How to Actually Transform (It's not Nutrition or Training)

When I started training and started taking care of my health, I thought that the perfect training plan, the perfect nutrition plan, the fully optimized supplement stack was gonna be the things that got me to my goals. So I constantly listened to all these bodybuilders online coming up with some crazy exercises, constantly making small tweaks just to try to optimize every single detail in these aspects, in these areas. Yet I didn't see the results that I wanted. Sure, I put some muscle on, but I also felt shit. And this is the belief that most people hold on to as well. Everyone thinks that the perfect training plan, the perfect supplement stack, or the perfect diet is what's going to change their life. But I'm here to tell you it absolutely is not, because you will never outperform The story that you believe about yourself. The real transformation doesn't start in the gym; it doesn't start in the kitchen. It will start in your mind with an identity shift. You don't change your life by stacking more habits or information or making small tweaks, this and that. You change your life by becoming the person who does those things naturally. I used to go to the gym every day. I trained hard, ate clean, tracked my food. I was doing everything right on paper according to these guys, but nothing. Changed. I was stuck. My body wasn't responding. My habits weren't sticking, and I was still fighting with myself every single day. And looking back at it now, I realize why. I absolutely do. I still saw myself as the guy who doesn't really belong here. You know, the guy who goes out, parties, skips sleep, and starts over on Monday. And even when I was doing all the things right, my identity was still pulling me backward. And then it doesn't help when people around you reinforce it. You know, you start hearing things like, "Oh, you're not that guy." You're not the gym dude. Why are you taking this so seriously? Have a bit of balance. Why are you bringing this food to work with you? Come on, man. Why are you so strict? And every time you hear that, it reconfirms the story you already tell yourself. Maybe I'm not actually this guy. Maybe I'm not this disciplined. Or maybe I'm cutting myself short and I can't achieve the goals that I've set out for myself. But this will keep you trapped in your old identity. And the moment everything changed for me wasn't when I found the perfect program or the perfect nutrition plan. It was when I stopped trying to prove something on the outside and started to rebuild who I was on the inside. I stopped caring about how I was looking, this and that. I just want to feel good on the inside. That's the thing that I value the most. That's when transformation also starts to become effortless. Now, having worked with multiple guys, I've also come to the realization, like again, that it doesn't matter if I have the perfect training plan put together or the perfect nutrition plan. If the mindset and the new the identity shift isn't there, those things are going to mean nothing. It's going to mean nothing. Nothing. I want you to think about the sleep analogy. Think about falling asleep. And think about how we fall asleep. We're not forcing it. You close your eyes, you slow your breath, and you pretend to be asleep, and eventually you are. You act as if, and your body follows. And that's exactly how identity works. You have to start acting like the person you want to become before you feel like that person. You fake it until your nervous system and subconscious accept this, accept it as reality. How do we fall asleep? Well, we pretend to be asleep, and then eventually we fall asleep. This is the analogy that I want you to apply and think about in all areas of your life. This Lucas did not get here by accident. He was starting to get religious with his inputs and. Dialed every single thing in, never cut himself short, acted, started to act like this person would have acted. And that's what's going to get him from here to here. It's not by accident. You're not getting here naturally by accident. Maybe if you're blasting PEDs and peptides and steroids, you might get here like by accident. But naturally, you're not going to do this naturally. You have to be religious with the inputs. And in order for that to happen, you have to Create a new identity, because it's the identity that Lucas holds on here that got him from from here to here. It's the identity shift. So what is the actual science behind this then? Fake it, faking it. Well, when you act as if you're not lying to yourself, you're reprogramming yourself. Your brain doesn't fully understand the. Difference between imagination and experience. So the same neural circuits fire when you visualize or act something out as when you actually do it. And that's how you build new neural pathways. You think, move, and breathe as your future self, and your biology begins to align with that signal. Your nervous system doesn't respond to words, it responds to identity. So if you act confident long enough, you become confident. If you act like you have energy, your physiology adapts. Cortisol lowers, dopamine rises, posture changes, breath deepens. You literally train your body into a new state of being. I used to be like, trust me, I was not a confident guy back in the days. Now I'm super confident. And how did I get there, get here? Well, it's by acting. I woke up one day and like, I'm just gonna pretend to be confident because your brain is also then gonna, gonna start to look naturally for confirmations. Like, we have this thing called confirmation bias, right? So starting to pretend, and then you snip up like proof that, oh, maybe I am confident, and maybe my own, my perception of myself is the only thing that matters. Because if I believe that I'm confident, I'm gonna act confident, then people around me are gonna, people around me gonna, gonna view me as confident as well, right? That's how it works. And here is what most people get wrong. They try to change behaviors before they change identity. They force Discipline on top of an identity that still believes, you know, I'm not consistent, I always fall off, I'm not that person, I can't follow through. But behavior always follows belief. You can't install new habits into an old operating system. You have to rewrite the system first. And when I stopped saying, you know, I'm trying to get healthy and started saying, I'm a healthy person, started embodying that, Everything shift. My body started acting differently. I started making better decisions automatically, not through willpower, but through alignment. Your subconscious doesn't care about what you want; it only cares about who you are. And if you keep identifying yourself as your old self, you'll always end up where you've always been. I think about this as if we Talk more about confirmation bias as well. Like if you just, what example should we give here? Okay, like this. If you go out and you drive your car to work every single morning and you hold on to this belief that everyone is so bad at driving, there's people can't drive. What's gonna happen is that your brain is gonna start look for proof that, that, or start to stack proof, um, based on that belief. So you're gonna start look for people that drives bad, and every time you see that, you're gonna be like, told you so, that this is how it is, everyone drives bad, everyone is a bad driver except me, and this and that. Because your brain will always try to confirm the belief that you hold on to yourself, right? So, and there's also this thing called the Brandolini's Law, which basically states that the effort in order to Reframe old beliefs and change old beliefs is 10 times greater than continuing to live on in a lie and continue to look for proof that your, your initial belief is the truth. So it's hard to change. Like, trust me, it's fucking hard. I want to give you another example here based on my story. You know, at this point, this Lucas would never— if you place Add all the candy in the world on top of his, um, on top or in front of me, I would never even look at it. I would never even look at it because my willpower muscle is so trained at this point. If you place a bowl of candy in front of this guy, candy, chips, whatever it might be, this guy is gonna have the hardest time to resist picking that up and putting it, putting it in his mouth. But We have this brain, this part in our brain called the willpower muscle. I'm not gonna say the real name because you're never gonna— first of all, I can't pronounce it. Let's just call it the willpower muscle. And this acts just as a muscle, you know, every single repetition we do, we get stronger. So this guy has hard times resisting, you know, temptation or whatever you wanna call it, but every single time He resists taking up that candy and putting it in his mouth. It's a repetition for his willpower muscle, and every single time it's going to get easier and easier to be able to resist until it gets to the point where this new identity, these new things—I don't have to act. I don't have to to resist. It's it's just who I am because I've trained my identity and trained my willpower muscle so much to the point where it's just it's just. That's just how it is. Obviously, another layer to it: I understand what that's going to do to my body, so I would never even even even put it in for that for those reasons as well. But training your willpower is also one thing that is super super correlated to identity as well that we have to understand, and it's hard in the beginning. It's fucking hard waking up, not motivated, not ready to go to the gym. Ah, this old version. Ah, it's okay if I skip the gym. No, fuck this shit. I'm the type of guy that goes to the gym every single day regardless of how I feel. Embody that shit. Go to the gym. You know, that's one repetition for your willpower muscle as well. You're doing something that you intuitively not want to do. Intuitively, your body, it feels right. You want to skip it. You want to lay home on the sofa, watch TV, eat some food because you don't have that much energy today. That's the moments that matters the most. Trust me. Identity also is not just psychological; it's physiological. Your beliefs shape your hormones, your posture, your breathing, even your metabolism. Think about confidence. It's not just in your head; it's chemical. Confidence raises testosterone and dopamine, which turns which in turn reinforce the feeling of confidence. Identity and biology form a feedback loop. If you keep acting like a low energy overwhelmed person, your body starts producing. Chemistry that matches that identity. But when you start acting like a grounded, strong, focused person, even before you feel it, your hormones begin to reflect that. You literally start changing from the inside out. How do we then actually reprogram our identity? Some practical shifts. Well, it's not by repeating affirmations in front of a mirror, although that can work. It's by collecting evidence every day that proves who you're becoming. So we have to start with language. Stop saying I'm trying. Start saying, I am. I'm not trying to be healthy. I am healthy. Obviously, we have to act in alignment as well. We can't just shout, I'm healthy, out in the blue and expect for our body to just be healthy from nowhere, from one day to another. Even if it's, you know, we have to act accordingly. Even if it's uncomfortable, behave like your future self would. Make decisions that That version of you would make. Move your body accordingly. Posture, breath, and tone all signals identity to your nervous system. You can't feel powerless while standing like power. We have to surround ourselves with mirrors— people, environments, and inputs that reflect your new story, not your old one. I like this analogy of this as well. If we're trying to quit alcohol, should you be at a bar a Friday night or Saturday evening surrounded by drunk people That is gonna push you to drink alcohol and tell you that you're boring and this and that if you're trying to quit alcohol. That's literally like fucking shooting yourself in the foot. Are you stupid? We have to cut those ties. We have to not surround ourselves with people that that doesn't have the same purpose and vision and goals as you because those are gonna bring you back to that old identity. It's gonna make the identity shift so hard. So if this means cutting old bands, that's what it meant for me. Cutting all bands, cutting all people, cutting out people that don't have the same vision and the same purpose and the same drive and the same energy as me. So be it. And then obviously repetition and reinforcing it daily. Every time you follow through, you're voting for your new self. Every time you skip picking up that candy, that's a repetition. It's gonna just get easier and easier. But trust me, I know it's so hard in the beginning. Identity isn't built in one moment. It's built in thousands of moments that all say. This is who I am now. Confirmation bias—we start to look for confirmation that this is the new, this is who I am now, right? I'm not holding on to these old beliefs and these old values that this old version of me had. So real transformation will not start when you find the perfect plan. It starts when you decide to stop being the old version of yourself, because the truth is you don't achieve a new identity; you embody it. It's not going to come on a silver platter. You stop waiting to feel ready, you act ready. You stop chasing motivation, you start living in alignment. And when you do that long enough, your biology, your results, your life, they will all catch up. You don't fake it forever, you fake it until it's real. Everything you want out of this life, whatever it might be— more energy, more money, a stronger body, better habits, Better health—it all starts with one thing. I love this photo. Identity is in the core. You will never outperform the story you believe about yourself. This is once again why throughout me and my journey and working with multiple multiple clients, I've understood that if I put like I wouldn't. There's probably someone that has a better, scientifically better workout program than me. I'm not gonna sit here and say that I have the best workout program in the world, or the best nutrition philosophy, or whatever in the world. That would be a complete lie, because it most likely isn't. But I don't care, because if I believe it, that's the only thing that matters. I believe that I have the best workout program in the world. I believe that my nutrition philosophy is the best in the world. If I believe it, if that's reality or not, I don't care. So be it. As long as I believe it, that's the only thing that matters for me, because then that becomes my identity, that becomes what I embody, right? Yeah. But I've understood that it's not about providing that to my clients that is going to make them change. It's not about giving— let's take an example— Landon here the perfect nutrition plan and perfect training plan that is getting him from here to here. Landon had already been training 10 years here. He already was eating super, super clean. So what's the difference? Why is the identity shift? Going from a, going from a business owner that just works, works, works, puts in all the hours, just go, go, go, to now we have to embody a new healthy version of ourselves that is going to perform better, that is going to show up as a better leader, that is going to, going to be someone that his employees can look up to because he not just talks the talk, he also walks the walk. How is this guy going to be able to tell people to do hard things when he looks soft, when he looks, you know, like he, he's not disciplined, he's this and that? Compared to this guy, like sharp, jacked. This guy you would want to listen to. This guy, are you really going to take him serious? You know, let's take another example. Let's take Leo. Same thing here. Had been working out for years here, putting in all the hours. Very good. Very good. Physique still already got results. What is gonna take Leo in 3 months from this to this? Well, it's not just the training and the nutrition. I can tell you that. Of course, it's a part of it, but it's the identity shift. It's adopting this new identity that gets results, that puts in the work, that does all the right things every single day. Start acting as this superhuman version of Leo. That's what's going to get this Leo from here to here. Same thing with Rasmus, cutting out all old bad habits, drinking alcohol, this and that. Start acting like the better, the new version of himself. That's where the real magic happens. Of course, the training and nutrition is important, but I can tell you for a fact, all these guys haven't gotten to where they are by just me handing out the best of the best training plan and the best of the best nutrition protocol and supplement stack to them. It's the identity shift. I've seen this so many times, and this is why I take this approach with my clients as well, right? Training and nutrition will only get you so far, but you're not getting from here to here just by training and nutrition. And if this sounds woo woo whatever, so be fucking it. But it's the truth. It's the identity shift. It's a mindset. It's all these things around the training and nutrition that is where the real magic happens. That's what's going to separate someone from that gets average results. To someone that gets fucking top 0.01% results, because you're not getting here by accident, and you're not getting here by average inputs. You're not getting from this to this by just optimizing your training and nutrition. If you believe that, you're massively misled. It's all these other things around that is the real reason for transformation. As it states here, wait, where do I have it? The foundation of transformation: identity. So if you feel like you've done everything, you're doing everything right now, right, right now, you're eating clean, you're training hard, but you're not seeing the results, it might just be the case that you're focusing on the wrong thing. It's not about optimizing the training, it's not about optimizing the nutrition or the supplement stack. You're going to get average results, right? What takes someone from this to this is not that, it's all the things around. And if you're interested about working with me one-to-one, as all of these guys have been doing, to get to where they was, toward towards where they are right now, you can always apply below for a discovery call for my one-to-one coaching. See if you can apply, see if we're a good fit, map out your current situation, see your— understand your bottlenecks, and see kind of the gap or the bridge between that and your goals, and see if I can be a part of that and help you out. Because just optimizing the training and nutrition is only going to get you so far. Upgrading your mindset, fixing your identity, fixing all these things around That's where the majority of the results are happening, and that's naturally how I approach it with my clients as well. It's not just training and nutrition; it's a full lifestyle mindset performance program. So check the first link in the description if you're interested in in in that, and I'll see you maybe see you there. If not, I hope you enjoy this one takeaways. Fix your identity. Kill your old beliefs. Create new ones. Create a new identity for yourself. That's where the real magic is going to be found. If you have any questions about this, shoot me a message. If you want a little workshop on this as well, something that I usually just send to my clients, shoot me a shoot me a message on Instagram and I'll send that over to you as well. Um, but yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, let me know. Let me know your thoughts. Let me know your experience about this, and I'll see you guys in the next one.