My Coach Gave Me the Perfect Plan. It Was the Wrong One for Where I Was.
- Aaron Ellis
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Have you ever had a coach or trainer give you advice that made complete sense — and you still couldn't follow through?
Maybe they told you to meal prep on Sundays. To get to the gym three times a week. To drink more water and cut out sugar. All reasonable. All things you already knew. And yet, nothing changed.
Here's what most people assume: the problem is motivation. Willpower. Follow-through. Character, even.
But the research tells a very different story.
There's a framework called the Transtheoretical Model of Change — the TTM — developed by psychologists James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente in the 1970s and published in the 1980s. It's arguably the most researched model of health behavior change in existence. And its core insight is simple and radical at the same time: everyone enters the change process at a different stage of readiness. And the right information at the wrong stage is just noise.
The TTM identifies five stages: precontemplation (not yet thinking about change), contemplation (aware something needs to shift but not ready to act), preparation (getting ready), action (actively changing), and maintenance (sustaining the change). Most health coaches — even well-meaning, highly trained ones — skip straight to action-stage advice. They hand you a plan. They tell you what to do. And if you're in contemplation or preparation, that plan is going to feel like pressure, not support.
I learned this the hard way.
I spent twenty years as a fitness professional. A Les Mills Master Trainer. Someone other coaches came to for answers. And when I started GLP-1 and my life got hard — emotionally, physically, financially — I found myself completely unable to follow through on the things I knew I should do. Not because I didn't know what to do. Because nobody stopped to ask where I actually was before prescribing what came next.
That experience became the foundation of born Radiant. Every session starts with one question: where are you right now? Not where should you be. Not where were you last week. Where are you today — in this moment, with this life, carrying everything you're carrying?
The answer to that question determines everything else. The habit we work on. The tool we use. The pace we set. Because the right information, delivered at the right stage of change, is what makes the difference between pressure and progress.
You haven't been failing your programs. Your programs have been failing to meet you where you are.
That changes here.