Fit to Transform Podcast with Coach Nikias
Sep 25, 2026 · 20 min · 6 segments
In this solo episode, I’m going to cover how my thoughts have changed regarding the importance of your mindset around food, IIFYM, and using a surplus to bulk. **Links and resources:** Sign up for…
Nikias TomasielloHostAnd three, the third topic is going to be bulking and specifically utilizing a nutritional surplus to enhance muscle growth.
Like all green personal trainers, when I completed my initial qualifications, I thought I knew exactly what people needed to to achieve their goals because during my courses I was taught about calorie balance and how if you want to lose fat you need to be in a deficit and if you want to gain weight you need to be in a surplus and so on and so forth and in my immense naivete I thought if I just told somebody to track their calories and specifically how many calories they should eat and they had me for accountability they would 100% get to their physique goals and we would all live happily ever after.
Now, this is a very common mindset among newbie trainers, as far as I have seen talking to my colleagues.
Even though it's quite funny, because if you think about it for one minute, you're going to realize that anybody could use a calorie calculator to get their calorie target absolutely for free.
Anyway, once reality stomped all over my naivete, I had to change my approach because I started working with clients and I realized that indeed, just giving them calories and macros and then acting as their accountability coach was not enough.
Or rather, it's not nearly as important as I thought it was in the beginning.
Yes, targets are important, and if they're not accurate, you're not going to get the results that you expect.
But this is not the main reason that people struggle with nutrition, in my experience.
First of all, do you see food as good or bad, like a lot of people do? Because if that's the case, then you're also likely to see good food as less appealing, because, well, we all like bad boys, don't we? Or, jokes aside, we all tend to crave the foods that we don't allow ourselves to have.
And if you label a food as bad, you probably don't allow yourself to have it.
On the other hand, if you had a more neutral view of all foods, where food is just food, then you probably wouldn't put any particular food on a pedestal, and that would change your approach to nutrition as a whole.
Second example, do you use food as a square peg for a round hole? Or in other words, is food the right tool for the job? For instance, if you're stressed, lonely, bored or grieving, food isn't going to solve those problems.
And as another example, are your food decisions intentional? For instance, if you choose to eat for comfort, if you choose to eat because you're stressed, lonely, bored, grieving, if you choose to go over your calorie target, and you also understand the consequences of your decision, and you feel in perfect control, great.
then I respect that and I've done my job because my job isn't to tell you what to do.
It's to give you the tools to make these informed and empowering decisions for yourself.
And three, the third topic is going to be bulking and specifically utilizing a nutritional surplus to enhance muscle growth.
Like all green personal trainers, when I completed my initial qualifications, I thought I knew exactly what people needed to to achieve their goals because during my courses I was taught about calorie balance and how if you want to lose fat you need to be in a deficit and if you want to gain weight you need to be in a surplus and so on and so forth and in my immense naivete I thought if I just told somebody to track their calories and specifically how many calories they should eat and they had me for accountability they would 100% get to their physique goals and we would all live happily ever after.
Now, this is a very common mindset among newbie trainers, as far as I have seen talking to my colleagues.
Even though it's quite funny, because if you think about it for one minute, you're going to realize that anybody could use a calorie calculator to get their calorie target absolutely for free.
Anyway, once reality stomped all over my naivete, I had to change my approach because I started working with clients and I realized that indeed, just giving them calories and macros and then acting as their accountability coach was not enough.
Or rather, it's not nearly as important as I thought it was in the beginning.
Yes, targets are important, and if they're not accurate, you're not going to get the results that you expect.
But this is not the main reason that people struggle with nutrition, in my experience.
First of all, do you see food as good or bad, like a lot of people do? Because if that's the case, then you're also likely to see good food as less appealing, because, well, we all like bad boys, don't we? Or, jokes aside, we all tend to crave the foods that we don't allow ourselves to have.
And if you label a food as bad, you probably don't allow yourself to have it.
On the other hand, if you had a more neutral view of all foods, where food is just food, then you probably wouldn't put any particular food on a pedestal, and that would change your approach to nutrition as a whole.
Second example, do you use food as a square peg for a round hole? Or in other words, is food the right tool for the job? For instance, if you're stressed, lonely, bored or grieving, food isn't going to solve those problems.
And as another example, are your food decisions intentional? For instance, if you choose to eat for comfort, if you choose to eat because you're stressed, lonely, bored, grieving, if you choose to go over your calorie target, and you also understand the consequences of your decision, and you feel in perfect control, great.
then I respect that and I've done my job because my job isn't to tell you what to do.
It's to give you the tools to make these informed and empowering decisions for yourself.
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