I'm Not Chasing Unrecognisable (And Neither Should You)

By Paul Butler · Online Coach & Personal Trainer

Every so often the internet decides you should come back unrecognisable. Which is a strange ambition when you think about it. Nobody says that about anything else they are fond of.

You do not hear people say they want their house to be unrecognisable, or their dog. But bodies get talked about as though the current one is a rough draft, and the only respectable outcome is a version so different that people walk past you in Tesco.

I have never coached anyone towards that, and I am not going to start. Not because I am against people changing, obviously, that is literally the job. But because "unrecognisable" is a terrible target that quietly wrecks more attempts than any bad diet ever has.

Why the extreme version sells so well

Because it photographs beautifully, and almost nothing else about real progress does.

Someone who has quietly got stronger over eight months, sleeps better, and no longer dreads the stairs at work does not make a compelling before-and-after. There is no dramatic reveal. There is just a person getting on with their life rather better than before, which is worth an enormous amount and is worth nothing at all as content.

So the industry sells the reveal. Thirty days, six weeks, a holiday deadline. I have seen more thirty-day transformations than I have had hot dinners, with about as much substance. Not because the pictures are fake, usually they are not. Because the picture is week twelve, and nobody ever posts year five.

Year five is the whole thing. Year five is whether you kept it.

What chasing unrecognisable actually costs you

Three things, and they compound.

It requires an extreme you cannot hold. To change that dramatically in the timescales being advertised, you have to run a deficit that leaves you tired and irritable, train more than your week has room for, and treat every social occasion as an obstacle. It works while you can sustain it. Nobody sustains it, because it was never designed to be sustained. It was designed to be photographed.

It makes real progress feel like failure. If the target is unrecognisable, then losing half a stone and getting noticeably stronger reads as "barely anything". You have done something genuinely good and the goalpost tells you it does not count. That is how people quit things that were working, which I went through properly in why you keep starting over.

It puts your body on trial. If the current one is a problem to be solved, you are now living inside a problem. That is a miserable arrangement, and it has consequences beyond motivation. Weight loss pursued in that spirit can genuinely leave people more anxious rather than less, which I covered in can losing weight cause anxiety.

What I actually coach towards

Recognisably you. Same person, better maintained.

In practice that means being strong enough that daily life stops being an effort. Carrying the shopping in one trip. Getting off the floor without making the noise. Keeping up on a walk without pretending to check your phone. Having something left at seven in the evening for the people who live with you.

It means fat loss too, for most people, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to want. But at a rate you can live with, holding onto muscle, in a way that survives a holiday and a bad month. I have written the honest timelines in how quickly can I lose a stone, and they are slower than the adverts and considerably faster than starting again every February.

And it means the thing nobody puts on a poster: not thinking about it much. The real marker of success is when training and eating stop being a project you are running and become just things you do, like brushing your teeth. Undramatic. Slightly boring. Completely different from where you started. I laid out that timeline in rebuilding self-trust week by week.

Why I hold this one quite strongly

I should be honest about where it comes from, because it is not a marketing position I arrived at.

I have Cystic Fibrosis, and I take around thirty tablets a day. Health has never been a vanity project for me, because it was never optional. The basics done consistently, sleep, food, movement, whether or not I fancied them, are a large part of why I am well enough to be writing this.

That gives you a particular view of the fitness industry. When your training genuinely affects whether you spend the winter in hospital, you lose patience quickly with anything built for a photograph. You want the version that works on a Tuesday in November when you feel rough and nobody is watching. That is the only version I know how to coach, and it turns out to be the version that works for people whose lungs are perfectly fine too.

The honest caveat

I am not telling you to lower your ambitions. This gets misread as "settle", and that is not it.

Plenty of my clients have changed a great deal. Several look genuinely different in photographs and are rightly delighted about it. The difference is that they got there at a pace that let them keep it, and they were not measuring themselves against a stranger the whole way. The change was a result, not the entry requirement.

And if you want to compete, or hit a specific look for a specific date, that is a legitimate goal with a real cost, and you should go in knowing the cost. What I object to is that being sold as the default setting to people who mainly want to feel better and be around for a long time.

If you are managing a health condition, that GP conversation comes before any of this. A coach can build structure round your life. A coach cannot tell you what your body can safely do, and should not pretend otherwise.

Frequently asked questions

Is it wrong to want to look different?

Not remotely, and I would be a strange coach if I said otherwise. Most people arrive wanting exactly that. The distinction is between wanting to look better and needing to become someone else. The first is a goal. The second is a moving target that never lets you arrive.

How do I set a goal that is not just a number on the scale?

Pick something you can test. A weight you can lift, a walk you can finish without stopping, a working day without the four o'clock crash. Those tell you whether the plan is working long before the scale does, and they keep counting during the weeks the scale sulks.

Does slower progress just mean less motivation?

It tends to mean the opposite once you are a couple of months in. Fast plans front-load the motivation and then collapse. Steady plans feel unimpressive early and then quietly keep going, and the compounding is where the actual change lives.

What if I have a wedding or a holiday in twelve weeks?

Then work backwards sensibly and accept what twelve weeks can honestly deliver, which is real and visible but not a different person. The mistake is not having a deadline. It is picking a target that only works if you use extremes you will abandon the week after.

How do I stop comparing myself to people online?

Mostly by remembering you are comparing your ordinary Tuesday with somebody's best fifteen seconds, filmed deliberately. Muting accounts that consistently leave you feeling behind is not weakness, it is basic housekeeping. Follow a few people whose lives look a bit like yours.

This article is general information, not medical advice. If you are managing a health condition, please speak to your GP before starting a new training or nutrition plan. Images sourced from Pexels (free to use): Abhi, Go0fyy.