The Story You're Telling Yourself Is Shaping Your Life.
What evidence-based coach, writer, and host of the Lift Free and Diet Hard podcast Andrew Coates understands about narratives, the fitness industry, and the one question worth asking yourself every day.
Andrew Coates has over 20,000 hours of coaching experience, nearly 500 podcast episodes, and a career built on doing something surprisingly rare in fitness. He tells the truth. Not the performed version. The actual truth — about what works, what doesn't, and what most people in the industry won't say out loud.
Partway through this conversation, he said something that stopped the whole discussion.
Almost everything you believe about yourself is a construct. A story. Not an objective truth. And the most important question you can ask is whether your story is serving you or holding you back.
“If you look at everything through the lens of what is a story I’m telling myself to reinforce belief and identity — where is it serving me, where is it holding me back, where is it keeping me playing small — you open yourself to changing your outcome.”
Lift Free And Diet Hard with Andrew Coates | Podcast on Spotify
He applies that lens to everything. To the coaches who tell themselves they hate marketing, when what they really fear is being seen and rejected. To the ones who build elaborate narratives about why viral social media is beneath them, while quietly struggling to find clients. To the people who say they want connection but vote for the Reels tab every time they open Instagram.
The story isn't always wrong. Sometimes it's protecting you. But if you never examine it, you can't know the difference between a belief that's building your life and one that's quietly limiting it.
Strong convictions, loosely held. Open to being wrong. Open to growing. That's how the best coaches — and the best people — actually operate.
The Lesson
Gravity is an objective truth. Almost everything else — every belief, every identity label, every story about who you are and what you're capable of — is a construct. Built by environment, by experience, by the culture you grew up in.
That's not a threat. It's a doorway. Because if the story is a construct, you can change it. You can examine it, update it, or let it go when it stops serving the life you're trying to build.
The number one thing holding most of us back is the story we tell ourselves. And most of us have never stopped to ask whether it's true.
“If you love what you do and believe in what you do, you don’t have to sell. It shines through. You listen, you ask questions, and people decide you’re who they want to work with.”
This conversation covers the state of the fitness industry, why simple beats sexy every time, where human connection fits in a world being over-digitized, the honest truth about online coaching, Pilates, GLP-1s, and what distinguishes coaches who build something lasting from those chasing shortcuts.
Andrew Coates is one of the most credible, honest voices in fitness. Not because of followers. Because of 20,000 hours of actual work.
This Week's Question
What story are you telling yourself right now? And is it serving you, or keeping you small?