Pull the Biggest Lever First

A client asks me what supplement they should take to lose fat, and they've been getting five hours of sleep a night for the last decade. That's the whole problem with how most people approach changing their body. They reach for the smallest lever in the room and ignore the one that would actually move the floor.

So let me give you the way I actually think about this, because it's the difference between spinning your wheels for a year and changing in a season.

Your body is a system, not a list

Here's the thing almost nobody is good at: systems thinking. We're trained to look for THE answer. The one food. The one trick. The one hack. But a body in the middle of a transformation isn't a single dial; it's a web of connected dials, and when you crank one, three others move whether you wanted them to or not.

Cut sleep to grab a workout, and you spike cortisol, blunt your recovery, raise your injury risk, and tank your mood. You "added" exercise and quietly subtracted from four other systems. That's the part people miss. You can't just optimize one corner. You have to step back, open the aperture, and ask what the whole system looks like before you touch anything.

When I assess why someone is succeeding or stalling, I'm not looking at one thing. I'm looking at a stack of levers: clarity, commitment, consistency, community, sleep, hydration, calories, macros, micronutrients, nutrient timing, exercise, non-exercise activity, supplementation. Thirteen of them. And the whole game is knowing which one to pull, and in what order.

Long levers and short levers

Not all levers are the same length. Some, when you pull them, move the entire system. Others barely nudge it. The mistake is spending all your energy on the short ones while the long ones sit untouched.

Sleep is the longest lever I know. A lot of people could improve their results without changing a single other thing in their life, just by sleeping enough to recover from what they're already doing. If you're consistently running on five or six hours, you're almost certainly not one of the rare few who's genetically fine on that (that's under three percent of people, and no, you're probably not one of them). Fix your sleep routine before you touch anything else. Same bedtime, same wake time, less screen and scroll in the decompression hours. That alone changes more than any supplement on the shelf.

Hydration is a long lever too, and it's one of the easiest to grab because it's additive. You're not taking anything away; you're just drinking more water. Roughly an ounce per kilo of bodyweight as a floor, biased toward water and calorie-free drinks. Low-hanging fruit, and most people leave it on the tree.

Then calories. When you read the actual clinical research, over and over, calories come out king for body composition. Every diet that has ever worked controls them, whether it admits it or not. Keto caps calories by deleting a whole macronutrient. Mediterranean caps them by leaning on nutrient-dense, calorically light food. Anyone selling you "eat unlimited as long as you avoid X" is selling you bullshit. A deep-fried bacon-wrapped avocado is still calories. Four thousand in, three thousand out, you gain weight; that doesn't care how keto the bomb is.

Earn the right to fine-tune

Now here's where people get it backward. They obsess over the short levers before the long ones are anywhere near solid.

Nutrient timing is the classic example. The bodybuilding world made the anabolic window famous, like you've got twenty-seven seconds after your last set to slam protein or it's all wasted. Timing is real and it matters, but it's a fine-tuning lever. I am not going to talk timing with someone who isn't sleeping, isn't hydrated, isn't hitting their calories, isn't hitting their protein, isn't making decent food choices. You don't tune the carburetor when the engine has no oil.

Supplementation is dead last on my list for the same reason, and I say that as someone who used to be all the way into supplements. They can help: round out a micronutrient gap, support a specific performance need, fill in vitamin D or fish oil. But they only do anything once the foundation underneath them is built. A supplement on top of no sleep and chaotic eating is decoration on a house with no frame.

That's the whole logic. The long levers (clarity on your goal, commitment to it, consistent habits, a community that holds you up, sleep, hydration, calories, protein) come first because they move the system the most. The short levers (precise timing, supplements, the clever tweaks) come last, because they only pay off once the big stuff is handled. Consistency, by the way, is the single best predictor of success I've ever seen. Which is exactly why we index on the foundational, sustainable levers instead of the hacks; a hack is only worth anything if it helps you stay consistent.

One more thing about the triangle

Before you pull any lever, get clear on what you're actually optimizing for. Performance, health, and aesthetics are three different points on a triangle, and you can't max all three at once. Chase performance and you may stress recovery and health. Chase aesthetics and you'll down-regulate performance. Chase health and you might not look your absolute leanest. Pick your point. The right lever for a fat-loss goal is not the right lever for a podium goal, and pretending otherwise is how people pour effort into the wrong dial for years.

This is general principle, not a prescription for your specific body; if you've got real metabolic, hormonal, or medical stuff in play, work it through with a professional who can see your whole picture.

So next time you catch yourself googling the perfect supplement or the perfect meal timing, stop and ask the real question: are my long levers handled? Am I sleeping? Am I hydrated? Are my calories and protein where they need to be, consistently? Pull the biggest lever in the room first. Then, and only then, go tune the small ones.

Listen to the full breakdown here.

If you want a coach to help you figure out which lever to pull first instead of guessing, come apply to work with me. I've never turned anyone away over money, and I'd rather get you moving on the right thing than watch you waste another year on the wrong one.

Vokse eller dø. — Coach Jordan