You’re Not Undertrained. You’re Underfed.

You train hard. You eat clean. You never miss a session. And your physique still doesn’t show it. Norvic Chanco’s message for anyone in that spot is short and a little uncomfortable: “You are not undertrained. You are underfed.” Could the thing holding you back be the food you keep cutting?

As he puts it, muscle is built from being fueled, not exhausted. Here’s what that means in practice.

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The signs you might be underfed

• Your lifts have stalled or gone backwards for weeks.
• You feel flat, tired or unmotivated in most sessions.
• You’re always hungry, or you swing between strict days and big overeating days.
• The scale is down, but you look softer rather than more defined.
• Your protein is a guess, and most days it’s on the low side.

None of these prove you’re underfed on their own, but if several sound familiar, adding more training is unlikely to fix it. Fueling better might.

Step 1: Fix your protein

Protein is the raw material for muscle. A meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues (2018) found that extra protein helped strength training build more muscle, with the benefit levelling off around 1.6 g per kilogram of body weight per day on average. During a calorie deficit, protein may matter even more.

In a four-week study by Longland and colleagues (2016), 40 young men followed a large calorie deficit with intense training six days a week. The group eating more protein (2.4 g/kg) gained lean mass and lost more fat than the group eating less (1.2 g/kg).

Step 2: Lift with a plan to get stronger

Being exhausted after a workout isn’t the goal. Getting a little stronger over time is. Norvic’s advice is to lift with a plan, track your main lifts, and aim to add a rep or a little weight when you can. We break this down in our guide to progressive overload and in training harder vs training progressively.

Step 3: Let yourself recover

Training is the signal; recovery is where the change happens. When did you last plan a lighter week or protect your sleep? Sleep, rest days and enough food all feed into how well you adapt. A review by Barakat and colleagues (2020) on body recomposition highlighted progressive resistance training and good nutrition as the main drivers, with sleep playing a supporting role.

Why dieting yourself smaller backfires

Cutting calories further and further can feel productive, but the body pushes back. A review by Trexler and colleagues (2014) describes how prolonged energy restriction can lower energy expenditure and shift appetite hormones, which makes further fat loss harder. Add low protein to that and you risk losing the very muscle that gives you shape.

This doesn’t mean you never diet. It means the diet has to support your training, not starve it. If the scale has dropped but you don’t look the way you hoped, read what you actually lost, and if you’re not sure where your weak link is, try Norvic’s five-point physique audit.

Ready to fuel yourself stronger? Norvic invites people to comment “RESET” on his Instagram post for his 28 Day Recomp Kickstart, or you can apply for coaching here.