“the physical change is the easier part. The real journey is the one that happens in your head — and most people never even see it coming, let alone prepare for it.”
Erkki Martin | MVP #1
Aged 37, Erkki Martin stepped on the scale one Sunday morning and saw 108 kilograms. He had assumed he was somewhere over 90. He hadn't checked in a while, there had been no particular reason to. He had always trained, year after year after year. But then came kids, entrepreneurship, and everything else that quietly fills a life until the gym sessions aren’t enough to keep you in shape.
His wife asked how much he weighed. He looked in the mirror first. Then he stepped on the scale.
No dramatic health scare. No doctor's warning. Just a number on a Sunday morning, possibly a slight hangover, and a decision that formed somewhere between the mirror and the scale: this starts now. He hired a coach. He told himself there was no other option. At 39 years old he was standing on a competition stage.
Erkki's professional life has never followed a straight line. He started a business, faced bankruptcy, and rebuilt. The bankruptcy taught him that consistency beats intensity, whether you’re building a company or rebuilding your body.
He founded Hakula Design Optikko, an eyeglasses store in Turku, and spent years building it into something worth selling, which he did last year (2025). That kind of exit doesn't happen by accident. It takes the same discipline he later applied to his body: show up, do the work, don't look for shortcuts.
Today he works four days a week at the optician store, coaches clients on nutrition and body transformation, and flips properties on the side. He has a family. The calendar is full. Three very different things, held together by the same approach, and not a lot of room for things that don't work.
Ask Erkki what changed and he won't give you a motivational answer. He stopped making excuses. That's it. Not a mindset shift, not a new system, not a revelation, just the decision to stop explaining away the gap between where he was and where he wanted to be, and start building habits simple enough to repeat week after week without thinking too hard about them.
The framework he lives by isn't complicated. Eat well 90% of the time, not perfectly, not obsessively, just consistently. Always get enough protein. Train with a purpose, not just to burn calories. Move outside the gym. Plan ahead so that success isn't left to chance. These aren't radical ideas. The difference is that Erkki actually does them, every week, regardless of how busy things get. And things get busy.
What nobody warns you about, Erkki says, is what happens around you when you decide to change. The people closest to you tell you you've already done enough. A couple of kilos gone, back to normal, back to the same rhythm as everyone else. You stop showing up for coffee and pastries as often. Friends pull back a little. The social calendar that used to fit your life no longer quite fits the person you're becoming. You keep going and the criticism gets louder.
He says the physical change is the easier part. The real journey is the one that happens in your head — and most people never even see it coming, let alone prepare for it.
On the nutrition side, Erkki keeps it exactly as simple as his schedule demands. Food volume, protein, fiber, fat, get those four things working together and the rest of the day becomes manageable. Blood sugar stays even. Hunger doesn't spike. You stop compensating at every meal. He adds cottage cheese to his Grit Farm Performance Oats and calls breakfast done. The macros work, the volume is there, and it takes 3 minutes.
He doesn't leave nutrition to chance any more than he leaves training to chance. It's planned, it's repeatable, and it works around a life that doesn't slow down to accommodate it.
Erkki doesn’t believe success comes from perfect days. It comes from repeating good ones often enough that they become who you are.
Follow Erkki Martin on Instagram: @erkki.martin
