Dillon Phaneuf | The Canadian Top 30 Spotlight Project

The Architecture of a Rebuilt Life.

Some people inspire us because of what they have accomplished. Others inspire us because they are willing to tell the truth about what it took to get there.

Dillon Phaneuf is both.

Today, Phaneuf is the founder of Edmonton-based Rebuild Coaching. He helps people rebuild their health, their habits and, often, the way they see themselves. But the word rebuild means something deeply personal to Dillon. Long before it became the name of his business, rebuilding had already become part of his own story.

Dillon left home at fifteen. The years that followed would bring challenges with his health, addiction and loss — chapters that would require him, more than once, to rebuild. And each time, there was a choice: what do I do from here?

For roughly twenty years, Dillon carried between 100 and 150 pounds of excess weight, but when he speaks about those years, the number is not what matters most. “The number is the least interesting part,” he says. “The part that matters is what it does to a person quietly. The avoiding. The planning your day around what you will not have to do in front of people. The private math nobody sees.”

We all have parts of our story that others may never fully see — seasons that test us, experiences that change us, and moments when finding our way forward takes more strength than anyone around us may realize.

At twenty, Dillon suffered a fall and was prescribed OxyContin for the pain that followed. What began as treatment for an injury became the beginning of a much harder battle. “The thing I was using to survive was also the thing taking me apart,” he says.

Personal loss followed, along with months spent in a basement during one of the hardest periods of his life. Dillon speaks openly about this chapter with the perspective of someone who can now see how much of his life would eventually be rebuilt. These experiences do not define his story, but they are part of it — and part of the strength, understanding and compassion he carries forward today.

For Dillon, one of the moments that changed the direction of his health came in a doctor’s office. His blood pressure medication was increasing, his glucose markers were poor, and insulin was likely next. “That was not a pep talk,” Dillon remembers. “It was a mirror. And for whatever reason, that time I did not look away.”

What followed was not an overnight transformation. It became approximately fifteen years of rebuilding — losing roughly 150 pounds, training, growing and continuing to make choices that moved his life forward. Jiu-jitsu and judo became part of that journey, teaching Dillon how to lose, learn, get back up and continue — something he calls “the most useful skill I own.”

Dillon’s physical rebuilding continued to reach new levels. In 2018, he earned his natural pro card at the World Championships.

“I stood backstage in the best shape of my life and still felt insecure,” Dillon says, “which taught me that no finish line cures the thing that sent you looking for it.”

And Dillon’s rebuilding was not only physical. While he had already built a life and work centred around helping others, his own rebuilding was continuing from within. He reconnected with his Christian faith and chose baptism, which he describes as “the best decision I have ever made.” His faith became an important foundation in his life. During one of his hardest refining seasons, a pastor named Jamie became an important source of support in Dillon’s faith journey — someone Dillon would come to describe as “something close to a spiritual father.”

That continued growth added another layer of understanding to work Dillon had already been doing for more than fifteen years as a coach. Through Rebuild Coaching, his practice centres on helping people create meaningful, sustainable change in their health. He also hosts The Rebuild, a podcast that adds another dimension to the work he continues to build.

Many of the people he works with already understand nutrition and exercise. Some have lost weight before, even several times. The challenge is often understanding why the changes they worked so hard to make did not last. Dillon knows that personally. “I was not saved by information,” he says. “I had all the information.”

That understanding allows Dillon to look beyond what someone is doing and help them understand what may be happening underneath it. “When I sit across from someone who feels buried, I am not working from a textbook,” Dillon says. “I know that room. I have furnished it.” His approach focuses on physiology, behaviour and identity — the body, the choices we make when life becomes difficult, and ultimately how we see ourselves.

“Borrowed habits do not survive a hard week,” he says. “The person who keeps the weight off is not the same person who lost it.”

Dillon also speaks openly about something many people carry quietly: shame. “Shame does not produce change. It produces hiding, and hiding produces another decade.”

One of the moments Dillon values most in coaching comes when someone stops seeing themselves as the problem and begins understanding the pattern underneath it. A nine o’clock snack, for example, may have started hours earlier with a skipped lunch or exhaustion. Once the pattern becomes visible, something changes. “They stop fighting themselves and start fixing something specific,” Dillon says.

That willingness to look honestly at what is happening is something Dillon asks of himself, too. His own definition of success has changed over the years. “I wanted to be the guy who did it,” he says of an earlier time in his journey. Today, what matters is different. “What matters now is who I am when nobody is watching, and what my influence does to the people standing near me.”

That kind of honesty also means being willing to hear the truth from others. Dillon intentionally keeps people in his life who can challenge him and hold him accountable. “I care more now about being accountable than being impressive,” he says.

That commitment to growth is also reflected in the way Dillon thinks about progress. For him, it is less about how quickly we get somewhere and more about the direction we continue to choose: Direction over speed.

“I would far rather have somebody pointed the right way and moving slowly than pointed the wrong way and sprinting,” he says.

“People arrive when they arrive, and my job is to be steady and still standing there when they do.”

That same presence matters in Dillon’s own life, too. He finds joy in training — lifting weights, being on the mats, and the focus that training requires. “The task is entirely in front of me,” he says. He also values something simpler: an honest conversation with another person. No agenda. No outcome to reach. Just two people willing to be present with one another.

That perspective carries even greater meaning when Dillon talks about the seasons when being present in his own life was much harder. “When you are in it, the ache feels permanent,” he says, “and permanence is what makes people quit. Nobody quits because today is hard. People quit because they become convinced that every day from now on will be this hard.”

Dillon knows what it is to believe that a difficult season might never end. His faith helped him see beyond what was in front of him, and over time, he came to understand: “I was not being punished, I was being built.”

There was a time when Dillon was over 300 pounds, dependent on painkillers and sitting in a basement believing the good part of his life might already have happened. Today, he knows that what felt like the end of his story was not the end at all.

The road forward did not appear all at once. Dillon says it began with “a decision to start walking it before I felt ready.”

As Dillon puts it: “It takes one honest decision and one small thing you do not negotiate.”

And he has learned that we do not have to walk that road alone. “The people who make it are almost never the ones with the most willpower,” he says. “They are the ones who let somebody walk with them.”

It is an honour to recognize Dillon Phaneuf as one of our 2026 Canadian Top 30 Honourees — for the life he has rebuilt, the man he continues to become, and the way he now uses what he has learned to strengthen others.

And for anyone who may need that reminder today, Dillon says it best:

“You are not too far gone. You are not too old. You have not used up your chances. There is a version of your life on the other side of this that you cannot picture from where you are standing right now.”

“Keep going. Somebody needs the version of you that made it through.”

Want to connect with Dillon Phaneuf or learn more about his work?

Coaching: Rebuild Coaching

Podcast: Listen on Spotify

Instagram: @dillonphaneuf | @coach_dillonphaneuf

YouTube: Rebuild Coaching

Follow Dillon’s journey, connect with his work, and see how he continues helping people rebuild stronger—from the inside out.