#66 - How to navigate the rest of 2025

December can feel like a runaway train, but most of the chaos melts away once you map the actual moments that matter. Larry and Daniel break down a simple system to plan the final eight weeks of the year, enjoy the food you love, and protect the progress you’ve earned. It starts with reframing: you likely have six or seven real events across fifty days. Plan for those hours and keep the rest of your days steady, and stress drops fast.

We walk through how to triage social occasions into big, medium, and low stakes, then decide where to push calories and where to keep it light. You’ll hear practical tactics for the day after a night out—hydration, a strong breakfast, fresh air, and pre-picked takeaways—so three fun hours don’t become a three-day slide. With dark evenings and wet weather, routines wobble, so we set realistic minimums: three-plus-one training, flexible steps, and short indoor cardio to maintain output. If you’re chasing a big year-end goal, we show how to manage trade-offs without turning December into a diet prison.

We also dig into the move from deficit to maintenance before the 22nd, reducing food focus so you can relax over Christmas without tracking. Think foundations first—protein, veg, fruit, fibre—then add seasonal treats as “decorations” on top. Simple rules help: dessert after meals, a short pause to check hunger, and a portion you can savour. Stay mindfully active for more wiggle room and better mood. Most importantly, own your choices: if training brings you joy, train; if a quiet walk clears your head, walk.

By planning the few key moments and keeping light structure elsewhere, you’ll glide into 2026 on the front foot—calm, confident, and consistent. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs a sane December. Subscribe for more practical health, fitness, and nutrition chats, and leave a review to tell us your biggest festive challenge.


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Larry IG https://www.instagram.com/larry_doyle_coaching
Daniel IG https://www.instagram.com/danieldalycoaching
Website https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie
Coaching with us https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie/1-1-premium/
Email : info@larrydoylecoaching.ie

Got questions? simply email or dm us with those questions

Larry IG https://www.instagram.com/larry_doyle_coaching
Daniel IG https://www.instagram.com/danieldalycoaching
Website https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie
Coaching with us https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie/1-1-premium/
Email : info@larrydoylecoaching.ie

Transcript

Welcome And Year-End Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, you're listening to the Gen Pop Podcast with me, your host, Larry Doyle. Each week, I'm gonna bring in friends, guests, and experts to help enhance your health, fitness, and wellness journeys. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversations. You are welcome back to another episode of the Gen Pop Podcast, where this week, co-host Daniel and I, we are gonna be planning out the rest of 2025 with you, making sure you can cruise into the festive season, feel on the front foot, feel your best, but also reduce that anxiety, that stress, that pressure you may be feeling of trying to do everything, reducing your while, making things easier, where you can also start off 2026 on the front foot. Daniel, we've got seven, eight weeks left in the year. Let's plan them out. Let's make it as easy as possible for people to run through this with less stress.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, and I guess this is the time when people start to take their foot off the gas a little. I think for the vast majority of our clients, and I probably would say all of our clients, we probably will say, like, when it comes to Christmas time, that's when we do advise you to kind of relax, enjoy a bit more, you know, cheesecake or whatever it is, enjoy some time away from the gym potentially. But a lot of people seem to kind of start pulling that back from just being Christmas week to being all of December, and then you're gonna have Halloween and all the long weekend and stuff in October, and that's gonna feed into November. Uh, so I think the first thing people need to do is just plan ahead because this is the time of year when there's gonna be an increased amount of socializing, there's going to be a lot more festivities, a lot more meals out, work parties, whatnot. So, what I would do is have a look at the rest of the year between now and obviously Christmas and kind of make out a plan of right, these are the weeks I know when I'm going out for dinner, these are the weeks when I know I'm gonna have a couple of drinks, and you can plan around that because a lot of the time people are going to um almost encounter like decision fatigue when it comes to these things and almost feel like oh shit, this popped out of nowhere. When it's like you knew in advance it was actually coming, but because you weren't actively planning for it, it takes you by surprise. So if you can at least have a rough plan in place, it's going to be a lot easier for you to navigate all these situations. So I think the first thing you need to do is sit down, have a look at the remaining two months of the year, and have a look at what source commitments you have made, where you actually can push and where you will actually have to pull back a slight bit so that you can actually manage all of these periods of time.

Map Social Events And Reduce Stress

All-Or-Nothing Thinking Versus Small Wins

SPEAKER_01 2:32

People will come in and they will say, I've got so much on. I've got a crazy amount of parties and weddings and all these things coming up. And I'll always come back to them and say, All right, let's actually list them out. So let's write off the week, not write it off, but let's not factor in the week of the 22nd onwards. Let's just write that off and park that because that's like 22nd of December into I don't want people tracking their calories, I want them to be mindful, to be aware, to be present, to be just conscious and enjoying the festivities. Don't go YOLO, enjoy it, do your thing. But let's kind of look at everything else leading up towards that. I've got a wedding, I've got uh two work functions, I've got a meetup with the lads, uh, you've got a meetup with the girls, whatever it is. People kind of freak out. Let's actually count the days. You've got like six or seven days within fifty. There is like forty-four, forty-three other days that we can actually look at, you know, not making like massive progress, but keeping dialed in and keeping controlled. Because it's very easy for those six or seven days to now blend into ten to fifteen to make it a whole festive month. And now you've written off one twelfth of the year. And that's like a huge percentage. And I'm not saying it needs to be super dialed, I'm not saying it needs to be hardcore, but if you're wanting to go into Christmas feeling your best, it's good to do things that make you feel your best. It's good to have yourself on the front foot leading in towards 2026 and having everything else in check. So immediately when we say, okay, you've got 50 days between now and then, and 44 of them we have absolute control over, and the other six, grand, we can cruise through. That's no real different to any other month or a couple of months of the year. And now all of a sudden there's this whoosh, just reduction in stress because people realize all of a sudden I can actually manage that. It's not two months of mayhem, it's just six or seven days. And now when you reframe the thought process, now all of a sudden it's like, you know what? I actually have a hell of a lot more control here. I've got a hell of a lot more ability. The ball is actually in my court, and I can manage and navigate those now completely, as opposed to throw my toise out of the bath, freak it out, and just kind of thinking, well, fuck it, I'm not going to get anything done here. YOLO. And this is where it kind of cascades. So again, like planning, planning, planning. Like this, it doesn't matter what we're talking about, we're probably talking about planning within that, whatever the the scenario or the phrase or the concept might be that we're looking over with any of the podcast episodes here. So you'll see that trend all the time. A little bit of planning. What's coming up? How big is the event? What's negotiable, what's non-negotiable for it? These are the questions we'll ask clients. Is it a you know a catch-up with your mates that you haven't seen all year and that one's gonna be super loosey-goosey? Cool. Let's bump your calories up to maintenance. Don't worry about tracking for that. Maybe we pull back some leading in towards it. Is it an event that you just have to go to and kind of schmooze around a bit with some clients from work? Cool, it's not gonna be as big, it's a bit of a daytime gig. We don't really need to worry about calories for that so much. So let's actually just discard that one. That's just a thing you have to go do. So now again, we've created more clarity around what you have to do, the days where you need to be more intentful and mindful around it, and the days where you actually don't. And now again, all of a sudden, I can factor that in, I can manage it. I'm not just writing off the whole week. Um, so what do you see? What trends have you noticed on it over the years with kind of people where they tend to lose the run of themselves or kind of could have in check that little bit more?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, I think uh what I kind of noticed, and it's something just to expand on what you were saying, was a lot of people will kind of think that it's such a busy time of the year and they'll start freaking out about it when you can actually you just mentioned there it's maybe six, seven days over the 50 days, you can actually never break that down even further and say that's two hours out of your day, not an entire day. Because if you're just going out for dinner, you just have to worry or just plan for that dinner. You don't have to like plan for your entire day or entire week. Obviously, you can put work in that if it's going to be a case of like it's just a dinner you need to work around that you're not gonna be drinking alcohol. It's like we can factor that in. That's not a big deal. So, like, you just have to work around like what do you think you're gonna have? Do you know where you're going? Can we look at the menu beforehand? Um, then we can kind of put a plan in place there. But a lot of people kind of follow this all or nothing thing that they're thinking, well, I don't go for dinner on Saturday, I won't be able to track that because I don't know how many calories are in it, so I might as well not even worry about the rest of the day. When there's still you know another 22 hours in the day that you can work on managing, so I think when you kind of break it down into smaller things like that, it's a lot easier to kind of visualize and say, like, okay, if I do have a meal out, it's not actually going to be that impactful, really, on my progress. So I think what you mentioned there about having different approaches depending on if it is a single meal out, if it's you're gonna go out and get absolutely plastered and you're gonna be falling all over the place, then obviously that's one thing. If it's just a thing you just have to turn up to just socially, obviously there isn't gonna be much required there. But once you kind of plan ahead, you're gonna be able to plan appropriately for whatever event it is going to be. Obviously, coming to this time of year, a lot of the events are going to be more food focused because that tends to be what this time of year kind of revolves around, especially when we get into like autumn, you're gonna have a lot more of these pumpkin spice and uh sort of things kind of poppy up, and they're gonna be a lot more desserts and sweets and stuff around the place for October. Um, and then when you get into Christmas, obviously people are gonna be raiding the uh the sweet tins and stuff, everything from 1st of December onwards. So a lot of it is gonna be kind of focused around foods, but I think for the most part, what we usually like to do is again follow the exact same approach as you would for the rest of the year. If you have something coming up at the weekend, just plan around that. If you have more chocolate around laying around the place, it's like just fit some of it in there again, be mindful with your approach. Don't worry that, like, oh, there's a thin of biscuits out on the the countertop, like I need to eat all of them. It's like, no, just factor it in the same as you would the rest of the year. It doesn't change, like your body doesn't suddenly change and it follows a different sort of um routine or it's going to uh respond differently. It's like your body is going to respond the exact same way, so just fit it in and don't stress about it.

Dark Evenings, Routine Shifts, And Training Minimums

SPEAKER_01 8:28

I think the biggest issue, and it's not actually the nights out, it's the days following those, and it's having no structure or kind of like I'll worry about it again on Monday. And I'm not saying that your Sunday has to be all perfect after being out on the piss on a Saturday night. But let's actually intently plan around and say, Do you know what? I'm gonna go to this place the following day and gonna have a really good breakfast, set myself up, I'm gonna get out, get a little bit of fresh air, go for a walk, or I'm gonna plan in my hangover uh breakfast roll, whatever it might be. But actually have intent around it. Because now again you have structure, and again, I'm not saying it has to be perfect. If you're absolutely hanging the following day, don't go training, don't go through any of that, but maybe plan, go for a sauna, maybe go plan a C dip, maybe go plan whatever. Again, not saying go do these things while under the influence of alcohol, but you get the idea you've now created an element of control of pulling the ball back into your court and saying, I'm taking control of this as opposed to the hangover taking control of me. Yes, you can look at strategies around hydration and all these things, but actually factoring in some food. I'm gonna have a takeaway the following day, but I'm actually gonna get it from this place and I'm gonna get that because it's a little bit more in line with the choices I want. It's still really tasty, still really flavorsome, or we're gonna make our own fake away at home, whatever it might be. Now you've taken control back and you're not waiting for the next 48 hours because that two or three or five hour session the night before or the night out or the event or whatever it is, that's just a couple of hours. Don't let it bleed into the following days where it becomes this cascade of like 24, 48, 72 hours all of a sudden before you're kind of back on it. Now, again, all of a sudden, those seven days just become the couple of hours over those seven days, and everything is in your control significantly more, and you don't have that kind of you know, two steps forward, four steps back approach. You've like just gone and you're maintaining, and everything is cool, and you pick it back up because you're not that widely off plan. Again, it's like this fear people have of completely fucking it up and like making too big a deal out of it, uh, that really sees them overboard and kind of cascading the whole thing. Again, the more you can put in as a bit of a stop gap around that, um, and allows you to actually incorporate these things in as opposed to saying, you know what, I'm just gonna drink Evian and eat salads all the next day after being on the piss, that's not gonna happen. Let's actually factor in the type of benign juries or let's factor in the takeaway or let's factor in the breakfast or whatever it might be the following day, and actually just stay accountable to it all. And you'll find all of a sudden it's much easier to navage and manigate, navigate and manage, I should say. Uh, and then you can actually intently plan around that and again cruise through it. Um, with the build-up, what other stressors do you kind of find uh people are gonna be again maybe having some impact to their sleep, they're gonna disrupt their routine a little bit. How do you find that kind of impacts their choices and everything else sent down there from that front?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

It could be huge, like there's a lot of a lot of things at play at this time of year because obviously, like the it's gonna be less daylight, it's gonna be colder, it's probably gonna be wetter, um, and like a lot of that is gonna actually feed into your decision-making process as well, and your whole mood as well. So, like, it's gonna be a lot harder when you come home after a day's work because when you left the house in the morning, it's gonna be dark, you're coming home, it's dark, you're gonna come into the house, the fire might be lighting. It's gonna be a lot harder for you to actually go out to go back to go to the gym if it's pissing rain outside. So it's kind of looking at these again and saying, Okay, let's set realistic targets for you. If it's going to cause you a lot more stress to kind of hit the same amount of sessions in the week, maybe we could look at doing three sessions a week. And it's always about looking at like what's the least amount you can consistently do. And a lot of people will be worried about that. It's like, but I you know, I've been able to train four days a week, you know, all throughout the year, but I can't do it now. And it's like, okay, there's no problem with that, let's just roll with that because consistency isn't about like what you have done in the past, it's what you can consistently do going forward. So if you can't do four sessions going forward, or you know it's going to be difficult going forward, let's adjust that. And I think the same goes for steps because you'll see people stressing off Australia an awful lot now about stress or about steps because they won't be able to get out, or they can't get out because they might be working a bit later, it might be uh absolutely bucketing down rain, and they just don't like a way out to walk in the rain. Again, we could make the argument that you could just get a good uh waterproof jacket and get out and do it. But again, that's not everyone is going to want to do that, not everyone is as hardcore to do that. So, again, it might be let's look at maybe adjusting your steps and pulling your steps down, and maybe we could put in some more formal cardio in the gym to kind of offset that change in expenditure there. So it's kind of about changing your approach to kind of fit your uh scenarios now. So, like as I said, consistency is about consistency going forward, not trying to compare what you did in the past and trying to keep going with that. Because if something simply isn't working, I would look at changing it straight away.

Trade-Offs For Big Year-End Goals

Christmas Without Tracking And Keeping Structure

SPEAKER_01 13:18

I think we could start a new trend with that where it's called if it fits your scenario as opposed to if it fits your macros. And I and actually just set this all up that like you're managing expectations for people. And and something I really like to do to put in around stuff like that is to put in, okay, you are doing your four sessions, now we're just going to aim for three plus one. If you get the plus one in, great bonus. If you don't, there's no sweat. You've had your three that were supposed to be structured in. Again, we might remove the intensity or pull down the intensity a little bit so we can keep in the game for longer, keep you in that session, keep you saying yes to it as opposed to saying no to it. And again, it might be okay, let's get instead of every day being 10k, let's get maybe a little bit more on the weekend and actually reduce it that little bit during the week. It reduces the pressure, which ultimately reduces the hitting the focus button. At the same point, if you've got some really big goals and you're on target to hit them and you're really wanting to hit them leading in towards Christmas, you're gonna have to offset that. You can't have everything as well, too. And this is like that other side of the coin where managing expectations, if you've got a really big target and you've got that one big event leading in towards in Christmas time, and you want to be looking and feeling absolutely awesome for that, you can't have your cake and eat it on every other single day of the week, then as well, too. So this is where we look at picking our battles and picking our wars with the whole thing. Yes, the big goal is the wedding on the 20th of December, the 24th or 31st, whatever it might be, New Year's Eve thing. We've got to keep the rest of it in check then. Because again, if we are behind on that goal, we need to keep it progressing towards that. So this is where you just gotta make adjustments around that and actually just again manage the expectations to say, can't have it all. How do we factor this in? How do we make it easier to do the thing and keep it all rolling? Because again, there's kind of this narrative now at the minute, it's like, oh, you can have your cake and eat it too, and you can do everything, but at the same point, for us as the coach, it's to manage the expectations, but also guide us towards the result. So if that's the big thing you're really working towards and the big thing you want to accomplish, how do we make it easier to do the thing and how do we make sure we're continuing to show up and actually get the result? And that's looking at the trade-offs that are going to be there on the smaller nights, on the bigger, on the bigger nights, it's looking at yes, we're gonna maybe push more calories towards those, but actually have much less then on these other nights. We can't go all out, we can't have everything all the time. So, again, like there's a huge element with that, and this is where like the two of us will go through this all the time. It's like, okay, what's negotiable, what's non-negotiable? So it's ultimately looking at that. What can we say yes to during the week with the training, with the steps and activity and lock that in? And then okay, where's the leeway as well too, right? Because this again is managed expectations because ultimately you're looking for a result. How do we get towards that result all the time? Yeah, we can't continually kind of take the piss as well, right? So there's an element of us being super nice and nice and sound with people and making sure it's all fit in. But then if you want to get that result and that outcome, well, you've got to manage an expectation, managed expectations around all that. Um, so let's say someone has got that really big goal on they've got their wedding coming up. It's super common, these New Year's Eve weddings, that's on the 31st. How do they navigate that's that period around Christmas then as well of leading in towards it? Because that's obviously a huge food focus thing. We don't want people scanning the barcode on the turkey's arse to get it into their mind fitness pal on the 25th. You want to be able to enjoy that and not feel uh removed from the social occasions. How do we manage that now over the next seven to eight weeks, leading in towards that event on the 31st, to give people some like practical or kind of more takeaways from this?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah, well, I guess the first thing is hopefully if everything went well, uh, that you're kind of wrapping things up a bit earlier, that you're not looking to try and diet all the way up until your wedding, that you can maybe spend the week before Christmas, like as you said from the 22nd or whatever it is onwards, that's when we can kind of bring things up close to the maintenance. So you can kind of come into Christmas, not as food focused, you're not going to be on potentially poverty calories, you might not be doing as much cardio. We can kind of like just say, right, we can kind of pull things back close to maintenance, give a bit more food, so you can kind of comfortably go into the Christmas period. Um, and like as you said, we don't really want people to be tracking over Christmas periods, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you just lose structure altogether. And like I like to have some sort of loose uh routine in there, whether that's like right, I can have say three meals a day or whatever, and if I want to have a dessert, I can have a dessert, or maybe make a compromise of like a dessert or alcohol or whatever it is. Just again to go back to what we were saying, just have a plan. Because I think if you can just in your head say, I'm just gonna eat three meals a day, it doesn't matter if I'm tracking them or not tracking them, it doesn't matter what is actually kind of in the meal itself, but as long as I'm having three meals a day, I'm sticking to what I planned, and you're just gonna actually physically and mentally feel a lot better for doing that. Because I think a lot of people will start kind of freaky out that you know I'm not getting protein in this meal and this and that over Christmas time. It's that it's like that's totally fine, like it's not gonna be into the world if like you're under your protein target over Christmas, or if you're getting only two meals in the day that contain like protein and whatever. Like if you have a plan, I think it's gonna make things a lot easier for you. But I think first of all, just to go back to is like to have yourself kind of in a position before Christmas that you're kind of more or less ready for your wedding day if it's gonna be on say New Year's Eve. Then across the portion of Christmas, have those couple of days where you're kind of like being a bit looser what you're having, whatever. But then you could also just kind of just kind of check in with yourself after Christmas, you know, from maybe the 27th onwards or whatever. It's kind of like just check in, kind of like look at right, is there anything else that I could maybe look at kind of doing just so I can actually just feel my best? And that might be okay, I'm just gonna maybe pull down on the amount of snacking that I'm doing. Still gonna stick to my tree meals, but I'm just gonna remove the amount of unnecessary snacking I'm doing. Still allowing to have, you know, that flexibility with the food you're having, but just reduce the amount of kind of overindulgence, really.

Moving From Deficit To Maintenance

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, because people think with Christmas that it's like two weeks of absolutely all gas, no breaks, everything is like completely unhinged and wild. But like the reality of it is you're gonna have a few days that are a little bit more indulgent or a lot more indulgent, but then there's a lot of days that you actually have a lot more control on. Plus, you look at it, there's a lot of downtime, there's a lot of low stress, your activity is potentially higher for some people because they're not at their desk nine to five or eight to six or whatever people are doing. So there's a lot more things that are actually in your favor than you'll realize. So again, it's kind of just forecasting the same what's feasible for me to actually put in here. And again, when you've got your phases planned out appropriately, that it's wrapped up a couple of weeks prior to the event, and that you're ahead of yourself. So that means now if you've got something on the 31st or around that time, or in January, a lot of people head away to the sun and stuff as well. It's actually looking at getting it wrapped up, getting it done, being very focused between now and the last two weeks of Christmas, and then intently going back to maintenance and having a structure. A lot of people when they get the diet phase done, they're kind of like, right, that's done now, cool. Just I can fuck off out of here and clock out, but they clock out too much and they kind of get back up and they're all of a sudden just in a surplus and they kind of undo a lot of that work very quickly. So it's again having a structure of getting back up to maintenance. Now, people have this rigid fear about maintenance, and we'll cover over this all the time. If you get to maintenance, you will maintain. If you're outputting activity and your calories in, calories out are being in line, you will absolutely maintain not necessarily your weight, but your composition. The goal is always to maintain the composition, not the weight. So being aware of that and having structure about going back up and being okay with having more food is a really key thing. There's an interesting mindset shift that people struggle with at times, and we'll talk about it a little bit now, where you go from this focus period of a lot of intent and you know, very direct-driven activity towards a deficit and to dieting, and now all of a sudden it's like I get to eat more food. This is weird. Like people kind of find that transition a little bit strange, and particularly around that period, leading in towards Christmas, where it's not your typical time of the year where there's a lot more food, like the food is omnipresent all the time now. But at Christmas, it tends to be a little bit more there. All the shops and stores have had stuff in their aisles since well before Halloween, and it's been fucking bananas every year. It's earlier, it's like almost August now. You've seen some of the stuff coming in. So there will be a bigger food focus and narrative driven towards that. And people kind of come out of the midst of this diet, and it's a little bit weird and strange because there's all these hyper-palatable foods at their fingertips. How would you suggest people manage and navigate around that now, Daniel? Kind of when they're getting to maintenance from that deficit in that like last week or two.

Foundations First, Treats As Decorations

Activity, Guilt, And Owning Your Choices

SPEAKER_00 21:41

I always kind of say to clients is like, think about building up your diet, like a house, building like your building a house, so like start with your foundations. Like if you have your foundations in place, which I usually would say is like your protein, your veggie, fruit, and fibers, like then that's when you can like layer the blocks on top of it, and then you can kind of look at like say the chocolate and the sweets and stuff, that's the decorations for your house or your diet. So you kind of sprinkle that on top just to kind of make everything a lot more enjoyable. Because like you could look at it again, just to go back to the house analogy, that like if you have your foundations, everything there, your carbs, your fats, or other kind of the blocks then that kind of go on top of your foundation, but like you could have an empty room, it's gonna be horrendous. Whereas if you sprinkle in those decorations, so if you're gonna enjoy actually being there, you're gonna be able to say sit inside in the sitting room for a longer period of time, you're actually gonna feel a lot more comfortable there, and that's why it's a good idea to sprinkle in these foods into your diet because it's gonna make the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. So, obviously, the most obvious one you can do is to just factor in those foods into your diet and just kind of ensure you kind of keep that in there, and then you could also look at having kind of some sort of like routine or I hate using the word, but rules, that like you're only going to have those maybe in the evening time when you're actually sitting down, you can actually spend time enjoying it, or that you can kind of like tick off the other boxes first. It's like I'm only going to um eat that particular food after I finish my meal. Like, if I wait maybe half an hour after I finish my meal, kind of see, check in with myself again to see like, am I hungry? Is it just I'm kind of snacky? Then kind of use that to kind of form your decision basis because again, a lot of these foods um are going to be very easy to eat, they're not gonna be things that you need to kind of prepare in advance or cook or anything, it's gonna be something you just take it from a tin or a box, or you just unwrap it and you eat it. So, having kind of a plan in place, like to just to go back to that, I think is the the first step with all of these things, and to look at those as like as a replacement to your diet, look at it more as an addition to your diet. So you still need to kind of have the fundamentals, like the foundations of your diet in place before you add these things on, because a lot of time we'll see it uh that people will have issues with hunger or they will have issues with energy, and you have a look at their diet, like their protein is 50 grams for the day, and they're eating like cereal and stuff like this, and you kind of say to them, it's like you've no wonder that like your energy is so low, or that you're not recovering, or that you're hungry all the time, it's like you haven't got the fundamentals in place, and it's no wonder you're gonna be snacking once lunch time rows are on or the afternoon comes around because like your breakfast consisted of a scone, then your lunch just consisted of like getting something from the canteen, which could have been just like a burger or whatnot. Like by the time the evening time comes around, you're gonna be absolutely starving. So if you had those foundations in place, and I'd like that you mentioned earlier about having the plan for the day after go out of having the breakfast laid out, because that actually is the exact advice I give to all my clients, is start your day off as you kind of mean to continue. So, like if you start your day off with a decent meal, you're less likely to kind of rely on these snacks throughout the day. Whereas if you're kind of in the morning, have you a cup of tea and then have your piece of chocolate with it, you're likely not going to eat again for three or four hours, and that's when you're gonna start reaching again for those chocolates or those biscuits or that extra food that you weren't having when you were in your dieting phase.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Yeah, and I think that's really key that there shouldn't be it's just foods. There shouldn't be dieting foods, there shouldn't be like non-dieting foods. If your setup is one that you're looking at that you can maintain and sustain for long term, it should be incorporating, yes, a lot of nutrient-dense food, single ingredient whole foods, but then also having an element of those processed foods and the more tastier, more savory stuff, whatever it is, actually in your diet all the time. And the only thing that really changes is just a little bit more quantities of each, that you can get a little bit more nutrient-dense food and a little bit more of the kind of finer stuff within that as well, too. But like another aspect of like going to maintenance, the energy balance is the whole thing, right? So it's like our calories in, calories out. If we're increasing and we know there's gonna be a significant increase in our intake, we can also manage that by just staying on top of our output and activity. If you jack up your uh food super high and you reduce your output super low, it's gonna have a bigger swing in the overall uh impact of our energy balance and potentially putting you into more of a surplus. So over that window of the maintenance period, if you're more mindful around your activity and a little bit more intentful around it, that you can get a little bit more leeway for yourself. And I'm not saying you need to go out for a job before you have an extra lint bar or like a limp ball out of the box, but it's just been mindfully active that you will have a lot more leeway and wiggle room within that. And you will see also you're just gonna be generally feeling better because now you've been more proactive and being active as well. So there's a ton of things that we can apply here with all this going forward, but then also a lot of people they almost feel guilty about it and they might be guilt-shamed into it a little bit over Christmas that people say, Oh, would you not take a break off the gym? Would you not do whatever? If you really enjoy your training, if you have more time available to actually go training, go train. Be okay with it, make your own mind up. Don't allow people to kind of influence you that way as well too. Um, obviously make sure your recovery is good if you're going to be going in and training hard and doing all the things. But if you enjoy staying active, stay active. Don't feel like you have to sit on the couch because everyone else is sitting on the couch over the break as well. So again, the ball is in your court for a lot more of it than you may realize. When you're planning out in advance, you're getting it minimized down in terms of the overall stress and how you actually realize that there's less events there and they're easier to manage than it may be. You're not writing off two months, you're allowing yourself to step into 2026 feeling really good, as opposed to coming out the mist and in the fog and feeling like absolute crap. You've maintained your results, you've worked hard, you've earned your results, and then also you can sit back and relax and enjoy it that little bit more. And then again, understanding it's a very short period of time once we can isolate it in over those couple of weeks. Um, any major takeaways, Daniel, you want people to take from this and apply to the weeks ahead before we wrap it all up?

Final Takeaways And How To Get Help

SPEAKER_00 27:48

I think the biggest thing, like as we touched on and we I think repeated it multiple times, is just plan. Plan for absolutely everything, and that's something you should be doing kind of all across the year, regardless. But this period of the year is when you will find that there's just gonna be a lot of uh more socializing, there's gonna be a lot of things kind of coming up last minute and stuff that you might not be able to plan for. But again, if you have a plan in place for what you would do for a dinner out, it doesn't matter where you're going for dinner or if it's last minute, you still will know what you need to do. And you might panic and think like, Oh, I was asked out for dinner tomorrow, but I haven't kind of factored that into my week, or I haven't kind of created a buffer. It's like that's totally fine. It's like you can also do that afterwards, you don't have to do it before it. But it's when you start kind of stressing about it and you have that all or nothing approach, that's when you can kind of start encountering issues. But when you kind of realize that, like, as we said, over the next two months or ten weeks, whatever it is, that you're gonna have maybe six, seven social events, it's only gonna be like probably like eight hours in total that dress you're gonna have to navigate outside of your normal routine. So stressing about eight or nine hours, ten hours, whatever it is, out of the course of you know, two, three months, whatever it is, is going to be matter very, very little when if you're focusing on the other remaining hours in your day.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

And that just removes or minimizes that whole stress load that people would have that tends to just see them pushed over the edge that little bit more. Tons of value within this. I'm sure you guys are gonna have maybe some questions for us on it. If you have anything of concern, interest that you want us to elaborate on more, just shoot us a DM, shoot us a message. We're gonna be able to help you out with that. If you want more structure leading into it all, of course, we can look at that further with some coaching, whatever it may be. But feel free to reach out and touch base on this. If there was something resonated, something made sense, something you want to know more about, we're always available. Shoot us a DM and we can help you guys out. Just give you a steer, create that little bit of clarity, can help you obviously manage towards your results and the maintenance of those because that's the most important thing to us. It's not about this dramatic before and after, it's about how we can sustain it for the long term, and you'll hear a lot of repetition of that from what we talk about. Daniel, it's been an awesome one as always. Looking forward to plenty more episodes.