90 Days To Summer

Summer is 90 days away and the “I’ll start when life calms down” excuse is about to get expensive. We sit down and map a practical 12-week fat loss plan for normal people with jobs, kids, social plans, stress, and a calendar that does not care about your goals. If you want to lose body fat, tighten up the love handles, and feel confident in a bikini or mankini, this is the reset that brings you back to basics without the fluff.

We talk realistic weight loss rates (think 0.5% to 1% of body weight per week for most), why the first weeks should build traction, and how to plan around Easter, barbecues, weekends away, and the curveballs that always show up. The core message is simple: there’s no perfect time, so we build a plan that survives imperfect weeks and still moves you forward.

Nutrition does the heavy lifting, so we dig into calorie tracking in a way that creates freedom rather than obsession. We cover weekly averages, building a buffer for social meals, meal prep to reduce effort, and simple templates you can repeat while adjusting portions. Then we tackle training and activity: full-body sessions when time is tight, plus why time-based cardio often beats chasing 10,000 steps when your day is already packed. We also share how accountability buddies and community support can make adherence far easier.

If you want help putting this into action, message us, and if you’re curious about our Momentum coaching block starting 6 April, we’ll point you in the right direction. Subscribe, share this with a mate who’s “starting Monday”, and leave a review so more people can find the simple plan that works.

Got questions? simply email or dm us with those questions

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Website https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie
Coaching with us https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie/1-1-premium/
Email : info@larrydoylecoaching.ie

Transcript

Intro And The Summer Countdown

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.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

And you are welcome back to another episode of the Gen Pop Podcast, where this week, co-host Daniel and I we're breaking it down. You've got 90 days as of today. We're recording on the 24th of March to official summertime. Are you going to get in shape? We're going to talk everything you need to know and what you need to do to drop those love handles, get in your bikini or man kini, whichever is your choice, and get rocking on. Daniel, let's dive in.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, I think the sudden realization has probably set in for a lot of people that it is only 90 days to summer, because I think there's still a lot of people who are still trying to get back into the swing of things post-Christmas, even though we're three months into the new year. But a lot of people kind of again will look at summer as the most obvious time to kind of get in shape. But in reality, the same principles still apply. Like getting in shape for summer, getting in shape for Christmas, getting in shape for whatever it is. The same principles still apply. It's still the same methods you're going to be using. But it can tend to get a bit more difficult than to lead up to summer because there's going to be a lot more outdoor socializing, there's going to be a lot more kind of barbecues, there's going to be a lot more social events to kind of like work around. You might be, if you're a student, for example, you might have exams, so there's going to be a lot of stress around that. If you have kids that are doing exams, there's going to be a lot of stress carryover to you as well. So a lot of the time, what I kind of focus on is these variables, is having a look at the next 90 days, the next three months to see like, right, what have you got coming up that we will need to work around and kind of create a plan around that because everyone always has amazing intentions starting off, and it is always going to be the easiest when you're starting off a dieting phase. But like once you start getting into the depths of it, and that's when like these social events do pop up or stress starts to increase, that's when you know problems start to occur. So you really have to know what to expect beforehand. So you need to kind of expect or need to set expectations early.

Plan Around Stress And Social Events

Realistic 90-Day Weight Loss Rates

SPEAKER_02 2:10

There's always going to be shit, right? That has to be navigated and there's always going to be stuff that needs to be worked around. I think January is the one where like most people obviously have a bit more of a clear window. They're probably doing dry January, they're probably broke after Christmas, they're got the January buzz rolling. But like there's always stuff on, and you need to just forecast and work around that. When you start a new phase, there's going to be the honeymoon period, and I guess January is like the ultimate honeymoon period when everything is gung-ho and you're ready to rock. But the whole thing is cyclical, right? We look at it. Um, I talk about the school year, the school calendar all the time. This now is into the next phase of that calendar where we're approaching Easter. After Easter, we've got the oh shit, I'm in my bikini in 12 weeks, need to get myself going. Depends on when you have your summer holidays. Some people are going to have June, July, August, whatever. But there's approximately 12 weeks till the start of summertime where you want to have that boxed off, you're getting back up. But when we look at that, the whole cyclical thing, uh, January, everyone back in the wagon post-Christmas. They'll get a bit of a clean run for a couple of months. Then there's Easter, people tend to blow out, there's midterm, there's a few days off, there's stuff on, there's social events, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Then you work into Easter time, then it's that block into summertime. Summertime generally people go to maintenance. That's cool, that's where we want to focus on being able to maintain the result. September, people are back into routine, the traffic are back in, the schools are back, kids are back, colleges back, whatever. It's just back into that normality. September's the new January, as we call it. And then you have that clear run from September to Christmas, and people get a bit of action routine there as well. But we're going to focus on the next 90 days in terms of what people need to do. But it's like you said, it doesn't matter when you're dieting, it's the same shit you need to do to diet. It's ultimately finding your lifestyle and finding the approach that suits and fits that and aligning it with your goal. So let's say someone is currently 80 kilos, 90 kilos, 100 kilos, doesn't really matter what the goal is. Let's look at what they can lose and what they need to lose, what they need to do to lose that over the 90 days ahead. So person X, they're 100 kilos, they want to get to what? What can they actually manage over the 90 days? Let's let's run down through that.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Well, when it comes to like say weight loss or kind of like predicting weight loss, I always kind of like to work within the framework of like losing 0.5 to 1% of your body weight per week. Um again, it's gonna be very person dependent and kind of like situation dependent. But like say if we were to take that 100 kilo person, that's saying over, you know, um, say a 10-week period just to kind of make it easier to work things out, you could lose like 1%, which would be a kilo per week, or it could be half a kilo per week. But again, if you're a bigger individual, there is going to be a lot more room there that you can actually potentially lose a lot more than that. So, like over the course of you know, the three months, you could lose upwards of like kilo and a half to two kilos per week at the start initially, then it will slow down and we could maybe have it like more of kind of maintainable kilo per week. So if you're say a hundred kilo person that is, you know, very, very overweight or hold a lot of body fat, or if you're a hundred kilo person that is quite muscular, it's gonna look completely different. So that's what I'm saying. It is very, very person-dependent, but you can shift quite a lot of body fat in a 90-day period once you get everything locked in again. And like as you said, there are always going to be different stressors, people are going to get sick. And this is a conversation I had with a couple of clients actually in the last week that you know they said that they haven't been able to achieve X in whatever length of time because you know, illnesses, injuries, whatnot. And I said, But for the vast majority of people, you probably will take three to say three or four to twelve months to probably get to your position. Like, can you guarantee in the next three to twelve months that no one's gonna get sick, no one's gonna get injured, you're not gonna have projects do it work, your boss isn't gonna be on your case that fucking unexpected situations come up that you have to pay out X amount for car repairs or whatever. It's like no. So you have to learn how to work around these things rather than waiting for this special perfect time to actually get going and things. So there's never going to be a perfect time, like I hate to be that person. Like the perfect time always is now, and I think like if you can kind of understand that and know that like there never is going to be a perfect time, that means there's never going to really be like perfect outcome or there's gonna be a perfect day. There's just going to be like the amount of effort you put is going to be a direct uh comparison to like the results you get out. So, like if you can just do 90% of the work, you're gonna get 90% of the results. But I think 90% of the results is always gonna be far better than 0% of the results.

Build Non-Negotiables That Actually Stick

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yeah, so it's it's manage your expectations in terms of where you currently are in your current situation. Because people think I'm starting something now, and just fucking magically all my stress is gonna disappear, there's gonna be no problems, and everything is gonna be perfect. Sorry, but it's not gonna be, but you're still gonna have to navigate it because summer is gonna come regardless. In 90 days' time, we are gonna get there, and whether you're in shape or not, or whether you've done the work or not, that's gonna happen. So, what we got to look at is how likely we can make it to actually stick for what you need to do. I can say random nonsense. You need to be on 2,000 calories a day, you need to do 10,000 steps a day, you need to hit four sessions a week. These are just random numbers and figures. They're all gonna be different for everybody. If you're very sedentary within your day job, you're gonna have to find a way to increase your movement or activity. If your calories are very high, which most likely they are if you're out of shape, you're gonna have to find a way to pull them down that best suits your needs and demands. It's not going from doing 2,000 steps a day to 20,000 steps a day. It's not going from eating 5,000 calories a day to eating 1,000 calories a day. We need to find an actual appropriate approach for you and your needs and your demands. So the most generalized approach we can take or kind of give to people is what is the low-hanging fruit that we can pull to immediately get some traction and get some return? I like to, in phases like this, maybe get a little bit more aggressive from the start because the more traction you can get initially, the more buy-in someone is gonna have, the more confidence they're gonna have. If we take a really gentle, subtle, subtle approach, which might be like, oh, let's go from doing 4,000 to 5,000 steps a day, let's go from 2.5 to 2,300 with the calories, whatever it might be, they're not gonna see that much. They're gonna be like, Oh, I'm doing this work and I'm not really getting much return. I feel a little bit better, I've dropped a little bit of weight. So I like to lock in that little bit more with people. And we'll say, All right, we're actually gonna commit to uh a set intake with our food. Yes, we're gonna look at the seven-day average, yes, we're gonna look at balancing out events, we're gonna look at structures, whatever. But it's looking at where you currently are, it's looking at what you need to do and looking at how we can make it as sticky as possible. So let's run through person X, they're 100 kilos, they're working five days a week, they're in the office two or three days a week, they're at home two or three days a week with work, whatever it might be. They have three days a week where they can realistically go to the gym, given that they've got kids or other occupations or other stuff outside of all that. What do they need to do then to put a structure in place? What is the most realistic targets that they can look at given those kind of inputs?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Well, if they have three days available that they can train, then they're probably going to be somewhat time-limited within there as well. So, like, I always kind of favor like full body sessions when like limited time because it's your biggest bang for your buck type sessions. But you can even then have like what I oftentimes do with clients is I'll kind of like say program the first say three movements, we'll call them like your main movements after that. It's kind of like a bonus. So even if you have to go into the gym and it's like a 20-minute session, at least you're ticking a box because that can be enough for a lot of people just to kind of keep that consistently going that, like, well, it's better than not going to the gym. So again, that can have a knock-on effect to them, you know, managing nutrition a bit better or kind of getting their steps in or make sure to get to bed in time. Um, but the one thing I actually always like get people to do as well, just have a conversation with their partner or with their friends or whatever, because that's why, in um like our questionnaire for a lot of clients will have like, do you have the people closest to you basically like are they aware of your goal or are they understanding your goal? Because like they're also kind of to a degree on that journey with you. Like, if you're co-parenting and you're all of a sudden deciding, right, I've got to go to the gym three days a week and I'm gonna separate my meals, that's obviously gonna cause a bit of friction in the household. So you need to make sure that like you have, you know, everyone's made aware of what you're doing. And like if you have a family, then I always kind of reinforce like right, we need to kind of keep some element of like social meals in there. You need to have like time to sit down with your family at evening time. So, like, we need to manage how to actually fit in that meal rather than saying, No, I'm gonna eat completely different to you, or I'm gonna eat in a separate room because I can't face being around lasagna and I need to eat fucking chicken salad, whatever it is. So I think these things all need to be taken into consideration as well. So, like that's why there's no real single best answer when it comes to like what's the best training split or what's the best like dieting approach or what's the best macro split, because it is gonna have to be very, very person dependent. And I think like as you said as well about kind of taking a bit more of a I wouldn't say like a harsher deficit, but kind of increasing the deficit a bit more at the start of a dieting phase can actually work in these people's favour to a degree um by kind of tricking them because if you put them on a bit less than what they have, it gives them increased flexibility that they can have then that if they have a meal that's kind of prepared at home that they don't know how to accurately track. We've kind of created a buffer without them even realizing it. Um, because maybe if we kind of drop the calories by an extra 150 to what we actually think would be a decent deficit, but it's still going to be manageable. They have an increased buffer of potentially a couple of hundred calories each week that they can use for these social events without even realizing it. So that again, that kind of increases buy-in as well and kind of increases how easy the the dieting phase is going to be for them, really.

Track Calories Without Losing Your Mind

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah, and again, it is looking at that creating a buffer for fuck-ups is is pretty good because again, you're not gonna know everything. Uh, you're not gonna be eating chicken and broccoli in fully macroed prepped meals all the time. So having that little bit of a buffer for some leeway, but then also that if there is a random event pops up on the weekend that you can fit it into your weekly averages, I think that's pretty key. And you're going to see a bit of a faster rate of loss on the weeks you can maintain that little bit of lower intake, and then it's just gonna balance out that little bit more on the days you have the higher intake. Um, with the training and stuff, obviously aside, like that's gonna be one that can be a little bit trickier for because it is another thing to fit into a person's busy schedule. Looking at what you can remove, okay, what's the this shit that I need to get rid of so I can maybe fit that in as something key, and that's again something people need to look at with it all. But the main non-negotiables we've got to look at is ultimately getting to grips with tracking calories. Um, while we said, you know, you may not know all the foods that you're gonna be consuming and you mightn't have control over all of them, that's cool. But for 90% of your meals, maybe 50%, whatever it is, you will have a lot of control there. You need to get to grips with tracking and you need to get better at tracking because that's the one variable where people really just kind of throw shit at the wall and hopefully something sticks, or they'll bury their head in the sand and ignore their tracking of the food, spin their wheels in the gym, they're training four or five days a week, but ultimately get no return. So, how can we reduce the friction for tracking for people? Because if you can't train, Grant, but the biggest variable is ultimately energy balance, and the biggest way to influence your energy balance is one, tracking your food, then two, obviously looking at output and activity. We'll look at that in a moment. But let's say someone has a bit of an aversion to tracking food, but they know they need to get on with it a little bit more. How can we twist our arm that little bit better to get them to buy into that?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

There's a few different ways you can go about doing it. Like one of the ways we always kind of like to do it that works well for social meals would be like say tracking using different measurements. Don't have to be an app. We could just literally use like hand measurements as a guide, just again, better understand of like what the composition of the meals are like. But another thing that I actually like to do with people, especially if people say that like they're caught for time, they don't have time to track, is like what actually plan ahead of time. Like if you're stuck for time, then it actually makes more sense for you actually to meal prep or at least kind of partially prep your meals because that is ultimately actually gonna save you time. Because if you're spending an hour every single day combined cooking, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you could spend like an hour at the weekend, an hour and a half, cooking for five days, four days, three days, whatever it is, it actually is gonna save you time, and that means that you also just only have to like track once, you're not gonna be glued to your phone every single day, track everything because it's gonna be consistent across those couple of days. Um, but I think like for people it's that stop viewing tracking as like a negative thing that's kind of tying you down. Um, because like funny enough, this week uh Saturday actually was like a it's like a learning experience for me as well. My girlfriend started tracking for the first time just out of pure curiosity, but like it's been a learning experience for me, kind of looking through the outset, kind of seeing firsthand what people are actually really like when they start tracking first. And firstly, it's kind of building up more awareness of like, oh shit, is that actually how much is in my breakfast? And like that's enough thing for you just to make a switch. And like I think sometimes that could be enough of a of a change, like if you just track once, it just gives you that awareness of like, all right, I didn't realise there was that much in what I'm eating for breakfast every single day, because more often than not, you are eating the same breakfast every single day. So just you adjusting that might be enough for you to actually make you know a pretty hefty deficit. If you're somebody who's just grabbing like a croissant in the morning and you're getting like a latte loaded with sugar and all of this kind of stuff, you just swapping like your croissant for maybe like a protein shake and a piece of fruit or yogurt, and swapping your latte for like an Americano or maybe just like a coffee with some you know plant-based milk or whatever, you're gonna be reducing like a shit ton of calories from your day just from that. So if you can just look at tracking as just a way of building up awareness initially, that might be enough of an incentive for you to kind of just make those more um uh more kind of informed decisions then going forward is you won't have to be glued to an app every single day of the week.

Simple Food Templates And Easy Swaps

SPEAKER_02 15:55

The more attention you pay in the short term to what you're tracking, the more freedom you get long term from tracking. Because everyone, regardless of what week it is, bar the odd exception of Christmas time, whatever, they're gonna have the same shit in their trolley 99 times out of a hundred. And once you create an awareness around the foods you like and enjoy, and the foods that line up with your uh outcomes and your goals that you want to have, it's a very simple thing. Because you're gonna have the same meals you enjoy, you're gonna have the same preferences. Get a good grasp of roughly what that chicken curry entails with your calories, what that balnaise entails with your calories, what that uh overnight oats entails with your calories, and the portion sizes you're having. Now all of a sudden you've got this control back in your hands that I know roughly that that's 500 calories, I know roughly that's 800 calories, I know roughly that that's a thousand calories, whatever it might be, the good, the bad, and the ugly, get an awareness of what it is. Now all of a sudden you get control on what it is and how to manage that and fit it into your overall calories. You don't have to have this uh constant spreadsheet and graph open all the time. You'll be able to mindfully log and track the more awareness that you build with the foods that you currently and commonly have within your intake, and now that ultimately creates food freedom. I see this all the time. People with a five-year streak on my fitness panel and they haven't a fucking clue what they're consuming because they're constantly just head down, scanning barcodes, ignoring the shit they're doing on a day-to-day basis. Like if you've tracked some foods a thousand times and you don't know how to get away from tracking that, there's something massively flawed in the approach you're taking because there's such a dependence created on it that maybe magically that meal I've logged a thousand times might just have different calories in it this time. It's not going to be the case. So it's creating that awareness in the short term to create that long-term freedom with your food and your tracking. It's such a massive investment to make with a small amount of time per day, per week, that you can get unlimited results with the whole bloody thing. And it's like that literally is the major key. Because you ask anyone what is their biggest frustration when it comes to getting in shape, and one other than people playing the victims in, they don't know what to do. It's like the main one is tracking calories. It's the biggest pain in the whole. Because when I get to the weekend, I don't know what I'm having, even though I have the same shit. And it's like creating awareness around that, now all of a sudden you create this freedom. And you can just put your energy and headspace into other things that require that energy and headspace as opposed to now spreading yourself to in and getting pissed off at tracking. So, short term, I think tidying up your tracking, obviously getting a very good awareness of the same, you know, meals you have on repeat all the time for the most part with people. If you're reading out a lot, like use ChatGPT. Take a picture of the food, put the goddamn meal into it. ChatGPT is gonna have a better idea than you have if you don't have a clue. And it's gonna give you a fairly decent input. Don't just, you know, take a picture of the top of your because we say it all the time for some reason lasagna, and it's like it's not gonna know exactly what's in it. But give it some information and it's gonna give you some information back, and it's gonna be a good guess to make, right? And then try and reference that off some other uh tracking that might be there or some other inputs that might be in my fitness pal, and you'll come to a good guesstimation. And ultimately, if it's telling you there's too many calories, there's probably too many calories in it. We need to look at how we can reduce that. There's not gonna be just some wild variance, it's not gonna give you some crazy bullshit answer because ChatGPT doesn't have any skin in the game, it doesn't have any emotional attachment to that food that you're after taking the picture of. We'll see this often, and you'll probably agree with me, Daniel. People are in two camps of foods when it comes to guesstimates with calories. Either one, they vastly underestimate the calories, or they will vastly overestimate the calories. Those who need to drop more body fat will vastly underestimate the calories. Those who need to put on some weight will vastly overestimate the calories that are in something, right? So again, your body type is probably telling you a pretty accurate response to how you actually go about tracking your food or your guesstimates, right? So it's looking at that. Um, and finding that midline within it up. Again, the better you get it, being more accurate within your tracking, uh, the better it's gonna be. Um those who require more flexibility with their approach, as in you're eating out more, you have more meals out, you have less control on the whole thing, you need to be more accurate with your tracking. You need to give more appreciation, you need to get a better understanding sooner with it all, because there's gonna be more variables. Those who have a very controlled input, and everyone is different, and that's cool. Those who have a very controlled input need to be less accurate because there's gonna be more consistencies within their intake. And they might just marginally be out every now and then, and that's fine. But they're gonna have way more consistency. If you're eating in different venues, different joints, different food types, different cuisines every single day of the week because that's what your job entails, you need to pay more attention to it because there will be more variables in those different meals and less control you have on the inputs with them. It doesn't mean you can't get in shape, but it just means you have to give more attention to the detail with that one and spend a little bit more time working through it. And this is something we'll use a lot with clients. Like I'll get clients to send me pictures of their meals. If you're not sure of it, if you're not familiar with it, take a snap of it, send it to me, and I will get a better guesstimate maybe than you because I have less emotional attachment to it, I have a better understanding. I've seen thousands of different meals from clients, and we will be able to get to a better, reasonable guesstimate, because it's always only going to be a guesttimate, it's never going to be perfectly accurate when you're eating out. And we will get to a reasonable guesstimate. I'll get them to log that in their internal MyFitnessPal. And now every time they go to that restaurant, pick that meal or something similar, they have a good gauge on it. Now it creates more food freedom for them as well. So don't be afraid to lean in. Even if I'm not coaching you and you're not sure of a calorie with a meal, send it to me on a DM on Instagram and I'll give you a good idea. Log it in your own internal MyFitnessPal. Now you've got a good gauge on what it actually is within that. And every other time you go out for those similar meals. Um, so that's one. Um I'll give you some input onto how I construct my day around my own nutrition. I like again to take the Steve Jobs approach. Uh, we talked about this before. I'm wearing the same uh pair of runners that I have now, again, of the same pair of pants and have multiples of these tops. But I like to have a lot of stuff on repeat and make life as simple as possible to reduce that decision fatigue. Every single morning I will have three slices of toast, three um fried eggs, sunny side up, a little bit runny in the middle. Uh I will have 500 grams of skier yogurt and I will have a couple of hundred grams of fruit. That's just on repeat for me always. It makes me feel really good. I like it and I enjoy it. If I'm cutting back my calories, I'll just do really simple stuff. I'll put a one cal spray as opposed to butter on the pan. I've saved a bunch of calories. I will um put no butter on the bread, I will just have plain bread with the eggs on top, a little bit runny, makes it nice. Cool. Now that's again more calories saved. I will take out one of the slices of bread, more calories saved. I'm having the same kind of breakfast, but now I've saved a lot of calories when I'm dieting. I will maybe alter the fruit that I have. I will, instead of having mango, I will might just have uh raspberries and blueberries. Again, I'm saving calories. It's the same, but different, right? So it's not like an overhaul of the types of foods that I have if I'm going for maintenance or gaining or dieting. I just alter the meals themselves. Uh midday, I will usually have uh either a couple of uh burgers and some salad, or I'll have a couple of uh chicken press and some salad, or I'll have some form of meat and some salads, right? That's cool. That's generally that. If I'm gaining, I'm gonna have some rice or bread with it. And if I'm not, I'm just gonna pull out those. Again, it's the easiest variable to have with that. Evening time, I'll have the family meal. That's gonna be some meat, some veg, kind of traditional family type meal. I'll have some carbohydrates with that. Very simple, very straightforward to manage. Again, it's just all about portion control and understanding what's gone into it. I know that because I'm cooking it myself every single day, but even if Cade's cooking it, I have a good idea of what's gone in there and I can easily portion that out around my caloric management. That's the one I'm least concerned about because it's one I need to have less kind of maniacal control over because I want the girls to enjoy it that I'm eating with them and we're having a bit of a downtime, we're having a family moment, it's whatever, and a bit of debrief for the day and a bit of get-together time. So that one I'm less concerned about, but I'm still aware of it. Then my last meal I doing, I have uh some tub of cottage cheese. Again, it's controlled because it's in a tub, I don't have to portion it out. Um, I'll have a couple of scoops of oats, I'll put a protein scoop into my oats, and I'll have two if I'm dieting, I'll have three if I'm gaining or maintaining and uh work from there with it. And then I'll have some fruit with that. Again, if I'm looking at pulling the calories down, uh, I'll put some berries in. If I'm putting up the calories, I'll have some almond butter and I'll have some banana with that. And that adjusts my calories. It's a template that I work off, it's not rigid, but it's very easy to manage the caloric control from that. Because one, I'm using foods that I really like and enjoy that suit my needs, my demands, my requirements on my day-to-day. And then two, I can manipulate the calories very easily with that as well, too, from just having very similar meals, but then just altering them within that. And I'm sure you have a similar approach yourself, Tanya, right, with your own foods throughout the day.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yeah, it's more or less the exact same approach. Like as you said, like if you're say using 10-15% beef mints, you could easily swap that back down to like 3-5%. If you're using uh 5% yogurt, swap that down to fat-free, or use it like cottage cheese, for example. So it's like making like small little substitutions in your diet because like you could still end up eating the same total volume of food, even possibly even more if you're swapping, say, for instance, like mangoes to maybe berries, you could ultimately end up eating more uh total quantities of food, but like you're not even gonna notice the difference in the changes. And this is kind of like where we always see clients when they come to us, if they start increasing the fruit and veg in their diet, they'll always have and more. I think most clients or most people have experienced this where they'll say, like, I've never eaten so much food and I'm losing weight. It's like because they've increased the actual volume of their meals. Yeah. So it's not that you've increased the calories, it's just you've increased total food volume. And again, I actually like that approach what you said about like say using the 500 gram servings of like say cottage cheese or whatever. Like, I am a person that like if it's in a tub, that is a serving. So like if I get like a kilo of yogurt, it's like I'm splitting that in half, or even there's days like it's funny you mentioned mango, like one of my favourite meals at the weekends, because I mentioned in the previous podcast, like since my structure is different, like a my hunger cues just are not the same, like I'm not hungry at all. So like I will literally eat a kilo of yogurt and half a kilo of mango because that's what it comes in, and I will just eat that. And that could be me for like seven hours sorted, but like it makes it so easier for me to like eat foods like that because like it already pre-portioned. Like sometimes I would be willing to spend that extra one to two euro to buy stuff that is kind of like pre-portioned rather than having to buy something and then portion it out myself because again, it's reducing that friction. And you might think like, oh, it's you know, it's one or two euro extra, but it's like more often than not, people are like spending more money on shit that they don't need anyway. So it's like, would you not prefer to spend more a small bit more money on stuff that actually is going to bring you closer to something you might have been hoping to achieve for like probably years in your life? So that's my way of kind of looking at things all the time. But my my nutrition board is is very, very similar all year round. Again, there might be small changes, like say it is more seasonally, like in the warmer months. My last meal is always gonna be something like yogurt-based. In the winter months, it's maybe it's gonna be something like oat-based, it's gonna be warmer. So again, that's probably the biggest change I ultimately will see. Like during the summer, it might be more kind of like cold cell type foods during the winter, and it might be like more hot foods. So again, it also it's it's all gonna be pretty similar, but just with very, very small changes.

Cardio Beats Chasing Step Targets

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Yeah, and it's it's super easy to adjust that. And just like something as well to note let's say you buy that 800 gram skier tub of yogurt or whatever, and you want to have half of it. I don't go weighing that out. I'll just have approximately half of it, and then the next day I have approximately half of it. I've still had the 800 grams. So, like again, I'm balancing out over the averages. Just don't be a greedy fuck and have like seven eighths of it on one day and leave yourself with rations the following day. Have roughly half of it, and then it's all going to balance out. If you've roughly half a pack of rice and you have the other pack, the next day you're just tracking it all in as one pack. There's no drama with it. And again, you'll see all the time, we're trying to make things as easy as possible. People get way ahead of themselves to start weighing out spinach, to start like dividing this and like weighing the spoon after they take it out of the bowl of yogurt and all this nonsense. So it's like make it as easy as possible to make it as sticky as possible. And the more crazy your approach is, the less likely it is to stick as well. So, again, like how can I peel that back? It's the big thing. Um, and I guess a lot of it will come from the approaches people see on social media that they're maybe following more fitness influencers and people who are like super dialed, and people who are like super into the lifestyle of doing it, people that are not remotely like you, uh, and those who are listening, I mean, and you can't take the approach that a bodybuilder or a physique athlete or someone who's prepping for something needs to take as well. Too, you're just looking at gain in shape or get in shape and gain some muscle mass, lose some fat leading in towards the summertime. This is not life or death. It's just finding a method that's really easy for you to stick to that you feel well with. Um, it comes to activity then, is the next thing we need to look at. How do we go like bumping that up that we touch? Someone is in an office job, this person who's 100 kilos, they can train three times a week. They've now looked at their food, but now we need to address activity and movement. Like the days are going to get longer, the hours going on the clock. You know, generally you will see if I was to show you an annual graph of my garment on the days with daylight savings, it just goes boop, straight up as a like linear chart across the board, I'll do like two and a half thousand extra steps. It's not from intentionally doing it because the weather is brighter and better, or the days are brighter and longer, and the weather is better. Generally, I'll just be a little bit more active. I'll be outside a little bit more. So you're gonna find inadvertently this time of the year people's activity increases and improves a touch without necessarily trying to intentionally go into chase more. But if someone is very sedentary, I would look at adding in some formal cardio because they're gonna get more bang for their book, as opposed to me saying, okay, I want you to go do uh 10,000 steps a day. And this is something client our coaches are massively unaware of how long it actually takes to walk 10,000 steps per day on top of someone who is only doing 2,000 steps per day. So to walk 8,000 steps, you're actually saying, I want you to go out and add two and a half hours of activity into your day that you do not have to spend. Because now they're trying to fit in, training, they're trying to fit in some food prep. And now you've said, let's go out and do two and a half hours more walking to get to an arbitrary number. Let's actually just do your two and a half thousand steps, maybe bring it up to three or four if you can, just be a little bit more active around lunchtime or walk into the office, whatever it might be. But add in an extra intentional half an hour to two quarters of an hour of some cardio. One, you're going to get the cardiovascular benefits, two, you're going to expend way more energy in that short time frame than you possibly will be from just going out and meandering around with a walk. Is that something you'd look at, Daniel? Incorporating formal cardio where possible into it all?

SPEAKER_00 30:37

100%. Because like if you give someone like say weekly targets in terms of like, I want you to do like say 60 minutes, you can split it up in whatever way kind of suits you then in your own schedule, and it's time-based rather than like step count-based, because like as you said, there is quite a lot of time you have to set aside to like increase your steps, whereas like with cardio, you know, like 20 minutes is 20 minutes. And like I always kind of say to people's like use that time to your advantage as well. Like, if you're a person that's like, Oh, like I get fucking bombarded with emails, wherever, right? Use that time to reply to emails, or use that time to maybe go on your favorite YouTube channel or Netflix show, and you're kind of doing two things at once, and then you're kind of making it more appealing as well. So, like, I think a lot of people just find cardio boring, so like if you can actually make it more appealing, you're more than likely to actually do it. Um, and then you can also like kind of combine it, so like you can also do your cardio outside, you don't have to do it in a machine. Like, if it is sunny outside, like go out for like a hike for half an hour or something, like throw a rucksack in your back with maybe a bit of weight and or whatever, and just like walk up a steep hill or something just for like 20 minutes. So, like get creative with things because like the more you enjoy something, the more you're actually gonna like keep it up. So I think I said it in one of the past uh podcasts that like my incentive to go for a walk in the morning is that that's when I actually get to listen to podcasts. Whereas like if I had to just force myself to go for a walk, I'm probably gonna be like second guessing it. But like if I have that incentive, right, going for a walk means I can listen to a podcast, I'm gonna maintain that. So, like if you can give yourself like a weekly target in terms of cardio, fit that around your schedule, whatever it works best, um, and then make it something that you can actually like adhere to, um, and then make it something that's gonna be appealing, like say combine it with replying to emails, uh, watch you something on Netflix, catch you up on you know your favourite series, whatever it is, I think that's ultimately the best thing because steps, as you said, like are kind of like a an arbitrary thing, everyone always aims to have 10,000 steps. But like if you're working in an office and like you're pretty sedentary, your commute every day is like two hours, two hours, two and a half hours, like your steps could be like two thousand, and that's probably gonna be like fairly close to like your upper limit. You might be able to squeeze out like an extra one to two thousand steps, but like that's not probably gonna bring you much return in the grand scheme of things. Whereas like if we were to put in like say 60 minutes of formal cardio across the week, you're gonna also be getting the cardiovascular benefits from it as well. So like we kind of need to look at it from that side too.

Accountability, Coaching, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, if you look at like the WHO numbers, like you know, you're trying to fit in a minimum of 150 to 300 minutes of formal exercise per week, which sounds like a lot in terms of like the minimal standards for like maintaining health and kind of wellness. Um, but spread over the week as an actual targeted number, it's like 30 to 45 minutes a day is actually gonna bring you much closer to that as well, too. So it's looking at some formal integration of that and where you can habit stack that as well too, it's gonna be absolutely a game changer for a lot of people because you're pairing it with some shit that you already want or need to do, and now all of a sudden it's just two things at once multitasking, probably something more for ladies to do because men can't multitask as we were talking about earlier on, but anyway. Uh just a quick disclaimer on that. If you're going out for a walk with a weighted vest, I seen a reel the other day where a guy had a weighted vest on him going through the UK and he got um he got a call sent into the police for him. It looked like he was wearing a bomb vest. So be very careful. Uh, this guy was stopped by an armed uh response unit within the cops in the UK and uh thankfully wasn't killed because he was out doing his exercise as a guy with uh a weighted vest. So just be careful, maybe write not a bomb or something on your vest as you're going out for a walk with that. Um so we've looked at tracking, we've looked at fitting in some training, we've looked at nutrition in terms of tracking. Those are the key variables. There is no other magic. We didn't start talking about supplements, we didn't start talking about biohacking, we didn't start talking about anything else. Yes, pay attention to your sleep as much as you possibly can. That's just going to make you healthier and better all around. We don't need to try and twist your arm into that. Uh, there is no magical hack when it comes to getting in shape. It's finding the plan that suits and fits your needs as close as physically possible that you can ultimately adhere to for long enough over that 90-day window. And it's a really nice window to commit to because let's say you have an awful lot more body weight to lose. Cool. But don't focus on I have two years of dieting to do. Break it into phases, break it into blocks where you're going to have maybe some intentional maintenance, but also break it into blocks where you're going to have more intention about your fat loss that you can actually commit to as well. So if you're looking at getting in shape for it over the next 90 days, leading in towards summertime, commit to it. Make a plan in your diary, make a plan in your schedule, make a plan like anything else. Imagine you've got an exam in 90 days, and now you've got this 90-day window where you can prepare for it. You're going to be continually studying as opposed to trying to cram. I know people will try to lean into that cramming before the exam and think they can get away with it. It ultimately backfires. Have a look at the preparation, what's needed to be figured out, leading in towards that where you can make your life as easy as possible, get a result, but actually feel better from the whole bloody thing in the process too. And then we'll obviously look at maintaining it. We've got other podcasts on maintenance, we can talk about that another time, but let's look at the actual result. Let's look at the outcome, look at the processes required to get in shape over the next 90 days. Daniel, anything else you want to leave people with as a nugget of wisdom on this?

SPEAKER_00 35:49

I think since it is the time of year when everyone is typically trying to get in shape as well, is try and build up as many kind of like accountability buddies, we'll call it as you can. Because like I think most people are looking to kind of get in shape for the summer or get in shape for holidays or whatever. So like try and surround yourself with people who are trying to do the same. Because like if you're going to be surrounded by people who like the summer means to them, it's like I'm going off the fucking rails, just getting shit faced every single weekend, and it's going to be about that. You're going to find it increasingly hard to actually like achieve your goals. So I think if you actually surround yourself by people who have kind of similar goals to you or have a similar mindset, it's going to make things ultimately a lot easier and it's going to increase the level of accountability you have because you're going to be, you know, encouraging each other to go out for walks, you're going to be sending pictures of your you know meals to each other, it's going to give each other um different uh ideas on what to kind of create, and like you're going to be trying to almost compete with each other. So you can add a fun element to it as well. So I think having um accountability circle is huge as well, Lee, into the summer.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

And that can be something you look at in your workplace to say, okay, you don't have to go disclaiming like I'm dieting or I'm doing whatever. But it's like, let's create a step challenge, let's create a track your food challenge, let's create a bring-in some fucking salad instead of donuts challenge into the office as well, too. And now all of a sudden you're going to have a group of peers, maybe not everyone, and that's cool, but you're going to have more support within your little network that is ultimately going to help you along to that goal, and that's going to be absolutely key. Now we're going to do the thing where we actually promote what we do with coaching as well, too, and actually say, if you're looking to get in shape, drop us a DM. We can actually chat about that with you as well, too, because it's what we do, it's what we're specialists in. It's what we do with normal people that are in the day-to-day trenches, just like you are. We understand exactly what you're going through, as you'll be after hearing already in this podcast, just taking the thinking out of it, but actually teaching you how to manage this for the long term. It's not a long-term relationship. You're looking at getting in with a coach, it's looking at how you can get some traction, take a lot of value from it, and then be able to install it into your life going forward as part of your uh day-to-day routine and structure. It's not as something you're committing to forever with a diet. It's an upskilling phase, it's a getting better phase, it's getting healthier, getting fitter, getting stronger as well, as opposed to just purely looking at dieting down. So we're always here to help. Feel free to reach out and DM. We do have the next block of Momentum, which is an eight-week focused coaching block that is starting on the 6th of April, which is perfect timing for those looking to run in towards summertime. It's after Easter, so all the eggs and shit are gone. You're after consuming a nice bit of calories, and you're ready to rock on and get committed into a focus block of coaching. It's not a challenge, it's an eight-week focus block of coaching as well. We also want to stress that across the people, but you can challenge yourself within that to upscale and upgrade to the next level and achieve some awesome results. Um, Daniel, give a quick overview uh with that. What have some people been experiencing so far with momentum?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yeah, I think it's been pretty positive so far. Like I think it is having just the overall structure in place, I think is the key thing there, and having like a community built around, as I said, um at the end there that having like people who are looking to achieve the similar result or kind of a similar outcome, having people like that close to you is gonna be key as well. So that's something we've always been trying to do with our coaching, is like have a community and have a community element to it because um I think when you're kind of part of like a community or part of a tribe, it kind of makes you feel like right, I'm part of something now that's bigger than just my own goals. We're all trying to do something together and help each other. And um I think just having that structure there, I think is the biggest component really because most people are just lacking structure because people know that like right ultimately I need to eat a bit better, I need to move a bit more, but like why am I not able to do it? And that's where we kind of come into play, and that's where we kind of like dissect everything and kind of create something actually is going to be realistic for you because as we said, there's gonna be people that are gonna have like all the time in the world, and there's gonna be people who have you know very, very little free time, so we need to kind of find an approach that works for each individual and kind of look at them first uh as a human rather than just like another you know, client to be just like give calories and macros and training plans and stuff too.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

Yeah, and I'm like this is why we do what we do because it's deciphering the bullshit that's out there, making a little bit more common sense of it for you, taking out the guesswork and just practical approaches and frameworks that you can actually apply to your life. That's the pitch and the spiel over. The intake is open. Do send us a DM if you want to know more about it. We've obviously various different culture packages there that we can help out with. But this episode, hopefully, it's giving you some insights into what you can do and what you can get from some serious effort and also just more realistic outcomes based off the 90 days ahead leading in towards summertime and getting you in shape. It's not just for summertime as well, too. This is uh getting in shape just forever and getting in shape for once and for all as well, too. Um, that it's not just a sprint, this is a marathon, and we're uh giving you the tools and the keys to be able to unlock that going forward. Daniel, it's been a pleasure as always. Until the next one. Talk to you guys soon.