Less Biohacks, More Results

You can learn every new health hack on the internet and still get nowhere if your calories and training don’t match your goal. That’s the blunt starting point for this chat between Larry and co-host Daniel, sparked by the kind of “fitness noise” we all see: people panicking about mitochondria, cortisol, insulin, or a “broken metabolism” while they have no idea what their actual energy intake looks like.

We pull it back to first principles: define the outcome, then build the plan around it. Want fat loss? A sustainable calorie deficit and a setup you can adhere to matter more than perfect macro ratios or meal timing. Want muscle? You need a proper hypertrophy stimulus and enough food to support recovery. Want endurance? Train like an endurance athlete and stop letting mismatched priorities sabotage you. We also tackle the real-world blockers that make the basics hard, like weekend blowouts, all-or-nothing tracking, and judging progress by a single day instead of weekly averages.

The deeper theme is behaviour change and lifestyle design. If stress is already high and sleep is poor, dieting can feel like pushing a boulder uphill, because a deficit is a stressor. Sometimes the smartest move is to improve sleep, steps, routine, and headspace first, then diet when the timing is right. We finish with the Pareto principle: put your focus on the small set of actions that produce most results, and ignore the flashy distractions until the foundation is solid.

If you found this useful, subscribe to the Gen Pop Podcast, share it with a mate who’s stuck in the rabbit holes, and leave a review. What’s the one “small” basic you know you need to nail this week?

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Rant

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. This week, co-host Daniel and I, we're gonna dive into a ton of topics. When we jump on these calls, we say, what are we gonna talk about this week? We don't pre-plan it all so much. We just kind of have a bit of a rant to each other and be like, okay, cool, let's talk about that topic. Uh, one of those topics that we were talking about is just people being fixated on the wrong fucking thing when it comes to their health and fitness. And Daniel had the tagline, which was particularly amazing. I have to give you credit for that, Daniel, that people are so fucking worried about the mitochondria, but they don't have a clue what fucking calories they're on. It's like, yeah, it's like there's random shit that's popping up that people are far too fixated on. And we're gonna go down through what do you actually need to be fixated on? What do you need to give a shit about to actually go and get a result? Daniel, let's have at it.

Stop Fixating On The Wrong Stuff

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah, as we were kind of saying there, that like a lot of people, especially because of podcasts who listen to whatever are gonna get fixated on certain things that they realize all of a sudden are a problem. They never realize it was a problem before, but now all of a sudden it's the thing that they care about most in the world. And I always kind of thought that that you could go for a general checkup to your doctor, and the doctor would be like, Yeah, yeah, you got the all clear, but like the deeper you go with things, like you're gonna find a problem, you're probably never gonna exist without a problem. But it's like, is it an immediate problem? Probably not. So when it comes to like focusing on what you need to focus on, I guess there's a million different avenues you could go down with this, but the question I always kind of would follow on from that is like like what is it you're looking to do in the first place? Like, if you're looking to like what is your outcome, what is your expected outcome, and then kind of work back from that. So, like if you want to look like a bodybuilder, you like you will have to train like a bodybuilder. If you want to run a marathon, you have to train like a marathon runner. Like, but the problem is a lot of people just trying to do everything, but they don't really know like what's the right thing to do. So, like you'll have people that you know, I want to do a marathon, so I'm gonna go to the gym six days a week and do strength training, but only go to running twice a week and say, right, but obviously your priorities are kind of mismatched there because you want to run more, but for some reason you're in the gym a lot more, or like people want to like, I want to gain more muscle, so I'm gonna go to a body boom class that I'm gonna lift two kilos uh continuously for the next five years, and it's like your expectations don't really align what you're doing at the moment. So I think the first thing you need to do is actually ask yourself like what is it really you're looking to achieve? Like if it is a case that you are looking to, you know, optimize your mitochondrial health, then maybe focus on that. But like if again you're looking to lose weight, then like focus on your calories, number one. Um, so I think, yeah, as I said, like the first thing you need to kind of focus on, or first thing you need to realize or understand is like what is your actual goal, what is your outcome, and then just start working back from there and you can start piecing things together and get a better understanding of what exactly matters most in this situation.

Set The Goal Then Work Back

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Yeah. Two things I think need to be the main consideration. Number one is energy balance, and number two is the stimulus. So let's look at the outcome we're looking for. What does my energy balance need to be for that? Okay, so what does my consumption of calories need to look like? What's my output and activity looking like? And then what's the stimulus? What's the thing that's going to drive that? So, exactly like you said, if I'm wanting to build obscene amounts of muscle and become a bodybuilder, chances are I'm going to need to do bodybuilding things. What are bodybuilding things? Getting enough sufficient stimulus across the week from uh hypertrophy focused training, and then having my calories in line with that bloody goal. It has nothing to do with all the other fucking rabbit holes. It's like, yes, you might find some roadblocks, but if you're not doing that thing, expect fuck all to happen. If you're looking to run a marathon, if you do not have a marathon-style approach, if you do not have a pair of runners, you're probably fucked in the meantime of trying to get to that goal. So it's like looking at the most basic fundamental things that drive the process of the outcome you're looking for, put them in play. And until you have them in, and until you have them repeatedly in for a long period of time, do not fucking worry about anything else. It is absolutely irrelevant. And people go far too far down the weeds. And it's like, I understand why, because you listen to a podcast and you're going to hear your diary of a CEO telling you that you're going to die from something else this week, or that they are lying to you about something else this week. Like this is the constant barrage. And I understand why they have these things in because they're clickbaity titles. But the reality of it is, if you don't do not have the foundational stuff there, you aren't going nowhere towards your goal. It doesn't matter about what new hormone they've uh found, it doesn't matter what new drug they've discovered, it does not matter what new whatever it is, if you do not have the fundamental basics there of have you got the appropriate stimulus in place for the goal, have you got energy balance in check for that goal? That's it. Now we can look at what are the underpinning factors that are going to derail the adherence to those two things, address those. Again, everything else is irrelevant. So it's like people want, I think, to have a bit of an excuse and they'll go down the oh, it's my cortisol, it's my hormones, it's my whatever thing insert here, it's insulin, it's whatever, it's not relevant for 99.9% of the people. If you're diabetic, insulin's gonna be relevant. If you've got severe mitochondrial dysregulation, that's gonna be relevant, of course. But how many people do you see, Daniel, that coming to you as a coach, looking to be coached, who have major issues outside of the fundamentals?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Uh if I get rounded up to like the the nearest whole number probably be zero.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

It's like I've chatted to Sean Kinnan from Health Matters, and he is he he tests metabolisms for a living. And Sean's whole thing is like, yeah, I've still yet to see a broken metabolism. Like yet to see one, not one. And he's tests tested thousands of people. It's like they still yet to find that, but still people like to have that little excuse that's they're hanging on to, as opposed to why they can't get the thing that they're looking for.

Fat Loss Starts With Calories

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So let's go back to fat loss. It's what most people are going to be looking for. We're gonna talk about this in

Energy Balance And Training Stimulus

SPEAKER_01 6:40

various sort of podcasts about the identity that you need to become and about the whole psychological side of it, but let's look at the physiological inputs. What do we actually need to do? What do we need to focus on when it comes to fat loss? Let's go with that.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

I think like the foundation of it, as you kind of touched on early, like is energy balance. Like if you're looking purely from a fat loss perspective, this simply is like energy in versus energy out. I know that is kind of triggering to some people, but that is the foundation of it. Um, like a lot of people like a lot of people will kind of like say, like, what's the best macro split and this and that, but like again, energy balance will come first because irregardless of what your macro split is, energy balance is going to be the king or queen above all else. And like I actually had that discussion with a client lately because they were asking about like kind of their macro targets, and like they said they went over on protein one day um compared to normal, but their calories are still in line. But they said this probably was more kind of um you know better because I get the thermic effect of protein. Like, and I actually kind of done the maths, and I was like, you likely burned an extra two calories because of that, like as like it's massively like like people kind of like put too much weight into the thermic fake of food. Yes, it it 100% does matter, it does come into the equation, but like again, it's not gonna have like a be all in all kind of result, like your energy balance is going to matter. Like, if your calories are where they need to be, it doesn't really matter what the ratio of everything is. Again, we can kind of say that like yes, we need to prioritize protein from like a muscle building, muscle preservation, recovery, skin health, everything uh perspective. But like if you don't have your calories in line, it it's not really gonna matter that much, especially if you're looking to actually prioritize fat loss, energy balance is what you should be focusing on instead of like actually focusing on like the minute little details.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah, you need to focus on what your actual lifestyle is like and then how you can fit the goal in around that. You know, so if that means that you know, the the latest research is saying that you need to have four meals a day and you need to have X amount of protein per meal and you need to blah blah blah whatever. It's like, okay, cool. How can I fit my calories into my week that I can actually adhere to it to get the job done? And if that means having two meals, five meals, ten meals a day, I don't care because you're ultimately going to have your energy balance in check. Your macros outside of total calories, outside of hitting a reasonable protein goal, I don't care about fattened carbohydrates, provided that you're not dumping them too low for one or the other. But I like preference to dictate the other. I could go again with the latest research and data, and I could say, okay, we need to have X amount of carbohydrates per pound of body weight, we have need to have X amount of fat. If your preference allows you to stick to it better, but your preference has nowhere near the latest research. I do not give a shit because ultimately our preference is that you're closer to our overall caloric target, and that's the underpinning factor that's going to be deciding the outcome that we have. Um, it doesn't matter. Again, you could have the most beautiful and sexy ratio possible for macros, but it's it's so irrelevant, it's not even funny. It's like it's it's miles past where you need to be. Like people, you know, oh, is it okay if I hit my protein but I way overhit my calories? It's like, no, you've gone over your calories. It doesn't matter if it's from the most organic virgin hand-reared meat that you've ever had, it's like it's irrelevant, calories are calories. And if you've had that from, you know, okay, we can look at the impact and the negative maybe uh outcomes that are there from having really poor quality meats or really poor quality proteins or really poor quality processed foods, whatever. But if you're within a caloric deficit, we've seen this with so many people, whether they eat sandwiches for a month, whether they eat Subway for a month, whether they eat McDonald's for a month and they're still within a deficit, they lose fat without fail every single time. You can see with so many people who have done it, they've worn the continuous glucose monitors and they've tracked their glucose spikes on every single meal while still in a deficit, they still lost fat. Every single test has been done on it. If you're in a calorie deficit, if you're in a negative energy balance, you will absolutely lose fat. Now, what's going to dictate that, because you can go off on a massive own with it and say, well, I'm just going to have the biggest deficit possible, chances are you're not going to adhere to that. So, what's the most adherable, if that's a word, um, setup that we can actually have that's going to allow long-term return? So, if your goal is to lose 20 pounds, we need to make that setup last a pace for it to allow us to lose 20 pounds. It's not just this one and done flash in the pan lasted two weeks and it's it's out the gate. Because again, the setup is going to allow you to execute on that with the overall goal. So make sure that the overall goal and the inputs that you have are aligned with each other, you're going to get that outcome. The ratios, the specifics, the nuances, the hyper-focus things are just fucking irrelevant in the grand scheme. And I'm like, I'm grossly oversimplifying it, but it is grossly oversimplified to actually get the thing done. And I mean it with the greatest respect to all people. That fat loss theoretically is incredibly easy. We are looking at psychological factors, we are looking at dealing with humans, we are looking at dealing with people with feelings and emotions and real life circumstances and shit that's going to go sideways every second day of the week. But ultimately, if we're looking at energy balance and we're looking at fat loss, that's what we need to look at ultimately with it all.

Macros Matter Less Than Adherence

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Um, what do you find people get again just too hyperfixated on? Um personally, I find it's like, okay, looking at the minutiae when it comes to like step targets, or they're like gone over, they're gone under. Again, their calories, they're gone slightly over, slightly under. Uh, we're looking at weekly averages all the time. We're kind of assessing certain aspects with this. You know, you'll see people getting hyper-fixated on sleep, and that is my cortisol slowing down my fat loss. You know, let's look at the extreme version of it. We'll always do this, and it is like a big extreme when we say it's like, you know, nobody got fit, uh nobody got fatter in a concentration camp. They ate way less food, and they all pretty much died of starvation from malnourishment. And because they were in such a big caloric deficit, their cortisol, I'm sure, was moderately high throughout that period of their life. We could probably say that safely. But did it impact their fat loss? Not necessarily. Yes, they're going to lose an awful lot of muscle tissue. Yes, they're just going to be, their bodies are going to be catabolizing at an alarming rate. But in the grand scheme of things, they were ultimately in a massive deficit and they've seen the impact from that. So, you know, again, we're all not in concentration camps, thankfully. We're not being forced into a calorie deficit because there's so much abundance of hyper uh palatable, calorically dense foods right now at the minute that are everywhere. It's very hard technically to be able to stick to a deficit because there is more options, it's more ease of access to food than there has been over the years. That's why people are getting fatter. But ultimately it boils down to these very basic things. What do you find people are getting carried away with, Daniel?

SPEAKER_00 13:39

I think uh, like kind of looking at long-term averages is probably something that people don't do enough of, and they kind of get fixated on again what they've done on a single day or on a single meal. I think it's kind of one of the things that I deal with people the most, especially when it comes to comes to the weekends. Now, again, there are situations where people will go off the fucking rails at the weekend, and it's like, right, it there's no there's no two ways about it. It's like you did really offset everything at the weekend, but like I kind of done uh this video for uh clients a couple of weeks ago about kind of working around the weekends, estimating meals, blah blah blah, and I kind of gave this example of two salads that kind of looked the same, but when you actually looked at the calories of them, one of them was 900, the other one was 500, I believe it was. And I said, right, but like looking at that, you might be like, it looked relatively the same. Like I probably would say maybe it's around 500 calories, but like you you could understandably freak out and say, but if I put in that I had a 500 calorie salad, there's actually 900 calories, like I'm way off in my um estimations. And I was like, but right, 400 calories, so was the difference between the two of those salads. If you put in 500 calories, it wasn't 100 calories, and we looked at it across the week, that's like 60 calories or something a day, every day that week. And like if you're only having that meal out once a month, you could divide that down further again across four weeks, which makes it even less. So it's like if you actually look at things like that, like in a in a bigger picture context, it actually kind of makes you understand a bit more like, all right, it actually is okay to go over in calories a small bit as long as I've kind of like again stayed accountable that I still have tracked it, but where a lot of people will go wrong is to get so hyper-fixated on the again minute details and saying, like, I can't track it accurately, I don't know exactly how many calories are in it, that they just don't bother tracking, and then it spirals into like not tracking that meal to not tracking that day to not tracking that weekend, and that turns one meal into two days of complete off-the-rails behavior. So I think it's kind of the the spiraling effect that kind of happens after you know focusing on the small minute details that kind of throws people off course realistically. Um,

Lifestyle Stress And Timing Your Diet

SPEAKER_00 15:49

because like I think we could almost be put alongside like energy balance being the foundation that you could say maybe it's either a long-sided and order of importance, or you could say it's almost like a prerequisite, is like lifestyle and behavior is also hugely important. Because like if your behaviors and your lifestyle makes

Weekends, Tracking, And The Spiral

SPEAKER_00 16:08

it harder for you to be like you know, in a deficit or kind of look after energy balance, you are obviously going to struggle, and that's where a lot of people kind of like struggle the most, is like they start tracking calories, but they don't look at their lifestyle, they don't look at their behaviors, and they wonder then why it's so hard for them to be in a deficit. They can't stay in a deficit because you know they're highly stressed, they've got a busy fucking social life, whatever it is. Then they conclude that like deficits don't work for me, counting calories doesn't work for me, it must be something else. But it's like, no, it's you still have to be in an energy deficit, but it's just hard for you because you haven't adapted or adjusted any parts of your behavior or your lifestyle. So maybe it's actually them that you need to focus on first, and then that's when you can actually focus on putting yourself into a deficit because a deficit in a very mild form is a form of stress to the body. So, like if you're already like highly stressed as it is, and you've got like a busy life and this and that, making your putting yourself into a deficit is just going to increase that stress a bit further. So I think as I said, like either putting lifestyle and behavior kind of alongside energy balance in order of importance or even putting it as a prerequisite, I think is useful as well. But again, the end result still is or should be led towards like getting into an overall energy deficit.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

And that's our role as coaches as well, too, to be able to identify, like we're kind of like the secret detective where we're like, you know, looking at the other 23 hours of the day with people, particularly because now we can identify those gaps because obviously the individual is going to be more emotionally charged by everything else that's going on within their environment. And where we can say, well, actually, maybe this isn't actually the right time for us to diet. You're doing a master's, you're building an extension on your house, you're going through a breakup, you're blah, blah, blah, whatever. There's just too much shit on. Let's actually pull it out right now. But let's actually focus on, okay, we can't do that thing, but let's focus on regulating your recovery. Let's focus on actually driving up your mood and energy that little bit more, um, increasing our caloric intake. It might be the goal you want to hit right now, but it's the goal that actually makes more sense. And it's for us to apply the kind of common sense approach that people are over overlooking or kind of misunderstanding or just missing that little bit more because they think that we need to do this thing all the time. And for us, it's to investigate that that little bit further in terms of one, how we can make it easier for to get to the goal, but two, if it's actually the right time for the goal as well. It's a big part of our role is like managing the expectations for the client. Because yes, the deficit is the thing that's going to drive it. And yes, technically it's easy, yada yada, yada. But when we look into so many different individuals and so many different lifestyles and so many different backgrounds and setups and support and blah, blah, blah, whatever, it's a very tricky situation to actually align those things at times. But then we can make it make more sense and just align the process, maybe slow it down that little bit more. Now we get a slower rate of loss, but more consistent rate of loss as well, too. Um, so again, from our side, it's just to get people to manage their expectations because they go into a deficit, they go into a diet, all guns blazing, they expect ferocious outcomes. And if they don't have that, they don't get that immediate or instant gratification that they're looking for. But there's a misalignment in terms of the actual setup, their environment, their lifestyle, their network, whatever it might be. And again, that's for us to be able to identify that and to steer them in the right direction. Because ultimately, when we can identify those gaps, one, it makes the outcome easier to get, we get a better result, the client gets a better return, and long term we can keep more sustainable practices in that you can actually get more return on the investment and ultimately sustain the result as well, too. So, again, like to kind of peel it back, we could talk on this one for loads. You know, we obviously want to look at all those foundational things, make sure they're all in check. If whatever the goal, if your sleep is not decent, maybe try address that. If your stress is high, maybe try address the root cause. You can't eliminate it, you can't get perfect all the time with it all. And I think that's a big part of it. People assessing and aiming for perfect, but they just need to aim for good enough and sufficient with it. And again, you can manage expectations with that. It's looking at the weekends, it's looking at you actually tracking the food that you're consuming. Are you actually aware of what's going on and not going down rabbit holes of this thing is killing me rapidly, and it's insulin is the problem, and it's my mitochondria and it's the cortisol, it'sada, yada, yada. Make sure that those foundational things are actually in check and you're going to find that everything is far easier to manage because you're only focusing on some minor things that raise it's kind of like that rising tide that floats all boats, right? Everything else now all of a sudden magically aligns when we just have the very simple basics in place. Um, I think it's probably after connecting with a lot of people in terms of what was spoken on already with this, Daniel. Is there anything specific you want to kind of wrap up on and kind of run through before we sign off on this one?

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Yeah,

The 80 20 Rule For Progress

SPEAKER_00 20:49

I think a lot of people kind of get fixated on like the you know, the flashy stuff, but like what's it called? Is it the the preter principles or the 80-20 rule that like you know you're gonna get like most of your 80% of your outcomes are gonna come from like 20% of your inputs, and like a lot of people will put a lot of their kind of attention and focus on the other factors, and like the way I've had it, like the way I kind of remember I think it was in Ali Abdal's book, Feel Good Productivity, that he spoke about it. It was he used like uh an example of a farmer that like imagine if a farmer had six fields or something and like with crops and it two of those six fields brought the most income from him and he only had a limited amount of time. Would he spend all his time like kind of evenly across all of them or spend more of his time like on the two that are going to bring the most you know income into the into his uh household? So that's the exact same thing you should kind of approach your health and fitness goals. It's like where are the key places that you could spend a bit more time focusing on that's actually gonna bring you the the you know the best results and like you could kind of reframe it as like the low hanging fruit or whatever, as like what's the easiest to implement change that you can make now that's gonna cause like the least amount of friction, it's gonna be easy to for you to change or implement. That's going to actually bring you, you know, more positive results because, like as I said earlier, like a lot of people will, you know, try to put themselves in a deficit, but it might not be the right time to do it. But maybe if they are focusing on, okay, I'm actually not going to focus on putting myself in a deficit or stress myself out about that. I'm going to focus instead on getting to sleep at a bit better time, spending a bit more time outdoors, spending a bit more time being a bit more active, even if it is like going for a walk for an extra 30 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it is. But eventually you'll find that you get so many benefits from these that it's going to be a lot easier for you to actually kind of face putting yourself in a deficit or being at the right kind of time. Now I can actually start tracking as opposed to like getting hyper-fixated and getting stressed out but numbers and an app or numbers and the scales or whatever it may be. So I think you always have to be like in the right frame of mind for these things as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yeah, and it's really key to have that as a the wrap-up there because I think again it just like allows people to reframe things and focus on the necessaries with it. And I think that example of that 80-20 with the Pareto principle is absolutely key for people to take away. So put the focus where it needs to be, remove the rest of the noise, and you're gonna find things are infinitely easier. And if you're wanting to make it even easier, let us take over and we will get you to that result a little bit smoother. Remove that frustration and the noise and the nonsense that you're gonna be dealing with and getting bombarded with 24-7 with podcasts like this, I guess, adding and contributing to some of that. But hopefully we are the voice of reason within a lot of nonsense that's out there.

How To Get Help And Wrap

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Um, feel free to reach out, touch base. You're gonna see all the uh links in the show notes that if it is something you want to do in terms of like kind of coaching with us, or if there's a question or anything you've got from this that you just want to give us some feedback on, just reach out, shoot us a DM. We're always here to help. Daniel, it's been an absolute pleasure as always.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Talk to you guys soon.