# 91 - (im)Balance

Balance is one of the most overused words in health and fitness, and we think it’s quietly keeping people stuck. We get straight into what balance actually means when the goal is fat loss, better health, and real progress: keeping the things you enjoy while staying accountable to the behaviours that move the needle.

We talk through the biggest trap we see with clients: being “good” Monday to Friday, then writing off the weekend as earned downtime. That pattern can blow up your weekly calorie budget through alcohol calories, takeaways, and restaurant meals that can easily land in the 1,500 to 2,000 calorie range. We’re not here to scaremonger or tell you to stop living your life. We’re here to show you how small, realistic changes like cutting ten pints to four or five, making smarter swaps when eating out, and tracking with honesty can keep your social life intact and your results moving.

We also clear up the 80/20 rule, because it’s not a free pass. It’s a percentage of your total weekly intake, with most of your calories coming from high-protein, high-fibre, nutrient-dense foods, and a smaller portion reserved for the extras. The key question we keep coming back to is simple: are your actions aligned with the outcome you want? If not, the solution isn’t a new slogan, it’s a new plan and often a bit more accountability.

If you’re tired of spinning your wheels, hit play, share this with a mate who needs the honest version, and leave us a review. Want help applying it to your own weekends and goals? Drop us a DM and tell us what you’re working towards.

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 What We Mean

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.

Defining Balance Without The Hype

SPEAKER_02 0:20

You are welcome back to another episode of the Gen Pop Podcast, where this week, co-host Daniel and I, we are gonna be discussing all things balanced. We think people have a pretty imbalanced view of what balance really is. But uh yeah, Daniel, let's get on to Seesaw. What's the crack with balance?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yeah, as you said, I don't think people really have a clue what balance is, and even when us as coaches speak about balance, we can almost be very vague what we kind of are expecting. And I think that's kind of one of our faults, really. But like a lot of people misinterpret balance as being like, oh, if I'm good Monday to Friday, I can't just take the weekend off like a deserve it. I worked hard Monday to Friday, I didn't miss a gym session, I tracked my nutrition, so now I can kind of take a backseat, but that not really that's not really what balance is. Like, usually what we kind of mean by balance is like you look at what your usual weekend routine might be, and it's a you're kind of a person that would have a very social life at the weekend that if you usually have like 10 drinks, now maybe you pull it back to four and you track them, you stay accountable to them. It doesn't mean you have to completely remove all these things, but it means you just have to stay accountable with them. So balance is finding an approach that kind of still allows you to kind of do the stuff you enjoy, but you're adding in that level of accountability that's required to actually reach your goals. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, you have to make changes if you want to change. You can't just expect to do everything you've been doing all along because that's what's taking you to the position you're now looking to change. So balanced realistically is about just finding somewhere between you know both um approaches where you are following your you know Monday to Friday sort of structure and routine and then your social life at the weekend, finding something that kind of works between both. Um, because like as I said, you can't expect a change if you just expect to do follow the exact same routine and structure that you have been all along with the same behaviours.

The Weekend Myth And Accountability

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So I think um people misunderstand that when we talk about balance and like they always like to throw numbers in like 80, 20 or whatever. I said, but what exactly does that mean? Because like that 20% you think is 20%, like I went through with a client earlier, they were going out for dinner tonight, and they sent me pictures, or sorry, they sent me a minion, and I looked up the restaurant as often we'll just kind of work out rough estimates of what that meal might include. Estimated it could be anywhere between like 1500 to 2,000 calories. Like if you were to do that a couple of times a week, like that's very, very, very hard to find balance within that. Whereas if that's like a once every two, three weeks, it's gonna be very easier to kind of factor that in. So I think that's where people misinterpret the balance. A lot of people would look at that, you know, weekend meal out as being like, that's my 20% burst. Like that actually could be like fucking, you know, blowing it all out of proportion. So I think having some accountability there at the weekend is probably where you need to kind of look at balance first of all.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Yeah, but I've seen like 15 posts from different coaches this morning already on social media telling me I don't need to change anything. I can keep drinking all the alcohol I want, I can keep eating all the shit I want and still get results. So what's the fucking story there? Like ultimately, if we're looking at it, you need to be in a deficit. You need to have an overall weekly allowance for your calories and an up meal allowance are not fucking giving you a certain amount of calories. We are giving you a certain amount of calories, you can do what you want with them, you're an adult, but you need to be within that range of calories and your expenditure to ensure you get a result continually. That's just the reality of it. We can't paint it any other way. You need to be in a deficit if you want to drop body fat, tough shit. But let's find a way of actually making it as easy as possible to

What 80 20 Actually Looks Like

SPEAKER_02 3:45

stick to that as well. So ultimately, when we say 80-20, it's like imagine 2,000 calories is your daily intake, 14,000 for the week. 80% of that 14,000 is gonna be ideally from single ingredient whole foods that are very nutritionally dense, they're all good, high protein, high fiber, all the stuff. 20% of those are going to come from foods that aren't really fitting into that category. They're gonna be more calorically dense. So probably not as much food is gonna fit into that 20%. That's what 8020 is. It's not like coming back in on a Monday after being on the rip since Thursday and saying, oh yeah, it just had a really good balance. It's like it's fucking completely imbalanced. Like you just went and fucked a couple of weeks of hard work out the window because you went completely yolo. That's fine in times, but it's understanding that you're not gonna get to where you want to get to ultimately if you're doing that more frequently than not. And that's ultimately what separates people who get results and people who don't, because they'll be playing the balance game, but it's completely imbalanced. Like the thing you're looking for with the result, you're actually looking for an imbalanced outcome because you've been having way too much balance all your life based off what we call balance, because now you've balanced your way to obesity and we need to imbalance that and actually get you back in check. So again, it's like being realistic with yourself, it's being realistic with the approach you're taking and how you're fitting in those weekends, events, your social life, whatever. You're probably gonna have to say no a little bit more often than you're saying yes to it, and still fitting in that 80-20 within the hundred percent, not 80-20 within 150%. So it makes a big, big difference, right? So, what challenges do you see with those who are living imbalanced when it comes to that?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Like, I think the weekend is probably one of the most common ones, and then like eating out um would be one of the other ones because like that some people kind of feel that you know it's very easy to kind of say quote unquote on track when you're at home, when you're able to track everything, weigh everything, and stay a bit more accountable. But well, when you go out thin, that's when it comes a bit harder to kind of manage everything, and like people just don't really understand what's kind of in foods really when it comes to like calories, so they don't really know like is this gonna be like as I said, like one single meal could easily be 1500 to thousand calories. Now that's not me scaremongering saying, like, oh fucking hell don't eat out, there's all these hidden calories. But depending on what you order, like if you're getting

Eating Out Alcohol And Hidden Calories

SPEAKER_00 6:10

like a huge burger with loaded fries and stuff, it's like that's gonna rack up quite a bit compared to if you went out and you had something a bit more sensible or reasonable. But if you think that like having that kind of a meal is the same as having something, as I said, a bit more reasonable, that's kind of blurring what that 20% is actually gonna account for. So a lot of people need to kind of first understand what's in the foods that they're eating so that they actually can fit it into that whole quote unquote balanced approach. Because as I said, like I think people's interpretation of what balance actually is is a bit skewed. Like as we said, I think people are living in this kind of fantasy land where they think like balance means like I don't really have to change anything, but somehow signing up to this coach who said you don't have to give up your social life, you don't have to give up your weekends, is going to be enough for me to somehow magically transform. I don't need to really count my calories at the weekend because they said balance is what's needed. We're humans, we need to relax, we have tough jobs, we need to take time off, but you have to change, you have to you have to do something different if you want to see a result. So I think staying accountable at the weekends, being more aware of what's actually in the foods that you're ordering when you're eating out, actually being accountable when it comes to alcohol intake, because again, you you will have people that you'd ask, like, how many drinks would you typically drink now at the weekend? Or if they said I'm going out at the weekend, what will I do? It's like, okay, what do you expect to actually have at the weekend in terms of like if you're having food out, alcohol, whatever? It's like, oh, I might have like ten points. It's like, right, is there any chance you could have like five? Is there any chance you could have four?

SPEAKER_02 7:45

It's 2,000 calories, like to start off the bath straight away. That thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

So like a lot of people just think that like that, balance means like either it's all or nothing. It's not that like I'm just gonna make some bit of limitations, I'm gonna scale back my ten pints back to five. Instead of having a load of fries, I'm not gonna have like a smaller portion of fries, maybe some veg alongside it. Maybe I might even swap it out completely for salad, but I'm still gonna keep the burger in there, but that's enough to kind of make you know, as I said, balance. So like you're still finding an approach that kind of works for both, where you're still having that thing that you enjoy, but just putting in a temporary change because we know that like we're not looking to like fucking be in a deficit or look focus on weight loss for six, nine, twelve months. So it's like you're just making a temporary change. You can easily down the line, once you kind of get your goals, it's very easy to kind of maintain it by you know including that balance in there. But that's where you can kind of get away with having those loaded fries or whatever, but understanding, okay, I still can't do this that often. Maybe it might be every two, three weeks, I suppose, every week. So it's it's a temporary change you're looking to make that could potentially kind of lead to like you know long-term results. And I think if you can't accept that, it's gonna be very hard to actually find that balance that's required to you know maintain these results long term.

Align Actions With The Outcome

SPEAKER_02 9:00

So it's looking at what you're actually looking for. I want to be leaner, healthier, stronger, fitter. That's let's categorize it and kind of standardise a little bit. That's what a lot of people are looking for. Is what I'm doing in line with those outcomes? Yes or no? It's not kind of maybe. You know, you it's very difficult to improve your health if you're out in the pace every single weekend. And again, you're you're playing the balance card. It's very difficult if you're having takeaways multiple times per week to increase your overall health. If you're having 15 takeaways a week and now you have five, that's gonna be a vastly more improved outcome towards your health. Yes. But if you're someone who's kind of like at that like five plus per week and you think you don't need to change that at all, and you can just vastly improve your health, it's probably not gonna happen. So again, it's like ultimately, is my actions in line with the outcome that I want? And can I take a balanced approach towards that, including those things to a degree in moderation, in line with my calories, and then still get to that outcome? Yes, I can. But if you're doing again, it comes back to like the person who wants to get way stronger, but they're not doing strength training, don't fucking expect miracles, don't expect big jacked arms if you're not doing some bicep curls and tricepus or bench faster or whatever the fuck it might be. So if you're not doing healthier things more than you're doing unhealthy things, don't expect to get healthier. It's a very simple policy. If you are eating more food all the time and claiming balance and giving out that you're not getting leaner as well at the same point, shut the fuck up because you're not doing the things to get leaner. It's ultimately like, are you in line with the actions that you want to take? And that's what it'll boil down to. And it's like we can harp on about it a million different ways, but it's like get your actions in line with the outcomes that you want. Again, if you can do it, like you said, well and do it over more short term, then you can like upregulate that balance a little bit more. But ultimately, we're looking at imbalanced outcomes. So you need to buckle down that little bit more and get shit done over that short term. Because where people really fail at their fat loss goal is when they start to stretch it out too long. And if now what could have been done in 10 or 12 weeks is now taking 20 to 30 weeks, you're gonna get fucked off because again, all I'm tracking my food, I'm kind of doing the things, I'm kind of exercising, I'm kind of kind of not getting the result. So if you can buckle it down, just clear the social calendar a little bit more, not entirely. Again, be mindful around the intake, be mindful around the alcohol, be mindful around the weekends. That little bit more short term gives you way more long-term freedom. So it's like just get the shit done short term, commit to it that little bit more, get way and I'm not trying to be like drill

Short Term Focus For Long Term Freedom

SPEAKER_02 11:40

sergeant, but I'm also not gonna be like pumping your tires saying, Yeah, you go, get pissed again on the weekend. Awesome. Had fucking ten more takeaways over the weekend, yeah, cool. Let's just do it all reset again every Monday, and it's the same shit all the time. So ultimately, people are paying us to get a result and an outcome. They're not paying us to be cheerleaders and pat them on the ass and say, Good job, well done, let's just try not fall in a vat of Deepide crisps and beer over the weekend again. And I'm not trying to be holier than thou. It's like you need to have a bit more of a balanced approach with it all because it's completely imbalanced the current approach you're taking because you're ultimately not getting a result. So it's like, what do we need to do with that? Um that's probably short and sharp in terms of like the input here on this one. Uh, pretty like stark realization, maybe for a lot of people, that they need to sort their shit out, get a little bit tighter with it all. If that's something you need a little bit more accountability for, and you're kind of like constantly spinning your wheels in your own, then get some accountability. It's gonna tie in that little bit more. Because again, it's having that extra set of eyes that can just like point out that the balanced approach isn't really all that balanced that you're taking, that the outcomes that we're getting could be significantly better if we take a different route with the approach that we're on, the overall health outcomes, the implications of what you're doing with your training, your exercise, your well-being, your whatever it is. This is where that little bit more coaching works. That is more direct as opposed to just pandering to your needs and kind of saying, Hey, good job, well done, you know, got pissed again on the weekend, well done. You know, it's like what are our actions and how are they aligned with the goal that we're looking for ultimately? That's our job to keep you in line with those and and paint that realistic picture. Um you leave a notes on this one, Daniel, that in terms of like the wrap-up for people to take from it. Obviously, we've gone over a lot of them, been pretty stark with it, but anything else you'd like people to immediately take action with?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

I think we kind of hopefully made our point pretty clear with all that. But I think like um, like as they're saying, like, it's very common for people to you know come back to us and say, like, oh, I enjoyed my weekend, whatever went out on Saturday, took off Sunday, and then got back straight back to on Monday, and it's like, right, number one, that actually is what we want people to do, is I just get straight back to a routine as normal. But like if this is the case every single week, it's a problem. If it's someone who they're you know on track with everything for weeks on end, a couple of months, whatever, then they have a party or birthday party, a social event, whatever, and they take the weekend off and they get straight back at the Monday, that's a completely different thing. That is kind of like more in line with what I would consider kind of like balance, where they have that flexibility to kind of do that because like they're you know making progress for weeks on in, months on in, they're staying accountable all across the weekend, but then like there's one weekend where you know it's just like a it could be their fucking hint party, it

Expectations Events And Realistic Timelines

SPEAKER_00 14:25

could be their stag, it could be something that's like a once-in-a-lifetime you'd hope event. Um, that's like, right, that's completely understandable. We're not going to sit here and be like, no, no, no, you need to actually take you know your scales with you. You need to weigh everything out, you need to track everything, you need to stay accountable to 100% of what you're doing, you need to limit the amount of alcohol. But people expect to have parties at that level every single week, they expect to kind of be able to eat out every single day and still get results. It's like, no, that's actually what got you to this point. We need to look at changing those behaviours, and as you said, like if someone is getting like takeaways every single day or eating out every single day, and that's like makes up 15 of their meals. If they scale that back to five, that might be able to see them make progress across a couple of months, and then that's when you need to kind of say, Right, now we need to have a little conversation maybe about maybe scaling that back further. Maybe instead of having your takeaways, you just prepare the meals yourself. Maybe you invite friends over to your house who's supposed to go out for a meal, and you can control what you're kind of cooking and preparing there. So it's about making those small changes, and that is actually what balance is about. It's not about like going all in one direction or the other, it's about kind of finding something in between that kind of works for both.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah. And again, like for us, it's the management of expectations around that all that if you say I want to get to X amount of body weight in X amount of weeks, if you have X amount of events that are non-negotiable that you need to incorporate yourself and involve yourself in, that's cool. But we're gonna say now that goal is just gonna take longer, or we're only gonna get X amount of kilos off within that time frame. Are you okay with that? And most people say, okay, I was a little bit unrealistic with my goals and my expectations here. Now you're after a line and all is better for me. Instead of dropping 10 over the next 12 weeks, I'm only gonna drop maybe five or six over that 10 weeks, but I'm gonna keep that level of balance in. And what would have happened if they would have taken the completely unbalanced approach that they would have just spun the wheels for the 12 weeks and got fuck all to happen? So ultimately, we're getting them to a better outcome of what would have happened in the first place, but it's just managing expectations and not having them feel like an asshole in the route as well, too. So again, it's the whole part of it, that a bit of accountability really, really ties in with it all. Uh Daniel, it's been a super episode. Hopefully, people have gotten a lot from it. Obviously, gone a little bit more harsh and realistic with it, but that's the

Coaching Invite And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_02 16:35

reality now because people are just trying to pump your tires, make sales, and get you across the line to join their services. We do that too. We do coaching, and I'm not going to make any crams about that. We sell coaching and we do a very good job at it. If you're looking at getting some coaching, getting involved with us, make sure you drop us a DM. If you want to just reach out, touch base, ask questions. We're always here to help as well too. Feel free to shoot us a DM anytime. You'll see the link in the episode as well in terms of how you can contact us. Daniel, it's been an awesome episode.