#95 - Momentum That Actually Lasts

The number on the scales spikes overnight and your brain goes straight to panic mode: cut calories harder, add more cardio, scrap the plan. We take that moment apart and rebuild it into something far more useful: momentum as a long-term trend, like compound interest, where small actions repeated consistently create the results people chase with extreme “quick fixes”. If you have ever felt like one imperfect day wipes out all your progress, you will hear exactly why that story keeps you stuck.

We talk through the practical tools that make momentum measurable and calm. Weekly averages for weight, calories, steps, and training stop you reacting to noise and help you make better decisions over time. We also get into the real momentum-killers: the weekend backlash, the missed-session spiral, and the urge to “fix” one problem by slashing the other three tyres. The goal is not perfection; it is keeping the line moving in the right direction across weeks, then months.

From there we go into habits that actually move the needle, starting with sleep. Instead of trying to change everything overnight, we explain how to layer changes like caffeine timing, phone routines, and a consistent schedule so the process sticks. We also tackle busy periods like summer, holidays, work travel, and social events with realistic strategies including maintenance days, smarter drink choices, and planning ahead so you come back feeling steady rather than starting from scratch.

If you want support and structure, we also explain our Momentum coaching block and who it is for. If this helps, subscribe to the Gen Pop Podcast, share it with a mate who overreacts to the scales, and leave us a review so more people can find it.

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 Show Setup

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 0:19

You

What Momentum Really Means

SPEAKER_02 0:20

are welcome back to another episode of the Gen Pop Podcast where this week co-host Daniel and I, we are going to discuss momentum. We're gonna discuss how to create it, we're gonna discuss what destroys it, and we're gonna give you the whole insights because again, I think it's a very misunderstood aspect when it comes to sound bites that are thrown around within the fitness industry, within your fitness journey. Daniel, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yeah, momentum, as you said, like is a thing that's very misunderstood. And I think the best way to understand it is like think about like your investment fund that it's like the compound effect over time is what's actually gonna bring you the results. It's not like what you put in on Monday is gonna bring a huge result by Tuesday, it's like what you put in on Monday this month, 10 years down the line is going to like show you the actual results, and it you know, the stock market is constantly gonna go up, it's gonna go down, but like on average it's gonna be like improving, you'd hope. Um, and that simply is what like momentum is. It's just about the trend over time travelling in the general direction. It's not about like every day needs to be perfect or you know, you need to have X number of weeks, X number of months where you don't have anything in your social diary that you shouldn't commit 100% to the gym because that's just gonna be unrealistic. And if that's what your expectation is at the very start or throughout the process, you're gonna just fall at the first roadblock. So momentum shouldn't be seen as you know something you need a clear path to actually build. It's something you just will compound over time, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

That's huge. I think that's a really good like uh comparison to be able to draw that with the the stock market because again, if you zoom in and we look at the stock market, it's going to be like, oh, we're down 500 points today. But it's like, okay, let's actually zoom out for one week, you know, one month. We'll look at six months, we'll look at six years, and now all of a sudden that trend is the whole thing that's there, and it's built massive momentum over that time. And that's again the compounded interests of super small habits and activities, right, that mount up as well too. When we're looking at the fitness journey, the health gain, the fat loss, the muscle gain side of things, what are those main aspects you look at to help people to compound on their uh return over time and efforts?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

I guess it is that's that's why we're looking at averages all across, you know, every week, every month is like what's your average weight week to week, what's your average calories for the week? Because a lot of times people get so hyper-focused on like the day-to-day amounts that like they just never actually look at the bigger picture. That like if you were over 500 calories of one

The Compound Interest Fitness Analogy

SPEAKER_00 2:40

day, but you were under by you know 250 calories two other days of the week, like that is going to balance out at the end of the week. So if you actually just stick with whatever route you're taking and then just give it a couple of weeks and then zoom out and kind of look at those couple of weeks together, you'll actually have a better understanding of like how things have actually been going. But people will be so quick to make you know rash decisions straight away if they see the scales, jump up by half a kilo, it's like I need to drop my calories, need to increase my steps, need to do more cardio, whatever it is. But like if the average has been trending downwards and that's one little blip, you're still making progress, and people need to kind of understand that that that is like what momentum is like is that small little um wins week to week kind of adding up. It's not about like the day-to-day amounts, it's about like the bigger picture.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Essentially, what Daniel was trying to say there was cool your fucking jets when you see the scales going up half a pound. Because it's like again, we'll have this like, yeah, the week was going so well, but I fucked it over the weekend and my calories went over. It's like, grand, I don't care. You're actually still under your whole threshold for the week, so we're actually sounding spot on. Yeah, yeah, but I fucked it on the weekend. It's like, yeah, you went over in that one day in isolation, but again, we look at the weekly view, it's all actually in check. And that's again going to compound. But the thing that will pull that back is if there's a big backlash against that, I fucked it every weekend kind of thing, or I've missed a session. So it's the the whole getting out to fix one tire, but you're slashing the other three, right? So when we can understand that, now all of a sudden people really do build momentum. They do break through plateaus that they kind of perceived as previously been an issue that I couldn't get past, you know, six weeks of consistency, whatever it might be. Now all of a sudden to see that locking in, to see greater return, to see all of a sudden now, yeah, I was only dropping like half a pound a week or a pound a week initially, and now it's tapered off a little bit, but actually I'm down 10 pounds now because I've I've lasted, I've broken through that six, eight weeks where it usually gets a bit boring, a bit bland, a bit vanilla, and now all of a sudden they actually have that compounded return that actually sees physical change. Because the grand scheme of things, in the first few weeks, you're not actually going to see a big return physically. You're not gonna see how old holy shit, I'm massively different now all of a sudden. But it's that compound and interest of over time of that little half pound, half pound, half kilo, half kilo, whatever it might be. Now all of a sudden, after 10, 12, 20 weeks, it's huge in terms of the grand scheme of it. But it's not just talking about fat loss, it's not just talking about the scales here, we're talking about habits as well. So, what habits do you like to focus on with people, Daniel, when it comes to actually building momentum, then as well, too?

Stop Obsessing Over Daily Numbers

SPEAKER_00 5:10

I think literally everything. Like I think sleep is is a big one because I think there's so many different variables when it comes to sleep that's gonna affect your sleep that if you were to change them all in you know one day or one week, like it's gonna be like a huge shift for people because a lot of people are like drinking caffeine way too late into the into the day, they're staying on their phone during the night, you know, they got their phone by the bed, they haven't got really like a fixed or uh some sort of a routine when it comes to like their sleep schedule, they're going to bed at different times or wake up at different times. And if you were to try and change all of those straight away, you're gonna have a lot of pushback because it's you know it's it's a huge change to someone's routine. So, like if you were to start off with, like, say, right, what's the biggest hitters here? Probably the caffeine, that's gonna be the easiest thing to kind of change. So it's like if you can just pull that back maybe to earlier portion of the day, still kind of allow them, maybe it's like right, just you could stay on your phone, but maybe like just change the content, like just don't be looking at fucking horror movies in bed or some sort of true crime dramas, whatever the price you're watching. But then after a week, once they kind of realize, like, you know what, I actually feel a lot fresher, I don't feel like I'm relying on coffee that bit more. I wonder what will happen if I also remove the phone from the bedroom. And you're letting them kind of naturally realize that you know, actually, this is actually gonna be hugely beneficial because I can already see the benefits of just reducing caffeine or just at least changing the timing of it. But if you were to come out the gate and say, okay, you're gonna remove your phone from the bedroom, you're gonna reduce caffeine, you're gonna pull it back to earlier in the day, you're gonna go to bed an hour earlier, they're not gonna do it. So, like, that's why, again, building momentum is simply like starting off with maybe one thing, taking that as far as it can go, once you feel like right, that's solidified now, add in the second layer, add in the third layer, and just slowly build it up over time.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

But that's not very sexy, it's not very extreme, it's not very in line with what the fitness industry and the general narrative would be. So why the fuck should I do it?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

And this is something that I actually was saying to someone the other day. It's like with the fitness industry and most industries, you'll have one side. The example I gave is you'll have one side of the fitness industry will be trying to sell you 12-week plans, then you'll have the other side telling you how 12-week plans are toxic. Both sides are trying to sell you something.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

It's like Democratic and Republican voters in the fucking states. It's like literally they should all be for the one goal of improving the country, but both of them are fucking hating each other, and the other one's the biggest idiot in the world, right? It's an exact demonstration of that. So, what do we do? How do we fight that narrative of okay? I need you to hang on here, I need you to bite down and and just stay with this for like eight to twelve weeks, and I promise you everything is going to be better. Because after week four, week five, week six, week seven, they've changed some stuff, but they haven't noticed the holy shit moment yet. And generally that holy shit moment does come like around the week 10, 12, when we pull up a picture for someone and we say, Look at the visuals here side by side, look at your sleep, Daddy. You're actually now sleeping an extra hour per night, which is an extra night per week. You've now gained an extra night's sleep per week, you've now improved your heart rate by X, Y, and Z, you've approved your formats, you approved your lifts. How do we get people to buy into that? It's all gonna be great in a few months.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

I think managing expectations up front is probably key here because if you're telling someone it's like, right, look, we're focusing on the next eight weeks, but in the grand scheme of things, it's probably gonna be four to six months. But within the eight weeks, this is probably what we could do. We could build like a lot on a lot of the foundations, we could improve your sleep, we could improve your general activity, we can improve like your dietary setup. We might not see like huge changes on the scales, it might see like coming down a couple of kilos,

Weekend Blowouts And Overcorrections

SPEAKER_00 8:50

we might see like body composition starting to change, but it's not really until we get that four to six months you're gonna see like right, this is life-changing results here. But you need to kind of go through that first eight weeks, that initial eight weeks to kind of qualify to get into the second eight weeks, the third eight weeks, the fourth eight weeks. So I think when you manage expectations up front and you don't kind of sell this magic eight-week plan that's gonna like completely change your life, I think that kind of just sets someone up to kind of either decide, okay, you know what, that actually sounds reasonable, that sounds like something that is fairly crystal clear, or else it's gonna make a person say, No, it's it's not quick enough for me. And to be honest, there's nothing you can really change about that. You can keep trying to lay things out in front of them, but I think everything is being sold as a quick fix now. It's it can be very hard to kind of change people's mindset around these things.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

I I do think aiming for some small, quick wins is a key thing because obviously that the people want that instant gratification of, I've done the thing, I've got the result, I did well. Because you know, whether they didn't get enough hugs as a child or whatever it might be, they need to be told that, you know, listen, good job, you've done well. Here's an actual return and a tangible return for you. And whether that's, you know, locking in much tighter with the calories initially in the first month, and not that you get loosey-goosey thereafter, but to see a couple of kilos coming off, it does create some buy-in. And this is where us as coaches, we often have to play a bit of chess to say, okay, I'm gonna push

Building Habits With Sleep First

SPEAKER_02 10:10

a bit harder for the first month, get some weight down, create a little bit more buy-in, but then I'm wanting to focus on the long term and your health and your uh lifestyle gains and all the big wins that we can put in here. The immediate one that you want as the client is like gonna be some fat loss or that instant gratification of the thing. I want the thing now, I'm looking for the thing, which is the big result. But we know that the compound and interest of improving the sleep, improving your general movement and activity, improving the little bit of stress management, improving your digestion, getting your menstrual cycle in order, whatever it might be, or libido back and check for guys, whatever it could be. We know that that's gonna take a little bit longer. So we'll give a bit of wants and needs with that as well, too, right? And it's not gonna be of detriment, we're not gonna put you on 1200 calories, we're gonna like set it up in a way that, okay, this is sustainable. We can get like some small wins mounted up here, but then also those small wins are gonna build more buy-in to the bigger rocks that we need to move, and ultimately we're gonna get a greater return long term from that. Again, each person is gonna be very different. They're gonna have the odd robot like yourself when you came on board and I was like, hey, we're gonna flip everything on its head, do this. Okay, aye, Captain, done. Then you're gonna have others who are gonna have more kickback, they're gonna have other objections around their lifestyle. And again, I think it's those objections that come into it where people, well, I've got work travel, I've got uh kids, I've got some holidays, I've got a Halloween coming up, whatever the fuck it might be, any time of the year, there's gonna be shit on. And this is where, again, managing expectations for people, where it comes from our point of view, what have you got coming up over the next 12 weeks? Okay, I've got a lot of travel coming up, I've got a lot of stuff. I don't really think I can commit fully to this. Okay, let's look at how we can make that travel better. Let's look at how we can now give you some workouts that you can actually keep when you're on the road. Let's give you some concepts and ideas to work around so that when you go on your holidays for two weeks in the middle of that 12 weeks, that it's not all gone to shit, that you're not starting from ground zero or worse when you come back. And this is something we've been working on a lot over the summertime with people, where we can now keep momentum there because that's the buzzword we're looking for. That's where you come back from your holidays, you've actually maintained as opposed to feeling completely shit. You've done all the things, you've really blown the arse out of it because you're all on holiday. And we didn't go piss on your parade, we didn't go tell you you need to walk 20,000 steps a day and train five times a week and only eat salad at the buffet. But we put in structures around it where you can actually maintain the momentum as opposed to breaking the momentum. And this is again a crucial thing. And I think we're going to break a record for the amount of times we can say a single word on a podcast with momentum because it's usually we say like or fuck 55 times in a podcast. But the whole aspect is how can I maintain and progress then as well too? And again, a lot of that is massive progression when people are away, whether it's with work for a midweek break or whether they're traveling, or whether they've got the kids for a long weekend, whatever the hell it might be. Progression is actual maintenance here for a lot of people on this, as opposed to regression across the board. So it's managing expectations and actually the understanding of the word, of the phrasing of what we're trying to put in play here for people. And that's again really, really key. Where now there's a mindset, mindset shift when it comes to what actual progression is, what momentum is, what the whole aspect of it is across the board. And again, like what we'll see that huge. Um, what do you look at when you're setting that up with managing expectations, let's say, around a busy schedule, Daniel, when it comes to your clients?

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Uh well, there's a few different approaches I take, but like you mentioned the summer there that I had this conversation with a client lately because, like, again, summer is usually a time when there's gonna be a lot more social events, gonna be a lot more ETOs, a lot more ice cream, barbecues, whatnot. Um, and I just asked, like, what was your general

Expectations Quick Wins And Patience

SPEAKER_00 13:55

approach previously when it came to like the summer? Like, what would you have done then? And I said, like, I never really had a plan for the summer. And I was like, it's perfect as long as we just have a plan now and you're not like three months down the line five, six kilos heavier and you're kind of on the back foot, you can actually have something in place that we can just maintain what you built now, so that by the time you know September comes back around that schools are back home, you have a bit more structure, a bit more routine, that you're actually ahead of every other year that you've tried to do this before. So, like when it comes to social events, it's simple on paper, but we maybe look at bringing calories up to maintenance for that day or two days across a weekend. Maybe if it's gonna be something like um, you know, like a barbecue, that it is pretty easy to kind of navigate because you're gonna be eating a lot of like high protein foods there, it's not gonna be as filling. We can have some sort of a plan there that we can maybe bank some calories towards it, or at least have an approach for the day. It's like, right, here's what you're gonna do in terms of like loading up your place, maybe instead of having like all the the beer that you normally would have, switch to a lighter beer, maybe have the employ like the zebra striping method that we would have talked about previously, where you follow up every um alcoholic drink with an alcoholic version or maybe a soft drink. So it's about looking at these situations and saying, like, right, they're not gonna disappear just because you have a goal in mind, because like once you reach your goal, you're gonna look at trying to maintain what you've built. So like you have to do that while also including all of these social events and social commitments. So like if you can't lose weight, get in shape while incorporating these, how do you think you're actually gonna maintain those results once you built it? So a lot of the time it is about kind of look at maintenance periods, maybe have a diet break. There could be some periods of time where you just say, like, look, you actually are getting pretty close to your goal now. Do you think that this is the right decision that you could actually just say no to it? You don't really want to do it. So why can't you actually just politely just say no? Like, look, my goals are very important to me. I'm just going to like pass up on this one, but didn't make plans down the line. You take charge of like, instead of doing that, why don't we do X or why don't we do Y? Um, because a lot of the time it is where people just feel like out of control or they feel like they have no control because they're giving the control to someone else or they're letting someone else kind of you know decide what their weekends are going to look like. Whereas if you actually take control and say, like, yeah, it's a good idea, we can do that for sure, but can we hold off and maybe doing that for three or four weeks? Maybe we could do this this weekend and we can kind of make up for it in a couple of weeks' time because you know I've got X, Y, and Z on at the moment. So I think once you just communicate with the client, you kind of understand like where they're coming from, what they like, where's the middle ground between like them still moving towards their goals, but then also not completely shutting themselves off socially, I think you're gonna actually you know have a far better time.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

A lot of people that come to us, their goal is to be able to improve their lifestyle, to improve their health and as a byproduct of the lifestyle, the health and the fat loss and all these things improve. But it's like if you are not attempting to be more inclusive of your health and fitness into events and events into your health and fitness, well then you're gonna struggle big time because there's gonna be stuff on all the time. There's gonna be every single month, every single quarter, every single week, there's gonna be stuff on that you're gonna have to work around that you're either gonna have to include or you need to forecast and navigate a little bit better than you normally would have before. Because right now, if you're out of shape, you're a byproduct of all the other shit you've been doing over the years and months previously, right? So again, that is gonna have to change how you approach those events. And that doesn't mean you can't approach those events, but you just have to be able to include them, you have to understand what's going on, you have to be able to say no that little bit more because saying yes has got you where you currently are. And again, when we can factor that in, when we can work at it, when we can navigate it, now all of a sudden we get the greater return without radically overhauling the whole thing. So, again, this is the whole thing of building and maintaining momentum across the board with it all. Um, Daniel, speaking of momentum, we've

Summer Social Events Without Losing Ground

SPEAKER_02 17:50

got a thing called momentum. Let's talk a little bit about that now at the moment. Uh, it's an eight-week coaching block where we take the reins to help you build exactly that. Give us a further breakdown of it all, Daniel.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, I think it's uh first of all, it's not an eight-week challenge. It's important to get that out there, and I keep having to tell that to people because it's not an eight-week challenge. It is just a structured eight weeks of uh eight-week block of coaching because like as we said, if we can kind of break things down into kind of smaller bite-sized chunks, it makes kind of the longer-term goal a lot more manageable. So, like if you had to think about walking up a mountain, for example, if you keep looking at the top to where you are, it's gonna seem like forever. But if you think, okay, I'm just focusing on getting to that first little piece of flat ground, it's a lot easier to kind of push yourself to get to that point, and then you can say, All right, it's gonna be a bit easier then then I'm gonna focus on the next point. That's exactly the way we've kind of set up the uh momentum, is we just purely purely focus on like the eight weeks block, give you some more structure. Do you have your check-ins every um two weeks or the bi-weekly check-ins? You have a live call every week in between, where you we uh we pick a topic or a couple of topics to run down through based on feedback from the check-ins, so any areas that people might be struggling with, any questions that might come up, uh, and then we have like a live Q ⁇ A afterwards. So it's just giving you a lot more, you know, structure, a lot more plan, uh planning to your weeks, months, and everything like that. Um but I think like as I said, the main thing is just to realize like it's not an eight-week plan. We don't like eight-week plans. Eight-week plans never work, they're great at filling coaches' pockets, but that's not what we're in it for.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

And again, it's eight-week structures that you can carry that ongoing. This is not like a flash in the pan radical transformation kind of stuff. If you want that instant hit of that, we're not the people for you. Again, it's the the whole aspect we want to have is that we can set you up for the long term. Give you the give it like move the big rocks we need to move. Okay, if your sleep is the main thing that's a real problem and that's the thing that's dragging everything else down, let's actually just focus on that with you for the eight weeks. If it's your training that's shit, and you just need to get it in order, let's focus on that. The rest of it will all come in line that little bit more than as well, too. So again, think of it as like a horizon tide that's going to float all bots. What is the main focus that needs to be focused on, as opposed to I'm going to do everything? Because those who try to do everything do fuck all when it comes to a grand scheme that they just end up spinning their wheels, they just keep jumping from challenge to challenge, they keep on getting absolutely nothing from it, and this is not again what we're about. So if that's something of interest, our next block is actually coming up on the 10th of August. Uh, the intake is currently open, and again, uh, we have those running throughout, and they're going to be back to back uh over the years and months and whatever to come ahead. Um, Daniel's been really good on this one so far. Obviously, understanding a lot about momentum for people and actually redefining it, what their approach would be to it traditionally, uh, because they think it's a sprint as opposed to where we can now

The Momentum Coaching Block Explained

SPEAKER_02 20:45

jog, stop, maintain, uh, as opposed to just being all out, hell and fury all the time. Um, it's been super, super useful. Any closing notes that you want to wrap up on?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, like as I said, I think uh managing expectations is key for everyone, no matter who's listening to this, no matter where you are. I think managing expectations is like super important because over the summer you will see people tend to kind of drop off from coaching an awful lot, and a lot of that is because they will have this, you know, expectation that they're going to be able to maintain their routine throughout the summer, that they have to kind of track every single bite, they have to be able to like be all or nothing, they have to weigh all their food, they have to hit all their sessions. But uh this is when you're gonna require having a coach the most, and that's where coaching actually you know helps is actually with managing expectations, kind of navigating these busy periods of time. So if you're kind of on the fence about potentially jumping on with momentum, thinking like, oh, August is still the summer, still got a lot of stuff on, that probably is the best time to actually jump on board because that is when you will need a lot more guidance around um these busy periods of time.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

If you're the person who says, I'm gonna give myself a kickstart and get my shit in order for over the next month and then I'm gonna jump on board, it's not gonna happen. Because again, you're you're gonna struggle, you're gonna falter because you've already been struggling with it. And if you could do it on your own, you'd probably have it done already.

Final Thoughts And Wrap

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Uh Daniel, that's been really useful as always with this one. Looking forward to the next episode.