How to get the best results in the initial weeks of your diet

Today we're breaking down the things you want to understand and be thinking about if you're starting with a new coach, a new diet or new plans and protocols 🙌🏽

Ruby talks through the step-by-step process of how to get the most out of the initial weeks of these things, to ensure you're set up to succeed for the long run!

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DISCLAIMER
The Eat Like Ruby podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or dietary advice.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature and should not be used to treat any medical conditions, health conditions, illnesses, injuries and/or any nutrition related conditions, deficiencies or similar.
This podcast is not to be used as, or in place of, medical advice or dietary advice.
Please consult your health care professional before implementing any of the advice, information or protocols discussed in this episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

G'day fam, welcome back to the pod. Today I'm gonna do an episode. I think we're gonna call it something like how to get the best results with your diet, and probably more so like how to get the best results in the initial weeks of your diet or how to get the best results when you get started with dieting. Something like that. And what we're gonna look at today, I think, is all things that we've spoken about on the podcast before, and even some things we've spoken about recently. But I feel like I've spoken about some of these things recently in like short-form ways, or we've touched on them as part of bigger episodes. And then I've just listened to it back and I'm like, I feel like we need to do a whole episode where we actually explain that right through so people can understand it a little bit better. So you might hear some things today and be like, oh, I've heard her kickoff about this recently. But we're gonna explain things a little bit more today. And I think cool just to go over things like always, people need to hear things a few times. And I think very cool to have this all in one episode for when we're like getting started with a diet. Maybe when you're getting started with a coach, maybe when you're getting started with me, another coach, another program, another diet, whatever you're doing. This is the stuff I would want to understand if you are going into something new or like getting back into something, whatever that looks like. This is the stuff I would be thinking about to really succeed in the initial weeks. And the first thing we're gonna look at, we've definitely spoken about this in different ways before, but the most important thing to do when we're starting a new diet or new protocols or anything is to think about the goal and really think about the goal and get clear on the goal. Because I think it's so easy for people to just be like, oh yeah, like I just want to lose a little bit of weight or like I just want to feel a little bit better. But it's just important to break that down and be like, no, what exactly do I want to get out of this? Like, why have I signed up to a coach or why am I starting a new diet, a new program, etc.? What exactly would I love to get out of this? And even just getting really clear on what would I love to get out of the initial weeks and then what is my bigger goal? What do I want to get out of it overall? The reason this is so important is because as we work through the next steps of like putting the plans and protocols in place to move towards that goal, obviously we need to be very clear on what the goal is. And obviously, if you're gonna work with a coach or you're gonna work with someone on these goals, you can talk about this with them and get really clear on it. But I think it's really important to do that yourself as well because no one else can decide your goals for you. No one, like even the best coach in the world can't tell you what you want. You really have to remember that and you really have to just break it down and get super clear and be like, what exactly is it that I want? Because the more specific and exact we can be with that goal, then the more specific and exact we can be with the plans and everything we put in place to move towards it. Again, if someone just says something like, Oh, I just want to like feel a little bit better, that's fine. Like, that's not a bad goal. But then you just have to break that down and be like, well, how am I gonna monitor my progression towards that? What data am I gonna collect? We're gonna talk about all this in a second, but what am I gonna collect to see if I am actually moving towards that goal? How am I gonna communicate with my coach how I'm feeling in regards to that goal? That's a really important one. And we'll probably talk about that more as the episode goes on. But if you're paying someone or you're working with someone and you want this person's input, think about if someone has a goal that's like, I just want to feel a little bit better. If you work with a coach and then the coach just goes, how are you feeling? And you're like, Yeah, not that bad. Okay, well, what else can we look at here? How else can we assess progress? How else can we know if we're moving towards the goal? How are we actually feeling? Can we see the difference between someone having like a very clear idea on exactly what they want to get out of something versus someone that's just a little bit vague, a little bit blasé? And if you are a little bit vague and blasé right now, that's fine. But I would just tap into that and almost like give yourself permission to just be like, no, what exactly do I want? I think sometimes it can even be a little bit of a mindset thing where people, like I said, don't give themselves the permission. Maybe they don't believe certain things are possible for them. So it is just like, if I have a little bit of a loose goal, there's not too much pressure on it, there's not too much expectation on it, I can't fail with it. Starting to get into a whole nother conversation here. But if you've hired someone and you're really going to put good plans and protocols in place to move towards a goal, give yourself permission to set a really clear, awesome goal. Because then we can set really clear, awesome plans to move towards it. So step one, just really think about the goal. And even if you're not someone who's in that like vague blasé category, even if you do know what you want, just get like really clear on that as well. And make sure if you are working with someone, you've communicated that to them. Because I think there's a whole nother thing to look at here where shit might be very prominent and very clear in our own minds, but then you have been a bit blasé with your coach and just saying things like, for example, if you've got like a muscle gain goal and you're just like, oh, like I just want to like build a little bit of shape. If you say something like that to your coach, but in your mind, you're like, I really want to build my quads, I really want to build my glutes. Right now I don't feel that good when I wear short shorts. I really want to build legs that like I feel really comfortable in short shorts. I've got a trip towards the end of the year, like in five months' time, I'm going on XYZ trip and I want to be able to wear my short shorts, have my quads, have my glutes, have all of this popping. Like in your mind, you're like, I know what I want. But then on the surface, we're like, oh, it's like a little bit of shape might be nice. If someone comes to me and is like, roops, I want quads, I want glutes, I want this, I want that, that is unreal because I can go off and be like, I know exactly what this person wants. So I can put exact plans and protocols in place to move towards that. If someone says to me, like, I just want to build a little bit of shape, again, that's fine, we can do that. But if what you actually want to do is a bit different or a bit more specific than that, communicate that, get really clear on it and own it. Same thing with the fat loss goal. If we're just a bit vague, like, oh, just like drop a little bit of body fat might be nice. But again, in your mind, you're like, no, I want to achieve XYZ fat loss by this date because then I want to go into a muscle game phase or I want to start prepping for a marathon or I am going on a holiday. Like, if you know there's real definite shit in your mind, ask yourself, like, have I definitely communicated this and gotten clear on this, either with myself or with my coach or with whoever. And if you haven't, that's the first thing we want to look at is just like getting so clear on exactly what you want to achieve. And just to be clear, guys, like there is no right or wrong with this. This is why I always say there's no right or wrong. There's no right or wrong goal. Like, you can want to work towards anything. It might be fat loss, it might be muscle gain, it might be performance, it might be more like mindset, mental health, emotional health, like feeling better in those ways. There might be events you want to do, there might be holidays you have coming up. You might want to just get into like more social fitness, you might just want to get better nutrition education. Like we can put nutrition and training in place to work towards so many different things. But it's just important to really be clear on what it is that you want to put it in place for so that as the weeks and months go by, we can actually ensure you're moving towards that thing. If we don't know what that thing is or we haven't communicated that, then those weeks and months are going by. And it's like, oh yeah, well, we're like implementing some nutrition and training stuff, but are we moving in the direction that we want to go? Big difference between someone who's just like sort of kind of doing some stuff with nutrition and training versus no, I've got the exact plans in place to move towards the exact goal that I have. And then that kind of segues us into the next thing I want to talk about. Obviously, different coaches are going to specialize in different things. So think about the fact that I just said, like, we can put nutrition and training in place to work towards so many different things. And there are coaches out there, like we are in the peak time of coaching, like with the internet and everything. There are coaches out there for everything. And if we look at like nutrition training specifically, obviously there's coaches out there like myself who help people with predominantly like body composition, performance. We look at a lot of data, we look at a lot of structure, education, facts, science, evidence, all of these things. Then we can come over to coaches who are gonna look more at like emotional eating, binge eating, mental health, mindset, like habits, that sort of thing. We've got coaches that are gonna be like super strict and intense if you really want to knuckle down on a crazy goal. We've got coaches that are like, I'm your online bestie, I'll just be like a cheerleader for you. Like, none of these things are wrong. But if we come back to that first point of like getting clear on your goal, if you get clear on your goal, then you can get clear on who's the best person to help me with this goal, if that's the direction that you want to go. And even if you don't want to go through coaching and you're gonna do this yourself, then even just getting clear on like, okay, well, what's the best diet? What's the best approach? What's the shit I should be implementing and looking at, depending on that goal? There's so many things that we can work towards with nutrition and training. And what we want to work towards is then gonna determine what we need to put in place to work towards that thing. So I think if you're gonna work with someone, get clear on what you want and then look around and go, who specializes in this or who works in this. We get people that apply for coaching and eat like Ruby and they'll write things on the form like, oh, I really want to get my hormones sorted and my mental health and my emotional eating sorted. And I'm like, I'm not gonna be your best person. And I always say that with love and respect, but I think it is with love and respect because I'm like, it'd be a dick move for me to take your money when I don't specialize in that stuff. If someone feels in a form applies for coaching and is like, I want to build my quads, I want to build my glutes, I want to build up my calories, I want to spend time out of a deficit, straight away. I'm like, okay, I can absolutely help this person in my sleep. Let's go. So I think a little bit of a side note, but just cool to get clear on what you want to then know like who or what do I need to then put in place to work towards that. And what I was saying there before I got my side note is seguing into the actual next point that I had is once we get clear on the goal, we then want to get clear on the actions that are required to work towards that goal. And our first step is to implement those actions consistently. So if you're anyone who's been in Eat Lack Ruby or you're a long-term listener, you would have heard me talk about the difference between actions and outcomes. And I think it's really important to touch on this again here. When we're looking at something like putting nutrition and training in place for body composition or performance goals, which is what we specialize in in Eat Lack Ruby, it can be very easy to focus on the outcomes. So obviously, if somebody wants to build their shape or drop body fat, we're very focused on that outcome of like, I want to get to a point where I've built the quads, I've built the glutes, I've dropped the body fat, right? The big step between setting that goal and achieving that goal and that outcome is the actions. So once we've gotten clear on the goal and we've decided either I'm hiring a coach or I'm gonna do this myself, and we've started to work out what the plan's gonna look like. We have to really tap into that and go. The number one thing I need to do is get that plan and implement that plan before I think too much about the results, before I start looking at the results, before I start looking at the outcomes. I'm gonna talk about those things a little bit later on, but there's a reason I'm speaking about this stuff in this order. We need to work through this order and go, what's the goal? What's required to achieve the goal? And now I need to start implementing that before I even think about actually achieving it and what that's gonna look like when I get there. So, really looking at the actions, that's where we want to come back and go, okay, cool, what is it that I want to achieve? If we do have something like a body composition or a performance goal, this is again what we specialize in and eat like Ruby. So I'm gonna speak predominantly to these things today because I can confidently speak to the actions that are required to achieve that goal and even clock that right there. Like I was saying before, different coaches specialize in different things. I wouldn't sit here and talk about the actions that are required to combat emotional eating because I don't know what those actions are. I don't coach on that. I haven't studied that. So that's just an example. Like I said, I could talk about progressing towards body composition and performance goals in my sleep because that is my specialty. That's what I studied for years. This is what I do all day, every day with people. So just clock the difference there in who can help you with what. But if we come back to the actions, when we get started with someone who has these goals of either body composition or performance, we get super clear on what that is. And then we work out what is required for this person to progress towards that thing. So starting to look at obviously like nutrition intakes, nutrition requirements, if we're doing this person's training, what training do we need in place for that goal? There's so many different things, and obviously that's gonna depend on the person and the goal. But once we formulate that plan, or if you're doing this by yourself and you formulate your own plan and you go, yep, I'm gonna work towards X, Y, Z goal. I think this is what's required for me to do it. This is what I'm gonna put in place. That really does become the focus for the next like three to four weeks minimum, like obviously way beyond that. But for the initial three to four weeks, I don't look at people's results, I don't look at their outcomes. We cannot start assessing results and outcomes until we've implemented the actions for long enough. And this is what is so important to understand because we see a big disconnect with people who kind of half-ass the actions, but then start looking at the results and outcomes. And I'm gonna speak about this more as the episode goes on. But let's say somebody has a goal to progress towards dropping body fat. And we say, okay, we think that the nutrition requirements for you to do this are XYZ. Like we might put a calorie target in place, we might put a meal plan in place, we put a protein requirement in place, a few other things. We might say, like, this is how many steps we're gonna average each week. We're gonna put numbers, plans, protocols, structure in place and say, you have said you want to work towards this goal. We've worked out what is required for you personally to move towards that goal. Here is that plan. And then this is where, like I said before, the initial three to four weeks have to be purely focused on implementing that plan. If someone implements that plan for three or four days and then starts being like, oh, I'm just like looking at my scale weight and it's not really moving, measurements haven't moved, pitches haven't moved, it's like, what, bro, in 72 hours? We haven't achieved amazing results in 72 hours. I'm being sarcastic, if you can't tell, guys, because we're not going to achieve amazing results in 72 hours or even four days or five days or eight days. We need to actually have things in place long enough to start to assess if we're progressing towards that goal. So I will never assess if someone is progressing towards a goal after like one, two, even in a third week of someone implementing a plan, we still need a bit longer. And if we side note for a second, but it's definitely worth looking at this, especially because we work predominantly with females in eat lacquerie, and we know that the female body rotates through different things at different times of the month, right? I'm not gonna get into that too much today, but we know that it does. So we never want to look at what was the body doing yesterday, what is it doing today, what was it doing last week, what is it doing this week? We need to sit in something long enough to start to detect the trends over time, not what it's doing from one day to the next or one week to the next. So if you're ever implementing something and you're starting to nitpick the numbers in the first week or the second week or even the third week, remember that we are not here to nitpick numbers. We are here to detect trends over time and we need to implement things over time to do that. We cannot detect a trend over time if we don't allow the time to play out. We cannot detect how something is trending over time if we have not had the protocols in place for some time. So that's the first thing that we want to think about here with our actions is like we need to implement the actions for long enough before we can determine how the body is responding to those. And that is exactly what we're here for. That's so important to understand, especially if you work with a coach, but even if you are implementing something by yourself, you've communicated your goal, hopefully very clearly now that we've pointed this out, then we've put the structure and the plan in place to work towards that goal. The absolute best thing you can do is adhere to that plan and adhere to that structure so we can start to assess how your body is responding to it. If you have goals for your body, whether they be body composition or performance, but really come back to the fact that I have sought out this coach or this diet or this plan because there are things that I want to progress with with my body, whether that be body composition or performance. But I want my body to progress in some way. So we have put the plan in place to start facilitating that progression. We need to have that plan in place for a while so we can assess how the body is starting to respond to that. If we do have the body composition goal, like I said, we want to collect data on how the body's responding for a few weeks to assess that. If we have a performance goal, we want to implement the plan as we're working through our training and we go through those few training sessions, those few weeks, and then we can start to see, hey, how is my training feeling? How is my body responding with the plan that I have in place? But we just can't do it in a short amount of time. We need to implement it for a while. And I always like to compare this to a budget. Think about somebody implementing a budget. You don't implement a budget for one week and then look and go, like, are we getting somewhere? You implement it for a few weeks and you start to detect, okay, cool, how much is going in, how much is coming out. And then overall, as a result of that, are we starting to gradually move in the direction that we wanted to go or are we not? And I'll talk about that in a second. But we don't just look at the bank account on the Monday and then look at it on the Tuesday and go, the budget's not working. We don't even look at it in week one and then in week two and go, the budget's not working. We need to implement it for a while to then be like, overall, what is this resulting in? And that is exactly what we're doing when we put nutrition and training protocols in place as well. So the first thing with the actions, I'm still on the first thing with the actions, is implementing it for long enough to allow us to be able to do that. And I think where I was going with that initially was saying the best thing that a client can do, especially like especially if you're working with a coach, the best thing that a client can do is just stick to the plan because it's the coach's job to watch how the body is responding to that plan. If you stick to the plan, the coach can absolutely do their job as good as possible for you. If you don't stick to the plan, then you're starting to navigate different things with the coach. It's like, okay, well, why couldn't we stick to the plan? What have we got to look at? Are we gonna stick to it this week? Let's try this week, let's try and get a few initial weeks going now. And that process can just drag on. So, I mean, obviously that can play out for different reasons. I'm not really gonna get into that today. But if you're someone who's like, like, no, I know what I want, I'm ready to do the work to achieve it, just know that the best work you can do is literally just ticking the box or sticking to the plan. And that kind of segues into the second thing I wanted to say with the actions and looking at like the difference between the actions and the outcomes. If someone half-asses the plan, like I said before, there is no point looking at the outcomes. This is where we can see people kind of implement the nutrition, kind of implement the training, sort of stuck to it. Oh, I didn't stick to it yesterday, kind of been mindful of my food, but haven't been actually like tracking it or logging it or haven't stuck to the meal plan, haven't recorded anything, sort of been adding things up in my head. Yeah, kind of, oh no, kind of didn't stick to it last night, wasn't that hungry yesterday, felt a little bit sick on Tuesday, so didn't stick to it Tuesday either. Obviously, like I went out on the weekend and like can we just see how overall we're kind of half-assing this, right? And like I always say, no right or wrong. No one's got a gunty head. You don't have to track food, you don't have to stick to meal plans, you can do what you want on weekends, like whatever. But come back to what goal do you have? Why are you implementing the diet? Why did you hire the coach, etc.? What structure, what plan have we put in place to move towards that goal? If we have not stuck to that, we've got to look at that and go, well, there's no point assessing if I'm moving towards my desired outcome and my desired goal, because I've completely skipped the stepping stone that I need to get there. Again, I'm gonna say it one more time. If you've got a goal and you've come to a professional and made that goal very clear, and the professional has then said, okay, here is the plan that I think is gonna move you towards that goal, and then you only half kind of maybe sort of stick to that plan, then there's no point looking like, hey, is this getting me the result that I wanted? It's like, no, you know what would get you the result? You wanted the plan. The plan that you're not sticking to. Can we see what's going on there? So this is why this step is so important and it's such a funny one because there'll be people listening that are like, no shit. Like, no shit. Of course I would stick to a plan if a coach gave me a plan. But then there are people who are like, wait, what? Like I have to I have to stick to it. What? Like, trust me, I see both sides. And it's just super important to clock it and really think like, am I someone who's wanting to move towards something, but not actually consistently implementing what is required for me to move towards it. And there's just a couple of little notes I had on this topic before we move on to the last thing. If we are looking out, I just feel like I want to hone in on this because this is something I really specifically do with most of my clients. For most of my clients, we will put an overall calorie target in place. Like I said before, we work with girls predominantly towards body composition or performance goals. If someone has a body composition goal like muscle gain or fat loss, we know that there's certain nutrition intakes that are gonna be needed to be implemented consistently to move towards either of those goals. And then obviously, if someone has performance goals like playing sport, runs, triathons, et cetera, we know that calories are energy. We obviously need to make sure this person has enough energy. So again, we're gonna put a calorie target in place to make sure we're meeting the energy requirements of that goal. And then from there, like we do obviously look at different things depending on the individuals, like protein, carbs, pre-training, different nutrients, again, depending on individuals. But by far the most common thing we put in place for pretty much every person we work with is a calorie target. If we're then looking at, like I said before, having an initial three to four weeks of actually adhering to that target, what I deem as successful in these times and what I look at as like consistent and adherent is someone being pretty much like a hundred calories either side of that target every day. So let's say we put someone on 2,000 cal. If we look over the initial two to three weeks and this person is sitting between 1900 and 2100 every day, that is success to me. Because we're never looking at exact numbers. I never, ever, ever look at an exact number and go, like, you need to hit 2,000 calories or 2,080. You know, people come to me and they're like, oh, coach, put me on 1,785 calories. And I'm like, what? I'm like, what's so random? But anyway, go off. But I never give people exact numbers. Sometimes we actually give people a range, and this will be dependent on whether, you know, people might have like big training days, lower days. Like there's a few different things we'd look at. But sometimes we say to people, like, your initial calorie target is a range of being between 21 and 2400. Or we might say to someone, your initial calorie target is 2000, and then we can be between 1900 and 2100 of that. So we never need to hit an exact number, but whenever I work with someone on their nutrition, we do like fortnightly video calls with our girls. So when we jump on that first fortnightly call, I literally get a big calendar view up in our app. So our girls use our app and then I obviously can go in the back end of the app, have a look at all their stuff. I get it up in a big calendar view, and it straightaway is basically like I can see four weeks on the screen and it'll have like your calorie intake every day. Depending on if you're like doing training and stuff with us, the training will be in there, maybe our steps will be in there, like exactly what we've got in place for that individual, a little bit different, but whatever we're looking at will be on this calendar. And I can like literally within three seconds be like, yes, good fortnight, or shitty, shitty rough start for this person. And what I'm looking at, I just feel like this would be helpful for my clients, but then also just for people in general, is for me to deem something as like a good start or somebody has had like good initial weeks on their plan, is if we can just see those calories really nicely hanging in that range that we want. So again, if someone's target was 2000 and we were looking and it was like 1920 one day and then 2050 one day, 1980 one day, 2000 the next, 2020, 1940, 1970, 1980, 1940, 2070, right? And that's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And like every day you are just clearly consistently falling in that range that we want, that is awesome. Like to me straight away, I'm like, that is a great week. But then obviously, like I said before, if you're training with us and we can see that the training is getting ticked off, that's awesome. If we've got a step target in place and we can see the steps on there, that's awesome. But really just doing that bird's eye view, and I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more in a second with like assessing progress, but that is what I'm looking at. I'm never looking at like exactly how much did we eat on Monday, exactly how much did we eat on Tuesday. Never, ever, ever am I nitpicking numbers or looking at like what happened on every individual day. I am always doing that big step back and looking at overall, are we consistently falling into the ranges that we want to be in? Are we consistently implementing the plan? So I just think that's a cool thing to think about. That's something that I just like assume everyone kind of thinks and knows. But then I've had people where, like, say we've put someone on 2200 cals and they're like, oh, I hit like 2270. Like, is that bad? And I'm like, bro, no, that's perfect. So I just thought it was important to communicate that it's not about exact numbers, it's about consistently falling in that range that we want to fall in to leave us in the position we want to be in, to then start assessing how our body is responding to that intake. Which brings me to my final point. But I did have one more note in that last category before we move on. If we look at that for a second, like somebody being in a range and somebody like implementing the plan and implementing protocols so we can start to see how the body is responding, right? If you, for whatever reason, have days or things that happen and you don't implement the plan, it's so important to understand that it is still like really beneficial to record this and communicate it with the coach or at least record it for yourself if you're doing things by yourself or whatever. And the reason I say this is because let's say we do have someone who's aiming for 2,000 cals and we're like trying to implement these initial weeks of hitting in that nice sweet spot in that range around the 2,000 cals, right? And you're hitting that really consistently, and then for whatever reason, you maybe you get sick and you have a few days where you under eat and you eat like 1600 for a few days, or have a busy few days, something happens, you end up eating 2,400 calories for a few days, right? Maybe you end up eating 2,800, 3,000, whatever it is. It is so beneficial to record that and be honest about that because think about what I just said, where I'm gonna go in, like if I'm working with someone, I'm gonna go in and assess how is your body responding to what you've been doing. If we don't communicate what we've been doing, or we lie about what we've been doing, or we fudge the numbers, or we just leave things blank or whatever, then we're not making an accurate assessment of how the body's responding to what you've been doing. Because if I'm looking at numbers, let's say someone did have three days where they really went over their calories, but they're like, well, I'm not gonna write that down, right? I don't I don't wanna like admit that, or I don't want the numbers to be off or whatever. If I look at it and I go, okay, well, this person's been like perfectly falling in the range that we want them to fall in, and then we start looking at how's their body responding to that, but their body isn't responding to that. Their body's responding to having some days like that, but then having some days where we ate a lot more. And so we're starting to assess things that aren't accurate and aren't right, and then we're gonna start to make assessments. I feel like I spoke about this a few weeks ago where people like don't want to record their extra snacks or their extra bites of things or whatever. But then it's like the coach comes in and starts assessing things and maybe looks and goes, like, oh, things aren't working. We need to change them or whatever. But it's like, no, maybe we don't need to change them. They just haven't responded the way we thought they would because this person has actually been doing something different, but they just haven't communicated that they've been doing something different. So I can't speak on behalf of all coaches, but I speak on behalf of myself. Obviously, I will never, ever, ever shame somebody for overeating or like eating higher than we told them to eat. What's more annoying as a coach, to just be completely honest and word it like straight up, what is so much more annoying is to think about somebody eating things and doing things that we don't know about. And then we're kind of like assessing things that we think are right, but they're not right. And then we're like, oh, okay, well, let's put different plans in place because it hasn't worked out how I thought it would, et cetera. And can we just see how like it literally starts to defeat the purpose of having a coach? Because the coach is like working in one set of numbers, you're over here actually consuming a different set of numbers. Like it just doesn't line up. And then it just has this blow-on effect where if we start to then adjust plans and everything based on what we think is happening, but that's actually not what's happening. Then it just starts to get, we just start to get further from the truth and from what's actually going on and from the accuracy, et cetera. So coming back to what I was saying, I will never shame anybody, I will never judge anybody. I would just look straight away and go, okay, cool. Well, if you had three or four days, or maybe seven days, whatever it was, eating a higher calorie intake than we had put in place, I would first of all just be asking you, like, was this because of hunger? Was it too low? Was it too hard? Were the cravings too much? Was energy too low? Like, was there actually something like that going on? Because that's so helpful as well. We can then just be like, yep, okay, shit. We can't put this person on that low of an intake, right? And again, that's what we're trying to find out. We're trying to find out how your body responds to intakes. So we want to know what intake you've been on. Or if somebody just goes, no, no, no, it was none of that. We just ended up having visitors show up and we sat up every night and had chips and drinks, right? Like, okay, go off. But then we can look and go, okay, cool. So we know that there's no point really looking how your body's responded to the protocols and the calories and stuff we did put in place because you haven't hit those. You've been off having your chips and drinks and extra calves, which is fine, go off. But we're not going to adjust things or think like, shit, the plan isn't working. Because we know, like, no, wait, hang on a minute, we just haven't implemented the plan. The visitors are going to go home next week, then we can actually implement the plan and we'll see how things go from there. So it's just so important to understand that and really just remember that like what we want to get out of the initial weeks is learning how our body responds to different intakes, because this helps set us up so well if we do have either fat loss or muscle gain or body recomp goals, or if we do have performance goals. Because once we hit certain intakes for a while and we start to assess how the body's responding in terms of things like progress, fat loss, weight, measurements, et cetera. I'm gonna talk about that in a second. And also things like energy, hunger, training, performance, mood, cravings, that side of things, then we really can start to learn how much food does this person's body needs? What calories should they be on? What calories are gonna be a deficit for them? What's gonna be a surplus? Where is maintenance, et cetera? That shit sets us up for life. But we have to actually collect that data, we have to collect that information, which is why I say all those things I just said. We can't assess shit after four days or eight days or whatever. We need some really solid time, like a few weeks implementing things before we start assessing. Ideally, we actually implement that plan and protocols really consistently so we can make that assessment. And if we have a reason or something comes up where we can't implement it consistently, that's fine. But we communicate that so we don't start assessing the wrong stuff or interpreting things the wrong way. And there's just like one tiny little example I wanted to use of this. I had it in the notes before I get on to that last thing, I promise. Um, we're sitting here right now, like we are a week away from Easter, and I spoke to one of my girls last week who just started with me, and it was actually her first check-in, and we were like, your adherence to nutrition has been awesome. We've put in place for her hitting around between like 21 to 2300 cows. Um, training adherence was perfect, like that was all solid. And then just starting to look at, like, okay, cool, because you've had good consistency, we can start to collect a bit of data on like measurements, weight, et cetera, and start to see how those are moving. And once we've had like another few weeks of really implementing this consistency with nutrition, like you have been, then we're really gonna start to be able to look at the trend in those things because she does have body composition goals. But then I said to her at the same time, like, we're coming into Easter. And I said, like, I've said to literally every client I've spoken to over the last month, what are the plans for Easter? Like, do we actually need to adjust our nutrition plans? Because you have big plans like travel, holidays, camping, etc. Right. So I've checked in with all my girls, like, do we actually need to adjust for something at Easter or is it pretty chill? With this particular client, it was pretty chill, and she was actually going away after Easter. And I said, Okay, cool. So do we think for the most part we can just stick to our plans over Easter? And she was like, Yep, might have a couple of little family things, but like nothing major, feeling pretty good about implementing the plans. And I said to her, like, yep, okay, cool, awesome. And just keep in mind that you can come up towards the higher end of that range of the calories over Easter if that suits you better. So if you end up having five days up at 2300, that's totally fine. Like if that is allowed, that's fine, that's awesome. That is part of our plan. Because I think it's so common for people to think that things like aren't allowed or I can't do that, et cetera. Starting to get into a whole nother topic. But I just wanted to communicate to this client, like, come up towards that high end and just know that like the best thing you can do is just monitor things, track things, and keep a fairly accurate record because we are right in the thick of learning how your body responds to different intakes. If you go into Easter and just do a bunch of random shit and then get into that mentality of like, I'm not gonna write it down, I'm not gonna record it, it's just a bit of a write-off, not gonna tell Rubes, or I'm gonna like, quote, start again Easter Monday, like whatever it is. Well, then we've completely wrecked, and I don't say that to be harsh, but we've completely wrecked the process of implementing plans and watching how the body responds to those plans. And so an important thing to do, or just like a cool thing to understand, is let's just pivot on that plan a little bit, let the intake be a little bit higher. And I said to her, even if it starts to come up towards like 24 or 25, just record it, monitor it, be honest about it. Because then when we're sitting here on the other side of Easter looking at everything, we don't want to sit there or like, I don't want to sit there and assume that you've had this perfect, strict, tracked Easter at 2100 calories a day when maybe it's been more like 2,500 calories a day, right? Because again, it just comes back to my point from before of now we're just assessing shit that isn't even accurate or right. So it's an inaccurate assessment, and then we're gonna start to put inaccurate plans in place and we're really gonna be derailed from progressing towards the thing you want to progress with. So I just wanted to communicate this to this client because she was right in the thick of that process of like really gathering all this info for her. I said, the best thing you can do is just be honest about the info. If you think that we're in a position where for the most part we can implement the plans and protocols that we have been over the last few weeks, awesome. Let's keep those in place if you're happy to do that, which she was. And then just know that you can come up to the higher end of those. And if you do even come up a bit further just because there is like a big family meal or she's got kids, there's probably gonna be Easter eggs, like whatever's going on. But just collect the data, keep it informative, keep it accurate, because when we get to the other side, we can work with the facts. We're not left sitting there going, oh, well, we don't really know what happened over Easter. So that's just like an example of the fact that we can be flexible, we can adjust things, but we want to communicate it, we want to collect the data, we want to be honest about it. And I don't like using that word honest because it implies that people are like dishonest at other times. I don't think people are dishonest in a bad way. I think it is more in that mindset of like, oh, that wasn't in the plan, so I won't write it down, kind of thing, which makes sense, but that's why I wanted to do an episode like this and be like, no, collecting data on anything and everything is still so beneficial. I think people think like, well, if I haven't stuck to the plan, there's no point collecting anything or making note of anything. But if we actually, let's say we ate a person who was aiming for 2,000 calories a day and then they end up eating 3,000 calories a day every day over Easter, but they write that down and we look and we just straight away go, oh yep, okay, so you ate an extra thousand calories a day for four days. Okay, yes, that wasn't in the plan. But if we then start looking at how your body's responding and how you're feeling with energy, hunger, all those things, I'm gonna assume all those things are feeling pretty good because you're pretty well fed, then it makes a lot more sense. If someone's having weight spikes or their energy or their performance or their cravings or all of that are like suddenly really different, but when we don't know why, because we didn't really write down what we did differently, then we're just kind of left sitting there going, like, what the hell is going on? If you've hired someone to help you, or even if you want to help yourself, you don't want to be left in a position of going, what the hell is going on? You want to be able to look at all the info and go, oh, okay, that makes sense. Even if it wasn't in the plan, it makes sense and we can work with that moving forward. So I really hope all that made sense. Maybe you need to listen to that a few times, but I just think that's so important to understand the difference and really understand the point of what we're trying to get out of those initial weeks when we do put something in place. And then this does bring me to the final point I've said I've been gonna get to for like the last half an hour, and that is collecting the data of how the body is responding and how we are responding and how things are starting to progress. So think about what we've said with our timeline. We want to set the goal and we know what that goal is. We wanna be clear on like body composition goal, performance goal, whatever exactly it is we want to work towards. Then we want to work out what is the plan, what protocols are required to move me towards that. We want to implement those for a long enough time that we can collect data of when I implement this plan, this is how the body responds. So that's why we can't rush that process. We can't assess that after a few days, we can't crack the shits at the scale after five days of not moving. I see all of this shit all the time. But we want to understand that that is a process. We want to sit in that process for a while, and we want to start collecting data along the way about how the body is responding. And this is something we've spoken about in initial weeks. And we've kind of spoken about the fact that some people collect data, some people don't, some people understand data, some people don't. And that's why I thought it'd be beneficial to touch on this here and go, well, what should that process actually look like? What should the data collection process actually look like? The first thing I want to point out is this is obviously going to be dependent on your goal. Because if somebody has a goal that has like nothing to do with body composition, then we probably don't need to look at like progress, pitches, measurements, weight, et cetera. And then if somebody has a goal that is like completely to do with those things, there might be other shit we don't need to look at. So just important to go through this process and get clear on the goal because then we can get clear on A, how do we actually progress towards that? And B, what forms of assessment are we using and what are we monitoring to assess if we are actually progressing towards it? So again, I'm gonna speak predominantly to body composition and performance goals because that's what we do. This is what I do all day, every day. If somebody has performance goals like they are getting ready for events or sporting seasons or anything like that, if I've never worked with them before, I do still like them to monitor a little bit of their body composition stuff if they're happy to. So this is always a conversation I have with every client. It's like, do we have any obvious reasons or do you have any issues with collecting any form of data? Sometimes people have a really negative thing with the scale or with measurements or with pictures or anything like that. It's just important to obviously speak to the person and be like, if this is a real issue for you, I'm not gonna make you do this all the time, right? Bit of a dick move if I did. But if somebody doesn't have any like major beef with those things, like I said, even for performance goals, when I get started with somebody, I do like them to collect those things a little bit because we're trying to find intakes that fuel them and their training and their goals. And we're trying to make sure that we're not overfeeding or underfeeding this person. Usually, if we're getting someone ready for something like high rocks or a run or anything like that, we obviously want to make sure we're fueling their training and we're giving them enough energy. The biggest things we're gonna look at with this person is like how is training performance, how is energy, how is recovery? But it can also help to look at things like pitches or measurement or scale weights a little bit just to make sure like we're not seeing those things trend up if we don't want them to be, we're not seeing them trend down, can be really common for athletes, especially as their training volume keeps going up, to underconsume calories. And so if we do have a little bit of data on where weight and measurements and picks and all those things were when we started, and we just keep an eye on those as we're going through a nutrition block and a training block, we can make sure we're not underfeeding. If we're gradually seeing those things drop, but that person doesn't have a weight loss goal, that's where we can just tap in and go, oh shit, like maybe we need to crank up the calories a little bit. And obviously, like I said, we're gonna be looking at their energy and their training performance and stuff as well. But those things are like subjective and/or we can be a little bit emotional. Like when you say to someone like, how's training performance? If someone's having a bad day, they can be like, oh, it's shit. It's like, is it shit or are you just having a bad day?

unknown 41:31

Right?

SPEAKER_00 41:31

And that's fine. We all have them. But I think it's cool to have some actual stats and numbers and stuff for people like that as well, just to keep an eye on. Like when someone's got goals like that, we don't have to take progress pictures every week. We don't have to weigh in every day, but just knowing like where they were. Let's say someone started with me at the start of the year and they were progressing towards like Brizzy Hyrux or what's the next big event, Noosa Marathon is another big one coming up. A lot of people started with me in like Jan and Feb for those goals throughout like April, May. If we took things like weight and measurements in January when you started, and then you've built up your kilometers and your training volume and stuff as those events got closer, we just want to check in on those things at some point throughout Feb, maybe early March, and just make sure, like I said, they're not moving in any direction. They're holding steady for the most part. Because that just helps us see, just like another form of data to be like, yep, this is a good sign that we're giving you the right intake. And then obviously, like I said, we look at other things, how you're actually feeling. And that just helps us really paint that big picture of like, are we giving you too much? Are we not giving you enough? Just where is everything sitting? Like I keep saying, how is the body responding? So we can know if we're on track or if we need to adjust anything. So that's really what we're looking at with performance girls. Then we come over to the body comp girls. I think this is where it gets a little juicier. Because obviously, if you've got body composition girls, this is where people are looking at things like pigs weight measurements. And again, I'll ask these girls, is there anything we really don't want to take? But ideally, I do like people to take two, if not three, of these things. If we look at scale weight, progress pitches, and measurements. Ideally, like I said, we take three, and if not, it's at least good to get two. I don't like to just have one form of assessment. And it can be really common for people to just use scale weight, and we'll probably talk about that in a sec. But it can even be common for people to take measurements and picks and everything at the start, but then just keep taking weight moving forward. And then you start saying to people like, Have you taken any picks again? Have you taken any measurements again? Oh no, I haven't been doing that. I'm just bitching about the scale every day. Right? And we'll talk about that in a second. But I really don't like people just relying on one thing because, like I said before, we want to get a big picture. We want to have as much information as we can about how the body is responding to something. And just relying on one thing is just not the smartest way to do that. If we can look at multiple things, why would we not? There's no point just honing in on one. So ideally, we would take all three if there's no reason not to, and if not, at least taking two. And if people are gonna take two, in my opinion and my preference is that you would take measurements and progress pitches. The low The least thing I care about is scale weight. And it's funny because, like, for most people, that's all they want to take and that's all they want to talk about. And for me, I'm like, that's the last thing I care about. If you've got a body composition goal, I care a lot more about the progress picks and the measurements than I do about the scale weight. But if people want to take that, that's fine. And if we want to take that alongside the others, that's perfect. And really what we want to think about here is like I keep saying, we want to get clear on the goal. And if we've got body composition goal like fat loss and muscle gain, we want to get clear on that. We want to get the plan to start progressing towards that. And then we want to take all these things at the start. Because if you've come to a coach or you've started a diet or a training program and you're like, I'm putting this in place to progress towards this goal, you want to make sure you've got your starting point. Like if you're like, I want to build my quads, I want to build my glutes, or I want to reduce body fat, I want to get leaner. You want to know where all of that stuff is sitting at the start so that then when you start implementing the plan and protocol, you can see if your body is responding to it, like I keep saying, and if we're progressing from where we were. So really important to get those things at the start and be like, this is where I'm at. Then we come back to that last point of like, okay, if this is where I'm at right now, what I need to do to get the ball rolling to progress with this thing is implement the actions. There's no point putting our energy into taking picks every day or watching the scale every day and watching all this shit every day if we could be putting our energy into the actions that are required to actually make those things change. There's no point just sitting around waiting for the change, hanging all of our hopes on the change. Instead, we've got to be like, no, what do I need to be doing to facilitate that change? And that's where we come back to the actions. And this is where we can start to see the disconnect of people who half-assed the actions or sort of kind of do them, didn't do it this day, kind of did it that day, been a little bit off track, got a bit sick, went here, went there. Everything is just half-assed for lack of a better word. I feel like I need a better word for that. But it's just inconsistent. Like if we've just been inconsistently implementing the thing that is required to move us towards our goal, there is no point then going, Am I moving towards my goal? I'm gonna take my weight every day. I'm gonna watch my progress pitches. I'm gonna see if I'm moving towards my goal. But again, like I said before, you've skipped the big stepping stone of doing what's required to move towards the goal. And that's why it's so important these initial weeks to put your focus there and be like, my energy, my focus, my time, everything needs to go on the actions. Once I get those actions consistently happening, then I start going, okay, cool. How is my body responding to these actions and to this plan? No point going, how is my body responding to a plan that I'm kind of half doing? So that's why I'll always just hone in on this like actions before outcomes thing and set action-based goals. People set outcome-based goals, like, I want to lose 500 grams this week. I want to hit XYZ weight, I want to drop XYZ measurements. And it's like, no, don't put your energy and your effort and everything into the outcome. Put it into the actions. Set the action-based goals of like, I will hit that calorie range every day, I will hit my protein requirement every day, I will tick off my four training sessions for the week, I'll hit my average step count for the week. If we can focus on hitting those goals, they're the things that are then going to move us towards the outcome-based goals. I don't know if people can hear Nutella snoring. I have been going for like an hour on this episode. And he is literally sleeping between the microphone and the camera. So if people don't know, Natella is my little French bulldog, and he is just absolutely gone for it. But I am nearly done. I've just woken him up. Hello. He's looking at me like, are you still going? Yes, I am. Nearly done. But just super important when you are going into those initial weeks, if you've got outcome-based goals in your head, like I want to lose X amount of weight this week, or I want to see X amount of progression this week, come back and go, no, piss that off. I'm going to set an action-based goal of like what I'm going to do this week to start making those outcomes happen. What am I going to do with my actions to then get to the outcomes? And then the last thing I wanted to touch on with the outcomes and the progress towards those is data collection and how often we should collect data and what that should look like. So if we're looking at things like pitches, weight and measurements, I personally think, like I said, unless there's a reason not to, we want to take all of those things at the start. And then I think with pitches, fortnightly or monthly is good. I like girls to do fortnightly because we do, like I said, fortnightly calls with our clients. And so I always just think it's like a good routine to get in. If you know that you're going to speak to me on like a Wednesday, every second Tuesday, like take your picks, take your measurements, like get all those things so that every time we sit down, think about everything we've just spoken about for the last hour. I'm going to sit there and go, what is this person doing? And what result is it getting them? If people sit there and go, oh no, I forgot to take picks, can't find my tape measure, haven't recorded it, et cetera. You've really got to come back and go, what is it that I want Rubes to do right now? Like she does not know what progress I'm making because I haven't been recording it. I haven't been monitoring it. I forgot, I'll do it next week. I did it a month ago, etc. It can be common for people to be kind of sitting there like, oh, so do you think I'm making progress? And I'm like, I don't know. Because think about everything you just said. It's actually so common for people these days to be like, oh yeah, I've been taking my weight. I just haven't been recording it. And I have lost my tape measure. And yep, I didn't take pics um last weekend or the weekend before. I think I took them like three weeks ago. So, like, do you think I'm making progress, rips? And I'm like, okay, so just confirming, you would like me to let you know if I think you're making progress with your body composition goal, but you do not have any body composition stats for me to look at. Just confirming. So just important to clock that. If you're doing that to me or another coach, or even if you're doing that with yourself and you're sort of sitting there going, like, I don't know if I'm making progress, am I making progress, etc.? Stripple that back for a second. Go, do I have the information here needed to actually assess that? And then coming back to the frequency and how we should do these. I think, like I said, if you're working with someone or if you're doing little like self-check-ins or whatever, I think fortnightly for measurements and photos is cool. Monthly can be all right. But I think when you're working with someone and you're like, think about what I just said. Like, if you're gonna get on a call with me or with your coach or whatever, and basically say, like, do you think I'm making progress? Ask yourself, have I given this person the information they would need to help me assess that and to help me answer that? And so that's where I just think it can make sense to be like, well, if I'm gonna assess this with my coach every fortnight, it makes sense to take them every fortnight, especially if that's my goal right now. I work with girls where then over time we might move into a different goal. And I'll say to them, like, hey, like you could take the picks every month or we could lay off taking weight for a while or whatever. But if our initial weeks are all about you wanting to progress as quickly as you can, and me needing to see how your body responds to different intakes in order to help facilitate that progress for you, piece together everything we've spoken about and just go, I'm gonna give this person everything they need to help me do that. And a little side note, but I feel like it's worth mentioning these days with like self-timers or like filming, like you can film like a quick little video of you doing your poses and then screenshot them to get your photos. People say things like, oh, I didn't have anyone to take my photos, or people take them really awkwardly in mirrors and stuff. Just put your camera like I put my camera up against a tub of protein on the kitchen bench. I step a few steps back from it, I have it on video mode, I face it for like five seconds, step to the side, stand there for five seconds, step to the back, stand there for five seconds, come back, stop the video, grab a screenshot of each of those positions, done. It's 2026. Do not tell me you don't have the technology to take a progress photo. I call bullshit. And then the last thing I want to look at with the frequency is scale weight. I think this is a huge one. I've fully put Nutella to sleep right now. He is going for it. He's like, I've heard this chick talk about scale weight a million times. But this is such an important one to talk about with the frequency and the intelligent way to do this. So if we are wanting to use and if we're gonna use scale weight as a form of assessment, like I said before, it is very important to have other things alongside it. Scale weight will fluctuate due to things that have nothing to do with body composition. If you have a body composition goal, we cannot just rely on scale weight to assess whether we are progressing towards it because it will change due to things that have nothing to do with body composition. So we're then left sitting there going, well, we don't know exactly what that scale weight is responding to. And if we have nothing else to look at to assess body composition progress, then we're just left in the dark. And it's like, okay, well, we actually just don't have enough to work with here to really assess progress. So so important to first of all understand that, but then also understand that if scale weight will fluctuate due to things that have nothing to do with body composition and body fat levels, this is exactly why we do not nitpick or even look at the day-to-day changes in numbers. So I will never ever look at what did someone weigh yesterday and what do they weigh today, and use that as an indicator of how their body is responding to something. I will never, ever do that, guys. And I am an educated professional that has been doing this work with women for 10 to 15 years, since my early 20s, I'm about to turn 35. I have done this every day for those 12 plus years, and I have never ever once looked at someone's weight yesterday and their weight today and been like, okay, red flag. Things aren't working or we need to change something, et cetera. I am always stepping back and looking at that trend over time. Like I said before, when I'm going in to assess this for somebody, I get their stuff up in a big calendar view and I just look at that overall trend in the calendar. And what I look at is exactly what we've spoken about here. I'll be like, okay, cool. What is it that this person wants to work towards? Like, yep, they've got this goal, they've got that goal, we're getting ready for this event, we're doing this phase, whatever it is for them. I'll then go, what plans and protocols have we put in place for this? Yep, we've set their calories to this, we've set their steps to this, we're on a four-day training program, etc. I'll look through that calendar and go, are the calories falling in that range? Are the steps coming into where we want them to come in? Are we consistently taking off training sessions? And I'm never looking at those things like how much did they eat Monday? How much did they eat Tuesday? What day did they train? What day were steps? I'm always looking at the averages and the trends. What is the average calorie intake overall? What is the average step count overall? Overall, are we consistently ticking off training sessions? I'm looking at like overall, does this person train consistently or do they not? Do they consistently fall in their calorie range or are they not? Are we consistently coming in close to the steps if we've set a step target? So I'm looking at that overall, and then I'm looking at if this person is ticking all those boxes, then how is the body responding alongside that? And when I have that big calendar view up, we can see anytime the person has entered their peaks and their measurements, and then we can see anytime they've entered weight. So I'll go into the most recent peaks and measurements. Ideally, they've just taken them and they took them the fortnight before and the fortnight before, and we'll go in and have a look at those. And with those things, I don't even really look at Fortnite to Fortnite. I'll more so look at their most recent ones and like their starting ones or ones like if they've been with me for ages, maybe we'll look back at ones from like six weeks ago or eight weeks ago. If we implemented a phase like maybe this person's been in a deficit for six weeks, so I'll look at the starting stuff of the deficit versus the most recent ones. A little bit different for everybody, but really what I'm getting at is we're looking at that trend. We're looking at overall how are things moving. And then the exact same thing with weight. So ideally, and this is worth noting, ideally, if someone is gonna use weight, we want to take it multiple times a week. I'm absolutely not a fan of someone taking weight once a week. I would prefer someone to not take weight at all if they were gonna take it once a week. The reason I say that is because, like I said before, weight is impacted by so many things that have nothing to do with body composition or body fat. If we take it once a week, we don't know if we've just caught it on like a high day or a low day or if it's responding to something different in the body. What I'm getting at there is like side note, I feel like we've mentioned this so many times. Weight will respond to things like time of the month, fluid levels, hydration status, sodium levels, digestion. Have we been to the bathroom yet? Have we peed? Have we not? Like so many different things. But there are so many different things going on in the body at all times. It's impossible to hit a weight down to like an exact hundred grams, right? Because there's just so many things that make up that number. So then coming back to someone who just takes it once a week, it's like, what if we just happen to catch it at a certain time of the month and digestion was a little off and fluid was a little higher, and then therefore the number is just like randomly a bit higher than it maybe was the day before and it's going to be the next day, et cetera. But we'll never know that because you just took it once a week. And then people kind of hang all their hopes on that one weekly weigh-in. And this is where it's important to understand like if you're hanging your hopes on a like one number that's impacted by things that are so far out of your control and so irrelevant to the goal that you have. We want to clock the facts like I'm hanging my hopes on this thing that is not a reflection of it at all. Like this one number is not a reflection of progressing towards a body composition goal. Yet I'm hanging all my hopes on it like it is. So then coming back to assessing the overall trend and how I think we should do it. This is where I say to people if we do want to take weight, we want to take it multiple times a week so we can detect that trend. So we can look. If somebody like really clear example, I have one of my girls who started with me at the start of this year, and she we put a deficit in place at the start of this year. She was 95 kilos at the start of this year, and she is just so prone to fluctuations. I've worked with this person for like five years, really closely on and off for a long time. And we just know her so well. And I said to her the other day, like, you are so prone to fluctuations, but we just know this for you now, and we just work with it. And what I mean is, like I said, she was 95 at the start of this year. She's now about to hit 85. She's like dabbling in the 86s. But when we look at her progress, it is like so up and down day to day. But when we look at like her first week, most weigh-ins were like in the 95. Then the next week we're in the 95s and we start to see the odd 94. Then the next week we're seeing like maybe 195, some 94s for the most part. Next week we're seeing 94s, maybe even a one-off 93. Then it comes back up to the 94s, certain time of the month, might even see a 95. Then it quickly comes back to those 93s, and then eventually we start seeing the 92s. But like day to day, it is constantly like, you know, 94 and then 94.8, 94.2, 94.6, but then we see a 93, then we go back to the 94.5s, and then we go back to the 93s and then 94.5 again. And it is very, very fluctuating, for lack of a better word. Like it just constantly bounces up and down. But when we open up that big calendar view and we do that big bird's eye view of the overall trend, it's like, well, the first week of Jan, you were hanging in the 95s. By the last week of Jan, we're hanging in the 93s. Maybe we even saw the odd 92. And if we were to look at the day-to-day fluctuations, it would do your head in. And if you were looking at that as a form of assessment, literally every second day, we would be like, this isn't working. But this is a person who we have not changed her protocols at all. We have not changed her calories or her steps at all since the start of the year. And she's nearly about to hit that 10 kilo loss mark. And if I remember at the time of this episode, I'll put a screenshot of her fluctuations up to just show how insane they are, like how much it fluctuates. But then you look at that overall trend and it's like, well, we've lost 10 kilos in it'd be like three months, pretty much Jan, Feb, March. Which is just unreal. But if we were to change the plan every time it fluctuated, that would be an absolute shit show. And we don't need to. Like we have the evidence now. It's like we didn't need to change the plan at all. We haven't changed it once. And this is a person, I feel like it's worth mentioning, this is a person who is very clear on her goal and very consistent with implementing everything to progress towards that goal. Does four training sessions with me a week, literally never misses one, hits about 10,000 steps a day, hits her cows like super consistent, will have the odd meal out here and there, get straight back on her cows, like just consistency queen. Just everything I've spoken about for the last hour, she's ticking all those boxes. And then when it comes to assessing her progress, she takes the pick, she takes the measurements, she takes the weight most days, and we see this constant fluctuation, but then we step back and we see 10 kilo weight loss. And so that's why I think it's so important if we do want to use weight to take it more than once because we want to detect that overall trend. If people just take it once, I don't really look at it too closely, but then usually they're looking at it very closely. Like I said, you're hanging all your hopes on that one number. And then this is where people can go like, oh, but I was 95 last week and I'm still 95 this week. And it's like, yeah, but for all we knew, last week you might have been 95 the day you weighed in, and like in the 96s on other days. This week you could have been 95 the day you wait in, and in the 94s on the other days. But we don't know that because we only took it once. We've just happened to grab two numbers. We can't really assess two numbers, or we can't assess two numbers. We want to assess the overall trend over time. So we want to take it enough to allow us to do that. And some people like to take it every day. I don't think you need to take it every day because I think some days you like just forget or you get up early or you get up late or whatever. But I always say, like, if we do want to take weight and if you're gonna watch weight as a form of assessment, I think four days a week minimum is good. Like four to seven is good. Just so when we are stepping back to look at that trend, we've got enough data to really look at and to work with. And I feel like the last thing worth mentioning with weight is we always want to take it in the same conditions. So we always want to take it first thing in the morning before we eat anything, before we drink anything. Ideally just go to the bathroom, do whatever you gotta do there, jump on the scale, minimum or no clothing. What we absolutely do not ever want to do is jump on at different times of the day or like jump on at the gym or at different places like that and add that to our assessment. Like, we don't want to do it at all, but you don't want to look at like, let's say on a Monday, you do weigh in in the nude, empty stomach, empty bows, haven't had anything to eat first thing in the morning, and you were 70 kilos, and then you weigh yourself at gym on Tuesday night when you're fully dressed, stomach full of food, and you're 72 kilos. Of course you are. You're fully dressed with a stomach full of food. That has nothing to do with gaining two kilos overnight. There is just an extra two kilos on you in so many ways that have nothing to do with body fat or body composition. So, very, very important if you are going to use scale weight to use it in an intelligent way. First thing in the morning, before any food or drink, minimal to no clothing after you've been to the bathroom, and then consistently take it that same way, like every second day or multiple times, just enough to collect the data and detect the overall trend. And then to wrap up this episode, the last thing I want to say is if you are working with someone like myself or another coach or similar, this is the best thing you can do. Stick to your plan, collect all the data, collect all the information, and allow that person to assess it and potentially adjust it if they need to. Remember that that is literally what we're here for. So common for people to look at all these things themselves and be like, should I eat less? Should I do more? Should I do this? Should I do that? And it's like, no, what you should do is stick to the plan that you came to me or came to your coach and asked for, and that I think is the best thing to progress you towards your goal. If you do that, I can then do my job of assessing all the data, assessing all the information, and then adjusting if needed. And just know that, like, again, that is literally what we're here to do. If you tick all the boxes, implement everything, nail those initial weeks of following the plan and collecting the data, and we get to like three, four weeks into sticking to that, we're either gonna, we're gonna be in like one of two positions. One is we're like, yep, cool, this is getting us the result that we want. Awesome, let's keep doing it. Or option B is like, okay, maybe it's not. And people can think that that's shitty or it's a waste of a few weeks, et cetera. That is absolutely not a waste of a few weeks because if you've ticked all the boxes and you've stuck to the plan, you've collected all the data, your coach can really confidently, or a good coach at least, should be able to sit there and go, okay, if all of this is factual and correct, I have a very good indicator of how this person's body's responding to what we're currently doing. If that response isn't what we want it to be, I know exactly how to adjust this plan to get that happening for them. I've said a million times on the podcast, like, we can calculate things, we can formulate the best plans, the best protocols, et cetera. But there's always going to be things for every individual human being that we can't account for and that we don't know about until you just simply implement it. Everyone's going to have little different factors that make up their calories and their energy and their movement and all of their things. If you really consistently implement a plan, we can just get the data for you personally. We don't have to run calculations anymore. We don't have to do anything like that anymore. We can just look at you and go, when this person does this, it results in this. If we want a different result, we know how to adjust the plan to start getting that result. So just know that regardless, the best thing that you can do is keep ticking boxes, keep sticking to plans, keep trusting your coach, communicate with your coach. Be honest, be clear, be concise, all of these things. Because the more info your coach has, the more they can work with you. I think that is the best place to wrap this episode up. I cannot believe how long it's been. I don't know how long it's gonna end up being, but I think it's definitely gonna be over the hour. Um, so if you're still here, thank you so much for listening. I'm sure we'll touch on some of this stuff again, but I just thought really cool to chuckle in one episode and really just think about like what you want to be focused on going into working with a coach or implementing something new by yourself to really make the most of the initial weeks and just get set up for success with that thing. That's really what I want people to get out of this episode is like, how can I best set myself up to succeed with this new plan, this new protocol, new diet, etc.? So I hope you got that out of it. If you did, please check in on your Instagram story, tag eat underscore like underscore Ruby, and I will be back very soon.