Client deep dive... 56 years old, dropping 8kg and training for a half ironman!

Today we're looking at the plans, protocols and progress of one of my current clients who came to me 6 months out from a half ironman event, with the goal to spend 3 months prioritising body composition and fat loss goals, and then 3 months in her official ironman prep 💪🏽

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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 0:09

G'day gals, welcome back to the pod. Today we are gonna do another client deep dive episode. And if you haven't heard one of these before, pretty much what we do is just look at one of my actual current clients and talk about the plans, protocols, everything we have in place for this client, just to give like a really cool example of all the information and everything we talk about on the podcast, what it actually looks like for a real life human being. So we've done a few of these recently, and I've just got another really cool client to do today. So today's client is a really cool client. She is 56 years old, and at the time of recording, she is about four months out from competing in a half Iron Man, which is just unreal, first of all. Like anyone doing a Half Iron Man is unreal. 56 years old doing a half Iron Man, even cooler, in my opinion. And we're just gonna look at what she's doing at the moment and what we've been doing over the last few months, and then obviously what the next few months are gonna look like coming into that event. So her event is the Sunny Coast Half Iron Man or 70.3, as we might refer to it in this episode, and that is in the middle of September. And at the time of recording right now, it is the end of May or coming up towards the end of May. So this client has been with me since March, and then obviously working towards that event in September. So we're just gonna talk through, like I said, the last few months and then the coming few months. One thing I will say is if you heard that and thought, like, I don't care about half-Ion Man training, we're not really gonna talk about the training. We're more so gonna talk about nutrition and we're gonna talk about just navigating nutrition through different phases and like really nailing your timelines and your plans and your protocols and everything. This client has done such a good job of this. So that's why I thought she'd be such a cool example to really speak through what we've done and how she's done it. And the gist or like the main thing we're gonna talk about in this episode with her nailing the timelines and everything, like I said, doesn't really have too much to do with the Half-Ion Man itself. So, what we're gonna talk about is still really relevant to anyone lining up like body composition and performance goals, anyone just navigating different phases, anyone working through long-term goals and trying to line up those phases. So don't feel like this episode's only gonna be relevant if you're doing a Half-Ion Man. I feel like a lot of us aren't, and that's fine. But just a really cool example of how this client has navigated the year as a whole. And one little side note, guys, Nutella is here. If people don't know, Nutella is my little French bulldog. He is literally sitting between the microphone and the camera, snoring his head off like always. So if we hear any little snores in the background, that's what that is. But we are going to charge through regardless. So, like I said, this client came to me in the middle of March and she said to me, like, I want to do the 70.3 in September. We're pretty much looking at, say, six months, which is awesome. Like, that's the first thing I want to point out. So insanely awesome when someone comes to you in the lead up to an event with enough time to really work on things. I've said it before and I'll say it again: very hard when someone comes to you like a few weeks out from an event and wants to work on a bunch of shit. It's like we literally just cannot fit it all in. So this client came to me with so much time, which is awesome. And when she came to me in March, she was sitting around the 78 kilo mark. And this is pretty important when we're looking at endurance athletes. So, someone doing something like a half Iron Man, obviously we want to look at body weight and just ask, like, are you at the body weight that you want to do a half Iron Man at? Or do we need to make it heavier or lighter? So this client came to me around 78 kilos, pretty standard height and pretty standard activity levels at this point in time. Obviously, training for a half iron man, her training volume is gonna go up, but six months out from the event, it wasn't too high. And that just kind of comes back to the point that I just said, and I'm definitely gonna touch on this point again as the episode goes on. But when she's come to me six months out, training volume isn't crazy high. We do have plenty of time to look at do we want to work on anything else before that training volume cranks up? And this client did. So she said to me, I'm sitting around 78 kilos. Ideally, I would love to compete around 70. Doesn't have to be 70 on the dot, like if we get to 72, 71, whatever it is, that's fine. But I would like to reduce some weight just for life and body composition and aesthetic reasons, but definitely for carrying weight through a half iron man. Obviously, if we're carrying excess weight that we don't want or need to be carrying, if we can reduce that, it's probably going to be more comfortable to complete that event. So that was one of her goals. And again, this is what I'm talking about. If we're looking at a six-month window where we do want to work towards some fat loss and weight loss, but then obviously we want to train and fuel Half Iron Man, having six months to do so is far better than having six weeks to do so. We actually just can't do that in six weeks. And I am going to read a comment that this client wrote on her startup form because I think it just kind of confirms everything I just said and just gives like a little bit of an idea for where this client was at. So on her startup form at the end of Feb, she said, I feel like my nutrition has let me down over the last couple of years when training for events, as I have gotten either sick or injured and had to pull out of a lot of events. I have tried to train in a deficit to lose weight and train for events at the same time. And in the end, I have to pull out for one reason or another. I would also find I was getting very tired and then couldn't sometimes give my training the effort that it deserves. I would really like to understand how much I need to be consuming to do the events I want to do at the body composition I want to do them at. Depending on how I feel during the half Iron Man, I may consider further fat loss towards the end of the year. As in 2027, my aim is to attempt a full Iron Man. So, I mean, first of all, Slay, she's gonna be 57 attempting the full Iron Man, which is just awesome. I love it. And I just always want to point out, like, I know, I just want to say, first of all, like 57 is not old. Like, we've had older clients on the podcast before. I've had my mum on the podcast before, she does really cool shit, but I think it's kind of like two sides to it where we can look and go, 57 ain't old, but then we also see people who are like 47 saying that they can't do any of these things. So that's why I like to point out the age and just point out the fact that it's awesome that this client is pursuing these things. And just as a little bit more context and a little bit more of a backstory on that comment that she put on the form, she has done a few events, so she has done a half-iron man before, but had some injuries, had some niggles, like didn't really get to do it the way she wanted. And we might talk about that a little bit through the episode, but it's pretty much all resulted in her coming to me and going, like, I want to do it again, I want to do it well. She's probably heard everything I've said on the podcast about juggling things and lining things up and giving everything the appropriate time. And she's kind of learnt the hard way. Like I had this conversation with her the other day, and I just said, like, yeah, you have learned the hard way, and obviously you've been through some shitty things with injuries, niggles, events that didn't go to plan, events that you didn't even end up getting to do because things hadn't gone to plan. Like, obviously, all that sucks, but she's in a great mindset, she's in a great position right now. And I said to her, I just feel like you've taken all of that. You've chosen to see the positives in the sense that like you've learned the lessons, you know what you don't want to do this time, and you're so motivated by all those past experiences to have a way better experience this time. And like I said at the start of the episode, she is just nailing everything at the moment. So I can just see clear as day, like those experiences have been prominent enough or they've affected her enough to just be like, that ain't happening again. Like I'm ticking the boxes, I'm doing everything right this time because I'm not going through that shit again. So, as much as we can look at past experiences and think, oh, that's so shitty. I wish that hadn't happened. I wish I had known better. We've spoken about this on the pod before. Like, constantly people come to me and go, like, I wish I knew then what I knew now. And while that can be true, I think, first of all, nothing we can do about it. So, secondly, what we can do is just look and go, okay, well, what can I learn from that? What can I take from that to then navigate things differently moving forward with that real motivation of like, I don't want that shit to happen again. And we can see this with fat loss, maintenance, muscle gain, restrictive diets, like you name it, people go through things, come out the other side and go, what the hell was I thinking?

unknown 8:01

Right?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

And so this client's just a really cool example of having some shitty experiences in the past, but right now is, like I said, so positive in an awesome place and doing the work to make sure that doesn't happen again. So if we then fast forward to this client getting started in the middle of March, I actually did something with this client that I do not do with many people at all. I've actually said on the podcast before, I don't really like to do this if it can be avoided, but I just I feel like I've got a good sixth sense when I talk to someone. I've been doing this shit a long time. And I just feel like I've got a good sixth sense of being like, I know what's gonna be right for you. And so with this particular client, she started with me pretty much two weeks before Easter. And she laid all this out for me. I've got these goals, this is my history, this is where I'm at, this is where I want to go. I was like, yep, this is awesome. I love all of this. And when we were having this conversation in the middle of March, she had been attempting a deficit for a while. Like she'd been attempting the deficit throughout the start of the year. If we come back to what she said on the form here, I've attempted to implement the deficit while training for events, which was last year, and just kind of in this vicious cycle, for lack of a better term, of constantly in the deficit, constantly trying to pursue these events, constantly getting sick or injured, having to pull out and then going again. And I could just see, I could just see like you you're so motivated, you want to do this, you have a good work, I think. But I just feel like you're exhausted. And maybe you don't even know it, but I just feel like there's a big element of diet fatigue sitting here. And at that time, looking at the fact that we were two weeks out from Easter, and then everything just happened to align really well. I think it was just meant to be where this client initially started with nutrition only and then like nutrition only coaching. And then she said to me straight away, I'd actually love to add training just to get you to do a bit of strength training for me while I do my own half-fire man training, like my swims and bikes and everything. So then we worked out that she would start training pretty much the Monday after Easter. We're like, let's just rip straight into training after Easter. And then so sitting there, we're like, okay, we've got two weeks until Easter, then we've obviously got Easter weekend, then we're gonna start training. That training, like we always program in 10-week blocks in Eat Lack Ruby, and it was gonna literally be 10 weeks from the Monday we started training until the Monday of her official Half Iron Man prep starting. So she's starting an official Half Iron Man training program, 12-week program, on Monday, the 22nd of June. And when we were looking at all these dates, we were like, we're gonna fit in this perfect 10-week program. And then obviously, when the Iron Man training starts, we're gonna be coming into a new strength program and we can make sure that lines up with what your Iron Man training is gonna look like. So that's not super relevant, but pretty much the position it left us in was like we got two weeks till Easter, and then we've got 10 weeks before the official half Iron Man training block starts. So I said to her, sitting here right now, I actually feel like you should do two weeks at maintenance. And like I said before, I don't usually say this to people. If someone comes to me and is like, I want to work on fat loss, unless there's a big reason not to, I'm like, yep, let's F and go, let's get this done. With this client, I was just getting this vibe. I'm like, you've been in this deficit grind for ages. I would just love to give you two weeks of still monitoring food, still being on point with your habits and things like protein, fruit, veggies, like all of that stuff. It's not just two weeks of doing what you want, it's two weeks of good consistency, good quality food, flexible dieting, but just in that slightly higher amount, just to give you some relief from this constant deficit grind you've been on. And the fact that it was Easter as well. I mean, this is a mum, she's got three kids. I think two of them still live at home. She works as a PT during the week, so she's gonna have like Easter long weekend. There's just so many things where I was like, I would just love for you to have two weeks of just enjoying a bit more food, just for two weeks. And she did that so well. So at the time, that looked like about 2300 cal. And she nailed it and her weight maintained. Funny that. Funny when we ate at maintenance and things maintained. And even that right there was really cool for her to see because she hadn't spent much time doing that at all in the past. And I said to her, obviously, once we really get into the thick of that 70.3 prep, we're gonna want you on your maintenance intake, like we're gonna be wanting to fuel training, all of these things. It's cool for you to just get a little glimpse of what that looks like right now, and even cool for me to just see, hey, when we nail two weeks at 2300 cows, what happens? We maintain. Awesome. That's great little info for me to have of just getting an idea of where her maintenance is and stuff for when that shift comes in her nutrition and her training in a few weeks. So, long story short, actually, long story long, I've told the whole story. She nailed that, just had an enjoyable two weeks, bit more food, obviously got to have a really enjoyable Easter. And then straight away, as soon as we put that in place, I said, like, just no, come Easter Monday, we're on. Because if you're gonna start that official prep in the middle of June, we don't want to be in a deficit then. So we've got this 10-week window to really go for this fat loss goal. And just for a little bit of context, while we are in this deficit, so we're in the deficit right now. She started it on Easter Monday, she's going through to that weekend before the next training block starts, which is middle of June. So she's in that right now. And she's doing three strength sessions a week with me. And then she's just doing shorter sessions of running, swimming, riding. She's had a few niggles, a few injuries, so she's been navigating those with physio. That's been going really well. So she's slowly building running back up, slowly building volume back up. But everyone that's involved from me to her to the physio, everyone that's working with this client on this long-term goal is in the same mindset of understanding, like right now, we are on restricted energy. We're also rehabbing a lot, like she's doing a lot of rehab, and just like I said, slowly building training volume back up. So it made sense to find the sweet spot with her intake that was going to be a deficit, but it's not gonna be too low for the fact that she's trying to recover and slowly build training volume at the same time. So that is a real sweet spot. But then at the same time, with her training, she knows. So she writes her own training, but she gets a bit of help from her physio as well. So she is a PT. I can't remember if I mentioned that, but this client is a PT. So she writes her own training. She's obviously done a lot of these things in the past. She's looked at a lot of these programs, so she's kind of compiled her own program based on all of her history. And then physio is giving a little bit of guidance about what we should be doing in her strength sessions and what she should be doing with building up her running, et cetera. So, what I was saying there is everyone who is programming things for this client is all on the same page of realizing, like right now, the main goal is dropping weight because we know when she does the event, she wants to be lighter, and we know that we don't want to work on getting lighter when training volume really cranks up in the middle of June. So, reverse engineering that whole thing and just going, this is our window right now to prioritize that. And then having her, who's programming her own training and her physio who's helping with that programming, understanding that, okay, if weight loss is the main priority right now, that means we need to have a deficit in place. If we do have a deficit in place, we just want to be mindful of that with training volume. So, meaning we don't want to just start programming massive sessions out of nowhere for this client while we're literally intentionally giving her restricted energy. We've spoken about this in so many ways on the podcast before, but this is just a really cool example of going through that reverse engineering process that I always talk about, working out when certain things should be prioritized and if certain things are being prioritized, what does that mean for everything else? So, this perfect example right here of understanding that this is the time to prioritize weight loss and just knowing that, and then knowing that we need to just keep that in mind when we're looking at training and programming training. And then at the same time, like this is just such a cool example of everything we talk about. This client, come Easter Monday, we put her in the deficit, she has nailed it. I cannot applaud this client enough. Like she just nails it. And if you don't believe me, we can look at some of her stats. So when we look at her nutrition, it's just spot on. Every time I look at it, I'm like, quantity-wise, it's awesome, quality-wise, it's awesome. Like, literally keep doing what you're doing. And then if we come over to her stats, on the 3rd of April, which if I'm remembering correctly was Good Friday, she was 78.3 kilos. And then on the 23rd of May, which is Friday just gone, she's 73.5 kilos. So pretty much five kilos down in trying to do the mass, probably say six weeks, give or take. And then if we also have a look at her measurements from the same time, on the 25th of March, so just probably like the week before Easter, her, what are we looking at here? Waist measurement was 93 centimeters. And last week it was 86 centimeters. So middle of May, 86 centimeters. So we've dropped, what is that, seven centimeters there off the waist in that time, and then hips look really similar. We were 108 at the end of March, and we are now 100 on the dot towards the end of May. So that right there is awesome. Seven centimeters off the waist, eight centimeters off the hips, and five kilos overall at this time. And if we think about that client's goal of wanting to sit roughly around 70 kilos, give or take, we've got about a month left in the deficit. She's definitely gonna get close to that. And like we said, we don't have to weigh in at an exact number, but if she was to finish this deficit, let's say at 71 kilos, that's unreal, especially when we think about what it's for. The fact that she wanted to drop excess weight before she goes into a 70.3 training block and competing at the 70.3 in September, doing so with seven to eight less kilos on you is awesome. Especially obviously considering the fact that she didn't want or need those seven to eight kilos. Obviously, if someone's already at a low weight, they don't need to drop eight kilos before they go into an IMM prep. But this is just a really cool example of everything I've just spoken about and the fact that it's just coming together so nicely. And then one thing I wanted to come back to before is the fact that I was saying obviously right now, fat loss and weight loss of the priority, and we're keeping that in mind when we're programming all of her training and looking at her training volume and everything. But because she nailed the deficit so well in those first few weeks, just had such good consistency with it, we were able to see after four to five weeks, we could just be like, you are very clearly in a deficit. I've said on the podcast before, like, we need to nail an intake for a few weeks. We need to be really consistent with certain protocols for a few weeks before we can say how the body responds to them. She did exactly that. And we were able to get to that point around the middle of May, even a little bit earlier, probably the start of May, we could look and just go, you're so clearly in a deficit, right? And then obviously I'm working one-on-one with this client. So I'm asking things like, how is training performance? How is energy? How is hunger? Because, like always, we're trying to find that sweet spot where those things are going to be present a little bit, like we're gonna have a bit of hunger. Energy might have a few dips at times because we are literally in an energy deficit. But like I always say, we want to find that sweet spot where those things aren't taking too much of a hit and they're pretty manageable for the most part, but we're still chipping away nicely at the fat loss progress. That is the sweet spot of the deficit, especially when there are training and performance goals. So the fact that this client was just able to be so consistent, every time I talk to her, she's like, yep, feeling pretty good for the most part. And then we come over and we look at the stats. We could just say with very good certainty, you are absolutely hanging in that sweet spot, which is awesome. And then coming back to what I wanted to say, now that we've gathered that information, we know where the deficit is, we know what's up. I said to her the other day, obviously, you are coming up towards that official training block starting, but she is gradually building training volume at the moment because she has certain points that she wants to be at before that official training block starts. So, for example, she wants to be doing a consistent 14K run. Like she wants her long runs to be at 14Ks before that official half Iron Man prep starts. Because obviously, if people don't know, in the Half Iron Man, you're gonna run 21Ks. So she wants to be at 14, and then obviously she'll spend that prep building from 14 to 21. So coming back to what I was saying, I said to her the other day, obviously, right now we're hanging in this sweet spot, we can see that. And then your official prep is gonna start in four weeks. But if you're gonna keep building that training volume over the next few weeks, we just wanna keep watching closely where things like hunger, energy, et cetera, are sitting. Because if training volume is gonna gradually go up, your intake's probably gonna need to go up alongside that. And that's still gonna keep you in a deficit. If we're in a deficit right now with a certain nutrition intake in place and certain training in place, let's remember that the deficit is the gap between those two things. So if the training goes up, the training volume goes up, the nutrition intake can come up too and still keep the same gap in place and therefore still keep the same deficit in place. So that's just an important thing to understand. And that is just another example of why this client has navigated things so well because she's given so much time to all of this. We were able to just go like, okay, our number one thing at this start is just having a few really consistent weeks in the deficit, knowing that training volume isn't too high at all right now. So our big priority is just nailing a deficit, nailing a certain intake, really trying to find where your calorie deficit is. She did that. Now we're able to just keep that in place. But now we're also able to go, okay, cool, we know what to do with nutrition. Like that's just chilling quite nicely. Training is starting to become more and more of a focus to you because you're getting closer and closer to the official event and the prep for the event starting. So now that we've laid that foundation with nutrition, we can just keep all that information in mind and know that we can adjust at any time as training adjusts. And you've allowed enough time to do that. Again, come back to what I said before. If someone comes to me six weeks out from an event and they're like, I want to drop a few kilos, but I also want to perform well. Like, first of all, we just don't have enough time to do either of those. But then even if we had a bit more time, we still have to go through a process of like, we need to find your deficit. We need to start reaping the results of that deficit. We might need to adjust that deficit as training changes. We want to come out of that deficit and start fueling training. There's so many steps along the way. And this client is just such a perfect example of allowing a great amount of time. To navigate each one of those steps. And so sitting here right now with about four weeks to go until her official training block starts in June, this is what I've said to her is like, you just do your thing with training. If you're ready to crank those runs up a little bit, crank them up. If you're gonna crank the swims up, crank them up. Anything that you think you need to do with training and that you can do, obviously do it properly, but she knows what she's doing. So we're leaving that to her and the physio to navigate the bike and the swim and the run training. But I said to her, do whatever you need to do with those and we'll adjust nutrition to support that. Don't feel like, oh, I shouldn't crank up the runs because I've still got the deficit in place. So I shouldn't crank up the swims because my calories are too low. We'll just bring the calories up because we're now in a position to do that because you've done such a good job over the last few weeks of allowing us to prioritize the calories and the nutrition to get that set up to lay that really good foundation. Because we have that foundation now, we can play around with that, we can structure that, we can navigate that depending on what you need to do with training. That is an unreal position to be in. If you're training for an event, you don't want to feel like you have to scale your training back because your calories are so low, because you're trying to implement a deficit or something like that, and you're trying to find your feet and you're trying to find your groove and you're trying to juggle too many things. If you're working towards an event and you know that training volume needs to continue to increase, but then you're over here going, oh, but my calories are still really low because I'm still trying to pursue fat loss. So maybe I shouldn't increase my training because I don't want to increase my calories. That's a shit flat. That's a shit position to be in. And this is why I've said so many times, we want to allow enough time to focus on the calories, the deficit, the nutrition, whatever we need to do with that, and then allow enough time to prioritize the training and be able to adjust nutrition to fuel that training and support that training. So our plan for this client now is just that it is to have her just keep navigating training how she needs to over the next few weeks. And we're just gonna watch that closely, obviously, monitor performance, energy, hunger, and body composition progress and just see if there's any signs there that we need to adjust nutrition to keep the same deficit in place, but to still support her training. And then when she hits that official 12-week training block before the event, which, like I said, is middle of June, then we're just gonna move up to her maintenance cows. We already have a pretty good idea of what that looks like. Obviously, we'll structure it depending on what training looks like at that time as well. And then again, we're gonna be in a position to just keep doing that over those 12 weeks, adjusting nutrition to support training while she's at the body composition that she wants to be at, because she's just spent the last three months prioritizing that aspect of things. That is unreal. And then if we look at the actual 12-week prep into the event, this is where we're gonna want to start playing around with things like trial carbloads, trial supplements, race day sims, and things like that, which is awesome. And again, if we come back to someone who hasn't left enough time, if you're in a position where you've got two months to your event and you're trying to lose weight, but also fuel your training, and then we consider the fact that you want to trial things like carb loads, supplements, race day sims, etc., you literally cannot do it all. Like we cannot have a deficit in place while we're trialing carb loads. And we don't want to have a deficit in place while we're trying to fuel training. If you're in a position where you're trialing carb loads, that means you're obviously doing something pretty awesome. If you're doing something pretty awesome, you should have awesome training in place. If you have awesome training in place, you should not be restricting the amount of energy that comes into your body and not supporting that training. So we just want to look at all of this and go, wouldn't it make sense for a person to be doing all of those things while also doing a deficit? Which again just backs up the point that we should be lining this shit up with enough time to do so. I actually think that is all for me today. But I just, if this client is listening, just know I think you are doing an unreal job. I say it to you all the time, but I'm not just boiling smoke up your ass. I really think you're doing an unreal job. And it's just a really cool example. If you're someone who's considering these types of events, even half marathons, full marathons, I think those type of events have become so normal that people don't think they're that big of a deal. But if you're training for a full marathon to run 42Ks, you want to just think about all this same shit that we just spoke about here. So that is all. Big slay from this client. Big lessons to take away if you are prepping for events, or if you're just trying to make the most of your nutrition and training for the year. Use this as a really good example of someone who is just structuring things and navigating things really well. I could talk about it all day, but I'm gonna shut up now. That is all. I will be back very soon. Thank you so much.