How to have controlled flexibility when eating at maintenance

This is one of my favourite topics and things to work on with my clients! So today, we're breaking down how gals who are eating at maintenance can find the sweet spot of having enough consistency to achieve their goals, but enough flexibility to make things enjoyable and sustainable, especially when we're sitting in this position for the long run 🙌🏽

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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 0:00

Hello homies, welcome back to the pod. Such a chilled intro for such a chilled episode. Today I'm gonna talk about something that is pretty chilled, and part of me wants to say, I feel like it's gonna be a short episode. The other part of me wants to slap myself anytime I even think that's a possibility. So we'll see how she goes. But I'm gonna talk about something today that we've actually touched on a little bit in recent episodes, but we've just touched on it briefly as part of a bigger episode. And I just feel like it deserves its own little episode. Again, with a little comment. We'll see how long I'm here for. But this is a really cool topic. And what I'm gonna talk about today basically is like the flexibility that we can have at maintenance. So I'm gonna get into that in a second, but this is something that I I touched on it, I think about two weeks ago when I spoke about one of my clients. So we did a client deep dive episode, and I spoke about her just going through different phases of fat loss and muscle gain, et cetera, and then having a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge about nutrition, but also knowledge about what in particular works for her with her nutrition, and now being at a point that she can essentially like sit at maintenance, but have a bit of flexibility. And that is a conversation and just a thing that I feel like I talk about every day. So it's one of those things that I just assume everybody knows and is well across. And then when I did that episode, a lot of people were like, oh my God, like that was so cool to hear. And like I love the way you spoke about that, and I'd never thought about that, etc. And it was one of those things where I was like, I just thought like everyone knew this. And side note, I feel like that all the time with everything about nutrition, like anything I talk about with nutrition, I'm like, but everyone already knows this. And then I'm like, oh no, wait, hang on a minute. Like you talk about it 20 times a day, Rubs, but no one else does. So this was just one of those things. And what happened in particular was a lot of my clients literally said to me, for a minute, I thought that episode was about me. And then when they were saying that, I was like, oh, I could fully see why you thought that because you're in a really similar position. And it really dawned on me that that is something. I mean, obviously I've known this for years because I've been doing this for years, but that is something that so many of my clients go through. It's probably like one of the key things, especially for my gym gals, is just going through almost like the cycle of learning about nutrition and flexible dieting and getting a good understanding of that, and then dabbling in a few different phases of fat loss, muscle gain, performance, whatever it is, and kind of just gathering information and evidence and data throughout all of those phases and throughout that time. And then, like I said, just landing in a point where you're like, okay, cool, I can just chill at maintenance and I can have a fair bit of flexibility and wiggle room there, and I can just hang here for a while. And when I spoke to one of my clients not long after that episode coming out, she was someone who said to me, like, I swear that episode was about me. And she actually said the term controlled flexibility. And I was like, that is that is it. That is such good terminology for it because it is controlled flexibility. When we get to this point of maintenance, and I'm really going to break this down today because again, I just assume everybody knows this, but I think it's gonna be cool to just really break it down and see what this looks like. But getting to that point where we can just hang at our maintenance intake long term and have controlled flexibility. So to me, what that looks like, and again, I will break it down more, so short episode my ass, but really just having a flexible diet overall and having some day-to-day flexibility, but in a controlled way. So that's what I want to talk about today is just what exactly that looks like. And another thing I mentioned in that client deep dive episode is that when we get to this point, it is such a good position to be in, first of all. Like just thinking about all of the things that women can go through with dieting and everybody, but obviously we speak predominantly to women and I work predominantly with women. Thinking about all the things that women can go through with dieting to get to a point where you can literally just feel like I can hang here for a long time. I'm happy to hang here for a long time, and I have control, but I also have flexibility. It sounds so simple. And again, I think it's almost one of those things where I think, like, aren't we all there? But we're really not. Like, we're really not. So if you're hearing this thinking, oh my god, I'm nowhere near that, like that sounds like the dream, just know you are so not alone. On the flip side, if you're someone who's listened to a lot of these episodes lately and thought, like, yeah, I am in a good place with this, that is awesome. It's such a win. And again, I think even people who have gone through different phases with their nutrition and different ups and downs, and then they get to this point, once you've been there for a while, it just becomes your new normal and you forget how good of a position you're in. Because you are like, oh yeah, well, this is just normal. But think back to times in your life where you might have had a lot of restriction or a lot of ups and downs or just not had control and flexibility, and you forget, like, oh my god, yeah, dieting can actually be really shitty. I forgot how shitty it can be because it's been so good for me lately. So I think regardless of what position you're in, you might be in a good position and hear this and go, oh my god, hell yeah, that's me. I need to remind myself at times, or you might not be in such a good position right now, but you can use this as evidence of like this is where I could get to. And the cool thing that I mentioned in that deep dive episode, and I say this to so many of my clients when they get to this point, is this is almost like a home base that you can just hang out at anytime you want to, and then you can venture away from here anytime you want to, if you want to pursue different goals or work towards different things or have different phases, and then you can always come back here. So, what I mean by that is if you go through a few things with your nutrition and you get to this point where you're like, I know where my maintenance intake is, I know how to hit that in a way that really includes good quality foods that support my health, good quantity of foods that obviously work for me and my maintenance goal. I have enough flexibility to include things that I enjoy, and I really just settle into that sweet spot of supporting my health, supporting my goals, enjoying my diet, and just leaves me feeling good overall for the long run. That is why I say, like, first of all, that is such a sweet spot. But secondly, we can hang here, we can hang here for the rest of our lives, or we can hang here anytime we want to. And then if we have a phase where we go, you know what, I do want to be a bit more strict and pursue a fat loss goal, I can. You know what? I do want to train for a half marathon. I can. I do want to do a muscle gain phase. I can. I am gonna go off on a holiday and not think about my nutrition for three weeks. I can. And when I've finished with that thing, I can come back here. That is such a game changer because for so many people, anytime they quote, come back to nutrition, they think they have to come back to restriction or low calories or a particular diet or whatever. Think about a typical person, and I don't say that to be rude, but think about a typical person who is in that mentality of just thinking like this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. Anytime I'm quote on a diet or being good, I have to cut things out, say no to things, like only eat particular foods or whatever, usually they find themselves in a position where like if they go off on a holiday or they have anything that comes up in their life and that kind of like derails things or just sends them in a bit of a different direction, then they think like, okay, I'm gonna get back to my nutrition. Again, for so many people, just like getting back onto things or getting back on track, however people want to word it, but it for so many people, there's this association that anytime we do that, it has to be restrictive, low calorie, a certain diet, cut things out, whatever, you know, whatever rules people have put in place, but it can create this thing of just thinking, like, well, anytime I'm focusing on my nutrition or anytime I'm prioritizing nutrition, or just even as simple as like, anytime I'm quote, on a diet, it means low calorie, it means fat loss, it means weight loss, it means certain foods, etc. Come back to these people that have navigated different things with their diet and understand that we can work towards different things at different times. And if we don't particularly want to work towards something major, we can hang at maintenance instead of feeling like we have to hang in a deficit or hang in restriction. And that can sound really random and funny, but I think there's so much more truth to that than we remember or than I remember. Like I said, I just feel like everyone's hanging at maintenance, having a great time. And then you kind of think about the girls, or like I think about the girls that I've worked with that have gotten to this point, and I'm like, oh no, like they're hanging at maintenance, having a great time because they've worked very hard to get to this point. And then it's always when I'm like at the hairdresser or at some sort of place like that where I'm surrounded by a lot of women who aren't in this space, and I hear the conversations and I think, yeah, wow, most people aren't in this position. So that's what kind of brings me back to reality. And then I think, yeah, we've got to talk about this more. So that's the reason that I wanted to do this episode and just talk about this. I was gonna say one more time. I'm sure we'll talk about this again in the future, but just talk about it again is because I really love to see, like I would say, if I had to pick one thing I could help people with for the rest of their life, it would be this. It would be helping women understand that yes, there's an intake that can help you work towards fat loss, but then there's whole other intake or a whole other world that you can hang out in and you don't always have to pursue fat loss. So when women go through this and get to this point, this is where I think I've said it in some of those episodes recently. This is where people say to me, that is life-changing. And it is life-changing because we're gonna be eating for the rest of our lives. I haven't said that for a few weeks. So little reminder, we are going to be eating for the rest of our life. You are going to eat multiple times a day for the rest of your life. If you have these walls and these boundaries and things in place that are just like, well, anytime I'm feeling good about that is only when I'm being restrictive and working towards weight loss, et cetera. It's going to be a long, effing life. So again, you come back to these people that have done the work to find their maintenance and just settle into this sweet spot. This is why they say it's life-changing because they're like, I'm doing this every day. If I'm gonna do something every day, I want to enjoy it and I want to feel like I'm in control of it, but I want to have flexibility with it. Coming back to that term we said before, that controlled flexibility, that's exactly what it is. It's like, oh, I can settle here and have control of this, like have enough control of this that I can feel good, but have enough flexibility with this that it actually works for me and the rest of my lifestyle, and then therefore becomes enjoyable and is enjoyable and sustainable. So that is why I love it. That is why we find ourselves talking about it every few weeks. And what I really wanted to hone in on today is when we get to this point. So this episode is probably more so for a lot of my clients, whether you're a current client or previous client that's been through some of this stuff. I think it's really cool to then understand what this controlled flexibility can look like and what this wiggle room can look like. I always talk about it as wiggle room. When this client said to me controlled flexibility, I was like, yeah, wow, that probably sounds a bit better than wiggle room, but I'll probably refer to it as both. But what I'm really talking about here, and I've kind of said this in recent episodes, but again, I think it's cool to just hone in on it. A really common thing that I see with a lot of women that I work with, and obviously we want to point out we can always have outliers, but if we think about a woman who is between maybe 50 to 80 kilos, give or take, pretty standard high, pretty standard activity levels. I'm not talking about people here that have a big outlying factor, but so commonly I see people that fall within this range, and then therefore their maintenance intake is around those low to mid 2000s. So let's say like very common for women in this position to maintain on around 22, 2300 cals. Again, give or take, but the give or take is almost what I want to talk about. If you have gone through a phase of like finding your maintenance, and I've spoken about this a lot on the podcast before, but this is again commonly what I do with clients. And again, if I had to pick, this is probably my favorite thing to do with clients. If someone's done a successful fat loss phase on like 1,600 or 1700 calves, again, give or take. But if they've done that and then we think, yep, okay, maintenance is gonna be up over the 2000, let's get you up to 2000, let's hang there for a little bit, let's have some consistency with it, let's watch how the body responds. If we see things maintained, we'll bump it up to like 2100, 2200, we'll hang there for a bit. If we see things maintained, we'll go to 23, 24. And for every person, we're gonna go through this process until we find their particular maintenance. And this is where, you know, for some people we see it's 2100, for some people it's 25, a little bit different for everyone, but that's a process we go through. I absolutely think that process is worth every female going through. Because again, come back to what I said at the start of this episode. If you dedicate a bit of time and a bit of consistency to going through that process and you get to a point where you can pretty confidently say, like, my maintenance intake is roughly X, Y, Z. That is life-changing information because of what I said before. Anytime you just want to hang at a sweet spot with your nutrition, you can hang there instead of a deficit. Again, it's life-changing. So I think that process is absolutely worth going through. But then the next step, in my opinion, and really what I wanted to talk about today, is let's say you get to a point and you realize that your maintenance intake is 2300. And if you've gone through this process, just apply your own numbers to this and you can kind of work out what this is gonna look like for you. But let's say somebody works out that their maintenance intake is 2300 calories. Again, give or take, but the give or take is what I want to look at. If we know that you're gonna maintain on 2300 calors, you can then take that information and apply it in so many different ways or let yourself go in a few different directions from here. And what I mean by this is you might say, like, I like to really consistently track my food. I like to do the same thing most days, so I'm gonna hang around 2300. You might say, like, I'm gonna take that information and move away from tracking my food. I'm not gonna talk about that today. We've spoken about that before, and if I speak about that, we will be here all day. But I want to more so look at the numbers side of things today. So you might go in that direction. You might be someone who says, okay, cool, I'm gonna do 2200 calday to Friday, and then I'm gonna use those extra calves to have like 25 or 26 on the weekends. That's awesome. On a similar note, you might do the same kind of thing, but with your training days. So you might look and go, certain sessions in my week are really hard. I want to have extra calories on those days, so I'm gonna structure my nutrition to be like a little bit lower some days, a little bit higher on my higher training days. Or the main thing I wanted to talk about today is giving yourself essentially like a buffer on that intake. So again, let's use the example of 2300. If you knew that your maintenance was around there, you could essentially say to yourself, I'm gonna hang between 21 and 2500 caly. I think this is so underrated and such a good position to be in. Because let's say you have a couple of days that are like 2100 calves, then you have a day that's 24, you have a day that's in the 22s, you have one up at 25, another one down at 21, one at 23. When we step back, your average is gonna be around that 23, give or take. That is awesome. And that right there, in my opinion, is that controlled flexibility because you've got enough control in place. It's not like you're having days down on 1500 and others up on 4,000. You've just allowed yourself to fall into that range that is gonna keep you in the position that you want to be in. And this is exactly how I word it to my girls. That is the exact sentence I say to them. We know roughly where we want you to hang now. So we can look at what the range of that is and we can just make sure that overall what you're doing is leaving you in that range to leave you in the position that you want to be in or move you in the position that you want to go. But if we look at it from the maintenance point of view, maintenance is keep me where I'm at, right? I want to maintain this. So if we think about that, we want to find that range where we have enough consistency with an intake. Again, it's not like we're having super low days or super high days. We're falling into that range all the time. But from day to day, you can just say, like, I'm a little bit hungrier today, I'm gonna hit the high end. I'm not that hungry today, or I got really busy, I forgot my snack, I missed my snack, whatever it is. I'm coming a little bit lower today, had a rest day, so therefore, my pre-training meal, I didn't have that, or I had something a bit smaller, so I'm a bit lower today. I did a massive search, I was a bit hungry, or I had an extra snack. And it really is just allowing yourself to have a bit of wiggle room day to day. And I think I said in one of those previous episodes, I'm not a big fan of just that terminology of like just listen to your body. And I know for some people, like some people have been through certain journeys that that is the best approach for them. Nothing but respect. If you know that that is right for you, that is awesome. But I think, I think there can be a big disconnect with that messaging. You know, if people make content that's like, just listen to your body. And then you've got people going, well, I've listened to my body for years and I put on 20 kilos that I didn't want to put on, right? So I don't think advice can begin and end at listen to your body for a lot of people. But I think if we come back to everything I was just saying, this is where we can have certain guidelines and boundaries in place, but then we can have that element of just listening to my body and seeing what I feel like on this particular day. And side note, if we think about doing this when the goal is maintenance and we just want to hang at this like middle ground, home base, whatever we want to call it, whether we do 2100 calves or 2500 cal, or whatever those numbers look like for you, if you're just hanging in that sweet spot for yourself, it's pretty easy to hit things like protein, fruit, veggies, fiber, calcium, etc. So, regardless of whether we've fallen into the lower end of the range or the higher end or whatever, we're still thinking about those things, we're still doing those things. And usually, girls who get to this point of going through a few different phases, learning a lot, and landing here, usually you're just at the point where it's like second nature to do those things. You've found your foods, you've found your meals, you know how to tick all those boxes. So that doesn't really change day to day. Like you have such a good foundation with your day and your habits, but then it's just the little extras of like, am I gonna have a bit of a bigger portion? Am I gonna have an extra snack? Am I gonna have dessert? Am I not gonna have those things? Am I just a little bit less hungry today? Or am I a little bit more hungry today? Am I a little bit less hungry or more hungry this week? Because this is even something else we can look at is like people navigating this a little bit differently week to week, depending on your cycle. You might just have times in your cycle where you're like, I'm just gonna fall at that lower end of the cows because I just don't feel like I need the extra ones. And then come into that next week and it's like, yep, I definitely do need those extra ones now. And I feel like something just clocked in my brain there where some people might be like, yeah, but Ruben's like, you're such an advocate of energy availability and making sure we eat enough and all of that. Yes, I am. Like, yes, I absolutely am. And I love people to understand those things. I love people to make sure they are eating enough. But if we come back to this scenario, falling into that lower end, like if someone is maintaining on 2300 cows and they're letting them stuff come in around 2100 cows, first of all, we're not gonna be underfueling, right? Like that's not underfueling, we're not gonna starve to death. And if we're doing that to then allow some other days to be 2400 or 2500, again, we're stepping back and overall, we're falling into that nice range and we're hitting that nice average. And the other thing to think about here is there are times, there are people, there are places, there are goals where we would want to prioritize something like energy availability, and then there are times, places, people, goals that we would want to look at prioritizing flexibility. Neither is better, neither is right or wrong. We can't sit here and go, energy availability should always be prioritized over flexibility, or sit here and go, flexibility should always be prioritized. We want to be able to look at an individual and just see where they are at, what have they been through, what are their current goals, and what is going to be best for them at this time. And if we think about this scenario, like coming back to falling into this position, if we prioritize one of those things a little bit more, it's not like the other one goes to shit. Like if you prioritize flexibility and therefore have some days that are 2100 cal and some days that are 2600 cal, it's not like your energy availability is gonna go to shit. Because again, you've got that controlled flexibility in place. You're not letting yourself have 1400 calorie days. Your quote, low days aren't crazy low that they're gonna put you in bad health. And then on the flip side, if somebody says like, I want to prioritize energy availability, I'm gonna try and like hit that higher end of that intake as often as possible. Again, that doesn't mean your flexibility goes to shit. You can still have flexibility in place while you do that. So I think this really is the sweet spot of not feeling like we have to pick certain things, knowing that we can pick certain things at certain times and focus on that, but knowing that we don't have to and we can just settle here in this middle ground where everything is just falling in that sweet spot. And that almost comes back to what I said before, where if this is like the home base, you might then have a period where you go, okay, I'm gonna branch away from this home base and really prioritize my energy availability for a while. I'm gonna tighten up my tracking, I'm gonna increase my intake a bit, I'm gonna prioritize that. Equally, you then might have a time where you go, okay, I'm gonna branch away from this home base and be a little bit more flexible for a few weeks. Maybe you've got something happening in your life or you've just got different things going on where you're like, flexibility is the thing that's gonna work for me right now. I'm gonna loosen the reins a little bit, still gonna have some guidelines, I'm still gonna have some things in place, but I'm just gonna prioritize flexibility and let that be my main thing for now, because that suits me, my goals, where I'm at. And I know that anytime I'm done with that, I can come back to this home base of my maintenance. And then I can see, do I want to hang here for a while or do I want to branch out into something else? And there are a couple of little things I had in my notes that I just wanted to touch on before we wrap up, just to almost like reiterate this and confirm this with people. Because I think this is one of those things where sometimes we can see people go to maintenance and they still feel like they just have to be super strict. And again, you can, like that is an option. I'm not saying that's wrong, but also if you've done that for a while and you are in the position of being like, okay, cool, I know where my maintenance is and I've been hanging here for a bit. You do have this option of bringing in a bit more flexibility. And I think it's just cool to kind of explain that a bit more, to reiterate it a bit more, and have people just think, like, oh yeah, like that's not as scary. I think some people think it's scary to move away from the strictness, which makes sense if the strictness has served you. It's just cool to kind of look at where we could go from there. So two things they wanted to look at is if we think about maintenance, maintenance essentially means like we have the same amount of energy coming in as going out. So we're breaking even. We don't have an excess of energy coming in, but we also don't have insufficient energy coming in. We pretty much match what comes in with what goes out. What we want to look at here is when we look at energy going out or energy expenditure as we call it, there are a few things that make up our energy expenditure. The main things are our metabolic rate, so just our body doing its thing and being alive, then our exercise activity thermogenesis, so the calories we burn during training, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, so calories that we burn doing other movement that isn't training, and then our thermic effect of feeding, which is the calories or the energy that our body has to use to consume, digest, and absorb food. So we don't have to think about that too much. We've spoken about that a lot over the years. But the reason I want to bring this up is because if we think about all of those things, pretty much besides metabolism, but even metabolism a little bit, or metabolic rate, those things are gonna change from day to day. So the exact amount of calories we burn during training is gonna be different from day to day. It can be really different if you're someone who like plays a sport or does running or something like that. Can be drastically different. But even if you're someone who just does pretty routine training like gym sessions every day, the exact amount of calories we burn in that session is still gonna differ from one day to the next. If we think about our non-exercise activity thermogenesis, so this is the energy or the calories that our body uses when we're just like zipping around, cleaning the house, going to the shops, doing all these things. That's gonna differ from day to day. Again, sometimes hugely, sometimes even if we have a pretty consistent routine, still like the exact amount of energy. It's not gonna be like tit for tat, calorie for calorie, every single day, right? And then the thermic effect of feeding, so the calories or energy our body uses when we're eating, that's gonna differ depending on the actual foods we eat and how that all adds up. So what I'm getting at here is our maintenance intake is not going to be one exact number every day. It's always gonna be a little bit different. So we are looking at that as the average, we're looking at that overall, and we're trying to land in that sweet spot of matching that overall with the calories that come in. The reason this is so important, and I want to bring this up, is because I'll always say things like maintenance will be a bit of a range, because that's always gonna ebb and flow. Exactly how many calories our body uses every day and how that all adds up is gonna waver and differ a little bit from day to day. And I just think that's really cool to understand because if you are in that mentality of thinking, like, I have to be really strict at maintenance and hit a really particular intake, it's like, why? Because your body's not having a really particular output every day. Your body's gonna differ a little bit, so you can differ a little bit. And again, what we're trying to do is get an idea of what all of this looks like overall over time, be able to step back and say, as a whole, is everything adding up nicely to let me fall in the range that I need to fall in to hang in this position over time. So that is absolutely how I think about it for myself, how I think about it for my clients. I'm never thinking like this client burnt 2,320 calories today, so we need to eat 2,320 calories today. First of all, we're never going to know that. And we don't need to know it. We want to have an idea of what this looks like overall and make sure we fall into that range overall. And the way we do this usually is like I said, by going through these phases and gathering the data and the evidence of how your body responds to different things. And then when you start to gather all that, you can pretty clearly see when I do XYZ, I'm in a deficit. When I do XYZ, I maintain. Maybe you've done it for a surplus, but you have that information and then you can look at that information and go, okay, if I know like roughly where my maintenance is, I can then give myself a little bit of a buffer on that number and just aim to fall in that range consistently over time. And the next thing I wanted to say kind of just flows on from that. But I think I literally said this in the very last episode: a kilo of body fat is 7,700 calories, meaning we need to consume an excess 7,700 calories that our body does not need or use and it moves it into storage to put on one kilo of body fat. So the reason I wanted to bring this up today is because if you think about all those numbers I just dropped, let's say on a particular day, everything that your body does and the energy that it uses adds up to 2,100 calories. So your energy expenditure for the day is 2,100 calories. If you're someone who thinks your maintenance is 2,300, right? Because you've been through all of this and you've gathered that data and you're pretty confident that's where it is. Let's say that's actually true, but you just have an odd day that you're a little bit more sedentary, maybe you don't train or training's not that hard, and things just add up to be a little bit lower for you that day, right? Again, let's say that's 2,100 cal. If you consume 2,300 calves, there's a 200 calorie surplus here. Let's come back to the fact that to put on a kilo of body fat, we need a 7,700 calorie surplus. So if we have one day that we consume an extra 200 calories, I can't even be bothered doing the math on that. We don't need to. Some people might be doing it, that's awesome, go off. But that's really what we want to think about because people might be like, what if I overconsumed? What if you overconsumed? You do the maths if you care that much, right? But then if we also come back to having this buffer and having this wiggle room, you could just as easily find yourself in a position the next day where you do train a bit harder, you do a few more things, you zip around a bit more, and your energy expenditure is 2,400 cals and you eat 2,250 on that day. And pretty quickly it's just offset the day before and it's balanced out. I don't want people to take that information as like I have to monitor every single thing that comes in and out every day. I want people to take that information very differently and think I'm never gonna know the exact number. If I know where the range is and I'm consistently falling in that range, there might be days where I'm a bit higher, I'm a bit lower, but overall, it's gonna balance out nicely. And that is what I personally think is the ultimate position to get to is knowing roughly where your deficit is, knowing where your maintenance is, knowing how to have good flexibility to include things you like and just make it enjoyable, but then knowing how to manage your food quantity in a way that is consistent enough to keep you in the position that you want to be in, but has enough wiggle room and flexibility day to day that you can actually just let yourself have flexibility and wiggle room day to day and just have a little bit of an element of like, what do I feel like? What do I need? And it's not going so far in terms of, oh, what do I feel like? A whole pizza and a jar of Nutella, but just going like, oh, what do I feel like? My energy is a little bit low, I've had a really big day, I do want that extra snack. And just knowing that you can have that wiggle room in place and it's going to keep you where you want to be overall. I think that is all for me today, but I also feel like there might be just some questions that come up off this episode, or I just might listen to it back and think, oh my God, I have so much more to say on that one. So I don't feel like this is the last time we'll talk about this, but I just think it's cool to just understand that, especially if you're someone who has been through a lot of these phases and gathered a lot of this information about yourself, if you're at a point where you would consider yourself to be pretty experienced or advanced, whatever we want to call it, and you are just keen to settle into a place like this for a while. I just think it's really cool to consider everything we've spoken about here and just truly find that sweet spot that allows you to hang there and keep feeling good and working towards your goals. But you can also just look at it and go, yeah, this works for me. That is all for me today. I will be back next week. Plenty more to say. Thank you so much.