Juggling fat loss, maintenance & running goals... Client deep dive!

We're back today with another cient deep dive episode... Talking all about a client who came to wanting to achieve fat loss, have a successful transition from that into maintenance, and fuel some running events later in the year!

We're talking through all the plans we've put in place for this particular client to work through all of these phases and goals, and all the things to think about when doing so 

Join the Eat Like Ruby Podcast Community
🍏 https://www.facebook.com/groups/eatlikerubypodcast

Follow Eat Like Ruby
🍫 https://www.instagram.com/eat_like_ruby/

Work with Ruby;
🥙 https://eatlikeruby.com.au

If you loved this episode, please;
🍑 Share to your IG stories & tag eat_like_ruby
🍔 Subscribe, rate & review on Apple podcast or Spotify!

For advertising opportunities, please contact;
📧 management@eatlikeruby.com.au

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

Hello fam, welcome back to the pod. I am back today doing another client deep dive episode. What we're gonna look at today is a client who has a goal of pursuing a little bit of fat loss, is also a runner and has some running events, and then has never really successfully done maintenance and is very, very keen to transition out of fat loss into maintenance and actually have success with that phase. So the first thing I want to say is if you can't relate to that, if you think like, oh, I don't have running goals, I don't have fat loss goals, I would definitely stick around because this is one of those client deep dive episodes where I was talking to this client the other day and literally everything she said, I was like, so many people are gonna relate to this. Like I just felt like, wow, this has to be a podcast combo. So I just think there's gonna be so many little things in here that different people are gonna relate to. Maybe you can relate to a lot of it, but just a very common trajectory. If we think about somebody having performance goals and wanting to excel with their training, but then also having fat loss goals, and then also feeling like, yes, I can do fat loss, but anytime I've tried to do maintenance, it hasn't gone that well. All of that is so common. So we're gonna pull all of that apart today. This client is working with me right now, and it's one of those things where she's done a few different eat lacribes programs in the past, and she's been a long-term podcast listener, and then she's been working with me for about four to six weeks. And as soon as we had our first call in May, I was just like, this is perfect. This is so perfect that you are here. Like, this is you are the perfect person for eat lacribes. Every single thing that you want to work on, I want to work on with you. Let's actually go. So, like always, I'm gonna keep this anonymous, but I have a feeling this client probably already even knows this is about her, or as we go through the episode, I think she's gonna realize. But then as well, I think this is gonna be one of those episodes where a lot of people are like, I kind of thought you were talking about me because all of this is so common. So, with this particular client, she is naturally quite tiny. Like we're talking about a person in the 50 kilo range. And the first thing I want to say here, pretty irrelevant to the episode, but this is one of those things I've worked with a lot of people in that weight range, and it is so common for people who are not in that weight range to just think like, oh my god, this person must be so tiny. Why would they ever go on a diet? Oh my god, why would they ever pursue fat loss? Like, there can just be such a perception and a narrative around people who are down in that 50 kilo range, and they can actually cop a lot of negative shit anytime they want to work on their body composition. So if you're someone who might be a little bit guilty of doing that, like hearing someone who's in those 50 kilos and just goes, oh my god, why would she be doing fat loss? Just back off for a second and just remember that they're in their position, you're in yours, everyone can work on stuff, and especially somebody who is going about it the way this client is, we're not trying to lose 20 kilos, we're not trying to do anything crazy. We have a very structured plan, we have a very clear plan, and everything that we're doing, and you're gonna hear as we go through this episode, everything that we're doing, even in a deficit for this client, is already improving her health physically and mentally. So just keep that in mind. Anytime your mind kind of wants to judge people in this position quite quickly, like I said, just back off. But like I mentioned before, this client came to me in early May and she said, like, I want to do some running events later in the year. She pretty much said to me, she was like, I want to do some running events, I listen to the podcast, I want to pursue fat loss, I know you're going to tell me that I can't do it all. So I'm happy for your opinion and you can help me work out the plan and then I can work out what events I might do. Like she had a couple of events in mind, but she was like, I'm definitely open to negotiating those and setting the best plan. So that was awesome, first of all, because as soon as I read this client's form and I was like, okay, we have a tiny person here, does a bit of running, wants to do some fat loss, wants to spend time at maintenance, is eating pretty low-cal, which we're gonna talk about in a second. I was and then I knew that she was a big podcast fan because she'd been in and out of Eat Lack Ruby things in the past. And as soon as I was reading her form, I was like, this client knows what's coming. She knows what I'm gonna tell her. But it was really cool to just get on the call with her and start to hash all of this out. So the first thing I want to talk about with this client, and this is what I think is very common, we did an episode not long ago at all about how people who are doing a lot of running can sometimes find themselves in a position of gaining weight. And I said in that episode that's actually a lot more common than people would think, and it can be quite confusing for people when we think about it, when they're in that position of like, I'm running a lot, and if anything, I'm kind of getting into worse shape. What the hell is going on here? There can obviously be a few things at play, but the main thing we spoke about in that previous episode was the fact that people can really increase their training volume or they can just have a high training volume in place for a long time. And then they're trying to implement nutrition protocols and a nutrition strategy that just doesn't align with how much training they're doing. And I said in that episode, what we can typically see here is people that have a higher than average training volume, but then they're looking at really common average nutrition advice, like women should eat X amount of calories and not factoring in all of the training that they are personally doing. So if you can relate to that, definitely go back, I'd say about five or six episodes ago, we did gaining weight while doing more running or something like that was the name of the episode. But I think this client was in a really similar position. She wasn't like crazily gaining weight, but she definitely wasn't losing weight, and she just definitely wasn't feeling her most comfortable, lean self. And I guess that kind of segues back into what I said before. Obviously, when we're talking about someone at this weight, at this size, like I mentioned, we're not trying to drop 20 kilos. We're trying to drop just a couple of kilos and more so just trying to lean up and just have this client feel a little bit more comfortable for running, but also just feel comfortable in her body composition and in the way she looks. And I've said on the podcast before, that can really get demonized. Like people can get really passionate about that message of like, who cares about how we look? But it's also like, mm, it's 2026, mate. I'm not sure if you've realized, but we all care about how we look. So piss off. But if we come back to the point of the episode, I think when we are willing to actually invest time and energy into learning about nutrition, learning about all of this stuff and going about it the right way, that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be really demonized. Like I said online, people can just get really passionate with that message of like, don't worry about the way you look, just focus on performance. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think we can focus on both. I think it is totally fine for a woman to say, I have goals and things that I want to achieve with my health, my performance, my strength, my endurance, etc. But I also want to feel good at the same time. And this client was definitely in that position. So coming back to her, like I said, she wasn't crazily gaining weight, but she felt like she had just gained a little bit and was just sitting a couple of kilos, a little bit uncomfortable, just wanted to drop that, be a little bit leaner, and then like I said, really focused on going into maintenance well because she felt like she hadn't done that well in the past. And when I was reading this client's form, the very first thing that sprung out to me was just like, you are not eating enough for the training that you're doing. And she pretty much knew that as well. And then as soon as we started talking, she said to me, I'm basically that typical person that you speak about, Rubes, or I'm in that typical scenario that you speak about where I'm aiming for the deficit, I'm doing a lot of training, I'm getting very hungry, so I get snacky in the afternoons. I tend to snack on lollies most days, and it would just be enough that it's pulling me back up to maintenance. And that's one of those things that I was saying at the start of the episode. Even if you're not into running or you're not in this exact position, I think so many people can relate to aiming for the deficit, snacking, doing extra little things, whatever it is, and then finding them self-maintaining and then just getting stuck in that cycle of like, oh, but I want to do fat loss, so I'm gonna keep trying with this deficit. But the actual result that you're continuously getting is maintenance because you're not adhering to the deficit. If we look at this client specifically, it was because she was aiming for those low cals while doing a lot of training. And to put into context for people, this client was aiming for about 1300-ish cals and training every day, a combo of running, riding, and strength training. And quite a typical running program, if you don't know what I mean by that, most running programs will have kind of like 45 minute to an hour runs during the week and then like a longer run, possibly on the weekends. Obviously, depending on the distances people are doing and stuff, but that's really common for like a couple of moderate runs and then a long run. This client was doing that, she's doing a little bit of spin bike, like cycling stuff, and then she was doing a bit of strength training at home as well. She's also in her 40s. She's a mum, she's a worker, like just a very sort of typical lifestyle that we talk about in Eat Lack Ruby, and she's doing all that training, and she was aiming for those fairly low calz. So we can see why I was like, okay, we gotta adjust some things here. And she knew it as well. She was very open to it, which is awesome. And then another comment she made to me was obviously doing that long run. So all of her other training sessions were like a similar length and like taking a similar amount of time, and then the long run was obviously a bit longer, taking a bit more time, and then therefore just a bit more taxing, obviously a higher energy expenditure, etc. And then she was like, I'm pretty hungry after that, I'm pretty hungry the next day. I'm sore, my recovery's not too good. All of the things that we've all heard eat like rubies tell you probably won't feel too good if we're underfueling. But again, no judgment to this client. She was quite aware of it. We had a really good convo and we've already made wicked progress, as you're about to hear about. She then said to me, and this is so funny, like any time someone wants to tell me this, I can see them not wanting to tell me. They literally are like shying away. They're like, don't yell at me, roops. She told me that she trains in the morning, then she gets ready, she goes to work. She will have her first meal sometimes around 9, sometimes around 11, sometimes around 12. First meal after getting up at like five o'clock in the morning, training every single morning, getting ready, going to work, working for hours, sometimes first meal around midday. So any regular listener will know that I was basically just wagging my finger at her on the screen, like, no, no, no, we're gonna change that right away. And again, she knew that. Like, that's pretty much why she'd come in. She's like, Rubes, I need you to tell me all this stuff because I've heard it on the pod, I need you to tell me, and I need you to help me implement it. And I think that's even a really cool thing to look at. I think that is so common in Eat Like Ruby is people listen to the podcast, they hear all this stuff and they're like, yeah, it makes so much sense, but I actually just need you to tell me that it's going to be applicable to me, it's gonna work for me, and I also need to work with you while I implement it, just because I'm a little bit scared of changing my mind, having a bad day, having something like temporarily move or change or whatever, having a freak out and then wanting to change the whole plan. We've spoken about that so much on the podcast before, but this is a really common scenario where we see it where people are like, I get it, Rubes, but I just need you right there with me while I implement it. And side note, lucky that is what I love to do. And so then coming back to setting the plan for this client, I said to her straight away, like I've read your form, obviously. I know you want to work on multiple things. I've got a bit of an idea. Like, do you want me to tell you that idea? And then you can let me know your thoughts. Have you had any more thoughts? Do you have any plans? Like, we can just hash this out right now. That is literally what we are here for. So she mentioned either doing a run in July, and we were talking in May, doing a run in July or doing one later in the year, like in September. And I said to her, the way I see this is you have a small fat loss goal and you're also fairly conditioned to running and the run that you want to do. So she wants to do a half Mara in September. And at the moment she's running around 16Ks. So the reason I point all this out is because if somebody has a fat loss goal and a running goal and they're in a position of like, I want to lose 15 kilos and I want to do a half marrow, but right now I can only run two K's, obviously, you're looking at a lot bigger goals and therefore needing to spend a lot more time on each of those goals. So it's important to understand this with this particular client. This is what I said to her, you've got a small fat loss goal, and then you're gonna need a smaller window to build up that running capacity before the half marrow. So just important to customize that to the individual. And that's exactly what we did for her. So I said to her, my opinion, the way I look at this is that fat loss goal is gonna take you like six to eight-ish weeks, give or take. If we think about implementing that through, say like May, June, possibly into July, and then at some point in July we cap that and we move to maintenance, you're then gonna be in a position where you're let's say eight to ten weeks out from that half marrow. And again, I wouldn't tell everybody to do this. If somebody was prepping for a half marrow and they, like I said, were starting from one or two kilometers and building up to 21, you'd want to say to this person and communicate to this person, you are asking a lot of your body that it cannot currently do. For this client, she's not really in that position. Her body's been doing this for a long time. And so we can kind of look at it from the angle, and this is what I said to her. If we were to look at the first two months, being fat loss is the priority, and you're just gonna basically maintain your running. You're just gonna hold that steady, you're gonna keep chipping away at that, but we know that the deficit is the priority. So you're not gonna ask your body to run further, to run harder, to do anything crazy that it's not currently doing. You just want that to hold steady while we focus on the fat loss. Then when we come into the next two months, we can flip it and you're gonna be in a position where we can go, okay, cool, we're gonna move to maintenance. We're gonna give your body the energy that it needs to start pushing harder in those runs, which is perfect because you're gonna be two to three months out from your half marrow. So that was the loose plan that I had in place for her. But then any time that I'm thinking about a plan like that, I also then want to say to the client, but how does that sound to you? And truthfully, like we need to have a very honest conversation about how you're feeling about your dieting mindset. Do you feel like the diet fatigue has accumulated too much? Do you feel like you're over it? If we were to think about that plan of spending the next six to eight weeks in a deficit, do you genuinely feel like you can do that? Or do you feel like you've been trying to do that for too long and you're exhausted and it's not gonna go that well? And that is something that you really have to try and get out of a client because most people want to dig in their heels and just go, no, no, no, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, let's do fat loss. Because people want to get the fat loss as soon as they can, right? Which makes sense, that's fine. But it's a conversation that I really get into with people because we've spoken about this so much on the podcast before, and I remind people when I'm talking to them, the last thing we want to do is set that plan of the next two months, the priority will be fat loss. If beneath the surface you're sitting there going, the last effing thing I want to do is more fat loss, and then therefore we're prioritizing something that you don't really think you actually can prioritize because we're just gonna waste two months. So it's so important to look at that because then I said to her, the alternative is that we just piss off the fat loss for now. We focus on fueling, we focus on maintenance, you focus on running, performance, all those things. You work out what event you're gonna do, whenever that might be, and then we schedule fat loss for after it. And again, sometimes people don't want to do that because they've just got that default thing of like, no, fat loss first. But when I communicate this really well and I explain this with clients and we really pull it apart, it's more common than people might think. And it's awesome when someone says to me, like, yeah, you're actually right, Rubs. I don't think I can adhere to that fat loss plan right now. I don't want to adhere to that fat loss plan right now. I am over it, I want to break from it. We can revisit that later on. It's very cool when someone understands that and is willing to admit that. And I feel like I can tell. I've been doing this shit a long time. I feel like when I'm sitting there with someone, I can tell. Like, do you need the break? Are you gonna struggle with this? Are you not? Do we feel like you're you're keen to rip in? Like, there's honestly so many little factors that I would look at, just every individual factor and how it's all adding up to just be like, what do we think is best for you? And with this particular client, there is another factor to look at, and it's something I wanted to talk about today. What she thought was her deficit and what I thought were her deficit were two different numbers. And that's an important thing to talk about here because with her and the position she was in, when we're looking at that convo of do you actually want to stick to a deficit for the next two months and do you think you can? I said to her, When we're making that decision, it's important for you to realize that your quote deficit is gonna be more than what you've currently been trying to stick to. So, like I said, she'd been trying to stick to that 1300. That's hard for anyone, let alone someone who's doing a fair bit of training. So it's just important to point that out to her and just be like, even though we are going to still be aiming for a deficit, you're probably gonna find it easier than you've been finding the last few months, which is just a cool factor to think about. And so I felt like we had a good convo about that. She had really good understanding, we had really good dates, timelines, numbers to work with. Again, just looking at the fact that the fat loss goal was small, the running goal was quite small for her, I said to her, you're in a unique position where this can all fit into this window. Whereas for a lot of people, they wouldn't be able to fit all this into a window this small. So again, just an individual thing to look at, but we decided that fat loss was going to be the way to go, like I said, for the initial six-ish weeks, give or take. And then we decided for this client, I'm hesitant to say this because I do not want people to take this and run with it. This is quite unique to this client, but we decided that there'd be a combo of some 1500 calorie days and some 1800 calorie days, depending on training volume and a few different things. The reason I don't want to really give the specifics of that, and I'm hesitant to even say those numbers in the first place, is because not many people who are doing training like that would be on an intake like this. But like I said, we are looking at a tiny client here. And if we think about what we look at and what we factor into calculate someone's nutrition requirements, obviously weight and height are a big factor in that. And like I said, we're working with a tiny client here. And then even though she is training really consistently, she's not crazily active in the rest of her life. She's definitely not lazy. If she's listening to this, I don't want to think she's lazy. But she doesn't have like a bullshit high step count. You know, sometimes we're looking at people with 14,000, 16,000 steps or whatever. Hers are not up around those numbers. Again, I don't want to give specifics because I feel like when you give too many specifics, people start to add it all up and go, well, she's doing this, she's doing this, she's doing that. So maybe I should do this, this, this. No, you shouldn't. You should get this shit personalized to you. So coming back to this client, we put that combo in place of some 1500s, 1800s. And when I made her startup videos, so usually when I start someone up with coaching, we'll do a video call, they'll fill in the form, I'll read the form and go, what are we dealing with here? Then we'll do a video call and talk through that form, hash out plans like this, then I'll go away, hash out the plan. And then usually I make a video like a screen recording and just talk them through the plan and all of the initial stuff we're gonna put in place. And in her video, and I feel like a lot of clients can probably relate to this, I said to her, I don't know if you're gonna be excited about those higher numbers. I don't know if you're gonna be apprehensive. And it's just so funny to think about somebody thinking of 1500 calories as quote, too high. But that's just such an interesting thing, again, for people to open their minds to a little bit. Like most of us would think that's really low. This client was sitting there thinking, oh my god, is that gonna be too high for me? Like it's all relative to what we've done in the past and what we're exposed to and everything. So again, just cool to open our minds a little bit to different numbers and different things. But I said in this video, I don't know if you're gonna love this or you're gonna be apprehensive, or probably a bit of both. I think it's common for people to be like, I'm really excited by that intake, but also like, are you sure, Ruby? And I always say to people, I always say to every client, pretty much, I would not tell you to do something if I did not think it was right for you. And literally the whole point of us working together is we are going to watch how your body responds to this and we're gonna adjust it if we need to. So the best thing you can do is just implement this plan for a few weeks and we can start to see how your body responds. Again, I wouldn't tell you to do it if I didn't think we're gonna get the response that we want, but we can never know that for sure. We're not psychic, we can't know every single factor that's gonna come into play. So the best thing we can do is just stick to the plan, watch how things trend, and adjust if we need to. And so my theory behind this intake is like obviously we run all the numbers, we calculate all this stuff for this client, and then I just said to her, really, what we are trying to do here is something that we've spoken about so much on the podcast. We are trying to find that sweet spot where it's like, yes, we're falling into the range that you need to fall into for the goal that you have, but it's sustainable and it's achievable for the most part. If we come back to what you've been trying to do, this is that perfect example of somebody aiming for a lower intake. So then when we suggest a higher intake, they can be like, wait, what? Are you sure? Then we have to really look and go, yeah, but you're aiming for that low one and you can't stick to it. And you're genuinely telling me, like, I'm so hungry, I'm snacking every afternoon, my recovery is really bad from that long round, etc. No shit. With all due respect, like this is not the first person that I've had this conversation with, but no shit. Of course you're starving, of course your recovery's poor because it is just that bit too low. And then again, even ignoring, not that we should or we ever would, but ignoring those factors for a second, simply just looking at the fact that you cannot stick to this. So that comes back to that line that I always say of the best diet in the world means nothing if we can't stick to it. If even if we thought 1300 calories was the best thing for you, which side note we don't, but even if we did, if you can't stick to it, then it's not the best thing for you. So we're trying to find that sweet spot of like, yes, this intake is going to move me in the direction that I want to go, but it's also sustainable enough that I can actually adhere to it for long enough to move me in the direction that I want to go. And just as a little bit of a spoiler alert for this client, I mean, this client has done her initial call, did a couple of weeks of adhering to everything. She's done a follow up call with me. And so it's only we're probably in like the fourth week now, or by the time this episode comes out, maybe the fifth week. Um, but even in those initial weeks, we saw a little bit of a drop in scale weight. And remember, this is a small person, so we're not looking for big drops in scale weight, but we saw a Bit of a drop, and we saw a big shift in photos. This is a lean person, but when we look at the initial photos versus the second photo she took, I think a lot of people who are at like a healthy weight and you're more so looking at body composition and photos and things like that, you can just see that initial drop in like fluid, puffiness, fluffiness, whatever the hell we want to call it. This was clear as day with this client. Like as soon as we looked at her photos, I said to her, um, you're giving six-pack vibes, and I personally don't even think we need to deficit for much longer. But it was just cool to see that initial shift and just cool to piece all this together and go, you were aiming for really low cals. We weren't able to stick to them and they were leaving you feeling pretty shitty. We've brought that up slightly to an intake that you were a little bit apprehensive about, but is still a fairly low intake. But you've been able to hit that now for consistent weeks, and that's led to seeing those changes in body composition that you've been wanting to see for ages. That's awesome, and that's just so cool. Like I love this. When I spoke to this client the other day, I was like, I could not love this anymore. Like, like I said, I was so stoked when she came in and I was like, yes, you're in the right place. And then just seeing her nail those initial weeks on that higher intake, and then just being like, you've nailed it. We can now look at how your body's responding, and your body's responding exactly how we want. That is awesome. And literally, all I said to her was, we're gonna do another two weeks exactly the same. We'll continue to monitor how are you feeling, how are you looking, how are things trending. If we think that maybe we need to increase it, we can, maybe we need to decrease it, we can look at that. We never know for sure. All we know is let's implement a plan, let's watch how things respond, let's adjust that plan if we need to, or let's stick to it if we don't. And I'm gonna skip ahead in my notes for a second here. There is one thing way back at the start of the notes that I haven't mentioned. I definitely want to come back to, but I had a note here that just lines up with what we just said. Literally, I wrote in my notes, nailed first two weeks, such a good start. Continuing on this trajectory is gonna set us up for great success with the long-term plan. So let's remember our long-term plan is to get that little bit of fat loss, just get her back to feeling good, feeling comfortable, transition her to maintenance, actually have a successful maintenance, but also line that up with the fact that when we go to that maintenance, she's gonna be ramping up that training volume a bit to prep for the half marrow. And again, that is such a great timeline for a person in this position. And I said this to her on the first call. I said, like, just so you know, my mind, like this plan is clear as day in my mind, and this is an awesome plan if we stick to it. If you come in, we nail that deficit for a few weeks, we get that little bit of fat loss that you want, we're gonna transition out of that to maintenance, you're gonna crank up your running, we're gonna watch how that intake works with that running volume, we're gonna see how you're feeling, we're gonna find where your maintenance window is. We're also gonna look at fueling the running event, the cardload, the race day, all of those things. It's all just going to line up so well if we stick to the plan. And I always just want to point that out to people. As soon as I can see someone's plan in my mind, and I think it's a good plan, I'm like, I just want you to know how good this could be because I want that to motivate you to stick to it. In my mind, we could just absolutely kill it with everything that you want to kill it with, but that starts and ends with you just following the plan, sticking to the plan as the weeks go by. So coming back to the note that I had here, um, nailed first two weeks, such a good start. Continuing on this trajectory is gonna set us up for great success with the long-term plan. Has never done maintenance well. So this is so motivating. Use that motivation to adhere to the deficit, knowing there's a plan and an end date. And in a few months' time, you can be in the best position ever. That is literally how I feel when I'm sitting there with someone who's saying things like this. She's like, you know, I'm underfueling running, I'm trying to do fat loss, can't stick to it, I've never done maintenance well. My wheels are just turning my brains like, oh my god, we could get you into the best position ever. Let's go. Like, I get so amped for it. And so coming back to those notes, this is something that I said to this client when I spoke to her in that follow-up call the other day. I just said, like, first of all, you've nailed the first few weeks. Like when I look at this, you have nailed this, and this is awesome because it's just allowing us to really start to see how is your body responding to what we've put in place. So far, so good. You could not have had a better start. This is awesome. And then I said, use that as your motivation. Like, you want to do that half marrow, you want to get to maintenance, you want to learn maintenance, like you want to do so many things, but you also want to achieve this little bit of fat loss before you get there. So use all of this as your motivation to know that Ruby thinks you've literally got the best plan in place. Ruby thinks that you have nailed that plan for the last two weeks. Ruby thinks that we can go to maintenance, we can fuel all those runs, we can do so many things. And the best thing we can do really with the next four-ish weeks, give or take, is continue to just stick to what we're doing and keep chipping away at that fat loss. And I said to her, like, just know we have an end date, we have a plan. So I think that's so beneficial and so cool for people to remember, especially when you've had a history or you feel like you've been stuck in that loop of like trying to do the deficit, can't really stick to it, might go back to it next week, diet starts on Monday, like any or all of those things. That can take such a toll on people's mindset and their mentality, like it's so mentally draining. So then anytime we look at going back into a deficit, it's like, oh my god, this thing again. And this is what I wanted to remind her like, we're not in a never-ending deficit right now. We have an end date on this, and then we have a really cool plan after it as well. So I think that can be so helpful to stop having those thoughts of just like, oh my god, I'm in a deficit. It's such a drag. Like, just that never-ending dieting life. If you're more so looking at it from the angle of like, no, this is just what I'm doing for now, for the goal that I have right now, and this is part of a bigger plan. And that bigger plan is going to get me to such a good position in the long run. And even when we look at quote long run, we're talking about like three months. Like, not to scare everybody, but it's literally three months till September. So looking at something like this is like that time's gonna go so fast, and it's like if we can just tick the boxes each day and each week and just keep moving in that direction and following along with that bigger plan, that's a very different mentality compared to someone who's just, like I said, in that never-ending dieting cycle. And then there's two more things I wanted to point out with this client before we wrap up. Obviously, we got to address what I said earlier in the episode. This client was sometimes not eating her first meal until the middle of the day, which I was like, well, that's gonna change right away. So all I said to this client, like, we've got to look at two things here. You are not currently eating pre-training or post-training, so we don't want to go from zero to a hundred and just give you like the biggest pre-training meal ever. We could potentially have like GI upset, we could have so many things go on there. So we wanna like gradually look at that. We also want to look at the fact that some days we're on 1500 cals, so we just don't have infinite cals to work with, right? Anyone who's been on calories around that will know. Like you're budgeting and you're trying to work out how best to use these. So I said to this client, we are not gonna go from zero to a hundred. All we want to do is just bring in some very small pre-training carbs. We're literally talking about like a banana or an LCM bar, some dried fruit, like a few strips of dried mango, a couple of dates, like literally a hundred cals, 20 something grams of carbs, just that little bit of pre-training carbs. And then this client was using things like protein water or protein shakes sometimes at different times throughout her day, just sometimes including them. And I said to her, we are just gonna bring in that really small, simple pre-training carb, and then we're just gonna bring in some post-training protein. So have the protein shake or the water, whatever you've got, just after that sesh as you're getting ready for work. And then we want to work on just bringing that first main meal that you've been having, just bringing that forward a little bit. And it's funny because I think some people are gonna be able to relate to this. This client was saying to me, like, I push those meals back because I'm trying to, you know, restrict my cows and make it all work and whatever. But she was like, then I just find myself in this position where I'm having like multiple meals in a really small window. It doesn't really work that well. Like, it's one of those things where we're hesitant to change it, but the way we're doing it's not really working anyway. So it's just funny and absolutely no shame to this client because so many people can relate to that. I have that conversation with people all the time where I'm like, you're so adamant on like budgeting and planning your day this particular way. You're really apprehensive to change it, but the way you're doing it's not really working for you either. It's just important to catch that. So I said to her, small pre-training carbs, just have that simple post-training protein as you're getting ready to work or you're on your way to work or whatever. And then we just want to look at bringing that first meal forward a little bit and then just spacing the meals. Instead of doing the meals at like 12 o'clock and then two o'clock and then snacking all afternoon. Let's kind of spread them a bit more throughout the day. Like bring one forward a bit, have one early Avo, bring in a little afternoon snack, and then we can go into dinner. It's just about like mapping out the day a little bit better. And really, we're in a position where this client was aiming for like those 1300s, and then I've said, okay, we're gonna go up into the 1500s. And the way we're gonna do that is just by like adding a hundred calories to pre-training, structuring that afternoon a little bit better. We can give you a little bit of a snack there, and then just kind of pivot those meal timings that you're currently doing a little bit around this new day, and that can all piece together really nicely. And then obviously, like I said, we're doing some of those higher calorie days for the long run and stuff, so that just gives you more to play with for fueling that big run. But it's just cool to kind of look at how we start to fix these things or change these things. And literally the note that I wrote for this is introduce small pre-training carbs and post-training protein, dot, dot, dot, doesn't have to be huge, just has to start filling the gaps, is on locals, so there's not heaps to play with here. But even those small changes compound to help performance, recovery, and therefore performance again. So even if we think about that, if she's in this position where she's really hungry and sore all the time, if we can give those pre-training carbs to help perform a little bit better in the session, then we can have that post-training protein to help recover a little bit from that session. Then when we go into the session the next day, we've got kind of like two things working for us now. We've got the pre-training carbs again to give us a little bit of energy. Also, ideally, we've recovered a little bit better because we've started having that post-training protein. We've spread the rest of our protein a little bit more evenly throughout the day. So you're kind of getting like that double whammy or that combo there of like, I'm fueling my sessions better and I'm recovering from my sessions better. So then when I get to the next session, I'm fueling it better and I'm feeling more recovered from the last one. And then piecing all of this together, the last note that I had here says, currently creating better habits and therefore feeling better, even though we're in the deficit. And this is the quote worst of it. So again, use that as motivation. And I literally said this to this client the other day. I said, notice how you're feeling better than you were a month ago. And right now we are pretty much in the quote worst of it. Like we know maintenance is coming, we know fueling is coming, we know all of these awesome things are coming. The deficit is the hardest thing in terms of like hunger, energy, performance, etc. But right now, your hunger, energy, and performance are feeling better than they were a month ago. So if we can make those things feel better when you're in a deficit, imagine how freaking good we can make them when you go to maintenance. And again, use that as your motivation. Look at this and go, wow, I'm feeling better over those last couple of weeks. And right now, this is the worst of it. So if I can stay here for this next month and keep chipping away, I can tick off my fat loss goals so I can feel that little bit more comfortable, that little bit more lean. I can then go into maintenance. I can feel even better in terms of performance, hunger, energy, recovery, etc. And I can just move on from there and live my best life. And again, come back to what I said before. Somewhere I said here, you're gonna be in the best position ever. That is why my brain went to that place. I was like, you are gonna be in the best position ever because you're gonna be able to take the body composition that you want and then transition into a phase of fueling that, maintaining the body composition that you want, but fueling all of the things that you want to do and just fueling your day-to-day life and your training. If that ain't the best position ever, I don't know what is. That is all from me today, but massive shout out to this client. Like I said, I I love working with people like this. So I just feel like as soon as I read these things, I'm like, yeah, girl, I got you. Let's go. So that is awesome. She is killing it. She's had such a good start to this. I have full faith in her continuing to chip away and follow through on this plan. And it just makes me so keen to see where she will be in a few months' time. So if you can relate to anything in that episode, I hope you got something out of it. If you did, like always, chuck us on your Instagram story, tag eat like Ruby. I appreciate the shares and the love a lot. And apart from that, I will be back very soon.