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The Last Diet Podcast 🎙️
The Last Diet Podcast is for people who want to rebuild a strong, athletic body that supports their life — not consumes it.
We talk training, nutrition, structure, and identity for people in their 30s–50s who’ve been fit before and want a clear, sustainable way to perform well again in work, family, and life.
No extremes. No gimmicks. Just standards, structure, and long-term performance.
Welcome to The Last Dight Podcast. The last podcast you'll ever need to create the last diet you ever need. I'm your host, Mike Finnegan. Let's dive in. Yes, team.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to another episode of The Last Dight Podcast. Hope you're all well, hope you're all enjoying the fine weather. Lots of good weather going on around nearly every one of my clients at the moment is enjoying a spell of weather, weather there in Ireland, Australia, Canada So, yeah, we're all getting we're all getting some of it at the moment, which is good. Long may it last. I'm actually home in two and a half weeks to Ireland for good, which is going to be a massive, massive transition.
Speaker 1:So I have to find whether it definitely will make it that little bit easier if if it could last a little bit longer, but that chance of that happening, I guess. Okay, guys. So let's get stuck into today's episode. Right? So I sat down this morning and I thought about what I wanted to talk about today.
Speaker 1:And I always like to keep things relevant to know. I've had a good few people reach out to me over the last couple of weeks and bring it back to the whole weather topic, right? A lot of people have been very, very unhappy over the summer, not with the weather, but the way they've been feeling in the weather. Some people have gone on holidays just not liking the clothes they're wearing, not liking what they saw in the mirror, not feeling confident enough to take off their top. Some people actually felt really uncomfortable because I know you've got a lot of like really high temperatures in Ireland recently.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are struggling with the actual heat because they're carrying a little bit of extra weight and how uncomfortable that made them feel. And they reached out to me and they're in a tough place, a lot of them, right? Because they're in a position where they really want to change and they know they have to change and they can't go through another summer like that. But they also feel like it's very busy. Like summer is very busy, it's very social.
Speaker 1:They have this belief in their head that if they start they're not gonna follow through and it's gonna become too busy, they become overwhelmed, it'll be just another failure. So they're thinking, oh, should I just wait until like September to start? But what I wanted to do in this episode, right, is I'm gonna break down why I feel like people think that way and the approach they use that actually heals them when it comes to changing their lifestyle, changing their body and their overall happiness, right? Because a big, big thing people fall down in is like the approach they use drains energy. Energy is the currency of long term results.
Speaker 1:So what I mean with that is like if you're burnt out and you're low in energy, especially when you're trying to do a fitness journey, you're going to fail after a few weeks if you get there even. So what we always want to look at here is how we can actually make energy work for us when it comes to a fitness journey. And I always say this to my clients, I'm like, you should be feeling better after a couple of weeks of doing this, not terrible. You shouldn't be feeling flatter on the floor or lacking motivation. You should be feeling good.
Speaker 1:You should be bouncing a little bit. Because when people come to me, their energy levels are on the floor. So doing anything should be raising their levels. If the energy gets worse, then you're doing something very, very, very wrong. But a lot of people's biggest issue is they go through extremes and they always think that the approach they use needs to be perfect and it needs to be hired almost.
Speaker 1:And I know I've mentioned this a good few times, guys, and it's not your fault because you've been conditioned to think this way. I had a check-in trying to a bit a tangent, but I had check-in from a client today. And I love what she said. She said, This was an imperfect week, but it was a really good week. And I was like, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's what we want. We're looking for that. Because there's no such thing as a perfect week. Life is always going to be there.
Speaker 1:And if you try to create perfection within your life, you're going to fail every single week and you're going to feel like you've failed every single week. And you're going to give up because you felt like you failed every single week. But a good week is a week where you accept that life is going to happen a little bit, but you're taking control of the controllables. You don't spoil because something didn't go the way you thought it was going to go. You had a night out that you'd expect came up or a dinner out that you didn't expect or you missed a session because something happened to someone in the family or something.
Speaker 1:Like these things are always going to happen every single week. It doesn't matter if it's summertime, September, Christmas time, it's going to happen all year round. So that's why we need to look at this journey as doing what you can do within your life, but doing it in a manageable way so you don't feel burnt out every day. Okay? So what I'm gonna do, guys, I'm gonna, again, try to keep this as simple as I can.
Speaker 1:And at the end, I'll bring it all together in terms of what you should do. I'm going to break down the five biggest energy mistakes people make on a weight loss journey. So if you're someone at the moment like the people that reached out to me recently, that you're not happy with where you are, over the summer it's really highlighted how far away from where you want to be you are, but you're also in a place where you feel like there's too much overwhelm at the moment or you feel like you can't find the right time to actually start, you don't know where to start and you know that if you do the same thing you've done before, you're just going to end up failing again. Okay, this is what I would say to you, right? Listen to these five mistakes, see which ones of these you're actually doing, and do the opposite, right?
Speaker 1:At the end, I'll break down what you should do, but these are the main ones that I feel like kill people, okay? So the first one, right, is you're frying an already stressed nervous system. So what I mean by that is a lot of people will start a fitness journey and they'll go straight into high intensity exercise classes, extreme dieting, like things that are really hard doing, like 15,000, 16,000 steps, just basically going all in because you think that's gonna be the quickest way. Now, keep in mind, most people listen to this podcast, I will assume you're the same, are already stressed. Your nervous system is already under pressure.
Speaker 1:So you're stressed from work, you're stressed from maybe kids, you're stressed from your social life, you're stressed from life in general. There's probably stress from all angles. Okay, so your nervous system is already under pressure. So if you're on top of that, you're putting a load of high intensity exercise, which there's nothing wrong with high intensity exercise, by the way. But for the majority of people, that's not where you should be starting.
Speaker 1:And definitely you should be doing a lot of it because our body doesn't know, like it doesn't differentiate from stresses. A stress is a stress. But if we are if we're chronically stressed from everything in our life, then adding extra stress would like lots of not to fight against exercise is just going to make us actually more burnt out. Now you might say, yeah, but I do I do a hard session and I feel great after it. That's fine.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're doing, let's say, like 75 harder one, the things where you have to do, like exercise every day and it's hard exercise and you do that three times a week, four times a week and you've just started back like you're going to eventually just burn out, especially if you're coupling that with extreme nutrition, trying to lose weight very quickly. So that's, to me, is a big no no. Okay? And I'll explain the opposite, what I think you should be doing after, right?
Speaker 1:Second thing, too little food. So you go into this whole thing and it's like, oh god, I'm so sick of overeating. I'm so sick of feeling like crap. I just need to cut down my food. And then you end up eating very little food.
Speaker 1:This is something that is going to zap your energy. You might be okay with day one, day two maybe, even maybe day three, but eventually you're going to be starving. Not only are gonna be starving, you're going to be irritated, you're going to have no energy and everything else becomes harder. All the decisions in your life become harder because again, you've added an extra stress on top of an already stressed life. So too little food is a killer.
Speaker 1:Mentally, it just makes everything so much harder and out of mind physically. So if you eat too little, you're going to end up giving up and probably overeating. I've often talked to people about this, people think, I don't think I'm eating enough, that's why I'm not losing weight. It's like, well, technically that could be true, but nobody ever actually doesn't lose weight from not eating enough. You're eating too much because you're probably under eating and over eating, but you're probably over eating because you're basically burning yourself out because you're under eating.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we wanna find the right amounts. Number three, you're in too large of a deficit. So this is kind of, this mixes the first two together. So as I've always talked about guys, right? In order to lose body fat and lose weight, you need to get into a calorie deficit, meaning you need to be burning more calories on a given day or a given week or a given month than you are consuming, okay?
Speaker 1:So what's coming in needs to be less than what's going out, right? So with that being said, when people start a journey like this, again, a big thing they'll do is the quicker the better. So it's like, if I eat less, it's gonna be quicker. And if I exercise more, that'll even make it quicker. So we can make a deficit larger by doing two things.
Speaker 1:We can either eat less or we can burn more, so we can do more exercise or more walking. But what a lot of people do is they'll do both. It's like, I'm gonna cut out loads of food and I'm also going to do loads of exercise. So I get people to track in the first week, and sometimes they'll be like hitting 1,100 calories, and then they'll be trying to do like 15,000 steps in a couple of exercise sessions. And I'm like, you've just gone from overeating to creating this really large deficit.
Speaker 1:And eventually, again, after a few days, weeks, maybe you're going to just crash. Your energy is going to be on the floor. And as I said, energy is the currency of success when it comes to weight loss. We should be feeling energized. We shouldn't be feeling on the floor every single day.
Speaker 1:It's fine to have a low energy day, but if you're feeling like that all the time, it's a big no no. Okay, so creating too large a deficit is not a good approach. Number four, cutting out all carbs. Carbs are the devil. I am being sarcastic.
Speaker 1:Carbs are so demonized, it's crazy. And I do understand why they're demonized, right? Because carbohydrates tend to be the foods that we over consume. So cutting back on carbs is probably a good shout because it just means it's easier to control our overall calorie intake because we're not as inclined to overeat on protein dense foods, for example, Okay, so it's an indirect effect. Carbohydrates also come with water.
Speaker 1:So when you eat one gram of carbs, you also hold on to four grams of water. Okay, so that's why you'll see a big weight hike or a big weight drop if you cut out carbs or re include carbs. Okay. But you have to remember, weight on the scales and water is not the same as body fat. We only care about body fat.
Speaker 1:So cutting out carbs, especially if you cut them way out, I don't mind cutting down, cutting out carbs, what that tends to mean is you will be really low in energy. Why? Because our body uses carbohydrates as its predominant energy source. So if you're exercising, especially like moderate to higher intensity exercise, your body craves carbs because carbs break down fast and they're the number one source we use for exercise. So if you cut out all your carbs, your gym sessions are gonna be terrible, your exercise sessions are gonna be terrible, your energy in general is just gonna be lower.
Speaker 1:And again, it just comes back to this whole thing of like, if your energy is really low, then you're going to find this journey really, really hard. So if you're doing lots of exercise, but you have no carbohydrates, it's gonna be a really difficult slog for you. If And it's a slog, chances are you're not gonna stick to it. So cutting out carbs is a no go for me. I don't mind cutting down, but cutting out is definitely a no go.
Speaker 1:Last but not least, number five, over caffeinating and lacking sleep. So we have this culture sometimes that working hard and drinking coffee to get boys, it's almost like a badge of honor. But for the majority of people that come to me, they're they're killing their results, their chances of the results, because they're neglecting the simple things, the low hanging fruit, if wanna call that. So instead of thinking about getting good sleep and not drinking as much coffee, getting good recovery, they're thinking about what supplements should I take? What food should I cut out?
Speaker 1:It's like, you're looking at this wrong because if you're not sleeping well, if you're getting by on coffee all the time, you're not looking after energy levels, again, you're going to find this journey very hard. You're going to have no drive to do anything, you're going to have no motivation to do anything, you're gonna have no energy to do anything, and you're going to be craving high sugar, low quality foods all the time. So even that alone can make such a big difference. If you start sleeping better and you cut down your caffeine, your energy levels are going to eventually, it'll take maybe a week or two, but they will eventually start to improve and it will be a natural energy. And when that happens, good things will start to happen.
Speaker 1:Because you're going to have more drive, you're going to be more productive, you're going to be more organized in yourself, but you're also going to have more energy to actually do things with a clear mind as well. If you're tired all the time and you're sleep deprived, your decision making is going to be terrible. Your willpower is going to be terrible. So the chance of you succeeding at this weight loss journey becomes, again, hugely, hugely reduced. Okay, so I'm going first through quickly.
Speaker 1:First one, frying an already stressed nervous system by doing too much high intensity exercise, especially as you start your journey. Number two, too little food when you start your journey. Number three, too large a deficit. Number four, cutting out all carbohydrates. Number five, over caffeinating and not getting enough sleep.
Speaker 1:So to me, guys, they're the five things. If you could look at them and ask yourself, okay, which ones of these do I do when I start my weight loss journey? Which am I currently do now even if you haven't started your weight loss journey? They're gonna be the things that are actually holding you back and not the things that are gonna help you. Okay?
Speaker 1:So I would actually go the opposite way with these things. So if someone comes to me, right, and I'm gonna break this down, this is how I work with clients. I've had a couple of signups in the last couple of weeks, and literally, because I just had one client check-in, this is how we started last week, right? So the first thing I get him to do was I got him to increase his movement for the first week. I didn't even ask him to go do exercises.
Speaker 1:And if he wanted to do a smaller exercise, no problem, but I basically got him to just increase his step count. So we basically tracked his steps and we're seeing where that is. So it doesn't kill our energy because it's just steps. It's a massive thing. It actually improves energy because it'll help mentally just getting out and actually getting some movement done.
Speaker 1:Okay? And it's very, very low hanging fruit to do it. Okay? Next thing I did for him is basically we got him to track food. So when we track food, we basically made sure that he is eating enough.
Speaker 1:So I've given him a calorie target. His calorie target is 21 to 2,200. Some people will look that and say, that's that's an awful lot. Jesus, would would he lose anyway on that? So yes, he will.
Speaker 1:And it's actually sustainable. So he's def he's probably burning anywhere between 28 to 3,000 calories a day just maintaining. So anything below that is gonna be a deficit. But if we go too far below that, so if I put him on 1,500 calories, again, can see huge weight loss, our weight drop over the first week because of carbs and just food volume and everything, but he'll be burnt out within a week or two. And he won't actually get a consistent run of weeks where he's losing weight.
Speaker 1:So he might actually look like it's faster at the start, but if we look back over the course of a month or two, he won't have progressed more because he won't have stick stuck to it long enough to actually see the results. Okay. So we're tracking the food. I haven't told him to cut out any carbohydrates. All I've asked him to do in the week one is to track.
Speaker 1:This week, I'm going to be getting him to send me food pictures, and I'm gonna be going through his MyFitnessPal. So I'm gonna see the food quality. I will not be telling him to cut out carbohydrates. I'm not gonna be telling him to drastically change anything he's eating. What I'm gonna be telling him to do is I'm gonna be suggesting some areas he can maybe improve on in order to hit his calorie target easier.
Speaker 1:So for example, and I don't know yet because I'm seeing food, but if he's lacking fruit and veg, that's the first thing I generally start with. If protein intake is low, that's another thing I'd go with. If he's maybe overconsuming on high calorie foods that aren't actually serving him that maybe he doesn't even know or care about too much, I might get him to portion control them a little bit better. But I will not say cut out all your carbohydrates or cut out anything. He went to a match weekend and he had food out and he had drinks.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm not asking him to cut all of them things because that's going to be part of the journey as well, but it's just understanding how to control them things and how to improve the overall food quality in general, And then it just makes it easier. And then the last thing is the sleep. I get him to track his sleep, and I'm going to be getting him to give me feedback on how he's sleeping. So I'll be looking at his sleep in terms of his quality and time, and that's the thing we're going to be really focusing in on. So if he's really poor asleep, then that's gonna be one of our main priorities.
Speaker 1:So you can see you guys, right? That's literally all I'll do with him for the next few weeks because it's the thing that's gonna make the biggest difference to his overall progress. Now we will be adding an exercise. So in the next couple of weeks, we're gonna get into the gym. That's one of these tasks actually for this week is to get signed up to a gym.
Speaker 1:But within the gym, we're gonna be doing just a bit of weights, nothing crazy, and we're gonna be building it up to two to three sessions. So it'll be probably thirty to forty five minute sessions max, nothing too crazy on the body, and we're gonna be building that up. So big thing for us is his step count, he's gonna be doing some weights, we're controlling the food, not eating too little, we're eating the right amounts, and then eventually we're gonna be improving the quality of that food as well as time goes on. That's it. Nothing extreme, nothing crazy, and I guarantee you, you've seen my post before, guys.
Speaker 1:I guarantee you he's going to be progressing week on week on week on week on week. He'd have ups and downs like anyone, but for the majority of the time, he's actually going to be progressing. And that's what you need to focus on as well. The simplest of things, they might seem boring, they might seem, oh gosh, there has to more to it than this, but there isn't. And the beauty of this, guys, you can start that now.
Speaker 1:You do not need to wait until the end of summer if you're not feeling good. You don't have to wait for this perfect moment. You have to wait for this this like time that you have, you know, zero stress or everything's going to be in order because it's not coming. You need to start these things now and just as I said at the start, aim for good, not perfect. And I'll say this to my clients, I'm like, we just need to do good enough.
Speaker 1:Good enough to keep progressing. Good enough, good enough. Some weeks it might be a shit show, but even in them weeks, can we just do good enough, even if it's just to maintain? Because if we do good enough enough times, we're going to keep moving forward and we're going to get to where we want to get to. Right, that is me.
Speaker 1:That was a bit of a rant and a bit of of a ramble. Hopefully you've got something from us. But yeah, just remember, it's the only thing you get in this podcast. Energy is the currency of success when it comes to weight loss. If your energy is on the floor when you start a weight loss journey or when you're doing a weight loss journey, you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1:Your energy should be proving you should be feeling better, especially if you're coming from ground zero. If you're on the floor when you start, your energy should be only going up. You shouldn't be feeling burned out. So, guys, that's me. As always, have a great week.
Speaker 1:We'll chat to you all soon. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of The Last Diet podcast. If you want to inquire about how you can join The Last Diet lifestyle and find out more about our coaching, then the show notes below has a link to coaching inquiries. Just fill that out, and we'll be in contact as soon as possible. See you in the next one.