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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 Diet 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, guys. Hope you are all good, and welcome back to the Last Diet Podcast.
Speaker 1:So, guys, hope you enjoyed the podcast with Jim last Friday. I do know a lot of the struggles he was having that a lot of people that are, following myself are probably having as well. And off the back of the podcast, I actually wanted to do a little bit of a more practical podcast. Right? Because at the moment, guys, there there's a lot of people that I'm talking to in the background that are struggling a bit, struggling a bit with consistency.
Speaker 1:Right? Most importantly, struggling with identity. I've talked a lot about this in the past where I lost myself for different reasons. When I was traveling Asia, I remember when I got injured and just losing that kind of identity that always overlooked, who I felt like I was when I was younger. And I do know as we get older, it's harder and harder and harder to keep up the standards that we once had when it comes to our health and fitness.
Speaker 1:When we were younger, it's one of the things that we didn't really have to think about as much. We felt like we could get away with self harms. You might have been naturally just more active or you might have been playing a sport or maybe you just had different coping mechanisms when it came to stress or maybe you didn't have as much stress. But a big issue I'm big issue I'm seeing, guys, and and even listening to gymnast podcast, you you would have got this, is a lot of people are struggling to manage the priorities they have right now with sustaining a healthy and balanced fitness lifestyle. And a huge, huge issue that follows most people is that the plans out there are not made for people who have real life.
Speaker 1:The fitness plans most people go for are made for people who have no life. They're made for the old version of you that wasn't even struggling anyway. So the way you're training now, if you're in your 30s or 40s, 50s even, you can't do the same things as you were doing when you were in your 20s because you don't have the time mostly. I won't even say it's your age. Most of time it's not even your age.
Speaker 1:It's that you don't have the time or the mental bandwidth to be as consistent as you were back then. And you may not have the outlet as well because you might not have the same exercise activity, sport, and everything that you had back then as well. But like I said, the big issue is when you go looking for a plan or you get coaching, a lot of coaches will, they'll give you what I would call a bodybuilding style plan. It's not made for people that have a real life. It's made for people that can afford to be almost given all their attention and energy to this one thing, which to be honest with you, unless it's like COVID times and you have no kids, no family, no other priorities, no one can do that unless you're a bodybuilder.
Speaker 1:And even bodybuilders struggle to do that for a long period of time. So you're not the issue with this, right? If you find yourself constantly resetting, restarting every Monday, you're not the problem. It's the process that you're using that is the problem. It's the advice you're getting that is the problem.
Speaker 1:You cannot fit that into your lifestyle. It's it's just not gonna work. And if there's only one thing you get in this podcast, because what I'm gonna go through is, spider earth, I'm I'm gonna go through the five rules that I help my clients with, right, when they are very, very busy, when they're trying to stay on top of their nutrition, especially when they're traveling, when they're working long hours. Lots of my clients do shift work. The five rules that we would abide by and that I would definitely encourage you to do as well, if you haven't had time to be overthinking things, you wanna keep it simple, but you still wanna get results.
Speaker 1:Okay? So I'm go through them very, very shortly. Now just before I get into that, right, want to bring this back to identity guys because a lot of people think that weight is their biggest issue. It's like, oh, I have a bit of a belly or I have a bit of extra weight I never had before. Right?
Speaker 1:It's never the weight that's the actual underlying issue. It's the identity shift that you are feeling within yourself. And as I said at the start, I've gone through that myself a lot, where I lost the way I looked when it came to nutrition when I was traveling. I lost my routine. I lost my structure.
Speaker 1:Most importantly, I lost my standards. And when you don't have good standards, you don't have a good routine going, it's very, very easy to slip into poor habits, not feel great. And before you know it, you're in a place that you don't even recognize yourself. You don't feel good physically. Your energy isn't there.
Speaker 1:Your habits aren't there. And you just, you feel very blah about things. You lose your drive in general to go do things. You lose your confidence to go achieve things. You lose your purpose, that get out of bed in the morning kind of like attitude to get up and go, you lose that.
Speaker 1:And it's just not a nice place to be because it can just make you feel like you're floating a little bit. You're coasting through life, never actually actually achieve what you want to achieve or even worse, never feeling like you're reaching a potential that you know deep down you can reach. And there's like there's something inside you that feels like disconnected, just not aligned to what you actually could do. And you know deep down that there's like this feeling inside you that you would love that feeling if you actually find it, but you just don't know how to find it. And this is what happens to people.
Speaker 1:They want that feeling, they don't have feelings there, and they want to get all the pain they're in. So it's so easy to jump into things that in the moment when you're motivated seem feasible, but deep down, you know that they're not actually going to stick. I always bring it back to things like 75 hard. It's like we love the idea of something like that. And I understand it's like a 75 hard.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. I have all these tasks I need to tick off every day. It's I'm going to feel incredible. And again, on paper, for a short period of time, it does help you and it does feel good. But I bring it back to like during COVID, if you've got nothing else to do, that would be fantastic because you literally got nothing else to put your energy into.
Speaker 1:But when you are working long hours, when you travel a lot, when you have kids that you have to carry to sports all the time, when you have social life that you need to upkeep as well, when you have other stresses going on, when you have sicknesses, when you have just so many different things life throws at you. Dim plans, that mindset around all or nothing, it never, ever surged you. It never, ever surged you. And just final thing before I get into the five rules. This journey is so much more about your mindset than it is about tactics.
Speaker 1:And I will share the tactics as well, but it's so much more about mindset. The mindset of like, are you going to start this journey and just try to be perfect? And then when it doesn't go perfect, you're just going to stop doing everything. Or are you actually going to try to just change how you're looking at this thing? You're not on plan or off plan.
Speaker 1:There is no plan, right? There's no track, right? This is a lifestyle change that you want to try and make. I had a client last week and I wanted to wait for it that were on stags, and they had just started recently. And I absolutely loved the mindset they took into it because they had asked me about calories before going.
Speaker 1:And I said to them, I was like, Look, forget about calories. This is not about calories. You cannot track calories. You cannot know what's in the food you're eating. You cannot know what's in the drink.
Speaker 1:And the environment is not going to be conducive to you tracking calories. A lot of lads have cut or beyond half cut. And you hear Trent track calories, like imagine the slagging. Imagine the slagging you get for doing that. So this wasn't it wasn't about the calories.
Speaker 1:It was about the mindset. And I said that to him. And one of my clients, Nayli, he was like, do you know what? I didn't obviously track or anything like that, but I was very conscious. Like he said, he didn't have drinks when they were having food because he was like, I didn't want it.
Speaker 1:And I actually just wanted to enjoy my food. And he said he was able to stop, like, eating at certain times. He actually had a breakfast in the morning when everyone else was just having liquid drinks because he knew if he didn't, he'd be just picking a food for the day. And he just made the decisions. Now, like, was it ideal the weekend in terms of fat loss?
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't. But it wasn't about the fat loss. It was about the sense of control he had in the mind that he took into it that this is not an all or nothing journey. I can do the best I can do in this weekend, and I can just fall back into my normal routine, and we have created a structure for him the week after. And there was another client as well that did the exact same, and I have another two clients with stacks coming up this week and next week.
Speaker 1:And it's the exact same advice I give them. This is so much more about your mindset and actually shifting away from the, I'm plan now, so I can't do this. I'm on track, so I can't do this, or else it's off track. Because what happens with people when they do that is they put so much pressure on themselves to be perfect that when it slips, it's like, well, what's the point now? And it spirals into it spirals into just sabotage and then feelings of guilt, shame, and then starting again on on Monday.
Speaker 1:There's no starting again on Monday. All you're doing is picking things back up and just continuing on with your lifestyle. It's part of your overall lifestyle. So if that's all you get from this podcast, guys, that's the only you take from it, it'll be enough for you to actually start to look at this journey a little bit differently and realize that with your current lifestyle and with everything you've got going on, you can't do plans. You can't do plans.
Speaker 1:You need to find a lifestyle that fits your life and you need to create an identity shift around that, where this is more about long term change and actually enjoying your fitness and therefore getting the results as opposed to I need to lose the weight to make me happy because it never ever works out that way. Okay. So guys, I'm gonna get into the five rules here, right? And just with these, again, these aren't and fast rules, but they will give you something to go off of if you're at the moment let's just say you travel off of work. Like, I have a lot of clients at the moment that do, like, shift.
Speaker 1:So they'll be working, like, evenings one week. They could be working nights another another week, and then they could be working days. So that's that's a lot of, like, change with their, like even their just their sleep, the craving, the routine, everything. So we want we always want to keep it really, really simple. I have another couple of clients that are working in Australia doing FIFO.
Speaker 1:So fly in, fly out basically where they'll work like really, really long hour days for like two or three weeks of go, and then they'll get a whole week off. So again, routine is totally totally different. So within this, we always have to create simple rules that they can actually use because they don't have this normal nine to five routine that they can fall into. But whether you do that or you're just busy with other things, you could be busy running a business, you could be busy with work, you could be busy with kids, you could be busy with a social life. There could be so many different things.
Speaker 1:And it all this is all the same thing. It all fits into these rules, right? So rule number one, guys, is just when it comes to food and if you're on the go a lot and you can't have exact meals at home, tracked and everything, just prioritise protein at every meal. It's a very, very simple, but a brilliant, brilliant tip for anyone. So for every meal that you have and you carry with you, or even if you're eating it out or getting it in a deli or something, always prioritise protein.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it could be simple things of just making sure you have like eggs, you have your chicken, your steak, you've things like Greek yogurt, like tuna, there's protein bars, protein shakes, there's protein yogurts. There's so many different things now that you can get that are very protein dense. And if you prioritize them as one of the main sources that you have at most of your meals, it's not that it has to be everything, but for the majority of your meals and snacks, if they're high protein foods, it'll stand you in really good stead. Reason being right, it helps your hunger. Don't, no one overeats some chicken or eggs like nobody does, right?
Speaker 1:You're not going to overeat them things. So it helps your hunger. It controls hunger. Protein is very it's very satiating, meaning that it fills you more than carbs and fats, right? Second thing, really good for recovery.
Speaker 1:So if you're doing a lot of exercise or any exercise, it's going to be good for your recovery. Gonna be good for your muscle retention, which is huge as well if you're someone who's trying to stay healthy long term and look your best, perform at your best, muscle retention is really important. And it's good for just stable energy. It's just no huge blood or sugar crashes. So it's just good for that.
Speaker 1:And it just helps you to make better decisions throughout the day. If you're eating high protein foods at most meals, chances are you're gonna make better decisions just when it comes to your your food. So, yeah, have protein and try to have it as like, especially with your first meal, try to have it in your first meal because that'll just set you up nicely for the day. So you can do that on the go, guys. You can there's loads of different things you can carry, just even the things I just mentioned there.
Speaker 1:Okay. Rule number two, create default meals for your busy days. I see this. This works so brilliantly with clients that have I can have a dad, for example, that is working all day, and then he comes home, and he basically has to go straight to training with the kids. So basically what I'd say to him is like, have some default meals just for your busy days.
Speaker 1:So you don't have to come home and think, oh, god, what are we going for dinner now? And then you're trying to basically come up with something healthy and you're trying to track and then you're just trying to do everything. Just if you have two or three go to meals that you can repeat on a busy day, busy weeks, you're laughing. Because even if you get overwhelmed at work or travel or whatever, if the meals are just easy on the go meals for you there, then happy days. When I say go to meals, right, you do this in a few ways, right?
Speaker 1:So you could you could buy meals in Aldi, for example, like Fit Food meals, and you could have them in the freezer and say, do know what? I'll have these now as an emergency stock if I need them because they're easy to track. They're they have all the the calories and stuff on them. They're high protein, and they'll just keep me going on the go. Okay.
Speaker 1:So you could do that. Or you could you could bulk cook a meal yourself for the freezer. And again, it's like your emergency stash. Or you could have a couple of meals that you say, you know what? I can make this in five minutes.
Speaker 1:And I know it feels to it's pretty healthy, happy days. One of my clients had a call with him there a few days ago, and he said to me, he goes, it was actually one client that I was on stag. And he said, you know what, I came home after stag, Mike, and I said, I'm going to keep it very simple now because obviously after drinking stuff, I wasn't feeling great and I was tired. He said, I'm to come home and I'm to make myself an omelet. I'm going to have some potatoes with it and it's going to be like it's going to fill me and I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1:And I said, brilliant. Like, because it's so easy making on it. And it's even just doing that for him, like signified, right, I'm locking back in now. I've stags over, and I'm ready to reset. If he had tried to kind of think about a big elaborate meal plan for that day, it may not have gone as well.
Speaker 1:So having these go to meals is brilliant. I have I've often I'd often just go to have porridge in the evenings. People might laugh at me. This isn't about having porridge, right? This is about I like porridge.
Speaker 1:I put protein powder into it. I put fruit into it. I really enjoyed the taste of it, and it's very filling. And it's very, like, energy dense in a good way. So it's like it gives me good, like, sustainable energy.
Speaker 1:Right? So I could literally have that for dinner some days if, for example, I had training early and I had time to be cooking dinner later. Is it perfect? No. Will I have it every day?
Speaker 1:No. Will it do if I'm busy and I need to do it for a given week? Yes. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Okay, so that's rule number two.
Speaker 1:Create default meals that you can have on busy weeks and busy days, okay? Just a couple of examples there quickly before I move through three, right? Things such as eggs on toast and a side of fruit, so easy. You could literally cook that up in a couple of minutes. Chicken wrap and a protein yogurt, again, so, so easy.
Speaker 1:Steak, rice, and vegetables, literally, you could cook it up in fifteen minutes. Protein smoothie notes. Like, these are just things I wrote down here, guys, because it's just so simple. They're so fast and repeatable and literally just stops all the kind of overthinking and the chaos that comes with it. Okay?
Speaker 1:So that's rule number two. Rule number three, stop using one bad meal as an excuse to spiral. This comes back to what I talked about there with the stag. It would be so easy for these clients to go on the SAG, have a few points, have a bad meal, think, gosh, it's all ruined now. I've blown it.
Speaker 1:I may as well just worry about it next week. But this is the mindset shift that I so often talk about. If you have a rule where you are learning how to just recover really quickly whenever you slip, or even if you have an intentional day where you're just out and about and you're doing things and you're deciding, do you know what, I'm going this time and I'm going to enjoy it. If you reset quickly and stop using that bad news and excuses for it, you're going to see the results you want and you're going to get you're going to enjoy your life as well. See, this is thing that 75 hard doesn't allow for.
Speaker 1:It's 75 hard. And if you're like me, you hate missing it, like ticking a box. It's like there's like this OCD of like, I need to tick every box. Well, with the approach I use, you don't have to tick every box. We go for like 70% consistency.
Speaker 1:If you hit 70% consistency, you're going get the best results of your life. But you're also going to get to enjoy your life. You're going to get the body. You're going to get the performance, energy and all that. But you're also going to allow for human living.
Speaker 1:You're going to allow for hangover days. You're going to allow for sicknesses. You're going to allow for just feeling low mood. And you're still going to get good results. So reset quickly, guys.
Speaker 1:One bad meal doesn't turn into a spiraling excuse. And if it does, then you're just letting yourself off the hook. You're using it as an excuse just to eat whatever you want and be a child, basically. And that's just me being very honest. Right?
Speaker 1:So sometimes you need hard love to actually pull yourself out of that mindset. Okay, rule number four, use damage control during travel or busy weeks. So this brings me back to the point I was talking about there with Nile on the stag. Okay, he was never going to be in a calorie deficit over the weekend on a stay, and I would never even ask him to try to do that. But what he did do was he did certain things that helped him to damage control.
Speaker 1:Being able to You're not always going to be able to track other calories. You're not always going to be able to have the best choices. You're not always going to be able to, you know, be in control of everything that's put in front of you, but you do have control over some things. So again, a great example is like you might be eating out and you might, you know, might have to might be an event or during your your partner might want to date night or whatever. But like things you can do when you're eating out, you could prioritize protein when you're out.
Speaker 1:So instead of going for like a big pasta dish with creamy sauce, you could say, you know, I'll have the I'll have the chicken with a side of fresh veg and, you know, a side of potato or whatever. So like it's very, very easy just to make better choices. Is it perfect? Can you track it all? No.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be controlled to some extent. You could do like if you're away traveling, you can literally you might have access to a gym, but what's stopping you from walking? What's stopping you from going for a run? There's always something you can do.
Speaker 1:And even just doing that one thing, it signifies in your head that you're you're showing up, you're showing up, you're not just turning off. I always I always use analogy, guys, of this is a dimmer switch, it's not a it's not an on off switch when it comes to your health and fitness. So sometimes we have to turn down the dimmer switch, but we never turn it off. Sometimes if we turn right upwards, we don't often go to the very end either. So it's just finding a happy medium.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we want to be averaging in around 70%. So sometimes we're up in eight or 19, we're locked in. Other times we're down to fifteen, sixteen, that's okay as well. But there's always something you can do. So if you can't go to the gym, get to go for a walk.
Speaker 1:If you can't if you can't go for a walk, control your food. Like things like avoiding liquid calories, for example, like you might be eating out, but like what's to say you have to have liquid calories, what's what's to say you have to have alcohol. There's always something you can do. And main main main thing is return to your normal habits after. Okay.
Speaker 1:So if you're away traveling and and things have come up, it's like, okay, that's fair. But there's nothing stopping you from resetting quickly. There's nothing stopping you from, you know, planning your meals and having them ready for when you come back, planning a gym session on the day you come back or the day after. Again, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. That's a choice you get to make.
Speaker 1:There's no excuses here because there's always just always options. If you're not you're not all or nothing, there's always a way through. And it takes the pressure off. You just need to be perfect with this as well. Right.
Speaker 1:Final rule. Rule number five. This is a big one. Focus on weekly consistency, not daily perfection. And this ties into everything I've talked about, right?
Speaker 1:So many people I've worked with, the people that have been fit in the past and found it easy in the past, they often fall into this all or nothing thinking, especially people that grow up in like a sporting environment, a competitive environment, GA especially, where we're very all or nothing thinkers at times. It's either like I'm fully in, I'm fully doing all this or I'm not doing it at all. But like one bad day, it feels like a failure, but it's not a failure. Long term consistency stacks up with. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:And if you start chasing, especially as you get older, again, you might get away when you're younger to some extent, but especially you get older, if you start chasing perfect days and perfect weeks and put that pressure on yourself, you're going to be very disappointed in yourself and you're going to give up because you're going to feel like you're not doing enough and inconsistency is going to be crazy. I often get this with that with clients. They're always like they're going really well. And then they'll be like, oh my god, I feel like I want to just go on and over the next couple of weeks. I had this coming up.
Speaker 1:And I said to him, I was like, look, we can do that. Right? But you're putting yourself at a huge risk here that by going all in and trying to do more, you're in that you're going to end up doing worse. And it happens. I see time and time again.
Speaker 1:The more you try to be perfect and the more you try to do more, the harder it is to stay consistent. Therefore, you do less. It's a strange paradox. So sometimes it's not about doing more, it's about doing the right amount for you and your life circumstances, right? A realistic system you can follow for seventy, eighty, 80% of the time consistently.
Speaker 1:It beats any extreme plan that you will stick at for ten days or even seventy five days and seventy five days hard. In an example, I have often like, people come to me all the time, guys, and they're like, I always ask them, have you have you tried winning the past? They're like, yeah, yeah, is a 75 harder. I did one of things. I was like, yeah, how'd you get on?
Speaker 1:I like, yeah, I got great results, but I couldn't stick out. And I'm back to square one. So like, of course, it's not a complete waste of time, but it's pretty much a waste of time. Because even if you are getting there and you get through it, you've not the short for after because this is going to go back to square one. Okay, it's nice to have kicked it off and it's been done.
Speaker 1:But like I look at 75 hard as more as a like a a fitness challenge as opposed to lifestyle change. It's like it's like running a marathon. You get through it, and it's a great achievement. But you're never gonna sustain that level of fitness in the market's case for for long term. And chances are if you try to, you'll you'll end up breaking down and get injured.
Speaker 1:So yeah, never sticks. Okay, so that's it. There are four or five rules. I've actually got I've got a little ebook created with a breakdown of these rules and the principles I use for my clients that are very, very busy and on the go all the time. If you want it for free, reach out to me and Instagram with the with the word five rules or something.
Speaker 1:Just just send just send me that you want the fucking ebook, and I'll send it on to you. No problem. You have it for yourself, and you'll be able to actually look through some of the examples I gave today and just the simple things that you can do yourself in order to to start building momentum. Right, guys. I've gone online enough.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna cut it there. I hope this session has been useful for you. Again, please, please, please, if it's all you take from this this whole session, it's that in order for you, especially as you get older, to sustain something within the realm of fitness, it needs to be a lifestyle change that is sustainable, enjoyable, and fits into your life, isn't all or nothing, and it just simplifies everything. Like, structure and simplicity is golden when you have a lot of other stuff going on. If you have structure, simplicity, a bit of accountability, you're winning, and it it won't feel hard.
Speaker 1:Like, trust me when I say that it won't feel hard when you get it done in the right way. Guys, I'm gonna leave there. Have a great week wherever you are, whatever you're doing, and we will chat you all soon. Thanks for tuning in to the latest 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.
Speaker 1:Just fill that out, and we'll be in contact as soon as possible. See you in the next one.