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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. Welcome back to another episode of The Last Diet Podcast. Hope everyone is having a good week.
Speaker 1:So first of all, guys, apologies. We had no, podcast earlier in week. No podcast on Tuesday. It was actually a a long weekend here in Canada, so we were away until Monday. And for those of you that follow me, know I'm a vivid Arsenal fan.
Speaker 1:They won the Premier League on Tuesday. So it's been a bit of a whirlwind kind of week. All good things. But, yeah, I didn't have time to get a podcast out Tuesday. I was gonna do it, and I just didn't wanna force one for the sake of it and and put out one that didn't that wasn't useful for you.
Speaker 1:So instead, I just took it out a couple of days, and I planned this one a little bit more in advance because I think it'll be actually a very, very useful one. So a lot of people have listened back to Shane's podcast last week, which is great to see. And I know a lot of you probably will get a lot from that as well because there'll be some crossover in terms of what I'm gonna be talking about today. But, yeah, look, thanks for everyone again that's listening as always. Great to see the views and I know always.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's one of the things when you actually stay consistent and keep listening and take some actions, that's when things will start to change for you as well. So, guys, let's get stuck at today's podcast. Right? So the weekend sabotage. I did a session with my group on Tuesday, and I wanted to basically do another variation here for the podcast because it's a very, very useful topic and it's a very, very pertinent topic coming into the summertime especially, right?
Speaker 1:Because what tends to happen, guys, and I'm sure those of you listening can relate to this to at least some degree, people get very much caught in stop start cycles because of the weekend and social events or holidays and things like that as well. Basically any time where you're out of routine and you might be socialising or the structure of your day or week changes, right? So what happens with a lot of people, especially the Follow Me, especially people that have struggled to stay consistent with their fitness or maybe have been fit in the past but are struggling at the moment to get back to that position without doing extremes. A lot of people struggle with the weekends because of perfectionism. This feeling of like, if I'm on a plan, I need everything to be really good all the time.
Speaker 1:And what happens then when the weekend comes, human nature takes over and we struggle to stay consistent. Temptation, just routine changes, and just life gets stressful and busy, especially if you've got a lot of stuff going on in the background as well and you aren't able to do things the way you would always like to do. But what happens with that then is it causes this feeling of failure. So what turns into a little bit of a slip over the weekend then becomes a spiral over another week or two weeks or three weeks for a lot of people. And then what happens, you feel crap again, and then it's like, I've got to start again.
Speaker 1:And then same cycle over and over and over and over. Now you might even have got beyond the first weekend sometimes. Maybe you start planning, you're like, maybe you're a month into it and you're feeling okay, yeah, things are going, things are going, I'm moving. But then something happens and thinnest parts. So it's not necessarily every weekend, but the point I'm trying to make here is you can't just ignore the weekend sabotage.
Speaker 1:You can't hope that it'll go away, you can't hope to be quote unquote good all the time over the weekends because you have to learn to incorporate the social life and the weekends into your life. Otherwise, you are not going to get the results you want, and even if you did for the short term, they would go because you would just fall back into the same cycle again. So what's the point in doing that? What's been going on in the plan, getting results, and then just finding yourself in the exact same position in a couple of months time? It's absolutely pointless.
Speaker 1:So why not do this right? Do it once, do it right. Learn how to balance a social life with your fitness results as well. And as I said, the reason I'm bringing this up now is because we're coming into the summertime. So whether you're trying to maintain some results you've already got or you're trying to create some momentum going into summer to feel better in yourself right now, this is going to be very, very useful for you.
Speaker 1:We just came back from, you probably follow me on Instagram, we came back from a three day trip away. So we were glamping. And in the past, I would have really, really struggled with this stuff. Would struggle with it. At the moment, I'm pretty lean.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling pretty good myself, athletic, fit. And I'm feeling generally good. But in the past coming into the summer, if I felt like this, I would always feel like I was on the edge of letting it go. I was on the edge of falling back into a bit of a cycle where I'd lose my sharpness, my fitness, and then I'd end up having to go on another diet down the line in order to pick it back up. But over the last couple of years, especially with Canada, I've worked an awful lot on that social balance with my fitness so that I could stay in the shape I wanted to stay in, but also not have to give up the social life in order to do that.
Speaker 1:Because I used to do the extreme support. I'd be all in and I'd be giving up to social life to get the results, which I would get the results, but then I'd feel disconnected and I would feel, you know, like my life was, you know, full because I wasn't connecting and meeting people, socialising, and it was too rigid. Then the opposite would happen. I'd end up going out too much, and I'd end up getting too loose of my nutrition, getting too loose of my training. And I'd be back to square one and trying to start that cycle over and over again.
Speaker 1:But things have changed a lot in the last few years because I've learned how to balance it. And I've also taught my clients the exact same things. So that's what I'm gonna go through with you today, things you can use to manage your weekends, manage your social events without being obsessive to the point where you don't enjoy your social events. Because it's very important that you're enjoying them as well. There's no point in us being going out and saying, well, let's get through this.
Speaker 1:God, I don't want to be going through this. Gotta get through it because, again, what's the point? Don't go if you don't want to go. So I want you to go to these things. I actually had a client today, and he's flying at the moment.
Speaker 1:But he said that he's got a couple of things maybe coming up the next few weeks. He said, oh, it's kind of annoying me because, you know, I hate that I can't track properly when I'm away. And I got this OCD feeling where I need to be in control. And I challenged him on that. And I was like, well, do you think you'll be able to do that forevermore?
Speaker 1:Give up all your social life and your weekends in order to lose the weight. And he's fine at the moment. That's probably why he said he wants to keep momentum going. I get that. But I basically said to him, look, we have to challenge that mindset because it's just as important to be able to enjoy your social life whilst feeling stable as it is to actually get the results if you want to keep them long term.
Speaker 1:And I kept bringing it back to this long term vision. It's like, where do you want to be in a year? Don't just think about where you want to be in couple of months because that's too short term and that just feeds into quick fixed mindset. Okay. So what do we get just got for me, right?
Speaker 1:It wasn't that I've done anything, like, major. Right? And there's a few things that I always find that that that falls into this. What a lot of people do, right, what I would have done in the past is leading up to the weekend just gone, I would have, quote, unquote, saved calories. I would have been, quote unquote, very good all week.
Speaker 1:I would have lowered my intake and I would have, you know, been clean eating all week. That's what I would have talked about in the past, and I hear this an awful lot from people, and it's kind of like the done thing within the fitness industry. Save calories so that you can overeat later, right? But this is a huge, huge problem for people because what this creates is restriction, which creates hunger and a feeling of like missing out almost. And then this leads to when you're out of routine and there's conditions, this leads to the justification mindset of, ah, but I've been good all week.
Speaker 1:And then also added to that, you're hungrier because you've been restricting yourself. So it's just a perfect storm. And then the weekend comes, and it's an absolute shit show. Lose control, spiral, overeat, and feel guilty, maybe let it go on for days, weeks for some people, and then end up feeling terrible at yourself, realizing you need to start again, and then do the exact same thing over and over and over. So all you're doing basically is spinning your wheels because you're undereating, overeating, overeating.
Speaker 1:It's this restrict binge cycle. And even though you might think, oh, I haven't got an eating disorder, you don't have to have an eating disorder for this to be a thing. There's always degrees to this. So if you're over consuming and feeling out of control and off the lot, that is a binge. It doesn't necessarily have to be like a diagnosed health thing, but it's still a form of a binge, you're losing control.
Speaker 1:And the key element for us is it's not to have this perfect control all the time, but it is to get to a place where you feel the control is enough to sustain what you're trying to achieve as well. Okay. So that's the first bit of advice I'm going to give you guys. Right. This isn't just about the weekend or the holiday or the social events.
Speaker 1:This is about the every day. This is about what you're doing every day. Are you undereating when you're, quote unquote, on plan in order to try to speed things up or to try to almost compensate for the damage you're doing at other times? If that's happening, need to balance that out. So for me last week, for example, I was eating plenty of food.
Speaker 1:I was eating in and around my maintenance calories, maybe a small bit blow up, close enough. Definitely no restriction going on. And I was eating plenty of high quality, normal foods. I was fitting in chocolate. Was fitting in some of the things I liked throughout the week as well.
Speaker 1:We went to the cinema on Friday night, had a medium popcorn, no problem. So there was no restriction going on. And what this allowed then, right, when I went into the weekend, I didn't feel restricted. I didn't feel starving. I didn't have this mindset of, oh, I'm going to reward myself now because I had a really good week.
Speaker 1:It was a mindset of, okay, I'm going away for the weekend, I'm going to enjoy myself, but I'm not going to do the job. So that's the first and probably most importantly, I'd say to you right now. Stop restricting yourself. You should be fueling yourself, not restricting. And I'll tell you the weekend, in general, the best course is always to fuel yourself and not restrict yourself.
Speaker 1:I'm forever, like every day, this week alone, I've said it's about five clients already that they need to increase their calories. They're not eating enough, and it's gonna cause a problem. You can push through it for so long, but it's gonna cause a problem. I had one client come to me this weekend. About a month ago, he's flying.
Speaker 1:He's been changing his body. He's been really consistent, and he's found it really easy. But about a month ago, he asked me. He said, I'm thinking about speeding this up a bit. I'm thinking about like opening the gears a little bit here and maybe pushing on a small bit.
Speaker 1:And I said to him at the time, I said, Look, there's always a risk when you try to do that. You're finding it really easy at the moment. And why change something that's working well? And there's always a risk if you try to go more extreme or even just go a little bit more strict on things, it can actually backfire and make it harder for you, which then in turn makes it actually slower because you're less consistent. And a month later, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:He had a few things come up and he tried to push it and he struggled to do it. And he asked me this week, he said, Mike, I'm thinking about dropping the calories and really going hard for a few weeks because I wanna get out of the diet. What's your opinion? And straight away I caught him and was like, I really, really have to challenge on this because that mindset is the mindset you came in with to this process originally with. That's the mindset that had kept you spinning your wheels for years and years and years.
Speaker 1:And this is why we have to do it differently. I said, you don't have to go back to low calories. You don't have to go train. We need to go back to the basics that were working really well for us only a month ago, the basics that you were finding really easy only a month ago. So the point in front of maker advice is sustainability is important.
Speaker 1:So if you're restricting yourself, if you're trying to train loads and eat little, you're going to last a few days, maybe you push through for a week, two weeks, it will come crashing down. You won't get any results first, and it's just gonna make you feel like failure. So stop that straight away. And look, there's no judgment. I've done it.
Speaker 1:I've tried it many times. And yeah, it's never worked, I promise you that. Or it's never worked to any of my clients either. So just for some practical advice around the weekends in South Wales, right? With the actual weekend, setting intention is important.
Speaker 1:If you follow me on Instagram again, you'd see that we now, were going glamping, so we didn't we had to carry some fruitless anyway, right? But I carried some overnight oats. I carried some protein yogurt cheesecake kind of thing. And I carried four sandwiches and some protein bars. So that was basically just all the food I carried with me, and then I had some alcohol and water and other stuff as well.
Speaker 1:But they're the foods I carried with me, right? Now you might say, geez, you're very dedicated. Someone actually mentioned me on Instagram. I said that to me one of boys. She said, you're very disciplined.
Speaker 1:And I said to Matt, it's not about being disciplined at all. It's like, I actually always get very hungry, and I want no food with me to eat. So it's the opposite. It's like, actually I'm making sure that I don't fall into the starve myself mindset because that's when we start to lose control. So with that right, I had two breakfasts basically first thing in the morning I could eat, which just sets me up for a good day so I don't feel starving and then I don't pick loads of bad options.
Speaker 1:That worked really well. I had sandwiches as well, so we had that on the go for lunch some days. So it just meant that we didn't have to eat out all the time or we didn't have to eat foods that weren't going to service all the time as well. Now, that didn't mean we didn't have them because we had alcohol. We ate out an entire restaurant.
Speaker 1:We had a barbecue where we had a baguette and a steak and a cornucobic. So we ate plenty of nice foods out as well. But there's a few things I carried out. We just helped me to just just to stay in control. That's the big thing.
Speaker 1:Right? Just staying in control. Now if I didn't carry out things, was it a big deal? Probably not. Like, the the weekend it depends what the weekend would would entail.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it would. Sometimes it wouldn't. But the point here again is there are some decisions you can make that don't have to ruin your weekend. It could be the smallest things, and I have often said this to my clients, like, what are the small things you can control on this holiday or this weekend? Can it be the amount of drink you have?
Speaker 1:Can it be about the choice of restaurant you go to? The choice of food you have at that restaurant? Is there a meal you can control on that day? Can you carry snacks with you? So the things that you can control and set intentions with.
Speaker 1:It won't be perfect, but it will be a lot better than you winging it, starving yourself, and then just picking really poor options. Now, again, we have plenty of alcohol as well. We made s'mores and biscuits and chocolate and stuff, Had probably too many of them on one of the nights. But again, didn't matter. No, it didn't matter because for the majority, like the weekend was decent.
Speaker 1:And it was still really enjoyable, no obsession, and I had a great weekend. So that's the practical advice I give you, right? So just set some intentions around what you want from the weekend and just ask yourself what are some of the things you can actually carry as well in order to make it a little bit easier for you to stay in control and don't get starving, right? Then the second thing, and I talk a lot to my clients about this, guys, it's the mindset. Because, again, as I said, a mindset is the mindset setting is so important because a lot of people have grown up on the mindset of rewarding themselves for undereating and then just totally lose control and then brought up the mindset of shame and guilt because of lost control.
Speaker 1:I've done it anyway now, so I might as well just start again on Monday or start again next week. That's the thing that actually spirals. So what we want is we want the mindset of not being obsessive, but being aware and mindful just when you're awake. So being mindful could literally just be, okay, I don't need to be picking at these foods all day. Being mindful could literally be, okay, what on the menu might actually be a bit of a better option?
Speaker 1:What would keep me a bit fuller for longer? Being mindful might be saying, do know what? I've had enough four drinks, I don't need any more. So that's being mindful. It's not, God, I need to be obsessed now because there's too many calories in this.
Speaker 1:It's just being thoughtful so you don't find yourself justifying every poor behavior just to make yourself feel better. And then the second thing with mindset is just reset quickly. That is the biggest thing, Baron. New clients have signed up with me over the two months, right? And three of them have had stags already since they started.
Speaker 1:So to go on a stag, anyone that obviously has been on a stag knows how hard that can be to stay, quote unquote, on track. So I said to the advisers, Led, you don't have to stay on track. There's no track with this. I know what it was. There's going to a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 1:There's going be a lot of just lead talk. There's going to be a lot of eating crap. And that's just the way stags can be, right? But again, I said to them, look, it's the mindset shift that we need here. What can you control within this?
Speaker 1:And how can you reset as quickly as possible after? And the three of them have done that. The three of them are flying it at the moment. They were flying it before the stag. The stag definitely slowed them in terms of just energy and mood.
Speaker 1:But then they picked it back up, and before they knew it, were gone beyond where they were before a seg. And that was the key thing. It wasn't about what happens on the stag. It was like, how quickly can you reset? And a couple of things you could do there is just basically make sure you have maybe your food prep for early the week after, maybe a session booked in for the week after, and just get something done early.
Speaker 1:When I came off on the weekend, I went for a five ks run really slow. I wasn't feeling great. My legs were really sore actually because I did heavy legs last week and I really regretted it. I never felt pain like that for a week. But I came back and I did a five ks run.
Speaker 1:Really slow, really easy. Went to do our food shop and basically just got prepped for the week. That was it. Nothing major, just action early in the week. And the same with the boys, basically what I said to them was like, can we get an exercise session in early in the week?
Speaker 1:Maybe go to training or get the gym in. And can you have some food ready and prepped just so you fall back into it? Nail, one of the clients, he was on the stage. He came home and he loved omelettes. And he said, whenever he has omelette, it's almost like this trigger where he's like and his head is like, yeah, I'm locked in.
Speaker 1:I'm back doing I'm eating good foods. That's And the way he does it. And it doesn't have to be like the omelet, but it's what the omelet represented. So there might be something you could do. And I always say to my clients, guys, I'm like, how can you set Monday you up for success?
Speaker 1:So you know the difference. Like Friday you, great farm, buzzing for the weekend, after maybe a good week of exercise and routine, feeling really good. And then Monday you is like your alter ego, where you're flat, no motivation, world is evil, feeling really down, cynical. How can you set that person up for success? So Friday, plan for Monday, and just make it so easy that that person doesn't have to think much, just needs to take action.
Speaker 1:That's a huge, huge tip I'll give you. So guys, just before we close this out, I hope that's been useful for you, right? I like to use an analogy, right? So a lot of people think when it comes to fat loss and fat gain, they think it's very quick. What I mean by that is they think that if I cut my calories by a couple of 100, it's going to really speed things up.
Speaker 1:Or if I eat this extra meal on a weekend, it's going to ruin everything all that I've worked towards, right? And a lot of this comes from There's two things. It comes from our weight culture, which basically we look at the scales, we see scales go up, we think that that's an accurate depiction of our weight, sorry, our fat gain, which it isn't. It's just bloating. It's just volume in the stomach.
Speaker 1:Your weight could go up three kgs overnight, which is like half stone, and you may not have put on any body fat at all. That's what happens with our I've I've seen it with clients. So that's that's one reason we think it. And then the second reason is feeling. When we overeat, we feel bloated.
Speaker 1:When we feel bloated, we psychologically start to convince ourselves that we've undone everything. We look in the mirror and we're like, okay, I knew it, I was way leaner before I left. And we start to come and settle, and then that leads into obviously negativity and it leads into sabotage and spiraling, saying, Oh, what's the point? I've ruined it anyway. So we think fat gain and fat loss is really quick, it's not.
Speaker 1:If you put down a good week of eating well and being in a deficit of doing exercise, you wouldn't expect to drastically see a difference in your body. So the same thing goes in the opposite direction. Like if you had one night where you overdo it or even a week where you overdo it, we shouldn't be expecting to see much of a difference. We feel a bit blah, but it's literally just a feeling that will go away after you do another day or two of good eating again. So what I usually compare this to, right?
Speaker 1:Guys, when you're trying to lose fat or when you're gaining fat, right, it's more aligned to turning a cruise ship. Okay? So if you can just imagine turning a cruise ship, how slow it actually turns, really, really slow. So every turn basically is an action. So for example, if you make a poor decision with your food, like turning the steering wheel in a cruise ship.
Speaker 1:It'll make very little kind of noticeable difference. It's not going to be this huge jerk change of direction, right? So it's going be such a small difference. But if you keep turning and turning and given enough time, the ship will eventually turn, right? So that's what happens with people.
Speaker 1:It's like that one action, that one turn of the wheel didn't do much, right? But when we do it long enough and do enough of it, it basically compounds and compounds and compounds. That's the spiral after the bad meal. Then eventually you will start to see regression or you'll start to see the ship turn. But what happens to most people is they think a fat loss or fat gain is more aligned to turning an F1 car, where one little turn of the wheel, the whole thing is gonna go sideways and maybe topple over.
Speaker 1:But it's not. It's very, very much like a cruise ship. So the point I'm trying to make here is nothing happens with one poor decision. Nothing happens with a couple of poor decisions. It's the compound effect and it's what it makes you do that's a problem.
Speaker 1:So that's why resetting quickly is the key to this. Guys, I've just created a five video mini series called the standard system. So basically, this is the system I use with my clients. And within this, I break down really short videos, break down what we do in order to help our clients to upkeep the standards that are moving forward, especially when it comes to social life and social events that come up and busy lives and everything that comes up externally. So if you want to watch that for free, guys, just send me the word standard and I will shoot you over the link and you can go into it.
Speaker 1:So it's five videos. They're about five minutes each. And it'll give you really practical advice in terms of how you stop starting, constantly on off. And I'll break that down in a bit more detail and to be visuals and stuff you can go through as well. Yeah, deem it worth standard, and I can send that out to you for free.
Speaker 1:No problem at all. So, guys, I'm just gonna close this off. Right? Just to summarize this, what we should be looking at, especially when it comes to weekends and social life in general. Minimize the overeating.
Speaker 1:So we do that by being mindful, as I said, and keeping your food quality pretty high, especially throughout the week. But even over the weekend, can keep the food quality somewhat high, like I did this weekend, just carrying some food with me and picking good options where possible. But it's not always possible, as many as you can, right? Minimize So overeating. That's what we wanna focus on over the weekend.
Speaker 1:And then the most important thing is reset quickly. And the way you reset quickly is forward planning. So think about how you can set yourself up, especially if you're in a negative place on a Monday, because it doesn't matter the intentions you have. Like, three boys who went on the stage, they were trying to convince me that, fine, I had a grand, I'll trip after Monday. I was like, lads, you're not going to feel great Monday.
Speaker 1:You need to work on this now. You need to plan now. This is when you're feeling good. This is when you have to get in get ahead of it. So that's basically where we are.
Speaker 1:So that's it, guys. Minimize your reading and reset as quickly as possible. You do do the two things, especially over the summer months, you will start to see results. There's no doubt in my mind because it will create consistency and it will create moment. Okay, guys, I'm going to shut down there.
Speaker 1:I hope everyone is having a good week like this. Any actual supporters out there, congratulations. Hope you enjoy the celebrations. I'm definitely gonna enjoy this weekend and a Champions League final to come next week as well. So, guys, have a fantastic weekend, and we'll chat you all soon.
Speaker 1: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. Just fill that out, and we'll be in contact as soon as possible. See you in the next one.