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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. Yes, team.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to another episode of The Last Diet Podcast. Hope everyone is doing well and has having a good start to their week as always. So, guys, I did a session for my group this morning, and I just thought it'd be a very, very relevant one for everyone. So I'm going to share some of the kind of high notes of the session and hopefully give you some just insightful practical tips in terms of managing weekends and how to not let big sessions, big events over the summer derail you and just lead into long term sabotage, basically. Right?
Speaker 1:So with the session, guys, I want to I'm gonna go through a few things. But I wanna keep this very, very practical because I know sometimes it's easy to kind of get into deep stuff and why we do things and everything. But I want to make this very practical because a lot of the times it's just having something to actually practically do can be very, very helpful, especially when it comes to post alcohol fuelled events. So a little bit of a back ground, right? So if you follow me on Instagram, guys, you probably have seen that actual link first time in twenty two years.
Speaker 1:And I've obviously been saying this a lot to everyone. So I was out for the last two days and Saturday was basically like drinks and like not late, not too late, but like 10PM probably. And then yesterday was an all dating. We were up at 7AM. The match actually kicked off at 8AM here.
Speaker 1:So I went to an Irish bar to watch that and we stayed out then for the day, basically celebrating. And I was home yesterday, maybe half seven, so pretty much a twelve hour day of drinking. So yeah, today I haven't been at my top top, but I wanted to maybe share that from my perspective right now, because it's a good time to do it, as opposed to always doing these podcasts when I'm feeling my very, very best. Because I said this to my clients today, guys, I'm human too, and everyone's human, and we all go through ups and downs emotionally. We all have good days, bad days, good weeks, bad weeks.
Speaker 1:And it's totally normal to experience that, but it's for us then to understand how to best deal with that. Because ultimately, term results are always going to be dictated by your consistency. Now, consistency to me isn't perfection. It's not showing up every single day doing it at 100%. Consistency to me is I always use 70%.
Speaker 1:I feel like 70% to me is the sweet spot for everyone. It's the tipping point in terms of getting results but not doing things so religiously that it becomes overwhelming at the point where you can't sustain it anyway, which then ends up you being on off, which is way below 70% consistency. So 70% to me is the sweet spot of I can maintain that, but I can also live a life around that as well. Okay, so when it comes to events, summer especially now, I know it's like a long weekend, next weekend in Ireland, and there's a few, obviously, van colleges over the summer in Ireland especially. But there's also going to be other things.
Speaker 1:You're probably going have concerts, weddings, holidays potentially. A lot of my clients already, and we're already starting to plan ahead for this. So all my one to one clients have already come to me, most of them, with things that are coming up in the future. So we're planning ahead for them things, and we're understanding how we can deal with them. Right?
Speaker 1:But within today's session, what I'm gonna do is actually I'm just gonna break down specifically what you can do during the event and then after the event in order to just maintain some bit of consistency and momentum, especially during the summer months because things can come really, really frequently and that can create a lot of just a lot of momentum issues when it comes to your health and fitness, especially, okay? So one thing I said to my clients today, guys, was to actually just take a step back and write down all the events they have coming up this summer. And I did a training with my clients a couple of months back called weekend rewire system. If anybody wants access to this, it's a short training and a very, very practical training, how to deal best with weekends. So basically, within that, I talked about having light sessions sorry, light, medium, and heavy events or sessions or weekends.
Speaker 1:Okay? So we basically categorised their events into light, medium, or heavy. So like a heavy, for example, would be what I just went through the weekend, two days of drinking and eating out. So that would be heavy. Heavy also could be like a stag or a wedding or a holiday.
Speaker 1:So things basically that will be maybe more in a day and also involve maybe excess alcohol and food. Okay, so that's what would be a heavy one, right, in my eyes. A medium one then might be like a one dating where it might be just drinking or it might be just eating out or something that like it's difficult but it's not too much either. And then a light one might be more towards going for maybe like a lunch with your friend where you can pick healthy options or going for a coffee with a friend or things that are a little bit unroutine but very, very easy to manage. Basically, I get my clients to just categorise their events over the next three months or somewhere within these categories.
Speaker 1:And it's very, very helpful for you because then you can start to understand the give and take of it because there are gonna be some weekends where you have to accept it's it's gonna be heavy. Like the weekend just got me, I knew this was coming if Arsenal wanted to leave and I knew I was going to be the worst to wear after it. But I accepted that and I set intentions around that. And a lot of this, guys, and this is such an important point to make, a lot of this is based on psychology and your feelings towards the events. Because if you are constantly telling yourself, oh god, I gotta be good.
Speaker 1:No, I can't be going out because I'm trying to get in shape. I'm trying to stay good. But then you're constantly doing the opposite and you're going out in hard sessions all the time, there's this disconnect that is making you feel really guilty, but then you can't stop the temptation of actually going doing it. And that's where you feel really bad after it. And that's where the issues start to come.
Speaker 1:That's where the sabotage and spiral actually starts to come. But when you actually accept that these things are coming up and that you're willing to trade off some maybe speed of progress or a little bit of momentum for that, but you have a plan around it, that's when you have real control. That's when you're feeling really good. I do this with all my friends. And we've had a lot of clients sign up recently and they've had a lot of things on, like Trelez.
Speaker 1:I've mentioned this a few times over the last few weeks, Trelez have had stags since they started. One client who only joined me last week is currently in The Netherlands on a short term holiday with his son. And like he said to me before he signed up, was like, should I start after this? And he said, I probably know what you're gonna say here. And I was like, yeah, no, start now because these things are gonna be frequent.
Speaker 1:These things are always gonna up. But how you deal with them and how you have your mindset programmed for these things is really important. And it's the same thing for weekends and events over summer. It's not that you have to cut all these things out, but you have to plan for them in advance and trade off some things further. Now, guys, this is a very hard truth.
Speaker 1:Right? And it might be hard to hear for some people. Right? But you cannot have big weekends all the time. And it might seem obvious.
Speaker 1:You cannot have big weekends all the time and expect to I wouldn't even say expect to maintain your your results if you have results now. If you have big weekends coming up every week over summer, then you're going to regress. And if you're okay with that, cool. But it will eventually happen. And And I have lots of people that think, well, I can maybe balance out my calories during the week and then at the weekends, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 1:And they're in this constant cycle of not raining in the weekends, just having huge binge weekends, but then being okay with it because they're balancing it out during the week. That is not a good long term strategy. You might get away with that for a few weeks, but it will come crashing down on you and it will create really, really poor habits and really poor relationship with the whole journey. So what I do with all my clients, we work on the big weekends, but we work on the relationship with the weekends as well. So that every weekend doesn't have to be a big weekend, that we're able to challenge some of these things and understand that, okay, a big weekend once every four weeks maybe, once every month, no big deal.
Speaker 1:We can definitely progress with that. But a big weekend every week or every couple of weeks, it's very, very hard to see any progress. And a lot of the times it's even hard to see maintenance of your progress as well. And it's not even about the calories because you can balance it when it comes to calories. Now it's not easy, but you can potentially do it.
Speaker 1:Like if I was to track my calories over the last two days, probably lose like 4,000 calories each day maybe. So you could technically balance that out over the week. But the issue is if you consistently, if you have consistent big events coming over every weekend that involve alcohol and poor sleep and poor eating, it's the knock on impact that that has. It's the standards that drop. You stop doing the things that actually serve you, not even over that weekend, but throughout the week eventually as well.
Speaker 1:And it becomes this vicious cycle. It's very hard to sustain that, especially as you get older. Maybe you got away with it when you're younger, but when you get to your 30s, 40s, it's a very hard thing to do. So for us, it's so much more about balancing these weekends off, enjoying them, but knowing that we also can have light weekends and we can have medium weekends. And that's gonna help you long term, not only get results, but also just be happier in general.
Speaker 1:Because if I went out every weekend the way I went out this weekend, I would be in a ball of depression in a couple of weeks. I'm actually feeling pretty good today, generally, probably because I accidentally, I definitely, definitely wouldn't be able to do this too much. And I used to do it a lot when I was younger, but I just, I don't anymore. It's because it doesn't serve my happy self and everything else takes a knock. My productivity and work, my mood, my fitness, finances, everything takes a knock when you do it too often.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I just wanted to set set it up with that guys, right, just just to just before I go into the actual practicality of what you can actually do when you have big big yeah. Sorry. Big weekends coming up over the next few weeks. So for example, this could could be something that you can practice if you have a big weekend coming up for the long weekend in Ireland.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the first thing I always look at when it comes to big weekends is just to acknowledge that it's a big weekend. So within the Weekend Rewire system, I talk about the four Rs, right? The four Rs, the first one is recognise. So it's only it might only seem like a small thing, but a lot of people, they can be so triggered almost by events, you know, when it comes to fitness. It's almost like it's seen as such a negative thing.
Speaker 1:It's almost like they don't want to think about it. It's like when they go on a weekend, they're like, oh god, I'll worry about it on Monday. But we don't want to do that. We want to recognise and acknowledge that it's going to be a big weekend, it's going be a little bit of a challenge. Because straight away when you do that, it almost just takes the guilt away because you know what it's going to be like a test and you know it's going to be, it's not going to be perfect on track weekend.
Speaker 1:So recognise first and recognise some of the difficulties that it may break. What are the patterns that usually come with a big weekend? Your Your eating habits, your drinking habits, what happens to you on Monday and so on. So recognise the first one. The second one is rehearse.
Speaker 1:So rehearse to me is about setting intentions. I always say to my clients anytime they have a big weekend coming up, it's like, let's set some intentions around this weekend. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to go exactly. It doesn't have to be everything in control all the way.
Speaker 1:But setting intentions, it just allows you to feel like you have control over some things. Now the intentions can be whatever you want. It's just important to do it because a single action can make you feel happy and proud of yourself. Just changing one thing can make you feel good and make you think, okay, I actually did better there than I would have before. And that in itself helps you minimise the damage, but then also get back to what you need to do after.
Speaker 1:So rehearse. Now you might say, okay, well, what kind of intentions do I set? That's up to you. But I would always build it around the big rocks, which would be alcohol consumption. Maybe you can set intentions in terms of how many drinks you want to have.
Speaker 1:Again, sometimes it works, sometimes it won't, but it's good to try. Maybe you can set some intentions around the types of food you're going to eat or how you're going to structure your day of eating around the event. Okay, just because you're eating out maybe an evening doesn't mean you can't have a good meal in the morning or during lunchtime. Or maybe you'll set intentions around the Monday after that you're going to maybe prep some food in advance and you're going to book a class or something early in the week so you can just slip back into it. So intentions and rehearsal is really important because the more you do that, the more you set intentions, the more you learn and the more you can actually build a long term strategy that will work for you.
Speaker 1:Because you might try this weekend, for example, for the long weekend, and it might go terribly. And you might think, oh, right, that wasn't great. But at least I tried something, now I can maybe understand what I need to do, what didn't go well. Because if you're aware of your triggers and your patterns over the weekend, it means then you can start to work on them. For example, for me, I know my biggest patterns are always my Sunday bingeing basically when I swim over, because I'd feel so low after a night of drinking.
Speaker 1:I would almost feel like it was like end of something where I would just eat all around me and I'd worry about tomorrow. It was kind of like every meal was like, oh this is the last bad meal I'm going to have now. And I know that's a pattern that a lot of my clients come to me with and we work on. So that's something I work around and being aware of that has helped me to put strategies in place so it doesn't become a big deal anymore. So for you, again, going with intentions and awareness can be really useful.
Speaker 1:So the third R then is reward. Now reward to me is it's just how you think about the weekend. So we always try to kind of keep the reward away from food rewards and more towards connection and events and stuff like that. So for example, your weekend, you're rewarding yourself with a concert and actually being present listening to the music and meeting your friends, as opposed to it's a reward of, well, I'm going to eat all around me and drink all around me this weekend because I've had a good week in the gym or I've had a hard week at work. We always justify bingeing and escapism because of that.
Speaker 1:And we use it as we wrap it up as a reward or like an escape from the tough life we're having. So we want to change that and reward ourselves with things we still love, but just think about it differently. It's not to say we still don't eat food or drink, whatever, but it's just trying not to have an old event based around, I can't wait to go binge drinking, I can't wait to get, you know, shit faced, or I can't wait to eat loads of food. So it's just building and rewarding yourself with the actual thing itself. Then the fourth R is rebound.
Speaker 1:Now you know where this is going, right? It's the most important part. The quicker you rebound, the better your results. And bring it back to what I said at the start. The only thing that's gonna dictate whether you're getting results or not is your consistency.
Speaker 1:So that's why consistency needs to be about that 70% I talk about. So that doesn't mean you can't have your event, but it just means that that event can't roll into a week, two weeks, three weeks. And that's what most people struggle with, is that one really good week, but then they'll fall off over the weekend and then the next week is an okay week and then we got to that, blah, blah. It's just really poor consistency. So rebounding as quick as possible is so important.
Speaker 1:How you do that, again, comes from strategies that you have to figure out as you go through the journey. I said this to one of my clients today and he's checking, was like, the whole journey for us is going to be about figuring out stuff as we go, learning from doing. I can give you all the strategies now but it's only when you go through and you actually bring awareness to it and you actually see what the patterns are, that's when you can start to work on them. Because everyone's a little bit different. What you struggle with when it comes to NIA will be different to what some other person will struggle with.
Speaker 1:Some people will be able to rebound really quickly, other people struggle with that. Some people will be able to minimise the damage of the night out, other people will really struggle with that and there'll be specifics that they'll actually struggle with. Some people will be drinking, some people will be food, some people potentially drugs, some people with sleep, whatever it might be, but everyone has different triggers. So your awareness to that is so, so important. So that's basically it guys in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:The weekend reward system is built around in four hours, recognised, rehearse, reward and rebound. You do them things, then you're going to be so much more consistent than you have been now. And it's also going give you that feeling of control back, which then has a downstream effect of how you show up next week and the week after and the week after. Honestly, it's so empowering, guys. It's so empowering when you feel you're in control again.
Speaker 1:Because I've been there, I know what that feels like when you're really, really excited to get results, but you keep slipping into the same cycles. It's so frustrating because you know you can do better, but you just can't figure out how to stay consistent enough to get there. And because mood goes up and down so much, it's very, hard to put yourself on it. So I'm going to finish off with this, right, because you're probably thinking, okay, well, give me some practical advice. What am I doing today?
Speaker 1:What did I do after this weekend is gone? Right? And the best advice I can give you here, guys, bar none. I mentioned this kind of last week as well. You have to stop panicking.
Speaker 1:The guy had 4,000 calories easily yesterday. The guy had I was drinking Guinness. I definitely had 10 points plus of Guinness and beer and spirits. I had chicken federals when I came home. I had a medium popcorn from cinema when I came home.
Speaker 1:Like, I definitely had 4,000 plus calories yesterday. Right? But the key today, I'm gonna feel bloated. I'm gonna feel blah. I'm gonna feel de energized.
Speaker 1:Right? But it's a feeling. Like, nothing has been done. Nothing has been sabotaged in the last couple of days. It's feeling that I have and the feeling that you have as well.
Speaker 1:And the only danger here is that we go through an extreme now. And I always say to my clients after a weekend like that, it's like, just relax. And I know it's not easy sometimes, but on the money, just relax and get back to the basics. Don't undereat to compensate. So I could easily come in today and go, right, I had 4,000 calories yesterday, so I want to maybe have thousand calories today, could that then only be 5,000 calories over the last two days and that's only 2,500 calories, that's not too bad.
Speaker 1:The second I start thinking that way, that's the second I've lost, right? Because it's going to create this vicious cycle that then will happen next week and the week after and so on. So today is about relaxing and just getting back to eating your normal foods, and it's about getting back to your normal habits. So the main ones are food quality and regularity. Don't skip meals, don't undereat, eat your normal meals.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you're genuinely not hungry today and you're feeling bloated, you can definitely reduce them a little bit, the size of them, but don't intentionally under eat your skin milk. Okay? The second most important thing I would say is your sleep. Get your sleep back in order. Especially after weekends and drinking stuff, your sleep is going be knocked out, so it's non negotiable that you're getting a good sleep this week.
Speaker 1:And then other little things around that. Can you get some early movement or exercise in the week, early in the week? You're not gonna feel like doing it. I don't feel like doing it. I've I've trained tonight.
Speaker 1:It's kinda raining. I'm just like, ugh, just become buttered. I don't feel like going to the gym, but I'm go tomorrow at half five in the morning. I didn't feel like eating great today. Thought I'd I just wanted to be kind of junk food, but again, I just made it simple and I ate.
Speaker 1:Sleep is coming the same tonight. Water, I don't feel like I want to drink that much water today, but it's so important because I'm dehydrated. So these are the basic habits and don't set the habits too hard for yourself. So if a good week for you looks like five gym sessions and 12,000 steps and tracking all your calories and getting eight hours sleep and drinking three liters of water, if that's your really good week, then don't aim for that this week because it's too far out of where your mindset is and your body is right now. Set the bar lower.
Speaker 1:Don't even think about how many sessions you get this week. Just think about the first session. It's amazing the knock on impact that has. That's why I always tell my clients, get a session done early. It's not about the calorie burn, it's not about the exercise, it's about the mindset it brings you.
Speaker 1:So a little bit of exercise goes a long way. It could literally be a twenty minute run, ten minute run. Just get to the gym, do small bit in the gym. Even if it's just getting up for a walk, just get moving. Even if it's just having one or two healthy meals today, that just make you feel like you're back locked in.
Speaker 1:One of my clients, he has this kind of ritual of he loves his omelet and toast. So for him it's like this trigger when he has that meal, when he comes back after like a weekend away he had a staggered meal, it's like when he has that meal it's like boom I'm back. And it's not about the omelet, it's about what it signifies for him eating well. So find that for yourself. For me, it's always protein oats with fruit.
Speaker 1:I love it, but when I have it, just, again, it's a healthy meal that triggers to me, right, I'm having a good daily. So don't think about all the stuff you need to do this week and all the standards you need to hit. Just think about the next meal, the next walk, the next session, exercise, and getting good sleep. Just the next one. Once you win that, you'll win them all.
Speaker 1:And just final thing I'll leave you with, right? This time next week, if you show up and do the things you don't feel like doing right now, even to a lower degree, this time next week you won't remember how you felt today after your hangover. This time next week you won't even remember, do you know, like, much about the start of the week. All you'll know is you've done the thing you needed to do and your momentum is back up again. I always see this with clients.
Speaker 1:It's like, it's not about whether they slip or not, it's about whether they're able to get back up and move the needle forward again. And when they do that and they keep progressing, that's when you can then look back in time and think, Jesus, I've made some progress, but I've also had a stag, I've also had a win, I've also had these events come up, I've had this sickness happen and this injury happened. That's when you look back and think to yourself, I can do this no matter what happens. I'm in control, and once I'm looking to hit that 70% consistency mark, I'm aces. It's not always gonna go really well, but it doesn't need to.
Speaker 1:That's that's the whole point. So that's me signing up, guys, on my hangover Monday. Hope you appreciate me regarding I thought it would be a day to do because, you know what, look, it would have been easy for me to wait till I was feeling better and and buzzing. But, yeah, I've got you today. I've done my minimums, which is good.
Speaker 1:And now it's just about building on that for the rest of week for me as well. So, guys, any questions, as always, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. If you want the weekend reward system sent over to you, it's a short video, short short training. I can do that for free.
Speaker 1:Just let me know, and I will do that too. Guys, have a fantastic week. Chat 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.