What is up and welcome back to Talking Nutrition. I got to pick it back up and I'm going to be fully transparent and open here. I missed a week. Sorry about that, but we're back. Okay. And I did make a promise and unfortunately I didn't manage to stick with things. I did have a few shifts in schedule and I went to a conference in the US and I'm going to be real with you. I put too much on my own place. I tried to do too many things at once, which just meant, Hey, I got to drop something and I didn't get to do my podcast. Now we're picking it back up. And that's one of the things I want to talk about today. Now I had some thoughts. I just wrapped up a full day of coaching client check-ins, right? So my clients check in on Sunday, they get their feedback on Monday and then the second half kind of checks in or fills in their form on Monday. And then I send them my feedback the next day. So tomorrow I'm going to do my second batch of check-ins, but there's a few things that came up and I don't have a script or, you know, outline for this podcast whatsoever. I'm just going to write down a few things. Balance is something we want to talk about. Picking things back up and they all kind of like play into each other. Okay. And then setting too high expectations for yourself. Okay. And also being too hard on yourself when you can't get everything done. Cause let's be honest here. Look like it's, we talk about consistency a lot. And I think we need to remember that consistency is imperfect by nature. Now, obviously we can be at a spot where you're just so damn, like you just keep going. It's easy. And we get into that flow state that, that magical state of, we just roll. And I've been there myself with, with fitness, with business, with fat loss, everything like music. Right. But like, let's, let's first of all, remember the seasonality of life, which kind of goes into balance. So let's start there. Okay. So balance and the seasons of life. I told a client of mine that balance is bullshit. She asked me, I struggled to find the balance, which then actually turned into her setting to a high expectations for ourselves, too many different things on her plate. And that's actually one of the things that made me think here for this check-in or this, this podcast based on my check-ins. I'm like balance is bullshit. And that balance is this, this fantasy where we think everything needs to be perfectly balanced out in life on a day-to-day basis, week-to-week basis, month-to-month, seasons, years, but it doesn't work that like that. I am of the opinion that balance, true balance in the sense that people think of balance is unachievable. It doesn't exist. I told my client also, I said, there's going to be times of trade-offs where you send to say no more often for that fat loss goal, but there's going to be times that we say yes more often. Okay. There's going to be times where you have more time to work out and maybe you go four or five times a week in our sessions and other times it might only be three times a week, half an hour, right? There's going to be times where we spend extra time with family and friends. And sometimes there's going to be seasons in life where we're extra busy. It doesn't mean that during those busy times, the friends and family and other things are not important, but we're going to have, um, balance in the bigger picture. That's how I want you to think about this. The shorter you make the, the smaller you make the timeframe here for the balance to be there. Let's say on a daily basis, the more unrealistic it becomes. Now, when you start to zoom out, I mean, this is kind of like that whole 80, 20 principle in a way, which we could weave into that. Okay. But even then 80, 20, like it's not balanced. Right. And I've really shifted more to 90, 10, which is something we already did with fat loss, but look, you've got to get most of your calories from whole foods and then we can definitely have some fun stuff every now and then. Okay. But it's the same principle. If you have one, two, three plus kids, like most of my clients and you have a full-time job and then you have another full-time job. Well, actually that's your first two already, right? Your mom, then your, your actual work, right? Second full-time job. And then you're also trying to figure out this whole nutrition thing. And we're stacking full-time jobs there and you only have 24 hours in a day. And no, we're not going to talk about the fact that everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. And like, no, that's short side of the way of looking at this problem, but we'll stick on balance for now. Um, and then what I'm also going to write down here, cause we are doing this just off the cuff, right? 24 hours in a day. We'll put a note on that. We're just going to riff today. We're just riffing, which is nice too. Okay. Because it is Monday evening. I just wanted to knock out this podcast for you. Okay. Make sure it's up so I can stick to my promise of giving you those weekly episodes. Right. But balance is bullshit in that it's not a day-to-day thing we can achieve. I would argue that this is impossible. I would argue, however, that we can achieve balance, um, over the course of bigger timeframes, understanding there's a seasonality to everything in life. This goes for more training, less training, fat loss, muscle gain, maintenance, reverse diets, holiday seasons versus your usual day-to-day and everything in between. Right. High stress, low stress, and most importantly, your results, but also your mental wellbeing. Maybe if your mental capacity, everything is seasonal. So much so that I sometimes tell my clients who are on a roll, I'm like, Hey, look, I love where you're at right now, but I'm going to keep you grounded. This momentum is here right now. And I want you to push, but I also want you to think of, Hey, look, something might happen next week and you might have zero motivation. Momentum drops. How are you going to show up then? Right now on the flip side, the bad times also don't last, which is awesome. Right. And that's something you got to keep in mind. Look, I'm going to use my example, myself as an example here. Look, last week, I last two weeks, to be honest with you, I put too much on my plate. Obviously we did the whole giveaway thing. We had some new clients, which after summer is kind of like summer is usually quiet. And then like around that September, you know, August, September, like people really start to like sign up for coaching. So we have a lot of new clients. And I am also working on updating my course, which I have built out for my clients. And we've been running that for years now, the Odyssey. You've heard me talk about this plenty of times. And I am about to start recording the Odyssey 2.0, which is now a 16 week course, which is I'm going to go in between kind of like a hands-on block. So the first four weeks are very hands-on. And then the second block, you know, the second, you know, week five through eight is going to be a little bit more like self-education, just kind of like watch these at your own, you know, pace. And then we get a little bit more hands-on again, block three. And then just like that, we're going to work through 16 weeks. So it's not like a full studying like 16 weeks, you know, because I do understand sometimes, you know, people might take a little bit more time and it's cool. But I'm about to record 16 modules. Most of these will have two to three videos, right? So we're looking at, I mean, 16 times, let's say two and a half. What even is that? That is 32, let's call 35 videos I'm about to record. 35 videos of education, application, right? Then there's also the whole bonus resources section. Then based off of that, I'm going to be creating guides, PDF guides as well to have for my clients who don't just want to watch and listen, but also have something to read because I have a lot of people who also like the reading side of things, which I may then even turn into something like a printable kind of thing, you know, printable guide kind of thing. But that's, that's an idea for now. We got to remember, we can only take so much on our plate, but we wrapped up the giveaway. We, I went to the US for a conference. Okay. Recently. Um, so that was, you know, the jet lag and then basically like three full days of conference workshops and presentations, then there's the content I got to keep up with. Then there's the podcast. There's my client check-ins and there's multiple other things behind the scenes. So full transparency. I just put too much on my plate. And then I also felt that overwhelmed that you might be currently dealing with. Um, but then I also have to remind myself, Hey, balance is bullshit right now. I have to push. I'm going to learn from this lesson of, I did actually put too much on my own plate. I can tell you this, there were, um, multiple months over the last few months, really, where I could have recorded two podcasts a week. I had the time. Okay. And then that is where like now I just didn't manage. I had to pick and choose and I had to choose not to do that podcast so that I could get everything else done. So we had to prioritize, which is what I told my clients or my clients specifically that I'm thinking of now. And let's actually go into my next point of setting too high expectations for yourself. And then as a result, feeling bad about not being able to get everything done. I told my client to look, you're naming a bunch of things here that I actually didn't even really bring up recently. Um, now these are key things like hydration and other things, but I told her, look, like you're actually doing great already. Okay. You're doing great already. First of all, all the things I need you to do right now in your fat loss phase, I'm seeing it happen. Keep doing what you're doing. But I also said, look, all the things that you listed out, I do get it. And it comes from a good place because you're a high performer. You want to see good results and you want to do well in this program because you just signed up. This was a returning client where she's coached with me in the past and she wanted to see more results, right? So she took a break and now she's actually back after summer. And, um, it's kind of fun too. Like we, we get a lot of clients come back after sometimes a few months, sometimes after multiple years, because they like the accountability, the guidance, and they want to push for that next level even. Right. But I told her to look, yes, those things that you listed out were important, are important and are going to continue to be important. But understand going back to this principle or, um, concept of balance is bullshit. We do need to prioritize because in her words, she said, Hey, I find it hard to find that balance. I think there's so many things on my plate right now that it makes me almost feel overwhelmed. This now means that I have a hard time sticking with things, at least the things that I think feel like I need to get done. And now it's like this feeling of right. Not being able to fulfill the things that you set out to do. And I told her, look, we went through the whole balance is bullshit and the seasonality of life and the busy seasons, the less busy seasons and everything in between the weeks where we feel amazing, the weeks where we have a harder time. And I said to look, sometimes it's a matter of setting too high expectations of yourself. And sometimes we just need to prioritize just how I had to do this with the podcast. What if we have so much on our plate? That's a little too much right now. Okay, cool. Then that doesn't mean that this is not the right time to do this nutrition thing. Doesn't mean that we're going to say, well, you know, I don't want to worry too much about nutrition. We'll do that when the time is right. No, no. This means that we just need to look at right now what are our priorities and your health needs to be priority. Number one, um, before your career, before taking care of other people, cause even as a parent and look, I want to say like 90% of my clients right now are moms. As a mom, it is in people's nature oftentimes to take care of their kids first, to take care of everything and everyone else first. And then their own stuff is kind of like an afterthought. And then you get lost, you know, in the mix. You're so busy and you're taking care of everything and everyone. And where's your own self-care? Now, some people might find this selfish, prioritizing their sleep, going to the gym, setting time apart to do self-care things, even if it's just more sleep or healthy eating, whatever it is, but it's actually very selfless thing. My clients have probably heard this a million times by now. You might've even too, but you know, when you're on a plane and they do that, that, you know, emergency tutorial, little video or the dance, right? When you see the flight attendants explain what to do when they say, Hey, when the cabin pressure falls out, like, what are we going to do? Well, you're going to see these oxygen masks. What do they tell you to do every single time? Put your own mask on first and then help the next person. Put your own oxygen mask on first, because if you don't, you will burn out. Okay. This is a whole other concept that I was not even going to talk about. And yet here we are, right? So a little side quest, but prioritize you bringing it back. Okay. Prioritizing you first. You have to, because if you prioritize you, you have more energy. You are happier. You're mentally resilient. Okay. You build up a capacity to handle stress because you deal with it. Well, you're not a victim of your business and schedule, but you're in charge and you're in control because you do the work. You prioritize you, you prioritize your structure, your agenda, you manage it. This is something we need to be better at as a whole because busyness is, it's such a obvious thing these days because look, like I get this quite often with clients. I'm so busy and overwhelmed in the beginning, especially. And then I'm always like, Hey, look, absolutely. Like it makes sense. Um, you are very busy and that's a very real argument, but it's also not going to change anytime soon. So let's just do this. Let's just try to figure it out for how life is currently set up and let's make it work for the business. Right? I think sometimes if we don't take action right now and we don't decide to take control, we're going to be victims to our schedules. We're going to have a really damn hard time getting everything done. You're going to fall victim to the stress and the overwhelm. And now you're stuck in fight or flight and you can't even plan anymore. You have no willpower, no self-control. Guess what? It's because you're stressed. It's because you're fatigued. It's because you don't protect an eight hour sleep window for yourself. Understanding that it's actually one of the absolute foundations to build your health on sleep, quality sleep, consistency. Okay. But try not to be too hot on yourself. If you cannot do 20 things all at once on one day. Okay. I would even say that's quite a bit. Let's say 10. If you can do these 10 different things, can we maybe do five? Can we maybe do three? Prioritize what's important right now. And if that means taking things one step at a time, perfect. Okay. Cause that's really how you create balance in life. It's the balance between the back and forth, the ups and downs, right? It's a bigger picture balance, which brings us also back to just picking things back up. If you've gotten to a point where you've been pretty damn inconsistent because you've just kind of fallen off and you know, you have not been able to get everything done and you have not prioritized and you have not put yourself first. And we are in a very busy season. There is something to be said for just taking that first next step. And this is not something new or look like you just got to take it from your next meal. It really doesn't matter how much you overate last week. If you binged on candy and chocolate because you were so hungry, cause you didn't plan your meals or meal prep. You came home finally after a long day at work, you first drove the kids to practice and then you waited and you still didn't eat. And then you came back home and you made food for everyone else. In the meantime, you're snacking while you're cooking for everyone else. Plus you have the kids leftovers. Plus we want to have a glass of wine after to wind down. Don't worry about compensating calories or whatever. Like let's just say this, pick it back up from your very next meal. Go for a walk right now or first thing in the morning. Put your alarm 10 minutes early to give yourself a little bit of silence in the morning before anyone else gets up. Try to get some sunlight in. If you haven't journaled for months, cool. Just grab your journal tomorrow morning. If you have zero clarity on like, I don't know what to do right now. Well then you message me and I'll coach you through it. But all joking aside, if we're just talking food, picking things right back up or really any hiccup in general, any day of failure, week of failure is really just about how quick can you pick it right back up? How fast can you bounce back? How fast can you go from falling off? Whatever we choose to call it. Like, you know, like, look, we all have days where we don't follow the plan. Look, I just missed my, my podcast too, right? How fast can we bounce back? If we think back to the book, which I think by now everyone should have read, Atomic Habits. What is one of the concepts here? And I want you to picture this, okay? That's why I like checklists. The visual, we have to week, the habits we want to hit, and we start checking these boxes. Goal is to create consistency, not perfection, but consistency. What does that look like? Monday check, Tuesday check, Wednesday miss, not a big deal, Thursday check, Friday check, Saturday miss, not a big deal, Sunday check. That is consistency. The goal becomes how can we not turn the misses into a trend? Because if it's Monday check, Tuesday miss, Wednesday miss, now it's a chain. Thursday miss, Friday miss. And the longer that chain becomes, the harder it becomes to drive the behavior we're actually trying to create or the habits we're trying to build. So what are we going to do? We break the chain as soon as we can. And I don't care if that takes a day, a week, a month, multiple months. We break the chain today and we say, I'm back. And honestly, I just had to have that conversation with myself today. I just wrapped up a full day of client check-ins. I could have very easily been like, no, I don't feel like it. You know, like I'm officially done with work and you know, like, which I am. Okay. I'm going overtime here today, but I also made a promise to you as a listener, to myself. And that's maybe something I want to wrap it up with today. Okay. I was going to speak more into like having 24 hours in a day, but we can't touch on it already. Okay. Making a promise to yourself and following through is very important thing. Saying something and doing it. If you cannot be a man or woman of your own word, if you can't even trust your own word, if you can't even say, when you say something, you will do it. If we can't do that, you know what we're going to have? Zero fucking self-belief, zero confidence. One more concept. Okay. And that is building evidence, building evidence for or against the person you want to become. Right now you might be listening to this thinking, I have this big goal. I'm never going to approach anywhere near my weight that I want to be. I have a big career goal, whatever goal it is that you have in life. We can all set ambitious goals, right? And I am truly of the opinion that anything is possible. If it's humanly possible, you can absolutely make it happen. But building evidence for or against the person you want to become. There's a good chance that you now think currently that that goal you want to achieve is unreachable or at least really damn difficult. That's okay. But, um, what's it really based on? It's just evidence from the past. And at this point, we have more evidence from the past versus the new evidence you're still trying to build. So that ratio is off. You might've even had, you know, seven awesome days last week where, you know, for the most part, you hit it. But because you have months and years of evidence against you being able to reach your goals, it's just going to take some time. And that bleeds into that self-believe, the confidence. Can you say something and do it and follow through and then pick it right back up and bounce back. Whether that's after a day, week, months, I don't care. Like I said, whenever you're listening to this, go on your walk now or tomorrow morning. First thing, pick up your journal again. It might've been months. Pick it up. Maybe you haven't been to the gym consistently. Go tomorrow or now. You get a 30 minute session in. Hell, you can't get a 20 minute session in. You can even just go on a 10 minute walk. I don't care. Do something. Pick it right back up, bounce back. And understand that sometimes to achieve balance in life, we're just going to have to zoom out a little bit more. Understanding there's times, you know, where we really push and times that we give ourselves a little bit of grace and say, Hey, you know what? I can only do so much right now. This is what I'm going to do because doing something is still better than nothing. And with that, I just want to wrap it up. This was really just a lot of just thoughts, letting it flow. Okay. Not really very structured, a little bit of back and forth, a little bit of side quests here and there. It's okay. Okay. We're back. Like I said, I had to do the same thing. I had to do the same thing. I was done with my client check-ins. I'm like, Hey, yo, I made a promise to myself also. And I want to follow through because the fastest way to destroy your own confidence and self-belief is to not follow through. All right. And I got to live up to that as well. So here we are. Have an amazing week. Thank you for being patient. All right. I'm always here. If you need any help, if you just want to go back and forth, chat, podcast suggestions, questions, whatever it is, let me know. Hit me up on Instagram. Or obviously if you're a client listening to this, message me in the app, message me in the app, say, Hey, boom, this is something I want to hear like a deep dive. Hey, this is someone I've been following on social media. Can you bring one as a guest? Let me know. Cool. This goes for both, just any listeners, but especially my clients, like any suggestions, any questions, let me know. Cool. Have a great week. I'll talk to you soon.