things will not go according to plan and that's exactly the plan what's up welcome back to the podcast my name is Johan Vesters your host as always welcome it's good to have you back the Talking Nutrition now today's gonna be good one all right because things within your control outside of your control we talk about that quite often with my clients challenges being put on your path specifically to test you obstacles put in place to test you and to hopefully make you respond the right way learn grow by overcoming the obstacle things not going according to plan understanding that bad days are good data it's all just feedback and i'll tell you this and it sounds funny maybe as a coach but when i see my client have their first bad day their first bad week it's not if it's when it's when we're all human okay but if i see a client have their first bad day their first bad week their first challenge their first mistake whatever i get excited and it's not because i like to see my clients feel bad about certain things or no not at all but i just understand this is where we grow and learn okay this is where you grow and learn if you respond rationally not emotionally you zoom out slow down take a deep breath and you objectively assess the situation what happened you ask a few questions hey why let me let me try to understand myself even if it's a pure just an emotional thing right emotional eating stress eating or we completely just kind of give up for a week or for the day or we feel like we fucked up right and we check in with our coach and we say well i can't even think of a weekly win okay it's really easy to sometimes respond emotionally and it's not always easy to in those moments zoom out slow down and think about things but once you've calmed down a bit there's so much value in taking a deep breath and asking a few questions what happened why what am i gonna do about it i get excited for bad days i get excited for bad weeks i know that is where my client learns the most as long as we ask ourselves those questions why what can i do about it next time let me try to understand the situation what was that first little domino that triggered this whole chain of events okay all an off day is really right let's call it off plan i don't even like the term off plan because realistically everything is on plan realistically everything is part of the plan you can have the perfect meal plan you can have the perfect workout routine you can have the perfect intentions i'm gonna go to bed on time i'm gonna not scroll my phone i'm gonna drink my water i'm gonna get my steps in my fruits and vegetables these are cool but you're not going to stick with that every single day you're not going to manage every single situation ever you're not going to not make mistakes you will let that be clear you will and if you go into any fat loss fitness health journey with that expectation you're setting yourself up for failure all you're going to do is let yourself down because you're going to be hit with reality the reality of we make mistakes okay so what we have bad days so what we have bad weeks and months so what we overate we underate we missed a workout we didn't sleep enough who cares all that matters is how you respond let me objectively just zoom out slow down take a deep breath assess the situation let's try to understand ourselves a little bit better here let's try to make a point of learning from these situations and actually just put yourself a third person i mentioned this recently put yourself a third person and just assess the situation for a second feel the feelings feel the emotions but understand that the emotions and feelings can be there without having to become this massive thing okay let them be there feel them but then let's do this what happens just point it out without judging what happened cool okay why okay what are you going to do about that's all you got to do you think as a coach i expect my clients to perfectly nail their macros from day one to live on a meal plan to do everything perfect no i tell them in week one hey look i'm not expecting perfection that is not what we are here for okay we're here to learn grow adapt we are here to make mistakes but feel forward okay and actually i heard about this recently i gotta google this real quick so give me a second so definition of fail i think it was fail just stands for first attempt in learning that's what it was and i just loved it okay first attempt in learning and that's something i'm going to be mentioning to my clients because that's all it is we just tried and we didn't manage okay what who cares what it doesn't have to be a big deal what are we going to do about it next time okay your skill is going to go up sometime even in the middle of a fat loss phase i've seen one plus kilo fluctuations you know what i see them every single week every single week i see people with a higher scale weight than i want to see in the middle of their fat loss phase so what did you stick to the plan yeah did you hit your macros at least on average yeah did you get your steps in your workouts yeah okay well you did your part that skill will follow it's just not going to be down every single day weight fluctuations are normal and obviously we've talked about this so many times but stress salt intake hydration status what you ate how much you ate what time you had your last meal have you been to the bathroom yet digestion inflammation long flights the list goes on there's so many reasons for that skill to be up let's just slow down for a second are you responding to that skill being up emotionally or assessing the situation rationally and thinking okay well i hit my macros my steps i did good this week okay all good we move on you know what even better let's actually look at measurements wait measurements are changing we're dropping body fat cool we continue but do we really think that life is going to be perfect that now just because you decided to have a goal the stars are going to align for you to reach that goal you really think there's going to be no challenge along the way you really think that you're the only person in the world who's not allowed to make mistakes i don't think so right this journey is really damn imperfect and i want you to understand that that is okay messy action messy action goes such a long the action taker will beat the perfectionist every single time you know what i'm not that impressed by you executing when everything is easy and everything goes according to plan i'm not impressed show me how you do when this challenge comes up show me how you respond when shit hits the fan show me how you respond when you planned perfectly but you didn't manage to follow the plan life threw you a curveball and guess what that just happened to me which is the whole reason i'm recording this podcast okay so i'm currently in the process of moving i have all my belongings up in boxes i'm literally looking at them right now well they're supposed to be in storage i rented a storage unit i rented a trailer i rented a rental car or at least i thought i did so this afternoon i go to the rental car place to find the machine not working okay so i call the people i'm like hey you know i got this reservation and couldn't pick up my car and then they tell me your reservation is for tomorrow and i'm like shit okay i planned for everything today was going to be moving day because tomorrow monday check-in day but i called them i said hey is there something you can figure out for me right because i also have you know status with the rental company and stuff so usually they're pretty helpful there and i just gave them a call hey you know couldn't check in and they actually told me okay so yeah it's actually for tomorrow i'm like you know i made a mistake i was planning on you know moving everything over need to be out of this apartment is there anything you can do okay no they made a few phone calls and they said stay right there someone's gonna be there within 30 minutes probably shorter but you know max 30 minutes so i waited not a big deal i made a mistake all good thank you very much for your help perfect i'm gonna wait so i walked to a cafe got myself a coffee walked back and i waited and i waited a bit longer and then a little bit longer and it was 40 minutes so i was like you know let me call got someone else on the phone and i said hey look i called you guys earlier and you know you called to the rental company here in Tromsø and you were gonna send someone over and i was just wanted you know just wanted to make sure if they are on their way or not just so i know when to expect it and they said well if they said someone's coming they're on their way so cool waited a little bit longer and by this time i'm sitting there for 60 minutes 60 minutes of just you know assuming someone's gonna be there not a big deal right i wasn't in a rush i was you know hoping to get some moving that already by then but you know still have plenty of time so it was not a big deal but then after a full hour i'm like let me just call just in case okay that that time i actually got the same guy on the phone which was great i was like hey called you guys earlier oh yeah you're the guy you know okay perfect and i said look hey not a big deal but i'm trying to to start moving and stuff and you told me it was going to be maybe 30 minutes max and it's been 60 minutes by now so i'm just you know just trying to check if they're on their way or could you make me make a phone call just so i know they're actually coming or not otherwise i'll just have to come back tomorrow no worries either way so they made a phone call they call me back okay well actually they said they were going to send someone but that person didn't pick up so they're not coming okay bummer and i said hey is there anything you can maybe do so you know they said unfortunately right now no but you can go tomorrow right it's going to be there as you know your reservation says um and that's all i can do for you okay not a big deal so my life's here in boxes supposed to have a full check-in day tomorrow and i didn't manage to to get my stuff moved so now i'm gonna have to pick up that rental car tomorrow 12 and spend half of what would be a work day figuring out the moving stuff getting my stuff into storage and all that and that sounds frustrating and annoying maybe the 60 minute wait not knowing if someone's gonna show up and then once you wait for a full hour they don't show planning to have all your stuff moved out of this apartment so that when the owners come back which luckily isn't tuesday so i have a little bit of a good room okay so that when the owners are back it's tidy none of my stuff is still here and cleaned and right guess what shit doesn't go according to plan it happens in life it's okay what are we gonna do sit there and be frustrated that we have to wait i was in no rush was i really hoping to get everything done yeah of course was getting a little you know bummed and a little impatient sometimes you know because i was like you know 40 minutes 50 and but the guy on the phone was super helpful he was just doing his job right he made the phone call he made an effort to help me out he even checked you know so anything else they could do well they couldn't unfortunately they couldn't move my reservation which was just because that office or that kiosk whatever i was closed on sunday and at the other place they didn't have something available so yeah big fucking deal so we pivot now either way i was going to record this podcast today sunday you know evening so that's fine so we just pivot after this podcast i'm going to be doing my check-ins now i'm grateful that i do have the freedom in you know running my own business and setting my own schedule and actually being able to adapt and say you know what not a big deal i'm gonna knock out as many check-ins as possible because by this time i'm recording it's like 5 45 pm by this time most clients are checking in those who are submitting their check-in form on sunday are just about now sending them in and i got some eager people who are super early always but okay cool so they get an early follow-up like what's literally like is it even a bad situation no we just adapt shit doesn't go according to plan you adapt and you move on that's all you got what else do we have in life right we're gonna sit here and just feel sorry for ourselves because all these factors outside of control it's all it's unfair it's difficult it's inconvenient yeah guess what that's life that's life and it's up to us to deal with it now it might not always be our fault but it's always going to be our problem to deal with okay so it's funny too because i had a note in my content ideas earlier this week already because i told the client bad days good data okay and i just kind of tweaked the episode because look really all you got to be is just a little resourceful really all you got to do is just not let your emotions decide everything for you keep it nice and objective feel the feelings of course but then at least do something about it because it's okay to feel like shit it's not okay to not do something about the state you're currently in if you're unhappy about anything in life that's cool then let's do something about it and like i just gave you the example she's not going to go according to plan and that is exactly when you will set yourself apart now obviously for me in this case i adapted not a big deal hey okay well then i'll just work today i'll just spend my sunday evening working did i plan to no but i don't mind i like doing check-ins so it's all good you know but look i didn't plan to do that okay i'll do it anyway so now i'll do my check-ins i'll have more time tomorrow to do the other stuff you know what because everything is packed and ready it probably won't take that much time anyway but like i said before like i'm really not you know impressed if you just show up when everything goes according to plan i'm really not impressed if you can only hit your macros in perfect conditions i really not i want to see you overcome a tough week okay i want to see you feel forward meaning learning from your mistakes instead of making mistake and a feeling so sorry for ourselves that we you know we might as well give up we might as well stop trying you see i just showed myself that i can't do no yes we might have done it again but how much reflecting are we doing how much are we actually trying to course correct how proactive do you actually think through the issue so that we can then come with a plan b or a plan c or a plan d and then we just keep course correcting until we figure it out i know look the people i coach especially early on but just in general right these are hard workers and maybe you're listening to this as a client and like look you guys really do your best and i know you want to perform well you invest in yourself you invest in my program you want to show up you do the work at least that's your intention it comes from a good place trying to do it really well trying to do your best look me too i'm in other programs you know coaching programs and every single year i've done multiple courses to improve my skills as a coach i want to get the most out of it too so that's i need to get everything right that the perfectionist like that doing good mindset it's a good thing in a way because obviously yeah i want you to show up but look it's easy to go hard when life puts everything in place for you but there's going to be a moment where there's a bump in the road okay my clients don't aim for whole foods for every single meal every single time we go with the 80 20 or 90 10 ratio okay i like 90 10 for fat loss but you know 80 20 goes a long way meaning 80 of whole foods or 80 of your calories come from whole foods 20 anywhere else okay tracking macros look if you get stressed because you can't get this tracking perfect that's you when you track macros you're supposed to track macro ranges and if you're new to this concept i will teach you this now if you to try to track your macros and you try to hit it to the ground you are doing it wrong for protein and carb targets there needs to be a 10 gram range both ways meaning you can be 10 grams above or below that target and it would still be considered pretty damn perfect for your fat target because fats are much higher in calories you have five grams of wiggle room that is considered perfect that is close enough guess what even that is incorrect or i'll put it this way it's not a hundred percent correct it's close but guess what you know how people like human beings some have more body fat some have more muscle and the other way around probably the same thing for any animal we might be eating right exactly so what about these food databases it's all averages foods will differ great example for it for example i learned a while ago that hey if you eat two brazil nuts today you cover your selenium for the day guess what turns out the selenium content per brazil nut can make a massive difference some might be way higher some way lower you see you're working with averages tracking macros is imperfect by nature it is not a hundred percent accurate by nature but that's okay because if you stay consistent with your food that you minimize your variables you have some type of structure in place you're close enough you're consistent and if you have consistent data we can tweak whether something is 150 calories or 100 if your intakes actually tracked within those ranges that just taught you you're close enough and now we can tweak look maybe you have a perfect plan let's say you've been tracking your food but you struggle not to or you've been doing really well like one of my clients i'm thinking of now she's on a roll and she actually told me well at this point i feel like i kind of don't want to go to the halloween party because i don't want to go sober so we had a conversation around that we're still kind of in that conversation and i'm like okay so you know there's a few things to unpack there of course i mean that's that should be a whole other topic and then podcasts because it doesn't have to be boring if you're sober i did it for 13 years it's look i've been on tour with bands who are all drinking and it's fine but it's your own mindset around these things but okay i don't want you to be able to only function when things are planned prepped by you like that's not life and yeah i know you might think well now i'm in this program i guess what this program is supposed to teach you how to respond to social settings and how to manage social settings you think life is going to be 100 whole foods no because that's all or nothing if you really want to stay home from a party we're looking forward to just because you can't get all the categories correct like that's that's taking it too far okay but it's a whole side other side note side rent okay we'll talk about that but let's imagine you've had a harder time including social settings and you follow my framework reflect plan and execute or at least you did the reflect part you know what you want to do differently we plan we have specific steps that we set for ourselves and then the execute part either we didn't do it or maybe didn't go according to plan okay cool reflect again was this an effort thing was it a social pressure thing or peer pressure right was it something else did you go in hungry because you thought it was a great idea to save calories really all we're trying to do guys is just get a little damn curious here and then we just try again next time especially this time of year november dst time there's going to be plenty of social settings you're going to have lots of practice there's going to be a lot of non-perfect moments and that's exactly part of the plan you know why it's difficult for people this time of year because those social settings and obviously there's a little bit of that mindset too we talked about it last time it's holidays not holiday months but you know most people don't have self-control most people can't do moderation most people eat like shit already so then yeah if you then also layer on top all the holiday meals yeah then we really start to add things up but if your diet is pretty damn solid during the week going back to that 80 20 principle like if you follow that pretty consistently and the more we zoom out actually so i'm really worrying here about a few days in christmas time but if i zoom out well the last nine months i've been killing it okay maybe just maybe we could be a little bit more relaxed going into that christmas dinner knowing that you're already killing it and that one meal is not going to offset nine months of hard work now can you overeat absolutely is it hard to include three four thousand calorie days yeah i don't don't recommend you do it but look The Odyssey includes imperfection The Odyssey includes days where you're not going to make those meals yourself and you're going to be with other people where you might not even get a saying in where you're going for food you might go to a wedding you don't know what's going to be on the menu you might go to family friends they're cooking what are you going to do like ask them like hey you know can you weigh out the food for me because no of course not try to not take perfection so far that like you can only function when things go according to plan hell most of my clients are parents moms specifically you know your kids gonna get sick at some point right lack of sleep maybe no appetite for yourself right because usually when those kids get sick you might catch it as well or or maybe it's just them and you're just need to spend more time taking care of them okay what are you going to do is the fact that your kid gets sick such a thing that throws you off so much that you can't function anymore and take care of yourself where did those habits go i don't know obviously it's it's a understandable thing right yes i want you to be there take care of your kid but look you're still going to eat right you're still going to eat healthy right still got your goals maybe we need to you know course correct a little bit but one inconvenience in life throws you off completely what about injury look example i had a client of mine she lost a lot of weight 15 kilos that's about 30 35 pounds right she lost a bunch of weight we got her lifting weights things are going really well and then she had this idea hey i want to get into running cool awesome you know what i encourage it now that you're you know done with a big weight loss journey i think now it kind of makes sense to layer in some running let's see how you like it but i warn you having made this mistake myself a lot of people going into running and especially now these days 2026 the running hype is kind of back right it's almost like 2012 when i got my first nike running band and the nike running app and all that but good times anyway look i took it too far and i injured myself so i warned my client hey look i've seen this happen firsthand not just in myself but also with other clients i told her look i get it that you're excited there's a bit of a hype going around currently also with the running but please be careful because running specifically especially if you get into it not learning like the the techniques not having the right shoes you can hurt yourself so just take it slow and she didn't exactly how i did in 2012 and then she got injured and then she couldn't run at all and that lasted multiple months going to a physio rehab training she couldn't run at all i did warn her and it's not one of those hey told you so moments but i did warn her and okay the real point being this was such a factor for her that it took over her complete mindset this turned everything negative this turned the whole situation from being fired up motivated or at the gym boom to everything sucks stop tracking stop weighing so you know now i got on a coaching call we talked things through and we got it to a good spot again so there's a silver lining to this story but i'm glad i was there with her because she was in a spiral unable to stop herself and so i said hey let's do a call let's do it tomorrow you got time cool what time boom let's book it i saw it happen i saw it happen now this needs to be said too i gotta give her the credit because she is actually still then the person who says yeah you know what yes let's do this call let's actually talk about this boom guess what we did we adapted we said okay well running's off the table for now we kind of knew that was going to be the case right when you just hurt yourself and we're now talking four or five months later okay we got to do something else here way before this running thing i remember you telling me hey i'm enjoying this weightlifting part it's fun to see i'm lifting heavier weights it's fun to see i'm understanding technique better and that i get more reps it's fun you were loving the progress can we go back to can we find something there she said okay cool so i got these you know exercises for my physio i want to keep doing them okay i was like perfect so let's do this for the the lag side of things you're just going to keep doing your physio and then you're going to take this workout program and then we're going to skip this and then all you're going to do is take the upper body stuff from that program and then you just do that and then maybe you get really strong arms okay cool maybe you get a strong back okay cool it's still going to be building your muscle and then maybe down the road you can layer in some legs again once you're fully rehabbed solution what could have very easily been just her maybe just regaining the whole weight because she stopped tracking and everything okay and then when she started tracking again her food log needed a lot of work again it was not looking good okay just another example life's imperfect you get hurt okay adapt training just work around it i messed up my my knee for a long time from that running so i couldn't do any squatting okay well i could still do bench still do shoulders and back i could still do some other things work around the issue and you can do the same thing with non-training things right now the skill we already talked about of course the fluctuations which we just know to expect let's also talk about not having a plan and i don't mean having a plan meaning every single meal everything is shopped everything is prepped yes i teach these concepts but a plan being i'm gonna go do this xyz let's actually include these parts okay so let's say hey i'm going to plan saturday shopping plan a sunday meal prep and then boom we're good for the week or for your schedule it might be different that's part of it but what about planning for the fact that on friday it's your partner's birthday which you knew already and on saturday you're going to a wedding which you were invited for months ago you're gonna tell me that's the surprise i don't think so right that's poor planning if you don't plan for those things and then on the day itself you act surprised shit well you didn't plan not just that you didn't do your saturday shopping because you're at the wedding okay you didn't plan because you knew this was coming up so hey let's look at our schedule actually thursday friday we're gonna be busy actually saturday said you know it doesn't matter what day but you can look at the days coming up you can say okay well maybe i can do my shopping on thursday then i can still at least make sure that when we get back home we'll have enough food i don't want to go shopping on sunday you know what i can skip my meal prep i can just make extra dinner on sunday evening so that the next day i have my lunch leftovers and then on monday i can do my shopping or maybe on monday i can do a meal prep you know what i mean you do need to plan for these things not in in the sense of every single meal every single food but like have an idea what you're going into it's sunday right now and i'm actually putting this podcast up early so this will be up pretty much right away after recording but it's sunday sit down for a second plan for your week and i'm saying weddings and birthdays but look what about your job what about picking up the kids after work dropping them off again driving to practice hobbies hobbies people you're going to visit or people who are visiting you you know this stuff's coming up right plan a little bit better it makes such a difference and when i say planning you know what we can take this even a step further we can make a plan we can also make a plan for what happens when i cannot follow the plan how will i respond this comes straight from psychology research and behavior change if then planning if this happens then i will do x if then and with that question or with that sentence you can get really down creative let me give you some gold here okay write down exactly what you want out of life everything what do you wish for not just a lower weight on the scale no like how do you want to feel who are you how do you show up on a daily basis what are you like who do you spend your time with map it out in detail and before we even get to the steps to take to to make it happen which will become very clear once you start putting things on paper let's list out every single obstacle let's list out every difficult thing that is making it so that that dream life you you picture and vision is currently not a reality yet list out every single obstacle you know will come up if you're an emotional eater you know that is going to be a challenge to work through if you're really damn busy then that's something to address you know what mistakes you're making already you know it whether you want to address them or not whether you actually want to look in the damn mirror or not you know your weaknesses we all have them i have them we all do as a human but if you write those down you look yourself in the mirror you write down those challenges and obstacles that you know will come up you make one if then plan per obstacle and challenge it might still not go perfect but at least you did a little bit of pre-work right if you know like for myself i know that the saturday shop and sunday meal prep works really nicely guess what if i want to go on a road trip on saturday we go camping that shop's not happening okay if i can shop on saturday i will do it on monday for example that's it if i overeat again i will do my best to pick it right back up from the very next meal if i miss my protein target again then i will make sure to review my food log look at what meal was low on protein and fix that specific and we could keep going if then if then if then per obstacle per challenge that's that's some goal right there now again you're gonna have to look in the mirror but it's all about expectations because let's be honest man like i'll just repeat what i said in the beginning of this podcast like just because you have this goal now you think the world's gonna put everything that's in place for you everything like every traffic light is going to be green as soon as you approach it right the stars align it's not going to go that way who are you kidding now i get it it can feel like that when early on in this journey especially when you're that like you know the high motivation and you know finally we're getting started i'm investing in myself especially then if you get a coach like myself yeah cool but uh guess what you're gonna have plans that something or someone will completely throw off how are you gonna respond you will have times where you just didn't make an effort to plan and then you're gonna have to deal with the consequences okay how are you gonna respond there are times where you do something and you kind of know it's a good idea but you know you do it anyway like the running example also there it's gonna probably keeps out of the gym for a minute but okay we just adapt and i could keep listening but i guess you get the point bad days are good data bad weeks are good data shitty seasons are good data because if anything is really the bad times in life that will lead to the most growth if you choose to listen to life's lessons because life will continue to teach you the same lesson over and over and over and over again until you listen until you learn and grow and adapt and then once you change obviously there's something needs to be set for outside factors you cannot control right let's be honest here but look it's all within your control at least for how you respond it's not always your fault it's gonna be your problem to deal with and this journey is not going to be perfect okay so this part is gonna go up right away enjoy this enjoy your sunday evening and this upcoming week you know what bonus points if you're gonna start if then planning right away right now okay i'm gonna end it up with a few more questions for yourself so you got the if then planning already i told you hey like visualize what you want out of life write down all the obstacles and challenges you know will come up and just write if then plans like what are you going to do about that specific thing coming up remember too that if something happens you can always ask yourself what happened why what am i going to do about it if you maybe want to add to this you could say what was within my control or what wasn't within my control for example and if it's anything food related what's my next meal going to be right what's tomorrow going to look like because today it wasn't perfect cool not a big deal but how will i respond next time what will i try differently how do i get just one percent better tomorrow and most importantly how will i do that thank you again for listening to Talking Nutrition trust me i get a little frustrated too with this whole moving situation but guess what i'm gonna make the mess of it i'm gonna dive right into my client check-ins i will talk to you very soon and as always my dms are open for anyone clients obviously you guys have access to me you know throughout the week through our own app of course but also non-clients if you're listening here you're not a client of mine of course hit me up anytime you got my instagram in the show notes okay happy to answer any question i will talk very soon have a great week and of course if you're going through a tough time reach out either to me or a friend or family member because one thing as a final little note is that figuring this whole thing out shouldn't have to be just up to you if you are having a hard time all right i'll talk to you soon