Q&A: Can I treat myself over the Easter Holiday?

So I'm on a coaching call with one of my clients yesterday afternoon and been working with this guy for about 8 weeks now, and we're going over his progress so far, how well he's been doing, what things he's been struggling with, what he maybe needs to tweak moving forward, and so on. And then towards the end of the call, he says to me, as it's Easter, am I allowed to take time off? Now, questions like this are always interesting to me because First off, I feel like you're a grown-ass man. Why are you asking me for permission? Can I take time off? It's like, it's your diet, it's your lifestyle, you can do what you like. But I get where he's coming from. Obviously he's doing this thing, he's trying to, to reach his body transformation goals. Currently lost around 12 pounds in the past 8 weeks, and of course looking to lose more. But then he's like, well, can I take time off over Easter? Or should I stick to my diet? And what we first have to remember, or what I had to remind him, was, well, we're not really doing a diet because I don't really believe in diets, because diets always imply that it's a temporary intervention. But if we want long-term or lifelong transformation, we have to actually make a lifestyle change and of course eat in a new way that aligns with our goal, but that's not ideally— or sorry, that's ideally not a diet, because diets are often over-restrictive and not fun to, to stick to, and often they're just completely unsustainable. So we're not looking to diet, we're literally looking to change the way that we eat in a way that gets us our goals but also sustains us in a way that obviously keeps the body healthy so that it's not over time just going to become depleted. Yes, I got my weight loss goals, but I've ended up ill as a result of it. So the, the main two points that I, that I called out for him or mentioned to him was, in reality, it's your choice. As an adult, we get to make our own decisions. Now, yes, of course it's fine for people to come to me, ask for my advice. What do you think I should do, Ty? You're the coach, you're the one with the experience. And of course I will give them my advice, but at the same time, you have to be able to now take that advice and decide if it's what you actually want. In other words, is the consequence of my advice the consequence you want to live with? Because you might decide, you know what, I'm going to stay on plan and eat well all throughout Easter. And you might find, oh, well, as a result of that, I continue to get my body transformation results. But because I didn't allow myself to indulge in the fun and all of the, the, the food and indulgence that everybody else had, I didn't actually enjoy the time. So we then have to go, okay, well, what's more important to me right now? Reaching the goal of losing the body fat and the weight or having what I would perceive as a good time if I'm thinking that not indulging and so on isn't going to be as much fun. And then we get to choose which one of these outcomes we want to live with because it's not really about, oh, you shouldn't have had those bad foods, naughty, naughty you. It's more a case of, well, what do you really want right now? Are you happy to kind of take a week off and maybe not lose some weight, or maybe there's a way you could actually still continue to lose weight and have some fun and enjoy some of the treats and things that you might want to have. Because the truth is, you can. It just depends on the extreme you want to go to. But for 90% of us, unless you've got some kind of metabolic illness or condition going on, there is a very good chance you can continue to lose weight and still allow yourself to have the treats, the sweets, the snacks, and all the different things that you think you might have to give up. You can still keep carbs in your diet. You can still keep sugar. If you like pizza, you can still keep that. You can keep all the junk food that you love. You're just, of course, going to have to back it off in the respect that you can't go and rely on it or indulge in it all throughout the whole week and then still expect to get a good result. But if you want to occasionally engage in these things, Generally speaking, most of us can handle that. I've said to you guys many times in the past, as long as we're doing at least the 80/20 rule, most of us will get really, really good results. Now, of course, if we're getting to a point where we're like, you know what, I don't just want weight loss, I actually want a visible six-pack, I want to see clear definition and maybe striation and definition in my muscles and so on. Well, now it's different. We maybe need to, need to go further than that 80% rule. And look at maybe 90/10 or 95/5 for some of us, because the truth is, of course, the more extreme the result, the more extreme my approach has to be. But we have to weigh that up in context of, well, what lifestyle am I happy to live with and which lifestyle can I maintain? At what level can I maintain these actions, my nutrition, the recovery, the intensity of training and so on? And most of us are not fussed about looking like a Greek god. We just want a slimmer, fitter, leaner, stronger body that enables us to do the things we want to do on a daily basis without aches, without pains, without feeling low self-esteem, without having low confidence, without feeling ashamed or guilty about the way we look. And that's enough. And then, of course, there are others who do want more. We do want the six-pack and we do want the muscles and all the rest of it. And you can have it at any level you want and still have some of these treats, sweets and snacks and so on. You've just got to find the line that works for you. So it's not a case of, oh, well, because Easter's going and you're trying to now lose weight, well, you better not indulge in Easter. Well, you can, but of course, if you want to get results as well this week, then you might not want to go all in on Easter. You would remain all in on your body transformation result, the weight loss, but you would just allow yourself to have some of your— the indulgences that you want, whether it's chocolate or whatever it might be that you're going to have over the weekend. Have it. Don't feel guilty because that's another big problem that many of us have is often we will allow ourselves to have these things and then guilt and shame and blame ourselves for having done it. And unfortunately, on the physiological perspective, as in, in terms of our actual health and our body's biology, it's more unhealthy for you to feel guilty about it than it was to actually have the thing in the first place, because that ongoing guilt and negative emotion will have more of a detrimental and long-term effect than just having the one-off food or treat or sweet and then just getting on with your diet as you were prior to it. So first thing is, which consequence do you want? Having the fun, the treat, the sweet, the snack, and maybe not losing weight? Or would you prefer to lose the weight? That will then tell you which side you need to lean. Do I need to stay eating clean and healthy, or will I allow myself some of the, the treats and sweets as well? And then I might not get quite the same weight loss result that I would this week. And then secondly, if I do choose to indulge, am I going to feel guilty about it? Am I now going to feel shit, talk shit about myself, and make myself feel bad for having gone off plan for a few days? If yes, then I would recommend you don't do it. But if you can have it and just be like, oh well, I just chose to have this thing because I wanted it and from tomorrow or from later on today, I'll get back on plan and continue doing what I had intended. Then I don't see that it's a single problem at all. There should never be— what we want to avoid having is guilt around anything that we choose to consume. Now, unfortunately, some of us have crap going on from our past, etc., and reasons why we constantly put ourselves into situations where we need to feel guilty through sabotage and things like that. And that's of course where we need to then do mindset work and so on. But I won't get into that for this video because we're talking about should we treat over Easter. But just know that sometimes there is, there are times where we're on an unconscious level deliberately tripping ourselves up so that we can put ourselves in these negative emotional states. But generally when that's not the case, if you can genuinely engage in a thing, as in a bad thing that you shouldn't be doing, and not feel guilty about it, go for it. It's not going to harm you as long as you then get back on track once you've done it, had the enjoyment and the fun of the thing, whatever it was, the cake, the sweet, the treat, and then back on plan, continuing to push towards your goals. And it will have very little, if any, detrimental effect at all as long as you're willing to get back on track and don't use it as an excuse to remain off, off track and off target. So any questions on this one, guys, drop them below and I'll get them answered for you as quickly as I can. And if not, I hope you all have an awesome Easter weekend, and I look forward to chatting with you all in my next video. Take it easy, people.