105. Lessons Learned in 2021 and Looking Forward to 2022

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 105 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about lessons I’ve learned in 2021. And looking forward to 2022.

So 2021 is coming to a close. And if you’re listening to this episode on the day that it comes out, it comes out on December 31. So literally, this is the last day of the year. And I don’t know about you, but I always get kind of introspective this time of the year.

I love this time of the year because I can reflect on what I’ve learned this past year, how I’ve changed how much I’ve grown. And I can take a good look at the progress I’ve made.

I think it’s important for all of us to have a look at the lessons we learn as we go along. So that we can continue to grow and evolve and become the badass that we ultimately want to be. So in this podcast, I’m going to share a few of the biggest lessons that I learned in 2021.

And also share what I’m looking forward to in 2022. And I want to encourage you to do the same, I want to encourage you to take some time before we get too far into this new year to reflect on some of the important lessons that you’ve learned this past year and how they’ve shaped who you are today.

And then I want you to think about where you’re going, who do you want to be by this time next year? Because this is a choice that you get to make, cool? So if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast Community on Facebook, you get weekly coaching and training from me. And you can also get support and encouragement from a group of runners just like you to help you crush your goals in 2022.

Just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook and join in the fun. And then remember the Running Lean Coaching group starting in January, we want to start the new year with some massive momentum, I want to help you develop the habits you need to lose weight for good.

And we have this big challenge going on in the group in January. The goal is to lose 8 pounds by January 31. And don’t worry if you don’t know how you’re going to do that, we’re going to show you exactly how to do it step by step and you’re going to get the support of me and the support and encouragement of everybody else in the group to help you crush that goal.

We’re gonna do it together. Okay. And January is an awesome time to get started with this not because of New Year’s resolutions, but because marathon training is just getting underway. So it’s like the perfect time for you to become fat-adapted.

So you can crush your spring races and it doesn’t have to be a marathon, it could be half marathon, 5k, 10k. It can just be a good time for you to just make this change for yourself. Okay, so I want to help you to learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine so you can run without bonking, lose weight without losing your mind and develop the habits that you need to make it last a lifetime.

If you’re interested in joining the group, we’d love to have you just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And then the most powerful way to hit all of your health and fitness goals, really, is to have someone there guiding you every step of the way, helping you overcome all of your personal struggles, showing you things about yourself that you just don’t see someone that’s holding you accountable, and somebody that’s there to keep you on the right track.

And this is what I do as your coach. And I’d love to work with you in the new year and help you absolutely crush all of your health and fitness goals in 2022. And I want to encourage you to make an investment into yourself in 2022 to make this the year that you finally become the lean, strong, badass runner that you’ve always wanted to be. You can apply for coaching over at runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

Alright, let’s get into this today. So lessons I’ve learned in 2021 and looking forward to what’s coming in the new year. So like I said before, I get kind of introspective this time of the year right. It’s a great time for me in a way to look back to see what I’ve learned, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, and what I want more of in the new year. Also maybe some things that I want to leave behind. Okay.

So I think it’s important that we are always evaluating where we are, how far we’ve come. And where do we want to go next right? Am I heading in the right direction? Am I making progress towards my goals? Am I staying true to myself throughout this whole process? Am I fulfilling the promises that I’ve made to myself? Am I be becoming the person that I set out to become?

Or am I kind of off track with all that? Right? This is a good time of the year to start reflecting on some of these questions. And I think you should just kind of do this on a regular basis. And, and I do this with my coaching clients, we’re always checking in and we’re just always kind of seeing where we are with things, right. It’s such a great time, the end of the year to see what you’ve accomplished this past year.

And to start thinking ahead, like, who do I want to be this time next year, like this is a perfect time to start kind of reflecting on where you are today and where you want to go? Okay.

So some of the lessons I’ve learned in 2021. And by no means is this a list of everything I’ve learned this past year because I mean, I could not possibly do that in one podcast episode. But there are some big lessons that I learned.

And these are like the most important ones, these are the ones that kind of stand out for me. And I hope you get something out of this because I think these are lessons that we can all learn.

So number one, the number one lesson I’ve learned, these are not in any particular order. But the first lesson I learned that I wanted to talk about today that I learned in 2021. Carbs are overrated. So I did some experimenting with carbohydrates and marathon training. And I did two different podcasts about these experiences, right.

Episode 71, I talked about zero-carb marathon training. And then Episode 98, I talked about how I use strategic carbs, to try to enhance my marathon training. And all throughout this past year, I’ve gone through periods of higher carb intake to see how it affected me. How did I feel? How was my overall health and fitness? How was my energy? How was my running? How was I sleeping, all those things, okay?

And the bottom line for me is that I just feel better when I’m not eating much in the way of carbs, right, I have more energy, my sleeping is better, my running performance is better. My endurance is better, I feel lighter, it helps me to stay leaner. And I’m just really like kind of sold on this idea that carbs are kind of overrated.

And we think that we have to have carbs all the time, in order to be like healthy. And you hear these messages all the time from people, especially like the food guidelines that are pushing like a 65% carbohydrate diet, you know, they’re just not essential. They’re not essential nutrients, right?

I’m not saying carbs can’t play a role in your health and fitness. I’m not saying carbs can’t play a role in your running performance, because they absolutely can. But for me, and for a lot of other people, they are just kind of overrated. They don’t do much for us. Okay.

The challenge with carbs is that you got to do it in such a way that supports your health and fitness that supports your weight loss goals that support your running goals. And that doesn’t cause you to backtrack, right? This is the tricky part about it.

Because a lot of the carbs that we kind of tends to focus on are the concentrated forms of carbs are the ones that cause us to overeat. They set us up for cravings, more and more carbs, and then, and then we’re in that cycle of excessive weight gain.

We’re not burning fat efficiently anymore. And for me, I don’t like that feeling. And so for me, I’ve decided that carbs are not essential. They’re overrated, I can do pretty well in fact better if I’m just keeping them super low. And, and I feel better about myself. Okay, so this was just a lesson I played around with this year because I really wanted to get a feel for how this would affect my running performance, especially more than anything else.

But I just learned some lessons about how I felt and my overall health and fitness and energy levels, just I feel so much better when I’m just keeping the carbs low. Okay. So that was like one of the big ‘aha’ moments for me this past year, is that you know, I did some experimenting with carbs and they just kind of, you know, it’s okay. Kind of overrated, right?

The next big lesson I learned this past year was that resistance training is probably the best, absolutely best thing that you can do for your overall health and fitness. And I talked about this all the time, especially with my clients, we get into strength training right away, like this is such an important part of your overall health and fitness goal and strategy for whatever it is you’re trying to do for yourself. You want to feel better? Start lifting weights. You want to lose some weight? Start lifting weights. You want to be more efficient at burning fat and start lifting weights, you want to sleep better, you want to like the way you look naked, all that stuff.

I started lifting weights. I dramatically changed my body composition this past year. I started out the year. Back in February, I did some measurements, and I was 165 pounds 15.1% body fat 140.1 pounds of lean body mass and 24.9 pounds of fat mass. Okay.

By August of last year, so just about six months later exactly, I had gained 10 pounds. So I was 175 pounds, my body fat percentage went down 2.2% to 12.9%. So back in August, I was at 12.9% body fat, my lean body mass, my muscle mass had gone up 12.3 pounds. So I had gained 12.3 pounds of muscle in the course of six months.

So I went up to 152.4 pounds of lean body mass and my fat mass went down a little bit to 22.6 pounds of fat mass. So I lost like 2.3 pounds of fat during that process, okay. This alone had a profound impact on me, this past year, I felt so amazing, I felt much leaner and stronger.

I was sleeping so much better, have effectively increased my metabolism because the more muscle you’re carrying around, the faster your metabolism is, I burn fat more efficiently.

So I have all this all-day energy, my clothes fit better. I like the way I look naked, you know, I’m more confident I have higher self-esteem, I’m feeling better about myself, I’m just happier in general. And I’ve been able to maintain this with hardly any effort, right?

I do a resistance training program that I put together. And I’ve chosen with all my clients and it’s just it’s two days a week. And it’s only about a 20-30-minute workout twice a week. And that’s all it really requires you to gain muscle. And to get stronger.

You don’t have to become a gym rat, you don’t have to spend all your time at the gym, you don’t have to go six days a week and spend 90 minutes a time each time you’re there, you can do this in a way that supports your running goals that support your weight loss goals, supports your health and fitness goals and doesn’t take forever. Okay.

The important thing about this, though, is that resistance training takes some time, you know, it took me six months to make these changes, you know, and I was extremely disciplined about doing it right.

And I was logging all my workouts. And my goal was to change my body composition and I absolutely did that. And I’m going to get into kind of what my goal is going to be for this next year. Because I’ve taken a little bit of a step back, I’ve taken a little bit of a backtrack from this, a little bit of a setback with my rotator cuff surgery because I haven’t been able to lift weights or do any kind of resistance exercises upper body anyway, for the last five weeks or so.

And it’s going to be a while before I can get back into the gym and start lifting weights again, this is a long painful process this shoulder surgery I’m gonna talk about that in a minute here.

But just know that I’ve got some big goals for myself and I’m gonna make up all this, you know, this difference in my body composition that I maybe have lost over the last few weeks here. Definitely going to change that in the new year.

Okay, but resistance training, is probably the best thing you can do for your overall health and fitness. That’s a huge, huge lesson that I learned this past year.

Another big lesson I learned in this kind of ties into what I was just talking about is that discipline beats motivation every single time. The real key to accomplishing anything worthwhile is not motivation. It’s not like feeling motivated to do it but practicing discipline.

So motivation is is a feeling, it’s an emotion, okay? Discipline is a practice, it’s a behavior, it’s an action, it’s something you do. So I don’t always feel like doing something I don’t feel like working out, sometimes I don’t feel like paying my bills.

I don’t feel like running, if it’s raining outside, you may not feel like getting up early to go for your run in the dark, or you may not feel like you know, going to the gym. These are all feelings. This is you know, you may not have the motivation that feeling to do these things, right.

But instead of waiting to have a feeling, I want to encourage you to take action. And this is what I have done this past year, there’s a big difference between the motivation feeling, and discipline, the practice of taking action.

Motivation is great if you’re feeling it, right. But if you’re not, and I promise you, there will be times when you just don’t feel it. What do you do? Do you just not do the thing, because that’s what a lot of people do. They’re like, well, I just wasn’t motivated. So I didn’t do it.

But this is where the practicing of discipline has to come into play, okay. You have to do the thing. Despite how you feel about it. Your alarm goes off in the morning, and you don’t want to get up because you’re tired. You just want to sleep more you want to hit snooze, right.

So instead of doing that, you’re not motivated to get up. Instead of waiting for motivation to hit you, you’ve got to turn off your alarm, you’ve got to get your feet on the floor, you’ve got to practice the discipline of hitting the floor and getting up when your alarm goes off.

You know, if you don’t like paying your bills, like I don’t like paying my bills, you got to just like get into the practice of like opening up your computer, bouncing your bank account paying those bills, even though you’d rather do just about anything else. Right?

You got to practice the discipline of sticking to your food plan, even though you know, there’s like free doughnuts in the break room. Right? That requires discipline. Because I guarantee you, you’re not going to feel motivated to eat your salad when you’ve got doughnuts sitting over there.

You’re going to want to eat the doughnuts, right? You might feel motivated to eat doughnuts. So what do you do in that situation? Right? That’s where the practice of discipline has to come into play.

You may not feel like doing these things. But when you get good at practicing being disciplined, you’re going to have this internal drive, you’re going to develop this internal fire to do what you need to do, despite how you feel in the moment.

Okay, so discipline is going to beat motivation. Every single time. And this is a lesson that I learned this past year. It was what got me to dramatically change my body composition over the year, I wasn’t motivated to go to the gym every single day, I gotta tell you, there were a few months at the beginning there where it just there wasn’t a whole lot of change happening.

Change is very slow, and when you’re lifting weights, change happens slowly over time. But I promise you, if you stick with it, if you practice that discipline, you’re going to see big, big changes.

Another lesson I learned this past year was that self-care is essential to being a healthy and happy human being. So this surgery has really kicked my butt and I’ve been forced to take time off, I can’t run. I can’t work out. And I looked at when I was looking ahead towards having the surgery. And I knew I was going to have to take this time off here.

It didn’t come as a surprise to me. But it’s been much harder than I thought it was going to be, to be honest with you. And the only way that I can get through this is by taking care of myself, right? I have to slow down. I have to rest, I have to just sometimes. I have to just not do anything.

Oh, that is hard to do. Can you relate? Can you imagine just sitting around not doing anything? Oh my gosh, it’s very hard, right? Like, the goal for me was like during, you know, when I was thinking about how I was going to get through this downtime. I was like, Oh, I’m gonna do all this work.

I’m gonna be working on my book I’m gonna be so I’m so excited about all these things. And the reality is there are some days where I’m just glad if I make it through the day doing the bare minimum, honestly, and I’ve just had to accept this right?

I’ve had to practice some radical acceptance and leaning into this whole situation that I’m in right now. You know, I’m trying not to, like wish things were different. I’m trying not to fight against reality here and fight against what is. And I’m trying to practice self-care in this moment, it’s going to take a while, it’s going to take a while for me to heal and recover.

Apparently, this rotator cuff surgery is like one of the longest recovery periods for surgery, and it’s one of the most painful, and I’m experiencing that. I’m definitely experiencing that right now. Okay.

So, self-care is essential. And we have to practice this, sometimes I want you to get in the habit of practicing self-care, take some time off, take some downtime, embrace that, we get so into this idea that we have to be moving all the time. And we have to be active all the time.

And what if you just calm down? What if you just took a day off? What if you just didn’t do anything and enjoy yourself. And that’s where I’m at right now. I’m trying to enjoy this time off, I’m not fighting against it. I’m trying to practice this, this self-care and really feeling good about taking the time off hard to do. But what I’m working on is a big, big lesson for me.

And then one other lesson that I’m kind of in the middle of right now, that’s kind of tied into this. And it’s not something I’m ready to say that I’ve completely learned. But I’m in the middle of this right now, which is that I’m stronger than I give myself credit for sometimes, I’m stronger than I think.

Because this surgery has got me all messed up. Like I’m not sleeping well. I’m in pain pretty much all the time. This is week number five, still in a lot of pain, I can’t work out, can’t run. I’m more stressed out right now. Because of the lack of sleep and lack of exercise. You know, I’m taking some walks, that feels good. That’s about all I can do.

Right now I’m doing some starting to go back to the gym and doing some lower body workouts, which is cool, you know. And I know I’m going to get through it, but I’m not there yet. So this is a lesson that I’m sort of in the middle of, right, I know I’m going to come out of this stronger, but it’s going to take a while.

And I’m going to share the lessons that I learned from this experience with you later. I just want you to know that I’m kind of in the middle of this right now. But I’m using this as a reminder of how tough I am.

I am physically mentally emotionally tough. And eventually, I know I’m going to get through this and that I’m going to be much stronger because of it. Right? I’m just not there right now. It’s tough, but I’m getting through it. Okay. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with it being hard. I’m okay with it being challenging.

You know, I talk a lot about how the challenges change us. Absolutely. This challenge. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever been through in my life. I’m just going to be honest with you. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through. But I’m getting through it. And I’ve got a few more months of this, but you know what, I’m hanging in there. I’m persevering. I’m doing what it takes to take care of myself.

And then the last kind of lesson that I’ve learned in 2021 – this is more of like a phrase that I heard that really hit me hard. Okay. This phrase that I heard and less than I learned around this is the phrase passive action.

And it seems like kind of an oxymoron, right? Passive action. But passive action is when you’re doing a bunch of stuff that feels like you’re taking action toward a goal. But you’re really not taking action towards that goal.

Passive action is doing things like reading books and listening to podcasts, taking courses and watching YouTube videos and learning a bunch of stuff, learning information, which is great, but not actually doing anything with that information.

It’s the learning of the knowledge, which is great gaining knowledge, awesome, but you’re not applying the knowledge. And for me, I read a lot of books on business strategy and leadership. I listened to a lot of podcasts I learned of from other coaches in the industry.

I’m always honing my craft as a coach, as a mentor, as a leader. I’m always reading books and listening to podcasts and taking courses and certifications on beat becoming a well-rounded coach and leader. And I’m reading books on growing my business and you know, I’m learning a lot of stuff right, but I had to be honest with myself that I really wasn’t getting into action. Right and it’s like I said, it’s fine to learn new stuff. It’s fine to have the knowledge.

But I had to look at myself like, am I changing anything here is anything changing for me, nothing changes if nothing changes, right? So I had to be real, honest with myself and had to like sort of concede that I was taking a lot of passive action, right?

I’ve been doing this passive action thing where I’ve been learning without applying, I want to be a better coach, you know, I want to grow my impact, I want to have a bigger impact on the world. And I’ve been, you know, learning about it. And like toying with this idea, but I’ve never, I haven’t really done anything about it yet. Okay.

Maybe you’ve been doing the passive action thing, maybe you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, but never really implemented any stuff I talked about here, right? Maybe you understand the relationship you have with food in general or the relationship you have with sugar in particular, you realize that these things have to change, but you haven’t done anything differently yet.

The way you change is to take action, you’ve got to stop eating junk food, you’ve got to stop eating sugar, you’ve got to stop eating processed food, you’ve got to start eating real food. You got to quit with the excuses, and the stories and the reasons and just take action today. Start now.

I am absolutely taking big action towards my goals in 2022. I’m done with this like passive action thing, right, I’m ready to get into actual action, like actually doing things differently. And I want that for you, too.

So, this kind of segues me into what I’m looking forward to next year in 2022. And some things that I want for myself next year. And the first is that I want to create a bigger impact. You know, my goal is to make a bigger impact on this world.

You know, my mission is to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire those around me to do the same. I want to inspire you to be an example of what’s possible. And I want you to inspire the people around you to do the same.

And I want them to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire people around them to see the kind of ripple effect that we can have. I want this impact to be greater. So one of the things that I’ve done for myself, and this is like a big, huge, scary thing that I committed to doing in 2022 is that I’ve hired a high-end coach to help me make this bigger impact.

I’m super stoked, I’ve got this amazing person that I totally admire and look up to and respect and I’ve got this mentor and this coach, that’s going to help me to become an example of what’s possible.

You know, I’ve committed to this year-long program. You know it’s not just a coach, it’s a whole community of other coaches. It’s kind of a mastermind group. And we’re all going to be working on making these huge changes in our businesses in our lives over the next 12 months.

The best coaches have coaches, right? And I’m making this huge investment into myself in 2022. I’m going to scale and grow the Running Lean brand like I never have before. And we’re gonna make big waves in 2022. And I’m so freaking excited about it, I really am.

So for me, this is about what I’m doing to actually get into action. So I’ve stopped like sitting on the fence, and kind of looking into things from the outside in. I’m diving right in and taking huge action to create a much bigger impact. And to make the Running Lean brand something truly amazing.

And you stand to benefit from this in big, big ways. Tons of fun stuff coming in 2022 from that point of view, cool. And then my next goal for next year for 2022 is to become even stronger and more fit than I was pre-surgery. Right. And I have to be honest with you, this seems like a lifetime away from where I am right now. Right?

I’m not active right now. I’m just not doing much of anything I’m doing but I can you know, but it’s gonna take a long time for me to get back on track and get back to being my badass self. And that’s okay, I’m committed to this process. I know it’s gonna take a while. I’m going to do it anyway, no matter how long it takes, right? I’m 100% committed to changing and to getting back to being even fitter and stronger than I was before. Right?

I’m gonna improve my health and fitness in several areas. So I want to increase my muscle mass, even more than I did last year. I want to decrease the kind of pain and injuries that I’ve experienced not just in my shoulder. But you know, I’ve got some knee issues and hip flexor pains every now and then stuff like that, I’m going to fix that, right?

I want to increase my functional fitness, I want to be able to move with a greater range of motion, I want to be more flexible, I want to be able to do more explosive movements, more sprinting, things like that.

So I want to increase my health from a number of different angles here, okay. And to become like the strongest fittest version of myself, right, I have this vision of who I’m going to be. And when I can look back over this time next year, I’m going to be like, damn, I did a lot of hard work, I practice the discipline, and I got there. So I know I’m going to get there in 2022.

And then another thing I’m looking forward to next year is to really to continue to just learn and grow and become more. This is what I want for myself. And that’s what I want for you too, obviously. And I want to pass on everything that I learned some always learning, I’m always trying things.

I’m always experimenting with things, you know, and I’m always going to share that stuff with you guys, right? Sometimes things work well, sometimes they don’t. And I tend to share it all with you, okay.

But I want to encourage you to do the same. I want to encourage you to learn and grow and become more and share it. Okay, we are all an experiment of one. Everything that I do here on the podcast, everything that I talk about in the Running Lean Facebook group, in my coaching practice; it’s all a fun experiment, right? And we get to see what works and what doesn’t.

And when we find things that work well, we want to do more of that stuff. When we find things that don’t work. Okay, cool. I tried that it didn’t work. Let’s try something else. We don’t quit. All right, we keep going forward, relentless forward progress, we don’t ever give up. Right, we always continue to learn and grow and become more. So that’s just a huge, huge part of what I want for myself for next year.

And this is going to keep me constantly becoming that amazing, badass version of myself that I want to become. And then I want to ask you this question. What is it that you want for yourself in 2022? Who is it that you want to become when you look back over the year, a year from now?

So when we get to this point, next year in 2022, what do you want to have accomplished? Like who do you want to be a year from now? Think about it. And how did you get there? So do you have a plan in place today for getting there? If not, that’s okay, we can work on that plan together if you want. If you want a little guidance, a little help, and a little accountability, reach out to me, I can absolutely help you with that, right.

I want to help you stay on track and reach your goals no matter what it is that you want for yourself, okay. Lots of ways that you can do that. You can join the coaching group starting in January, we’re gonna start the year with like creating massive momentum. Developing habits, to lose weight for good, to get fat-adapted.

And then if you’re willing to really push yourself, we’re gonna we got this challenge to lose eight pounds by January 31, which will be super fun. And then there’s always you know, hiring me as your coach, I would love to help you reach all of your goals next year, put together a plan, and help you reach those goals, okay?

But think about this, you know, whether you hire me as your coach or join my programs, it doesn’t matter to me, what I want for you, is to think about who it is you want to be a year from now. And then I want you to put together a plan for getting there. Okay?

You know, hiring a coach is like hitting the easy button, right? It’s just like, boom like they got the experience and the expertise they’ve already got, they have what you want. So they have what you want, and they can just show you the way, this is why it’s so important that I hired a coach, I totally believe in the power of coaching.

So I have several coaches. So that’s a great way to do it. But if you’re the kind of person that’s like, Oh, I just want to DIY this thing, I’m gonna do it myself, like totally fine. But put together a plan, make sure you have a plan for getting there. Okay.

And then you’ve got to be disciplined and work that plan. All right. So I look forward to what’s coming in the new year. I’ve had an amazing year, despite a few setbacks like with this shoulder surgery and stuff like that, but you know what, it’s all good.

You know, it’s the challenges that change us and we only grow from going through the tough stuff. Okay. I hate that it works that way. But that’s the way it works. So join me. And let’s become badasses in 2022. Cool, you guys with me on that? Awesome. Well, that’s all I got for you today. Happy New Year everybody, love you all, keep on Running Lean and we’ll talk to you soon.

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