114. Winning The Inner Game

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 114 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, winning the inner game. When it comes to making a lasting habit change there are two main areas of work that we have to address. First, there’s the outer work, this is what to do and how to do it. But then there’s the inner work, which is all about making profound shifts in your mindset.

Most people only focus their attention on the outer work. Just tell me what to do, Patrick, that’s what they say to me, just tell you what to do. But the outer work is only a small fraction of the game. If you want better results for yourself, and you want to create new habits that actually last, you have to shift your focus internally, you have to start working on your inner game.

So in this episode, I’m going to be taking a deep dive into what this means what it means to be winning the inner game, and why it’s actually a very critical component of becoming a leaner, stronger runner, and a healthier, more badass human being.

But first, if you’re ready to do the inner work, if you’re ready to start winning the inner game, if you’re ready to start making that shift in your mindset, so you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet, then you have to take action, you have to start doing things differently. Nothing changes if nothing changes, right.

But most people just want to keep doing what they’re doing over and over again, expecting something to magically change. And it doesn’t work that way, right? Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I think that’s the definition of insanity. So don’t go insane. Just we got to change something, okay.

And if you’re not sure what to do, or you want a little bit of help with this, this is what I do. Apply for coaching with me, there’s no commitment to apply. It’s just me and you having a conversation about what coaching looks like and what this could possibly do for you. And how it could be one of the best things you ever do for yourself. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And take that first step, make that first change, make that first change to become that badass future version of yourself. Cool.

And then I wanted to give you guys a heads up about this workshop that I have coming up. In just a few weeks, I’m going to be teaching a live workshop all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner. So this is going to be one of the most informative and most comprehensive live workshops that I’ve ever taught. I’ve never done this in this format live before.

And honestly, I’m just so excited about this. And I think it’s gonna be super fun. There’s like this cool energy when we do these things live. And we all come together and you can ask questions and get feedback. It’s super fun. So in this workshop, you’re going to learn the simple steps you need to get leaner get stronger, and make healthy habits last for life. That’s the whole point of this.

It’s not just about, hey, let’s lose some weight and get a little bit stronger. You know, and then in six months, we’ll just go back to doing what we’re doing before. No. How do we make these things last? So that’s what this workshop is all about. To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, and I’m gonna give you a couple of opportunities to attend.

The first one is coming up on March 17. Yes, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. You can go drink your green beer after the workshop. Okay, it’s going to be March 17. And then I’ll share more about the other two opportunities to join in the weeks in the coming weeks here. Okay.

If I didn’t mention it, it’s going to be free. It’s a free live training just for you to help you understand the fundamentals of becoming the healthiest and most badass human being that you can possibly be – runningleanpodcast.com/workshop. I would love to see you there. We’re gonna have a lot of fun and it’s free. It’s fun. It’s free. It’s all good. And we can celebrate St. Patrick’s day together. Cool. Awesome. All right, let’s get into this content.

I want to talk about winning the inner game. I am so passionate about this particular topic. And I’ve been talking a lot with my clients about this lately, especially in the group program that I have in the monthly coaching group. So you know, we’re talking a lot about emotional eating and how to eliminate emotional eating, how to stop doing it for good in the coaching group.

So if you’re somebody that’s been on the fence about joining the coaching group, and you’re like, oh, man, that’s me, I’m an emotional eater, for sure. And it doesn’t mean you’re like sitting in the corner, you know, crying over him with a whole, you know, gallon of ice cream in your lap.

You know, that’s not what I mean by emotional eating, emotional eating, and stuff, like stress eating, eating, because you’re bored, because you’re tired, because you’re angry, because you’re frustrated, whatever it is your eating to feel better using something external to feel better, okay?

So we’re talking a lot about the inner work that we have to do in order to make a shift, a profound shift in the way we think and feel about ourselves and about our emotions and our feelings and stuff, so that we don’t have to eat over them.

The truth is, you don’t have to be an emotional eater, we all are, to some degree, I’m just gonna tell you right now, we all are to some degree. But if you’re done with that, if you want to be done with that forever, then you got to make some changes.

And a lot of what we got to do is the inner work, it’s not necessarily about what you’re doing on the outside, it’s about what you’re doing on the inside, okay. So that’s an example of the inner work, okay, and so we’re gonna be talking a lot about that this whole month over in the coaching group. And you can always join us over there, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/join, to kind of check it out.

But here’s the thing. And why I wanted to talk about this today is because when you have a goal for yourself, like let’s say you have a goal of losing weight, and you’re just having a really hard time with that, and you’re struggling to keep it off, you might be able to keep it off for a little while, like you’ve probably all have experienced this, right, you lost some weight, then it comes back after a while. You keep finding yourself reverting to old behaviors.

If you can’t keep the weight off, then it means that you probably aren’t doing the inner work. You know, you have to have a mindset shift in order to accomplish these big goals. And most people do not want to do this, most people only focus on the outer work. So they will be like, just tell me what to eat Patrick, tell me what I shouldn’t eat. Just tell me how many carbs I should be eating every day, Patrick, that’s it? How many times a week should I be running? When should I lift weights? That’s all good.

I mean, this is all part of this is all strategy. But most people only want to know this part. Most coaches only focus on this part. Strategy is fine, it’s good. It’s important, it is part of the process. But it’s the outer stuff. Like you know, I’m not trying to minimize the importance of strategy, you got to know what to do. And you got to know how to do it. And I teach a lot of strategies in my coaching programs.

So there’s a right way to go about losing weight, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about becoming a fat-adapted runner. There’s a right and wrong way to go about getting stronger. You know, there are also ways that we do these things that are very frustrating, especially when you’re trying to figure it out yourself.

But the thing is that our work this strategy stuff I’m talking about here, it’s like 20% of the equation, right? It’s a small piece of the puzzle, right? The inner work is learning how to shift your mindset so that you make all the strategies work long term.

The inner work is learning how to break old habits and create new ones that last, the inner work is learning how to make the new healthy habits that you’re creating, how to make those habits stick. The inner work is going to help you to say no to a food craving when it’s sitting right there in your face.

The inner work is required if you want to learn how to eliminate those old cravings for junk food, the cravings that had you eating and that whole pint of ice cream, you know right before going to bed because you just can’t say no. The inner work is the other 80% of the equation.

And when you look at it that way, it becomes glaringly important, because I know that you have tried all the different things. You’ve tried the different types of diets, the Mediterranean diet and the South Beach diet and the vegan diet and the pegan diet and you know, low carb and the Keto and the plant-based or whatever it is, right. We’ve all tried all these different things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, most of the time they don’t. Because we’re just focused on the outside stuff. We’re just focused on what to do. What do we do?

I did this for years, I tried all those different diets I just mentioned, trying them all, didn’t work for me. Because I didn’t know about the inner work, I was just focused on, you know, the outside stuff. And I got to a point in all of these different diets, where maybe things just didn’t start, didn’t keep working for me, you know, and maybe I started to gain a little bit of weight back, or I didn’t feel like I had as much energy as I wanted, or whatever it is you know. Something, something in my mind was like, Oh, this isn’t working. This isn’t for me, this isn’t gonna last, I can’t keep this up. And then I quit. I wasn’t doing the inner work.

So what is the inner work? Here are some examples of what I’m talking about here. So for example, one of the things I recommend a lot of my clients do when they’re trying to shift their habits around food, and they’re in they’re using food to kind of deal with boredom or frustration or whatever it is stressed throughout the day and things like that, are we eliminate snacking throughout the day snacking is one of those things, you just don’t need to be snacking.

Snacking is always an emotional event, you don’t need food, you don’t need to eat, like, you know, a handful of nuts or you know, a few chips or whatever it is that you’re snacking on, you know, you aren’t really hungry, like your body isn’t craving nourishment. If you’re just going to be eating a few, you know, nuts or something, you know.

So how snacking is almost always just emotionally eating, right? It’s just because we’re stressed out or bored or something like that. So one of the things we do is we stop snacking, okay, and most people kind of freak out a little bit, you know, because they want to eat, they’re like, Oh, I just always eat every time I feel a little bit hungry, I eat. So managing hunger is a form of doing the inner work, right?

When you’ve done the inner work, and you’ve you you have this new profound understanding of what hunger really is, and what it’s not; how hunger isn’t always an emergency. Like, you don’t have to just solve the problem of hunger, every time it comes up for you. Like you can just practice feeling a little bit hungry. Sometimes it’s not a problem. Right? It’s not a problem.

When you’re just okay with that feeling inside. And you’ve kind of learned how you’re not going to die of hunger if you don’t eat for two hours. When you’ve done this work, and you learn to experience a little bit of hunger, maybe in a different way, it’s no longer a problem for you, it’s not a problem that has to be solved. It’s not an emergency that has to be fixed right now. It’s just a sensation in your body that you can handle, and you’ll be fine. And you can get through it.

And you don’t have to eat every time you, you know, get a little bit stressed out. That’s an example of doing the inner work. Okay, so you got to work on your thoughts about this stuff, you got to work on your beliefs about what you believe about hunger, what does that mean to you.

Another example of doing the inner work is just sticking to your food plan. Especially when you don’t feel like sticking to your food plan. So I have my clients, you know, plan what they’re going to be eating, we do this thing where we plan ahead, it’s very important that we plan things in advance because when you plan things in advance, you’re much more likely to stick to them, right? So we create a plan.

And then the rule is that once you’ve created your plan, you stick to that plan. So for example, let’s say you’re going out to dinner with some friends Friday night, and you’re not eating bread right now, as an example. And you go out to dinner and you’re at some kind of restaurant, they just keep bringing out the bread basket and there’s bread going around, everybody’s like, you know, literally like breaking bread in front of you and eating it and you can like smell it, you know?

And you’re like, ah, you’re kind of freaking out about that, right? But when you do the inner work of learning how to understand why you’re not choosing this particular food because it’s not good for you. It’s not serving you. It’s not part of your plan. And you’ve learned that you’re not going to you don’t have to freak out in that situation.

When you see the bread sitting there and you don’t have to give in to that urge or craving that you have to eat the bread. So you learn how to stick to your food plan even when you don’t feel like it. This is an example of what it means to do the inner work.

So you’re understanding what’s really empowering to your own health and fitness, that’s what’s important to you, not what other people think of you. Because sometimes people are like Hey, why aren’t you eating the bread? We’re all eating the bread, how come you’re not eating the bread and you’re like, Hey, back off, I’m just, you know, I don’t want the bread, it’s okay.

You know, we get a little worked up about those kinds of situations sometimes, okay. But when you do the inner work, those kinds of situations, they don’t bother you anymore. Because you’ve, you’ve learned how to process those situations and those feelings that come up for you, okay? That’s what it means to do the inner work.

And these things are all about your mindset. It’s making shifts in the way that you think and feel about yourself, and the way you think and feel about your diet, nutrition, and exercise, and running. All of that stuff.

And these internal shifts are what will keep you going when the going gets tough. And here’s a little thing that going will always get tough. It always does, right? We’re always going to be faced with different challenges in our lives, we’re always going to be faced with, you know, the people eating the bread in front of us, or people like shoving donuts in our face, you know? I don’t know, do people do that? Do they shove doughnuts in your face? I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me.

But here’s the thing, but the inner work is very powerful. And here’s a little bit of truth for you. If you’re not where you want to be, you know, if you’re not at the weight you want to be at, if you’re not as healthy as you want to be, you’re probably not doing the inner work, you’ve probably got some work to do.

Because the results that you get on the outside your outer results are a direct reflection of whether or not you’re doing the inner work, your thoughts, and feelings. In other words, your mindset drives all of your actions and all of your behaviors. Your current weight is just a direct result of whether or not you’re doing the inner work.

So who you are on the outside is actually created by who you are on the inside. So losing weight and being able to keep it off for good. It’s an inside job. And if it’s not working for you, if you’re struggling with this, if you’re not where you want to be, you have to shift your focus internally, and you have to start doing the inner work.

But people don’t want to do this work. They don’t want to do it. They fight me on this all the time. And I think it’s so interesting. And so I started looking into this, like why, why don’t people want to do this? Why don’t they want to do this introspective self-awareness type of work?

Why don’t people want to challenge their own beliefs about how they see things? Because of the beliefs you have about how you see things are keeping you stuck? Why wouldn’t you want to change that? You know, it just seems logical to me that you would want to loosen your grip on your belief systems and make some changes so that you can start to make progress.

And you can start to like start moving towards your goals instead of just staying stuck and frustrated all the time. But that’s just me. But this work is hard. It’s hard for people. And the thing is people will do just about anything, they’ll do all kinds of crazy stuff except this inner work, right?

So they try all sorts of crazy diets, the cabbage diet, the hot dog water diet, the juice cleanses the counting calories, the starving themselves, and they feel like you know, murdering somebody, whatever the deprivation, all that stuff. They’re gonna suffer through all sorts of painful, frustrating stuff.

But they’re unwilling to take a look at their own thoughts and feelings and how that might be contributing to their current situation, how their own belief systems might be creating their current weight. People are unwilling to spend time working through the stuff that comes up when you stop eating junk food.

So, for example, let’s say you want to like get off the sugar train, right? So you just stop, you know, you stop eating sugar, you want to stop using sugar as a coping mechanism. All right.

We do this we use sugar as a coping mechanism. As a reward system. We use sugar as an emotional management tool. And a lot of us have been doing this our whole lives, okay. So when you stop doing that, when you stop trying to manage your emotions with sugar, all this uncomfortable stuff’s going to come up.

You’re going to start to feel all these feelings and emotions and stuff that you typically squash down with food with sugar because the sugar just lights up the pleasure centers of your brain. And so you don’t have to really think about that.

The negative emotions you’re experiencing; the stress, frustration, anger, whatever it is. So this is the resistance that comes up, right? This is your brain trying to tell you, Hey, this is not good, what you’re doing here, stop doing this, like, we want sugar, give us back to sugar, or we’re gonna sit here and we got to actually feel these emotions, we can’t do that. Danger, danger, bring on the sugar, right?

Instead of dealing with all the stuff that comes up, when we stop eating sugar, we just give in to eating sugar, it’s way easier to do. And just so you know, I just did a podcast episode about this called battling the resistance, it’s episode 110. Definitely check it out. Because I take a deep dive into this whole topic of the resistance and how our brains work and stuff. It’s a good one.

So just know that you’re normal if this is happening to you. And if you’re like, if you’re resisting doing the inner work, it’s because your brain just wants to keep you safe. And when you start to feel these emotions and stuff, it feels unsafe, it feels uncomfortable, it’s not a comfortable situation to be in – not emotionally eating.

So not using sugar as a coping mechanism is hard. And here’s the thing that I think is really interesting. Runners are really good at some of the stuff like they’re really good at sticking to like you’re good, you’re sticking to your marathon training plan no matter what. So it doesn’t matter what the weather is, doesn’t matter if you’re sick or not, doesn’t matter if you’re lacking motivation. It’s like you’re going to absolutely, make sure you do all of your training runs.

Oh, it says I have to run six miles today. It’s pouring down rain, I’m doing it. I’m just gonna run in the rain. It’s no problem, right. And I love this commitment that we have as runners, it’s amazing. Like, you’re super committed, nothing’s gonna stand in your way, boom, you just command you’re gonna do your thing, right.

But when it comes to food, runners have this like, kryptonite, that’s like this weakness. You know, they’re, they’re like superheroes over here. But then they come over here to do the inner work. And they just like melt, like cotton candy in the rain, you know, just blue.

They lack the commitment to healthy eating, they have plenty of commitment and motivation when it comes to their training programs. But that lack of commitment to healthy eating, that lack of motivation to stick to your food plan, it’s just because you haven’t done the inner work. That’s all.

It’s not that you don’t have it, you can get it, it’s not something that like you’re either born with it or you’re not, you just need to do the inner work, you need to, to do the inner work so that you can have that same level of commitment, and that same motivation when it comes to things like sticking to your food plan.

So this doesn’t mean you’re weak-minded, or you’re a failure, you have no willpower, right? It just means you got some work to do. Like I said, you know, we’re talking all about this in the coaching group. This month, we’re focused on eliminating emotional eating for good. And this topic is really resonating with people right now.

You know, emotionally eating is just using something external to feel better inside. Right. And the way we accomplish this, the way we eliminate the emotional eating is we do the inner work, right? There’s some strategy involved on top of talking about that in the group and stuff too. But it’s such an inside job, it really is, you know.

So as a group, we’re kind of committing and doing this inner work together. It’s very powerful stuff, okay. So when you shift your focus internally, and you begin to take responsibility for your own results, so you start doing the inner work, and you start saying, Hey, this is on me, I am going to fix this, then good things start to happen. Right?

Remember, your outer results, like your current weight is a direct result of whether or not you’re doing the inner work. So if you want to start moving the scale, then you know you have to do the inner work. You may have all these deep-seated beliefs about how you can’t lose weight because you’ve tried all this stuff in the past. And it’s never worked for you and you always gain the weight back.

And you so that’s a belief that you have that is just keeping you stuck. So we call these limiting beliefs because they actually limit your ability to grow. And to accomplish your goals, right, they limit your ability to accomplish things like, become healthier, like losing weight. But when you can let go of the limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck where you are, what do you think is going to happen?

Yeah, you start to grow, you start to make progress, you become limitless in a way, those things that used to seem impossible for you, all of a sudden, they become possible. And it’s really not because you’re doing anything differently. It’s because of who you are being on the inside, right?

The inner work, it’s not because of some secret strategy that you just hadn’t heard about. It’s because you’ve had this profound shift in how you think and feel about stuff. It’s like a profound mindset shift has to happen.

So if you’ve failed in the past, at sticking to your diet, or losing weight, whatever, and you believe really strongly that this is just the way it’s gonna be for you, then this is a limiting belief for you, we have to like let go of that limiting belief. When you make that internal mindset shift, to start questioning all of your beliefs, you start questioning your thoughts and feelings.

Eventually, you can completely drop those old beliefs that are keeping you stuck. That’s when the cool stuff starts to happen. That’s when the magic happens. Because you’re no longer driven by your thoughts about the past, you can begin to create the future that you actually want for yourself. That requires inner work.

So that’s what it looks like to start winning the inner game. Cool. And remember that if you’re ready to start winning the inner game, if you’re ready to start doing the inner work required to make long-lasting changes to your physical, mental, and emotional health and fitness, check out this free live workshop I’m doing here, March 17. To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop. I would love to see you there. I think it’s gonna be super fun. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.