130. Taking Your Health Into Your Own Hands

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 130 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today taking your health into your own hands. There is a health crisis going on right now in the United States.

Metabolic diseases like obesity, type two diabetes and heart disease are at an all time high and our collective health has been steadily declining over the last 40 years. And it doesn’t appear to be reversing any time soon. And if you think that our healthcare system or the food industry or the government are here to help you to help reverse this, you are sadly mistaken.

So if you want to avoid being another statistic, and if you want to start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, then this episode is for you. In this episode, I’m going to share some surprising reasons why we might be experiencing this current health crisis here in this country.

And I also want to explain the simple solution not relying on the powers that be quote unquote, but instead taking your health into your own hands. What does that look like? What does it mean for you? What can you do today to start taking your health into your own hands?

First, I just want to talk a little bit about my coaching program, which is called the Running Lean coaching project. So every month I pick a different topic. And in our program, we kind of take a deep dive into that topic and June, this month of June, is all about mastering your mindset.

Your mindset is the foundation of everything that you do in your life, everything that you want to accomplish in your life, whether it’s you know, health and fitness related, even business related relationship related, all requires you to have the right mindset. And a lot of times we don’t even understand what that means. What is mindset? What does it even mean to have the right kind of mindset?

So we’re taking a deep dive into this all month long. And if you want to join us, it’s not too late. Not only can you continue to join in the conversations we’re having about this, but you can also have access to all of the past coaching calls that I’ve done.

There’s kind of a couple of different components to this coaching program. There’s group coaching, and then there’s also one on one coaching with me, I designed this program to give you all of the support that you need to accomplish your goals, whether you want to lose weight, improve your running performance, become stronger, just become the most badass version of yourself whatever that looks like for you.

I’ve created this program to provide you with the knowledge, the support, the accountability, the inspiration, the motivation to help get you there, I want to help you stay on track, help you change your mindset, if that’s what needs to happen, develop good habits, so that we can create a healthier version of you that lasts.

This is about permanent lifestyle changes. This isn’t about short term fixes or, you know, lose weight quickly kind of thing. This is about long term health and fitness. So if you’re interested in that, if you’re interested in not the short game, but the long game, and about changing your mindset and changing the way you think and feel about health and fitness and diet and nutrition permanently, then I think this might be a great program for you.

But we have to have a conversation about it, we’ll jump on a call and we’ll kind of talk about the program. I want to give you more details. I’m going to talk about your individual goals because this this program is designed for you as an individual, it’s not about just you know, doing some certain diet, you know, this is about me, and you’re working together to figure out what’s the best plan of action for you as an individual, because we’re all different.

We all have different metabolisms, different goals, different likes and dislikes, different food preferences, and we want to put together a plan that works specifically for you. So if you’re interested, go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, book a call with me, and we’ll talk about it, cool. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project.

And then just really quickly, I want to put out a little bit of a disclaimer about this particular episode. So I’m going to be talking about some things today that that you might want to change in your diet and I usually don’t talk about like, say I don’t usually suggest things has to do, because we don’t have a client coach relationship, me and you, you know, for the most part, right? So I can’t really offer nutritional advice here on the podcast.

But what I can do is suggest some things that you may consider changing. Of course, you know, get your doctor’s approval before you change anything in your diet before you start making any kinds of changes to your exercise regimen or anything like that, okay, I’m not a doctor, I can’t offer medical advice, I can’t really offer advice unless we have a relationship.

So nothing that I ever say here should ever be construed as medical advice. And just know that the things I’m going to be talking about today are just general sort of guidelines that I think we can all follow and maybe improve our health a little bit. But again, you got to talk to your doctor about making any kinds of changes. Cool. All right. So let’s get into this a little bit.

I have to say that I’m a little fired up about this topic. And I have been for a while. And I hope by the end of this episode, you get a little bit fired up too. Because there’s a big problem here in this country, with our health and with the health of the population of the people in the United States.

Now, this extends beyond the borders of the United States as this goes into most of the world at this point. But I’m just kind of focusing on what’s happening here, because I know more about what’s happening here in the US than I do about other countries. And I really can’t speak to that.

But we’re in the midst of a kind of a devastating health crisis here. We really are. Like I said at the beginning, you know, over the last 40 years, our health has been steadily declining, and hasn’t been getting better. You know, right now, obesity rates are at an all time high. In 2020 42% of the US population was considered obese. 42%. That’s up from 30% in the year 2000.

So just 22 years ago, that has changed dramatically. And then severe obesity, some people call it morbid obesity, but severe obesity is up from 4.7%, back in 2000, to 9.2% today in 2022. And the annual medical cost just of this one chronic condition, this the annual medical cost of obesity here in the United States is nearly $173 billion.

That’s billion with a B obesity related medical conditions include things like heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, and certain types of cancer. These are some of the leading causes of premature death in this country. And they’re all absolutely preventable. So they call these things lifestyle diseases, because they are associated with the way you live your life, the way the choices that you make, you know, around nutrition, around exercise, around alcohol and drug intake, those kinds of things are associated with these problems.

And it’s a big, huge problem in this country. Here’s something that I saw recently, and this just this makes me very sad. Okay, and this has to do with children. Right now, one in eight children have asthma. One in five children in this country have allergic eczema. One in twelve children have food allergies, one in five children have obesity, one in five children have obesity, one in six children have a mental health disorder. And one in 54 children have autism, children with chronic conditions, has increased by over 400% since the 1970s.

And people look at these kinds of stats. And they say, well, it’s genetics, it’s genetics. Our genes haven’t changed since the 1970s. It takes 10s of 1000s of years for genes to change like that, for genetics to play a big role like that. It’s not about genetics, our environment has changed.

At the start of the 1970s we were told, you know by our government by, you know, these dietary guidelines they put out there that we should start eating what they called the food pyramid at the time. And this pushed refined carbohydrates as the basis of our diet. That should be the majority of the food we’re eating. Up to 65% of our diet should be coming in the form of refined carbohydrates.

And at the same time we started doing that chronic diseases increased in both adults and children. There’s an obesity epidemic among toddlers in this country. What the hell? That is crazy. That is just crazy. Toddlers were not obese. Prior to the 1970s, it was a very, very, very, very rare thing. But now we look at kids today, one in five children are obese. This is crazy.

Since we started following these food guidelines, we’ve gotten fatter, and we’ve gotten sicker, chronic diseases are up, and we are not getting better. And there’s no sign of this changing, it’s only getting worse.

And what I want to talk about today, is that there’s something we can do about this. But what I want to talk about today, and I’ll get to that is not just bad news, okay. But there’s a lot of bad news. Unfortunately, this is what gets me fired up, though. Okay.

But today, when we look at the policies our government has in play, we look at our health care system, as a whole. We look at Big Pharma, big pharmaceutical companies, we look at all the big food companies in this country. And we think we have this idea, this beautiful idea that all of these systems are in place to help us to keep us healthy, to improve our health.

And the reality of it is, is that they’re not there to help us. They’re not there to improve our health and to help us to live long, healthy lives, they’re there, they’re around to make money. And there’s a lot of profit in keeping people sick. I know this may seem a little bit like conspiracy theory, but it’s really not.

This is something I’ve been noodling over for a long time for years, actually. And I just feel like we need to just call it what it is, you know. And so I’m gonna break down a little bit of why I feel this way. And it’s not just me, this is not just something I just thought of the other day, and I’m like, oh, you know, I think I’m just gonna start talking about how all this stuff is working against us now.

This has been going on for decades. And there’s millions of people talking about this. Okay, so I’m just another voice out there that’s talking about this, but I think it’s really, really important that we talk about this. Okay, so, here’s an example. Look at the big food companies that are out there. Okay.

So, when you look at the biggest food companies in this country, the majority of food produced in this country is created by these companies, Kraft Foods, Coca Cola, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Unilever, PepsiCo, General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Mars. Okay, so what you’re noticing in this list is that there’s a lot, a lot of sugar. Right?

There’s a lot of, a lot of processed food, it’s a lot of sugar. And it’s a lot of refined grains. You know, we look at stuff like Kellogg’s and General Mills is just nothing but sugar, refined grains, and vegetable oil. That’s like the main three ingredients of all junk food, right? Stay away from those three things, by the way, and your health is going to start to change for the better.

But Coca Cola, Nestle, PepsiCo, Mars, these are all, you know, these are sugar, sugar, water and candy companies. And these are the biggest food companies in this country. And they’re the most profitable and they have deep, deep pockets and money in this country, money equals power. And these big companies, they have the power to change laws to create policies to promote more of their own products.

You know, an example would be the sugar industry actually came up with a study to prove quote, unquote, prove that salt was bad for us. Salt is bad for us. Alright, so they wanted to divert the attention away from sugar as being a problem. And most people don’t know this, but the salt, the sugar industry actually funded studies to prove you know that that showed that salt was a problem. It was causing hypertension, high blood pressure, and all these other things.

And the truth of the matter is, salt is something we have to have in our diet. Like if we don’t eat salt, we will die. Like we have to have sodium in our diet. And in the end, the sugar industry doesn’t want you to limit the amount of sugar you’re eating. So they are kind of saying well, oh, high blood pressure, heart disease, all these other things. It’s the salt in your diet.

And so they have these deep pockets and they can fund these kinds of studies. That’s just one example. This happens every single day in this country. These big food companies are funding studies that promote their viewpoint, right?

And a lot of the science, you know, the people that are actually conducting the science, they’re being funded by these food companies. So we have to understand that there’s a lot of skewed science out there and that we have to just take things into our own hands, we have to look at what’s going on out there.

And just don’t believe everything you read, for sure, don’t even believe everything I’m telling you, like, do your own research, if you want to go and look this stuff up, I’m not sharing anything that I haven’t researched thoroughly. And I’m at this point in my life where I just have to, I have to say what’s on my mind, and I get fired up about this particular topic.

Here’s another thing to kind of consider from the big food companies, sugar and refined grains, they are not nutritious. Alright, there’s nothing really good about eating this stuff. It doesn’t, there’s no health benefits from eating this stuff, okay. And the other thing you have to realize is that sugar and refined grains will turn off sensors in your body that will actually make you feel full.

So like, when you eat something like a piece of chicken, or, you know, some some vegetables with some butter, you know, like you eat some real, you know, good sources of protein and fat, you’re going to feel full, and then you’ll stop eating, how much chicken can you sit down and eat at one at one sitting? Not a lot. I’ve tried it before.

I’m like, I’m gonna eat a pound of chicken and then I’m 12 ounces into it. I’m like, I’m done, right? You just can’t eat anymore. But how many, you know, Twinkies can you eat at one sitting like dozens, right? Like, you could just keep going, you never stop. So eating these kinds of refined foods, especially with the sugar and refined grains, they turn off sensors of fullness and satiety. And so we can overeat that very easily.

And they increase our hunger signals. So when you’re eating these kinds of foods, you’re more hungry all the time. And this is by design, the food companies understand this, if we never feel full, if we’re always hungry. And we’re eating this non nutritious, you know, empty calorie, carbohydrate laden foods, we’re gonna buy more of that stuff, because it tastes amazing, right?

We’re gonna keep buying more and more, so it increases their profits. So what they’re doing is working for them. It’s working to build more and more profits for the big food companies. But it’s making us fat, or it’s making us sick or, and they don’t care about that. They just want to, they want you to eat more, they want you to stay hungry, they don’t want you to crave their stuff, eat more of their processed garbage food, so that you just continue to buy, buy, buy buy from them, they use the cheapest ingredients available, and they make these hyper palatable foods.

You’ve probably heard about the bliss point, they have scientists that are working on the actual science of craving and how, what ingredients can they use, and it’s usually sugar, flour and vegetable oil to produce the most, the most blissful feeling in our brains. And they’ve shown that sugar is actually preferable to certain drugs like cocaine, like they’ve done these tests on rats, poor rats, they always get tested on these weird things, right?

But they did this test on rats where they gave them cocaine or sugar. And over time, the sugar was preferable. The rats just stopped doing the cocaine, stopped drinking the cocaine and stopped and started drinking their sugar water because it gave them a better high. It gave them a better high. And if you don’t think sugar is bad for you, you don’t think sugar is addictive? Just look at that study right there. Rats will prefer it over cocaine. Okay.

So they’re getting us hooked on their product. They know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re doing. And they’re giving us this garbage food and we’re just buying into it. We’re buying into it. We’re buying the stuff by the pallet full, just go into Costco and see what’s sitting out there on all these giant pallets of food, right?

And then, of course, there’s this idea of like, they have all this influence and power, you know, they squash any attempts to say that their food is unhealthy. You know, Coca Cola put out this whole campaign about how sugar wasn’t the problem, and you just needed to move more just like exercise more. And I forget the name of the campaign, it was something like you know, move more or something like that, but it’s basically like, oh, yeah, Coca Cola is fine. Just keep drinking Coke. That’s not the problem with you, the problem is you’re lazy. And you need to be moving more.

That’s just bananas to think about, right? What, when in human existence, have we ever needed to like, do a bunch of cardio? This has never been a thing for us. Why, since the incorporation of these guidelines in 19 in the late 1970s. Why all of a sudden do we have to do a bunch of cardio just to stay in shape and not get all fat and obese? But it’s crazy. It’s crazy. The diet is wrong.

And they’re pushing their junk on us. And we have to just stand up and say, no, thank you. No, thank you, I’m not going to buy into this anymore. Okay. And remember that, you know, he’s talking about salt being an essential nutrient salt is essential. If we don’t eat salt, we will die. Sugar, on the other hand is a non-essential nutrient, we don’t have to eat sugar in our diet, our bodies will produce the glucose that we need, our brain needs a certain amount of glucose to function, but your liver produces that just fine.

I’ve gone through stints where I’ve basically done no sugar, no carbs, basically, like just kind of a carnivore type of diet. And I gotta tell you, I’ve never felt better. I felt amazing when I eat that way. And, and I go back and forth, it’s not something I do all the time. I’m always kind of experimenting with things because I want to go to share different, you know, different diets and things with you guys and share different strategies to kind of help you.

So I’m always experimenting on myself. So I never do anything for too long. But honestly, I go back to that sort of carnivore way of eating, where it’s just basically meat and eggs for periods of time. And I’ve done it for 30, 60, 90 days, and I just feel amazing, and my body functions perfectly fine, I get all the glucose I need, my brain is functioning better than ever.

So just so you understand, I’m not telling you, you need to do that. I’m not telling you, you need to like stop eating vegetables or fruit or anything like that. Eat that stuff. It’s good. You know, fruit, veg, meat, eggs, dairy, some of that stuff. If you can handle dairy, like all good for you. But stay away from all that junk food, okay? And if the big food companies are telling you to eat something, do the opposite. Okay?

And then we’ve got this issue with the government. So our government here is there’s a lot of self interest going on here. There’s lawmakers, there’s lobbyists, and they’re tied in to the big food companies, you know, the big food companies put a lot of money into the government to help create policies, and even on the board of, and I’m gonna get this wrong, but it’s like the USDA, or the FDA can’t remember which one it is that actually funds that actually does the food guidelines. There’s a lot of people on that board that are being funded by the big food companies like Coca Cola and PepsiCo and Mars, it’s bananas like, this is not, this is not the way it should be.

The government does not really have our best interest in mind. When we look at the government, we’re talking about people who are being, you know, funded by big food companies, right. And it’s profitable, everybody’s making money off of this, you know, but it doesn’t mean it’s healthier doesn’t mean it’s the way we should be doing things. And there’s, there’s these big incentives to grow mono crops like corn, wheat, and soy. So these are the three three ingredients that dominate the food industry, right. And these three crops are subsidized heavily by the federal government, farmers received between 1995 and 2020, farmers received 424 billion with a B dollars in substitute subsidies.

And 50% of that were for just those three crops corn, wheat and soybeans. And corn was by far the largest at $116 billion in subsidy subsidies going to corn production, which accounts for about 20-27% of the total mono crop.

Mono-culture crops contribute to a large portion of soil erosion, they increase fertilizer and pesticide use. And Cornell did this study and found that pesticide use in the United States causes $520 million in crop loss, and over a billion dollars in health costs for us as humans. So buy organic by all means, okay. And we want to stay away from those mono crop foods, you know, corn, wheat and soybeans is a problem.

This is a problem these things are, are not necessarily they’re not good for us, you know, they cause all kinds of problems, right. And then just keep in mind that, you know, the government puts out these guidelines. And, you know, they basically put out these guidelines back in late 1970s or 1980 that says, you know, 65, up to 65% of your diet should be coming from refined carbohydrates. And the food guidelines are there not to make us healthy.

They’re not for health and well being, but they’re there to support a profitable food industry because the more you tell people you need to eat these, you know, these refined grains, the more money that you know, is being pumped into producing these grains, the more subsidies people are getting, and the whole system is kind of just messed up. It’s a messed up system.

And so we just have to understand what’s going on and try to take some, some control ourselves, okay. And listen, the food guidelines that are being followed. I know a lot of people say like, well, people aren’t just following, if they would just follow them, everything would be fine. But they’re not being followed. They are being followed.

I mean, and we are really good at following advice that is put out there. Like when they say, Hey, you know, smoking is bad, cigarettes are bad that causes all these problems. We follow suit, you know, all the side effects and diseases caused by smoking have gone down dramatically since we started these anti smoking campaigns right? Dramatically.

I don’t even know many people that smoke anymore. I don’t know. I don’t know maybe one person that I know of smoking, everybody I knew used to smoke, right? Maybe I’m hanging around different people these days. But these guidelines are being followed. And they’re not working. The guidelines are not working. The government is putting out these food guidelines that are not designed with our health and well being in mind. And it’s just not working.

The science that produces the guidelines is bad, the sciences never really proven. They’ve come up with so many new studies that show that, you know, saturated fats are not the enemy, the fat is not the enemy, that carbs are bad, the sugar is bad, and vegetable oil is bad. And listen, these guidelines are driving a lot of policy and a lot of food that goes out to like our kids.

So public school lunch programs, they use the guidelines to follow, to put together the school lunch programs for our kids, the military follows these guidelines, hospitals, nursing homes, VA hospitals, that kind of stuff. All follow the guidelines, they use the guidelines as the basis of how to structure and nutrition programs. And these things are just not working. They’re keeping us sick, they’re keeping us overweight, obese, they’re causing all kinds of problems with our health. So we need to take things into our own hands. Okay.

And, you know, here’s something interesting, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. So and this is the organization that where if you’re a registered dietitian, this is where you get registered through or whatever, right. So they’re having a conference coming up here in a few months. And it’s touted as the world’s largest meeting of food and nutrition experts. Oh, that sounds good. Right. So this conference is coming up. And you know, it’s supposed to be all these experts coming together. Well, here’s who’s sponsoring this, this conference, PepsiCo, the sugar Foundation, Nestle, General Mills, the canola oil Council, just to name a few.

So this is indicative of the kinds of relationships that exist between food companies, healthcare systems, the government, you know, the governing agencies that are governing all these registered dieticians, our nutrition is being dictated by the sugar industry, essentially.

So there’s all these conflicts of interest, right? And conflicts of interest come about when, you know, there’s big corporations marketing, potentially harmful products, and they have these financial relationships with research institutions, or individual researchers, or public health organizations.

And as obesity is becoming just more and more rampant in this country, these kinds of relationships are jeopardizing the integrity of scientific research. So if you want to know if what you’re reading is, you know, legit or not, see who’s funding the research. You have to do your homework on this stuff. Okay? I hate that it even has to be this way.

But there’s these big companies, you know, like Pepsi Cola, sugar Foundation, General Mills, Coca Cola, whatever, they flood the literature out there with science that they funded to make it very difficult for you to actually find legit science that’s not been funded by the food industry. It’s a problem. It’s a real problem. Okay. And then I talk about the healthcare industry as you know, it’s really not about our health or care.

It’s like another for profit business in this country, our health care system in this country is messed up. And, you know, we could go into that. And maybe I will go into a whole episode about how just the healthcare industry is messed up. But I need to say this, though, health care workers are amazing. And there’s a lot of great doctors out there. And there’s a lot of great health care workers out there.

That’s not what I’m talking about here. The health care workers are amazing people. And I have a couple of doctors that I go to, and I love, they’re amazing. And they spent a long time with me, right? There’s a lot of amazing people in the healthcare industry, I have a lot of friends who work in the healthcare industry. And these people are amazing people, it’s not about the people, this is about the industry as a whole, the big health care system is broken. Right?

What doctors can and can’t do largely is dictated by the insurance companies, you know, in their hands are tied, a lot of times they want to be able to help and they can’t, right, and they have to work within these strict guidelines, often without the patient’s best interest in mind. And they’re told to push drugs. They’re not trying to solve the problem. They’re just writing prescriptions. And if you go to your doctor and say, oh, you know, I’m overweight, and I have type two diabetes, these are lifestyle diseases, right?

And you go, yes, doc, I’ve got these lifestyle diseases, you would think the doctor would say, Well, what you need to do is fix your lifestyle. Instead, they say, oh, my gosh, here’s a drug you should take. Here’s something to lower your cholesterol, or here’s something to help you with your type two diabetes, to keep insulin levels low, whatever, they’re just treating symptoms, right.

And I just watched a video from a doctor, MD Paul Saladino, who said, that not one time, not one time, during his entire med school, or his residency, was he ever challenged to actually find the root cause of any illness, he was never challenged, as a medical student to ever, like, go find what’s really causing the problems and solve the problem at its root, he was always told to just treat the symptoms. And that’s, that’s what most of our doctors are told.

Now, there’s some good doctors out there. And I want to make it very clear that there are some very good doctors out there. And you just need to find the right one, right. But a lot of these doctors, they’re just writing prescriptions, right? The big pharmaceutical companies are making huge profits off of us, and they don’t want us to get healthy. They don’t want us to solve the problem, they don’t want us to solve the root problem, they want to keep, they want us to keep taking their pills. That’s it, because money equals power, right? So they drive policies that keep doctors writing prescriptions. Because listen, a cured patient is no longer a paying customer.

Think about that, you are a customer of these big insurance companies or big pharmaceutical companies. And if you get healthy, you don’t make them money. Okay? So a few things that I’m going to suggest you do here, number one, like find a good doctor, there are amazing doctors out there. And, for example, I go to a doctor who doesn’t really take insurance.

There, I pay a monthly fee to sort of be a part of their practices called concierge health care. And so I pay a monthly fee to be a part of their practice. They’re not pressured by, you know, pharmaceutical companies to write prescriptions. And like, my doctor spends time with me, like she spends, like 30 minutes with me every time I go to see her, and we talk about what the root problem is, and we try to solve things. So this is like old school, right? It’s the way doctors should do things, right? I think you can find a doctor like this.

But you’ve got to do a little bit of work and do a little digging, but find somebody that’s on your side that has your best interests in mind. And that isn’t going to just write prescriptions, right. And on the prescription thing, you know, I try to avoid taking medications. And I suggest that you do too.

Obviously, you know, there’s some medications that are very important that you have to take, you know, and that’s awesome. And I totally am down with that, right? But instead of taking a pill like to mask symptoms, like let’s do our best to change our lifestyle so that we can get off the medications. And a lot of my clients actually end up greatly reducing or even getting off medications altogether, with their doctor’s approval, of course, right.

But here’s what I’m trying to say: a pill is not always the answer. Like sometimes it is but you know, for some of these lifestyle issues I’m talking about here. Yeah, you want to continue taking your medication but wouldn’t it be awesome if you changed things and improved your health from the inside out without having to take medications anymore? Like maybe you can reduce or eventually get off those things right.

Another thing that I want to suggest here is that those dietary guidelines from the government just don’t work, they don’t work, like they do the opposite. If they’re telling you to stay away from fat, eat more fat, if they’re saying meat and eggs is gonna kill you, like eat more of that stuff. If they say eat a ton of grains don’t do that. If they say sugar is fine, don’t eat sugar, eliminate it from your diet and see how good you feel.

You know, they say, oh, keep salt really low, like just use salt, you need salt will die if you don’t need salt, right. And they say, you know, healthy fats like vegetable oil, stay away from that stuff, they’re dead wrong about that, that stuff is toxic, avoid it altogether, okay. And then that food industry, food industry is there to make money, they make money off of us.

So like, avoid food that comes with a marketing message. Avoid foods that don’t look like food. Avoid foods, or at least most foods that come in packages. And if you do buy food that comes in a package, read the label and understand what you’re reading, understand how to read the label, because the labels can be very deceiving. You know, there’s like 96 different words they use for sugar, because they want to confuse you and hide that stuff, right. So make sure you understand what you’re reading.

And then just eat real food, eat food that looks like food, eat food that you buy around the perimeter of the grocery store, you know, meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, right? Eat food that our ancestors would recognize, oh, beef, chicken, banana, avocado, like, stick with stuff like that, you know, if the food you’re eating is making you feel hungry all the time, this is not the right kind of food. Right? There’s, you got to change that, right? Eat the opposite,

Okay. So I get fired up about this, because I have this mission. And this mission that I have is to help you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And in order to do that, I have to call BS on a lot of stuff that’s going on in this country, the current health situation in this country is dire, it’s dire. And we have to fix it.

And I share all this stuff with you because there’s this problem out there that’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than you and we need to take things into our own hands. Right? I’m compelled to help make this world a healthier place. And it happens like one person at a time, it’s me doing what I can to become the best and most badass version of myself. So it’s me being an example of what’s possible, and then hopefully inspiring you to do the same.

And then hopefully, you inspire other people to do the same. And I see this happen all the time. And I don’t have millions of people listening to this podcast, I don’t have millions of people following me. But I do have a lot and I have a voice. And I’m passionate about helping you. I’m passionate about helping you get healthy and stay healthy and stay fit.

So I want to create this ripple effect, this ripple effect of positivity and good health in this world, I want to make an impact. And when I share topics like this, I can help to make an impact, right. And I’ve worked with hundreds of runners who have gotten leaner and gotten stronger and taken back control of their health. And I’m gonna help you too. But it’s up to you to do things differently.

Stop following the dietary advice from the government, stop buying into the marketing messages from the food industry. Stop thinking that you know, our healthcare system and the government and the big food companies have your best interest in mind because they don’t. Right, take things into your own hands. You get to do this any way that you want, and you get to do whatever you want to do. You don’t have to follow the normal things that people are doing out there.

And when I say normal, I use like finger quotes like normal, because normal isn’t good. Normal is those stats I told you at the beginning of this podcast normal is like becoming obese. Normal is becoming having type two diabetes normals having this list of chronic lifestyle diseases, don’t be normal. Take things into your own hands, take a stand, make a different start today. It’s not hard. It takes a little bit of time.

I’m here to help you if you ever want help, but just listen, you can do this. I know that you can do this. But if we’re going to change things, it’s going to be up to me and you to do this as individuals and then hopefully inspire other people to do the same cool. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.

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.