170. Getting Started With Habit Change

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 170 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Getting Started With Habit Change. If you want different results, you have to do things differently, right?

But doing things differently requires some work. It’s an uncomfortable process. And honestly, it’s why most people just refuse to change. But what if you could make changing easier? What if you could replace a bunch of your bad habits with good ones that would make change much easier? Right? It’d be amazing.

That’s the basic premise of developing good habits: making things like living a healthy lifestyle automatic, make it easy. But again, most people won’t do the work to change their habits because change is hard. And it doesn’t feel good. Not at first anyway.

So today, I’m going to give you some actionable tips on getting started with habit change. Because if you can just get started, you can start making progress. Change won’t happen if you never start. So let’s get started, shall we?

But first, I think you will agree with me when I say that most fad diets don’t work. Have you ever tried a fad diet? I have, I’ve tried all of them. The promise of a fad diet is that it’s the best and fastest way to lose weight. And a lot of them will tell you it’s the only way and nothing else works, but this way does work.

And every year millions of people get sucked into this idea that this thing is going to be different. This thing is going to be the cure all for everything right. And every year millions of people are disappointed because they don’t get the results that they want. Why? Because fad diets are not sustainable.

Humans are not designed to survive on cabbage soup alone, or just grapefruit or baby food or whatever the latest trend is, baby food diet. That’s actually a thing by the way. I know, weird, right? These fad diets may help you lose weight in the short term, but they don’t teach you how to change your habits.

They don’t teach you how to change your lifestyle. They don’t teach you how to make this something that is sustainable because eating baby food or grapefruits or cabbage soup for the rest of your life is totally not sustainable. Right. A big focus of my coaching program is to teach you how to integrate healthy eating habits into your life for good in a way that is sustainable for you as an individual.

So a rule of thumb, I think we can all follow here is that if you can’t sustain it, just don’t do it. Stay away from the weird fat diets. And just do what we’ve always done as human beings eat real food, food that still looks like food. Food our ancient ancestors would still recognize they can go oh, well, I know what that is. Because you can’t go wrong with this plan, right?

And if you want some help with this, if you want some guidance every step of the way through this whole process, check out my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/join. You can learn all about my program. And I hope you see hope to see you in the Running Lean Coaching Project where the project is always you.

Okay, so today I wanted to talk about getting started with habit change. Because when it comes to changing habits, I think we all know that there’s processes involved, and that there are some things that we can do. There’s been books written about this, to really, you know, change habits and make them last for good. Okay.

But just getting started with this whole process feels overwhelming for a lot of people. And I wanted to take some time today to just go over a few principles and give you a few tips and ideas for getting started with habit change. Because if you can just start doing things differently, if you can just start making some effort and getting some movement happening, then you can start to see some progress happening. Okay.

If you want to change anything in your life, you’ve got to do things differently. All right. I think we can all agree on that and doing things differently is the challenging part because we’re just so used to doing things a certain way, it’s so ingrained into our brain that this is the way I do things that doing something differently feels uncomfortable, it feels scary, it feels foreign to us.

And until those new things become a habit, it’s going to feel uncomfortable and scary and foreign, so just getting started with this process. A lot of people will not even bother, they won’t even bother starting and changing something because the whole process feels too hard, it feels too scary, it’s gonna be a challenge. But if you’re willing to accept the challenge, then you can start making progress, and you can start creating good habits in a lot of different areas of your life.

Okay, today, I want to focus on a few I want to focus on, you know, weight loss is a topic I talk about a lot in here, as a weight loss coach for runners, this is a topic that I’m going to focus on a lot. So I’m going to kind of frame the conversation today, around you know, losing weight and changing your diet, but you can apply these same principles to any habits that you want to change.

The principles will be the same if you’re trying to get stronger, or improve your running or, you know, improve your relationship or, you know, improve your career or you know, better the relationship with your kids or whatever it is. There’s so many different ways that we can apply these same principles in different areas of our life. It’s not just related to weight loss, but that’s my jam. So that’s what I’m going to be talking about today.

So the first thing I want to say is that you have to just start, and I know this seems like too rudimentary. But so many people procrastinate changing. They procrastinate getting started, that they never take action. Have you ever said I really want to lose weight, or I really want to run a marathon, but I’m just going to wait until X, Y or Z happens and then I’ll start?

You know, I want to wait until after the New Year, or I want to wait until after St. Patrick’s Day, or I want to wait until when the summer comes around, or I want to wait until; you know what I mean. And we could just do that forever. Why don’t you just start right now? And you can come up with all kinds of excuses, and all kinds of stories and all kinds of reasons why you can’t start right now.

But it all boils down to you’re just afraid. And that’s it, and it’s okay. It’s okay to be afraid to start. Because getting started with something like this can be a little bit scary. If you’re somebody who’s like, man, I’ve been wanting to lose weight for 10 years. And I’ve got a lot of weight to lose, like 50 pounds.

And you know, just getting started just feels so daunting and scary. Because what if I fail, I failed before, but I do really want to do this, but maybe I’ll just wait until and then you fill in the blank with whatever is going to happen. And whenever the planets align or whatever. Just throw all that garbage out the window and just start right now. Start right now.

If you want to just start losing weight right now, I’m going to give you one tip that will absolutely point you in the right direction. Just stop eating sugar. Do that today. If you do that, starting today, I promise you a week from now, if you stick with it, you’ll feel better and you’ll probably lose some weight. And you’ll be like, dang, why didn’t I start that earlier?

I can’t tell you how many people come to me for coaching. And we start working together. And we start to put together a plan for them and they start feeling better and running gets better and they’re losing weight and they’re feeling amazing and they’re sleeping better. And they’re like I had been thinking about working with you for like two years and I just finally said why didn’t I do this earlier?

Well, gosh, I’m just kicking myself for not starting earlier. I’m like well let’s just, you know, it takes what it takes but I just want to encourage you that wherever you are right now is a perfect time to get started. It is the perfect time to change, it is the perfect time to give up junk food or sugar or whatever it is that is your Achilles heel. Okay, so just get started, stop saying later.

Stop waiting for the planets to align, they never do. Although the whole Mercury being in retrograde thing is just messing with my computer, right? Is that a thing? I think it is a thing. So don’t wait for that to happen just like do your thing and do it now get started now. This idea of later is a killer of hopes and dreams. Later, later, later, because later never happens. Okay, so the first thing is just like start, just start where you are is fine.

And the next thing is that I want you to start simple, don’t overcomplicate this stuff, we have to make things very, very simple. At the beginning, when I’m working with new people, we change a couple of things, okay? I might say like, Hey, we’re going to stop eating sugar, we’re going to stay away from, you know, junk food, we’re going to limit how much you know, carbohydrates, you’re eating, whatever, like it all goes a little bit different for each person.

But we start with a few things, we see how that goes for a week or two, and then we layer on something else, okay? If you try to change 27 things at once, it is going to be too overwhelming for you. And it’s funny, because I’ve worked with a couple people who have told me like, I can handle it, Patrick, just tell me everything right now, I want to start doing it all.

And I’m like, okay, here’s a few things. And I’ll lay out five or six things, you know, that they can change. And, you know, they’ll start doing all these things. And they’ll message me like three days later, and they’re like, okay, that was too much, is too overwhelming for me, I can’t do all this stuff all at once. I’m like, I know.

So we change a few things at a time. First, for a lot of reasons. Number one is like we want to get your body used to doing things a little bit differently. And if you remove sugar, if you’re somebody that’s eating a lot of carbs, a lot of sugar, and we lower your carb intake and stop eating sugar and refined grains, that might be a bit of a shock to your system, you know, and so we want to get your body like feeling good again.

And then we can layer on the next thing, okay. That’s why one of the reasons why we do this also, from a psychological standpoint, we can handle a couple changes at once, one or two things, but much more than that, and we just feel too overwhelmed. And we’re more likely to give up because it feels too overwhelming.

So start simple, start very simple. Change one thing, give up sugar, just stop eating sugar for a week, see how you feel okay? I heard this recently, I like this principle called the ABZ principle. That’s like Alpha Beta Zulu. And the ABZ principle is this. Where you are right now is A and where you want to be eventually, maybe lose 50 pounds, that’s going to be Z.

All right, that’s the end game, where you want to be is the next aligned action. That is your next step. That’s what you’re going to do. Now. That’s where your focus is on B, keep your focus there. Do not worry about steps C through Y. We’ll get there later. Start where you are. Start with here you are at A and I’m going to focus on B right now. I’ll get to C later.

And then D, E and F and so on. But for right now it’s just B, that’s all we’re going to focus on right now. If you can just use that kind of as a basic principle for habit change, this whole process is going to become so much easier for you, because you’re not overwhelming yourself. You’re literally just working on the next aligned action, what is the next thing I can do that will move me an inch closer to Z?

Not three feet closer, just an inch or two. That’s all we want to focus on right now. Okay, so just keep it very, very simple, especially at the beginning. And think about all the different ways that you can simplify the process of habit change, it could be as simple as like, okay, I really want to get in the habit of eating healthy food every day at lunch. And so one way I’m going to simplify that process is to meal prep once a week on Sunday afternoon. And then I’m going to have my lunches all prepared.

You know, when I go to work, I can just grab one of those and I’m done. I don’t have to think about it. I’ve simplified that part of the plan. You know, I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do every single day. I’ve kind of made it very, very simple. And that right there. That simple little tip right there is going to help you increase your compliance every single day.

It’s going to be much easier to stay on track and develop a good habit of eating healthy lunches, if you’ve already prepped them ahead of time, right? So keep it simple. And then make it simplify the process as well as much as you can. If you want to get in the habit of running early in the morning, every other day or whatever; get out your running clothes and your running shoes the night before, lay it all out, get it all ready to go so that when you wake up in the morning, all you have to do is slip out of bed and slip into those running clothes and slip out the door and you’re ready and you’re running.

If you can just kind of get in the habit of putting out those clothes the night before, when you’re thinking clearly and it’s not like cold outside and you’re in bed all snuggled up all warm and thinking about being outside, get yourself ready the night before. That way, when you wake up in the morning, you’re just like ready to go. And you can just get right into the start of developing that habit of getting into running right away. You don’t have to think about it because you’ve already made that decision ahead of time. Okay.

Another way of developing good habits, especially at the beginning, is to kind of ritualize some of the things that we do and, and putting out those running clothes would be kind of an example of a ritual that makes things simple as well. But it’s also a way of building into your day, some rituals so that some of these things can become habits for you.

So I’ve used this analogy of like a sports team, whatever. Like they have pregame routines, right? You’ve seen the baseball players, they’ll go out and they’ll toss the ball around. And they kind of do the same thing. Every single time. Football players do drills, whatever, I guess I don’t really know. But I have seen baseball players go out there and toss the ball around.

Today, by the way, I took a little run through downtown Cincinnati. And it happens to be Opening Day. Opening Day is a big deal here in Cincinnati as like the first official baseball team in the United States, Cincinnati Reds. And we have a big parade every year. And so there’s thousands of people downtown kind of playing in the streets getting ready for this parade.

I didn’t even know it was Opening Day until I was running down there. But I was like, oh, this is so cool. This is so fun, you know, but it just got me thinking about like baseball and how they have these pregame routines, these rituals that they go through. And they do this not because they’re really trying to warm up, you know, that’s probably a little bit of it. But it’s a little bit of just like they’re preparing their mind, and they’re preparing their body to start to do this work that they’re going to do, okay.

So if you’re somebody that wants to change your day, you want to feel a little bit more, you know, mindful during your day and you want to, you know, start your day on the right track every day, create like a morning routine.

So you might get up, you might put the coffee on, you might do a little meditation, you might spend a few minutes journaling, that would be a great way to start every single day. So you’ve developed this ritual, about how you start your day. And if you want to feel better throughout your day, every day consistently, then maybe starting every day with the same morning routine.

Much like baseball players start a game with the same warmup routine, you are going to set yourself up; mind, body and spirit to like, you know, approach that day in a more mindful way. Same thing, like if you want to sleep better at night, maybe have a wind down routine at the end of your day. So you can start your day with a morning routine, you can end your day with a wind down routine, where you might dim the lights for a little while, you might do some journaling or some reading, you know before going to bed.

You know you brush your teeth, you put your pajamas on, you kind of get in bed, like whatever that looks like for you create a little bit of a routine around some of these things, make it a ritual and it will make the process of winding down much easier for you and you’ll probably sleep better if you get into this habit of of this ritualistic routine, okay.

Your pregame routine is what’s going to get you into action that’s going to get you to start the process of taking action when you don’t feel like it. So you may wake up in the morning and you’re like I don’t feel like doing much today, but I’m just gonna go ahead and get up every day and I do my journaling and meditation. So I’m just going to start with that. And just the process of doing that will set you up for a better day. Right there. Even though you may not even feel like it. It’s just gonna make it that much easier for you. Okay.

Another way to get started with changing habits is that you have to make changes to your environment. And there’s a lot of different ways of looking at this and a lot of different ways to interpret what I mean when I say environment. And I’ll give you a couple examples here.

One of them is if you if you want to start eating better, and you want to stop eating junk food, get the junk food out of the house, you have to get that stuff out of your house, the environment that you live in the environment that you spend the most amount of time in, cannot be laden with junk food everywhere you look.

Every time you open the fridge or the pantry, or you look on the counter and you see cookies, or ice cream, or whatever, chips, pretzels, just junk, just, that’s going to make it very hard for you to stay on track, right. So you’ve got to change your environment and clean out the fridge, clean out the pantry. If you only have one option for the food that you have in your house, and it’s healthy food, and it’s food that’s on your plan, you’re going to be so much more likely to stay on track and develop good habits around what you eat and what you don’t eat.

The more you can control your default food environment, the healthier you are going to be. For most of us, our default food environment is our house, our own home. And if you can control the heck out of that you are well on your way to being the healthiest version of yourself. Some other forms of environment that we can change to improve our compliance and to improve our ability to create good habits is things like what we’re reading, what we’re listening to, what we’re watching, the people we’re hanging around, this is all part of your environment, okay.

I’m a person who likes to consume a lot of content. So I read a lot of books. I listen to podcasts, I listen to audiobooks. I watch documentaries, I hang around people, I follow people online. And all these people are like, people that lift me up. The books I read are on topics like habit change, and nutrition. The podcasts I listen to are on things like mindset, and coaching, and improving your health and your fitness and strength and, and all the stuff that I’m constantly immersed in.

This world of healthy, living, healthy eating, I’m always learning, I’m always growing and evolving. One way that you can do this is to join a running group. If you have a local running group, join the group and immerse yourself in this world of running with other people. Because you’re going to be surrounded by other people who have similar goals.

Maybe you’re all training for the same marathon, or half marathon, or 5k, or whatever. But when you’re surrounded by people who get it, who are all kind of doing the same thing. You’re listening to podcasts on that subject, you’re reading books on that subject, and your world becomes like focused on running marathons – you’re gonna be so much more successful, and so much more driven, to stay on track and create good habits.

So immerse yourself in this world of losing weight, healthy living. This is one of the reasons I designed my coaching program the way that I did. It’s designed exactly for this purpose, to help you stay surrounded by people who get it, who will encourage you, who lift you up, who inspire you and motivate you and who help you stay on track.

The people who show up for all my group coaching calls, the people who do the homework, who immerse themselves into this program, honestly, they get the best results. So if you want to get started with habit change, one of the best things you can do is sort of immerse yourself in this world of healthy eating, of nutrition, of running, of losing weight, all that stuff.

And I promise you, it’s going to make changing your habits so much easier because everybody that’s around you is doing the same thing. You know, they say if you surround yourself with that you’re kind of the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And I love that because if you spend your time around, you know five people who eat junk food, you’re probably the sixth.

If you spend your time with five really overweight people Well, you’ll probably be the sixth. If you spend your time with five people who run marathons, you’ll probably be the six or five people who are losing weight, you will probably be the sixth. Okay? So immerse yourself into this environment of being a healthy person, and you will be.

And then lastly, you know, this is something that is often overlooked. And a lot of people don’t really talk about this. But when it comes to losing weight, and changing habits, and getting healthier and getting stronger, I think people have this presupposition, this idea that it has to be a suffer fest, that in order to lose weight, you’re going to have to suffer your way to your weight loss goal, and it’s going to really suck.

Now, I’ll be honest, there are times when it might, and I talk about this, I say, hey, you know, you have to embrace the suck sometimes, right? But that doesn’t mean it has to be a suffer fest through the whole process. So my last tip for you is that whatever you’re doing, you have to make it fun. You cannot suffer your way to your ideal weight. I mean, you can and some people do, but I do not recommend that.

So you need to find some ways of making the process fun. And in my coaching program, I try so hard to have fun with it and be light hearted. And we laugh and I think we do have fun doing this. Okay, we don’t, you know, sit there and you know mope around about this. There’s times when it’s challenging for us and for me and for you, and I get all that. But for the most part, we have fun doing this, we look for ways of making this process fun.

So how can you put some fun into changing your habits or getting started with habit change? Now fun is very subjective, it’s going to look different for different people. For me, I enjoy trying some different foods, and you know, kind of changing up my diet every now and then. And, you know, still focused on the principles that I teach and, you know, in maintaining high protein and you know, a lower carb approach for the gym, for the most part, you know, in general that works for me, other people, like, you know, eat more carbs and stuff like that.

But I try to have fun doing this. I try to make eating part of the process of having fun. I recently made some green enchiladas with my girlfriend. We made this big casserole dish of enchiladas that were so amazing; chicken enchiladas and with cheese and sour cream and green enchilada sauce and hot salsa stuff. So much fun. Like we had a really good time doing that.

Putting those together and eating, eating can be fun. It doesn’t have to be you know, oh, gosh, we’re eating you know, just kale again. It’s not like that at all. Not like that at all. But I tried to have fun doing this. And I had tried to have fun with my training, with my diet, with the way I approach nutrition, with the way that I approach strength, all this stuff. I try to have fun with this.

So think about ways that you can make losing weight fun. I know it doesn’t sound logical because most people don’t look at it that way. They think of losing weight as being such a tough process and such a unfun process, but I promise you, there are ways that we can make this process fun. You can have fun, while losing weight, you absolutely can. Okay.

And if you ever want to make habit change and weight loss easier, join the Running Lean coaching project. I promise you’ll get all the support that you need to create healthy habits that actually stick. Just head over to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more, and I’ll see you there. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. 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.