176. Handling Setbacks Like a Badass

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 176 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, handling setbacks like a badass. At some point in your weight loss journey, you will experience a setback. This is normal, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but most people just do not handle setbacks very well.

They get down on themselves, they feel gross feelings like guilt and shame. And most of the time they just give up. Do not do this. Instead, you have to learn how to handle setbacks properly. So in this episode, I’m gonna break it all down for you and explain what to do instead. So you’ll be handling setbacks, like a badass every time they happen.

first, let me ask you something. Can you relate to any of this? Do you struggle to lose weight? Does running more no longer work for you? Are you ready to be done with all the yo-yo dieting? The yo-yo gaining and losing the same way over and over again? Do you want running to be easier again? Do you just want to know what to do and how to do it? And are you ready to get started on your weight loss journey?

If you answered yes to any of the previous statements, then I have just a thing for you. You can join me for a free live training and coaching session called How to start losing weight as a runner, this is going to be held on Wednesday, May 17. And it is going to be live over Zoom.

So you just got to get yourself signed up. Once you do that you’re in and I’ll be there live. And during this call, you’re going to learn why we gain weight, the real reasons why we gain weight and what you can do about it. Why running more is not the answer, the right fuel to use for weight loss and for running. You’re gonna learn nutrition principles to get you started.

So the whole purpose of this is to get you started on your weight loss journey the right way. Okay. And I’ll be answering your questions live. So be sure to show up, bring your questions. If you’ve been thinking about working with me as your coach, join me on this live training and coaching session that is a great opportunity for you to show up, ask questions and kind of get some live coaching from me.

So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself, then you owe it to yourself to attend this free live event. If I didn’t mention that it’s free, there’s nothing you just got to sign up, you know, so I know who’s coming and be able to send emails to you and things like that. So you’ve got nothing to lose except a few extra pounds and everything to gain.

To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/live and you can sign up, right up until the date of the event. I would just encourage you to sign up a little bit sooner so that you can get the reminder emails and make sure you can and you get the links to the meeting and stuff like that. Okay, runningleancoaching.com/live. I hope to see you there. It’s gonna be fun.

Okay, on to this topic today handling setbacks, like a badass. I’ve been thinking about this topic and sharing this topic for a while with you guys. And I’ve had a couple of people experience some setbacks, lately, which is very normal. I want to make that very clear here that, you know, having a setback, you know, you’re going along fine.

Maybe you’re losing some weight, you’re sticking to your plan. And then something happens. Like that’s normal. But a lot of times we don’t, we don’t think it’s normal. And we think that it’s bad for some reason, and we get down on ourselves when this happens.

So a common scenario is you’re on your weight loss journey. You’ve changed your diet, you’re exercising regularly, maybe you join a gym, you’re sticking to the program, losing weight, feeling great, feeling motivated, committed, all of a sudden, though, something happens, something happens and it throws you off your plan.

So you’re no longer sticking with it. You stop eating healthy food, you stop going to the gym, you’re not running, you just want to sit around and watch Netflix all day. Maybe even start gaining some weight. And you just feel like guilt and shame and disgust and you’re disgusted with yourself and oh my gosh, this sounds terrible. Right?

And you might be thinking I’m being a little overly dramatic here. Or is this just a little glimpse into reality? Because I can describe this scenario so well, because I’ve lived it. I’ve been there. I’ve lived this over and over again. I’ve had many setbacks in a lot of different areas of my life. And I know how much it sucks. And I know how hard it is. And I also know that the traditional ways that people talk about this stuff isn’t super helpful.

So what I’m going to share with you today is a little bit of a different take on some of this. And you have to understand, the first thing you have to understand here is that, you know, setbacks are normal, and we should expect them and nobody’s going to get through life without having any kind of setback. So as soon as we start accepting that things are gonna get a little bit easier for you.

But you just have to know that it is part of the deal. It just is. All right. And I think that one of the big problems is that there are a lot of messages that we get from outside. A lot of external messages that we get that tell us that, like, it should be easy. That’s the first message I want to kind of address here that most experts and coaches out there who are talking about diet and nutrition, they will tell you, well, here’s what you do, stop eating sugar. And I say this all the time, too, right?

I tell people this all the time, stop eating sugar, stay away from processed food, stick to eating, you know, whole food, real food, right? This, this is something we can all agree that’s, that’s probably pretty beneficial for you and works for most people. And then if you know what to do, like, that’s all you need. And I think the underlying message there is that it’s so easy. All you need to know is what to do.

But I have to tell you something, it is never that easy. If it were that easy, no one would ever experience any kind of failure or setback, I wouldn’t have a job if it was that easy. If I could just tell you what to do, I would just do that. I would just tell you, here’s what you do, here’s the 10 things you’re going to do. And everything will work perfectly for you. It does not work that way.

This whole idea that it should be easy, it’s very misleading. Because people think that, you know, if you just tell people what to do, then they’ll just do it. And if people aren’t talking about the fact that you fail, and that there are setbacks, and that they’re expected. If people aren’t talking about that, then it just must be easy for everybody else, except for me.

So this is a real tricky little place to be because you might be thinking that you’re the only one that’s having a hard time with this. And then everybody else finds this to be easy. But for you it’s hard. Right? But I have to tell you this, it is hard. This stuff is not easy. Right? It is supposed to be hard.

And I know this not just from my own experience, because I have experienced many, many challenging times trying to stick with my weight loss plan my, you know, exercise plan, my overall mental health and fitness plan. And I know from years of experience working with literally hundreds of runners, that this stuff that we do, it is not easy. It is hard, it can be challenging. It can really suck sometimes.

Success is never a linear path. It’s always kind of wonky. And that’s okay. It’s okay. I talk about embracing the suck all the time. Like just lean into that discomfort, right? This means that it will be hard. It is not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be hard. And if you have it in your mind that it’s supposed to be easy, but for you it’s not, that’s going to feel terrible.

I was talking to a client recently who told me, you know, early on the process she was like super committed, ready to go. She was all in and you know, we talked about hey, you know at times this is going to be hard. You’ve got to be willing to, you know, embrace the suck times. It’s gonna be hard, expect to be hard.

She’s like, yeah, I got this. I know it’s gonna be hard. I’m ready for it, bring it on. And then after a month or two something happened with work. She kind of went off the plan. And getting back on track was really, really hard. She found it very, very hard to get back on the plane. And I remember being on a call with her and she said she was like experiencing all this guilt and shame and just couldn’t get her mojo back and, and it was really hard.

And I said, yeah, remember back when I said, this was going to be hard and you need to embrace the suck? Well, this is what I’m talking about. This is what hard feels like she was like, oh, wow, that’s cool. Like, it just clicked for her. That like, for some reason, even though going into it, intellectually, she knew, oh, this is supposed to be hard, it’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be hard.

But then when you’re actually in it, and it gets hard, and you’re like, oh, it shouldn’t be this way. It should be easy. It’s not easy. And this is what hard feels like. So stop thinking it’s supposed to be easy. It’s not. And it’s not just you, it gets hard for everybody at some point. Expect it to be hard, because it will be.

And then when it does get hard, and it’s like, oh, this is very challenging right now, you can gently remind yourself, oh, yeah, this is what hard feels like. So that first message that I think we get from a lot of people out there, a lot on social media, other coaches, nutrition experts, dieticians, whatever. There’s this underlying sort of presupposition that it should be easy, and it’s not easy. It is hard. Okay. So first accept that.

The second thing is that we just shouldn’t have setbacks like we should, you should just do it perfectly. This is a message that I think we get from the outside world at times, but more often, internally. That you should be able to do this perfectly, and you should never fail. And that was always me. This internal dialogue always tells me that I am different. I don’t fail, I do things perfectly. And I shouldn’t have failures. I shouldn’t have setbacks.

This is a problem. Because here’s why. When you do experience a setback, and you will, you feel like you shouldn’t be experiencing that setback. And this is something that I call fighting against what is. You are fighting against the way things are. You are so keen on being perfect, that when things go awry, and they always do – you think well, it shouldn’t be this way. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.

But this causes a lot of suffering. This thing of where you’re like this, things should be different. As soon as you start thinking things should be different, you start suffering. That’s it. Most human suffering is due to this to us wanting things to be different, but they aren’t. Most human suffering is just us fighting against what is. And we do it all the freaking time.

When we refuse to accept that things are the way they are. When we refuse to accept the way things are we suffer, we experience inner turmoil that doesn’t change the way things are. We just experienced all kinds of inner suffering. So the way through this is to learn what I call radical acceptance. That means accepting the way things are. Accepting reality, just as it is. No judgments, no criticisms, no thinking and wishing things were different.

Practicing radical acceptance in every aspect of your life, if you do this, you will stop your own internal suffering. Everything will still be the way it is. But your inner turmoil disappears because you’re accepting of the way things are. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. You’ll know that things are the way they’re supposed to be because that’s the way they are.

It’s funny because we will do something, we will experience something and look back on it and go well, that shouldn’t have gone that way. And I always say well, you know, it was supposed to go that way because that’s the way it happened. That’s the way it happened. It was supposed to be that way because that’s the way it happened. As soon as you just accept all of this, everything gets easier. You’re no longer fighting against everything. So practice radical acceptance.

This does not mean you don’t work to improve things, or change or learn from your mistakes. Of course not. We always want to be learning and growing and evolving and becoming more, you can still accept everything just as it is and work to change. This is a very, very, very key distinction here.

Accepting the way things are does not mean that we are passive, that does not mean that we accept, well, I’m just going to like, gain two pounds a week for the rest of my life until I blow up and die. Like, no, it doesn’t have to be that way.

You can work to change, while accepting the way things are. This kind of a radical concept, right? Most people do not do this. And most people suffer through everything in their life. Setbacks are to be expected. As soon as you accept this fact, it’s going to make a big difference for you.

And I think the third message we get around experiencing setbacks is that see, we often get emotional about this stuff. And there’s this underlying message out there, that we shouldn’t get emotional. That we just shouldn’t be emotional people, especially guys.

This is a sneaky one, because it’s not something that’s often you know, actually said out loud. But I think there’s an underlying vibe that we just shouldn’t be emotional, shouldn’t show our feelings, shouldn’t feel our feelings, just get over it and move on. And especially in the health and fitness community, there’s a lot of, you know, macho bravado out there.

And I think there’s a place for that. And I kind of like some of that at times. But other times I’m like, you know, it’s okay, that as men, especially, that we can just, we do have feelings, we do have emotions, and it’s okay to experience that stuff. It’s okay to have those emotions and feelings.

Listen, we are human beings. Every human being has emotions, we are emotional animals. It’s what makes us awesome, what makes us human. There’s no other animals on the planet that experience the vast array of in depth emotions that we do.

There are animals that experience emotions, they’ve shown this before, but not the way that we do. It’s not to the extent that we do. So having emotions is normal. It’s a part of being human. So that’s cool. Being emotional, having emotions is not the problem. We get into trouble when we allow our emotions to dictate our behavior. That’s when we run into problems.

So, for example, you experience some kind of setback, like you have a big change at work, and you got all this new work to do. And maybe they let a couple people go, you’ve got to take over their responsibilities. It’s a lot of work that you have to do now, a lot of internal stress. So your goal now becomes just I gotta get rid of this stress as fast as possible. So how do you do that?

Well, how have you always gotten rid of stress? Eat, drink, binge watch your favorite shows on Netflix, sleep in, skip your workouts, do whatever feels good. Because that’s going to make you feel better, right? That’s going to remove the stress right now.

It doesn’t work and we know that, but we have the setbacks and then we allow the emotions of that experience to drive our behavior. When you allow this to happen, you are no longer in control. Your emotions have taken the wheel and they are driving the bus. Okay? We cannot allow our emotions to be in charge. We cannot allow our emotions to dictate our behavior. And this will also happen when we experience a setback and then we beat ourselves up about it. ‘I’m worthless. I can’t stick to my plan. I’m a failure. I suck at this. I’ll never lose weight. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m a piece of crap.’

This is like self flagellation, right? And it sends you spiraling downward into the abyss of negative emotions. And again, how do you mitigate that? Will you turn to food and drink and Netflix and whatever to suit yourself and feel better. Even though you know, this is not a long term solution, you’re chasing immediate pleasure in the midst of pain because it just feels good. You just want to feel good.

And you end up sacrificing your long term goals for a little bit of short term pleasure. So the big problem here isn’t being emotional. The big problem isn’t having emotions, that’s normal. We’re human, we should have emotions, we should experience our emotions. The problem is when we allow our emotions to drive our behavior.

So you have to allow yourself to experience those emotions without trying to make them go away. You have to allow yourself to be emotional and experience an emotion. Process that emotion, feel your feelings, allow the emotions to move through you, without doing anything, to numb yourself or to, to feel different; just feel bad.

That is a crazy concept right there. Most people do not want to feel bad. People do not want to do this because it does feel terrible. It’s supposed to feel terrible, though they are negative emotions by default. They are negative feelings. It feels negative, it feels terrible. But what if you just could experience these emotions and not do anything about it? Ah, this is how you become an emotional badass right here.

Oh, I’m willing to experience that emotion. I’m willing to experience some guilt, or shame or feeling like crap. I’m willing to experience all that stuff. If you get good at that, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. So feel the emotion, allow it to be there, do nothing. Don’t try to numb it. Don’t try to make it go away. Just feel it, it will eventually fade and go away.

Think about the times you’ve been in emotional distress. And you’ve just felt so terrible. You can look back on those moments and say like, oh, yeah, that was like, a few hours, a few minutes a day, whatever. Depends on the type of emotion we’re talking about here and the intensity of it right? Most of the time, though, it always passes, it eventually goes away. You can choose to just experience it and feel it and process it. Or you can just numb yourself to that stuff. Don’t do that though.

Become an emotional badass. Instead practice this. This is something you do have to practice. It is not easy. It’s not for the timid. Okay, so, setbacks, they are inevitable. They are part of the process of growth and change and evolving and becoming more. Handling setbacks like a badass means knowing that your journey will be hard. And you keep continuing on anyway, you just keep going anyway.

It means accepting that everything that happens is as it should be. And then you can work to change when necessary, but accepting everything as is because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And then allowing your emotions to be there without trying to numb them or push them away. And without letting them drive your behavior. This is how you handle setbacks, like a total badass.

If you want to learn more about getting started on your weight loss journey, join me for that free live training and coaching session called How To Start Losing Weight As A Runner on Wednesday, May 17. I’ll be going live to show you how to get started on your weight loss journey the right way. I’ll be answering your questions live. So be sure to show up. Bring your questions and get a little coaching, cool. Go to runningleancoaching.com/live to sign up. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will 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.