19. How to Become a Lean Running Machine Part 1

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 19 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host and a Master Life Coach and weight loss coach for runners. And today, I want to talk about how to become a lean running machine. And this is the first episode in a podcast series that I’m doing a three part series that I’m doing called How to Become a Lean Running Machine.

This subject is near and dear to my heart because I’ve spent years and years trying to lose weight, I was very overweight for a while there. I lost some weight with running and exercise and diet, and then put a bunch of that weight back on. And then I’ve spent the last few years trying everything imaginable.

And nothing was working at all, until I finally figured out the secrets to losing weight and to becoming a lean runner to getting back to my natural weight and being able to stay there. And now I’m on this mission I want to help as many runners as possible to stop struggling and stop trying to run more to lose weight. I want to help you stop struggling and hit your goal weight too.

So over these next few episodes, these next three episodes, I’m sharing everything I know about becoming a lean running machine. That’s all right here on The Running Mind podcast. As a reminder, my next weight loss masterclass starts June 1, I’m really, really excited about this. I’m really proud of this work that I’m doing and the people that have taken the class already have seen amazing results. Anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds lost in the first five or six weeks, up to 35 pounds loss in the first six weeks. It’s amazing.

You will learn how to control your cravings, manage your emotions, and stop the overeating for good because really the cause of being overweight is overeating. This is a one of a kind masterclass, it’s not a diet program. It’s not an exercise program. It’s a transformational coaching program and my job.

And what I do really well is to help you permanently change your relationship with food. Most diet plans, they just focus on the food, here’s what you do, do this. They don’t do anything to address all the mental and emotional factors, all the mental and emotional causes of overeating, overeating and weight gain.

So as a master life coach, this is my area of expertise and I got you covered here for sure. I will help you go from feeling exhausted out of control and hating how you look in the mirror to feeling full of energy in control. And loving how you look feeling confident about your new body and your new mind. You’re going to completely change how you think and feel about food and about yourself.

It’s a six week masterclass, and we teach this live so we do a zoom call with the group. And I only take like 10 to 15 people at a time. I want to keep it small so that everybody has a chance to get personal one-on-one coaching time with me.

Okay, but in the six week masterclass, you will learn how to control the hormones that cause you to gain weight, you’re going to learn how to stop the cravings of those foods that do not serve you. You’re going to learn how to only desire food that fuels your body, you’re gonna develop this whole new healthy relationship with food, you’ll stop struggling with the uncontrollable urges, we’ll recalibrate your hunger.

So you will feel satisfied for longer, you’re going to be able to use food as a way to thrive not as an escape from your life. And I will teach you how to manage your mind and your emotions, like a badass. And this work that we do. It’s not just about losing weight. It applies to every aspect of your life. The tools that you will learn here you can apply to your work, to your relationships, to your family, to your career, if you’re an entrepreneur, whatever it is.

So here’s what it looks like when you enroll in the master class. Week one we uncover the hidden causes of weight gain so you’re gonna learn all the reasons why you’re gaining weight and what you can do about it. You’re going to learn what foods you absolutely have to stop eating and the most important things you should be eating if you want to lose weight.

Week two we will go into how to recalibrate your hormones. Okay, next week we’re gonna be talking about hormones. But there’s these differences between like, what is physical hunger? What are withdrawals? What are cravings? What’s emotional hunger? You’re gonna learn how to deal with all that stuff, you’re gonna learn how to recalibrate your hormones for optimal weight loss. You’re gonna learn what a food protocol is and how to stick to it.

Week three, we talk about the mental cravings, the urges, desires, how to control your thoughts, how to manage your mind, this is such a key component to this program. And so different from what other people offer out there, honestly, you’re going to manage your mind to eliminate this over desire, this unnatural desire for food, you’re gonna learn how to believe in yourself, you’re going to learn how to believe in your ability to get back to your natural weight, and we will get you there, you’re going to learn how to process those urges and those cravings.

Okay, week four, we talk about making decisions ahead of time, the power of that I talked about that in the podcast, in a recent podcast episode, the power of making decisions ahead of time,
how to overcome obstacles that stand between you and your goal weight, using the power of visualization, and then we get into in week five, the emotional eating piece, you know, we’re we build up to this, okay.

And then in week five, we talk about how to stop using food as a way to escape your life, as a way to escape your emotions. What false pleasures are and how to create emotional well being instead of relying on these false pleasures to feel good. There’s food, it’s much like a drug, you know, we eat food, it makes us feel good, but we’re escaping our life.

When we do that we’re avoiding something, usually when we do that, okay, so I’m going to teach you how to create emotional comfort, without all these negative side effects that you get from like, from overeating, okay.

And then in week six, we’re going to talk about how to feel on purpose, like how to choose your emotions, it’s fascinating that you can choose your emotion, you can choose how you want to feel, did you know that? So we’ll talk about how to do that.

The power of making commitments, how to stop reliving your past, and start creating an amazing future for yourself. And then how to keep getting ongoing support, motivation, how to, you know, do your maintenance, your ongoing maintenance once you get to your goal weight.

So I talk about all of this stuff. It’s a comprehensive program that addresses the physical, mental and emotional aspects of gaining weight, and how to master those things. So that you can lose weight and get back to your natural weight and stay there, okay. You also get access to all the training material. So I record everything and put it on a private website. We have a private Facebook group where you guys can interact, we can ask questions, I post questions and answers in there. And you get one-on-one coaching with me.

So this is one of the biggest things that I offer. One of the most powerful things that I offer through this program is that you get one-on-one time with me throughout the course of the six weeks. And this is key because if there’s something you want to talk about, that’s, you know, maybe a little personal or you want help with a specific issue, you and I will have a chance to do that together. So you get me as your personal weight loss coach throughout this program.

Now, if you’re looking for some kind of a quick fix, this is probably not the right program for you. A lot of people want the magic pill that’s going to make them lose weight, or just tell me the one thing that I should eat. I gotta tell you, that stuff does not work. Okay. This is the most comprehensive and most effective weight loss program that you will ever experience.

I guarantee that the program itself is pretty simple. Okay, it’s a simple concept, but I will tell you this, it is not easy. Over the course of the six week masterclass, you will be challenged mentally, physically and emotionally. But I am there to help you navigate every single piece of that you will not be doing this on your own. I’m not going to just tell you what to eat, and send you on your way and say good luck with that. That’s the way most diet plans work.

Okay, that’s not what I’m going to do here. Also, if you’re the kind of person who likes to sort of half assed stuff, this is probably not for you either. This is a program of commitment, empowerment and action. I want people who are committed to reaching their weight loss goal. If that feels like you, then this is the perfect program for you.

Okay, I can’t do the work for you. Just like your personal trainer can’t do the push ups for you. I can’t do your weight loss work for you. I can’t be there standing next to you every time you know somebody shoves chocolate cake in your face, okay? But I can be there virtually for you to help you. Okay. But you have to show up and you have to have a commitment to do this work. And if that sounds like you, have you committed? If you’re ready to do this now, then this is the right program for you. Again, I only take about 10 to 15 people through this class at a time so that everybody gets the personal attention and coaching that they need to be successful.

So if you want in on this, please go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating, that’s one word, and enroll now you can learn more about the program their enrollment is on a first come first served basis. So once the class is filled, I’m going to close the doors and you’ll have to wait until the next program starts in probably another eight weeks. But if you want to save your spot for this life changing masterclass, then please go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and enroll now. I want to see you in this class. You deserve this. You are worth it. Okay, so sign up today, innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating.

Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Here’s some things that I hear from my weight loss clients a lot, especially my runners. See if any of this resonates with you. So I hear things like, I’m running more, and I’m eating less, and I’m still gaining weight, or I’m running every day, and I keep gaining weight. Or I’m training for a marathon, and I’m not losing any weight, I’m actually gaining weight.

What is happening here, why can’t I lose weight by running? If you have found yourself thinking these things, or trying to run more to try to lose weight, or if you’ve tried to just limit the amount of calories you’ve been eating to try to lose weight, and it hasn’t worked for you, this is not your fault.

The truth of the matter is that this is a broken model of weight loss, it does not work. Okay, we’re going to talk all about that today. I’ve been there, I know exactly how this feels. So just a little quick backstory about me. I was about 60 pounds overweight, I was very sick, unhealthy. I was eating too much, drinking too much, I had a lot of health issues. I got really sick.

So I started eating better and running. And I did lose a lot of weight, okay. And I started getting into ultra marathons and Ironman and stuff like that. And I lost a lot of weight. But I wasn’t able to keep it off. It was temporary. It took me a long time to lose that weight. And then it didn’t take me very long to gain it all back or to gain a lot of it back.

So I started running more and trying to eat less and really controlling my calories by using apps and all kinds of stuff to like count my calories and stuff like that. I tried all these different diets. And none of that stuff was really working. I kept gaining the weight.

And so I had this mission of like trying to figure this out. I’m a runner, I’m healthy. I’m pretty fit, you know, I work out all the time, how come I’m gaining weight? And I had to realize that it wasn’t about the running. And it wasn’t about the calories. It was about this abnormal desire that I had for food and over desire, an unnatural craving and over desire for food. And that unnatural over desire was causing me to overeat.

My body and my brain. We’re addicted to food we’re addicted to eating, and no amount of running is ever going to fix that problem. Okay, so in order to lose weight, I had to figure out what was causing this over desire for food. And I had to figure out how to fix that so that I could stop the overeating so that I could get back to my natural weight. Okay, so I tried all kinds of stuff that I tried diets willpower, starving myself running more, none of this stuff was working.

So I had to get to the to the actual cause. And I discovered something interesting. My overeating was just a symptom of deeper problems. And if I wanted to lose weight, I had to identify and solve those deeper problems. I had to solve the cause of the over desire, cause of the kind of food addiction, not just treat the symptom which was overeating.

So here’s what I learned. The reason we are overweight is not because we don’t run enough. The reason we are overweight is because we overeat, period. And the reason we overeat is because we have a physical, mental and emotional over desire for food. And when we solve these underlying issues, mental, physical and emotional issues, the overeating stops the way It comes off, we get to our natural weight, and we can stay there permanently.

Now, there are three things you need to understand if you want to stop the struggling, if you want to stop the overeating and if you want to lose the weight and keep it off permanently. And these three things go against a lot of what you may already know about weight loss are about diet and exercise. And these are three things that a lot of people are not talking about.

I’m going to talk about them here. These are the secrets to getting your body back to its natural weight. Okay. So the first thing I’m going to talk about, and the subject of today’s podcast is all about how running more and eating less does not work for weight loss. Okay, so this is secret number one. So we’re going to focus on this today.

So we’ve been told for decades that the formula for weight loss is this, right: eat less, exercise more. That’s all anybody has ever said. And so this has like been the normal advice we’ve all been given. But unfortunately, it’s not good advice. And it’s basically wrong. It just doesn’t work.

Okay, running more and eating less, does not work. If you want to lose weight, and keep it off permanently. So, just a little backstory back in the 1970s, early 70s. There was this guy named Jim Fixx, and he and he wrote this book called The Complete Book of Running. And so this guy is considered sort of the catalyst for the American Fitness revolution, okay, he really popularized the sport of running.

Since then, running has become like such a popular and such an accessible sport to people. I just did some research on this, there are more than 30,000 running events in the US every year. So that includes 5k’s marathons, half marathons, ultra marathons, all that stuff. Yet, as a nation, we are fatter than ever. We are exercising more than we ever have in a recorded human history. Yet since the 1970s, the obesity rates, especially here in the US have tripled. This is crazy.

Okay, what is happening here? Here’s why running or exercise doesn’t really work for weight loss. So there’s three parts to this: running doesn’t work for weight loss. And the first part is this, that we tend to overcompensate by eating more food. So when we exercise, we burn calories, right, we burn a bunch of calories. Well, when that happens, our body requires more calories.

So do you ever notice how hungry you are after a long run? I know that I used to eat like crazy after a long run. That’s because after your long run, your brain is sending signals to your body to increase your appetite. So this causes you to actually eat more food. So your body’s always like trying to regulate itself, right? It’s trying to get back to a neutral state.

That neutral state is called homeostasis. And what happens is when you burn a lot of calories, your body’s like we got to get all those calories back. Okay, so it sends signals using hormones to your brain, to increase your appetite to cause you to eat more food. And a lot of times we overcompensate.

So instead of just, you know, eating the exact same amount of calories that we burn or fewer, we eat more, which leads to weight gain instead of weight loss. That’s why a lot of people who train for marathons gain weight, because their appetite is increased and they overcompensate. And there’s kind of a mental thing there too, where people think, hey, I ran today, so I can eat whatever I want.

And they’re just shoving doughnuts and stuff in their mouth all the time. Right? And it’s fun, I get it. Like it’s like, hey, I’m a runner, I can eat whatever I want. And I see all these memes and all these posts in Facebook groups, from runners who are like, I run so I can eat anything I want. And it’s funny, but it doesn’t really work.

Okay, you can’t just consume donuts and expect to lose weight. I don’t care how much running you’re doing. That is not going to work for you. In fact, it is going to have some very detrimental effects for you. It’s just not about it’s not about that you just can’t eat anything you want just because you’re running. Okay.

So when you exercise, you’re burning a lot of fuel and your body’s like I need to get back to homeostasis as quickly as possible. So it does this by making you hungry so you eat more food. Running actually makes you hungrier, you overcompensate, you gain weight. And this cycle just continues.

And then when you’re not exercising those hunger signals because you’re eating certain types of food, and we’ll get into that later, but because you’re eating certain types of food, and because you’re constantly burning a lot of calories, you’re constantly in this like increased appetite mode. It’s a vicious cycle, okay? You just can’t outrun this process, you can’t outrun your appetite here. Okay. So that’s number one. The number one reason why running doesn’t really work for weight loss is because you tend to overcompensate and your body’s this is just a natural process that your body is doing here. Okay.

Number two, when you try to use exercise running as a way to lose weight, progress is slow and minimal at best. It takes a long time to lose weight just by exercising just by running a bunch of miles. And when you do, the effects are usually pretty minimal. So there’s a couple of studies that were done. One of them studied this large group of men and women for over a year. And they had them do an hour of strenuous exercise six days a week for more than a year. Okay.

After the study, after more than a year, the women had lost an average of only three pounds, and the men had lost an average of around four pounds. This is after a year of exercising six days a week. They’ve done a lot of studies like this that prove that exercise is not a great way to lose weight. Okay.

Another study that I think is really fascinating is that they took this group of sedentary people, people who normally do not exercise, and they had them trained for a marathon. Okay, so what is that, 17 weeks, 20 weeks? And then at the end of the training season, they checked in and the men had lost an average of around five pounds, which is not bad. The women had lost zero pounds. This is crazy.

This is a ton of running that you’re doing when you’re training for a marathon, right. But it just doesn’t work. All of these people were overcompensating by eating more food, okay. But one of the most compelling studies was the Women’s Health Study. So this is where they followed around 40,000 women for 10 years. 10 years!

And they were divided up into three different groups, high exercise, medium exercise, and low levels of exercise. And the high intensity group exercised for like an hour every day, okay. And after 10 years, they checked out the groups, and this high exercise group has lost no additional weight. In fact, there was no noticeable change in body composition. This is insane, right?

But you just got to look at the facts. You know, science has proven time and time again, that exercise is not a great way to lose weight, yet we are so Ultra focused on this one thing: just run more, and the weight will magically come off, but it doesn’t work. Okay. So that is reason number two why running does not really work for losing weight. Which it progresses slow and minimal.

And then reason number three, why running is not a great way to lose weight is because running doesn’t address the underlying causes of weight gain, the mental, physical and emotional causes. Okay, running is just treating a symptom. So you gain weight, and then you want to try to burn it off by running right?

All you’re doing is just putting a tiny bandaid on this huge wound, okay, it’s just not enough, it’s not going to work, okay, you just cannot run enough to get out of that cycle. And you’re not addressing the underlying issues. And that’s what the third thing here is, it doesn’t address the cause of overeating, the cause of your over desire for food.

Like I said before, overeating. That’s just a symptom. You’ve got to treat the cause of the overeating, which is an over desire, okay. And I feel like I need to say this here. So I don’t want you to stop running. Running is awesome. It’s very, very good for you. It helps to build strong bones and muscles. It improves your overall fitness, especially your cardiovascular fitness. It helps you sleep better. It helps reduce stress, it’s really good for your heart. It’s an amazing thing to do. So keep running for sure.

Just don’t rely on running as a way of losing weight. Okay, so I just want to make sure that I threw that in there, okay. But there are mental issues and emotional issues that are hidden kind of beneath the surface that cause us to overeat that cause us to crave food and have an unnatural craving for food and running just doesn’t address those things. Okay?

So the three things that why running is not a great way to lose weight is you overcompensate, progress is slow and minimal, and then it doesn’t address the underlying causes: the physical, mental, emotional causes of overeating.

Okay, so that’s why running is not a really great way to lose weight, and then why eating less doesn’t work for weight loss. This is fascinating stuff right here. So we all think that if we just burn more calories than we take in, we can lose weight, right? We’ve been taught this forever. And it’s not that simple. It really does not work the way you think it does.

Okay, so here’s what we think. We think that if we normally burn something like 2000 calories a day, if we restrict our daily calorie intake to 1500 calories a day, we’re going to lose weight, right? I know you’ve tried this, I’ve tried this for years, I actually had this app where I was logging every bit of food that I ate, every time I went to a restaurant, everything I bought in the store, everything I made at home, like I was logging every single item.

And you know, getting my macros right, and counting all the calories, and then making sure that I’m running to burn off more of these calories. And it was completely ineffective. And so frustrating. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted entering food data into this app. It was crazy, okay.

But here’s what happens, you restrict your caloric intake to you know, 1500 calories, okay. And what happens is your body then lowers its metabolism to conserve calories. Okay, your body, again, is trying to get back to homeostasis, it wants to get back to normal, okay. So if you’re used to eating 2000 calories per day, and you limit your intake to 1500, your body has this process where it will down regulate its metabolism, to only burn those 1500 calories and no more, your body has a very good system at regulating this.

What’s happening here is your body is trying to keep you from starving to death. If you were to continue to lower your caloric intake, you know, there’s this idea that if you continue to lower your caloric intake, you can just keep losing weight, and you can lose some weight, but your body will continue to downregulate.

Okay, so let’s say you lowered your caloric intake and you’re losing like two pounds a week, you know, if you went on this thing for, like, two years, would you lose 200 pounds? No, you would not. Your body will downregulate what it burns. And it’ll keep you at a certain level. Okay.

Because your body’s like, I do not want you to starve to death. Okay, your body is really good at this process, okay. They actually did this experiment back in the 40s, like 1944 or 45, right after World War Two or during, during the end of it. So it was called the Minnesota starvation experiment.

And it sounds terrible I’ll tell you, but they took a bunch of healthy young men, who averaged eating around 3000 calories a day. And they lowered their caloric intake to around 1500. And then they lowered it even more to like less than 1000. And there were all kinds of issues that they had.

They ended up being like super cold all the time. Their fingernails got really brittle, their hair was falling out. Like there were all these side effects, you know, because their body was trying to conserve calories it was trying to and so it was putting all its it lowered the metabolism so much that it wasn’t effective at keeping the body in, in a good state in a natural healthy state.

And so these people were slowly losing their minds. They were starting to, you know, hallucinate and think about food all the time, and anyways, horrible. But anyway, the expected weight loss for each of these guys was around 78 pounds. That’s what they expected would happen. They discovered though, that on average, they only lost about 37 pounds each.

And what they figured out is that their bodies were reducing their energy expenditure in direct response to the reduced caloric intake. So the body was lowering its metabolism to make up for the fact that they were getting fewer calories. So for those people who were doing like 1500 calories a day, at that time, their energy expenditure dropped to only around 1400 calories per day.

So the body actually creates this little buffer, this margin of safety. Again, it’s like trying to stay healthy, so you don’t starve to death. Okay? Once the experiment was over, though, and they went back to their normal caloric intake, the 3000 calories, or whatever it was, they started gaining weight until it was actually they were even heavier than they were before the experiment.

And I know that we have all experienced this kind of thing, you kind of starve yourself, you eat less for a while, and you kind of lose a few pounds, but then you start eating normally again, and, and you gain all this weight back. In fact, you’re heavier, right? It’s crazy. I’ve done this before. It’s a crazy cycle. It’s no fun at all. But the fewer calories you eat, the lower your metabolism goes, and the fewer calories you burn.

There was another study done most recently in like 2008. And they had these participants, you know, they lowered their caloric intake, and they initially lost like 10% of their body weight. And their total energy expenditure decreased as expected. But it didn’t last very long, their metabolism actually remained reduced. So their ability to burn calories remained reduced for the entire year of the study. So even after a year at this new lower body weight, their total energy expenditure was still reduced by an average of almost 500 calories per day.

When you lower your caloric intake, your metabolism decreases almost immediately. And then that decrease persists basically indefinitely. Otherwise, you’d keep losing weight until you die. And the application of this is like it’s, it’s obvious like, let’s say, prior to dieting, a woman eats and burns 2000 calories per day. And then following doctor’s orders, she adopts a calorie restricted portion controlled low fat diet and reduces her intake by 500 calories a day, quickly.

Her total expenditure also drops by 500 calories a day. So her metabolism lowers. She feels lousy, tired, cold, hungry, irritable, depressed, but she sticks with it thinking that things must eventually improve, she might lose some weight. But as the caloric expenditure decreases to match the lower calorie intake, the weight plateaus.

And a year later, things have not improved, the weight slowly comes back. Even though she’s eating the same number of calories, right? So she finally figures this is not working. She abandons this failed diet and resumes eating 2000 calories a day, but her metabolism has slowed. She’s only burning off like 1500 calories a day now. And all the weight comes rushing back.

And people will say, well, you just are lacking willpower, right? You need to just, you know, eat less, control yourself. Right? Does this sound familiar to anybody? This is my experience for sure. Okay. Everything I’m describing here has been well documented, okay. Remember, your body is always trying to balance things out, your body always wants to get back to homeostasis.

And when you limit the amount of fuel that you give your body, your body also limits how much fuel that will burn. So you don’t become calorie deficient and starve yourself to death. calories in, calories out is broken. It does not work. Your body naturally works against this process. Okay.

So let’s recap. Running more does not work for weight loss. Your body naturally overcompensates by increasing your appetite and you end up actually eating more than you would normally. Progress is slow and minimal at best. And running doesn’t address the physical, mental and emotional causes of weight gain. It doesn’t address the hormonal imbalances that cause us to overeat the mental cravings, the emotional eating.And then eating less doesn’t work either, calories in calories out is a myth.

It doesn’t work. Your body naturally works against this. You reduce calories and your body lowers its metabolism and response, your body stays at that reduced metabolism basically forever. And you cannot lose weight this way. If you want to lose weight, you have to address the causes of weight gain. And just eating less and running more does not address the cause.

It’s just treating a symptom and doesn’t do very well. That’s why this approach to weight loss is so frustrating. It was so frustrating to me for so long and so frustrating to my clients for so long, because it doesn’t work. Okay, so next week on the podcast, I’m going to be talking about the role your hormones play in overeating and gaining weight. And this is a fascinating, fascinating topic. You will learn a lot I guarantee it.

But one of the biggest reasons why we gain weight is that our hormones are just completely out of whack. Okay, and I’m going to talk about how to get your hormones back in balance by simply changing what you eat. This is fascinating. It’s eye opening information, it will completely change what you know about food and how it affects your body.

Okay, quick reminder, my next weight class weight loss masterclass starts June 1, and I only take about 10 people through the class. So if you want in, you have to enroll now, go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and get signed up. Drop the Quarantine 15, get your body ready for the summer, become a lean running machine. Go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating to enroll now. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are starving yourself, and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.