196. What Not to Do When Life Gets Chaotic

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 196 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, what not to do when life gets chaotic.

No matter how hard we try to control all the circumstances of our lives, eventually things get a little out of control. Your boss increases your workload, the kids are riddled with extra curricular activities, which means you’re riddled with extracurricular activities.

Aging family members require constant care. And you just start to feel overwhelmed with everything going on in your life. Stress and anxiety levels increase until you’re sitting at defcon 1 and you’re ready to explode.

How you handle yourself during these times of intense stress. It’s extremely important. Everyone’s good at stress management, when there’s no stress. But when life gets hectic and feels overwhelming, that’s when you need to double down on self care.

So today, I’m sharing some very helpful advice on what not to do when life gets chaotic and what you should do instead. But first, if you’re interested in getting started with all the stuff that I talked about here on the website, I put together a free training for you, that will put you on the right track, it’s called five simple steps to becoming a leaner stronger runner, you’ll learn how to lose weight the right way as a runner, and keep it off for good without running a million miles a week.

I have heard from a lot of people who have told me that they have been told that they should not try to lose weight while they’re training for something while they are actively running. And I just have to tell you, that is definitely not the case, there is a way you can do this and make it work to where you can still improve your running while you are losing weight.

The problem is most people try to lose weight by just cutting calories. That’s not really recommended. That’s not what I teach. That’s not what I do with my clients. So if you’re a runner and you want to improve your endurance, you want to improve your strength, you want to improve your speed as a runner and lose weight. You can do all of that. Okay?

Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and check out that training. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, check it out. Cool.

Okay, so today I’m talking about what not to do when life gets chaotic. So the reason I’m talking about this today is because I’ve had several clients come to me recently, and in our weekly calls, they’ve shared that they haven’t been really sticking with their diet, and they really haven’t been sticking with their exercise plan.

And when we start digging into it, like, Hey, what’s going on? They’re like, well, you know, things are crazy right now in my life. I’ve got all these projects to work, you know, I’m taking care of my, my elderly father, let’s say or the kids have all that stuff going on at school and then after school on the weekends and, and life is just really chaotic right now.

And the thing they do when they feel like life is chaotic, and they feel overwhelmed. The thing that a lot of people do is they feel like they need to take something off their table. Like they got to take something off of their plate here because it’s just there’s too much stuff going on.

And what a lot of people do is they take off things like exercise, or eating right because those things seem like they are things that you can put off to later that don’t seem as important. And I know you know where I’m going with this because when you do that it just makes you feel worse. It just makes the whole situation worse.

It’s in those times of super stress in our lives and when our lives get chaotic that we need consistency. We need consistency in our diet, we need consistency in our exercise, we need to be consistently practicing self care. Because when you do that when you take care of yourself, you are much better able to handle the stress that life is throwing at you.

But that’s not what we do. We say you know what I’m feeling really overwhelmed with life right now. So I’m not going to exercise. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Because that exercise is the thing that helps you to relieve stress and helps you to keep stress levels low. So why then would you want to take that off the table when you’re in this place of high stress in your life?

So that’s what I’m going to encourage you not to do that don’t take exercising off the table, or, you know, healthy eating off the table when, you know, life starts to throw you some curveballs and things start to get a little chaotic in your life. Okay.

And the reason that you do this, the reason that your brain says let’s stop exercising now is because you’re just your brain is just trying to keep you safe and comfortable seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

So whenever we see that our life is getting stressed out, that appears to be something that is painful to our brain, right? That’s pain. We’re trying to avoid that and we’re seeking pleasure. Our brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, seeking comfort, avoiding discomfort, seeking the familiar, avoiding the unfamiliar.

So when all these unfamiliar, uncomfortable, painful events start happening in our life, we just want to go to that thing, or those things that make us feel good. And a lot of times it’s food, right, it’s like, I’m just going to eat a pint of ice cream by myself, and this large pizza here and sit on the couch and do nothing else. And that’s going to make me feel better.

And you know what, it kind of works for a minute like you do feel a little bit better, who doesn’t feel great eating pizza and ice cream sitting on the couch, it feels amazing.

Until later, when you feel terrible, because you didn’t work out. Because you didn’t get those endorphins that you get when you run, you didn’t get the good feel good hormones that you get when you exercise.

You have this food hangover, because you ate tons of sugar and gluten and you know, carbs and all this stuff. And then you know, now you’re faced with feeling terrible, feeling terrible about yourself, physically feeling terrible, and you still have all this stressful stuff happening in your life.

So you’re not armed to actually be able to handle that stuff. You’re much more likely to handle stress in your life, if you stick to your exercise plan, if you stick to your healthy eating plan. And I know this is the time where you’re like, oh, but it’s just so hard. I have so much other stuff going on. I get it, I totally get it. But it doesn’t help you to feel better. It just doesn’t work.

And so I just want to encourage you to not do that. Okay, when life gets chaotic, that’s when you need to be even more disciplined about your own self care. What are those things that you’re doing on a daily basis, that help you to manage stress that help you to feel better?

Don’t take your own healthy habits off the table when life gets chaotic. Okay? Make a plan. And make that plan every day. Make that plan in advance. And the reason we do that is because you’re much more likely to make a good plan if you make those decisions about what you’re doing ahead of time.

So I talked about the 24 hour plan a lot. Make that plan at least 24 hours in advance, know what you’re doing tomorrow. What does your exercise look like tomorrow? Are you working out? Are you hitting the gym? Are you lifting weights? Are you running? What does your food look like tomorrow? When are you eating your first meal? When are you eating your second meal? What are you eating in between? Are you waiting in between? What are you eating at those meals?

I plan all that ahead of time, when you plan ahead of time you make great decisions. Think about that. You’re sitting here, maybe listening to this and you’re thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow, you probably can make a great list of foods and exercise that you could do.

But when tomorrow comes and things are crazy, and you’re a little stressed out about work and stuff, you’re just gonna go and grab whatever’s in front of you. Like that’s not when you make good decisions. You make good decisions when you decide ahead of time.

So make a plan, make that plan ahead of time and then stick to that plan, no matter how hectic life becomes. There’s an exception to this. And that means that when we have a plan, and we’re planning on sticking to that plan, and then something happens and we’re like, okay, I was going to work out but my boss told me I had to come to work early.

And now I’m going to be working all night and I won’t be able to work out. Okay, so you miss a workout. It’s no big deal. Do you know make a plan, get very detailed about your plan, make that plan ahead of time and then you know when life throws you some curveballs and things get a little bit hectic, a little bit chaotic.

You have to be able to go with the flow a little bit. Okay, but that should be the exception, not the rule. That should be just something that happens every now and then. Okay. And listen, I know what this is like because I’m going through this myself right now.

I live in this old building. It’s a beautiful old building right on the outskirts of downtown Cincinnati. It’s an old Piano Factory. And it was built in 1921. And back in the, they were making pianos here until like the 70s. And then like in the 80s, they turn this building into an office like an office, office complex, whatever.

And then about 10 years ago, a building management company took over the building and turned all these, this whole building into beautiful loft apartments. And it is beautiful, huge windows, 15 foot high ceilings. It’s a beautiful place to live.

But last week, somebody had a small little fire in their apartment down the hall from me, I live on the sixth floor. And somebody had a little kitchen fire. They were like frying chicken or something, right? They had a grease fire.

They didn’t know what to do when you have a grease fire. What are you supposed to do when you have a grease fire? I’ll tell you what not to do. Don’t throw water on it. But that’s what they did. They threw water on it and it made the fire worse. It set off the sprinkler system.

Okay, so there wasn’t really damage from the fire like the fire was minimal, very small, but it set off the sprinkler system in that one apartment down the hall. Well, apparently that sprinkler system has something like 1200 gallons of water that has to just it’s like a tank and so it has to run out. There’s no way to turn it off.

So the sprinklers went off, and they just flooded this floor there. And there’s water from this floor from the sixth floor all the way down to the basement. So there’s 52 units that were affected by this flood, including mine. So I’ve had them coming in here.

I’m recording in my home office right now. It is the first time I’ve been able to get in here in a while because they’ve had dehumidifiers in here, they ripped up the carpet today. They ripped up some of our hardwood floor. They’re doing a great job of cleaning up and they’re gonna be, you know, doing the rebuilding project here pretty soon, but it is a mess right now.

And my whole system is like, just disheveled right now. It’s very chaotic in my life right now. Okay. Everything’s cool. Like we’re getting through it. My girlfriend and I live together here, we both work from home. And so this is affecting us both, you know, but we’re working it out. And we’re making things work as best we can.

But I just have to tell you that things are chaotic right now. Okay. What I’m doing is I’m focusing on healthy eating every day, I’m focusing on workouts every day. There have been a couple of days where I haven’t been able to get my workout in. Today was one of them, they came in here. During the time that I had allotted to do my workout today.

They came in here and needed to be in here for several hours doing work. And I needed to kind of be here to kind of oversee things to make sure everything was cool. So I wasn’t able to get my workout in, which is fine. That’s what I’m talking about. Like, I had a plan. I’ve been working the plan pretty well, pretty much 90% of the time.

But today, it was one of those times where I just had to like stay home and I couldn’t get my workout in. Okay, but no big deal, right? I’m not too concerned about that. Because I know tomorrow, I’m back on track again, you know, and we need to have a plan.

We need to focus on our own self care during these times of crisis and chaos. But also we do need to be able to go with the flow. We’re not striving for perfection. Nobody does any of this stuff perfectly. I don’t do this perfectly. I don’t stick to my food plan 100% of the time, probably 90% of the time.

From a workout standpoint, I’m better about that probably 95% of the time, I really don’t miss many workouts. This is a pretty rare exception today. They’ve actually ripped up the carpet in my office here to where I record and so it’s like an echo chamber in here.

Because I don’t have that carpet. dampening the sounds of it sounds like I’m in a hall like a big hall or something. That’s why there’s a lot of reverb going on in here. But listen, you need to double down on yourself during these times of crisis when things get chaotic for you.

Okay, don’t take exercise off the table. Don’t take self care off the table. Don’t take healthy eating off the table. Stick with those things as best you can. You may not do it perfectly. That’s okay. Right. I’m not putting my health and my fitness on the backburner just because there’s been this crazy, you know, construction going on around here. Right?

So I don’t want you to do that either. So in those times when things get hectic and stressful, because that’s going to happen. This is what life is about: life is about how we deal with these situations when they come up. Because it’s going to happen, it’s inevitable. But I think what happens a lot of times is we wish this stuff wasn’t going on.

You know, we wish the apartment hadn’t flooded. We wish these people didn’t throw water on a grease fire, you know, we wish they didn’t have to rip up my carpet and hardwood floors and all this stuff. But it’s just the fact you know, and this is what we’re dealing with. And so we have to accept this as like, here’s our circumstances in life, and then do our best to take care of ourselves through this process. That’s it.

Because when you do that, you’re going to feel so much more confident and so better armed to be able to deal with the stress and chaos that’s going on in your life. Okay? Chaos is inevitable. Stress is inevitable. Crazy circumstances in your life are inevitable how you deal with it, that’s up to you. You can deal with it by diving into junk food, and eating your way through large pizzas and pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. I have done that. I don’t recommend it.

The other way of dealing with this is to focus on exercise, focus on taking care of yourself, focus on healthy eating. And I promise you, you’re gonna get through this, you’re gonna get through this feeling way better about yourself, then had you gone that other route, okay? So don’t take self care off the table, focus, you know, make yourself the priority when things are crazy and chaotic. Okay.

And as always, if you’re looking for help with any of this stuff, we can talk about coaching, just head over to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. You can fill out a little application with just a couple questions. We’ll get on a Zoom call.

We’ll talk about coaching and I’ll give you all the details and see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, great. If it isn’t, no big deal. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.