233. The Power of Planning Ahead

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 233 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Power of Planning Ahead. So when it comes to creating healthy habits that actually last, the real key is going to be consistency.

You have to take consistent aligned action if you want to create new behavior patterns that get you new results, and the key to taking consistent, aligned action is planning ahead. So in this episode of the podcast, you’re going to learn the power of planning ahead and why you need to be practicing this right now.

But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, losing some weight, improving your running getting stronger, and you want some help, some guidance, some support to help get you there, consider coaching.

The fact is, coaching works where a lot of these other methods fail because it’s not about some particular method. It’s about figuring out what works for you as an individual and teaching you how to do this stuff on your own.

You have to be able to know what to eat and know intuitively how to do all this stuff on your own. At some point, you shouldn’t need a coach. You should be able to do it on your own. If you’ve worked with a coach in the past, and at the end of that coaching relationship, you had no idea what to do, then that wasn’t a good coaching relationship. That’s not the way I do things.

The way I do things is I teach you how to make good decisions. Understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and then teach you how to make this sustainable for you. It has to be sustainable for you.

So if you want to just hit the easy button on all this stuff you want help, the support, the guidance, the knowledge, all of that stuff. Consider coaching. Go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself to date. Cool.

Okay, so today I’m talking about the power of planning ahead. And I’m actually going to share something with you guys. I don’t know that I’ve ever done this before, but I’m going to share with you a group coaching call that we did this week.

So a couple times a week, we hold a group coaching call, and each month we pick a topic, and the month of June here in 2024 we are talking about building and maintaining healthy habits. And everything that goes into creating habits, everything that goes into practicing good habits, you know, kind of getting rid of old habits and replacing those with new habits.

And one of the keys to creating good habits is the topic we’re talking about here tonight, which is the power of planning ahead. And I really liked our call the other night, and so I’m going to share with you my teaching portion of that call, and then, so this is, like, the first half, I do some teaching, and then the second half we, everybody gets a chance to kind of share and talk about things.

I’m not going to play that part of it for you guys, but I definitely want to play the first part of this where I talk about planning ahead. So you’ll get a little bit of a look behind the curtain, so to speak, of how we, you know, we do our group coaching calls and what at least the teaching portion would look like. So I hope you enjoy this one. If you have any questions about anything, reach out to me. I’m always here for you. Okay, enjoy.

Okay, so let’s get into planning ahead. So this is something that we talk about a lot, and I know that we have all talked about this before, and that’s okay. We’re going to keep talking about it because it is one of the core tenants of what makes this work, what makes any kind of long-term change work.

So habits are all about consistency. You know, doing things consistently. And so planning ahead is one of the best things that you could do, one of the most powerful things that you can do to start practicing consistency. How many of you guys have a workout schedule that is planned in advance? And you stick to it every day. Yeah, most of us do, right? How many people here? I hope everybody raised their hand on this one.

Have a food plan that’s planned ahead and you stick to it every day. Okay, good, good. So, okay, that’s because we talk about it a lot, but it is one of the most powerful ways of building good habits. Okay? And most people, believe it or not, they don’t do that. They don’t practice the consistency with the food part of things.

They’re really good with the workouts, you know, the running, whatever. Oh yeah, I got my strength sessions. I go to this gym class. I go and do my speed work. I know when I’m doing my long run. I know all that ahead of time. I’ve got my whole training schedule planned out until the the half marathon I’m training for, like, you know in advance what you’re doing.

And the reason we plan all that stuff in advance is because it works, and it’s how you stay on track with those things, you know, and so when it comes to changing our habits around food, it’s especially important to plan ahead. Now this does not mean you have to plan months in advance.

I did work with one person who loved to plan like a month of food at a time, like she planned every meal for a month at a time. Don’t recommend doing that, but if you want to, that’s perfectly fine, if that’s what floats your boat. I love the 24-hour rule, which is just saying we need to plan at least 24 hours in advance, but you know, a few days, or even if you’re somebody that likes to plan a week at a time from a meal perspective, that’s fine, whatever works for you, whatever feels manageable for you.

Remember the key to all of this, the key to long-term change, is to do these things that are sustainable for you. You know you got to get into practicing things that are sustainable for you. And if planning out a week’s of worth of meals at a time, or meal prepping is too overwhelming for you, like, I don’t really do that.

I kind of know what I’m doing most days and so and then those days where I where I don’t have a set plan, I know kind of what I’m doing. Like, you know we might be going out to dinner or something like that, and I know where we’re going, and so that I do kind of know what I’m doing in those days too, but usually I know a couple of days in advance what I’m doing, and I don’t plan a whole week at a time, and I certainly don’t do much in the way of meal prepping ahead of time, because I don’t, I just, I just never done that, you know.

And so that works for me. You need to figure out what works for you, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about here. But listen, the planning ahead thing is very important, and I’m going to explain why it works, because this is one of the keys that we’re going to be working with here, which is, you know, we have this part of our brain that is called the amygdala that is like our fight or flight center. It’s our fear center.

It’s one of the most primitive parts of our brain, a lot of times jokingly, but kind of seriously. We call it the lizard brain. So that’s that unevolved part of our brain that is reactionary, and it is a part of our brain that is responsible for our primal drives. You know, we just that part of our brain just wants whatever feels good in the moment.

You know, it’s responsible for our drive and for, you know, eating junk food and, you know, whatever like, we just want to feel good. Now, that’s the part of our brain that’s driving that. And it’s, you know, it’s interesting, because as human beings, you know, we needed to find things that were pleasurable, like we needed to procreate in order to, you know, to evolve and to maintain our status as a as a species.

And so that was something that was important to us. We had to find somebody to procreate with, right? And the same thing goes for calories and certain types of carbohydrates and things like that, where we needed those things in order to survive, we needed to remember where those things were, and they had to bring us pleasure, you know, so food is one of those things that we evolved to find and enjoy, and it brings us a lot of pleasure because of that amygdala.

Okay, well, the amygdala is also responsible. You know when put it in today’s terms for impulse decisions. You know where you’re maybe your impulse buying. You know, they put that stuff at the grocery store that’s right by the checkout. So when you’re standing there looking over, you’re like, oh, that looks really good. I’m just going to buy that thing right there. You had no intention of getting that until you saw it. That’s your amygdala at work, just wanting to feel good right now.
So the amygdala is responsible for you chasing pleasure, wanting to feel good, avoiding pain, avoiding discomfort, chasing comfort, seeking the familiar, all of those things. So we don’t want to rely on our amygdala it to make our decisions around food, because if we do, we are in trouble, because we’re just going to be going for whatever looks good in the moment.

Instead, we want to use that different part of our brain, that more evolved part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. And that is that part of our brain that is responsible for, you know, organized thought, for planning ahead, for making decisions ahead of time, for, you know, being logical and rational.

So when you sit down, for example, one of the things I recommend is that you guys take pen to paper, and you can do this in the evening. You can write your food plan down the night before. That’s an easy way to do it, it’ll take you five minutes, but when you sit down and you start thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow, you’re not using your amygdala.

You are using your prefrontal cortex in that moment when you do that, you are making good decisions. You’re making decisions based on your long term goals. You’re making decisions that you know are good for you. So we’re like in a much more clear headed space when we’re using our prefrontal cortex to make our decisions.

So that’s why we want to do these things ahead of time. When we make a decision ahead of time, when we write down our plan in advance, and we take pen to paper and physically write it down, we’re kind of cementing that into our subconscious, that that idea that tomorrow I’m eating, you know, eggs for breakfast, I’m having, you know, chicken and broccoli for dinner tomorrow. Like it can be that simple.

You can just write something down like that, but when you do that, you’re thinking ahead of time. You are making good decisions. You’re making decisions that are based on your long term goals, and then you’re also much more likely to stick to that plan because you have thought about it ahead of time you have committed it to paper, so you wrote it down yourself.

You’re writing with your hand. You’re looking at the words with your eyes, so you’re thinking about it, you’re seeing it, you’re writing it out, and all of those things just cement that idea into your subconscious mind.

So really, any habit that you want to create for yourself, this is how you do it. You need to, you know, create a plan ahead of time. You need to write it down, and then you need to just execute that plan the next day. Okay, so that’s the gist of all this. This is why this is so important. This is why we we do it this way.

So when it comes to your running schedule, you’ve kind of already done that, I would assume. I would encourage you to do the same thing for your weight training sessions and for your food, because those are the areas where we need to focus on consistency.

And I talk to a lot of people who say things like, oh, I just haven’t been really consistent with my weight training, for example. Okay, well, you know, well, are you consistent with your running? Oh, yeah, I’ve got a plan. It’s all written down. And I just, you know, do that every week, and I stick to those training plans, no matter what.

Okay, well, just do the same thing for your workouts. You know, do the same thing for your strength training. It’s that simple. Do the same thing for your food. Just make it that important to you.

You know, we prioritize things. Sometimes we say, like, oh, training for my marathon is important. So that’s like, number one. And the strength training, I’ll just kind of put, you know, down here, like number six, you know. And the food can be like, I don’t know, five, whatever. Like, we’re not making a priority.

But if this is what you want for yourself, if you really want to change, and you really want to, you know, lose the weight and get healthy and make these long term changes, these lifestyle changes, then commit ahead of time to doing these things. Because when you commit to doing them, and you fulfill that commitment, you start to build a lot of trust in yourself.

This is another part of this that is really important, because every time you say you’re going to do something, and then you don’t do it. What happens? You feel like you let yourself down. You kind of break down that trust in yourself, because you made this promise to yourself and then you broke the promise to yourself. Yeah, and you can justify it, you know, we’ve got all kinds of stories and reasons why, you know it didn’t work out, or why I didn’t, but you know what?

Think about it this way, would you let down your partner or your kids or your best friend? Would you want to break a promise that you made to those people in your life. Chances are no and chances are you don’t do that, unless it’s, you know, there’s really some sort of an emergency or something like that. But when you do let somebody down like that, it doesn’t feel good.

You know, when you do say you’re going to do something and you aren’t able to do that, or you you don’t follow through with that, it doesn’t feel good. And so we do the same thing to ourselves, though all the time. We’re constantly letting ourselves down. We’re constantly making promises to ourselves and then not fulfilling those promises.

And every time you do that, you break a little bit of trust with yourself, and you start to lose confidence in yourself. This is where it gets a little bit you go into a little bit of a decline. You go into a little bit of a spiral, because you start to lose confidence, you start to feel bad about yourself because you keep letting yourself down, you’re unmotivated, and you just don’t feel like doing it anymore.

Anybody been there before? We all have it’s normal. We’ve all been there. So the alternative is like, you gotta not get into that spiral. You can’t get into that spiral. So we plan ahead, we stick to the plan. We plan ahead, we stick to the plan. When you do that, you start to build trust in yourself. You start to create more confidence. You start getting results too. You start to see, like, Oh, this is actually working, because I’m sticking with it. I’m doing these things consistently. And then you start to be more motivated to want to keep going. And then you get into that cycle.

You get into that spiral of like, that’s an upward spiral right where you building more and more confidence, more and more trust in yourself. You’re getting better and better results. You’re feeling more and more motivated. You’re more much more likely to stick with it. And all it takes is that, planning ahead, sticking to the plan. Plan ahead and stick to the plan. You guys with me on this so far? Yeah, it’s important.

Okay, so how do we do it? Just write down what you’re doing tomorrow. Make sure it’s at least 24 hours in advance, if you can. Or you know, if you do it the night before, and you know it’s you’re going to go to sleep and then you wake that’s fine. If it’s, you know, whatever, 12 hours or whatever. We just want to make sure that you are doing these things ahead of time and not in the moment. We’re not making decisions in the moment. We want to make our decisions ahead of time.

So write down what you’re doing, okay? And I just, I make a little check, check box on my on my notebook here, I just, you know, make a little I make circles like a little bubble, right? And I and I write what I’m doing next to it, and then that little circle that I made is where I check it off after I’ve done it. So I make a little circle and I say, here’s what I’m eating for lunch tomorrow. Here’s what I’m eating for dinner. Here’s what my run looks like tomorrow, here’s what my workout is tomorrow.

And then I’ve usually got a couple other things I add on there that I want to get done. Could be work related stuff, you know, I got to pay this bill, or, you know, pay these taxes, or whatever it is, like, I’ll put down, you know, a couple things like that too. So I’m thinking about, okay, what do I want to do tomorrow? And I’m writing down those things that are important to me that I want to get done.

And then the food thing is very important part of that. And then what I do is I wake up in the morning and I have a look at what I wrote down the night before, and I just kind of commit that to memory. Okay, here’s what I’m doing today. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I forgot. I needed to pay that bill. Okay, I’ll take care of that today.

And so I just take a look at what I’m doing. I’m like, okay, cool, I’ve got this plan, and this is what I’m doing today, and then I just do it. I execute. And then that night, you know, after I’ve done all those things, I open up my notebook again, and I start to write down my stuff for that I’m going to do tomorrow. And at the same time, I kind of check off the things that I did today. Okay, yes, I paid that bill. Yes, I did that strength workout I said I was going to do, yes, I did the what I said I was going to eat for lunch. This is what I said I was going to do for dinner. Yes, I did that.

Sometimes there are things that I don’t do, you know, I didn’t get to that, paid that bill, or whatever it was, and then I have to, you know, add it to the next day, and I have to say, like, okay, I have to think about this. Like, why didn’t I do that? Oh, it’s because I got sidetracked and I got, you know, had this other meeting that I had to go to, or whatever. Like, I, you know, sometimes it’s stuff that I really don’t have control over.

Sometimes I’m just like, oh, I totally forgot to do that or whatever. So we want to pay attention to what we’re doing. We want to make this little list ahead of time. We want to review that list in the morning, and then at night.

We want to, like, kind of review our day and then give yourself some kudos for doing these things right. It’s like, celebrate the win, celebrate the things that you’re doing well, kind of like we do here on these calls.

You know, we always want to talk about wins, what’s working, what’s going well. We do that because it helps us to feel like things are going well, and we want to pay attention to that stuff. So take a moment and just kind of check off the things you did. Well, give yourself a little gold star.

Somebody in this group was putting, actually bought a bunch of gold stars, and they were putting them on their notebook, which I thought was amazing, and then that’s what we do. So that is a very simple process that you can do, but you gotta do it and listen anytime somebody tells me, well, you know, the weight loss has sort of stalled for me a little bit.

The first question I asked him is, like, are you planning ahead? Oh, no, I sort of got out of the habit of doing that. Okay, do it again. Like, get back into the habit of doing that. It’s like the foundation. It’s the fundamental thing to do. When you’re doing that, things are going to start working for you, but you got to do it consistently.

Like that is like the the trigger, that trigger, that’s like a domino effect. You know, you you make that plan ahead of time, you’re much more likely to stack, stick to that plan. You’re much more likely to have consistency. You’re much more likely to keep the motivation going. You’re much more likely to continue getting results when you don’t, you know, topple that first domino when you don’t make your plan, a lot of other stuff doesn’t happen, right?

So get into the habit of doing this now. I will say this also, when I did this journey, like five years ago, I was very adamant about making a plan every single day. I think maybe we talked about this last week, I don’t know, but for like, eight months, I wrote my plan out every single day. I was logging everything. I was eating. I was, like, being very meticulous about it, because I was like, if I stop doing this, it’s going to stop working for me. You know, I was a little paranoid about that.

But after about eight months of being really strict about this, I started to ease up on myself, and I got to a place where I was comfortable enough doing this, where I didn’t need to make that plan every day. I want you all to get to that place eventually.

And I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you. It might be three months or six months or five months. It doesn’t really matter, but you got to have that consistency, and you’ve got to be so confident in yourself that you can do this that, you know, you don’t need to write that plan every day, but you can always go back to doing it.

I went back to doing my daily plan a couple of months ago because I was starting to see some, you know, negative results, you know. And I was like, wait a minute, I’m being a little too loosey goosey with the food thing here. I need to get back into just planning and sticking to the plant. And I did that, and everything is turned around, and I’m feeling amazing, and everything’s going really well.

My running has been really much better, too, because I’m planning the runs and things like that ahead of time. So we can always go back to this planning strategy, because it’s a it’s a very simple tactic that works really well. It’s very effective.

Okay, so I want everybody to commit to making that daily plan. Make your plan for at least tomorrow, and if you want to plan a couple days in advance, totally fine, to do that. Okay, one more thing I wanted to add to this before we move on is that some people like to use a food tracker, like a food tracking app, to track all your food because you want to pay attention to calories and macros, and you don’t have to do that.

But if you’re doing it right now because you just want to gather some data and understand what you’re doing that is perfectly fine. Or if you enjoy doing that, that’s perfectly fine. One pro tip I’ll give you, if you are somebody that wants to put your food into MyFitnessPal or Lose It, or CarB Manager or something like that, is to add your food to the app ahead of time.

It’s the same principle so you can write it down. I think that’s a good thing to do. But also on your phone, just write it, put those things, enter the food into your phone the day before. So instead of tracking after the fact, put it all in your phone the day before and get all your macros where you want them to be.

Because now you have control, because you get to decide what you’re going to do. So what I would do is I would just get all my food in the app, and then I would go, like, oh, I’m over with my carbs, so I’m going to adjust a little bit. And I would, you know, dork around with a little bit and play with like, oh, I’m going to take off two strawberries, or, you know, add some of this.

Whatever I would, you know, play around with the numbers until I got to the point where I was happy with the macros for the day, and then the next day, I could just look at the app and say, What am I eating today? Oh, I’m eating this for lunch. I’m eating this for dinner, and it’s good to go.

And I, you know, I, I’m not one that likes to measure stuff or, like, weigh my food, but I was like, eyeballing it, and I could go, that’s like two cups of broccoli and that’s like a eight ounces of chicken or whatever. Like, I just kind of knew what I was getting into from that standpoint. But if you want to weigh your food, that’s completely fine too. If you want to measure perfectly, fine.

But if you’re adding food to an app, do it ahead of time, get your numbers right, and then just work that plant. It’s very easy to do it that way, because a lot of times what happens is, you get to the end of the day and you’re like, oh, I better put my food in my app, and you start putting it in there, like, oh, I’m way over in this or I didn’t get enough of that, and now what are you going to do? Like, it because you can’t undo that, right?

Or you find yourself like, I’m kind of full, but I didn’t eat enough calories today. I better go eat some food. Like, don’t do that. We don’t want to get into this place where we’re overeating. Just to hit some number on your app, you never want to do that. But that’s just a little pro tip for you guys.

Okay, any questions about planning ahead? This is key. Okay, it’s one of the most important things you guys are going to do. It’s one of the most powerful things you’re going to do. Get into the habit. If I can say anything, I’m going to stress, especially for you guys, get into the habit of making that plan every single day. It takes five minutes if that write it down every single day. Get into that habit. Okay, cool, and that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.