237. What to Do When You Feel Stuck

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 237 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what to do when you feel stuck. So many people I talk to about losing weight or running faster tell me they just can’t seem to make any progress because they feel stuck, and this is a really tough place to be, because when you feel stuck.

It’s like there’s nothing you can do to get out of it. You feel like nothing’s ever gonna work. You get discouraged. You feel defeated. And what do you do when you feel defeated? You give up, you quit. Why bother eating right? If you’re never going to lose weight, why bother doing the speed work, if I’m never gonna break four hours in the marathon?

But listen, there’s a better way to approach these things. So today, what to do when you feel stuck so that you can get back on track, making progress toward your goals. But first, if you want to get leaner or stronger or run faster or longer, you need to change what you do. Doing the same things will not get you new results. Nothing changes. If nothing changes, right?

The real secret, though, is doing these new things consistently. You know, if you decide you want to get stronger so you go to the gym once a month, that’s not going to get you very far. You need to adopt new behaviors and start doing them consistently. And this is where coaching really helps, trying to stay on track yourself.

It can be difficult, I know, because I’ve tried it like a million times, it never worked for me. You know, I’d start something, I’d do it for a bit, I’d go right back to doing the same old stuff, and I never really made any progress. But once I got a coach, everything changed. I had somebody there guiding me every step of the way, holding me accountable, calling me out when I started slipping back into old behaviors.

Most importantly, I had someone there that was in my corner that was never, ever, ever going to let me quit. So if you’re ready to start doing some new things, and you want to make sure you’re doing them consistently, and you want somebody there to make sure you never quit, let’s do this. Let’s get this done together. We can do it together.

It’s hard to do it on your own, but we can do it together. So just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and I’ll show exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself, yet cool. Okay, what to do when you feel stuck.

So the reason I want to talk about this today is because so many people that I talk to, they tell me that they feel stuck, that being stuck is why they aren’t making any progress towards their goals. You know, being stuck, I’m stuck, so this is never going to work for me, or they feel stuck, and so they don’t even feel like starting something new, especially, right? It’s a huge problem. And I mean, we’ve all felt like this at some point in our lives, right? We felt stuck.

For me, a time that I remember feeling stuck is when I was trying to lose weight some years ago, and nothing was working for me, and I was running a bunch at the time, I was training for some ultra marathons that year, so I was running a ton, and I was following, you know, some advice from whatever professionals, elite runners, whatever it was, it wasn’t working for me. Whatever I tried didn’t work.

And I was actually gaining weight in the process, right? This is what it felt like to feel stuck. Because I was gaining weight, I was doing all these things, they weren’t working, and I felt stuck. So maybe you’ve felt stuck at some point. Maybe you felt stuck trying to run faster. You know you’re not making any progress. You’re not getting faster.

Let’s say you want to run a sub four marathon, or a sub two half marathon, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. But season after season, you keep trying. You sign up for races, you do the work, and then you can’t get there, right? You just keep coming up short. You know?

You train, and then you show up for this race, and you’re okay, this is going to be the time, and you’re like a 4:04, or something like that, right? It’s disappointing, you know? So you decide that you’re just stuck and you’re just never going to get faster. You have to understand something though, that like these things are going to take time, right?

The reality is that things like losing weight or running faster. They do not happen overnight. It is a long process, and progress can be slow or seem slow. So you have to commit to this process. You have to show up for yourself every single day and commit to the process of change every single day. It’s like a recommitment every day you wake up and you have to go, okay, I’m committed to staying on track again today, no matter what.

And listen, it may take months or years to reach these kinds of goals. Are you okay with that? Because guess what, you have to be, because if you’re not okay with that, you’re going to give up. At some point, you’re going to quit. If you’re not committed to the process of change, you will eventually feel stuck, and you will quit.

You will give in, and you definitely will not reach your goals at that point. So here’s what feeling stuck is, it’s really that it’s a feeling, right? You’re never actually stuck. This is really important. The feeling of being stuck, it’s an emotional state that you’re in.

And if you feel stuck, it’s because you put yourself into that emotional state you got into this emotional state of feeling stuck. That’s all it is. And listen, what I’m about to talk about is going to help you a lot, because once you understand how you got there, the feeling of stuck, stuckness, feeling stuck, once you understand how you got there, it’s then you can see the path out of it. Okay?

So there’s a couple of ways that we get ourselves into this emotional state of feeling stuck, and there’s three that come to mind. The first one is this, you continually let yourself down. So listen, in order to accomplish any big goal, it takes consistency, right you have to continually do the right things over and over and over and over and over again, like sticking with your meal plan, you have to do that every day no matter what, until you reach your goal.

I talk a lot about planning ahead, and this is on a recent episode I did, number 233, the Power of Planning Ahead. Definitely listen to that one if you haven’t checked it out yet. But the the way we do this is you plan ahead, and then so you make a plan for what you’re going to eat.

Let’s say you you do this 24 hours in advance, and then you follow through with that plan tomorrow. That’s it. That’s how you do it. And you rinse and repeat that every single day. This is how you’re going to eventually reach your goal. It’s in these tiny little moments of decision that you make every single day for a long, long time, tiny little moments of decision that add up to big change to big results. Okay, so that’s the way we do it.

But here’s what most people do. They make a plan, and then they don’t follow through with that plan. And so in that situation, what are you doing? You are letting yourself down. And when you do this over and over again, you start to really break down the trust that you’re trying to build in yourself, because you don’t trust yourself anymore.

Like, I can’t trust myself to stick to my plan. Look at me, I failed again. You know, I didn’t do what I said I was going to do again. And that really like, shakes your confidence. You lose tons of confidence when you do that. And then you begin to think, this is never gonna work for me, but you know what that is? Just a lie that you keep telling yourself because you’re full of guilt and shame and remorse over not doing what you said you would do.

You’re not in integrity with yourself, so you have to stop doing this. This is a vicious cycle to be in, and this is what leads to feeling stuck and giving up on yourself. So when you constantly let yourself down, you break confidence and trust in yourself.

You lose confidence, then you feel stuck and you feel like there’s nothing you can do to get out of it, so why bother? And this is what why people quit. And when you’re feeling that way, when you’re feeling defeated, and you know you don’t trust yourself anymore, you lack confidence, you’re definitely not doing the right things. You’re not taking aligned action, those are the things that are going to get you to your goals right.

So if your progress grinds to a halt, and yeah, you’re gonna you’re gonna be stuck, and you actually will feel stuck, and you will actually not be making progress, and most people at that point will quit. All right, so you have to stop letting yourself down, stay in integrity with yourself. Say you’re gonna do something, then do it. Make a plan, follow through with the plan, and show up for yourself every single day.

So that’s number one. Number two is that for a lot of people, progress can be slow, and this is another way that we tell ourselves we’re stuck when we’re really not. So remember what I said earlier about like losing weight or running faster? These things take time. They take a long time.

Most people are not okay with this. They say they’re okay with this. They’re like, oh yeah, I get it, Patrick, I know it’s gonna take a while, but when we actually get into doing the work, so maybe I’m working with somebody, and at the beginning of the process, I say, listen, you know, it’s a little bit different for each person. This is gonna take a while.

I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for you, three months, six months a year. I don’t know. You know, let’s say you have 50 pounds to lose. I don’t know how long that’s going to take. Everybody’s so different, different metabolisms, different lifestyles, different people’s, you know, stick to things differently. You know, different people are more committed than others, whatever, more people, some people are more disciplined than others.

But anyway, I’ll get them on a meal plan, and they might doing they might start doing that pretty regularly, and they’re doing okay, and they might see some results, but then, if they don’t see results fast enough, you know, or immediately, then things aren’t changing. They’re like, I’m stuck, and you know what? I get it.

It’s a tough thing to accept that you got to do all this hard work every single day, but the payoff is like way later. That’s tough for us, especially in the world we live in today. You know, waiting for results. You know, waiting committing to something and knowing that the results are going to be way off in the distance.

That’s a tough sell for a lot of people, because we’re a society that’s been trained to expect things now. You know, Amazon has same day delivery. UberEATS delivers food to your couch in minutes. You know, sometimes every movie or song you’ve ever wanted to watch or listen to, it’s instantly downloadable to your phone wherever you are, right?

So we are not a society that likes to wait for things, you know, like, for me, if I’m buying something online and the shipping is like, oh, this is gonna take, like, a week or 10 days, I’m like, I don’t know if I really want that, right? I mean, it’s ridiculous to think that way.

Funny, recently I bought a couch. I can’t remember last time I bought a couch. I think it was in 2010 was the last time I bought a couch, right? So I think I was due for a new couch. And I love this couch. It’s beautiful. And I went into the store and I saw it, and I sat in it and all that good stuff. And I’m like, Okay, I want this couch. And this was back in May. It was like, May the 11th, is the day that I ordered this couch.

And they’re like, you know, I sign all these papers and pay for it and everything. And they’re like, okay, let’s kind of talk about the shipping. I’m like, cool, you know, I’m available this weekend or whatever. They’re like, oh no, it’s not going to be ready until the middle of July. And I was like, Wait a minute. What now? I had to wait two months for this couch. Actually, I haven’t even got it yet today as I’m recording this.

It’s July 11, so it’s been exactly two months since I ordered this couch. Still not here. I’ll keep you posted on that. I’ll tell you when I get the couch. But I had to really think about this. After I did all this stuff and I signed the papers and I paid for it and everything, I was like, I don’t know if I want this now, because it’s gonna take so long to get here.

And in the grand scheme of things, is two months, really that big of a deal? No, but I’ve been sitting on this jinky old couch forever, and I’m like, I just want this new couch. Like, it’s ridiculous, but this is anyway, this is the world we live in right now. Right? Everything we want it now, right?

So when it comes to things like losing weight, it takes time if you want to run a faster marathon or qualify for Boston or, you know, break two hours and a half, whatever it is, it’s gonna take some time. How much time? Well, that’s the cool part, because we don’t know. That’s the fun part. It’s different for everyone. Nobody really knows.

So this goes back to what I said earlier, about committing to the process of change. So so many people I talk to will say, oh, yeah, I want to lose 30 pounds by, you know, September 1 or whatever. I’m like, okay, let’s just take that date off the table right now, because I we don’t know is how long it’s going to take. Now we can make some progress between now and then, absolutely, but I don’t think, I don’t know if you’re going to get to that goal in that amount of time. Like, who knows?

So we’ve got to come into the process of change, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes, six months a year, three years. Does not matter. What matters is that you’ve chosen to live your life in a healthy way. You’re always improving little by little, day by day. And remember, it’s in these tiny, little moments of progress every single day that add up to really big change. Okay? So we have to understand that progress can be slow. Don’t take that as a sign that you’re stuck, because you’re not stuck. Just accept the fact that progress is slow and commit to the process.

The third way that we can really feel like we’re stuck is that we misunderstand failure. So one of the things I talk a lot about with clients is that we have to change our definition of failure if you want to avoid feeling stuck. So let me ask you this, what do you think of when you think of failure? It’s like the end, right? Like you failed and so you’re done.

That’s what most people think of failure as, or they think of it as, like, I am a failure, like I did not succeed at this. So I am a failure like this is never going to work. I’m always going to fail. And we look at failure as such a huge negative thing. We look at it as like the worst thing, really?

Oh, and there’s a big reason why a lot of people will not even start stuff because they’re afraid of failing, right? That’s crazy, because, listen, failing is just part of the process. It’s part of the process of succeeding, right? So when I was in junior high, it was like ninth grade. I was not the best student. I effed off a bunch. I really didn’t care.

All I cared about was dorking around with my friends and girls like, that’s all I really cared about. And I got, like, mostly C’s, a few D’s, and then in one class at the end of the year, I ended up getting an F in algebra, ninth grade algebra, I got an F, and I was like, oh, my God. I was devastated, and I felt like such a huge loser, so I kind of deemed myself as a failure.

I figured my parents were going to kill me. First of all, I’m never going to graduate from high school. I’m a stupid, dumb loser. And listen, is any of that stuff true? No. But does thinking these terrible things help us at all? No. So how do you think I felt with that kind of a mindset? Well, I felt like I was completely stuck, like I can’t do math. I’m never going to be good at math. I can never get it. Why bother trying?

By the way, happy ending to that story, I took summer school that year. I got my grade up to where I needed to be, so I didn’t have to retake that the next year or whatever. I did graduate from high school. My parents did, in fact, not kill me, which is awesome. And I ended up not being a stupid, dumb loser. I’m actually, I’ve turned out to be pretty awesome and smart.

Okay, so failure is part of the process. It’s never the end. We have to just accept this, right? Failure never means the end, and it never, ever means that you are a failure. It just means you tried something and didn’t work. Okay, so try something else or try that again. Failing is part of the process, and you have to commit to failing if you eventually want to succeed.

Failure is inevitable. It will happen. You will go off your food plan. You’ll have a terrible workout. You won’t PR that marathon that you’ve been training for. Your progress might go in the wrong direction. You might gain weight. You might actually get slower. You know what? It’s all okay. Embrace failure for what it is. It’s part of the learning process. Every success is built upon a big old pile of failures.

All right, so stop seeing failure as the end. Stop seeing failure as I’m stuck. Start seeing it as just another step towards success. That’s it. That’s all it is. So the bottom line here, with all this today, you are never stuck. Being stuck is just an emotional state that you are putting yourself into. And so what do you do when you feel stuck? The way out is to stop letting yourself down.

You’ve got to start building trust and integrity with yourself instead. And when you do that, when you do what you say you’re going to do, you build confidence in yourself. You make progress. And then you you want to keep doing that. Get out of that vicious cycle of letting yourself down and feeling terrible.

Get into the cycle of building that trust and integrity with yourself doing what you said you’re going to do, and building that motivation to keep going. Number two, accept the fact that progress will be slow. That’s okay. Progress can be slow. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. The important thing is that you are committed to the process of change and that you’re in this right? There’s no finish line to being healthy. It’s not a destination we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our life. Period, okay? And then, number three, you got to reframe failure, stop seeing it as the end, and just start seeing it as just one more thing that you learned that maybe didn’t work on the road to eventually reaching your big goals and eventually being successful. Okay, you got this. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.