65. The Three Requirements for Making Lasting Change

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.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 65 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer, health and fitness expert, and the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about the three requirements for making lasting change.

So making lasting changes like permanently losing weight, is not an easy thing to do, it requires you to do more than just change your behavior, it requires you to do more than just change what you’re doing. Any kind of meaningful, lasting change requires these three key things and you have to have all three, or it just won’t work.

Think of it like a three-legged table. You know, if you’re missing one of the legs, the thing just falls over. It does not stand up on its own, you need all three to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share the three requirements for making lasting change and show you where you can find all three of these things in one place.

If you haven’t already done so please go check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a fun group of runners who are encouraging one another positively, support one another, and ask great questions. And all are sharing similar health and fitness goals. And I’ve got something big coming this Sunday in the Running Lean podcast community.

On Facebook, I do a live training or a Q&A session every Sunday afternoon. And I’ll tell you more about that at the end of this episode. But you will want to pay attention to the end of this episode when I talk about that because it’s a fun little surprise for you. So just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community and join us over there. It’s fun, we have so much fun.

All right, I’m gonna just jump right into this here the three requirements for making lasting change. So whenever we set out to make some kind of big change in our life, we focus on one thing we focus on, what do I need to do? We focus on action or behavior, what action do I need to take?

So we go to Google, we go to YouTube, and we search how to do blank, right? How-to videos are arguably the most-watched content on YouTube, right? Just tell me what to do. And I can do it right. So the first requirement for any kind of lasting change is knowing what to do this is important, okay, but it’s not the whole picture.

But knowledge is that first leg of the table, that’s the first thing that we need, in order to make any kind of lasting change in our life. So knowledge is important. Here’s how it plays out for a lot of people. Let’s say you’re a runner, just hypothetically, and you’ve been gaining weight over the last few years. Again, just hypothetically, right?

Actually, this is very common, by the way, especially as we get older, so you’re not alone at all. This is me too. So I feel ya. Let’s say you’re a runner, you’ve been getting some weight. You’re still logging a lot of miles each week. So it’s not the running, we know this, it’s your diet, you change your diet, right?

So you decide you’re like, okay, I’m gonna change my diet, I’m gonna lose the weight. I’m committed to doing this. I’m ready. I’m serious this time. So you go to Google, and you type in weight loss, and oh, my god, they do this. I encourage you to do this because I don’t think I’ve ever done this before.

But I just did it just to see what would happen. I typed in weight loss in Google and it came back with almost 3 billion results on the internet. 2,970,000,000 results in 1.4 seconds, by the way, so Google good job and you know, indexing everything on the internet is crazy. 3 billion results for weight loss.

People tell me that figuring out what to do is overwhelming. I just said I can prove this just by going to Google and typing in weight loss. It is overwhelming. I mean, that’s beyond overwhelming, right? It is incredibly confusing. There are so many different diets, so many weight loss supplements, so many meal replacement drinks, and bars and shakes and pills, and it goes on and on and on.

But let’s just say like you find something that sounds good to you like the Paleo diet, and I’m a fan of the Paleo diet, I think it’s pretty good. You know, because it’s based on human evolution, you know, how we evolved, eat over the last two and a half million years or so. So let’s just say you’re like, you know, I’m gonna give this a go.

And so maybe you find a website and some blog articles and you read some stuff, maybe you buy a book, and they tell you exactly what to do. And you start following the plan. And it seems to be working, okay, it works, okay, for a few weeks, maybe you lose a few pounds. But then everything comes to a grinding halt, the scale stops moving, you get frustrated, and you end up quitting, because you know what, that diet doesn’t work.

So then what do you do? You go back to Google, you type in weight loss, and you get a scour through another 3 billion results and try to find something else that works, right. This is not a made-up story. This is not make-believe, this is exactly what I’ve done. This is exactly what I did.

And this is exactly what I hear from runners every single day who try to lose weight, and they fail time and time and time and time again. It’s exactly what they’ve done too. So knowledge is great. Like, you have to have the knowledge, right? You have to know what to do. But it’s not the whole picture.

You know, you may know what you need to do. But what happens when it stops working for you? Or why like, why can’t you make it work beyond a couple of weeks? Why can’t you make these changes last? You know, it’s just because knowledge alone, it’s not enough, it’s only one leg of the table. And without all three, this table of lasting change is not going to stand up on its own.

So just knowing what to do, it’s not enough to make these kinds of lasting changes, especially when it comes to things like completely changing your diet and losing weight and making it a permanent change. Right. So knowledge is good, it’s definitely required. It’s invaluable. You have to know what to do, but it’s not the whole story.

The next thing that is absolutely required, if you want to make any kind of meaningful lasting change is the second leg of the table is support. Okay, so once you know what to do, you can get to work on taking action on changing your behavior on doing what you need to do. And maybe you’ll start getting some results. So that’s the knowledge piece.

But then, what do you do when you encounter an obstacle. And I will promise you right now, that if you want to do something big, like change your diet and lose weight, something that it’s been really, really hard for you in the past, you will encounter obstacles along the way. You cannot accomplish anything meaningful without failing a bunch of times on your way to getting there.

Every success is built upon a pile of failures, we expect failure. In fact, we embrace it, we know that it’s part of the process. But that’s not what most people believe. Most people look at failure as the end. They say, look, the scale stopped moving, I have failed. This diet is a failure. I am a failure and they quit. I see this all the time. Failure is not the end. It’s just a step. It’s one step along the path to success.

But most people don’t see it this way. They fail once and it’s just game over. They’re done. Why? Because they don’t have the support. They need to get them through the failures. So knowledge is great, but without the proper support, making big changes last is incredibly difficult. Without the proper support, you don’t know what to do when things go wrong.

You know, what do you change? Do you change your macros? Do you eat more carbs? Fewer carbs? Do you run harder? Should you eat more often? The guys at the gym telling me I should be eating eight times a day should I be doing that? Should I be eating once a day like should I run 60 miles a week instead of 20? What do I need to do? I need some support.

So without the proper support, it can be very frustrating and confusing. So you need some sort of a support system to help you navigate all the stuff that comes up when you want to make a big change, like changing your diet and losing a bunch of weight.

So what’s the best support system? Well, honestly, the best support system you can have is, is someone that’s already got what you want somebody that can support you, who already has been there, done that, figure it all out, and they can show you the way, a guide, a mentor, someone who has the experience and expertise, expertise to guide you.

And that can always help you make the changes that you need to make so you can keep moving towards your goals. So for example, I have a coach to help me, I actually have two coaches, I have a business coach, and I have a fitness coach. And these two coaches helped me to stay on track.

They show me things that I’m doing, or they show me how I’m thinking that I cannot see, you know, we all have blind spots. There are things about the way that I think sometimes that I think is just the way it is like, oh, yeah, this is just, you know, the way it is. And then my coach will say, Patrick, this is just a thought in your head. You’re just making this stuff up. And I’m like, Oh my God, you’re right.

So a lot of times, a good coach will show you what you can’t see about yourself, which is really, really important. You know, but most importantly, my coaches helped me overcome obstacles, they helped me to embrace failure. They helped me to get over it already. And they helped me to keep moving forward. Yes, they pushed me, but in a good way.

So I’m a big believer in coaching. If you want the best support system around, I would say, get a coach who has what you want, and who can offer their experience and their guidance. And all the best heroes think about this. This is awesome. I love this all the best heroes have coaches where they have guides that can show them the way you know, Luke Skywalker had Obi-Wan Kenobi, Frodo had Gandalf, Neo had Morpheus.

And for me, and I just love the nerdy references. And if you do, too, then you’re my people so awesome. For me, I will gladly invest in a coach who can give me the support that I need. While I’m going through these big changes in my life, if I want to accomplish something big, it’s so worth it to me to invest in someone that can help get me there faster, without all the frustration and the can support me now.

That being said, you don’t have to invest in a coach. Honestly, if you have a partner that supports you, this is such a great place to start. It can just be a spouse or a family member. Here’s a little backstory, like when I was married, I worked a corporate job, I worked this job for 16 years, doing the same thing. And over and over every single day, 16 years.

And at one point, I was like I’m done with this. And I really wanted to set out on my own, I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but it was a big change to make. It was scary. Like leaving the safety and security of that corporate job with the health insurance and the paid vacations, and going to be an entrepreneur where you gotta like, you know, hustle and make ends meet.

It’s all up to you. And there are no paid vacations, there’s no health insurance like you got to take care of all that stuff on your own. The idea of leaving that safety net that I had in that job was very, very scary. And I remember one day, I’ll never forget this day, I came home from work and I was so frustrated again, it was another hard day. And I was just exhausted and fed up and angry.

And my wife at the time looked at me and said, I hate seeing you like this. This is no way to live. You need to quit that job. You need to follow your dream of being an entrepreneur, and I fully support you in that. I’m 100% behind you on this, we will make this work together we’ll figure it out.

When she told me that I was floored because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to quit that job. But suddenly I’m like, filled with this conviction and confidence. Because I had that person supporting me. And that’s exactly what I did. Like the next day I went in and I gave my notice and I quit that job and I never looked back.

So support is so important to have like you’ve just got to have somebody that’s supporting you or some sort of support system. Okay. So we’ve got two legs of our table. Now we’ve got the knowledge, okay, you need to know what to do. You need to know how to do it and We’ve got the support. So we’ve got someone to guide you, you got your Obi-Wan Kenobi, to somebody show you the way to help you overcome the obstacles and the failures.

And this brings us to the third, and maybe the most powerful of all three of these requirements for making lasting change. And that is accountability. The definition of accountable is an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions. So I love this, I love that it’s a willingness to accept responsibility for your own actions. How are you at taking responsibility for your own actions? Who did that just make you cringe a little? If it did, you are not alone. Most people are not good at this.

Most people do not do well when left to do things on their own. Most people do not succeed with something like losing weight when they try to do it on their own. This is why Weight Watchers was such a great concept early on.

So they were mostly these accountability groups, right where you would have to, you know, check-in each week and share, you know, with everybody, whether you stuck to your plan or binge down on French fries all week, like you had to show up and be accountable.

And the rest of the group was there to hold you accountable, and to support you as well, right. So very effective, very effective. And all kinds of support groups are like this, its support is important. But it’s that accountability, it’s just showing up. That is so important that you have to report to someone.

Another great example of an accountability group, and this is, my favorite one is my running group. So my running group, we meet every Tuesday evening and Saturday morning for these group runs. And I usually can’t make the Tuesday evening workout workouts because I’m coaching people in the evenings.

But Saturdays, I block out that time every Saturday to show up to run with the group. And this is when we do our long runs. And I promise you that if it were up to me alone, I would not get out of bed at six o’clock on a Saturday morning in the winter when it’s cold outside and dark outside to go run like 20 miles by myself. I’m telling you right now, I would not do that. I would not have run the number of marathons and Ultras if I had just left been left to try to do this all on my own.

I just don’t think I would have done it. But I know when there’s a bunch of people counting on me to be there that are expecting me to show up because I said I’m going to show up. I’m there every single time every Saturday morning, I never miss those group runs. The accountability is so important.

And when I ask people, because I talked to people about this all the time, I talked to people who are struggling to make changes on their own. And I always ask them like, why is it so hard for you to make this change on your own? How come you can’t stick with your diet plan? Or how can you stick with the exercise program? What is so hard about this? Why can’t you do it on your own?

The number one reason I get from people, the number one reason why they can’t stick to something is they have no accountability. They tell me this every single day. They have no one to report to. They have no one holding them accountable. They have no one that’s making them take responsibility for their own actions. They have no one pushing them.

There’s this incredible power in accountability. I did this little bit of research when I was looking up the information for this podcast. And I found this interesting study by the American Society for Training and Development. And they did this study where they were trying to measure the power of accountability. And they found that people who took action toward a particular goal so you know, they had all these people that had a goal.

And the people that took action on that goal had around a 25% success rate in achieving that goal, right, not bad. But the people who had a goal and who took action on that goal and who had an accountability partner, and had the scheduled appointment with that accountability partner.

These people had a 95% success rate. Basically, a done deal, right? That’s so fascinating to me that accountability and having somebody to check in with on a regular basis is the difference between hitting your goal about a quarter of the time or basically almost 100% of the time. And when I’m working one on one with a client, we have a standing weekly check-in, I’m holding them accountable every single week, did you stick to your plan or no?

And guess what, pretty much everyone always sticks to their plan, there’s a very, very few compliance issues with my coaching clients. Because people are just much more likely to stay on plan when they have to report into me each week, and they even tell me this, they’re like, I was gonna, like, give in and eat this whole chocolate cake because I was, you know, having an emotional moment or something.

And then I thought, I’ve got to talk to Patrick later today. So I’m just not going to do it, you know, because I don’t want to show up and tell him that I screwed up or that I, you know, gave in to this urge or whatever. So just having that person there to hold you accountable can be the difference between making lasting change in your life or just throwing in the towel. Find an accountability partner, it doesn’t have to be a coach, but it can be a group or a spouse, or a friend, or a family member, these can all work.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that sometimes there are issues with people you’re close to like family dynamics, you know, or you know, drama between spouses. And maybe they’re really not as committed to your success as you are, okay. And an accountability group is a great option because you’re surrounding yourself with people who are all doing what you’re doing.

So they share similar goals. And obviously, the best type of accountability partner would be a coach, because they definitely won’t give up on you there. It’s their job to be there for you and to hold you accountable. So it’s in their best interest to hold you accountable as well. So when we talk about making lasting change, this is what it’s all about.

It’s about making changes last permanently, right, anyone can change their diet, or they can start exercising for a couple of weeks, or we see it all the time the gyms fill up in January, and then they’re empty by March. What we’re really after here is permanent, lifelong changes. And there’s no easy path. It’s a challenge. I mean, if it was easy, you’d already have it, you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now.

But in order to make meaningful changes in your life that will last you have to have all three legs of the table knowledge, support, and accountability. So now the question is, how do you get all three? How do you get the knowledge, support, and accountability that you need to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life, I’m going to make this super simple for you.

I have something that will absolutely give you all three. And this is the Running Lean monthly coaching group. This is my monthly membership program and support group where you get everything you need to make lasting changes in your life. So I’m going to talk about this for a moment here. And I want to say this if you’re the kind of person who listens to this podcast, and you get what you need.

And then you’re like, I’m good to go. I don’t need your membership program. That’s fine. I love that. I come here every single week. And do this for you guys because I want to help you get results. And I teach what I teach here on the podcast and in my Facebook group because I want to help you I really honestly do.

So if this is you and you don’t want to hear about this program, you can stop listening now and go see what Joe Rogan is up to or something, okay. I love Joe Rogan. But he’s kind of not my style, but that’s okay.

But if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I want to learn more about this Patrick, like I want some help. I want knowledge, support, and accountability. I want it all in one place. If that’s you then keep listening because I think this program might just be perfect for you.

Okay, so just for a few minutes, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about the monthly coaching group. So with the Running Lean monthly group, monthly coaching group program. With this membership program, you get the knowledge so you get my entire library of online training materials. These are self-paced, that you can go through at your own leisure.

There’s the weight loss training course for runners. So this is everything you need to know about becoming a fat-adapted runner, what to eat, what not to eat, how to break through weight-loss plateaus, how to manage hunger and cravings so much more. And I’m always adding to that particular course. And I’m also adding to my training library all the time.

In January, I created a new course called achieving the impossible. This is how to create an extraordinary life by going after unrealistic goals. And I’ve got a ton of great feedback on this course already. So you can go through these training materials on your own, learn at a pace that works for you and your schedule, then you can start implementing these things.

So you have the knowledge, and you can start taking action and changing your behaviors, okay? Then you can take your questions, or maybe your struggles or your failures, you can take these to the support group. So then you get the support and encouragement from, from the group and from me, an experienced sports nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a master life coach.

But it’s not just about support from me, right. It’s about the support from me and the community of people that are like you that are runners who are sharing similar experiences and similar goals, we all come to the group as ourselves with what what we’re going through at the time, like, these group calls are very powerful, we show up and we’re real move or vulnerable.

We share what we’re struggling with. And we offer our support or encouragement, our experience, our strength, our hope. And we lift each other up when we fail, and we help each other to course correct. This is the power of the support group.

Then when we try to do hard things alone, it’s challenging, it’s frustrating. But when we set out to do hard things, and we do it together, it’s motivating it’s energizing, are much more likely to succeed. So much easier when we do it together.

And then with this membership program, you get the accountability to like to stay on track, and always moving towards your goals. If you want to make lasting change, you have to have accountability. And you’re much more likely to stick to a healthy eating plan or an exercise plan if you have to show up and report it to the group.

It’s kind of like Weight Watchers in that way. But a lot cooler, we’re cool. We have fun. You got to show up and check in. How did it go this past week? What did you do? Did you do what you said you were going to do? Wow, that’s powerful right there.

So these are the three biggest reasons why this membership program is so successful, why it’s helping so many people because you get the knowledge, support, and accountability all in one place. And how does it work? Well, we do live group coaching via Zoom with me and your fellow members. So you get the personal guidance and feedback that you need, you can ask questions, and I’ll coach you.

And all these group coaching calls are recorded and archived onto a Members Only website. So you’ll have 24 access to all the recorded coaching calls so that you can catch anything you might miss. You also get access to a private Facebook group where you can ask questions and get help in between the coaching calls.

This is just a very, very cost-effective way to get results. And I have to say this, we have a lot of fun, I believe, I believe so hard that making big changes, like losing weight should be enjoyable. It has to be enjoyable, it has to be fun. If it’s not fun, why are we doing it? Like you don’t have to suffer your way to good health and fitness.

And the group aspect of this program makes eating right losing weight and doing this big thing. It makes it so much more fun. So here’s the thing, I’m opening the spring session of the Running Lean monthly coaching group this Sunday, March 28. And I don’t open the group very often.

So if you’ve been thinking about this, this is the time for you to take action. If you don’t take action now you’ll have to wait a few more months. All right. And just think about how much change you can make in a few months. You can either be like three months into your health journey. Or you can just be like right where you are today.

Three months from now. The choice is yours. So if you want to learn more, and you want to get notified when enrollment opens, it will be on Sunday at some time. Just head over to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Get your name on the list. Okay.

So this is something I wanted to mention earlier and I want to share this with you. I’m doing a live launch event this Sunday over in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. Right. So that’s this Sunday, March 28 at 4 pm Eastern Daylight Time, daylight time we change our clocks you guys. Did you know that?

I’m going to do something fun this week that I’ve never really done before, I have a special offer for everyone who attends that live on Sunday. Okay, it’s a little something cool that I’m doing. I’ve never done this before. But it’s, it’s a little way that I want to say thank you for being a part of the group and showing up on that live.

I won’t be offering this fun little surprise to the general public. The only way you’ll know about it and be able to take advantage of it is if you show up on the live training this Sunday in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, okay, you will want to get in on this. I promise you, it’ll be really cool.

Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. Remember, head over to runningleanpodcast.com/join and save your spot. And then I’ll see you on the Facebook Live launch event this Sunday. It’s going to be fun, right? It’s fun. We have so much fun. All right, you guys, as always, lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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