73. Becoming a Lean, Fat-Burning Machine and Making It Last For Life – Part 2

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 73 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And this is part two of a two part podcast series called Becoming a Lean Fat Burning Machine and Making It Last For Life. So as a sports nutritionist, a weight loss coach for runners and master life coach, I help runners transform themselves into lean efficient fat burning machines.

So they can end all that yo yo dieting, and finally get to their ideal weight and stay there for good. And I have a vested interest in this subject matter since I struggled with gaining weight, like over 40 pounds in just a few years. While I was training for marathons while I was running ultra marathons. Well, I figured I finally figured out how to change my diet so that I was burning fat instead of storing it.

And check out part one of this series if you want all the info on how I did that. So I lost the weight pretty easily really. And I’ve been able to keep it off almost effortlessly. And honestly the hardest thing about making any kind of big change like this in your life, especially when it comes to what you’re eating, your health, your fitness – the hardest part is making it last.

Anyone can stick to a plan for a few weeks. But the real transformation happens when you feel like you can stick to it for good when it just becomes part of who you are. So in this episode, I’m devoting the whole episode two, just outlining the most important mindset shifts that you have to adopt. If you want to make becoming a lean running machine, something that you can make last for life.

Okay, so if you haven’t already done so, come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group of like minded runners and fellow listeners of the podcast whose support encourage and help each other with whatever it is you’re going through. So maybe you’re nursing an injury and you can’t run and you just want some other runners to tell you that they’ve been where you are that everything’s gonna eventually be okay.

Maybe you have a question about fueling properly for those long runs or a race and you want to hear how other people are doing it. whatever’s on your mind, we got you covered. We have the best group on Facebook. Somebody told me that recently and I was like, I think you’re right.

It’s pretty awesome to have this community to lean into when you need the help when you need a little encouragement. Or when you just want to share something good like a win. We love wins, come and share a win. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and come join in on the fun.

Here’s another five star podcast review from Joe. Joe says, “This is an awesome podcast. I’ve been listening since I decided to start running again back in June of 2020. And I’ve lost over 20 pounds with Patrick’s guidance and healthy eating teachings. Not only is he a subject matter expert, but he continues to push us to reach our goals. I highly recommend this podcast if you’re looking to get back into running or not sure where to start. Along with his podcast, Patrick’s Facebook group is an added bonus and a phenomenal group of motivators that continue to support you along the way.”

See, I told you it wasn’t just me, Joe’s telling you the same thing here. And then Joe says, “Finally, you will not be disappointed.” Thank you, Joe. That was amazing. I love reading five star reviews.

Hey, share the love if you want to. If you enjoy this podcast and you want to take a moment to leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, wherever you wherever you can leave a review. I don’t even know where you can leave a review. I know you can’t on Apple.

Just I would love it if you would if you would do that. And I’ll be sure to read it here on the show. So leave a review. Tell me what you think and share the love. Thank you so much.

And you know I teach a lot about how to lose weight and the mindset required to make it last for life. I talk about this here on the podcast a lot and some people like Joe get results from just implementing the stuff that I teach here on the podcast, right?

But if you want more, if you want some expert guidance to help keep you on track. If you want someone there to show you exactly how to make all of this work for you individually, and you want somebody there to hold you accountable, to encourage you to do things you don’t want to do so that you can to become the person that you want to be, then one on one coaching might be the perfect thing for you.

I work with runners who are finally ready to stop making excuses for themselves and their start. And they’re ready to start making changes to their health and their fitness. I work with runners who are tired of losing and gaining the same 20 pounds over and over and over again, I work with people who might have these big weight loss goals, like they want to lose 100 pounds and develop the mindset skills they need to keep the weight off for the rest of their life.

Wherever you are on your weight loss journey, or your health or fitness journey, I’m here for you to help you become the most badass version of yourself yet. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

We’ll have a short conversation, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. There’s no charge for this call. But you know, we can just talk about your goals and see if this is a good fit. And if so great, if not no big deal.runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

Okay, let’s, I want to recap really quickly. What I talked about in part one of this two part series. So in part one, I talked about how runners on average, you know, we carry around a little too much body fat, like we just were a little overweight in general, okay, and running alone, it’s just not a very effective weight loss strategy. Right, the key to losing weight. And being able to run all day without bonking is you’ve got to turn your body into a fat burning machine, you got to burn fat.

In order to turn yourself from a sugar burner into a fat burner, we have to get rid of the most problematic carbohydrates, right, especially the highly refined carbs like sugar and flour. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend it. Because what I’m talking about today is how to take all that stuff that you learned in part one, and how to apply it and make it last for life to make it something that is sustainable.

There are several mindset shifts that you have to make. If you want to make this all something that you can just do going forward, it has to become part of who you are, has to become something automatic and sustainable for you.

Okay, this is the key to any kind of long term changes in any area of your life, really. But probably when it comes to losing weight, this is the hardest thing for most people to wrap their brains around, which is how do I make this last?

Okay, so I put together in this episode, a bunch of mindset shifts that I think are absolutely required, if you want to make Running Lean last for life, okay. The first one is this, you have to ditch the whole diet mentality. It has to go. The whole idea of I’m on a diet is a temporary thing. Right? It assumes that there is an end, eventually I am on a diet, or I’m off a diet.

Have you ever been on a diet? Yeah, you like you’re on a diet for a short period of time, right? You don’t stay on a diet, right? This is the whole temporary mentality about the word diet, okay, and this mentality about diets being temporary, it’s not going to work, this is not going to work for you. So the very first thing you have to do is ditch that whole idea of this is a temporary diet because it’s not.

It’s a way of life, okay? There is not an end to this, this is very, very important. There’s no destination you’re trying to get to. And then you’re just going to go back to doing whatever you were doing before. You’re not gonna like not eat sugar, and get to your goal weight and feel amazing.

And then all of a sudden go back to eating all the sugar. Again, it does not work that way. This is not a diet, this is a way of life. And the first thing you have to do is adopt this mentality of like, this is how I’m going to live my life from here on out.

So you either commit to being healthy for life, or you’re committing to something else, you’re committing to a lifetime of struggle, of frustration of yo yo dieting, of losing and gaining those same 20 pounds over and over and over and over again. Right? Why don’t you just be done with all of that nonsense once and for all. All right.

This is my suggestion for you. You’ve got to drop the diet mentality. You have to adopt this attitude of like I’m all in forever. This is how I live my life now. Or you can just keep riding the struggle bus forever. Like that’s up to you if you want to do that, right.

And it surprises me how many people actually choose to ride the struggle bus for the rest of their lives, they continue to choose the harder, more complicated, more struggling way to do things. We don’t have to do that. Okay.

So the first thing you really have to wrap your head around is like this is not temporary, this is not a diet, there’s no destination, we’re trying to get to being healthy is not a destination, it’s a way of life. Right. So everything I’m going to talk about going forward here is going to be like how we kind of do that, okay.

And I’ve talked about a lot of these topics here on the podcast, and various episodes, you can go back and listen to some of those. But I’ve put together some, I think, the most powerful mindset shifts that you have to make. If you want to make these changes last for good, okay.

So one of the things you have to do is you have to focus on changing your identity, you have to focus on changing who you are at your core. So it kind of goes back to this idea of like, I’m in this for good, this is a way of life for me. So you have to adopt that as part of your identity. It has to become part of who you are.

So what is your identity? Your identity is how you define yourself. It’s the words, and the phrases, and the concepts and the beliefs that you have about yourself that define who you are, at your core. Think about it like this, everything you say after the words, I am is part of your identity.

So I am a runner, I’m identifying myself, as someone who is at their core a runner. I am a coach, I am a brother, I am a father. I’m a sci-fi nerd. I love sci-fi movies. And that’s part of who I am. And I can’t deny that I just have to accept that. This is part of me, this is part of who I am at my very, very core. Okay.

Now, this is the part I think is so fascinating. One of the strongest forces in every human being is that you must act consistent with how you define yourself. I’m going to say that, again, because I think this is so important. One of the strongest forces in every human being is that you must act consistent with how you define yourself.

How you define yourself determines how you act, how you act determines the results you get in your life. So the thoughts that you think, the feelings that you feel, the words you say about yourself, how you dialogue with yourself, your brain has no choice but to take all of that information and make it real for you.

To make it who you are, you will act in accordance with what you believe you are who you believe you are. Okay? So all of these things, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, the words you say about yourself, this is how you define yourself, right? And all of this becomes real for you, it becomes part of who you are.

And here’s the cool thing, you can redefine yourself, or just define yourself at any time in your life. It’s not like you picked who you were when you were 12. And then that’s just who you are from going forward. Right? You get to redefine yourself anytime you want.

Now, I think I identified as a sci-fi nerd when I was like 11 or 12 years old, whenever Star Wars came out. See, I would have been 11 or 10. Yeah, cause that came out in ‘77, I believe, right? And so yeah, I was 10 years old. So I defined myself as a sci-fi nerd, pretty early on, and that’s just been a part of who I am forever. And I continue to love those kinds of movies.

And, but that’s not, you know, just who I am, like, there’s so many other parts of me, right? I’m so complex. I’m such a complex person. I mean, and so are you. You know, we all are. We have so many different ways of defining ourselves. But it’s important. This is so important.

Because what you believe about yourself determines the kind of results that you get in your life. And so if I say, I’m a coach, then I’m going to act in accordance with that. I’m going to coach people, and I’m going to help people to make big changes in their life and make big transformations in their life, encourage them to do things they don’t feel like doing so that they can become that person that they want to become.

I act in accordance with how I define myself. I watch sci-fi movies, because I’m a sci-fi nerd. I am a father. And so I do things that are important for you know, I put my kids first. So all of these things are how we define ourselves. I’m a runner. So you know what I do, I run. I run, whether I feel like it or not.

I recently made this switch to doing yoga again, it’s been a long time since I’ve done yoga, they’ve gotten so stiff. I’m like, wound up as tight as steel cables. And I decided I’m going to be somebody who does yoga all the time. And so I committed to being this different person, like, I’m going to redefine myself as a yogi, you know, somebody that does yoga regularly.

And so far, I’ve got like, 15 days in, and I feel amazing. All because I made that little mental shift of this is who I am at my core. Okay, so you need to define yourself, you need to maybe change the core beliefs you have about yourself, you might even need to sort of become a different person, which is okay.

You know, think about this, like, I’m the kind of person who sticks to her training plan, no matter what. I’m the kind of person who sticks to their diet to their nutrition plan, no matter what. Right? These are the kinds of things that are gonna help determine what you do in your life, right. So who you are, determines what you do.

Okay, the next concept is that you have to have your own back through all of this, you have to love yourself through this whole process, right? If you have a negative self talk like dialogue going on in your brain, “I can never make anything work. I’m so slow as a runner, and I’ll never lose the weight. And I’m never going to be healthy. And running is always so hard for me”, like you got to stop the negative self talk. This is not, this is not doing you any good at all. Okay?

This is not having your own back. This is like tearing yourself down. So when we talk about mindset, mindset is all about how you dialogue with yourself, the words that you say to yourself, in your own brain. And listen, your mind really believes everything that you tell it, you keep saying the same things over about yourself, keep thinking the same things over and over about yourself. Your brain will believe it, whether it’s true or not.

So if you say like I’m a failure, and nothing ever works for me, I’m never going to lose weight, you’re going to believe that it’s just going to become true for you. That becomes your reality. The things you keep telling yourself over and over and over again become your reality. Most people, most people beat themselves up like crazy about everything they speak to themselves so harshly.

“I’m so weak, I’m on discipline, I’m such a failure. I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy.” Wow. What kind of results do you think you’re gonna get if you continue to tear yourself down like that? Bad results, you’re gonna get bad results. Your mind believes everything you tell it.

Okay, so you have to start changing that dialogue, the way you talk to yourself, the way you feel, think and feel about yourself has to change. Get rid of the negative self talk, you have to love yourself through this process. I did a podcast episode awhile back on loving yourself unconditionally.

And there’s this idea of that, like you can’t hate yourself thin, you can’t hate yourself and expect to, to make positive improvements on your life. You can’t hate yourself and expect to run a faster marathon. Because you’re just going to be tearing yourself down for four hours or whatever it is, however long it takes you to run that marathon.

Instead we have to have our own back, we have to talk to ourselves positively. You know, the funny thing is like you would never talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself. You would never speak so harshly to any other human being most likely as harshly as you talk about yourself and talk to yourself.

I don’t really know why we do this as humans but we need to stop this because it’s not doing us any good. It’s not helping us at all. Okay, have your own back. Support yourself if you make a decision that.

You want to run a faster marathon? Go all in on yourself, have your own back and start talking positively about yourself. Stop the negative self talk, start positive self talk. Right? Your mindset will change when you begin dialoguing with yourself in a positive manner.

Okay, the next concept, you guys, I love this one, is that you have to embrace discomfort. You know, change is hard, change is uncomfortable. And change can be painful. We have to be willing to embrace the discomfort of change.

There’s a story of a lady running through her neighborhood, and she’s running through a neighborhood. And she hears this dog crying, howling, right? And she gets closer, she’s running through her neighborhood. She comes around a corner. And sure enough, she sees a dog sitting on a front porch. And just howling like, like crying.

She gets closer and she wants to see what’s going on. She notices a guy sitting on the front porch, reading the newspaper, drinking his coffee and just hanging out. She’s like, hey, it sounds like your dog is like in some sort of pain. And the guy says, Yeah, he is. He’s sitting on a nail. And she’s like, Oh, my gosh, why doesn’t he get up off the nail? And he goes, Oh, because it would hurt too much.

And so this, the moral of the story is like sometimes the pain of change, we have this idea that it’s going to hurt too much to change. So we’d rather just sit in the pain that we’re in, instead of doing something about it. And the story of this dog sitting on nails seems, you know, a little harsh or whatever. But this is what we do to ourselves. We’re sitting in our own pain. And we’re just, we’re crying about it.

And we’re saying, Oh, this is terrible. I hate being this way. I hate being overweight. I hate feeling this way running. But we don’t want to do anything about it. Because to change means we’re going to get uncomfortable means we’re going to get out of our comfort zone. If you want things to be different than they are in your life right now.

I’ve got some news for you, it’s gonna be uncomfortable to get there. Because everything you already have is in your comfort zone. Everything that you want, but don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. Ah, there’s the problem right there, right? Oh, well, I want to lose weight.

Okay, guess what, you’re gonna have to get uncomfortable to do it. Oh, but I don’t want to get uncomfortable. But there’s no other way around it. You have to be willing to embrace the discomfort, or else you’re not going to get it.

I did a podcast episode called embracing the suck. And as ultra runners, this is a concept that we have is like, at some point during this race, you know, you’re running 30 or 50 miles or 100 miles at some point, it’s gonna suck. You can either complain about it, and you know, cry about it, or you can just embrace it. Right, choose to embrace the suck.

Doing things like this – running an ultramarathon, losing weight, you know, changing your whole mentality around how you think and feel about food, changing your diet. This is not easy, this is hard, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, it absolutely means you should do it. But just know it’s going to be uncomfortable.

Get up off that nail, stop crying, get up off that nail, and do the hard thing, do the thing that’s going to hurt for the short term. But eventually, it’ll stop. And eventually, you’re going to get stronger and you’re going to become more. And you’ll have those things that are outside your comfort zone. And your comfort zone grows.

It’s the hard things we do that make us stronger, that make us become more. You know, you build stronger muscles by continually overloading your muscles, tearing them down and it hurts, right? It’s painful to go to the gym and lift weights. It’s painful. But there’s this adaptive response to the stress. Your muscles get bigger.

And it’s the same with becoming stronger, mentally becoming stronger emotionally. You have to do the hard things. You have to challenge yourself, push yourself to do more to become more to get out of your comfort zone more often. Because then you produce this adaptive response mentally and emotionally. And you grow and you become more.

And it’s not the fact that we don’t have challenges in our life that we can’t grow and become more, it’s because of the challenges in our life. It’s not despite them. It’s because of the challenges that we go through that we become more. When I ran 100 miles, it wasn’t easy. There was a point where I was ready to give up. And I had run at four miles. And I gotta tell you, that was a dark moment for me because I was in so much pain.

And I decided that I was going to embrace the suck in that moment, and finish this thing. And I did, and it felt amazing to finish. But I could have quit, I could have just sat there on my nail and been like, well, this hurts. I don’t want to do this. No, I got up off that nail, and I did what I needed to do to finish. And it literally changed my life. So you have to embrace discomfort.

Alright, the next mindset shift you have to adopt is you have to honor the commitments that you make to yourself. A key component to making being healthy last for life is that you have to do the things you say you’re going to do. This is not a hard concept. You guys, listen.

If you say to yourself, you know, I’m not going to eat bread at dinner tonight. Then when dinner comes tonight, don’t eat the bread. Or maybe you make a promise to yourself that you’re not going to drink alcohol this weekend. And then when the weekend rolls around, you don’t drink alcohol. That’s it. It’s not a hard concept.

Every time you do this, every time you do what you say you’re going to do, every time you honor a commitment that you make to yourself, you build trust in yourself, you build resilience, you build confidence in yourself. Now, there’s an alternative way of doing things.

Every time you say you’re not gonna eat the bread, and you find yourself face first into the sourdough at dinner. I love sourdough, by the way, so good. But every time you say you’re not gonna eat the bread, and then you just shove your face full of sourdough bread, you break that trust in yourself, you diminish your resilience, you lower your self confidence.

So every time you say I’m not gonna drink tonight, and then you find yourself like three drinks in or whatever you’re like, ah, I didn’t want to do this, like you’re breaking this trust in yourself, okay? You’re always doing one or the other, you’re either building trust and confidence in yourself, or you’re breaking it down. You get better at whatever you practice, right.

So if you practice running fast, you’re going to become a faster runner. If you practice running farther and farther, you’re going to get better at running longer distances. If you practice breaking promises to yourself, you’re going to get really good at breaking promises to yourself, I promise you. Right.

So if you do not honor the commitments that you make to yourself, you break that trust and confidence in yourself. You don’t build that resilience that you need. You just get better at giving in to the urges and the cravings that you’re having. Right, you have to honor the commitments that you make to yourself. And listen, you’re a runner, like you’ve if you’ve trained for half marathon or a marathon, I know that you know how to do this.

You put together a training schedule, and you say I’m going to run five days a week from now until six months from now, when I have this race coming up, and you stick to that training plan. I see people do this all the time. It could be snowing outside, it’s like cold and dark and raining. And you’re like I’m just gonna put on my running shoes and go run because my schedule says I gotta run, I don’t want to, I don’t want to like, you know, break this commitment I made to myself.

And you’re so good at this. Well just take that same attitude and apply it to sticking to your meal plan. Right? You’re already doing it. But then when we talk about like what you’re eating, it’s like oh, but that’s so hard. But you’re already doing it right? Copy and paste that same attitude that you have about running into sticking with your meal plan.

And I get it you guys, this is not easy to do. I know it’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good, right? This is why I’m talking about all these different mindset shifts that we have to make because it’s not just one thing. It’s not just one thing that’s going to do it for you.

Sorry, but there’s a lot to it. And it’s about changing your whole way of thinking and the way you feel about yourself and about nutrition and about diets and food and exercise and running and all of it like we have to change the story. Okay.

So another mindset shift you absolutely have to make is that you just have to stop procrastinating and just start taking action already. Right, you can’t think yourself thin. You can’t think your way to better health. This is a program of action. You know, I hear people tell me that, you know, they want to change.

And you know, they really want to like lose the weight, and they’re ready right now. But then they’re like, I just need to think about it. And I’m like, No, don’t think about it, just do something. I don’t care what you do. Do something right now, whenever we say like, I’ll get to it later. I’ll just do it later, maybe later. Because you’re hoping that like, all the stars are gonna align, and everything’s gonna like, feel perfect. It could, it just never comes.

There’s never a perfect time, the perfect time is like right now. The perfect time is when you feel inspired to take action, that’s when you need to just take some action, just do something. What can you do right now, that will move you one tiny step closer to your goal.

Maybe you just cut out sugar for a day, or maybe you just say no to bread, say no to this hour, go. Go to the gym for like five minutes or run around the block, do a set of burpees. Like these are teeny tiny steps that you can do. But when you do them, they start to build motivation.

Motivation is an inside job, all motivation it’s created by you internally by your brain. You don’t, you don’t have to, like you don’t have to have motivation in order to do something either, right? A lot of times the motivation comes after you start. That’s why I’m encouraging you to go do something teeny, tiny, some teeny, tiny step and just start building upon that.

Because that’ll create the motivation for you. You know, there’s a lot of days I don’t feel like running, I’ll tell you these last 15 days of doing yoga, probably 14 of them, maybe 15. I’ve not felt like doing it. But I’m doing it anyway. Because I said I was going to. I’m honoring this commitment that I made to myself, right. But I stopped thinking about it and procrastinating and it just started, I just started doing it. Right.

And I always find it surprising how much more motivated I feel after I start doing something. So thinking about making changes to your health or being healthy. It’s not the same thing as being healthy. Like thinking about it as not doing it. You can think about it all you want. Stop procrastinating and take action, even one teeny, tiny little step, those tiny steps add up.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. That’s a quote, right? But it’s not a journey of 1000 Miles. Begin with thinking about it for a while, thinking about the journey. No, that’s not the way it goes. It begins with a single step but you’ve got to take the action. So stop procrastinating and start doing something about it. Okay.

Next concept is you have to take radical responsibility. So there are basically two ways of approaching things in our life you can be at, you can be the cause of all the results that you get in your life, the good, the bad, the in between, you’re the cause of them. Or you can be at the effect of other people and outside circumstances. That’s the cause and effect.

People are living at the effect end of the spectrum. They are at the effect of outside circumstances. These people have excuses. They have stories, they have reasons why they can’t ever do anything. Why nothing ever works for them. They have lots of reasons. You know, they play the victim, nothing is ever their fault.

You know, my boss yelled at me at work today. So that’s why I ate cake for dinner. This is people living at effect. On the other end of the spectrum, as people who are living at cause, people who are taking radical responsibility. These people, they get results. They take action and they reach their goals no matter what. They’re always becoming more.

They take radical responsibility for everything they’re getting in their life. It would look like this. My boss yelled at me at work today because I didn’t handle that situation with the customer very well. I am absolutely going to do better next time. Now where’s that chicken that I’m having for dinner tonight? Boom, much different outcome when you take radical responsibility.

You know, taking radical responsibility can look like this. I’m going to lose the 40 pounds no matter what is happening in my life, no matter how long it takes. No matter how many times I quote unquote “fail” along the way. I’m gonna make this work no matter what. Wow, that is powerful.

That is a radical concept. Most people don’t think about things this way. Right? It’s just easier to blame everybody else for your lack of results. This diet didn’t work. Oh, my life is too stressful. This isn’t a good time for me. Yeah, that’s easier, right? That’s like the easier way to go. What are you going to get? What kind of results do you get from that? Crappy results? You don’t get any results. Is that how you want live your life? No, I don’t think so.

Take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening to you, the good, the bad, and all the in between. When you do that you just cannot fail, there’s no more failure. There’s just lessons you learn along the way. So you drank two bottles of wine over the weekend, your weight loss stalls out for the next week. Okay, well, that clearly didn’t work. What am I going to do next time?

Okay, next time, I’m not going to drink two bottles of wine. You know, next time, I’m going to make better decisions, boom, lesson learned, move on. Take radical responsibility for every thing happening in your life, every result that you’re getting, it’s no, it’s nobody else’s fault. It’s all your fault. This is the good thing, because you can do something about it.

I mean, it’s bad news and good news. It’s bad news, because there’s nobody to blame. There’s no, there’s no more blaming others. But that’s also the good news that everything is your fault. That means you can control it, which is amazing.

Next concept is like you have to start thinking about who it is you want to become. Setting goals and going after them is more about who you become in the process of working towards that goal than it is about actually achieving the goal. Like when I decided to run 100 miles, I didn’t know how I was going to do that. You know, I did only run 50 miles before. And so running 100 Miles seemed impossible for me.

In order to achieve that goal, I had to become a different person. I had to become the kind of person who could run 100 miles. And that required me to change my whole identity. Huh, see where I’m going with this. I had to change my identity. This is all related. Things all overlap.

So here’s the important part. I became a different person in the training process when I was training for that 100 miler. And becoming the person that I became in that process was actually more important and more powerful than actually finishing that event. So just showing up at the starting line of that race meant that I had become the kind of person who trained for and who could run 100 miles. And everything after that was just gravy.

So if I actually finished the thing, that would have been amazing. But your showing up meant that I had transformed myself into a 100 miler runner. Now, for me, I don’t like, like, when I set out to do something like that, I’m gonna finish it. Like this is my mentality is like this is done, you know, I’m going to make this happen no matter what. And I did.

So think about who you want to become. Whenever I set big goals for myself, it’s more about who I become in the process than actually achieving the goal. I’m always working on becoming more, more fit, more healthy, more powerful as a human being. That’s my mission in life is to always become more, you know, stronger, more in control of my thoughts and feelings, more of who I meant to be.

And then I want to be the example of what’s possible, I’m going to show you that you too, can become more of who you are meant to be. So think about who it is you want to become. Set big goals and become that person in the process.

Next mindset shift is, this isn’t so much a mindset shift to something you can actually do, you need to surround yourself with people who help you become more in order to achieve anything like long term health and fitness. In order to make all of this last for life. You need three things: you need knowledge, support and accountability. So you need to know what to do and how to do it. That’s the knowledge.

You need this supportive people around you. So this is your friends, your family, your community, and you need accountability. So this is someone who can, who you can check in with who can help you to stay on track. So, you know, for example, working with a coach like me will give you all three of those things.

And this is why I believe in coaching and I have three different coaches that helped me in different areas of my life. But you don’t even have to go that route. You don’t even have to, you know, work with a coach. Plenty of people get the knowledge and the support that they need from you know, listening to a podcast like this.

In our Facebook community, like Joe said in his review. At the top of this episode, he lost 20 pounds just by listening to the podcast and kind of following along in the Facebook group, that’s amazing. Surround yourself with people who will help you become more.

So you may have to change your circle of friends. And I say this to people, sometimes they’re like, Well, I’m like, if you’re with a bunch of people who eat crap food, don’t exercise, don’t know what it’s like to want to become a better person. You know, they drink all the time, they’re just partying like they’re in college still like, is this who you want for your circle of friends? You might have to change your group of friends.

But I promise you, surrounding yourself with people who have like minded goals, and who will help to support you and encourage you to become more. Oh my gosh, it’s, it’s life changing. It’s amazing. And of course, I’m always here for you if you want personalized guidance, support and accountability, and all that good stuff.

Okay, the last thing I want to talk about you guys, and this is like something that I believe so strongly that a lot of people just don’t, is this like, you cannot suffer your way to good health. If you want to lose weight, if you want to get healthy, if you want to become more of you who you’re meant to be. It doesn’t have to suck. It doesn’t have to be a terrible process. You don’t have to suffer your way through this whole process.

Eating healthy, losing weight, building new habits around food, this can actually be kind of easy, and it can feel almost effortless. And it can even be fun. What? I know it’s crazy, right? What a crazy radical concept. Losing weight can be fun. Suffering, turmoil, hunger, deprivation, feeling like always missing out on something. These are all just mindset things.

These are all mental constructs. This is just how you’re choosing to think and feel and what you’re choosing to believe about the process. You can choose that stuff all day long, and it will be terrible, you will feel deprivation, you will feel like you’re missing out, you will suffer your way through this, you do not have to suffer your way to good health.

So instead of asking yourself, like, why does this suck so bad? Why is this so hard? Once you start asking better questions like, How can I make this easier? How can I make this more enjoyable? How can I have fun with this? How can I enjoy going out to dinner with my friends and stay on my meal plan? What’s one thing I can do today to make this easier for myself?

These are really powerful questions to ask. But the thing is, most people don’t ask those questions. They ask those really terrible questions like why is it so hard? Well, you ask yourself that question, you will find answers to that. But you do not have to suffer through this process. The people that I work with, we make this fun, and we make it enjoyable. Is there some discomfort? Of course.

It’s like saying, you know, hey, let’s make this marathon training fun. Will there be moments where it’s just uncomfortable for you? And you experienced discomfort? Yes. But can we also have fun? Yes, yes, we can. Yes, we absolutely can.

Okay, so those are my big overarching mindset shifts that you absolutely have to make. If you want to make all this, you know, last for life. I hope you’ve enjoyed this two part series. And I hope you have a much clearer sense of how you can make being healthy and being fit and becoming a lean fat burning machine.

You can make all of this last for life. And if you got something out of this series, please consider sharing it with a friend, maybe somebody who you think might also get something out of it. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.