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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Beliefs

172. Can Losing Weight Be Fun?

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Most people think that losing weight equals suffering. If you want to lose weight you have to stop eating all “delicious” foods forever and you will suffer every single day. They use words like …

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Podcast Transcript

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 172 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, can losing weight be fun? So most people think that losing weight equals suffering. If you want to lose weight, you have to stop eating all the quote-unquote delicious foods forever. And you’re basically going to suffer every single day.

They use words like suffering and struggling and deprivation and starvation and white knuckling it. And I don’t know about you, but all of this sounds pretty terrible to me. If this is what you think losing weight looks like, if you’re suffering every day trying to lose weight, you are doing it wrong. Today, I’m digging into this concept of making healthy eating and losing weight fun.

Can losing weight be fun? Armed with the right mindset, I think it can absolutely be fun. But first, it’s been drilled into our heads that if you’re a runner, you have to eat carbs, lots and lots of carbs. The truth is, though, in two and a half million years of human evolution, we’ve never relied solely on carbs to run long distances, we just never have.

We burn fat, lots of fat, the idea of not using gels, and goos and stuff to run – this isn’t crazy. This isn’t some new fringe concept. It’s actually baked into our DNA. Humans are naturally excellent fat burners. But we’ve gotten far away from that in the last few decades. When you adapt to burning fat for fuel, you will have all the energy you need for running your own stored body fat, right?

We’re not talking about eating bacon and lard or whatever this is like your own stored body fat becomes your fuel source. Plus, if you want to lose weight, what do you have to do? You’ve got to burn fat, you’ve got to burn that stored body fat. So this whole concept of that adaptation, it’s a beautiful thing all the way around.

You really don’t need to eat a ton of carbs to run, you can eat some, that’s fine. You can become fat adapted, though and start using your own body fat as fuel. When you get fat adapted, you’ll never run out of fuel, you’ll be able to run basically all day, and you lose weight in the process. It’s a win win-win.

Learn more about my unique approach to weight loss for runners and join the Coaching Project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Okay, I mentioned something in last week’s podcast, or maybe it was a couple weeks ago about creating habits and trying to make things fun. And I just sort of touched on this idea of, you know, changing your habits eating healthy and how it can be fun.

And I got some questions about that. So I’m like, you know what, I need to just address this today. Because I think there’s this concept that when you change your diet, and when you start exercising, if you want to lose weight, like it’s just not going to be fun. Like you have to suffer your way through this whole process. I think most people believe that if you want to lose weight, you have to suffer. It has to be about suffering and struggling and excessive hunger and deprivation and white knuckling it. And this all sounds like super terrible, right?

The problem with this thinking, if you believe that in order to lose weight, you’re going to have to suffer for the rest of your life, that is absolutely not sustainable. There’s no way you can maintain that level of suffering forever. And so a lot of people believe this. They believe that losing weight equals suffering forever, never going to eat good food again. Got to eat bland, cardboard tasting stuff for the rest of my life. I’m going to be freaking out and feeling deprived every time I’m around some sort of quote-unquote delicious food. Like I just there’s no way I can deal with that. And so they just quit. There’s like, there’s no way I can do that for the rest of my life.

And many of you listening to this right now I know that you are good at suffering already. Like you’re a runner, like you’ve probably run marathons or ultra marathons or half marathons or whatever. Just training for an event like that and training for a marathon requires a lot of suffering.

Like you, there’s months of suffering, I gotta get up early. And it’s cold in the wintertime and like, you know, go run in the rain and run the snow and the ice and the wind and push yourself through the miles and you know that hurts. PR during a marathon is painful, there is pain involved in improving your time.

Every time you want to run a marathon, qualify for Boston, whatever that looks like for you. There’s pain involved, there’s suffering involved, not just in the race itself, but in the months of training that lead up to them. So we are good as runners, we are good at suffering, we can do that. We know what that looks like.

And I’ve suffered so much doing hard races. I have never run a marathon that at some point I didn’t say, ‘why do I even do this, this sucks so bad right now.’ And I remember running my 100 miler, and that’s a whole new level of pain and suffering, my friends, I’m just going to tell you right now, that this is something that I haven’t done again, since because there’s so much pain and suffering involved with that is like 28 hours of pain and suffering involved with that, right?

So runners, we can endure a lot of pain and suffering, we can deal with that, we’re good at this, right? But when I say to you, like, you know, what, just, you know, limit how much like pizza you’re eating or ice cream, like, you know, maybe just not eat that much. Immediately this becomes some type of suffering that you’re just like not willing to endure, right? Think about that for just a second.

You’re going to do all the hard work required to let’s say, qualify for Boston. So hard to do that. Right? You will suffer for months. And during that race itself, you’re going to be running so hard, you’re going to deal with so much pain, that, but if I say like, hey, don’t eat ice cream for 30 days, or 60 days or something like that, it’s like, oh, my god, I can’t do it. Right? It just becomes in our mind, it becomes something that we’re just not willing to deal with. Right? So this is why most people don’t even start.

Now, there is some suffering at the beginning. Like when you change your diet, there’s going to be a little bit of, you know, deprivation, you’re going to feel a little bit like, oh, what am I supposed to eat? I can’t eat sugar, I can’t eat, you know, processed flours and things like that. And whatever your plan looks like, everybody’s a little bit different.

But let’s just say you’re not eating pizza and ice cream. And you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m you know, this is hard, right? Yeah, it is hard at the beginning. Over time, that gets better. That gets better. Like it’s this is not going to last forever. I think we all know that, right. But if you believe that, you know, the rest of your life, you’re going to be suffering and struggling, no one’s going to sign up for that.

No one on this planet is going to sign up for that. I don’t care how much pain you can endure during an ultramarathon or something like that, nobody is going to sign up for a lifetime of suffering and struggling around food, right?

So there’s a mindset that this is too hard, I’m going to feel deprived for the rest of my life, screw this, it’s not worth it. And that mindset is just wrong, you have to change that, right? But most people, they just come at this whole process like losing weight, the whole journey of losing weight, is just going to feel so terrible forever that they quit or never start.

But when you do that, you’re really giving up what you really want for yourself. You want to get healthier, you want to be stronger, you want to feel good in your body, you want to feel confident, you want to run faster, whatever it is. Losing weight is actually just sort of a nice side effect of all those things.

Like you’re trying to become this healthiest version of yourself. And losing weight is just a little nice side benefit in the process. But you give all that up when you quit on yourself because you think it’s gonna be too hard or you make it too hard, right?

Becoming a fit, strong, healthy human being means you’re probably going to have to change some things. If you want to lose some weight, you’re gonna have to make some changes, you’re probably gonna have to give up a couple of these foods that you’ve been eating, or maybe not eat as much of some of these foods. Really limit how much pizza you eat.

I eat pizza every now and then. I eat some tacos here and there, I had some sushi a couple weeks ago. It’s great. I don’t do that all the time. But there will be some amount of discomfort there will be some amount of suffering involved. It should be minimal. It shouldn’t be temporary.

Changing your diet, changing anything for that matter, comes with some amount of discomfort, right? Just accept this, right? Let’s accept this and move on. It’s gonna happen. It’s typically at the beginning, it’s not a lifetime of pain and suffering and struggling. If it is, you’re doing it wrong. And I want to clear one thing up right away. The goal of all this, the goal of losing weight, or eating healthy, is not to have fun. It’s to be a fit healthy human being and do what it takes to stick with that, like make this your lifestyle.

To live your life as a fit, healthy human being, that means there will be some struggle, some suffering, some times that are not so good. That’s okay, that’s part of the process, there’s also going to be some times where it is fun, where it feels great, just like running.

But if you want to get stronger, let’s say, you’ve got to lift the heavy weights. Lifting heavy weights is hard, it hurts. There’s a certain amount of suffering involved, right. But is that fun? The results are fun. Looking in the mirror and seeing your abs for the first time since you were like 12. That’s fun. Having your shirts fit tight around your arms. That’s fun for the guys, maybe, maybe for the ladies, too.

If you want to lose weight, you have to endure a little bit of suffering like not eating pizza. That’s not fun. Not drinking any alcohol when everybody else at the table is drinking is not necessarily fun. But you know what is fun? Not waking up with a hangover the next day, stepping on the scale and seeing a lower number, that’s fun.

Fitting into that pair of jeans again, that’s fun. Feeling confident enough to wear a two piece bathing suit, or to maybe take your shirt off at the beach, guys only probably, depending on what beach you’re at, that’s fun. So it’s not going to be fun and games all the time. And you have to accept that, right?

You’ve got to kind of do some of the hard things in order to reap the benefits in order to have the fun. Running is hard, right? We do it anyway because we love how we feel afterward. We love pushing ourselves. We love accomplishing big things. We love seeing what we’re capable of. We love accomplishing more and running faster and running further.

But running is not always fun. Running is hard. A lot of times running is hard. I did two runs last weekend, I’m training for this Ultra. And on Saturday, I ran 24 miles. On Sunday I ran 10. Right, that was on the schedule. That’s what I told myself I was going to do. I did the 24 on Saturday and was pretty good. I felt good. Felt pretty strong, and recovered quickly from that run.

And the next day I set out to do 10. And every step of that 10 miles was terrible. It was so hard. I’m like oh my god, this is so hard. And if my belief is that running is supposed to be fun all the time. I’m quitting like right now, I’m not doing any of this, running is hard. Let’s just be honest, like running is hard.

You know, I’m putting in these miles because what I want for myself is to finish this Ultra and I, you know, I’m putting in the miles and I’m doing the hard things now so that I can reap the benefits and finish this thing. Now this Ultra I’m doing is going to be another level of heart. And that’s okay, I’m building the strength and the endurance and all that right now to be able to finish this thing.

But sometimes, running is hard. Sometimes, losing weight is hard, sometimes sticking with the plan, and not eating the pizza, and not drinking the beers after work or whatever is hard. Losing weight is hard sometimes, but we do it anyway because we’re committed to that process.

We’re committed to this as a lifestyle. I saw this quote the other day, which I thought was so awesome, it said, “How long does it take the average person to run a marathon?” That was like a question that was posed and the answer underneath it said, “Average people don’t run marathons.” I thought, damn, I love that!

I love that because we are not average people. We want more for ourselves. Average people don’t do the hard things. Average people will not deal with any amount of suffering or struggling in order to lose the way because it’s hard. But you’re not average. You’re willing to do the hard things so that you can become more, right?

Another thing I want you to think about is what does fun even mean to you? Is running intervals fun? I don’t know. Probably not. I’m going to say no. But how good you feel afterwards, that’s fun. Is doing the work to PR a marathon fun? No, but there’s some elation that you feel when you cross the finish line that is out of this world. I

s it fun to skip dessert? No. But when you see that number on the scale go down again, that’s fun. You got to reframe fun. Is it fun to binge out on like fried food? It might feel like it at the time, listen, I can’t eat this stuff. I eat fried food and I feel terrible for like three days. I’m sluggish, I can’t think straight. I got to stay away from this stuff. Stay away from fried food. If you just do one thing, stay away from fried food.

You know what is fun though? Waking up every morning feeling good. Having lots of energy, having a clear head. That’s fun. So we have to kind of reframe our idea of fun and maybe push some of this short term pleasure off the table, in favor of what we really want for ourselves long term.

And one thing I just have to say right here is like fun is subjective. What might be fun for me is not going to be fun for you necessarily. How you make weight loss fun, or how you make running fun is gonna be different for each person. So we have to come up with some ideas that feel good individually. But I’m gonna give you some examples here.

So how can you make running fun, let’s say one thing I love is running with friends. If you have a group of people you can run with regularly, that is fun. I have had more fun in my running group over the last, whatever, 15 years, basically running with the same people for that amount of time.

It is so amazing because we do hard things, but we do them together. And we laugh and we joke around, there’s always a joke of the day, usually super inappropriate. And super fun. Mix up your workouts, don’t do the same workouts all the time, change things up, leave your watch at home. That’s kind of fun. Just go out there and run. Leave your phone at home. They call this running naked.

It doesn’t mean running without clothes on, I want to make that very clear. Running naked means leaving your watch and your phone at home and just going for a run and paying attention to your breathing and to your surroundings. And like it’s just different, you know, run somewhere new, pick a new route somewhere you’ve never been before.

Get out in nature, run on a beach, one of my favorite things to do in the world is run on a beach. If you can do that, if you have any access to a beach, go do that right now. Run on trails, run up a mountain, get out in nature and run in nature, it’s amazing. This is what we do as human beings, we’ve just evolved to run in nature. So do more of that.

How can you make losing weight fun? Do it with friends. You know, one of the big reasons I have a group component to my coaching program is that we do it together. You know we support each other, we do coaching together, and we encourage each other and we’re there for each other.

We share ideas, and we share what works for us and what doesn’t work. And it’s more fun to do with friends. Plain and simple. Try new foods. What foods do you love? And by the way, there are so many choices for healthy foods out there. It’s literally limitless.

I hear people say this all the time. “I don’t know what to eat. There’s nothing to eat.” This is just a cop out. This is an excuse. There are a few foods that we try to stay away from like, I’ll tell people like maybe we start out with stay away from sugar, flour, vegetable oils, you cut out those three things.

“Oh my gosh, what’s left?” Literally everything else in the world. Everything else. Eat more protein, stay away from junk food. And then the choices are limitless from there. I love burgers and I found a bunch of new burger places around town here. And we go to these burger places and they do a great job of like making a burger with a lettuce wrap.

I don’t eat flour and leave you know the bun, whatever. So I’ll get a lettuce wrap burger. Oh, get an extra patty on there and put all kinds of stuff on there. Veggies, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, jalapenos, and a fried egg on there, whatever. It’s like super delicious and just love eating burgers again, you know?

I like pizza, all the pizza here. I’ll make my own crust. You know. Try new places, new foods, new recipes. Eating healthy can be fun. If it’s not fun to some degree, it doesn’t have to be fun all the time, you’re probably doing it wrong. Okay.

Another way of making this whole process of eating healthy and losing weight fun is rewarding yourself. Reward yourself for sticking to the plan. Don’t reward yourself with food. Don’t reward yourself with like, oh I stuck to my plan for the last week I’m going to eat a pizza, I’m going to eat ice cream, I’m going to, you know, eat a bunch of candy. No, don’t do that. That’s called self sabotaging behavior. We don’t do that.

Reward yourself with things like a massage, or go to a museum or get a new pair of running shoes. How about that, or a new shirt or pair of jeans or bathing suit or something. Reward yourself with something that feels good. Make it fun.

Go out in the woods, take a hike, get out in nature, take a weekend trip somewhere, it doesn’t have to be somewhere far away, or expensive or whatever. Just do something to reward yourself for sticking with the plan. Again, fun is subjective. So what’s fun for you? Like how many ways can you come up with to make losing weight fun for you?

And I talk about all this stuff here on the podcast. But listen, if you really want to change, you’ve got to do stuff, right? The only way you can produce results is by taking action. Action produces results, thinking about stuff doesn’t give you results.

So when this podcast is over, I want you to get a notebook or journal and I want you to spend a few minutes and write down all the different ways that you can make losing weight fun. Answer these questions. How can I make eating healthy, more fun for me? How can I make sticking to my plan more fun for me? How can I make exercise more fun for me? How can I make running more fun for me?

Ask yourself all these questions, write down all the answers, you should probably be able to come up with 100 different answers to these questions total, you know, something like that. 50, whatever, come up with as many as you can, the more fun you make it, the more likely you are to stick with it.

Another concept I want you to kind of wrap your head around is this. Over time, your palette will change. You may think that eating healthy is gonna be boring, I’m not gonna like it and it’s not going to taste good. And when you first change your diet, and you first stop eating some of these hyper palatable foods, your taste buds may be like where’s the good stuff, quote-unquote good stuff?

Where’s the overly processed hyper palatable foods? Like, over time your taste buds will change. And things will start to become more delicious to you, the simple foods will become more delicious to you. For example, one of the things that I love to eat, I love eating steak with salt on it like that is one of my favorite things to eat. It’s so simple. And this is from a guy who didn’t eat meat for like 10 years.

And now I just love it’s like such a beautiful thing. You know, a nice ribeye grilled with some salt. That’s it. It’s so good. And that’s all I need. Chicken and broccoli is one of my other favorite things. It’s just, you know, broiled chicken with broccoli. That’s it. And some butter and salt on that broccoli. Oh my gosh, so delicious. My mouth just like explodes with flavor. And I’m like, this is so good.

But it wasn’t good at the beginning. It was hard. It was like, this is like, I want a pizza, I want bread, I want sugar, or whatever. And I don’t need all that stuff anymore. My tastes have changed, my palette has changed. I find so much satisfaction and fun eating a super simple diet. It’s not complicated. It’s not, you know, super exciting. But it’s also fun to eat this way. It really is. Food can be fun, every meal doesn’t have to be some magical spiritual experience. Okay?

Over time when your tastes change these simple foods will become more fun for you to promise. If you’re trying to lose weight and you’re suffering, you’re suffering long term, you are doing it wrong. It’s not sustainable, you’ll quit. Right? It’s kind of like doing speed work every single day, you are going to hate running very quickly, you’re gonna burn yourself out, and you’re gonna quit because that is not sustainable.

And then listen, if you want to have more fun on your weight loss journey, consider joining us in the Coaching Project where we actually have fun. This is my lifetime access program. We support each other, we encourage each other, we learn from each other, you get live coaching with me every week, twice a week. And this makes the process of losing weight actually fun.

Just like running alone is not as fun as running with a group. Being on this weight loss journey alone is not as fun as doing it with a group like the coaching project. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. 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.

166. Overcoming Your Fear of Success

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Fear of success is probably something most people aren’t aware of. If you ask people why they can’t seem to reach a particular goal, they will come up with all kinds of reasons, excuses, and …

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Podcast Transcript

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 166, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, overcoming your fear of success. Fear of success is something that most people probably aren’t aware of. If you ask people why they can’t seem to reach a particular goal, they’ll probably come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses and stories and such. And they’ll probably almost never say, oh, fear of success. That’s why I couldn’t reach my goal.

But here’s the thing, fear of success is a real thing. And today, I want to bring this into your understanding. I want you to become keenly aware of this natural fear of success that we all have, what it looks like, so that you’ll never have to fall prey to that again in the future. So in this episode, I’ll explain what fear of success is, and how overcoming your fear of success can be the key to achieving your weight loss goals.

But first, when I start working with someone, and they tell me they have a sweet tooth, I’m using finger quotes here sweet tooth. And they cannot imagine living their life without sweets without sugar. So here’s what we do, I suggest they take a break from sugar for a while. And that suggestion usually makes them freak out a little bit. Their cravings for sugar typically go up right away, like if you stop eating sugar, or if you let’s say you stop drinking alcohol, like the first thing that’s going to happen is that your cravings are going to probably go up a little bit.

Okay, but then we work through that and we deal with that. And then something interesting happens after a few days. without sugar, those cravings start to subside a little bit. After a few weeks, the cravings get a lot weaker and more sporadic. So they’re not happening constantly.
And then after a few months without sugar, the cravings are often completely gone. Not always.

But a lot of times, it’s just not an issue anymore. So sugar was something that they couldn’t imagine living without, oh, I have a sweet tooth, I just have to eat sugar all the time. And now it’s something that they don’t care about anymore. They don’t ever want it back in their lives. They feel better without it, they sleep better. They have more energy, and running is easier. They’re losing weight.

So if this is you, if you don’t think you could ever give up sugar, I want you to challenge that thought. Just challenge the thought, what if What if you’re wrong? Because here’s what I think – I think you can do it. I think you can do it. You just need the right guidance, the support and the encouragement to get you there. And I can help you with all that.

Okay, if you want to learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. We’ll get on call, we’ll talk about it, we’ll see how coaching can help you overcome your quote unquote, sweet tooth. Cool. Awesome.

All right, let’s talk about overcoming your fear of success. And I have been thinking about this episode for a while because it is a concept that I talk to someone about, typically every week, every week, this comes up in one way or another. And it’s something that we have to work through.

So I thought since it’s so prevalent out there, that I thought I would really bring this into the spotlight today and really shine a light on what fear of success is but I think we all experienced this to some degree. And as I go through this conversation today, I think you’re gonna see that you can relate to a lot of this and you may not be aware that you’re doing it or why you’re doing it, but let’s, let’s just get into this.

Let’s start with an understanding of what fear of success is. So fear of success is when you have an ongoing fear of reaching some goal or of accomplishing something and it’s usually something big like you know, losing a lot of weight. That’s that’s a big let’s say you got to lose 30 pounds 50 pounds. That can seem pretty daunting.

So fear of success is having a fear of reaching that goal. And the fear is very real. And it’s also mostly unconscious or subconscious. Meaning that you may not be consciously aware that you have this fear, but it’s there. And it’s real nonetheless. And it’s not that you aren’t capable of reaching your goal, you definitely are, you are capable of losing the 30 pounds or 50 pounds.

But there’s an underlying fear of what comes along with reaching that big goal, the change that happens when you reach a big goal like that, and you’re not so sure that you’re going to be able to handle it. That’s where a lot of this fear stems from. Let’s talk about the underlying issue here, the real root cause of this fear of success. The fear of success is your brain trying to keep you safe and comfortable.

So we have two main different aspects of our brain, there’s more than two, but there’s two I’m going to talk about today, we have our amygdala, our primitive brain, and we have our prefrontal frontal cortex, which is our more modern, that’s more of our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain we use for planning for making good decisions for being organized.

And so this is our modern evolved part of our brain, the amygdala, is a tiny little almond size, part of our brain, one of the most primitive parts of our brain that is responsible for fight or flight for fear for those criminal primal urges that we have, you know, survival and sex drive and things like that.

So we have this thinking, planning, you know, organized brain, and then we have this primitive, fear driven brain, and they’re always kind of at odds with each other to some degree, right? That amygdala, so that lizard brain, I’ll call it right, is always just seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And this is a very powerful part of our brain, that amygdala drives a lot of our decision making and drives a lot of our behavior.

And it’s up to us using the prefrontal cortex to override that default behavior. So that primitive part of our brain will be seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, it’s seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort, it’s seeking the familiar and avoiding anything that feels unfamiliar. So reaching a big goal, you know, losing a bunch of weight, or, you know, achieving success in other areas of our life.

This seems like it would create pleasure for us, right? And our prefrontal cortex, we say, Yes, this is what I want for myself, this will bring me joy and pleasure and make me happy. But to your brain, this is just another uncomfortable place for you. This is you getting into unfamiliar territory, your natural inclination is to avoid anything that causes fear and worry and anxiety, and discomfort.

And succeeding at something like losing a bunch of weight can create all those things, it can create fear, anxiety and worry and discomfort. So a good example of this is something that I see, probably once a week, I talk to somebody about this, in my coaching practice, someone has a big weight loss goal, and they might be getting close to some big number. So it could be breaking 200 pounds.

So there, there may be, you know, they started at 225 or 230, and they want to get, you know, down to 190 or something like that, and they’re getting close to that 200 pound mark, they might be at 205 or something. And, or it could be someone who’s, you know, trying to break through some other number, like another milestone number, like 150, you know, maybe it’s someone who’s trying to get down to one 140. And, you know, 145 and they’re like 155, and they haven’t been under 150 in decades, you know, okay, so they’re getting close to this number.

And let’s just use the 200 pound number and so we have somebody that’s getting close, so maybe they got really close, they’d been at two, two and two, a one and maybe they even dipped down below 200 And got to like 199 for a day. And then they find themselves moving in the other direction they got to, then they go back to 201 and 203 and 205.

And they don’t understand it. How can this be happening? I just got right below that number that I was working so hard to get to. I was starting to understand, why couldn’t I stay there? So then we dig into the details, we look at their food logs, and then we see a few things that become pretty clear.

Oh, yeah, well, I forgot that I ate that piece of cake. And I ate that medium sized pizza by myself. And while I ate a bunch of my kids’ french fries and ate all this bread with dinner, and I did have a few beers or a couple bottles of wine or whatever it is, right? And they’re not even aware that they’re doing these things.

But they’re sabotaging their own success in the process, right? So their brain is basically just saying, like, getting under 199 feels uncomfortable. So we’re not going to go there. We’re going to keep you up here at like 203-205. Like, this feels pretty good. We haven’t been under 200 in the 100’s for like 20 years. So this is dangerous territory we’re getting into here. This is unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

So your brain will actively try to move you in the other direction. It’s not that this is what you want for yourself, not consciously anyway. But unconsciously your brain is sensing danger, and sensing discomfort and sensing fear and will move you in the other direction. This is classic self sabotage. This is how fear of success manifests itself. In a lot of people.

Okay, this is one example. So we have to be aware of this. And we have to actively work against our brain’s natural tendencies, that means being willing to get uncomfortable. That means noticing, when you are actively seeking comfort and safety and keep going anyway, keep doing your thing anyway.

Even though it feels uncomfortable, and unsafe, and unfamiliar, be willing to be uncomfortable, embrace the suck. Because that’s how you actually achieve anything that you want and everything that you want for yourself. So there are some other signs that you might be experiencing fear of success. And one of those is maybe you don’t have goals, because you lack goals or your goals are very low and very easy to reach.

So keeping the bar low, means you don’t ever have to face any real challenges. You never have to get too uncomfortable. So if you don’t strive for much, it won’t really matter if you reach that goal or not. Because you haven’t put much into it. So many people do this. I talk to people all the time, what’s your weight loss goal? And they’ll say, oh, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds, or they’ll say something small like that.

And I’ll push them a little bit and you know, really dig into it and kind of find out where they really want to be and what their ideal weight is. Let’s say you could wave a magic wand today. Where do you want to be, really? And they’ll be like well, I mean, I really want to lose like 30 pounds.

Okay, so why aren’t you shooting for 30 pounds as your goal? Well, because it seems hard. That’s not realistic. What if I fail, or I’ve tried that before, and I’ve let myself down? I’ve never been able to do it before. And in light of this discussion to say today, I just want to say like what, what if, what if I succeed, I’m going to be a whole new person. And that brings up a whole host of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about who I’m going to be.

That’s really what’s going on here. What happens if you succeed? So understand that we can self sabotage and we can keep ourselves small, because we are afraid of succeeding. So we we don’t have big goals. We keep our goals very low. Oh, what’s your big running goal this year? Oh, I want to run? You know, a 5k. Well, why not go for more? What do you really want to do? Well, I mean, I’d love to run a marathon someday, but I mean, that’s not in the stars for me. I could never do something like that.

Like no, we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna do that thing that you think is impossible. Forget realistic, I hate those smart goals that are like they’re, they’re you know, “realistic” goals, and I’m like, no, let’s go for unrealistic goals. Okay, so lack of goals are low goals, easily attainable goals. This could be a sign that you’re experiencing fear of success.

Another sign is procrastination. So you keep stalling and stalling until you just don’t ever do anything. Right, a lot of times people will stall and then the opposite opportunity will actually pass them by. And they’ll be like, well see, I mean, it just wasn’t meant to be. But then you know, you never really have to take action if you just keep putting things off. So you never have to worry about failing or succeeding.

And one of the biggest reasons why people do not achieve what they want for themselves. The biggest reason why people don’t achieve their goals and their dreams is procrastination. They say, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it. When I have more time, I’ll do it when I have more money, I’ll do it when the kids are off to college, or when we pay the house off, or after I retire. Or once this big project is over at work or whatever, on and on, and on, and on and on.

Later, I’ll do it later. Later, later, later, is the number one killer of hopes and dreams. Because later never happens. There will always be some excuse, some reason or some story about why you need to wait or why you should put it off. If you want to make a big change in your life right now, stop doing this. Stop saying later, start taking action, not this week. Not later today, right now do something right now, to move towards that goal, whatever it is that you want for yourself. There’s something you can do, right now.

Another reason why people will have this fear of success, and you’ll see it manifest in this way, is perfectionism. So people will say to themselves, hey, if I can’t do it perfectly, why should I bother doing it at all? And I think this is on one hand, hilarious, and on the other hand, insidious, because it’s funny to me, because nobody does anything perfectly right?

No, we don’t ever do anything perfectly. But we hold ourselves to this high standard that if we aren’t perfect, there’s no reason why we should even bother doing it. And it’s kind of insidious, because it keeps us from achieving anything. This is one of the reasons why people won’t start something or they try something for a minute and they quit because they don’t do it perfectly. Or maybe they fail.

But you know what the real key here is, isn’t doing something perfectly. It’s about being consistent about what you’re doing. Consistency beats perfection all the time. So instead of thinking about and striving for perfection, think about and strive to be consistent in whatever it is you’re doing. Maybe you have a goal to run regularly. And your goal is to run five days a week. And you do that pretty well for a few weeks. And then you miss a day.

Instead of saying, “Well, you know, I screwed up, I guess I can’t do this though”, you just keep going. Or if you have a new food plan, you’re trying to not eat sugar. And then, you know, over the weekend you kind of gave in and your kids were having a little birthday party for their friend and they had cupcakes and you had a cupcake. “Well, I didn’t do it perfectly. So I might as well just eat the rest of the cupcakes. Screw these little kids. I’m gonna eat all their cupcakes.”

No, don’t do that. First of all, that’s not cool. Kids want the cupcakes, right? Let the kids eat the cupcakes. But for you, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Just stop eating the cupcakes, just whatever, you ate one, fine, move on. We don’t have to. But you know, we don’t have two cheat meals in a row. We don’t miss two workouts in a row. That’s a good rule of thumb right there. Okay, so forget perfectionism. Strive for consistency. instead.

Another sign that you might be experiencing this fear of success is quitting. Why did you quit? And a lot of people will quit just before they reach some goal or some milestone, like the example of somebody that’s trying to lose weight and they’re, you know, they get to 203 or 204. And they just quit.

Because getting close to that goal, it starts to become real, it starts to feel uncomfortable. And they start worrying about all kinds of stuff. Why they won’t be able to maintain that going forward or, or what are people going to think of them and I’ll get into all that in just a minute. But people will quit, rather than experience the discomfort that comes along with succeeding. I know it’s bananas, right?

And the last sign that you might be experiencing a fear of success is any kind of self sabotaging behavior which we’ve been talking about any kind of self destructive behavior. So doing things that go against what you’re actively trying to achieve. Self sabotaging behavior is any behavior that you engage in, that is not in alignment with your goals. It’s things you do that aren’t aligned with who you want to be. It’s pretty simple. Is this thing I’m doing right now in alignment with who I ultimately want to be as a human being? Pretty easy answer, just like yes or no?

If the answer is yes, do it. If the answer is no, don’t do it. Pretty simple. Should I eat the cupcake? Oh, is that in alignment with who you want to be? No, well, I don’t need it. Pretty simple.

So why do we do all this? There are many reasons why we fear success, as counterintuitive as it seems. So I want to dive into some of the reasons why we actually do these things. Okay. So one of them is that you might be afraid of being the center of attention. So succeeding, losing a lot of weight means that people might start to notice you. So you might be afraid of people noticing you or you might be afraid of being in the spotlight, people might start complimenting you on how good you look.

And consciously you might, you might say, oh, I want that. But subconsciously, you’re like, I don’t want that. I don’t want anybody to notice me, I don’t want people to notice how much weight I’ve lost. Because this can feel very uncomfortable. This is not something that you’re used to, you’re used to hiding in this body where nobody really paid attention to you. Nobody really saw you.

And now you start to feel exposed because people are noticing you. And this can be very uncomfortable. Okay? Notice when this is happening, notice when you’re actively being afraid of being the center of attention. Okay? Another reason why we do this is that we worry about leaving people behind, if we move forward. So if we succeed at something, we worry about, leaving others behind, so has your husband, or your friends will say things to you, like, Hey, you look fine, you don’t need to lose any more weight.

And so as you lose weight, you start to feel like you’re pulling away from those people. And you start to feel like there’s this rift between you because they’re telling you, oh, don’t lose more weight, you know, you look fine. And they’re doing that, because what you’re doing makes them feel uncomfortable. It’s not about you, it’s about them. So instead of continuing on, you begin to self sabotage your own success, so you don’t lose your friends. So you don’t lose your partner.

And of course, it’ll probably never happen. But it’s hitting on that tribal nerve, that part of us that just wants to be a part of that wants to fit in and wants to be a part of the group. And there’s this quote that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, right. And instinctively, we don’t want to stand out, we don’t want to get hammered down, we just want to be like everybody else around us.

But here’s the truth bomb, you may have to leave some people behind. If the people around you don’t support you, if the people around you are trying to hold you back from being your best self, because it makes them feel uncomfortable. It makes them feel bad about themselves. You might need to find new people, or at least have a conversation with some of these people, especially your partner.

You don’t need to get divorced over this, right? But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. So I’m just saying. All right. Another reason why we fear success is that we start to feel anxious about being able to maintain that success. So we say things like, oh, it’s kind of hard work to lose weight, right? Am I going to have to work this hard the rest of my life?

And this is where we stop being afraid of reaching a goal and start being afraid of being able to maintain that goal. The truth though, is that it’s actually much easier to maintain your weight than it is to lose weight. So to lose weight, there’s some restriction there, you have to be a little bit more strict about what you’re doing if you want to lose weight, much more so than to maintain weight.

But most people what happens is they tend to fall back into old habits once they hit a weight loss goal. So they never really learned how to maintain their weight. They never learned the habits to make all this sustainable. And one of the most important things I do as a coach is help you to learn how to make eating right and maintaining a healthy weight just part of who you are part of what you do.

It has to be easy, it has to be effortless. Maintaining your weight has to be an ingrained habit. And inevitably that’s where we’re trying to get with all this but a lot of people don’t see it that way. They don’t understand how to make it sustainable, they feel like they have to be too restrictive, to lose weight and they think that they have to be that restrictive forever and you really don’t.

But, you know, thinking about maintaining your success thinking about maintaining your weight can be enough to cause people to quit and to start self sabotaging, okay. Another reason why people fear success is there’s this fear of being judged. And criticized, especially by the people that are close to you.

We sometimes feel like we get judged, criticized, shunned by friends and family. Sometimes it’s just strangers on the internet, or whatever. But this can be, this can be very uncomfortable. And so you might have a whole new look like you lost a bunch of weight, you got new clothes, you get super fit, you feel amazing, you look fabulous.

And yet, there will be people out there who do not like you. And they’ll let you know that. They don’t like that you’ve changed. They don’t like your new look, they don’t like your new clothes, they don’t like that you’re into running or whatever it is, they just don’t like you period, right? Here’s the thing, though, this is just part of being a human being here on planet Earth. Some people like you, and some people won’t.

And that’s it, get over it. Do not let your fear of being judged or criticized stop you from becoming your most badass self. Because the reality is, there are probably already people right now who don’t like you for who you are at this moment. So you might as well just ignore everybody, all the haters out there, and just you do you you become the person that you ultimately want to become.

And don’t let any of that nonsense stop you. Okay? So all the stuff we’re talking about today is about awareness. It’s about having the insight and the self awareness to notice when your fear of success might actually be the fortune of your success. So once you understand all this, you see that it is happening. And a lot of times remember this is a lot of this is subconscious, right.

But once you see that it is happening. Once you bring it into your awareness into your consciousness, you can do something about it. You have to notice when your behavior might not be in alignment with who you want to be, and then work to change it. Be mindful when you start using excuses and reasons and stories to justify some sort of unwanted behavior. Oh, man, I’ve been really good all week. So I deserve a pizza as a reward. Oh, this might be a little fear of success. Do I really want to undo all the hard work I’ve done up to this point for a few pieces of mediocre pizza? No, I don’t.

So be aware of when you try to tell yourself, it’s okay to do it. There’s just one piece of pizza or whatever. When you know that that’s really not what you want for yourself. Okay. Lastly, I just want you to be willing to be uncomfortable because this process of succeeding or achieving weight loss goals or whatever your goals are is its own comfort.

Discomfort is the price you pay to achieve all your goals and dreams. Discomfort is the cost of your success. Just gotta remember that. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will 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.

153. 5 Tips to Avoid Gaining Weight This Holiday Season

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It’s officially the Holiday Season and that means it’s time to gain a bunch of weight over the next 30 days and start the new year feeling like crap, right? I know it seems kinda crazy when I say …

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Podcast Transcript

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 153 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. So it’s officially the holiday season. And that means it’s time to gain a bunch of weight over the next 30 days and start the new year feeling like crap, right?

I know it seems crazy when I say that out loud. The truth is, though, that’s the way most people do it. Most people gain a bunch of weight during the holidays. And then at some point, they swear a solemn oath that they’re going to change everything and get back on track in January.

And I know what this feels like. I’ve done this many, many times. I also know how terrible it feels when January comes around. And you have to lose a bunch of weight just to get back to where you were before Thanksgiving. So in this episode, I’m gonna offer a better approach for this whole time of the year.

Okay, I have five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. And listen, if you’re the kind of person who’s ready to make some changes, right now, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to wait until January to actually start improving their health to start losing the weight to start changing their relationship with food to start becoming the healthiest version of yourself, then I want to encourage you to apply for coaching.

There’s no obligation, you can just fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a quick zoom call, we’ll have a conversation, we’ll talk about coaching, I’ll explain exactly what coaching looks like, I’ll explain my approach which is a little different for most coaches, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. And if it’s a good fit, great if it’s not no harm done, maybe you learned a little bit more about yourself, you maybe learned some tips that can help you get started in the right direction.

But here’s the thing, if you’re ready to change now, don’t wait, you don’t have to wait till January one in order to to begin a program like this or to begin changing the how you feel about yourself, or changing your health or improving your health or improving your running or losing weight, you can start now just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Again, fill out that application and you and I can get started, I want to encourage you to just take some action.

Now whatever that looks like, if it’s coaching, great if it’s not, do something today, to start improving yourself to start improving your health to start improving your fitness to become that best version of yourself. Cool. So just you know, go to runningleancoaching.com/apply I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project as always, is you.

Okay, so today, I got these tips for you. I got some tips to help you avoid gaining weight this holiday season. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And so many people think that this time of the year they will automatically gain weight. In fact, so many people think this because the average adult American says that they expect to gain around seven pounds during the holidays. That’s a lot of weight to gain in a month, right.

And one in four of those people say that they’re still carrying extra weight from the previous year. And so you know, let’s just say it’s a few pounds, I mean, you’re this is just this time of the year, you’re just going to be continually gaining weight. And if you multiply this by 10 or 20 years, this is a big problem. This can be a huge problem, right?

So, let’s stop this trend right now. Let’s take control of our health and our fitness and our weight for once. Don’t be average. Don’t be the average American. You know, I’ve talked to so many people about changing their diet and eating differently and maybe, you know, giving up things like sugar and grains. And people are like well, but I don’t want to be different. I just want to be able to do what everybody else is doing.

And I’m like to listen, listen, what everybody else is doing isn’t working, there’s like 78% of people in this country have some sort of metabolic dysfunction? Do you really want to be one of the normal people? Do you really want to be one of the average Americans? And this applies to other countries as well. But I say no, I say let’s be, let’s be the minority, let’s be different.

Embrace that, like, don’t be normal, don’t be average. Okay. So instead of expecting to gain a bunch of weight during the holidays, we need to have a different approach, you got to do things differently than the way most people are doing things. And yeah, that means that you might not be indulging in all the Christmas cookies, and all the booze at the parties and all this other stuff that other people are doing.

But guess what, you’re gonna feel so much better when January 1 comes around, and you haven’t gained that seven pounds. And that’s kind of average, I think some people gain more, you know, 10-12 pounds. So for me, here’s kind of the way I used to do it. So this time of the year was always the, well it’s still is pretty much the offseason for running.

And so we’ll do a full marathon. And then we sort of take a break from running. But for me, I never really changed my diet, like I just kept eating the same amounts of food and the same types of food. And of course, I was eating a ton of sugar and a ton of carbs. And so this time of the year, I would always gain weight.

And I would always gain 5-10 pounds somewhere in that range. And then I would always tell myself that yeah, come January 1, everything’s going to change, I’m going to get serious, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to, you know, start focusing on eating better, and all this other stuff.

And guess what, January 1 would come around, and I would sort of start some of that stuff, I would kinda maybe watch my calories, or start adding food into a food tracking app. And you know, you know, going lower fat and trying to exercise more, and all the things that we’ve tried that really don’t work long term. And I might do it for a short amount of time. But then it became problematic, it became frustrating, became too tedious, and I would just stop doing it. And I would always, you know, I might lose a few of those pounds, but I would always gain a few extra pounds every year, during this time of the year.

And you know, you do that for 10 years. And, you know, I found myself 40, more than 40 pounds overweight. And I was eating what I thought was a really clean diet. You know, I was plant based and I was just eating a ton of carbs. I was a carb-atarian, let’s just say it that way. Eating nothing but sugar and carbs, and running a lot. I was running and training for marathons and ultra marathons.

And it wasn’t that I wasn’t exercising, I was going to the gym two or three times a week, doing yoga a couple of times a week, like I had a regular exercise regimen, I was running like crazy every year. And still I would gain weight during the holiday season. And I couldn’t, couldn’t lose it. And that just kept you know, adding on and packing on more weight and more weight.

So there’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to get through the holidays. And, and I’m going to give you a few tips here for you to apply and actually take action on because these tips are great. If if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, these sound great, Patrick, that’s one thing.

It’s a whole other thing if you take action and actually do what I’m going to suggest that you do here today. Because if you do what I suggest you do here today, you’re gonna get through the holidays in a much different way than somebody who doesn’t take action. Any kind of program like this, anytime we’re talking about improving yourself, it requires something on your part.

You’re not just going to lose weight by listening to somebody talk about what to do, right? You’ve got to take action, you got to do this stuff. Okay? So if you’re the kind of person who loves getting into action and loves, you know, doing, you know, these kinds of tips, then do it. I want to encourage you to just start today.

So here’s the tips I’m gonna give you tip number one, and this is probably the one that most people won’t do. And this is why I’m sort of prefacing this by saying like you have to take action here because most people don’t want to do this. And that is to create a vision for who you want to be on January 1, create a vision for who you want to be on January 1.

How do you want to show up for yourself? How do you want to feel about yourself? How do you want to look? How do you want to feel mentally, emotionally, physically? How do you want to have approached this holiday season? Like, I really want you to get detailed about this future version of yourself. So we’re only talking about 30 days in the future. As we record this, it’s December 1. And so we’ve got, you know, what, 31 days, 32 days, something like that until January 1. So create a vision today.

And I want to encourage you not to just think about this, but to actually write it down. So grab a piece of paper, grab a journal, whatever it is that you want to use, do it on your computer, it doesn’t really matter. But write down in detail as much as you want. How do you want to show up for yourself on January 1, who do you want to be?

Most people don’t do this. Most people are just like, yeah, yeah, whatever, I want to feel good, but whatever. But they don’t really spend any time really thinking about this. But here’s something that’s very interesting. There’s this very powerful thing that happens, when you start thinking about who you want to be in the future, your subconscious mind will actually start moving you in the direction of that vision, your subconscious mind will actually get on board with this plan.

Everything that we want for ourselves, we first have to create in our mind, there’s not one thing on this planet that’s been created that hasn’t first been a thought and a vision, you know, think about things like a rocket ship, or an airplane or the iPhone, all these things were first an idea and a thought.

And then they were written down, and they were then you know, expanded upon, you know, so all these things that we want for ourselves have to start with a thought they have to start with a detailed vision. And when we create this vision for ourselves, it’s important that you get into that emotional state of how you want to feel on January 1.

Do you want to feel like you are regretting your decisions over the last 30 days? Do you want to feel like you have fallen behind or fallen off the wagon, or let yourself down? Or do you want to feel like you’ve built some confidence in yourself, you’ve built some trust in yourself, you said you were going to do some things, and you actually did them. Because that is available to you.

But you first have to start with a vision, you have to start with a detailed accounting of how you want to show up on January one. So don’t skip this step. Do it, I’m gonna encourage you to just do it, write it down, it’ll take you 10 or 15 minutes, spend about that much time writing free, write just as much as you want, or as little as you want. But do this step. Okay.

So that’s step number one, create a vision for who you want to be, and how you want to show up for yourself, and how you want to feel that’s the important part. Because once we get into that emotional state of how we want to feel, we can access that throughout the month, you know, you might have a day where you wake up and you’re like, I really don’t feel like running today, or I really don’t feel like you know, sticking to my plan my food plan today or whatever, you’re gonna be like, oh, but you know what that feeling that I want on January 1? I’m only gonna get that feeling.

If I stick to this plan, if I go out and run, if I go lift weights or whatever. So make sure that you get into that emotional state of how you want to feel on January 1, okay? That’s a very, very powerful state to be in. Okay, that’s how all visions come to life is just creating that vision getting into that emotional state. Okay, so that’s step number one.

The next tip I have for you, after you create a vision, you have to have a plan. You have to have a plan. Most people think that they will just sort of wing it. And I’m just going to tell you right now winging it does not work. If you think well, I’ll just kind of like I’ll get through the holidays, it’ll be fine. I’m not too concerned about it.

But if you’ve got some weight to lose, and you really want to make some changes and you want to get through this unscathed, you want to, you know, show up on January 1 really feeling good about yourself. You have to have a plan. Okay? So that means that you need to write down what you’re going to do to get to that vision that you have for yourself on January 1.

So you have a vision, great, how are you going to achieve that vision? You have to have a plan. I’m going to not eat sugar this month, that’s a plan. I’m going to, you know, work out every day, that’s a plan, I’m going to do yoga three times a week, I’m going to strength train twice a week, I’m going to run three times a week, I’m going to, you know, eat, you know, a good amount of protein at each meal, these are all plans, and you write these things down.

And there’s things that are going to happen this month. So we got holiday parties, we got a couple of holidays, really, we’re only talking about a couple days here, we got like Christmas, and New Year’s right, and then maybe New Year’s Eve, right? So maybe, or maybe even Christmas Eve for some people.

So three or four days really is all we’re talking about, you know, from here on out. So, plan those days, then if you have holiday parties, you’re gonna be going to or family’s gonna be in town or whatever, plan for that stuff, make a detailed plan of how you’re going to achieve your vision for yourself.

And this is what I do with all my clients. We work together on a plan and we get very detailed about what they’re going to eat and what they’re not going to eat, when they’re going to work out, when they’re not, when they’re going to recover. And we put together a detailed plan. And then obviously, you have to work the plan, you have to actually stick to the plan.

But you’re more likely to stick to the plan when you’ve created that vision for yourself. And then you’ve written it down. And then you’ve also written down a plan. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got it written down. You can look at it every day and say, okay, what am I doing today, and then just follow the plan. It seems almost too simple. Create a plan, and then stick to the plan no matter what. But that’s how simple it is. Create a plan and then stick to the plan no matter what.

And it’s that no matter what part that’s kind of important, right? For example, I am working on running every day during the holidays. So if you’re part of the Running Lean Facebook group, and if you’re not, you can join us just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. We are doing the running through the holidays challenge right now, which is to run every day, outside from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. And that’s 39 days of running.

And it’s just, you know, just gotta run at least a mile each day. So some days, I’m running one mile, some days, I’m running 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever. But the other day, I did not run during the day, I had a busy day. And I wasn’t able to get outside and you know, it gets dark early, it gets dark at like 5:30. And this is like 7pm and it was raining. And it was cold. And it was windy. And I did not feel like running. Not at all did I feel like running.

I had already eaten dinner and stuff. And I’m like, oh my god, I forgot I have to run still. And so you know what I did? I put on my running shoes, and I put on a rain jacket and I just headed out the door. And I got my mile in outside in the rain and the wind and the cold. And I have to tell you that it didn’t feel awesome. When I was out there I was you know, I had to put a headlamp on and you know, watch out for debris in the streets and roads and stuff like that.

But I did it, and I felt good about myself because I stuck to my plan. So I had a plan to run every day. That’s a plan. And then I stuck to the plan no matter what even though I didn’t feel like it. It could have been so easy for me to just say screw it. I am not doing this. I don’t feel like it. And it’s cold and it’s raining and I could have used all the excuses.

But I didn’t do that. I had a plan and I stuck to the plan no matter what. Okay? It’s that no matter what part that’s important, okay, so create a vision and have a plan and then stick to the plan no matter what. Cool.

Alright, my third tip is this. You’ve got to manage stress, you cannot go through this holiday season super stressed out about everything you just can’t. Stress will cause you to hold on to body fat. Stress will cause you to gain weight. The stress response is a glucose response. Being stressed out will spike your blood sugar, will spike your insulin levels and will put you into fat storage mode. And if you’re chronically stressed out and a lot of people are during the holidays, they stay kind of in this chronic state of stress from Thanksgiving through January 1.

I’m going to tell you right now it is going to be very difficult for you to lose weight, in fact, you will probably gain some weight just based on being stressed out during the holidays. So you have to have a stress management regimen, you have to have some sort of routine that you’re doing regularly like every single day to keep stress levels to a minimum.

Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a very hard time losing weight or have a hard time maintaining your weight during the holidays. So there are two types of stress. There’s the stress that we put on our bodies when we work out and maybe we lift weights or we go for a run. And maybe we do some sprint intervals or something like that.

This is called acute stress. And this is the good kind of stress. This is a positive type of stress, we stress our body, we stress a muscle, we stress our cardiovascular system. And then we have a positive adaptation because of that stress. So our muscles get stronger, our cardiovascular system improves, our speed improves, we raise our lactate threshold. So when we put acute stress on our bodies, this is acute and short term, very short term stress, this is a positive thing, this is a good thing we want to stress ourselves out in that way.

The kind of stress that we don’t want to be engaging in is like we’re constantly thinking about, you know, work or relationships or family issues. And we’re just constantly, you know, in a state of chronic stress, chronic stress is the kind of stress that is going to cause us to have that glucose response and cause us to keep our insulin levels high. You know, cortisol is a stress hormone.

When cortisol is high, our body is in that fight or flight mode, we’re in that sympathetic mode. Remember, the sympathetic mode is stress sympathetic for stress s for stress, the parasympathetic mode is, is peace, P for peace. So parasympathetic is when we are calm and relaxed and at peace and the sympathetic nervous system is when we are stressed out.

So we want to tap more into that parasympathetic nervous system and reduce the amount of stress we’re in. So that means that we can’t wait until we’re super stressed out to start working on it and that we have to work on it continuously. That means you have to have some sort of stress relief plan in place every single day.

Some of the things you can do to help reduce stress, meditation, journaling, going for a walk, going for a run, doing some yoga, just taking a nap. Maybe. Naps are very underrated, by the way. Getting enough sleep is super important. Getting good quality sleep, you know, we need seven, eight hours of sleep most of us as adults.

Just doing anything, playing a game, laughing, going to see a movie, doing something with friends, doing something with family, just being silly with your kids, anything like that is going to help to reduce stress, you need to figure out what works for you, everybody’s different. So figure out what works for you and what you can do every single day to make stress management a priority.

Because if you do that, I guarantee you, you’re gonna have a much easier time getting through the holidays and your body won’t be holding on to as much body weight, you won’t be holding on to as much fat you’ll be able to burn fat, we always want to be burning fat, not storing fat. So you’ll get into fat burning mode instead of fat storing mode. And you’ll get through the holidays without all that extra weight.

Okay, so that’s tip number three is to manage stress, and you have to do it every single day. You can’t wait until you’re stressed out to start working on it, you have to manage stress every single day.

And this brings me to my fourth tip, which is to exercise daily. So not only does daily exercise help with stress management, it also helps you to burn fat, you know, so obviously exercise can be helpful to fat burning, especially if you’re doing the lower intensity exercise, you know, you stay in that zone one, zone two, you know, you’re in that aerobic zone. That’s what’s considered sort of the fat burning zone, right?

So if you’re doing some sort of exercise every day, go out and run a few miles. Really easy. Go for some, you know, do a power walk, do some yoga, walk the dogs, play with the kids. It doesn’t have to be something intense but do something every day. And I promise you, you are going to not only feel better, but you’re going to help you to maintain your weight and probably help you to lose a little bit if that’s, you know, one of your goals here.

So, one of the reasons why we want to exercise every day is that when we exercise we get our dose of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So we get that rush of feel good hormones, and neurotransmitters. And when we have these feel good chemicals kind of running through our body, it puts us in a better mood, it helps us stay in that parasympathetic nervous system state. And we feel good.

It’s not only a good way to manage stress, but it’s a way of keeping our body feeling happy, like it improves our mood as well. You know, also more burning fat, you know, like I said, but it’s just this way of continually feeling good and feeling good about ourselves and feeling good about who we are and what we’re doing. And it’s such a better way to go through the holidays feeling good, as opposed to being, you know, super stressed out and freaking out about all the junk you’re eating and all this other stuff.

So when you’re in a good mood, you tend to make better decisions, when you’re exercising every day, you tend to build some momentum and want to keep exercising, it helps you to, you know, stay on track with your food plan, when you’re exercising daily. This is one of the big reasons why we have this running through the holidays challenge going on right now is because I want to encourage you to get outside every day, and do some exercise and the outside part is important.

During the winter, we tend you know, the days get shorter, and we tend to spend a lot more time indoors, the days are shorter, it’s darker in the morning is darker in the evening, there’s not as much sunlight during the day, we need to get outside and get some sun in our eyeballs, like we need to, you know, have that sun in our face on our bodies, if we can, it’s so important for us to you know, be outside in the elements in the sun.

And it helps to put us in that, you know, good mood, it helps with our serotonin levels. You know, we build serotonin during the day. And that’s what helps to create melatonin to help us sleep better at night. It helps with our circadian rhythms and helps us to sleep, you know, improve our sleep quality during the night when we can get outside into the sun every day.

So I know a lot of days around here, you know, I’m in Cincinnati, and a lot of days around here in the wintertime, it’s just gray, and dark. And there’s no sun. But those days that there is sun, take advantage of that and get outside. We’ve had a lot of gray days here. And then this morning, I went for a run and had to bring my sunglasses with me because it was so beautiful out, very, very cold, very cold.

But the sun was shining and it felt so amazing to be outside and to see the sun and to be in the sun. So exercise daily, put together you know, make exercise daily part of your plan. You know, make it part of your plan, part of your daily plan. And you’re going to get through the holidays feeling so much better about yourself, okay.

And then my last tip is going to be this when it comes to nutrition. We’re all a little bit different. And it’s hard for me to make some recommendations as here’s what you should eat or whatever. So I’m going to give you this tip. And I think this is one of the most powerful tips around nutrition that I can give you and it’s one that is underrated and something that most people just don’t do or maybe they’re not aware of, or they think it would be too hard.

But it’s this, skip some meals, skip some meals, you don’t have to eat three meals a day, every single day all the time. You don’t have to eat three meals a day, plus three snacks a day, plus dessert every single day, you really don’t have to eat that much skip breakfast, skip breakfast and lunch one day.

Skip snacking, skip dessert, like just pick something that you think would work for you. And you don’t have to do this every single day. But just consider skipping some meals. You know, there’s a lot of benefits that you’ll gain from exercising in the fasted state, which means that, you know, if you exercise in the morning, don’t you don’t have to fuel up before you get outside and run.

Just skip it, just skip fueling, you know and try some what we call intermittent fasting. And when people hear that word fasting, they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s, you know, I’m gonna die. I can’t do that. It’s like, dude, no, listen, it’s just like, skip breakfast is our target about here. It’s not that big of a deal.

You know, we’ve been doing this as human beings for millions of years. We didn’t eat all the time. We didn’t have snacks. We didn’t eat dessert, like there were no three meals a day, kind of a deal. Like a lot of times, and a lot of cultures, they eat like once a day, maybe twice a day. And so I think we’ve, you know, in the Western world, we’re under this impression that we have to eat a lot, just all the time. And it’s just not true.

Like we just don’t need to eat that often. Okay, so, one thing I did recently is Thanksgiving Day. And so that was Thursday and then a couple days later on Saturday we did another Thanksgiving with my girlfriend and our kids, well, we all got together. And so we did like two different Thanksgivings, super fun.

But each of those days, I only ate that one meal each day. So I ate one big meal on Thanksgiving, and then one big meal on that Saturday, and I just skipped breakfast, I typically eat twice a day, you know, I’ll have a pretty good sized breakfast around noon, and then I eat dinner around 6pm, 7pm, something like that.

And, and that’s usually good for me. But some days, I just skip that first meal. And, and I feel so much better when I, you know, can skip a meal and, and then I can maybe eat a little bit more at that second meal and still be in a bit of a deficit and still not be overeating and still not be eating, you know, a ton of calories that day.

So for me, it feels really good to skip a meal every now and then. And this is one of the simplest things that you can do to help manage your weight and help you to not gain weight during the holidays. It’s just like, pick a few days a week here and there and skip some of these meals. And you might be surprised how good you feel. You might be surprised how much easier it is to exercise in that fasted state and take advantage of the adrenaline that you get from exercising in the fasted state.

So you actually, you know, people think, oh, I won’t have the energy. But now your body will produce the glucose that you need, your body will produce the adrenaline that you need to be able to actually work out a little bit harder. And then there’s another positive benefit from exercising in the fasted state, which is an increase in growth hormone.

So after exercise, your body will produce more growth hormone, which will help you to recover faster. So not only can you exercise harder in a fasted state, but you can also recover faster. So these are good benefits. And you don’t have to do this all the time. But try it every now and then and see how it goes for you.

Okay, so quick recap, you know of my five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. Number one, create a vision. Who do you want to be on January 1? How do you want to feel and write it down?

Okay, number two, have a plan. Write down your plan. And then write down your plan every week and consult your plan. And make sure you’re staying on track with your plan no matter what.

Number three, you have to manage stress and it has to be something you do every single day.

Number four exercise daily. Get outside if you can do whatever it takes to move your body and to release the endorphins and get the dopamine and the serotonin and all those good feeling chemicals that you get. So power walk yoga, walk the dog, play with the kids, go for a run, lift some weights, swim, bike, whatever you need to do, but do something every day. Do it outside if you can get in the sun.

And then lastly, skip some meals here and there. You don’t have to eat all the time. This is like intermittent fasting simplified, right? It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to do some sort of long three day fast or anything like that. Just like skip a meal here and there. And you might be surprised how much easier it is to get through the holidays without gaining weight.

Cool. All right, you guys, I hope you take some action on these tips here and actually do these things because I guarantee you it’s going to make a difference on how you show up for yourself on January 1. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will 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.

152. Struggling, Suffering, and Giving In

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When it comes to eating healthy and losing weight, people think you have 3 choices: Struggle, suffer, or give in. You might want to stick to a healthy eating plan through the holidays but feel like …

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Podcast Transcript

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 152 of Running Lean.

My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today I’m talking about struggling, suffering and giving in when it comes to eating healthy and losing weight. A lot of people, runners especially, think that you have basically three choices, you can either struggle, suffer, or just give him.

So you might want to stick to a healthy eating plan, you know, through the holidays. But you feel like you’re either going to have to struggle to stay on that plan, or suffer your way through it. Or just say screw it and give in to all those cravings for carbage.

But what if there was another option? What if you didn’t have to suffer or struggle? What if you never gave in to those food cravings? Today I’m talking about how we’re not really stuck with this, these three options of struggling suffering and giving in how you can make healthy eating actually enjoyable, and maybe even fun, and stick to your plan. Cool.

Instead of struggling or suffering your way through the holidays this year, why don’t you do something different with coaching you and I will create a plan just for you. One that feels good to you when you actually have some say in how we structure it and one that you feel good about. And then I hope you stick to that plan.

If you want to show up on January 1, next year actually feeling good about yourself for a change. Instead of regretting all of your decisions over the last 40 days, then you might be ready for the Running Lean coaching project.

This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners where the project as always is you to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And get started, you’ll fill out a quick application, you and I will jump on a zoom, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. If it is then we can get you started right away. Cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And I’ll see you in the Running Lean coaching project.

Okay, this topic came to me recently because I’ve been hearing a lot of people struggling and a lot of people kind of suffering, a lot of people giving in to these temptations. Now we are officially into the holiday season here, especially in the US where if you’re listening to this, the day this episode comes out, it’ll be the day after Thanksgiving.

And so Thanksgiving is kind of the official or maybe unofficial kickoff of the holidays here in the US. So if you are in the US or in a part of the world that celebrates, you know, Christmas and all that stuff, then we are getting into this season where it’s challenging for a lot of people, this is a time of the year that can be very stressful for a lot of people.

There’s a lot of tempting foods out there. There’s holiday parties, there’s weird working schedules, there’s a lot of time off, and we sort of get out of our routine. And it can be very stressful and very detrimental.

If you are somebody that’s trying to lose weight or get healthy or change your exercise regimen or change your body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself. This is the time of the year where most people fall off the wagon, right.

Another thing to consider is that for most runners, this is considered the offseason because we are getting into the winter. We’ve had our fall races, we’ve had our fall marathons and half marathons. And now we sort of have a little bit of time off before marathons. Training actually begins again in January, at least here in the US.

So this is the time of the year where a lot of people just sort of go off the rails, eat a bunch of junk, gain a bunch of weight, and come January one they feel terrible about themselves. Yeah, have you ever done this before? This used to be my go to every single year, I would run a couple marathons every year, you know, run that fall marathon, and then I’d be like, heck yeah, I’m taking some time off.

So I would stop training. You run a little bit here and there, but pretty much stopped the level of intensity of training that I had been doing for most of the year. And then it basically eat whatever I wanted to. And then by January 1 I would always gain, like 10-15 pounds. Yeah, that’s a lot of weight gain, in really a short amount of time, really, we’re only talking about two months, maybe.

Okay, so, for me, this was always something where I would start the new year at a deficit, let’s start the new year like having to make up a bunch of ground, just to get back to normal just to get back to where I was, you know, before I started, you know, binging out and going crazy on all the garbage that I was eating at the time.

And this, this was problematic, because I would do this, you know, every year, and I would never really get back to where I was. So I just kept gaining weight, and every year, I would just gain a bunch of weight. And this time of the year was a time where I would gain the most amount of weight, because it was the offseason because it was the holidays, because it was stressful.

And all the reasons I can tell you all the reasons, all the stories, all the excuses for why I did what I did. But at the end of the day, it just boils down to me having some really bad habits and eating the wrong kinds of foods and, and really not understanding how all this was affecting me. So we don’t want to do this, this is not really a good way to go, right?

You want to start the new year, instead of feeling bad and coming from a deficit and having to make up this ground. You want to start the new year feeling good about yourself, not feeling bad about yourself. Because when you start the new year, and you feel bad about yourself, here’s what you’ve done over the last 40 days or so, you’ve broken down the trust in yourself.

So when I say you know, how do you build up trust in yourself? What I’m talking about is, you say you’re gonna do something and then you do it. So you say you’re gonna stick to your food plan, and you do what you say you’re gonna stick to your running schedule, and you do it. When you don’t do that, you break down that trust in yourself.

When you say you’re going to do something, and then you fail, and you give up and you don’t do that thing. You subconsciously break down your ability to trust yourself to stay on track, you lose confidence, you lose momentum, you have all this ground to make up, you’re not making progress anymore, you’re actually going backwards. And all of this feels terrible.

And yet, so many people do this anyway. And then they struggle come the New Year to just get back to their normal state. They’re like, You know what they’re used to. I don’t think this is a good idea, we do not want to take this approach over the next 40 days or so. So there’s roughly 39 or 40 days between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.

And I think this is a great opportunity for us to get focused on what we can do to stay consistent, and to honor the commitments we make to ourselves and to build trust in ourselves. Because the opposite is also true. When you say you’re going to do something and you do it, you build trust in yourself, you build confidence in yourself that you can actually stick to your plan. And this is where you start to make progress towards your goals, you maybe start to lose weight, maybe you start to improve your running, you get faster, maybe you’re lifting weights, and you get stronger, and then you build momentum.

And all this momentum helps you have more confidence in it. And it motivates you to keep going and then you can start the new year feeling amazing. And making all this progress and having had your own back these last 40 days. That’s what I really want for you. And for me and for all of us. Because I know that that is what you want for yourself.

I know that you want to get through the holidays and you want to feel like you’ve done a good job and you’ve honored your commitments to yourself. You’ve built momentum, you’ve built confidence, you’ve built trust in yourself and you’ve made progress. That’s where I think you want to be, right?

So why not do that? Why not make that your priority? But the problem is most people, they don’t do that. Most people just have this idea of like yeah, I’m gonna I’m going to start the new year feeling great and then they just give in, you know, they struggle they suffer they give in through the whole 40 days of the holidays.

And really what are the holidays we have? Thanksgiving Day. You can count New Year’s Eve and or I’m sorry, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So really we’re talking five days, five days. Some of those are like half days, like New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve.

So, like four days we’re talking about here, it’s so when we talk about the holidays, it’s like four days, right? Don’t make it seem like every day is a party between now and the end of the year, because it isn’t, and it shouldn’t be. Okay. But here’s the thing.

Most people, they struggle, they suffer, or they just give in, they have all these excuses, all these stories, all these reasons. As if all this stuff is automatic, it’s set in stone, it’s absolute, it is the truth, it’s not the truth. It’s just what you’re choosing to believe. It’s what you’re choosing to believe to be true.

Think about that for a minute, the things you think are true, like, losing weight is hard, I have to suffer my way through this. It’s going to be a struggle, I always give in all those things are just things that you are choosing to believe. I want you to think about that and really let that sink in. You’re just choosing to believe those things.

So when we talk about struggling, what I hear from people, I hear them struggling, and I hear them say this is really hard. It’s hard for me to do this, I just can’t do it. I can’t seem to get motivated, I can’t stick with it. And they struggle and they struggle and they struggle and it’s in it and it creates a really negative state of being. Okay.

And then there’s people that they may not actually feel like they’re struggling, they might stick with the plan, but they suffer their way through it. All right, well, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to stick with this plan and eat this good food, but I won’t like it. I’m not going to be happy, it’s going to suck. Is that how we want to go through life? No, no, no, no.

But they’re like, hanging on like, like white knuckling it right? They’re hating every minute of it. They’re in a crappy mood all the time, they’re resentful, they’re angry, they’re pissed off, because they can eat all this good food that everybody else is eating, they can’t do what everybody else is doing. And so they feel terrible. And they suffer and they suffer. Alright, so you can do that you can suffer, you can struggle, all you want.

But what that usually leads to is giving in and it leads to quitting. As it is too hard, I can’t do it, I’m just not going to do it anymore. I quit. I’m just going to give in. I’m having cravings for pizza. So I’m going to eat pizza. I’m having cravings for pie and cookies, and alcohol. And I’m just going to give in because it’s easier, and it feels good. And it’s not hard. And you know, I don’t have to suffer anymore.

And so a lot of people will just say screw it or, you know, why bother, you know, it’s too hard. And they just walk away from what they want for themselves, right? They walk away from the process of actually improving their life, improving their health, improving their well being and improving their fitness. Because the struggling, the suffering is just too much, it’s too hard. And so that usually leads to quitting.

So this might be your default behavior, you may have conditioned yourself over the years over the decades, to struggle to say it’s too hard to say you can’t do it to say you could never stick with it, to suffer your way through it, hate every minute of it. Be resentful, be angry all the time. And then quit. This may be what you’ve done over and over and over again. You’ve conditioned yourself to behave in certain ways, in certain situations.

But now, you want something more for yourself, you want to improve your body composition, you want to lose weight, you want to get stronger, you want to improve your running, or maybe you just want to start running, you want to be a consistent runner. So these are things that you want for yourself that you may not have right now. But in order to get there, you cannot continue struggling, you cannot continue with the suffering and obviously, quitting is not going to get you there.

So if you’ve conditioned yourself to act in certain ways, and behave in certain ways and feel certain things and think certain things, you’re gonna have to do some work here, you’re gonna have to decondition yourself, you’re gonna have to decondition yourself and change your default behavior because your default behavior kind of sucks and it’s not working for you.

Struggling, suffering, giving in. If this is your default behavior, that’s pretty sucky behavior. Sorry, but it is you who has to change that. You got to change that right now. And so you just got to change what you do. Right Easy, easy peasy. Just change your default behavior. That’s sarcasm in case you can’t tell. It’s not easy to do. It’s a simple concept. But it is not easy to do.

And it’s just because of your conditioning, it’s because you’ve been doing the same thing for a lot of time, decades, that it becomes very difficult to change that because you just think that this is who you are at your core. And there’s nothing you can do about it. That is what we call a limiting belief, because it limits you, it keeps you stuck, it keeps you small, it keeps you from making any kind of progress that keeps you from growing.

And a lot of times people choose those limiting types of behavior, life limiting types of beliefs, because it’s easier than actually doing the work of change, change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to do the work to change. But I’m telling you right now, if you can decondition yourself. And if you can change that default behavior, you are going to be a total badass, you can do anything that you want for yourself.

So really, what you have to do is you have to undo your conditioning. And it really starts with your mindset. Your mindset is your foundation, it’s the foundation that everything you want for yourself is built upon. Everything good that you want for yourself that you don’t already have, is built upon a solid foundation of the right mindset. With the right mindset, you can accomplish anything that you want.

The opposite is also true with the wrong mindset, it’s going to be very difficult to make any kind of progress to stick with anything to accomplish anything at all, it’s going to be very difficult with the wrong mindset. So we have to fix the mindset, struggling, suffering, this is just your mindset, this is something you are choosing, it may not seem like it, it may feel like it’s you know, just happening to you.

It may feel automatic, but I’m telling you, this is a state of being that you’re in that you are choosing. And you might be thinking, why would I choose this? Why would I choose a crappy mindset? Why do I choose a crappy state of being? Why would we do this? It sounds kind of ridiculous, right? But I see this every single day: people choosing the struggle, people choosing to suffer. Why?

Why would you do this? It feels terrible. It creates all sorts of negativity, it creates all sorts of stress in your life, it is very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable place to be. So why would you choose this? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because there’s another type of discomfort, the type of discomfort that comes with sticking to your plan no matter what. When you feel like eating a bunch of junk food and you don’t, that is very uncomfortable.

But that’s a different kind of discomfort. It’s the kind of discomfort that you’re not used to. It’s the kind of discomfort that is unfamiliar to you. The kind of discomfort you’re familiar with is the struggling in the suffering and the giving it that’s what you’re used to. That’s familiar to you. That’s your comfort zone. That sort of discomfort is in your comfort zone.

I know it sounds kind of weird, but it’s true. You’re used to that. It’s like putting on that warm cozy sweater in the winter, like, ooh, this feels good. Even though it makes you feel terrible. You’re choosing the struggling, you’re choosing the suffering because that level of that type of discomfort is something you’re familiar with.

Okay, so the other type of discomfort is the type where you have to stick to your food plan or stick to your exercise plan or go run outside even though it’s cold out. Those things feel uncomfortable, but in a different way in a way that you’re just not used to.

So here’s something I’m going to offer you: which one of these levels of discomfort do you want to focus on because you get to choose? Choose your discomfort. Choose how you want to struggle or suffer. What if you chose the discomfort of sticking to your plan no matter what. Ooh, now we’re getting somewhere right?

What if you put aside the discomfort of struggling and put aside the discomfort of suffering and just embrace the discomfort of sticking to the plan. What if you created a plan and then stuck to the plan no matter what even though it was uncomfortable? Right. This is a totally different mindset. This is a complete mindset shift that most people are not willing to even think about.

They’re not willing to even consider it because it doesn’t feel good. Now, first thing, and the most important thing is you have to have a plan. Most people don’t have a plan, they just wing it. Right? Most people wing it all the time. Well, you know, just figure it out later, I’ll figure it out. I’ll just, what am I going to eat for Thanksgiving? What am I going to eat for Christmas? What am I going to do about running? I’ll just figure it out later.

No, you have to have a plan. Have a plan. Plan your runs, plan your workouts, plan your meals. What does your running plan look like this week? What do your meals look like this week? What are you eating for dinner tomorrow? How are you handling that holiday party that’s coming up in a couple of weeks? When are you doing your strength training this week? What is your plan, plan everything and then stick to the plan no matter what.

And by the way, that’s it, that no matter what part that’s most important. The people I work with my clients, we make a plan. Every one of my clients has a plan, we put together a plan. That’s different. It’s different for everybody. Everybody’s plan is a little bit different. But we put together a personalized plan, and then we stick to the plan. And if they don’t stick to the plan, they have to tell me why I hold them accountable. And we talk through it, we decide how maybe next time we can do things differently.

How do we handle this situation better the next time it comes around, and then the next time that type of thing happens they do they handle it better, and it gets a little bit easier. And the more they stick to their plan, the more progress they make, the more confidence they build, the more they build that trust in themselves. And the more they build good habits. And they know that they can get through just about anything.

This is a big part of why coaching works so well, is because we’re creating a personalized plan and then helping you stick to the plan no matter what. And with this approach, there’s not much struggle, there’s not much suffering, and there’s really no giving in that maybe, maybe occasionally, and especially at the beginning, there’s a little bit of a, there’s a bit of a process of like committing to the change and then getting used to the change.

And again, it’s an uncomfortable process. Nobody does this perfectly. And it does happen occasionally where there might be some giving in. But we learn from the experience and we act differently next time. And over time, all of this just gets easier and easier. And the struggling, the suffering and the giving in become a thing of the past, it just doesn’t happen anymore. This is all about building new habits.

You have to build new habits, you have to do things that feel good to you that they may feel bad at the beginning, they may feel uncomfortable at the beginning. But eventually they will feel good to you. They should start to feel easy and effortless and feel sustainable for you. And there’s probably something you’ve never really experienced before because you either struggled, suffered or just gave in so you quit before the actual magic happened. Right?

So we’re getting into this season we’re getting in this holiday season, it’s can be a very tough time of the year for a lot of people, I get that. You know people deal with family issues. Maybe they’ve lost somebody, there’s some loneliness, there’s some stress, there’s anxiety, there’s financial issues and on and on.

Don’t add to the stress of the season because it’s, it’s already kind of stressful. Don’t add to that stress by going completely off the rails from a food and exercise standpoint. Make a plan and then stick to your plan no matter what. Stop it with all the struggling, stop it with the suffering. That mindset is not going to get you anywhere. And definitely stop giving in, don’t give in. Don’t quit. We keep going. Relentless forward progress, we keep moving forward.

And listen, if you want some help with this, I am absolutely here for you just go to my website runningleancoaching.com/apply and I’ll help you start the new year feeling good about yourself feeling confident and having made a bunch of progress towards your health and fitness goals. Instead of regretting everything you’ve done for the last 40 days and having to make up a bunch of ground. We don’t want to do that. Okay, so reach out to me, I’m here for you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will 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.

146. Slow Down and Stay in the Flow

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Many runners who set out to achieve big goals will get it into their heads that things should just be happening faster. They should be losing weight faster, their running should be improving more …

Continue Reading about 146. Slow Down and Stay in the Flow →

Podcast Transcript

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 146 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today: slow down and stay in the flow. Many runners I talked to who set out to achieve big goals will get this idea into their heads that for some reason, things should just be happening faster, they should be losing weight faster, they’re running should be improving more quickly.

And those strength sessions at the gym should be paying off by now. And the reality of the situation is this, these things take time, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to become a stronger, faster runner. And when you think everything should be happening faster, all of this becomes very frustrating.

So in this episode, I’m going to talk about what happens when you believe everything should be happening faster. And then what it looks like when you just slow down and stay in the flow instead. And one of the most important things I do with my coaching clients is this: I help them stay on track. Together, we set big goals, we’ll put together a plan to help you achieve those goals, and then help you stick to the plan. It’s that simple.

But I know how difficult and how frustrating it can be to set out to make big changes, especially when it comes to your health and fitness. And then getting to this place where you think everything should be going faster. Listen, these things take time. But imagine how much easier it would be if you had somebody there to guide you through the whole process every step of the way, to be there to offer expertise, support, encouragement, motivation, and to hold you accountable.

Becoming the most badass version of yourself, this is an amazing thing to accomplish. And having a coach there to help you get there. This is a game changer. So if you’re looking for guidance, support, encouragement, motivation, accountability, I want to encourage you to apply to join my coaching program, the Running Lean coaching project.

To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You have to fill out a short application, we’re gonna have a conversation, then we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. I would love to have you in my program. This is a very unique weight loss coaching program for runners. It’s the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.

Alright, let’s get into this topic, slow down and stay in the flow. The reason I’m talking about this today, like I mentioned at the top of the episode here is that so many people I talked to set out to achieve big goals, they really want to become the healthiest version of themselves, they really want to improve their body composition, they want to get stronger, they want to become a faster runner, they want to PR their marathon or half marathon, they want to lose weight.

And when they set out to achieve these things, they get this concept in their mind that it’s all going to happen according to some arbitrary timeline. Okay, it could be like, oh, I’ve got this goal race coming up in three months. And so I’m going to change my diet, I’m gonna, like start running a little bit faster. And, and somehow I’m going to like, you know, PR this thing and lose 30 pounds in the process.

And while that might happen, for some people, it’s your there’s no guarantee, right? I mean, these things take time, it takes time to change habits, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to get faster as a runner. And if you’re somebody whose thinking that this is going to be all all said and done in a matter of you know, 90 days exactly, or whatever; you may be frustrated, you may be disappointed with the results in that amount of time. So many of us get it into our heads that you know everything should be happening faster.

And when we get to this place of thinking everything should be happening faster. It’s not happening fast enough. It gets very very frustrating. So some examples of where I see this happening the most first of all is in weight loss. When people want to lose weight. They change their diet, they start making maybe some sacrifices, you know, they start giving up some of the foods they used to love to eat, you know, junk food, let’s just say and they stick with it.

And the weight loss isn’t happening fast enough, they may only be losing a pound or two a week. And over months of working together, I hear this from people a lot who have consistently lost one or two pounds a week, and then will tell me, ah, it’s just, you know, everything’s fine, I guess. But it’s just not happening fast enough, right?

And becoming a faster runner is another place where people want this to happen faster, surprisingly enough, right? So you might set out to like PR, your half marathon or marathon time. And so you start changing your running routine, you start adding more speed work, and you’re really intentionally focused on becoming that faster runner.

And then you have a race coming up and you and you do everything you’re supposed to do and you’re, you’re ready to go and you’re feeling great. And then you get out there and you just don’t hit your goal on that race day. And it gets really frustrating, right, or maybe you’re trying to build some strength and build some muscle. So you’re at the gym, and you’re hitting the weights pretty hard.

And it’s just, it seems like it’s taking forever, you don’t see those muscles bulging out of your arms, like you think you should after, you know, a period of time. You know, another way that I see people getting frustrated is when they want to improve their endurance, they want to be able to run longer distances, but they just keep running out of gas.

And they’re like, what’s going on? Shouldn’t this be happening faster? I mean, just I, you know, I can run a 5k I can run a 10k How come I can’t do a half marathon or a marathon? How come I’m running out of gas at mile 10 or 12 or 19?

Or, you know, overcoming food cravings. This is an area where I’m just going to tell you right now, this is not something that happens quickly. It may take some time to get past the place where you’re really craving junk food, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve been somebody who’s been really eating a lot of junk food, then it may take a long time for you to like get over those cravings, you know, in thinking that it’s going to happen quickly. Oh, yeah. Well, I quit eating junk food two weeks ago, how come I’m still craving pizza? It’s gonna take a while. Right?

Or even this concept of just not sticking to the plan, like I just keep slipping up. How come I’m not sticking to the plan 100% of the time? By now I’ve been doing this for a while. How can I keep you know, reverting back to old behaviors? Shouldn’t this be happening faster? So all of these things are processes that take time.

And the idea that from the very get go, you should be perfect, and everything should be moving along quickly. It’s just a myth, it’s never going to happen that way. All of these processes are things that take time. And when you have this concept that you think it should be happening faster, it creates a real negative state within you.

Okay, because when you think things should be going faster, and they’re not, it can be very frustrating. It can cause you to feel frustration, it can cause you to feel stressed, you can feel disappointed and discouraged. These are all negative emotions. And when you’re feeling these negative emotions around what you’re doing to try to change yourself for the better to try to improve your health and fitness.

When all of your energy is put into this negative emotional state it puts you into a state of mentally and emotionally being really negative. So you’re in this negative emotional and mental state. And when you’re feeling this way, how do you think you’re going to act? Because your feelings really drive your behaviors, your feelings drive your actions, the mental and emotional state that you’re in will determine what you do.

So what behaviors do you think you engage in when you’re feeling constantly when you’re in this negative emotional state? Well, if you’re feeling discouraged and frustrated that weight loss is taking too long, then you’re probably not going to stick with a plan because you’re probably thinking like, why should I stick to this plan? It’s not working anyway, it’s taking too long anyway.

And you might feel disappointed because you know, running isn’t improving as fast as you want it to and that will make you feel very disappointed. Very disappointing and discouraging to you, right? You’re not getting faster quickly enough? Well, if you’re in that state, you’re probably not going to keep doing the speed work, right? Because why bother? Why should I stick to my speed work if it’s not working anyway?

So the thought, the thoughts and feelings that you put into this, the thoughts and feelings that you’re experiencing that, oh, it’s taking too long. It’s frustrating, and I’m disappointed, I’m discouraged. It’s going to take forever, I’m never gonna get there. When you’re in that place, that will absolutely become true for you. You will prove those thoughts and feelings to be true when you act from that negative state, that negative state that you’re in will create that reality for you, you will get those results, it will take too long, it will take forever, because you won’t be sticking to the plan.

You’ll never get there because you won’t stay on track. You’re constantly thinking, Oh, why bother? Why should I do this, it’s not working anyway. And this is a really crappy place to be just so you know. But I see so many people wallowing in this negative emotional state. Your thoughts and feelings, create your results, your thoughts and feelings create your reality, you get more of what you focus your attention on. Right? So constantly thinking, this isn’t working.

It won’t work for you, I promise you, if you’re constantly thinking, I’m never gonna get there. And guess what? You’re never gonna get there. And if you’re thinking to yourself, Patrick, this sounds too simple. I agree that it does sound too simple, but it is absolutely true. And a very powerful concept that I want you to try to wrap your head around here, okay?

Because when you’re operating from this very powerful, but negative place, you get to create results and your reality. And you get to achieve what you want for yourself. Or what you, in this case, what you don’t want for yourself, you get to achieve what you’re what you’re focused on achieving, which is it’s not working, it’s taking too long, it’s gonna take forever, I’m never gonna get there. That’s a very powerful yet negative place to be, it’s a powerfully negative place to be okay.

So you have to understand this, it is a simple concept, that your emotional state, your thoughts and feelings, create your results. Because it drives your actions, your thoughts and feelings drive your actions and your actions create your results. So instead of you know, constantly thinking that these things should be happening faster, we have to let go of that.

Okay, because here, here’s some simple facts. Losing weight takes time, it takes time to change your eating habits. It takes time to figure out what actually works best for you as an individual. Because we’re all different. We all have different goals, different weight loss goals, different metabolism, different lifestyles, different food preferences, and you have to figure out what works best for you, what’s going to support your weight loss goals and your running goals. And figuring all this out, it takes a little bit of time to really dial it in.

And it’s okay, let’s just be okay with that fact. Right, losing weight will take some time, it takes time to you know, get your blood sugar regulated to fix your metabolism. It takes time to you know, get your body working the way it’s supposed to to get your hormones working the way they’re supposed to. But once you get into that place, things start to change for you.

You know, your blood sugar’s regulated, your hormonal changes become more balanced, your hormone hormonal response to food becomes more, more balanced and your your body actually starts to function the way it was made to function, you start burning more fat instead of burning all the sugar. And eventually you’ll see the weight loss start to happen.

But there’s a lot of things that have to kind of happen in the interim before you actually see the number on the scale start to change, right. So just understand that it takes time to lose weight. And if you have a lot of weight to lose, it’s going to take more time. And it’s okay.

Building muscle takes time. It takes time to go to the gym, improve your your weightlifting capabilities to increase the resistance that you’re lifting. You know, we in order to gain muscle and build strength, we have to overload the muscles so that means we have to lift heavier weights and it takes time to get to the place where, you know, you can get stronger and you can actually lift heavier weights.

And it may take time before you can see any improvement at all before you can start to increase the weights or the reps or whatever. There’s a period at the beginning, if you’ve never done any kind of strength training, any kind of resistance training, there’s a time at the beginning where you just gotta get used to the, to the workouts, you got to get used to the routines, you got to be doing things in a safe way, getting your body like used to lifting weights.

But eventually, you’ll start to see some progress happen, okay, but it takes time. Improving your endurance takes time, improving your speed as a runner takes time, it takes time to build the muscle memory of doing harder, faster workouts to improve your running form. You know, you’ll make incremental improvements to your endurance. But these things do take some time.

Do you remember when you first started out as a runner, you couldn’t imagine running a 5k, running three miles without stopping. And you might be running half marathons now and wanting to get faster, or running to take it up to the next level, run a marathon and you’re like, why is it taking so long to build that endurance and think back to when you first started running and how long it took you to make those improvements.

I remember training for my first 10k, I set out to run a 10k. And you know where I could, I could only run like one mile at a time, you know, I could run one mile without stopping. And that felt pretty amazing, you know, and then I could run two and then three. And I couldn’t imagine doing a whole 10k like 6.2 miles without stopping. Like, that’s crazy. Who does this, you know?

But eventually I got there, but it took months of training to get there. Okay, so all these things take time, stop thinking it’s all going to happen quickly or according to some arbitrary timeline that you’ve created, in your own mind. Start accepting the fact that these things will take time, time takes time. And slow down, slow down.

And instead, I want you to focus on staying in the flow. Like, what if you just took your time, instead of trying to rush your way to your weight loss goal or to some running goal or to some strength goal? What if you just slow down? What would that look like for you? What if you made changes slowly over time?

Because we’re talking about changing habits around food, changing habits around how you train. How you fuel for training and races? And, it takes time to dial this in for you as an individual. Right? So understand this and accept that it’s going to take time. Okay. How long did it take you to gain the weight in the first place? Maybe you’ve gained 30, 40, 50 pounds? Would it take two years? Three years? 10 years? 20 years? Why do you think it should all come off in like 90 days?

It might take longer than that. So what? So what. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, stop trying to fast track everything. And instead, just focus on what you’re doing today. And you will get there. Staying in the flow means just being here. Right now, what are you doing today? What are you doing in this moment to better your health?

Are you making your food plan for the next 24 hours, or you’re filling in your training schedule for the week, maybe you’re lacing up your shoes, because you’re ready to head out for a run. Maybe you’re just you know, sitting down to dinner and you’re actually eating what you said you’d eat today. That’s what it means to be in the flow.

It means you’re not thinking about how long it’s going to take. Because that really doesn’t matter. It might take six months or a year or more. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s all okay. Think about this, where would you be a year from now, if you stuck to your plan every day for a year, think about that. A year from now you could be like 95% of the way to your goal or 100% there.

Or you could be totally frustrated and pissed off a year from now because you kept thinking it was taking too long. And you kept stopping and starting and stopping and starting you kept giving up. Maybe you’d recommit. Maybe you’d quit and you’d start again, then you quit again. Maybe you just quit altogether. Staying in the flow means you commit to the process. You commit to the process of change. What things do you need to change to get to your goals?

Stop eating junk food, start lifting weights regularly, maybe doing more speed work? What is the process of change, what does that look like for you and commit to that? Because that’s what you need to focus on. That’s where your attention needs to be. Staying in the flow means staying focused on the process of change and not getting frustrated because it’s taking too long to see your results right?

Hey, when you stop thinking that this is all supposed to be different, somehow faster, whatever. And when you just slow down and you stay in the flow, and you stay committed right now to this process, your whole mindset shifts, you become calmer about everything, you become more at peace with where you are, you feel more encouraged, you feel more confident, and that confidence builds you feel more motivated to stay on track.

You stay more disciplined. When you’re feeling this way, when you’re in this mental and emotional state, you become unstoppable. When you’re operating from this emotional state, what do you think becomes your new reality? What do you think becomes true for you? What do you think are the results that you’re gonna get?

When you’re coming from this place of like, I will get there eventually. And I’m just right where I’m supposed to be, and I’m just gonna stay committed, you will get there, eventually, you will stay committed, you will get the results you want for yourself, you will achieve the goals that you want for yourself.

So what I want you to do this week, I want you to ask yourself, where you might be trying to fast track things, right? Where might you be wishing that things should be faster, quicker, and then notice how thinking that way makes you feel? Because chances are, it’s going to put you in a negative feeling, a negative emotional state, you’re not gonna feel good, you’re gonna feel frustrated, discouraged. You’re gonna feel stressed out. And then ask yourself, how can I let go of these ideas? How can I let go of this arbitrary timeline that I’ve created for myself? How can I just sit here? Slow down? How can I stay in the flow right here now?

How can you focus on the process of change here in this moment, and this isn’t just about like feeling good, or getting out of that negative state. It’s about creating everything that you want for yourself. It’s how you get there. If you want to become the most badass version of yourself, just commit to the process of change, and you’ll get there. Slow down, stay in the flow, and I promise you, you will absolutely get there eventually.

And as always, if you want some help with any of this, or all of this, apply for coaching you and I can work together, we’ll put together a plan for you. I’ll help you stay committed to that process. I’ll help you stay in the flow and together we’ll get you there. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. 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.

143. Upgrading Your Model Of the World

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One nice thing about human beings is that no two of us are alike. And not just in how we look or where we live, but in how we see the world. We each have our own unique Model Of the World (MOW) …

Continue Reading about 143. Upgrading Your Model Of the World →

Podcast Transcript

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 143, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today upgrading your model of the world. One nice thing about human beings is that no two of us are alike. And not just in how we look or where we live, but in how we each see the world.

We each have our own unique model of the world, based on our own past experiences, our beliefs, our values, and our individual upbringings. And your model, the world can either keep you stuck and frustrated, or help you to achieve everything that you want for yourself. So in this episode, I’m going to be taking a good look at how your unique model of the world can be harmful or helpful, and why you might want to consider upgrading your model of the world.

But first, a lot of people ask me about coaching and what it looks like. And it may not look the way you think that it does. So for me, from my perspective, coaching is not me creating a list of rules and then handing that list of rules to every single person that I work with.

Coaching is a relationship, it’s you and I working closely together to look at your goals, to look at your lifestyle, to look at the way that you want to achieve things in your life. And then putting together a plan that is unique to you. Just like we all have a unique model of the world, we each want to approach getting healthy, getting fit, getting stronger, losing weight, we all need to approach this in a slightly different way.

So I don’t have a cookie cutter program that just is the same for everybody that I work with. We’re all individuals and I want to celebrate that really. So with the way that I do coaching, which is different from a lot of other coaches. It is a unique relationship, it’s you and I working closely together to set goals for you to create a plan for you.

And then to help you stick to that plan. It’s really a collaboration, you have some say, in how we structure things, you have some agency here. Okay, this isn’t just me telling you what to do, there’s a little bit of me telling you what to do, but you have to be on board with what we’re doing. Because if you’re not, you’re not going to stick with it. Nobody wants to do something that they don’t want to do. Right.

So what I try to create with my coaching program is a collaborative approach where you get to have some say in how we structure things, okay? The main objective here is to create a plan and then help you stick to that plan. And if you want some help creating a plan, if you want some help sticking to that plan, coaching might be a great fit for you. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.

I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, we’ll jump on a zoom call, see if there’s a good fit for you. Cool.

All right, let’s talk about upgrading your model of the world. So like I was saying at the top of the episode here, we humans are all very different. We each have our own ways of seeing things in the world. And this isn’t just about, you know, our upbringings. This isn’t just about our past experiences, there’s so many different factors that make up how we see the world. So we will see things differently based upon our past experiences and our upbringing and our cultures and where we grew up.

But also you got to look at the things that you have believed for your whole life, your belief systems, you got to look at your values. You have to look at the things that are important to you. All of these things paint a different picture of what reality looks like for you. So when I talk about how we all have our unique model of the world, really what I’m saying here is we each have our own view of reality.

And if you want to extrapolate this out a step further, you could say that, that reality is what you think it is. That there isn’t one reality that is the same for everyone. It’s kind of mind blowing, if you think about that, right. But it’s pretty true, because we each have a different way of interpreting what’s happening around us. And we each have a different way of approaching the circumstances in our life. That means we each have our own version of what’s real and what’s not.

So all these factors are our belief systems, the way we have thought our whole lives, the people around us, our schooling, our experiences, all make up our unique model of the world. And this is important, because your model of the world can affect you. in many different ways. It can affect how you get through life, it can affect how you get through relationships, it can affect how you achieve big things in your life or not.

And when I talk about making big changes in your life, let’s say you want to, you want to lose some weight. Let’s say you want to become a faster runner, these things take time, and they take effort, they take getting uncomfortable. And if your model of the world says, Hey, every time you try to do something like this, every time you’ve ever set out to lose weight you fail, losing weight is too hard. Losing weight is something you’ll never be able to do.

If you have believed that your whole life, then guess what your reality is, you will not be able to lose weight, your model of the world is your reality. And if your model of the world is keeping you stuck where you are, and affecting you negatively, and keeping you from taking action or keeping you from moving in the direction of your goals or what you really want for yourself, then you have to consider maybe changing that.

Now, if your model of the world is positive, and it is, is one of like determination, and if your model of the world is one of hey, I can achieve anything that I set my mind to, then guess what that becomes your reality. You might want to let go of your current model of the world if it is not serving you. Just because you believe this is the way things are. And you’ve always believed this is the way things are does not mean you have to hold on to that. I know it’s kind of a crazy concept, right?

What I’m talking about here is releasing your grip on reality, releasing your grip on your version of reality. And this is not something most people ever consider is even in the realm of possibilities. Most people are so ingrained and so dug into their own model of the world, they cannot see any other way of doing things.

They cannot see themselves ever becoming more than they are. They cannot see themselves ever achieving anything more than what they’ve already achieved in their life. And it keeps them from ever pushing themselves. It keeps them from ever taking any kind of action that would improve their health, their fitness, their relationships, their business, their careers. They are so stuck in where they are and who they are, they cannot see that there’s more available to them.

So what I’m asking you to do is release your grip on what you believe to be true. Release your grip on your own version of reality. Release your grip on your own model of the world. And this takes some work. This is not really a simple process or an easy process. It takes some work and some time but it starts with you challenging your beliefs and challenging the way that you see things.

And the way that you believe things are about yourself, about others, about society, about the world around you. But you don’t have to believe everything you think just because you think something just because you’ve believed something your whole life doesn’t mean you have to continue to believe that you can choose to believe something else instead.

For years and years, I believed that I could not quit drinking, for example, I believed that I was always going to drink alcohol. I mean, I drank alcohol every day for 25 years, or something like that – a long, long time. And I could not imagine going one day without drinking alcohol. I mean, I did it every now and then. But it was not fun. And it was hard. And I was thinking like, this is just, this is just who I am.

And then at one point in my life, I decided I wasn’t gonna do that anymore. I wasn’t gonna drink anymore. That was a huge mindset shift for me to go from being somebody who believed, firmly believed that drinking was just part of who I was. And it was always going to be that way to being a non drinker. What? I know, it’s crazy. That is completely the opposite of everything I believed about my model of the world at that point.

Everything I did, had alcohol involved, somehow, oh, we’re gonna go out to dinner gotta go somewhere where they serve alcohol, oh, we’re gonna go to this sporting event. No, I’m going to be drinking a lot. Oh, it’s, you know, I got to take the kids to, you know, football practice, well, better, you know, make sure I get some beers on the way home or whatever it was.

Oh, it’s Tuesday, well better stock up on alcohol. You know, it was always part of everything that I did. Not having alcohol was a wild concept for me. That broke my model of the world, I was like, does not compute. I had to release my grip on my version of reality, in order to make that shift for myself. And I had to do the same thing.

A few years back, when I made this big shift from being a, a plant based person, somebody who did not eat meat, I hadn’t eaten meat for 15 years, and I made a big shift, I decided that that was no longer what I believed to be the best thing for myself. My model of the world for the previous 15 years was, you know, meat is bad for you, you shouldn’t eat meat, it’s much healthier to not eat meat. And I was dug in with that belief about myself. And for me, it was the way I believed and the way I was eating. And there’s a lot more to this than just meat.

But you know, I was eating a lot of sugar, a lot of carbohydrates and things like that. But I had gained a lot of weight and I was feeling very unhealthy. And I decided to go back to more of an ancestral way of eating, which included eating meat, again, extremely different, extremely difficult to make this decision to start eating meat again, and change my diet. I’m really glad I did that though. I’ve gotten way healthier, I feel much better. I’ve changed my diet in a lot of ways. But this is just one way.

Okay, I’m not saying you know, eating meat is better than being vegetarian or vegan or anything like that. I’m not going to get into that discussion here. I’m just saying for me, this was a good choice for me to make for my body and my health and my fitness and I feel better now. But this was a big shift for me.

So my model of the world that I was holding on too tightly, even though I was gaining weight and gaining weight and gained like 40 pounds. My clothes didn’t fit anymore. I looked terrible. I hated the way I looked in the mirror. I was not letting go of that model of reality, that model of the world. But when I did when I made that shift when I made that change, it changed everything for me. I had to release my grip on reality, my version of reality, in order for me to become the person that I am today.

This doesn’t mean I’m done either, like I have other versions of myself that I want to become, we are always a work in progress, at least we always should be. And though those versions of myself that I see in the future that I am working towards, are different than who I am today, are different than who I’ve been up to this point. And those versions of me require me to release my grip on reality again, in other ways. And this is an ongoing process, and it’s okay, it’s okay that we do this.

But you have to challenge what you believe. You have to challenge the way you’ve been doing things, if you want to become more, you have to challenge your experiences in the past, because listening to your past does not determine your future. Just because you’ve always done something a certain way does not mean it has to continue.

Just because you’ve always had the same results from everything you’ve tried in the past does not mean you’re going to continue to get those same results, your past does not determine your future. Stop looking to the past and saying well see, this is why I can’t get where I want to in life because of what happened, you know, back in the day, stop doing that.

Release that idea, let go of those old ideas. Just because you’ve done something for decades, doesn’t mean you can’t change it, we can always change. And this idea of upgrading your model of the world of making these changes, letting go of the things that aren’t serving you anymore. Choosing new values, choosing new things you want to believe about yourself and the world around you. This is such a difficult process to go through.

This is uncomfortable, because it goes against everything that you believe to be true to this point. Right? It challenges everything you think you know, everything you currently hold to be true. Everything you’ve believed, maybe your whole life. But what I want you to do is I want you to decide, first of all, decide who it is that you want to become. And then you got to start working towards becoming that version of yourself. Okay?

And then look at what version of reality you’re holding on to right now. And is that version of reality that you’re holding on to helping you to become that future version of yourself? Or is it keeping you stuck where you are. The art of becoming more requires you to let go of who you think you are today. The art of becoming more requires you to release your grip on your current model of the world. That’s it, it really does.

You got to you know, you got to do more if you want to become more. And your work this week, is to look at different areas of your life. Look at your past experiences. Look at the things you think you believe. Look at the things that you think you know, look at the things you think you’re capable of. And challenge all of it, challenge all of it.

Your work is to challenge reality, your work is to challenge your current model of the world. And make some changes and upgrade that. If you want to become more, you ‘ve got to do more. If you want to become more, you’ve got to release your grip on your current model of the world and make some changes and start moving toward that direction of becoming more. Okay. That is your work this week. I hope you will do this. It is so worth it. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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