It’s that time of year when the days are getting shorter and colder, the holidays are upon us, and all you feel like doing is staying in and eating comfort food. I get it. I feel this too. And just …
256. Why Runners Need Help Losing Weight
I’ve received a lot of comments on my social media posts over the years basically saying that if you are a runner, you shouldn’t need help losing weight. Comments like, “If you want to lose weight, …
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246. The Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners
I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s advised to keep your carbs low if you’re a runner who wants to lose weight and use body fat as fuel for running. I realized I haven’t …
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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 246, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, the Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners. So I know I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s maybe advised for you to keep your carbs low. If you’re a runner who wants to get fat adapted, use body fat as fuel for running and wants to lose weight, I think keeping your carbs low is a very good plan for most people, not everybody, but for most people. But I realized I haven’t spent much time talking about the other macronutrients, fat and protein. Fat and protein are essential nutrients that often get overlooked when it comes to low carb diets and fat adapted running. So I’m hoping to remedy that here today. So this episode is all about that one macronutrient that matters most for runners, and how it benefits your overall health and fitness.
But first I want to talk a little bit about what being a coach means to me. So I’m someone who struggled with eating properly, struggled with my weight, struggled with getting stronger, struggled with my business, and I decided at some point that I was going to get some help, and so I reached out, and I got a nutrition coach that helped me greatly, and I figured out a lot of important things for me, and it was really the key to me losing weight and be able to keep it off forever. I really wanted to get stronger and leaner and build more muscle, and I just was trying to do it on my own. It really wasn’t working. So I got a coach. I had a personal trainer that was working with me to help me get stronger and showing me what to do and correcting my mistakes and keeping me accountable and keeping me on track. And then I had a business coach that really helped me to get my business started, and get my business to a place where it was something that was very sustainable for me. And all along this process, I learned so much from having coaches guide me, show me the way, show me what to do. You know, they’ve already made all the mistakes so they can just teach me what to do without me having to make all those same mistakes, which is really awesome. It’s like taking everything that they know and then just downloading it into me and going like, Okay, perfect. You know, I’m good to go here. But having that accountability, having somebody to bounce ideas off of, having somebody to talk to when things aren’t going well, having somebody to help keep me on track all of those things were vital to me becoming the person that I am today, to losing the weight, to keeping it off, to improving my strength, my overall fitness, to having a thriving business. All those things were benefits of me reaching out and taking a little bit of a leap of faith here, because I had never really done too much in the way of coaching prior to doing all this stuff, and it was a game changer for me. So this is why I became a coach, because it was so impactful for me. And this is why I’m so passionate about being a coach, because I had such an amazing experience with my coaches. And I was just talking to someone the other day who is a coach herself, and she was reaching out to me to get some help. And, you know, we both agreed that all the best coaches have coaches, you know. So it’s just one of those things that if you’re looking for some help, you want somebody to just show you exactly what to do. You’re looking for some guidance and some accountability. You want somebody that’s had all the experience that can just, you know, really take everything that they’ve learned and just dump it into you then, then coaching is probably a good fit for you. And if you want to know if working with me is a good fit for you, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, and click on the big button that says, work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how you can become the most badass version of yourself. Yeah, cool. Running, leancoaching.com. Click on work with me, and let’s do it. Let’s work together. I think it would be super fun. Cool.
Okay, so today, let’s talk about the macronutrient that matters most for runners, and I know that we talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, because I’m a big proponent of just keeping the carbs low. What does that mean? It’s different for each person. You know, we kind of take a break from eating sugar and some of the really starchy grains and try to lower our carbohydrate intake at the beginning of this process. That’s kind of like phase one that I go through with most of my clients.
We keep the carbs pretty low at the beginning, and then at some point we start to increase the carbs. We time carbs around workouts. You go to a place where you’ve kind of maybe hit your ideal weight, and you can dial in your carbohydrate intake to determine, okay, I can eat this many carbs until I start to gain weight again. Oh, maybe I need to back it off a little bit. You know, maybe 100 grams. 150 grams is good for you. Maybe it’s 75, maybe it’s 20. I don’t know. Just everybody’s a little bit different. Everybody has the sweet spot that they feel good about.
So we know we talk a lot about carbs, and being a low carb runner is something that is pretty amazing. Getting fat adapted as a runner is pretty amazing, because now you have this unlimited fuel source of stored body fat that helps improve your endurance, helps improve your athletic performance, and it gives you a whole nother tool that most runners just don’t take advantage of. You know, burning fat as fuel, so keeping the carbs low is a really amazing tool. It helps with weight loss and helps improve your running.
And I realize that I talk a lot about carbs. And if you want to go back to many, many episodes, there’s lots of episodes where I talk about carbohydrates, you know, good carbs, bad carbs. Why carbs are not the enemy, how we feel with carbs, all that kind of stuff. Just go back through my different episodes. You can actually, if you go on to, I don’t know what Apple podcast or Spotify, you can actually scroll back and see all the different episodes. Or you can go to my podcast website, which is runningleanpodcast.com, and that will give you all the episodes that I’ve ever put out there. And you can, you know, just have a scroll through all of those as well.
So anyway, lots of information about carbs, right? But I realized I haven’t talked about the other macronutrients too much, and protein is one of those ones that does not get the air time that carbs get, even fat. Fat gets talked about a lot, you know, especially people who are trying to watch their weight and so they cut out all the fat, which is, we’ll talk a little bit about that in a second. That’s really not recommended, but protein is one of those things that we really need to focus on, especially as runners and when we’re talking about macronutrients, I just want to set the stage here.
The macronutrients that we’re talking about are fat, protein and carbohydrates. Fat and protein are both called Essential macronutrients. That means that your body does not produce fat or protein, so you have to get that in your diet. And when I talk, when I say fat, it doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t store fat. It does store fat, but your body needs fat in order to survive. If you were to go to a zero fat diet, this would be a problem. If you were to go to a zero protein diet, this would be a problem. You would die.
But carbohydrates are not essential. There is no essential requirement for the human body to consume carbohydrates. I’m not saying you shouldn’t consume carbohydrates. I’m just saying, isn’t it interesting that they are not essential, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute, too. But the macronutrients are the things that make up kind of the majority of our diet, fat, protein, carbohydrates. If you look at the back of most labels, it’ll give you the macronutrient breakdown. But there’s also something called micronutrients. And I’m not going to get into a lot of this, but just understand that micronutrients are not, they are required, and we, there are certain essential micronutrients that are required because our bodies that make them so we need to to get in our diet, things like vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D, iron, iodine, folate, zinc. There’s all kinds of essential micronutrients. And then there’s something called micro minerals, which is salt, potassium, magnesium, calcium. These are all essential as well. So we need to get those in our diet as well, because our body doesn’t produce those things. So as long as you’re eating a well balanced diet, you’re going to be getting all of the micronutrients and all the macronutrients that you need to be a healthy human being.
Okay, so now that we know there’s a difference between macronutrients and micronutrients, I wanted to talk a little bit more about carbs. So carbs are kind of considered non essential nutrients, so proteins and fats, vitamins, minerals, all those things I just mentioned are essential because your body doesn’t produce those. So your body actually produces glucose, which is carbohydrate on its own. And your body can actually use other energy sources if there’s no glucose available or very little glucose available. So fat is a good example of this, right? So just understand that you do not need to load up on the carbs all the time, because your body doesn’t really require that much in the way of carbs. Actually, there’s no essential amount of carbs that are required, you know?
And I’m not opposed to carbs, like I said, you know, I think they’re great for helping to improve your athletic performance. It’s fun to just eat some cake sometimes, or ice cream or whatever. So carbs are fine. They’re kind of addicting to a lot of people, though, I know I’m one of these people where I start eating carbs and I can’t stop, you know, so it’s one of those things where I need to really keep my carb intake in check.
Okay, so carbs are fine, but they’re just not essential in the same way that fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals are, but just understand it’s one of the macronutrients that’s talked about a lot, and the other one being fat. So fat is often touted as, like, the enemy of weight loss. Like I know, back in the 80s, they determined, you know, with some pretty shoddy science, that the reason people were getting fat is because they were eating fat. The reason people were overweight is because they were eating too much fat, so stop eating the fat. So they took all the fat out of everything. Everything became low fat, no fat, non fat. And with most of those food products, they replaced the fat with sugar. Because taking the fat out of stuff made it taste terrible. You know, you take the fat out of whatever. There are people who were like, oh, this is disgusting. And so they were like, oh, we’ll make this better, don’t worry. And so they added sugar to it, okay. Well, now everybody became even more overweight. And they’re like, See, you’re not eating all the fat, so you’re healthier. But everybody, the obesity rates have just skyrocketed in this country since we’ve done dumb stuff like that.
So you gotta eat fat like, fat is important. It is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients. If you don’t eat fat, you’ll die. There’s actually something called dietary fat deficiency. It’s kind of rare, but it can happen if you just, like, cut all the fat out of your diet. I know some people who have tried this, they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna go super, I’m just gonna eat no fat, like zero fat. But it leads to things like vitamin deficiencies, dermatitis, slow wound healing, hair loss, sickness problems with your eyes not functioning properly because of like, vitamin deficiencies. There’s like, all kinds of problems that happen when you completely cut out fat. So don’t do that. Fat is a essential macronutrient. We have to get fat in our diet. Don’t be afraid of the fat. The fat is not causing you to get fat.
There’s other factors involved here, and carbs have a bigger role to play when it comes to gaining weight. So we don’t want to just cut out all the fat. We don’t want to go to some kind of a low fat diet, because a lot of times when you do that, you know, you’re replacing a lot of that fat with sugar, and your carbohydrate intake tends to go up pretty high. So just keep the fat in check. You know, I’m not saying you need to be wrapping bacon around sticks of butter and eating that every day. That’s not what we’re talking about here. But don’t be afraid of the fat. I eat lots of fat in my diet.
I actually found that I was trying to cut back on the fat a little bit as an experiment. So I did this for, I don’t know, for four to five months, something like that, and I noticed I just was more lethargic. My running wasn’t going as well. I just didn’t feel as good. Generally, I wasn’t making gains at the gym, and so I added more fat back into the diet, and I noticed that I started feeling better. I was sleeping better. I had more energy. My running improved. My energy levels throughout the day improved. My workouts got better. I started putting on some muscle again, like, so for me, eating a little bit more fat is good. It works for me. And everybody kind of needs to figure out their own fat intake or whatever. But just understand that.
You know, we don’t want to be just cutting all the fat out of the diet, but fat gets so much, you know, whatever you want to call it, press, people talk about fat a lot. Talk about carbs a lot. The one macro that I think you should really be focusing on here is protein for a lot of reasons. And I mean. Give you a few of them here.
Like, one of them is that when you eat more protein, you typically don’t eat as much food. So I’m a person who is, I’m a chronic overeater. I just eat a lot of food when I sit down to eat food, like, if you give me a large pizza, I can put a big, huge dent in that large pizza. People are like, oh, we’re going to be taking some of this home. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t think so. Like, I can put away some food, and I’m not a big person, but I just, especially when it comes to eating carbs. Carbs mess up your hunger signals. When you’re eating a lot of sugar, a lot of carbs, they make your body, they make you feel more hungry. You know, they increase the production of ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, so you feel more hungry. So if you’re eating a lot of carbs, you’re going to be hungry all the time. They suppress the production of leptin, which is the fullness hormone, so then you’re hungry all the time, but you’re not feeling full when you do eat.
So that’s a bad combination, because now you’re just you tend to overeat, and you’re eating and you’re more hungry and eating more all the time. So when we increase the number of the, or the amount of protein that we’re eating, I think what happens for most people is they reduce the amount of fat, and they reduce the amount of carbs that they’re eating. And I would say, if you’re going to replace something on your plate, you know, I would say, just cut out some of the carbs and replace it with protein. We want protein to be the main event at every meal. We want protein to be the main event, and I’m not gonna, you know, necessarily tell you, you got to get so many grams of protein every single day.
I think there’s some new data out there that suggests that a good place for most people who are athletic, like for runners, I think a 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight is a pretty good place for most people to be. If you’re non athletic, you could probably go a little bit less than that, maybe 0.5, 0.6, some people, if you’re highly athletic, you know, maybe bodybuilder type of person, you might need closer to 1.0 gram of protein per pound of body weight, but I think runners can do really well at about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
And this is some new data that’s been coming out. And you know, I’ve been trying this and working with a lot of clients who have been doing this, and it seems to work pretty well for most people. Again, you’re an individual, you got to do what works for you. But when you’re eating more protein, you tend to not eat as much and so and when you do eat, you tend to be more full, because protein is very satiating. And when it comes to, you know, satiety per calorie, protein is going to give you, you know, one of the best bangs for your buck there, okay?
Plus, you’re giving your body what it really needs. Protein is required to build lean muscle. And when most people try to lose weight, they just cut their calories. They lose weight, but they lose muscle through this process. We don’t want that. You definitely do not want to do that. So when you increase protein, and, you know, do some consistent strength training, this is going to stop this from happening. This is going to prevent the loss of muscle. So we want to make sure that you are eating enough protein to build lean muscle, not lose that if you’re trying to lose weight, especially if you’re training for any kind of you know, half marathon or a marathon, then you do not want to be losing muscle in the process.
Getting enough protein also means that you’re going to recover better from those hard workouts, whether at the gym or on the track or whatever, long runs, anytime you get out there and you push yourself hard, that you break down muscle tissue. Running is a catabolic activity. It breaks down muscle tissue, and you need to recover from those workouts, and so getting enough protein helps support the repair of muscle tissue and the building of new muscle tissue.
So if you want to make sure that you’re recovering properly from your workouts, you want a low inflammatory diet. So that means a diet that’s not going to keep you in a state of inflammation and bloating, which is, you know, the low carb diet tends to work pretty well for that, and you want to make sure you’re getting enough protein. So we want a higher protein diet.
Also, when you eat more protein, you will perform better as a runner, because you’re going to get stronger, you’re going to build stronger muscles. You can run harder, you can run faster, you can recover faster. Stronger muscles means you are less likely to get injured. It helps improve your immune function as well. So if you’re somebody that gets sick a lot, especially as you’re running more. I used to get sick all the time, late stages of marathon training when I’d be, you know, getting out there and doing these super long runs. You know, it’s just a lot of stress on your body, and it can really break down your immune system and compromise your immune system and help, you know, getting enough protein helps you to stay strong and build muscle tissue and helps to improve your immune function, which is amazing.
And then understand that when you’re eating more protein, this can really help with improving your weight loss for a few reasons. So you’re not as hungry all the time, like you stay more satiated throughout the day. You don’t need to eat as often. So you can eat a couple times a day. You don’t need to eat six or eight times a day, and you start to get in tune with your body’s natural hunger signals, which is a really powerful thing, if you think about it.
When did we start having MyFitnessPal to count all of our calories and track all of our macros? We started that. What, 6, 7 years ago, 10 years ago, I don’t know, but it hasn’t been that long, and before that, what did we do? How did people stay in shape? How did people not just blow up and get super fat? They just listened to their body. They just did what their body was telling them to do. Are you hungry? Eat something. Are you not hungry? Don’t eat anything. Don’t eat because you’re bored. Don’t eat because you’re stressed. You eat because you’re hungry, and when you’re eating more protein and fewer carbs, your body tends to be much better in tune with your natural hunger signals, and you tend to just eat less in general, you tend to eat fewer carbs in general too, because you’re satiated, you don’t need more.
So more protein has, gosh, so many benefits. You know, it also means you don’t need to count your macros, you don’t need to count your calories. You’re just going to feel better. You’re going to notice that you’re getting results. You’re going to lose more weight. You’re going to improve your strength, you know, more protein plus strength training. This is like magic for weight loss, it just helps improve your metabolism. Helps improve fat burning. There’s so many benefits. So for runners, especially runners who want to lose weight, or if you’re a runner who maybe you don’t need to lose weight, but you want to maintain a lean, strong body, you don’t want to keep breaking yourself down. You want to recover faster. You want to make sure that you’re building lean muscle tissue, then it’s more protein for the win every time. Cool.
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Hope that was helpful, and love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
243. Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work
When it comes to weight loss tips, one principle stands out among all the others: counting calories. For decades, you’ve been told that the only way to lose weight is to make sure you count all …
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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 243 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work. So when it comes to weight loss tips, one principle stands out among all the others, counting calories. For decades, you’ve been told that the only way to lose weight is to make sure you count all your calories honestly. If this worked as advertised, we wouldn’t have a crisis of obesity here in this country, and no one would really struggle with their weight. The truth is, it doesn’t work. So today, why counting calories doesn’t work, and what you should probably do instead.
But first, if you’re interested in getting leaner, getting stronger, running faster or running longer, you need to change something. What do you need to change? Probably your nutrition plan, probably whether or not your strength training or how your strength training, probably how you’re approaching your running training, because doing the same things you’re doing right now is not going to get you new results. I think we all know that nothing changes if nothing changes. So the real secret here is to make changes, but stick with them. You got to make them last. You got to do them consistently. So doing new things consistently is really the goal. That’s what we’re really after here. Trying to do new things consistently on your own, it’s tough. It’s challenging. I get it. I tried. It doesn’t work. Didn’t work for me. It didn’t work for me, until I got some help. I got a coach. I got somebody there that was in my corner, that was showing me the way, that was telling me what to do, that was holding me accountable, that was giving me guidance, that was offering suggestions, that was keeping me motivated. Once I had a coach, everything changed for me. I needed someone there to tell me what to do when things weren’t working right, you know, somebody there to hold me accountable and say, Hey, did you do what you said you were going to do? Yes or no. So I made a lot of progress. Once I got a coach. I improved my eating, my running, my strength, all those things. I’ve had all kinds of coaches in my life. I’ve had a nutrition coach, I’ve had a strength coach, I’ve had a business coach, and these coaches have really changed who I am from the inside out. Why I decided to get into coaching, because I got such a great experience. I’ve had such great experiences with my coaches. So if you’re interested in getting some help becoming the most badass version of yourself, just go to my website, running leancoaching.com. Click on work with me. I’ll show you exactly what to do. I’ll show you exactly how to become that best version of yourself yet. Okay, that’s running leancoaching.com. Click on work with me. Cool.
Okay, this topic today is one that I’m pretty passionate about. I’ve got a few notes here, but I just have to tell you that I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’ve talked a little bit about this in the last episode of the podcast, I mentioned 10 tips to help runners lose weight, and one of them was about not putting yourself into a calorie deficit. You don’t really want to go into a calorie deficit. And it sparked a little bit of conversation online. And you know, some people are asking some questions and stuff, which I thought was really great, and I’ll get into that in a minute, but it got me really thinking about this whole idea of counting calories and I was like, why is this such a accepted method of losing weight and eating healthy is to just count your calories. Don’t restrict anything you’re eating, don’t change anything you’re eating. Just keep your calories to a certain level and you should be fine. Why is this so popular? Why is this something that everybody kind of talks about?
We’ve got programs like Weight Watchers with points and they’ve, you know, determined what foods are higher in calories, and those get a higher point level, and lower in calories get lower point level, and things like that. You know, we’ve taken out all the fat from all our foods and replaced it with sugar a lot of the time, but we’ve taken out all this fat because fat is high in calories. You’re going to be eating a lot of calories. And I was just thinking like, if this worked so well, if counting calories was the answer to all of our weight loss problems or overweight problems, nobody would be overweight. Nobody would struggle with gaining and losing weight constantly, there wouldn’t be an obesity crisis here in the US and in other countries. And I was just like, this is really interesting.
And one thing you know that I saw a while back, but I thought this was really fascinating, is that there’s an obesity epidemic amongst toddlers here in the US toddlers. So these are people that are not making their own decisions. They can’t count their calories anyway. So the whole idea of counting calories is very controversial, and I’m going to admit that, and what I might have to share with you guys today might go against a lot of what you know or have thought to be true, but one thing that I really want to start with is just saying like we have evolved as human beings to be really good at metabolizing certain foods and not good at metabolizing other kinds of foods. We’ve evolved over 1000s upon 1000s of years.
You know, we’ve been some form of human hominid, some sort of human being, for like, two and a half million years. So you can argue that our evolution started about two and a half million years ago, and we’ve never had to track calories before. You know, we never had MyFitnessPal until recently. Why, all of a sudden, is tracking all your food in an app necessary? Why all of a sudden do we need to be eating in a calorie deficit, and we better know all these numbers. You know, do all this math and figure out all these numbers in order to maintain a healthy weight as a human being, we’ve never had to do this in the history of our species before.
Were there overweight people in the past? Yeah, probably, especially once we started processing more foods and people were eating a lot more bread and sugar, let’s just say those were two things that started to cause some of the obesity in people and so but think about when we started eating those foods. It wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things, you know, maybe a few 100 or 1000 years ago, something like that. So just be thinking about, you know, the fact that we’ve never really had to count calories before, and now all of a sudden, everybody’s saying, well, that’s the only way that you can lose weight, is to count calories and listen. I was on board with all of that. I tried that for a long time.
I got an app. The app I was using was called Lose It. So it’s similar to my fitness pal or, you know, carb manager is another one that I like to use just for looking up foods and stuff like that. But I use this app called Lose It. And it was all about, okay, put in your weight loss goal. Okay, I want to lose, you know, 40 pounds. Okay, all right. Well, you just need, well, how much you working out every day? Oh, I’m doing this, and this is okay. So here’s what your daily calorie needs are. Let’s say it’s, you know, 2000 calories a day, and so you just need to be eating around 1700 or 1800 calories a day. Oh, okay, great, no problem. So I did that.
I tracked all my food, tracked all my calories, and then it asked you, okay, did you work out today? I sure did. I went and ran 10 miles today. Oh, well, good. You get another 1000 calories. Oh, awesome. I eat another 1000 calories of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or whatever. And so I did this, and I did all the math, right, and I was putting in all my all my numbers, and putting in all my food. And at the end of the day, I lost like zero weight. It did not change a thing for me. So doing all this math, counting all my calories, tracking all my food, meticulously tracking on my food for a long, long time, because after some time it wasn’t working.
I was like, I just have to do this longer, you know? And this went on for months. I want to say I did this for like, a year or something like that, and it didn’t work for me. And in the process, I was running and training for marathons, ultra marathons and things like that. And so I was doing a lot of training and gaining weight in the process. I’ve shared this before, and a lot of people that I talk to tell me, yeah, Patrick, the exact same thing happened to me. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. What the heck is going on? I should be losing weight. I know you should be according to the numbers, right? Right, but it doesn’t really work that way.
Now I need to say this, can you lose weight by limiting your calories? Yes, you can. Is it a good thing to do? I don’t believe so, because for a few reasons. Number one, it’s not sustainable, like you can’t just limit your calories and be able to maintain a calorie deficit for the rest of your life. You cannot do that if you want to lose weight and you’re trying to cut your calories, you’re going to get to this place where you’re cutting your calories probably too low. If you’re a runner, you probably shouldn’t be cutting your calories because you need the energy for running. But if you keep your calories too low for too long a time, you end up kind of slowing down your metabolism.
This is what happened to the people that are in like the biggest loser shows like that. They lose a ton of weight by dramatically cutting their calories and exercising like crazy, and they can burn some fat, and they do burn some fat, and they do lose some weight, but like 96% of the people on that show gain all the weight back, and then some. So they actually gain more because their metabolism slows down to the point where they can’t maintain that deficit anymore. And so let’s say you cut your calories to 1000 calories a day, and your body needs like 2000 calories a day. Well, your metabolism is going to start to slow down. To say, like, if we maintain this, if we keep doing this, we’re going to die. Like, your body will slow your metabolism down to match the energy that’s coming in. So that means that now your body’s only burning like 1200 calories a day, or 1000 calories a day, but you’re eating 1000 calories a day, so now weight loss stops, so now you got to start eating less again. Okay, well, I’ll just go to 800 calories a day. Great. Your body’s going to eventually slow down 800 calories a day.
And it takes time for that to happen. It’s not going to happen if you do that for a couple of days, or something like that. I mean, it takes time, but that’s the principle that a lot of people want to follow. They want to follow this principle of just eating less, eating less, eating less, it is not sustainable. They did a meta study that looked at hundreds of different diets. A meta study is a large study that looks at other studies. Okay, so they did a meta study on all these different diets, and they found that the one that had the most weight loss at the beginning was a calorie deficit. So cutting your calories does work to lose weight. They also showed from all these diets that the one that was the absolute worst in long term longevity was cutting your calories. So it does work.
You know, you can lose some weight in the beginning, but then you gain it back because of, you know, slowing down your metabolism, and that it’s just not really sustainable to continue to track your calories and cut your calories, at some point, you have to start eating more, and then you’re going to start to gain the weight again. And you’re probably going to gain it faster, because now your metabolism has slowed down. So this meta study showed that it was really good at initial weight loss, and I think that’s why a lot of people are so attracted to cutting calories, is that it does work, but it’s very short term. It’s not something that is sustainable.
Okay, so, like, can you track your calories forever? Do you really want to do that? I don’t want to do that. I don’t think it’s necessary. Again. Let’s go back to how we evolved as human beings. We’ve never had to track calories before. Why do we all of a sudden have to do this? And this whole idea is based on the energy balance theory.
The energy balance theory says, you know more energy going out than coming in, and you will lose weight. So if you exercise more, you can eat whatever you want, but as long as, you know, you burned X number of calories, you will not gain weight. And it’s a good theory, but it’s thought it’s flawed, because it’s assuming that we’re some sort of perfect vessel, like a steam engine that that works off of, you know, perfect principles of so much energy coming in, and then everything works perfectly, and we’re all the same, and then the energy going out, and we’re not steam engines, we’re very complicated, organic creatures, and we’re all different. We all have different genetics and different metabolisms and different food preferences and different cultures and things like that. We got to factor all this stuff in there.
So the energy balance theory, it’s a good theory, but it’s flawed. It’s much more complicated than that. The types of foods you eat matter. So if you ate nothing, but, you know, Twinkies and you were, you know, burning so many calories? Can you lose weight? I don’t know, but you know what? That’s gonna mess up your hunger signals. It’s gonna make you super hungry all the time. You’re not gonna have control over what you’re eating. You’re eating something that is really bad for you. You’re not getting the proper nutrition like there’s so many things we have to consider here. So just to eat a bunch of junk and say, Well, I’m not eating X number of calories, so it’s fine. It’s flawed.
And what happens when we eat certain foods? What happens to our hormones, our hunger signals? You know ghrelin as a hunger hormone. When you eat sugar, ghrelin is produced in mass quantities, so you become more hungry. That’s why, when you eat more sugar, you crave more sugar. You’re just hungrier in general, one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion, is to start your day with a high carbohydrate, high sugar meal, because then you’re setting yourself up for disaster. The rest of the day, you’re gonna be hungry the rest of the day. That’s why people can’t understand why somebody like me who does intermittent fasting, you know, and that just means I don’t eat breakfast. That’s the way I, you know, define it for me.
Anyway, I don’t eat breakfast. And people think I’m crazy because they can’t understand what it would be like to not eat breakfast because they have to start their day with a bunch of carbs, a bunch of sugar, and then they’re hungry the rest of the day. And so they just can’t imagine going until lunchtime without food, because they’re hungry all the time. But I’m telling you, once you stop eating all the sugar and you stop eating breakfast, you’re not going to be hungry all the time. You’re going to be very satisfied.
Another hormone we have to consider when we eat certain foods, like sugar, is leptin. Leptin is the fullness sensor. It’s a fullness hormone. And so when you eat certain foods, you get full, like if you eat steak, you can only eat so much steak, and then you’re going to get full. Chicken is another one, man I can eat a lot of food, but when it comes to something like dense protein, like chicken, I can only eat so much. And I’m like, Dude, I cannot eat any more of this. I am so full. But you give me a plate of pasta, man, it’s like, I can never stop eating it, because leptin, the hunger hormone, or, I’m sorry, the fullness hormone gets turned off or turned down when you start eating a lot of carbs and sugar.
So you’re more hungry because more ghrelin is being produced, less leptin is being produced, so you’re not feeling full. And this is a bad combination, because now you just, you’re more hungry, you’re going to end up eating way more than you should be eating, and your body is just not functioning the way it’s supposed to, right? So this is another reason why, you know, there’s more going on than just calories in, calories out. I believe that tracking your calories forever and going into some kind of calorie deficit and trying to count your calories is a very short term thing that you can do. I mean, maybe if you want to do it, just to get some data, good.
But listen, I think that it is very unsustainable. It’s very unsustainable. Do you want to track your calories for the rest of your life? Because if that is the case, then, I mean, go for it, if that’s what you want to do, but there’s got to be a better way, right?
Related to that, though, somebody asked a question on a post from my last podcast where I was talking about, you know, not going into a calorie deficit. That’s a mistake that a lot of runners make, is they want to lose weight, but then they think they need to cut calories, and you shouldn’t cut your calories, you shouldn’t go into a calorie deficit. And this person asked a question, if the idea is not to go into calorie deficit, shouldn’t you track your calories so you know that you’re not going to calorie deficit. So I get where this person is coming from with this, and it is a good question. But listen, if you’re eating to satiety, you really shouldn’t need to track anything. Some days, you’re going to eat more because you might have a higher training volume.
So you might be in the throes of marathon training, and so you’re going to be hungry, and you might eat more food. So your food volume might go up. Sometimes you might be at a lower place in your training volume, and you’ll be eating less food either way. It’s fine. Listen to your body. Eat until you feel full. Don’t go beyond that. Though. Eat whole foods. Eat real food. Get plenty of fat and protein in your diet. And you shouldn’t really need to track anything. You don’t have to track calories if you’re eating the proper foods, the proper human diet, which, in my opinion, is things like eggs, meat, fish, dairy, you know, avocados, fruit, vegetables, whole foods. Eat food that still looks like food, food that our ancient ancestors would say, oh, I understand what that is. I’ve seen that before.
What would happen if, instead of eating all the sugar and the carbs all the time, you just started eating more satiating foods? Fat and protein are very satiating, so when you’re eating more nutrient dense, more satiating foods, you’re going to be less hungry. You’re going to feel more full when you do eat, you will naturally be eating the right amount of food for yourself, because you’re going to start to get in tune with what your body really needs. Because now your hunger and fullness signals are not all messed up, so there shouldn’t be any need to track calories.
Now you know, if you’re one of these people, that you’re like, well, what about the numbers? Like, I just need to know the numbers. Then go for it. You can help yourself figure out how much, you know, what the numbers say you should be eating every day, and then stick to that if you want to do that great, but you don’t have to. If you’re eating the right foods. You shouldn’t need to do that.
One of the big problems is we are a society who is attracted to hyper palatable foods. Hyper palatable foods are foods that have been engineered in a laboratory to be crave worthy, to be something that we cannot get enough of. You know, right on the can of Pringles, I believe it is. I don’t know. I don’t buy that stuff. It says, like, once you pop, you can’t stop, or there’s another potato chip or something that says, bet you can’t eat just one. They’re telling you on the label, hey, we’ve designed this so that you cannot stop eating it. It’s that good. And it’s true. You start eating Pringles. You can eat a whole sleeve of those things.
You know, I used to be able to do that. I used to love Pringles for road trips because I just put that can of whatever they’re called. I don’t, they’re not really potato chips. Is there even potatoes in there? I don’t know. Probably put that thing between your legs while you’re driving, and just, you’re just good to go. You just keep dipping in there, and, you know, just eating all the Pringles out of the tube, whatever. So those foods are very hyper palatable. They’re highly processed, they’re full of carbohydrates and sugars, and they taste amazing, and they make you crave more of those foods.
So when you’re eating a lot of that stuff, eating less or eating the right amount of food is going to be very difficult for you. Instead, stick with those nutrient dense, satiating foods that have good sources of protein and fat. Protein is going to be one of the best things you can do for yourself, eat more protein. Just make that one change, starting this week, just start eating more protein, eggs, meat, fish, dairy. You’re going to be less hungry. You’re going to be more satisfied when you do eat, you’re getting nutrient dense foods that your body actually needs. There shouldn’t be any need to drop calories once you start eating more protein and good sources of fat too. Once you start eating good sources of fat and enough protein, you’re going to start to feel so much better.
So this idea that we have to count calories in order to be healthy human beings in order to lose weight, it’s flawed. I just don’t think it’s sustainable. You know? I don’t think it really works. If it worked so well, there would be no problems with people gaining weight or struggling to lose weight. So I think instead, a better idea is to focus on eating whole foods. Stay away from highly processed foods. I mean, if you stay away from foods in a package, for the most part, I think you’re going to be in a much better place.
And I don’t mean like, oh, it’s a piece of cheese and it’s, you know, got, you know, what, clear plastic over it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about those foods with all the ingredients in them, you know, highly processed, highly palatable foods. Stay away from that stuff. Focus on more fat and proteins, you’re going to feel much better. It really is the key to losing weight and being able to keep it off long term.
And this is what I work on with my clients. We figure out what foods work for them, you know. And a lot of it is this, from these different categories I’m talking about here, you know, eggs, meat, fish, dairy, that kind of thing. And it’s just so, so much easier to do that and definitely more sustainable.
Okay, so that’s your work for this week. Get out there and start eating more protein. Start eating real food. Start eating more satiating, more nutrient dense foods. Stay away from these hyper palatable, packaged processed foods, and don’t count your calories, just stop doing that. You know? It just really doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable. It’s not something that I think you’re going to be able to do long term.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I know you got this. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you in the next one.
242. Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Runners
There is so much contradictory advice out there when it comes to losing weight. It’s really hard to know what’s right and what’s just BS. I’ve always taken the approach that you need to ignore …
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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 242, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today my top 10 weight loss tips for runners. So there is so much contradictory advice out there when it comes to losing weight, it’s really hard to know what’s right and what’s just BS. And I’ve always taken the approach that you actually need to ignore most of the info that’s spewed out there on the internet and social media, and just figure out what works best for you. We’re all different. There’s simply not one approach that’s going to work perfectly for everybody. So with that principle in mind, for this episode of the podcast, I want to share with you my top 10 weight loss tips for runners, and these tips should work for most of you, not all of you. So as always, try some things and figure out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Cool.
But first, if you want to get leaner, stronger, run faster, run longer, you need to make some changes. Making change is hard, but listen, if you don’t change, nothing changes. Nothing changes, if nothing changes, I think we all understand that the real secret, though, is to make changes and make them consistently. And that’s where coaching helps you, because making change and doing things new things consistently is hard. That part is hard. So if you have a coach there, helping you, keeping you on track, showing you the path, showing you what to do, holding your hand, walking you through the whole process. It makes making change and making change consistent, much, much easier. Getting a coach was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. This is why I’m a coach today, because I got so much out of my coaching. It was such a powerful life changing experience for me that I decided to devote my life to helping other people by coaching them through their achieving their goals. You know, whether it’s losing weight or improving their health, improving their strength, getting faster, whatever it is. So if you’re ready to start making some change and you want help making those changes stick, making them consistent. Reach out to me. Just go to my website, running, leancoaching.com, click on work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet.
Cool. Okay, so today, Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Runners. So I wanted to put together a list of what I believe are some of the best changes that you can make as a runner, if you are interested in losing weight, and if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably a runner, and you’re probably interested in losing some weight. And there’s a lot of misinformation out there, a lot of contradicting information out there. And you might be just sitting there, like, what do I do with all of this? And you know, there’s a lot of polarizing content out there, you know, that kind of divides people.
Oh, you have to eat nothing but plants. And this other group says you have to eat nothing but meat, and you can never deviate. And they will tell you. Each of those people will tell you that their way is the right way and the only healthy way. And is that true? Because they can’t both be right. So I take a lot of the advice that’s spewed out there with a grain of salt, and I want you to do the same thing. I want you to kind of make up your own mind when it comes to what works best for you, because only you will know what works best for you, but with that principle in mind, with the principle of like, individuality and like, knowing that there is no one size fits all. When it comes to this stuff, I wanted to put together what I thought was a pretty decent list of principles that tips really, that I think will work for most people, you know. And if you’re somebody that’s been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know a lot of the principles that I teach when it comes to, you know, how many carbs you should be eating, and how often you should be eating, and some things like that.
But I wanted to put together a kind of a bullet list of action items that you can start kind of working through. So try some of these things. You don’t have to try them all, but you can try some of these and see if they have a positive effect on you, if they work, great, if they don’t, don’t do it. You know, it’s there. I’m not telling you that all of these are going to work perfectly for everybody, but in my years and years of coaching hundreds and hundreds of runners, I’ve decided that there are some principles that seem to apply to most people. So that’s the kind of thing I’m sharing with you today. So these are my top 10 weight loss tips for runners. Again, you’ve got to figure out what works for you, but try some of these.
So number one is going to be to not cut calories. Don’t just cut your calories. This is the typical weight loss advice that’s out there. If you want to lose weight, you got to cut your calories. And the reason I’m saying don’t do this is because it doesn’t really work, not long term. The reason most people tell you to cut calories to lose weight is because it is a very effective way in the short term of losing weight, you can lose weight pretty quickly if you cut your calories. So if you’re going from eating 2000 calories a day and you drop down to like 800 calories a day, I’m gonna tell you right now, you’re going to lose weight.
The problem, though, is that if you keep this up, your metabolism will slow down. So instead of burning 2000 calories a day, now you’re only burning 800 calories a day. Now you got to, like, cut your calories back even more if you want to continue to lose weight. And you can see where this is going, like, there’s a point where you’re just going to start gaining weight again, so you don’t want to slow your metabolism down. Right? So that’s one problem. Another problem is that, yes, it is one of the most effective short term ways of losing weight. It’s also the least effective method of keeping weight off long term of all the diets out there, and they’ve done massive studies on all these different diets, and they have shown that, yes, cutting calories is a great way to lose weight short term, but it’s also the most problematic, like people gain the most weight back the fastest when they do nothing but cut calories. So it’s not a very viable long term solution, because you can’t keep your body in a calorie deficit forever. If you do, you’re going to risk that slower metabolism. And it’s just, it’s, it’s a vicious cycle to get into.
The other reason why I don’t want you to cut your calories is because it’s not really recommended for runners. If you’re somebody that’s working out and running consistently, 3, 4, 5, 6 days a week, you need energy. You need the calories you need to recover from your workouts. You need the energy to perform properly in your workouts. And if you are not giving your body what it really needs, and you’re kind of starving yourself like you’re just trying to drop the calories so you can lose a bunch of weight, you’re going to suffer from a running standpoint.
So we don’t want to cut calories, so just don’t do it. It’s very, it’s not recommended, and it’s, actually, it’s very bad in the long term, like it just does not work long term, and it’s just not good. It’s not going to help you improve your running. Okay?
So instead, number two is to adopt a diet that just keeps your blood sugar levels normalized, right? So we want stable blood sugar, because when you have stable blood sugar, that means you also have stable insulin levels. Insulin is the hormone that lowers your blood sugar. And if you eat a bunch of sugar, high-carbohydrate meal, your blood sugar goes way up and so does insulin. Insulin goes way up and it stays up until it brings your blood sugar back down. Every time insulin is present, though, your body is storing fat, not burning fat. If you want to keep your body in fat burning mode, then you want to keep your insulin levels low. So we want to keep our blood sugar chill. We just want it to be low and we want it to be chill throughout the day. We don’t want to have these big spikes and crashes in our blood sugar.
Because when you have spikes in blood sugar, you feel good because you’re energized, but then you come down and your blood sugar goes below baseline. That’s when people say, Oh, my blood sugar is low because they’re, they’re going so high, they’re, they’re raising their blood sugar so high, so much insulin is being produced to push that blood sugar back down, that the blood sugar actually gets too low, and then you’ve got to eat some sugar or something like that, just to feel normal. Again. Okay, this is a bad life cycle to be in right here. Okay, so we want to keep your body in fat burning mode. That means keep the blood sugar low, keep the insulin levels low. We don’t want to keep our body in fat storing mode. That’s high blood sugar, high insulin levels.
Okay, also, when you adopt a diet that keeps your blood sugar low, it means you’re going to be less hungry throughout the day, and you’re going to have fewer cravings, because high blood sugar means you’re putting your body into an unnatural state of being more hungry. You also produce more ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, and you suppress the production of leptin, which is your fullness receptor. It’s a fullness hormone. So more ghrelin, more hungry, less leptin, you know, less full. Okay, and so you’re going to have cravings like crazy. You’re going to be hungry all the time. So high blood sugar means that you’re just going to be more hungry. You’re going to be more hungry, you’re going to be eating more food, you’re going to be craving more sugar and more carbs, and it’s just, again, the vicious cycle to get into.
So instead, adopt a diet that just keeps the blood sugar low, and you’re going to see a lot of this just take care of itself, which leads me to number three, which is to get fat adapted. This is just training your body to burn more body fat. We all have tons of body fat stored on our bodies. Even the leanest people out there who maybe have 3% or 8% body fat or something like that, you have plenty of body fat on you to sustain you for weeks without food. Burning fat is the natural state for us as human beings. We are really good fat burners. We’ve just gotten away from that.
You know, fat burning is like we eat some food, some of the energy that we eat, especially when we eat the sugar and carbohydrates, some of that energy gets stored, gets used, and then some of it gets stored as body fat. So we use some of it in our muscles. We use some of it when we are in activity, or just like keeping our body running throughout the day. We use some of that energy from food. Some of that energy gets stored as fat. The problem is that we should be tapping into that stored body fat as a fuel source later, but we’re not. We’re just keep adding more wood to the wood pile, so to speak. So we just keep piling on more fat. We’re not burning the fat. So we want to get into the fat burning state. We want to get our bodies fat adapted.
Fat Burning means you’re going to lose the weight. Like if you want to lose weight, you got to burn the fat, right? So if we want to get fat adapted, we want to train our body to burn more fat. Diet has a lot to do with that. Also, when you’re burning more fat, it helps to improve your running. You improve your endurance. You have this natural fuel that’s on your body all the time, and you don’t have the need for as much fuel. From a running standpoint, you can run a half marathon, a marathon, with very little fuel, as opposed to people who are carb adapted, who need to eat tons of carbs just to keep themselves going for the run. So it helps you to lose weight. It helps to improve your running. Why wouldn’t you want to get fat adapted? Okay, that’s number three.
Number four is to time your carbs around your workouts. So this is where this isn’t about no carbs. This isn’t about never eating any sugar or any carbohydrates ever again in your life. We eat some carbs, right? We just want to time them around our workouts. So you might go a few days where you’re pretty low carb throughout the week, and then you have a long run on a Saturday. So the night before, you might increase your carb intake. The morning of a long run, you might increase your carb intake during that long run. You’re probably gonna take in some carbs, and this isn’t a ton. I’m not talking about getting 300-500 grams of carbs a day or something like that, but we want to be mindful that just because we’re doing a low carb thing doesn’t mean we don’t ever eat carbs. We do. We use carbs for fuel.
Runners will benefit greatly from having two sources of fuel, from being really good fat burners and from adding some carbohydrate into the mix. You want to earn your carbs. So you earn your carbs by using, you know, having a workout where you’re going to be using them as fuel, and then you burn the carbs, so you’re actually going to metabolize those carbohydrates during a long run or a hard workout or something like that. So that you’re, you’re not just storing a bunch of that carb energy as fat, right? So you earn your carbs by requiring them for fuel, and you metabolize them. You burn them pretty quickly during activity. So you don’t have this huge surplus of carb energy that you’re storing as fat. Cool. So earn your carbs and burn your carbs. Time your carbs around your workouts.
Number five, you’ve got to prioritize protein. Talk about this before on the podcast here. Listen. Running is a catabolic activity. Catabolic activities are ones that break down muscle tissue. So what we want to do is we have to. To offset that, we want to build lean muscle. We want to maintain and build muscle. And a lot of people will tell you again, this is why you shouldn’t run, why you’re trying to lose weight. Because if you’re just cutting calories, a lot of the weight that you lose is going to be muscle tissue, and then running is just going to make that worse. But if you’re doing this the right way, you’re not cutting your calories, you’re adding more protein into your diet. You will actually build lean muscle through this process.
More protein also means that you’re going to feel more full when you eat. You know, protein has a much higher satiety point than carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are not satisfying, like you can really overeat carbohydrates, and then they make you more hungry throughout the day. When you’re eating more protein and good quality fats too, you’re just less hungry throughout the day, and you’re going to feel more full when you eat, and you’re going to recover better from your workouts, because you’re getting, you’re providing your muscles with what they need to recover properly from your hard runs, long runs, hard workouts. So you have to make protein the priority at every meal, and make sure that you’re getting your right amount of protein every day.
And then that leads me to number six, which is you also have to add strength training into your weekly training schedule. So whatever you’re training for, if you’re ,you know, running a 5k or an ultra marathon, or anything in between, you have to make sure, even if you’re not a runner at all, you have to make sure that you are adding some sort of consistent strength training to your regimen on a weekly basis, you should be doing some strength training two or three times a week. At least twice a week would be the bare minimum that you should be doing some kind of strength training.
You have to include strength training into your training schedule, because you want to be gaining muscle, you want to be building lean muscle, not getting big. We’re not talking about becoming a huge bodybuilder. That’s very difficult to do if you’re an endurance athlete, but we want you to be stronger, because when you’re stronger, this means you’re going to offset that catabolic nature of running, so you’re going to not lose muscle through this process. And a lot of times, you can become anabolic, which means you’re building muscle. You get stronger. This means you’re going to have a faster metabolism. You’re going to burn more fat, you’re going to lose more weight.
When you’re stronger, you are at less risk of injury. You improve your endurance when you’re stronger, because stronger muscles take longer to fatigue than weak muscles, you become a faster runner. Then some other side effects that just happen to come along with regular strength training is less stress. You’re in a better mood, you’re just happier. You’re nicer to be around, you sleep better and you live longer. So strength training absolutely has to be something that you add into your weekly training schedule. If you’re not doing it, make sure you start doing it today.
Number seven is going to be to eat less often, not eat less, but eat less often. And this is one of those things where you may have been told, Oh, you need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism burning hot. You know, this is just gym bro science. You know, there’s really no science behind this, the human body. If you look at our digestive systems, they’re really designed to work two or three times a day at the max, so eating six or eight times a day is just not recommended. Again, every time you eat some food, you’re going to raise your blood sugar, you’re going to raise insulin, and you’re going to be kind of storing some fat. So the fewer times a day you’re eating actually is better for you. And this doesn’t mean you eat, you know, one tiny little meal per day or something like that. We want to make sure you’re getting enough calories and enough protein throughout the day. So eat two, three times a day, twice, seems to be what a lot of people love doing, and it just feels really good, and you’re getting what you need at those two meals.
But this is a great way to keep your body burning fat. You want to space out your meals so that in between meals, your body is getting into that fat burning state. And if you want to lose weight, you know this is a great way of helping to enhance that. And you’ll get fat adapted faster. You’ll be burning more fat. You’ll get all the energy you need. You’ll get all the calories you need. You don’t need to worry about that.
But another great side effect of eating less often is that it helps you start to maintain, get back control of your eating, and maintain control of your eating instead of being an automatic eater where you just, every time you think about food, or you get stressed, or you get bored, you go and you grab something from the pantry. You know you’re just munching on stuff all day long. You become a more mindful eater. So you learn how to not snack throughout the day. You learn how to skip breakfast. You learn how to control your eating to where you’re eating a couple of times a day. It makes you a much more evolved eater, and not just a reactive eater. Okay, so this is really important, so eat less often. That’s number seven.
Number eight. This one might surprise you. Number eight is to not be too restrictive. Don’t be too restrictive with your diet. Allow yourself the indulgence every now and then. Listen, whatever your diet is, the formula that works for you, it has to be sustainable for you. And what I have found over many years of coaching people is that if it’s too restrictive, it’s not going to be sustainable long term for most people.
Now we do some things where we might cut the carbs pretty low for the first 30 days or something, and then we can, like, start adding in some of these little treat meals, or whatever you want to call them, treats, cheat meals, exceptions to the plan, whatever you want to call them. But if you want to stay in the game long term, you have to have this little release valve every now and then, from my experience, and I need this too. It works for me every now and then I’m like, you know, I’m really craving pizza. I need to eat some pizza, and I’ll just go eat some pizza. It’s something I do a couple times a year. Big whoop. It doesn’t throw me off. It might set me back a day or two, but then I’m right back on my plan.
I like the 90/10 approach instead of 80/20. 80/20 is a little too loosey goosey, in my opinion. But if you try the 90/10 approach, this equals maybe one meal a week that you can have an exception to your plan, right? So there’s too many people out there, too many diets that are promoting that you never, ever deviate from the plan. And this just is not something that is sustainable for most people. And I’ve worked with hundreds of people who’ve had much more success long term when they have the cheat meal every now and then, you have to learn how to do it properly. You can’t just go crazy every weekend and just binge out on everything. I’ve tried that approach, that does not work, but you definitely need to, like work on this, and it’s something you have to sort of practice and ease your way into. But being too restrictive too long is is definitely not something that’s going to work long term. Okay, that was number eight.
Number nine. Keep on running like you just have to keep up with the running. Lots of dietitians, lots of weight loss coaches out there tell you don’t run if you’re trying to lose weight. They tell you not to run because they don’t want to restrict calories, because that’s going to have a negative impact on running, which we’re not doing that. We’re not restricting calories, so we don’t need to worry about that.
And a lot of these people will tell you, well, you should only be focusing on one thing at a time. And, you know, I kind of get where they’re coming from, instead of, like, focusing on running and lifting weights, and, you know, your diet, they want you to just focus on one thing. Just focus on your diet, and don’t do anything else. But listen. I know from experience that you listening to this podcast can absolutely focus on more than one thing at a time. You’re a runner, so you like, you love running. You love strength training. You love working on your nutrition. You love cross training. This is how you live your life every single day.
Why now should I tell you that you should only be doing one thing at a time, right? Consistent running, also, it’s going to help you to burn more fat, which is going to equal more weight loss. But also, don’t forget, with all the running that you’re doing, don’t forget your speed work, long, slow, easy running is great, but be sure to add in some moderate to high intensity intervals, like sprint repeats and tempo runs, to help improve your cardiovascular system, to help improve your heart rate, we want lower heart rate to have a higher VO2 Max, improved lactate clearing, not to mention you get faster when you’re doing the speed work.
Also, little side note here, faster running makes your slow, easy runs feel very, very easy. So if you want running to just feel easier in general, make sure you’re doing the speed work every week. All right, okay.
And number 10, and maybe the most important tip I have for you today is don’t be in a hurry. Weight loss takes time. How much time? Who knows? It’s different for everyone. So just commit to the process. Don’t compare yourself to where you are today to where somebody else is. Just compare yourself to where you were yesterday and just always be trying to improve. Don’t set arbitrary weight loss goals, especially with dates like, oh, I need to lose 40 pounds in four months. There’s just too many factors involved with something like this, and who knows how fast your body’s going to respond to these changes.
Instead, commit to the process of change. Do what you need to do today to stay on track. Don’t worry about tomorrow until tomorrow. This has to be a lifestyle change if you want it to last. People that lose weight fast with like liposuction or weight loss surgery, they don’t learn how to maintain it, because they’re not learning what works for them. They’re not learning new habits and new behaviors. You have to learn how to make this work for you long term, and you know what, that takes time.
You need to learn how to shop differently, how to handle vacations and holidays, how to handle family functions, dinners out with friends, how to handle stressful situations in your life. There’s always going to be some kind of stressful situations in your life. You need to learn how to get through those without totally going off plan. So every day, just make a commitment to being the best you that you can be from now until forever.
So that’s the good news, and the bad news is that this doesn’t change. You just keep working on this. You just keep going. There’s no finish line. There’s no destination you’re trying to get to. This is who you are. This is how you live your life from here on out, right? It’s good news and bad news because, you know, it’s bad news because there is no finish line. You’re just going to continue doing this. But it’s good news because this is how you get to live your life now. This is how you approach everything. You’re just a, you’re a different person now, and you’re a healthy eater, and you commit to your workouts, and this is just who you are now.
Actually, it makes going through your life much easier. You don’t have to think about it anymore. You don’t have to question these decisions you’re making. You’re just gonna do it. You’re just gonna show up for yourself every day. So commit to the process. Don’t ever, ever, ever quit. Don’t give up on yourself. Okay, if you don’t give up on yourself, eventually you will reach your weight loss goal, but you just can’t take your head out of the game. You have to keep your head in the game.
Okay, cool. Those are my top 10 tips, my top 10 weight loss tips for runners. That’s all I got for you today. I know you got this. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
239. Replay: The Myths and Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
There seems to be a lot of misleading information out there about intermittent fasting. People think it will mess up your metabolism, or it’s unsafe, or it’s just plain crazy. The truth is very …
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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 239, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. Today is a replay. It is the Myths and Benefits of Intermittent Fasting.
So there seems to be a lot of misleading information out there about intermittent fasting. Some people think it will mess up your metabolism. Other people think it’s unsafe, and still others think it’s just plain crazy. The truth is very different.
Intermittent Fasting is not only safe, but it provides some pretty amazing health benefits, especially when combined with a low carb diet. So today I’m going to separate fact from fiction and share all of the incredible positive health benefits that intermittent fasting provides.
But first, if you want to get leaner or stronger, if you want to run faster or longer, you need to change what you’re doing. Doing the same things over and over and over again will not get you new results. Nothing changes. If nothing changes, I think we all get this right, but the real secret here is doing new things consistently. So if you decide you want to get stronger and you go to the gym once a month, that’s not going to get you there. You need to adopt new behaviors, and you need to start doing things consistently.
And this is where coaching really helps, trying to stay on track yourself. It’s very difficult, I know because I’ve tried it like a million times. I’d start something, I’d do it for a bit, then I’d go right back to doing the same old stuff and never really make any progress toward my goals. But once I got a coach, everything changed. Now I had someone guiding me every step of the way, holding me accountable, calling me out when I started to slip back into old behaviors, and most importantly, someone that would never, ever, ever, let me quit. So if you’re ready to start doing new things and making sure you’re doing them consistently, let’s do the work to get you there. Just go to my website, running, leancoaching.com, click on, work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet.
Cool. Okay, so today, the Myths and Benefits of Intermittent Fasting, I realized in going through previous episodes that I haven’t done a podcast on intermittent fasting in a very, very long time, and this is important information, especially if you are a runner and you are interested in losing weight, and you’ll see why when I go through all the different benefits and the myths here today, and there’s a lot of confusing information about intermittent fasting, and people think that it’s crazier that you’re going to die if you don’t eat, you know, six or eight times a day. And this is not crazy. This is something we’ve been doing as human beings forever.
I’m going to get into all that in this episode. And I want to do more episodes upcoming about intermittent fasting, because I think it’s an important topic. But for now, please enjoy this replay of Episode 36 the Myths and Benefits of Intermittent Fasting.
Okay, let’s get into the topic today. So today I’m talking about the myths and benefits of intermittent fasting. And like I said, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Some people think this is just crazy. You can’t do it. I’m gonna address a bunch of these different myths here in a minute, but I wanna back up just a little bit and explain how we lose weight. Okay?
So one thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that there are systems in place in our bodies that either promote fat storage or promote fat burning. Okay? If we want to lose weight, we want to do that whole fat burning thing, right? We want to burn the fat. We don’t want to hold on to the fat. So our body, we have two primary sources of fuel. We have glucose and we have fat. Glucose comes from eating carbohydrates. Mainly, okay, you eat carbohydrates. Any carbohydrates you turn into glucose in your system, and they get stored as fuel, as glycogen, or they get stored as fat. Okay, so that’s carbohydrates, and then we have fat.
This is our own body fat that we can use for fuel. The problem is we can only use one of these fuel sources at a time, pretty much okay. Like in order to burn fat, you basically have to burn through the available glucose first. Okay, so if you are eating a diet high in carbohydrates, then you know getting that glucose out of your system is key so that you can actually access your own body fat for fuel. Okay?
Eating a diet high in carbohydrates makes it very difficult to lose weight. If you’ve been listening to me for a while, you understand this, we’re always going to want to use the available glucose as the primary fuel. That’s just the way our bodies are designed. Okay, we’re designed to use available glucose/glycogen first. So when, when you have high glucose levels in your body, when you’re eating a lot of carbs and sugar, then you cannot access your fat stores, you know, maybe a little bit, but not really.
When glucose is high, insulin is also high. Insulin is produced when our blood sugar goes up. Insulin, its job is to bring blood sugars down. But when insulin is high, it puts our body into this fat storage mode. We hold on to our body fat. When insulin is high, when glucose is high, insulin is high, we’re in fat storage mode. When glucose is low, when we don’t eat a lot of carbohydrates, when we don’t have a lot of high blood sugar. When glucose is low, insulin is low, then our bodies are in fat burning mode.
Okay, so the key to this whole deal is keep insulin levels low, keep them low. And the way we do this, there’s two ways that we lower insulin. Keep it low. We don’t eat carbohydrates, and we don’t eat, insulin will remain low as long as our blood sugar is low, as long as our blood sugar is normal, okay, it’s not elevated. Blood sugars go high when we eat a lot of carbohydrates, especially highly refined carbohydrates, the higher we find the carbohydrate, like pure sugar, will spike our blood sugar like crazy, which spikes our insulin like crazy, and then we’re in fat storage mode, like crazy.
All right, when we don’t eat carbohydrates, it keeps our blood sugars normalized. Another way of keeping blood sugars normalized is to not eat anything at all, because every time you eat some food, your blood sugar goes up a little bit. So if you eat you know, a pile of broccoli and a steak, your blood sugar is going to go up a little bit, which is normal, insulin will get produced a little bit, which is normal, and it’ll come back down pretty quickly, which is normal. Everything is like working the way it should.
But if you ate a big bowl of, you know, sugary cereal and a glass of orange juice, your blood sugar’s gonna go up like crazy. Insulin is gonna go up like crazy, and then we’re in that insidious fat storage mode again. Okay, but anytime we eat any food at all, blood sugar goes up a little bit. So one awesome way of keeping blood sugar down, keeping insulin down, getting us into fat burning mode, is to not eat anything at all.
Now I’m not talking about, you know, going on a 12 day fast or something like that. We’re talking about intermittent fasting. I’m going to break this all down in just a minute, but I just want you to understand that, for example, your blood sugars are very low in the morning because you have been fasting all night long. So anyway, when we combine these two things, a low carbohydrate, high fat diet with intermittent fasting. Both of these things work to regulate our blood sugars, to keep our insulin levels in check, and to put us into fat burning mode.
So when we combine these two things, it’s like rocket fuel for your overall health and for your weight loss. This approach will keep blood sugars normalized, it’ll keep insulin down, and you’ll be able to access your own body fat for fuel. So what is intermittent fasting? At its simplest, it just means this, don’t eat anything. It’s just like not eating for periods of time, okay? The intermittent part means we don’t do it all the time. We do it intermittently, sporadically or periodically. So it’s basically periodically we don’t eat. That’s all that it means.
Okay, a little bit about fasting in general. So fasting is something that is in our DNA. It’s something we’ve done as humans for millions of years. It’s not some new thing that was created by the CrossFit community or anything like that. Okay, I love the CrossFit people, by the way. I think they’re awesome, but they love, they love the whole low carb, high fat diet. They love their intermittent fasting. But people just have some notions that this is like all new. It’s not. We’ve been doing this forever. We didn’t evolve as humans by eating three meals a day, two snacks a day and dessert. We didn’t we didn’t have that much food available to us.
We scavenged, we hunted, we foraged and we ate and then we fasted. This is the way we’ve evolved as humans to get to where we are today. We feasted and then we fasted. This was beautiful. Everything was working beautifully for us. You know, we didn’t have ways of preserving foods until much later in our evolution. So when we had food available, we ate it right. Another kind of historical part of fasting is that cultures around the world today have been practicing some form of fasting for many 1000s of years. Fasting has been used therapeutically since at least the fifth century, when the Greek physician Hippocrates recommended to his patients abstinence from food or drink if they had certain types of illnesses.
So you know, back in the fifth century, Hippocrates was saying, like, Hey, you want to get better, don’t eat or drink anything. Religions have been practicing fasting for millennia. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Jainism, Hinduism, have all been practicing some form of fasting for 1000s of years. Hindus, for example, are used to fasting on Ekadashi Titi, which is the 11th day of the lunar cycle. So they fast every 11th day during the season of Lent. Catholics give up certain foods or practice fasting. In Judaism, they observe fasting on six different days of the year, like Yom Kippur, for example, the entire month of Ramadan in Islam is a period of penance or penitence, sorry, and total fasting from dawn to dusk.
And then arguably three of the most influential people in the history of the world, Jesus, the prophet Muhammad and the Buddha. They didn’t all agree on a whole lot, but they all agreed on one thing, the power of fasting. And here’s something else that I just want you to understand about fasting. You are already doing it. You fast every day, you know, unless you eat while you’re sleeping, like if you get up in the middle of the night and eat something, go back to bed. Most of us, I would say almost all of us, fast for around seven or eight hours a day or more.
You know, you probably don’t eat a couple hours before you go to bed, and maybe you don’t eat as soon as you wake up in the morning. So it might be 10 hours a day you’re fasting anyway, okay? And the word itself breakfast means to break your fast, right? So this fasting is not something that is harmful, it’s not something that is weird, and it’s not something that is new. We’ve been doing this for a long, long time.
So I want to talk about some of the myths that people have around fasting and tell you what the truth is around some of these things. So here’s one of the first myths that people have, they say it’s not safe. Fasting is not safe. Well, like I just said, You’re doing this every day. Is that not safe? And we’re not talking about going weeks without food here. This is intermittent fasting. This is sporadically not eating. You can safely go for days, weeks, probably even months without any food, depending on how much body fat that you have on you. And I’m not suggesting you do this. I’m not suggesting you try to go weeks or months without food, but you could easily go a couple days without food with no, you know, any deleterious effects.
Okay, can fasting be dangerous? Yes, if done recklessly, sure, just about anything can be done with reckless abandon and get you into trouble. And consider the story of the marathon. According to legend in 490 BC, the Greek soldier, Fidipities ran approximately 26 miles from the battlefield near the town of Marathon to Athens. He was delivering a message, the news of the defeat of the Persians. When he got there, he shouted, Nike, which means victory, and then he promptly keeled over and died.
People say, well, yeah, you shouldn’t run marathons. They’re not safe. Look what happened to this guy and like, if we look at this in today’s terms, if, if you took a sedentary, middle aged, out of shape person and said, go run a marathon right now, as hard as you can, you know, at your maximum speed, without any type of preparation or knowledge, that person might very well keel over and die too.
Okay, but here’s the thing, just about anything can be done recklessly, can be done in a way that is not safe, but millions of people practice some form of fasting every single day on this planet, and have zero problems. We have been doing fasting as a species for millions of years without any problems.
Okay, but just to address the safety issue one step further. So there’s this guy back in 1965 His name is Angus Barbieri, Scottish dude, and he was very overweight. He was obese at the time. You know, ‘65 people weren’t this big. He weighed 456 pounds. And his doctor suggested he go on a fast. And so he fasted for like, 10 days or something like that. And he loved it. He felt great. He was losing some weight, and he decided to keep going, and with his doctor’s supervision, he went on a total fast for 382 days.
Think about that. This dude went over a year without eating any food. He was living on his own body fat that whole time now, he was drinking water, obviously, coffee, tea. He had to take vitamins and electrolytes. You got to have, you know, some kind of nutrition coming in. But he lost like 276 pounds by living off of his own body fat for over a year. This is crazy, right? And I’m not suggesting again that anybody try this, but I just want you to see that. You know, this guy had Doctor supervision, but you can go for a long time living off your own body fat.
Okay, so our fat is a great source of fuel for our bodies and for our brains and this is the way we’re designed as people. So that’s kind of a myth. Number one, that fasting isn’t safe. I think we can all agree that fasting is perfectly safe, and something we do all the time. Another myth is that fasting makes you go into starvation mode. I don’t even get this, it’s not starving yourself. You don’t go into starvation mode when you fast. Your body has plenty of fuel on board in the form of your own body fat. We all do. Even the leanest marathon runners have like 8% of body fat, plenty of fat on them to to last a long, long time without eating anything.
Calorie restriction diets actually will put you into starvation mode. And they did these experiments which sound horrible, the Minnesota starvation experiment, where they took a group of men and they gave them a very, very limited calorie diet, and they went into starvation mode. They became extremely weak, lethargic, emaciated, and were literally starving to death.
But here’s the thing, there’s a big difference between calorie restriction, severe calorie restriction and zero food, something hormonally changes when you don’t eat anything. Calorie restriction puts you into starvation mode, because your body can’t make the necessary hormonal adaptations that you get when you’re fasting when you have zero calories coming in. So you’re never actually getting to the point where you’re using your own body fat for fuel. Everything changes when you go to zero calories.
So fasting, the body switches from burning glucose to burning your own stored body fat. And this is exactly what your body fat is there for. Our body fat is not for looks. It’s not there to make us look good, right? It’s there. It’s used for food. When no food is available, our body fat, our stored body fat, is used to nourish us when no food is available. It’s a very well designed system. It works very, very well. Again, humans have been feasting and then fasting for millions of years. If not eating for short periods of time, would put us into starvation mode. We’d have become extinct a long, long time ago.
Okay, so when you fast, you do not go into starvation mode. Okay? Another myth is that when you fast, you will lose muscle. So consider the consequences of burning muscle for energy during long winters. You know, back in the caveman days, there would have been many days where no food was available. After the first episode of like a period of no food available, your body, if it was actually consuming muscle as fuel, you would be severely weakened.
After a couple times of this happening, you’d be so weak that you’d be unable to hunt, you wouldn’t even be able to stand up. Humans would never have survived as a species if burning muscle happened when we didn’t eat. So your body, here’s the way your body works. You burn glucose first, then fat, and then when there’s no fat available, your body will start to use muscle as fuel, but it’s a terrible source of fuel for your body, so it will not do that. It won’t break down muscle until all the fat is gone. And I gotta tell you, it would be almost impossible for you to lose that much fat.
Think of Angus. Dude had so much fat on his body, he’s able to, you know, use that as fuel for over a year. When you fast, you burn fat, your body will only use muscle if there’s no more glucose, no fat available. So you’d literally have to be at that point of like, starving to death for your body to start using muscle and studies indicate that intermittent fasting is actually better for maintaining muscle mass.
In fact, intermittent fasting is very popular among bodybuilders because they find it helps them to maintain muscle alongside a low body fat percentage, right? So they’re lean and super muscular, so you don’t burn muscle when you fast. Another myth that I’m trying to bust here today is that fasting will make you tired and lethargic. Oh, if I don’t eat all the time, I’m going to be super tired. I need the energy. Well, listen, have you ever been tired after eating a meal? Of course, you have, everybody has, this is what happens when you eat. There’s this moment of, like, drowsiness afterwards, lack of concentration.
That’s your system, like your stomach, your liver, your digestive system, all working to process the food. When you fast, you don’t have these kinds of problems. Fat is a far superior source of fuel for your body and for your brain. So when you fast, your body can actually produce ketones, which is an amazing source of energy. And ketones, along with your own body fat actually increase your energy levels, right? You get tired and lethargic when you’re eating a lot of sugar and carbs, and you have that crash after you eat, like, if you’ve ever had a big lunch, and then you want to go to sleep around two o’clock in the afternoon, two, three o’clock, you’re just like, dead, and you need your Starbucks triple mocha caramel latte or whatever to get you through the afternoon.
That’s because of, you know, eating all that food, especially the sugar and the carbs. But when you’re fasting, this doesn’t happen. You don’t have those energy spikes and crashes. You have this like, consistent energy throughout the day, so no crashes at all. And I got to tell you, my clients report a lot of increased energy and sustained energy when they become fat adapted when they stop eating the sugar and the carbs, and their body is starting to burn fat. And then when we add in some intermittent fasting, their energy levels actually go up, not down.
Okay, so fasting does not make you tired and lethargic. Actually, it gives you more energy. People think fasting will slow your metabolism, and no, this is not true at all. It actually boosts your metabolism. When you fast, it puts your body into fat burning mode, okay, which is boosting, it actually boosts your metabolic rate. This is due to a drastic increase in blood levels of norepinephrine, which stimulates your metabolism, and it instructs your fat cells to break down body fat, and then you can use that body fat for fuel.
Studies have shown that fasting for even up to like 48 hours will boost your metabolism by something like 3% up to 14%, fasting does not slow your metabolism. And there’s this misconception out there that you need to eat like six times a day, you know, to boost your metabolism. And it’s the opposite. When you eat six times a day, you slow your metabolism down, because you’re always hanging on to all that extra body fat, all that extra food is going into, you know, your fat stores, okay, your blood glucose is always elevated, insulin is always elevated, and you’re holding on to all that extra fat. Okay, so you’re actually not burning fat when you do that. So eating less often or eating nothing at all for periods of time will actually speed up your metabolism.
Another myth is that fasting deprives your body of nutrients. So some people have concerns that fasting will lead to some sort of malnourishment. Right? You’re not getting the right vitamins and minerals. And it’s been shown that fasting that lasts under 24 hours, like what we’re talking about here, intermittent fasting, there’s no real need to be concerned with missing vitamins or minerals, mainly because we replenish anything we lost when we eat food later in the day, like you’re not eating, you’re eating every day.
Okay, but for longer fasts, if you’re doing like a 24 hour or longer fast, doctors recommend supplementing with electrolytes, so sodium, potassium, magnesium, which is very easy to get in a supplement, right? I actually take these when I’m running in the heat, just because we all need electrolytes when we’re running, especially longer distances, especially when it’s super hot outside. And so I take a supplement that’s just sodium, potassium and magnesium and no sugar or anything like that, and gives me everything I need. And I do all my runs fasted, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in a second here.
But actually, fat, fat is one of the best things your body can use for fuel, right? It’s one of two essential nutrients that we have to have, and so you know you’re not depriving your body of nutrients when you fast for short periods of time at all. Okay? If you’re concerned, just make sure you’re getting enough salt, enough electrolytes. But other than that, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to get all the food, all the nutrients you need from the food that you eat. Okay?
And then the last myth I want to just talk about here is people say fasting is just crazy. And at this point I want to say isn’t eating six times a day crazy, yeah, keeping your insulin levels elevated all the time, so your body is constantly in fat storage mode. You become insulin resistant. When you do this, you know, you get fat. You can’t lose the weight. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah, I think so.
You know, think about all these millions of people around the world who’ve been fasting for 1000s of years, Muslims, Christians, Jewish people, Hindus, all. Are they all crazy? No. What about all the human ancestors who feasted and fasted millions of years of evolution and we thrived as a species? It’s not crazy, it’s perfect. It’s how we’ve evolved. It’s how we’re designed to function optimally. And I just wanted you to think about this. Think about animals, the animal kingdom, okay?
So bears. Bears hibernate every winter, right? They gorge themselves on salmon and berries, which sounds delicious, by the way, and then they live on their own body fat all winter long when they hibernate, right? Are they crazy? Are they like, just, you know, insane? No, this way, they’re designed and just a little sidebar here, humans, we’re like the only animal on the planet that eats food that we’re not designed to eat. So all the sugar and the highly refined carbohydrates we’re not supposed to eat that stuff. That stuff makes us fat. It makes us obese. It creates all kinds of health problems for us. But we eat tons of that stuff. No other animal on the planet does this. Humans are the only overweight animal on the planet. Think about that. No other animals get fat and obese. You know, obviously there’s fat animals like walruses and elephant seals, right? They have a lot of body fat, but they’re not overweight. That’s the way they’re supposed to be. Okay? They’re designed to be this way, but it’s perfectly healthy for them. That’s optimal for them, but it’s not perfectly healthy for humans to be as fat as a walrus. To me, that’s crazy.
Okay, so I hope you understand that fasting is not crazy, it’s perfectly normal. So let’s quickly, I’m going to talk about some of the benefits of fasting. Sorry, I get all worked up about this stuff, and I crack myself up sometimes. Okay, the benefits of fasting, especially for runners. So here’s the benefits we can experience. And I’ve kind of talked about some of the stuff already, so. But I’m going to reiterate a few things and tell you about a few things I think are kind of cool here.
So what happens when you do some fasting? What’s good about it, especially for runners? Well, number one, glucose levels go down. So when our blood sugars, you know, normalize, insulin levels go down, it improves insulin sensitivity, which means our bodies can react to insulin the way they’re supposed to. We get out of fat storage mode and we get into fat burning mode, right? So we have this boost in metabolism, and our bodies can actually get out of fat storage and into fat burning mode. So this is a huge benefit for everybody, right in it.
The second benefit is that it induces weight loss, because our metabolism is speeding up, not slowing down. It speeds up weight loss and fat loss and fat adaptation. So if you want to become a fat adapted runner, one of the best ways to get there is, obviously, you have to stop eating sugar and carbohydrates, and then number two, start doing some intermittent fasting. And when you do it, you will get your body into fat burning mode faster. You’ll lose more weight, obviously, but becoming a fat adapted runner will go fast. It’ll happen quicker if you, if you include a little intermittent fasting along with the low carb, high fat diet.
Another benefit is that intermittent fasting helps you to break through weight loss plateaus. So with all my clients, invariably, at some point, weight loss kind of stalls a little bit. This is perfectly normal, and we anticipate this happening. And there’s all kinds of tools that I help use and we implement to help my clients break through some of those weight loss plateaus, and one of them is intermittent fasting.
It’s a great way to bust through when you get stuck at a certain weight, especially when it’s done intermittently, so not all the time, periodically, because here’s what happens when we do the same thing over and over again, our bodies adapt. Our bodies are very good at adapting, right? So what we want to do is we want to kind of shake things up a little bit every now and then, we want to cause our body a little bit of stress so that it can adapt in a different way and change things.
Okay, this is why we don’t work the same muscles at this, do the exact same workout at the gym every single time we go, if you want to actually build muscle, because your body will adapt, and it’ll stop seeing that as a stressor, and it will stop building the muscle, right? So that’s why if you follow any kind of workout routine or a plan that somebody put in place for you, then you know they always want you to be doing different things and mixing it up, and that’s how you get stronger and build muscle.
Also, this is why we don’t run the same distances and the same pace every time we go out and run, right? You gotta mix things up. We want our bodies to adapt to some super hard, super fast running, like sprints or hill repeats. And then we want to do some really slow, long running. And then we want to do some stuff in between. And then we throw some fartleks in there. I just love saying fartleks, and then we want to do some interval training in there, right? Well, we want to just keep mixing things up so our bodies can respond to these changes of stressors.
Same thing happens with fasting. It helps us to respond to changes in a different way, and really helps to break through some of these weight loss plateaus that we get. Another huge benefit of intermittent fasting is increased mental and cognitive abilities. So our brains love fat and ketones for fuel. This is an amazing source of fuel for our brains. And when we do intermittent fasting, fat and ketones are produced. We get this flood of amazing fuel for our brain. It helps improve our mental clarity, our concentration. You’ll think more clearly, you’ll be more focused. You’ll be smarter. You get smarter when you do intermittent fasting.
FYI. Another amazing benefit is that intermittent fasting enables cell regeneration, including immune cell regeneration, which is very important during things like global pandemics. Okay, intermittent fasting also helps to lower blood cholesterol levels, it helps to decrease inflammation in your body, which is amazing, especially as runners. We don’t want to be inflamed. We want to decrease inflammation, right? And intermittent fasting will help with that. Intermittent fasting helps to lower blood pressure, so reducing hypertension.
And then studies have shown that intermittent fasting can also help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. It helps to extend your life by reversing the aging process. So fasting actually provides some anti aging benefits, and studies have actually shown that intermittent fasting helps to lower the risk of certain types of cancer.
Now here are some benefits that are particularly interesting for you as a runner. Number one, increased energy, not a loss of energy, but an increase of energy. So when you practice some intermittent fasting, Adrenaline increases. You actually have more energy so you can train harder. You can run harder. You can do some more intense workouts. If you’re lifting weights at the gym, you can lift a lot more because you have all this increased adrenaline and energy, and you’re going to get some pretty amazing results because you have more energy.
Also a huge benefit is there’s an increase in growth hormone production during those fasting periods. When you have more growth hormone being produced in your body, this helps to increase your bone density. So this is good for people over 40. I don’t know if there’s any of you out there, well, it’ll help to increase muscle mass. So this is good for everybody, right? You can build more muscle because you’re producing more growth hormone. When you’re producing more growth hormone, it also allows you to recover faster from these harder runs and workouts.
So intermittent fasting allows you to train harder and recover faster. And then one of the big benefits I want to talk about here is that, and I kind of mentioned this already, but intermittent fasting helps to speed up the fat adaptation process. The key to fat adaptation, becoming a fat adapted runner is to get your body used to using your own body fat for fuel. And the best way to do this is just don’t eat anything. That way your body will not have any glucose available for energy, so it will have to go into your fat stores for energy. This is good. This is what we want.
And this process of switching from burning glycogen to burning fat is what we call the fat adaptation period, and that takes a couple of weeks, you know, two to six weeks, depending on how you do it, and your body type and all kinds of other factors. But, and it’s kind of different for everybody, but generally speaking, it’s somewhere between two in six weeks to get to that point of where you become fully fat adapted. Fasting really helps to speed up this process.
Okay, it’s an uncomfortable period, because running really sucks during that period. So when you combine a low carbohydrate, high fat diet along with intermittent fasting, it helps to shorten that uncomfortable fat adaptation period. Okay, so all of these amazing benefits that I just listed, you get all these amazing health benefits without taking any kind of medications, without buying any kind of supplements, without any cost at all to you, without doing anything at all except just don’t eat. I think that’s pretty freaking amazing, if you ask me. Cool.
That’s all I got for you guys today, as always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you. Keep on Running Lean. We’ll talk to you soon.