Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by health and fitness “experts.” One in particular that has stood out to me lately goes something like, “Take a few days each …
Continue Reading about 223. The Problem with Eating Whatever You Want →
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 223, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today the problem with eating whatever you want. There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by quote unquote, like health and fitness experts.
One in particular that has kind of stood out to me lately goes something like this, take a few days each week and go crazy, eat whatever you want. You can’t be too restrictive with your diet. So I’ve done a lot of thinking about this idea. In fact, I’ve even tried it for a while I’m gonna talk about that later.
I’ve learned a lot about how this principle works, why it works, why it doesn’t work, mostly why it doesn’t work. And I’m going to share my thoughts with you about that today. So in this episode, I’m going to explain the problem with eating whatever you want, and offer maybe a better way to do things.
But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you. You want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster. And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you.
I also want you to know that I am here to help you get there. Yes, I know I’m here talking to you on the podcast, I’m sharing all this information with you. And if you’re listening, awesome, you’re going to learn a lot. I listen to all sorts of podcasts and audiobooks. And I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.
But when it comes to the practical application of all that knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track. I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life, who have helped me to become who I am today.
I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business, my mindset has never been better. These amazing coaches helped me with all of that, in fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach myself.
Okay, so for you, the one listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge, but when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me, okay, but find somebody to show you the way to help you to apply all of this knowledge that you’re gaining to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get better results and faster than you ever could on your own.
Okay, and if you are interested in working with me, awesome, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
All right, let’s talk about the problem with eating whatever you want. So there’s a trend out there. I’m starting to notice in the health and fitness industry, this has been going on for a while that basically says this every now and then you should be able to eat whatever you want, and it should be fine.
And I’m not diametrically opposed to this idea. Okay, I want to start out by saying that. So some people, they say, you know, just follow the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you’re eating healthy, then 20% of the time, you can do anything you want, and it’s totally fine. And I’m not even completely opposed to this concept. But I think if we’re doing a 20 around food, it might be a little too much of eating whatever you want.
Okay, so I did a little bit of math. And if you eat three times a day, for seven days, that’s 21 meals a week. Okay. So 20% 21 is 4.2 meals a week, where you get to eat anything you want. To me, that seems like a lot. Okay.
Then there’s something like Tim Ferris’ slow carb diet. So he has this thing called the slow carb diet. It’s from his book, The Four Hour Body, great book, by the way, a lot of good information in there.
And he has this kind of diet plan in there that says you know, just keep the carbs low. You know, don’t eat anything white, essentially. And there’s some interpretation as to what is considered white. It’s kind of like no sugar, no flour, no dairy, essentially. And you want to do that like six days a week, okay.
And then one day a week for the whole day, you should eat whatever you want. Literally eat anything, you can eat five pizzas, a dozen donuts at a time, ice cream at every meal. And the people that follow this kind of diet, I guess you could call it a diet usually have this one cheat day, whatever you want to call it.
They do this on Saturdays, and they’ve nicknamed it Fatterday. Because you gained like five pounds every Saturday. So the principle is, you know, one day a week, you get to do whatever you want. And people go crazy on this day. And I actually tried this a year or so ago I did this as an experiment to see, you know, what would happen to me, if I took on this all you can eat anything goes one day a week sort of mentality.
Okay, so I ate you know, I would eat doughnuts and pastries in the morning with coffee like and I don’t ever eat in the morning, I was eating french toast and pancakes for lunch, pizza for dinner. And then the most decadent ice cream I could find. Sometimes they get ice cream that’s like low carb ice cream that doesn’t have sugar in it.
But in this case, I was looking for what has the most fat and the most sugar like I was just going crazy. And I didn’t do this for too long. I don’t know, maybe a few weeks to a month, something like that. Because I have to tell you, that Saturday was amazing, like because I just was binging like crazy.
But I felt like total garbage for like five days afterwards. And on that one day, I would gain a bunch of weight. And it took like five days before that weight would come off again. And I would come back to normal. You know, just think about that.
Like every week, you’re doing something that is so bad for you really and makes you feel so terrible that it takes you like four or five days to just get back to normal again. Okay. So that was one problem with that.
Another problem with it was that I found myself counting the hours until Saturday, I was starting to like fantasize about food and all the junk food that I was going to eat and how many glazed doughnuts I could eat at once. And you know what kind of pizza I was going to be eating and buying ice cream. So I would have it ready.
And you know, because I’ve been avoiding all this junk for years. But I found my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about all this food. Right? This is not really healthy thinking. Okay. So needless to say, this diet did not really work for me, even though I loved it. Man, who doesn’t love binging out on a bunch of junk food like that? Right?
It wasn’t helping me to maintain my weight. I felt like crap all the time, my food cravings were through the roof. So there are several problems with with plans like this, whether it’s like four days, four meals a week, you know, whatever you want, you know, or one day a week, just do whatever. Like I think that that we have to come up with a better plan than this. Okay?
Some of the problems with this eating whatever you want mentality is that it doesn’t teach you how to take control of your eating, you know, for a long time. For me anyway, and I’m guessing for you, because this happens with a lot of people that I talk to.
They have issues about control, and they’re eating like they feel like they’re eating is out of control. And if you’re engaging in a behavior that promotes out of control, eating on a regular basis, this is not going to teach you how to take control of your eating over the long term. You’re going to constantly feel like this out of control behavior is not only okay, but it’s almost encouraged, you know.
So you’re not learning how to be a mindful eater, you know, and I talked about this recently on the podcast about the mindless eating and how we have to be more mindful about eating. And so this kind of behavior I think, is detrimental to that. I think it leads to more mindless Eating, and it doesn’t teach you anything. So, you know, people say, well, this is this is the only way that you can eat a healthy diet sustainably, you have to be able to let off the steam every now and then.
But I think that we’re just reinforcing some really terrible eating habits, you know, its its binge type of eating is what’s going on here a lot of times, and to me, it feels like, we’re just kind of giving people permission to keep the disordered eating patterns happening. Okay?
If you’re somebody that has ever suffered with any sort of eating disorder, you know, you, you know what this feels like. And you know that this is very difficult and very triggering for you. Maybe even just talking about it can feel it triggering for you.
But to keep reinforcing that binge type of eating is, I think it’s going to kind of mess you up in the long term, okay, because it’s not teaching you how to be that mindful eater, how to be that person that is in control of what they’re doing.
Not to mention that, you know, eating whatever you want is, it’s not healthy for you not physically healthy, not mentally healthy, not emotionally healthy. It’s not physically healthy, because anything that you eat, that is so full of sugar and junk food, and you know, fried food, and, you know, all of the bread and refined grains and flour, that stuff just makes you inflamed, it makes you hold on to a lot of your weight.
It makes you feel lethargic, it makes you have brain fog, like you can’t think clearly. You know, it raises your blood sugar and insulin levels, it can really lead to some serious health effects, you know, really can lead to diabetes and things like that, if not, if done regularly, obviously. But it’s kind of like you’re you’re dabbling with poison here.
You know, it’s kind of like drinking alcohol, where alcohol is poison. You know, ethanol, the main ingredient that makes alcohol give you a buzz is poisonous, toxic, if you drink enough alcohol, you will die. It will kill you. But if you do it in small doses, it’s not too bad. But it’s still poison.
All right, we’re still eating poison. When you’re eating all this junk food here, you’re just doing it in smaller doses, but it’s not physically healthy. It’s not good for you, okay? And I think from a mental and emotional standpoint, it’s really bad for you, because it’s not teaching you good eating habits.
It’s promoting disordered eating patterns. It’s not allowing you to learn how to take control of your emotions, you’re basically eating your feelings, your eating, because you’re, you’re voracious, and you have this huge desire to eat, you’re eating because you’re stressed out, or whatever it is, whatever the reasons are, it’s hard for us as humans to learn how to take control of how they think and feel, when we’re eating a huge amount of junk food all the time.
This is akin to telling an alcoholic to just go on a bender once a week, or twice a week, you know, just to let off some steam, you know, because that’s going to be more sustainable for you. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.
As somebody who used to drink, I don’t anymore, I don’t think that’s a very good idea at all. Because for an alcoholic, you know, one drink leads to more drinks. You know, for somebody that has some issues around food, eating a bunch of junk food like that can just lead to more of that type of behavior.
And you’re not changing the behavior, we’ve got to take control of the behavior. Okay, I’m not opposed to eating this stuff every now and then. Not at all. But I think that, you know, somehow we’re treating your body like a garbage can. And we’re telling ourselves this story that it’s good for us. It’s really not.
Right, you’re not learning, any type of self-control here. You’re not learning how to deal with your emotions, like an adult. You know, you’re acting like a toddler, what does a toddler do? A toddler kicks and screams and cries oh, I want it my way I want I want things my way. And they and they will cry and scream until they get what they want. And we’re kind of doing the same things.
We have these feelings and we’re like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just eat a bunch of junk food and you feel better. A little better, just for a few minutes doesn’t last. You’re actually not dealing with any of the issues and you’re not learning how to have emotions. You’re emotionally acting like a toddler, okay? We want to be emotional adults, not emotional toddlers, okay?
So this idea that we should be able to eat whatever we want to let off steam or whatever, they’re selling you this idea because they’re telling you, it’s the only sustainable way to eat because eating healthy all the time is not sustainable. You know, you have to get into those cravings or you’re gonna go crazy. This is what they tell you.
Okay, but what if you will learn how to dial down the volume of those cravings? What if those cravings weren’t as strong anymore? What if you thought about eating some ice cream for a minute, and you’re like, man, ice cream wouldn’t be good right now. It’s not really on my plan. I’m cool. I don’t really need it, I’m fine.
You’re gonna have those thoughts every now and then. But they don’t have to take over your life. They don’t have to become so strong that you have to go and give in to those cravings. Just because you have a craving for something doesn’t mean you have to go and have that thing. Right? If this is a new concept for you, I’m glad you’re here. Okay.
What if you learned how to manage your mind and you learn how to manage your emotions, so that you no longer needed to binge eat over them? Right? Wouldn’t that be more sustainable and healthier than, you know, blowing off some steam a couple times a week, just because you can’t deal with the emotional stuff. I think it’s more important to deal with how you think and feel than it is to like, binge out all the time.
So what if you learn how to handle all these emotions in your life, the good, the bad, the ugly, what if you didn’t need to turn to food to just feel better all the time? You know, this would be amazing. It’s a big game changer for you. When we’re giving in to all these cravings all the time, and we’re allowing ourselves to binge eat like that. Food has a power over you. Because you’re engaging in this binging behavior, you’re allowing food to be to be in control of you food is in the driver’s seat.
Food has the power over you, you have given up your power and your control to food. This is ridiculous. Don’t do this. You’re giving up control of your mental and emotional state to food. Right? Alcoholics do ,drug addicts do this. People who are addicted to food do this.
So there’s a better way to do things, there’s a better approach. And the approach is this learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings. That’s it. That’s the work. It’s that simple. It’s that simple. Stop using a substance food, alcohol drugs to manage how you feel. You got to get really good at just dealing with life just as it is the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly. All of it, you just have to be able to handle it all. Like an emotional adult. Okay.
I used to use alcohol this way. For 25 years I drank so that I wouldn’t have to feel, period. That’s why I drank because I didn’t want to deal with all these feelings stress, anger, fear, resentment, guilt, shame, frustration. I didn’t want to deal with any of that stuff. And I drank and I felt better. It worked.
Kind of came with all these negative consequences. My health was terrible. My relationships with everyone were terrible. I ended up getting a divorce. People didn’t want to be around me anymore. I generally felt miserable all the time. And when I quit drinking, this was back in 2007. I had to learn how to live my life without numbing, without the crutch, without escaping my thoughts and feelings. And it worked.
It worked for a period of time until I turned to food to fill that void because I got off the alcohol but then I was like oh food that gives me that buzz that I used to get that gives me that numbing sensation I used to this helps me to not have to deal with my thoughts and feelings anymore. Yay.
But then the foods started to not work for me and I started to gain a bunch of weight, you know, and I started to feel terrible. And I had to learn how to deal with all the thoughts and feelings all over again. All right.
This time I had to do it without any sort of external coping mechanism, right? So I made the decision when I stopped eating junk food – sugar, pizza, ice cream – and made the decision that I was going to start embracing my life, just the way it was everything and the way that I felt, and in my thoughts, my thoughts and feelings, were not going to, like control me that I was going to take control over that stuff that I wasn’t going to turn to food or drugs or alcohol to feel better.
I haven’t had a drink in 17 years, and my life is vastly richer and more rewarding because of it. I stopped using food to feel better. I haven’t done that in five years, I have never felt better. I’m in the best shape of my life, physically, but also in the best shape of my life, mentally, emotionally, I can handle everything that life throws at me.
And I’ve gone through a lot of hard stuff in the last few years, and I don’t have to eat a bunch of doughnuts. Just because you know, life is stressful. You know, I’ve done the work. It’s not easy, it’s hard. It takes time. There are setbacks, there is discomfort. It takes time.
But this is the work that we commit to. And the people that I work with, the clients that I work with, they get this, they’re here for it, they show up, and they’re ready to embrace the sock, you know, they don’t do it perfectly. No one does, by the way, not even me. But they stick with it.
They make progress, they get better at it, they learn how to be emotional adults, they learn how to stop using food to feel better, they learn how to stop the binging behavior. And when you learn this work, when you learn how to take control of your thoughts and feelings.
Everything in your life becomes easier. This stuff doesn’t apply just to food. It applies to every area of your life, your relationships are better, your work is better. Your friendships are better your relationship with your kids is better. You’re happier person. Because you’ve learned how to handle the stress the board and the frustration, anger all without having to eat over it.
Okay, you’re going to learn how to have a little discomfort, like that’s part of the process. But you’re going to learn how to just deal with the discomfort and you don’t have to feel better right away. This is the path to becoming the healthy, healthiest and most badass version of yourself honestly.
So you might be thinking, you know, okay, I’m listening to you, Patrick. I’m hearing all this stuff. But in the back of my mind, you’re like, Okay, does this mean I can never eat a doughnut again? Can I have pizza sometimes? Please, you know? And yeah, absolutely. You don’t have to like give up these foods for the rest of your life. That is not what I’m talking about here. I eat those things on occasion.
Food is meant to be enjoyed, right? We celebrate with food. If it’s your birthday, eat some cake. You don’t have to eat a birthday salad. Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Okay. But you have to do the work I’m talking about here today.
First, you have to change your thoughts and feelings, you have to change your relationship with food before you can start enjoying these things every now and then. Okay, you have to learn how to dial down the volume of the desire. Learn how to handle your thoughts and feelings.
Learn how to handle life on life’s terms, you’ve got to get past the need for the binging type of behavior. When you do all that you can experience true freedom around food because you’re no longer powerless, you’ve taken your power back, you’ve taken back control, you’re now in charge again, then you can start eating the stuff on occasion.
And I don’t recommend the 20% rule, or the one day a week you get to do whatever you want. I don’t think that’s really healthy for a lot of reasons that I’ve already talked about. But I do talk to my clients about getting to this place where maybe there’s one meal a week that you can go a little bit off the plan. And that might be a 90% or 95% rule, something like that sort of 80/20 It’s like 90/10 or 95/5, you know, something like that.
And, but you can’t do that from day one. Like we have to get control of food first, before you can start dabbling with some of this junk food. The junk food is not the it’s not the main problem. The problem is really our relationship with this stuff. So we got to fix that first. When you fix that first then you can enjoy a piece of pizza every now and then.
I do eat pizza a couple times a year, I do eat ice cream a couple times a year. Desserts here and there, a piece of chocolate here and there. I don’t eat a lot of sugar to be honest with you. The thing that I crave more than anything else would be like baked goods, bread, pizza, that kind of stuff. Okay?
So you can do this on occasion, but you gotta get in control of your thoughts and feelings. You got to change that relationship with food first. Okay? That’s very important. Very important. We don’t want to be eating out of control. We don’t want to be eating powerlessly.
We want to be eating mindfully. We want to be mindful of about our plan and then sticking to that plan we want to be intentional and mindful around food and that takes a little bit of time.
And as always, I’m always here to help you with all this you know, if you’re interested in working with me just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will get started on your journey. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and thought…did I really just eat all that? I know I have…and too many times to count! If …
Continue Reading about 222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating →
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 222 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to stop the mindless eating. So have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and you thought did I really just eat all that? I know I have, probably too many times to count.
So if you have ever found yourself in that situation, then you’ve probably done some mindless eating. Mindless Eating is something that we’ve all done at one point or another. And it’s something that you can absolutely change. You don’t have to continue to eat mindlessly, there are some practical things you can do to change this behavior.
So today here on the podcast, what Mindless Eating is and how to stop the Mindless Eating once and for all. But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running, and strength training here on the podcast. And if you’re new, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.
But this all might feel a little overwhelming for you. If you want a great place to start, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and strength training and endurance and mindset all geared towards you, the runner. If you’re a runner, you want to lose some weight, you want to get stronger, you want to become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. It’s pretty self-explanatory. And then get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.
Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve been excited to talk about this for some reason. I don’t know why, but I think it’s one of the things that people have been telling me that they want to change. I talk a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people every day about coaching.
And I always ask them like, you know, what do you want some coaching on? And you know, how can I help you? What goals do you have? And inevitably, most of the people I talked to that they list like the mindless eating, the automatic eating as one of the things that they want to change.
So if you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, then you really have to change your whole relationship with food. All right, if I just sit here and I say here, here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to eat these things, and not eat these things. And you’re going to be fine. I got this, I got this, Patrick, I’m good. Just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.
Okay, but in reality, you don’t got this, I’m just going to tell you, what you got is a lot of conditioned behaviors, you what you’ve got is a lot of habits that you’ve been practicing for years, decades, probably around food, a lot of learned behaviors around food, you’ve been doing the same things for years and years and years for decades.
Like I said, when it comes to how you eat, how you approach food. And if you want to lose weight, and you want to do it in a way that is sustainable for you, then you’re going to have to make some major changes to all of this, you got to change these habits.
You can’t keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing right, nothing changes, if nothing changes. You know, if what you’re if you’re what you’re doing isn’t working, then you have to change it. If you’re doing automatic eating, then you have to change it.
You can’t be a mindless eater, and expect to be able to lose weight because we have to start taking control of what we’re doing. We have to start taking control of our behavior. So the mindless eating, it’s really, it’s an automatic type of behavior that we engage in. It’s not something you just picked up out of the blue you’ve trained yourself to eat and not think about it, right.
So Mindless Eating is is an automatic learned behavior, right? So you go into the kitchen, you grab something, you start eating it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing this, right? Mindless Eating is it’s kind of an unconscious behavior. I like to say it’s similar to tying your shoes tying your shoes is an unconscious behavior.
So when you go, you’re getting ready for work in the morning, you put your shoes on, you tie them and you go, you don’t even think about it. It is unconscious. You don’t even remember doing it today, probably.
So you just do it and you don’t even have any thought or there’s no effort there. There’s no thought there. You don’t have to sit there and think, Okay, what am I doing now? I’m putting my shoes on. And now I have to take these lace things. And I had one goes under the other like, no, no, no, no, you just do it. It takes you two seconds.
Well, we’ve done the same thing with food. You know, we go into the kitchen, and we scarf down a whole sleeve of Oreos, you don’t even notice that you’ve done that until it’s done. And then you’re like, wait a minute, who ate all these oars? Did I eat all these? What the heck is going on here? Honestly, I have done this and Oreos was one of them.
Let’s see kettle chips, those kettle potato chips that are just like super salty. Oh my gosh, those are the best I can eat a giant bag that I get the family style bags, and then I just eat it until they’re gone. Oh, but that’s just me. But these are unconscious learned behaviors just like tying your shoes. Okay. And you’ve trained yourself to do this over years and years and years.
Okay, so it’s a habit is just a habit. Okay, we can if you if you’ve developed a habit, if you learn a habit, you can break the habit, okay? You’ve just trained yourself that when you go into the kitchen, you grab something and you eat it, and then you walk out of the kitchen, don’t even remember, it’s just like tying your shoes, you don’t think about it, you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take any effort, you just do it, okay.
Also, a lot of times we use food to feel better, we want to use food as a way of changing the way we feel. So we grab this thing that’s external to us, we ingest it, it becomes internal, and it helps us to feel better on the inside. This is called emotional eating. And emotional eating to some degree is also just a habit.
Emotional eating can also be automatic mindless eating. And again, it’s just a habit that you’ve developed. You know, emotional eating is when you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out or you’re anxious, and you just want to eat something to kind of feel better, you want to kind of numb the feelings that you’re experiencing, you want to numb the emotions that you’re experiencing, and food will do that it has that effect.
You know, especially if you go for something like sugar, sugar lights up the pleasure centers of your brain like nothing else. And if you want to feel pleasure, just eat some sugar, and you’ll feel pleasure for a short period of time. And you might stop thinking about the stress or the boredom or the anxiety that you’re experiencing for a short period of time, but then it’ll come back.
And then what do you do? Well, you gotta go back to the kitchen and eat something else. And again, this emotional eating can also be a very mindless eating, it can be an automatic behavior that you’re not even aware that you’re doing. Okay? So again, mindless eating, it’s just a learned behavior, you’ve trained yourself to eat, and you’ve trained yourself to not think about it.
This is important, listen to this. Because really, who wants to think about it? So you just, you just blank, this little snack out of your brain. So you’re just like, ooh, some cookies, you eat them, and then you go, bloop, and it’s gone from your brain. Like, it never really happened.
Because if you have to acknowledge it, and if you’re doing it in an intentional, conscious way, you know, you shouldn’t be eating the cookies, you just had lunch, you don’t need to be eating all these cookies. And so you sort of blank it out of your mind. You don’t want to think about it because you love it feels good.
And you know, it’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing. Right? So you have trained yourself to not think about it. Right? So you just do it, you do it automatically. And I think it’s interesting when people tell me this, they’re like, yeah, I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I say well, yeah, you do know, but you’ve chosen to blink it out of your mind. This is a little trick you’re playing on yourself, okay?
So, why is it important to change this behavior? So, mindlessly eating means that you are just eating you know, whenever you feel like it, not when you are actually in need of some nutrition. So this can lead to over eating so eating all the time, it’s really just not good for us. It’s really not the normal state for human beings. The human body is designed to eat a couple of times a day, you know, but not just mindlessly eating snacks all the time, right? It’s just not good for you, it puts a lot of stress on on the system.
You know, also, let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what you are eating. When you are mindlessly eating. I’m guessing it’s probably not broccoli. Have you ever like walked in the kitchen, and you’re like, man, I’m a little bored and a little, I just want a little snack of some time and you open up the fridge and there’s some like leftover broccoli sitting in there and you start eating that? No, nobody does that.
You want something crunchy, and salty and sweet, like chips, pretzels, nuts, chocolate, or like chocolate that has pretzels and nuts mixed into it. You know, like, whatever you can get your hands on that’s going to, you know, light up the pleasure centers. And that’s usually the crunchy, salty, sweet stuff, okay?
So, mindlessly eating is really a way of overeating, you end up over eating, and you end up over eating junk food, like you’re just eating junk, right? And so this is a bad combination. Like if you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to improve your health, you know, change your diet, change your habits, mindlessly eating, you’re overeating, you’re eating junk food, this is a bad combination. Stop doing that. Okay?
Now I get it, you’re like, but it’s so automatic. I don’t even know that I’m doing it. How am I going to stop doing this? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. So the opposite of mindless eating is what it’s mindful eating.
So the goal, the first step here, the first goal that you want to accomplish here is to start being more mindful about everything that you eat, you have to start being mindful about every bite that you put into your mouth. The easiest way to do this, is to write it down. This is a really great place to start. And I think that everybody should do this.
Not just for the mindless eating, but for all kinds of habits around food. But everything has to be written down. And the easiest way to do it is to just grab a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. So every time you eat something, just write it down.
Now I like to talk to people about this. And they’ll say, well, I could use this app I use My Fitness Pal, you know, Carb Manager or whatever. Fine. Use whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. But just make it simple.
Okay, apps can sometimes be complicated. They’re kind of clunky to use, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, and you just want to it has to be something you can do easily. It has to be simple and easy. Pen and paper is simple and easy. But if you’re on the go, maybe use a note on your phone, you know, just open up a note and just start taking inventory of everything you’re eating throughout the day.
And every time you eat or drink something, anything goes into your mouth. You want to write it down in that note on your phone or on a piece of paper. Okay, that is step number one. So what we’re doing here is we’re creating awareness about what is really going on with you and food, what’s really going on?
There’s no lies here. There’s no tricking yourself. There’s no deception. There’s no you know, tricking yourself into thinking you’re doing something you’re not or not doing something that you are, you’re actually just writing down everything that goes into your mouth, every bite, lick taste, okay?
So record everything that you do. Let’s do this for like a week. All right. And every time you eat something, every time you drink something, write it down. This is going to create a lot of self awareness. This is going to be the first step in being mindful around food instead of mindless.
Okay, so what starts happening here? Well, you start noticing that you’re eating stuff all the time you’re eating stuff, when you’re not hungry, you’re eating stuff, when you’re bored, you’re eating stuff when you’re feeling a little anxious, you’re eating stuff that you know isn’t on your plan. You know, you you start to see when and where you get triggered to eat stuff, you know, oh, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to eat something.
Oh, you know, every time I go in the break room, I have to eat something. You know, you don’t have to keep doing that. But you need to know what you’re doing first. So this is like creating such amazing self awareness. Okay.
And you have to develop this self awareness, you have to know what you’re doing before you can change it right, you got to know what you’re doing before you can change it, you have to know what you’re doing day in and day out before you can stop doing i,t before you can start creating better habits, before you can stop the automatic behavior.
So self awareness is the main goal here. So you got to write everything down, start creating that self awareness. So that’s step number one.
Step number two is this once you start noticing what you’re doing, when you’re eating, how often you’re eating the types of foods you’re eating, you can begin to start practicing the pause.
The pause is you pause before you put any food in your mouth. So you might get to the kitchen, you open up the pantry and you start looking around for some, you know, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever. But you pause right there with the cupboard open. And you notice oh man, I’m really looking for these Girl Scout cookies right now, aren’t I? Because you’ve created that self awareness. Okay, this is really cool.
This is very important and very easy to do. Okay, so you just take a moment and you pause. I’m about to engage in some kind of like mindless eating, I’m going back to these old habits. And so now you started to create a little bit of awareness, we’re starting to move into more of a mindful state, okay.
Next thing I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions. You can do this in your brain, it only takes a few seconds to do this. But ask yourself these questions. Do I really need to eat something right now? Am I really hungry? Or am I just bored or stressed out or anxious? Am I just trying to use food to feel better? What can I do instead of eating if I need to feel better?
Maybe I can go for a walk. Maybe I can walk the dog? Maybe I can, you know, pet the dog? What can you do that it doesn’t involve eating to feel better? Do I really need to feel better at all, maybe I can just be okay, feeling a little stressed out or a little bit bored or whatever.
Like, just go through these few questions in your mind really quickly. Okay. So what you’re doing is you’re going from mindless eating, to being mindful about eating. And listen, when you take that pause, you ask yourself those questions. And if you still want to eat something, then fine, eat the Girl Scout cookies or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.
But what you’re doing here is you’re not eating mindlessly. Now you’re eating mindfully, you’re you’re checking in with yourself before you make the decision to eat or not eat. And I’d much rather you are mindful about eating the Girl Scout cookies, then making that decision to eat the Girl Scout cookies, right? So you’ve made a conscious decision than eating the Girl Scout cookies unconsciously.
We don’t want to be mindless about what we’re doing. We want to be mindful, we don’t want to be unconscious. We want to be conscious. You know what we don’t want our body and our brain operating on autopilot here. We want to be in control.
And if you’re in control, and you’re saying you know what? Eating those Girl Scout Cookies feels like a really good decision for me right now. And you do that fine. Now over time, it would probably be great if you cut out the Girl Scout Cookies altogether. But listen, baby steps I get it. And this first baby step is moving from mindlessness to mindfulness around food.
This is very important. It’s a game changer if you want to lose weight. This is a game changer. It’s really hard to lose weight when you’re eating mindlessly and automatically all the time. You make this one change, and I promise you, your weight loss journey is going to get easier. Okay?
So you want to go from being a mindless eater to a mindful eater. This is where the good stuff starts to happen for you. This is where you can begin to break those conditioned behaviors and habits. This is how you start to change your whole relationship with food.
You’ve got to get away from the unconscious behavior and move towards consciousness get away from mindlessness and start moving towards mindfulness. Okay, this is a critical first step to losing weight and keeping it off. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you probably already know that you have to change your diet. This is obvious and we all know this, but that’s where most people stop. They change …
Continue Reading about 218. You Have to Change How You Think →
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 218 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, you have to change how you think. So if you’re somebody who wants to lose weight and keep it off, you probably already know that you have to change your diet, right?
This is obvious, we all know this. But that’s where most people stop, they change their diet, they get some results. But it rarely lasts. Because they’ve only changed the behavior, not the thinking that’s driving the behavior. They keep slipping back into old eating patterns because they haven’t changed the thoughts that create those patterns in the first place.
So if you think you can change your diet, but not your thinking, you’re always going to struggle. So today on the podcast, if you want to change behavior and make it last, then you have to change how you think.
But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running strength training, all that stuff here on the podcast. And if you’re new to the podcast, welcome. And also this all might seem a little overwhelming to you. And you might just want to know where to get started with all this stuff.
If that sounds like you, awesome, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training, it’s about an hour long, it’s a video that you can watch, you can check it out anytime it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, you’re gonna learn all the basics, nutrition, strength, endurance mindset, all geared towards you, the runner who’s interested in becoming fitter, stronger, faster, and the most badass version of yourself yet.
If this sounds like you, check out this free training, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. I know it’s pretty obvious, right? And you can get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today, you have to change how you think. So one of the things that prompted me to talk about this today is that I talk to people every single day. And they just want some of these people just want me to talk to tell them like what to do, like, just tell me what to do. You know, give me a plan and I’ll follow the plan.
They just want to know what’s, the when’s, the how’s, like what should I eat? When should I lift weights? How often should I run? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And I jokingly say, half-jokingly I say, yeah, knowing what to do is easy. If it were that easy, though, all I would do is write a book and hand it over to you right?
But knowing what to do is only a small part of the equation. All right? How often have you known what to do and you still haven’t done it anyway, like, you probably know that you shouldn’t be eating some things like Dunkin Donuts, right? But you do it anyway.
And you’re not doing it and you’re not like doing the things that you want to be doing consistently. So that’s where, you know, we see this behavior that we’re engaging in, we want to change the behavior, but we stop there, we just stop it like, well, I just need to stop doing that I need to do things differently. I need to take different actions, okay?
The problem with this is that you’re not changing the thing that is actually driving the behavior that’s actually creating the thoughts, the feelings that are actually driving the behavior. Okay, you can’t just change a behavior, you have to change the thinking behind the behavior, okay?
But when it comes to, you know, things like, okay, I shouldn’t be eating Dunkin Donuts every day. I get that. But they find themselves they just keep eating the Dunkin Donuts every day. And they’re like, how come I can’t do that? Because they haven’t changed the thinking that’s driving the behavior.
So if you’re somebody who struggles with sticking to a plan, like sticking to a food plan, you know, you might have experienced this in the past, and lots of people I’ve talked to have experienced this where they’re like, yeah, I did that.
For a while I was able to change the behavior, I started to eat real food, and I started to do pretty well with that. But they never did like the deeper work of changing the thinking that drives the behavior. And so they just slip back into those old patterns that keep slipping back into those old eating patterns.
You know, slipping back into, you know, binging on stuff and in, you know, eating the junk food, and they can’t understand why because they know what to do. But they’ve never done the deeper work. The deeper work is changing. The thinking changes the doing, the thinking that actually drives the behavior.
Okay, so I’ve said this a couple of times now, your thinking drives your behavior, how does all this work? So, you know, here’s, here’s what, what I want to talk about next, this is how your thinking actually drives your actions. Okay?
So when we want to change something complicated, like eating patterns, this can be kind of challenging, okay? And for most people, they just look at the action itself, I’m either eating broccoli, or I’m eating potato chips, I’m eating, you know, the chicken that I put out, or a meeting the Dunkin Donuts, you know.
And when it’s when you think about the action like that, it is, it is very surface level, when you just try to change the action, you are going to get minuscule results, I’m just telling you right now, if that’s what you’ve been working on, then you are going to get very short term results, and you’re never going to make lasting change.
What you want to do is get down to the thinking this is the deeper work, you get down to the thinking that’s driving the behavior because this is where you can actually start making real lasting change.
So most people believe that whatever they’re doing is some sort of automatic behavior. Like they’re some sort of a robot, they have no control over their actions, you know, the Dunkin Donuts just sitting there and I eat them. I just find myself eating them, I find myself eating them. Like I am an automaton, I see doughnuts and I eat them.
This is not really going on. This is really not what’s happening. You are not a robot, you are a human being you have free will, you have agency, you have the power to make decisions and you are making decisions, you are not out of control. You can choose something different in that circumstance.
But in that circumstance, you’re making a choice, you’re choosing this over that you’re choosing, typically, you’re choosing what feels good right now, you’re choosing immediate gratification, you’re choosing immediate pleasure over your long-term goals, over long-lasting gratification and pleasure, a fit body, a long and healthy life and all the good stuff that you actually want for yourself.
Most people think behavior works like this, they see the Dunkin Donuts saying eat them, period, right? Here’s how your thinking actually drives your behavior, though. So you see the Dunkin Donuts sitting there. And then you have a thought about the Dunkin Donuts.
So it’s not the donuts themselves that are driving the behavior, but it’s your thoughts. So you have a thought about the donuts, oh, man, those look so good. You know what, I’ve been good all week, I just ran 10 miles, I deserve a little treat. You know, I’ve been pretty consistent with all this, it’s not gonna hurt that much. It’s going to feel really good to eat, though.
So you have all these thoughts that go through your mind. You know, a lot of times you don’t even know you’re having those thoughts. It just goes, it happens really fast. Really, it’s very, very quick. It’s just in an instant, where you have these thoughts, but you do have these thoughts.
And those thoughts are very powerful. Because those thoughts create a feeling inside of you. Immediately, they create a in this case, they create something like desire. And the feeling could be anything really it could be a feeling like you can have a thought that creates a feeling of stress or anxiety or anger.
But in the case of you know, looking at some Dunkin Donuts and you just ran 10 miles, it could just be an intense desire, which is just a feeling it’s an emotion, a desire. You have this intense desire that wells up inside you that desire to eat a Dunkin donut.
What is actually driving the action of eating the doughnut? If the desire wasn’t there, you wouldn’t eat the doughnut. So the desire to eat the donut is not created by the donut in the box. That’s not creating the desire. The desire is created by your thoughts about the donut sitting in the box.
Oh, this is gonna taste so good. This sugar is gonna make me feel really good because it does that sugar lights up those pleasure centers in your brain. Oh, I’m gonna get a nice sugar rush for the next 20 minutes or so.
All these thoughts that you have create that desire and they really ramp up that desire. It’s like turning up the volume on that desire. And the reason we know this is true is because some people they just don’t have that. They don’t like Dunkin Donuts and they don’t have it. The desire to eat the doughnuts, the doughnuts are not causing the desire because some people can see them sitting there and just be like, not so great. I don’t really like those things, you know, they have no thoughts about, oh my God, these are gonna be so amazing.
They have no thoughts about oh, I just deserve this, you know, just ran 10 miles, they don’t have any of those thoughts. And so they have no desire to eat the doughnut, and so they don’t eat the doughnut.
So not eating the doughnut is not hard for those people because their thinking is different. They are not thinking all these thoughts about how amazing this is going to feel. And so the desire is not there to eat the doughnut, and so they don’t eat the doughnut.
So this is what is called a thought-feeling-action pattern. Your thoughts create feelings and your feelings drive your behavior. And I just call this for simplicity, a thought pattern, right? Thought patterns are things that we have learned over the years and years and years of our lives. And we have thought patterns about all kinds of stuff in our life. Some are good, some are not so good. Right? You’ve been practicing certain thought patterns for your whole life, decades.
Like, Dunkin Donuts are amazing. To be honest with you. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a Dunkin donut, just a little sidebar here. I know people love their coffee, they talk about how good the coffee is. I just can’t imagine that it would be that good.
Because I’m sort of a coffee snob. I love really good, you know, single-origin coffees that I grind the beans myself, and I just don’t think that it would be that good. But in no way I don’t know, maybe I’m missing out on something. But I don’t have the desire to eat the Dunkin Donuts. I’m just using this as an example.
So you’ve had these, you’ve been practicing these types of thought patterns for decades. Like if you’ve always loved Dunkin Donuts, and you’ve probably thought, oh my God, these are just so amazing all the time. So you’ve created a thought pattern. And you’ve done this so many times, it just creates a habit. The habit is when you see the donuts, you eat them.
And you think it’s an automatic thing. But it really isn’t. It’s a thought-feeling-action pattern that you’ve been practicing over and over and over and over again. This is the same as practicing any other behavior. Behavior that’s become a habit for you, like running.
So when you first started running, you have all these thoughts about running, like, running as hard. I don’t feel like running today. I’m not getting any faster. Running is really hard. Why is running so hard? I hate running. It’s really hard. It’s stupid. Those are my thoughts about running when I first started doing it, and it took me so long before I got better, you know, running, running takes a long, it takes a long time to get better at, right?
And these thoughts that I was having would keep me in bed, most mornings, you know, because they would, when I started thinking these feelings about running being so hard, and I’m not getting better. And I you know, I’m not getting faster, and running is stupid. It’s not working for me.
All those thoughts that I had about running, were causing feelings of demotivation inside me, a lack of enthusiasm. I’m not good enough, feelings of frustration and anger, like those feelings of demotivation, frustration, anger, and lack of enthusiasm, these feelings will drive a certain type of behavior, which is to stay in bed and don’t go run. Because running is stupid. Okay?
That is a thought-feeling-action pattern at play right there. So you don’t feel like running and you don’t run. But over time, over time, you do squeak out a few good runs here and there. And you do eventually get a little bit faster. And running becomes a little bit easier. And you kind of surprise yourself that oh I actually ran like five miles and it actually felt okay.
Like you start to see that this might actually be working, you start to enjoy it. You start to feel good after you run, you start to look forward to it. And so then you have all these new thoughts about running that start to change the way you feel about running to the point where now you never miss a run no matter what even if it’s really crappy outside.
Even if it’s cold and snowy and rainy. Even if you’re sick, you’ve got the flu, even if you’re on vacation, you’re gonna go out there and run because it feels so good for you. So you’ve created for yourself without even knowing it a whole different set of thought patterns around running.
And so the behavior, you think, you know, the behavior just changes by itself. No, you have changed that behavior over time. I hope this is an example that you can relate to. Because this is a really good example of the amazing power of your thought patterns.
Running can be a hard thing, but you can get through it. And you can get over that and you can become a person who loves to run. The very same thing can happen with any other thought patterns in your life. Running just didn’t naturally come easily to you and be handed to you all of a sudden, you know, running just got easier. No, you had to like, work through it.
And you had to learn thought patterns, it took a while you had to practice it for a long time before it became something that was easier, and it was a habit. So thought patterns can be learned thought patterns can be unlearned, too, right?
If you want to train yourself to hate running, just go back to all the crappy thinking about running, how hard it is how you don’t like it, how you’re not getting any faster, why so hard. All that stuff, just keep thinking those kinds of thoughts, and it’ll be super demotivating. And you’ll not feel like running ever again. Okay?
If you have a thought pattern, like mindlessly eating the Dunkin Donuts every time you see them, even though you know it’s not what you want, it’s not good for you, it’s not going to help you lose weight, it’s not healthy, it’s not in alignment with your long term goals, then you can unlearn that thought pattern, okay?
And it starts with changing the way you think you have to change the thoughts that are creating those feelings of desire within you. So how do you change your thinking? So changing your thinking is not as easy as it sounds, you just can’t be like, well, I’m just going to think differently.
Especially if you’ve been practicing the same thought patterns your whole life, it takes time. And it takes some effort, it takes a little bit of work. And when I say work, that’s where most people like tune out. They’re like, oh, please, I don’t want to do any work.
But listen, if you want to change, you have to do some work, right? And I promise you that if you’re willing to work on this particular area, when you’re starting to talk about changing thought patterns, this can be an absolute game changer for you. And it applies to any thought patterns in your life, whether it’s Dunkin Donuts, running, whatever it is that you want for yourself, you can change this.
And I’ve got a three step little process here that I’m going to go through with you that I think is really powerful. And it’s the three R’s. And the three R’s are to recognize, record, and reframe.
So the first R, if we’re talking about changing thought patterns here, the first R, the very first step is to recognize you got to recognize that something is going on here. You know, you have to see that you’re engaging in a behavior or a thought pattern that you want to change.
You have to recognize that what you’re doing may not be in alignment with your long-term goals. So this is self-awareness, understanding that you’re not a robot, this is not automatic behavior. You’re just practicing an old thought pattern. So you have to recognize that something is going on here.
That is the critical first step. And you have to be honest with yourself that oh, yeah, I’m doing something that you know, I am eating the Dunkin Donuts mindlessly what’s happening here, like what’s going on? So recognize that something is happening here. Okay, step number one.
Step number two, the second R is to record, record the thought pattern in as much detail as possible. So as soon as you can, once you recognize what’s happening, or that there’s something happening here, stop and record some thoughts and feelings about the behavior.
Ask yourself some questions like, what just happened there? Like why did I do that? What was the thought that I had right before I did that? What was the feeling that I had right before I did that?
This doesn’t have to be complicated, you can just grab a notebook and write it down, use a pen and a piece of paper, use your journal, write it on a note on your phone, you can even record a voice memo and just record it into your phone. I like doing that because sometimes I can’t write as fast as my brain is, you know, can think and I can talk so I just talk it’s a lot easier for me.
But the more you record, the more you can start to see that yeah, these are the types of thought patterns that I’m engaging in. These are the types of thoughts I’m thinking these are the types of feelings that are being created within me that are actually driving the behavior.
And then the next step is to and the third R is to reframe. Reframing means you change the thought to create different feelings, which drive a different behavior. This simply means you need to start to choose different thoughts in those moments, and this is a practice this is not something you’re going to do you know, you, you know, and then you’re going to do one time, you’re gonna be like, oh, I got it. No, it takes time.
Reframing is a powerful tool. It’s used in a lot of psychological practices like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. And they have a similar like three steps sort of process that is similar to this. But I think this one applies to us very profoundly. Okay.
So you have a thought, like, you know, I’ve been good all week, I deserve this donut, I just ran 10 miles, it’s not that big a deal. All those kinds of thoughts, right? Those thoughts are creating a desire inside you. And then you just use that desire to drive you to eat the doughnut.
But a reframing, reframing thought might be something like, oh, that donut looks really good. But my health is more important to me than how good that donut might taste in the moment. My weight loss goal is bigger than the tiny amount of pleasure that this stupid little donut is going to give me. Or I’m not the kind of person that eats that crap anymore.
Right, these thoughts, these reframed thoughts, start to create feelings of motivation, you start to feel more confident, you have a different desire not to eat the doughnut, but to stay consistent and reach those health and fitness goals that are so important to you.
And so in that moment, the desire to stay committed to your goals is much more powerful than the stupid donut sitting there. And so you make the choice tonight the donut. That’s a reframe.
Okay, so the whole thing, this whole process, recognize, record, reframe, only takes a couple of minutes to do, it only takes a few minutes, but you want to practice this, you want to practice this every day.
Recognize there’s a thought pattern you want to change. Record your thoughts and feelings about it. Reframe those thoughts and feelings to produce a better outcome next time.
It’s a very simple process. Simple, but not easy. This is the work that we have to do. This is the work that most people don’t want to do or not willing to do. Most people would rather stay stuck and just blame everything around them for why they’re stuck.
Like, oh, if those donuts weren’t sitting there, I’d be fine. Actually, no, because the donuts are not the problem. It’s your thoughts about the donuts. That’s the real problem. Okay. So get out there, start seeing all the thought patterns in your life, and start recognizing that these things are happening and that you are creating them.
Alright, so there’s some good thought patterns that are happening in your life and there’s some that are not so good, but recognize all of them and start to see them for what they really are, okay?
There’s going to be some that you want to continue doing. There are going to be some thought patterns that you want to change. And that’s when we put the three R’s into practice. Recognize, record, and reframe. Cool. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
When it comes to running tough races, you eventually get to a point where it’s all mind over matter. Your legs hurt, you’re exhausted, and you just want to quit. This is when your emotional …
Continue Reading about 198. Increasing Your Emotional Tolerance →
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 198 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today I’m talking about increasing your emotional tolerance.
So when it comes to running tough races, you eventually get to this point where it’s kind of mind over matter, right? Your legs hurt, you’re exhausted, you’re ready to give up. This is when your emotional toughness game really has to be on point, you know, or at least you think that you can physically keep going.
But there’s this emotional state that is trying to convince you that you need to stop right now. Like it’s just time to quit, right. And this emotional toughness or emotional tolerance is also required when you want to do other tough things in your life, like not eating the pizza when everybody around you is eating the pizza.
So today’s podcast is all about increasing your emotional tolerance. So you’re better armed to tough it out when things get tough, which they always seem to do. And if you want a little bit of help getting started with everything that I teach here on the podcast, when it comes to losing weight as a runner, being able to keep the weight off for good, not trying to outrun a bad diet, improving your strength, improving your endurance, improving your speed as a runner. And being able to make all of these changes last for good.
I’ve put together a free training that you can check out. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. I’ll teach you the right way to lose weight and keep it off for good. If you’re ready to become leaner and stronger, run faster and longer and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, then you need to check out this free training right now.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com, that’s my website, and click on Free Training. And by the way, it’s free if I didn’t say that it’s free, the training is free. I’ve put together this free training about an hour long. It goes over everything that I teach you on the podcast, definitely check it out runningleancoaching.com and then click on Free Training. Cool.
Okay, so let’s get into this idea of increasing your emotional tolerance. So the first thing to understand is that running is an emotional sport, right? We have all experienced a wide variety of emotions, when we’ve set out to train for a hard event, whether it’s a 5k, or half marathon, marathon, ultra marathon, whatever it is, there’s a there’s going to be a point during some tough race, there are some tough events that you’ve been training for, where it gets emotional.
And during running, there’s this physical toughness about it running, you know, I mean, you got to develop the endurance and develop the speed and develop the strength to be able to, you know, tough it out for 13 miles or 26 miles or whatever.
But then there’s also that emotional toughness, and you’ve probably already developed some emotional toughness, you’ve developed some emotional badass notes, you know, when it comes to running, because I hear from people all the time who tell me, they can sign up for a race and they go and they run their fastest race.
And there’s a point in that race where it becomes really hard. And they want to give up and they want to quit, but there’s this emotional resilience that they have that’s keeping them going. And I’m using the word emotional resilience or emotional toughness as opposed to mental toughness, because I think it is more emotional.
You know, the Mental Toughness part is like thinking, oh, I can do this. I think I can do this. I’m gonna keep going. But the emotional piece is like, you know, that feeling of like not wanting to be a failure. And like, I really just want to give up, I want to quit right now and curl up into a ball and cry right now.
I definitely have experienced that when it comes to running. So I think that as runners, we have developed some emotional toughness around running around certain events. When it comes to something like food, though, what happens there? Why is this so much different for us?
There’s this idea that when it comes to food and changing your diet, let’s say you want to lose weight, and so you’re going to stop eating pizza every night and you’re going to stop eating junk food, you’re going to up eating ice cream for dessert every night, you’re gonna stop eating the french fries every day, whatever it is, there’s this idea that you have to be able to handle some discomfort.
Because when you make a change like that, I promise you, it’s going to be uncomfortable. There’s going to be moments, sometimes a lot of moments where things are going to get uncomfortable for you. And I talk to people all the time, and I say, listen, you got to be able to handle this discomfort, you know, we’re going to stop eating sugar, for example.
And it’s going to be, it’s going to be hard and you’re going to feel uncomfortable, you’re going to want the sugar, your body’s going to crave the sugar, your mind is going to crave the sugar, you’re going to get emotional about all this stuff.
But you got to just lean into that discomfort and not eat the sugar, and be able to accept that emotional discomfort. And people tell me all the time, yep, I got it. No problem, Patrick. And then in reality when that time comes, and they have to say no to the sugar, but they’re craving it and they give in, or they you know, curl up into a ball and cry. Because it’s really hard in the moment.
In theory, it sounds easy enough. But in reality, this is a tough thing to deal with, especially if you’re not used to doing it. If you’re somebody that’s used to eating sugar every day, and you’re going to quit eating sugar for a period of time, that’s going to be hard to do.
If you’re somebody that’s used to drinking alcohol every day, or most days, and then you’re going to give up alcohol for a period of time, that’s going to be hard to do. If you’re somebody that wants to give up eating pizza all the time, not eating the pizza is going to be hard to do.
And it’s an emotional attachment that we have to these foods. It’s an emotional attachment that we have to feeling good. So it’s much harder to not eat the pizza than it is to tough it out for a marathon. Isn’t that interesting. I think that’s kind of crazy in a way.
Like if I just told you like you gotta run a PR when your next marathon. And if you’re in good enough shape, and you’ve done the training, you’re gonna get to a place during that race where it’s gonna be tough, and you’re gonna have to like put on that emotional badass rehab of yours, and you’ll be able to get through it.
But then when I say like, Hey, don’t eat pizza. Tomorrow night, when everybody else is eating pizza around you. That’s hard. It’s like harder for a lot of people, right? It’s interesting to me. So what is this? Is this a lack of willpower? You just don’t have enough willpower? Is it a lack of discipline? Are you just not disciplined enough? Was it a lack of desire? Do you not want it bad enough?
I don’t think it’s any of those things. I think it’s just an emotional tolerance issue more than anything else. So I’m going to ask you this question. What are you willing to feel? Seriously ask yourself that question, what are you willing to feel? What emotions are you willing to accept and just to feel?
You know, emotions we feel in our body, emotions, negative emotions, positive emotions, we feel them in our body, they feel like vibrations in our body, thoughts we experience in our minds and our heads. It’s very mental. It’s very heavy. But emotions we feel in our bodies like this vibration in our body. Some are good, some are not so good. Some feel good, some feel bad.
Anytime you use the word ‘feel’ to describe something that’s an emotional experience, we feel our emotions. Okay, for running, we feel physical pain, we feel physical suffering around food. It’s like emotional pain and emotional suffering. But what if you were willing to feel everything, especially the tough emotions.
Some of these emotions that we experience are deemed as negative emotions. And we don’t want to feel them. We’re taught at an early age that we don’t want to feel bad, we only want to feel good. And so our entire lives, we are chasing good feelings and running away from bad feelings.
So we do things like eat to feel better. We drink alcohol to feel better. We shop, gamble, do drugs, whatever, just because we want to feel better, even though we know those things are not good for us. But we chase after the good feeling. Because we don’t want to experience the bad feeling.
We run away from anything that feels bad, and we run towards anything that feels good. But if you want to change your diet, and you want to stick to a healthy eating plan, you’re going to have to experience some bad feelings.
But if you’re so conditioned to feel good all the time, then it’s going to feel like something is wrong. When you experience that bad feeling. So you’re sitting there at the table. Everybody’s eating pizza, and you’re like, oh my God, I feel bad right now. I don’t fit, this doesn’t feel right.
This feels like there’s something wrong, and I just got to feel better right now. And so you just grabbed the pizza and you start eating and you go, yeah, there we go. Now I feel good.
Don’t tell me you haven’t done that. Because we all have, we have all been there, you’re trying to stick to your diet, but then something happens everybody else is indulging in ice cream, pizza, whatever. And you just go for it, you just dig in, and you feel so much better. Right?
Because it feels good. Feels good to eat that stuff. Here’s the thing, though. Human beings, we are designed to feel all sorts of emotions, all sorts of stuff, right? Some feel good, and some feel bad. And I’m gonna say it’s about 50/50. And that’s the way life is designed. Life is supposed to be 50/50. It doesn’t feel good all the time.
But anytime we feel any kind of negative emotion and we go running away from it, we’re typically running into or chasing after something that is probably not good for us. So we have to accept this fact that life is 50/50 and that we’re gonna feel some negative emotions sometimes. And that’s okay, we’re gonna start, we got to start accepting, feeling bad sometimes.
That’s a crazy concept right there. Just accept that you’re going to feel bad sometimes. What? I know it’s bananas, right? A few years back. And I’ve talked about this before on the podcast here. But a few years back, I was going through a divorce. And this was tough for me. I’ve been with my second wife, that was my second wife, by the way, for like, nine years or whatever.
And we are going through this divorce. And we had been separated. And I was feeling terrible. Like, all the time. You know, I would wake up feeling terrible all day long, I’d feel kind of terrible. There were moments where I was okay. But I mean, I just felt bad a lot. It was tough to go to sleep at night, I was having all these crazy thoughts. And my mind was just racing and all these negative emotions.
Emotionally, I was a wreck. I felt terrible for a long time, for months. But here’s what I did. I, well, I tried to make it go away. And I was using food at the time to try to make it all go away. And I was working with a coach. And I just wanted to feel better. I was working with this coach. And she asked me a question.
At one point, she just said like, why do you think you shouldn’t feel bad? Why do you think you should feel any differently than you do? And I didn’t have an answer for that. I mean, I just, it doesn’t feel good to feel bad, right?
She’s like, yeah, but that right there, like just understanding that what you’re going through is tough, and it’s going to feel bad. And just having the acceptance around. That is what you need to wrap your head around, not trying to feel better, not trying to make the bad feelings go away.
But to accept the feelings, that was a game changer. For me, this changed my perspective on life and emotions and, and so much stuff. And we were just taught that we have to have like a positive attitude and think good thoughts and smile, and everything’s gonna be okay.
And like, no, everything was shit, you know, it was like, not good. And I just had to accept that and just be willing to feel bad. When I accepted this as my reality. And I sort of leaned into the negative emotions of, you know, going through this divorce. I did get through it much quicker. And I stopped having to use food to make myself feel better.
When you stop chasing feeling good all the time everything can change for you, because you’re no longer running away from the negative emotions. Because when you do that, listen, you’re running away from 50% of your life. You’re no longer afraid to feel bad. You can handle anything that comes your way, you become an emotional badass.
So this issue around food, and not wanting to feel uncomfortable at the table when everybody else is eating the pizza up. Think about this. What if you were just willing to feel bad for a little while? What if you’re willing to feel, you know, the desire for the pizza but not eat it? That’s uncomfortable. That’s an uncomfortable feeling, right?
But what if you were just willing to lean into that? What if you were having this craving and this urge to just like eat the pizza and just dig into it, but you didn’t give into that. That’s gonna feel terrible.
But you would get through that meal, and you would feel so much better about yourself. And then you would build a little bit of trust in yourself and a little bit of confidence that you can do this. And then the next time this happens, you’d get through that meal the same way and you’d build a little bit more trust and a little bit more confidence in yourself.
And listen, this doesn’t feel good. I’m not trying to Candy Coat anything here for you. This is a process that actually feels bad. Feeling negative emotions does not feel good. But it is important, I would say it is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.
If you want to change, if there’s anything that you’re going after that is tough, that’s going to take a while, like losing weight, changing your diet, not eating junk food, or even, you know, running that marathon. Those things all require some emotional tolerance, you have to be able to tolerate experiencing all these different emotions.
Now, there’s also the positive side of this, there are good emotions that you feel when you accomplish these goals. Or when you do something, when you feel good about yourself, I hear this all the time from my clients. They say, Oh my gosh, Patrick, I can’t believe I, they had, you know, brought all these doughnuts and bagels or whatever, into the break room. And I just didn’t eat them. And I felt good about myself.
And we call that a win. We call that a victory, you know, you won the day because you didn’t give in to the negative emotions. And that feels great, it feels great to do that. When you tough it out for that marathon and you cross the finish line. And you see that number on the clock and you just PR’d your marathon, that feels amazing. That’s, that’s joyous. That is an amazing elation that you feel.
So you can experience the positive emotions as well. But a lot of times it requires that we are willing to experience the negative ones. And then I remember a couple of marathons that I’ve PR’d or you know, 10K’s or half marathons, whatever. And those were very tough. And there were times when it was very challenging and extremely emotional and very hard and felt like quitting and all that.
And then at the end, crossing the finish line and accomplishing that goal, there was this release of positive emotion, it was just amazing. I actually cried, tears coming out my face, like it was so joyous, like blissful to feel that because I went through, you know, I went through the gauntlet, I did the hard things, I put in the work, I experienced all the negative emotions so I could experience the joy of victory.
You know, the same thing happens when we want to change our diet and stick to healthy eating, we have to go through the gauntlet, sometimes, you know, this isn’t forever. And this isn’t like something that’s gonna like last for months and months and months.
A lot of times we can break these addictions to sugar or junk food in around 30 days or so. But 30 days of like feeling some negative emotions can be kind of tough. You know, that’s why I do what I do as a coach. And I don’t just hand people a document and say, here’s what you do that just do the things on this list. And you’ll be fine. Because we need to talk through what they’re experiencing, we need to talk through how to get through some of those tough times and how to lean into those negative emotions.
So this is your work for this week. It is to allow yourself to experience negative emotions, allow yourself to experience you know what we would call bad feelings, don’t run away from them, lean into them, be willing to experience it all.
Remember, life is 50/50. Half the time you’re going to feel good half the time you’re going to feel bad. Don’t run away from that 50% that feels “bad”. Something else that happens over time when you do this, the bad feelings don’t feel that bad, they become more neutral.
When you’re willing to experience negative emotions and you do this on the regular and you get good at it. They become less emotionally charged, they don’t become so powerful, they become more neutral. This is what I call becoming an emotional badass.
So you build up this emotional tolerance, feeling bad becomes more and more acceptable and more neutral and easier for you to handle, then you can do anything you want. Because you’re willing to experience the negative emotions. You’re willing to experience the whole swath of emotions that we all experience as human beings and you’re not running away from half of your life.
Okay, I know you can do this. But if you want some help, I’m always here for you. Okay, we can talk about coaching, just head over to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. Fill out an application, we can get on a Zoom call. We can talk about coaching, what it looks like. I’ll answer all of your questions. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Coo.l
Okay, you guys got this I know you do and that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
A LOT of people are addicted to, or have a troublesome relationship with, sugar. And a LOT of people I work with come to me because they want this problem solved once and for all. The problem is …
Continue Reading about 192. How Do I Break My Addiction to Sugar? →
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 192 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, How Do I Break My Addiction To Sugar?
So a lot of people are addicted to or have a troublesome relationship with sugar. And a lot of people I work with actually come to me because they want this problem solved once and for all. Because if you can solve the sugar addiction problem, there’s a lot that you can do to improve your health.
And it makes a lot of the things that I talked about here much easier, like losing weight and getting stronger and getting fitter, changing your body composition. The problem is that most people don’t know how to break their sugar addiction. And they never get to a place where they can enjoy sugar in moderation.
For some people, that’s a thing. And some people cannot do that. They continue this dysfunctional relationship with sugar even though they know it’s doing more harm than good. But wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have such a messed up relationship with sugar? How would your life change if you no longer had that constant craving for sugar? How much weight could you lose? How much better would you feel physically mentally and emotionally?
In this episode, I’m gonna explain why sugar has such a powerful grip on us as human beings, and how you can take back control and begin to break your addiction to sugar once and for all. But first, if you’ve ever worked with a coach, then your experience probably looks something like this. Your coach told you what to do. And then you are supposed to do it.
Does that sound familiar? Yes, knowing what to do is a part of coaching. But there’s a lot more to it than that. But this traditional coaching approach is the equivalent of reading a book. So you get the knowledge piece when you read a book, but you don’t get anything else after that.
And the biggest issue I have with this quote unquote, like traditional coaching approach, is that what works for some people won’t necessarily work for everyone. So what works for them may not work for you. That’s why I approach coaching very differently.
Every person I work with is an individual. And so I’m going to treat you like the individual that you are. We all have different metabolisms, different body types, different goals, different lifestyles, different food likes and dislikes, and on and on and on. And so with my approach, you and I work closely together to put together a plan that’s tailored to you, personally.
A plan that fits you and your lifestyle and your goals and is designed to help you accomplish those things that you want for yourself to help you to become that particular person that you want to become which is different than what this other person wants to become. And then as we go through the process of coaching, we continually monitor progress.
It’s a feedback system, we course correct if we need to. And if things are working great, we keep moving on, we keep going through the process. If they aren’t, then we change something. It’s pretty simple.
But most coaches don’t do this because this is hard. And it takes time. And it requires a wealth of experience to do it properly. But I do it this way, because it’s the right way to do coaching. And it means that you get the best results possible period.
This is all about getting results. If we are getting results, great, if not, we change something until we get results. So if you’re looking for more than the traditional one size fits all type of coaching, I’m here for you, you can join my program, the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program specifically designed for runners. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more.
And if you want a little help, just getting started with all that stuff. I know I talk a lot about a lot of different things here on the podcast. Sometimes I give you some steps that you can get started that I’m going to do today. You know we’re talking about breaking your addiction to sugar. I’m gonna give you a few steps to help you get started.
But if you want more and you really want some help on proper nutrition, and what strength training should look like, what it means to build endurance and mindset, and improve your mindset. I put together a brand new fun training and it’s free.
It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. I’ll teach you the right way to lose weight and keep it off for good. You will learn why running more and eating less doesn’t work. If you’re trying to lose weight and improve your body composition, you’ll learn a couple things that runners don’t really do well, but really need to do well if you want to lose weight.
And we’ll talk about things like endurance and mindset. And then there’s a couple of keys there that I share with you that are maybe surprising for you, maybe something you haven’t really thought about in the past. Everybody that goes through this training tells me that they have learned something that they didn’t really know before. And it just kind of shed some light on some things for them.
So if you want to learn how to crush your weight loss goals and your running goals, and you’re ready to do that, now you can take this free training, it’s about an hour long, it’s a video based training, and you can go through it in your free time. So whenever it’s convenient for you, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. Cool.
Okay, so today’s topic is How Do I Break My Addiction To Sugar? Now, this episode is inspired by a question that was submitted by a listener. Danielle asked the very simple question, how do I break my addiction to sugar? And it’s a very simple question, right? But it has a bit of a complicated answer. And that’s why I’m answering it here in a podcast episode.
So I’m devoting an entire podcast episode to answering this question, as opposed to just, you know, typing a few sentences and sending that off to her because there’s more to it, especially when we talk about sugar and addiction and things like that.
Plus, I think it’s great that we can all benefit from the question and the answer, because I know that she’s not the only person that has this question. In fact, I get questions like this all the time.
And if you have a question that you would like me to answer, if there’s something on your mind where you’re like, man, I really wish you would talk about this, then feel free to send me your questions. I would love your input. I’m always looking for new topics. And really, I do this for you.
So send me your questions, and I will answer them right here on the podcast. Okay.
So if you have questions about weight loss, body composition, running, nutrition, strength training, whatever is on your mind, you can send me questions via Facebook, just find me on Running Lean Coaching on Facebook, Instagram is @RunningLeanCoach, or you can email me patrick@runningleancoaching.com, any of those methods will work, just shoot off your question to me, and I will answer it here. Okay.
But I’d love to know what you want to learn about what you want more, you know, light shed upon, okay. Okay, so let’s just kind of start talking about this topic today. How do I break my addiction to sugar?
I want to go back a little bit and just talk about a little bit of our history with sugar because I think it’s important to understand that sugar is not something that we have always been consuming as human beings. I mean, we did eat fruit, and we have always, you know, found fruit to eat, we would forage for things like berries, right, and some fruit trees, I would imagine that were available.
Now, the fruit for the last couple of million years, the fruit that we were consuming was very different from the stuff we’re consuming today. The stuff we’re consuming today is mostly sugar, it’s been hybridized, and bred out to be sweeter and juicier and bigger.
And one good, great example is the peach, which used to be about the size of a cherry. So it’s very tiny and had a really bitter taste to it. So if you were to eat a peach from, you know, 500 years ago, it would be really tiny and not very sweet at all.
And you can see that, you know, peaches are the size of softballs now. And they’re super juicy and incredibly sweet and delicious, right? Very satisfying, especially on a hot summer day. Very good, right?
But that’s a big difference. You know, bananas are another example. They used to be very small, and they had these giant seeds in them. And now the seeds and bananas are teeny tiny, like, we just eat them, right? They’re like teeny, tiny little black things, right?
Those are actually the seeds of the bananas, but they used to be much larger, much, much larger, and they would take up most of the inside of the banana. And again, the banana was not very sweet at all. So understand that, you know, consuming fruit for us, you know, that was our form of sugar.
And of course, we would find honey as well. And that was about the sweetest thing that we would consume as human beings. And for millions of years, we did really well without the introduction of any sort of processed and refined sugar.
And then back in the 16th century, sugar started being imported to Europe from the tropics. And so they were starting to import things like coffee and tea and chocolate and rum. Rum is just fermented sugarcane juice, essentially; tobacco, and then sugar.
And all the European empires were kind of built upon these substances, coffee, tea, chocolate, rum, tobacco, sugar. And they call these things ‘drug foods’. Because all of these foods are considered powerful psychoactive, and arguably addictive substances. Coffee, tea, chocolate and tobacco are unique.
And that they’d become more desired when you combine these things with sugar. So sweetening tea and coffee with sugar became wildly popular, and chocolate as well. So if you were to take just 100% pure chocolate and eat that it would be really bitter and really hard to consume, but combine it with some sugar, oh, now we’re talking, right?
So sugar consumption increased throughout the whole colonized world. And anywhere these items were imported the coffee, tea, chocolate sugar became imported too. So it was one of those things that went along for the ride, so to speak.
And something interesting that I found in my research here is that cigarettes were one of those things that benefited from sugar and most people don’t know this, but there’s this process called flue cured.
So flue cured tobacco is where you dry out tobacco leaves in a hot barn, and this kind of releases the natural sugars from the tobacco leaves. But when they started adding sugar to the tobacco leaves, it made smoking cigarettes much easier and more pleasurable and much easier to inhale deeply.
Cigars and pipes, you really cannot inhale those things deeply. If you’ve ever tried to It is awful, because they don’t have the added sugar in the tobacco leaves. So cigars and pipes are not considered as addictive as cigarettes because they don’t soak leaves in sugar.
So they started soaking the leaves in this sugar solution. And they called it a sauce. So they were saucing the tobacco. And in 1913, RJ Reynolds put out Camel cigarettes, which was the first commercially made sugar soft tobacco blend, and it was a big hit.
So big hit. Sugar also carmelizes as it burns, so it made the cigarettes taste sweeter, it was more pleasing. It appealed to women into younger people like adolescents. And so younger people started smoking, women started smoking more, because it was more pleasurable to do. It wasn’t as harsh.
So saucing tobacco is something that they did they added sugar to tobacco to make it more pleasurable and more addictive. And they did this with chewing tobacco as well. And so easier to inhale and more nicotine is delivered. Because you’re inhaling deeper, there’s a bigger rush.
And then it makes the drug the nicotine whatever much more addictive. So it’s really the sugar component from cigarettes that makes it as addictive as it is right. But listen, as human beings, for millions of years, we didn’t need sugar, we did just fine.
We actually thrived as human beings without sugar is not something that we needed for survival and we still don’t, but then things changed once sugar became introduced into the human body, and you can look at Egyptian mummies from thousands of years ago with rotten teeth and distended bellies. And this is because of the introduction of refined grains and sugars into the diet.
Whereas you look at the dental records or not dental records, but the skeletons, you know, the skulls of Neanderthals, and they had perfect teeth. Now we don’t have their bodies so we don’t know if they had like distended bellies or anything like that, they weren’t necessarily overweight, like we don’t know that.
But we can tell from their teeth that they didn’t have rotten teeth. So they weren’t eating sugar because they didn’t have it available. Okay, so one thing we have to understand is that there’s a lot of negative side effects to consuming sugar.
And then we have to also talk about this like is sugar actually an addictive substance? And if you look at some of the data out there, like for example it If you look at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, at the end, they will say sugar is not addictive.
And from their website, it says neither sugar or any food for that matter is on the DSM five list of addictive substances. So they’re basically saying that you cannot get addicted to sugar. It’s not addictive because it’s not in the DSM five. So what do we think about that?
Well, there’s a journalist, Charles, the man who wrote whether sugar is actually an addictive substance or if people just act like it is, if everyone is acting like it is. And the evidence is pretty clear that it is then the answer to that question becomes pretty clear as well.
And scientists have concluded that sugar is both a nutrient, a carbohydrate, and a psychoactive substance with addictive characteristics. I think that’s pretty clear. I think it is pretty clear what makes a substance addictive.
So there’s lots of ways you can kind of break this down. But here’s three, you crave something intensely, there’s a loss of control over its use, continuing involvement with the substance, despite adverse consequences.
So does something like alcohol fit this description? Do people crave it intensely? Yes. Is there a loss of control over its use? Yes. Is there continued involvement, even though there’s adverse consequences? Yes.
How about tobacco? Absolutely. Opioids? Sure. Definitely sugar. Most definitely. Do people crave sugar intensely? Yes. Do people feel a loss of control over its use? Do they have a hard time not consuming sugar? Absolutely.
Does continuing involvement with sugar, continual consumption of sugar? Does it have adverse consequences on your health? Yes, and your health and your happiness and your mental state, your emotional state? Absolutely.
Too much sugar is linked with tooth decay, consuming more calories, weight gain, high blood pressure, inflammation, diabetes, fatty liver disease, obesity, and all of these things are linked to an increased risk for heart attack and stroke.
So yeah, I’m gonna say there’s a lot of adverse consequences to consuming sugar. Have you ever tried to just quit eating sugar and not been able to do it, despite the fact that it’s causing you issues causing negative health consequences? Lots of people come to me and tell me this.
They’re like, it’s so hard to quit sugar. Even though I know it’s not good for me. Even though when I eat sugar, I don’t feel good. It’s affecting my weight. It’s affecting my health. It’s affecting my running. It’s affecting my body composition. It’s affecting my relationships. state of mind. Yeah, so let’s just agree.
Let’s start from this place right here that yeah, sugar is addictive. It really is. It is an addictive psychoactive substance. So let’s just start with that understanding. Okay. By the way, the AMD the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is funded by the sugar industry. You know, Pepsi, Mars, Candis, and others fund the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
And so they also contribute a lot of articles and a lot of, quote, unquote, studies on how sugar’s not harmful and not addictive and actually good for you. And in my research here, I was looking up some information on sugar and I came across like, I don’t even know the name of it, but it was like the sugar industry’s website.
And it just talks about how great sugar is, how much we love it, and we should be eating it every day. And I’m just like, oh my god, this is crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. So understand that sugar is addictive, okay, and understand that there’s a lot of information out there and a lot of people out there that are trying to tell you that it is and that it’s fine.
I’m gonna let you make up your own mind but I believe firmly and so does the science that sugar is very addictive. Okay, so we have to understand that. And then also we have to understand what we’re getting when we consume sugar.
So sugar has psychoactive effects on the brain similar to drugs like cocaine, sugar can cause your brain to release endorphins and dopamine, which leads to feelings of joy and pleasure. It feels great. Eating sugar, right? This is why we do it. We don’t do it.
Well, I mean, it tastes good, has a great feeling in our mouth. But it also, you know, brings us joy and pleasure. It feels good, just like any other psychoactive drug just like cocaine or tobacco or you know, nicotine or opioids or alcohol, it feels good to consume these substances, right?
But it’s temporary. That good feeling is actually very, very temporary. Just like any other psychoactive substance, there’s an opposite reaction when that substance wears off when the effects of that substance wears off.
So there’s a primary response to the psychoactive substance. And then there’s a secondary response, the primary response is a feeling of joy, pleasure, bliss, it feels good. And this lasts a very short amount of time, maybe 20-30 minutes, 45 minutes, something like that.
It’s very short, when it comes to sugar, other drugs might last longer, other ones are really short, something like cocaine doesn’t last very long at all. Let’s give it about 30 minutes, okay, let’s just say that thing lasts for about 30 minutes, then there is a secondary response.
And that is the opposite. It’s the opposite of that feeling. So instead of feeling pleasure, joy and bliss, it’s depression, anger, anxiety, moodiness, and this can last for like two or three days, two or three days of depressed mood, because of sugar consumption.
Sugar actually fuels anxiety, depression, stress, moodiness, it causes these things. It doesn’t manage it, it doesn’t control it. So it’s a false belief that it’s going to make you feel better. Okay, it does make you feel better, but for a very short amount of time.
But what really happens is there’s that negative that coming down off the substance that causes you to feel worse. And so what do we do? In that situation, when you’re feeling worse, when you start to feel the anxiety of depression, the stress and the moodiness, you go back for more sugar because it’s going to make you feel good again. And then we just keep repeating the cycle over and over and over again, that is what addiction looks like.
You can substitute alcohol, cocaine, opioids, any of that stuff for sugar, and it’s all the same. It’s all the same. So your brain wants you to feel good, your brain thinks that sugar is good for you. Because your brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
You’re seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And so when your brain thinks you need sugar to feel good, it almost feels like a survival instinct to your brain. “I need this, I have to have it. If I don’t have it, I’m going to die.”
And that’s what that coming down off of sugar feels like, oh my god, I’m going to die. I need some sugar, I need to feel better right now. And this is what leads to compulsive behavior, that thing where we keep going back to the substance over and over and over again, even though we’re having a lot of negative side effects from the thing.
So it can cause a short term high burst of energy and feeling good. But then we have that negative side, those negative side effects and some of the signs of the sugar addiction are the negative side effects of sugar are anxiety, depression, bloating, diarrhea. That’s no good.
Cravings, chills, involuntary shaking, muscle aches, headaches, fatigue, nausea, these are just signs that you might be addicted to sugar. So I hope you’re understanding something here today so far.
Anyway, I haven’t even talked about how we break the addiction to sugar, but I hope you’re understanding that this is a powerful thing. It’s a powerful substance, right. So it is very powerful. And we have to change our relationship with sugar and we want to remove that substance from the equation if you want to break the addiction.
Okay, so step one, to breaking your addiction to sugar is to remove the substance completely, there has to be a period of abstinence. This is a hard step, but it is necessary. So if you’re an alcoholic, and you have a problem, you know, drinking, you can check into a rehab or you can stay there for like 30 days, they lock you up, you have no access to alcohol.
They have medical interventions to help you alleviate the withdrawal symptoms. And people can make massive progress by staying away from alcohol for like 30 days, let’s say or other drugs, opioids, same way. What about sugar though? Is that something that is available? Is there like a sugar rehab out there? I don’t think so. Probably not. Maybe there needs to be.
But can you sort of mimic that it’s really hard to do, it’d be really hard to have that kind of an intervention, and to have no access to sugar. It’s everywhere, by the way.
But here’s something that I found really interesting: that there are a lot of symptoms of sugar withdrawal. So when you stop eating sugar, this is why it’s so hard for people to quit sugar, you’re going to experience one or more of these symptoms, and these are all related to the withdrawal of sugar from the system.
So as soon as you remove sugar from your body and stop consuming it, people experience headache, nausea, lightheadedness, dizziness, lethargy, depression, anger, irritability, bloating, muscle aches, moodiness, emotional swings, intense cravings for more sugar, difficulty concentrating, disrupted sleep patterns. This is crazy.
When you stop eating this quote unquote, food, that everyone says is totally fine. When you just stop eating it, you can experience one or more of all these symptoms or all of them. That is crazy, that food should not be a part of your diet, if that’s what you experienced when you don’t eat it. Right? Isn’t that crazy.
So one of the reasons why we want to abstain, we want to have a period of complete abstinence from sugar is because you need to reset your dopamine levels, consuming sugar regularly will actually raise your levels of dopamine and it feels great, I mean, you know, you’re you’re getting more dopamine and your dopamine is constantly raised.
But that means that your baseline dopamine is a lot higher than it should be. And it takes more of the substance to get you back up to baseline. So chronically elevated dopamine levels, means that sugar is going to be something you have a very hard time giving up. Because the more you eat it, the higher your dopamine gets, and you need to eat a lot of it to get back up to that artificially high baseline.
Okay, so you’ve raised your baseline if you’ve consumed sugar for, you know, consistently for a long period of time. So taking a break from sugar will reset your dopamine, it’ll reset your dopamine back to normal levels. And then you’re not going to have the intense cravings anymore. And you won’t need as much dopamine to get you back to feeling good again.
And this process takes some time, it could take 30 days or 90 days, they say that for some depending on the drug you’re using, let’s say you’re addicted to opioids or something like that, you know, it could take 14 months to reset your dopamine levels, you know, this is sugar, it’s probably not going to take as long.
I always suggest you start with a 30 day break and then see how you’re going from there. Most of the people I work with, most of my clients report that after 30 days of abstinence from sugar, their cravings are basically gone. They no longer crave sugar, so they’re not eating it and it’s not eating and it’s not a big deal anymore. This is a good place to be. This is where you want to get to.
You want to turn down the volume of the desire, you want to turn down the volume of the craving. And to do that you have to take a break for a while, 30 days, and see how you’re doing from there. Right? Take a break. Try for 30 days to deal with the withdrawal symptoms, you got to deal with all that list of crazy stuff that I mentioned some of it, you won’t experience some of it, you will.
And I help people get through that period, you know, there’s different things we can do. But the desire for sugar should get turned way down. And then when you’re no longer craving it now, not eating sugar is not a big deal. Because your dopamine level has been reset. You don’t have those cravings there anymore.
You’ve gotten out of that cycle of needing the dopamine and then coming down off the dopamine and then having to get it back up again. And so everything is normalized, right? But that’s not how most people do it. Most people do this, they say oh, I gotta stop eating sugar.
So they take a break for like a week. And then something happens. Somebody brings in some donuts at work and they just like oh my god, their cravings are so intense and they just like eat all the donuts right? And then they are back in the pattern of, you know, craving the dopamine and then you know, getting the sugar high and coming down hard and then wanting it back again.
And maybe they can take another week where they can, I’m just gonna white knuckle through this next week. But then you’re in this vicious cycle of continually keeping dopamine levels artificially raised and continually giving in to those cravings and so that cycle continues.
You never get off the substance, you just keep using it, you just keep getting enough to keep your dopamine levels from getting too low, right? And this is a very hard way to do it. I’m just gonna tell you right now, it’s very hard to do it this way.
And this is where people get frustrated, and they just want to give up. You know, don’t give up. Right? And if you want help, obviously, I can help you with this whole process, right? But do not give up. Right? Because what you’re doing, you’re just reinforcing this habit.
If you want to break a habit, you’ve got to practice the new habit, repeatedly, consistently. So if the habit is eating sugar, every time you eat sugar, you’re reinforcing the habit that I eat sugar to feel good. And every time you don’t do that, you’re reinforcing the habit of I can, I can deal with this feeling I can, I don’t need sugar to feel good.
So you’re either reinforcing the habit of eating sugar or the habit of abstaining from sugar, you’re always reinforcing a habit, one or the other. Which habit Are you reinforcing? Right. So step one, take a break from sugar, and avoid all types of sugar. And I would say even sugar substitutes, because some sugar substitutes can actually elevate your blood sugar and cause a rise in dopamine.
And so they’re not, you’re not really getting the abstinence that we’re talking about here. And some of them will just kind of trick your brain into thinking you’re getting some sugar and increase dopamine. So not everyone responds the same way to sugar substitutes, it’s probably best to just like eliminate them for a period of time, just get off the sweet stuff altogether.
And remember, your goal is to reset dopamine levels. And this requires a period of normalized dopamine. Now, we do want to do things to get natural occurring sources of dopamine, that we can kind of create ourselves from things like exercise, running, lifting, weights, meditation, quality, sleep, laughing, all these things give you dopamine, and will help you to feel good, without the huge spikes and crashes. Okay, so that’s step one, gotta eliminate sugar from your diet for a period of time, let’s say 30 days or so.
Step two is going to be the reintroduction stage. So this is where you want to reintroduce some sugar into your system, but you have to do this carefully. So once you’ve reset the dopamine, and you no longer have those sugar cravings, and so you’ve turned down the volume of the desire for sugar, this is a good place to be.
So you can try some reintroduction, you can like try a very small amount of dark chocolate, let’s say like 70% or higher, I like 85% dark chocolate, I love that stuff. It’s so good. If you’re used to eating sugar, 85% dark chocolate, it’s gonna taste very bitter, it’s not going to taste sweet at all.
But if you haven’t had sugar in a while, you eat some 85% dark chocolate, you’re gonna be like, Whoa, this is really sweet. It’s interesting, right? Because you’re not just resetting your dopamine, you’re also resetting your palate. So just a little bit of sugar will taste very sweet.
So you don’t need much at all, which is good, it’s a good place to be right. So try a few pieces of dark chocolate, let’s say for an example and see how you feel. Another kind of tip with this is to eat the sugar with a meal or right after a meal because this will lessen the blood sugar impacted or lessen the dopamine impact.
So consuming sugar after eating other foods like fat and protein dampens the blood sugar response. I like to eat a few pieces of dark chocolate right after I eat my dinner, kind of like a dessert almost. But it is. It’s not like hours after dinner. It’s literally like minutes after dinner.
So I eat my dinner and then maybe I clean up my dishes or whatever, then I grab a couple pieces of dark chocolate. And I don’t have big cravings for more sugar when I do it that way. I don’t have big rises in blood sugar and then crashes and it doesn’t cause huge dopamine spikes and it doesn’t cause that craving which is key, right? So step one abstinence, step two is reintroduction of a very small amount of some kind of sugar. And then try this for 30 days, 60 days something like that.
And listen, this is different for each person. So if you find that when you try reintroducing some sugar, your cravings come back and you start binging out on stuff like that, then we have to look at that. And there may be some other stuff going on. We may have to start a reset start over with a reset.
But eventually we want to get to this place where your relationship with sugar changes like that’s really the goal like to no longer have the cravings because when you don’t crave then you don’t really need it. When you don’t need it, it’s no big deal to not eat it. Okay.
Step three is going to be more of a lifestyle and this is you know, moderation that means that moderation moderating your sugar intake is something you’re going to probably do for the rest to your life, if this is important to you, because your cravings over time are going to fluctuate, sometimes you’re going to have cravings for sugar, sometimes you won’t. And this is normal.
Sugar’s amazing, it’s highly pleasurable, it brings you a lot of joy and pleasure and bliss. And your brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. So if there’s a bunch of donuts sitting there, you’re gonna want the donuts and it’s okay, it doesn’t mean you’re broken, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, your brain is just doing what it normally does.
If I see a bunch of old fashioned glazed donuts sitting in front of me, I’m going to want to eat the donut, it doesn’t mean I will eat them. Big difference. But I’m going to want to eat them. Okay. So when you’re feeling some kind of stress in your life, or craving, and you want to feel better, right now, sugar is going to make you feel better. But remember, it’s very temporary.
And there’s that opposite effect, more stress, more anxiety, more depression, whatever. So it doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do. It never does. So your goal in living your life is to moderate your sugar intake. You gotta keep that intake pretty low.
It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it on occasions. Everybody wants a piece of birthday cake on their birthday, you don’t eat the birthday salad. That’s no fun. But you have to remember, sugar like alcohol is a powerful psychoactive substance. Use with extreme caution, the dosage matters, okay?
Sugar is not a healthy food. It’s not good for you. It rots your teeth, it has no positive effects on your health or your well being. Except for that temporary feeling of bliss. Just like alcohol, alcohol is a poison, right? There’s no health benefits to drinking alcohol. Is it okay to drink alcohol on occasion in moderation and a little bit? Sure, it’s fine. But just understand it’s not a health food.
But if you find yourself having a drink, and then you feel out of control when you do drink, and increased cravings, inability to stop drinking, and your life starts to spiral out of control, because you’re drinking, that’s a problem.
Sustainless sugar, you’re finding that it’s hard to stop, you’re finding you’re out of control, you’re finding you’re binging you’re finding that you have, you keep going back to sugar, even though you’re having adverse health effects from it, that’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Okay.
And the other side of this is learning how to deal with the emotions, right? We’re learning how to deal with the stress and the anxiety and the things that come up in your life without using any substance without using alcohol without using drugs without using sugar.
And this is a big part of the work that I do with my coaching clients. They learn how to experience their emotions without eating over them. They learn how to lean into the discomfort of having stress or anxiety or fear, frustration, whatever that negative emotion is, they learn how to lean into the discomfort of having that negative emotion without needing to dampen it without needing to make it go away.
This is a key skill that you need to learn as a human being. Because it requires being willing to feel your feelings without doing anything to try to change them. This is not the way we’re conditioned to do things, right? We’re conditioned that if you have a negative emotion, you got to make it go away as fast as possible.
We are very, very quick to want to dampen or remove a negative emotion. But what if you just didn’t do anything? What if you just felt it? What if you just processed it and then moved on with your life?
And that’s what it means to be an emotional badass. You’re no longer afraid of feeling a feeling. It is a skill that you can learn. It’s really a superpower that you can learn and that everyone should learn how to master this superpower here. Okay. So I hope this helps answer your question, Danielle, and please send me your questions and any topics that you want me to cover here on the podcast.
I’d love to hear what you guys are interested in, in learning about, okay. And as always, I can help you through this entire process, ending your addiction to sugar as a huge part of what we do together in The Coaching Project.
If you’re looking for some help, we can talk about it. Just head over to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And we can talk about coaching what that would look like for you. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
One of the most important concepts you need to learn if you want to take back control of eating is the desire scale. This is a tool we have recently started using in The Coaching Project and it’s …
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 174 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today: The Desire Scale. One of the most important concepts you need to learn if you want to take back control of eating is the desire scale. This is a tool we’ve started using recently in the coaching project. And it’s been so well received that I thought I’d share it with you guys here today.
So when you’re trying to lose weight, sticking to your food plan is what makes or breaks your progress. If you’re constantly giving into temptations, losing weight is going to be very difficult and feel pretty miserable.
Instead, if you can take back control of what foods you eat, when you eat, how much, how often, et cetera, that losing weight will be much easier and a heck of a lot more fun. So in this episode, I explain the desire scale, what it is, how it works, and how it might just be the key to your weight loss success.
So today’s episode is all about the desire scale. And this is a concept that I taught live on a Coaching Project group call recently. And if you’re not familiar, the Coaching Project is my lifetime access coaching program where you get live coaching with me every week. You also get to be part of an amazing community of runners of all abilities, who are all working on becoming their best selves.
This isn’t just for elite athletes. If you’re a runner, meaning you run, and you would love to lose weight and learn how to keep it off for good, then you have to check out the Coaching Project. We focus on nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset to help you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. Whatever that looks like for you.
Some people want to lose 50 pounds, other people just want to run faster or run longer. And then there’s a few people who just would love to change their whole relationship with food, maybe get off the sugar train once and for all. If you’re a runner, and you struggle to lose weight, don’t know what to do from a nutrition standpoint, and would love to learn how to eat healthy and maintain that as a lifestyle, then you are a perfect fit for the Coaching Project. To learn more and sign up now just go to runningleancoaching.com/join.
So how do you lose weight? And these concepts apply, whether you’re a runner or not, runners are not magically exempt from these principles. Okay, if you want to lose weight, you have to change what you’re doing, right? You’ve got to change what you’re eating, maybe stop eating certain foods and maybe start eating other foods, maybe cut back on the sugar and maybe increase your protein.
So you have to kind of change what you’re doing a lot. A lot of times it means that we have to restrict ourselves from certain foods. Let’s say you love eating pizza, and you love eating ice cream and you eat these things all the time like pizza a couple times a week. Ice cream is a nightly event after dinner, you know, you’re like, “Oh, I just need to eat some ice cream every night. That’s just the way I am. That’s the way it is.”
If this is your default, then you’re probably gonna have to change that. If you decide, hey, I want to lose some weight. So I probably need to cut out the sugar, I need to cut out the, you know, carbs, the grains, you know, so I’m gonna stop eating pizza, and I’m going to stop eating ice cream, I’ll do those two things.
Well, this is going to feel terrible. At first, okay. Restriction is kind of required. If you want to lose weight, if you want to change what you’re doing, you’re gonna have to do things differently and it’s going to feel a little restrictive at the beginning.
Now in my program, the way I do things with my clients is we restrict in stages. So we might cut out sugar first, we might reduce our overall carbohydrate intake, we might reduce some other types of foods. But we do these things in stages so that it doesn’t feel too terrible. Okay, just FYI.
But there is going to be some level of restriction and some level of man, this feels terrible. At the beginning, especially right after a while you get used to this stuff, not that big of a deal. But at the beginning especially, it’s going to feel tough, and it’s okay, this is normal.
This is just your brain doing what it does. Your brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. You know what pleasure feels like to your brain? Ice cream and pizza. You know what pain feels like? Not eating pizza and ice cream. But you have to understand that the thing that’s actually driving that behavior, there’s an emotion that’s driving that behavior of feeling and that feeling is desire.
So what is desire? A desire is a feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. It’s a feeling of wanting to have something, it’s a feeling, it’s an emotion. And as we know, feelings and emotions are created by your thoughts.
It’s not the thing itself that’s driving you to want it, it is your thoughts about the thing. For example, pizza, just sitting there has no effect on you whatsoever. And if you’re somebody who has never eaten pizza in their life, or just doesn’t like pizza, and looking at a pizza, they’re not really going to feel anything.
But if you love pizza, and you look at pizza, and you say, “Oh my god, that is going to be an amazing experience. If I eat this pizza…” that’s a thought. And so that feeling that desire is being created by you.
And so you might be kind of really thinking about this pizza a lot and smelling it, and imagining what it’s going to feel like and your mouth and the cheese and the crust and all this stuff. And you can create a pretty intense, a pretty intense desire, just by thinking about something, okay.
So sometimes the desire can be pretty strong. Sometimes it’s not so much. For example, my girlfriend, Cathy, she keeps this bowl of dark chocolate on her dining room table. And it looks pretty, you know, it’s in a pretty little bowl and, and I’ll go over there sometimes, and I’ll look at that bowl.
And I’ll just be like, I don’t even want that, you know, I mean, I love chocolate, don’t get me wrong. And sometimes I just don’t even want it. I’ll look at it, I’ll be like, doesn’t even look good to me right now. Other times, I’ll look at that, and I’ll be like, woof, I’m gonna, I’m gonna eat some chocolate. And it’s okay.
But it’s interesting, because the desire is not the same all the time, it has a lot to do with what’s going on with me, not not necessarily what’s going on in that bowl, the bowl is not changing, the chocolate is just sitting there. That’s just a circumstance, the pizza, the ice cream, they’re just sitting there. But there are things that can affect the intensity of our desire.
So some of these things could be stress. Stress can have an effect on people’s desire. And I hear this all the time, just about everyday, somebody tells me how stressed out they are. And that’s why they couldn’t stick to their plan. And that’s why they haven’t been exercising. And that’s why they can’t not eat the ice cream every night.
The boss yells at you at work, you know, you got this deadline to or you know, you got passed up for promotion or something like that. So there’s a stressful situation, and you come home and all you want to do is eat. Right? The pizza isn’t causing you the desire, it’s the stress that’s causing that desire to be amplified.
Lack of sleep can do the same thing. When you’re tired your guard is down, right? You don’t have the same amount of willpower. You know, willpower is not something we want to rely on anyway. But when you’re tired, when you haven’t slept well, that also puts your body in a state of stress. But that can make that desire increase in intensity as well.
Being bored. How many people have I talked to you, oh my gosh, that tells me they’re just bored. And you know, they work from home. They sit around all day, and they just get bored and they wander into the kitchen and start opening cabinets until they find something that looks good. They’re not really even hungry. They’re just bored. And so they eat out of boredom. But that boredom can kind of increase that intensity of the desire.
There’s other emotions like anger, frustration, anxiety, these will all increase your level of desire, your intensity of that desire. It’s kind of like turning a knob, a volume knob and you’re turning up the intensity because you’re experiencing these, what we would call, like intense negative emotions, right?
Then there’s other things that can have an effect on our, on our intensity levels of our desire, which is things like peer pressure people, you know, you’re in a group of people and everybody’s eating the pizza or drinking margaritas or something and you’re feeling like oh my gosh, I’m just and they’re like saying, “Come on, it’s fine. Just have some. You don’t need to stay on your diet. Come on, you’re on vacation, whatever.”
That can feel like, you know, let your guard down and that can increase that desire as well. And then there’s like marketing messages that we get from the world out there on social media, billboards, magazines, television, commercials, all that stuff. You know, they make the food look so amazingly delicious. By the way, those burgers that you see in the commercials, they never ever look anything like that in real life, am I right?
Look at a Wendy’s burger on the commercial and then look at it in person. It’s like what the? This is not what I expected this to look like. Okay, now all these things I just mentioned stress, lack of sleep, boredom, anger, frustration, anxiety, peer pressure, marketing messages, all these things are neutral.
Really, when you think about it, all of these things are emotional responses to your circumstances. Okay? So all of these things are just emotions, they are you taking your circumstances of your life, and you’re coming up with thoughts about those situations.
I’m angry, because I’m frustrated, because I’m anxious, because I’m stressed out because, and you’re taking all these things, and you or the marketing messages, for example, or peer pressure, these are just outside circumstances that are creating the desire inside of you. So you have thoughts about what’s going on.
You’re stressed out, you’re, you know, bored, you’re tired. And you’re starting to have these thoughts that you know, if I just eat some pizza, or eat some ice cream that’s going to make this feel better. And so that’s what increases the desire, okay?
So it isn’t those things themselves that are increasing. And I want to make sure that this is very clear: that you are always in control. This is all about your thoughts and feelings, your thoughts and your emotions, okay? Desire is just another emotional response. It’s an emotional response to outside circumstances.
But I understand it can feel really intense, and it can feel very uncomfortable. And most people, when they experience this amount of desire, they want to make it go away, right away, they want to make it go away immediately. They want to satisfy that desire as soon as possible.
So some examples of this, like, so you’ve had a stressful day at work. And you’ve eaten dinner, and you’ve maybe even like over eaten at dinner, you’re stuffed, but you don’t care. You just want to eat some ice cream. So you eat some ice cream. That doesn’t make any sense.
Like logically it doesn’t make any sense to eat that. Right? But the desire was there. And you had to like satisfy that desire. Or you’re at the beach with friends, you’re on vacation, everybody else is drinking margaritas. And you kind of told yourself, you were you allowed yourself to have one Margarita per day on vacation like fine, like, that’s fine. You know, you’ve decided that whole time, but then you find yourself drinking like eight as fast as possible. Like downing them, you know? Because you feel overcome by desire.
In both these situations, you feel overcome by desire, it’s intense. It’s real. It feels like an emergency. Like you got to fix this situation right away. But I want you to think about this. What if there wasn’t anything to fix? What if there wasn’t a problem? You’re seeing desire as a problem. But what if it wasn’t a problem? What if it was just neutral?
What if you could learn how to turn down the volume of that desire? So if your desire for ice cream is usually at a 10, or an 11? What if it was a 3? Would that be better? One of the biggest keys to losing weight and keeping it off is learning how to control your desires.
So if you love ice cream, and you love eating ice cream, and you eat ice cream every single night, and you just have to have it every single night, you can’t go night without it. The desire is super strong. And every night you just give in to that desire, you cannot stop yourself. This is an automatic behavior. Now you feel out of control.
What if you could turn down the volume of that desire until it was no longer something that was so compelling for you? What if it was on the same level as something that was like eggplant? I used this example on the call the other night. I do not necessarily like eggplant. I don’t really hate it. But I don’t really like it. I think it’s weird.
I don’t know why they call it eggplant. It doesn’t look like an egg. It’s got a weird texture. I’ve eaten a lot of eggplant in my life. Like eggplant parmesan, for example. You know, you got some sauce and some cheese and it’s alright. It’s okay, but I’d rather just put some chicken in there instead of eggplant, or mushrooms, anything except for this eggplant stuff. It’s weird. I think it’s weird.
So if you put eggplant in front of me and you make eggplant and you put it front of me, I’ll eat it but I’ll just be like, Man, no big deal. I really couldn’t care less about it. I’ll eat it if I have to. Don’t hate it. I don’t think it’s gross or anything like that. It’s just weird. And really, there’s no desire there. I don’t have any desire or cravings for eggplant.
I never tell people I’m trying to moderate my eggplant consumption. I just have zero desire for eggplant. Okay, so what if you felt the same way about ice cream? What if you could take it or leave it? What if there was no intense desire? No cravings? What if peer pressure didn’t matter? You know, if somebody tries to peer pressure me into eating eggplant, I don’t care, I’m not eating it.
So your desire for ice cream can be, “I could care less.” You would no longer be fighting the urge to eat the ice cream. There’s no more urge. Why? What would that do for you? I think that would be pretty amazing.
Another example is I used to smoke cigarettes and I couldn’t go like an hour without a cigarette, I’d smoke about a pack a day. And I did this for like 10 or 15 years, I quit some time in there and picked it back up again. So maybe 15 years off and on.
But once I quit, and it took a little while, but once I quit, the desire is gone. I don’t crave cigarettes anymore. I don’t want cigarettes anymore. Something that used to be part of my life, I could not go without. Now I couldn’t care less, cigarettes are eggplant to me now. Right? You could put a carton of cigarettes in front of me, I have no desire to smoke a cigarette ever again. And I never thought it could be like that.
Another example of this is I’ve been married a couple of times. And both times I was in love. And I couldn’t imagine life without that other person. The desire was there. It was very intense. Now after being divorced from both these people for quite a while now, to me, they’re both eggplant.
Please don’t tell them I said that. But now I could like take it or leave it, right? There’s no intense emotions around these people anymore. It’s like I can see them and be like, Oh, hey, there’s that one person I used to be married to. Like, it doesn’t doesn’t matter to me anymore.
You’ve probably had that experience. Think about a boyfriend or girlfriend that you had back in high school or something you couldn’t live without. And now you’re like, geez, I haven’t even thought about them. But like the desire is no longer there. So what if we can just turn down that desire to where it’s just gone? Wouldn’t that be amazing.
So this can be how you feel about ice cream and margaritas and pizza and french fries and giant pretzels and chocolate and wine or whatever. And listen, this does not mean that you can never have a glass of wine again. Or that means you can never have ice cream again. Or chocolate or whatever, you can. I’m not suggesting that you never eat or drink this stuff again.
But what if we move that desire from 10 to like a 3? Wouldn’t that be amazing? How much easier would it be to stick to your plan and avoid eating junk food? I’m telling you, it’d be a lot easier.
How much weight could you lose? Probably a lot. What could your body look like? How much better would running be for you? I hope you’re beginning to see how powerful this is. Because if you work on this, and start learning how to turn down the volume of that desire, losing weight will be an extremely more pleasant experience.
Now you can do it the other way where your desire is always at like a 10 or an 11. This one goes to 11. That was me with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, for sure. But trying not to eat ice cream when your desire for ice cream is at an 11, that’s a very terrible place to be. I’ve been there, that is not fun. This is the miserable way to try to lose weight. That’s the hard way.
The easy way is turning down the volume on the desire and just its eggplant. Okay.
So how do you do that? How do you turn down the volume of the desire so I’m going to share with you one of the tools that we use in the Coaching Project and this is something that is very simple for you to wrap your head around and it will begin the process of turning down the volume of that desire.
And this tool is called The Desire Scale. So The Desire Scale is how you rate the level of desire you are experiencing at any given point in time. So think of this as a scale of like, you know, 0 to 10. For me, like I said, eggplant is like a zero. I have zero desire for eggplant.
If I was starving, I’d probably have a higher desire, maybe a two or something for eggplant, I’d probably rather just fast for a week than eat eggplant. You know what I mean? Anyway, so, 0 to 10. Zero is like no desire completely neutral. 10 is like the strongest desire you can imagine, right?
So, let’s use this example. I just finished dinner, but I want ice cream, but it’s not on my plant. Like, I ate chicken and broccoli for dinner. And that’s just that’s what I had on my plan. That’s what I was gonna eat. And I’m not eating ice cream, but you really want the ice cream after dinner.
So the first thing I want you to do, you’re gonna ask yourself three questions. First, what’s the desire level? On the desire scale 0 to 10? What is it? A four? Is it a seven? What does this feel like? Is this a nine? Get really good at understanding the number.
If you can just come up with a number in your mind to correlate with how you’re feeling inside, this is going to be huge for you? Okay. So the first question is, what’s the level of the desire? Is it a 2 or a 3 or a 10? Whatever. Make sure you lock in that number. Okay?
Second question. What’s the emotion driving the desire? Because there’s always something underneath the surface, there’s always something pushing up that desire, it’s typically going to be some other emotion. And so you need to name it.
What is the word that describes that emotion? Is it stress, boredom, anger, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, guilt, shame, whatever it is fear. What is the one word? That is the emotion that’s under the desire? What’s driving that desire? What’s pushing that desire up? Okay, step one. Your first question is, what’s it on the desire scale, 0 to 10? Two, what is the emotion driving the desire? What’s the name?
Third question. Can I wait 20 minutes? Oftentimes, the desire will go away, or diminish greatly in around 10 or 15 minutes. So if you can, wait 20 minutes. And the answer will pretty much always be yes, by the way, you can wait 20 minutes, then you will get through that moment.
And this is huge if you can get through that moment. Okay. So those are the three questions I want you to ask yourself. And then what I want you to do is decide ahead of time on a number, where if your desire is above that number, you’re going to go ahead and like eat the ice cream. So let’s say you’re going to use 8 as the example.
If you got a number, if you’re feeling the desire to eat ice cream, and it’s above an eight, like if it’s a 9 or a 10, then you’re allowed to eat the ice cream, like you’re going to decide this ahead of time. Here’s why we want to do this. When you’re learning how to change your desire, this is not about never giving in or never eating ice cream again, or making you feel so terrible that you want to, you know murder someone.
We don’t want to do that. So if you’re at this place where you’re just feeling completely out of sorts, and you just really need to eat the ice cream, eat the ice cream. But it’s got to be above that number that you agreed upon ahead of time, right?
You don’t make this decision in the moment, you make this decision ahead of time. And so if you decide that you’re going to eat because the desire’s just too overwhelming for you, then do it and you’ll probably feel a little bit better momentarily. But you need to learn from that experience. Okay.
So here’s why all this works. First thing, you start getting really good at knowing how intense your desire actually is. And this is key. I really, really wanted the ice cream. I just had to have it. So I ate it. Saying that that’s like really vague and arbitrary. What is really, really want the ice cream? What does that even mean? Right?
So we want to become really self aware. We want to start being more objective about our desire. What does this feel like? Is this a two and then you’ll start getting really good at understanding what a two feels like, or what a four feels like or what an eight feels like.
And you’ll start getting really good at knowing when you’re going to give in to that desire and when you can walk away, right when you should hold them and when you should fold them. Right. So you’re gonna get really good at understanding, you know, at what level, you can walk away, and you shouldn’t be able to push that up, you should be able to go, “Well, you know, maybe it’s a four and I can only, I can’t give in if it’s more than that.” But then you start to get really good at like, “No, you know, I can handle a seven, I can handle an eight, that’s fine.”
This is huge right here, right? So you start to become really aware of where you are on the desire scale, what these desires feel like. And you start to become more in control of these desires, and therefore the behaviors around those desires. So the desire is no longer driving all your behavior, you’re not on autopilot any longer, you’re back in control.
So this is really, really huge. The next reason why this works is that you begin to understand the emotions that are driving that desire up. Most people are afraid to talk about emotions, but guess what, we all have them, get over it, start dealing with them, start understanding that the reason you want ice cream has nothing to do with being hungry.
It’s all about how pissed off you are that Kevin got the promotion at work instead of you. Stupid jerk, Kevin, that’s why you’re wanting ice cream has nothing to do with the fact that the ice cream is just sitting there, okay? So you get really good at understanding the emotions that are driving your desire and driving your behavior.
Those underlying emotions are huge, if you start to get a hold of what that feels like, you are no longer on autopilot, right, you are taking back control, right? Lastly, you begin to practice, not giving in to every little spark of desire. So you’ll learn how to make better decisions in every moment of your life.
So whether there’s a desire to eat or drink something, you know, that you can handle like not doing it, you don’t really actually want it but you, you start to understand that this is just a little bit of a desire. And I can make a good decision here.
So you’re making decisions ahead of time about what numbers like whatever your trigger number is. So let’s say you decide it’s an eight. But then in the moment, you’re like, Oh, this is only about a four. So that means it’s a no go. So you don’t have to give in to that. And you begin to learn that you can wait 20 minutes from the desire and it will just go away pretty much, usually, this is great.
This is something that you can do every single day and practice this. And this is how you actually turn the knob. This is how you turn down the volume of that desire. Now, this is not something where you’re going to do it one time, and it’s going to be like, “Oh, I’m fixed.” You got to practice this. You got to do it every day. Right?
Practice it. Get good at it. Because in time, you can get so good at understanding how your brain works and how desire works that you can look at a lot of things used to think you couldn’t live without like ice cream and pizza and be like, huh, eggplant. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called Running Lean For Life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
