Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
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When it comes to creating healthy habits that last, the real key is consistency. You have to take consistent, aligned action if you want to create behavior patterns that get you results. And the …
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 233 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Power of Planning Ahead. So when it comes to creating healthy habits that actually last, the real key is going to be consistency.
You have to take consistent aligned action if you want to create new behavior patterns that get you new results, and the key to taking consistent, aligned action is planning ahead. So in this episode of the podcast, you’re going to learn the power of planning ahead and why you need to be practicing this right now.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, losing some weight, improving your running getting stronger, and you want some help, some guidance, some support to help get you there, consider coaching.
The fact is, coaching works where a lot of these other methods fail because it’s not about some particular method. It’s about figuring out what works for you as an individual and teaching you how to do this stuff on your own.
You have to be able to know what to eat and know intuitively how to do all this stuff on your own. At some point, you shouldn’t need a coach. You should be able to do it on your own. If you’ve worked with a coach in the past, and at the end of that coaching relationship, you had no idea what to do, then that wasn’t a good coaching relationship. That’s not the way I do things.
The way I do things is I teach you how to make good decisions. Understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and then teach you how to make this sustainable for you. It has to be sustainable for you.
So if you want to just hit the easy button on all this stuff you want help, the support, the guidance, the knowledge, all of that stuff. Consider coaching. Go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself to date. Cool.
Okay, so today I’m talking about the power of planning ahead. And I’m actually going to share something with you guys. I don’t know that I’ve ever done this before, but I’m going to share with you a group coaching call that we did this week.
So a couple times a week, we hold a group coaching call, and each month we pick a topic, and the month of June here in 2024 we are talking about building and maintaining healthy habits. And everything that goes into creating habits, everything that goes into practicing good habits, you know, kind of getting rid of old habits and replacing those with new habits.
And one of the keys to creating good habits is the topic we’re talking about here tonight, which is the power of planning ahead. And I really liked our call the other night, and so I’m going to share with you my teaching portion of that call, and then, so this is, like, the first half, I do some teaching, and then the second half we, everybody gets a chance to kind of share and talk about things.
I’m not going to play that part of it for you guys, but I definitely want to play the first part of this where I talk about planning ahead. So you’ll get a little bit of a look behind the curtain, so to speak, of how we, you know, we do our group coaching calls and what at least the teaching portion would look like. So I hope you enjoy this one. If you have any questions about anything, reach out to me. I’m always here for you. Okay, enjoy.
Okay, so let’s get into planning ahead. So this is something that we talk about a lot, and I know that we have all talked about this before, and that’s okay. We’re going to keep talking about it because it is one of the core tenants of what makes this work, what makes any kind of long-term change work.
So habits are all about consistency. You know, doing things consistently. And so planning ahead is one of the best things that you could do, one of the most powerful things that you can do to start practicing consistency. How many of you guys have a workout schedule that is planned in advance? And you stick to it every day. Yeah, most of us do, right? How many people here? I hope everybody raised their hand on this one.
Have a food plan that’s planned ahead and you stick to it every day. Okay, good, good. So, okay, that’s because we talk about it a lot, but it is one of the most powerful ways of building good habits. Okay? And most people, believe it or not, they don’t do that. They don’t practice the consistency with the food part of things.
They’re really good with the workouts, you know, the running, whatever. Oh yeah, I got my strength sessions. I go to this gym class. I go and do my speed work. I know when I’m doing my long run. I know all that ahead of time. I’ve got my whole training schedule planned out until the the half marathon I’m training for, like, you know in advance what you’re doing.
And the reason we plan all that stuff in advance is because it works, and it’s how you stay on track with those things, you know, and so when it comes to changing our habits around food, it’s especially important to plan ahead. Now this does not mean you have to plan months in advance.
I did work with one person who loved to plan like a month of food at a time, like she planned every meal for a month at a time. Don’t recommend doing that, but if you want to, that’s perfectly fine, if that’s what floats your boat. I love the 24-hour rule, which is just saying we need to plan at least 24 hours in advance, but you know, a few days, or even if you’re somebody that likes to plan a week at a time from a meal perspective, that’s fine, whatever works for you, whatever feels manageable for you.
Remember the key to all of this, the key to long-term change, is to do these things that are sustainable for you. You know you got to get into practicing things that are sustainable for you. And if planning out a week’s of worth of meals at a time, or meal prepping is too overwhelming for you, like, I don’t really do that.
I kind of know what I’m doing most days and so and then those days where I where I don’t have a set plan, I know kind of what I’m doing. Like, you know we might be going out to dinner or something like that, and I know where we’re going, and so that I do kind of know what I’m doing in those days too, but usually I know a couple of days in advance what I’m doing, and I don’t plan a whole week at a time, and I certainly don’t do much in the way of meal prepping ahead of time, because I don’t, I just, I just never done that, you know.
And so that works for me. You need to figure out what works for you, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about here. But listen, the planning ahead thing is very important, and I’m going to explain why it works, because this is one of the keys that we’re going to be working with here, which is, you know, we have this part of our brain that is called the amygdala that is like our fight or flight center. It’s our fear center.
It’s one of the most primitive parts of our brain, a lot of times jokingly, but kind of seriously. We call it the lizard brain. So that’s that unevolved part of our brain that is reactionary, and it is a part of our brain that is responsible for our primal drives. You know, we just that part of our brain just wants whatever feels good in the moment.
You know, it’s responsible for our drive and for, you know, eating junk food and, you know, whatever like, we just want to feel good. Now, that’s the part of our brain that’s driving that. And it’s, you know, it’s interesting, because as human beings, you know, we needed to find things that were pleasurable, like we needed to procreate in order to, you know, to evolve and to maintain our status as a as a species.
And so that was something that was important to us. We had to find somebody to procreate with, right? And the same thing goes for calories and certain types of carbohydrates and things like that, where we needed those things in order to survive, we needed to remember where those things were, and they had to bring us pleasure, you know, so food is one of those things that we evolved to find and enjoy, and it brings us a lot of pleasure because of that amygdala.
Okay, well, the amygdala is also responsible. You know when put it in today’s terms for impulse decisions. You know where you’re maybe your impulse buying. You know, they put that stuff at the grocery store that’s right by the checkout. So when you’re standing there looking over, you’re like, oh, that looks really good. I’m just going to buy that thing right there. You had no intention of getting that until you saw it. That’s your amygdala at work, just wanting to feel good right now.
So the amygdala is responsible for you chasing pleasure, wanting to feel good, avoiding pain, avoiding discomfort, chasing comfort, seeking the familiar, all of those things. So we don’t want to rely on our amygdala it to make our decisions around food, because if we do, we are in trouble, because we’re just going to be going for whatever looks good in the moment.
Instead, we want to use that different part of our brain, that more evolved part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. And that is that part of our brain that is responsible for, you know, organized thought, for planning ahead, for making decisions ahead of time, for, you know, being logical and rational.
So when you sit down, for example, one of the things I recommend is that you guys take pen to paper, and you can do this in the evening. You can write your food plan down the night before. That’s an easy way to do it, it’ll take you five minutes, but when you sit down and you start thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow, you’re not using your amygdala.
You are using your prefrontal cortex in that moment when you do that, you are making good decisions. You’re making decisions based on your long term goals. You’re making decisions that you know are good for you. So we’re like in a much more clear headed space when we’re using our prefrontal cortex to make our decisions.
So that’s why we want to do these things ahead of time. When we make a decision ahead of time, when we write down our plan in advance, and we take pen to paper and physically write it down, we’re kind of cementing that into our subconscious, that that idea that tomorrow I’m eating, you know, eggs for breakfast, I’m having, you know, chicken and broccoli for dinner tomorrow. Like it can be that simple.
You can just write something down like that, but when you do that, you’re thinking ahead of time. You are making good decisions. You’re making decisions that are based on your long term goals, and then you’re also much more likely to stick to that plan because you have thought about it ahead of time you have committed it to paper, so you wrote it down yourself.
You’re writing with your hand. You’re looking at the words with your eyes, so you’re thinking about it, you’re seeing it, you’re writing it out, and all of those things just cement that idea into your subconscious mind.
So really, any habit that you want to create for yourself, this is how you do it. You need to, you know, create a plan ahead of time. You need to write it down, and then you need to just execute that plan the next day. Okay, so that’s the gist of all this. This is why this is so important. This is why we we do it this way.
So when it comes to your running schedule, you’ve kind of already done that, I would assume. I would encourage you to do the same thing for your weight training sessions and for your food, because those are the areas where we need to focus on consistency.
And I talk to a lot of people who say things like, oh, I just haven’t been really consistent with my weight training, for example. Okay, well, you know, well, are you consistent with your running? Oh, yeah, I’ve got a plan. It’s all written down. And I just, you know, do that every week, and I stick to those training plans, no matter what.
Okay, well, just do the same thing for your workouts. You know, do the same thing for your strength training. It’s that simple. Do the same thing for your food. Just make it that important to you.
You know, we prioritize things. Sometimes we say, like, oh, training for my marathon is important. So that’s like, number one. And the strength training, I’ll just kind of put, you know, down here, like number six, you know. And the food can be like, I don’t know, five, whatever. Like, we’re not making a priority.
But if this is what you want for yourself, if you really want to change, and you really want to, you know, lose the weight and get healthy and make these long term changes, these lifestyle changes, then commit ahead of time to doing these things. Because when you commit to doing them, and you fulfill that commitment, you start to build a lot of trust in yourself.
This is another part of this that is really important, because every time you say you’re going to do something, and then you don’t do it. What happens? You feel like you let yourself down. You kind of break down that trust in yourself, because you made this promise to yourself and then you broke the promise to yourself. Yeah, and you can justify it, you know, we’ve got all kinds of stories and reasons why, you know it didn’t work out, or why I didn’t, but you know what?
Think about it this way, would you let down your partner or your kids or your best friend? Would you want to break a promise that you made to those people in your life. Chances are no and chances are you don’t do that, unless it’s, you know, there’s really some sort of an emergency or something like that. But when you do let somebody down like that, it doesn’t feel good.
You know, when you do say you’re going to do something and you aren’t able to do that, or you you don’t follow through with that, it doesn’t feel good. And so we do the same thing to ourselves, though all the time. We’re constantly letting ourselves down. We’re constantly making promises to ourselves and then not fulfilling those promises.
And every time you do that, you break a little bit of trust with yourself, and you start to lose confidence in yourself. This is where it gets a little bit you go into a little bit of a decline. You go into a little bit of a spiral, because you start to lose confidence, you start to feel bad about yourself because you keep letting yourself down, you’re unmotivated, and you just don’t feel like doing it anymore.
Anybody been there before? We all have it’s normal. We’ve all been there. So the alternative is like, you gotta not get into that spiral. You can’t get into that spiral. So we plan ahead, we stick to the plan. We plan ahead, we stick to the plan. When you do that, you start to build trust in yourself. You start to create more confidence. You start getting results too. You start to see, like, Oh, this is actually working, because I’m sticking with it. I’m doing these things consistently. And then you start to be more motivated to want to keep going. And then you get into that cycle.
You get into that spiral of like, that’s an upward spiral right where you building more and more confidence, more and more trust in yourself. You’re getting better and better results. You’re feeling more and more motivated. You’re more much more likely to stick with it. And all it takes is that, planning ahead, sticking to the plan. Plan ahead and stick to the plan. You guys with me on this so far? Yeah, it’s important.
Okay, so how do we do it? Just write down what you’re doing tomorrow. Make sure it’s at least 24 hours in advance, if you can. Or you know, if you do it the night before, and you know it’s you’re going to go to sleep and then you wake that’s fine. If it’s, you know, whatever, 12 hours or whatever. We just want to make sure that you are doing these things ahead of time and not in the moment. We’re not making decisions in the moment. We want to make our decisions ahead of time.
So write down what you’re doing, okay? And I just, I make a little check, check box on my on my notebook here, I just, you know, make a little I make circles like a little bubble, right? And I and I write what I’m doing next to it, and then that little circle that I made is where I check it off after I’ve done it. So I make a little circle and I say, here’s what I’m eating for lunch tomorrow. Here’s what I’m eating for dinner. Here’s what my run looks like tomorrow, here’s what my workout is tomorrow.
And then I’ve usually got a couple other things I add on there that I want to get done. Could be work related stuff, you know, I got to pay this bill, or, you know, pay these taxes, or whatever it is, like, I’ll put down, you know, a couple things like that too. So I’m thinking about, okay, what do I want to do tomorrow? And I’m writing down those things that are important to me that I want to get done.
And then the food thing is very important part of that. And then what I do is I wake up in the morning and I have a look at what I wrote down the night before, and I just kind of commit that to memory. Okay, here’s what I’m doing today. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I forgot. I needed to pay that bill. Okay, I’ll take care of that today.
And so I just take a look at what I’m doing. I’m like, okay, cool, I’ve got this plan, and this is what I’m doing today, and then I just do it. I execute. And then that night, you know, after I’ve done all those things, I open up my notebook again, and I start to write down my stuff for that I’m going to do tomorrow. And at the same time, I kind of check off the things that I did today. Okay, yes, I paid that bill. Yes, I did that strength workout I said I was going to do, yes, I did the what I said I was going to eat for lunch. This is what I said I was going to do for dinner. Yes, I did that.
Sometimes there are things that I don’t do, you know, I didn’t get to that, paid that bill, or whatever it was, and then I have to, you know, add it to the next day, and I have to say, like, okay, I have to think about this. Like, why didn’t I do that? Oh, it’s because I got sidetracked and I got, you know, had this other meeting that I had to go to, or whatever. Like, I, you know, sometimes it’s stuff that I really don’t have control over.
Sometimes I’m just like, oh, I totally forgot to do that or whatever. So we want to pay attention to what we’re doing. We want to make this little list ahead of time. We want to review that list in the morning, and then at night.
We want to, like, kind of review our day and then give yourself some kudos for doing these things right. It’s like, celebrate the win, celebrate the things that you’re doing well, kind of like we do here on these calls.
You know, we always want to talk about wins, what’s working, what’s going well. We do that because it helps us to feel like things are going well, and we want to pay attention to that stuff. So take a moment and just kind of check off the things you did. Well, give yourself a little gold star.
Somebody in this group was putting, actually bought a bunch of gold stars, and they were putting them on their notebook, which I thought was amazing, and then that’s what we do. So that is a very simple process that you can do, but you gotta do it and listen anytime somebody tells me, well, you know, the weight loss has sort of stalled for me a little bit.
The first question I asked him is, like, are you planning ahead? Oh, no, I sort of got out of the habit of doing that. Okay, do it again. Like, get back into the habit of doing that. It’s like the foundation. It’s the fundamental thing to do. When you’re doing that, things are going to start working for you, but you got to do it consistently.
Like that is like the the trigger, that trigger, that’s like a domino effect. You know, you you make that plan ahead of time, you’re much more likely to stack, stick to that plan. You’re much more likely to have consistency. You’re much more likely to keep the motivation going. You’re much more likely to continue getting results when you don’t, you know, topple that first domino when you don’t make your plan, a lot of other stuff doesn’t happen, right?
So get into the habit of doing this now. I will say this also, when I did this journey, like five years ago, I was very adamant about making a plan every single day. I think maybe we talked about this last week, I don’t know, but for like, eight months, I wrote my plan out every single day. I was logging everything. I was eating. I was, like, being very meticulous about it, because I was like, if I stop doing this, it’s going to stop working for me. You know, I was a little paranoid about that.
But after about eight months of being really strict about this, I started to ease up on myself, and I got to a place where I was comfortable enough doing this, where I didn’t need to make that plan every day. I want you all to get to that place eventually.
And I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you. It might be three months or six months or five months. It doesn’t really matter, but you got to have that consistency, and you’ve got to be so confident in yourself that you can do this that, you know, you don’t need to write that plan every day, but you can always go back to doing it.
I went back to doing my daily plan a couple of months ago because I was starting to see some, you know, negative results, you know. And I was like, wait a minute, I’m being a little too loosey goosey with the food thing here. I need to get back into just planning and sticking to the plant. And I did that, and everything is turned around, and I’m feeling amazing, and everything’s going really well.
My running has been really much better, too, because I’m planning the runs and things like that ahead of time. So we can always go back to this planning strategy, because it’s a it’s a very simple tactic that works really well. It’s very effective.
Okay, so I want everybody to commit to making that daily plan. Make your plan for at least tomorrow, and if you want to plan a couple days in advance, totally fine, to do that. Okay, one more thing I wanted to add to this before we move on is that some people like to use a food tracker, like a food tracking app, to track all your food because you want to pay attention to calories and macros, and you don’t have to do that.
But if you’re doing it right now because you just want to gather some data and understand what you’re doing that is perfectly fine. Or if you enjoy doing that, that’s perfectly fine. One pro tip I’ll give you, if you are somebody that wants to put your food into MyFitnessPal or Lose It, or CarB Manager or something like that, is to add your food to the app ahead of time.
It’s the same principle so you can write it down. I think that’s a good thing to do. But also on your phone, just write it, put those things, enter the food into your phone the day before. So instead of tracking after the fact, put it all in your phone the day before and get all your macros where you want them to be.
Because now you have control, because you get to decide what you’re going to do. So what I would do is I would just get all my food in the app, and then I would go, like, oh, I’m over with my carbs, so I’m going to adjust a little bit. And I would, you know, dork around with a little bit and play with like, oh, I’m going to take off two strawberries, or, you know, add some of this.
Whatever I would, you know, play around with the numbers until I got to the point where I was happy with the macros for the day, and then the next day, I could just look at the app and say, What am I eating today? Oh, I’m eating this for lunch. I’m eating this for dinner, and it’s good to go.
And I, you know, I, I’m not one that likes to measure stuff or, like, weigh my food, but I was like, eyeballing it, and I could go, that’s like two cups of broccoli and that’s like a eight ounces of chicken or whatever. Like, I just kind of knew what I was getting into from that standpoint. But if you want to weigh your food, that’s completely fine too. If you want to measure perfectly, fine.
But if you’re adding food to an app, do it ahead of time, get your numbers right, and then just work that plant. It’s very easy to do it that way, because a lot of times what happens is, you get to the end of the day and you’re like, oh, I better put my food in my app, and you start putting it in there, like, oh, I’m way over in this or I didn’t get enough of that, and now what are you going to do? Like, it because you can’t undo that, right?
Or you find yourself like, I’m kind of full, but I didn’t eat enough calories today. I better go eat some food. Like, don’t do that. We don’t want to get into this place where we’re overeating. Just to hit some number on your app, you never want to do that. But that’s just a little pro tip for you guys.
Okay, any questions about planning ahead? This is key. Okay, it’s one of the most important things you guys are going to do. It’s one of the most powerful things you’re going to do. Get into the habit. If I can say anything, I’m going to stress, especially for you guys, get into the habit of making that plan every single day. It takes five minutes if that write it down every single day. Get into that habit. Okay, cool, and that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
It’s that time of the year again! The kids are out of school, the weather is amazing, and you are going on vacation. But you might be worried because in the past, going on vacation meant going …
Continue Reading about 231. Replay: Sticking to Your Plan – Even on Vacation →
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 231. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Sticking to Your Plan – Even On Vacation. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, the kids are out of school, the weather is amazing, and you are going on vacation.
But you might be worried because in the past, going on vacation meant going off the rails, you’re on vacation. So you just want to have fun, right? You deserve to live a little, if this means coming home 10 pounds heavier and hating yourself, is it really all that fun?
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to offer up some helpful tips for sticking to your plan, even on vacation so that you can come home feeling good about yourself.
But first one thing I wanted to talk to you guys about really quickly is coaching, if this is something that you might be interested in, if you’re looking for some help and some guidance, and some support, to lose weight, to get healthier, to feel better, to have more energy to improve your strength to improve your running, then coaching might be a good fit for you.
It is not for everybody, I get that some people like to do stuff on their own, they don’t want to invest time or money into a coach that’s going to hold them accountable. That’s going to make sure they do what they say they’re going to do that’s there to you know, help them to get results.
But also is there to kind of call you out on some of your BS, because sometimes we get lost in our own stories, our own excuses, our own reasons why we can’t get the results that we want. And being a coach, I can see through a lot of that stuff, and help you to see through that stuff as well. And start taking responsibility for your own results.
Some people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to take responsibility for their own results. They’d rather just blame other people or blame their life situation or their stress at work or whatever for what it is that’s keeping them stuck and not able to lose the weight or stick to a plan or whatever it is.
But as a coach, I can just tell you right now that I can help you to work through all of that stuff. Okay, so if you want to hit the easy button on getting better results and becoming the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me, you and I will jump on a zoom call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
It isn’t for everybody. I’m gonna be honest with you. There’s some people that I talk to and they’re just like, yeah, this isn’t really a good fit for me. And that’s fine. That is fine. There’s a lot of people that it is a good fit for them and a lot of people that get really good results.
And we have a lot of fun doing this too. It’s not a suffer fest. We’re not suffering our way to getting healthy and losing weight. We are actually having fun. Okay. So if you want to learn how to become the best version of yourself, go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. We’ll jump on a call, and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool.
Okay, so today’s episode is a replay. So it’s about sticking to your plan, even on vacation. And this episode originally aired back in June of 2021. And I recorded this after taking a trip to Florida. And I’m mentioning this now because in this episode I talk about like COVID and the COVID travel restrictions being lifted and being able to travel freely again.
And I wanted to make sure you had a little context of like when did this all take place. So this was in you know, June of ‘21. And people were starting to travel more freely and so it was a good time to be traveling. I also really wanted to touch on this topic of what to do when we go on vacation because so many people I work with so many of my clients, they really stress out and they worry about traveling.
They worry about going on vacation when they’re trying to stick to a certain food plan. They’re trying to lose weight. Because in the past when they go on vacation, they tend to blow it and they tend to just go crazy. They gain a bunch of weight and they come back feeling terrible, hating themselves.
We don’t want to do that there’s a different way to approach vacation. And I go over all of that. In this episode, I was actually looking through my notes for this episode today when I was thinking about recording this. And I was like, you know what, this is really good. I’m just going to replay this episode. It’s very relevant.
This is exactly what I wanted to say to you guys here today. So I’m just going to replay this. So without further ado, I’m gonna let this play out here. So here it is the replay of episode 76 Sticking to Your Plan – Even On Vacation, I hope you enjoy it. Alright, cool.
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 76 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, I’m talking about how to stick to your plan. Even on vacation. Listen, it’s vacation season, right? The kids are out of school, the COVID travel restrictions are easing up and you, my friend, are going on a trip. Amazing, right?
But what that usually means is that you go completely off the rails eat and drink your way into oblivion and come back hating yourself. Am I right? At least that’s what I used to do, you probably don’t do that. But if you’re if you’re one of those people that’s thinking there’s just no way you’re gonna be able to get through this vacation without gaining 5 or 10 pounds and coming home feeling like crap, then I’ve got some good news for you.
Because listen, it doesn’t have to be like that. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be offering up some helpful tips for sticking to your plan, whether it’s you know, a food plan or an exercise plan, even on vacation and being able to have fun and enjoy your vacation too. Because you can do it all you absolutely can.
But first, be sure to check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. If you haven’t already checked us out over there. I created this group so we could have a conversation so you could ask questions and get help and support. And we can encourage each other and support each other through our big goals.
And it is a fun group. It’s a lot of fun. We have fun doing this. If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong. I say that all the time. Just go to Facebook search for Running Lean community. And join us join in on the fun.
And here’s another quick five star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Leanne. She says, “A must-listen for runners. I found this podcast when searching for a podcast for runners with an emphasis on diet and nutrition. Patrick’s topics each week were just what I was looking for to improve my running performance. I also worked with Patrick as a personal coach.”
Yes, she did. Leanne is amazing. And she goes on to say, “I was able to take my running to new levels and learn from Patrick that I could do much more than I thought I was possible as a runner in my early 60s. Thanks, Patrick, for your commitment to the running community and for providing these weekly podcasts that are fun, inspiring, and full of tough love.”
And Leanne is the most awesome, thank you so much. Leanne was really, really awesome to work with, by the way. And yeah, I hope this is fun. It’s supposed to be fun. And if you would like to share in the fun, and you get something out of this podcast, it would mean a lot to me. If you could take a moment and go to what is it like Apple podcasts where you can leave a review, just tap the stars and jot down a few words if this is if you’re getting something out of this, I’d love that.
And then listen, if you ever want a little help, losing some weight or, or improving your running performance or getting leaner, getting stronger, you know, running faster running longer than you ever thought you possibly could I have got you covered. As a one-on-one coach, I work with runners every single day, who want to become more who want to become the healthiest, most badass versions of themselves. This is what I do.
You know, a coach doesn’t just like tell you what to do. A coach is somebody that works with you and figures out the best plan for you, and holds you accountable for sticking to that plan. This is why the coach is so powerful because it’s very hard to stick to things on your own. Right.
I mean, this is was always my experience. It’s very hard. I know what to do. It’s very hard for me to stick to it on my own. But with a coach, I have that accountability and the encouragement to do the hard stuff. And I’m willing to like push myself harder with a coach just like when you’re at the gym and you’re you have a personal trainer, they’re saying come on, you can do one more, you can absolutely do one more.
But if you’re on your own, you’re like, I’m good. So coaching isn’t for everybody. So what we’ll do is we’ll you can go on the website, you can fill out a quick application, there’s like one question on there I want you to answer but then we’ll jump on a quick zoom call you and I will have a conversation. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
That’s all, we’ll just have a convo and we’ll talk about it. And if it’s a good fit great if it’s no big deal, you haven’t lost anything yet. There’s nothing to lose by doing this. So just go torunningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we’ll see if coaching is the right fit for you. All right, cool.
Let’s get on to this topic today because I’m kind of excited to talk about this. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. So I just got back from vacation, I was on vacation, and I took a vacation. I was in Florida for eight days, I went to this place that I absolutely love. And it’s just such a cool place. And it was one of these places that my ex-wife and I used to go to, in fact, she was the first one that took me there, she used to live in that area down to Florida.
And she’s like, oh, we got to go vacation this place. And we went there many, many times. And I just fell in love with this place. And honestly, it was a, it was a big decision for me, whether I wanted to go back to this place or not.
Because when I think of the beach vacation, I think of this place, and it’s just the there’s restaurants and shopping and a beach and a pool, like everything is just right there within walking distance, it’s on this little island, like you’re just, it just feels like you’re, you’re away from it all, you know.
And I just love this place so much. And I thought do I want to go back to the place that I went to, but I used to vacation with my ex-wife? And I talked to my coach about it. And she was like, Patrick, you can absolutely do this, you want to do this. If this is something you want to do, you should do it and make new memories, and create a new way of thinking about this place.
Because I always associate this place with her, you know, and or us, you know, as a couple or whatever. So, and the other thing is, I’ve never taken a vacation by myself before. You know, listen, I’m 54 years old, I’ve done a lot of traveling, I’ve gotten to visit family and stuff like that by myself, whatever.
But I’ve never really gone on an actual like week-long vacation, alone and just to like be by myself. So this was all out of my comfort zone, you guys, and I gotta tell you, I’m so glad I did it. I’m so glad I did it. Because I learned so much about myself, I learned that I can absolutely have fun, and be content and, and feel so good being alone.
And honestly, I was never really alone. I would go out walking on the beach every day, go for runs, there’s people all over the place. Every night, I would go out to dinner, sit at the bar, talk to people talk to the bartenders, whatever, and I was just having so much fun. And it was so chill, I came back so relaxed, I just feel so amazing.
So vacations are amazing. We need to take vacations, they’re so good for us, they’re good for our, for our body, they’re good for stress relief, they’re good for our mind, they’re good for our soul, you know, like all there are all these amazing benefits of taking a vacation. So I’m really glad I did this, I’m glad I went by myself, I have created all these new memories.
And, and, and I can absolutely do this again and I’m looking forward to taking another vacation by myself. I really enjoyed this I loved it. I’m very content being a lot, I’m okay with that. And, you know, to be able to be okay with being by yourself. I think that’s a sign of, you know, self-confidence of self-awareness of, you know, evolving as a human. So, I felt really good about my decision to do this. And I’m glad I did. So vacations are awesome.
I just got back and I wanted to share some stuff with you guys because a lot of people that I talk to I’m coaching people all the time and they tell me, oh yeah, I’m getting ready to go on vacation. I’m really nervous about it. Because and then they say they go on to tell me how in the past, what they would do is they use vacation as a way to just say eff it to everything right?
And they get into that mode of just like screw everything. They eat whatever they want. They go completely bananas on everything, you know, drinking, eating desserts, the all you can eat buffets, whatever it is okay. And, and then they always come back feeling terrible and hating themselves.
They come back feeling very regretful about all the stuff they did, you know, I’ve never seen anybody go on vacation, eat and drink their way into, you know, 10 or 15 pounds heavier or whatever it is, and then really feel good about themselves afterward. You know, most people do not feel good about themselves if they just go completely off the rails on vacation.
So what is the alternative, you know? So if you’re the kind of person who is sticking to some sort of diet or exercise plan right now, so maybe you’re in a mode of like, I’m trying to lose weight right now. Or maybe you’re training for an event, and you’re concerned about what might happen.
If you take a break from your normal life, so if you if you’re training for a marathon, let’s say, and you’re, you take a vacation, this is going to kind of be a little bit more challenging for you to stick to your training plan, right? So if you if you’ve got a long run to do on the weekend, where you’re going to be, you know, in, in Maui or something like that, like, are you going to be able to stick to your training plan? Right?
Or, you know, if you associate vacation with eating everything in sight, and drinking like crazy, every single night, then, and you want to lose weight, though? Like, is this in alignment with your goals? Like, is this gonna work for you? Okay, so these are the kinds of things we want to kind of think about here.
And I have a friend who was training for a marathon, and for a spring marathon this year, and we did all these training runs together. And, you know, he was doing great and really on track, and then he went on vacation. And you know, he didn’t run much, he kind of cut his runs shorter, ate and drank differently, let’s say, you know, I don’t know how much he ate and drank. But I’m assuming it was different from what he was doing before.
But this person came back from that vacation feeling not very confident, and the running was really hard. And he felt defeated. And he’s just like, you know, what, I’m just gonna do the half instead, yes, I switched from the full marathon to the half marathon. And listen, there’s nothing wrong with this, that’s totally fine.
You know, like, if that’s what you want for yourself, that’s fine. But if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I want to run this marathon, and I want to take this vacation, and how can I do both? You know, how can I stay healthy? How can I continue to eat right? Or maybe lose weight, or whatever it is? Stick with my exercise plan? How can I do all this? While I’m on vacation? Right?
So if that’s you, then this podcast is absolutely for you. If you’re the kind of person that’s like, you know what, when I go on vacation, all rules are out the window, then, but you probably don’t need to listen to this. Because you’re gonna just do your own thing. And that’s totally fine.
But we, I think a lot of times, you get it into your mind that going on vacation means that everything has to be different, you have to stop exercising, you know, like, oh, I’m working so hard all year long. You know, I just want to go on vacation and just relax, you know? And so I’m just gonna say no, to everything that I’ve been doing up to this point, well, it doesn’t have to mean that at all.
Okay, you get to decide what vacation means for you, you get to decide what your vacation looks like for you. And if you’re saying, well, I’ve always done this in the past, this is the way I’ve always done it. That doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it the same way. You know, not if you want something different for your future. If you want something different for yourself in the future, you may have to stop doing the same things over and over and over again, that has got you where you are today, right.
So my suggestion is to think about, you know what it is you want for yourself when you go on vacation? Who is it that you want to be when you get home from this vacation, okay? Another issue is that a lot of people seem to equate overeating or eating other sugar or overdrinking with fun.
In other words, I want to have fun on this vacation. Can I just have a little fun? Which means what does that mean to eat ice cream every day? Twice a day three times a day eat dessert every night. Binge up on the all-you-can-eat buffet. This was so me. I’ve been to all these resorts where they have like an all-you-can-eat buffet and there’s always that dessert section it’s like whole tables and tables of just like desserts.
I would eat as much food as I could possibly have. So stuff from all the food you know, because it’s all you can eat everything and I go back and eat all the desserts like I would have to try them all because you know this one looks good. So does that! So I would just like I would make two trips three trips to the dessert section. Okay, so maybe that’s just me.
But then I would feel like crap the next day. So today this is not my idea of fun. Okay, but if your idea of fun means you have to like drink a lot, you know, and eat a lot or eat all the sugar eat all the crappy food, then, you know, I think we just have to get get it into our heads. What do we mean by fun? What does that mean to us?
You know what, what does it mean to have fun on vacation? And I’ll talk about this more in a minute. here, but I just want you to start thinking about this like, what? What is it that you want for yourself? For your vacation?
Okay, so one of the most important things that I suggest people do when they’re getting ready to go on a vacation is deciding ahead of time. How do you want to be when you come home, like how do you want to feel about yourself, when you come home from this vacation?
Do you want to feel good about yourself? Or do you want to feel, you know, bloated, and regretful, and ashamed and guilty? Or do you want to feel confident, and proud of yourself, because you get to decide? One thing I suggest people do is to decide ahead of time, whether they want to maintain their weight on vacation, continue to lose weight, or gain weight on vacation because you can actually choose one of those three options.
One of those three things is going to happen. Anyway, but if you go into your vacation, thinking, let’s say you’re trying to lose, you’re saying that you’re in the middle of losing, like 50 pounds or something, right? And you’re like, well, you just have this thing in your head of like, yeah, when I’m on vacation, I’ll probably still continue to lose some weight, but then you eat whatever the hell you want to while you’re on vacation, and you come back and you’re like, what happened? I, I was doing so good.
And then you know, I went on vacation, and now I’m up five pounds, you know, and then you feel like crap about yourself, you beat yourself up about it, you end up quitting on yourself. It’s all because you didn’t have an intention going into your vacation, you didn’t have a plan, I always want people to decide ahead of time what they want for themselves. So do you want to lose weight, maintain or gain because you get to choose, this is going to determine how you show up each day?
You know, if you’re if your goal is to maintain weight, during your vacation, you can kind of just do what you’re doing, you know, maybe indulge a little bit here and there. If you want to, if you’re okay with gaining weight on vacation, just know ahead of time I’m going to gain I’m gonna allow myself to gain like five pounds on vacation.
And then you know, bang it out. Have fun with that, you know, do it, do it the way that you want to do it, just know that that’s your goal. And then when you come home, if you’ve gained 10 pounds, you didn’t do it right. Okay, you went a little, a little too excessive on that, okay? Or if your goal is to lose weight, that’s gonna determine how you show up for yourself every day, it’s gonna determine what you do, you know, each day of your vacation, okay?
So do you want to here’s another thing to decide. Do you want to keep up with your training? Exactly, you know, do you want to keep with your strength training with your running? Maybe you’re doing some cross-training, cycling, or something like that swimming? Do you want to maintain your training? Do you want to back off a little bit? Or do you want to just quit altogether?
And there’s no right or wrong answer to these things. It’s just that you have to make a decision ahead of time about what you want for yourself. Don’t say you’re going to stick to your plan, I’m going to keep exercising and, and eat right. But then go completely off the rails because that’s, that’s not being in alignment with your goals. That’s not having your own back.
When you do this, you destroy your self-confidence. You kind of undermine your own progress, you lose motivation. It is very demotivating when you let yourself down like this. So my suggestion to you, I want to encourage you to make a decision ahead of time, and then stick to that decision, whatever that is for you. Okay, do you want to continue with your exercise and an eating plan? Or do you want to like, you know, be a little more lenient, because you get to decide?
No right or wrong answer, you get to decide, just decide ahead of time. Planning ahead is one of the most important things you can do to help you stick to a plan, whether it’s whether you’re on vacation or not, honestly. And when we talk about planning ahead, you may have heard this before. But when we plan something ahead of time, especially like 24 hours in advance, we’re using a part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex.
And this is our thinking more modern, like the cognitive planning part of our brain. And when we use this part of our brain to make decisions, where we’re making good decisions, and we’re, we’re thinking through with the consequences, and it’s like the planning part of our brain. And so we always want to use that type of brain, that prefrontal cortex part of our brain, the modern thinking brain, to make decisions when it comes to what we’re going to eat how much we’re gonna drink, whether we’re going to stick to exercise playing the next day and things like that.
The alternative is we use a part of our brain called the amygdala, which is our fear center, or our primitive brain fight or flight part of our brain. This is the part of our brain that is a tiny little almond size part of our brain that’s like super ancient, and it’s designed to respond to urges and things like that, you know, very primitive.
So when you’re feeling like, I really want some cake, and you haven’t really thought this out with your prefrontal cortex, you know, your amygdala is gonna be like, eat the cake. Go back to the dessert buffet, come on, and just do it, you want to do it, you know, it’s like the good, the little angel, and the devil on your shoulders. You know, this kind of analogy is a good analogy.
So we don’t want to be caught in the moment trying to use our, you know, fear center or fight or flight or urge center to make these kinds of decisions for us. Okay, whether we’re going to work out or not, whether we’re going to eat right or not, we want to plan ahead. So that’s why it works. And it does work beautifully if you plan ahead.
So the key is to plan ahead and then stick to your plan. That’s it plan ahead, stick to your plan. This works with everything in life, you guys, every single thing you want to accomplish in your life plan ahead, stick to your plan. So I’m going to give you guys some tips and some things and I’m going to share some experiences that I had with my recent trip because I was very cognizant about this planning ahead, I really wanted to make sure that I was I wanted to stick to my plan, and I wanted to do some certain things.
So I’m going to just kind of go through what I did. And hopefully, this will give you guys some tips that you can use for your vacation. I hope you’re going on vacation soon, too. So the first thing I did was to make sure I planned my food. So I was very conscious of where I was going to stay. I wanted to stay at an Airbnb that had a kitchen like it had to have a fully stocked kitchen, a fridge, and all that stuff.
I would look at some places and they had like a hot plate or one of those tiny little mini-fridges that you can hold like, you know, 12 you know, cans of soda or whatever. And I’m like that is not going to cut it for me like I need to buy some food and I need to like I want a stocked fridge, I want to be able to cook for myself, at least one meal a day I wanted to. My plan was to cook my first meal. So I eat twice a day, around noon, then around 6 or 7pm.
And I wanted that first meal to I wanted to cook that at home every day, I wanted total control over that first meal every single day. So I made sure that the place I was staying at had a kitchen. That was important to me, okay. And then the very first thing I did when I got into town was I took an Uber over to the grocery store and I stocked up I bought everything I needed for the whole week. So I bought all the food, you know, Lacroix, eggs, bacon, sausage, butter, avocado, sour cream, like all the stuff that I typically would eat. And I and I just stocked up. That’s the only time I went to the grocery store the whole time I was there. And it was awesome.
Because I just knew that I had, you know, everything I needed for that first meal was there. And then I made that first meal at home every day. So that was one thing like planning ahead was really important for me to make sure that I did that. And I went to the store and that I stocked up.
And then for me, I made a decision that I was going to eat out every night, you know, so I went to different restaurants. I sat at the bars and I talked to people, but I would check out the menus ahead of time and you know, occasionally I would ask if they could do substitutions and things like that. But for the most part, I ate you know the items off the menu as they were prepared.
And I ate haha. Oh my god, it’s so amazing. Like the seafood down there is totally amazing. So I had fresh grouper, salmon, scallops, shrimp tacos. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So I actually made a point to go, I was eating some carbs when I was down there I made a point to like, be okay with that.
You know, I had some rice here and there I had some plantains that came with my tacos, you know and I eat the corn tortillas that came in. It’s not a big deal. You know, a few carbs here and there. But I made a point to never indulge in sugar. I did not want to do that. And so I did. And I totally stay away from sugar.
So eating out for me was amazing. And you can like, just plan ahead as much as you can with this. Know where you’re going to eat out if you can, how often you’re going to be eating out, check the menus, you can even call the restaurants and ask if they can do substitutions and stuff like that. Just tell them you have an allergy to, you know, certain foods or carbohydrates or something like that, and they’ll totally work with you. Okay.
Another thing that you can do when we’re planning food is packing snacks, making sure you bring some kind of snacks, just in case you need something, you don’t ever want to get to that place where you’re hungry, and vulnerable to temptations, right. So pack your own, like healthy snacks like nonperishable stuff, nonperishable stuff, if you can, if you need it.
Okay, so I actually brought some snacks for the plane, because, you know, I got up early, and I usually don’t eat till noon or so. But I was going to be traveling from like, basically, you know, eight o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. And I knew I was going to want to eat something in there.
So I brought, I got like a bag of this zero sugar, beef jerky. And I was like, Oh, this would be good. This would be like a little kind of lunchy type of thing I could do on the plane. But even if you’re taking a road trip in a car, like, you know, you can go to fast food places. It’s not ideal, but you can make it work. You know, you can get protein-style bunless burgers, you can get salads with chicken, you can make it work, or I think we get into this mindset of I don’t know what to do. I’ve never done this before. And I think this is not a good mindset to be in, like, so what if you’ve never done it before?
Guess what, a lot of people don’t know what to do. Why don’t you ask yourself this question instead, I wonder what’s available. I wonder how I can make this work. I wonder how I can get creative and make something work for me. Because chances are, you can absolutely make it work.
I’ve seen people get fried chicken at like, Chick-fil-A or something like that. And just like kind of peel the breading off of it and eat it and it’s delicious. You know, like, there are things you can do if you need to. I was talking to somebody last night about getting pizza. And like I did this recently where we were I was with a group of people and they all ordered pizza. And you know, there was nothing I could really order.
And so I just took the toppings off the pizza and kind of rolled them up. It was like cheese and pepperoni stuff like that. And I ate that. And I ate a lot of it. And it was delicious. And it was just left with some, you know pieces of crust with sauce on it that other people were like, Oh, can I eat that crust, I’m like sure. So it was a win-win for everybody.
Get creative. You know, even if you’re like on a road trip and you stop at a gas station, you can find something to eat like, for me I do, you know pretty low carbs I would stay away from, you know, chips and pretzels and stuff like that. But there’s like beef jerky, and nuts, pork rinds, hard-boiled eggs, pickles, like there are all kinds of stuff you can, you can find even at a crappy place like a gas station. Obviously, if you can bring your own stuff, that’s a better way to go.
Another suggestion that I have for you would be to plan your workouts ahead of time, okay. So if you’re going to want to stick to like a running program, if you’ve got a running schedule, let’s say you’re running three or four days a week, you want to get your miles in, plan ahead, plan ahead, what you’re going, where you’re going to run, how far you’re going to run where and the routes that you’re going to run.
The routes are important because a lot of times you may be in an area where I don’t know you don’t know the area. And maybe I don’t know if it’d be unsafe, but hopefully, you’re not staying in a place that is unsafe. I did this a while back when I was in Mexico, and the property owner was like, we don’t suggest you go run out on the streets around here. And I was like, ha, okay, and they said, but there is like a path that you can run around the property.
And so I did that I ran around it was a huge property. So I ran like the perimeter of the property. They actually like I think 75% of it was like a walking path anyway, so I just ran around the property and did a lot of miles on that vacation. And, you know, totally doable, you know.
Another thing you can do is like I go to Google Maps and I check the Street View and I’m like, is there a sidewalk here? You know, is this doable? Like, oh, this looks like a bridge. Is there a sidewalk on this bridge? I don’t want to be stuck on some bridge where there’s like, no, no shoulder and I’m in traffic and you don’t ever want to run on the street. You know, if there’s a lot of traffic and stuff like that, if you’re staying at a hotel or someplace, you can ask the concierge about local trails, about paths, you know, running routes, they know about all this kind of stuff.
Or maybe you’re at a place with a gym. And your only option is to like, you know, run on a treadmill, is there a treadmill available for you, you know, so when I was in Florida, I’d love running down there. Number one, I mean, there’s this long stretch of beach that I ran on every single day. So that’s amazing. I made a point to do that.
But then there’s this bridge that takes you from where I was staying over to Sarasota. And I would, I would run across the bridge and then run around the marina and stuff. And it’s just like, the views are amazing. And they got this nice ocean breeze was hot down there, but got this nice ocean breeze and just beautiful. And I plan all this ahead of time, I knew I was going to you know, run and I made a plan to run every day when I was down there.
And I did, I ran at least five miles every day down there, I did a 10-mile run, I think I did a few seven-mile runs. And really just really enjoyed it. You know, I made a point that this is important to me that I wanted to keep up with my running. And so I did it.
Another thing that I suggest if you’re doing any kind of strength training and you want to keep up with it on your vacation is to make a plan ahead of time for this as well. So if you’re staying somewhere with like a gym, you can use the hotel gym, hotels are so good. Now, they’re pretty well equipped with all this kind of stuff. But if you’re not staying at a place with a gym, you can find a local gym.
And a lot of times they’ll let you come in and just you know drop in on a class or use the gym, or maybe you belong to one of these big LA Fitness or 24-hour deals where you can just go to one of these places, those are all good too.
A couple of things that are kind of different is like find an outdoor fitness park or a playground because sometimes they have, you know, equipment that you can use to do pull-ups and you know, push-ups or bench presses or something like that, you know.
Sometimes they have those little parkour type of courses that you can kind of use to do fitness and you know, things like that it makes it kind of fun, you get outside what I did for my phone, because I didn’t have access to a gym where I was going, there wasn’t a gym in the area. And I didn’t really want to have to, you know, Uber, you know, 10 or 15 bucks every single day if I wanted to lift weights, so I decided to bring my resistance bands.
So I have this set of small, lightweight resistance bands, and you could just throw them in your suitcase, they’re super easy to bring with you. And I did, you know, a couple of workouts just to maintain my strength training while I was on vacation. And I felt really good about that. It wasn’t exactly the same, you know, but I could put enough resistance on those bands to make it pretty hard. And one of the days I was there, it was Memorial Day. And a lot of people were doing that Murph workout, which, if you don’t know what it is, it’s, it’s pretty tough.
It’s a one-mile run. And then it’s 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats. You’re supposed to do it with a weighted vest on or some sort of resistance. And I did it pretty much just with bodyweight because I didn’t have like a weighted vest or a way to do that. And I gotta tell you, that was a kick-ass strength workout.
But I felt good about doing that I felt good that I did this for myself, you know, it was a hard workout. And that one was awesome because I felt really good about sticking to that plan and sticking to my strength training because when I came home from my trip, I felt just as strong as when I left. I didn’t want to lose momentum.
I’ve been building some strength lately, I’ve been putting on some muscle, some pounds, you know, I didn’t want to lose any of that. So I wanted to keep up with it. And I absolutely did. In fact, the day that I got home the day after I got home from my trip, I went back to the gym, my gym here, and had a killer strength workout and I felt so good. I’m so glad that I kept up with it while I was on vacation, okay.
And then if you’re doing other kinds of workouts, you can find a way to do that too. Like, find a local yoga studio. If you’re doing yoga, or do yoga in your room. You can do strength training, just using bodyweight exercises if you have to as well just do it in your room. You know, other things you can do is just get out there and walk as much as possible. You know I walked on the beach every single day I walked along the beach at sunset every single night.
You can do things like rent bikes, go canoeing, go swimming, go do some rowing, stand up paddleboarding, wherever kind of, you know, hiking, whatever kind of trip you’re going on, there’s stuff you can do to stick with your plan, okay? But it all requires you to do a little bit of planning ahead of time. So that’s, that’s my really big encouragement.
And that’s my biggest, I want this to be your biggest takeaway. Plan ahead, plan ahead what you want for yourself, plan ahead, about your food, plan ahead your exercise plans, and then stick to your plan. Okay, decide who you want to be when you come home, and then stick to your plan.
And listen, you can actually choose to indulge a little bit on your vacation, you can choose to, you know, drink more than you would or, you know, eat a little bit differently if you want to just do it in a way that where you have your own back, do it in a way that is intentional. And you’re doing it with purpose, not just giving into cravings, urges, and temptations.
We don’t ever want to give in to cravings, urges, and temptations because that’s not how we build resilience. That’s not how you build new habits. That’s how you just are keeping yourself stuck to where you have been for most of your life, we got to change the way we think about this stuff, we got to change our mindset around all this stuff. Okay, planning ahead is how you do that.
Okay, so maybe you drink a little bit more, that’s fine. You know, I would suggest choosing your drinks wisely, you know, stick with the drinks that don’t contain sugar, hobbies, tropical drinks. So I went out to eat every night, I sat at the bar, and I watched them making all these drinks. And it was just like, oh, sugar, I’m going to pour some of this sugar in there. I’m going to pour some of this kind of sugar in there. And then here’s some liquor, which is mostly sugar.
Like, it was crazy how much sugar in these drinks, you know. So yeah, just make good decisions about alcohol. Make good decisions about the kinds of foods you want to eat. Like I ate more carbs than normal. I planned it. I knew I was going to do this I stayed away from the sugar. You know, I had rice at this place that made it as a side to the I had a big steak one night, which was amazing.
And as a side, they had cauliflower and potato mash. So it was like half potatoes have cauliflower. And I was like this is perfect. You know, there’ll be a few more carbs than I would normally but totally fine. Like it’s not, it’s not going off the rails here you guys, you know what I mean?
There’s a big difference between eating a couple of plantains with my tacos and eating, you know, a half a gallon of ice cream every night like I used to. Speaking of which, where I stayed, there’s this amazing gelato place and this used to be my nightly thing, I go to the gelato place every single night and order this huge big thing of gelato with one of those waffle cones. It’s just like ridiculous.
And, and I thought, Well, I’m gonna just one day I was like taking a walk around the little towns and the shops and stuff. And I’m like, I’m just gonna pop in here and see if they have some kind of sugar-free gelato option. And they did. They had sugar-free chocolate gelato, I’m like, I’m so getting some of this, which I did. And I really enjoyed it. And that was a way for me to indulge in something and not go off my plan. You know what I mean?
Like, we can do this, we can have fun, and stick to our plan. We can enjoy our vacation and stick to the plan. Decide who you want to be when you come home. For me, I wanted to be basically the same person I was when I left. I wanted to continue to feel good about myself, I didn’t want to feel crap about myself.
So my plan was to, you know, maintain my weight, maintain my running, maintain my eating as much as I could as much as I had control over. Indulge a little bit here and there, enjoy every bit of it. And come home feeling amazing, which I did. I feel like I’m proud of myself, proud of myself for taking a vacation by myself, proud of myself for going to this place that you know, had all these old memories.
I’ve created all these new memories, proud of myself for sticking to my exercise and eating plan and proud of myself for coming home feeling good and having my own back through this whole thing. Right, I’ve built more confidence because I did this all right. You can absolutely go on vacation and have fun and have an amazing time and stick to your plan.
Let’s make vacation more about the experiences of creating amazing memories with your family with your friends and relaxing and enjoying the outdoors and the adventures and creating all these experiences that will last, that’ll stay with you for a lifetime. Let’s make our vacation more about that and less about how much sugar we’re gonna eat. You know?
Because is that really the key to a vacation? Is that the most important thing for you? I’m going to say no, it’s eating and drinking your way into oblivion is not the purpose of the vacation. Right? It’s the reset, recharge, you know? Come back feeling rested and refreshed and good about yourself. Okay. All right.
Well, I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, I would love it if you would share it with a friend. And I hope you take a vacation soon. And I hope you enjoy it. I hope you decide ahead of time, who you want to be when you come home. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
