Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Many runners who set out to achieve big goals will get it into their heads that things should just be happening faster. They should be losing weight faster, their running should be improving more …
Continue Reading about 146. Slow Down and Stay in the Flow →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 146 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today: slow down and stay in the flow. Many runners I talked to who set out to achieve big goals will get this idea into their heads that for some reason, things should just be happening faster, they should be losing weight faster, they’re running should be improving more quickly.
And those strength sessions at the gym should be paying off by now. And the reality of the situation is this, these things take time, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to become a stronger, faster runner. And when you think everything should be happening faster, all of this becomes very frustrating.
So in this episode, I’m going to talk about what happens when you believe everything should be happening faster. And then what it looks like when you just slow down and stay in the flow instead. And one of the most important things I do with my coaching clients is this: I help them stay on track. Together, we set big goals, we’ll put together a plan to help you achieve those goals, and then help you stick to the plan. It’s that simple.
But I know how difficult and how frustrating it can be to set out to make big changes, especially when it comes to your health and fitness. And then getting to this place where you think everything should be going faster. Listen, these things take time. But imagine how much easier it would be if you had somebody there to guide you through the whole process every step of the way, to be there to offer expertise, support, encouragement, motivation, and to hold you accountable.
Becoming the most badass version of yourself, this is an amazing thing to accomplish. And having a coach there to help you get there. This is a game changer. So if you’re looking for guidance, support, encouragement, motivation, accountability, I want to encourage you to apply to join my coaching program, the Running Lean coaching project.
To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You have to fill out a short application, we’re gonna have a conversation, then we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. I would love to have you in my program. This is a very unique weight loss coaching program for runners. It’s the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Alright, let’s get into this topic, slow down and stay in the flow. The reason I’m talking about this today, like I mentioned at the top of the episode here is that so many people I talked to set out to achieve big goals, they really want to become the healthiest version of themselves, they really want to improve their body composition, they want to get stronger, they want to become a faster runner, they want to PR their marathon or half marathon, they want to lose weight.
And when they set out to achieve these things, they get this concept in their mind that it’s all going to happen according to some arbitrary timeline. Okay, it could be like, oh, I’ve got this goal race coming up in three months. And so I’m going to change my diet, I’m gonna, like start running a little bit faster. And, and somehow I’m going to like, you know, PR this thing and lose 30 pounds in the process.
And while that might happen, for some people, it’s your there’s no guarantee, right? I mean, these things take time, it takes time to change habits, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to get faster as a runner. And if you’re somebody whose thinking that this is going to be all all said and done in a matter of you know, 90 days exactly, or whatever; you may be frustrated, you may be disappointed with the results in that amount of time. So many of us get it into our heads that you know everything should be happening faster.
And when we get to this place of thinking everything should be happening faster. It’s not happening fast enough. It gets very very frustrating. So some examples of where I see this happening the most first of all is in weight loss. When people want to lose weight. They change their diet, they start making maybe some sacrifices, you know, they start giving up some of the foods they used to love to eat, you know, junk food, let’s just say and they stick with it.
And the weight loss isn’t happening fast enough, they may only be losing a pound or two a week. And over months of working together, I hear this from people a lot who have consistently lost one or two pounds a week, and then will tell me, ah, it’s just, you know, everything’s fine, I guess. But it’s just not happening fast enough, right?
And becoming a faster runner is another place where people want this to happen faster, surprisingly enough, right? So you might set out to like PR, your half marathon or marathon time. And so you start changing your running routine, you start adding more speed work, and you’re really intentionally focused on becoming that faster runner.
And then you have a race coming up and you and you do everything you’re supposed to do and you’re, you’re ready to go and you’re feeling great. And then you get out there and you just don’t hit your goal on that race day. And it gets really frustrating, right, or maybe you’re trying to build some strength and build some muscle. So you’re at the gym, and you’re hitting the weights pretty hard.
And it’s just, it seems like it’s taking forever, you don’t see those muscles bulging out of your arms, like you think you should after, you know, a period of time. You know, another way that I see people getting frustrated is when they want to improve their endurance, they want to be able to run longer distances, but they just keep running out of gas.
And they’re like, what’s going on? Shouldn’t this be happening faster? I mean, just I, you know, I can run a 5k I can run a 10k How come I can’t do a half marathon or a marathon? How come I’m running out of gas at mile 10 or 12 or 19?
Or, you know, overcoming food cravings. This is an area where I’m just going to tell you right now, this is not something that happens quickly. It may take some time to get past the place where you’re really craving junk food, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve been somebody who’s been really eating a lot of junk food, then it may take a long time for you to like get over those cravings, you know, in thinking that it’s going to happen quickly. Oh, yeah. Well, I quit eating junk food two weeks ago, how come I’m still craving pizza? It’s gonna take a while. Right?
Or even this concept of just not sticking to the plan, like I just keep slipping up. How come I’m not sticking to the plan 100% of the time? By now I’ve been doing this for a while. How can I keep you know, reverting back to old behaviors? Shouldn’t this be happening faster? So all of these things are processes that take time.
And the idea that from the very get go, you should be perfect, and everything should be moving along quickly. It’s just a myth, it’s never going to happen that way. All of these processes are things that take time. And when you have this concept that you think it should be happening faster, it creates a real negative state within you.
Okay, because when you think things should be going faster, and they’re not, it can be very frustrating. It can cause you to feel frustration, it can cause you to feel stressed, you can feel disappointed and discouraged. These are all negative emotions. And when you’re feeling these negative emotions around what you’re doing to try to change yourself for the better to try to improve your health and fitness.
When all of your energy is put into this negative emotional state it puts you into a state of mentally and emotionally being really negative. So you’re in this negative emotional and mental state. And when you’re feeling this way, how do you think you’re going to act? Because your feelings really drive your behaviors, your feelings drive your actions, the mental and emotional state that you’re in will determine what you do.
So what behaviors do you think you engage in when you’re feeling constantly when you’re in this negative emotional state? Well, if you’re feeling discouraged and frustrated that weight loss is taking too long, then you’re probably not going to stick with a plan because you’re probably thinking like, why should I stick to this plan? It’s not working anyway, it’s taking too long anyway.
And you might feel disappointed because you know, running isn’t improving as fast as you want it to and that will make you feel very disappointed. Very disappointing and discouraging to you, right? You’re not getting faster quickly enough? Well, if you’re in that state, you’re probably not going to keep doing the speed work, right? Because why bother? Why should I stick to my speed work if it’s not working anyway?
So the thought, the thoughts and feelings that you put into this, the thoughts and feelings that you’re experiencing that, oh, it’s taking too long. It’s frustrating, and I’m disappointed, I’m discouraged. It’s going to take forever, I’m never gonna get there. When you’re in that place, that will absolutely become true for you. You will prove those thoughts and feelings to be true when you act from that negative state, that negative state that you’re in will create that reality for you, you will get those results, it will take too long, it will take forever, because you won’t be sticking to the plan.
You’ll never get there because you won’t stay on track. You’re constantly thinking, Oh, why bother? Why should I do this, it’s not working anyway. And this is a really crappy place to be just so you know. But I see so many people wallowing in this negative emotional state. Your thoughts and feelings, create your results, your thoughts and feelings create your reality, you get more of what you focus your attention on. Right? So constantly thinking, this isn’t working.
It won’t work for you, I promise you, if you’re constantly thinking, I’m never gonna get there. And guess what? You’re never gonna get there. And if you’re thinking to yourself, Patrick, this sounds too simple. I agree that it does sound too simple, but it is absolutely true. And a very powerful concept that I want you to try to wrap your head around here, okay?
Because when you’re operating from this very powerful, but negative place, you get to create results and your reality. And you get to achieve what you want for yourself. Or what you, in this case, what you don’t want for yourself, you get to achieve what you’re what you’re focused on achieving, which is it’s not working, it’s taking too long, it’s gonna take forever, I’m never gonna get there. That’s a very powerful yet negative place to be, it’s a powerfully negative place to be okay.
So you have to understand this, it is a simple concept, that your emotional state, your thoughts and feelings, create your results. Because it drives your actions, your thoughts and feelings drive your actions and your actions create your results. So instead of you know, constantly thinking that these things should be happening faster, we have to let go of that.
Okay, because here, here’s some simple facts. Losing weight takes time, it takes time to change your eating habits. It takes time to figure out what actually works best for you as an individual. Because we’re all different. We all have different goals, different weight loss goals, different metabolism, different lifestyles, different food preferences, and you have to figure out what works best for you, what’s going to support your weight loss goals and your running goals. And figuring all this out, it takes a little bit of time to really dial it in.
And it’s okay, let’s just be okay with that fact. Right, losing weight will take some time, it takes time to you know, get your blood sugar regulated to fix your metabolism. It takes time to you know, get your body working the way it’s supposed to to get your hormones working the way they’re supposed to. But once you get into that place, things start to change for you.
You know, your blood sugar’s regulated, your hormonal changes become more balanced, your hormone hormonal response to food becomes more, more balanced and your your body actually starts to function the way it was made to function, you start burning more fat instead of burning all the sugar. And eventually you’ll see the weight loss start to happen.
But there’s a lot of things that have to kind of happen in the interim before you actually see the number on the scale start to change, right. So just understand that it takes time to lose weight. And if you have a lot of weight to lose, it’s going to take more time. And it’s okay.
Building muscle takes time. It takes time to go to the gym, improve your your weightlifting capabilities to increase the resistance that you’re lifting. You know, we in order to gain muscle and build strength, we have to overload the muscles so that means we have to lift heavier weights and it takes time to get to the place where, you know, you can get stronger and you can actually lift heavier weights.
And it may take time before you can see any improvement at all before you can start to increase the weights or the reps or whatever. There’s a period at the beginning, if you’ve never done any kind of strength training, any kind of resistance training, there’s a time at the beginning where you just gotta get used to the, to the workouts, you got to get used to the routines, you got to be doing things in a safe way, getting your body like used to lifting weights.
But eventually, you’ll start to see some progress happen, okay, but it takes time. Improving your endurance takes time, improving your speed as a runner takes time, it takes time to build the muscle memory of doing harder, faster workouts to improve your running form. You know, you’ll make incremental improvements to your endurance. But these things do take some time.
Do you remember when you first started out as a runner, you couldn’t imagine running a 5k, running three miles without stopping. And you might be running half marathons now and wanting to get faster, or running to take it up to the next level, run a marathon and you’re like, why is it taking so long to build that endurance and think back to when you first started running and how long it took you to make those improvements.
I remember training for my first 10k, I set out to run a 10k. And you know where I could, I could only run like one mile at a time, you know, I could run one mile without stopping. And that felt pretty amazing, you know, and then I could run two and then three. And I couldn’t imagine doing a whole 10k like 6.2 miles without stopping. Like, that’s crazy. Who does this, you know?
But eventually I got there, but it took months of training to get there. Okay, so all these things take time, stop thinking it’s all going to happen quickly or according to some arbitrary timeline that you’ve created, in your own mind. Start accepting the fact that these things will take time, time takes time. And slow down, slow down.
And instead, I want you to focus on staying in the flow. Like, what if you just took your time, instead of trying to rush your way to your weight loss goal or to some running goal or to some strength goal? What if you just slow down? What would that look like for you? What if you made changes slowly over time?
Because we’re talking about changing habits around food, changing habits around how you train. How you fuel for training and races? And, it takes time to dial this in for you as an individual. Right? So understand this and accept that it’s going to take time. Okay. How long did it take you to gain the weight in the first place? Maybe you’ve gained 30, 40, 50 pounds? Would it take two years? Three years? 10 years? 20 years? Why do you think it should all come off in like 90 days?
It might take longer than that. So what? So what. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, stop trying to fast track everything. And instead, just focus on what you’re doing today. And you will get there. Staying in the flow means just being here. Right now, what are you doing today? What are you doing in this moment to better your health?
Are you making your food plan for the next 24 hours, or you’re filling in your training schedule for the week, maybe you’re lacing up your shoes, because you’re ready to head out for a run. Maybe you’re just you know, sitting down to dinner and you’re actually eating what you said you’d eat today. That’s what it means to be in the flow.
It means you’re not thinking about how long it’s going to take. Because that really doesn’t matter. It might take six months or a year or more. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s all okay. Think about this, where would you be a year from now, if you stuck to your plan every day for a year, think about that. A year from now you could be like 95% of the way to your goal or 100% there.
Or you could be totally frustrated and pissed off a year from now because you kept thinking it was taking too long. And you kept stopping and starting and stopping and starting you kept giving up. Maybe you’d recommit. Maybe you’d quit and you’d start again, then you quit again. Maybe you just quit altogether. Staying in the flow means you commit to the process. You commit to the process of change. What things do you need to change to get to your goals?
Stop eating junk food, start lifting weights regularly, maybe doing more speed work? What is the process of change, what does that look like for you and commit to that? Because that’s what you need to focus on. That’s where your attention needs to be. Staying in the flow means staying focused on the process of change and not getting frustrated because it’s taking too long to see your results right?
Hey, when you stop thinking that this is all supposed to be different, somehow faster, whatever. And when you just slow down and you stay in the flow, and you stay committed right now to this process, your whole mindset shifts, you become calmer about everything, you become more at peace with where you are, you feel more encouraged, you feel more confident, and that confidence builds you feel more motivated to stay on track.
You stay more disciplined. When you’re feeling this way, when you’re in this mental and emotional state, you become unstoppable. When you’re operating from this emotional state, what do you think becomes your new reality? What do you think becomes true for you? What do you think are the results that you’re gonna get?
When you’re coming from this place of like, I will get there eventually. And I’m just right where I’m supposed to be, and I’m just gonna stay committed, you will get there, eventually, you will stay committed, you will get the results you want for yourself, you will achieve the goals that you want for yourself.
So what I want you to do this week, I want you to ask yourself, where you might be trying to fast track things, right? Where might you be wishing that things should be faster, quicker, and then notice how thinking that way makes you feel? Because chances are, it’s going to put you in a negative feeling, a negative emotional state, you’re not gonna feel good, you’re gonna feel frustrated, discouraged. You’re gonna feel stressed out. And then ask yourself, how can I let go of these ideas? How can I let go of this arbitrary timeline that I’ve created for myself? How can I just sit here? Slow down? How can I stay in the flow right here now?
How can you focus on the process of change here in this moment, and this isn’t just about like feeling good, or getting out of that negative state. It’s about creating everything that you want for yourself. It’s how you get there. If you want to become the most badass version of yourself, just commit to the process of change, and you’ll get there. Slow down, stay in the flow, and I promise you, you will absolutely get there eventually.
And as always, if you want some help with any of this, or all of this, apply for coaching you and I can work together, we’ll put together a plan for you. I’ll help you stay committed to that process. I’ll help you stay in the flow and together we’ll get you there. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
I coach a lot of runners who honestly want to change. They are ready to dial in their nutrition, lose the extra weight (permanently), get stronger, run faster, and become the healthiest version of …
Continue Reading about 134. The Art of Living in Integrity →
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 134 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the art of living in integrity. So I coach a lot of runners who honestly want to change. They say they’re ready to dial in their nutrition, they’re ready to lose the extra weight and do it permanently. They want to get stronger, they want to run faster, they’re ready to become the healthiest version of themselves.
But oftentimes, there’s this big disconnect between what they want for themselves and what they actually do. And the problem isn’t a lack of desire, because they want it. I know they want it bad for themselves. It’s not an absence of willpower. They’re just not living in integrity. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explore what it means to live in integrity, the art of living in integrity, what it looks like to live in integrity, and how it can absolutely change your life.
I’m also going to share some practical tips to help you get started living a life of integrity. And listen, hitting your goals is all about living a life of integrity. Yes, it takes discipline, it takes consistency, it takes time. But it also requires that you live a life of integrity. And this is one of the reasons why I created the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my immersive coaching program that delivers all the knowledge, the support and the accountability that you need to improve your health to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And to make it last permanently. It’s not about quick fixes. This is about longevity. Okay?
So if you’re ready to lose weight, if you’re ready to get stronger, if you’re ready to run faster, run longer than you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. To get started, you have to fill out a short application schedule call with me, we’re gonna have a brief conversation, we’ll talk about your goals. And we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not for everybody.
But if this is something that you’re interested in, if you want to live a life of integrity, and you want help hitting your goals, join me in the Running Lean coaching project. All right, let’s get into this topic.
So I coach a lot of people who honestly want to change, they are ready to finally figure out this whole nutrition thing, right, they’re ready to lose the weight permanently, to get leaner to get stronger, maybe to run their fastest marathon, just to get back to being the healthiest version of themselves or to become the healthiest version of themselves.
But oftentimes, there’s this huge disconnect between what they want and what they do. There’s a disconnect between their goals, and their behavior, their behavior, their behaviors are not necessarily in alignment with their goals. So they’re doing things that don’t really help them to move closer to their goals. They’re doing things that actually move them further away from their goals. I don’t know if you can relate to this.
Maybe you’ve tried cleaning up your diet in the past maybe you’ve tried you know sticking to a plan, but you constantly find yourself self-sabotaging. If you find yourself like eating all the cookies or like just going out for pizza or eating ice cream every night. I don’t know, this was me.
Anyway, I don’t know if you can relate to this. But this is what I used to do. And for me, I had this idea in my head that I wanted to lose weight. I was pretty overweight at the time. And I remember thinking man, I need to lose about 40 pounds here. And eating this junk food and eating all the sugar and eating all this ice cream and eating all this pizza is probably not going to get me there. And yet I find myself doing it anyway. Can you relate?
So for me eating the junk food was not in alignment with my goals of losing weight, but I was doing it anyway. And if you have a goal in mind for yourself, whatever that looks like for you whether it’s to lose weight or just become healthier, stronger, to run faster, whatever it is for you.
If your behaviors are not in alignment with that goal, if the things you do on a daily basis aren’t moving you closer to that goal, if they’re moving you further away from that goal, then you are not living in integrity. Oh, there’s all kinds of reasons why you can’t stick to your plan or why you ate the pizza, or why you’re going to eat ice cream. There’s reasons you’ve got stories, you’ve got justifications. You could justify this stuff all day long.
But the thing is, you’re not being in integrity with yourself. And this is one of the main takeaways that I want you to have from this podcast today is being in integrity with yourself. And it doesn’t matter what other people think, or what you’re putting out there for the outside world to see what you’re posting on Instagram. None of that stuff matters. It’s like yes or no, are you in integrity with yourself.
And like I said, at the beginning, this isn’t a problem of willpower. It’s not a, it’s not a problem of desire. It’s not that you don’t want this for yourself. I honestly wanted to lose weight, I honestly knew that what I was doing was not moving me closer to that goal that was actually causing me to probably gain more weight, but I was doing it anyway, I wasn’t in integrity with myself.
And it didn’t matter what I showed the outside world, or what I told people I was doing. And it didn’t matter how much I wanted it for myself. I simply wasn’t in integrity with myself. So what is integrity? I looked up a couple of different definitions. And one definition says: A firm adherence to a code of moral or artistic values, I think that’s kind of interesting that they use the word artistic values. So it’s like incorruptible, that’s kind of cool.
Another definition says: The quality or state of being complete, or undivided. When you are undivided in your actions, when you’re on when your actions are undivided, from your goals, then you are in integrity. So living in integrity means that you are adhering to a code of values of principles. Right?
It means having a strong inner compass, which is just a powerful set of guiding values and principles. And when you have this, when you have this inner compass, you are more likely to stay on track, you’re more likely to be in integrity. Most people don’t do this, though they don’t have any type of inner compass, they never do the work of creating a set of guiding principles for themselves, right.
Another way of saying this, and this is something that I use all the time with my coaching clients is that it’s you know, being in integrity means that you make a plan. And then you stick to the plan no matter what. You make a plan and stick to the plan no matter what. And it’s the “no matter what” part that’s important.
Again, everybody can make a plan. It’s sticking to the plan that’s the important part, because that’s the part that’s actually going to move you closer to your goals. No matter what you want for yourself, you want a better career, you want a better marriage, you want to better, you want better health, you want to be able to run faster, you want running to be easier for you, whatever it is you want for yourself. You’ve got to have a plan for getting there, and then you have to stick to that plan. That’s it. It’s that simple.
Why do we make this so complicated? Why do we have all these reasons and stories and excuses and justifications for why we can’t do it? It’s interesting, isn’t it? But what if you did what if you stuck to your plan? No matter what that is, it’s hard to do that. This is why I have a coaching practice because I help people stick to their plan. Because so many things get in the way. And I get that I totally get that.
But I want you to think about this. I want you to think about what it would look like for you to be in integrity with yourself because that’s what this is all about. It’s about having your own back. And what I mean by that is like you say you’re going to do something and then you do that thing. If you do what you say you’re going to do, you make a plan, and then you stick to the plan.
And I coach people on how to do this, I even tell them, Okay, listen, if you want to make an exception to your plan, that’s totally fine. But like, make that part of your plan. You know, let’s say you’re going out with friends on Saturday night, and you want to have a glass of wine, totally fine, have a glass of wine, make that part of your plan.
You say to yourself, oh, I’m not going to drink this weekend. But then you go out and you have a few glasses of wine. And then you feel bad about yourself, you’re not being in integrity with yourself, you don’t have your own back. But if you decide, oh, we’re going out friends, I’m going to have a glass of wine, I’m gonna enjoy myself. Maybe I’ll even split a dessert with my husband.
And then you go out and you do that, you go out and you enjoy dinner, you have a glass of wine, you split dessert. That’s being in integrity with yourself, it doesn’t mean you never have a dessert again in your life doesn’t mean you never drink alcohol, again, what it means is that you have a plan and then you stick to your plan. That’s it. It means that if your friends are getting married, and you’re going to their wedding, and you decide you know what, ahead of time you decide, I’m going to have a piece of cake at this wedding. Because I mean, come on, it’s wedding cake. It’s amazing, right? Then you have a piece of cake at the wedding and you enjoy it, it’s part of your plan.
That’s what it means to live in integrity. What, what integrity does not look like is you go to the wedding, and you’re like, I’m not eating any cake. Because you know, I’m trying to stick to my plan here. And then you eat like six pieces of cake. Because it’s like, wedding cake. And it’s amazing. And it’s free. And you can’t let it go to waste, right? So you got to eat it all up.
That’s what I used to do. I would go back for seconds and thirds when it came to stuff like wedding cake, because it’s just sitting out there. What are they going to do with that? Right? They’re just gonna throw it away, give it to the staff or something, I don’t know. But we got to eat that stuff, right? That was just me.
So that’s not being an integrity, when you’re, when you’re doing things that go against what you want for yourself, or when you’re doing things that go against your plan. So make a plan and stick to your plan. If you want to have a piece of cake, put it on your plan. It’s no big deal. Right.
And listen, this is not something you do once, and you’re done. Living in integrity is like it’s an ongoing practice. It’s something that you have to do every day. It’s not like, you know, you, you decide you’re going to lose weight, and you change your diet and you do it for a couple of weeks. And then you kind of start doing other things, you start slipping back into old behaviors.
This isn’t about going out and running faster you want to you know, you want to PR a marathon, you don’t go out and do speed work once. Living in integrity means that you practice this on a daily basis. And I say practice because you’re not going to do it perfectly. Nobody does. Right. And being in integrity and living a life of integrity is not some, you know, level of enlightenment that you’re gonna get like, this is just something you do.
As part of your daily living, it’s part of your life, it’s part of who you are. It’s part of what you do. Like, like I say, all the time being healthy. It’s not a destination we’re trying to get to. It’s how you live your life. Living in integrity is how you live your life. It’s who you are and what you do. And you’re already doing this, I guarantee you that you are in integrity in some areas of your life.
Think about this, think about your relationship, maybe you’re married, maybe you have a significant other. Maybe it’s your relationship with your kids, whatever it is, I’m pretty sure that you are living in integrity in that area of your life. What about work, you know, you say you’re gonna show up on time for work and you do. You gotta get your work done by a certain day at a certain time or you know, your boss is gonna yell at you or whatever.
So you’re in integrity with that. Maybe it’s your workout schedule. Maybe you’re in integrity with how you, you know, schedule your runs, and then you go and you do those runs no matter what. These are all places in your life right now. Where you are, being in integrity. You’re already doing it.
But I’m going to challenge you to look at all other areas of your life. And I want to ask, I want you to ask yourself, honestly, are you in integrity in all areas of your life? You know, you’re practicing being in integrity right now in some places, but what about others? Think about that? Is there a place in your life right now where you could be more in integrity?
And can you take the way you approach your relationship, for example, that being in integrity, no matter what attitude that you have about your relationship? Can you kind of copy and paste that integrity into this other area of your life? Maybe it’s, it’s your diet?
How cool would it be if you just did that? What if you lived your life and integrity in all areas of your life? What would that look like for you? What do you think you could accomplish? That you don’t have right now. And I say that this is an art form. Because being in integrity, living a life of integrity, there’s an art to it.
There’s an art to living in integrity, because it’s different for everyone. It’s personal to you. It’s unique to how you live your life and the things that you want for yourself. And you know, what, only you know, when you’re doing it. Nobody else knows you can fool with the outside world, but you can never fool yourself, you know, when you’re in integrity, and when you’re not.
It’s an art because when you do it right, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful way to live your life. It’s a beautiful way to accomplish anything that you want for yourself. So you’re doing this in some areas of your life, you’re not doing this in some other areas of your life. Why not?
And what would it look like if you were to just take this idea of living a life of integrity across all areas of your life. And one of the ways you can start doing this is to create that set of guiding principles. So I call this a strong inner compass that’s guiding you. It’s like your North Star.
So the first step would be to create a set of values and principles to help guide you in the direction of your goals. And this is going to look different for everyone. But you’ve got to hold yourself to the principles that you create for yourself. That’s what it means to be in integrity. Like I said before, you can create these values and these principles for yourself. And that’s great. It’s like it’s great to have a set of guiding values and principles.
But if you’re not holding yourself to those, then what good is it? What good is it? I wouldn’t even encourage you to write them down, put them on a piece of paper, put them on some post it notes, stick them on your bathroom mirror, put them on a note on your phone, so that you can look at it all the time.
You need to see these things and be reminded of why you’re doing the things you’re doing. What are the principles that are guiding you? What are the principles and values that you find important for yourself, and then stick to those guiding principles. Allow them to guide you. Okay? Remember, this is about making a plan. And then sticking to the plan. And the sticking to the plan is the important part. And the sticking to the plan no matter what is the really important part.
Because anybody can have a plan. But very few people are that disciplined and that and have that much integrity to stick with their plan, no matter what happens around them. But this is what’s going to be the game changer for you. This is what’s going to get you to your goals. And if you find yourself living in integrity in some areas of your life, but not others, I want you to ask yourself, why? Get curious about that.
Why aren’t you living in integrity in all areas of your life right now? And where’s that one area that really needs some work? You know, maybe it’s your diet, maybe it’s one of those things where you’re just like, I just can’t seem to stick to this diet. Why is that? Get curious about that. Is it because it’s hard? Is it because you feel like you’re missing out on something good?
Because I’m going to tell you right now, most of the time, it’s just your brain telling you that it’s uncomfortable and you’d rather be doing something that feels good. Because this is the way our brains are designed, it’s the way our brains have evolved. We are always trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And sticking to a food plan that does not include pizza and cookies and ice cream can seem uncomfortable. It can seem, you know, like, oh, we’re not, we’re not enjoying ourselves.
Everybody else is eating all this amazing food. And we’re eating, you know, salmon and broccoli over here or whatever, which I find amazingly delicious, by the way. But ask yourself why do you think? Why do you think you find it hard to live in integrity? Why do you think that is? Get curious with yourself.
Oftentimes, you’re going to find that it’s just your brain doing what it likes to do, which is to keep you comfortable, and seek pleasure and avoid pain. But what if you just embraced some of that discomfort. And when I say embrace discomfort, it doesn’t mean like you’re gonna live your life in discomfort forever.
This is just like, certain moments, we’re talking about here, certain moments when you want to go back for that second or third piece of wedding cake, and instead not doing it. And that’s uncomfortable, because you want it and you’re like, well, I really want that thing. I have this strong desire to eat some more cake right now. And you’re not going to do that.
So if that desire is still gonna be there, but you’re not going to satisfy that desire. That’s what feels uncomfortable, right? But what if you just embrace that? What if you’re just like, you know what, for me, being integrity means that I’m not going to go back for that second piece of cake.
And we make it into some big thing like, oh, it’s like, oh, it’s like a big thing. And it stresses us out. But it’s just cake. All right. Let’s get over that. Let’s get over the feelings around it. And let’s get over the emotional part of it. And let’s just embrace the fact that what we’re doing here, this is not going to be moving us towards our goals. This is not in alignment with who we want to be. This is not living a life of integrity.
So look at different areas of your life. I want you to do that this week. And then consider whether or not you’re actually living a life of integrity in every area of your life. And if you’re not, get curious, ask yourself why? Because imagine what you could accomplish. If you practice the art of living in integrity in every area of your life every single day. What could you accomplish? Who could you be in three months and six months in a year? If you did that? I bet it’d be pretty amazing for you. We talked about becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. This is what’s gonna get you there. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. 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.
What do you think of when you hear the word “discipline”? Does it conjure up images of “getting in trouble” or controlling behavior by means of punishment? For a lot of people, the word has a …
Continue Reading about 128. Discipline Does Not Mean Punishment →
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 128, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, discipline does not mean punishment. So let me ask you this. What do you think of when you hear the word discipline? Does it conjure up images of like getting in trouble, or controlling behavior by way of punishment?
For a lot of people, the word discipline has a very negative connotation. And they don’t want any type of discipline in their life at all. But discipline is not always a bad thing. In fact, having more discipline in your life, might actually be one of the best things you can do for yourself for your overall health and happiness as a human being.
So today, I’m going to share why discipline does not mean punishment, and explain the surprising benefits of creating a more disciplined life. First, I want to talk a little bit about what’s going on over in the coaching project.
So the coaching project is my coaching program, where you get group coaching, one on one coaching, and it’s a program that is designed to give you all of the knowledge and the support, and provide accountability for you to reach your personal health and fitness goals, whatever that might look like for you. And every month during our group calls. So we do a couple of group calls every week.
And on one of those group calls every week, I do some teaching and some coaching on a topic. And for the month of June, we’re talking about mastering your mindset. What is your mindset? And why is your mindset so important to achieving the goals that you want for yourself. And today’s topic on the podcast, they were talking about discipline is one of those mindsets that are one of those components of mindset that is required.
If you want to achieve big things for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants to get leaner, get stronger, run faster, run longer. All of these things require you to have the right mindset because it’s one thing to know what to do. And it’s a whole nother thing, to motivate yourself to do it, to be disciplined to do those things that maybe you don’t want to do sometimes, in order to get the stuff that you really want for yourself in order to become the person that you want to become.
So all month long, we’re going to be talking about different aspects of mindset. This week was all about the topic I’m talking about today, which is, you know, creating more discipline in your life. We’re going to be talking about stopping self sabotage, building mental toughness, creating permanent habit change, becoming an emotional badass. All of these things require a shift in your mindset. And the mindset is the foundation for everything that you want for yourself.
Okay, so if you’re ready to become more, if you’re ready to take your health, and your fitness and your mindset to the next level, then you’re ready for the Running Lean Coaching Project. And it’s an application program you got to apply for. You’re going to have a short conversation with me, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. And if so then I want to invite you to apply to the Running Lean Coaching Project and you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, schedule a call with me we’ll talk about your goals and we’ll just see if this is a good fit for you; runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean Coaching Project.
All right now on to today’s topic, which is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while here. And I was talking to a friend recently about the difference between having a disciplined life and an undisciplined life. And something that came up was that there’s a lot of people out there that have this really negative connotation of the word discipline.
And you know, when we talk about that word, when you hear that word, think about this, like, what? What images come up for you? What comes up for you when you hear the word discipline. So there’s a couple of different definitions of, of discipline, and one that I think a lot of us think about is the practice of training people to obey rules, or a code of behavior, using punishment, to correct disobedience, right.
So a lot of people think of discipline as disciplining a child, for bad behavior. And this was a big part of my childhood. I got in trouble a lot, as a child, especially in school with my parents, I was a bit of a rebel. And I just did things the way I wanted to do things, and I didn’t do things I was supposed to do, and whatever you want to call it, I was a bit of a rebel, I was a bit of a troublemaker, and I was getting in trouble a lot. I was punished a lot. I was disciplined a lot as a child.
And so for me, for a big part of my life, the idea of having more discipline in my life was like, oh, heck, no, no, thank you, that is not what I want at all, I don’t want more of that. I finally got away from all that, you know, I grew up and became a dad, I had my own family, and you know, I was an adult and all these things, you know, that supposedly make us, you know, autonomous creatures, and have sovereignty and agency over our own lives.
And, but then even at work, I would get punished for, you know, maybe showing up late or something like that, you know, so it was still kind of following me around. And I was like, well, geez, I don’t want discipline in my life, I don’t want to be disciplined. And so for a lot of us, we have that connotation.
Or maybe you’re trying to train a puppy. And so a lot of times we use discipline to train a puppy, we punish the puppy if they pee on the rug, or whatever, you know. So I want to just acknowledge that a lot of us have this idea of what it means to live a disciplined life or to have discipline in our lives. And it’s not necessarily a positive, you know, content doesn’t bring up positive thoughts and feelings, you know, it’s a, it’s a very negative thing. So there’s another definition of discipline that I have adopted into my life and really accepted as part of who I am. That has, for me, nothing but positive connotations.
Okay, so the other definition of the word discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. This I love because I practice discipline, in all areas of my life. I train myself to do things in a controlled and habitual way. That doesn’t mean I’m a robot, you know, it doesn’t mean I live in this weird little, you know, confined bubble or whatever.
But I do things very intentionally, in a controlled and habitual way. And I learn habits, and I create good habits for myself. And for me, this definition of discipline feels good. It’s something that I can, you know, try on and say, Yeah, I want discipline in my life, because discipline gets me the good stuff that I want in my life.
Discipline is a way of training myself, to create good habits. It does require some level of structure and some level of control over yourself. And it creates and it requires creating good habits. But it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. We don’t have to look at being disciplined in our life or having discipline in our life as a negative. We don’t have to look at it as being a punishment.
I live a pretty disciplined life. So most days, I go to bed around the same time, you know, pretty early, I would say for some people, I don’t know, maybe it’s late for others. I get up at the same time every day. I have a consistent morning routine. I do some journaling and some meditation and drink some coffee.
I start my day in a very intentional way. And then I work out I run or I hit the gym and or go to yoga class or something, I have a very structured morning, you know, I have a very structured day most days. And then my work schedule is very structured. In order for me to create the kind of business that I’ve created the business model where I’m coaching people all day long, I have to have a pretty detailed amount of structure, a pretty significant amount of structure in my calendar.
And everything I do has to be on my calendar. And I’m very disciplined about sticking to that schedule, it’s important for me, it helps me to create the kind of life that I want for myself. So having some structure and some discipline, in certain areas of my life, helps me to achieve the things that I want for myself, you know, I want to build and grow my business, I want to make an impact on this world.
I want to create more good health and more positivity, I want to get people off of junk food, I want to get people off of, you know, being you know, inactive, I want to get people stronger and more fit, I want to help people, you know, with their nutrition and with strength and endurance and with their mindset. And in order for me to do that, in order for me to make a big impact in this world, I have to be pretty structured and pretty disciplined about how I show up for you and how I show up for myself and how I show up for my business.
This requires discipline, I’m disciplined about my food choices. And about my diet, I eat a lot of the same things pretty often. I mean, I do mix it up here and there. But for the most part, I’m pretty structured and disciplined about how I eat, it’s important to me. And it’s not a struggle, this isn’t a punishment, it’s not a punishment, eat real food. For me every day, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something because I’m not eating burgers and french fries all the time. And you know, chocolate cake and ice cream and all the things that I used to do.
I used to eat a lot of pizza, a lot of ice cream. And I don’t do that anymore. But it doesn’t feel like I’m being disciplined or like I’m being punished. I’m intentional about having this kind of discipline in my life, in these areas of my life. Being disciplined has helped me to create massive change in my life. And it allows me to achieve everything that I want for myself. I have big goals that I set for myself, I want to become more.
I’m always growing as a human being, I’m always evolving as a person, I want my health and fitness to always get better, not worse. And for me, it requires me to be disciplined in some areas of my life, it requires me to be disciplined about how often I do strength training and how often I run and how I, you know, schedule my meals and things like that.
You know, for me, a few years ago, when I finally permanently lost the weight that I had gained over the previous five years or whatever. It requires some discipline for me to lose that weight. It required me creating discipline in my life, around my diet and exercise regimens. And now, having some amount of discipline in that area allows me to maintain my weight effortlessly, effortlessly.
It’s easy, because I’ve created that level of discipline. I’ve improved my running performance over the years. By being more disciplined, I’ve gotten stronger. I’ve got this big goal of changing my body composition. And I’m working on being more of a bodybuilder, if you will.
I don’t like that term, because it conjures up these images of these huge, giant people. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But I’m trying to become more muscular and change the way my body looks and feels and get a lot stronger. And I’m being very disciplined about how I do that. I have to be disciplined about how I structure my workouts, how often I’m lifting, the kinds of foods that I’m eating, I have to eat more food, I have to be more intentional about some supplements that I’m taking and things like that.
And all of these areas of my life are growing and becoming better and I’m improving in all these different areas of my life because I have discipline in my life. Okay, so you can see the difference here, right? It’s not punishment. It’s not that I’m beating myself up. It’s because I have this level of discipline that I am able to achieve these things that I want for myself. Okay. It doesn’t mean I’m battling with myself, you know, I’m not punishing myself.
I’m not in a battle with myself, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t have fun, too. So here’s a big misconception about having a disciplined life. A lot of people think that if you, oh, I don’t want discipline in my life, because I still want to have fun, guess what you can do both. It’s not a one or the other. In fact, I believe that having discipline in my life allows me the freedom to also be in the flow sometimes, and to have playfulness in my life, and to have unstructured time in my life and to have fun in my life.
Having some discipline gives me the freedom to just at other times to just do what I want. If I was always super undisciplined, if I was just always going with the flow, I don’t think I would be able to achieve a whole lot from a success level like with my business with my health and fitness. And so for me, like just being totally undisciplined wouldn’t get me there. Maybe that works for you. Maybe that works for some people. But for me, I have to have some structure and some discipline in some areas part of the time.
So think about it as a balance in our lives, right? Having discipline is how I achieve my goals. That’s how I become more. It’s how I grow and evolve. Also, being undisciplined some of the time is how I grow and evolve to it’s like, you kind of need both, right? So you need some level of unstructured playtime, I think, playfulness, and spontaneity, and just silliness and laughter and fun and craziness.
All this stuff is like so important, and really required. If you want to be a well rounded, healthy, happy human being, we have to have expressive free playtime. And we don’t do it as adults, we don’t, we don’t make that a priority as adults. And I’m going to tell you here, and you might be kind of surprised to hear me talking about this. But I’m telling you right now that just goofing around, and having total joyful, playful, fun is necessary to having a joyful life.
If you want to have an incredibly fulfilling life, you’ve got to include playfulness in there, it has to be part of it. So being disciplined does not mean punishment, it does not mean you never have fun in your life. It’s just you structure some parts of your life and then other parts of your life can be completely unstructured. Doesn’t that sound better than just being punished all the time? Or having a disciplined life 24/7, 365? I don’t want that. I don’t want that.
So here’s what I want you to do this week, I just want you to consider yourself, consider your own life. Think about those things that you want for yourself. What do you want for yourself? Do you want to get stronger? Do you want to run faster? Do you want to lose some weight? Do you want to just get fitter? Change your body composition? What is it you want for yourself? And then think about that word discipline? How does it make you feel?
Could you use a little more discipline in your life? So if there’s things that you want for yourself, but you’re having a hard time getting them or you don’t have them? What’s it going to take to get you there? How much discipline? Do you think you’ll need to get there? Can you start applying some discipline into that area of your life in order to get you there? Can you be more disciplined at times? And then the flip side of that is? Where are you? Where are you making time for playfulness? Are you making time to just have fun and let loose and let your hair down? And just go crazy?
Dance like no one is watching. You know, can you make time for that to be undisciplined? Can you have that balance? Can you achieve what you want and have time to just goof around? Like, can we have this kind of balance? Or if the answer is yes, but I want you to think about this for yourself, how can you apply this? How can you make this happen for yourself, right? And it’s not about it’s not about one or the other. It’s about both. It’s about how we can do both. You know if you’re too disciplined all the time, it can feel hard and stressful and create anxiety in you.
Being too undisciplined on the other hand can have the same effect. You’re not getting things done that are important to you, you kind of stay stuck where you are. This can create a lot of stress and anxiety as well. So I think it’s important that we have both in our lives. So think about that this week, and what would that look like for you? And I want to take back the meaning of the word discipline, I want to take back the negative power that this word has over us.
And I want to remove the negative connotations that the word discipline has in our lives, right? It doesn’t mean punishment, I want to adopt this new definition, I want you to start using it in this way of like, okay, the the word discipline for me means to create healthy, productive habits that helped me become more, that’s what I want to, I want this word to mean going forward.
Okay, so consider how you can be more disciplined in some areas of your life to get the things that you want for yourself, and how you can balance that with complete undisciplined parts of your life so you can have fun and make that room for flow and playfulness. Okay.
And as always, if you want help implementing a more disciplined life, or implementing more playfulness in your life, or applying any of the principles that I talked about here on the podcast, I want to invite you to join us over on the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
In my coaching practice, I hear this phrase a lot, “I feel like I’m spiraling out of control.” Spiraling out of control can feel terrible and typically leads to out-of-control behavior like eating …
Continue Reading about 125. Do You Feel Like You’re Spiraling Out of Control? →
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 125, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, do you feel like you’re spiraling out of control? So in my coaching practice, I hear this phrase a lot. I feel like I’m spiraling out of control, spiraling out of control can feel terrible.
And it’s one of those things that kind of leads to out of control behavior, like eating all the Oreos in the house or eating an entire large pizza by yourself. And I know this from personal experience, by the way, but what does it really mean to be spiraling out of control? Are you actually out of control? Or does it just feel like it?
Is there no way to recover from the state that you’re in? In this episode of the podcast, I’m gonna explain what it really means when you feel like you’re spiraling out of control. And I’ll show you what you need to do to get yourself out of it.
But first, I want to encourage you to consider applying to join the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my immersive coaching program, where you get all the guidance, the support, the knowledge, the accountability, that you need to hit your goals. I know that if you’re listening to this podcast, it means that you want more for yourself, you’re not okay with the status quo. There’s somebody that you want to become.
And in order for you to become that future version of yourself, you’re going to have to get into action, there are things you’re going to have to do that you’re not doing right now. There’s some things that you might have to stop doing that you’re doing right now. There’s changes that have to happen. And my job as your coach is to help you make those changes. My job is to help you get into action. My job is to help you to stay in action, and continue to make progress towards your goals.
You know, my job is to help you accomplish whatever it is that you want for yourself. So I’m here for you. If you’re one of those people that’s like you know, what I’ve been doing isn’t working. And I just need a little guidance, I need the support of an expert, I need somebody who’s helped hundreds of other people do the same thing. Then consider joining the Running Lean Coaching Project. It’s easy, all you got to do is go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
You’re gonna fill out a short little application, you’re going to schedule a call with me, we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to talk about your goals. We’re going to talk about what it is you really want for yourself. And then we’re going to see if this is a good fit for you. I’ll answer all your questions, I’ll explain all the details of the coaching program. But nothing’s going to change unless you get into action. So I want to encourage you, if you’re thinking about this, if you’ve been on the fence about this, if this is something that you want for yourself, just take action, it doesn’t cost anything to schedule this call with me it doesn’t. It takes a little bit of time. And that’s it.
But don’t you owe that to yourself, just invest a little bit of time to find out if this is something that you want for yourself. I think it’s worth it. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Let’s jump on a call. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Sound good? Awesome. All right.
So a lot of people come to me and a lot of people share this, this phrase with me where they say like they feel like they’re spiraling out of control. And I want to break this down a little bit and talk about what this really means. So what does it really mean when you say you’re spiraling out of control?
So what that means for a lot of people is they’ve been doing pretty well for a while, maybe they’re sticking to a new kind of food plan. They’ve switched up their workout schedule. And things have been going pretty well for a while but then they have, you know, stopped they’ve they’ve stopped being consistent. They’ve stopped eating the right foods. They’ve gone back to binging on the Oreos and the pizza. And it feels like they’re out of control. And then this leads to feelings of frustration and guilt and shame.
And then you feel bad about yourself. And that feeling bad about yourself, all those feelings of guilt and shame about what you’ve been doing and how you can stay on track, you’d beat yourself up, oh my gosh, I always fail. That just leads to more, quote unquote, like out of control behavior. So you binge on even more Oreos, or Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or french fries, or whatever it is, that turns you on, you know. Because why bother?
And that’s kind of what we mean, when we say we’re spiraling out of control. You know, there’s some, there’s some out of control behavior happening, that creates these feelings within us of guilt and shame and frustration and failure. And it just leads to more out of control behavior. So that’s where the spiral comes from. Okay. I totally get this.
And this was definitely the way that I lived my life when I was drinking alcohol. When I was drinking alcohol, I would drink to excess every day. You know, every, every time five o’clock rolled around, I would start cracking open the beers. And I would drink until I fell asleep or passed out, however you want to say it. And I couldn’t stop that. I had been doing that for so many years, every day, thousands of days in a row, that to stop that felt impossible.
I felt like I had no control over my drinking. I felt like I had no control over my actions, I felt like I had no control over my behavior. So the things that I was doing just felt super out of control. And maybe it’s just my personality, but I kind of did the same thing with food. So I quit drinking, eventually, you know, it’s been over 15 years now. But a few years back, I was starting to get pretty out of control with my eating. And I was using food as an emotional management tool.
And I was that person, you know, I would order a large pizza and eat it by myself. And then you know, wash it down with some Ben and Jerry’s. So that was my deal. And that felt really out of control to like, I couldn’t not do that. And, and that led to really feeling terrible, gaining weight, feeling bad about myself, knowing I should be better knowing that I should be, you know, doing things differently. But feeling completely, like I had no control over my own decisions. Like I felt just like completely out of control. And that spiraling out of control feeling, it’s not a good feeling. Because the only solution really, when you’re in it, is to just keep going with that. At least that’s what it feels like, right?
And I just want you to think about this. Now, there are other ways that we can spiral out of control. And a lot of times we look to our circumstances, we look to things that are happening around us we can look to, oh, you know, my bosses got this. Yeah, things are crazy at work right now my bosses just laid all this extra work on me.
And it’s that time of the year where the kids are getting finished up with schooling and it’s crazy, you know, and then, oh, the husband is just driving me nuts with all this stuff right now and not supporting me, I’m trying to like change my diet, he’s just not supporting me, you know, and, you know, the in-laws are coming out.
Like, you can just keep layering on all the things that are happening around you. And it can really feel like you are spiraling out. Everywhere you look, there’s some reason, some story, some excuse, you know, something that is causing you, I’m using finger quotes, they’re causing you to just eat a bunch of crap, you know, because all you want to do is just not deal with any of this stuff here. So that spiraling feeling, forget it. It’s real, it feels real, doesn’t it?
But when you’re in that mode of feeling out of control, and it feels like there’s nothing you could do about it. This is where kind of there’s some negative consequences to this. Right? I think you can kind of see that. You know, you start veering off your plate and you start binging all the junk food, and you just stay stuck and you feel like crap in order to feel bad or you go for more food because that’s your default. That’s just the way you’ve programmed yourself.
You know, you want to stick to your running schedule, but you just can’t do it. So you just say screw it. And that’s another way where you’re just like, see I’m spiraling out of control, and you don’t make progress. And then you get even more flushed, frustrated, and you feel bad about yourself. And because like you keep letting yourself down, you make these promises to yourself that you’re not keeping, then it feels hopeless. And it feels like there’s nothing you can do about it.
But I want to tell you something. This is a victim mentality. This is blaming others. This is having excuses. This is having reasons, this is having stories. Here’s the thing, you know what you have control over? Always 100% of the time, you have control over your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That’s it.
And I would even argue that there are times when your thoughts can seem pretty automatic, but you can kind of quickly change them. I was talking to my coach today about this. And she said this phrase that I thought was amazing. She says, you need to be the guard at the door to your thoughts. You need to stand guard at the door to your thoughts? So there’s times when you know, something may sneak past you and you’re like, oops, I gotta like, keep that in check. Okay, so you have control over your own thoughts, feelings and actions. But what you don’t have control over is everything else.
All the circumstances, the boss, the kids, the husband, whatever it is, you don’t have control over that stuff. But you do have control over your own thoughts, feelings, you have control over the things over the way that you respond to the things happening around you. And I did a deep dive into this last week.
So if you listen to last week’s podcast, this kind of dovetails into it nicely. You know, your brain just wants to keep you safe, your brain just wants to keep you comfortable. And every time we indulge in change, every time we start changing something for the better your brain wants to shut that stuff down your brain is like no, we’re not doing that. Because that doesn’t feel comfortable.
Get us back to eating ice cream everyday. That’s where we felt good. That was our normal. That’s the familiar stuff, we’re used to this whole idea of not eating ice cream at night. What? Can’t do that. And so that spiraling a lot of times begins as just your brain wanting to get you back to safety. Your brain just wants to keep you safe, your brain just wants you to feel comfortable and safe. It’s always seeking pleasure. And it’s always avoiding pain.
You know, what’s pleasurable, eating ice cream, you know, it’s painful, not eating ice cream. And so then the spiraling begins, because the stuff just, you just keep going back to the easy, you keep going back to the safe, you keep going back to the comfortable. And the more you do it, the worse it gets. Because the more you do it, the easier it is right, the easier it is to eat the large pizza, the easier it is for you to do. And you’re just reinforcing those bad habits.
And it just becomes natural, it becomes part of who you are. You program yourself to act this way you program yourself to think and feel this way. That’s the spiraling that’s when it feels out of control. But I have to tell you, that this is all false. There is no out of control. You’re always in control. You’ve just taught yourself to act in a certain way. You’ve trained yourself to think and feel these thought patterns that feel so automatic, that you just feel like it’s just happening to you, but you’re doing it, you’re creating it yourself. You’re creating this spiraling feeling yourself. The out of control feeling, you’re doing that. It’s not anybody else. It’s not that you’re not actually out of control. It’s just you.
And you’re doing it because you just keep practicing these, these thought patterns. You just keep practicing these behaviors. And it just leads to more and more. More and more of the feeling of hopelessness, more and more of that feeling of like, I don’t have any control. There’s nothing I can do about this. And I get it. It’s easy. It’s easy to just say like I’m spiraling out of control. Like I have no control over this because then you don’t have to actually do anything about it. Right?
That’s the way I was with my drinking. My drinking felt so out of control. And I could just tell people like, oh, it’s just it’s out of control, I’m out of control. And then I didn’t have to do anything about it. Because I’m like, just shrug my shoulders. And there is nothing I can do about it, it’s out of control. It’s a cop out, really is, it’s a huge cop out. Listen, if you want to lose weight, then you have to take back your control.
Because I’m going to tell you right now that you were never out of control, you were just choosing thoughts, feelings and actions that just felt good. That’s it. And you’ve just been practicing it. So it just feels like it’s natural. It just feels easy. It just feels like it’s automatic, but it’s not. These are things you have control over. You have to be willing to do the work, though.
And you got to be willing to put yourself into some uncomfortable situations, you got to be willing to embrace the discomfort of change, because it’s uncomfortable. I get that talk about this all the time, right? Change is not comfortable. That’s why I do what I do as a coach. Because in order for you to lose weight and feel better, and get stronger, and become healthier, and run longer, and always say, you got to change stuff, there’s a lot of change we got to do to get you there.
You could do it, though. But it’s hard work. And it’s uncomfortable, it doesn’t feel good. You can still do it. But here’s the thing, the more you do it, the more you practice the more you practice the new stuff, the more you practice taking back your control, the easier that becomes for you.
That’s where we want to get to, that’s where we want to get, that’s when the magic starts to happen. Because then you’re like, you no longer can use that excuse of being out of control. Because you know how to take your control back. You no longer use that as a reason why you can’t make progress. You know, it’s kind of like pulling the rug out from under yourself. You’re like, look, guess what? I can’t use this excuse anymore.
It’s kind of the good and the bad news, right? It’s bad news. Because now you have no excuse, you just have to take responsibility. It’s good news, because now you get to change. Change is uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. It’s like a shedding of your old self. That’s an uncomfortable process to go through.
There’s all this stuff that you’ve been doing, it’s just your programming, and it’s part of who you are. And it’s so hard to let go of that stuff. For me, it was like pizza, ice cream, you know, when I was drinking, it was drinking 6-12 beers every night. That was part of who I was. To change that, to stop drinking, it just seemed like that does not compute. It does not compute.
This is not who I am, I had to become a different person. If you want to change, you want to stop the out of control BS, then you got to like shed that old version of yourself to become a different person. We use being out of control as an excuse. And we got to stop doing that. Okay. Now there are some things that happen, some traumatic events that happen in our lives that will take time to heal, you know, the death of a loved one.
If you go through a divorce, abuse, these things are, are a lot of times these things are out of your control. And the way you respond to these things can be out of control, it can feel that way. And it takes time to heal. But over time, you can heal and you can still get to choose how you think, feel and act you really do.
You know, choosing to feel sad or angry or hurt is 100% normal. It’s a normal response. If you you know, lose a loved one or go through a divorce. Like it’s it’s okay to grieve that and to feel sad or to feel angry to feel hurt. This is normal. You can get through these difficult times you can experience difficult emotions. You can also go through these things without adding the complication of the out of control behavior of binge eating or overdrinking.
You know, a couple years ago, I went through a divorce. This is hard. I used food to soothe myself. I was engaging in out of control behavior. At least it felt like that to me. And I used food as an emotional management tool. I don’t recommend doing this. I learned a lesson that I can just experience the emotions.
I can experience the hurt and the endless badness, and I could grieve that relationship. And I could be angry and all those things without eating large pizza, to feel better. And I could just be with the pain and be with the hurt and all that stuff and process the emotions without eating them. And I did. That’s when you kind of become an emotional badass.
Okay, so I’m just letting you know that there are traumatic things that happen that do take some time to heal from, you know, but we don’t have to also add the complication of you know, the out of control behavior or using that as an excuse to engage in the out of control behavior. Eating a large pizza by myself, not helping me to improve my emotional state that was not helping me to process my emotions that was not helping me to, to, to move on. It just kept me feeling terrible.
So that out of control, spiraling feeling, I just want you to really understand that you have control. And I want you to stop acting like you’re out of control. I want you to stop using this out of control, as an excuse, right? You know, stop pretending that you don’t have control over your own behavior. Always, always, always do take your power back, take your control back today, start doing this today, stop using this spiraling out of control as an excuse to stay stuck, and to stay small, and to stay comfortable.
There’s all kinds of areas of your life where you exhibit control, no matter what. Like think about, I talk to so many people about this and it cracks me up. I’ll be like, listen, okay, you feel out of control with your eating? Like you just have no control? What about your running? How are you doing with that? Are you sticking to your running schedule? You’re training for a marathon? Are you sticking to that schedule?
Oh, yeah, perfectly. I hit all my runs, no matter what I do all those workouts. I’m perfect with that. Perfect 100%. I’m like, well, that is the same date, like you, you have total control over that. Or you could choose to not be in control there. But you’re doing that you’re doing it over here in this area of your life. Why can’t you do it with your food? And something sort of I see like a light bulb go off in people’s heads, I can almost see it like being as if they’re like, oh, yeah, you’re right. I do have control over that. I do have control over my food, too. I’m just, I just don’t feel like it.
You know, I just like, yeah, and they and they kind of see that they can exhibit this control in other places of their life. It’s kind of like showing up for work on time. There’s so many people that like they just show up for work on time, no matter what they’re gonna show up for work every day, five days a week to get there on time. They make sure they’re sitting at their desk five minutes before their shift starts or whatever, like they are diligent about that.
But then I’m like, how’s it going sticking to that food plan? Oh, I can’t do it, can’t even put two days together. Like really? What about work? Like, are you going to show up late for work every day? Oh, no, I’ll do that perfectly. It’s that same concept. It’s the same concept. It’s the same thing happening in your brain. You’re just making choices. And you’re making excuses. And you’re using it as a way of keeping yourself safe and comfortable. But also stuck where you are. And you don’t want that I know I said that earlier. You want more for yourself. You want to become that badass person that you know you can be.
In order to get there. We’ve got to stop acting like we’re out of control. Stop thinking and feeling out of control thoughts and feelings stop in engaging in out of control behavior. Take back your power. Take back the control over every area of your life. I know you can do this. And if you want my help, I’m here for you. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. 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.
Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway and we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat-adapted. But the …
Continue Reading about 112. Taking Back Control of Your Life with Melanie Millaway →
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 112, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, taking back control of your life with Melanie Millaway.
Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway. And we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat adapted. But the real change didn’t happen on the outside. Yes, she lost weight. Yes, she improved her running performance. Yes, she got stronger. Yes, she has more energy now. And yes, she generally feels a lot better.
But the real change happened on the inside. Melanie made this massive shift in her mindset. And I just have to say that this is the real work we do here in my coaching program, you will learn how to become a leaner, stronger runner. But you do it by making the internal shift by doing the inner work just like Melanie did. And I’ll let her tell you more about that.
Here’s the thing, the way you look on the outside, for example, your current weight, it’s just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the internal work. If you’re unhappy with the way that you look and feel and you want more for yourself, then you have to do that internal work. Okay. This is the work that Melanie did. And in this episode of the podcast, she shares how she’s absolutely transformed herself her entire life from the inside out.
But first, if you love this podcast, come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, come join us join in the fun, we have a lot of fun over there. We post selfies, we do challenges, we support each other, we encourage each other, and we have a good time doing it. It’s all about running. It’s all about diet and exercise and becoming your best self. Just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook and join the fun.
And then if you’re somebody who is ready to do that inner work to make that shift in your mindset so that you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, then you have to just take action. One of the biggest mistakes people make around changing their health is procrastination. They put off taking action.
They always think later. Like when I have more time or when I feel more motivated or after the kids go to college later, is a dream killer. It’s a killer of hopes and dreams. It’s a killer of goals. If you want something more for yourself, if you want to make a change for yourself for the better, then you have to start today.
Apply for coaching with me. There’s no commitment. It’s just a conversation, you and me just going to have a conversation about what coaching would look like for you, and how it might be one of the best things you ever do for yourself.
Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and take that first step take action, stop putting it off. Take that step towards becoming that badass future version of yourself. Cool.
All right. As I said, I’m excited to share this interview with you. Melanie experienced this profound transformation and affected a bunch of different areas of her life. And I’m gonna let her tell you all about it. So I’m gonna stop talking. Here’s my interview with Melanie Millaway.
Patrick McGilvray
All right, cool. So today I’m talking with Melanie and Melanie has a cool story that I felt was worth sharing with you guys. So Melanie and I started working together a few months ago. And
Melanie just is one of these people that at the beginning, things were very challenging for her. And at the beginning, she may have had some doubts, and she may have struggled a little bit and we’re going to talk about that. But I want you to know that at the end of our coaching together and the end of our sort of time working together. Melanie just had this amazing, like,
attitude, and this amazing transformation, and I wanted to make sure that we sort of captured that and shared it with you guys, because I think it’s very inspirational. And I hope I’m not, you know, setting this up too, too big for you here, Melanie. But I thought it was very inspirational. And I wanted to make sure that we sort of had this conversation and talked about all this stuff.
So, Melanie, why don’t you just introduce yourself and kind of tell us like, where you were, before you and I started working together?
Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Well, Patrick, first off, thanks for having me. Man, all the way back to the beginning with this process, I think when we started…
Patrick McGilvray
So where did you find yourself and by the way, this is like such a common story. This is one of the reasons I do what I do is because so many runners have this mentality of “Oh, I just run to eat, I can eat whatever I want. I just need to run more. And that’ll solve the problem.” You know, and so what you’re describing here is completely normal. We can all relate, we’ve all been there. Okay. But where did you find yourself that you thought “I need help with this?” Like what was the biggest issue that you really wanted to be solved, or the biggest issue you wanted help with?
Melanie Millaway
Well, you know, what I was doing wasn’t working, I was spending more time running and kind of prioritizing that over other things. And it was really was creating a strain for me to balance everything. Like I have a lot more responsibilities in my life, like family and career now than when I trained for my last full marathon. And, you know, I wasn’t blessed with like Olympic DNA. So I’m just your average runner based on age and kind of finish time. And, you know, it takes me a couple of hours to knock out a 10-15 mile run. And yet, I felt like I was stuck. And I wasn’t really making any material progress. I wasn’t getting faster, I didn’t look any different. In general, I kind of felt like garbage. And I wasn’t in a great mood most of the time. Yet, I was investing all this time running and I was feeling frustrated.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and this is so interesting because you’re one of these people Melanie who has come to me and said like, “Listen, I don’t have like a bunch of weight to lose. I’m not super overweight or anything like that.”
You did lose some weight in this process. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But you didn’t come to me saying like, “Oh, I just can lose the weight you just you know you had a lot more going on and there was just so many things like you described it just feeling like garbage.
I think that pretty much sums it up there. But it’s like we want more for ourselves. We want to feel better. We want running to be something we enjoy. We want it to be easier.
And so those are some of the things that I remember from when we started working together where you were just like, I’ve got to figure this out, you know?
And so we started kind of working together describe like, what, what are some of the things you, you experienced when we started making some of these changes? Because I know it didn’t know, it wasn’t all like super easy or work super well, for the beginning.
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, you know, I think when we first started, got started, really what I wanted some guidance, I wanted to be held accountable. Like I knew that was something I needed for myself. Because I have a tendency to kind of put others before me, just a kind of a pleaser, by nature that way, and if you overuse that formula, a lot of times you end up kind of sacrificing your own goals and desires. And that’s not very empowering, and it leaves you feeling like you don’t have a lot of control in certain circles, you know, situations or circumstances.
And then kind of looking outward, you know, I’ve had a lot of success, other aspects of my life working with a mentor, kind of specifically, in my career with, you know, whether it’s like an individual development plan or your career growth, I’ve had mentors in the past that were supporting me with a variety of goals, and kind of seeking their advice or guidance on something, but I never really thought to make that kind of investment in my own personal life, until I cross paths with you.
But, you know, how did they get started? Or how did it go? You know, it was challenging in the beginning, you know, I made the conscious choice to begin this journey heading into what I perceive to be the most challenging time of the year, the holiday season, that quad factor of Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Years, like, they are all packed in there. And it’s kind of crazy to, you know, experience growth and discomfort to the holidays, like the ultimate gauntlet of obstacles. But I thought if I could come out of that specific time of the year successful, it would be a huge boost to my self-confidence. And I could kind of wear it like a badge of honor.
And as I worked to get kind of fat-adapted, you know, I experienced the headaches and the sugar withdrawal symptoms. And looking back on it, I was probably a little more than grouchy. But I was really committed. You know, I started my food journal, and I was logging meals consistently. And I started planning and buying different things at the store and set my protocol and knew what I wanted to eat ahead of time.
And, you know, when it comes to running, like, I’m not gonna lie, the running sucks for a while going through this process. Yeah, there were weeks when I felt sluggish, and my body was heavy. And I was basically sucking wind.
And I had run a half marathon just a few weeks prior to kind of starting to want the Running Lean program. And I had a PR in that race. And then fast forward, like, as I’m in the midst of getting fat-adapted, I had forgot I had committed to a friend that was gonna, I was going to help pace her during a local, like half marathon. And that race felt hard. But I wasn’t quite over the hump yet at that point.
And then I just remember kind of coming out on the other side, eventually, my runs, they started getting easier. You know, my times were improving. I felt like less effort. And it was just kind of gradual onset. And I remember sending you a text message, like, you know, ran five miles this morning, and it felt really good. And I was back but I was like better.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you bring it up. Um, a couple of things I want to touch on number one is like you did take this on during candy season, which is Halloween through New Years, you know, and we’ve talked about that. And you were like, I don’t know if I really want to do this right now. But I think I need to do this right now.
And that takes a lot of courage like to stand up and do that because most people they don’t you know, most people are like, “You know what, I’m gonna wait till the New Year’s I’m just gonna like, binge my way through this holiday season. I need a bunch of garbage and feel terrible, and gained a bunch of weight. And then hopefully on New Year’s, I’ll make a resolution and be able to stick with it this time, which will be different, you know?”
And nobody does that. Do you know what I mean? It’s just, it doesn’t really work, you know? And you were like, “You know what, no, that’s not what I want for myself. I want to do something different. I want to just get started now. And I want to make these changes now. And I’m going to get through the holidays and feel good about myself. I want to come out on the other side of the holidays feeling like I had my own back through that whole process.”
So how did that go for you? Like how was the how’d you come out of the holidays?
Melanie Millaway
I came out and felt like I was well ahead of the game, you know, and I had been training along the way for my event in January and I mean, I was so far ahead. So that felt that part of felt amazing.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah. So you came out of the holidays, you came into January, with all this momentum. And you had actually lost weight over the holidays, which is something most people don’t do.
So that was really cool. And then yeah, then you had your race in January. What was that? What was the race?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, so that was I ran a half marathon in Houston, which Houston’s a really special city to me, and I just, I love that event. And this time, you know, I was fully fat-adapted, like, it seemed so simple.
I didn’t have to do anything different than any other typical day when I was down there. Like, I didn’t have to carb load the night before. And I never, I never liked that feeling of carb-loading before a race anyway, it always kind of made me feel lethargic or gross.
But, you know, now I didn’t have to do that. And I didn’t eat anything pre-race, like I completely fasted aside from a cup of coffee. And, you know, I didn’t run with any carbs on me, like I was naked. With carbs, like, you know, I still carry my own hydration. But my running back was a little lighter. And I wasn’t ravenous post race, you know, like, I ate a standard meal a few hours later. So it was kind of surreal at first, but just strangely liberating, like to go through that transformation and to, for it to just be so easy.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and how’d you do in the race?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah. So I broke a course record for myself. So improved my time for the last time that I’d run in person. So you know, it was, it was a really smooth race, I got to see my dad along the way, like at mile two. So it’s always encouraging to have, you know, family there to support you.
But it just the overall experience of felt good. And I was really energized and happy to be there. And just overall, an incredible weekend.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome, super awesome. Just goes to show you that just because you’re running on fat instead of carbs, like you can still run fast. You know, a lot of people, there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about that, you know, you want to get faster, you can work on getting faster, and you can do it as a fat-adapted runner, for sure. That’s awesome.
So something I wanted to kind of go back to you mentioned, like drinking and sort of like, you know, taking some time off from drinking, what was that like for you? Was that something you were just kind of struggling with a little bit and you want to do like, you knew that was maybe something that was contributing to you feeling like garbage? Is that kind of why you decided you wanted to take a break from drinking?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just wasn’t very happy with who I was. And I’ll kind of go back a little bit on my relationship with alcohol, you know,
I wanted to just kind of take a pause and kind of figure out the role it was playing in my life. And, you know, alcohol was a challenge. Like, I think I’ve had established some enduring habits over the past 20 years, like, when I was younger, and you know, you’re seeking social acceptance, like, I was one of those, I had to put effort into acquiring a taste for alcohol. But then like, fast forward, you know, now I’m in a position where I find myself thinking about having a beer after I’m done working for the day, or after a stressful week, or maybe it’s the start of the weekend, and like, let’s kick it off with a drink. Or I’m at a business meeting, and I want to be the first to meet my colleagues at the bar. So like, I had some legacy habits there. But I didn’t like the way I was feeling.
And I think with coaching, I ended up making some really positive and just lasting changes with that relationship to kind of pause on it kind of reflect on, you know, what are the positives and the negatives from drinking, like, I’m not getting a whole lot of benefits here. Like I don’t feel good. I’m not really motivated. That’s an area where I think I’ve just been wanting to make a change for a while. And this is an aspect of kind of shame with the struggle.
And that’s where you kind of provided just a safe place for me and kind of understood that the challenge that comes with it, and being like how empowering to re-evaluate that relationship over the holidays like I think it’s December and it’s holiday parties and gatherings and get-togethers and I just did like a complete dry December and like it was really challenging at first but as each day kind of passed by and I had those successes, you build more confidence and like it’s so much easier at the end and then again, looking back on it like for something I had looked so forward to like the race that year, okay, well, now I’m going to have a sip of it. And it’s just kind of neck like it kind of lost its luster by the end, like, my feeling towards it is so different now.
Patrick McGilvray
If you could identify like kind of what that mindset shift was for you because what you’re describing is awesome. And a lot of people that I work with kind of experienced the same thing. So you know, just to lose weight and kind of get fat-adapted and change our, you know, body composition and things like that. I do recommend maybe taking a break from alcohol, some people freak out a little bit about that. Some people are like, okay, no big deal I can take or leave it. And, but something interesting happens along the way.
There’s always a mindset shift. There’s like a way we think about alcohol and what it does for us. Like before we give it up for a period of time. And then there’s the way we think about it afterward. Like, can you tell me kind of what that looked like for you? Like, what was the biggest shift for you and your mindset around that?
Melanie Millaway
I think it was feeling like, I needed some sense of control, like, at some point, it kind of had control over me. And I needed to have that, that shift of power kind of back into my favor, like it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be.
And I think just more awareness to my thoughts and the feelings that they’re generating and slowing down a little bit kind of pause for a moment.
And I kind of liken it to thinking before you speak but on a more like a deeper, subconscious level. But is this really what I want at the moment and I still, you know, I still have a beer every now and then. So it’s not like I’ve completely ended my relationship with alcohol, but it’s just, I have better control. And my thought process is different towards it. And yeah, it’s been a shift, it’s, it’s not as sexy as it used to be. Because I can take it or leave it at this point.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so cool. Because that’s the place where you want to get to, and when it comes to drinking alcohol, or eating sugar, for example, these are like two things that are like drugs, if not our drugs, you know, the way that they affect our body and the way they affect our brain, the way they light up our pleasure centers.
And we have a hard time, you know, not doing these things when we’re used to doing them on the regular basis, right. And so when we’re like, okay, you know what, maybe, you know, stop eating sugar, stop drinking alcohol, and then all this resistance comes up and all this, we start freaking out about that, because we’re just so used to having it whenever we want it. So we use it to feel good, we use it as a reward system for ourselves, we use it to deal with our emotions, all that stuff.
When we take it away, it becomes challenging, and we got to deal with all that stuff that comes up. So you got to deal with the emotions, you got to like, reward yourself in different ways. You got to make yourself feel good in different ways, you know. But the other thing that people don’t realize is that that desire that you have for alcohol or sugar, will actually go away once you’ve abstained from it for a while.
And that desire, you can actually, when that sort of desire goes away, you actually start to not crave it anymore. You don’t. You’re no longer like thinking about it, you’re no longer dreaming about it. It’s no longer the solution for you anymore. And so you don’t even really want it anymore. That’s a place you want to get to. That’s a beautiful place to be because if you’re craving alcohol, but you’re not drinking, that’s terrible. I just want to murder somebody, right? But when you’re like, all of a sudden you’re like, and I remember you told me this, you’re like, it’s lost its luster. I just don’t even want it anymore. I was like, yes, that’s where we want to get to because now it’s easy to say no. Right? Yeah.
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just feel so much better. So like how I feel is more powerful than the thing than the food than the sugar than the drink. Like, that doesn’t make me feel as good as like how I feel now with the clarity and how much better I sleep at night or how much better my mood is or like I’m more engaged with my family or connected with the world like, that feels better than the beer ever made me feel.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I love that. I love that and we get into this place sometimes where we start to feel good. And you know, we start to feel good without using you know, food or alcohol to make us feel good and we think this can’t last. This isn’t sustainable. And all these like stories will start to come up and excuses and things like that, because we get some comfortable.
It’s like feeling good. Actually, it doesn’t make sense. But feeling good. Like that actually makes us feel uncomfortable because we’re not used to it. And you even said this to me, and I took a note of this of some time into our working together, you were like, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop in our heads if like, this is all gonna just come crashing down. But it didn’t, did it?
Melanie Millaway
No, I felt guilty, like for feeling so good. Like when I first felt the impact and kind of just the transformation. And I honestly had no idea that I could feel this good. It was like euphoria, like, and I just wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Like, I didn’t trust it.
And, you know, I also had to kind of remind myself not to go back to the things or the habits that got me where, where I was before, and I certainly where I don’t want to go back to you. But it was, it was a strange feeling to feel so good.
Patrick McGilvray
I just think that’s so funny in a way that we, we do that to ourselves, we actually start to feel good. And then we’re like, there’s got to be something wrong here. When is this gonna change? This is not normal, this is weird, is uncomfortable. But it’s like, no, we want to feel good. We want to feel good. So tell me about something else that shifted for you. Because, you know, you’ve you’ve experienced some profound shifts in your, in your mindset and in the way you think and feel about yourself. Tell me something else that you’ve experienced through this process.
Melanie Millaway
You know, just seeking some clarity in my life, there were things I wanted to change about myself. But I was lacking direction or certainty on kind of how to make that meaningful and lasting change.
And, you know, I had celebrated a milestone birthday earlier last year. And I think that natural progression, kind of when you enter a new decade of your life is to get introspective and start kind of conducting your own personal inventory. So you know, my satisfied with where I am right now, is there something more out there? Is this what life is really all about? Like, is this it? Or is it time for change?
And I think I coupled those kind of internal thoughts with the fact that I’ve always been interested in health and fitness and nutrition and learning new things. And, you know, identify as a runner, you know, I was an athlete in high school. And after college, I ran my first marathon, and I was hooked. I love the sport. But that also started me down the path of adopting the mindset of like, now that I’m a marathon runner, like, I can eat whatever I want like I run to eat. And if I’m training, logging miles, and burning tons of calories, and naturally, I get to eat and drink, whatever I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, like, I love food.
And my childhood and upbringing certainly revolved around food. So it seemed like a natural fit. You know, all this to say that you know, the strategy that I had adopted, you know, I run to I can eat that wasn’t really working for me anymore. I wasn’t feeling great, I was not really motivated. So what did I do? I leaned in further with what I knew, I thought, well, clearly, I just need to run farther. So let’s increase the distance.
So I signed up, and I started training to run another full marathon. And that was my goal. It had been a few years since my last full marathon, I have been running half marathons kind of for maintenance. And it was at this point that I kind of discovered the Running Lean podcast on Audible, and I was listening during my training runs. And that led me to you. And kind of just the start of this new beginning and understanding that you can’t outrun a bad diet. And what I needed was to change my relationship with food and alcohol. And if I wanted to feel better, and to achieve, like greater things for myself, like those changes needed to happen. You know, I was just kind of searching for more.
Patrick McGilvray
I mean, absolutely. It’s normal to start the year that way and to not feel like you’re in the hole, so to speak of you, you know, overindulge to the holidays, and maybe ate more drank more than you normally would have any other time of the year and have to start just to start building.
Melanie Millaway
You know, just, you know, I remember early on, I had some anxiety or apprehension with an upcoming business trip, you know, meeting with vendors, typically, that’s meals out, like a reason to overindulge with food or alcohol or otherwise and used to use support me to ensure that I had a solid plan kind of going into that situation, it’s as simple as thinking like about, how do you want to come out of that week? You know, how do you want to feel about yourself that really resonated with me. And again, just I felt supported, that was a big boost to my confidence.
You know, another simple situation where a friend had brought me lunch, like, I think it was a roast beef sandwich. And I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was doing this high fat, low carb thing. And basically, I didn’t want to eat the bread in front of my friends. So I’d not eat the bread. So I ended up, you know, kind of caving and eating the entire sandwich.
And I just remember, kind of, I felt disappointed with myself afterward. I took a good thing like someone bringing me lunch, and I turned it into something else. And I remember you kind of breaking it down. And obviously, the situation was deeper than just the bread, like leaving that conversation, feeling more confident in my choices, and being empowered to kind of stick to stick with those was really important to me.
And then really just, I mean, again, mindset, just being more aware of my thoughts and the feelings that those are generating and slowing down. Kind of just taking a pause for a moment. I didn’t realize I’ve always felt frustrated for a long time. And I couldn’t really figure out why or kind of put my finger on it. And it all makes a lot more sense.
Now it’s like, the thought is the thing. But I have control over the thoughts, how it makes me feel, and ultimately kind of what my actions are. So I feel like my life is I feel less frustrated. And I feel like I have more control in despite not being able to control the circumstance, but just how I react to the situation and just being more at ease. Like I feel less frustrated.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Do you feel like you have more control over your thoughts and feelings?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love just being able to, I’m more intentional, I think with my thoughts. And even if the thoughts maybe don’t feel good kind of marinating enough for a minute or kind of reflecting on it and trying to connect it back to the why.
And just having a better mindset in general. And feeling like I have control. Like, and I do. And that’s incredibly empowering. Like, I can think about having a drink. And again, pause for a second and think with that thought and contemplate it. That’s what I really want. And occasionally I may want to eat the thing like maybe it’s cake. But I got the power back like I get to decide for myself I get to choose.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I love the way you phrase that too because you do have the power. And it’s incredibly empowering when we can learn how to manage or control our thoughts and feelings. We go through life thinking that what other people do or say, makes us feel a certain way. And when we start to take control over that and start to take responsibility for our own stuff, and for our own emotional state, it becomes, it becomes so empowering, because now you’re not blaming other people for how you feel. You’re not blaming other people for how you’re reacting to situations.
Do you see this work that we’ve done together? Do you see it sort of spilling over into other areas of your life?
Melanie Millaway
Absolutely, I mean, that part of it, it is positively impacted so many other areas of my life. Like I said, with just being more engaged at home, I have more energy to spend time with my kids in the evening, after, you know, working all day or kind of fulfilling my responsibilities. At work, I think I’m more inspiring to my team of leaders that I work with, my colleagues, and just kind of energizing them and it’s infectious. Like, it’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible how I can like just spill over and impact so many other areas of my life in such meaningful and positive ways. Like that feels really good.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and, and I just want to point out, Melanie, that this is all you, you know, I’m, I’m over here, like yammering on about stuff, and, you know, kind of, you know, offering some suggestions and things like that, but you’re doing the work.
And that’s something I want everybody that’s listening to this to really hear that, you know, having a coach is great. And it’s great to have somebody that can guide you, that has the experience and that expertise with this kind of stuff. But really, you got to show up, and you got to actually do the work, you got to like, do things that you don’t want to do, you know, you’ve got to, you know, practice being disciplined about your diet and about exercising and about getting your runs and getting your strength training in and working through the mindset stuff.
And so I just wanted to point out that you have done an exceptional job with all that stuff, you know, you are the one that has shown up and actually done the work. So good job.
Well, what’s been like the most, like, if you could just identify like one big, the best part of this for you are the biggest transformation you’ve experienced with all of this, what would you say that was for you?
Melanie Millaway
I would say it’s having your own back. I mean, life isn’t easy. You know life is full of struggles. But you have choices. And I think I learned you have more control than you know, like, you get to choose your own adventure. Choose your struggles, right.
So personally, I’d rather be focused on controlling aspects of my diet, or sitting with an uncomfortable thought or emotion than struggling with diabetes, or heart disease or alcoholism, all of which, you know, run in my family, I think you’ve got to give yourself some grace and kind of self-love along the way.
Like, I’m going to make mistakes, the reality is I’m going to fail at things. But just keep going and keep working towards making those small, incremental changes. Because they all add up in time and, you know, you’re moving forward and getting closer towards the things that you want, and just never quitting.
And I think lastly, kind of coming out of this process, you know, I learned that nothing is impossible like we all have or should have like what I call a big, hairy, audacious goal, and you need to go after it, like see it as part of your identity, and who you are and believe in it. I think most importantly, just believe in yourself, because anything is possible.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah, and I totally agree with you, I think we should have big, huge, impossible goals, we should all have those kinds of goals for ourselves. Because if we don’t, if our goals are small, that means they’re because we a lot of people, we set small goals for ourselves because we know we can attain them.
But those small goals feel kind of comfortable for us. But we want those big or bigger things that are uncomfortable, the ones that require us to change and to become more in the process of going for them. Right. So love that.
Let me ask you this. How do you feel about going forward of all this? So you and I worked together for a few months. But now do you feel like you have like what it takes to like continue this as a way of life? Is this something that you just did temporarily? Like where do you stand with all that today?
Melanie Millaway
I think it’s I’m more confident than ever. It’s completely sustainable. It is a life track, like a lifestyle choice. It’s not like a diet or something that’s a fad that’s, you know, quickly slips away. Like I feel like I’ve acquired a set of skills that are transferable across all facets of my life.
And again, I think when I started this journey I was, I thought my goal was one thing. But really what I was seeking was something else and just the skill set that I’ve acquired make it easier for me to have a positive mindset. Being able to take back control, like, it’s a huge and just the self-confidence that comes from it. It’s life-changing. And it’s been a transformational process for me.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so awesome. I love that. And that’s really the goal is to make this something that is pretty easy and effortless that you can carry forward. You know, we’re not about it’s not about the short term, it’s not about like, losing weight, or, you know, improving your running for a month or two. This is about lifestyle changes.
You know, it’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself and being able to continue that going forward. You know, I always say that health is not a destination that we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our lives. And so you’re sort of an example of that, you know, and that’s why one of the reasons why I want to talk to you is because now you’re just like, Yeah, this is how I live my life now. I love that. So awesome.
Last question, really, like, what would you say to someone who isn’t sure about this stuff? Or isn’t sure if they’re ready to change? You know, or, or they’re on the fence? Or they’re undecided? Or they’re not sure if it’s the right time? Like, what would you say to that person?
Melanie Millaway
Put yourself out there, you’ve got nothing to lose. I mean, just kind of the growth through discomfort, make an investment in yourself. It works if you go all in and you’re truly committed to the program, and you’re willing to get uncomfortable, but it can change your life and how you experience the world.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, heck yeah. I think just like starting is just so important for people. You know, just like start, just get started. I know. But what happens is we start to think about, oh, I want to change my diet. I want to get healthy, I want to lose some weight, I want to get leaner, I want to improve my running, I want to get faster.
And then we start like, we just think about it and all this stuff starts coming up for us like oh, I’ve never worked for me in the past. Or maybe this is not the right time. I need to wait till after the holidays, or you know, whatever. But yeah, I think that’s good advice. Just start, just get started today, get started, do something for yourself today.
Anything else you wanted to talk about or anything else you wanted to mention before we finish up here?
Melanie Millaway
No, I mean, just yeah, be fully committed. Trust the contents of this program it is life-changing. It really appeals, it’s very logical. Makes a lot of sense. It’s very simplistic, kind of easy to understand and follow.
It’s built on a bunch of principles that build upon themselves. So it’s, it’s just so different than I know, I totally ditched the idea of because I’m a runner, I can eat whatever I want. Now that thought process is gone.
And I guess one other final thought too, is just again, it’s just a huge sense of relief that I can do things more efficiently with this process. Like I don’t have to spend hours running. Like I can work smarter, not harder.
And being a fat-adapted runner is so much easier. Like I’m not constantly eating I don’t feel hungry all the time. You know, I have two meals a day, I don’t snack. I can distinguish hunger from cravings and I’m just amazed at how little food I need to eat. And I’m always leaving a meal feeling satisfied. And you know, fat is your friend like it gets a bad rap. I think fat needs a new PR agent, because not only does it taste delicious, but again, it leaves you feeling satisfied. So yeah, it’s good.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Focus on fat, focus on protein. Those are the macros we want to be focused on. Awesome stuff, Melanie. Well, thanks again for coming on here and sharing your story and sharing about your transformation. And we’re gonna keep an eye on you and just kind of see where things go with you. Do you have any races coming up anytime soon?
Melanie Millaway
I’ve got one in April, I’ve got a half I’m looking forward to. And then I’ll be focused on you know, building some lean muscle mass. So that’s what’s next for me.
Patrick McGilvray
Love it. Well, we’ll stay in touch and we’ll do an update here. Once you start getting strong and ripped. Okay. All right. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it and thanks for just sharing so much about your story. It’s been really cool.
Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
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It’s a new year and there’s all this talk of goals and dreams and what you want to accomplish in the year ahead. But without the right mindset, it’s extremely difficult to create the kind of big, …
Continue Reading about 106. A Powerful Way to Start Your Day →
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 106 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, I’ve got a powerful way to start your day. I love how that rhymes. So it’s a new year. And there’s all this talk of goals and dreams and what it is you want to accomplish in the year ahead. But without the right mindset, it’s extremely difficult to create the kind of big permanent changes that you want for yourself.
Whether you want to lose weight, become a faster runner gets stronger, or just become the healthiest you yet I want to help you to develop the right mindset, the mindset that is absolutely required to get you there. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share a very simple mindset exercise that when done consistently, when done every day can be an incredibly powerful way to start your day and help you achieve all your goals.
But first, if you like this podcast, you got to come check out the Facebook community. This is the Running Lean Community on Facebook. We do some weekly coaching and training in there, we get tons of encouragement and support from runners that are just like you, we have fun. We just finished up our running through the holidays challenge and everybody had an amazing experience with that. Lots and lots and lots of great feedback from that. So definitely come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook.
And then listen, the most powerful way to hit all of your health and fitness goals is to really have someone there guiding you every step of the way, helping you to overcome your struggles, showing you things about yourself that you just don’t see holding you accountable, and keeping you on the right track. This is what I do as your coach. And I’d love to work with you here in the new year and help you absolutely crush all of your health and fitness goals in 2022. I want to encourage you to take action.
If this is something you’ve been thinking about for a while, I want you to stop thinking about it and just do it. Take action on yourself, invest in yourself in 2022 and make this the year that you finally become that lean, strong, badass runner that you’ve always wanted to be.
You can apply for coaching over at runningleanpodcast.com/apply and I’d love to see over there. And then in the Running Lean coaching group this month, this is another way to get some coaching – in my group program we’re doing a weight loss is our focus for January. So we’re doing the eight pounds down challenge. And so we’re into week number one people are having some great experiences. It’s not too late to join, we’re going to show you exactly how to become a fat-adapted runner and lose weight and hopefully get to eight pounds down by the end of the month. That’s the goal. That’s kind of what we’re challenging and pushing each other to do this month over there.
Okay, this is a good time to get started with this thing because we’re, you know, not quite in a marathon training season yet we’re still kind of in the offseason we’re just getting started with that. So it’s a good time to get fat-adapted and be able to crush your spring marathons. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join if you want to learn more.
Alright, so let’s get into this topic today. This is something that one of my coaches shared with me and I wanted to pass it along to you guys because I thought it was so powerful. I’ve been getting a lot of good results by practicing this little daily mindset exercise and I want to share it with you guys.
So first of all, why do we need to work on our mindset? Like why is this something we actually have to do? Aren’t you just supposed to have the right mindset? And listen, no, no. Mindset is not something you have or don’t have. It’s something you learn it’s a skill. If it’s a skill, that means you got to practice it right. That means you can get better at it.
And if you don’t practice it you’ll probably not have a good mindset and so in order to just like building muscle at the gym, right if you want to get stronger muscles you got to go lift heavy things at the gym right? Getting a stronger mindset requires a similar approach. You have to work on it.
You have to, you know, work on your thoughts, your feelings and things that you believe about yourself and believe about the world, you have to challenge yourself, you have to push yourself mentally, emotionally, just the same way that you do have to push yourself physically if you want to, you know, become a faster runner or build bigger muscles, right? So we have to work on our mindset, okay.
One of the most powerful ways of working on your mindset, in my opinion, is journaling. And some people think that journaling is just stupid, and it serves no purpose, and it’s pointless, and they feel stupid doing it. And that’s okay if you think it’s dumb. You don’t have to do it. Okay.
But I just have to tell you, the people that do this on a regular basis, are achieving at a higher level. They’re building mental toughness, they have a much more sort o well thought out and more powerful mindset. They got a mindset game going on. Okay.
So I just want to encourage you, if you’re one of those people that thinks journaling is pointless, I want to encourage you to kind of reconsider that and give it a go. And listen, journaling doesn’t have to be, you know, like, oh, dear diary, you know, here’s what Billy said to me today. No, it can be, it can be very specific and done in a very specific way, right?
I’ve talked about this before, we can do things like thought downloads, where you just get everything that’s going on in your head, all the thoughts in your head, and just get them out on the page. That right there can be a powerful way to start your day, that can be a powerful way to just get the junk out of your head and see it on the page and see what you’re actually thinking about.
Like what are the big thoughts that are just kind of swirling around in your head, we can become very overwhelmed with our thoughts. You know, I think we think something like 60,000 thoughts a day, 60,000 thoughts a day. And what if you just put some of those down on paper, and you could actually see what’s going on up there.
It’s kind of like a little snapshot of what’s going on in your brain. I love the thought download. And I kind of do this every single day. That’s kind of the way I start my day. There are other types of journaling you can do, which is you know, doing like a training log, you could do a training log for running, or resistance training, I highly recommend this, you know, to keep track of your runs, how you felt, timing, pacing, how you felt before and after, the weather. You can just like record all kinds of things, heart rate data, that kind of stuff.
And in resistance training, obviously, you need to log your resistance training, see how you’re feeling during those workouts, and keep track of your weights and reps. So you can see that you’re making progress, okay. But journaling can also be just like writing down daily goals and objectives. Okay?
So it can be like a food journal where you’re writing down things you’re eating just to keep track and create some awareness around that. It could be an exercise journal, where you’re creating awareness and helping you to make good progress then in that way, but it can just be whatever you want. Okay. Now, I’m not talking about journaling in general today, but I just wanted to mention that journaling can be a very, very powerful mindset tool. Okay.
So, right, just writing in general, is one of the best ways to build a stronger mindset. Okay. Some of the benefits of journaling, and doing some writing every day. It helps you to review your past and be honest. So it helps you to kind of, you know, you can recap the past day or the past week, and you can say, like, here’s what actually happened.
Journaling actually helps to reduce stress and anxiety, it’s been shown that people that do journaling, have less stress and anxiety, which is awesome. It creates a massive amount of self-awareness because like I said, you’re starting to create, you’re creating self-awareness by looking at what you’re thinking about, right? You’re sort of like, it’s kind of meta, you’re kind of thinking about what you’re thinking about. But it’s important to write it down, not just like, think about it in your head because when you write it down, you start to see things in a much different way. And it starts to really bring things into your consciousness that you may not be aware of.
Journaling can help you to make progress towards your goals. It can help you identify weak areas so that you can improve them. Journaling helps to boost motivation, helps you to stay motivated, helps you to stay on track, with whatever goals that you have. It’s been shown to help improve focus and concentration. And it just helps you to kind of see the bigger picture and get some perspective on what’s going on. Okay. There are no real rules around journaling. And you can do it any way that you want, but I just want to encourage you to get into some sort of daily journaling, practice okay.
Now I have a very specific little exercise a journaling exercise that you can begin to do to kind of add to your daily journaling practice if you’re already doing it, or if you’re not doing any journaling at all, you can start with this because it’s super, super simple and very powerful. So there aren’t really any rules about what to do or how to journal, okay? But having a purpose, and having an intention for your writing for what it is that you’re actually putting down on the page can really make this daily act of writing much more impactful.
Okay, we’re talking about creating a mindset and working on your mindset and improving your mindset. And it requires daily practice, just like lifting weights, if you want to get stronger lifting weights is your daily practice. Journaling can be your daily practice to work on your mindset, okay.
And so what I’m going to share with you today is one very simple writing exercise that you can do every single day, it’s going to give you one thing to focus on every day. One simple mindset exercise that can help you to create powerful results in every area of your life. Okay. And this little exercise is called the word of the day.
So it basically works like this is so simple it’s not even funny. Okay, you just pick a word each day, you write it down. And then you write about that word, you write about what you might do today, to embody that word. And that’s it. It’s super simple. I love simple things. It’s very powerful.
Two words can be life-changing, right? How many big events in your life could be summed up with just one word? Words like divorce, cancer, or injury or illness or failure or disappointment? All of these words describe powerful times of pain and suffering and despair in your life. Right?
And, and when you hear one of these words, or you say one of these words out loud, it sort of brings all those emotions from that time from that event, from the past that brings it all right back into the present, right?
What about positive words, positive words that describe good times, where it’s like marriage, birth and promotion, and PR, and it’s not a word, but close enough vacation, joy, accomplishment; these positive words can bring those good memories and those good times right back into your consciousness right back into the forefront of your mind. And they can help you to kind of get through some of the tough times in the present. Okay?
So words are very, very powerful, right? And so what we want to do is we want to sort of hack into this little process of using words in a powerful, positive way. So you’re going to pick a word each day, you’re just gonna write about it.
So how do you pick the right word? How do you know you’re picking the right word, there’s no right or wrong way to do this, okay? And if you’re doing this every day, let’s say you, you decide you’re going to do this for a month, or you can do it for a year or a week, whatever you want to do is fine.
But you’re going to have a whole bunch, there are so many words out there, there’s a lot of words out there like you’re not gonna really need to worry about not finding a word, okay? But I just want you to focus on whatever sort of comes to mind or whatever you might need in the moment. So for me, when I’m sitting there, and I’m thinking about like, what word should I make my word of the day here?
I might be like, so I listen to a lot of books and podcasts, and I read a lot. And sometimes I see a word or hear a word over and over again. Or maybe when I’m talking with my clients, I’ll hear a word and I’ll hear the same word like three or four times in a row or three or four times in just a couple of days. And that’s like a little alarm for me.
It’s like a little sign that I need to pay attention to that word, okay? So, there’s no real right or wrong way to pick a word and there’s no right or wrong words here. Okay? We do want to pick words that inspire action, like sit.
So here’s a couple of guidelines for you pick a word that inspires action, because you’re going to be using your word, to inspire some sort of action, some sort of change in your behavior, something that you’re going to do differently. Or something that you’re going to do today.
So even a word like rest can inspire action if resting is what you need today, maybe you need to rest physically, mentally, emotionally, that’s a great word. And it could be just like, I’m just going to rest, you know, I’m going to spend some time not doing anything, that would be a great word of the day for you if that’s what you need in the moment. Okay?
The other thing is you don’t have to pick a different word each day, you can reuse words. You know, I’ve got some examples that I’m going to share with you guys where I’ve, you know, basically, I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now. And I just wanted to share with you some of the words that I chose.
So you can like reuse words, you don’t have to use the same one every single day. But just pick something that you want to focus on for that day. Okay, so let me give you my examples. And this might help to clarify all of this for you. This is a really fun and really simple exercise, and I think you’re gonna get a lot out of it, I just want you to try it, I want to encourage you to give it a go.
So here are some words that I wrote down. And I’ll give you a little bit of a little, you know, I’ll explain each one a little bit and just tell you kind of like what I did each day, or how I wanted to embody that word each day.
So the first word was strength. So this for me meant that, okay, so I, you know, started this after my shoulder surgery. And so strength for me was like, showing strength in the face of pain, showing strength in the face of like being tired, feeling weak, to do what I needed to do to do my physical therapy exercises, which hurt to build a little bit of strength every single day. So that was kind of like a word that I needed in that moment. And I embodied that word in that day. So I did things that day, that embodied the word strength, and to build a little bit of strength, that data was really helpful for me.
Another word I chose was action. Like just getting into action and getting things done. I wrote this down, because I had a lot to do over the holidays, I had a lot of work to do. And I was feeling like, Man, I need to get all this stuff done. How am I going to get all this done? And it was just like, the word that popped into my mind was action. And so I just got into action, you know. And it’s one of those things where, for me, I am all about, like, you got to take action, even when you don’t feel like it. And maybe I just wasn’t feeling it at the time. So writing this word down really got that ingrained in my brain, I was just like, I need to just take action, get all this stuff done. And I did, which was awesome.
Another word I picked was vulnerable. So for me, asking for help putting myself out there, you know, telling people how I’m feeling, even though I may not be feeling very supportive makes me feel very vulnerable. You know, I’ve had some bad moments over the last month or so I’ve had some tough days, you know, and sometimes it’s hard for me to, like, share that with people and say that I’m having a hard time, or to ask for help, like, I need help doing things sometimes. But I’ve just been sort of embracing that and being able to ask for help and being vulnerable. And it’s very powerful to do that. Right.
Another word I picked was heal, like just to, you know, to give my body the rest that it needs to heal properly. To slow down. I think I wrote this down, because, you know, I started to get into some action. And I started to like, you know, do more exercising and taking more walks and things like that I can’t do a whole lot still.
But I think I may have overdone a little bit. And I was, you know, creating some stress in my body, you know, and the stress that I was creating was kind of making things worse for me, you know, I needed to slow down I need to rest a take care of myself. And I needed to give myself a chance to heal this long process of this recovery from this rotator cuff surgery, right? So it’s going to take a while. And I have to give myself the time and the space to heal. So I spent the whole weekend just like resting last weekend, which was amazing.
Another word I picked was clarity. So for me, this is one of those words that I heard over and over again. I just kept hearing it. I heard it on a podcast. I heard it from clients. And I was like, ‘Well, I think I need to write this word down. So what does this mean for me?’ I was like, ‘What is clarity?’ What do I need clarity around and really for me, it was like, I needed clarity around this vision.
I need a clear and focused vision of who it is I want to become. It’s being able to see and feel very clearly my future self. It’s like having this sharp and focused image of who I’m becoming. That’s what that meant for me. You know, so I spent some time getting clear on my goals getting clear on who I want to become in 2022.
Another word I picked was discipline. So for me, discipline is like suiting up and showing up to do what needs to be done. Even though I don’t feel like it, right? Motivation is great. But discipline will beat motivation every single time. You know, motivation is a feeling. So you got to have that feeling in order to like, take action. But discipline is doing it despite feeling motivated, right.
So for me, discipline was like, I need to do some things that are going to move me towards that future version of myself, right? It means I need to do what needs to be done here, not what I feel like doing. And I think at the time, I didn’t want to go outside. It’s like, I don’t want to go outside and take my walks, it was cold. I wrote this a few days ago, it was like 21 degrees outside. And I just didn’t feel like it.
But I was like, dude, discipline is what you need here. So I put on my coat, put on my hat, and just went outside and took my walk. And I was still in pain. And it was still, you know, cold and whatever. But I enjoyed it. And I showed myself that I can do it and was practicing discipline which got me out the door. Okay.
And then the last word like I’ve been doing this every day. And I’m just picked a few words for you guys here. But the last word I’m going to share with you today is impact. And this is this was my word for the day. And it’s also my word for this year like impact is the word that I’m choosing to embody for 2022.
And I have had to think about this recently, like, what is the impact that I want to create in the world? You know, what am I doing today to create that impact? Am I doing something today that’s helping to create that impact? Right? So how can I make a bigger and more powerful impact in this world, that’s my goal.
You know, my mission is to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire those around me to do the same. And that’s what I mean by impact. I’m being an example of what’s possible, and I’m inspiring you to be an example of what’s possible, and then you’re gonna inspire others.
And it’s a ripple effect. It’s a ripple effect of positivity. It’s a ripple effect of health. And feeling good. That’s the impact that I want to make. And so it’s very easy for me to see like, what am I doing today, to make that kind of an impact? Okay.
So I want you to take action on so I want you to like, get into action with this little simple mindset exercise. Try it for a week, try for a month tried for the year. My goal is to do this every day for this year, right every day. So I do some writing every day. And I’m just adding this into my journaling practice every single day. doesn’t take any extra time.
But for me, it’s just like, I look forward to this every day and like, ‘Ooh, what, what word can I sort of embody today? What area of my life do I need to improve today? What do I need to focus on today?’ And all I feel like I’m just starting each day with more purpose and more direction, and more intention and more focus.
And I’m going to tell you this right now, that if you do this every single day, you know, over time, it is going to dramatically alter the direction of your life. Because you’re treating each day as an opportunity to move a little closer to your goals. You’re treating each day as an opportunity for you to become that future version of yourself. And when you practice this every single day, and when every day you’re moving just a little bit closer to who you want to become. Little by little, you will eventually get there. Try this I think you’ll love it. All right, you guys love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
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