Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
I know you’ve heard the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. But so many runners keep doing the same workouts over and over …
Continue Reading about 140. You Have to Do More to Become More →
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 140, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, you have to do more, to become more. I know, you’ve heard that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over again, and expect different results, right. But so many runners I talk to, they keep doing the same workouts over and over and over and somehow they expect that they’re just gonna get faster.
Or people that lift the same amount of weights all the time and expect to get stronger or build more muscle, or you just keep eating the same food over and over again expecting to magically lose weight. I don’t know how this is supposed to happen.
But whatever, from an external perspective, these problems, they’re pretty obvious, right? You have to do things differently in order to get different results. But from an internal perspective, like from the inside, looking out where this lesson is often missed, it’s just, it’s a blind spot that a lot of us have, we all have had this at some point a lot of us have right now.
So today, I’m gonna get into what it looks like to stop doing the same things over and over again, and start doing things differently because you have to do more in order to become more. And one of the things that I love about what I do about being a weight loss coach is that I get to help runners, people who are already pretty focused on their own health and fitness, I get to help them take things to the next level.
So a lot of the runners I work with have been running consistently for a long time, or maybe a short period of time, but for some time, they really are into running, they get it, they love running. They’re also doing other kinds of workouts pretty consistently. Sometimes it’s cross training, cycling, yoga, strength training, whatever it is.
But when it comes to nutrition, there’s this blind spot there, okay, they’re at a loss, they get confused by all the conflicting information that’s out there. And they’ve tried all kinds of diets that don’t work. They even get told by some dietitians or coaches to stop running altogether. Which is really just not an option for people like us, am I right? So what’s the answer?
How do you lose weight while you keep running? How do you keep running without all the gross gels and stuff, you know the stuff that makes you gain weight? Well, that’s exactly what I do. As your coach, I put together a personalized plan for you that you feel good about to get your nutrition in line with your weight loss goals and your running goals.
Because you know what? You can do both, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. And I see this every single day: people who are learning how to fuel their bodies to promote good health, to lose weight, and to promote their athletic performance to improve their running. And this topic I’m talking about here today is all about doing more, so that you can become more. And if you’re finally ready to do more to take your health and fitness to the next level to lose weight for good to improve your running performance to really become the most badass version of yourself then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my unique weight loss coaching program designed specifically for runners to help you crush those weight loss goals and crush those running goals too. Okay? To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Alright, let’s get into this topic here today, you have to do more to become more so that old saying that I mentioned at the top of the episode here where the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. We’ve all heard this before. We all know it but still so many people are on willing to change anything at all. They just keep doing the same things over and over and over and expect somehow that things are going to be different and something is going to change.
For example, a lot of people come to me because they want to lose weight and they want to improve their running and these are amazing goals and they truly want these things for themselves. They have been overweight for some time, you know, the more they run, the more they tend to put on pounds. I know, it’s counterintuitive, but I see it all the time.
And when I talk to these people, I can really feel it, I really feel that they want these things for themselves, they are important to them, they really want to change. But there’s something that comes up, it’s a resistance, it’s a resistance to change.
Anytime we think about changing, anytime we think about embarking on some sort of process of change. When we want to become more we want to get out of our comfort zone, there’s this resistance that comes up, even thinking about changing how you eat, is going to create a resistance from within you.
And Steven Pressfield, in the War of Art calls resistance the enemy within. So it’s not something that is out there. It’s not resistance from outside of you, it’s resistance that’s within you. And you will experience this resistance every time you get outside your comfort zone, or even think about getting outside your comfort zone. When you think about how, you know what, I really want to improve my marathon time, I really want to PR my next marathon, I really want to qualify for Boston. But that’s going to require me to shave 15 or 20, or 30 minutes off of my already, you know, challenging marathon time.
When you even think about that your brain starts coming up with all sorts of stories, and excuses and reasons and justifications. And you start telling yourself that you know what, there’s just going to be too hard, I can’t do it. Right there. That’s the resistance.
And you have to understand something: the resistance is normal, it’s perfectly normal to have this, we all have this kind of resistance that shows up for us. Anytime we want to embark on a journey of change, and the bigger the change, the bigger the resistance. And so the real work that we have to do is really battling that resistance. And what it looks like to bow the resistance is in a nutshell is to suit up, show up and do the deal. Whatever it is you need to do.
If you want to become more, you got to do more. So you got to show up and do what you need to do. Even though you’re experiencing the resistance, even though you’re experiencing all these excuses and reasons. And these obstacles that are seemingly in your path. If you want to run faster, you can’t keep doing the same workouts right, you need to practice running faster, you got to do the speed work, you got to do intervals, you’ve got to do tempo runs, you got to do fartleks, I just love saying fartleks.
If you want to lose weight, you can’t keep eating the same foods that you’ve been eating that helped you to gain all the weight, you’re going to have to change up your nutrition game, your nutrition game is going to have to get on point. If you want to build muscle, if you want to get stronger, you can’t keep lifting the same amount of weight, you’ve got to increase the amount of weight that you’re lifting because your body adapts to the weight.
So if you want to build muscle, if you want to get stronger, you’ve got to keep increasing the weights, or reps or both. So you keep creating that adaptive response and your muscles will grow. And this goes for anything that you want to change in your life. And again, like I said, the bigger the change, the more resistance is going to come up. But this is how it works.
You want to change something you do a little bit more, you’ve got to get outside of your comfort zone a little bit, even just a little. You stick with that until that kind of becomes your new normal. Your Comfort Zone grows, you grow, you become more and then you repeat, rinse and repeat this cycle over and over again until you reach your goal. And then you keep going because we always have some goal out there it doesn’t we don’t stop growing. We don’t stop learning. We don’t stop evolving. We don’t stop becoming more.
But that cycle I just described none of that happens without the doing bit you got to do more to become more but this is where most people get stuck or most people stop or most people quit because doing more is hard work. Doing more is uncomfortable. Doing more is getting into unfamiliar territory. And sometimes you know what? It just feels terrible.
Getting outside your comfort zone does not feel good. That’s why we call it outside your comfort zone. It is not something that is comfortable, it feels terrible. So fear is an example of what I’m talking about. Right now I’m working on getting stronger legs, my legs have always been kind of a weak point, I just have these skinny little bird legs, whatever.
And so I’ve been focusing on doing more leg workouts and being more intentional about doing leg workouts. You know how many people love to do leg workouts? Zero. Zero people, nobody likes to do leg workouts, right? In particular, one of my worst exercises is lunges.
And the way my trainer has me doing lunges is it’s a type of lunge called a Bulgarian split. But it’s a type of lunge called a Bulgarian split squat. And we use kettlebells. And your back leg is elevated on a bench and your forward leg is the leg that you’re squatting on. So you really are using just that forward leg and that back leg, you know, you really don’t have any sort of leverage from that back leg. It’s just there to kind of balance you.
And I hate doing these. They’re terrible. They’re super hard. And I was talking to my trainer about it the other day, and I was telling him how much I hate doing these things. And he’s like, Well, that looks like where you need to focus your attention here. And I was like, oh, I hate that. I hate that. I have to focus my attention on the things that are hard and uncomfortable. And the things I don’t like to do. But I did it.
And four days later, I did this on Monday, today’s Thursday, four days later, my legs are still sore. But here’s the thing, I want more, I want to become more in this case, I want stronger legs. So I know that I’m going to have to do more than what I’ve been doing. And for me, doing more means doing the things that I don’t want to do. Doing the things that are uncomfortable, doing the things that I’m weakest at.
Because honestly, if it’s easy, it’s too comfortable. It doesn’t change you at all. Right? It just helps you stay where you are. So for me, I’m focusing on doing these lunges and other leg workouts to build stronger legs so that I can become the runner that I want to be and improve my running and some other things.
And so just you know, in order to make this change that I want for myself, I’m doing the hard work, and I’m just embracing it and I don’t like it, but I’m doing it anyway. And then here’s an example from a nutrition standpoint. For years, I was eating the same diet, basically the typical runner’s diet, which is you know, carbs, right, all carbs, literally all carbs.
And over the years, I was steadily gaining weight. And I was running a ton of miles. Every week, I was training for marathons, I was training for ultra marathons, and I just kept steadily gaining weight. And I wanted so badly for things to change. I wanted to lose the weight, I wanted to feel better. I wondered if running was ever going to be easier. I wanted to have more energy. I was feeling rundown a lot, I was really inflamed and bloated. And I use the word puffy, because I just felt very puffy. And I wanted to become more.
But I knew that in order to become more, I had to do more. And I knew all about ditching the carbs and getting fat adapted, and I knew it was going to work. But I wasn’t willing to put in the work. I wasn’t willing to get uncomfortable. I wasn’t willing to change what I was doing, because it’s an uncomfortable process. So I avoided it, I just put it off and put it off and put it off. Because I told myself, this is going to be too hard.
I gotta wait until I’m really ready for this maybe when I’m not training for something. And and I just kept telling myself all these stories, and I had all these reasons and all these excuses. But what it really was was that resistance, that resistance kept coming up. And I was giving into it. I was just letting it control me.
Until finally I was just fed up with that I had gained like 40 pounds, I was overweight, I was miserable. Running was just becoming so hard. I felt terrible all the time. And I eventually just made the decision to do it: to ditch the carbs, embrace the suck for a short period of time, you know, I got outside of my comfort zone.
And it took work. It took months of me really kind of learning what to do, what to eat, what not to eat, how to learn how to run without all the carbs. I started weight training in a different way. You know, getting getting my strength training on in a very different way. And all of these things combined helped me to get through this period and become the healthier, fitter, leaner, stronger, faster version of me that I always wanted to become, that I knew I could become.
And then I just, I kept thinking it was going to be too hard. I kept thinking about all the stories and excuses and reasons why I didn’t want to do this, because it was an uncomfortable thing to change. But I wanted it so badly for so long. And I finally was ready to do it. And looking back on it, I’m like, why did I wait so long to do that?
If I had just done this a few years prior to that, I wouldn’t have had to suffer for such a long period of time, I wouldn’t have to struggle with my weight and with running, and with the way I felt every day in my energy levels. And I wish I had done it sooner, but everything happens for a reason. So I’m like, okay, it’s perfect timing, whatever, it’s all good.
But I say this all the time, I say, nothing changes, if nothing changes, right? And it’s not just a pithy saying it is the absolute truth. It has to be something that we embrace change has to be something that we embrace. Because if where you are right now, is not where you ultimately want to be, then you’re going to have to do more, you only get different results by taking different actions, right, you don’t get results by thinking differently. Although that’s part of it.
You’ve got to think differently. But you also have to take actions, actions produce results, thoughts don’t produce results, right? You can think about losing weight, you can think about changing your diet, you can think about running faster. But unless you actually do things and get out of your comfort zone and push yourself and get uncomfortable, nothing’s going to change for you.
You don’t lose weight by thinking about changing your diet, you don’t get stronger by thinking about going to the gym, right? Actions produce results. And the same actions, if you just keep doing the same things over and over again, will just continue to produce the same results. So just keep doing what you’ve already been doing, you’ll just keep getting more and more of what you’ve already got. Right? In order to be more, you have to do more.
So here’s some action steps for you this week. Here’s what I want you to watch. Here’s what I want you to work on this week, I want you to think about who it is you want to become. Get very, very clear on this, create a vision for your future self. What does the future you look like? What does the future you feel like? What has the future you accomplished? And spend some time every day thinking about this, this is a very powerful tool called this visualization.
This is what elite athletes do, they create a vision of who they want to be, sometimes they envision the race they’re about to run. And they visualize it every single day. It’s a very, very powerful to tool to help you achieve these big goals that you want for yourself. And it doesn’t matter what it is, if you want to get stronger, if you want to lose weight, if you want to get fitter. If you want to get healthier, if you want to improve your running, or you want to qualify for Boston, whatever it is, imagine yourself crossing that finish line and looking up at the clock and seeing that PR time on the clock. And do this every single day. That’s a very, very powerful first step. So you have to know who it is you want to become and you have to spend some time thinking about that. Okay.
Next, I want you to think about what you need to do in order to get there. And you don’t have to have every step, like mapped out because it’s kind of impossible to do that anyway, like, just focus on what is the next step? What is the next action you can take? What can you do today or this week? What’s one thing that you can change today or this week, to get you a little bit closer to that goal? If you want to become that future self, you’ve got to do things differently. So what is one thing you can do differently today?
And then step number three is to do that thing. It’s not going to feel good. That resistance is going to come up and you got to do it anyway. Remember, the results come from taking action, no action, no results. No doing equals no becoming. So what is it that you can do and then do that thing, okay? And then just rinse and repeat this process. Keep thinking about who it is you want to be,every day, every week, come up with an action step or two that you can take and then do that thing even though you’re going to experience that resistance.
Okay, that’s how we become more. If you want to become more, you have to do more. And I want to encourage you to do more this week, okay? And if you’re looking to become more, if you’re ready to do the work to get there, I’m here to help get you there. Okay? 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.
Lots of runners come to me for help losing weight, getting stronger, and running faster. One common question that keeps coming up is, “How do I lose weight without all the discomfort?” They want …
Continue Reading about 136. How to Avoid Weight Loss Discomfort →
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 136 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: how to avoid weight loss discomfort. Lots of runners come to me because they want help losing weight, they want help getting stronger and running faster. One common question that keeps coming up is how do I lose weight without all the discomfort?
So they want to make big sweeping changes to their health and fitness, but they want to avoid feeling uncomfortable during the process. I get that. Totally. That was definitely me. Back in the day, I was always looking for shortcuts and hacks, anything that could help me lose weight that would help me get to my goal weight without feeling any kind of discomfort, or I wanted all the gains without any of the pains.
But this is not how things work in the real world. So in this episode, I’m going to take a look at what it actually takes to reach a weight loss goal. I’ll also share the secret of how to avoid weight loss discomfort. And avoiding weight loss discomfort, avoiding the discomfort of change is something that I am very familiar with, and something that a lot of people want help with.
And what they really want though, is they want help overcoming or getting through the uncomfortable bits. Because I think we all know that it takes some discomfort in order to grow and to change and to lose weight and to get healthier and to get stronger. Like all those things that we want for ourselves. You know that it does require you to get uncomfortable.
This is one of the reasons why I created my coaching program. And why I do personalized coaching is because we all need a little help getting through those uncomfortable places. This does not mean that the rest of your life has to be riddled with discomfort. And that you’re setting yourself up for a life of discomfort. That’s not what we’re talking about at all here.
But when we’re making changes when we’re growing, when we’re changing, when we’re improving our body composition, all of those things require a certain amount of discomfort. Because what you have right now where you are right now in your comfort zone isn’t what you want for yourself like this is easy, you know how to do what you’re doing now.
But in order to get to that next level, whether it’s running faster, getting stronger, losing 30, 40, 50 pounds, it requires some level of discomfort, okay? This is why I do personalized coaching. I’ve created an immersive coaching program that delivers all the knowledge, all the support, the encouragement, the inspiration, the motivation and accountability that you need to stay on track, to improve your health to make changes that last permanently.
This isn’t about quick fixes. This isn’t about losing weight as fast as possible. And I’m going to tell you right now, this is not about doing it without any discomfort. This is about learning how to lean into the discomfort so that you can become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And you can do it in a way that is sustainable. That’s what we’re all looking for here.
Anybody can lose weight quickly for a short period of time. We’ve all done that. But then you put the weight back on. Anybody can get a little bit strong or a little bit faster. But what if you want to PR? What if you want to BQ? You know what, if you want to radically improve your body composition, you’re gonna have to lean into some serious discomfort.
So if you’re ready for those kinds of big changes, if you’re ready to finally drop the weight and keep it off for good, if you’re ready to get stronger, to look better, to run faster, to run longer than you ever have before; then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. There is an application process to join this program. You can just fill out a short application, schedule a free Zoom call with me. We’ll talk about your goals and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
It may not be but if you’re interested, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out the application, you and I will get on a call, and we’ll talk about it. Cool, I would love for you to join me in the Running Lean coaching project, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’ll see you there soon.
Okay, so this whole idea of leaning into discomfort is what we’re talking about today. And I titled this episode how to avoid weight loss discomfort, because I think that’s something we all want. And I will actually tell you, at the end of this episode, how you can avoid that discomfort.
But I want to, I want to like, first of all talk about how we really need to change our way of thinking around this, okay, so when people come to me, and they tell me that they, that they want things to be easy for them, they want things to be as comfortable as possible. So this is what they think they want, they think they want weight loss to be easy, they want it to be easy and effortless. They don’t want to give up anything, they want to continue to eat their favorite foods.
They don’t want to experience any level of discomfort whatsoever. And the truth is that this is just not the way things work in the real world. If you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to make some changes to your diet. If you want to run faster, you’re going to have to practice running faster. And these things do not feel good.
These things are by their very nature, they are uncomfortable things to do, because they’re pushing you out of your comfort zone. So people think they want weight loss to be easy. They think they want running faster to be easy. What they also want is they want to lose all this weight, they want to run a Boston Qualifying time, they want to look better, they want to feel better, and they want to do it without any kind of discomfort whatsoever.
And I think this is an interesting concept. But here’s the thing, you’re just you cannot have both. You cannot stay comfortable, and become more, it just doesn’t work that way. Think about everything you’ve done in your life that you’re proud of, or anything you’ve gotten through in your life. That was hard, but maybe profoundly changed you. Maybe you’ve had a child, or three, maybe you’ve raised a child through the teenage years, that’s some hard stuff right there.
Maybe you’ve run a marathon, or a half marathon or a 5k, or an ultra marathon or an Ironman or whatever. Maybe you’ve built a healthy relationship with a significant other. This is very hard work. This is years and years of work. Maybe you’ve gotten through a divorce or a health scare or a health diagnosis like cancer, maybe you’ve had a loved one passed away, like a parent, or a friend, or sibling or child.
All of these things have a profound effect on you. All these things change us profoundly. And I’ve said before, it’s the challenges that change us. It’s the challenges that teach us lessons. It’s through these challenges that growth happens. And none of this stuff is easy. It’s all hard. All of this stuff is hard to do.
But it’s those challenges that actually cause us to learn and grow and to evolve and to become more. It’s the challenges that change us. I hate that it works that way. I really do. I wish it was easier. I wish we could learn lessons from just reading a book. And we can learn some lessons from reading a book. But the profound life changes that the or life experiences that change us the most and cause us to grow, are those things that are hard to do, the ones that are uncomfortable.
You know, think about the weight loss or the strength training analogy where you have to, you know, go to the gym and lift weights, lift heavy weights, you have to overload your muscles in order for your muscles to grow and get stronger. You cannot build muscle and get stronger by lifting super lightweights. It just doesn’t work that way.
There’s a former Mr. Olympia Champion, Ronnie Coleman. And he has this saying he has this quote that I love. I say this all the time. And he says, “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights.” And oh my god, isn’t that the truth? Everybody wants the body, but nobody wants to do the hard work. Everybody wants the gains, nobody wants the pains.
So if you want something more for yourself, if you want to lose weight, if you want to evolve, if you want to grow, if you want to get stronger, all that stuff is going to require that you endure some discomfort. And instead of trying to avoid discomfort, I want you to think about doing the opposite, I want you to actually embrace it.
Instead of trying to stay comfortable, and have everything be easy peasy. I want you to know that it will be hard, and know that you will get uncomfortable. You need to accept this, you need to embrace it, and then get on with it. Get on with doing what you need to do. And this discomfort is something that you have to choose. And you have to choose this on a regular basis. You have to choose to do the uncomfortable things.
If you want to grow, you have to decide that this is what you want for yourself. And you have to make a decision and decide that you want to embrace discomfort. And in Latin, the Latin origin of the word decide means to cut off. So you’re cutting off all other options when you make a decision.
And when you make these decisions, and you make decisions every single day, you’re going to make a decision to eat the pizza, or to eat the salad, you’re going to make a decision to have ice cream or not. You’re going to make a decision to, you know, get drunk tonight, or just drink sparkling water. And it’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
That’s a Tony Robbins quote, by the way, it’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. There’s no growth in the comfort zone. And there’s no comfort in the growth zone. You have to be able to, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable in order to grow in order to change in order to become more.
And there actually is one way to avoid discomfort. And I told you at the beginning I was going to share this with you. There’s a way that you can avoid discomfort with all this and a lot of people don’t talk about this. Okay. So if the idea of embracing discomfort is too much for you, that is totally fine.
Here’s the answer: if you want to avoid discomfort, do nothing. Don’t try to lose weight. Don’t try to run faster. Don’t try to improve your health. Don’t try to get stronger. Don’t try to get off your meds. You know, don’t grow, don’t evolve. Don’t worry about ever trying to be anything more than who you are right now. Right, problem solved.
Stay comfortable. Stay in your comfort zone. But just remember, there’s no growth in the comfort zone. And there’s no comfort in the growth zone. But if you don’t want to experience any kind of discomfort, that’s fine. That’s an option for you. Just don’t worry about changing, just stay where you are.
Is this what you want? Is this okay for you? Is that really what you want for yourself? I don’t think so. If you’re listening to this podcast right now, I’m gonna say probably not there’s probably something more that you want for yourself. And you’re willing to experience some discomfort to get there, right.
But what most people do is what I just mentioned, they do nothing. They don’t try to improve their health. They don’t try to lose weight. They don’t try to run faster. They don’t try to get stronger. Because it’s hard. Because that doesn’t feel good. Your brain is programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Pleasure equals in our minds, in your brain, pleasure equals eating ice cream. Pain equals not eating ice cream. Pleasure equals sitting on the couch and watching Netflix pain equals going for a run or doing speed work. That is painful, right?
So your brain just wants you to be safe and comfortable, and just, you know, everything to feel good. And what I’m asking you to do here is to kind of override your brain’s natural way of doing things, and to seek discomfort in order to become more in order to grow, in order to evolve. And I have to say this to like, more discomfort is not always better. We’re not getting uncomfortable for the sake of getting uncomfortable. That’s not what I mean here.
Like, don’t put a rock in your shoe before you run out. Patrick said, I need to get uncomfortable. So I’m just going to be really uncomfortable and just, you know, make this run really suck. No, that’s not what we’re talking about here. Okay. We’re not talking about pushing yourself so hard all the time, that you’re creating chronic stress in your body, and you’re not getting the rest and recovery that you need.
You don’t need to be go, go, go, go go all the time, you have to prioritize rest and recovery. Right? This is what I’m talking about rest and recovery, I mean, mental rest and recovery, emotional rest and recovery too, as well as physical. But we don’t want to put ourselves in a chronic state of stress, you know, I gotta stay uncomfortable all the time.
No, we can be comfortable sometimes. It’s okay. So just don’t don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here, I do want you to have some comfort in your lives, you know. And you can of course, you can eat that ice cream. Occasionally, of course, you can like watch Netflix, you know, here and there.
But we also have to remember that if there are things that you want for yourself, those things that you want for yourself that you don’t already have, why outside your comfort zone, the things you want for yourself, but they exist out of your comfort zone. So you gotta get out of your comfort zone in order to get them.
And there’s no end to this, just understand this, like as a human being, you should always be striving to grow and evolve and become more. I think this is something that we should all be working towards. And there’s no end to changing and evolving. So there’s really no end to this idea of embracing discomfort, it has to just become part of your identity, it has to become part of who you are, and what you do on a regular basis.
Today, I am someone who regularly seeks out and embraces discomfort. Because I know that if I’m doing that I am growing and evolving and I’m becoming more I’m becoming more of the person that I was put on this earth to become. This is what I want for you. I want you to embrace the idea of embracing discomfort and knowing that that is the goal. That is the path to get you to your goals. Okay, I want this for you. You should want this for you as well. 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.
If you want to make big changes in your life, then a lot of things in your life are going to have to change. The problem is that most people do not like to change things! They want to lose …
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 117 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’m talking about the power of total immersion. So if you want to make big changes in your life, and a lot of things in your life are going to have to change. The problem is that most people do not like to change things.
People want to lose weight, but they don’t want to give up the junk food. People want to get stronger, but they don’t want to lift any of those heavy weights. Most people have big lofty goals but are willing to change only as little as possible. And you know that this doesn’t really work. Right? Right. So today, I’m going to offer up an alternative way of doing things, something called total immersion, I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode, especially if there are big things that you want for yourself.
But first, I wanted to remind you that I’ve got another live workshop coming up. So it’s gonna be Thursday, the 31st of March. And we did this last week, and it was super fun had a ton of people on there and we had a lot of fun. It’s called five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner. And we’re going to be talking about why willpower doesn’t work when you’re trying to change, you know, eating habits, why fad diets don’t work, why counting calories doesn’t work, why running a million more miles doesn’t work. And I’m gonna talk about what does work.
So this is understanding how habits actually operate, right, and the science of making habit change permanent. We’re going to talk about a personalized approach that supports your weight loss and your running goals, and how to put together a comprehensive plan of action that actually works on the mental, emotional and physical changes that you have to do right it’s not just about what you’re doing. It’s about the mental-emotional pieces, too. And this is the part that a lot of people just miss.
So I’m going to be teaching about all this stuff in this free workshop, you’re going to learn how to become leaner and stronger and transform yourself into the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet to sign up, go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop and the next one’s coming up on Thursday, March 31, I hope you’ll join us it’s going to be super fun.
And then I wanted to just give you guys a quick update on kind of where I am with my recovery from my rotator cuff surgery and how running is going because I haven’t talked about this too much lately. So I just want to give you a quick update. So I started running again, I don’t know about four or five weeks ago.
And to be honest with you taking three months off of all exercise, I wasn’t able to do a whole lot at all. And taking three months off really kind of got me sort of soft. And I lost some fitness, I really did, I lost some muscle mass, and I lost my endurance for running for sure. So I started running again, you know, four or five weeks ago. And I started out just very slow and started, you know, kind of doing some, you know, slow, easy runs one mile, two miles, three miles, that kind of thing.
And then I started working into some more speed work and some interval training and things like that, just to kind of push myself a little bit harder. Started doing some tempo runs on still low mileage, right. And in the last few weeks, I’ve started kind of increasing my mileage. But I have to tell you, this whole process has been very challenging. And I think what’s going on here is that my body needed to get fat adapted again.
So the fat-adaptation I had for so long, sort of went away to a certain extent, you know, I’m still, you know, sticking to a low carb diet, I’m still, you know, super efficient at burning fat. But as far as fat-adaptation for running, I think that kind of went away because I wasn’t running. So this is a big lesson that I’ve learned here.
And I’m going to talk more about this in a future episode. And kind of some of the things that I’ve learned about this whole process of taking this much time off and how to come back from it. But I think I lost a little bit of that fat adaptation of how to get it back.
So you know, if you’ve gone through the process of becoming fat-adapted, you know, it takes a few weeks and running is hard during that time. And I have to tell you the last few weeks running has been very hard. And I’ve just been like right, stupid, why am I doing this? I don’t ever want to run again, you know, I’m just gonna hang it up.
And then this past weekend, I did a 10 miler, and I have to tell you, I turned a corner, I felt good. And I finished that run feeling like man, I’m just so happy that I stuck with it. I’m so happy that I didn’t hang up my running shoes forever, that it didn’t just give up, that I kept going. And I kept, you know, sticking with the plan of continuing to run even though it was hard, even though it felt terrible. I stuck with it. And the results are starting to pay off.
And then I did a 5 mile run yesterday, which felt great. And my speed is not where I want it to be yet, but I’m going to work on that too. That’s going to come back too, but the endurance is definitely coming back. I’ve kind of gotten through that hump of that fat adaptation period. And I just want to encourage you guys, if you’re out there, and you’re going through this, and running is hard for you right now. Just stick with it. It gets better. It really does.
And like I said, I’ll do another episode soon. And kind of give you guys a little bit more insight as to what my experience has been taking this much time off three months is a lot of time off. You know, it’s a lot of time to take off from really not doing any exercise at all. Other than walking, I was able to walk some when I had my sling on and I could go for a walk. But I couldn’t do a whole lot of anything else.
And that was challenging for me and a lot of ways mentally, emotionally, and physically. And I’ve had to work through some things but I’m turning a corner. I’m feeling good. Plus, you know, the weather’s getting nicer. It’s like we’re starting to like its spring, we’re starting to get some nicer, warmer days out there. And you know, running in the 50s and 60s instead of the teens and 20s is delightful. It’s delightful. I don’t know about you, but I like it to be a little bit warmer out there running. How about you? Where do you like it to be? What’s your favorite temperature for running?
I’ve decided that like 50 degrees is about perfect for running. But I don’t mind even running in the heat when it’s super hot out at 90 degrees. Like I’m cool with that I can deal with that. It’s not bad, right? Am I crazy? This is a little crazy, right?
Okay, so here’s what I want to talk about. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the power of total immersion. And I want to talk a little bit about what most people do when it comes to changing habits. So if you’ve got you know, big goals, let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds or you know, really improve your running qualify for Boston, run your first marathon, whatever it is, we have big lofty goals, right.
But here’s the thing, most people, they’re like toe dippers are just, they want to just dip their toe into the process and the things they need to do for changing a habit. You know, they want to gain, they want to lose the 50 pounds, but they don’t want to do much of anything differently. Right. And this is kind of a problem. Because if you’re not willing to do much, you know, if you’re not willing to alter your behavior substantially, then you’re just going to get very, very little in the way of results from that, you know.
If you’re only willing to give up as, ditch the bare minimum, I’m going to tell you right now, that’s not going to be enough to get you to this big goal, you know, in order to to be the kind of person who finishes a marathon, you know, who trains for and finishes a marathon, you’ve got to change a lot about your life. And it’s an inside job, you got to start from the inside, you know, we’ll talk about that a little bit. But it really requires you to do a lot of things.
Now, nothing has to be big and major, but we got to change a lot of little things. But what most people do, they’re like, oh, I’m just gonna, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds. So I’m just gonna, I’m gonna get this book that talks about, you know, eating right or something. And now, they’ll read a book, and they’ll kind of do some things kind of sorta, and then that’s it. That’s all they’re willing to do.
Or they’ll, you know, listen to a podcast and there’ll be like, oh, yeah, I listened to that one podcast. And so I’m gonna just kind of do what that one person said on that one podcast, and it’s just not enough. You know, they try the fad diet for a minute. This is all very much like dipping your toes in the pool, right? It’s like a very timid approach to this kind of work.
If you want to change your life I’m telling you right now that you have to like be all in you have to do more than the bare minimum. Okay. So some examples that I’ve experienced are people who want to lose a significant amount of weight. But they will just do as little as possible because they want to try to maintain the same lifestyle that they have. They love their junk food. They have an exercise routine that whatever they’re comfortable with. And they just want to keep everything the same, they want to stay comfortable. And you know, you’ve heard me talk about this a million times, right? You’ve got to embrace the discomfort, you’ve got to embrace the suck if you want to make big changes, okay?
So, so maybe this person who is, you know, wants to change, you know, wants to lose 50 pounds, maybe they just commit to running a few extra miles each week, right? It’s you know, it’s a little bit of work, but it’s not much. They don’t, they’re not willing to change their diet at all, they don’t really want to change their lifestyle, they’ll just commit to a few extra miles, right. And that’s not going to get you there.
Big changes require big changes. But here’s the thing, big change doesn’t mean you have to just change one big giant thing. You can accomplish big changes in your life by making a lot of little tiny changes. Let me give you an example of what this looked like for me some years ago.
So a while back, I decided I was going to do an Ironman Triathlon. And if you’re not familiar with the Ironman, it’s a pretty grueling event. It’s a one-day event, I think you have something like 17 hours to complete it. And it’s a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike, followed by a full marathon on the same day, right. And when I did mine, this was back in 2013, in Louisville.
And it was, by the time I started my run, so the time I started my marathon was three o’clock in the afternoon, it was 90 degrees with you know, super humid conditions, and I thought I was gonna die. I literally thought I cannot do this, I think I’m gonna die. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done to this date. It’s still the hardest thing I’ve ever done is that Iron Man.
But here’s the thing – because it was such a big thing, it was so hard. It just seemed impossible for me. At the time, I decided that I was going to go all in on myself and I was going to do whatever it took to make this thing happen to cross that finish line feeling good. So I read books, and I listened to podcasts all about triathlon, and Ironman, in particular, you know, watched YouTube videos and documentaries.
The people that I spent my time with were my training partners. Other friends that I trained with who had done Iron Man’s in the past, you know, the people I worked out with, I surrounded myself with like-minded people with positive people with people who had already done what I wanted, so that I could learn as much as possible from them. I practiced with all these different gears you know, different water bottles setups on my bike.
I literally tried like five different bike saddles until I found one that actually worked for me all these different running shoes, do I wear socks? Do I not wear socks? You know, shoes that where I could just slip them on and off, you know where I didn’t have to tie them because that takes time in transition time. I practice with a bunch of different triathlon suits, you know, that I could wear while swimming, biking, and running. So I didn’t have to change I could just wear kind of the same clothes the whole time.
I studied the course you know I actually took several trips down to Louisville, and Louisville is about 100 miles away from Cincinnati. So it was about a two-hour drive. So drove down there I swam in the river, we did the swim a portion of the race in the Ohio River. And so there’s you start in this channel. And actually, the group of us went down there and we swam the channel upstream against the river against the current of the river, which is extremely challenging.
And just doing that right there was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be a bit of a challenge to swim against the tide here against this course of the river for the first you know, third or so of the swim, but it helped a lot, you know, and then I rode the bike course I wrote the whole course and ran part of the marathon route.
So for the better part of a year, here’s what I did. I completely immersed myself in the world of Ironman Triathlon. I ate, slept, and dreamed about Ironman. This was a huge, huge goal of mine, and I wasn’t gonna leave anything on the table. I went all-in on myself and I did whatever it took to make sure that I could cross the finish line and I did I finished that event, hit a goal time, I felt amazing.
It was one of the most challenging things I have ever done in my life. And the most rewarding and the most life-changing things I’ve ever done in my life, it changed me profoundly.
But I want you to see the difference between just like dipping your toe in and total immersion. What I did when I was training for this event was total immersion. You know, dipping your toe in is just like, if I had just said, you know, I’m just going to run a few extra miles each week, I’ll do a few extra, you know, biking workouts, I’ll swim a few times, like that would be the bare minimum, like you got to do some training, right.
But I decided I was going to do everything that I could possibly do to make sure that I was successful in this event. So I immersed myself in the world of triathlon. So total immersion, this idea of total immersion is changing a lot of little things, not one of these things like reading books, or taking a trip down to Louisville, or, you know, listening to podcasts, none of these things is a big deal on its own.
But when you add them all up, they combine and compound to create this massive effect on your life. Because then I just felt like I was surrounded with all the support and the knowledge and encouragement and inspiration that I needed to get this thing done.
It’s like learning a new language like you can install Duolingo on your phone. And you can learn a few phrases here or there. And after a few months, you might be able to, you know, rattle off a few phrases or have a minor conversation, a simple conversation. But if you were to be transplanted in Rome, for three months, I guarantee by the end of that three months of you just living in the middle of Rome, like you would be speaking Italian pretty fluently by the end of that.
Because you’re immersed in the language and the culture the society, there’s no way you’re going to make it really without learning the language. I could force you to learn and to grow and to adapt and to evolve and become more. So you can see the power of immersion, right? But why don’t we do this? Why don’t we choose this path with everything that we do in our lives with all the big things that we want for ourselves?
And really, it’s because it’s hard. You know, it requires you to change a lot of little things. None of them, like I said, is that big of a deal on its own. But there are a lot of little changes you need to make. And when you change things like what you do like your behaviors, your actions, the things you’re actually doing, this is great. This is the surface-level stuff, though, you also have to go a little bit deeper.
You have to change your thought processes. You have to change your whole belief system, you have to change the way you kind of think and feel about these things. I had to change the way I thought and felt about the Ironman and about myself, I had to change the things I believed about myself. Because up to the point of like, you know, I don’t remember when it exactly happened when I made that shift from like, believing that I was going to do it.
Because I know when I signed up for the thing, I was like scared to death. And I was like, I don’t know if this is going to happen. That’s one of the reasons why I immersed myself in this world because I was like, I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make it happen. But at some point along the way, maybe a month or two before the event, I was like, I’m gonna do this, like I changed. I had to change my beliefs about myself, and what I was capable of.
When I signed up for the Iron Man, that was an impossible goal. For me, it seemed impossible. And in order for me to complete that event, I had to become a different person in the process. It changed me profoundly, you know, from so many different levels of my being.
So immersion is like changing things at different levels. It’s your thought process, your belief systems, your whole attitude, your relationship with yourself and with others and with the sport. And with your nutrition, diet, and exercise. It’s all of that. You know, if you want to lose the 50 pounds, you have to change the whole way you think and feel about food, right? Just changing one tiny thing isn’t going to get you there.
And yeah, this is the harder path. But the path to big goals. It’s always the harder path. It always is. It’s not the comfortable, easy way. It never is. It’s always going to require you to get uncomfortable and to do the harder things because if it was easy, and if it was comfortable, you’d already have it. And this idea of total immersion is how I decided to structure my new coaching program.
So I’ve just opened up the doors to the Running Lean Coaching Project, I’m super excited about this, but I decided that it was going to be a program of total immersion. So just a few of the things that you get when you sign up for the coaching project, you get three full months of access to the program, you get one on one coaching with me, you get twice-weekly group coaching. There’s an online self-paced training library of materials so you can learn everything that you need to learn on your own. There’s support via email, and messaging with me, there’s a private podcast channel and a private members-only Facebook group so that you’re surrounded, and completely immersed in this world, right, this whole program has been designed to be one of total immersion so that you’re surrounded immersed with knowledge, with support with encouragement and with accountability, so that you can be successful in your goals.
And if you want to learn more about the program, you can go to runningleancoaching.com/join, and I have a page where you can just learn all about it, and it goes into great detail and tells you everything you need to know about it. But you can see that there’s a big difference here, you know, you can, you can dip your toe in the water of, you know, weight loss or trying to train for a marathon or something like that, like you can read a book, or, you know, try a fad diet for a couple of weeks, right.
Or you can immerse yourself into a program like this one, and make your success practically inevitable. So I want to encourage you, and it doesn’t have to be my program, like, I share this stuff with you guys. Because I think it’s amazingly transformative. And the people that I’ve worked with have had amazing experiences. But it’s not for everybody, and I totally get that.
But find something, find something, find a way that you can immerse yourself in the work in the world of whatever it is you’re going for here. So your work really is to see where in your life, you might just be dipping your toe in. So maybe you’re training for a marathon. But you don’t really even have a training plan, you’re just kind of winging it, right? Or maybe you want to build a stronger frame, you want to be you know, build muscle. And so you’re kind of doing some strength training, you know, but you really don’t have a plan.
You’re not tracking your progress. You don’t maybe don’t even really know what you’re doing. I hear this from people a lot, especially runners who are like, I don’t really know what I’m doing with strength training, Patrick, and I’m like, oh, we’ve got to work on that. Or maybe you’ve picked up on some ideas to help you lose weight. Like you’re cutting out snacking, but you’re not really doing it consistently. You’re just kind of like, you know, sorta this is all just like dipping your toe in right?
What would it look like to immerse yourself in the work of changing habits and changing behaviors? What resources can you add into your life to help you what books can you read, podcasts, audiobooks, can you listen to documentaries? What can you watch? What groups can you join like Facebook groups? Is there a local running group, I love local running groups, if you’ve got one, join a local running group or a gym if you need to join a gym so that you can learn how to you know do strength training properly.
What people could you start hanging around with? What people share your goals? You know, find like-minded people that you can surround yourself with that will help to support you and encourage you and support and inspire you know, what can you do today to start changing your mindset, your attitude, your thought patterns, your belief systems? Because this is the big part of the work that has to happen.
You’ve got to like, question a lot of the things that you might have believed for years about yourself, especially when it comes to your ability to lose weight, or you know, nutrition for running or becoming your most badass self? Is that what you want for yourself? Do you want to become a total badass I want you to? What is it going to take to get you there? What could be possible for you?
If you immerse yourself in the world of habit change, as opposed to just dipping a toe in? What things seem impossible for you right now, could become possible with the power of total immersion. Finishing an Ironman Triathlon seemed absolutely impossible for me until I immersed myself in the world of the Ironman Triathlon. And then it became inevitable for me And I did it.
So how can you immerse yourself? How can you go all-in on yourself? How can you immerse yourself in the world of changing habits, changing behaviors, what big goals do you want to become inevitable for you? Because it’s all available to you. If you’re willing to not just dip a toe and if you’re willing to immerse yourself if you’re willing to jump in feet first, just do it. Cool.
And remember that if you’re ready to immerse yourself in the world of healthy weight loss, specifically for runners and other endurance athletes, come check out my free live workshop five simple steps to becoming a leaner stronger runner, the next one’s coming up March 31. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I would love to see you there. You’re going to learn a lot. We’re going to have some fun together. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. We’ll talk to you.
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.
Wow! 100 episodes of the podcast! In this “best of” edition of the Running Lean podcast, I feature a dozen or so of your favorite moments - and mine - from the first 100 episodes. The timing of …
Continue Reading about 100. The Best of the Running Lean Podcast →
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 100 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. Holy wow. 100 episodes of the podcast. This is so awesome. In this next edition of the Running Lean podcast, I feature a dozen or so of your favorite moments and mine from the first 100 episodes.
And if you want to know which episodes each of these little clips come from, I’ve linked to all the episodes featured in this podcast in the show notes. So you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com to access the show notes for this episode.
And the timing of this particular episode, my 100th episode could not have been better. It was set to be released on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, but I decided I was going to release it a day early. Because I wanted this episode this 100th episode to be my way of saying thank you to all of you for listening and for allowing me to be a part of your health and fitness journey.
I received a comment in the Running Lean Facebook group today from Michelle and she just said, thank you, you have made such a positive impact in my life. This is why I do what I do. And I’m just beyond grateful for all the love support and encouragement that I’ve received from you since I started doing this podcast back in January of 2020. And I can’t wait to share the next 100 episodes with each and every one of you. Love you all, keep on running lean. And enjoy the best of the Running Lean podcast so far.
So what’s the alternative? What’s the alternative to this, like a temporary diet mentality? You know, the alternative is the way of life mentality, right? You’ve got to change your whole mindset around healthy eating. You have to let go of that whole old diet mentality, idea, that temporary idea. And you have to adopt this new way of life mentality.
Why does this work? Well, when you make healthy eating a way of life, you’re no longer in this temporary mindset, okay, you have a mindset of permanence, right? Healthy eating becomes who you are, it becomes what you do, you’ll have a much easier time sticking to it. Because in your mind, you’re never going back to eating that way that you used to eat again.
You’ll never quit. Because quitting isn’t an option. You have this deep desire at the core of your being to be as healthy as possible. And it’s a for life kind of a deal. So you develop this unshakable determination.
Think about it this way, like it’s very similar to when you’re training for a marathon. Right? There’s something very powerful and deep inside you that when you’re dry when you’re training for a marathon, it drives you there’s something inside you that drives you to train to do all those long, hard runs.
To get up early on the Saturday mornings to run in the rain in the cold and the snow and all that other stuff, right? You’ll do it because there’s something like visceral that’s driving you right? No matter what I’m sticking to my marathon training schedule.
That’s what I mean by unshakable determination. We want to apply that same unshakable determination to healthy eating. No matter what happens. I’m sticking to my healthy eating plan. No matter what happens, I’m going to make this work for the long haul. I’m in this 100% I’m committed. That’s where we want to get to. Okay.
So how do we do that? Like, how do you develop that unshakable determination? Well, really, it involves not just changing what you do, because when you just change what you do, you’re changing your actions, your behaviors, kind of your habits, right? This is just this is surface-level stuff, right? You have to go deeper than that, you have to like, get to the core of who you are right? You have to make healthy eating part of your identity. Okay? You got to make healthy eating just a way of life. Right? It’s just what you do. It’s just who you are.
Tony Robbins says quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions. And as a result, they get better answers. Love Tony Robbins. So blaming people ask terrible questions, blaming people ask questions like, Why does this always happen to me?
Have you ever found yourself asking your yourself something like this? Or how come everybody else can do this, but not me? Or how come I can never get ahead? Why isn’t life fair? These are the kinds of questions that blaming people, that people who are living in the effect of everyone and everything around them, they ask questions like that.
People who take radical responsibility for everything in their life – they ask questions like, How can I get this done? Like what do I need to do to change? What do I need to change in this situation in order to get better results? You know, what internal resources can I tap into to make this better? How can I figure this out? What can I do better next time? What do I need to learn to make this happen for me now?
Those kinds of questions are empowering those kinds of questions will help you to take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life. So what happens when you take radical responsibility for everything, you take back your control, you know, you, you regain agency over your own results, you take back your power, okay, you are empowered, you control your thinking.
And if you want to, you can change it, you control your emotions, you get to choose your feelings, somebody isn’t bestowing them upon you, okay. You control what you do, you control the actions that you take. And if you want to, you can always do something different, you can always take different actions.
The best part though, is you control your results. And results are not determined by others, you are in charge, your results are determined by you alone, okay? And you have no excuses, all the excuses are gone. Okay? That’s the good and the bad news.
So, think about this, you don’t need anyone else to change anything. They don’t need to change what they’re doing at all. You have the power within you right now. To get whatever you want in your life, stop living in the effect of what others are doing or saying or thinking, stop blaming others start taking radical responsibility, and you’re gonna see some amazing changes happening in your life.
Cool. Here’s the thing, if all you’re focused on is your weight, how many pounds your body weighs? You’re kind of missing the point. And the big secret is that listen, weight loss is really not the goal. Getting to some arbitrary number on the scale is not what you should be after, fitting into those jeans you rocked 10 years ago is not your only objective. Although that’s pretty awesome if you could do that.
So what are we talking about here? What’s the real goal, Patrick? Well, here it is. The real goal is to become the healthiest version of yourself losing weight, you know, getting back to your natural weight, whatever that is for you. That’s a side effect of becoming healthy. It’s secondary.
But most people have this backward. They think that you know, they need to lose weight to get healthy, but it’s the other way around. You become healthy, and then the weight comes off. You stop putting a bunch of crap into your body and your body responds. Inflammation disappears, your hormones get back in line. blood sugar and insulin levels become normal.
You start feeling better. You’re not hungry all the time. You start sleeping better. You no longer feel stressed out about everything and you have tons of energy. Running becomes easier, your cravings for sugar go away. And you seem to be able to think more clearly when all of these changes in your body start happening.
And then, as a result of all these good changes happening in your body becoming healthier, then you start burning fat like crazy, then the weight starts to drop off. Alright. And remember, we store body fat when we have when we’re taking in all this extra energy, usually in the form of sugar.
And our body can only use so much of that energy and the rest of it gets stored away to be used later. But later never comes where we’re always storing fat, we’re really good at storing fat, we’re just not really good at burning the fat, okay?
So we’re really good at storing and storing and storing fat, we want to be good at burning the fat, right, but all these other things have to happen in order for you get your body into that fat-burning mode, in order for the weight to start coming off.
Okay, so you get your body healthy first. And then you start losing the weight making sense. So it’s less about the number on the scale. And it’s more about becoming the healthiest human being possible.
The difference between people who succeed at stuff and those who don’t, a lot of times just comes down to a commitment. Successful people decide that they are going to succeed, they make a commitment to reach their goal. No matter how long it takes, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how many challenges they face, they are committed to making that happen.
So they don’t necessarily have some superpower, they don’t have more drive than you or more determination, more willpower, or anything like that. They just early on in the process, they made a decision that they were going all in on this, no matter what you have to make the decision that you are going to go all in that you are going to succeed, no matter what. No matter what challenges come up, no matter how uncomfortable you might get, no matter how hard it might seem in the moment.
Most people don’t do this though. Most people, you know, dabble in these concepts and principles. When we talk about losing weight and changing your diet and what you’re eating, and how much you’re eating. And when you’re eating the kinds of foods you’re eating, people do it kind of sort of, but they don’t make that commitment, they don’t go out there.
And because they’re afraid, they’re afraid of how they might feel because they might feel sluggish, they might have cravings, they might get an urge to eat some pizza or ice cream. And guess what, those people that kind of dabble, the kind of go, not all in, they go sort of a little bit in they get some little results.
I want you to see how complicated our relationship with food has become. And that this is not easy. This topic is controversial. It’s complicated, it’s complex. There are a lot of nuances here a lot of gray areas, I want you to be able to make informed decisions about your own health.
And I want you to feel good about what you choose to eat and choose not to eat, you got to do what feels good for you. I also want you to be open to different ideas. So maybe not the ideas that are pushed down from the big food companies, but maybe some more grassroots kinds of ideas.
You know, we are all an experiment of one. So you need to figure out what works best for you. Take control of your own health and your own fitness and your own diet and do what feels best for you. If you want to be a vegetarian or a vegan or do the Mediterranean diet or Weight Watchers, whatever you want to do is completely fine. I have no judgments about any of that stuff.
But if what you’re doing isn’t working, I want you to be open-minded to try something else. But if you think life is going to be good all the time; if you expect that you are going to be very disappointed and very miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be rejecting and resisting the idea of reality of what it is, you have to accept it all, you have to embrace the suck.
Because without the pain, we don’t get to experience the pleasure. Without agony, we don’t know what joy is. Without feeling sadness, we don’t know what happiness feels like. Without frustration, we don’t learn patience. Without feeling anxiety, we don’t experience peace. Without failing, we don’t know what accomplishment feels like.
You know, without uncertainty, we don’t know what confidence is. When you can embrace all of it and when you become willing to experience all of these emotions, we’re talking about a lot of emotions here fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, pain, when you’re willing to experience these emotions, when you’re willing to embrace the suck; here’s nothing you can’t do.
Most people are afraid to feel uncomfortable. They are so afraid of the suck that they never do anything hard, they’re not going to try. They don’t even get up off the couch. Because they know that to put on their running shoes and go start running when they haven’t been running in forever.
And they want to run a 5k, they want to do that. But they know it’s gonna be hard. And so they just stay on the couch. They don’t embrace the suck. So they never do anything hard. And guess what? They never accomplish anything. They stay comfortable. Yeah. They don’t have to experience the sucky things. Yeah. They stay in their comfort zone.
But what does that do for you? What does that get you? Is that what you want for your life? I don’t think so. If you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to me, then I’m pretty sure that’s not you. That does not sound like you.
Everything you want, but don’t already have, lies outside your comfort zone. So if you never embrace the suck, you never embrace the discomfort you never grow. You never become more than what you are today, right here. Now. You’ve never accomplished anything bigger than what you’ve already done in your life. The purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time, the purpose of your life is to become more.
Becoming more requires you to be somewhat unhappy and somewhat discontented with how things are and somewhat uncomfortable. Right, for yourself or others for your community for the world. Like there needs to be some level of discontentment with the way things are, in order for you to want to grow and become more to change to evolve.
Becoming more means experiencing some amount of discomfort, some amount of pain or hardness or suffering. We don’t grow and evolve by sitting around on our butts in our comfort zone all the time. If I could grow and become more by just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day long, I would absolutely do that. But it doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way.
Becoming more means and I want to break this down for you because I talk about this idea of becoming more what does that mean? Becoming more means becoming more of who you are not becoming someone else. But just becoming more of you. More of who you want to be.
There’s this version of you that’s inside you that’s lurking inside you that maybe you’ve always been afraid to let out. That’s what I’m talking about. I want that for you. I want you to be more authentically you.
And I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you guys before this quote from Dr. Seuss. And it’s from one of the Dr. Seuss books. I can’t remember which book it’s from. But the quote is this: “Today you are you that is truer than true.”
There is no one alive who is you-er than you at anytime. I talk about like becoming more you. This quote always comes to mind, like there’s no one alive who’s you-er than you. Becoming more means living up to your true potential becoming the best you can be right, most of us are living up to about 40% of our potential.
This is below average, I want more for myself, I want to become more, I want more than that for myself, I want you to want more than that for yourself. I don’t want to be below average, I want to be well above average, 40% is not cool with me, shouldn’t be cool with you either. We need to tap into more of who we are more of what we are capable of.
You cannot hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself through all of this. You have to have your own back. I talk about this concept a lot with my clients; having your own back. And I’m going to explain what this means to you. So you understand this too because this is a cool concept.
So what does it mean to have your own back? So imagine you’re out running with a friend. And you could be in a race, maybe you’re helping a friend get through their first half marathon, right? And you’ve done this a million times. And so you feel pretty confident you’re just out there to support them. You’re helping them get through the tough part of this run.
How would you show up for that friend? What would you say to them? I think you’d say things like, hey, I’m here for you, you got this, you can do it, you are a badass, come on, keep going, you’re doing great, you look great. You can do hard things, you are crushing it out here you are almost there. Come on, let’s go.
Right, you’d be there to support them to encourage them to keep them motivated. You point out all the positive things you can about them, you’d push them, you make sure that they finished strong. So this is what it looks like to have someone’s back.
And when you do this for someone else that feels really good, right? It feels good to be the one that’s doing the encouraging the one that’s doling out all that love all that positive mojo, it feels good to be that person, right?
Because you’re helping them do something big, you’re helping them get through something that’s uncomfortable. And it feels good to do this. It’s very invigorating. I love doing this. I love helping people.
That’s why I love coaching so much. You know, it’s such a big part of coaching is to give people encouragement and motivation and all that positive mojo doling out the love, right. So you can dig deep within yourself when you need to help someone else, right?
You can dig deep within yourself and find that love and that encouragement to help push someone further even when it’s very challenging for them even when things are going very tough for them. Right. So it’s very easy for us to do for others.
But it’s very hard for us to do for ourselves. Why is that? You know, it’s interesting, isn’t it? That it’s hard for us to do that for ourselves, even though we can do it so easily for others. You know, if you can do this for someone else, which you can I know you can, you’ve done this before, then you can do it for yourself. It just takes a little practice. So some of the things you can practice are instead of practicing negative self-talk, practice, positive self-talk.
You know, instead of practicing, feeling discouraged all the time, practice encouraging yourself. Instead of practicing thinking about all the ways that you’re going to fail, or all the ways that you suck, practice thinking about all the ways you’re going to succeed and all the ways that you are awesome.
We get to choose how we respond to every circumstance in our life. We can respond like a toddler, lay on the ground and kick our legs and scream and cry about it. Or we can respond like an emotional adults.
Here’s an example from my life. Speaking of challenges, 14 years ago, I decided I’d had enough drinking alcohol just wasn’t working for me, okay. And so I quit drinking. And during the last 14 years, I have had all kinds of challenges in my life. I’ve gone through breakups and divorce. I’ve changed careers. I’ve lost jobs. Both my parents passed away.
I’ve started businesses and then failed businesses. And through all of these 14 years there were all kinds of reasons and excuses that I could have turned to alcohol as a solution, like, oh, yeah, my, my parents just died like I could choose that as an excuse to drink. And most people would probably say, Yeah, I’d probably drink over a lot of that stuff too.
But I never did, I never felt the need to take a drink. I’ve never felt the need to revert to being an emotional toddler because of what’s happening in my life. I don’t blame the outside world, for how I feel, or for what I’m doing or not doing. I’m staying true to myself through all of it.
In fact, staying true to myself is why I’ve been able to handle these big challenges in my life. Because I’m not afraid to experience the emotions. Not afraid to feel my feelings. I don’t have to numb my emotions with alcohol or food anymore. And numbing out is a way of being an emotional toddler.
This is the way we sort of practice emotional childhood, okay. So when you go through something that challenges you, and you’re absolutely going to feel some emotions, right. You’re going to feel fear, you’re going to feel frustration, you’re going to feel stress, you’re going to feel sadness, or, or loneliness, or failure, or shame, or whatever it is, you’re going to feel some emotions.
So when you go through these big things in your life, the most people the way most people deal with these difficult emotions is they, they drink something, or they eat something, they turn to some sort of external thing to make them feel better inside it temporarily anyway, like, it just feels good to eat some cake, right, it feels good to drink some alcohol.
The problem with this approach, though, is that it comes with negative consequences, right? And maybe you drink too much, or you wake up with a hangover, you know, or maybe you eat too much. And you end up gaining weight, and you feel terrible.
This is what it means to approach the challenges in your life, like an emotional toddler, or you’re just like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just like drink yourself numb or eat yourself numb? No. So when I talk about all or nothing, it’s different from when I talk about going all-in on yourself.
Okay, so I talk a lot about this concept of, you know, when you have a big goal, you need to go all-in on yourself for that goal, okay? You need to approach these big things in your life with this attitude that you’re committed to making it work, right no matter what.
So let’s say you want to lose weight, you have this big weight loss goal, going all in on yourself means that you’re going to keep going, that you’re, you know, it may take a while you may have some slip-ups, you may have some failures along the way. You may not stick to your plan or whatever, but you keep moving forward, you don’t quit on yourself.
Okay, maybe you want to change your relationship with alcohol going all-in on that means you use the power of your thoughts and feelings about alcohol to change the habit, it means you create a drinking plan, maybe you just want to moderate, you create a drinking plan and you stick to it no matter what.
Going all in on yourself means you’re committed to your health, you’re committed to success you’re committed to, you know, maybe going after this PR and your marathon. It does not mean you’re never allowed to drink again. It does not mean you’re never allowed to eat a cupcake again. It does not mean like you can never, you know, run a half marathon or 5k or something like that, you know.
I would just want to make sure that we understand the difference between the all or nothing mentality and like going all-in on yourself. Okay.
There’s a big difference between swearing off something forever like sugar alcohol and changing the habit and changing your relationship with it. Okay. So going all-in on yourself does not equate to all or nothing it just means you aren’t half-assing it, you know. You’re not half-assing your efforts towards this goal you’re full-assing it with whatever it is you’re doing. Okay.
So an example of what this looks like. So a lot of people live their life in the past. And here’s what I mean by that. People wake up and they start thinking about their problems. Right, your problems are just memories of past situations, past issues past stressors, past trauma.
So you start each day living in the past you thinking about, Oh, this thing that happened to me a while back, you know. And we call these things problems, or memories, whatever it is, you’re consciously back there in the past. So you start each day just like living in the past.
And each one of these past memories has an emotion tied to it. So you immediately begin your day feeling. Maybe you’re really feeling the unhappiness or the hurt, or the unworthiness or the stress or the anger that you experienced in the past, just by thinking about that situation now brings up the same emotional response, right?
How you think and feel, creates your present state of being who you are, at this moment, is a result of how you’re thinking and feeling right now. And most people start their day feeling all these negative emotions from the past.
And so they’re just living in the past, your familiar past, the thing that you know, that you keep repeating over and over and over again, in your mind becomes who you are today. And it just goes on and on. And your familiar past becomes your predictable future.
So who you were in the past, you’re just going to continue to create more and more of that you just become more and more of who you already are. You can’t go beyond who you used to be. You can’t get beyond who you are up to this point. Because that’s all you know. And that’s what you’re ruminating on.
And that’s what you’re thinking about. And that’s the emotions that you’re experiencing right now. So your emotional state right now is the past. And all you can think about is the future for your future is how you’re feeling right now.
When all your feelings and all of your thoughts and your whole being is is focused on who you used to be in the past like that’s who you are right now, that’s just going to be what you keep creating more and more and more for yourself, okay? This is what it looks like to be stuck in the habit of being you.
Now listen, there’s nothing wrong with this, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or you’re doing something wrong, this is the way most of us have just kind of conditioned ourselves to operate in, it’s okay.
But if you want something more for yourself, if you want to continue to learn and grow and evolve and become that badass version of yourself that I always like to say that phrase, I love it, becoming the most badass version of yourself. If that’s what you want for yourself, then you got to break this habit of being who you are today, you’ve got to get out of being who you are so that you can become more.
This is probably the biggest key if you want to create self-motivation, you’ve got to do hard things when you don’t feel like it. Because when you do some little thing that’s hard, and you didn’t feel like doing it, you know, it’s going to move you a little closer to your goal, you know. It’s good for you, you know, it’s like helping you, you know, it’s going to keep you heading in the right direction.
And that little bit of, of doing that hard thing, that little feeling that you get after you do that little bit of satisfaction you get after doing that is going to give you a little bit of motivation to do it again. And do it again, and do it again. And you can just keep going.
In order to create self-motivation you have to do the things you don’t feel like doing. And then you have to just keep repeating those things, you have to get your reps in. Again, this is something I talked about in last week’s podcast. Repetition causes motivation because you begin to make the hard stuff easier, the hard stuff becomes easier. Okay.
So the first thing I want you to focus on is like doing the hard thing, even though you don’t feel like it. So I’m going to be sharing my experience of the Goggins 4x4x48 challenge this weekend in the Running Lean community on Facebook.
So join us over there and I’ll be like, kind of documenting that my experience as I go, do some lives and stuff like that and share kind of what it’s like to try to get out there at like 3am to get motivated to run.
So I’m doing this because it’s hard. And this is like my number one tip for creating self-motivation is like, do the hard thing, especially if you don’t feel like it.
The second tip I have for you is this always focus on making slow and steady progress, or fast and steady progress. doesn’t matter. But always focus on making incremental progress. Just making a little bit of progress will help you to get a little bit more motivation to keep you going.
Because when you make a little bit of progress, you tell yourself a story about what that means. And that thought is, hey, this is working, right? So many people don’t see any progress. Or maybe they’re not tracking their progress. Or they’re not seeing progress fast enough. And they just quit, they give up.
They’re like, hey, this, this way of eating isn’t, is I’m not losing weight fast enough. I’m just gonna quit and go back to doing what I was doing before, which doesn’t work, either. But that’s a whole other story.
But little by little, you want to be making incremental progress, because when you do, you get this little hidden motivation every single time you see the, you know, one pound a week drop off, or something like that, you’re like, oh, my gosh, that’s awesome.
Or an inch off your waist. Oh, my gosh, that feels so good. Or, hey, you know what, I ran a longer mile this week, my longer than my longest run. And these little things just start to stack up. And you and you begin to feel more and more motivated. It’s like you keep your motivation tank topped off each time you do something like this.
And you keep increasing the amount of motivation that you create, you keep stacking these little, little bits of motivation, one on top of the other. So you know, like, for me lately, I’ve been I’m lifting more weights, I’m tracking my weightlifting, and I’m able to do more reps or lift more weights.
So maybe you’re like, oh, I was able to do five more pounds this week. You know, or one more rep, than the last week. Or one more, I ran that one more mile, whatever it is. All these little signs point to progress, and that it’s working. And they will help to keep you motivated to keep showing up and continue doing the hard thing that you don’t want to do.
I have this mantra this is like my mantra for life. It’s relentless forward progress, no matter what. Always moving forward, no matter what. Always moving forward, no matter how slow. No matter how you know, zigzaggy the courses or whatever, we’re always moving in the direction of our goals. This is my motto for life.
This is like this got me through ultramarathons has got me through, you know. Tough things that happen in my life like divorce and loss of jobs. This is how I build my business. Relentless forward progress, little by little we make progress and it feels good to just look back and say like, oh, I’m actually I’m making progress here.
It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but I can see these little hitsof progress. And that gets me motivated. Okay, I hope you all have an amazing day. Lots of love, 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.
One of the hardest things about losing weight is feeling like no one is supporting you in your weight loss journey. Not only do you feel a lack of support, but you feel like the people closest to …
Continue Reading about 95. Getting Your Family’s Support with Your Weight Loss Plan →
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 95 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about getting your family’s support with your weight loss plan.
So one of the hardest things about losing weight is feeling like no one is supporting you in your weight loss journey. No one’s got your back. Not only do you feel a lack of support from the people closest to you, but you actually feel like these people are going out of their way to make it harder for you to stay on track.
Why are they doing this? Why do we feel unsupported when we decide to make these big changes in our health and diet? How do we get through this? How do we get the support that we need to be successful with being healthy and sticking to our plan with making this our new way of life? I’ve been getting these questions a lot lately.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’ve got some helpful tips for getting your family support with your weight loss plan. But first, if you’d like this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook.
It’s a group of like-minded runners who are focused on improving their health improving their fitness getting stronger, getting leaner, getting faster, and we support each other, we encourage each other we inspire one another, we motivate one another.
And it’s a place where you can ask questions. And it’s a place where you get a voice. You know, this podcast is great, I get to talk to you. But I don’t get to hear from you. And you don’t get to share what’s going on with you.
Join the Facebook group and you can share what’s going on with you. You can ask questions you can get answers. And it’s a lot of fun. That’s fun. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and hope to see you over there.
And then people ask how they can work with me. And there are really two ways. There’s the Running Lean coaching group which meets once a week we do a live group coaching call. And this is a great way to introduce yourself to becoming a fat adapted runner to understanding how your thoughts and feelings drive your actions to learn all about, you know how to succeed with your weight loss goals with your running goals.
You get to hear from like-minded people, we get to share what’s going on, we do a little coaching and teaching in the group once a week. And you get access to all my online training materials. So this is a great introduction to coaching and a great way to kind of get yourself started and make some progress. And to learn more and join the group just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.
And then the other way of working with me is as your coach, I’m a one-on-one coach, this is my jam, this is what I do, I can show you exactly how to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself. I’ll show you how to do it, you can get there.
And when you sign up to coach with me, you get the personalized meal plans, you get personalized attention, you know, it’s you and me working together to get you to your goals. It’s a results-oriented coaching program.
It’s not about just like I don’t have like a blueprint that I just give to everybody that’s exactly the same. It’s you and me figuring out together, what works best for you what makes you feel the best.
What gets you to your weight loss goals, what gets you to your running goals? What helps you to become the best, healthiest version of yourself? That’s what we do. And we do it together and we have fun here. Are you sensing a theme here? Like we try to have fun with all this stuff.
Losing weight, getting healthy does not have to be a suffer fest, we can have fun doing it. Anyway, if you’re interested in coaching with me just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you and I will jump on a quick Zoom call, have a conversation and we’ll talk about your goals. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool. Awesome. All right.
So I’ve been mulling around this topic for a while now because it’s something that is recurring. I keep hearing people talking about this and variations of this topic of like not feeling supported by their family and I’ve been working on this for a while and I think I have helpful tips for you guys today.
So make sure you listen to this whole podcast. I don’t know, don’t like just skim through these sometimes because if you do, you’re missing out on the good stuff. But today I’ve got some really helpful tips at the end of this episode, so stick around for that.
But the issue is that I hear a lot of people talking about how they don’t feel supported in what they’re doing, especially when they change their diet when they change what they’re eating. And then they try to stick to their plan. And this is especially true at the beginning of their weight loss journey.
And they tell me, they feel like they’re all alone. They feel like they’re just on their own, they feel lonely, they feel like no one is supporting them, their spouse isn’t supporting them, their kids maybe aren’t supporting them, and they just and their friends aren’t supporting them. And they just feel all alone. And it makes it very difficult to want to stick to their plan.
So I really think this is an issue for a lot of people and we need to, you know, figure this out. Right? So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today is what do we do in these situations, when we don’t feel supported, especially from the people closest to us, like our spouses, okay.
So one thing I want you to understand here is that if you want everybody in your family, if you want your spouse, and your kids and everybody, your family and all your friends, to just be on board with what you’re doing, and to totally support you, and to think the way you think and feel the same way you feel and do the things that you’re doing.
I’m just gonna tell you right now, this is an exercise in futility, you are going to be disappointed when you are expecting other people to think the way you think and do what you’re doing and say things that support you all the time, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. I’m just going to tell you right now, when you expect people to say this thing or do that thing, I promise you, they will let you down.
Okay, so we just have to understand that the number one thing we have to understand here is that you cannot control what other people are thinking what other people are feeling, what they are saying what they’re doing. And you have to stop pretending like you can control all of that. Okay, because you cannot.
And one thing that keeps coming up for me is when people say, Well, you know that my husband isn’t saying these things to me that he’s not talking to me in a way that feels supportive. He’s saying negative things, you know, he’s saying, Well, why don’t you just, you know, live a little, you know, just enjoy yourself for once, you know, these kinds of things are not helpful. Okay?
And I hear people say this, and I’m like, okay, I get it, you wish that they said different things to you, which isn’t really going to happen. Okay, first of all, but are you saying these things to yourself? Are you being encouraging to yourself? How are you talking to yourself? This is an important thing for you to think about. And really be honest with yourself.
Are you saying to yourself, “I don’t know if I should do this? Maybe I should just live a little? Oh, maybe I am. I’m doing great. And I deserve a little something. Maybe I should reward myself because I’ve been staying on my plan all week. So I can just eat like a cake.” Right?
I mean, that’s fine. Like, how are you talking to yourself? What are you saying to yourself? What’s that inner dialogue look like for you? Because if you’re not supporting yourself in the way that you’re talking to yourself, do you really expect other people to do that for you? Yeah.
And listen, I understand that it can feel like people are supporting you like no one is supporting you. You can make everything that they do and say mean that they’re not supportive of you. Right?
So you go out to dinner with your husband, and he’s like, You know what, I’m going to get extra french fries, because I’m like, really hungry. So and you’re like, “Ah, see, he’s not supporting me.” Or, you know, you’re you come home from work and your wife brings home a pizza for her and she’s eating pizza with the kids and you’re like making yourself some chicken and a salad or whatever. And you’re like, “See, she’s not supporting me.”
Or, you know, you go out to dinner with your friends and they’re ordering all these fruity cocktails and you’re not drinking, you know, and you’re just sitting there like feeling sorry for yourself and like, look, my friends aren’t supporting me. See how all these people aren’t supportive.
You can make everything mean that people aren’t supporting you. Okay? Look what they’re doing. See, they’re not supporting me in reality, none of this stuff. None of this has anything to do with you. This is just them doing them. Right? You’ve got to do you let them do them, and you do you.
And when you start making everything mean that you’re not being supported, you’re going to start to find evidence for that everywhere. Everywhere you look, every person you talk to, you’re going to feel like they’re not supportive of you see, here’s another person that’s like eating something that I can’t eat. So that means they’re not supportive of me.
And we’ve just got to get over this. Alright, you have to learn how to support yourself like this is my number one tip for you here today, is that you have to be your own number one best supporter, you have to have your own back all the time. What does this mean?
What does it mean to have your own back? Having your own back means that you speak kindly to yourself the same way you would speak to a friend. So if you and a friend were trying to stick to a healthy eating plan, and you were doing it together, and your friend was feeling like, I’m not sure about this, what would you say to that friend?
You’d be like, “Listen, you got this, you can do this stick with the plan, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get through this.” Like, that’s how you would treat your friend. That’s what you would say to your friend. That’s the way you need to dialogue with yourself.
Because the way you dialogue with yourself is whether you had your own back or not. So speak kindly to yourself, encourage yourself. Don’t talk trash to yourself. Don’t be like, “Oh, look at you, you screwed up again. Nothing ever works for you, you can’t do this. You know, you might as well just give up.” Like this is trash talk that you do to yourself. And listen, we all do it, right? But you’ve got to stop doing that. So speak kindly to yourself, stop the trash-talking to yourself.
Having your own back means keeping the promises you made to yourself, you make a commitment. I’m going to stick to my food plan today. And then you honor that commitment that you made to yourself, that’s having your own back. Right?
You say you’re going to do something, you commit to doing that thing. And then you do that thing. You honor the commitments you make to yourself, that’s having your own back.
What’s not having your own back is constantly breaking those commitments to yourself. Letting yourself down, making a plan and saying, “Okay, tomorrow, I’m sticking to my plan no matter what.” And then tomorrow comes and you’re like, you know what, I just feel like Chick-fil-A, and you go eat a bunch of, you know, get a bunch of junk food on your way home from work and just gorge out on that. Right?
Like that’s not having your own back. You have to be your own best supporter. This is like the number one thing I want you to take away from this episode right here is that when it comes to who’s supporting you and who isn’t?
If you’re not supporting you, how can you expect other people to? If you’re not supporting yourself, and you’re expecting everybody else to do it for you, you’re going to be very disappointed. Every single day, it’s not gonna work for you, okay? So you have to have your own back, you have to be your best supporter.
And here’s something I really think is important, something that you have to understand. You have to stop trying to control your circumstances. So stop trying to control what other people are thinking what other people are feeling when other people are saying what other people are doing. These are all circumstances.
And if you heard me talk about this ever in the past, you know that circumstances are things you cannot control. What you have control over are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. That’s it. So you can’t control what other people are doing or saying or thinking or whatever.
So, your husband will say what he says and he’s gonna think what he thinks he’s gonna do what he does. And if you’re hoping he’s gonna change all that stuff, you will forever be in turmoil around all of that. Alright, because he is not going to change except that he is the way he is.
He’s going to say what he says, he’s gonna think how he thinks, and what he does, he’s just gonna keep doing right. You have to take responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings and actions. You have to take responsibility for your own decisions for your own choices.
Don’t blame other people for your bad choices. Don’t blame other people because you didn’t stick to your plan. It’s not their responsibility for you to, you know, stick to your healthy eating plan. It’s yours. It’s on you to take ownership.
I want you to take extreme ownership of your own health. And listen, this is not bad news. This is good news, this is very empowering. Because when you rely on other people and other people’s opinions, then this can be very disempowering because you’re giving your power away to others. You’re letting others’ thoughts and feelings about us determine how we think about ourselves that’s not good, or their opinions don’t matter.
So friends, moms, spouses, they all have their opinions about what you’re doing. Everybody has an opinion, right? And most people are more than happy to share their opinion with you whether you ask for it or not, especially when it comes to what people are eating.
And I think this is so crazy, and like weird, like, people will tell me all the time, like, why would you eat that? Or that’s weird. Or I was standing in line recently at this little breakfast buffet thing. And I was, you know, it kind of just loaded up my plate with eggs and bacon. And that was it. And somebody next to me was like, well, that’s a lot of protein. You know, and I was like, thanks for your opinion, didn’t ask for it. But thank you.
But people are just more than happy to share their thoughts with us. Isn’t that funny that we do that? I don’t understand. I would never say anything to somebody about what they’re eating.
But here’s a story I heard recently, from one of my clients, they were feeling good. They had started a couple of weeks into their weight loss journey. And they were feeling great. They changed their diet. They’re losing weight, they had tons of energy, and they were just like, feeling great about themselves.
And so they were talking to a co-worker about it. And they said, you know, hey, this is what I’m doing. And I feel so amazing. And this person they were talking to at the office was like, oh, yeah, I tried that low carb thing. It didn’t work for me after a few months.
And so this person came back to me, and she was very concerned about this, like, “Oh, is this gonna happen for me, too?” Like she really internalized this, right? And she believed that because this other person who she doesn’t even know that well had this one experience that that’s going to be her experience, too.
And I was like, listen, you don’t have to. First of all, you don’t have to believe what other people are telling you. Their opinions are just that they are their own opinions, it’s their own experiences. And what they’re saying and what their experiences were don’t mean squat to their experiences, they’re not yours.
Maybe they did it wrong. Maybe they didn’t really do it at all, maybe they thought they were doing it right. But they weren’t, I don’t know that. Who knows what happened with that person, it doesn’t really matter.
To be honest with you, most people try some sort of dietary change, and then give up after some time, and then say it doesn’t work, or that didn’t work for them when they really didn’t like stick to it long enough.
Or they didn’t make some minor changes or whatever. Like there’s always something we can do. And this is one thing I do with all my coaching clients is like, we always check and see how are things working? Are we getting the results that we want? Are you feeling good? Or is running getting better? How are your energy levels? Are you hungry?
Are you losing weight?
But we keep looking at all these metrics, and then we keep making minor changes to stay on plan and to keep moving in the right direction. But we don’t quit. But this is what most people do. They get to a point with their diet or whatever they’re doing. And they’re like, this isn’t working anymore, that diet doesn’t work.
And so if you internalize that and say like, oh, maybe this doesn’t work, because this one person had this one experience, and I don’t even know what they were doing. Just we got to stop doing that. Okay?
Other people’s opinions are just that – they’re their opinions, what their experiences were or what their opinions are, does not matter to you, you get to choose what you believe about yourself. Even if your spouse is like, I don’t think this is a good idea.
You know, we can really internalize that and think like, oh, maybe it’s not a good idea. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. But really, do you feel good? Are you enjoying this? Are you getting results? Are you becoming healthier? Like, then just stick with it. You know, don’t worry about their opinion, let them have their opinion, because they will share it with you.
But at the same time, you get to choose what you want to believe about yourself, period. Right? It’s on you. So people will have their opinions. You don’t have to internalize all that stuff, okay? But here’s what happens when you do internalize that stuff.
When you start to believe all the BS that people are telling you or whatever, you start to doubt yourself. You stop believing in yourself, you lose confidence. You know, you get frustrated you get worried and so what do you do when you start feeling frustrated and you start feeling worse? A lot of times you give in, you go off your plan, and then you eat a bunch of crap, you start to feel like crap.
And then you slip into these old behaviors because you’re going to start using food to feel better again, and the cycle continues. And then you’re back to where you were at square one. This is not having your own back, this is the opposite. Okay?
This is like self-sabotage stuff that we do. Okay? So what I’m saying here is that, like, you have to have your own back. And you have to just like trust in yourself, trust the process, you have to believe in yourself. And you don’t have to believe what other people are telling you. Right? Take control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, you get to choose what you believe. Isn’t that awesome? I think that’s amazing.
You get to choose what you believe people can say whatever they want, you get to choose your own beliefs about yourself. So own this, own it. Really be in control of your own beliefs, your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Take 100% ownership of your own health. Stop giving away your power to other people, you’re in control. You get to choose what you want to believe about yourself.
Okay, so this is like my number one, like, big overarching tip here today is you, you have to take ownership, and you have to be your own best supporter. Okay. Here are a few other tips for you. Tell your family, your spouse, your kids, whoever it is that’s closest to you.
Tell them that, make sure you explain to them that this is about me and not you. I’m doing this thing, I’m making these changes. I’m not going to force my plan on you, you get to do what you want. If you want to come along with me great, if not great, but this is what I’m doing. And I’m doing it for me. I’m not doing it for you. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care about your opinion.
I don’t care, you know, uh, whether or not you want to join me in this journey, but this is what I’m doing. For me. It’s not about you, you get to do whatever you want you to do you let me do me, okay. So make sure that you explain that.
And that, especially with your spouse, right, because a lot of times the spouses can just be like, they can say things that get under our skin, or they can try to pull us down to what they’re doing. They’re like, Come on, just have some french fries. Come on, let’s just get some pizza tonight. You’ve been doing great. These little things can be really subtle, but also very dangerous for us. Right?
Because then they’re starting to like influence you, you’re letting them influence you. You just have to let them know like, Listen, you do you and I’m going to do me okay? It’s not about you, it’s about me. My next tip is that you have to explain that you may be a little bit of a cranky pants at times, especially at the beginning. Okay?
Listen, I’m not gonna candy-coat here, change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. And when you’re changing your diet, and let’s say you’re used to eating a bunch of junk food and a bunch of sugar and a bunch of comfort food, all that stuff that you’ve been eating for a long time and you’re like, I’m going to stop eating the junk, I’m going to stop eating sugar.
And when you do that, it’s going to be uncomfortable, you’re going to go through a period of discomfort, okay, it’s part of the process. Like being uncomfortable is like the price you have to pay to make that change. Alright, it’s required, it’s a requirement.
So embrace the discomfort and just let them know, listen, I may be a pain in the butt here. Please understand, this is not about you, but I’m just doing something that is, you know, it’s challenging, and I’m going to feel a little uncomfortable doing it. I’m going to be embracing the discomfort and I’m going to keep going alright, you have been warned.
But just let them know it’s not about them, it’s just about you and it will pass you know, usually you know a few weeks into it, it starts to get a lot less uncomfortable.
Another tip here, make your environment work for you. And this is going to look different for different people. But you may have to go through your kitchen and get rid of the crap food that you’ve got sitting around okay. You may have to like just totally get rid of the cookies and the chips and all this stuff.
If this is not an option for you, if you’ve got somebody kids or spouse in your household that eats a lot of this stuff still and is not willing to give up some of this junk food, then put that stuff in a designated cabinet. This is just for them and you stay away from it.
Like this is a little environment hack to help us stick to our plan because every time you open the cabinet to get you to know, whatever it is you want for yourself, and you’re seeing all the junk food, you’re just going to keep getting reminded that that stuff is there.
And it’s gonna make it very difficult for you. So do your best to make your environment work for you. Right. And sometimes that’s throwing stuff away. Or sometimes it’s like just putting it into a place where you just have limited access to it. Okay.
Here’s another tip. And this one’s going to sound hard. But it’s actually really cool. It’s really, really empowering. And that is like practice, being around people being around food being around situations that are tempting for you. Say what now? Yes, I’m telling you to put yourself in situations where people are eating junk food in front of you.
And I want you to just be in those situations and do nothing. Because here’s the reality of life, you are going to be in situations like this, whether you want it or not. And if you’re trying to control for all of this, and you’re just trying to like live in some sort of bubble, where everything is just perfectly formulated around you, and everybody’s eating the right foods, and you’re never going to see tempting foods or alcohol or whatever, it’s going to be a really tough life for you.
Like, you’re just you’re going to be around these situations, whether you want to or not. So my tip is to practice being in this in these situations and do nothing. Practice being around people who are eating junk food or drinking and you’re not drinking.
Practice being around people who are eating a bunch of junk, sugar, candy, whatever it is, and don’t do it, you know. Let other people order their dessert and just watch them eat it and just like, notice what comes up for you, how are you feeling in those situations? It’s gonna feel probably a little terrible, it’s okay, embrace the discomfort, don’t do anything about it.
Because the more you do this, the more you build the skill of being in these situations without giving in to the urges and the cravings and stuff, right. And if you’re just trying to shelter yourself from these situations, and that’s how you’re going to deal with it, there’s going to be a time where you just find yourself around people who are eating dessert or drinking or something like that, and you’re just like, screw it, just give in, because you haven’t developed that skill.
So what I’m telling you is to embrace some of those situations, put yourself in those situations. You know, I wouldn’t do it like, every single day. But practice being in those situations. You know, your husband brings home pizza for him, and the kids just sit there with them and enjoy your salad while they’re eating pizza.
You’re going to smell it, it’s going to look great, that cheese is all gooey and just gonna look amazing. But just like you know, what, just be like, Yeah, that’s cool. How was your day?
And just be with the discomfort, you know, embrace the discomfort and don’t, don’t give in. And the more you do this, the easier it becomes. This is a skillset, a habit that you need to learn, okay.
And then another tip I have for you is to create your own support system, alright. So it can be very helpful to have a support system around you. And it doesn’t have to be your spouse or your immediate family members or whatever, or your mom or whoever. Like you can like have, you can sort of create your own support system. Okay.
And here’s what I mean by this. You might have some like-minded friends that are on board with you – spend more time with them. You might belong to Facebook groups, like the Running Lean community on Facebook, which is a bunch of like-minded people who support you, you might read books that support what you’re doing, or listen to podcasts that support what you’re doing.
You might follow people on social media, you might hire a coach, these are all ways of creating a support system for yourself. Because listen, you can have your own back and that’s awesome. And that’s great. Honestly, it is helpful to have supportive others around, but sometimes you just have to create it yourself.
You can’t expect other people to just magically be your support system. Okay? So create your own support system. When I get into something when I’m making a big change. Like when I was training for my Ironman, that’s a big deal, right? It’s a super challenging event and there are so many moving parts. Like when you talk about doing basically an all-day event that involves three different sports like there’s so much involved with that.
I created my own support system around that I was reading books and listening to podcasts and following people on social media and you know started to develop these friends who we would train together and talk about stuff together, and drive to different places to, to swim in open water, or go on long bike rides together. Like I just surrounded myself with my own support system, I created my own support system. And it was very, very helpful.
You know, instead of just sitting there by myself, you know, wondering, I don’t know what to do, or, you know, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, or I’m afraid of not being able to finish this thing or whatever. Like, I created a support system, and it was so helpful. So this is something I want you to do for yourself, okay, take ownership of this stuff for yourself.
And then here’s the thing, sometimes people in your life will eventually get on board with what you’re doing. Sometimes, your spouse might see what you’re doing.
They see you’re doing great, they see you’re losing weight, they see that you’re feeling better, you’re in a better mood, you have lots of energy, you know, you love running, again, you’re working out, you’re getting fit, you have this halo about you, you’re just radiating good health.
When you get to this point, some people be like, hey, I want some of that, too. And I see this a lot with spouses, especially, who aren’t very supportive at the beginning, they’re like, I want nothing to do with your stupid diet, you know, I’m not doing any of that I’m sticking to my thing over here. But once they see their spouse making all these amazing changes and feeling great and losing weight, they just are this beacon of good health and happiness.
And then a lot of times the spouses are like, Hey, um, what is it you’re doing again? They all of a sudden want some of that, okay, so this can happen. And it’s awesome when it does. But listen, that’s not the goal, the goal is not to get people on board, right?
Because if that’s your goal, if you’re expecting people to come around, eventually, you’re probably going to be disappointed. It does happen sometimes. And what I always tell people is I just say, like, be an example. Be an example for your husband, be an example for your wife, be an example for your kids, or your grandkids, or whoever it is, that’s important to you in your life. Be a good example.
And a lot of times people will come around and want what you have because they see so many positive changes in you. And this is an awesome thing. If it does happen for you, but don’t expect it. That’s the key here like it can happen, but not all the time. Okay.
So listen, the biggest takeaway here and I kind of mentioned this before is like, it doesn’t matter who’s supporting you who isn’t, you have to be your own best supporter, you have to have your own back. I want you to take 100% ownership of your own health, your own fitness, your own diet, whatever it is that you’re doing, be your own best supporter.
Remember that you control you have control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions and nothing else. Everything else that other people are doing, saying thinking, feeling whatever is on that. You get to believe what you want to believe about yourself.
Choose to believe the good things, have your own back, speak to yourself in a way that is kind and supportive, and encouraging of yourself. Because at the end of the day, it’s just you, right? This is the good news though, right? Because when you’re only relying on yourself, which you can do, then you can absolutely make so much progress.
When you’re relying on yourself and you have your own back it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world is thinking or doing or saying it doesn’t matter who’s on board and who isn’t who’s supporting and who isn’t. None of that stuff matters. What matters is that you 100% have your own back and that you are your number one supporter and always be there for you to just know that okay, you totally got this all right, that’s all I got for you today.
And if you’re looking for a little bit of help with all this, that’s what I do. I can offer the expert guidance, support encouragement, accountability, and experience you need to make this work for you. No matter what your goals no matter what your lifestyle no matter what your tastes we can make this work for you just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we can just jump on a call and see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool. All right, you guys have an amazing day 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.
When you think of discipline, what comes to mind? For some, it conjures up images of obeying rules and doling out punishment for anyone who disobeys. But when I think of discipline I think of …
Continue Reading about 82. Practicing the Art of Discipline →
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 82 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today we’re going to be talking about practicing the art of discipline. So when you think of discipline, what comes to mind, because for some people, it conjures up images of like obeying rules. And if you don’t obey the rules, there’s a punishment being doled out.
But when I think of discipline, I think of training myself to do something on a consistent basis training myself to do something day in and day out. And it’s usually something that I don’t really feel like doing, but I do it anyway. So I never think of discipline as a punishment, but rather, as a means of achieving whatever worthwhile thing that I want for myself.
So if there’s something big that you want for yourself, I’m telling you right now, there’s no like magic formula to making it easy. It just takes practicing the art of discipline to get it. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. Cool.
If you guys haven’t already checked it out, please come join us in the Facebook group, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, the group goes hand in hand with the podcast, it’s a bunch of people just like you that are cool. And that are into running and maybe want to feel better and want to get leaner and get stronger and run faster and run longer than they ever could before. And that’s what we do.
This month, we’re kind of having some fun with the dry July challenge. We’ve been kind of challenging ourselves to take a break from alcohol for the month of July. And a lot of people have been posting some really positive experiences from doing this. Because a lot of times you don’t even realize that you feel much better when you’re not doing something like drinking alcohol every day or eating sugar every day.
You know, and then you’re just like, well, I feel amazing. You know, I didn’t even know that I could feel this good. Because I’m just not used to this. So there’s nothing wrong with alcohol, alcohol is fine is drinking is awesome, but whatever. But if you’re trying to lose weight, or you know you want to improve your running performance, it may be something you want to explore cutting out. So anyway, join us over in the Facebook group and check it out. Search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us in the fun.
And here’s a quick little review that somebody posted about the podcast. So this is from Cara Lee and she says, “I only recently found this podcast, and I’m absolutely loving it. Love the podcast about stress. I’m one that’s always hated hills. But after listening to it and thinking of how to get stronger the next morning off, I went to do hill work with your voice inside my head. It was super motivating. And I went back to a few more podcast episodes. So now I’m hooked. So thanks and keep them coming.”
Thank you Kelly for posting that. And share your thoughts about the podcast. I love, love, love doing this podcast and I love when you guys tell me that it’s resonating with you. And if you want to leave a review, you can always do that on like Apple podcasts. Just go to the section where it says leave a review, tap the stars write a few words. And I so appreciate it I read all those reviews and I so appreciate it when you guys do that.
And then lastly, I’ve got a big announcement for you guys. Here’s a big update. I am opening up the Running Lean monthly coaching group starting now. So you can join now this is like something I’m just I didn’t do a lot of build-up to this I just want you to know that it is open and you can join today if you want to.
So what is the monthly coaching group? Well, it’s a group of like-minded people who are all working together to accomplish some big goals right it could be weight loss, it could be just improving your overall health and it could be becoming a more badass runner. It could be like improving your mental and emotional state so that you don’t keep doing the emotional eating and learning how to make all of these habits so that it lasts for the rest of your life.
So it’s a monthly membership program you get access to my online training materials, the weight loss training course for runners. My goal-setting course is called achieving the impossible which is how to create an extraordinary life by going after unrealistic goals. That’s super fun.
You get weekly live coaching with me. So this is a big change. I was only doing this every other week. And I’ve decided that I’m going to give more value to the group. So we’re going to start doing coaching every single week on a group zoom call. And so you’ll get personalized guidance and feedback. And you can hear other people being coached on some of the same things that you’re experiencing.
And you learn, even if you’re not getting the individual coaching if I’m not talking directly to you, hearing somebody else getting coached on a similar topic is so, so helpful. You get the support and the encouragement of people that are just like you and they’re going through the same things, you get accountability.
So we’re going to help you stay on track and help you move toward your goals. It’s a lot of fun to oh my gosh, these calls and this group is such a great group of people, oh my gosh, I do record all the coaching calls so that you’ll have access to them all on a website. And they’re all organized by month.
We’re doing something also new starting in August, we’re doing a topic of the month. So we’re going to focus all of our calls and a lot of the work that we’re going to be doing in August is going to be focused around taking a deep dive into this thought, feeling, action patterns that we have, like, how are your thought feeling action patterns keeping you stuck? And how can you start harnessing the power of your thoughts and your feelings to start getting better results in all kinds of areas of your life, you know. If you find yourself, you just can’t seem to stick to your food plan, you just can’t seem to lose the weight, you just keep getting stuck.
We’re going to talk about how to change your thoughts and feelings about this so that you can start getting unstuck, and start getting better results in your life. Okay. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and you can just sign up today, you can join us we’ve got a members only Facebook group where we’ll all be posting more information about the next group call.
So it’s going to be every Tuesday from now on every Tuesday evening is when we do these group zoom calls. So I would love love, love for you to join us. And the other thing is that I’m not going to close the group, it’s just going to be open from now on.
Now, I want you to know why I’m doing this. I did it in the past because I wanted to, you know, I open the group, maybe once a quarter. And I wanted people to kind of go through the material together and sort of learn together. But I found that a lot of people wanted to join, and they were ready to join. But I was like, well, you’ve got to wait a couple of months.
And I don’t want that I want you to join when you’re ready. If you’re ready today, I would encourage you to just take some action and join. And you can start getting some amazing results in these different places in your life. Cool. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and we’ll see you over in the Running Lean monthly coaching group.
Okay, so let’s get into this topic today, which is practicing the art of discipline. So before we get into what discipline is, I want to talk a little bit about what we typically think we need in order to accomplish something big, which is motivation, a lot of people think, oh, you know, I need to feel motivated in order to like do something I need to feel motivated in order to take action.
And a lot of people look at their lack of motivation as a reason why they don’t do something. So let’s say you’re trying to stick to your food plan, and you just don’t feel like it. It’s like I’m not motivated to stick to my food plan. So that’s why I didn’t do it. And I’m going to explain a little bit, you know, why the motivation seems to like fade away.
But this is where discipline is going to trump motivation, like every single time, right? But what is motivation? So the definition of motivation is the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. So it’s like a desire and a willingness to do something, right. It’s a, it’s a desire and willingness to take action. Right?
Now, here’s what here’s what’s not the definition of motivation. Motivation is not something that is external. It’s not something that’s outside of you. Motivation is not something that gets bestowed upon you. Motivation is an emotion, it’s a feeling. It’s created within you. You create motivation by your thoughts.
Because if it’s an emotion, it’s created by your thoughts 100% of the time. And motivation is awesome and it can get you really, it can help you to take action. feeling motivated will get you into action, for sure. It’s a driving force. Feeling motivated can definitely help you to do something that maybe you don’t necessarily feel like doing.
Okay, but what happens when the motivation sort of fades away? What happens when you don’t feel like doing something? You know, what happens when you are all excited about losing weight? And so you, you know, maybe you get to change a food plan, you know, maybe you hire a coach, you know, maybe you’re like all gung ho about, you know what, what the future holds for you, and you’re super excited, and you’re like, on track, and you’re like, super motivated, and you’ve got this energy around you and, and you’re excited.
But what happens after a couple of weeks of doing this, and, and that motivation and that excitement, and that energy sort of fades away, then what do you do? Like, how do you keep going? You know, motivation is great for getting you started and getting you into action. But then how do you keep going when you don’t feel like it?
And this is where discipline comes into play. Because when your motivation is gone, you need something else to keep you going. And think about this, like people joining a gym in January, like how many people are motivated and excited to join a gym in January, right? Millions of people, you know, the gyms are so packed in January and February, but by March, I’m telling you, they’re like empty again, there’s like, you know, it’s like, all these people, their motivation went away.
And they were like, yeah, just don’t feel like doing this anymore. And so what happens when that, you know, motivation is no longer there? Well, you need something stronger to keep you going, you need something that’s going to keep you going for the long haul. And this is where we need discipline, we need to practice discipline.
So what is discipline? Well, discipline is training oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. So this is like I love this definition, by the way, training yourself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. Discipline is what creates what it takes to create new habits, right?
Discipline is doing something, even when you don’t feel like it. Discipline means you’re suiting up and showing up every single day, no matter what. So motivation might be that thing that gets you started. But discipline is the thing that’s going to keep you going.
So you might have been motivated when you signed up for that marathon. But then the training started, you’re gonna need some discipline to get you through the months of training, especially if you’re training in any kind of, you know, sub-optimal weather like so around here, this part of the country, if you’re training for a spring marathon, you’re doing all your training in the winter, and it’s dark, and it’s cold, and it’s windy, and it kinda can suck.
And then if you’re training for a fall marathon, guess what, it’s all the opposite. It’s sunny and hot and humid. And it sucks, like, so, motivation is not going to be there, I promise you, at some point, during that marathon training, you’re going to need to get into practicing discipline, or you’re just not going to make it through there through the training.
And you might be motivated when you made the decision to lose weight. So you may have, you know, gotten, you know, finally ready to drop the 40 pounds or whatever you’ve been carrying around and you’re like, you know what, I am finally going to do this for myself and I’m motivated and excited and you’ve got this energy.
And then after a few weeks, you know, you’re just like sticking with this food plan, you’re just not motivated anymore. Discipline is going to keep you on that food plan when you don’t feel like it. Okay? Accomplishing anything worthwhile is going to require practicing the art of discipline, there’s just no other way around it.
Discipline is not the fun and sexy and exciting stuff. Discipline means you’re doing the boring stuff over and over and over again, day in and day out. It’s like discipline is like getting up early, every single day so you can hit the gym and work out. Discipline means like, you know, whatever the run is on your schedule for today just doing it. Right.
It may not be fun. It may not be what you feel like doing but you do it anyway. Discipline is sticking to that food plan. Even though it’s not exciting. Even the food is kind of like it’s a little boring. It’s okay. It means sticking to it anyway. And listen, I totally get that discipline is not easy. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unfamiliar and just by the nature of it, like, you’re not gonna feel like doing it, you’re not gonna feel like sticking with it.
But this is the work of discipline, practicing the art of discipline is the work that you have to do. So I want to like challenge you to stop looking outside of yourself for motivation, before you do something, stop waiting to feel motivated before you take action. Because in the grand scheme of things, discipline beats motivation every single time. And here’s something cool. Like when you practice discipline when you get disciplined, and you do something, even though you don’t feel like doing it, oftentimes, just the act of doing, getting out there, and doing the thing will create a ton of motivation for you.
So like, when you don’t feel like running when you’re not motivated to run, and you go head out the door anyway, you will often get super motivated to keep going. So you get out there and you run a mile or so and you’re like, I do not feel like doing this. But then after a mile and a half, two miles, you’re like, you know, I’m feeling pretty good. After three miles, you’re like, you know, I’m actually pretty pumped about this.
People tell me this all the time. They’re like, you know what, Patrick, I didn’t feel like running. But then I did it. Anyway, I headed out the door. And I had like, the most amazing run, I hit a PR for my 5k time or I just had this amazing long run. And they feel super pumped about themselves. And they feel super motivated. That motivation was not there.
Before they headed out the door, they created that motivation, from discipline from being disciplined. Right, so you create the motivation by taking the action. Okay, I love this, I love this idea. Because it means that you have more control and more power.
Like you don’t have to just feel a certain way in order to like, get amazing results. Here’s an example. Like, I did not feel like lifting weights yesterday, I’ve been a little under the weather, I’ve got a little bug of something, you know, a little sore throat, I’ve been taking my temperature, I don’t have a fever or anything like that.
But I just feel like I’ve been out in the public more, I think it’s, you know, I just got some bug or something, you know, so I’m just feeling a little under the weather. So I hit the gym yesterday. And I did not feel like lifting weights, I was a little rundown, a little achy. And I was just like, I do not want to do this. And I told my trainer, Chris, I was like, dude, I just feel terrible today. So I’m just gonna, like take it easy, you know, when I was kind of giving myself an out.
And so I found myself putting a bunch of weight on the bar to do some back squats. And actually had a back squat PR yesterday, and I tied my deadlift PR yesterday. And I have to tell you that I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that. And for whatever reason, I just was like, let’s see what we can do. And I did it.
And I have to tell you like after I hit those two like PRs, I was so motivated, it was super motivating. I felt amazing. And the rest of my workout was so good. And I felt so proud of myself for sticking with it. And for showing up and doing what was hard. That’s the hard stuff, you guys, it’s not easy.
You know, maybe you’re like part of our dry July challenge in the Facebook group. And maybe you’re not drinking right now. And I know that this is not easy to do. Like if you’re in the habit of drinking on a regular basis, and then you decide you’re going to like take 30 days off or, you know, just even a few weeks or whatever. Like that could be very challenging, right.
But, you know, let’s say you, you decide you’re just going to skip that after-work happy hour on Friday, you know, and you’re not motivated to do this at all. You’re not going to feel like this is a good idea in the moment. Okay? But because you’re practicing the art of discipline, you say no.
And you see your friends leave and they all go hit the bar. And what you do is you say no, and you go home and you get in a nice run instead. Or maybe you hit the gym. Or maybe you just spend some time playing with your kids. And then I promise you, you’re going to feel something, you’re going to feel accomplished.
You’re going to feel a sense of pride in yourself. You’re going to gain confidence, you’re going to build trust with yourself, and this feeling that you have is just going to it’s going to feel so amazing and so motivating to keep you going back and keep you doing that and keep you staying on your plan.
And you’re gonna feel so good about yourself. Motivation is a feeling it’s an emotion it’s created by our thoughts. Right, discipline is taking action despite how you think and feel despite what your thoughts and feelings are in that moment. You may not think what you’re about to do is a good idea. It may seem like a dumb idea to not go to the bar with your friends, it may seem like you’re missing out on something, you may feel like, you know, left out, you know, you may feel sad, or you may feel, you know, frustrated by that.
And you’re taking action, despite those thoughts and despite those feelings, this is kind of cool. I mean, this is powerful, powerful stuff. And I want you to think about it this way, too. You are already practicing discipline in other areas of your life. And it’s funny because I hear people say, like, well, I’m in disciplined in this area over here, but I just can’t be disciplined in this area of my life.
So for example, like, I’m sure there’s probably been a time where you didn’t feel like going to work, you get up in the morning, and you’re like, I do not feel like going to work today. But you get up, you brush your teeth, you put your clothes on, you take a shower, whatever you do, get in your car, you drive to work, and you do it no matter what.
Or maybe you don’t feel like walking your dog every day at 4:30 in the morning, you know, whatever. But there you are out there in the cold walking the dog. And maybe you don’t feel like taking your kids to soccer practice again. But there you are doing it. And so you might argue, well, Patrick, the stakes are high, you know, with these things like you can’t lose your job, you can’t have poop on the carpet, you know, you can’t let your kids grow up to be mediocre soccer players. Think that’s funny. I’m glad I cracked myself up.
Because, I mean, there’s nobody else here. So it’s just me. You know, and I would argue that your health and your well-being and your fitness are pretty high stakes too. And I say that, if it isn’t for you, it should be. Because if you don’t have that, like what else do you have, you know, you’re not going to be there for your kids and your dog and your family and things like that, right?
So you’re already practicing this in other areas of your life, I just want you to see that. And understand that you can take that same mentality of like, I have to show up to my job, the stakes are high to your health and fitness. You know, you can absolutely apply those same principles here. Okay.
So instead of waiting to be, you know, struck with motivation, instead of waiting to be bestowed with motivation, practice the art of discipline. And I call it an art because it isn’t like an art form is something that you create, and you get to make it your own, you get to do it, however, you want to do it. You get to decide what discipline looks like for you. And then you get to practice it.
And just like an artist has to practice their craft to get better at it. You have to practice discipline to get better at it. And I understand this, it doesn’t come naturally. Our natural instinct is not to be disciplined, our natural instinct is to seek comfort. And discipline is oftentimes the opposite of that it’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good sometimes. And that’s okay. Because here’s the thing, the more you practice it, the easier it becomes, the more you practice it, the better you get at it, just like anything else in your life.
Also, the art of discipline is making tiny decisions. It’s making little choices consistently over time. Every huge success is really just a series of small decisions that are made consistently, every single day. And all these tiny little actions, all these tiny things that you do all these tiny choices that you make, they can add up to something huge, something big, powerful.
I heard the saying that an ant can eat an elephant, one teeny tiny bite at a time. But this requires discipline. It’s not going to happen quickly. Motivation won’t get you there. So what is your elephant? What’s the big, seemingly impossible goal that you want for yourself? What is it that you want to become? That seems so huge?
It’s just like, there’s no way you could ever do it? And how can you take one teeny tiny bite of that today? And then what can you do tomorrow? And then the next day and so on? What little tiny decisions are you making in this moment right now? Can you lace up your running shoes and head out the door? Even though you don’t feel like it? Can you say no to the pizza that your husband brought home for dinner? Because yeah, that’s not part of your plan.
Can you skip the glass of wine after dinner because you said you weren’t drinking? Like I can say with almost certainty that you will not feel like doing these things you will not feel like running, you will not feel like saying no to the pizza. I mean, it’s pizza. Come on, right? You’re not gonna feel like saying no to the glass of wine. But can you do them anyway? Because that’s what discipline looks like.
Things just don’t happen, right, you make things happen. And in order to make things happen, you have to take action, and taking action requires discipline. And like I said before when you practice this, you get good at it, it becomes easier. There’s another side to this too, like, when you practice slacking off, you get good at that too. slagging off can be an art form, too.
You know, people get really creative and really fanciful with the excuses and reasons why they didn’t do what they said they’re going to do, you know, things are crazy at work, right now, the kids are out of school, you know, so you know, that means or it’s hot this time of the year, it’s cold this time of the year, whatever.
Like, we can get really fanciful and creative with all these excuses. And, and we’re good at this already, we’re good at coming up with excuses for not to do something. What if you instead practiced the opposite, you know, and took a different approach? Instead of practicing excuse as you practiced doing, you practiced taking action, even when the motivation wasn’t there, even when you didn’t feel like it.
So you got some work to do this week, I want you to practice the art of discipline and however that looks for you. Like, maybe you just set your alarm earlier, and you get your butt out of bed. You know, maybe you stick to that running schedule, you lace up your running shoes, and you head out the door. Maybe it’s saying no to that party after work and happy hour and hitting the gym instead. Don’t wait to feel motivated before taking action. Create those feelings of motivation by taking action, even when you don’t feel like it. Okay?
This is all about doing stuff. This is about taking action. So it’s not enough to just listen to this podcast and say, hey, cool stuff, bro. I get it. No, you got to do it. You got to practice it, nothing changes if nothing changes. So I want you to pick something. Pick one thing that you want to be disciplined about this week and stick to it. Do it even though you don’t feel like it, practice it.
And then jump into our Facebook group and post your results. Let’s talk about it. I would love to hear what you’re practicing this week. Because we’re there to support you. We’re here to help you and encourage you. And you know, just you know, celebrate you when you do stick to it for this week. Okay, cool.
You totally got this, you guys. I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
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