Emotional Eating

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is running lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 238, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, should you restrict certain foods when it comes to changing your diet in order to lose weight or maybe just feel healthier? Most people feel like whatever they do is too restrictive. So they feel like you should be able to eat anything you want, as long as you don’t overdo it. And most people also feel that restricting any amount of food is really not sustainable long term.

So what’s the answer here? Should you restrict certain foods or not? That’s the big question I’m going to answer today in this episode of the running lean podcast. But first, if you want to get leaner, if you want to get stronger, if you want to run faster longer, you need to change some things. Doing the same things is not going to get you different results. Nothing changes if nothing changes, I think we all understand this, right? But the real secret here is doing these new things, making these changes and making them doing them consistently.

If you decide you want to get stronger, you can’t just go to the gym once a month. If you want to get faster, you can’t do speed training one time. You need to adopt new behaviors, and you need to do them consistently. And this is where coaching comes into play, because with coaching, it really helps you to stay on track. It helps you to have somebody there that’s kind of guiding you, yes, that’s giving you the information that you need, that’s telling you what to do, that’s guiding you forward, that’s walking you through things step by step, but also to make sure that you’re staying on track. This was my problem.

I could never make much progress because I couldn’t stay on track for very long. But once I got a coach, everything changed for me. I had somebody that was holding me accountable, calling me out when I started slipping back into old behaviors, and somebody that’s really never, ever letting me quit, that was an awesome part of having a coach. So if you’re ready to start doing some things differently, if you’re ready to start doing some different things consistently, and you want to make sure that you never, ever quit, let’s get you there. Just go to my website, runningleancoach.com, click on work with me, and I will show you how to stay on track, how to be consistent, and how to become the most badass version of yourself yet.

Cool. Yeah, let’s do this. Okay. So what are we talking about today? Should you restrict certain foods? So the reason that I want to talk about this today is because this is kind of a big hot topic in the field of nutrition management, weight management, diets, diet culture, whatever. And there are basically two camps out there with two main ideas.

So there’s one camp who says you need to stick to a certain diet. And it’s usually whatever one they adhere to, and a lot of times it has to do with a book that they wrote that they want to sell you, okay? But basically it’s like you need to stick to a certain diet, Mediterranean, keto, vegan, carnivore. It doesn’t really matter what it is. There’s just some diet. This is the way to do it. This is it. This is the healthiest way to go. And you have to stick to this. And then that’s their whole thing. Like you cannot deviate from this diet. You have to do this.

Then there’s the other camp who says you should never restrict any foods. You should be able to eat all the foods that you want. Don’t ever deny yourself the foods that you love. Just make sure you do all these foods in moderation, right? And I’m going to get into both of these approaches.

I’m going to tell you kind of what I think is good and bad about each one, and I’m also, today, I’m also going to share my approach, which is a little bit different, but this is the approach that I live my life by, and the one that I recommend to all of my coaching clients as well. But while you’re listening to this episode, I want you to be thinking about yourself and thinking about your own life, and think about how these different approaches that I’m going to be talking about, how do they sit with you? How do you feel about them? How do they make you feel and then think about which of these approaches might be something that you could do long term.

Okay, again, when we talk about making changes like this, it can’t be something you do temporarily. Be something you do every now and then. It has to be something that you can commit to for life. So what can you commit to for life? So just be thinking about those things like, what, what are these different approaches mean to you? How do they make you feel? How do they sit with you? And which feels like it’s sustainable for you? Okay? So just be thinking about that.

Okay. So, first approach I want to talk about is that you have to stick to this certain diet no matter what. And so that’s like the people who are like, all carnivore, you know, like, all you have to do is just eat meat and eggs, and that’s it. Just don’t eat anything else. Or vegan, like, you just have to never eat any animal products. You just stick with plant based stuff. And that’s the way to go, or vegetarian, or the Mediterranean diet, or the south peach diet, or the, I don’t know, the all cabbage diet, whatever it is.

What I like about these approaches is that a lot of times there is some good data, some good studies that they’ve done, some science based studies that support some of the data here. Now what’s interesting is that a lot of the science based studies will contradict each other.

So people will say, Oh, you know, all these people lost a ton of weight and got much healthier and are at lower risk of all these diseases when they went to a totally plant based diet, so no animal products whatsoever. Then there’ll be all these other studies that say, oh, all these other people, they lost weight, they feel better, they’re much healthier. All their markers have improved. They’re at lower risk of all these illnesses, and they went to the all meat diet. That’s like, which of these is right, you know, are they both right? Are they both wrong? I don’t know, but, but a lot of times we can look at data and science and say that, you know, for the most part, for most people anyway, that some of these approaches have some good data behind them.

So I like that. One thing I really like about adhering to some sort of a diet is that you have very clear guidelines to follow. You know, it makes it very simple for you, because you don’t have to make all these decisions yourself. You can just say, like, look at a list online, or something that says, here’s the foods you can eat and here’s the foods you need to avoid. You know, if you want to do paleo, just stay away from sugar and grains and dairy or whatever it is, you know, and you’d be like, Okay, that’s easy to follow, you know, if you do go online, another thing I like about adhering to a diet is that there are, there are tons of information about each of these diets available online.

So you can get into groups where you can chat with other people about this stuff. You can look up all kinds of different articles, listen to podcasts. So there’s tons of information out there about all these different diets, and there’s lots of success stories about all these diets. A lot of people do really well when they eat, you know, this diet or that one? And you know what? Some people just like being told what to do, and they like not having to make decisions. And they just want somebody to tell them, just do this, and that’ll work for you, and they feel good, and that works for them. Okay? So that’s kind of what I like about the sticking to a certain diet approach.

Okay, what I don’t like is that these diets are all pretty restrictive, or at least most of them are pretty restrictive. For example, we look at, you know, vegan, and I was vegan for 10 years, so I’m not slamming veganism, I’m just saying that it’s kind of extreme, because you’re avoiding all animal products, including things like honey. So no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no honey, you know, and that can be tough for some people because it is very restrictive, and some people don’t like this. Some people just don’t want to live their life that way. Some people like it. They like the restrictive quality, and they do really well with that. But some people do not like that restrictive quality.

Another reason why I don’t like completely restricting certain foods is that it can lead to, in some people, it can lead to disordered eating. And this is one thing you’ll see out there when you start looking up different diets and their effectiveness and stuff like that, you’ll see that this one topic keeps coming up over and over again, and it’s that any type of restricted eating can lead to eating disorders or disordered eating. And I just have to say that that is not true for everyone.

Okay, so I don’t want you to think that if you are following some kind of diet, like paleo or something like that, that you’re doing some sort of disordered eating. You’re not but some people that are more susceptible to that kind of thing, or have had eating disorders in the past, or things like that, you got to be careful with how you’re restricting food. So that’s just something that I don’t really like the restrictive nature of. Some of these approaches, especially when they’re like, you can never eat sugar again in your life.

You know, is that really? Is that really, you know, is that really going to happen? Are you really going to adhere to that? Like, I don’t know, also, each one of these diets, like I was saying, there’s studies that’ll show, like, oh, this, this will help cure cancer, and this one, you know, I don’t know, I’m making that up, but they give you all these claims, right? But not one of these diets works for everyone, right? They’re all different, like, not everybody responds the same way to eating certain foods, right? So you just have to accept this as part of the deal here. And so if there’s a certain diet that you’re, you know, following, and it’s not working for you, try a different one. Maybe that’ll work better for you.

But all these food influencers out there, or people that are selling their books or whatever it is, they’re claiming that their diet, this one way of doing things, is superior to all the other ways of doing things. And of course, the other person that’s on the other end of that is saying the exact same thing. So who’s right? Like, I don’t know, different people respond differently to different diets. We just have to accept that this is part of it. Okay?

So these, these diet approaches, you know, there are some things I like about it. You know, they’re pretty clear, pretty simple to follow a lot of times. There’s some good science behind it, a lot of information out there, but at the same time, they can be very restrictive, and a lot of people do not respond well to that. Okay.

The second approach is this approach that a lot of dietitians out there, almost every dietician, especially if they are A and D certified dietitians. So that means that they’ve been certified through the American the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. So A and D, they recommend this approach, which is, you should never restrict any foods, right? All foods in moderation. That is their mantra. All foods in moderation. And you have to understand that dietitians, they are funded by the big food industry, even brands like PepsiCo and Mars, right Pepsi and then Mars, who makes all the candy bars and stuff like that their advice is biased, in my opinion. You know, just because they have, they are, they’re funded by big food industry, and they have a certain agenda that they’re taught to pass on. And one of them is this, all foods in moderation.

And I think this approach does have its benefits, like for most people, they do consider this approach sustainable, right? Because it’s not restrictive at all, like you can eat anything you want, just be, you know, moderate your food intake. You know, be mindful about what you’re eating. People who don’t restrict foods, they’re less likely to develop like disordered eating, right?

And again, this is not to say that everyone who restricts Foods has some sort of eating disorder, right, but for some people that are more prone to it, you know, just allowing whatever foods. You know it’s fine. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing here. You can just eat whatever you like. Doesn’t matter. You’re not following any guidelines at all. You just get to eat whatever you want.

What I don’t like about this approach is that, again, it doesn’t work for everyone for a lot of reasons, like all foods in moderation. Let’s talk about that for a minute. This idea is great in theory, but for a lot of people, and I’m one of these people, certain foods I have a really hard time moderating, especially when we start talking about hyper palatable foods.

So these are foods that are designed to make you feel really good. They taste amazing. They light up your pleasure centers like crazy, and they make you crave more of those foods. They’re very addictive in nature. They’re very hard to moderate. So hyper palatable foods, and usually these are foods that are loaded with sugar, that are a lot of times Ultra processed foods. These foods hijack your hunger signals. They make you more hungry for more of those types of foods. They make you crave more of those types of foods, very, very difficult to moderate, hyper palatable foods. So to say all foods in moderation, it’s a great theory, but it doesn’t work for a lot of people, and for some people, they eat these foods, and it leads to binging behavior, which is also a disordered type of eating, right?

So the idea behind all foods in moderation is good, the execution of it is typically pretty, pretty poor, because they’re not teaching people how to moderate their food intake. They’re not teaching people how to change their thinking. Most of us have very well developed thought patterns, thought feeling, action patterns around food. And in order to moderate our food intake, you have to learn how to change these patterns. And no one is teaching you how to do this. They’re just saying moderation. Just moderate your food. Eat in moderation. Eat whatever you want, but eat it in moderation.

So I’ve got a big problem with that part of it. And if moderating food was that simple, we wouldn’t have this obesity epidemic in this country. So I think all that advice of like all foods in moderation doesn’t work for everybody, and I think it is one of those things where it’s a little bit irresponsible because we’re not helping people deal with the thoughts and feelings they have around food, or how to deal with their own own emotions and things like that.

You know, another thing that I don’t really like about this approach is that there are some foods that affect people profoundly, you know, like sugar, for example. For some people, sugar can really dramatically affect people and put them into this place where they’re pre diabetic or diabetic, you know, high blood sugar can be a real problem. And I think saying, like, oh, even though you’re diabetic, you can still eat a bunch of sugar. I don’t think that’s responsible either.

Okay, so I have a few problems with this approach. Okay, so I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about my approach. So we’ve talked about restricting foods, you know, forever, like, here’s the diet you’re going to stick to be a vegan, or whatever it is, forever, or just eat whatever you want. Here’s my approach. I think this is something that we can all sort of relate to, which is, you need to figure out what works best for you. You know, I’ve talked about this before, right? I do suggest at the beginning of the process here, especially if you’re somebody who is trying to change your relationship with food, you’re trying to lose weight, I do suggest that we practice some food restriction for a period of time, let’s say 30 days or so, to get your body off of the sugar and the and the highly processed foods.

We got to give your body some time, your body and your brain, some time to detox and to get out of this addictive tendencies, you know, around food, you got to get you starting to get used to eating real food, not just food that hijacks your hunger signals that makes you super hungry all the time. We need to get your body burning fat, so there’s a period, yeah, of a little bit of restriction at the beginning. So we kind of lower the carbohydrate intake. You know, with this may be 30 or 60 days, depending on where you are with things or what your goals are.

But what’s different here is that this restriction is temporary, like, we’re trying to reset your body back to normal, and then we can reintroduce some of these foods later, we can even, like, you know, I also suggest taking a break from alcohol too, because it’s it’s also very addictive and has a tendency to keep you from burning fat and makes it hard to lose weight if you’re trying to lose weight. So maybe we take a break from alcohol as well, but after some period of time, we can even reintroduce alcohol back into the mix, right? If that’s something that you want for yourself, right?

So where, where I’m different though, from these other approaches is that I want you to learn how to be more mindful about the foods that you eat. So it’s not about total restriction forever, and it’s not about, you know, all foods in moderation either, it’s, you know, it’s not about eating whatever you want whenever you want, either, okay, but it’s about learning how to manage your mind around food.

So for most of us, we’ve, like, taught ourselves all these lessons around food for the last 30, 40, 50 years. Like we can use food as a great emotional management tool, you know, if I’m stressed, if I’m tired, if I’m bored, we use food and it works for us, you know. Or we use food as a reward, like I did something good this week. I had a really hard day at work. I turn in that presentation, or had a really long run, and I’m going to reward myself with a bunch of junk food. Or, you know, I can’t have fun unless I’m eating X, Y and Z, like, I’m going to go out with my friends, and I have to order the burger with the glazed donuts, because that’s the thing they have at this restaurant, the glazed donuts, or the buns for the burger, whatever it is, right?

I just heard about a burger here locally that has glazed donuts as buns. So hilarious. But we have these well conceived and well established lessons that we’ve taught ourselves around food. We use it as an emotional management tools reward or, you know, we have to eat junk food in order to have fun.

But we need to take a different approach. We want to be mindful about what we’re eating. And being mindful about what we’re eating is something where it sounds, you know, it sounds easy. It’s not easy, right? Especially if you’re eating highly palatable foods that are loaded with sugar, like these foods make you crave more of those foods. It really requires a shift in your thinking.

So this is where we have to really dig into the mindset, and we have to change our thinking. And this is something that neither one of these other approaches are really talking about. You know, if you want to, if you want to moderate your food intake, especially the hyper palatable foods, you got to learn how to deal with your emotions if you want to stop the, like, emotional eating. You know, if you want to stop eating as a reward, you got to learn other ways of rewarding yourself that don’t involve eating a bunch of junk food, right?

So what I’m talking about here is a more sensible approach. We need to learn how to take back control of our eating. We never want to feel like we’re on autopilot, like we’re out of control. We want to be intentional about and mindful about the foods that we eat, foods they affect us profoundly. You know, they can fuel our athletic endeavors. Food can provide sustenance and all the nutrition that we need, but food can be harmful to us. Can’t forget that not all foods are awesome, you know? And there’s issues out there, especially when we’re talking about these highly palatable foods, hyper palatable foods, highly processed foods.

The problem with these foods is that it’s all about the marketing. They’re just trying to sell more of this food. So they market this stuff to make it seem like it’s amazing. A lot of these foods are void of actual nutrients. So they’re actually not good for you. They’re bad for you. They’re loaded with artificial ingredients, artificial flavorings, artificial sweeteners. A lot of these foods have been proven to cause long term health issues. They’re designed to make you crave more and more of the foods, so that you become addicted to them, so that you buy more because the food companies don’t care about your health. They don’t care if you’re healthy and happy and feeling good. They don’t care if you’re overweight. They just want to make more money. They want to sell you more food.

High profits drive cheap ingredients, poor quality, addiction and repeat customers, not health. We are the sickest society to ever live in the history of the world, right here, right now, in 2024 and all the stuff we’re doing is clearly not working. I recently came across this fascinating study in the journal Lancet, and it says that the number one killer of human beings on Earth right now is no longer heart disease or cancer, but the foods that we are eating mainly because the foods that we’re eating are causing all of these other killer diseases, you know.

So what we eat, it really does matter, but we have to find a balance, like you have to do what feels right for you. You don’t have to listen to anyone else. You need to kind of trust your own instincts. And what I’m trying to tell you to do here is get off the highly palatable foods, eat mostly whole foods, real food, food that still looks like food, food that our ancestors would recognize as food. And then you got to learn how to manage your mind.

You have to adopt a mindset that is intentional and mindful about the foods that you eat. And yes, you do have to do this for life. This is not a short term thing. This requires a shift in your identity, to someone who eats healthy like 90% of the time, and someone who can indulge a little bit here and there, but this is the approach that I take.

This is what I see as the most sustainable. This is the approach that I work on with all of my clients. I want to get them into this place where they eat real food most of the time. We can occasionally have that little indulgence here there, eat the pizza, eat the ice cream, fine, whatever. But then we’re back on track again. But that is what’s sustainable. What’s not sustainable is the all or nothing approach.

You know, all foods all the time and are super restrictive all the time. So what I do, like 90% of the time I’m eating whole foods. I’m eating meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, dairy, nuts, seeds, that’s it. There’s no sugar, there’s no junk food, there’s no fried food, like, 90% of the time I’m eating super clean food. 10% of the time, 10% by the way, works out to, like, maybe a meal per week, or something like that. I might eat some pizza or some ice cream or some bread, but I probably don’t do all those things at once, you know, like, I try to pick one thing that I’ll do.

You know, if I go out, going to go, you know, play some trivia or something, one night, I might have some pizza. And that’s the one time I do that for the week. And I really limit the amount of grains that I eat, the amount of sugar that I eat, I really do. And then occasionally, I will do a 30 day stint or so where I take a reset, where I might avoid all sugar, all grains for 30 days. I just won’t do any of that stuff. I won’t eat any pizza, no ice cream, nothing like that. And this is if I’m feeling like I’m gaining some fat weight, or feeling a little puffy, or just not feeling as good as I know that I can feel, then I’ll just take a reset.

So I’ve developed a way of eating, for me, that works beautifully. It’s not all or nothing. It’s not super restrictive, but it’s not eat all the foods all the time, either. And you know what? It changes sometimes, and this is important too, like sometimes I do that stint where I’ll cut out all dairy, or cut out all sugar, or all grains or whatever. And I think one of the big mistakes that most people make when they set out to change their diet, their lifestyle, they want to lose weight, whatever it is that they think that they have to do the same thing forever. You know, all I committed to, you know, being a vegan, so I got to do this forever.

You got to figure out what works for you, and then you have to allow yourself to change things up if it stops working for you, or if you want to work differently. You know that’s what sustainability really looks like. Find something that works for you, stick with it pretty much. And then if you need to change something, change something. You got to do what works for you, right? Don’t hold on to some methodology forever, no matter what. I did this when I was plant based, I was plant based for like, 10 years, and I was doing great for a while, but then I really started feeling like crap. I was gaining a lot of weight, and I kind of felt stuck because I wouldn’t change anything, because I was like, this is who I am. This is what I do. I’m this vegan guy, you know, and you know what? That’s dumb, like, I know that now that I could change at any time, but I wasn’t willing to let go of this ideology around the foods I was eating, because it had become such a part of my identity. I had to let go of that if I wanted to feel better and get healthier and lose weight and all that other stuff, right?

So what sustainability looks like is finding something that feels good for you, that you feel in integrity with. And you know what? Some people like sticking to that plant based diet, or to the, you know, all meat diet or or doing all foods in moderation, whatever. And if that works for you, beautiful, do that. That feels good for you, and that is a long term solution for you. Do that. The real answer here is that there isn’t an answer that is the same for everybody. You got to sort of figure this out.

That’s why I do coaching, and I don’t write a book and say, here’s how you’re gonna you know, here’s the foods you’re gonna eat, because it doesn’t work that way. We all have different ways of approaching this stuff, and it’s fine. It’s completely fine that we do. The important thing is, is that what you’re doing feels good for you. It’s healthy for you, it works for you, and it is sustainable for you.

Cool, okay, you guys got this, I know you do. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.