Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you want to lose weight and you’re finding it difficult - maybe you’ve hit a plateau and can’t seem to get the weight moving again - this episode is for you. Losing weight is never a linear …
Continue Reading about 248. How Do I Know if I’m Overeating? →
When it comes to changing your diet in order to lose weight or just be healthier, most people feel like whatever they do is too restrictive. They feel like you should be able to eat anything you …
Continue Reading about 238. Should You Restrict Certain Foods? →
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.
There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by health and fitness “experts.” One in particular that has stood out to me lately goes something like, “Take a few days each …
Continue Reading about 223. The Problem with Eating Whatever You Want →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 223, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today the problem with eating whatever you want. There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by quote unquote, like health and fitness experts.
One in particular that has kind of stood out to me lately goes something like this, take a few days each week and go crazy, eat whatever you want. You can’t be too restrictive with your diet. So I’ve done a lot of thinking about this idea. In fact, I’ve even tried it for a while I’m gonna talk about that later.
I’ve learned a lot about how this principle works, why it works, why it doesn’t work, mostly why it doesn’t work. And I’m going to share my thoughts with you about that today. So in this episode, I’m going to explain the problem with eating whatever you want, and offer maybe a better way to do things.
But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you. You want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster. And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you.
I also want you to know that I am here to help you get there. Yes, I know I’m here talking to you on the podcast, I’m sharing all this information with you. And if you’re listening, awesome, you’re going to learn a lot. I listen to all sorts of podcasts and audiobooks. And I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.
But when it comes to the practical application of all that knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track. I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life, who have helped me to become who I am today.
I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business, my mindset has never been better. These amazing coaches helped me with all of that, in fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach myself.
Okay, so for you, the one listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge, but when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me, okay, but find somebody to show you the way to help you to apply all of this knowledge that you’re gaining to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get better results and faster than you ever could on your own.
Okay, and if you are interested in working with me, awesome, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
All right, let’s talk about the problem with eating whatever you want. So there’s a trend out there. I’m starting to notice in the health and fitness industry, this has been going on for a while that basically says this every now and then you should be able to eat whatever you want, and it should be fine.
And I’m not diametrically opposed to this idea. Okay, I want to start out by saying that. So some people, they say, you know, just follow the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you’re eating healthy, then 20% of the time, you can do anything you want, and it’s totally fine. And I’m not even completely opposed to this concept. But I think if we’re doing a 20 around food, it might be a little too much of eating whatever you want.
Okay, so I did a little bit of math. And if you eat three times a day, for seven days, that’s 21 meals a week. Okay. So 20% 21 is 4.2 meals a week, where you get to eat anything you want. To me, that seems like a lot. Okay.
Then there’s something like Tim Ferris’ slow carb diet. So he has this thing called the slow carb diet. It’s from his book, The Four Hour Body, great book, by the way, a lot of good information in there.
And he has this kind of diet plan in there that says you know, just keep the carbs low. You know, don’t eat anything white, essentially. And there’s some interpretation as to what is considered white. It’s kind of like no sugar, no flour, no dairy, essentially. And you want to do that like six days a week, okay.
And then one day a week for the whole day, you should eat whatever you want. Literally eat anything, you can eat five pizzas, a dozen donuts at a time, ice cream at every meal. And the people that follow this kind of diet, I guess you could call it a diet usually have this one cheat day, whatever you want to call it.
They do this on Saturdays, and they’ve nicknamed it Fatterday. Because you gained like five pounds every Saturday. So the principle is, you know, one day a week, you get to do whatever you want. And people go crazy on this day. And I actually tried this a year or so ago I did this as an experiment to see, you know, what would happen to me, if I took on this all you can eat anything goes one day a week sort of mentality.
Okay, so I ate you know, I would eat doughnuts and pastries in the morning with coffee like and I don’t ever eat in the morning, I was eating french toast and pancakes for lunch, pizza for dinner. And then the most decadent ice cream I could find. Sometimes they get ice cream that’s like low carb ice cream that doesn’t have sugar in it.
But in this case, I was looking for what has the most fat and the most sugar like I was just going crazy. And I didn’t do this for too long. I don’t know, maybe a few weeks to a month, something like that. Because I have to tell you, that Saturday was amazing, like because I just was binging like crazy.
But I felt like total garbage for like five days afterwards. And on that one day, I would gain a bunch of weight. And it took like five days before that weight would come off again. And I would come back to normal. You know, just think about that.
Like every week, you’re doing something that is so bad for you really and makes you feel so terrible that it takes you like four or five days to just get back to normal again. Okay. So that was one problem with that.
Another problem with it was that I found myself counting the hours until Saturday, I was starting to like fantasize about food and all the junk food that I was going to eat and how many glazed doughnuts I could eat at once. And you know what kind of pizza I was going to be eating and buying ice cream. So I would have it ready.
And you know, because I’ve been avoiding all this junk for years. But I found my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about all this food. Right? This is not really healthy thinking. Okay. So needless to say, this diet did not really work for me, even though I loved it. Man, who doesn’t love binging out on a bunch of junk food like that? Right?
It wasn’t helping me to maintain my weight. I felt like crap all the time, my food cravings were through the roof. So there are several problems with with plans like this, whether it’s like four days, four meals a week, you know, whatever you want, you know, or one day a week, just do whatever. Like I think that that we have to come up with a better plan than this. Okay?
Some of the problems with this eating whatever you want mentality is that it doesn’t teach you how to take control of your eating, you know, for a long time. For me anyway, and I’m guessing for you, because this happens with a lot of people that I talk to.
They have issues about control, and they’re eating like they feel like they’re eating is out of control. And if you’re engaging in a behavior that promotes out of control, eating on a regular basis, this is not going to teach you how to take control of your eating over the long term. You’re going to constantly feel like this out of control behavior is not only okay, but it’s almost encouraged, you know.
So you’re not learning how to be a mindful eater, you know, and I talked about this recently on the podcast about the mindless eating and how we have to be more mindful about eating. And so this kind of behavior I think, is detrimental to that. I think it leads to more mindless Eating, and it doesn’t teach you anything. So, you know, people say, well, this is this is the only way that you can eat a healthy diet sustainably, you have to be able to let off the steam every now and then.
But I think that we’re just reinforcing some really terrible eating habits, you know, its its binge type of eating is what’s going on here a lot of times, and to me, it feels like, we’re just kind of giving people permission to keep the disordered eating patterns happening. Okay?
If you’re somebody that has ever suffered with any sort of eating disorder, you know, you, you know what this feels like. And you know that this is very difficult and very triggering for you. Maybe even just talking about it can feel it triggering for you.
But to keep reinforcing that binge type of eating is, I think it’s going to kind of mess you up in the long term, okay, because it’s not teaching you how to be that mindful eater, how to be that person that is in control of what they’re doing.
Not to mention that, you know, eating whatever you want is, it’s not healthy for you not physically healthy, not mentally healthy, not emotionally healthy. It’s not physically healthy, because anything that you eat, that is so full of sugar and junk food, and you know, fried food, and, you know, all of the bread and refined grains and flour, that stuff just makes you inflamed, it makes you hold on to a lot of your weight.
It makes you feel lethargic, it makes you have brain fog, like you can’t think clearly. You know, it raises your blood sugar and insulin levels, it can really lead to some serious health effects, you know, really can lead to diabetes and things like that, if not, if done regularly, obviously. But it’s kind of like you’re you’re dabbling with poison here.
You know, it’s kind of like drinking alcohol, where alcohol is poison. You know, ethanol, the main ingredient that makes alcohol give you a buzz is poisonous, toxic, if you drink enough alcohol, you will die. It will kill you. But if you do it in small doses, it’s not too bad. But it’s still poison.
All right, we’re still eating poison. When you’re eating all this junk food here, you’re just doing it in smaller doses, but it’s not physically healthy. It’s not good for you, okay? And I think from a mental and emotional standpoint, it’s really bad for you, because it’s not teaching you good eating habits.
It’s promoting disordered eating patterns. It’s not allowing you to learn how to take control of your emotions, you’re basically eating your feelings, your eating, because you’re, you’re voracious, and you have this huge desire to eat, you’re eating because you’re stressed out, or whatever it is, whatever the reasons are, it’s hard for us as humans to learn how to take control of how they think and feel, when we’re eating a huge amount of junk food all the time.
This is akin to telling an alcoholic to just go on a bender once a week, or twice a week, you know, just to let off some steam, you know, because that’s going to be more sustainable for you. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.
As somebody who used to drink, I don’t anymore, I don’t think that’s a very good idea at all. Because for an alcoholic, you know, one drink leads to more drinks. You know, for somebody that has some issues around food, eating a bunch of junk food like that can just lead to more of that type of behavior.
And you’re not changing the behavior, we’ve got to take control of the behavior. Okay, I’m not opposed to eating this stuff every now and then. Not at all. But I think that, you know, somehow we’re treating your body like a garbage can. And we’re telling ourselves this story that it’s good for us. It’s really not.
Right, you’re not learning, any type of self-control here. You’re not learning how to deal with your emotions, like an adult. You know, you’re acting like a toddler, what does a toddler do? A toddler kicks and screams and cries oh, I want it my way I want I want things my way. And they and they will cry and scream until they get what they want. And we’re kind of doing the same things.
We have these feelings and we’re like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just eat a bunch of junk food and you feel better. A little better, just for a few minutes doesn’t last. You’re actually not dealing with any of the issues and you’re not learning how to have emotions. You’re emotionally acting like a toddler, okay? We want to be emotional adults, not emotional toddlers, okay?
So this idea that we should be able to eat whatever we want to let off steam or whatever, they’re selling you this idea because they’re telling you, it’s the only sustainable way to eat because eating healthy all the time is not sustainable. You know, you have to get into those cravings or you’re gonna go crazy. This is what they tell you.
Okay, but what if you will learn how to dial down the volume of those cravings? What if those cravings weren’t as strong anymore? What if you thought about eating some ice cream for a minute, and you’re like, man, ice cream wouldn’t be good right now. It’s not really on my plan. I’m cool. I don’t really need it, I’m fine.
You’re gonna have those thoughts every now and then. But they don’t have to take over your life. They don’t have to become so strong that you have to go and give in to those cravings. Just because you have a craving for something doesn’t mean you have to go and have that thing. Right? If this is a new concept for you, I’m glad you’re here. Okay.
What if you learned how to manage your mind and you learn how to manage your emotions, so that you no longer needed to binge eat over them? Right? Wouldn’t that be more sustainable and healthier than, you know, blowing off some steam a couple times a week, just because you can’t deal with the emotional stuff. I think it’s more important to deal with how you think and feel than it is to like, binge out all the time.
So what if you learn how to handle all these emotions in your life, the good, the bad, the ugly, what if you didn’t need to turn to food to just feel better all the time? You know, this would be amazing. It’s a big game changer for you. When we’re giving in to all these cravings all the time, and we’re allowing ourselves to binge eat like that. Food has a power over you. Because you’re engaging in this binging behavior, you’re allowing food to be to be in control of you food is in the driver’s seat.
Food has the power over you, you have given up your power and your control to food. This is ridiculous. Don’t do this. You’re giving up control of your mental and emotional state to food. Right? Alcoholics do ,drug addicts do this. People who are addicted to food do this.
So there’s a better way to do things, there’s a better approach. And the approach is this learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings. That’s it. That’s the work. It’s that simple. It’s that simple. Stop using a substance food, alcohol drugs to manage how you feel. You got to get really good at just dealing with life just as it is the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly. All of it, you just have to be able to handle it all. Like an emotional adult. Okay.
I used to use alcohol this way. For 25 years I drank so that I wouldn’t have to feel, period. That’s why I drank because I didn’t want to deal with all these feelings stress, anger, fear, resentment, guilt, shame, frustration. I didn’t want to deal with any of that stuff. And I drank and I felt better. It worked.
Kind of came with all these negative consequences. My health was terrible. My relationships with everyone were terrible. I ended up getting a divorce. People didn’t want to be around me anymore. I generally felt miserable all the time. And when I quit drinking, this was back in 2007. I had to learn how to live my life without numbing, without the crutch, without escaping my thoughts and feelings. And it worked.
It worked for a period of time until I turned to food to fill that void because I got off the alcohol but then I was like oh food that gives me that buzz that I used to get that gives me that numbing sensation I used to this helps me to not have to deal with my thoughts and feelings anymore. Yay.
But then the foods started to not work for me and I started to gain a bunch of weight, you know, and I started to feel terrible. And I had to learn how to deal with all the thoughts and feelings all over again. All right.
This time I had to do it without any sort of external coping mechanism, right? So I made the decision when I stopped eating junk food – sugar, pizza, ice cream – and made the decision that I was going to start embracing my life, just the way it was everything and the way that I felt, and in my thoughts, my thoughts and feelings, were not going to, like control me that I was going to take control over that stuff that I wasn’t going to turn to food or drugs or alcohol to feel better.
I haven’t had a drink in 17 years, and my life is vastly richer and more rewarding because of it. I stopped using food to feel better. I haven’t done that in five years, I have never felt better. I’m in the best shape of my life, physically, but also in the best shape of my life, mentally, emotionally, I can handle everything that life throws at me.
And I’ve gone through a lot of hard stuff in the last few years, and I don’t have to eat a bunch of doughnuts. Just because you know, life is stressful. You know, I’ve done the work. It’s not easy, it’s hard. It takes time. There are setbacks, there is discomfort. It takes time.
But this is the work that we commit to. And the people that I work with, the clients that I work with, they get this, they’re here for it, they show up, and they’re ready to embrace the sock, you know, they don’t do it perfectly. No one does, by the way, not even me. But they stick with it.
They make progress, they get better at it, they learn how to be emotional adults, they learn how to stop using food to feel better, they learn how to stop the binging behavior. And when you learn this work, when you learn how to take control of your thoughts and feelings.
Everything in your life becomes easier. This stuff doesn’t apply just to food. It applies to every area of your life, your relationships are better, your work is better. Your friendships are better your relationship with your kids is better. You’re happier person. Because you’ve learned how to handle the stress the board and the frustration, anger all without having to eat over it.
Okay, you’re going to learn how to have a little discomfort, like that’s part of the process. But you’re going to learn how to just deal with the discomfort and you don’t have to feel better right away. This is the path to becoming the healthy, healthiest and most badass version of yourself honestly.
So you might be thinking, you know, okay, I’m listening to you, Patrick. I’m hearing all this stuff. But in the back of my mind, you’re like, Okay, does this mean I can never eat a doughnut again? Can I have pizza sometimes? Please, you know? And yeah, absolutely. You don’t have to like give up these foods for the rest of your life. That is not what I’m talking about here. I eat those things on occasion.
Food is meant to be enjoyed, right? We celebrate with food. If it’s your birthday, eat some cake. You don’t have to eat a birthday salad. Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Okay. But you have to do the work I’m talking about here today.
First, you have to change your thoughts and feelings, you have to change your relationship with food before you can start enjoying these things every now and then. Okay, you have to learn how to dial down the volume of the desire. Learn how to handle your thoughts and feelings.
Learn how to handle life on life’s terms, you’ve got to get past the need for the binging type of behavior. When you do all that you can experience true freedom around food because you’re no longer powerless, you’ve taken your power back, you’ve taken back control, you’re now in charge again, then you can start eating the stuff on occasion.
And I don’t recommend the 20% rule, or the one day a week you get to do whatever you want. I don’t think that’s really healthy for a lot of reasons that I’ve already talked about. But I do talk to my clients about getting to this place where maybe there’s one meal a week that you can go a little bit off the plan. And that might be a 90% or 95% rule, something like that sort of 80/20 It’s like 90/10 or 95/5, you know, something like that.
And, but you can’t do that from day one. Like we have to get control of food first, before you can start dabbling with some of this junk food. The junk food is not the it’s not the main problem. The problem is really our relationship with this stuff. So we got to fix that first. When you fix that first then you can enjoy a piece of pizza every now and then.
I do eat pizza a couple times a year, I do eat ice cream a couple times a year. Desserts here and there, a piece of chocolate here and there. I don’t eat a lot of sugar to be honest with you. The thing that I crave more than anything else would be like baked goods, bread, pizza, that kind of stuff. Okay?
So you can do this on occasion, but you gotta get in control of your thoughts and feelings. You got to change that relationship with food first. Okay? That’s very important. Very important. We don’t want to be eating out of control. We don’t want to be eating powerlessly.
We want to be eating mindfully. We want to be mindful of about our plan and then sticking to that plan we want to be intentional and mindful around food and that takes a little bit of time.
And as always, I’m always here to help you with all this you know, if you’re interested in working with me just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will get started on your journey. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and thought…did I really just eat all that? I know I have…and too many times to count! If …
Continue Reading about 222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 222 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to stop the mindless eating. So have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and you thought did I really just eat all that? I know I have, probably too many times to count.
So if you have ever found yourself in that situation, then you’ve probably done some mindless eating. Mindless Eating is something that we’ve all done at one point or another. And it’s something that you can absolutely change. You don’t have to continue to eat mindlessly, there are some practical things you can do to change this behavior.
So today here on the podcast, what Mindless Eating is and how to stop the Mindless Eating once and for all. But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running, and strength training here on the podcast. And if you’re new, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.
But this all might feel a little overwhelming for you. If you want a great place to start, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and strength training and endurance and mindset all geared towards you, the runner. If you’re a runner, you want to lose some weight, you want to get stronger, you want to become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. It’s pretty self-explanatory. And then get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.
Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve been excited to talk about this for some reason. I don’t know why, but I think it’s one of the things that people have been telling me that they want to change. I talk a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people every day about coaching.
And I always ask them like, you know, what do you want some coaching on? And you know, how can I help you? What goals do you have? And inevitably, most of the people I talked to that they list like the mindless eating, the automatic eating as one of the things that they want to change.
So if you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, then you really have to change your whole relationship with food. All right, if I just sit here and I say here, here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to eat these things, and not eat these things. And you’re going to be fine. I got this, I got this, Patrick, I’m good. Just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.
Okay, but in reality, you don’t got this, I’m just going to tell you, what you got is a lot of conditioned behaviors, you what you’ve got is a lot of habits that you’ve been practicing for years, decades, probably around food, a lot of learned behaviors around food, you’ve been doing the same things for years and years and years for decades.
Like I said, when it comes to how you eat, how you approach food. And if you want to lose weight, and you want to do it in a way that is sustainable for you, then you’re going to have to make some major changes to all of this, you got to change these habits.
You can’t keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing right, nothing changes, if nothing changes. You know, if what you’re if you’re what you’re doing isn’t working, then you have to change it. If you’re doing automatic eating, then you have to change it.
You can’t be a mindless eater, and expect to be able to lose weight because we have to start taking control of what we’re doing. We have to start taking control of our behavior. So the mindless eating, it’s really, it’s an automatic type of behavior that we engage in. It’s not something you just picked up out of the blue you’ve trained yourself to eat and not think about it, right.
So Mindless Eating is is an automatic learned behavior, right? So you go into the kitchen, you grab something, you start eating it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing this, right? Mindless Eating is it’s kind of an unconscious behavior. I like to say it’s similar to tying your shoes tying your shoes is an unconscious behavior.
So when you go, you’re getting ready for work in the morning, you put your shoes on, you tie them and you go, you don’t even think about it. It is unconscious. You don’t even remember doing it today, probably.
So you just do it and you don’t even have any thought or there’s no effort there. There’s no thought there. You don’t have to sit there and think, Okay, what am I doing now? I’m putting my shoes on. And now I have to take these lace things. And I had one goes under the other like, no, no, no, no, you just do it. It takes you two seconds.
Well, we’ve done the same thing with food. You know, we go into the kitchen, and we scarf down a whole sleeve of Oreos, you don’t even notice that you’ve done that until it’s done. And then you’re like, wait a minute, who ate all these oars? Did I eat all these? What the heck is going on here? Honestly, I have done this and Oreos was one of them.
Let’s see kettle chips, those kettle potato chips that are just like super salty. Oh my gosh, those are the best I can eat a giant bag that I get the family style bags, and then I just eat it until they’re gone. Oh, but that’s just me. But these are unconscious learned behaviors just like tying your shoes. Okay. And you’ve trained yourself to do this over years and years and years.
Okay, so it’s a habit is just a habit. Okay, we can if you if you’ve developed a habit, if you learn a habit, you can break the habit, okay? You’ve just trained yourself that when you go into the kitchen, you grab something and you eat it, and then you walk out of the kitchen, don’t even remember, it’s just like tying your shoes, you don’t think about it, you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take any effort, you just do it, okay.
Also, a lot of times we use food to feel better, we want to use food as a way of changing the way we feel. So we grab this thing that’s external to us, we ingest it, it becomes internal, and it helps us to feel better on the inside. This is called emotional eating. And emotional eating to some degree is also just a habit.
Emotional eating can also be automatic mindless eating. And again, it’s just a habit that you’ve developed. You know, emotional eating is when you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out or you’re anxious, and you just want to eat something to kind of feel better, you want to kind of numb the feelings that you’re experiencing, you want to numb the emotions that you’re experiencing, and food will do that it has that effect.
You know, especially if you go for something like sugar, sugar lights up the pleasure centers of your brain like nothing else. And if you want to feel pleasure, just eat some sugar, and you’ll feel pleasure for a short period of time. And you might stop thinking about the stress or the boredom or the anxiety that you’re experiencing for a short period of time, but then it’ll come back.
And then what do you do? Well, you gotta go back to the kitchen and eat something else. And again, this emotional eating can also be a very mindless eating, it can be an automatic behavior that you’re not even aware that you’re doing. Okay? So again, mindless eating, it’s just a learned behavior, you’ve trained yourself to eat, and you’ve trained yourself to not think about it.
This is important, listen to this. Because really, who wants to think about it? So you just, you just blank, this little snack out of your brain. So you’re just like, ooh, some cookies, you eat them, and then you go, bloop, and it’s gone from your brain. Like, it never really happened.
Because if you have to acknowledge it, and if you’re doing it in an intentional, conscious way, you know, you shouldn’t be eating the cookies, you just had lunch, you don’t need to be eating all these cookies. And so you sort of blank it out of your mind. You don’t want to think about it because you love it feels good.
And you know, it’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing. Right? So you have trained yourself to not think about it. Right? So you just do it, you do it automatically. And I think it’s interesting when people tell me this, they’re like, yeah, I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I say well, yeah, you do know, but you’ve chosen to blink it out of your mind. This is a little trick you’re playing on yourself, okay?
So, why is it important to change this behavior? So, mindlessly eating means that you are just eating you know, whenever you feel like it, not when you are actually in need of some nutrition. So this can lead to over eating so eating all the time, it’s really just not good for us. It’s really not the normal state for human beings. The human body is designed to eat a couple of times a day, you know, but not just mindlessly eating snacks all the time, right? It’s just not good for you, it puts a lot of stress on on the system.
You know, also, let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what you are eating. When you are mindlessly eating. I’m guessing it’s probably not broccoli. Have you ever like walked in the kitchen, and you’re like, man, I’m a little bored and a little, I just want a little snack of some time and you open up the fridge and there’s some like leftover broccoli sitting in there and you start eating that? No, nobody does that.
You want something crunchy, and salty and sweet, like chips, pretzels, nuts, chocolate, or like chocolate that has pretzels and nuts mixed into it. You know, like, whatever you can get your hands on that’s going to, you know, light up the pleasure centers. And that’s usually the crunchy, salty, sweet stuff, okay?
So, mindlessly eating is really a way of overeating, you end up over eating, and you end up over eating junk food, like you’re just eating junk, right? And so this is a bad combination. Like if you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to improve your health, you know, change your diet, change your habits, mindlessly eating, you’re overeating, you’re eating junk food, this is a bad combination. Stop doing that. Okay?
Now I get it, you’re like, but it’s so automatic. I don’t even know that I’m doing it. How am I going to stop doing this? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. So the opposite of mindless eating is what it’s mindful eating.
So the goal, the first step here, the first goal that you want to accomplish here is to start being more mindful about everything that you eat, you have to start being mindful about every bite that you put into your mouth. The easiest way to do this, is to write it down. This is a really great place to start. And I think that everybody should do this.
Not just for the mindless eating, but for all kinds of habits around food. But everything has to be written down. And the easiest way to do it is to just grab a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. So every time you eat something, just write it down.
Now I like to talk to people about this. And they’ll say, well, I could use this app I use My Fitness Pal, you know, Carb Manager or whatever. Fine. Use whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. But just make it simple.
Okay, apps can sometimes be complicated. They’re kind of clunky to use, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, and you just want to it has to be something you can do easily. It has to be simple and easy. Pen and paper is simple and easy. But if you’re on the go, maybe use a note on your phone, you know, just open up a note and just start taking inventory of everything you’re eating throughout the day.
And every time you eat or drink something, anything goes into your mouth. You want to write it down in that note on your phone or on a piece of paper. Okay, that is step number one. So what we’re doing here is we’re creating awareness about what is really going on with you and food, what’s really going on?
There’s no lies here. There’s no tricking yourself. There’s no deception. There’s no you know, tricking yourself into thinking you’re doing something you’re not or not doing something that you are, you’re actually just writing down everything that goes into your mouth, every bite, lick taste, okay?
So record everything that you do. Let’s do this for like a week. All right. And every time you eat something, every time you drink something, write it down. This is going to create a lot of self awareness. This is going to be the first step in being mindful around food instead of mindless.
Okay, so what starts happening here? Well, you start noticing that you’re eating stuff all the time you’re eating stuff, when you’re not hungry, you’re eating stuff, when you’re bored, you’re eating stuff when you’re feeling a little anxious, you’re eating stuff that you know isn’t on your plan. You know, you you start to see when and where you get triggered to eat stuff, you know, oh, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to eat something.
Oh, you know, every time I go in the break room, I have to eat something. You know, you don’t have to keep doing that. But you need to know what you’re doing first. So this is like creating such amazing self awareness. Okay.
And you have to develop this self awareness, you have to know what you’re doing before you can change it right, you got to know what you’re doing before you can change it, you have to know what you’re doing day in and day out before you can stop doing i,t before you can start creating better habits, before you can stop the automatic behavior.
So self awareness is the main goal here. So you got to write everything down, start creating that self awareness. So that’s step number one.
Step number two is this once you start noticing what you’re doing, when you’re eating, how often you’re eating the types of foods you’re eating, you can begin to start practicing the pause.
The pause is you pause before you put any food in your mouth. So you might get to the kitchen, you open up the pantry and you start looking around for some, you know, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever. But you pause right there with the cupboard open. And you notice oh man, I’m really looking for these Girl Scout cookies right now, aren’t I? Because you’ve created that self awareness. Okay, this is really cool.
This is very important and very easy to do. Okay, so you just take a moment and you pause. I’m about to engage in some kind of like mindless eating, I’m going back to these old habits. And so now you started to create a little bit of awareness, we’re starting to move into more of a mindful state, okay.
Next thing I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions. You can do this in your brain, it only takes a few seconds to do this. But ask yourself these questions. Do I really need to eat something right now? Am I really hungry? Or am I just bored or stressed out or anxious? Am I just trying to use food to feel better? What can I do instead of eating if I need to feel better?
Maybe I can go for a walk. Maybe I can walk the dog? Maybe I can, you know, pet the dog? What can you do that it doesn’t involve eating to feel better? Do I really need to feel better at all, maybe I can just be okay, feeling a little stressed out or a little bit bored or whatever.
Like, just go through these few questions in your mind really quickly. Okay. So what you’re doing is you’re going from mindless eating, to being mindful about eating. And listen, when you take that pause, you ask yourself those questions. And if you still want to eat something, then fine, eat the Girl Scout cookies or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.
But what you’re doing here is you’re not eating mindlessly. Now you’re eating mindfully, you’re you’re checking in with yourself before you make the decision to eat or not eat. And I’d much rather you are mindful about eating the Girl Scout cookies, then making that decision to eat the Girl Scout cookies, right? So you’ve made a conscious decision than eating the Girl Scout cookies unconsciously.
We don’t want to be mindless about what we’re doing. We want to be mindful, we don’t want to be unconscious. We want to be conscious. You know what we don’t want our body and our brain operating on autopilot here. We want to be in control.
And if you’re in control, and you’re saying you know what? Eating those Girl Scout Cookies feels like a really good decision for me right now. And you do that fine. Now over time, it would probably be great if you cut out the Girl Scout Cookies altogether. But listen, baby steps I get it. And this first baby step is moving from mindlessness to mindfulness around food.
This is very important. It’s a game changer if you want to lose weight. This is a game changer. It’s really hard to lose weight when you’re eating mindlessly and automatically all the time. You make this one change, and I promise you, your weight loss journey is going to get easier. Okay?
So you want to go from being a mindless eater to a mindful eater. This is where the good stuff starts to happen for you. This is where you can begin to break those conditioned behaviors and habits. This is how you start to change your whole relationship with food.
You’ve got to get away from the unconscious behavior and move towards consciousness get away from mindlessness and start moving towards mindfulness. Okay, this is a critical first step to losing weight and keeping it off. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
When it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there that it can feel incredibly overwhelming. While I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet …
Continue Reading about 212. 3 Things You Should Stop Doing if You Want To Lose Weight →
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 212 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight.
So when it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there, it can feel incredibly overwhelming. And while I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet here in one podcast episode, I do want to go over a few things that you might want to stop doing right now because sometimes the best way to start is to stop.
So in this episode, I’ve got three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good. But first I know I talk a lot about you know proper nutrition, losing weight, improving your running and building strength here on the podcast.
And if you’re new, and all this feels a little overwhelming, that’s okay, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training that will get you started on the right track. It’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’ll learn the basics of proper nutrition, how to build strength, how to build endurance, how to build the right mindset, all geared towards you the runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training to get started on your weight loss journey today.
Alright, before I get into the topic today, I just wanted to drop a little disclaimer here that I have been really sick, I got sick a few days ago, you know, woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach bug and was up all night. And I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say that it was a pretty awful night.
And I haven’t gotten sick like that in like 15 years, I can’t remember the last time I was sick like that. And must have picked up some kind of stomach bug at the gym or at the grocery store or something. I don’t know where I got it, but the gym is my primary suspect. So I’m still recovering.
And I actually had to take a day off of work. And I haven’t done that in like 10 or 15 years. So I know it was not good. It was a really, really horrible sickness for me to actually have to take a day off work. And so it’s taken me a couple of days to kind of come back.
So if my voice sounds a little scratchy today, or I don’t sound like myself, it’s because I’m still kind of recovering. But I’m giving myself a little bit of time I actually drove to the gym yesterday sat in the parking lot and was like no, I don’t think this is a good idea for me to go in there today. I still don’t feel 100% civilian, I’m a little lightheaded. Still a little bit nauseous. And I was just like, no, I’m gonna give it another day or two.
So just a little side note here, if you find yourself up, you know, sick this winter, which a lot of people are sick right now I’ve talked to a lot of people who are getting over something or in the middle of something, give yourself time to rest and recover, drink plenty of fluids, take your vitamins, make sure you’re eating right, or just not eating. Fasting is a great way to help, you know, alleviate the symptoms of viruses and it will speed up the recovery process too.
So just know that there are things that you can do out there that will help you to get through this a lot faster. But also don’t try to do too much too soon. I know that as runners, you want to get back out there and run right away or you want to hit the gym and get back into your weightlifting.
And I’m feeling that way right now. Right now I’m like, man, I really wish I was at the gym lifting weights right now or I was out there running today. It was a run day for me and I was gonna run this morning and I just I’m not up to it, you know, and I’m listening to my body.
And I’m just like, okay, this isn’t about embracing the suck. This is about doing what I need to do to take care of myself and to make sure that I don’t go back too fast too soon, you know. So I’ll make tomorrow run day or I’ll hit the gym tomorrow, as long as I’m feeling up to it and then I’ll ease my way back into working out again. I’m not going to go run 10 miles on Saturday or anything like that.
So for me, it’s about giving my body that time it needs the rest, proper hydration, proper nutrition, and just waiting until I really feel like I’m ready to go again. Okay, so that’s just a little sidebar today. That’s where I’m at right now I’m just gonna get through this. So I appreciate your understanding if I don’t sound like myself.
Okay, now all that’s out of the way, let’s get into this topic today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight. And one of the reasons I’m bringing this up today is because I hear about so much information out there that is so confusing to all of us. It’s even confusing to me.
I’m constantly following people on social media, and reading articles on the internet, that completely contradict one another. And I’ve made a decision a long time ago that I wasn’t going to, you know, hang my hat on any one principle out there that I was going to figure out what works best for me.
And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But my goal here on the podcast is always to help you make good decisions, and help to simplify things, and clear up some of this information so that you can make good decisions for yourself so that you can start getting results right away.
Okay, so just understand that there are things that people recommend that you do constantly do this, do that. And what I’m going to ask you to do today is to stop doing a few things. And if you just stop doing these three things here, today, I guarantee you, you’re going to start seeing some results.
You know, I can’t guarantee that, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to start seeing some good results if you just stop doing these three big things here. Okay, so I’m not going to waste a bunch of time. You know, previewing this, I’m just gonna get right into it.
Number one, the one thing I want you to stop doing right now is to stop counting calories. Okay, just stop doing that. I talk about this a lot. Listen, if counting calories worked, it would have worked by now, our ancient ancestors did not do this, they did not track their food, they did not have my fitness pal, and they did not have Weight Watchers points.
They did not need to count how many macros they were eating, okay, they ate real food they ate when they were hungry, and they did not eat when they weren’t. And they did just fine. You know, we evolved as a species over two and a half million years to where we are today. And only in the last 40-50 years have we put this huge focus on counting calories.
And all that has done is made us bigger, we’re bigger than we have ever been in the history of the species. So to me, this is not a very sustainable solution. And it’s also not sustainable. From a weight loss standpoint, if you are somebody who reduces calories, in order to lose weight, just keep in mind that there’s going to come a point in time when your metabolism will slow down to match the amount of energy that’s coming in.
And this starts to become a problem because now you have to reduce your calories even more to get the weight loss to keep happening. Okay, so reducing calories and counting calories to lose weight. You know, it does work in the short term, but it does not work in the long term.
It also causes muscle loss. And if you’re somebody who is an active athlete, if you’re a runner, or you’re trying to get stronger or build muscle, which you should be, then causing muscle loss is not something that you want.
Restricting food and restricting calories is a great way to start to experience muscle loss. And you know, this is going to affect your runs, it’s going to you won’t be fueling, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel for running, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel to get stronger in the gym.
If you’re working out and lifting weights regularly, which you should be, you won’t be able to build muscle. So instead of you know counting calories and restricting calories, I want you to do something else instead. And what I want you to do instead is to eat to satiety, stop when you’re full.
You don’t need to count your calories. You don’t need to count your macros, and I talked about this. I’ve talked about this several times on the podcast but I talked a lot about tracking your food in the last episode, so definitely check that one out.
But if you focus on eating real food, so this is like food that still looks like, you know that food that you find around the perimeter of the grocery aisle, you know, so we got fruits, vegetables, we got meat and dairy and cheese. You know, we have nuts and seeds. You know, we have eggs, and fish, you know, all that stuff.
If you just focus on eating that stuff, again, this is the food that our ancestors have been eating forever. You’re going to feel more satiated when you eat, you won’t be eating the food that messes up your hunger signals. This is very important here. Okay.
So foods like sugar and refined grains, which most processed food is full of sugar and refined grains, that kind of food will really mess up your hunger signals, you will feel more hungry after you eat that food, you will have more cravings for those type of foods.
So for more sugar and more refined grains, you won’t be able to really get in touch with what hunger feels like for you. Because your hunger signals, pardon me, will be so messed up from the sugar and the refined grains, those things tend to reduce the amount of leptin that your body produces leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full.
And it increases the amount of ghrelin that you produce. And the ghrelin is the hunger hormone that makes you feel hungry. And so with those two things being you know, out of whack, you’re going to feel hungry all the time, and you’re going to be craving more of those foods.
And when you’re craving more of those foods, you just can’t get enough to eat, you tend to overeat, you tend to eat the wrong kinds of foods, and you tend to be kind of miserable all the time. And so trying to fuel properly and eat less or whatever, it’s really, it’s really hard to do not okay. So you have to start to get in touch with what real hunger feels like for you.
One of the biggest lessons I teach my clients and people that I work one one-on-one with, is to start to understand the difference between these cravings and hunger. The false hunger is what I call it. And real hunger. real hunger is when you could sit down and eat a meal. Like you can sit down and eat, you know, a whole bunch of chicken and broccoli and some carrots or whatever.
And that’s real hunger, if you could eat, you know, an actual meal. That means that, hey, I’m actually really hungry right now. And I should probably eat something. But if you’re like, oh, I’m feeling hungry, and you go browsing through the cabinets, and you’re like, oh, I’ll just eat six nuts, you know, and I’ll eat a few potato chips. Like, that’s not real hunger.
You know what that is? That is you being bored. That is you looking for something to make you feel good right now. You know, that’s you being stressed out. That’s what I call emotional eating.
Emotional Eating is when you’re just trying to dampen some kind of emotion that you’re feeling. Usually, it’s some kind of strong emotion. And that could be boredom. It could be stress, it could be anxiety. And you just want to feel better, and you want to dampen that emotion.
So you’re using food as a coping mechanism there. Okay? Well, we don’t really need to do that. If you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’re not going to mess up your hunger signals, you’re going to feel full when you eat, and you’re going to stay full for much longer.
You’re not going to be having those cravings for the chips and the nuts and the crackers and the junk food, you know. So you have to learn what hunger feels like for you. This takes time. It takes time and it takes practice.
And so you have to kind of devote the time and the effort into this process. But it is totally worth it. You know, once you start to eat and understand what your body feels like when it’s full and it’s had enough food. This is a game-changer. Right? So we don’t need to be people who overeat.
We have never been that way in the past because we’re eating food that kept us full and we didn’t have this food that was hijacking or hunger signals. Okay. So again, this is about you know, eating like our ancestors ate, we don’t need to count calories. So stop doing that. Eat real food food that, you know, fills you up and feels good when you eat it. Okay. So stop counting calories.
Number two, is to stop eating all the time. There is so much gym bro advice out there that says you should be eating six times a day. You have to eat 6, 7, 8 times a day to keep your metabolism going. So eat like you don’t want your meals and just keep eating constantly throughout the day.
And I’m gonna go back to what our ancient ancestors did. They did not eat six times a day. First of all, they did not have snacks or anything, that was invented like in the 1950’s. And it wasn’t a thing before that.
Snacks were a food category that was created by the food companies. It was a marketing thing like, hey, let’s, let’s try to sell more food to people. Let’s create a snack category. Oh, okay, that sounds great Bill, you know, let’s do that.
And so Bill and his buddies got together and they decided, I don’t know if his name was Bill could have been Steve or something like that. But they just got together and they were like, Hey, let’s create this whole new category of food that we can sell people on, it’ll be great.
And it worked. It works like crazy. People love snack foods, right? But this is not our DNA. This is not how we were programmed to eat. In fact, if you look at a lot of the systems in our body, I was reading an article recently about the pancreas and about how our pancreas is designed to only operate a couple of times a day, you know, it secretes, you know, whatever it does hormones to help us process food and whatever. And it’s only it’s the system is only designed to work a couple of times a day, it’s not designed to work six times a day.
So we’re sort of overloading our systems when we eat that often. You know, our liver plays a role in this too, and other, you know, organs and stuff. So what our ancestors did was they feasted, and they fasted. That was their MO, they would eat when the food was available, and then they didn’t eat and they didn’t eat for long periods of time.
And there’s lots of evidence that shows that there’s lots of tribes today that do the same thing where they eat, they, they hunt, they gather the eat when food is plentiful, and then there’s times when they don’t eat, but they’re not sitting there snacking all day long. All right.
And they did a study pretty recently that showed that participants in this study, who ate six small meals a day, versus people who ate three larger meals. And there was no metabolic advantage over those who ate six meals a day over the three meals a day.
So the people who ate six small meals, their metabolism didn’t speed up, because they were eating more often, that was exactly the same as the people who are eating three times a day. What was different from the two groups was that the people in the six meal a day group reported higher levels of hunger, and an increased desire to eat.
So they were more hungry, they had an increased desire to eat, so they were eating more and eating more often, and they had higher levels of hunger. And so this is not something that we want, I think we want the opposite of that. Okay.
You also have to understand there’s an insulin response, every time you eat food, you will produce some blood sugar, unless you’re eating pure fat, which really doesn’t raise your blood sugar at all. But anything else really is going to increase your blood sugar a little bit.
And insulin will be produced in order to bring that blood sugar back down to normal levels, which is the way your body is supposed to operate. And this is completely fine to eat this way or for your system to function this way when you’re eating three times a day, or six times a day or whatever.
But one thing that we have to understand is that when insulin is present in the system, that puts your body into that fat-storing mode. So your fat is locked up in your fat cells. While insulin is present. We want to get the insulin down in order to burn the fat. And if you’re eating six times a day, then your body never has a chance to recover that insulin level.
You’re always going to have insulin present, which means that you are never burning fat throughout the day. And so if you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight, and eating six times a day is not working for you. This is why right here. You are constantly in fat-storing mode, you’re never in fat-burning mode, right?
So we’ve got to make sure that we eat a diet that keeps our blood sugar at pretty normal levels, we want our blood sugar to rise a little bit, and then come back down again. We want insulin to rise a little bit and come back down again, a couple of times a day that is normal. That’s the way we should be functioning.
We are naturally good fat burners as human beings, but we’ve gotten away from that. And we want to get back to that state that natural state that we are so good at our body burns fat as fuel. This is in our DNA.
You know, we store body fat to be used as fuel later, but the way we eat the types of foods we eat the the amount of times a day we eat can really make that fat or that storage mode just constant and we’re just constantly adding you know, we’re Just constantly adding to those fat stores and never able to burn the fat. Okay?
So I’m a big fan of intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting just means you’re not eating constantly. It’s not some weird fringe thing. Again, this is kind of the way we’ve evolved as human beings. The intermittent fasting is just not eating constantly, it’s prolonging the amount of time between your meals, think of it as meal spacing.
The way that I do it, and I suggest a lot of people do this, and they have good results from doing this is just skip breakfast. This is one of the easiest ways that you can start intermittent fasting. So you know the time from dinner the day before. And let’s say lunch, the next day might be 16 hours or so.
Most of the time, we fast for about 12 hours. So all I’m saying is like, hey, just extend that like four more hours. It’s easy to do, right? So what I’m suggesting you do, instead of eating all the time is to not eat all the time, just stop doing that.
Right, don’t eat all the time, space out your meals, and allow your body more time for fat burning to kick in. And for fat burning, to ramp up. Skipping breakfast is the easiest way to do it. It is not the most important meal of the day.
That again, is a marketing message that was created by like Kellogg’s, they wanted to sell more cereal. So they’re like, you gotta have breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Just stop doing that.
Okay, and exercising in that fasted state is a great way to improve fat burning as well. And people report more energy when they exercise in the fasted state. They report increases in their endurance when they’re running, and they report increases in the amount of weight they can lift when they’re lifting weights.
So there’s some positive adaptations that happen when you train your body to exercise in that fasted state. So number two, stop eating all the time, and practice some intermittent fasting, I think you’ll see some some good results from that.
And then the third thing I would say to stop doing is just stop following the conventional advice out there. The conventional advice is like the food pyramid, the MyPlate, or whatever they’re calling it these days. A lot of this stuff is you know, they’re telling you to eat 60 to 70% of your calories from carbohydrates.
This is a problem because people are generally following this advice. The food guidelines, so food guidelines were created in like 1980. And if you look at since 1980, if you look at the rates of obesity here in the United States, they go up dramatically starting in 1980.
So I’m, you know, maybe doing some correlation, not causation. But it’s pretty clear that things have not been working for us as a country since 1980. And we may want to just rethink this whole food guidelines thing, okay. So if you’re somebody that’s like, well, I’m just going to follow the food guidelines. I’m going to suggest maybe not doing that.
Okay, so stop following the conventional advice out there. The thing with the food guidelines is that they show up everywhere they show up in hospitals, the hospitals have to follow the food guidelines. It dictates what we feed our children in schools.
There’s more obesity among children now than there ever has been in the history of human beings. Even these food guidelines show up in the military. I get people in the military constantly reaching out to me, Hey, I need some help losing weight because what they’re feeding me here is not working.
The food guidelines dictate what they serve in nursing homes. Most dietitians, and health coaches follow the food guidelines, and that’s the advice they’re giving you. Even a lot of running coaches that I know and talk to and running certification programs for coaches out there, preach these food guidelines and I just have to say that you know it this might work for some people, but for the vast majority of us, it does not work.
A recent study shows that 88 to 93% of the US population is considered metabolically unhealthy. So that is not a good stat right there. So that means like 7-12% of us are considered metabolically healthy. That is a very small number. That is actually frightening. That is a very frightening number and it’s going up because it was 88% and now they’re showing new numbers that show it could be up to like 93% that is frightening. We need to fix that.
Okay, so whatever we’re doing, following this conventional advice is not working. So we got to do something else instead. So what should you do? This is where this gets a little bit meta, because I can’t really tell you what to do, because you got to figure out what works best for you.
We’re all different. We’re all a little bit different when it comes to how our metabolisms work, how our lifestyle is structured, the foods that we enjoy our culture, you know, our weight loss goals, or our running goals, or weightlifting goals, do we want to build muscles? Do we want to maintain? Do we want to lose fat? Do we want to improve our running endurance? Do we want to get faster, there are so many different factors to consider there.
But I just want you to ditch that conventional advice out there. And it’s okay if what you do doesn’t look like what anybody else is doing. Because that’s that’s the way I am to things what I’m eating doesn’t fall into any category of any specific diet.
You know, it might be close to something like a paleo diet or primal eating, I don’t know what you want to call it, I just tried to eat something that is mostly whole foods related, you know, like I eat real food, like 90 plus percent of the time, I pretty much don’t eat packaged food.
I don’t eat processed foods, these things are mostly junk, they’re there to sell you more food. If I do eat foods that come in a package, it’s like some cheese or some you know, heavy cream, or like some frozen broccoli. It’s like hey, prepping all this food and cleaning up the kitchen.
So I buy like frozen broccoli, frozen cauliflower, stuff like that. But I want to encourage you to take control of your own health. And you don’t have to follow the norm out there. Because the norm is not working, the norm is 88-93% of the population who is metabolically unhealthy, that is the norm. So don’t be the norm.
So stop doing the norm, and start doing what feels good for you. And you start you have to start to get in touch with your own body and how your body feels when you eat certain foods. Does eating this food make me feel good? Does this make me feel bad? Does this make me feel extra hungry? Am I getting cranky?
A couple of hours after eating this food, I’m getting anxious to have more cravings for junk food. If I eat this particular thing, you need to be an experiment of one and figure out what feels good for you and what helps to keep you satiated, because the diet doesn’t mess up your hunger signals.
That keeps you feeling full throughout the day and provides proper nutrition is going to be the one that helps you to become the healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss will happen as a side effect of all the good things that you’re doing for yourself here. Okay?
The real goal here is always to become that healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss happens as a result of that, you know, we’re not just trying to lose weight. And that’s one thing I always make sure I tell people that I’m working with, I’m like, listen, our goal here is to get you as healthy as possible to get you operating at peak performance, you know.
And when we do that, when we start aiming in that direction, and moving towards that path, the weight loss, it will happen as a nice side effect of all of them. Okay, so number one, stop counting calories. It doesn’t really work. It certainly doesn’t work long term, stop eating all the time.
Eating six times a day does not speed up your metabolism. In fact, it makes you overeat and tends to make you feel more hungry and keeps that fat locked up in fat cells and then stop following the conventional advice because it’s not working. Don’t be normal. Be abnormal, okay?
And as always, if you want help with any of this or all of this, I’m here for you. Just go to runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, hit me up and you and I can have a conversation about coaching. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Sometimes, I have a bunch of thoughts that I want to share with you here on the podcast and I’ll create an episode for each one of those random thoughts. This is a great way of taking a deep dive …
Continue Reading about 206. Random Thoughts about Weight Loss for Runners →
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 206 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, some random thoughts about weight loss for runners.
So sometimes I have a bunch of thoughts that I want to share with you here on the podcast. And what I do is I create individual episodes for each one of those random thoughts. This is a great way of taking a deep dive into each topic and looking at it from several different angles.
However, today’s podcast is going to be a little bit different. Instead of focusing on just one topic, I’ve got several sort of random thoughts about weight loss for runners that I’m going to share with you here today.
And these thoughts and topics might all seem kind of random, but they do all focus on weight loss and running. So maybe they’re not so random after all. But first, I know I talk a lot about losing weight and improving your health and your fitness here on the podcast.
And all this stuff can feel pretty overwhelming. So if you’re looking for a good place to just get started and understand the basic core principles that I talked about here, and that I have talked about for the last four years here on the podcast, I’ve got a free training that I created, it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
In this training, you’ll learn how to fuel your body so you can lose weight and improve running, you’ll learn about strength training, and how important that is for you. You’ll learn how to make mindset shifts to make all of these changes of lifestyle, sustainable, and tons more.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, if you’re ready to run faster and longer, if you’re ready to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, then you need to check out this free training now just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. Easy peasy.
Okay, so today, some random thoughts about weight loss for runners. So like I said at the intro here, a lot of times when I set out to do a podcast, I’ll have lots of topics that I kind of choose from, and I’ll pick one topic.
And I’ll take a deep dive into that one topic. And I love doing that because I get to really delve into each particular thought or principle or topic or whatever it is. And look at it from a bunch of different angles and really give you a very clear picture of that one principle.
And if you look at my past episodes, you’ll see that this is the case that most episodes take a deep dive into one particular topic. But occasionally, I have a bunch of topics or a bunch of thoughts that I want to get down. And they’re just not enough for an entire podcast episode.
Sometimes I share those thoughts on social media. And sometimes I just kind of put them in a little, you know, little file, you know, keep a little note on my phone where I keep all my ideas for future podcasts and stuff. And I’ll just kind of keep them on the phone and just keep looking at them and go I don’t know, I don’t have enough to really do a podcast with all of these little random thoughts.
But today, I thought I’m just going to take a bunch of these random thoughts. And I’m just going to beat them out to you here. And please understand that all these things are related to running and to weight loss and to diet and exercise and stuff. So they’re not entirely random, but sometimes they are inspired by some comments that I get from people on social media.
Sometimes it’s just some basic principles that I want to make sure that you understand. And so just understand that today’s podcast is a little bit different. I’ve just got some random thoughts I want to share with you.
So I’m just going to dive in and start going through some of these and just keep in mind these are in no particular order or anything like that. They’re just some thoughts that I had, and I’m just mashing them all together here today.
Okay, so the first thing I wanted to talk about is some comments that I’ve gotten from some people on social media. So I occasionally share this podcast episode, and I do a Monday Motivation post. I try to do that every week. I miss a week here and there, but I’ve tried to stay pretty consistent with that.
And occasionally I will get some comments from people bored on those posts, and they’re not always super positive. Now there are lots of positive people out there. And if you’re somebody that has commented on my stuff regularly or shared some of my stuff, thank you for doing that, I appreciate that.
If you’re somebody that has been posting some hateful comments, then stop doing that. There’s really no reason for that kind of stuff. But some of the comments I think, are kind of interesting. And I’ve gotten a few similar comments from people recently. And I wanted to kind of address some of those.
And I want to preface this all by saying that I hate social media, I really do. I do not think social media is good for us. I think it is dumbing down us as a society. I think it’s causing a lot of, you know, FOMO, fear of missing out, I think it’s causing a lot of resentment with people.
I think it’s causing a lot of, you know, thinking that other people are better than we are. I think there’s a lot of negativity around social media, there’s bullying that happens on social media, it’s very divisive. People take things out of context. There’s so much now they’re doing with AI, where they’re actually creating videos of people saying things that it’s not, they never said those things.
But they can use AI and, you know, chat GPT, or whatever it is, and create a very convincing video of somebody saying some words that they haven’t said. So a lot of the stuff we’re even seeing out there isn’t even the truth. It’s not true. But we’re seeing these things. And it’s filling our feeds with just garbage and nonsense and divisiveness. And I think there’s a problem there.
So anyway, I just wanted to say that I try not to use social media very often, I do it because it helps to spread the word about this podcast, and helps to share some of the principles that I’m sharing out there in the world. But I don’t do a whole lot on social media.
But occasionally, I’ll get some comments from people. And some of them are, I’m gonna go through a couple of these that I’ve gotten recently that have, you know, I’ve gotten several comments that are very similar to this.
One of them is like, you shouldn’t tell people they have to lose weight, stop telling people they need to lose weight. And I just have to say, like, what, first of all, I have never told you or anybody that you have to lose weight.
I have never ever, ever said that and I’ve never thought it. If I have implied that, then I apologize. I don’t mean to think I’ve implied that. So I’m here to help you lose weight, if that’s something that you want help with. If you don’t want help with that, move on. That’s it, you just need to walk away.
If you’re somebody that doesn’t feel like they need to lose weight, and you’re listening to this podcast every week about me telling people how they can lose weight and how to be healthier and how to improve your diet and running, then, and you’re getting really resentful about listening to that. Just stop listening to that.
Okay, I’ve got no problem with that. I’m here for the people who want help. That’s it. And there are lots and lots of people, millions of people in this world who want help losing weight, they’ve tried all the stuff, it doesn’t work for them.
So I’m not telling you, you need to lose weight, but I’m here to help you if you want the help. Okay. So first of all, I’ve never told you, you need to lose weight.
Another comment that I’ve heard, or seen recently from several people is the gist of it is this. It’s not about losing weight, it’s about losing fat. So stop telling people, they need to lose weight, you need to tell them they need to lose fat.
Okay, so we’re now the semantic police out there. We’re like telling, you know, using these little phrases, I talk about weight loss because everybody understands what that means. Yes, it means losing fat weight. I’m not telling you, oh, I’m going to help you lose weight. And I really hope you lose muscle and bone mass because that’s my goal is to make sure that you know, develop osteoporosis and sarcopenia you know, no, it’s not about that.
Of course, it’s about fat loss. You know, people don’t like the word fat, you know. So I do use the word fat a lot. We talk about getting fat-adapted and being a fat-burning machine. But if you tell people, if you put it out there like, hey, I’m the Fat Loss For Runners Guy like people are not gonna like that. I don’t know. It just has some negative connotations.
So I think we all know, I’m talking about losing fat weight, right? I’m not talking about losing muscle. In fact, one of the big principles, I make sure that every one of my clients understands when they start working with me is that we don’t want to lose muscle.
We want to make sure we are preserving or gaining muscle mass while we are losing weight. And there’s a way that you can do that. A lot of people when they set out to lose weight, they just cut their calories back really significantly.
And yeah, they do lose weight, but that is muscle and bone, and fat. And we don’t want to do that that’s not the right way to do especially if you’re an athlete, and you’re a runner, and you’re training for something like you just need to make sure you’re losing weight the right way.
A/nd I always make sure that my clients are losing weight the right way. Okay, so of course, it’s about fat loss. Of course, it is. Right? I don’t explicitly say that. But please understand, that’s what I’m talking about. So if you’re somebody out there, that’s like, oh, I didn’t know you meant fat weight. Well, now you do.
And speaking of fat, as somebody has mentioned, you know, a couple of times in the past, like, oh, you fat shame people, you fat-shamed people like, listen, again, I have never, I’ve never shamed anybody about anything.
Again, I’m not telling you, you need to lose weight. I’m talking about, I’m talking to the people who are interested in becoming leaner, who are interested in changing their body composition for the better, who are interested in becoming healthier. That has nothing to do with if you’re overweight, good for you.
I’m old, I was overweight. You know, I was overweight for a decade or more, a couple of decades. And then I lost a bunch of weight. And then I gained a bunch of that back again. And I had to lose it again. Like I know what it’s like to be overweight.
And I’ve never been shamed by anybody in my life for that. And I’ve never shamed anybody else or not intentionally shamed anybody else for being overweight. Like, it’s such a common thing these days for people to be overweight. It’s like, okay, great. If you want to lose weight, great. If you don’t, that’s completely fine, too. I’m okay either way.
I’m here to help you if you want to lose the weight. But I’ve never fat-shamed anybody. I did have a friend that sort of fat-shamed me. Like, when I was pretty overweight, I was working with this guy. And he used to call me fatty Patty from Cincinnati. That was his little nickname for me. And he thought it was really funny.
And I, you know, kind of went along with it. He was a good friend of mine. So he could say that, you know, he didn’t mean it in a really mean way. But looking back on it, and I’m like, oh my god, he was fat-shaming me, but it never really bothered me that much.
A couple other random thoughts. Okay. So I’ve heard from a lot of people, some people mentioned this on social media. Some people mentioned this when I get on calls with them, where they’re like, oh, you know, I’ve been told that, since I’m a runner, I shouldn’t try to lose weight, like you shouldn’t do that. It’s not okay to do that. You shouldn’t, you know, try to lose weight while you’re training for a marathon or half marathon or something like that.
And I want to challenge that. And I want to, I want to dive into this just a little bit. So a lot of people I talked to tell me, Patrick, I am a runner. I’ve been running for a long time. You know, I used to eat a ton of you know, carbs, and sugar and junk food or whatever it was always fine and never really bothered me at all.
But as I get older, I tend to put on more weight. In fact, the more I run when I get into my training cycle, and I’m training for a marathon or half marathon, I gain weight, and what’s going on there? Like how come things aren’t working for me? They used to work for me.
And, you know, they’ve heard from people like, oh, you know, I’ve heard that I shouldn’t try to lose weight when I’m training for something. And I’m always training for something. I’ve got, like two races a year.
So I’m kind of always training for something. I have a short offseason. But you know, I gain weight while I’m training. But what am I supposed to do here because like just every year, year after year after year, I keep gaining more weight.
And I think this is interesting, because there are people out there that will tell people, like you shouldn’t try to lose weight if you’re a runner. But apparently, it’s okay to gain weight as a runner, like that’s okay. But you shouldn’t try to lose weight.
I think that’s kind of backward. I think that’s kind of stupid. So a lot of people think that the answer to losing weight is just running more and more and more. And if you’re running a lot, you know, you’re putting in 60 miles a week or whatever it is, you’re training, you know, some massive amount of training, and you’re gaining weight in the process or not losing weight in the process, that you’re just you know, you’re doing it wrong, you there’s something wrong with you, you know, it’s genetics, whatever.
And listen, it isn’t genetics, it isn’t that there’s something wrong with you. You’re just doing the wrong you’re focusing on the wrong thing. You know, it’s not about you. It’s not about your diet. It’s about, wait, I’m sorry, it’s not about your exercise. It’s about what you’re eating.
It’s really more about the diet than it is about the training that you’re doing. Really, I talk to people every day who are like I gain weight, the more I train, and I’m like, yeah, because your diet is terrible. And the more you train, the hungrier you are, typically, and the more you end up eating of that junk food, and so you’re just gonna gain weight, your body’s gonna keep storing a lot of that junk food is excess fat, even though you’re running a lot doesn’t matter.
So the answer is not to run more. But this idea of not losing weight, as you are training for something, I don’t think that is valid for all people. Now, some people are like, listen, when I’m training, it puts my body under a lot of stress. And that stress will cause me to hold on to more weight, which is kind of true if you’re training the wrong way.
In other words, if you’re overtraining, you could be putting your body into a state of chronic stress. Chronic stress equals chronically elevated cortisol levels, chronically elevated cortisol levels to the stress hormone will lead to chronically elevated blood sugar, and insulin, and you’re basically staying in that fat storage mode, you’re always storing fat, and your body cannot burn fat, while you’re in a state of chronic stress.
So I get that part of it, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or can’t lose weight, while you’re training, you just need to fix your training and fix your diet. The other side of this is that when most people set out to lose weight, they cut their calories and they lose muscle and they lose bone mass.
And they lose fat weight too. But when you’re training for something, you do not want to be losing muscle mass, like you need to maintain muscle mass while you’re training, otherwise, you’re gonna like really mess yourself up, and you risk getting injured. And there are lots of reasons why you don’t want to lose muscle and bone while you’re training for a marathon. It’s just pretty obvious, right?
So you risk injury, you risk burning yourself out. Really, it’s really bad for you to do that. And so we never want to lose muscle and bone, we always want to just focus on fat loss. That’s why I always talk about fat burning, turning your body into a fat-burning machine, getting you fat adapted.
Once you’re fat-adapted, that means your body is burning fat the way it’s supposed to. It means that you have tons of energy for running fat stored body fat is a great source of fuel for runners. Plus, if you want to lose weight, we’re talking about fat weight here, you have to burn the fat.
How do you burn the fat? Well, you got to stop storing the fat and you got to get into that fat-burning mode instead, right?
So another couple of reasons why people say you shouldn’t try to lose weight while you’re running or shouldn’t run while you’re trying to lose weight. So some people say, oh, you’re losing weight, great, just focus on that.
Don’t work out, don’t run, because it’s going to put your body under too much stress. It’s too many changes all at once. You should just focus on one thing at a time. That way, you’re going to be more compliant with your diet, like just change your diet first. And then you can work on exercise later.
And I’ve heard this quite a bit and people that I talk to tell me this and they’re like, man, I’m not doing that. I don’t want to go on some diet where I can’t exercise for three months or something. That’s crazy. I’ll go crazy, right? Because the exercise is so good for you. There are so many reasons why it’s so good for you.
It produces dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, like, it’s our feel-good hormones, our feel-good neurotransmitters. It’s like, it puts us in a good mood, it helps us to sleep, it helps us to focus it, you know, gives us plenty of energy throughout the day. Why would you stop doing that?
Oh, because you know, it’s going to be too hard for you to stick to your diet and exercise at the same time, well, then you need some help with that. You’re doing it wrong, right? You just need some help with the mindset around this stuff. So you can lose weight while running. You can lose weight while working out. You can do both.
And if you’re somebody who loves working out and you want to focus on your nutrition and change you should be able to do that and you can do it. I help people with this all the time. It’s totally doable.
Another thing I hear people say and a lot of these comments are coming from social media. A lot of these topics are coming from social media. This one is oh, you know you don’t need to change your diet or anything just you know, eat right and exercise.
You know, I don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to understand. Like these are comments that I hear from people that you know kind of on I’m paraphrasing here, but you know, just the writing exercise, it’s easy to do. You know, that’s all you need to do.
And listen, if it was easy, there would be no overweight people in this world, there’d be nobody that really needs to lose weight ever if it was easy. If it was just that simple. Of course, we know that we should eat right and exercise. Of course, we know that.
But what does it mean to eat right? I mean, if you get out there on the internet, you start looking, okay, what’s the right diet, like, you’re gonna get 10 million different answers. It’s stupid. Like, we’ve just got this wrong, where we think there’s like one answer that’s going to work forever. It doesn’t, it doesn’t.
Whatever you did, whatever this random person over here did, whatever the latest fad diet is, whatever the trend is, whatever that book is, you just read, none of that stuff is going to work for everybody. I’ve tried all that stuff. And until I just kind of put together my own sort of protocol, my own food plan. That’s the only thing that really worked for me.
And that’s what I help people do, you know, I help people figure out what works for them. Because all this other nonsense that’s out there, you know, vegan diet, or a carnivore diet, or South Beach diet, the Mediterranean diet, whatever it is, whatever, whatever diet that’s like, pre-made, that you’re trying to follow, it’s not going to work for you.
I mean, it’s just not going to, well, it’s not gonna work for everybody, we’ll put it that way. Right, there isn’t one diet that works perfectly for everybody, we all have to just get our heads around that. And so I don’t encourage people to follow any particular diet, instead, I help you get off the junk food.
I help people start eating real food, start focusing on getting enough protein, ditching the really problematic carbohydrate-laden foods, processed foods, the seed oils, the sugars, that kind of stuff. And just focus on eating the kinds of foods that fill them up, and that make them feel great.
And that improves their body composition that helps them to lose the fat weight and gain muscle and maintain muscle. Like that’s so important. And related to that, I’ve seen comments in like Facebook groups from people who are like, oh, man, I, you know, I’m, I’m struggling with gaining weight while I’m training for a marathon.
I’m in a lot of running groups and stuff on Facebook. And I’ll see people post, you know, questions like, oh, you know, I’m gaining weight, what should I do, and all these people, random people who know nothing about this person, are telling them what they shouldn’t, should or shouldn’t eat.
You know, how, oh, here’s what you should do. You know, here’s the diet, you should do blah, blah, blah, eat vegan, eat, you know, nothing, but meat, eat nothing. But you know, broccoli, nothing, but whatever. Like, there’s all these crazy diets out there. And listen, you know nothing about that person you have, you’re not qualified to give that person advice.
Even if you are a doctor, you shouldn’t give that person advice, because you don’t know them, you don’t have a relationship with that person. Again, this is why I do coaching. And I don’t just sell a book about this stuff, because I can’t put it in a book.
Because the same thing doesn’t work for everybody, you’ve got to really understand that, okay. But these randos that are just giving people this unsolicited advice, and sometimes it’s solicited, but you know, most of the time it’s not, and just telling people what they should do. It’s so stupid, just don’t do that.
If you’re one of those people who like feels compelled to give people advice on what they should do. Don’t do that. Okay? Because you don’t know what’s going to work for them.
Okay, a little bit of this as ranting, I get that I’m just like, I wanted to get this stuff off my chest for a while. So thank you for letting me do that. Related to all that there are tons of like running coaches out there. And even like nutritionists and dietitians that I’ve seen, who you know, preach about certain ways of doing things. And they have, they follow this traditional coaching style, which is, it’s really not even coaching, it’s just they tell you what to do.
Like, here’s what you’re going to do, here’s the protocol, you’re going to follow, you know, I have this 10-step plan, this is what’s going to work for you right, again, it’s a one size fits all, but they’re not taking into account that you know, that you’re an individual and that you have certain metabolism and certain lifestyle needs that need to be considered here.
And, and lots of other factors that make you an individual, you know, genetics and food preferences and how you like to work out and you know, how much running you do and all these other things.
But there are lots of coaches out there dietitians, nutritionists, whatever, who don’t have a one-size-fits-all program, they just tell you what to do. Here’s what you’re gonna do. They don’t consider the fact that it’s hard to, like you know what to do, but it’s hard to stick with it.
It’s hard to keep doing those things. And they don’t even consider that. Oh, you didn’t, I told you to eat these foods, you didn’t do it. Why not? Well, because, you know, I really struggle with this stuff. And, you know, I think I might be like, eating emotionally, because I find that I just, I need to eat to feel better. And they’re just like, I don’t get any of that, you know, you just need to stick to the plan here.
You know, you need to have more willpower, you need to be more disciplined. That’s not helpful. And all these people that I’m talking about these coaches, these, a lot of these people I’m thinking about here are like elite athletes, who decided they want to be a coach, they have never been overweight in their life.
They’ve never had to lose 40 or 50 pounds, they don’t know what that feels like they’ve never struggled with, you know, food. You know, emotional eating, or with food issues, you know, they’ve never struggled with their weight. They never struggled with working out or running, you know, maybe they did early on.
But they’re not a four to five-hour marathoner who struggles to, you know, PR, or struggles to, you know, maybe you’re trying to qualify for Boston or something like that. These are people who are like, elite athletes, top athletes in the world. And they just think they, they’re a little disassociated with the common people like me, and you, you know, and, and I see these people doling out advice and telling people what to do.
And I just look at it and kind of shake my head, because I’m like, that is not gonna work for everybody. And it might work for some people who are, you know, of elite caliber, but you’re trying to reach the general population out here, you’re talking way over their heads like they’re not there, they just can’t relate to that stuff, and you can’t relate to them.
So how can you help these people if you’ve never been there before? How can you help these people if you, you know, lose weight or change their diet? If you’ve never struggled with that stuff? You know, you’re somebody who’s like, oh, you know, like David Goggins? You know, it’s like, oh, you know, just run 200 miles a day, you know, and it’s no big deal. Like, just, you just do it, man, you know?
And well, that’s hard for people sometimes. And what do you do when that kind of stuff is, is challenging? It’s hard to get out of bed and put those running shoes on and go out the door? How do you deal with that stuff? How do you deal with the fact that you’re used to eating, you know, junk food, because you know, you’re not dealing with some of the mental and emotional stuff that you’re going through and you keep turning to food?
Like, how do you deal with the stuff that comes up, when you stop eating that food, like, there’s going to be all this stuff that comes up when you stop eating the junk food that you got to start dealing with, you know, and I’m not saying I’m like a therapist or anything like that. But we do a lot of work around emotional eating, we do a lot of work around helping people to change their relationship with food.
So it’s not about just eating automatically and eating emotionally, it’s about eating intentionally, and eating mindfully, you know? And of course, eating good food, eating real food, not junk food. Okay, so I think that’s about it for these random thoughts that I had today.
Thanks for listening to all of this stuff here. I wanted to just get all these out and share them with you because they’ve been topics that have been on my mind for a while. And every now and then I’ll put together a little list of random topics and I’ll share them with you guys.
I think this is kind of fun for me to do. Today. Actually, it just can kind of go off on a tangent on these little things. A little bit of a rant here and there too, which is okay. I hope that’s okay with you. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
