Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
When it comes to health and fitness, there’s no topic more controversial or more complicated than which foods we should eat, and which we should avoid. Some experts tell you this diet or that diet …
Continue Reading about 68. Our Complicated Relationship With Food →
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 68 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And today, I’ve got a really cool topic for you. This is our complicated relationship with food. So when it comes to our health and fitness, honestly, there’s no topic that’s probably more controversial or more complicated, than what foods we should eat and what foods we should avoid.
And experts will tell you like this diet is the best one for everyone or that one is the best for everyone and, or maybe that it’s not about the food at all. It’s more a problem of willpower and self-control. Just eat whatever you want, just eat less of it and exercise more, and you’ll be fine.
And I’ve come to realize that it’s just not that simple. We humans, we’ve evolved to have a very interesting and very complicated relationship with food. So why is what we eat so complicated? And what does this mean for us? And most importantly, what can we do about it? So in this episode, I share many of the reasons why our relationship with food is complicated. And my hope is that by the end of this episode, you’ll have a deeper understanding of this complicated relationship we have with food, and maybe be able to make some more informed decisions about your own dietary choices.
But first, if you haven’t already done so come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing group of runners, the Running Lean podcast community, on Facebook, and it’s a place where you can ask questions get help feel supported, hey, we all need to feel supported. Sometimes, especially when it comes to trying to accomplish something big, like training for a marathon or an ultra-marathon or maybe, you know, getting lean and strong, maybe losing some weight.
All of these things. We support each other in the Facebook community. So come and join us. You can lean into this community you’ll find encouragement, inspiration, and motivation. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. I hope you join us. It’s fun, we have fun.
I want to dive right into this topic today. Because I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now. And I really wanted to share this information with you guys and acknowledge the fact that our relationship with food is complicated. And I think it’s, we do ourselves a disservice when we try to simplify it, you know, just eat this or don’t eat that. And it’s more complicated than that.
And I want to just really acknowledge how complicated this really is. And that there’s a lot more going on than just, you know, these foods are good, these foods are bad, you know, that kind of mentality. I don’t think that serves anybody. Okay. So before I get into, like, why things are complicated, I want to just give a quick history.
And this is nonscientific. But I just want to give you a rundown, kind of the way we’ve evolved. Okay, so we had these hunter-gatherer ancestors, okay, who I’m assuming did not have a very complicated relationship with food. Alright, food was a means of survival. So they would hunt, they would gather, and they had this survival instinct. They told them that they needed to go forage for food or hunt for food, they got some food, they ate it, they shared it, it was probably from what I understand is probably a community effort.
You know, the whole community got involved with the hunting and gathering, the preparing of the food, and then the eating of the food. And so we evolved with this beautiful, healthy sort of relationship, I guess you could call it a relationship with food. And over millions of years, we grew these amazing brains.
You know, we became the most advanced living creature in the known universe. Think about this. There is no creature that is as evolved as we are that we know about in the universe. There might be, it’d be very cool if we could figure that out and meet some of these other creatures. But for now, it’s just us, okay.
And we evolved this way, because of our dietary choices, really think about it. And then we live this way for eons, you know, from literally millions of years. And then something changed in the last few 1000 years, you know, we started to see things like, people becoming obese and diseased. And, you know, there was a lot of overeating, gluttony, and things like that.
And you can see this in history, if you look at, like the Roman Empire. So this would have been, you know, just a few 1000 years ago, during the Roman Empire, being fat was a sign of being ugly, like they really admired the ideal human form. If you look at the sculptures and paintings from that era, they had this ideal that they were reaching for.
And people that were fat people that were overweight, this is a sign of ugliness, and a sign of being mentally unbalanced, like an unfit mind. And so they created things like gymnasiums, where they would work out to get stronger and improve their fitness and their health. And they held beauty contests for women, just like interesting, you know.
And then, like, early Christians, they thought that being obese was a sign of not being spiritual. And early on in you know, the early few 100 years A.D., you know, gluttony was deemed, you know, one of the deadly sins. And so we started out with really no, sort of, like, emotional, spiritual or mental, like, hang-ups around food, and our bodies.
And then as we’ve evolved, you know, all of this has become more complicated. And being overweight, or obese, you know, has been vilified. Okay. So, just know that you know, only in the last few 1000 years have we started to really have this super complicated relationship with food. And I would say, probably, within the last 100-120 years or so, have things really amped up, you know, especially in the era of the Internet, and social media. And we’ll get into that a little bit more in just a minute here.
But here’s the thing. We do need food to survive. Food gives us life. Food can also cause us harm, it can create a diseased state in our body, we know this. Science tells us this it can create a state of obesity, lead to debilitating diseases, and can even kill us. So when I talk about our complicated relationship with food, we need food to survive without it will die. But eating the wrong types of food too much food can literally kill us. This is where things start to get complicated. Okay.
So, one of the first real big complications I want to talk about here is that you know, the foods we tend to love the most the foods that we’re most drawn to, the foods that we fantasize about, seem to be the ones that are the worst for us. For example, sugar is amazing, right? When we eat sugar, we feel amazing. Feels so good. We get this rush of dopamine, our endorphins, you know get released.
Eating sugar lights up the same centers in our brain as when you do cocaine. So this is great, right? Like we’ve evolved as humans to seek out these kinds of calorie-dense, very sweet foods, you know, like honey, and berries. And we would eat these foods every now and then. But nowadays, these foods that we’re eating are being you know, developed in a laboratory, by food scientists, they’re deemed hyper-palatable.
So they really hijack the pleasure centers of our brains. So when we eat some of these hyper-palatable foods, we can’t get them out of our mind, you know. So we’re really, really drawn to these foods. So that’s sugar.
Flour is the same way. So flour is like, white flour especially, is a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, just like sugar is, but I didn’t know this until recently, but flour actually spikes your blood sugar even more than actual table sugar does. Because it’s ground so finely. So it is a very refined carbohydrate.
But because there’s so much more surface area in flour, because it’s so fine, it will create an even higher spike in your blood sugar. So when you’re eating things that are made of flour, and sugar, this is just like, off the charts, right? So the foods we love the most, the foods that we’re like, most drawn to seem to be the ones that cause the most problems, you know. So this, this makes things complicated, right.
And these foods, you know, we know that too much sugar is bad, and it causes us to hold on to fat, and we store fat when we eat a lot of sugar, and flour. And it’s making us fat, obese, and sick, and it’s slowly killing us. We’ve never been more fat as a nation. In the US, you know, obesity rates have more than tripled since the 1970s.
And the major culprit, I would argue in the science would argue is the highly refined carbohydrates, especially sugar and liquid sugar and soda and things like that. So this is complicated, right, in, in conjunction with that is, you know, is this addictive nature of food. So, you know, I really, I gotta say, in the big food industry, they use this idea of hyper palatability, and they create this food that is super, super desirable so that they can sell more food.
And, honestly, we are being manipulated in a way. I’m not like a conspiracy theorist type of guy here, but we are being manipulated by the big food industries, especially the big packaged food industries because they just want to sell us more food. They’re not concerned about how healthy or unhealthy these products are. They are only concerned about making more money.
And so they put a lot of money into making these foods as highly palatable as possible. And so, you know, this is where the complication comes in, right? Because these foods that we know are not good for us are incredibly addicting, and we just like we can’t get enough of them. Right?
They’re like the most the things we desire the most. Our desire is like off the charts for these kinds of foods. Okay. So, you know, most of us, most of us cannot handle these, these highly refined carbohydrates and most people, the majority of people are what is called carbohydrate intolerant – just means like you can’t handle a diet that’s really high in carbohydrates.
These highly palatable high carbohydrate foods, they’re just as addictive as a substance as something like alcohol. In fact, they turn on those similar pathways in the brain, they turn on this thing called the phenomenon of craving. It’s like once you start thinking about donuts, you can’t get it out of your head and you just gotta go have a doughnut.
It’s very similar to somebody who has an addiction to something like alcohol. When they start thinking about it. They can’t get out of their head. It’s this craving that they just can’t shake. You know, and the food industry they know this and they make these foods that do this to us. So that will buy more.
They even put it on their packaging, you know, once you, once you pop, you can’t stop. Like we acknowledge the fact that you cannot just have one potato chip. You know, like, you’ve got to eat this whole bag once you open it up, that was my experience. Anyway, I used to love those kettle chips. Let’s see, I think it’s called kettle brand chips, I don’t even know anymore.
But they’re these potato chips with like salt and vinegar on them and just the saltiness and, and the bitter like vinegar taste to these things. I could not stop eating these things, I would go through a whole bag, and I could not just eat just one. You’re right, food companies, I cannot stop once I pop.
And so there’s this like addictive nature to and there’s this hyper palatability to food. And on one hand, there are people you know trying to make the food as pleasurable as possible. Remember, our brains are really good at seeking pleasure and avoiding pain that’s our, our amygdala, you know, that ancient part of our brain that primitive part of our brain that is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And this does it for us.
You know, seeking out these highly palatable foods creates this incredibly intense desire and pleasure for us. Okay, but it’s also super terrible for our health. So this is complicated, right? And then you’ll hear people say things like, well, you can eat anything you want, just in moderation. All foods in moderation. This is the slogan that a lot of registered dieticians use: all foods in moderation.
And I just don’t think this is necessarily good advice because, for some of us, certain foods can trigger addictive-like responses. So wouldn’t it be better to just avoid some of these foods? Just a thought. I mean, it’s kind of like telling somebody who has a drinking problem. And maybe they’re an alcoholic to just have a few beers every now and then. You know you can drink. It’s fine. Just you know, one or two.
But the answer for some of us is that the answer, really, for some of us is that we just have to avoid these problematic foods altogether. Because if we start we can’t stop. You know, when I used to drink alcohol, I could not stop at just one. I had to keep going. Because it lit up that pleasure center in my brain. And my brain, you know, maybe it’s wired differently than most people. I don’t know.
But I couldn’t stop it. Just I couldn’t have just one beer, I would see people that would like drink a half a beer and like, leave it on the table. I’d be like, what is happening here? Does not compute. How do you do that?
And it’s the same way with food for a lot of us like we cannot stop we you know, once you if you ordered dessert at the table and everybody’s like, oh, let’s just share, just have one bite, we can each have one bite? No, man, I’m gonna get my own dessert. Okay, I’m gonna eat the whole thing myself. You can’t, I’m not sharing it with you. All right, because I’m not I can’t just have one bite it just triggers this response inside me.
So wouldn’t it be better to maybe just avoid that? Okay. I don’t know that all foods in moderation is like the best advice, you know. And I’m gonna go on a little bit of a rant here just about registered dieticians and I love them and I have friends who are RDS but the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics so this is the organization that kind of the Governing Board of Registered Dieticians. This is an organization that over the years has been funded by big companies like McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Company, Sara Lee, Abbott nutrition, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, you know people that make candy. Unilever and the sugar association.
So of course their slogan is going to be all foods in moderation, eat some McDonald’s eat some you know, drink some Coke and Pepsi, eat your cereal, eat your candy bars. Sugar is fine, just in moderation, right. So this organization, the AMD is kind of in bed with big food. And in my opinion and the opinion of a lot of people in the nutrition world, it’s coloring their stance you know, by telling people that cereal and soda and candy bars are fine.
I don’t think this is good advice necessarily. Okay. That does not mean that every registered dietitian is telling people to go eat McDonald’s and Coke and things like that. But I’m just saying that again, this is complicated, right? That there are these relationships that those big companies have with nutrition governing bodies.
And, for example, like registered dietitians, they are the only people that can prescribe meals for patients in hospitals. And for type two diabetic patients. This is no joke. They will prescribe a breakfast of coffee, orange juice, a bagel, Rice Krispies, a V8, and a package of white sugar. This is for somebody suffering from high blood sugar hyperinsulinemia, type two diabetes, this diet is going to spike their blood sugar like crazy. This is not what you want to give somebody that’s a type two diabetic.
And then their solution is well then we just inject them with more insulin and the problem is solved. This is crazy right here. Okay. And if you want to learn more about this, there’s a great book by Michelle Hearn. She’s a registered dietician. And it’s called the Dietitian’s Dilemma.
And she talks about this place where she got to in her dietitian practice where she was like, I just, I don’t feel good prescribing people with type two diabetes, these super high sugary meals, I just can’t do it. But this is what they have to give them. It’s a little complicated.
And here’s the thing, I absolutely believe that we should be able to treat ourselves every now and then. You know, so yeah, some foods are problematic. Maybe for me, you know, sugar is a problem. And maybe I want to not eat sugar most of the time. But can I treat myself every now and then? You know, if it’s Christmas, can I have some Christmas pudding? Or if it’s Thanksgiving? Do I want to eat a piece of pumpkin pie with some whipped cream on it? Yeah, sure. If it’s my birthday, am I gonna eat some birthday cake? Probably yes.
And then I just go back to my regular diet, you know, the next day. But if treating yourself is having negative consequences, or if it becomes something that you can’t stop doing, is this good for you? Is this really a treat?
So, you know, I don’t want to go through my life, never eating a good piece of fresh sourdough bread again, or, you know, pizza, I love pizza for the crust, I’ll be honest with you, I the toppings, whatever, I love pizza, because it’s the crust, I just love the stretchiness of it. And so good. So good.
And I want to be able to eat that, again, I want to be able to eat some ice cream again. But I don’t want to be obsessed with these foods. And this is where things get complicated, right? Because we want to be able to do this every now and then. But for some, we just can’t do that.
You know, so maybe it’s better to just avoid altogether, for the most part, you know, avoid it altogether. Except for maybe some special occasions. I haven’t eaten sugar in a very long time. I think the last time I ate some sugar was on. Well, was it Thanksgiving, probably. And we’re in April now. So this was a while back. And I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t amazing. And I didn’t get obsessed with it, you know.
So for me, I don’t really want to. I just don’t want to eat sugar because I can’t stop once I start. So I’m just you know, the reason I’m doing this today and talking about this stuff is because we do have a complicated relationship with food. And I don’t want to ever say that it’s easy. And that it’s super straightforward.
Because we all have a very unique relationship with food. We all have strong opinions, we all have certain desires and things that trigger us, and it’s complicated. And I just want to acknowledge that.
So another thing that we’re told is that and I kind of mentioned this earlier is that you know, if you just eat less food and exercise more, you’ll be fine. So eat whatever you want, just eat less and exercise more and got nothing to worry about. And honestly, this just doesn’t work. And we’ve talked about this before.
It has been proven that this doesn’t work for the majority of us, you know if you’re overweight. So this is their stance is like if you’re overweight, it means you overeat, you’ve just got to eat less. If you had more self-control, you wouldn’t be overweight, because you wouldn’t eat as much.
And I just think this is so crazy because it’s just not true. There are so many people that watch their calories, and they exercise a lot. And they still gain weight. It’s not necessarily about how much you’re eating. It’s like, what kinds of foods you’re eating? And how is your relationship with it?
I have this client who had a running streak going and still does. But he’s had this running streak going since 2007. So this guy is an absolute beast, he runs at least three miles a day, since 2007. This is like well over 5000 miles, I believe by now. And in this process, he’s gained over 50 pounds. So this is an average weight gain of 3.8 pounds a year.
If it really took that long, you know, it really only came on in the last half of this. So really, it was more like six pounds a year or so. And just so you know, the average adult in the US gains around two pounds a year after the age of 20. And so this is a problem like you’re gonna be pretty overweight, as you get older, right?
But this person, this client of mine, doing this running streak was exercising like crazy, like crazy, and still gained all this weight, like, the answer is not to exercise more. And this person was not a compulsive overeater or anything like that, you know, for the most part, try to eat up a pretty healthy diet but still gained 50 pounds, the answer is not, you know, eat less and run more, it just doesn’t work.
And, you know, there’s a lot of experts out there that are doling out advice. And trying to tell us what we should do. And a lot of this advice, I think, is well-intentioned, and it may work for them. But a lot of these experts are, are thin people, and they’ve always been thin. And they’ve never been overweight, and they’ve never struggled with eating, and they don’t know what it’s like to be a fat person to be overweight.
And some of these experts that are that have always been thin, trying to tell us, you know, well, you just don’t have enough self-control, I think is really doing us a disservice. I used to follow these ultra runners who were following a high carbohydrate plant-based diet, and they’re like, this is what you do, you got to eat all these carbs eat a plant-based diet. And I’m like, oh if this is the way to go, that’s what I’m going to do. Because this is what the experts are telling me.
Well, you know, these, these ultra runner experts are, have been thin their whole life. And they run like 200 miles a week. Okay, they’ve never struggled with their weight a day in their life, maybe they’re not carbohydrate intolerant, they may be part of that population that can handle a high carbohydrate diet. Plus, you know, if you’re running 200 miles a week, you know, it’s gonna be really hard for you to put on weight.
You know, also these people are like, elite athletes are like the top 1% of athletes in the world. You know, and here I am just some average dude with, you know, who’s overweight, you know, trying to follow their advice, and it’s not working for me. Right? This is complicated. It’s not as simple as just doing what they do, because I’m not them.
We’re all different. We all have different needs. We all have different metabolic profiles, we all have different desires, we all have different likes, and we all have different goals. And we have to meet you know, we need to meet ourselves where we are. And we need to do what is best for us and what works for us and having thin people trying to tell us what to do, I don’t think is doing us a much of a service. Okay.
And then we get into things like our relationship with food being so complicated, we get into things like eating disorders, you know, there’s this body dysmorphia, which is a mental illness, you know, and it’s, it’s when people think, you know, they see a flaw in themselves, you know that this flaw they see in themselves, could be very minor or it could even be just something they’re imagining, but they spend hours just, you know, trying to fix this flaw.
You know, they may try to excel at exercise, or they do cosmetic procedures. And they look at themselves in the mirror, and they say, oh, I’m so fat. Or look at that, look at my nose, you know. And this is an issue that causes you to know, other eating disorders. So this body dysmorphia, like we were comparing ourselves to maybe this perfect ideal image we see on Instagram or something.
And it can lead to, you know, depression, anxiety, and other types of eating disorders. You know, like anorexia, Anorexia is a very distorted body image, it’s a super, like, intense fear of gaining weight or being fat. And so a lot of people that have anorexia are very below normal weight, they’re very unhealthy, they starve themselves, they exercise, they over-exercise.
And a lot of these people, need medical treatment, to get themselves back to normal weight. A lot of times they need therapy to help with their self-esteem. And with these behavioral changes, they need to make.
Bulimia is a similar disorder. You know this is binging and purging, you know, and people with bulimia. You know, they’re, they feel compelled to binge eat. And then they want to avoid any kind of weight gain. So they’ll purge, and this can be life-threatening, right, because, you know, with anorexia and bulimia, these people are not getting the nutrition that they need to be healthy.
So, you know, we’ve taken this idea of like, a healthy ideal, and it can go to the extreme. And it can be very hard for people to see themselves as healthy as well, especially when we compare ourselves to others. And if you or somebody you know, is struggling with you know, dysmorphia, anorexia, or bulimia, you need to get some sort of medical help, honestly, because these are serious eating disorders and could be life-threatening. So definitely seek out help with these kinds of things.
But see, there’s this complicated relationship we have with food, you know, and it’s just been, it gets more intense, you know, it can be very intense for people. You know, we have this physical, we have a physical relationship with food, like where we have to eat food, or we die, okay. But like I was saying, you know, we have these hyper-palatable foods, and that creates a physical craving in our body.
So our body gets addicted to these feelings of bliss that we get from eating highly refined carbohydrates, for example. So the way it works is you eat some sugar, let’s say, like, you eat some donuts, right? Blood sugar spikes like crazy, but then it comes crashing down. And in order to get back to baseline, your body needs more donuts, to get back there. So you eat more donuts, and then the cycle repeats, you know, blood sugar spikes then crashes hard.
And you know, we get a lot of energy from eating donuts, we get this like a burst of, of energy, but then after a couple of hours, we have much less energy, we’re more fatigued than before we ate the donuts. Okay, so we have this physical, this complicated physical relationship with food with certain foods especially.
And then we have this emotional relationship with food. We use food to comfort ourselves, we use food to soothe ourselves so that we feel better. When we experience a difficult emotion like we’re stressed out, or we have anxiety, or we’re bored or angry, or we’re sad, or we feel hurt, a lot of times we turn to food to make us feel better.
Some foods we call comfort foods because they come for us. They make us feel good. And this is fine. It’s fine to do this, okay. But if your comfort food has negative consequences, this may not be such a good idea. Obviously, it depends on the food you’re using to comfort yourself. You could cover yourself with a whole pizza like I used to do.
A large pizza and a pint of beer and Ben and Jerry’s and oh, that’s very comforting. But lots of negative consequences. I just kept getting fatter and sicker. You could also come for yourself with other types of food and people don’t think of it this way. But you could come for yourself with a big colorful salad. Or a thick ribeye steak. Or a piece of grilled salmon or yeah, with like butter sauce on it.
Oh my gosh, amazing. And it’s very comforting to eat healthy foods as well, it can be. So we don’t have to go to the highly palatable foods to comfort ourselves, sometimes we can use I know. It’s like, oh, really, Patrick? Like, I’m just gonna go eat a big pile of broccoli? And that’s going to comfort me? And, you know, sometimes, yes, sometimes, yes. Okay.
But we can actually choose comfort foods that do serve us, and that will support our good health. So we have a physical relationship with food that’s complicated, we have an emotional relationship with food that can be complicated. And then we have this mental relationship with food.
You know, just thinking about food can produce a physical craving, just the anticipation of eating food. It’s actually more enticing than the actual experience itself. Like, I remember. Yeah, for Thanksgiving, last year, I was all obsessed about this pumpkin pie. And I’m like, this is gonna be so amazing. And I’m gonna get the, you know, the whipped cream on there. And it’s just, I can’t wait to do it.
And the anticipation, I had this idea in my brain that it was going to be so amazing. And then, when the event actually happened, and I ate it, I was like, all right. It’s like no big deal. It wasn’t as good as it was in my brain, you know, beforehand leading up to it. So we have this mental sort of obsession with food. This is complicated, right?
We have food we see in our Instagram feed, you know, food porn, they call it, you know, and just do a search for the hashtag food porn on Instagram. It’s amazing, like, pictures of burgers and pie and cake, and doughnuts and all kinds of stuff. It’s pretty amazing, your mouth will just start to water just by looking at these pictures. And then there’s the role that, you know, the media plays, and we see these billboards with giant pictures of pizzas on them.
We were out running this past weekend and I don’t like, you know, pizza, really, from this one place here in town. But there was a big giant billboard with his huge pizza on it. And like I said, I don’t even like their pizza. But I saw that billboard. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I go for a big piece of pizza right now, because I’m looking at this thing. And it’s creating this trigger in my brain. Right. And they know that it does that to us.
You know, we see these ads on TV ads, social media ads, and magazines and stuff like that. And the food that they just, you know, they’re just pumping us full of, you know, these images of how amazing this food is, okay. And then we have the social aspects of food. So a lot of times, you know, we want to stay on our plan, but then we, we go out with friends or something, and we feel like we’re being judged by other people.
You know, we want to celebrate with food. But then we feel like we’re, we’re doing something bad. You know, there’s a lot of stereotypes to like, oh, you’re a runner. Oh, all runners are skinny people, all runners can eat whatever they want. They don’t have to worry about getting fat.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not my experience. I was fat. And I felt judged by people, like, oh, you’re a runner, and you’re overweight? Like you must be doing it wrong. And then we have all this fat-shaming that goes on, you know, there’s like so much judgment around this stuff, right? When we’re being judged by others, we tend to want to, you know, crawl back to safety. And so we don’t stick to our program because we feel judged.
You know, we don’t want to be the weirdo at the dinner party, or in the restaurant with our friends. You know, everybody’s eating bread, and you’re like, oh, no bread for me. And they’re like, what’s wrong with you weirdo? Now, of course, people probably don’t say that. But that’s what we think. And we feel judged by people.
There’s this social pressure and food pushers, you know, people that are telling us just eat, just eat it. It’s fine. It’s not fine. It’s not fine. And then, you know, we have this. Speaking of restaurants, we have this problem, I think with portion sizes and how much we eat and how often we eat. And we’re told that we need to eat three meals a day plus a couple of snacks plus dessert and so we end up eating six times a day.
So we’re snacking all day long, and we go out to eat and our portion sizes are humongous, and I think that overeating has become the norm, you know. And then there’s this, like self-torture that we, that we do to ourselves, like, we torture ourselves around food, like, I shouldn’t eat this, or I can eat that. And in order to lose weight, I have to suffer, I have to suffer my way to better health.
You know, if I’m not suffering, I must not be doing it right. So I’ve never had a diet where I didn’t suffer and feel terrible. And then there’s this guilt and shame, we feel and we don’t stick to our plan. And there’s an internal shame of feeling, you know, ugly or overweight. And we have this emotional distress around how much we weigh on the scale.
And if we gain a pound, it means we’re a bad person. And we’re a failure. And we have a bad day. And so we just go back to eating the garbage food, you know. And if you want to know more about the scale drama, check out episode number 66, all about eliminating skilled drama, because I take a deep dive into that topic.
So all of these things I’ve talked about here today, I know I’ve kind of been all over the place. But I did this on purpose because I just want to I want you to know that this is complicated. It’s not a subject that, you know, we can just talk about in black and white. It’s not black and white, there’s so much gray area here. And what works for one person doesn’t work for somebody else.
So what do we do with all this? What do we do with all this information? Yeah, it’s super complicated. So what do we do? Well, I want you to know that the reason I created this is because I wanted to create a massive amount of awareness, I want you to see how complicated our relationship with food has become. And that this is not easy.
This topic is controversial, it’s complicated, it’s complex. There are a lot of nuances here, a lot of gray areas, I want you to be able to make informed decisions about your own health. And I want you to feel good about what you choose to eat and choose not to eat, you got to do what feels good for you. I also want you to be open to different ideas. So maybe not the ideas that are pushed down from the big food companies. But maybe some more grassroots kinds of ideas.
You know, we are all an experiment of one. You need to figure out what works best for you take control of your own health and your own fitness and your own diet and do what feels best for you. If you want to be a vegetarian or a vegan, or do the Mediterranean diet or Weight Watchers, whatever you want to do is completely fine. I have no judgments about any of that stuff.
But if what you’re doing isn’t working, I want you to be open-minded to try something else. You know, I talk about this a lot here I have a bias towards a lower carbohydrate approach. It seems to be the high carbohydrate diets seem to be a problem for most of us. Okay. And so, a lot, just lowering some of these problematic carbohydrates seems to help most people achieve peak physical health.
And, you know, if you can adopt a lower carbohydrate approach, and become a fat-adapted runner, oh, that’s amazing. And if you want help with this, like, reach out to me, I’ll walk you through that whole process step by step. One of the main reasons why I chose this field to specialize in sports, nutrition, health, and fitness coaching for runners is because it is so complicated.
And because I want to take all of these complicated issues here, and I want to do my best to distill them down for you so that they make sense and that you can make informed decisions and you can take control of your own health and fitness. So I do my best here on this podcast and in my coaching programs, to help you to make good decisions and do what works best for you because there’s not one diet that works for everyone.
My job is to help you and help my clients figure out what’s best for you. What’s the best for your body type what works best for your metabolism, what’s going to help support your health and fit goals? What supports your likes and dislikes? Complicated, right? We have a complicated relationship with food. I’m hoping that you got something out of this episode today.
And if you did, if you could please consider sharing it with a friend that would mean a lot to me. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Thanks for letting me rant a little bit here. As always, lots and lots of love to every single one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Let’s face it, it’s been a challenging year for all of us. Just consider the impact the COVID-19 global pandemic has had on each of us - this year has been a huge challenge! We’ve all been forced …
Continue Reading about 30. It’s the Challenges That Change Us →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 30 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host and the weight loss coach for runners. And if you’re just tuning in for the first time, you’re not losing your mind, I just recently changed the name of the podcast. So this is the podcast formerly known as The Running Mind podcast. And now we’re just Running Lean, boom.
So welcome to Running Lean, where you’re gonna learn all about how to get leaner and get stronger. So you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. You are capable of amazing things. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about. Today, we’re talking about facing challenges in order to unleash that amazingness that is lurking inside you.
Let’s face it, it’s been a challenging year for all of us. Just considering the impact that the COVID-19 global pandemic has had on every single one of us. It’s been a challenging year, it’s been a huge challenge for all of us. We’ve all been forced outside our comfort zones, and into a place that feels very uncomfortable, very challenging.
But what I want to talk about today is how it’s these, these very challenges that we face, that show us who we really are. It’s the challenges that force us to grow. It’s the challenges that change us sometimes in profound ways that we never would have experienced if it weren’t for going through all the discomfort of these challenges. The challenges that we face are essential for our growth as human beings. So I’m gonna get into all of that in just a minute.
But if you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It’s a group that kind of goes hand in hand with this podcast. And it’s a fun, thriving, engaging community of like minded runners who all want the same thing. They want to get leaner and stronger, run faster, and be able to run longer.
And speaking of challenges this month, we’ve been doing the no sugar challenge, and it’s been super fun. It’s hard. It’s a challenge. It’s why it’s called a town challenge. It’s not easy to quit eating sugar, trust me. But lots of people have been in the group ditching sugar and carbs and experiencing, you know, discomfort, but also amazing changes.
And here’s a recent comment from Sondra, she’s in the group and she’s talking about how she feels and she says, “I’m doing great. I’m finally over the headaches and the fatigue. I now have the energy to run consistently and longer. Oh, and I’ve lost inches and I’ve lost eight pounds. It’s day 16 for me, super excited about the results thus far.”
That is amazing, Sondra, that is amazing work. Giving up sugar is not easy. It’s a challenge. It’s hard. But it’s not quite as hard when you’ve got the support of all these people around you to kind of share the experience with you and help keep you motivated. So join the group just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us, I’d love to have you in there.
Also very important. Our next masterclass the next Running Lean weight loss masterclass for runners starts Monday, August 3, that is just 10 days from today. If you’re listening to this on Friday, it’s a six week intensive training program, you’re going to learn how to become a fat adapted runner. That means getting off the sugar and running on fat.
Running on your own body fat, which is an amazing source of fuel. Yes, you will lose pounds, you will lose inches but also you’ll become leaner and stronger you’ll be able to run. Running will be easier. I promise you. It’s hard at first but then it gets easier. I do have a couple of spots left. And I’m only accepting a small number of students per class. I keep it intimate. And it’s a select group of people so you’ll need to apply so if you want to get your application in do it now before the program sells out because it will sell out. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass to apply.
Okay, so let’s get into this topic today, which it’s the challenges that change us. So like I had mentioned, it’s been a challenging year for all of us, you know, we’ve got this global pandemic. I mean, who would have known that something like this would happen. It has radically changed our lives, it has affected the economy, it’s affected us as human beings like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.
There’s been layoffs and work furloughs, people have had to adjust to working from home, people have had to adjust to being at home with their spouses and with their kids. Not always easy. People have had to learn how to use Zoom, talk about stress. You know, parents are expected to homeschool their kids along with, you know, doing their job from home.
You know, our running groups have all been canceled, all of our races have been canceled. All of these big goals and dreams that we had for this year have been canceled, or at least, you know, put on some extended hold. And, you know, these are all big challenges. You know, if you can put all this stuff together, you know, it can seem like pretty overwhelming, right? Pretty big challenges.
So I’m going to share some stuff with you here. And I hope you don’t mind. But I’m going to ask your permission to get real with you. And I’m going to be vulnerable and talk about some things that I really haven’t talked about before. Here’s that cool, cool, cool. Okay, good.
So here we go. So here’s been some of the personal challenges that I’ve faced, in addition to, you know, the global pandemic, and all the fun that’s kind of gone along with that. So at the beginning of this year, I got divorced, you know, my wife said she was ready to move on.
And, and so I had to go through that, which is a challenge. And that meant, you know, finding my own place to live. So I moved into my own place, I had to get used to living alone again, which is kind of weird. After being married for like nine and a half years, you know, I had to figure out how to pay my bills, because honestly, at the time, she was the main income earner for our relationship in our marriage. And so I had to hustle, right, I had to, like, get some jobs and stuff.
So I did, I like, I had my coaching business and I was you know, doing some coaching which was good, kind of building my business at the time. But I went out there and I got some jobs so that I could have some more income coming in. So I got a job working at a running store, local running store, selling running shoes, basically, which was, you know, was fine.
I got a job working as the head coach of one of the local running groups here in Cincinnati, and that was fine. And you know, paid a little bit of money, just good. In addition to those three things, so my coaching, the running store, the running group, head coach, I was doing some rideshare you know, driving just picking up some, some extra cash, driving people around for Lyft, and all that was fine. Like I was fine, I was making ends meet, I was hustling. I was very busy. I was working literally like all the time. And then COVID hit and things really changed in a big way for me, personally.
The two jobs that I had the two paying jobs that I had I got furloughed from both of those so we had to stop the running group and obviously the running store had to shut down. So those two things went away immediately. And then I had to like stop doing that ride share thing because I did not want people in my car.
You know, I did not I just don’t trust you know, people I wanted to stay safe and I didn’t want to get sick. So I stopped doing that. And that all brought a lot of fear to me and a lot of financial fear like how am I going to pay my rent? How am I going to buy groceries? That kind of stuff.
And so I started delivering food for Uber Eats so I just did some of that food delivery and I gotta tell you, during the stay at home order that was a pretty lucrative gig. You know what I mean? I could work on my coaching business in the day and then deliver food dinner time basically and I and I did that for quite a while and really made a lot of good money doing that.
You’d be surprised people were ordering a lot of food during the lockdown. Okay so working on my coaching business during the day, recording podcasts, sharing content, you know, creating programs and things like that. And then at night out there hustling, delivering food and I gotta tell you all of this stuff dealing with all of this and and the divorce and all of that all at once was very challenging for me, there was a lot, a lot of stress going on in my life.
And, and I didn’t choose any of it. You know, it wasn’t like I went out there and was like, I think I’m going to get divorced and start my life kind of all over again, at 53 years old. You know, I didn’t want that. Choose that. I mean, I’ve chosen plenty of challenges like I’ve chosen to do hard things, plenty of times, I’ve run dozens of marathons and ultra marathons, you know, I did an Ironman, I ran 100 miles, I did a 100 mile trail race, all these things are very hard, but I chose them.
They all made me feel very uncomfortable. They got me out of my comfort zone. I knew they would, though. But I made a decision, a conscious decision ahead of time to do these things. Okay, I didn’t choose to get divorced, I didn’t choose to get furloughed from those jobs. I didn’t choose to kind of start my life all over again, on my own. I certainly didn’t choose a global pandemic, to just add to the fun of all this stuff going on.
All of this stuff forced me to get out of my comfort zone. It forced me to get uncomfortable. And inevitably, it like forced me to grow and to change. And this is the powerful lesson that I’m going to share with you here today is that whether or not you choose the challenge, if you face it head on, you change for the better.
You’ve got to embrace the discomfort that these challenges bring. The key is to step up and face the challenge head on, embrace the discomfort. Discomfort is the cost of growth, it’s the price you pay, if you want to change. Because when you avoid discomfort, you avoid all the change and all the growth, you stay right where you are.
Yeah, it feels comfortable, feels good. It’s what you know. But you’ll also never have the experience of becoming anything more than you are right here now in this moment. And one big way that we avoid discomfort is we try not to feel our feelings, you know, we don’t want to feel bad, we don’t want to feel any negative emotions, because that feels bad.
So a lot of times what we do is we buffer away our emotions. And buffering means we put something external between us in our emotions. So we use something like food or alcohol, to make us feel better on the inside. So we might, we might feel scared or lonely or angry. And so we eat something or drink something and it does feel better temporarily.
But we’re basically, we’re resisting those feelings, we’re resisting those emotions that are coming up during that challenging time. You know, we reject anything that’s so called like a negative emotion, because they don’t feel good. And we want to feel good.
Like right now. I can’t tell you how often I used food to feel better at the beginning of this year. You know, the first couple of months after our separation. I was eating a lot of pizza and a lot of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And it did feel good. It was kind of like the best part of my day.
I would you know, like I was saying I was working all day and then working all night. And then I would be like I’m getting a large pizza and a couple of pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And this is going to be like the best part of my day. I look forward to it.
I mean, honestly, that’s probably not awesome, if that’s the best part of your day. But that’s a topic for another day. But anyway, it works for a minute like it does, does feel good. Eat all that sugar and stuff. It works for a minute, but then it doesn’t work right like you come down after sugar.
And then you’re still left with all those emotions, you still feel all those feelings. But only now you feel worse because you’re getting fat on top of feeling hurt or lonely or scared. So avoiding the discomfort does not work. It only makes things worse, you have to embrace the discomfort of your challenges. So I had to learn how to allow these emotions in.
I had to learn how to allow them in and process them just to let them be there. The negative emotions the quote unquote negative emotions, the positive emotions, all of them. I had to stop using food as an escape from my emotions. And this is not something most people are willing to do.
Most people will not do this because it’s hard, it does not feel good, it is uncomfortable. But if you want to step up, if you want to face your challenges head on, you have to allow these emotions in. You know, like, a good example is right before the start of Ironman. So if you’re not familiar with what Ironman is, it is a brutal, it’s like one of the toughest sporting events you can do as a human being.
So it starts with a 2.4 mile swim, and then 112 mile bike ride, followed by a full 26.2 marathon. And so I trained for a long time for this thing, but then, right, you know, the morning of the event, we’re standing there ready to jump in the water. And I was like, feeling so scared, so scared, full of fear. And I just allowed that fear to be there with me, and I, and I, the gun went off, and I jumped in the water.
And I just did it anyway, as a good example, I tuned in to that feeling I had at the time of just allowing that emotion to be there with me, while I was doing this really hard thing. And I was kind of feeling that same way, about the separation and the divorce.
At the beginning of this year, I was feeling so hurt and angry about the divorce, you know, I didn’t want to feel that way. But I allowed the feelings to be there. I allowed those emotions to be there. And I carried on anyway, I just kept doing the next right thing. Anyway, it’s kind of like you’re driving in a car, and you look over in the passenger seat and you’re like, hello, fear, hello, hurt, hello, anger.
Yeah, you guys can come along with me, but I’m driving, you’re not in charge here. So don’t allow those feelings to overwhelm you or overtake you, or dictate how you’re going to show up. You know, keep moving forward, allow the feelings to be there with you. That’s what it means to embrace the discomfort.
You know, think about this sugar challenge or no sugar challenge we’re doing in July, it’s uncomfortable, it’s uncomfortable to not eat sugar, if you’re used to eating it, it doesn’t feel good. You can there’s some like withdrawal symptoms that you get, your head aches, maybe a little lethargy.
And it just doesn’t feel good. And you don’t have that thing anymore, that buffer to use to feel better. So there’s this period of like discomfort and most people are just not willing to feel that discomfort. But I’m telling you, discomfort is the price you have to pay to become more when you embrace discomfort and you face your challenges, you grow.
Because growth doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. Oh, you get in your comfort zone is more of what you already know and have you know, you don’t get to be more. When you embrace discomfort, you learn what you’re capable of. And let me tell you, you’re capable of way more than you realize. When you embrace discomfort, you build trust in yourself, you build confidence in yourself. And you begin to change in profound ways that you’d never even imagine.
If you weren’t faced with this particular challenge, you become more of that amazing human being that you already are, but you just become more. You know, you get to become an example of what’s possible. And honestly, when you embrace discomfort and you like, face your challenges and move through them. It just, it feels amazing. The sense of accomplishment and pride that you have in that, oh my gosh.
Now, here’s the best and worst part about all this, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the change. So, if you want to make some big changes in your life, you’ve got to like face some big challenges head on. You know, and a lot of times, what we do is we say, well, I’m gonna do this little challenge, I’ll stop eating a little bit of sugar. I’ll cut it down a little bit, you know, and then you might get a little bit of a change, you know, but if you really want to elicit big changes in your life, you’ve got to like face these big challenges whether you choose them or not.
You know, I faced some very big challenges this year so far. And because of those big challenges, I’ve changed in big ways. You know, right now sitting here talking to you today. I feel so good about myself. I’m very comfortable living here on my own, I’m very comfortable financially, I’m very comfortable with myself.
I actually love being alone, in love living by myself. I actually have a good relationship with my ex wife. Like we still talk. And just a little sidebar, like who wouldn’t want to be married to me? I just want to know that, right? I mean, because I’m awesome. But anyway, that’s another, another topic.
But I’ve gotten myself off the sugar, I’ve gotten myself off the carbs I’ve lost 40 pounds this year. And it’s not because of stress. Actually, I was gaining weight, because of the stress eating that I was doing. I was one of the reasons why I was like, dude, I gotta do something about this now.
So I got off the sugar and the carbs, I started eating high fat, low carb diet, lost 40 pounds, running is so much more enjoyable again, I’m actually like, at the best weight, and I’m in the best shape of my life that I’ve been at since I can remember, I don’t remember ever being in this good shape. And I’m 53 I’m not like you know, super young.
Other big ways I’ve changed, I’m doing work that I love every single day. Talking to you right here on this podcast is a great example of the kind of work I’m doing. Not because, not in spite of the challenges I’ve had, but because of them. Because I’ve been forced to like step up my game.
You know, I’m building this amazing community of runners. And it fills me with gratitude and with love. I mean, this is an amazing positive group of people that I get to surround myself with, I feel so grateful for that. I have this great coaching business that I just love. Coaching people, by the way, like, when I’m coaching someone, I’m in my zone, and I just feel amazing. You know, right now, this podcast, it’s like one of the top ranked podcasts on iTunes. What? That’s crazy.
I’ve rekindled all these amazing friendships with people, from people from high school and people that I just haven’t been, you know, friends with for a while or haven’t really communicated.
But I have all these people reaching out to me and saying, Hey, Patrick, how are you doing? I just, I feel overwhelmed with love and support from my friends and from family. And today, I show up in everything I do as like the best and most authentic version of myself yet. And I know there’s even more to come.
But today, I can honestly tell you sitting here today, I love myself unconditionally. This is not something I would have said four or five months ago. I love myself unconditionally. And this is one of the most amazing changes I’ve ever experienced in my life. And here’s the crazy part about all this, I would not be here today in this place with all this. All these amazing changes that I’ve experienced. I would not be here today, if I was still married, I just know that I would not be who I am today.
If I was still in that comfortable life that I had. I was forced out of that comfortable life and into all this discomfort. It was very uncomfortable. If I haven’t stressed that enough, it was very uncomfortable, the divorce, the loss of jobs, the pandemic, all of this. But it was the catalyst for my change in my growth. And I know it sounds crazy. But I’m grateful for all of it.
I’m not where I am today despite these challenges. I’m here and who I am today because of those challenges. And I look at challenges differently today. I see challenges as opportunities, opportunities to grow, to change, to become more to get stronger to thrive. I don’t want to just survive. I’m not here to be a survivor, I want to thrive. I want to be amazing.
I just want to be like, fine. You ever ask people like how are you doing? And they’re like, fine. Like of all the emotions you could choose to feel? You just want to feel fine? No, I want to be amazing.
Now are our challenges hard? Are they hard to do? Is it hard to like face your challenges? Yes. Is giving up sugar hard? Yes it is. You know you feel terrible at first,running sucks for a little while. But then is it worth it when you get through all that and you get to the other side of that again? Hell yes. It is so worth it.
Is running a marathon hard? You know it is, but are you profoundly changed when you cross that finish line, especially with your first marathon, oh my gosh, you know you are. So here’s my challenge to you. What are you avoiding doing because it’s hard? What are you not doing because it’s uncomfortable? I want to challenge you today to do that. Do the hard stuff, face those challenges, whether you’re choosing them or not, get out of your comfort zone. Do it off.
And if you can’t do it every day, if you can, you know whether the challenge is something you’re choosing or not choosing, embrace the discomfort because there will be discomfort. Learn how to feel your feelings, learn how to allow them in and keep moving forward. You know, don’t use those buffers against your emotions, don’t eat to feel better, don’t drink to feel better, don’t do drugs to feel better.
Because that stuff that does not work, you have to learn how to feel your feelings. But when you do, when you get out of your comfort zone, when you show up as your most authentic self, when you face your challenges head on, you get to show yourself what you’re made of. You get to become more you will blow your own mind with this work, I promise you.
And you can see what amazing big changes you can make in your life. Who you can be? Who do you want to be? Not despite the challenges but because of them. Ah, that was good. I’m glad I shared that stuff with you guys here today. And honestly join the Facebook group because we talk about challenges a lot in there.
And every Sunday I do kind of like a little free training in there. Sunday afternoons. So last Sunday, we talked about what it means to become a fat-adapted runner and all the benefits of that. And it’s good, we have lots of fun discussions in the group. So please join us over on Facebook, Facebook land, just go to find the Running Lean community on Facebook.
And then remember the next Running Lean weight loss masterclass for runners starts in just 10 days, you will learn exactly how to become a fat adapted runner. It’s an intensive six week training program taught by me live, you get to ask questions, get all your questions answered, you will lose weight, you will run faster, you will become stronger. You will become a bonk proof runner and build around those long distances without ever worrying about like crashing and burning.
You’ll learn how to end the emotional eating and learn how to allow and process those emotions will help you work through embracing the discomfort of all of this. Yes, it’s a challenging program, but it will change you. You will be transformed as a runner and as a human being in just six weeks. And I do have a couple spots left.
So please get your application in now. innerfiretribe.com/masterclass. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
There are more diets out there in the world right now (and more conflicting information about those diets) than I even care to think about. There also seems to be a common recurring theme about all of …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there, and welcome to episode number 25 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m a weight loss coach for runners. Today, I want to talk about why diets don’t work. Honestly, there are more diets out there in the world right now, and probably more conflicting information about all those diets than I can even think about.
But there’s one theme that I keep seeing, and it keeps repeating and keeps coming up over and over again. And that is that diets don’t work. Why is this? Why don’t diets work? Every one of them claims that they are the answer to your weight loss problems. And basically, every one of them fails to produce lasting results.
So today, I’m going to do a little bit of a deep dive into what I think are the five biggest reasons why diets don’t work. And I’m going to give you a few options for what you should focus on instead.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a Facebook group that I created and it goes hand in hand with this podcast. We take a deeper dive into these topics, you can ask questions, you can get answers. It’s totally free. If you listen to this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. Just go to Facebook and search for the Running Lean community. Pretty simple. Right?
Awesome. So why don’t diets work? What is going on here? So I’ve got five things I want to talk about today. And the first is this. The first thing that I think is why diets don’t work. Number one diets, they only address one thing, what you should or shouldn’t eat. So I have tried many, many different diets.
I did the vegetarian thing for a while and then I eventually moved to pescetarian. And then plant-based or vegan. I did keto paleo Adkins, I did something called TR E or time restricted eating, which is kind of a form of intermittent fasting. And then I did like a raw food diet, and actually started a raw food diet when I was training for a marathon, like just a couple of weeks before a marathon.
I was like, I’m gonna try this raw food diet. And it was terrible. I had really terrible results from doing that. And then there’s a lot of diets out there that I haven’t tried. There’s things like Jenny Craig, which is super popular. Weight Watchers is another super popular one.
And then, you know, like the Mediterranean diet, the South Beach Diet zone, which I had to look up what that even was. And I’m still not exactly sure what that entails. But the common thread among virtually every one of these diets is that they just focus on one thing, what you should or shouldn’t eat. So eat this. And not that, which is fine, I get it. It is important. It is one of the components of, you know, creating a healthy eating lifestyle, but it’s only one part of it. It’s not everything. It’s not the whole picture.
And I think when these diets focus on just telling you what you should and shouldn’t eat, we’re, you know, they’re really missing the ball, they’re really missing the point. Because if it was that easy, if it was as easy as just like telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat, then there would be no problem with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, all that stuff that we got going on here in this country.
Also, most of these diets are just kind of handing out bad advice. So they fall along the same lines as the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is a diet that is high in carbohydrates, and low in fat. And we know without a doubt, now, we know that this approach does not work. I mean, we started doing this back in the late 70s, early 80s.
And the country the US as a whole has been compliant you know we’ve reduced the amount of fat we eat, we’ve increased the amount of carbs we eat. And we as a nation keep getting, you know, fatter, and all these issues of heart disease, diabetes and obesity just keep increasing. So we know for a fact that this type of diet really doesn’t work. Okay?
But this is what a lot of these diets are putting out there. The Mediterranean diet, the Zone Diet Weight Watchers, Jenny, Greg, South Beach, a lot of these are just telling you to eat more grains, eat more carbs and limit the amount of fat that you take in, okay? It doesn’t work. And here’s something that is interesting.
Runners on the whole are really very carb dependent. Runners on the whole carry around too much body fat in general. And the reason for this is simple, that runners are addicted to carbs. So runners eat way more carbs, then even the average American.
Think about it like you got to fuel up for all those long runs, you know, so the day before, let’s do some carbo loading, you know, fettuccine alfredo, like Michael Scott training for the 5k or, you know, the the pre run meal of, you know, carbs or pancakes or whatever you like to do, and the gels, all the gels, and this constant sucking down of sports drinks, and energy bars.
And then there’s the post workout fuel and carbo loading that we do as well. I mean, I’ve done this gladly, too, because it’s just an excuse to eat as much, you know, as many pancakes and syrup is that one, you know, so I get it. But runners on the whole, eat way too much sugar and way too many carbs, which creates a chronic state in our bodies of fat storage mode. You know, because our insulin goes high insulin is a fat storage hormone.
And so we’re constantly storing fat. You know, when we run, especially when we’re training for long distance events, we can burn off some of that fat, but typically no, typically, we’re not losing weight during training like that. In fact, if you’re a long distance runner, and you’ve ever like, scaled back your running, like scaled back the intensity of your workouts, or maybe the mileage you’re doing per week or per month, you will start gaining weight pretty quickly.
I hear this all the time from runners. Oh, yeah, you know, I injured my foot. And so I had to take a couple weeks off and I gained like five pounds. It’s crazy, right? Because you are not, your body’s in this state of chronic fat storage mode. You’re not in fat burning mode, the only way you can lose weight is to burn fat. That’s that we all know that. Okay, but anyway, I went off on a little bit of a tangent there about runners and being addicted to carbs. But it’s important, I think it’s important for us to understand that.
So diets, they, you know, they only tell you what to eat, and they’re not addressing the stuff that’s going on, underneath all of that, which is the mental and emotional obsession that we have with food, you know, we’ve become a culture that has become addicted to food, we crave it like a drug, specially certain types of foods and it depends on you know, on the person. But there are a bunch of different foods out there.
Pizza is one that we crave, like a drug, you know, fast food like burgers and french fries, we crave like a drug. I used to crave Ben and Jerry’s ice cream like a drug. And the food scientists know this. They are taking advantage of this mental obsession that we have with food. So every time we eat something, we get a little bit of a hit of dopamine in our brain, you know, which makes us feel good.
It’s the same kind of response you get when you drink alcohol, or do drugs like cocaine, for instance, you get a little hit of dopamine and it feels good. And you’re like, ooh, that was good. I want more of that. But when you eat certain types of food foods that are high in sugar, especially like McDonald’s, french fries, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and french fries, just by the way, you know, it’s the fat content, but it’s also the starch that turns in no sugar.
So those kinds of things really give you a big hit of dopamine. And so your brain is like, whoa, we need more of that right now. It’s crazy. They’ve kind of created this culture of food addicts, you know? Which I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
I don’t I don’t I don’t I well, I do know I don’t think that’s good. It’s crazy, though. Like they even you’re gonna start to notice this now. driving around town, you’re gonna see giant billboards with pictures of food, they call this food porn, because it like, creates that same sort of release of dopamine in our brain, when we see a picture of like a close up picture of a juicy hamburger and french fries on a billboard, we get that same response in our body.
Like, if you were like looking at a picture of, of a naked person, you know, I mean, like, there’s a physiological response to that. Notice it. Next time, you’re driving around, and you see a billboard with like, you know, close up of some kind of food, pizza, you know, steaming or that close up of a burger or whatever. Notice what’s going on in your body, chances are, you’ll notice one thing especially which is like your mouth will start to water like Pavlov’s dog here, you know?
So notice that the next time you’re driving around, you see a billboard like that, what do you start to think about? What feelings do you have in your body? Are you like, salivating? Do you all of a sudden want that burger or whatever.
But we see these images all over the place, we see them posted on Instagram, and Facebook, and we see him on billboards, and we see him, you know, in magazines, and in commercials and all this stuff. And so we’re constantly bombarded. Our brains are bombarded with thoughts about this food, it’s creating a mental obsession for us.
Not only is the food being created and designed in a way, and they call this the bliss point, which is what the scientists create, with the right amount of sugar, fat, and salt, or whatever they use to create a food that makes us crave it the most. It creates the biggest dopamine hit in our brains, which makes us feel the best. I call it the bliss point, because it creates a sense of bliss in our body when we eat it.
They know this, they’re doing all of this on purpose, okay. So, in order to break out of this, you got to start breaking the pattern, and you got to work on your thoughts about food, you have to change the way you think about food. And we do this with my clients, we work on that mental obsession, and we work on the cravings. And one thing we do is like, anytime you have a craving, we just allow it to be there and don’t react to it.
So anytime you can not give into a craving, like let’s say you have some ice cream in your freezer, and you’re like, man, that ice cream would be really good right now. But if you don’t give into that craving, you can start training your brain to allow those cravings to be there without reacting to them without doing anything about them. It’s a process though, and it takes a while.
And you have to be okay with like feeling kind of uncomfortable for a little while. And that’s what a lot of people have a hard time with. Okay, we’re also a society that does a lot of emotional eating. Right, instead of feeling our feelings, we eat food, just like I was explaining, you know, you get uncomfortable when you have this craving for something, you just want to eat it, it’s the same thing when we have a negative emotion.
So when we have a negative emotion, like hurt, or anger, or stress or overwhelm, or you know, we’re lonely, or something like that, what we want to do is we want that feeling to go away right away, we want it to go away, like right now. And one way that we do that is with substances.
So we’ll grab alcohol, you drink some alcohol, and it’ll immediately make you feel good. So instead of feeling lonely, let’s say you drink some alcohol, and you’re going to your blood brain is going to be flooded with dopamine and adrenaline and it’s going to just feel amazing. And you kind of forget about the fact that you’re lonely, okay?
Because your body is flooded with these other feelings. So alcohol does that. Food does that the same exact way shopping for a lot of people. It gives them that same kind of sense of that feeling of like flooding your brain and body with dopamine. And there’s a variety of other things that people get into drugs and you know, sex and gambling and other things like that.
And here’s the thing, all of these things that are outside of us when we reach for something that’s outside of us to make us feel better inside it not only does it not work, so it doesn’t we’re not dealing with the emotion that we’re feeling. You know, if you’re feeling hurt or lonely. Eating is going to feel good, just because you know you’re getting that little hit of dopamine, but it’s not dealing with the fact that you’re feeling hurt or lonely, that emotion is still there.
So when the buzz of your food or alcohol or whatever it is wears off, you still have the negative emotion. In fact, you feel worse because now you’ve created, you’ve done something very negative, something with negative consequences, like you gain weight, or you have a hangover or whatever. And now you feel bad about doing that.
And so it’s kind of like, you even feel worse. So these things we think are helping or making us feel better actually make us feel worse. You know, we call this buffering when we’re using something external as a buffer between our ourselves and our feelings, you know, we want to dampen the emotions, so we put a buffer between the emotion and ourselves, the emotion doesn’t go away, you just, it just sort of numbs it a little bit, okay. And you feel something else instead.
So when you eat, you might feel full, which gives your brain you know, big hit of dopamine, it feels great. And you sort of forget about those other emotions for a little bit. But it doesn’t work for the long term, because you’re not dealing with the emotions. Okay, so if any of this is resonating with you, I just want you to know that you are perfectly normal. This happens to all of us, welcome to the human race.
So number one, diets only address one thing: they address what to eat or what not to eat, they don’t address any of this other stuff. They don’t address the mental obsession that we have with food, this unnatural craving that we have for food, they don’t address the emotional eating that we do. And most diets are kind of handing out bad advice about what to eat and what not to eat. Okay. All right. So that was number one. Diets are only talking about what to eat, what not to eat.
Number two, diets are very restrictive. Have you ever been on a diet and just wanted to punch somebody in the face? I know that I had, this is my experience. Like, I remember doing this calorie counting thing a couple years ago, because I was gaining weight I was running and I was gaining weight. And so I’m like, okay, I gotta start tracking all my calories, because that’s how you lose weight, right? You gotta like, eat fewer calories than you burn.
So I was like, you know, running extra miles every week and tracking every single mile I ran, every mile I walked, every step I took, every time I like, did, you know, weightlifting, I was tracking all these calories that I was burning. And I then had to put in how many calories I was was consuming. So I had to like, put in this app that I had this tracker app, I had to put in exactly how many calories I was consuming each day, which meant that every time I ate a bite of anything, I had to input it into this app, right?
Which at first was okay, it’s like, you know, cereal, you know, find the cereal in the database. And you know, they had a pretty good database of food in there, find the cereal. How much did I use? Probably a lot more than they say, as a serving whatever. Blueberries, I could find that. And that was fine. Like if I could just put in things like that.
But sometimes I would, I would make my own recipe or you know, make a casserole or something, right. And then you got to put every one of those items into this app to create the recipe then divided out by how many portions sizes, like the whole, the whole thing was so stressful for me.
And honestly, I got so stressed out about doing this, that it just made me like, you know, it kept me up at night, like, every time I ate something I had to like, do all this inputting into this app and do all this math and everything. And besides that, besides it being super stressful. I was hungry all the time because I was restricting calories. Okay. I was like hangry. I was hangry right, hungry and angry. Hangry and, and I wasn’t losing weight either. Right. So awesome. I’m angry, hungry, and then I couldn’t lose weight. So that’s amazing, right?
But why is this what is going on here? I had to figure out what’s happening here. So most diets are based on this concept of restrict and restriction. So typically, diets restrict fat or calories or both. So low fat or low calorie diets are probably the biggest culprits here. And they create an environment in our bodies of over hunger and over desire, they kind of do the opposite of what you would think they would do.
So what happens in your body is when you restrict calories, your body starts sending signals to your brain that you’re not getting enough food. And so you produce more ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, your appetite actually increases, because you’re restricting calories. So your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis, it wants to get back to neutral.
And so it says, like, Hey, we’re not getting enough food here, you need to feed us and so your, your body’s doing what’s supposed to, it’s increasing your appetite. But since you’re restricting calories, you’re not eating as much, you’re gonna have this like really massive disconnect from your brain, your body, your body is saying, like, feed me now.
But your brain is like, oh, no, we have to stick to 1000 calories a day, no more. And you’re gonna just feel miserable and hungry all the time. This is my experience, there’s a lot of what a lot of people experience with restrictive diets. It creates a, it just feels terrible, it creates a lot of inner turmoil.
You know, when you restrict food, especially foods that are high in fat say, you also create a sense of deprivation. So, you know, you start saying to yourself, like, I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that. Or maybe you go out to dinner with friends, and everybody’s eating, you know, wings, and pizza and french fries. And you’re like, I’ll just have a side salad, because you know, I’ve kind of had most of my calories for the day. And boy, that feels terrible, right? You get FOMO fear of missing out.
It’s like, there’s all this food here around you, and I can’t eat it, it just feels terrible. Okay, so number two diets don’t work because they are restrictive. And this restricting of calories, especially calories from fat leads to uncontrollable cravings. And almost inevitably will lead to non compliance, people will no longer comply with this kind of diet, because they just can’t do it, they can’t deal with those cravings, usually at least a binging and then just quitting the diet altogether.
And then what happens is, a lot of times people will go back on that kind of a diet, and then they will lose some weight, and then they will feel terrible, and then you can’t do it. And then they gain a bunch of weight back. And then they do that again. And that’s what we call like a yo-yo diet, where people are constantly restricting what they’re eating and like trying to white knuckle it, and then you know, quitting, because it’s so hard. And then, you know, getting a bunch of weight back and then doing it again. And that cycle just continues. It’s really not good for you, by the way.
So number three is that diets are complicated. You know, I was talking about that calorie tracking app, and I had to input everything I was eating. This was extremely complicated. You know, when you got to like, count every calorie in every macro, you know, how much protein, how much fat, how many carbs of everything you’re eating, oh my god, I was crazy.
When I did the keto diet for a while there and had some good results from that. But keto in general, to get your body into ketosis means you have to eat very, very few carbs. I think it’s like less than 50 a day or something like that. And it is very hard to do that for most people, especially since I was plant based at the time.
And so it was like, you know, you had to get most of your calories in the day from fat and you know, as eating a plant based diet, it’s kind of challenging unless you’re like chugging olive oil all day, you know, which I did not do that. But you know, I was eating a lot avocados. Anyway. So when I was doing the Keto thing, I had to track all these macros and actually created this Excel spreadsheet for calculating all this stuff.
How much protein was, you know, the protein, fat, carb ratio had to get it all straightened out every day. I had to keep track of every single morsel that I ate. And honestly, eating was no longer enjoyable for me. Eating wasn’t fun for me. It was a chore; it was like a math assignment. You know, diets they really think they’re making things simple for us but they really are very complicated.
You know, Weight Watchers has their points just eat so many points. Well, you got to like keep track of all your points. You can only buy food that has certain points. Jenny Craig, you’ve got to buy all their food you have to like only buy the food that they tell you to buy other diets have you supplement with all these shake mixes? And pills and probiotics and prebiotics and cleanse kits.
And, you know, all these things, and it just seems so overly complicated. Some diets have you, you gotta weigh all your food. So, you know, what do you have to bring a scale to the restaurant? So you can like weigh your food? I don’t know. They’re just very complicated. You know, and they’re trying to tell you, it’s simple. They’re trying to sell you on an idea that, Oh, it’s just simple. Just count on your points, or whatever.
But it really isn’t, you know, it isn’t simple. The reality is that diets are very complicated. And what happens is they create a lot of stress for us. You know, my experience has been, when I’ve had to, like input everything into an app, or you don’t track everything on an Excel spreadsheet, I got really stressed out about food.
And when I get stressed out, what do I do? Probably the same thing you do, I just want to eat to feel better. You know, and that’s not the goal of these diets. But far too often, it’s the outcome. You know, the diets are trying to be simple, but they are very complicated. And they and they create a lot of stress, and then you end up just binging. Okay, so that was number three. Diets are complicated.
Number four, diets are based on this one size fits all concept. Every diet out there is like we are the best one for everyone. Like everyone should be on this diet, everyone should be on the Zone diet, or the South Beach diet, or everyone should be plant based.
Like they can’t all be right, right? If everybody’s saying they’re the one, and there’s, you know, 60 diets out there, or 100, or however many, they can’t all be right. But I totally get this, I really, really do. So for around 10 years, I was plant based 100%. And I swore that this was the only way to go. And this is best for everyone I preached about being plant-based.
And I was you know, my thoughts, my understanding was that if everyone would just switch to eating plants, they would all be super healthy. And, and I really firmly believe this for a long time. The truth is, though, that we are all different. We are all different people, we all have different dietary needs, we all have different metabolic needs.
We all have, you know, our genes are slightly different. I don’t know a ton about genes. But I will say this, I’ve started really getting into this new science of ancestral eating. And this is where, you know, you want to focus on eating what your particular ancestors have evolved to eat over the last, you know, couple 1000 years.
You know, if your ancestors were Inuit Eskimos living in the Canadian Arctic, you’re gonna be, you know, very genetically different and thrive on a very different diet than if your ancestors like mine, you know, we’re from Ireland and Scotland, you know, or if your ancestors come from the plains of Africa, or from East Asia. So in all of these different parts of the world, people have been thriving for 1000s of years on different types of diets, different types of foods, some of them super high in fat, and super high in animal fat, and very few vegetables.
And some are kind of the opposite. Lots of rice, and lots of seafood and lots of vegetables and things like that. So really the truth of the matter is there isn’t one diet that’s best for everyone. But that’s not true. There is one, there is one diet, it’s that’s best for everyone. And that’s the one that works for you.
You know, like South Beach diet might work for you. But it might be terrible for somebody else. So what I teach, and what I would suggest that you start thinking about is choosing food that works for you, you know, choosing an eating protocol and I use this word protocol with my clients because it’s not a diet, it’s a it’s kind of a way of of eating that you can sustain over time.
So we choose a protocol that works for each person individually, and we figure it out together. So if you want to lose weight, eating a vegan diet or plant based totally fine, we can figure out a way to do that. If you want to do it as a carnivore or doing paleo or primal or, you know, whatever, fine vegetarian, fine, whatever pescatarian. We will make it work, you can lose weight on all kinds of different diets, okay? There’s not one size that fits for everyone. There’s not one diet that’s best for everyone out there.
Okay, there’s so many different factors involved here, you got to figure out what works best for you. Now, I will say one thing here. And this is my, my caveat, which is, any diet that’s high in sugar and carbohydrates will not work. Any diet that’s high in sugar, and refined carbohydrates especially, will keep you in a state of elevated insulin will keep you in this chronic state of fat storage mode in your body and you’re constantly going to gain weight, you’re going to you know, massively increase your chances for obesity, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, sugar and carbs.
Bad, okay, you absolutely cannot lose weight, while eating a diet that’s high in sugar and carbs. I don’t care what anybody says or what you believe, that’s just the facts. This is just science where our bodies work, okay. So you got to get your insulin down. That’s the only thing I would say about this. So there, there it is. Well, there isn’t one particular diet that works for everyone, we do know that there’s one thing that does not work for everyone, and that’s lots of sugar and carbs.
So choose foods that work for you, if you want to eat, you know, whatever, if you want to eat, you know, a plant based diet, do it. And you know, we can work on that we can, we can make it work for you. But just don’t assume that every one of these diets is going to work for everyone, because they don’t, you know, diets don’t work because they assume that what’s good for one is good for all there really is no one size fits all, when it comes to what food you should be eating.
So choose wisely, my friends. And then number five, and this is probably the most important factor in why diets don’t work. And that is the main concept of a diet, the whole idea of a diet is that it’s temporary, it’s a temporary thing. You know, when we think of a diet we think of as something we do for a short period of time, you know, I need to go on a diet to lose weight.
So most people think they can go on a diet for a few months, get to their goal weight, you know, lose the 20 or 30 or 50 pounds, and then go back to the way they were eating before. You know, eating the same stuff that got them to gain all that weight in the first place. Which makes no sense at all right? This is going back to that whole yo-yo dieting thing. You eat all this crappy food, you gain a bunch of weight, then you’re like, I need to go on a diet.
So you pick one of these diets. It works for a little bit, until it doesn’t, you gain all the weight back. And then you do it again. And this is really bad for you and really bad for your health. And you know, it sets you up for a lifetime of struggle and weight loss failure. And it sets you up for all kinds of things for stress.
For this over desire for food, you’re constantly thinking about and stressing out about food. And, you know, it’s because of all the other things I’ve mentioned here, you know that all the complications, all the restrictions of diets, the deprivation, we feel the cravings we experience is why people just can’t wait to just go back to what they were eating before. Because, frankly, diets kind of suck.
The whole idea that a diet is something that’s temporary, and we got to get rid of that idea. Instead of a diet I teach my clients like I said, how to create a protocol, a way of eating that you can do for the rest of your life. It doesn’t do you any good just to be able to do this temporarily. Just doesn’t work.
Whatever you choose to do, whatever kinds of food you choose to eat, when we talk about what foods you want to eat, and how often you want to eat, and your mindset around food and how you process your emotions. When we talk about taking this holistic approach to nutrition and health and feeling vibrant and thriving in our bodies. It’s not a diet, it’s a way of life.
You’ve got to create a whole new way of thinking about food. You got to change the way you feel about food. You need to change the way you feel about yourself. What I do with my clients is I help them to create a whole new relationship with food And with themselves. You know, if you’re struggling with a diet, yes, stop doing that. You need to create an eating plan that works for you protocol.
And once you get that dialed in, and you get the mindset, right, and you get your emotional state, right, you’ll be able to lose the weight, you’ll, it’s kind of magical, actually, the way it works is you kind of the fat starts coming off. And when you stick to it, it’s something you can do forever, you lose the weight, the fat starts coming off.
And it’s something you just you want to keep doing because it feels so good. And then one of the things that I really want to say here, because I think it’s important is that eating should be a joyous thing. We’ve, our whole culture is like, you know, we celebrate with food a lot of times and I don’t want you to stop doing that.
And so I encourage my clients when they’re creating their protocol to include things like birthdays and holidays like account for those kinds of days. And, and enjoy. You know, the wedding cake when you go to your best friend’s wedding. You know, if it’s your birthday, no one wants to eat a birthday salad, you know, so eat the birthday cake, it’s fine, just go back to what you were doing the next day. It’s not an excuse to just like, say, screw it and go back to eating all the sugar and carbs all the time. But every now and then, you know, eat the birthday cake, you know, and plan ahead for things like this.
But for the most part, what we do is we create a plan that involves eating the kinds of food that properly fuels your body, and keeps your body thriving and working optimally. You know, the food you eat should help your body to thrive. And it should be something that you can do forever.
So you have to change the mindset of like this diet as a temporary thing. And get into the mindset of how you fuel your body today. And how you fuel your body tomorrow is how you’re going to fuel your body a month from now or a year from now or for the rest of your life. So the biggest reason why diets don’t work is that it’s a temporary concept.
Instead, eat real food, food that encourages your body to thrive and live this vibrant, healthy, long life, something that you can do forever. Cool. Cool. We are going to be continuing this conversation in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’d love for you to join the group.
We’re talking about diets and what different kinds of diets people have tried and why they haven’t worked. I would love to hear about your personal experience with some kind of diet. Maybe something I mentioned, maybe something I didn’t mention. I know there’s a lot more diets out there. I’ve tried a lot of them. And obviously not all of them.
But why? What have you tried? And why didn’t work for you? That’s kind of what we’re talking about in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Just search for Running Lean community on facebook and join in the conversation. Well, that’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you as always and keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are starving yourself, and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
I recently sat down to have a candid conversation with one of my favorite clients - my son Colin! Colin has struggled with his weight his whole life. He's always been the "big kid", and that hasn't …
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Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 22 of the running mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, Master Life Coach and weight loss coach for runners. And hey, if you’ve been dorking around with your weight your whole life, you need to stop doing that. You need to take action, you need to do something about it, your time has finally come.
I’ve got a weight loss masterclass that starts next Monday, June 1, it’s an intimate interactive six week class, where you will discover the real causes of your weight gain, you will learn how to recalibrate your hormones so that you stop overeating.
You will learn how to eliminate the uncontrollable cravings, urges and desires that you have around food, you will learn how to master a healthy mindset of eating, you will learn how to break the emotional eating habits. And you’ll be able to create the exact future that you’ve always wanted for yourself.
Here’s the thing, if you want to get in, you just need to enroll now, because enrollment closes Sunday the 31st at midnight, I only take about 10 people through the class at a time so that each person gets my personal attention, and the personal coaching that they need to succeed.
Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and get signed up. Let’s get you to your goal weight. You know one of the most appealing aspects of this class is the personal attention that you get. I run all the classes live on Zoom, where you get to ask questions as we go. You get personal coaching time with me. And I personally teach you exactly how to get your goal weight and walk you through it every step of the way.
And doing it as a group is amazing. Everybody loves that aspect of this, I know you’re ready to do something. So let’s do it. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. And let’s go. Okay, recently, I had this amazing conversation with one of my best clients, my new favorite client, who just also happens to be my son, Colin.
So a little backstory, Colin has kind of struggled with his weight for most of his life. He’s always been “the big kid”. And I know it’s not always easy to be looked at that way, especially when you’re in like middle school in high school. So we talked about all that we talked about, like what it was like to go through middle school in high school as the bigger kid.
And then we talked about why he finally reached out to me for help with his weight. Now as his dad, I always knew that I could help him but I never like forced my ideas onto him. I was wanting to call him to decide for himself what he wanted to do. And when he was ready for help. If you want it from me, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too. But he finally did come to me a few months ago. And we started working together.
And I started doing the coaching with him exactly the same as I do with any other client. Almost exactly like he maybe got a little bit more of my time and attention. But he’s my son, so whatever. But this is a really fun interview, I just wanted to share, I wanted him to share his experiences that he’s had through this process, because he’s had some amazing results so far.
So we talk about the challenges he’s encountered throughout the journey so far, how he’s been able to get through those challenges. We talk about what it’s like to lose a significant amount of weight. Because this will challenge anyone, it was challenging for him. But he knew he could do it.
And he knew he could get through those tough moments. And he did, and he talks about that. And then he talks about how he’s come out the other side. And he’s just got these amazing results. He looks better, he feels better. He’s more confident. And honestly, as a parent, this is all we want for our kids.
You know, we just want them to feel good about themselves. And he does. It’s so awesome to see this. I’m really proud of myself too, for being able to be a part of this journey of his. I know you will be inspired by Colin’s story. And it’s a story that’s still in the making. Like he’s made amazing progress toward his goal.
He wants to lose 100 pounds. He’s not there yet. But he’s getting there. He’s super motivated and inspired to get there and I have no doubt he’s going to do it. He has no doubt he’s going to do it. Why? Because he has the right attitude about it. And this is the difference between people who succeed at something like this than people who don’t, you know, getting to some huge goal, whatever that goal is, is all about developing the right mindset. It’s all your mindset. Mindset is everything.
And he has the absolute right mindset to do this. And this is why I’m so passionate about helping people get the same kinds of results. Because when you’re armed with that, right mindset, there’s nothing you can do. You’re like unstoppable. You can totally train your brain to do whatever you want. Lose 100 pounds, no problem, bring it on. Okay, let’s do this. I want you to hear this interview with my son, Colin. He’s like my new favorite client.
By the way, I think you’re gonna really get a lot out of this. So here’s my interview with Colin McGilvray.
Okay, so today, I’ve got something very special for you guys. I’m actually having a conversation with one of my best weight loss clients. who just happens to be my son, Colin McGilvray. Colin, how are you?
Colin McGilvray
Great. Thank you.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Thanks for coming on here. And having a conversation with me today. I just wanted to share your experience with people. I wanted people to hear your personal experience with kind of the work that we’ve been doing together, because you’ve had some pretty amazing results so far.
So we’re going to talk a little bit about your journey in the past. What’s it been like six, eight weeks now? Roughly?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, roughly.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, roughly, over the last two months, basically, of, of working on the mindset, the emotional piece, and then obviously, the physical piece of losing weight. So tell me like, just I know where you were, but like, for everybody else’s sake, like, let’s just share, like where you were when we started working together?
Colin McGilvray
Sure. So when we started working together, I was about 300 pounds. And I weighed in once we first started doing this, at 295. Really lethargic, basically no exercise. Very little energy. Really not in a good spot.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so how, how was that for you? Like, you’re the reason you wanted me to help you is because of why like, why did you reach out to me for help?
Colin McGilvray
I reached out because I wanted to change. I wanted it to be different. Other people in my life kind of hinted that I needed to change. There’s a lot of people I know in my life who were as big as I was and had serious health problems. And so I know that if I kept going on that route, I was gonna have some serious problems.
Patrick McGilvray
And how has it been for you? Because you’ve always been like a bigger kid, you know what I mean? Like you were born a bigger kid, you know what I mean? And so and that’s fine. But you know, how was it growing up for you? Like as a, you know, middle schooler and a teenager in high school? Or was that challenging for you being like the bigger kid?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, so I played sports when I was growing up. And I always knew I was the biggest kid. And I was a little slower than everybody else. I ran cross country, kind of, towards the slower side there as well. So I always knew I was bigger. It’s not something that was like hidden. I always realized it.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So how did that make you feel, though?
Colin McGilvray
It didn’t make me feel really good at all, like, on the wrestling team I was probably one of the one of the biggest kids there. And, you know, I knew it. And I was really self conscious about it.
Patrick McGilvray
So when you like came to me and was like, Dad, I think I need some help with this. Like, what was your thought about that? Like, what was your thought of what you wanted to do? Like, what did you want from this?
Colin McGilvray
I want, ultimately a better body. I don’t want to worry about having health problems. I want to look better. I want to, I want to feel better, I want to have more energy, I want to sleep better. I want to be able to go out and exercise and be able to climb a few flights of stairs and not be out of breath.
Patrick McGilvray
Was that kind of challenging for you exercising and stuff like that?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, for sure. You know, you get in a routine where maybe you go to the gym for two weeks and it kind of falls off.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And I would imagine that being overweight being, you know, roughly 100 pounds overweight right? Is probably challenging trying to get out there and exercise. And so you don’t feel like doing it because it’s so hard, which just kind of perpetuates the body image issues that you’re having. And the fact that you know, you just don’t feel good about yourself. Right?
Colin McGilvray
Definitely.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. All right, so we started working together. And how old are you now? Colin?
Colin McGilvray
I’m 21.
Patrick McGilvray
You’re so young, literally, and baby still. But Colin’s 21 and, you know, he’s gotten, you know, he’s, he got up to 300 pounds. And that’s, that was kind of a wake up call for him. Like he told me like, when I saw that number on the scale, like, what did that mean to you? When you saw that? Like, what did that feel like?
Colin McGilvray
Oh, I mean, the first time I was 300 pounds was like in high school, like, probably my junior year, and I fluctuated between like, 300-35, I’d go on a diet, get down to like the 270s. And then it would all come right back. So I mean, recently wasn’t the first time I’d seen that I’d gotten so used to seeing 300 pounds. And I would purposely not weigh myself, because I knew it was going to be well over 300 pounds.
Patrick McGilvray
Wow. And so like you were ready to finally do something about that. Right?
Colin McGilvray
Absolutely.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, that’s cool. So you and I kind of got on this plan, I started coaching you, we started talking about, you know, what you’re going to eat, what you’re not going to eat. And then we worked on some other things, like your mindset and stuff like that, and we’ll talk about that. And then, uh, but you know, walk me through what it was like, at the very beginning, like, how was the beginning of this program? Like when you and I started doing this, and I really, the biggest thing was like, I was like, you got to stop eating sugar and flour. Like, we got to get rid of the refined carbohydrates and the sugar. And so we eliminated that first, like, what was that like?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, honestly, when we first started it within the first few days, I was like, wow, what did I get myself into? This is difficult. It started out pretty, pretty rough, because I would drink a lot of Mountain Dew every day. Yeah, like 52 ounces of Mountain Dew, which is a lot. And so tons of fast food, fried chicken, fried anything, McDonald’s. And so it was almost daily. So is a big, huge lifestyle adjustment. For sure.
Patrick McGilvray
How did you feel though, when you stopped eating sugar?
Colin McGilvray
I felt really good. I noticed that probably two days.
Patrick McGilvray
Well, first, though, at first, how would you feel first?
Colin McGilvray
Okay. So, you know, this first few days without eating sugar, it was a little rough. Because you know, you really have that sugar craving, your body really wants it, you really want that mountain dew or that candy. But like I said, probably a few days afterwards. It’s just, I just didn’t have those cravings anymore.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so it only took a few days. That’s cool. Yeah, so when you eliminate sugar, like you will kind of go through a withdrawal phase. And, and it’s short, you know, if you do it the right way. And you get rid of the refined carbs and the sugar, just like 100% like eliminate it, it will kind of be terrible, you will feel terrible for a couple of days, which I think you experienced.
And you and I talked about that. But then it goes away and then it gets better. So after that, like after you got over that initial thing, we just started getting you on an eating protocol, which just means like, a way of eating that serves you like it’s a way of eating food that fuels your body.
You know, so when we talk about a protocol, it’s not a diet, it’s not like you have to eat these certain five things or whatever. You get to choose what you want to eat. But it’s a high fat, low carb diet, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just, we just get rid of the refined sugar and carbs.
And when we do that, it gives your body a chance to, you know, rebalance the hormones. We’ve got to bring those insulin levels down, which you did, you know, when the insulin levels come down, then your hormones get balanced out so you don’t feel as hungry. When you do eat, you feel more full.
And when you’re eating a lot of processed food and sugar those things are all out of whack. So you’re like always hungry all the time. You know. So tell me about your experience with the eating protocol in general. Like, how’s that been going for you? And yeah, how’s it going today for you?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, the eating protocol’s great. I think it really helps that some of my favorite foods are high in fat. Like I really enjoy eating steak, and I can eat that a lot. And it’s nice to be able to find something in your protocol that you do enjoy eating. So it’s been really good so far. Like I said, at the very beginning, kind of settling into it took a little bit of adjustment for sure.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, cool. Um, so you are eating food that you enjoy?
Colin McGilvray
100%.
Patrick McGilvray
Do you feel hungry all the time?
Colin McGilvray
I do not feel hungry all the time.
Patrick McGilvray
So that’s, that’s good. That’s one of the benefits of eating a higher fat diet. So if you’re eating good, good fats, then it will fill you up, and you shouldn’t be as hungry. So then, one of the things I wanted to talk about, which is, you know, one of my areas of expertise, and one of the things that you and I have talked extensively about, which is kind of the mindset piece, because there, there have been times that have come up where you’ve been challenged by some of the things. So give me an example of a challenge for you during this whole mental weight loss process.
Colin McGilvray
So we have a party at work, and there’s a bunch of food that’s not in the protocol. Tons of sugar, flour, fried food, just big tables of candy and Cheetos. Doritos. So, you know, I just, I had the right mindset about it, like we’ve, like we’ve talked about before.
Patrick McGilvray
Well was that mindset like? So what is it that gets you to not have to like, feel like you’re deprived or something?
Colin McGilvray
Sure. So that mindset really becomes thinking about myself at my ideal weight. And thinking about what I’m going to look like, how I’m going to feel, the exercise I’m able to do, and knowing that, you know, if I eat that bag of Cheetos, that’s not helping me get there. So why would I really want to be eating something that’s ultimately going to hurt me?
Patrick McGilvray
Right? So what is your ideal weight? What do you want to get down to?
Colin McGilvray
I want to get down to 180 pounds.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, cool. I think you can do that. For sure. So tell me more about that ideal version of yourself that like future Colin like, what does that look like for you?
Colin McGilvray
I’d like to be you know, around 180 pounds, whatever my healthy weight is going to be, I want to have, you know, I want to be in shape, you know, I want to have some muscle muscle definition, I want to be able to have a lot of endurance, do a lot of running.
Patrick McGilvray
And what will that do for you? Like, let’s say you get to 185 pounds, 180 pounds, you’ve built some muscle you can like go out and run five miles at a time or whatever it is you want to do? Like, what does that mean for you?
Colin McGilvray
For me, all the issues we talked about earlier, like heart disease, being extremely overweight, and the possibility of diabetes. I won’t have those worries anymore. And just kind of proves to myself that, you know, I could do anything I really set my mind to. And it would give me a lot of empowerment for other other aspects of my life.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s awesome. So having that vision of yourself, is that what kind of helps you get through some of these challenging situations? Like that situation described at work, like does it help to like know that you know, who you want to be in your future is more important than like this bag of Doritos?
Colin McGilvray
It does. It really, it really helps because I think about, you know what I’m gonna look like. And I don’t really have that craving anymore, because I’m just kind of over it. I don’t need that. It’s at my ideal weight. I’m not going to be eating that. And it’s not going to help me get there. So why would I really want to hurt myself?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So looking through this whole process of like, you know, losing weight, so how many pounds would be lost so far? Let’s go. Let’s talk about that.
Colin McGilvray
So right now. I’m at 257. So over 37 pounds so far.
Patrick McGilvray
Dang. That’s awesome.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, it feels really good.
Patrick McGilvray
That is awesome. Because you’d lost a few pounds before you and I started like doing this together. But really the weight just has been dropping off like crazy over the last five or six weeks for sure. Which is awesome. But what’s been like the hardest part of all of this for you?
Colin McGilvray
The hardest part is seeing a lot of other people eating the food I used to eat. So you know people coming in with fast food, or pizza, or junk food at work sitting next to me eating it. That was really hard at first. And that’s the hardest part.
Patrick McGilvray
Has that gotten better?
Colin McGilvray
It’s gotten a lot better, just with the you know, the mindset that we’ve talked about and and thinking about, you know, 180lb Colin and how that’s not going to help get me there. And I don’t need to eat that food.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, when you think about that future version of yourself, do you have like some feelings associated with that some like emotions that that kind of come up when you think about that?
Colin McGilvray
I do. Yeah, I really want to get to that point. And I think I’m willing to put in whatever amount of work it takes to get there.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, because it’s not easy sometimes. Right? I mean, there can be challenges, you know, you get fast food shoved in your face at work. There’s cupcakes and Doritos, and all this stuff. And yeah. You’re doing great, though. Really proud of you. Colin has been an ideal client, you know, like you really have like, you’ve been doing everything that I’ve told you to do. You know, and honestly, some of this has been hard, right?
Colin McGilvray
It’s been really hard. Not gonna lie. Yeah, there are times where it is very difficult.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, but you get through it.
Colin McGilvray
Definitely. And there’s also times where it feels amazing to know that like, you know, wow, I’ve lost 37 pounds, I look visibly different. I’ve had to buy new clothes. Like, I’m doing this, it feels really good.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I tell my clients this all the time, like, it’s not easy. Like, there will be challenges, you will be challenged mentally, you will be challenged physically, you will be challenged emotionally. But I help you get through all that stuff. That’s the beautiful thing about having a coach there to help you get through stuff like this.
Because honestly, if like, losing 100 pounds was easy, everybody would just do it, it wouldn’t be a problem there wouldn’t need, we wouldn’t need any help at all, it would just be like, just eat this and you’re fine, you know, but we’ve been conditioned and trained our whole lives to eat food that just creates this, this unnatural craving inside of us.
And it creates this emotional connection to food. You know, so many of us use food as an escape from our lives as an escape from reality, because it feels good, feels good to eat the fried chicken, and eat the Snickers and eat the Doritos, you know, and so why should we deal with our emotions and our thoughts and whatever, when we can just eat instead?
You know, and one of the things that you and I have talked about is like, how to stop eating, because you don’t want to feel a certain feeling. You know, so you’ve learned how to kind of process some of those emotions and stuff.
And as a 20 year old, 21 year old, I think that’s pretty, pretty awesome, that you’ve been able to do that you know that you have learned how to manage your mind. Right? And how to process emotions, so you don’t have to eat over them.
Colin McGilvray
Definitely.
Patrick McGilvray
And you’ve also learned that you can have a fulfilling life without having to just eat food or like food doesn’t equal a good life. Right?
Colin McGilvray
Exactly. And the world doesn’t revolve around what I’m going to eat next.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you were talking about going on vacation soon. And whenever you go on vacation, you have a lot of memories about like food with that. Yeah. So what are you going to do now? So you’re going on vacation soon? What are you going to do differently?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, so a lot of it is, you know, we go on vacation in the same spot, there’s all these restaurants we always go to, and really not a whole lot of what they have is, you know, on protocol. And it’s a lot of just realizing that the vacation is going to be just as fun if you don’t eat that food.
What I put into my body does not determine whether or not I have a good vacation. It’s people I’m with, the experiences I have, you know, making memories. It has nothing to do with the food. And you know, if you’re, if you’re motivated enough, if you really care enough, you’ll figure out a way to make that work and not make excuses. Like, I’m going to go off protocol, just because I’m in a situation where it’s harder to stay on protocol.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so that you may be challenged on that vacation, but there’s no reason for you to change what you’re doing right. Here’s the thing, when we use food, food as an escape or as food as a way to feel good. We lose the beautiful moments that we have with our family and with our loved ones with our friends, you know, because we’re not really fully present to be with them. We’re not fully present for the experience.
You know, I used to have the same feeling about when I was drinking, you know, I used to drink. And, and I thought there’s no way I can have fun out with people without drinking. Like if alcohol isn’t involved, why bother? You know.
And, and I’ve learned that my life is so much better without alcohol. And my life is so much better in the same way without those foods that I used to eat as an escape because I thought that to eat the certain food or drink, the certain thing meant I was having fun. But it didn’t at all, it meant that I thought I was having fun.
It felt good for a moment. But then I had the terrible hangover, and I was gaining weight. And I felt bad about myself. And I was lethargic, like, there were all these negative side effects, these negative consequences of using food and using alcohol as an escape from my life as a buffer from my real life, you know.
And so for you, one of the things we’ve talked about, and you’ve sort of embraced is like, I’m going to go on vacation, I’m going to spend time with my family, and my friends, and we’re going to hang out and talk and I’m going to be there for the experience of being with them. And you always find something to eat at these restaurants, you know, I mean, a big piece of fish, eat a steak, whatever you want to do.
Like, there’s lots of good options, you know, you can definitely find the food that works for you. Or you can just, you know, eat what feels good and feels authentic for you, you know, and maintain that integrity that you have with yourself, because you’ve built up over these last couple of months, Colin, you’ve built up a lot of integrity with yourself, you know, like you’re not cheating on your protocol, you’re not eating what you’re not supposed to.
And when you do that, and you continue to reward yourself, you reward your brain by not eating and giving in to those urges and cravings that you used to have for like Mountain Dew or fried chicken or whatever. When you continually do that you build up this trust in yourself and this confidence in yourself. And it’s I can see it in you like you’ve changed, you know, which has been awesome to see, you know. So that’s cool.
Like, obviously, Colin is, you know, my son. And so I’ve been working with him a lot like he and I have had a lot of long conversations about this stuff. And he’s made a lot of progress in a short amount of time. But honestly, anybody I work with can see the same kinds of results, it just depends on how much work they want to put into it.
You know, Colin just happens to be really committed to this, you know what I mean? He has this vision for himself that he has created that is like, it’s really powerful. And he thinks about that, you know, like when he’s challenged with the food at work, like he’s like, that person that I want to be in the future is much more important to me than this bag of Doritos right here. Like, that’s cool. That’s really cool, Colin. So what has been like the most surprising thing out of all of this work that we’ve done together, like, what surprised you the most so far?
Colin McGilvray
What surprised me the most is how the coaching that we’ve talked about and we’ve done, the coaching model, essentially, changing your your thoughts that you have about things, has helped me in so much more than just weight loss, relationships with other people, with my family, with co-workers, or just situations that pop up in my life. I mean, it’s helped me everywhere.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, like you’ve had some experiences, you work in customer support. And you’ve you know, I’ve had some, like angry customers, you know, I’m sure they call and like, you know, want to yell at you, you know, and just take out their frustration. And you’ve learned how to separate, like, the circumstance of this angry customer from what it means to you, like, it doesn’t mean anything about you, you know, and you don’t have to take that personally and you don’t have to react to that, you know, you can respond in a very mature and very in a way that’s like, very resourceful in a way that’s that’s very helpful for them and for you, you know.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, just realizing, you know, what they’re saying doesn’t mean anything about me. It’s just a fact. And what they’re saying is what they’re saying. I’m gonna choose to think the thoughts that I want to think about it.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, they’re just words. Oh, this person said some words. You know, you can choose what that means to you. You can choose that means like, you don’t know what you’re doing. Or, you know, you know, they’re mad at you or something like that. But you can also choose that it doesn’t mean anything doesn’t mean anything about you. So that’s cool. All right. Any other thoughts about this process so far?
Colin McGilvray
Yes. So I’ve tried several, like weight loss programs before. And none of them prepare you for how hard this is going to be mentally. None of them tell you that, you know, you’re going to be around people who are eating this fast food that you are not going to eat. And it’s never prepared you for that. It’s never really gone into the coaching side of it. And I think that’s what’s really different about this. And this is why I’ve been able to get this far with it.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the things that I definitely bring to the table with my clients. And I tell them this all the time, it’s like, you know what, it will be hard, it will be challenging, you know, changing your diet, like changing what you’re eating, and stop using food as an escape from your life stop using food to feel better, is going to be challenging.
But I got you through that, like, that’s my forte is like, you know, working on the mindset piece with people and helping them process the emotional piece so that they can get through this. And diets just don’t do that. They’re like, here’s what you eat, or don’t eat, and good luck, you’re on your own, you know, they don’t talk to you about, okay, what happens when it gets really hard? Like, what am I supposed to do?
Or I’m having this situation, what do I do about this? Or I have this thing coming up at work or this vacation. Like, how do I get through that? And that’s one of the beautiful things about having a coach working with you is like, you get answers to all of your questions. You get to help working through your particular situation, you get somebody there, walking you through every step of the way of this process, through the hard stuff. Has it gotten easier, like are things easier now?
Colin McGilvray
Sure, like I was gonna say earlier a ton about it being really hard. And you know, it isn’t the beginning of getting off a sugar craving and you kind of build a you obtain a skill set that you have to help you with all these different, all these different situations. So you’ve essentially given me that skill set to get through all of this, and it gets a lot easier as you go. There’s still hard moments and things come up for sure. But you get through it, and it just gets easier and easier.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and like I said, at the beginning, this has only been we’ve only been working together for like eight weeks, you know, honestly, the first five or six weeks are probably the hardest part, like just like you got to get through that initial, you got to get off the sugar and get off, get off the sugar withdrawals, because that’s definitely a mental and a physical issue that we gotta get over.
So we did that pretty quickly. But then we learn the mental piece. And that takes a few weeks to like, kind of work through that stuff. But once you get through those, like the first six weeks, then you’re pretty well situated, right? Like, you know, the last couple of weeks, we haven’t talked too much. And you’ve been doing really well. And you keep losing weight, and you’re sticking to your protocol, which is awesome.
Like you’re doing such a great job. I wish everybody was like, honestly, because people they’re like, oh, I want to change, I want to lose weight. And then I’m like, cool, here’s what we’re gonna do. And they’re like, whoa, I don’t want to do anything different. You know, like, I don’t want to like be uncomfortable at all. And like, you gotta get uncomfortable, right? Like, has that?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, I definitely had a fear of being uncomfortable. Yeah, sure. But like you’ve said before, I must embrace the suck.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s a phrase we use in Ultra running a lot or in triathlon is like, embrace the suck, because it will suck at times. But just know that so. So it’s been uncomfortable. You got through it, and now you’re reaping the rewards of that right?
Colin McGilvray
Absolutely.
Patrick McGilvray
Do you feel better?
Colin McGilvray
I feel so much better.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And do you still have that like strong vision of future Colin? And is that still the thing that’s kind of like your north star that keeps you pointed forward?
Colin McGilvray
I do. Definitely. And, you know, I started out with that vision, and it’s only gotten stronger as we’ve done this. As I get closer, and that number between 2- or 300 and 180 becomes smaller and smaller. That vision only becomes stronger.
Patrick McGilvray
When’s the last time we were in the 250s?
Colin McGilvray
I don’t remember it was probably junior high. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s crazy.
Colin McGilvray
It is.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s awesome. Well, here’s what I want for you. I mean, I love you because you’re my son and I want obviously all the best things in the world for you. But I want you to feel good about yourself. And I think it’s tough growing up as a kid, that’s the bigger kid in the class, you know, I mean, you’re tall too, you’re like six, three, right?
Colin McGilvray
6’2.
Patrick McGilvray
So like 6’2, okay, so you’re like tall, and then the big kid. Like, I think that’s tough. And there’s a lot of stuff that goes on, you know, around that, you know, there may be teasing, there may be bullying, there may be, you know, just some like, passive aggressive stuff, talking behind your back or whatever.
So, I mean, I know that that can be challenging. And, and I know that, you know, what I want for you is that I want you to feel good about yourself and feel confident, I want you to feel like you can do anything, because you can, I have so much faith in you. And I have so much confidence in you.
And I’m seeing you building up that self confidence in yourself. And it’s amazing to watch. And the more you do this, the more you stick with what you’re doing, the more that builds, the more that self confidence builds, the more that relationship with yourself, gets stronger, and gets better and more powerful.
You know, you’re learning very quickly, too, by the way, but you’re learning how to like, be a more powerful person and to like, step into that person that you really want to be. Because we all have that within us. We all have that ability within us to be who we want to be. And you’re starting to see that. And it’s awesome.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, I definitely look at challenges a lot different already. Now.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So you probably see challenges as more of like, an opportunity for you to grow.
Colin McGilvray
Exactly. And I started to feel, you know, a lot of things I thought I could never do, are suddenly possible.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Anything is possible.
Colin McGilvray
It is.
Patrick McGilvray
Well, you’re doing great. We’re going to check in with you later in a couple of months and see how things are going. My prediction is that you should get your goal weight here in a few months, you know, if you’re kind of on this steady decline, so average weight loss in a program like this is anywhere between like one to seven pounds a week, you know, I mean, you’ve been in about in the middle about five pounds a week, I guess.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, something like that. And it fluctuates, too, you know, some weeks you lose a little less than others. Some days you get on the scale, and you notice a couple pound difference.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And sometimes it goes up and you’re like, what the heck is going on here? But then we’ve learned and one of the things I talk about is like not to be afraid of the scale. It’s just data. You know, I mean, it’s just like a number. It’s a number. This, you know, it’s a number that means how much your bones and your skin weigh and the water inside your body, you know.
Colin McGilvray
Exactly and ultimately still have that downward trend. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And that’s what we’re always looking for. We want it to keep going down for sure. So while you’re doing great, I’m really proud of you. And we’re going to check back in like I said, and a couple of months and see how you’re progressing. But you’re one of my favorite clients. You’ve been like one of the best coaching clients I’ve had. So keep up the good work Colin, and we’ll be checking in with you soon. Okay?
Colin McGilvray
Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, I love that kid so much. He is so awesome. I’m so happy for him too, as a parent. I’m like, so proud of him and so happy for him. And I’m proud of his progress. And I’m proud of the fact that he’s continuing to make progress and continuing on this journey.
And I want to keep you guys posted. So you know, we’ll definitely share more of his journey with you as we progress along here. I think a couple more interviews with Colin would be awesome. And then just a quick reminder here. The next weight loss masterclass starts June 1, only about 10 people can get in this class.
So if you want to get in, you have to enroll now, innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and get signed up, get your body ready for the summer, become that lean running machine that you know you can be innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and enroll. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it so much. And as always, I have lots and lots of love for each and every one of you, my friends, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are starving yourself, and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
This is the third episode of my three-part series called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I’ve spent years and years trying every type of diet …
Continue Reading about 21. How to Become a Lean Running Machine Part 3 →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 21 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and Master Life Coach and the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got for you part three of my three part podcast series called How to Become a Lean Running Machine.
And the reason I put this together is because I’ve tried everything to lose weight, especially running more and more and more, and nothing I ever did really worked. So I set out to find the answers. I found the answers and I’m sharing them all with you here.
In this three part series. I just want to help you to stop struggling with your weight, I want to help you to start becoming the lean runner that you want to be. Quick reminder, next week, my next weight loss masterclass, starts Monday, June 1. And I want you to do this little visualization exercise with me here. So just take a moment.
If you’re driving, don’t do this. Don’t close your eyes. But if you’re not driving, just take a moment. Close your eyes, I want you to visualize yourself at your goal weight, or whatever that ideal weight is for you. Visualize yourself, Okay, close your eyes and do this right now. And then think about it like what do you look like?
How do you feel about your body now? How much easier is running now? How much more self esteem and how much more confidence do you have now? How much better is your relationship with yourself? What else have you learned along the way? What else have you been able to accomplish?
This is a powerful exercise really, you can open your eyes now. But I want you to just hold this vivid picture of yourself in your mind for a few moments each day when you do this. Your subconscious mind, your brain will actually get you there faster, it will move you there faster.
And if you’re ready right now, to start becoming that future version of yourself. This weight loss masterclass that I have is the rocket fuel you need to get there. Listen, losing weight is hard. If this was easy, we’d all be ripped and super lean. And it would be simple and everybody would have, there wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t have a job as a weight loss coach.
But it’s not easy. Losing weight is hard. There’s a lot more going on, than just like calories in calories out or just run more, right? And that’s what you’ve been learning here. It’s really especially hard to do on your own. Imagine, just imagine how much easier losing weight would be if you had somebody there to teach you exactly what to do and to guide you through it all every single step of the way.
Well, that’s exactly what I do in this masterclass. We just finished up a six week class where my students have had some amazing progress towards becoming their future selves. Okay, I want to share a couple of those little stats with you here. Elizabeth dropped 4 pounds. She wasn’t trying to lose weight but she ended up dropping like four pounds. She wanted to kick her sugar habit, which she did. She’s off of sugar for good and she feels amazing.
Amy lost 9 pounds. She’s down two sizes. She’s dropped four inches off her waist in her hips. Jenny lost 15 pounds and feels completely in control of her over eating for the first time in her life. Eric lost 15 pounds and he doesn’t have to feel like he has to exercise like crazy anymore just to keep the weight off.
Colin’s lost 40 pounds, and he has no doubt he’s going to hit his goal of losing 100 pounds. Oh my gosh. What’s really cool, though, all that is amazing, obviously, let’s celebrate that. But what’s also really cool is that they’ve all learned how to manage their thoughts and feelings around eating and we’re gonna be talking about that today.
They’ve all developed a whole new relationship with food and they’re all still losing weight. So our next masterclass starts Monday, June 1. If you’re in, you’re in, I only take 10 or 12 people through this class at a time, I want each person to get my personal attention. I want each person to get the coaching that they need to succeed to hit their goal.
And it means that you get a better experience because it’s a small group. And everybody loves the group classes. By the way, everybody’s been telling me how awesome it is that they’re on this journey together, and that they can share their struggles and their frustrations, and their ideas and their tips with each other and learn from each other and they support each other.
It’s an amazing little community. So if you want to get in, let’s just do it, just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and sign up to it now. Okay, so, here’s a quick recap of what we learned in the last two episodes.
I feel like I need to say like, you know, previously on The Running Mind podcast, give a little recap here. So I just did. So number one, the first part of this was talking about how running more and eating less, doesn’t really work for losing weight. Okay, running more or exercising more, moving more, doesn’t work for weight loss because our bodies naturally overcompensate by increasing our appetite by lowering our metabolism, you end up eating more so you kind of overcompensate for the calories that you burn from running.
And then the progress is very slow and very minimal at best. Also, running doesn’t address the physical, mental and emotional causes of weight gain, which is hormonal imbalances, mental cravings, emotional eating, okay. Calories in, calories out doesn’t work either, it never has, it’s a myth, our body works against this process again, you reduce calories, your metabolism goes down in response to that your body stays at that reduced metabolism, and the weight inevitably comes back, you just can’t outrun this natural process.
The second secret is that your hormones are most likely all out of whack. So increased levels of insulin put your body into fat storage mode, which also causes the hunger hormone ghrelin and the safety hormone leptin to stop functioning properly. So you’re always hungry, you never feel full. Decreasing insulin puts your body into fat burning mode, which means you know, all your hormones start working the way they’re supposed to, you’re not hungry all the time you feel full when you eat.
You know, everything’s working as it should, your body’s back into homeostasis. And the way you reduce insulin is by changing what you eat and when you eat. So you eliminate the foods that cause the high insulin, which is sugar and refined carbs, and then you just eat less often. Since insulin goes up every time you eat, eating less often.
Doing something like intermittent fasting or just not eating as often throughout the day, like eliminating snacks is probably the best thing you can do and will keep your insulin levels down and get your hormones back in healthy amounts.
And then today, we’ve got the third secret to permanent weight loss, which is you need to learn how to manage your mind and take control of your emotions. When you take away the foods that are causing you to gain weight, your over desire for food, this unnatural desire that you have for food does not go away immediately.
In fact, that desire can go up initially and it can get stronger because you’re in the state of like withdrawal, and craving. So it’s critical at this point to manage your mind and learn how to process your emotions while you’re going through this process. And this is where most diets fail.
And this is also where most dieticians or nutrition coaches fall short. They do a good job of telling you what to eat. But then they’re like, okay, here’s what you eat, or here’s what you don’t eat. Good luck with that. They don’t teach you how to deal with all the mental chatter that’s going on. And all the emotional stuff that you’re feeling that comes up, you know, you get these cravings, these urges.
We have withdrawals, we have to do a lot of emotional eating. This right here is probably the most powerful work that I do with my clients. This is what separates me from the rest of the diet coaches out there. Stop the eating, stop, you know change what you’re eating. That’s the easy part that’s just changing what you do.
And we all know that changing behavior is the least effective way of accomplishing anything. What you’re left with, after you remove the food, that’s the hard part. So, first you need to learn how to manage your mind and then learn how to deal with your emotions.
So let’s talk about how to manage your mind. You need to learn how to deal with the mental aspects of this over desire. So when you stop eating certain foods, like sugar and refined carbs, you’re going to have these urges, you’re going to have cravings, you’re going to feel restless, you’re going to feel deprived, because you’re gonna feel like you’re missing out on something like you’re missing out on on the joys of life or something, okay?
And all this is perfectly normal. Your mind has been programmed to believe that you will die if you don’t eat certain foods, like right now. And it’s for a lot of different reasons. But it has to do with the way our food is made, has to do with the way that our food has been marketed to us.
And it has to do with the way you’ve conditioned yourself to crave certain foods like your whole life. But especially like the people who make our food and market it to us, they’ve learned the secret to selling more food to us, which is to make us crave it like a drug. And it works really well.
They’ve created this thing called the bliss point in food. Scientists now lab are making our food unnaturally over desirable. And so they’ve created this thing that’s called the bliss point. And what it does is like they’ve determined for whatever food it is, what is going to give your body the most dopamine hit.
So the best feel good, physical feel good feeling from the food when you eat it, because every time you eat, you get a little bit of dopamine response, well, you increase the amount of sugar, sometimes you increase the amount of salt or the right combination of sugar, fat and salt or whatever.
And then you have this unnatural dopamine response in your body. Well, this is amazing, right? Because this is what causes them to be able to sell a lot more food. But it’s not good for us because it creates an unnatural over desire for food. And so we have this unnatural over desire right now in society, like we’ve never had before in human history. Okay.
So the good news is, though, that you can change this, okay? This is something that your brain has been trained to do. It’s mostly like subconscious mental habits, okay, and you can change it, you can actually learn how to reprogram your mind. So you got to learn how to train your brain to stop giving in to the urges, and you gotta learn how to train your brain to stop the unnatural craving for food.
Your brain is working against you here. And you need to learn how to stop doing that. Okay, so you need to develop new habits around how you eat, so that you can decrease these unnatural, like primitive desires and cravings for food that is basically making us fat. So you need to learn how to decondition your mind and reprogram your brain, so you no longer have the unnatural cravings and desires.
You need to change how you think about food. And you do this by changing what food means to you. So think about this. Next time you’re about to eat something. Just ask yourself this question. Why am I choosing to eat this? Whatever it is right now. Is it because I’m actually hungry, because I want to provide fuel for my body? Or is it because I’m bored? Or it’s lunchtime, or I eat at this time every day, whether I’m hungry or not? So let’s go get some food.
How you think about food is so key the meaning you assigned to food is so key if you want to change your relationship with it. If you find yourself thinking about food all the time, you might want to take a look at that. You might want to get to the point where food is more of you think of food as more of a way of just fueling your body and not something you’re like obsessing with, obsessing over all day long in your mind.
You know, and if you find yourself using food to feel better than we need to look at the emotional aspect of eating. Okay, we’re going to talk about that in just a second. So if you’re if thinking about food all the time, or if if the reasons you’re eating food are not just because, like oh I need to fuel my body I’m actually hungry, then that’s something you need to get control over. Okay.
The next thing is learning how to take control of your emotions. This is so critical. There’s a lot of emotional eating going on in the world right now, during this COVID19 quarantine, a lot of people are feeling a lot of emotions. And so they’re doing a lot of emotional eating. And I get it, eating feels good, it makes us feel good.
You know, we get that little hit of dopamine every time we eat. This is the same chemical that gets released when you drink alcohol or when you take drugs. Highly concentrated foods and foods that are super high in sugar, especially give us a huge hit of dopamine, and they feel really freakin good. Going back to the bliss point, again, they’ve created this unnatural desire in us, okay.
So what happens is when you start to feel some kind of negative emotion, the first thing you want to do is be like, I gotta make this go away. I want to feel better right now. So what do you do? You go to the fridge, you open it up, you pull out, whatever it is, and you eat and you’re like, Ah, I feel better. What’s going on here is that we’ve trained ourselves to use food as a way of dealing with our emotions, instead of just dealing with our emotions.
So maybe you’ve had a bad day at work, or a fight with your husband. Or maybe your kids are screaming in the background, no problem, just go eat something and feel better. And we call this buffering because what you’re doing is you’re putting a buffer between you and your feelings, you’re using something external, to feel better internally.
The problem with buffering is that it’s temporary, and doesn’t work. And it has a lot of negative consequences. So I used to use alcohol as a way of buffering from my life. And it worked great. I felt better every time I drank. Here’s the thing, though, my problems were still there. My emotions were still there waiting for me.
And when I sobered up, they were still there. Except now I’m home. I was hungover, I was feeling like ass and destroying everything good around me. And then I would want to feel better. So what I would do was what? Drink again, right? Because that’s what makes you feel good.
What a terrible unhealthy cycle to be at, you know, that was just doing the one thing that was like, you know, making my life miserable, making me miserable. And it was the only thing I could do to feel better. But it was also the thing that made me feel terrible. Crazy. The same thing happens with food though.
So you might be stressed out, you might be having a bad day or you’re feeling lonely or nervous about an upcoming event or something and, and you eat over it. You know when Kristine and I separated back in December, I was feeling all the feelings. I was feeling lonely. I was feeling scared. I was feeling sad. I was feeling hurt. And I really started using food as a buffer.
I started using food to feel better. You know Dewey’s pizza, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream became the best part of my day. I looked forward to that all day long. If I can just get to the end of the day where I can like eat a ton of food. Especially that ice cream with all the sugar in it. I knew I would feel better. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t work.
I mean, it works temporarily. It feels good. But then I started gaining weight. And I started feeling terrible about myself. And I still had all the negative emotions. But now I was eating, adding over eating on top of the negative emotions, and it made me just feel worse. Good times.
So what do you do in that situation? I just wanted to feel better. So well, I would like just go to Chipotle, get a giant burrito and chips and walk and I would feel better, right? No. It’s just part of that vicious cycle. I had to break the cycle. I had to learn how to feel my feelings. I had to learn how to stop using food as the escape pod to get away from my life.
I learned how to process my emotions all the way through. I needed to completely change how I felt about myself and how I felt about food. When you learn how to manage your emotions without having to eat over them. Not only will you have a much easier time losing weight, but you will be able to apply this same skill to every area of your life.
When you think about the worst thing that can happen in most situations, you will feel some kind of feeling. And a lot of times the feeling we’re trying to avoid is fear or, or some negative emotion, right? Fears. The biggest one that comes to mind though. But what if you are no longer afraid to feel your emotions, but if you are like, just bring it on, I’ll experience any emotion? And that’s where I’m at today.
And this is what I teach my clients is like, learn how to experience any emotion. And oh my gosh, there’s like nothing you can do. I mean, it sounds kind of scary and crazy to think about that to just like, feel your feelings. But what if you could do that? Like, what if you no longer had to eat to feel better? When you don’t have these like primitive urges, and these cravings, and you can deal with your emotions without eating, like you’re free, there’s incredible freedom in this.
And when you learn how to manage your mind, and learn how to process your emotions through, just allow them to be there, just sit with them. You know, besides being able to lose weight much easier, you get these amazing life skills that you can apply to every area of your life, everything becomes easier.
So, if you want to get back to your natural weight, if you want to stay there permanently, you need to learn how to manage your mind, you need to learn how to control your emotions. And these are skills you can learn. I can teach you all of this.
So let’s recap what we learned here today. Most diets fall short, because they only tell you what to eat or not to eat. They don’t teach you how to deal with your thoughts and your feelings. We have an unnatural mental over desire for food. It was created by scientists mostly, but it’s how we’ve programmed ourselves to think about food.
And you need to learn how to reprogram your mind and create better mental habits around eating. This is how you change your thinking about food. And then eating just like alcohol or drugs, it makes us feel good. You know, we get that little release of dopamine feels good. But you can get stuck in the cycle of using food as a buffer as a way of feeling good temporarily and trying to avoid feeling your emotions.
And it comes with a price: weight gain, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, diabetes, the list goes on and on and on. So you have to learn how to allow your emotions to learn how to feel your feelings. Stop using food as your escape pod. If you want to lose weight and you want to keep it off, you have to change the way you think and feel about food. You have to change your whole relationship with food.
And when you learn these skills, you get to apply them in every area of your life. You become this mental and emotional badass. And when you learn how to do this, there’s nothing you won’t be able to do. I promise you, this is amazing. Okay, that’s all I got for you today.
Quick reminder, the next weight loss masterclass starts June 1 That’s only a few short days away. I don’t have room for 10 people, so you have to sign up now. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating, and you can get signed up. You will learn all of these skills in this masterclass, you will lose weight for sure.
But you’ll also learn how to manage your mind and allow your emotions. This work is life changing, I promise you it is transformational. innefiretrib.com/stopovereating, and enroll now. That’s all I got here. I really hope you enjoyed this series. I’ve got lots more good stuff coming your way very soon. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are starving yourself, and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
This is the second episode of an eye-opening podcast series I'm doing called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I’ve spent years and years trying every …
Continue Reading about 20. How to Become a Lean Running Machine Part 2 →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there, and welcome to episode number 20 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, Master Life Coach and weight loss coach. And today, I’ve got part two of my three part series on how to become a lean running machine.
This series is something that I’m very passionate about. This is something that is very near and dear to my heart, I’ve spent a lot of time and effort and energy trying to figure out how to lose weight as a runner, because I was really struggling with that. I put on about 25 or 30 pounds and was able to finally figure out how to lose the weight.
And it didn’t involve running a million miles, or restricting calories or anything like that. And so I’m sharing all this stuff with you here, okay. I’ve gotten back to my goal weight, you know, what I weigh now today, the same that I did when I was like in this heavy training for Ironman back in 2013. So it’s been like seven years, since I’ve been at this weight, I’ve just put on weight ever since then. But I finally got back there.
And it only took me a couple of months really to get there. So I’m going to share a bunch of that stuff with you here. My goal here, I just want to help you. I know there’s a lot of runners out there that kind of struggle with their weight. And it’s not something that we talk about, we don’t feel comfortable talking about that a lot.
It’s almost like a taboo thing to talk about in the running community. But I know there’s a lot of people that struggle with this. So I want to be an example of what’s possible. And I want to help you. So I hope you find some value from these episodes that I’m sharing here. I’m just sharing what I know. And I hope it brings you some kind of help. And I hope it gives you something that you can do, some action that you can take that you can put into place and that you can get some results from that.
Okay. So here’s something I wanted to share with you guys. I just got this awesome text from one of my weight loss clients. And he said that he’s lost 13 pounds so far. He has more energy than ever feels better than he has in a long time. And here’s a guy who’s a runner, who also has struggled with his weight for years. And he joined my program. And he’s now well on his way to his goal weight. And oh my gosh, it’s so amazing.
I love, love, love getting texts like this from clients, it makes me feel so good. This is why I do what I do. You know, I want to help people transform their lives, I want to help people change the way they think about their bodies and the way they think about themselves. I want people to love themselves more. I’ve learned how to do that. And I want to share that with as many people as possible.
But I know what it’s like to try to just run and run and run and not be able to lose the weight. And to go to the gym six days a week and restrict what I’m eating and feel terrible all the time and still not lose weight. Like I’ve been there. I’ve done all that. So this particular client has gotten some amazing results.
He’s well on his way and he keeps texting me all the time. Like, you know, I’m down another two pounds, I’m down another three pounds. And I just love it. I just give him big hearts and smiles and everything every time he texts that to me. So I learned what to eat, I learned how to manage my mind. I learned when to eat, learned how to stop using food as an escape from my life, I learned how to deal with all the cravings and hunger.
And I will teach you all of this stuff. And I have an upcoming masterclass that starts on Monday, June 1, and I will teach you how to do every single one of these things. I only take about 10 people through these classes. Okay. It’s an intimate class. And once it’s filled, I just closed the doors and we gotta wait till the next time.
So another couple of months before I do that again. But if you want to save your spot for this class, just go to innerfiretribe.com/overeating, and enroll now. I know for a fact that this is the solution to your weight loss struggles. I know for a fact that this is the most comprehensive and most effective weight loss program you will ever experience.
I walk you through everything step by step. I’m there for you. It’s a six week program. When you’re trying to lose weight and you’re changing a bunch of stuff. Those first six weeks are the hardest. But I got you through that. Okay. I will walk you through that and help you get through the challenging stuff so that you can have this success that you’re looking for listen, you deserve this, you are worth it. Go to Inner Fire, innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. It’s easy to say and sign up today.
Okay, so today, like I said, this is part two of the three part series on how to become a lean running machine. And if you haven’t listened to the first episode yet, go back and do that. Now listen to part one. That was episode number 19. And to find any of these podcasts, you can just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/and, then the number 19. And, and that’ll take you right to that episode. So listen to that first, because it kind of lays the foundation for what I’m going to be talking about here. Talks about why losing weight is so hard. In fact, I’m going to recap that here.
So here’s what I talked about in that episode. Running more and eating less does not work for weight loss. It just doesn’t. Calories in calories out does not work. And eat more, run less, or I’m sorry, run more, eat less just does not work, which people just have been telling us for decades.
We just need to move our bodies more, move more and eat less and you’ll be fine. It does not work. And I explain why. But some of the reasons why are your body naturally overcompensates by increasing your appetite when you exercise more, so you get hungrier, and you’re eating more, you end up eating more calories, than you can burn.
Also, progress is very, very slow when you take this approach, and it’s minimal at best. And then running doesn’t address the physical, mental and emotional causes of weight gain. Okay, you got hormonal hormonal imbalances going on, you’ve got mental cravings, you got emotional eating, and it just doesn’t address those things. Okay.
And then the calories in calories out, you know, everybody thinks this is the only way to lose weight and adjust does not work and never has is a myth, your body, the body will naturally work against this process to keep you from like dying to keep you from starving to death. So when you reduce calories, your body lowers its metabolism in response, your body stays at that reduced metabolism.
And you cannot run fast, run as many miles or reduce the amount of food you’re taking in order to burn off those calories. Right. So there’s some other things and some other reasons why that doesn’t work either. But basically, metabolism lowers when you limit the amount of calories you take in. And so it can only go so low, before your body starts to like to get into starvation mode. Okay.
So the first secret to understand the first thing you really have to understand is that running more and eating less just doesn’t work. Okay, and so I break that all down. And I talked about that in episode number 19, episode number one of this series, but the podcast episode number 19. Okay, cool.
So today, I am going to ask your permission to get a little sciency because I want to talk about hormones. And so I’m going to be talking about the three main hormones that are involved with weight gain, and why it’s really hard to lose weight and what we can do about that, okay.
But for a lot of us, we’ve thought that there must be something wrong with us because we keep gaining weight, even though we’re watching. We eat a good diet, and we don’t, we might be vegetarian or vegan, or paleo or something like that. And we exercise regularly. But we keep gaining weight, and we can’t seem to lose it.
And, and so we come to these conclusions like It must be me, I’m doing something wrong, I don’t have enough willpower. I’m not strong enough. This is just the way I am. I don’t have the self control other people have. Nothing ever works for me. Basically, there’s just something wrong with me. But here’s the truth, there is nothing wrong with you, my friend, at all.
It’s not your fault. And this is the thing I want you to understand here. And this is kind of the second secret I want to talk about to permanent weight loss is that it is not your fault. Your hormones, more than anything else are causing you to gain weight, your hormones are what are keeping you from losing weight. Okay.
If you want to lose weight, you have to be able to burn fat, you’ve got to become a fat burning machine right? And more than anything else your hormones are responsible for whether your body is in fat storage mode, or fat burning mode. And so if you want to get into fat burning mode, you’ve got to like make sure your hormones are regulated properly. Okay. So the three hormones we’re going to talk about today are going to be insulin, ghrelin, and leptin. And these all have to do with your body’s ability to become a fat burner or a fat store. We want to be fat burners, we don’t want to be fat storers. We’ve done enough of that so far in our lives. Okay?
So let’s talk about insulin first. Okay, this is the most important hormone when it comes to weight loss, insulin’s job, its main job is to lower your blood sugar. So anytime you eat any kind of food, and especially foods that are high in sugar, your body secretes, releases insulin to help keep that blood sugar low and keep things in balance, okay?
But here’s the thing. When insulin is high in your system, you are in fat storage mode. Because what insulin is doing is saying like, hey, we need to take this energy and put it somewhere, we need to store it. This sugar, let’s say, and so what we do is insulin stores it as fat for use later on, okay?
So when insulin is high, you’re in fat storage mode. The opposite is also true. When insulin is low in your system, you’re in fat burning mode, and you can start consuming your own body fat, which sounds disgusting, but you can start using your own body fat for fuel, okay? Until you get rid of the sugar that you’re burning in your system, you really can’t access that fat very well.
Okay, so we want to get rid of that, get out of that sugar burning mode, we want to get out of that fat storage mode, and we want to get into the fat burning mode, okay? And the way we do this is to lower our insulin, okay? When you have too much insulin in your system, you just cannot lose weight. Okay? Very, very important to understand. When you have too much insulin, you’re in fat storage mode, and you cannot lose weight.
So there’s two types of insulin disorders, basically, there’s type one and type two diabetes, okay? Type one diabetics, their bodies do not produce enough insulin. So it is very, very hard for them to actually put on any weight, because their insulin levels are so low. And so it’s kind of sad.
But back in the earlier 20th century, type one diabetics used to starve to death because they couldn’t get enough. Their bodies were not getting enough. They were not storing their fat, their bodies were basically just burning off everything that they took in, okay, so their insulin was way too low, until they figured out how to you know, inject insulin. And that was a life saving thing, which is awesome. But they didn’t have a way of storing fat. And so they were way too thin, and they ended up starving to death. It’s horrible, right?
Then there’s type two diabetes, and this is a disease of, of diet, basically. Okay, and type two diabetics produce way too much insulin. And type two diabetics are always in fat storage mode, so they can’t lose weight. And the treatment for type two diabetics, there’s a couple of different things, but one of the treatments, which is crazy, and I really don’t understand this, but the treatment for a lot of type two diabetics is to increase their insulin, so they give them more insulin, which produces the same fat storage mode.
And it makes it very difficult for them to lose weight, which is the big problem anyway. And it just compounds the cycle, it creates a problem called insulin resistance. Too much insulin means your body is resistant to insulin’s effects, it just stops working. It’s like when you take too many antibiotics, you know, the bacteria becomes resistant to it, right? This is same thing here.
So what we want is we want our bodies to be sensitive to insulin, okay, so we want to lower the insulin so we can access our fat for fuel. And so this is the first thing that you just really have to understand. I know I’m talking about a lot of like, sciency stuff here. Okay? But what I want you to understand with this is that insulin’s job is to lower your blood sugar.
And when your insulin is high in your system, you’re in fat storage mode. When it’s low, you’re in fat burning mode, okay? So if you’re trying to lose weight, we want to get the insulin levels down.
Okay, the second hormone I want to talk about is ghrelin, and that’s the hunger hormone. So whenever you get hungry, there’s this hormone that gets released called ghrelin, and that kind of tells you that you’re hungry. It increases your appetite so that you’ll eat some food. And this works great. You know, we should be hungry at different times.
Like there’s every now and then we should be hungry, we should feel hungry. We should have an appetite and we want to eat some food. This way we don’t die. And all these hormones. They’ve been working this way for millennia. We’ve evolved for these hormones to work beautifully, okay?
Here’s the problem. When insulin is high in your system, ghrelin gets blocked, it does not turn off. And so it’s constantly producing these signals that are saying I’m hungry, I’m hungry, my it increases your appetite. And it’s saying feed me feed me. And you constantly feel like you need to eat more food, even though you don’t.
So high insulin levels blocks ghrelin, and so you feel hungry all the time and you end up just overeating. That’s a real problem, okay? So high insulin is kind of insidious, okay? It has one more insidious effect here, and that is how it affects the hormone leptin.
And leptin is the safety hormone. So leptin’s job is to tell your brain when you’re full, and so it sends signals that says, hey, I’m no longer hungry, stop eating, and you’ve probably experienced leptin. Everybody does, you know, but think about the last time you had like, Thanksgiving dinner, and you’re like, stuffed, and you’re like, I cannot eat another thing, you got a lot of leptin going on here, okay.
But here again, when insulin is high, leptin gets blocked, same way, and it cannot do its job. So you never really feel full. You end up overeating at every meal, you eat too much food. So high insulin levels block leptin, you constantly feel like you can still eat more food. It’s like after that Thanksgiving dinner when you’re stuffed in somebody’s like, hey, would you like another piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream? And you’re like, yes, of course I would.
That is a hormonal imbalance that’s going on there. Okay, because, you know, it’s really not good for you to do that. It’s not good for you to stuff yourself to the point of feeling miserable and terrible and sick to your stomach, okay? But because the hormones are all jacked up here, we do that to ourselves.
So high levels of insulin, cause this chain reaction with these other hormones that puts your body into the state of relentless over eating and relentless fat storage mode. So the big villain of this whole story here is insulin, okay? So too much insulin is the root cause of insidious weight gain. It’s the root cause of obesity. It’s the root cause of type two diabetes, okay? Too much insulin is bad.
So what causes insulin levels to get so high? So anytime we eat food, that food that we eat, no matter what it is, becomes, to some extent, sugar in our bloodstream, glucose. And so your body produces insulin to lower that glucose level to kind of balance things out to lower your blood sugar.
So anytime you eat any food, there’s an insulin effect. So insulin gets produced, okay, so whenever you eat, insulin goes up a little bit, okay? Which is totally normal. One of the problems though, is that when we eat all day long, our insulin is always elevated and never goes down. And so we kind of put our bodies into this consistent fat storage mode, like all day, every day, we never give our bodies the chance to regulate and for that, blood sugars actually come down, and the insulin levels go down and everything starts working the way it’s supposed to.
So eating any food causes insulin to go up, but eating all the time causes insulin to be always high. Okay? The other thing that causes insulin to be really high is certain types of foods. So sugar, and processed foods, especially highly refined carbohydrates, make insulin go way up. These are super concentrated foods, they have a huge glucose response in your body, which causes a huge insulin surge to try to bring your blood sugar down. This is a big problem.
When you’re constantly eating refined carbs and sugar, you are in way higher levels of glucose and way higher levels of insulin. Okay, and then the whole system is jacked up. So eating all the time, and eating processed foods with a lot of sugar will put your body in a state I have constantly elevated insulin, which puts your body in this state of constantly in this fat storage mode. Okay?
Which can lead to insulin resistance, which can lead to obesity, but it definitely causes weight gain, for sure. Okay. So the big question is, I know what you’re thinking, and I have an answer for you. The big question is, I didn’t get your insulin levels down. How do you get your hormones back in balance? How do you, you know, get that insulin production down, get it into the normal ranges?
So you can become that lean, mean fat burning machine. How do you get your body back into the fat burning mode and lose weight, because that’s what we’re talking about here. There’s two things you can do, you can change what you eat, and you can change when you eat.
So first, you need to change what you eat, you need to eliminate the foods that cause those huge insulin spikes. So mainly, you’re not going to like to hear this. But here’s the truth, you need to stop eating sugar and refined carbs. What? I know it sounds terrible. But everything you eat causes insulin to rise somewhat.
Sugar and highly refined carbs create this intense glucose response in your body. And they cause the highest insulin spike. If you were to just cut out eating sugar and refined carbs, you are going to decrease your insulin like crazy and you will start losing weight, I guarantee it. It’s hard to do, I can teach you how to do it. It’s hard to do on your own for sure. But if you can do that, then you are going to be well on your way to getting your hormones in balance and starting to lose weight.
One thing that I would encourage you to do is to just eat whole food, eat the kind of food that we’ve been eating for millennia. Okay? If it comes with a, if your food if you’re buying food that has a nutrition label on it, it’s probably not what you want to eat. You want to eat the stuff that’s on the outside of the store, you know, the produce, the meat, the fish, the dairy, like, stick with this stuff on the outside, okay.
Try to get away from the sugar and refined carbs, you know, and then check those labels because there are so many different types of sugar that is put into food, especially food that says like low fat or whatever, like stay away from low fat stuff all together. But when you see food and it says like, you know, healthy, whatever, low fat look at the label and see what kinds of sugar are in there.
So a lot of times there’s not added sugar, or there’s added sugar, but it’s hidden. So it’ll be called like agave nectar, or brown rice syrup or maltodextrin. Like they have all these different names for sugar. I think there’s something like 78 different names for sugar. And they try to confuse us. So they actually put sugar in the ingredients like six times.
But it’s all these crazy names. And so you think like, oh, like sugar is like only the 12th ingredient on here, you know, and oh, this must be good for me. But then they’ve hidden sugar and all these other ways. So anyway, stay away from food with labels. How about that idea? Okay.
Really, the best thing you can do is just eat whole foods. Just eat like fruits, vegetables, meat, fish protein, dairy, poultry, like all the good stuff, right? There’s so many options out there for you. But the sugar and the refined carbs are poisoning us. And it’s making us overweight, it’s keeping us from losing weight. Okay, so if you want to lose weight, drop the sugar, drop the highly refined carbs. Okay. So that’s number one, that’s changing what you eat.
Number two, is you need to change when you eat. So basically eating less often. So you know, insulin levels go up every time you eat any kind of food. So one of the simplest things you can do to get your insulin levels down, is to just not eat anything at all. And here’s the thing, like, I know what you’re thinking like, dude, I’m not going to starve myself. And I’m not talking about that. Okay?
But um, one of the things you can do to extend the time where you don’t have food in your system to give your insulin levels a chance to go down, is to stop eating snacks altogether. Okay, let’s just start there. So there was this time back in the 50’s. Like and prior to that where there was no such thing as snacks. There was no snacking going on. People would eat their three meals a day. And that was fine.
But back then starting in the 50s, the big food companies were like, hey, we got to make more money, we got to sell more food. How do we get people to eat more food? And so they came up with this whole category called snacks, okay? And they could, you know, they would tell people like you need a little pick me up in mid morning. So have a mid morning snack. And feeling love lethargic after lunch, you know, have an afternoon snack.
And then after dinner, you need a little snack, you need some dessert, you know, so we’re basically eating three snacks and three meals a day, we’re eating six times a day, here in the United States. I mean, a lot of other countries don’t do that. But at least here I know, for a fact, most people eat five or six times a day.
So your body is always in this state of elevated insulin levels, okay, you’re always in this state of storing fat, we never give our bodies a chance to lower that insulin and so that we can, you know, become fat burners. Okay, so we always have food in our system. So one of the biggest things you can do, and the easiest thing you can do is to just don’t eat something in between meals, like that’s number one.
And it’s so easy, it doesn’t cost any money to do this. You don’t have to like add anything, you don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t have to decide what you’re going to do, like just don’t do anything, just don’t eat anything. All right.
Another thing you can do is extend the amount of time between meals. And I get into this in my program. And I talk about intermittent fasting. And I’m not going to talk about that right now. But one thing you can do is extend the amount of time between your dinner and your breakfast the next day.
So if you want to give your body just a little bit more of a chance to get those insulin levels down and get into fat burning mode, eat your dinner a little bit earlier, you know, maybe an hour earlier than you normally do, and eat your breakfast like an hour later than you normally do. Okay, so extend that what we call the fasting window, you’re you’re fasting every day anyway, unless you eat while you’re sleeping, which I do know somebody that does that, which is crazy.
But if you’re eating dinner at let’s say, you know, seven o’clock, usually, and then you eat breakfast at seven o’clock. So that’s like a 12 hour window of fasting, you know, maybe just extend it, you know, eat at 6pm dinner and then eat breakfast at eight o’clock. And so now you’ve got like a 14 hour window there.
So you’ve given your body two extra hours, and you won’t even notice that really, you know, have your coffee in the morning, whatever you need to do, but just don’t eat, just push that back a little bit, you will find that you will. These two things combined, like getting rid of the sugar and flour and then extending periods where you’re not eating will actually have a huge effect on your body’s ability to get into fat burning mode and lose weight.
These two ideas are gold, they are absolutely gold. What the idea here is we’re trying to access the fuel that we have on board, we’re trying to access the fuel that we have on our bodies, which is our own fat and we have tons and tons of this on our bodies we do we have pounds of it that we can use it.
And a pound of fat has way more calories than a pound of you know, whatever. Fat has more calories than glucose, okay, so like fat is a better fuel source for us than sugar is anyway. So get rid of their sugar, you know and start accessing your fat, you’re gonna have tons of energy, you’re gonna feel amazing, and you will start losing weight. It’s awesome. And this and what you do here with these couple of simple things I’m talking about is you get your hormones back in balance. Regulating your hormones is critical. If you want to lose weight, and if you want to start becoming a lean, mean, fat burning machine. Okay, got to get those hormones regulated.
So I know I talked about a lot of stuff here, a lot of science. Let me just recap really quickly. Okay. One of the main reasons why you can’t lose weight, your hormones are out of whack. increased insulin levels puts your body into fat storage mode. Elevated insulin also causes ghrelin and leptin to stop working properly. So you’re always hungry, you never feel full and you constantly overeat, which makes it even worse.
You can put even more weight on your body okay, so increased insulin causes your body to become a fat store. When you decrease insulin, when you lower the insulin levels in your body, you become a fat burner. It means that ghrelin and leptin start functioning properly. So your hormones are all in balance, you aren’t hungry all the time, you aren’t hangry all the time.
And when you do eat, you feel full and you feel more satisfied for longer. How do we reduce insulin, we change what we eat, and we change when we eat. So we eliminate the two main causes of insulin spikes, which is sugar and refined carbs, eat whole foods, and then we eat less often, we just eliminate the snacks, and maybe extend our fasting nightly fasting period by an hour or two.
So the second part of this three part series, the second secret to permanent weight loss is basically your hormones are causing you to gain weight. And it’s not your fault, it’s totally changeable, you can fix this easily. And I teach you exactly how to do all of this in my weight loss master class.
If you really want to become a lean running machine, you have to get your body out of the fat storage mode and into the fat burning mode. Reducing insulin is perhaps the most powerful thing you can do to solve the physical aspect of permanent weight loss. So in the next episode, in part three of this series, I’m going to be covering the mental and emotional aspects of permanent weight loss.
So most diet programs, they tell you what to eat here, eat this food, do this and good luck, you should be fine. Just eat this stuff right here. They don’t tell you what to do when you have all these crazy cravings. When you have withdrawal from when you stop eating sugar, let’s say when you have these uncontrollable urges around food, when you have this unhealthy relationship with food, they don’t tell you what to do with all that.
They don’t tell you what to do when you start feeling your feelings, you just want to eat over it and you just say eff it and you eat all the food anyway, this is why most diets don’t work. This is why a lot of the approaches that most nutrition coaches take just doesn’t work either. Because they basically just tell you what to eat, they give you a nutrition plan to follow.
And my approach is very different. The way I work with my clients, it’s vastly more effective. It’s basically 100% effective, because I provide solutions for all of the factors involved, that contribute to being overweight and I provide solutions for all the things that are the root causes of weight gain, not just the physical stuff line, what to eat, but the mental and emotional factors as well.
Okay, so we’re going to talk about that in the next episode, so stay tuned for that you will not want to miss it. And then one more quick little reminder. The next weight loss masterclass starts June 1, I only take a few people through the program at a time, each person gets a lot of my personal attention and they get personal coaching time with me. It’s actually like the probably the most affordable way of working with me as your weight loss coach. But you have to get signed up now because it will fill up innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating to get signed up. Remember, if nothing changes, then nothing changes.
You know, if you want different results in your life, you have to take different actions. I know it feels uncomfortable, I know that it will be challenging for you. That’s why I created this six week program to basically walk you through all of the tough stuff step by step and help you to get to the other side where you become the person that you want to be.
Where you start to feel good about yourself again, where you start to love yourself again, where you feel good about your body and you feel you feel good about your mind. I want this for you. I’ve experienced this, I’ve learned how to do it. I’ve learned the formula.
So I’ve put together this system and this program that works wonders. I want you to be a part of this. So please join me. innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating, sign up today. That’s all I got for you here. Can’t wait to see you on the next episode. And as always, I have lots and lots of love for each and every one of you. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are starving yourself, and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
