Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and thought…did I really just eat all that? I know I have…and too many times to count! If …
Continue Reading about 222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 222 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to stop the mindless eating. So have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and you thought did I really just eat all that? I know I have, probably too many times to count.
So if you have ever found yourself in that situation, then you’ve probably done some mindless eating. Mindless Eating is something that we’ve all done at one point or another. And it’s something that you can absolutely change. You don’t have to continue to eat mindlessly, there are some practical things you can do to change this behavior.
So today here on the podcast, what Mindless Eating is and how to stop the Mindless Eating once and for all. But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running, and strength training here on the podcast. And if you’re new, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.
But this all might feel a little overwhelming for you. If you want a great place to start, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and strength training and endurance and mindset all geared towards you, the runner. If you’re a runner, you want to lose some weight, you want to get stronger, you want to become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. It’s pretty self-explanatory. And then get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.
Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve been excited to talk about this for some reason. I don’t know why, but I think it’s one of the things that people have been telling me that they want to change. I talk a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people every day about coaching.
And I always ask them like, you know, what do you want some coaching on? And you know, how can I help you? What goals do you have? And inevitably, most of the people I talked to that they list like the mindless eating, the automatic eating as one of the things that they want to change.
So if you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, then you really have to change your whole relationship with food. All right, if I just sit here and I say here, here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to eat these things, and not eat these things. And you’re going to be fine. I got this, I got this, Patrick, I’m good. Just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.
Okay, but in reality, you don’t got this, I’m just going to tell you, what you got is a lot of conditioned behaviors, you what you’ve got is a lot of habits that you’ve been practicing for years, decades, probably around food, a lot of learned behaviors around food, you’ve been doing the same things for years and years and years for decades.
Like I said, when it comes to how you eat, how you approach food. And if you want to lose weight, and you want to do it in a way that is sustainable for you, then you’re going to have to make some major changes to all of this, you got to change these habits.
You can’t keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing right, nothing changes, if nothing changes. You know, if what you’re if you’re what you’re doing isn’t working, then you have to change it. If you’re doing automatic eating, then you have to change it.
You can’t be a mindless eater, and expect to be able to lose weight because we have to start taking control of what we’re doing. We have to start taking control of our behavior. So the mindless eating, it’s really, it’s an automatic type of behavior that we engage in. It’s not something you just picked up out of the blue you’ve trained yourself to eat and not think about it, right.
So Mindless Eating is is an automatic learned behavior, right? So you go into the kitchen, you grab something, you start eating it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing this, right? Mindless Eating is it’s kind of an unconscious behavior. I like to say it’s similar to tying your shoes tying your shoes is an unconscious behavior.
So when you go, you’re getting ready for work in the morning, you put your shoes on, you tie them and you go, you don’t even think about it. It is unconscious. You don’t even remember doing it today, probably.
So you just do it and you don’t even have any thought or there’s no effort there. There’s no thought there. You don’t have to sit there and think, Okay, what am I doing now? I’m putting my shoes on. And now I have to take these lace things. And I had one goes under the other like, no, no, no, no, you just do it. It takes you two seconds.
Well, we’ve done the same thing with food. You know, we go into the kitchen, and we scarf down a whole sleeve of Oreos, you don’t even notice that you’ve done that until it’s done. And then you’re like, wait a minute, who ate all these oars? Did I eat all these? What the heck is going on here? Honestly, I have done this and Oreos was one of them.
Let’s see kettle chips, those kettle potato chips that are just like super salty. Oh my gosh, those are the best I can eat a giant bag that I get the family style bags, and then I just eat it until they’re gone. Oh, but that’s just me. But these are unconscious learned behaviors just like tying your shoes. Okay. And you’ve trained yourself to do this over years and years and years.
Okay, so it’s a habit is just a habit. Okay, we can if you if you’ve developed a habit, if you learn a habit, you can break the habit, okay? You’ve just trained yourself that when you go into the kitchen, you grab something and you eat it, and then you walk out of the kitchen, don’t even remember, it’s just like tying your shoes, you don’t think about it, you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take any effort, you just do it, okay.
Also, a lot of times we use food to feel better, we want to use food as a way of changing the way we feel. So we grab this thing that’s external to us, we ingest it, it becomes internal, and it helps us to feel better on the inside. This is called emotional eating. And emotional eating to some degree is also just a habit.
Emotional eating can also be automatic mindless eating. And again, it’s just a habit that you’ve developed. You know, emotional eating is when you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out or you’re anxious, and you just want to eat something to kind of feel better, you want to kind of numb the feelings that you’re experiencing, you want to numb the emotions that you’re experiencing, and food will do that it has that effect.
You know, especially if you go for something like sugar, sugar lights up the pleasure centers of your brain like nothing else. And if you want to feel pleasure, just eat some sugar, and you’ll feel pleasure for a short period of time. And you might stop thinking about the stress or the boredom or the anxiety that you’re experiencing for a short period of time, but then it’ll come back.
And then what do you do? Well, you gotta go back to the kitchen and eat something else. And again, this emotional eating can also be a very mindless eating, it can be an automatic behavior that you’re not even aware that you’re doing. Okay? So again, mindless eating, it’s just a learned behavior, you’ve trained yourself to eat, and you’ve trained yourself to not think about it.
This is important, listen to this. Because really, who wants to think about it? So you just, you just blank, this little snack out of your brain. So you’re just like, ooh, some cookies, you eat them, and then you go, bloop, and it’s gone from your brain. Like, it never really happened.
Because if you have to acknowledge it, and if you’re doing it in an intentional, conscious way, you know, you shouldn’t be eating the cookies, you just had lunch, you don’t need to be eating all these cookies. And so you sort of blank it out of your mind. You don’t want to think about it because you love it feels good.
And you know, it’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing. Right? So you have trained yourself to not think about it. Right? So you just do it, you do it automatically. And I think it’s interesting when people tell me this, they’re like, yeah, I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I say well, yeah, you do know, but you’ve chosen to blink it out of your mind. This is a little trick you’re playing on yourself, okay?
So, why is it important to change this behavior? So, mindlessly eating means that you are just eating you know, whenever you feel like it, not when you are actually in need of some nutrition. So this can lead to over eating so eating all the time, it’s really just not good for us. It’s really not the normal state for human beings. The human body is designed to eat a couple of times a day, you know, but not just mindlessly eating snacks all the time, right? It’s just not good for you, it puts a lot of stress on on the system.
You know, also, let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what you are eating. When you are mindlessly eating. I’m guessing it’s probably not broccoli. Have you ever like walked in the kitchen, and you’re like, man, I’m a little bored and a little, I just want a little snack of some time and you open up the fridge and there’s some like leftover broccoli sitting in there and you start eating that? No, nobody does that.
You want something crunchy, and salty and sweet, like chips, pretzels, nuts, chocolate, or like chocolate that has pretzels and nuts mixed into it. You know, like, whatever you can get your hands on that’s going to, you know, light up the pleasure centers. And that’s usually the crunchy, salty, sweet stuff, okay?
So, mindlessly eating is really a way of overeating, you end up over eating, and you end up over eating junk food, like you’re just eating junk, right? And so this is a bad combination. Like if you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to improve your health, you know, change your diet, change your habits, mindlessly eating, you’re overeating, you’re eating junk food, this is a bad combination. Stop doing that. Okay?
Now I get it, you’re like, but it’s so automatic. I don’t even know that I’m doing it. How am I going to stop doing this? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. So the opposite of mindless eating is what it’s mindful eating.
So the goal, the first step here, the first goal that you want to accomplish here is to start being more mindful about everything that you eat, you have to start being mindful about every bite that you put into your mouth. The easiest way to do this, is to write it down. This is a really great place to start. And I think that everybody should do this.
Not just for the mindless eating, but for all kinds of habits around food. But everything has to be written down. And the easiest way to do it is to just grab a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. So every time you eat something, just write it down.
Now I like to talk to people about this. And they’ll say, well, I could use this app I use My Fitness Pal, you know, Carb Manager or whatever. Fine. Use whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. But just make it simple.
Okay, apps can sometimes be complicated. They’re kind of clunky to use, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, and you just want to it has to be something you can do easily. It has to be simple and easy. Pen and paper is simple and easy. But if you’re on the go, maybe use a note on your phone, you know, just open up a note and just start taking inventory of everything you’re eating throughout the day.
And every time you eat or drink something, anything goes into your mouth. You want to write it down in that note on your phone or on a piece of paper. Okay, that is step number one. So what we’re doing here is we’re creating awareness about what is really going on with you and food, what’s really going on?
There’s no lies here. There’s no tricking yourself. There’s no deception. There’s no you know, tricking yourself into thinking you’re doing something you’re not or not doing something that you are, you’re actually just writing down everything that goes into your mouth, every bite, lick taste, okay?
So record everything that you do. Let’s do this for like a week. All right. And every time you eat something, every time you drink something, write it down. This is going to create a lot of self awareness. This is going to be the first step in being mindful around food instead of mindless.
Okay, so what starts happening here? Well, you start noticing that you’re eating stuff all the time you’re eating stuff, when you’re not hungry, you’re eating stuff, when you’re bored, you’re eating stuff when you’re feeling a little anxious, you’re eating stuff that you know isn’t on your plan. You know, you you start to see when and where you get triggered to eat stuff, you know, oh, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to eat something.
Oh, you know, every time I go in the break room, I have to eat something. You know, you don’t have to keep doing that. But you need to know what you’re doing first. So this is like creating such amazing self awareness. Okay.
And you have to develop this self awareness, you have to know what you’re doing before you can change it right, you got to know what you’re doing before you can change it, you have to know what you’re doing day in and day out before you can stop doing i,t before you can start creating better habits, before you can stop the automatic behavior.
So self awareness is the main goal here. So you got to write everything down, start creating that self awareness. So that’s step number one.
Step number two is this once you start noticing what you’re doing, when you’re eating, how often you’re eating the types of foods you’re eating, you can begin to start practicing the pause.
The pause is you pause before you put any food in your mouth. So you might get to the kitchen, you open up the pantry and you start looking around for some, you know, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever. But you pause right there with the cupboard open. And you notice oh man, I’m really looking for these Girl Scout cookies right now, aren’t I? Because you’ve created that self awareness. Okay, this is really cool.
This is very important and very easy to do. Okay, so you just take a moment and you pause. I’m about to engage in some kind of like mindless eating, I’m going back to these old habits. And so now you started to create a little bit of awareness, we’re starting to move into more of a mindful state, okay.
Next thing I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions. You can do this in your brain, it only takes a few seconds to do this. But ask yourself these questions. Do I really need to eat something right now? Am I really hungry? Or am I just bored or stressed out or anxious? Am I just trying to use food to feel better? What can I do instead of eating if I need to feel better?
Maybe I can go for a walk. Maybe I can walk the dog? Maybe I can, you know, pet the dog? What can you do that it doesn’t involve eating to feel better? Do I really need to feel better at all, maybe I can just be okay, feeling a little stressed out or a little bit bored or whatever.
Like, just go through these few questions in your mind really quickly. Okay. So what you’re doing is you’re going from mindless eating, to being mindful about eating. And listen, when you take that pause, you ask yourself those questions. And if you still want to eat something, then fine, eat the Girl Scout cookies or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.
But what you’re doing here is you’re not eating mindlessly. Now you’re eating mindfully, you’re you’re checking in with yourself before you make the decision to eat or not eat. And I’d much rather you are mindful about eating the Girl Scout cookies, then making that decision to eat the Girl Scout cookies, right? So you’ve made a conscious decision than eating the Girl Scout cookies unconsciously.
We don’t want to be mindless about what we’re doing. We want to be mindful, we don’t want to be unconscious. We want to be conscious. You know what we don’t want our body and our brain operating on autopilot here. We want to be in control.
And if you’re in control, and you’re saying you know what? Eating those Girl Scout Cookies feels like a really good decision for me right now. And you do that fine. Now over time, it would probably be great if you cut out the Girl Scout Cookies altogether. But listen, baby steps I get it. And this first baby step is moving from mindlessness to mindfulness around food.
This is very important. It’s a game changer if you want to lose weight. This is a game changer. It’s really hard to lose weight when you’re eating mindlessly and automatically all the time. You make this one change, and I promise you, your weight loss journey is going to get easier. Okay?
So you want to go from being a mindless eater to a mindful eater. This is where the good stuff starts to happen for you. This is where you can begin to break those conditioned behaviors and habits. This is how you start to change your whole relationship with food.
You’ve got to get away from the unconscious behavior and move towards consciousness get away from mindlessness and start moving towards mindfulness. Okay, this is a critical first step to losing weight and keeping it off. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you probably already know that you have to change your diet. This is obvious and we all know this, but that’s where most people stop. They change …
Continue Reading about 218. You Have to Change How You Think →
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 218 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, you have to change how you think. So if you’re somebody who wants to lose weight and keep it off, you probably already know that you have to change your diet, right?
This is obvious, we all know this. But that’s where most people stop, they change their diet, they get some results. But it rarely lasts. Because they’ve only changed the behavior, not the thinking that’s driving the behavior. They keep slipping back into old eating patterns because they haven’t changed the thoughts that create those patterns in the first place.
So if you think you can change your diet, but not your thinking, you’re always going to struggle. So today on the podcast, if you want to change behavior and make it last, then you have to change how you think.
But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running strength training, all that stuff here on the podcast. And if you’re new to the podcast, welcome. And also this all might seem a little overwhelming to you. And you might just want to know where to get started with all this stuff.
If that sounds like you, awesome, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training, it’s about an hour long, it’s a video that you can watch, you can check it out anytime it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, you’re gonna learn all the basics, nutrition, strength, endurance mindset, all geared towards you, the runner who’s interested in becoming fitter, stronger, faster, and the most badass version of yourself yet.
If this sounds like you, check out this free training, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. I know it’s pretty obvious, right? And you can get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today, you have to change how you think. So one of the things that prompted me to talk about this today is that I talk to people every single day. And they just want some of these people just want me to talk to tell them like what to do, like, just tell me what to do. You know, give me a plan and I’ll follow the plan.
They just want to know what’s, the when’s, the how’s, like what should I eat? When should I lift weights? How often should I run? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And I jokingly say, half-jokingly I say, yeah, knowing what to do is easy. If it were that easy, though, all I would do is write a book and hand it over to you right?
But knowing what to do is only a small part of the equation. All right? How often have you known what to do and you still haven’t done it anyway, like, you probably know that you shouldn’t be eating some things like Dunkin Donuts, right? But you do it anyway.
And you’re not doing it and you’re not like doing the things that you want to be doing consistently. So that’s where, you know, we see this behavior that we’re engaging in, we want to change the behavior, but we stop there, we just stop it like, well, I just need to stop doing that I need to do things differently. I need to take different actions, okay?
The problem with this is that you’re not changing the thing that is actually driving the behavior that’s actually creating the thoughts, the feelings that are actually driving the behavior. Okay, you can’t just change a behavior, you have to change the thinking behind the behavior, okay?
But when it comes to, you know, things like, okay, I shouldn’t be eating Dunkin Donuts every day. I get that. But they find themselves they just keep eating the Dunkin Donuts every day. And they’re like, how come I can’t do that? Because they haven’t changed the thinking that’s driving the behavior.
So if you’re somebody who struggles with sticking to a plan, like sticking to a food plan, you know, you might have experienced this in the past, and lots of people I’ve talked to have experienced this where they’re like, yeah, I did that.
For a while I was able to change the behavior, I started to eat real food, and I started to do pretty well with that. But they never did like the deeper work of changing the thinking that drives the behavior. And so they just slip back into those old patterns that keep slipping back into those old eating patterns.
You know, slipping back into, you know, binging on stuff and in, you know, eating the junk food, and they can’t understand why because they know what to do. But they’ve never done the deeper work. The deeper work is changing. The thinking changes the doing, the thinking that actually drives the behavior.
Okay, so I’ve said this a couple of times now, your thinking drives your behavior, how does all this work? So, you know, here’s, here’s what, what I want to talk about next, this is how your thinking actually drives your actions. Okay?
So when we want to change something complicated, like eating patterns, this can be kind of challenging, okay? And for most people, they just look at the action itself, I’m either eating broccoli, or I’m eating potato chips, I’m eating, you know, the chicken that I put out, or a meeting the Dunkin Donuts, you know.
And when it’s when you think about the action like that, it is, it is very surface level, when you just try to change the action, you are going to get minuscule results, I’m just telling you right now, if that’s what you’ve been working on, then you are going to get very short term results, and you’re never going to make lasting change.
What you want to do is get down to the thinking this is the deeper work, you get down to the thinking that’s driving the behavior because this is where you can actually start making real lasting change.
So most people believe that whatever they’re doing is some sort of automatic behavior. Like they’re some sort of a robot, they have no control over their actions, you know, the Dunkin Donuts just sitting there and I eat them. I just find myself eating them, I find myself eating them. Like I am an automaton, I see doughnuts and I eat them.
This is not really going on. This is really not what’s happening. You are not a robot, you are a human being you have free will, you have agency, you have the power to make decisions and you are making decisions, you are not out of control. You can choose something different in that circumstance.
But in that circumstance, you’re making a choice, you’re choosing this over that you’re choosing, typically, you’re choosing what feels good right now, you’re choosing immediate gratification, you’re choosing immediate pleasure over your long-term goals, over long-lasting gratification and pleasure, a fit body, a long and healthy life and all the good stuff that you actually want for yourself.
Most people think behavior works like this, they see the Dunkin Donuts saying eat them, period, right? Here’s how your thinking actually drives your behavior, though. So you see the Dunkin Donuts sitting there. And then you have a thought about the Dunkin Donuts.
So it’s not the donuts themselves that are driving the behavior, but it’s your thoughts. So you have a thought about the donuts, oh, man, those look so good. You know what, I’ve been good all week, I just ran 10 miles, I deserve a little treat. You know, I’ve been pretty consistent with all this, it’s not gonna hurt that much. It’s going to feel really good to eat, though.
So you have all these thoughts that go through your mind. You know, a lot of times you don’t even know you’re having those thoughts. It just goes, it happens really fast. Really, it’s very, very quick. It’s just in an instant, where you have these thoughts, but you do have these thoughts.
And those thoughts are very powerful. Because those thoughts create a feeling inside of you. Immediately, they create a in this case, they create something like desire. And the feeling could be anything really it could be a feeling like you can have a thought that creates a feeling of stress or anxiety or anger.
But in the case of you know, looking at some Dunkin Donuts and you just ran 10 miles, it could just be an intense desire, which is just a feeling it’s an emotion, a desire. You have this intense desire that wells up inside you that desire to eat a Dunkin donut.
What is actually driving the action of eating the doughnut? If the desire wasn’t there, you wouldn’t eat the doughnut. So the desire to eat the donut is not created by the donut in the box. That’s not creating the desire. The desire is created by your thoughts about the donut sitting in the box.
Oh, this is gonna taste so good. This sugar is gonna make me feel really good because it does that sugar lights up those pleasure centers in your brain. Oh, I’m gonna get a nice sugar rush for the next 20 minutes or so.
All these thoughts that you have create that desire and they really ramp up that desire. It’s like turning up the volume on that desire. And the reason we know this is true is because some people they just don’t have that. They don’t like Dunkin Donuts and they don’t have it. The desire to eat the doughnuts, the doughnuts are not causing the desire because some people can see them sitting there and just be like, not so great. I don’t really like those things, you know, they have no thoughts about, oh my God, these are gonna be so amazing.
They have no thoughts about oh, I just deserve this, you know, just ran 10 miles, they don’t have any of those thoughts. And so they have no desire to eat the doughnut, and so they don’t eat the doughnut.
So not eating the doughnut is not hard for those people because their thinking is different. They are not thinking all these thoughts about how amazing this is going to feel. And so the desire is not there to eat the doughnut, and so they don’t eat the doughnut.
So this is what is called a thought-feeling-action pattern. Your thoughts create feelings and your feelings drive your behavior. And I just call this for simplicity, a thought pattern, right? Thought patterns are things that we have learned over the years and years and years of our lives. And we have thought patterns about all kinds of stuff in our life. Some are good, some are not so good. Right? You’ve been practicing certain thought patterns for your whole life, decades.
Like, Dunkin Donuts are amazing. To be honest with you. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a Dunkin donut, just a little sidebar here. I know people love their coffee, they talk about how good the coffee is. I just can’t imagine that it would be that good.
Because I’m sort of a coffee snob. I love really good, you know, single-origin coffees that I grind the beans myself, and I just don’t think that it would be that good. But in no way I don’t know, maybe I’m missing out on something. But I don’t have the desire to eat the Dunkin Donuts. I’m just using this as an example.
So you’ve had these, you’ve been practicing these types of thought patterns for decades. Like if you’ve always loved Dunkin Donuts, and you’ve probably thought, oh my God, these are just so amazing all the time. So you’ve created a thought pattern. And you’ve done this so many times, it just creates a habit. The habit is when you see the donuts, you eat them.
And you think it’s an automatic thing. But it really isn’t. It’s a thought-feeling-action pattern that you’ve been practicing over and over and over and over again. This is the same as practicing any other behavior. Behavior that’s become a habit for you, like running.
So when you first started running, you have all these thoughts about running, like, running as hard. I don’t feel like running today. I’m not getting any faster. Running is really hard. Why is running so hard? I hate running. It’s really hard. It’s stupid. Those are my thoughts about running when I first started doing it, and it took me so long before I got better, you know, running, running takes a long, it takes a long time to get better at, right?
And these thoughts that I was having would keep me in bed, most mornings, you know, because they would, when I started thinking these feelings about running being so hard, and I’m not getting better. And I you know, I’m not getting faster, and running is stupid. It’s not working for me.
All those thoughts that I had about running, were causing feelings of demotivation inside me, a lack of enthusiasm. I’m not good enough, feelings of frustration and anger, like those feelings of demotivation, frustration, anger, and lack of enthusiasm, these feelings will drive a certain type of behavior, which is to stay in bed and don’t go run. Because running is stupid. Okay?
That is a thought-feeling-action pattern at play right there. So you don’t feel like running and you don’t run. But over time, over time, you do squeak out a few good runs here and there. And you do eventually get a little bit faster. And running becomes a little bit easier. And you kind of surprise yourself that oh I actually ran like five miles and it actually felt okay.
Like you start to see that this might actually be working, you start to enjoy it. You start to feel good after you run, you start to look forward to it. And so then you have all these new thoughts about running that start to change the way you feel about running to the point where now you never miss a run no matter what even if it’s really crappy outside.
Even if it’s cold and snowy and rainy. Even if you’re sick, you’ve got the flu, even if you’re on vacation, you’re gonna go out there and run because it feels so good for you. So you’ve created for yourself without even knowing it a whole different set of thought patterns around running.
And so the behavior, you think, you know, the behavior just changes by itself. No, you have changed that behavior over time. I hope this is an example that you can relate to. Because this is a really good example of the amazing power of your thought patterns.
Running can be a hard thing, but you can get through it. And you can get over that and you can become a person who loves to run. The very same thing can happen with any other thought patterns in your life. Running just didn’t naturally come easily to you and be handed to you all of a sudden, you know, running just got easier. No, you had to like, work through it.
And you had to learn thought patterns, it took a while you had to practice it for a long time before it became something that was easier, and it was a habit. So thought patterns can be learned thought patterns can be unlearned, too, right?
If you want to train yourself to hate running, just go back to all the crappy thinking about running, how hard it is how you don’t like it, how you’re not getting any faster, why so hard. All that stuff, just keep thinking those kinds of thoughts, and it’ll be super demotivating. And you’ll not feel like running ever again. Okay?
If you have a thought pattern, like mindlessly eating the Dunkin Donuts every time you see them, even though you know it’s not what you want, it’s not good for you, it’s not going to help you lose weight, it’s not healthy, it’s not in alignment with your long term goals, then you can unlearn that thought pattern, okay?
And it starts with changing the way you think you have to change the thoughts that are creating those feelings of desire within you. So how do you change your thinking? So changing your thinking is not as easy as it sounds, you just can’t be like, well, I’m just going to think differently.
Especially if you’ve been practicing the same thought patterns your whole life, it takes time. And it takes some effort, it takes a little bit of work. And when I say work, that’s where most people like tune out. They’re like, oh, please, I don’t want to do any work.
But listen, if you want to change, you have to do some work, right? And I promise you that if you’re willing to work on this particular area, when you’re starting to talk about changing thought patterns, this can be an absolute game changer for you. And it applies to any thought patterns in your life, whether it’s Dunkin Donuts, running, whatever it is that you want for yourself, you can change this.
And I’ve got a three step little process here that I’m going to go through with you that I think is really powerful. And it’s the three R’s. And the three R’s are to recognize, record, and reframe.
So the first R, if we’re talking about changing thought patterns here, the first R, the very first step is to recognize you got to recognize that something is going on here. You know, you have to see that you’re engaging in a behavior or a thought pattern that you want to change.
You have to recognize that what you’re doing may not be in alignment with your long-term goals. So this is self-awareness, understanding that you’re not a robot, this is not automatic behavior. You’re just practicing an old thought pattern. So you have to recognize that something is going on here.
That is the critical first step. And you have to be honest with yourself that oh, yeah, I’m doing something that you know, I am eating the Dunkin Donuts mindlessly what’s happening here, like what’s going on? So recognize that something is happening here. Okay, step number one.
Step number two, the second R is to record, record the thought pattern in as much detail as possible. So as soon as you can, once you recognize what’s happening, or that there’s something happening here, stop and record some thoughts and feelings about the behavior.
Ask yourself some questions like, what just happened there? Like why did I do that? What was the thought that I had right before I did that? What was the feeling that I had right before I did that?
This doesn’t have to be complicated, you can just grab a notebook and write it down, use a pen and a piece of paper, use your journal, write it on a note on your phone, you can even record a voice memo and just record it into your phone. I like doing that because sometimes I can’t write as fast as my brain is, you know, can think and I can talk so I just talk it’s a lot easier for me.
But the more you record, the more you can start to see that yeah, these are the types of thought patterns that I’m engaging in. These are the types of thoughts I’m thinking these are the types of feelings that are being created within me that are actually driving the behavior.
And then the next step is to and the third R is to reframe. Reframing means you change the thought to create different feelings, which drive a different behavior. This simply means you need to start to choose different thoughts in those moments, and this is a practice this is not something you’re going to do you know, you, you know, and then you’re going to do one time, you’re gonna be like, oh, I got it. No, it takes time.
Reframing is a powerful tool. It’s used in a lot of psychological practices like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. And they have a similar like three steps sort of process that is similar to this. But I think this one applies to us very profoundly. Okay.
So you have a thought, like, you know, I’ve been good all week, I deserve this donut, I just ran 10 miles, it’s not that big a deal. All those kinds of thoughts, right? Those thoughts are creating a desire inside you. And then you just use that desire to drive you to eat the doughnut.
But a reframing, reframing thought might be something like, oh, that donut looks really good. But my health is more important to me than how good that donut might taste in the moment. My weight loss goal is bigger than the tiny amount of pleasure that this stupid little donut is going to give me. Or I’m not the kind of person that eats that crap anymore.
Right, these thoughts, these reframed thoughts, start to create feelings of motivation, you start to feel more confident, you have a different desire not to eat the doughnut, but to stay consistent and reach those health and fitness goals that are so important to you.
And so in that moment, the desire to stay committed to your goals is much more powerful than the stupid donut sitting there. And so you make the choice tonight the donut. That’s a reframe.
Okay, so the whole thing, this whole process, recognize, record, reframe, only takes a couple of minutes to do, it only takes a few minutes, but you want to practice this, you want to practice this every day.
Recognize there’s a thought pattern you want to change. Record your thoughts and feelings about it. Reframe those thoughts and feelings to produce a better outcome next time.
It’s a very simple process. Simple, but not easy. This is the work that we have to do. This is the work that most people don’t want to do or not willing to do. Most people would rather stay stuck and just blame everything around them for why they’re stuck.
Like, oh, if those donuts weren’t sitting there, I’d be fine. Actually, no, because the donuts are not the problem. It’s your thoughts about the donuts. That’s the real problem. Okay. So get out there, start seeing all the thought patterns in your life, and start recognizing that these things are happening and that you are creating them.
Alright, so there’s some good thought patterns that are happening in your life and there’s some that are not so good, but recognize all of them and start to see them for what they really are, okay?
There’s going to be some that you want to continue doing. There are going to be some thought patterns that you want to change. And that’s when we put the three R’s into practice. Recognize, record, and reframe. Cool. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Being overweight is not something that’s not talked about very much (or at all) in the running community. There seems to be some stigma around being a runner and being overweight. Like you’re not …
Continue Reading about 214. Replay: Why Running Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss →
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 214 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, why running doesn’t work for weight loss. Being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much or at all in the running community.
There seems to be some stigma around being a runner, and being overweight, like you’re not doing it right. You’re not running enough. You’re doing it all wrong. If you’re training for a marathon and you’re overweight, you’re you’re doing it wrong.
And I know exactly how this feels. This is definitely my story, which I’ll share with you here in a minute. But in this episode, I’m going to share why running is not an effective tool for weight loss, and why you need to treat the underlying physical, mental and emotional aspects of overeating if you really want to lose weight for good.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about losing weight, about proper nutrition for running about improving your running about building strength. And if you’re new to this podcast, well welcome first of all, but I can tell that for some of you this might feel a little overwhelming and you not might not know where to start with all this stuff.
And if that sounds like you, no worries, I’ve totally got you covered, I created a free hour-long video training that you can check out at any time it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset, all geared toward you, the runner. If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, then this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training. I know right? It’s so simple. And get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, so this is actually a replay episode, if you’re listening to this, I’m probably sitting on the beach in Hawaii right now. And I decided that this is a topic that I really wanted to share with you guys. And I thought I would go ahead and replay this is one of my very, very early episodes.
So if I sound a little bit different, that’s why. It was from several years ago. But the message still rings true. And I’m talking about overeating, especially in this episode. And it’s one aspect of losing weight and improving your health and fitness that a lot of people really don’t address or don’t talk about. So I really wanted to get into this and share this with you guys today. Okay, so let’s get into this replay of why running doesn’t work for weight loss.
Today I want to talk about a subject that is really important to me and something that I’m really passionate about, and that is why running doesn’t work for weight loss. So being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much, or at all in the running community, there seems to be some sort of stigma around being a runner, and being overweight. It’s like, hey, you’re not doing it right. You must not be running enough. If you can’t lose weight, or if you’re overweight. Oh, I see you’re training for a marathon. Still can’t seem to lose weight. What’s wrong with you?
These are some of the things that I’ve heard around the running community. And some things that people have shared with me and I felt as well. Okay, so I know, I know how this feels. I really do. I know this is something that not a lot of people are talking about. And so I wanted to sort of just like shine a light on this subject and talk about this today, because it’s really something that I’m really passionate about. And I haven’t shared this really before. And I think now’s the right time. So here we go.
So back in the day, back in, like 2003, I was seriously, I was overweight, I was I was probably 50 or 60 pounds overweight. And I was very unhealthy. I was very sick, I had cancer, I was drinking too much. And I was in a very, very bad place. I was basically just really sick and really unhealthy. And I needed to change some stuff in my life.
So I did, I quit drinking, which was a big part of the problem for me. I started eating better. And I started running. And obviously I got treated for the cancer and I’ve been cancer-free for many, many years now. So that’s all good. But the running was like a big catalyst for me to like, do something that would help me to lose weight.
You know, like that was the thing was like, oh, if I just run I’m gonna lose weight. And for me, it was like a change of lifestyle completely. You know, I gave up the crazy eating that I was doing. And I started running and stopped drinking. So all those things combined. I lost a lot of weight and I lost probably 60 pounds and kept it off for a long time and continued to run and train and do all these awesome things.
I’ve run like 14 marathons, I’ve done an Ironman, I’ve done countless other triathlons and ultra marathons, including a 50 miler and a 100 miler. And I’ve done all these things, and was able to kind of maintain this, this weight that I was at for a long time. And I felt pretty good about myself.
Well, in the last few years, I’ve sort of backed off my running a little bit. After I did my 100 miler at the end of 2017. I wanted to scale back my running, and I just didn’t want to put anything on the calendar and I just wanted to be like, I just want to go out there and run and have fun and enjoy it and not to have all these goals out there.
So I stopped kind of signing up for races and having goals like that, and I started gaining weight. And I couldn’t figure out why because I was still training and I was still running and I was still like I would do a marathon a year or whatever. But I was running all the time.
Well, I ended up, you know, gaining like 15 or 20 pounds back, you know, look, looking back over time, it was like, it happened slowly, but it happened. And I found myself in this place of like, okay, I need to lose this weight, what am I going to do? And so I tried all these different things to help me to lose the weight.
And I tried like calorie restriction where I was just like counting calories. And that is very challenging to do, by the way, I had to have this app. And I had to log every bite of anything that I ate, and I had to know all the ingredients in it, and all the breakdown of all the nutrition breakdown of it according to the label.
And it was challenging to try to keep track of that. When the idea there was like, oh, yeah, if you eat, you know, 1500 calories, but you burn off 2000 calories a day, you’ll lose weight. I gotta tell you, I did not lose weight. And I was constantly stressed out about entering all this data into this app. Okay.
Maybe that’s how you lose the weight, you’ve spent so much time and energy, and you’re so stressed about trying to figure out how to enter all that data into this thing. You just lose weight. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. But you know, I’ve done a plant-based thing for many years. Vegetarian, I tried sort of a vegan-paleo thing, a vegan-keto thing, I’ve tried to eat nothing but fat, nothing, but no carbs. Like, I’ve tried all these things. And I couldn’t get anything to work, I can’t get anything to work.
I’ve always felt like I just haven’t had control of what I eat. I know what the problem is now. And I’m gonna get to that in just a minute. But getting here, you know, I just felt like I did not have control over what I was eating. I didn’t have control over myself. You know, I felt tired all the time. I found myself doing a lot of emotional eating. I’ve been doing that lately, too.
By the way, with the lock down here, The Stay At Home order. And some other things going on in my life, I’ve been doing a lot of emotional eating. And I’m not sorry about it, but I even eat when I’m not hungry. And you know what, I’ve just felt stuck.
I felt like, I am never going to lose this weight. And I’ve keep running. You know, I ran back in August, I did 31 days of running. And I thought for sure that would help me to lose weight. No, I gained weight. Starting in November, I did a running challenge running through the holidays. And I ran for something like 80 days straight. And I thought that would help me to lose weight.
And it didn’t, I didn’t lose weight at all, I actually gained weight. And so I’ve realized that the problem really isn’t about running. It’s not about like, oh, I’m not running enough. The problem is that I’m overeating. The problem is that I overeat, I eat too much. I have an addiction to food. I’ve programmed my body to become so addicted to food, not just my body, but my brain as well, to become so addicted to food, especially sugar.
That not even you know, training for a marathon is going to help me to lose weight. Okay? So, believe me, I’m frustrated by this or have been frustrated by this. And I feel like the advice out there is just like here, Here, eat this. Just eat this over here or eat this or just do this diet over here. And it just this just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for most people.
You know, just changing your behavior, changing what you eat, does not address the underlying issues. You know, I feel like everyone’s out there just saying, eat this as if it’s that simple. It’s not that simple. In order to lose weight in order to be at your ideal weight to be at your natural weight. You need to identify and fix the causes of your over eating. Not just treat the symptoms. We’re so focused on treating the symptoms or not getting to the root of the problem. Okay.
So all these different like diets I’ve tried or whatever, I’ve tried these things and then said, that doesn’t work because I gained weight, or I kept overeating. And the problem isn’t in what I’m eating, necessarily, although that is part of it. The problem is, I wasn’t addressing the mental and emotional part of overeating, okay?
There’s three parts to overeating that have to be addressed. There’s the physical causes of overeating, there’s the mental causes, and then there’s the emotional causes. I’m going to talk about all three of these. But I want you to know something, if you’re out there and you’re a runner, and you’re having a, you know, a struggle with you’re struggling to lose weight or struggling to feel good about your body.
I know what you’re going through, I feel I feel your pain, I really do. And, and I want to help you, and I, and I coach people through this. I’m coaching myself through this and I want to coach you through this. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today, we’re going to talk about the three causes of overeating. And, and the things that aren’t really addressed. And if you’re a runner, I want you to pay attention. And I want you to really take in what I’m going to say here and be open to trying something that’s a little different, okay?
Because whatever, whatever you’ve been trying is not working. Okay? So let’s try something different. Okay? Okay, so the three causes of overeating. The first is the physical causes. So this is, most overeating is caused by a hormonal imbalance, okay? Overeating, especially sugar, causes too much insulin to be produced in your body. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, okay, the more insulin you produce, the more fat will be stored on your body, the more you way, okay?
If you continually produce insulin, you are going to continue to gain weight. Okay, this is just straight up science, okay? The problem is that when you’re trying to lose weight, the most important thing for you to consume is what it’s your own body fat you want to consume, if you will, you want to burn for energy, your own body fat, in order to lose weight, you cannot do that when your body is full of glucose sugar, your insulin is too high. And you’re in fat storage mode, and you got to, you got to shift that, okay.
So the first thing you need to do is you need to get your insulin levels down. And you can do this by eating less often. And by reducing the amount of sugar you consume. We all know that sugar is bad for us. Okay? It’s actually the worst thing you can put in your body. And I’m saying this, as, as the words are coming out of my mouth here. I’m thinking of the Ben and Jerry’s that I have in the freezer, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I love Ben and Jerry’s. I absolutely love it.
But I’m giving it up, because I know how bad it is for me, and I’m just tired of feeling the way that I felt lately, okay. So I’m giving it up. And here’s the other thing, when you eat too much sugar, you get this huge over desire for food, you get this like physical craving for food.
Because what happens is, sugar is super concentrated, it causes a super concentrated dopamine response in your brain. It causes an excess of dopamine to be produced, which feels really good, right? So much so that the neurotransmitters that are producing the dopamine, they actually down regulate over time.
So it takes more and more sugar for you to get the same amount of pleasure. So you got to eat more sugar to feel good. And your brain and your body or just being there like it’s like a Drug Act, okay? A drug addict needs more and more of the drug to produce the same result. And so what happens there then your insulin goes up again, you get more cravings, you can’t handle the cravings, you eat more, and there’s this crazy cycle that happens, right.
And you know what? This isn’t your fault. We’ve all been programmed this way. For decades, the food industry has made it their mission to make food as delicious as possible, you know, as desirable as possible, they put sugar in everything, for the love. And the food that we eat, it’s so concentrated and processed that it gives us this incredible hit of dopamine when we eat certain foods. And then we have to eat more and more just to get that same feeling.
Okay, so it’s like being addicted to drugs or alcohol, you need more to produce the same effect. So in order to fix the physical cause of overeating, you have to get that insulin level down, you have to eat less, eat less often and eat less processed foods like sugar and flour. Okay? When you do this, you actually can start to get your hormones back in balance and start burning fat instead of burning to sugar. Okay. So that’s how we fix the physical part of overeating.
Okay, next is the mental part of overeating, the mental causes. So mental cravings, this is a real thing. Again, the food industry has concentrated this sugar in our foods so much that we are constantly craving more and more food, more and more of this delicious sugar, right? Our brains are actually responding the way they’re supposed to, though. They’re not,your brain is working normally. Okay, this isn’t your fault.
You eat the sugar, you eat the flour, you release the dopamine. And then your brain wants more of that. It’s just like your primitive brain, the amygdala, part of your brain responding to this like, it’s like a life or death situation, you know, are primitive brains, they’ve learned over time that when food is good, we’re going to produce a hormone that makes us feel good. So that will remember that, hey, this is good, okay.
So when you know when we would be eating blueberries back in the caveman days, you know, back in the day, we’d be eating some blueberries and be like, ooh, these are really good. And you get this little tiny dopamine response, right? That’s good. Oh, I want to remember this, I want to eat more of those because they made me feel good. And so you’ll go back and eat more of the blueberries.
Okay, but over time, it’s kind of developed into this thing of like, life and death kind of situation with our brains. Because now we have like blueberry syrup, blueberry pie, blueberry toaster strudels. We juice everything. So it’s super concentrated, and we get this super intense hit of dopamine. And then when we don’t get it, our brains are like, we need this now or we’re going to die.
Your brain actually literally thinks it’s like a life and death situation happening here. Okay. So that’s kind of like what’s happening with your brain. And then you get these thoughts. So the thoughts will start to come into play here, you get these thoughts of, I’m restless, I’m bored. I feel deprived.
You know, when you stop overeating, even for a little bit. You start to feel like, you know, oh, I just deserve this. I’m deprived. What’s one box of Oreos? You know that you can justify that all you want. And all that mental chatter. All it’s doing is just continuing to build into that idea and support that idea that your brain is thinking like you need this or you’re going to die. And so you give in to it, you give into the mental craving, okay.
And we’ve just been programmed our whole lives, we’ve essentially programmed our minds to over eat and buy now. It’s our subconscious mind that’s running the show. Our subconscious minds have been programmed to make us think we have to overeat or will die. Okay, we get these intense cravings for something sweet.
And I know I talk about Ben and Jerry’s all the time, but it’s just a good example. It’s so good. But it’s like Ben and Jerry’s. You know? I think about that. And I’m like, I’ve just got to have it. And these thoughts go through my mind. Like if I don’t have it, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might die. And I’ll go to the store and I’ll get some.
I’ll go drive miles to the store to get Ben and Jerry’s just so I can like satisfy that mental craving. And there’s a physical craving there too. But here’s the thing. The good news is that you can reprogram your mind to not overeat, you can reprogram your mind to just just eat normally. This is actually one of the most powerful things I do with my coaching clients is I help them change their brains literally by creating new habits, new neural pathways.
And if you really want to stop overeating, you have to break those old habits and create new habits that serve to reprogram your mind, especially the subconscious. But even if you can get the physical piece to work, and you can get through some of this mental stuff, there’s still that emotional side of overeating that has to be addressed.
One of the biggest underlying factors in weight gain is emotional eating. And you know what? Runners just don’t want to talk about this. Runners think I’ve got this. I’m a runner, I know what to do. I know all this stuff about nutrition, I’ve read the books, like I’m good, thanks. They just don’t want to talk about it. Okay.
Runners do love talking about food, though, but not overeating. You know, we talk about donuts and ice cream and pizza and chips and cake and all that. What are we going to eat after the run? And I would do that too. And I would just eat all that food. But then I noticed something happening to me, I started to feel bad about myself.
You know, I started gaining weight. And I started feeling guilty about overeating. And I started to feel like shame around it. I felt shame about how I looked and how I felt I’ve been fit for a long time and had been really in great shape. And then I got to this point where I didn’t even want to like, take my shirt off at the pool or whatever. Because I was like, oh, I you know, feel fat again, okay.
And I felt judged by other people, like people were talking about me. They probably weren’t, it’s probably all in my head. But I just felt that way. And I felt like a failure. Like, I used to be really fit. I used to be in good shape. And now I’m not anymore. And like, I’m never going to be that person again. And honestly, I just felt depressed about it and sad.
And you know how I know how I dealt with all these emotions I was feeling? Yes, I ate over them. Because eating gives me that little dopamine hit and it feels good. Does that make any sense whatsoever? As I’m saying this, you’re probably like, dude, that makes no sense whatsoever. Or maybe you’re like, yep, I get it.
Here’s the problem, though. When that little feel good, dopamine wears off, you’re still left with feeling all those emotions. But now it’s worse because you feel bad about overeating. So you eat more to feel better. And then like, oh my gosh, it’s this crazy vicious cycle that just goes on and on. But you know what? Emotional eating is a very common thing. It’s a very, very common theme. A lot of people do it, they eat, so they don’t have to feel their feelings. Especially right now during this like stay at home order people are dealing with this crisis by going to the refrigerator. I’ve seen a lot of people joking about it on social media, but I think there’s an underlying like, oh, yeah, that’s me. You know?
I mean, I’ve been doing it. I know that it’s been me, okay. I mean, it does work for a little bit like you do feel a little bit better while you’re eating the Ben and Jerry’s. But when you stop, what happens? Like what results are you getting? Who are you? Who are you becoming in the process of stuffing down your feelings and feeling good momentarily, like you’re using this? It’s like a false pleasure.
You know, to just try to feel good in the moment we were so afraid to feel our feelings that we will become overweight, instead of feeling our feelings. You know, if you want to stop overeating, if you want to lose weight, you have to be able to manage your emotions, you have to be able to feel your emotions. Well, how do you do that?
Well, one of the things you do is you need to stop using food to feel better. Okay, that’s one thing. And you need to learn how to just sit with your feelings, how to sit with your emotions, how to allow them to be there, without reacting to them, or without eating to now feel them. And you know what, here’s some truth I’m gonna drop on you right now.
This is not a comfortable place to be. Sometimes it’s not comfortable, to feel sad, or to feel frustrated or to feel angry, or to feel shame or guilt or whatever it is, it might suck pretty bad sometimes. And honestly, in those times, it’s really good to have somebody there and help you. And that’s where I come in.
And I, one of the most powerful things I do as a coach is I help my clients work through their emotions, I help them to learn to allow those emotions to be with them, to allow them to be present in their body, to embrace that temporary uncomfortable feelings so they can get to the other side of that because on the other side of that is all the stuff that you want, okay, on the other side of those uncomfortable feelings are the results that you want in your life, okay?
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Most people spend a great deal of time thinking about the past. They ruminate over things they did that they regret doing. They replay situations over and over and wish they’d handled things …
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 208 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, remembering your future.
So most people spend a lot of time thinking about their past. They ruminate over things they did that maybe they regret doing. And they replay these situations over and over and over again, wishing that they’d handled things differently in the past, all their focus, all their energy is on past events. And they spend zero time or zero energy thinking about their future.
This is a mistake. Why? Because you can’t change your past. It’s over, it’s done with. But you can 100% change your future. So that’s a much better place to focus your time and your energy. So this episode is all about remembering your future so that you can make that future your reality.
But first, I talk a lot about losing weight, improving your health, improving your fitness, and improving your running here on the podcast. And I know all of this can feel very overwhelming. If you’re looking for a good place to start, where I’ve consolidated everything and given you some steps that you can take right away.
It’s all encapsulated in a free training that I created called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. In this free training, you’ll learn how to fuel your body properly, so that you can lose weight and improve your running.
You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner, you’re going to learn to make mindset shifts that actually help you make all of this stuff sustainable, and so much more.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, to run faster and longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then you need to check out this free training now. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, on to the topic of the day, which is remembering your future. So most people spend all their time focused on past events, and usually not the positive ones. We’re talking about the negative past events, the things you wish you had done differently, the things that you regret the traumas in your life, the things that that you did wrong, the things that you don’t feel good about.
And this can create a lot of stress in your life. And this stress can become chronic stress. And chronic stress means your sleep is disrupted. And chronic stress leads to not being able to lose weight. And chronic stress leads to your workout suffering and your recovery suffering.
And so we spend all this time and energy focused on our past, the things we did wrong, the things that did not go our way, the mistakes we’ve made the people that wronged us. And we do this, and we seem to not be able to get out of this cycle of focusing on the past. A friend of mine explained it to me like this, he said, imagine you have a plastic bag in your pocket. And inside that plastic bag is some dog poop. And every so often you take out the plastic bag and you open it up and you smell it and you’re like, oh god, that’s horrible. That’s horrible. But then you put it back in your pocket. And then a couple days later, you take it out again, and you smell again. Oh my God, that’s terrible.
Why do we do this to ourselves? One of the reasons is, is because as human beings, we’ve evolved to be really efficient problem solvers. And we want to fix the problems that we’re experiencing in our lives, whether they’re happening to us now, or they’ve happened in the past.
And in fact, we spend a lot of time trying to fix our past. Even though it’s over and done with our brains don’t know the difference between past, present and future realities. And this is important, and I’m going to talk about why it’s important in just a minute. But think about this.
You’re trying to fix problems from your past. You rehearse a scenario over and over and over again in your mind. Because your brain is trying to change that outcome. It’s trying to solve the problem. And I know it doesn’t make sense logically. But that’s just the way our brains are wired.
From an evolutionary standpoint. It served us really well. It helped us to learn how to not make the same mistakes twice. So from an evolutionary standpoint, this is great, it’s helped us. But today, we don’t really need to keep focusing on the past, but we do it all the time.
What you’re hoping to get out of all this ruminating on the past is a different outcome. But you can’t get a different outcome, the past is fixed. So one of the first things you need to do is you need to accept the way things played out in the past.
And I talk about this concept called radical acceptance, where you need to be practicing radical acceptance that this is the way things down. This is the way things went down in my life. This is the way things were supposed to go down.
How do you know it was the way they were supposed to go down? Because that’s the way it happened. You know, things were supposed to happen, because that is the way that it actually did happen in the past.
It’s kind of a radical concept. Because most people live in this fantasy world where they think things should be different. They have zero acceptance of the reality of a given situation. This is very convoluted thinking. And it only leads to your own internal turmoil, your own misery.
So you’re focused on these past events, you wish they were different, you think they should be different. And you don’t understand why you’re miserable all the time, you keep taking the plastic bag of poop out of your pocket and smelling it. And then you’re wondering why it smells so terrible all the time. I love that imagery. I don’t know why, but I just love it. It feels really visceral to me like I really get that.
Okay, so instead, what we need to be doing is spending time remembering, not our past, but remembering our future. Now, this is not a hard thing to do, it doesn’t take a lot of time. But it is an extremely powerful tool that you can use if you want to change who you are.
So you’re this version of yourself right now. And if you have any ideas for changing that version of you in the future, then you need to spend some time imagining what that future version of you is going to be like, instead of focusing on your past things that you cannot change, focus on your future, the things that you can change.
And you might be thinking, well, I don’t know, I’m not really going to change that much. But think about your past, like, there’s a version of you from last year, who is vastly different than who you are today, or five years ago, or ten years ago, that’s a completely different person than who you are today.
Would you agree? Yeah, you’re different today than you were in your past than when you’re in your 20s or 30s, or 40s, or 50s, or whatever.
You’re different now compared to who you were in the past, hopefully better. So there’s also a version of you out there in the future, that is vastly different than who you are today. It could be a year in the future. It could be three months in the future, it could be five years, ten years, whatever.
We are constantly evolving and growing and becoming more as human beings, or at least in my opinion, we should be. So what I want you to do is focus on that future version of yourself. What does that future you look like? How’s your health? How’s your fitness? How’s your running? Are you still running?
How’s your mindset? Do you have a growth mindset? Do you have more of a negative mindset? What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror in that future version of yourself? Think about your relationship with food and with alcohol in the future. What does that look like?
How are you sleeping? How are your stress levels? How do you feel about yourself in the future? So I want to give you some homework assignments. Say I got two homework assignments for you to do here. Step one is to answer these questions. Write out a detailed version of who you want to be in the future. This can be a month from now three months from now, a year from now, five years from now, it doesn’t matter.
And you can do this multiple times in the future. You can keep changing this because we do evolve and grow and we change as we go and our priorities change. So you can always do this later.
But for now, I want you to focus on writing out a detailed version of who you want to be in the future. What does that future version of you look like? Think about yourself from a health and fitness standpoint, mindset, your relationship with food, with alcohol, with other people. How do you feel about yourself?
All those things, write it down, write it down on a piece of paper, write it in a notebook, write it in a journal doesn’t matter, but write it down, take the time to write as much detail as possible, especially those, those ways that you feel about yourself.
Because when you include emotions, in an exercise like this, it makes the exercise even more powerful. Because in order to create that future version of you, you have to be able to feel what it feels like to be that future version of you. Okay, so just write it all down, spend some time on this, don’t skip this step, do it, they won’t take you that long. Okay, that’s step number one.
I said, there are only two steps, the next step is to practice visualizing that future version of yourself. Visualization is a powerful tool that you can use at any time. But most people don’t use it or don’t use it properly. They spend all their time visualizing their past, like I talked about at the beginning here, right?
You’re spending all this time focused on the past the things you cannot change, the regrets, the mistakes, the failures, right, instead of focusing on this amazing, healthy, fit, leaner, stronger, faster future version of you, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. Don’t keep spending all your time focused on this version of you that you do not want.
Unfortunately, that’s our default. So you have to stop doing that. Gotta break out of that habit and start focusing on the future, you focus on the version of you that you want to become. When you imagine something, and when you imagine something vividly. Your brain and your body don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined.
Your subconscious mind just believes that whatever you’re envisioning is happening right here. And now it doesn’t know the difference between the real and the imagined. This is why so many elite athletes, and other people in other industries, but elite athletes spend so much time visualizing the outcome of an event, like a race, because it gives them a competitive edge that a lot of other people do not have, because they don’t spend the time visualizing how they want this thing to go.
A lot of elite athletes spend a lot of time thinking about, let’s say, a marathon, and they think about the entire race, they visualize how they prepare how they show up at the start line, they’re pacing the course they spend time, you know, focusing on how they’re going to feel when they crossed the finish line.
And they see that number on the clock, and they feel that exhilaration of finishing, and they hear the crowd and they can taste the salt in their sweat on their lips. And they, you know, they have this visual and visceral experience this emotional experience of of winning a race. And when they imagine it over and over and over again, they spend time every single day imagining this thing, they inevitably will work. Your brain will work towards becoming that version of you, it will work towards that outcome that you’re visualizing.
They did this cool experiment a while back involving students who were basketball players, and they did this experiment with free throws. And there was an Australian psychologist named Alan Richardson. And he was testing this visualization, this mental imagery, and benefiting athletic performance.
So they did this study, they took three groups of students who were basketball players. And the first group practiced basketball free throws for 20 minutes a day, for 20 days. And then they had two other groups. The second and third groups shot free throws on day one. And then on day 20 because they wanted to be able to compare how they did from day one to day 20.
The second group spent 20 minutes every day in the middle there, so they weren’t shooting free throws just on day one and day 20. But in the middle, they spent 20 minutes every day visualizing themselves shooting free throws, just 20 minutes a day visualizing shooting free throws, the third group did nothing in between.
So they just shot free throws on day one and day 20. They compared the three groups at the end of the 20 day experiment. The first group the people who actually physically practiced shooting free throws every single day. They improved their free throws from day one to day 20 by 24%. All right. The third group did not improve at all. They didn’t practice at all, they didn’t do any visualizing in between at all, and they did not improve at all.
The second group who just practiced mental imagery for those 20 days and didn’t practice any actual physical free throws, they improved by 23%, almost exactly the same as the first group at 24%, who was physically actively shooting free throws every single day.
And this is just one example. There are many other examples like this, that show the benefits of visualization on athletic performance, on relationships, on different areas of your life, even your career.
So what I want you to do is practice visualizing that future version of you. It’s a very simple step. But it does require you to spend some time holding that mental and emotional image of your future self, remembering your future over and over and over again, who do you want to become? How do you want to feel?
It doesn’t take a lot of time to do this. And you don’t have to be like, you know, meditating and sitting in the lotus position and chanting or anything like that. You can do this while you’re journaling in the morning, you can do it while you’re showering, you can do it while you’re driving. As long as you keep your eyes open, you can do it while you’re running.
I think this is an awesome way to hold a vision and to get into that meditative state while you’re running. I love being in this state. While I’m running to feel so good. It really doesn’t matter how you do it.
As long as you do it every single day, you need to spend some time every single day holding that vision of your future self. Practice it just like the basketball players practice shooting free throws, practice being that future version of you, and do this every single day.
Now remember, I said you need to write this down, you need to write it down on a piece of paper. The reason is that you should also spend time reading it every day as well. So read it and feel into it every day. So you can just write this out in your journal. And you can look at it every day, just open up your journal and read it every morning. That’s a great way to start your day. And a great way to finish your day, at the end of the night only takes you a few minutes to read through it.
You can write it on a piece of paper and stick it on your computer, your fridge or your mirror. So you see it every single day. I like the idea of writing it out every day. And really, it only takes a couple of minutes to do this, but open up your journal.
And as you start writing your journal for today, just write out you know, here’s my future self. And then just write out how you feel how you want to feel how you want to be how you want to act, what you look like, what you feel like how your health how your fitness is.
And write this every single day. When you write it, you’re you’re doing something very visceral. And you’re cementing this into your subconscious mind. And it’s a really, really powerful way to remind yourself that every day you are on this journey of becoming more. And this doesn’t stop there is no finish line here.
I want to make that very clear here that we are always evolving, we are always growing, we are always becoming more or we should be, and we don’t want to stay stagnant. We don’t want to stay small, we don’t want to stay where we are now, we always want to grow and evolve and become more.
And that process never really stops. It’s a process that continues to evolve. And change and, and blossom as we as we get older as we become more. So we’re going to become that future version of ourselves. And as we are becoming that that will begin to morph and change into that next version. Or we should always be wanting to become more.
So the two steps to this process are number one, know who you want to become. You have to know that and you have to write it down. So you have to be very crystal clear on who that future version of you is. And then number two, spend some time remembering your future.
Remember, visualize that future version of yourself. This is not hard. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, but it works. And right now is the perfect time to get started with this because it’s the end of the year. We’re about to start a new year. And instead of spending a lot of time and energy reflecting on the past, take that time spend that time and energy focusing on your future and holding that vision for your future self. Okay. Take a little bit of time every day to remember your future. And then every day just do a little bit of work that’s required to get you there.
Take small actions every day that move you a little bit closer to that future version of you and over time all these little tiny steps, they add up to big big changes. Cool that’s all I got for you today, love you all keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon, bye.
If you want to accomplish a big goal, the key to getting there is consistency. You have to take aligned action and continue to take it over and over and over until you eventually reach that …
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 207 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to get back on track. So if you want to accomplish a big goal, the key to getting there is consistency.
You have to take aligned action and continue to take aligned action over and over and over again until you eventually reach that goal. The problem is that most people don’t stick with anything long enough to see that end result.
They get off track somewhere along the way, and they end up staying off track. So getting off track is actually not the problem, we all do it. The real problem is not getting back on track. So today, it’s all about how to get back on track, and how to stay there so that you can actually crush those big goals.
But first, I know I talk a lot about improving your health and fitness becoming a fat-adapted runner and losing weight. And I know all this stuff can be a little overwhelming. So if you’re looking for a little guidance, a good place to start is a free training that I created called Five Steps to Becoming a Leaner, Stronger Runner.
It’s a training video where you’re going to learn how to fuel your body properly, you’re going to learn how to improve your strength, improve your mindset, so that you can make these changes last, you’re going to learn how to lose weight, what kinds of fuel to use and not to use.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, if you’re ready to run faster and longer and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then you need to check out this free training now just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Alright, let’s get into this topic how to get back on track. So I realized that a lot of people will start working towards some big goal like losing weight. And if you’re somebody that wants to, you know, lose 30 or 40 pounds, that’s a big goal.
And that’s going to take time to reach that goal. It’s not something you can do in a few weeks or even a couple of months, it usually takes longer than that. Or maybe it’s it’s something big like running your first marathon. Again, that’s going to take months of preparation, you have to build a good base. And then you got to do like 16-20 weeks of training.
These kinds of goals, these big goals, I love them because they cause you to level up. But they’re also hard and they take time. And eventually, you are going to, during the course of training for that marathon or trying to lose weight, you’re going to go off track, you’re going to slip up, you’re going to miss a workout, you’re going to eat something you shouldn’t be eating, you’re going to eat something that it was, you know the way you used to eat, you’re gonna eat a bunch of junk food.
And it’s okay to do that. It’s okay to have those little slip-ups here and there. But what most people do is they go off track, and then they end up quitting because they’re like, well, I can’t do it. See, look, I failed.
They consider themselves a failure, which is never true, by the way. But they end up quitting so easily. Right? Have you ever done this? Have you ever been doing something you were doing great, you’re moving right along, you are sticking with a plan.
Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight. So you change your diet, and you’re sticking with it. You’re doing great. And then you have this weakness moment and you’re like, I’m just going to eat up large pizza myself, right?
And then you look at yourself and go, you know what, I’m a complete failure. I can’t do this. Look, look at what happened to me. I went completely off track, I can’t do this and then they quit.
Well, when you quit, you’re absolutely giving up and you’re absolutely going to fail. You’re never going to reach that goal. You know, if you’re training for a marathon, and you just give up running like you’re not gonna run that marathon I’m going to tell you right now, it’s a little bit too hard to be able to just show up on the starting line and run a marathon without any training. (Although there are people that have done that and good for you. They probably did not feel too good for a couple of weeks afterward.)
But just know that these things require work they require time and that you will go off track during that process. Okay, and we have got to stop looking at going off track as the end because it’s not the end, the real problem, I think, is that many people are just afraid to fail. There’s a big fear of failure going on here.
This is why most people will never even start anything why most people won’t try to change their diet, they won’t even try to lose weight. They’ll convince themselves that it’s okay being the size they are. And for some people, that’s fine.
And a lot of people, you know, there’s a big movement of body positivity. And I’m all for that if you’re feeling good in your skin the way you are, and you like your size and everything, perfect, I love it.
But there’s a lot of people that are trying to convince themselves that it’s okay, because they’re afraid of trying to lose weight, they’re afraid of failing because when they’ve tried it in the past, it hasn’t worked.
And when you go off track, when you start something and you go a little bit off track, people will see that as a failure. And they’ll be like, yeah, see, I just showed myself that I can’t do it. This is not good thinking though. This is not the way you want to approach something big like this, okay?
If you want to accomplish these big goals, you have to stay consistent. Like you have to do things consistently. You have to eat the right foods, day in and day out, you have to do the training every single day, you have to show up for yourself no matter what. So this is all about taking aligned action and taking aligned action consistently.
Aligned action is an action that is in alignment with those big goals that you have for yourself. So if you’re taking aligned action around losing 40 pounds, it might be, you’re just not gonna eat sugar for a while.
If you, you know, want to run a marathon lined action would be you got to show up and do the training, you got to run four days a week, five days a week, whatever you decided you want to do, you got to do those long runs on the weekends.
Even though it’s raining out, even though it’s cold out, even though you got to, you know, dress in a hat and gloves and tights and jacket and everything and go out there and run in the cold. Like that’s aligned action is getting out there and showing up for yourself. Even though it’s hard, even though you don’t want to. That’s the only way you’re gonna reach these goals.
If you want to lose a bunch of weight, or get to run your first marathon or improve your marathon time, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take consistent aligned action. That’s it like you just have to take consistent aligned action.
So what happens though, is people will be taking aligned action pretty consistently for a while. And then they’ll go a little bit off track. Well, listen, everybody goes off track. Nobody does this stuff perfectly. I work with clients every day, who are kicking ass, they are improving, they’re running, they’re losing weight, they’re getting stronger.
And not one person has done this perfectly, not one person has been 100% compliant with everything I’ve told him to do. And that’s okay. Because that’s the norm like, it’s normal to not do it 100% perfectly. But we do need to be consistent with this stuff.
Okay, we need to get our reps in, we need to do the same things over and over and over and over again until it becomes automatic behavior. So for me for a while there, I was working out at this local gym, a little small gym with a, I had a private trainer that was helping me and I would go twice a week.
And actually, this was when I was going in it was I was just doing this group, these group workout sessions. So I was doing these group workout sessions twice a week. And honestly, it just there wasn’t enough consistency there for me to get stronger. Like, I wanted to get bigger muscles, and I wanted to get stronger. And I just wasn’t doing it consistently enough.
And then I’d missed some weeks and missed some workouts and I was just sort of half-assing the whole thing. Okay. So the thing is, though, I decided at some point that I wanted more for myself, and that for me, I needed more consistency, that the aligned action was kind of there, but it wasn’t enough.
And so I needed to reevaluate what I was doing. And so what I started doing was I joined a different gym, you know, one where I didn’t have to go to these group classes where I could just go whenever I wanted to. And I started going five times a week and I started that just earlier this year.
So we’re coming to the end of 2023. So this was at the kind of the beginning of 2023. And I decided that for me, the kind of consistency I needed was to go five days a week, Monday through Friday. And I committed to doing that and I knew that if I was committed to going five days a week, the consistency would be there for me to get bigger muscles for me to get stronger for things to begin to change for me, and they did.
And it took a while, like, at the beginning, it was hard. It was not something I was used to, I wasn’t in the routine of going to the gym every day. I didn’t always feel motivated to go, but I just kept at it. And the thing is, every now and then, I had some, you know, things to do, I had some scheduling conflicts, or whatever, and I couldn’t show up, and I couldn’t, you know, go to the gym. So I went off track.
But the thing is, because I was going five days a week, if I missed one day, it wasn’t a big deal. When I’m going twice a week, and I missed a day, that’s a lot. That’s like 50%, of my workouts I missed for the week. But now if I’m doing five days a week, and I missed one, okay, no big deal.
But getting into this routine of going five days a week, I wasn’t motivated to do it all the time. I didn’t do it perfectly all the time. But I kept at it until it became automatic behavior, until it became something that felt easy and effortless.
Today I love going to the gym every day, it’s my happy place, I would much rather just go and lift weights than run. I got, I’ve kind of switched, I used to like hate lifting weights, and would just rather run now I’d rather just lift weights and running kind of has become secondary for me.
So my point with all this is that you have to practice consistency, you will not do it perfectly. But you have to get those reps in, you got to show up for yourself every single day. And you have to take that consistent aligned action.
Okay, so the key here is consistency, not perfection. So if you go off track, not a big deal. Now, with all the consistency in the world, you are going to go off track, and you’re going to experience some kind of failure along the way.
If you’re trying to change how you eat, and you know the family has all ordered pizza, and there’s pizza sitting there, you might eat some pizza because it’s pizza. It’s amazing, right? You might skip a workout because you don’t feel good and you didn’t get enough sleep last night or you just don’t feel like going, that’s fine.
You might skip a run because it’s like raining, pouring down rain outside, that’s about the only reason why I skip runs usually is if it’s absolutely pouring rain and cold. If it’s raining and warm, fine. But if it’s cold and rainy, I don’t like that combination.
So eating the pizza, skipping a workout, skipping a run, no big deal. It’s normal. It’s to be expected, it will happen sometimes. But you cannot look at these things as being the end, they are not the end. These are just little micro failures along the path that will eventually lead to your success.
So the big key is consistency, not perfection. And you’re going to have these little failures. But you have to recognize these little failures for what they are. They’re just little blips on the radar.
And the important thing is, is that as soon as possible, you get back on track, and you do not miss two workouts in a row. You never have two cheat meals in a row. You don’t turn one meal of eating pizza into well, you know what I’ve blown it already. So I might as well just go all in on this.
And then you end up eating and drinking your way through the weekend. And then you feel terrible on Monday. And you’re like, you know what I might as well just keep going because I’ve already blown this whole week anyway. So then you blow the rest of the week. And then you’re like, well, I’ve already blown this whole week might as well just blow the whole month.
And you see where I’m going with this right? This is terrible. This is terrible thinking, okay? Never have two cheat meals in a row. As soon as you can you get back on track. So if you have, you know, a dinner and that you know, was you ate a bunch of French fries, you know, because they were just sitting there and you’re like, I just want some french fries. And you sort of give in and you and you have that moment of like getting off track.
Okay, no big deal. Next meal that might be you know, lunch the next day or something like that. You’re back on track you you stick to the plan that you made for yourself.
Same with your workouts do not miss two workouts in a row. Everybody will miss a workout here and there. And I have done this, you know, a handful of times over the last year so like there’s just times where I couldn’t make a workout. I’m like, you know what, I’m just gonna I’m just gonna blow this one off. It’s fine. Next workout though I do not miss that next workout. That is key right there.
You don’t want to start spiraling downward so you have to stop it as soon as possible. You have to put the brakes on right there right? You have to stop that process from getting out of control. Because when you have this thinking where you’re like, well, I’ve already blown it, I might as well just keep going, that is very detrimental. You know, you have these big, important goals that you are working towards.
And basically, what you’re saying is, what’s more important to me is this one meal, and just, you know, giving in to all these desires that I’m experiencing right now. And just, you know, feeling comfortable, that’s more important than these long-term goals, that is not acting in alignment with who you really want to become in the future.
So think about that are your actions in alignment with who you really want to become in the future, getting off track is fine, you can get off track here and there, get back on track as soon as possible. It’s okay to fail. It’s part of the process, it should be expected. But failure does not mean it’s the end. getting off track here or there does not mean that you should stay off track for days or weeks or months at a time.
Right, those little off-track moments should just be that there should be little moments, little vignettes, little blips on the radar. The key to not letting these moments turn into days and weeks is to reflect on that moment of failure. And what I suggest to my clients to do is to write about it.
It doesn’t have to be this big, you know, time-consuming grandiose thing, just jot down a few questions and reflect on them. Ask yourself a few key questions. So let’s say you ate a bunch of pizza. What I want you to do is like fine, okay? Eat the pizza, enjoy it, whatever. Afterward, though, maybe that night before you go to bed, you pull out your journal. And I want you to do a little bit of writing.
And I want you to ask yourself some key questions like, Why did I do that? Get curious with yourself. Why did I go off track like that? What was the thought process that led me to make that particular decision? What feeling was I experiencing that I was trying to avoid experiencing? Or change? How was that feeling? And how was I trying to change that feeling? What could I have done differently in that moment?
You know, if I could have waved a magic wand and done things differently, what would I do differently? You know, what would I do differently next time because it’s there’s going to be a next time? And this little process, even simple, doing a little bit of writing a little bit of reflection on your thought process and on your decision making. And it is it’s very simple, but it’s also very powerful.
And honestly, most people don’t do it. Most people would not spend five minutes writing about why they made a particular decision. But understanding why you make the decisions that you make, why you go off track, learning about your own thought process, learning about how you’re dealing with emotions, or trying to squash your emotions, learning about how you give into temptation, or how you blow off a workout or why you do those things. This is amazing self-awareness.
And right here, this little exercise will help you stay on track next time 100%. Because when you do that work of doing a little bit of a post mortem on the incident and saying like, oh, here’s why I think I did this. Here’s what I would do differently next time when that next time comes around which it will, you are armed with new information, you’re armed with this new self-awareness, you’re armed with strategies and tactics that you can take. That will keep you on track.
So you don’t go off track in the first place, we will all go off track eventually. But the odds of you doing it go down a lot when you take the time to create this self-awareness. Okay, you want to understand yourself at a deep level. You want to understand why you do the things you do. You want to understand how you could do things differently next time so you can make different decisions in the future because every little decision helps to shape who you are. All these decisions you make there either moving you closer to that goal, or further away.
And failure is inevitable. Listen, you are going to fail. You’re not going to do this stuff perfectly. It’s okay. But each of these little failures you have to see is a learning experience. Every time you go off track. It has to be a learning experience.
So learn from these experiences. This is how you develop your mindset. This is how you grow, this is how you evolve, this is how you become more. You actually don’t learn anything from doing everything perfectly all the time, I wish it worked that way but it doesn’t. Okay that’s all I got for you today, love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Most people come up with all sorts of excuses, reasons, and stories for why they can’t accomplish something hard. You set out to lose weight so you change your diet but you eventually slip back …
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 205 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, the problem is you. So most people come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons and stories for why they can’t accomplish something hard.
So you might set out to lose weight. So you change your diet, but eventually kind of slip back into old habits, and your new way of eating goes out the window. And when you ask most people why they do this, that’s when all the excuses and the reasons in the stories come into play.
There’s a different way to approach all of this. And in this episode, I’m going to show you the way most people think that the problem is out there. But when you accept that the problem is you, you can start accomplishing everything that you want in your life.
But first, I talk a lot about losing weight and improving your health and fitness here on the podcast. And I know all of this information can feel a little bit overwhelming. That’s why I created a very comprehensive free hour-long training for you called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
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Okay, so most people when they set out to accomplish something, and they start making some progress, and they find themselves slipping back into old habits or not following through on the things they said they were going to do, they come up with excuses, and reasons and stories.
And all these things can seem very valid. You know, you can say, oh, you know, I can’t stick to my diet because my husband doesn’t support me. Or, you know, I wasn’t able to stick to my running plan because my work schedule changed. And all of these things that we look to as reasons why we can’t accomplish the things that we want to accomplish in our lives.
All of these things are typically outside of us, they are outside of our control, meaning we only have control over three things, our own thoughts, feelings, and actions and everything else is outside of our control.
So when you start to blame outside circumstances, outside forces, for why you can’t accomplish something that feels very out of your hands, it’s out of your control, there’s nothing you can do about it, right?
And I want to talk about this, but I want to go back a little bit and talk about why we do this. So humans as we’ve evolved, we’ve been hard-wired, to look for problems and find solutions. And we are really, really good at this. This has helped us in the past to avoid danger, and to survive, and to evolve and to eventually become the beings that we are today.
So this problem-solving feature that we have as human beings is really fantastic. Okay, this is built into our DNA now, right? It’s, it’s a part of who we are, from an evolutionary standpoint, we look for problems, and we find solutions and we are good at this.
And from an evolutionary standpoint, finding problems was always really good, like looking outside of ourselves for problems was very important, right? Because we were faced with real dangers that were outside of us things like saber-toothed tigers, that were lurking in the shadows, long, cold winters that we had to survive, scarcity of food, you know, finding shelter going through childbirth, these are all things that were big problems and most of them were, you know, outside of our control.
And so, we had to look for and find these problems and find solutions for those problems. And so this is how we have evolved. We’re good at looking outside of ourselves to find what the problem is. The issue, though, is that nowadays, we don’t have those kinds of problems. But our genetic programming still wants to look outside of ourselves for problems.
So we inherently will look to, oh, my boss is being a jerk. That’s why, you know, I’m not performing well at work, or I’m in a really bad mood, because traffic was really crappy this morning on my way to work, or, you know, I would do better with my diet and stuff, but my spouse doesn’t really support me or it’s too cold outside, I don’t want to run, you know.
So we are looking outside of ourselves for problems. And when we do that, when we look outside of ourselves to find a problem, we will find problems. And we will find a lot of them.
When you’re constantly looking for the problem, and you’re looking outside of yourself, you will find it. You can find all kinds of excuses and stories and reasons why you can’t do this, or why this is too hard, or why you fail.
So instead of going outside, which is our programming, and I get that, and it’s hard to do this, but you have to look inside for the problems and the solutions. Because if the solution isn’t within you, there’s really nothing you can do about it.
Because you have no control over everything out there, you don’t have control over outside circumstances, you can only control your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That means if it’s not your own thoughts, feelings and actions, you have no control over it.
Everything else is out of your control. And if you extrapolate that out a little bit, that means that those things are not a problem for you. What other people think what other people feel what other people do, it’s out of your control, and therefore not your problem.
If it’s not within you, you can’t change it. And so it shouldn’t really be a problem for you. So always go within to find the problem. And the solution.
Sometimes other people’s actions will affect you. Like if somebody punches you in the face, that is an action that has affected you in a certain way. But it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a problem for you, you can be like, wow, that was crazy and just choose to walk away.
Or, you know, oh, my boss just dumped this big project on me. This affects you, you have to work late now, you wanted to work out or something like that, but you now you have to work late. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a problem for you. You choose what you want that situation to mean, you’re always assigning meaning to your circumstances, always.
You have a flat tire and you’re ready to work, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be in a bad mood all day, you can choose to be in a bad mood about that or not, it does not have to be a problem for you. So the solution is always within whatever the problem is, then the solution is within, okay.
If the problem is you know your own thoughts, feelings and actions, then you need to look at your own thoughts, feelings and actions to see what needs to change here. Because if it’s outside of you, it’s not your problem. If it’s within you, you can do something about that.
So that becomes where you need to put your focus. Most people will never do this. They don’t want to look at themselves. They always want to blame and complain and have stories and reasons and excuses. And when they do that, if you’re somebody that does that, it’s really easy to not have to do anything.
You don’t have to change yourself. You don’t have to become more you don’t have to grow. You don’t have to do anything hard. You can just sit there and be like, I’m a victim. And all this stuff is happening to me. With that attitude, though, what are you going to accomplish? Nothing.
You’re never going to grow, you’re never going to accomplish something bigger, and you’re never going to move past where you are right now. And if you want to move past where you are right now, and if there’s this other version of you that you’re working towards, then I’m going to tell you right now you have to stop blaming, you have to take responsibility.
So often times we look inside for the problem, and that’s a good thing. But you can do that and do it sort of the wrong way. You can be asking yourself really terrible questions. Like you can say to yourself, why is losing weight so hard for me? How come I can never run faster? How can I fail at everything I do? These are known as, and I say this a lot, these are called terrible questions.
They’re terrible. Because when you ask questions like, why is losing weight so hard? You’re going to find answers. You know, oh, because I always eat junk food. And I can never do this. And I’m never good enough.
Why can’t I run faster? Because I’m slow. I’ll always be slow. I just keep getting slow. Why do I fail at everything? Because I can never accomplish anything. I’m destined to be a failure. I’m never good enough. I can’t be successful like other people. These are terrible questions.
Don’t ask yourself those kinds of questions. Stay away from questions like that. Okay? Instead, you want to reframe these questions, you want to start asking yourself better questions. So it’s good that you’re looking within for the problem, and the solution, but you have to ask better questions.
So instead of why is losing weight so hard, say how can I make losing weight easier? What do I need to do to make this process easier for me? Do I need to write a list every day and make a plan every single day? Do I need to include foods that I really enjoy and make it fun?
Like, what do I need to do to run faster? Instead of why can’t I ever run fast? Oh, I need to do more speed work? I can start focusing on tempo runs? You know, instead of why do I always fail and everything, it’s like, how can I start being a success?
What can I do today, that’s going to help me to succeed at this thing, losing weight, getting stronger, getting faster? Stop the blame game, and start taking radical responsibility. You have to stop blaming everyone and everything that’s outside of you for why you can’t accomplish what you want to accomplish.
If you want to lose weight, if you want to run faster if you want to get stronger, stop blaming, and start taking radical responsibility. Radical responsibility means you take responsibility for all of the results that you’re getting, or not getting in your life.
If it’s not working, the problem is you. If it is working, you did that. Okay. It has nothing to do with what’s out there. What’s outside of you has nothing to do with whether or not you can accomplish the things that you want for yourself. But it has everything to do with what’s inside you. So once you see that the problem is you that’s good.
Okay, now you can get to work fixing it because you can you can control that. You can take control over what is within you. The only thing you can control. Radical responsibility means you accept responsibility for everything in your life.
Every result that you’re getting, or not getting, everything good, bad, and ugly in your life. You did that. When you get to that place of taking radical responsibility, that is a humongous first step in you know, being able to accomplish all these things that you want for yourself, okay?
Once you take radical responsibility, you can be like, oh, great, now I’m the problem. And here’s my situation. And here’s what I need to do to get things back on track. Okay, if the problem is always out there, you have every excuse in the world to fail. But if the problem is you, you have everything you need within you to succeed.
And listen, you always, always get to choose. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
