Additional menu

Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Emotions

79. Demystifying Desire

By

Desire is one of those things that most people struggle with, mainly because they just don't understand what it really is. Desire can feel very strong and very powerful, and it can lead you to do …

Continue Reading about 79. Demystifying Desire →

Podcast Transcript

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 79 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today I’ve got a fun topic for you. Yes, it’s fun demystifying desire. So desire is one of those things that a lot of people struggle with. And I think a lot of people struggle with desire because they just don’t understand what it really is.

So desire can feel very strong, it can feel very powerful. And desire can lead you to do things that may not be in alignment with who you want to be, they may not desire can cause you to do things that aren’t in alignment with your goals like eating or drinking. You may think that having an intense desire for something like alcohol is normal, it’s just the way it is. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

The truth is, it doesn’t have to be this way, you can absolutely change your desire, even for things like food and alcohol. Desire does not have to be so ominous and so powerful and so mysterious. Okay, so in this episode, I want to break it all down, I’m going to go over what desire really is, hopefully, remove the mystery from desire. Talk about why desire is such a powerful force in your life and offer some things that you can do to change it.

So if you like this podcast, you got to come check out the Facebook group, we have this amazing group of like-minded runners over on Facebook. And we talk about all kinds of topics in there. You know, we do goal setting, we’re doing a challenge right now. And it’s July, and we’re doing the dry July challenge. And we’re just getting started with that. So definitely come and check us out just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, join the group.

And if you’re interested in doing the dry July challenge with us, it’s basically just we’re taking a break from alcohol for the month of July and see how that goes for us and see how it feels to do that. There are a lot of positive benefits from taking a break from alcohol.

And if it’s something you’ve thought about doing in the past, but you just feel like it might be too hard. Well, we’re going to be talking about it in the Facebook group. I’m going to be talking about it here on the podcast.

In fact, this episode today kind of has a lot to do with alcohol and our desire for alcohol. And how we can diminish that desire if that’s something we want for ourselves. So definitely come check us out. It’s fun, we have a lot of fun over in the Facebook group. It’s just you know, you get the support, the encouragement, the inspiration from a bunch of other people that are just like you.

And then here’s a message I received a while back that I was going through some folders on my computer. And I found this message from Melissa. And I just wanted to share, share part of this with you guys. Because I thought this was really cool. And she just wrote, “Patrick, your podcasts and posts have helped me so much. So much already. It’s so awesome to find a group of like-minded people who understand the passion behind what makes us run. I feel fortunate to have this strong, amazing running family that I’m always adding to with groups like yours. With COVID I’ve been mostly running solo and feeling more connected through your online resources, and social media posts. And this has meant the world to me. Thank you. I can’t wait for more emails and podcasts.”

Thank you, Melissa. That was super sweet. And I don’t think I’ve shared this before on the podcast, but I wanted to make sure that I did. Obviously, she sent this when you know we were kind of going through some lockdown stuff and COVID and social distancing and running groups weren’t meeting and things like that.

I know a lot of that has changed. But it’s really cool that she reached out and shared that. And it would mean a lot to me if you could take a moment and leave a quick review of the podcast. You can do that in Apple podcasts. Just scroll down where it says leave a review, tap the stars and write a few words. It’s just a way of saying thank you for what I’m providing here on the show.

And then if you ever want a little help with any of this stuff with, you know, sports nutrition with getting your mindset right around, you know, not drinking or changing your eating habits, maybe losing some weight, you can work with me as a one on one coach, this is what I do. And I work with runners every day who are trying to improve themselves and want to become the most badass version of themselves, whatever that looks like for you.

Listen, I want you to love yourself, exactly as you are right now. Whether you’re, you know, whether you feel like you’re you have some weight to lose, or you feel like you’re, you know, you need to get faster as a runner, or you want to become healthier. None of that stuff really matters. And wherever you are right now, is perfect.

And you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. And you should love yourself exactly as you are right here in this moment. But if you want to improve where you are, that’s okay to like you can love yourself exactly as you are and still want to lose some weight. It doesn’t There’s nothing bad about that. It’s not fat-shaming, it’s not, you know, body negativity, this is all, I want to encourage you to love yourself where you are.

And if you want to improve something in your life, then I’m here to help you. Okay? There’s no, you know, there’s no shame in where you are, in this moment, we got to love ourselves exactly as we are. And sometimes we just need a little help getting to where we want to be.

I know, that was where I was, I was, you know, finding myself feeling very unhealthy, and continuing to gain weight. And I was not happy where I was, I still loved myself. You know, I still loved myself where I was, but I wanted to improve, you know, I could look at myself in the mirror and go like, Come on, dude, you got to change something here, you know.

And so I made some decisions. And I made some choices that led me to becoming healthier and losing weight and feeling great in the process. And you can do the same thing too.

So if you ever want to talk about coaching and just see what coaching looks like, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, you and I’ll jump on a quick zoom call, we’ll have a short conversation, we’ll see if this is something you’re interested in. That’s it. No obligation, it can’t hurt to have a conversation. Okay, cool.

So demystifying desire, I’ve been excited about talking about this, because desire is one of those things that I think we get in our heads that it’s some big, complicated, ominous, mysterious thing. And it can really keep us stuck, whether it’s a desire for sugar, you know, or junk food, or scrolling through social media or alcohol, or, you know, whatever your desire is, whatever this strong desire that you have, it can seem overwhelming, and it can feel so big and overpowering.

And just feel like there’s nothing you can do about it, right. And if you want to make a change, like let’s say you want to stop drinking, you just have to like grit your teeth and white knuckle your way through it, right. And that’s not really the case. And we’re gonna talk about all this today. And one of the reasons I’m bringing this up, and especially talking about alcohol is because we’re doing that challenge in the Facebook group, the dry July challenge.

Alcohol is a big crutch for a lot of people. Lots of people use alcohol as a way of feeling better as a way of soothing themselves. Just like we use food. You know, we have talked about sugar in the past and how sugar can feel very addictive, it can be very hard to stop eating sugar, right.

So just I wanted to preface this was just saying like this conversation today is about we’re going to talk a lot about alcohol. I’m just using this as our vehicle because we’re talking about this in the Facebook group. Okay, so today’s focus is going to kind of be on you know, not drinking and alcohol and our desire for alcohol.

And, and maybe you don’t drink. Maybe you’re somebody who’s like, well, I don’t drink already. So this isn’t really an issue for me. And that’s totally fine. Just substitute, you know, your desire for something else sugar, junk food, shopping, whatever your thing is, you can just substitute because it’s all the same. The work is the same for whatever the desire is that you have, okay?

It’s just like, we just need to preface I just wanted to preface this by just talking about how I’m going to be talking about alcohol in this episode. Okay, so what is desire? Exactly? So if you look up the definition of desire, it says desire is a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen, a strong feeling, in other words, desire is a feeling desire is not something that’s out there external to you.

Desire is inside you. It’s a feeling it’s an emotion. Desire is just a feeling. And this is kind of cool because when you look at it this way it right away, we’ve, you know, kind of eliminated a lot of the mystery around this right? So desires are just a feeling. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know that all of your feelings, all of your emotions are always created by your thoughts.

So there’s this thought feeling action cycle, you have a thought about something that thought creates an emotional experience inside of you, that creates a feeling inside of you. And those emotions, those feelings that you have drive your actions, thought feeling action.

And it always happens in that order, you have a thought, that creates an emotion or a feeling. And that feeling will drive your action. This is the way it works all the time you think you’re doing something automatically, like you just doing it because, you know, you see a glass of wine and you just drink it.

But there’s a thought and a feeling in there before you take that action. Always, always always. Alright. So knowing this really helps a lot. This helped me a lot, for sure. And the other thing that’s kind of cool, is that desire is just something that is learned. It’s something that you learn over time, you’re not born with a desire to drink alcohol, right, I didn’t have a desire to drink alcohol until I started drinking alcohol.

So when I was in high school, I was a very shy kid, I was introverted, nerdy, awkward, full of fear, couldn’t talk to girls, very uncomfortable in my own skin. And, you know, I just I, no matter what I did, I could not change this, okay. And I just felt very uncomfortable and very awkward all the time.

Until I drank alcohol for the first time. And all of that kind of changed for me, right? All of a sudden, I felt more outgoing, more confident, the fear went away. I was funny, I was the life of the party. I’m talking to girls like I felt comfortable. All that stuff shifted for me because I drank alcohol.

So right away, I started to want more of what I wanted, I wanted that feeling. Right, I wanted to. I wanted to feel outgoing and confident. I didn’t want to feel fearful and uncomfortable anymore. I wanted that. That feeling that alcohol gaming. So all of a sudden, I had created a desire, I learned that alcohol could help me.

And it was actually a lot of what was happening, it was dampening those feelings I had. So I felt uncomfortable, awkward fearful. And the alcohol actually just squashed those feelings down. It diminished those feelings. And so that’s where the desire started to grow for me. And I learned that you know, alcohol kind of helped with this issue here.

So I learned the desire for alcohol. Right? It wasn’t actually the alcohol that was desiring. It was the feeling that I got from drinking. That’s what I was craving. That’s what I wanted. That was a strong feeling that I wanted, okay, my desire was very strong. But it wasn’t for the alcohol. It was what alcohol did for me. It made me feel better.

I was the life of the party, it was a lot of fun, felt more, more comfortable. So my desire was really to just feel less fearful, more comfortable, I want to feel safer. And alcohol made me feel more comfortable. So the real desire boils down for a lot of us the real desire boils down to comfort, it boils down to safety, I just want to feel more comfortable, I want to feel safer.

I don’t want to feel this fear. I don’t want to feel this anxiety. I don’t want to feel this stress, whatever I can do to feel more comfortable. And alcohol did that. For me, it made me feel more comfortable, at least I thought it did. So another way of saying this is like the desire was not the desire was to not feel the fear. The desire was to not feel the anxiety and the awkwardness.

And alcohol kind of numbed those feelings for me. So I didn’t have to feel those things, right. And I developed this. I learned this process, I learned that if I drink alcohol, I’m not going to feel that way. Right? So it was something that I learned which is this is good news, in my opinion, because if the desire is something that you learn, it’s something that you can unlearn.

If desire is something you learn, it’s something that you can change. And you’ve already done this in other places in your life, right? You’ve already had a strong desire for something, and then it’s gone away. Because desire is just a feeling and feelings come and go, right.

So, you know, think back to maybe, you know, when you were in high school, and maybe you were dating someone, and you had this obsession with this other person, you know, you had this intense desire to be with this person for the rest of your life, like you couldn’t imagine not being with this person. And now think of where you are today, you probably haven’t thought about that person until just now. And I started saying this, right?

I know, as I was writing some notes for this episode, I started thinking about those old girlfriends that I had back in high school, and I’m like, well, I have not thought about her in many years, like, you know, 40 years almost. And so it’s crazy. So we have these people that we think are, you know, we can’t live without, and we have this super strong desire for this other person, we can, you know, we want to be with them forever.

And then, you know, some years go by, and then you just stop thinking about them, and that desire is gone. So that’s something that you’ve already experienced in your life, you know, desire, comes and goes, it’s a feeling, Feelings come and go.

And so why would you want to change your desire? Why would you no longer want to have a strong desire? And the reason you would want to change it, or, you know, kind of get rid of that desire is because when you no longer desire, things like sugar, or junk food, or alcohol, there’s like so much freedom in that.

Because when you’re chained to this desire when you have this over desire for alcohol or food, you’re going to have a very hard time losing weight, you’re going to have a hard time, you know, improving your running performance, you’re going to have a hard time getting healthier.

And you know, you’re just going to be constantly in this cycle of kind of beating yourself up and engaging in bad behaviors and then beating yourself up again. And so it’s just like this vicious cycle, right? But when you no longer have the desire. You just don’t crave that anymore. And that’s where the freedom comes in.

And I hear people say, Well, I’m going to miss drinking. And I just, I can’t imagine not drinking, and I’m just going to miss it way too much. And here’s the thing, you’re thinking that now because you have this strong desire right now. And you can’t imagine not feeling that desire for alcohol. You can’t imagine not wanting it you can imagine not wanting to drink.

But it’s just like that old boyfriend and girlfriend that you had, you couldn’t imagine living without them. And now you’re like, yeah, whatever. That was interesting. That whole situation. But this is what freedom looks like, it looks like you’re not emotionally charged with this desire to have, you know, the sugar or the alcohol. This is what freedom looks like. Okay.

So one of the things we can do to change our desire is we have to understand, like what change looks like, okay, so you will learn over time that alcohol can dampen those difficult emotions that can dull the difficult emotions that you’re experiencing, right. And so you keep using alcohol in that way, and you keep getting better at it, right, you get better at what you practice.

So every time you feel stressed out, or you feel like you just need to take the edge off. You know, you just want to unwind, you go for a drink. And you keep practicing this and for years and years, and maybe decades, and you get really good at it, it becomes a very unconscious automatic habit, you do it automatically.

But really, it’s always a thought, that’s creating a feeling that’s driving an action. It always works that way. It’s just you’ve gotten so good at it, you’ve created this pattern, this thought pattern. That’s really an unconscious habit. It’s just super easy and effortless. It seems like it’s automatic. But really, it’s always a thought feeling action that’s happening, right.

And so one of the things I’m going to have you do here we’ll talk about this in just a minute is identifying those pieces and identifying, you know what’s really going on in that moment and interrupting that pattern.

Because that’s the work that we have to do is we have to change the pattern. If you want to change the habit. We’ve got to interrupt the pattern and then change the pattern, okay? But it’s just something you’ve learned to desire, something you’ve just been practicing. It’s something that you’ve learned. And it’s something that’s very habitual, automatic, and unconscious for you

We just want to bring up the awareness, we want to bring it into our consciousness. Right. So, in order to change the desire, dampen it or make it go away, you have to interrupt the pattern, you have to notice when the desire comes up for you. So you’re gonna think you know what? A drink sounds really good, right by now, I, you know, I said, I’m not going to drink, but I’m, there’s a bottle of wine in the fridge. And I just, you know, it just sounds really good. Right now, I just want to take the edge off, I just want to relax, I want to unwind destress, I just want to feel good.

So when you notice this is coming up for you when you notice that you have that desire, that’s when you need to stop, you need to interrupt the pattern in that moment, while it is happening, do not take a drink. This is not easy, I get it, it’s hard. It’s an uncomfortable thing to do. But this is how you’re going to break the habit. And this is how you’re going to diminish the desire.

So you can’t skip this part, you have to stop you, you got to just like nod, take the drink, okay. And then you have to identify the emotion or the feeling that you’re having at that moment. Right, you have to stop and be present with yourself. Now, when you stop and you don’t take the drink, you’re going to start to feel something.

And your first reaction is going to be I want to make this feeling go away. And if you’re choosing not to drink, you might choose to do something else like to distract yourself in some other way. I’m just going to go for a run, I’m going to do some laundry, I’m going to wash the dog, I’m going to do something just to like, take my mind off of this.

And I don’t want you to do that. In fact, it’s not going to help you’re not going to be you’re not going to become better at changing the desire if you do that. All you’re going to do is just you know you’re replacing the drink with some other way of distracting yourself. And we don’t want to do that.

You have to create awareness about what is really going on inside you inside your brain inside your body. So what I want you to do is when you notice that urge comes and that desire is there to drink. You just have to stop, stop right there, interrupt the pattern, do not take the drink, sit down, close your eyes, and feel whatever’s coming up for you just feel the emotion is the part where you’re like you had me up until this point.

But you just have to do this part. It’s so important. What is this thing you’re feeling? Is it stress? Is it anger? Like, name it. Is it boredom? Is it frustration? Is it anxiety? Describe the feeling, name it, and describe it. What is this feeling like inside your body? We feel our emotions in our body, our thoughts we experience in our brains in our heads, our emotions, our feelings we experience in our body.

And they manifest in ways like a tightness in your shoulders, stiffness in your neck, turning in your stomach, a heaviness in your chest, things like that. Describe the way it feels. And you only have to take a few minutes to do this, like five minutes.

Sit down, close your eyes, name that thing you’re feeling. Name the emotion. Feel it in your body describe the way you’re feeling it in your body. Because what emotion really is, is a sensation in your body. That’s it. It’s a sensation in your body. But we’re so afraid to feel these things, we’re so afraid to feel an emotion that we’re drinking instead. And we’re eating instead.

Because when we drink or we eat, it just stuffs that emotion down and it makes it kind of go away. It doesn’t really go away, by the way. It’s still there. But you’re dampening it. And you’re like pushing it down. And I heard you describe it this way. It’s kind of like holding a beach ball underwater. Like if you’re in a pool or in the ocean, you’re trying to hold that ball underwater.

And the more you push it down, the more it wants to just shoot up. And it’s just like you can’t hold it down forever. At some point, it’s going to come exploding out through the water. And that’s exactly what we’re doing with our emotions. When we drink over them when we eat over them.

So this process is so important. You have to understand what it is you’re feeling and you just have to feel it. So, identify what it is you’re feeling. Name the emotion and then feel it in your body. That’s it. Take five minutes to be present with yourself, with exactly what you’re feeling.

And I would encourage you to write it down, this is really helpful through this process is just to write down what you’re feeling and how it feels in your body, you’re going to be creating so much awareness around while you’re drinking, that that desire will start to immediately just diminish, I promise you.

And the key part of this is like, we don’t want to try to make the feelings go away. And this is going to be your natural inclination, you’re going to be like, I just want to make this go away. I don’t like to feel the stress, I don’t like to feel the anxiety or the boredom, I just want to make this go away.

But the key thing here, and the key habit we’re trying to change is not dampening our emotions, not avoiding our emotions, not trying to numb out to our emotions, the key thing we’re trying to change is we want to feel them, we want to be present with them, we want to acknowledge them, and it may not feel good. And that’s okay, you can do this, you can do this for five minutes, you can feel a little bit of stress for five minutes, you will not die, I promise you. Don’t do anything to try to change how you feel. This is kind of a radical concept, right?

Just feeling your feelings, it seems so simple. And it is simple. It’s not easy. It’s uncomfortable. But the more you do it, the better you get at it, and the more comfortable it becomes. In order to change that thought feeling action habit that you’re in, and change the desire that you’re feeling, you’ve got to get good at feeling stuff, you just got to get good at feeling what you’re feeling, and not giving in to it.

And here’s something that’s kind of interesting. This is not just true for negative emotions. So we talk about stress and fear and anxiety and anger and all this stuff, right. But sometimes you might be feeling a lot of joy or happiness or excitement. And those emotions can be very strong and feel very uncomfortable for a lot of people because we’re not, we’re not used to feeling those things. So they feel weird to us, right?

Happiness can feel very uncomfortable for us because it’s not our norm. So we often feel like I just want to drink because you know, I’m feeling a little too good. I want to like, dampen that emotion, you don’t even know you’re doing this, I promise you, you think you’re just drinking to celebrate or have fun. And a lot of times we’re drinking to just feel comfortable. We’re not wired as humans to seek happiness, we’re wired to seek comfort. We’re not wired to experience our emotions, we’re wired to, you know, numb out and try to avoid our emotions.

This is not something we’re used to doing at all, just sending with our feelings and feeling them good, bad, whatever we want to whatever, however you want to label them. And these are just labels, right? There’s no good or bad emotion. They’re all just emotions. And as humans, it’s cool, we get to experience all the emotions, right?

So we got to feel what we’re feeling, we just have to be present with that, we have to create the awareness that internal that self-awareness, it’s so key, right. And in order to make any kind of change, it’s not enough, just know this or think about it, you have to take action. And I know a lot of you that are listening to this right now will never do this, you will never take the time to just sit with your feelings and write them down. And that’s okay, that’s fine.

But the solution to lessening your desire for alcohol or food or whatever your strong desire is, the solution is to get good at experiencing your feelings. Now, I’ve been practicing this for a long time. And I’ve changed a lot of habits, I’ve changed a lot of bad habits. I’ve replaced those habits with new ones, habits that helped me to grow and helped me to evolve, and helped me to become more of who I want to be.

And these new habits, are now in alignment with that future version of myself that I’m always working towards. I’m not superhuman, there’s nothing really special about me. I’m just willing to feel my emotions, all of them. And you can get good at this too. When you do you can become an emotional badass. I love this little phrase, the becoming an emotional badass. I think this is something we can all strive for.

And I was talking to a client recently who she and I were talking about this exact topic about you know, just sitting with your feelings and feeling them instead of trying to eat over them or instead of trying to drink over them. And she said that she was going over this with her 12-year-old daughter, she was explaining how to do this with her daughter and explaining her that it was okay for her to not feel good and to just feel her feelings.

And that was okay. And I was like, Well, what a radical concept that must be. For kids especially like to be taught this at an early age, I’m really hoping that this kind of stuff catches on with kids. And that we can learn how to do this early on in our life, and we can get good at it and we can become emotional badass is at an early age, and the rest of our lives can be, it’s not going to be without struggles or challenges.

But I think we can just be so much better and engage in less of the kind of behavior that we don’t want to be engaged in, you know, like drinking too much or, or eating over our feelings, you know. So I think this is cool stuff that we can teach our kids, you know.

So I want to encourage you, even though you might think it’s weird, even though you may probably not want to do it, I want to encourage you to do this work to take action because it’s only by taking action that you’re going to make any kind of change, okay?

I want to encourage you to stop giving in to every desire that you have. You know, I want you to stop giving in to seeking comfort and safety all the time and seeking more of the known I want you to seek discomfort I want you to seek, you know, the unknown. I want you to do the harder thing, which is to just feel whatever it is that’s coming up for you without doing anything to make it go away.

And then over time, as you get good at this, a lot of times that the desire, once you understand and you’ve demystified desire and you understand what’s really going on inside you, you can begin to change this so easily and so quickly, and it’ll become a habit for you, it’ll become an unconscious automatic habit for you where you have, you know, you experience a desire for something, and it just sort of like you can instantly just kind of make it change, you can make it go away and lessen it, and then you don’t need it anymore.

And you can actually over time, you can learn how to change your thoughts and feelings. But the first step is you have to create the awareness that your thoughts are causing your feelings, your thoughts are causing your desire. It’s not the alcohol that’s causing your desire, the alcohol sitting over there is not causing you to feel this way. It’s your thoughts about it that are causing you to feel this way.

And over time, you can learn how to change those thoughts. And when you get good at this, you can go anywhere you can be around people who are drinking and go hang out at bars with people, you can have alcohol in your house and not desire it at all. And that’s what I want for you.

I want you to be able to just live your life and hang out with people who are drinking and not be you know, having to white knuckle it. Through all of that, I want you to experience the freedom that comes with understanding desire and eliminating that desire for things that aren’t serving you.

Alright, so I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. Come join us over in the Facebook group for our dry July challenge. We’re gonna be talking more about this kind of stuff all month long. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

77. Happiness is Overrated

By

There’s a lot of talk out there in the personal development world about happiness. There are so many books on how to be happy all the time and how to be happy about everything, and honestly, I see …

Continue Reading about 77. Happiness is Overrated →

Podcast Transcript

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 77, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I am so happy to be here talking about happiness today. And my take on happiness, which might be a little different from what most people say about happiness. I have this idea that happiness might be a little overrated. So I’m going to talk about that today.

Listen, there’s a lot of talk in the personal development space, about happiness about how to become happy all the time, and how the goal is to just like, we need to be happy all the time. There are books on this, there are podcasts on this, there are all kinds of teachings out there about how to be happy all the time. And honestly, I think this is kind of a problem because my take on happiness is a little bit different.

I think happiness is not the goal, I don’t think our goal or our purpose in life is to be happy all the time. So I believe we are put here on this earth for something bigger, and much more powerful than just like being happy.

Okay, so in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain all of that, I’ll break it down. I’ll explain what I mean when I say that happiness is overrated, and I’ll offer my take on what I believe my life’s purpose and your life’s purpose really is.

And then as a little extra something, be sure to listen to the end of this episode because I’m going to walk you through a very powerful happiness, exercise. Okay, so be sure to listen to the end of this one, because it’ll be kind of fun, fun thing for you at the end here.

But first, if you haven’t already joined us on Facebook, come check us out the Running Lean podcast community, I created this group as an extension of this podcast so that we could have more of a two-way conversation because it’s just me here talking into this microphone. I know you’re listening on the other end there. But I like to have that interaction.

And so in the Facebook group, you can ask questions, I can chime in and help answer those questions. And then each week, I do a little coaching a little teaching in the group. And I love doing that. It’s super fun to connect with you guys. live and in person, so to speak, right virtually, virtually live and in person. So come and check us out on Facebook, just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community and you’ll find us we have fun, we have a lot of fun.

Here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Maddie. And she says “Five-star plus, I’ve only been listening a few weeks and listened to most podcasts more than once very informative, very encouraging. I’m also a member of the Facebook group, everyone is there to support, encourage and help each other.”

Thank you, Maddie, for that awesome review. And yes, the Facebook group is amazing. And if you feel the urge to drop a review of the podcast, I would really appreciate it. You can just go to Apple podcasts or Spotify or audible wherever you listen to your podcasts and tap the stars. Leave a few words and you’re good to go. I’d really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

And then listen, if you’re ever looking for a little bit of help with all this stuff, losing weight, becoming a fat-adapted runner, changing your mindset, you know, working through all the issues we have around sticking to our plan. This is what I do as a one-on-one coach, this is the kind of work we do together. Listen, everybody I work with experiences some sort of a transformation.

Sometimes it’s the transformation of the mind. Sometimes it’s the transformation of the body sometimes it’s both. But I promise you that working one on one with a coach for a period of time can be very transformative. And just imagine what you can accomplish in like three months working one on one with a coach. It’s It’s amazing. Right?

So a coach just doesn’t you know, tell you what to do. A coach is there to support you. guide you offer you encouragement, support, knowledge experience, but also a coach there to help you do the things that you know you should do that you don’t want to do. There might be a little bit of tough love involved with coaching as well. That’s all part of it.

But the goal of coaching is not to just teach you a bunch of stuff, but to help you become the person that you ultimately want to become. So if you’re ever interested, you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and apply for coaching, we’ll get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a conversation about and see if it’s a good fit for you.

No obligations, it doesn’t cost anything to jump on this call with me. It’s just me and you, having a little chat about your goals and seeing if coaching is something you’re interested in. And if you’re a good fit, cool, awesome.

Okay, let’s get into this topic because I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And I’m finally like, okay, I’m ready to have this conversation with you guys. This is one of those maybe a little bit of tough love conversations. And I just want to start out by saying, like, happiness is not the goal, happiness is not the end result that we’re looking for. At least it shouldn’t be, okay?

But a lot of times I talk to people, and I’ll say like, tell me about your goals, what do you want for yourself? And inevitably, something will come up, like, oh, I just want to be happy. You know, I know that if I just lose weight, then I’ll be happy. Or if I can just run a faster marathon, then I’m going to be happy.

And I want to caution you guys against this. Because if you’re looking at happiness, as the end result of, of what you really want for yourself is like, that’s the goal I’m trying to reach, I’m trying to get to this place where I can just be happy all the time, you are going to be disappointed. It is almost impossible for you to be happy all the time. And I’ll talk about this more, I’ll break this down for you here.

But I just want you to know that happiness is one of those emotions that we want. And we desire. It’s one of our positive emotions, right, it’s a wanted emotion, it’s something we want more of in our life. And we can absolutely have more happiness in our life. But to think that, like, we’re going to be happy all the time.

And I think this is the mental image we project and this is the idea we get in our heads about, you know, if I could just lose this weight, if I could just lose the 30 pounds, get back to this weight I was when I first got married or when I was, you know, at my peak, then then I’ll be happy.

You know, and we do this in other areas of our lives, too. Like, oh, if I just had a better job, I’d be happy. Or if maybe I had a better relationship, you know, I’d be happy. And I want to caution you against thinking this way. Because accomplishing some big goal in your life or, you know, changing, you know, moving or changing a job or changing a relationship. Those things are all great. And you should always be wanting to accomplish things in your life.

But if the end goal is to be happy, you’re going to be disappointed. Happiness should not be the end goal, okay? Because happiness is just an emotion and emotions we can experience they come and they go, you know, you feel happiness, you feel joy, you feel sadness, you feel sorrow, you feel shame, or guilt, or stress or boredom. These are all emotions that we experience at different times in our lives, different times in our day, you can go through a whole day where you’re feeling a whole breadth of emotions, right?

Which I think is super cool, because as human beings, we get to experience all of these cool emotions. And as far as we know, we’re the only creatures in the universe that experience emotion in this way, especially this wide breadth of emotions.

I think somebody told me once they’re like dogs, dogs feel emotions, too. And I’m like, Yeah, probably. Cats, not so much. Dogs. Yes. But we get to experience all these different emotions, okay? And if we’re just, you know, set on, like, I just want this one emotion to be around forever. And that’s it. Like, I think this is, this is dumb to think this way, honestly. Okay.

So I don’t want you to be in this place of like, chasing happiness and making happiness the goal. Okay. Happiness is not a permanent state of being, it’s not something that you can just experience all the time. And if you see people that are like, Oh, that person is just happy all the time. I promise you they are not.

And they why would you want to be? Why would you want to be happy all the time? The purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time. Because when you’re happy. Where are you like everything is great, right? You’re comfortable. Everything is going perfectly well right? and you’re, you get to this place of contentment. Right?

And that’s okay to feel contentment, that’s okay to feel comfortable. But I think we get into this place of, oh, I just want to be happy. And then you want to be content and you get comfortable and just feel sort of, you know, like your life is sort of soft, soft and happy and comfortable all the time. Is that really what you want for yourself?

So you no longer need to work to improve yourself, you no longer need to push yourself, you no longer need to change anything in your life, because you’re just happy. I think this is the problem, right? I have this vision of being happy all the time, like this, if you guys saw the movie, Wally, the cruise ship in space, you know, with all the fat happy people, like everybody’s become so happy. And they don’t have to do anything. And they’re so comfortable that they’re so fat, they can’t even walk anymore.

So they get carted around in these little hover chairs. And there are all these robots that do everything for them. And all they do is like sit around and eat and drink all day, and they’re just fat slobs, right? It’s just like, so hilarious.

But it’s not unlike this vision of like, Oh, I just want to be happy all the time. You know, and just happy, soft, comfortable, you know, and content. And I don’t think this is what we want for ourselves. So this is kind of what I mean when I say happiness is overrated. I think if you want to evolve and you want to grow and you want to become something more than what you are right now, that there is a level of unhappiness required that there is some discontentment that is required if you want to become more.

And this takes me to what I believe the purpose of life really is for us, the purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time, the purpose of your life is to become more. Becoming more requires you to be somewhat unhappy and somewhat discontented with how things are and somewhat uncomfortable, right?

For yourself or others for your community for the world. Like there needs to be some level of discontentment with the way things are, in order for you to want to grow and become more to change to evolve. Becoming more means experiencing some amount of discomfort, some amount of pain or hardness or suffering.

We don’t grow and evolve by sitting around on our butts in our comfort zone all the time. If I could grow and become more by just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day long, I would absolutely do that. But it doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way.

Becoming more means and I want to break this down for you. Because I talk about this idea of becoming more what does that mean? Becoming more means becoming more of who you are not becoming someone else. But just becoming more of you. More of who you want to be.

There’s this version of you that’s inside you that’s lurking inside you that maybe you’ve always been afraid to, to let her out. That’s what I’m talking about. I want that for you. I want you to be more authentically you. And I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you guys before this quote from Dr. Seuss. And it’s from one of the Dr. Seuss books. I can’t remember which book it’s from. But the quote is this: “Today you are you that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.”

Anytime I talk about like becoming more you I always this quote always comes to mind like there’s no one alive who’s youer than you. Becoming more means living up to your true potential becoming the best you can be right? Most of us are living up to about 40% of our potential. This is below average, I want more for myself, I want to become more.

I want more than that for myself. I want you to want more than that for yourself. I don’t want to be below average. I want to be well above average 40% is not cool with me. Shouldn’t be cool with you either. We need to tap into more of who we are more of what we are capable of.

So to become more though it means you have to experience some level of discontentment or discomfort with where you are right now. And that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing. Like to not be happy where you are right now this is okay. That just means you want more for yourself. It’s amazing actually, right, if there’s you know, discontentment a little unhappiness that will actually serve you and actually help to drive you forward.

And being unhappy sometimes or being discontented sometimes. Don’t look at this as a negative thing. We think of this as being negative, I’m discontented, oh, I’m unhappy. It’s okay. You know, Life is 50/50. You know, we experience 50% of the time, roughly, we have positive emotions, and 50% of the time, you know, we experience quote, unquote, like negative emotions, right?

And it’s meant to be that way, life is supposed to be about half and half. Because as humans, we get to experience all the emotions, this wide breadth of emotions, the good and the bad, we need the contrast. Because without sadness, we wouldn’t have happiness. without sorrow, you wouldn’t know what joy feels like without conflict, you wouldn’t feel peaceful.

Without some sort of discontentment, you wouldn’t have any reason to grow. And to become more. We need the contrast. The contrast provides clarity for us. Otherwise, all these emotions would all just like, blend together, and just be like, blah, right?

So we have, you know, emotions that feel good and positive, and there are emotions that we feel that we experience and we feel maybe not so good. And then we might label these as negative, okay.

And listen, negative emotions are not to be avoided or pushed away or numbed out, we do this all the time, we experienced some sort of negative emotion, and we want to just push away wanting to go with his fastball, get back to being happy, I don’t want to feel this way.

Do not make the mistake of pushing these emotions away, do not make the mistake of trying to just feel happy all the time. Because when you do this, you get caught in this practice of running away from half of the emotions you’re trying to that you want to feel, you know, end up, pushing away, and numbing out to half of your life. These negative emotions are things that we should absolutely allow them to be there.

I don’t even like to use the word negative to describe emotions, because I don’t really think they’re negative, I think it’s just part of who you are. And when we say negative then we think, Oh, I, they’re, they’re bad, they’re not bad.

Now, some of these are difficult emotions, their unwanted emotions, they’re highly charged emotions, they’re strong emotions, you know, shame, guilt, hurt, sadness. These are emotionally or energetically charged motions, they really make you feel something in your body like you feel these emotions deeply. Right. And it’s okay to feel deeply. Happiness and sadness.

It’s okay to feel deep guilt and hurt and shame, and joy, and excitement and motivation. But when we push away half of our emotions, we’re not experiencing like half of our life or numbing out to half of our experience in this world. So what does this look like?

So if, for example, somebody that you care about dies, you want to feel sadness for that person, you want to feel sadness for that loss. You don’t want to push that away. You don’t want to be happy about that. Right? So that’s kind of what I’m talking about like when we want to feel happy all the time.

That means you want to feel happy when somebody you love dies, do you want to feel happy when your husband cheats on you? You know you want to feel angry. You want to feel hurt, right? Because that is how we are wired as human beings and it’s good. It’s good to feel these things. You should be angry. If your husband cheats on you like that is something you can absolutely be angry about.

Allow that to be there don’t push it away. You don’t need to feel happy about those things. Okay, that would be weird. Okay. So whenever we experience certain emotions we want to push them away as fast as possible. A lot of times what we do is we numb out to those so we go, we eat something or drink something, we go shopping, whatever we do. We’re trying to feel better, just like right right now I just want to say feel better. I just want to feel better.

I don’t want to feel sadness, I don’t want to feel shame. I don’t want to feel guilt. I don’t want to feel stress. So I’m just gonna eat something, you know, and we condition ourselves to eat and drink our way to feeling better. To try to make ourselves feel happy. If I just eat this cake, I’m gonna be happy.

You guys, it doesn’t work. I talked to people every single day who tell me, you know, I wasn’t feeling good. I was stressed out or I was unhappy, and I just wanted to be happy. So I, you know, I ate the cake, because I thought that was gonna make me feel happy. Oh, okay. How’d that work for you? Do you feel happy? Hmm. No, I mean, you know, it tasted good. Gave me a sugar rush. But I wasn’t happy.

We eat and drink ourselves into oblivion sometimes, because we think that it’s gonna make us happy. And we think it’s gonna make us feel better. But it doesn’t. It tricks your brain into making you think you’re feeling better because it’s a, it’s like a drug, sugar as a drug. I would argue alcohol is a drug.

And we use these things to trick our brains into feeling good, right? Because we release dopamine, they light up these pleasure centers in our brain. And so we feel good. Our brain thinks we feel good. Our brain thinks we’re happy. But are we really happy? No, we just think we are.

And listen, the difficult emotions like the stress, the boredom, the sadness, whatever you’re experiencing, it’s still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. Okay. So I don’t want to chase this idea of happiness as something that we need to get to as a destination as an end result. Happiness is something we can experience and we should experience.

I think we can increase the amount of happiness in our lives and I’ll talk about that more in a minute. But I don’t want to get stuck in this idea of chasing happiness as the goal. So not the goal. The goal is to become more and I don’t want to conflate being unhappy with like grumpiness. Okay, because I think we can do this.

I think there’s a misconception that like if you’re a grumpy person you’re unhappy. Just because you’re discontented with the way things are. You don’t have to be a grim kin or a snark. Okay, you can be happy, or you can be unhappy and discontented and still be positive. You can be unhappy and discontented and still be kind, generous, selfless, and friendly. And motivated.

You know, when we talk about weight loss, a lot of times people are discontented with the way they are today. I don’t like my body today. I feel fat. I feel I’m ashamed of who I am. I don’t want you to be ashamed of who you are. We have to love ourselves exactly as we are right now.

You can absolutely love yourself how you are right now. And have a positive body image and be discontented and want to become more and want to lose the weight. You can do both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Love yourself exactly as you are and want to become more you can do that. I love that. I love that idea.

So I don’t want you to think that if you’re unhappy, that means you’re, you know, you’re just a jerk to everybody. Because that’s different. That’s just you’re a jerk, okay? If everybody you meet is a jerk, you’re the jerk. Just so you know. Okay.

I saw that meme recently, I thought was pretty funny. And listen, I’m not about anti-happiness. Okay, I absolutely think we can increase the amount of happiness in our lives. And I think we should, I think we should be working on ways to increase the amount of happiness in our lives. As long as we understand that this is not the end goal.

We should increase the time the amount of time that we spend experiencing positive or, you know, wanted emotions like joy and excitement, and delight and happiness. You know, all of these things in love. Oh my gosh, love what a great emotion to experience. Don’t you want to experience more love in your life? Absolutely.

So we just don’t want to make that like the absolute goal, right? Remember, your purpose in life is to become more of who you are. So I’m not anti-happiness. I just don’t want you to seek it as the purpose of your life. The purpose of your life is not to be happy. Because if you make that the purpose of your life, you’re going to be miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be, you’re not going to be where you want to be. Right.

So happiness is one of those things that it’s just an emotion that you can experience. And it’s an emotion that you can experience anytime you want. And so if, if you’re into it, I’m going to walk you through a little exercise here, where you can actually experience a great deal of happiness right now, right here in this moment, okay?

So, if your goal with this, I’m going to just kind of walk you through this little exercise, okay, this is really powerful. And something you can do. Anytime you want to experience more happiness, or, or any other emotion that you want to experience and you want to create more love, we’re just going to use happiness because that’s kind of what we’re talking about today.

So here’s what we’re going to do if you’re listening to this, and you can, you know, sit down or, or just close your eyes, and just relax a little bit, that’s a good way to do this. But if you’re out running or driving or something like that, and you’re listening to this, that’s totally fine, too, you don’t have to close your eyes, don’t close your eyes, if you’re driving, unless you’re driving your Tesla with autopilot on, and that’s totally fine. But even then keep your hands on the steering wheel.

But now, so just like if you’re out running or something like that, you can still do this, you just do it with your eyes open. Okay. And so here’s what I want you to do, close your eyes, and I just want you to like, relax, take a couple of deep breaths.

And just try to relax a little bit, okay, because we just want to like, we want to tap into a different state right, now we want to tap into a state where we feel a little more calm, a little bit more relaxed, a little more at ease, we just want to slow down a little bit here, okay.

And what I want you to do is I want you to think about a time when you are really happy. I want you to think about a specific moment in time in your past when you were really, really happy. And then I want you to go back to that moment right now. Go back to that moment in your mind.

Float down into that moment and see what you saw through your own eyes. Hear what you heard. And I want you to really feel the feeling of happiness. From that moment. Start to tap into what that feels like. And you can start to feel it in your body. And start to feel that energy flowing in and through you.

And as you’re experiencing this moment of happiness, I want you to turn it up a little bit. Want you to crank up the happiness, just like you would adjust the dials on an OLED television to like, make it more vibrant. make it clearer, turn up the level of happiness that you’re feeling right now in this moment.

Make it even stronger until you feel like you’re just overflowing with happiness. And you feel that happiness just wanting to burst out through you. And you can feel this energy welling up and just growing inside you. It feels so good. Doesn’t it feel good? Feels good to be happy. And this happy feeling that you’re experiencing right now in this moment. You can tap into this any time you want. It’s cool. I love this.

I love feeling good and I love tapping into an emotion an emotional state like that. And that’s as simple as it is right there you guys. You can feel happy like that any time you want. You can feel love like that anytime you want. You can feel confidence just like that anytime you want. Just go back to a time when you felt super confident and walk through that same exercise.

I would encourage you to really re-listen to this like last section of this podcast. And you can plug in different emotions you can plug in, you know confidence or motivation. Love is such a good one too. Who doesn’t love to feel love? I love to feel love.

Whew, I’m feeling so good right now. I love doing that. I haven’t done that exercise for a while. And I was just doing it with you guys just now and I’m just feeling so good right now. I’m like beaming. Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. I hope this was helpful for you.

In a way, I hope you got something out of this episode. If you did consider sharing it with a friend that would mean the world to me. And as always, I love you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

70. Becoming an Emotional Adult

By

There’s one big difference between people who consistently reach their goals and those who do not. It doesn’t have anything to do with how bad they want it or how early they get up in the …

Continue Reading about 70. Becoming an Emotional Adult →

Podcast Transcript

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 70 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. 70 episodes! This is so fun. I just love coming on this podcast and sharing this stuff with you guys. Today I’m talking about becoming an emotional adult. So I’ve noticed that there’s one big difference between people who consistently reach their goals, and those who do not.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with how bad they want it, or how early they get up in the morning. It’s more about whether or not they’re living their life as an emotional adult. So yes, this episode of the Running Lean podcast is all about emotions, we’re going to talk about feelings. I’m going to be talking about the very important role that your emotions play in whether or not you are getting the results that you want in your life.

Whether your goal is to finish a marathon without bonking or know how to lose weight and keep it off for good. You have to become an emotional adult in order to get there. Becoming an emotional adult, this is one of the most powerful skills you can learn. And it’s key to becoming the most badass version of yourself. So I’m gonna get to all that in just a minute.

First, if you haven’t already joined us on Facebook, come check out the Running Lean podcast community, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a group of people just like you. We all share common goals, we share common struggles, we help each other, we encourage each other, we ask questions, we get answers, we support each other through this journey.

Having a community to lean into is so helpful. So come and check us out. We have a lot of fun in there. I do weekly trainings every Sunday afternoon, little Facebook Live, where you can bring questions and I’ll answer them for you. I created that community on Facebook as a way of extending this conversation making it a two way conversation because I’m here talking into this microphone on this podcast. But I can’t hear back from you.

What’s going on with you? I want to know what’s going on with you. So that’s why I do this over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So come check us out over there. And then here’s a message I got recently from a new podcast listener.

And this is from Deb and she says, “Wow, Patrick, listening to your podcast is life changing. I stumbled across it yesterday. And I’ve spent the last two days smashing through loads of them. Thankfully, I have more for tomorrow. You speak so well cut to the chase, no BS, very informative. I’ve recently signed up for a half marathon and know that I will complete it. Thank you for you.”

That’s so awesome. I get messages like this all the time. If you want to share the love and just give back and let me know how you feel about the podcast. If this has helped you in any way, you can leave a review. Just do that on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. I don’t know where to do it. Just figure out where it says like leave a review, write a quick five star review. Tell me what this podcast means to you. I would love to hear from you.

And listen, I know that I talk a lot about diet, nutrition, weight loss, dealing with your emotions, and all this stuff can be helpful and awesome and all that but also may feel a little overwhelming. And you probably just want to know like how do I start? Where do I go? How do I make this work for me?

Well, as a one on one coach, I got you covered. I can help you make sense of all of this. We can put together a plan that will work for you because listen, we are all different. We have different body types, different metabolisms, different goals, different needs, different likes, different dislikes. And there’s just not one way of doing things that works perfectly for everybody.

So my job as a coach is to help you figure out what works best for you. So working together will define your goals. We’ll put together a plan that’s tailored to help you reach those goals. And listen, this work that we do together and coaching is not just about diet and nutrition. It’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself.

Becoming the healthiest human being that you can possibly be physically, mentally, and emotionally. You know, I work with people who have been struggling with weight for the majority of their life and they’re finally ready to change for good. I work with runners who are tired of bonking all the time, they’re ready to stop hitting the wall and start hitting their goals.

I work with people who want to end the emotional eating, who want to take control of their thoughts and feelings, and get over feeling obsessed about food all the time. So whatever your health and fitness goals, I’m here for you, I’ll be your guide, I can show you the way I can help you become that badass version of yourself. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we’ll have a conversation. It’ll be fun.

Alright, let’s get into this. Speaking of fun, let’s get into this topic of becoming an emotional adult. So in order to get started with this, I need to talk about what the difference is between being an emotional child and being an emotional adult. So being an emotional child is easy. This is something we’ve been doing since we were toddlers. Okay?

So if you’re a toddler, and you parents out there that have toddlers right now, I feel for you, I really do. My kids are grown up. Now, we don’t have to deal with this anymore. But when you have a toddler, what do they do when things don’t go their way? Right? They scream and cry, they lay on the ground, in the middle of Target, and just have a fit. Right?

And, you know, they, they’re like, you know, oh, you know, this isn’t going my way. I’m not getting what I want. I want this but I can’t get it, you know, I can’t have it or whatever. Or you’re so mean to me. You know, and they just kind of have a fit. Okay? This is what it means to be an emotional toddler. And it’s fine. To be this way when you’re a toddler like this is kind of normal for toddlers to act this way, right?

But here’s where this plays out for us as adults. So you kind of see this all the time. You kind of act the same way. It’s a little more subtle. But you’ll say things to yourself. Like, I can’t have this. I’m not allowed to eat cake. I want this cake. But I’m not allowed. Nothing ever works for me. My life just sucks. There’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing ever goes my way. Right?

Doesn’t this sound whiny? I know I sound like I’m whining right now. But this is what we do to ourselves. We talk to ourselves this way we say these kinds of things. We blame everyone, we blame everything on what’s going on with ourselves in our own lives. Okay, so when we talk about emotional toddlers, we’re talking about people who play the victim who blame others, their blamers they’re complainers.

They always have stories and reasons and excuses for why they can’t reach their goals, why they can’t stick to their plan. I hear these stories all the time. You know, I hear them from friends and family and clients. Sometimes they tell me about, you know, oh, I had this really hard day at work. And that’s why I had to eat cake for dinner instead of the chicken that I was planning on making.

And as I’m saying this out loud, doesn’t it sound sort of ridiculous? But these are real situations. These are like real things that go through people’s brains. You know, they’re like, oh, yeah, I had a hard day at work. And so I had to eat cake. We all do this too. And I’ve done this before too. And I’m not immune to any of this. Okay, so this is just something we all do.

But I want to just make this very clear distinction between what it means to be an emotional toddler, what it means to be an emotional child. And what it means to be an emotional adult. Okay?

So emotional child, blaming, complaining, things don’t go your way. I can’t have this, I’m not allowed. Nothing ever goes my way that kind of stuff, right? So let’s contrast that with what it means to be an emotional adult. So when you’re an emotional adult, you don’t throw fits if things don’t go your way.

You don’t blame other people or other circumstances for what’s happening in your life. You don’t have excuses. You don’t have stories you’re not blaming, you don’t have reasons. Instead, you take responsibility for all of your results. Good and bad. You gained three pounds this week. Okay, why? What did I do differently? What can I do to change that?

Didn’t hit my running goal this week. Why? What happened? How can I get back on track next week? Doesn’t it sound better? There’s no blaming, no complaining, there’s just taking responsibility for everything that’s going on in your life. All of your results, the good, and the bad. Yes, all of it. It’s all, it’s all your fault. Okay.

So another way of looking at this is a concept called cause and effect. In every situation, you are either at cause or you are at the effect of others. So you are either the cause of the result, meaning you are taking responsibility, you’re taking ownership. This is all on me, hey, I ate the cake, I chose to eat the cake that’s on me. This is what it means to be at cause, okay, or you are at the effect of your circumstances.

Someone at the dinner table said I was no fun because I didn’t want to eat the cake. So they made me feel bad. So I ate the cake. It was their fault. Like that’s being at the effect of your circumstance. I had a bad day at work, so I ate cake for dinner instead of chicken. That’s being at the fact that’s just blaming others, you don’t take responsibility there, okay?

Here’s something I need you guys to understand. You are not a victim of your circumstances. Okay? Circumstances in our lives are always neutral. People can say anything they want, people can do anything they want, things can happen at work. And they always will. Some of it you like some of it you don’t like and it’s all basically it’s all neutral.

None of this stuff means anything to you until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. So big, challenging things can happen in your life, things that, you know, don’t really mean anything, until you create a story about what this thing means to you.

For example, let’s say and this is pretty subtle, and this is very common to let’s say your husband says something to you like, you know what, honey, you’re fine, just the way you are. You don’t need to lose any more weight. Okay, what do you do with that? How do you respond internally?

Like, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that? Think about this. What’s the story that you’re telling yourself about those words? Because here’s the truth. The truth is, they are just words, your husband said some words, this is a neutral circumstance. You can make it mean whatever you want.

But he just said some words. You can just ignore him if you want to. But you can make it mean that he’s right. Oh, maybe I’m just being selfish here. You know, I really want to make him happy, I should probably just go back to doing what I was doing before. Even though I was gaining weight. I was unhappy. But, you know, you know, maybe making him happy is more important than me losing weight and feeling good about myself.

And maybe he won’t love me if I lose more weight, you know, maybe all this stuff I’m doing is making him uncomfortable. And I don’t want him to be uncomfortable. So what do you do when you start thinking this way and you start feeling this way? You go back to doing what you were doing before you give up on your goal of getting lean and getting healthy. And you just stay unhappy and overweight? Because you’re making these words means something to you. So that’s one way you can go.

Another thing you can do with this information is that this person said to you these words that this person said to you, oh, you’re fine. You don’t need to lose weight. You can make it mean that here’s a person that’s just voicing his opinion. Okay, thank you for sharing your opinion. I appreciate that. But you know what? I’m doing this for me. Not for you. Your opinion. You know, thank you, but I’m good.

You know what I’m doing might make you feel uncomfortable, but that’s your problem. I’m going to carry on because I’m becoming healthier. I’m feeling better. Running is getting easier. I’m losing weight. I love living this way. And when you make it mean that and when you can like start thinking those thoughts and feelings about what this means to you, you’ll stay on track.

You know, you actually will become that healthiest, most badass version of yourself. yet. So this is just an example. And you can replace, you know, my husband said some words with other stuff, like my boss said stuff to me at work, or I got a flat tire in my car, or my kids are driving me nuts, you know, or I can’t run because of this injury or my daughter broke her arm, or any other litany of circumstances that are happening in your life, because those things are always going to happen. Always, always, always.

It’s interesting. I was talking to a client recently about this very issue. And she said, Yeah, because she had a situation at work that was causing a lot of stress and I said, Well, how do you respond to other challenges that you face? “ And she said that she had recently got a nail in her tire in her car. And she didn’t freak out about it. She just, like, drove her car to the tire place and like got it fixed, got it patched and then was on her way didn’t make it mean anything.

But we can do this, we can say, Oh, how about this nail in my car tire? I gotta tire my car. Yeah, of course, you know, I got a nail in my tire. So this means that I’m gonna have a bad day, this is so stressful. Oh, my gosh, you know, like, we can create this whole story around it right and drive ourselves crazy.

That’s being an emotional toddler about it. Being an emotional adult is handling a situation like that. And just going like that, no big deal. I’m gonna go get this fixed. And I’m on my way. So we can do that easily with stuff like getting a nail in your tire.

But what about when it comes to what our husband says to us? Or what our boss says to us, or how our kids are behaving, we make it mean something else. Okay, we get to choose how we respond to every circumstance in our life. We can respond like a toddler, lay on the ground and kick our legs and scream and cry about it.

Or we can respond like an emotional adult. Here’s an example from my life. Speaking of challenges, 14 years ago, I decided I’d had enough drinking alcohol just wasn’t working for me, okay. And so I quit, quit drinking. And during the last 14 years, I have had all kinds of challenges in my life.

I’ve gone through breakups and divorce, I’ve changed careers. I’ve lost jobs. Both my parents passed away. I’ve started businesses and then failed businesses. And through all of these 14 years, there were all kinds of reasons and excuses that I could have turned to alcohol as a solution, like, oh, yeah, my, my parents just died. Like I could choose that as an excuse to drink. And most people would probably say, Yeah, I’d probably drink over a lot of that stuff, too. But I never did, I never felt the need to take a drink.

I’ve never felt the need to revert to being an emotional toddler because of what’s happening in my life. I don’t blame the outside world, for how I feel, or for what I’m doing or not doing. I’m staying true to myself through all of it. In fact, staying true to myself is why I’ve been able to handle these big challenges in my life.

Because I’m not afraid to experience the emotions. I’m not afraid to feel my feelings. I don’t have to numb my emotions with alcohol or food anymore. And numbing out is a way of being an emotional toddler. This is the way we sort of practice emotional childhood. Okay?

So when you go through something that challenges you and you’re absolutely going to feel some emotions, right? You’re going to feel fear, you’re going to feel frustration, you’re gonna feel stress, you’re going to feel sadness or, or loneliness or failure or shame or whatever it is, you’re going to feel some emotions. So when you go through these big things in your life, most people, the way most people deal with these difficult emotions is they drink something or they eat something they turn to some sort of external thing to make them feel better inside.

Temporarily anyway, like it just feels good to eat some cake right? It feels good to drink some alcohol. The problem with this approach, though, is that it comes with negative consequences. Right. And maybe you drink too much, or you wake up with a hangover, you know, or maybe you eat too much and you end up gaining weight and you feel terrible.

This is what it means to approach the challenges in your life like an emotional toddler or you’re just like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just like drink yourself numb or eat yourself numb and it doesn’t work. Right? It doesn’t doesn’t mean those feelings go away. They just temporarily you’re putting them on hold, you know, you’re just, you know, drinking something to make you feel better, temporarily. Doesn’t do anything for the actual feelings. Your feelings.

Because you’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna be hungover, you’re gonna feel like crap. Alright. And then you’re still gonna have those feelings. You’re gonna be like, No, I got to deal with this. And then you go, just want to drink again. It’s a never ending cycle. So numbing out is emotional toddlerhood, right? We don’t want to do that.

We want to feel our feelings. And this is where things get tough for most people, okay. Most people do not like to feel difficult emotions. And this is normal. Like, I don’t like to feel these things. Fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, grief, shame, overwhelm, frustration, stress, anxiety, these are all emotions, these are all feelings that we feel. And most people will do anything to just not have to feel these feelings.

But most people are coming from this place of like, being at the effect, right being at the effect of everything that’s happening around them being a blame, or being a complainer being an emotional toddler. So here’s a radical concept for you. What if you were willing to just feel those emotions? What if you didn’t do anything? To try to make them go away? You just felt them? What? I know, it’s a crazy concept.

What would that look like for you to just feel your feelings? I promise you, it would not feel good. I promise you it would be uncomfortable. But here’s the thing. This is how you become more emotionally evolved. This is exactly the way that you become an emotional adult, it’s about experiencing your emotions, feeling your feelings, allowing them to be they’re not doing anything to change them, just allowing them to come and go like a wave.

So we experience thoughts in our head, you know, in our brain, we experience emotions in our body. And so in order to feel those emotions, you have to get in touch with your body, you have to process your emotions, you have to get in touch with how you feel in your body. Sometimes it’s like a tightness in your chest.

Or, you know, your shoulders are tensed up, you know, your shoulders start to raise up towards your ears. That’s like stress, right? And we experience these emotions, we feel them in our body. This is where a lot of people just don’t like that feeling. They don’t like that feeling.

I’ll tell you what, one one thing that’s really amazing at working through this stuff is to go for a run, because then you’re like, you’re changing the feelings in your body. Okay, we’re not, we’re not stuffing the feelings down, what you’re doing is you’re doing something that is healthy. And that allows you to get in touch with what’s going on inside your body.

This helped me so much over the last couple of years, especially last year when I was going through a divorce and I was feeling all these intense feelings, you know, sadness and loneliness, and hurt. And I would go for a run. And I would still feel those feelings, but, but it was like I was able to process them, I was able to let them come and let them go.

Alright, and then I was able to carry on with my day. So this is how you become an emotional adult is to just allow the feelings to be there and not do anything to change them. Stop the complaining, stop the blaming, take 100% responsibility for everything you’re feeling and everything that’s going on good or bad in your life.

And you have to practice. This is a skill that you can learn. Right? This is one of the most powerful life skills that you can learn in my opinion. And you have to practice it and it is not easy. And I talk to my clients about this all the time. I talk about just letting the uncomfortable feeling be there. Right, it will not feel good.

But if you can practice it and you can just be with these emotions, it will get easier. I promise you just like anything else in your life. The more you practice it, the better you get at it. So this is how you become an emotional adult, this is how you become a total emotional badass. Because here’s the cool thing about this, when you learn how to do this, and you get good at this, when you’re no longer afraid to experience some of these emotions, there’s nothing you can’t do.

So most people will, you know, quit on themselves, they’ll give up their goals and their dreams, because getting there doesn’t feel good, it’s uncomfortable, you’re out of your comfort zone. And so most people will just quit on themselves. All because of a feeling because they just don’t want to feel uncomfortable.

They don’t want to feel the fear. They don’t want to feel the disappointment if they don’t make it or if they feel like a failure. But what if you didn’t care? What if you were willing to feel all of those emotions? What if you’re willing to feel any emotion? What do you think you could accomplish?

Oh, my gosh, there’d be nothing to stop you from achieving anything you want in your life. I’ve experienced this huge, huge amount of success, and abundance and joy and accomplishment in my life. Because I’m willing to get uncomfortable. I’m not superhuman, honestly, far from it. I’m just a normal average job here, right?

I’m just more willing to experience some of these difficult emotions. And most people, I’m more willing to put myself out there and be uncomfortable and go through it, have the fear, have the anxiety, and show up anyway. And then take responsibility for everything that’s happening in my life, good, bad, or otherwise.

So here’s my call to action for you this week. I want you to just notice, like be aware of when you’re being an emotional toddler. Don’t judge yourself. You know, don’t beat yourself up about this. But just be aware that you’re doing it. Where are you blaming others? Where are you complaining?

Where are you saying things like, I can’t have that. I don’t get to do that. Because you’re making a choice. These are all choices you get to make, be an adult about this, be an adult about your emotions, take responsibility for everything, everything, everything that you’re getting in your life or not getting the good, the bad, everything. It’s all on you.

I have this t-shirt, and it’s a black T-shirt with big white lettering, and it says everything is my fault. And I wear that T-shirt to remind myself that everything in my life is my fault, whether it’s good or bad. I am the cause of everything that’s happening in my life.

Now you know what somebody said to me? Not what’s going on at work? Not what’s happening with my running injury? Nothing. It’s all on me. So where are you at? Are you the cause of everything? Or are you at the effect of everything? Are you at the effect of your circumstances? I want you to take full responsibility for all of this, this is radical. This is crazy.

Most people don’t do this. But you know, if you’re living at the effect of your circumstances, you have all these stories and excuses and reasons and you’re blaming yourself and your complex. We don’t want to do that, we want to take responsibility for all of it. Be an emotional adult.

And if you’re finding yourself trying to avoid feeling your feelings, you just want to push your feelings away. I don’t want to feel this right now. I’m going to eat something, I’m gonna drink something. What if you just allow them to be there and see how it goes like practice that practice feeling your feelings. I know this is such a crazy concept. We don’t talk about this.

I’m not afraid to talk about feelings. I’m not afraid to talk about emotions. I think this is a skill we should be teaching our kids, honestly. Because when you get good at this, there’s just nothing you can’t do. I want you to be willing this week, I want you to be willing to get uncomfortable emotionally so that you can become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet because this is how you’re going to get there.

Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. I hope you got something out of this episode. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

66. Eliminating Scale Drama

By

I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and comments lately where people are sharing their frustration around the scale. They weigh themselves and if the scale hasn’t moved in the right direction, …

Continue Reading about 66. Eliminating Scale Drama →

Podcast Transcript

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 66 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer health, and fitness expert, and weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got a very fun topic. Very fun, I’m being a little sarcastic. You may not think this is very fun. I think it’s fun. Eliminating scale drama.

So I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and, and comments on posts lately where people are talking about the scale. And they’re sharing their frustration around the scale. So people are weighing themselves and if the scale isn’t moving in the right direction, they get all down on themselves, they feel depressed, they feel disappointed. And and a lot of times they just give up. All right.

So they’re creating all this drama for themselves because of a number on a device that is used to measure your body weight. Right? And then the suggested solution to the problem is to just don’t weigh yourself, you know, weigh yourself less often or don’t do it at all. And to me, this doesn’t make any sense.

If you’re having an emotional experience around a number on the scale. Does avoiding the scale really solve anything? No. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to dole out a little bit of tough love. I love you guys, but sometimes I gotta get tough with you. I want to explain exactly what scale drama is, how it is impacting your life, and how to eliminate all of that scale drama for good. All right, stay with me, you’re gonna like this one or not. It’s okay though.

If you haven’t already done it, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a fun group of positive runners who are there to support each other, and encourage each other. We talk about our goals, we share our experiences, we ask questions, and it’s fun, and we have a good time. So just come find us on Facebook. The podcast and the Facebook group kind of go hand in hand.

So I do a little bit of teaching in the Facebook group as well it kind of goes along with the stuff I teach you on the podcast. So definitely check out the Facebook group because you’ll get a good well-rounded feel for exactly what it is I’m teaching here and it’s a good adjunct to the podcast.

Also, spring enrollment is now open for the Running Lean monthly coaching group. This is my monthly membership program. In a support group where you get everything you need to make lasting changes to your health and fitness. We’re talking about knowledge, support, and accountability.

I talked about these three things last week in the podcast, right. And the Running Lean monthly coaching group, I created because it has all three of those things in one place. So you get the knowledge, which is my entire library of online training materials, and self-paced videos that you can go through and learn at your own pace.

Like the weight loss training course for runners, this is like everything you need to know about becoming fat-adapted, what to eat, what not to eat, how to break through weight-loss plateaus, how to manage hunger, and cravings, and so much more. You can go through all of this at your own pace. And then start implementing what you learned and start getting some results.

But then, if you have questions or struggles or something doesn’t make sense to you, you can bring all of that to the group, okay. And that’s where the support piece comes in. So we have this group of people that are all in this together, right, we’re all doing this together.

Of course, you get my expertise and my experience as a sports nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a master life coach, but it’s not just about me, it’s about the support from a community of people like you. Some people have some good experiences they can share.

You know, we share our experience, our strength is our hope with each other, you know, we’re vulnerable, we share with what we’re struggling with, and we offer our support or encouragement, and we lift each other up, and we help each other. This is the power of the group.

When we do try to do some hard things on our own. It’s hard. It’s challenging, it’s frustrating, but when we do hard things together, it’s motivating. It’s energizing, we’re much more likely to succeed.

And then the third piece is the accountability piece. Showing up in this group means you’re going to be held accountable to stay on track and move towards your goals. You know, if you want to make changes last you have to have accountability. You’re much more likely to stick with a healthy eating plan or an exercise regimen if you have to report to the group and say, yeah, I did what I said I was going to do. That’s powerful.

Okay, so the three biggest reasons why I created this group is because it has the knowledge, support, and accountability all in one place. All right, we do live group coaching via zoom. All the group coaching calls are recorded and archived. So you can always go back and watch something you missed, or rewatch something.

And we have a lot of fun, I believe, and making big changes in our lives, like changing our diet, losing weight, you know, getting stronger, getting faster can be fun, and enjoyable. We don’t have to suffer our way to good health. Right. So the group aspect of this program makes all of this a lot more fun.

So the spring enrollment is open. Now, I don’t open this group very often, maybe once a quarter. So if you want to take advantage of this, is this something you’ve been thinking about? Now’s the time to do it. Okay, I’m going to be closing the doors at the end of the day. On Sunday, April, the fourth, so 11:59 pm, Sunday, April 4, done for a few months.

Start today, and think about how much further you will be in three or four months. Right? Do you want to just be where you are today in three or four months? Or do you want to be like three or four months into a healthy eating regimen? The choice is yours. Always. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

Learn how to dial in your nutrition, make healthy eating a way of life, become a badass fat-adapted, bonk-proof runner, and have fun doing it. I promise you it is fun. runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Okay, let’s get into this topic today, which is eliminating scale drama. Like I said earlier, sometimes I gotta be a little tough with you guys got to dole out a little bit of tough love. And today is one of those days.

So I’ve been seeing a lot of posts out there in the Facebook group and on other Facebook groups and just in on social media in general posts and comments about the scale. You know, why you should or should not weigh yourself and how often you should weigh yourself.

Even people suggest that you never weigh yourself just stop doing it. It’s too frustrating. And I have these conversations at least once a day with people, sometimes clients who get frustrated. And today I want to make my stance on this topic very clear. Right? Not everyone is going to agree with me on my approach. And that’s totally fine with me.

We all have our own opinions, we get to decide what’s best for ourselves. Okay, if you have a different idea, a different way of doing it. Awesome. You do you, but at least be open to hearing me out today. Because I think I think we could all use a little help around this issue, this issue of scale drama.

So what is scale drama? Scale, drama is all that stuff. You tell yourself what the number on the scale means about you. So let’s say you start eating healthier, you’re exercising, you’re making some healthy changes in your life, and you’re starting to feel pretty good, right? You’re feeling pretty good about yourself.

And then you step on the scale, and you haven’t lost any weight. You know, let’s say your goal is to lose 40 pounds. And you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks and you feel good. And you get on the scale and it hasn’t moved. Or maybe it went up a pound. And then this is where all the drama comes in.

You have all these stories that you start telling yourself all these thoughts come up all these feelings come up. It’s so frustrating. This is not working. Oh no, I’m gonna have a bad day. This is so disappointing. This is depressing. This whole thing is just stupid. Screw it, I give up. And have you ever had any of these thoughts or feelings about the number that you see on the scale? I know you have, we all have.

I started so many different diets and quit them because I was having all these frustrating feelings. It was depressing to me. It didn’t I didn’t think it was working. And I did that I like stopped weighing myself, man.

Maybe I weighed myself once a week. And then then I was just frustrated that one time a week. You know what I mean? It didn’t help. So this is where this is what I’m talking about when I talk about scale drama. It’s all the stories and all the stuff we make up about what all this means about us. Okay.

So when people start doling out this advice, like only weigh yourself once a week or only weigh yourself once a month. only weigh yourself right after you’ve run 20 miles because that always looks good. Or just stop weighing yourself at all. Their intentions are good with this kind of advice. But honestly, I think this is misguided.

The idea here is that if you only weigh yourself every now and then you’re only going to feel disappointed or frustrated or depressed every now and then. Right? So it’s like, if you avoid the scale, except for once a month, you can like sneak up on it. When all the stars are aligned and you’ll hopefully get the number that will make you finally feel good about yourself.

So you wait a month, and you’re doing all the right things. At least you think you are. And then you step on the scale. You’re like, you sneak up on it, you step on it really fast. And you’re like, dang it, I’m up two pounds, then all that frustration comes back, the disappointment comes back, the depression all comes rushing back.

But you’re only doing it once a month. So like this is a much better plan, right? No, this is dumb to me, right? I don’t think this makes any sense at all. You can’t sneak up on the scale, right? You’re not looking at this from the right place, you’re not looking at the problem, the scale is not the real problem.

I don’t even say your current weight isn’t even the problem has nothing to do with how much you weigh. The real problem is how you think, and how you feel about yourself. All of this drama that you have around the scale, that’s all you. You create the drama, all the sadness, all the frustration, all the disappointment you’re experiencing. Those are all emotions.

And we know that emotions are always caused by thoughts. So if we’re feeling emotions about ourselves, it’s because we have these thoughts about ourselves. This is such a pervasive issue. I get it and these emotions are very strong, right?

They even create issues around your self-worth. I hear people say things like this all the time, like, they don’t feel like they’re good enough. Based on a number on a scale, you know, they’re comparing themselves to other people, or to where they think they should be.

You know, because they gained three pounds, they’re not good enough, you end up basing your own worthiness, your self-worth, on a number on a bodyweight measuring device, this is insane. A number on a scale cannot tell you how worthy you are. Because here’s a fact, for all of you. You were 100% born worthy. What the scale can tell you as the scale can tell you how much you weigh like it’s just a tool to measure the weight of your entire body.

The scale can tell you how much your bones, your skin, your organs, your muscles, your blood, your fat, and your hair weigh, that’s it. And every part of your body is made up of water, your body is actually 60% water at least sometimes up to 70% water. So 60% of the weight we’re looking at is actually water anyway, right?

So how much your bones and your skin and your organs weigh has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human being. It has nothing to do with how beautiful and amazing you are. It has nothing to do with whether or not you are enough. Because you were born enough. How much do you weigh? It’s just a data point, right?

It’s just a fact like your shoe size or how tall you are doesn’t mean you’re a good person or a bad person. It’s just data unless you make it mean something. It’s like saying, oh, my feet are so big. And I’m so short. It’s so frustrating. I’m like a hobbit, by the way. The hobbits were the real heroes of that story.

Okay, at the end of Return of the King, after Eric Aragorn gets crowned king, everybody’s bowing to him, and he looks to the hobbits and he says, my friends, you bow to no one. Oh my god, that gives me chills every time I love, love, love that movie.

Doesn’t mean anything. But what are you making it mean? What are you making that number on the scale mean about you? We have these thoughts like it’s not working. I’m a failure. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. I’ll never lose weight. But none of this is true unless you make it true.

None of this is true unless you believe it. You always have a choice in what you believe about yourself. Right? If you believe it It’s not working, you’ll find evidence that it’s not working like a number on a scale, it went up, and so you quit. If you believe you’ll never lose weight, you won’t, promise you.

If you believe you’re a failure, you will always fail. Always. I hope you’re starting to see that this all sounds pretty insane. If you’re experiencing any of this drama, and I know we all have at some point or another if you’re having a good day or a bad day, and you’re determining your self-worth, based on some arbitrary number on a $29 bathroom scale, we’ve got to fix this. Okay, we have to fix this.

The scale is just a measuring device. There are other measuring devices out there. Like if you really want to know about body composition, you can do girth measurements, where you measure your waist and arms and thighs, you do some calculations, you can do skinfold thickness measurements, bioelectrical impedance, hydrostatic weighing, like a bod pod, you can do a DEXA scan, all of these things will give you data. They’re all just numbers. Again, they don’t mean anything about you.

But having this info can help you to make decisions about what’s working, what’s working with your nutrition and exercise program, and what isn’t. But that’s all I can do. It can’t tell you whether you’re a good person or a bad person, it can’t determine if you’re going to have a good day or a bad day. Why do we do this to ourselves?

What do we do about this, though? Like, how do we eliminate the scale drama? So the first thing I’ll tell you is just stop it, stop doing it. Stop making that number on the scale mean something about you, it doesn’t mean anything about you. Okay, it’s just a number. It’s just data. And we’ll talk about this in a minute, like what we can do with that data, but just stop making it mean something, okay?

So here’s how we do it like, this is where people will disagree with me. My suggestion to you is this, weigh yourself every single day, do it at the same time every day, record your weight in a log or a journal or an app, whatever is easy for you.

And then you’re going to this stuff is going to come up, you’re going to feel disappointed, frustrated, depressed, whatever, just sit back and like, let that stuff come up. Okay, it will come up, and that’s fine.

But here’s what I want you to understand. This is important. Every single day, your weight will fluctuate every single day. It always will from now until the end of time, your weight will go up, and it will go down every single day. You just have to accept this. I have never seen anybody lose weight, whether it was five pounds, or 50 pounds, or 100 pounds, and I’ve helped people lose all that kind of weight; I’ve never seen it just go straight down from one day to the next.

Always down, down, down down. Never ever, ever works that way. Okay, so let’s just accept this. I’ve been recording my weight every day for like a year now. And it still goes up and down. One to three pounds every single day. But I’ve maintained the same weight for months and months and months.

Like it’s just not a problem. But it does go up and it goes down and it goes up and it goes down. Sometimes I know why sometimes I have no idea why. And at first, it used to freak me out. It’s like, oh, my gosh, you went up. What does this mean? And maybe it’s not working? Maybe I need to change something. But then it goes down again. And I’m like, oh, okay, good. Yeah.

But then it just keeps happening and keeps happening and keeps happening. And you’re like, what? A year later, it still happens every single day. I still write down my weight every single morning. Do you think I make it mean anything now? Heck, no, I do not. It means nothing. Your weight will fluctuate every single day.

So what let’s just embrace it, let’s just accept this fact. Okay. And it has to do with water retention, whether you’re dehydrated or not hormonal changes, hormonal responses, and a slew of other things that I just can’t explain. But just know that it’s normal. It is perfectly normal for the scale to go up and down for your way to go up and down.

So instead of avoiding the scale, here’s my advice to you embrace it. Instead of sneaking up on the scale, face it head-on every single day, and build up some resilience to it. I promise you, if you do this every single day, you’re gonna see that it’s totally normal for that number to go up and down.

And losing weight is never linear. It’ll always go up and down. Alright, always, always, always; don’t avoid it. Let’s start accepting it. Just create some acceptance around that. And it takes repetition, you just have to keep doing it. Now, of course, you have to deal with the drama. Right? The drama will still be there in the beginning, it’ll get better, but you’re going to have to deal with it, right?

So step one is to just weigh yourself every day, except the fact that your weight will fluctuate every single day, it should trend down, if you’re trying to lose weight, you’re doing it the right way, the way that I recommend. Everybody that works with me, they trend down, it goes up and down, but they’re trending down.

We don’t gain weight. You know, in this nutrition regimen that I help people with, they don’t gain weight, we can keep ratcheting that weight down. But it does go up and down. But over time, it’s trending down. Okay. So step one, weigh yourself every day.

Step two, deal with the drama, get the drama out of your head, and get it onto a piece of paper. Right, think about what you’re making this number mean? What does it mean to you? What’s coming up for you? What do you? What stories are you telling yourself about this? What thoughts and feelings are coming up for you?

Oh, it’s depressing. It’s not working, I’m frustrated, like, Whatever, whatever is coming up, just write it all down, get it all down on the page, we’re creating massive awareness, here’s what we’re doing.

Okay, you’re gonna start to see all these negative thoughts, all these negative emotions you’re experiencing around the scale, you’re gonna see all the drama. And you’re gonna see what your brain is doing. And once you see what your brain is doing, all those stories are making up about this number and what it means about you and doesn’t mean about you, then you can start to deal with it right?

But you have to get it all out. First, you got to see what you’re thinking, right? You got to see what you’re feeling, get it out on the page, and then ask yourself, is this true? Is any of this true? Chances are no, it’s not true.

Also, ask yourself this question. This is a good one. This is a powerful question. What else could this mean about me? So maybe my weight went up? What does that mean? What else could it mean? If it doesn’t mean, it’s not working? What else could it mean? Maybe it means losing weight will take a little more time than I originally thought. Maybe it means that I’m a normal human being.

Maybe it means that I’m committed to making this work no matter what, even if it does go up every now and then. Maybe it means I need to change something. Oh, now we’re onto something here. Okay. We want to use the scale as a tool. I encourage people to weigh themselves every day, create awareness, and see that your weight will fluctuate over time. But then we also use it as a tool to make changes, right.

So if you hit some sort of stall and your weight loss, and you’re trying to break through a stall, and by the way, a true plateau in weight loss is like if you stay at the same number for like two straight weeks. Usually, if you’re at the same number for a couple of days, that’s not a plateau.

People tell me this all the time. They’re like, my weight hasn’t changed in three days, I’ve hit a plateau. I’m like, no, you haven’t. Let’s give it two weeks. And then we change something. Okay. So if you hit a stall, a true stall, you know, where it’s like two weeks and nothing changes, then we need to make a change, then we’re going to change something, right?

We can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results, right? We got to make some changes. So we use the scales feedback. But we can’t see this, this change if we weigh ourselves, you know, once a week or once a month, we won’t be able to keep track of these things, right?

So if we don’t see any changes in two weeks, we’ll change what we eat. We’re changing our macros. We’re changing how much we’re eating, how often we’re eating, what times are eating, whatever we need to change, we’ll make changes.

I’m always tweaking my clients’ nutrition regimen when we hit some sort of stall, and we know this will happen. I know it will happen. It happens with every single person, I expect it. It’s all part of the process. You know, my favorite thing with clients? They probably hate it. But it’s like, this is all a fun experiment, isn’t it? But it’s true. It’s just a fun experiment.

There’s not one solution that works for everyone. So we keep working on it. We keep tweaking things, we keep making changes until we get the results we’re after. We never ever, ever give up. We always use that data as feedback and then we course correct. This is why it’s so important to weigh yourself every day.

You got to notice these trends, and then we can make changes accordingly. If you weigh yourself once a month or whatever, it’s just not enough data. Right? It’s just not going to tell us the whole story. So we want the data so we can, like, you know, do science, you know, this is basically like how we do science where we have a hypothesis, we set up an experiment, we test it, we measure our results, and then we make changes. And we try a different experiment.

Right? There’s no drama in science. There’s no crying in baseball, there’s no drama in science, right? Here’s what I want you to do instead of all the drama. So let’s say we’ve started weighing ourselves every day, we’re starting to get used to it. You know, you start writing down all these feelings that are coming up, you start getting used to that, like you’re starting to, like, see what’s happening with your mind.

And you’re starting to, you know, have a little bit of resilience around all this stuff. We also want to focus on all the other things. Let’s forget about the scale for a minute. Right, your weight going down is just one indicator that you’re becoming healthier. It’s one data point, what about all the other stuff?

You know, we tend to focus just on weight, how much we weigh, but your weight is often the last thing to change. Like there are a number of cool things happening in your body hormones being regulated, blood sugars leveling out, insulin levels coming down. Fat is being used as an energy source. All these things are happening, these amazing changes in your body.

Losing weight is usually the last thing to change. So let’s focus on some of the nonscale victories. You know, you’re feeling better, you’re less bloated, you’re less inflamed, you have more energy, you’re sleeping better. Running is getting easier, your workouts are improving, you’re starting to run faster, and your endurance is improving.

You’re recovering faster from these harder workouts. Your clothes are fitting better, looser, starting to get a little loose, you’re not so hungry all the time. You have improved focus and concentration, maybe you just feel happier. Maybe you just feel better about yourself. These are all amazing, healthy changes.

But we just tend to focus on the scale and then we create all this drama around it. So I want you to stop it with all the scale drama. Okay, just stop it. And hope you still love me. I mean, sometimes I gotta drop a little bit of tough love on you guys. But I hope you still can love me through this stuff.

Stop it with the scale drama. Weigh yourself every day, just get used to it right accept the fact that your weight will fluctuate every day. This is normal, it means you’re a normal human being. How about that doesn’t mean anything negative about you at all. You’re beautiful, you’re worthy, you’re more than good enough. You’re amazing. Focus on the good stuff. Okay. As always, lots of love to every single one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

57. How to Make Healthy Eating a Way of Life

By

Probably the number one issue people struggle with when it comes to healthy eating is sticking with it! They do great for a few weeks or a few months but then eventually find themselves elbow-deep …

Continue Reading about 57. How to Make Healthy Eating a Way of Life →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners, I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 57 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. Today, I’m going to be talking about how to make healthy eating a way of life. Probably the biggest issue that people struggle with when it comes to healthy eating is sticking with it.

They do great for a few weeks or maybe a few months. But then eventually they find themselves elbow-deep in the edible cookie dough and they have no idea how they got there. Well, here’s the thing. We all have the ability to make healthy eating a way of life. For some people, it’s no problem for others, it seems virtually impossible.

So today I’m going to talk about what’s going on here. Why it’s easy for some people to make healthy eating a way of life and why for others, it’s really hard. I’m also going to offer some practical tips to help you start making that shift that mental shift from the temporary diet mentality to the permanent way of life mentality. Cool. All right, I’m gonna get into all that in just a minute.

If you haven’t already, come check us out on Facebook, we have this awesome Running Lean community on Facebook. And next month, this is February 2021, we’re going to be doing a 28-day low carb challenge. So our focus for the month will be on reducing problematic carbs. So we’re talking about sugar and refined grains.

Mostly, this is not a no carbs deal here. You know, this isn’t like keto month or anything like that. What we’re trying to do is just see what it feels like to ditch the really problematic carbs for a couple of weeks or four weeks if you decide to do that. So I’m going to be offering some training each week in the Facebook group, during the challenge period here, tell you how to do this simply and safely.

And we’ll also be offering encouragement for one another. We’ll support each other through this whole month. Okay, so join us in the Facebook group. And this Sunday, this will be the 31st of January, I’m going to do a kickoff call. So our weekly coaching calls that I normally do on Sundays, this one will be all about kicking off our 28 day low-carb challenge, cool.

It’s gonna be fun. It might open your eyes to some different ways of doing things and I think it could change your life for the better. So if you’re interested, just come check us out on Facebook, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook.

Here’s a recent five-star review of the Running Lean podcast from Rudy Root. Love the name by the way. And Rudy Root says, “Five stars. Super awesome podcast. I’ve been listening since last summer and find so much inspiration from this podcast. I’ve actually listened to many of the podcasts twice. Because there aren’t many great podcasts out there. So many of them sound monotone and rehearsed, but not this one. Patrick’s passion comes through and his sincerity. I’ve learned so much about journaling, mindset, food fasting, and of course running. I’m impressed that Patrick shares so much knowledge for free. The Facebook group is also worth checking out. I enjoy the Sunday live videos too. Again, so much you can learn from on this podcast.”

Thank you, Rudy wrote for that awesome review. And if you feel moved, you can share the love as well. If you enjoy the podcast, it would mean so much to me. If you would just take a moment and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It’s just a nice way for you to say thank you. Cool, awesome.

Alright, let’s get into this topic today. I’m excited about this. Because this is something that is very near and dear to my heart and this is how to make healthy eating a way of life. So the problem that most people face is that you know, they have this issue, they’re like overweight, okay, or they don’t feel good.

Maybe they have inflammation, bloating, gas, health problems, all kinds of, you know, metabolic issues, right. And so, the answer is just to change how you’re eating right? Change your diet, do something different. You know, for most people just switching from the standard American diet to literally anything else is going to be is going to, you know, help you to improve in some ways, okay?

But whatever it is that you adopt, whatever healthy eating plan that you get on – vegetarian pescatarian, Paleo, the South Beach diet, whatever it is. I mean, you know that you need to do these things, right, you know what you need to do, okay, and so you do it.

So you start just taking some action, you start changing how you eat, you’re changing the types of foods you’re eating, and maybe how often you’re eating, okay. And for most people, it starts out pretty good, like a few weeks go by, you might be able to stick with it, you start to feel better, and you might even lose some weight.

But then something happens, something always happens by the way, and you find yourself you know, gorging on cupcakes, or whatever your bingeable food of choice is. The edible cookie dough is so hilarious, I think it’s funny that they even make such a thing. It’s like, we know you guys like to eat raw cookie dough. So we’re just going to make that just eat that, okay.

But what happens is, you’re able to stick to it, most people are able to stick to some sort of healthy eating plan for a few weeks or a couple of months. But then they quit, they can’t do it anymore. Okay. And a lot of times, they blame that diet or that diet doesn’t work.

And they’re not really taking responsibility for their own actions. Okay. And I’m gonna get into why it’s hard to take responsibility for our own actions and why we don’t do that very well, especially when it comes to sticking with a nutrition or exercise plan. But the core problem, though, is that after a few weeks, or a few months, most people quit.

Now, I have to say this, like not all diets are the same. When it comes to changing your diet changing what you’re eating, some diets are, are much harder to stick to, in particular, like caloric restriction diets. So any diet that reduces calories is going to put your body into this kind of starvation mode, and you end up being most people end up being very hungry all the time, like overly hungry, and they end up getting to a point where they just start binging on junk food again.

Also, these caloric restriction diets tend to slow your metabolism down. So you’ll end up burning fewer calories. So not only are you hungry all the time, but your metabolism actually starts to slow down to match what you’re taking in. And so the weight loss tends to stall and kind of just plateau after a little bit.

So any diet that makes you super hungry, though, is going to be very hard to stick to, okay, it’s almost impossible to stick to a diet and expect to lose weight if you’re like voraciously, hungry all the time. And most diets work on some principle, some version of a caloric restriction.

Okay, so this is why most typical diets are so hard to make a way of life, right? For most people, it’s not impossible, just it’s very difficult to stick to a caloric restriction type of diet for any long period of time. It’s very hard to make this a way of life for sure.

Okay, well, the type of diet does matter. There’s bigger issues at play here. Some people do well with caloric restriction, and they can do that for their whole life. And that’s fine. And most people have an issue with that, though. So the things I want to talk about here are the so the first thing is this idea of the diet mentality.

The diet mentality is this underlying principle that what you’re doing is temporary. I’m going on a diet, that that just sounds like you’re doing something very short-term, right? You know, I’m going on a diet, and then I’ll go off the diet. You know, it’s it doesn’t sound permanent, right?

Whether you consciously are even aware of this or not, when you say I’m going on a diet, it kind of implies that you’re making changes for a short period of time, and then you’ll be able to go at some point and to go back to doing things the way you used to do. Right. This is sort of the unspoken rule, I guess you could say, or principle behind most diets. It’s this mentality that it’s temporary, okay?

There’s also the mentality that it has to be hard. And then it has to be uncomfortable, and you have to suffer your way through it. You know, and once you suffer long enough, you know, maybe you get to your goal weight, then you can go back to not suffering anymore and eating comfortably again.

So eating all the sugar, all the refined grains, all the comfort, food, all this stuff that got you overweight in the first place. Yeah, just go back to eating that stuff. Again, this is the mentality of a diet, right? It’s temporary, it’s super hard, you’re going to suffer. And then at some point, you can just go back to doing things the way you used to do and get back to being comfortable.

Again, you know, those things that you used to do that got you 40 or 50 pounds overweight in the first place. Do you see the kind of ridiculousness of this way of thinking, the way that I do? Good, I hope you do. This mentality, it just does not work and never has worked. And it never will.

To think you can go back to your old ways, the stuff that got you, you know, metabolically unhealthy, overweight, whatever it is, to think you can go back to doing that, and not like gain all the weight back and be become unhealthy, again, is bananas. It just is totally bananas. I don’t understand it.

But a lot of people think this, even people I work with sometimes, you know, we change their diet, we get them where they’re starting to get healthy. And they have this thought that like it’s temporary, they can go back to doing the old things. Again, I missed that way of eating. Of course, you do. That way of eating is amazing.

It feels great to eat pasta, bread, and sugar all the time. Like that stuff is amazing. But it got you sick, and it got you super overweight and unhealthy. You can’t expect to go back to doing that and not suffer the consequences. Okay. So remember, nothing changes if nothing changes, you can’t expect different results by doing the same things over and over again.

Trust me, I’ve tried this. I tried this for years and years, and it kept gaining weight. I was like, maybe if I just try this harder. If I just eat more carbs and more fruit and exercise more, it’ll finally work for me. And it just was never working. Maybe if I count my calories harder, maybe if I kept three apps that were tracking and a spreadsheet for tracking all of my macros that would help, and like no, this stuff was working right.

And I just kept gaining weight. I finally had to throw my hands in the air at some point and just say, okay, I’m going to try anything, whatever I need to do, it’s whatever I’m doing is not working, I need to try something different. Okay. So my point here is that you, you can’t get into this mentality of diet, this is like temporary, and you can go back to doing what you used to do, that is not going to work. All right?

What happens though, when you’re entrenched in this temporary diet mentality, you’re just bound to fail, right? Your chances of quitting are so much higher. Why? Because you’re not in it for the long haul, you’re thinking in terms of a few weeks or a few months. And guess what, that’s exactly what you get, you can do it for a few weeks, or a few months, and then you quit.

So this thought that you have whether it’s conscious or not, this thoughts that you have is going to lead to that outcome of quitting in a few weeks or a few months. Even though you’re not really aware of it. And you may blame the diet, you may just say, Oh, that diet doesn’t work. No, this is what you’re thinking about it. Okay.

So what’s the alternative? What’s the alternative to this, like, temporary diet mentality? You know, the alternative is the way of life mentality, right? You’ve got to change your whole mindset around healthy eating. You have to let go of that whole old diet mentality, idea, that temporary idea, and you have to adopt this new way of life mentality.

Why does this work? Well, when you make healthy eating a way of life you’re no longer in this temporary mindset. Okay, you have a mindset of permanence, right? Healthy eating becomes who you are, it becomes what you do. You’ll have a much easier time sticking to it because in your mind, you’re never going back to eating the way that you used to eat again.

You’ll never quit because quitting isn’t an option, you have this deep desire at the core of your being to be as healthy as possible. And it’s a for life kind of a deal. So you develop this unshakable determination.

Think about it this way, like, it’s very similar to when you’re training for a marathon, right? There’s something very powerful, and deep inside you that when you’re training for a marathon, it drives you, there’s something inside you that drives you to train, to do all those long, hard runs to get up early on the Saturday mornings to run in the rain and the cold and the snow and all that other stuff, right?

You’ll do it because there’s something like visceral that’s driving you, right? No matter what I’m sticking to my marathon training schedule. That’s what I mean by unshakable determination. We want to apply that same unshakable determination to healthy eating, no matter what happens,

I’m sticking to my healthy eating plan. No matter what happens, I’m going to make this work. For the long haul. I’m in this 100% I’m committed. That’s where we want to get to. Okay. So how do we do that? Like, how do you develop that unshakable determination? Well, really, it involves not just changing what you do, because when you just change what you do, you’re changing your actions, your behaviors, kind of your habits, right?

This is just surface level stuff, right? You have to go deeper than that. You have to like, get to the core of who you are, right? You have to make healthy eating part of your identity. Okay? You got to make healthy eating just a way of life. Right? It’s just what you do. It’s just who you are. It’s part of your identity.

So when we talk about identity, what do we mean by that? Identity is everything that comes after the words I am. So your identity is who you are at the deepest core layer of your being. And we all have identities, we all have several identities. Some of the identities I have are I’m a man, I’m a father, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a coach. I’m a hopeless romantic. I’m a personal trainer. I’m an expert in sports nutrition. I’m a runner, I am a runner, this is part of my identity. You can probably relate to this one, you probably have that same identity. I am a runner.

Now, this has not always been the case. For me. I didn’t always use to be a runner. I used to be the fat guy. I was sick. I smoked cigarettes, I drank alcohol, I was super unhealthy. That was my identity. I was a smoker, drinker, and eater of junk food. You know, at one point, I’m a smoker. That was my identity. You know, and I couldn’t imagine not being a smoker.

And honestly, I tried to quit a million times. And that never worked. My identity was even when I was trying to quit my identity was tied around this idea of like, I’m a smoker who’s trying to quit. That was like who I was. It wasn’t until I shifted my identity to I’m a nonsmoker then I was able to quit for good.

I decided that I was going to be a different person. I was going to be a nonsmoker. In fact, I had to be I had to feel that at my core that had to be part of my identity in order for me to quit for good. I am a runner was not part of my identity until I was like almost 40 years old. Now, I can’t imagine not being a runner.

Honestly, I cannot imagine having the identity of someone who’s a non-runner. Being a runner is just deeply ingrained into who I am. I’ve made running and helping runners figure out their diet, their nutrition, I’ve helped runners take control of their health I help runners adopt a more powerful mindset. My whole career is built upon this core identity of mine that I am a runner.

This is just such an ingrained part of who I am. Same thing with I am a healthy eater, and I didn’t used to be, you know, junk food. I was overweight. I was obese. I was sick. I had cancer. And all these things were part of who I was, I was like this, I didn’t care what I ate was a human garbage can just eat anything, just throw it all in there, whatever.

And again, I didn’t really take control of my eating around until I was around 40 years old. And then it got better, you know, and it got out of hand again, and I had to take control again about a year ago. But today, I’m, I have this identity of someone who is a healthy eater.

This is really, really ingrained in who I am. And it kind of colors, everything that I do and how I go through my day, and who I interact with, and the things I do for my work and everything else. Today, healthy eating is not just what I do, it’s who I am, I can’t imagine being someone who doesn’t eat healthy.

So this is deeply rooted in the core of my being this is a deeply rooted core identity of mine being a healthy eater, right. It’s the foundation of like all this work that I do, it’s what Running Lean is based on. Okay.

So when I talk about identity, I’m really talking about those things that are just part of who you are at your core. All right. Now, you might have an identity, that’s kind of keeping you stuck, you might be carrying around this identity of someone who can never lose weight, you might have the identity of someone who can never stick to a diet, you might have the identity of someone who always struggles.

I hear this all the time, oh, I’m, you know, I just always struggle with my weight, I’ve always struggled, this is just who I am. That’s like so deeply part of your core, that trying to lose the weight or changing how you’re eating is going to be extremely difficult.

And these thoughts that you have these beliefs that you have about yourself, they may be buried in your subconscious, you may not even be aware that you have this identity, but it’s like the ultimate form of self-sabotage, you’re never going to make progress, you’re never going to be able to stick to anything, any healthy way of eating.

If you have this identity of like, I always struggle, I can never lose weight. I’m someone who just this never works for me, you have to make a shift at the identity level, if you want to get different results. And that identity level, this is where your beliefs are this is your worldview, your self image or self worth your values, your judgments about yourself and others.

That’s where all of these things reside, this is all these things kind of makeup who you are at your core. Okay? In order for you to make healthy eating a way of life, it has to become a part of your identity. And I love this. I was talking to a client last night, Autumn, and she shared with me that she has been journaling lately.

And she wrote that, you know, healthy eating is what I do. This is who I am. And she shared that with me. And I was like, yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. This is what I do. This is who I am. When you have that mentality, there’s no question of sticking to it or not. It’s just what you do. It’s just who you are.

I’ve just been reading this amazing book, by James Clear, called Atomic Habits. And people have been recommending that I read this book for years. And I’m like, yeah, I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it. And finally, I’m like, okay, let’s start reading this book. And really, the stuff he talks about in there is amazing. And it really lines up with a lot of stuff that I teach here, too.

But he says, “The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.” It’s one thing to say, I’m the type of person who wants this. And it’s something very different to say, I’m the type of person who is this. So, again, in order to make healthy eating a way of life, it has to become part of your core identity.

So how do you do that? Good question. How do you make healthy eating part of your identity? So I’m going to give you a couple of practical steps that you can actually take care of. Okay. The first is this, the first thing you have to do is you have to commit. You have to go all in on this idea that I’m just going to make healthy eating part of who I am. You have to make that commitment to yourself. You have to go all-in on yourself.

I am now a healthy eater, period. This is who I am, period, make the commitment that you’re going to stick with, this doesn’t matter what happens, you’re sticking with this. It’s like making an unwavering promise to yourself, right? This is who I am, this is what I do. So that’s number one. You have to make that commitment and you have to really feel it.

What a lot of people do is they say, yeah, I want to eat healthy for the rest of my life. Yeah, sure. And they kind of half-ass that commitment. Well, guess what, you’re gonna get half-assed results from that. Okay, so you got to be you got to full ask this commitment. why don’t why isn’t that a phrase? I want to full-ass this thing? Anyway, things that make you go, that’s weird. Okay, step one, make the commitment has to be like, you have to go all in on yourself.

Number two, you got to spend some time visualizing this new identity. All right. If part of your identity if you want part of your identity to be I am a healthy eater. What does that look like for you? You have to spend some time thinking about it, visualizing it. What does your life look like? What do you look like? What does your typical day look like? What do you do? What do you eat? When do you eat? How much do you eat? What’s now important to you? Now that you’re a healthy eater? This is a lifestyle for you what’s important to you? Maybe the most important thing to ask yourself is how do you feel? How does it feel to have this identity?

I am a healthy eater. How does it feel to be a healthy eater? When you visualize who you want to be when you visualize this identity, it’s like a mental rehearsal for the reality that you want for yourself. Right? So you mentally rehearse the reality that you want. And when you do that, you create that reality for yourself.

Dr. Joe Dispenza, amazing, amazing guy. By the way, if you’re not familiar with his work, definitely read, Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself. This is an amazing book. But anyway, he says, “According to research on mental rehearsal visualization, once we immerse ourselves in that scene, changes begin to take place in our brain. Therefore, each time we do this, we’re laying down new neurological tracks in the present moment, that literally change our brain to look like the brain of our future.”

In other words, the brain starts to look like the future we want to create has already happened. This is such a powerful, powerful thing, okay, visualization changes your brain to basically look like the future that you want to create. And when you do that, that future that you want to create for yourself begins to take shape for you. Okay.

Elite athletes do this all the time they rehearse the race, they’re about to run in their mind first, and then when they go to do it, it’s like it’s already happened. Basketball players do this, they rehearse, shooting free throws, and then they get out there and they can do it more effectively. Visualize your new identity. That’s step number two.

Step number three is to start paying attention to yourdaily thoughts, your feelings, and your actions, right. These are only things that you can control in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, right? So start paying attention to them.

A great way to do this is to do some daily journaling. We’ve been talking about this all month in the Running Lean community on Facebook. We’ve done this journal challenge for January, people have been getting some great results. You start paying attention to what you’re thinking about, you start paying attention to your emotions, and you start paying attention to the actions you’re taking.

Right because you’re the things you think about all the time, you’re your constant thoughts. They create your feelings, they create your emotional state, and then you take action based on your emotional state. So your thoughts lead directly to the actions that you take and the results that you get right.

For example, if you feel motivated, you might go for a run. If you feel motivated and excited, and you feel like oh, I’m sticking to my meal plan here. You might eat a nice kale salad and a piece of salmon. Okay? Now if you’re feeling crappy if you feel sad, you might sit on the couch. You might binge-watch some Netflix you might eat a whole large pizza by yourself and cry. I may have done that. Right.

So your emotional state kind of drives your actions. So pay attention to what you’re constantly thinking because your thoughts really create that emotional state. And one great way of doing that is just doing some journaling each day, write down what you’re thinking about, just get all your thoughts out of your head and onto the page.

And so pay attention to what you’re thinking about, then pay attention to how you’re feeling. And it really helps to just give your emotions a name, instead of just like, oh, I’m depressed, I’m down, I’m blue. I don’t know, I’m overwhelmed, whatever, whatever state you’re in, try to name it, I’m, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m lonely, I’m sad. I’m bored. I’m stressed. Try to name those emotions and try to find out, like, what thoughts are causing those feelings, okay.

And then look at the actions that you’re taking right in and start paying attention. I’m not talking like you don’t have to change all this stuff. But start paying attention to your thoughts, start paying attention to how you feel. And then really start paying attack attention to the actions you’re taking.

Start taking aligned actions, like is eating a large pizza by yourself moving you closer to or further away from your goals? I’m gonna say probably moving further away. That’s just something you can say, oh, that’s interesting. I wonder why I’m doing that. Right. So just make sure that the things you’re doing or not doing are in alignment with this identity that you want for yourself.

Like, if your identity if you want your identity to be I am a healthy eater, then you know, just sitting around watching Netflix and eating a large pizza by herself, is probably not going to be in alignment with that identity that you want for yourself, okay? So make sure you’re taking aligned action.

What you do should be moving you closer to who you want to be. When being healthy, becomes part of your identity, you gain confidence in yourself, you build trust with yourself, and sticking to it becomes natural. It’s just it’s what you do. Remember, being healthy is not a destination you’re trying to get to this isn’t a temporary deal. Being healthy is a way of life.

Being healthy has to become part of the very essence of who you are. Like Adam said, This is what I do. This is who I am. That’s what we want. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you got something out of it, please consider sharing it with a friend. You guys totally got this. Lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

48. Think, Feel, and Act With Purpose

By

The only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, how they feel, or what they …

Continue Reading about 48. Think, Feel, and Act With Purpose →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 48 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. How are you doing today? I am doing fantastic. Today I want to talk about how to think, feel and act with purpose. So we’re still talking about our Running Lean manifesto, the principles that we choose to live our life by here in the Running Lean community.

And here’s something interesting, the only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, you cannot control how they feel, and you cannot control what they do. No matter how hard you try.

The problem is that most people don’t understand how all this works. Most people just feel terrible all the time. And they blame it on other people. They blame it on the outside circumstances, they blame it on everything and everyone except for it themselves.

But here’s the thing, if you want anything different in your life, anything different than what you already have, you have to look at what is actually creating those results in your life. If you’re getting good results or bad results in your life, whatever it is you’re getting, it’s always been created by your own thoughts, feelings and actions.

For example, losing weight and keeping it off. It requires that you learn how to think, feel, and act with purpose. So don’t worry, I’m gonna explain how all of this works today here on the podcast, so that you can start applying this to your own life so you can start getting the results that you really want.

But first, come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing community of runners called the Running Lean community. It is a supportive group, energetic group and encouraging group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast, we got this big challenge that we just started on Thanksgiving Day.

And it’s called running through the holidays, it’s not too late for you to get in on the action. Just come and join us. What we’re doing is we’re running at least a mile a day, every day from Thanksgiving Day, through New Year’s Day. Running is an amazing stress reliever. And who doesn’t want a stress reliever this time of the year? We could all use a little reduction in stress.

So come check us out the Running Lean community on Facebook, join us for the running through the holidays challenge is going to be fun, we are all doing it together. We’re challenging ourselves to show up every day and run at least a mile from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. It’ll be fun, come check it out.

Okay, like I said, we are working our way through the Running Lean manifesto. And today I want to talk about, think, feel and act with purpose. So remember the Running Lean manifesto, this is a set of guiding principles that we can live our life by. And if you adopt these principles into your life, if you use these principles as your north star, then you can have an amazing life.

That’s it. It’s that simple. Just do what I say. You can have an amazing life. It really is that simple. It’s not easy. It’s simple. But so today we’re talking about how to think, feel and act with purpose because most of us don’t understand that we can do this and that this is an option for us.

I think this is absolutely life changing. This one principle alone has changed my life more than anything else I have done in my life like this has changed so much for me. And I’m gonna get into why and how this works and everything in just a minute.

But I just want you to know that of all the principles I’ve been talking about here. If you just adopt this one principle, I guarantee you that you will start getting different, more positive results in your life, like your life will continue to get infinitely better if you adopt this one principle and if you practice it and if you get good at it, okay. And the principle is to think, feel and act with purpose. If you get good at doing that, you’re unstoppable, you become super powerful.

So here’s how this works. Here, I’m gonna break this down a little bit for you here. Most people live their life, as if life is just happening to them. Like they have no control, like they are living at the effect of other people and other circumstances. They have no control over their thoughts. It feels their thoughts feel automatic, they have no control over their emotions, their feelings feel automatic.

And a lot of times they feel like they don’t even have control over what they do. So a lot of people will say, I don’t even know I just started eating all the Oreos, it’s like, no, you know, you chose to do that, like you actually have control over that. But they feel like they have no self control.

So for most people, their thoughts, feelings and actions feel out of control, like they are not in control of those things. Most people feel like they can’t get what they want. And so they blame everything but themselves. They blame other people, or circumstances, they have reasons, they have stories, they have excuses for why things just don’t go their way, or why they can’t stick to their diet plan or why they can’t stick to their running schedule.

Most people just think if they could control all these things outside of themselves, if people would just do what I think they should do, if work wasn’t so stressful all the time. You know, if everything around me would just like fall into place, then I could feel good about myself, then I could get the results that I want.

And most people live their whole lives this way, trying to manipulate control, change everything but themselves. And it’s frustrating, because it doesn’t work. The only thing this does is it causes you to feel terrible, all the time. If you try to spend your whole life trying to controlling the uncontrollable, the things that you absolutely cannot control.

If you spend your whole life trying to manipulate and control those things, you are just going to spend your whole life feeling miserable. Right, the only things you can control are your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That’s it, you cannot control anything else, period. End of story.

When you accept this, when you accept this universal truth it is incredibly freeing because it changes everything. It changes how you see things, it changes how you think about things, it changes how you feel about things, changes what you do, and it absolutely will change the results that you get in your life.

It changes how you experience other people, and how you experience everything that happens in the world around you. When you learn how to take control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions, anything becomes possible for you, there’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing that you aren’t willing to experience.

So I’ve talked about this before, but I want to break this down a little bit for you. So that we have a good understanding of the foundation of how this all works. So we have these things that happen in our life. We call these things circumstances, circumstances, things that happen in our life are always, always neutral.

Nothing can happen in your life, and have any kind of meaning to you until you assign meaning to it. Nothing happens in the world that affects you unless you first have a thought about it. Circumstances: the things that are happening outside of you, you know, stuff your boss says at work, stuff your spouse says to you, what the kids are doing.

None of that stuff means anything until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. Your circumstances are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until you tell yourself a story about what this thing that’s happening, what that means to you, okay? This is very important to understand.

Your circumstances are always 100% of the time neutral until you have a thought about it. Okay, now, once you have a thought about something, then that thing has meaning for you. You know, if your spouse speaks to you, and says some words to you that cause you to feel, you know, upset or whatever. And then you’re assigning meaning to what those words mean to you, okay?

But you know, the circumstances that this person is just saying words, okay? But once you have a thought, then this thing has meaning to you. Your thoughts are just sentences that you’re saying in your mind about something.

That’s it, we have like 60,000 thoughts a day. So basically, you’re saying like 60,000 sentences to yourself, in your mind over and over again. So your thoughts about your circumstances, you’re gonna have all kinds of thoughts about what’s going on in your life. We do we think about the past, we think about the future, we think about what’s happening right now.

We are cars, our minds are constantly racing, we constantly have all these thoughts. And they are always your thoughts. Your thoughts are based on your own experiences, your own beliefs, your past experiences, your values, your model of the world, we all see the world differently based on our beliefs, past experiences, our own values, all that stuff.

We all create our own version of reality, if you will. So your thoughts about a circumstance might be different than somebody else’s. Which is the truth? Is it yours or theirs? I love this example of two people standing at the ocean, you know, the waves are crashing, and they’re both standing on the beach, and they’re looking over the ocean.

And one person looks at the ocean, and it fills them with fear. Because this person had a near drowning accident, when they were a child, they almost drowned in the ocean. And so the ocean is a dangerous place to them, the ocean brings a feeling of dread and fear.

The person standing next to this person surfs every day and loves the ocean, it’s there. It’s the most magical place for them, it’s where they feel the most alive. So there’s these two examples of two different people experiencing the exact same thing: the ocean is neutral.

But for one, it has a completely different meaning. The ocean is a dangerous, terrible place and should be avoided at all costs. And for the other person experiencing the exact same ocean. It is beautiful, magical, and fills them with delight, and should be utilized every single day and shouldn’t be experienced every single day.

So this is how we each have our own model of the world, we each have our own version of reality. So your thoughts about a circumstance will be different than others. So which is true, yours or theirs? Well, both, both are true for them. And neither one is true. There isn’t one universal truth.

So if you believe it, then it’s true for you. So if you really believe something, if you really believe the ocean is dangerous, then that is going to be your truth. That is what’s true for you. If this other person believes with their whole heart that the ocean is amazing and enjoys it, then that’s what they’re going to believe. And that’s what’s true for them. Okay.

So this is just our thoughts. We have circumstances that happen in our life, and they don’t mean anything really until we assign meaning to them. Okay? Now, once we have thoughts about our circumstances, we will typically get an emotion based on those thoughts.

So your thoughts cause your feelings, your thoughts cause you to experience an emotion, always, you cannot experience an emotion without a thought first, every emotion you feel is first created by a thought in your mind. So you think a thought and then you feel something, you think a thought in your mind, and then you feel it in your body.

That’s where we experience our emotions, we feel them in our body. So you don’t feel something without a thought about it. You might experience something you have a quick thought about and then you have this emotion, it happens very quickly. You think it’s like automatic, you think it’s the circumstance outside of you that’s causing this emotional response. But it’s really a thought in your head.

It’s always a thought in your head that’s causing your emotional response. It’s never what that person is saying or doing or anything else like that. It’s always a thought about it. This is really critical to understand because you want to catch yourself when you have an emotion.

When you start to feel like a negative emotion. Like let’s say you’re feeling stress. quickly ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What is the thought that I’m having that’s causing me to feel this way? And just start to create some awareness around that. I’ll talk more about that in just a minute about what we can do to start to change some of these thoughts and feelings that we have, okay?

So circumstances in our life are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until we assign meaning to them. And we do that by a thought we have a thought about something. And those thoughts cause us to feel an emotion. Now our feelings, our emotions drive our actions, we always take actions based on our emotional state.

You know, if we feel motivated, we’ll probably do this thing. If we feel frustrated, we’re probably gonna do something different. We’re gonna do this thing over here. You know, if you find yourself staying in the kitchen, binge eating Oreos, and you can’t figure out how it happened.

Know that it’s because you had some thoughts and feelings. And those thoughts and feelings are causing you to take the action of binging on Oreos, okay? It wasn’t what happened at work. It wasn’t what your spouse said to you that caused you to eat Oreos, it’s because you had thoughts and feelings about what your spouse said, or you had thoughts and things about what happened at work.

Okay, the action that you take standing there eating Oreos, might feel totally out of your control. Like it’s just happening, unconsciously. But the truth is, it’s always under your control, you just haven’t learned how to take back the control, you just haven’t learned to recognize what’s actually happening.

And this is so crucial to all this thought work is to have awareness of what’s happening, okay? Because it’s not your circumstances causing you to feel this way. It’s not, it’s not the stress at work. It’s not what’s happening at work that’s causing you to binge eat. It’s your thoughts and feelings about work.

So when you take action, you get results, every time you get some kind of result in your life, it’s because of some actions that you’re taking, okay. And if you’re taking actions based on positive emotions, you know, you’re taking actions that are probably in alignment with your goals, like sticking to your food plan, you’re sticking to your running schedule. So no matter what happens, like you’re probably going to crush those goals, because you’re, you’re sticking to those things no matter what.

But if you constantly take action from a place of negative emotion, you know, if you’re always feeling frustrated and stressed out, you’re probably going to take different actions or no action, you know, you might just go sit on the couch watching Netflix instead of run, you might just say screw it and eat all the Oreos, instead of sticking to your food plan.

Those actions you’re taking, the things you’re doing, the behaviors you’re engaging in, you’re doing because of how you feel you’re doing it based on your emotional state, which is caused by your thoughts, right?

So a lot of times, we blame our results on our circumstances. I can’t lose weight, because I have this stressful job. You know, I can’t stick to my plan, because my spouse doesn’t support me. Those things are not true. You know, your spouse might say some things or do some things, but you have control over your thoughts about those things you have control over how you feel about those things.

And then what you do, the actions that you take or don’t take, okay? Circumstances are always neutral. Until we have a thought about it, our thoughts cause our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions. And it’s from taking actions that we get results or don’t get results. Okay, so that’s how this all works.

So any kind of result that you want in your life is basically created with a thought first, you have to have a thought about it. First, whether it’s a positive result or a negative result, it’s coming from your thoughts. So here’s an example of how this all works.

I want to I know, I’m kind of like talking about these concepts. And this may be foreign to you, you may have never heard of any of this stuff before. And I want to give you an example of what this looks like. So here’s a statement that I hear all the time, like literally every day I hear this from someone.

Work is stressful. And so I can’t stick to my food plan. Work is stressful. Well, in reality work does not cause you to feel stress. Okay, it’s your thoughts about work to cause you to feel stress. Stress is an emotion, right? That’s a feeling. It’s always caused by a thought.

So what is the circumstance? What happened at work, to cause you to feel stress or you know, to cause you to choose to feel stress? Oh, well, my boss only gave me two weeks to finish this big project. Okay, so that’s the circumstance, right? The boss gave me two weeks to finish a big project.

And, okay, well, what are your thoughts about that? Well, my thoughts are that she doesn’t support me, she doesn’t care about me, she should do things differently. These are all just thoughts. Right? About the circumstance “project is due in two weeks”.

We can all agree that that is true, but doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just those thoughts that cause you to feel stress, she doesn’t care about me, she doesn’t support me, she should do things differently. Right? That’s what’s causing you to feel stressed because you have thoughts about it.

And so what do you do when you feel stressed? You get home, and you eat a bunch of Oreos, because you just don’t feel like doing this work. Because you’re all stressed out, right? Now, here’s another way of looking at this, you might have somebody else on your team that says, oh, we only have to work two weeks to get this work done. Great. I work best on a short timeline, let’s do this.

So they might feel excited. Those thoughts like “I work best on a short timeline”, that would make them feel excited and motivated, to get the work to get cracking on this project. So that would fire them up, they would start taking action right away, they start checking off things off their task list, you know, they get motivated, and they just jump right in and start doing these things.

Same exact circumstance, you have two weeks to get this project done. Two different people with different thoughts, different feelings, different actions, different results. Okay. And I hear this so, so often, you know, work is really stressful. So I can’t stick to my food plan, you know, I have all this stress at work.

So when I get home, I just don’t feel like eating anything healthy. So instead, I just open up the pantry and start eating all the Oreos. So in your mind, stress at work is causing this thing you’re eating Oreos, like that’s what’s causing it. But in reality, you are causing the stress you’re feeling based on your own thoughts about work.

And because you’re feeling stressed out, you’re choosing an action, not in alignment with your goals, you’re choosing this action of binge eating Oreos. Based on that negative emotion, that negative emotion that you created with your thoughts.

You always take action based on how you feel. And if you always feel stressed out, you’re probably gonna do a lot of binge eating, you probably never lose weight. Those are the results you’re gonna get. If you’re always stressed out, it’s probably going to be very hard for you to lose weight, right, because you can be doing a lot of emotional eating.

But when you learn to take control of your thoughts and feelings and actions, when you can feel excited, and you can feel motivated, you’ll start to do things differently. You’ll want to stick to your plan, you’ll come home and eat a salad and a piece of salmon instead of the Oreos. And you’ll start to get the results that you want.

You know, you’ll keep losing weight. This whole concept, though, of thinking, feeling and acting with purpose, it’s not the norm. I get it like this is not something we’re taught. Can you imagine, though, if we taught this to our children, like how amazing would that be?

If I had learned this, I only learned this in the last couple of years. But if I had learned this 20, 30, 40 years ago, how much different my life would be. Because since I’ve learned this, my life has changed dramatically for the better.

But we go through our whole lives thinking that we can’t control our thoughts and feelings like all this stuff is just happening to us, right? You blame the results that you get on your external circumstances, whatever good results, bad results.

And we’re always living at the effect of our surroundings. We blame others, we have all kinds of excuses why things don’t work for us. We have these stories. And when you do this, you’re just giving away all your power. You become powerless. I want you to take back your power.

And you do this by taking control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions. Stop trying to manipulate and control other people and circumstances outside of your control. That does not work. I have tried this. Believe me it does not work.

I was always blaming other people for how I felt. I was always trying to control what other people were doing or saying or thinking so that like I could feel better about myself. You know, if my wife would say, if my wife would only say these things in this way, then I’d feel better. I’d like her more, I’d feel more confident or more secure in this relationship, you know, she’d only do things this way, then I’d feel more loving to her.

But since she’s not, then you know, I’m gonna hold back, my love. I was always trying to control her, manipulate her and change what she was doing. And you know what that got me? I felt miserable all the time, didn’t change, and she never changed, she’s not going to change, you can’t change other people.

I wish we could, that would be amazing, but we can’t. But when I finally accepted this, this universal truth, that I could not change anything else, that I could control my own thoughts, feelings and action, though, when I accepted this, I was free, I started to see everything in my life differently.

It was like seeing the matrix. Like for the first time in my life, I could, I could think, thoughts that would cause me to feel positive emotions. And I would take these positive actions based on that, and I would start getting these positive results, it was crazy.

You know, like, sticking to my eating plan got way easier. You know, I couldn’t lose weight. Until I got the mindset piece right. I finally started to lose weight when I understood that my emotional eating wasn’t caused by what other people were doing. Or my stress outside of me, that I was creating all of this with my own thoughts and feelings.

But I’ve started to feel more at peace, I still do, I still feel so much more at peace now, because I understand what’s happening in my mind. And I practice this every day, I’m not perfect at it. It’s a daily practice, I’m always aware that my thoughts create my feelings. And my feelings drive my actions.

I’m always, always always aware of that. Because here’s the thing, your thoughts create the reality that you’re living in everything that you have right now in your life, or everything that you don’t have, as a result of a thought it was first a thought, like, if you think I want to run a marathon, yeah, I can do that.

I want to do that. I’m going to run a marathon, that’s going to make you feel motivated, you’re going to train consistently, and then like, bam, you’re gonna cross the finish line. Result achieved, and you did it because you kept thinking, I can do it, I want to do that. I’m going to do that.

You know, your current weight. Whatever you weigh right now, is the direct result of your thinking. Well, if you keep thinking thoughts, like ‘I can’t lose weight, it never works for me, I’m always going to be this weight, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. It’s easier for other people, I always gain the weight back.’

If you keep thinking these thoughts over and over and over again, this is going to cause you to create an emotional state for yourself. You’re just going to feel terrible, frustrated, sad, dejected, you’re going to feel like a failure. You’re going to feel like you’re not good enough. And when you feel that way, what do you do?

You got it, you come home, and you eat a whole bag of Oreos, because that’s what feels good. And that’s, you know, why bother? And then when you do that, when you eat the Oreos, instead of eating what you know you should be eating, What results do you get, you get the exact results, you kept focusing on those thoughts.

You kept thinking over and over again, that’s what you get, it is hard. It doesn’t work for you. You can’t lose the weight, you always gain the weight back. You can’t do it, it doesn’t work. So what I want you to do, is I want you to just start being aware of your thoughts.

Anytime you experience an emotion anytime you experience a negative emotion, so you start to feel stressed out or bored or frustrated, lonely, sad, ashamed, you know, angry. Whatever emotion you’re experiencing, that should be an alarm that goes off and and you want to look at your thoughts.

What is the thought that’s causing me to feel this emotion? Okay, that’s step one. Be aware of your thoughts, what thoughts are you habitually thinking? And then notice that those thoughts are causing these emotions in you, okay? When you feel that way, when you feel that emotion, what do you want to do? What do you do or what do you not do? What actions are you taking or not taking?

Because instead of reacting to the world around you, I want you to respond thoughtfully with intention with purpose. Awareness is the key though. You have to begin to think, with purpose, with intention that will help you to feel with purpose and intention. And then you will act with purpose and intention.

And when you’re acting with purpose and intention, that’s when you start to get the results that you want in your life, you can become super powerful. You can get anything you want, honestly. So whether you know it or not, you are always creating the results that you’re getting in your life. Right now.

You’re always creating results with your thoughts, feelings and actions. They may not be the results that you want, but you’re creating them. Negative thoughts, feelings and actions will produce negative results. Positive thoughts, feelings and actions will produce positive results.

So decide what you want. And then create it on purpose. Begin to choose your thoughts with intention, begin to create your feelings, and begin to take action with purpose, think, feel and act with purpose. It’s a daily practice, but you can do it.

You got this, my friends. All right, join us in the Facebook group for the running through the holidays challenge we’re going to be running every single day, at least a mile. From Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. We’re gonna run our way through the holidays and we’re going to feel good, we’re going to slide into 2021 Feeling damn good about ourselves. As always, lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.