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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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35. Embracing The Suck

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If you have big goals and dreams for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants more out of life, then achieving those big goals and dreams will require you to do hard things. To get there …

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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 35 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about embracing the suck. I’m gonna say the word suck a lot today, just so you know, little forewarning.

But listen, if you have big goals and dreams for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants more out of life, than achieving those big goals and dreams will require you to do hard things. And to get there means there will definitely be a period of time when things were going to get hard things are eventually going to suck.

So today I’m talking about embracing the suck. Most people want to do the opposite, they want to avoid the suck. But here’s the thing, the suck is going to happen, whether you like it or not. So it’s better that you learn how to embrace it, rather than always trying to resist it. So that is coming up.

If you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive, informative, highly energized group of like minded runners and it kind of goes hand in hand with the podcast. I do weekly live trainings in there on a bunch of different topics.

We talk about nutrition, weight loss, some science stuff, some mindset stuff, and we got a big challenge coming up. This is my first time talking about this, we are doing a challenge for the month of September. So beginning September 1, it is intermittent fasting month in the Running Lean community. And no, it does not mean that we will not be eating anything for the entire month of September. Okay.

I will explain exactly what intermittent fasting is and what it isn’t. We’ll talk about how you can do intermittent fasting safely. And you’re kind of already doing it already right now, whether you like whether you know it or not, I’ll be busting all the myths about intermittent fasting like it will kill you. That’s a myth, it won’t kill you.

We’ll talk about how you can incorporate intermittent fasting into your training, all the amazing health benefits of intermittent fasting especially for running and weight loss. When you combine a low carbohydrate, high fat diet, along with intermittent fasting, this is like rocket fuel for your health and for your fitness and for your weight loss.

And we’ll talk about what all that means and how to do it. So just go over to Facebook, search for Running Lean the Running Lean community and join us for our September intermittent fasting challenge. It’s going to be cool. Also losing weight, becoming fat-adapted, learning how to do all these things like intermittent fasting. It’s hard to do on your own, I get it.

That’s why I’m here. I want to help you. And I do offer one-on-one coaching because we’re all different. We all have different goals, different needs, different lifestyles. Working with me, you’ll learn exactly how to do all this stuff in a way that works for you as an individual. In fact, here’s one of my very favorite clients Deborah had to say recently, she wrote this comment, so sweet.

She wrote, “I’m on day 14 of coaching with Patrick. I’ve seen many nutritionists and dietitians in my life, and also work with a dedicated running coach. Patrick is by far the most legit health coach I’ve had the pleasure of working with. He takes the whole body and the whole mind approach and helps you to battle through the tough stuff, cutting out sugar and carbs, and helps you to identify the reasons that are far bigger than calories or pounds. So you can stay with it. I was dying for a piece of supermarket birthday cake yesterday. And just knowing that Patrick is in my corner to make a smarter decision helped me to get through that craving.”

Thank you so much for those kind words. Deborah, you are so sweet and you are an awesome client. Also, that craving for that supermarket birthday cake is very, very specific. We need to talk about that. But it’s funny. That’s what sugar does to us. It has a powerful hold on as it causes all kinds of very specific cravings apparently.

But if you’re ready to make some big changes in your life if you’re ready to ditch the sugar and the carbs In the addiction to sugar and carbs and those crazy, specific cravings, if you’re ready to embrace the suck, at least temporarily, then you have to go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, one word, and apply for one on one coaching with me do it now I promise you, you will not regret it.

Alright, embracing the suck, embrace the suck is a fun phrase that is very popular in endurance sports, it means that it means this, it means things are gonna get hard. At some point during this event during this race, whatever it is you’re doing, things are going to suck, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to accept it, embrace it, and keep going.

And I first started hearing about this a lot when I was training for Ironman. There’s a great deal of suck during that race, there’s a great deal of suck in the training for that event too, just so you know, it’s a lifetime of suck when you’re into Ironman Triathlon, as a lifestyle.

But anyway, so during that event, there’s a lot of suck, that’s going to happen, right. And I knew that at some point, during that day, I was going to have to face the suck, okay. And I didn’t really know when that was going to happen or whatever, until the day of the race.

So the day of the race, you know, do this swim, two and a half, 2.4 mile swim, get out of the water and, you know, cycling for 112 miles. And then I laced up my running shoes and started to run while this was Louisville, Kentucky, August 95 degrees and humid.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, arguably. And this is when I was heading out to start to run my marathon after the 2.4 mile swim and cycling 112 miles of rolling hills. So I had been out exerting myself since 7am. And this was now three o’clock in the afternoon. So this is like eight straight hours of continuous physical exertion. And I started running and my legs just would not move. I felt horrible. It sucked big time. And it’s in that very moment right there. I was like, oh, yeah, this is what they’re talking about. Embrace the suck. This is the sucky part.

And I knew what it meant intellectually, like, I knew like, oh, yeah, this is gonna happen at some point. But until you experience it in the moment, it is just a concept. It’s just a theory. But when it hits you hard like that, and I will tell you, it hit me hard, it was very, very difficult, I would start running for maybe 10 seconds, and I just had to start walking and try to start running again for maybe 15 seconds. And I just couldn’t do it, I had to walk.

And it took a while for me to get a little momentum going where I could actually run for any extended period of time. I mean, there were people, you know, at the beginning of the marathon that were just like, sitting on the ground, just like on the curb, like laying down, you know, just already they were just done.

And it kind of freaks you out a little bit because you’re like, oh my god, you know, what have I got myself into here? But as you know, I kept moving. And when I was fueling and hydrating and things like that I was able to get up a little running, but I just let it be sucky. And I just kept moving forward. That little mantra was in my mind, embrace the suck, just know it’s gonna suck. And keep moving.

Another crystal clear moment of embracing the suck for me, was during the Hallucination 100. So this was the 100 mile trail race that I did up in Hell, Michigan, which is an aptly named play by the way. And the trail is 16, roughly 16 miles, a little over 16 miles. And so you got to do the loop six times to get to 100 miles.

So I finished my fifth loop. And so there’s right around mile 84. So I just had one more loop to go and you’d think I’d be like, Yay, just one more loop to go. Well, my feet were swollen like crazy. I had these giant blisters. My feet hurt every step. I was in excruciating pain. Every muscle in my body was like, just sore and tense and tight.

I had been running nonstop for over 24 hours at this point. So I’d rip around all through the night. No sleep and here I was, I still had 60 more miles of trails and hills to go, I wanted to quit. So I had to make a choice, in that moment, you know, because it sucked big time, it was really, my whole body just wanted to shut down and just lay down and be done with it.

I had a choice though, I could call it a day, and just be done with it. You know, say, Hey, I got to mile 84 good job, or embrace the suck, and finish. I mustered up all the courage, I had all the determination. I knew it was going to be painful. And I just put one foot in front of the other.

And I set out on that single track trail, and started that last 16 grueling miles. And it was very hard. It hurt a lot. It sucked a lot. But I just allowed it. I allowed the pain to ache, I embraced the suck. The exhaustion, the fear, the frustration, all of it, I just was like, it’s all going to be there. And I’m going to keep moving forward no matter what.

I have this mantra, there’s a mantra and trail running, which is, or ultra running, I guess it’s relentless forward progress. And this is kind of my mantra for life in general. But relentless forward, progress is like the thing that keeps me moving in those moments, like no matter what, just keep moving forward. And I did. And I finished that.

I finished both those races to the hardest things I’ve ever done. Arguably, like, those two moments are like, the most sucky experiences of my life, but I embraced them. And I kept going, I didn’t quit.

And then what happened to me, which surprised me, when I finished those races, the experience of of having gone through that sucky period, and like embracing it, and then keep moving forward. This was life changing for me, I became more of a person more than what I was before starting those events. You know, I got way outside my comfort zone. And I grew in more ways than I could ever have imagined.

And it didn’t happen because there weren’t any sucky periods or because it was easy. It happened because it was hard. You know, I’ve talked about this before, and, you know, we gotta like, accept the challenges that come our way. And that’s how we get to the, to the good stuff is we got to go through the challenges, kind of what we’re talking about here. embracing the suck, okay.

And this applies to many different areas of your life, you know, so I talk about my, my weight loss clients, I tell them that things are gonna get uncomfortable, you know, that they need to embrace the suck when they stop eating sugar. And they’re like, yes, Patrick, I’m down with all of that, bring it on, I’m ready.

And so they stop eating sugar. And a week or so goes by, you know, things are okay. But then they start having these withdrawal symptoms, you know, they get headaches they get, they feel lethargic, they start having these super strong cravings for sugar, they start dreaming of sheet cakes from the grocery stores and edible cookie dough.

And they start to feel like they’re missing out on all of life’s pleasures that their life really sucks now, and there’s never ever gonna be joy in their life again, their life is basically over. And I’m like, remember, when I said things were going to suck and get very uncomfortable? Well, that’s what we’re talking about. You’re in it now.

But they’re like, but I don’t want it now. I want it to go away. And I’m like, I know, I know. But here we are. Same thing with runners who want to, you know, kick the carbohydrate addiction and want to become fat-adapted runners. And I tell them very specifically, running will suck for a few weeks as your body adjusts to switching from, you know, glucose to fat as fuel, just it takes a while for your body to get to that process.

And they’re always like, I’m down with that. I’m ready, bring it on. So they stop eating the carbohydrates. And after a week or so the running gets really hard and they’re like, what’s happening? Running is really hard. I mean, it’s really hard and I’m like remember when I said you have to embrace the suck and you were all down with all that. Well, this is what we’re telling you. This is the suck. Okay.

You know, it just takes a few weeks to become fat-adapted. Once you do, it’s amazing. But there’s a period where it’s very uncomfortable and running is hard. And you just have to accept it. That is part of the process.

Okay, but here’s the thing. Anytime things start to get hard they start to suck, we have two choices. We can resist them, resist it, or we can embrace it, we can either resist it all, fight it, reject it, push it away. wish it wasn’t so hard wish it was different.

Or we can embrace it, we can allow it to be there, accept it, accept the fact that it’s going to be hard and keep going anyway. So when we, when we resist it, when we resist the sock, you know, we wish things were different. We’re basically not accepting reality. It’s like saying I wish the sky was red instead of blue.

Or, I wish running 100 miles didn’t hurt at all. Or I wish my sugar addiction wasn’t so real. These things are just the way things are. They are exactly how they’re supposed to be. And here’s a little pro tip, do you know how you know that this is how they’re supposed to be? Because that’s how they are.

You know, running 100 miles is going to hurt because it hurts. You know that sugar addiction is real, because it’s real. You know, this guy’s supposed to be blue, because it is. It’s when we don’t accept this reality, this is what causes us inner turmoil.

When we don’t accept things as they are, it actually makes the sucky part a lot worse. You know, and I get it, it’s like, I just want to feel better, like right now. But you know, it’s not how it works. It’s like trying to hold a big beach ball underwater.

So you push it down and you push it down, the more you push it down, the harder it is to hold it down, and you just can’t keep it up. And eventually, that beach ball is going to come up, it’s going to come splashing up into your face. And don’t ask me how I know how this works. But that’s what happens. Okay.

So we’re just like rejecting what is, we’re pushing away. This sucky part, when that is just part of the process of getting to those big goals and dreams. Anything worthwhile that we want to accomplish means we got to go through something sucky to get there, okay.

You can accept it, you can embrace it, or you can just resist it and fight it. Fighting it and resisting, it just makes it worse. Right. But when you embrace it, when you stop the resisting, when you stop pushing away, the reality of what it is, you let go of the beach ball, you just let it be there. All sucky and everything. When you can accept things as they are, even if they suck, and that’s okay. Just embrace it and keep moving forward.

You feel the pain, yeah. But you keep on running. You feel like quitting, but you don’t, you just keep going instead, you feel like eating a whole sheet cake to yourself. But you don’t, you just allow that craving to be there. And you don’t do anything about it. Maybe eat some bacon instead. Or you feel like going back to all the carbs.

So that running will be quote unquote, easy again. But you don’t, you just let it be hard. Because you know, you have to go through that sucky part to get to the amazing part. And here’s a little spoiler alert for you guys. Life is not supposed to be happy, and comfortable all the time. Life is like 50/50. it’s just not supposed to be happy, carefree, joyous, and amazing and super comfortable all the time. It’s just not.

It’s more like 50% of the time, life is amazing, and exciting and fun and uncomfortable. And then 50% of the time, it’s uncomfortable and kind of crappy and a little sucky. And that’s okay, this is normal. This is the way of life. This is what it means to be a human being alive on the planet today.

But if you think life is going to be good all the time, if you expect that you are going to be very disappointed and very miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be rejecting and resisting the reality of what is. You have to accept it all. You have to embrace the suck.

Because without the pain, we don’t get to experience the pleasure. Without agony we don’t know what joy is without feeling sadness. We don’t know what happiness feels like without frustration, we don’t learn patience. Without feeling anxiety, we don’t experience peace. Without failing, we don’t want to know what accomplishment feels like.

You know, without uncertainty, we don’t know what confidence is. When you can embrace all of it, when you become willing to experience all of these emotions that we’re talking about a lot of emotions here fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, pain, when you’re willing to experience these emotions, when you’re willing to embrace the suck. There’s nothing you can’t do.

Most people, they’re afraid to feel uncomfortable. They are so afraid of the suck that they never do anything hard, they’re not even going to try. They don’t even get up off the couch. Because they know that to put on their running shoes and go start running when they haven’t been running forever.

And they want to run a 5k. They want to do that. But they know it’s going to be hard. And so they just stay on the couch. They don’t embrace the suck. So they never do anything hard. And guess what? They never accomplish anything. They stay comfortable. Yeah. They don’t have to experience the sucky things. Yeah. They stay in their comfort zone.

But what does that do for you? What does that get you? Is that what you want for your life? I don’t think so. If you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to me, then I’m pretty sure that’s not you. That does not sound like you. Everything you want, but don’t already have, lies outside your comfort zone. So if you never embrace the suck, you never embrace the discomfort you never grow.

You never become more than what you are today, right here, now. You never accomplish anything bigger than what you’ve already done in your life. Like, this is it, this is where you are. And that’s it. If you don’t embrace the suck, you don’t get uncomfortable.

You never experience the amazing 50% of your life full of joy and satisfaction and accomplishment. You got to go through the 50% that’s hard and painful and sucky. Remember the sucky parts, you have to go through the sucky part, in order to get to the amazing part.

It just that’s just the way it works. So I want to encourage you to embrace it all. The good, the bad, and the suck, embrace the suck. Become an emotional badass, like allow all those things to come up. The pain, the frustration, the fear of missing out the exhaustion, whatever it is you’re doing, embrace it all.

Because when you do when you embrace the suck, you become a total badass you’d be there’s like nothing you can’t accomplish. Most people are so afraid to experience these emotions. Don’t be afraid to experience the emotions. And you’ll see what you can do. I guarantee you, it’s a much better way to live your life.

Well, we will be continuing this conversation over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Just come and check us out. It’s really fun. And remember, September is going to be intermittent fasting month, we’re gonna be talking all about it, how to do it, why we do it, why it’s important, how it’ll help you.

And, you know, it’d be super awesome. If you enjoy this podcast. If you get something out of it. Just leave a quick little review on iTunes, just, you know, scroll down and your little iTunes podcast app, tap the stars. And then just write a couple words that that you’re getting something out of this, it would really mean a lot to me if you did that. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean. Embrace the suck. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

21. How to Become a Lean Running Machine Part 3

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This is the third episode of my three-part series called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I’ve spent years and years trying every type of diet …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 21 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and Master Life Coach and the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got for you part three of my three part podcast series called How to Become a Lean Running Machine.

And the reason I put this together is because I’ve tried everything to lose weight, especially running more and more and more, and nothing I ever did really worked. So I set out to find the answers. I found the answers and I’m sharing them all with you here.

In this three part series. I just want to help you to stop struggling with your weight, I want to help you to start becoming the lean runner that you want to be. Quick reminder, next week, my next weight loss masterclass, starts Monday, June 1. And I want you to do this little visualization exercise with me here. So just take a moment.

If you’re driving, don’t do this. Don’t close your eyes. But if you’re not driving, just take a moment. Close your eyes, I want you to visualize yourself at your goal weight, or whatever that ideal weight is for you. Visualize yourself, Okay, close your eyes and do this right now. And then think about it like what do you look like?

How do you feel about your body now? How much easier is running now? How much more self esteem and how much more confidence do you have now? How much better is your relationship with yourself? What else have you learned along the way? What else have you been able to accomplish?

This is a powerful exercise really, you can open your eyes now. But I want you to just hold this vivid picture of yourself in your mind for a few moments each day when you do this. Your subconscious mind, your brain will actually get you there faster, it will move you there faster.

And if you’re ready right now, to start becoming that future version of yourself. This weight loss masterclass that I have is the rocket fuel you need to get there. Listen, losing weight is hard. If this was easy, we’d all be ripped and super lean. And it would be simple and everybody would have, there wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t have a job as a weight loss coach.

But it’s not easy. Losing weight is hard. There’s a lot more going on, than just like calories in calories out or just run more, right? And that’s what you’ve been learning here. It’s really especially hard to do on your own. Imagine, just imagine how much easier losing weight would be if you had somebody there to teach you exactly what to do and to guide you through it all every single step of the way.

Well, that’s exactly what I do in this masterclass. We just finished up a six week class where my students have had some amazing progress towards becoming their future selves. Okay, I want to share a couple of those little stats with you here. Elizabeth dropped 4 pounds. She wasn’t trying to lose weight but she ended up dropping like four pounds. She wanted to kick her sugar habit, which she did. She’s off of sugar for good and she feels amazing.

Amy lost 9 pounds. She’s down two sizes. She’s dropped four inches off her waist in her hips. Jenny lost 15 pounds and feels completely in control of her over eating for the first time in her life. Eric lost 15 pounds and he doesn’t have to feel like he has to exercise like crazy anymore just to keep the weight off.

Colin’s lost 40 pounds, and he has no doubt he’s going to hit his goal of losing 100 pounds. Oh my gosh. What’s really cool, though, all that is amazing, obviously, let’s celebrate that. But what’s also really cool is that they’ve all learned how to manage their thoughts and feelings around eating and we’re gonna be talking about that today.

They’ve all developed a whole new relationship with food and they’re all still losing weight. So our next masterclass starts Monday, June 1. If you’re in, you’re in, I only take 10 or 12 people through this class at a time, I want each person to get my personal attention. I want each person to get the coaching that they need to succeed to hit their goal.

And it means that you get a better experience because it’s a small group. And everybody loves the group classes. By the way, everybody’s been telling me how awesome it is that they’re on this journey together, and that they can share their struggles and their frustrations, and their ideas and their tips with each other and learn from each other and they support each other.

It’s an amazing little community. So if you want to get in, let’s just do it, just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and sign up to it now. Okay, so, here’s a quick recap of what we learned in the last two episodes.

I feel like I need to say like, you know, previously on The Running Mind podcast, give a little recap here. So I just did. So number one, the first part of this was talking about how running more and eating less, doesn’t really work for losing weight. Okay, running more or exercising more, moving more, doesn’t work for weight loss because our bodies naturally overcompensate by increasing our appetite by lowering our metabolism, you end up eating more so you kind of overcompensate for the calories that you burn from running.

And then the progress is very slow and very minimal at best. Also, running doesn’t address the physical, mental and emotional causes of weight gain, which is hormonal imbalances, mental cravings, emotional eating, okay. Calories in, calories out doesn’t work either, it never has, it’s a myth, our body works against this process again, you reduce calories, your metabolism goes down in response to that your body stays at that reduced metabolism, and the weight inevitably comes back, you just can’t outrun this natural process.

The second secret is that your hormones are most likely all out of whack. So increased levels of insulin put your body into fat storage mode, which also causes the hunger hormone ghrelin and the safety hormone leptin to stop functioning properly. So you’re always hungry, you never feel full. Decreasing insulin puts your body into fat burning mode, which means you know, all your hormones start working the way they’re supposed to, you’re not hungry all the time you feel full when you eat.

You know, everything’s working as it should, your body’s back into homeostasis. And the way you reduce insulin is by changing what you eat and when you eat. So you eliminate the foods that cause the high insulin, which is sugar and refined carbs, and then you just eat less often. Since insulin goes up every time you eat, eating less often.

Doing something like intermittent fasting or just not eating as often throughout the day, like eliminating snacks is probably the best thing you can do and will keep your insulin levels down and get your hormones back in healthy amounts.

And then today, we’ve got the third secret to permanent weight loss, which is you need to learn how to manage your mind and take control of your emotions. When you take away the foods that are causing you to gain weight, your over desire for food, this unnatural desire that you have for food does not go away immediately.

In fact, that desire can go up initially and it can get stronger because you’re in the state of like withdrawal, and craving. So it’s critical at this point to manage your mind and learn how to process your emotions while you’re going through this process. And this is where most diets fail.

And this is also where most dieticians or nutrition coaches fall short. They do a good job of telling you what to eat. But then they’re like, okay, here’s what you eat, or here’s what you don’t eat. Good luck with that. They don’t teach you how to deal with all the mental chatter that’s going on. And all the emotional stuff that you’re feeling that comes up, you know, you get these cravings, these urges.

We have withdrawals, we have to do a lot of emotional eating. This right here is probably the most powerful work that I do with my clients. This is what separates me from the rest of the diet coaches out there. Stop the eating, stop, you know change what you’re eating. That’s the easy part that’s just changing what you do.

And we all know that changing behavior is the least effective way of accomplishing anything. What you’re left with, after you remove the food, that’s the hard part. So, first you need to learn how to manage your mind and then learn how to deal with your emotions.

So let’s talk about how to manage your mind. You need to learn how to deal with the mental aspects of this over desire. So when you stop eating certain foods, like sugar and refined carbs, you’re going to have these urges, you’re going to have cravings, you’re going to feel restless, you’re going to feel deprived, because you’re gonna feel like you’re missing out on something like you’re missing out on on the joys of life or something, okay?

And all this is perfectly normal. Your mind has been programmed to believe that you will die if you don’t eat certain foods, like right now. And it’s for a lot of different reasons. But it has to do with the way our food is made, has to do with the way that our food has been marketed to us.

And it has to do with the way you’ve conditioned yourself to crave certain foods like your whole life. But especially like the people who make our food and market it to us, they’ve learned the secret to selling more food to us, which is to make us crave it like a drug. And it works really well.

They’ve created this thing called the bliss point in food. Scientists now lab are making our food unnaturally over desirable. And so they’ve created this thing that’s called the bliss point. And what it does is like they’ve determined for whatever food it is, what is going to give your body the most dopamine hit.

So the best feel good, physical feel good feeling from the food when you eat it, because every time you eat, you get a little bit of dopamine response, well, you increase the amount of sugar, sometimes you increase the amount of salt or the right combination of sugar, fat and salt or whatever.

And then you have this unnatural dopamine response in your body. Well, this is amazing, right? Because this is what causes them to be able to sell a lot more food. But it’s not good for us because it creates an unnatural over desire for food. And so we have this unnatural over desire right now in society, like we’ve never had before in human history. Okay.

So the good news is, though, that you can change this, okay? This is something that your brain has been trained to do. It’s mostly like subconscious mental habits, okay, and you can change it, you can actually learn how to reprogram your mind. So you got to learn how to train your brain to stop giving in to the urges, and you gotta learn how to train your brain to stop the unnatural craving for food.

Your brain is working against you here. And you need to learn how to stop doing that. Okay, so you need to develop new habits around how you eat, so that you can decrease these unnatural, like primitive desires and cravings for food that is basically making us fat. So you need to learn how to decondition your mind and reprogram your brain, so you no longer have the unnatural cravings and desires.

You need to change how you think about food. And you do this by changing what food means to you. So think about this. Next time you’re about to eat something. Just ask yourself this question. Why am I choosing to eat this? Whatever it is right now. Is it because I’m actually hungry, because I want to provide fuel for my body? Or is it because I’m bored? Or it’s lunchtime, or I eat at this time every day, whether I’m hungry or not? So let’s go get some food.

How you think about food is so key the meaning you assigned to food is so key if you want to change your relationship with it. If you find yourself thinking about food all the time, you might want to take a look at that. You might want to get to the point where food is more of you think of food as more of a way of just fueling your body and not something you’re like obsessing with, obsessing over all day long in your mind.

You know, and if you find yourself using food to feel better than we need to look at the emotional aspect of eating. Okay, we’re going to talk about that in just a second. So if you’re if thinking about food all the time, or if if the reasons you’re eating food are not just because, like oh I need to fuel my body I’m actually hungry, then that’s something you need to get control over. Okay.

The next thing is learning how to take control of your emotions. This is so critical. There’s a lot of emotional eating going on in the world right now, during this COVID19 quarantine, a lot of people are feeling a lot of emotions. And so they’re doing a lot of emotional eating. And I get it, eating feels good, it makes us feel good.

You know, we get that little hit of dopamine every time we eat. This is the same chemical that gets released when you drink alcohol or when you take drugs. Highly concentrated foods and foods that are super high in sugar, especially give us a huge hit of dopamine, and they feel really freakin good. Going back to the bliss point, again, they’ve created this unnatural desire in us, okay.

So what happens is when you start to feel some kind of negative emotion, the first thing you want to do is be like, I gotta make this go away. I want to feel better right now. So what do you do? You go to the fridge, you open it up, you pull out, whatever it is, and you eat and you’re like, Ah, I feel better. What’s going on here is that we’ve trained ourselves to use food as a way of dealing with our emotions, instead of just dealing with our emotions.

So maybe you’ve had a bad day at work, or a fight with your husband. Or maybe your kids are screaming in the background, no problem, just go eat something and feel better. And we call this buffering because what you’re doing is you’re putting a buffer between you and your feelings, you’re using something external, to feel better internally.

The problem with buffering is that it’s temporary, and doesn’t work. And it has a lot of negative consequences. So I used to use alcohol as a way of buffering from my life. And it worked great. I felt better every time I drank. Here’s the thing, though, my problems were still there. My emotions were still there waiting for me.

And when I sobered up, they were still there. Except now I’m home. I was hungover, I was feeling like ass and destroying everything good around me. And then I would want to feel better. So what I would do was what? Drink again, right? Because that’s what makes you feel good.

What a terrible unhealthy cycle to be at, you know, that was just doing the one thing that was like, you know, making my life miserable, making me miserable. And it was the only thing I could do to feel better. But it was also the thing that made me feel terrible. Crazy. The same thing happens with food though.

So you might be stressed out, you might be having a bad day or you’re feeling lonely or nervous about an upcoming event or something and, and you eat over it. You know when Kristine and I separated back in December, I was feeling all the feelings. I was feeling lonely. I was feeling scared. I was feeling sad. I was feeling hurt. And I really started using food as a buffer.

I started using food to feel better. You know Dewey’s pizza, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream became the best part of my day. I looked forward to that all day long. If I can just get to the end of the day where I can like eat a ton of food. Especially that ice cream with all the sugar in it. I knew I would feel better. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t work.

I mean, it works temporarily. It feels good. But then I started gaining weight. And I started feeling terrible about myself. And I still had all the negative emotions. But now I was eating, adding over eating on top of the negative emotions, and it made me just feel worse. Good times.

So what do you do in that situation? I just wanted to feel better. So well, I would like just go to Chipotle, get a giant burrito and chips and walk and I would feel better, right? No. It’s just part of that vicious cycle. I had to break the cycle. I had to learn how to feel my feelings. I had to learn how to stop using food as the escape pod to get away from my life.

I learned how to process my emotions all the way through. I needed to completely change how I felt about myself and how I felt about food. When you learn how to manage your emotions without having to eat over them. Not only will you have a much easier time losing weight, but you will be able to apply this same skill to every area of your life.

When you think about the worst thing that can happen in most situations, you will feel some kind of feeling. And a lot of times the feeling we’re trying to avoid is fear or, or some negative emotion, right? Fears. The biggest one that comes to mind though. But what if you are no longer afraid to feel your emotions, but if you are like, just bring it on, I’ll experience any emotion? And that’s where I’m at today.

And this is what I teach my clients is like, learn how to experience any emotion. And oh my gosh, there’s like nothing you can do. I mean, it sounds kind of scary and crazy to think about that to just like, feel your feelings. But what if you could do that? Like, what if you no longer had to eat to feel better? When you don’t have these like primitive urges, and these cravings, and you can deal with your emotions without eating, like you’re free, there’s incredible freedom in this.

And when you learn how to manage your mind, and learn how to process your emotions through, just allow them to be there, just sit with them. You know, besides being able to lose weight much easier, you get these amazing life skills that you can apply to every area of your life, everything becomes easier.

So, if you want to get back to your natural weight, if you want to stay there permanently, you need to learn how to manage your mind, you need to learn how to control your emotions. And these are skills you can learn. I can teach you all of this.

So let’s recap what we learned here today. Most diets fall short, because they only tell you what to eat or not to eat. They don’t teach you how to deal with your thoughts and your feelings. We have an unnatural mental over desire for food. It was created by scientists mostly, but it’s how we’ve programmed ourselves to think about food.

And you need to learn how to reprogram your mind and create better mental habits around eating. This is how you change your thinking about food. And then eating just like alcohol or drugs, it makes us feel good. You know, we get that little release of dopamine feels good. But you can get stuck in the cycle of using food as a buffer as a way of feeling good temporarily and trying to avoid feeling your emotions.

And it comes with a price: weight gain, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, diabetes, the list goes on and on and on. So you have to learn how to allow your emotions to learn how to feel your feelings. Stop using food as your escape pod. If you want to lose weight and you want to keep it off, you have to change the way you think and feel about food. You have to change your whole relationship with food.

And when you learn these skills, you get to apply them in every area of your life. You become this mental and emotional badass. And when you learn how to do this, there’s nothing you won’t be able to do. I promise you, this is amazing. Okay, that’s all I got for you today.

Quick reminder, the next weight loss masterclass starts June 1 That’s only a few short days away. I don’t have room for 10 people, so you have to sign up now. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating, and you can get signed up. You will learn all of these skills in this masterclass, you will lose weight for sure.

But you’ll also learn how to manage your mind and allow your emotions. This work is life changing, I promise you it is transformational. innefiretrib.com/stopovereating, and enroll now. That’s all I got here. I really hope you enjoyed this series. I’ve got lots more good stuff coming your way very soon. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

15. The Surprising Power of Self-Awareness

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Most people are not consciously aware of their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. They assume that everything is just happening to them and it's all out of their control. They aren’t aware that they …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host. And I’m a master life and success coach and a weight loss coach for runners. I teach you how to stop struggling, and start getting the results that you want from your running in your weight loss journey and in your life.

And it all starts with learning how to manage your mind. That’s what I teach you here on this podcast, I teach you how to manage your mind so you can create better results in your life, whatever that looks like for you. Today, I’m talking about self awareness and the surprising power of self awareness, I want to talk about what it means to develop self awareness, how you do it, and why it is perhaps the most powerful life skill that you can learn.

So first, let’s talk about what self awareness means. Self awareness, the Google definition is, “a conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires”. So when I hear that, I think of it being the ability for you to take an honest and objective look at yourself without any sort of attachment to it being right or wrong. So it’s the act of thinking about your own thoughts, thinking about your own feelings, without any kind of judgment.

And I think one of the things that people struggle with is a lack of self awareness. I think this is a big problem for most people. Most people are just not consciously aware of their own thoughts and their own feelings, and even their own actions, they’re not even aware of what they are doing, or why they are doing what they do.

Most people think everything is just happening to them and they aren’t aware that they are actually creating all of their own thoughts, all of their own feelings and creating all of the results that they’re getting in their life or not getting in their lives. Most people just don’t take the time to think about their thinking or to just feel their feelings or to notice what it is that they are doing.

What most people do, is they feel some kind of emotion that feels terrible inside them, which is like an alarm going off. I’m feeling something, and then they do whatever they can right now to change it to stop it to stop the feeling. You know, I can’t feel bad, I can’t be sad, I can’t be angry, I can’t be hurt or frustrated. I need to do something right now to change this. What can I do?

So what do most people do? Most people in a situation like that reach for something outside of themselves to make them feel better. They grab the bottle of wine, and the biggest glass they can find, or they go binge on some junk food or binge on some Netflix and then ah, they feel so much better, right? So this is called buffering. This is where you’re using some external thing to feel better internally.

And it’s buffering because it puts a buffer between you and reality. And it does. It feels good for a minute, but it’s actually a false pleasure. It’s temporary. And it has many negative consequences, being addicted to alcohol or drugs or, you know, chronic procrastination, lethargy, being overweight, and then all those negative things, they lead to more negative emotions inside.

And so what do you do when you have the negative emotions? You go drink more, or you eat more or you watch more TV. I hope you’re starting to hear like how crazy this is, right? You have to get out of that loop. So remember, your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive, all your actions and your actions are what produced the results that you get in your life. So eventually, you’ll want to change your thinking. So you can change your feelings so you can take more aligned action so you can get better results, right?

And here’s what I hear people say to me, my clients, they tell me this, they’re like, okay, I know I need to think new thoughts, so I can feel better right now. So how do I do that? Tell me the new thoughts to think. Tell me how to feel differently, so I can start doing different stuff.

And the answer, which doesn’t make sense at first, but hear me out, the answer always starts with increasing your self awareness. The first and most important step in creating different results in your life, in your running, in your marriage, in your weight loss journey, is to increase your self awareness.

You can’t change something unless you know what you’re changing, you can’t change your thinking. Unless you know exactly what your thoughts are, and what’s driving them. You can’t change your feelings inside your emotions, your emotional state, unless you’re really in touch with your emotions, unless you really understand them profoundly. And you can sit with them, and experience them and you know what that feels like.

And you can’t take different actions, unless you can observe yourself objectively. And honestly, which is the tough part for most of us, and determine what actions are serving you and, and what are not. So is this thing I’m doing right now moving me closer to my goal or further away from it? You have to get really honest and objective.

And that’s what self awareness is. It’s a non judgmental awareness of yourself. I think this is the most important life skill you can develop. If you can increase your self awareness, you dramatically increase your potential. Because you’re constantly analyzing the data without judgment. It’s just facts, just data. So you can constantly make improvements in all these different areas of your life. Practicing self awareness is like the most important thing you can do.

Okay, so how do you do it? So one of the things you need to work on here is to be a non judgmental observer of yourself. And that’s a lot easier said than done. I get it sounds simple. Sounds easy enough. But the truth is, we are constantly judging ourselves. This is a good thought, this is a bad thought. This is a good feeling. This is a bad feeling. I need to feel differently, how can I change the way I feel right now? I don’t want to feel this way any longer.

Like we’re constantly doing this battle with ourselves over how our thinking is messed up, or how we shouldn’t feel this way. Like, for example, you might be feeling a little stressed out right now with everything that’s going on. With the stay at home order, you’re working from home, your kids are there with you, against your better judgment, against your wishes, you know, you’re trying to homeschool them and get all your work done.

And you’re feeling completely stressed out about everything, right? So what do you do? So most people when they feel anxious and stressed out, they look for something outside of themselves to make them feel better. So they have a drink, eat some cookie dough, go buy something, you know, put that buffer between yourself and what’s going on. And most people just can’t stand to feel stressed out, even for a minute.

They can’t stand to feel anxious or overwhelmed. But what would it be like for you if you were to just let that feeling be there without any kind of judgment? And without doing anything to try to change it? What? I know it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But what if instead of rejecting reality, the reality of what’s happening around you, and the reality of how you’re feeling instead of trying to resist it, what if you just allowed it to be?

What if you just allowed yourself to feel the stress and the anxiety without having to change it? Notice what comes up for you. When you feel it when you just sit with it when you experience it when you let it process through. You notice it with curiosity. Hmm, that’s interesting. I’m kind of feeling a little freaked out right about now. I wonder what that’s all about. And that’s it. You don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to try to change it. You don’t want it to go away. You don’t have to switch it into something else.

I know this sounds crazy. But here’s the thing, the more you can practice just noticing your thoughts. same feelings, the better you can get at managing them. And notice something managing and not changing them. So managing your thoughts and emotions means being super aware of everything you’re thinking and feeling. And then just allowing it to be as it is. Just let it be, all of it: the good, the bad, the ugly.

Well, there is no good or bad or ugly because you’re not judging any of it. Try to be a non judgmental observer of your emotions, from your thoughts. When we talk about emotions, and just feeling our emotions, like how do you just manage your emotions? It’s just being with them and experiencing them and letting them do their thing in your body.

You know, watch yourself express an emotion. How do you do it? What does it feel like for you? What does it feel like inside your body? Where do you feel it inside your body? Sometimes it’s in our chest or our stomach and our throat? So where do you feel? Is it big? Is it small? Does it feel like it’s swirling around inside you? Oh, it does. Which way? Is it swirling clockwise? or counterclockwise?

Does it move from top to bottom or the other way? Really just get in touch with your emotions. When we think about emotions, they’re just like sensations in our body. That’s all they are. They’re just vibrations that we can sort of feel inside our body. That’s it, your emotions, your feelings cannot hurt you. What can hurt you is resisting them, immediately trying to change them, reject them, pushing them down, pushing them away. When we do that, that’s what causes the internal suffering. That’s what causes our self misery.

You know, when we try to constantly reject and resist our emotions, wishing we didn’t feel this way, I should be feeling differently, we buffer them away. When we do that, that is when we suffer. But just feeling an emotion. You don’t suffer because of that. You just feel the emotion. Oh, I’m pretty angry right now. You don’t have to do anything about it.

You might feel like smashing somebody’s face, but you don’t have to act out on that. And you don’t have to judge that either. Just go oh, yeah, that’s interesting. That’s curious. So you don’t have to fix it, you don’t have to change it. Your job in life is not to change everything, to just feel better. In fact, your job in life is not to just feel good all the time. This is not what our lives are supposed to be.

Your role in life, the only things that really are things you have to do in your life, are to live and to die. And that’s it really, you exist. And then you don’t know it sounds kind of depressing. But no, those are the only things that are like your required requirements for being a human on this planet is to be alive. And then to die.

Everything else in between is what you choose to do, honestly. And we’re not supposed to feel good all the time. I don’t know where we came up with this idea. But you know, we feel good about half the time and we feel not so good about half the time and this is normal. This is like nature. This is the nature of life for all human beings on planet Earth.

We feel good about half the time and the other half is like not so good. So the meaning of your life is not to just control the show. You know controlling everything so you feel better all the time. It’s to get good at being with both halves of that equation, the good and the bad. You know when we try to just control everything so we feel good all the time.

We are miserable because everything is constantly not going according to our plan. And so we have all this internal misery when we do this. You need to stop doing this. Accept the good, accept the bad, just be with it. Have that self awareness of oh, this is interesting. I don’t feel good. I am pissed off right now. I feel hurt by what, you know, by these thoughts in my head are creating these feelings and that isn’t that interesting.

So you’ve got to get out of this victim mode where like everything is happening to you, take responsibility. Understand that you’re a normal human being feeling feelings, thinking thoughts, and doing things based on what you’ve, you know, what you feel is best for you and for others. People are whatever and just just be with all of it. Be aware of it. Be curious, don’t judge yourself. Practice self awareness.

So what if instead of trying to control everything or change everything, you were just an observer of your life? Like, what would that look like for you? And I’m not saying you never take action, you just sit around passively observing yourself going, Oh, that’s very interesting. And then, you know, waste away on a couch somewhere, that is not what I’m saying at all.

You definitely want to take aligned action and create the kind of life that you want. But what I’m talking about here is before you can do that, you have to have the self awareness to know what is coming up for you. What does your life look like, really? What do your thoughts sound like to you? What do your feelings feel like to you? And if you were to just do this, instead of trying to control everything, you were just an observer?

How would that change how you showed up in the world? How would that change how you showed up for yourself? For your partner, for your kids, for your work? For your running? Just notice everything with like a neutral curiosity. Hmm, well, that’s interesting. It’s a good phrase, I use that a lot in my life.

I think about when I start to feel a feeling that feels like a negative feeling. And to me, that’s an alarm going off. And that triggers this thought, hmm, isn’t that interesting? What is that for me? Why am I feeling this way? And usually, I can just pinpoint a certain thought, a sentence in my head that’s causing me to feel hurt or sad or angry.

So when you stop resisting, when you stop rejecting, when you stop trying to change everything, that internal suffering that you have stops, when you can notice without judgment, what’s going on in your mind, what’s happening in your body, what’s going on with your thoughts and your feelings, your internal conflicts and your internal struggles melt away.

Like this is the most important step, the first step and the most important step in becoming the badass person that you want to be. And I love this quote from Eckhart Tolle, he says, “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” Whoa, I love this.

Whatever is coming up for you right now, just accept it as if you had chosen it. You know, developing self awareness, being aware of your own thoughts, being aware of your feelings, being aware of your actions. It’s not something that’s like, bestowed upon you like here, you get self awareness, and you don’t know it’s a learned skill.

And it’s a skill that you have to practice if you want to get good at it. But when you do it, when you do get good at developing more self awareness, you create this like neutral space, where you can make better decisions, instead of making all your decisions based from a place of judgment and fear and resistance and suffering.

So I’m going to encourage you, right now to start practicing self awareness, and see how things start to shift for you. See how things in your life become clearer. See how you start to make better decisions, and you start moving towards that badass person that you know you are that you want to be, you can start becoming that person right now.

And it all starts with just practicing self awareness. And anytime you’re thinking of thought or feeling of feeling and you’re, you’re wanting to resist it, or thinking it should, you should change it. Practice that little line that I use, which is huh. Isn’t that interesting? And then see what happens. This is powerful, powerful stuff, you guys.

So that’s all I got for you today. I hope you got something out of this. Reach out to me with questions or comments Hello at Inner Fire tribe.com I’d love to hear what you think of this. Much love to each and every one of you. We’ll see you next time.

Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.

13. What Are You Choosing to Believe About Yourself?

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What you choose to believe about yourself is so incredibly important. Unfortunately, most people believe a lot of negative things about themselves and then wonder why they can't get anywhere in …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Hey there and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host and I’m the life coach for runners. I help you overcome your obstacles in running and in life so you can unleash your inner badass. Just a quick reminder, my stop overeating masterclass, called You Can’t Outrun Your Fork starts Monday, April 6.

And if you’ve tried to lose weight by running and have had less than stellar results, you’re not alone. The truth is running is just not a very effective way to lose weight. Running is not the problem. The reason you are overweight is because you overeat, period. In this live six week masterclass, you will learn why you overeat. And it’s not your fault, by the way.

You will learn why running is not a very effective way to lose weight, I’ll talk all about that.You’ll learn a whole new way of eating that actually will serve you for the rest of your life, so that you can deal with all those urges and desires that come up. You will learn how to manage your emotions like a boss, so you can stop all the emotional eating. And I know for a fact right now, there is a lot of emotional eating going on. Am I right?

Yes, this program is unique in that I teach you how to manage the physical, mental and emotional aspects of weight loss. And as far as I know, no one else is really teaching it in this way, not like I am, you will learn how to control your cravings, manage your emotions and stop overeating for good. So you can weigh your natural weight.

So as I record this, it’s today’s Wednesday, April 1, and I currently have three spots available. I’m only taking 10 people for this initial class and I already have seven amazing people already signed up and ready to go. It’s going to be amazing. If you want to get in, and at a very, very deeply discounted rate, you have to sign up, like right now. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. The program starts soon; it starts Monday, April 6.

So if you’re hearing this on Friday, then you’ll probably want to sign up right away. If you get to this Saturday, Sunday, something like that, and you go to sign up and you can’t it just means the class is full. And you’ll have to wait till next time. But next time it’s going to be like 10 times more expensive. I kid you not. If you want to get in, do it now just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. I hope to see you there. It’s going to be epic.

Okay, on to today’s topic, what are you choosing to believe about yourself? So very often I hear clients say things like, oh, I’m not a real runner. You know, I only do half marathons. Or I could never run a full marathon. Because I ran a half once and it was really hard. Or I suck at running trails every time I do it. I trip and fall.

So I’m terrible at it. Or I’ve tried everything to lose weight and nothing ever works for me. So I’m just, I’m always going to be overweight and nothing works for me. Or I’ll never be a success because I’ve always failed at stuff in the past. So isn’t it interesting that we can take things that have happened in our past and we assign some sort of meaning to it? And then we adopt it as something we believe 100% is true.

So just because you’ve only run a half marathon, does that mean that you’re not a real runner? No, absolutely. You’re a real runner. Actually, you know, it makes you a real runner. You run. You go outside and you run a mile, you run 10 miles, it does not matter. Doesn’t matter how far or how fast. You’re a runner if you run.

And just because you’ve tripped and fallen on the trails does not mean you suck at running trails. I know a lot of people that fall all the time. I love running trails, I’m thinking I’m a pretty damn good trail runner. And I’ve fallen dozens of times, it does not mean anything. But what we do is we assign meaning to something that has happened to us. And then we adopt it as a belief. It’s something that we believe in about ourselves. And it holds us back a lot of the time.

We have, as humans, we’ve actually developed this knack for taking certain events from our past, especially like traumatic events from our past, and then creating deep seated beliefs around them. So much so that our past we think our past is who we are, we have become our past.

So let’s say we were rejected by someone, or sexually assaulted, or hurt by someone or embarrassed or bullied. We often believe that these these things mean we are were broken in some way, that we are unworthy or we are damaged goods. And I can relate to this, honestly, I’ve had some experiences in my past.

I’ve had troubles with an addiction to alcohol. I’ve had troubles with being very overweight, I’ve had troubles with being very sick, and unhealthy, and had cancer. And my wife left me. And I used to believe that because of all those things happened, were happening to me within a, you know, pretty short period of time that I was broken. And I couldn’t be fixed, like there was something inherently wrong with me, and that I was just not a good person.

And, I mean, I had all the evidence, you know, I was sick. I was a failure. My life was a failure. It was overdrinking, I was overweight, I had this sickness. And all those things I believed about myself, since I believed I was a failure, they drove my action. So I just drank more. And I ate whatever I wanted to. I didn’t care about how I looked or how I felt or how sick I was, I got into one bad relationship after another and then I could say like, hey, yeah, see, see what a failure I am? Like to justify it all. Because of what I call the facts of my life, my actions were building into these, these negative beliefs.

You know, our beliefs drive our actions, then our actions produce results. Usually negative results that prove our negative beliefs are true for us. And this negative belief cycle just keeps going on and on. We all have gotten sucked into it at one point or another. So we use our past to believe we are unworthy or unlovable or doomed or just unlucky. Or like I said, damaged goods. Do you believe that though? Is any of this really true at all? No.

It is not the events of our past that shape who we are, but rather, our beliefs about what those things mean. What shapes who we are is the meaning that we assign to the events that happened in our lives. For instance, you don’t have to believe in the shame of a past event. You can believe that you are a magnificent creature full of light and love, not because of what did or didn’t happen to you. But just because you’re a human being alive on planet Earth and you were born good enough.

The moment you were born, you were born perfect, and beautiful, and lovable, and worthy beyond measure, the only one who thinks you’re not, is you because of what you believe. So no matter what’s happened in your past, you get to choose what it means to you today. And you absolutely have a choice in the matter. You get to choose what you believe about yourself.

I want to talk a little bit about belief systems. So a belief system is a whole group of beliefs that all feed off one another. They all support each other. So for example, if you believe you will always be overweight because you believe you’re weak. You have no willpower. You’re lazy, life is hard. You don’t deserve to be thin, your metabolism sucks, you’re ugly, it will always be a struggle for you.

Wow, there’s a complete belief system there that’s completely sabotaging any chance you have for success at losing weight. Or maybe you believe you’ll never be able to run a marathon because marathons are hard. And you’re not mentally or physically strong enough? And I mean, you’ve never run that far before. So why would you be able to do it now? And you’re just not capable of that much drive and determination, and you probably won’t be able to finish anyway.

So there’s a whole belief system about why you can’t run a marathon. So what do you think your chances are of succeeding? When you firmly believe all those things 100%. That’s right, zero, zip nada, nil, it’s just never gonna happen. You’ll need to dismantle these whole belief systems one by one, you’ve got to pick apart each one of those false beliefs that you think is true, that you think is a part of your identity, it’s really not.

It’s just a belief that you chose to believe at some point in your life. And you’ve got to address each one of those false beliefs and then choose to believe something else. Instead, you have to create a whole new belief system around what you do want. But it’s crazy, how we choose to believe all this negative crap about ourselves. It really is, it’s crazy.

Have you noticed that little kids don’t do this, they don’t go out there, and don’t think they can’t do something. You know what I mean? So a little kid is like, you know, learning how to ride a bike, they don’t think I can’t do it, and they just give up and never ride a bike. No, they just keep trying. Right? Little kids, they, you know, they’re learning how to walk. They don’t think to themselves. Yeah, I don’t know, I’ve never been able to do this before. So chances are pretty good, I won’t be able to do this.

No, they just show up and they do it. They keep trying and trying and trying to keep falling on their asses. And eventually they figure it out. At some point along the way, though, we’ve lost sight of that. We’ve developed this belief about ourselves, where we can’t do things we’ve started to like, look at our past and see how that’s going to affect our future. The truth though, is your past does not determine your future.

What you’ve done or not done in the past actually has nothing to do with what you, who you are or what you can do in the future. I mean, if we all believe this, if we all believe that our past determines our future, nothing new had ever happened, no one would ever do anything new, nothing new in our world would have ever been invented.

We would never have gone to the moon, we wouldn’t have iPhones, we probably would never have left the caves back in the day, right? We’d all be like, well, this cave is pretty good. You know, let’s not get crazy and try something new, like building a house because that’s something we’ve never done before. So I can’t possibly do that because we’ve never done anything like that before.

I don’t know, it’s crazy. But from this moment here, right now, you get to choose how you want to think you get to choose what you want to believe. You get to choose what you want to do. And you get to choose who you want to be right now, regardless of what you’ve ever done, or not done in your past.

But instead, what we do too often is we assign meaning or quote unquote truth to events from our past. And we take that truth. And we apply it to everything that we do, we prove it. And everything that we do, we prove that it’s true over and over and over again. And then we get stuck in that crazy loop of negative beliefs, and we can’t get out of it. And we just feel we just get stuck right in place right where we are. And we don’t ever get anywhere with our running.

We don’t ever lose the weight. We don’t ever try to get into another relationship because why bother? It hasn’t worked before I’ve failed. I’m a failure.

What you want to do is you want to start to change those beliefs, those negative beliefs you have about yourself, they are limiting your potential. They are holding you back. A lot of times we call these limiting beliefs because that’s what they do they limit our potential. So here’s an exercise you can do to start building new beliefs about yourself.

First of all, write down all have negative things that you believe about yourself, don’t hold back, just get it all out, pull out a piece of paper and a pen, write it down by hand, I love writing by hand, it’s so visceral, it helps you to get that information into your subconscious mind in a way that typing in on a computer does not. It’s a little bit slower for most people.

And so, you know, it helps to build those neural pathways. And the technology doesn’t get in the way I find when I start typing stuff, I’m constantly correcting errors, and it’s just a little bit of a clunkier process than just writing by hand. I don’t care about the grammar and all that other stuff. Anyway, that was a little sidebar.

But anyway, get out a piece of paper and a pen, write the stuff down, write down all the negative beliefs that you have about yourself. Don’t hold that. For example, I’m not good enough to ever be in a relationship again, because I’ve had two failed marriages. Or I’ll never have the body I want because I always fail when I’m trying to lose weight, I’m a failure. Or I could never run a marathon because running is too hard for me, I can’t do it, I’m not good enough to do it, you know, whatever it is, write out all that stuff. Just get it all down.

When you have filled a page, because you will have a lot of stuff that you believe by yourself, once you really dig deep, you’ll start to uncover stuff that is a little a little bit below the surface, okay? For each of these negative beliefs that you write down, I want you to write down what you want to start believing instead. Typically, it’s the opposite of that negative belief.

So write down what you want to believe instead, starting now, because you get to choose your choosing every one of these negative beliefs. Why? Why would you choose those? Why would you choose the negative beliefs? It’s crazy. I do it, too. I’m not yelling at you. We’re in this together. Okay, I got you.

Okay, so anyway, write down what you want to believe instead starting now. So typically it is the opposite. For example, I am more than good enough, because I am an amazing person, I’ve been an amazing partner in the past, I am capable of incredibly rich relationships full of love full of life full of fun adventure, I will have the exact body I want because I am now 100% committed to changing my relationship to food, I am a success story in the making. That’s a much more empowering belief.

Do you hear that? Or, I will absolutely run a marathon even though running is hard. Sometimes, hey, running is just hard. But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I’ve done all kinds of hard things in my life. And if I set my mind to it, I can do this too. What an empowering belief to have instead of, I can’t do it, because it’s too hard for me.

Okay, the next thing you have to do is you have to take action. So after you write down the opposite of these limiting beliefs, you’re writing down the more empowering beliefs, the beliefs that you want to believe, instead, you’re probably going to feel pretty motivated by that and inspired. And that’s where you have to start taking action.

This is the important part, you’ve got to get busy, proving that these new beliefs are true for you in your life, by taking action every day to make them come true. So just sitting around thinking about these things and writing them down, it’s great. And you should do that. And I would encourage you to do that. And I would encourage you to read them everyday too.

Because the writing, the thinking about them, the writing, and the reading them everyday helps build those new neural pathways, what you’re doing is in your brain, you’re creating new belief habits in your brain that will overwrite those old habits. So this is how you reprogram your brain. Okay, but besides just thinking about them and writing them down and reading them, you also have to take action to move in the direction of these new beliefs every day.

Taking action is how you will produce new results in your life and start to get the things that you want in your life. So maybe, if you want like a new, better relationship, you go on a bunch of dates and you start building awesome new relationships and new relationship skills. You have fun, you be yourself, you show up authentically. And you don’t have to make some major commitment. Just go out there and enjoy being with other people with no drama, no expectations and just have fun.

You know if you want to lose weight, if that’s the thing that you want for yourself or for your life, commit to eating only food that fuels your body, stop eating processed food, stop eating sugar, and start eating more of what serves you and the food that will serve Have you and your weight loss goals.

And if you want to run a marathon, pick a marathon, you know, six months out, eight months out and start training, pick a training plan, join a running group, when we’re allowed to do that again. Find a running partner, find a virtual running partner if you need to, or just go out there and go for a run. Take action today to move in the direction of your goals and your dreams and the things that you want.

And do it from this place of this new belief. When your new beliefs are driving that action, you will be unstoppable. This is how you build up these whole new belief systems. I mean, it took a long time to build the old beliefs and old belief systems and took a long time to get you to where you are here today, stuck. It’s going to take a little bit of time to undo that, okay, to loosen up the grip that you have on your limitations on your old illogical false beliefs.

You know, you’ve spent a great deal of time over the years finding ways to constantly prove all these old limiting beliefs were true even though they were not. So it’s gonna take a little bit of time to build up the new beliefs, but you’ve got to take action. And you do this by continually making progress and proving to yourself over and over again that this new belief is the one that you’re adopting.

This new belief is the one that you’re choosing. You get to choose what you believe. You know, believing in yourself is not some gift that some people have and others don’t. It’s not like, oh, well, he believes in himself. So you know, that’s awesome. Good for him. I just don’t know, it’s a decision that somebody made along the way. It’s a choice that you get to make.

Make the decision today right now to believe in yourself. Choose to believe that you are glorious, beautiful, worthy, strong, because you are. Choose to believe that you have the power of the universe behind you in everything you do, because you do choose to believe that matter. No matter how much fat you have on your body, or how much pain you’ve experienced in your past, or how hard running is for you. From this moment forward, you will believe in yourself.

And then I want to leave you with this little bit from Wayne Dyer. Wayne Dyer has a book called You’ll See It When You Believe It. And so many people think it’s the other way around, you know, I’ll believe it when I see it. But if you want something to happen in your life, you have to believe it will happen first.

Not like oh, once I get this thing, then I’ll believe in it. You know, once I see the results, then I can believe in myself. No, it does not work like that. You have to believe in yourself 100% in order to get those results. Always, always, and period. Choose to believe in yourself, my friends.

So that’s all I got for you today. I hope you are staying safe and sane at home during the COVID19 crisis we’re experiencing right now. Listen, I understand this is a challenging event happening in your life. You get to choose what it means to you. You might choose to believe that this is the worst thing that could possibly happen, that you’re never going to get back on track with your training, that your running season is ruined, the world is not a safe place or something terrible is going to happen to you or someone you know.

Or instead, you can choose to believe that this is the moment where you step up your game and you become the badass person you are meant to be. You choose to believe that this is a temporary situation and you’ll get back on track with your training soon and you’ll actually be stronger and faster than ever before.

You can choose to believe that all pandemic you know these global pandemics come and go because they have and this too shall pass this is temporary and that you and everyone you know is going to be just fine. What you choose to believe shapes who you are just remember that so who do you want to be? As always, you can reach out with questions or comments hello@innerfiretribe.com. I’d love to hear what you think of this. Send me a message and just say hey, here’s what I thought. Have an amazing day my friends much love to each and every one of you

Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.

12. Why Running Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss

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Being overweight is not something that’s not talked about very much (or at all) in the running community. There seems to be some stigma around being a runner and being overweight. Like you’re not …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners. And I help you overcome your obstacles in running and in life. So you can unleash your inner badass. And today I want to talk about a subject that is really important to me and something that I’m really passionate about.

And that is why running doesn’t work for weight loss. So being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much, or at all in the running community, there seems to be some sort of stigma around being a runner, and being overweight. It’s like, hey, you’re not doing it, right. You must not be running enough. If you can’t lose weight, or if you’re overweight. Oh, I see you’re training for a marathon. Still can’t seem to lose weight. What’s wrong with you?

These are some of the things that I’ve heard around the running community. And some things that people have shared with me and I felt as well. Okay, so I know, I know how this feels. I really do. I know this is something that not a lot of people are talking about. And so I wanted to sort of just like shine a light on this subject and talk about this today, because it’s really something that I’m really passionate about. And I haven’t shared this really before. And I think now’s the right time. So here we go.

So back in the day, back in, like 2003, I was seriously, I was overweight, I was I was probably 50 or 60 pounds overweight. And I was very unhealthy. I was very sick, I had cancer, I was drinking too much. And I was in a very, very bad place. I was basically just really sick and really unhealthy. And I needed to change some stuff in my life.

So I did, I quit drinking, which was a big part of the problem for me. I started eating better. And I started running. And obviously I got treated for the cancer and I’ve been cancer free for many, many years now. So that’s all good. But the running was like a big catalyst for me to like, do something that would help me to lose weight.

You know, like that was the thing was like, oh, if I just run I’m gonna lose weight. And, and for me, it was like a change of lifestyle completely. You know, I gave up the crazy eating that I was doing. And I started running and stopped drinking. So all those things combined. I lost a lot of weight and I lost probably 60 pounds and kept it off for a long time and continued to run and train and do all these awesome things.

I’ve run like 14 marathons, I’ve done an Ironman, I’ve done countless other triathlons and ultra marathons, including a 50 miler and a 100 miler. And I’ve done all these things, and was able to kind of maintain this, this weight that I was at for a long time. And I felt pretty good about myself.

Well, in the last few years, I’ve sort of backed off my running a little bit. After I did my 100 miler at the end of 2017. I wanted to scale back my running, and I just didn’t want to put anything on the calendar and I just wanted to be like, I just want to go out there and run and have fun and enjoy it and not to have all these goals out there.

So I stopped kind of signing up for races and having goals like that, and I started gaining weight. And I couldn’t figure out why because I was still training and I was still running and I was still like I would do a marathon a year or whatever. But I was running all the time.

Well, I ended up, you know, gaining like 15 or 20 pounds back, you know, look, looking back over time, it was like, it happened slowly, but it happened. And I found myself in this place of like, okay, I need to lose this weight, what am I going to do? And so I tried all these different things to help me to lose the weight.

And I tried like calorie restriction where I was just like counting calories. And that is very challenging to do, by the way, I had to have this app. And I had to log every bite of anything that I ate, and I had to know all the ingredients in it, and all the breakdown of all the nutrition breakdown of it according to the label.

And it was challenging to try to keep track of that. When the idea there was like, oh, yeah, if you eat, you know, 1500 calories, but you burn off 2000 calories a day, you’ll lose weight. I gotta tell you, I did not lose weight. And I was constantly stressed out about entering all this data into this app. Okay.

Maybe that’s how you lose the weight, you’ve spent so much time and energy, and you’re so stressed about trying to figure out how to enter all that data into this thing. You just lose weight. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. But you know, I’ve done a plant-based thing for many years. Vegetarian, I tried sort of a vegan-paleo thing, a vegan-keto thing, I’ve tried to eat nothing but fat, nothing, but no carbs. Like, I’ve tried all these things. And I couldn’t get anything to work, I can’t get anything to work.

I’ve always felt like I just haven’t had control of what I eat. I know what the problem is now. And I’m gonna get to that in just a minute. But getting here, you know, I just felt like I did not have control over what I was eating. I didn’t have control over myself. You know, I felt tired all the time. I found myself doing a lot of emotional eating. I’ve been doing that lately, too.

By the way, with the lock down here, The Stay At Home order. And some other things going on in my life, I’ve been doing a lot of emotional eating. And I’m not sorry about it, but I even eat when I’m not hungry. And you know what, I’ve just felt stuck.

I felt like, I am never going to lose this weight. And I’ve keep running. You know, I ran back in August, I did 31 days of running. And I thought for sure that would help me to lose weight. No, I gained weight. Starting in November, I did a running challenge running through the holidays. And I ran for something like 80 days straight. And I thought that would help me to lose weight.

And it didn’t, I didn’t lose weight at all, I actually gained weight. And so I’ve realized that the problem really isn’t about running. It’s not about like, oh, I’m not running enough. The problem is that I’m overeating. The problem is that I overeat, I eat too much. I have an addiction to food. I’ve programmed my body to become so addicted to food, not just my body, but my brain as well, to become so addicted to food, especially sugar.

That not even you know, training for a marathon is going to help me to lose weight. Okay? So, believe me, I’m frustrated by this or have been frustrated by this. And I feel like the advice out there is just like here, Here, eat this. Just eat this over here or eat this or just do this diet over here. And it just this just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for most people.

You know, just changing your behavior, changing what you eat, does not address the underlying issues. You know, I feel like everyone’s out there just saying, eat this as if it’s that simple. It’s not that simple. In order to lose weight in order to be at your ideal weight to be at your natural weight. You need to identify and fix the causes of your over eating. Not just treat the symptoms. We’re so focused on treating the symptoms or not getting to the root of the problem. Okay.

So all these different like diets I’ve tried or whatever, I’ve tried these things and then said, that doesn’t work because I gained weight, or I kept overeating. And the problem isn’t in what I’m eating, necessarily, although that is part of it. The problem is, I wasn’t addressing the mental and emotional part of overeating, okay?

There’s three parts to overeating that have to be addressed. There’s the physical causes of overeating, there’s the mental causes, and then there’s the emotional causes. I’m going to talk about all three of these. But I want you to know something, if you’re out there and you’re a runner, and you’re having a, you know, a struggle with you’re struggling to lose weight or struggling to feel good about your body.

I know what you’re going through, I feel I feel your pain, I really do. And, and I want to help you, and I, and I coach people through this. I’m coaching myself through this and I want to coach you through this. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today, we’re going to talk about the three causes of overeating. And, and the things that aren’t really addressed. And if you’re a runner, I want you to pay attention. And I want you to really take in what I’m going to say here and be open to trying something that’s a little different, okay?

Because whatever, whatever you’ve been trying is not working. Okay? So let’s try something different. Okay? Okay, so the three causes of overeating. The first is the physical causes. So this is, most overeating is caused by a hormonal imbalance, okay? Overeating, especially sugar, causes too much insulin to be produced in your body. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, okay, the more insulin you produce, the more fat will be stored on your body, the more you way, okay?

If you continually produce insulin, you are going to continue to gain weight. Okay, this is just straight up science, okay? The problem is that when you’re trying to lose weight, the most important thing for you to consume is what it’s your own body fat you want to consume, if you will, you want to burn for energy, your own body fat, in order to lose weight, you cannot do that when your body is full of glucose sugar, your insulin is too high. And you’re in fat storage mode, and you got to, you got to shift that, okay.

So the first thing you need to do is you need to get your insulin levels down. And you can do this by eating less often. And by reducing the amount of sugar you consume. We all know that sugar is bad for us. Okay? It’s actually the worst thing you can put in your body. And I’m saying this, as, as the words are coming out of my mouth here. I’m thinking of the Ben and Jerry’s that I have in the freezer, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I love Ben and Jerry’s. I absolutely love it.

But I’m giving it up, because I know how bad it is for me, and I’m just tired of feeling the way that I felt lately, okay. So I’m giving it up. And here’s the other thing, when you eat too much sugar, you get this huge over desire for food, you get this like physical craving for food.

Because what happens is, sugar is super concentrated, it causes a super concentrated dopamine response in your brain. It causes an excess of dopamine to be produced, which feels really good, right? So much so that the neurotransmitters that are producing the dopamine, they actually down regulate over time.

So it takes more and more sugar for you to get the same amount of pleasure. So you got to eat more sugar to feel good. And your brain and your body or just being there like it’s like a Drug Act, okay? A drug addict needs more and more of the drug to produce the same result. And so what happens there then your insulin goes up again, you get more cravings, you can’t handle the cravings, you eat more, and there’s this crazy cycle that happens, right.

And you know what? This isn’t your fault. We’ve all been programmed this way. For decades, the food industry has made it their mission to make food as delicious as possible, you know, as desirable as possible, they put sugar in everything, for the love. And the food that we eat, it’s so concentrated and processed that it gives us this incredible hit of dopamine when we eat certain foods. And then we have to eat more and more just to get that same feeling.

Okay, so it’s like being addicted to drugs or alcohol, you need more to produce the same effect. So in order to fix the physical cause of overeating, you have to get that insulin level down, you have to eat less, eat less often and eat less processed foods like sugar and flour. Okay? When you do this, you actually can start to get your hormones back in balance and start burning fat instead of burning to sugar. Okay. So that’s how we fix the physical part of overeating.

Okay, next is the mental part of overeating, the mental causes. So mental cravings, this is a real thing. Again, the food industry has concentrated this sugar in our foods so much that we are constantly craving more and more food, more and more of this delicious sugar, right? Our brains are actually responding the way they’re supposed to, though. They’re not,your brain is working normally. Okay, this isn’t your fault.

You eat the sugar, you eat the flour, you release the dopamine. And then your brain wants more of that. It’s just like your primitive brain, the amygdala, part of your brain responding to this like, it’s like a life or death situation, you know, are primitive brains, they’ve learned over time that when food is good, we’re going to produce a hormone that makes us feel good. So that will remember that, hey, this is good, okay.

So when you know when we would be eating blueberries back in the caveman days, you know, back in the day, we’d be eating some blueberries and be like, ooh, these are really good. And you get this little tiny dopamine response, right? That’s good. Oh, I want to remember this, I want to eat more of those because they made me feel good. And so you’ll go back and eat more of the blueberries.

Okay, but over time, it’s kind of developed into this thing of like, life and death kind of situation with our brains. Because now we have like blueberry syrup, blueberry pie, blueberry toaster strudels. We juice everything. So it’s super concentrated, and we get this super intense hit of dopamine. And then when we don’t get it, our brains are like, we need this now or we’re going to die.

Your brain actually literally thinks it’s like a life and death situation happening here. Okay. So that’s kind of like what’s happening with your brain. And then you get these thoughts. So the thoughts will start to come into play here, you get these thoughts of, I’m restless, I’m bored. I feel deprived.

You know, when you stop overeating, even for a little bit. You start to feel like, you know, oh, I just deserve this. I’m deprived. What’s one box of Oreos? You know that you can justify that all you want. And all that mental chatter. All it’s doing is just continuing to build into that idea and support that idea that your brain is thinking like you need this or you’re going to die. And so you give in to it, you give into the mental craving, okay.

And we’ve just been programmed our whole lives, we’ve essentially programmed our minds to over eat and buy now. It’s our subconscious mind that’s running the show. Our subconscious minds have been programmed to make us think we have to overeat or will die. Okay, we get these intense cravings for something sweet.

And I know I talk about Ben and Jerry’s all the time, but it’s just a good example. It’s so good. But it’s like Ben and Jerry’s. You know? I think about that. And I’m like, I’ve just got to have it. And these thoughts go through my mind. Like if I don’t have it, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might die. And I’ll go to the store and I’ll get some.

I’ll go drive miles to the store to get Ben and Jerry’s just so I can like satisfy that mental craving. And there’s a physical craving there too. But here’s the thing. The good news is that you can reprogram your mind to not overeat, you can reprogram your mind to just just eat normally. This is actually one of the most powerful things I do with my coaching clients is I help them change their brains literally by creating new habits, new neural pathways.

And if you really want to stop overeating, you have to break those old habits and create new habits that serve to reprogram your mind, especially the subconscious. But even if you can get the physical piece to work, and you can get through some of this mental stuff, there’s still that emotional side of overeating that has to be addressed.

One of the biggest underlying factors in weight gain is emotional eating. And you know what? Runners just don’t want to talk about this. Runners think I’ve got this. I’m a runner, I know what to do. I know all this stuff about nutrition, I’ve read the books, like I’m good, thanks. They just don’t want to talk about it. Okay.

Runners do love talking about food, though, but not overeating. You know, we talk about donuts and ice cream and pizza and chips and cake and all that. What are we going to eat after the run? And I would do that too. And I would just eat all that food. But then I noticed something happening to me, I started to feel bad about myself.

You know, I started gaining weight. And I started feeling guilty about overeating. And I started to feel like shame around it. I felt shame about how I looked and how I felt I’ve been fit for a long time and had been really in great shape. And then I got to this point where I didn’t even want to like, take my shirt off at the pool or whatever. Because I was like, oh, I you know, feel fat again, okay.

And I felt judged by other people, like people were talking about me. They probably weren’t, it’s probably all in my head. But I just felt that way. And I felt like a failure. Like, I used to be really fit. I used to be in good shape. And now I’m not anymore. And like, I’m never going to be that person again. And honestly, I just felt depressed about it and sad.

And you know how I know how I dealt with all these emotions I was feeling? Yes, I ate over them. Because eating gives me that little dopamine hit and it feels good. Does that make any sense whatsoever? As I’m saying this, you’re probably like, dude, that makes no sense whatsoever. Or maybe you’re like, yep, I get it.

Here’s the problem, though. When that little feel good, dopamine wears off, you’re still left with feeling all those emotions. But now it’s worse because you feel bad about overeating. So you eat more to feel better. And then like, oh my gosh, it’s this crazy vicious cycle that just goes on and on. But you know what? Emotional eating is a very common thing. It’s a very, very common theme. A lot of people do it, they eat, so they don’t have to feel their feelings. Especially right now during this like stay at home order people are dealing with this crisis by going to the refrigerator. I’ve seen a lot of people joking about it on social media, but I think there’s an underlying like, oh, yeah, that’s me. You know?

I mean, I’ve been doing it. I know that it’s been me, okay. I mean, it does work for a little bit like you do feel a little bit better while you’re eating the Ben and Jerry’s. But when you stop, what happens? Like what results are you getting? Who are you? Who are you becoming in the process of stuffing down your feelings and feeling good momentarily, like you’re using this? It’s like a false pleasure.

You know, to just try to feel good in the moment we were so afraid to feel our feelings that we will become overweight, instead of feeling our feelings. You know, if you want to stop overeating, if you want to lose weight, you have to be able to manage your emotions, you have to be able to feel your emotions. Well, how do you do that?

Well, one of the things you do is you need to stop using food to feel better. Okay, that’s one thing. And you need to learn how to just sit with your feelings, how to sit with your emotions, how to allow them to be there, without reacting to them, or without eating to now feel them. And you know what, here’s some truth I’m gonna drop on you right now.

This is not a comfortable place to be. Sometimes it’s not comfortable, to feel sad, or to feel frustrated or to feel angry, or to feel shame or guilt or whatever it is, it might suck pretty bad sometimes. And honestly, in those times, it’s really good to have somebody there and help you. And that’s where I come in.

And I, one of the most powerful things I do as a coach is I help my clients work through their emotions, I help them to learn to allow those emotions to be with them, to allow them to be present in their body, to embrace that temporary uncomfort uncomfortable feelings so they can get to the other side of that because on the other side of that is all the stuff that you want, okay, on the other side of those uncomfortable feelings are the results that you want in your life, okay? That’s where the good shit is, okay.

And I teach my clients how to be emotional bad asses. Okay, I want to show you how to be an emotional badass. So those are the three big things that people aren’t really talking about. And this is why running doesn’t really work for weight loss. Now, here’s the thing about running.

Running is freaking awesome. You should keep running. Do not misunderstand what I’m saying here. I completely love running and do it all the time. It is just not a great tool for weight loss. Exercise in general is not a great way to lose weight. Because as soon as you stop exercising, the weight is just going to come back if you’re just trying to like do this calorie burn thing. It’s not sustainable.

You have to stop the overeating. The reason you are overweight is because you overeat. And I’m like looking in the mirror when I’m saying this because I do it too. I want to help you overcome your addiction to food. I want to help you overcome your addiction to overeating. I want to help you overcome your addiction to stuffing your feelings down with food.

And I can show you how to do this. I can show you how to stop overeating. More importantly, I can show you how to deal with the physical, mental and emotional aspects of losing weight as a runner. So I’ve got something really amazing to share with you guys. I’m launching a brand new masterclass called You Can’t Outrun Your Fork. And the stop overeating masterclass, it’s a six week live masterclass with me. I’m only allowing 10 people to join this, I just want to keep this really small and intimate.

But you are going to learn why you overeat, you are going to develop a new way of eating that will serve you for the rest of your life, you are going to learn the skills to deal with all those mental and emotional urges and desires. You’re going to learn how to stop the emotional eating, and you’re going to learn how to manage those three things, the physical, mental and emotional aspects of overeating.

We’re going to work on those underlying issues that cause you to overeat. You’re going to learn how to reduce your hunger and your desire for food to their natural states so that you can weigh your natural weight. I want you to imagine for a minute how much easier running will be when you aren’t carrying around all those extra pounds. And you know what no one else is really teaching this in this way.

So here’s the thing, I am going to be offering this course to the general public here in a couple of months. And it’s a lot of material. And I’m walking you through every step of the way. And I’m coaching you we’re doing group coaching, and I’m doing one on one coaching with each person in this group for six weeks, okay?

When I launch this, it’s going to be around $3,000 which I think is a really good deal for that. Okay. But right now, since this is the first time I’m doing this, I want you to help make this launch a success. So I’m only charging $97 for this beta launch. Okay. That being said, there’s only 10 spots available. Some are already taken. If you want to get in on this, you have to sign up now.

I’ve only got a few spots left and I have to cap it at 10. I don’t want more people than that in there. Okay. And there’s just one catch at the end of the program. I’m going to ask you for some feedback. Give me your thoughts about the program and I might ask you to share your story. Cool.

So the program starts Monday April 6, it’s a six week live masterclass with weekly meetings on Zoom. So it’s social distancing friendly. I will be coaching you through the entire process and other people will be going through this with you, I will be going through this with you. You will not be doing this on your own.

You’ll get one on one coaching with me to work through any personal issues that come up to so we’ll have to save some time just me and you talking Okay. You will learn how to stop overeating you will learn how to stop using food to prevent you from becoming the most badass version of yourself. Okay, I want you to join me. Go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. That’s one word, innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. I would love to hear what you think about this topic.

It might be a little controversial. I don’t know if people when you start talking about food and weight loss, sometimes it can be a little controversial. You know what, if so, bring it on. I want to hear what you think about this. Always, always, always you can reach out to me at hello@innerfiretribe.com. You know and I sincerely hope you all make the most of this time at home. So you can think of this time here locked in your house or whatever as a huge problem. Or you can think of it as a chance to learn and to grow and an opportunity to become the best version of yourself. You get to choose. Much love to each and every one of you will talk to you next week.

Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.

11. How to Manage Your Mind During Uncertain Times

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These are some very uncertain times we are living in right now. Races are canceled, schools are closed, restaurants and bars are closed, most people are working from home, and what's next? How bad …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners and other cool people. What do I do? I help you overcome your obstacles in running and in life so you can unleash your inner badass. Today I’m doing something a little bit different because of the situation that’s going on in the world today, the Coronavirus and people are concerned.

And what I wanted to do is record this podcast today to talk to you about how to manage your mind during uncertain times. This, I would say, is definitely an uncertain time for everybody. First, let me tell you really quickly about The Runner’s Edge. This is my mindset, coaching and training program. It’s a comprehensive online coaching and training program designed specifically to help runners like you develop the mindset you need to achieve powerful results in running and life.

When you join The Runner’s Edge, you get weekly mindset training, you get to ask questions, get answers, much like the teaching that I do here on the podcast, but we take a deeper dive into the material, we learn it, we study it, we apply it. The runner’s edge is only $26 per month. It’s less than $1.02 per day. It’s a subscription based program. The longer you stay, the more valuable it becomes for you.

Join The Runner’s Edge, ask your questions, get answers, jump on a hot seat coaching call with me that would be fun. Connect with other like minded runners and learn how to master the mindset of running. So you can unleash your inner badass, go to innefiretribe.com/edge to sign up for Runner’s Edge today.

So onto today’s topic, how to manage your mind during uncertain times. There’s some uncertainty, there’s some very uncertain times happening right now. There is a situation going on out in the world today that’s causing a lot of people to panic and a lot of people to have a lot of fear and anxiety.

You know, this virus thing is causing businesses to close their doors temporarily. It’s causing a lot of race cancellations. People are hoarding toilet paper. I don’t know why. But here’s the thing. There is a situation happening here in the world right now. And then there’s our thinking about that situation. And honestly, people are letting their thoughts just go wild here.

They’re freaking out. They’re going out to this worst case scenario. They’re panicking. People are getting angry, they’re gonna be angry about things being canceled about. There’s no toilet paper or bananas at the grocery store. Why did you guys buy all the bananas? I got bananas today, I’ll tell you that. And I feel good about that. Still don’t have toilet paper.

People are getting disappointed. They’re getting angry because races are being canceled. Training groups are canceled, schools are closed, restaurants are closed, bars are closed, public places are closed, blah, blah, blah. Everything is being turned inside out. Like we don’t know what is going on here. There’s a lot of uncertainty.

And so it’s, you know, what people are saying is all this uncertainty is causing me to have all this fear and all this anxiety inside. You know, people have to stay home alone. You know, they’re spending a lot more time alone. Or they’re spending more time at home working from home with their kids, bugging them all the time, which is probably worse, I don’t know. But anyway, all of this stuff can lead to very unhealthy thinking. You know, remember, it’s our thoughts about the situation, not the situation itself. That is the problem, okay?

And what we’re doing is we’re causing ourselves all kinds of unnecessary suffering, you know, we might have an emotional state that is, you know, in a negative emotional state. And when we start thinking this way, it just sort of amplifies everything. And we start self medicating. Because we don’t want to feel this way. We don’t want to feel the fear. We don’t want to feel the anger, the frustration, so we go to the fridge, we overeat, we drink too much.

You know, or maybe you don’t numb your feelings with food or alcohol. And you experience things like panic attacks, or anxiety, or just depression or strained relationships. You know, stress and anxiety can trigger a fight or flight response in the body and actually release a flood of chemicals like adrenaline into your system, which can cause your immune system to become weak and compromised, leaving you more vulnerable to viral infections. Does that sound like something you want to know?

I was talking to a friend earlier today who went through a very highly stressful situation in her life some years ago, and it actually caused her to, she was under so much stress, she put her body into so much stress, that she actually got shingles, you know, and it’s one of those things where that’s a pretty bad reaction to stress and anxiety, you know.

Now’s not the time when we want to compromise our immune systems, you know, we want to be strong, mind and body, okay. But so all this stuff is happening out there. And we start to feel fear, we feel anxiety, we feel panic, we feel frustration, and all those things. And we think this is a normal reaction to what’s happening, like out there. You know, the truth is, though, this is not, it’s not normal. And it’s not healthy, and it’s not necessary.

Like I was saying times like this, they tend to amplify who we already are. So if you’re typically a stressed out person, now, you might be into full blown panic mode. Or maybe you typically manage your feelings by going to the fridge, and now you’re knee deep in edible cookie dough, or Ben and Jerry’s. Or, you know, you can power down and eat a whole large pizza yourself, whatever it looks like for you.

You know, maybe if you’re, if you’re typically a little depressed, now you’re like, in this isolation mode, and this might send you into a deep, dark place, and we don’t want that. Okay. So what we need to do is we need to manage our mind, we need to manage our mind so that we can show up during this time, in a more empowered way. Okay.

So just because things are happening out there doesn’t mean you have to respond, or you have to react to them in a negative way, okay? It doesn’t have to be this way. What’s going on out there doesn’t have to affect you in here, okay? It really doesn’t. You don’t have to react to the news, or to the rumors or their predictions, or you don’t have to worry about what might happen.

Instead of allowing the events around you to determine how you think and feel, you can actually decide for yourself, how you want to show up right here now. Who would you be without these thoughts that are causing you to feel so frustrated? So angry, sad, worried, afraid?

You know, who do you want to be while we’re all dealing with all this uncertainty, because you get to choose how you feel. That is a choice that you make, okay? Remember, every emotion that you feel is caused by a thought, it’s caused by your thoughts and by your thinking. It’s not the situation out there. It’s not the circumstances around you that are causing you to feel the fear and the anxiety. It’s your thoughts about them.

It’s your thoughts about what’s happening out there that is causing you to think these thoughts that is causing you to feel these feelings. All right, whether you like it or not, the truth is you are choosing your feelings. You are choosing to think these thoughts. You choose to feel your emotions, okay, and it’s not a bad thing. I’m gonna talk about that in just a minute here. But I think what a lot of people want is they want some sort of tools, you know, what do I do in this situation?

If I start to feel this way, what do I do? If I start thinking these crazy thoughts, how do I manage my mind? Well, first of all, I want you to take ownership of your thinking, know that your thinking is not determined by what’s happening outside of you, your thinking is 100% determined by you, you choose your thoughts 100% of the time, okay?

Now, take responsibility for your own thoughts and for your own feelings. And we call this being at cause, be the cause of everything that’s happening in your life to you, in your mind, in your body.

Be a cause for all the results that you’re getting in your life, don’t be at the effect of others, don’t be at the don’t live at the effect of the news or the rumors. Okay. So take ownership of your thinking, that’s the first thing you can do, just know that you are going to take radical responsibility for the way you think and feel. That’s a great first step right there. Okay.

The next thing you can do is separate out the facts from your thoughts about the facts. Okay, so what’s really going on out in the world? You know, is this thing that you’re hearing about actually true? You know, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the number of cases that have been reported. And I’ve heard numbers of 10,000, in Ohio and 100,000. And I’m just like, whoa, this is crazy.

I got on the CDC website, and they’re only around 3500 confirmed cases. Now. I’m not saying that it’s not going to go up. I know it’s going to go up. But there are some, there are some facts that are happening right now. And then there are predictions and there are what might happen in the future. And even if the number goes up a lot, I still can’t do anything about that, other than stay home, wash my hands, use hand sanitizer, and don’t get into fights with anybody over toilet paper at the grocery store.

So, you know, what are the facts of the situation? You know. So, for example, you know, our local marathon here, the Flying Pig marathon, which was scheduled for the weekend of May 2, and third has been postponed until October, October 9 through the 11th. That’s a fact. The Flying Pig has been postponed. Our training group has stopped meeting officially, bars and restaurants are closed in the area. Travel has been limited. I’m spending more time alone. Those are all facts.

I could say, you know, everything sucks right now, you know, or you know, I can’t go out to get food anywhere. The training groups are all canceled. This all sucks. Like, no, I’m not doing that. Instead, I’m looking at what the facts are. Okay, I’m separating out the facts from my thoughts about the facts.

Now I have some thoughts about what’s happening. You know, and I know, I take full ownership of what I’m thinking, I’m disappointed. You know, I’m a little I’m, there’s some uncertainty about what’s going to happen going forward here with our training group. And, and that’s okay, like, I don’t have to have all the answers right now. You know, but it’s not causing me undue stress or anxiety. Okay.

So what are the facts about the situation? Just make sure you know, what’s true. And what are the facts? Okay. And then what are your thoughts about the facts? Now we can separate out? What is true, what are facts? You can separate those from your thoughts about it. What are you really thinking? What are the stories that you’re telling yourself about what’s happening? What are the opinions that you have? What are your judgments?

You know, where are you like, going out in the future and thinking about the worst case scenario? You know, are you seeing only the bad things? Or do you have positive thoughts about your circumstances, like, what are your thoughts? Sometimes it’s helpful to just write all that stuff down, just get it all down on a page, and you can actually see, oh, these thoughts here, those are kind of crazy. I should probably check those.

You know, right now I feel pretty good. I feel pretty calm about things. There are things that are happening with this situation that are affecting me. And as they come to my attention, I can respond to them, I can respond to them with clarity and understanding, I’m not reacting to them with fear, frustration and anger. And, you know, craziness.

You know, I’m calm, I have a clear head. And I have a lot of understanding. And I’m being very practical about what I can and can’t do. I can only control my thoughts. I can only control how I show up in the world. I can’t control what other people are doing at all. Honestly, I think I’m going to be fine.

I think most people are going to be fine. I’m not going to entertain a different thought, I’m not going to entertain a thought that everybody I know is going to be, you know, infected or something like that, you know. I’m just not going to go there until that situation changes and warrants a different thought. I’m going to maintain the thought that like, hey, right now I’m fine. Right now everybody I know is fine. And I think most of us are going to be fine. Okay.

And then I think like, okay, when I think these thoughts, how does that make me feel? It’s important to notice what thoughts are causing your feelings because all of your thoughts cause your feelings. Okay, the situation out there isn’t causing you to feel fearful. The situation out there isn’t causing you to feel frustrated. Situation up there is not causing you to feel sad.

You choose those feelings too. What is it that you’re feeling? What is the name of that emotion? Because sometimes it’s hard to determine, like, what is it that I’m really feeling here? Is that sadness? Is it fear, anger, hurt? Guilt, loneliness, frustration? Are you just pissed off? Are you frustrated with the lack of toilet paper in the world today? What is the feeling that you’re feeling?

And then here’s the part that seems counterintuitive. Don’t try to make that emotion go away. Don’t try to suppress that feeling. Feel your feelings. It’s okay. Feel it, allow it. Let it be. Don’t fight against it. We suffer when we resist our emotions. Resisting our feelings is what leads to most or all of our suffering. It’s okay to feel frustrated. It’s okay to feel sad. I’m frustrated.

You know, it’s okay to be pissed off because your race got canceled. I’m pissed off because, you know, our race got canceled. I was really looking forward to this. You know, it’s okay to feel like you’re going crazy trying to work from home with kids asking you a million questions and bugging you every 14 seconds. You can feel frustrated, it’s okay. Just don’t allow those feelings to consume you. Okay?

Don’t get lost in your feelings. Remember that you are in control. Always you are choosing these feelings. And it’s okay, you can have them, it’s okay. You know, you don’t have to allow them to dictate, you know, your behavior, you don’t have to allow your feelings to overwhelm you so that you can’t take action.

A lot of times we feel stuck. And so we just feel like we can’t do anything. And a lot of people that have depression that will feel like doesn’t, you know, whatever they do doesn’t matter. And so they just stay in bed, you know, they stay on the couch, whatever.

That’s when your feelings kind of can consume you. And they get to the point where it becomes unhealthy. But don’t don’t get lost in your feelings, it’s okay to feel your feelings. It’s when we try to push them away, that we start to see issues. And one of the ways we push them away is by numbing. And we do that with food and alcohol and drugs, or shopping, whatever.

But if you’re not showing up as the person that you want to be because of how you feel, that might be something you want to look at. Because that might mean that you’re not allowing those feelings to be just allow them to be and then look at how you’re showing up, how are you showing up in this world today? You know, what are you doing or not doing because of how you feel?

You know, what actions can you take despite how you feel, you know. Things get bad for us when we feel like there’s nothing we can do about our situation. And here’s the truth, there’s always something you can do about your situation. And the first and foremost thing and one of the most important things you can do is to manage your thoughts about your situation. Okay?

So some actions, you might take some actions, we can all take, I think, to stay more positive, more, more focused, more present moment, more thoughtful. First of all, stop watching the news. Because you know what, this steady stream of like, fear mongering, which a lot of the news is, it just goes, it goes right to our subconscious minds, you know, and it creates all kinds of innate fear and panic and anger in us.

So instead, I would encourage you to consume something positive every day, read a personal growth book, listen to an awesome podcast, like this one you’re listening to right now, watch some good, you know, YouTube videos, some TED talks, some good speakers, read some blogs, soak up good stuff, from high vibe people, you know.

Something else you can do is connect one on one with people I know, there’s a lot of isolation going on right now. We can still connect with each other. You know, I feel like I’m connecting with you here, through this microphone through this video camera, through this social media platform, whatever it is, but you know, get together with people, it’s okay, you know, stay six feet apart.

Or connect with people over the phone, you know, let’s get back on the phone and talk to people. Jump on a video conference like this. I’ve been doing this lately with some people. I talked to a guy today, who lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and we just did a Zoom call. And it was awesome. Had a fun little chat. And they’re dealing with the exact same stuff we are here. It’s no different. Okay?

Everybody’s dealing with this right now. All right. But take the time to like work on yourself right now. You know, who do you want to be today? Who do you want to be right here? Now as we’re going through this, as we’re all going through this together? How do you want to? How do you want to remember this time? How do you want to remember how you showed up?

How do you want to remember yourself in this experience? Do you want to remember it as being like, sad and lonely and frustrated? And you know, crying all the time? Or do you want to remember it is like that was an amazing thing that I did there? Like I transformed myself? Like, what can you learn? How can you grow? What lessons are here for you?

Right now, I would encourage you to get outside, take a walk, go for a run, keep running, run with a friend with a small group of friends less than 10. And you don’t have to react with fear. Okay? No matter what is happening out there, you don’t have to react with fear instead, respond with conscious thinking, on purpose, purposeful, conscious thinking.

The bottom line here, yes, these are uncertain times. Okay, we’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. But you know what, we will get through this, you will get through this. And you get to choose who you want to be while you’re getting through this. So who do you want to be? How do you want to show up for yourself? How do you want to show up for your kids? How do you want to show up for your friends and for your family? How do you want to remember this time? How do you want to remember the plague of 2020?

And I’m not making light of this. Okay, not at all. I do think I’m kind of funny though. All right, my friends. I would love to hear what you think about this, drop a comment. And if you liked what you heard here today, I would love it if you share it with a friend. Also, it would be incredibly awesome if you’d leave a review on iTunes. I truly value your feedback because it helps make me, it helps make the show better. Reach out with questions or comments. Always hello@innerfiretribe.com And I hope you all have an amazing day, much love to each and every one of you.

Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.