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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Emotions

66. Eliminating Scale Drama

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

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

57. How to Make Healthy Eating a Way of Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

48. Think, Feel, and Act With Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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