Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
I hear a lot of runners talk about strength training, and honestly, not all of what they say makes sense. For example, runners tend to think they need to do a lot of reps with super light weights …
Continue Reading about 67. The Myths and Benefits of Strength Training for Runners →
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 67 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, a health and fitness expert and certified personal trainer. And as a certified personal trainer, I talk a lot with my clients about the benefits of strength training. So today, I’m going to go through some of those benefits.
And also kind of I want to dispel some of the myths around strength training, especially for runners because I hear a lot of people, a lot of runners, especially talking about strength training. And honestly, not everything I hear makes a lot of sense.
For example, runners tend to think they need to do a lot of reps with super lightweights or they’re going to get too jacked, you know, they’re going to get too muscley. Right, and it’s going to hinder their running performance. Really? Is that something you’re concerned about?
I get it though because I’ve bought into a lot of these ideas over the years. And I’ve come to realize that there’s just a lot of information out there that we believe to be true. We believe it’s based on facts, but it’s just not true. Okay, so in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I want to help clarify some of these things bust a few of these myths and misconceptions that runners have around strength training and what it can and can’t do for you.
I also will outline the many, many benefits that strength training actually does provide, especially for endurance athletes. If you haven’t already done so please come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing podcast community on Facebook called the Running Lean podcast community. It’s a group of runners who all share similar health and fitness goals.
Join the group, you can ask questions, get help, and feel supported. Listen, we all want to feel supported, especially when it comes to doing hard things like training for a marathon or losing a bunch of weight. And having a community like this to lean into is so helpful. You’ll find encouragement, inspiration, and even motivation for when you’re just not feeling it. So just go to Facebook search for Running Lean community and join us.
Okay, let’s get right into this topic here. Because I’m excited about this. The myths and benefits of strength training for runners. So first off, I’m going to go through a few of these myths that are very common among the running community and things that I’ve heard for many years. And I’ve just come to realize that some of these things are not true.
And we need to understand what’s really going on, I really want to focus on the importance of strength training, especially for endurance athletes. Okay, so the first myth I’ve heard for years and years and years, and I kind of bought into this too early on in my running days is that I’m a runner, so I don’t really need to do strength training, running is enough.
And this one, I’ve just got to tell you, you know, no, running is not enough. Okay. So, as a healthy human being, as an athlete, especially though, we have three main kinds of systems that we need to improve, okay, we’ve got our endurance system, our strength system, and our explosive power system.
All three of these are required for optimal human health and fitness, okay, but especially for us runners, right? You’ve got to build your endurance, you’ve got to build strength, and you need to build up your explosive power. Most long-distance runners only focus on one thing though, endurance, and that’s it.
They might focus on maybe getting a little bit faster, but they kind of leave a lot on the table, right? Just because you can go long distances and run far doesn’t mean you’re as strong or as fitter, as healthy as you can be. And when you only focus on one system, like endurance, you never improve other areas and you’re actually not going to be as fit or as powerful as a runner as you could be.
Okay, so we all know that to build endurance, we need to run more, right, we just keep increasing our distance, we keep increasing the time that we’re out there running. And that’s how we build endurance, you know, you, you go longer and then you back it off a little bit. So your body can adapt and recover.
And then you go longer, again, you build up that cardiovascular system, you build up that aerobic system. Great, we all understand how to do that, right? To build explosive power, you can do things like plyometric exercises, box jumps, single-leg jumps, lateral jumps, HIIT training, these are all ways of building explosive power.
Also, things like sprinting, and I’m not talking about, you know, speed work, where you just go a little bit faster, I’m talking about all-out sprinting, or explosive step running, like running up steps, right, just until you just can’t go any further. It’s like, you hit that lactic threshold really fast. Okay, that’s, that’ll build explosive power.
And then to build strength, we need to do some sort of resistance training, we need to do some sort of resistance exercise where we lift heavy things, we progressively overload our muscles, so that our muscles can adapt and grow and get stronger. And it’s not just enough to go out there and run a lot to get stronger legs, let’s say, like, you can do that.
And you will improve the strength in your legs by running. But even more effective would be to do some sort of resistance training. But when you have all three of these systems, you know, when you’re building into all three of these systems – endurance, explosive power and strength – you’re going to be a much stronger, much more powerful runner, you will be able to go farther and faster. And also, you’re just gonna be a much more healthy human being over. All right.
Everything I talk about here is like, I want to be the healthiest, most badass version of myself possible. I’m always working on improving my health, and my fitness, always. And I’ve realized that in order to do that, I can’t just go run a million miles. Like, that’s part of it. But if I only focus on one thing, I’m just leaving so much behind. And so I’ve really made it a point to start focusing on building strength. And it’s so powerful.
And I’ll get into a lot of the benefits about this as we go through this, but just know that you do need to do strength training, you know, running is not enough, just running a million miles is not enough. Okay. Another thing I hear from people because I work with a lot of people who are, you know, maybe in their 40s, or 50s, or 60s, you know, and a lot of people have said this, to me, it’s like, I’m getting too old to do strength training, I’m too old to do this.
And I just have to say like this one is not true at all, you’re never too old to do strength training, even if you’ve never done it before in your life. Especially for endurance athletes who are over the age of 40. We especially benefit from strength training, because as we get older, our strength tends to decline faster than our endurance, like our endurance seems to be pretty good. And we can kind of maintain that as we get older, but our strength declines pretty fast.
And when you engage in high-intensity strength training, it actually kind of produces an anti-aging effect, because what you’re doing is you’re preserving lean muscle mass, which is very important. We want to stave off sarcopenia, which is you know, losing muscle. It optimizes certain adaptive hormones so that you, you know, get stronger, you build more lean muscle mass.
And the reason this is important is because as you get older, you know, sarcopenia is a real problem. Osteoporosis is a real problem. And one of the most common causes of death in the elderly population is not having strong bones and muscles, not having a strong muscular, skeletal muscular system, and people fall down.
Falling down is one of the leading causes of death in the elderly population because they fall down, they break a hip or something like that, and all of a sudden they become said theory. And then when you’re sedentary, everything declines very rapidly, right? You totally lose muscle mass, you lose bone density and bone strength.
And, you know, your quality of life just goes downhill pretty fast, you know. So if you can maintain your muscle strength, if you can maintain your bone density, you’re much more likely to live longer and thrive even as you get super old, right.
So strength training will actually help increase muscles, right, we know that, but it also will help increase bone density and can help prevent osteoporosis. A study published in the journal, endocrinology, and metabolism this study was called the effects of resistance exercise on bone health.
And basically, they say, based on the available information resistance exercise, either alone or in combination with other interventions may be the most optimal strategy to improve the muscle and bone mass in postmenopausal women, middle-aged men, or even the older population. So studies have confirmed this, this is not just speculation, and as you get older, you definitely want to maintain some sort of wrist resistance exercise.
One of the best ways to stave off aging, and to build and maintain a good strong skeletal muscular system is to lift heavy things, keep doing some strength training or start doing it. Listen, I’m 54 years old. I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve been doing strength training for a long time. And right now, I’m the strongest I’ve ever been.
I am in really, really good shape. I feel amazing. My running is amazing. My strength regimen just keeps improving. I’m starting to see a lot of muscle growth and muscle definition like I’ve never seen before. So even at my ripe old age of 54 years old, I’m still making massive improvements. Okay, so you absolutely can do this. It doesn’t matter how old you are.
I recently saw some video, I think it was on Instagram of some 95-year-old woman doing deadlifts. And that was pretty badass, you know, she was like in super great shape. And that was impressive, you know, so it doesn’t matter how old you are, at any age, you’re never too old to do strength training. Alright.
Another common misconception people have is that strength training just takes too long. It takes too long. Listen, I get it looks like you’re already running four days a week or six days a week. And now you want to add strength training to that too. I mean, come on, I don’t have time for that. Nobody has time for this, right.
So there is a little bit of truth to this, because if you’re doing it wrong, it may take too long. So I used to do strength training, like three or four times a week, and I would go for an hour or an hour and a half each time. And for years I did this and my results were never all that great, right? I really wasn’t getting a lot of results.
And the thing is, I was doing it wrong. Okay, I was going there and I wasn’t doing a good effective strength training program. So what I was doing was just kind of going through the motions putting my time in, you know, it was more of a cardio workout than anything else, right.
So to spend that much time at the gym doing strength training, unless you’re a professional bodybuilder, and this is like what you’re doing for a living, I would say you don’t need to spend that much time at the gym. A well-written strength program, the programs that I write for my clients only require twice a week.
And about 20 minutes each time 15 to 20 minutes each session, you get a whole-body workout twice a week, and it is a kick-ass program and very effective. Very, very effective. I am seeing amazing results in myself and in my clients. I’m getting bigger arms, bigger legs, more muscle definition, and I feel more powerful.
I’m definitely stronger because I’ve been tracking all this from just doing this, like 20 minutes a week, twice a week. That’s it. I have time for that you have time for that. So strength training does not take too long. If it’s taking too long. You’re not doing it right. Okay, we need to back off the amount of time we’re doing it and make the most of the time we’re lifting.
So that requires you to get get a little bit heavier with the weights. It’s got to hurt it’s got to be hard. But you can do it and do it without spending a lot of time at the gym. Okay, this one is interesting. So a lot of people think that you have to do strength training on your rest days.
So the days that you’re not running are the days that you should do your strength training. And I used to believe this, and I used to think this was a really smart way to go, like, you don’t want to, like, you know, go run a lot and do some sort of heavy, heavy lifting on the same day, right. And until recently, I used to believe this and used to practice this, but I found more and more evidence that this is actually not a very good idea.
Here’s why. Because when you do your strength training on your rest days, you’re effectively destroying all the benefits of a rest day. Okay, so let’s say, for example, you run four days a week, like Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then on Mondays and Wednesdays, these are supposed to be your rest days. Very critical rest days, you know, for a hard-running schedule, you need those rest days, right.
But now you’re putting in a couple of heavy lifting days, well, you’re gonna have a much harder time recovering from your runs, because you’re not giving your body the time it needs to recover on those rest days. Also, because you’re doing your strength training, and then the next day you’re running again, you’re gonna have a hard time recovering from your strength sessions, because you’re not giving yourself time to recover on those rest days.
Okay, so the suggestion here, then this may go against everything you thought you knew. But the suggestion is to do your hard strength training days on the same days as your hard running workouts. The idea here is that you want to make your hard days hard and make your easy days easy.
So this will actually help you to work harder on those hard days because you’re going to recover faster, you’re going to reduce your risk of getting injured, and you’ll be more you’ll have more energy and you’ll be more rested and recovered for those hard workout days. And then on your rest days, treat it as a true easy day, a true rest day, and you’ll recover much better. And you’re going to get stronger, and you’re going to improve both your strength training and your running if you do it this way.
Okay, so and then there’s a preference, some people decide to do their strength training before their running. And some people like to do it in the opposite order, they like to run first and then do their strength training. Really, this is kind of a personal preference, really up to you.
Personally, I like to do the strength training first and then run. But do you know, do whatever works for you. But try to keep your hard days hard, and your easy days easy. And you’re gonna start to see some definite improvements in both places, for sure.
All right, now this one is fun. And I love this because I hear this all the time. And it cracks me up. I need to do super light weights with a lot of reps so that, you know, I build endurance. And here’s the thing, your endurance system, you’re already working in the endurance system, right?
You do not need to do a bunch of reps with super lightweight, this is not doing you much good at all, honestly. And I see people do this all the time. They’re like, you know, they go to the gym, they pick up those five-pound weights, and they’re just doing these arm curls or something. And they can do like 100 reps. And yeah, it is true.
It does help to build some cardiovascular endurance, but you don’t really need to be working on that at the gym with weights in your hands, okay, you work that work on your cardiovascular endurance out on the roads running, right? You don’t lift weights to build endurance, you lift weights to build muscle.
You don’t need more endurance training. What you need to do is increase your lean muscle mass so you can become a stronger runner and doing a lot of reps with very light weights is just like going out and running a bunch more. Right? There is a cardiovascular component to it, but there’s no strength component to it.
So you want to develop muscles you want to get stronger and the only way you can do that is to overload your muscles. You got to put more load than your muscles can handle so that they adapt to those stressors. You want to overload your muscles so that they get super stressed, send signals to repair and grow so that it can accommodate more stress the next time.
And if you could do this properly, and you do this consistently, you will build muscle and you will get stronger. You just never tax your system enough by lifting super light weights and doing a million reps. Your muscles never need to adapt. And I totally get this because I kind of did this for years, I was doing some sort of strength training for years, and I wasn’t getting results.
And I’m like, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I need to go and, and do even more. Because I was in this mindset of like, I’m a runner. So I need to do lightweights with a million reps. And it just never worked. And never, I never got any results from that, you know. So the same thing applies here.
You know, when we keep doing the same amount of weight each time we work out at the gym, right? You’re never going to progress, your muscles will never grow because they aren’t being overloaded. And here’s the thing, the reason we don’t want to do this is because it sucks and it hurts, it’s hard. Overloading your muscles means you’re going to have to get to failure. And that’s painful. It’s really, it’s painful. If you do it the right way.
If you’re doing strength training the right way. You should be just cooked at the end of the workout. Okay. So the whole lightweights with a million reps is not a thing, just stop doing that it’s not really doing you much good at all. Okay.
Another myth I hear is that, if I do strength training, it will actually hurt my running performance. And this one, I mean, I would hope you guys understand by now that this is definitely not true like strength training can only help your running performance, right? Being stronger overall, having a stronger, you know, muscular system definitely makes you a better endurance athlete.
Building strength helps you to maintain good running form helps you to maintain consistent power, especially as we get into these longer endurance activities and you start to fatigue towards the end, right like towards the end of a marathon, or an ultra marathon when you need that extra strength and power.
You know, if you’ve not built up your muscular system, you’re not going to have that extra power that you need. And you’re going to fatigue and you’re going to kind of crash and burn, okay. Strength training is actually essential. If you want to be a successful endurance athlete, okay, putting your muscles under intense stress stimulates muscle growth, right, you build more muscle, you build more lean mass, you get stronger, and you will be able to achieve peak performance in running.
Only if you improve your muscular strength, right, you absolutely must include strength training if you want to become a stronger runner. Strength training will make you a more powerful runner. Because here’s the thing, when you build more muscle, and you reduce your body fat, that means you’re going to increase your power to weight ratio making you a more powerful runner. How awesome would it be to be lighter with carrying around less body fat and stronger, carrying around more muscle mass, this will only help your running performance? Okay.
Another myth that people have – this is my favorite one. This is the last myth I’m going to talk about here. But this is a good one. If I lift heavy weights, I’m going to bulk up too much. So heavy weights will make me bulk up too much. Light weights will get me toned. And this is awesome. I love this.
Like I hear people say this all the time. I don’t want to get all big and muscle-bound. So I’m just going to lift light weights. I’m afraid I’m gonna get too jacked. I’m going to be too big and muscley and jacked and it’s going to hurt my running performance or whatever. I think this is so amazing.
Because if you want a real honest answer to this, go to a gym and tell one of these big huge bodybuilders that you don’t want to lift weights because you’re afraid you’re gonna get too big. They’re just gonna laugh you out of the gym. Do you know why? Because as it takes a long, long time, for them to get huge like that.
It takes years of very hard work and dedication, they’ve got to show up at the gym constantly. They’re eating like 4 or 5000 calories a day. Honestly, if you’re an endurance athlete, you don’t need to worry about getting too big, heavy weights will not bulk you up. The only way you can build muscle is if you lift heavy weights regularly.
You’ve got to do it the right way, right, you’ve got to lift heavy weights, overload the system, adapt muscles grow. Right, if you’re doing it the right way, you’re going to be fine, right, you’ll build more lean muscle, your muscles will get bigger, very slowly, takes a very long time, months, months and months.
And listen, if you start to get too big, if you really start to get too muscley, all you have to do is back off on the weight training, just you know, maybe go down to once a week, that’s all you really need to maintain your muscle mass anyway, once you’ve built a solid base. So if you’re doing this properly, you should begin to lose body fat because carrying around muscle will help you to lose, lose weight. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.
But your muscles will start to show because you’re losing body fat, and then you’re building some muscle and so your muscles will start to show through your skin a little bit better. And this is what we mean when we say we want to look toned, we want to see some muscle definition, we want to see those muscles, right?
Being toned is a function of both increasing muscle size and decreasing excess body fat. So this is what gets you that toned look. But you have to do it the right way, you have to actually build muscle. And you can’t build muscle by doing this super lightweight and a million reps, right? It’s just not gonna work.
So I think this is so funny, people are worried they’re gonna get too big. And it’s kind of like a brand new runner coming to you and saying, yeah, I don’t really want to train for a marathon because I’m afraid I’m going to do like a two and a half hour marathon. And you know, I just don’t want to run that fast. You’re just gonna be like, yeah, good luck with that.
So here are some other benefits of strength training, I’ve talked about a lot of benefits, you know that you increase your power to weight ratio, right, we can get stronger bones as well, from increasing our strength, we can prevent injury. Some of the other benefits of strength training are that you actually increase your lactic threshold.
So strength training isn’t, is an anaerobic exercise. In other words, if you’re doing it properly, you’re not in that, you know, aerobic zone, like when you’re out there running a 10-minute mile or whatever your anaerobic like, you can only lift a certain amount of reps if you’re doing this properly until your body is just like cooked, yours is done, right.
So this is like training at or above your anaerobic threshold, right? When you do this regularly, your body can actually increase its ability to handle like lactic acid and remove it from your system, which will increase your lactic threshold or the point at which you experience fatigue.
Okay, so this means that when you increase your lactic threshold, you’ll be able to work out harder for longer. This will enable you to run faster and run faster for longer periods. So it helps to increase your speed and endurance. Okay, so that increase of lactic threshold is an amazing benefit of strength training.
Another one that I mentioned earlier is that strength training will boost your metabolism. So muscles just carrying around muscles will increase your resting metabolic rate because muscle takes more energy to carry around than fat does. So just by carrying around more muscles, you are burning more fat, you’re burning more calories, right? It increases your overall metabolism.
And if you’re you know, following a more of a low carbohydrate diet and you’re already kind of an efficient fat burner, this will actually make you an even more efficient fat burner. And if you’re wanting to be a fat-adapted runner, this will help to speed up your fat adaptation process. So strength training will help to speed up that process of you know, turning yourself from a carb adapted athlete to a fat-adapted athlete, which is amazing.
So, because of this boost in your metabolism, it helps you to lose weight. So increasing your lean muscle mass strength training makes it easier to lose weight. Isn’t that awesome? I love that.
Strength training also helps to fight depression. And I think this is a really cool area of study. And I want to do a little more research into this, because studies have shown that doing an aerobic exercise like, you know, high-intensity strength training can actually boost your mood, and make you feel better, gives you a bit of a pick me up, and even helps to fight off depression, which I think is really, really cool. So if you want to feel good, you want to be just happier, do some strength training.
Also, strength training helps to reduce the risk of certain diseases, gains strength and gains in bone density, attained by doing high-intensity anaerobic training, like strength training, can actually reduce your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and other cardiovascular diseases.
So this is a really cool thing to just know that as we engage in regular, intense anaerobic strength training, that it has all these other amazing health benefits for us, not just stronger muscles, you know, obviously, we get bigger muscles, and we look good, right? And this is important to you will look good naked. So that’s, that’s an important benefit as well.
But also, you know, you’re going to help to stave off other diseases like heart disease. Also, strength training will help to protect joints because it builds stronger muscles and helps to build stronger connective tissues. Right, so we’re talking tendons and ligaments here.
So when you build up your muscle strength and your muscle mass, your joints will be better protected, meaning that you’ll have greater protection against injury, which is really important, especially for us endurance athletes, and especially as we get older.
And then lastly, just doing strength training get boosts your energy, consistent. anaerobic exercise increases your body’s ability to store glycogen, which is what your body uses as energy. And even if you’re not eating a lot of carbs, your body still produces glycogen and can store it. So when you’re consistently doing strength training, you actually become more efficient at storing glycogen, which will give you more energy for your next bout of intense activity or training. Right. So this will improve your athletic endurance and your performance overall.
So, bottom line, get out there and do some strength training, lift some heavy things. And listen, it has to be hard, it should be very hard, it should be very taxing to your system, you should get to that anaerobic threshold, you should just be, you know, cooked at the end of your strength session. Okay, it doesn’t have to take a long time. But there are so many amazing health benefits, especially for runners.
Okay, so if it’s hard, and it feels terrible, and it hurts, that’s good. That means it’s working. All right, you guys, that’s all I got for you today. As always, lots and 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 Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
Runners love to get their drink on! They are especially passionate about coffee, beer, and their magical sports drinks. In this episode of the Running Lean Podcast, I’ll be covering a few …
Continue Reading about 60. Beverages: The Good and the Bad for Long-Distance Running →
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 60 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about beverages, getting our drink on runners love to get their drink on. And they are especially passionate about certain drinks like alcohol, coffee, and their magical sports drinks.
So in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I’m going to be covering a few of these beverages, the ones that seem to get the most attention, namely, alcohol, coffee, and water. And these seem to be the ones that are most talked about amongst runners, the ones with some misunderstandings, alright, so by the end of this episode, I want you to have a much better understanding of what’s good and what’s bad about these drinks, and how they will absolutely affect your long-distance running.
So if you haven’t already checked it out, come find us on Facebook, we’ve got this amazing Running Lean community on Facebook. And right now, we’re kind of in the middle of our February, low carb challenge, it’s a 28-day challenge to just ditch some of the problematic carbohydrates.
You know, I’m kind of biased here, I talk a lot about low carb running a low carb approach to endurance sports, and, and weight loss. And it’s a really great fit for a lot of people. It’s not for everybody, I get that. But I want to expose more people to this.
So I created this challenge in the Facebook group. And a lot of people that have never done anything like this before are jumping in and trying it out. And some people are having some great results. They’re feeling good, they’re losing some weight running starting to get easier.
And so that’s why I do things like these challenges in the Facebook group. So we can have a place where we can kind of come together and try some of these things, and get the support and the encouragement that we need from like-minded runners.
And so we’re all in this together, right? We are all doing this together. It’s a challenge. It’s called a challenge because it’s hard. It’s hard to get started with something like this. But if you want to jump in, you can still jump in and we can talk about that. And you can ask questions and get the support that you need. Just go to Facebook search for Running Lean community, and join the group.
And the other thing I wanted to mention quickly is that what I do here on this podcast and in my Facebook group, is to help spread the message about becoming healthy, as healthy as we can be as endurance athletes. You know, I think there’s this misconception that just because you run a lot means you’re super healthy. And that’s really not the case, you know.
And so my message here is that you know, I experienced ill health, I got really overweight and sick and fat and I was really unhappy as an endurance athlete as an ultra runner. And I had to make some changes in my diet and in my mindset. And that’s what I teach here. And that’s what I do in my coaching programs to help people make changes in their life.
I help people, I guide people towards better health, you know, mentally, physically, and emotionally. So if you’re looking for something a little more than just what you get from this podcast, or maybe in the Facebook group, then I’m here for you, okay, you’re working one on one with me, you can get the individual guidance and support that you need.
You know, we can put together a metabolic profile for you, we can dial in your macros, we can help you become fat-adapted, and we can work on your mindset. And we can do this in a way that supports you and your long-term health and fitness goals. I’ll be there for you. I’ll be your guide. I’ll be there to encourage you. I’ll be there to help you do things you don’t want to do so you can become the person that you want to be.
Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching and you can apply to work one on one with me we’ll jump on a call with see if it’s a good fit for each other. There’s no cost there’s no obligation for this call. It’s just a chance for you and I to talk and see if it’s a good fit. Okay, and if it’s if it’s a good fit great if it’s not no big deal, runningleanpodcast.com/coaching to apply.
And here’s a recent five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. I love reading these, by the way. And this was from TFabula. And she says, “Inspiration, knowledge and a complete package, Patrick gives you a full bodied approach, that might be the inspiration you need, from your mental approach to your physical goals. Pick a few and listen in I promise you will learn something to improve your life.”
I love these kinds of reviews. Thank you, T Fabula. And if you feel like sharing the love, I’d really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this podcast, if you get something out of it, it would mean so much to me if you could just take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. And I’ll read it right here on the show. Cool. Awesome.
All right, let’s talk about these beverages the good and the bad for long-distance running. And the first one I want to talk about is water. So water is one of those things where we’re like, Well, yeah, obviously, you have to drink water or you will die, right? But there’s a little bit more to it, especially when we talk about endurance sports.
Okay, so I want to get into this a little bit here. The truth of the matter is that most people just don’t drink enough water. Right? You know, they say, oh, you got to drink eight glasses of water a day. And that may not be right for everybody. But water plays a very huge role in our, in our health. And it’s often overlooked.
Okay, so here’s a little bit of background, which I think this is really fascinating. Every single cell in your body contains water. In fact, your cells contain around 60% of all the water that’s in your body is in your cells, okay. And then different parts of your body contain different percentages of water. And this is the part that I found super fascinating.
So your brain is anywhere from 80 to 85%. Water, your muscles are somewhere between 70 and 75%. Water, your skin is also 70 to 75% Water, your blood is half water 50% Water, even your bones contain 20 to 25% water. This is crazy. Every part of your body contains water, everything in your body needs water to operate efficiently.
If you don’t give your body enough water you cannot function properly. We know this right? But here’s something maybe you didn’t know, water can actually help you with your weight loss. And with your fat burning. There was a study done in the journal obesity, and found that drinking adequate amounts of water can actually trigger the release of stored body fat.
So water will actually help pull your body fat out of fat cells. Another study found that water can actually increase your resting metabolic rate through a process called water-induced thermogenesis. And basically, the way this works is that if you drink about 16 ounces of water within a few minutes, you can temporarily boost your metabolic rate by as much as 30%.
And this increase in your metabolic rate seems to last for about 30 or 40 minutes. And you could do this several times a day. So basically, every time you drink about a pint of water, you’re increasing your metabolic rate a little bit. So drinking water, which is completely calorie-free, actually causes you to burn calories. Fascinating, right?
Well, let’s talk about performance and drinking water because one thing we know is that dehydration is a problem and is not good for endurance athletes, right? Dehydration can severely impact your performance. And here’s something I want to talk about when it comes to drinking during endurance activities.
So a lot of times we just focus on these like sports drinks, right? And a lot of sports drinks are just nothing but sugar. Okay. So they have done these studies and they found that if you’re consuming more carbohydrates than water during exercise, this can actually cause dehydration.
Sugar in the blood like high levels of sugar in the blood will actually cause water to move out of cells in order to equalize the water sugar balance right to equalize the concentration of sugar in your blood. So this can result in potentially dangerous dehydration.
So it’s kind of recommended that athletes during endurance activities lasting anywhere from 45 minutes on, should consume water, obviously, but nothing that’s more than 8% carbohydrate. Okay, so just keep that in mind.
Okay, so a little bit, you know, maybe helpful. But a lot can be very can actually be dangerous, right, so you got to be careful with that. One caveat I want to mention here about sports drinks, because sports drinks typically contain very high amounts of sugar. And liquid sugar, the liquid form of carbohydrate is probably the worst thing you can put in your body. Most sports drinks are not much different than like, Mountain Dew, right? They’re just full of sugar.
And the reason why they’re so bad for you, any kind of a soft drink or super sugary drink is that your body does not recognize the calories that are coming in. Like, if you drink a big Monster energy drink with whatever it is, I don’t even know how much sugar they put in those things.
But I saw a comparison and there was something like 27 teaspoons of sugar in one monster, that’s a lot of sugar, right, you could not eat that much sugar even in you know, crystallized form, like you, couldn’t eat a bowl of just like sugar granules like that. But you can drink it very, very easily. This is very dangerous.
This is why so many people become severely overweight and obese by drinking their sugar. Because your body doesn’t recognize the calories coming in, you can consume massive amounts of carbohydrates, all that stuff gets just stored as fat. And it’s a vicious cycle. So you got to be careful with the liquid sugar.
All right, this raises your blood sugar like crazy when you drink this stuff. Insulin goes up like crazy, you’re just like in fat storage mode all the time drinking this stuff. So you got to be careful. I’m not saying you can never have a sports drink or whatever like you got to be careful with it though.
If you’re somebody who’s overweight or you’re having a hard time losing weight, you may want to like reconsider these things, you know, or dilute them heavily or just ditch them altogether in favor of something else. And I’ll talk about an alternative in just a moment.
Okay, so that’s kind of the whole like sports string thing. We do need to drink water during exercise, right? It’s obviously important, we don’t want to get dehydrated. One other kind of side of this is drinking too much water like there’s actually a thing where you can drink too much water.
And this came to light, you know, a few decades ago and endurance athletes were starting to suffer from something called hyponatremia, which is basically you don’t have enough sodium in your blood. And this is mainly due to overdrinking water. Just plain water without any electrolytes in it.
When you over-drink water, you dilute your blood of sodium. And if you are drinking way too much water during an endurance event, and you’re sweating like crazy. And you’re just consuming tons of water and not replacing the electrolytes you can risk getting dangerously low levels of sodium and that’s called hyponatremia.
If you start getting headaches or feeling nauseous, you’re feeling confused or heavy fatigue and not just the fatigue from like running a marathon but you know, like really rundown, this is the sign that electrolytes are out of balance and you need to fix this right away. Okay, so make sure you’re getting electrolytes and this is kind of the key here to water consumption during sports activities is making sure you’re getting the right electrolytes.
So we evolved as humans by drinking you know, water that was naturally occurring from springs and things like that. And there was heavy, heavy mineral content and salt content and they were fine like and it was great. Today though, all our water is super treated filtered.
My water coming out of my tap sometimes just it tastes like chlorine. It’s gotta like figure something out with this because it is it does not seem like it’s all that healthy. So I’m working on that, I prefer mineral water. And if you can get some good mineral water, that’s probably better but if you’re getting your water tested I might have my water tested and see what’s going on in there.
But most municipal water is probably not super awesome. And hey, listen, if you work for the Cincinnati, you know waterworks, you know, no hatred for you or anything like that, but I don’t know why my water tastes like chlorine anyway, that’s a little sidebar, but get good water, you know, make sure you’re drinking good water.
And the other thing is like, we got to make sure we’re replacing the electrolytes, especially during exercise, right? You have to replace the electrolytes, right? We’re talking mostly about sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And when you’re participating in some sort of long-distance running, and you’re sweating, even if you don’t feel like you’re sweating a whole lot, you could still be losing a lot of these necessary electrolytes.
All right, so a couple of the products that I really love and talk a lot about the first one is LMNT by elemental labs, like I don’t get paid to like talk about this, but it’s just a good product. And I use it and I recommend it to people. And basically, it’s just those three electrolytes sodium, magnesium, and potassium with a little bit of stevia and some flavoring. So there’s no sugar in there at all.
Noon, N-O-ON makes a product that’s similar, but you just got to make sure you get the ones that don’t have sugar added to it. I don’t know if Noon has some that contain sugar or not. But I know LMNT does not. So just be careful of the sugar content in this stuff.
But these powders or tabs, the noon or tabs elementi is powder, you just add them to your water and take it on your run. And you’re good to go. You know you need to like kind of dial in what’s going to work best for you. But especially if you’re like a low-carb athlete, which is like something we talk about a lot here, right?
Since our insulin levels are lower, your kidneys may be excreting more salt and potassium, and magnesium. So you want to make sure that you are replacing that. Now, of course, you can eat more foods that contain these micronutrients, like avocados, almonds, dark leafy greens, stuff like that.
But it’s a good idea to just go ahead and supplement with something like LMNT, especially during those long-distance activities where you’re going to be depleting your body of some of these key electrolytes, right.
So the other thing people ask is like, well, how much water should we be drinking, Patrick? The whole eight glasses a day? Is this the right amount for everybody just in general? And honestly, yeah, here’s the here’s a good way you can kind of figure out how much water you should be drinking.
Just take your body weight, divided in half. And that’s how many ounces you should try to drink each day. That’s pretty close. Like, for me, I weigh 165 pounds. If I divide that by two that’s 82.5 ounces of water per day, or around five pints or 16 ounces in a pint.
So I have this pint glass, which I got for finishing my 100 miler. It’s got the hallucination 100 logo on it, it’s cool. So that’s what you get, when you run 100 miles you get a pint glass, oh, I got a belt buckle too which is amazing. But anyway, so I have this pint glass and I just tried to fill it up and drink it down like five times a day. And I’m good to go.
Another good idea is just to carry a water bottle around with you and just you know, keep it full and just you know drink around your weight divided by two, that’s how many ounces you should be drinking per day. Right? That’s a pretty good estimate.
Because the eight glasses a day doesn’t really work for everybody. How, how big is the glass, you know? And depends on your body weight. And as well like you could be six foot six, you’re gonna need to drink more water than somebody who’s five foot two, you know what I mean? So that’s a good way to just kind of figure that out.
And what about during exercise? How much water should we be drinking during exercise? Well, it’s recommended to drink some water, like maybe 14 to 20 ounces, around two hours before exercise, and make sure you’re hydrated going into your endurance activity. And then somewhere between six and 12 ounces every 15 to 20 minutes during.
Now, obviously, this is going to vary depending on your body composition. How much you sweat, the environment. Is it hot? Is it human? Is it dry? Is it super cold? how intensely are you running? What’s your nutritional status like all these things matter?
So you need to experiment during your training. Don’t experiment on race day, right? Experiment during your training and see what It works best for you. And then you can just include some of these electrolytes in the water and, and you’re good to go.
Another good thing to do with water is to start your day with water. So we tend to kind of dehydrate ourselves while we’re sleeping. Unless you’re one of those people that gets up in the middle of the night to drink water some people do, it’s fine. But the first thing you do when you get up in the morning, it’s a good idea to just drink a big glass of water.
So I do this every single day. First thing I do when I wake up, I get up and I mix in a little bit of sea salt, like maybe half a teaspoon of sea salt, and a little bit of apple cider vinegar in a big 16 ounce glass of water and I just chug it down, I do this while I’m making my coffee.
And it’s a great way to rehydrate and start my day. You know, you’re rehydrating your muscles, your organs, your brain, everything. And so that’s, that’s a good way to start your day. Okay. So that’s my, my take on water, it’s important, we have to have it, we probably don’t get enough. And the electrolytes are kind of the key, especially for us long-distance runners.
So the next beverage I want to talk about, and this is the one where I’m probably gonna get some people that like, are not happy about this, but I want to talk about alcohol. And I thought about doing a whole podcast just about alcohol, and I thought this is going to be too much of a downer.
People aren’t going to like this. So um, I’m squeezing it in the middle here. But here’s the thing, the chemical compound, and alcohol that makes it what it is called ethanol. So this is the primary compound that makes alcohol, you know, alcohol. Ethanol is also used as fuel for cars. Alright, because it is highly volatile.
The molecule ethanol, we’re just talking about at a molecular level here. Ethanol is a toxic compound. Obviously, the dosage matters, though, right? This toxic compound affects everybody negatively to some degree. Right? Some people can handle it fine. Other people cannot, it has a problem, they have a big problem with it.
I want to make sure that you understand that I’m really just talking about the science behind alcohol here. And not really, this is not a moral thing or anything like that. And I’ll talk a little bit more about my experience with alcohol in a minute and drinking in general.
But just know that this isn’t a moral discussion. And this is not about, you know, whether or not you should drink, like you get to decide for yourself but I want you to have this information. And this is, especially as it relates to long-distance running. Okay. So you know, some people can handle alcohol and some people can’t, but just know that it is a toxic compound, and it has a negative effect on us to some degree.
And here are some of the things that that I’ll mention some of the negative effects of alcohol. So alcohol is kind of, it’s kind of turned into fat, right? When you drink alcohol, the byproducts of that metabolizing that alcohol are converted to fatty acids, which are stored in the liver and stored in your bloodstream. This is not good. This could put you at higher risk for heart disease.
But this alcohol that gets turned into sugar, it like spikes, your blood sugar spikes your insulin, it puts your body into that fat storage mode. We know that when insulin is high, you’re in fat storage mode. So it’s basically like drinking sugar in a way, right? It’s basically like drinking carbohydrates. But it’s it has, it’s much more potent.
In fact, you know, alcohol is fermented carbohydrates, right? So the way you make alcohol is you take some carbohydrates like grapes, or grains and you ferment it. The crazy thing is though, during that process of fermentation, you basically intensify the caloric intake of those carbohydrates by 175%.
So alcohol delivers 175% more calories than the pre-fermented source of carbohydrates. So that’s something interesting. Alcohol was also an anti-nutrients. So since alcohol is void of any nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, it ends up robbing your body of the micronutrients, so it can assimilate and metabolize the alcohol, right?
So this depletes your body of essential nutrients that you need to maintain good health. So alcohol sort of pulls these things out of your body, right? Alcohol seems to diminish your body’s ability to absorb other nutrients as well. And I think of it like this, like, why are we going to spend all our time eating healthy and having a super healthy diet, and then drinking alcohol, just to pull a lot of these nutrients out of us? Right?
It kind of undermines the effort that we’re doing, we’re trying to eat healthy, okay. So this fact that we’re pulling nutrients out of our body as well will make us more prone to premature fatigue during our next exercise session, too. Okay, so this is one of the negative effects that alcohol has on running performance.
So some studies have shown that aerobic performance was diminished, especially the day after alcohol was consumed. So a study in the journal nutrients showed that drinking alcohol could reduce muscle strength. Another study showed that alcohol negatively impacts protein synthesis, meaning that, you know, if you’re trying to build muscle, it could throw out your progress.
Drinking alcohol actually impedes recovery as well. Especially if you drink too soon after a workout. It increases dehydration, it interferes with glycogen replenishing. And it inhibits the repair of muscle tissue by suppressing your production of HGH, human growth hormone, and testosterone.
The toxic impact of a single drink depresses the endocrine system pretty dramatically. So if you drink right after intense training, and exercise, the recovery from that training is basically canceled until your body metabolizes the alcohol and gets back to homeostasis. So when I see people run and they go out there and they do this, this awesome workout, and then they drink a couple of beers, right afterward, you know, a little party in the parking lot after the rmorning run.
You’re kind of undoing all the good work from that workout. Okay, so again, no judgment here. I just want you to know that alcohol can negatively affect your running. And we just have to be mindful of this.
rOkay, now, I am not trying to be a Debbie Downer about alcohol here, I’m not anti-alcohol, I think it’s fine. If you can handle it, do it, it’s fine. Just be careful. And just know that like, you can do too much. And it can be a problem. Now, I have to say this, I have not had alcohol in like 14 years, I’ve been sober for 14 years. I don’t drink anymore. But I used to drink a lot. I know how alcohol works, I know the effect that it can have on the human body, and I understand how good it makes you feel.
You know, it affects our brain, right? It releases dopamine, we get this buzz going. It helps us to relieve stress, it relaxes the central nervous system. And some people can tolerate it without any problems at all. Just know that some people cannot. And if you’re one of those people that cannot tolerate it, then well, even a little bit of alcohol can be a problem for some people, then I just want you to have this information and know that there are alternatives, you know, you don’t have to drink alcohol.
And sometimes I asked my clients, you know if when we start out working and we’re going to change their diet and get on a nutrition plan. And I say hey, would you be willing to give up alcohol for like 30 days, maybe? And sometimes they get a little freaked out. But then sometimes they do it and they just find it’s no big deal. They just don’t need it anymore. They don’t miss it.
If you find it hard to give up alcohol, you can always reach out to me, I can absolutely help you with that. The bottom line here. This is what I want you to know about this if you can tolerate it in small amounts without any issues, totally awesome. Do your thing.
But if you’re having a hard time losing weight, if your endurance is inhibited, if you’re not recovering well, if you’re not as strong as you’d like to be these all might be signs that you could use a break from alcohol and see what happens. All right. So again, don’t send me hate mail. I’m not anti-alcohol, but I think we need to be careful with alcohol, especially for long-distance running.
Okay, and then the last beverage I’m gonna talk about here. Now we’re gonna switch gears. We’re gonna get on a happy note. We’re going to talk about coffee. Okay, coffee is nature’s perfect drink. It’s nature’s perfect beverage if you ask me. We all know that coffee gives us energy everybody understands this right, but there are a lot of other benefits, especially for endurance athletes.
So one of the things I love about coffee is that it actually improves focus and concentration. And I know that you guys know what I’m talking about here, I absolutely love my morning coffee, that’s when I get the most creative work done. That’s when I feel the most alert the most on-point, you know, I can do my work, and I can concentrate really well.
And it’s really, really good for that focus and concentration. In fact, US special forces use coffee and caffeine especially to enhance their performance and awareness. So if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. Coffee actually helps you to burn more fat too, which is just a bonus, I love this.
So coffee aids in fat burning and therefore helps you to lose weight. They did this study in the Journal of Nutrition, and they found that light to moderate coffee drinkers, so people who drank like, maybe one to four cups of coffee per day, had the lowest amount of visceral fat, that’s the fat that’s like, around our organs inside us, right?
Not the fat that we see on the outside, you know, under our skin, that subcutaneous fat, we’re talking about visceral fat, this is the really, this is the bad kind of fat, right? So people who drink one, four cups of coffee per day had the lowest amount of visceral fat compared to non-coffee drinkers, or compared to heavy coffee drinkers like you don’t want to go too far to that other end, you know, you don’t wanna be drinking, you know, 8 to 11 cups of coffee a day, like one to three, one to four seems to be kind of the sweet spot.
Another study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that coffee can actually increase your metabolic rate anywhere from 3 to 11%. And most of this increase, they have directly linked to fat burning. So the way this works is that when you drink coffee, you release this certain type of stress hormone, it’s these hormones are called catecholamines.
And they’re like epinephrine, norepinephrine, or what used to be called adrenaline. So catecholamines help to release stored body fat, so it can be used for fuel. So in my opinion, if you want to become a fat-adapted athlete, then drinking coffee will really help this process, right, it’ll help to release the stored body fat that’s locked up in your fat cells. And allows you to use that for fuel, which is exactly what we’re talking about when we want to become fat adapted.
And there’s this other study, and this is kind of early research. But they did this study, where drinking coffee before exercise actually increased the release of stored body fat by as much as 30%, like a 30% increase in the amount of stored body fat that can be used for fuel. That’s pretty awesome, right?
So this is all good news, especially if you want to become a fat-adapted runner. Right? Drinking coffee seems to promote fat burning, and it should speed up your fat adaptation period. Right. So that’s all really good. Another thing that coffee helps with, is reducing inflammation.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have shown that people who regularly drink coffee have lower levels of the inflammatory biomarkers. Which is amazing, because like inflammation is not good, right. And the scientists at Stanford actually recently showed that coffee helps to defend the body against a certain type of inflammation, which is age-related inflammation. They found that people who drank a few cups of coffee actually lived longer.
And were generally more healthy than noncoffee drinkers. And the caffeine in coffee helps to suppress the genes that are related to inflammation. So inflammation is a big problem. If you’re an endurance athlete, right? The act of running, just going out and running long distances will cause inflammation, and this is normal.
This is you know, your body trying to repair from a hard workout, right, you get a little bit inflamed, but that’s fine. If you can recover and then you’re not inflamed all the time. Chronic inflammation is a problem. This comes from doing too many hard workouts, not enough recovery time in between you’re not getting enough sleep.
Maybe your performance starts to decline your immune system becomes compromised, this could lead to burnout, even injury. So inflammation is not good, it can lead to a lot of problems. So anything that can help to reduce inflammation, I would say is good. Now, obviously, you don’t want to overtrain your nutrition has to be spot on, you got to get enough rest between workouts.
You gotta manage your stress, but coffee can definitely help reduce inflammation. I love this. Coffee has also been proven to improve endurance performance. Many, many studies have been done here on this, like, you cannot go on the internet without finding a study on the efficacy of caffeine and sports performance. One particular study showed that endurance runners who drank coffee were able to run 1.3 to 2 miles longer than the placebo group. That’s awesome.
And then in a study on cyclists, caffeine was shown to be more effective than even carbohydrates for improving their energy and performance. And then they did this 1500 meter run this time trial run. And they had two groups of people, one group drank coffee, the other drank decaf, so they didn’t know which they were drinking if it had caffeine or not.
And the coffee drinkers were on average, 4.2 seconds faster than those drinking decaf. That’s cool. And something interesting is that coffee helps to reduce your RPE, your rate of perceived exertion. So your rate of perceived exertion is a scale from like one to 10, you know, one being no exertion at all 10 being as hard as you can go.
And so coffee actually helps to reduce your rate of perceived exertion, which means you can work harder, you can run a little harder, a little faster without feeling like you’re working harder, which is amazing. So you can actually run faster, but not feel like you’re running faster. Who doesn’t want that?
Coffee also helps to spare muscle glycogen from being burned. So coffee promotes the mobilization of fat from fat stores to be used for energy, right, so you’re not tapping into your muscle glycogen as much for energy. So you will be able to carry more muscle glycogen so you can have more muscle glycogen available for longer periods of time.
Which is an amazing bonus for endurance athletes because if you can stave off using your stored muscle glycogen for fuel, you’d be able to run longer and harder without bonking and coffee just helps to enhance this whole process, you know, so you can burn more fat more efficiently.
And it spares you from you know, tapping into the muscle glycogen which is really cool. But what about if you hate coffee? What if you’re just like Patrick, I’m not a coffee drinker. I hate that stuff. I honestly I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I cannot relate. I love coffee. I love love, love my coffee and it’s important to get good coffee, you got to get good quality coffee I buy single-origin beans from Central America and I’m just in love with my coffee and love it, love it.
But if you cannot stand coffee, I get it I get it you know there are just some things that you don’t you just can’t get your arms around. There are other options like green tea, black tea both seem to have similar benefits right some of it is the caffeine but some of it has to do with things like catechins which are antioxidants in green tea.
That helps promote fat loss as well very similar to coffee but the bottom line around this one is that coffee is a great aid in fat loss fat burning weight loss it’s a great aid in endurance and long-distance running it’s also a great aid for faster running you know if you want to run a faster race so that is my take on beverages you know the good and the bad we got to drink water, alcohol yeah take it or leave it, just make sure you’re not overdoing it. Though coffee is good definitely good.
But all these things can be problematic in too much you know too much water can be a problem. You know too much alcohol is a problem too much coffees problem. We want to be mindful of these things. Okay, we can use these things to help us we can use these things to help our sports performance and help our mental state and help our weight loss but we just gotta be mindful. Okay.
I hope you all have an amazing day. I really, really do. And if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast and if you got something out But I would love it if you could share it with a friend. As always, 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.
There are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around out there around the topic of carbohydrates and running performance. Some say you can’t run without them, others say you should ditch …
Continue Reading about 59. Myths and Misconceptions of Low-Carb Running →
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 59 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today we are talking about carbohydrates. Again, it’s carbohydrate month over there in the Running Lean community on Facebook. I’ll talk more about that in just a second.
But today, we’re talking myths and misconceptions of low carb running. Listen, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around out there around the carbohydrates and running performance. Some say you can’t run without them. Other people say you should ditch them altogether. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there.
How do you know which answer is right for you? So today, in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I hope to clear up some of the biggest misunderstandings, myths and misconceptions of low carb running. By the end of this episode, I want you to have the information you need to be able to make an informed decision about which approach is best for you, personally, for your personal health and fitness goals. So that is all coming up.
I did mention the Facebook group, we’re doing a 28 day low carb challenge here all this month in February. And the idea is that we’re just ditching the problematic carbs, you know, the highly refined grains and sugars and just giving it a go. And people are having some great success.
People are having tons of energy and losing weight and feeling good. And there’s all kinds of positive results coming out of this. Okay. It’s not easy. It’s not easy for everybody. That’s why we’re doing it in the group, we’re doing it as a group. And that’s why it’s called a challenge too. Because it’s a challenge. It is hard.
At first is little uncomfortable when you stop eating all the sugar because your body’s like, Where’d that sugar go? But we’re having fun over there. So definitely check us out, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us it’s not too late, you can still jump in there and start with us.
Also, people have been asking me about how they can work one on one with me. And you know, I talk about this every now and then. But if you’re interested in personal coaching, working with me, where you’ll get the individual guidance and support you need, you know, we’ll work together to dial in your macros, we’ll help you to get fat adapted.
We’ll do it in a way that supports your long term health and your fitness goals. I’m there as your guide, I’m there to guide you every step of the way to encourage you to do the things that maybe you don’t want to do. So that you can become the healthiest and fittest runner that you can be you I want you to become the person that you’ve always wanted to be that healthy fit athlete.
So if you’re interested in working with me, let’s let’s do it, I’ll get you there. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching. And when you get there, you have to apply you have to apply to work with me. So what that looks like is you just fill out a quick little form a couple questions, and then we’ll jump on a call and we’ll see if we’re a good fit for each other. And for some people, it’s not a good fit, and that’s totally fine. No problem.
There’s no cost for this assessment call. There’s no obligation, it’s just me and you talking about your goals, and we’ll see if we can make it work working together. Okay, so just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching to apply.
And then lastly, here’s a quick little five star review of the Running Lean podcast from SerenityBob I don’t know how to pronounce that, but SerenityBob, and it’s titled heartfelt help for runners and beyond. “I happened upon the Running Lean podcast in my pursuit of strengthening my running but also, in attempting to solve the puzzle of unwanted weight gain and problematic body composition. Patrick offered heartfelt sincere support from a place of personal experience, which I found helpful.”
Thank you SerenityBob for sharing the love and if you enjoy the podcast, it would mean a lot to me if you just took a minute to jump on Apple podcasts is the only place I know where you can actually leave a review You and just scroll down and tap the five stars leave a nice review. And I’ll read it here on the show. Cool.
So let’s get into this topic today, myths and misconceptions of low carb running. Right. So I was talking about how we’re focusing on carbs this month, you know, we’re talking all about carbohydrates. I’m trying to give you guys a fresh look at this low carb approach for runners and endurance athletes. And I’ll be honest with you, this is not for everyone, I wouldn’t, I would never say that this is the only way to go. Or this is the best option for everybody out there.
Like it’s just everybody needs to go low carb. I’ll never say that. But I will say that I think it’s a fantastic approach to sports nutrition for a lot of endurance athletes. And for a lot of people in general, I think going low carb has so many health benefits, that I’m not afraid to talk about that stuff.
And here’s the world we’re living in, you know, it’s been shown that like 88% of Americans are considered metabolically unhealthy. 88% of us need some sort of help. And taking a low carb approach to your to your diet is one great way to help, you know, improve your metabolic health. And if 88% of us are metabolically unhealthy, I mean, that includes a lot of runners too, okay, I’m sure there’s a lot of runners out there that are not metabolically healthy.
And if you’re part of the 12%, that’s considered healthy, like, that is amazing, that is awesome. Whatever you’re doing is obviously working, keep doing it, stick with it, I would never tell you, you should change it if it’s working for you. And I’ve said this a million times, but there’s no one ideal human diet, you need to find the one that works for you.
And a lot of times, you know, I start working with a client and we we talk about this because it’s very important that we dial in the right macronutrient and the right caloric intake and the right types of foods that work for the individual, it’s a very individual thing.
We all have different metabolic profiles. You know, we all have different, you know, weights and heights and needs and likes and dislikes. We all have different health and fitness goals. And there’s just no way that you could say like, oh, this is the best option for everybody. Because there isn’t, there isn’t one answer that works for everybody. Okay.
So this is why this is like, this is why I talk about this so much. This is why I have this podcast and my Facebook group and my coaching practice because I want to help people and it really does take some individual coaching and and knowledge and working one on one with a professional and expert in order to really dial in what works for you.
And some people can do this on their own. But it’s it’s a challenge because a lot of times people in this my experience, I’ve tried to like dial this stuff in on my own. And as soon as it gets a little uncomfortable, I’m like, well, that doesn’t work. Let me just like, screw it and I go on to something else.
And I talk about how this diet doesn’t work or that doesn’t work. So having somebody there with you is very helpful. And I’m not trying to push my services on you or anything like that. But I definitely think that having an expert there with you makes it so much easier for you to stick with it.
Okay, so there’s not one ideal diet, you need to figure out what works for you. I’m going to give you some of these myths and misconceptions about the low carb deal today. But again, this is not for everyone. I just want to make that clear, okay. And runners are not immune to health issues. Runners are not immune to metabolic issues. Okay. A lot of runners are considered unhealthy. You know, they’re addicted to sugar.
They’re insulin resistant. They’re pre diabetic. A lot of runners are overweight or obese. You know, even lean runners can be unhealthy. And there’s a name for these people. They’re called tofies, t o f i, and that means thin on the outside, but fat on the inside. You can look lean on the outside but have a lot of visceral fat.
Visceral fat is fat that is around your organs. There’s a condition called non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is a problem where fat develops around the liver. And it has it’s directly linked to carbohydrate intake, and in sugar, basically. So eating a diet that’s very high in carbs, maybe too high in carbs for some people can cause a lot of visceral fat.
And this is not healthy. This is a sign that you’re pre diabetic or you could even be insulin resistant and diabetic. And so it’s one of those things where, you know, if you don’t, if that sounds like you are, you know, you’re worried about that definitely go to go to have your your blood work done with your doctor have it checked out and everything.
But, you know, I just think that, you know, even runners and even lean runners need to be conscious of the diet and what we’re what we’re eating on a regular basis. The food that we eat affects every cell in our body, every cell, and if you think it doesn’t, then that’s just a misconception.
And so we really need to be mindful of the kinds of stuff we’re eating. It’s important. And I’m biased. I’m going to tell you right now, right now, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m very biased. I advocate for a low carb approach. You probably knew that already. And I find that most of the people I work with, most of my clients have great success with a lower carbohydrate approach.
But it’s not the only thing that works. And I absolutely acknowledge that. And for some people, eating a low carbohydrate diet is not a good option, totally fine. But you need to figure out what works for you. Okay, so just all that being said, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you want to try a low carb approach, especially for a long distance runner, if this appeals to you, if you want to become fat adapted, and this is something you want to try, then this is what we’re talking about today, okay?
And if you’re interested in doing the whole low carb thing, but you have concerns because people are like, you know, if you don’t eat carbs, you’re gonna die. Or you can’t possibly run fast without eating carbs, then this episode may clear up a couple of those things for you. Okay.
So my goal with this episode is to dispel some of these myths and really give you the information you need so that you can decide, you know, which approach might work best for you, especially for endurance athletes. Alright, so let’s get into this.
The first myth that I want to talk about, and I just mentioned, it is that you have to eat carbohydrates, or you will die. And I’ve probably talked about this before, but I just want you to understand this is not true. Okay, there are essential nutrients that we have to have essential nutrients are those things that we have to get in our diet, because our bodies do not manufacture them.
Right, we have to eat them, we have to find them in our diet. And these include things like fatty acids, amino acids, certain vitamins and minerals, electrolytes, and water, okay, if we don’t consume these things, if we don’t find them outside of ourselves and eat them or drink them, we will die. So fatty acids would be fat, basically.
So we have to have fat in our diet, we have to eat fat, we have to get amino acids. This is found in protein. And we need protein. In order to live, if we don’t eat protein, we die. We need vitamins, we need minerals, we need water, we need electrolytes, all of these things are very important. If we don’t have these things in our diet, if we have a deficiency in fat or protein or vitamins or certain minerals, this will cause illness in the human body. Right?
If you don’t eat enough protein in your diet, this will cause illness. If you don’t get enough vitamins, you know, there’s all kinds of issues with vitamin deficiencies. You know, our iron deficiencies like these things are important and you will get very sick if you don’t have the right amounts of these things in your diet.
But the interesting thing is this is not the case with carbohydrates. There’s no correlation with illness or disease in the absence of carbohydrates, so there’s no such thing as like, carbohydrate deficiency. So like if you don’t if you don’t eat carbohydrates, honestly, you’ll probably be just fine you know?
And so this is like, people don’t like to hear this. They’re like, oh, but what about the food pyramid? What about the my plate that says we should be eating 65% of our, of our calories in the form of carbohydrates? Yeah, they do say that. And I don’t even want to get into why they say that.
But some of it has to do with the people that created the food guide, you know, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, sponsored by big food companies. And that’s a problem. But besides that, you know, it’s just a, it’s a different approach to diet. But if you look at the science, there is no essential carbohydrate, okay, just just let’s just be very clear about that.
So, if you don’t eat enough protein, you’ll die. If you don’t eat enough fat, you’ll die. If you don’t eat enough carbs, you’re going to be just fine. All right. And this is true for people all over the planet. You know, you talk about indigenous cultures, like the Inuit diet, they mostly ate just like fish seal, walrus, mostly fat, very fatty. Diet high in protein, and fat, and pretty much no carbohydrates.
And these people have survived and thrived as a people for millennia on this, almost zero carbohydrate diet, right. But here’s the crazy thing about these cultures around the world like the Inuit, by the 21st century, they have been westernized so they have been exposed to the good ol American western diet. And they’re, you know, purchasing more food from stores.
Now, they’re eating a lot more highly processed foods, refined grains, sugars, vegetable oils, that’s what we mean by the Western diet. And people like the Inuit, they’re starting to experience all the same illnesses, and metabolic issues that we’re experiencing here in the United States, you know, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancers, those kinds of things that they really have never seen before.
And so cultures all over the world have had this same experience. So they eat this traditional diet of whole foods, lots of fat and protein, very little, almost no, no refined grains, or sugar and pretty low carbs, you know, there are some cultures out there that eat a higher carbohydrate diet, which is fine.
But some of these cultures, they become westernized and they start eating the traditional, you know, American diet, which is terrible. And then they start experiencing all the same health issues. And it’s not good.
So I just want to make this first, clear up this first myth, which is that you have to eat carbohydrates, or you’ll die, it’s just not true. You can do just fine without them. And this does not mean that we should not eat carbohydrates. I want to make this very clear.
In fact, this brings me to Myth number two, which is a low carb means no carb. So a lot of people think that if you, you know, go to this low carb, high fat diet or a ketogenic diet or something like that, it means you don’t eat any carbs ever. And I want to make this very, very, very clear, low carb does not mean no carbs, right?
People freak out on me to talk about low carb. You can’t take my carbs away from me and listen, I have no, no desire to take your carbs away from you. All right, I’ve never once suggested that we should eat zero carbohydrates, right?
Too many carbohydrates can be problematic for runners. Okay? Runners are notoriously carb addicts. You know, we just we love our carbs. We love our doughnuts and our beer and our pasta and carbo loading and all this other stuff, right?
But eating a diet that’s super high in carbs, like refined grains will cause some problems for runners, especially for endurance athletes. One of the things that it can lead to is nutrient deficiencies. And, you know, carrbridge foods, like refined grains contain phytates and phytates act like it’s like a fiber in your gut. But instead of, you know, binding to things you don’t want they phytates bind to nutrients that your body actually needs, and then they, you know, pull them out of your system.
So, this is something you don’t want, okay? You know, a higher carb diet, especially one that’s high in grains. Because, you know, we all know sugar is bad. I’m kind of shifting a little bit to talk a little bit about grains here, especially because a lot of refined grains is a problem. Like gluten.
Gluten is a big major offender here, gluten has been shown to be mildly to severely inflammatory in most people. So most people have some sort of inflammatory response to gluten. So Gluten is a problem. And when your body is inflamed, it leads to all kinds of other issues.
And gluten has also been shown to compromise our digestive function and our immunity, our immune system, it actually lowers your immune system, we don’t want that. Okay, so it appears that pretty much all of us, to some extent, are sensitive to gluten, some more than others, obviously, you can be mildly sensitive and just have mild inflammation, you can go all the way up to having celiac disease where you have a severe reaction to any kind of gluten at all.
But my take on it is like why don’t we just not have any inflammation at all. So just kind of avoid the the gluten altogether. And then another problem with a higher carbohydrate diet for long distance runners especially is that we become more susceptible to oxidative damage from the stress of training. So when your body is in this state of like chronic and chronically inflamed, and you add additional stressors on your body, like a super long training run, you’re actually way more susceptible to damaging to oxidative damage.
And that means that it does damage to your fatty tissues to your DNA and to proteins in your body. And this oxidative damage leads to a host of other diseases. So enough of this oxidative damage over time can lead to insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, neurogenesis, neuro degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and even some cancers.
So oxidative damage is a problem. We don’t want that, okay, high carbohydrate diets tend to make us more susceptible to this kinds of oxidative damage. And again, I’m not saying that runners should like stay away from all carbohydrates, we’re not talking about zero carbs, here we’re talking about the problematic carbohydrates, especially refined grains and sugars. And it means that for some of us, a diet high in these, these substances can create a very unhealthy and troublesome environment in our bodies, all right, and it can put us at high risk risk for metabolic diseases.
And it also just thwarts your progress. If you want to get healthy and you want to get fit and you want running to be better, you want to become a faster runner, you build and run on longer distances, you want to improve your performance, this is just going to like tank you, it’s just doing a lot of damage to your body.
You know, if your body is in a state of chronic inflammation, this is going to be very difficult for you to make, make strides in your running, you know, pardon the sort of running pun there. But like you’re not going to be able to hit your PR if your body is in a state of inflammation all the time.
And interestingly, most people when they first stop eating sugar and refined grains, and they get off those problematic carbs within the first week, they say they they lose weight, they usually lose a couple of pounds in that first week. And a lot of that is the inflammation that they’ve been experiencing that they didn’t really know they were experiencing. They say they immediately feel lighter, and less like bloated and puffy, you know, and they feel leaner just from just from making this one change. Okay, so inflammation is a problem.
But what was I talking about? I’m talking about runners, okay? We don’t have to stay away from carbs altogether, we can actually use carbohydrates in a strategic way and make this part of our running performance actually helped to increase our performance.
Okay, so I always talk about eating good, the good types of carbs if you’re going to choose carbs, choose things like dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, some dairy products, like full fat Greek yogurt, I’ve talked about that before, very beneficial for our health. I love my big salad every night I ate this big salad with tons of veggies, dark leafy greens. There are other kinds of carbs you can incorporate to help your running as well like you know, sweet potatoes, wild rice, quinoa, oats, these things all have their place for endurance athletes, okay?
We can utilize carbohydrates strategically, to actually improve our performance. Even in fat adapted runners, it doesn’t mean that you don’t ever use an alternative fuel source, it doesn’t ever, it doesn’t mean you never eat another carbohydrate in your life, okay?
And actually carb loading before a race is still a strategy that you can incorporate even if you’re doing a low carb approach, you can still ramp up your carbohydrates before you’re a race and you want to, you know, PR or something like that. Use some carbs, it’ll help you, um, you just do it with different types of carbs.
So slow burning carbs, don’t go for the pasta, don’t go for the spaghetti dinner, you know, do some of the things I mentioned, you know, the sweet potatoes and the likes. And if you’re interested in learning more about this, go to episode number 56, Good Carbs, Bad Carbs, because I break it all down and talk about all the different carbs that you can include and what you should maybe avoid. So I dive a little deeper into that in that episode.
And here’s the cool thing, once you become fat adapted, your body can actually use utilize carbohydrates differently, then a carb adapted athlete, okay, so because you are a fat adapted athlete, you burn fat very efficiently, your glycogen stores, this is where your muscles store, the carbohydrate energy, right, so carbohydrate gets turned into glucose, which gets stored in your muscles as glycogen.
Because you’re a fat adapted runner, those glycogen stores are pretty low. So when you eat some carbs, most of that energy is readily available in your muscles for energy to be burned for fuel. When you’re a carb adapted athlete, you know, your, your glycogen stores are pretty much full all the time. So when you eat carbohydrates, some of that gets most of that kind of gets stored as fat. And that’s where it becomes a problem. Okay.
So even if you’re a more efficient sugar burner, when you’re an efficient fat burner, right, it’s just, it kind of just kind of works together. And your body can kind of burn both of these things while you’re doing these long distance events. You know, typically your body wants to burn the glycogen first, but you can actually burn glycogen and fat somewhat simultaneously. It just depends on the person and how fat adapted you are and things like that.
But so for, you know, most of us, if you’re doing fat adaptation, you’re doing a low carb, your glycogen stores are pretty low. When you do take in carbohydrates, you’ll be able to utilize those to enhance your running performance. Without you know, the negative side effects that most carb adapted runners run into, which is, you know, they get into like, GI distress.
And you know, eating a lot of carbs, they end up gaining weight, they have excessive hunger, they have inflammation and things like that. So we can actually use some carbs strategically to enhance performance. Okay, so that was, you know, the myth of low carb means no carb, we’re not talking about no carbs, we’re talking about a lower carb approach, okay?
Another myth is that like, long distance runners, you just have to eat carbs, like you just have to eat them, or else you can’t run, you know, and I hope this is pretty obvious to you by now. That this is like totally bogus, right? Like, you don’t have to have carbs to run, you really don’t.
You know, people will say like, well, you know, this is what they’ve been teaching us since the 80s. And I’m like, well, they’ve also, you know, gave us this food pyramid, and we’re much fatter and much more unhealthy now than we used to be. So maybe that’s not the right approach. Maybe there’s another way to do it.
Again, it’s not for everybody, but maybe, maybe this works for you. So the way our fueling works usually is that our primary source of energy is glucose, like we want to use the glucose, you know, for energy. And so most runners think well, you have to have this glucose where you can’t run.
And then, you know, glucose gets put into our muscles and stored as glycogen. So once that happens, you know, any extra glucose that comes in, in the way of carbohydrates gets stored as fat and so this is why a lot of runners who eat a lot of carbs, just keep gaining weight, you know, because they’re just, they’re eating too much. They got too much glucose coming in.
Most runners carry around too much body fat in general. Okay, so glucose is a great source of energy. It really is, but we can only carry around about 1000 calories of glucose at a time, we only store about 2000 calories of glucose as energy. And we have to keep consuming it, especially during endurance activities or we will hit the wall, we will bonk.
So we want to tap into a better fuel source and we all have one, it’s a better alternative fuel source, it’s fat, right. But it’s really hard to get to, if you’re if you’re eating a lot of carbohydrates. So long distance runners don’t have the carbs, they can run on fat very, very efficiently. You just have to like get rid of the glycogen stores and keep your body in a low carbohydrate state to force your body to tap into that stored body fat to use for energy, right.
And here’s the cool thing. You know, if you can only carry around 2000 calories of glucose at a time. On average, even the leanest runner will be carrying around more than 20,000 calories of fat as fuel at any given time. So you don’t need to restock the shelves during a long distance event, you just keep running. Right?
So you know, and 20,000 is a very conservative estimate. And that’s for lean runners, if you’re maybe carrying around a little extra body fat, then you have probably closer to 50,000 calories of fat as fuel available to you.
And remember, carbs provide us with about four calories of energy per gram. Fat provides us with over nine calories of energy per gram. So it’s a more energy efficient source of fuel to like more than twice the energy, and you can carry around more than 10 times as much. To me, this is a no brainer, okay.
I’ve been experimenting with fat adaptation for a year now. And I’ve done it before in the past, but this past year has been very intentional and very, very different for me. And so I’ve been doing all my runs, fasted all my runs in this state where I’m just using my own body fat for fuel.
And I do that to show you what’s possible. So you know, not everybody has to do all their runs, fasted or do them without bringing any fuel with them, I do it because it feels great. It’s really easy to do, I can run all day on bonk proof, I feel bonk proof, I just never worry about hitting the wall, I run a marathon and a 50k on zero calories, just to show that I can do it just to prove to myself that this works, right?
I have become virtually bulletproof. Right. So runners do not have to eat carbs to run long distances, you just don’t have to do that. And there’s all kinds of benefits to becoming a fat adapted runner. In fact, I just did a podcast another one, I recommend you listen to number 54 called The Benefits Of Becoming A Fat Adapted Runner. And this will give you a solid understanding of all the positive benefits that this lower carb approach being fat adapted can have on your running performance.
And, and this is not just me, and I know I’m just an experiment of one here. I’m just one average guy that has had great success with fat adaptation. But a lot of my clients have really great success with fat adaptation too. But there’s also elite athletes that are finding great success with a low carb approach.
And that leads me to my next myth or misconception, which is that you can’t run fast without carbs. Like you have to have carbs if you want to run fast and you know, most people think, Okay, this is gray, Patrick, like running slow, long distances is great. We understand that, like you’re in that fat burning zone, you know, just keep your heart rate low. And you can run all day like that. Right?
But what about running fast? You have to have carbs for that, right? Yes and no. And I’m gonna break this down for you here. So yeah, the fat adapted athlete can basically run all day, right? As long as you’re, you know, staying below the point where your body isn’t producing lactate, you know, faster than you can flush it out, right.
So lactic acid buildup will lead you to bonking right? There’s two kinds of bonking really that most people experience – lactic acid build up. I mean, you’re just going out too hard. And, well, another kind of bonk, there’s actually three. There’s a glycogen depletion bonking, which is like your body’s just out of fuel, right? And then the third is like a mental bonking.
All right, so just keep that in mind that we can eliminate a couple of these at least, with changing our diet, but lactic acid buildup is a problem. And this occurs when your body can’t metabolize the lactate being produced during the higher intensity events, you know, during high intensity exercise is why you can only sprint for short bursts. You know, Usain Bolt is not going to go run the half marathon at that pace, right?
He can’t do that, like you cannot run, you can’t sprint for long periods, periods because that lactic acid would build up and then you would just totally crash, right? But you can run slow all day long.
And the fat adapted athlete, here’s one of the benefits of becoming fat adapted is that you produce less lactate, and therefore you actually have a higher lactate threshold, meaning you can actually increase your exercise intensity so you can run faster, while still being able to metabolize the lactate, because you’re not producing as much as the carb adapted athlete. Alright.
And if you want to learn more about this check out there’s a great book. It’s called The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Oerformance. It’s by two doctors Jeff Bullock and Stephen Finney. And these guys literally wrote the book on low carbohydrate performance. And it’s, it’s awesome.
So I don’t want to get too nerdy with some of the science stuff here. But just know that you can actually run fast and be fat adapted and run for not only longer distances, but also faster. Another example of this is Zach Bitter, who is the current world record holder in the 100 miler and the 12 hour events, right. So he did, this guy’s a beast, he broke the world record in the 100 miler with a time of 11 hours and 90 minutes. That is a 6 minute 48 Second pace for 100 miles. This is insane.
And then his 12 hour world record, he ran 104.8 miles in 12 hours. So Zach, I talk about him because he’s kind of the poster child of the low carb approach for high performing athletes. He’s a leader. He’s like one of the best in the world, right? He trains very low carb. And he’s an extremely efficient fat burner, this guy can just burn fat like crazy.
So here’s where I kind of talk about this myth of like, you can’t run fast without carbs, being sort of true and false. So for Zach, he’s going to use carbohydrates strategically during a race to give him that edge that he needs the extra gear that he needs to be able to compete or to win an event like this. Okay? So Zach does something like, like when he did his world record 100 miler, he did something around 40 grams of carbs per hour for that event. So he added carbohydrates to give him an extra little edge.
Why not use them, right? 40 grams an hour is not much. If you compare that to what most average, like marathoners, like weekend warriors like us do. Most people do somewhere around 60 to 90 grams of carbs per hour for like a marathon where they’re gonna run like a four hour marathon.
So he’s not doing a ton, but it’s enough to give him the competitive edge that he needs is enough to push him to a world record time as an elite athlete, he’s using carbs very strategically, he trains very low, but then races higher, so he uses carbs to improve his performance at times. We can do this too, we can use carbs to help us run faster.
You don’t have to, like, I’m sure that there are. This is different for everybody. So what I’m about to say just like, please understand this is different for everybody. But most people probably wouldn’t need carbs hardly at all for a 5k or 10k, maybe even a half marathon like depending on your intensity.
Like you can probably go out there and smash a half marathon time, you know, an hour and 45 minutes or something like that. Really not need much if any carbs at all, because you’re not going to like deplete the stores that you have and you’ll probably be okay.
But you know that that’s an individual kind of thing, but you can certainly use them right? If you’re staying in that kind of fat burning zone like below your anaerobic threshold you can run pretty far. Like you can run faster for long periods of time. But as soon as you kick into that anaerobic zone, you’re going to like need to keep your muscle glycogen stores topped off.
So you have to experiment with this. This is not the same for everybody. But you might be surprised how hard you can go, like how fast you can run without needing carbs. I’ve had some interesting experiences this past year, running faster without carbs.
So this time last year, I was probably, you know, averaging. If I went out and ran like 10 miles, I’d probably average around a 10-10:30 pace. And today, if I were to go out and do that same 10 mile run, at what, to me is like the same perceived effort that I was doing a year ago, it’s probably more like a 9:30, or a 9:15 pace.
So I’ve improved my times by, you know, roughly a minute, per mile faster. And I say this, because I’ve, you know, switched from being a carb adapted athlete to a fat adapted athlete. And I don’t use carbs on these runs, especially when I’m out there doing the longer runs, I just don’t use anything at all, no calories at all.
And I know this is just my experience is one person. It’s kind of anecdotal. But you need to try this for yourself and see how it goes for you. I’ve been doing a couple of time trials with my running group lately, and my 5k time which I haven’t run like a race, I haven’t raced a 5k in a long time, several years. But my time was like, under 24 minutes, I averaged a 7:43 pace for 5k.
And I did it without any kind of carbs or anything like that. And so when on the shorter distances, it’s like, you don’t really need the extra carbs, because you’re not going to burn through your your energy stores. But to me, though, I was pretty proud of that pace, like that was pretty, pretty hard. I went out hard, and I felt really good.
So you can definitely, definitely run faster, and improve your running performance without having to be a high carb runner, you can do it using some carbs strategically, if you want to. Why not use them, right? I mean, when you’re an efficient fat burner, using carbs, we’ll send that glucose straight to your muscles to be used for energy. So why not do it if you want to enhance your speed and performance, you have that tool available to you. Okay. So that was the myth of like that you can’t run fast on carbs.
And then the last one I’ll talk about today is that, you know, this whole low carb thing is just not sustainable. I hear people tell me this all the time. And I do get it, I really do. And honestly, I used to believe it too. You know, there was a couple of years ago where I went out to become fat-adapted, and I did it. And I loved it. And running was great. And I was able to run all day, I remember doing a couple of 50K’s that summer, and I just felt so good. I was like, this is like the easiest this has ever felt.
But for whatever reason, I got it into my head, that this is just not sustainable. Like I can’t keep this up. And people were telling me, this was stupid, this is not a viable approach. You can’t do this long term, this is bad for your health, you’re gonna die. And I let all these people get in my head honestly.
And I started to believe in myself, you know, I let their misconceptions dictate how I felt about myself. And I started to doubt myself. And I started to doubt if this was the right choice for me. And full disclosure, I was not eating a really awesome diet at the time, I was eating a lot of processed foods.
So on one hand, you know, we just have to understand that you know, what I was the way I was doing, it was not, I wasn’t doing it the right way. Not the way I’m doing I know a lot more now. So I got into my head that this was not something I could keep doing. And eventually I caved, and I just went back to eating the high carbohydrate diet that I was eating before that.
And honestly, that’s when things started to kind of go south for me, I put on somewhere close to 20 pounds a year for the next two years. I gained over 40 pounds. Because I went back to my high carb diet. I kept running, I was still running, I was still working out all the time. I was doing all kinds of exercise.
I was even like counting my calories and like you know, making sure I was getting my steps in and you know doing all this stuff and I just wasn’t I wasn’t losing weight. I was gaining weight consistently. So the funny thing is, that was not sustainable for me. The whole going back to the high carb diet was the thing that was actually not sustainable.
Because if I kept going in that direction I’d be, you know, who knows, another 20 pounds heavier. So for the past year, I’ve been fat adapted eating, low carb, preaching about it, and coaching people on it. And I’ve had great success. I love it. It’s easy. It’s effortless, I enjoy everything about it. I love the food. I love the way I feel. I love how it affects my running in a positive way.
You know, I’m sleeping better. I have more energy. I’m thinking more clearly. And I’ve been sharing my journey with you here on the podcast in the Facebook group for the past year. And I will continue to do that. I will continue to share my journey. I absolutely believe that this is very sustainable. And as I learn new things, and new science comes out, I’ve tried to pass them along to you.
And just as a side note, Zack Bitter, you know, he’s been following this very large, low carb approach to endurance running for over 10 years now. And he continues to break records. And he’ll tell you like this is like, totally sustainable. But here’s the thing: the best diet is the one that works for you and is sustainable for you. You may not enjoy eating low carb like I do. Fair enough, do you.
But here’s my message for you today. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. And I want you to know that low carb is healthy. It’s great for weight loss. It’s great for maintaining your weight. It’s great for long distance running. It’s great for fast running. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s sustainable.
And there’s a couple of resources. I mentioned one already The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. Definitely check out that book. It’s great. Another great book is Primal Endurance by Mark Sisson. Two great resources that you guys can check out.
Okay, that’s all we got for today. I hope you all have an amazing, amazing day. And if you liked this episode, and you got something out of it, please share it with a friend. You guys got this. Lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I will 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.
Stress is not something that can be avoided, it’s just a fact of modern life. In fact, we all need a certain amount of stress to function normally. We’ve evolved as humans to handle stress; we …
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.
Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 58 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about how stress is making us fat. That’s right, stress is making us fat.
Now, stress is not really something that can be avoided. You know, it’s just a fact of modern life, that we all need a certain amount of stress to function. Normally, a little bit of stress is okay, it’s normal, it’s healthy. We’ve evolved as humans to handle stress pretty well. We have these built-in mechanisms that kick into gear to help us deal with stressful situations very effectively, this works great, but too much stress or the wrong kind of stress can have some pretty serious health consequences.
Stress can make us sick, stress can lead to a host of other chronic diseases. And stress can make us fat. So in this episode, I’ll be taking a look at stress from several different angles. I’ll explain how stress is making us fat. And I’ll provide some options for how you can reduce stress in your life.
If you haven’t already done so please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook, all this month, this is February 2021. We’re doing a 28 day low carb challenge. So the focus this month is to try to reduce the problematic carbohydrates for a couple of weeks. That’s all. It’s not like, you know, zero carbs or anything like that. It’s just like, let’s see what it feels like to ditch some of the problematic carbs, and see how our body responds.
Each week, I’m doing a little bit of training in there. To show you how to do this simply and safely. We’re also encouraging each other people are asking great questions. They’re posting great results they’re having already. And it’s a lot of fun. We’re all supporting each other this month, through the 28 day, low carb challenge. So come join us over there. Just jump on Facebook search for Running Lean community.
Here’s a recent five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This is from RTM71. And RT says, “This is not just about running. I’m an almost 50 year old malel, I quit smoking five years ago, never really thought about becoming a regular runner until I found this podcast. And it’s not only about running, it’s about a lifestyle. I love it. And Patrick interacts with his listeners on different platforms as well.”
Thank you RTM71. And if you feel so compelled, if you get something out of this podcast, I would love it if you jumped on Apple podcasts and you can just scroll down and leave a quick review. And who knows I might even read it here on the show. Awesome.
Okay, so let’s talk about this how stress is making us fat. So first of all, let’s define stress. What is stress? What do we mean when we talk about stress? Stress is the mental, emotional, and physiological response of the body to any situation that is new, threatening, frightening, or even exciting. Okay.
So it’s like a mental, emotional, and physical, physiological response to situations that are new or different, that seem threatening, frightening, or exciting. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s normal, you know, we all need a certain amount of stress in our lives, you know, there’s a certain amount of optimal stress that happens in our lives that helps us to you know, maintain our homeostasis and maintain adequate health and our athletic performance okay.
But when stress levels reach mental, emotional, and physiological limits, stress becomes a problem. We no longer function optimally, right we become sick we become diseased, we gain weight or it becomes very hard to lose weight or we get injured. You know this is when stress becomes a problem, okay.
So stress is one of the most common problems people face today. And chronic stress really undermines your ability to just stay healthy. An August 2020 Gallup Poll reported that 60% of Americans say they experience daily stress and worry. 60% of Americans say they experience daily stress and worry. And this is up 14% from the previous year.
So in 2019, only 46% of Americans said they felt daily stress and worry, by the way, that 46% is pretty much what it’s been for a long time, many, many years, it doesn’t really change much. 46% is about what it normally is. But because of this global pandemic, you know, 2020 is like the most stressful year we’ve had, in a long, long time, we’re more stressed out than ever right now.
And current estimates indicate that the annual cost of stress and stress-related diseases in the United States exceeds a $300 billion 300 billion with a B dollars annually. And this is mostly due to health care costs. It also is due to lost productivity, and absenteeism as well. So stress is a big, big problem. It’s very common.
It’s a chronic issue here in the United States and other parts of the world, but especially here, we do everything being here, tell me. So we just have to understand that stress can be problematic. Okay.
Let’s talk a little bit about the different types of stress. So how do we react to stress? What is stress? What are the two main types of stress we want to talk about here? So you know, there’s two types of stress, I’ll talk about those in a minute.
But it’s really how we respond to these that makes all the difference, okay, because we’re all going to experience stress, it’s not like you can, you know, wave your magic wand and you’re going to have a stress free life, that’s just doesn’t work. That way, there’s always going to be something that happens to create that mental emotional, and physiological response in your, in your body in your mind.
So you have to just be able to learn how to handle what comes your way. Okay, so it’s how you respond to stressful situations, that makes all the difference, all right. So, the main two types of stress first of all, we have eustress and that is spelled eustress, eustress. This is the beneficial kind of stress.
This is the kind of stress where health and performance continue to improve even though the stressor is there. Okay, so here’s a good example of a type of use stress, lifting weights, this produces a good type of stress. This is the principle behind lifting weights, one of the principles is the principle called overload.
And if you want to develop muscles, you need to apply the principle of overload so when weight training, the muscle must be forced to work harder than normal, and the muscle must be overloaded, in order to stimulate improvement. So you overload the muscle by lifting a weight that’s heavier than you would normally lift, your muscle adapts, by getting stronger.
And then you continue this process. And that’s how you build muscle. You build muscle during the rest phase, actually, right? So you stress your muscle for a short period of time at the gym. And then the next day you rest. And that’s how you build muscle. So that’s an example of a beneficial type of stress, you stress.
Another example of a type of use stress would be doing interval training or speed work as a runner, right? So you would run very hard and very fast for a short period of time. So maybe you do a sprint workout. You do hard, you know all-out sprinting for 30 seconds at a time. Rest for a couple of minutes and repeat that maybe four or five times that’d be a good stressful workout.
But it’s very short. It’s very intense. You’re stressing your body, but then you back off When your body responds by adapting the same principle as the weightlifting here, you’re overloading your muscles by sprinting, you’re overloading your cardiovascular system by sprinting. But your body responds by adapting and getting stronger, getting more efficient and delivering oxygen to your muscles, and building muscle.
So this is the beneficial kind of stress, you become a faster, stronger runner. So this is like the good kind of stress. And this is fine, we want this, we need this in our life in order to grow in order to continue to be a healthy human being, you want some of this good kind of stress in your life. Okay.
Now let’s talk about the other kind of stress. This is the kind most people think of this is, it’s not us stress, this is distress. And this is the negative kind of stress this is the unpleasant or harmful response to stress. When your body has a distress response to stress, this is where your health and your performance deteriorate.
So it would be like, if you lifted heavy weights every single day, without ever giving yourself a rest day, you totally like tax your muscles, they wouldn’t be able to grow because you’d never give them a chance to rest and go through that repair phase. And you’d probably cause injury. And running is the same. Running is the same thing.
Like if you just ran the same like super-fast tempo, every time you go out and run and you ran every single day, you never gave yourself a rest day you never let off the gas. You’re not slow enough to be in the aerobic zone. You’re not fast enough to be creating adaptive responses like doing speed work, you’re in that chronic cardio stressful running mode.
And by the way, a lot of new runners do this. And this causes a lot of injuries in new runners or burnout. You know, it’s really hard to keep your body under that chronic distress for long periods of time. Okay, so those are some examples of distress, okay? Chronic distress can be very problematic, okay, when your body is chronically distressed.
You can increase your risk of all kinds of health disorders. Chronic distress has been related to coronary heart disease, which is the number one cause of death in the United States. Chronic distress has been linked to hypertension, high blood pressure. It’s been linked to eating disorders, ulcers, diabetes, asthma, depression, migraines, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue.
Chronic stress has also been linked to the development of certain types of cancer. Chronic stress is not good. It is not good for us, it causes all kinds of problems, okay. So there are basically two types of stress. Eustress this is the short term beneficial, good kind of stress, our body responds positively by adapting and improving.
And then we have distress. This is long term chronic, harmful type of stress, our body responds in a negative way, our health and our performance decline, and it could kill us. It has a lot of very bad effects on our body and on our health.
So let’s talk a little bit about what happens when we experience stress in the world. Okay. So again, stress is stress in itself is not inherently bad. You know, we’ve evolved as humans to have an amazing response to stress, you know, something in our environment, you know, would stress us out?
We would hear a rustling in the bushes that we’re not familiar with, well, what’s that that’s something new. So we would, you know, our senses would get heightened, you know, and then out pops a saber toothed Tiger. And when that happens, all these things like kick into gear, our brain sends messages to our hypothalamus, you know, into our adrenal glands. We activate the sympathetic nervous system.
This is the fight or flight nervous system, right? The adrenal glands produce adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormone, you know in our body responds by increasing blood pressure, increasing our heart rate, increasing blood glucose, our liver will actually create more glucose and send it out into our bloodstream because we need that energy to be able to fight or flight right. In turn, our insulin levels go up.
We do some more blood flow to the brain, more oxygen uptake we are breathing increases, our muscles tense up, our muscles strengthen. And we have this sense of heightened awareness. These are all the things that happened in our body in response to stress, okay, so this is all good. This is normal, if there’s a saber toothed Tiger there, okay? This is all good if the stress can be released in some way.
So when you set your body up into this fight or flight mode, you’re getting ready to like do some battle or run away very, very fast. Okay. So in my case, if I see that saber toothed Tiger, I am running away as fast as I can, I am not going to take my chances with saber toothed Tiger, right. So, you know, if the stress can be released in some way, you know if we can run away, or if you want to stand and fight the tiger, awesome. And if you win, then good for you even better.
But you know that stress will be released by either one – we fight the tiger or we run away, something has to happen to get our body back to homeostasis, we got to get back to normal. So we are we need our heart rate to drop our blood pressure to normalize, we need to burn off that excess glucose we would do that by running or fighting or whatever, our insulin levels will get back to normal or muscle tensions would release our muscles would relax, our bodies would relax.
So this is all good. This is the way the stress response system is all set up. This is all good, right? But what happens if there’s no release of the stress? Your heart rate is gonna stay high, your blood pressure is going to remain elevated glucose and insulin levels are going to remain high, your body is going to remain tense, and your muscles are going to be all tensed up.
And this condition I’m describing right here, this chronic stress is how 60% of Americans live their entire lives. Right, there’s no saber toothed Tiger today. There’s other things that stress us out instead, but our bodies have this exact same response to whatever we determine is stress in our lives. Okay.
So that stress could be, oh, my boss is a jerk. You know, I got these three projects, he wants me to get them done by the end of the week, or, you know, I gotta homeschool my kids, or you know, just driving to and from work in rush hour traffic. That can be very stressful, right? Or feeling like there’s never enough time to do everything that has to get done. Maybe you’re not sleeping well.
This can keep your body in a state of chronic stress. Feeling overwhelmed by you know, emails and text messages and social media, being distracted by social media. So we never get anything worthwhile done, right? Information overload. constantly comparing ourselves to others worrying about money and finances. Worrying about COVID.
All these things are what stress us out on a daily basis. All of these things create that same mental, emotional and physiological response in our bodies. They all produce that same stressful response as though there were danger in front of us something frightening, right?
And so it’s very easy for us as, as humans today, in the modern world, especially in the United States, to get stuck in this state of chronic stress is not good. It’s not good for us at all. It’s creating a very healthy, very unhealthy environment and our bodies and our minds. And it’s leading to all sorts of, of illness, disease, ill health, and it’s making us fat. So how does stress make us fat?
Well, your body’s response to stress. One of the things that happens is that your body produces cortisol, that is the stress hormone. Your body produces cortisol, adrenaline, blood glucose, so glucose levels go up; adrenaline, cortisol, and insulin.
And again, this is all great if you’re going to fight off the saber toothed tiger or runaway, you’re going to burn that glucose off the cortisol will lower the adrenaline will lower insulin lower and everything will get back to normal. You would use the glucose for energy right and insulin would kind of level out but that just doesn’t happen today, right, because you’re like stuck in traffic or you never get a good night’s sleep or whatever it is.
So your blood glucose your cortisol levels remain high, your blood glucose levels remain high, your insulin levels remain high. And remember, if insulin is high, your body is holding on to fat. If insulin is high, you are in fat storage mode, your body is holding is not releasing fat from your fat cells, it is holding on to it, you’ve got to get the insulin low in order to release the fat in order to become a fat burner to get your body into fat-burning mode, right?
Cortisol increases our blood sugar. And insulin goes up in response to that. And here’s a little side note, cortisol also suppresses your immune system. So it makes you more susceptible to all sorts of illnesses, including some things that you don’t want these days. COVID-19. So cortisol, you know, it’s a stress hormone, it’s fine to have some cortisol in our system, but we, we don’t want an inordinate amount of this.
And we don’t want stress, and cortisol in our bodies all the time. This is how stress is literally making us fat. Cortisol increases our blood sugar increases our insulin. That’s the main reason we hold on to weight when we’re stressed out. And if you want more proof of that, they make a synthetic form of cortisol. It’s called prednisone.
This is a corticosteroid that they use for some people. Some people use this and they get some good results from using it. But the number one side effect of using prednisone is weight gain. People that take it weight gain over 70% report, I’m sorry, people that take prednisone over 70% of them report weight gain, and the higher the dose, and the longer the duration of, of use of prednisone, the more weight they gain.
So if they keep taking this steroid, they keep gaining weight. And as soon as they stop taking it, they stop gaining weight. And sometimes it takes a while to lose that weight. It’s very hard. But that’s just a little sidebar. Like you know, prednisone is the synthetic form of cortisol. So cortisol is not good. No bueno.
We don’t want a lot of cortisol in our system all the time, a little bit every now and then it’s fine. And that’s what the short term, they use stress. That’s why it’s good to go to the gym workout, you know, stress your whole body out, stress all your muscles out quickly, and then let it repair. That’s good. That’s what it’s designed for, right?
But when we’re stressed out all the time, our hormones are just whacked. Hormone regulation, it’s like one of the most important factors in maintaining a healthy body weight, when your hormones are out of whack, your weight is out of whack.
When your hormones are normal, you tend to be at your normal healthy body weight. So just we got to like get this stuff in check, right? Like stress is literally making us fat. If you’re having a hard time losing weight, then you got to check your stress levels. Okay. So how do you know if you’re stressed? I mean, I think most of us know.
But if you’re not sure, I’ve got a list of some symptoms that you can kind of check out. But you have to be aware, the first step is like you just have to be aware that stress is an issue in your life. And I asked my clients this a lot when we hit a weight loss stall, or a plateau and I say, Hey, how’s your stress level? Oh, you know, everything’s great. I’m eating great, you know, blah, blah, blah, but oh, yeah, work is really stressful.
And, you know, gosh, the kids are just driving me crazy. And, oh, yeah. And I find out that their stress levels are super high, and they’re not taking care of themselves. And we dig into it a little bit deeper. And we find that once we start working on the stress, the weight starts to kind of come off again. So we kind of can break through some of these weight loss stalls or plateaus by reducing stress. It’s amazing. Totally cool.
So you may be chronically stressed and not even know it. Here are some common system symptoms of stress. These are this is not a comprehensive list, but these are things that if you experience these things on a regular basis, any of these things on a regular basis, this could just be that you’re overstressed headaches, sore muscles, like neck, shoulder, back muscles, and I’m not talking about from working out.
I’m talking about just like my neck and back and shoulders are always sore. What is that all about? Well, if your shoulders are up in your ears all the time because you’re so stressed out, that’s what we’re talking about. If you grind your teeth all the time, maybe you have a nervous tic like a finger tapping or toe-tapping, a sudden increase or loss of appetite, insomnia, nightmares, could be a cause of stress, fatigue, just chronic fatigue all the time, high blood pressure, impotence, loss of sex drive could be stress related to pry depression, irritation, irritability, anger are all kind of related to stress.
If you’re like hostile, or you experience a lot of fear, panic, or anxiety, this could be stress-related. Stomach pain or nausea. You know, stress can cause ulcers, you know, so if you’re experiencing some stomach pain or nausea that lasts kind of on a regular basis, and you can’t really identify the cause of it could be stress. Lack of concentration, rapid heart rate, low-grade infection, and just a general feeling of restlessness. These are all signs that we’re chronically stressed out, and we need to do something about it.
Okay, if you’re experiencing some of these are a lot of these, you know, kind of symptoms. Definitely work on kind of reducing stress, see a doctor obviously, if some of these things are going on, and see if, you know, make sure there isn’t something else happening. But definitely work on things to reduce stress.
So if you think you might be chronically stressed, don’t, don’t freak out on me here, there’s some things you can do to kind of reduce the stress. And one of the most powerful tools to help reduce stress is exercise. You know, go back to this saber toothed Tiger example, you know, our body is being primed. When we get stressed out, our body’s being primed to take action to fight or flight. So exercise is like kind of mimicking that in our lives. Okay. So this is like one of the best things you can do to help reduce stress.
So let’s say for example, you’re super stressed out at work. You had a tough day at work, your boss was a jerk all day, you spent the last eight hours being chastised. And then to make matters worse, you’re driving home. And the car in front of you is driving like way slower than the speed limit. And you’re just like, freaking out, right?
The fight or flight response has already been activated from your stressful day at work, right. So now driving home, this guy is going super slow and it’s in high gear, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure shoots up, you’re breathing, quickens your muscles tense up, cortisol and adrenaline are released. And it’s all systems go, right.
But you can’t do anything about it. Because you’re just sitting there in traffic, you can’t dissipate the stress, there’s no fight or flight response that can happen. So you’re just going to sit there and feel terrible, right. And we do this all the time. Like I used to have to commute to work and oh my gosh, I remember just like it was so stressful.
So really just doing some sort of exercise will help to relieve that stress, okay, you got to do something, you got to like dissipate this stuff from your body, you got to give your body your work your muscles so that they can relax. You got to, you know, do something aerobic to or anaerobic, you know, do some moderate or intense, vigorous exercise to get that blood sugar out of your system. So your insulin levels can go down, right.
So even just like you get home after that commute, and you do like some aerobic exercise for 30 minutes, this can start to relieve tension in your muscles, it can use up that extra energy that you’ve got in your body. And even moderate to vigorous-intensity exercise even produces better results.
And it produces things like endorphins, endorphins or morphine-like chemicals that actually act like painkillers in our body. So they kind of help to kill the pain. But they also have this soothing, calming effect. Research has shown that exercise has an immediate effect on your mood, and that that effect lasts up to 12 hours following the activity. So you want to relieve stress. Get some exercise. It’ll put you in a better mood.
You ever hear people say like oh running I love running, running is my therapy. Well, now you know why. Running reduces stress. It improves your mood for up to 12 hours. After running, people who run regularly are just less stressed out. And generally, they’re just happier, they’re in a better mood. And I would totally agree with this right?
I am in a great mood pretty much all the time. And all the people that I know that are runners are so positive, and, and generally happy and in a good mood and fun. And, and I love that about runners. And this is one of the reasons why I love working with runners is because we’re all in a good mood, we all have a lot of fun, and we laugh a lot.
And by the way, if running makes you stressed out, you’re doing it wrong. Okay? If you run and you’re just constantly stressed, every time you run, you’re not doing it right. So two things you can do.
Number one, you can slow down a lot, like do some really slow runs every now and then just stay in that zone one or two, you know, stay in that aerobic zone. And really just work your aerobic engine, just build some aerobic and don’t overly stress your body. And you can do this for long periods of time, you can run like that. And this is really good for you.
The other thing you can do on the other end of the spectrum is to speed up a lot like do some intense speed drills like sprints, like I described earlier. Those will produce high amounts of stress. But the release afterward is what you’re looking for, you’re looking for that adaptation. You know, and you do this for a very short amount of time, like you’re this isn’t a chronic thing you’re going to do, okay?
So the slowing down or the speeding up the slowing down, you can do for longer periods of time to slow, the speeding up, you want to do very short. But these both produce positive adaptations in your body and in your brain. They both make you feel good. Obviously, there’s many other ways to reduce stress. I just love running. I think this is like the best way to reduce stress.
But other things could be walking, journaling, meditation, getting a massage, yoga, stretching, sleeping, well getting a good night’s sleep. All these are amazing. Like there’s so many things you can do to reduce stress, like you can’t do too many of these things, right? Just find a few things that work for you. For me, every day I get outside and I walk or I run no matter the weather. So it could be pouring down rain, snowing, four degrees doesn’t matter. I’m outside, I’m walking, or I’m running.
I do strength training a few days a week, I do some meditation every single day. I do journaling every single day. I connect with friends on a regular basis. This is one of the best stress relief. Things that I do for myself are connecting with friends. You know, sometimes it’s over zoom, sometimes it’s in person, maybe on a phone call, whatever it is, we have fun, we laugh. And that human connection is so important. And it really does help me to reduce stress.
And then I get it, I try to get a good night’s sleep. So that’s the like little combo that works for me walking, running, strength training, meditation, journaling, connecting with friends, and getting a good night’s sleep. Figure out what works for you. Pick a few things and try them, apply them on a regular basis and see if you can help reduce the stress in your life, it cannot hurt, it can only help you.
And if you’re somebody who’s really struggling to lose weight, or maybe you’ve hit some sort of a stall, then this is a great way to kind of breakthrough that. So I want to encourage you to check in with yourself, how are your stress levels? If you might think you’re a little chronically stressed out, you can do something about it, right?
Pick some pick a few things that work for you, but do something. And if it is the weight, that’s a problem and your diet is good, you know, you’re sticking to a low carb type of diet, maybe you’re practicing some intermittent fasting, you’re not overeating, and you just can’t seem to move the needle. It could be stress-related.
Okay, so this is one time where I think I think running really does help with weight loss in this case, you know, it’s not from a burning calories perspective, but more from a stress relief perspective. So just consider that and pick a few of these things and start applying them and start getting rid of the stress in your life. Well, I hope you all have an amazing day. And if you liked this episode and you got something out of it, please share it with a friend. You guys totally got this. Lots of love. As always keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a 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.
Some of the most often-asked questions I get from runners revolve around the topic of carbohydrates. Most runners I talk to are either straight-up addicted to carbs or at the very least obsessed …
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.
Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 56 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about good carbs and bad carbs. Some of the most often asked questions I get from runners revolve around this topic of carbohydrates. Most runners I talk to are either straight-up addicted to carbs, or at the very least a little obsessed with carbs.
So when I come in, and I start talking about a low-carb approach to running and weight loss, they kind of freak out a little bit. They just can’t imagine a world where carbs are not the main focus of their nutrition game.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to answer some of the biggest questions runners ask about carbs, like, what are good carbs, what are bad carbs, also want to talk about the quality of your carbs, the quantity of your carbs, and the timing of your carbs, all of which are very important. And they all play a different role in your long-distance running and in your weight loss. Cool. So we’re gonna get into that in just a minute.
First of all, I wanted to remind you that we have this amazing little community on Facebook, called the Running Lean community, come and check us out. I do some teaching in there once a week. We post in there every day, there’s over 5000 people in the group now, which is just crazy amazing. And they’re so positive.
And there’s so much good feedback I’m getting from people in the group, they tell me all the time, how they love the group and how it’s been changing their life. And they’re learning so much. And they’re getting so much support and encouragement from other runners that are trying to do similar things. So come and check us out, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and come and join us over there. It’s a lot of fun. We’re doing a lot of good stuff over there.
And then here’s a recent review of the Running Lean podcast that I received from someone in a message. And this is from Wendy and she says, “Hey, Patrick, I stumbled across your Running Lean podcast in November 2020. And I’ve intently listened to every episode. Since then I’ve learned so much valuable information from your knowledge and experience.” Thank you.
And then she goes on to say, “Some of the most profound lessons I’ve learned from you are one, you’re either in fat storage mode or fat-burning mode. I was totally in fat storage mode. I was doughy and it felt awful. Number two, you can control your thoughts. Things that happen to you are neutral. It is how you think about those events that create your feelings and your response. Number three, don’t let your lizard brain control your goals and dreams. Number four, eat real food. Number five, satiety is a beautiful thing. It feels so good. It feels so much better than the strong cravings that come from eating a diet high in refined carbs and sugar.” Totally agree with you there when need.
“Number six, embrace discomfort or choose your discomfort. You can either be uncomfortable from working hard and stepping out of your comfort zone to achieve a goal or you can be uncomfortable because of regret.” Whew, that’s a really good insight. “And then number seven, not all oils are created equally. Wow, I had no idea what goes into producing vegetable oil. Yuck. Thanks again for the work you are doing. It has helped my life tremendously. I look forward to Friday so I can listen to a new episode of the Running Lean podcast.”
Thank you, Wendy, that was super sweet of you to reach out and send me that message. And if you want to share the love, and just as a way of just saying thank you if you get something out of this podcast, and you just want to say thank you.
You can just go on Apple podcasts and scroll down on the podcast where it says to write a review and review. Just write a few comments. You know, tap the five stars and I’ll read your review here on the show. It means a lot to me that you guys take the time to reach out and tell me how this is improving your life and how it’s making you know changes in your life.
This is really important to me. My goal, my mission is to help make an impact on the unhealthy state of the world today. And to know that my messages about you know, eating healthy, and controlling our thoughts and emotions and things like that is actually resonating with people, it means so much to hear that. So love to hear from you guys.
Okay, so let’s get into this topic today, good carbs, bad carbs. And I purposely named this because we have this idea that, you know, carbs are bad. And I think people when they hear me talk about a low carb approach to dieting, to weight loss to running whatever you want to call it, you know, I talk about becoming fat adapted and needing to take more of a low carb approach. I think some people have this misconception that it just means that all carbs are bad.
And that you have to stay away from all carbs. And that is not what I’m saying at all. And I want to make sure that, you know, I clear that up here right at the beginning, I’m going to talk about some of the carbs that are good, and some that you know, maybe not so good. There’s really no good or bad here.
But some have a different effect on your body and on your metabolism on your running, your weight loss efforts, and on your overall health. And there’s just so much new science around all this stuff. So let’s get into this a little bit. And we’ll talk about good carbs and bad carbs. Cool.
All right, first of all, what are carbs? What are carbohydrates? Carbohydrates are basically forms of sugar, you know, where you take, like refined sugar, table sugar that you would just like eat out of the bag, just take a spoonful of that. And that’s like pure carbohydrate, right? And lots of foods contain sugar, lots of foods contain natural forms of sugar or carbohydrate. Okay.
So when we’re talking about sugar, we’re talking about carbs and vice versa. Okay, so carbohydrates are basically, you know, the sugar content of foods. And all carbs get turned into glucose in your body. So 100% of carbohydrates that you eat will become glucose in your body. All right, glucose is very easily available for your body to use for fuel.
You know, so you eat an apple, it’s got, you know, carbohydrates in there, that gets turned into glucose, which is the version of sugar that your body can use for fuel and so boom, eat an apple, get some fuel, right. Some of that glucose, though, gets used for energy, but some of it gets stored as glycogen in the muscles.
So some of that glucose will be readily used right away. It’s kind of floating around in your blood, let’s just put it that way. Some of it is like, oh, you know, our glucose is pretty high. And let’s just put some of this away for later. And it’ll store some of that glycogen in your muscles for use later. That’s all good too.
Once your glycogen stores are full, though, in your muscles, your body’s going to be like, Hey, we got this extra glucose or glycogen stores are full, let’s just store this away for use later in the form of fat. Right? So typically, this is very generally speaking here. Typically, the more carbs you eat, the more fat that gets stored on your body.
So overconsumption of carbohydrates, leads to can lead to incessant weight gain, among other things. Alright, so when we talk about carbs, we’re talking about this version of sugar that our bodies can use for fuel. But too much of it can be, you know, start, we can start storing that as fat. All right. So that’s just a very broad overview. I’m going to get into this a little bit more and talk about some of this more in detail.
But I want to talk about this other idea, first of all, before we get into all that, so there’s this idea that I’ve thrown out there before, which is that there are no such things as essential carbohydrates, okay? When you look at all the essential human nutrients, you know, we talk about fat protein, certain vitamins, and minerals, carbohydrates are not on that list. Okay?
In fact, there’s a report done by the US Institute of Medicines, food and nutrition pinboard in this report, it says, the lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed. So what they’re saying is, the lower limit of carbohydrates that we need to survive is basically zero, as long as we’re getting enough fat and protein, okay?
If you don’t eat fat, you will die. If you don’t eat protein, you will die, our body does not make those nutrients. So we have to eat them, we have to eat, get them in our diet. If you don’t eat fat and protein, you will die. But if you don’t eat carbohydrates, you’re gonna kind of do just fine, you will survive.
Now, I’m not saying you should do this. And I’m not saying that it’s the best way to go. But what I’m saying is that you can survive without carbohydrates. That tells you something about the human body. It tells me that carbohydrates are not essential and that they’re not the most important thing. They’re pretty low on the list of them of importance from a macronutrient standpoint, if you ask me, okay.
And this makes sense. Because of the way we’ve evolved as humans, like when carbohydrates were scarce during the winter, or during these ice ages were carbohydrate-based foods were unavailable, we would survive just fine. During these long winters. Without any carbohydrates at all, we ate more fat and protein, and we were just fine.
In fact, there are many indigenous people around the world today, who do just fine eating zero carbohydrates. You know, the Inuit Eskimos are one example of people that do not eat carbohydrates. They don’t, they don’t grow a lot of vegetables up there, in the frozen north, you know, so they eat fish, and you know, whatever else they eat, I don’t know seals and things like that, but a lot of fat, a lot of protein, and they do just fine.
But here’s the crazy thing, and this is where you stuffed makes you scratch your head and you’re just like what the heck? The current USDA guidelines suggest that up to 65% of your diet should be from carbohydrates. Based on what? Why would they suggest this if carbohydrates are not even an essential nutrient for us, this is this is what I just don’t understand.
So that leaves only 20% for protein because they suggest 20% protein and 15% for fat. So these are the two things that your body actually needs, or you will die. And they’re like putting those things pretty low on the list. Okay? So I look at this, look at this dietary guidelines and they suggest like 45 to 65% of your diet be from carbs.
And then we wonder why 88% of people in the United States are considered metabolically unhealthy. I don’t even know what to say about that. Just, it’s bananas, right? The whole thing is bananas. So what does this mean?
This does not mean you should not eat carbohydrates, okay? This does not also mean that 65% of your diet should be from carbohydrates. I don’t think that is a very good approach. And I don’t think zero carbohydrates is a very good approach either, okay. So carbs can be good.
Carbs can be bad, there’s like some good and bad, we’re going to talk about all of that. I love carbohydrates, I really do. But the type of carbs that I eat matters, okay? The type of carbs that we eat in our diet does matter. They’re not all the same.
The amount of carbs that you eat matters, right? You just can’t go hog wild on eating carbs. You can’t just like make that the majority of your calories and expect everything to be fine inside your body. And then the timing of when you eat your carbs matters. Okay? So the quality of your carbs, the quantity and the timing all matters.
So I’m going to be talking about all of those things today in this episode. Okay. Are you excited? I’m so excited. Okay, so let’s talk about when carbs go bad, you know, when they go off the rails here. So when we eat carbohydrates, this raises our blood sugar, right, our body then produces insulin to bring this down. And when we do this all the time, more and more insulin gets produced. And when your body’s producing insulin constantly, it doesn’t, it stops working the way it’s supposed to, it doesn’t respond the way that it should, and your body becomes resistant to the insulin effect.
And so this is called insulin resistance. When this happens, your body can no longer regulate your blood sugar properly. So your blood sugar is going to be up a lot, it’s gonna be up all the time. And when this is the case, you start storing more fat, and you know, more of the energy that you need is going to be just stored as fat.
So instead of taking this energy that’s coming in and using it is just getting put away for later, right. So this is the problem with high insulin is that you’re in this fat storage mode. Okay? Another way of saying this is that you become carbohydrate intolerant. So this just means that you can no longer handle the carbs and the whole glucose, blood sugar insulin response that goes along with it, okay?
As we get older, our tolerance for carbohydrate intake tends to go down. I remember in my 20s, I would be able to eat like a whole pizza, loaves of bread, mounds of pasta, drink tons of beer, Gatorade, what is that stuff called Mountain Dew, like all this coke, whatever, I would not gain an ounce, right? But once I got into my 30s and 40s, things started to become very different for me.
Now, if I just like smell a doughnut, I gain a pound. So things change. As we get older, we become less tolerant of carbohydrates as we get older. This is why a lot of runners who are heavily addicted to carbohydrates, and they’re like, well, this always worked for me in the past, why isn’t it working anymore?
It’s because of this whole carbohydrate intolerance thing, okay. So the carb intolerance can lead to being excessively hungry. So if you find yourself like, pretty hungry all the time, all day long, we’re having these incessant food cravings, you know, these really strong cravings for food.
If when you eat, you’re not feeling full, you’re not feeling satisfied. If you have energy spikes and crashes throughout the day, if you’ve been gaining weight, all of these things are signs of carbohydrate intolerance. This can also lead to chronic diseases like type two diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic inflammation, irritable bowel syndrome, Alzheimer’s, and more. Right?
So there’s all these like, really bad, healthy things, unhealthy things that can happen when your carbohydrate intolerance goes down. And typically, as you get older, and as your carbohydrate intake goes up, all these things tend to happen, okay? So it’s not that like carbs are bad, right, but rather, to many can be problematic, right now, not everybody is going to have all of these the exact same response to carbs.
In fact, there are some elite athletes out there who are in their 40s 50s, who are super lean, who eat a ton of carbs in the form of, you know, very refined carbs, and in simple sugars and stuff like that. But they tend to metabolize that very effectively. Okay, this is not normal, but this is like there are people that are at that end of the spectrum that can still do tons of carbs, and it’s not a problem.
But for most of us, this is a problem, it becomes very problematic, we start to have all these different negative side effects from too many carbs. Okay? So when we talk about how many carbs, like what’s good and what’s bad. So this kind of varies for everyone, you got to figure out what’s right for you. This is all about, you know, this is an experiment of one. Everything I talk about is always about you.
You need to figure out what works best for you what feels good to you, what’s helping you to reach your goals. Are you becoming fat-adapted? Are you losing weight? Do you feel good? You have tons of energy? Are you thinking clearly all these things matter? It’s not just a number on the scale we’re looking at. We’re looking at all these different factors.
So you need to figure out what kind of works for you, okay, but I’m gonna give you a little place to start So a good place to start, if you want to lower your carb intake, start with about 100 grams of carbs per day, that’s a good place for most people to start, I think the average Americans probably consume four to 500 grams of carbs per day.
So this would be like lowering your carb take quite a bit, but without going like full-on like keto or whatever, right, which would be like less than 20 grams a day, which is, you know, fine for some people. But you don’t have to do that to start experiencing some of these benefits of lowering your carbs and start feeling better. So shoot for like 100 grams per day and see how you do.
See if you start feeling good. See if you have the energy, if it comes back, try it for like, two weeks, right? See what happens. This is a good experiment for you to try. Most people who try this like two-week experiment, you know, keep their carbs for 150 to 100. Somewhere in that range. They start to feel amazing.
They can’t believe how much better they feel after just two weeks of doing that they have more energy, no afternoon crashes, they feel more satiated, they’re not hungry all the time, and their inflammation goes down. They may stop having the bloating and gas, they said. And they almost all lose weight, too. Right. So this is just like a very simple thing that you can try for two weeks and see how you do.
For me personally, I probably am somewhere around 40 to 50 grams of carbs a day. And that seems to work great for me, I don’t really count this stuff I don’t measure, I did. Every now and then I do I still do like measure my daily macros just to kind of see where I am ballpark-wise, but I’m not obsessive about this at all. I keep my carbs low. And I eat a lot of nutrient dense carbs, which we’ll talk about in a minute.
But as far as the quantity of carbs, you know, shoot for 75-100, something like that, try it for two weeks, see how you feel good experiment, okay. And so I want to kind of talk about the way our bodies used fuel really quickly here. So glucose, which is you know, freely available sugar that we can we get when we eat carbohydrates. And then there’s glycogen, which is where we store that sugar in our blood, these things are fine, right? Your body uses these fuels easily. Your brain also loves this fuel, okay?
The problem is that when we get too much of this kind of fuel coming in, okay, so I’m not saying that, you know, carbs are bad, or glucose is bad. Sugar is bad, but too much is bad. Okay, so your fat burning gets diminished. When you eat more carbohydrates, you are more in fat storage mode. So when you eat fewer carbs, that typically means you’re more in fat-burning mode.
And your body uses fuels this way, freely available glucose number one, number two glycogen that’s stored in your muscles. And then number three stored body fat. And the idea is that we want to kind of rid our body of the freely available glucose, you know, get that glycogen to be used from our muscles so that we can start to access that stored by body fat.
So that’s one of the reasons why we want this low-carb approach we want to be able to burn fat, right? You burn fat, you can run all day you burn fat, you start to lose weight, you burn fat, you start to have all this energy. So that’s what we’re trying to get to here. Okay. So I just want to make sure that that made sense to you guys. If it doesn’t make sense, then you can go back and listen to that again.
Okay, now let’s talk about the quality of carbs the kind of carbs that you eat matters. Okay. So we’ve talked about how many carbs let’s talk about the difference between good carbs and bad carbs. So like I said, there are no like really good or bad carbs, but they’re they have different effects on your body, right?
The higher the concentration of the carbohydrate, the more of an effect it’s going to have on your blood sugar, your insulin production, and the more it’s going to keep you in that fat storage mode. Okay. So some of what I would consider to be the bad carbs would be number one, Sugar.
Sugar is the most concentrated form of carbohydrate that’s out there. And really, there’s no real there’s not a lot of good that comes from eating sugar. There just really isn’t. It’s connected to so many health problems that it’s probably best to avoid, like 99% of the time. So sugar is like the number one sort of what I would consider to be like the bad carb, the other kinds of carbohydrates that I would try to like really limit to almost none would be super-refined carbohydrates like flour, and anything made with flour.
So that would be like bread and pasta and cookies and crackers and muffins, and oh my gosh, there are so many things that have flour in them, right? Flour is a very, very concentrated very refined carbohydrate, it spikes your blood sugar like crazy. So we want to kind of stay away from that. All right, so that would be also on the naughty list, right? The bad list of carbs.
The other carbs that are kind of considered to be higher in carbohydrate content are the other category of foods I should say they’re higher in carbohydrate content would be starchy vegetables. So for the most part, we’re talking about underground vegetables, root vegetables, white potatoes, that kind of thing. Legumes like beans are very, very high in carbohydrates, and very starchy.
So any of these considered starchy vegetables would be sort of something you want to stay away from, you know, while white rice, that kind of stuff, okay, it doesn’t mean not any. That doesn’t mean you can never eat beans again, or never have a white potato, the rest of your life, it just means like these things are going to have a higher effect on your body, they’re going to increase your blood sugar more, they’re going to put you into fat storage mode more.
And you want to limit your intake of these things. Okay, not saying none, just really limit. And the other category of foods that super high in sugar content. And maybe best to avoid would be the super high sugar content fruits like bananas, apples, pears, grapes, pineapple, mango, those kinds of things, super high in sugar.
You know, the fruit we eat today has been modified over the last three to 500 years. And it’s just incredibly high in sugar content. It’s not like what it used to be. So it’s best to avoid some of these fruits that have super high sugar content because it’s just going to keep you in that fat storage mode. Okay. So those are kind of the lists. A very short list of you know, some of the things to avoid that would be considered sort of bad carbs.
You know, sugar and all forms of sugar. You know anything with added sugar, refined grains, flour, anything made with flour, starchy vegetables, and high sugar fruits. Now, let’s talk about some good carbs. Right? There’s good news here.
There are so many amazing vegetables that you can eat that contain carbohydrates that are just completely fine to eat, and suggested to eat because they’re, they provide tons of nutrition, and vitamins and minerals, and micronutrients and they help with your gut health with your microbiome and they help with your weight loss efforts and they taste great.
These would be things like all the nonstarchy vegetables. So think about things like avocados, olives, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, I mean, I could just go on and on and on, right.
There’s so many amazing vegetables that you can eat, that support a low carbohydrate approach that are delicious, that provide tons of nutrition. You know, all these things I just mentioned, are nutrient-dense, each one of them provides a different array of vitamins and minerals and micronutrients and they’re so good for you.
So include tons of this type of vegetable, the nonstarchy vegetables, okay. And then low sugar fruits would be a good type of carb as well. Raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, those kinds of things are very good for you. They also provide tons of nutrients and vitamins, minerals and support that gut microbiome too. So, a good rule of thumb just generally speaking, when we’re talking about different kinds of carbs, good carbs, bad carbs, avoid the sugar, flour, starchy vegetables and the high sugar fruit and include more of the nonstarchy above ground vegetables.
Okay, so those are some different types of carbs and the type of carbs you’re eating does matter. Now, here’s something that I find really fascinating. This is the timing of your carbs, like when should you be eating carbs, right? Let’s talk about good times bad times, right?
So, a bad time to eat carbs would be eating more carbs at your first meal at breakfast, or whatever you call your first meal, lunch. Early in the day, this is not when you want to eat the majority of your carbs, okay, because what happens is, when you eat carbs at that first meal, it tends to lead to more hunger throughout the day, and also tends to increase your fat storage.
So a study in the journal Appetite, found that people who ate a high carbohydrate breakfast consisting of a bagel were hungry again soon after that meal, whereas the people who ate a low carbohydrate breakfast with more fat and protein, so they had eggs, they felt more full for longer, same exact number of calories, but a different feeling afterwards.
And the people that ate the eggs lost more weight. During the period of this study, the people that ate the bagel for breakfast gained more weight, and they were more hungry. Right. So eating your carbohydrates early in the day tends to make you more hungry, help, you know, makes you put on more weight. And then you don’t want to do that, right.
This is not going to support your weight loss efforts, that’s for sure. So what would be a different way of doing this? So a different approach would be to consume the majority of your carbohydrates in the evening. Right, so they did this study.
And this was a six-month study that they published in the journal obesity. And this put people on one of two different diets. They were both reduced calorie diet, so whatever they each were eating the same amount of calories. But the one group ate the majority of their carbohydrates. At their first meal in the second group ate the majority of their carbohydrates at their second meal at dinnertime.
At the end of six months, the people who ate most of their carbs at dinner lost more weight, had a greater reduction in waist circumference, and had an overall greater reduction in body fat mass. They also had better fasting blood sugar, better insulin sensitivity, improved cholesterol ratios, reduced inflammation, and improved levels of the hunger hormones or satiety hormones leptin and adiponectin.
So meaning their appetite was diminished. And they weren’t feeling hungry all the time. So fewer food cravings, just from the timing of their carbohydrates, as opposed to eating the majority of their carbs. In the first meal of the day, they just ate them at dinner. And so this is something that I do pretty regularly, which is I eat a pretty low carb, first meal of the day, that would be called like breakfast, and I do that around noon.
That would be like bacon and eggs and avocado, pretty much what I do most days. And then at dinner time, I eat this big salad, and I eat tons of leafy greens, spinach and kale, and lots of veggies. And then I eat some protein and there’s some fat in there as well. But pretty much I would say 90% of the carbs 95% of the carbs that I eat each day are eaten at that second meal at dinner time.
Okay, so the timing of your carbs does matter. And it will help you to oxidize more fat more efficiently. And it will help you to feel more satiated when you eat the carbs in the evening as opposed to during that first meal. Okay.
So here’s something else I wanted to touch on really quickly. And this has to do with training on a low carbohydrate approach. Okay, and this idea of metabolic flexibility. So one of the concerns that a lot of runners have is that you know, oh, if I switch to eating a lower-carb diet, I won’t have any energy for running okay.
And the idea here is that what you want to do is what you want your body to become very efficient at using fat for fuel. And the way you do that is you, you go low, you go low carb, and you train low carb, okay? That means that your body can burn fat very efficiently, which is great fuel for long distance running. And it supports weight loss, you know, you’re gonna feel better, you know, all this energy, all the amazing things that come with being a fat adapted runner.
Now, when it comes to race day, you can take a little bit of a different approach, okay? Because you’re fat adapted, because you can now use stored body fat for fuel, you’re more metabolically flexible, this is a really cool thing. Because that means that when you do bring in some more carbohydrates, you know, you can actually use that carbohydrate and the stored body fat as fuel very effectively, you can kind of switch between the two, okay?
This gives you an advantage, especially in endurance activities, like long distance running, right, you can train low and race, high train, low carb race, high carb, more high carb, not high but high Earth. So you can train low, and then you top up your glycogen stores the day or so before a race, you know, something like eat some sweet potatoes, and you don’t need a ton, you can do 150-200 grams a day before a race.
And that’ll kind of top up your glycogen stores and your muscles. And you’ll have all this slow burning energy for use the next day. But it gives you the flexibility to use more than one energy source.
Right, because most people if you’re not fat adapted, you cannot access your fat stores for energy. Not at all, you can only use store glycogen, and freely available glucose, you have to continue eating carbs for that event, you know, so you’re sucking down the goos and the gels and the drinking this sports drink and all this other stuff, right, which leads to weight gain leads to GI distress and all kinds of other issues.
But when you become more metabolically flexible, you have these different energy sources. This gives you a competitive advantage, why not take advantage of it, okay, so you can still use carbohydrates to your advantage for running. And I really suggest you try this, you know, pick a day where you want to do a long run.
Obviously, you want to practice this before you use it on race day. But top up your glycogen stores the day before and see how that gives you a little bit more energy for that long run the next day. So carbs can be good, like carbs are good for some things, you know, they’re they can help you as a tool to help you race more, give you a little more gas in the tank for race day.
They help to promote proper thyroid function, right they keep, they help to keep cortisol levels in check. So this is the stress hormone cortisol. And so you know, having some carbs can help to reduce the cortisol levels in your body. Eating carbs have been known to help with testosterone production. And carbs are a good source of dietary fiber, which we all need, right?
When carbs are bad, though, this is like when you have too many or the wrong type of carbs. Or maybe you’re eating carbs at the wrong time. This can lead to increased hunger, decreased satiety, so you never feel full, can lead to increased inflammation, bloating, gas, irritable bowel syndrome, increased fat storage, insulin resistance, weight gain, decreased fat burning, and all these chronic diseases I’ve already talked about right?
So the good and the bad bottom line here is that if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it’s that carbs are not necessarily good or bad, but the timing, the quality and the quantity of carbs all matter, okay? All of these factors can affect your overall health. They affect your metabolism, your ability to burn fat, whether or not you’re fat adapted.
All of these factors affect your energy levels, your weight loss goals, your aerobic function, your running performance, and just your overall health and well being. Right, the wrong kinds of carbs and the wrong amount at the wrong times can lead to an array of health problems, but the right kinds of carbs in the right amount at the right time, can support your weight loss goals can help you with your fat adaptation and can actually improve your running performance. Right?
You need to figure out what works for you, right? We are all an experiment of one, find a formula that works for you. And then maybe try that two-week test. Aim for 75-100 grams of carbs a day. See how you feel after two weeks, right? And then you can always adjust that up or down depending on what’s working for you. Okay, awesome.
Well, I hope you guys got something out of this episode. I had a lot of fun kind of putting this one together. And again, if you enjoy listening to the podcast, if it helps you in any way, please consider just leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It’s a great way to say thank you for all the stuff that I do here for you. Cool, awesome, you guys totally got this. Lots of love to each and every one of you. As always 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.
I think we can all agree that in order to lose weight, you have to be able to burn fat. This is one of the main reasons why I spend so much time talking about how to turn your body into a …
Continue Reading about 55. 5 Foods That Boost Your Metabolism →
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 55 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got a cool episode for you, I’m going to be bringing to you five different foods that help boost your metabolism. I think we can all agree that if you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat, right? This is why I talk so much about how to turn your body into a fat-burning machine. Right?
If you want to lose weight, you got to burn the fat. But becoming an efficient fat burner also has these other cool benefits besides weight loss. For example. Burning fat is a great source of fuel for running. It also gives you all this all-day energy. And it improves your mental focus and concentration boosts your brainpower as well.
So in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I’m talking about foods that will definitely give your metabolism a boost to help you become that lean, fat-burning machine.
But first, I want to quickly invite you to come join us on Facebook, we’ve got this cool community called the Running Lean community over on Facebook. This is a group of runners who encourage each other, support each other, and I do some training in there. Right now we’re doing a fun challenge. It’s the January journal challenge.
And this is a challenge for you to spend a little bit of time each day doing a little writing. Now some of you might be thinking, that sounds super boring. I don’t want to do that. And that is fine. But I would encourage you to come and check out some of the prompts that I’ve been adding into the group each day.
So each day you get a different question, or a series of questions to kind of ask yourself, and then write about, and people have been getting some pretty profound insights into themselves and finding some motivation. And it’s been really cool. It’s been, it’s been surprising for some people, okay, so some people that were like, I didn’t think this is going to do much for me.
They’re like, wow, this is like really changing the way I feel about myself. It helps you to create awareness of what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling and, and how you focus on achieving goals and things like that. Cool.
So join us if you want to, it’s not too late, you can start journaling today, you know, we’re about halfway through the month of January. But go ahead, start anytime. So just find us on Facebook, just look for the Running Lean community. We’re all doing this together. So join us. It’s a fun group.
Alright, let’s talk about foods that boost your metabolism. And I got five foods I want to talk about today. But the first thing I want to do is go over a little bit about what metabolism actually means. What does it mean when we talk about metabolism. So if you look up the definition of metabolism, it’s basically the conversion of food to energy to run cellular processes. Alright, so when we’re talking about metabolism, in general, are we talking about is how our bodies use the food we eat for energy.
Another way of saying this is like how many calories we are burning at any given time. That’s what metabolism is. Now there’s more to it than that. I’m just trying to make it you know, simple for what we’re talking about here today. Okay.
So your metabolism is how you convert food, energy, and how many calories you’re burning. And there are a couple of different types of metabolism and I’m going to talk about a couple of them here. First is your basal metabolic rate. This is the metabolic rate like during sleep or deep rest. I don’t know what deep rest is actually. Is that like light sleeping napping? I’m not sure.
But anyway, so this is the minimum metabolic rate that is needed to keep your lungs breathing, to keep your heart pumping, to keep your brain actually functioning, and to keep your body temperature regulated. So this is your basal metabolic rate. So this is just the very, very minimum amount of energy you need basically or energy conversion that you need to just keep your body functioning at a basal level, okay.
Then we have something called resting metabolic rate. So your resting metabolic rate is the minimum metabolic rate required to keep you alive while you are at rest. And this is not the deep rest or sleeping, this is just like, when you’re just hanging around, you’re just sitting around talking, working that kind of stuff, okay?
On average, this is your resting metabolic rate accounts for something like 50 to 70%. 50 to 75% of the total calories that you use each day. Okay, so just resting and just hanging around just going through your day, you know, you’re burning 50 to 75% of the calories that you’re taking in or, or your total calorie expenditure for the day. I should say it that way. Okay.
So those are just a couple of different types of metabolism that we have like or a metabolic rate. Okay. So, you know, here’s the thing, if we’ve always been told, like, if we want to lose weight, then we have to burn more calories than we are taking in, right? This is the whole calories in versus calories out the whole myth, right. And I say it’s a myth because it really doesn’t work very well. Okay, I’ll get to that in a second.
So when we talk about boosting your metabolism, what we’re trying to say here is like, we want to increase the number of calories that you can burn each day, we don’t want to just be satisfied with your resting metabolic rate or your basal metabolic rate, like we want to increase your body’s natural ability to burn calories, okay.
So when you boost your metabolism, when you raise your metabolism, this means you’re a more efficient calorie burner, you, you actually are a more efficient fuel burner, okay. But the thing is, we want to pay attention to the type of fuel that we are burning, okay, we don’t want to just burn through, you know, sugar and the kind of carbohydrates that we’re eating and things like that.
We want our fuel, we want the fuel source that we’re burning, to be our own body fat, right? This is what we mean when we say we want to be efficient fat burners. So when I talk about boosting your metabolism, I’m really talking about boosting your fat metabolism, I want you to become a more efficient fat burner, not just a more efficient calorie burner. But when you’re when you eat the right kinds of food and you eliminate the wrong kinds of food, then you can become a more efficient fat burner. Okay?
So there are so many factors that go into what happens when we eat food, right? When calories come into our body there are so many things that happen, right? There are different gene expressions, there’s, you know, we all have our own set of genes and our own gene expressions and our own gut microbiome that affects what, you know, how we process fuel from the food that we eat.
It’s not as simple as just like a number of calories coming in and a number of calories that we’re burning, okay? It’s not some linear machine like that. We’re not like a steam engine, okay? You don’t just like put coal in one side, and we all generate the exact same amount of energy from that. And then we have this energy coming out the other side is not that simple. Okay.
We are like, the space shuttle, you know, we’re very complicated, super complex, highly sophisticated organisms that all use different fuels differently. We all have our own very unique metabolic fingerprint, and no two of us are the same. So when we, when people talk about this idea of like, Oh, it’s just about calories. They’re not talking about the types of calories or the type of person that’s burning the calories or anything else, right.
There are so many factors to take into consideration here, okay. And the type of fuel that we give our bodies, the type of fuels that We are burning is very important, it matters, it matters a lot. Yes, we can run our bodies on sugar as our primary fuel source, we can do that it’s fuel that we can use for our bodies.
But running our bodies on sugar causes all these detrimental health effects like insulin resistance and incessant weight gain and type two diabetes and obesity and heart disease and stroke, certain cancers, even Alzheimer’s, they’re calling Alzheimer’s now, type three diabetes because it is so linked to insulin resistance and, and diet, really, type two diabetes and now Alzheimer’s are really related to your diet.
So they’re finding all these correlations between all these detrimental chronic diseases and diet. And it’s kind of the equivalent of like, putting unleaded gasoline into the space shuttle’s fuel tank, you know, this is not going to work, it’s not going to work at all. The space shuttle needs very sophisticated, a very specific fuel for its purposes, right.
So just to kind of recap how this works, if sugar is available, your body will use that for fuel. First, your body can use sugar very easily. So when you’re eating a lot of sugar and a lot of refined carbohydrates, and your body is full of glucose, sugar, or a lot of that glucose is stored as glycogen in your muscles, then your body will burn that for fuel first, okay.
You can boost your metabolism all you want. But if you’re just filling your gas tank with sugar, and that’s the only fuel you’re burning, you’re never gonna be able to get to that stored body fat for fuel. Okay, so what we want to do is stop eating the sugar, stop eating all the carbohydrates give our body a chance to burn through the glucose that’s floating around in our system, get rid of the glycogen that’s stored in our muscles so that we can begin to release the body fat that we have and be able to use that for fuel.
Okay, so this is what it means when I talk about getting fat-adapted, adapting your body to be able to use fat for fuel, you also will use some glucose, you know, we’re not talking about eliminating sugar 100% from our diet or carbohydrates 100% from our diet, we’re talking about giving our body a chance to get our blood sugar’s normalized, bring insulin levels down, access our stored body fat as that super clean-burning source of fuel that has all these amazing benefits. Okay, so that’s a quick recap of, you know what it means to be an efficient fat burner.
Okay, so when I talk about increasing our metabolism, boosting our metabolism, really talking about increasing our body’s ability to use our own stored body fat for fuel, our fat metabolism, and being able to metabolize fat more efficiently. Okay, so what you eat really, really matters, right? The number of calories, not so much the types of food you eat, though, definitely, the types of food you eat plays a huge role in what your body does with those calories.
So and a lot of people will argue with me about this. And there’s been so many studies that have been done about the fact that calories in versus calories out that whole myth is just that a myth. It really doesn’t work. Calorie restricting diets. They do work in the short term, but they have this crazy side effect that people really don’t talk about, and that is that calorie restricting diets when done over a period of time will begin to actually slow down your metabolism.
This is known as metabolic adaptation. Your body will actually adapt to the number of calories coming in. Your body will slow down its metabolism, according to the number of calories that it’s receiving, in other words, if you typically eat a 2000 calorie diet 2000 calories a day diet, and you restrict that to 1500 calories. At first, you might lose some weight. But over time, your body is only going to burn 1500 calories a day, and you’ll stop losing weight.
And in fact, you’ll start gaining weight. And then you would have to lower your caloric intake even further in order to lose weight again. And then your body would eventually adapt to that. And honestly, this is why calorie restricting diets just don’t work. Okay?
This process that happens is also called starvation mode. This is your body’s natural response to a caloric deficit. You know, when your body doesn’t get enough food coming in, it doesn’t have enough energy and enough fuel coming in, it tries to compensate by reducing how much fuel It’s burning. Because your body is always trying to maintain neutral, it’s trying to get back to homeostasis, it wants things to get back to normal.
So if it’s if it sees all these limited calories coming in, over time it’s just gonna say, nope, not doing this. They also call this the biggest loser effect, because you know, on that show the Biggest Loser, they have all these contestants, and they dramatically limit the number of calories these people eat, right?
These are very obese people when they start, and then they dramatically limit the number of calories they consume. And of course, they make them exercise like crazy, whatever, and they all lose weight, they all lose a lot of weight, okay.
But what they don’t tell you is that 93% of the contestants on that show gain all the weight back 93%. That’s like, almost everybody. You ever wonder why they don’t do a biggest loser reunion show? That’s because it doesn’t work long term.
Now, a couple of people on there may have long-term effects, but I guarantee it is not because of caloric restriction. Because they’re all experiencing the same thing, this metabolic adaptation. So the whole idea of just restricting calories just really doesn’t work long term, okay.
And they did this meta-analysis of all the top diets in the world, right, and they covered like, some 26,000 people in all these different studies. And they found that calorie-restricting diets did have the most short-term success. So people lost the most weight in those types of diets, across all of these different studies, right.
But they also found that those same calorie restricting diets were the ones where the most people gained weight after six months. So it may work very short term, but it doesn’t work long term, right? Simply restricting calories does not boost your metabolism, it actually slows it down.
So what I want to focus on today is talking about how we can, you know, improve our body’s ability to burn fat more efficiently. And I’m going to specifically talk about five different foods that you can start eating that you can include into your diet, whatever that is for you, that will actually help you to become a more efficient fat-burning machine.
Alright, so the first food I want to talk about that’s going to help you to boost your metabolism is salmon. Salmon is a fatty fish. Fatty fish are not only delicious, but they’re incredibly good for you. So this includes fish like salmon, herring, sardines, mackerel, and any of the fish that are considered oily fish. And these all contain high amounts of omega-three fatty acids. Omega-three fatty acids are amazing because they have been shown to reduce inflammation and they also have shown to help decrease your risk of heart disease.
I just prefer salmon in particular, like I’ve done the sardine thing and all that, and honestly, I just like salmon, nothing else. It tastes delicious. So it’s a great way to add omega-three fatty acids into your diet. So omega three is also helped to boost your metabolism, so you can burn more body fat.
They did this study, a six-week controlled study, where they had all these people take fish oil supplements were, you know, these fish oils high in omega threes. And these people lost an average of 1.1 pounds of fat and experienced a drop in cortisol, which is a stress hormone that’s associated with fat storage. Okay, six-week study, people lost an average of a little over a pound just by taking a fish oil supplement.
Another study that was published in the journal plus one, that’s the Public Library of Science found subjects who took three grams of fish oil per day for 12 weeks, had their metabolic rates increase by 14%. This is crazy. This is like the equivalent of being able to burn around 200 more calories per day. This is just from you know, they didn’t really change anything else other than they added some omega threes in the form of fish oil, okay.
And then they did this meta-analysis. So that meta-analysis is where they study a bunch of studies. Okay, so they did a meta-analysis of 21 different studies and found that people who took fish oil, were able to also reduce their amount of belly fat, and improve their hip to waist ratio more effectively than the people who did not take the Omega three fish oil supplement. Okay?
These are amazing results, these are all really, really cool. And this is just from the fish oil itself. This is not eating actual fish, which is even better for you. Okay, so when you include fatty fish like salmon into your diet on a regular basis, this is an amazing source of Omega threes, but also super high-quality protein.
Digesting protein leads to a greater feeling of fullness. And it helps to increase your metabolic rate more when you’re digesting protein than when you digest fat or carbohydrates. Okay, so protein actually will help you to feel more full and helps you to burn more calories just by eating protein in general.
Omega threes also have this anti-obesity effect by helping to increase your levels of this hormone called adiponectin. So this is a hormone that helps you to regulate your appetite. So not only do you feel more full because you’re eating this great source of protein, you’re getting all these amazing, amazing omega threes.
You also will feel like you’re not hungry all the time, which is awesome. There’s another great way to you know help you to lose weight. You know if you’re not hungry all the time, okay. The type of fish you get is important to make sure you’re getting wild-caught salmon. And I just suggest any kind of wild-caught fish, in general, don’t do the farm raise stuff, farm raised salmon. I know this for a fact that they feed them grain.
This is not what fish are supposed to eat. Okay. Wild Salmon eat. Their diet is mostly shrimp and krill. And this is where they get their orange coloring from, okay. Farmed fish, though, are fed grains they’re fed like corn and soy and vegetable oils and then they have to add this pigment to their food to make them turn orange. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be orange. They would be like a grayish color, which sounds super gross. So my suggestion is always to go for the wild-caught salmon.
Yes, it costs a buck or two more per pound or whatever, but it’s totally worth it. So, shoot for something like three to four servings of wild-caught salmon each week to help you boost your metabolism you’ll feel more satiated. And that protein helps to build lean muscle mass. And you’re just going to be eating like one of the best things you can eat seriously.
Alright, the second food I want to talk about to help boost your metabolism is eggs. Eggs are like one of the world’s healthiest foods. They are super packed with nutrition. They are little nutritional powerhouses. They’re full of protein, healthy fats, and lots of vitamins and minerals like vitamin D. And I love that eggs have this really perfect ratio of macros.
So eggs are 64% fat. And that’s mostly in the yolk, which is also by the way full of an array of powerful antioxidants, which is super cool. So 64% fat 34% protein. And for me, I shoot for somewhere around 65% like, just in my diet in general, I tried to shoot for something like 65-70% fat, and around 30% protein. So eating an egg is like the perfect little package of macro percentages, I think it’s so cool.
Here’s the thing, eggs have been sort of vilified in the past. Like, I know back in the 80s. People used to say don’t eat eggs, especially the yolks know everybody was going to the egg white thing, you know, egg white omelets were the big thing, right. And because of the cholesterol, they were everybody was worried about cholesterol. But since then science has totally debunked all of this we have to have cholesterol.
Cholesterol makes up every cell of our body. Whole eggs have actually been shown in many, many studies to help protect your heart health in those, especially in those who are at increased risk of heart disease. Eggs are also an awesome metabolism booster. Studies have shown that you know, when you eat eggs for breakfast, it reduces your hunger, it promotes feelings of fullness for several hours after eating them.
They did this controlled eight-week study. So this is a randomized controlled trial, which is really the best type of trial that you can do. There are two main types of nutritional trials that they do. One of them is called an association study. And that’s where you associate eating some foods with some kind of health benefit, like, oh, people that ate broccoli lived longer.
That’s an association study. But it’s not a randomized control trial is where they control everything. And they only, you know, they only alternate this one variable. These are very hard to do, by the way, especially for the long term. Because you have to have everybody in a controlled environment.
You have to you know, make sure you are paying attention to everything they’re doing. They all have to be doing the same things. They have to be eating the same things, exercising the same things, and very hard to do. But these are like the ones that are considered sort of the gold standard of trials. So they did a controlled, randomized controlled trial. And this was published in the International Journal of Obesity. And they took 21 men and had them eat three eggs for breakfast.
And that’s all they did. They had one group of people ate three eggs for breakfast, another group of people ate a bagel for breakfast, the same number of calories in those two breakfasts. But over eight weeks, they looked at the people who ate three eggs for breakfast. And these people had a 16% greater reduction in body fat 16% greater reduction in body fat than the people who were eating a bagel for breakfast.
That’s one simple change to lose more weight just by eating eggs. One of the reasons eggs are more filling is because they contain a lot of protein. And I mentioned this when I was talking about salmon is that digesting protein will help you to burn more calories. Okay, so one of the reasons why eggs help you to burn more calories is because of the protein content.
Now, this is due to something called the thermic effect of food. This is the process of when you digest foods, just the fact of digesting a food actually burned some calories so it takes some calories to digest that food. Okay. Protein-rich foods have the highest thermic effect.
In other words, when you eat protein that increases your metabolic rate by somewhere between 50 to 30%. So that would mean that when you eat 100 calories of protein, around 30 of those calories are getting burned just to digest the protein, you’re right without doing anything else.
When it comes to other foods, like carbohydrates, for example, the thermic effect is only five to 10% of those calories get used for digestion. And when you’re eating fats, 0 to 3% of those calories gets used for digestion. So our bodies are actually really, really efficient at digesting fats, which is, you know, very telling that fats are good for us, our bodies are really conditioned to absorb and digest those fats without using a lot of energy.
Whereas protein takes the most amount of energy. So a lot of people that eat higher protein, actually, you know, you’re burning more calories and you’re feeling more full too at the same time. It’s really good. So, like I was saying, eggs are high-quality protein. High-quality protein means that eggs contain all the essential amino acids, right and in the right ratios, this means your body can easily use the protein and eggs to build muscle to maintain the muscle that you have, and it helps to give your metabolism a boost.
So based on a bunch of different studies, they’ve done eggs can actually increase your metabolic rate by something like 20 to 35% for many hours after eating them. Okay, so I suggest if you do eggs, eat three eggs several times a week this is going to help you to burn fat it’s going to help you to feel more full and more satisfied. Plus eggs are delicious.
And there’s like limitless ways to eat eggs right? And you can scramble them you can flip them you can sunnyside up um you can do an omelet you can do a fritatta. You can do hard boiled, like there’s just so many different things you can do with eggs. Make sure you go for the good eggs, get organic eggs, get pastured, or free-range eggs. Yes, again, it’s cost a little bit more, but it’s worth it. It’s better for you. It’s better for the chickens, it’s better for the planet, okay, so eggs are a high protein food that helped to reduce hunger and helps you to feel more full. They’re delicious, and they help to boost fat burning.
Alright, the next food I want to talk about to help boost your metabolism is yogurt. Specifically, full-fat Greek yogurt. This is an extremely nutritious food. First of all, it’s an excellent source of protein. It has potassium and calcium.
Research suggests that high protein dairy products specifically can boost fat loss, protect muscles during weight loss and help you feel more full and more satisfied. Another cool thing about Greek yogurt is that it contains probiotics. So this will help to keep your gut healthy. A healthy gut means you’re a more efficient fat burner as well. And full-fat Greek yogurt contains something called linoleic acid, which seems to promote weight loss and fat burning.
According to this meta-analysis of like 18 different studies, right? They showed that the linoleic acid will help you to burn fat more efficiently, which is super cool. Greek yogurt is also an excellent source of iodine. So iodine is one of those things our bodies do not make. We have to make sure we get iodine through the foods that we eat.
Iodine is very important that it helps to promote proper thyroid function. And thyroid is responsible for a healthy metabolism. Okay, so people a lot of people today are iodine deficient. And this can cause you to know, all kinds of serious problems including, you know, fluctuations in weight. So, for people with weight problems, increasing iodine can actually help to increase your thyroid activity, which will, in turn, increase your metabolism.
So iodine is important Greek yogurt is a great source of iodine. Eating Greek yogurt will help you to feel full and satisfied for longer like some of these other proteins we were talking about with should you know when you’re feeling full and satiated like your body gets a chance to like regulate blood sugars. This will help to keep you from feeling hungry between meals and going for snacks between meals.
They did this study, it was a year-long study back in 2014. And they found that people who ate more than three servings of yogurt per week actually gained less weight than those who ate less than one serving of yogurt per week. That’s crazy. Greek yogurt is also a great post-run recovery food. So if you’d like to eat a little something after a run, Greek yogurt is a great option for that.
It can be very satisfying after a tough workout, so you’re gonna get the protein that it has, you’re gonna, it’ll help to repair muscle damage done by exercise, and it’ll help to tide you over until your next meal. I personally like to add a few berries and some nuts to my yogurt just make it a little more interesting. It’s a little boring to eat on its own, but I kind of liked the taste of it.
Some people don’t really like the taste of it. But be sure to get the plain, full fat, Greek yogurt, none of this low-fat stuff or nonfat stuff, make sure that yogurt does not have sugar in it either. Okay, we don’t want these, you know, sugar-laden yogurts, you know, they have all kinds of stuff in them. They have thickening agents and preservatives and all kinds of other nonsense. So I get the Chobani whole milk, Greek yogurt, it has one ingredient, it says cultured milk, that’s the only ingredient in there. Okay.
So add some full-fat Greek yogurt into your diet. And this will help to increase fat burning and helps to reduce your appetite protects muscles during weight loss and helps to improve muscle recovery after a workout. And it’s good for your gut to have those awesome probiotics.
Alright, the other food I want to talk about. This is number four if you’re keeping track here, and this one might surprise you a little bit. But that is chocolate, specifically cacao or cocoa. So these are amazing. This is an amazing superfood right here. Okay. And when we talk about chocolate, what I want to talk about here is cacao or raw cocoa, okay? So cacao is the bean like seeds from which they make cocoa, cocoa butter, and chocolate. Okay, so they did these studies, here’s why I like this for fat burning.
They did these studies in mice is not a human study, but they did it in mice, that cocoa and cocoa extracts may promote the expression of genes that stimulate the use of fat for energy. So, especially in mice that were fed high fat or high-calorie diets. So they fed chocolate, basically to mice, and they were able to use more of their fat for energy. This is kind of cool. I mean, I’m willing to give it a shot, you know, just to see if it works.
One study that they did actually suggested that cocoa may actually prevent the action of enzymes necessary to break down fat and carbs during digestion, which means that cocoa could theoretically play a role in preventing weight gain by reducing the absorption of some of the calories that you’re eating.
So it’s shown that cocoa can actually prevent the breakdown of some of the calories that you’re eating, meaning that your body won’t absorb everything that you’re eating, right. That’s interesting. Here’s the one that I thought was really cool, though. They did this very cool study.
And this was published in the International Archives of Medicine and they took two groups of people, and they had them on a low carbohydrate diet. So half the people are on the low-carb diet. They also gave them one and a half ounces of dark chocolate each day. It was at 1% dark chocolate. The other half was doing the low-carb thing, but they gave them no chocolate. How do you sign up to be on the chocolate group? That’s cool. I want to be in the dark chocolate group.
So half the people, they’re both eating the same low carb diet, but half of them were given 1.5 ounces of a 1% dark chocolate every day. So after many weeks, the half who were eating the dark chocolate had lost 10% more weight. They also said that losing weight was easier and less challenging because they’re eating chocolate every day.
One of the reasons that they believe this happened is because there’s this incredible array of micronutrients found in dark chocolate. So there are things like magnesium, iron, and copper. And copper especially has been shown to play a key role in your body’s ability to metabolize fat.
So if you want to add some chocolate, to your fat burning list of foods, go for the dark stuff, embrace the dark side, the darker it is, this, this means it has less of the stuff you don’t want, so it doesn’t have as much sugar doesn’t have milk and things like that. So the darker chocolate has more metabolism-boosting properties in it. Okay, the darker the better.
I do a little bit of 88% Dark Chocolate most days, right? This is like something I eat with my dinner. It’s kind of like a little after-dinner treat. I’ve tried 100% dark chocolate and I gotta tell you, it’s so bitter. It was tough. It was not tasty at all. So I liked that 88-90% That seems to be pretty good. Like Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, if only you knew the power of the dark side. Indeed, Darth Vader indeed.
Alright, the last food I want to talk about here to round out our list of foods that boost your metabolism is MCT oil. So MCT oil – MCT stands for medium-chain triglycerides. So there are different types of saturated fats that we can utilize as humans. There are some are called short-chain triglycerides, some are medium-chain triglycerides, and some are long-chain triglycerides. And the different links just have to do with how many carbon atoms are attached to the molecules that make up the triglyceride. This is like deep science stuff right here. Don’t need to worry about that though.
We can use all of these types of fat for energy which is good, right, but some are better than others. For whatever reason, due to their shorter length, MCT’s medium-chain triglycerides are rapidly absorbed by the body, they go straight to the liver, and they can be used immediately for energy. Or sometimes they can be converted into ketones, which is another source of energy that our body can use. Okay.
Medium-chain triglycerides have been shown to increase your metabolic rate in many different studies. One study that I’m going to talk about here was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And they found that just by adding one to two tablespoons of MCT oil per day to the participants use usual diets increases their metabolic rate by 5% per day, meaning that they’re burning an average of like 120 extra calories per day, just by adding a little bit of MCT oil to their diet, they didn’t change anything else.
So this oil just immediately just starts to boost gives your metabolism a little bit of a boost, it’s really cool. In that same study, the MCT oil was shown to increase the release of two hormones that promote the feeling of fullness in the body. So these two hormones are called leptin, and peptide YY. Just know that you know MCT oils will help you to feel more full and give your metabolism a boost.
So this is something that I do every day actually. I actually add one to two tablespoons of MCT oil to my coffee every morning. And I also put a little bit of grass-fed butter in my coffee and I blend it up. A lot of people call this bulletproof coffee. This gives me a boost of energy and I gotta tell you lasts all day long. MCT has also had this other side benefit where they are an amazing food for your brain.
MCT helps you to improve your focus and your concentration They are one of the few nutrients that can actually cross the blood-brain barrier that can actually get right into your brain to help stimulate brain function. Your brain loves MCT. Yes, so just replace some of the fat in your diet with a couple of tablespoons of MCT oil every day, and you will increase fat burning. See, it’s super easy.
Now the way they make MCT oil is they extract the oil from either coconut oil or palm oil. And I would say do not use the palm oil extracted MCT oil focus on the coconut extracted MCT oil because the palm oil industry, this is not good. They’re like destroying the rainforest. This is not good for the planet.
So make sure you’re just getting the 100% coconut oil-based MCT oil a little caution here, some people experience a little bit of stomach discomfort when they first start taking some MCT oil. So start with a little bit like a teaspoon or something like that and see how you feel. Some people don’t have any of those issues at all.
But you can add MCT oil to salads, you know you can cook with it. It’s odorless and tasteless. So you can use it wherever you use any other kind of oil. MCT’s are rapidly absorbed, they’re used immediately as energy, they help increase fat burning, they help decrease hunger and help improve your brain function.
So this is like one of my favorite things, I definitely do a couple of tablespoons every day of MCT’s. Okay, so those are the five foods that will help boost your metabolism. First, we got salmon, then we got eggs, we got yogurt, go for that full-fat Greek yogurt. We got cacao cocoa chocolate, go for the dark side. And then we got MCT oil. The bottom line is that adding these metabolism-boosting foods to your diet will help you to burn more fat.
It will also support you in other ways, all these different ways I talked about, you know, they help support muscle growth, recovery, help you to stay focused, help you to feel more for they support you in so many ways and becoming the healthiest person that you can be. And listen, this is optimal health.
It’s not some destination you’re trying to get to over there. This is what we do. Being healthy is who we are. It’s how we live our life. You know, just like running is part of who you are. I want eating real food to become a part of who you are for good. You know, it’s not about just like losing 30 pounds, so you can go back to doing all the stuff that you used to do. It’s not a short-term thing.
This is what we do. This is about changing your life for good. This is about becoming the most badass healthiest version of yourself yet. Okay, you totally got this, my friends, 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.
