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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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184. The Incredible Power of Focus

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A lot of people set out to lose weight and then quit. They change their diet, start exercising, and then at some point just throw up their hands and give up. This was definitely me and it was …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 184 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Incredible Power of Focus. So a lot of people set out to lose weight and then at some point they quit.

They changed their diet, they started exercising, and then at some point, they just throw up their hands and they give up. This was definitely me, and it was probably you at some point, I’m guessing.

And while there are a lot of reasons why someone might just give up on themselves, one of the most likely reasons is a serious lack of focus. Being focused means more than just paying attention to what’s in front of you, it can actually be the key to accomplishing all your health and fitness goals.

So in this episode, I uncover the incredible power of focus and how it can help you become the leaner, stronger, more badass runner you’ve always wanted to be. But first, I often get asked by runners who want to lose weight, how to get started, how to get started with proper nutrition, resistance training, how to get stronger how to improve their running, maybe run longer or run faster, or maybe they just want more energy, they want to improve themselves from the inside out.

I get asked this so much that I put together a free training program designed to do just that to get you started on your health and fitness journey to get you started on your weight loss journey. And it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.

If you’re looking for a great place to start, this is it. It’s an on demand video training. So you can go through it at your own pace, whenever it’s convenient for you, you’ll learn what it means to eat real food, how to improve your ability to burn fat, how to get stronger, how to increase your endurance as a runner, and so much more, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started.

Alright, let’s talk about the incredible power of focus. So if we look up the definition of focus, there’s a couple. One of them is, “The center of interest directivity.”

Another one is, “A clear visual definition.” That’s like when you take a camera and you bring something into focus into clearer visual definition.

And the third definition here is, “To pay particular attention to something.”

Okay. So when we think about focus, I want you to think about a couple different ways of looking at this, you know, this is the center of your interest, you’re putting your mindset on something, and you are paying very close attention to that something or paying particular attention to that area of interest or activity and bringing it into clearer focus, bringing it into clearer definition.

So I like all of those definitions of the word, focus, think about focus this way. And this, this describes the incredible power of focus for sure. If you were to take a 150 watt light bulb, and you are to put it on a lamp in the middle of a large room and turn it on middle of a dark room, and you turn on that 150 watt light bulb, it would scatter light all over the room and light up the room you wouldn’t be able to see in a dark room. Very cool, right?

But if you were to take that same 150 watts, and focus the light into a very small laser beam, you could actually cut through steel with that same amount of light, it’s the same amount of energy, the same amount of light being produced, but it is focused.

And you can see that the power of that focused beam of light is much more powerful than a light bulb that’s just scattered as its light all over the place. There’s nothing wrong with a light bulb, it’s doing its job, it’s lighting up the room. But think about how much more powerful that light is when it is focused.

Okay, your focus is similar. If it’s spread all over the place, if there’s no precise direction to it, if you’re scattered. I mean this is okay and most of us live our lives this way where we kind of scatter our focus and our attention everywhere. And that’s okay. But what would happen, if you took that same amount of energy and you concentrated it?

What if you were to concentrate that energy more precisely on certain areas of your life, on certain goals that you have for yourself? I think things would change dramatically for you. And I think you would agree with that, you would become unstoppable. You could accomplish amazing things.

You know, if you want to lose weight, this requires focused energy. And a lot of people that give up, that quit things, they do it because they lack the focus, they lack the ability to stay focused on the goal.

What do you need to succeed at anything, especially like, health and fitness goals? You need a very clear, focused vision for that end result that you’re looking for. Who is it that you want to become? What do you really want for yourself? What does the future version of you look like?

And we talk about this a lot in my coaching program, when you’re a client of mine, I kind of make you go through this process of like painting a very clear picture of what that future version of you looks like.

What do you look like? How are you sleeping? How? How is your life different than it is today? How are your clothes fitting you? What clothes are you wearing? Are you comfortable taking your shirt off at the pool? You know, things like that.

And when we have this clear vision of our future self, when we have this sense of purpose, and we know exactly what we want for ourselves, well, that’s good, because now we have focus, we have direction, we have a plan a path steps, we can change our actions and behaviors because we know where we’re going.

But you have to have a clear and organized version of that future self, you have to have a clear and focused vision for who you want to become if you want to become that person. Because without a clear vision for yourself, you’re just going to be like, whatever.

So when we have this clear focus, this creates a lot of consistency, it creates a lot of motivation. And we’ll talk about more of that in a minute. But you are more likely to reach those goals. Because you have a clear vision for who you want to become.

When you don’t have focus, you don’t understand where you’re going, you know, you have no clarity of purpose, no clear vision for your future self. There’s no like big picture here, or you have a big picture, but it’s very, it’s like a blurry big picture. It’s not focused, right?

And without focus, we tend to forget our purpose, why we want these things for ourselves. So your health, your fitness, your exercise, your nutrition, it’s all scattered, right? No direction, no motivation to do anything. Because it doesn’t really matter. Because you don’t have that sense of purpose.

You don’t have that clear vision for who you want to become which just drives your motivation down. And this is why people quit. Because they don’t have that focus, they don’t have that clear vision of their future self.

And when you don’t have motivation, you lack progress. You don’t get the results you want. And of course, you’re gonna quit, why would you keep going. But with focus, you create that clear vision of your future self, you have that clarity of purpose, you have very clear goals, and dreams and hopes and things that you want to accomplish for yourself.

This is amazing at helping you to maintain motivation. Because without focus, you get very, it’s very demotivating. You know, you’re just scattered all over the place. You don’t even know where you’re going. How can you even track progress? You know, and that’s where you kind of lose motivation and give up.

But with focus, you maintain motivation. You continually make progress because you’re, you’re taking consistent aligned action. And you end up getting the results that you want, you produce results consistently. And even small results, even if they are, you know, small wins, achieved consistently you will eventually reach your goal.

It’s like running an ultra marathon. It doesn’t matter how slow you go, you gotta run 100 miles, just keep moving forward. But when you stop moving, or when you go backwards, or your heart isn’t in it anymore, and you have no clear vision of where you want to be at the end.

And there’s no purpose for you to continue, why would you continue? It’s just so easy to give up. Okay, so you can start to see, I’m hoping anyway, I hope you can start to see that focus is the key here. Whatever it is you want to accomplish, you want to lose weight, it takes time.

If you want to run an ultra marathon, it takes time, it takes time for the training, it takes time to do that actual event as well. And these things mean that you are going to have to spend a lot of time staying focused, so you stay in the game.

And another way of thinking about focus is this word, constraint, think about constraint. So what is the definition of constraint? This means a limitation or a restriction. And I know when people hear this, they think of this in a negative way, oh, I don’t want to be restricted, I don’t want to be limited. But don’t think about it in a negative way.

Think about it as restricting or limiting your focus to you know, one thing at a time. So constraint of focus is very important. And they’re similar. But it’s almost like taking your focus and really fine tuning it, it’s like, you know, that laser that I’m talking about earlier, instead of being a light bulb, be the laser constraint helps you to do this.

So we don’t want to scatter our focus all over the place, we want it to be very laser like and so constrained is how we do this. So one thing to understand is that people make a big deal about their ability to multitask.

And I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but multitasking is really not something we do well. It’s just as nice as it would be to be able to do two things at once. Lots and lots of studies have shown that the human brain simply isn’t capable of paying full attention to more than one thing at a time.

In fact, our brain has evolved to be really good at single tasking, to only be able to think about or do one thing at a time. So when somebody says they’re multitasking, that’s just somebody who is scattered. They’re trying to justify it. Oh, I’m just, I’m a multitasker. It’s like, no, you’re just not focused. You lack focus and constraint. Okay.

So multitasking is not real, we want to focus on one thing at a time. And let’s, you know, see what this would look like. So if you want to achieve health and fitness goals, you know, and like I said, these things take time, you want to lose weight, it’s going to take time, you want to become a runner, and just be able to run a half marathon or marathon or a 5k, whatever this takes time.

It’s really hard to get out there and just like run and accomplish something big from a running perspective. Or lifting weights at the gym, you know, you want to build some muscle you want to, you know, get more toned, that is not something that you’re going to see right away, you can’t go to the gym three times and be toned, like it takes a while months of hard work to get to that place. Right. And so we don’t see results for a while.

So we need to stay focused. And we need to practice constraint. So here’s an example of someone who’s trying to lose weight, let’s say you’re, you want to lose weight. And you are really motivated to lose weight.

And so you are going to do everything all at once you’re going to cut calories, and give up sugar, and start intermittent fasting and cut out snacking. And you’re going to start logging all your food and tracking your food and an app and counting your macros and skipping breakfast and doing all your workouts fasted.

And I will tell you that this approach can feel way too overwhelming. It’s just too much to change all at once. And you are very likely to fail and or quit. And a quick story of one of my clients who was very motivated early on in the process. And he came to me and on our first call, he had said okay, I’ve made all these changes.

And he literally was doing everything I just said. And he was like I’m super motivated. I’m doing all these things. And I said listen, I really don’t recommend that because you’re going to kind of feel overwhelmed and you’re probably not going to be able to sustain this very long.

But he was determined that it was fine that he could do it all. And so I said okay, let’s see how it goes. And two weeks later, he was like I can’t do this. He could not maintain that type of lifestyle, you know, all those changes at once was way too much for him.

So I said, Okay, let’s just start over. Let’s start over. Okay. But I don’t know about you, I have done this before, too, because I get this, like, you know, what do they call it shiny object syndrome, where I’m like, oh, this is cool. Oh, look at this cool thing over here. Let’s try that too. Oh, that looks fun. I saw that on Instagram. Oh, let’s try that.

So when we have shiny object syndrome, and we try all these different things at once, that all sounds great, but it’s too much. It’s too much. And it’s really hard to maintain that, especially when it comes to, you know, lifestyle changes, like from a nutrition and exercise standpoint, okay.

So constraint means focusing on one thing at a time. So for this particular person, and for you, and for others, I would say, let’s just start with one thing, like, let’s give up sugar, let’s just give that a couple of weeks, see how you feel, get over the withdrawal symptoms, which are real, by the way, once you feel good about where you are, and you’ve gotten over that initial withdrawal from sugar, and you’re starting to feel better, let’s go on to step two. Let’s try something else. Right.

And this is my strategy with clients. It’s always a layered approach, we make one or two small changes, we wait a couple of weeks, we see how things are working or not working. And then we can layer on the next change. This is my, I call this like my layered approach, right?

We’re layering on different changes, making sure that your body and your mind adjust to these things, and give you enough time to adjust to these things. So that then when we move on to the next thing, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. You’re like, oh, I already got this one thing, let’s, let’s go on to step number two.

So this practice is very effective. It gives you the ability to get used to one small change at a time, this is how you change habits. Right? You cannot change habits by changing everything at once. You have to do these one step at a time.

So this is where constraint is very important, right? This practice is effective because it gives you feedback. And so you know exactly what’s working. What isn’t? Because you’ve only changed the one thing, if you change 10 things, how do you know which one of these things is making you feel terrible, you just don’t know?

Alright, so we change one thing at a time. And then this practice is also sustainable, because we are constraining our changes to one thing at a time. You get used to each stage to each change before we move on to the next stage before we move on to the next change. And so building habits this way is very powerful, very effective.

Okay, so let’s, let’s talk about how to get started with this. How do you get started with practicing constraint and focus? And I want you to start with that vision for your future self. So who are you becoming? Where do you want to be in 6 to 12 months? What goals do you have for yourself?

Do you want to lose weight, improve your strength, you want to get faster, maybe you want to qualify for Boston or run that ultra marathon. Maybe you’re just someone who’s like, I just need to fix my dysfunctional relationship with food. Whatever it is, be very clear and focused on who you want to be. And then write it down.

And then spend at least five minutes a day thinking about this future version of yourself every single day, spend some time writing about it, journaling about it, reading those journal entries, recording a voice memos, talking to somebody else about your goals and your dreams for your future for yourself who you want to become.

Everything that you want for yourself, every accomplishment that you want to achieve starts in your mind. It starts with thinking about who you want to be, and what you want that end result to be, what is the outcome you’re looking for. And the more focused and the more clear that vision of your future self is, the more likely you are to achieve that.

So spend time every single day thinking about who you want to be, you have to have this very clear vision of who you want to be if you want to get there, right? If you don’t have focus around your goals and the vision for your future self you’re just going to fail. So don’t skip this step. Consistent focus on your future self will help you stay motivated. It will help you keep your head in the game and keep you making progress towards those goals.

Keep reminding yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. People who don’t do this, they will be motivated at the beginning of the process. You know, we all get motivated when we make a change. Oh I’m gonna lose weight. I’m gonna change my diet. I’m gonna stop eating sugar and they feel motivated at the beginning.

But over time, that motivation will fade and then they will think that they are just a failure, that they can’t do this, that it will never work for them. That is not true. The actual truth is they just lost their focus. That’s it. Clarity of purpose, that’s the key.

Keep reminding yourself of this purpose, keep reminding yourself why this is important to you, and you will stay motivated. And you will be much more consistent in your actions. And you’ll keep moving toward that vision of yourself for the future. Okay, so start with that vision of who you want to become. And then you have to practice constraint.

And this is the thing that is hard for most people, because I’m going to tell you, just pick one thing to change. You know, pick an area of your life, whether it’s, you know, running, getting faster, improving your endurance, whether it’s losing weight, or getting stronger, pick one area, and then pick one, you know, behavior that you want to change one action that you want to change, don’t get sucked into the shiny object syndrome, where you want to try to change everything at once.

Just choose one area, and then one action item that you can do and give it a couple of weeks, you know, like giving up sugar. Give that a couple of weeks and see how it’s going for you. What are the results? Is this working, or not? Is this terrible? Do I still feel terrible? Or am I feeling better now?

Okay, but don’t be tempted to keep changing things every single day. Don’t do everything at once, make one small change, and then make sure that you’ve adapted to that change before layering on the next thing. And then it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating this process, because over time, you will find that changing habits is much easier if you practice constraint instead of trying to do it all at once.

And then the third part of this is to have a plan. Being focused means that you have a plan. And of course, you got to stick to the plan. But people who lack focus, people who are scattered, they don’t have a plan.

Their plan is to just wing it with everything that they do. And how does that work for you? That doesn’t work very good. I’m gonna tell you, it might work in the moment, and sometimes we do have to wing it. And that’s just because, you know, maybe something happened externally. And your plan has to change because of outside circumstances that you have no control over.

And that is completely fine. But winging it is not a plan, okay. So I always tell my clients that the key to accomplishing everything that they want is to have a plan, right and stick to the plan. That’s the important part, right? You got to have a plan, but then you got to stick to the plan, right?

Being focused and practicing constraint. This gives you the ability to stay on track. And it helps you to continue to make minor changes, tweaking the plan if necessary. But when you’re focused and you’re practicing constraint, it means you are working a plan very intentionally, not haphazardly.

Like you’re, you’re doing everything with intention. With direction you have a laser-like focus on what you’re doing. And then what the next thing is, what’s that next step that’s going to move you closer to your goals. Without focus, you don’t have any idea what the next step is, with focus.

And with constraint, you know exactly what the next step is, because you’ve planned it in advance, and then you do it because you’re not distracted by a million other things. So make a plan. And stick to the plan. This is simple, but it requires you to be focused and it requires constraint, okay.

Remember to continue focusing on your future self always. And anytime you feel like you’re stuck, or you’re lacking motivation, you don’t feel like going to the gym, you don’t feel like running, whatever it is, remember why you’re doing this, go back to that future version of yourself, spend some time in that place. And then the other thing should fall into place for you here.

And then lastly, be careful where you put your focus. So if you focus on the negative on the things that are not working for you, you’re going to feel terrible, you’re going to feel less motivated, and you’re probably going to quit. So if you focus on your failures, you’re destined to repeat them and continue to fail.

If you focus on how long it’s taking, or I can’t do this or I’m a failure or this is too hard. It will continue to be hard, it will continue. You will continue not to be able to do it and you will continue to fail, right. If you keep focusing on the negative, you’re going to feel more and more negative and keep getting more negative results.

You always get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want. Have you ever noticed that negative people always seem to attract more and more negativity into their lives? Have you ever noticed that positive people seem to attract more and more positivity into their lives?

It all has to do with where they put their focus, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you really want. And I love this quote from Bruce Lee that says, “The successful warrior is the average man or woman with laser-like focus.”

So be the successful warrior. Maintain laser-like focus on your goals and your dreams, and you’ll experience success like never before.

And then lastly, have you ever thought about doing something hard and then just decided I can’t do that? I’ve done this many times. I’ve told myself, I can’t lose weight. I can’t run a marathon. I can’t finish an Ironman. And the problem with thoughts like I can’t is that that thought becomes the truth for you.

Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” And I love this quote so much because it sums up this whole principle beautifully. It means that whatever you believe you can or can’t do will be true for you.

So thoughts like ‘I can’t’, they don’t serve any purpose other than to keep you stuck and limit your potential. By the way, I stopped saying I can’t a long time ago. Since then, I’ve been able to lose weight. Keep the weight off for good. I’ve run like 20 marathons, I finished the Ironman Triathlon.

Stop saying I can’t and start saying I can and see what amazing things you’ll be able to accomplish. Let’s you and I work together to see what you can do. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

182. A Better Approach to the Off-Season

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If you’re anything like most runners, especially if you live in the US, this is most likely the off-season for you. You’ve completed your Spring races and you’re not quite into the next training …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there and welcome to episode 182 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today a better approach to the offseason. If you’re anything like most runners, especially if you live here in the US, this is most likely the offseason for you.

So you’ve completed your spring races, and you’re not quite into the next training cycle yet. Most runners that I know of anyway, approach this offseason as a time to live it up, eat and drink whatever, slack off on your training and just have fun.

This is always my approach to the offseason, I figured I would you know get back on track as soon as training started up yet. The problem is that I ended up gaining weight feeling like crap. And then when training started again, I had to like make up all this ground, right?

So in this episode, I’m gonna offer a better approach to the offseason, one that will have you feeling your best when you start training for that next big race. Cool. All right, but first, when runners come to me, for help losing weight, they often experience some pretty amazing transformations.

They stop burning sugar, they start burning stored body fat, they start losing weight like they’ve never been able to do before. Their endurance improves, they become long distance running machines, they get faster, they’re able to run at higher intensities for much longer.

But one of the most unexpected transformations they experienced is that running becomes fun again. Since they’re not carrying around so much weight, running becomes easier. Gone are the days when running is a constant struggle, running actually becomes fun again. Can you even remember the last time you thought running was fun? I bet it’s been a while.

And if so, that’s okay, you can get back to that feeling anytime that you want, you just have to start doing things differently. If you’re ready to make running fun, again, join The Coaching Project.

This is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program for runners, you’ll get all the knowledge, support, guidance, and accountability you need to crush your weight loss and your running goals. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/join.

Okay, let’s talk about this, a better approach to the offseason. So the way most runners approach the offseason looks like this, eat whatever you want, all the junk food all the time, no training structure. So you know, there may not be running consistently, they may not be sticking to any kind of a running schedule.

There’s no resistance training structure or schedule there, they probably just don’t do that at all. So no hitting the gym regularly. They’re on vacation, they’re drinking more. They’re eating just kind of whatever, lots of junk food, lots of sugar.

And I don’t know about you, but this is the way that I used to approach the offseason. This was my life for years and years, okay. When our Fall or Spring races were done, I would just go into, basically, hey, I’m off, I’m not training.

And so I would just kind of slack off on everything, skip the resistance training, don’t go to the gym, no structured runs, and then eat whatever, especially during the summertime, you know. This is the time where we’ve got the pool and the cookouts and the beer and the wine and the desserts and vacation and margaritas everywhere, right?

It’s a time where most people just kind of do whatever. So the effects of this though there’s a problem with this, right? Because this approach is not going to be sustainable. This isn’t something you can’t do all the time.

In fact, I’m going to argue that it’s not something you should ever really do. You don’t really want to ever get into this place where you just toss everything out the window, and then hopefully, you know, start it back up again. Right? What happens when you take this “toss it out the window” approach is that you end up losing fitness.

You know, you’re not going to be as strong if you’re not maintaining some sort of a resistance training routine. You’re going to lose endurance if you’re not running consistently. Most likely you’re going to gain weight if you’re just eating a bunch of junk food and drinking a lot more than you’re used to.

Your mindset also just kind of goes out the window, because you get into this mindset of like, I can just do whatever I want. And so you lack discipline. And all of this kind of just leads to a general feeling of like getting out of shape, you know, and feeling like you’re starting, if and when you do start up your next training cycle you got, you’re coming from this big deficit, like, you’re just got to, you kind of got to start over again, maybe you gain 10 or 12 pounds, and you got to lose the weight.

And then, you know, you’re probably not going to lose all that weight in the beginning of this training cycle. And this is always my experience, I would gain 10 or 12 pounds, I might lose a few of those, but then I would, you know, have netted a gain of three or four, eight pounds or whatever, every year, I did the same thing just over and over again.

And not only is it not healthy, but it’s like a terrible way to start your training cycle. When you’re getting ready to train for your next marathon or triathlon or ultra marathon, whatever it is, if you just keep doing this big cycle of like eating a bunch of junk food and gaining a bunch of weight and then trying to lose it again, it’s just not it’s not healthy for you, it’s much healthier to just maintain your weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

So I just want to kind of address this whole situation here where I think there’s a mindset that a lot of runners get into, which is “it’s the offseason I can do whatever I want.” And I want to argue that that is not a very good approach. Okay. It becomes this crazy roller coaster of like, Oh, I’m working out, oh no, I’m not working out, oh, I’m running, no, I’m not running, or I’m eating right now I’m not eating right.

And, you know, that can really mess with your mind and mess with good habits maybe that you’ve worked to establish. You know, you go from being like super committed and dedicated and disciplined to just throwing everything out the window. Like that is not how you want to approach any of this stuff.

Because one thing I have learned working with hundreds of runners on this stuff is that if you just stay consistent, this is so much easier than doing this whole roller coaster up and down thing, you know, where it’s like an all or nothing sort of mentality, way, way easier to just stay consistent with all of this stuff. Okay.

But like I said, this is how I did it for years. You know, I gained weight every offseason, I tried to run it off and you know, marathon training kicked in again, or triathlon training or whatever it was. And that never really worked. I always, you know, consistently just gained weight every single year and felt like crap.

And so when you start your training cycle, feeling like crap, like this is just not a good way to approach your training. Okay, remember, you’re an athlete, right? If you run, if you do any kind of consistent, working out training races, whatever, consider yourself and an athlete because you are one.

So just start acting like that, you know, elite athletes, they don’t approach their offseason in this way. They don’t totally go off the rails, you know, they stick to the plan for the most part. And I’m gonna talk about that too. Like, you can vary your plan a little bit, you’re gonna go on vacation, you’re probably going to have a margarita or two here and there. And that stuff is okay.

But we’ve got to do this in a more mindful, more, intentional way, as opposed to just like, just throwing the rulebook out the window and just going crazy, because it’s the offseason. Okay. So I’m gonna give you a few pointers here to make the offseason more fruitful for you.

And it’s just a better approach to the offseason and the offseason can be a month or two, sometimes it’s three months, depends on what you’re training for whatever but just know that there’s a period of time here where you know, you’re not going to be in that heat of the your training cycle. And so you will have to do things a little bit differently.

So let’s kind of go through this. The first thing I want you to do, before you even get into the offseason. We’re probably already there into the thick of it right now, but just set an intention, like how do you want to handle this offseason? What do you want this to look like for you?

Do you want to go crazy and go off the rails? Then be my guest. Totally fine. You’re probably going to regret it, but it’s totally up to you. Okay. What I want you to think about is who do you want to be at the end of this offseason when the training starts up again? Who do you want to be?

How do you want to show up for yourself? Do you want to feel good and energized and feel like you’ve made some progress? In maybe some of your habits, or in your diet or your weight? Or do you want to just maybe gain a bunch of weight and get a little bit ,you know, weak and dopey because that’s up to you, you get to decide that.

Do you want to maintain your weight, lose weight, gain weight, just make that decision ahead of time, and then just act accordingly. Right, so you get to do this any way that you want. My suggestion is that you at least try to just maintain where you are, which is fine. If you want to continue to lose weight, that’s great.

But during the offseason, if you want to just maintain where you are, I think that’s great. But decide ahead of time, don’t fool yourself, don’t think, oh, I’m just going to lose a bunch of weight when the off-season comes and then you’re acting like, you know, you’re just eating whatever and drinking all the time.

Because that’s going totally against what you really want for yourself, right? That behavior doesn’t coincide, it doesn’t really line up with your intention, right. So if you have an intention of wanting to maintain weight, then act accordingly.

If you have an intention of wanting to lose weight and act accordingly, if you have an intention of wanting to gain weight, you get to act accordingly. Okay, but set that intention. That’s step number one.

The second thing I want to encourage you to do is to maintain some sort of structure, that means that you’ve got to have a structured workout program, structured runs, structured diet, this does not mean that you can’t have fun and indulge a little bit you should do that.

You know, you go on vacation, you should have a drink, you should have a beer, you should have that Margarita while you’re sitting on the beach. I think that is amazing. I think that is, you know, how we enjoy our life sometimes.

And it’s okay to do that. And every now and then you gotta do it in a way that fits your long term goals, though. So you have to have a plan, you have to have a plan for when you’re going to work out for when you’re going to run for what you’re going to be eating or not eating.

You can’t just wing it, you can’t just expect that somehow you’re going to, you know, come out of this thing on the other side of the offseason, you’re going to feel amazing and lose a bunch of weight if you have no intention and no structure around any of this stuff. Right. So structure means here’s the days I’m running, here are the days I’m lifting weights, here are the days I’m doing my cross training or whatever. Here’s what my diet is going to look like. Create that structure for yourself.

It does not mean you have to be, you know, 100% perfect with it. But have some structure. Go into this with a plan. Don’t just wing it. Winging it never works, it doesn’t work. So make sure that you have some sort of structure, make sure that you have a plan for yourself, whatever that looks like.

Like for me right now I’m kind of focusing on strength and working out. I’m at the gym five days a week. I’m running three days a week. I’ve got speed work that I’m doing. I’ve got this all planned out. It’s all written down. I know what I’m eating right now. My diet looks a little bit different right now than it did a month ago when I was training for my ultra marathon.

So I’ve got all this kind of figured out and I don’t just wing it, right that winging it doesn’t work doesn’t work for me. Anyway, I like having that structure. Okay.

Next tip is to stick to the food plan. That’s it, like you got to stick to your food plan. First of all, you have to have a food plan. And then you got to stick to it. Right? Yes, you can deviate here and there, but no more than usual.

You know, I’ve talked about the 90/10 rule. 90/10 rule that is like, nobody’s going to stick to their food plan 100% of the time you’re going to, you know, have a piece of chocolate or eat a doughnut or whatever you’re going to do have a beer, do that stuff. 90% of the time, though, stick to your food plan that 10% which works out to be maybe like one meal a week that can be a little bit off the plan. But you got to plan those things.

You can’t just do it in the moment. Like you have to do these things intentionally and purposefully. Okay, enjoy your vacation, but do it mindfully. This is not an excuse to just go crazy with food. So have a food plan and then stick to the food plan.

This is a great time to work on your diet, the offseason, especially if you’re interested in getting fat adapted because it takes a few weeks to transition, you know from being mostly a carb burner to being mostly a fat burner. And that process of that fat adaptation process can be a little bit uncomfortable.

So your running performance might dip a little bit. It’ll come back but you know, there’s a few weeks there where running might dip a little bit. This is a perfect time to change your diet and focus on that area of improvement. Okay?

You don’t want to be doing this in the thick of a training cycle. So let’s say you got three weeks to go before your marathon or whatever, that is not the time to change your diet, do not do that. Okay?

But think about how amazing you’ll feel when your training kicks in again, in a month or two, and you’re fat adapted and running feels easier, and you’ve lost some weight and you’re lighter, like, and maybe you’ve stuck with some strength training too, and you’ve got a little bit stronger.

So normally lighter, but you’re stronger, like running is going to feel amazing, okay? So just make sure that you have a plan and then stick to that food plan during the offseason, right, this is not the time to go crazy and go off the rails, you’re going to pay for that, you know, you’re gonna see the weight gain, you’re gonna feel terrible.

And if you’re somebody that already is fat adapted, maintain that fat adapted status. Don’t go so crazy that you get out of that fat adapted state, you know, that would require and I’ve seen some people that have done this before, but it’s going to require you to kind of start the process over a little bit, it takes a very short amount of time to get back into it once you’ve been fat adapted for a while.

But to get out of it is means that you’ve just been really indulging in a lot of sugar essentially. So we got to like, keep that out of the picture, right? Just keep the sugar low. Don’t be tempted to go crazy with the sugar during this offseason. Okay, stay fat adapted, it’s much easier to just stay fat adapted than it is to keep going like back and forth with this whole thing. Okay.

Next suggestion here is to focus on an area of weakness or an area that needs improvement. So that’s why like food is a big one for most people. It’s a time where they can clean up their diet and get fat adapted and get off to sugar and all that. So if that’s the area of weakness for you, this is the time to focus on that area.

It could be where you just haven’t been working on your strength training very consistently. And so this is the time for you to get into a resistance training routine. Right? Maybe your speed work has been put on hold.

I know that was kind of the case for me over the last six or eight weeks prior to my ultra marathon I did recently, I kind of put the speed work on hold, I really focused on the long slow running for the majority of that, like a third part of my training cycle for my ultra. And so right now I’m back into regular speed work again. Okay?

This is a great time to pick an area of weakness or an area that you’ve wanted to work on in wanting to improve and focus on that. Okay, so it could be one of those things where maybe you want to focus on more flexibility, or mobility work, then do that, now’s the time to focus on that. So it also helps you to kind of stay in the game. You know, and this is all good for your mindset as well.

All these things I’m talking about here will keep your mind focused and keep you in that mode of like I’m an athlete, I’m acting like an athlete, I’m still kind of in training even though I’m in between training cycles right now. Like you’re still at this place where this stuff still does matter to you, your health, your fitness still matters to you, right.

And then my last suggestion is to use this time to start creating better habits, you know, because changing habits takes time, it takes commitment, it takes focus, it takes some discipline. And you’re gonna have a lot more time and commitment and discipline during the offseason season than you would like during the middle of your training for a big race that you have coming up. Okay.

So if you want to develop some better habits, especially around food or resistance training, maybe it’s something like you want to sleep better, like you want to establish a better sleep pattern, better sleep routine, this is the time to start working on it.

It could be where you want to focus more on cross training. So you want to do more regular cycling or swimming or yoga or maybe some of that flexibility work that I talked about. It could be just other personal growth stuff like reading every day, some meditation like establishing a good morning routine.

This is key if you want to, you know start your day on a positive mindset every single day get into a good morning routine. What does that look like for you? I don’t know. It’s different for everybody. Maybe you want to spend more time having fun playing with your kids.

I just had such a blast last Friday, took the second half of the day off and my girlfriend and I went up to run to the little Miami River and we did a little kayaking down the river. And when I say kayaking, I mean we sat in our kayaks and just floated down the river for like two hours, it was so nice as beautiful day.

There was nobody else out there. And because it was like a Friday, you know, and it was so just lovely to be out in nature and to just like kick back and have nothing to do and just have fun for a couple of hours off, so nice.

But just doing things like that, this is a great time to get out into nature, walk more, I’m actually spending a lot of time rucking right now. So I’ve got a good rucking backpack with the 25 pound ruck weight that I haul around.

And I’m up to a couple miles at a time, some hilly miles where I’m just rocking right now. And I’m having a lot of fun doing that. It’s a totally different kind of workout than running. But then when I take that thing off, and I go for a run, I’m like, oh man, I feel so light, this feels so amazing right now.

So any kind of habits that you want to work on, now is the time to start building those habits, right? This is why I talk a lot about using this time to change your habits around food. Because this is like the time where you gotta like, do something consistently for a period of time in order to make these, you know, different eating habits stick.

You know, this isn’t about short term, like quick fixes. It’s about like long term lifestyle changes, you know, and that just takes time to get there. And if you think you’re going to do it in the middle of, you know, training for your race, a marathon or ultra, it’s not going to happen, it’s not the time to change your diet. Okay, right now is a great time to change your diet.

Okay, so approach the offseason with intention with mindfulness with some structure with a plan and a little bit of discipline too, you know, you can still have fun, right? And you’re going to come out the other side of this feeling amazing and feeling good about yourself, you know, set that intention.

Where do you want to be in three weeks or six weeks or a month or whatever it is, this is such a better way to do it, then the way that at least I used to do it, which is feeling like crap about myself.

And having gained like 10 or 12 pounds, right. And then remember, we still want to have fun. This is, you know, summer for us here in the US and we want to enjoy time at the pool. We want to enjoy that margarita on the beach, you can do that. Just do it with intention and with purpose.

You don’t want to undo all the good work that you’ve done up to this point, you know, just because it’s the offseason. So maintain some structure, maintain some good habits, focus on some areas of improvement and come out the end of this offseason feeling amazing with yourself.

You know, having had your own back, having like set good intentions and then, like kept those promises that you made to yourself, you’re gonna feel so much better than doing it the other way. I promise you, cool.

All right, are you ready to learn what it takes to get leaner and stronger and run faster and longer than you ever imagined? If so, then I have just the thing for you. Check out my all new free training called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.

It is a comprehensive hour-long training that will teach you how to lose weight and keep it off for good without running an extra million miles per week. It takes everything that I’ve been teaching on this podcast for the last three years and distills it all down into a training program that will teach you what you need to know to get started on your weight loss journey the right way.

And of course, it’s all designed with you the runner in mind, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

175. The Comfort Crisis

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There’s a real crisis happening in our world today, one that’s been decades in the making. And I find it somewhat disturbing that no one is really talking about it. It’s not making the …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 175 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, the comfort crisis. There’s a real crisis happening in our world today. One that’s been decades, centuries in the making.

And I find it somewhat disturbing that no one is really talking about this. It’s not making the headlines, it’s not in the news. And it doesn’t come up on our social media feeds. Well, it comes up in my social media feed, but probably not yours. But if left unchecked, if we allow this crisis to continue as is it could lead to the end of human life, at least as we know it today.

And you might be thinking I’m being a little overly dramatic here. But I promise you that I am not. In this episode of the podcast, I’m talking about the comfort crisis, and how our insatiable quest for comfort might just lead to our downfall.

But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your diet, dialing in your nutrition plan and or losing weight, then I’ve got the perfect thing to get you started. I’m doing a free live training and coaching event. It’s called How To Start Losing Weight As A Runner. It’s going to be on May 17.

And in this live event, which I don’t do very often, by the way, but in this live event, I’m going to show you how to get started on your weight loss journey the right way. I’m going to talk about which foods to eat, which to avoid, what fuel to use if you want to lose weight and improve your running performance. How to create the right mindset to help you stay motivated so you stick with the plan, and tons tons more.

Also I am going to be answering your questions live. So be sure to show up on the live call. It’s going to be done over Zoom, and bring your questions. If you’ve been thinking about working with me, if you’ve been thinking about joining the coaching project, this is an awesome opportunity to show up, ask questions and see what coaching is all about.

You actually get some live coaching from me during this event. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, and become the most badass version of yourself, then you owe it to yourself to attend this live event. You have nothing to lose, except maybe a few extra pounds, and you really have everything to gain. To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/live.

All right, so let’s talk about the comfort crisis. So throughout human history, we have evolved as a species seeking comfort. We’ve always done this and it’s been a good thing. You know, seeking comfort seeking shelter from the freezing cold helped us to survive. You know, seeking foods that gave us a lot of calories, things like honey and berries helped us to survive the droughts and things when we didn’t have a lot of food available to us.

You know, putting on clothing and then learning how to like domesticate horses so that you know travel can be easier. All the things that we’ve done over the millennia to seek comfort have been mainly in the vein of comfort, safety, survival, really. So it’s kept us alive. Our seeking of comfort has kept us alive and thriving for millennia.

So we are creatures who naturally seek comfort, we’re really good at seeking comfort. And we’re constantly doing it. We’re constantly changing how we do things, especially now in the developed world, you know, to where we are experiencing so much comfort that we avoid any type of discomfort whatsoever.

Today, like most developed countries anyway, we don’t face any of the same hardships that we used to have to face back in the day, you know and we think that it’s evolution, and that it’s a good thing, you know, to always seek comfort. But I think that this might be wrong. I think that this might be something that is not causing us to thrive anymore.

I think the amount of attention and the amount of priority that we put on comfort today is actually causing our demise. It’s causing us to devolve. You know? Here’s something interesting. I came up across here back in the early or late 80s, early 90s, scientists built this research facility in Arizona, it’s called Biosphere Two.

And the biosphere was a controlled environment, it was an enclosed environment, think about it, like a big bubble city, so to speak, right? Wasn’t that big, but pretty big. So it was a closed ecological system. And it was used to kind of see like, okay, what if we build something like this on Mars, or on the moon or something, would we be able to live in here?

You know, and it had different biomes, you know, to let nature sort of happen and it had like rainforests and oceans and wetlands and desert and had people living in there, things like that, right. But something really fascinating happened.

So they had planted these trees there. And they found that with the right conditions, you know, soil and water and light and things like that, these trees would grow very quickly. But then before they could mature before they could, you know, become mature trees that could reproduce and, you know, produce more trees, the trees would all flop over. And they couldn’t understand why.

And they did all these experiments. And they were looking at the soil and looking at the structure of the trees themselves, and the root systems and all these things. And they found out that the reason the trees could not survive, and they just kept flopping over, is because there was no wind in the biosphere.

Trees need stress to survive, and to thrive, they can’t grow without it. Trees need to experience, you know, wind and that wind pushing on them. Discomfort, if you will, causes them to adapt and to grow stronger. And as a tree is growing and as it experiences more and more high winds and storms and you know, thunderstorms and hurricanes or whatever, these trees become stronger and stronger and stronger over time.

But without any wind without any adversity. Without any discomfort. The trees just flop over. And I bring this up because I think we’re doing the same thing to humans today. If we shelter ourselves from everything uncomfortable, what do we become? We’re becoming floppy trees. We can’t handle stress. We eat our feelings and become obese, we end up dying early. Because we’re not willing to be uncomfortable. We’re just choosing comfort over longevity.

Today’s children are the first generation in human history that has the same or lower life span than their parents. Meaning that this is the first time in the history of humans that our children are going to live as long or not as long as us. Why is this? And one of the big drivers of this is obesity.

It’s one of the biggest drivers of that lowering of the lifespan, as people are, you know, as the generations go on here. So this is not a good sign. This is a sign that if we keep going in this direction, what’s going to happen? You know, the average human lifespan can start to actually devolve and start going down. You know, I think right now, the average lifespan is something like 78 years old. But if we keep going in this direction, where’s it going to be? 60, 50, 40? I don’t know.

So just understand that this isn’t just some arbitrary idea I’m talking about here. This is like we’ve just become so comfortable. We’re always seeking comfort especially in the form of food, right? That it could lead to our demise.

And I talk a lot about leaning into discomfort here on the podcast and with my clients. I talk about embracing the suck, right? But are you doing it? Are you leaning into discomfort? Are you embracing the suck on a regular basis? I think for most of us, the opposite is probably true. Embracing comfort, embracing what’s easy. And I think we’re all really good at that. We’ve all become really, really good at that, too good.

In fact, I was watching Wall-e recently, the movie, the Disney movie, Wall-e, about the little robot that collects trash. And if you’re not familiar with the movie, I’m gonna probably do a terrible job of recapping it for you. But basically, the Earth has been uninhabited for 700 years. And this takes place like 800 years in the future or something like that.

And the Earth has been destroyed by too much garbage. No plants grow anymore. And all the humans have left the earth. And they’re all living on a giant space cruise ship, right. And over the last 700 years, they’ve had to do nothing themselves. All these people, all these humans on this giant cruise ship. They don’t have to walk.

First of all, they get carted around on these moveable chairs everywhere. So they’re sitting in these lounge chairs all the time. They don’t have to eat food, like with a knife and fork, everything is just like a smoothie, basically that they drink. Anytime I see somebody eating, drinking a smoothie, like with a straw, I’m like, oh, Wall-e, be careful. They’re all morbidly obese.

You know, they just, they’re just staring at screens the whole time. Everybody has their own individual screen, they’re sitting out, like by the pool, there’s thousands of these people that are all in these lounge chairs, drinking their smoothies, sitting by the pool, but they’re all staring at these little screens. Nobody’s even really talking to each other or anything like that, right.

And I see that scene and I kind of like I’m a little scared that we’re heading in that direction. Everything we do that we continually do to make our lives more and more comfortable moves us a little bit closer to a Wally reality in the future.

Think about all the ways that we choose comfort these days. Like we don’t have to hunt our own food anymore, right? We’ve done away with that a long time ago. In fact, we started growing our own food, we started becoming farmers and we would grow our own food, don’t even have to do that anymore. We can just go to the grocery store and buy all that stuff.

In fact, we don’t even have to do that anymore. We can just hit up Instacart and have all that stuff delivered right to your door. Right? In fact, you don’t even have to go to a restaurant to eat anymore. You can just have all that stuff delivered to your door, Uber Eats or whatever. You can do all your shopping from the couch.

And I ordered some protein powder the other day and an option was like same day delivery. Like I ordered it on Amazon and it was delivered here in like two hours. How is that even possible? I mean, I kind of know how it’s possible. But it’s kind of crazy, right? That’s where we are today.

Some years ago, this is like when Amazon had just started to get pretty ubiquitous and pretty huge, right? Some guy did this experiment where he lived for a year in his own house. Like without leaving his house, never went outside. He worked from home. He had all his food delivered, all his groceries delivered to him. Pretty much used Amazon for everything.

And I don’t know that he like worked out at all because you could have a treadmill and weights and stuff like that. I don’t know if he did that or not. I tried to look up some info on this guy and I couldn’t really find anything about it. I don’t think it was that big of a deal at the time.

But I just remember reading about this guy. And at the end of the year like he did it. He spent the whole year inside his house and ordered everything and just was like watching Netflix all the time or whatever. And at the end of the year he finally came out of his house and he was not happy. I think he was like overweight and out of shape and just like miserable.

But it’s like that’s the Wall-e cruise ship right there, that guy basically just did it, you know, for a year, it’s crazy. Other ways we choose comfort, like we don’t even have to walk anywhere anymore. I don’t know about where you guys live. But here in Cincinnati where I live, you know, I live in an urban area near downtown Cincinnati.

And when I go for a walk or go for a run through downtown, I have to like swerve around all the Bird scooters and Lime scooters. And if you guys have those where you are basically a scooter that you can rent and you can just hop on and zip around wherever you need to go. You don’t have to walk down the street. Oh, it was too far to walk, you know, two blocks, I’m just going to jump on this Lime scooter and just, you know, zip myself down the street.

Now I have considered using those especially after a long run and I have to run uphill on the way home. I’m like, I could just jump on this scooter right here. No, I don’t do that. What about those scooters at the grocery store? For people who you know are maybe a little more immobile or obese or you know, have injury or illness or whatever. 10, 20, 30 years ago, were those a thing? I don’t remember ever seeing those back in the day. And now there’s like, instead of being one at a store, there might be 10 or 12 or more, you know, it’s crazy.

We don’t even have to leave our couch like everything. We want all the streaming options that we want Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Disney, Apple, Amazon, all this stuff. They’re there, everything you want is there, you don’t have to leave the couch, everything you want, is just right in front of you on this big screen where you can just sit on your couch and you don’t have to like go interact with any humans.

In fact, we’ve made interacting with humans, something we don’t even have to do anymore. We just interact on social media. Instead just stare at your phone, just look at your phone, keep looking down at your phone all day. I see people in their cars who’re driving and they stop at a red light. As soon as they stopped their car, they pick up their phone and they’re scrolling and they’re seeing who liked my post, who texted me, there’s a funny cat video, whatever.

We can’t even interact with each other anymore. Most of us sit all day, which is so bad for you. And I’m guilty of this too. I sit for pretty long stretches of time during the day when I’m doing coaching calls and things like that. I have a standing desk that moves up and down like it, it can be a set standing or sitting desk. I’m actually standing right now to record this. But I’m guilty of sitting a lot as well.

But we don’t have to do manual labor. We have jobs where you know, we sit all day indoors. We never have to experience temperature changes, hot or cold, because we go from our temperature controlled house to our temperature controlled car to our temperature controlled office.

In fact, you can like lot of people can open up an app on their phone and turn on their car heat ahead of time. So you don’t even have to let your car warm up. You could just like soon as you get in your car, it’s already warm for you. There’s fast food, there’s escalators, they’re self driving cars, you don’t have to drive anymore.

There’s liposuction, like why change your habits and actually burn fat when you can just get it sucked out to you and just keep up with your terrible eating habits? All these things are, you know considered innovations, technological advances. And they’re all providing us with more comfort and more comfortable life but at what cost? What’s going to be the end result if we keep going down this path? The Wall-e cruise ship is what you want.

And listen, like I used to be someone who was always looking for comfort, like I drank alcohol all the time, smoked cigarettes, ate whatever I felt like eating. And honestly, it affected me negatively, profoundly negatively. I became really overweight. I was sick all the time. I was miserable. I could not handle stress at any time. I became one of those trees in the biosphere. I just flopped over under my own weight. I couldn’t hold myself up. No muscle mass. I wasn’t strong. I couldn’t run, couldn’t do anything.

And so I’ve chosen to choose or I’ve chosen to live my life in a different way now. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t seek comfort constantly. I mean, there’s things I do enjoy, like sleeping in a bed. I don’t need to sleep on a rock. You know, I like temperature controlled atmospheres, like that stuff’s okay.

But there’s a lot of times in my life where I choose discomfort on purpose. So I don’t end up like one of the people on the Wall-e cruise ship. And I want you to ask yourself this. Honestly, be honest about this. Who am I becoming? And I want you to play it out, roll the tape forward. What happens to you if you keep going down your current path? A floppy tree, a Wall-e cruise ship passenger? Who am I becoming? Ask yourself this and be honest.

And is that what you really want for yourself? If so, great. No problem. No judgment, no criticism, no pressure to change at all. Just do you. That’s all good. But be honest. If that’s not what you want, then what are you doing about it? What are you doing today? How can you lean into discomfort today? How can you embrace the suck today?

You’ve probably heard the saying do something every day that scares you. I like to say it, it’s a good one. It helps you to, you know, think like, oh, I gotta get out of my comfort zone. Because if I do something that scares me, that means I’m doing something that’s uncomfortable.

One of our mantras at the gym is this: do something every day that hurts. Every day experience some pain. If you’re not experiencing pain every day, you’re doing it wrong. When I go to the gym, I work out, I work out hard. It hurts. I work out until it hurts. But this is how you get stronger. This is how you grow muscle. You work out until it hurts. Your body adapts. And then you do it again. This is how you grow. You don’t grow by sitting around staring at a screen all day.

Now, if you’re listening to this, and you’re a runner, you know what I’m talking about when I say you got to embrace the suck. Because you know what? Running is hard. Running is hard and you show up and you do it anyway, you train for that 5k or that half marathon or that marathon. And you know how hard that work is.

This weekend I’m running my 10th Flying Pig marathon. That is our flagship race every year here in Cincinnati. Such a fun event if you ever get a chance to do the Flying Pig, do it. It’s a hard race. Hilly the first eight miles, pretty hilly. But it’s fun, super fun event. So I’m running my 10th one this weekend. Super fun. And the forecast calls for pain. That’s like something Mr. T would say right. And if you don’t know who Mr. T is, I’m sorry, I apologize for that. But Google it.

I’ve never run a marathon where there wasn’t pain involved at some point. Sometimes it’s mile 21. Sometimes it’s mile 15. Sometimes it’s mile 8, whatever. And one of the keys to being successful at running a marathon, especially if you want to run like a PR or qualify for Boston, if you want to run a fast marathon is being able to endure pain, being able to endure discomfort for a long period of time. And by a long period of time, I mean, like an hour or two or whatever, right. So I’m looking forward to this painful race this weekend. I know it’s temporary. I’ve done this before.

I’m not trying to PR this one. I’m not trying to qualify for Boston or anything like that. But I do know that every time I’ve run a marathon I’ve been like this pretty much sucks at some point. But I do it because it’s important to me. I do it because this is how I continue to grow. So here’s another question I want you to ask yourself, what am I going to do today that hurts? How can I experience some pain today? How can I experience some discomfort today?

Now I don’t mean to sit on a tack or like put your hand on the stove or anything like that, right? But what can you do to avoid the crisis of comfort today? What about your diet? How are you using comfort as a means of determining what you eat or when you eat or how much you eat or whatever.

I cannot tell you how many people would lose so much weight if they were willing to experience discomfort but they just won’t do it. They’re not willing to do it, they would rather be comfortable than get lean. They’d rather be comfortable and get strong, because lifting weights is uncomfortable. And I get it. Changing your eating habits is hard.

You’ve trained yourself over the decades to eat certain foods at certain times in certain ways, and to eat your feelings and all this stuff. And to change those ingrained habits means that you will be uncomfortable, you will experience discomfort. And nobody wants to do that.

Everybody wants the results. Nobody wants to do the work. Everybody wants to get leaner. Nobody wants to experience the discomfort. But the cost of success is discomfort. That’s it. Discomfort is the price you pay. If you want to change your habits, and you want to lose weight, if you’re willing to get uncomfortable, you will be successful. Period. But so many people are unwilling to do this.

They say they’re willing, I might be talking to them on a call. And they’re like, oh, yeah, Patrick, I got this, I’m willing to be uncomfortable. I’m willing to do this. You might be thinking right now, while you’re listening to this podcast, you might be saying this to yourself, like, I’m ready to be uncomfortable.

But then I promise you when your partner brings home a pizza and you smell it, and your desire goes through the roof, you start salivating? How about then? Are you going to be willing to experience the discomfort then? Because that’s when it matters. That’s when it actually happens. That is the work. Not while you’re out running and listening to this podcast, that’s great. But like, you got to sit there in that moment when you want the pizza, and you’re and you’re not going to eat the pizza and it’s uncomfortable. And you want nothing more than to just eat the pizza. And you don’t. That’s discomfort.

That’s what I’m talking about. If you’re willing to give up comfort, you can become anything you want. Are you willing to give up comfort to become your most badass self? It’s a good question. Think about that. Think about who you could become if you’re willing to embrace the suck more often? What would that look like for you? How much weight could you lose? How much healthier could you be?

How would your quality of life improve? Because to continue down the path of comfort, always seeking comfort, more and more and more comfort. That’s not working for you. I know because I’ve been there. It doesn’t work. You think you’re playing it safe, but you’re really destroying yourself.

The older you get, the weaker and more fragile you become. You become weak, your muscles atrophy, you become overweight, can’t pick up your grandkids, you can’t run in the falling down, you break a hip because your bones are so brittle. Now you can’t even get out of bed. And this scenario is not made up. It’s actually so common that it’s probably the leading, I believe it is the leading cause of death and the older and the elderly.

And it’s happening more and more as the baby boomers are getting older and needing more care and things like that. And it scares the crap out of me actually. And it should scare the crap out of you, too. I do not want that for myself. I do not want to be bed bound in my 70s or 80s or 90s. You know, I don’t want to be one of those passengers on the Wall-e cruise ship. I want to stay strong and lean and fit and athletic.

I want to have strong bones. I want to be able to lift weights and run until I’m 100. And the way I’m gonna get there is that I’m going to avoid comfort. Most of the time, I’m going to do something hard, something that hurts something uncomfortable every single day. And I’m going to do everything in my power to avoid the comfort crisis. Now, how about you, are you willing to do this with me?

Let’s do it. Alright, that’s all I got for you. Remember, join me for a free live training and coaching session called How To Start Losing Weight As A Runner. This is going to be on Wednesday, May 17, 2023. You know I’m going live. I’m going to show you how to get started the right way on your weight loss journey, I’ll be answering your questions live. So show up, bring your questions, you’ll get them answered, then you can get some coaching from me. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/live to sign up. That’s all I got. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

173. Replay: Why Diets Don’t Work

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There are more diets out there in the world right now (and more conflicting information about those diets) than I even care to think about. And there is one thing I’ve noticed that comes up again …

Continue Reading about 173. Replay: Why Diets Don’t Work →

Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 173 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today is a replay: Why Diets Don’t Work.

There are more diets out there in the world right now and more conflicting information about those diets than I even care to think about. And there’s one thing I’ve noticed that keeps coming up again and again and again, the fact that diets don’t work. Why? Why don’t diets work?

Every one of them claimed that they are the answer to your weight loss problems. And basically, every one of them fails to produce lasting results. Today, I’m going to take a deep dive into the five biggest reasons why diets don’t work, and give you a few options for what you should focus on instead. So this is actually a replay of a very early episode of the podcast, episode number 25.

And I wanted to talk about this topic this week about why diets don’t work. And in looking through my notes, I started to realize that this episode was really good, and basically said everything that I wanted to say anyway, so I’m just going to replay it for you here today. Cool?

But first, if you’ve ever tried and failed to lose weight, then you’ve probably felt like a lost cause. Like, it’s never going to work for you. Like there’s just no way you will ever succeed at losing the weight.

But I want you to know that it’s not you, you are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you, you can do it. You need three things in order to succeed though. First, you need knowledge, you need to know what to do and how to do it. You need someone to guide you, you need a personalized plan that’s been put together for you by someone who knows what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve coached hundreds of runners on nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset to help them become the healthiest versions of themselves. And I can help you too. But you need that knowledge, you need to know what to do and how to do it.

You also need support. If you want to accomplish anything big, you need support to help you stay on track. You need people in your corner. People who understand what you’re going through, people have been there themselves.

That’s why I include group coaching, as well as one on one coaching in my program. I think the group coaching aspect is so key, because I want to ensure that you have all the support that you need to stick with your plan and keep making progress and keep moving forward.

And then lastly, you need accountability. You need someone there to hold you accountable. It’s one thing to say you’re going to stick to your food plan. It’s quite another thing to have someone there holding you accountable for your actions. Accountability is the key to making consistent forward progress towards your goals.

My unique weight loss coaching program for runners the coaching project delivers all the knowledge, support and accountability you need to crush your goals. To learn more and get yourself signed up. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join. And now onto the replay of episode number 25: Why Diets Don’t Work.

So why don’t diets work? What is going on here? So I’ve got five things I want to talk about today. And the first is this. The first thing that I think is why diets don’t work. Number one diets, they only address one thing, what you should or shouldn’t eat. So I have tried many, many different diets.

I did the vegetarian thing for a while and then I eventually moved to pescetarian. And then plant-based or vegan. I did keto paleo Adkins, I did something called TR E or time restricted eating, which is kind of a form of intermittent fasting. And then I did like a raw food diet, and actually started a raw food diet when I was training for a marathon, like just a couple of weeks before a marathon.

I was like, I’m gonna try this raw food diet. And it was terrible. I had really terrible results from doing that. And then there’s a lot of diets out there that I haven’t tried. There’s things like Jenny Craig, which is super popular. Weight Watchers is another super popular one.

And then, you know, like the Mediterranean diet, the South Beach Diet zone, which I had to look up what that even was. And I’m still not exactly sure what that entails. But the common thread among virtually every one of these diets is that they just focus on one thing, what you should or shouldn’t eat. So eat this. And not that, which is fine, I get it. It is important. It is one of the components of, you know, creating a healthy eating lifestyle, but it’s only one part of it. It’s not everything. It’s not the whole picture.

And I think when these diets focus on just telling you what you should and shouldn’t eat, we’re, you know, they’re really missing the ball, they’re really missing the point. Because if it was that easy, if it was as easy as just like telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat, then there would be no problem with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, all that stuff that we got going on here in this country.

Also, most of these diets are just kind of handing out bad advice. So they fall along the same lines as the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is a diet that is high in carbohydrates, and low in fat. And we know without a doubt, now, we know that this approach does not work. I mean, we started doing this back in the late 70s, early 80s.

And the country the US as a whole has been compliant you know we’ve reduced the amount of fat we eat, we’ve increased the amount of carbs we eat. And we as a nation keep getting, you know, fatter, and all these issues of heart disease, diabetes and obesity just keep increasing. So we know for a fact that this type of diet really doesn’t work. Okay?

But this is what a lot of these diets are putting out there. The Mediterranean diet, the Zone Diet Weight Watchers, Jenny, Greg, South Beach, a lot of these are just telling you to eat more grains, eat more carbs and limit the amount of fat that you take in, okay? It doesn’t work. And here’s something that is interesting.

Runners on the whole are really very carb dependent. Runners on the whole carry around too much body fat in general. And the reason for this is simple, that runners are addicted to carbs. So runners eat way more carbs, then even the average American.

Think about it like you got to fuel up for all those long runs, you know, so the day before, let’s do some carbo loading, you know, fettuccine alfredo, like Michael Scott training for the 5k or, you know, the the pre run meal of, you know, carbs or pancakes or whatever you like to do, and the gels, all the gels, and this constant sucking down of sports drinks, and energy bars.

And then there’s the post workout fuel and carbo loading that we do as well. I mean, I’ve done this gladly, too, because it’s just an excuse to eat as much, you know, as many pancakes and syrup is that one, you know, so I get it. But runners on the whole, eat way too much sugar and way too many carbs, which creates a chronic state in our bodies of fat storage mode. You know, because our insulin goes high insulin is a fat storage hormone.

And so we’re constantly storing fat. You know, when we run, especially when we’re training for long distance events, we can burn off some of that fat, but typically no, typically, we’re not losing weight during training like that. In fact, if you’re a long distance runner, and you’ve ever like, scaled back your running, like scaled back the intensity of your workouts, or maybe the mileage you’re doing per week or per month, you will start gaining weight pretty quickly.

I hear this all the time from runners. Oh, yeah, you know, I injured my foot. And so I had to take a couple weeks off and I gained like five pounds. It’s crazy, right? Because you are not, your body’s in this state of chronic fat storage mode. You’re not in fat burning mode, the only way you can lose weight is to burn fat. That’s that we all know that. Okay, but anyway, I went off on a little bit of a tangent there about runners and being addicted to carbs. But it’s important, I think it’s important for us to understand that.

So diets, they, you know, they only tell you what to eat, and they’re not addressing the stuff that’s going on, underneath all of that, which is the mental and emotional obsession that we have with food, you know, we’ve become a culture that has become addicted to food, we crave it like a drug, specially certain types of foods and it depends on you know, on the person. But there are a bunch of different foods out there.

Pizza is one that we crave, like a drug, you know, fast food like burgers and french fries, we crave like a drug. I used to crave Ben and Jerry’s ice cream like a drug. And the food scientists know this. They are taking advantage of this mental obsession that we have with food. So every time we eat something, we get a little bit of a hit of dopamine in our brain, you know, which makes us feel good.

It’s the same kind of response you get when you drink alcohol, or do drugs like cocaine, for instance, you get a little hit of dopamine and it feels good. And you’re like, ooh, that was good. I want more of that. But when you eat certain types of food foods that are high in sugar, especially like McDonald’s, french fries, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and french fries, just by the way, you know, it’s the fat content, but it’s also the starch that turns in no sugar.

So those kinds of things really give you a big hit of dopamine. And so your brain is like, whoa, we need more of that right now. It’s crazy. They’ve kind of created this culture of food addicts, you know? Which I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

I don’t I don’t I don’t I well, I do know I don’t think that’s good. It’s crazy, though. Like they even you’re gonna start to notice this now. driving around town, you’re gonna see giant billboards with pictures of food, they call this food porn, because it like, creates that same sort of release of dopamine in our brain, when we see a picture of like a close up picture of a juicy hamburger and french fries on a billboard, we get that same response in our body.

Like, if you were like looking at a picture of, of a naked person, you know, I mean, like, there’s a physiological response to that. Notice it. Next time, you’re driving around, and you see a billboard with like, you know, close up of some kind of food, pizza, you know, steaming or that close up of a burger or whatever. Notice what’s going on in your body, chances are, you’ll notice one thing especially which is like your mouth will start to water like Pavlov’s dog here, you know?

So notice that the next time you’re driving around, you see a billboard like that, what do you start to think about? What feelings do you have in your body? Are you like, salivating? Do you all of a sudden want that burger or whatever.

But we see these images all over the place, we see them posted on Instagram, and Facebook, and we see him on billboards, and we see him, you know, in magazines, and in commercials and all this stuff. And so we’re constantly bombarded. Our brains are bombarded with thoughts about this food, it’s creating a mental obsession for us.

Not only is the food being created and designed in a way, and they call this the bliss point, which is what the scientists create, with the right amount of sugar, fat, and salt, or whatever they use to create a food that makes us crave it the most. It creates the biggest dopamine hit in our brains, which makes us feel the best. I call it the bliss point, because it creates a sense of bliss in our body when we eat it.

They know this, they’re doing all of this on purpose, okay. So, in order to break out of this, you got to start breaking the pattern, and you got to work on your thoughts about food, you have to change the way you think about food. And we do this with my clients, we work on that mental obsession, and we work on the cravings. And one thing we do is like, anytime you have a craving, we just allow it to be there and don’t react to it.

So anytime you can not give into a craving, like let’s say you have some ice cream in your freezer, and you’re like, man, that ice cream would be really good right now. But if you don’t give into that craving, you can start training your brain to allow those cravings to be there without reacting to them without doing anything about them. It’s a process though, and it takes a while.

And you have to be okay with like feeling kind of uncomfortable for a little while. And that’s what a lot of people have a hard time with. Okay, we’re also a society that does a lot of emotional eating. Right, instead of feeling our feelings, we eat food, just like I was explaining, you know, you get uncomfortable when you have this craving for something, you just want to eat it, it’s the same thing when we have a negative emotion.

So when we have a negative emotion, like hurt, or anger, or stress or overwhelm, or you know, we’re lonely, or something like that, what we want to do is we want that feeling to go away right away, we want it to go away, like right now. And one way that we do that is with substances.

So we’ll grab alcohol, you drink some alcohol, and it’ll immediately make you feel good. So instead of feeling lonely, let’s say you drink some alcohol, and you’re going to your blood brain is going to be flooded with dopamine and adrenaline and it’s going to just feel amazing. And you kind of forget about the fact that you’re lonely, okay?

Because your body is flooded with these other feelings. So alcohol does that. Food does that the same exact way shopping for a lot of people. It gives them that same kind of sense of that feeling of like flooding your brain and body with dopamine. And there’s a variety of other things that people get into drugs and you know, sex and gambling and other things like that.

And here’s the thing, all of these things that are outside of us when we reach for something that’s outside of us to make us feel better inside it not only does it not work, so it doesn’t we’re not dealing with the emotion that we’re feeling. You know, if you’re feeling hurt or lonely. Eating is going to feel good, just because you know you’re getting that little hit of dopamine, but it’s not dealing with the fact that you’re feeling hurt or lonely, that emotion is still there.

So when the buzz of your food or alcohol or whatever it is wears off, you still have the negative emotion. In fact, you feel worse because now you’ve created, you’ve done something very negative, something with negative consequences, like you gain weight, or you have a hangover or whatever. And now you feel bad about doing that.

And so it’s kind of like, you even feel worse. So these things we think are helping or making us feel better actually make us feel worse. You know, we call this buffering when we’re using something external as a buffer between our ourselves and our feelings, you know, we want to dampen the emotions, so we put a buffer between the emotion and ourselves, the emotion doesn’t go away, you just, it just sort of numbs it a little bit, okay. And you feel something else instead.

So when you eat, you might feel full, which gives your brain you know, big hit of dopamine, it feels great. And you sort of forget about those other emotions for a little bit. But it doesn’t work for the long term, because you’re not dealing with the emotions. Okay, so if any of this is resonating with you, I just want you to know that you are perfectly normal. This happens to all of us, welcome to the human race.

So number one, diets only address one thing: they address what to eat or what not to eat, they don’t address any of this other stuff. They don’t address the mental obsession that we have with food, this unnatural craving that we have for food, they don’t address the emotional eating that we do. And most diets are kind of handing out bad advice about what to eat and what not to eat. Okay. All right. So that was number one. Diets are only talking about what to eat, what not to eat.

Number two, diets are very restrictive. Have you ever been on a diet and just wanted to punch somebody in the face? I know that I had, this is my experience. Like, I remember doing this calorie counting thing a couple years ago, because I was gaining weight I was running and I was gaining weight. And so I’m like, okay, I gotta start tracking all my calories, because that’s how you lose weight, right? You gotta like, eat fewer calories than you burn.

So I was like, you know, running extra miles every week and tracking every single mile I ran, every mile I walked, every step I took, every time I like, did, you know, weightlifting, I was tracking all these calories that I was burning. And I then had to put in how many calories I was was consuming. So I had to like, put in this app that I had this tracker app, I had to put in exactly how many calories I was consuming each day, which meant that every time I ate a bite of anything, I had to input it into this app, right?

Which at first was okay, it’s like, you know, cereal, you know, find the cereal in the database. And you know, they had a pretty good database of food in there, find the cereal. How much did I use? Probably a lot more than they say, as a serving whatever. Blueberries, I could find that. And that was fine. Like if I could just put in things like that.

But sometimes I would, I would make my own recipe or you know, make a casserole or something, right. And then you got to put every one of those items into this app to create the recipe then divided out by how many portions sizes, like the whole, the whole thing was so stressful for me.

And honestly, I got so stressed out about doing this, that it just made me like, you know, it kept me up at night, like, every time I ate something I had to like, do all this inputting into this app and do all this math and everything. And besides that, besides it being super stressful. I was hungry all the time because I was restricting calories. Okay. I was like hangry. I was hangry right, hungry and angry. Hangry and, and I wasn’t losing weight either. Right. So awesome. I’m angry, hungry, and then I couldn’t lose weight. So that’s amazing, right?

But why is this what is going on here? I had to figure out what’s happening here. So most diets are based on this concept of restrict and restriction. So typically, diets restrict fat or calories or both. So low fat or low calorie diets are probably the biggest culprits here. And they create an environment in our bodies of over hunger and over desire, they kind of do the opposite of what you would think they would do.

So what happens in your body is when you restrict calories, your body starts sending signals to your brain that you’re not getting enough food. And so you produce more ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, your appetite actually increases, because you’re restricting calories. So your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis, it wants to get back to neutral.

And so it says, like, Hey, we’re not getting enough food here, you need to feed us and so your, your body’s doing what’s supposed to, it’s increasing your appetite. But since you’re restricting calories, you’re not eating as much, you’re gonna have this like really massive disconnect from your brain, your body, your body is saying, like, feed me now.

But your brain is like, oh, no, we have to stick to 1000 calories a day, no more. And you’re gonna just feel miserable and hungry all the time. This is my experience, there’s a lot of what a lot of people experience with restrictive diets. It creates a, it just feels terrible, it creates a lot of inner turmoil.

You know, when you restrict food, especially foods that are high in fat say, you also create a sense of deprivation. So, you know, you start saying to yourself, like, I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that. Or maybe you go out to dinner with friends, and everybody’s eating, you know, wings, and pizza and french fries. And you’re like, I’ll just have a side salad, because you know, I’ve kind of had most of my calories for the day. And boy, that feels terrible, right? You get FOMO fear of missing out.

It’s like, there’s all this food here around you, and I can’t eat it, it just feels terrible. Okay, so number two diets don’t work because they are restrictive. And this restricting of calories, especially calories from fat leads to uncontrollable cravings. And almost inevitably will lead to non compliance, people will no longer comply with this kind of diet, because they just can’t do it, they can’t deal with those cravings, usually at least a binging and then just quitting the diet altogether.

And then what happens is, a lot of times people will go back on that kind of a diet, and then they will lose some weight, and then they will feel terrible, and then you can’t do it. And then they gain a bunch of weight back. And then they do that again. And that’s what we call like a yo-yo diet, where people are constantly restricting what they’re eating and like trying to white knuckle it, and then you know, quitting, because it’s so hard. And then, you know, getting a bunch of weight back and then doing it again. And that cycle just continues. It’s really not good for you, by the way.

So number three is that diets are complicated. You know, I was talking about that calorie tracking app, and I had to input everything I was eating. This was extremely complicated. You know, when you got to like, count every calorie in every macro, you know, how much protein, how much fat, how many carbs of everything you’re eating, oh my god, I was crazy.

When I did the keto diet for a while there and had some good results from that. But keto in general, to get your body into ketosis means you have to eat very, very few carbs. I think it’s like less than 50 a day or something like that. And it is very hard to do that for most people, especially since I was plant based at the time.

And so it was like, you know, you had to get most of your calories in the day from fat and you know, as eating a plant based diet, it’s kind of challenging unless you’re like chugging olive oil all day, you know, which I did not do that. But you know, I was eating a lot avocados. Anyway. So when I was doing the Keto thing, I had to track all these macros and actually created this Excel spreadsheet for calculating all this stuff.

How much protein was, you know, the protein, fat, carb ratio had to get it all straightened out every day. I had to keep track of every single morsel that I ate. And honestly, eating was no longer enjoyable for me. Eating wasn’t fun for me. It was a chore; it was like a math assignment. You know, diets they really think they’re making things simple for us but they really are very complicated.

You know, Weight Watchers has their points just eat so many points. Well, you got to like keep track of all your points. You can only buy food that has certain points. Jenny Craig, you’ve got to buy all their food you have to like only buy the food that they tell you to buy other diets have you supplement with all these shake mixes? And pills and probiotics and prebiotics and cleanse kits.

And, you know, all these things, and it just seems so overly complicated. Some diets have you, you gotta weigh all your food. So, you know, what do you have to bring a scale to the restaurant? So you can like weigh your food? I don’t know. They’re just very complicated. You know, and they’re trying to tell you, it’s simple. They’re trying to sell you on an idea that, Oh, it’s just simple. Just count on your points, or whatever.

But it really isn’t, you know, it isn’t simple. The reality is that diets are very complicated. And what happens is they create a lot of stress for us. You know, my experience has been, when I’ve had to, like input everything into an app, or you don’t track everything on an Excel spreadsheet, I got really stressed out about food.

And when I get stressed out, what do I do? Probably the same thing you do, I just want to eat to feel better. You know, and that’s not the goal of these diets. But far too often, it’s the outcome. You know, the diets are trying to be simple, but they are very complicated. And they and they create a lot of stress, and then you end up just binging. Okay, so that was number three. Diets are complicated.

Number four, diets are based on this one size fits all concept. Every diet out there is like we are the best one for everyone. Like everyone should be on this diet, everyone should be on the Zone diet, or the South Beach diet, or everyone should be plant based.

Like they can’t all be right, right? If everybody’s saying they’re the one, and there’s, you know, 60 diets out there, or 100, or however many, they can’t all be right. But I totally get this, I really, really do. So for around 10 years, I was plant based 100%. And I swore that this was the only way to go. And this is best for everyone I preached about being plant-based.

And I was you know, my thoughts, my understanding was that if everyone would just switch to eating plants, they would all be super healthy. And, and I really firmly believe this for a long time. The truth is, though, that we are all different. We are all different people, we all have different dietary needs, we all have different metabolic needs.

We all have, you know, our genes are slightly different. I don’t know a ton about genes. But I will say this, I’ve started really getting into this new science of ancestral eating. And this is where, you know, you want to focus on eating what your particular ancestors have evolved to eat over the last, you know, couple 1000 years.

You know, if your ancestors were Inuit Eskimos living in the Canadian Arctic, you’re gonna be, you know, very genetically different and thrive on a very different diet than if your ancestors like mine, you know, we’re from Ireland and Scotland, you know, or if your ancestors come from the plains of Africa, or from East Asia. So in all of these different parts of the world, people have been thriving for 1000s of years on different types of diets, different types of foods, some of them super high in fat, and super high in animal fat, and very few vegetables.

And some are kind of the opposite. Lots of rice, and lots of seafood and lots of vegetables and things like that. So really the truth of the matter is there isn’t one diet that’s best for everyone. But that’s not true. There is one, there is one diet, it’s that’s best for everyone. And that’s the one that works for you.

You know, like South Beach diet might work for you. But it might be terrible for somebody else. So what I teach, and what I would suggest that you start thinking about is choosing food that works for you, you know, choosing an eating protocol and I use this word protocol with my clients because it’s not a diet, it’s a it’s kind of a way of of eating that you can sustain over time.

So we choose a protocol that works for each person individually, and we figure it out together. So if you want to lose weight, eating a vegan diet or plant based totally fine, we can figure out a way to do that. If you want to do it as a carnivore or doing paleo or primal or, you know, whatever, fine vegetarian, fine, whatever pescatarian. We will make it work, you can lose weight on all kinds of different diets, okay? There’s not one size that fits for everyone. There’s not one diet that’s best for everyone out there.

Okay, there’s so many different factors involved here, you got to figure out what works best for you. Now, I will say one thing here. And this is my, my caveat, which is, any diet that’s high in sugar and carbohydrates will not work. Any diet that’s high in sugar, and refined carbohydrates especially, will keep you in a state of elevated insulin will keep you in this chronic state of fat storage mode in your body and you’re constantly going to gain weight, you’re going to you know, massively increase your chances for obesity, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, sugar and carbs.

Bad, okay, you absolutely cannot lose weight, while eating a diet that’s high in sugar and carbs. I don’t care what anybody says or what you believe, that’s just the facts. This is just science where our bodies work, okay. So you got to get your insulin down. That’s the only thing I would say about this. So there, there it is. Well, there isn’t one particular diet that works for everyone, we do know that there’s one thing that does not work for everyone, and that’s lots of sugar and carbs.

So choose foods that work for you, if you want to eat, you know, whatever, if you want to eat, you know, a plant based diet, do it. And you know, we can work on that we can, we can make it work for you. But just don’t assume that every one of these diets is going to work for everyone, because they don’t, you know, diets don’t work because they assume that what’s good for one is good for all there really is no one size fits all, when it comes to what food you should be eating.

So choose wisely, my friends. And then number five, and this is probably the most important factor in why diets don’t work. And that is the main concept of a diet, the whole idea of a diet is that it’s temporary, it’s a temporary thing. You know, when we think of a diet we think of as something we do for a short period of time, you know, I need to go on a diet to lose weight.

So most people think they can go on a diet for a few months, get to their goal weight, you know, lose the 20 or 30 or 50 pounds, and then go back to the way they were eating before. You know, eating the same stuff that got them to gain all that weight in the first place. Which makes no sense at all right? This is going back to that whole yo-yo dieting thing. You eat all this crappy food, you gain a bunch of weight, then you’re like, I need to go on a diet.

So you pick one of these diets. It works for a little bit, until it doesn’t, you gain all the weight back. And then you do it again. And this is really bad for you and really bad for your health. And you know, it sets you up for a lifetime of struggle and weight loss failure. And it sets you up for all kinds of things for stress.

For this over desire for food, you’re constantly thinking about and stressing out about food. And, you know, it’s because of all the other things I’ve mentioned here, you know that all the complications, all the restrictions of diets, the deprivation, we feel the cravings we experience is why people just can’t wait to just go back to what they were eating before. Because, frankly, diets kind of suck.

The whole idea that a diet is something that’s temporary, and we got to get rid of that idea. Instead of a diet I teach my clients like I said, how to create a protocol, a way of eating that you can do for the rest of your life. It doesn’t do you any good just to be able to do this temporarily. Just doesn’t work.

Whatever you choose to do, whatever kinds of food you choose to eat, when we talk about what foods you want to eat, and how often you want to eat, and your mindset around food and how you process your emotions. When we talk about taking this holistic approach to nutrition and health and feeling vibrant and thriving in our bodies. It’s not a diet, it’s a way of life.

You’ve got to create a whole new way of thinking about food. You got to change the way you feel about food. You need to change the way you feel about yourself. What I do with my clients is I help them to create a whole new relationship with food And with themselves. You know, if you’re struggling with a diet, yes, stop doing that. You need to create an eating plan that works for you protocol.

And once you get that dialed in, and you get the mindset, right, and you get your emotional state, right, you’ll be able to lose the weight, you’ll, it’s kind of magical, actually, the way it works is you kind of the fat starts coming off. And when you stick to it, it’s something you can do forever, you lose the weight, the fat starts coming off.

And it’s something you just you want to keep doing because it feels so good. And then one of the things that I really want to say here, because I think it’s important is that eating should be a joyous thing. We’ve, our whole culture is like, you know, we celebrate with food a lot of times and I don’t want you to stop doing that.

And so I encourage my clients when they’re creating their protocol to include things like birthdays and holidays like account for those kinds of days. And, and enjoy. You know, the wedding cake when you go to your best friend’s wedding. You know, if it’s your birthday, no one wants to eat a birthday salad, you know, so eat the birthday cake, it’s fine, just go back to what you were doing the next day. It’s not an excuse to just like, say, screw it and go back to eating all the sugar and carbs all the time. But every now and then, you know, eat the birthday cake, you know, and plan ahead for things like this.

But for the most part, what we do is we create a plan that involves eating the kinds of food that properly fuels your body, and keeps your body thriving and working optimally. You know, the food you eat should help your body to thrive. And it should be something that you can do forever.

So you have to change the mindset of like this diet as a temporary thing. And get into the mindset of how you fuel your body today. And how you fuel your body tomorrow is how you’re going to fuel your body a month from now or a year from now or for the rest of your life. So the biggest reason why diets don’t work is that it’s a temporary concept.

Instead, eat real food, food that encourages your body to thrive and live this vibrant, healthy, long life, something that you can do forever. Cool. Cool. We are going to be continuing this conversation in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’d love for you to join the group.

We’re talking about diets and what different kinds of diets people have tried and why they haven’t worked. I would love to hear about your personal experience with some kind of diet. Maybe something I mentioned, maybe something I didn’t mention. I know there’s a lot more diets out there. I’ve tried a lot of them. And obviously not all of them.

But why? What have you tried? And why didn’t work for you? That’s kind of what we’re talking about in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join in the conversation. Well, that’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you as always and keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

172. Can Losing Weight Be Fun?

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Most people think that losing weight equals suffering. If you want to lose weight you have to stop eating all “delicious” foods forever and you will suffer every single day. They use words like …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 172 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, can losing weight be fun? So most people think that losing weight equals suffering. If you want to lose weight, you have to stop eating all the quote-unquote delicious foods forever. And you’re basically going to suffer every single day.

They use words like suffering and struggling and deprivation and starvation and white knuckling it. And I don’t know about you, but all of this sounds pretty terrible to me. If this is what you think losing weight looks like, if you’re suffering every day trying to lose weight, you are doing it wrong. Today, I’m digging into this concept of making healthy eating and losing weight fun.

Can losing weight be fun? Armed with the right mindset, I think it can absolutely be fun. But first, it’s been drilled into our heads that if you’re a runner, you have to eat carbs, lots and lots of carbs. The truth is, though, in two and a half million years of human evolution, we’ve never relied solely on carbs to run long distances, we just never have.

We burn fat, lots of fat, the idea of not using gels, and goos and stuff to run – this isn’t crazy. This isn’t some new fringe concept. It’s actually baked into our DNA. Humans are naturally excellent fat burners. But we’ve gotten far away from that in the last few decades. When you adapt to burning fat for fuel, you will have all the energy you need for running your own stored body fat, right?

We’re not talking about eating bacon and lard or whatever this is like your own stored body fat becomes your fuel source. Plus, if you want to lose weight, what do you have to do? You’ve got to burn fat, you’ve got to burn that stored body fat. So this whole concept of that adaptation, it’s a beautiful thing all the way around.

You really don’t need to eat a ton of carbs to run, you can eat some, that’s fine. You can become fat adapted, though and start using your own body fat as fuel. When you get fat adapted, you’ll never run out of fuel, you’ll be able to run basically all day, and you lose weight in the process. It’s a win win-win.

Learn more about my unique approach to weight loss for runners and join the Coaching Project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Okay, I mentioned something in last week’s podcast, or maybe it was a couple weeks ago about creating habits and trying to make things fun. And I just sort of touched on this idea of, you know, changing your habits eating healthy and how it can be fun.

And I got some questions about that. So I’m like, you know what, I need to just address this today. Because I think there’s this concept that when you change your diet, and when you start exercising, if you want to lose weight, like it’s just not going to be fun. Like you have to suffer your way through this whole process. I think most people believe that if you want to lose weight, you have to suffer. It has to be about suffering and struggling and excessive hunger and deprivation and white knuckling it. And this all sounds like super terrible, right?

The problem with this thinking, if you believe that in order to lose weight, you’re going to have to suffer for the rest of your life, that is absolutely not sustainable. There’s no way you can maintain that level of suffering forever. And so a lot of people believe this. They believe that losing weight equals suffering forever, never going to eat good food again. Got to eat bland, cardboard tasting stuff for the rest of my life. I’m going to be freaking out and feeling deprived every time I’m around some sort of quote-unquote delicious food. Like I just there’s no way I can deal with that. And so they just quit. There’s like, there’s no way I can do that for the rest of my life.

And many of you listening to this right now I know that you are good at suffering already. Like you’re a runner, like you’ve probably run marathons or ultra marathons or half marathons or whatever. Just training for an event like that and training for a marathon requires a lot of suffering.

Like you, there’s months of suffering, I gotta get up early. And it’s cold in the wintertime and like, you know, go run in the rain and run the snow and the ice and the wind and push yourself through the miles and you know that hurts. PR during a marathon is painful, there is pain involved in improving your time.

Every time you want to run a marathon, qualify for Boston, whatever that looks like for you. There’s pain involved, there’s suffering involved, not just in the race itself, but in the months of training that lead up to them. So we are good as runners, we are good at suffering, we can do that. We know what that looks like.

And I’ve suffered so much doing hard races. I have never run a marathon that at some point I didn’t say, ‘why do I even do this, this sucks so bad right now.’ And I remember running my 100 miler, and that’s a whole new level of pain and suffering, my friends, I’m just going to tell you right now, that this is something that I haven’t done again, since because there’s so much pain and suffering involved with that is like 28 hours of pain and suffering involved with that, right?

So runners, we can endure a lot of pain and suffering, we can deal with that, we’re good at this, right? But when I say to you, like, you know, what, just, you know, limit how much like pizza you’re eating or ice cream, like, you know, maybe just not eat that much. Immediately this becomes some type of suffering that you’re just like not willing to endure, right? Think about that for just a second.

You’re going to do all the hard work required to let’s say, qualify for Boston. So hard to do that. Right? You will suffer for months. And during that race itself, you’re going to be running so hard, you’re going to deal with so much pain, that, but if I say like, hey, don’t eat ice cream for 30 days, or 60 days or something like that, it’s like, oh, my god, I can’t do it. Right? It just becomes in our mind, it becomes something that we’re just not willing to deal with. Right? So this is why most people don’t even start.

Now, there is some suffering at the beginning. Like when you change your diet, there’s going to be a little bit of, you know, deprivation, you’re going to feel a little bit like, oh, what am I supposed to eat? I can’t eat sugar, I can’t eat, you know, processed flours and things like that. And whatever your plan looks like, everybody’s a little bit different.

But let’s just say you’re not eating pizza and ice cream. And you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m you know, this is hard, right? Yeah, it is hard at the beginning. Over time, that gets better. That gets better. Like it’s this is not going to last forever. I think we all know that, right. But if you believe that, you know, the rest of your life, you’re going to be suffering and struggling, no one’s going to sign up for that.

No one on this planet is going to sign up for that. I don’t care how much pain you can endure during an ultramarathon or something like that, nobody is going to sign up for a lifetime of suffering and struggling around food, right?

So there’s a mindset that this is too hard, I’m going to feel deprived for the rest of my life, screw this, it’s not worth it. And that mindset is just wrong, you have to change that, right? But most people, they just come at this whole process like losing weight, the whole journey of losing weight, is just going to feel so terrible forever that they quit or never start.

But when you do that, you’re really giving up what you really want for yourself. You want to get healthier, you want to be stronger, you want to feel good in your body, you want to feel confident, you want to run faster, whatever it is. Losing weight is actually just sort of a nice side effect of all those things.

Like you’re trying to become this healthiest version of yourself. And losing weight is just a little nice side benefit in the process. But you give all that up when you quit on yourself because you think it’s gonna be too hard or you make it too hard, right?

Becoming a fit, strong, healthy human being means you’re probably going to have to change some things. If you want to lose some weight, you’re gonna have to make some changes, you’re probably gonna have to give up a couple of these foods that you’ve been eating, or maybe not eat as much of some of these foods. Really limit how much pizza you eat.

I eat pizza every now and then. I eat some tacos here and there, I had some sushi a couple weeks ago. It’s great. I don’t do that all the time. But there will be some amount of discomfort there will be some amount of suffering involved. It should be minimal. It shouldn’t be temporary.

Changing your diet, changing anything for that matter, comes with some amount of discomfort, right? Just accept this, right? Let’s accept this and move on. It’s gonna happen. It’s typically at the beginning, it’s not a lifetime of pain and suffering and struggling. If it is, you’re doing it wrong. And I want to clear one thing up right away. The goal of all this, the goal of losing weight, or eating healthy, is not to have fun. It’s to be a fit healthy human being and do what it takes to stick with that, like make this your lifestyle.

To live your life as a fit, healthy human being, that means there will be some struggle, some suffering, some times that are not so good. That’s okay, that’s part of the process, there’s also going to be some times where it is fun, where it feels great, just like running.

But if you want to get stronger, let’s say, you’ve got to lift the heavy weights. Lifting heavy weights is hard, it hurts. There’s a certain amount of suffering involved, right. But is that fun? The results are fun. Looking in the mirror and seeing your abs for the first time since you were like 12. That’s fun. Having your shirts fit tight around your arms. That’s fun for the guys, maybe, maybe for the ladies, too.

If you want to lose weight, you have to endure a little bit of suffering like not eating pizza. That’s not fun. Not drinking any alcohol when everybody else at the table is drinking is not necessarily fun. But you know what is fun? Not waking up with a hangover the next day, stepping on the scale and seeing a lower number, that’s fun.

Fitting into that pair of jeans again, that’s fun. Feeling confident enough to wear a two piece bathing suit, or to maybe take your shirt off at the beach, guys only probably, depending on what beach you’re at, that’s fun. So it’s not going to be fun and games all the time. And you have to accept that, right?

You’ve got to kind of do some of the hard things in order to reap the benefits in order to have the fun. Running is hard, right? We do it anyway because we love how we feel afterward. We love pushing ourselves. We love accomplishing big things. We love seeing what we’re capable of. We love accomplishing more and running faster and running further.

But running is not always fun. Running is hard. A lot of times running is hard. I did two runs last weekend, I’m training for this Ultra. And on Saturday, I ran 24 miles. On Sunday I ran 10. Right, that was on the schedule. That’s what I told myself I was going to do. I did the 24 on Saturday and was pretty good. I felt good. Felt pretty strong, and recovered quickly from that run.

And the next day I set out to do 10. And every step of that 10 miles was terrible. It was so hard. I’m like oh my god, this is so hard. And if my belief is that running is supposed to be fun all the time. I’m quitting like right now, I’m not doing any of this, running is hard. Let’s just be honest, like running is hard.

You know, I’m putting in these miles because what I want for myself is to finish this Ultra and I, you know, I’m putting in the miles and I’m doing the hard things now so that I can reap the benefits and finish this thing. Now this Ultra I’m doing is going to be another level of heart. And that’s okay, I’m building the strength and the endurance and all that right now to be able to finish this thing.

But sometimes, running is hard. Sometimes, losing weight is hard, sometimes sticking with the plan, and not eating the pizza, and not drinking the beers after work or whatever is hard. Losing weight is hard sometimes, but we do it anyway because we’re committed to that process.

We’re committed to this as a lifestyle. I saw this quote the other day, which I thought was so awesome, it said, “How long does it take the average person to run a marathon?” That was like a question that was posed and the answer underneath it said, “Average people don’t run marathons.” I thought, damn, I love that!

I love that because we are not average people. We want more for ourselves. Average people don’t do the hard things. Average people will not deal with any amount of suffering or struggling in order to lose the way because it’s hard. But you’re not average. You’re willing to do the hard things so that you can become more, right?

Another thing I want you to think about is what does fun even mean to you? Is running intervals fun? I don’t know. Probably not. I’m going to say no. But how good you feel afterwards, that’s fun. Is doing the work to PR a marathon fun? No, but there’s some elation that you feel when you cross the finish line that is out of this world. I

s it fun to skip dessert? No. But when you see that number on the scale go down again, that’s fun. You got to reframe fun. Is it fun to binge out on like fried food? It might feel like it at the time, listen, I can’t eat this stuff. I eat fried food and I feel terrible for like three days. I’m sluggish, I can’t think straight. I got to stay away from this stuff. Stay away from fried food. If you just do one thing, stay away from fried food.

You know what is fun though? Waking up every morning feeling good. Having lots of energy, having a clear head. That’s fun. So we have to kind of reframe our idea of fun and maybe push some of this short term pleasure off the table, in favor of what we really want for ourselves long term.

And one thing I just have to say right here is like fun is subjective. What might be fun for me is not going to be fun for you necessarily. How you make weight loss fun, or how you make running fun is gonna be different for each person. So we have to come up with some ideas that feel good individually. But I’m gonna give you some examples here.

So how can you make running fun, let’s say one thing I love is running with friends. If you have a group of people you can run with regularly, that is fun. I have had more fun in my running group over the last, whatever, 15 years, basically running with the same people for that amount of time.

It is so amazing because we do hard things, but we do them together. And we laugh and we joke around, there’s always a joke of the day, usually super inappropriate. And super fun. Mix up your workouts, don’t do the same workouts all the time, change things up, leave your watch at home. That’s kind of fun. Just go out there and run. Leave your phone at home. They call this running naked.

It doesn’t mean running without clothes on, I want to make that very clear. Running naked means leaving your watch and your phone at home and just going for a run and paying attention to your breathing and to your surroundings. And like it’s just different, you know, run somewhere new, pick a new route somewhere you’ve never been before.

Get out in nature, run on a beach, one of my favorite things to do in the world is run on a beach. If you can do that, if you have any access to a beach, go do that right now. Run on trails, run up a mountain, get out in nature and run in nature, it’s amazing. This is what we do as human beings, we’ve just evolved to run in nature. So do more of that.

How can you make losing weight fun? Do it with friends. You know, one of the big reasons I have a group component to my coaching program is that we do it together. You know we support each other, we do coaching together, and we encourage each other and we’re there for each other.

We share ideas, and we share what works for us and what doesn’t work. And it’s more fun to do with friends. Plain and simple. Try new foods. What foods do you love? And by the way, there are so many choices for healthy foods out there. It’s literally limitless.

I hear people say this all the time. “I don’t know what to eat. There’s nothing to eat.” This is just a cop out. This is an excuse. There are a few foods that we try to stay away from like, I’ll tell people like maybe we start out with stay away from sugar, flour, vegetable oils, you cut out those three things.

“Oh my gosh, what’s left?” Literally everything else in the world. Everything else. Eat more protein, stay away from junk food. And then the choices are limitless from there. I love burgers and I found a bunch of new burger places around town here. And we go to these burger places and they do a great job of like making a burger with a lettuce wrap.

I don’t eat flour and leave you know the bun, whatever. So I’ll get a lettuce wrap burger. Oh, get an extra patty on there and put all kinds of stuff on there. Veggies, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, jalapenos, and a fried egg on there, whatever. It’s like super delicious and just love eating burgers again, you know?

I like pizza, all the pizza here. I’ll make my own crust. You know. Try new places, new foods, new recipes. Eating healthy can be fun. If it’s not fun to some degree, it doesn’t have to be fun all the time, you’re probably doing it wrong. Okay.

Another way of making this whole process of eating healthy and losing weight fun is rewarding yourself. Reward yourself for sticking to the plan. Don’t reward yourself with food. Don’t reward yourself with like, oh I stuck to my plan for the last week I’m going to eat a pizza, I’m going to eat ice cream, I’m going to, you know, eat a bunch of candy. No, don’t do that. That’s called self sabotaging behavior. We don’t do that.

Reward yourself with things like a massage, or go to a museum or get a new pair of running shoes. How about that, or a new shirt or pair of jeans or bathing suit or something. Reward yourself with something that feels good. Make it fun.

Go out in the woods, take a hike, get out in nature, take a weekend trip somewhere, it doesn’t have to be somewhere far away, or expensive or whatever. Just do something to reward yourself for sticking with the plan. Again, fun is subjective. So what’s fun for you? Like how many ways can you come up with to make losing weight fun for you?

And I talk about all this stuff here on the podcast. But listen, if you really want to change, you’ve got to do stuff, right? The only way you can produce results is by taking action. Action produces results, thinking about stuff doesn’t give you results.

So when this podcast is over, I want you to get a notebook or journal and I want you to spend a few minutes and write down all the different ways that you can make losing weight fun. Answer these questions. How can I make eating healthy, more fun for me? How can I make sticking to my plan more fun for me? How can I make exercise more fun for me? How can I make running more fun for me?

Ask yourself all these questions, write down all the answers, you should probably be able to come up with 100 different answers to these questions total, you know, something like that. 50, whatever, come up with as many as you can, the more fun you make it, the more likely you are to stick with it.

Another concept I want you to kind of wrap your head around is this. Over time, your palette will change. You may think that eating healthy is gonna be boring, I’m not gonna like it and it’s not going to taste good. And when you first change your diet, and you first stop eating some of these hyper palatable foods, your taste buds may be like where’s the good stuff, quote-unquote good stuff?

Where’s the overly processed hyper palatable foods? Like, over time your taste buds will change. And things will start to become more delicious to you, the simple foods will become more delicious to you. For example, one of the things that I love to eat, I love eating steak with salt on it like that is one of my favorite things to eat. It’s so simple. And this is from a guy who didn’t eat meat for like 10 years.

And now I just love it’s like such a beautiful thing. You know, a nice ribeye grilled with some salt. That’s it. It’s so good. And that’s all I need. Chicken and broccoli is one of my other favorite things. It’s just, you know, broiled chicken with broccoli. That’s it. And some butter and salt on that broccoli. Oh my gosh, so delicious. My mouth just like explodes with flavor. And I’m like, this is so good.

But it wasn’t good at the beginning. It was hard. It was like, this is like, I want a pizza, I want bread, I want sugar, or whatever. And I don’t need all that stuff anymore. My tastes have changed, my palette has changed. I find so much satisfaction and fun eating a super simple diet. It’s not complicated. It’s not, you know, super exciting. But it’s also fun to eat this way. It really is. Food can be fun, every meal doesn’t have to be some magical spiritual experience. Okay?

Over time when your tastes change these simple foods will become more fun for you to promise. If you’re trying to lose weight and you’re suffering, you’re suffering long term, you are doing it wrong. It’s not sustainable, you’ll quit. Right? It’s kind of like doing speed work every single day, you are going to hate running very quickly, you’re gonna burn yourself out, and you’re gonna quit because that is not sustainable.

And then listen, if you want to have more fun on your weight loss journey, consider joining us in the Coaching Project where we actually have fun. This is my lifetime access program. We support each other, we encourage each other, we learn from each other, you get live coaching with me every week, twice a week. And this makes the process of losing weight actually fun.

Just like running alone is not as fun as running with a group. Being on this weight loss journey alone is not as fun as doing it with a group like the coaching project. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

170. Getting Started With Habit Change

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If you want different results you have to do things differently, right? But doing things differently requires some work, it’s an uncomfortable process, and honestly, this is why most people refuse …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 170 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Getting Started With Habit Change. If you want different results, you have to do things differently, right?

But doing things differently requires some work. It’s an uncomfortable process. And honestly, it’s why most people just refuse to change. But what if you could make changing easier? What if you could replace a bunch of your bad habits with good ones that would make change much easier? Right? It’d be amazing.

That’s the basic premise of developing good habits: making things like living a healthy lifestyle automatic, make it easy. But again, most people won’t do the work to change their habits because change is hard. And it doesn’t feel good. Not at first anyway.

So today, I’m going to give you some actionable tips on getting started with habit change. Because if you can just get started, you can start making progress. Change won’t happen if you never start. So let’s get started, shall we?

But first, I think you will agree with me when I say that most fad diets don’t work. Have you ever tried a fad diet? I have, I’ve tried all of them. The promise of a fad diet is that it’s the best and fastest way to lose weight. And a lot of them will tell you it’s the only way and nothing else works, but this way does work.

And every year millions of people get sucked into this idea that this thing is going to be different. This thing is going to be the cure all for everything right. And every year millions of people are disappointed because they don’t get the results that they want. Why? Because fad diets are not sustainable.

Humans are not designed to survive on cabbage soup alone, or just grapefruit or baby food or whatever the latest trend is, baby food diet. That’s actually a thing by the way. I know, weird, right? These fad diets may help you lose weight in the short term, but they don’t teach you how to change your habits.

They don’t teach you how to change your lifestyle. They don’t teach you how to make this something that is sustainable because eating baby food or grapefruits or cabbage soup for the rest of your life is totally not sustainable. Right. A big focus of my coaching program is to teach you how to integrate healthy eating habits into your life for good in a way that is sustainable for you as an individual.

So a rule of thumb, I think we can all follow here is that if you can’t sustain it, just don’t do it. Stay away from the weird fat diets. And just do what we’ve always done as human beings eat real food, food that still looks like food. Food our ancient ancestors would still recognize they can go oh, well, I know what that is. Because you can’t go wrong with this plan, right?

And if you want some help with this, if you want some guidance every step of the way through this whole process, check out my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/join. You can learn all about my program. And I hope you see hope to see you in the Running Lean Coaching Project where the project is always you.

Okay, so today I wanted to talk about getting started with habit change. Because when it comes to changing habits, I think we all know that there’s processes involved, and that there are some things that we can do. There’s been books written about this, to really, you know, change habits and make them last for good. Okay.

But just getting started with this whole process feels overwhelming for a lot of people. And I wanted to take some time today to just go over a few principles and give you a few tips and ideas for getting started with habit change. Because if you can just start doing things differently, if you can just start making some effort and getting some movement happening, then you can start to see some progress happening. Okay.

If you want to change anything in your life, you’ve got to do things differently. All right. I think we can all agree on that and doing things differently is the challenging part because we’re just so used to doing things a certain way, it’s so ingrained into our brain that this is the way I do things that doing something differently feels uncomfortable, it feels scary, it feels foreign to us.

And until those new things become a habit, it’s going to feel uncomfortable and scary and foreign, so just getting started with this process. A lot of people will not even bother, they won’t even bother starting and changing something because the whole process feels too hard, it feels too scary, it’s gonna be a challenge. But if you’re willing to accept the challenge, then you can start making progress, and you can start creating good habits in a lot of different areas of your life.

Okay, today, I want to focus on a few I want to focus on, you know, weight loss is a topic I talk about a lot in here, as a weight loss coach for runners, this is a topic that I’m going to focus on a lot. So I’m going to kind of frame the conversation today, around you know, losing weight and changing your diet, but you can apply these same principles to any habits that you want to change.

The principles will be the same if you’re trying to get stronger, or improve your running or, you know, improve your relationship or, you know, improve your career or you know, better the relationship with your kids or whatever it is. There’s so many different ways that we can apply these same principles in different areas of our life. It’s not just related to weight loss, but that’s my jam. So that’s what I’m going to be talking about today.

So the first thing I want to say is that you have to just start, and I know this seems like too rudimentary. But so many people procrastinate changing. They procrastinate getting started, that they never take action. Have you ever said I really want to lose weight, or I really want to run a marathon, but I’m just going to wait until X, Y or Z happens and then I’ll start?

You know, I want to wait until after the New Year, or I want to wait until after St. Patrick’s Day, or I want to wait until when the summer comes around, or I want to wait until; you know what I mean. And we could just do that forever. Why don’t you just start right now? And you can come up with all kinds of excuses, and all kinds of stories and all kinds of reasons why you can’t start right now.

But it all boils down to you’re just afraid. And that’s it, and it’s okay. It’s okay to be afraid to start. Because getting started with something like this can be a little bit scary. If you’re somebody who’s like, man, I’ve been wanting to lose weight for 10 years. And I’ve got a lot of weight to lose, like 50 pounds.

And you know, just getting started just feels so daunting and scary. Because what if I fail, I failed before, but I do really want to do this, but maybe I’ll just wait until and then you fill in the blank with whatever is going to happen. And whenever the planets align or whatever. Just throw all that garbage out the window and just start right now. Start right now.

If you want to just start losing weight right now, I’m going to give you one tip that will absolutely point you in the right direction. Just stop eating sugar. Do that today. If you do that, starting today, I promise you a week from now, if you stick with it, you’ll feel better and you’ll probably lose some weight. And you’ll be like, dang, why didn’t I start that earlier?

I can’t tell you how many people come to me for coaching. And we start working together. And we start to put together a plan for them and they start feeling better and running gets better and they’re losing weight and they’re feeling amazing and they’re sleeping better. And they’re like I had been thinking about working with you for like two years and I just finally said why didn’t I do this earlier?

Well, gosh, I’m just kicking myself for not starting earlier. I’m like well let’s just, you know, it takes what it takes but I just want to encourage you that wherever you are right now is a perfect time to get started. It is the perfect time to change, it is the perfect time to give up junk food or sugar or whatever it is that is your Achilles heel. Okay, so just get started, stop saying later.

Stop waiting for the planets to align, they never do. Although the whole Mercury being in retrograde thing is just messing with my computer, right? Is that a thing? I think it is a thing. So don’t wait for that to happen just like do your thing and do it now get started now. This idea of later is a killer of hopes and dreams. Later, later, later, because later never happens. Okay, so the first thing is just like start, just start where you are is fine.

And the next thing is that I want you to start simple, don’t overcomplicate this stuff, we have to make things very, very simple. At the beginning, when I’m working with new people, we change a couple of things, okay? I might say like, Hey, we’re going to stop eating sugar, we’re going to stay away from, you know, junk food, we’re going to limit how much you know, carbohydrates, you’re eating, whatever, like it all goes a little bit different for each person.

But we start with a few things, we see how that goes for a week or two, and then we layer on something else, okay? If you try to change 27 things at once, it is going to be too overwhelming for you. And it’s funny, because I’ve worked with a couple people who have told me like, I can handle it, Patrick, just tell me everything right now, I want to start doing it all.

And I’m like, okay, here’s a few things. And I’ll lay out five or six things, you know, that they can change. And, you know, they’ll start doing all these things. And they’ll message me like three days later, and they’re like, okay, that was too much, is too overwhelming for me, I can’t do all this stuff all at once. I’m like, I know.

So we change a few things at a time. First, for a lot of reasons. Number one is like we want to get your body used to doing things a little bit differently. And if you remove sugar, if you’re somebody that’s eating a lot of carbs, a lot of sugar, and we lower your carb intake and stop eating sugar and refined grains, that might be a bit of a shock to your system, you know, and so we want to get your body like feeling good again.

And then we can layer on the next thing, okay. That’s why one of the reasons why we do this also, from a psychological standpoint, we can handle a couple changes at once, one or two things, but much more than that, and we just feel too overwhelmed. And we’re more likely to give up because it feels too overwhelming.

So start simple, start very simple. Change one thing, give up sugar, just stop eating sugar for a week, see how you feel okay? I heard this recently, I like this principle called the ABZ principle. That’s like Alpha Beta Zulu. And the ABZ principle is this. Where you are right now is A and where you want to be eventually, maybe lose 50 pounds, that’s going to be Z.

All right, that’s the end game, where you want to be is the next aligned action. That is your next step. That’s what you’re going to do. Now. That’s where your focus is on B, keep your focus there. Do not worry about steps C through Y. We’ll get there later. Start where you are. Start with here you are at A and I’m going to focus on B right now. I’ll get to C later.

And then D, E and F and so on. But for right now it’s just B, that’s all we’re going to focus on right now. If you can just use that kind of as a basic principle for habit change, this whole process is going to become so much easier for you, because you’re not overwhelming yourself. You’re literally just working on the next aligned action, what is the next thing I can do that will move me an inch closer to Z?

Not three feet closer, just an inch or two. That’s all we want to focus on right now. Okay, so just keep it very, very simple, especially at the beginning. And think about all the different ways that you can simplify the process of habit change, it could be as simple as like, okay, I really want to get in the habit of eating healthy food every day at lunch. And so one way I’m going to simplify that process is to meal prep once a week on Sunday afternoon. And then I’m going to have my lunches all prepared.

You know, when I go to work, I can just grab one of those and I’m done. I don’t have to think about it. I’ve simplified that part of the plan. You know, I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do every single day. I’ve kind of made it very, very simple. And that right there. That simple little tip right there is going to help you increase your compliance every single day.

It’s going to be much easier to stay on track and develop a good habit of eating healthy lunches, if you’ve already prepped them ahead of time, right? So keep it simple. And then make it simplify the process as well as much as you can. If you want to get in the habit of running early in the morning, every other day or whatever; get out your running clothes and your running shoes the night before, lay it all out, get it all ready to go so that when you wake up in the morning, all you have to do is slip out of bed and slip into those running clothes and slip out the door and you’re ready and you’re running.

If you can just kind of get in the habit of putting out those clothes the night before, when you’re thinking clearly and it’s not like cold outside and you’re in bed all snuggled up all warm and thinking about being outside, get yourself ready the night before. That way, when you wake up in the morning, you’re just like ready to go. And you can just get right into the start of developing that habit of getting into running right away. You don’t have to think about it because you’ve already made that decision ahead of time. Okay.

Another way of developing good habits, especially at the beginning, is to kind of ritualize some of the things that we do and, and putting out those running clothes would be kind of an example of a ritual that makes things simple as well. But it’s also a way of building into your day, some rituals so that some of these things can become habits for you.

So I’ve used this analogy of like a sports team, whatever. Like they have pregame routines, right? You’ve seen the baseball players, they’ll go out and they’ll toss the ball around. And they kind of do the same thing. Every single time. Football players do drills, whatever, I guess I don’t really know. But I have seen baseball players go out there and toss the ball around.

Today, by the way, I took a little run through downtown Cincinnati. And it happens to be Opening Day. Opening Day is a big deal here in Cincinnati as like the first official baseball team in the United States, Cincinnati Reds. And we have a big parade every year. And so there’s thousands of people downtown kind of playing in the streets getting ready for this parade.

I didn’t even know it was Opening Day until I was running down there. But I was like, oh, this is so cool. This is so fun, you know, but it just got me thinking about like baseball and how they have these pregame routines, these rituals that they go through. And they do this not because they’re really trying to warm up, you know, that’s probably a little bit of it. But it’s a little bit of just like they’re preparing their mind, and they’re preparing their body to start to do this work that they’re going to do, okay.

So if you’re somebody that wants to change your day, you want to feel a little bit more, you know, mindful during your day and you want to, you know, start your day on the right track every day, create like a morning routine.

So you might get up, you might put the coffee on, you might do a little meditation, you might spend a few minutes journaling, that would be a great way to start every single day. So you’ve developed this ritual, about how you start your day. And if you want to feel better throughout your day, every day consistently, then maybe starting every day with the same morning routine.

Much like baseball players start a game with the same warmup routine, you are going to set yourself up; mind, body and spirit to like, you know, approach that day in a more mindful way. Same thing, like if you want to sleep better at night, maybe have a wind down routine at the end of your day. So you can start your day with a morning routine, you can end your day with a wind down routine, where you might dim the lights for a little while, you might do some journaling or some reading, you know before going to bed.

You know you brush your teeth, you put your pajamas on, you kind of get in bed, like whatever that looks like for you create a little bit of a routine around some of these things, make it a ritual and it will make the process of winding down much easier for you and you’ll probably sleep better if you get into this habit of of this ritualistic routine, okay.

Your pregame routine is what’s going to get you into action that’s going to get you to start the process of taking action when you don’t feel like it. So you may wake up in the morning and you’re like I don’t feel like doing much today, but I’m just gonna go ahead and get up every day and I do my journaling and meditation. So I’m just going to start with that. And just the process of doing that will set you up for a better day. Right there. Even though you may not even feel like it. It’s just gonna make it that much easier for you. Okay.

Another way to get started with changing habits is that you have to make changes to your environment. And there’s a lot of different ways of looking at this and a lot of different ways to interpret what I mean when I say environment. And I’ll give you a couple examples here.

One of them is if you if you want to start eating better, and you want to stop eating junk food, get the junk food out of the house, you have to get that stuff out of your house, the environment that you live in the environment that you spend the most amount of time in, cannot be laden with junk food everywhere you look.

Every time you open the fridge or the pantry, or you look on the counter and you see cookies, or ice cream, or whatever, chips, pretzels, just junk, just, that’s going to make it very hard for you to stay on track, right. So you’ve got to change your environment and clean out the fridge, clean out the pantry. If you only have one option for the food that you have in your house, and it’s healthy food, and it’s food that’s on your plan, you’re going to be so much more likely to stay on track and develop good habits around what you eat and what you don’t eat.

The more you can control your default food environment, the healthier you are going to be. For most of us, our default food environment is our house, our own home. And if you can control the heck out of that you are well on your way to being the healthiest version of yourself. Some other forms of environment that we can change to improve our compliance and to improve our ability to create good habits is things like what we’re reading, what we’re listening to, what we’re watching, the people we’re hanging around, this is all part of your environment, okay.

I’m a person who likes to consume a lot of content. So I read a lot of books. I listen to podcasts, I listen to audiobooks. I watch documentaries, I hang around people, I follow people online. And all these people are like, people that lift me up. The books I read are on topics like habit change, and nutrition. The podcasts I listen to are on things like mindset, and coaching, and improving your health and your fitness and strength and, and all the stuff that I’m constantly immersed in.

This world of healthy, living, healthy eating, I’m always learning, I’m always growing and evolving. One way that you can do this is to join a running group. If you have a local running group, join the group and immerse yourself in this world of running with other people. Because you’re going to be surrounded by other people who have similar goals.

Maybe you’re all training for the same marathon, or half marathon, or 5k, or whatever. But when you’re surrounded by people who get it, who are all kind of doing the same thing. You’re listening to podcasts on that subject, you’re reading books on that subject, and your world becomes like focused on running marathons – you’re gonna be so much more successful, and so much more driven, to stay on track and create good habits.

So immerse yourself in this world of losing weight, healthy living. This is one of the reasons I designed my coaching program the way that I did. It’s designed exactly for this purpose, to help you stay surrounded by people who get it, who will encourage you, who lift you up, who inspire you and motivate you and who help you stay on track.

The people who show up for all my group coaching calls, the people who do the homework, who immerse themselves into this program, honestly, they get the best results. So if you want to get started with habit change, one of the best things you can do is sort of immerse yourself in this world of healthy eating, of nutrition, of running, of losing weight, all that stuff.

And I promise you, it’s going to make changing your habits so much easier because everybody that’s around you is doing the same thing. You know, they say if you surround yourself with that you’re kind of the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And I love that because if you spend your time around, you know five people who eat junk food, you’re probably the sixth.

If you spend your time with five really overweight people Well, you’ll probably be the sixth. If you spend your time with five people who run marathons, you’ll probably be the six or five people who are losing weight, you will probably be the sixth. Okay? So immerse yourself into this environment of being a healthy person, and you will be.

And then lastly, you know, this is something that is often overlooked. And a lot of people don’t really talk about this. But when it comes to losing weight, and changing habits, and getting healthier and getting stronger, I think people have this presupposition, this idea that it has to be a suffer fest, that in order to lose weight, you’re going to have to suffer your way to your weight loss goal, and it’s going to really suck.

Now, I’ll be honest, there are times when it might, and I talk about this, I say, hey, you know, you have to embrace the suck sometimes, right? But that doesn’t mean it has to be a suffer fest through the whole process. So my last tip for you is that whatever you’re doing, you have to make it fun. You cannot suffer your way to your ideal weight. I mean, you can and some people do, but I do not recommend that.

So you need to find some ways of making the process fun. And in my coaching program, I try so hard to have fun with it and be light hearted. And we laugh and I think we do have fun doing this. Okay, we don’t, you know, sit there and you know mope around about this. There’s times when it’s challenging for us and for me and for you, and I get all that. But for the most part, we have fun doing this, we look for ways of making this process fun.

So how can you put some fun into changing your habits or getting started with habit change? Now fun is very subjective, it’s going to look different for different people. For me, I enjoy trying some different foods, and you know, kind of changing up my diet every now and then. And, you know, still focused on the principles that I teach and, you know, in maintaining high protein and you know, a lower carb approach for the gym, for the most part, you know, in general that works for me, other people, like, you know, eat more carbs and stuff like that.

But I try to have fun doing this. I try to make eating part of the process of having fun. I recently made some green enchiladas with my girlfriend. We made this big casserole dish of enchiladas that were so amazing; chicken enchiladas and with cheese and sour cream and green enchilada sauce and hot salsa stuff. So much fun. Like we had a really good time doing that.

Putting those together and eating, eating can be fun. It doesn’t have to be you know, oh, gosh, we’re eating you know, just kale again. It’s not like that at all. Not like that at all. But I tried to have fun doing this. And I had tried to have fun with my training, with my diet, with the way I approach nutrition, with the way that I approach strength, all this stuff. I try to have fun with this.

So think about ways that you can make losing weight fun. I know it doesn’t sound logical because most people don’t look at it that way. They think of losing weight as being such a tough process and such a unfun process, but I promise you, there are ways that we can make this process fun. You can have fun, while losing weight, you absolutely can. Okay.

And if you ever want to make habit change and weight loss easier, join the Running Lean coaching project. I promise you’ll get all the support that you need to create healthy habits that actually stick. Just head over to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more, and I’ll see you there. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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