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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Habits

142. Overcoming Emotional Eating

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If you’re like most people and you hear the words, “emotional eating” you probably picture a woman crying in bed eating a half-gallon of ice cream right out of the container. I know that’s what’s …

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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 142. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: overcoming emotional eating. If you’re like most people, when you hear the words, emotional eating, you probably picture a woman crying in bed, eating a half gallon of ice cream right out of the container.

I know that’s what’s depicted in rom com movies and on TV, but that image is just plain wrong. Emotional Eating is something that we all do. Both men and women do it. And it typically looks nothing like what we see on the screen. And one of the keys to becoming the healthiest version of yourself is getting control of your food choices.

And the way you do that is to stop the emotional eating. This is especially important for runners who typically don’t consider themselves emotional eaters. Hmm, interesting. We’re going to talk about that today. So in this episode, I’m gonna explain what emotional eating is and what it isn’t. And I’m going to share some things that you can do to begin the process of overcoming emotional eating for good.

And when I talk about coaching, and when I talk about my particular program, and the way that I do things, I have four main pillars of my program, four main areas of focus, and those include nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset. And mindset is the foundation of everything that we do. Armed with the right mindset, there’s basically nothing that you can’t accomplish. Okay?

So mindset is extremely important in the work that we do in my coaching program. And mindset includes both mental and emotional strength, both mental and emotional well being. And emotional eating is one of those things that is one of the hardest things to master, especially for the type of people that I work with athletes runners, because they know what to do, knowing what to do is one part of this, but actually doing it consistently is a whole nother thing.

Okay, so we work on this, we focus on it, we spend time working on improving and eliminating emotional eating, eliminating the need to do this, to engage in this behavior of emotional eating, okay, and I’ll explain what it is and everything here in the podcast. But I just want you to understand that it is something we will work on.

If you want to get back into control and feel like you’re in control of how you eat, you know how often you eat, how much you’re eating, the types of foods you’re eating. If you want to feel like you have control again, then this is an area that we need to focus on. Okay. And if it’s something you want help with, I got you. To learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.

You fill out a quick application and we can have a conversation and get started. Okay, I’d love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, called the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply And let’s get this thing started. Cool.

Okay, so let’s get into this topic of overcoming emotional eating. Then first I want to explain a little bit about what emotional eating is and what it is. And like I said at the beginning here, we have this picture in our head of emotional eating, being something very similar to what we see in movies in romantic comedies and pictured on television shows and things like that. And they usually show some woman who just went through some bad breakup or really got her heart broken by a boyfriend or something like that.

And so they picture her in bed with the half gallon of ice cream and next door is a half eaten large pizza and she’s just got a spoon and she’s just digging into it crying watching, you know, some sort of lifetime movie or something like that. Right? And this is just such a, I think this is kind of a dumb depiction of what emotional eating is because, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s fine and it kind of conveys the message they’re trying to get across in the movie or whatever.

But that’s really just such a tiny part of what emotional eating looks like, okay? Emotional Eating is not just eating because you’re sad and you went through some big breakup, emotional eating is not something that only women do. It’s something that we all do. Men and women both do this, and we do it regularly, you probably don’t even know that you’re doing it. It’s such an automatic habit, okay?

So emotionally eating is not necessarily the way that it’s depicted in the movies, it is something that is pretty mundane, and looks pretty benign on the surface. But it’s something that can really kind of thwart your progress if you’re trying to improve your health, if you’re trying to improve your body composition, if you’re trying to improve your relationship with food and nutrition and exercise, okay.

So what emotional eating is, is using food as a way of changing how you feel. So imagine that you come home from a long day at work, and you’re a little stressed out from the work day and the boss and the project you got going on. Or maybe you have kids that have just come home from school. And you know, things are a little chaotic at the house in that moment, right.

And what you do in that moment is reach for something to soothe you, something to help you deal with the stress that you’re experiencing in that moment. And so you go for the cookies that are sitting out on the counter, or the chocolate cake that’s been, you know, sitting in the fridge, or you know, the pretzels, or the potato chips, or whatever it is, okay. So you use food as a way of suppressing that stress that you’re feeling in that moment.

It’s actually a way of numbing, or we’re trying to numb that emotion, we don’t want to feel that emotion of stress. And so we eat instead. And when you eat something, especially those things that I mentioned, sugar, potato chips, pretzels, any kind of refined carbohydrates, any kind of sugary type of food, it feels good, we get this release of dopamine, we get the feel good, you know, serotonin go and we get the feel good chemicals going in our brain.

And we’re like woo! Yeah, there we go. I’m feeling better. I don’t have to feel that stress anymore. The reality is you do, you still experience the stress. But for a brief moment there, you’re numbing yourself to that distress, okay. So we use food, and alcohol and drugs and cigarettes and caffeine, any kind of mood altering substance, even shopping and scrolling through social media, things like that.

We use these to try to feel better, we use these to numb ourselves from having to feel the emotions that we’re experiencing in that moment. And it doesn’t just have to be grief, or sadness. And it doesn’t have to be just because something major just happened like some big stressful event. It could just be an every day, you know, source of stress. Like I said, like the kids coming home from school or something like that.

It can be something really mundane. It can even be something like you’re eating because you’re bored. You know, you’re sitting at home, you’re working all day. And every 30 minutes or so you just get up and you’re like, sure I’m bored and you go to the fridge and you start rifling through what’s in the fridge or going through the pantry and grabbing various bags of chips and stuff like that. And we’re doing it because, you know, we just want something to kind of numb the boredom. So anytime we’re using food to try to feel better. It’s almost always a numbing act.

In this country in the United States, we are really, really good at numbing. We are a highly addicted society here. We eat a lot of food emotionally. We take a lot of prescription drugs, we take a lot of illicit drugs. There’s a lot of that alcoholism and a lot of drinking that goes on here in the United States. And all of these things are done because we are trying to feel different or feel nothing, we just want to stop feeling whatever that feeling is.

So emotional eating is just using something externally to try to feel better internally. Right, and even runners, even people who are athletes in and, and know, better and know like what to do, we know that, you know, eating certain foods is probably not in our best interest, it’s not going to help us to run that faster marathon that we’re training for, it’s not going to help us stay fat adapted, or whatever it is that our goal is, we know these things.

But we still engage in this emotional eating behavior every single day. And I talk to people, every single day, I talk to runners who are really, really good at sticking with their running plan, who are really good at sticking with their strength workouts and are really good at sticking with their cross training, they will get up early in the morning and get stuff done.

And they feel great, because they’re exercising, they’re doing what they’re supposed to and when it comes to eating and sticking to their food plan, it is really, really challenging. And I find this pretty interesting. We can be really mentally and emotionally tough around exercise. But when it comes to food, we just melt, we melt like ice cream on a hot summer day, we just melt, we cannot deal with what’s happening around us.

We cannot deal with the stress or feeling or the frustration or the anger or the you know, irritation or whatever it is, or the boredom, we have a really hard time just dealing with, you know, life around us. And so we use food. And we have been using food as a coping mechanism for many, many years and decades. Most of our life, actually, we’ve been taught this from an early age our parents have, God love them, but our parents have, you know, kind of created little emotional eaters, you know, they they reward us with food, when we’re feeling sad, or we’re crying or we’re like a little upset, to give us food to try to soothe those feelings, to try to make us feel better, you know, all good intentions, and all that.

But I think we need to like break this cycle. If you’re a parent, maybe we can kind of break this cycle of not using food as a way of helping our kids to soothe themselves, don’t teach them how to use food as a way of coping. Instead, actually deal with the emotions that they’re experiencing. And I’ll get to that in just a minute what we need to do in order to break this cycle and to overcome emotional eating, okay, but understand that, you know, emotional eating is just something that we all do, we all engage in.

And something that I find very interesting is that we don’t typically emotionally eat, you know, broccoli, we don’t typically emotionally eat, you know, like chicken breast or something like that. We’re emotionally eating the stuff that lights up our brain that makes us feel really good.

You know, so it’s going to be the really hyper palatable foods, the foods that have been engineered to make us feel good to release that dopamine to give us the biggest hit of dopamine, dopamine possible. I never hear people telling me oh, you know what, I had a really, really stressful day at work. And then I came home and I just, I was just feeling really stressed out. And so I ate a whole bunch of brussel sprouts. Or I just, you know, started really digging in to that chicken that I made and just ate a lot of that chicken like, we don’t do that.

Because those kinds of foods, we know those types of foods are healthy and good for us and all that. But they don’t light up our brain the way that doughnuts do, or cookies, or chocolate cake or ice cream or pizza. That stuff is amazing at biting up our brain. You know, so just keep in mind that the types of foods that we’re using to soothe ourselves, it matters.

And it’s one of those things where I wouldn’t be talking about this if we were emotionally eating with broccoli, because it’s not a big deal. Who cares, right? I mean, we do want to be able to deal with our feelings and things like that. But when we emotionally eat all the junk food, it negatively impacts our health and our fitness and our ability to to accomplish our goals and our ability to become the person that we ultimately want to become, okay.

So just understand that if you find yourself going towards those hyper palatable foods, that junk food, then you got to look at that as probably being some sort of emotional trigger that’s causing you to go for that kind of food. Okay. And again, this is something, if this is normal, there’s nothing wrong with you. If you engage in this kind of behavior, you know, and maybe you do it regularly, maybe you do it from time to time, maybe you’ve done it your whole life, this is normal.

This is kind of your brain just doing what it’s been trained to do. Over the last several decades, your brain only wants one thing, it wants to feel good. Your brain is always searching for pleasure. It wants to keep you safe, and your brain wants you to feel good. And it wants to stay away from anything that feels unsafe, or that doesn’t feel good. So going for when your brain is feeling stress, for example, going for broccoli does not do anything to make your brain feel good. But going for chocolate chip cookies that are warm and gooey, and just came out of the oven.

Heck, yeah, your brain is going to go for that, because that is going to light up the pleasure centers of your brain. And that is going to make you feel really good for a little bit. For a very short period of time, you are going to feel good, but that is what your brain is supposed to do. Your brain is supposed to chase pleasure, avoid pain, seek, you know, something that feels safe, and avoid anything that feels unsafe. What feels unsafe is the stress that you’re experiencing. What feels really good and safe, is to just dig into a big ol plate of chocolate chip cookies.

But the thing is, you can untrain your brain. And this is the work that we actually have to do. This is just a habit that you’ve developed. And this is something that you can undeveloped. Anytime you have a habit that you have engaged in for a period of time, that is something that you’re choosing to do that you have chosen to do, and you’ve trained yourself to do over decades, and it is something that you can train yourself to do differently. Okay. And again, there are negative consequences when we use these types of food, you know, the highly palatable foods or sugary foods, the pizzas and things like that the junk food, when we use junk food, there are negative consequences to our emotional eating, okay, we think it’s just fine as good is gonna feel really good.

I’m gonna like finally, like, get some relief from this stress I’m experiencing or this boredom or this, you know, irritation that I’m feeling. But there are negative consequences to this. You know, you, you stay, you don’t stay on your food plan, you don’t stay fat adapted as a runner, your training is going to be impacted by this, your weight is going to be impacted by this. You stay in that sugar burning zone instead of being in the fat burning zone.

And you don’t build that trust and confidence in yourself. You’re breaking down the trust and confidence in yourself because you tell yourself, okay, I’m not eating cookies, I’m not eating pizza. But then you give in, because you just want to feel better in the moment. And when you do that, you don’t have your own back in that situation, what you’re doing is you’re actually breaking down the trust that you’re trying to build in yourself, you’re breaking down the confidence that you’re trying to build on yourself. Trust and confidence are so important.

If you want to do anything long term, if you want to create great results for yourself, it’s going to require you to do things consistently, and to build up trust and confidence as you go. And the more you do what you say you’re going to do, the more you are in integrity with what you want for yourself, the more trust and confidence that you build in yourself and the more motivation you have to keep going because you start getting better results. Breaking down that trust and confidence, you know, stops that process.

You no longer feel motivated, you feel frustrated. And when you feel frustrated, you end up going back to the emotional eating. It’s a vicious cycle, right. So the real work is going to be in learning how to feel your feelings. The real work is going to be learning how to experience having an emotion without eating to make it go away or to numb it. Not eating your feelings. So when you stop eating to feel better All the emotions are still going to be there.

And the real work comes in learning how to sit with that. The real work comes to learning how to feel all the stuff that you’ve been trying not to feel for so long. And this is a very uncomfortable process. For most people, this is really difficult for us to do as human beings, especially as adults who have been using food as a coping mechanism as an emotional management tool our whole lives. Okay, let’s take away the emotional management tool. Now, what do you do? How do you manage your emotions? If you’re not using food to numb them? Because you’re gonna feel all that stuff? It’s gonna, it’s not gonna feel good, it’s gonna feel terrible.

Are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to feel terrible for that short little period of time, because it usually doesn’t last that long. It might be 10 or 15 minutes, let’s say when you come home from work, and you’re stressed out, and the kids come home, and there’s chaos, and you just want to dive into that plate of chocolate chip cookies that you see sitting on the counter.

What if instead, in that moment, you just were like, Hi, I’m feeling stressed out right now. I am feeling chaotic right now. And what if you just bypassed the chocolate chip cookies? And just felt chaotic? What if you just felt stressed out? What if you just felt a little irritated? For 10 or 15 minutes? It’s a crazy concept, right? To just feel your feelings.

But when we’re willing to feel anything, there is almost nothing that we can’t accomplish. Do you know how badass it is? To like, just sit with a feeling and just feel it? This is what I call becoming an emotional badass when you can actually just sit with any feeling doesn’t matter. Positive or negative? Of course, we love the positive feelings, right? Joy, bliss, excitement, happiness, love. We love those feelings, right? Those are all fine. We’ll feel those all day long.

Oh, but don’t give me the negative emotions. I don’t want to feel the stress or the boredom or the frustration. I don’t want to feel grief or sadness or loneliness. But what if you just accepted that that is just part of being a human being. Because as a human being, guess what? You get to feel all of the emotions, you get to feel love, and joy and bliss and excitement. And you get to feel sadness and loneliness and grief.

Like you get them all. You can’t just have the good feeling emotions. And I’ve talked about this before life is about half good and half not so good. It’s about 50/50, right? 50% of the time, things are great. And we feel amazing. And we’re happy. And we’re content and we’re at peace 50% of the time, we’re stressed out, we’re pissed off. We’re irritated or annoyed or angry. And that’s okay. What if it was just okay to feel all of it. I know, it’s such a crazy concept.

We do so much stuff to not have to feel any of these negative emotions. We do so much we drink. We take drugs, prescription and non prescription drugs. There’s gambling and porn and shopping and scrolling through social media, and numbing ourselves with TV and all the stuff that we do, all the food that we eat, and the cigarettes and the caffeine and everything that we do just to like, numb ourselves out.

And there’s nothing wrong with occasionally having a drink or occasionally having a cup of coffee or occasionally watching some Netflix, like those things are okay, they bring us some pleasure. It’s okay to do those things here and there. But there’s a difference between, you know, eating mindfully, drinking mindfully, and drinking to numb ourselves, eating to not have to feel our feelings. There’s a big difference between those two, when we know when we’re doing it, we know what we’re doing.

So you just have to get really good with feeling your emotions. You got to get really good at experiencing the whole swath of human emotions that we get to experience. It’s okay to feel that way. It’s okay to feel bad. Every now and then. You can feel bad and still stick to your workout schedule. Right, like you can still crush your runs, you can be going through a hard time or be stressed at work and still hit your running schedule and hit your workouts at the gym and go to yoga, and do your strength training.

You can feel bad and do all those things, right? Because doing those things is actually a form of stress relief. It’s a form of managing our emotions in a healthy way. But when it comes to food, we don’t think we can feel bad and stick to our food plan. But you can, you can absolutely feel that and stick to your nutrition plan. You can feel bad, and still avoid the junk food, you can feel bad, and still skip the alcohol, or the potato chips, or the chocolate chip cookies or whatever you’re using to try to, you know, change how you feel? What if you just didn’t change how you feel?

What if you just kind of felt bad sometimes. So crazy concept, but it’s also the very first step in trying to change this behavior. Okay? Really, the very first step is being aware of what you’re doing, being aware of the fact that you are experiencing an emotion and you’re trying to eat to try to numb that emotion. That’s the very first step. It’s self awareness, it’s being aware that you are using food, some external substance to try to feel better on the inside.

Notice when you’re doing that, I really don’t want those cookies, but why do I find my hand reaching for them? And why is this moving towards my mouth right now? Why am I doing this? Sometimes it feels like we’re out of control, right? But we’re not, you’re never out of control, you are always choosing, you’re always deciding, you’re always in control. You just have to learn how to see that and how to take back that control.

Okay, what you’ve been engaging in for decades is just some automatic behaviors, they become very automatic, okay. But we can change that. That is something you can absolutely overcome and change. And the first step is just understanding what you are doing in that moment. What is the emotion you’re feeling in that moment? Name it: is this stress, or anxiety or irritation or anger? What is the emotion I’m experiencing right now? Put a name to it.

Once you do that, it kind of takes the electric charge out of it, you know, it kind of softens it a little bit. You’re like oh, okay, okay, I’m really irritated right now. Speak into that, I’m irritated right now. Kind of takes the, the, the intensity away, right. So it’s no longer overwhelming, you’re just like, Okay, I’m just feeling irritated, I can deal with that right now. And then it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating this process and learning how to sit with those emotions.

Because listen, it’s just a habit that you’ve done. Like, it’s just a habit you’ve developed, and you’re good at it, and feels automatic. And it feels like it’s mindless. But it’s just a habit. And habits are built one decision at a time, both good and bad habits. So the work is in those moments of decision. What is that you’re choosing in this moment?

Okay, you’re feeling an emotion in this moment, and you’re trying to make that emotion go away, you’re trying to numb yourself to that emotion, what is the decision you’re going to make at that moment is going to be to feel your feeling or to try to not feel your feeling? Is it going to be to go for the junk food that’s going to make you feel better temporarily, very, very temporarily.

Or are you going to do the thing that you know is going to move you towards your weight loss goals and towards your running goals and towards you becoming that best version of yourself? What are you going to choose in that moment, habits are built one decision at a time. And there’s a million little decisions that we need to make in order to change these habits.

So make good choices and be willing to feel your feelings. Be willing to experience all the emotions that come along with being a human being. Okay, this is not easy. And it’s not even necessarily fun. It is hard. At first it takes some practice. But you can do this. You do hard things all the time. This is just one of those things that you have to learn to do and learn to get good at and all that takes is repetition.

Get your reps in and continue to look at these experiences that you’re having as learning experiences. And at times where you can practice feeling your emotions. And maybe at first, you can only do it for a few minutes, and then you give in, you’re like, Okay, I just can’t do this anymore, and you go for the cookie, right? Maybe next time, you can go for a little bit longer, maybe instead of two or three minutes, it’s like eight or 10 minutes. And maybe the next time you give it like 15 minutes, and then you find that after about 16 or 17 minutes, you don’t have to go for the cookie anymore, because you’re starting to feel better.

Understand that a lot of times we feel these emotions for short periods of time, and then they go away. Then they come back, you know, we were always feeling different emotions. We’re always experiencing different emotions through our life and throughout our day. But understand that nothing is permanent. Think about a bad breakup you went through decades ago. Does that bother you anymore? No, not at all. You can think about that and just be like, Yeah, whatever.

But at the time, it felt like your whole world was collapsing, you know. So none of these emotional states that we enter into our permanent okay, just understand that. Habits are built one decision at a time. I want to offer you this. make some good decisions this week. Right? move in the direction of your goals, move in the direction of who you want to become. Okay. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will 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.

128. Discipline Does Not Mean Punishment

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What do you think of when you hear the word “discipline”? Does it conjure up images of “getting in trouble” or controlling behavior by means of punishment? For a lot of people, the word has a …

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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 128, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, discipline does not mean punishment. So let me ask you this. What do you think of when you hear the word discipline? Does it conjure up images of like getting in trouble, or controlling behavior by way of punishment?

For a lot of people, the word discipline has a very negative connotation. And they don’t want any type of discipline in their life at all. But discipline is not always a bad thing. In fact, having more discipline in your life, might actually be one of the best things you can do for yourself for your overall health and happiness as a human being.

So today, I’m going to share why discipline does not mean punishment, and explain the surprising benefits of creating a more disciplined life. First, I want to talk a little bit about what’s going on over in the coaching project.

So the coaching project is my coaching program, where you get group coaching, one on one coaching, and it’s a program that is designed to give you all of the knowledge and the support, and provide accountability for you to reach your personal health and fitness goals, whatever that might look like for you. And every month during our group calls. So we do a couple of group calls every week.

And on one of those group calls every week, I do some teaching and some coaching on a topic. And for the month of June, we’re talking about mastering your mindset. What is your mindset? And why is your mindset so important to achieving the goals that you want for yourself. And today’s topic on the podcast, they were talking about discipline is one of those mindsets that are one of those components of mindset that is required.

If you want to achieve big things for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants to get leaner, get stronger, run faster, run longer. All of these things require you to have the right mindset because it’s one thing to know what to do. And it’s a whole nother thing, to motivate yourself to do it, to be disciplined to do those things that maybe you don’t want to do sometimes, in order to get the stuff that you really want for yourself in order to become the person that you want to become.

So all month long, we’re going to be talking about different aspects of mindset. This week was all about the topic I’m talking about today, which is, you know, creating more discipline in your life. We’re going to be talking about stopping self sabotage, building mental toughness, creating permanent habit change, becoming an emotional badass. All of these things require a shift in your mindset. And the mindset is the foundation for everything that you want for yourself.

Okay, so if you’re ready to become more, if you’re ready to take your health, and your fitness and your mindset to the next level, then you’re ready for the Running Lean Coaching Project. And it’s an application program you got to apply for. You’re going to have a short conversation with me, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. And if so then I want to invite you to apply to the Running Lean Coaching Project and you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, schedule a call with me we’ll talk about your goals and we’ll just see if this is a good fit for you; runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean Coaching Project.

All right now on to today’s topic, which is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while here. And I was talking to a friend recently about the difference between having a disciplined life and an undisciplined life. And something that came up was that there’s a lot of people out there that have this really negative connotation of the word discipline.

And you know, when we talk about that word, when you hear that word, think about this, like, what? What images come up for you? What comes up for you when you hear the word discipline. So there’s a couple of different definitions of, of discipline, and one that I think a lot of us think about is the practice of training people to obey rules, or a code of behavior, using punishment, to correct disobedience, right.

So a lot of people think of discipline as disciplining a child, for bad behavior. And this was a big part of my childhood. I got in trouble a lot, as a child, especially in school with my parents, I was a bit of a rebel. And I just did things the way I wanted to do things, and I didn’t do things I was supposed to do, and whatever you want to call it, I was a bit of a rebel, I was a bit of a troublemaker, and I was getting in trouble a lot. I was punished a lot. I was disciplined a lot as a child.

And so for me, for a big part of my life, the idea of having more discipline in my life was like, oh, heck, no, no, thank you, that is not what I want at all, I don’t want more of that. I finally got away from all that, you know, I grew up and became a dad, I had my own family, and you know, I was an adult and all these things, you know, that supposedly make us, you know, autonomous creatures, and have sovereignty and agency over our own lives.

And, but then even at work, I would get punished for, you know, maybe showing up late or something like that, you know, so it was still kind of following me around. And I was like, well, geez, I don’t want discipline in my life, I don’t want to be disciplined. And so for a lot of us, we have that connotation.

Or maybe you’re trying to train a puppy. And so a lot of times we use discipline to train a puppy, we punish the puppy if they pee on the rug, or whatever, you know. So I want to just acknowledge that a lot of us have this idea of what it means to live a disciplined life or to have discipline in our lives. And it’s not necessarily a positive, you know, content doesn’t bring up positive thoughts and feelings, you know, it’s a, it’s a very negative thing. So there’s another definition of discipline that I have adopted into my life and really accepted as part of who I am. That has, for me, nothing but positive connotations.

Okay, so the other definition of the word discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. This I love because I practice discipline, in all areas of my life. I train myself to do things in a controlled and habitual way. That doesn’t mean I’m a robot, you know, it doesn’t mean I live in this weird little, you know, confined bubble or whatever.

But I do things very intentionally, in a controlled and habitual way. And I learn habits, and I create good habits for myself. And for me, this definition of discipline feels good. It’s something that I can, you know, try on and say, Yeah, I want discipline in my life, because discipline gets me the good stuff that I want in my life.

Discipline is a way of training myself, to create good habits. It does require some level of structure and some level of control over yourself. And it creates and it requires creating good habits. But it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. We don’t have to look at being disciplined in our life or having discipline in our life as a negative. We don’t have to look at it as being a punishment.

I live a pretty disciplined life. So most days, I go to bed around the same time, you know, pretty early, I would say for some people, I don’t know, maybe it’s late for others. I get up at the same time every day. I have a consistent morning routine. I do some journaling and some meditation and drink some coffee.

I start my day in a very intentional way. And then I work out I run or I hit the gym and or go to yoga class or something, I have a very structured morning, you know, I have a very structured day most days. And then my work schedule is very structured. In order for me to create the kind of business that I’ve created the business model where I’m coaching people all day long, I have to have a pretty detailed amount of structure, a pretty significant amount of structure in my calendar.

And everything I do has to be on my calendar. And I’m very disciplined about sticking to that schedule, it’s important for me, it helps me to create the kind of life that I want for myself. So having some structure and some discipline, in certain areas of my life, helps me to achieve the things that I want for myself, you know, I want to build and grow my business, I want to make an impact on this world.

I want to create more good health and more positivity, I want to get people off of junk food, I want to get people off of, you know, being you know, inactive, I want to get people stronger and more fit, I want to help people, you know, with their nutrition and with strength and endurance and with their mindset. And in order for me to do that, in order for me to make a big impact in this world, I have to be pretty structured and pretty disciplined about how I show up for you and how I show up for myself and how I show up for my business.

This requires discipline, I’m disciplined about my food choices. And about my diet, I eat a lot of the same things pretty often. I mean, I do mix it up here and there. But for the most part, I’m pretty structured and disciplined about how I eat, it’s important to me. And it’s not a struggle, this isn’t a punishment, it’s not a punishment, eat real food. For me every day, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something because I’m not eating burgers and french fries all the time. And you know, chocolate cake and ice cream and all the things that I used to do.

I used to eat a lot of pizza, a lot of ice cream. And I don’t do that anymore. But it doesn’t feel like I’m being disciplined or like I’m being punished. I’m intentional about having this kind of discipline in my life, in these areas of my life. Being disciplined has helped me to create massive change in my life. And it allows me to achieve everything that I want for myself. I have big goals that I set for myself, I want to become more.

I’m always growing as a human being, I’m always evolving as a person, I want my health and fitness to always get better, not worse. And for me, it requires me to be disciplined in some areas of my life, it requires me to be disciplined about how often I do strength training and how often I run and how I, you know, schedule my meals and things like that.

You know, for me, a few years ago, when I finally permanently lost the weight that I had gained over the previous five years or whatever. It requires some discipline for me to lose that weight. It required me creating discipline in my life, around my diet and exercise regimens. And now, having some amount of discipline in that area allows me to maintain my weight effortlessly, effortlessly.

It’s easy, because I’ve created that level of discipline. I’ve improved my running performance over the years. By being more disciplined, I’ve gotten stronger. I’ve got this big goal of changing my body composition. And I’m working on being more of a bodybuilder, if you will.

I don’t like that term, because it conjures up these images of these huge, giant people. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But I’m trying to become more muscular and change the way my body looks and feels and get a lot stronger. And I’m being very disciplined about how I do that. I have to be disciplined about how I structure my workouts, how often I’m lifting, the kinds of foods that I’m eating, I have to eat more food, I have to be more intentional about some supplements that I’m taking and things like that.

And all of these areas of my life are growing and becoming better and I’m improving in all these different areas of my life because I have discipline in my life. Okay, so you can see the difference here, right? It’s not punishment. It’s not that I’m beating myself up. It’s because I have this level of discipline that I am able to achieve these things that I want for myself. Okay. It doesn’t mean I’m battling with myself, you know, I’m not punishing myself.

I’m not in a battle with myself, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t have fun, too. So here’s a big misconception about having a disciplined life. A lot of people think that if you, oh, I don’t want discipline in my life, because I still want to have fun, guess what you can do both. It’s not a one or the other. In fact, I believe that having discipline in my life allows me the freedom to also be in the flow sometimes, and to have playfulness in my life, and to have unstructured time in my life and to have fun in my life.

Having some discipline gives me the freedom to just at other times to just do what I want. If I was always super undisciplined, if I was just always going with the flow, I don’t think I would be able to achieve a whole lot from a success level like with my business with my health and fitness. And so for me, like just being totally undisciplined wouldn’t get me there. Maybe that works for you. Maybe that works for some people. But for me, I have to have some structure and some discipline in some areas part of the time.

So think about it as a balance in our lives, right? Having discipline is how I achieve my goals. That’s how I become more. It’s how I grow and evolve. Also, being undisciplined some of the time is how I grow and evolve to it’s like, you kind of need both, right? So you need some level of unstructured playtime, I think, playfulness, and spontaneity, and just silliness and laughter and fun and craziness.

All this stuff is like so important, and really required. If you want to be a well rounded, healthy, happy human being, we have to have expressive free playtime. And we don’t do it as adults, we don’t, we don’t make that a priority as adults. And I’m going to tell you here, and you might be kind of surprised to hear me talking about this. But I’m telling you right now that just goofing around, and having total joyful, playful, fun is necessary to having a joyful life.

If you want to have an incredibly fulfilling life, you’ve got to include playfulness in there, it has to be part of it. So being disciplined does not mean punishment, it does not mean you never have fun in your life. It’s just you structure some parts of your life and then other parts of your life can be completely unstructured. Doesn’t that sound better than just being punished all the time? Or having a disciplined life 24/7, 365? I don’t want that. I don’t want that.

So here’s what I want you to do this week, I just want you to consider yourself, consider your own life. Think about those things that you want for yourself. What do you want for yourself? Do you want to get stronger? Do you want to run faster? Do you want to lose some weight? Do you want to just get fitter? Change your body composition? What is it you want for yourself? And then think about that word discipline? How does it make you feel?

Could you use a little more discipline in your life? So if there’s things that you want for yourself, but you’re having a hard time getting them or you don’t have them? What’s it going to take to get you there? How much discipline? Do you think you’ll need to get there? Can you start applying some discipline into that area of your life in order to get you there? Can you be more disciplined at times? And then the flip side of that is? Where are you? Where are you making time for playfulness? Are you making time to just have fun and let loose and let your hair down? And just go crazy?

Dance like no one is watching. You know, can you make time for that to be undisciplined? Can you have that balance? Can you achieve what you want and have time to just goof around? Like, can we have this kind of balance? Or if the answer is yes, but I want you to think about this for yourself, how can you apply this? How can you make this happen for yourself, right? And it’s not about it’s not about one or the other. It’s about both. It’s about how we can do both. You know if you’re too disciplined all the time, it can feel hard and stressful and create anxiety in you.

Being too undisciplined on the other hand can have the same effect. You’re not getting things done that are important to you, you kind of stay stuck where you are. This can create a lot of stress and anxiety as well. So I think it’s important that we have both in our lives. So think about that this week, and what would that look like for you? And I want to take back the meaning of the word discipline, I want to take back the negative power that this word has over us.

And I want to remove the negative connotations that the word discipline has in our lives, right? It doesn’t mean punishment, I want to adopt this new definition, I want you to start using it in this way of like, okay, the the word discipline for me means to create healthy, productive habits that helped me become more, that’s what I want to, I want this word to mean going forward.

Okay, so consider how you can be more disciplined in some areas of your life to get the things that you want for yourself, and how you can balance that with complete undisciplined parts of your life so you can have fun and make that room for flow and playfulness. Okay.

And as always, if you want help implementing a more disciplined life, or implementing more playfulness in your life, or applying any of the principles that I talked about here on the podcast, I want to invite you to join us over on the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

125. Do You Feel Like You’re Spiraling Out of Control?

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In my coaching practice, I hear this phrase a lot, “I feel like I’m spiraling out of control.” Spiraling out of control can feel terrible and typically leads to out-of-control behavior like eating …

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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 125, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, do you feel like you’re spiraling out of control? So in my coaching practice, I hear this phrase a lot. I feel like I’m spiraling out of control, spiraling out of control can feel terrible.

And it’s one of those things that kind of leads to out of control behavior, like eating all the Oreos in the house or eating an entire large pizza by yourself. And I know this from personal experience, by the way, but what does it really mean to be spiraling out of control? Are you actually out of control? Or does it just feel like it?

Is there no way to recover from the state that you’re in? In this episode of the podcast, I’m gonna explain what it really means when you feel like you’re spiraling out of control. And I’ll show you what you need to do to get yourself out of it.

But first, I want to encourage you to consider applying to join the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my immersive coaching program, where you get all the guidance, the support, the knowledge, the accountability, that you need to hit your goals. I know that if you’re listening to this podcast, it means that you want more for yourself, you’re not okay with the status quo. There’s somebody that you want to become.

And in order for you to become that future version of yourself, you’re going to have to get into action, there are things you’re going to have to do that you’re not doing right now. There’s some things that you might have to stop doing that you’re doing right now. There’s changes that have to happen. And my job as your coach is to help you make those changes. My job is to help you get into action. My job is to help you to stay in action, and continue to make progress towards your goals.

You know, my job is to help you accomplish whatever it is that you want for yourself. So I’m here for you. If you’re one of those people that’s like you know, what I’ve been doing isn’t working. And I just need a little guidance, I need the support of an expert, I need somebody who’s helped hundreds of other people do the same thing. Then consider joining the Running Lean Coaching Project. It’s easy, all you got to do is go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.

You’re gonna fill out a short little application, you’re going to schedule a call with me, we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to talk about your goals. We’re going to talk about what it is you really want for yourself. And then we’re going to see if this is a good fit for you. I’ll answer all your questions, I’ll explain all the details of the coaching program. But nothing’s going to change unless you get into action. So I want to encourage you, if you’re thinking about this, if you’ve been on the fence about this, if this is something that you want for yourself, just take action, it doesn’t cost anything to schedule this call with me it doesn’t. It takes a little bit of time. And that’s it.

But don’t you owe that to yourself, just invest a little bit of time to find out if this is something that you want for yourself. I think it’s worth it. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Let’s jump on a call. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Sound good? Awesome. All right.

So a lot of people come to me and a lot of people share this, this phrase with me where they say like they feel like they’re spiraling out of control. And I want to break this down a little bit and talk about what this really means. So what does it really mean when you say you’re spiraling out of control?

So what that means for a lot of people is they’ve been doing pretty well for a while, maybe they’re sticking to a new kind of food plan. They’ve switched up their workout schedule. And things have been going pretty well for a while but then they have, you know, stopped they’ve they’ve stopped being consistent. They’ve stopped eating the right foods. They’ve gone back to binging on the Oreos and the pizza. And it feels like they’re out of control. And then this leads to feelings of frustration and guilt and shame.

And then you feel bad about yourself. And that feeling bad about yourself, all those feelings of guilt and shame about what you’ve been doing and how you can stay on track, you’d beat yourself up, oh my gosh, I always fail. That just leads to more, quote unquote, like out of control behavior. So you binge on even more Oreos, or Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or french fries, or whatever it is, that turns you on, you know. Because why bother?

And that’s kind of what we mean, when we say we’re spiraling out of control. You know, there’s some, there’s some out of control behavior happening, that creates these feelings within us of guilt and shame and frustration and failure. And it just leads to more out of control behavior. So that’s where the spiral comes from. Okay. I totally get this.

And this was definitely the way that I lived my life when I was drinking alcohol. When I was drinking alcohol, I would drink to excess every day. You know, every, every time five o’clock rolled around, I would start cracking open the beers. And I would drink until I fell asleep or passed out, however you want to say it. And I couldn’t stop that. I had been doing that for so many years, every day, thousands of days in a row, that to stop that felt impossible.

I felt like I had no control over my drinking. I felt like I had no control over my actions, I felt like I had no control over my behavior. So the things that I was doing just felt super out of control. And maybe it’s just my personality, but I kind of did the same thing with food. So I quit drinking, eventually, you know, it’s been over 15 years now. But a few years back, I was starting to get pretty out of control with my eating. And I was using food as an emotional management tool.

And I was that person, you know, I would order a large pizza and eat it by myself. And then you know, wash it down with some Ben and Jerry’s. So that was my deal. And that felt really out of control to like, I couldn’t not do that. And, and that led to really feeling terrible, gaining weight, feeling bad about myself, knowing I should be better knowing that I should be, you know, doing things differently. But feeling completely, like I had no control over my own decisions. Like I felt just like completely out of control. And that spiraling out of control feeling, it’s not a good feeling. Because the only solution really, when you’re in it, is to just keep going with that. At least that’s what it feels like, right?

And I just want you to think about this. Now, there are other ways that we can spiral out of control. And a lot of times we look to our circumstances, we look to things that are happening around us we can look to, oh, you know, my bosses got this. Yeah, things are crazy at work right now my bosses just laid all this extra work on me.

And it’s that time of the year where the kids are getting finished up with schooling and it’s crazy, you know, and then, oh, the husband is just driving me nuts with all this stuff right now and not supporting me, I’m trying to like change my diet, he’s just not supporting me, you know, and, you know, the in-laws are coming out.

Like, you can just keep layering on all the things that are happening around you. And it can really feel like you are spiraling out. Everywhere you look, there’s some reason, some story, some excuse, you know, something that is causing you, I’m using finger quotes, they’re causing you to just eat a bunch of crap, you know, because all you want to do is just not deal with any of this stuff here. So that spiraling feeling, forget it. It’s real, it feels real, doesn’t it?

But when you’re in that mode of feeling out of control, and it feels like there’s nothing you could do about it. This is where kind of there’s some negative consequences to this. Right? I think you can kind of see that. You know, you start veering off your plate and you start binging all the junk food, and you just stay stuck and you feel like crap in order to feel bad or you go for more food because that’s your default. That’s just the way you’ve programmed yourself.

You know, you want to stick to your running schedule, but you just can’t do it. So you just say screw it. And that’s another way where you’re just like, see I’m spiraling out of control, and you don’t make progress. And then you get even more flushed, frustrated, and you feel bad about yourself. And because like you keep letting yourself down, you make these promises to yourself that you’re not keeping, then it feels hopeless. And it feels like there’s nothing you can do about it.

But I want to tell you something. This is a victim mentality. This is blaming others. This is having excuses. This is having reasons, this is having stories. Here’s the thing, you know what you have control over? Always 100% of the time, you have control over your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That’s it.

And I would even argue that there are times when your thoughts can seem pretty automatic, but you can kind of quickly change them. I was talking to my coach today about this. And she said this phrase that I thought was amazing. She says, you need to be the guard at the door to your thoughts. You need to stand guard at the door to your thoughts? So there’s times when you know, something may sneak past you and you’re like, oops, I gotta like, keep that in check. Okay, so you have control over your own thoughts, feelings and actions. But what you don’t have control over is everything else.

All the circumstances, the boss, the kids, the husband, whatever it is, you don’t have control over that stuff. But you do have control over your own thoughts, feelings, you have control over the things over the way that you respond to the things happening around you. And I did a deep dive into this last week.

So if you listen to last week’s podcast, this kind of dovetails into it nicely. You know, your brain just wants to keep you safe, your brain just wants to keep you comfortable. And every time we indulge in change, every time we start changing something for the better your brain wants to shut that stuff down your brain is like no, we’re not doing that. Because that doesn’t feel comfortable.

Get us back to eating ice cream everyday. That’s where we felt good. That was our normal. That’s the familiar stuff, we’re used to this whole idea of not eating ice cream at night. What? Can’t do that. And so that spiraling a lot of times begins as just your brain wanting to get you back to safety. Your brain just wants to keep you safe, your brain just wants you to feel comfortable and safe. It’s always seeking pleasure. And it’s always avoiding pain.

You know, what’s pleasurable, eating ice cream, you know, it’s painful, not eating ice cream. And so then the spiraling begins, because the stuff just, you just keep going back to the easy, you keep going back to the safe, you keep going back to the comfortable. And the more you do it, the worse it gets. Because the more you do it, the easier it is right, the easier it is to eat the large pizza, the easier it is for you to do. And you’re just reinforcing those bad habits.

And it just becomes natural, it becomes part of who you are. You program yourself to act this way you program yourself to think and feel this way. That’s the spiraling that’s when it feels out of control. But I have to tell you, that this is all false. There is no out of control. You’re always in control. You’ve just taught yourself to act in a certain way. You’ve trained yourself to think and feel these thought patterns that feel so automatic, that you just feel like it’s just happening to you, but you’re doing it, you’re creating it yourself. You’re creating this spiraling feeling yourself. The out of control feeling, you’re doing that. It’s not anybody else. It’s not that you’re not actually out of control. It’s just you.

And you’re doing it because you just keep practicing these, these thought patterns. You just keep practicing these behaviors. And it just leads to more and more. More and more of the feeling of hopelessness, more and more of that feeling of like, I don’t have any control. There’s nothing I can do about this. And I get it. It’s easy. It’s easy to just say like I’m spiraling out of control. Like I have no control over this because then you don’t have to actually do anything about it. Right?

That’s the way I was with my drinking. My drinking felt so out of control. And I could just tell people like, oh, it’s just it’s out of control, I’m out of control. And then I didn’t have to do anything about it. Because I’m like, just shrug my shoulders. And there is nothing I can do about it, it’s out of control. It’s a cop out, really is, it’s a huge cop out. Listen, if you want to lose weight, then you have to take back your control.

Because I’m going to tell you right now that you were never out of control, you were just choosing thoughts, feelings and actions that just felt good. That’s it. And you’ve just been practicing it. So it just feels like it’s natural. It just feels easy. It just feels like it’s automatic, but it’s not. These are things you have control over. You have to be willing to do the work, though.

And you got to be willing to put yourself into some uncomfortable situations, you got to be willing to embrace the discomfort of change, because it’s uncomfortable. I get that talk about this all the time, right? Change is not comfortable. That’s why I do what I do as a coach. Because in order for you to lose weight and feel better, and get stronger, and become healthier, and run longer, and always say, you got to change stuff, there’s a lot of change we got to do to get you there.

You could do it, though. But it’s hard work. And it’s uncomfortable, it doesn’t feel good. You can still do it. But here’s the thing, the more you do it, the more you practice the more you practice the new stuff, the more you practice taking back your control, the easier that becomes for you.

That’s where we want to get to, that’s where we want to get, that’s when the magic starts to happen. Because then you’re like, you no longer can use that excuse of being out of control. Because you know how to take your control back. You no longer use that as a reason why you can’t make progress. You know, it’s kind of like pulling the rug out from under yourself. You’re like, look, guess what? I can’t use this excuse anymore.

It’s kind of the good and the bad news, right? It’s bad news. Because now you have no excuse, you just have to take responsibility. It’s good news, because now you get to change. Change is uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. It’s like a shedding of your old self. That’s an uncomfortable process to go through.

There’s all this stuff that you’ve been doing, it’s just your programming, and it’s part of who you are. And it’s so hard to let go of that stuff. For me, it was like pizza, ice cream, you know, when I was drinking, it was drinking 6-12 beers every night. That was part of who I was. To change that, to stop drinking, it just seemed like that does not compute. It does not compute.

This is not who I am, I had to become a different person. If you want to change, you want to stop the out of control BS, then you got to like shed that old version of yourself to become a different person. We use being out of control as an excuse. And we got to stop doing that. Okay. Now there are some things that happen, some traumatic events that happen in our lives that will take time to heal, you know, the death of a loved one.

If you go through a divorce, abuse, these things are, are a lot of times these things are out of your control. And the way you respond to these things can be out of control, it can feel that way. And it takes time to heal. But over time, you can heal and you can still get to choose how you think, feel and act you really do.

You know, choosing to feel sad or angry or hurt is 100% normal. It’s a normal response. If you you know, lose a loved one or go through a divorce. Like it’s it’s okay to grieve that and to feel sad or to feel angry to feel hurt. This is normal. You can get through these difficult times you can experience difficult emotions. You can also go through these things without adding the complication of the out of control behavior of binge eating or overdrinking.

You know, a couple years ago, I went through a divorce. This is hard. I used food to soothe myself. I was engaging in out of control behavior. At least it felt like that to me. And I used food as an emotional management tool. I don’t recommend doing this. I learned a lesson that I can just experience the emotions.

I can experience the hurt and the endless badness, and I could grieve that relationship. And I could be angry and all those things without eating large pizza, to feel better. And I could just be with the pain and be with the hurt and all that stuff and process the emotions without eating them. And I did. That’s when you kind of become an emotional badass.

Okay, so I’m just letting you know that there are traumatic things that happen that do take some time to heal from, you know, but we don’t have to also add the complication of you know, the out of control behavior or using that as an excuse to engage in the out of control behavior. Eating a large pizza by myself, not helping me to improve my emotional state that was not helping me to process my emotions that was not helping me to, to, to move on. It just kept me feeling terrible.

So that out of control, spiraling feeling, I just want you to really understand that you have control. And I want you to stop acting like you’re out of control. I want you to stop using this out of control, as an excuse, right? You know, stop pretending that you don’t have control over your own behavior. Always, always, always do take your power back, take your control back today, start doing this today, stop using this spiraling out of control as an excuse to stay stuck, and to stay small, and to stay comfortable.

There’s all kinds of areas of your life where you exhibit control, no matter what. Like think about, I talk to so many people about this and it cracks me up. I’ll be like, listen, okay, you feel out of control with your eating? Like you just have no control? What about your running? How are you doing with that? Are you sticking to your running schedule? You’re training for a marathon? Are you sticking to that schedule?

Oh, yeah, perfectly. I hit all my runs, no matter what I do all those workouts. I’m perfect with that. Perfect 100%. I’m like, well, that is the same date, like you, you have total control over that. Or you could choose to not be in control there. But you’re doing that you’re doing it over here in this area of your life. Why can’t you do it with your food? And something sort of I see like a light bulb go off in people’s heads, I can almost see it like being as if they’re like, oh, yeah, you’re right. I do have control over that. I do have control over my food, too. I’m just, I just don’t feel like it.

You know, I just like, yeah, and they and they kind of see that they can exhibit this control in other places of their life. It’s kind of like showing up for work on time. There’s so many people that like they just show up for work on time, no matter what they’re gonna show up for work every day, five days a week to get there on time. They make sure they’re sitting at their desk five minutes before their shift starts or whatever, like they are diligent about that.

But then I’m like, how’s it going sticking to that food plan? Oh, I can’t do it, can’t even put two days together. Like really? What about work? Like, are you going to show up late for work every day? Oh, no, I’ll do that perfectly. It’s that same concept. It’s the same concept. It’s the same thing happening in your brain. You’re just making choices. And you’re making excuses. And you’re using it as a way of keeping yourself safe and comfortable. But also stuck where you are. And you don’t want that I know I said that earlier. You want more for yourself. You want to become that badass person that you know you can be.

In order to get there. We’ve got to stop acting like we’re out of control. Stop thinking and feeling out of control thoughts and feelings stop in engaging in out of control behavior. Take back your power. Take back the control over every area of your life. I know you can do this. And if you want my help, I’m here for you. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. 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.

122. What Coaching Should Look Like

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There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what coaching is and what it isn’t. Some people think coaching is just someone screaming at you like a drill sergeant in boot camp. Others think …

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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 122 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what coaching should look like? I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what coaching is and what it isn’t.

Some people think coaching is just like having someone screaming at you like a drill sergeant and boot camp. Other people think coaching is having a cheerleader by your side always telling you great job. Both of these can be positive aspects of coaching. But there’s a lot more to consider if you’re seriously looking for someone to help you reach your weight loss and running goals.

So in this episode of the podcast, I break down what coaching is, what it isn’t, and explain what coaching should look like. And I’m hoping that by the end of this episode, you have a very clear understanding of how the right kind of coaching can actually help you achieve all of your health and fitness goals.

And I just want to get right into this topic today because this is something that I’ve been very passionate about, and something that I talk about just about every day. So I talk with runners every single day about their goals and whether or not they want to coach with me, whether they want to work with me or not.

And I always explain a little bit about what coaching looks like, when I get on a call with someone. And I thought you know, this would be a great idea to just jump on here and do a whole podcast about this topic about what good coaching should actually look like, you know, what coaching should look like versus what maybe we think it is?

Okay, so let me ask you this, like when you think of a coach, what image comes to mind for you, when I think of a coach, I get this image of somebody standing on the side of the track, like with a clipboard and a stopwatch, right?

Or maybe that coach in the locker room at halftime screaming at the players to get them all pumped up for the second half of the game. Or the personal trainer screaming at you there’s a lot of screaming in my envision of coaches for some reason. The personal trainer at the gym screaming like, you know, do one more rep. One more, one more.

So we all have some notion of what a coach looks like. And most of us have probably had some experience working with or having some sort of a coach in our lives, whether it was a coaching, you know, when you played high school sports, you maybe had a coach. But this idea of what a coach actually is, I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that.

Okay, and so, today I want to talk about this, I want to talk about what coaching is and what it isn’t. And I want to bust some of the myths around coaching and what it means to work with a coach. I want to help you to understand what to look for if you want to work with a coach.

Okay, by the end of this episode, I want you to have a clear understanding of what this should look like. Okay, now I need to say this, I’m a coach, right? And of course, I would love it if you wanted coaching and you decided you want to work with me. That would be amazing. But that’s not what this is about. Okay, this isn’t about me.

This is about you understanding the power of coaching, and how it can help you and how, what I want for you is I want to give you the information to go out there and find a coach that works for you, whether it’s me or somebody else, it’s fine with me either way. I fiercely believe in the power of coaching. It is one of the most amazing things I have ever done for myself is getting a coach and I think everyone can benefit from having a coach.

I actually have several coaches, I have a strength coach, I have a nutrition coach and a business coach. And each of these coaches plays a huge role in helping me to become my most badass self. I would not have lost the weight and learned how to keep it off for good without my coach.

I wouldn’t have learned how to get stronger. I wouldn’t understand the importance of continually, you know, building strength as a runner, if it wasn’t for my functional strength coach, and I definitely wouldn’t make it as an entrepreneur without my business coach. You know, being an entrepreneur building a business from the ground up and doing it all by yourself. This is one of the hardest things I have ever done. It’s challenging.

And they say I love this little like analogy here, they say, “Being an entrepreneur is like jumping out of an airplane and building the parachute on the way down.” And I feel this deeply, every single day. Okay? Anyway, so I just wanted to make this very clear that this isn’t about me, this is not about me, like selling you on coaching with me or anything like that.

It’s about helping you understand what good coaching should look like, whether it’s with me or somebody else. But I want you to understand how powerful coaching can be for you, and how amazing it can be for you, and how it can absolutely transform your life, and help you achieve whatever goals you want for yourself in different areas of your life. Okay.

So one of the biggest misconceptions I want to talk about is that a coach is just there to tell you what to do. Right? I have talked to so many runners who have worked with a running coach, or maybe a nutrition coach in the past. And one of the common issues I see with most coaches with most of like what I’ll call like traditional coaching, okay?

That it’s just somebody, they’re telling you what to do. Like, here’s what you should eat, or here’s your running workout, just do what I say. All right, and this is fine. You know, there has to be a part of that with coaching, right. But when that’s all the coaches doing for you, they’re giving you some sort of standard formula, some standard meal plan or some standard workout. You know, everybody they’re coaching is kind of getting the same standard deal, right? That doesn’t really work. Okay.

This is a problem. And I see this with a lot of nutrition coaches, specifically who just prescribe meal plans for their clients. So they give them a menu of actually, like, here’s what you’re going to eat this week. And then next week, I’ll give you a new meal plan of what you should eat. Okay? And again, this is fine.

This might work sometimes, but what are you teaching the client? What are you teaching that person you’re working with? Are they learning how to make good decisions about food? Are they developing the habits they need to make their new food choices on their own and to make them last for the long haul?

Like, how sustainable is it to just tell somebody what to do? I’ve had several people come to me after working with other nutrition coaches, who gave them meal plans, who gave them a menu of what to do. And by the end of that coaching relationship, they had no clue what to do on their own.

So once the coaching relationship was over, they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t understand why they were being told to eat these certain foods. And to avoid these foods over here. They didn’t understand the philosophy behind making these menus, you know, they hadn’t developed any skills of their own.

They just didn’t know how to create their own food plan. Okay. That’s not sustainable. Right? They also hadn’t developed good eating habits, right. So they just ended up falling back into old behaviors, once that coaching relationship was over, and they ended up putting all the weight back on.

And I see this with most diet plans, right? They just tell you what to eat, and what not to eat. And then, you know, send you on your way. Good luck. Good luck with all that, right. And I see this with books. You know, I read a lot of books on diet and nutrition, sports, nutrition, athletic performance.

And a lot of these books have meal plans in them and recipes and things like that. I guess people say they want those kinds of things, right? This might be what people say they want, but it’s not what they need. Right? What people want is for somebody to just tell them what to do.

But what they need is they need to learn how to break old habits. People need to learn how to develop new habits from the ground up, and you can’t learn new habits just by somebody telling you what to do. And just a little side note here, I’m planning on writing a book, I’ve actually kind of started this is a long process to write a book, by the way, and I’m at the baby stages right now.

But my goal with this book that I’m creating is to not just offer meal plans and tell people what to do, but to teach you how to build your own meal plan to teach you how to make good choices and why you should make those choices. That right there is going to be a game changer, I promise you, but that’s down the road.

So I’m just giving you a little preview of what’s to come later. All this is just to say that instead of just telling you what to do, a good coach should empower you to make good decisions for yourself. And to help you to be there as your guide to help you build the habits that are required to make whatever changes you’re making last for good.

Like this isn’t about, you know, just a quick fix, like these short term plans might be fine. But what do you do when you stop working with the coach, if you haven’t learned how to do this for yourself, you’re just on your own. And most people just don’t know what to do when they stop working with their coach, okay. So you should be becoming empowered, your coach should be empowering you. Right?

When the coach just tells you what to do, they have all the power, they have all the power, you need to have the power, right, you should be able to make most of these decisions for yourself. Now, of course, having a coach, a good coach, is there to guide you, and to show you the way, but also to empower you to learn what works for you and what doesn’t work for you.

Now, there’s no possible way any coach could know what’s going to work for you ahead of time, I’m just going to tell you right now, when it comes to things like nutrition, there is just no way. Every human being is different. Every human being has different metabolism, different goals, different food preferences, different likes and dislikes.

There’s different lifestyle concerns to take into consideration. There’s different cultures, different genetics, different medical histories, oh my gosh, there’s no way that one meal plan from a book is going to work for every single person, right? There’s no way that just giving everybody the same standard meal plan every week is going to work for everybody.

This is not a one size fits all situation here. There’s way too many factors involved. So the power of coaching is helping you figure out what works for you, as an individual and what doesn’t work for you. And this is one of the reasons why most people, they try some kind of diet, it doesn’t work for them.

And so they just say you know what diet doesn’t work. But in reality, one diet is not going to work for everyone. I’m just telling you, it’s not anyone who tells you that one diet is going to work for everyone is wrong, I’m just gonna tell you right now they are wrong. People get super worked up about this.

People are like they get dug in with their particular diet. Think about like, plant-based people, for whatever reason, they seem to be very worked up about their diet and telling you if they want to tell everybody that you’re stupid if you eat meat and plant-based is the only way to go. And honestly, I just have to tell you, there’s a lot of ignorance in that kind of generalization, right? The reality is, there isn’t one diet that works for everyone, there just isn’t.

So when I work with someone, it’s you and me like we are engaged in a coaching relationship. Yes, of course, I have a lot of experience and a lot of expertise in the area of diet nutrition for runners, for runners who want to lose weight and be able to keep it off like, yeah, we kind of start with a framework.

But you know, we have some basics that we sort of, kind of start with, but then throughout our coaching relationship, we pretty quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. And here’s the important part, we constantly analyze the results. We look at a bunch of different metrics. And we see, are we making progress here or not? Yes or no? Where can we improve things?

And then we course correct, we change something. If something isn’t working, we want to change it. So it’s not just about telling you what to do and then hoping you do it. It’s a feedback system, right? We’re always looking at your results. It’s a results oriented type of coaching. And that’s something you should definitely be looking for.

If you’re looking for a coach, somebody that’s going to help you to analyze the results that you’re getting, and then make the necessary changes so that you keep moving closer to your goals. And I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to be totally honest with you. I don’t know what’s going to work for you.

Yes, I have some good ideas based on working with hundreds of runners. But not every single person is the same. Every single person I work with is different. I’ve never done the exact same thing for two people, really I never have.

So when it comes to diet and nutrition, especially when we add in the complexity of doing all of this in a way that will also support your running goals. It’s always an experiment of one. This is a n equals one situation and the one that’s you so look for a coach who will win work with you, one who will help you to make good decisions for yourself, one who will empower you to make those kinds of choices and decisions and to create the good habits and teach you how to make all of this last.

Well, after the coaching relationship is over, I tell people who want to work with me all the time, I’m like, This is not a, I don’t want to like be stringing you along as a coach forever, I want to teach you what you need to learn so that you can go and go live your life. You know, you’ve got to find somebody who understands that you are an individual, and who will treat you like an individual. Okay.

So another sign you’re working with a good coach is someone who will ask you a lot of questions, a lot of powerful questions. Here’s why this is important. Most likely, you already have the answers within you. You just need help accessing them. So believe it or not, you are right now a powerhouse of information. And you know more than you think you do. And you definitely know more about you than anyone else on the planet. Okay.

This is one of those things that I couldn’t grasp at first. I thought I had no clue what to do. And that’s why I hired a coach in the first place, right? Just tell me what to do. But the more I got into this process, the more I worked with my coach, the more I learned that I pretty much had everything I needed to know already inside me.

And then I just needed somebody to help figure it out. That really changed everything for me. And I love this now, like, I see this every week, especially in working with my business coach, because she’s always asking me these powerful questions, right? Questions that force me to go inside, to go inside myself to go inside my own brain to find the answers.

The answers aren’t out there. The answers are in here. And I’m pointing to my head. And this used to be really frustrating for me at first, right? Because I just wanted her to tell me what to do, just tell me what to do. But she wouldn’t do that, she would ask me a lot of questions and help me come up with the right answers. And now I love this process.

Because I know that by asking me the right questions, she’s helping me to access those parts of my brain that I just that I need to access to be able to solve problems. And then I’m just I haven’t developed that, like skill of being able to access those things until I started doing this on a regular basis. And now, it’s extremely powerful. I know it sounds counterintuitive, right? To work with a coach and have them help you figure it out for yourself. But it’s an amazing way to coach someone.

Because when you do it this way, you’re actually teaching someone how to become a powerful problem solver on their own. Again, this isn’t about, like just, you know, telling somebody what to do in that situation, you would always have to have that coach there with you, right? Instead, what have you learned how to become that powerful problem solver on your own? That’s amazing, right there.

The point of coaching is not to just rely on your coach forever, right? But to teach you how to think for yourself to develop the cognitive skills to know what to do in every situation. Right, and to be able to solve every problem that comes your way. So for me, I ask a lot of powerful questions. Okay.

So I’ll ask clients, they’ll tell me they, you know, did something and I’ll say like, well, why did you make that choice? You know, why do you think you chose cake for dinner last night instead of chicken? Or, you know, okay, so you had a situation? How could you have handled that situation better when your coworker put that cupcake on your desk? You know, or what was the thought that immediately preceded the action that you took, you know, that behavior where, you know, you decided I’m not going to work out today? What was the thought right before that?

Or maybe you fail? Did you binge out on some pizza last night or ice cream? Like, what did you learn about yourself from this experience? These are examples of real questions that I ask clients all the time. And when I ask them these questions, they go inside themselves to find the answers. And they come up with solutions on their own with my help, right? But instead of me just telling them what to do in each of these situations, well, here’s what you do next time.

They are figuring it out for themselves. And I’m going to tell you something right now. When you figure it out for yourself, you are way more likely to remember that and to make better choices next time. There is a big difference between somebody telling you what to do, and you making a decision for yourself on what you should do.

When you come up with the solution for yourself, you learn from it, it just sticks, right? It’s the difference between, well, Patrick told me I shouldn’t eat cake for dinner and, and I don’t eat cake for dinner because that choice is not in alignment with who I want to be. See the difference there. It’s very powerful, very powerful.

Another thing you should look for in a good coach is someone who will point out your blind spots. So a good coach should help you see things that you cannot see about yourself. These are often called your blind spots, because like a blind spot in your car, you know, where you can’t see the car next to you, or whatever. There are things about yourself that you can’t see, because you’re inside yourself.

There’s a saying, and it goes something like “You can’t see the label from inside the bottle.” So you can’t see the outside, from inside. So sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to show you things about yourself that you wouldn’t be able to see on your own.

For example, I see a lot of self-sabotaging behavior happen when people set out to lose weight. So they might be going along fine for a while. And maybe their weight stalls a little bit, which is totally normal. It happens all the time, right? But then they’re just like, ethic, you know, and they binge out on french fries and donuts.

And they don’t understand why they do this. And they come to me and they’re like, Patrick, I don’t understand why, why do I do this all the time? So I started asking a lot of questions. And when we get to the root of the problem, it’s usually something like, well, you know, I was getting frustrated, the weight was stalled.

And I was having a tough day at work. And I thought, well, I might as well just eat whatever I want, since this isn’t working anyway, you know, some variation of a thought like that, okay. But they don’t see what’s happening in their brain, you know, because they’re, it’s their brain.

And they’re just like, they’re just operating on sort of autopilot. It’s just doing what they’ve always done, right. But having a coach, they’re having that person that’s outside of them, to show them what their brain is doing. To show you things about yourself that you cannot see, that’s some powerful stuff right there.

There are things about yourself that you can’t see, because they’ve just been like, things you’ve been doing your whole life, automatic behaviors and habits and they just seem like normal to you. But to an outsider, they might see like, oh, well, there’s your problem right there. You don’t see it, because it’s just part of who you are. And just something you’ve been doing forever, right.

But having this outsider’s perspective, like somebody’s pointing out these blind spots that you have, it’s crucial, it’s crucial. This is why it’s hard to have somebody that’s like really close to you, as your coach, you know, they need to be a bit more removed. So people who you’re too close with, like a spouse, or a good friend or family member, they don’t have that third party perspective, right, they’re also going to have trouble telling you things that you actually need to hear, they won’t be able to dole out the tough love the way they need to maybe.

And so somebody that’s like too close to you won’t be able to do that. Somebody that’s too close to you really just can’t be a good coach for you. Right, then it’s kind of damaging to the relationship if you’ve ever worked with somebody in that capacity, that’s a spouse or something like that, not usually a good situation. Okay.

The other thing about working with a coach versus a friend or family member is the coach has the training, the background, the professionalism, the experience necessary to help you get the results that you want. Friends and family members really don’t have that. They don’t have what it takes, unless they’re trained as a coach, but even then, again, they’re too close to you, right? So anyway, just make sure that you have somebody that can point out those blind spots. Okay.

And then there’s a few other qualities to look for in a coach that I think are very important. One is accountability. So this is one of the most important aspects of coaching in general, like you are way more likely to do what you said you’re going to do when you have somebody holding you accountable. You have to have somebody holding you accountable.

People tell me all the time, you know, I was going to eat this junk food, but I knew I was going to have to talk to you later. So I decided not to do it. They just know that they’d rather stay on their plan, then have to tell me, they went off their plan. Even though I don’t yell at anybody, like I don’t judge anybody. But having somebody that’s there to hold you accountable is key crucial insight, one of the most important aspects of coaching for sure, okay?

Another good quality to look for is encouragement. So, being a cheerleader, it’s not really the main job of a coach. A coach’s job is to help you get results. But having somebody there to encourage you, and support you, and believe in you, it’s so helpful, it really is so helpful. You want somebody who can encourage you to do hard things, to do those hard things that you know you need to do, in order to get the results that you want.

You need someone in your corner who believes in you fiercely, who can help you to start believing in yourself, right? In case that’s a problem. In case you don’t believe in yourself, you need somebody that’s there that believes in you. And that can help you build that belief that you need for yourself, right.

And then of course, another quality is look for his knowledge, like it goes without saying, but you need someone with the knowledge with the experience with the expertise to be able to help you achieve your specific goals. And a lot of coaches that I know are very general, they’re like generalists, right?

They have a little bit of knowledge over a wide variety of topics. You want a coach who specializes in helping someone like you to reach your specific goals, right? So for example, when I talk about me being the weight loss coach for runners, I say it like that for a reason. It’s because I specialize in being the weight loss coach for runners.

I don’t know of anybody else who really specializes in this particular area of coaching. As far as I know, I’m the only weight loss coach for runners. Now, there might be others. But no one does it quite like I do, I know that for sure. Okay.

But that’s just an example, like, find a coach who specializes in helping somebody like you reach your specific goals, right, because you want to find the expert in your area, you know, whatever it is that you’re looking for, okay.

And again, it doesn’t have to be me, I want you to understand how powerful coaching can be, I want you to understand that, you know, you just need to have this criteria for deciding if coaching is a good fit for you or not, it’s not for everyone. Some people don’t want that accountability. They want to just do it on their own. And that’s fine. And that used to be me, my mantra was always ‘I will figure it out myself’.

And when that strategy stopped working for me, and I decided to reach out and get help and get a coach, it really changed everything. For me, it’s absolutely been one of the most powerful things I’ve ever done for myself, okay. So listen, if you’re a runner, and you’d like to get the weight problem solved for good, and you want a coach to help get you there, I want to encourage you to find someone to help you, right?

And if you want to work with me, I would absolutely love that. And I will invite you to apply for coaching, right? Fill out an application, you and I will get on a short Zoom call. We’ll talk about your goals and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Okay, I would love to be your guide.

I would love to help you lose the weight and show you how to do it without all the struggle and frustration. So if you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts, and sustainable results. Then just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And let’s get started. Love you all keep on Running Lean. 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.

120. How to Fail Properly

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Failure. It’s such a negative word, isn’t it? What do you think of when you hear the word “failure”? If you’re like most people, you probably think of something you tried but were not …

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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 120 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today how to fail properly. Failure. It’s such a negative word, isn’t it? What do you think of when you hear the word failure?

If you’re anything like most people, you probably think of something you tried, but then were not successful. It didn’t work, you failed. And then it brings up all these feelings like disappointment, regret, and defeat. failure means you’ve been defeated, you lost it’s over the end, right?

But what if there was a totally different way to think about failure? What would it look like if you learned how to fail properly. And that’s what I’m talking about here on the podcast today. So get ready to learn a whole new way to look at failure, what failing means and how to fail properly.

And before I get into this topic, today, I wanted to share a quick story about someone I’m working with. This person came to me as a runner, wanting to lose weight around 20 pounds or so. And he had tried everything on his own and just couldn’t do it. And in the five weeks that we’ve been working together, he’s lost over 14 pounds. And that’s a lot of weight. And it’s not really uncommon.

Okay, it’s well, within the range of average weight loss of like one to three pounds per week seems to be pretty average for most people that I work with. The reason I bring this up is because of something he said to me on our call the other day. And I’m paraphrasing here, I didn’t you know, write down everything exactly, as he said.

But he basically said, ‘You know, I’m super happy with this weight loss, I haven’t been this weight and over 30 years, I feel so good. I’m getting stronger running is getting easier every day. But the thing that surprised me the most is all the stuff I’m learning about myself. I’ve really changed my mindset about food and exercise and running and everything. And I’m feeling so much better about myself, I don’t have all those intense cravings to eat junk food anymore, I’m feeling much more confident, I’m standing taller and carrying myself better.’

And I just want to say that I’m so proud of this person for doing the work. Because this is not easy stuff to do. Not everyone is willing to commit, not everyone is willing to put in the effort and actually show up and do this work every day. Not everybody sticks to their plan. But when you do, that’s when the good stuff happens. It does work if you show up and do the work.

So if you’d like to experience the same kind of results, then I want to invite you to apply for coaching with me. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. When you get on that page, you can fill out a short application and then schedule a free zoom call with me and we’ll talk about your goals.

And we’ll talk about how coaching works and how coaching can help you reach those goals. I would love for you to experience these same kinds of changes for yourself. If you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes for mindset shifts, and you’re ready to get some sustainable results. Then I think you’re ready for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.

Alright, let’s talk about how to fail properly. So why am I bringing this up today? Well, I work with a lot of people and sometimes I see people that experience a failure of some sort and then give up. I’ve seen some examples of this lately, where someone has embarked on their weight loss journey and maybe experienced some sort of a failure or a setback.

You know, maybe they hit a stall like so their weight. They were losing weight pretty steadily but then their weight loss sort of stalled out. They hit what’s called a plateau which is super common. In fact, I’ve almost never seen it not happen or maybe they’ve gained a couple of pounds back.

And so they start slipping back into old behaviors. And the reason people do this is because they get frustrated. And when you get frustrated, what do you do, you want to go eat some food to feel better, right? But what happens internally is these, some people like they tell themselves, I have failed, I am a failure, this program, this diet, this food plan, whatever it is, isn’t working. So they quit. They give up, they see failure as the end.

And this is not some fringe thing. I see this all the time, mostly not from my clients, to be honest with you. Because if you’re one of my clients, if you’re one of the members of my program, you’re not allowed to quit. And I’ll talk more about this later. But I see it’s super common in the weight loss industry in general, in the health and fitness industry in general.

My training coach, and I, my weightlifting coach, and I were talking about this the other day, he sees a lot of times with people who are, you know, wanting to get fit. And so they start lifting weights, and they start getting healthier. And then, you know, maybe they just kind of stall out or they have a bad workout, or they’ve experienced some sort of a setback, maybe they get sick, and then they just quit, they just stopped coming back to the gym, they just give up.

So I’m going to go so far as to say that here in the Western world, this is kind of an epidemic. All right, I think that we’re taught at an early age, that the worst possible thing that we can do is to fail at something, you know, you better do well, in third grade, or you’ll fail, and we’re gonna hold you back. And this means that you don’t measure up, you’re not good enough, you are a failure.

And a little sidebar here, I think we need to do a better job of teaching kids that failure is not the end, it’s just part of the process of learning. I don’t think this whole grading system and failing kids and things like that is really working very well, I think it just puts a lot of pressure on kids, kids are filled with fear and anxiety about failure, and I think there’s a better way to do it. But that’s for another topic.

But we as adults need to understand the same thing. We need to understand that failure is just part of how we learn and how we grow, how we evolve, and how we become more. But we get it in our heads that failure is the end. So even as old wise adults, we need to learn how to fail properly because we never have. So that’s what we’re talking about here today.

So let’s get into this a little bit like what is failure? Exactly. If you look up the dictionary definition of failure, it says: an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful, lack of success, that’s all it means is lack of success. And I always add the phrase “for now” at the end of that. So failure to me is a lack of success right now.

Doesn’t mean lack of success forever, it just means that whatever you’re doing didn’t work big up. Notice it doesn’t say a lack of success forever. And it’s the end of your journey. It’s not the end. One story I love about failure is the story of Stephen King.

So Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. And I remember in high school and after high school reading, just like every one of his books, you know, I was kind of hooked on Stephen King at the time. And I love that kind of writing. Now you may not enjoy his particular style of writing or his subject matter, you know, kind of gruesome and horror-type stuff, but I enjoy it.

I think it’s really fun to just get lost in these crazy, supernatural stories. But anyway, the first manuscript that he wrote was Carrie, and he submitted this to publishers trying to get this book published, right. And he took it to like 30 different publishers and was rejected every time he was rejected over 30 times for this manuscript of Carrie.

One of the rejection letters that he received said, we are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias, they do not sell. And he eventually took that manuscript and threw it in the garbage. He was like, this is the end screw it. I’m not going to keep trying. I’ve tried 30 times and failed 30 times.

But his wife convinced him to try again and she like, dug it out of the garbage, I guess. And he was, you know, he resigned himself to just keep trying. And he did. And of course, he eventually sold it. And he’s become one of the most popular and successful writers of our time. To date, he’s the only author to have over 30 books become number one bestsellers. That’s crazy.

But what if he gave up? What if, after one of those failures, or 9 or 21 of those failures, he just said, you know, screw it, I’m not doing this anymore, and just quit writing, he would never experience the kind of success he did. So I love that story of failure, it does not mean it’s the end, it just means it’s the end for now.

And I like to use this analogy of failure as like, imagine yourself being an airplane pilot, and you’re flying a commercial airliner from LA to New York. So you plot your course and you take off and everything’s looking good. And you’re flying through the air, everything’s like smooth sailing, but then you like, realize there’s this big storm ahead, you know, a huge storm.

And you’d have to make a decision of what you’re gonna do. Do you just quit? Do you like land the plane and say, sorry, there’s a storm in our way. There’s a big obstacle in our path we just can’t go on? Or do you go around it? You know, it’s going to take longer, you know, it’s not the way it was supposed to go. Things are not going according to plan, but you’re going to make it work, right?

Obviously, you’re going to make it work. You’re just gonna go around the storm, you keep going, right. But what if there was like a mechanical issue with the plane, you had to land it? Okay, now, you’re really off track, you had to actually take the time, you have to land somewhere, you got to sit there and wait for them to check it out. You know? So do you just quit? Do you just give up in that moment?

No, you just keep going. Obviously, as long as there’s nothing terribly wrong, you know, as long as the mechanics check it out, and the plane looks good. Then you get back on it, right, you just get back on track. These failures along the way, though, we look at our own failures as the end like it’s an excuse to give up.

And if you were that pilot, you would never give up, you would just continue, you got a plane full of people, you got to get them safely to their destination, right? Think about your health and fitness journey, your weight loss journey, you want to get to that destination. And so you have to experience a little bit of turbulence, a little bit of rough weather, just expect that on the path. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean it’s the end, it just means that it’s a setback. It’s a detour. All right.

So one thing I love about runners is that they’re already really good at doing this, like you guys, you guys are amazing at experiencing failures in your training. When you’re training for a marathon, you know, you got this 16,18, 20 weeks of training. And I see people all the time experience failures and setbacks and disappointments, you know, you might get injured, and you have to take some time off of running to nurse an injury.

Or maybe you have to travel for work or vacation. And it’s the same week, you’re supposed to be doing like a 20 miler. And so what do you do in those situations? Or maybe you get sick, this has been happening a lot, right? Over the last couple of years, you get sick, and you have to take time off? You know, do you quit?

No, you don’t you keep going and you like you get back at it. As soon as you can you get just pick up where you left off with your training plan, right? You keep training because you have this goal, and it’s important to you to finish that marathon, that’s a priority. And whether you’re traveling or if you’re sick or injured, none of these things are going to derail you from accomplishing that goal, right?

You probably paid for the race. So you have some skin in the game, which helps to drive you forward as well. Right? You’re focused, you’re determined, and you’re not going to allow these failures to stop you. You’re laser-focused on hitting this goal of finishing this marathon, you’re gonna finish that no matter what. Right, that’s amazing, you know, character trait, to have that sort of tenacity to just keep going no matter what.

And it’s really the same with your weight loss journey. But here’s the thing, I see runners all the time who can do this with their running plan, they might get injured, and they just, they do all their physical therapy and they, you know, get back on track, and then they finish that marathon like they are focused on completing that task and that goal.

But when it comes to losing weight, I see people experience some minor setbacks like hey, their weight stayed the same for a couple of weeks in a row and then give up. Like, what if you were as laser-focused on your weight loss as you know, health and fitness goals as you were on finishing that marathon?

What if you never let some little failures along the way stop you from continuing on? What if you took that same all-in attitude about your marathon training, and applied it to losing weight and becoming the most badass version of yourself? What would that look like for you? Would you look at failure differently? What would you do the next time you experienced that weight loss stall or plateau?

Or maybe you gave into a temptation to eat some junk food? Would this mean you can’t do it? And you give up and you just declare this doesn’t work and go back to doing whatever you’ve been doing? Which already, you know, that doesn’t work? I know, it sounds kind of crazy. The way I’m explaining it here, you’re probably thinking to yourself, like, oh, no, of course, I wouldn’t do that.

But this is exactly the thing I see people do all the time. You know, I’ve even talked to people who said they had their diet all dialed in years ago. Like they never felt better. I was at my goal weight. Running was awesome. Everything was amazing. I was eating all this amazing food. But then something happened, something seemed like it wasn’t working. And they gave up.

They experienced some sort of a setback, some sort of a failure, and they quit. And they went back to doing whatever they were used to doing before, which got them kind of overweight in the first place, and blah, blah, blah. I really wished this was an uncommon story. I really wish this was like the exception, but it’s not a people tell me this all the time.

So instead of avoiding failure at all costs, instead of giving up when you experience failure, you have to expect failure. What would that look like for you? Like ehat would it look like if you just expected to fail? I know it sounds like a kind of a crazy concept, right? What if you just expected there to be some turbulence along the way?

What if you just expected to have to, you know, lay in the plane to fix a stabilizer flap. I clearly don’t know much about airplanes. But whatever thing you would need to fix on a plane. Like what if you expected a weight-loss stall or a plateau? And what if you just expected your weight loss journey to take a little bit longer?

Failure is not to be avoided, failure is inevitable, you will fail. So why not embrace it, deal with it, learn from it, and then keep going. You cannot spend all your time trying to avoid failure. If you do, you will never try anything hard, you will never push yourself to accomplish anything more. You won’t ever get out of your comfort zone.

Because when you avoid failure, it keeps you in that comfort zone. But it also keeps you stuck and keeps you small and keeps you from growing and becoming more expected and embracing failure has the opposite effect. It gets you out of your comfort zone and drives you forward toward your goals. It’s how you evolve and grow and become more it’s how you accomplish hard things like losing 20, 30, 50 pounds.

You have to look at failures as stepping stones along your path. If when you fail, it is not the end, every one of these failures you experience is just one more step on the path to your eventual success. So each time you fail, it becomes one more step closer to your goal. And each failure is a chance to learn something. This is the important part of failing you have to learn the lesson from the failure.

You have to learn what works and what doesn’t. And the only way you learn this is by failing because success doesn’t teach you anything. So each failure actually becomes necessary in order to reach your goal. Each failure is one step closer to that goal. So you try something you fail. You learn something, you course correct, then you try again. Boom. Now you’re one step closer to your goal.

Every success is built upon a pile of failures. And no one does anything challenging perfectly. There’s no such thing as success without setbacks and failures along the way. So just expect them to be there. Embrace the failures. If you look at failures, in the end you’re gonna be quitting a lot. You’re gonna be quitting everything you ever start.

Are you the kind of person that quits things a lot? it’s probably because you look at failures, the end, failure is never the end, it’s just another step closer to becoming who you really want to be. So when you embrace failure, this means that you’re going to try things that might not work. And this is a scary thing for a lot of people.

Well, what if it doesn’t work? Who cares? A lot of people just use this as an excuse to quit or not even start something, because what they’re gonna do, you know, what they’re setting out to do is hard, it’s uncomfortable. And I get that doing this work. Like if you’re losing weight, if you want to lose weight and become a leaner, stronger runner, this is not an easy thing to do.

This takes some time, it takes some time to build new habits, it takes some time to learn what works for you. If it was easy, none of us would be overweight, none of us would need help with staying on track. You know, nobody would ever slip into old habits, again, like this would be simple, but it’s not. It’s, it’s it takes some work, I get that right.

In order to change your habits, you have to do things that feel uncomfortable, right? At least at first, once you do things for a while, it gets more comfortable, it gets easier, and all that. But at first, especially it doesn’t feel good. And so a lot of people just use failure as an excuse to quit. So they’re just chasing, they’re chasing after comfort and security, at the cost of their goals, they really want for themselves.

They don’t want to feel uncomfortable. They don’t want to do anything hard. They want more for themselves. But they don’t want to put the time and effort into reaching some people like they don’t want to put the actual effort into doing it. They don’t want to experience the discomfort that is required to reach that goal.

So it’s way easier to just say, you know, this failed, and go back to being comfortable and safe and small and doing all the stuff you used to do. And that’s fine if that’s what you want for yourself. But you’re listening to this podcast right now, I don’t think that’s what you want for yourself.

The people that listen to this podcast, I know you want more for yourself. Like I was saying earlier, this whole idea of like staying small and comfortable, and not wanting to get uncomfortable. I think this is an epidemic. This is like the disease of modern society, at least in the Western world.

Chasing after comfort. Avoiding discomfort at all costs, and avoiding failure at all costs has caused us to become weak and soft and small. And staying safe, and uncomfortable just keeps us from evolving, right? If you want to become badass, you got to embrace discomfort, you got to embrace failure as often as you can, and you got to do stuff that might not work.

Change your diet, sign up for an ultra marathon, start lifting some heavy-ass weights, guess what, you’re gonna try these things. And you might fail, you probably will fail, Big whoop. Learn from it. Try something else and try it again. Do not give up on yourself just to be comfortable. Because I know you’re capable of so much more.

You may not believe that about yourself. But I know that about you, you’re capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for. Most of us are only living up to about 40% of our actual potential increase that goes beyond 40%.

And the last thing I want to say about all this is probably one of the most important things that I want you to take away from this episode. And that is that any time you fail, and if you’re following my lead here, and you’re kind of doing what I’m suggesting here, you will fail maybe a lot.

Anytime you fail, it does not mean anything about you, it does not mean that you are a failure. When you try something and fail, it’s really easy to fall into that trap of thinking that you are a failure. feeling like a failure is really caused by a lot of negative thinking. And if you feel like you’re a failure, that’s an internal state caused by your thoughts about what this failure means about you.

So feeling like a failure is just an emotional state that you’re in. And emotional states are just caused by your thoughts. Okay. So just know that you are never a failure. The reason you feel this way is just you’re projecting that onto yourself. You are an amazing human being. You’re capable of greatness. You are perfect just the way you are right now. Yeah, you can still work to change yourself but that does not mean that you are a failure just because you tried something and it didn’t work does not mean that you are a failure.

You analyze your results. You try something else. And you see if that works, but you are never a failure. Do things that are hard, try things that may not work, fail, fail often fail fast. But none of this means anything about you as a person, it does not mean that you are a failure. You’re amazing.

So, your call to action this week, what I want you to do, is I want you to allow failure. Allow it to become part of your health and fitness journey. Allow it to become part of your weight loss journey. Try things that may not work. Get out of your comfort zone. Stop expecting your life to be failure-free and there’s no such thing as a failure-free life. So embrace failure.

Try something hard fail, learn from it course correct, then keep going. Rinse and repeat until you hit your goal. Cool. And remember, if you’re ready to make realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and get sustainable results. Then you’re ready for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. 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.

118. The Biggest Mistakes of Habit Change

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In my coaching practice, I’ve helped hundreds of runners ditch old bad habits and create ones. This is really the core of the work we do together - creating new habits that get you to your weight …

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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 118 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about the biggest mistakes of habit change. So in my coaching practice, I’ve helped hundreds of runners ditch old habits and create new ones. And this is really the core of the work that we do together, creating new habits that get you to your weight loss goals and get you to your running goals.

So when it comes to changing a habit, I know what works and what doesn’t. I’ve also seen a lot of people make the same mistakes over and over again. So today, I’m going to share a few of those biggest mistakes of habit change that I’ve seen.

And these are the things that people do that make it very hard to create any kind of lasting change any kind of permanent change in their habits. And my hope here today is that this is going to help you to avoid making these same mistakes yourself.

So I just want to let you guys know that we just finished up a whole month of working toward eliminating emotional eating for good over in the Running Lean coaching project. It was an intense learning experience for everyone in the group. We all learned some powerful skills for permanently ending emotional eating stress, automatic eating whatever you want to call it, it’s basically the same thing.

And in case you don’t know, I’ve just opened up my brand new immersive coaching program called the Running Lean coaching project. This program combines the best elements of my group coaching program, and also includes personal one-on-one coaching with me to help you get all the knowledge, guidance, encouragement, and accountability that you need to hit your weight loss and running goals.

And starting in April, our whole focus for the month of April is going to be on building healthy habits that stick there’s an art and science to habit change. And all month long we’ll be doing live trainings, q&a sessions, workshops, and coaching to learn how to ditch the old habits and replace them with new healthy habits that get you to your goals. I hope you’ll join us you can learn more and sign up now at runningleanpodcast.com/join. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.

Alright, so let’s talk about why habit change is so hard. And the biggest mistakes people make around habit change. Okay. So why is it so hard? Why does it seem to be so grueling for us to stop doing our bad habits? Like why do we struggle when we want to change a habit? Break an old habit develop a new habit? Why is this such a struggle? Okay.

You know, you should be doing this, but instead, you don’t do it right? You know, you really want to stop doing this. But you keep going back to that old behavior time and time again. Okay? Why do we do this to ourselves? So that’s what I’m going to be talking about here today, okay, I’m gonna be talking about the importance of not making these mistakes, the same mistakes that I see a lot of people make, okay, you have to avoid these mistakes.

If you want to create healthy habits that actually stick that become automatic, become part of who you are and what you do that becomes easy and effortless behavior for you going forward. Okay. So this is the crux of, of the work that we do in my coaching programs because when it comes to building a better you, it’s all about what you’re doing day after day after day after day after day.

It’s not about one thing that you change one time, it’s about consistency in habits and consistent behaviors over time. And if you don’t understand this, and if you don’t wrap your head around the fact that you’re going to have to create new habits, it’s going to be very challenging for you.

Okay, so here are some of the mistakes that I see people make around this. And there’s more probably, but I’ve got a few to share with you today. These are the big ones. All right. So the first one is this. The first mistake of habit change is not understanding how your brain works and not understanding that your brain is actually designed to fight against you.

So most people don’t understand what their brain is doing and they get very frustrated. When they try to create some kind of a new habit, because they’re suddenly faced with all this resistance, it’s like internal resistance. And they don’t really see that they don’t know where it’s coming from. They don’t know why it’s such a struggle for them mentally and emotionally to like, stick with their plan.

Okay, so you have to understand what’s going on in your brain. So here’s what you need to understand. Your brain has one job, and your brain’s job is to keep you safe and to keep you alive. And whenever you make any kind of big change, your brain goes into freakout mode, it goes into fight-flight or freeze mode.

So doing a new habit, like say, you want to get up early, you want to get up earlier than normal to start running before you go to work. And this is a great idea. But to your brain, this feels uncomfortable, it feels unsafe, it feels unfamiliar, and your brain will reject this behavior. Your brain will seek comfort, and safety.

And whatever is familiar to it, even though what you’re trying to do is actually good for you. And will make you healthier, and we’ll make you feel better. Because getting up early to run, you know, it’s great for you, right, it helps you start your day with some good endorphins, you’re less stressed throughout the day, you feel more invigorated, you’re generally happier when you start your day with exercise. So this is all good.

There’s no logical reason why, you know, your brain would be against this idea. But here’s what’s going on your brain, this to your brain, this whole idea is like, foreign, it’s not what you’re, it’s not what it’s used to. Your brain is used to you hitting the snooze button three or four times and then grabbing quick coffee as you sprint out the door at the last minute, that’s what your brain sees as normal.

That’s what your brain sees as safe and comfortable. And familiar. Even though it’s not good for you, it’s not good for your mental health or physical or emotional health. But this is what just seems safe and familiar and comfortable to your brain. So that’s what your brain wants you to do. Right?

It just wants you to just keep doing what you’re doing, stay comfortable, stay with the familiar. So doing something different. Getting up early, putting your running shoes on, and going outside and running just seems so foreign and like unsafe, like your brain is literally thinking we’re gonna die if we did this, you know.

So you really have to understand this, you have to understand that your brain will force your progress in these scenarios, right. And it will cause you to self-sabotage just to keep you comfortable, your brain just wants to keep you comfortable and safe. You have to understand this have to, have to, have to.

So this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make all the time, they don’t understand this, they don’t get it and they can’t figure out why they just can’t get up in the morning, you know that they put their shoes out, they set the alarm, they made an intention, but they just can’t do it.

You know, they can’t stick to their food plan, they made a food plan and they’re, you know, trying to stick to it, and they just can’t do it, they can’t make any traction towards their goals. Because they’re just letting their brain run the show their primitive brain, you know, that’s that part of our brain that just wants to keep us safe. That’s called our amygdala that’s like that old primitive reptilian part of our brain.

Okay, so you have to override your brain, you have to take back control of your own behavior. And so, you know, one of the ways you need to do this is to embrace the discomfort of habit change, you have to embrace the discomfort that will be there. I talk about this all the time, right, you got to embrace the suck, right?

You have to be willing to get uncomfortable because your brain just wants to keep you comfortable, and you have to do the opposite. You have to get uncomfortable. And if you want to create new habits, and ditch old ones and create new healthy habits, you absolutely are going to have to get uncomfortable. And this means doing the opposite of what your brain wants you to do sometimes and you just have to be willing to be uncomfortable to do it. Okay.

So that is the first mistake that I see people make they don’t understand this. They don’t understand what’s going on. They’re not willing to get uncomfortable. And they just go with whatever their brain is, is trying to do by default, which is to keep them safe and comfortable. Hit snooze. That’s what feels normal. Don’t get up and go running. It doesn’t feel good. That’s hard. Right? But you know that that’s what’s good for you. You know that that’s required.

Another big mistake I see a lot of runners make when it comes to changing habits is procrastination. And I know you’ve done this, you’ve probably said to yourself, I really want to lose weight, or I really want to run a marathon. But right now, it’s not a good time. Not right now you’ve got this big thing going on at work, maybe when that’s done, or, you know, the kids are in school, so I got a lot of stuff going on with that.

So maybe after the kids get out of school, or when we have more money I can invest in myself, you know, or when I have more time when I have some free time, then I’ll do it. And we just keep going on and on and on about all the reasons why we should put this thing off till later. When we all do this, we all procrastinate. No one is immune, I do it. I’m very guilty of doing this.

But here’s the thing, in order to change your habits, you have to be taking action, you have to be actively practicing new behaviors. That’s what habit change is all about. You have to be actively practicing new behaviors.

The problem is new behaviors are hard. And it’s uncomfortable. See mistake number one that I just mentioned about our brain wanting to keep you safe and comfortable, right.

So we do whatever we can to just not do it. And we use this excuse of procrastination as a reason to not have to do anything right now. So you just tell yourself this little light, you’re like, I’m going to do it later, I’m going to lose the weight, I’m gonna run a marathon, just not right now, later, later, later, later, later, is the killer of hopes and dreams later is a goal crusher.

You want something for yourself, but you just keep saying later, I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s not going to happen. And I say that this is a lie that you tell yourself that you’re going to do it later. Because you really, you’re just you just don’t want to do it. You don’t want to do it at all. And so you just convince yourself that you’ll do it later. But in reality, you’re never going to do that thing.

And the reason you don’t want to do it is because you are afraid you’re afraid that you know, you might fail. That’s what this boils down to. You might feel in your heart that you really want to run that marathon, but you’re scared, you may not be able to do it. You know, what if I don’t finish?

What is that gonna be mean about me, I’m gonna feel like a failure. Or you really want to lose the weight, but you’ve failed so many times before. You just can’t bear to do that again. You know, what is that going to say about you? It’s this fear of failure that’s often at the root of all procrastination. So you have to know that this fear of failing is going to be there.

And that putting off starting something, doesn’t do anything to make that fear of failure, go away, still gonna be there. It just makes you feel worse because now you have this thing that you really want to do. But you’re not doing it, you’re kind of procrastinating because you’re afraid you’re gonna fail. So you put it off till later. And that even makes you feel worse.

But what if you just took action today toward that goal? What if you said to yourself, no more delaying this, let’s go. And you actually signed up for that marathon? Or you change something about your diet starting today? How would that feel? Well, honestly, it would feel a little scary, right?

But here’s the thing with procrastination, taking action is always going to feel scary. Because you don’t know if this is gonna work or not, you don’t know, if you’re gonna be able to lose the weight, you don’t know, if you’re gonna be able to cross that finish line that marathon. And delaying it is not gonna make it any less scary. It just means you’ve wasted a bunch of time that you could have been using to train for that marathon, or get your diet figured out.

You know, you’re still going to feel the fear. When you set out to do that thing later. You might as well just take action now and not waste all this time. Because you know that later, it really means never stop putting off that thing. And take action today.

Another big mistake related to this whole idea of habit change and kind of related to procrastination is getting into what I call information overload. And here’s what this looks like. So let’s say you want to lose weight. So you Google weight loss. A

nd you get a billion articles that all tell you different things. And I actually just did this. I’m like, I wonder how many articles if I just type in weight loss and Google will come back 1.6 billion results B with a B billion. With this much information out there on this topic. Why on earth does anyone have trouble losing weight?

Right, it would seem like all the information you need is out there. But oh my gosh, the problem with this is that there’s like, so many different ways to approach this thing, right, and everything, not everything works for everyone, everybody’s different. And you kind of need to figure out what works for you.

And I have to tell you that this is kind of a struggle for a lot of people. I’ve been there I’ve tried it. And I’ve tried so many different things. And I’ve gotten into this information overload too. And I’ve gotten stuck with like, what about this idea? What about that? Well, this says this, and this says this is all kind of contradicts each other too, right?

And I’ve tried so many different things. It didn’t work for me. I was Googling this stuff for like years, years of the Googles. And it just didn’t work I couldn’t figure it out was very frustrating. Super overwhelming. But here’s the thing, you can’t just get stuck in this information overload mode, right?

You have to get out of that state you’re in. Because what happens when you get overwhelmed, right, you end up like doing nothing, you get stuck in this analysis paralysis. And you don’t do anything because it’s all too frustrating. It’s too complex. There’s too many contradictory methodologies. There’s too many options. There’s too much information. And this is again, where your brain is just like goes into freakout mode and just like shuts down and just wants to do nothing.

But you know, that’s not the answer. That is not going to get you there. You have to do something, right. So what’s the right plan for you? And honestly, I wish I could tell you that I wish I could just tell you right now, here’s what you do. And this is what’s gonna work for you because this works for everybody. And the truth is that we’re all different. And there is not one thing, there’s not one diet, there’s not one plan that works for everyone. There’s no one size fits all, when it comes to nutrition and weight loss, there just isn’t.

And this is one of the big principles that I use in my coaching practice that I treat every person is an individual. And we look at your specific goals, your metabolism, your activity levels, your lifestyle, your food preferences, your likes, your dislikes, we put all this stuff together. And we create an individualized plan that works for you. And it’s something that you can feel good about.

So you have to get out of this mode of information overload. So get out of this, like research mode on Google, like to try to figure out what’s going to work for you. Because I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s going to drive you crazy, it’s going to drive you crazy, like looking at all this information out there.

Okay, sometimes you just have to get into action, and sort of figure it out as you go. Now, obviously, having someone knowledgeable there to help you put your plan together is ideal. But even if you try to go it alone, just get out of information overload and get into action, try something, try something that feels good to you.

That feels in alignment with your goals, your values, and then see if it works for you. And if it doesn’t, you can always try something else. Okay? Get out of information overload.

Another big mistake I see people make when they’re trying to change habits is they play the blame game. They set out to change a habit, they can’t seem to make it work. And then they blame everybody else in their life and everything in the world for their inability to make it work. So here’s a scenario you might be able to relate to.

Let’s say you’ve decided you’re going to stop eating sugar, like sugar is a problem for most people, right? It makes it really hard to lose weight. If you have a regular sugar habit. There are no real positive health benefits from consuming sugar. So you make this decision. You’re like, you know, I’m just gonna stop eating sugar. Okay. And it’s going okay for a week or so. And then your husband is doing something nice for you. So he decides he’s gonna bring home doughnuts for breakfast on like a Sunday morning. Right?

And he’s like, just have a doughnut. You know, just live a little. Have a little fun. You deserve it. You’ve been doing great all week. Just treat yourself. It’s just a don’t, it’s gonna be fine. And of course, you agree with him. You’re like, yeah, I have been doing great all week. I do deserve this. I do want to have a little bit of fun. And so you cave and you eat, you know, a few donuts.

And then you’re like, well, you know what I mean? I’ve already blown it for today. So I might as well just like, you know, this whole day it’s shot. Sometimes we’ll just like eat more sugar. Alright, so you just spend the rest of the day scarfing down muffins and cookies and cupcakes and for a snack, you’re eating like candy and oh, you have ice cream for dessert and whatever.

And of course, you feel like crap because you’ve been sugar all day. But you also feel bad because you let yourself down and so you’re like in this downward spiral now, right, and of course, you’re coming off with a sugar buzz. And so what’s gonna make you feel better? That’s right, more sugar, it feels great to eat the sugar.

But then you’re back on the sugar train, and you just say, eff it to the whole, not eating sugar thing. And you justify it, you justify it by telling yourself that it’s really not your fault. If your husband didn’t force you to eat those donuts, you’d be fine. If your husband would just support you, you’d be able to make this work.

But since I don’t have a supportive husband, this is just not going to work for me, right. And this story is really not a made-up story. I hear stories like this once a week, once or twice a week from people who legitimately think that it’s not their fault that they can’t stick to their food plan.

They blame other people, they have lots of stories, lots of excuses, lots of justifications for their behavior, and they believe in these things fiercely. And they will defend these stories and excuses and justifications, right? They blame their spouses, their friends, their kids, their kids’ friends, their boss, their stressful job, their culture, society in general, they blame the seasons, the weather, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, you name it. Nothing is ever their fault.

And if everything and everyone around them would just change, then they’d be able to stick to their plan. But here’s the thing, if you want to change your habits, it’s going to require that you take ownership of your own behavior. You cannot blame anyone else for your own choices. No one ever holds you down and forces the donuts into your mouth. And if this is happening to you, you need to seek some professional help right now, right?

But I really doubt that that is the case, right? Nobody’s making you eat doughnuts. You make your own decisions every minute of every day. And changing a habit requires that you are 100% responsible for everything that you do or don’t do. You cannot blame other people, you cannot blame anything outside of yourself.

You have to stop blaming and start taking full responsibility for everything that you do. Here’s what you can control, you can control your own thoughts, your own feelings in your own actions. That’s it, nothing else is within your control. You can’t control other people, what other people think how they feel or what they do.

This also means that no one else can control your thoughts or your feelings or your actions. No one else is ever to blame for what you are choosing to do. So stop acting like you are powerless and out of control. You’re always making decisions about what you are doing. Every bite of food you put into your mouth is a decision and a choice you’re making at that moment. Always, always, always.

In order to change habits, you have to take full responsibility for your own behaviors and your own results. If things aren’t going the way you’d like them to be going. Other people don’t need to change. You need to do something, you need to do something different. You need to change something within yourself. Okay.

So those are the biggest mistakes I see around habit change. I hope you will avoid these mistakes for yourself. And remember, we’re going to be spending the whole month of April on the art and science of habit change over in the Running Lean coaching project you’ll learn exactly how to ditch the old habits and make healthy habits stick and we’re going to have some fun doing it.

I hope you’ll join us just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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