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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Habits

117. The Power of Total Immersion

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If you want to make big changes in your life, then a lot of things in your life are going to have to change. The problem is that most people do not like to change things! They want to lose …

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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 117 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’m talking about the power of total immersion. So if you want to make big changes in your life, and a lot of things in your life are going to have to change. The problem is that most people do not like to change things.

People want to lose weight, but they don’t want to give up the junk food. People want to get stronger, but they don’t want to lift any of those heavy weights. Most people have big lofty goals but are willing to change only as little as possible. And you know that this doesn’t really work. Right? Right. So today, I’m going to offer up an alternative way of doing things, something called total immersion, I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode, especially if there are big things that you want for yourself.

But first, I wanted to remind you that I’ve got another live workshop coming up. So it’s gonna be Thursday, the 31st of March. And we did this last week, and it was super fun had a ton of people on there and we had a lot of fun. It’s called five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner. And we’re going to be talking about why willpower doesn’t work when you’re trying to change, you know, eating habits, why fad diets don’t work, why counting calories doesn’t work, why running a million more miles doesn’t work. And I’m gonna talk about what does work.

So this is understanding how habits actually operate, right, and the science of making habit change permanent. We’re going to talk about a personalized approach that supports your weight loss and your running goals, and how to put together a comprehensive plan of action that actually works on the mental, emotional and physical changes that you have to do right it’s not just about what you’re doing. It’s about the mental-emotional pieces, too. And this is the part that a lot of people just miss.

So I’m going to be teaching about all this stuff in this free workshop, you’re going to learn how to become leaner and stronger and transform yourself into the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet to sign up, go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop and the next one’s coming up on Thursday, March 31, I hope you’ll join us it’s going to be super fun.

And then I wanted to just give you guys a quick update on kind of where I am with my recovery from my rotator cuff surgery and how running is going because I haven’t talked about this too much lately. So I just want to give you a quick update. So I started running again, I don’t know about four or five weeks ago.

And to be honest with you taking three months off of all exercise, I wasn’t able to do a whole lot at all. And taking three months off really kind of got me sort of soft. And I lost some fitness, I really did, I lost some muscle mass, and I lost my endurance for running for sure. So I started running again, you know, four or five weeks ago. And I started out just very slow and started, you know, kind of doing some, you know, slow, easy runs one mile, two miles, three miles, that kind of thing.

And then I started working into some more speed work and some interval training and things like that, just to kind of push myself a little bit harder. Started doing some tempo runs on still low mileage, right. And in the last few weeks, I’ve started kind of increasing my mileage. But I have to tell you, this whole process has been very challenging. And I think what’s going on here is that my body needed to get fat adapted again.

So the fat-adaptation I had for so long, sort of went away to a certain extent, you know, I’m still, you know, sticking to a low carb diet, I’m still, you know, super efficient at burning fat. But as far as fat-adaptation for running, I think that kind of went away because I wasn’t running. So this is a big lesson that I’ve learned here.

And I’m going to talk more about this in a future episode. And kind of some of the things that I’ve learned about this whole process of taking this much time off and how to come back from it. But I think I lost a little bit of that fat adaptation of how to get it back.

So you know, if you’ve gone through the process of becoming fat-adapted, you know, it takes a few weeks and running is hard during that time. And I have to tell you the last few weeks running has been very hard. And I’ve just been like right, stupid, why am I doing this? I don’t ever want to run again, you know, I’m just gonna hang it up.

And then this past weekend, I did a 10 miler, and I have to tell you, I turned a corner, I felt good. And I finished that run feeling like man, I’m just so happy that I stuck with it. I’m so happy that I didn’t hang up my running shoes forever, that it didn’t just give up, that I kept going. And I kept, you know, sticking with the plan of continuing to run even though it was hard, even though it felt terrible. I stuck with it. And the results are starting to pay off.

And then I did a 5 mile run yesterday, which felt great. And my speed is not where I want it to be yet, but I’m going to work on that too. That’s going to come back too, but the endurance is definitely coming back. I’ve kind of gotten through that hump of that fat adaptation period. And I just want to encourage you guys, if you’re out there, and you’re going through this, and running is hard for you right now. Just stick with it. It gets better. It really does.

And like I said, I’ll do another episode soon. And kind of give you guys a little bit more insight as to what my experience has been taking this much time off three months is a lot of time off. You know, it’s a lot of time to take off from really not doing any exercise at all. Other than walking, I was able to walk some when I had my sling on and I could go for a walk. But I couldn’t do a whole lot of anything else.

And that was challenging for me and a lot of ways mentally, emotionally, and physically. And I’ve had to work through some things but I’m turning a corner. I’m feeling good. Plus, you know, the weather’s getting nicer. It’s like we’re starting to like its spring, we’re starting to get some nicer, warmer days out there. And you know, running in the 50s and 60s instead of the teens and 20s is delightful. It’s delightful. I don’t know about you, but I like it to be a little bit warmer out there running. How about you? Where do you like it to be? What’s your favorite temperature for running?

I’ve decided that like 50 degrees is about perfect for running. But I don’t mind even running in the heat when it’s super hot out at 90 degrees. Like I’m cool with that I can deal with that. It’s not bad, right? Am I crazy? This is a little crazy, right?

Okay, so here’s what I want to talk about. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the power of total immersion. And I want to talk a little bit about what most people do when it comes to changing habits. So if you’ve got you know, big goals, let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds or you know, really improve your running qualify for Boston, run your first marathon, whatever it is, we have big lofty goals, right.

But here’s the thing, most people, they’re like toe dippers are just, they want to just dip their toe into the process and the things they need to do for changing a habit. You know, they want to gain, they want to lose the 50 pounds, but they don’t want to do much of anything differently. Right. And this is kind of a problem. Because if you’re not willing to do much, you know, if you’re not willing to alter your behavior substantially, then you’re just going to get very, very little in the way of results from that, you know.

If you’re only willing to give up as, ditch the bare minimum, I’m going to tell you right now, that’s not going to be enough to get you to this big goal, you know, in order to to be the kind of person who finishes a marathon, you know, who trains for and finishes a marathon, you’ve got to change a lot about your life. And it’s an inside job, you got to start from the inside, you know, we’ll talk about that a little bit. But it really requires you to do a lot of things.

Now, nothing has to be big and major, but we got to change a lot of little things. But what most people do, they’re like, oh, I’m just gonna, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds. So I’m just gonna, I’m gonna get this book that talks about, you know, eating right or something. And now, they’ll read a book, and they’ll kind of do some things kind of sorta, and then that’s it. That’s all they’re willing to do.

Or they’ll, you know, listen to a podcast and there’ll be like, oh, yeah, I listened to that one podcast. And so I’m gonna just kind of do what that one person said on that one podcast, and it’s just not enough. You know, they try the fad diet for a minute. This is all very much like dipping your toes in the pool, right? It’s like a very timid approach to this kind of work.

If you want to change your life I’m telling you right now that you have to like be all in you have to do more than the bare minimum. Okay. So some examples that I’ve experienced are people who want to lose a significant amount of weight. But they will just do as little as possible because they want to try to maintain the same lifestyle that they have. They love their junk food. They have an exercise routine that whatever they’re comfortable with. And they just want to keep everything the same, they want to stay comfortable. And you know, you’ve heard me talk about this a million times, right? You’ve got to embrace the discomfort, you’ve got to embrace the suck if you want to make big changes, okay?

So, so maybe this person who is, you know, wants to change, you know, wants to lose 50 pounds, maybe they just commit to running a few extra miles each week, right? It’s you know, it’s a little bit of work, but it’s not much. They don’t, they’re not willing to change their diet at all, they don’t really want to change their lifestyle, they’ll just commit to a few extra miles, right. And that’s not going to get you there.

Big changes require big changes. But here’s the thing, big change doesn’t mean you have to just change one big giant thing. You can accomplish big changes in your life by making a lot of little tiny changes. Let me give you an example of what this looked like for me some years ago.

So a while back, I decided I was going to do an Ironman Triathlon. And if you’re not familiar with the Ironman, it’s a pretty grueling event. It’s a one-day event, I think you have something like 17 hours to complete it. And it’s a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike, followed by a full marathon on the same day, right. And when I did mine, this was back in 2013, in Louisville.

And it was, by the time I started my run, so the time I started my marathon was three o’clock in the afternoon, it was 90 degrees with you know, super humid conditions, and I thought I was gonna die. I literally thought I cannot do this, I think I’m gonna die. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done to this date. It’s still the hardest thing I’ve ever done is that Iron Man.

But here’s the thing – because it was such a big thing, it was so hard. It just seemed impossible for me. At the time, I decided that I was going to go all in on myself and I was going to do whatever it took to make this thing happen to cross that finish line feeling good. So I read books, and I listened to podcasts all about triathlon, and Ironman, in particular, you know, watched YouTube videos and documentaries.

The people that I spent my time with were my training partners. Other friends that I trained with who had done Iron Man’s in the past, you know, the people I worked out with, I surrounded myself with like-minded people with positive people with people who had already done what I wanted, so that I could learn as much as possible from them. I practiced with all these different gears you know, different water bottles setups on my bike.

I literally tried like five different bike saddles until I found one that actually worked for me all these different running shoes, do I wear socks? Do I not wear socks? You know, shoes that where I could just slip them on and off, you know where I didn’t have to tie them because that takes time in transition time. I practice with a bunch of different triathlon suits, you know, that I could wear while swimming, biking, and running. So I didn’t have to change I could just wear kind of the same clothes the whole time.

I studied the course you know I actually took several trips down to Louisville, and Louisville is about 100 miles away from Cincinnati. So it was about a two-hour drive. So drove down there I swam in the river, we did the swim a portion of the race in the Ohio River. And so there’s you start in this channel. And actually, the group of us went down there and we swam the channel upstream against the river against the current of the river, which is extremely challenging.

And just doing that right there was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be a bit of a challenge to swim against the tide here against this course of the river for the first you know, third or so of the swim, but it helped a lot, you know, and then I rode the bike course I wrote the whole course and ran part of the marathon route.

So for the better part of a year, here’s what I did. I completely immersed myself in the world of Ironman Triathlon. I ate, slept, and dreamed about Ironman. This was a huge, huge goal of mine, and I wasn’t gonna leave anything on the table. I went all-in on myself and I did whatever it took to make sure that I could cross the finish line and I did I finished that event, hit a goal time, I felt amazing.

It was one of the most challenging things I have ever done in my life. And the most rewarding and the most life-changing things I’ve ever done in my life, it changed me profoundly.

But I want you to see the difference between just like dipping your toe in and total immersion. What I did when I was training for this event was total immersion. You know, dipping your toe in is just like, if I had just said, you know, I’m just going to run a few extra miles each week, I’ll do a few extra, you know, biking workouts, I’ll swim a few times, like that would be the bare minimum, like you got to do some training, right.

But I decided I was going to do everything that I could possibly do to make sure that I was successful in this event. So I immersed myself in the world of triathlon. So total immersion, this idea of total immersion is changing a lot of little things, not one of these things like reading books, or taking a trip down to Louisville, or, you know, listening to podcasts, none of these things is a big deal on its own.

But when you add them all up, they combine and compound to create this massive effect on your life. Because then I just felt like I was surrounded with all the support and the knowledge and encouragement and inspiration that I needed to get this thing done.

It’s like learning a new language like you can install Duolingo on your phone. And you can learn a few phrases here or there. And after a few months, you might be able to, you know, rattle off a few phrases or have a minor conversation, a simple conversation. But if you were to be transplanted in Rome, for three months, I guarantee by the end of that three months of you just living in the middle of Rome, like you would be speaking Italian pretty fluently by the end of that.

Because you’re immersed in the language and the culture the society, there’s no way you’re going to make it really without learning the language. I could force you to learn and to grow and to adapt and to evolve and become more. So you can see the power of immersion, right? But why don’t we do this? Why don’t we choose this path with everything that we do in our lives with all the big things that we want for ourselves?

And really, it’s because it’s hard. You know, it requires you to change a lot of little things. None of them, like I said, is that big of a deal on its own. But there are a lot of little changes you need to make. And when you change things like what you do like your behaviors, your actions, the things you’re actually doing, this is great. This is the surface-level stuff, though, you also have to go a little bit deeper.

You have to change your thought processes. You have to change your whole belief system, you have to change the way you kind of think and feel about these things. I had to change the way I thought and felt about the Ironman and about myself, I had to change the things I believed about myself. Because up to the point of like, you know, I don’t remember when it exactly happened when I made that shift from like, believing that I was going to do it.

Because I know when I signed up for the thing, I was like scared to death. And I was like, I don’t know if this is going to happen. That’s one of the reasons why I immersed myself in this world because I was like, I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make it happen. But at some point along the way, maybe a month or two before the event, I was like, I’m gonna do this, like I changed. I had to change my beliefs about myself, and what I was capable of.

When I signed up for the Iron Man, that was an impossible goal. For me, it seemed impossible. And in order for me to complete that event, I had to become a different person in the process. It changed me profoundly, you know, from so many different levels of my being.

So immersion is like changing things at different levels. It’s your thought process, your belief systems, your whole attitude, your relationship with yourself and with others and with the sport. And with your nutrition, diet, and exercise. It’s all of that. You know, if you want to lose the 50 pounds, you have to change the whole way you think and feel about food, right? Just changing one tiny thing isn’t going to get you there.

And yeah, this is the harder path. But the path to big goals. It’s always the harder path. It always is. It’s not the comfortable, easy way. It never is. It’s always going to require you to get uncomfortable and to do the harder things because if it was easy, and if it was comfortable, you’d already have it. And this idea of total immersion is how I decided to structure my new coaching program.

So I’ve just opened up the doors to the Running Lean Coaching Project, I’m super excited about this, but I decided that it was going to be a program of total immersion. So just a few of the things that you get when you sign up for the coaching project, you get three full months of access to the program, you get one on one coaching with me, you get twice-weekly group coaching. There’s an online self-paced training library of materials so you can learn everything that you need to learn on your own. There’s support via email, and messaging with me, there’s a private podcast channel and a private members-only Facebook group so that you’re surrounded, and completely immersed in this world, right, this whole program has been designed to be one of total immersion so that you’re surrounded immersed with knowledge, with support with encouragement and with accountability, so that you can be successful in your goals.

And if you want to learn more about the program, you can go to runningleancoaching.com/join, and I have a page where you can just learn all about it, and it goes into great detail and tells you everything you need to know about it. But you can see that there’s a big difference here, you know, you can, you can dip your toe in the water of, you know, weight loss or trying to train for a marathon or something like that, like you can read a book, or, you know, try a fad diet for a couple of weeks, right.

Or you can immerse yourself into a program like this one, and make your success practically inevitable. So I want to encourage you, and it doesn’t have to be my program, like, I share this stuff with you guys. Because I think it’s amazingly transformative. And the people that I’ve worked with have had amazing experiences. But it’s not for everybody, and I totally get that.

But find something, find something, find a way that you can immerse yourself in the work in the world of whatever it is you’re going for here. So your work really is to see where in your life, you might just be dipping your toe in. So maybe you’re training for a marathon. But you don’t really even have a training plan, you’re just kind of winging it, right? Or maybe you want to build a stronger frame, you want to be you know, build muscle. And so you’re kind of doing some strength training, you know, but you really don’t have a plan.

You’re not tracking your progress. You don’t maybe don’t even really know what you’re doing. I hear this from people a lot, especially runners who are like, I don’t really know what I’m doing with strength training, Patrick, and I’m like, oh, we’ve got to work on that. Or maybe you’ve picked up on some ideas to help you lose weight. Like you’re cutting out snacking, but you’re not really doing it consistently. You’re just kind of like, you know, sorta this is all just like dipping your toe in right?

What would it look like to immerse yourself in the work of changing habits and changing behaviors? What resources can you add into your life to help you what books can you read, podcasts, audiobooks, can you listen to documentaries? What can you watch? What groups can you join like Facebook groups? Is there a local running group, I love local running groups, if you’ve got one, join a local running group or a gym if you need to join a gym so that you can learn how to you know do strength training properly.

What people could you start hanging around with? What people share your goals? You know, find like-minded people that you can surround yourself with that will help to support you and encourage you and support and inspire you know, what can you do today to start changing your mindset, your attitude, your thought patterns, your belief systems? Because this is the big part of the work that has to happen.

You’ve got to like, question a lot of the things that you might have believed for years about yourself, especially when it comes to your ability to lose weight, or you know, nutrition for running or becoming your most badass self? Is that what you want for yourself? Do you want to become a total badass I want you to? What is it going to take to get you there? What could be possible for you?

If you immerse yourself in the world of habit change, as opposed to just dipping a toe in? What things seem impossible for you right now, could become possible with the power of total immersion. Finishing an Ironman Triathlon seemed absolutely impossible for me until I immersed myself in the world of the Ironman Triathlon. And then it became inevitable for me And I did it.

So how can you immerse yourself? How can you go all-in on yourself? How can you immerse yourself in the world of changing habits, changing behaviors, what big goals do you want to become inevitable for you? Because it’s all available to you. If you’re willing to not just dip a toe and if you’re willing to immerse yourself if you’re willing to jump in feet first, just do it. Cool.

And remember that if you’re ready to immerse yourself in the world of healthy weight loss, specifically for runners and other endurance athletes, come check out my free live workshop five simple steps to becoming a leaner stronger runner, the next one’s coming up March 31. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I would love to see you there. You’re going to learn a lot. We’re going to have some fun together. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. We’ll talk to you.

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.

116. The One Big Mindset Shift You Have to Make

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If you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good, you have to shift your mindset. I think you probably know this by now since I talk about it all the time. But there’s a reason why …

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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 116 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the one big mindset shift you have to make. If you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good, you have to shift your mindset. I think you probably know this by now since I talk about it all the time here on the podcast.

But there’s a reason why I spend so much time on this subject. It’s because it’s one of the most important factors in whether or not you keep the weight off permanently, getting leaner and stronger. It’s mostly an inside job, right? So today I’m going to share with you perhaps the biggest mindset shift you have to make if you want to create healthy new habits that last for life.

But first, I want to give you guys a quick little FYI. So you may have heard a short little podcast episode that I released accidentally. A couple of days ago, this was a message I was sending to my private coaching clients. So I have another private podcast feed that’s just for my private coaching clients.

And I record trainings and I record group coaching calls, and I released those on a private podcast so that my coaching clients can listen to those things after the fact. You know, maybe they weren’t able to make a group coaching call live. And so they can listen to the replays.

Well, the way that I do my podcasts is I have this program that I use that basically has two boxes that are right next to each other and one of them is for this live public podcast that goes out to the whole world. And then right next to it, there’s another box that’s like for just my private coaching clients.

And every time I put out an episode for my private clients, I’m always like, Okay, did I do this right? Am I in the right box? Because I know one of these days, I’m going to make a mistake. And sure enough, I was just in a hurry yesterday, or whatever I did this couple of days ago. And I was like, cool. it’s all good, publish it.

And I started getting these emails from people like, Hey, I hear you’re, you’re going away with this podcast like you’re not going to be doing it anymore. Where’s it going to be? I didn’t get an email. Because in this in this message I send out I’m changing my platform for the private podcast because I don’t want to make these kinds of mistakes in the future, right?

Anyway, I totally screwed up, I put it out in the wrong place. So if you received that podcast where I was like, hey, this is going away, you got to check your email to find out where to get the new podcast. That was all just a mistake, it was intended to just go out to my coaching clients, so you can just disregard it.

Nothing’s changing here on the Running Lean podcast at all. It’s still gonna be right here while you normally listen, you don’t have to do anything differently. Nothing’s changing. And I apologize for any of the confusion. But technology, am I right?

And then I wanted to give you guys a quick heads up that I’ve got a live workshop coming up again next week. So it’s five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner. And listen, you may have already tried everything to lose weight. But what you’ve already tried probably doesn’t work. And it’s not that you’re a bad person or you lack willpower. You’ve just been given a lot of bad advice, right? So using willpower doesn’t work. Fad diets don’t work. Counting calories doesn’t work.

You’ve heard me talk about all this stuff before, right? Deprivation and starvation don’t work, running more miles doesn’t work. So what does work well? Understanding how habits actually work in the science of making habit change permanent that works.

A personalized approach to support both your weight loss and your running goals – that works. And what you need is a comprehensive plan of action that works on the mental emotional and physical changes required so you can absolutely lose weight and keep it off for good. You just need the right information.

And that’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this free workshop. You’re going to learn how to get leaner become stronger and transform yourself into the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. To sign up for this free workshop just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop.

And I’m going to give you guys a couple more opportunities, I’m doing this three times. So the first one was March 17. And that would be yesterday if you’re listening to this podcast today, the day that it comes out. The next one is going to be Thursday, March 24. And then I’ll do another one the following Thursday. So if you can’t make it, this one time, that’s fine. Look, go for the next one.

And listen, we’re gonna have fun together, okay, it’s live. It’s interactive, you get to ask questions. And we’re going to try to have some fun doing this stuff. This, this topic of like, getting healthier and getting stronger and losing weight. It doesn’t have to be like suffer-fest. We don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. We can have fun doing this. Right? Cool. All right.

So today, the one big mindset shift that you have to make. So let me ask you this question. How is your mindset different? Think about that. Do you ever spend any time thinking about how your mindset is actually determining everything that you get in your life? No. Okay, that’s cool. That’s why I’m talking about this here today.

The truth is, most people do not spend any time thinking about this. Most people just think that the way that they think is like their thoughts, the way they feel their emotional state, all this stuff is just fixed. And it cannot be changed. Like you’ve been programmed like an android, to have certain thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about yourself, and that they are just permanently fixed. And there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s it. This is who you are. This is what you think. These are the things that you believe, good luck with your semi-human existence robot.

You are not a robot, your mindset is not fixed. You can absolutely change your mindset at any time, then this is the first thing I want you to understand here today, that your mindset is not fixed, it is changeable. Now, it may feel like it’s not changeable. Because you’ve been thinking the same thoughts, your whole life, maybe over and over again. For decades, you’ve been believing the same things. For those decades, you’ve been feeling the same way.

And so in a way, I mean, you’ve sort of programmed yourself with this current mindset that you have.

And just a little like sidebar here, like what if we are actually all just androids and we’ve programmed ourselves? Hmm. This is like, eerily close to a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story. And if you’re not familiar with Philip K, Dick and who he is, and his work, check out, Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle, Total Recall, Minority Report, and so on. Awesome, awesome sci-fi writer right here. He talks a lot about androids.

And whether or not, you know, androids can think, and are they actually humans? Are we actually androids? Hmm? Of course, we’re not androids, right? We’re not robots, but we can get ourselves stuck in a fixed mindset. And I want you to know this, that you have the power to change your mindset, always. It may not feel like it, but you do. We have to understand this thing.

Okay, so first of all got to understand that your mindset, the way you think and feel about yourself is changeable. And listen, the reason I talk so much about mindset here on the podcast is that if you want to make big changes in your life like if you want to lose weight and keep it off for good, it’s all about your mindset, right? I’ve talked about this before, what you do, you know, your diet and exercise and things like that. It’s like 20% of the equation, the other 80% is your mindset.

Losing weight, initially is mostly about what you do, like you’ve got to change your diet, right? Keeping it off for good. That’s almost entirely about your mindset because you’ve already figured out what to do you know what to do. It’s all about mindset. And this word, mindset. It’s a huge, huge word. It means so much.

It’s like, all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, all of the things you believe about yourself in the world. It’s your values. It’s your whole attitude, and outlook on life. It’s really how you feel about yourself, how you feel about other people, and how you feel about society. And like it’s huge, right? It’s a huge, huge topic.

And this is why I talked so much about it here on the podcast because there’s so much to it. And I can’t possibly tell you in one podcast episode like everything you need to know about mindset. Okay, so, you know, it would be a really long podcast episode. Maybe I’ll do it someday. Be fun with you guys like that would be fun.

So today, what I want to do is I want to focus on one specific part of your mindset. And this is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful parts of your mindset. And it’s the one part of your mindset that basically drives everything else. Okay? And this one part of your mindset, we call this your identity.

So your identity is who you are, at your core. It’s everything you say, after the words, I am. Like, for me, here are some parts of my identity – I am a man, I am a runner, I am a coach. These are all parts of my identity. This is all part of who I am at my core, how I see myself.

When Darth Vader says to Luke, “I am your father.” He’s speaking from his identity, right? This is who he is at his core, Darth Vader is a father. You know, we think of him as just this evil, you know, villain with no feelings at all. But we have to acknowledge this because his identity is driving his behavior.

And later on, right, he defies the emperor, he saves his son, because, at his core, he’s a father, he can’t kill his own son. You know, and we have, like, empathy for him at the end, sorry, if that’s a spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the Star Wars series already, whatever. And I hope you don’t mind my sci-fi references today. I’m just feeling very sci-fi-ey this morning for some reason.

But listen, your identity, it’s like the root of who you are. Okay. But here’s the thing. And this is the part I mean, that you got to understand, like, you can still change it, you can still change it, even though it’s your identity, and you feel like it’s like fixed and unchangeable, you can still change it.

Think about this, if you’re a mother, and you have kids, like being a mother is part of your identity, right? And it’s probably always going to be part of your identity. And you, you probably wouldn’t want to change that you would want to always be a mother. But even this, which seems like something that is completely fixed can be changed.

So there are some women who, you know, have kids and they give them up for adoption, because they don’t want to be mothers, okay, or whatever reason, right? And that’s okay. So this is even this, like deep-seated part of your identity of like, being a mother can be changed, okay. I just want you to understand this, that your identity is very, very powerful, and changeable, you can change it. And if you want things to be different in your life, then you need to step into a new identity to get there.

You need to assume the identity of someone who is leaner, stronger, and faster, if that’s what you want for yourself. You have to let go of the parts of your identity that are holding you back and keeping you overweight and keeping you stuck there.

So here’s a little bit of a story about me and a big shift that I had to make in my identity. So for a long time there for many years, part of my identity was I am a vegan. And nothing could change that for me.

I had programmed myself with this identity. So everything I did was filtered through the lens of I am a vegan I eat a plant-based diet. Like how I fueled you know how I ate, you know, obviously, but how I feel about running, how I felt about eating animals, what I thought of other people who ate me what restaurants I ate at. The people I spent time with books, I read blogs, I read podcasts, I listened to movies I watched where I shop for food, what kinds of food about everything in my life was driven by this huge part of my identity.

You can see how, what a powerful part of my mindset this was, right? This was who I was at my core, I’m a vegan, this is who I was okay. And I held on to this identity for dear life. For like 10 years, I held on to this part of my identity. I did not waver.

Now, even though at that time, I was not super healthy. I was steadily gaining weight. You know, I couldn’t put muscle on no matter how much I was lifting weights. And this identity that I had and I didn’t realize it at the time. I can see it now but I didn’t realize at the time this identity that I was holding onto so tightly was kind of keeping me stuck. It was keeping me from getting healthier and getting stronger.

That identity was not serving me, it was actually detrimental to my health and my athletic performance, but I would not let go of it. Because at my core, I was like, this is who I am.

So you can see how powerful your identity is how it drives your thoughts, it drives your beliefs, it drives your feelings, it drives your behavior. And ultimately, it drives and determines all the results that you get in your life.

So for me, I had to make a big change. I was getting overweight, I gained like 40 pounds during this process, right. But I just held on to this identity with a death grip, I was like not letting go of it.

And at some point a few years ago, I had to let go of that identity, I had to change my identity from I’m a vegan to I’m a meat-eater. And this was not an easy thing for me to do, you can imagine the internal struggle that I had with this decision. And if you want to learn more about this, I did a whole podcast on this. It’s episode number 32. It’s called Why I Changed My Mind About Eating Meat.

And I want to say this, I have to say this because I know that I’m going to get emails from people about this. But there’s nothing wrong with being vegan. There’s nothing wrong with being plant-based.

If this is you, and you identify this way, and this is part of your identity, and it’s working for you, that’s amazing. It did not work for me, my experience was I was eating a ton of sugar, I was eating a ton of refined carbohydrates, I wasn’t getting enough protein, I wasn’t doing it right.

And today, I have a different attitude about all this, I work with a lot of people who are vegan or vegetarian, and they do amazing, they lose weight, they get stronger, they get healthier. So I know how to do this differently now. But I’ve sort of just let go of that identity of being plant-based and being a vegan, right.

But today, I can help people that have this as part of their identity and as part of their beliefs. And as part of like what they feel is right for them. And that’s totally awesome. I love it. Like whatever diet you choose is fine, as long as it’s working for you.

If you’re slowly gaining weight and becoming unhealthy, and you know, you can’t get strong and things like that we got to change some things, we can still do it, you know, plant-based or vegan, vegetarian, whatever you’d like to do, okay, but what I was doing was not working for me. So I had to make that decision to change for myself and I decided to start eating meat again. And I started to change. And it made a big difference for me, and I got off to sugar and the refined carbs and all that other junk, okay.

But I want you to understand the incredible power of this one mindset to shift your identity, it’s driving all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, it’s driving your values and your beliefs. It’s driving, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, and how you think and feel about the world around you.

Your identity is driving your actions, your behaviors, what you do each day is largely determined by who you are at your core. And all the results that you’re getting in your life are not getting determined by your identity. So everything you say after the words “I am” is going to help to determine what you get in your life. The results you’re getting in your life are mostly determined by your identity, we have to understand this.

So I want to challenge you, I want to challenge you to change those parts of your identity that are not serving you. I want to challenge you to take a look at all the different parts of your identity. And ask yourself, Is this really something that I want to hang on to or not?

Look at who you are and all the deep-seated thoughts and beliefs that you have about yourself? Which of these do you want to keep? Which do you think you want to change? So you might have this deeply held belief that you cannot lose weight? No matter what you do?

Your identity might be “I’m hopeless”, and that’s who you see yourself. And that’s who you are at your core. But is that working for you? Is that serving you? Is this helping you or hurting you? Is it helping you to make progress? Or is it keeping you stuck? “I’m hopeless.” This is probably going to just keep you stuck.

Other identities that you have that you might want to change. “I’m a failure. I never stick to a diet. I’m weak. I have no discipline. I’m not a real runner. I’m too old. I’m too slow. I’m too weak.”

What if all of this was just BS? Like what if all the things you’ve always thought about yourself are wrong? Think about this. The truth is you’re deciding what you believe about yourself. Nobody’s programming you from the outside like you’re doing it yourself.

You get to decide who you are. You get to decide what identity you take on for yourself. So your challenge is to get honest with yourself. And really take a hard look at those identities and how they’re affecting every area of your life. And then be willing to change them be willing to make different decisions.

Changing our identity, it’s not easy. It takes courage, takes determination, it takes some time. But mostly it takes you making the decision that you want to change, that you want something more for yourself, that you’re no longer going to be driven by an old identity that’s just keeping you stuck, and miserable. Okay, that’s your challenge. Look at all of this stuff, the core of who you are, and challenge all of it.

Okay, you can do this, you’ve got this, my friends. And remember, if you’re ready to step into your new identity and make healthy habits last for good, then you have to check out my free live workshop. It’s coming up Thursday, March 24.

To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I would love to see you there. You’re gonna learn a lot. We’re gonna have some fun together. 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.

112. Taking Back Control of Your Life with Melanie Millaway

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Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway and we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat-adapted. But the …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 112, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, taking back control of your life with Melanie Millaway.

Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway. And we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat adapted. But the real change didn’t happen on the outside. Yes, she lost weight. Yes, she improved her running performance. Yes, she got stronger. Yes, she has more energy now. And yes, she generally feels a lot better.

But the real change happened on the inside. Melanie made this massive shift in her mindset. And I just have to say that this is the real work we do here in my coaching program, you will learn how to become a leaner, stronger runner. But you do it by making the internal shift by doing the inner work just like Melanie did. And I’ll let her tell you more about that.

Here’s the thing, the way you look on the outside, for example, your current weight, it’s just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the internal work. If you’re unhappy with the way that you look and feel and you want more for yourself, then you have to do that internal work. Okay. This is the work that Melanie did. And in this episode of the podcast, she shares how she’s absolutely transformed herself her entire life from the inside out.

But first, if you love this podcast, come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, come join us join in the fun, we have a lot of fun over there. We post selfies, we do challenges, we support each other, we encourage each other, and we have a good time doing it. It’s all about running. It’s all about diet and exercise and becoming your best self. Just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook and join the fun.

And then if you’re somebody who is ready to do that inner work to make that shift in your mindset so that you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, then you have to just take action. One of the biggest mistakes people make around changing their health is procrastination. They put off taking action.

They always think later. Like when I have more time or when I feel more motivated or after the kids go to college later, is a dream killer. It’s a killer of hopes and dreams. It’s a killer of goals. If you want something more for yourself, if you want to make a change for yourself for the better, then you have to start today.

Apply for coaching with me. There’s no commitment. It’s just a conversation, you and me just going to have a conversation about what coaching would look like for you, and how it might be one of the best things you ever do for yourself.

Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and take that first step take action, stop putting it off. Take that step towards becoming that badass future version of yourself. Cool.

All right. As I said, I’m excited to share this interview with you. Melanie experienced this profound transformation and affected a bunch of different areas of her life. And I’m gonna let her tell you all about it. So I’m gonna stop talking. Here’s my interview with Melanie Millaway.

Patrick McGilvray
All right, cool. So today I’m talking with Melanie and Melanie has a cool story that I felt was worth sharing with you guys. So Melanie and I started working together a few months ago. And
Melanie just is one of these people that at the beginning, things were very challenging for her. And at the beginning, she may have had some doubts, and she may have struggled a little bit and we’re going to talk about that. But I want you to know that at the end of our coaching together and the end of our sort of time working together. Melanie just had this amazing, like,
attitude, and this amazing transformation, and I wanted to make sure that we sort of captured that and shared it with you guys, because I think it’s very inspirational. And I hope I’m not, you know, setting this up too, too big for you here, Melanie. But I thought it was very inspirational. And I wanted to make sure that we sort of had this conversation and talked about all this stuff.

So, Melanie, why don’t you just introduce yourself and kind of tell us like, where you were, before you and I started working together?

Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Well, Patrick, first off, thanks for having me. Man, all the way back to the beginning with this process, I think when we started…

Patrick McGilvray
So where did you find yourself and by the way, this is like such a common story. This is one of the reasons I do what I do is because so many runners have this mentality of “Oh, I just run to eat, I can eat whatever I want. I just need to run more. And that’ll solve the problem.” You know, and so what you’re describing here is completely normal. We can all relate, we’ve all been there. Okay. But where did you find yourself that you thought “I need help with this?” Like what was the biggest issue that you really wanted to be solved, or the biggest issue you wanted help with?

Melanie Millaway
Well, you know, what I was doing wasn’t working, I was spending more time running and kind of prioritizing that over other things. And it was really was creating a strain for me to balance everything. Like I have a lot more responsibilities in my life, like family and career now than when I trained for my last full marathon. And, you know, I wasn’t blessed with like Olympic DNA. So I’m just your average runner based on age and kind of finish time. And, you know, it takes me a couple of hours to knock out a 10-15 mile run. And yet, I felt like I was stuck. And I wasn’t really making any material progress. I wasn’t getting faster, I didn’t look any different. In general, I kind of felt like garbage. And I wasn’t in a great mood most of the time. Yet, I was investing all this time running and I was feeling frustrated.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and this is so interesting because you’re one of these people Melanie who has come to me and said like, “Listen, I don’t have like a bunch of weight to lose. I’m not super overweight or anything like that.”

You did lose some weight in this process. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But you didn’t come to me saying like, “Oh, I just can lose the weight you just you know you had a lot more going on and there was just so many things like you described it just feeling like garbage.

I think that pretty much sums it up there. But it’s like we want more for ourselves. We want to feel better. We want running to be something we enjoy. We want it to be easier.

And so those are some of the things that I remember from when we started working together where you were just like, I’ve got to figure this out, you know?

And so we started kind of working together describe like, what, what are some of the things you, you experienced when we started making some of these changes? Because I know it didn’t know, it wasn’t all like super easy or work super well, for the beginning.

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, you know, I think when we first started, got started, really what I wanted some guidance, I wanted to be held accountable. Like I knew that was something I needed for myself. Because I have a tendency to kind of put others before me, just a kind of a pleaser, by nature that way, and if you overuse that formula, a lot of times you end up kind of sacrificing your own goals and desires. And that’s not very empowering, and it leaves you feeling like you don’t have a lot of control in certain circles, you know, situations or circumstances.

And then kind of looking outward, you know, I’ve had a lot of success, other aspects of my life working with a mentor, kind of specifically, in my career with, you know, whether it’s like an individual development plan or your career growth, I’ve had mentors in the past that were supporting me with a variety of goals, and kind of seeking their advice or guidance on something, but I never really thought to make that kind of investment in my own personal life, until I cross paths with you.

But, you know, how did they get started? Or how did it go? You know, it was challenging in the beginning, you know, I made the conscious choice to begin this journey heading into what I perceive to be the most challenging time of the year, the holiday season, that quad factor of Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Years, like, they are all packed in there. And it’s kind of crazy to, you know, experience growth and discomfort to the holidays, like the ultimate gauntlet of obstacles. But I thought if I could come out of that specific time of the year successful, it would be a huge boost to my self-confidence. And I could kind of wear it like a badge of honor.

And as I worked to get kind of fat-adapted, you know, I experienced the headaches and the sugar withdrawal symptoms. And looking back on it, I was probably a little more than grouchy. But I was really committed. You know, I started my food journal, and I was logging meals consistently. And I started planning and buying different things at the store and set my protocol and knew what I wanted to eat ahead of time.

And, you know, when it comes to running, like, I’m not gonna lie, the running sucks for a while going through this process. Yeah, there were weeks when I felt sluggish, and my body was heavy. And I was basically sucking wind.

And I had run a half marathon just a few weeks prior to kind of starting to want the Running Lean program. And I had a PR in that race. And then fast forward, like, as I’m in the midst of getting fat-adapted, I had forgot I had committed to a friend that was gonna, I was going to help pace her during a local, like half marathon. And that race felt hard. But I wasn’t quite over the hump yet at that point.

And then I just remember kind of coming out on the other side, eventually, my runs, they started getting easier. You know, my times were improving. I felt like less effort. And it was just kind of gradual onset. And I remember sending you a text message, like, you know, ran five miles this morning, and it felt really good. And I was back but I was like better.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you bring it up. Um, a couple of things I want to touch on number one is like you did take this on during candy season, which is Halloween through New Years, you know, and we’ve talked about that. And you were like, I don’t know if I really want to do this right now. But I think I need to do this right now.

And that takes a lot of courage like to stand up and do that because most people they don’t you know, most people are like, “You know what, I’m gonna wait till the New Year’s I’m just gonna like, binge my way through this holiday season. I need a bunch of garbage and feel terrible, and gained a bunch of weight. And then hopefully on New Year’s, I’ll make a resolution and be able to stick with it this time, which will be different, you know?”

And nobody does that. Do you know what I mean? It’s just, it doesn’t really work, you know? And you were like, “You know what, no, that’s not what I want for myself. I want to do something different. I want to just get started now. And I want to make these changes now. And I’m going to get through the holidays and feel good about myself. I want to come out on the other side of the holidays feeling like I had my own back through that whole process.”

So how did that go for you? Like how was the how’d you come out of the holidays?
Melanie Millaway
I came out and felt like I was well ahead of the game, you know, and I had been training along the way for my event in January and I mean, I was so far ahead. So that felt that part of felt amazing.

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah. So you came out of the holidays, you came into January, with all this momentum. And you had actually lost weight over the holidays, which is something most people don’t do.

So that was really cool. And then yeah, then you had your race in January. What was that? What was the race?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, so that was I ran a half marathon in Houston, which Houston’s a really special city to me, and I just, I love that event. And this time, you know, I was fully fat-adapted, like, it seemed so simple.

I didn’t have to do anything different than any other typical day when I was down there. Like, I didn’t have to carb load the night before. And I never, I never liked that feeling of carb-loading before a race anyway, it always kind of made me feel lethargic or gross.

But, you know, now I didn’t have to do that. And I didn’t eat anything pre-race, like I completely fasted aside from a cup of coffee. And, you know, I didn’t run with any carbs on me, like I was naked. With carbs, like, you know, I still carry my own hydration. But my running back was a little lighter. And I wasn’t ravenous post race, you know, like, I ate a standard meal a few hours later. So it was kind of surreal at first, but just strangely liberating, like to go through that transformation and to, for it to just be so easy.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and how’d you do in the race?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah. So I broke a course record for myself. So improved my time for the last time that I’d run in person. So you know, it was, it was a really smooth race, I got to see my dad along the way, like at mile two. So it’s always encouraging to have, you know, family there to support you.

But it just the overall experience of felt good. And I was really energized and happy to be there. And just overall, an incredible weekend.

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome, super awesome. Just goes to show you that just because you’re running on fat instead of carbs, like you can still run fast. You know, a lot of people, there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about that, you know, you want to get faster, you can work on getting faster, and you can do it as a fat-adapted runner, for sure. That’s awesome.

So something I wanted to kind of go back to you mentioned, like drinking and sort of like, you know, taking some time off from drinking, what was that like for you? Was that something you were just kind of struggling with a little bit and you want to do like, you knew that was maybe something that was contributing to you feeling like garbage? Is that kind of why you decided you wanted to take a break from drinking?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just wasn’t very happy with who I was. And I’ll kind of go back a little bit on my relationship with alcohol, you know,

I wanted to just kind of take a pause and kind of figure out the role it was playing in my life. And, you know, alcohol was a challenge. Like, I think I’ve had established some enduring habits over the past 20 years, like, when I was younger, and you know, you’re seeking social acceptance, like, I was one of those, I had to put effort into acquiring a taste for alcohol. But then like, fast forward, you know, now I’m in a position where I find myself thinking about having a beer after I’m done working for the day, or after a stressful week, or maybe it’s the start of the weekend, and like, let’s kick it off with a drink. Or I’m at a business meeting, and I want to be the first to meet my colleagues at the bar. So like, I had some legacy habits there. But I didn’t like the way I was feeling.

And I think with coaching, I ended up making some really positive and just lasting changes with that relationship to kind of pause on it kind of reflect on, you know, what are the positives and the negatives from drinking, like, I’m not getting a whole lot of benefits here. Like I don’t feel good. I’m not really motivated. That’s an area where I think I’ve just been wanting to make a change for a while. And this is an aspect of kind of shame with the struggle.

And that’s where you kind of provided just a safe place for me and kind of understood that the challenge that comes with it, and being like how empowering to re-evaluate that relationship over the holidays like I think it’s December and it’s holiday parties and gatherings and get-togethers and I just did like a complete dry December and like it was really challenging at first but as each day kind of passed by and I had those successes, you build more confidence and like it’s so much easier at the end and then again, looking back on it like for something I had looked so forward to like the race that year, okay, well, now I’m going to have a sip of it. And it’s just kind of neck like it kind of lost its luster by the end, like, my feeling towards it is so different now.

Patrick McGilvray
If you could identify like kind of what that mindset shift was for you because what you’re describing is awesome. And a lot of people that I work with kind of experienced the same thing. So you know, just to lose weight and kind of get fat-adapted and change our, you know, body composition and things like that. I do recommend maybe taking a break from alcohol, some people freak out a little bit about that. Some people are like, okay, no big deal I can take or leave it. And, but something interesting happens along the way.

There’s always a mindset shift. There’s like a way we think about alcohol and what it does for us. Like before we give it up for a period of time. And then there’s the way we think about it afterward. Like, can you tell me kind of what that looked like for you? Like, what was the biggest shift for you and your mindset around that?

Melanie Millaway
I think it was feeling like, I needed some sense of control, like, at some point, it kind of had control over me. And I needed to have that, that shift of power kind of back into my favor, like it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be.

And I think just more awareness to my thoughts and the feelings that they’re generating and slowing down a little bit kind of pause for a moment.

And I kind of liken it to thinking before you speak but on a more like a deeper, subconscious level. But is this really what I want at the moment and I still, you know, I still have a beer every now and then. So it’s not like I’ve completely ended my relationship with alcohol, but it’s just, I have better control. And my thought process is different towards it. And yeah, it’s been a shift, it’s, it’s not as sexy as it used to be. Because I can take it or leave it at this point.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so cool. Because that’s the place where you want to get to, and when it comes to drinking alcohol, or eating sugar, for example, these are like two things that are like drugs, if not our drugs, you know, the way that they affect our body and the way they affect our brain, the way they light up our pleasure centers.

And we have a hard time, you know, not doing these things when we’re used to doing them on the regular basis, right. And so when we’re like, okay, you know what, maybe, you know, stop eating sugar, stop drinking alcohol, and then all this resistance comes up and all this, we start freaking out about that, because we’re just so used to having it whenever we want it. So we use it to feel good, we use it as a reward system for ourselves, we use it to deal with our emotions, all that stuff.

When we take it away, it becomes challenging, and we got to deal with all that stuff that comes up. So you got to deal with the emotions, you got to like, reward yourself in different ways. You got to make yourself feel good in different ways, you know. But the other thing that people don’t realize is that that desire that you have for alcohol or sugar, will actually go away once you’ve abstained from it for a while.

And that desire, you can actually, when that sort of desire goes away, you actually start to not crave it anymore. You don’t. You’re no longer like thinking about it, you’re no longer dreaming about it. It’s no longer the solution for you anymore. And so you don’t even really want it anymore. That’s a place you want to get to. That’s a beautiful place to be because if you’re craving alcohol, but you’re not drinking, that’s terrible. I just want to murder somebody, right? But when you’re like, all of a sudden you’re like, and I remember you told me this, you’re like, it’s lost its luster. I just don’t even want it anymore. I was like, yes, that’s where we want to get to because now it’s easy to say no. Right? Yeah.

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just feel so much better. So like how I feel is more powerful than the thing than the food than the sugar than the drink. Like, that doesn’t make me feel as good as like how I feel now with the clarity and how much better I sleep at night or how much better my mood is or like I’m more engaged with my family or connected with the world like, that feels better than the beer ever made me feel.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I love that. I love that and we get into this place sometimes where we start to feel good. And you know, we start to feel good without using you know, food or alcohol to make us feel good and we think this can’t last. This isn’t sustainable. And all these like stories will start to come up and excuses and things like that, because we get some comfortable.

It’s like feeling good. Actually, it doesn’t make sense. But feeling good. Like that actually makes us feel uncomfortable because we’re not used to it. And you even said this to me, and I took a note of this of some time into our working together, you were like, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop in our heads if like, this is all gonna just come crashing down. But it didn’t, did it?

Melanie Millaway
No, I felt guilty, like for feeling so good. Like when I first felt the impact and kind of just the transformation. And I honestly had no idea that I could feel this good. It was like euphoria, like, and I just wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Like, I didn’t trust it.

And, you know, I also had to kind of remind myself not to go back to the things or the habits that got me where, where I was before, and I certainly where I don’t want to go back to you. But it was, it was a strange feeling to feel so good.

Patrick McGilvray
I just think that’s so funny in a way that we, we do that to ourselves, we actually start to feel good. And then we’re like, there’s got to be something wrong here. When is this gonna change? This is not normal, this is weird, is uncomfortable. But it’s like, no, we want to feel good. We want to feel good. So tell me about something else that shifted for you. Because, you know, you’ve you’ve experienced some profound shifts in your, in your mindset and in the way you think and feel about yourself. Tell me something else that you’ve experienced through this process.

Melanie Millaway
You know, just seeking some clarity in my life, there were things I wanted to change about myself. But I was lacking direction or certainty on kind of how to make that meaningful and lasting change.

And, you know, I had celebrated a milestone birthday earlier last year. And I think that natural progression, kind of when you enter a new decade of your life is to get introspective and start kind of conducting your own personal inventory. So you know, my satisfied with where I am right now, is there something more out there? Is this what life is really all about? Like, is this it? Or is it time for change?

And I think I coupled those kind of internal thoughts with the fact that I’ve always been interested in health and fitness and nutrition and learning new things. And, you know, identify as a runner, you know, I was an athlete in high school. And after college, I ran my first marathon, and I was hooked. I love the sport. But that also started me down the path of adopting the mindset of like, now that I’m a marathon runner, like, I can eat whatever I want like I run to eat. And if I’m training, logging miles, and burning tons of calories, and naturally, I get to eat and drink, whatever I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, like, I love food.

And my childhood and upbringing certainly revolved around food. So it seemed like a natural fit. You know, all this to say that you know, the strategy that I had adopted, you know, I run to I can eat that wasn’t really working for me anymore. I wasn’t feeling great, I was not really motivated. So what did I do? I leaned in further with what I knew, I thought, well, clearly, I just need to run farther. So let’s increase the distance.

So I signed up, and I started training to run another full marathon. And that was my goal. It had been a few years since my last full marathon, I have been running half marathons kind of for maintenance. And it was at this point that I kind of discovered the Running Lean podcast on Audible, and I was listening during my training runs. And that led me to you. And kind of just the start of this new beginning and understanding that you can’t outrun a bad diet. And what I needed was to change my relationship with food and alcohol. And if I wanted to feel better, and to achieve, like greater things for myself, like those changes needed to happen. You know, I was just kind of searching for more.

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, absolutely. It’s normal to start the year that way and to not feel like you’re in the hole, so to speak of you, you know, overindulge to the holidays, and maybe ate more drank more than you normally would have any other time of the year and have to start just to start building.

Melanie Millaway
You know, just, you know, I remember early on, I had some anxiety or apprehension with an upcoming business trip, you know, meeting with vendors, typically, that’s meals out, like a reason to overindulge with food or alcohol or otherwise and used to use support me to ensure that I had a solid plan kind of going into that situation, it’s as simple as thinking like about, how do you want to come out of that week? You know, how do you want to feel about yourself that really resonated with me. And again, just I felt supported, that was a big boost to my confidence.

You know, another simple situation where a friend had brought me lunch, like, I think it was a roast beef sandwich. And I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was doing this high fat, low carb thing. And basically, I didn’t want to eat the bread in front of my friends. So I’d not eat the bread. So I ended up, you know, kind of caving and eating the entire sandwich.

And I just remember, kind of, I felt disappointed with myself afterward. I took a good thing like someone bringing me lunch, and I turned it into something else. And I remember you kind of breaking it down. And obviously, the situation was deeper than just the bread, like leaving that conversation, feeling more confident in my choices, and being empowered to kind of stick to stick with those was really important to me.

And then really just, I mean, again, mindset, just being more aware of my thoughts and the feelings that those are generating and slowing down. Kind of just taking a pause for a moment. I didn’t realize I’ve always felt frustrated for a long time. And I couldn’t really figure out why or kind of put my finger on it. And it all makes a lot more sense.

Now it’s like, the thought is the thing. But I have control over the thoughts, how it makes me feel, and ultimately kind of what my actions are. So I feel like my life is I feel less frustrated. And I feel like I have more control in despite not being able to control the circumstance, but just how I react to the situation and just being more at ease. Like I feel less frustrated.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Do you feel like you have more control over your thoughts and feelings?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love just being able to, I’m more intentional, I think with my thoughts. And even if the thoughts maybe don’t feel good kind of marinating enough for a minute or kind of reflecting on it and trying to connect it back to the why.

And just having a better mindset in general. And feeling like I have control. Like, and I do. And that’s incredibly empowering. Like, I can think about having a drink. And again, pause for a second and think with that thought and contemplate it. That’s what I really want. And occasionally I may want to eat the thing like maybe it’s cake. But I got the power back like I get to decide for myself I get to choose.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I love the way you phrase that too because you do have the power. And it’s incredibly empowering when we can learn how to manage or control our thoughts and feelings. We go through life thinking that what other people do or say, makes us feel a certain way. And when we start to take control over that and start to take responsibility for our own stuff, and for our own emotional state, it becomes, it becomes so empowering, because now you’re not blaming other people for how you feel. You’re not blaming other people for how you’re reacting to situations.

Do you see this work that we’ve done together? Do you see it sort of spilling over into other areas of your life?

Melanie Millaway
Absolutely, I mean, that part of it, it is positively impacted so many other areas of my life. Like I said, with just being more engaged at home, I have more energy to spend time with my kids in the evening, after, you know, working all day or kind of fulfilling my responsibilities. At work, I think I’m more inspiring to my team of leaders that I work with, my colleagues, and just kind of energizing them and it’s infectious. Like, it’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible how I can like just spill over and impact so many other areas of my life in such meaningful and positive ways. Like that feels really good.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and, and I just want to point out, Melanie, that this is all you, you know, I’m, I’m over here, like yammering on about stuff, and, you know, kind of, you know, offering some suggestions and things like that, but you’re doing the work.

And that’s something I want everybody that’s listening to this to really hear that, you know, having a coach is great. And it’s great to have somebody that can guide you, that has the experience and that expertise with this kind of stuff. But really, you got to show up, and you got to actually do the work, you got to like, do things that you don’t want to do, you know, you’ve got to, you know, practice being disciplined about your diet and about exercising and about getting your runs and getting your strength training in and working through the mindset stuff.

And so I just wanted to point out that you have done an exceptional job with all that stuff, you know, you are the one that has shown up and actually done the work. So good job.

Well, what’s been like the most, like, if you could just identify like one big, the best part of this for you are the biggest transformation you’ve experienced with all of this, what would you say that was for you?

Melanie Millaway
I would say it’s having your own back. I mean, life isn’t easy. You know life is full of struggles. But you have choices. And I think I learned you have more control than you know, like, you get to choose your own adventure. Choose your struggles, right.

So personally, I’d rather be focused on controlling aspects of my diet, or sitting with an uncomfortable thought or emotion than struggling with diabetes, or heart disease or alcoholism, all of which, you know, run in my family, I think you’ve got to give yourself some grace and kind of self-love along the way.

Like, I’m going to make mistakes, the reality is I’m going to fail at things. But just keep going and keep working towards making those small, incremental changes. Because they all add up in time and, you know, you’re moving forward and getting closer towards the things that you want, and just never quitting.

And I think lastly, kind of coming out of this process, you know, I learned that nothing is impossible like we all have or should have like what I call a big, hairy, audacious goal, and you need to go after it, like see it as part of your identity, and who you are and believe in it. I think most importantly, just believe in yourself, because anything is possible.

Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah, and I totally agree with you, I think we should have big, huge, impossible goals, we should all have those kinds of goals for ourselves. Because if we don’t, if our goals are small, that means they’re because we a lot of people, we set small goals for ourselves because we know we can attain them.

But those small goals feel kind of comfortable for us. But we want those big or bigger things that are uncomfortable, the ones that require us to change and to become more in the process of going for them. Right. So love that.

Let me ask you this. How do you feel about going forward of all this? So you and I worked together for a few months. But now do you feel like you have like what it takes to like continue this as a way of life? Is this something that you just did temporarily? Like where do you stand with all that today?

Melanie Millaway
I think it’s I’m more confident than ever. It’s completely sustainable. It is a life track, like a lifestyle choice. It’s not like a diet or something that’s a fad that’s, you know, quickly slips away. Like I feel like I’ve acquired a set of skills that are transferable across all facets of my life.

And again, I think when I started this journey I was, I thought my goal was one thing. But really what I was seeking was something else and just the skill set that I’ve acquired make it easier for me to have a positive mindset. Being able to take back control, like, it’s a huge and just the self-confidence that comes from it. It’s life-changing. And it’s been a transformational process for me.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so awesome. I love that. And that’s really the goal is to make this something that is pretty easy and effortless that you can carry forward. You know, we’re not about it’s not about the short term, it’s not about like, losing weight, or, you know, improving your running for a month or two. This is about lifestyle changes.

You know, it’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself and being able to continue that going forward. You know, I always say that health is not a destination that we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our lives. And so you’re sort of an example of that, you know, and that’s why one of the reasons why I want to talk to you is because now you’re just like, Yeah, this is how I live my life now. I love that. So awesome.

Last question, really, like, what would you say to someone who isn’t sure about this stuff? Or isn’t sure if they’re ready to change? You know, or, or they’re on the fence? Or they’re undecided? Or they’re not sure if it’s the right time? Like, what would you say to that person?

Melanie Millaway
Put yourself out there, you’ve got nothing to lose. I mean, just kind of the growth through discomfort, make an investment in yourself. It works if you go all in and you’re truly committed to the program, and you’re willing to get uncomfortable, but it can change your life and how you experience the world.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, heck yeah. I think just like starting is just so important for people. You know, just like start, just get started. I know. But what happens is we start to think about, oh, I want to change my diet. I want to get healthy, I want to lose some weight, I want to get leaner, I want to improve my running, I want to get faster.

And then we start like, we just think about it and all this stuff starts coming up for us like oh, I’ve never worked for me in the past. Or maybe this is not the right time. I need to wait till after the holidays, or you know, whatever. But yeah, I think that’s good advice. Just start, just get started today, get started, do something for yourself today.

Anything else you wanted to talk about or anything else you wanted to mention before we finish up here?

Melanie Millaway
No, I mean, just yeah, be fully committed. Trust the contents of this program it is life-changing. It really appeals, it’s very logical. Makes a lot of sense. It’s very simplistic, kind of easy to understand and follow.

It’s built on a bunch of principles that build upon themselves. So it’s, it’s just so different than I know, I totally ditched the idea of because I’m a runner, I can eat whatever I want. Now that thought process is gone.

And I guess one other final thought too, is just again, it’s just a huge sense of relief that I can do things more efficiently with this process. Like I don’t have to spend hours running. Like I can work smarter, not harder.

And being a fat-adapted runner is so much easier. Like I’m not constantly eating I don’t feel hungry all the time. You know, I have two meals a day, I don’t snack. I can distinguish hunger from cravings and I’m just amazed at how little food I need to eat. And I’m always leaving a meal feeling satisfied. And you know, fat is your friend like it gets a bad rap. I think fat needs a new PR agent, because not only does it taste delicious, but again, it leaves you feeling satisfied. So yeah, it’s good.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Focus on fat, focus on protein. Those are the macros we want to be focused on. Awesome stuff, Melanie. Well, thanks again for coming on here and sharing your story and sharing about your transformation. And we’re gonna keep an eye on you and just kind of see where things go with you. Do you have any races coming up anytime soon?

Melanie Millaway
I’ve got one in April, I’ve got a half I’m looking forward to. And then I’ll be focused on you know, building some lean muscle mass. So that’s what’s next for me.

Patrick McGilvray
Love it. Well, we’ll stay in touch and we’ll do an update here. Once you start getting strong and ripped. Okay. All right. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it and thanks for just sharing so much about your story. It’s been really cool.

Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Thank you for having me.

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.

104. Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work

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It’s that time of the year again when many people set big goals for themselves. They decide that starting January 1st, they are going to lose weight, get in shape, quit drinking, start that …

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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 104, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, why New Year’s resolutions just don’t work. It’s that time of the year again, when many people set out to change their lives for the better.

They set out to make these big goals and they set New Year’s resolutions. And they decide that starting on January 1, they’re going to lose weight or get in shape or quit drinking start that business or start working on whatever big goal they’ve been putting off for way too long.

The problem is that almost 90% of people who set new year’s resolutions will fail at keeping them by around mid-February. This is why the gyms are full in January and then empty again in March. Right.

So why is it that most people can only stick to a goal for around six weeks or so? Well, in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to go over exactly why New Year’s resolutions just don’t work and offer up some ideas for what to do instead.

But first, if you like this podcast, definitely come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. And we are still in the midst of our running through the holidays challenge. The challenge is to run a mile every day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. And so far, it’s been super awesome. People are having a lot of fun, posting pictures and being accountable and getting inspired, and feeling encouraged and supported. So definitely come check us out. It’s not too late to join us. You can join us at any time just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and come have fun with us.

Nextly people ask how they can work with me. And I’ve got to tell you about two things. The first one is one on one coaching. So I’m a coach, this is what I do. I help people to dial in their nutrition to become the most badass, healthiest versions of themselves. I help with losing weight and becoming stronger becoming a more powerful runner.

And I do it all with one on one personalized approach. It’s a one on one approach. It’s the guidance, the support, encouragement, the accountability that you need to make it work for you. And if you’ve never had a coach before, I can tell you it’s a very, very powerful way of achieving results and reaching your goals.

So you know, this is kind of what we’re talking about in this podcast, these goals. And if you have a big goal for yourself, hiring a coach might be just the thing that you need. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you can learn more about my coaching and apply you and I can jump on a conversation and see if this is a good fit for you.

And then I wanted to mention that the Running Lean coaching group is doing something cool in January. So we’ve got this big challenge we’re going to be doing together as a group in January, which is to lose eight pounds by January 31. Okay, and don’t worry, I’ll show you exactly how to do it, you’re going to get the support of me and everybody else in the group and show you how to do this and help you and encourage you and give you the motivation that you need to help you reach that goal.

January is a good time to get started with this and I know that it’s that that New Year’s resolution season or whatever, but it’s just a good time to get started. Because this is when you’re just getting into marathon training, and becoming a fat-adapted runner takes a few weeks. So this is going to be perfect to help you crush those spring races.

Okay, I want to help you transform yourself into that lean fat-burning machine. And we will help you through that exact process and help you develop the mindset that you need to and the habits that you need to make this last it’s not just a temporary thing we’re looking for here.

What we’re trying to do together is develop the permanent changes to your mental state to your emotional state so that you can just do this easily and effortlessly for the rest of your life. We’re interested in lifestyle changes, not short-term gains here okay. So if you’re interested in joining the coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and I hope we see you in the coaching group in January.

Okay, so speaking of January and speaking of New Year’s resolutions, let’s talk about why these don’t work typically. So yeah, this is the time of the year where everybody’s like, Okay, starting in the new year, I’m going to make some big changes in my life.

And I’ve been talking to quite a few people recently, who have told me that they are ready, they’re ready to make some changes in their life. And they’re ready to get healthy, and they’re ready to lose the weight for good this time. And they’re ready to finally do something about how they feel about themselves. And they’re ready, they’re ready, they’re ready.

And then they end up just saying, like, well, I’m just going to wait until after the holidays, I’m just going to wait until after the new year. And I’m like if you’re ready, now, you need to take action. Now. If you’re ready to make some kind of change in your life today, then you need to do something about it today.

And this is like the first thing that I want to talk about why New Year’s resolutions don’t work is because you’re picking some arbitrary date to start. And most people are just not ready on January 1 to like, make a change. If you’re not ready today, why do you think you’re going to be all of a sudden be ready on January first?

What’s gonna happen between now and then, you know, so I just want to encourage you that, you know, if you’re ready to make a big change in your life, if you’re ready to lose weight, or become a stronger runner, get into some strength training, if you’re ready to, like, become the healthiest version of yourself, and you’re ready to do that like you’re ready to commit to that just start today.

You know, don’t just do it because you think you should on the first of January, for whatever reason. So many people do this. So many people wait. So they may not be ready today, and they think they’re gonna magically become ready on the first or maybe they are ready today.

But they don’t do anything about it. And so then the first comes and they’re like, and now I’m fine. You know, you sort of lose some of that momentum that you built up some of that motivation that you had. But thinking you’re just going to be ready on the first is what’s called a false first step.

You know, we were taking the step that isn’t it isn’t true. It isn’t solid, it isn’t grounded in anything. It’s like a false step. Right? It’s like, you’re just doing it because it’s this date. That’s all right, you’ve got to be ready to make that commitment to yourself.

And like I said, if you’re ready to make that change, I suggest you just start doing something about it today, the best time to start, the best time to start improving your health was yesterday or a year ago. Right? But the next best time to start is right now.

But listen to this. Imagine, imagine if you had started on your weight loss journey this time last year, where would you be today? Imagine if you stuck to it for the last 12 months? Where would you be today? I’m going to tell you right now you would be a different person today.

I don’t want you to get to this point in 2022. I don’t want you to get to this time of the year next year, and be asking yourself that same question. Well, what if I had started? What if I had done something about this, you know, a year ago, no. Do something today, now you’ve got to be ready, you’ve got to be ready to make that commitment to yourself, you’ve got to be ready to go all-in on yourself.

You’ve got to be ready and willing to do what it takes to make those changes for yourself. Okay. But I’m just going to tell you like do not use the date of you know, January 1, as any kind of excuse or, or any sort of an arbitrary start date for you if you’re ready to go. Start now.

So that’s the first reason why New Year’s resolutions really don’t work. The next thing here is that typically when people make New Year’s resolutions, they’re very vague. They’re very vague, they’re like, I want to lose weight, I want to get healthy, I want to get back in shape again, whatever that means.

They’re just very unspecific, right? They’re not measurable, you don’t know when you’re going to get there. You know, instead of saying like, Oh, I want to lose 40 pounds by you know, April 30, or whatever,

You’re just like, I just want to lose weight, like, get healthy get in shape. And I think the reason most people use these kinds of New Year’s resolutions is because they don’t want to have to commit to anything. Because if you say to yourself and say to the world or whatever, hey, I’m going to lose 30 pounds by you know, May 1 – if you say that and then you fail you’re gonna feel like a failure. You’re gonna feel like you know, what if I let people down or what If I let myself down, I’m gonna feel like a failure.

And like, who cares? Honestly, my thing is like, if you’re just saying something vague, like lose weight or get healthy or get in shape, that doesn’t mean anything. And so you really don’t have to commit to anything.

You don’t have to actually take any action around a goal like that. Because how do you know if you even get there. In other words, there’s no risk involved, because there’s no specific like endpoint, there’s no outcome you’re actually going for.

So people will say this all the time, and I go, I’m gonna finally get healthy, I’m gonna finally lose the weight, I’m gonna finally get in shape, but then they don’t have any sort of like, measurable goal that they’re looking for.

So what I’m going to encourage you to do instead is make us make a SMART goal, you know, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time-bound. So instead of losing weight, you know, I’m going to lose 40 pounds by May 1, or instead of getting in shape, I want to be able to do 20 unassisted pull-ups by June or something like that, like these are very specific.

Or if you want to, you know, improve your running, or be able to run longer, you can say, I’m gonna run a half marathon on May 2, you know, these are specific, measurable goals, and they’re time-bound, and they’re achievable, right?

So instead of being vague, and not committing to anything, get super freakin specific with your goals. Just say what you really want. And you know what, in the process of going after this goal that you have for yourself, you will change. You will become the kind of person that can accomplish that goal. I’ll talk about that in just a second a little bit more too.

Okay. Yeah, so the other thing I want to encourage you to do is to make your goals bigger. So this is another reason why New Year’s resolutions don’t work as people make these really small goals. They’re too small, they’re like, I want to lose three pounds in six months or something like that.

And so you don’t have to get out of your comfort zone, you don’t have to, like, do anything that’s challenging, you don’t have to do anything that’s gonna push you to become more. So you know, kind of what I was talking about as making these specific goals, I want you to also make them big, set big, scary, uncomfortable, impossible goals.

Because in the process of going after a big impossible goal, you have to transform yourself into a new person, you become a different person than you are today. So if you’re somebody who has never run a marathon before in your life, and you have a goal to run a full marathon in 2022, you got some work to do, you’re going to have to put the training in that’s required to get you not just to the starting line, but to get you across the finish line of that race.

But the work involved, if you put in the time and you do the work, then by the time you get to the starting line of that race, you will have become a marathon runner. Now you just have to finish it up by completing the actual race itself, right.

But think about it, think about the transformation involved from where you are today, to where you need to be in order to run a marathon. There’s a lot of work involved there. Most people are just not willing to put in the work there. They don’t want to get uncomfortable. They don’t want to do what it takes to become that kind of person. It’s scary. It’s hard. What if you fail, blah, blah, blah, who cares?

Do the impossible, set out to do something big next year, I’ve got some big goals for next year. And I’m not talking about them right now. Because they’re kind of personal. And some things that I’ve just not really shared with only my coach, honestly. And I think I just want to keep it close to my chest for now. I’ll talk about them later.

But um, you know, my goals are big and scary. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to share. I’m like, I don’t know. But my goals are big and scary and they make me uncomfortable. They’re outside of my comfort zone.

Listen, everything you have already is in your comfort zone. If you don’t have it, it’s out of your comfort zone. That’s the stuff you want to be going after. Not the easy little stuff, right? We don’t want the low-hanging fruit, we want the high-hanging fruit. We want the opposite of low-hanging fruit.

So what we want is the fruit at the top of the tree. We want the good stuff. We want the stuff that is not easily accessible. We want the stuff that causes us to grow, that challenges us that causes us to become more, right?

So most resolutions are just way too small. And I think we need to be instead of playing small I think we need to be playing big. I think we need to be going out to the big stuff, okay?

The other reason why most resolutions fail is that there’s no real commitment. There’s no, I’m all in on this, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make this happen. This is more of ah, oh, it’s New Year’s all I guess I should pick something to do.

And then it’s kind of like, oh yeah, maybe get healthy, maybe run a half marathon. It’s kind of a half-assed commitment, right. And we know we don’t have this thing, we full ass things here, right.

So there’s no real commitment with these New Year’s resolutions, right. And they’re just like, you feel like you have to do something, or else you’re not part of it, you know, who cares? Like just when you’re ready, and you’re in, you’re going to make that commitment to yourself, go all in on that commitment to yourself, you’re going to do whatever it takes to succeed with that sort of an attitude, you cannot fail.

Because as long as you’re making progress, you’re going to succeed, eventually, the only time you really fail is when you just throw up your hands and quit, and say, screw it, I’m not doing this anymore. I give up, I quit.

And I want to encourage you to never ever do that. Never ever do that. Always be making progress, relentless, forward progress, not backward progress, forward progress. You need to learn how to make that commitment to yourself, and then honor that commitment to yourself.

You make your promises to yourself, and then you keep those promises to yourself, right? You commit to working on becoming a better person and you do it, you work, you know, you commit to losing weight, or you commit to running faster, you commit to getting stronger, and you do the work it takes to get there.

The progress might be slow, it may seem like it’s not working, it may seem like it’s taking too long. Like if you want to get stronger, and you want to build bigger muscles, you know, and you start working out at the gym. I’m going to tell you right now, it takes a while before you’re going to start to see changes, you know, there’s there, it’s slow, steady progress, is what we’re looking for here, okay.

But the only way you get there is you got to commit to the process, you’ve got to commit to going out and lifting those weights a few times a week. You’ve got to commit to doing the hard work to like, you know, work until exhaustion to like, you know, really lifting until your muscles hurt.

And there’s a period of time where they do hurt, you know, and then it gets better. But it takes a while. Okay, so you’ve got to do the hard work at the gym, if you want to get the bigger muscles. And without a real commitment, at some point, you’re probably just going to throw in the towel, because it’s going to be hard.

So I want to encourage you to not do what most people do, which is just be vague, not really commit, I want to encourage you to commit to whatever it is you want to do. And then honor that commitment to yourself every day by showing up for yourself and doing what it takes to move forward. Okay.

Another reason why New Year’s resolutions just don’t work as you’re not really focusing on that habits. So many people try to do something new in the new year so they have that new year new me, I’m going to go ahead and workout more.

I’m going to change my diet, okay. And they start doing something different, they start changing their behavior, but they’re not working on these habits and, you know, thought, feeling, action patterns that they’ve developed over the last 30 years or so. They’re just trying to change their behavior, which is the least effective way to change a habit is to just change the behavior, you’ve got to work on the mindset.

That has to be the foundation, your thoughts and feelings are driving your actions and you have to work on that mental and emotional part of your habit or you’re not going to see these changes actually happen, you’re not going to be creating the new habits.

It takes a while to build up to these new habits. You know, it takes a while it takes like you know, I’ve heard some experts say around 90 days to change habits to break old habits and to establish new ones. And that means 90 days of doing the same things over and over again.

And again this goes to that commitment level to like are you committed to changing your habits because if you are you’re gonna have to go through a period of discomfort. There’s discomfort involved with let’s say you want to like not snack during the day you just want to like eliminate snacking.

The way to do it is to just stop snacking, and be uncomfortable because it’s going to be uncomfortable, right? I tell people this all the time, and they just look at me, like, you know, with one eyebrow raised, like, are you serious, I’m like, yeah, you just got to stop snacking. And then and then sit there and be uncomfortable.

Embrace the discomfort of not eating the snack, even though you want it. That’s how you break a habit like that. It’s hard to do I get it, it’s really hard to do. But the important thing here is that you understand that it’s a simple process, stop doing this one thing, and, you know, sit with the discomfort of not doing it and then do something else instead.

You know, if you’re, if you’re used to, you know, if you want to get into the habit of running every morning, then you gotta set your alarm earlier and get up to go for your run. You know, if you don’t do that, if you just keep saying to yourself, like, you know what, I’m just gonna, today I’m just gonna stay in bed.

And then you do that every other day, it’s like, you’re not really building a new habit, you’re just kind of reinforcing that old habit that you have of sleeping in. And if what you want for yourself is to run every morning, then you got to set your alarm and you’ve got to, you know, that alarm goes off, those feet have to hit the ground, and you’ve got to get out there and, and run even when you don’t feel like it.

Even when it’s hard, even when it’s cold, even when it’s raining, even when you’re just like I just want five more minutes of sleep, you’ve got to just get up and do it if you want to change that habit. So most people don’t focus on the habit change, they just want to like they just focus on the behavior.

You know, they just focus on oh, I’ve just got to like, get up early every day. But you’ve got to work on the mindset behind that you got to work on the foundation, which is your thoughts and feelings about it.

You know, you got to do that thought work that’s involved with changing how you think and feel about getting up in the morning, how you think and feel about running how you think and feel about yourself. And what is this going to mean for you?

And when you work on that stuff, getting up in the morning is kind of a no-brainer, but you’ve got to work on the mental-emotional stuff first, okay. So most people there just don’t work on the habits, they’re just trying to change behaviors. And that just doesn’t work.

Another reason why New Year’s resolutions don’t work is too often we’re focused on perfection. You know, like say you want to lose some weight, you want to lose like 40 pounds. So you change your diet, and you’re sticking your plan for the most part, but then you blow it and you cheat here and there.

And then, you know, you’re just, you just feel like you keep falling short. And if you can’t do it perfectly, why do it at all? And so you just quit. And I want to encourage you to not do this. Perfection, doing things perfectly is just not possible. It’s not possible for any of us, right? I don’t do things perfectly. I know you don’t either. And it’s okay.

Instead of focusing on perfection, I want you to focus on progress. Are you making forward progress? Yes or no? It’s pretty easy to tell, is what you’re doing moving you closer to your goals or further away from your goals? Is you know, eating this donut on the plan for you or not?

Pretty simple, pretty simple to know. Is this going to help me to make progress or not? And if you’re not, then you got to switch your focus a little bit, you need to focus on the things that are gonna move you forward.

It doesn’t mean you’re going to do it perfectly, does not mean you’re going to do it perfectly. You know, think again about where you want to be at the end of next year. You know, this time next year? How did you get there? Did you do it perfectly? Probably not.

You probably missed a workout here or there. You probably snuck in a donut here. You probably drank more than you wanted to here or there. Right? It’s okay. You can do it. What I want to encourage you to do is not skip two workouts in a row not have two bad meals in a row.

In other words, if you have a cheat meal or whatever, get back on track with your next meal. If you miss a workout, don’t miss your next workout. Never miss two workouts in a row, never two cheat meals in a row. Slow and steady. Progress wins the race every single time.

That’s what we want to focus on not perfection, you will never do this perfectly. And if you’re striving for perfection then you’re going to fall short and you’re going to get disappointed and you’re going to feel discouraged. So I want you to focus on doing it to the best of your ability and making slow and steady progress instead. Okay.

And then the last thing I have the last reason why most New Year’s resolutions don’t work for people is that you’re not holding yourself accountable, there’s no accountability and there’s no support system in place.

Right what you’re doing, especially when we talk about changing habits, changing our health and fitness – becoming leaner, becoming stronger, becoming a faster, more powerful runner, whatever it is that you want for yourself – I’m going to tell you right now, it will get hard, it will become challenging at some point.

And if you don’t have a support system in place, and you don’t have somebody that’s there to hold you accountable, your chances of quitting, your chances of giving up are going to be much higher, right.

You’re going to get down, things aren’t going to work out, you’re going to get bummed out, you’re going to be hard on yourself. And you’re going to have no one there to help you get out of that. And most people just quit way too easily in these situations. Okay.

Accountability is huge, you know, get an accountability partner, if you have somebody. Let’s talk about running. Like if you want to run more regularly, you want to get up earlier to run, have somebody that you run with – get a running partner.

That way you guys have to, like show up for each other. You know, I encourage people to join a running group, I love my running group, they’ve helped me to stay accountable for running. I’m not going to get up on a cold Saturday morning to run by myself. I mean, I do.

But I’m much more likely and more excited and more motivated to do that when I know that my running group is out there, you know, all they’re all going to be running with me. Plus we have tons of fun. So that’s super fun.

But this is a big part of what I do as a coach, right? I show you things that you know, maybe you don’t see about yourself, I hold you accountable. I help you to overcome the things you struggle with, you know, the self-sabotage.

I encourage you to do things you don’t want to do I help you stay on track, always moving towards your goals. You know, I offer the support and encouragement, and motivation that you need to keep going.

But then there’s this accountability piece, which is so huge. People tell me all the time, they’re like, yeah, I was going to eat this like cake, but I knew I was going to have my call with you today. So I just decided not to do it. I didn’t want to have to tell you I did this.

Or I have people telling me they just love the fact that they get to check in with me every week. And they can be like, oh my gosh, I just love the accountability, because this is what’s helping me to stay on track. Okay.

So make sure that whatever you’re doing for yourself, that you have either an accountability partner, group, a coach, something like that, and remember that our coaching group starting in January, it can be your accountability partner, you know, we’re going to be creating a lot of momentum in January by learning exactly how to become fat-adapted, and how to lose those eight pounds by January 31. That’s our goal.

That’s our challenge – to help each other and hold each other accountable. And to offer the support and encouragement and motivation for each other to hit this goal by the end of January.

So if you’d like to join us, I’d love to have you in there. I think it would be super fun. And we can all do New Year’s resolutions the right way we can all do. Goal setting the right way. So if you’re interested in joining us for January, we’d love to have you just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

Alright, that’s all I got for you guys today. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season here. 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.

100. The Best of the Running Lean Podcast

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Wow! 100 episodes of the podcast! In this “best of” edition of the Running Lean podcast, I feature a dozen or so of your favorite moments - and mine - from the first 100 episodes. The timing of …

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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 100 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. Holy wow. 100 episodes of the podcast. This is so awesome. In this next edition of the Running Lean podcast, I feature a dozen or so of your favorite moments and mine from the first 100 episodes.

And if you want to know which episodes each of these little clips come from, I’ve linked to all the episodes featured in this podcast in the show notes. So you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com to access the show notes for this episode.

And the timing of this particular episode, my 100th episode could not have been better. It was set to be released on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, but I decided I was going to release it a day early. Because I wanted this episode this 100th episode to be my way of saying thank you to all of you for listening and for allowing me to be a part of your health and fitness journey.

I received a comment in the Running Lean Facebook group today from Michelle and she just said, thank you, you have made such a positive impact in my life. This is why I do what I do. And I’m just beyond grateful for all the love support and encouragement that I’ve received from you since I started doing this podcast back in January of 2020. And I can’t wait to share the next 100 episodes with each and every one of you. Love you all, keep on running lean. And enjoy the best of the Running Lean podcast so far.

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

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

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

Think about it this way, like it’s very similar to when you’re training for a marathon. Right? There’s something very powerful and deep inside you that when you’re dry when you’re training for a marathon, it drives you there’s something inside you that drives you to train to do all those long, hard runs.

To get up early on the Saturday mornings to run in the rain in the cold and the snow and all that other stuff, right? You’ll do it because there’s something like visceral that’s driving you right? No matter what I’m sticking to my marathon training schedule.

That’s what I mean by unshakable determination. We want to apply that same unshakable determination to healthy eating. No matter what happens. I’m sticking to my healthy eating plan. No matter what happens, I’m going to make this work for the long haul. I’m in this 100% I’m committed. That’s where we want to get to. Okay.

So how do we do that? Like, how do you develop that unshakable determination? Well, really, it involves not just changing what you do, because when you just change what you do, you’re changing your actions, your behaviors, kind of your habits, right? This is just this is surface-level stuff, right? You have to go deeper than that, you have to like, get to the core of who you are right? You have to make healthy eating part of your identity. Okay? You got to make healthy eating just a way of life. Right? It’s just what you do. It’s just who you are.

Tony Robbins says quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions. And as a result, they get better answers. Love Tony Robbins. So blaming people ask terrible questions, blaming people ask questions like, Why does this always happen to me?

Have you ever found yourself asking your yourself something like this? Or how come everybody else can do this, but not me? Or how come I can never get ahead? Why isn’t life fair? These are the kinds of questions that blaming people, that people who are living in the effect of everyone and everything around them, they ask questions like that.

People who take radical responsibility for everything in their life – they ask questions like, How can I get this done? Like what do I need to do to change? What do I need to change in this situation in order to get better results? You know, what internal resources can I tap into to make this better? How can I figure this out? What can I do better next time? What do I need to learn to make this happen for me now?

Those kinds of questions are empowering those kinds of questions will help you to take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life. So what happens when you take radical responsibility for everything, you take back your control, you know, you, you regain agency over your own results, you take back your power, okay, you are empowered, you control your thinking.

And if you want to, you can change it, you control your emotions, you get to choose your feelings, somebody isn’t bestowing them upon you, okay. You control what you do, you control the actions that you take. And if you want to, you can always do something different, you can always take different actions.

The best part though, is you control your results. And results are not determined by others, you are in charge, your results are determined by you alone, okay? And you have no excuses, all the excuses are gone. Okay? That’s the good and the bad news.

So, think about this, you don’t need anyone else to change anything. They don’t need to change what they’re doing at all. You have the power within you right now. To get whatever you want in your life, stop living in the effect of what others are doing or saying or thinking, stop blaming others start taking radical responsibility, and you’re gonna see some amazing changes happening in your life.

Cool. Here’s the thing, if all you’re focused on is your weight, how many pounds your body weighs? You’re kind of missing the point. And the big secret is that listen, weight loss is really not the goal. Getting to some arbitrary number on the scale is not what you should be after, fitting into those jeans you rocked 10 years ago is not your only objective. Although that’s pretty awesome if you could do that.

So what are we talking about here? What’s the real goal, Patrick? Well, here it is. The real goal is to become the healthiest version of yourself losing weight, you know, getting back to your natural weight, whatever that is for you. That’s a side effect of becoming healthy. It’s secondary.

But most people have this backward. They think that you know, they need to lose weight to get healthy, but it’s the other way around. You become healthy, and then the weight comes off. You stop putting a bunch of crap into your body and your body responds. Inflammation disappears, your hormones get back in line. blood sugar and insulin levels become normal.

You start feeling better. You’re not hungry all the time. You start sleeping better. You no longer feel stressed out about everything and you have tons of energy. Running becomes easier, your cravings for sugar go away. And you seem to be able to think more clearly when all of these changes in your body start happening.

And then, as a result of all these good changes happening in your body becoming healthier, then you start burning fat like crazy, then the weight starts to drop off. Alright. And remember, we store body fat when we have when we’re taking in all this extra energy, usually in the form of sugar.

And our body can only use so much of that energy and the rest of it gets stored away to be used later. But later never comes where we’re always storing fat, we’re really good at storing fat, we’re just not really good at burning the fat, okay?

So we’re really good at storing and storing and storing fat, we want to be good at burning the fat, right, but all these other things have to happen in order for you get your body into that fat-burning mode, in order for the weight to start coming off.

Okay, so you get your body healthy first. And then you start losing the weight making sense. So it’s less about the number on the scale. And it’s more about becoming the healthiest human being possible.

The difference between people who succeed at stuff and those who don’t, a lot of times just comes down to a commitment. Successful people decide that they are going to succeed, they make a commitment to reach their goal. No matter how long it takes, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how many challenges they face, they are committed to making that happen.

So they don’t necessarily have some superpower, they don’t have more drive than you or more determination, more willpower, or anything like that. They just early on in the process, they made a decision that they were going all in on this, no matter what you have to make the decision that you are going to go all in that you are going to succeed, no matter what. No matter what challenges come up, no matter how uncomfortable you might get, no matter how hard it might seem in the moment.

Most people don’t do this though. Most people, you know, dabble in these concepts and principles. When we talk about losing weight and changing your diet and what you’re eating, and how much you’re eating. And when you’re eating the kinds of foods you’re eating, people do it kind of sort of, but they don’t make that commitment, they don’t go out there.

And because they’re afraid, they’re afraid of how they might feel because they might feel sluggish, they might have cravings, they might get an urge to eat some pizza or ice cream. And guess what, those people that kind of dabble, the kind of go, not all in, they go sort of a little bit in they get some little results.

I want you to see how complicated our relationship with food has become. And that this is not easy. This topic is controversial. It’s complicated, it’s complex. There are a lot of nuances here a lot of gray areas, I want you to be able to make informed decisions about your own health.

And I want you to feel good about what you choose to eat and choose not to eat, you got to do what feels good for you. I also want you to be open to different ideas. So maybe not the ideas that are pushed down from the big food companies, but maybe some more grassroots kinds of ideas.

You know, we are all an experiment of one. So you need to figure out what works best for you. Take control of your own health and your own fitness and your own diet and do what feels best for you. If you want to be a vegetarian or a vegan or do the Mediterranean diet or Weight Watchers, whatever you want to do is completely fine. I have no judgments about any of that stuff.

But if what you’re doing isn’t working, I want you to be open-minded to try something else. But if you think life is going to be good all the time; if you expect that you are going to be very disappointed and very miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be rejecting and resisting the idea of reality of what it is, you have to accept it all, you have to embrace the suck.

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

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

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

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

But what does that do for you? What does that get you? Is that what you want for your life? I don’t think so. If you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to me, then I’m pretty sure that’s not you. That does not sound like you.

Everything you want, but don’t already have, lies outside your comfort zone. So if you never embrace the suck, you never embrace the discomfort you never grow. You never become more than what you are today, right here. Now. You’ve never accomplished anything bigger than what you’ve already done in your life. The purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time, the purpose of your life is to become more.

Becoming more requires you to be somewhat unhappy and somewhat discontented with how things are and somewhat uncomfortable. Right, for yourself or others for your community for the world. Like there needs to be some level of discontentment with the way things are, in order for you to want to grow and become more to change to evolve.

Becoming more means experiencing some amount of discomfort, some amount of pain or hardness or suffering. We don’t grow and evolve by sitting around on our butts in our comfort zone all the time. If I could grow and become more by just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day long, I would absolutely do that. But it doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way.

Becoming more means and I want to break this down for you because I talk about this idea of becoming more what does that mean? Becoming more means becoming more of who you are not becoming someone else. But just becoming more of you. More of who you want to be.

There’s this version of you that’s inside you that’s lurking inside you that maybe you’ve always been afraid to let out. That’s what I’m talking about. I want that for you. I want you to be more authentically you.

And I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you guys before this quote from Dr. Seuss. And it’s from one of the Dr. Seuss books. I can’t remember which book it’s from. But the quote is this: “Today you are you that is truer than true.”

There is no one alive who is you-er than you at anytime. I talk about like becoming more you. This quote always comes to mind, like there’s no one alive who’s you-er than you. Becoming more means living up to your true potential becoming the best you can be right, most of us are living up to about 40% of our potential.

This is below average, I want more for myself, I want to become more, I want more than that for myself, I want you to want more than that for yourself. I don’t want to be below average, I want to be well above average, 40% is not cool with me, shouldn’t be cool with you either. We need to tap into more of who we are more of what we are capable of.

You cannot hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself through all of this. You have to have your own back. I talk about this concept a lot with my clients; having your own back. And I’m going to explain what this means to you. So you understand this too because this is a cool concept.

So what does it mean to have your own back? So imagine you’re out running with a friend. And you could be in a race, maybe you’re helping a friend get through their first half marathon, right? And you’ve done this a million times. And so you feel pretty confident you’re just out there to support them. You’re helping them get through the tough part of this run.

How would you show up for that friend? What would you say to them? I think you’d say things like, hey, I’m here for you, you got this, you can do it, you are a badass, come on, keep going, you’re doing great, you look great. You can do hard things, you are crushing it out here you are almost there. Come on, let’s go.

Right, you’d be there to support them to encourage them to keep them motivated. You point out all the positive things you can about them, you’d push them, you make sure that they finished strong. So this is what it looks like to have someone’s back.

And when you do this for someone else that feels really good, right? It feels good to be the one that’s doing the encouraging the one that’s doling out all that love all that positive mojo, it feels good to be that person, right?

Because you’re helping them do something big, you’re helping them get through something that’s uncomfortable. And it feels good to do this. It’s very invigorating. I love doing this. I love helping people.

That’s why I love coaching so much. You know, it’s such a big part of coaching is to give people encouragement and motivation and all that positive mojo doling out the love, right. So you can dig deep within yourself when you need to help someone else, right?

You can dig deep within yourself and find that love and that encouragement to help push someone further even when it’s very challenging for them even when things are going very tough for them. Right. So it’s very easy for us to do for others.

But it’s very hard for us to do for ourselves. Why is that? You know, it’s interesting, isn’t it? That it’s hard for us to do that for ourselves, even though we can do it so easily for others. You know, if you can do this for someone else, which you can I know you can, you’ve done this before, then you can do it for yourself. It just takes a little practice. So some of the things you can practice are instead of practicing negative self-talk, practice, positive self-talk.

You know, instead of practicing, feeling discouraged all the time, practice encouraging yourself. Instead of practicing thinking about all the ways that you’re going to fail, or all the ways that you suck, practice thinking about all the ways you’re going to succeed and all the ways that you are awesome.

We get to choose how we respond to every circumstance in our life. We can respond like a toddler, lay on the ground and kick our legs and scream and cry about it. Or we can respond like an emotional adults.

Here’s an example from my life. Speaking of challenges, 14 years ago, I decided I’d had enough drinking alcohol just wasn’t working for me, okay. And so I quit drinking. And during the last 14 years, I have had all kinds of challenges in my life. I’ve gone through breakups and divorce. I’ve changed careers. I’ve lost jobs. Both my parents passed away.

I’ve started businesses and then failed businesses. And through all of these 14 years there were all kinds of reasons and excuses that I could have turned to alcohol as a solution, like, oh, yeah, my, my parents just died like I could choose that as an excuse to drink. And most people would probably say, Yeah, I’d probably drink over a lot of that stuff too.

But I never did, I never felt the need to take a drink. I’ve never felt the need to revert to being an emotional toddler because of what’s happening in my life. I don’t blame the outside world, for how I feel, or for what I’m doing or not doing. I’m staying true to myself through all of it.

In fact, staying true to myself is why I’ve been able to handle these big challenges in my life. Because I’m not afraid to experience the emotions. Not afraid to feel my feelings. I don’t have to numb my emotions with alcohol or food anymore. And numbing out is a way of being an emotional toddler.

This is the way we sort of practice emotional childhood, okay. So when you go through something that challenges you, and you’re absolutely going to feel some emotions, right. You’re going to feel fear, you’re going to feel frustration, you’re going to feel stress, you’re going to feel sadness, or, or loneliness, or failure, or shame, or whatever it is, you’re going to feel some emotions.

So when you go through these big things in your life, the most people the way most people deal with these difficult emotions is they, they drink something, or they eat something, they turn to some sort of external thing to make them feel better inside it temporarily anyway, like, it just feels good to eat some cake, right, it feels good to drink some alcohol.

The problem with this approach, though, is that it comes with negative consequences, right? And maybe you drink too much, or you wake up with a hangover, you know, or maybe you eat too much. And you end up gaining weight, and you feel terrible.

This is what it means to approach the challenges in your life, like an emotional toddler, or you’re just like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just like drink yourself numb or eat yourself numb? No. So when I talk about all or nothing, it’s different from when I talk about going all-in on yourself.

Okay, so I talk a lot about this concept of, you know, when you have a big goal, you need to go all-in on yourself for that goal, okay? You need to approach these big things in your life with this attitude that you’re committed to making it work, right no matter what.

So let’s say you want to lose weight, you have this big weight loss goal, going all in on yourself means that you’re going to keep going, that you’re, you know, it may take a while you may have some slip-ups, you may have some failures along the way. You may not stick to your plan or whatever, but you keep moving forward, you don’t quit on yourself.

Okay, maybe you want to change your relationship with alcohol going all-in on that means you use the power of your thoughts and feelings about alcohol to change the habit, it means you create a drinking plan, maybe you just want to moderate, you create a drinking plan and you stick to it no matter what.

Going all in on yourself means you’re committed to your health, you’re committed to success you’re committed to, you know, maybe going after this PR and your marathon. It does not mean you’re never allowed to drink again. It does not mean you’re never allowed to eat a cupcake again. It does not mean like you can never, you know, run a half marathon or 5k or something like that, you know.

I would just want to make sure that we understand the difference between the all or nothing mentality and like going all-in on yourself. Okay.

There’s a big difference between swearing off something forever like sugar alcohol and changing the habit and changing your relationship with it. Okay. So going all-in on yourself does not equate to all or nothing it just means you aren’t half-assing it, you know. You’re not half-assing your efforts towards this goal you’re full-assing it with whatever it is you’re doing. Okay.

So an example of what this looks like. So a lot of people live their life in the past. And here’s what I mean by that. People wake up and they start thinking about their problems. Right, your problems are just memories of past situations, past issues past stressors, past trauma.

So you start each day living in the past you thinking about, Oh, this thing that happened to me a while back, you know. And we call these things problems, or memories, whatever it is, you’re consciously back there in the past. So you start each day just like living in the past.

And each one of these past memories has an emotion tied to it. So you immediately begin your day feeling. Maybe you’re really feeling the unhappiness or the hurt, or the unworthiness or the stress or the anger that you experienced in the past, just by thinking about that situation now brings up the same emotional response, right?

How you think and feel, creates your present state of being who you are, at this moment, is a result of how you’re thinking and feeling right now. And most people start their day feeling all these negative emotions from the past.

And so they’re just living in the past, your familiar past, the thing that you know, that you keep repeating over and over and over again, in your mind becomes who you are today. And it just goes on and on. And your familiar past becomes your predictable future.

So who you were in the past, you’re just going to continue to create more and more of that you just become more and more of who you already are. You can’t go beyond who you used to be. You can’t get beyond who you are up to this point. Because that’s all you know. And that’s what you’re ruminating on.

And that’s what you’re thinking about. And that’s the emotions that you’re experiencing right now. So your emotional state right now is the past. And all you can think about is the future for your future is how you’re feeling right now.

When all your feelings and all of your thoughts and your whole being is is focused on who you used to be in the past like that’s who you are right now, that’s just going to be what you keep creating more and more and more for yourself, okay? This is what it looks like to be stuck in the habit of being you.

Now listen, there’s nothing wrong with this, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or you’re doing something wrong, this is the way most of us have just kind of conditioned ourselves to operate in, it’s okay.

But if you want something more for yourself, if you want to continue to learn and grow and evolve and become that badass version of yourself that I always like to say that phrase, I love it, becoming the most badass version of yourself. If that’s what you want for yourself, then you got to break this habit of being who you are today, you’ve got to get out of being who you are so that you can become more.

This is probably the biggest key if you want to create self-motivation, you’ve got to do hard things when you don’t feel like it. Because when you do some little thing that’s hard, and you didn’t feel like doing it, you know, it’s going to move you a little closer to your goal, you know. It’s good for you, you know, it’s like helping you, you know, it’s going to keep you heading in the right direction.

And that little bit of, of doing that hard thing, that little feeling that you get after you do that little bit of satisfaction you get after doing that is going to give you a little bit of motivation to do it again. And do it again, and do it again. And you can just keep going.

In order to create self-motivation you have to do the things you don’t feel like doing. And then you have to just keep repeating those things, you have to get your reps in. Again, this is something I talked about in last week’s podcast. Repetition causes motivation because you begin to make the hard stuff easier, the hard stuff becomes easier. Okay.

So the first thing I want you to focus on is like doing the hard thing, even though you don’t feel like it. So I’m going to be sharing my experience of the Goggins 4x4x48 challenge this weekend in the Running Lean community on Facebook.

So join us over there and I’ll be like, kind of documenting that my experience as I go, do some lives and stuff like that and share kind of what it’s like to try to get out there at like 3am to get motivated to run.

So I’m doing this because it’s hard. And this is like my number one tip for creating self-motivation is like, do the hard thing, especially if you don’t feel like it.

The second tip I have for you is this always focus on making slow and steady progress, or fast and steady progress. doesn’t matter. But always focus on making incremental progress. Just making a little bit of progress will help you to get a little bit more motivation to keep you going.

Because when you make a little bit of progress, you tell yourself a story about what that means. And that thought is, hey, this is working, right? So many people don’t see any progress. Or maybe they’re not tracking their progress. Or they’re not seeing progress fast enough. And they just quit, they give up.

They’re like, hey, this, this way of eating isn’t, is I’m not losing weight fast enough. I’m just gonna quit and go back to doing what I was doing before, which doesn’t work, either. But that’s a whole other story.

But little by little, you want to be making incremental progress, because when you do, you get this little hidden motivation every single time you see the, you know, one pound a week drop off, or something like that, you’re like, oh, my gosh, that’s awesome.

Or an inch off your waist. Oh, my gosh, that feels so good. Or, hey, you know what, I ran a longer mile this week, my longer than my longest run. And these little things just start to stack up. And you and you begin to feel more and more motivated. It’s like you keep your motivation tank topped off each time you do something like this.

And you keep increasing the amount of motivation that you create, you keep stacking these little, little bits of motivation, one on top of the other. So you know, like, for me lately, I’ve been I’m lifting more weights, I’m tracking my weightlifting, and I’m able to do more reps or lift more weights.

So maybe you’re like, oh, I was able to do five more pounds this week. You know, or one more rep, than the last week. Or one more, I ran that one more mile, whatever it is. All these little signs point to progress, and that it’s working. And they will help to keep you motivated to keep showing up and continue doing the hard thing that you don’t want to do.

I have this mantra this is like my mantra for life. It’s relentless forward progress, no matter what. Always moving forward, no matter what. Always moving forward, no matter how slow. No matter how you know, zigzaggy the courses or whatever, we’re always moving in the direction of our goals. This is my motto for life.

This is like this got me through ultramarathons has got me through, you know. Tough things that happen in my life like divorce and loss of jobs. This is how I build my business. Relentless forward progress, little by little we make progress and it feels good to just look back and say like, oh, I’m actually I’m making progress here.

It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but I can see these little hitsof progress. And that gets me motivated. Okay, I hope you all have an amazing day. Lots of love, 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.

95. Getting Your Family’s Support with Your Weight Loss Plan

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One of the hardest things about losing weight is feeling like no one is supporting you in your weight loss journey. Not only do you feel a lack of support, but you feel like the people closest to …

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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 95 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about getting your family’s support with your weight loss plan.

So one of the hardest things about losing weight is feeling like no one is supporting you in your weight loss journey. No one’s got your back. Not only do you feel a lack of support from the people closest to you, but you actually feel like these people are going out of their way to make it harder for you to stay on track.

Why are they doing this? Why do we feel unsupported when we decide to make these big changes in our health and diet? How do we get through this? How do we get the support that we need to be successful with being healthy and sticking to our plan with making this our new way of life? I’ve been getting these questions a lot lately.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’ve got some helpful tips for getting your family support with your weight loss plan. But first, if you’d like this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook.

It’s a group of like-minded runners who are focused on improving their health improving their fitness getting stronger, getting leaner, getting faster, and we support each other, we encourage each other we inspire one another, we motivate one another.

And it’s a place where you can ask questions. And it’s a place where you get a voice. You know, this podcast is great, I get to talk to you. But I don’t get to hear from you. And you don’t get to share what’s going on with you.

Join the Facebook group and you can share what’s going on with you. You can ask questions you can get answers. And it’s a lot of fun. That’s fun. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and hope to see you over there.

And then people ask how they can work with me. And there are really two ways. There’s the Running Lean coaching group which meets once a week we do a live group coaching call. And this is a great way to introduce yourself to becoming a fat adapted runner to understanding how your thoughts and feelings drive your actions to learn all about, you know how to succeed with your weight loss goals with your running goals.

You get to hear from like-minded people, we get to share what’s going on, we do a little coaching and teaching in the group once a week. And you get access to all my online training materials. So this is a great introduction to coaching and a great way to kind of get yourself started and make some progress. And to learn more and join the group just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

And then the other way of working with me is as your coach, I’m a one-on-one coach, this is my jam, this is what I do, I can show you exactly how to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself. I’ll show you how to do it, you can get there.

And when you sign up to coach with me, you get the personalized meal plans, you get personalized attention, you know, it’s you and me working together to get you to your goals. It’s a results-oriented coaching program.

It’s not about just like I don’t have like a blueprint that I just give to everybody that’s exactly the same. It’s you and me figuring out together, what works best for you what makes you feel the best.

What gets you to your weight loss goals, what gets you to your running goals? What helps you to become the best, healthiest version of yourself? That’s what we do. And we do it together and we have fun here. Are you sensing a theme here? Like we try to have fun with all this stuff.

Losing weight, getting healthy does not have to be a suffer fest, we can have fun doing it. Anyway, if you’re interested in coaching with me just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you and I will jump on a quick Zoom call, have a conversation and we’ll talk about your goals. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool. Awesome. All right.

So I’ve been mulling around this topic for a while now because it’s something that is recurring. I keep hearing people talking about this and variations of this topic of like not feeling supported by their family and I’ve been working on this for a while and I think I have helpful tips for you guys today.

So make sure you listen to this whole podcast. I don’t know, don’t like just skim through these sometimes because if you do, you’re missing out on the good stuff. But today I’ve got some really helpful tips at the end of this episode, so stick around for that.

But the issue is that I hear a lot of people talking about how they don’t feel supported in what they’re doing, especially when they change their diet when they change what they’re eating. And then they try to stick to their plan. And this is especially true at the beginning of their weight loss journey.

And they tell me, they feel like they’re all alone. They feel like they’re just on their own, they feel lonely, they feel like no one is supporting them, their spouse isn’t supporting them, their kids maybe aren’t supporting them, and they just and their friends aren’t supporting them. And they just feel all alone. And it makes it very difficult to want to stick to their plan.

So I really think this is an issue for a lot of people and we need to, you know, figure this out. Right? So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today is what do we do in these situations, when we don’t feel supported, especially from the people closest to us, like our spouses, okay.

So one thing I want you to understand here is that if you want everybody in your family, if you want your spouse, and your kids and everybody, your family and all your friends, to just be on board with what you’re doing, and to totally support you, and to think the way you think and feel the same way you feel and do the things that you’re doing.

I’m just gonna tell you right now, this is an exercise in futility, you are going to be disappointed when you are expecting other people to think the way you think and do what you’re doing and say things that support you all the time, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. I’m just going to tell you right now, when you expect people to say this thing or do that thing, I promise you, they will let you down.

Okay, so we just have to understand that the number one thing we have to understand here is that you cannot control what other people are thinking what other people are feeling, what they are saying what they’re doing. And you have to stop pretending like you can control all of that. Okay, because you cannot.

And one thing that keeps coming up for me is when people say, Well, you know that my husband isn’t saying these things to me that he’s not talking to me in a way that feels supportive. He’s saying negative things, you know, he’s saying, Well, why don’t you just, you know, live a little, you know, just enjoy yourself for once, you know, these kinds of things are not helpful. Okay?

And I hear people say this, and I’m like, okay, I get it, you wish that they said different things to you, which isn’t really going to happen. Okay, first of all, but are you saying these things to yourself? Are you being encouraging to yourself? How are you talking to yourself? This is an important thing for you to think about. And really be honest with yourself.

Are you saying to yourself, “I don’t know if I should do this? Maybe I should just live a little? Oh, maybe I am. I’m doing great. And I deserve a little something. Maybe I should reward myself because I’ve been staying on my plan all week. So I can just eat like a cake.” Right?

I mean, that’s fine. Like, how are you talking to yourself? What are you saying to yourself? What’s that inner dialogue look like for you? Because if you’re not supporting yourself in the way that you’re talking to yourself, do you really expect other people to do that for you? Yeah.

And listen, I understand that it can feel like people are supporting you like no one is supporting you. You can make everything that they do and say mean that they’re not supportive of you. Right?

So you go out to dinner with your husband, and he’s like, You know what, I’m going to get extra french fries, because I’m like, really hungry. So and you’re like, “Ah, see, he’s not supporting me.” Or, you know, you’re you come home from work and your wife brings home a pizza for her and she’s eating pizza with the kids and you’re like making yourself some chicken and a salad or whatever. And you’re like, “See, she’s not supporting me.”

Or, you know, you go out to dinner with your friends and they’re ordering all these fruity cocktails and you’re not drinking, you know, and you’re just sitting there like feeling sorry for yourself and like, look, my friends aren’t supporting me. See how all these people aren’t supportive.

You can make everything mean that people aren’t supporting you. Okay? Look what they’re doing. See, they’re not supporting me in reality, none of this stuff. None of this has anything to do with you. This is just them doing them. Right? You’ve got to do you let them do them, and you do you.

And when you start making everything mean that you’re not being supported, you’re going to start to find evidence for that everywhere. Everywhere you look, every person you talk to, you’re going to feel like they’re not supportive of you see, here’s another person that’s like eating something that I can’t eat. So that means they’re not supportive of me.

And we’ve just got to get over this. Alright, you have to learn how to support yourself like this is my number one tip for you here today, is that you have to be your own number one best supporter, you have to have your own back all the time. What does this mean?

What does it mean to have your own back? Having your own back means that you speak kindly to yourself the same way you would speak to a friend. So if you and a friend were trying to stick to a healthy eating plan, and you were doing it together, and your friend was feeling like, I’m not sure about this, what would you say to that friend?

You’d be like, “Listen, you got this, you can do this stick with the plan, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get through this.” Like, that’s how you would treat your friend. That’s what you would say to your friend. That’s the way you need to dialogue with yourself.

Because the way you dialogue with yourself is whether you had your own back or not. So speak kindly to yourself, encourage yourself. Don’t talk trash to yourself. Don’t be like, “Oh, look at you, you screwed up again. Nothing ever works for you, you can’t do this. You know, you might as well just give up.” Like this is trash talk that you do to yourself. And listen, we all do it, right? But you’ve got to stop doing that. So speak kindly to yourself, stop the trash-talking to yourself.

Having your own back means keeping the promises you made to yourself, you make a commitment. I’m going to stick to my food plan today. And then you honor that commitment that you made to yourself, that’s having your own back. Right?

You say you’re going to do something, you commit to doing that thing. And then you do that thing. You honor the commitments you make to yourself, that’s having your own back.

What’s not having your own back is constantly breaking those commitments to yourself. Letting yourself down, making a plan and saying, “Okay, tomorrow, I’m sticking to my plan no matter what.” And then tomorrow comes and you’re like, you know what, I just feel like Chick-fil-A, and you go eat a bunch of, you know, get a bunch of junk food on your way home from work and just gorge out on that. Right?

Like that’s not having your own back. You have to be your own best supporter. This is like the number one thing I want you to take away from this episode right here is that when it comes to who’s supporting you and who isn’t?

If you’re not supporting you, how can you expect other people to? If you’re not supporting yourself, and you’re expecting everybody else to do it for you, you’re going to be very disappointed. Every single day, it’s not gonna work for you, okay? So you have to have your own back, you have to be your best supporter.

And here’s something I really think is important, something that you have to understand. You have to stop trying to control your circumstances. So stop trying to control what other people are thinking what other people are feeling when other people are saying what other people are doing. These are all circumstances.

And if you heard me talk about this ever in the past, you know that circumstances are things you cannot control. What you have control over are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. That’s it. So you can’t control what other people are doing or saying or thinking or whatever.

So, your husband will say what he says and he’s gonna think what he thinks he’s gonna do what he does. And if you’re hoping he’s gonna change all that stuff, you will forever be in turmoil around all of that. Alright, because he is not going to change except that he is the way he is.

He’s going to say what he says, he’s gonna think how he thinks, and what he does, he’s just gonna keep doing right. You have to take responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings and actions. You have to take responsibility for your own decisions for your own choices.

Don’t blame other people for your bad choices. Don’t blame other people because you didn’t stick to your plan. It’s not their responsibility for you to, you know, stick to your healthy eating plan. It’s yours. It’s on you to take ownership.

I want you to take extreme ownership of your own health. And listen, this is not bad news. This is good news, this is very empowering. Because when you rely on other people and other people’s opinions, then this can be very disempowering because you’re giving your power away to others. You’re letting others’ thoughts and feelings about us determine how we think about ourselves that’s not good, or their opinions don’t matter.

So friends, moms, spouses, they all have their opinions about what you’re doing. Everybody has an opinion, right? And most people are more than happy to share their opinion with you whether you ask for it or not, especially when it comes to what people are eating.

And I think this is so crazy, and like weird, like, people will tell me all the time, like, why would you eat that? Or that’s weird. Or I was standing in line recently at this little breakfast buffet thing. And I was, you know, it kind of just loaded up my plate with eggs and bacon. And that was it. And somebody next to me was like, well, that’s a lot of protein. You know, and I was like, thanks for your opinion, didn’t ask for it. But thank you.

But people are just more than happy to share their thoughts with us. Isn’t that funny that we do that? I don’t understand. I would never say anything to somebody about what they’re eating.

But here’s a story I heard recently, from one of my clients, they were feeling good. They had started a couple of weeks into their weight loss journey. And they were feeling great. They changed their diet. They’re losing weight, they had tons of energy, and they were just like, feeling great about themselves.

And so they were talking to a co-worker about it. And they said, you know, hey, this is what I’m doing. And I feel so amazing. And this person they were talking to at the office was like, oh, yeah, I tried that low carb thing. It didn’t work for me after a few months.

And so this person came back to me, and she was very concerned about this, like, “Oh, is this gonna happen for me, too?” Like she really internalized this, right? And she believed that because this other person who she doesn’t even know that well had this one experience that that’s going to be her experience, too.

And I was like, listen, you don’t have to. First of all, you don’t have to believe what other people are telling you. Their opinions are just that they are their own opinions, it’s their own experiences. And what they’re saying and what their experiences were don’t mean squat to their experiences, they’re not yours.

Maybe they did it wrong. Maybe they didn’t really do it at all, maybe they thought they were doing it right. But they weren’t, I don’t know that. Who knows what happened with that person, it doesn’t really matter.

To be honest with you, most people try some sort of dietary change, and then give up after some time, and then say it doesn’t work, or that didn’t work for them when they really didn’t like stick to it long enough.

Or they didn’t make some minor changes or whatever. Like there’s always something we can do. And this is one thing I do with all my coaching clients is like, we always check and see how are things working? Are we getting the results that we want? Are you feeling good? Or is running getting better? How are your energy levels? Are you hungry?

Are you losing weight?

But we keep looking at all these metrics, and then we keep making minor changes to stay on plan and to keep moving in the right direction. But we don’t quit. But this is what most people do. They get to a point with their diet or whatever they’re doing. And they’re like, this isn’t working anymore, that diet doesn’t work.

And so if you internalize that and say like, oh, maybe this doesn’t work, because this one person had this one experience, and I don’t even know what they were doing. Just we got to stop doing that. Okay?

Other people’s opinions are just that – they’re their opinions, what their experiences were or what their opinions are, does not matter to you, you get to choose what you believe about yourself. Even if your spouse is like, I don’t think this is a good idea.

You know, we can really internalize that and think like, oh, maybe it’s not a good idea. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. But really, do you feel good? Are you enjoying this? Are you getting results? Are you becoming healthier? Like, then just stick with it. You know, don’t worry about their opinion, let them have their opinion, because they will share it with you.

But at the same time, you get to choose what you want to believe about yourself, period. Right? It’s on you. So people will have their opinions. You don’t have to internalize all that stuff, okay? But here’s what happens when you do internalize that stuff.

When you start to believe all the BS that people are telling you or whatever, you start to doubt yourself. You stop believing in yourself, you lose confidence. You know, you get frustrated you get worried and so what do you do when you start feeling frustrated and you start feeling worse? A lot of times you give in, you go off your plan, and then you eat a bunch of crap, you start to feel like crap.

And then you slip into these old behaviors because you’re going to start using food to feel better again, and the cycle continues. And then you’re back to where you were at square one. This is not having your own back, this is the opposite. Okay?

This is like self-sabotage stuff that we do. Okay? So what I’m saying here is that, like, you have to have your own back. And you have to just like trust in yourself, trust the process, you have to believe in yourself. And you don’t have to believe what other people are telling you. Right? Take control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, you get to choose what you believe. Isn’t that awesome? I think that’s amazing.

You get to choose what you believe people can say whatever they want, you get to choose your own beliefs about yourself. So own this, own it. Really be in control of your own beliefs, your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Take 100% ownership of your own health. Stop giving away your power to other people, you’re in control. You get to choose what you want to believe about yourself.

Okay, so this is like my number one, like, big overarching tip here today is you, you have to take ownership, and you have to be your own best supporter. Okay. Here are a few other tips for you. Tell your family, your spouse, your kids, whoever it is that’s closest to you.

Tell them that, make sure you explain to them that this is about me and not you. I’m doing this thing, I’m making these changes. I’m not going to force my plan on you, you get to do what you want. If you want to come along with me great, if not great, but this is what I’m doing. And I’m doing it for me. I’m not doing it for you. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care about your opinion.

I don’t care, you know, uh, whether or not you want to join me in this journey, but this is what I’m doing. For me. It’s not about you, you get to do whatever you want you to do you let me do me, okay. So make sure that you explain that.

And that, especially with your spouse, right, because a lot of times the spouses can just be like, they can say things that get under our skin, or they can try to pull us down to what they’re doing. They’re like, Come on, just have some french fries. Come on, let’s just get some pizza tonight. You’ve been doing great. These little things can be really subtle, but also very dangerous for us. Right?

Because then they’re starting to like influence you, you’re letting them influence you. You just have to let them know like, Listen, you do you and I’m going to do me okay? It’s not about you, it’s about me. My next tip is that you have to explain that you may be a little bit of a cranky pants at times, especially at the beginning. Okay?

Listen, I’m not gonna candy-coat here, change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. And when you’re changing your diet, and let’s say you’re used to eating a bunch of junk food and a bunch of sugar and a bunch of comfort food, all that stuff that you’ve been eating for a long time and you’re like, I’m going to stop eating the junk, I’m going to stop eating sugar.

And when you do that, it’s going to be uncomfortable, you’re going to go through a period of discomfort, okay, it’s part of the process. Like being uncomfortable is like the price you have to pay to make that change. Alright, it’s required, it’s a requirement.

So embrace the discomfort and just let them know, listen, I may be a pain in the butt here. Please understand, this is not about you, but I’m just doing something that is, you know, it’s challenging, and I’m going to feel a little uncomfortable doing it. I’m going to be embracing the discomfort and I’m going to keep going alright, you have been warned.

But just let them know it’s not about them, it’s just about you and it will pass you know, usually you know a few weeks into it, it starts to get a lot less uncomfortable.

Another tip here, make your environment work for you. And this is going to look different for different people. But you may have to go through your kitchen and get rid of the crap food that you’ve got sitting around okay. You may have to like just totally get rid of the cookies and the chips and all this stuff.

If this is not an option for you, if you’ve got somebody kids or spouse in your household that eats a lot of this stuff still and is not willing to give up some of this junk food, then put that stuff in a designated cabinet. This is just for them and you stay away from it.

Like this is a little environment hack to help us stick to our plan because every time you open the cabinet to get you to know, whatever it is you want for yourself, and you’re seeing all the junk food, you’re just going to keep getting reminded that that stuff is there.

And it’s gonna make it very difficult for you. So do your best to make your environment work for you. Right. And sometimes that’s throwing stuff away. Or sometimes it’s like just putting it into a place where you just have limited access to it. Okay.

Here’s another tip. And this one’s going to sound hard. But it’s actually really cool. It’s really, really empowering. And that is like practice, being around people being around food being around situations that are tempting for you. Say what now? Yes, I’m telling you to put yourself in situations where people are eating junk food in front of you.

And I want you to just be in those situations and do nothing. Because here’s the reality of life, you are going to be in situations like this, whether you want it or not. And if you’re trying to control for all of this, and you’re just trying to like live in some sort of bubble, where everything is just perfectly formulated around you, and everybody’s eating the right foods, and you’re never going to see tempting foods or alcohol or whatever, it’s going to be a really tough life for you.

Like, you’re just you’re going to be around these situations, whether you want to or not. So my tip is to practice being in this in these situations and do nothing. Practice being around people who are eating junk food or drinking and you’re not drinking.

Practice being around people who are eating a bunch of junk, sugar, candy, whatever it is, and don’t do it, you know. Let other people order their dessert and just watch them eat it and just like, notice what comes up for you, how are you feeling in those situations? It’s gonna feel probably a little terrible, it’s okay, embrace the discomfort, don’t do anything about it.

Because the more you do this, the more you build the skill of being in these situations without giving in to the urges and the cravings and stuff, right. And if you’re just trying to shelter yourself from these situations, and that’s how you’re going to deal with it, there’s going to be a time where you just find yourself around people who are eating dessert or drinking or something like that, and you’re just like, screw it, just give in, because you haven’t developed that skill.

So what I’m telling you is to embrace some of those situations, put yourself in those situations. You know, I wouldn’t do it like, every single day. But practice being in those situations. You know, your husband brings home pizza for him, and the kids just sit there with them and enjoy your salad while they’re eating pizza.
You’re going to smell it, it’s going to look great, that cheese is all gooey and just gonna look amazing. But just like you know, what, just be like, Yeah, that’s cool. How was your day?

And just be with the discomfort, you know, embrace the discomfort and don’t, don’t give in. And the more you do this, the easier it becomes. This is a skillset, a habit that you need to learn, okay.

And then another tip I have for you is to create your own support system, alright. So it can be very helpful to have a support system around you. And it doesn’t have to be your spouse or your immediate family members or whatever, or your mom or whoever. Like you can like have, you can sort of create your own support system. Okay.

And here’s what I mean by this. You might have some like-minded friends that are on board with you – spend more time with them. You might belong to Facebook groups, like the Running Lean community on Facebook, which is a bunch of like-minded people who support you, you might read books that support what you’re doing, or listen to podcasts that support what you’re doing.

You might follow people on social media, you might hire a coach, these are all ways of creating a support system for yourself. Because listen, you can have your own back and that’s awesome. And that’s great. Honestly, it is helpful to have supportive others around, but sometimes you just have to create it yourself.

You can’t expect other people to just magically be your support system. Okay? So create your own support system. When I get into something when I’m making a big change. Like when I was training for my Ironman, that’s a big deal, right? It’s a super challenging event and there are so many moving parts. Like when you talk about doing basically an all-day event that involves three different sports like there’s so much involved with that.

I created my own support system around that I was reading books and listening to podcasts and following people on social media and you know started to develop these friends who we would train together and talk about stuff together, and drive to different places to, to swim in open water, or go on long bike rides together. Like I just surrounded myself with my own support system, I created my own support system. And it was very, very helpful.

You know, instead of just sitting there by myself, you know, wondering, I don’t know what to do, or, you know, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, or I’m afraid of not being able to finish this thing or whatever. Like, I created a support system, and it was so helpful. So this is something I want you to do for yourself, okay, take ownership of this stuff for yourself.

And then here’s the thing, sometimes people in your life will eventually get on board with what you’re doing. Sometimes, your spouse might see what you’re doing.

They see you’re doing great, they see you’re losing weight, they see that you’re feeling better, you’re in a better mood, you have lots of energy, you know, you love running, again, you’re working out, you’re getting fit, you have this halo about you, you’re just radiating good health.

When you get to this point, some people be like, hey, I want some of that, too. And I see this a lot with spouses, especially, who aren’t very supportive at the beginning, they’re like, I want nothing to do with your stupid diet, you know, I’m not doing any of that I’m sticking to my thing over here. But once they see their spouse making all these amazing changes and feeling great and losing weight, they just are this beacon of good health and happiness.

And then a lot of times the spouses are like, Hey, um, what is it you’re doing again? They all of a sudden want some of that, okay, so this can happen. And it’s awesome when it does. But listen, that’s not the goal, the goal is not to get people on board, right?

Because if that’s your goal, if you’re expecting people to come around, eventually, you’re probably going to be disappointed. It does happen sometimes. And what I always tell people is I just say, like, be an example. Be an example for your husband, be an example for your wife, be an example for your kids, or your grandkids, or whoever it is, that’s important to you in your life. Be a good example.

And a lot of times people will come around and want what you have because they see so many positive changes in you. And this is an awesome thing. If it does happen for you, but don’t expect it. That’s the key here like it can happen, but not all the time. Okay.

So listen, the biggest takeaway here and I kind of mentioned this before is like, it doesn’t matter who’s supporting you who isn’t, you have to be your own best supporter, you have to have your own back. I want you to take 100% ownership of your own health, your own fitness, your own diet, whatever it is that you’re doing, be your own best supporter.

Remember that you control you have control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions and nothing else. Everything else that other people are doing, saying thinking, feeling whatever is on that. You get to believe what you want to believe about yourself.

Choose to believe the good things, have your own back, speak to yourself in a way that is kind and supportive, and encouraging of yourself. Because at the end of the day, it’s just you, right? This is the good news though, right? Because when you’re only relying on yourself, which you can do, then you can absolutely make so much progress.

When you’re relying on yourself and you have your own back it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world is thinking or doing or saying it doesn’t matter who’s on board and who isn’t who’s supporting and who isn’t. None of that stuff matters. What matters is that you 100% have your own back and that you are your number one supporter and always be there for you to just know that okay, you totally got this all right, that’s all I got for you today.

And if you’re looking for a little bit of help with all this, that’s what I do. I can offer the expert guidance, support encouragement, accountability, and experience you need to make this work for you. No matter what your goals no matter what your lifestyle no matter what your tastes we can make this work for you just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we can just jump on a call and see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool. All right, you guys have an amazing day love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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