Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
I have a very special guest joining me here on the podcast today. A few months ago, Latisha Simmons was facing some pretty serious health issues and decided she needed to make some big changes in …
Continue Reading about 75. How Being Healthy Becomes a Lifestyle with Latisha Simmons →
Patrick McGilvray
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 75 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got a very special episode for you. I’ve got a special guest joining me here on the podcast today. Latisha Simmons.
So a few months ago, Latisha was facing some pretty serious health issues. And she decided that she needed to make some big changes in her life. So she changed her entire approach to diet to running to strength training. And most importantly, though, she changed her mindset around all of this.
And she’s worked really hard on making this whole idea of becoming healthy and being healthy. She’s worked hard on making this her new lifestyle. Like I said, she’s come a long way in just a few months. And I thought it’d be beneficial for all of us to hear her story of transformation. So that’s coming right up.
We had this conversation, Latisha and I, recently in the Running Lean Facebook group. And if you haven’t checked it out yet, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, I created this group so that you and I could have a conversation, that it was a place where you can ask questions and get answers and do it all in a way that’s like fun and encouraging and motivating. So just go on Facebook and search for Running Lean community and come join us. Come join in on the fun.
And then quickly, here’s another five star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Tammy. Tammy says, “I love everything you teach. I listened to your podcast when I run. And when I work out. Thank you for everything. I’m in love with my new lifestyle. I love to listen to your new podcasts and the old ones too. Thank you again, Tammy.”
Tammy, thank you so much for leaving this nice review, I really appreciate it. And if you enjoy the podcast, I would love it if you could tap the stars just leave a quick rating and review. It just helps other people to find the show. So you can do that on Apple podcasts and probably other places where you listen to podcasts.
And then hey, if you ever want a little help losing weight, or, or making all of this a lifestyle, I’ve got you covered. As a one on one coach, I work with runners every day who are working to become the healthiest and most badass versions of themselves.
So a coach doesn’t just show you what to do. A coach will hold you accountable. Coach will help you get through all of the challenging stuff. And there will be challenging stuff, I promise you. A good coach will encourage you to do the stuff you don’t want to do so that you can become the person you want to become. So not everyone needs coaching.
But for those who who want the expert guidance, who want the support, the encouragement, the accountability, then coaching might be perfect for you to learn more and apply. Just go torunningleanpodcast.com/apply.
And what happens is you’ll schedule a call with me and you and I’ll jump on a quick zoom call, we’ll have a short conversation. And we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. It might be it may not be either way. It’s cool. You have nothing to lose from just having a quick conversation. Okay, cool. So let’s get into this.
So like I said in the intro Latisha has come a long way in just a few months. She feels amazing. She’s lost a bunch of weight running is amazing for her. And she’s developed this awesome new mindset about what it really means to be healthy, how she’s sort of made this into a lifestyle.
Because listen, she’s tried other things before and they just never worked for her long term. But now she says things are different. She’s developed this new mindset about what it means to be healthy. And she’s just kind of made this how she lives her life. Now, this is just who she is and what she does. It’s really cool.
And no, it wasn’t a walk in the park for her. It was challenging. And she talks about this, she talks about especially at the beginning, it was very challenging for her but she had this determination that she was going to make it work and she was able to get through all of it. So I hope you enjoy this conversation that I had recently with Latisha Simmons. So let’s just get into this conversation if that’s cool with you, first of all, welcome, Latisha.
Latisha Simmons
Hi, Patrick. Thank you for having me.
Patrick McGilvray
This is my first time doing an interview in the group here like this. So…
Latisha Simmons
Guinea pig is what you tell me.
Patrick McGilvray
So you’re my guinea pig. Thank you for playing along with me, you are pretty awesome for doing that. I appreciate that you’re brave, you’re courageous. So just like introduce yourself and like, tell us like, where you tell us where you live. And like, tell us a little bit about your you know where you were a few months back and why you decided to make some changes and stuff. So just kind of give us a little bit of background and tell us like where you were coming from.
Latisha Simmons
Okay, so I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is a small town in Tennessee, couple hours from Nashville, and a couple hours from Atlanta, Georgia born and raised here. So when I first came to purchase a little bit of backstory, I started running back in 2015, just to lose some weight, and I’ve been a yo-yo dieter all my life building weight issues.
So I started in 2015, to lose some weight. The way I lost at that time was by running and doing some strength training in basically counting calories. So I was successful with that 10 months after that I had lost 80 pounds, kept it off for a couple of years.
But then 2019 it started to creep back. And I just started regaining some of the weight. So Patrick talks to us about that all the time. So because I started gaining the weight back, of course, I wasn’t happy about that. Honestly, I was ashamed of gaining it back again.
So as a result, I just, I was still running the whole time. But my you know what, my eating wasn’t good. So I didn’t even like want to go like to my doctor’s appointments, like my annual doctor’s appointments, because I knew my doctors were gonna be like blessing.
So anyway, I didn’t go to the doctor for a year or two. And so finally, I went to the doctor earlier this year. And it actually was my gynecologist who was running, you know, some tests and she was like, I think you might be insulin resistant. Of course, I had really no idea what that was.
But because I have a family history of diabetes, is what made her even look at that for me. And she knows I had gained a significant amount of weight in a short period of time. So she ran tests, and sure enough, I was insulin resistant.
So that’s basically where I was when I found Patrick, I was insulin resistant, I had high blood pressure, because I had regained you know, so much of the weight back that I had lost. And because of the genetic predispositions has started to show up, I’m in my mid 40s. And apparently, that’s when all that starts to show up. So anyway, that’s where I was when I found you, Patrick.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and then, you know, talk a little bit more about that feeling of like gaining the weight back. And you mentioned like that feeling of just feeling like ashamed of like, you know, you you did something, you know, that was good for you, and you did something good for yourself, and you made a big positive change in your life and your health. And then you slipped, you know, when you went back to a, you know, gaining a bunch of the weight back, like talk a little bit about how that felt.
Latisha Simmons
Yeah, I mean, I really, I mean, honestly, I felt like a failure, like I failed myself again. So it wasn’t a good feeling at all, I really didn’t understand what was happening because like I said, I was still running the whole time. I was still strength training the whole time. And you know that you hear, you know, if you’re a runner, you can eat whatever you want. So and I know that’s not true, but kinda sorta I was still doing that. And it’s worth a try. Right?
Exactly. Well, I’m here to tell you that doesn’t, you know, doesn’t matter how much you run if you don’t have your diet under control. It’s just not going to work. So yeah, I wasn’t in a good place. I didn’t feel good. Didn’t have the energy I used to have.
My running was hard to think about, you know, the more weight you’re carrying around, of course, it’s just uncomfortable. So yeah, I wasn’t in a good place wasn’t feeling good at all. And like I said, I just, I was feeling just really down on myself for you again, you know, losing the way but only to regain it again. So yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
And so you went to the doctor and the doctor said you’re insulin resistant. And what that means is that your body will no longer respond to the effects of insulin so your body just starts producing more and more insulin.
And when that happens, so insulin is that hormone that that locks up your fat in your in your fat cells and it doesn’t allow you to burn the fat so you’re always storing fat when insulin is high. So that’s kind of what was happening in with you. And, and so your doctor recommended something for you, what did she recommend that you do?
Latisha Simmons
Yes, she, when I left her office that day, I left with a low carb diet, low carb, low sugar diet. And basically, it was a list of foods that I could eat and a list of foods that I couldn’t eat. So she was like this is what you have to do.
The good thing about it is, so basically, insulin resistance is pretty much pre diabetes. Which means, you know, if you catch it early, you you know, if you change your lifestyle, your eating habits and workout and all that stuff, you can, you know, pretty much reverse it. So that’s the good thing.
She was like, you know, we caught it early. If you do what I tell you, you can you can beat this. So of course, I’m like, okay, just tell me what I need to do. So yeah, she gave me that, that told me you know what I needed to do. Um, but you know, I left there with two prescriptions that I didn’t have, when I when I walked in the door.
I’ve never been on any medication, you know, regularly like that in my life, knock on wood, but I am now. So that was really my motivation to really like, basically get my life together. Because she’s like, if you don’t, you’re gonna be on this medication the rest of your life. But if you do what I tell you, you know, you can come off of it within a couple of months.
So that’s what she told me. And around that same time, I feel like it was meant to be because I somehow found the Running Lean community on Facebook, which you and I were talking before, I don’t know how it took me so long to find it. But timing is everything.
So anyway, I found I found the Running Lean community. And it was right around the time you were doing the February challenge. We were starting on February 1. So all of that aligned with my doctor telling me to do this same diet that you were challenging us to do. So worked out perfectly. So I’ve been doing it every since February 1.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. We’ll just call that divine intervention. Yes, I like that. The gods were smiling upon all of us. Okay, so she sends you home with like this list of foods to eat, and you start doing the low carb thing. And then, okay, so what was your diet like before that, like what was it that was? What was the diet like that kind of got you to putting on all that weight again?
Latisha Simmons
So it pretty much was a free for all, like, I was just eating, you know, whatever I wanted to eat as much as I wanted to eat course, you know, all the meat, the three meals, the snacking in between. So that’s pretty much what my diet was.
I mean, I was eating, I’m a huge sweet eater. So of course, I was eating, you know, cakes, and cookies and doughnuts, and just all the stuff that I like to eat. Just really not even being mindful of what I was eating, just eating and that started happening.
It’s happening like right around 2019 ish, then of course, when the pandemic hit, I mean, you know, just, you know, that didn’t help the situation either. So just a lot of sugar, a lot of carbs, and just basically, anything I wanted to eat whenever I wanted to eat. So it was basically eating all the time. It felt like even as I was eating, I’ll be thinking about what am I gonna eat next meal. That’s, that’s kind of the state I was in.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you mentioned sort of, like just eating on was almost like unconscious eating. That’d be a way of describing it. Yeah, just eating. Yes. Like you don’t even know you’re like, how did I just eat that whole bag of chips?
Latisha Simmons
Exactly. Exactly. I was only supposed to eat three cookies. And now the whole bag is gone. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
Hmm. Once you start once you start you can’t stop though, right? I know. What about alcohol? Did you drink alcohol before?
Latisha Simmons
I did. So so like I said, I didn’t realize that I guess I was addicted to sugar because it will start in the morning with my coffee creamer. And in at night with a glass of desert wine, and of course, sugar and carbs in between the day too.
So I was drinking like a glass of wine every night, you know, in sweet wine so you know full of sugar. So that’s where I was before I started the low carb, low sugar.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you were drinking dessert wine. You were drinking dessert coffee in the morning, basically right? And like dessert breakfast and lunch dessert snacks. Isn’t it funny like everything? Like you know will say like, well you can’t eat cake for breakfast but have this pile of pancakes with maple syrup all over it and that’s fine.
Latisha Simmons
That was a regular breakfast for me that I love pancakes and syrup. Yes. And cranberry juice. Of course we know that juices are full of sugar. Just yeah, just sugar all throughout the day in different formats. And of course, we know sugars and so many things that we don’t even realize have sugar in it. And everything more. So yeah, that was my life. Yes.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay. Okay, so what were some of the big changes that you made? Like what was what kind of stands out to you? Now? Obviously, you stopped eating sugar. But what were some of the things that you did that were? Well, let’s let me put it this way. What were the hardest changes for you to make?
Latisha Simmons
How long we got? No. I know the answer. But I was just, I mean, man, there were a lot of things that it was hard, but I think I mean, it was hard to stop drinking wine every night. You know, that was hard to do.
You know, my little coffee creamer. That was hard to do. I mean, just think I mean, everything I was eating, and drinking has some kind of sugar in it. So I mean, it was just hard not to eat. You know, every time I looked around, you know, it’s just, there was a lot of things that was hard about my running was hard.
Once I you know, started not eating so much sugar, and carbs and all of that stuff. So I don’t know, honestly, patching back and saving. One thing was hard. I do know. Most everything was hard.
Everything, just everything about it was hard. Everything about it was hard. It was not easy at all. It was just hard to stop eating, you know, all the carbs all the sugar eating all the time. I mean, it was it was hard. It really was, yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
But you’re able to stick with it. You did a really good job of sticking with it, like you made a decision early on, that this is you know, I’m going to make this work. Because I’m not going on this medication for the rest of my life. And like, I’m not going to become a diabetic. And you made a work and you stuck to it. Like you were really, really good about sticking to it. Talk a little bit about that, like, what was that like for you?
Latisha Simmons
Well, I mean, like most runners, we’re pretty competitive people in you know, with ourselves. So one way to get me to do something is to tell me, I can’t do it, or expect me not to do it. Because my doctor didn’t tell me, you know, I couldn’t do it. She knows me. So she knows, she knew that if she told me if you don’t do this, this is gonna happen.
And you know, this is what we need to tell she knows me. So she knew that. So that’s basically what it is. It’s like, no, I’m not gonna be on this medication forever. I’m not gonna end up a full blown diabetic. No, so let’s do what we need to do. So, yeah, I was all in. I mean, one.
And like you said, I do feel like it was divine intervention, because it all kind of happened at the same time. So I was like, Okay, it’s meant for me to get my diet together and make this really a lifestyle change this time, stick with it, and you know, get take back control of my health is what I need to do.
So, I mean, that’s, that’s pretty much the mindset that I’ve had, I mean, you talk to us and several other podcasts about how important mindset is, and honestly, that’s it is, it’s all about your mindset. And so once I, you know, made up my mind that this is what we’re gonna do, like you said, I was all in.
And, of course, you know, having you there for support and accountability, and just, you know, walk me through every step of the way, is really a big part of why I’ve been so successful. So I mean, yes, I had to do the work, but I couldn’t have done it without all the support and accountability that I’ve gotten from working with you.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you know, what that whole mindset of like, going all in is really the key, it really is. Because I can be like, the motivator over here and your cheerleader, and I can show you what to do and encourage you and, you know, support you and hold you accountable. I can do all that stuff.
But at the end of the day, you’ve got to like do the work yourself, you’ve got to stick to your plan, you’ve got to, you know, show up and do your runs, even though it sucks. We’ll talk about that in a second. But like, you have to have the attitude of like, I’m going to do this for me, because I’m worth it.
And it’s important to me, you know, and my health is the most important thing that I have, you know, and so you made that commitment. And so I want to say, you know, I’m proud of you for for sticking with it, but mostly I’m impressed, because you made that commitment early on, and you just you nailed it. You know what I mean?
Like you just were like, I’m not going off my plan. And you you really stuck with it like like crazy, which is awesome. And here’s the thing, and you kind of mentioned this at the beginning like runners are good about stuff like that, like we’re competitive. And we can stick to a training program, no problem, you know, marathon training in the snow, you know, no problem I’ll show for that.
But then it’s like, don’t eat waffles. And you’re like, why isn’t oh my god crazy talk, you know. And so that’s I’m glad you brought that up. Because runners already have that mentality of like being able to stick with stuff and do the hard things, you know, we can absolutely do that, we just need to take that same attitude we have about sticking to our training plan and apply it over here to our to our diet and our nutrition and stuff like that.
So let’s talk a little bit about running because I know you struggled for a while. So there’s this thing that happens with runners and I’ve talked about this a million times. But it’s this fat adaptation period where when you as a runner decide to stop eating a lot of sugar and a lot of carbs, then it takes a while for your body to switch over from burning all that sugar and carbs to burning fat.
And burning fat is where you want to be because that’s where you lose weight. And that makes running so much easier. And stuff. I’ve talked about this so many times. But it’s hard to do, because there’s that period where you where you’re running, and you don’t have the energy here because you haven’t made the switch yet.
And so that that fat adaptation period can take on average, most people two to six weeks. I talk about this all the time. Some people it’s like a week or two, and it’s like, boom, no big deal. It took me like eight weeks, it took me a long time. What did that feel like for you? Like, what was that transition period? Like for you?
Latisha Simmons
Oh, my goodness, oh, man, it was really bad. The first couple of weeks, I don’t, I couldn’t run more than two, maybe three miles at a time. That’s as far as I could go. And so you can imagine, you know, you used to, you know, run in, you know, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 miles, you know, depending on where you are in your training cycle. And you can’t even run two miles? You know, so it was hard.
And I think that was really one of the there was one of the times where you really came in handy for me because you were literally my cheerleader every week when I would meet with you because I’m like, they suck. And I don’t want to do it.
And you were like, you have to keep doing it. You know, so you really helped me through that period, because I really wanted to quit. I mean, that was the end now that you say what was the hardest part, there probably was the hardest part. Because I run really, I mean, it’s mainly mental health, I run for the mental benefits of running.
Sure, physically, it helps us to, but it really helps me mentally. So as much as I, I like how I feel when I run it wasn’t feeling good at all. And that went on for several weeks. And, and I think Patrick, I’m like you I think it took me probably six, seven weeks before my run started feeling good. So yeah, that was a long time.
But you know, I trusted you. And I really think too, that you have in your own personal journey, you know, your own struggles with you know, your lifestyle before you major change. I think, you know, knowing that this work for you, and you have no personal experience with this really helped me to trust you.
Even when you know you were saying, just keep going just keep going, I promise you on the other side is gonna be better. Knowing that you personally had that experience is what kept me going. I mean, cause I’m just gonna be honest, if it was somebody else that you know, is selling this whole thing and don’t have a personal experience with it. I probably wouldn’t have done and it would have just given up.
But knowing that you had had gone through the same thing. I was like, Okay, I’m trusting him. And I’m glad I did. Because now I mean, when I run, I look forward to running. I mean, I have rekindled my love for running again. When it’s you know, thanks to you telling me just don’t give up. Just keep going. It’ll get better to get better. I’m like, Okay, I’m trusting you, Patrick. So anyway, you know, it worked at it every week.
Patrick McGilvray
I was like, it’s just got to be getting better and you’re like no it took a while but but here’s the thing it’s like yeah, so you’re right that this is the the part where most people will just quit on this process because it does kind of suck and it’s hard.
And it just feels like you don’t have energy when you’re running and it’s not it’s not comfortable at all right? And so I just kept saying like you’re going to get through it I promise you it will happen it just takes what it takes for any everybody’s a little bit different. So and you did you eventually got to that point. So let’s think about a little bit now what is it like for you now running Like how is running for you today?
Latisha Simmons
Man running now it I mean, I am back to looking forward to it on my run days because I run four days a week and bike two days a week. So I run days I’m like, Oh yes, I get to run today it feels good. I have more energy to do it.
Even like on my speed days and my heal repeat days. I mean, I’m just killing those now. My recovery is better. Like, I feel like I recover quicker. There are times where I will go and do a 12 mile run on a Saturday. And that’s pretty much all I’m doing. I’m coming home, I’m eating, taking a shower, and I’m laying around all day.
Now I come home, eat, shower, and I go out and you know, enjoy my weekend because I just feel better. Even after the run, I feel like my recovery is better. So my running is I’m really enjoying it now. Because I look forward to my long runs even though it’s getting hot here in the south. Still just looking forward to my runs.
And honestly, and I never believed you when you would say this, but you like it’s come to feel amazing. And you’re gonna feel like you can just run all day. And yeah, I have to give it to you. That’s true.
There there are times where I’m like, oh, man, you know, if I’m only scheduled to do 8 or 10 I’m like, oh, I could have kept running. I mean, cause it felt that good today. So yeah, my running definitely is much better than it was when I first started the you know, the low carb low sugar. But yeah, I definitely have rekindled my love for running now. And it just feels great. And I look forward to doing it on my running days.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And runnings probably also a little bit easier for you, Latisha because you’ve lost some weight. Well, yeah, I mean, would you say that’s true?
Latisha Simmons
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Patrick McGilvray
So how much have you lost so far? Just in the last three months or so?
Latisha Simmons
I’m 32 pounds down. So yeah. 32 pounds since? Yeah, since I started.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome work. Yeah, that’s a lot in a short amount of time. It is.
Latisha Simmons
And the good thing about it is, you know, once you get over, you know, I’d say the first probably two weeks. You don’t feel you know, deprived. You don’t you’re not hungry all the time, you’re not always thinking about what you need to eat next, you know, like, all those sugar cravings are gone.
So it’s just been just a whole 360 for me, like I and every week, of course, you know, this passion happy. Like, I can’t believe I’m not like thinking about food all the time. I’m not hungry all the time. Because I just couldn’t believe it because that, you know, that had been my life for so many years.
So yeah, that’s just been amazing not to, not to feel like a slave to food basically. This I felt before, like, you know, I was always thinking about him, it was just consuming, you know, my thoughts and my behavior and to not have that now.
I mean, there are times where, you know, it’s two, three o’clock in the afternoon. I’m like, oh, I need to eat. Like, I haven’t even had anything to eat, but I still have energy. I’m not crashing. And I’m not thinking about food all the time. So, man, it’s, it’s been a life changer. For me, it really has been.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s crazy right there. And that’s one of the things that I love about eating this way is that I’m not hungry all the time. Like, I didn’t eat until after 1:00 to 1:30. And I was just like, what what is this, you know? But there’s like this incredible amount of freedom in that because you’re not like, like you just said you’re not like obsessing about food 24 hours a day anymore.
You know, and when that goes away, you can start doing other things, you know, like, get on with your life, go for a run or whatever. And, and running, you know, drop, take 32 pounds and put it in a backpack and strap it to you and go run with that. And you know, runnings gonna be a lot easier without that 32 pounds on you for sure.
So what do you think about like, your ability to take this low carb sort of like lifestyle and like, go forward with it into the future? Is this something you feel like you can do forever? Is this something because you’ve tried other diets that didn’t work for you and you’ve tried to do other things? But do you feel like what you’ve learned here is something that you can perpetuate and that you can do pretty easily or does it seem like it’ll still be hard?
Latisha Simmons
Well, I mean, honestly, when when I walked out of my doctor’s office with this diet, I was like, there’s no way am I gonna be able to do this, first of all. Secondly, definitely not long term like, this is gonna be awful. Because you know, of course, we’ve all tried, like you said, the other low carb diets and stuff in the past.
But this, and again, you told me this, but I didn’t believe it. I mean, it definitely is easy. It’s a lifestyle. And I think that it’s not hard to do. Like, I still go to all my favorite restaurants. And there’s always something I can eat, that I can enjoy eating. So it’s not hard to do, like, it’s easy to fit into your lifestyle.
And, and that is what sets it apart from all the other diets I’ve ever done. The other ones were not sustainable. They just were not not long term. But this one to answer your question, I really do feel like I can do this for the rest of my life. And sure I have, you know, this threat of, you know, these health issues over my head, if I do go back to eating, you know, different types of diet.
But we all know, I mean, sometimes that’s not enough for people. But I do feel like for me, it’s I feel like I’m literally in a race against diabetes. I feel like that. And so it’s like, if you go back this way, then that’s what you’re looking at. But if you keep going this way, you know, you’ll be fine.
And you’ll be able to live a healthier life. And so, you know, I really don’t have a choice. I mean, I do, I mean, I could make that choice and end up on this, you know, medication, and you know, all of that, but I’m choosing not to do that. And I think this this low carb lifestyle definitely is the key to me being successful.
And I yeah, I don’t I really, I guess I still can’t believe that I don’t feel deprived. I mean, I keep waiting for that, you know, all the time like it. I mean, the fact that I don’t really I can’t eat pasta. I mean, I can I mean because of course you tell us, if there’s something you feel like you just really need to eat, eat it, then your very next meal, go back to your diet.
But I haven’t even had to do that like because I just don’t miss it. It’s like a life’s like this is what we’re doing. And so I’m just automatically, you know, making my choices based on my lifestyle. So I can’t believe it.
I never thought that I will find something that actually works for me. It’s good for my health in this sustainable. I just never thought that I will find that. But I really have and I just I can’t tell you how ecstatic I am about that.
Patrick McGilvray
So, so awesome. How about that dessert wine? Do you miss that?
Latisha Simmons
You know, I like to say after about two weeks. I didn’t because I don’t crave sugar like that anymore? Ah, interesting. No, I don’t crave sugar like that. And I’m just like, I mean, because I’ve been thinking I’m like, maybe I could just have a glass of wine. I’m like, I really don’t want because the the thought of how sweet is gonna be.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you were concerned about that at the beginning. You’re like, I don’t know about giving up this dessert wine. I mean, because this is part of like who I am, you know? And you were not too thrilled about that part.
Latisha Simmons
Yeah. But when I think about, you know, just the consequences of it. It’s just not worth it. I mean, you know, will I drink alcohol again, I’m sure I will. But I don’t think that I’m going to be drinking a glass of wine every night. And it definitely won’t even be dessert wine. It’s going to be you know, something with less sugar than that. Like I said, not every night. So I really yeah, I’m surprised that I’ve been able to just just keep doing it.
Patrick McGilvray
So you were drinking a glass of wine every night and you haven’t you haven’t had any alcohol?
Latisha Simmons
I have had one drink. Not a dessert one.
Patrick McGilvray
One drink in three months versus every night. That’s a big change.
Latisha Simmons
Oh yeah, I’m not going to be. And I wanted to do that just to see what would happen. Yeah. And I you know, to be honest, I was scared to do it. Because it was like, a trigger or something? But you know, and it wasn’t as a really sweet drink either.
So I definitely know that’s not going to be the case. But yeah, I didn’t. I was like, okay, one drink of coke. And now I’ve been fine. So yeah, it’s not something that I just have to have anymore. But you’re right. I was concerned about it in the beginning.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah. So any final thoughts? Anything that you want to share that we haven’t talked about yet? Or, you know, what do you see yourself in the future? What’s next for you?
Latisha Simmons
Well, I still have some weight that I want to lose. Some of course. Everybody just keep doing what you’re doing. Just keep doing what you’re doing. And that’s what my plan is, is to keep doing what I’ve been doing because it’s been working for me.
You know, my daughter is excited about the progress that I’ve made. And she’s, you know, she’s hopeful that I’ll be able to come off these medications soon. So that’s obviously a big motivator for me. And again, knowing that if I go back to my old lifestyle that, you know, I’ve got some major consequences, you know, that I’ll be facing.
And so that’s, you know, a huge motivator for me to keep going and not only logistics, set an example for, you know, other people that may be going through this same, you know, situation, or I have family members that have some some of these similar health issues.
And, you know, I really want people to know that if you change your diet and your lifestyle, that you really can’t overcome some of these health issues that you might be facing, you know, even though you know, it is, you know, a genetic, you know, issue.
Sometimes that doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, you have to just give up, you know, you still can, you know, fight and see, you know, can you change it, do all you can basically I’m trying to control what I can control, you know, I can’t control my genetics, I know that, but I definitely control you know, how much I exercise what I eat, you know, that whole thing, I like what I drink, and that has a big impact on, you know, the outcome here.
So, that’s definitely a big motivator for me. So my goal is to keep running from diabetes. And also, you know, just get some back to my goal weight, cause running wise, you know, once I get back to my goal weight, I want to set some some PR’s. Once I get back to that, I got a couple of races coming up. So that’s basically where I am.
But I’m excited about it for the first time ever, I actually feel like I can, once I get back to my race late in my healthy weight, that I can sustain it. And I have never felt like that in my entire life. So that is really just a wonderful feeling to have. And again, being able to do that and not feel deprived.
I mean, because if you feel like you miss an out or you feel deprived, you’re not gonna stick with it. But this type of lifestyle, you just don’t feel that way. At least I don’t. And I’m just super excited about it. And coming into it. I was just like, there’s no way I’m going to be able to be…
Patrick McGilvray
You were skeptical, you were a little skeptical. You’re like I don’t know about this guy. But we made a believer out of you, Latisha. So I just want to say thank you for coming on here and sharing your story.
And I also want to say that I’m really proud of you for just like, being courageous and making these changes, because it was hard for you at the beginning, you know, just to make that decision to like, go all in on yourself and to like, make these big changes in your life. That requires a lot of courage.
And a lot of people don’t have that, you know, a lot of people it’s just too scary for them, you know, but you you are like, I’m I’m going to make this happen. I’m going to do this, I’m going to fix my health. And yeah, you mentioned like diabetes being you know, genetic, you there’s a genetic predisposition predisposition for diabetes and insulin resistance and stuff like that. But it’s a lifestyle disease, you know, and you can absolutely change it with your lifestyle.
Just because you have the genetic predisposition does not mean the genes will be turned on. So if you don’t, you know, if you don’t feed the bad lifestyle, then the genes don’t get expressed, you know, and so you can definitely affect even a genetic disease, like diabetes with the right kind of lifestyle.
Latisha Simmons
Exactly. And, and I’m glad you brought that up. Because, you know, my doctor told me so I’m like, What do you mean? Like, I’ve never had this problem before. And she’s, you know, she’s like, because you’ve been keeping your weight under control, you know, you’ve been running and exercise and, and all of that.
So, you know, it didn’t show up. She said, but once you start eating what you want it to and, you know, started gaining all this weight, you know, then it showed up, she says so this has been there, but you’ve been able to control it with your lifestyle.
And so now that you know your lifestyle, it’s out of control, basically, here it is. I’m like, oh, so yeah, you bring up a good point. I mean, it’s just because it’s there and you can still control the lifestyle. And I’m definitely a believer of that now, because I’m seeing it. I mean, you know, it’s working. So I’m like..
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, the whatever you want diet, that one doesn’t work for that. Even if you run it don’t matter. Doesn’t matter how much you run that diet doesn’t work.
Latisha Simmons
Yeah, I mean, I trained and did a 50k during that time. And so like I said, I was being austere running marathons and ultra marathons, but I’ll still eat what I wanted to and yeah, that didn’t help.
Patrick McGilvray
I mean that’s such a such a common story. Well, thank you again, Latisha. I appreciate you so much. And I’m so proud of you. And we’re gonna keep following your story here. I want you to keep us posted on your progress and let us know how this how these PRs go for you.
Latisha Simmons
Absolutely, I will do that. Thank you for having me, Patrick.
Patrick McGilvray
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.
Honestly, there are probably more than 5 ways you sabotage your own success, but in this special edition of the Running Lean podcast, I’m talking about the BIG ones. I coach a lot of runners on …
Continue Reading about 69. 5 Ways You Sabotage Your Own Success →
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 69 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray and today I’m talking about five ways you sabotage your own success. Honestly, there are probably more than five ways you sabotage your own success. But in this special edition of the Running Lean podcast, I’m talking about the big ones.
So I coach a lot of runners on nutrition, weight loss, overall health, and fitness. And I see the same self-sabotaging behavior over and over again. Why do you do these things to yourself? Why can’t you ever seem to make any significant progress towards your goals? Why do you always seem to sabotage your own success?
So I mentioned that this is a special edition of the podcast because this episode is actually a recording of a live coaching session that I did recently over in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. So each Sunday, I go live in the Facebook group, and I do a little coaching and a little training, maybe dole out a little tough love.
And this particular session that I did last week received a lot of really positive feedback. So I thought it would be fun to share it with you here on the podcast. Speaking of the Facebook group, come and join us if you haven’t done so already. This is a group of runners that all share similar health and fitness goals.
It’s a great place to feel supported, encouraged, inspired, motivated, you can ask questions and get answers. And it’s just a fun group of people. We have a lot of fun over there. So just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And click join us.
Here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one came from Karen recently and she says, “Top notch. Each week when I listen to Patrick’s podcast, I feel like he is directly talking to me. He is full of knowledge and truly has a passion for his field and his followers. His messages motivate me to sign up for my first half marathon and give up sugar and begin food journaling.”
That’s a lot of awesome stuff, Karen. Awesome, awesome, awesome. You won’t be disappointed. Thank you so much, Karen. And I would love it. If you would submit a five-star review of the podcast, wherever you listen to your podcast, whether it’s Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Play, whatever it is, wherever you can leave a review, I would love it means a lot to me if you did that. So thank you. Thank you very much for doing that.
And you know, I know I talk a lot about all this diet, nutrition, weight loss, even self-sabotage, talk about all this stuff. And it can seem it can be awesome and super helpful. But also it can feel a little overwhelming. And you probably want to know like, how do I just how do I get started? How do I make all this work for me? Well, I got you covered as a one-on-one coach.
This is what I do, I can help you make sense of all this. I can help you apply these principles to your own life. Listen, we’re all so different. We all have different metabolisms. We all have different body types, different genetics, different goals, and different likes and dislikes. And there’s just not one approach that works perfectly for everyone. It would be awesome.
If there was it would make my job a lot easier, but there’s not okay, there’s not one way. So the way my coaching works is we work together you and me to work up a metabolic profile for you. We clearly define your health and fitness goals. Then we put together a plan that is specifically tailored for you specifically designed to help you reach your particular goals.
I work with people who want to lose 30 pounds and run their first marathon. And they know they can’t do it carrying around all that extra weight. I work with people who want to lose 60, 80, or 100 pounds and can’t even run anymore. They just want to get back to running. They have to fix their diet first.
I work with some people who are already lean, and they want to get stronger and more powerful and maybe qualify for Boston or run their first ultra-marathon. And they understand the hugely important role that nutrition plays in their performance. So whatever your weight loss goals or running goals, I’m here to help you get there to learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.
Okay, so like I said earlier, this is a recording of a recent Facebook Live I did over in the face Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’m just going to play this episode right now. I think you’re gonna love it. I got a lot of great feedback on this. So I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.
Hey, there Facebook friends. Hey there Running Lean community on Facebook. How’s everybody doing this fine Sunday afternoon? I hope you’re all enjoying the weather. I hope you’re getting some good weather wherever you are. Here in Cincinnati, it is a beautiful day. I have been going pretty hard with the running lately. And so I decided to take a day off today.
Usually, I don’t run on Sundays anyway. But I took a long walk today and listened to some cool podcasts. And I was just walking through the park and the sun was shining. And I just took my time and went all over the place ended up being about three miles or so. And man, just gorgeous outside. So if you haven’t been outside yet, get out there it is. Amazing.
So here’s what we’re doing, today is Sunday. And that means we’re gonna do a little coaching today, I got a little bold, tough love for you guys today. Okay. Because here’s what I want to talk about. We tend to sabotage our own success in multiple ways. There are many, many, many ways that we sabotage our own success.
And I’ve talked about a few of these things before, or I’ve talked about other ways that we sabotage ourselves. But I came up with these five because I’ve been seeing some trends recently with people and I’m like, you know what, I’m going to talk about this, I’m going to kind of point out these five things that we all do, I’ve done them. And but these five things are like they’re sabotaging what we want for ourselves. They’re thwarting our progress, and we need to make some changes, okay.
So what I’m going to do here is talk about these five things today, and hopefully, through the process, give you some insights and some tips to maybe not do these things, and some things to do instead. For the new people, I want to make sure that you guys are subscribed to the podcast. So definitely do that.
Even if you’re not new if you just haven’t subscribed to the podcast, what’s the matter with you? Get on that. It’s good. It’s good stuff. And here’s an ask for you guys today. I would love it if you could leave a review of the podcast. So I don’t know what platforms allow reviews other than Apple podcasts.
So if you’re an Apple podcast user, and you scroll down to the podcast, and you just tap the five stars, because you know five stars is that’s what you want to do right there. Right? And just leave a quick review. Letting other people know how much you love the podcast would mean a lot to me.
You know, I put a lot of work into this stuff that I do for you guys here. And occasionally I’m gonna ask you for things like, Hey, if you could leave a review, that would be amazing. And I’ll take you like two minutes. And it would really mean a lot to me. Okay. So Apple podcasts, leave a review, that would be awesome.
Also, if you haven’t done it already, there’s a free training that I created at the top of this group, it’s called How to Become A Lean Running Machine. Definitely check that out. It lays the foundation for the stuff that I teach here in this in this group and on the podcast, too. Okay. I also want you to participate in this group.
So if you’re one of these people that that comes and kind of lurks around, you’re just kind of like seeing what everybody’s doing and maybe get a little bit of inspiration and things like that. That’s awesome. But I would encourage you to participate to share a post, tell us a little something about yourself. What are you working on? What are you trying to accomplish? How can we help you?
Tell us something good, maybe you had a win this week, share that with us, we would love to hear about stuff like that or a struggle. And we can help you with that too. And encourage other people, post on other people’s comments on other people’s posts, you know, and engage with the group okay.
And then the last thing we’ll talk about before we get into today’s topic is that people have been asking how to directly work with me like I get messages on Instagram messenger and Facebook Messenger asking what do I do? If you want to work with me directly and have me as your coach this is probably the most effective way to get the results that you want with your health and fitness to make big changes and make them last to quit. Get a new mindset so that you can do this thing. Stick to your diet, you know, run a marathon, whatever it is you want for yourself.
I’ll help you, I’d love to help you, this is what I do. So all you got to do is go to runningleancoaching.com and then click on the link at the very top that says, work with me. And then you’ll have to apply and we’ll get on a Zoom call, and we’ll talk about it and see what your goals are, and see if this is actually a good fit for you.
But I would love to work with you this is what I do. This is what I’m good at. What I’m really good at is helping people figure out their nutrition dialed in their nutrition to support their weight loss to support their overall health and fitness and to support their running. And there are a lot of weight loss coaches out there, but they don’t have this focus on runners.
You know, I think they just think that runners are like good to go like, Oh, they run so they’re fine. Hey, we’re not fine. We need help, too. So that’s what I’m here for. Okay, just go to runningleancoaching.com and then click on work with me. I’d be glad to have a conversation with you and see if this is a good fit for you. It’s not a good fit for everybody. I totally acknowledge that. But for those that want the help. It’s pretty awesome.
So here’s my question for you guys as everybody’s jumping on. Hi, Amy. Hi, Joy. Hi, Candace. Hi, Laura. Hello, everybody. It’s so good to see you guys on here. I love this so much. It’s so fun. One of the reasons I created this Facebook group is because I wanted to be able to communicate with you guys.
You know, and the podcast is such a one-way thing I just talked him to a microphone and then you listen to it. But this is like we get to ask questions, and I get to hear from you and I get to engage with you. So this is really fun. I love this. And here’s my question for you today. All you people that are listening live right now, I want you to answer this question for me because I really want to know, what’s one way you sabotage yourself?
Like what is one thing you do that always sabotages your own success? How do you screw it up for yourself? What is it that you do that sabotages your success? Answer that question in the comments. And I’m going to get to those in a minute. Because I want to, I do want to answer those questions.
And I want to hear what you guys have to say about this. Because I want to actually address some of the things that you talk about here. And maybe what you have to share isn’t one of the five things that I’m gonna be talking about. So I would love to hear what you guys got. Okay, so what’s one way you sabotage your own success?
And this could be anything, it could be with work-related stuff with health and fitness with, you know, trying to stick to a diet, lose weight, trying to stick to a workout schedule, whatever it is, okay? Let me know. Alright, so while you guys are thinking about that, I’m going to dive into the topic here. Okay.
So the reason I’m talking about this like I mentioned at the top of this live is that I’ve been seeing some trends from people lately, I have a lot of conversations with people every single day. And whether they’re my clients or potential clients, or friends, whatever, I talk about this stuff every single day, and this is what I do.
And I hear people and I keep hearing the same things come up. And I ask people this question all the time. Like, why can’t you get x results on your own? How come you can’t seem to make this work for yourself? And I love asking people this question because it really gives me an insight into what people need really, what do they need help with the most?
Okay, so, when I ask that question, like, why can’t you make this work? Like what’s the reason why you haven’t been successful with you know, losing weight in the past? And it really uncovers what’s going on with people. And when I ask this question a lot, I start to see some trends. And I’ve noticed these five things.
So number one, the number one reason but not the number one reason but the first one I’m going to talk about is these are in no particular order. Okay. But the first reason that people seem to sabotage themselves is that they are not living up to their true potential you are capable of so much more.
I know it, other people know it. Other people can probably see it other people have probably told you that before have you ever been told you have so much potential? And you’re like yeah, whatever. That was always me. I always heard that from bosses and teachers and stuff like that. Early on in my life like you have so much potential but you’re not living up to your potential, you’re giving it your all, but you’re not tapping into that potential.
And we sort of carry this through our whole lives, you know, sometimes we get set up early on, and we think that you’re that we’re not capable of much like we can only do so much, we can only make so much money, we can only be so lean, we can only run so far. And I want to call BS on all of that, right here now.
Because like David Goggins talks about this 40% rule, you know, we’re living in about 40% of our potential, we’re living up to about 40% of our potential, most of us about 40%. I don’t know about you, but 40% is below average, and not even mediocre like it’s below mediocre if you ask me.
So the fact that most people in this world are only tapping into about 40% of what they’re capable of, sort of blows my mind a little bit. And I’m here to tell you, that you are capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for. And you’re, you’re hanging back, and you’re waiting for something to happen.
And you’re not going for this thing that you really want for yourself. I can’t tell you how many times I talk to people and I say, what do you really want for yourself, like, who do you want to become? And we have these emotional conversations where they tell me, you know, I’ve been heavy all my life, and I’ve struggled with my weight for so long. And I just want to be this, this lean, fit runner and I can see myself as this, you know, super healthy eater, and that’s what I want to be I want to work out all the time, I want to.
And then and then I say like, okay, now, what are you doing to get there? Nothing. Right? They want more for themselves, but they’re not doing anything about it. They’re only tapping into that 40%. They’re living in about 40%, 60% of the time, they’re like sitting on the couch, eating cookies, thinking about being healthy, and running is not going to work for you. Okay. 40% is not good enough. Not for me, not for you. Not for any of us. Okay?
Now, I’m not saying we got to live up to 100%. Like, we’re capable of so much more than we can even fathom. Yeah, but you know what it gets scary. Right? It’s scary when you start tapping into that untapped potential. What about 60%? What about 70%? What if you aim for just like 10% better?
What could you accomplish? If you could tap into just 10% more of your own tapped potential? Think about that. This is powerful. Right? I am always striving for more I say this all the time, like my goal in life. My goal in life is not to be happy. My goal is to become more. My goal in life is not to, you know, make a million dollars or you know, be this like zen you know, person with no worries or anything like that.
I want to become more and becoming more means that we get uncomfortable means we deal with unhappiness, sometimes we deal with all these human emotions, right? And, and I’m okay with that. I’m okay with doing what it takes to become more. Okay, so for me, I’m always moving in the direction of more. So I don’t know what percentage I’m tapping into. But it’s more than 40% at this point in my life. Right? And it requires you to like, dig down deep sometimes. And get there but you can do it. Okay.
So, the first thing I want to say to you is you’ve got to want to become more. You have to want that for yourself. Okay, I want that for you. You need to want it for you. Right, so 40% It’s not good enough, right? Let’s go for more. Okay, that’s number one. That’s number one. I’m just looking to see if there’s anything I want to talk about here. Huh?
Amy says, thinking that if I go off my plan with one thing then I may as well have a free pass to eat whatever I want for the rest of the day. Yep. Laura says I tell myself I’m just gonna have a bite of my kid’s snack and then I say eff it. I’m just going to finish the bag now. Yep.
Marla says rewarding myself with a treat after each workout. Yep. Debbie says doubting my abilities. Yes. Right there. Right there, Debbie is the 40% talking, okay? You’re doubting your abilities, you’re doubting your capability to give more to become more. Okay, so these are great you guys.
And this whole idea of like rewarding ourselves, like, I’m going to eat really healthy. And then, you know, once I do that for a couple of weeks straight, I’m gonna reward myself with a really crappy meal of a bunch of sugar. Does this make any sense? No, it doesn’t make any sense. Okay?
It’s like saying to the alcoholic, hey, you haven’t drank for like three months, you know what you should do? Reward yourself and get good and drunk? Not a good idea. Okay. Okay, so number one is not living up to your true potential, 40%. We need more.
Number two is procrastination. I’ll do it later. We say this all the time. This is one thing that I hear from people. And it drives me crazy. Because again, I say like who is it that you want to become? All I want to become is this healthy person, I want to become this fit person. I want to lose this weight. I want to get started. I’m like, so ready to do this. Okay.
All right, let’s do it. Let’s do some coaching. Like, you know, it costs a little bit of money. You know, let’s do it. Let’s sign you up. Let’s get started. You know, let’s, oh, you know what? I’m, I’ll do it later. I don’t really have the money right now. I don’t really have the time right now. You know or I’ve got something going on. I’ve got this project at work, I need to finish first, you know, or, or my daughter’s getting married. Here.
Like, I mean, there are a million excuses, we can come up with why we need to put something off until later. Later, later, later. I’m going to do it later. We just keep saying that to ourselves, though. You never get anywhere, you never do anything later. You might as well just say never. Okay, later is the killer of more hopes and dreams.
Because you’re delaying something, you know, you feel good about something right now you feel motivated, you want to take action today. And then you say, you know what, though, maybe later I’ll do it. And I’ll think about it. And then you end up just never doing anything, you never take action. And then you just feel bad about yourself.
I see this a lot. I see people that you know, want to work with me or they want to get healthy, they want to lose weight, they want to run a marathon. And then, you know, we talk about that. And we talk about what it’s going to look like to do that. And a lot of times they’re just not ready. I get that.
But you know what, when do you get ready? When are you going to have the time, when you’re going to be ready, when it all one or all the stars gonna align so that there’s nothing else going on where everything’s just gonna work out perfectly? It’s not gonna happen, I promise you, it’s never ever, ever going to happen.
And you know, this idea of like, not having enough money, either. I get that and to invest in something like, like a coach to help you. It’s a little bit of money. It’s not a huge amount, but it’s a little bit of money. And a lot of people say I don’t have the money. When I have some extra money, I’m going to do this for sure.
When do you have extra money? Do you guys ever have extra money? I don’t. I never have extra money. I wish I did. That would be amazing, but I never do. I wish I had extra money. I guarantee though, if your car needed, like new tires, or if your dishwasher broke, and you needed a new one you could come up with, you know, $1200 bucks today to do that. Right?
Because that’s important to you and like, you know, you’ve got to have transportation or you got to have a dishwasher. Actually, you don’t have to have a dishwasher. I have a dishwasher. You can see it right back there. I haven’t used it in a year, because it’s just me. What am I gonna do put one dish in there and turn it on? No, by the time I fill it up. I don’t have any dishes to use. So I just wash them as I go.
Anyhow, you can get along just fine without a dishwasher, but I guarantee you, you could find the time the money whatever you need to do for things that you deem important to you. What about your health? Isn’t that important to you? You? What about losing that 50 pounds? Isn’t that important to you?
What about getting to become that person you ultimately want to become? Isn’t that important to you? I say yes, it is. Let me give you an example of something that I just did recently because this was one of these things where I was procrastinating on this, okay.
I haven’t taken a vacation. I haven’t taken any time off from work in like a year and a half like I have not stopped. I have not been out of Cincinnati, in a year and a half. Okay. And I know a lot of us are in the same boat, especially since the lockdown, but I’ve been itching to get out of here and take a trip. I love going to the beach.
So I have been thinking about this beach trip. And I was like, ah, when I have more money when I have the time when this happens when that happens. And I finally found myself, you know, procrastinating and saying later and using all these things to delay this thing that I really wanted for myself.
And so today, this morning, I was like, screw it. I’m just gonna take this trip got on Airbnb or VRBO, whatever it was booked to place, got my plane tickets. I’m good to go. It’s all good. I’m going over Memorial Day weekend, I’m going to have a good time going on a little vacation. And I feel so good about it because I stopped saying later. Right?
So if you want something and it’s important to you, you’ve gotta take action on it. Okay, there’s no better time than right now. I promise you. Delay is a killer delay that will kill you. Okay, so stop procrastinating.
Okay, so number three is a good one. I’ve talked a lot about this topic. And number three, the third reason why we sabotage our own success is because we quit when things get uncomfortable. Have you ever quit because something got uncomfortable? I have. I tried so hard to lose weight so many times. And as soon as it got uncomfortable, or I had to do something I didn’t want to do you know, or give up certain foods I didn’t want to give up. I gotta tell you, I just quit. I was like, screw this. If I can’t eat, you know, ice cream, and pizza and tacos all the time? Is it worth it? What is life, if I can’t eat donuts whenever I want to.
Because it’s uncomfortable to make big changes like this, okay. I know people that are training for ultra marathons and training for marathons. And they’re willing to get uncomfortable. Because they know in order to succeed with this thing they want to do you know, if you want to run a 50k or 100 miles.
I’ve got this one friend who’s training for the grand canyon from rim to rim to rim. So you go down and up the other side and then back down and back up again. Right. I don’t know something like 43 miles total, but the elevation gain is crazy. And like you got to do this in one day, you know, got to do it before it gets dark out. And that’s a hell of an ultra to prepare for. You know, do you think he’s getting uncomfortable training for this thing? Absolutely.
He’s running up. He keeps finding more hills around him and he just keeps running up. Okay, today I did six hills or a seven or eight or nine or ten whatever it is, and he keeps increasing the number of hills he’s running. I think it’s awesome and sounds terrible. But he’s like willing to get uncomfortable, right?
Because here’s the thing you guys, all this stuff that you want that you don’t have already is outside your comfort zone. Everything that you want for yourself, but don’t have yet is going to require you to get uncomfortable to get it. Discomfort is the currency for success. Discomfort is the cost. It’s what you have to pay in order to to be successful. In order to accomplish whatever big thing you want to accomplish.
Discomfort is the price you pay. It’s non-negotiable. You have to get uncomfortable. If it was comfortable and easy. You already have it. Anything you want. This person you want to become this person you see yourself as this thin, lean, strong runner, this powerful runner who’s lost all the weight and feels amazing about herself. That’s going require you to get uncomfortable to get there.
Are you willing to do that? Most people say yes. But most people, when it starts to really get uncomfortable quit. Most people can’t handle it once they get out there. And when I tell people things are gonna get uncomfortable, they say I’m all in, Patrick. Like yeah, let’s do it. I’m ready to get uncomfortable.
And then things start to get uncomfortable. And they’re like, well, well, well, well, that this is not what I signed up for. I’m like, hey, remember, I said it was gonna get uncomfortable. This is what we’re talking about. It is literally uncomfortable. Right? We don’t like it. We don’t like to be uncomfortable.
But you guys, whatever it is you want it’s going to require you to go through some period of discomfort to get it. Okay. Losing weight is not an easy thing to do. For most people, the way I do it with people, there’s a short discomfort period, there’s a short, uncomfortable period. But it’s pretty short, though. I promise you. But then I have this philosophy with my clients, and I want losing weight to be enjoyable and relatively effortless. And fun. Yes, fun.
We don’t have to suffer through our weight loss journey. We don’t have to suffer our way to good health. It doesn’t have to be that way. It can be fun. It can be enjoyable. Is there some discomfort? Yes. Do we also work on making it enjoyable and fun? Yes, we do. Okay, but you have to be willing to endure the discomfort and not quit. Most people can’t do that though.
And I get it. It’s hard. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to do on your own. I acknowledge that. This is one of the main reasons I come on here and talk to you guys is one of the main reasons I have this podcast. This is the main reason that I do my one-on-one coaching with people is because when it gets uncomfortable, most people quit.
When things aren’t working, when they face challenges, when maybe their weight loss stalls or their running sucks for a period of time. Most people just quit. They’re like, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. But when you got me there, in your cheering squad, I’m your little cheering squad. But I’m also there to kick in the butt a little bit and keep you moving with love. Right?
There’s a little, a little tough love going on. And kind of like what I’m doing out here today. You know, just a little bit of tough love. Right? Okay, so let’s recap where we are. So far, five ways we sabotage our success number one, not living up to your true potential, 40% – it’s not good enough. Number two, procrastination later, is the killer of hopes and dreams. Three, we quit because it gets uncomfortable.
Number four, you don’t honor the commitments you make to yourself. This is a big one, you guys, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you say I’m not eating cookies today, don’t eat cookies today. Because here’s what happens. Every time you say I’m not going to eat cookies today, and then you eat the cookies anyway; you train your brain that you can just do whatever the f you want.
Anytime you feel like you have this urge to eat some cookies, you’re training your brain that you’re just gonna reward that urge with some cookies. And you’re gonna get really good at that. Right, you get good at what you practice, right? When you don’t honor the commitments you make to yourself. You just get good at not honoring commitments, you get good at giving in. You get good at caving under the pressure. Okay. This will definitely sabotage your success.
One of the big, big, big things you have to do if you’re going to take on something big, like losing too much weight training for some big event, whatever it is, like you have to got to have a plan, right? You got to have a plan. And then you have to commit to the plan. And then you have to follow through with the commitment.
That’s the important part is the following through with the commitment. Anybody can have a plan. Anybody can put it on their calendar. Anybody can write it down on a piece of paper. Do you do it? Because if you don’t, you’re just going to fail. You’re going to continue to fail after time and time and time again. And you’re going to train yourself that it’s okay to do that. This is not good enough, in my opinion. You have to honor the commitments you make to yourself when you do when you say I’m not eating cookies today, and then, you know, there comes a point in the day where you’re like, I would really love some cookies, but not going to do it.
When you interrupt that pattern, when you don’t eat the cookies, even though you want them, oh, that’s cool, because now you’re training your brain that you don’t reward it. When it wants something like that. Then you’re training your brain, hey, I honor commitments I make to myself, this is beautiful when you can do this good.
You guys, when you practice doing this over and over and over again. And it takes a lot of practice. But when you get good at this, you build trust in yourself. You build resilience, you build confidence. And you build this relationship with yourself that like you can do any frickin thing that you want to. Okay?
Because when you give in all the time, you’re just telling yourself, you’re like that 40% rule, right? You’re just like giving in. I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. I can only give about 40% 60% of the time, I’m just gonna say screw it. No, no, no, no, you got to honor those commitments you make to yourself. Okay, when you do you build so much confidence and trust in yourself. And it’s like, that’s where you become this total badass, right?
Because, you know, you can show up and you can get through anything, you go out to dinner with friends. And they’re all like eating bread, or dessert, or whatever it is, you can be like, I’m good. I don’t need any of that stuff. I don’t eat that anymore. And they’re gonna be like, whoa, what is up with you? What’s gotten into you? And you’re gonna be like, I’m good over here.
You know, I’m just gonna eat this big ol’ steak. Alright, so we’re either building ourselves up and building up resilience and building up confidence in ourselves, or we’re like tearing ourselves down. We’re like letting ourselves down every day, we got to stop doing that. Okay?
Honor the commitments you make to yourself. It’s great that you make commitments to yourself, honor those commitments, okay? Train yourself that you can do this over and over again, right? Practice doing that, okay.
And then the last way that we sabotage our own success. And this one, this is a big one. And this is a very, this is a tough one. But here’s what we do we compare ourselves to others, we have to stop doing that. We have to stop comparing ourselves to others. There’s a lot of pressure out there to look a certain way, be a certain way. Especially in the health and fitness industry, health and fitness world.
You know, if you scroll through Instagram, you’re gonna see, you know, dudes with just rockhard, six-pack abs and giant arms and, you know, super lean, thin women. And whatever it is, you know, lots of big butts, you know, this is what Instagram looks like when I scroll through my feed or whatever. And it’s really easy to compare ourselves to others and look and say, oh, that person looks better than me. Or that person can run faster than me, or that person is thinner than me. Or that person was able to lose the weight easily, and so hard for me.
We can get really down on ourselves when we compare ourselves to other people. Here’s the thing we don’t really know what’s going on with anybody else. I think some of these posts that people put on Instagram, then look at me, and they, they’ll be like, eight weeks difference. And it’ll be like this big, you know, very overweight person, and then this completely rockhard person over here, you know.
They lost all the weight and I’m just like, I don’t know about that. You know, I’ve worked with a lot of people we help people lose a lot of weight and I’ve never seen anything quite like that. So anyway, I think there’s some of that is a little BS but here’s the thing.
We have this like ideal out there that we’re trying to all aspire to. And we’ve just got to stop doing that. All right, because you the way you are right now in this moment, I’m going to tell you something, you better listen to me right now. You are amazing. You’re beautiful. I love you and you are just capable of so much. I love you exactly the way that you are because you are freaking amazing and unique. And you have so much to offer. That’s what I believe about you.
You need to believe that about you too and stop comparing yourself to somebody else. I’ve done it. I look at all these other people you know, I’m working on getting like a little more built-up or whatever but I have little arms still. You know I’m not a big giant burly dude. I’m working on it though. Right?
But I don’t compare myself to other people. I know that I’m amazing just the way that I am right now. And I have so much to offer in this world. And I’m not afraid to come here in front of you guys and be vulnerable with you and share this stuff with you. Because I think it’s important.
You know, I’m not comparing myself to what other people are doing. There are other people that do stuff like what I do that, that have these great big podcasts with millions of followers, and they have, you know, they’re coaching people and whatever, I don’t really care, I’m doing things my own way.
I don’t walk around looking at what other people are doing, I try not to, when I’m scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, I’m looking for funny stuff. Usually, I’m looking for funny memes. And I just want to like, get out of my head for a minute and just laugh about something.
I might scroll through the news and just see like, you know if there’s an asteroid coming or anything like that, but for the most part, I don’t, I don’t read the news. It’s too depressing. It’s very negative, I don’t want to get caught up and all that stuff. And I don’t want to get caught up comparing myself to other people. I just want to be here in my own skin, and be comfortable with who I am here today.
Okay, and I want to encourage you to do the same thing. It is totally okay to love yourself exactly as you are right here now. And it is totally okay to love yourself exactly as you are and want to better yourself want to become healthier, want to lose some weight, want to run further run faster like you couldn’t want more for yourself.
But you got to love yourself through that process. You can’t hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself just as you are. Stop comparing yourself to other people, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Also, just keep that in mind. A lot of times we see these people, and we think there have these amazing lives, and they might be miserable inside, you know, you never know what people are going through. Okay.
So when we say we’re not as fast as other people are, we’re not as thin as other people, or we’re not as beautiful as other people. Or we’re not as far along in our weight loss journey as other people. That doesn’t do us any good at all. There’s no point in doing any of that stuff. Okay, so stop doing that. This is my final suggestion for you guys today.
And because it’s serious, like we can really thwart our progress when we keep comparing ourselves, I should be here and I’m not, you know, I should lose two pounds a week, every single week, or I’m a piece of crap. No, you’re not. And no, it’s not supposed to work that way. It’s all over the board as far as how much you’re going to lose or whatever. Don’t compare yourself. Stop doing that. Okay?
So those are five things, you’re not living up to your true potential. Procrastination, we keep saying later. Don’t say later. Do it now. Whatever you want to do start today start now telling you, you’re gonna feel so much better about yourself. If you just take action today. We quit because it gets uncomfortable. We don’t honor the commitments we make to ourselves, we make the commandments, but we don’t honor them. And we compare ourselves to others. Those are the five things, the five biggest ways that we sabotage ourselves.
Okay, so I hope you guys got something out of this today. I’m going to just scroll through a few of these comments really quickly you guys, okay. Lots of good comments, you guys. Let’s see.
Debbie says I’ve been very disciplined for over three years, and I’ve lost 95 pounds. What? That’s amazing, Debbie, so proud of you. Recently, I’ve allowed myself to cave off makes me feel like such a failure. Yeah. Why are you allowing yourself to cave? That’s a question you want to ask yourself? Why are you thinking it’s okay to cave?
And we get into this mindset of like, oh, you know, weight loss is this thing you do and then once you get there, you just do whatever you want. No, it doesn’t work that way. What I do with my clients is I train them well, I help to train them to eat healthy for the rest of their life. All right, it’s a big change that we make. And it’s something that we need to do forever.
Okay, it’s not a short-term thing. It’s like, how can we make this sustainable for the rest of our lives and it’s a little different for everybody. There’s not like one formula that works for every person. But what I do has helped them get to the point where, when they’re done working with me, they know what they need to just stay doing that for the rest of their life. It’s not a short-term thing, it’s not a destination you’re trying to get to, you know, you lost 95 pounds. Debbie, that is so amazing.
Sometimes the harder part is like to keep it off, right? Because you don’t have this mindset of like, I’m trying to lose anymore. And so you can kind of thwart yourself by getting into this mindset of like, I can do whatever I want. I can cave. Okay? Can you though?
Maybe you’re the kind of person that like, shouldn’t cave because whatever that means for you means that you’re gonna start gaining weight again. I know that’s the case for me. If I go back to doing what I was doing before, I’m gonna start gaining weight again. I’m gonna get fat again. I don’t want to be that person anymore. So I’m okay with just doing this. I’ve made this a lifestyle change right.
Baelor says I lost 80 pounds when the pandemic started just by not eating fast food. Okay, that is amazing. That is amazing. Good job. Yeah. Total lifestyle change there. Ballerina mark. Candice was talking about negative self-talk. And yeah, this is something we do. Yeah. Good stuff, you guys. Really good stuff.
And I’m glad you guys are here for this today. I’ll go through and look through if there are any more comments and answer them in the comments myself, okay. But I hope you got something out of this today. And again, if you wouldn’t mind, I would love it. If you could find the Running Lean podcast on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It means so much to me, just as a way of saying thank you, that would be awesome and amazing. Okay.
So these five things I talked about today, I want to encourage you to stop doing them. Okay? Just like we got to like, shift our mindset, okay. And we got to like, notice that we’re doing these things. That’s just the first step just notice that you do these things, you’ll start to see them, you’ll start to see yourself doing these things.
That is such an amazing first step awareness is so amazing. Once you see that you’re procrastinating, or you see that you’re, you quit because things get uncomfortable or you’re not honoring those commitments to yourself or you’re not living up to your full potential. Are you find yourself comparing yourself to others. When you see yourself doing this, just acknowledge that oh, that’s me comparing myself to somebody else. Oh, this is me not tapping into my full potential. Just be aware. That’s the first step. Right. Cool. Awesome, you guys. Great hanging out with you today.
I’ll drop in the comments and answer other questions. But hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. Get out there and enjoy the beautiful sunshine. If it’s sunny where you are hope it is. Love you. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
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I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and comments lately where people are sharing their frustration around the scale. They weigh themselves and if the scale hasn’t moved in the right direction, …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 66 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer health, and fitness expert, and weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got a very fun topic. Very fun, I’m being a little sarcastic. You may not think this is very fun. I think it’s fun. Eliminating scale drama.
So I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and, and comments on posts lately where people are talking about the scale. And they’re sharing their frustration around the scale. So people are weighing themselves and if the scale isn’t moving in the right direction, they get all down on themselves, they feel depressed, they feel disappointed. And and a lot of times they just give up. All right.
So they’re creating all this drama for themselves because of a number on a device that is used to measure your body weight. Right? And then the suggested solution to the problem is to just don’t weigh yourself, you know, weigh yourself less often or don’t do it at all. And to me, this doesn’t make any sense.
If you’re having an emotional experience around a number on the scale. Does avoiding the scale really solve anything? No. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to dole out a little bit of tough love. I love you guys, but sometimes I gotta get tough with you. I want to explain exactly what scale drama is, how it is impacting your life, and how to eliminate all of that scale drama for good. All right, stay with me, you’re gonna like this one or not. It’s okay though.
If you haven’t already done it, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a fun group of positive runners who are there to support each other, and encourage each other. We talk about our goals, we share our experiences, we ask questions, and it’s fun, and we have a good time. So just come find us on Facebook. The podcast and the Facebook group kind of go hand in hand.
So I do a little bit of teaching in the Facebook group as well it kind of goes along with the stuff I teach you on the podcast. So definitely check out the Facebook group because you’ll get a good well-rounded feel for exactly what it is I’m teaching here and it’s a good adjunct to the podcast.
Also, spring enrollment is now open for the Running Lean monthly coaching group. This is my monthly membership program. In a support group where you get everything you need to make lasting changes to your health and fitness. We’re talking about knowledge, support, and accountability.
I talked about these three things last week in the podcast, right. And the Running Lean monthly coaching group, I created because it has all three of those things in one place. So you get the knowledge, which is my entire library of online training materials, and self-paced videos that you can go through and learn at your own pace.
Like the weight loss training course for runners, this is like everything you need to know about becoming fat-adapted, what to eat, what not to eat, how to break through weight-loss plateaus, how to manage hunger, and cravings, and so much more. You can go through all of this at your own pace. And then start implementing what you learned and start getting some results.
But then, if you have questions or struggles or something doesn’t make sense to you, you can bring all of that to the group, okay. And that’s where the support piece comes in. So we have this group of people that are all in this together, right, we’re all doing this together.
Of course, you get my expertise and my experience as a sports nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a master life coach, but it’s not just about me, it’s about the support from a community of people like you. Some people have some good experiences they can share.
You know, we share our experience, our strength is our hope with each other, you know, we’re vulnerable, we share with what we’re struggling with, and we offer our support or encouragement, and we lift each other up, and we help each other. This is the power of the group.
When we do try to do some hard things on our own. It’s hard. It’s challenging, it’s frustrating, but when we do hard things together, it’s motivating. It’s energizing, we’re much more likely to succeed.
And then the third piece is the accountability piece. Showing up in this group means you’re going to be held accountable to stay on track and move towards your goals. You know, if you want to make changes last you have to have accountability. You’re much more likely to stick with a healthy eating plan or an exercise regimen if you have to report to the group and say, yeah, I did what I said I was going to do. That’s powerful.
Okay, so the three biggest reasons why I created this group is because it has the knowledge, support, and accountability all in one place. All right, we do live group coaching via zoom. All the group coaching calls are recorded and archived. So you can always go back and watch something you missed, or rewatch something.
And we have a lot of fun, I believe, and making big changes in our lives, like changing our diet, losing weight, you know, getting stronger, getting faster can be fun, and enjoyable. We don’t have to suffer our way to good health. Right. So the group aspect of this program makes all of this a lot more fun.
So the spring enrollment is open. Now, I don’t open this group very often, maybe once a quarter. So if you want to take advantage of this, is this something you’ve been thinking about? Now’s the time to do it. Okay, I’m going to be closing the doors at the end of the day. On Sunday, April, the fourth, so 11:59 pm, Sunday, April 4, done for a few months.
Start today, and think about how much further you will be in three or four months. Right? Do you want to just be where you are today in three or four months? Or do you want to be like three or four months into a healthy eating regimen? The choice is yours. Always. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.
Learn how to dial in your nutrition, make healthy eating a way of life, become a badass fat-adapted, bonk-proof runner, and have fun doing it. I promise you it is fun. runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us. It’ll be fun, I promise.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today, which is eliminating scale drama. Like I said earlier, sometimes I gotta be a little tough with you guys got to dole out a little bit of tough love. And today is one of those days.
So I’ve been seeing a lot of posts out there in the Facebook group and on other Facebook groups and just in on social media in general posts and comments about the scale. You know, why you should or should not weigh yourself and how often you should weigh yourself.
Even people suggest that you never weigh yourself just stop doing it. It’s too frustrating. And I have these conversations at least once a day with people, sometimes clients who get frustrated. And today I want to make my stance on this topic very clear. Right? Not everyone is going to agree with me on my approach. And that’s totally fine with me.
We all have our own opinions, we get to decide what’s best for ourselves. Okay, if you have a different idea, a different way of doing it. Awesome. You do you, but at least be open to hearing me out today. Because I think I think we could all use a little help around this issue, this issue of scale drama.
So what is scale drama? Scale, drama is all that stuff. You tell yourself what the number on the scale means about you. So let’s say you start eating healthier, you’re exercising, you’re making some healthy changes in your life, and you’re starting to feel pretty good, right? You’re feeling pretty good about yourself.
And then you step on the scale, and you haven’t lost any weight. You know, let’s say your goal is to lose 40 pounds. And you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks and you feel good. And you get on the scale and it hasn’t moved. Or maybe it went up a pound. And then this is where all the drama comes in.
You have all these stories that you start telling yourself all these thoughts come up all these feelings come up. It’s so frustrating. This is not working. Oh no, I’m gonna have a bad day. This is so disappointing. This is depressing. This whole thing is just stupid. Screw it, I give up. And have you ever had any of these thoughts or feelings about the number that you see on the scale? I know you have, we all have.
I started so many different diets and quit them because I was having all these frustrating feelings. It was depressing to me. It didn’t I didn’t think it was working. And I did that I like stopped weighing myself, man.
Maybe I weighed myself once a week. And then then I was just frustrated that one time a week. You know what I mean? It didn’t help. So this is where this is what I’m talking about when I talk about scale drama. It’s all the stories and all the stuff we make up about what all this means about us. Okay.
So when people start doling out this advice, like only weigh yourself once a week or only weigh yourself once a month. only weigh yourself right after you’ve run 20 miles because that always looks good. Or just stop weighing yourself at all. Their intentions are good with this kind of advice. But honestly, I think this is misguided.
The idea here is that if you only weigh yourself every now and then you’re only going to feel disappointed or frustrated or depressed every now and then. Right? So it’s like, if you avoid the scale, except for once a month, you can like sneak up on it. When all the stars are aligned and you’ll hopefully get the number that will make you finally feel good about yourself.
So you wait a month, and you’re doing all the right things. At least you think you are. And then you step on the scale. You’re like, you sneak up on it, you step on it really fast. And you’re like, dang it, I’m up two pounds, then all that frustration comes back, the disappointment comes back, the depression all comes rushing back.
But you’re only doing it once a month. So like this is a much better plan, right? No, this is dumb to me, right? I don’t think this makes any sense at all. You can’t sneak up on the scale, right? You’re not looking at this from the right place, you’re not looking at the problem, the scale is not the real problem.
I don’t even say your current weight isn’t even the problem has nothing to do with how much you weigh. The real problem is how you think, and how you feel about yourself. All of this drama that you have around the scale, that’s all you. You create the drama, all the sadness, all the frustration, all the disappointment you’re experiencing. Those are all emotions.
And we know that emotions are always caused by thoughts. So if we’re feeling emotions about ourselves, it’s because we have these thoughts about ourselves. This is such a pervasive issue. I get it and these emotions are very strong, right?
They even create issues around your self-worth. I hear people say things like this all the time, like, they don’t feel like they’re good enough. Based on a number on a scale, you know, they’re comparing themselves to other people, or to where they think they should be.
You know, because they gained three pounds, they’re not good enough, you end up basing your own worthiness, your self-worth, on a number on a bodyweight measuring device, this is insane. A number on a scale cannot tell you how worthy you are. Because here’s a fact, for all of you. You were 100% born worthy. What the scale can tell you as the scale can tell you how much you weigh like it’s just a tool to measure the weight of your entire body.
The scale can tell you how much your bones, your skin, your organs, your muscles, your blood, your fat, and your hair weigh, that’s it. And every part of your body is made up of water, your body is actually 60% water at least sometimes up to 70% water. So 60% of the weight we’re looking at is actually water anyway, right?
So how much your bones and your skin and your organs weigh has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human being. It has nothing to do with how beautiful and amazing you are. It has nothing to do with whether or not you are enough. Because you were born enough. How much do you weigh? It’s just a data point, right?
It’s just a fact like your shoe size or how tall you are doesn’t mean you’re a good person or a bad person. It’s just data unless you make it mean something. It’s like saying, oh, my feet are so big. And I’m so short. It’s so frustrating. I’m like a hobbit, by the way. The hobbits were the real heroes of that story.
Okay, at the end of Return of the King, after Eric Aragorn gets crowned king, everybody’s bowing to him, and he looks to the hobbits and he says, my friends, you bow to no one. Oh my god, that gives me chills every time I love, love, love that movie.
Doesn’t mean anything. But what are you making it mean? What are you making that number on the scale mean about you? We have these thoughts like it’s not working. I’m a failure. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. I’ll never lose weight. But none of this is true unless you make it true.
None of this is true unless you believe it. You always have a choice in what you believe about yourself. Right? If you believe it It’s not working, you’ll find evidence that it’s not working like a number on a scale, it went up, and so you quit. If you believe you’ll never lose weight, you won’t, promise you.
If you believe you’re a failure, you will always fail. Always. I hope you’re starting to see that this all sounds pretty insane. If you’re experiencing any of this drama, and I know we all have at some point or another if you’re having a good day or a bad day, and you’re determining your self-worth, based on some arbitrary number on a $29 bathroom scale, we’ve got to fix this. Okay, we have to fix this.
The scale is just a measuring device. There are other measuring devices out there. Like if you really want to know about body composition, you can do girth measurements, where you measure your waist and arms and thighs, you do some calculations, you can do skinfold thickness measurements, bioelectrical impedance, hydrostatic weighing, like a bod pod, you can do a DEXA scan, all of these things will give you data. They’re all just numbers. Again, they don’t mean anything about you.
But having this info can help you to make decisions about what’s working, what’s working with your nutrition and exercise program, and what isn’t. But that’s all I can do. It can’t tell you whether you’re a good person or a bad person, it can’t determine if you’re going to have a good day or a bad day. Why do we do this to ourselves?
What do we do about this, though? Like, how do we eliminate the scale drama? So the first thing I’ll tell you is just stop it, stop doing it. Stop making that number on the scale mean something about you, it doesn’t mean anything about you. Okay, it’s just a number. It’s just data. And we’ll talk about this in a minute, like what we can do with that data, but just stop making it mean something, okay?
So here’s how we do it like, this is where people will disagree with me. My suggestion to you is this, weigh yourself every single day, do it at the same time every day, record your weight in a log or a journal or an app, whatever is easy for you.
And then you’re going to this stuff is going to come up, you’re going to feel disappointed, frustrated, depressed, whatever, just sit back and like, let that stuff come up. Okay, it will come up, and that’s fine.
But here’s what I want you to understand. This is important. Every single day, your weight will fluctuate every single day. It always will from now until the end of time, your weight will go up, and it will go down every single day. You just have to accept this. I have never seen anybody lose weight, whether it was five pounds, or 50 pounds, or 100 pounds, and I’ve helped people lose all that kind of weight; I’ve never seen it just go straight down from one day to the next.
Always down, down, down down. Never ever, ever works that way. Okay, so let’s just accept this. I’ve been recording my weight every day for like a year now. And it still goes up and down. One to three pounds every single day. But I’ve maintained the same weight for months and months and months.
Like it’s just not a problem. But it does go up and it goes down and it goes up and it goes down. Sometimes I know why sometimes I have no idea why. And at first, it used to freak me out. It’s like, oh, my gosh, you went up. What does this mean? And maybe it’s not working? Maybe I need to change something. But then it goes down again. And I’m like, oh, okay, good. Yeah.
But then it just keeps happening and keeps happening and keeps happening. And you’re like, what? A year later, it still happens every single day. I still write down my weight every single morning. Do you think I make it mean anything now? Heck, no, I do not. It means nothing. Your weight will fluctuate every single day.
So what let’s just embrace it, let’s just accept this fact. Okay. And it has to do with water retention, whether you’re dehydrated or not hormonal changes, hormonal responses, and a slew of other things that I just can’t explain. But just know that it’s normal. It is perfectly normal for the scale to go up and down for your way to go up and down.
So instead of avoiding the scale, here’s my advice to you embrace it. Instead of sneaking up on the scale, face it head-on every single day, and build up some resilience to it. I promise you, if you do this every single day, you’re gonna see that it’s totally normal for that number to go up and down.
And losing weight is never linear. It’ll always go up and down. Alright, always, always, always; don’t avoid it. Let’s start accepting it. Just create some acceptance around that. And it takes repetition, you just have to keep doing it. Now, of course, you have to deal with the drama. Right? The drama will still be there in the beginning, it’ll get better, but you’re going to have to deal with it, right?
So step one is to just weigh yourself every day, except the fact that your weight will fluctuate every single day, it should trend down, if you’re trying to lose weight, you’re doing it the right way, the way that I recommend. Everybody that works with me, they trend down, it goes up and down, but they’re trending down.
We don’t gain weight. You know, in this nutrition regimen that I help people with, they don’t gain weight, we can keep ratcheting that weight down. But it does go up and down. But over time, it’s trending down. Okay. So step one, weigh yourself every day.
Step two, deal with the drama, get the drama out of your head, and get it onto a piece of paper. Right, think about what you’re making this number mean? What does it mean to you? What’s coming up for you? What do you? What stories are you telling yourself about this? What thoughts and feelings are coming up for you?
Oh, it’s depressing. It’s not working, I’m frustrated, like, Whatever, whatever is coming up, just write it all down, get it all down on the page, we’re creating massive awareness, here’s what we’re doing.
Okay, you’re gonna start to see all these negative thoughts, all these negative emotions you’re experiencing around the scale, you’re gonna see all the drama. And you’re gonna see what your brain is doing. And once you see what your brain is doing, all those stories are making up about this number and what it means about you and doesn’t mean about you, then you can start to deal with it right?
But you have to get it all out. First, you got to see what you’re thinking, right? You got to see what you’re feeling, get it out on the page, and then ask yourself, is this true? Is any of this true? Chances are no, it’s not true.
Also, ask yourself this question. This is a good one. This is a powerful question. What else could this mean about me? So maybe my weight went up? What does that mean? What else could it mean? If it doesn’t mean, it’s not working? What else could it mean? Maybe it means losing weight will take a little more time than I originally thought. Maybe it means that I’m a normal human being.
Maybe it means that I’m committed to making this work no matter what, even if it does go up every now and then. Maybe it means I need to change something. Oh, now we’re onto something here. Okay. We want to use the scale as a tool. I encourage people to weigh themselves every day, create awareness, and see that your weight will fluctuate over time. But then we also use it as a tool to make changes, right.
So if you hit some sort of stall and your weight loss, and you’re trying to break through a stall, and by the way, a true plateau in weight loss is like if you stay at the same number for like two straight weeks. Usually, if you’re at the same number for a couple of days, that’s not a plateau.
People tell me this all the time. They’re like, my weight hasn’t changed in three days, I’ve hit a plateau. I’m like, no, you haven’t. Let’s give it two weeks. And then we change something. Okay. So if you hit a stall, a true stall, you know, where it’s like two weeks and nothing changes, then we need to make a change, then we’re going to change something, right?
We can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results, right? We got to make some changes. So we use the scales feedback. But we can’t see this, this change if we weigh ourselves, you know, once a week or once a month, we won’t be able to keep track of these things, right?
So if we don’t see any changes in two weeks, we’ll change what we eat. We’re changing our macros. We’re changing how much we’re eating, how often we’re eating, what times are eating, whatever we need to change, we’ll make changes.
I’m always tweaking my clients’ nutrition regimen when we hit some sort of stall, and we know this will happen. I know it will happen. It happens with every single person, I expect it. It’s all part of the process. You know, my favorite thing with clients? They probably hate it. But it’s like, this is all a fun experiment, isn’t it? But it’s true. It’s just a fun experiment.
There’s not one solution that works for everyone. So we keep working on it. We keep tweaking things, we keep making changes until we get the results we’re after. We never ever, ever give up. We always use that data as feedback and then we course correct. This is why it’s so important to weigh yourself every day.
You got to notice these trends, and then we can make changes accordingly. If you weigh yourself once a month or whatever, it’s just not enough data. Right? It’s just not going to tell us the whole story. So we want the data so we can, like, you know, do science, you know, this is basically like how we do science where we have a hypothesis, we set up an experiment, we test it, we measure our results, and then we make changes. And we try a different experiment.
Right? There’s no drama in science. There’s no crying in baseball, there’s no drama in science, right? Here’s what I want you to do instead of all the drama. So let’s say we’ve started weighing ourselves every day, we’re starting to get used to it. You know, you start writing down all these feelings that are coming up, you start getting used to that, like you’re starting to, like, see what’s happening with your mind.
And you’re starting to, you know, have a little bit of resilience around all this stuff. We also want to focus on all the other things. Let’s forget about the scale for a minute. Right, your weight going down is just one indicator that you’re becoming healthier. It’s one data point, what about all the other stuff?
You know, we tend to focus just on weight, how much we weigh, but your weight is often the last thing to change. Like there are a number of cool things happening in your body hormones being regulated, blood sugars leveling out, insulin levels coming down. Fat is being used as an energy source. All these things are happening, these amazing changes in your body.
Losing weight is usually the last thing to change. So let’s focus on some of the nonscale victories. You know, you’re feeling better, you’re less bloated, you’re less inflamed, you have more energy, you’re sleeping better. Running is getting easier, your workouts are improving, you’re starting to run faster, and your endurance is improving.
You’re recovering faster from these harder workouts. Your clothes are fitting better, looser, starting to get a little loose, you’re not so hungry all the time. You have improved focus and concentration, maybe you just feel happier. Maybe you just feel better about yourself. These are all amazing, healthy changes.
But we just tend to focus on the scale and then we create all this drama around it. So I want you to stop it with all the scale drama. Okay, just stop it. And hope you still love me. I mean, sometimes I gotta drop a little bit of tough love on you guys. But I hope you still can love me through this stuff.
Stop it with the scale drama. Weigh yourself every day, just get used to it right accept the fact that your weight will fluctuate every day. This is normal, it means you’re a normal human being. How about that doesn’t mean anything negative about you at all. You’re beautiful, you’re worthy, you’re more than good enough. You’re amazing. Focus on the good stuff. Okay. As always, lots of love to every single one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
Making lasting changes like permanently losing weight is not an easy thing to do. It requires you to do more than just change a behavior. Any kind of meaningful, lasting change requires three …
Continue Reading about 65. The Three Requirements for Making Lasting Change →
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.
Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 65 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer, health and fitness expert, and the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about the three requirements for making lasting change.
So making lasting changes like permanently losing weight, is not an easy thing to do, it requires you to do more than just change your behavior, it requires you to do more than just change what you’re doing. Any kind of meaningful, lasting change requires these three key things and you have to have all three, or it just won’t work.
Think of it like a three-legged table. You know, if you’re missing one of the legs, the thing just falls over. It does not stand up on its own, you need all three to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share the three requirements for making lasting change and show you where you can find all three of these things in one place.
If you haven’t already done so please go check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a fun group of runners who are encouraging one another positively, support one another, and ask great questions. And all are sharing similar health and fitness goals. And I’ve got something big coming this Sunday in the Running Lean podcast community.
On Facebook, I do a live training or a Q&A session every Sunday afternoon. And I’ll tell you more about that at the end of this episode. But you will want to pay attention to the end of this episode when I talk about that because it’s a fun little surprise for you. So just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community and join us over there. It’s fun, we have so much fun.
All right, I’m gonna just jump right into this here the three requirements for making lasting change. So whenever we set out to make some kind of big change in our life, we focus on one thing we focus on, what do I need to do? We focus on action or behavior, what action do I need to take?
So we go to Google, we go to YouTube, and we search how to do blank, right? How-to videos are arguably the most-watched content on YouTube, right? Just tell me what to do. And I can do it right. So the first requirement for any kind of lasting change is knowing what to do this is important, okay, but it’s not the whole picture.
But knowledge is that first leg of the table, that’s the first thing that we need, in order to make any kind of lasting change in our life. So knowledge is important. Here’s how it plays out for a lot of people. Let’s say you’re a runner, just hypothetically, and you’ve been gaining weight over the last few years. Again, just hypothetically, right?
Actually, this is very common, by the way, especially as we get older, so you’re not alone at all. This is me too. So I feel ya. Let’s say you’re a runner, you’ve been getting some weight. You’re still logging a lot of miles each week. So it’s not the running, we know this, it’s your diet, you change your diet, right?
So you decide you’re like, okay, I’m gonna change my diet, I’m gonna lose the weight. I’m committed to doing this. I’m ready. I’m serious this time. So you go to Google, and you type in weight loss, and oh, my god, they do this. I encourage you to do this because I don’t think I’ve ever done this before.
But I just did it just to see what would happen. I typed in weight loss in Google and it came back with almost 3 billion results on the internet. 2,970,000,000 results in 1.4 seconds, by the way, so Google good job and you know, indexing everything on the internet is crazy. 3 billion results for weight loss.
People tell me that figuring out what to do is overwhelming. I just said I can prove this just by going to Google and typing in weight loss. It is overwhelming. I mean, that’s beyond overwhelming, right? It is incredibly confusing. There are so many different diets, so many weight loss supplements, so many meal replacement drinks, and bars and shakes and pills, and it goes on and on and on.
But let’s just say like you find something that sounds good to you like the Paleo diet, and I’m a fan of the Paleo diet, I think it’s pretty good. You know, because it’s based on human evolution, you know, how we evolved, eat over the last two and a half million years or so. So let’s just say you’re like, you know, I’m gonna give this a go.
And so maybe you find a website and some blog articles and you read some stuff, maybe you buy a book, and they tell you exactly what to do. And you start following the plan. And it seems to be working, okay, it works, okay, for a few weeks, maybe you lose a few pounds. But then everything comes to a grinding halt, the scale stops moving, you get frustrated, and you end up quitting, because you know what, that diet doesn’t work.
So then what do you do? You go back to Google, you type in weight loss, and you get a scour through another 3 billion results and try to find something else that works, right. This is not a made-up story. This is not make-believe, this is exactly what I’ve done. This is exactly what I did.
And this is exactly what I hear from runners every single day who try to lose weight, and they fail time and time and time and time again. It’s exactly what they’ve done too. So knowledge is great. Like, you have to have the knowledge, right? You have to know what to do. But it’s not the whole picture.
You know, you may know what you need to do. But what happens when it stops working for you? Or why like, why can’t you make it work beyond a couple of weeks? Why can’t you make these changes last? You know, it’s just because knowledge alone, it’s not enough, it’s only one leg of the table. And without all three, this table of lasting change is not going to stand up on its own.
So just knowing what to do, it’s not enough to make these kinds of lasting changes, especially when it comes to things like completely changing your diet and losing weight and making it a permanent change. Right. So knowledge is good, it’s definitely required. It’s invaluable. You have to know what to do, but it’s not the whole story.
The next thing that is absolutely required, if you want to make any kind of meaningful lasting change is the second leg of the table is support. Okay, so once you know what to do, you can get to work on taking action on changing your behavior on doing what you need to do. And maybe you’ll start getting some results. So that’s the knowledge piece.
But then, what do you do when you encounter an obstacle. And I will promise you right now, that if you want to do something big, like change your diet and lose weight, something that it’s been really, really hard for you in the past, you will encounter obstacles along the way. You cannot accomplish anything meaningful without failing a bunch of times on your way to getting there.
Every success is built upon a pile of failures, we expect failure. In fact, we embrace it, we know that it’s part of the process. But that’s not what most people believe. Most people look at failure as the end. They say, look, the scale stopped moving, I have failed. This diet is a failure. I am a failure and they quit. I see this all the time. Failure is not the end. It’s just a step. It’s one step along the path to success.
But most people don’t see it this way. They fail once and it’s just game over. They’re done. Why? Because they don’t have the support. They need to get them through the failures. So knowledge is great, but without the proper support, making big changes last is incredibly difficult. Without the proper support, you don’t know what to do when things go wrong.
You know, what do you change? Do you change your macros? Do you eat more carbs? Fewer carbs? Do you run harder? Should you eat more often? The guys at the gym telling me I should be eating eight times a day should I be doing that? Should I be eating once a day like should I run 60 miles a week instead of 20? What do I need to do? I need some support.
So without the proper support, it can be very frustrating and confusing. So you need some sort of a support system to help you navigate all the stuff that comes up when you want to make a big change, like changing your diet and losing a bunch of weight.
So what’s the best support system? Well, honestly, the best support system you can have is, is someone that’s already got what you want somebody that can support you, who already has been there, done that, figure it all out, and they can show you the way, a guide, a mentor, someone who has the experience and expertise, expertise to guide you.
And that can always help you make the changes that you need to make so you can keep moving towards your goals. So for example, I have a coach to help me, I actually have two coaches, I have a business coach, and I have a fitness coach. And these two coaches helped me to stay on track.
They show me things that I’m doing, or they show me how I’m thinking that I cannot see, you know, we all have blind spots. There are things about the way that I think sometimes that I think is just the way it is like, oh, yeah, this is just, you know, the way it is. And then my coach will say, Patrick, this is just a thought in your head. You’re just making this stuff up. And I’m like, Oh my God, you’re right.
So a lot of times, a good coach will show you what you can’t see about yourself, which is really, really important. You know, but most importantly, my coaches helped me overcome obstacles, they helped me to embrace failure. They helped me to get over it already. And they helped me to keep moving forward. Yes, they pushed me, but in a good way.
So I’m a big believer in coaching. If you want the best support system around, I would say, get a coach who has what you want, and who can offer their experience and their guidance. And all the best heroes think about this. This is awesome. I love this all the best heroes have coaches where they have guides that can show them the way you know, Luke Skywalker had Obi-Wan Kenobi, Frodo had Gandalf, Neo had Morpheus.
And for me, and I just love the nerdy references. And if you do, too, then you’re my people so awesome. For me, I will gladly invest in a coach who can give me the support that I need. While I’m going through these big changes in my life, if I want to accomplish something big, it’s so worth it to me to invest in someone that can help get me there faster, without all the frustration and the can support me now.
That being said, you don’t have to invest in a coach. Honestly, if you have a partner that supports you, this is such a great place to start. It can just be a spouse or a family member. Here’s a little backstory, like when I was married, I worked a corporate job, I worked this job for 16 years, doing the same thing. And over and over every single day, 16 years.
And at one point, I was like I’m done with this. And I really wanted to set out on my own, I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but it was a big change to make. It was scary. Like leaving the safety and security of that corporate job with the health insurance and the paid vacations, and going to be an entrepreneur where you gotta like, you know, hustle and make ends meet.
It’s all up to you. And there are no paid vacations, there’s no health insurance like you got to take care of all that stuff on your own. The idea of leaving that safety net that I had in that job was very, very scary. And I remember one day, I’ll never forget this day, I came home from work and I was so frustrated again, it was another hard day. And I was just exhausted and fed up and angry.
And my wife at the time looked at me and said, I hate seeing you like this. This is no way to live. You need to quit that job. You need to follow your dream of being an entrepreneur, and I fully support you in that. I’m 100% behind you on this, we will make this work together we’ll figure it out.
When she told me that I was floored because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to quit that job. But suddenly I’m like, filled with this conviction and confidence. Because I had that person supporting me. And that’s exactly what I did. Like the next day I went in and I gave my notice and I quit that job and I never looked back.
So support is so important to have like you’ve just got to have somebody that’s supporting you or some sort of support system. Okay. So we’ve got two legs of our table. Now we’ve got the knowledge, okay, you need to know what to do. You need to know how to do it and We’ve got the support. So we’ve got someone to guide you, you got your Obi-Wan Kenobi, to somebody show you the way to help you overcome the obstacles and the failures.
And this brings us to the third, and maybe the most powerful of all three of these requirements for making lasting change. And that is accountability. The definition of accountable is an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions. So I love this, I love that it’s a willingness to accept responsibility for your own actions. How are you at taking responsibility for your own actions? Who did that just make you cringe a little? If it did, you are not alone. Most people are not good at this.
Most people do not do well when left to do things on their own. Most people do not succeed with something like losing weight when they try to do it on their own. This is why Weight Watchers was such a great concept early on.
So they were mostly these accountability groups, right where you would have to, you know, check-in each week and share, you know, with everybody, whether you stuck to your plan or binge down on French fries all week, like you had to show up and be accountable.
And the rest of the group was there to hold you accountable, and to support you as well, right. So very effective, very effective. And all kinds of support groups are like this, its support is important. But it’s that accountability, it’s just showing up. That is so important that you have to report to someone.
Another great example of an accountability group, and this is, my favorite one is my running group. So my running group, we meet every Tuesday evening and Saturday morning for these group runs. And I usually can’t make the Tuesday evening workout workouts because I’m coaching people in the evenings.
But Saturdays, I block out that time every Saturday to show up to run with the group. And this is when we do our long runs. And I promise you that if it were up to me alone, I would not get out of bed at six o’clock on a Saturday morning in the winter when it’s cold outside and dark outside to go run like 20 miles by myself. I’m telling you right now, I would not do that. I would not have run the number of marathons and Ultras if I had just left been left to try to do this all on my own.
I just don’t think I would have done it. But I know when there’s a bunch of people counting on me to be there that are expecting me to show up because I said I’m going to show up. I’m there every single time every Saturday morning, I never miss those group runs. The accountability is so important.
And when I ask people, because I talked to people about this all the time, I talked to people who are struggling to make changes on their own. And I always ask them like, why is it so hard for you to make this change on your own? How come you can’t stick with your diet plan? Or how can you stick with the exercise program? What is so hard about this? Why can’t you do it on your own?
The number one reason I get from people, the number one reason why they can’t stick to something is they have no accountability. They tell me this every single day. They have no one to report to. They have no one holding them accountable. They have no one that’s making them take responsibility for their own actions. They have no one pushing them.
There’s this incredible power in accountability. I did this little bit of research when I was looking up the information for this podcast. And I found this interesting study by the American Society for Training and Development. And they did this study where they were trying to measure the power of accountability. And they found that people who took action toward a particular goal so you know, they had all these people that had a goal.
And the people that took action on that goal had around a 25% success rate in achieving that goal, right, not bad. But the people who had a goal and who took action on that goal and who had an accountability partner, and had the scheduled appointment with that accountability partner.
These people had a 95% success rate. Basically, a done deal, right? That’s so fascinating to me that accountability and having somebody to check in with on a regular basis is the difference between hitting your goal about a quarter of the time or basically almost 100% of the time. And when I’m working one on one with a client, we have a standing weekly check-in, I’m holding them accountable every single week, did you stick to your plan or no?
And guess what, pretty much everyone always sticks to their plan, there’s a very, very few compliance issues with my coaching clients. Because people are just much more likely to stay on plan when they have to report into me each week, and they even tell me this, they’re like, I was gonna, like, give in and eat this whole chocolate cake because I was, you know, having an emotional moment or something.
And then I thought, I’ve got to talk to Patrick later today. So I’m just not going to do it, you know, because I don’t want to show up and tell him that I screwed up or that I, you know, gave in to this urge or whatever. So just having that person there to hold you accountable can be the difference between making lasting change in your life or just throwing in the towel. Find an accountability partner, it doesn’t have to be a coach, but it can be a group or a spouse, or a friend, or a family member, these can all work.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that sometimes there are issues with people you’re close to like family dynamics, you know, or you know, drama between spouses. And maybe they’re really not as committed to your success as you are, okay. And an accountability group is a great option because you’re surrounding yourself with people who are all doing what you’re doing.
So they share similar goals. And obviously, the best type of accountability partner would be a coach, because they definitely won’t give up on you there. It’s their job to be there for you and to hold you accountable. So it’s in their best interest to hold you accountable as well. So when we talk about making lasting change, this is what it’s all about.
It’s about making changes last permanently, right, anyone can change their diet, or they can start exercising for a couple of weeks, or we see it all the time the gyms fill up in January, and then they’re empty by March. What we’re really after here is permanent, lifelong changes. And there’s no easy path. It’s a challenge. I mean, if it was easy, you’d already have it, you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now.
But in order to make meaningful changes in your life that will last you have to have all three legs of the table knowledge, support, and accountability. So now the question is, how do you get all three? How do you get the knowledge, support, and accountability that you need to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life, I’m going to make this super simple for you.
I have something that will absolutely give you all three. And this is the Running Lean monthly coaching group. This is my monthly membership program and support group where you get everything you need to make lasting changes in your life. So I’m going to talk about this for a moment here. And I want to say this if you’re the kind of person who listens to this podcast, and you get what you need.
And then you’re like, I’m good to go. I don’t need your membership program. That’s fine. I love that. I come here every single week. And do this for you guys because I want to help you get results. And I teach what I teach here on the podcast and in my Facebook group because I want to help you I really honestly do.
So if this is you and you don’t want to hear about this program, you can stop listening now and go see what Joe Rogan is up to or something, okay. I love Joe Rogan. But he’s kind of not my style, but that’s okay.
But if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I want to learn more about this Patrick, like I want some help. I want knowledge, support, and accountability. I want it all in one place. If that’s you then keep listening because I think this program might just be perfect for you.
Okay, so just for a few minutes, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about the monthly coaching group. So with the Running Lean monthly group, monthly coaching group program. With this membership program, you get the knowledge so you get my entire library of online training materials. These are self-paced, that you can go through at your own leisure.
There’s the weight loss training course for runners. So this is everything you need to know about becoming a fat-adapted runner, what to eat, what not to eat, how to break through weight-loss plateaus, how to manage hunger and cravings so much more. And I’m always adding to that particular course. And I’m also adding to my training library all the time.
In January, I created a new course called achieving the impossible. This is how to create an extraordinary life by going after unrealistic goals. And I’ve got a ton of great feedback on this course already. So you can go through these training materials on your own, learn at a pace that works for you and your schedule, then you can start implementing these things.
So you have the knowledge, and you can start taking action and changing your behaviors, okay? Then you can take your questions, or maybe your struggles or your failures, you can take these to the support group. So then you get the support and encouragement from, from the group and from me, an experienced sports nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a master life coach.
But it’s not just about support from me, right. It’s about the support from me and the community of people that are like you that are runners who are sharing similar experiences and similar goals, we all come to the group as ourselves with what what we’re going through at the time, like, these group calls are very powerful, we show up and we’re real move or vulnerable.
We share what we’re struggling with. And we offer our support or encouragement, our experience, our strength, our hope. And we lift each other up when we fail, and we help each other to course correct. This is the power of the support group.
Then when we try to do hard things alone, it’s challenging, it’s frustrating. But when we set out to do hard things, and we do it together, it’s motivating it’s energizing, are much more likely to succeed. So much easier when we do it together.
And then with this membership program, you get the accountability to like to stay on track, and always moving towards your goals. If you want to make lasting change, you have to have accountability. And you’re much more likely to stick to a healthy eating plan or an exercise plan if you have to show up and report it to the group.
It’s kind of like Weight Watchers in that way. But a lot cooler, we’re cool. We have fun. You got to show up and check in. How did it go this past week? What did you do? Did you do what you said you were going to do? Wow, that’s powerful right there.
So these are the three biggest reasons why this membership program is so successful, why it’s helping so many people because you get the knowledge, support, and accountability all in one place. And how does it work? Well, we do live group coaching via Zoom with me and your fellow members. So you get the personal guidance and feedback that you need, you can ask questions, and I’ll coach you.
And all these group coaching calls are recorded and archived onto a Members Only website. So you’ll have 24 access to all the recorded coaching calls so that you can catch anything you might miss. You also get access to a private Facebook group where you can ask questions and get help in between the coaching calls.
This is just a very, very cost-effective way to get results. And I have to say this, we have a lot of fun, I believe, I believe so hard that making big changes, like losing weight should be enjoyable. It has to be enjoyable, it has to be fun. If it’s not fun, why are we doing it? Like you don’t have to suffer your way to good health and fitness.
And the group aspect of this program makes eating right losing weight and doing this big thing. It makes it so much more fun. So here’s the thing, I’m opening the spring session of the Running Lean monthly coaching group this Sunday, March 28. And I don’t open the group very often.
So if you’ve been thinking about this, this is the time for you to take action. If you don’t take action now you’ll have to wait a few more months. All right. And just think about how much change you can make in a few months. You can either be like three months into your health journey. Or you can just be like right where you are today.
Three months from now. The choice is yours. So if you want to learn more, and you want to get notified when enrollment opens, it will be on Sunday at some time. Just head over to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Get your name on the list. Okay.
So this is something I wanted to mention earlier and I want to share this with you. I’m doing a live launch event this Sunday over in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. Right. So that’s this Sunday, March 28 at 4 pm Eastern Daylight Time, daylight time we change our clocks you guys. Did you know that?
I’m going to do something fun this week that I’ve never really done before, I have a special offer for everyone who attends that live on Sunday. Okay, it’s a little something cool that I’m doing. I’ve never done this before. But it’s, it’s a little way that I want to say thank you for being a part of the group and showing up on that live.
I won’t be offering this fun little surprise to the general public. The only way you’ll know about it and be able to take advantage of it is if you show up on the live training this Sunday in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, okay, you will want to get in on this. I promise you, it’ll be really cool.
Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. Remember, head over to runningleanpodcast.com/join and save your spot. And then I’ll see you on the Facebook Live launch event this Sunday. It’s going to be fun, right? It’s fun. We have so much fun. All right, you guys, as always, lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
I think you all know that in order to become a healthy human, you need to change your habits. You need to break bad habits and create good ones. The problem isn't knowing which habits are bad …
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 61 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about making healthy habits stick. I think you all know that in order to become a healthy human being, you need to change your habits, need to break bad habits, stop doing those things, and create some good habits to start doing those things.
The problem really isn’t knowing which habits are bad and which are good. I think we all know that. It’s knowing how to make those good and healthy habits stick. Anyone can eat healthy for a day or two. But how do you do it day in and day out? How do you make it automatic? So in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I’ve got five pretty simple and very practical steps to making healthy habits stick.
But first, if you haven’t already done so come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a fun group of positive runners who share their experiences with each other, who encourage one another, who ask great questions, and who support one another in their health and fitness goals. I want you to be a part of this group.
And one of the things I’m going to talk about in this episode ties into how being a part of a group like this can really help make your healthy habits stick. So if you’re interested, just come check us out search Running Lean community on Facebook would be super fun to see you there.
Also, people have been asking me about working one on one with me. And if you’re interested in this, it’s it would be awesome for you to engage with me and to create this, this relationship with with you so that I can help you become the person that you ultimately want to become I love doing this, this is what I do.
You’ll get the individual guidance and support that you need to dial in your nutrition plan to become fat-adapted, and to hit your goals, your weight loss goals, your running goals, just overall health, and fitness goals, right? I’m here to help you guide you every step of the way to encourage you to do the things that maybe you don’t want to do,so that you can become the person that you ultimately want to become.
If you’re interested in coaching, here’s how it works, you have to apply. And then you and I are going to get on a call and we’re going to talk about I’ll talk about the program. I’ll talk about how it works. And we’ll discuss all that stuff. Okay. I’ve been getting a lot of messages lately, where people are just asking, like, how much is coaching? And I really don’t like to talk about that over messaging and stuff like that.
Okay, we really want to just have a conversation about what does this look like? What would it look like for me and you to work together? And then you can make an informed decision. And I can answer all your questions on that on that call. So there’s no obligation to jump on this call with me. But you do have to apply. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching and apply and we can work on, we can talk about your goals and we can work on a plan and kind of see if this is something you want to do or not. Like I said it’s free for this cause and there’s no obligation to come and check us out – runningleanpodcast.com/coaching.
Here is a recent five-star review of the Running Lean podcast this is from Nikita Barbosa. And Nikita says, “Great information and tips presented in a creative manner. Thank you for this podcast and the Facebook group.”
Well thank you, Akita for reaching out and dropping in a review. I appreciate that. If you are listening to this and you get something out of it, it would mean so much to me if you would take a moment and just leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. I guess you can leave reviews on other platforms. I don’t really know about that. I don’t get those reviews. I don’t see them anywhere.
But if you can, great. Leave, leave a review somewhere but Apple Podcasts seems to be the one that most people leave reviews on. And I would be happy to read your review here on the show. All right, cool.
So let’s get into this topic today. This is a fun, fun topic for me to put together. Honestly, I had a lot of fun doing this. And it’s all about making healthy habits stick. And I recently read a book that has been recommended to me for years. And it’s a book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. And it’s a great book, a fantastic read, I would highly recommend getting it and checking it out.
But I noticed when I was reading the book that I was already doing a lot of the stuff that he mentions in the book, you know, there was a lot of new stuff in there too. But I was like, this is really cool. I think this is important to talk about. So it kind of inspired me to take a few of the things that I learned from him in this book and taking a few of the things that I teach to my clients.
And to put them all together into a, I kind of created a five-step process or a five-step action plan, with practical tips that you can kind of start taking some action on strength today. All right, none of this stuff is going to be too mind-blowingly hard or anything like that. But these are things that will really help you to make those healthy habits stick because I know how hard it is.
This is like one of the most common questions I get from people is like, I know what to do, I just can’t seem to make it stick. I can’t seem to do it. I just I always fall off the rails. How do I make these habits stick? So that’s what we’re talking about today. So I’ve been using some of these concepts for years with myself and with my clients. And we’ve been having some really great results with these things. Okay.
You know, think about it like this, anybody can kind of lose weight, right? Like you can change your diet and lose weight, right? But it’s the keeping it off. That’s the problem. Most people say, oh, yeah, I’ve lost weight a bunch of times. It’s kind of like, oh, yeah, I’ve quit smoking, quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times, you know, anybody can eat healthy for a couple of days.
But how about day in and day out? How about for months at a time, you know, everybody can go for a run every now and then. But sticking to a running schedule, and like finishing a marathon, that’s a whole different deal altogether, right? So we’re going to be taking a deep dive into healthy habits today, and about how we can make these healthy habits stick.
So let’s talk about what a habit is. So a habit, if you look up the definition, there are a couple of definitions I found that I think are really cool. So the first definition I found is, is as a habit is a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior. Okay?
Another definition is that a routine a habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly, and tends to occur subconsciously, that I like I liked that definition a lot. And then the third one I found was a habit is an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary. That sounds kind of cool, right?
A behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary, it’s just like something you do without even having to think about it, you just do it like, tying your shoes is involuntary, you just tie me you don’t have to think about tying your shoes or driving a car. You know, when you’re first learning to drive a car. It’s, there’s a lot of things you got to think about, right? Where do I put my foot? Where do I? How do I adjust these mirrors? You know, where’s the gas? How do I put it into drive? Okay, I gotta use my turn signal, where’s that located?
And you’re thinking about all these things, right? But now you just get in a car and you can drive for like, sometimes you’re driving and you’re like, how did I even get here? I don’t remember the last 10 minutes. And it’s like, everything is become so subconscious, you know. So, I like to think of a habit as a behavior that has become automatic. Right?
So it’s just something you do involuntarily or automatically, right. So obviously, there are good habits and bad habits, you know, so bad habits can be automatic as well. You know, there are a lot of habits that we engage in, that seem involuntary or automatic and that aren’t necessarily healthy, right? We want the healthy habits to stick and we don’t really want the unhealthy habits to stick.
So like a good habit would be you know, taking a shower every day. That’s something you probably do pretty automatically. A bad habit might be that every time you go into the break room at work, you grab a doughnut and eat it. That might be a bad habit that you don’t want to engage in. Okay? So not all habits are good.
Not all habits are bad, but we just want to get we want to start to create some awareness around what habits are and what habits we’re engaging in. What habits do we want to continue engaging in? Maybe some habits, we want to stop doing and maybe make some new habits. So the very first step, step number one in making healthy habits stick is to create awareness.
So what are all your current habits? What are the things that you do? Automatically, out of habit every single day? What are the things you do every single day? Which of these would you consider to be good habits, and which of these would you consider to be bad habits?
So, an easy way of doing this is just a make a list of everything you do every day, you’ve probably never done something like this before. And it may seem kind of weird to do it at first. But it would look something like this, like, here’s my list, I started doing this. And it starts like this, wake up, turn off the alarm, get out of bed, go to the bathroom, weigh myself, log my weight in my journal, brush my teeth, make my bed, make coffee. And then it just keeps going, right?
These are lists, everything single thing that I do every single day. And I just keep going with that list. Alright, seems kind of monotonous or tedious or whatever, but it’s important. So just write down everything you do in a typical day, then you’re going to like look at each one of those habits that you engage in every single day. And you’re going to decide if it is positive, or negative habit or neutral.
So just you can just use like a little plus sign, if it’s positive, write a little plus sign next to it. If it’s negative, make a little minus sign. And if it’s neutral, you could use like a little equal sign. For example, wake up that’s neutral is you’ve just got to wake up, it’s not good or bad. There’s nothing, you know, negative about that. Nothing really positive, but it’s just neutral to wake up.
Next, maybe I don’t turn off the alarm. Maybe I hit snooze. That would be negative habit. Okay, below minus sign next to it. And then I hit snooze. Again, there’s another negative, maybe hit snooze a third time, I’ve been known to do this before. So these are kind of negative habits, I don’t want to do okay, then I turn off my alarm, there’s a positive, okay, so that’s a plus, then I get out of bed, neutral, go to the bathroom, neutral, weigh myself positive.
Because I’m trying to keep track of, you know, making some gains, you know, or maybe trying to lose some weight or whatever it is that you’re trying to do. For me, I’m trying to actually gain a little bit of weight by increasing my muscle mass. So I’m weighing myself positive, I logged my weight positive because these things are our positive habits that are helping me become a healthier person.
Brush my teeth. I will say that’s positive. Make my bed? Some people don’t make their bed. I don’t get that. How do you go through your life without making it? How did you just like leave your bed unmade all day long. I don’t understand that at all. That’s a positive. Make my coffee, I put two pluses next to that, that’s super positive.
Okay, and then you can just go on like that. Okay. So at the end of your list, what you basically have is you have a list of all the habits that are good habits that are bad, some that are neutral that are neither here nor there. So go through your whole day. And what we’re trying to do is just create awareness of what’s going on with you right now? Go through your whole day. What positive habits do you want to keep? And then keep reinforcing? Maybe there are some negative habits that you want to drop.
You know, for me, it’s the hitting the snooze, I want to just get up when my alarm goes off. Some days I hit snooze. Typically, once some days more than that, that might be something I want to stop doing. What new habits do you want to add? You know, maybe you’re not running right now. And running is something you want to do every morning, you know, or every afternoon or whatever it is, you can add that in as one of your habits.
But this first step, it’s all about just creating awareness, creating awareness of what’s good, and you want to keep what’s necessary, you know, not necessarily good, maybe what’s bad and you want to drop and some new things you want to add in okay. But without this awareness, you have no idea what your current habits look like, what you want to keep doing, or what you want to stop doing. Okay, so step number one is to create a massive awareness of all your habits okay.
Now, step number two, in making healthy habits stick is to plan ahead. So there was this study they did back in 2001. In Great Britain, they took like 248 people and they were trying to see if they could build better exercise habits for these people. And they divided them up into three groups.
So the first group was the control group. And they were asked to just track how much they exercised. The second group was what they called the motivation group. So these were these people were also tracked, asked to track their exercise, but they were also told to read some material on the benefits of exercise. And then they were presented with some information and kind of lectured on how exercise could help resist reduce their risk of cardiovascular heart disease, and how it could improve their heart health and stuff like that. So that was the motivation group.
And then the third group was the same as the second group. So they were also asked to track their exercises, and given the motivation materials, but this group was also told to plan their workouts ahead of time. What specific day and time were they going to work out where were they going to work out for how long etc.
In the first and second groups, around 36% of the people exercised once a week. And by the way, the motivational presentations did not seem to affect their behavior one way or the other. The third group, however, the group that was that had planned ahead of time specifically planned out their workouts 91% of them exercise at least once per week, 91% versus 36%, who did not plan ahead.
So this tells me there’s something to this. You have to have a predefined plan if you want to make these healthy habits stick. So I’ll have clients come to me and they’ll say, hey, I want to get stronger. I want to do some strength training. I want to work out more. And I’m like, Okay, how specifically? I don’t know, I just know I need I want to work out more. So I’m going to work out more. Well, how many times a week are you gonna do it? I don’t know. Well, which days? I don’t know. Like, this is not gonna work, right? This is not a plan.
I want to work out more is not going to move the needle for you at all. Okay. We want to get specific. All right. So here’s what I would tell them to do. I’ll say, let’s, let’s think about this. How many times a week do you want to work out? Twice. Okay, you’re gonna work out two times next week. Which days? You’re gonna do it? Tuesday, Thursday. Perfect. What time, 8 am? Okay, great. Where are you going to do it? At your local gym. Perfect.
Now put it on your calendar. I will strength train two times next week on Tuesday, and Thursday at 8 am. At my local gym, it’s on my calendar, guess what that person is going to do those two workouts, I promise you, right. That is how you get very specific, and plan ahead, which is much different than oh, I want to work out more. It’s just not going to work. All right.
A lot of times people think they lacked the motivation to do something like this like to work out more, they think they’re lacking motivation, what they’re really lacking is a clear plan of action. Planning ahead is crucial. It’s crucial to making any habits stick. And I talk a lot about this when I talk with my clients about sticking to their food plan.
If you know what you’re gonna be eating tomorrow, if you’ve planned it ahead of time, and you’ve even written it down in your food journal. Today, you know what you’re doing tomorrow, you’re way more likely to stick to that food plan tomorrow, you’re not just going to be like planning in the heat of the moment. You’re not just winging it every day, that that doesn’t work. Plan ahead. It is crucial.
And the reason for this is that we have these two parts of our brain we have the amygdala, which is our primitive brain. This is the part of our brain that’s responsible for primal urges, you know, our fear center fight or flight, that kind of thing. The amygdala is going to make decisions in the moment.
So if you’re like standing in front of the fridge, and you have no idea what you’re gonna be eating, and there’s like a chocolate cake sitting there, you’re gonna just eat the chocolate cake, right, let’s be honest.
But then there’s this other part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, and this is your plan and planning plan ahead. You know, the organizing part of your brain the more modern part of your brain. This is responsible for cognitive behavior. This is the part of your brain that you use when you make decisions ahead of time.
And when you use that part of your brain, you are way more likely to stick to that decision that you made. So oh, that’s kind of the science behind it. But basically, what you want to do is just make sure you have planned ahead, and you have a very structured, very clear plan. And I’ve encouraged people to write it down or put it on the calendar. When it’s on the calendar, it’s like it’s done, you’re gonna do it, you know. So the second step to making healthy habits stick is to plan ahead, get specific, and plan ahead.
Step number three is to change your environment, you are way more likely to stick to a healthy habit if your environment supports it. So they did this experiment at a hospital in Massachusetts, Massachusetts General Hospital, and they wanted to see if they could change the eating habits of the 1000s of hospital staff and visitors by just making a few simple changes to the environment.
So they used the hospital cafeteria as the environment they were going to change. And in the hospital cafeteria had all these had a couple of drink stations located in it, okay. And there were like two places in this in the cafeteria where they had water available to people, like just two places. Mostly they had soda, which doesn’t make sense, you know, for a hospital to have nothing but soda. But yeah, it’s another conversation.
So the one change they made is that they added more water to the cafeteria. So they added bottled water options to where these couple of drinks stations were. But they also added baskets of bottled water next to all the food stations, and they added bottled water next to the cash registers. And so instead of just having two locations in the cafeteria, where there was bottled water available, there were now 10 different locations where they had bottled water water available.
And they didn’t make any announcements about this, they didn’t, you know, make a big campaign, you know, oh, we’re all gonna be drinking more water. No, they just made this little modification to the environment. They didn’t put up signs or anything like that. And then they tracked some things over the next few months. And they noticed that sales of soda, so the soda sales dropped by like 11.4%, during the next three months, in that same amount of time, bottled water sales increased by 25.8%.
So this is kind of cool, right? Just making a simple change, the environment can have a big impact. It’s kind of like the impulse buying, that we do at the grocery store, you know when you’re standing in the checkout line, and there’s all that stuff right there, like candy and gum and mints, and the trashy magazines, like you don’t need that stuff, you really don’t.
And you don’t even want it right you didn’t, you didn’t come into the store going, I can’t wait to be standing in line so that I can get the trashy magazines and a candy bar. But because it’s sitting there, it’s just because of the way it’s presented to you. You buy it, right? You don’t need it, you don’t want it but you buy it anyway.
It’s why they put end caps at the grocery stores. Because as you walk by them, you know, you’re it’s going to really jump out and people are more apt to buy that stuff and the end caps because of the way it’s presented to you because it’s in your environment. They also, you know, put stuff on the shelves like down low, they don’t want you to buy and they put stuff right at eye level that they do want you to buy, right, it’s all very intentional.
So then, you know, it becomes a habit. Like every time you’re staying in line at the checkout, you’re buying candy bars and trashy magazines or whatever. Okay, so your environment has a profound impact on your habits.
Another example is if your pantry is full of junk food, what are you going to be presented with each time you open those doors? Junk food, right? If you always have a plate of cookies out on your counter, in your kitchen, what do you think is gonna happen each time you go into the kitchen? Or if there’s always a box of doughnuts in the break room, you’re probably going to be eating a lot of donuts.
If you want your healthy habits to stick you need to create an environment or make changes to your environment that supports your healthy habits. And your environment is way more than like doughnuts in the break room. It’s more than just how you stock your pantry.
Your environment includes things like the books you read, the shows you watch the podcasts, you listen to, and the people you hang out with. If your environment is made up of healthy eaters and dedicated runners, you’re going to feel supported, and you’re going to be way more likely to make your healthy habits stick.
And like I mentioned earlier, the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, is a great example of surrounding yourself with people who are focused on their health and fitness. Another great example is my local running group. So I’m part of a running group with you know, I don’t know a couple of 100 people who are all motivated and focused on running.
And so every Saturday, we meet, like, twice a week, but you know, Saturday mornings are the ones that are I always talk about that, because it’s like, it’s early in the morning, it’s cold winter day, and the alarm goes off, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, do I really want to go run right now?
But I know that there’s a whole group of people out there, that I’m going to be surrounded with. So I’m like, Yes, I’m gonna get up, I’m on a run. And I’m way more motivated to stick to that healthy habit of running on Saturday mornings, because I know, there’s this whole group of people that’s out there doing the same thing, right?
I surround myself with health and fitness experts in the way of the books that I read, and the podcasts that I listened to, you know, think about my coaches, my mentors, and all day, I’m talking to runners who are focused on their health and fitness. And all day, I’m recording podcasts and trainings and putting together training materials, and talking to my clients about their health and fitness.
So for me, sticking to my own health healthy habits is a breeze, you know, because my environment is nothing but people. And information that’s coming into me is all health is focused on health, good eating habits, running, how to improve running, working out strength training, all these things, okay. So your environment is more than just you know, how you own the food that you have in your fridge, okay.
And then even like small changes to your environment, like, if you layout your running clothes the night before, or you prep your meals for the week, these things can have a big impact on making a healthy habit stick. Because if you wake up in the morning, and you see those running clothes are sitting there, you know what you’re going to do, you’re gonna put those running clothes on and you’re gonna go for your run.
Or if you open the fridge and you’re not sure what to eat, and you see all your healthy meals all prepped and ready to go. You don’t have to wonder you don’t have to make a decision, you just grab it and eat it, you’re gonna make that healthy habit stick, okay? So make sure your environment supports your healthy habits. So the key to making a healthy habit stick.
Number four, the fourth step is to practice, practice, practice. So the definition of practice is to carry out or perform a particular activity method or custom, habitually or regularly. It’s just doing something over and over again. So there are things like a yoga practice, a meditation practice, even a medical practice, you know, they talk about doctors practicing medicine.
You know, I have a coaching practice. I’m a metabolic health practitioner. A practitioner is someone who practices a profession. The key though here is the habitually and regularly parked, right, anybody can do something every now and then. This does not create a habit. Habit formation is when the behavior becomes automatic.
Habit formation is when your behavior becomes automatic. The more you do something, the more automatic it becomes. Right, we’re talking about driving a car or tying your shoes. The first few times, tying your shoes was, you know, you probably did it wrong. I know I did. I was like, this doesn’t make any sense.
The first time you drive a car, it’s like it’s hard. You know, it’s just it’s not automatic. But the more and more you do it, the better you get, and just becomes automatic. And this is how you create healthy habits too. You just gotta keep doing them. You have to practice, practice, practice, you got to get your reps in. And when you do this, you start to rewire your brain, you can actually change the way your brain functions.
The more you engage in a behavior, whether it’s good or bad, the more automatic that behavior becomes right, your brain actually can rewire itself, and you create new neural pathways. These are just like patterns of thought. And these neural pathways are automatic. The thoughts and the behaviors become automatic, even subconscious, sometimes you don’t even know you’re doing them.
Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiation. And this is referring to creating strong neural pathways through the repetition of behavior. So an example of how this kind of plays out, scientists studied the brains of London taxi drivers, I think this is fascinating. And they noticed in these people that made their living driving taxis around London, that their hippocampus, a part of their brain, that is, plays a key role in spatial memory, their hippocampus was much larger than non-taxi drivers.
Because they’d spent decades memorizing the complex London street systems, you know, they essentially rewired their brains and created all these new neural pathways that other people just didn’t have. And something that I found kind of interesting about this is that when they retired, their hippocampus actually shrank back down to normal size.
So those new neural pathways that they had created unwired themselves after they had retired because they were no longer, they no longer needed that. So that was kind of interesting. So you can actually rewire your brain by doing something over and over and over again. So if you want to make healthy eating habits, something you do automatically, you just have to, really, you have to just do it, often, you have to stick to your plan every single day.
You know, if you want to get bigger muscles, you’ve got to lift weights, you’ve got to do it more than once, you know, you gotta keep doing it, you got to get your reps in, right? If you want to run a marathon, you have to get your training runs in all of them. Right, you have to get your reps and you have to practice, practice, practice.
You know, on average, it takes around 90 days to break old habits and establish new ones. So the more reps you get in, the more likely that these new healthy habits are going to stick. And here’s the important part, you have to do it even when you don’t feel like it. Because the behavior that you practice over and over again, is the one that’s going to stick.
So if you constantly say, screw it to your diet, or your strength training schedule, or your running schedule, then that’s the habit that’s going to stick. If you consistently don’t follow through with what you said you were going to do, that’s the habit that’s going to stick. So even when you don’t feel like it, you have to stick to that habit. Keep doing it, it’s hard. This is the hard part. I know it’s hard, but you got to do it, even when you don’t feel like it. And that’s how you create a habit that will stick right but you got to practice, practice, practice.
Alright, and then step five in making healthy habits stick is to track your progress. So this is so simple, but it is so powerful. And most people just don’t do it. So for example, I used to work out at a gym, and I would lift weights, and I didn’t keep track of anything, right. I just showed up I did whatever. And I wasn’t getting any results I did so for years, years, I even did like small group classes and things like that, I would just show up, do whatever.
And the results would be like a, you know, no gains. For years, I did this and it was very frustrating. I spent a lot of time and a lot of money and put in a lot of effort for nothing. I was not getting any returns from this. I wasn’t making any progress. So I decided pretty recently. Listen, you guys, I am 54 years old and I’m still learning new things.
Okay, some of these things may seem really obvious to you. You might be thinking like, Well, yeah, duh, Patrick, you have to track things, but I wasn’t doing it. Okay. Until very recently, and I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna start tracking my workouts at the gym. All right. And so I started a strength training log. This is a very simple thing to do. Just took me a little while but I finally decided I was going to do this.
Okay, so now I’m tracking everything. Every exercise, how many sets the number of reps I’m putting in, And the amount of weight, I’m lifting all that stuff, right? And it only takes like 30 seconds to jot these things down. So I’ll do an exercise and I’ll just jot down how many reps. What did I do? And then you know, what was the weight?
And then did I take it to failure or not? I like to record that it literally just takes a second to do this. But just in a few weeks, it’s only been a few weeks, I’ve been doing this, I just made this one minor change, I started tracking, I’m seeing improvements, I’m increasing the number of reps at the same weight. It also gives me a target to you know, it’s so if I did eight reps last time, I want to do nine this time, you know, I’m able to increase the amount of weight lifted.
So if it was, you know, 185 pounds last week, it’s going to be 190 pounds this week, I can see that I’m able to lift heavier weights or do more reps, I’m getting stronger, I’m getting bigger muscles for the first time in my life. All because I did this one tiny little thing, which is started tracking it.
One of the most powerful behaviors that I asked my clients to do is to track their food intake. And here’s why I do it. And they did this study, which I think is so cool. They did this study with over 1600 people and they divided them up into two groups, one group was told to write down everything they ate every day, and the other group was not told to do anything.
And neither group was given any kind of dietary advice, they weren’t given any instructions. They just, you know, told one group to write down everything you eat every day. And then they went after some time, I don’t know the time period on this particular study. But there was some period of time where they looked at the weight loss between the two different groups.
And the people who had tracked their food lost like twice as much weight as the people who did not. They didn’t tell him to do anything differently. They didn’t offer them any, like nutrition advice or anything like that. But the people who wrote down what they were eating, lost twice as much weight as those who did not.
So what’s happening here? Well, awareness is part of it talked about that earlier, you know, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Right. So the simple act of writing things down and creating that awareness and tracking their progress actually allows you to continually improve something, okay. So that’s one of the big reasons why tracking is so important is creating that awareness, you have to be able to measure it if you want to prove it.
Secondly, making progress is very satisfying. Like it feels so good to see the number, the numbers go up or down or whatever it is you’re trying to do. Like, it’s fun to see me be able to lift more weight or do a couple of extra reps. Like that’s fun to see, it gives me a little bit of satisfaction, it’s very satisfying. Or if you’re tracking your weight, and you’re logging it, and you can see, oh, I can see that my weight, you know, goes up and down every now and then. But I can see over time it’s going down like that’s very motivating, right? Feels good.
These tiny little indicators of progress, help to reinforce healthy habits. And speaking of motivating, yeah, making progress. Even tiny, little incremental progress is very motivating. You’re way more motivated to stick to a healthy habit when you see these little tiny incremental improvements. Right.
Another example I’ve been trying to make morning meditation, a daily habit I did this years ago, I was a diligent meditator. And I’ve used this app to track my meditation progress. It’s called Insight Timer. It’s a great app, it’s got a lot of cool features. And in the past, I’ve gotten up to like 500 consecutive days of meditating. And then I just stopped doing it for a while and I wanted to get back into it because it does help me feel better. It does help with my mental and emotional state.
And so as of today, I hit 40 consecutive days of meditating. And you get these little stars that track your progress, and it says you’ve meditated, you know, X number of consecutive days. And just seeing these little tiny indicators of progress keeps me motivated to keep the habit going. Because I don’t want to break the streak. Like I want to keep the streak alive. You know.
I remember back in the day is a long time ago. I used to smoke cigarettes, okay, a long, long time ago. And when I quit smoking several times, (btdubs), but when I quit smoking, like one of the first times that I was like, I’m serious about it this time, I had this wall calendar. And every day I didn’t smoke, I put a big red X on that day of my wall calendar to mark each day that I did not smoke cigarettes.
And it was so satisfying to see those x’s add up. And I kept seeing more and more of those X’s on my calendar. And after, you know, a month or so of that, I was I had kind of broken the habit and I no longer had the desire to smoke cigarettes. So I was motivated each day because I wanted to keep that streak alive, I wanted to keep those x’s multiplying on that calendar. And to see that visually, it was kind of cool.
So just tracking something like that to break a bad habit is a cool idea too. And by the way, kids don’t smoke, don’t do it. It’s bad. It’s so bad. I can’t believe I used to smoke, it’s so funny. Think about who I am today and who I used to be. So we can change, we can always change. So here are a couple of suggestions for you as far as tracking goes.
Number one, keep some sort of a food journal or some way of tracking your food. You can use a notebook, you can use an app, some people like my fitness pal, or carb manager or something like that. But just make it simple, make it easy to do and make it fun. Tracking your food creates massive awareness.
So you’ll see exactly what you’re eating every day because you might think you’re doing pretty good. But when you start tracking it, you might be kind of surprised by what’s really happening. It’s a great, great way to also track your progress and keep you motivated to stick with that healthy eating habit.
The second tracking idea I have for you or suggestion would be to keep a running journal. So keep you can do this again, in a notebook or an app. Again, make it easy, whatever it is for you, if you if it’s easier for you to plug things into an app, do that. But if it’s just as easy to write in a notebook or a journal, do that. Just make it simple. But then just record each run that you do your time, your distance, your pace, how you felt the weather, stuff like that.
Any notes you want to add, shouldn’t take too long after each run, but this is so good for not just creating awareness and motivation, but also for helping you get progressively faster, or run longer. Like let’s say you want to run a faster half marathon, you’re going to need to improve your speed. Right?
So how do you know if you’re getting faster unless you keep track of it? Right? So you’re gonna want to track your progress. So you know you’re on target for that PR pace. You can’t just show up on race day, and expect to magically pull off some kind of PR. I’ve done that before where I’m like, I’m going to PR this marathon. Oh, yeah.
Well, what have you done to prepare for this? Nothing different. It doesn’t work. I’m gonna tell you right now. Right. So in order to improve something, you have to be able to measure it by tracking your progress. It’s fun, it’s satisfying, it’s motivating. And it’s a very effective way to make healthy habits stick so you can get leaner get stronger, run faster, whatever it is that you want to do. All right.
So here’s a quick recap, if you want to make healthy habits stick to number one, you need to create awareness. So what current habits are you engaging in that are good, bad, neutral, which ones do you want to add to that list?
Number two, make sure you’re planning ahead, make a very clear and very detailed plan of what you’re going to do because you’re much more likely to make that stick if you do that.
Number three, change your environment. Make sure your environment supports your healthy habits and your environment includes the people you hang out with and the media that you consume that kind of stuff.
Number four, practice, practice, practice, you got to get your reps in, especially when you don’t feel like it. And then number five, keep track of your progress. It helps you to stay motivated and definitely will help those healthy habits stick. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. I hope you all have an amazing day.
If you liked this episode, and you got something out of it, it would mean a lot to me if you shared it with somebody. As always, lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
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