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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Hunger

114. Winning The Inner Game

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When it comes to making lasting habit change, there are two main areas of “work” that you have to address. There’s the outer work, which is what to do and how to do it, and then there’s the inner …

Continue Reading about 114. Winning The Inner Game →

Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 114 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, winning the inner game. When it comes to making a lasting habit change there are two main areas of work that we have to address. First, there’s the outer work, this is what to do and how to do it. But then there’s the inner work, which is all about making profound shifts in your mindset.

Most people only focus their attention on the outer work. Just tell me what to do, Patrick, that’s what they say to me, just tell you what to do. But the outer work is only a small fraction of the game. If you want better results for yourself, and you want to create new habits that actually last, you have to shift your focus internally, you have to start working on your inner game.

So in this episode, I’m going to be taking a deep dive into what this means what it means to be winning the inner game, and why it’s actually a very critical component of becoming a leaner, stronger runner, and a healthier, more badass human being.

But first, if you’re ready to do the inner work, if you’re ready to start winning the inner game, if you’re ready to start making that shift in your mindset, so you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet, then you have to take action, you have to start doing things differently. Nothing changes if nothing changes, right.

But most people just want to keep doing what they’re doing over and over again, expecting something to magically change. And it doesn’t work that way, right? Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I think that’s the definition of insanity. So don’t go insane. Just we got to change something, okay.

And if you’re not sure what to do, or you want a little bit of help with this, this is what I do. Apply for coaching with me, there’s no commitment to apply. It’s just me and you having a conversation about what coaching looks like and what this could possibly do for you. And how it could be one of the best things you ever do for yourself. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And take that first step, make that first change, make that first change to become that badass future version of yourself. Cool.

And then I wanted to give you guys a heads up about this workshop that I have coming up. In just a few weeks, I’m going to be teaching a live workshop all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner. So this is going to be one of the most informative and most comprehensive live workshops that I’ve ever taught. I’ve never done this in this format live before.

And honestly, I’m just so excited about this. And I think it’s gonna be super fun. There’s like this cool energy when we do these things live. And we all come together and you can ask questions and get feedback. It’s super fun. So in this workshop, you’re going to learn the simple steps you need to get leaner get stronger, and make healthy habits last for life. That’s the whole point of this.

It’s not just about, hey, let’s lose some weight and get a little bit stronger. You know, and then in six months, we’ll just go back to doing what we’re doing before. No. How do we make these things last? So that’s what this workshop is all about. To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, and I’m gonna give you a couple of opportunities to attend.

The first one is coming up on March 17. Yes, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. You can go drink your green beer after the workshop. Okay, it’s going to be March 17. And then I’ll share more about the other two opportunities to join in the weeks in the coming weeks here. Okay.

If I didn’t mention it, it’s going to be free. It’s a free live training just for you to help you understand the fundamentals of becoming the healthiest and most badass human being that you can possibly be – runningleanpodcast.com/workshop. I would love to see you there. We’re gonna have a lot of fun and it’s free. It’s fun. It’s free. It’s all good. And we can celebrate St. Patrick’s day together. Cool. Awesome. All right, let’s get into this content.

I want to talk about winning the inner game. I am so passionate about this particular topic. And I’ve been talking a lot with my clients about this lately, especially in the group program that I have in the monthly coaching group. So you know, we’re talking a lot about emotional eating and how to eliminate emotional eating, how to stop doing it for good in the coaching group.

So if you’re somebody that’s been on the fence about joining the coaching group, and you’re like, oh, man, that’s me, I’m an emotional eater, for sure. And it doesn’t mean you’re like sitting in the corner, you know, crying over him with a whole, you know, gallon of ice cream in your lap.

You know, that’s not what I mean by emotional eating, emotional eating, and stuff, like stress eating, eating, because you’re bored, because you’re tired, because you’re angry, because you’re frustrated, whatever it is your eating to feel better using something external to feel better, okay?

So we’re talking a lot about the inner work that we have to do in order to make a shift, a profound shift in the way we think and feel about ourselves and about our emotions and our feelings and stuff, so that we don’t have to eat over them.

The truth is, you don’t have to be an emotional eater, we all are, to some degree, I’m just gonna tell you right now, we all are to some degree. But if you’re done with that, if you want to be done with that forever, then you got to make some changes.

And a lot of what we got to do is the inner work, it’s not necessarily about what you’re doing on the outside, it’s about what you’re doing on the inside, okay. So that’s an example of the inner work, okay, and so we’re gonna be talking a lot about that this whole month over in the coaching group. And you can always join us over there, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/join, to kind of check it out.

But here’s the thing. And why I wanted to talk about this today is because when you have a goal for yourself, like let’s say you have a goal of losing weight, and you’re just having a really hard time with that, and you’re struggling to keep it off, you might be able to keep it off for a little while, like you’ve probably all have experienced this, right, you lost some weight, then it comes back after a while. You keep finding yourself reverting to old behaviors.

If you can’t keep the weight off, then it means that you probably aren’t doing the inner work. You know, you have to have a mindset shift in order to accomplish these big goals. And most people do not want to do this, most people only focus on the outer work. So they will be like, just tell me what to eat Patrick, tell me what I shouldn’t eat. Just tell me how many carbs I should be eating every day, Patrick, that’s it? How many times a week should I be running? When should I lift weights? That’s all good.

I mean, this is all part of this is all strategy. But most people only want to know this part. Most coaches only focus on this part. Strategy is fine, it’s good. It’s important, it is part of the process. But it’s the outer stuff. Like you know, I’m not trying to minimize the importance of strategy, you got to know what to do. And you got to know how to do it. And I teach a lot of strategies in my coaching programs.

So there’s a right way to go about losing weight, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about becoming a fat-adapted runner. There’s a right and wrong way to go about getting stronger. You know, there are also ways that we do these things that are very frustrating, especially when you’re trying to figure it out yourself.

But the thing is that our work this strategy stuff I’m talking about here, it’s like 20% of the equation, right? It’s a small piece of the puzzle, right? The inner work is learning how to shift your mindset so that you make all the strategies work long term.

The inner work is learning how to break old habits and create new ones that last, the inner work is learning how to make the new healthy habits that you’re creating, how to make those habits stick. The inner work is going to help you to say no to a food craving when it’s sitting right there in your face.

The inner work is required if you want to learn how to eliminate those old cravings for junk food, the cravings that had you eating and that whole pint of ice cream, you know right before going to bed because you just can’t say no. The inner work is the other 80% of the equation.

And when you look at it that way, it becomes glaringly important, because I know that you have tried all the different things. You’ve tried the different types of diets, the Mediterranean diet and the South Beach diet and the vegan diet and the pegan diet and you know, low carb and the Keto and the plant-based or whatever it is, right. We’ve all tried all these different things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, most of the time they don’t. Because we’re just focused on the outside stuff. We’re just focused on what to do. What do we do?

I did this for years, I tried all those different diets I just mentioned, trying them all, didn’t work for me. Because I didn’t know about the inner work, I was just focused on, you know, the outside stuff. And I got to a point in all of these different diets, where maybe things just didn’t start, didn’t keep working for me, you know, and maybe I started to gain a little bit of weight back, or I didn’t feel like I had as much energy as I wanted, or whatever it is you know. Something, something in my mind was like, Oh, this isn’t working. This isn’t for me, this isn’t gonna last, I can’t keep this up. And then I quit. I wasn’t doing the inner work.

So what is the inner work? Here are some examples of what I’m talking about here. So for example, one of the things I recommend a lot of my clients do when they’re trying to shift their habits around food, and they’re in they’re using food to kind of deal with boredom or frustration or whatever it is stressed throughout the day and things like that, are we eliminate snacking throughout the day snacking is one of those things, you just don’t need to be snacking.

Snacking is always an emotional event, you don’t need food, you don’t need to eat, like, you know, a handful of nuts or you know, a few chips or whatever it is that you’re snacking on, you know, you aren’t really hungry, like your body isn’t craving nourishment. If you’re just going to be eating a few, you know, nuts or something, you know.

So how snacking is almost always just emotionally eating, right? It’s just because we’re stressed out or bored or something like that. So one of the things we do is we stop snacking, okay, and most people kind of freak out a little bit, you know, because they want to eat, they’re like, Oh, I just always eat every time I feel a little bit hungry, I eat. So managing hunger is a form of doing the inner work, right?

When you’ve done the inner work, and you’ve you you have this new profound understanding of what hunger really is, and what it’s not; how hunger isn’t always an emergency. Like, you don’t have to just solve the problem of hunger, every time it comes up for you. Like you can just practice feeling a little bit hungry. Sometimes it’s not a problem. Right? It’s not a problem.

When you’re just okay with that feeling inside. And you’ve kind of learned how you’re not going to die of hunger if you don’t eat for two hours. When you’ve done this work, and you learn to experience a little bit of hunger, maybe in a different way, it’s no longer a problem for you, it’s not a problem that has to be solved. It’s not an emergency that has to be fixed right now. It’s just a sensation in your body that you can handle, and you’ll be fine. And you can get through it.

And you don’t have to eat every time you, you know, get a little bit stressed out. That’s an example of doing the inner work. Okay, so you got to work on your thoughts about this stuff, you got to work on your beliefs about what you believe about hunger, what does that mean to you.

Another example of doing the inner work is just sticking to your food plan. Especially when you don’t feel like sticking to your food plan. So I have my clients, you know, plan what they’re going to be eating, we do this thing where we plan ahead, it’s very important that we plan things in advance because when you plan things in advance, you’re much more likely to stick to them, right? So we create a plan.

And then the rule is that once you’ve created your plan, you stick to that plan. So for example, let’s say you’re going out to dinner with some friends Friday night, and you’re not eating bread right now, as an example. And you go out to dinner and you’re at some kind of restaurant, they just keep bringing out the bread basket and there’s bread going around, everybody’s like, you know, literally like breaking bread in front of you and eating it and you can like smell it, you know?

And you’re like, ah, you’re kind of freaking out about that, right? But when you do the inner work of learning how to understand why you’re not choosing this particular food because it’s not good for you. It’s not serving you. It’s not part of your plan. And you’ve learned that you’re not going to you don’t have to freak out in that situation.

When you see the bread sitting there and you don’t have to give in to that urge or craving that you have to eat the bread. So you learn how to stick to your food plan even when you don’t feel like it. This is an example of what it means to do the inner work.

So you’re understanding what’s really empowering to your own health and fitness, that’s what’s important to you, not what other people think of you. Because sometimes people are like Hey, why aren’t you eating the bread? We’re all eating the bread, how come you’re not eating the bread and you’re like, Hey, back off, I’m just, you know, I don’t want the bread, it’s okay.

You know, we get a little worked up about those kinds of situations sometimes, okay. But when you do the inner work, those kinds of situations, they don’t bother you anymore. Because you’ve, you’ve learned how to process those situations and those feelings that come up for you, okay? That’s what it means to do the inner work.

And these things are all about your mindset. It’s making shifts in the way that you think and feel about yourself, and the way you think and feel about your diet, nutrition, and exercise, and running. All of that stuff.

And these internal shifts are what will keep you going when the going gets tough. And here’s a little thing that going will always get tough. It always does, right? We’re always going to be faced with different challenges in our lives, we’re always going to be faced with, you know, the people eating the bread in front of us, or people like shoving donuts in our face, you know? I don’t know, do people do that? Do they shove doughnuts in your face? I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me.

But here’s the thing, but the inner work is very powerful. And here’s a little bit of truth for you. If you’re not where you want to be, you know, if you’re not at the weight you want to be at, if you’re not as healthy as you want to be, you’re probably not doing the inner work, you’ve probably got some work to do.

Because the results that you get on the outside your outer results are a direct reflection of whether or not you’re doing the inner work, your thoughts, and feelings. In other words, your mindset drives all of your actions and all of your behaviors. Your current weight is just a direct result of whether or not you’re doing the inner work.

So who you are on the outside is actually created by who you are on the inside. So losing weight and being able to keep it off for good. It’s an inside job. And if it’s not working for you, if you’re struggling with this, if you’re not where you want to be, you have to shift your focus internally, and you have to start doing the inner work.

But people don’t want to do this work. They don’t want to do it. They fight me on this all the time. And I think it’s so interesting. And so I started looking into this, like why, why don’t people want to do this? Why don’t they want to do this introspective self-awareness type of work?

Why don’t people want to challenge their own beliefs about how they see things? Because of the beliefs you have about how you see things are keeping you stuck? Why wouldn’t you want to change that? You know, it just seems logical to me that you would want to loosen your grip on your belief systems and make some changes so that you can start to make progress.

And you can start to like start moving towards your goals instead of just staying stuck and frustrated all the time. But that’s just me. But this work is hard. It’s hard for people. And the thing is people will do just about anything, they’ll do all kinds of crazy stuff except this inner work, right?

So they try all sorts of crazy diets, the cabbage diet, the hot dog water diet, the juice cleanses the counting calories, the starving themselves, and they feel like you know, murdering somebody, whatever the deprivation, all that stuff. They’re gonna suffer through all sorts of painful, frustrating stuff.

But they’re unwilling to take a look at their own thoughts and feelings and how that might be contributing to their current situation, how their own belief systems might be creating their current weight. People are unwilling to spend time working through the stuff that comes up when you stop eating junk food.

So, for example, let’s say you want to like get off the sugar train, right? So you just stop, you know, you stop eating sugar, you want to stop using sugar as a coping mechanism. All right.

We do this we use sugar as a coping mechanism. As a reward system. We use sugar as an emotional management tool. And a lot of us have been doing this our whole lives, okay. So when you stop doing that, when you stop trying to manage your emotions with sugar, all this uncomfortable stuff’s going to come up.

You’re going to start to feel all these feelings and emotions and stuff that you typically squash down with food with sugar because the sugar just lights up the pleasure centers of your brain. And so you don’t have to really think about that.

The negative emotions you’re experiencing; the stress, frustration, anger, whatever it is. So this is the resistance that comes up, right? This is your brain trying to tell you, Hey, this is not good, what you’re doing here, stop doing this, like, we want sugar, give us back to sugar, or we’re gonna sit here and we got to actually feel these emotions, we can’t do that. Danger, danger, bring on the sugar, right?

Instead of dealing with all the stuff that comes up, when we stop eating sugar, we just give in to eating sugar, it’s way easier to do. And just so you know, I just did a podcast episode about this called battling the resistance, it’s episode 110. Definitely check it out. Because I take a deep dive into this whole topic of the resistance and how our brains work and stuff. It’s a good one.

So just know that you’re normal if this is happening to you. And if you’re like, if you’re resisting doing the inner work, it’s because your brain just wants to keep you safe. And when you start to feel these emotions and stuff, it feels unsafe, it feels uncomfortable, it’s not a comfortable situation to be in – not emotionally eating.

So not using sugar as a coping mechanism is hard. And here’s the thing that I think is really interesting. Runners are really good at some of the stuff like they’re really good at sticking to like you’re good, you’re sticking to your marathon training plan no matter what. So it doesn’t matter what the weather is, doesn’t matter if you’re sick or not, doesn’t matter if you’re lacking motivation. It’s like you’re going to absolutely, make sure you do all of your training runs.

Oh, it says I have to run six miles today. It’s pouring down rain, I’m doing it. I’m just gonna run in the rain. It’s no problem, right. And I love this commitment that we have as runners, it’s amazing. Like, you’re super committed, nothing’s gonna stand in your way, boom, you just command you’re gonna do your thing, right.

But when it comes to food, runners have this like, kryptonite, that’s like this weakness. You know, they’re, they’re like superheroes over here. But then they come over here to do the inner work. And they just like melt, like cotton candy in the rain, you know, just blue.

They lack the commitment to healthy eating, they have plenty of commitment and motivation when it comes to their training programs. But that lack of commitment to healthy eating, that lack of motivation to stick to your food plan, it’s just because you haven’t done the inner work. That’s all.

It’s not that you don’t have it, you can get it, it’s not something that like you’re either born with it or you’re not, you just need to do the inner work, you need to, to do the inner work so that you can have that same level of commitment, and that same motivation when it comes to things like sticking to your food plan.

So this doesn’t mean you’re weak-minded, or you’re a failure, you have no willpower, right? It just means you got some work to do. Like I said, you know, we’re talking all about this in the coaching group. This month, we’re focused on eliminating emotional eating for good. And this topic is really resonating with people right now.

You know, emotionally eating is just using something external to feel better inside. Right. And the way we accomplish this, the way we eliminate the emotional eating is we do the inner work, right? There’s some strategy involved on top of talking about that in the group and stuff too. But it’s such an inside job, it really is, you know.

So as a group, we’re kind of committing and doing this inner work together. It’s very powerful stuff, okay. So when you shift your focus internally, and you begin to take responsibility for your own results, so you start doing the inner work, and you start saying, Hey, this is on me, I am going to fix this, then good things start to happen. Right?

Remember, your outer results, like your current weight is a direct result of whether or not you’re doing the inner work. So if you want to start moving the scale, then you know you have to do the inner work. You may have all these deep-seated beliefs about how you can’t lose weight because you’ve tried all this stuff in the past. And it’s never worked for you and you always gain the weight back.

And you so that’s a belief that you have that is just keeping you stuck. So we call these limiting beliefs because they actually limit your ability to grow. And to accomplish your goals, right, they limit your ability to accomplish things like, become healthier, like losing weight. But when you can let go of the limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck where you are, what do you think is going to happen?

Yeah, you start to grow, you start to make progress, you become limitless in a way, those things that used to seem impossible for you, all of a sudden, they become possible. And it’s really not because you’re doing anything differently. It’s because of who you are being on the inside, right?

The inner work, it’s not because of some secret strategy that you just hadn’t heard about. It’s because you’ve had this profound shift in how you think and feel about stuff. It’s like a profound mindset shift has to happen.

So if you’ve failed in the past, at sticking to your diet, or losing weight, whatever, and you believe really strongly that this is just the way it’s gonna be for you, then this is a limiting belief for you, we have to like let go of that limiting belief. When you make that internal mindset shift, to start questioning all of your beliefs, you start questioning your thoughts and feelings.

Eventually, you can completely drop those old beliefs that are keeping you stuck. That’s when the cool stuff starts to happen. That’s when the magic happens. Because you’re no longer driven by your thoughts about the past, you can begin to create the future that you actually want for yourself. That requires inner work.

So that’s what it looks like to start winning the inner game. Cool. And remember that if you’re ready to start winning the inner game, if you’re ready to start doing the inner work required to make long-lasting changes to your physical, mental, and emotional health and fitness, check out this free live workshop I’m doing here, March 17. To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop. I would love to see you there. I think it’s gonna be super fun. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you.

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

47. How to Handle the Holidays

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Next week is Thanksgiving and that marks the beginning of the holiday season here in the U.S. The holidays are a time to gather with loved ones, give thanks for all that we have, and of course, eat …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 47 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I want to talk about how to handle the holidays. Next week is Thanksgiving. And that marks the beginning of the official holiday season here in the US.

And the holidays are a time to gather with loved ones and give thanks for all that we have. And of course eat and drink ourselves into oblivion. Right? Okay, maybe that’s just me. So today, I want to offer some practical tips to help you handle the holidays. So you don’t roll into 2021 hating yourself and looking like Frosty the Snowman.

But first, if you are enjoying this podcast, please come check out our Facebook community. The Running Lean community on Facebook is a positive energetic, fun group of like minded runners who share goals and get through challenges together. I’ve got a big challenge that starts on Thanksgiving Day.

It’s called running through the holidays, we’re going to be running our way from Thanksgiving Day all the way through New Year’s Day, there’s going to be a lot of encouragement, a lot of support for each other. Listen, this can be a very stressful time of the year for a lot of people. And running is an amazing way to help relieve stress.

So we want to run our way through the holidays. So we can roll into 2021 Like a boss. Okay. So come check out the Facebook group, join us for the running through the holidays challenge, I’m going to be talking all about it, explaining how it works, what the quote unquote rules are, and all that stuff on Sunday. So come check us out love to have you in the group.

Okay, let’s talk about how we are going to handle the holidays. So most people, this is what happens when most people get to this time of the year. And they just don’t have any kind of plan for getting through the holidays in one piece, so to speak, okay. So this was always me, I would always roll into this time of the year and be like, it was kind of the off season.

So I might do a fall marathon. And so that would be like late October, early November, something like that. And then unrolling into this time of the year wouldn’t be running as much. And you think about how much time there is between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. It’s like 37 days. And those 37 days, it’s like hey, I’m going to go ahead and just do whatever the heck I feel like.

I’m going to eat whatever I want, drink whatever I want, whatever. And just party my face off and eat my face off for 37 straight days. So, you know there’d be holiday gatherings, a holiday family time, you know, shopping gift buying all this stuff, right? And I would just tell myself, hey, this is just, it’s the holidays. So I’m just gonna eat whatever I want. I deserve all this, I earned it. I’ve worked hard to share you know doing all this running. It’s the offseason, I’m just gonna let my hair down so to speak, and just eat whatever I feel like and we all do this.

Okay, this is a very common thing. A lot of people do this. No plan. Just feel like they can just do whatever they want. And then they roll into the new year and can’t understand why they gained five or 10 pounds.

And I did this like all the time and I couldn’t figure out why I keep doing this? Why do I always gateway this time of the year? And I just used this excuse. I used the holidays as an excuse to just stuff myself like a Thanksgiving turkey. You know, I got into this kind of mode, this end of the year where I was just like f it, I got into f it mode, okay?

It’s the holidays f it, it’s Thanksgiving Day f it, it’s the day after Thanksgiving f it, I deserve all this, f it. It’s, you know, two weeks before Christmas, like, I just keep saying f it, I was in f it mode. And you know what that’s gonna get you, when you’re, when you’re in f it mode, constantly, your whole attitude just kind of sucks.

And you’re just going to go off the rails. You know, if you’re trying to stick to some kind of food plan, you’re trying not to blow up like a Thanksgiving turkey, during the holidays, and you’re in f it mode all the time. That is a terrible combination, you won’t stick to your plan.

So that was me, I would do this every year. And then come January would be like, okay, now I’m going to start getting serious about this. But then I’m like, starting from a negative, you know, I’m starting from this place of like, well, now I gotta, I gotta lose the 10 pounds I gained here in the last couple of months.

And I also, you know, you know, maybe another 20 pounds over as I’m up 30 pounds now. So it just sets you up for disaster, it sets you up for failure, you know. And I want to tell you something, this is all normal. And it’s just your brain doing what it does. This is your, it’s your thinking, it’s the way you’re thinking and the way you’re feeling.

And you can change all of it. I’m going to offer some tips for how to get through the holidays here. But I just want you to understand this is very, very important to understand that your brain is always trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And when we get to this time of the year, we get very stressed out. And we don’t want to feel stressed out.

So we want to avoid that that kind of pain that we’re experiencing the pain of stress, the pain of having to you know, having family over or going to someone’s house, you know, and visiting with family or preparing all these meals or buying all these gifts, or whatever we have to do is time of the year.

It can be very stressful and cause a lot of stress and anxiety. And that’s perceived pain. And we want to avoid pain. That’s our kind of default, we want to avoid pain. We want to seek pleasure. And we go to things like food to do that. Okay, so this is just normal. This is the way your brain is kind of wired, okay, but you don’t have to just operate in default mode, though.

You don’t have to just, you know, succumb to these desires to eat all the crap and overeat and just binge out on sugar for 37 straight days. You don’t have to do that. Okay? I know. But you’re saying well, but it’s the holidays. So can’t we just live a little? You can. You can, you get to decide what you want to do.

But don’t go into this expecting that you’re going to like maintain your weight or lose five pounds with that kind of an attitude. Because if your expectations are, oh, I want to lose five pounds between now and the end of the year. But you eat like a maniac for 37 straight days, that’s not going to work. That’s not reality.

Okay, so just understand that your brain is there trying to protect you. And it’s trying to say, hey, we want to avoid this pain when avoiding stress eating makes us feel better. So let’s just do that. Let’s just eat all the things and just feel good now. But I want to drop a little bit of truth on you here.

Because when we talk about the holidays, and we talk about you know, we use the holidays as an excuse to overeat and to over consume and to binge out over drink all these things. What we’re actually talking about, how many holidays are there? There’s like, three holidays, right? There’s Thanksgiving Day, there’s Christmas, and there’s New Year’s Day.

Now you could actually argue that Christmas Eve might be a holiday or New Year’s Eve or something like that. So maybe four. Okay, and there might be a couple of parties in there. So maybe five, maybe six, we’re talking like five or six days out of 37 days. But what we’re saying is it’s the holidays, so I’m just going to eat and drink my way into oblivion and what?

No, we’re just talking about a handful of days here actually, and a handful of days that you can manage if you get your mind right. Okay. Your brain is always looking for an excuse to get what it wants. Your brain is always looking for an excuse to eat the sugar until you just give in. You missed out on sugar.

Sugar is like so addictive, you know, and your brain is gonna go, you know what, it’s the holidays, eat all the sugar, you’re gonna feel so good look at that plate of cookies over there, just eat all of them, you know? Good, that’s gonna feel good.

So just notice your brain is doing this, okay? And here’s the thing, I guarantee you that your brain is not thinking about eating a bunch of turkey, or green beans, your brain doesn’t go to this place of craving, you know, normal food. What I say is like normal food, okay?

You get fixated on pie. You get fixated on cookies, on sweet potato pie, on mashed potatoes, all the carbs, all the the alcohol, the sweet stuff, the sugar, that is what you’re thinking about. And I guarantee that that’s the kind of stuff that you will binge out on. If you don’t understand what’s happening. All those foods are super delicious. Yes, but they also make us feel good.

They release these chemicals in our body that makes us feel good. The more concentrated the carbohydrate is, the more good it feels, you know, and we love this. Even thinking about a pile of Christmas cookies right now. Just think about that. Really imagine them, smell them. Imagine what it would taste like, I guarantee you right now, you’re starting to get fixated on these cookies and your mouth is starting to water and you’re starting to crave these cookies like you started once you start thinking about them. It’s like I’ve got to have cookies now. I guarantee you that you’re doing that and I have to apologize for doing this to you.

But this is what our brains do, we start thinking about how amazing this is going to taste. And for me, it’s always like pecan pie with whipped cream. Oh my god, I’m starting to like salivate just thinking about pecan pie. It’s like, so decadent and so rich.

And when that sugar hits you, because that is just like pure sugar, right? Oh my god, it feels so good. And then so that’s just thinking about it, and we start to like, have these crazy cravings for it. But once you actually start eating it, you cannot stop. And that’s the other part of it.

So there’s this like mental fixation, there’s mental craving that we get. And then there’s this physical craving that we get once we start eating it, we cannot stop, we will binge out on pie and cake and pecan pie and apple pie and all this stuff.

Whereas you won’t do the same thing with like turkey, right? You’re not gonna like I just can’t wait to binge out on, I’m gonna eat the whole turkey myself. No, man, you can’t do that. You just can’t do it. Your body has these natural whatever you call it, the sensors, like there’s these sensors in your body that say stop eating, you’re full.

We don’t have those same sensors for carbohydrates, though. So once we start eating them, we cannot stop, that feels so good. And we don’t have these things that are telling our brain to stop eating them. Okay, so just understand that this is all what your brain is telling you but it’s not necessarily the truth.

Your brain might be telling you, you have to eat a whole pecan pie yourself. But that’s really not the truth. You don’t have to do that. And like I was saying, like you probably don’t get fixated on just eating something like turkey and green beans. You just don’t do that. Right?

But you can eat a lot of food a lot of like non carb type food and get pretty full but then you’ll still eat tons of pie. But if I were to tell you like when you’re full hey, eat a bunch more turkey. You’d be like no way I can’t. There’s no possible way I could eat any more turkey but I guarantee you, you can eat half a pie. At least I can.

I’m hoping you can relate to some of this because if this is just me, then I’m in trouble. No, I know we can all relate to this stuff. Here’s the other thing I have to make sure you understand and that I want to make sure I’m communicating this well. I am not saying you cannot enjoy Thanksgiving dinner. I am not saying you should not eat the pie. Like my friend Katie says, she says, eat the damn pie. And I love that. Because if that’s what you want to do, then you should do that.

If you’re eating your grandma’s famous pumpkin pie with whipped cream on it is going to bring you joy, and you want that to be a part of your Thanksgiving, then absolutely do that. But I just want you to do it in a way that’s intentional, I want you to do it in a way that you’ve, you’ve planned it, and that you feel good about your decision for eating that. And that you have your own back.

I don’t want you to say, you know what, I’m not eating any dessert, I’m not going to do it, I’m just, I’m off of sugar, I don’t want to do it, it’s gonna like really ruin everything for me, and then do it. And then just give in in the moment and do it because then you’re just going to feel like crap, and you’re gonna beat yourself up, you’re gonna feel guilty, and you and you’re just gonna, like hate yourself, you do not want to go through the holidays, hating yourself.

You don’t want to spend Thanksgiving dinner, thinking that you’re missing out on something good, and you can’t have anything that’s good. And you’re deprived and you can’t have certain things and woe is me, everybody else is enjoying themselves. And I can’t enjoy myself because that attitude sucks. And that’s just going to keep you feeling miserable. And that’s going to make you take terrible actions.

And you’re probably just going to give in, oh, you know what, screw it, I deserve this. So what I’m saying here is whatever you decide whether it’s, you know, I’m just not eating sugar, you could always bring your own like, sugar free dessert or something. That’s what I do. And I love it, love of it. And sometimes I just eat the sugar laden stuff too. And I love that.

But whatever you decide, do it with intention, go into it with a plan, and a purpose. And then stick to your plan. So we’re going to talk about that in just a minute. So I want you guys to enjoy the holidays. And I want you to do it in a way that is intentional, that feels good to you.

That’s honest, that’s authentic. And you’re not doing it in a way where you’re just beating yourself up for 37 straight days. Because that’s terrible. That’s just a terrible way to go through the holidays. Okay.

So here are some tips that I have for you for handling the holidays. So you don’t look like or feel like a stuffed turkey by the first of the year. So the first one is this, the first thing I want you to do is set your intention for the holidays.

How do you want to show up on January one? What is your vision for yourself? On January one, how do you want to feel about yourself? How do you want to look? Do you want to be the same as you are right now? Do you want to feel the same about yourself as you do right now? Maybe you want to get five pounds leaner? Or maybe you’re somebody that’s like you know, I’m okay gaining a few pounds.

Decide what you want to do now, set that intention for yourself now. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to maintain weight? Or do you want to gain weight between now and the first of the year? Because the choice is yours. But decide now what you’re going to do and be honest with yourself.

Okay, so let’s say you want to lose weight, let’s say that’s your intention, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to just continue sticking to my plan. And I’m going to try to keep losing weight. It might be, you know, a pound or two a week. So you know, I might lose, you know, five to 10 pounds.

And if that is your goal, and you’re all in on that goal, then awesome. Like, hats off to you like, awesome job. Just stick to it. Just do what you’ve been doing. Stick to your plan. So if you want to lose weight during the holidays, you can do that. It’s up to you. It just means that you’re going to have to get your mind right around some of these situations that you’re going to find yourself in.

You may not go all out on the deserts at Thanksgiving and Christmas and all this stuff. You may not be participating in the Christmas cookie bake-a-thon, if that’s something that would be challenging for you. Or you can do it and just know that you’re going to have these cravings and how to deal with them. And I talk to my clients all the time about how to deal with these kinds of cravings, and how to get through stuff like that.

Because, listen, we can’t always control our circumstances, but sometimes you can. So if you want to lose weight, you’re just gonna have to, like, stick to your plan, you’re gonna have to have the right mindset around it. And, and you can do that, but just go all in on that plan, okay?

What if you want to maintain weight during the holidays? So that might mean that you’re just gonna like, stay where you are. And that might mean you can have a few glasses of wine here and there, it might mean that you can have some exceptions to your plan, you can eat some pie here and there, you can eat the cookies here and there.

But it doesn’t mean going off the rails, it doesn’t mean like, really binging out on stuff, you know, you’re just going to continue kind of doing what you’ve been doing. But maybe you’re adding in a little bit more of the of the treats and the sugar and stuff like that. Maybe an extra helping of mashed potatoes with gravy, I love mashed potatoes, so good, isn’t it? Oh my gosh, like lots of butter in there and gravy.

And then let’s say you want to gain weight during the holidays. Now, you might think, who would want to do that? Well, if you’re the kind of person that’s like, you know what I want to really go all out and enjoy myself. I don’t mind if I gain five pounds during the holidays, if that’s what you want to do, again, go all in on that decision.

That might mean you drink more.It might mean you’re eating more and you’re participating in the cookie bake-a-thon. It means you’re like eating double desserts, you know, whatever it is you want to do. Go all in on that decision. Okay? Have your own back no matter what you decide, because there’s no right answer here.

It’s whatever you want to do for you, okay, but what happens is, most people say, I’m just going to like, I’m going to, I’m going to be really good this year, I’m not going to go off the rails, I’m going to stick to my plan, I’m going to keep losing weight, and then they they gain weight, and they can’t figure out why.

And they just didn’t go all in on their decision to lose, okay, so whatever you want to do lose, maintain gain, totally fine. Just be good with that decision. Have your own back and go all in on that. Okay, so that’s my first tip. Set your intention, decide what you want to do ahead of time, who do you want to show up as on January 1.

The second tip I have for you on how to handle the holidays is plan ahead and stick to your plan. This is like the most important thing you can do if you want to change anything in your life, but it’s so important when it comes to eating and losing weight. Or even you know, if you’re the kind of person who is doing something like maybe training for a half marathon or a marathon.

So what happens when you want to train for a marathon? You put together a training plan, you write it all down, you put it on your calendar, and then you do what when that day comes, you run those eight miles or those 16 miles or whatever it says on your calendar, right? That’s what it means to plan ahead, and then stick to your plan.

But when it comes to things like oh, I want to lose 40 pounds. And what that’s going to require is you changing what you eat, maybe when you eat. And instead of writing that down, and then working the plan and sticking to it. You’re just kind of like, oh, I’ll just kind of figure it out as I go. And it doesn’t work. And you’re like, oh, this, this diet doesn’t work or this eating plan doesn’t work?

No, it’s just that you just didn’t plan ahead and you didn’t stick to it. That’s all. It’s that simple. I know it’s simple. It’s not easy, but it’s that simple. So include in your plan, make sure you’re including in your plan, the stuff that you want to eat.

So let’s say you’re planning ahead for the holidays, right? And so you might work out a plan for a week at a time. You might write down in your journal or on a calendar, something like that. When you have holiday gatherings, parties, whatever it is. You have a written plan of what you’re going to do, when you’re going to eat, how much you’re going to eat on those occasions.

So you’re planning ahead, you’re using that prefrontal cortex of your brain that planning, cognitive part of your brain that’s responsible for thinking ahead and planning ahead. You want to use that part of your brain because you don’t want to use the primitive part of your brain into the make decisions in the moment because you typically make bad decisions in the moment.

So we plan ahead, we write down what we’re going to eat at least 24 hours in advance. So I know what I’m going to do tomorrow.

Right, this is a great, great tip, especially for things like Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, whatever it is, the day before Thanksgiving, make sure you know what you’re going to do for that day. And if your plan is to eat some pie, and eat the mashed potatoes, and you know, whatever, write it down, it’s totally fine.

Whatever you want to put on your plan is up to you. If you want to include a glass of wine, put that in there. Okay, just like with your running, plan it out ahead of time, and then stick to your plan. This is how you like, create good habits, this is how you build trust with yourself. This is how you build self confidence. If you plan ahead and you stick to your plan, you’re gonna feel so much better about yourself when you do it this way, as opposed to planning ahead and then just saying f it.

Because that’s the, you’re just gonna feel terrible about yourself, you let yourself down, you’re gonna feel guilty, you’re gonna beat yourself up, we don’t want to do that we want to feel good about ourselves, about ourselves and about our decisions. So have your own back, write, write down what you’re going to do, and then stick to that plan.

When it comes to food, remember, you know, it’s very compelling these foods, you know, especially he’s looking at that pile of Christmas cookies, or the table with the five different pies that you can eat after dinner, like it can be very compelling, and feel very urgent and feel like, you know, you get these intense cravings for that stuff in the moment.

But if you’ve planned ahead and said, I’m going to eat a small piece of pecan pie, and a small piece of pumpkin pie, and I’m going to be good with that, then do that. Stick to that and you’re gonna feel so much better about yourself. Okay. So that’s my second tip is to plan ahead, stick to your plan. And include the good stuff, include the stuff that you want to eat, the stuff that you love, if that’s what you want to do.

Tip number three is don’t show up at these holiday dinners, or meals, like starving and dehydrated. Because I’m going to tell you, if you show up feeling super hungry, hangry and super dehydrated, what you’re going to do is you’re going to as soon as you get there, you’re just going to be shoving food in your face and drinking whatever’s available to you.

Okay, so the suggestion is, for any kind of holiday event, to make sure you eat beforehand, like eat your regular breakfast or lunch, whatever you would normally do, do that. Make sure you’re getting good fats and protein, because that stuff kind of keeps you feeling full for a while.

And then when you show up at this event, you’re not going to feel like you got to eat your face off, you’re not going to feel like super dehydrated, drink plenty of water too, this is so important. Most people don’t drink enough water during holidays and stuff like that and family gatherings.

And what you end up doing is drinking a lot more alcohol and then when you’re drinking a lot of alcohol, you sort of lower your willpower and you start making bad decisions and that’s when f it mode gets activated and right.

So if you’re super thirsty, you tend to drink more alcohol. So if that’s something you want to avoid, my suggestion is to drink more water to make sure you’re just staying hydrated, okay? And whether or not you want to drink alcohol is totally fine. It’s up to you know, I don’t have any strong opinions either way.

Just know that as you drink more and you feel more drunk, you know you feel more relaxed, a little more loosey goosey. You get a little more loosey goosey with your eating plan and you tend to kind of get into that mode where you’re just like screw it, I deserve this, this is awesome. I’m enjoying myself. I’m just gonna eat whatever it’s fine.

So you’ve tended to make terrible decisions when you drink too much. So just make sure that you’re not coming to these events feeling super super hungry. Eat your normal breakfast or lunch and then when you do show up, you won’t be just, you know voraciously, digging into the piles of nuts and chips and all this other stuff, okay, so don’t show up super hungry or dehydrated.

Number four, and this one is so important. These are all important, but this one is one that we really have a hard time doing on a daily basis. But even more so during the holidays, especially Thanksgiving, and that is to don’t eat to discomfort. This was a big aha moment for me when I started losing weight.

Finally, for the last time, I learned that I am an overeater. I tend to eat a lot of food. And I always justify it because I’m a runner, hey, I run a lot, so I need to eat a lot more. But I would eat until I was uncomfortable, basically at every meal.

And at the holidays, it was way worse. I can remember Thanksgivings where I literally would stuf myself so much that I felt so miserable. I couldn’t even function after dinner. I just had to like go sit on the couch and just veg. And I felt terrible. I felt sick to my stomach. Is that how you want to go through the holidays? I say no.

There’s this comedian. And I don’t know who said this. But basically, he’s an overweight guy. And he’s like, “Yeah, I tend to overeat a lot. He’s like, the meal isn’t over when I’m full, the meal’s over when I hate myself.” And I think about this all the time, because that was true for me.

I would eat until I hated myself, I felt so bad about eating so much food. And I just don’t do that anymore. I’ve learned how to eat to a place where I’m comfortably full. And I use this tool with my clients called the hunger scale.

And it’s basically a scale of 0 to 10. How hungry are you? How full are you? And when you get to like a plus two plus three, on that fullness meter, then you just stop eating. So you’re kind of pleasantly full but not uncomfortable. Because as soon as you get uncomfortable, you’ve eaten too much.

Our bodies are not designed to eat that much food when you get uncomfortable. That’s because we have these sensors in our stomachs that sense. They’re like stretchers. Stretch sensors, they determine how much food we’re putting in our stomach. And when they get to a certain point, they say stop eating.

And I would not stop at that point, I would start to feel that uncomfortable. And I would just keep going and keep going and keep going. And that’s what made me hate myself, as it made me miserable. Okay, so I’m not talking about like, counting calories, or you know, tracking everything in an app or you don’t have to get that detailed with this kind of stuff.

You don’t have to get super diligent about counting everything that you eat or weighing your food or anything like that, because that can be very, very stressful for a lot of people. But I do suggest really getting in tune with how your body feels, how much food does your body actually need?

When do you start to feel full, and then don’t eat beyond that feeling. Because when you do, you’re eating too much. And if your goal is to maintain or lose weight during the holidays, but you keep overeating at every meal. You’re not going to recycle I’m just going to tell you right now.

And like I said, when I first started talking about this subject of not eating to discomfort, that was the game changer for me when I was able to start losing weight that I stopped eating to the point of making myself feel terrible. I stopped eating too are uncomfortable. I stopped eating to where I hated myself.

Okay, now I’m eating enough to where I feel satisfied. But I don’t feel uncomfortable. This is a game changer. I guarantee you. Okay, so do not eat till you feel miserable. That’s not healthy. It’s just not good for you.

And then my fifth tip is just to remember what the holidays are all about, and that they’re not all about the food. For me, the holidays are about giving thanks for everything good in my life, obviously especially Thanksgiving, right? But it’s a chance for me reflect on this past year, and all the things that I’m grateful for.

You know, the people in my life, the abundance that I have in my life, I’m so grateful for everything, for being able to sit here and do these podcasts and share this with you guys, for the Facebook group for my coaching clients, for my membership group, all these people that are changing their lives for the better because they’re changing their mindset.

They’re changing their diet, they’re changing their relationship with food, they’re changing their relationship with their bodies, and with running and all this stuff. And I get to do this with people, I get to help people. I’m so grateful for all this stuff. And these holidays are a time to celebrate our accomplishments over there.

It’s time to celebrate with family and with friends, it’s time to make connections, it’s time to be together and enjoy that feeling of kinship and togetherness. It’s time to share love, and laughter and have fun together and play games and make lasting memories together. 20 years from now, you’re not going to remember how many helpings of mashed potatoes you ate.

Unless you eat like 12 helpings and you’ll probably remember, but you’re always going to remember that time you spent with your family. Like I remember, honestly, like I remember so many Thanksgivings with my family sitting around the table when all of us were together.

And seeing my dad’s face and seeing him smile. And just looking around the table. And he was so grateful to have this amazing family. With these amazing kids. Especially me, I was really probably the most amazing of all. I’m just kidding.

But he just was like, would look around us in like, raise his glass and be like, I love all you, I’m so thankful for all of you. This is so amazing. You know, let’s all give thanks. And I just remember that connection in that family togetherness that we shared. And it was so amazing.

That’s what I remember, I don’t remember, you know how many pieces of pie I ate, or you know, my mom always made these amazing, this amazing Thanksgiving dinner and all the traditional stuff. And it was always great. But I remember laughing with my family.

I remember sitting around the table, and me and my brothers, we get going and my sister we just start laughing like crazy. That’s the kind of stuff that I remember. And my mom shaking her head and just going like you guys are terrible. Oh my gosh. We’d always kind of take things a little too far.

But that’s the stuff I remember. And it was so fun. Remember what the holidays are all about. Don’t focus so much on what you’re eating, or what you’re not eating, or what you get to eat or what you don’t get to eat because you get to decide all of that. Okay? So set your intentions.

Here’s, here’s our list of tips to get you through the holidays here. Set your intention, do you want to lose, maintain or gain weight it just go all in on that decision. Okay. Number two, plan ahead and stick to your plan. Just know what you’re going to do at least 24 hours in advance and stick to it. That’s the important part: sticking to it. Number three, don’t show up starving, don’t show up dehydrated. Eat a regular meal beforehand, make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. Number four, don’t eat so much that you’re miserable, you’re uncomfortable. And then number five, remember what the holidays are all about. Connection, togetherness. Make memories.

It doesn’t have to be all about the food. It can be a little bit about the food, but it doesn’t have to be the main focus. Okay. Those are my tips to help you get through the holidays. Come on over to the Running Lean community on Facebook because we’re going to do this amazing running challenge. We’re going to be running every day from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day.

And then I’m going to do some weekly coaching in the group to help you stay on track. We’re going to be talking about some goal setting for the new year. weight loss goals, setting running goals, all kinds of stuff. Cool. I cannot wait to see you guys there in the group.

And if I don’t talk to you beforehand, have an amazing Thanksgiving with your family and friends. And as always, lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

37. How to Solve the Hunger Problem

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Here’s a fact: if you are trying to lose weight and you are hungry all the time, it is going to be a very difficult struggle. This is exactly why most people quit diets - they can’t deal with the …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 37 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today we are talking about how to solve the hunger problem. So here’s a fact: if you’re trying to lose weight, and you are hungry all the time, this is going to be very difficult for you, you are going to struggle. And this is exactly why most people quit diets, they just can’t deal with that constant, intense feeling of hunger.

So today I’m talking about this problem of hunger and how to solve it. So I’ll explain different types of hunger, how to tell if you’re actually hungry, which foods tend to increase your hunger and which tend to reduce it, and how all of this relates to your running. So that is all coming up momentarily.

And listen, if you’d like this podcast, I hope you do, then you got to come check us out on Facebook, check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It’s this positive, energetic, fun group of like minded runners like you who share common goals. We all want to lose weight, we want running to be easier. We want to live a healthier life.

Okay, I do weekly live trainings in the Facebook group on a host of different topics like running nutrition, weight loss. This month, we’re talking about intermittent fasting. So I’m doing a lot of in depth talks about that. Here’s a recent comment from one of our members of the Facebook group. Erica, she says, “Okay, so I’m sure you’re still on a Saturday run.” She sent this on a Saturday morning. “But I just have to say that the scale is finally moving in the right direction. And it has nothing to do with exercise because I’ve been sick, and I’ve cut back due to trying not to physically wear myself out again. So thinking about food as my main way to control my weight has been key. I tried too long to connect diet with exercise. And I wound up focusing more on exercise to make up for my bad eating. Not anymore. And I love listening to your podcasts while walking or running. They make the time fly. Thanks again, for all you continue to share. You’re impacting so many lives in a positive way.”

Oh my gosh, Erica, I’m getting all choked up. That was really sweet. And this is my goal. I just want to help people, I want to impact people in a positive way. So thank you so much for saying that, it does make me feel good. Sometimes I feel like I’m just all alone over here. I’m just talking into this microphone. When I get messages like that it does make me feel good, that lights me up.

And you are so right. Exercise is great for a lot of things. But it’s just not a really great way to lose weight. Right. It’s more about the food you eat. And I’m glad that message is resonating with you especially. It’s one of the big reasons why I do what I do. This is why I started this whole Running Lean community in the Running Lean podcast because running you just can’t outrun a bad diet. Right? We’ve heard that a lot.

And we have to focus on nutrition. If we want to get lean, lose weight, feel better, make running easier, get stronger, all that stuff. Okay. So in the Facebook group, we’ve got a big challenge going on this month, I told you it’s intermittent fasting month, over in the Running Lean community on Facebook.

And that does not mean we’re fasting for the entire month of September. No, we’re not doing that. So what we’re talking about is what intermittent fasting is, what it isn’t, and how to do it safely. And the amazing benefits that you can get, especially for long distance running. Right?

There’s so many amazing benefits and if you haven’t checked it out last week, I did a podcast all about the myths and benefits of intermittent fasting you should definitely check that one out. So just go to Facebook, search for Running Lean community and join us. We’d love to have you in there.

Also, figuring out what to eat so you can become fat-adapted, losing weight, becoming that lean running machine. This can all be kind of challenging to do on your own. It typically takes these three things to create lasting change in your life. You need awareness, you need knowledge, and you need support.

And what I try to do with this podcast is I try to provide as much awareness and knowledge as I can. Right? But that personal, ongoing support is something you can only get from one on one, you know. So that’s why I offer one-on-one coaching. Listen, we’re all different. We all have different dietary needs, what works for one person may not work for you.

Working together, you and I, we figure out exactly how to put together a nutrition plan that works for you, that gets you the results that you want, that gets you to your goals. So if you’re ready to make some big changes in your life, if you’re ready to get off the sugar, and those crazy insatiable hunger.

If you’re ready to reap all the amazing benefits of intermittent fasting, if we’re ready to lose weight and feel good while doing it, and not be hungry all the time, then you have to apply for a one on one coaching with me, it’s very easy to do. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, one word, do it now I promise you, it’s worth it.

Alright, let’s talk about hunger. Yay. So how to solve the hunger problem? So first of all, what is hunger? What does this even mean? What are we talking about? So early humans, we were hunter-gatherers, right? We would go and hunt. And we would eat or we would forage for food.

And we would eat, we feasted. And we fasted. I talked a lot about this in the last episode, right? So we would go for long stretches of time, without food, and this was normal. Right? So we would maybe hunt for something, and kill it and then eat it. And then, you know, that would keep us feeling pretty satiated for a few days.

Think about this in the animal kingdom today, most mammals, especially predatory mammals, like think of the lion, right? They hunt, they kill, and then they eat. And they only eat like once or twice a week. Right? This is the way that we evolved as humans. This is the way most animals operate in the animal kingdom, that are predatory animals, omnivores.

And so it was very common for our ancestral human hunter-gatherers, to go for long periods of time without a substantial meal. Right. And this did not impair them mentally or physically. In fact, it had the opposite effect. From a report that I was just reading called meal frequency and timing and health and disease. It says that the ability to function at a high level, both physically and mentally, during extended periods without food may have been a fundamental importance in our evolutionary history.

So meaning that we were not impaired mentally and physically by not eating, in fact, it had some good health benefits to us. So hunger would come on a day or two after we ate, and would signal the animal or the human in this case to go out and hunt or forage to get more food. Right?

We weren’t getting hungry, we didn’t evolve to get hungry every couple of hours. We didn’t evolve eating six meals a day. We didn’t have snacks. Okay, we feasted. And then we fasted. And when we did that, our hunger came on very slowly. So we would feel this urge to go get more food, and then we would eat it, and we would feel satiated. And then we wouldn’t be hungry for a day or two.

When that hunger came on, it would send signals that we need to eat, we need nutrition. And then we would go out and get more food. So this is what hunger is. It’s our body signaling us that we need nutrition, we require it or we will die. Now, today we eat you know, if we feel just a slightest bit hungry, we got to eat something right. This is not the way we evolved to eat though. Okay, so we’ll get into more of that in a second.

Let’s talk about some different types of hunger. First, I want you to understand what we’re talking about when we talk about different types of hunger and what real hunger actually is. So first of all, we have a type of hunger called a craving, right? Have you ever had a craving for something?

So a craving is where you have a real need like you want a specific food, so it might be what do I have a craving for? Chips and guacamole. That does sound good right about now, or I have a craving for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. That’s a very specific kind of craving, you know, people are like, oh, I have a craving for pizza or french fries, you know, cravings feel urgent, they feel like you have to do something about it right now.

They come on very quickly, and easily pass very quickly, if you don’t do anything about it. This is not real hunger. This is just a craving. And a lot of this is mental. It’s psychological. Right? Another type of hunger is withdrawal, hunger. So this happens, when, for instance, you stop eating sugar, or refined carbohydrates. Obviously, sugar, we’ve talked about this in depth. It’s like other drugs, it’s like alcohol. And when you stop consuming drugs, or alcohol, or sugar, in this case, you may experience some withdrawal symptoms.

So in this case, the withdrawal symptoms are both physical, and mental, and it’s a sensation of ‘I need to eat something right away.’ So it might feel urgent, mentally, and physically, it comes on quickly, again, similar to a craving. But it’s not, it’s not real hunger, it’s because your body is coming off of sugar, carbohydrates.

The next type of hunger I want to talk about is called emotional hunger. And this is when you are bored, or you’re nervous, or you’re anxious, or you want something to do. And this is typically what we call emotional eating. So we’re eating to dull a sensation, to dull an unwanted emotion that we’re having. And emotions are just caused by our thoughts.

So this idea that we’re hungry, and that somehow going to make us feel better, is just a thought in our brain. That’s what emotional eating is. That’s what emotional hunger is, again, this comes on kind of quickly. And again, it just kind of passes away if you don’t do anything about it. This is not real hunger. None of these are real hunger, okay?

These are all just like our body, having addiction or coming off addiction, or not dealing with our emotions, or having a craving for something because we saw a billboard with giant french fries on him. Not real hunger.

So let’s talk about what real hunger is – physical hunger. This is when our body actually requires nutrition, we need food. Now, you’ll usually feel physical hunger only a couple times a day. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But for the most part, you should only feel real physical hunger once or twice a day. Real physical hunger, it comes on slowly. It comes on gently, kind of like a gentle wave in the ocean. Right?

It typically doesn’t just pass very quickly, but it never feels urgent or terrible. The way you know that you’re really hungry is if a meal sounds good. In other words, if you’re like, you know, a handful of nuts, it’d be good right about now, that’s not real hunger. That’s typically an emotional eating, or a craving, or man, I could really go for some french fries right now that’s, that’s not real hunger.

Real hunger is, man, I could go for a steak and a salad and you know, some broccoli. When a big meal sounds good, then you know you’re actually hungry. Okay, so we have some signals in our body. They’re hormones, and they help to regulate our hunger. So the hormones we’ve talked about, and I’ve talked about a lot on here are insulin, ghrelin and leptin.

So insulin is the hormone that gets secreted when our blood sugars go up. So anytime we eat anything, especially when we eat sugar or carbohydrates, our blood sugars go up quite a lot and we produce insulin. We also have a hormone called ghrelin and ghrelin is produced when our body is actually hungry.

And again, ghrelin should just be produced in very limited quantities, and very slowly to tell us we are hungry so it sends hunger signals to our brain, so we eat something and we don’t die. Then we have a hormone called leptin. Leptin tells us when we are full and and when we eat food, leptin kicks in and says, you know, you’ve had enough broccoli and steak, I think you’re good and then we stop eating.

Now when insulin is super high, by eating a high carbohydrate diet, it messes up the production of ghrelin and leptin, you over produce ghrelin, so you feel hungry all the time, and you under produce leptin, so you feel you don’t feel full. So when you’re eating a diet high in carbohydrates, sugar is a carbohydrates, just a very refined carbohydrate.

So high in carbs, high in sugar, then insulin is always elevated, your body is in this mode of holding on to fat, which is not good. You’re more hungry, and you don’t feel full when you do eat. So this is a terrible combination of hormone activity in your body. Okay, so when you’re eating a diet high in carbohydrates, you are going to feel terribly hungry all the time.

So a low fat, low calorie, high carbohydrate diet makes you feel hungry, this diet, eating this kind of food will increase your hunger when you’re eating a lot of bread and pasta, and a lot of fruit and drinking a lot of you know, sports drinks with a lot of sugar in it. You’re eating all these sports goos and things like that, when you’re running.

Insulin is going to be high all the time this suppresses leptin and interferes with ghrelin, you are going to be abnormally hungry all the time. Eating a high carb diet increases your appetite and makes you hungry.

This is why restaurants really push appetizers, especially a bunch of carby appetizers, like they’ll just stick a basket of bread in front of you and say, oh yeah, here just eat as much bread as you want while you’re waiting or while you’re deciding on what you’re going to eat. Because when you start eating bread, especially carbs, or appetizers, especially high carb appetizers, it actually makes you hungrier.

Restaurants know this, they know that if they can get people to eat some carbs before they order their food, they order more food, and they eat more of their main course. But you think we probably think that if we eat some appetizers, we won’t eat as much at our meal. But the opposite is actually the case, people order more food.

So eating these high carb appetizers, and just next time you go to restaurant, check out the appetizers and you’ll notice a theme. Everything’s got a ton of carbs in it, right? Especially when they just dropped that bread basket right there. Which don’t get me wrong, I used to love the bread basket. Now, I do not eat bread. Bread is really. There’s so many bad things. I’m gonna do a whole podcast episode on bread, because bread is like the worst thing you can be eating.

I know it’s delicious. I know it is. But really, it’s not good. You guys hate me sometimes. First, I take away fruit and I’m taking away bread and you’re just like, who is this guy? Alright, so the wrong diet, the wrong food will make you hungrier. So this is lots of sugar and lots of carbs, it makes you hungrier. Now, the right type of food, the right diet should reduce your hunger.

So when we switch over to a low carbohydrate, high fat diet, this is a diet that keeps insulin levels low, normal. It normalizes these hormones, right? Then ghrelin and leptin work the way they’re supposed to. So you’re only hungry when you’re really physically hungry, which is very, not as often as you would think. When you do eat, you feel more for you to eat to satiety, so you eat until you feel for.

And then because you’re eating good types of food with nutrient dense types of food with good fats. You won’t be hungry for a long time. The high fat part of the diet really helps with hunger because you feel full for way longer.

And this is basically what our human ancestors ate for millions of years. Think about it. They ate meat with a lot of fat. They went especially for the fattest parts of the animal. They ate some vegetables. Yes, very few though. There just wasn’t a lot of vegetables available. And they ate seasonally and low, whatever they could find.

They ate very little fruit and the fruit that they ate was not sweet at all, not like it is today. They weren’t eating refined sugars or carbs. And so they would eat and they would feel so full and satiated and then they wouldn’t need to eat for a couple of days, which is I think, really cool. And we can do the same kind of thing.

Now, I’m not suggesting you don’t eat meat for a couple of days at a time. But um, you know, you can go longer periods of time without food, which is an amazing place to get to. And think about, like, you know, predatory animals today like a lion, you know, they get very full, because they basically eat a low carb, high fat diet, right.

And they don’t need to eat again for days. And I know we’re not lions, I’m just trying to say that, like mammals eat this way, most of them. So here’s another thing I want to talk about. So the types of food you eat is very important. But even if you’re eating a low carb, high fat diet, there’s times where you might experience a little bit of hunger, okay?

We think that being hungry is somehow a problem. If we ever feel the least bit of hunger, we get that little signal, maybe a little belly grumbling or something like that. We’re like, oh, my God, I’m so hungry, I can’t concentrate, my blood sugars are going to be too low, I’m running low on energy, I’m gonna pass out. And like we got to do something about it right now. Right?

This is really not something we have to like, it’s not an emergency. Okay, being hungry is not really an issue. It’s not a problem. You know, real hunger is an important signal that we should eat. But it’s almost never an emergency, especially we’re talking about here in the Western world where we have access to food all the time, you’re not going to starve to death, you’re not going to die.

Okay, unless you haven’t eaten for days, and days and days, you won’t die from being a little bit hungry. In fact, I talk about this guy who holds the world record for fasting, his name is Angus Barbieri. And he is a Scottish dude who weighed like 467 pounds or something like that. And he fasted for 382 days.

So he lived off of his own body fat, he had to, you know, drink water, obviously, and take electrolytes and some vitamins. And he had doctor’s supervision through this. And he was drinking coffee and stuff like that. But basically, no food and he lived off his own body fat for over a year. And he was fine. He didn’t die.

He ended up weighing, like 180 pounds or something like that, when all was said and done. So anyway, the point is that you can live off your own body fat, and when you do feel a little bit of hunger, if you’re trying to lose weight.

And you’re starting to feel a little bit hungry, and it’s that gentle hunger, it’s actually kind of a good signal to you, like think about it as like, Oh yeah, I’m burning fat on my body and can actually use my own fat for fuel. So it’s not a it’s not a problem.

And, and being a little hungry every now and then. Maybe it’s just something you have to accept as just being okay. You know, I’m not talking about being like ravishing, ravishingly hungry or starving, like these are unhealthy states to be in. But I guarantee you, if you’re listening to this podcast, then you don’t have to worry about starving to death, I guarantee you that.

So if you find yourself if you are eating a low carb, high fat diet, and you do find yourself getting hungry between meals, here’s what I suggest you do. Nothing. Just don’t do anything about it. Just allow it to be there. Allow that feeling to kind of be there. It’s not a problem, really, it’s just a feeling.

And you’ll probably be eating in an hour or two anyway. So it’s not an emergency, you will be fine. You won’t die. Remember, Angus, he didn’t die. One of my clients started using that as a hashtag. I think it’s fabulous. He didn’t die. If it’s true hunger, it will come on slowly, like a gentle wave that won’t feel urgent.

And you can just like let it be there and it’ll kind of pass. Right? The main reason we feel hungry all the time. And it feels urgent because we’re eating food that makes us feel that way. When you change your diet, when you switch to a low carb high fat diet, the hunger problem is basically solved.

Alright, I’m going to talk about a concept that I think is pretty interesting. And this is a concept I call hunger matching. So hunger matching is basically you have this sort of biological function in your body that says every time around the time you normally eat, you’re going to be hungry.

So let’s say you normally eat three meals a day, 8am, 12 noon, and 7pm. Over time, your body’s going to expect to be fed at those three times. So ghrelin will kind of be produced at those times. And you will start to feel more hungry at eight, noon and 7pm. I know this was recently my friend was hanging out at my friend’s house and his dog started freaking out. And I’m like, what’s the dog freaking out about and he’s like, oh, it’s dinnertime, the dog knows what time dinner is, even though he doesn’t tell time that we know of.

But he has this like biological sensor that knows, hey, it’s time to eat. Okay, so the dog doesn’t freak out two hours before it’s time to eat, or an hour afterwards. But like, right at that time, it’s pretty fascinating. But we do the same thing. So we have this internal biological function that says it’s time for you to eat.

So if you’re eating six times a day, which some people recommend you do, which I think is ridiculous, and stupid, and I don’t think this is a good is the exact opposite of what you want to do, by the way. But if you eat six times a day, then you will be hungry six times a day, you’re basically always going to be hungry from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed.

Do you want to live your life that way? I say no. Over time, let’s say you switch to eating twice a day, which is what I kind of recommend for most people, you’re only going to feel hungry around those two times a day. And it might take a few weeks for you to get used to this new like feeding schedule.

But basically, hunger should only appear around those couple of times a day where you normally eat. So your hunger, the feeling of hunger kind of matches, when you typically eat. Think about the freedom that comes with only being hungry once or twice a day. And knowing that it’s real hunger, like this is so amazing.

Alright, let’s talk about running a little bit. So running actually makes you hungry. Did you know that you probably didn’t know that exercise increases your appetite. And again, this is an evolutionary thing that is good. It’s a good system to have in place. So you exercise, and your body says, hey, you’ve just expelled a bunch of energy, you know, you burned a lot of fat or calories, we need to replace that.

So hormones will kick in and your appetite will go up, the ghrelin gets increased. And so after you exercise, then hunger becomes increased. And this is what our hunter gatherer ancestors did, you know, they would go on this hunt, which would build up their appetite. And their hunger would increase as they were out there, hunting down this animal or chasing it down or whatever they did. And then they would eat and feel satiated, right?

So the exercise increases your hunger. Right. And if we didn’t get hungry, when we exercise, we would have just been extinct a long time ago, because our bodies wouldn’t have any way of knowing that, hey, we need to replace some of this fuel that we just used up here. Okay. But think about this, the whole calories in calories out thing.

It doesn’t work for this very reason right here because when you burn calories, when you go and run, your body sends signals that you have to replace those calories right away. Your body is always trying to get back to homeostasis to neutral to baseline. And so your body has these systems in place to replace those calories.

It will increase your appetite and most runners what happens is you go for a long run, you come back you eat a bunch of food, lots of carbs, usually. And you sort of overcompensate so runners tend to actually eat more when they run more.

This is why it’s so hard to lose weight while you’re running a lot. And a lot of people have trouble losing weight when they’re like training for a marathon, which is bananas, right? It’s like why am I gaining weight when I’m training for this marathon? It’s because your body is saying you need more food. And of course you’re listening to your body.

So you burn all these calories and your hunger goes up like crazy. You eat a ton of food. And let’s be honest, here’s what runners eat. They eat doughnuts, cereal, pancakes, drink a lot of beer. They’re taking in these goos and gels, energy bars, pizza pasta, all the carbs. Runners tend to be carb addicts, right? They just have this idea of like I can just eat whatever I want because I run.

This is actually a recipe for metabolic disaster though. You have to switch over to a low carb diet. And then when you run you are actually being fueled by your own body fat which is amazing, so many amazing benefits to that. And it doesn’t upregulate your hunger quite as much. But when you do eat after a long run, so I might come home from a long run, and I usually wait an hour or two after I run to eat anyway, because I’m not that hungry, and I come home and then I’ll eat a low carb meal, you know, bacon and eggs and avocado or something like that.

And it doesn’t pack on the fat that that fuel is going right back into my, into my body to be used properly. And I’m not just storing all this extra carbs as fat, right? So very important thing to understand. And I know people have issues, or concerns about doing these long distance runs, and not eating enough food, like you know, what happens if I’m hungry, you know, should I be eating for running? Don’t need the calories doing the fuel.

Here’s the thing, you really don’t, if you’re fat adapted, if you’re off the sugar and the carbs, you got plenty of fuel on board. Earlier this year, in May, there was an ultra runner named Mike McKnight. And he ran 100 miles without consuming any calories during the run.

So he was out there for like, almost 19 hours running. And he didn’t have any calories before, during. And if you asked him, you know, man wasn’t this hard? He was like not really, it was actually kind of enjoyable. So he’s the fat adapted athlete, he trains very low carb. And he incorporates intermittent fasting.

So he’s running on his own body fat, and he can do these amazing long distance events without any food, like he just doesn’t get hungry. Because your body is getting what it needs is getting the nutrients it needs from your own body fat. Now there’s an important thing I need to point out, you need to be fat adapted before you go and try to run 100 miles with no calories, right? Your own fat is an amazing source of fuel for long distance running, it’s amazing.

And this is why we want to become fat-adapted. So we can use our own body fat for fuel. So how to fuel these runs, like if you’re gonna go out and do five, six miles, I suggest don’t eat anything. You know, if you get to the point where you’re running, where you are fat adapted, and you’re running for two, three hours at a time or more.

And then you start to actually feel really hungry when you’re out there, then eat some food, you know, eat something and it’s totally fine. But just know that you shouldn’t be eating like for energy, you won’t need to eat for energy you want to eat because I’m getting a little hungry, you might need a little bit of fuel.

And in that case, you can do like a little bit of fat protein, which will give you the kind of energy that you actually want, you don’t need to do the goos and stuff like that. I’m already up to about two and a half hours of running with zero calories, no calories before, during or after running. And I’m just not hungry. And I’m doing fine.

You know, 16 miles was where I’m at right now. And I’m just trying to, you know, keep going, I want to see what I can do. I want to see how good I can get at running on my own fat. It’s pretty fascinating. And trust me, I’m pretty lean, but I still got plenty of body fat to use as fuel. And I eat fat. I eat a high fat diet.

And so I’m replacing that fat in my diet. And I can use that for fuels too, as well. So it’s awesome. So I’m just getting good at listening to my body. I’m only eating when I’m genuinely hungry. And I suggest you start listening to your body to Okay, so the bottom line for eating and running is like if you’re genuinely hungry, eat something.

But for the most part, if you’re fat adapted, you shouldn’t really need to eat much unless you’re doing some very long distance type stuff. All right, so just a quick recap here. How do we solve the hunger problem? Well, first of all, become fat adapted, stop eating the carbs. Start eating more fat. And when you do this, your hormones will begin to reset. You’ll know what real hunger feels like. You know, you’ll know the difference between a craving and withdrawal, that emotional hunger that stuff will all kind of fade away.

Eat only a couple times a day. You don’t eat six times a day, you don’t need snacks, and your hunger will begin to match the times that you eat. If you do get hungry between meals, it’s not an emergency. You don’t have to get in, get into that feeling. It’s just a feeling. Allow it to be there and it’s going to be okay.

When you do run, you don’t need to overcompensate by eating doughnuts and pizza and beer. You know, don’t load up on carbs after you run. You’ll be fine. And just practice not eating before, during and after running and see how it goes for you. Right do these things and hunger will never be a problem for you again, Mischief Managed.

Alright, we’re going to be talking more about solving this hunger problem over in the Facebook group, especially how to manage hunger when you begin your intermittent fasting journey. So being hungry when you first get off the sugar and carbs, that withdrawal type stuff, it can feel a little overwhelming for people.

So I’m going to be offering some tips on how to alleviate the hunger and getting through those first few weeks of intermittent fasting. And then over the course of the next few weeks, we’re going to be talking more about intermittent fasting. You know, what do we do about electrolytes?

How do we curb the cravings between meals? We’ll be talking about training in the fasted state more, and some of the other types of fasting, and just really what it takes to become fat adapted as a runner, because this is like one of the best things you can do for yourself. So join us over in the Running Lean community on Facebook, and see what it feels like to not eat all the time. See how much better running can be. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, 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.