Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
When you think of discipline, what comes to mind? For some, it conjures up images of obeying rules and doling out punishment for anyone who disobeys. But when I think of discipline I think of …
Continue Reading about 252. Practicing the Art of Discipline →
17 years ago I finally made the decision to give up drinking alcohol. This was not a decision that came quickly or easily, I had been drinking daily for many, many years. I got to a point where …
Continue Reading about 224. How I Experienced Freedom from Alcohol →
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 224 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today how I experienced freedom from alcohol.
So 17 years ago, I finally made the decision to give up drinking alcohol. This was not a decision that came quickly or easily for me because I’ve been drinking daily for many, many years. And I got to a point where my life was just not what I wanted it to be. I wanted more for myself and alcohol was standing between me and the person that I ultimately wanted to be.
So today, how I experienced freedom from alcohol, how I got my life back and how I became more than I ever thought possible. But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you, you want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster.
And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you. And I also want you to know that I’m here to help you get there. I’m talking to you on the podcast here. And if you’re listening to the podcast, you’re going to learn a lot.
I listen to all sorts of podcasts. I listen to audiobooks, I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. But when it comes to the practical application of all this knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way, to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track.
I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life who have helped me to become who I am today, I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business. And my mindset has never been better. My amazing coaches helped me with all of that I had a coach in each of these different areas of my life.
In fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach. So that’s why I do what I do today. So for you, the person who’s listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge. But when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me.
But find someone that can show you the way they can help you to apply all of this knowledge to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get the results that you want, and maybe a little bit faster than you ever could on your own.
Okay, and if you’re interested in working with me, you can always go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me. And we’ll work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself. Yeah, cool. Awesome. Okay.
So today, what I’m talking about here is how I experienced freedom from alcohol. And I’m just gonna give you guys a little bit of a disclaimer, this is gonna be a little bit of a different episode, I typically write out quite a lot of notes for my podcast, and I have a lot of references to things that I want to talk about. Today, I’m just kind of winging it.
And the reason I want to just kind of wing it is because I just want to share my experience with you. I want to share with you my story of how I used to be someone who couldn’t live without alcohol, and how I became someone who can imagine drinking again, it’s a very huge shift. It’s a cataclysmic shift in my life, I am a vastly different person today than I was when I was in my drinking days. So that’s why I didn’t really write notes, because it’s just my story.
And I’m just going to tell you my story the way that I remember it. So if I jump around a little bit, just know that I’ll try to pull it back. And I’ll try to keep you on track as much as possible here. But this is going to be just a little bit of a different episode. I just want to share how I experienced true freedom from alcohol. And I’m hoping to inspire you to experience true freedom from alcohol as well if that’s something that you’re interested in.
And if you listen to the end of this episode, I’m going to share with you a program that I’m putting together that may help with experiencing freedom from alcohol. Okay, so be sure to listen to the end and you’ll see how you can find out more about this program that I’m putting together here. Okay.
So let’s start from the beginning. So 17 years ago, this week, so April 9 is what I call my sobriety date. That’s the date that I quit drinking, and the day that I made the decision to change my life because I was about 40 years old or so at the time.
And for the previous, oh my gosh, 25 years or so 20-25 years, I drank pretty much every day. I’m really and I’m not exaggerating that. I think I drank most days for those 20 or 25 years. And there was some point in there, you know, well into my 30s, at least, where I knew that I had some issues with drinking.
And I knew that I probably needed to stop drinking, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to stop because I was like, I don’t see how I can possibly live without this. I had used alcohol as a coping mechanism. I used alcohol as an escape mechanism, I had used alcohol to numb myself from having to deal with life.
You know, without having to, I didn’t want to deal with my emotions, I didn’t want to deal with stress, I didn’t want to deal with, you know, relationships with work, with kids, with everything that was in my life, everything was just better if I could just numb myself to all of that.
So I used alcohol to not feel. I used alcohol to escape, I used alcohol to feel better. And you know what? It does work. When you drink alcohol, it feels pretty good. It’s a pretty short-lived experience. It’s very temporary, it doesn’t last very long. But it does feel pretty good when you’re doing it, you know, you get that buzz going, your body starts to get all tingly and warm, and stuff.
The problem with it, there’s so many problems with it. But one of the problems with it is that it’s very short-lived. And that feeling goes away pretty quickly. And then you need more to get it back. And then the more you keep doing that, the more you need to feel good. And now you’re just trying to get back to baseline, like you just want to feel normal.
That’s not a good place to be. So for most of my life, I had been drinking daily from the time I was, you know, 15, 16, 17 years old, something like that, and made it a just a daily habit of drinking pretty much all the time until I, you know, made that decision to finally quit.
And in between there, all kinds of stuff happened in my life, you know, that were consequences of my drinking, you know, there were car accidents, there was my first wife left me because of my drinking. There was, you know, people that were friends of mine that didn’t want to be around me anymore because of my drinking.
You know, I had alienated people. I had embarrassed people. I was just I was not in a good place at all. And of course, on top of all of this, I was you know, smoking cigarettes and not exercising and I was eating crappy diet.
I was in a really, you know, bad place for most of those years. And it all sort of caught up to me, when I had just been like I just woke up on a Monday morning. It happened to be the Monday after Easter in 2007. And I had just woken up and I was hungover and had a big fight with this girlfriend that I was dating at the time the day before, and I really embarrassed myself.
And you know, I just felt like it was just one of one more day where I just woke up feeling like crap, and I felt out of control. That’s the thing with alcohol. When you use alcohol or drugs to kind of escape, at some point, it just kind of stops working. And it just feels terrible because you get into this place where you really want to quit, but you can’t quit because you can’t live without it.
So you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. You’re like stuck between a rock and a hard place. And this is a terrible place to be. And I was in that place for a long time for many, many years. Until that one morning when I finally woke up, I was hungover, you know, had to go to work.
And I may have called in sick to work that day. I can’t remember. But I just remember waking up and laying in bed and telling myself or actually saying out loud. Like for the first time ever I said out loud like, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this anymore. I need some help.” And that was a thought that I had never had before that I needed some help.
Up to that point. I thought you know I can do this on my own. You know if I ever wanted to quit I could just you know give it up. And I had kind of tried a few times but I couldn’t last more than a day or two. You know what I mean?
Because I was like so you know, I can say addicted you know because it is an addictive substance. I could say that I was kind of addicted to alcohol. And I was like, you know, I just, it was too hard to live without it.
But as soon as I made that statement out loud, I was like, I can get some help. It sort of shifted something for me, it felt like this weight fell off on my shoulders like that I could actually do this. But I would need somebody to help me.
And that was a very different thought for me and a very different feeling. Because it was like, the first time I ever felt like maybe I could live without alcohol. Maybe I could experience freedom from drinking, you know.
So my first thought was to go get some like counseling. And so I went and saw like a therapist and did some counseling. And that was the first time I ever talked to anybody about this, the first time I ever talked to anybody about the fact that I had a problem with drinking and that I wanted to quit and that I couldn’t do it on my own.
And so like, what do I do? Like, I just was very open and honest, and just said, like, you know, what do I do, of course, there was a lot of guilt and shame around all of this. And, but this person that I was working with made me feel like I was very normal.
In fact, he shared with me that he had a drinking problem. And that, you know, he found a lot of relief in like a 12-step program. So he kind of turned me on to AA, you know, and so I started doing that. And, and that was really helpful at the beginning as well, because then I started to hang around other people that were just like me, that had gone through similar stuff, you know, we’re all different.
You look around a room of, of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you can see that there’s a lot of different people in that room. But we all share this same thing where we all want freedom, you know, we all want to experience that freedom from drinking, we don’t want to have to drink anymore.
And so, with that particular program, this is where I’m gonna get into just a little bit of a, you know, criticisms about a program like that. That program, I would say, it kind of saved my life, it really helped me at the beginning. I kind of grew out of it at some point, though, you know, and it’s great.
And there’s no, I’m not going to, you know, talk any smack about a program like AA or any other 12-Step program, but I’m just gonna say that they’re not for everybody. And they don’t work for everybody that you know, so there’s no, like, one size fits all, when it comes to this kind of stuff, okay.
But one thing that was helpful for me was, was being around other people and seeing that this was a pretty normal thing. And that all we all wanted together was to quit drinking and to support each other through that process. Now, listen, AA was started back in 1939, by a bunch of old white Christian guys, you know, and if, you know, so some of these tenents of the program are really based in Christianity and a belief in God and things like that, you know, they tried to kind of soften some of that stuff.
But you know, I’m not a really religious person. And so a lot of that didn’t really jive with me, you know, but there’s some good parts that program. So if you’re somebody that’s like, you know, maybe I’ll try it and give it, give it a try. You know, give it a shot. You know, there’s nothing wrong with it.
And I’m not going to like I said, I’m not going to talk more smack about it. I’m just saying it’s not for everybody, okay. But it did show me that there’s a whole world out there of people that are living their life, and they don’t have to, they don’t have to drink every day. And I was like, wow, that’s a crazy concept. Because the only people I knew were people that drank every day, or pretty much every day. And that’s how I live my life for so long.
Those were the only people that I had surrounded myself with. I didn’t see how it was possible to live your life without it. And one of the things that scared me when I first quit drinking because I felt some relief at the beginning. I was like, oh good. Finally getting on. I’m getting some help. I think I can do this. I’m gonna quit.
But then I started thinking like, how can I ever have fun again, in my life, how can anything ever be fun again, because I used alcohol to make every experience more fun. At least I thought I was you know, I thought I was having more fun but it was really just my brain tricking me into thinking I was having fun when in reality, you can have tons of fun without alcohol trust me.
But that scared me at first because I was like, How can I you know, go through a Saturday without alcohol because I would you know, you know get up and you know, do some work you know, cut the grass or something like that and then start drinking, you know, however many, whatever and drink the rest of the day and hang out with my friends and we would drink and watch football or whatever.
And I just thought this. I don’t see how life can can be fun at all, without alcohol. Well, I’m glad I was wrong, because I will tell you that my life has been infinitely more fun. Because I’m not drinking because I’m a sober person, and have been for the last 17 years.
You know, since 2007, I have had all kinds of amazing experiences in my life, you know, I got remarried and, and, you know, went on amazing trips all over the place. And, you know, my kids have grown up, and, you know, one of my kids has gotten married and had a grandchild.
And, you know, I started this amazing coaching practice that I love so much, you know, I’ve done so many amazing things physically, I’ve completely changed my physical body, you know, my physical health, you know, become super fit.
I’ve accomplished a lot, you know, from running, you know, 50 miles, 100 miles, doing an Ironman, you know, running countless marathons, like all these things that I would never consider when I was drinking, like, none of this was even on my radar, you know.
But when I quit drinking, it opened up a whole world to me of things that I never thought would be possible. You know, like staying up past nine o’clock, I guess I would drink myself until I passed out every night at you know, 9, 9:30 or something like that. Now I go to bed at like 9:30 or 10. And I love it. And I feel so amazing, because I get up pretty early.
But that’s a whole different deal. You know, going to bed early is like the new, cool thing to do. You know, I’m convinced of that. I know so many people that love going to bed early, and getting up early, and they just are more healthy. They’re more productive. They get more done. And they just feel better.
So there’s, you know, used to be this, like, you know, a badge of honor. Do they always stay up till three o’clock in the morning every day? Like, no, no, thank you. I’m in bed by 10. I love it. I love it.
But really the one thing I wanted to share with you guys that that is really the kind of the key learning with all of this is the freedom from alcohol part. So you know, a lot of people can quit drinking, or moderate their drinking, but they don’t experience the freedom that I’ve experienced.
The freedom comes from this place of the alcohol is going to be there. Okay, everywhere you look, everybody, pretty much drinks, there’s alcohol everywhere you go, you know, you can’t go to a restaurant, you can’t walk down the street, even the movie theaters they have like they’re selling alcohol at the movie theaters.
So alcohol is going to be there. And if you think that you can somehow, you know, white knuckle, your way through the rest of your life, you decide you’re going to quit drinking, but you know, you just you’re craving alcohol all the time. That is not freedom. That is not what I’m talking about.
Freedom is where you just don’t want it anymore. Freedom looks like this. Like today, I can go to any number of restaurants that I love that are around where I live here. There’s this great barbecue joint I go to all the time. And I love sitting at the bar, because I can talk to the bartender, maybe watch the sports game that’s on or whatever.
So I will sit at the bar. They are pouring drinks for everybody around me. There’s alcohol flying everywhere I can see it, I can smell it. And I don’t want it. I have no desire to drink that alcohol. That’s what freedom looks like. That’s a big difference between somebody who’s like, you know, I can’t go into that place. Because you know, there’s alcohol in there.
You know, you should be able to go anywhere, whether they’re serving alcohol or not, and it shouldn’t be a problem for you. That’s what freedom looks like. You know, freedom looks like the desire for alcohol is gone. That’s what freedom looks like.
Because when you don’t have the desire for alcohol, you just don’t want it anymore. Not drinking is not a problem. And I use this analogy all the time with people because a lot of people can relate.
I don’t know if you guys ever smoke cigarettes but I used to smoke cigarettes and smoking was one of those things that I did all day every day right as soon as I wake up in the morning and have coffee have a cigarette you know and then all day long and I would smoke.
I was somebody who smoked a pack or so a day so what does that like 20 cigarettes a day that’s a that’s a lot in my opinion. So 20 cigarettes a day and then you know I quit a bunch of times I quit for like a year or more at once at one point and then like took it back up again like so stupid.
But then at some point, it finally clicked and I quit and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I quit smoking. And then it was hard, you know, white knuckling it try not to smoke and I was just counting the days, eventually it got easier.
I finally got to some point in my life where I just didn’t want it anymore. Like cigarettes just do not appeal to me anymore. And now, you know, I think about smoking, you could put cartons of cigarettes and lighters in front of me. And I have no desire, no desire, the desire, the desire is gone, the desire has been removed. Like, I don’t have that anymore. That’s what freedom looks like.
Here’s another analogy for you. Have you ever been in love with someone? Yes, we all have. Okay. So think about like one of your first loves, like your first boyfriend or your first girlfriend? Oh, I know, what was it like middle school, high school, something like that. And you couldn’t imagine living without that person? Right?
You just couldn’t imagine life without this person that was there every day that you could talk to every day, there were your world, you know? And then at some point, you guys broke up. Or maybe you didn’t, maybe you married that person and good for you.
But you know, for most of us, for me anyway. You know, I broke up with that person. And I can look back on that and go like, oh yeah, I have no desire to be with that person anymore. The desire is gone. That’s where freedom is. Okay?
So you don’t think about that person anymore. It’s not a big deal. Or you can see that person, you’ll be like, oh, yeah, like, I’m friends with my first girlfriends on Facebook. And I can, you know, they’re married, and they have these amazing lives and everything. And I can see them and look at pictures and just be like, oh, that’s awesome. Good for her, you know.
So that’s what freedom looks like, like, you know, that person is going to be there, you’re gonna see them, it’s not a big deal. You know, alcohol is gonna be around, but you don’t need it anymore. You don’t want it anymore, the desire is gone. That desire is gone. That’s what freedom looks like. That’s what I want you to experience.
And and a lot of times, it doesn’t come from, you know, reading a book or a 12-step program or something like that. It comes from doing the inner work, you know, it comes from doing the work of changing how you think and feel about alcohol. That’s what it really comes down to.
Now, this work that I’m talking about here, is very similar to the work that I do with my clients around food. Because food, especially sugar, has the same effect on us. It lights up our pleasure centers, just like alcohol.
Sugar is very hard to give up just like alcohol. Sugar has you experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you give up sugar, just like alcohol. You probably can’t imagine life without sugar, just like alcohol. Like there’s so many similarities.
Sugar is not necessarily good for you like alcohol, there’s a lot of negative side effects that come along with eating sugar, just like alcohol, right? These things are so similar. So here’s where I want to tell you guys about something that I’m putting together.
So if you’re interested, I’m creating a program called alcohol freedom. It’s my Alcohol Freedom Program. And if you want to learn more about it, it’s just not live yet. It’s not something that I’m offering just yet. But I will be very soon.
And what I want to encourage you to do is just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and then put in /alcoholfreedom, it’s all one word, alcoholfreedom. Also, I’m going to put a link in the show notes for this episode.
So if you’re listening to this on, you know, Spotify, or you know, Apple podcasts or something, you can just scroll down and click the link, but click the link and get on the list. So there’s, there’s like a waitlist right now.
So I’m opening this up to a select few people for this like pilot program, where we’re basically going to take you through how to experience this true freedom from alcohol. And you know, we’re going to do it together. And it’s going to be guided, I’m going to I’m gonna do a lot of teaching, you’re gonna have some work to do, there’s going to be some accountability, but it’s one of those things where I feel really passionately about this, I feel very called to do this.
So I wanted to share this with you now just to plant the seed, you know, and maybe you’re fine with whatever your relationship with alcohol is today, but just know that this will be there for you later, you know. So just, you can always just put your name on this list and then you don’t have to do anything here, I’m not going to hold you to this, you’re not obligated to do anything here.
But just put your name on the list. So you can get more information as I, you know, develop this program and have it ready here, it should be, you know, soon, okay, so just go to runningleancoaching.com/alcoholfreedom, get your name on the on the waitlist for the program.
Okay, so just wanted to throw that out there. But listen, the work requires you to change your thoughts and feelings, we have all these, you know, thought-feeling-action patterns that we’ve developed over decades of drinking alcohol, and we use alcohol to feel better.
You know, we use alcohol to numb ourselves, we use alcohol to deal with stress, we use alcohol, for lots and lots and lots of reasons. And a lot of these reasons are fine. You know, if you’re somebody that drinks you know, once in a while, good, that’s awesome. And you don’t have that pull, like alcohol doesn’t have that pull on you like it doesn’t, like you don’t feel the need to drink. Like, that’s an amazing place to be honestly, I never was like that, I always had to have more like, I always had to have it, it wasn’t something I could live without, until I quit.
So, if you’re somebody that drinks occasionally, and this isn’t a problem for you, then you don’t need to worry about it, you’re in good shape. But if you feel like your drinking is out of control, if you feel like you can’t control your drinking, when you start, if you feel like you can’t keep promises to yourself, like you say, Oh, I’m not gonna drink tomorrow night. But you do.
If you want to drink less, or you want to stop drinking altogether, you don’t have to stop drinking altogether, you can moderate your drinking, and lots of people live their lives drinking moderately, and it is okay, you can do that, that is an option for you.
The whole idea here is that you take back control, you want to live a healthy happy life, you got to be in control of your eating, and you got to be in control of things like drinking, if this is something that feels maybe out of control for you, or something that you want more control over or more management over, then you know, consider putting your name on the list, you know, so that we can, you know, have that discussion and we can help you.
You know, my goal with all this is that I have experienced freedom from drinking, and the last 17 years of my life have been amazing. And I’m such a different person today than I was 17 years ago. And I want that for you too. It doesn’t mean you have to quit, it doesn’t mean you have to do it the way that I did it. But I want you to know that it is possible for you.
Because if a dummy like me can do it, you can do it too. Okay, there’s nothing special about me. I was just a normal person, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t have any super like, they call this like your bottom, like you hit rock bottom, like I didn’t, I wasn’t in jail. I didn’t you know, I wasn’t living in the street. I wasn’t in the gutter. You know, I never got a DUI or anything like that, but my life was just sucky, you know, and I didn’t want to live that way any longer.
That’s all and that’s all it takes like, it doesn’t even have to be my story doesn’t even have to be your story, like you are allowed to make your own decisions about food, about your weight, about how you want to change your relationship with alcohol. It’s up to you, okay, but just know that help is out there. And you don’t have to do it alone.
Doing it on your own is hard. I’m just going to tell you like it’s very, very hard. And getting help is easy. It’s like hitting the easy button, all that stuff. You know, because you have somebody there that’s going to hold you accountable, that’s going to help you get through the rough spots, that has the experience to help you and guide you and mentor you and all that. Okay.
So, like I said, I’m here to help you with all this stuff. If you’re interested, go to runningleancoaching.com/alcoholfreedom, or click the link on the show notes for this episode. I’d love to see you in the program. I think it’s gonna be fun.
We do have fun doing this kind of stuff. Like we’re not gonna, you know, suffer our way through this, you know, you want to, you know, take back control of your drinking. We don’t have to, you know, be all mopey about it like this can be something where we actually have fun and a really positive experience and a positive environment where we can do this work together and help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet.
If that’s what you want for yourself, it is available to you and I can help you get there. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. All right, love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Recently, I completed a self-supported, solo 12-hour run. I’ve always wanted to do a 12-hour event, but I could never really find a race that spoke to me. So, I decided to take things into my …
Continue Reading about 180. What I Learned Running Solo for 12 Hours →
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 180 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today what I learned running solo for 12 hours. So recently, I completed a self supported solo 12 hour run.
I’ve always wanted to do a 12 hour event, but I could never really find a race that I got excited about and nothing really spoke to me. So I decided to take things into my own hands and just do it myself.
So in this episode, I’m going to share what I learned running solo for 12 hours. What prompted me to want to run alone for so long, how I approached my training, how I fueled during the event and some interesting lessons I learned along the way.
And if you’ve ever considered doing an ultra marathon, this episode is for you, I think you’ll learn a lot. Also, if you have no desire to ever do an ultra marathon, I think you’ll still get a lot out of this episode, because a lot of the training, and the fueling principles especially, apply to races that have many different distances. Cool.
But first, if you’re ready to begin your weight loss journey, then I have just the thing that gets you started on the right track, I put together a brand new hour long training just for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
I will teach you how to lose weight the right way and how to keep it off for good without running a million miles a week. Okay, some of the things that you’ll learn in this comprehensive training is why running more and eating less is not an effective way to lose weight and what to do instead.
One thing most runners don’t do or do wrong when they’re trying to lose weight, the best fuel to use to improve your endurance and lose weight, how to create the mindset shifts necessary to develop new habits that actually make all this last for life.
And then one thing that I did that was really the key for me being able to keep the weight off for good. And it’s something you should probably do too. And there’s a lot more in there. But those are some of the key points that you’ll learn.
So if you’re ready to get started, if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, run faster, longer become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, check out this free training, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. There’s never going to be a better time than right now to get started. So just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. Alright, cool.
So let’s talk about this: what prompted me to want to run solo for 12 hours? So I came across a podcast where some people were talking about the 12 hour walk. And ‘The 12 Hour Walk’, if you’re not familiar, is a book that Colin O’Brady wrote.
Colin O’Brady is a pretty badass adventure guy. Like he’s done all kinds of endurance events like walking solo across Antarctica, and actually breaking the record for doing it faster than anybody else.
So he walked across Antarctica, pulling a sled with all of his, you know, food and equipment and everything that he needed for this track. And he ended up walking something like 12 hours a day, because I guess that’s how much daylight they had.
And he covered I don’t know, 50 miles a day or something close to that, 48 miles a day. But he ended up doing this for like 53, I believe, straight days. So that is pretty insane to do something like that.
So during the pandemic, he, you know, was back home and, you know, was itching to get outside and do something. And of course, you know, all this stuff is shut down. He couldn’t travel.
And so he decided to just take a walk and he left his house and he ended up walking for like 12 hours by himself without his phone. And he was just like, this is really fascinating. And he learned some interesting lessons along the way by doing this.
It’s a very personal sort of inward journey. It was for him anyway. And he thought, wow, I think a lot of people could benefit from doing something like this. So he wrote the book, the 12 Hour Walk.
And it’s a great book, if you want to check it out. It really goes into a lot of detail about all the things that he’s accomplished, and he’s accomplished some crazy events, some crazy endurance events.
But in the book, he talks about this 12 hour walk and encourages people to just do this. Leave your house, go walk for 12 hours by yourself unplugged. And some of the rules that he puts down are this, so it’s supposed to be done solo. So you do it by yourself, no friends, no dogs, no turtles, cats, anything, any other animal, it’s just supposed to be you. So it’s a solo journey.
And the length of time needs to be 12 hours. You know, it can be longer if you want, but that’s like the minimum right? So 12 hours is the length of time we’re talking about. And you need to be by yourself and there’s no, no phones involved.
So no headphones, no texting, no talking to anybody on the phone, no listening to podcasts, no listening to audiobooks, no listening to music. No, you know, FaceTiming people while you’re out there, it’s supposed to be a solo journey. Now you can take your phone with you, which I did. And I recorded a few short videos or a few voice memos or typed in some notes. I especially took some notes about my fueling during the event, just so I could keep track of when I was, you know, fueling.
So I could, you know, know how much time had elapsed between the last time I fueled. But it’s supposed to be done in silence, like you’re supposed to be just quiet, you know, and really not talk to people. And so that’s what the 12 hour walk is.
Okay, so I heard about this. And I heard some people talking about this on a podcast. And it really started, the wheels in my brain started turning because I was like, oh, man, I’ve always wanted to do a 12 hour event. And a lot of the 12 hour events or 24 hour endurance events, if you’re familiar with these things, a lot of times they do them on a short, one mile or two mile loop.
A lot of times they’ll do it at a track. So you’re running around a track for like 12 hours. And to me, that sounds terrible. The few miles like loop through the woods would be doable, but also you get sort of, you know, just used to the same things over and over again. So that really never spoke to me.
Like I just never was really interested in doing an event where I’m going to be running for 12 straight hours or 24 hours around a track or something like that. So I thought wow, this is pretty interesting. Because I get to do this anywhere that I want, I can go and run around my neighborhood, I can go down, you know, I live close to the Ohio River, I can go down to the river and run along the river.
And I’ll tell you about what I ended up doing and where I ended up going in a minute. But it was just sort of like this free form event like you can do it any way you want. So that really appealed to me. The solo adventure part of it appealed to me because I’ve you know, I’ve done a lot of running by myself for sure, I’ve done a lot of long distance running where I’m by myself for long stretches of time, but never more than an hour or two, something like that.
And then you’re like you hit an aid station or you’re running with other people or maybe you’re listening to something on the phone or talking to somebody. And then that aspect of not having your phone on and not having that distraction and, and listening to a podcast or an audiobook or something like that.
I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks when I run. It’s like I get to learn while I’m running. You know, I get to learn about you know, some badass, you know, adventurer guy, or whatever it is. And I really enjoy that. I don’t do that all the time, but I do enjoy that.
And so that appealed to me, like unplugging basically for 12 hours. So that part appealed to me. So this is kind of my, what prompted me, you know, and why I decided I wanted to do this. And then, of course, being a runner, I was like, well, I’m not going to walk this thing, I’m going to run it.
And I ended up doing a run-walk approach. And I’ll talk about that next and I want to talk about the training but just understand that this is something that you can do anytime you want. And if there really aren’t any rules other than what I just mentioned there, like if you need to take breaks, take breaks.
If you need to use a bathroom somewhere, use a bathroom, if you need to get some food, get some food, but the idea is that you kind of carry the food that you need, take a backpack or a Camelback or something like that. And then it should be self supported. There should be no distractions, it should be an internal journey, as well as an external physical journey. Okay.
So how did I approach my training? What did I do there? So, my idea was, my focus was always going to be on 12 hours. I wasn’t concerned about distance or time or pace or anything like that. I just wanted to be out there running for 12 hours.
And so I was going to I made a decision early on, that I was just going to do this slow and easy, that I wasn’t going to try to break any records here. And that if I could get to 50 miles, I would consider that to be a huge success. So that was kind of my goal, really, my big goal was like, you know, just to finish it, and just to keep, you know, running for 12 hours.
So, the way I approached my training, I started training for this thing back in like December, January. And the event was on May 27, that’s the day that I picked, so that was Memorial Day weekend, which was about three weeks after the Flying Pig Marathon, which I did, which was the Floating Pig Marathon since we had so much rain that day, it was crazy.
But I knew I wanted a little bit of time to recover from that race until before I did this other Ultra event. So 50 miles was the goal, May 27, was the date I picked. And I started training in December, basically January, and I was just building my base at the beginning.
I divided my training into three main sections. So the and as we get closer to the race, the running becomes more specific to the race. So at the beginning of my training cycle, I was doing more speed work, doing shorter, faster runs doing hill repeats and, and sprint intervals, and tempo runs and things like that.
As I got closer to the race, I stopped doing a lot of the speed work. And I just focused on, like dialing in sort of that race pace that I was going to use during the event itself, which was very slow. It’s like 13 minute miles, which is what I ended up averaging for the event itself, which I thought was fine, you know, it’s fine for me.
And that’s the way that I kind of approached the training. So, you know, I did a lot of miles, especially in that second and third phase of my training cycle, a lot of miles at a slow pace, and kept my heart rate down. And really the whole point of this was just to be out there for 12 hours, and enjoy it. I guess as much as you can enjoy running for 12 hours or being out there running and walking for 12 hours. And really just to finish.
And so I didn’t I didn’t put a lot of pressure on myself. I did have that goal of 50 miles. And so that was one thing where I was like, I do want to hit 50 miles. And that was totally doable. I knew that if I could get to about a 14 minute pace 14 something I knew that I would get to 50 miles.
So that was kind of the goal from a pace standpoint. So a lot of my training was just done by myself without my phone. So I just leave my phone at home and start getting used to running without any sort of distraction. Okay.
That was interesting, because think about this, how much time do you spend completely unplugged. Not looking at a screen, not watching TV, not listening to music, or podcasts, or books, or the radio in your car. Not talking to other people. Not calling someone or texting someone.
Think about this. This is one of the big lessons I learned because I was like, I do not spend much time during any given day completely unplugged. And that’s what was really interesting to me, that it made me hyper aware of how much time I actually spend distracting myself from whatever’s happening in the moment.
Think about it, like I was at the gym this morning. And I usually have my headphones when I’m at the gym and I’m listening to a book or something like that. And I forgot them right. I left them at home. So I’m just like, whatever. I’m just going to sit here in between sets and just look around, I guess I don’t know, what do you do? It’s kind of weird.
I was like, what did we used to do back in the day when we didn’t have cell phones? I guess we would just sit there and look at each other. Right? So I was just sitting there and I looked around and I started to see every single person in the gym staring at their phone.
Every single person that wasn’t actively lifting was like staring at their phone. Every person. It was wild. And I was just thinking wow, that’s so interesting. We are so connected to our phones that even two minutes in between sets we can’t not be sitting there staring at our phones, you know.
So for me, one of the biggest lessons that I learned really is that I can spend time away from screens and I can spend time away from distracting myself from the moment and that I want to be more mindful, I want to have more mindfulness in my life, I want to be more present in the moment, not just for myself, but for other people as well.
And so that was a huge lesson that I learned. And it took training for this event, and then actually doing the event to sort of bring that really into my focus and into my attention. So during the event, there were so many times where I was wanting to whip out my phone and call somebody, or text somebody, oh, I just thought of something I need to tell my kids. I better just text him.
And I was like, nope, I had my phone with me, but it was just for taking a couple of quick videos and some voice memos that I was recording, and a couple of notes that I was writing just because I wanted to keep track of my fueling, right.
So I did have my phone with me, but it was in airplane mode. So it was basically all I could do it use it for was recording messages, taking pictures, that kind of stuff. And I didn’t pull it out that often I was really just focused on being in the moment.
And that was one of the biggest lessons I learned is that I distract myself a lot. And we all do. We are constantly distracting ourselves. Aside from sleeping. We either have, we’re talking to someone, we’re listening to something, we’re watching something, we’re reading something, we are constantly bombarded with information, and constantly connected and constantly distracted from the moment. So just think about that.
How can you maybe change that? What does that look like for you? Can you spend some more time just in silence, maybe mindfulness meditation, maybe just leave your phone at home, when you go for a run, leave those headphones at home, take your phone if you want to, if you need it for emergency or something like that, but just take leave the headphones at home. Interesting, right? It may be an interesting experiment to do.
Okay, so the training I did was pretty standard, nothing really fancy there. Other than, you know, I shut down the speed work during that last six weeks or so and really just focused on really hammering the long distance getting used to running with a backpack because I did carry a backpack with water and fuel and things like that.
And that was it, like the training was pretty, you know, standard and really not a whole lot to discuss there. Other than, you know, just those last six weeks or so I just really ramped up the mileage. You know, I was doing you know, my weekly mileage ended up being I think at the peak was something like 60-65 miles a week.
But the long runs on the weekends were, you know, 25 and 12 was like the longest I did. 26 and 10, something like that. So that was the training. And then so my approach for the race itself, I decided I was going to bring the minimal amount of fuel that I needed.
And I was thinking because I’m fat-adapted, I don’t really need a whole lot in the way of fuel for something like this, but I wanted to maintain some semblance of energy. So I did use some fuel. And the idea was that I was going to start to run fasted and have some coffee before I left the door or headed out the door. I had some coffee about 6am and was out the door by 6:22 is when I started on a Saturday morning.
So I started fasted, just had some saltwater before I started and some coffee and that was it. The saltwater was actually an LMNT that’s an electrolyte drink. So I did my electrolyte drink, no calories, really no sugar or anything like that. And just some coffee, headed out the door.
And then my goal was to fuel every hour, and to get about 150 calories per hour 150 to 200 calories per hour. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t want more than that, because I don’t really need more than that. So, and I practiced during my training with this and this is something important for you.
If you’re doing a half or full or any kind of long distance event, you’ve got to practice your fueling during training, like all your long training runs should be dress rehearsals for your event. Okay, so just make sure you’re training the way that you’re going to be racing, right so I did this regularly.
And I’ve tried a few different types of fuels and things like that, I ended up going mostly with the Muir energy gels and those things, they have like four ingredients. It’s like almond butter, cacao, some blackstrap molasses, that’s the carbohydrate that they use in there. And then some salt, something, maybe there’s five ingredients, some other kind of flavoring in there, but they’re very clean.
Some people don’t like the way they taste, I think they taste fine. They’re kind of good, actually, I think they have almond butter as another ingredient depending on which one you get: cashew butter, almond butter. But they’re pretty good and have good, clean ingredients.
There are a little bit of carbs, like 12 carbs per packet. And they’re 150 calories. So one of those per hour was kind of my goal. And I had a couple other things that I had just had in my closet that I just pulled out a couple other types of fuel. But they were all very similar and all about 150 calories each. So that was what I planned on doing. And I stuck to that plan pretty well.
So after about an hour of running, I did my first Muir, and then kind of kept doing that every hour or so there was a couple of times where I lost track of time, and I looked down, I’m like, oh, it’s been like an hour and a half and I haven’t fueled at all, better do something. And then the next one I did a little bit shorter, like, you know, I just had to kind of tweak it a little bit.
But at the end of the day, I think I only used eight or nine of those. So it should have been 11. And I think I brought 11 with me, and there were a couple left when I got home. So maybe I used eight or nine of them in total. So it didn’t even need as much as I brought with me, you know, and I was really trying not to weigh myself down the pack that I had fully loaded with water, two liters of water plus all the, you know, goos and the phone and stuff like that, we’d like eight and a half pounds, so it wasn’t super heavy.
But eight and a half pounds is eight and a half pounds added to, you know, your body weight as you’re running for 12 hours, right. So I wanted to keep things as light as possible. So I just brought the bare minimum and I didn’t even use all of it. And I felt fine.
The race itself was pretty uneventful other than so I headed out of my house. And it was cool in the morning. You know, it’s very cool, probably in the high 50s, right. And I was like, oh my god, this is perfect, you know, but it got hot that day, it ended up being in the high 70s.
And two things that really helped. Number one is that I chose a rail to trail, also the little Miami Recreation Trail, that was kind of the majority of the run for me was on that trail. And I hit that during the peak of the day. And it’s very shaded because there’s trees on both sides.
And most of it, there’s some sections that are totally exposed, and it was getting hot. So that helped. So the location that I picked for this thing really did help. Also, it ended up getting cloudy in the afternoon, which was amazing because when the clouds came over it dropped the temperature down and kept me from like, I was getting hot with the sun out I was really getting hot.
And so the clouds really helped a lot. And so for that second half of the day, you know, I finished at 6:20pm. The second half of the day was warmer, but it could have been a lot worse. So I was thankful for the clouds. So I took off from my house. I ran out to this trail, which is about 12 miles from my house. So I took another path called the Watson Way, it’s another rail to trail that sort of connects to this other one.
And I ended up running from my house 26.2 miles to a little town called Loveland. And, you know, that is the farthest I’ve ever run by myself. The farthest I’ve ever run in one direction, that’s for sure. And so when I was in Loveland, I was like, 5 hours and 36 minutes into this thing. So I wasn’t quite halfway but close to it. And I decided that was a good point to turn around. And my goal was to make it a double marathon.
So if I got to, like 52 miles, that was the goal. At that point, I was like, I think I can do this. You know, I’m padding my time a little bit because I might slow down towards the last half of this thing. And I did slow down a little bit towards the end just because I did have a little bit of extra time and so I did a little bit more walking during the last hour or so, a little more walking, and a little less running and it felt fine.
You know, all in all, the event was great. I did stop to refill water a couple of times, because the two liters of water that I had wasn’t going to be enough. I ended up stopping at a Starbucks on the way out towards Loveland.
So during the first half, I stopped at Starbucks and got some ice water, took that with me, that felt great. Stopped at a little bike shop that had cold waters and filled up my backpack with cold waters on the way out. I did that again on the way back, stopped at that Starbucks again, on the way back in, I ended up getting an iced coffee, which was amazing. So delicious.
And then that gave me a little bit of an extra boost there for the last few hours that I have out there. And then you know, I ended up just finishing feeling pretty good. The only problem I had during this thing was that my knees are kind of messed up, like I’ve fallen down on the trail so many times that my knees occasionally will kind of start talking to me and my right knee was kind of talking to me towards the end of this thing.
And I was like, yeah, I think I’m ready to be done. And then as soon as I finished and I stopped, and I sat down, and I took a shower and stuff like that my knee just swelled up, it was huge. And just bending, it was very painful. And walking was hard.
Like, I messed myself up pretty bad, like, not even knowing that I was in, you know, doing any kind of damage to the knee. That knee is fine now like it just took a couple of days for the inflammation to go down. I don’t know what the issue is with that knee. But it does do this every now and then.
And I’m just going to take it easy and not overdo it here during the next few weeks. But it’s been fine since then. It took a couple of days for that swelling to go down, but it’s been fine. So the event itself was great. I did it solo, I did it without talking to people.
For the most part, when I did stop, I had to like, you know, talk to the people that sold me the water or the coffee or whatever. But other than that, and one guy that ran past me, there were some running groups running on Saturday morning. And one guy in a running group said, Hey, I love your podcast.
And I kind of just looked and waved because I didn’t want to say anything because I’m like I’m trying to be quiet and not say anything. So for the guy that ran past me and said, hey, I love your podcast, on the Murray trail, I think you’re with the tri-state group, then hey, I’m gonna say, hey, thank you for listening. I appreciate that. And I appreciate that you gave me the shout out during the run, but I was being quiet at the time.
So I wasn’t talking to anybody. And I did run into my son. I’m like, you know, he was running towards me on one section of the trail. And I’m like, what are you doing out here and he’s like, I just went out for a run today. And he didn’t know where I was running. And so he didn’t know he was going to run into me. I’m like, hey, I’m not supposed to be talking to people. He’s like, cool, I’m gonna leave. And I’m like, cool. Alright.
So that was kind of fun. And by the way, I ended up running almost 53 miles total. So it was a double marathon and a little bit more. So that was cool. So a couple of lessons that I learned through this whole thing, number one, that you have to get out of your comfort zone if you want to grow.
And I’ve talked about this before, but this brought it all home to me in a big way that this was an uncomfortable event fFor me. It was uncomfortable for a lot of reasons: because of the silence because of no distractions, because I had to be in the moment. And because it’s 12 hours of running, come on.
It was hard, you know, something that was very challenging to do the training was hard. For this event, the event itself was hard. But coming out of this, I feel like a little bit of a different person. You know, I feel like I have learned some things and I’ve grown and I’ve like, every time I challenge myself and I try to do something like this, like, once a year.
Every year, I try to pick some event, something that I’ve never done before and do it. So anytime I do something like this, it causes me to level up, causes me to grow and it causes me to become more and become closer to that ultimate version of myself that I’m always working towards. It’s a work in progress. It always is.
But doing things like this. I want to encourage you to do something like this because things like this cause you to level up, they cause you to grow and they cause you to evolve as a human being, okay.
The other lesson that I learned is that being alone in silence without the distractions for 12 hours is really hard. We are so used to using our devices and distracting ourselves that to do this was a challenge but it was great. I loved it. At the end of the day. I was like, wow, I’m like I didn’t need it. You know, I don’t need to distract myself, I could just be in the moment.
And it got me thinking about when I was younger. You know, we grew up without the internet without cell phones. Well, we did have like a Sony Walkman you could wear you know, and listen to tapes, you know, that was awesome. But even so, like, we didn’t take those everywhere we went, you know, and so there was so much more in the moment.
Mindfulness, I guess you would call it, we didn’t know, it was called that at the time. Now we have to call it a certain thing, because it’s so different from what we’re used to doing. But that’s just how we were back in the day, you know. And so it just really made me realize how distracted we are all the time.
And how much I am craving, and I think we all kind of crave a little bit of like silence and internal, an internal journey, so to speak. Okay. Another lesson I learned was this, that we all have an inner dialogue, we all have an internal voice that’s kind of talking all the time.
And I realized that that voice never really stops, it’s there’s always going and even being out there, I thought, this voice has got to stop at some point here. And it sort of did at least it got quieter after about four or five hours, but it took four or five hours out there running by myself for this to even like calm down at all. Okay.
And then I noticed that there were times where I started just talking to myself out loud. So that into your internal voice that I had, maybe I was missing it, I don’t know, but I would just start talking to myself out loud. And it wasn’t like seeing anything, you know, mind bending or anything like that.
I would just be like, oh, hey, I wonder if it’s time to drink some water. Maybe I need to grab a gel. Maybe it’s time to feel? Gosh, that tree is cool. Oh, man, I’ve been on here for a long time, those clouds look interesting. Like just whatever. I was sort of, like narrating things, and I had to like, stop myself and be like, dude, what are you doing? I was craving some sort of, I don’t know if it’s a distraction, but some sort of a dialogue.
And so I started just creating a dialogue to myself, Okay. But all in all, I would suggest that if you want to challenge yourself, and if you want to level up and if you want to see what you’re capable of, and if you want to learn some lessons that you know are going to be personal to you, then I would suggest doing something like this, you don’t have to run it, you could walk it. It can be something that you do once a year, twice a year, I’m considering doing this again in the fall as a walk.
And I might invite you to join me, not in person, but virtually and we can all do this, maybe we pick a date. And we all do this together, so to speak. You know, we all do it on the same day in our separate towns in our separate cities, separate countries, whatever. And it could be something where we all learn some lessons together, we kind of come back and commiserate on what we’ve learned together. Sounds cool.
So all in all, this was a successful event. For me. It’s my first 12 hour timed event. And I enjoyed it. I really did. I enjoyed the the aspect of doing it however, I wanted to do it, you know, picking my own route, picking how I wanted to approach the fueling and, and hydration and all those things myself.
Making all those decisions myself and not having to, you know, have it be dictated by a race director and a certain location and a certain day in a certain time and certain types of fuel they have out there. Like I just did it myself. And it was awesome.
And actually, it was one of those things that like wasn’t that big of a deal. It really wasn’t. I devoted one day, one day to bettering myself to being mindful with myself being alone with myself. And I would suggest that you kind of do the same thing. Cool. All right.
So that’s all I got for you here. And listen, if you’ve ever struggled with losing weight, if you want to lose weight and keep it off and you want some help doing that, I want you to know that I have a great coaching program, and it was created with you in mind.
The Coaching Project is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program for runners. You and I will work closely together to put together a custom nutrition plan for you to get you to your goals. And we also talk about building strength and we talk about endurance and we talk about mindset, okay, and then we meet regularly to see what’s working and what’s not and then course correct as needed.
And one thing you have to understand about coaching is it’s not like some other diet or something like that. It’s not like a one size It’s all cookie cutter approach, right? You’re an individual, you have your own sets of goals and lifestyle and food preferences and the way you want to work out and things like that. And I’m going to meet you where you are.
And we’ll put together a plan that you feel good about because you have to enjoy what you’re doing. You have to enjoy the food, you got to enjoy the way you work out. Because if you don’t, you’re not gonna stick with it.
So if you want to just stop struggling, you want to start getting results, check out The Coaching Project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more, I’d love to see you in The Coaching Project. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Your mindset is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. But most people do not spend any time at all working on improving their mindset. This is crazy to me because without the …
Continue Reading about 179. Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs to Know Part 3: Mindset →
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 179 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today: Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know, Part Three: Mindset.
Your mindset is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. But most people do not spend any time at all working on improving their mindset. This is crazy to me because without the right mindset, doing things like losing weight and keeping it off becomes nearly impossible.
However, armed with the right mindset, losing weight becomes easy, and effortless and your success is basically inevitable. Everything you want for yourself but don’t already have requires a shift in your mindset in order to get it. Change happens from the inside out, okay?
This inner work, this mindset work, is the most important and most powerful work you can do for yourself. So today, I’m going to lay out a whole bunch of mindset principles that you absolutely need to know if you want to lose weight and keep it off.
And again, this is part three of my three part series called Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know. Part One focused on nutrition principles. Part Two was all about the exercise principles you need to focus on in order to lose weight, get stronger and become the most badass version of yourself. Cool.
Alright, but first, if you have ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, I want you to know that there is nothing wrong with you. You are not alone, you’ve probably just been given the wrong advice, or you’re just not following any kind of plan. Alright, and it’s okay. I get it. I’ve been there, we’ve all been there.
But if you’re ready to actually do something different to actually do something to change, and follow a plan that was custom built for you and have someone there supporting you every step of the way, then I’ve got you covered. I created The Coaching Project with you in mind.
The Coaching Project is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program designed specifically for runners. You and I will work closely together to put together a custom nutrition and exercise plan to get you to your goals.
Then we meet regularly to see what’s working and what’s not and then course correct if needed. One thing you need to understand about coaching is that it’s not a one size fits all approach. There just isn’t one diet or one exercise plan that works for everyone. There just isn’t.
You are an individual, you have your own goals, needs and your own lifestyle. And I want to meet you where you are. What works for others may not work for you. So why try to force yourself into some cookie cutter program that isn’t made for you and probably won’t work for you?
So if you’re ready to stop struggling and start getting results, check out the coaching project just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. I would love to see you in The Coaching Project.
Okay, let’s get into this, the most important mindset principles runners need to know in order to lose weight and keep it off. This is like my favorite topic. As a coach I’ve worked with a lot of runners and helped them develop the mindset that allows them to to become their most badass selves to lose weight, get stronger, run faster, and become their best selves.
And the mindset work is probably the most important work that you have to do if you want to lose weight and keep it off. If you want to live a happy, healthy lifestyle easily and effortlessly, this all requires a big shift in your mindset.
Your mindset is the foundation of everything that you do. Everything that you do is built upon this foundation. With the wrong mindset though you are doomed to failure. But with the right mindset, you’d become basically unstoppable. There’s nothing you can’t do.
So I’m gonna go over a few mindset principles that runners need to know in order to lose weight and keep it off. Okay, there’s more than a few. This is very challenging for me to narrow down this list. But I don’t know, I have like 18 or 19 principles I want to share with you today. I just couldn’t I couldn’t choose just a few.
So I hope you’ll enjoy, but let’s start with the first one, and these are in no particular order, by the way. But the first one is this: your environment is everything. So when we talk about changing your environment in order to promote healthy changes in your life, like if you want to create new healthy habits, you got to change your environment.
This means changing things like what foods you keep in the kitchen and the fridge and the pantry. What’s in that snack cupboard? Do you even have a snack cupboard? You probably don’t need one. But your environment is more than just your kitchen.
Your environment is the books you read, the movies you watch, the podcasts you listen to, the audio books you listen to, the TV shows you watch. All of these things have an influence on you as a person and what you choose to do and not do and how you live your life.
We are very influenced by all these outside influences that come into us. What about the people you spend time with? You know, they say you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with?
Who do you follow on social media? What friends do you spend time with? What family members do you spend time with? You may have some toxic family members that you probably shouldn’t spend as much time with. I know sometimes that’s out of our control.
But sometimes you need to just say like I’m not gonna go over to Aunt Janet’s because she’s a little cuckoo, you know, or whatever you need to do. But these people have an influence on you, even the people you follow on social media, right?
So make sure that the people in your life are supporting you, they have your back. There are positive influences on your life, okay? They say you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.
If you spend time with five marathon runners, you’ll probably be the sixth. If you spend time with five lean, strong human beings, five faster runners, five people who are into self improvement, you’ll probably be the sixth.
Conversely, if you spend time with five couch potatoes, five junk food junkies, you’ll probably be the sixth. Okay, so your environment is everything. It really is everything, okay?
Next one, your feelings are not in charge. Okay? And you are not your feelings. So don’t allow your feelings to drive your actions. Your brain is a powerful thing, that we don’t use it, we allow ourselves to be driven by our feelings a lot of the time.
So for example, if you’re having a stressful day, you’re feeling very stressed out about what you want to do, you just want to go drink a bunch of alcohol or eat some junk food. But listen to your mind, your mind is smarter than your feelings, your mind knows what’s good for you.
Your mind should be driving the bus, your feelings can come along for the ride, but they’re a passenger, they’re sitting in a passenger seat, they’re not allowed to drive. And we think we have to do things a certain way. Because we feel a certain way. This is just not true.
You don’t have to do anything, you can just have a feeling. So instead of being driven by your feelings, use that intuitive voice that you have inside you. Your intuition knows what’s right, or what’s wrong in any particular moment.
So let’s say you had a stressful day and you just want to eat cake for dinner. This is a feeling that’s dictating a behavior. But in that moment, there’s a part of you that’s like, this is not right. I shouldn’t be eating cake for dinner. That’s not who I want to be. That’s your intuitive voice. That’s your intuition. Listen to that voice.
Okay, your feelings are not in charge. Listen to that voice of reason. Let that drive your actions. Don’t let your feelings drive the bus. Okay? If you get good at this, this is a game changer for every aspect of your life.
All right, the next principle is this: you have to know the difference between knowledge and know how. So knowledge is knowing about something. Know how is knowing how to do that thing.
So for example, if you read books on how to swim, and you listen to, you know, podcasts about how to swim, and you read all these books, are you a swimmer? No, of course not because you’ve never been in the water. You’ve never practiced.
You’ve never, like gotten from one end of the pool to the other without having to stop and be like, oh my god, this is super hard. I did this when I was learning how to swim because I decided I was going to do my first triathlon some years ago and I signed up for a half Ironman. Who does that? Right?
I’ve never done a triathlon in my life and I’m like, I’m gonna sign up for half Ironman, how hard could it be? It’s a half, it’s a half thing, you know, so it can’t be that hard. But I really didn’t know how to swim I kind of assumed, but I wasn’t good at swimming at all. I couldn’t make it across the pool without having to stop and like catch my breath or whatever.
So I got on YouTube, and I read some books and I learned the principles of swimming but It wasn’t until I got into the pool and I practiced that, that I actually knew how to do it, it took me a long time to get good at the right form, because you have to be able to breathe on both sides.
And you have to be able to look up out of the water and sight where you’re going and keep yourself going in a straight line. Because when you’re swimming in open water, there’s no black line at the bottom of the lake or whatever to keep you on track. So you have to be able to look and so you’ve got to practice all this stuff, knowing how to do it is completely different than actually doing it. Okay.
So you got to know the difference between knowledge and know how. And when I coach people, I always kind of tell them, like, coaching is like 20% knowledge, yeah, I’m going to show you what to do to show you how to do it. But it’s like 80% application, it’s 80%, practicing these principles, it’s 80% doing the thing.
That’s how you become good at something. That’s how you develop good habits. That’s how you become a good swimmer. You know, you’ve got to practice that good form over and over and over again. But reading a book on it does not give you what you need, you’ve got to do the thing, and you’ve got to spend time doing it. Okay, so this applies.
Specifically, we’re talking about weight loss here. So we’re talking about sticking to the food plan, what works for you, what doesn’t work for you? How do you work in all this running that you want to do? How do you train for this event? And stick to your food plan and lose weight, if that’s what you want for yourself?
So it’s 20% knowledge and like, 80% application, okay, but the know how is in the doing. It’s in the practicing. It’s in the repetition. Okay.
That leads me to my next principle, which is this: You crave what you repeatedly do. So the things that are easy for you, and that you enjoy doing are probably the things you do regularly. So if you’re somebody who goes to the gym regularly, like I go to the gym most days, right?
So right now I’m in this phase where I’m going to the gym like five days a week, and I love it. I love it. There was a time in my life where going to the gym one day a week would have sucked. And I would have been like, this is stupid, I can’t believe I would have to force myself to go because I didn’t love it, because I wasn’t doing it regularly.
But those things that we continually do. We get good at, they start to fill us with joy, and we crave those things. All right. So maybe you’re somebody who runs marathons regularly, you begin to crave the training and the feeling of crossing that finish line.
Let’s look at the other side of this though. If you repeatedly eat junk food, you’re going to keep craving it more and more and more. Instead, if you start eating healthy food repeatedly, guess what? That begins to be what you crave.
I will tell you right now I crave certain foods that seem crazy to me. That like few years ago, I would have been like, who is this person, you know, like a good salad with some crispy vegetables on there. And a big steak like that is something that sounds amazing to me.
Now, if you’re not somebody that likes to eat salad, and likes to eat steak, whatever do, you do you it’s fine. But this healthy, simple food right now, I crave it, you know? So as human beings, the reason why this kind of works for us is that we perceive anything familiar as good.
So anything that seems familiar to us that we do repeatedly, we see that as good, anything unfamiliar, we see as bad. Even if that thing is not actually good for us like eating junk food as an example, right? We do this repeatedly and our brain’s just like this is good, because we do it all the time.
But we know it’s not good for us. But your brain doesn’t care. It just sees that as good because it’s something you do repeatedly. Okay. So the more you do something, the more familiar it becomes, and the more your brain perceives it as good so you begin to crave it, you crave what you repeatedly do. So choose those things wisely. Okay.
Next principle, I’ve talked about this once or twice before, embrace the suck. Listen, change is uncomfortable. Change is hard. And change, it just plain sucks sometimes. And in the ultra running community, we talk about this a lot.
There’s this concept called ‘embrace the suck’ because the suck is that point that will happen at some point during your race where you’re going to feel terrible. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. Let’s say you’re doing a 50 miler. It could happen at mile 30 or 45 or minus eight, I don’t know, but at some point, it’s going to suck. And it’s better to know this in advance to accept it. To embrace it, don’t wish it didn’t suck, don’t don’t wish it was easier because it isn’t going to be.
So accept it and embrace it. That’s the only way you’re gonna get through it. What we do here, when we’re trying to change our diet, lose weight, create better habits, become healthier, get stronger, this stuff is not easy. If it was easy, I wouldn’t have a job, I wouldn’t do what I do.
This is hard work. But it’s in the hard work that we grow, it’s in the hard work that we evolve, and we become our best selves. So don’t try to avoid the suck, don’t try to make it easier, don’t wish it was easier. You know, embrace the suck, because it will always be a part of the process. Okay?
Next principle, you have to commit to the process of change. If you want to lose weight, let’s say you wanna lose 40 pounds, and all your energy is focused on 40 pounds, I gotta get to this goal weight by this date, I’m just, you know, kind of got to hit that 40 pounds, I got 40 pounds lose.
If you just focused all of your energy on this one long term goal, you’re just going to feel kind of miserable all the time. I’m just telling you right now from experience of helping people through this kind of thing and seeing people with these weight loss goals.
And I’m just telling you that it is a miserable place to be if all you’re focused on is hitting that goal. Because your weight changes, it fluctuates, it goes up and down. And it’s just sometimes the the date that we have for a goal isn’t realistic, you know, it’s like I’m gonna lose 40 pounds in the next 60 days. I don’t think that’s realistic. I mean, it might happen. But what if it doesn’t, then you’re just disappointed. So let’s just scrap all that out.
I want you to instead commit to the process of change. What does that mean? That means doing the stuff you need to do today, and just focus on that, focus on the process of change, focus on your plan, the steps that you’re taking.
What are you doing today to move yourself towards that goal? Are you skipping dessert? Are you eating more protein, doing a HIIT workout, lifting heavy weights, saying no to fried food and sugary treats? Yeah, do those things just focus on that be in the moment, focus on the process of change instead of the end result.
Because I’ll tell you what, you’re going to enjoy that process way, way more if you just focus on the process of change, okay. And when you do this, your goal becomes inevitable, it may take a little bit longer than you want, or it may not take as long as you think it just takes what it takes, we’re all different, but you’re going to enjoy the process so much more.
So just commit to that process of change and not focused all your energy on the end result. Which leads me to my next principle, which is the gap versus the gain, you’ve got to be focused on the gain, not the gap. So the gap, what is the gap? The gap is when you’re focused on where you’re not. So let’s say you want to lose those 40 pounds.
The gap is, you know that you have 40 pounds to lose, you have 40 pounds, that 40 pounds is the gap from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. And when all of our attention and energy is focused on what we don’t have, what we haven’t accomplished, how far we have to go, that is not a good place to be.
Because you’re going to get down on yourself, you’re going to feel frustrated, it’s going to feel like this is a never ending journey. And you’re just focused on the wrong thing. Instead, I want you to focus on the gain, what’s the gain?
The gain is every little success that you have along the way. When you focus on your little successes, and these could be oh, I lost a half a pound this week. Or it could be that my pants fit a little bit better. Or, oh, I can get into those shorts that I wore last, that I couldn’t wear last summer, you know, or I just feel like I have a lot of energy today. That’s a good thing.
When we focus on the positives on the gains that we’ve made along the way, we feel more motivated to keep going. We feel more confident that this is working. We’re no longer focused on what isn’t working. We’re focused on what is and it’s like just shifting into this whole new positive mindset instead of this negative one. So stop focusing on the gap, the gap doesn’t matter.
Focus on the gain, focus on those little things you do every single day that feel good and that move you inch by inch closer to that goal. You’re going to be much happier and enjoy the process much more if you do this, okay?
Okay, next principle, it’s okay to be the weirdo at the table. I love this one. Because we are so worried about trying to fit in, and please other people, and go along, just get along with everyone just do what everybody else is doing. Stop doing that. Okay?
If you’re somebody who is like working on their weight and trying to improve their health, and you’re not just not eating junk food, but you’re going out with some friends, and they’re all want to order a bunch of junk for dinner or something like that, or a bunch of alcohol or something, you do not have to go along with that.
If you choose in that moment, though, that everybody else is getting, you know, garbage food, you know, but you’re choosing to eat a salad or, or not have the drink when everybody else is drinking, you’re going to feel like you’re a little left out like you’re the outsider, like you don’t fit in.
They may even say something to you like, Hey, why aren’t you drinking? Hey, why aren’t you eating pizza like everybody else? You know, what’s wrong with you? Come on, just live a little, you get a little peer pressure going on there.
But they may just think you’re the weirdo at the table. And I want to encourage you to just be the weirdo at the table. It’s okay. Listen, you don’t want to be like everyone else. 88% of Americans suffer from some sort of metabolic dysfunction.
We’re talking overweight, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, all that stuff. These are all lifestyle diseases. And they call it metabolic dysfunction, or metabolic disease. You want to be in the 12%. The different the, the outlier, the weirdo, that is not like everybody else, okay? Just own it. Just own it.
Like be okay being the weirdo at the table. All right. Don’t be like everybody else. And we can’t please other people by our actions, you know, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, you could be the perfect person. And somebody’s not gonna like you. So it doesn’t matter, like, stop trying to please other people. It just doesn’t work. I wish it did. But it doesn’t.
Okay, next principle is this: the 90/10 rule. I love this one. I hope you do too. So we don’t have to do everything 100% perfectly. Nobody does, not even me, honestly. Instead, you’ve got to take a day off every now and then from your workouts or have a piece of cake or a piece of pizza every now and then.
Otherwise, you know, you might feel discouraged and miserable, we don’t want to be discouraged and miserable. So when I’m working with clients, I try to encourage them to follow the 90/10 rule when it comes to diet and even exercise, primarily diet.
That means that 90% or 90% of the time you are like on the money, you’re not eating sugar, you’re not eating a bunch of processed junk food, no fried food, no vegetable oil, nothing like that, right.
But then there’s that 10% of the time where you can have the cake, or a sugary treat, or some pizza or a beer or a doughnut or whatever, do what makes you happy. Right? If you can do this the right way, and this is very important, you have to be able to do this right where you can allow yourself to binge out on junk food because you have one donut gotta be able to practice restraint, right, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do cheat meals.
But if you can do this the right way, and you have a plan that you know is working for you 90% of the time, then this is something that might be sustainable for you. Right. So if we talk about 10% of your meals can be a little bit of a cheat meal kind of a thing. That means that we’re talking about one meal per week. That’s it.
So this isn’t a cheat day, this isn’t a cheat week or a cheat month. This is a cheat meal, like once a week. So I’ll tell you like and I don’t do this once a week, but probably once or twice a month I get like tacos, that’s my thing. I just love tacos full of chips and salsa and guacamole and, and I get tacos.
And so that is what I consider my cheat meal. I do that once every other week or something like that. And it makes it so enjoyable to live this way. You know because the other 90% of the tim my diet is on point. Right?
But then I get to you know, enjoy something that is hyper palatable food that’s Uber delicious. I know it’s not super good for me. But at the same time it’s so small the amount of tortilla chips that I eat versus you know how much good clean food I’m eating that it doesn’t have a big effect on me. Okay.
Which leads me to my next principle: Whatever you do, it has to be sustainable for you. That means that it has to be enjoyable for you, or else you won’t want to do it. And if you don’t want to do it, and it’s a miserable process, and you feel like you’re deprived all the time, you’re not going to stick with it.
Sustainability means that you have a plan that you follow for life, like this is not short term. This is for good, right? not temporary. This is just how you do things from here on out. Okay. So this has to do with the foods you eat, how you exercise, all that stuff.
So if you’re trying to follow some plan that says you can never have sugar again, in any form the rest of your life, and you have to run every single day. Like, to me that sounds terrible. Because there’s going to be a moment where I’m going to be like, oh, it’s like Christmas, I really want to have this Christmas cookie that my kids made for me or something.
Or, you know, I’m kind of tired. And I feel like I need to take a day off, but I can’t because I’m on this plan. Like that’s not sustainable. Right? So whatever you have to do, you have to enjoy it. And it has to be sustainable.
That’s why when I work with new people, we come up with a plan and we always have the discussion about what foods do you love. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about putting together a plan that includes a lot of those foods that you love, so that you’re more likely to stick with it.
Which leads me into my next principle, which is consistency beats perfection. Do not focus on perfection. Nobody does this perfectly. Instead, focus on consistent consistency. Over time, that’s what’s gonna get you there. That’s what’s gonna make a huge difference for you. Okay?
When you focus on perfection, you beat yourself up every time you go off the plan. And this leads to self doubt, and a lack of motivation and giving up on yourself. Instead, practice consistency, you make a plan, and then you stick to the plan even when you don’t feel like it. It’s that simple.
You don’t go ballistic on yourself if you mess up because you are going to mess up and it’s okay. Here’s a good rule of thumb to follow: never have two cheat meals in a row. Never miss two workouts in a row.
That means if you do have that one cheat meal that next meal, you are right back on plan again. That means if you missed that workout, the next scheduled workout you make that workout no matter what.
You know, maybe you didn’t feel like running because you were super tired. It’s not a big deal. But you got to hit that next workout no matter what. Same with the food plan, right next meal, you’re back on track. Consistency over time is what’s going to get you there because nobody does it perfectly. So don’t think you have to do it perfectly. And don’t think that anybody does it perfectly, because nobody does.
Alright, next principle is this, you have to take radical responsibility. So this means that you cannot be a blamer or a complainer. Most people have a very hard time sticking with some kind of a diet or exercise plan. And they will have all kinds of stories and reasons and excuses. And they will blame everything and everyone else for why they can’t stick to their plan.
I had a job change, or my hours changed at work, or my kids are home for the summer or my husband doesn’t eat the same foods as me or is too cold outside, or it’s too hot outside, or Mercury’s in retrograde or whatever. These are all just excuses. And I could go on and on. I’ve heard every excuse in the world, you know.
And I want to tell you to just stop it with the stories. Stop it with the reasons stop it with the excuses, stop blaming everybody else. Start taking radical responsibility for your own results or lack of results. If you want to lose weight, and you want to maybe run faster, and you really want this for yourself, then take the responsibility of doing the work to get those things. No excuses.
No more blaming anyone or anything that’s outside of you. If it’s to be it’s up to me. Have you heard that quote before? I don’t know who said that. But I love it. If it’s to be it’s up to me that means you got to do it. It’s your fault. If it works, it’s your fault. If it doesn’t work, it’s your fault. Just take responsibility, good or bad.
If you’re getting good results take responsibility. If you’re not, take responsibility. Don’t blame anybody else. So here’s the thing: when you start doing this, when you start taking radical responsibility for every result you’re getting or not getting in your life, it becomes a game changer.
This is like total freedom for you because you’re no longer allowing anything outside of you to control what you’re doing or not doing or stop you from becoming who you truly want to be. This is a very beautiful empowering place to be, okay? People who take radical responsibility, get results, period. Okay?
Next principle, coaching is only for people who can’t do it on their own. So this is actually a myth. This is not something that I want you to follow. But I want you to just hear me on this. I hear people talk about coaching. And they think that coaching means that it is only for people who have no willpower, no discipline, and who just can’t do stuff on their own.
And I just have to tell you, this is not true at all. I was always somebody who’s very disciplined, I trained for an Ironman Ironman on my own. I trained for a 50 mile race on my own, 100 mile race on my own, countless marathons, countless ultra marathons, all on my own. And I was fine with all that I did great with all that.
Now, there was a blind spot that I had, when it came to nutrition, I did not have a plan that was working for me, I didn’t know what to do. And I didn’t have anybody helping me. And I thought I could figure it out myself. And I just couldn’t, I tried everything. And I really couldn’t.
Nothing really clicked for me until I got some coaching. Once I got some coaching, I had a custom plan that was designed for me, I had a lot of say in how I wanted to make this work. And I began doing the mindset work I needed to do to make this a lifestyle. And that was never going to happen on my own.
I learned a lot of the mindset principles I’m sharing with you today from various coaches that I’ve worked with. And doing this inner work has been the game changer for me. And the other thing I have to tell you is that the best coaches have coaches.
I work with a lot of coaches, there’s a lot of people that are clients of mine who coach other people. Some of them coach them on health and nutrition and diet and running and exercise. Some of them are life coaches and things like that. The point is, though, the best coaches have coaches.
So coaching isn’t just for people who can’t do it on their own, coaching is for anybody that wants to improve, and that wants the help and the guidance and the support to basically make those results inevitable. Okay.
Which leads me to my next principle, which is this change happens from the inside out, right? It’s this inner work, these mindset principles I’m sharing with you today, for example, this is the inner work that you have to do, you cannot expect to change by simply like, Oh, I’m just going to run more miles or I’m going to eat, you know, these 10 foods.
Yeah, you’ll change temporarily, like some of that you might be able to lose some weight, if you change your diet a little bit. But permanent change, it’s a whole different thing, a whole different thing. You have to fix your mindset. If you want long lasting change to happen, you have to do the inner work.
That’s why so much of my coaching program is focused on this inner work, on the mindset work. Because change happens from the inside out, it doesn’t happen the other way around. It doesn’t happen from the outside in. It’s not like oh, I’m going to make all these changes and I’m going to lose this weight. And I’m going to run faster, I’m gonna get stronger. And then I’ll have this great mindset.
Nope, it happens the other way around. You improve your mindset. First, you adopt a powerful, successful mindset. And then you become powerful and successful because of that. Okay, so just remember that change happens from the inside out, not the other way around.
Alright, next principle is this: you need to become an emotional badass. So human beings, we are emotional beings. It’s normal and natural for us to experience a wide variety of emotions and we have emotions that we call negative and some that we call positive.
We love the positive emotions you know love joy, happiness, ecstasy, calmness, peacefulness. These are all what we would consider positive emotions. But we hate the negative ones, fear stress, anxiety, guilt, shame.
All these are what we would call negative emotions. And we love feeling the positive emotions but we try to repress the negative ones. We try to push them down. We numb ourselves out to those negative emotions. We don’t want to feel those things, emotions and feelings same things right. So we numb ourselves to those feelings.
And how do we do that? We use food, we use alcohol, we use shopping, sex, gambling, drugs, and on and on and on. There’s so many things, scrolling through social media as a way of numbing ourselves. The two most common ones, and the ones that I help people with a lot, are the food and alcohol.
Those are like the two kind of most common ways that we numb ourselves. So if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re eating, to make yourself feel better, you got to learn how to stop doing that you got to learn how to stop soothing yourself, or numbing yourself with food, or alcohol.
Because you’ve probably been using food as an emotional management tool for way too long and has to stop. If you want to become healthier, leaner, stronger, you got to change your whole relationship with food. So the real work actually begins when you stop using food as an emotional management tool, when you stop using food to numb yourself when you stop using food to feel better.
Now, you got to feel all these emotions, hmm, that does not feel good. That is the stuff that we actually have to deal with. So when I talk about becoming an emotional badass, that means that you have to get good at having those emotions and experiencing the feelings, that you have all of them without doing anything to make them go away without eating over them. And it sounds easy enough, right?
Okay, you stop emotional eating, you’ve got some emotions you’ve got to deal with, you just deal with those, and then you’re good to go. Sounds easy. But this is the work. This is the hard work and some of the hardest work that we do in the coaching project.
You know, I guarantee that most coaches out there and most programs out there are not going to help you in this area. Especially people that are helping runners and stuff like that, like it’s just not on their radar to help people in this way.
Most coaches don’t know how to help you stop the emotional eating and what to do instead, right. They, most coaches, are just like eat this, don’t eat that. Run this many miles, whatever. I do things a little bit differently, just so you know. So we have feelings. And we have to feel those feelings, we have to be able to feel them, we have to be able to process them, we have to be able to learn from them without eating because of that without drinking because of them.
And honestly, this is probably one of the most important life skills that you can and should learn. Because when you become an emotional badass, you’re no longer afraid to experience any emotion, positive, negative, whatever, like you’re, you’re just like grinding it all on, you become unstoppable. There’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing that you can’t accomplish.
Most people don’t want to try to lose weight because they’re afraid they’re going to fail. And then they’re going to feel bad about themselves. That’s why they don’t do it. They’re afraid they’re going to fail. And they’re going to feel bad about themselves. They’re afraid of a feeling they’re afraid of feeling that feeling.
But what if you weren’t afraid to feel the feeling? There’s just like, nothing you wouldn’t be willing to try. So you got to become an emotional badass, just know that. Okay. Next on my list of principles that every runner needs to know, is the idea of a fixed versus a growth mindset. A fixed mindset.
So this is where your brain and your mindset is basically fixed. This is who I am. This is how I’ve always done things. This is how I will continue to do things I cannot change. And end of story. And I’m being sort of funny about this, but so many people think that their mindset is fixed. That’s just, this is the way I do things.
Oh, I’ve got a sweet tooth. I’m an emotional eater. You know, I’m a stress eater, whatever. But you don’t have to be that way. You can change. But if you’re stuck in that fixed mindset, it is going to stifle your growth, it’s going to cause a lot of stress in your life. It does kind of let you off the hook though.
Because you don’t really have to do anything, or stick with anything because you’re never going to like get better or improve anyway. So you don’t really need to bother with any of that stuff. It basically keeps you stuck and small. The fixed mindset is not where you want to be. You want to adopt a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is like I’m always learning, I’m always growing. I’m always improving. I’m always becoming more. I’m always capable of growth. I’m always open to change and learning and growing. This opens you up to amazing new experiences and opportunities. It helps you to try new things even though you might fail. But you know that you can try because you might also succeed. And so why not just try?
So the growth mindset is one that you have to adopt, if you want to change. If there’s anything you want to improve in your life, you can’t do it with a fixed mindset, you have to have that growth mindset, okay? So you have to adopt that. And you will be able to accomplish great things in your life, right? But with that fixed mindset, you’re going to just kind of stay where you are, you don’t want that.
Alright, next principle is this. Taking aligned action is the key. So this means that you have to take consistent aligned action, if you want to create progress, what is consistent aligned action. So aligned action is actions that are in alignment with your long term goals.
So if you want to lose weight, one of your actions that would be in alignment with that goal is like, I’m just not going to eat ice cream for dessert every night, boom, okay, doing that action. In this case, it’s not doing something that is in alignment with who you want to be. And when you take consistent aligned action, you make progress, you’ll start to see the weight coming off of you. Cool.
Well, making progress helps you to build confidence, you’re like, Oh, I’m doing this, I can actually do this. And that confidence creates motivation to keep going and take more aligned action. And this is the cycle of motivation. This is the cycle that you want to stay in.
All right, taking consistent aligned action, making progress, building confidence, being motivated to continue to take more aligned action, that’s the cycle you want to be in. There is another cycle that most people kind of find themselves in, by the way, and this is the cycle of demotivation, where you take misaligned action, so action that is not in alignment with your long term goals.
I want to lose weight, but you know what, I’m going to eat twice as much ice cream every night for dessert. That would be called misaligned action. Misaligned action causes misaligned results or lack of progress. So you start gaining weight, you want to lose weight, but you’re gaining weight. And that lack of progress causes doubt and worry and uncertainty and a loss of confidence. And that lack of confidence causes you to be demotivated.
So you’re no longer motivated to keep going. So you just quit. Have you ever experienced that? And I know I have. But I want to tell you something. Just don’t do that. Take consistent aligned action. If you’re not taking consistent aligned action, ask yourself why?
Why am I not doing the right thing in this moment? Maybe go back to that intuitive, asking yourself intuitively, like what is right in this moment, okay, because you know, you know what’s right.
Next principle is this: never, ever, ever, ever give up. People who are successful at losing weight, know that it takes some time to get the results that they want. So they don’t quit when they have a weight loss stall or a plateau. They keep going day in and day out. They keep doing the work, they keep showing up for themselves. And they never give up no matter what. They’ve committed to the process of change, and they keep going no matter how long it takes.
What if you adopted this mindset around one key area of your life like weight loss? What could you accomplish? How much weight could you lose? If you just never quit? What if you applied this principle to every area of your life, you could transform yourself into a whole new person no joke.
So commit to becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And then never, ever, ever give up. You don’t quit when it gets hard. You don’t quit when you get tired. You only quit when you’re done. Okay.
Which leads me to my last principle, which is this there is no finish line, you’re never done. I hope this doesn’t bum you out. Really, I hope it doesn’t. But there is no finish line. This is a lifestyle. You know, weight loss, getting healthy, becoming our best selves isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to, there isn’t a finish line, you’re going to cross and then you’re going to be like, oh, cool, I can rest and relax now and eat whatever I want.
No, it doesn’t work that way. We commit to these principles. We commit to this lifestyle. And it is a lifestyle. It’s the lifestyle that we live our life from here on out. So there is no “done”. There is no finish line. We just keep going. We keep showing up for ourselves because it’s the right thing to do.
We keep improving and growing and evolving and becoming more because it’s the right thing to do. Because we want to constantly transform ourselves. We don’t want to stay where we are. We don’t want to be the same person in 10 years that we are today.
I don’t know about you, but I’m always growing and evolving and I couldn’t look back where I was two three years ago and go, gosh, I’m like a different person today. And it’s because I kept showing up for myself every single day. A day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year.
When you have this principle, there is no finish line that this is just the work we do and it continues. This is a game changer because this just becomes a part of your identity. Being healthy, exercising, eating right, it just becomes a part of your identity becomes part of who you are and what you do. It’s not a struggle. It’s not hard. You’re not missing out on anything. It’s just what you do. It’s who you are.
Okay, just remember, there is no finish line, this work continues. Okay. I hope you’ve enjoyed this three part series called Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know. You can really listen these three episodes anytime you need a little refresher course on what to do to kind of get yourself back on track.
Next week on the podcast, I’m going to be recapping my recent 12 hour ultra marathon, how I trained for it, my nutrition plan during the event, what went well, what didn’t go so well. lessons I learned and lots more. So that should be a fun one. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast and whatever podcast app you use so you never miss a future episode, okay.
And then if you’re a runner and you’re ready to lose the weight for good, then I have something that you need to check out, I put together a brand new free training program called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
I’ll teach you how to lose weight the right way and keep it off for good without the suffering and the deprivation or running a million miles a week. And just like you know, this is about more than just losing weight. It’s about not doing the same things over and over expecting different results.
It’s about changing your whole relationship with diets and nutrition and exercise. It’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself from the inside out. And it’s about changing your mindset and creating new habits that last for life.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, if you’re ready to run faster, run longer and become the healthiest version of yourself yet. Check out this free training, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. There’s never going to be a better time than right now to get started, that’s runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
6 months ago, Natasha Sorensen was a little frustrated with where she was physically, mentally, and even emotionally. She was 18 months post-partum with twins and found it difficult to lose the …
Continue Reading about 159. Always Becoming More with Natasha Sorensen →
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Patrick McGilvray
Hey there and welcome to episode 159 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Always Becoming More with Natasha Sorenson. So six months ago, Natasha Sorenson or Tash, was little frustrated with where she was physically, mentally, even emotionally.
She was 18 months postpartum with twins, and found it difficult to lose the weight she gained during pregnancy. She was also a very active person running and doing CrossFit regularly. But she couldn’t seem to make forward progress. Like she couldn’t break that cycle of emotional eating, for example, she knew she was capable of achieving more, but could never really stay consistent long enough to get there.
In this episode of the podcast, Natasha talks candidly about her mental and emotional struggles with eating right with being consistent and with going after big goals. Personally, I’m very inspired by Tasha and I know you will be too. And if you’ve ever tried and failed to lose weight on your own, you’ve probably felt like a lost cause. Like this is just never gonna work for you.
But I want you to know something, it’s not you. You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you, you can do it, you just need a few things in order to succeed. Specifically, you need knowledge, you need support, you need accountability, you need knowledge, you need to know what to do, you need to know how to do it, you need someone to guide you, you need a personalized plan. Right?
‘ve coached hundreds of runners on nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset. And I’ve helped them to become the healthiest versions of themselves. And I can help you too. You need support. If you want to accomplish anything big, you need support to help you get there to help you stay on track. You need people in your corner, people who understand what you’re going through, people who’ve been there themselves.
That’s why I include group coaching as well as one on one coaching in my program, I want to make sure that you have everything you need and all the support that you need to keep making progress to keep moving forward. And then lastly, you need accountability. You have to have someone there holding you accountable.
It’s one thing to say you’re going to stick to your food plan. Let’s say it’s quite another thing to have someone there holding you accountable for your actions. Accountability is really the key to making consistent forward progress towards your goals.
My unique weight loss coaching program for runners delivers all three all the knowledge, support and accountability that you need to crush your goals. Let’s work together and make 2023 your best year yet to learn more and apply just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
So, Tash is an inspiration to me. She was struggling for a while, mostly with the like mental and emotional side of things of eating, diets, nutrition, weight loss, she knew deep down that she was capable of becoming more, she had these goals that she wanted for herself, she just found it difficult to get there, she found it difficult to stay on track, you know, she would put together some consistency, she would lose a little bit of weight and get back again.
This cycle continued for quite some time, she found it very difficult to make any kind of progress. And one of the reasons why I find her story so inspiring is that she never ever gave up on herself. It was difficult for her at times. And she pushed through that. She knew that she had this amazing version of herself kind of lurking inside, right, and she just needed a little bit of help to let her out. Right?
And so in this interview today, she talks about her struggles with all this. She also talks about some of the amazing accomplishments. She’s had, in a very short amount of time, physical accomplishments around running and CrossFit, but also mental and emotional accomplishments, like completely changing her relationship with food and where she is today with all that.
So today, she’s committed to this process of always becoming more. And this is a concept that I think we all need to embrace. Always becoming more should be all of our goals. That should be your goal, should be my goal. It is my goal. It should be how you live your life. It should just be like who you are and what you do, and Tash embodies this concept beautifully.
I know you’re gonna love this inspirational conversation with Tasha Sorenson. Well today I am talking with Natasha Sorenson and you prefer Tash, right, you’d like to be called Tash?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
And today, we’re just going to kind of go through a little bit of your journey, because I think you were able to accomplish some pretty amazing things in the relatively short amount of time that you and I’ve been working together.
And every time I talk to you, it’s such a pleasure, and it’s so uplifting for me, because you are doing the deal, you know, like, you show up and you and you take instruction well, and you and you are very disciplined about what you do.
And then it’s obvious because you’re getting these amazing results. So I kind of want to talk a little bit about where you started and some of the things that you know you were struggling with. So give us a little bit of an idea of where you were six months ago, when you and I started working together and and what it is you were looking for some help with everybody that seeks out coaching or seeks out some help.
It’s because you’re struggling with some things, things aren’t working for you. And you need some help and some guidance. And so kind of give us a little bit of a feel of where you were at that time and what you wanted for yourself and what you were kind of struggling with.
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, okay. So six months ago, I would have been about 18 months postpartum with my twin boys. So that was a pretty epic life event for me. And I put on roughly, sort of 50-60 pounds during my twin pregnancy. And I think when we met, I was still holding on to, you know, roughly 30 of those pounds.
And that was despite going back to walking and running and CrossFit. And I think what comes in hand in hand with being a mum, and, you know, being a mom of twins is an amazing experience. But it’s also been amazingly difficult. And it triggered some pretty deep set, you know, postpartum depression and anxiety and I just really had a very hard time early on.
And my way of sort of dealing with those really big emotions is to basically just feed them and shove them down with food and really not deal with them at all. So in reality, I wasn’t dealing with those emotions at all, I was just eating over the top of them. And, in March, last year, I was, you know, I was doing a lot of walking, I was out sort of two hours a day walking with my twins in the pram and listening to a lot of podcasts, and I stumbled upon your podcast.
And I sort of binge through all of your episodes, because it really felt like you were speaking to me, it felt like basically, every episode you made was tailored to my situation. And, and, yeah, so I felt like there was this big change that needed to be made in my life.
I felt very stuck, when we met, and I didn’t know how to help myself, I had never really been in that position. Before I was I’ve always been very strong willed and, and I’ve, you know, been able to stay fit and healthy and achieve my goals with a fair amount of ease. And I just found myself in a really bad position. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and there was just a lot going on for me.
So I felt like this was the big change that I needed. I needed to address, address all of the important issues around being your best self. And that obviously included diet. And also, you know, for me running and and you addressed the importance of strength training in that learning journey.
But I think a really big one for me was addressing mental health and mental well being and really knowing why I was, you know, choosing to eat when I felt bad and why I would constantly sabotage myself constantly. And so I’d you know, I’d lose a few kilos here and there, but at the end of the day, it would never amount to anything and I’d go straight back to where I was before.
And this cycle had been going on for, you know, at least 18 months, but, you know, sort of leads back into my previous life before I was pregnant, pregnant as well. You know, I’d kind of always done this so there was a yo-yoing between good and bad situations, so I felt like receiving coaching with you is really going to help me address all of those aspects. But probably most importantly, it was going to, I was focused on resetting my mindset, and using my mindset to my advantage, rather than my disadvantage.
Patrick McGilvray
Hmm, that’s such a big thing, I want to touch on that a little bit here. So that mental and emotional piece is so important and so common. And so, you know, it’s so like, normalized, you know, because we all can relate to what you just described there, you know, yeah, but nobody wants to talk about it, you know, nobody wants to really address that issue.
And I work with a lot of runners and, and a lot of guys too, and a lot of the guys are like, oh, you know, I don’t have I don’t, I’m not an emotional person, you know, they don’t want to really talk about that, but they do some emotional eating, you know, they call it stress eating, or something else.
But it’s all the same thing, right? You’re eating because you want to feel better, or you’re stressed out, or you’re anxious, or you’re bored, or you’re lonely, or you’re tired, whatever it is, and you’re just using food as a way of, of feeling better and dealing with, or not dealing with the actual things that you’re feeling inside, you know, so if we can just like, if everybody would just like, admit that, like, we all do some type of emotional type of eating, then we can start to address it and start to look at it.
So you were keen on that early on to just say, like, hey, this is an issue and I’m struggling with this. And I think that was good to sort of admit that, you know, the other thing that is good about you and your approach to this and wanting to help is that you understood that it required a shift in your mindset. And it’s not just about, like, what do you do, because we all kind of know what to do.
Or we can, we can learn about what to do. But it’s a whole different thing to adopt a different mindset around all of this stuff. So that you change your default thinking, and you change your default feeling. And you change how you handle these different situations, whether it’s stress from work, or dealing with the kids or whatever it is, you know.
So you’re really good about that mindset is such a huge piece to all of this, whether you’re trying to lose weight or trying to, you know, win a CrossFit competition or, you know, PR your half marathon, or any emotional eating habit, you know, it’s the right mindset, with the right mindset, you are very powerful and capable of all kinds of things, which you’ve proven, you know, so I just want to address that.
And it’s so important that you looked at that and made that a priority for you of addressing that mindset piece and, and making that shift for you.
Natasha Sorenson
So yeah, I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from you is that this isn’t a game of willpower. You can go through the processes of, you know, eating right and, and getting out there and running. But at the end of the day, something’s going to challenge that. And if you don’t have the mindset to cope with that, then your willpower is eventually going to fail you. So yeah, I think mindset over, over just relying on pure willpower is really, really important.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So when you, when you start to make those, like really profound internal shifts, then the things that you’re doing externally become much easier, you know, developing good habits and things like that.
So, okay, so give us a little bit of an idea of what that process looked like for you, not just shifting your mindset, but making changes to, you know, your diet to how you looked at exercise, whether it’s running or CrossFit or whatever. So what were some of the things that were easy for you during this process, and what were maybe some things you struggled with?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, so I’d say I didn’t really struggle with the change in diet as much as I thought I would. I always felt really well nourished, and, and really satisfied. And I think the way that you taught me how to adopt this way of eating, meant that I was eating fairly intuitively. And, you know, I suppose we can revisit that concept, if you want to, but I certainly felt like, the initial fighting of the cravings. That was a tough gig.
And that lasted a few weeks, but I had kind of you’d set me up to expect that that was going to happen. And so I knew that if I could just push through that I’d be in a good place and really within a few weeks, I stopped craving, you know, all the sugar. And I was losing weight. So I was feeling great.
Probably the one doubt I had was what sort of effect the low carb eating was going to have on my training. And initially, I was like, I can’t handle it. And then I sort of started incorporating it into my training and trying to do my usual running and my usual CrossFit. And I felt pretty dreadful initially. So much slower, I felt sluggish, my legs were heavy in my runs, and everything just felt really hard.
And keeping my mind right to push through that it really was quite difficult. I think the things that worked to help me get through that, doing some faster training, and fasted running that helped, but I’d say sort of three to four weeks of feeling pretty average. Yeah, until I was sort of truly fat adapted.
And then suddenly, everything started ticking into place. And, my running improved. And I was able to lift heavier and I was managing my CrossFit sessions much easier. And, you know, I was doing better than even before I was pregnant. So I did see the gains. But getting to that place was really difficult. And I think that was a huge part of that was the coaching that I received in sort of the interim, of getting from one place to another.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that fat adapted process like getting your body used to burning fat really efficiently is, but you know, it’s a little bit of a struggle, it really is for everybody. And it’s like by design, because your body is like not getting the fuel source that it loves – sugar. And so you kind of deny that nice, easy fuel source. And it takes a little bit of time for your body to adapt, usually two to six weeks for most people.
You’re right in the middle there, three to four, something like that. But here’s the thing: a lot of people just give up when they try to do this, they give up because it is hard. I remember doing this, like I got fat adapted years ago. And I remember like getting on these forums and Facebook groups and like saying, like, how long is this supposed to last because I feel like crap.
And it just, it’s continuing, it’s not letting up like I just can’t seem to. And people in these groups were telling me just like, stick with it, it’ll get better. And eventually did it for some reason, like when maybe it was because of the amount of carbs and sugar I was eating at the time. But it took me a long time, like eight weeks to get fat adapted.
And then I, you know, went back to the normal carb, high carb diet sometime after that. Second time I got fat adapted, which was three, four years ago. Again, it took me like eight weeks. So I’m just one of these. I’m a long study, I guess.
So imagine putting up with that. Running and struggling for eight weeks. I mean, that’s a lot, you know. So three to four weeks is no big deal. But here’s the other thing. I wasn’t doing it right, because I didn’t have the kind of guidance that you have, like, I’ve got a lot of experience helping people with this.
So I understand some things that kind of speed up the process a little bit. So that helps, you know, I don’t know anybody really that I’m working with that has taken that long – eight weeks. That’s really on the extreme end. So you’re welcome and I took one for the team there. Thank you.
I think yeah, something else you mentioned, I just want to touch on really quickly, which was those cravings. So a lot of times we think, okay, running sucks, right now, this is hard, I’m having all these cravings. And really, you just want to quit, right? You just want to just like why am I doing this? You know? How long did it take for those cravings to sort of, you know, fade away to where you really didn’t really experience those anymore?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I’d say at least two weeks, but maybe even as long as three weeks I was still you know, like I could go for a block of chocolate right now but uh, you know, as the process went on, it got much easier to just say no. And I gave up drinking in that early stage as well. And I was just astonished that I found it so easy to just say no, I really explored the psychology behind drinking with you and why we do it and you know, it’s very similar I suppose to why we eat sugar and, and just a matter of making us feel better and making us feel part of some sort of social etiquette. But I found that I really just didn’t need it, as much as I thought I did, not to de-stress at least, if anything, it made me more stressed. So, yeah, very interesting to just explore that, something I’ve never really done before.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and those cravings for sugar, you know, a lot of people have a heart, a lot of people have a hard time losing weight, because they, the cravings are very intense at the beginning. And so a lot of people again, they give up, you know, but if you can get through those first couple of weeks, they get, they get much easier, much easier.
Yeah, and drinking is interesting, because it’s one of those things that is very detrimental to our health and performance, it really is. So if you’re a runner, and you’re an active person, drinking alcohol, even a few drinks per week is going to diminish your performance, it’s going to affect you kind of profoundly, and if you’re trying to get fat adapted, if you’re trying to like keep your body burning fat, that alcohol just shuts down that whole process.
So people that have a hard time losing weight, or maybe their athletic performance isn’t where they want it to be, you know, try not drinking for a period of time. But again, there’s that social, that mental, emotional, social piece that you talked about, which is like, it’s hard to do. It’s hard to like be around friends and family who are all drinking and not drink.
It’s hard to be around friends and family and everybody’s eating pizza and ice cream and chocolate bars and not partake in that. Yeah, but it’s not impossible, you know, we can do that. And, and if you want to be a healthy person, maybe it’s worth being the kind of weird one at the table for a while.
But okay, so let’s fast forward just a little bit. So you got through this kind of transition period where the cravings were there. And then they kind of went away. The running was really hard. CrossFit was hard, but then they started to get better. And then what kinds of improvements did you start to see after that? So now that you’ve like done the hard work, you’ve gotten through that really challenging phase of getting fat adapted? What kinds of improvements did you start to see?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I just want to mention that I think a pivotal part of getting through those first few weeks was not only the one-on-one coaching that I do with you, because I was able to sort of debrief those situations as and when I needed to. But the group coaching was very effective in dealing with that, like speaking to other people that have been through that initial process and sort of had some success. That was reassuring.
And, and I think very important for me, that sort of camaraderie of like other people that knew what you were going through, but it had successfully sort of got to the other side. So I think, like you said, you did the hard work, hard work. And I think that a lot of people in that, when if they’re trying to do this alone, that self doubt is usually going to get the better of them, and they’re gonna give up.
So having both you and the other sort of students, I suppose, to fall back on, that’s been a really important part of the success, I think, in terms of how things just sort of started to improve for me after that. So I’ve lost, I’m closing in on if not already there, 20 pounds. And I’m almost, you know, I’m pretty much back at what I was pre pregnancy, if not, maybe even a little better.
I’ve certainly lost body fat and increased sort of lean muscle mass. I’ve lost as much as 10% body fat. So while I may sort of be heavier on the scale, than I was pre pregnancy, I feel like my body composition overall is just astoundingly better than what it was before.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s really what we want. It’s not necessarily like about the some number on the scale. It’s about getting healthy, getting strong and feeling good.
Natasha Sorenson
And my clothes, you know, they fit the same. So I think, really, it’s a lot of the time it’s about nonmetric successes as well as it is the scale. And so even though like in that sort of weight loss process, I did hit a plateau or two along the way. It honestly didn’t bother me because I was making a lot more progress in sort of other areas of my life. So my running, was regularly doing 5k sort of Time Trial style. And my 5k time went from 31 minutes, sort of the middle of last year to 23 minutes. And I was running that with a double pram and toddlers.
Patrick McGilvray
Kids in the pram and yeah, 23 minute 5k?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah. And like, I wouldn’t have been, I don’t think I would have been capable of that pre pregnancy. So like, I just, maybe even when I was 25, I would have been capable of that. And I ran my first half marathon after you know, sort of a few years, I’d say three or four years and I ran that fasted with just electrolytes. And I beat my previous time by about five minutes.
I entered my first trial run, because you inspired me to give trail running ago, and that was at the end of last year, and I, my first trail run, I got a podium. Just like, I don’t even recognize the person that I am. I did a slightly longer one over the weekend, last weekend gone, and I placed fifth in that one. So just my running has just like, taken off in ways that I didn’t know it was possible.
And I mean, I’m certain that that’s because I’m leaner and fitter and stronger. But also I trust myself to take those leaps of faith and my confidence has come through in leaps and bounds because I’ve attended to the mindset as well as the, you know, the physical and the mental stuff.
Patrick McGilvray
I want to talk about running just for a second here because Yeah, a couple of things that I think are interesting. One is that you are fitter and stronger, and leaner. Yes, but running has improved substantially for you. You know, and it’s because you’ve done the hard work, you’ve you’ve, you know, shifted how you kind of train a little bit.
But I think, you know, from a fuelling standpoint, I wanted to touch on that, which is like, you’re doing a lot of these runs without fuel, like you’re not you don’t need to, you know, carb up and carb load and do all the stuff before you take on a half marathon or fast 5k. Like, you can just do it with very minimal or zero fuel and still perform exceptionally well, if you’re winning or taking the podium or whatever, you know, kind of accomplishments. I mean, amazing. You’re doing amazingly well.
So how does that feel like how does it feel to run? Because it’s very counterintuitive to what, you know, a lot of the running community will tell you out there. Yeah, I think it’s an amazing feeling like how does that feel for you?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like mind blowing. I, you know, six months ago, if you’d told me that I could run my fastest 5k. And like, I think in like almost 10 years, fasted, then with a double pram, like, I would have laughed at you, really. So it’s quite amazing. And, you know, like, I think a point that you’ve driven home for me as well is that low carb doesn’t mean no carbs.
And really, we can use carbohydrates to our advantage. So if there is a really important race coming up, or, you know, with my CrossFit camps, I can have half a banana or, you know, you’ve we’ve picked out some sort of better tailored gels to low carb eating, and you can use those and they really have an effect, because they’re not just like, an everyday piece of your of your diet.
And so they give you just like this propulsion of energy, that your body is just like, wow, but actually, so much of the time you can get that just from, you know, having a glass of electrolytes. I think, an enormous part of the sort of low carb life is making sure that you’re well hydrated and your electrolytes are topped up all the time.
I feel like it’s this hack that nobody really knows about. How important salt is in the body and being well hydrated. It’s almost like you know, like, yeah, like a biohack in terms of the energy I can give you for just a standard workout. I always feel better when I’m optimally hydrated. And I think that’s when you are eating low carb, it’s very easy to become dehydrated. So yeah, that answers your question.
Patrick McGilvray
No, yeah, that’s perfect. So, it’s just so interesting because people think that if you’re not using all the sugar and gels, or herbs to run, like, you’re just not gonna be able to perform at your best, and you’re just living proof that you can.
Natasha Sorenson
I come from a triathlon background, I can’t tell you. It’s like just the amount of carbohydrates I used to eat, just sort of all day every day. And the gels and the, you know, just crazy, crazy amounts in the hundreds of grams of carbohydrates a day. Whereas now I’m, you know, probably sitting around 50, although, like I said, I’m very intuitive about that I don’t count carbs, low carb, I’ve kind of found what works for me in that in a range that I can easily find without looking at what the carbs are in each item of food.
And as long as I sort of maximize my protein, I think protein’s really important. That’s another lesson I’ve learned from you; protein, you basically can’t have too much. And, and yeah, I just, I can’t even believe how I used to eat. And I’m really getting not only getting the same results as I would have when I was doing that, but better results than when I was doing that. And I’m maintaining my health. And, you know, my physical appearance is not important, but my sort of like physique far easier than I was when I was fighting 500 grams of carbs today.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, yeah, because yeah, your body’s fighting against that process right there. All that sugar intake. So running improves this substantially it sounds like. Have you tried doing one of those 5k’s without pushing the twins?
Natasha Sorenson
I’m going to, I’m actually going to, I’m thinking of trying it this weekend. Make my hubby take the pram and we’ll see. My PB when I was about 23 is 22 minutes and like, a few seconds, so you’re gonna be maybe I’ve got it in me.
Patrick McGilvray
You’re gonna beat that. I mean, I can just I can just tell you’re gonna be faster.
Natasha Sorenson
if it doesn’t happen now. It will happen over I, I honestly didn’t think it would have happened ever again. You know, six months ago. So it’s nice to have the confidence to think that I can maybe do it again.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, you can absolutely do it. Yeah, I have no doubt. So let’s talk a little bit about CrossFit. How long have you been doing CrossFit? And kind of where have you been? And what were you able to accomplish in CrossFit? Because CrossFit is a whole different ballgame. It’s a more high intensity type of exercise and it’s really focused on strength, you know? So when we talk about fat burning, a lot of people think oh, yeah, that’s great for, you know, the long slow running old they think ultra runners or whatever. But what about for high intensity exercise like CrossFit? is it applicable?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I mean, it’s absolutely applicable. And while in the same breath that those early few workouts and now would have been, it would have been maybe a handful workouts, like, 5 to 10 workouts that I was like, oh, I feel heavy and sluggish. Now, I don’t even I don’t even think about it.
I’ll go in the morning and do fasted workouts or, you know, sometimes in the afternoon I’ve even done one meal Monday and gone and done a CrossFit workout. That was like, one of my most epic workouts. I just felt amazing the whole way through it, and I hadn’t eaten all day. I haven’t eaten in like 24 hours. And I’m not to say that, you know, that’s a necessary part of the lifestyle.
I was just sort of playing around at that stage, but I just don’t think, yeah, you certainly don’t need absorbent amounts of food to fuel those workouts. In terms of you, like I said, it’s really strength based. I mean, it’s an overall program where we try and be good at many different things. But it’s got a huge strength base component where they do a lot of Olympic lifting, and I’ve basically PB’d all of my lifts in that component of the sport.
So you know, deadlifts and squats, cleans and snatches, I’m lifting heavier than what it was, even before I was pregnant. And I was, admittedly, still quite new to CrossFit, pre pregnancy, like, I’d only been doing it maybe eight to 10 months. But I wasn’t foreign to the concept of lifting heavy weights. It was just, I was taking on CrossFit as a new way of exploring that.
And, yeah, I mean, I just, I still, I see improvements every day. And I think that’s the beauty of CrossFit is that it’s always about how much you challenge yourself. And there’s always somewhere to go and grow and be better. And even stuff that I thought, I’ll never be any good at that, particularly the gymnastics.
So now that I’m leaning down, I’m finding I’m actually able to do movements that I thought, I’ll never do that. That’s ridiculous. Like, I’m a 35 year old woman, I’m never gonna do that, like, and now, here I am, like, I can do, I can do some of them. And I’m seeing I’m like, hey, I can do that last week, or I can do that last month. And it’s just, yeah, I think, again, it’s gone. It’s given me the confidence to try to try these completely different things.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you had a CrossFit competition not too long ago. When was that?
Natasha Sorenson
In November, and it was my coach kind of pushed me to just give it a go. And they entered me into the beginners category, just simply because there’s a lot of stuff in both the intermediate and obviously, the, they call it the fire breathers category, or the RX category that I wasn’t able to do.
And if you’re not capable of doing the movements, well, you’re not going to do any good. So you entered me and beginners, and I found it incredibly challenging, but I placed fourth overall, in fact, for maybe the first half of the weekend, I was on the podium. But that’s okay. I mean, I was just astounded to even be up there at all.
And I’ve got another one coming up in about two weeks time, with a slightly different format, where the first two days you compete, the whole group competes together, and they seed you into a category based on your performance in the first two days. And then the third day you compete in the category that they seed you into. So it’ll be interesting to see where I kind of fall as the natural progression of my capabilities and my ability to lift and do the gymnastics and do the cardio.
Patrick McGilvray
And yeah, six months ago, did you see yourself like on the podium for CrossFit competition or for these runs that you’ve been doing?
Natasha Sorenson
No way, no way. And it’s done so much for me. Not only, you know, physically, but I’ve just said a different, much more lighter person. I really believe in myself. And that’s following through into a lot of other aspects of my life, including my professional and my academic life. So yeah, I think it’s been a really important process. And it’s just nice to believe in yourself. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m, I don’t ever feel like I’m going to be at the Olympics or be at the CrossFit Games, but it’s just nice to succeed in your own little world, you know?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And when you talk about being a little bit lighter, I mean, I think you mean like, mentally and emotionally, right?
Natasha Sorenson
Yes, yes.
Patrick McGilvray
Physically, too?
Natasha Sorenson
Certainly, I think everybody in my life can tell that I’m, I’m just a happier, mentally stronger person.
Patrick McGilvray
And it’s so interesting how these types of changes bleed over into all different areas of our lives. So this isn’t just about running. This isn’t just about CrossFit, or, you know, low carb or anything like that. Like these are all just, you know, tools.
Really, these are all things that we do because we love them. And we feel amazing when we do them. And it makes life better. You know, when we’re taking care of ourselves, and when we’re becoming that healthiest version of ourselves. We are better in relationships, we’re better with our kids, we’re better at work, you know, so there’s all these things that bleed into other areas of our life. There’s this ripple effect, right, that happens. And then I’m assuming that the people around you are, you know, probably feeling better too and stressed out and those relationships improve, and work improves and all those good things, right?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of my sort of main reasons for taking this on was so that I could be a better mom to my boys, and more present an emotionally stable mum so that I could help them be, you know, emotionally stable and grow in a healthy way, and teach them how to be physically active and eat well, but also be more present and emotionally stable wife.
And I think, coming back to those reasons, every time there’s like a moment of doubt, or things haven’t gone my way for a day, or I’m just not feeling well, you know, coming back to those reasons has been really important, because they’re always more important than eating a block of chocolate or, you know, a piece of cake, or they’re always more important. Yeah. And so I guess that goes back to mindset.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, a big piece of that mindset is having that very powerful reason why you’re doing this stuff. And like you always had that Northstar sort of guiding you. And when you have that, it makes it a little bit easier to get up in the morning and hit the gym, or put on the running shoes and do a workout. Or to not eat the chocolate bar, not drink the wine, because you have these higher, there’s a kind of a higher purpose to this, you know, and I love this idea of sort of the ripple effect.
And part of my mission is to, you know, be an example of what’s possible to help other people like you become an example of what’s possible. Now you’re spreading that to your sphere of influence, you know, the people in your life, you’re showing them what’s possible. And hopefully, you know, you’ll touch other people’s lives.
And so we have this really awesome ripple effect that we’re creating here of, positivity of mindset of, you know, mental and emotional health and well being of you know, eating right and feeling good and being healthy. And being a healthy, strong, fit human being in all areas of our lives. So I love this. I love your story. And I love your progression here. And I love the things you’ve been able to accomplish. And you’re such an inspiration, you really are.
Natasha Sorenson
Thank you, I owe it to you. But thank you, I’m really happy with how things have gone for me.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So give me an idea of what’s next for you to hash. So you’ve got you know, you talk about doing this 5k, maybe getting that personal best, right, without, without the pram without pushing the kids. So what else is on the list for you for this year?
Natasha Sorenson
Um, well, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet that I want to do an ultra. So I’m going to try a 50k ultra marathon in July, end of July. And I’ll do a marathon in the sort of LEED AP as part of my training, I’m gonna go and do the Gold Coast marathon on the east coast of Australia with my sister.
That probably won’t be sort of like a targeted run where I’ll, I’ll try and get my most amazing marathon time, just because I’ll try and sort of roll it into my training, which might just be mostly easy, especially if I’m running sort of 42k in preparation for a 50.
But yeah, I’m just really looking forward to changing it up and a completely different terrain. I’m strictly a road runner up to this point. So gonna finish the Perth summer trail series, and they’ve got a winter one as well, where I can sort of dabble a little bit more in that. And I’d like to do quite well in this up and coming CrossFit competition, but potentially at the end of the year. I’ll repeat the one that I did.
And I know that I’ve already admitted this to you, but it always feels a little bit strange, but I’d really like to win it. So we’ll see. Yeah, that’d be that’d be cool. Even just on the podium would be good. I feel like fourth kind of was like, a bit crappy. But um, but yeah, just I just want to see how much I can achieve in a year and really, I feel like it’s going to be enormous. So not not unachievable. I just need to have some faith in myself.
Patrick McGilvray
When was the last time you ran a marathon?
Natasha Sorenson
2019.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so not that long ago.
Natasha Sorenson
So I mean, realistically, it was probably safe to say that I could probably beat my time. Yeah, I mean, it’s possible. It’s very possible.
Patrick McGilvray
Do these goals scare you a little bit? Do they feel a little bit? Outside Your Comfort Zone?
Natasha Sorenson
I feel very uncomfortable.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, saying like, okay, I’m making this declaration that I’m going to win this CrossFit competition. That’s it. That’s a little scary.
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, it feels a little top heavy. So we’ll see. But, like I said, I definitely don’t think it’s unachievable. I just need to stay dedicated to the cause. And if I keep seeing the improvement in my, you know, week to week progressions at CrossFit, and my running, then the sky’s the limit, really. I’m excited. And I think, you know, even if it doesn’t happen, the progress I make over the course of the next year trying to achieve it will be rewarding enough in itself.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, cool. Yeah. And like, let’s say you don’t, you know, win the thing this year, there’s always next year, you know, there’s, so we’re not, we’re not really like focused on, oh, I have to accomplish this by this date. But it’s like setting goals for ourselves, and wanting to improve. And in setting this goal of winning this CrossFit comp, if that’s the goal that you have in your mind. And that’s the goal that you’re constantly working towards. Eventually, you’ll get there as long as you don’t quit.
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like this is going to be a long term thing for me, I’m always going to be chasing something different, something that’s going to push me out of my comfort zone. And that’s like a really exciting part of my life.
Patrick McGilvray
Do you feel like this whole, you know, shift that you’ve made and your diet and exercise and all this? The low carb lifestyle, whatever we want to call it? Do you feel like this is something that is sustainable for you, and something that you can do going forward pretty easily? Or is it a little bit of a struggle still?
Natasha Sorenson
No, absolutely. I don’t find it hard at all. In fact, if I will never go back to what it was before. Never. It is not worth it, in my mind, not for anything. In fact, if anything, I want to just try and yeah, just I want to say, influence those around me. I’m not really about shoving stuff on people, though. But already my husband, you know, he eats like I do. And he’s seen changes, I’d like to influence my little carb eating gremlin children. But that’s a process I may tackle a little bit later. But yeah, I don’t struggle with it at all. And I really can’t ever imagine going back to what it was before because nothing feels as good as distance.
Patrick McGilvray
Love that. And one thing I’ve learned over the years, is that you cannot force your agenda on anybody else. All we can do is just lead by example, just be a good example. Eat healthily, you know, your fitness will improve, your health improves, your mood improves, you lose weight, you look better, you feel better. People see that. And then they’re like, Wow, maybe I’m maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I should make some changes here too. But anytime we try to try to get people on our agenda, it just doesn’t work. Nobody wants to do so.
Natasha Sorenson
And I don’t want to be part of that process, either. So it really is, I think it really needs to come from you. You need to be ready to take it on because otherwise it’s just gonna fail.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you have to be ready to change. Have to be ready. Yeah. Love it. So anything else you want to share any other takeaways from this whole experience for you?
Natasha Sorenson
Um, I mean, I guess for anybody else that that’s sort of in this position where they’re on the fence. They’re thinking about doing something like this to just do it. And, particularly from a place of mother. Your body is not it’s, it’s not over. Like, it felt like it really was for me, I felt like my best days had come and gone.
And my mom bod was just going to be weighing me down for the rest of time, both physically and emotionally, and, and I really, I can’t believe how much I’ve changed my body in the last six months and, and if anything, it is stronger and better than it was before I had my kids.
And that’s, you know, for a few other reasons in terms of like I carried and birthed two babies. Not much can be harder than that. But I think, I think, yeah, just it doesn’t have to be the end for you, you really can make a comeback and you can be your best self in spades. And, you know, for the guys out there. And non mums, this process is the same.
You really can be your best self, but it requires dedication. And it requires an all in effort for all aspects of your life. But it is achievable to cook the right food as it is achievable to be in social situations where you have to deny what other people are eating or drinking. And drinking is obviously a personal choice. But it’s very, very achievable. And accomplishable.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Love it. Well, thank you so much for being here and just kind of sharing your experiences and your story. Like I said before, you are an inspiration.
Natasha Sorenson
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Honored to. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
And it’s just such a pleasure to see the progress and to see the accomplishments and to see the way you’re handling all of this with such grace, you know, and just like, yeah, you’re laughing, but from where I’m sitting, that’s the way I see it. And I know, it’s been challenging for you at times, but really, you’ve just shown up and, and been very disciplined about all this and it’s gotten easier for you. And I just love the whole like sustainability for you that this is something that you’ve really eased into and feel like it’s something that is very sustainable for you going forward. I love it. So great, great stuff. Thank you so much. Tash.
Natasha Sorenson
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Patrick McGilvray
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I think we can all agree that children need to play. Play is crucial for their brain development and their mental and emotional growth. But what about us adults? Should play be abandoned once we …
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 151 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the importance of play. I think we can all agree that children need to play. Play is crucial for their brain development. Play is crucial for their mental growth and for their emotional growth.
But what about us? What about us adults? Should play be abandoned once we reach adulthood? The short answer is no. Play should continue for everyone, no matter what age. But why, why is play so important? Why should we make play part of our everyday life? What does it even mean to play? What does play even mean for us adults, right?
So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into the importance of play, and hopefully inspire you to integrate more play into your day to day life. But first, a quick question for you to ponder. Who are you becoming? Who are you becoming? It’s a very valid question, right? But have you ever really thought about it? Have you ever really taken the time to paint a picture of who you want to be in the future, the future you?
What does the future you look like? How do you feel about yourself? What have you accomplished? Where are you in the future? That may seem impossible for where you are right now in your life. This is one of the very important exercises that I do with all of my coaching clients, we paint a very clear picture of who they want to be, who do you want to be?
And then we put together a plan to get you there. If you’re ready to get started becoming that future, you that healthiest and most badass version of you, then you are ready for some coaching, you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. This is my unique weight loss health and fitness coaching program for runners where the project is always you.
So to learn more, go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started. You and I will jump on a quick call. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, boom, we’ll get you in, we’ll get you started right away. Okay, runningleancoaching.com/apply and hope to see you in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, so the importance of play. This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for some time. And I recently spent an entire week in Disney World, which is the happiest place on earth, apparently. And I grew up in LA. So I grew up in the LA area and spent a lot of time going to Disneyland as a kid even as an adult. And it’s one of my favorite things to do to just go and have fun and play.
And I’m going to talk more about my experience at Disney later in this podcast. But it got me thinking that you know, play is something that we abandon as we become adults, and it’s something that we should not abandon. That’s something we need to embrace on a regular basis. So it really got me thinking about why is play on board and for us as adults like why should we be engaging in more play?
Why should we incorporate more play into our life? And so that’s what I’m focusing on today. And I will talk about my experience at Disney World, which was my first time ever there and had so much fun. It just took me back to my childhood and I had such a great time. But here’s the thing, why is play so important.
Why is play important for kids, first of all. So, you know, like I said at the beginning here that for children. Play is important. It’s really important for kids’ brain development. It’s important for them to learn how to connect and interact with others. It helps them to express their creativity and to learn how to be creative and helps them to express their unique self and to be more self aware and aware of others. It helps to nurture Critical Thinking in children.
Healthy play time for kids leads to healthy adulthood. Okay, so we all know that that play is so important for kids, we integrate it into their day to day life. You know, we make recess and free play part of their schooling. Like, we know that this is important for kids.
But at some point, we take all of that and we abandon it because we’ve quote unquote, like become adults, like, what does that even mean to become an adult? Just because you turn 18 or 21? Or 25? What is that? What’s the cut off for playing as adults?
And I’m here to tell you that never is the cut off for playing. For adults, we never outgrow the need for play in our lives. Okay. So some of the reasons why we want to continue playing as adults is that it helps to continue just like it does with kids. It helps us to connect with others and helps us to build healthy relationships with other people.
It helps us to release endorphins, and dopamine, and all the good feeling hormones, it helps us to reduce stress, it helps improve our brain functionality. It helps us to improve our memory, and stimulate creativity. It helps us to feel young, and energetic play just gives us a feeling of youthfulness and energy. And it actually stimulates brain cell growth in adults.
And if you want to live a long and healthy life with a functioning brain, and cognitive function, then you need to continue to play in your everyday life. Why would we ever stop doing this? There are really no downsides to play. There’s nothing negative about it. And I’ll talk about that in just a minute here, like what play is and what it is, and are you doing it wrong.
Because there’s a right way and a wrong way to play. But think about all of these positive health benefits of play, especially for the aging adult. And if you’re finding your life is full of stress, and you’re finding it hard to be in a positive state of mind on a regular basis, then maybe play is the answer for you. Why would you stop playing with all these positive benefits?
Okay, so let’s get into what play is and what it isn’t. So play has to be something that is done. For the sake of play, it has to be done for its own sake, the act of playing, engaging in play is more important than any kind of outcome that you’re seeking. Okay. So I know that most of the people listening to this podcast are runners and if you’re a runner, and you’re like, Yeah, my idea of play is to run a 5k every weekend and crush everybody else out there and beat my time every single time and if I don’t beat myself up, and I get I’m really hard on myself and I work out really hard in order to crush all these competitors every weekend.
If that’s your idea of play. I don’t think you’re doing it right. Okay, I think that might be fun, competitive. Sports are fun. But they’re not necessarily play. If you like to play poker, let’s say, and you enjoy playing cards and you have fun playing a competitive card game every now and then. That’s all good. And that might be considered play. But if you’re a gambling addict, and your only goal is to hit some huge jackpot and you know you’re blowing through all your life savings, then that’s not play. That is not play, that is something completely different. Okay.
Family Game Night, family game night. Oh my gosh, it’s so much fun, right? It’s play as long as your goal isn’t to dominate every other person in the room and make other people cry. If somebody’s crying at the end of the night, and feelings are hurt, and that may not be play, it may be something you’re taking a little too seriously.
Okay, so play can be competitive. Play can involve tactics and strategy, and you can want to win and you can want to crush a 5k but if it’s causing more stress and anxiety for you, then I don’t think you’re doing it right. Play should cause you to feel more relaxed, it should feel like you should get that release of endorphins and dopamine and it should actually feel good and you should walk away from play. Feeling better, not worse. If you’re feeling worse, you might be doing it wrong. Okay.
Now there is an author of a book called Play Dr. Stewart Brown. And he’s been studying play for forever. And he outlines five different types of play that he’s observed during his years of research. Now there’s more than these five types, but I’m going to go through the five that he talks about, because I think it’ll give us a better picture, it’s a good way of explaining what types of play we can engage in.
Okay, so the first type of play that he talks about is rough and tumble play, which is a good way for us to learn, like, if you’re learning how to, you know, hit a baseball or, you know, playing games, like kickball or dodgeball, or soccer, those kinds of things.
Even you know, swimming and diving and capture the flag, you know, kickball, these are all fun, rough and tumble types of games that we can play. And they help us with, you know, mastering something physically like becoming a good diver and learning how to do a triple flip or something like that, like, that’s a great way of engaging in rough and tumble play.
Then there is another type of play, he calls ritual play, which is things like board games, and chess. And this would be like more activities and sports with certain structures and, and rules, you know, basketball and football and soccer and baseball and those kinds of things. It’s also ritual play, when we are creating and strategizing and designing and engaging in activities that bring different people together for a common purpose or a goal.
Then we have imaginative play. So this is the kind of thing where you are storytelling, drawing, acting, taking an improv class painting, these kinds of things are all imaginative play.
Then we have body play. Body play is what a lot of us kind of, in this community tend to gravitate towards. So this is, you know, where we do things like you know, running and hiking, and Pilates and yoga and riding roller coasters and climbing mountains and surfing and, and maybe snorkeling, these are all things that we can do to use our body as a way of just getting out and having fun and playing. Okay?
Again, if we’re getting too competitive with it, it may not be considered play. And if the outcome is more stressful, it may not be play. So just be mindful of that.
And then there’s object play, which is building things like with Legos and making a fort out of the couch, having a snowball fight, designing things, these can all be like object play. So there are many, many ways of play, there’s many categories of play, we can all find things that we can relate to and that we can gravitate towards.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. But just be thinking about the types of activities that you’re engaging in. How are they making you feel? Are you feeling more rejuvenated and more connected to others? And less stressed out when you’re engaging in this play? Or are you feeling more anxiety and stress and actually feeling resentful of others because you lost and they won or something like that, you see what I’m saying there is a very, pretty stark difference, and you’ll know it when you see it. Okay.
So there’s all these ways that play, and a lot of the things that I just mentioned can help improve your cognitive function, how having the ability to deal with stress better, improving your creative thinking, having this childlike exuberance, about life, laughing more often, far into adulthood. Like, these are some of the most important things you can do for your health, for your physical health, for your mental and emotional health. And I would say for your fitness too, because you know, being in a state of chronic stress, it’s going to be really hard on your body.
And if you want to improve your body and improve your body composition, you’re somebody that’s trying to, you know, maybe get leaner and get stronger. Being in a state of chronic stress is going to thwart that progress. It’s going to make it so hard for you to make progress, losing weight and getting fitter. So play can be one of those things that reduces stress and eliminate stress from your life really helps to keep you sharp.
It helps to keep you functioning at a high level and helps you to grow mentally, emotionally, physically. And it’s so good at reducing stress, right? So why wouldn’t you want to engage in play all the time. So, let’s talk a little bit about my week. I’m excited to sort of share some of this with you, because I had so much fun.
So like I said, at the beginning here, I’m a Disneyland person, like, I grew up in LA, and I grew up going to Disneyland, and I have very fond memories of Disneyland. And it was always just one of those places that we went to as kids, my parents would take us there, we only lived about two hours away from there. So we would go there.
And, you know, every summer and I just have so many great memories from being at Disneyland. So, you know, I was talking to my girlfriend about it recently. And we just decided that for my birthday, this year for my birthday. About a week ago, we decided that we were going to take a trip and just spend a few days down there.
And so we booked a place. we booked one of the Disney resorts. So we were close to all the action, we went to all the parks. And my goal was to do nothing but play for a week. Really, I blocked out my calendar, and I spent, you know, I took my laptop with me, but never even turned it on, didn’t even open it up because I was just so focused on just being in the moment and playing.
And listen, I do things for fun, you know, on the regular I, I like to run and I lift weights, and these things aren’t always fun or play, okay, sometimes they can be but not always. But there’s things I do that would fall into that play category for sure. On a regular basis, like walking and doing yoga and listening to books and podcasts, watching movies, TV shows, I’m a huge sci fi nerd, right. Love Star Wars, love, you know, Game of Thrones and things like that.
And so I’m really into a lot of that fantasy stuff. And to me, that is super fun. Family Game Night is something we do spending time with my grandson, oh my gosh, these are all ways that I love to play and try to play on a regular basis. But I wanted to take things to the next level.
So we went to Disney World, got to go to all the parks. And like I said, my goal was just to have fun and play for a week, not with any sort of like outcome in mind, but just to play, and to experience all of the fun that is available, which is everywhere you look, it’s nothing but fun. I love Star Wars and I got to immerse myself into Star Wars Land there, Disney’s Hollywood Studios. And I just felt like a little kid again.
Star Wars was one of those things that I saw when I was about 11 years old. And it sort of changed my life. I really fell in love with sci fi at that time, because it wasn’t something that really appealed to me until then. And then it was something that I was really, really changed my mind about a lot of that kind of stuff. And I really got into it and was really excited to be immersed in this Star Wars lane.
And I felt like I was among my people. Like all the other people I saw there were a lot of people that were similar in age to me, and had similar looks on their face, which they were just really happy and smiling a lot. I rode all the roller coasters at all the parks and laughed so much and had so much fun, huge smile across my face the whole time.
And even while we were down there in the middle of the week, this big hurricane came through Hurricane Nicole that ended up hitting landfall in Florida as a category one hurricane pretty quickly got reduced to a tropical storm by the time it hit us in Orlando. But so, this tropical storm kind of shut down the parks for about a day so they closed the parks early on Wednesday, and then opened them up for about a half a day on Thursday. So we missed out on a big chunk of time there and then dealt with like just torrential rain all day on Wednesday when we were at the parks. Even that did not stop us from playing and just having fun. Like we still had fun.
We bought some ponchos, some plastic ponchos that we ended up wearing all the time. And I will tell you that it was the best $12 I ever spent on each one of those ponchos because we were able to just walk around and have fun, stand in lines outside and be in the rain and stay relatively dry.
Really not an ideal situation but we made the most of it and still had so much fun. So, so coming back from this trip, I just feel so rejuvenated and relaxed and free of stress. And I was thinking about this this morning. And really this whole trip taught me a big lesson. And the lesson is that I need more of this in my life, I need to include even more play into my day to day life.
Somehow I need to make play more a part of what I do every single day. And so I’m asking myself this question, and I want you to ask yourself this question: what can I do today? To play? Not, you know, to crush the competition or, you know, to, you know, make somebody cry? But what can I do to just play for the sake of play? Just because we’re adults, doesn’t mean we have to stop playing. Having fun, being silly, for no other reason than to have fun and be silly, is crucial.
For us as adults, it’s crucial for physical, mental and emotional health. And I talked to so many people who tell me how stressful their life is. It’s their job. It’s the kids, it’s the families, their relationships, it’s their finances, all causing so much stress in their life. And then I’m like, Okay, what are you doing to play? How are you relaxing? How are you having fun? And they got nothing, just crickets? Why not? Why aren’t you engaging in play on the regular?
Are you embarrassed? Is it silly to act like a kid? You know? Are you too serious? And is this like, below you or something? No, it’s not. I mean, I get it. It can be kind of silly sometimes. And I felt like a little kid all week at Disney World. Like, I was waiting in line for all these rides. And there’s a lot of little kids around and but you know what, I loved every minute of it. Because it was like I was a kid again. And it felt amazing. And it feels good to be a kid. Why? Why not?
So ask yourself how can you play today? What can you do today? To start adding more fun and more play into your life? Who can you include in this play? Can you include your kids, your spouse, friends, family, the more the merrier. We want to build those connections. I want to build those relationships. What kind of a play appeals to you like board games, joining Soccer League, learning how to play the guitar, yoga, dancing, jumping on a trampoline, what appeals to you, just find something and do that.
And if you find it doesn’t work for you, you don’t like it, try something else. But make play a priority in your life. Make play something you do every single day, or at least as often as you can. Embrace that feeling of play. Embrace that feeling of being a kid again. However, that looks for you. You get to decide, play more, and you’ll enjoy life more. You’ll keep your mind sharp, you’ll build better relationships and you will live a healthier, happier life. I promise you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
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