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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Intermittent Fasting

38. Stop Arguing for Your Limitations

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There are basically two ways to approach any challenge. One way is to focus on all the reasons why you can’t do it. The other way is to focus on all the reasons why you can. I find it …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 38 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about why we need to stop arguing for our limitations. There are basically two ways to approach any challenge. One way that some people do it is to focus on all the reasons why you can’t do it. The other way is to focus on all the reasons why you can.

And I find it interesting that so many people choose option one, when they’re facing something challenging in their life. They spend a lot of time and a lot of energy focusing on all the reasons why they can’t do it. So today, I want to talk about why we do this, why we argue for our limitations, and how this kind of thinking is just keeping us stuck. And I do offer some suggestions on what we can do instead.

But first, if you like this podcast, please come check us out on Facebook, though – Running Lean community on Facebook, you can just search for those words, and you’ll find us. This is a positive, energetic, informative, fun group of like-minded runners just like you that share common goals like losing weight, living a vibrant life, becoming super healthy, running, making running easier.

I host a weekly live trainings in there on things like intermittent fasting, which we’re focusing on this month. Running, nutrition, weight loss, exercise, physiology, all kinds of stuff. Here’s a recent comment from one of our community members, Amy.

Amy says, “I ran a virtual 10k this morning, although it was hot and steamy, I felt great. I didn’t have to eat anything before the run, or even feel like I needed anything to fuel with but water. Thank you, Patrick and the rest of the group for the motivation and helping me change my mindset and my body these last eight weeks.”

That is awesome. Thank you, Amy. Amy’s a great example of the kind of positive, motivated people we have over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. And this month, we’ve got this intermittent fasting challenge going on right now. Intermittent Fasting is just practicing some periods of the day where you just don’t eat anything.

You can call it time restricted eating or meal spacing. But basically, you know, we talk about how to do it safely, how to incorporate this into your running, why we would want to incorporate this into our running. There’s a lot of amazing health benefits, by the way. So just check us out, come and see what it’s all about the Running Lean community on Facebook, and figuring out all this stuff.

How do we do time restricted eating? How do I lose weight and continue running? How do I make running stronger? How do I become a fat adapted runner? All these things take some time to figure out. They take awareness, they take knowledge and they take some support, so that you can create this kind of lasting change in your life.

Listen, this is not about a diet, diets are temporary, right? What I help people do, through my coaching practice, is help people create new habits. And it takes about 90 days to create a new habit. So most of the coaching I do with people is a three month or 90 Day Program. And what you get with that is the knowledge, awareness and support that you need.

So that you can accomplish those goals so that you can create the habits that you need to change your lifestyle to change your relationship with the we’re all different. We all have different dietary needs, what works for one person may not work for somebody else. You know, if one thing worked for everybody, I could just create a PDF and give it to all you guys and be like here just do this, but it doesn’t work that way you need to figure out what works for you.

So together you and I will figure out exactly what will work for you. It takes a little bit of trial and error, but eventually we get it right. I want you to make big changes in your life. I want you to get off of the carbohydrate addiction, I want you to reap all the amazing benefits of becoming a fat adapted runner.

If you’re interested in this, cool, check it out, just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, that’s one word, and apply for coaching with me, we’ll get on the phone, we’ll have a little conversation, we’ll get on a Zoom call. And we’ll have a quick little conversation and see if this is a good fit for both of us. Cool.

Alright, let’s get into this topic today. So the topic today is, I titled this stop arguing for your limitations. And I have to tell you a little warning before we get started here that I’m doling out a little tough love today. I think this is an important message for all of us to hear. And listen, I need to hear this too. I’m not exempt from this message either.

So part of me talking about this is to remind myself that I need to stop arguing for my limitations too, because I do it sometimes, too. But I’m hoping this message resonates with you. I wrote a short post about this earlier in the week, and shared it on social media, and I think it touched a nerve for a few people.

And so I thought you know, I think I need to do a little deeper dive into this. Because a few people said, you know, oh, that was tough to hear, but I needed to hear it. So I’m hoping this resonates with you guys. So here’s what I’m seeing, I hear you guys tell me things like I want to do something big. I want I want to accomplish this big goal, I have this, this big dream or goal, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds, I’ve struggled for so long with this weight, I really want to lose this weight, or I want to run a full marathon, I really want to do that.

And so, you know, you say you’re all in, you want this with every bit of your soul, you’re like, I’m so focused on this goal, I’m gonna do it. You might have a plan, you start working the plan. But then you know, stuff starts to happen. Maybe you wake up in the morning, and then the weather’s not awesome, it’s raining outside, and you’re just like, I don’t really don’t feel like running today.

Or maybe you just get tired or maybe stuff like your job is stressing you out. You know, your kids are driving you crazy. Or the one that I love, you know, well COVID hit and so you know what that means as if like it was some hurricane that you know, knocked your house down or something.

But here’s what’s happening, we have all these external things that happen in our life. You know, we get an extra workload at work, you know, our boss is demanding more of us or, you know, the kids are being, they’re doing school from home, they’re doing like remote schooling, or the husband doesn’t help as much as he should be, according to you.

And you have all these external things happening. And instead of just forging on, you use these external things, as an excuse to give up to quit, you use these excuses to give up on these big goals and dreams that you said you are all in on. You wanted more than anything else. And you just use his excuse to quit.

You know, you say, I can’t focus on my health because you know, my kids are our home and they’re doing school from home now. So there’s no longer I can’t focus on my health anymore. What, really? Or I was doing fine, not eating sugar and carbs. But then I had this really stressful day at work. And, you know, my boss gave me a bunch of extra work. So I needed to eat a whole pizza and a half gallon of ice cream at one sitting.

If you’ve done that before, it’s fine. You’re normal. I’ve done that before. Or you’re just like, you know, this is just hard. It’s really hard. Training for a marathon is hard. Or losing weight is hard. So I just, that’s why I can’t do it. By the way, all this stuff I’m talking about here, this stuff is just life.

Stuff happens all the time. Life’s not supposed to be some carefree, happy existence. You know, flowers, daisies, unicorns, rainbows, it’s not like that. It’s more like 50/50 – half the time you feel pretty good. Half the time you feel not so good. That’s okay. You can either just accept this fact, or you can just fight against it with everything you’ve got.

And when you accept it, when you accept that you won’t feel happy all the time. Honestly, there’s a lot of freedom in that. What happens is we get ourselves into trouble when we have this belief. And we hold on to this belief very tightly that we have to feel happy all the time.

And I got news for you, that’s just never going to happen. This is you fighting against reality. And I see it all the time. I see it every single day. Well, I just want to feel better. Guess what, you’re not always going to feel good. And that’s okay. The inner turmoil that you feel is mostly caused by resisting these negative emotions, quote, unquote, negative emotions, unwanted emotions, like stress, like anger, like fear, like sadness.

All these emotions, we feel are just part of the human experience. We’re humans, we get to feel all kinds of amazing emotions, some of them are pretty amazing. Some of them feel so good. And some of them not so much. But to be human means we feel all these emotions. And we have to accept this fact, we will feel some positive and some negative emotion, some wanted emotions and some unwanted emotions, and it’s all good.

Life is 50/50 – be willing to accept all of it. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to accept it and say, well, that’s just the way it is. I can’t do anything about it. No. It’s like I tell my weight loss clients all the time, I’m like, you have to love yourself exactly as you are right now. Look in the mirror and love yourself exactly as you are every bit of your body.

You can’t hate yourself and expect to lose weight, I always say can’t hate yourself thin, you got to love yourself exactly as you are. And you can work to change that. But you have to accept what is. It’s when we resist what is when we resist and reject that half of our existence that we quote unquote, don’t like or, you know, don’t think is normal.

That’s what causes us the internal pain and the agony, we resist and reject any kind of unwanted emotion. Okay, that was a little a little tangent, I went off on there. But I just need you to understand that there are external circumstances that are going to happen in our lives. And those things are neither good nor bad, really, I’ll talk about that more in just a second.

But understand that you may feel some stress, you may feel some anger, you may feel some fear. And it’s okay. Don’t push it away. Don’t push it away, just accept it all. I love this quote from Henry Ford. He said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” This is perfect for what I’m talking about here today.

So like I said, at the beginning, there are basically two ways we can approach a challenge. So we have something challenging in our life, we want to lose a bunch of weight, we want to run a marathon, we can focus on why we can’t do it. Or we can focus on why we can do it. Let’s talk about these.

When you focus on why you can’t do something, here’s what happens. You find all sorts of excuses, all sorts of reasons you have stories you want to tell me about why this isn’t going to work for you want to lose weight, but stuff happened at work, you know, my husband doesn’t help as much as he should. The kids are screaming in the background.

And in your mind, these are all valid excuses. They are valid reasons why you can’t do this thing. Why you can’t stay on your protocol, why you can’t train for your marathon. But let’s look at this. Let’s look at how this works. Because here’s the thing, these are all just stories that you’re telling yourself. These are all just stories, you’re believing you’re choosing them, and you’re choosing to believe them.

So let’s look at how this works. You got stuff happening at work, the husband’s not helping the kids are demanding stuff from you. These are what we call circumstances. Circumstances in our lives are always neutral. The circumstances in our lives are facts. They don’t hold any meaning on their own. They only mean something after we have a thought about the circumstances. Okay.

Neutral circumstances are true for everyone. They’re just facts, facts that can be upheld in a court of law, let’s say. So, the kids have to attend school from home, that is a fact. My workload has increased at work, tat is a fact. These are just facts. Everyone would say, yeah, that is true.

None of this means anything, until you have thought about it, until you choose a meaning that you want to assign to this particular circumstance. You with me so far? Circumstances, always neutral. If it’s something happening outside of our thoughts, feelings and actions, it is neutral, we have no control over it.

So the kids have to attend school from home is a circumstance, millions of parents are dealing with this right now. Right? This is just a neutral fact. Kids have to attend school from home, it does not mean you can’t, you can no longer focus on your health. It doesn’t mean you can’t train for a marathon.

Those millions of parents that are dealing with this right now, you know, half of them are probably out there, focusing on their health right now. They’re probably training for their first marathon right now. They’re figuring it out. Kids doing school from home does not mean you can’t run. If that were true, it would be true for everyone. But it’s not.

You’re choosing not to focus on your health, you’re choosing not to run. And what you’re doing is you’re using your kids having to do school from home, you’re using that as an excuse. Because what you’re trying to do is hard. And you don’t want to do it. Because it’s hard, because it’s uncomfortable. Because it’s gonna take a while.

By the way, nobody said this stuff was going to be easy. It’s why it’s a challenge. But you want that thing. You want it with all of your being. But instead, you’re choosing to focus on all these reasons, you’re choosing to believe, you’re choosing these reasons. This amazing story that you’re creating in your mind about why this won’t work for you.

And then I come in as your coach and I say, listen, here’s what your mind is doing, your brain is just making up these stories about why you can’t do this. This is a choice you’re making. These are just neutral circumstances, you can figure this out, let’s figure it out together. And then that’s when I get the pushback.

I get people digging in and fighting like hell, for all the reasons why they can’t do it. Why, you know, it’s different for them. They have all these stories, all these excuses, all these reasons. They defend these things, to their dying breath. They are fighting tooth and nail for these beliefs that they have about why they can’t do it. Why? It’s too hard for them and they argue with me.

No, it’s just the way it is Patrick, there’s nothing I can do about it. But you know what, there is something you can do about it. These are just beliefs that they are choosing. They’re arguing for their limitations. They’re basically saying like, look, I have these limitations. I can’t do it. Here’s all the reasons why. And then they list them all out.

And I hear stories and stories and stories. It doesn’t make any sense. You’re basically saying I want this goal. I want this thing that I’ve wanted for so long, but I know it’s a challenge, but it’s it’s too hard. And here’s all the reasons why I can’t do it.

They’re like focusing on the reasons why they can’t, creating all the reasons, all the excuses in their mind. And choosing to believe them. That’s the scary part right there. You’re choosing to believe these reasons. You’ve got to stop doing this. Just stop it right now.

Stop arguing for your limitations. Because the more you focus on why you can’t do it, the more reasons you’ll find, the more excuses you’ll find. You look for reasons why you’re failing and you will see these reasons everywhere. When you start looking for all the excuses, you will find them everywhere.

My friend Samantha says it this way. She says, “When you argue for your limitations, they’re yours to keep.” Powerful. So there’s another approach. This is the one that I would suggest you take on. It’s up to you though.

Let’s go back to those neutral circumstances. Okay, so my boss is asking a lot of me at work right now. It’s really stressing me out. So you can choose to believe that this workload is stressing you out, you can choose to believe that this means you can’t focus on your running anymore. You can’t focus on your health, and you have to like quit running.

You can choose to believe that this extra workload means you can just sit around and watch Netflix eating a whole pizza and half gallons of ice cream. And that’s just the way it is. As if you know, it’s all happening to you. What results do you think you’re gonna get from that? From taking those actions?

I can pretty much guarantee you’re not going to be running a marathon anytime soon, I can pretty much guarantee your health will definitely not be improving anytime soon. All right, my boss is asking me to do more work right now is a neutral circumstance. So what if you thought, you know, my boss was asking more of me. And I’m up to the challenge.

Hey, I’m really good at what I do. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve done way harder things in my life. This is no big deal. You know, I might need to adjust my training plan a little bit. But hey, I got this. Wow, that’s a little more powerful, isn’t it? or what have you tried on a thought like, nothing is more important to me than my health.

And running a marathon has been a dream of mine for way too long. Now, I’m not letting a little extra workload stop me from reaching this goal. You know, what if instead of looking for all your limitations, because when you look for them, you will find them? I promise you? What if you looked for all of the possibilities? Focus on why you can’t and you’ll find reasons why everywhere.

Also focus on why you can and you’ll find reasons why everywhere. If you get to choose what you want to believe about your circumstances, because they are neutral, why would you ever choose to believe that you can’t do it? Why would you choose to believe that this stuff means you can’t reach your goal?

Why would you ever choose failure? Because that’s what you’re doing. By the way, I don’t really believe there’s such a thing as failure. You either keep going until you succeed, or you quit. These are two choices that you get to make. And they have nothing to do with anything outside of you know, kids screaming, no workload can change that. These are choices you’re making. You either keep going until you succeed, or you quit. For me, quitting is just not an option.

These are choices you get to make based on your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. It has nothing to do with COVID. Okay. Lots of people are training for a marathon. Lots of people are building a business during this global pandemic. Lots of people are improving their health. I see it every single day. Lots of people are getting amazing coaching and changing their lives for the better. Stop using it as an excuse.

Sorry, this is where the old Tough Love is coming in. I do love you guys. I hope you know that. Everything I’m saying I’m saying with kindness and love. I’m smiling. But listen, where are you in your life with this right now? Like where are you arguing for your limitations? Think about this.

Like, let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds? It’s pretty common for a lot of people I’ve talked to. Why do you think you can’t do it? Think about that. Why do you think you can’t do it? Why? Why isn’t this going to work for you? Ask yourself that question. See what your brain comes up with for an answer.

So maybe you came up with answers like well, I’ve tried everything, nothing’s ever worked before or you know understand I’ve time to figure all this out right now I don’t even know where to begin. These are just reasons you came up with, they’re just thoughts in your head. They’re not the they’re not the truth unless you choose to believe them.

Take a look at the circumstances in your life right now. Ask yourself this question: What am I choosing to believe about this particular situation, whatever it is? You know maybe it’s the kids being home. A lot of people are talking to me about their kids being home and doing school from home and it’s posing some challenges, some unique challenges for people.

What are you choosing to believe about that situation? Are you holding on to a story or a belief about it? That means you can’t do this. You can’t succeed at your health goals or your weight loss goals or your running goals. If that’s you, like, maybe think about that, and what do you want to believe instead? You get to choose what to believe.

By the way, this is a very important question to ask your brain, what thought can I choose to believe? What thought can I choose to believe that will motivate me, that will fill me with courage and passion and excitement about this big goal? It’s so important to me. Maybe something like you know what, I’m going to lose 50 pounds, no matter how long it takes.

I’ve tried a bunch of other stuff. It didn’t work. That’s all behind me now. Now. Now is the time I’m going to figure this out. I will not stop until I figure it out. I will not quit until I succeed. This is way too important to me. I don’t want to ever feel sick and tired again.

I don’t know, I don’t really know where to begin with all this stuff. But I’m going to start today. And maybe I’ll ask for help. I’m going to seek out a coach, I’m going to get guidance, I’m going to get direction, I am going to make this work. Damn, that is a much more powerful way to approach something, right?

What if you took all that fight, all that energy that you’re putting into arguing for your limitations, and instead, put all that fight and all that energy into searching out like the possibilities and all the reasons why you’re going to succeed? I wonder what kind of results you’d get if you did that.

Remember, whether you think you can or you think you can’t. You’re right. Okay, I hope you don’t mind. This little bit of tough love for me today. So here’s what’s coming up in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Remember, I talked about doing the September intermittent fasting challenge.

We’re talking about time restricted eating, meal spacing, that kind of stuff. This week, we’re going to be talking about training in a fasted state running on empty. Why do we do this? It sounds crazy. I know. But why is this good for us? And why would we want to do this? Why would we choose to train without calories and without fuel?

So I’ll talk about that this week. So join us in the Facebook group, just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. That’s all I got for you today. Lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

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

37. How to Solve the Hunger Problem

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

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Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

36. The Myths and Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

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There seems to be a lot of misleading information out there about intermittent fasting. People think it will mess up your metabolism, or it’s unsafe, or it’s just plain crazy. The truth, …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 36 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And there seems to be a lot of misleading information out there about intermittent fasting, people think it will mess up their metabolism or they think it’s unsafe, or they say it’s just plain crazy. The truth, however, is very different.

Intermittent Fasting is not only safe, but it provides some pretty amazing health benefits, especially when combined with a low carb diet. So today, I’m going to separate fact from fiction and share with you all of the incredible positive health benefits that intermittent fasting provides.

And if you liked this podcast, you should come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a fun, positive, energetic group that kind of goes hand in hand with this podcast. It’s full of fun, like minded runners who all have a common goal, we all want to lose weight, we want running to be easier. We want to live a more vibrant life.

And I do weekly trainings in there on a bunch of different topics. This month, we’re talking all about intermittent fasting. So you gotta come check out the group.

Here’s a recent review from iTunes from somebody that found me on Facebook, and this is from Tinkerboom. And Tinkerboom says, “For a long time I asked myself the same questions, why can’t I lose weight if I run every day? I’ve talked to trainers, doctors, etc. And not one of them told me or suggested that it could be my hormones. I found Patrick on Facebook and started listening to his podcast and found incredible information. And I found that I am not alone in this struggle. Patrick’s information is on point and has worked for me and I am on my way to being a fat adapted runner. Thank you, Patrick, you are amazing. I look forward to listening to all your information. #youarealifechanger.”

Well thank you Tinkerboom. I just want my message, this message I’m sharing with you today. And every day, I just want this message to resonate with runners like you, because I want you to become that badass lean running machine that you’ve always wanted to be.

Okay, so I’m talking about the Facebook group, we’ve got a big challenge going on right now, September is intermittent fasting month in the Running Lean community on Facebook. And just to be clear, it does not mean we’re fasting for the entire month of September.

But you’re gonna learn what intermittent fasting is, what it isn’t, how to do it safely, how to incorporate this into your training as part of your not only nutrition plan, but your training plan. And you’re gonna learn all about the amazing health benefits of intermittent fasting especially for running. And I’m gonna be sharing some of those with you here in this episode. So just search for the Running Lean community on facebook and join us.

Also, if you are interested in losing weight and becoming a fat adapted runner, it can be hard to do on your own, I totally get it. That’s why I offer one-on-one coaching. We’re all different. We all have different goals, different needs, different lifestyles, and what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for somebody else.

So when you work with me directly, you will learn exactly how to become a lean fat burning running machine in a way that works for you. So I’ll help you determine the right plan and the right system that works for you. I help keep you accountable. I make sure you’re reaching your goals and I help you to get results if you’re ready to make some big changes in your life.

If you’re ready to reap all the benefits of a low carbohydrate diet and intermittent fasting, then just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, that’s all one word, and apply. Apply for a one-on-one coaching with me. Do it now, I promise you it is life changing, you will not regret it.

Okay, let’s get into the topic today. So today I’m talking about the myths and benefits of intermittent fasting. And like I said there are a lot of myths in information out there. Some people think this is just crazy, you can’t do it. I’m going to address a bunch of these different myths here in a minute. But I want to back up just a little bit and explain how we lose weight.

Okay, so one thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that there are systems in place in our bodies that either promote fat storage, or promote fat burning. Okay, if we want to lose weight, we want to do that whole fat burning thing, right? We want to burn the fat, we don’t want to hold on to the fat.

So our body, we have two primary sources of fuel, we have glucose and we have fat. Glucose comes from eating carbohydrates, mainly, okay, you eat carbohydrates, any carbohydrates, you turn into glucose in your system, and they get stored as fuel as glycogen, or they get stored as fat. Okay, so that’s carbohydrates.

And then we have fat. This is our own body fat that we can use for fuel. The problem is, we can only use one of these fuel sources at a time, pretty much okay. Like in order to burn fat, you basically have to burn through the available glucose first, okay, so if you are eating a diet high in carbohydrates, then you know, getting that glucose out of your system is key, so that you can actually access your own body fat for fuel, okay?

Eating a diet high in carbohydrates, makes it very difficult to lose weight. If you’ve been listening to me for a while you understand this. We’re always going to want to use the available glucose as the primary fuel. That’s just the way our bodies are designed. Okay, we’re designed to use available glucose and glycogen first.

So when you have high glucose levels in your body, when you’re eating a lot of carbs and sugar, then you cannot access your fat stores, you know, maybe a little bit but not really. When glucose is high, insulin is also high. Insulin is produced when our blood sugar goes up insulin, its job is to bring blood sugars down. But when insulin is high, it puts our body into this fat storage mode. We hold on to our body fat when insulin is high.

When glucose is high, insulin is high, we’re in fat storage mode, when glucose is low. When we don’t eat a lot of carbohydrates, when we don’t have a lot of high blood sugar. When glucose is low, insulin is low, then our bodies are in fat burning mode.

Okay, so the key to this whole deal is keep insulin levels low, keep them low. And the way we do this, there’s two ways that we lower insulin to keep it low. We don’t eat carbohydrates, and we don’t eat. Insulin will remain low. As long as our blood sugar is low, as long as our blood sugar is normal, okay, it’s not elevated. Blood sugars go high when we eat a lot of carbohydrates, especially highly refined carbohydrates, the higher refined the carbohydrate, like pure sugar will spike our blood sugar like crazy, which spikes our insulin like crazy.

And then we’re in fat storage mode like crazy. All right, when we don’t eat carbohydrates, it keeps our blood sugars normalized. Another way of keeping blood sugars normalized is to not eat anything at all. Because every time you eat some food, your blood sugar goes up a little bit. So if you eat, you know, a pile of broccoli, and a steak, your blood sugar is going to go up a little bit, which is normal.

Insulin will get produced a little bit, which is normal, and it’ll come back down pretty quickly, which is normal. Everything is like working the way it should. But if you ate a big bowl of, you know, sugary cereal, and a glass of orange juice, your blood sugar is going to go up like crazy. Insulin is gonna go up like crazy. And then we’re in that insidious fat storage mode again, okay?

But anytime we eat any food at all, blood sugar goes up a little bit. So one awesome way of keeping blood sugar down, keeping insulin down, and getting us into fat burning mode is to not eat anything at all. And I’m not talking about you know, going on a 12 day fast or something like that.

We’re talking about intermittent fasting. I’m gonna break this all down in just a minute but I just want you understand that, for example, your blood sugars are very low in the morning, because you have been fasting all night long. So anyway, when we combine these two things a low carbohydrate, high fat diet, with intermittent fasting, both of these things work to regulate our blood sugars to keep our insulin levels in check, and to put us into fat burning mode.

So when we combine these two things, it’s like rocket fuel for your overall health and for your weight loss. This approach will keep blood sugars normalized, it’ll keep insulin down, and you’ll be able to access your own body fat for fuel. So what is intermittent fasting at its simplest?

It just means this. Don’t eat anything. It’s just like not eating for periods of time. Okay? The intermittent part means we don’t do it all the time. We do it intermittently, sporadically or periodically. So it’s basically, periodically we don’t eat. That’s all that it means. Okay.

A little bit about fasting in general. So fasting is something that is in our DNA. It’s something we’ve done as humans for millions of years. It’s not some new thing that was created by the CrossFit community or anything like that. Okay. I love the CrossFit people, by the way, I think they’re awesome.

But they love the whole low carb, high fat diet, they love their intermittent fasting. But people just have some notion that this is like all new. It’s not. We’ve been doing this forever. We didn’t evolve as humans by eating three meals a day, two snacks a day and dessert. We didn’t.

We didn’t have that much food available to us. We scavenged. We hunted. We foraged and we ate. And then we fasted. This is the way we’ve evolved as humans to get to where we are today, we feasted. And then we fasted. This was beautiful, everything was working beautifully for us. You know, we didn’t have ways of preserving foods until much later in our evolution.

So when we had food available, we ate it, right? Another kind of historical part of fasting is that cultures around the world today have been practicing some form of fasting for many 1000s of years.

Fasting has been used therapeutically since at least the fifth century, when the Greek physician Hippocrates recommended to his patients abstinence from food or drink, if they had certain types of illnesses. So, you know, back in the fifth century, Hippocrates was saying like, Hey, you want to get better, don’t eat or drink anything.

Religions have been practicing fasting for millennia. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Jainism, Hinduism have all been practicing some form of fasting for 1000s of years. Hindus, for example, are used to fasting on Ekadashi, which is the 11th day of the lunar cycle.

So they fast every 11th day. During the season of Lent, Catholics give up certain foods or practice fasting. In Judaism, they observed fasting on six different days of the year, like Yom Kippur, for example. The entire month of Ramadan and Islam as a period of penitence, sorry, and total fasting from dawn to dusk.

And then arguably three of the most influential people in the history of the world, Jesus, the prophet Muhammad, and the Buddha, they didn’t all agree on a whole lot, but they all agreed on one thing, the power of fasting.

And here’s something else that I just want you to understand about fasting. You are already doing it. You fast every day, you know, unless you eat while you’re sleeping. Like if you get up in the middle of the night and eat something and go back to bed. Most of us, I would say almost all of us fast for around seven or eight hours a day or more.

You know, you don’t you probably don’t need a couple hours before you go to bed. And maybe you don’t eat as soon as you wake up in the morning. So it might be 10 hours a day that you’re fasting anyway. Okay. And the word itself, breakfast means to break your fast, right? So this fasting is not something that is harmful. It’s not something that is weird. And it’s not something that is new. We’ve been doing this for a long, long time.

So I want to talk about some of the myths that people have around fasting and tell you what the truth is around some of these things. So here’s one of the first myths that people have: they say it’s not safe fasting is not safe. Well, like I just said you’re doing this every day, is that not safe?

And we’re not talking about going weeks without food here. This is intermittent fasting, this is sporadically not eating. You can safely go for days, weeks, probably even months without any food depending on how much body fat that you have on you.

And I’m not suggesting you do this. I’m not suggesting you try to go weeks or months without food. But you could easily go a couple of days without food without, you know, any deleterious effects. Okay? Can fasting be dangerous? Yes, if done recklessly, sure, just about anything can be done with reckless abandon and get you into trouble.

And consider the story of the marathon. According to legend. In 490 BC, the Greek soldier Pheidippides ran approximately 26 miles from the battlefield near the town of Marathon to Athens, he’s delivering a message on the news of the defeat of the Persians.

When he got there, he shouted Nike, which means victory. And then he promptly keeled over and died. And people say, well, yeah, you shouldn’t run marathons, they’re not safe, look what happened to this guy. And like, if we look at this, in today’s terms, if, if you took a sedentary middle aged out of shape person, and said go run of Marathon right now, as hard as you can, you know, at your maximum speed, without any type of preparation or knowledge, that person might very well keel over and die to okay.

But here’s the thing, just about anything can be done recklessly, can be done in a way that is not safe. But millions of people practice some form of fasting every single day on this planet and have zero problems. We have been doing fasting as a species for millions of years without any problems. Okay.

But just to address the safety issue, one step further. So there was this guy back in 1965, his name is Angus Barbieri, Scottish dude. And he was very overweight, he is obese at the time, you know, 1965 people weren’t this big, he weighed 456 pounds.

And his doctor suggested he’d go on a fast and so he fasted for like 10 days or something like that. And he loved it, he felt great, he was losing some weight. And he decided to keep going. And with his doctor supervision, he went on a total fast for 382 days. Think about that. This dude went over a year without eating any food.

He was living on his own body fat that whole time. Now, he was drinking water, obviously, coffee, tea, he had to take vitamins and electrolytes, you got to have, you know, some kind of nutrition coming in. But he lost like 276 pounds by living off of his own body fat for over a year. This is crazy, right? And I’m not suggesting again that anybody try this, but I just want you to see that, you know, this guy had doctor’s supervision, but you can go for a long time living off your own body fat. Okay.

So our fat is a great source of fuel for our bodies and for our brains. And, and this is the way we’re designed as people. So that’s kind of Myth number one that fasting isn’t safe. I think we can all agree that fasting is perfectly safe and something we do all the time. Another myth is that fasting makes you go into starvation mode.

I mean, get this. It’s not starving yourself. You don’t go into starvation mode when you fast. Your body has plenty of fuel onboard in the form of your own body fat. We all do. Even the leanest marathon runners have like 8% of body fat, plenty of fat on them to to last a long, long time without eating anything.

Calorie restriction diets actually will put you into starvation mode. And they did these experiments which sound horrible, the Minnesota starvation experiment where they took a group of men and they gave them a very, very limited calorie diet and they went into starvation mode. They became extremely weak, lethargic, emaciated, and were literally starving to death.

But here’s the thing, there’s a big difference between calorie restriction, severe calorie restriction and zero food. Something hormonally changes when you don’t eat anything, calorie restriction puts you in a starvation mode. Because your body can’t make the necessary hormonal adaptations that you get when you’re fasting when you have zero calories coming in, so you’re never actually getting to the point where you’re using your own body fat for fuel.

Everything changes when you go to zero calorie. So fasting the body switches from burning glucose to burning your own stored body fat. And this is exactly what your body fat is there for.
Our body fat is not for looks. It’s not there to make us look good. Right? It’s there, it’s used for food when no food is available, our stored body fat is used to nourish us when no food is available.

It’s a very well designed system and works very, very well. Again, humans have been feasting and then fasting for millions of years. If not eating for short periods of time would put us into starvation mode, we’ve become extinct a long, long time ago. Okay, so when you fast, you do not go into starvation mode. Okay.

Another myth is that when you fast you will lose muscle. So, consider the consequences of burning muscle for energy. During long winters, you know, back in the caveman days, there would have been many days where no food was available. After the first episode of like a period of no food available, your body was actually consuming muscle as fuel, you would be severely weakened after a couple times of this happening, you’d be so weak that you’d be unable to hunt, you won’t even be able to stand up.

Humans would never have survived as a species, if burning muscle happened when we didn’t eat. So your body, here’s the way your body works, you burn glucose first, then fat. And then when there’s no fat available, your body will start to use muscle as fuel.

But it’s a terrible source of fuel for your body. So it will not do that it won’t break down muscle until all the fat is gone. And I gotta tell you, it would be almost impossible for you to lose that much fat, think of Angus. He had so much fat on his body he was able to you know, use that as fuel for over a year. When you fast you burn fat that your body will only use muscle if there’s no more glucose, no fat available.

So you’d literally have to be at that point of like starving to death for your body to start using muscle. And studies indicate that intermittent fasting is actually better for maintaining muscle mass. In fact, intermittent fasting is very popular among bodybuilders because they find it helps them to maintain muscle alongside a low body fat percentage, right? So they’re lean, and super muscular. So you don’t burn muscle when you fast.

Another myth that I’m trying to bust here today is that fasting will make you tired, and lethargic. Oh, if I don’t eat all the time, I’m gonna be super tired. I need the energy. Well, have you ever been tired after eating a meal? Of course you have, everybody has. This is what happens when you eat.

There’s this moment of like drowsiness afterwards, lack of concentration. That’s your system like your stomach, your liver, your digestive system all working to process the food. When you fast, you don’t have these kinds of problems. Fat is a far superior source of fuel for your body and for your brain.

So when you fast your body can actually produce ketones, which is an amazing source of energy. And ketones along with your own body fat, actually increase your energy levels. Right? You get tired and lethargic when you’re eating a lot of sugar and carbs. And you have that crash after you eat.

Like if you’ve ever had a big lunch and then you want to go to sleep around two o’clock in the afternoon to three o’clock you’re just like dead. And you need your Starbucks, triple Mocha, caramel latte or whatever to get you through the afternoon. That’s because of you know, eating all that food, especially the sugar and the carbs.

But when you’re fasting this doesn’t happen. You don’t have those energy spikes and crashes. You have this like consistent energy throughout the day so no crashes at all. And I gotta tell you, my clients report a lot of increased energy and sustained energy when they become fat-adapted

When they stop eating the sugar and the carbs and they, their body is starting to burn fat. And then when we add in some intermittent fasting, their energy levels actually go up, not down. Okay? So fasting does not make you tired and lethargic actually gives you more energy. People think fasting will slow your metabolism.

And no, this is not true at all. It actually boosts your metabolism. When you fast it puts your body into fat burning mode, okay, which is boosting it actually boosts your metabolic rate. This is due to a drastic increase in blood levels of norepinephrine, which stimulates your metabolism and instructs your fat cells to break down body fat. And then you can use that body fat for fuel.

Studies have shown that fasting for even up to like 48 hours will boost your metabolism by something like 3% up to 14%. Fasting does not slow your metabolism. And there’s this misconception out there that you need to eat like six times a day, you know, to boost your metabolism. And it’s the opposite.

When you eat six times a day, you slow your metabolism down. Because you’re always hanging on to all that extra body fat. All that extra food is going into your fat stores. Okay, your your blood glucose is always elevated, insulin has always elevated and you’re holding on to all that extra fat. Okay, so you’re actually not burning fat when you do that. So eating less often or eating nothing at all for periods of time will actually speed up your metabolism.

Another myth is that fasting deprives your body of nutrients. So some people have concerns that fasting will lead to some sort of malnourishment, right, you’re not getting the right vitamins and minerals. And it’s been shown that fasting that lasts under 24 hours, like what we’re talking about here, intermittent fasting, there’s no real need to be concerned with missing vitamins or minerals, mainly because we replenish anything we lost.

When we eat food later in the day, like you’re not you’re you’re eating every day, okay? But for longer fasts, if you’re doing like a 24 hour or longer fast, doctors recommend supplementing with electrolytes. So sodium, potassium, magnesium, which is very easy to get in a supplement, right? I actually take these when I’m running in the heat, just because we all need electrolytes when we’re running, especially longer distances, especially when it’s super hot outside.

And so I take a supplement that’s just sodium, potassium, and magnesium, and no sugar or anything like that, and gives me everything I need. And I do all my runs fasted. And we’ll talk a little bit about that in a second here. But actually, fat is one of the best things your body can use for fuel, right, it’s one of two essential nutrients that we have to have.

And so, you know, you’re not depriving your body of nutrients when you fast for short periods of time at all. Okay, if you’re concerned, just make sure you’re getting enough salt on the electrolytes. But other than that, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to get all the food, all the nutrients you need from the food that you eat. Okay.

And then the last myth I want to just talk about here, as people say, fasting is just crazy. And at this point, I want to say isn’t eating six times a day crazy? Yeah. Keeping your insulin levels elevated all the time. So your body is constantly in fat storage mode, you become insulin resistant when you do this. You know, you get fat, you can’t lose the weight. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah, I think so.

You know, think about all these millions of people around the world who have been fasting for 1000s of years. Muslims, Christians, Jewish people, Hindus, are they all crazy? No. What about all the human ancestors who feasted and fasted millions of years of evolution and we thrived as a species? It’s not crazy. It’s perfect. It’s how we’ve evolved is how we’re designed to function optimally.

And I just wanted you to think about this. Think about animals, the animal kingdom Okay, so bears hibernate every winter, right? They gorge themselves on salmon and berries, which sounds delicious, by the way, and then they live on their own body fat all winter long when they hibernate, right? Are they crazy? Are they just you know, insane? No, is the way they’re designed.

And just a little sidebar here humans were like the only animal on the planet It eats foods that we’re not designed to eat. So all the sugar and the highly refined carbohydrates, we’re not supposed to eat that stuff. That stuff makes us fat. It makes us obese. It creates all kinds of health problems for us. But we eat tons of that stuff. No other animal on the planet does this.

Humans are the only overweight animal on the planet. Think about that. No other animals get fat and obese. You know, obviously, there’s fat animals, like Wallace’s and elephant seals, right? They have a lot of body fat, but they’re not overweight. That’s the way they’re supposed to be. They’re designed to be this way. But it’s perfectly healthy for them. That’s, that’s optimal for them. But it’s not perfectly healthy for humans to be as fat as a walrus. To me, that’s crazy.

Okay, so I hope you understand that fasting is not crazy, it’s perfectly normal. So let’s quickly I’m gonna talk about some of the benefits of fasting, sorry, I get all worked up about this stuff. And I crack myself up sometimes, okay, the benefits of fasting, especially for runners.

So here’s the benefits we can experience. And I’ve kind of talked about some of the stuff already. But I’m gonna reiterate a few things and tell you about a few things I think are kind of cool here. So what happens when you do some fasting? What’s good about it, especially for runners?

Well, number one, glucose levels go down. So when our blood sugars, you know, normalized insulin levels go down, it improves insulin sensitivity, which means our bodies can react to insulin the way they’re supposed to, we get out of fat storage mode, and we get into fat burning mode, right, so we have this boost in metabolism. And our bodies can actually get out of fat storage and into fat burning mode. So there’s a huge benefit for everybody right in it.

The second benefit is that it induces weight loss, because our metabolism is speeding up, not slowing down. It speeds up weight loss and fat loss and fat adaptation. So if you want to become a fat adapted runner, one of the best ways to get there is obviously you have to stop eating sugar and carbohydrates. And then number two, start doing some intermittent fasting.

And when you do it, you will get your body into fat burning mode faster, you’ll lose more weight, obviously, but becoming a fat adapted runner will happen quicker if you include a little intermittent fasting along with the low carb high fat diet.

Another benefit is that intermittent fasting helps you to break through weight loss plateaus. So with all my clients, invariably, at some point, weight loss kind of stalls a little bit, this is perfectly normal. And we anticipate this happening.

And there’s all kinds of tools that I help us and we implement to help my, my clients break through some of those weight loss plateaus, and one of them is intermittent fasting, it’s a great way to bust through when you get stuck at a certain weight, especially when it’s done intermittently. So not all the time, but periodically.

Because here’s what happens when we do the same thing over and over again, our bodies adapt, our body’s very good at adapting, right, so what we want to do is we want to kind of shake things up a little bit every now and then we want to cause our body a little bit of stress so that it can adapt in a different way and change things. Okay.

This is why we don’t work the same muscles at the exact same workout at the gym every single time we go if you want to actually build muscle because your body will adapt, and it’ll stop seeing that as a stressor, and it will stop building the muscle, right. So that’s why if you follow any kind of workout routine or a plan that somebody put in place for you, then you know, they always want you to be doing different things and mixing it up.

And that’s how you get stronger and build muscle. Also, this is why we don’t run the same distances and the same pace. Every time we go out and run right you got to mix things up. We want our bodies to adapt to some super hard super fast running like sprints or hill repeats. And then we want to do some really slow long running.

And then we want to do some stuff in between and then we throw some fartleks in there. I just love saying fartleks and then we want to do some interval training in there. Right? Well, we want to just keep mixing things up so our bodies can respond to these changes of stressors. Same thing happens with fasting it helps us to respond to changes in a different way and really helps to break through some of these weight loss plateaus that we get.

Another huge benefit of intermittent fasting is increased mental and cognitive abilities. So our brains love fat and ketones for fuel is an amazing source of fuel for our brains. And when we do intermittent fasting fat and ketones are produced, we get this flood of amazing fuel for our brain.

It helps improve our mental clarity or concentration, you’ll think more clearly, you’ll be more focused, you’ll be smarter, you get smarter when you do intermittent fasting. FYI. Another amazing benefit is that intermittent fasting enables cell regeneration, including immune cell regeneration, which is very important during things like global pandemics. Okay?

Intermittent fasting also helps to lower blood cholesterol levels, it helps to decrease inflammation in your body, which is amazing, especially as runners, we don’t want to be inflamed, we want to decrease inflammation, right. And intermittent fasting will help with that.

Intermittent fasting helps to lower blood pressure, so reducing hypertension. And then studies have shown that intermittent fasting can also help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, it helps to extend your life by reversing the aging process. So fasting actually provides some anti aging benefits.

And studies have actually shown that intermittent fasting helps to lower the risk of certain types of cancer. Now, here’s some benefits that are particularly interesting for you as a runner, number one, increased energy, not a loss of energy, but an increase of energy.

So when you practice some intermittent fasting, Adrenaline increases, you actually have more energy, so you can train harder, you can run harder, you can do some more intense workouts, you know, if you’re lifting weights at the gym, you can lift a lot more, because you have all this increased adrenaline and energy. And you’re gonna get some pretty amazing results. Because you have more energy.

Also another huge benefit is there is an increase in growth hormone production during those fasting periods. When you have more growth hormone being produced in your body, this helps to increase your bone density. So this is good for people over 40. I don’t know if there’s any of you out there, well, it’ll help to increase muscle mass. So this is good for everybody.

Right, you can build more muscle because you’re producing more growth hormone. When you’re producing more growth hormone, it also allows you to recover faster from these harder runs and workouts. So intermittent fasting allows you to train harder, and recover faster.

And then one of the big benefits I want to talk about here is that and I kind of mentioned this already, but this is that intermittent fasting helps to speed up the fat adaptation process. The key to fat adaptation, becoming a fat adapted runner, is to get your body used to using your own body fat for fuel.

And the best way to do this, is just don’t eat anything. That way, your body will not have any glucose available for energy. So it will have to go into your fat stores for energy, this is good, this is what we want. And this process of switching from burning glycogen to burning fat, is what we call the fat adaptation period.

And that takes a couple of weeks, you know, two to six weeks depending on how you do it, and your body type and all kinds of other factors. But it’s kind of different for everybody. But generally speaking, it’s somewhere between two and six weeks to get to that point of where you become fully fat adapted. Fasting really helps to speed up this process, okay? It’s an uncomfortable period, because running really sucks during that period.

So when you combine low carbohydrate, high fat diet, along with intermittent fasting, it helps to shorten that uncomfortable fat adaptation period. Okay, so all of these amazing benefits that I just listed. You get all these amazing health benefits without taking any kind of medications without buying any kind of supplements, without any cost at all to you without doing anything at all, except just donate. I think that’s pretty freakin amazing if you ask me.

Okay, so we will be continuing this conversation. We’re talking all about intermittent fasting this month over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So here’s a little preview of what’s coming up in the Running Lean community. September intermittent fasting challenge.

And so over the course of the next several weeks, talking about how to do intermittent fasting is a lot simpler than you might think. I’m going to be offering tips on how to succeed with intermittent fasting, like how to make sure we’re getting enough electrolytes, what electrolytes should you take? When should you take them?

And what to do when you feel like, when you feel like eating something because like when we’re intermittent fasting, one of the things I talk about the first thing we’re doing this week is no snacks, right? Not eating between meals. And people are like, well, I feel hungry. And I’m like, Well, what did we do about that? You know, that never happens, people never feel hungry between meals. So I’ll give you some tips on how to deal with stuff like that.

So it’s like about how to curb the cravings between meals, how to deal with those urges and stuff like that, okay. I’ll be going over all the different types of intermittent fasting. So there’s different ways of doing this. There’s something called time restricted eating. There’s something people do called alternate day fasting.

There’s some advanced fasting regimens like a 36 hour, 48 hour, 24 hour fasts, one meal a day that people like to do. So there’s different ways of doing this. And I’ll just be giving you some information on all these things, and how to do some of them safely.

And then one of the big things I’ll be talking about over in the Running Lean community on Facebook is training in a fasted state. I call it running on empty. So this is where you don’t need fuel before, during or even after your runs. What? I know it sounds crazy, right? But I gotta tell you, it’s pretty amazing. I have not used fuel.

For months, I do all my workouts, all of my runs in a fasted state. So I haven’t eaten anything for like, at least 12 hours before running, just do some coffee, you know, I gotta have my coffee in the morning. Just honestly, I take electrolytes with me on my runs. And my runs have been amazing.

I’m up to about 15 miles doing this, alright, and I don’t need to have fuel with me. It’s kind of an experiment I’m doing. You know, I could take some fuel with me if I wanted to, but I don’t need it. And that’s the point I’m trying to get out here is like, you don’t have to have it. And when you train this way, and you train in this fasted state you’re building, you’re producing all this growth hormone, and you’ve got an amazing amount of energy. So you can actually run harder, run faster, run longer, and recover faster. So amazing, right?

So honestly, becoming a fat-adapted runner, this is one of the best things you can do for yourself. We’ll talk about how we do all that. So join us for the September intermittent fasting, and see what not eating can do for your overall health, energy, weight loss, and running. Cool. That’s all I got for you guys today. As always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you. Keep on Running Lean will talk to you soon.

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

26. Chris Wissman on Maintaining Peak Performance as a Real Human

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Chris Wissman is co-founder and Director of Fitness Programs at Real Human Performance here in Cincinnati. Chris considers himself more of a holistic health coach than a personal trainer. His …

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Podcast Transcript

Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode number 26 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m a weight loss coach for runners. And today, I have something very special to share with you. It’s an interview I did recently with Chris Wissman.

Chris is one of the cofounders of Real Human Performance here in Cincinnati. And he’s the director of their fitness programs. Chris considers himself more of a holistic health coach than a personal trainer though. And his approach to health and fitness is a lot like mine.

So for him, it’s not just about lifting weights or eating right, there’s so much more going on, there’s so many more things to consider. You know, if you want to get to your ideal body weight, or maintain peak performance as a runner, you have to consider the whole human. And that’s what Chris does.

And I say this is an interview, but it was more just like a fun conversation that he and I have. So we work out together. And he and I have these awesome conversations while we’re working out. And one day, I was like, do we need to record these conversations, I think people would get a lot out of this. So that’s kind of what we’ve got going on here. You’re gonna dig this, promise.

And if you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a Facebook group that goes hand in hand with this podcast, we take a deeper dive into these topics. You get to ask questions and get answers totally free. But if you listen to the podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook, and starting July 1.

So that’s coming up very soon here in a matter of days, starting July 1, we are doing a 31 day no sugar challenge for the whole month of July. The challenge is for you to stop eating sugar. Sugar is just so terrible for you. Really is the first step if you want to lose weight. If you want to become a lean running machine, you’ve got to stop eating sugar.

So all during July, we’ll be talking about sugar, you know, all the reasons why you need to get off of sugar. I’m going to be walking you through this step by step. So each week I’ll be offering support, some tips, some q&a sessions, some coaching, I’m going to be talking about it here on the podcast, I’m going to do everything I can to help you make that transition off of sugar, and into becoming a better human and lean running machine.

So grab a few friends to join us in the Running Lean community on Facebook, you can just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And you can find it there but join us for the no sugar challenge. It’s going to be amazing.

Okay, so in the interview, Chris and I talked about a lot of cool stuff. So we talked about what chronic cardio is like the cycle of chronic cardio and what runners need to do to break out of it. We talked about why we should be adding in some more high intensity workouts like sprints, we talked about how running slower (sounds counterintuitive) will actually help you to run faster.

We talked about sure sugar burning versus fat burning, and the benefits of becoming a fat adapted runner. We talked about what happens when you don’t get enough sleep, the importance of managing stress as an athlete. Why you might want to rethink sucking down all those energy gels during a race. Talk about intermittent fasting and the surprising benefits of when you work out in a fasted state.

Why athletes practice periodization and why you should too and a bunch of other stuff. So this is a really, we talk about a lot of stuff in here but it’s a really fun interview. And Chris, he’s just an all around awesome human and a good friend. I think you’re really going to dig this conversation. So here it is.

Patrick McGilvray
Okay, today I’m talking with Chris Wissman. Chris is a holistic, functional health coach and movement coach. How’s that, Chris?

Chris Wissman
That sounds perfect, man.

Patrick McGilvray
We were just talking about what do I call you and Chris was like, here’s some words you can use, you know, but what Chris does is he helps people to become the best version of themselves, you know, through functional fitness through coaching. And he does it with a really cool approach, something that I try to, you know, mimic in the way that I coach people, which is taking a holistic approach, like looking at this from a bunch of different angles.

It’s not just about work. Now, it’s not just about lifting weights, it’s not just about eating right, you’ve got to like factor in all these different things. And one of the things that Chris and I are going to talk about today, I hope we get into this, I’m sure we will, is about stress and the amount of stress that we put on our body on a regular basis.

So we as runners are really notoriously bad at resting. And we’re notoriously bad at overworking ourselves, and not listening to our body and not being like aware of, you know, how we’re feeling and then adjusting. We’re just like, hammer on all the time. So I want to talk about that a little bit today. So we got a few things we’re gonna talk about. Chris, how’re you doing today?

Chris Wissman
Good, man. Good. It’s good to be here. I’m really excited and excited to see you back in the gym. And I’m stoked to talk about this stuff as this is the stuff that I I love to research all the time and just keep up with.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and Chris and I work out together. And he’s my coach, you know, when we’re at the gym, and we have these conversations about, you know, about food and stress and running and all this stuff. And, and I’m like, dude, let’s just put this, let’s just record our conversation. So that’s what we’re doing. So cool.

Chris Wissman
Yeah. I love that you mentioned the running and the chronic state of running. And I think you mentioned to me not too long ago that people jump into a running protocol to maybe lose weight, and where that it can help. But if we’re in that kind of chronic state, the black hole training model of just some people refer to it as the stage three training model, the level three, it just becomes like a chronic stressor. And like you’re saying with the stress, and it’s, it becomes really hard to if your goal is to lose weight, it becomes really hard to lose weight. While you’re chronically stressed, the body actually wants to hold weight in that state to survive. And certainly, it gets confused.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I was just talking about this with a client yesterday about what stress does to your body. So what stress does is it releases this hormone called cortisol. And cortisol is a stress hormone. And but when you’re when your body releases cortisol, it like floods, your system with glycogen, you know what I mean?

So glucose levels go up, your insulin levels go up. And we all know that, you know, when insulin is high, you’re in this fat storage mode. So people that are chronically stressed out whether it’s because of their job or their, you know, family situation, or because of what they’re doing to their body, the way they’re running or working out, find it very difficult to lose weight because their body is constantly in that fat storage mode.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, that’s exactly when cortisol is a great thing. It’s a survival mechanism. But we can’t be chronically releasing cortisol, we kind of get, at some point in time, you can’t produce it as well. And that becomes really problematic.

It’s what you were talking about when you discovered Mark Sisson, and probably a long time ago, but recently, when we’re kind of connecting the dots, with Sisson’s approaches, what he does is a lot of sprinting, and then a lot of low level like aerobic state movements. If I’m not mistaken, I’d love to do stuff in quite a long time.

But if I, if I remember correctly, that was his approach, and then maybe strength training first. And that kind of system, which helps people not have to stand up again, and that black hole, right, and that and that. There’s no real intention. I think that’s the underlying factor to all these things.

Like, why are we running? What’s the intention? And then if the intention is to lose weight, cool, if the intention is to I want to run a marathon, that’s a different story, if the intention is, you know what I mean? So for me, it just, everyone has to know why they’re doing what they’re doing, before they just jump into it for kind of haphazard reasons.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and honestly, like marathon runners were really great at like, following a plan, you know, following a training plan. Yeah, it’s like run five miles today. And you’re like, well, I don’t really feel like it but just do it anyway, or I’m really sore. I’m really tired. Just like do it anyway, and then do it tomorrow and do it the next day and do it three days from now and like this, just that what we do, you know, and we think we’re like, really, like, we’ve got this like, amazing work ethic.

And we’re like, yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, the problem is you’re just always, you know, in that you’re stressing your body and you never give it a chance to kind of calm down. And, you know, going back to the cortisol thing, it’s like, that’s a great thing to stress your body sometimes, but then, you know, you want to like, then not stress your body, because that’s correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that’s how we grow. You know, when we lift, we lift weights at the gym, we stress out our muscles, we break them down, we tear them apart, and then we gotta rest so that they will grow.

Chris Wissman
We can’t be catabolic all the time. Catabolic is muscle destruction, you gotta, you gotta go through that healing process. At some point. It’s a guy that I trained through, I always go back to the yin and the yang cycle with all of these things like the balance is so important. Yeah, catabolic, you’re gonna, you’re gonna start rippin’ some muscle, but then you have to rest, you have to come out of that, that a lot of these really high intensity, high functioning athletes are 80%, anaerobic, and that 20% of the time and they’re in that catabolic state.

So it’s not like a 50/50, which is very interesting, right? Yeah. Yeah, they pick very specific times with very specific movements to go tear it up. And on their other training days, their way in low there, they’re getting their mileage in if they need to. It might not be Grace mileage, but you know what I mean?

So they’re staying at that slower pace, like you and I were talking about, and all the other life elements that we experienced that make us not only like, from muscle, musculoskeletal standpoint, catabolic is stressors from every other element is, again, mimicking catabolic activity in our, in our, in our body. And so we’re really struggling to heal. So that rest process is like, dude, sleep is sacred. It is, it is free, you don’t have to pay for it. And if you set it up, right there, there is nothing. That I mean, there are some things but it affects your life so positively. But yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
Sleep is such a key factor here. Like, I just read this study where they tested people, and they like limited the amount of sleep they got, and the like, by an hour or two. And they you know, in this, you know, clinical trial that they did with these people. And all of them started gaining weight just from like reducing the amount of sleep there again, because of the cortisol.

Chris Wissman
It is. Yep. Yeah. There’s a really cool chart that I’ll send over to you. It shows the the graph on the cortisol rise in relation to the sunlight and all of this. It’s it’s a really unique sequence that has everything to do with balancing your rest and recovery cycle. European some people call it your circadian rhythm. Yeah. And so if I had any advice to people, if it was like, the freest thing you can do is to structure your sleep as best as you possibly can.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, for sure. We can get enough sleep, for sure. But going back, you mentioned something that was kind of cool, talking about the intensity of the workouts. And so one thing I’ve been doing lately, and I’ve been having some good luck with this, in fact, I just did this this morning. I did some sprinting.

So yeah, go out for and I try to do this once a week. And I go out for it’s like a 20 minute run. It’s really short, but incredibly intense. Like I do just a half mile jog, just to kind of warm up a little bit. Then I stop and get my heart rate down. And then I run as hard as I can for like 30 seconds.

And then take about a minute off until my heart rate comes back down again. And then just repeat that so I’m running full on as hard as I can for 30 seconds. resting for a minute and I do that like six times. And then through interval training. Yeah, then a short jog to finish up.

Okay, so that’s what that looks like. The rest of the week. I do a couple other runs, where I’m going really slow. So it’s almost painfully slow sometimes. Yeah. And to keep my heart rate down to stay in that aerobic zone. Yes. You know, the fat burning zone, the, the place where you were like build your aerobic engine you oh my god, this is like the best way to build endurance is to run really slow. It’s really hard for people to do that though. They freak out because they’re like, man, I can’t run that slow all the time. But if you if you can get good at running in that aerobic zone, do your endurance, it just goes through the roof,

Chris Wissman
Especially if you regulate breath during it. And the yogis figured this out a long time ago. Like really anaerobic is just like a symptom of not being aerobic don’t I mean, iit’s not like a different state. It’s just like, oh, I’ve become anaerobic now.

Like the aerobic if you can control the breath during the aerobic process, the more you’ll be able to regulate your O2. And there’s a term I’m looking for specifically, Brian McKenzie talks a lot about this. And I’m excited for you and Jen to, to talk about the breath and maintaining our aerobic zone. Because when you come out of it, that’s that 20%, right that, that more chest breathing and more needing for more oxygen. It’s really, it’s a fascinating topic. There’s a lot of really awesome experts out there in regards to in regards to that. And Brian would encourage you to if you’ve never heard of him, check out Brian Mackenzie. He’s an awesome, dude.

Patrick McGilvray
Definitely, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes for this episode, too. And, and just so people know, Chris is talking about Jen, who is your partner at human performance. And Jen and I are gonna be having a conversation about breathing soon, Jen is a breathwork expert. And she’s going to be talking about, she and I are going to have a conversation about breathing and running and how to kind of reduce stress using breath work, you know how to, you know, stay in that aerobic zone, using your breath as a tool for that. And some other things that blow she blows my mind when she started talking about breathing.

Chris Wissman
It’s really wild. Every time somebody comes out of her office, they’re like, dude, who is that? What in the hell, how does she know these things?

Patrick McGilvray
So I found that, like, the slowing down has been one of the best things that I can do to improve my endurance, you know, and, and here’s the thing that runners struggle with, they’re like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to be a slow runner, I don’t want to run that slow. But the thing is, in order to get faster, you got to start slow, or you got to really slow down, you can, as you become, you build that aerobic engine, and you become super efficient at that slower speed, and you’re incorporating some really explosive speed work. You can start ramping up your speed. Exactly, it’s going to be so much easier for you. Yep, oh my god, yeah,

Chris Wissman
Without a doubt, you know, you know, that threshold will get higher and higher and higher and higher than your, your efficiency of breath will be the same at a faster pace. And it will seem just as easy if you’re smoking be able to being able to push that envelope, which is it’s really cool.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so one of the issues that people have when they do this, but you know, Mark Sisson calls chronic cardio, it, you know, they get just into that anaerobic zone, and they just stay there all the time, every difficult is, or every workout is like, you know, moderate to difficult intensity, like every single workout is the same, there’s not enough rest and recovery period in between there, this leads to burnout, it leads to chronic stress, it leads to inflammation…

Chris Wissman
That’s the hardest thing ever, when it comes to developing a workout program for the general population, because most people are chronically stressed, right, we go as you know, we go through at Real Human Performance, we go through cycles, right, we’ll go through a heavy phase will go through an endurance phase, we’ll go through a rotation and a power phase and, etc, etc, with and they’re very strategically placed. One after the next so we can lead in these different zones.

But the problem is the the capacity takes takes quite a bit to get if that makes any sense to have the capacity to say do a heavy set of three on like a trap bar, squat deadlift, whatever you want to call it, or a heavy set of three on a push press, or a heavy sled boy, you have to be really a balanced human being to be able to go in there and, and push it like a corporate athlete, if you will. So that’s why my passion is really helping people understand their life stressors. Like you said, it’s easy to build on that. The foundation, like we’re talking about, has to be laid. And sometimes that’s hard to convince people to take the time to do. If that makes sense.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and yeah, and it’s building the foundation. It’s like the, it’s the foundation. It’s like the most important part. It really is. And then there’s this idea of like, periodization, you know, or like, you know, you know, just, you know, following like not only listening to your body and kind of like, if you need a rest day take it but also like, like a professional athletes, for example.

They go through these training seasons, you know, so they’ll have a season where they start out really slow, and then they gradually build in intensity. And then they, you know, get to this critical point they do whatever event they’re going to do and then There’s this period of rest, you know, where they’re not doing any, hardly any training at all.

And, you know, that gives your body a chance to, like, you know, rebuild on the inflammation to come down. And you get to do other things like spend time with your family and connect with your friends and you know, do hobbies and all these other things that you like to do that make your life worth living, you know. But again, there’s like this idea in that a lot of runners follow this, which is like you’re always training. So you’re always at, like, this intensity level of like, a seven or something seven or eight, you know, and just like, that’s how you do like, 100% of the time.

Chris Wissman
There’s a reason that athletes pay coaches a lot of money to design them periodization protocols because it’s keeping them from getting injured. It’s, it’s lengthening the lifespan of their sport, and, and then making money, right. So it’s, that’s the professional, I guess my point is the professionals do it like that for a very good reason. You don’t have an option, but everything is very crucial in that world. It’s there to make a living.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I can’t, I’m not a professional athlete. Yeah, no, right. But I can say from my own experience of years of like, just pushing it all the time, that I was stressed out, I was always I was inflamed.

I was, you know, addicted to carbs, carbs and sugar, like and glucose, like I was running on on sugar, you know, and I became, you know, I started gaining weight, and I started becoming, you know, pretty stressed out and inflamed. And just like, unhealthy as a runner, which is a crazy thing to think about, you know, because most people think, Oh, you run marathons, you’ve got to be like, the healthiest of the healthy. And it’s just not true.

There’s plenty of people out there that are just like me, like I was, which is like, just, you know, totally addicted to carbs and sugar running on glucose taking 18, you know, gels with them for a long run, whatever, right? And just like never, you know, always gaining weight, always under stress, and not understanding why they aren’t in perfect health.

Chris Wissman
Intention, man. Yeah, that’s exactly it. What is the what is your intention here? And then if it’s not, pure intention isn’t lining up. The results are lining up with the intention. There’s something wrong. And that sounds like that you’ve discovered that.

I had a similar thing. A couple years ago, on my birthday. I guess it was my 30th birthday. I started feeling really dizzy in a restaurant. I don’t know if I mentioned this in the last podcast, did I? I don’t think so. Anyway, because it was kind of a, like a eye opening experience. Got really dizzy at a restaurant on my birthday, I was under a lot of stress.

At the time, I was sleeping probably four or five hours a night, probably four coffees a day. Any element of life that I could think of I was getting stressed from I was trying to make a pretty extreme diet change. I was heavy, heavy strength training. It wasn’t like an 80/20. For me with a 20 strength. It was like probably four days a week of heavy lifting and very little aerobic activity.

So I ended up passing out in this restaurant and what looked like I wanted to anaphylactic shock. And no one was really, ever really able to give me any answers. I went to the hospital and got all the scans and the tests. And I believe that I just have had a total shutdown of my nervous system. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.

But it was just from chronic stress, right? It was just without recovery. And the body perceives stress. Perception is almost all the same, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional, or nutritional, or dehydration, all these things equal kind of the same thing at the end of the road.

It’s a hormonal dysregulation. It’s an end you can’t recover without setting down, getting out of that catabolic lifestyle, getting out of a catabolic state and resting. And so once I understood that, I didn’t really I, I kind of had to make a lot of changes. And that’s kind of why I was making mentioned on my being very cognizant of my caffeine consumption because I can become addicted to that very fast and I noticed my cortisol getting jacked up.

If I break that one coffee in the morning, and I start doing two a day. I know, like a weekend I’m like, oh, your mind tries to play tricks on you. It’s like yeah, it’s alright, you’re running low. Today, you’re gonna do a X, Y and Z, you should get a little extra energy and it’s fake.

And at that point, it’s not I’m borrowing and borrowing that energy. So and everyone’s different in that regard. So it’s just that the stress element of all this is, is, is of the utmost importance, utmost importance if you’re going to be doing any kind of activity, and it’s hard, man, that’s life right now, like, people have kids, and they’ll have really intense jobs, and they have to maintain relationships at home and at work and with their family. And so that the balance, yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, man, I mean, you’re talking about so many important things there, you know, and, you know, the stress that we put ourselves under. Even if we’re, quote, unquote, like, super healthy, like, you were like, I thought I was, you know, like, you can, that stress can really cause a chain reaction, and lead to all kinds of health issues, you know, you passed out in a restaurant, basically, because your body was just like, shutting down, you know, yeah.

And for a lot of people, like, I know, my experience was that I was, like, really inflamed, and just gaining weight, like crazy. And I couldn’t figure out why. And, and part of it, you know, was diet, but you know, another big part of it was, was stress and constantly putting myself under stress, whether it was from, you know, work or from relationships, or from, you know, the kind of workouts I was doing, it’s all related.

And that’s where you know, what I started talking about what you do and how you help people, Chris, you know, I mentioned, you take this approach, where we look at all these things. And that’s what I love, like working out at Real Human Performance. And I love your approach is because we talk about these things. And it’s not just about lifting the weights at the gym. Yeah.

Chris Wissman
I try to explain that to people that haven’t been in there. Like, how’s the gym? I’m like, wow, and it’s not really just a gym. I try not to get frustrated.

Patrick McGilvray
They’re like, well, you know, LA Fitness is cheaper, you know? Yeah. I’m just like, Yeah, I’m

Chris Wissman
Like, whatever. Just come in for a month and tell me what you think.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And so like, yeah, you’ve been such a big influence on me, honestly, like, this has been really, I’ve had an amazing health journey and health transformation over the last few months, in part by, you know, some of the things that you and I have been talking about some of the things that you have taught me, you know, I mean, a few years ago, I ditched the sugar and the carbs.

And I like, kind of went more of on a like a ketogenic type of diet. And, you know, and you and I talked a lot about that at the time, and I had a lot of great results from that, you know, and I remember one of the biggest results I had was that I was training for these ultra marathons at the time, and I’d really slow down my running.

But dude, I could run all day, because I was just running on fat. I was completely fat adapted. I was fueled by fat. And I could literally run, I would do these ultra marathons in the summer 30 mile trail races, you know, and I wasn’t breaking any speed records. But dude, I could run all day. And I was just doing like, for fuel. I was drinking water. And eating almond butter.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, like that was about you gave me some of those coconut balls that you had made back in the day. Yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
And so I was doing these fat bombs and coconut oil and stuff like that. So I learned all that. But then it got I didn’t I didn’t have the whole I didn’t have the whole picture. And I went back to like, you know, doing the carbs again. And, and that’s when things started to go kind of slippery, slippery slope, you know, started going downhill for me.

I started becoming more stressed out, more chronically inflamed, and started gaining weight. And the last few years have been this low decline of my health. And I finally had to just be like, dude, what is going on here? So thinking back to what we did before I’m like that worked for me and I had amazing results. I remember feeling so good. Back then I’m like, I gotta get back into it and become fat-adapted again. So that’s where I am today. And these last few months have been amazing, you know, I’ve lost like 35 pounds, dude. Yeah, dude, I’m not inflamed anymore. Like I can see my abs again.

Chris Wissman
So happy I can be a part of that. That’s frickin cool.

Patrick McGilvray
But one of the things that I really had to wrap my head around is that, you know, running is not a really effective way to just lose weight. You know what I mean? I was trying to use running to lose weight and I kept running more and more, and it wasn’t working.

But now I understand it’s more of a hormonal issue, you know, and, and once I figured that out, and then figure it out some of the stressors that I was putting my body under the weight, you know, just started melting off. Yes, and then you know, then there’s that period of time. After adaptation, you know where as a runner running on sugar, you got to switch over to being fueled by fat. So you got to get the sugar out of your system takes a few weeks. But then once you get to that point to that’s where the magic happens. And that’s kind of where I am today. And I love it.

Chris Wissman
Yes, yeah, without a doubt I, under that that stressful state that I was in I was I was fat-adapted, and I had all these benefits from it as far as like, no brain fog. And I just didn’t get hungry all the time, like you would in a normal eating scenario. But one thing I found out about myself with that situation was that my liver was under a lot of stress, and it wasn’t able to keep up because we can produce our own glycogen, theoretically, we don’t have to have a healthy individual doesn’t have to have carbohydrates, or sugar.

We can do all of that on our own. What I found out through one of my friends, Jared Ziegler to the living proof Institute, and that dude’s on another level, but that I wasn’t, I just, he just pointed me in a couple of directions.

He didn’t tell me very much, but I intuitively discovered them that I was not producing glycogen, my liver was really stressed. So I had to back off a little bit and then then really slowly reintroduce, and find what my kind of we talked about last time and metabolic type was. And I mentioned last time that I was more of a carbo type.

And I think that I’m more of a carbo type when I’m stressed, if that makes sense. Because, and I didn’t have the availability, I don’t have, I didn’t have the full life force to have all my systems working in synchronicity, when I’m under a lot of stress. And now with this recalibration of sleep after the break, and coming back, and then having a consolidated schedule, I can really tune all these things in.

So I guess that it kind of leads back to what we were talking about the ancestral eating type, you know, is understanding that and understanding that it matters, how we evolved, in what our ancestors had availability to eat. That is literally how our genetics are made up. And now, there is epigenetics, where you can change slightly, but we still have some kind of hardwired things, if you will. So that’s where it all goes back for me. And the majority of the people have access to heavy fat dense fuel. A lot of the times, you know what I mean? So whether it be wild game, or you name it, you know what I’m saying?

Patrick McGilvray
So, and I’ve been like, really fascinated by that whole topic lately of ancestral eating, which is yeah, basically eating what your particular ancestors ate, you know, like, when you just say like, the Paleo diet or something like that, that’s kind of a one size fits all for everybody. And everybody has their own interpretation of it.

Some people it means just eat bacon all the time. Some people just like just eat cheese, or whatever now. Yeah. So but if you can, if you can look at your particular genetics and your particular ancestral eating patterns and the things that your particular ancestor did. My ancestors come from Western Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland, mostly. Yeah, and so they were eating a lot of fish. And a lot of, they eat a lot of oats, they have these like oat cakes, which is something that they’ve been eating for, you know, a couple 1000 years.

Julius Caesar actually makes note of this in a document where he you know, he ended up in, in Great Britain, you know, any any came across the Britains. And he made this note of them eating these oatcakes. And so that’s something that my ancestors used to eat. And then, but obviously, it wasn’t highly processed, like that kind of stuff is today. And then, you know, certain game animals too.

Yeah, you know, so anyways, so there was this. So those kinds of things like you can actually look to your own history. And even within the last 500 years or so, is a good way to look your great grandparents or their great grandparent, you know, somewhere in that lineage there and see what they were eating, because we have some good records of that, you know, we even have, like recipes that people have handed down, you know.

Chris Wissman
And it’s worth testing. You know what I mean, to see how you do on that there is a good old brand out there, it’s called One Degree, they actually have a barcode on their bag, and it tells you exactly what farm their oats came from. So it’s like guaranteed glyphosate free. Cool, really cool brand, just side note, but yeah. So once you gain that knowledge, then you can look back and think about what they’re eating like you did and test it out and see if it works for you. A lot of times it does and sometimes it doesn’t, but it just depends on where you’re at. And your your journey of making these these changes. So I think it’s fascinating nonetheless.

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, it’s totally worth experimenting with, you know what I mean? Yeah, like if you’re if your ancestors are from, you know, the tropics, they’re gonna they’re gonna eat a much different diet and you’re, you’re going to be predisposed to, to thrive on a much different diet, then, you know, the Inuit Eskimos and the Arctic, you know what I mean? So yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
That’s, that’s, that’s really cool. And those people are probably exposed to, they’re probably eating fat, fatty fish, and then tropical sugars. So I think one of the misconceptions with fat adaptation is that we no longer use sugar. And that’s not that’s not the case really, at all, because we’re producing our own and we’re converting proteins, and we’re really in the training zone into sugars, right.

And especially for super catabolic, even our muscle. So it’s not like it’s this direct gear shift from sugar to fat, you know what I mean, it’s a constant mesh of different types of fuel. But just having the availability, to get the most efficiency out of that fat is what I think is important to understand. Because before we didn’t, we weren’t able to use it unless we were like, in this starvation situation, and you were just out in the wilderness forever, and you would have to burn your stored body fat. So forcing yourself to start using that is really, really cool.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and that fat is, is such a great source of fuel. It’s like a, especially if you’re an endurance athlete, because, you know, it’s, you know, glycogen is great for short bursts. If you’re a sprinter. You know, if you’re Usain Bolt you want to be you want to have those glycogen stores filled up, you know, but if you’re a long distance runner, or an ultra runner, you don’t need to have that added glycogen, you can get all the energy you need for that long distance running, just from your fat, it’s such a clean burning type of fuel. And you can you know, we have hundreds of 1000s of calories of fat just on our bodies, even the leanest of us. So we don’t really need to bring all the gels and sports drinks and all that stuff for those kinds of events.

Chris Wissman
Especially if you’re not going to train right the next day, like the majority of us are not, like you said are not professional athletes, right. So after you train, a healthy body can go without fuel immediately. And we’re you mentioned fasted workouts. I know a little bit more on waiting after the workout regards to, again, a healthy body, if you do your exercise or your run, you can wait a little bit and let the body do its natural hormetic process.

When we interrupt that hormetic process with immediate fuel, or immediate cold shower to blunt inflammation, then our body gets assistance. So you’re, you’re essentially taking away from that workout or that recovery of that workout a little bit.

If you’re able to wait a little bit, you know, take a walk after you’re done exercising, or if you’re done running, and then cooled down. And maybe that 60 minute mark could start replenishing. And if you’re gonna go right back at a hard one, the next day after training or something really serious, then you might consider the glucose then.

If you’re not going to train the next day, or if it’s going to be an aerobic day, a light day, you don’t necessarily need it, you know what I mean? So that’s a really interesting thing to think about as as people progress with their training as the as someone like me might be a little different because I struggle I have the opposite of struggle where I really don’t want to put on so I might need to go replenish right after and that seems like peachy rosy but it’s it’s a pain in the butt.

Sometimes they have to worry about how much fuel to put in. Before Patrick and I just got started was talking about since we’ve opened the gym back up. I’ve lost like 12 pounds and just sheer movement and activity. And so everyone’s going to be unique with generally speaking you don’t have to refuel immediately after.

And sometimes from what a lot of these guys are saying there’s huge benefits to going into a workout. Again, I want to keep stressing a healthy body going into a workout fasted. We’re talking all sorts of anti-aging effects, and then and then being more sensitive to insulin again, and tons of things, which I think is fascinating.

Growth factor and hormone regulation and testosterone production. And it’s really wild. And to be honest, you mentioned that in our note overview. I hadn’t looked at that a lot in a long time. And I thought it was fascinating when I when I started pulling this stuff back up and I was like, dang, I wasn’t sure I didn’t know about all that at least anytime recently. I wasn’t I wasn’t up on the research there. It’s pretty cool.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, a couple of things that I love about working out in that fasted state is number one, you produce more adrenaline, which means you actually work out a little harder. Then if you are working out in a fed state, okay, so number one you can, you can intensify your workouts and do some good explosive training. And it’s good for the long distance training too.

Number two, you produce more growth hormone when you’re in that fasted state. So you could actually like, you’re gonna get better results from your from your workout, and the recovery time will be shorter, because of that growth hormone that’s being produced.

Chris Wissman
It’s kind of like that hormetic response I was talking about, right? Like you’re not assisting your body in this process that it has to do. And it gets better at it, slowly.

Patrick McGilvray
And if you’re like trying to lose weight, working on a fasted state is a great way to really access those fat stores and start to use the fat for fuel, meaning you’re burning body fat while you’re working out. So it has all these amazing advantages. And it’s almost like cheating in a way. Because like, I know that there’s some professional athletes that did train in a fasted state now because it gives them that same kind of edge as if they were taking performance enhancing drugs. Yeah, without any of those crazy side effects.

Chris Wissman
It’s, you’re exactly right. I mean, the clarity you get sometimes on a fast is like, your body’s not working, it can focus on what your task at hand, you know, you’re not digesting food. And that’s like the big thing with going to bed. Without food in your stomach, the body gets a chance to do its thing gets a chance to physically and emotionally recover.

From all the standpoints of life, we always have food in our system, then we’re just constantly having to spend a ton of energy, I forget the percentage of energy spent on digestion versus what you think like, say you had 100 calories, I think 40 of them go to digesting the food. I’m not a big calorie person.

But just to give you an example, it is a huge working process to metabolize food, and to turn it into fuel. And the body gets hot. When you’re eating a bunch of food, like my body temperature will go way up. I can just physically feel like radiating heat when I have a lot of food to process. So just think about how much work that is.

So there’s a reason that all the ancient ancient traditions and religions have incorporated fasting for it since the beginning of time. Yeah, something we had to deal with, like the feast famine cycle, and we’re out in the wild. Like there might be times when we didn’t get it, and everybody talks about that. But it’s, it’s real. Like, there’s times we went without food for a long time, and are fine. Fine, totally fine.

Patrick McGilvray
You touched on something though, that’s really important too, also for long distance runners, that when you are constantly shoving food into your stomach while you’re running, especially doing these longer events, you’re spending a lot of energy digesting that food.

So energy and blood gets pulled away from your extremities from your muscles to work in digesting, especially for the ultra runners who are actually eating a lot of food like pizza, potato chips and stuff like that out there. So instead, if you can work out and do these longer runs in a fasted state, you don’t need to constantly be fueling your body. You’re not using all this extra energy that you need for your legs to be digesting all this food. I mean, it makes sense, right?

Chris Wissman
You know, it’s, it’s right. It’s exactly right. Yeah, I noticed I would watch I watch a lot of Ultras. I’ll watch the ones in Colorado, and in Meadville, and just something that I don’t I’ve never done one I’ve always wanted to so I end up watching him and these guys are like at breaks eating big pieces of pizza. I’m like, what are you doing?

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, I will totally tell you like I was eating so much. Like when I did my 100 miler, I ate so much food. And honestly, looking back on it, it was probably a lot harder than it needed to be for that.

Chris Wissman
You think there’s a better way to fuel what these breaks for people. And I don’t, I’m not trying to be judgmental, but I just assume there’s got to be some. Why is it that we just resource to junk at the brakes might excuse the excuses that I’ve heard is that we burned it so fast that it doesn’t matter. I don’t I mean, like you get a cellular response from everything that you’re putting in. So it’s like, is there something better we can be doing for these guys and you guys and gals at these checkpoints to not have to have all the garbage?

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, like I was under a lot of GI distress during that particular race for sure. A lot of Gi issues. In fact, eating anything became extremely hard like I had to force myself to just eat like salty pretzels or was just something to get the salt in and potato chips because everything else was making me like nauseous, you know? Yeah, and a lot of that has to do with just, you know, constantly having all that blood, you know, in your stomach trying to digest all this food that and it just it really upsets your stomach. So a lot, a lot of runners have issues with GI issues.

Chris Wissman
I wouldn’t doubt it. I mean, I touched last time, that idea of the disrupt somatic inhibition, and there’s all kinds of terms around it. But all that really means is all your organs are inflamed, so as a musculature, most muscular scope, musculoskeletal system around it, sorry. So you get a stress response in your gut while you’re in the middle of 100 mile race. I struggle with that.

Patrick McGilvray
And it’s kind of self induced, right? Yeah.

Chris Wissman
Yeah. Like you want everything on your side when you’re running 100 miles. Come on.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. I mean, and I don’t know what they I mean, there’s a different answer for everybody. But like, one of the things I experimented with, and I kind of mentioned this earlier, which is on these Ultras, I was doing almond butter, and I would get those like little packets of Justin’s almond butter, and they would be just be almond butter with some, like, maybe some maple syrup in there or something like that.

Yeah, so there was a little bit of sugar in there, but mostly, it was just like a lot of fat. And, and your and your stomach doesn’t have to work very hard to like, metabolize that. And almonds are already ground up. Yeah, but you’re using mostly your, your fat stores for energy.

Now, the sugar packets, you know, the gels like that are just like liquid sugar, basically do the same kind of thing. But they cause an amazing amount of distress and people in people. And but what they do is they you know, it’s like liquefied sugar, basically. And so you get this glycogen hit right away, you know, it’s like, your muscles can access that right away.

But that causes a lot of stomach distress for a lot of people. And so like on an endurance event like that, you can’t do that you can’t be sucking down this sugar all the time, because it will just, you will be sick to your stomach.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, then I did an adventure. I saw my Uncle a quite a while ago. But I remember I’ve never had one of those gel packs. And I remember tasting it. And I was like, whoa. Like the sweetness and the sourness from that it’s something I’d never experienced in my life, it was probably because I’m in the middle of this excruciating race. And my body hadn’t taken any calories. So it’s just like exaggerated. But nonetheless, I, I only had one or two during that race. And it was it was wild.

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, they work to deliver that glycogen like, you know, it gets turned into glycogen right away. And so it works to like, give you that quick energy. But that only lasts for 30-40 minutes, something like that. Yeah, you know, more like, you can’t do that for 24 straight hours, if you’re in long distance races, you know, or, I don’t know, maybe some people can. Like I said, it’s kind of different for everyone, you kind of got to figure out what works for you.

But once you become once you don’t need the glucose for energy, if you’re just relying on the fat, you don’t need to be putting all this sugar and all these carbs into your body. During these kinds of races. You could do some, like, eat some strawberries, you know, you could do Yeah, some some kind of natural forms of of, you know, dense nutrient dense carbohydrates, sweet potatoes as a great thing to have and something like that, you know, easy to digest tons of great nutrient dense carbs. And, and it’s more of a long lasting type of fuel.

Chris Wissman
Yes. There’s a couple of guys that are talking about and I’ve never experienced them. But I’ve heard really good things about something called ketone esters. I only found the production of them through like one company. This has been a couple of years back, but you really just rang a bell a fuel during races and I remember something called ketone esters. So I would maybe look at that. See what you think about that.

Patrick McGilvray
I’ll have to look that up because I have not heard that before.

Chris Wissman
The only thing I remember about them other than their name was how expensive they were.

Patrick McGilvray
I didn’t know that. Like there’s a way that you can like drink ketones somehow to like, kind of get your body into ketosis faster or something like that. But I haven’t really looked into that either.

Chris Wissman
The description was rocket fuel, so

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap it up here? That’s been really awesome, by the way.

Chris Wissman
I think that’s about it, man. And I always go back to making sure that everybody is under the least amount of unnecessary load possible. And I think that’s something that anyone could just take a look at any element of their life and see where they can get rid of unnecessary load, or, or address unnecessary load. But again, whether it be food or relationship or dehydration, or lack of sleep, or lack of movement, you know, you all everyone knows what they could be doing better, you just have to sit down, ask yourself that, and just encourage people to do it, you know. So I think that’s it.

Patrick McGilvray
I love it. I love that intuitive approach to not just eating I love the intuitive approach to eating to, you know, what fuels you eat, what sounds good right now. But I also love that intuitive approach to physical exercise.

You know, if I’m feeling stressed out, or I’m feeling tired, this is not the day to go, you know, push it extra hard as a day to like, slow it down. Take it easy, or just rest. Yes. So I love that awesome man. Back Yeah, well, as always, it is so fun talking to you. And having these conversations, Chris, like I said, we just sit down, we just start talking about whatever it is, or know where it’s gonna go. But it’s fun today. So where can people like reach out to learn more about you?

Chris Wissman
Well, so we have Real Human Performance, we’re going under a little construction in the background as far as like digitally and all that because we’re just creating some new programs, the website is going to look a little different over time, or social media will look a little different.

Personally, I had to get rid of one of my social media accounts, which is drawing too much energy from me. So I went and resorted just to Facebook. And I’m gonna start jumping back on health wagon on Facebook and helping people with that. So I’m not on Instagram, but Real Human Performance is on Instagram. You can also go to our website at realhumanperformance.com. And you can check me out on Facebook, and I think it’s just Christopher Whitman. And I’m gonna start being a lot more engaging on Facebook with the information that I help people with.

Patrick McGilvray
Cool. Love it. Thank you again.

Chris Wissman
Of course, man. Thank you.

Patrick McGilvray
So good, right. Good, good stuff. I just love these conversations with Chris. Remember, we will be continuing this conversation in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’d love for you to join the group. Chris is a part of that group. And you can ask him questions there too. And remember, starting July 1, 31 days, no sugar challenge begins. It’s just a few short days from now. So join us in the Running Lean community on Facebook, grab a few friends, it will be fun. Just search for the Running Lean community and join us. Well, that’s all we got today. As always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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