It’s that time of year when the days are getting shorter and colder, the holidays are upon us, and all you feel like doing is staying in and eating comfort food. I get it. I feel this too. And just …
246. The Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners
I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s advised to keep your carbs low if you’re a runner who wants to lose weight and use body fat as fuel for running. I realized I haven’t …
Continue Reading about 246. The Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 246, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, the Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners. So I know I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s maybe advised for you to keep your carbs low. If you’re a runner who wants to get fat adapted, use body fat as fuel for running and wants to lose weight, I think keeping your carbs low is a very good plan for most people, not everybody, but for most people. But I realized I haven’t spent much time talking about the other macronutrients, fat and protein. Fat and protein are essential nutrients that often get overlooked when it comes to low carb diets and fat adapted running. So I’m hoping to remedy that here today. So this episode is all about that one macronutrient that matters most for runners, and how it benefits your overall health and fitness.
But first I want to talk a little bit about what being a coach means to me. So I’m someone who struggled with eating properly, struggled with my weight, struggled with getting stronger, struggled with my business, and I decided at some point that I was going to get some help, and so I reached out, and I got a nutrition coach that helped me greatly, and I figured out a lot of important things for me, and it was really the key to me losing weight and be able to keep it off forever. I really wanted to get stronger and leaner and build more muscle, and I just was trying to do it on my own. It really wasn’t working. So I got a coach. I had a personal trainer that was working with me to help me get stronger and showing me what to do and correcting my mistakes and keeping me accountable and keeping me on track. And then I had a business coach that really helped me to get my business started, and get my business to a place where it was something that was very sustainable for me. And all along this process, I learned so much from having coaches guide me, show me the way, show me what to do. You know, they’ve already made all the mistakes so they can just teach me what to do without me having to make all those same mistakes, which is really awesome. It’s like taking everything that they know and then just downloading it into me and going like, Okay, perfect. You know, I’m good to go here. But having that accountability, having somebody to bounce ideas off of, having somebody to talk to when things aren’t going well, having somebody to help keep me on track all of those things were vital to me becoming the person that I am today, to losing the weight, to keeping it off, to improving my strength, my overall fitness, to having a thriving business. All those things were benefits of me reaching out and taking a little bit of a leap of faith here, because I had never really done too much in the way of coaching prior to doing all this stuff, and it was a game changer for me. So this is why I became a coach, because it was so impactful for me. And this is why I’m so passionate about being a coach, because I had such an amazing experience with my coaches. And I was just talking to someone the other day who is a coach herself, and she was reaching out to me to get some help. And, you know, we both agreed that all the best coaches have coaches, you know. So it’s just one of those things that if you’re looking for some help, you want somebody to just show you exactly what to do. You’re looking for some guidance and some accountability. You want somebody that’s had all the experience that can just, you know, really take everything that they’ve learned and just dump it into you then, then coaching is probably a good fit for you. And if you want to know if working with me is a good fit for you, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, and click on the big button that says, work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how you can become the most badass version of yourself. Yeah, cool. Running, leancoaching.com. Click on work with me, and let’s do it. Let’s work together. I think it would be super fun. Cool.
Okay, so today, let’s talk about the macronutrient that matters most for runners, and I know that we talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, because I’m a big proponent of just keeping the carbs low. What does that mean? It’s different for each person. You know, we kind of take a break from eating sugar and some of the really starchy grains and try to lower our carbohydrate intake at the beginning of this process. That’s kind of like phase one that I go through with most of my clients.
We keep the carbs pretty low at the beginning, and then at some point we start to increase the carbs. We time carbs around workouts. You go to a place where you’ve kind of maybe hit your ideal weight, and you can dial in your carbohydrate intake to determine, okay, I can eat this many carbs until I start to gain weight again. Oh, maybe I need to back it off a little bit. You know, maybe 100 grams. 150 grams is good for you. Maybe it’s 75, maybe it’s 20. I don’t know. Just everybody’s a little bit different. Everybody has the sweet spot that they feel good about.
So we know we talk a lot about carbs, and being a low carb runner is something that is pretty amazing. Getting fat adapted as a runner is pretty amazing, because now you have this unlimited fuel source of stored body fat that helps improve your endurance, helps improve your athletic performance, and it gives you a whole nother tool that most runners just don’t take advantage of. You know, burning fat as fuel, so keeping the carbs low is a really amazing tool. It helps with weight loss and helps improve your running.
And I realize that I talk a lot about carbs. And if you want to go back to many, many episodes, there’s lots of episodes where I talk about carbohydrates, you know, good carbs, bad carbs. Why carbs are not the enemy, how we feel with carbs, all that kind of stuff. Just go back through my different episodes. You can actually, if you go on to, I don’t know what Apple podcast or Spotify, you can actually scroll back and see all the different episodes. Or you can go to my podcast website, which is runningleanpodcast.com, and that will give you all the episodes that I’ve ever put out there. And you can, you know, just have a scroll through all of those as well.
So anyway, lots of information about carbs, right? But I realized I haven’t talked about the other macronutrients too much, and protein is one of those ones that does not get the air time that carbs get, even fat. Fat gets talked about a lot, you know, especially people who are trying to watch their weight and so they cut out all the fat, which is, we’ll talk a little bit about that in a second. That’s really not recommended, but protein is one of those things that we really need to focus on, especially as runners and when we’re talking about macronutrients, I just want to set the stage here.
The macronutrients that we’re talking about are fat, protein and carbohydrates. Fat and protein are both called Essential macronutrients. That means that your body does not produce fat or protein, so you have to get that in your diet. And when I talk, when I say fat, it doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t store fat. It does store fat, but your body needs fat in order to survive. If you were to go to a zero fat diet, this would be a problem. If you were to go to a zero protein diet, this would be a problem. You would die.
But carbohydrates are not essential. There is no essential requirement for the human body to consume carbohydrates. I’m not saying you shouldn’t consume carbohydrates. I’m just saying, isn’t it interesting that they are not essential, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute, too. But the macronutrients are the things that make up kind of the majority of our diet, fat, protein, carbohydrates. If you look at the back of most labels, it’ll give you the macronutrient breakdown. But there’s also something called micronutrients. And I’m not going to get into a lot of this, but just understand that micronutrients are not, they are required, and we, there are certain essential micronutrients that are required because our bodies that make them so we need to to get in our diet, things like vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D, iron, iodine, folate, zinc. There’s all kinds of essential micronutrients. And then there’s something called micro minerals, which is salt, potassium, magnesium, calcium. These are all essential as well. So we need to get those in our diet as well, because our body doesn’t produce those things. So as long as you’re eating a well balanced diet, you’re going to be getting all of the micronutrients and all the macronutrients that you need to be a healthy human being.
Okay, so now that we know there’s a difference between macronutrients and micronutrients, I wanted to talk a little bit more about carbs. So carbs are kind of considered non essential nutrients, so proteins and fats, vitamins, minerals, all those things I just mentioned are essential because your body doesn’t produce those. So your body actually produces glucose, which is carbohydrate on its own. And your body can actually use other energy sources if there’s no glucose available or very little glucose available. So fat is a good example of this, right? So just understand that you do not need to load up on the carbs all the time, because your body doesn’t really require that much in the way of carbs. Actually, there’s no essential amount of carbs that are required, you know?
And I’m not opposed to carbs, like I said, you know, I think they’re great for helping to improve your athletic performance. It’s fun to just eat some cake sometimes, or ice cream or whatever. So carbs are fine. They’re kind of addicting to a lot of people, though, I know I’m one of these people where I start eating carbs and I can’t stop, you know, so it’s one of those things where I need to really keep my carb intake in check.
Okay, so carbs are fine, but they’re just not essential in the same way that fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals are, but just understand it’s one of the macronutrients that’s talked about a lot, and the other one being fat. So fat is often touted as, like, the enemy of weight loss. Like I know, back in the 80s, they determined, you know, with some pretty shoddy science, that the reason people were getting fat is because they were eating fat. The reason people were overweight is because they were eating too much fat, so stop eating the fat. So they took all the fat out of everything. Everything became low fat, no fat, non fat. And with most of those food products, they replaced the fat with sugar. Because taking the fat out of stuff made it taste terrible. You know, you take the fat out of whatever. There are people who were like, oh, this is disgusting. And so they were like, oh, we’ll make this better, don’t worry. And so they added sugar to it, okay. Well, now everybody became even more overweight. And they’re like, See, you’re not eating all the fat, so you’re healthier. But everybody, the obesity rates have just skyrocketed in this country since we’ve done dumb stuff like that.
So you gotta eat fat like, fat is important. It is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients. If you don’t eat fat, you’ll die. There’s actually something called dietary fat deficiency. It’s kind of rare, but it can happen if you just, like, cut all the fat out of your diet. I know some people who have tried this, they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna go super, I’m just gonna eat no fat, like zero fat. But it leads to things like vitamin deficiencies, dermatitis, slow wound healing, hair loss, sickness problems with your eyes not functioning properly because of like, vitamin deficiencies. There’s like, all kinds of problems that happen when you completely cut out fat. So don’t do that. Fat is a essential macronutrient. We have to get fat in our diet. Don’t be afraid of the fat. The fat is not causing you to get fat.
There’s other factors involved here, and carbs have a bigger role to play when it comes to gaining weight. So we don’t want to just cut out all the fat. We don’t want to go to some kind of a low fat diet, because a lot of times when you do that, you know, you’re replacing a lot of that fat with sugar, and your carbohydrate intake tends to go up pretty high. So just keep the fat in check. You know, I’m not saying you need to be wrapping bacon around sticks of butter and eating that every day. That’s not what we’re talking about here. But don’t be afraid of the fat. I eat lots of fat in my diet.
I actually found that I was trying to cut back on the fat a little bit as an experiment. So I did this for, I don’t know, for four to five months, something like that, and I noticed I just was more lethargic. My running wasn’t going as well. I just didn’t feel as good. Generally, I wasn’t making gains at the gym, and so I added more fat back into the diet, and I noticed that I started feeling better. I was sleeping better. I had more energy. My running improved. My energy levels throughout the day improved. My workouts got better. I started putting on some muscle again, like, so for me, eating a little bit more fat is good. It works for me. And everybody kind of needs to figure out their own fat intake or whatever. But just understand that.
You know, we don’t want to be just cutting all the fat out of the diet, but fat gets so much, you know, whatever you want to call it, press, people talk about fat a lot. Talk about carbs a lot. The one macro that I think you should really be focusing on here is protein for a lot of reasons. And I mean. Give you a few of them here.
Like, one of them is that when you eat more protein, you typically don’t eat as much food. So I’m a person who is, I’m a chronic overeater. I just eat a lot of food when I sit down to eat food, like, if you give me a large pizza, I can put a big, huge dent in that large pizza. People are like, oh, we’re going to be taking some of this home. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t think so. Like, I can put away some food, and I’m not a big person, but I just, especially when it comes to eating carbs. Carbs mess up your hunger signals. When you’re eating a lot of sugar, a lot of carbs, they make your body, they make you feel more hungry. You know, they increase the production of ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, so you feel more hungry. So if you’re eating a lot of carbs, you’re going to be hungry all the time. They suppress the production of leptin, which is the fullness hormone, so then you’re hungry all the time, but you’re not feeling full when you do eat.
So that’s a bad combination, because now you’re just you tend to overeat, and you’re eating and you’re more hungry and eating more all the time. So when we increase the number of the, or the amount of protein that we’re eating, I think what happens for most people is they reduce the amount of fat, and they reduce the amount of carbs that they’re eating. And I would say, if you’re going to replace something on your plate, you know, I would say, just cut out some of the carbs and replace it with protein. We want protein to be the main event at every meal. We want protein to be the main event, and I’m not gonna, you know, necessarily tell you, you got to get so many grams of protein every single day.
I think there’s some new data out there that suggests that a good place for most people who are athletic, like for runners, I think a 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight is a pretty good place for most people to be. If you’re non athletic, you could probably go a little bit less than that, maybe 0.5, 0.6, some people, if you’re highly athletic, you know, maybe bodybuilder type of person, you might need closer to 1.0 gram of protein per pound of body weight, but I think runners can do really well at about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
And this is some new data that’s been coming out. And you know, I’ve been trying this and working with a lot of clients who have been doing this, and it seems to work pretty well for most people. Again, you’re an individual, you got to do what works for you. But when you’re eating more protein, you tend to not eat as much and so and when you do eat, you tend to be more full, because protein is very satiating. And when it comes to, you know, satiety per calorie, protein is going to give you, you know, one of the best bangs for your buck there, okay?
Plus, you’re giving your body what it really needs. Protein is required to build lean muscle. And when most people try to lose weight, they just cut their calories. They lose weight, but they lose muscle through this process. We don’t want that. You definitely do not want to do that. So when you increase protein, and, you know, do some consistent strength training, this is going to stop this from happening. This is going to prevent the loss of muscle. So we want to make sure that you are eating enough protein to build lean muscle, not lose that if you’re trying to lose weight, especially if you’re training for any kind of you know, half marathon or a marathon, then you do not want to be losing muscle in the process.
Getting enough protein also means that you’re going to recover better from those hard workouts, whether at the gym or on the track or whatever, long runs, anytime you get out there and you push yourself hard, that you break down muscle tissue. Running is a catabolic activity. It breaks down muscle tissue, and you need to recover from those workouts, and so getting enough protein helps support the repair of muscle tissue and the building of new muscle tissue.
So if you want to make sure that you’re recovering properly from your workouts, you want a low inflammatory diet. So that means a diet that’s not going to keep you in a state of inflammation and bloating, which is, you know, the low carb diet tends to work pretty well for that, and you want to make sure you’re getting enough protein. So we want a higher protein diet.
Also, when you eat more protein, you will perform better as a runner, because you’re going to get stronger, you’re going to build stronger muscles. You can run harder, you can run faster, you can recover faster. Stronger muscles means you are less likely to get injured. It helps improve your immune function as well. So if you’re somebody that gets sick a lot, especially as you’re running more. I used to get sick all the time, late stages of marathon training when I’d be, you know, getting out there and doing these super long runs. You know, it’s just a lot of stress on your body, and it can really break down your immune system and compromise your immune system and help, you know, getting enough protein helps you to stay strong and build muscle tissue and helps to improve your immune function, which is amazing.
And then understand that when you’re eating more protein, this can really help with improving your weight loss for a few reasons. So you’re not as hungry all the time, like you stay more satiated throughout the day. You don’t need to eat as often. So you can eat a couple times a day. You don’t need to eat six or eight times a day, and you start to get in tune with your body’s natural hunger signals, which is a really powerful thing, if you think about it.
When did we start having MyFitnessPal to count all of our calories and track all of our macros? We started that. What, 6, 7 years ago, 10 years ago, I don’t know, but it hasn’t been that long, and before that, what did we do? How did people stay in shape? How did people not just blow up and get super fat? They just listened to their body. They just did what their body was telling them to do. Are you hungry? Eat something. Are you not hungry? Don’t eat anything. Don’t eat because you’re bored. Don’t eat because you’re stressed. You eat because you’re hungry, and when you’re eating more protein and fewer carbs, your body tends to be much better in tune with your natural hunger signals, and you tend to just eat less in general, you tend to eat fewer carbs in general too, because you’re satiated, you don’t need more.
So more protein has, gosh, so many benefits. You know, it also means you don’t need to count your macros, you don’t need to count your calories. You’re just going to feel better. You’re going to notice that you’re getting results. You’re going to lose more weight. You’re going to improve your strength, you know, more protein plus strength training. This is like magic for weight loss, it just helps improve your metabolism. Helps improve fat burning. There’s so many benefits. So for runners, especially runners who want to lose weight, or if you’re a runner who maybe you don’t need to lose weight, but you want to maintain a lean, strong body, you don’t want to keep breaking yourself down. You want to recover faster. You want to make sure that you’re building lean muscle tissue, then it’s more protein for the win every time. Cool.
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Hope that was helpful, and love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
243. Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work
When it comes to weight loss tips, one principle stands out among all the others: counting calories. For decades, you’ve been told that the only way to lose weight is to make sure you count all …
Continue Reading about 243. Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 243 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work. So when it comes to weight loss tips, one principle stands out among all the others, counting calories. For decades, you’ve been told that the only way to lose weight is to make sure you count all your calories honestly. If this worked as advertised, we wouldn’t have a crisis of obesity here in this country, and no one would really struggle with their weight. The truth is, it doesn’t work. So today, why counting calories doesn’t work, and what you should probably do instead.
But first, if you’re interested in getting leaner, getting stronger, running faster or running longer, you need to change something. What do you need to change? Probably your nutrition plan, probably whether or not your strength training or how your strength training, probably how you’re approaching your running training, because doing the same things you’re doing right now is not going to get you new results. I think we all know that nothing changes if nothing changes. So the real secret here is to make changes, but stick with them. You got to make them last. You got to do them consistently. So doing new things consistently is really the goal. That’s what we’re really after here. Trying to do new things consistently on your own, it’s tough. It’s challenging. I get it. I tried. It doesn’t work. Didn’t work for me. It didn’t work for me, until I got some help. I got a coach. I got somebody there that was in my corner, that was showing me the way, that was telling me what to do, that was holding me accountable, that was giving me guidance, that was offering suggestions, that was keeping me motivated. Once I had a coach, everything changed for me. I needed someone there to tell me what to do when things weren’t working right, you know, somebody there to hold me accountable and say, Hey, did you do what you said you were going to do? Yes or no. So I made a lot of progress. Once I got a coach. I improved my eating, my running, my strength, all those things. I’ve had all kinds of coaches in my life. I’ve had a nutrition coach, I’ve had a strength coach, I’ve had a business coach, and these coaches have really changed who I am from the inside out. Why I decided to get into coaching, because I got such a great experience. I’ve had such great experiences with my coaches. So if you’re interested in getting some help becoming the most badass version of yourself, just go to my website, running leancoaching.com. Click on work with me. I’ll show you exactly what to do. I’ll show you exactly how to become that best version of yourself yet. Okay, that’s running leancoaching.com. Click on work with me. Cool.
Okay, this topic today is one that I’m pretty passionate about. I’ve got a few notes here, but I just have to tell you that I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’ve talked a little bit about this in the last episode of the podcast, I mentioned 10 tips to help runners lose weight, and one of them was about not putting yourself into a calorie deficit. You don’t really want to go into a calorie deficit. And it sparked a little bit of conversation online. And you know, some people are asking some questions and stuff, which I thought was really great, and I’ll get into that in a minute, but it got me really thinking about this whole idea of counting calories and I was like, why is this such a accepted method of losing weight and eating healthy is to just count your calories. Don’t restrict anything you’re eating, don’t change anything you’re eating. Just keep your calories to a certain level and you should be fine. Why is this so popular? Why is this something that everybody kind of talks about?
We’ve got programs like Weight Watchers with points and they’ve, you know, determined what foods are higher in calories, and those get a higher point level, and lower in calories get lower point level, and things like that. You know, we’ve taken out all the fat from all our foods and replaced it with sugar a lot of the time, but we’ve taken out all this fat because fat is high in calories. You’re going to be eating a lot of calories. And I was just thinking like, if this worked so well, if counting calories was the answer to all of our weight loss problems or overweight problems, nobody would be overweight. Nobody would struggle with gaining and losing weight constantly, there wouldn’t be an obesity crisis here in the US and in other countries. And I was just like, this is really interesting.
And one thing you know that I saw a while back, but I thought this was really fascinating, is that there’s an obesity epidemic amongst toddlers here in the US toddlers. So these are people that are not making their own decisions. They can’t count their calories anyway. So the whole idea of counting calories is very controversial, and I’m going to admit that, and what I might have to share with you guys today might go against a lot of what you know or have thought to be true, but one thing that I really want to start with is just saying like we have evolved as human beings to be really good at metabolizing certain foods and not good at metabolizing other kinds of foods. We’ve evolved over 1000s upon 1000s of years.
You know, we’ve been some form of human hominid, some sort of human being, for like, two and a half million years. So you can argue that our evolution started about two and a half million years ago, and we’ve never had to track calories before. You know, we never had MyFitnessPal until recently. Why, all of a sudden, is tracking all your food in an app necessary? Why all of a sudden do we need to be eating in a calorie deficit, and we better know all these numbers. You know, do all this math and figure out all these numbers in order to maintain a healthy weight as a human being, we’ve never had to do this in the history of our species before.
Were there overweight people in the past? Yeah, probably, especially once we started processing more foods and people were eating a lot more bread and sugar, let’s just say those were two things that started to cause some of the obesity in people and so but think about when we started eating those foods. It wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things, you know, maybe a few 100 or 1000 years ago, something like that. So just be thinking about, you know, the fact that we’ve never really had to count calories before, and now all of a sudden, everybody’s saying, well, that’s the only way that you can lose weight, is to count calories and listen. I was on board with all of that. I tried that for a long time.
I got an app. The app I was using was called Lose It. So it’s similar to my fitness pal or, you know, carb manager is another one that I like to use just for looking up foods and stuff like that. But I use this app called Lose It. And it was all about, okay, put in your weight loss goal. Okay, I want to lose, you know, 40 pounds. Okay, all right. Well, you just need, well, how much you working out every day? Oh, I’m doing this, and this is okay. So here’s what your daily calorie needs are. Let’s say it’s, you know, 2000 calories a day, and so you just need to be eating around 1700 or 1800 calories a day. Oh, okay, great, no problem. So I did that.
I tracked all my food, tracked all my calories, and then it asked you, okay, did you work out today? I sure did. I went and ran 10 miles today. Oh, well, good. You get another 1000 calories. Oh, awesome. I eat another 1000 calories of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or whatever. And so I did this, and I did all the math, right, and I was putting in all my all my numbers, and putting in all my food. And at the end of the day, I lost like zero weight. It did not change a thing for me. So doing all this math, counting all my calories, tracking all my food, meticulously tracking on my food for a long, long time, because after some time it wasn’t working.
I was like, I just have to do this longer, you know? And this went on for months. I want to say I did this for like, a year or something like that, and it didn’t work for me. And in the process, I was running and training for marathons, ultra marathons and things like that. And so I was doing a lot of training and gaining weight in the process. I’ve shared this before, and a lot of people that I talk to tell me, yeah, Patrick, the exact same thing happened to me. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. What the heck is going on? I should be losing weight. I know you should be according to the numbers, right? Right, but it doesn’t really work that way.
Now I need to say this, can you lose weight by limiting your calories? Yes, you can. Is it a good thing to do? I don’t believe so, because for a few reasons. Number one, it’s not sustainable, like you can’t just limit your calories and be able to maintain a calorie deficit for the rest of your life. You cannot do that if you want to lose weight and you’re trying to cut your calories, you’re going to get to this place where you’re cutting your calories probably too low. If you’re a runner, you probably shouldn’t be cutting your calories because you need the energy for running. But if you keep your calories too low for too long a time, you end up kind of slowing down your metabolism.
This is what happened to the people that are in like the biggest loser shows like that. They lose a ton of weight by dramatically cutting their calories and exercising like crazy, and they can burn some fat, and they do burn some fat, and they do lose some weight, but like 96% of the people on that show gain all the weight back, and then some. So they actually gain more because their metabolism slows down to the point where they can’t maintain that deficit anymore. And so let’s say you cut your calories to 1000 calories a day, and your body needs like 2000 calories a day. Well, your metabolism is going to start to slow down. To say, like, if we maintain this, if we keep doing this, we’re going to die. Like, your body will slow your metabolism down to match the energy that’s coming in. So that means that now your body’s only burning like 1200 calories a day, or 1000 calories a day, but you’re eating 1000 calories a day, so now weight loss stops, so now you got to start eating less again. Okay, well, I’ll just go to 800 calories a day. Great. Your body’s going to eventually slow down 800 calories a day.
And it takes time for that to happen. It’s not going to happen if you do that for a couple of days, or something like that. I mean, it takes time, but that’s the principle that a lot of people want to follow. They want to follow this principle of just eating less, eating less, eating less, it is not sustainable. They did a meta study that looked at hundreds of different diets. A meta study is a large study that looks at other studies. Okay, so they did a meta study on all these different diets, and they found that the one that had the most weight loss at the beginning was a calorie deficit. So cutting your calories does work to lose weight. They also showed from all these diets that the one that was the absolute worst in long term longevity was cutting your calories. So it does work.
You know, you can lose some weight in the beginning, but then you gain it back because of, you know, slowing down your metabolism, and that it’s just not really sustainable to continue to track your calories and cut your calories, at some point, you have to start eating more, and then you’re going to start to gain the weight again. And you’re probably going to gain it faster, because now your metabolism has slowed down. So this meta study showed that it was really good at initial weight loss, and I think that’s why a lot of people are so attracted to cutting calories, is that it does work, but it’s very short term. It’s not something that is sustainable.
Okay, so, like, can you track your calories forever? Do you really want to do that? I don’t want to do that. I don’t think it’s necessary. Again. Let’s go back to how we evolved as human beings. We’ve never had to track calories before. Why do we all of a sudden have to do this? And this whole idea is based on the energy balance theory.
The energy balance theory says, you know more energy going out than coming in, and you will lose weight. So if you exercise more, you can eat whatever you want, but as long as, you know, you burned X number of calories, you will not gain weight. And it’s a good theory, but it’s thought it’s flawed, because it’s assuming that we’re some sort of perfect vessel, like a steam engine that that works off of, you know, perfect principles of so much energy coming in, and then everything works perfectly, and we’re all the same, and then the energy going out, and we’re not steam engines, we’re very complicated, organic creatures, and we’re all different. We all have different genetics and different metabolisms and different food preferences and different cultures and things like that. We got to factor all this stuff in there.
So the energy balance theory, it’s a good theory, but it’s flawed. It’s much more complicated than that. The types of foods you eat matter. So if you ate nothing, but, you know, Twinkies and you were, you know, burning so many calories? Can you lose weight? I don’t know, but you know what? That’s gonna mess up your hunger signals. It’s gonna make you super hungry all the time. You’re not gonna have control over what you’re eating. You’re eating something that is really bad for you. You’re not getting the proper nutrition like there’s so many things we have to consider here. So just to eat a bunch of junk and say, Well, I’m not eating X number of calories, so it’s fine. It’s flawed.
And what happens when we eat certain foods? What happens to our hormones, our hunger signals? You know ghrelin as a hunger hormone. When you eat sugar, ghrelin is produced in mass quantities, so you become more hungry. That’s why, when you eat more sugar, you crave more sugar. You’re just hungrier in general, one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion, is to start your day with a high carbohydrate, high sugar meal, because then you’re setting yourself up for disaster. The rest of the day, you’re gonna be hungry the rest of the day. That’s why people can’t understand why somebody like me who does intermittent fasting, you know, and that just means I don’t eat breakfast. That’s the way I, you know, define it for me.
Anyway, I don’t eat breakfast. And people think I’m crazy because they can’t understand what it would be like to not eat breakfast because they have to start their day with a bunch of carbs, a bunch of sugar, and then they’re hungry the rest of the day. And so they just can’t imagine going until lunchtime without food, because they’re hungry all the time. But I’m telling you, once you stop eating all the sugar and you stop eating breakfast, you’re not going to be hungry all the time. You’re going to be very satisfied.
Another hormone we have to consider when we eat certain foods, like sugar, is leptin. Leptin is the fullness sensor. It’s a fullness hormone. And so when you eat certain foods, you get full, like if you eat steak, you can only eat so much steak, and then you’re going to get full. Chicken is another one, man I can eat a lot of food, but when it comes to something like dense protein, like chicken, I can only eat so much. And I’m like, Dude, I cannot eat any more of this. I am so full. But you give me a plate of pasta, man, it’s like, I can never stop eating it, because leptin, the hunger hormone, or, I’m sorry, the fullness hormone gets turned off or turned down when you start eating a lot of carbs and sugar.
So you’re more hungry because more ghrelin is being produced, less leptin is being produced, so you’re not feeling full. And this is a bad combination, because now you just, you’re more hungry, you’re going to end up eating way more than you should be eating, and your body is just not functioning the way it’s supposed to, right? So this is another reason why, you know, there’s more going on than just calories in, calories out. I believe that tracking your calories forever and going into some kind of calorie deficit and trying to count your calories is a very short term thing that you can do. I mean, maybe if you want to do it, just to get some data, good.
But listen, I think that it is very unsustainable. It’s very unsustainable. Do you want to track your calories for the rest of your life? Because if that is the case, then, I mean, go for it, if that’s what you want to do, but there’s got to be a better way, right?
Related to that, though, somebody asked a question on a post from my last podcast where I was talking about, you know, not going into a calorie deficit. That’s a mistake that a lot of runners make, is they want to lose weight, but then they think they need to cut calories, and you shouldn’t cut your calories, you shouldn’t go into a calorie deficit. And this person asked a question, if the idea is not to go into calorie deficit, shouldn’t you track your calories so you know that you’re not going to calorie deficit. So I get where this person is coming from with this, and it is a good question. But listen, if you’re eating to satiety, you really shouldn’t need to track anything. Some days, you’re going to eat more because you might have a higher training volume.
So you might be in the throes of marathon training, and so you’re going to be hungry, and you might eat more food. So your food volume might go up. Sometimes you might be at a lower place in your training volume, and you’ll be eating less food either way. It’s fine. Listen to your body. Eat until you feel full. Don’t go beyond that. Though. Eat whole foods. Eat real food. Get plenty of fat and protein in your diet. And you shouldn’t really need to track anything. You don’t have to track calories if you’re eating the proper foods, the proper human diet, which, in my opinion, is things like eggs, meat, fish, dairy, you know, avocados, fruit, vegetables, whole foods. Eat food that still looks like food, food that our ancient ancestors would say, oh, I understand what that is. I’ve seen that before.
What would happen if, instead of eating all the sugar and the carbs all the time, you just started eating more satiating foods? Fat and protein are very satiating, so when you’re eating more nutrient dense, more satiating foods, you’re going to be less hungry. You’re going to feel more full when you do eat, you will naturally be eating the right amount of food for yourself, because you’re going to start to get in tune with what your body really needs. Because now your hunger and fullness signals are not all messed up, so there shouldn’t be any need to track calories.
Now you know, if you’re one of these people, that you’re like, well, what about the numbers? Like, I just need to know the numbers. Then go for it. You can help yourself figure out how much, you know, what the numbers say you should be eating every day, and then stick to that if you want to do that great, but you don’t have to. If you’re eating the right foods. You shouldn’t need to do that.
One of the big problems is we are a society who is attracted to hyper palatable foods. Hyper palatable foods are foods that have been engineered in a laboratory to be crave worthy, to be something that we cannot get enough of. You know, right on the can of Pringles, I believe it is. I don’t know. I don’t buy that stuff. It says, like, once you pop, you can’t stop, or there’s another potato chip or something that says, bet you can’t eat just one. They’re telling you on the label, hey, we’ve designed this so that you cannot stop eating it. It’s that good. And it’s true. You start eating Pringles. You can eat a whole sleeve of those things.
You know, I used to be able to do that. I used to love Pringles for road trips because I just put that can of whatever they’re called. I don’t, they’re not really potato chips. Is there even potatoes in there? I don’t know. Probably put that thing between your legs while you’re driving, and just, you’re just good to go. You just keep dipping in there, and, you know, just eating all the Pringles out of the tube, whatever. So those foods are very hyper palatable. They’re highly processed, they’re full of carbohydrates and sugars, and they taste amazing, and they make you crave more of those foods.
So when you’re eating a lot of that stuff, eating less or eating the right amount of food is going to be very difficult for you. Instead, stick with those nutrient dense, satiating foods that have good sources of protein and fat. Protein is going to be one of the best things you can do for yourself, eat more protein. Just make that one change, starting this week, just start eating more protein, eggs, meat, fish, dairy. You’re going to be less hungry. You’re going to be more satisfied when you do eat, you’re getting nutrient dense foods that your body actually needs. There shouldn’t be any need to drop calories once you start eating more protein and good sources of fat too. Once you start eating good sources of fat and enough protein, you’re going to start to feel so much better.
So this idea that we have to count calories in order to be healthy human beings in order to lose weight, it’s flawed. I just don’t think it’s sustainable. You know? I don’t think it really works. If it worked so well, there would be no problems with people gaining weight or struggling to lose weight. So I think instead, a better idea is to focus on eating whole foods. Stay away from highly processed foods. I mean, if you stay away from foods in a package, for the most part, I think you’re going to be in a much better place.
And I don’t mean like, oh, it’s a piece of cheese and it’s, you know, got, you know, what, clear plastic over it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about those foods with all the ingredients in them, you know, highly processed, highly palatable foods. Stay away from that stuff. Focus on more fat and proteins, you’re going to feel much better. It really is the key to losing weight and being able to keep it off long term.
And this is what I work on with my clients. We figure out what foods work for them, you know. And a lot of it is this, from these different categories I’m talking about here, you know, eggs, meat, fish, dairy, that kind of thing. And it’s just so, so much easier to do that and definitely more sustainable.
Okay, so that’s your work for this week. Get out there and start eating more protein. Start eating real food. Start eating more satiating, more nutrient dense foods. Stay away from these hyper palatable, packaged processed foods, and don’t count your calories, just stop doing that. You know? It just really doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable. It’s not something that I think you’re going to be able to do long term.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I know you got this. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you in the next one.
242. Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Runners
There is so much contradictory advice out there when it comes to losing weight. It’s really hard to know what’s right and what’s just BS. I’ve always taken the approach that you need to ignore …
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Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 242, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today my top 10 weight loss tips for runners. So there is so much contradictory advice out there when it comes to losing weight, it’s really hard to know what’s right and what’s just BS. And I’ve always taken the approach that you actually need to ignore most of the info that’s spewed out there on the internet and social media, and just figure out what works best for you. We’re all different. There’s simply not one approach that’s going to work perfectly for everybody. So with that principle in mind, for this episode of the podcast, I want to share with you my top 10 weight loss tips for runners, and these tips should work for most of you, not all of you. So as always, try some things and figure out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Cool.
But first, if you want to get leaner, stronger, run faster, run longer, you need to make some changes. Making change is hard, but listen, if you don’t change, nothing changes. Nothing changes, if nothing changes, I think we all understand that the real secret, though, is to make changes and make them consistently. And that’s where coaching helps you, because making change and doing things new things consistently is hard. That part is hard. So if you have a coach there, helping you, keeping you on track, showing you the path, showing you what to do, holding your hand, walking you through the whole process. It makes making change and making change consistent, much, much easier. Getting a coach was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. This is why I’m a coach today, because I got so much out of my coaching. It was such a powerful life changing experience for me that I decided to devote my life to helping other people by coaching them through their achieving their goals. You know, whether it’s losing weight or improving their health, improving their strength, getting faster, whatever it is. So if you’re ready to start making some change and you want help making those changes stick, making them consistent. Reach out to me. Just go to my website, running, leancoaching.com, click on work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet.
Cool. Okay, so today, Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Runners. So I wanted to put together a list of what I believe are some of the best changes that you can make as a runner, if you are interested in losing weight, and if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably a runner, and you’re probably interested in losing some weight. And there’s a lot of misinformation out there, a lot of contradicting information out there. And you might be just sitting there, like, what do I do with all of this? And you know, there’s a lot of polarizing content out there, you know, that kind of divides people.
Oh, you have to eat nothing but plants. And this other group says you have to eat nothing but meat, and you can never deviate. And they will tell you. Each of those people will tell you that their way is the right way and the only healthy way. And is that true? Because they can’t both be right. So I take a lot of the advice that’s spewed out there with a grain of salt, and I want you to do the same thing. I want you to kind of make up your own mind when it comes to what works best for you, because only you will know what works best for you, but with that principle in mind, with the principle of like, individuality and like, knowing that there is no one size fits all. When it comes to this stuff, I wanted to put together what I thought was a pretty decent list of principles that tips really, that I think will work for most people, you know. And if you’re somebody that’s been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know a lot of the principles that I teach when it comes to, you know, how many carbs you should be eating, and how often you should be eating, and some things like that.
But I wanted to put together a kind of a bullet list of action items that you can start kind of working through. So try some of these things. You don’t have to try them all, but you can try some of these and see if they have a positive effect on you, if they work, great, if they don’t, don’t do it. You know, it’s there. I’m not telling you that all of these are going to work perfectly for everybody, but in my years and years of coaching hundreds and hundreds of runners, I’ve decided that there are some principles that seem to apply to most people. So that’s the kind of thing I’m sharing with you today. So these are my top 10 weight loss tips for runners. Again, you’ve got to figure out what works for you, but try some of these.
So number one is going to be to not cut calories. Don’t just cut your calories. This is the typical weight loss advice that’s out there. If you want to lose weight, you got to cut your calories. And the reason I’m saying don’t do this is because it doesn’t really work, not long term. The reason most people tell you to cut calories to lose weight is because it is a very effective way in the short term of losing weight, you can lose weight pretty quickly if you cut your calories. So if you’re going from eating 2000 calories a day and you drop down to like 800 calories a day, I’m gonna tell you right now, you’re going to lose weight.
The problem, though, is that if you keep this up, your metabolism will slow down. So instead of burning 2000 calories a day, now you’re only burning 800 calories a day. Now you got to, like, cut your calories back even more if you want to continue to lose weight. And you can see where this is going, like, there’s a point where you’re just going to start gaining weight again, so you don’t want to slow your metabolism down. Right? So that’s one problem. Another problem is that, yes, it is one of the most effective short term ways of losing weight. It’s also the least effective method of keeping weight off long term of all the diets out there, and they’ve done massive studies on all these different diets, and they have shown that, yes, cutting calories is a great way to lose weight short term, but it’s also the most problematic, like people gain the most weight back the fastest when they do nothing but cut calories. So it’s not a very viable long term solution, because you can’t keep your body in a calorie deficit forever. If you do, you’re going to risk that slower metabolism. And it’s just, it’s, it’s a vicious cycle to get into.
The other reason why I don’t want you to cut your calories is because it’s not really recommended for runners. If you’re somebody that’s working out and running consistently, 3, 4, 5, 6 days a week, you need energy. You need the calories you need to recover from your workouts. You need the energy to perform properly in your workouts. And if you are not giving your body what it really needs, and you’re kind of starving yourself like you’re just trying to drop the calories so you can lose a bunch of weight, you’re going to suffer from a running standpoint.
So we don’t want to cut calories, so just don’t do it. It’s very, it’s not recommended, and it’s, actually, it’s very bad in the long term, like it just does not work long term, and it’s just not good. It’s not going to help you improve your running. Okay?
So instead, number two is to adopt a diet that just keeps your blood sugar levels normalized, right? So we want stable blood sugar, because when you have stable blood sugar, that means you also have stable insulin levels. Insulin is the hormone that lowers your blood sugar. And if you eat a bunch of sugar, high-carbohydrate meal, your blood sugar goes way up and so does insulin. Insulin goes way up and it stays up until it brings your blood sugar back down. Every time insulin is present, though, your body is storing fat, not burning fat. If you want to keep your body in fat burning mode, then you want to keep your insulin levels low. So we want to keep our blood sugar chill. We just want it to be low and we want it to be chill throughout the day. We don’t want to have these big spikes and crashes in our blood sugar.
Because when you have spikes in blood sugar, you feel good because you’re energized, but then you come down and your blood sugar goes below baseline. That’s when people say, Oh, my blood sugar is low because they’re, they’re going so high, they’re, they’re raising their blood sugar so high, so much insulin is being produced to push that blood sugar back down, that the blood sugar actually gets too low, and then you’ve got to eat some sugar or something like that, just to feel normal. Again. Okay, this is a bad life cycle to be in right here. Okay, so we want to keep your body in fat burning mode. That means keep the blood sugar low, keep the insulin levels low. We don’t want to keep our body in fat storing mode. That’s high blood sugar, high insulin levels.
Okay, also, when you adopt a diet that keeps your blood sugar low, it means you’re going to be less hungry throughout the day, and you’re going to have fewer cravings, because high blood sugar means you’re putting your body into an unnatural state of being more hungry. You also produce more ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, and you suppress the production of leptin, which is your fullness receptor. It’s a fullness hormone. So more ghrelin, more hungry, less leptin, you know, less full. Okay, and so you’re going to have cravings like crazy. You’re going to be hungry all the time. So high blood sugar means that you’re just going to be more hungry. You’re going to be more hungry, you’re going to be eating more food, you’re going to be craving more sugar and more carbs, and it’s just, again, the vicious cycle to get into.
So instead, adopt a diet that just keeps the blood sugar low, and you’re going to see a lot of this just take care of itself, which leads me to number three, which is to get fat adapted. This is just training your body to burn more body fat. We all have tons of body fat stored on our bodies. Even the leanest people out there who maybe have 3% or 8% body fat or something like that, you have plenty of body fat on you to sustain you for weeks without food. Burning fat is the natural state for us as human beings. We are really good fat burners. We’ve just gotten away from that.
You know, fat burning is like we eat some food, some of the energy that we eat, especially when we eat the sugar and carbohydrates, some of that energy gets stored, gets used, and then some of it gets stored as body fat. So we use some of it in our muscles. We use some of it when we are in activity, or just like keeping our body running throughout the day. We use some of that energy from food. Some of that energy gets stored as fat. The problem is that we should be tapping into that stored body fat as a fuel source later, but we’re not. We’re just keep adding more wood to the wood pile, so to speak. So we just keep piling on more fat. We’re not burning the fat. So we want to get into the fat burning state. We want to get our bodies fat adapted.
Fat Burning means you’re going to lose the weight. Like if you want to lose weight, you got to burn the fat, right? So if we want to get fat adapted, we want to train our body to burn more fat. Diet has a lot to do with that. Also, when you’re burning more fat, it helps to improve your running. You improve your endurance. You have this natural fuel that’s on your body all the time, and you don’t have the need for as much fuel. From a running standpoint, you can run a half marathon, a marathon, with very little fuel, as opposed to people who are carb adapted, who need to eat tons of carbs just to keep themselves going for the run. So it helps you to lose weight. It helps to improve your running. Why wouldn’t you want to get fat adapted? Okay, that’s number three.
Number four is to time your carbs around your workouts. So this is where this isn’t about no carbs. This isn’t about never eating any sugar or any carbohydrates ever again in your life. We eat some carbs, right? We just want to time them around our workouts. So you might go a few days where you’re pretty low carb throughout the week, and then you have a long run on a Saturday. So the night before, you might increase your carb intake. The morning of a long run, you might increase your carb intake during that long run. You’re probably gonna take in some carbs, and this isn’t a ton. I’m not talking about getting 300-500 grams of carbs a day or something like that, but we want to be mindful that just because we’re doing a low carb thing doesn’t mean we don’t ever eat carbs. We do. We use carbs for fuel.
Runners will benefit greatly from having two sources of fuel, from being really good fat burners and from adding some carbohydrate into the mix. You want to earn your carbs. So you earn your carbs by using, you know, having a workout where you’re going to be using them as fuel, and then you burn the carbs, so you’re actually going to metabolize those carbohydrates during a long run or a hard workout or something like that. So that you’re, you’re not just storing a bunch of that carb energy as fat, right? So you earn your carbs by requiring them for fuel, and you metabolize them. You burn them pretty quickly during activity. So you don’t have this huge surplus of carb energy that you’re storing as fat. Cool. So earn your carbs and burn your carbs. Time your carbs around your workouts.
Number five, you’ve got to prioritize protein. Talk about this before on the podcast here. Listen. Running is a catabolic activity. Catabolic activities are ones that break down muscle tissue. So what we want to do is we have to. To offset that, we want to build lean muscle. We want to maintain and build muscle. And a lot of people will tell you again, this is why you shouldn’t run, why you’re trying to lose weight. Because if you’re just cutting calories, a lot of the weight that you lose is going to be muscle tissue, and then running is just going to make that worse. But if you’re doing this the right way, you’re not cutting your calories, you’re adding more protein into your diet. You will actually build lean muscle through this process.
More protein also means that you’re going to feel more full when you eat. You know, protein has a much higher satiety point than carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are not satisfying, like you can really overeat carbohydrates, and then they make you more hungry throughout the day. When you’re eating more protein and good quality fats too, you’re just less hungry throughout the day, and you’re going to feel more full when you eat, and you’re going to recover better from your workouts, because you’re getting, you’re providing your muscles with what they need to recover properly from your hard runs, long runs, hard workouts. So you have to make protein the priority at every meal, and make sure that you’re getting your right amount of protein every day.
And then that leads me to number six, which is you also have to add strength training into your weekly training schedule. So whatever you’re training for, if you’re ,you know, running a 5k or an ultra marathon, or anything in between, you have to make sure, even if you’re not a runner at all, you have to make sure that you are adding some sort of consistent strength training to your regimen on a weekly basis, you should be doing some strength training two or three times a week. At least twice a week would be the bare minimum that you should be doing some kind of strength training.
You have to include strength training into your training schedule, because you want to be gaining muscle, you want to be building lean muscle, not getting big. We’re not talking about becoming a huge bodybuilder. That’s very difficult to do if you’re an endurance athlete, but we want you to be stronger, because when you’re stronger, this means you’re going to offset that catabolic nature of running, so you’re going to not lose muscle through this process. And a lot of times, you can become anabolic, which means you’re building muscle. You get stronger. This means you’re going to have a faster metabolism. You’re going to burn more fat, you’re going to lose more weight.
When you’re stronger, you are at less risk of injury. You improve your endurance when you’re stronger, because stronger muscles take longer to fatigue than weak muscles, you become a faster runner. Then some other side effects that just happen to come along with regular strength training is less stress. You’re in a better mood, you’re just happier. You’re nicer to be around, you sleep better and you live longer. So strength training absolutely has to be something that you add into your weekly training schedule. If you’re not doing it, make sure you start doing it today.
Number seven is going to be to eat less often, not eat less, but eat less often. And this is one of those things where you may have been told, Oh, you need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism burning hot. You know, this is just gym bro science. You know, there’s really no science behind this, the human body. If you look at our digestive systems, they’re really designed to work two or three times a day at the max, so eating six or eight times a day is just not recommended. Again, every time you eat some food, you’re going to raise your blood sugar, you’re going to raise insulin, and you’re going to be kind of storing some fat. So the fewer times a day you’re eating actually is better for you. And this doesn’t mean you eat, you know, one tiny little meal per day or something like that. We want to make sure you’re getting enough calories and enough protein throughout the day. So eat two, three times a day, twice, seems to be what a lot of people love doing, and it just feels really good, and you’re getting what you need at those two meals.
But this is a great way to keep your body burning fat. You want to space out your meals so that in between meals, your body is getting into that fat burning state. And if you want to lose weight, you know this is a great way of helping to enhance that. And you’ll get fat adapted faster. You’ll be burning more fat. You’ll get all the energy you need. You’ll get all the calories you need. You don’t need to worry about that.
But another great side effect of eating less often is that it helps you start to maintain, get back control of your eating, and maintain control of your eating instead of being an automatic eater where you just, every time you think about food, or you get stressed, or you get bored, you go and you grab something from the pantry. You know you’re just munching on stuff all day long. You become a more mindful eater. So you learn how to not snack throughout the day. You learn how to skip breakfast. You learn how to control your eating to where you’re eating a couple of times a day. It makes you a much more evolved eater, and not just a reactive eater. Okay, so this is really important, so eat less often. That’s number seven.
Number eight. This one might surprise you. Number eight is to not be too restrictive. Don’t be too restrictive with your diet. Allow yourself the indulgence every now and then. Listen, whatever your diet is, the formula that works for you, it has to be sustainable for you. And what I have found over many years of coaching people is that if it’s too restrictive, it’s not going to be sustainable long term for most people.
Now we do some things where we might cut the carbs pretty low for the first 30 days or something, and then we can, like, start adding in some of these little treat meals, or whatever you want to call them, treats, cheat meals, exceptions to the plan, whatever you want to call them. But if you want to stay in the game long term, you have to have this little release valve every now and then, from my experience, and I need this too. It works for me every now and then I’m like, you know, I’m really craving pizza. I need to eat some pizza, and I’ll just go eat some pizza. It’s something I do a couple times a year. Big whoop. It doesn’t throw me off. It might set me back a day or two, but then I’m right back on my plan.
I like the 90/10 approach instead of 80/20. 80/20 is a little too loosey goosey, in my opinion. But if you try the 90/10 approach, this equals maybe one meal a week that you can have an exception to your plan, right? So there’s too many people out there, too many diets that are promoting that you never, ever deviate from the plan. And this just is not something that is sustainable for most people. And I’ve worked with hundreds of people who’ve had much more success long term when they have the cheat meal every now and then, you have to learn how to do it properly. You can’t just go crazy every weekend and just binge out on everything. I’ve tried that approach, that does not work, but you definitely need to, like work on this, and it’s something you have to sort of practice and ease your way into. But being too restrictive too long is is definitely not something that’s going to work long term. Okay, that was number eight.
Number nine. Keep on running like you just have to keep up with the running. Lots of dietitians, lots of weight loss coaches out there tell you don’t run if you’re trying to lose weight. They tell you not to run because they don’t want to restrict calories, because that’s going to have a negative impact on running, which we’re not doing that. We’re not restricting calories, so we don’t need to worry about that.
And a lot of these people will tell you, well, you should only be focusing on one thing at a time. And, you know, I kind of get where they’re coming from, instead of, like, focusing on running and lifting weights, and, you know, your diet, they want you to just focus on one thing. Just focus on your diet, and don’t do anything else. But listen. I know from experience that you listening to this podcast can absolutely focus on more than one thing at a time. You’re a runner, so you like, you love running. You love strength training. You love working on your nutrition. You love cross training. This is how you live your life every single day.
Why now should I tell you that you should only be doing one thing at a time, right? Consistent running, also, it’s going to help you to burn more fat, which is going to equal more weight loss. But also, don’t forget, with all the running that you’re doing, don’t forget your speed work, long, slow, easy running is great, but be sure to add in some moderate to high intensity intervals, like sprint repeats and tempo runs, to help improve your cardiovascular system, to help improve your heart rate, we want lower heart rate to have a higher VO2 Max, improved lactate clearing, not to mention you get faster when you’re doing the speed work.
Also, little side note here, faster running makes your slow, easy runs feel very, very easy. So if you want running to just feel easier in general, make sure you’re doing the speed work every week. All right, okay.
And number 10, and maybe the most important tip I have for you today is don’t be in a hurry. Weight loss takes time. How much time? Who knows? It’s different for everyone. So just commit to the process. Don’t compare yourself to where you are today to where somebody else is. Just compare yourself to where you were yesterday and just always be trying to improve. Don’t set arbitrary weight loss goals, especially with dates like, oh, I need to lose 40 pounds in four months. There’s just too many factors involved with something like this, and who knows how fast your body’s going to respond to these changes.
Instead, commit to the process of change. Do what you need to do today to stay on track. Don’t worry about tomorrow until tomorrow. This has to be a lifestyle change if you want it to last. People that lose weight fast with like liposuction or weight loss surgery, they don’t learn how to maintain it, because they’re not learning what works for them. They’re not learning new habits and new behaviors. You have to learn how to make this work for you long term, and you know what, that takes time.
You need to learn how to shop differently, how to handle vacations and holidays, how to handle family functions, dinners out with friends, how to handle stressful situations in your life. There’s always going to be some kind of stressful situations in your life. You need to learn how to get through those without totally going off plan. So every day, just make a commitment to being the best you that you can be from now until forever.
So that’s the good news, and the bad news is that this doesn’t change. You just keep working on this. You just keep going. There’s no finish line. There’s no destination you’re trying to get to. This is who you are. This is how you live your life from here on out, right? It’s good news and bad news because, you know, it’s bad news because there is no finish line. You’re just going to continue doing this. But it’s good news because this is how you get to live your life now. This is how you approach everything. You’re just a, you’re a different person now, and you’re a healthy eater, and you commit to your workouts, and this is just who you are now.
Actually, it makes going through your life much easier. You don’t have to think about it anymore. You don’t have to question these decisions you’re making. You’re just gonna do it. You’re just gonna show up for yourself every day. So commit to the process. Don’t ever, ever, ever quit. Don’t give up on yourself. Okay, if you don’t give up on yourself, eventually you will reach your weight loss goal, but you just can’t take your head out of the game. You have to keep your head in the game.
Okay, cool. Those are my top 10 tips, my top 10 weight loss tips for runners. That’s all I got for you today. I know you got this. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
216. An Alternative Way To Fuel Long-Distance Running
As runners, we’ve been told over the last 40 years or so that the only way to fuel for running is with carbohydrates. Loads and loads of carbs. Eat lots of carbs every day, carb load the day …
Continue Reading about 216. An Alternative Way To Fuel Long-Distance Running →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 216 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, an alternative way to fuel long-distance running. So as runners, we’ve been told over the last 40 years or so that the only way to fuel for running is with carbohydrates, carbs, loads and loads of carbs.
Eat lots of carbs every day, carbo-load the day before you run, carb up in the morning pre-run, consume ample carbs during your run. And then of course, you’re gonna want some carbs for recovery after your run.
This has been the standard approach since the 1980s. But it’s definitely not the only way to do things. The thing is, this approach just doesn’t work for everyone. Some people like me gain a lot of weight eating all those carbs regardless of how much we run. So in this episode, I offer an alternative way to fuel long-distance running one that doesn’t cause you to gain all that weight in the process.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, and improving your running. If you’re new to the podcast, it can probably feel a little overwhelming. And you’re like I don’t even know where to start with all this.
And if that sounds like you, totally cool, I got you covered. I created a free training. It’s about an hour long. It’s a video that you can watch, you can check it out anytime it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronge Runner.
In this video, you’re gonna learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset, all these things that are geared towards you the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner, and if you’re ready to get stronger, if you’re ready to become the most badass version of yourself that I know you are, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, so let’s talk about an alternative way to fuel long-distance running. Why do I want to talk about this today? Because I keep hearing from runners and I keep reading articles online and social media posts for runners that talk about eating all the carbs.
And I’m like, gosh, are we still talking about this? Since the 1980s, the carb-loading approach has been the gold standard, so to speak for runners just eat all the carbs, and you’re going to find that most coaches teach this approach.
Most experts, quote-unquote experts, teach this approach. When I got my running, coaching certification, when I went through my coaching certification program, I was taught this approach. And this approach is fine. And it does work for some people. But it doesn’t work for everybody.
For some of us, like me, eating all those carbs caused us to gain a lot of weight in the process. You know, and I’m not against having carbohydrates. In fact, I think using carbohydrates strategically for running is a great tool.
It’s a really good tool that you have in your tool belt, why not use the carbohydrates as fuel, especially for the higher intensity stuff or races? But eating all the carbs all the time, is what we’ve been taught and it just doesn’t work for everybody.
You know, I’m one of those people that is very sensitive to carbohydrates. You know, I eat carbs and I gain weight. And so if I just take this standard approach to fueling for long-distance running, I ballooned up 40 more pounds, 50 more pounds, whatever.
You know, I’ve shared this before where I was training for ultra marathons, I was running all the time, I was doing a ton of mileage and gaining weight in the process. You can’t outrun the wrong diet, right?
So for me the all carbs all the time approach while I loved it. Who doesn’t love eating carbs all the time? Oh, pizza, sure. Ice cream. Yep, that’s going to, I mean, I’m a runner, so I gotta eat this stuff. Right? Spaghetti all the time. Like I was just I was eating tons of bread and pasta. And sugar, like this was my diet. You know, it was like a 90% carbohydrates, you know?
And I just kept gaining weight and gaining weight and I was like wow, even though I was running a ton, you know, I was training for ultra marathons and running ultra marathons regularly and then gaining weight in the process does not make sense, right?
You are supposed to lose weight when you start training. Well, the wrong diet won’t allow that to happen, right, so the wrong diet will cause the weight to continually stack up. So for me, this this all carbs all the time approach is one that I tried, and it just didn’t work for me.
You know, I also found that I would crash and burn during long-distance events. And I’m like, what’s going on here, because I’m using all the fuel. You know, I’m taking all the gels and I’m eating, I’m pre-loading with carbs and do all this stuff. But I keep crashing and burning and mile 18 to 22 of a marathon, you know.
And I was like this, this isn’t working, like there’s got to be a different approach here. Okay. And there is, there are, there is an alternative approach, there are probably multiple other approaches that you can take.
But there’s one specific that I want to talk about today, one that doesn’t require eating all the carbs all the time, and one that doesn’t require you to gain a bunch of weight in the process, if that’s you.
And listen, if you’re the kind of person that can eat all those carbs, and not gain any weight, and it works really well for you, then keep doing your thing. Keep doing that. My hat’s off to you. But if you’re somebody that’s like Patrick, that really doesn’t work for me, then listen up, because here’s the different approach you want to take.
You want to get yourself fat-adapted. So we’re talking about this concept of fat adaptation. Fat adaptation means that you train your body to burn your stored body fat as fuel for long-distance running.
When you stop eating all the sugar and all the carbs constantly, you give your body a chance to tap into your stored body fat as fuel. So the way this works, essentially, is think about your different fuel sources in your body as like a fuel tank, and the top layer of that fuel tank is what’s gets burned first.
And that top layer is going to be sugar, essentially glucose, glycogen, that kind of stuff. So that is going to be burned first. And as long as that’s available, that is what’s going to be constantly burned. Okay.
And so the concept, but behind all carbs all the time thing is like you want to keep that top layer of the tank filled at all times so that you’re constantly always burning that. The problem is that when you run out of that, maybe you get to mile 20 of the marathon and you just haven’t done a good job of keeping up with the amount of carbs that you need for that event, or you haven’t trained yourself to metabolize carbs that to that extent.
That top layer of the tank is going to run out and then you’re going to crash because you don’t, you don’t have access to that lower portion of the gas tank, which is the biggest portion, I’m going to say it’s probably like 90% of that gas tank is going to be your fat stores.
But you don’t have access to that because you haven’t trained your body to use that fat as fuel, like the pathways are not there. So what happens is that when you stop eating the sugar and the carbs all the time?
You start to train your body to use the alternative fuel source, the fat stores the stored body fat, you know, we all eat some, you know, we all eat food and some of that energy that we consume gets used towards working muscles, some of that energy gets stored as fat to be used later as fuel.
The problem is we’ve just gotten so far away from using our stored body fat as fuel, it’s kind of like we just constantly put wood on the woodpile, but we’re never burning the wood it just keeps stacking up that’s our fat stores just getting bigger and bigger.
So when you train yourself to tap into those stored to your stored body fat as a fuel, now you have this like almost unlimited fuel source for running. So that’s the concept of fat-adaptation, you’re removing the sugar and the carbs that that initial, like, let’s say 10%.
And I’m kind of making these numbers up but just think of it like you know, we only have the capacity to store like 2000 calories as of energy as glucose but we have our body fat can can store hundreds of thousands of calories of energy as stored body fat, so just know that yeah, it’s probably like 10% and 90%, something like that. It’s probably more like 99 and 1% or something okay.
Anyway, so we want to get ourselves fat-adapted we want to be able to adapt to using that stored body fat as fuel. Okay, now, people hear this and they’re like, oh, that’s crazy. That’s just some weird fringe thing, it’s probably a fad, and it’s gonna go away.
Listen, we’ve been doing this for millennia, as human beings, we’ve been doing it for more than millennia, for like millions of years. Fat Burning is our natural state as human beings. You know, we store some of that energy we consume as body fat, and we use it when we’re not eating.
This is the way the human body is designed, you know, there’s periods of feasting, and there’s periods of fasting during those periods of fasting, we should be tapping into our stored body fat as fuel. Humans are really good at this, we are naturally really good at using fat as fuel.
And we’re naturally good distance runners like we used to be hunter-gatherers, we used to be a persistence Hunter, so we would, we would chase down prey, and we would outrun them not from a speed perspective, but from a time perspective like we would, you know, cut an antelope out of the herd or whatever.
And they might be able to outrun us in the short distance, but over time, like over hours and days, we would run them down to where they just would die of exhaustion. You know, poor antelope. I know, but good for us, because now we have this nutrient-dense meal that would that would sustain us, you know.
So the human body is designed to use that stored body fat as fuel during those times when we didn’t have the other food coming in. Okay. So to say that, oh, you have to consume all the carbs, all the pasta, all the bread all the time, just to be able to run?
That’s actually the new thing. That’s actually the weird fad thing that we’ve only been doing for the last 40 years or so. Right? I mean, isn’t that interesting that people look at this fat-burning thing. And they’re like, oh, you know, that’s not the way you should do it.
And I’m like, well, listen, we’ve been amazing runners for millions of years as humans and we never had to eat all the pasta and bread and gels and stuff like that. Why now? Should we have to do that? Okay.
So not only is it not a fad thing, or some weird approach, like there are elite runners that have adopted this approach for years and years and years, and they’re at the top of their game, you know, I’m gonna mention a couple of them here.
And I’ve talked about these guys before on the podcast here. And there are countless others too, but these guys just are kind of like the top, you know, the top 1% or whatever. Jeff Browning. He’s an ultra runner. He’s finished nearly 200 ultra marathons in his career. He’s had over 40 career ultra marathon wins 29 of those at the 100 mile plus distance, making him second in the world for the most 100 mile wins in history.
Ranked seven times in the top 10 of ultra running magazines, North American Ultra Runner of the year, ranked third in Ultra running magazines, North American Ultra Runner of the decade. He builds multiple, multiple course records, including the Moab 240 course record, and he is a low carb, low carb, high-fat kind of he takes that approach to his training.
You know, he’s very vocal about his fat-burning approach, his fat-adapted approach to ultra running, you know, he doesn’t consume all the sugars and all the gels and all the pasta and all the carbs. All right.
And another one that comes to mind is Mike McKnight. He’s an ultra runner. He specializes in the 200 mile distance. And he posed several wins every year for different events. He’s kind of known because he ran 118 Miles while consuming zero calories, zero calories. He ran 118 miles. He was just relying on his own stored body fat for fuel and he’s a pretty, pretty lean guy. You know? He’s amazing.
And I actually tried this, I was like, hey, you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna give this a shot. I didn’t do 180 miles but I did two marathons and a 50k ultra marathon on zero calories just to say like, Oh, can I even do this? Yeah, I could do it and I was fine. Really no problems whatsoever.
And then of course, there’s Zach Bitter. He’s an American ultramarathon runner. He specializes in the 100 miler distance and he’s done like over 60 ultras. He’s known for his low-carb diet, which he uses for training and racing nutrition. He had the record for the 100 miler. One point of 11 hours, 19 minutes and 13 seconds. I’m gonna say that one more time because that is a crazy number, he ran 100 miles and 11 hours in 90 minutes. That’s insane.
He’s the holder of the 12-hour American record at 104.88 miles. He claims the 100-mile and 12-hour world records at the Six Days in the Dome event in Milwaukee in 2019. Competed for team USA world 100 Kilometer team three times.
So these are guys, these are just some of the guys who are benefiting and their, their elite athletes who are at the top of their game. And they’re taking this low-carb approach to distance running. They’re not consuming all the carbs all the time. Yeah, they do use some carbs for their events.
And they’ll tell you, you know, you can check them out, or their websites, check them out on social media, they have podcasts and stuff like that, you can totally listen to what these guys say. And they’ll tell you they do like maybe, you know, 30 to 50 grams of carbs per hour for these events, which is not a lot. But they’re not eating all the carbs all the time. They’re taking this fat adaptation approach to running and it’s working really, really well for them. Okay.
Another thing to consider here is that if your goal is to lose weight, then this is a great way to lose weight. Because listen, if you want to lose weight, what do you got to do? You have to burn a fat, right?
We’re not talking about weight loss, we’re talking about fat loss. So you have to burn the fat. If you are burning the fat, you are losing weight. And it’s really hard to burn the fat when you’re on that super high-carb runner’s type of diet, right?
Because of the whole fuel source prioritization, you know, you’re going to burn through the glucose first, then you’re going to tap into the fat but you gotta like, You got to eliminate that top 1% or whatever of your fuel tank.
So if fat burning is the key to weight loss, which it is, wouldn’t you want to do it? It that makes fat burning the priority? Yes, you would. When you eat for fat-burning, you’re running improves your endurance and improves and you lose weight in the process. Right?
So if you’re somebody who is interested in losing weight, this approach might work for you, it may be something you want to consider. Okay, and and listen, when we talk about a low-carb approach to fueling a low-carb diet, a low-carb, you know, nutrition approach; a lot of people think, you know, you’re talking about keto, or doing no carbs or carnivore or something like that.
No, it’s not about that. It’s about finding the right amount of carbs that keeps you burning fat, while also helping you’re running because carbs are helpful for running, right? You don’t have to be Mike McKnight and do the zero-calorie thing. But it’s cool that the human body can do that, you know.
That’s fat-adaptation. And it’s most impressive, like what that guy does, right? And by the way, this guy is not fat, right? You don’t need a ton of body fat, to be able to use your own stored body fat as fuel.
Even the leanest of athletes can benefit from fat adaptation as an approach. Okay, so this doesn’t mean that you’re never eating any carbs, you can still eat some carbs. I use carbs for fuel, and I encourage my clients to use carbs for fuel, but we prefer like whole food sources of carbs, you know, we might be talking about bananas or sweet potatoes or rice or something like that, right?
And obviously, everybody’s a little bit different. And you have to kind of experiment with what works for you. But there’s, there’s tons of great options just from the natural world like and sticking with whole food sources of carbohydrates is great.
Now I get it that when you’re in any event, like you can’t carry a bunch of sweet potatoes or bananas with you. I mean, it’s just really not that convenient. But what’s cool is that there are a bunch of brands out there that cater to the low-carb endurance athlete, and they have entire product lines that are geared towards helping you fuel for running while maintaining that fat-burning state.
So like Hammer Nutrition is one you can use. S-Fuels, Muir energy, and there are a bunch of other brands out there and new ones coming out all the time. So that’s a very encouraging thing that there are companies out there that are that are gearing their product lines towards the low carb endurance athlete. Okay.
Now, just like I said, at the beginning of this podcast that the high-carb approach isn’t for everyone, just like that, like the fat-adapted approach probably isn’t for everyone. So I’m not going to come out here and say that everybody should do this. And everybody will benefit from this.
Some people do really fine eating all the carbs and the sugar and the gels, and they never have to worry about gaining weight. And if that’s you, that is amazing. That’s definitely not me. But if you struggle with losing weight, and you love running, then this might be the approach that you want to try.
You know, the only way you can tell if it works through you, or if you enjoy it, or if you can do this as a lifestyle as to give it a shot, you might see the weight start to come off, you might experience running feeling easier than ever before.
You might see your energy levels are better all day long, no more afternoon crashes, you might begin to think more clearly be able to focus and concentrate better. And as always, if you want help with any of this, you can always reach out to me you can go to my website runningleancoaching.com.
Every day I help runners get fat-adapted, lose weight, improve their running performance and make all this a lifestyle. So whatever approach you take cool, but it has to be something that is sustainable for you. Because if it’s not sustainable for you, it’s not going to work because this stuff takes time.
You know, if you want to lose weight, and you want to improve your diet, improve your nutrition, improve your running and your nutrition for running specifically, then you’re gonna have to take a little bit of time to figure out what works for you. And it has to be something that you can do sustainably long term, right?
So I work with my clients, we work together to make sure whatever they’re doing is something that they can do on their own like for good, or it’s not about quick fixes, but lifestyle changes, right being fit and healthy isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our life. Okay. Consider the fat-adapted approach. I think it’s amazing. It works really well for me and countless people that I work with. Give it a shot. You never know. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
201. Reversing Disease Through Nutrition and Exercise with Dr. Marvin Merrit
I recently sat down with Dr. Marvin Merrit and had an awesome conversation about what it means to be a healthy human being. In the world of health and fitness, there is a lot of information out …
Podcast Transcript
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 201 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, reversing disease through nutrition and exercise with Dr. Marvin Merrit.
So I recently sat down with Dr. Marvin, and we had this awesome conversation about what it means to be a healthy human being. In the world of health and fitness. There’s a lot of confusing information out there. And it can feel pretty overwhelming. And a lot of this information can even be contradictory.
Okay, so how do you know what you should be doing? Well, rest assured that Dr. Marvin and I break it all down for you. And we offer up some very clear strategies for reversing disease, using nutrition and exercise so that you can become the healthiest version of yourself yet.
But first, I know I talk a lot about losing weight, and improving your health and fitness. And I know that all the stuff that even I talk about here can feel a little overwhelming.
That’s why I created a free training just for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. I wanted to make it easy for you, I wanted to break it all down, put all the stuff that I’ve been talking about here on the podcast for over 200 episodes now and give you some really actionable strategies.
So in this training video, you’re going to learn how to fuel your body properly so that you can lose weight and improve your running. You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner.
You’re going to learn how to make changes that are actually sustainable, because that is what it’s all about. We’re not interested in short term fixes. We want sustainability with our diet, and so much more. So if you’re ready to get leaner and get stronger, run faster and run longer than ever before. If you’re ready to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then check out this free training.
It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You can find it by going to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, without further ado, let’s just get into this conversation. So much fun talking to Dr. Marvin, reversing disease through nutrition and exercise with Dr. Marvin Merrit.
Okay, today, I’ve got Dr. Marvin here, Marvin Merrit and Marvin reached out to me on Facebook, right?
Dr. Marvin Merrit
Yes.
Patrick McGilvray
And you were sharing with me that you teach a lot of the same concepts and principles that I talked about on my podcast, and I share on social media and things like that. And you said, hey, this would be a great kind of collaboration, or maybe we can have a conversation about this.
So we got on a call and you and I had a great conversation where I thought, man, we should really record this, you know, and do a podcast on this because you come out with this healthy eating and healthy lifestyle, from a little bit of a different perspective, being a doctor.
And I typically don’t talk a lot about, about the health, I’m sorry about the medical side of things because I’m not a doctor. I do quote a lot of doctors and I read a lot of the research and I and I understand a lot of the concepts.
And I absolutely know how a lot of these healthy principles can help us with medical conditions. But it’s you know, I don’t like to talk about that stuff, because I don’t have that MD after my name, you know. So that’s where you come in. And I want to just kind of talk to you about, you know, those, the medical side of things and how healthy eating and exercising can help us.
So first of all, before we get into all that stuff, just give us a little bit of background on who you are, and how you got to where you are today with all this stuff.
Marvin Merrit
Sure. Well, basically I’m a kid from New Jersey. I went to college as an undergrad at a small liberal arts college in Iowa. Upon graduation from there, I attended Life University where I got my Doctorate, and I’ve been a practicing physician for almost 40 years.
My practice has taken many manifestations over the years. And now I kind of focus a lot on treating my patients very well. realistically very naturally, through exercise through diet and through nutritional supplements to manage what we call metabolic syndrome, which is type two diabetes, hyperlipidemia, which has high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and hypertension, which we commonly refer to as high blood pressure.
And being that these are all lifestyle diseases, people can go ahead and make that conscious decision. Do I want to live healthy? Do I want to eat healthy? Do I want to increase my exercise?
Because all of those combined together will help with the better control of all of these diseases that many people suffer from not just here in the United States, but around the world and just about all modern countries.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and when you say that lifestyle diseases, I think that is spot on, because these are things that are caused by lifestyle. Right?
Marvin Merrit
Exactly, exactly. You know, you, you eat poorly, you know, it’s the old story garbage in garbage out, you eat poorly, you’re going to end up with high cholesterol, there’s just no way around it.
You eat too much saturated fats, too much greasy foods, the fried chicken, the French fries, you’re going to end up with high cholesterol levels.
You eat a lot of products that have hidden sodium in it. And I say hidden sodium, because it’s okay to add a little bit of salt at the table, especially if you’re working out, you’re sweating, you want to replace some of those electrolytes.
But there’s so many foods that have hidden sodium in it because sodium for ages has been used as a preservative. And when you start reading things that are in a can, or things that are in a jar, you see all of this hidden sodium in there in its chemical names, such as, you know, sodium benzoate, you know, people don’t know what sodium benzoate is, they just see that it’s another chemical.
But without fully understanding the labels that are on the containers of the foods that we eat, they don’t realize what they actually have. So that’s where it all comes into play.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I’m gonna reel it back here in just a second. But I have to tell you, I saw this very funny meme once. And I love this, it really sums it up. It’s a guy, you know, talking to his doctor.
And the doctor says, well, you have all these lifestyle diseases. And the guy says to the doctor, okay, I guess I need to change my lifestyle. And the doctor says, oh, no, here’s a pill.
And I think that sort of sums up the medical, the general medical answer to these lifestyle diseases, which is take this drug, take that drug, don’t change your lifestyle, don’t worry about that. That’s all fine. Just, you know, take these drugs.
What’s your take on that? Like, how do you approach things differently than just prescribing medication for people who have these issues?
Marvin Merrit
What it really comes down to and it’s something that that you talk about is people have to be willing to be uncomfortable, they have to be willing to change their diet, they have to be willing to cut out the starchy carbohydrates, the breads, the cakes, the cookies, that candies, the ice cream, you know, the things that are the comfort foods, they have to be willing to get up off the sofa and move, whether it’s run, walk, ride a bicycle, you know, whatever the case, may be getting the pool and swim a couple of laps, just do something physical every single day, they have to be willing to do that.
And, and it’s, it’s all changing that comfort level, people have to be uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong with okay, you go out for dinner with your, you know, whoever on a Saturday night and you want to have a little bit of something that you don’t normally eat, that’s okay.
But when you do it every day, that’s what gets them into the position that they’re in. And by doing that, that’s the way they’re able to lower and eventually get off some of these medications like the Metformin and the Glipizide. And, and that’s just for diabetes.
Or you know, the medications that we use for high cholesterol, the statins, which are horrible drugs to start out with, because people have so many side effects with them.
And then the hypertension medications, the ACE inhibitors that yeah, great. So it’s going to help lower your blood pressure, but it’s going to give you a chronic cough for the rest of your life. Why put those into your body when you can put natural healthy foods into your body and reverse all of these situations that you have?
And it’s like I always tell my patients, you know, you can keep a diary, and you can fudge that diary all you want. You can come in and talk to me and you can tell me any story you want. Blood doesn’t lie. When I run your blood, I know the truth.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. So you see a lot of these metabolic syndrome issues with people and you treat them naturally and you see good results. Do you see a lot of reversal of these diseases?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, I actually do. If you if you get them off, you know, again, the starchy carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables are okay, but you get them off those starchy carbohydrates, all of those carbohydrates turn to glucose, that’s how we metabolize them, the glucose gets in the blood, and that’s going to raise your blood glucose levels.
Now when it gets a little bit too high, that eventually is going to get stored in the liver. And that’s going to get stored as glycogen. Glycogen is good, because we break that down between meals, we break that down when we exercise.
However, if you don’t do that, then that glycogen is eventually going to turn to triglycerides, triglycerides will get them back into the blood, those can clog some arteries, specifically arteries in the heart.
And that’s how people end up with myocardial infarction, heart attacks, they end up with blockages in the carotid arteries, and it just becomes a vicious vicious cycle.
So what I tried to do is change their diets, get them off the carbs, get them off the fats, get them taking some good healthy supplements to help alleviate some of these problems, such as red yeast rice. Red yeast rice is a natural statin. It’s been used for hundreds of years. Okay.
But most doctors don’t want to use it. And I don’t want to get into the whole theories behind, you know, drug reps and you know, and drug labs and things like that. But they are more prone to prescribe a medication than to use something natural because there’s an incentive there to write that prescription.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I hate that it works that way. So you mentioned like lowering fat intake. What do you mean by that? And like, what do you consider like good, healthy fats?
Marvin Merrit
Okay, so good, healthy fats. Good healthy fats are going to come from things like olive oil. I use a lot of olive oil when I personally cook, because it’s a good healthy fat because you can’t deep fry in it, you just saute in it. Other good healthy fats, avocados, good healthy fats, all your nuts, good healthy fats. Okay, those are all things that are healthy for us.
What’s not healthy is all the processed oils, all the seed oils, while those seed oils are these heavy oils that we just don’t digest well. And because we don’t digest them, well, now they end up getting stored.
And that’s how people also end up suffering from what we call fatty liver disease. The too much of the saturated fats, the fats get stored in the liver, and the liver becomes filled with fat.
It’s reversible, because the liver is one of the most versatile organs that we have in the human body. So we’re able to reverse that. But again, it’s getting off those fats and changing the diet up.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I tell people, generally speaking to stay away from those seed oils, canola oil, you know, that kind of stuff. Whatever is considered like vegetable oils, you know, because they were designed to be something that was like heart healthy, and they’re sold and marketed as being heart healthy. But I think there’s other implications that eating that stuff. There’s like some long term studies that have been done that have shown that this stuff is just toxic for your body.
Marvin Merrit
It’s extremely toxic. You know, if you remember years ago, they used to say, oh, stop eating eggs, eggs are high and cholesterol. But when you take a look at an egg, an egg is almost the perfect food.
It has protein, it has some fat, okay, it has a little bit of carbohydrate in it. And again, in moderation eating a couple of eggs a week is almost the perfect food. So there’s nothing wrong with that.
Where again utilizing these these vegetable oils, the corn oils. Canola oils. You know, those, those just do not metabolize well in the body. And one of the other things I tell my patients, olive oil aside, the lighter the color of the oil, the healthier it is for you, because it’s not as heavy.
So if you use something like sunflower oil, sunflower oil is a very, very light colored oil. It’s good for you, you can utilize it. It metabolizes well in the human body. You can’t fry in it, deep fry in it, because it won’t hold up, it’ll break down. So those types of oils, those are the oils that tend to be more healthy for us.
Patrick McGilvray
And then how do you figure olive oil and things like that play in? Because olive oil is pretty dark, usually.
Marvin Merrit
Olive oil is pretty dark, but olive oil is purified. And that’s the nice thing about it, you get that extra virgin olive oil, which is the better of the olive oils. And that’s been purified. And that because you can’t deep fry in it. You can only saute like some vegetables or a chicken breast or something like that. It’s not going to be soaked in that oil.
Whereas you take something like a vegetable oil, or an animal based oil like lard and you drop your chicken breast covered in you know whatever coating you put it in and you fry it in there for 10 minutes or so, that oil just soaks right into the meat. It soaks right into that breading. And now you’re eating that oil on top of it. And that’s where the downfall comes.
Patrick McGilvray
Gotcha. Gotcha. And so let’s talk a little bit about the exercise side of things. So tell me a little bit about your history because I know you’re a runner, right?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, yeah, I run, I cycle. I actually, I was a wrestler. I wrestled in college, I wrestled in high school. I was a lifeguard on the Jersey Shore. That’s the way I worked my way through college.
I’ve always been very, very active. You know, and I picked up running probably about 10 years ago, I got this bug to, I started out walking. And I said, you know, I’ll let me try a little bit of running. And one thing led to the next and before I knew what I was doing, 5K’s and 10K’s and then a triathlon and said, Well, that’s a lot of fun.
So I started doing more and more, I’m just letting through the whole lifestyle of it. And, you know, realize that, you know, you can’t smoke, you can’t drink heavily, you can’t eat poorly, to participate in these sports, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work with our bodies.
Although oddly enough, I’ve seen some weird things on some of these courses that I’ve run with what people do. But, you know, nonetheless, you know, it’s all part of that healthy lifestyle.
And by exercising, that helps you metabolize all of these good foods that you put into your body into energy. And that gives you the energy to go out there and run 5k, to go out there and run 10k, to go out there and jump on a bike for 30-40 miles. And you don’t feel tired afterwards, you feel energized. On top of that, you get that dopamine release on top of it. And it all just ties together. And that’s what I try to get my patients to do.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you have like a running group that you do there. And you’re in Florida, right?
Marvin Merrit
Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, what I do is on Saturdays, I know it sounds crazy for a doctor to work on Saturdays. But on Saturdays, I go to my office and where my office is located in Pompano Beach, it’s in an office building kind of off the beaten path, which I kind of like and it’s a beautiful lake right across the street.
So my patients, I have two groups of patients, I have my walker patients and I have my runner patients. My walker patients, I meet them early in the morning. And we’ll go out for a two or three mile walk, a brisk walk and get their heart rate up and exercise and stretching beforehand.
We walk, come back, stretch again, we talk a little bit about our nutrition and any challenges that they face during the week.
And then I get my running group and a little bit later on. And we’ll go out for a 5k a three mile run, not too hard of a pace, running about a 13 minute mile give or take. Because some of them are a little bit slower.
And I don’t like to leave anybody behind. So we’ll slow the group down if we have a slower runner. And same thing stretch beforehand, go for a run stretch afterwards, you know.
And everybody says oh, we should go to Dunkin Donuts for coffee, no let’s not go to Dunkin Donuts for coffee, let’s go get something healthy to eat. The coffee is okay, but the Dunkin Donuts isn’t gonna work. And that’s what I tried to do with them at least two to three Saturdays a month, we get together and we do that.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s cool because you’re building this relationship with people where you can share more than you can in a you know, 14 minutes that you have with your patients, you probably spend more time with your patients than a lot of doctors, the traditional doctors that are working for these big insurance companies, they get, you know, certain amount of time they’re allowed to spend with each person. Right?
And that’s it, and then they’re done. But you’re creating these relationships, and you’re having these conversations with people and you’re actually out there running with them. You’re actually out there having breakfast with them. I think that’s really cool.
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, you know, my philosophy has been and to give you a little bit more of the background of how this generation of my practice manifested. Sadly, my mom died from complications of type two diabetes.
And going forward from that I said to myself, I said, you know, and she didn’t take care of herself. That was all part of it I said, people need to be educated. People need to understand because it’s a hidden disease. People don’t really know that they have type two diabetes until something goes really wrong.
Or they just go to the doctor for their annual checkup. And they do blood and they’re, you know, their fasting blood sugar is like 190 or they give a urine and their sugar is like 800 milligrams per deciliter or something like that.
So that’s when they find out about it. For the most part, it’s a silent disease. And because it’s a silent disease, people don’t even realize that something is wrong.
Once they realize something is wrong, then we can get them on the track to doing better, getting better, feeling better, feeling stronger, and reversing most of the symptomatology of type two diabetes. And again, type two diabetes goes hand in hand with high cholesterol, high blood pressure. They all three seem to go together all at the same time.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you mentioned that diabetes as being sort of a hidden thing and I know a lot of the visceral fat that people have, you know, visceral fat is that internal fat, it’s growing around your organs and things like that’s the really the bad kind of fat.
And people don’t know that they’re, that they’re getting, they don’t know that they have that. Right. I think it was Professor Tim Noakes, who was a long distance runner, and he was running all these marathons he had done like, I forget how many 72 marathons or something crazy like that.
And went to the doctor and was diagnosed with diabetes. And he was like, that’s impossible. You know, I run all these marathons and, and he sort of, I don’t know if he coined this term or not, but he calls it tofi T-O-F-I, thin on the outside fat on the inside. You know, that is like people who are fit and they’re exercising, and they look pretty good from the outside. But inside, there’s stuff going on, they need to get fixed, you know?
Marvin Merrit
Right. Right. And that’s exactly it. The thin on the outside, they’re fat on the inside, because yeah, you carry this layer of visceral fat. We all do, because we use it for insulation when it’s cold. And you live up there in Ohio, you know about cold
Patrick McGilvray
This week for sure, yeah.
Marvin Merrit
You know, it’s, yeah, it’s that body fat, that does help keep us a little bit warmer, which is very, very important. Also, in times of crisis, our bodies will tap into that, you know, internal body fat, but we shouldn’t be carrying enormous amounts of it.
You know, it’s interesting in my, in my, I’m also a college professor, as you know, so when, when I teach, when I teach about the heart, we do dissection. And for years, we used to do these sheep heart dissections.
And one of the things I remember about the sheep hearts is they were very, very fatty, they did some research and sheep actually carry a lot of visceral fat. Granted, they don’t have to worry about diabetes and things like that, like we do, but they carry a lot of visceral fat.
And I still have one of the sheep parts in my lab, and I show my students the sheep part, as compared to a pig heart, which is what we dissect now. Now pigs, they don’t carry visceral fat, they carry body fat, which is a little bit different.
And we take a look at the differences between the two. And I say, can you imagine a human being that has such a poor diet that eats a lot of fat, and they have a heart that looks something like this?
Because they do, they will build up that visceral fat on the heart, which can also compress the heart, which now can result in cardiac conditions. So it all begins to tie in together. It’s how you take care of yourself. How do you choose to live your life? And that’s the bottom line.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so interesting. So what are some of the main I guess, what is the right word for it, like complaints or whatever the people are coming to you with? Like, what’s the main things people need fixed? And why are they coming to you?
Marvin Merrit
Okay, basically, my practice is straight referral. I don’t advertise. I don’t belong to any insurance companies or anything like that. In fact, I take absolutely no insurance in my practice.
The reason why I do that is because I want my patients to have a commitment. I feel that if an insurance company is paying for them to come, they don’t really see what the insurance company is paying other than their copay, whether it be $5 $10, whatever.
So I want them to have commitment and commitment comes from them paying me, I make it very reasonable for them. But the thing is, is that when they come in to see me their referral, usually from a friend that has seen me or a relative that has seen me, and yeah, their complaint is, yeah, I’m a type two diabetic, I keep going into my medical doctor, all they do is they keep on increasing and increasing and increasing my medication.
And I don’t feel any better. I’m tired. I’m sluggish and rundown. I’m hungry all the time and drinking, like I own the water company, you know. And those are all the symptoms that you see. And then you have to try to fix that.
So the first thing I always do with these folks is, you know, keep a diet diary for me, okay, I want to know everything that goes in your mouth for the next seven days.
I don’t care if you think it’s minuscule, like a piece of gum, I want to know what it is. And then we start taking examination of that we start breaking it down to see what can we replace it with? What changes can we make?
How can we okay, you like gum? Well, I see you’re chewing bazooka bubble gum, which is high in sugar? Well, you know, let’s, let’s see if we can change that to something that’s a little bit less caustic on the body.
Okay, I’m not a big one in artificial sweeteners and things like that. But I’d rather have them chew a gum that has no sugar in it than a gum that’s all sugar. Okay, so these are just the little changes.
And like you do in your podcast, you know, you make these little steps with these people and make little changes in the diet and make little changes in their exercise. And we just start looking at this week after week, month after month.
And what’s really amazing they see it because they’ll see it in their blood work that hemoglobin A1C went from 11.2 to 9.7 they’re not, you know, normal yet they’re still diabetic. But that’s a significant change. And they feel better.
They get on the scale, and they’ve lost 10-15 pounds, they feel better, the clothes fit better. They realize that when they go out to dinner, they don’t have to eat half a basket of bread, you know, they can walk away from the bread.
And again, that is that psychological motivation that happens with these folks. And really what I do with them, Patrick is I give them 90 days, okay? If in 90 days, they can’t comply with my recommendations, I can’t help them. And I very politely, I verbally discharge them, and I send them a certified letter that they’re discharged, that there’s nothing more I can do for them.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s hardcore man.
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, you gotta be, that’s the only way to be because, because otherwise, you’re going to go on to another doctor, and they’re getting another pill, and they’re getting another medication and another prescription.
And then before you know it, they’re taking, I have a friend of mine, sadly, he’s, he’s my age, I’ll be 64. In January, he just turned 64. And he’s a type two diabetic, with all the problems, he will not listen to me.
So he goes to another doctor, he’s on four different diabetes medications, he’s on two different blood pressure medications, and a statin. And that’s just to start out with. And, you know, it’s just, it says, he doesn’t want to be uncomfortable, he’d rather, you know, go out and eat half a pizza.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, there’s this whole mentality that I think we really have to shift and you’re doing a great job of starting to shift this mentality of, I can just do what I want is I just go to the doctor and get a pill or get, you know, get on some kind of drug that’s going to that’s going to allow me to leave this lead this great, crappy lifestyle.
You know, I was talking to an older woman recently. I think she’s in her 70s. And she’s a type two diabetic and is on diabetes medication, and the doctor wanted to up her medication. And she was eating, you know, some cookies or something like that.
And this is a family member, and my girlfriend was like, hey, you shouldn’t be eating those cookies. You know, you got to go on this. If you got to take this medication, you shouldn’t be eating those cookies. And she said, oh, it’s fine, because the medications are free anyway. And so I don’t have to pay for it. So it’s fine. You know, that’s kind of like that is the wrong mentality. Right?
Marvin Merrit
And that’s why I take no insurance.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, exactly. And I love that. And the other thing I wanted to say, and one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk to you is because of that approach that you just talked about that you take with your with your patients, which is the same approach that I take with my coaching clients, which is, we’re going to look at what you’re doing today.
And we’re going to make a few modifications, and we’re going to see how you feel. And then we’re going to make a few more modifications and get your body adjusted to those changes. And then we’re going to like, see how you feel.
And then we’re going to just keep going with that process. I don’t have a diet that I’m going to hand over to them, because there’s no way I can know what’s going to work best for them.
Now, of course, I have guidelines like you do, and I have suggestions. But at the end of the day, everybody’s a little bit different. And everybody approaches this a little bit differently.
Yeah, we lower the carbs, Yeah, we tried to get off sugar, we want to stop using sugar as an emotional management tool. Yes, we need to increase the protein intake, especially if your activity levels are pretty high.
But for the most part, this is going to be very individualized for the person I’m working with. And so many doctors or coaches or, you know, trainers, whatever they have this like one diet, you know, in mind, and I just don’t think that works.
And so that’s what I really like, it was kind of refreshing when you and I talked about that, that, you know, you do take a very individualized approach and you work with each person, you treat them, like an individual because they are and you work around where they are and make a few changes and then continue with that process.
Marvin Merrit
And that’s absolutely, you know, I don’t just hand them a diet. I mean, you can go online and there’s a million diets for diabetics. Oh, do this diet. Oh, do that diet. Oh, do the keto diet, do the Atkins diet. You know, and we can go on and on about that. Oh, do Weight Watchers.
But that’s a cookbook, okay. We can’t do a cookbook. We have to make the recipe, individual to everybody’s lifestyle to everybody’s tastes, so to speak. And that’s what I tried to do because what might work for one patient may not work for the other patient.
And we have to find, you know, what’s that happy medium for that particular patient? What are we going to slowly begin to tweak in their diet? What is their, you know, their level of being able to exercise?
Some of them haven’t gotten off the sofa in 20 years, you know, I certainly can’t have going out and running, you know, 5K’s from day one. But you got to find out what their level of activity is.
I deal with a few patients, unfortunately, they’re either widows or widowers, and you know, they’re at home. And, you know, they don’t get out a lot. And I tell them, you know, what, get a dog. The dog needs to be walked. If you get a dog and you walk the dog, well, now you’re getting out there, and you’re doing some exercise.
And sometimes it’s as simple as easy fix as that and now they also have companionship, something that they’re responsible for, and they’re able to go out and do that. And that’s, that’s just a little easy fix that I do with some of our patients, not all of them, because they all can’t have dogs where they live. But those that can, that’s something that I strongly recommend.
Patrick McGilvray
Not everybody likes dogs, Marvin, okay. You can walk your lizard if you need to. There you go. Yeah. Well, from an exercise standpoint, what do you see as sort of the best types of exercises that kind of across the board, most people should do or get the best benefits from doing regularly,
Marvin Merrit
There should always be a balance between aerobic or cardio exercise and strength training. Again, very similar to the things that you talk about in your podcasts, you know, we talked about, you know, cardio exercise, again, it doesn’t have to be running, but walking, walking at a good pace, you know, not walking, like you’re going through the mall, shopping, but walking at a good pace.
And then some strength training and strength training doesn’t necessarily have to mean, you know, go to the gym and spend hours and hours on end in the gym. All it means is, go on Amazon, get some bands, you know, and, and start doing that.
Some of my patients, I’ll actually, you know, I have the bands in my office. I want to say I sell to them, I sell them for what I paid for it off of Amazon. It’s just a convenience thing. It’s like, here, let me show you how to do this. And I’ll show them a half a dozen exercises to do with the bands, maybe some arm curls, maybe some overhead presses, some, you know, deltoid work, just some things like that.
And I have them worked with bands, sometimes they’ll come to the office on the Saturday sessions, I’ll have them bring their bands with them. And as a group, we’ll do some band exercises. And that’s it just something to get them physically moving again.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I love that. And I’m a big fan of strength training, especially like actually being intentional about getting stronger muscles. Because as we get older, and I know you probably work with a lot of older people that, you know, one of the biggest issues with older people is that their muscle mass really declines, you know, they start getting very weak.
And then their bone mass also gets pretty weak. And then they fall and they have complications. And that leads to all kinds of issues because now they’re completely immobile, they can’t do anything. So building muscle, building strong muscles, building a strong skeletal system, skeletal muscle and bone sport. It’s so huge. Oh my god, it’s gonna put years and years and maybe decades on your life.
Marvin Merrit
It’s sustaining. You know, without getting too scientific, we have what’s known as Wolf’s law. And Wolf’s law states that the more stress you place on your skeletal system, the healthier your skeletal system is going to be.
And this is something that I find with my female patients is that as they get older, they suffer from what’s known as osteopenia, which is a loss of bone mass. Okay. So I put them on calcium and magnesium that helps with the with the bone mass a little bit from nutritional standpoint.
But they get that way because they haven’t done much in the way of exercise. Now you start putting more stress on the skeletal system by having them exercise a bit, and it’s not so much that you reverse the osteopenia, slowly osteopenia, so it doesn’t progress to a severe case of osteoporosis. And that’s what you really want to prevent. Because you don’t want this poor woman stepping off the curb and the pressure is just right. And boom, she breaks a hip. That’s the thing you don’t want.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, what’s the difference between osteopenia and osteoporosis?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, osteopenia is when you start losing bone mass. Osteoporosis is where the bone actually gets eaten away, and you lose all of this calcium. And it almost looks like in osteoporosis, if you look at it under the microscope, it almost looks like moths have eaten away at the bone, like moths will eat away at a cloth. That’s what it’s like. Osteopenia, you just start seeing on an x-ray, how the bone mass is getting thinner and thinner and thinner. And then it can lead to the next.
Patrick McGilvray
Wow, okay, interesting. Just learn something. That’s cool. So yeah, I think strength is like so huge. It’s like one of the best things you can do for yourself. And I think that if as we get older, if we continue building strong muscles and supporting strong bones, then you’re you’re going to live longer, you’re going to have a better quality of life, you’re less likely to get injured from doing normal day to day things, especially those of us who love to run. And you can run as you get I know people who run marathons in their 90s, you know.
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, there’s a video that I showed to my students when I’m teaching. It was done by PBS, and it showcases an 87 year old man doing the triathlon Escape from Alcatraz. I mean, that’s one of the toughest triathlons because you’re swimming across San Francisco Bay for a mile and a half, followed by I think it’s 20 miles on the bike, and then an eight mile run. And he’s 87. I mean, that’s pretty big. I want to be back. I want to be him. That’s my goal.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s no joke right there. That’s,
Marvin Merrit
That’s my goal. Yeah. That’s my goal.
Patrick McGilvray
That is amazing. Yeah, that San Francisco Bay is brutal. That is brutal. It’s a little stretch of ocean swim. Can’t imagine. People swim in that and they get seasick from this swimming because there’s so much up and down movement. This has been really good.
So let me ask you this. If people wanted to try to find you, how could they reach out to you and, and be able to find you and learn more about you and how they might be able to hook up with you?
Marvin Merrit
Sure, they can email me and marvinmerrit@bellsouth.net. But that’s one way they can call me. And I can give you my cell phone number. I have no issue with that. I always ask though, if you want to reach out to me text me before calling.
I’ll always get back and my phone number is 954-649-5280 Just text me before calling tell me what you need me for. And I’ll be more than happy to, you know, if I’m with patients or teaching, I’ll just politely text you back that I’ll get back to you. But I’ll always get back to people and I always do. That’s just the way I am. That’s the two easiest ways to get hold of me.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, cool. And do you work with people that are not local to Pompano Beach area?
Marvin Merrit
Yes, absolutely. I can do it. You know, via telehealth, you know, no problem with that at all.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. Cool. What’s next for you? I know you just did a race about a week ago. Right? What did you do?
Marvin Merrit
Yeah, I did the Danger Point 5k I had a personal best that 3550. Which I was pretty happy with in my ripe old age. I think next I’m probably going to do the jingle bell jog on Christmas Eve. Okay, I’ll do that next.
And I’ll keep training but I’ll take a little bit of time off from from racing because I want to do the In April the Los Olas Triathlon, which is down here that’s, well it takes place on Fort Lauderdale beach and they call it the Los Olas Triathlon because it crosses Los Olas Boulevard which is pretty famous down here.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. Is that a sprint triathlon? Yeah. Cool. You swim in the ocean?
Marvin Merrit
Oh, yeah, swimming the ocean. And then we’ll see where the spring in the summer takes me. There’s usually a couple of events that pop up. Last year I did the July 4 triathlon. It was a great weekend. Actually a great couple of weeks, I did the Memorial Day 5k followed by the July 4th triathlon, which was on July second, followed by the July 4th 5k, on July 4th, so it was a nice quick couple of weeks and then finished up the end of August with the Iguana Man 5K.
So I try to stay active. I tried to do you know, 5675 k’s a year, two, three triathlons, maybe a duathalon depending on how the water is.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. You are an example of what is possible, Marvin, I love it. Keep up the good work seriously. You’re doing some work in this world. And you’re helping people get healthier and helping people live longer and helping people figure out how to do all this because it’s confusing.
And there’s a lot of information out there that’s just like, it’s a lot of conflicting information, a lot of confusing information and it’s very overwhelming for people. So to have somebody like you where people can go and, you know, do a consult with you like even you know, over Zoom or however you do it. That’s awesome.
Because that gives people an opportunity to start to see that things can be different for them and they don’t have to be on medication for the rest of their life. Just because you have one of these lifestyle diseases, it’s not a death sentence. It doesn’t mean you can’t improve with the right diet and exercise.
So hats off to you, my friend for doing good work. Keep it up. Thank you for taking some time to chat with me here today. It’s been really fun.
Marvin Merrit
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. Patrick, thank you so much for having me.