Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
A lot of people find it very hard to change their diet. They have been practicing the same eating patterns for most of their life and even though this is causing dysfunction in their body, they …
Continue Reading about 150. Do You Have an Addictive Personality? →
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 150 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, do you have an addictive personality? So a lot of people find it very hard to change their diet, okay, they’ve been practicing the same eating patterns for most of their life.
And even though this might be causing some dysfunction in their body, they can’t lose weight, they’re gaining weight, they can’t seem to change anything. Why do they do this? Why can’t they just change? And a lot of times they’ll say it’s because they have a quote unquote, addictive personality. What does this mean? What is an addictive personality? Is this even a real thing? Are some of us just wired to eat junk food, and there’s nothing we can do about it?
So today, I want to unpack this kind of delicate topic, and help you to understand whether or not you have an addictive personality and what you might be able to do about it. And I get it, changing habits is hard. Changing your eating habits is really hard. Trying to do this all on your own is the hardest.
That’s why I do what I do as the weight loss coach for runners, I encourage you to do hard things to do things you might not want to do, or things you find very difficult to do on your own, like changing your habits around food, so that you can become the healthy fit runner that you’ve always wanted to be.
I know that there’s a version of you that you have in your mind, this vision that you have for yourself. And what I want to do, what I do every day is to help you to become that person. I help you to get the outside you to match the inside you. I want the way you look on the outside to match the way you feel about yourself on the inside.
So if you’re ready to get started becoming that healthiest version of you, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners where the project is you. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started.
Alright, so do you have an addictive personality? The reason I’m talking about this today is because I hear a lot of people say this, they say oh, I can’t really change my eating patterns, I can’t really stop eating sugar, I can’t stop eating carbs because I have an addictive personality. And they use this as a reason for their, you know, overeating or over drinking or whatever it is.
So they engage in patterns of behavior that might be detrimental to their health and their fitness. And they can’t stop doing that behavior. And they’ve heard this term we’ve all heard this term, oh, I just have an addictive personality in there kind of using that as a catch all as an excuse for these patterns of behavior, okay.
Now, something I want to say here is a little bit of a disclaimer for this episode. I’m going to be talking about addiction, addictive personality behaviors. If you’re somebody who actually truly struggles with a diagnosed addiction, like if you’ve been clinically diagnosed with a substance abuse problem, you know, some sort of addiction, alcoholism or eating disorder, please seek professional medical help, okay, I’m not a doctor and nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice, cool? Okay.
So, what is this thing about addictive personality? What is an addictive personality? Is this a real thing? The short answer is no. Addiction and addictive behaviors are complex issues, very, very complex issues. But there is not one personality type that will always develop an addiction.
Addiction can affect anyone regardless of your personality. Okay, so some people can drink or use recreational drugs or eat sugar in moderation. They can do these things on occasion and they never develop any kind of addiction to these substances. Other people can try these things once and immediately develop an intense craving or an intense desire to try them again and again and again. And so the truth is this: that experts generally agree that, you know, addiction is much more complicated. It’s not a personality issue. Okay.
So I want to make sure we understand that, you know, just saying, like, oh, I have an addictive personality, it’s not, it’s not a real thing. Okay, now, let’s break this down a little bit here. Okay, so what, what is addiction? And the definition of addiction that I’m using here is addictive behaviors, okay? So behaviors that can be that we can kind of grow addicted to, okay, there’s many varying definitions of addiction. And it can be confusing to know what it is and what it isn’t. But the difference between, let’s say, somebody who’s just enthusiastic about something, and someone who’s addicted to something, is this and here’s a pretty simplified definition. But I like this definition here. I think it’s helpful.
If you have a healthy enthusiasm for food or alcohol, or shopping or whatever. And when you engage in these activities they add to your life, then that’s good. That’s a healthy enthusiasm. That’s not addiction. But if when you engage in these behaviors, it takes away from your life, if the behavior leads to negative consequences, it’s most likely an addictive behavior.
If the behavior lacks the negative consequences, or actually provides some positive results in your life, then it’s probably not an addiction. Okay. Another key factor in recognizing addictive behavior like compulsive eating, binge eating, binge drinking, is a feeling of being out of control.
A lot of people who actually struggle with addiction will report that a lot of times they feel this overwhelming sensation of being out of control, like their behavior is automatic, they don’t even know they’re doing it sometimes. And they feel out of control because they might start drinking or start eating something and they can’t stop. And that’s a very out of control feeling. Okay?
And there are many, many things in this world that we can become addicted to. I’m not just talking about drugs here. So food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, porn, social media, people are addicted to social media, they get a dopamine hit, when they open up their Instagram account, and they see they got 10 more followers or something, right? People get addicted to work. You ever heard of a workaholic, people can even get addicted to things that seem positive like working out or running.
There are people who use running as an escape from their life, they use it in a way that is a numbing, like we use alcohol or food to numb out. And then if it creates some negative consequences in your life, that may be an addictive behavior, maybe something you want to stop, stop doing. Okay? So if when you start engaging in a behavior, and you can’t stop it, or when you engage in certain behaviors, they have negative consequences they take away from your life, instead of adding to your life.
This may be addictive, this may be an addictive behavior that you’re engaging in. Okay. So what we’re really talking about here is not is not your personality, right? It’s your behavior. Now, there are things like genetics that may play a role in addiction. And there have been many, many studies about this, there might be some genes that play a role in addictive behaviors that might predispose you to obesity or alcoholism.
But listen, if you don’t drink alcohol, you don’t become an alcoholic, you’re not an alcoholic. Just because you have a gene doesn’t mean that that gene gets expressed or it doesn’t mean you’re engaging in that behavior. So you might have a gene that predisposes you to obesity, but if you don’t overeat, then you stay away from junk food, you know, you don’t become obese, you’re not you’re not obese, okay?
It’s just, we don’t want to look at these things and just say, well, this is oh, it’s just I’m, I’m wired this way, it’s in my DNA. I have this addictive personality and there’s just nothing I can do about it. So I want to kind of remove that idea from the equation here. Okay.
Now, I used to think that I had an addictive personality. And I came up with this idea or heard about this idea. When I was in my teens, I started drinking alcohol. I started smoking cigarettes. I started doing recreational drugs, you know, and and every time I tried something new like the first time I smoked a cigarette, or the first time I got high or the first time I drank alcohol, that feeling that I got that, the sensation that I got the lighting up of my brain, the high that I got from that substance was something that I immediately wanted more and more of.
So I’d like drink alcohol or, you know, smoke some pot or something like that. And as soon as that high wore off, I just, I needed that, again, I wanted to get it back again. And I did this repeatedly for many, many years. And my idea, my conclusion was that I had an addictive personality. So there’s just nothing I could do about it, I was just, you know, engaging in these behaviors regularly.
I was drinking, you know, smoking weed, I was smoking cigarettes, whatever, there’s nothing I could do about it. Because I had this personality. I was doomed to just be an addict, in one way or another, my whole life. And I thought this for forever. You know, until really, until I was in my 40s. When I was 40 years old, I decided that I had had enough of drinking, and I quit. And I had quit smoking some years before that, but, and stopped doing drugs. So I want to make it very clear that I haven’t done any kind of recreational drugs in decades, right?
But you know, the last thing was really the alcohol, it took me until I was like 40, to decide that I wasn’t going to engage in this behavior anymore. So over time, I was able to break each of these addictions to break the patterns of addiction, right, some took longer than others, you know, food, food was actually probably the last one for me.
And for me, like, once I stopped drinking, I started eating more and you know, gained a lot of weight doing that I used food, kind of the similar way that I used alcohol. And really, the food was the last thing for me. And that was just about three years ago that I stopped using food in an obsessive-compulsive, addictive way. And so here’s what I found out. And this is what I’ve discovered, that was really what was really going on with me, okay, so it’s not my personality. I’m not just an addict, and I’m doomed.
You know, the reason I’m engaging in this addictive behavior is not because of genes or my heredity, heredity, or you know, my parents or whatever, all those things might play a role. It was just conditioning. It was just conditioning, I learned that certain things make my brain light up like a Christmas tree. When I drink alcohol, when I eat sugar, I get the rush of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. And my brain loves this feeling and feels so amazing.
And as soon as that effect wears off, I just wanted to give in. And so the desire within me grows, the cravings become more intense, and my brain wants that rush again, I want to feel good again. And so I just gave it what I wanted all the time. And I reinforced the feeling, I reinforced the desire with a reward.
Every time I had the desire, I rewarded that desire with the dopamine, the serotonin, all the you know, the chemicals that get released when eating sugar or drinking alcohol. And, and I wrote, I did this over and over and over again. And it was a cycle, right? So, you use food or alcohol to feel good, and then that effect wears off, the desire intensifies, and you seek the reward again, and that’s the cycle of addiction.
So the more I continued to reward myself with my quote, unquote, like drug of choice, the more I needed it, the more I needed it, the more I had to have it, and then blah, blah, blah, it was just unending. So this isn’t a personality disorder I’m describing here. This is not a personality disorder. This is a learned behavior. This is something that I practiced over and over and over again for decades, especially in the case of alcohol, especially with food.
And this behavior, for me, felt comfortable, familiar, and safe to my brain. My brain was like, This feels good. It’s like putting a warm blanket on, you know, in the winter, and putting on that soft, comfortable sweater. So your brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Your brain just wants you to feel good.
And engaging in addictive behavior, even though it comes with all the negative consequences. It’s very pleasurable to your brain. Your brain just wants to feel good right now, at any cost. Drug addicts will do horrible things to get their drug of choice and from the outside, you see this unconscionable behavior? And you think, how can they do that? How can they hurt themselves? How can they hurt others? How can they break the law? How can they do that to the people that love?
But the reality is that drug, that high, that thereafter is way more important than anything or anyone else. That’s how powerful your brain is. That’s how powerful the drug’s effect is on your brain. And it’s really not the drug itself, but it’s the effect that the drug has on the brain. You’re always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Well, this is intense pleasure that they’re going after, and they crave that over everything else. Okay. Alright, so you might be thinking, saying, like, how does this relate to me, Patrick? I’m not some opioid addict stealing my grandmother’s pain medication to get high. But there’s liquor, let me bring this all home here, okay. There’s a way that this pertains to most of us, okay.
Food has a very, very similar effect, right? It’s probably not as intense as drugs, but it is very addictive. Sugar is highly addictive. Carbs are highly addictive. It’s all just sugar, right and varying degrees of concentration, carbohydrates, sugars, a carbohydrate. There’s just all carbs, right. And we are a nation of people who love our carbs.
And we love to numb ourselves. And we use cards to numb ourselves, we use food, and alcohol and drugs and everything else to numb ourselves, right food is probably the most prevalent thing that we use, though. We numb ourselves to the perceived pain that we see out there in the world. If we experience stress, or anger, or frustration, or sadness, or guilt or shame, we don’t want to feel any of that stuff. That’s all painful. We just want to feel good.
So we’ve conditioned ourselves to numb those feelings with, you know, a variety of substances and food being one of the most prevalent, okay, so we’re talking about, we’re not talking about numbing out with food, like asparagus and chicken like that’s, nobody does that, right? It’s the highly pleasurable foods that we use, like a drug because they light up our brain like a drug. Sugar lights up more areas of the brain and stimulates more pleasure areas of the brain than cocaine does. They’ve done studies that show this.
So it’s those highly pleasurable foods that were after sugar, refined carbs in all their various forms. And I call this stuff carbage. So if you find yourself using carbage, as a means of numbing yourself, it’s time to stop doing that. You have to break the cycle of addiction at some point in time, you’re going to have to stop numbing, and start feeling. Now this is easier said than done. I get that. Because you’ve conditioned yourself to not feel.
So feeling an emotion, especially what we call negative emotions, like you know, guilt, shame, anger, frustration, sadness, stress. This is something we’ve gotten really good at avoiding, we will do almost anything to not have to feel one of these negative emotions. No one wants to feel stress or sadness. So just go eat something and you don’t have to feel any of that stuff. Okay? But does this really work?
Maybe for a minute. But then there’s this insidious thing that happens. So it actually creates a counter effect, there is an opposite effect that happens. So you feel stress, you feel sadness, you know, whatever, you eat some sugar, it lights up your brain and you feel bliss, it feel good for a few minutes, until that effect wears off your blood sugar crashes, you begin to feel depressed, you feel even more stressed.
Now the sadness comes back even even more intensely. And now, it’s coupled with the fact that you binge out on on a bunch of Halloween candy or whatever. And so your stress levels become even more amplified, or those negative emotions become more amplified. So now what do you do? Now you’re feeling even worse. So yeah, you go back to the candy bowl, you go back to that big bowl of Halloween candy, you just start diving in, you just start eating more and more and more. And the cycle continues.
So the answer here is you have to break the cycle. You have to stop eating the carbage you have to stop numbing yourself. You have to start learning how to feel instead of you know, not feeling this is not easy to do. I’m not going to Candy Coat and say like, oh, this is so simple. It’s not easy. It’s a simple concept. Yep. It’s not easy, it takes time it takes practice.
But I promise you, this is one of the most powerful life skills that you can and should master. If you’re willing to experience any emotion, good or bad, negative or positive, there’s nothing you can do. You can achieve anything that you want for yourself. break the cycle of addiction, it’s not a personality problem.
You don’t have an addictive personality, you’ve just conditioned yourself to use food or whatever, to feel better. That’s it. So here’s your work. Here’s what you need to do. You need to look at what you’re currently doing. Start by looking at your current eating patterns. Really look honestly, at what you’re eating everything. What foods are you eating? When and what times of the day? How often? How much? When do you go for the carbage? And ask yourself, am I eating to numb out right now? What am I feeling right before I binge out on my kids’ Halloween candy?
And this is just the first step. This is like step one, but we’ve got to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you have to understand, if you are using food to numb yourself. This is what I call radical self awareness. It’s a very, very important first step. It’s the first step to changing any kind of behavior, radical self awareness. Okay, this is your work. This is what I want you to focus on this week.
Okay. And like I said earlier, if you’re really struggling with addiction or substance abuse, you know, you need to seek out professional help. But if you want to break the cycle of emotional eating, you want to learn how to stop numbing yourself with food. I got you. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
There seems to be a bit of confusion out there in the endurance world when it comes to the terms “keto” and “fat-adapted.” Keto gets a bad rap because people tout it as being an all-fat diet - all …
Continue Reading about 149. Keto vs. Fat-Adapted – Which is Better? →
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 149 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today keto versus fat adapted, which is better? So there seems to be a bit of confusion out there in the endurance world when it comes to the terms keto and fat adapted.
Keto kind of gets a bad rap because people tout keto as being the all fat diet, right? Like you’re just eating sticks of butter wrapped with bacon, but this is definitely not the case at all. And then being fat adapted on the other hand, it causes confusion because there’s the word fat in there. And so people are running in the other direction because they’re afraid of fat. We’ve become kind of a fat phobic nation here. All right.
So any kind of dietary intervention that allows you to consume higher amounts of fat seems counterintuitive and scary and all that. So today on the podcast, I’m going to clear up all this confusion and help answer the question: keto versus fat adapted, which is better?
And whether you want to lose weight, run longer, or just become that healthiest version of yourself, burning fat is how you get there, and figuring out how to best get your body into fat burning mode; this is what I do every single day as the weight loss coach for runners.
So working together, you and I will put together a plan to get your body burning fat effectively. The way it’s supposed to. This is not some weird fat diet. This is like getting your body back to its natural state of being a fat burning machine.
We humans are excellent fat burners, we’ve just gotten away from that with the crappy diet most people eat. Okay, so if you’re ready to get back to being a fat burning machine, apply for coaching with me and we’ll get you there to learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Okay, the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because there seems to be this confusion over the terms there’s confusion about what it means to be keto. There’s words like the ketogenic diet, and being in ketosis and ketones and ketone bodies and all these different words around keto, and people don’t fully understand what it means.
They also hear people talk about keto is just being like this diet, we’re eating nothing but fat. And fat adapted, you know, people are confused about what does that mean? What does it mean, fat adapted? And do you have to eat high amounts of fat in that diet, too? Is it all just about eating a bunch of fat?
So I want to break this all down for you today, I want to like kind of help you to understand the difference between the two. There’s some similarities to keto and fat adapted, they share many similarities, right? I’m gonna go over what those similarities are, how there’s some overlap between the two. And then what the differences are between the two. And I’m hoping that by the end of this episode, you can make that determination for yourself, which is better for you as a person.
Okay, I’m gonna just gonna say from the outset, that they’re both very beneficial states to be in being fat adapted and being keto, they’re both really healthy for you and they have lots of positive health benefits, okay. And I want you to understand how this relates to you as a runner as well. Okay, so I want you to understand the difference between keto and fat adapted, I want you to understand the implications that it will have for you as a runner.
I want you to understand the health benefits of both of these things and then hopefully, dispel some of these myths and misconceptions about keto and fat adapted and, and really just help you to make an informed decision about your own health and fitness journey. Okay, and what you want for yourself, so be thinking about that.
What is it that you want for yourself? What are the goals that you have for yourself, and then as I’m talking through this stuff today, think oh, that might be a way that can help me get there or maybe that’s not for me. Either way, it’s fine. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Okay. So first, let’s get into this.
Let’s talk about keto. What doees keto mean? Okay. So when we talk about keto, a lot of times we’re talking about the ketogenic Diet a ketogenic diet is a diet that is low in carbohydrates. It’s higher in fat, you know, when you drop the carbohydrate ratio, you’re going to increase your fat content as well. Okay? But it does not mean we’re eating sticks of butter wrapped with bacon all day long. That’s not what we do.
It’s basically keeping your carbohydrate levels pretty low so that you can lower your blood sugar, lower your insulin levels and shift your body’s metabolism away from burning carbs towards burning fat. And ketones are using mostly fat and ketones for energy.
Okay, so the ketogenic diet offers many health benefits right? Many studies have shown that this type of diet can help you to lose weight and improve your health and a bunch of different ways. The ketogenic diet has proven benefits that help reverse diabetes that help prevent cancers, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease.
But really the main focus here in the way that I want to talk about this today is on fat metabolism, your body’s ability to burn fat for fuel, okay, so you lower your carbohydrate intake, blood sugar, lowers insulin levels, lowers and now your body can access your stored body fat for fuel, okay? So the ketogenic diet is a diet that is low carbohydrate and higher in fat, yes, but it helps your body to start burning fat really effectively and producing ketones and and this state of producing a certain amount of ketones is called ketosis. Okay?
Ketosis is a metabolic state where your body is using fat and ketones for fuel instead of sugar and carbs and glucose, okay? It’s called dietary ketosis because in this state, your body is producing a certain amount of ketones. There are three main ketones that get produced: beta hydroxy butyrate, acetylacetate, and then acetone. The first two beta hydroxy butyrate, or BHB, and acetylacetate seemed, are the the main ketone bodies that get produced, okay, acetone is actually a byproduct of acetoacetate.
And in order to know whether or not you’re in this state of ketosis, you have to test your blood, your urine, your breath for the presence of one or more of those ketone bodies, okay? So being in ketosis means that you are producing between point five and three millimoles of ketones per liter of blood. So for me, when I have like, tried to get into ketosis in the past, I never really produced these numbers, I might get between like point five and one.
So I might be where they consider trace amounts of ketones, I might produce small amounts of ketones, but I never got into this place where I was burning, you know, two, three millimoles of ketones, right? Or producing those kinds of numbers. And to be honest with you, I never worried about it. I felt great when I when I do more of a Keto type of diet, when I keep my carbs super low.
And for me, it’s not about the number on some test device. It’s about how I feel and how my workouts are. And if I’m maintaining weight, if I’m losing weight, if my cognitive function is high, all those things are important to me, not a number of ketones. It’s produced on a certain test meter or something like that.
I’ve done the urine tests, I’ve done the blood tests, haven’t done the breath test, but there’s different ways of testing ketones. So if you follow a strict ketogenic diet, meaning you’re keeping your carbs very low, and you shoot for probably between 20 to 50 grams of carbs total per day.
So this is a dramatic lowering of your carbohydrate intake, especially if you’re used to eating like a standard kind of American type of diet with very, very high in carbs. If you follow this very strict ketogenic type of diet, you will most likely get into that state of ketosis, okay, which is great. Your blood sugar’s level out, insulin levels out, your body starts being able to use the stored body fat for fuel.
Ketones get produced as a byproduct of this fat burning, and you’re in ketosis, okay. And there’s a lot of great benefits to be in this state of ketosis. Okay. So some of the benefits of being in in ketosis and in doing the following a strict ketogenic diet, fat burning is put into high gear you are burning fat really effectively, you’re no longer burning glucose for energy because you’re not giving your body glucose for energy, you’re not really eating much in the way of sugar or carbohydrates at all.
So the only fuel your body has now is your own stored body fat and some of the fat that you’re consuming that you’re eating, okay? So fat burning is put into high gear, weight loss will absolutely begin to happen for you. If you want to lose weight, you got to burn fat, this is a great way to get fat burning going.
Okay, lots and lots of studies have shown the effectiveness of a ketogenic diet for weight loss, right? This is very well known. It’s the you know, they’ve proven like they’ve compared it to the low fat diet or low calorie diets, and they get better results. So you lose weight without counting calories without tracking your food, and with less hunger and deprivation because you’re eating a higher fat, higher protein type of diet.
And what’s interesting is they did a study, one particular study I’ll mention here was in the journal, Nutrition and Metabolism found that people who followed a ketogenic diet for eight weeks lost nearly five times as much body fat as those who followed a low fat diet, okay, so a low fat diet is not as effective at losing weight, like you can burn much more fat and get your body into this natural state of fat burning by just lowering your carbohydrate intake getting into ketosis, and boom, you’re gonna start to feel great, you’re gonna start losing weight, some other other health benefits of being in ketosis, your endurance improves.
So runners who follow a pretty strict ketogenic diet will most likely also experience an improvement in their running endurance, because you’re burning fat really effectively here, this is the key thing we have to understand here. You’re burning fat really effectively, even at higher running intensity. So people think that oh, you know, keto is great. You know, you really can’t, like run fast when you’re doing this when you’re doing the super low carb, you know, ketogenic approach, which is not really true.
They’ve done some studies, they’ve shown that typical carb adapted athletes, you know, they can hit, they can burn their burning fat up to about 65%, or their VO2 max, right. But the keto adapted athletes, somebody who’s doing more of a strict ketogenic type of diet can burn fat, you know, 70, 80 up to 90 or more percent of their VO2 max.
So as the intensity increases, as a keto adapted athlete, you can increase your fat burning as well. So just keep that in mind that athletic performance does not have to suffer because your carbohydrate intake goes down because you’re doing kind of a Keto type of diet, okay? Also, sleep is improved.
Studies have shown that ketogenic diet promotes adenosine activity in the body. So adenosine promotes the sleep drive. So it is a chemical that helps you sleep more effectively, right. And so they’ve shown that adenosine gets produced. It helps to relax the nervous system, it helps to reduce pain and inflammation, all of which help you improve sleep.
Your focus and concentration improve on the ketogenic diet. So your brain loves fat and ketones as a fuel source. And most people when they switched from, you know, a regular high sugar diet, high carb diet to a low carb ketogenic type of diet, they experienced the lifting of the brain fog that happens when they make this switch.
And most people don’t even know they’re in a brain fog until they start experiencing this. And they’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how much more clearly I could think and concentrate. People experience more sustained energy throughout the day. So blood sugar and insulin levels are normalized. So you no longer have these spikes and crashes and energy levels throughout the day.
You don’t have to get an afternoon coffee just to get you through the last part of the day. Food cravings subside greatly. So when you switch to a lower carb diet and a strict ketogenic type of diet, you no longer have your hunger signals being jacked up by all the carbs and insulin. And so your food cravings go way down. You’re not as hungry during the day, this is a really good place to be by the way. If you’re feeling hungry all the time, there’s something wrong with your diet right there. There’s some dysfunction happening there.
Also, people experience less bloating and inflammation. Keto is a non inflammatory diet, you’re removing the inflammatory carbohydrates from your diet. So inflammation and bloating become a thing of the past which helps you to recover faster from the harder workouts as well. So you have this lack of inflammation And this is gonna play a role in helping you to recover faster especially from the longer harder workouts. Okay?
So these are all benefits of the ketogenic diet. These are all benefits of fat burning, when you really kick your fat burning into high gear. These are all the amazing things that can happen. Studies have actually shown that this kind of a diet, the ketogenic diet can have other benefits for a variety of different health conditions like heart disease.
They’ve shown that the ketogenic diet can help improve risk factors like body fat HDL, which is the good cholesterol blood pressure, normalized blood sugars normalized, and this can have a positive effect on your risk of heart disease. Cancer, they’ve shown that the diet has been explored as an additional treatment for cancer because it helps to slow tumor growth, which is really interesting. The keto diet may help reduce symptoms of Alzheimer’s and actually help to slow its progress. Research has shown that the ketogenic diet can cause significant reductions in seizures for children that have epilepsy.
They’ve shown that this diet can help improve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The ketogenic diet also helps to reduce insulin levels, which plays a key role in PCOS polycystic ovary syndrome. And then the last thing that I thought was pretty interesting was that some research has shown that this diet, the ketogenic diet improves the outcomes of traumatic brain injuries as well.
Okay, so lots and lots of benefits of getting off the carbs and switching to a very low carb ketogenic type of diet. Okay, so that’s keto. That’s what it means to be in ketosis. You know, we’re keeping our ketone bodies up into that point five to three millimoles per liter of blood. We’re producing ketones, we have all these positive health benefits that begin to happen.
Now, let’s talk about the difference between keto and being fat adapted, okay. So first and foremost, understand this: being fat adapted shares a lot of the same benefits. In fact, all of the same benefits as keto they both mean that you are burning fat for fuel, you are training your body to become really effective at burning fat, right? They’re both great as weight loss interventions.
They’re both great at helping to improve cognitive function, sleep endurance, energy levels, blood sugar and insulin levels, faster recovery, everything else I mentioned above. So being fat adapted and being in the state of ketosis or following a ketogenic diet, share all of those same benefits. Okay. So in one aspect, they are virtually the same thing you would think right?
Being fat adapted means you’re burning mostly fat for energy, you’re producing ketones as well. Probably not as many though, and this is where there’s some overlap between the two. And this is where the differences start to happen. Okay. The biggest difference between being fat adapted and being keto is that when you’re fat adapted, you increase your ability to switch between burning fat and burning carbs for fuel.
So someone doing strict keto, you know, keeping the carbs super low, producing that point five to three millimoles of ketones is mainly using fat for fuel and ketones. But they will not be as metabolically flexible, meaning that you can’t switch between burning fat and carbs as easily. Okay, so eating a bunch of carbs may not shut down fat burning totally, but it will definitely kick you out of ketosis.
Okay, so as soon as you start increasing your carbs, you’re going to be kicking yourself out of that ketogenic state out of ketosis, okay. The fat adapted athlete can handle a carb load. So let’s say you eat a couple of sweet potatoes that night before a long run. In the short term, you’re going to be kicked out of ketosis, right? But it’s not a problem. Because as soon as your blood sugar and your insulin levels normalize, you’re going to be back to burning fat really effectively.
So you’ll quickly go from burning sugar burning carbs to burning fat, and you can kind of switch between the two. So, the key differentiator here is that the fat adapted athlete has the ability to use both fat and carbs as fuel. Metabolic Flexibility is the key here and this is a really good place to be. So you can switch between being keto and being fat adapted and one of the processes that I work through with all my clients.
First of all, we want to get their bodies used to burning fat, we got to get really good at burning fat. And this is the state we are naturally in as human beings, we’re naturally good fat burners. And we’ve gotten away from this state because we’re just eating tons of sugar, tons of grains, tons of processed foods, and we’re just burning all that for fuel.
So you’re constantly have to keep, you know, putting this big, fast burning fuel on the fire, it’s like putting paper on a fire and you just got it, you’re you keep burning through that paper really quickly, what we want to do is we want to be putting logs on that fire that burned really slowly.
And for long periods of time, that’s fat, okay, the paper is sugar, right? So we want to get our body back into the natural state of burning fat really effectively. And this is where keto is a great tool to us for a period of time, okay, so you can, you can go really strict ketogenic diet, you can keep your carbs super low at the beginning.
And you really don’t even need to test for ketones just keep your carbs super low, and you’re gonna start burning fat, right, and this may take some time, it may take two to four weeks, it may take longer, everybody’s a little bit different here. Okay. But then we can start incorporating more carbs back in the diet. And what we do is we time the carbs around key workouts.
So we want to get your body used to burning fat and used to burning carbs as fuel during certain times when your body demands more fuel from your body. So this is being fat adapted, right? But it’s not like a free for all with the carbs and sugar. This is not an excuse to binge out on ice cream and candy and stuff like that.
We’re still eating real food, nutrient dense sources of naturally occurring carbohydrates, for example, root vegetables or fruit, right? And then we time these around your workouts, you earn your carbs, and then you burn your carbs. Okay, and if you do this properly, you should still be experiencing all the benefits of keto.
So weight loss, improved endurance, improved cognitive function all day energy, etc, etc, etc. all the benefits I mentioned above, and also being able to use carbohydrates strategically around workouts as fuel to give you that extra gear, okay. So you can be fat adapted and not be in ketosis, you can be fat adapted, and not have to follow a strict ketogenic diet, fat adapted and keto are using the same pathways for energy.
So they’re both utilizing fat and ketones for fuel. But being fat adapted will allow you to also use carbohydrates for fuel, which is especially ideal for the endurance athlete. So I hope this clears up the confusion about keto and fat adapted, they’re similar. They’re similar states to be in their long, they’re like different sides of the same spectrum of fat burning, right, and they’re both great.
They’re both great places to be right, tons of health benefits for both and you get to decide what works best for you. Some people love being in ketosis all the time, they feel great, their workouts are great. They don’t need the extra push, they don’t need the carbs, and it can help them to lose weight or maintain their weight pretty effortlessly.
So keto is a great option for a lot of people. Other people prefer the option to use carbs for workouts. And being fat adapted gives them all the benefits of keto without having to be quite as strict right. So they also get the added benefit of having that extra gear for the higher intensity workouts and adding in some carbs, is how you do that. And that will definitely give you that edge. Okay.
And as always, if you want help with any of this, I’m totally here for you. We’ll figure out what works best for you. We’ll put together a plan for you and I’ll help you stay on track with that plan. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
A lot of people make the assumption that if you’re a low-carb runner, it means you don't ever eat any carbs at all. But this simply isn’t true. There’s a time and place for carbs in your diet, …
Continue Reading about 148. Determining Your Carbohydrate Tolerance →
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 148 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners today, determining your carbohydrate tolerance. So a lot of people make this assumption that if you’re a low carb athlete, that means that you don’t ever eat any carbs at all. And this simply isn’t true.
I’ve talked about this before, here on the podcast, there’s definitely a time and place for carbs in your diet, but you need to understand how carbs affect you as an individual, before you start piling all those sweet potatoes onto your plate. Okay, we all have differing levels of tolerance. When it comes to carbohydrates.
Some people can handle more than others without any negative side effects at all. Others need to keep their carb intake fairly low, or they experience all kinds of issues. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. Carbohydrates are not bad. But understanding how you tolerate them can definitely prevent a lot of the common issues and a lot of the negative side effects that a lot of people experience.
So here today, I’m going to explain the importance of determining your carbohydrate tolerance, so that you can lose weight and prove your endurance and basically achieve all of your health and fitness goals. And for a lot of people figuring out how many carbs is going to be right for you as an individual is challenging. It’s kind of confusing.
And this is why this is a big part of what I do as the weight loss coach for runners. So we’re not only going to focus on how many carbs you’re eating, but we want to focus on the timing of those carbs as well. We want to make sure that you’re getting the best bang for your buck, so to speak, without any of the issues that come along with increasing carbs in your diet.
So it’s not an all or nothing kind of thing we need to figure out, we need to do a little bit of experimenting, we do a little trial and error. And we got to figure out what is the right plan, what is the right sort of recipe for you around workouts, how many carbs the timing of your carbs. But listen, having a coach there to help you make sense of all this and help you figure it out. It’s just like hitting the easy button on all this for you.
Okay, and this is my jam. This is what I do every single day. So if you’re ready to just stop struggling and hit that easy button, I’m here for you. Okay, to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application, you and I will get on a call and we’ll see if the Running Lean coaching project is a good fit for you. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.
And if I sound like I’m a little nasally today, it’s because I have had this head cold for like 10 days now. And I rarely get sick. The last time I was sick was at the beginning of 2020 before COVID I probably had COVID at the time, but I haven’t had any kind of head cold or anything since then. And this one has been lingering. And it’s kind of I’m ready for this to be done because it’s driving me crazy. Not only do I sound nasally, I feel like my head is still going to explode.
I’m trying not to take any medication. I did that for a few days at the beginning. But that stuff just messes me up. And I feel like I just want my body to fight this off and do what it needs to do naturally. But one thing about this is that for about a week there I completely lost my sense of smell and taste. And I did a COVID test because I was like man, I think I probably have COVID because I had a fever and, you know, coughing and lost my sense of smell and taste. Tested negative for COVID. So that’s not what it is. It’s just a head cold that is really messing with my whole system here.
So, this past week again, though, the reason I’m bringing this up is because this past weekend, we’re here in Cincinnati, we had this festival called the Coffee Fest. And it was, it’s one of those things where we have lots of festivals here in the summer, you know, we have, and they’re all revolved around drinking, right? They’re all about wine tasting and beer fests. And or, you know, we have Oktoberfest Cincinnati, which is really popular here. And it’s just a bunch of junk food and beer.
And finally, there’s something where I can go and actually enjoy. This is my jam. I love coffee, I love good coffee, I drink very high quality coffee, I grind my own beans. And I’m very particular about coffee. And I’m like, this is going to be perfect. So I got these tickets. And I’m like, man, I hope I can actually taste some of this coffee, and showed up at Coffee Fest, and I’m walking around the different vendors and, and trying their coffee and trying to smell it.
I like I could not smell or taste anything. I mean, nothing at all. And, you know, I felt bad because I was like, man, I would really be enjoying this. If I could smell or taste any of this. So much of taste is is through your nose, right how you smell things. So I’m at this beautiful place with music playing. It’s a beautiful place. All these amazing coffees around, I’m tasting the coffee. And they’re explaining to me the different notes of citrus and floral and cocoa.
And I’m just like, yeah, I was just going to take your word for it because I can’t taste anything at all. It’s such a bummer. But my sense of smell and taste are coming back, I can definitely smell things now. And my taste is coming back. And I love food too. I love to eat. And eating food has not been extremely enjoyable. To me, it’s just been like, I better eat some food because I need the energy to, you know, get through my workouts and such. But it was nothing that I could taste at all.
So what a weird experience to go through, I’ve never had this before, I’ve never lost my sense of taste and smell like that before. So I don’t recommend it. I’m just gonna be honest with you. It’s no fun. But I’m getting through this, but I’m hoping that, you know, by the next time I record my next podcast, I will sound so nasally but um, I’m about apologizing, you’re just gonna have to deal with it for right now. Okay.
So here’s what I want to talk about today. I have been talking to a lot of runners, and you know, a lot of people are into this higher training cycle, you know, higher training parts of their training cycle, because we’ve got all of our fall races happening these days, you know, New York Marathon is, you know, about 10 days away. So a lot of people are talking about training and you know, how there may be increasing carbs, or we’re having these conversations in our client calls and our coaching calls about how to match your carb intake along with your training. Okay.
And for everybody that I talked to, it’s a little bit different. We all have a different tolerance for carbohydrates. Okay. And I want to explain, first of all, what this means, like what does it mean that you can tolerate, quote, unquote, like tolerate carbs or not tolerate carbs? You know, I’ve talked before that a lot of people have some level of intolerance.
For carbohydrates. I think the human body in general, has some level of intolerance for carbohydrates, and some people are more susceptible to that than others more sensitive to that intolerance than others. Okay? So when I talk about tolerance, what I’m really talking about is how many carbs you can eat that you can ingest without any negative side effects.
So we have to make this assumption that to some level carbs are somewhat toxic to the human body, okay, they have an element of toxicity, and it’s very much like alcohol, when you think about it this way. Alcohol in small amounts is slightly toxic to the human body, but is it really very harmful? I mean, you can argue why this might be harmful, even in small amounts.
But from a metabolic standpoint, even in small amounts, carbohydrates do have an effect on the human body and there’s some negative effects of carbohydrates on the human body that I really want to address here today. Because when we talk about whether you can tolerate more carbs or not? We need to be looking at these negative side effects that a lot of people experience when they are eating a high carb diet, or moderate carbohydrate diet.
Okay, now, a lot of people means that the majority of people have some sort of intolerance to carbohydrates. And they experience one or more of these negative side effects that I’m going to talk about here in just a second. But at higher amounts, all of these things get exacerbated.
Okay, and so in higher amounts, people experience more of these issues, and people experience them and in greater degrees, okay, so some of the dysfunction that I’m talking about here are things like bloating, inflammation, blood sugar spikes, and then crashes, weight gain, the inability to lose weight. These are all side effects of carbohydrates, carbohydrate intake, sleep issues, chronic stress, incessant hunger, cravings for more carbohydrates, sugar cravings, brain fog, the inability to think and concentrate, gas, constipation, diarrhea, high heart rate while exercising, the inability to recover quickly from harder workouts.
Endurance issues where your endurance just tanks, you know, you’re out there running and you hit the wall. Things like irritability, grumpiness, anxiety, depression, these are all symptoms of high carbohydrate intake. And of course, there’s a bigger list of things that will happen as a result of, of years and years of high carb intake, we start to get into metabolic diseases.
But these are just very common, these are not weird one off things I’m talking about here. These are all very common side effects, very common symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance. And a lot of people experienced these side effects, especially when they’re ingesting carbs and higher amounts, okay. And as we get older, we become even more carbohydrate intolerant, meaning that as we get older, we probably most of us can’t handle carbs like we did when we were younger.
So lowering your carb intake is going to be especially helpful and beneficial for the aging athlete if you’re in your 40s 50s 60s and beyond, okay, so really, determining your individual carbohydrate tolerance is going to be key to you, not just becoming a fat adapted runner, but also to help you to become the healthiest and fittest human being that you can possibly be.
Alright, we need to figure out what works for you from a carbohydrate standpoint, if you want to be the healthiest person that you can be. Okay, so let’s look at one common scenario. A common scenario would be somebody that is interested in losing weight, and I talked to so many people who are runners who are trying to lose weight and having a hard time with it, they’re struggling with it.
Most people that listen to this podcast are probably people that fit into that category. Right? Right. So if you’re a runner and you struggled with your weight, then this is, you know, a pretty common scenario. Okay, so let’s look at what changes you might make and how to get a feel for what your carb carb tolerance might be.
Okay, so let’s say you have been eating that standard runner’s diet that I’ve talked about in the past the standard runners diet is the all carbs all the time diet hits, where your your carb loading basically every single day, you’re pre fueling with carbs, you’re fueling during running with carbs, your post fueling with carbs. And you have it in your head, you can just eat anything you want at any time because you’re a runner.
So I call this the carbterian diet. And you might be sick of doing that and that’s not working for you any more. So you stop doing that, okay? And you decide, okay, I’m gonna, I’m going to try this Patrick, I’m gonna I’m gonna adopt a low carb approach here, I’m gonna, I’m gonna adopt a low carb diet, I’m gonna stop eating all the carbs and like you say, and I’m going to try and lose weight.
You know, your goals might be to lose weight to improve your body composition, you know, to lose fat weight, gain muscle weight, improve your endurance, you, you want to reduce inflammation and all those things, right? So you have these very specific goals, and you decide to go on a quote unquote low carb diet.
And so you might decrease your carb intake to like 100 to 150 grams of carbs a day. And this may not seem very low to most people. But most runners are probably eating between 5 and 800 grams of carbs a day, you heard me correctly, 5-800 grams of carbs per day, then remember, the dosage determines the poison, right.
So eating a few grams of carbs a day, not a big deal, but 5 to 800 grams of carbs a day is gonna have a significant impact on your metabolism and on your health in general. And I did a little bit of research into this and looked at what traditional running coaches recommend, and traditional running coaches will recommend from a carbohydrate standpoint, two and a half to four and a half grams of carbs, for every pound of bodyweight, you know, to kind of depending on where you are in your training cycle, but the higher end of this is so crazy.
So for somebody like me, so I weigh about 180 pounds these days, okay? For me, if I’m at that, you know, four and a half grams of carbs, for every pound of body weight, that is 110 grams of carbs per day, that the traditional, you know, conventional wisdom will tell you is appropriate, right. And I used to eat this way, I did.
And it was amazing. Like, I loved eating all those carbs, like I was like, bring it on, you know, I was training for ultra marathons and running several marathons a year and several ultra marathons a year. And I was gaining a lot of weight. Until you know, after a few years, I realized that I was 40 pounds overweight, and I was like this is stupid, like I can’t keep doing this, I can’t go on this way.
Like there has to be a different way of doing this, right. So just keep in mind that 100 to 150 grams of carbs a day, is pretty low compared to where a lot of people start out with this thing, okay, so you reduce your carbs, you’re down to 100, let’s say you’re about 150 grams a day, and you’re like, you know, I’m feeling better, my inflammation is going down, I don’t feel so bloated all the time, I’m feeling pretty good. I like I’ve got pretty good energy all day long, like, I’m actually losing a few pounds too, you know, so you stick with that approach for a while.
And then after some time, your weight loss might kind of stall out. So you hit a sort of a plateau. And maybe your endurance, so your running isn’t really improving much, right. So at that 150 grams level, your body is probably still relying mostly on carbs as the main fuel source, right, so you’re really not tapping into your own stored body fat as your main fuel source, you’re still relying on carbs, you might feel better, you might lose some weight.
And this may be a place where you want to stay and totally fine if that’s what you want for yourself, okay? Fat adaptation, probably not going to happen at this level of carbs. Okay, in order to get fat adapted, you have to reduce your carbs. And we’ll talk about that in a second here. But if you’re okay, like just with a lower carb approach, and you’re at that level, 150 grams, something like that, you still get to eat a lot of food that maybe you have always eaten, and it’s pretty easy to do, and pretty easy to maintain this.
Great, that’s a good place for you to be, then stick with that, if that works for you. Okay, but if you really want to get fat burning kicked into gear, if you want to become fat adapted as a runner, meaning you’re burning mostly fat instead of sugar, then you you’re going to have to drop the carb intake, okay, if you really want to get weight loss moving, you’re going to have to drop your carb intake, you know, you might be better suited in that 50 to 100 grams per day range, something like that, okay.
For me, I tend to stick with a pretty low carb approach most of the time. And then what I do is I add carbs around certain workouts or when my training load increases. And this works really well for me. And one thing I need to say right here is like we don’t need to be tracking these grams of carbs every single day, for the rest of our lives. That’s not what we’re about here.
We do want to get a feel for where we are, and then we can start to use our intuition and eat the kinds of foods that we know will work for us and avoid the kinds of foods we know don’t work for us. Okay. And that’s a big part of what I do in my coaching with people as individuals as we get to this place where All of this just becomes intuitive for you. And it just becomes how you live your life.
Like I understand what I can and can’t eat, I understand how many carbs I’m eating without even having to enter anything into an app or track any of my food. I know what I’m doing. And I know how to add extra carbs around certain workouts, or when my training load increases, to give me a little bit of an edge, and to help me with that higher gear with that higher intensity training. So that’s a beautiful place to be and, you know, if you want help with that, I can help you get there.
Okay, but just understand that, for the most part, I tend to stick with a pretty low carb approach most of the time, okay. So I do something that’s probably more like a low carb, keto carnivore type of diet, okay, I’m probably in the 20 to 30 grams of carbs total for most days, right, this is really low. And a lot of people don’t like doing this. They don’t think it’s sustainable, or they think it’s too hard or too restrictive. Like, that’s fine. But I love it.
I feel amazing when I’m super low carb like this. But then around certain workouts, I’m going to add 20 to 40 grams of carbs. So on days, when I up my training, and I have a really intense workout, I might be in the 50 to 75 grams of carbs for that day. But here’s something that’s interesting is we have to earn our carbs. Okay?
So you earn your carbs around high intensity workouts or longer workouts, okay. And, like I said, there isn’t exactly some right number that I’m shooting for. Because I don’t really track this anymore. I go about how I feel, and what I need for this particular workout that I’m about to embark on here.
Okay, so I tie my carbs around my workouts. And this is key, you have to understand this, because during a high intensity interval session, for example, I’m going to burn through that sugar that’s in my system pretty quickly. So I may raise my blood sugar by eating some carbs, but I’m essentially going to burn through that sugar very, very quickly during that workout. So I’m earning my carbs for that workout.
And then my blood sugar comes back down the rest of the day, and I’m back into that total fat burning zone again, right, and I’m back down into that, you know, keto, carnivore, whatever you want to call it, right, I don’t really have a name for that, because I don’t really track ketones and things like that, right.
So just understand that you gotta earn your carbs, and we want to time them around our workouts, okay. And lower intensity workouts basically require fewer carbs, because you’re staying in that fat burning zone, right? Usually, that’s gonna be zones one, two, and three, even, you can even get into zone four, and still be burning a lot of fat if you’re an experienced fat adapted athlete.
And I know that there are some elite athletes out there, you know, top of their game in the world who are burning mostly fat still in zones for even in the zone five, like this is like up to 80 90% of their vo to max, they are still burning mostly fat, which is amazing, which is so so amazing.
But for most of us, you know, we’re going to be into that zone one, two, and three, possibly a little bit into zone four, okay. But for those higher intensity workouts or workouts that are going to be, for me, maybe longer than two, three hours, I’m going to add more carbs to help me defend against that glycogen depletion. And just to keep my glycogen levels high, so that I can continue to perform at the level that I want to perform at.
So it doesn’t take much for me during a long workout. It doesn’t take much in the way of carbs during long workout for me to get the fuel that I need. And for me to experience that little burst of energy and a little bit of rocket fuel.
So for me, I might be adding 15 to 20 grams of carbohydrate fuel per hour, which is totally sufficient for me. There are some athletes who, like you know, talked about Zach Bitter in the past, elite ultra marathoner, right? He does something more in the 40 to 50 grams of carbs per hour. And he’s running these world record paces like he’s trying to set a world record for the 100 mile or something like that, right? This is not something that I’m going to ever have to worry about.
Okay, so, my guess is you probably won’t either, which is fine, but it’s interesting that he only needs 40 or 50 grams per hour and he can still perform as one of the top ultra runners in the world. Okay? So, for me, and I’ve experimented with this for years, I know what works for me, I know what works for me and my goals.
For me, I can keep my carbs super low, increase them around workouts, add some carbs during some higher intensity or longer workouts. And, and I know what to do when I’m in these situations, and I and I just intuitively know how to keep things working for me, okay, and I know what to do when things aren’t working the way I’d like them to work.
Okay. So for example, a couple of months ago, I, I hate even admitting this, but a couple months ago, I fell running through on the sidewalk and tripped over a big crack in the sidewalk. I was not even paying attention. I went down hard, blamed up my knee, so my knee was all swollen. And for a couple of days, I could run still, and I was like, oh, I think I’m gonna be okay. But it just got worse and, and I really had to cut back on my running because any running at all hurt my knee like crazy.
And I’ve done this before, in the past, both my knees are kind of messed up from falling down. Especially trail running. You got to avoid those roots and rocks and stuff when your trail running makes it a much more adventurous type of running for sure. But so both my knees are a little bit jacked up. But you know, it’s not enough to keep me from running, you know, I get some pain every now and then. But not a big deal.
So these last 60 days, though, I have not been able to run without a significant amount of pain. Now, the pain is getting better. And I can actually start to increase my mileage. But in the last two months, I’ve run around 30 miles total. And I was getting closer to around 30 miles per week before I fell. Okay, so anyway, because of this, I’ve had to really lower my cardio, you know, I’ve had a lower my, my running, not exercising as much. And I just know intuitively that when I get to this place where I am having some periods of inactivity, or I’m not able to exercise, then I’m gonna just drop my carbs to like zero basically, right?
So during this period, these last 60 days, I’ve been very low carb, keto carnivore-ish, right. And, and I feel really good, I feel lean, I’m not gaining weight, right. And as soon as my weekly mileage went from that 25-30 miles a week down to like three to five miles a week, because that’s about all I can handle these days. I just decreased the carbs, I just dropped the carbs altogether, basically. Right. So I’ve been focusing more on weight training more elliptical rower to get that kind of endorphin rush that I love from running.
And I’m getting better, my knees feeling better, my runs feel much better. There’s much less pain, not quite where I want to be. I was scheduled to do a half marathon this fall, I had to cancel because I can’t do it. There’s no way I can run that far right now. Without my knee just like going ballistic on me here. So for me, I know that when I get into these places where my training intensity goes down, so does my carb intake, I feel really good.
And then when I increase my intensity again, those carbs will go back up again, in order to make sure that I am like I said, defending against that muscle glycogen. And then I’m giving my body the energy that I need to crush those harder workouts. All right. So this is what I want you to do. This is all an experiment, okay? There’s no right or wrong way to do this. There’s no magic number that is perfect for you or for everybody. It’s all an experiment, okay?
And it’s a fun thing to do. Like we get to play around with this. You get to decide what you want to do for yourself. As long as what you’re doing is working for you. You’re feeling good, your inflammation is down, you’re losing weight, running is improving, your endurance is improving. You’re not experiencing the inflammation and bloating and all those side effects that I mentioned. Your body composition is improving.
Sleeping is good, your energy levels are good. Brain fog is lifted. All those things are happening then you’re doing it right. And I don’t care what that number is for you. Okay, listen, we’ve been doing this low carb approach to our diet as human beings for like two and a half million years of evolution is always the way we’ve done it. We were never a high carbohydrate society. So this is just getting back to our roots. This is just getting back to the natural order of things as human beings, okay?
So first of all determine your goals, what is it you want for yourself? If you want to lose weight, you want to improve your running, you want better sleep? Do you want more energy throughout the day? Do you want all those things? So determine what goals you want for yourself, make some changes, try it for a while, track your progress and see what works for you. And then look at your results. Okay, is this working or not? What is working, what’s not working.
And look at all these different metrics you know about weight loss and your body composition, sleeping and energy and all these things, right. And if you’re noticing things aren’t working the way you want to change something, you know, maybe add more carbs or drop your carbs lower. You know, experiment with this, have fun with this. It’s all a fun experiment, right?
And basically, you’re just going to rinse and repeat this process until you feel like you have a good handle on what works for you. And that’s what this is all about. Determining your carbohydrate tolerance means that you get to decide what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Okay, and as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll figure it out together. We’ll put together a plan. I’ll help you stay on track, we’ll hit that easy button, and together we’ll crush those goals. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Most of the people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet. And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction - their blood sugar and blood pressure are too …
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 147 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, bucking conventional wisdom. Most people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet.
And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction, their blood sugar and blood pressure are way too high, carrying around too much body fat, they’re at higher risk for heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, just to name a few.
The troubling part about all this is that this is considered normal here in this country, okay, and in a lot of other parts of the world. So if you want to be different, meaning that you want to be the healthiest human being that you can possibly be, you’re going to have to do things differently. For most people, you’re going to have to buck conventional wisdom.
So in this episode, I’m going to break down what’s considered normal, what’s not, and how bucking conventional wisdom might be the best possible thing that you could do for yourself. And as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this, or all the stuff that I’m talking about here, on the podcast, consider applying for coaching with me, it’s one thing to know what to do, it’s quite another thing to actually have the expert guidance and support of a coach to hold you accountable, and help you make all these big changes that you want for yourself.
Whether it’s improving your body composition, getting stronger, running faster, or just becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, working with a coach is how you get there. So if you want to have me in your corner, every step of the way, apply to join the Running Lean coaching project to learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Okay, so what prompted this conversation today. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what people consider normal, and I talked to a lot of clients who feel like what they’re doing is not normal, and therefore, is difficult or is challenging, or is uncomfortable or is hard.
And they fall into this place where they just want to be doing all the normal stuff, okay, so they feel like maybe they are the weird one at the table, they feel like an outsider, they kind of feel separate, not a part of because they’re not going along with what everybody else is doing.
And they see this as a problem. So they see it as a problem, because conventional wisdom, wisdom will tell them and conventional wisdom tells us that we should be eating the food pyramid, right that we should never restrict any foods that you know, in order to run as a runner in order to function well as a runner, you have to like eat all the carbs and all the sugar, right?
And so when we get it into our heads that we should be doing all this stuff out there, there, there becomes this internal conflict. Because what we want to do in order to change our health for the better, in order to improve our health, our fitness, or speed, our body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself, what we do to get there goes against conventional wisdom.
And people feel like they should be able to do what everybody else is doing. But they can’t do what everybody else is doing because they can’t make these changes they want for themselves. So that’s where the internal conflict comes from. That’s where the inner turmoil comes from.
Everybody else is drinking alcohol and I’m not. Everybody else is eating the pizza and getting dessert and eating the ice cream and eating all the junk food and I’m not. And the internal conflict isn’t actually caused by what other people are doing. It’s caused by your thoughts because you think you should be able to do what everybody else is doing.
And you should be able to become healthier and lose the weight and get stronger and improve your health and all that stuff. Right? The cold hard truth is this though. You don’t become badass by doing what everybody else is doing. You only become badass by ditching conventional wisdom and cutting your own path, okay?
So here’s the trouble with what everybody else out there is doing. So most people are eating the food pyramid or the MyPlate, or whatever the government is telling us we should be eating, okay? The government has this agenda, to push grains on us to push sugars on us.
All these studies are funded by the big agricultural companies, big food companies like Kellogg’s and Coca Cola. And they’re making these decisions about what we should be eating in this country. Okay, so a lot of the food programs in this country, the things that are served in hospitals, what our kids eat in schools with military eats, all this is driven by the food pyramid or my plate or whatever they’re calling it these days, okay?
This is a diet that is very high in sugar and carbohydrates, it’s up to 65% of your calories should be coming from refined grains and sugar. And you should limit fats and meats. And you should just be eating all the grains, like that’s the healthy stuff. You know, eat the fruits and the grains and stay away from you know, fat and meat and things like that.
But you know, what’s interesting is, if you want to fatten up a cow, what do you do? You feed it grains, right? So grass fed beef, grass fed, and grass finished beef, this is beef that only eats grass. If you’ve ever seen this at the grocery store, you will see that it is very lean there. It’s very red. Like there’s very little marbling in there at all. There’s very little fat in there at all, almost none.
But when you look at grain fed beef or grain finished beef, in other words, they feed it grain towards the end of its cycle, whatever, then there’s a lot of fat in that. So isn’t it interesting that cows naturally don’t eat grains, cows eat grass, and they can stay pretty lean if they do that. But that’s not what people want. So we feed cows grains to fatten them up.
You want to know how to fatten up a human being? Feed them grains, will just do the exact same thing. It’ll create all this internal visceral fat and intramuscular fat. And if you don’t want all that, then stop eating the grains. Pretty simple, right?
How about wild caught salmon? Have you ever seen wild caught salmon at the store? It’s very lean, there’s very little fat in there. It’s delicious. It’s really got a nice beautiful orangish red color. And then there’s the farmed salmon. The farm salmon is fed a diet of plants and grains and fish meal and farmed salmon. You know, it’s really fatty because they’re feeding it weird stuff like grains again, right fish don’t eat grains. Right?
And so when you feed a fish, the grains are how you fatten them up, right? And what’s interesting about salmon is that farmed salmon, because the salmon are not eating their normal diet of krill, which actually colors their flesh, because of the pink little creatures, whatever they are, they have to add dye to the to the meat or to the to the feed that they feed the salmon otherwise they would just be gray.
And people don’t want to eat grey salmon, right? So anyway, this is all really dysfunctional, like the way that we fatten up animals in order to, you know, make them more desirable for us. But here’s the thing, here’s my point with all this is that we humans were not really designed to process the Greens either.
So when we eat the greens, we get that to, you know, you want to increase the intramuscular fat and yourself just eat a bunch of grains. Okay, so the point with all this is that when you look out in the wild, when you look at wild animals, there are no overweight wild animals, because each animal species is eating a specific diet that is appropriate for that animal.
The only two animals well, maybe I’ll make an exception here, but the only animals on this planet that are overweight, would be humans and their pets and of course the cows and pigs and fish that we fatten up intentionally okay. So, we human beings are not eating the appropriate diet, but we’re following the food guidelines. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.
We’re good at following directions like this, you know, when, when the government came out with all the dangers of smoking cigarettes, we listened. We stopped smoking in the 1970s over 40% of Americans smoked. And that number is way way down to just 16% in 2018. So they came out with all these guidelines and told us Hey, smoking is bad. You should stop smoking and we did you know down from 40% to 16%. That’s me.
And the same goes for the food guidelines, right? The standard American diet that we have today was introduced in 1980. And up to that point, the obesity rates in this country were pretty stable, you know, during the 50s 60s 70s, right?
Once we introduced these guidelines, obesity rates began to surge. So they are around 13%. In 1980, obesity rates in this country were about 13%. In 2022, that number is up to 40%! 40% of people in the US are considered obese today, that’s for adults.
And then for children, this kind of makes me sad, because we’re fattening up our kids, unfortunately. But the obesity rate for children was 5%, before 1980, and it’s up to 20% today. So by all means, feel free to do what everybody else is doing, but just know that what everybody else is doing is really bad for you, it’s detrimental to your health and well being. Okay.
So you might be thinking, well, you know, Patrick, I’m a runner. And so this stuff doesn’t really apply to me, right. And here’s what I’m gonna say about that. Because every single day, I talk to runners who have been following the conventional wisdom out there, they might be eating the standard American diet as well. And they think that running is going to be the cure all.
That if they just run more, everything would be fine, if that doesn’t really work. Or they’re eating what I call the typical runner’s diet, which is all carbs all the time like they’re carbterians, right. So they carb load for days leading up to the long runs, they’re fueling up on carbs before running, they’re sucking down the gels and the goos. And the Gatorade, which is just sugar water, during their runs.
They’re making sure they get all those recovery carbs too, after their runs. And they’re basically just eating whatever they want. They’re like, I’m just gonna eat doughnuts and beer and ice cream and pizza, whatever, because hey, I’m a runner, I run, it’s not good enough. And they literally cannot understand why they keep gaining weight, especially as they get older.
All that sugar, all those grains, all that high carbohydrate diet just eventually catches up with you, and you start packing on the pounds. And I had personal experience with this too. You know, I was training for ultra marathons. And eating that kind of diet that I just described, it was like all carbs all the time.
And during this period, there were times where I was running up to 85 miles a week. And over about a two and a half year period or so I gained like 40 pounds. So all this running in the world wasn’t impacting my weight at all. I kept slowly gaining weight. And so this is not unusual. This is not just a one off type of thing.
Like I said, I talk to people every single day, who are doing what everybody else is doing. They’re following the conventional wisdom. And it just doesn’t work. They just keep getting, you know, more overweight, they’re carrying around way too much body fat and, and running is not helping with this, right, the diet is wrong, the diet does not work.
Now, the conventional wisdom out there, it might work for some people, that’s fine. If you’re one of those people that’s like, hey Patrick, I eat whatever I want. And I’m fine. I’m not overweight, I’m super healthy. And I can eat all that stuff. Like totally fine. Like if that works for you, that is amazing. But that is not the case for most people.
So you get to decide what you want to do. And if what’s working out there, you know, the conventional thinking is working for you fine, but if it’s not, you got to try a different approach, you got to do something different. Maybe try to stop eating the processed foods and the sugar and the grades and see what happens. Maybe stop doing all the fast food stuff. Because you know, it’s easy, but it’s not really good for you. It’s not really working for you.
Start eating actual real whole foods instead. Maybe stop doing the all carb diet as a runner, and see how you can improve your health and your running at the same time by ditching some of those problematic carbs and sugars and stuff. Bucking conventional wisdom is hard.
It’s hard because we are a society that loves junk food, just about every packaged, processed food is made with junk, it’s sugar, refined grains, seed oils, it’s like these are the worst three things that you can put into your body, by the way. And when you go out to eat at restaurants, you know, you’re going to places whose menus are full of foods that contain those three ingredients, right? And it can be challenging sometimes to find real food at restaurants, which seems ridiculous, right?
Restaurants are interesting too, because they’re pushing appetizers. So that’s the food you eat before you eat your food. They’re pushing out alcohol on you, that’s their big moneymaker. They’re pushing desserts on you, that’s the food you eat after you eat your food. So their job is really to drive up the price of your bill as much as possible, they don’t care about your health, they don’t care about you being healthy and feeling good.
They want to make as much money off of you as possible. That’s it, which is fine, I get it, they’re a business they’re running, you know, they want to like, make sure that you leave, you know, happy and fat and happy when you leave the restaurant, you know, and it’s working. It’s working.
You know, and then there’s like social pressures, you know, going against what normal, quote unquote, normal people are doing is hard, because there’s social pressures from friends and family. Oh, come on, Patrick, just live a little, you know, have a drink, eat the dessert, you deserve it, you’ve been good all week, you know, come on, just live a little every now and then let your hair down, so to speak.
Or, you know, oh, well, I have kids, and my kids have to eat all this junk food. So I keep all this junk food in the house, which means that, you know, I’m just going to eat it sometimes too, because it’s there. Or, you know, oh, I’m having lunch with this client at work, and my boss is going to be there and they all drink during lunch, so I got to drink too.
Or, you know, they’re all going to want to eat, you know, this pasta and bread and stuff. So I have to just go along with it. Because not doing that is going to be I don’t want to be the weird one at the table. Right.
So going against what everybody else is doing is hard, it is uncomfortable, I totally get that. Going against the grain pun intended. It’s uncomfortable, because you are different. You’re not like everyone else, you’re not doing what everybody else is doing. You’re not accepting this fate of just getting fatter, and sicker and weaker.
As you get older, you know, you’re not using sugar and alcohol to feel better anymore. And that definitely doesn’t feel good, but it’s temporary. So you’re gonna be sitting at the dinner table eating something different than everybody else may be eating. They’re all eating pizza, and you’re having a salad instead. But every time you stick to your plan, you reinforce this idea that being a healthy human being is important to you.
And every time you give in and just go along with what everybody else is doing, you reinforce the notion that your health is not that important to you, that it’s more important to just be comfortable here in this moment. So here’s what I want you to do, I want you to really ask yourself, what do you want for yourself?
Do you want to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself? I hope you do. Because if you do, you have to do things differently. Most people eat a pretty crap diet. Most people are overweight. Most people have some sort of metabolic dysfunction happening in their body. Most runners are carrying around way too much body fat.
Most people as they get older, get weaker and fatter. And you need to ask yourself, do you want this for yourself? Or do you want something more. Because if you want something more, that’s going to take a little bit of work to get there. It’s going to take being willing to be uncomfortable in those situations where you’re doing things differently. It’s going to take you getting to this place where you feel good about yourself and you feel confident about yourself.
And you feel confident in your decisions that you’re making in those moments where everybody else is doing the normal junk food and getting whatever food is there, and you’re doing something different. You’re being different. And I think that when you get to that place, it is an amazing place to get to. Because you no longer care about what is considered normal.
The conventional wisdom doesn’t work for most of us. So we got to buck the system, we got to do things differently. We get to cut our own path. And you get to decide if that’s what you want for yourself. Because if you do want that, be willing and ready to embrace the discomfort that comes along with that.
There will be discomfort that comes along with that, I promise you, but it’s short lived. It’s temporary, it doesn’t last forever. It takes some time to get past that. But once you do get past that, that’s where the good stuff really starts to happen. Cool. And as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll put together a personalized plan just for you. I’ll help you stay on track and together we will get you there. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately from people in the low-carb athlete community who tend to adhere to an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to diet and exercise. They hear that low carb …
Continue Reading about 145. All or Nothing is Not Always Best →
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 145, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, all or nothing is not always best. So I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately from people in the low carb athletic community, who really tend to adhere to an all or nothing mentality when it comes to their diet and how they exercise.
So they might hear that low carb is a good way to go. And so they’re like zero carbs all the time. And that’s how they do it. And that’s kind of what they’re putting out there in the stories. They’re telling you just about no carbs, no carbs, no carbs. They might hear that training in the fasted state has certain benefits, which I’ll be talking about that in a minute, and it absolutely does; but then they do all their workouts fasted, no matter what, all of them all the time.
So today, I want to address these principles, these beliefs that I think some people have, because I think it’s important to understand when the all or nothing approach should be embraced and when it should be avoided. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why all or nothing is not always best, especially when it comes to nutrition and exercise for the endurance athlete.
So when should you use fuel for workouts? When should you add carbs around those workouts? How much fuel, how many carbs? What types of carbs? These are all great questions. And they require more information, they require more context, you can’t just answer these questions for everyone the same way because we’re all different. Everyone is different.
And we each need to figure out the right formula, right for what is going to work for you as an individual. It’s like building the perfect recipe around fuel, fuel timing, the types of exercises, you’re doing your exercise intensities, your rest, recovery, all that stuff matters. And it’s all different for each person, there’s not one recipe that’s going to work perfectly for every individual. This is why I do what I do. This is why I’m a coach.
This is why I work one on one with my clients to help you figure out the right recipe to help you figure out the right recipe that’s going to get you to your fitness goals, get you to your weight loss goals and help you improve your health overall. The only way to figure all this stuff out is really by kind of trying some things, seeing what works and then of course correcting right it’s trial and error.
And having a coach there to guide you through this process every step of the way is going to make it so much easier. So if you’re looking for that guidance, the support, the encouragement that you get from a coach, the motivation and the accountability apply to join the Running Lean coaching project. To learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join me in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners the Running Lean coaching project where the project is as always you.
Alright, so let’s get into this all or nothing approach here. Okay, and why I’m talking about this today is because I’ve been hearing a lot about people that embrace the low carb approach to endurance sports. And I love this approach. Obviously, I talk about this all the time. And they also talk about fasted workouts and they and they talk about doing all of their workouts fasted all the time.
And when I hear these things, when I hear people talk about zero carbs and carbs being bad and you have to avoid all carbs all the time. And when I hear about people doing all their workouts fasted all the time, it kind of makes me cringe just a little bit. And maybe I’ve kind of promoted some of this by talking about how I’ve done a marathon.
Well, actually I’ve done like two marathons and 50k all with zero calories fasted just to say like, hey, you know, you can do this right? You don’t need carbs to run, you know, it’s kind of fun. I tried to prove a point, you know, but maybe people think that this is like, the only way to go and it really isn’t. Okay. So a low carb approach to endurance sports does not mean zero carbs.
And training in the fasted state at times doesn’t mean you have to do all of your workouts fasted, and it doesn’t mean that you never fuel for anything. Okay, so I wanted to talk about this today and really kind of shed some light, especially in these two areas, when it comes to nutrition.
And the low carb approach, I want to make sure we understand that there are times when you will want to use some strategic carbohydrates to fuel your workouts and, and then adding fuel for workouts and not necessarily doing everything in the fasted state. Now, there’s benefits to doing these things to doing a low carb approach, or kind of a zero carb approach at times. There’s also benefits to training in the fasted state at times. But it doesn’t mean we do it all the time.
And it doesn’t mean that we never use carbs or never use fuel for our workouts. So I want to make sure that we get a better idea of when it’s okay to do these things. And when it’s okay to experiment with adding in some fuels, and especially adding some carbohydrates to help improve our performance to help improve our fitness. Because they’re not, as you know, carbs are not the enemy.
Carbs are not evil, carbs are not bad. Yes, the types of carbs you use does matter. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But just remember that all or nothing is not always best, okay, and all or nothing is definitely not how we need to do, how we need to do all this stuff. Okay, so I just want to shed some light on this so that we can be successful and do it in a way that can support us.
And we can add some carbs and add some fuel and not have to do all this stuff. Totally fasted or unfasted, or zero carbs, it’s not a zero carb approach, I’ve never really talked about that being the only way to go, okay. So, all these things matter. And I kind of touched on this at the beginning here, all these things depend on you as an individual.
So being fat adapted just means it kind of means different things to different people. And being a fat adapted athlete is going to look different for somebody who maybe they’re training for their first 5k. And so they’re doing like a couch to 5k program and they’re just getting started with running. And they’re doing most of their runs at a very low intensity, a very low heart rate. And they’re losing weight in the process. And they’re feeling amazing. That might be a great place for someone to do a lot of workouts fasted and to really not dip into the carbs too much, okay.
But if you’re somebody who is, you know, training for your fastest marathon, and you’re trying to qualify for Boston, and you’ve got to shave, you know, 15 minutes off your marathon time, your intensity level is going to be high, your training is going to be high. And for higher intensity levels and longer training sessions and more intense longer training sessions especially, you will absolutely want to fuel for those things.
And you do not have to do those things fasted. So being fat adapted means different things for different people, we’re all a little bit different. We have to accept and acknowledge this. And then all these different differences in our goals in our training levels and our fitness levels in our gender like men and women need to feel a little bit differently for these things. So all these things matter.
And we have to look at this as an experiment of one and you’ll hear me say this probably 10 times today, because an experiment of one is always how we approach all of this stuff when it comes to changing your diet, losing weight, getting faster, you know, getting stronger, we all have to do this and play around with some things and figure out what works best for us. Okay, so first I want to talk about carbs.
So the first principle that I kind of hear people get into is, you know, oh, low carb, that means no carbs, zero carbs. And as athletes, we can use carbs. And we can time our carbs around our workouts and it’s not going to kick us out of fat burning mode.
It’s not going to, you know, ruin what you’re doing here and it’s not going to mean you’re starting from scratch. I’ve heard some people ask that question where Oh, you know, ate some carbs. Does that mean I’m not fat adapted anymore? It’s like no, absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that at all.
Getting fat adapted means you’re burning fat really efficiently. you’ve trained your body to burn fat efficiently as athletes and especially if you want to increase your performance and increase your fitness. It’s a good idea to use some carbs and time them around your workouts and improve your metabolic flexibility, you want to be metabolically flexible, you want to be able to use both carbs and fat as fuel efficiently. Why not?
Why would you just rely on fat as a fuel source? Fat is a great fuel source and, and you can really get really efficient at burning fat even at higher intensities, but we don’t have to use just fat as fuel, we can absolutely use carbs, okay. So if your goal, again, you’re gonna, you want to crush your fastest half marathon, different phases of that training cycle will require you to increase your carbohydrate intake, especially around those workouts, you know, and maybe even on a daily basis as your training cycle increases.
So if you’re, you know, if you’re doing the lower carb approach, and your goal is to lose weight, and you’re probably in that 30 to 50 grams of carbs a day kind of mode, or whatever, and that kind of works for you, you know,if your intensity is increasing in your workouts, and you’re really crushing some more intense harder workouts, you might be in that 80 to 100 grams of carbs, a day kind of mode, you know, and, and it’s not going to kick you out of fat burning mode, and it’s not going to impair your performance, if anything, it’s going to give you that extra gear, when your intensity increases.
So initially, we do want to keep our carbs low and get fat adapted. And then over time, we want to start to slowly kind of ramp up our carbs, as your body responds positively to the changes, you want to ramp up your carbohydrate intake, depending on the intensity levels of your training. And this does not mean that we’re going to just go crazy and eat, you know, just you know, whatever you like to eat, that’s like pure sugar and junk food, like we’re not talking about that.
We’re talking about using real whole foods, sources of carbohydrate and some slow burning carbohydrates in order to improve your running performance. So remember that, you know, when we this whole low carb approach is to help regulate blood sugar, it’s to help, you know keep your blood sugar from from spiking and crashing, to keep your insulin levels normal instead of because when your blood sugar spikes, insulin spikes, and then you’re you’re in that fat storage mode, you know, you’re burning, you’re burning the sugar, you’re burning sugar and you’re storing fat and we need to get blood sugar normal.
We need to stop the spikes and crashes in the blood sugar, stop the spikes and crashes in the insulin levels so that your body can start burning fat instead of burning all the carbohydrates that you’re eating. Okay. Think of this like a fire. I love this analogy. So sugar, it’s like kindling, right? It burns first. It’s the first fuel source your body will use. It burns very quickly. But it’s not sustainable. It depletes rapidly and then you’re left with nothing. Okay? So sugar’s like kindling, it burns quickly, it burns first, but it doesn’t burn very long. It’s just it’s boom, burns and it’s gone.
Whereas fat burning is like the logs you put on the fire right, it takes a little bit longer to get going. But once it’s burning, it’s going to last a very, very long time. And to achieve this log burning to achieve the fat burning, we need to get rid of the sugar and the refined carbs and the processed junk food and the carbage, I like to call it, and we need to get into the fat burning, we need to get into the log burning.
And once we do that, you will have steady energy and you will have plenty of energy to fuel your you know lower intensity workouts especially at the beginning, okay, but that does not mean you never use any kind of carbs to improve, okay. And again, what we’re after is metabolic flexibility, the ability to burn both types of fuel sugar and fat very effectively.
Humans are really good fat burners, we’re, we’re naturally good fat burners, it’s our natural state of being. And we’ve just gotten away from that state. This junk food is processed carbohydrates, the carbage that we’ve been eating, it now makes up over 50% of the calories that we consume here in the United States. And that number is rising every single year. We’ve become a nation of sugar eaters, and therefore sugar burners.
So we’re not burning fat naturally anymore. And we’re gaining weight and you know, experiencing all kinds of metabolic issues and diseases and you know, obesity and all these other things, right? So we all were talking about doing things like lower the carbohydrate intake, get rid of the junk food, get rid of the garbage and start eating real whole foods. Doesn’t mean zero carbs. It does mean we will ditch a lot of the problematic carbs But we want to use some types of carbohydrates and time them around our workout so that we get the benefits of the added sugar intake from the added carbohydrate intake.
Because when you’re burning fat efficiently and when you’re exercising at a higher intensity, you’re going to burn through that sugar that you’re taking in, you’re going to burn through the carbohydrates that you’re fueling with pretty quickly. And then you’re back into fat burning again. Okay, so it’s not like you just like, oh, you’re just always burning sugar or always fat, you’re always burning both, right, but at different levels, different intensities, okay.
So when you increase your exercise intensity, you might also need to increase your carb intake. And this is where most people kind of freak out a little bit, right, they’re like, oh, my gosh, no way, I don’t want to eat any carbs, I’m gonna kick myself out of fat burning mode, I’m gonna be fat adapted, you know, low carb, low carb, zero carb.
But listen, don’t freak out, there’s a way to do this in a way that it’s not gonna really affect your body’s ability to burn fat, you can still burn fat and burn sugar at the same time, okay, if most of your training is done at a low heart rate and a lower intensity, then there’s not much of a need to add carbs as fuel, you can continue to burn fat efficiently.
And if you’re just doing some, some lower intensity stuff, lower heart rate stuff, you’re gonna be fine, you can improve your fitness, you know, you can get a little bit you know, stronger as a runner, and you can get a little bit faster, and that’s going to be fine. But if you really want to make some gains, you want to improve fitness, you get stronger, get faster, workout at higher intensities, higher heart rates, then some strategic carbs around those workouts will give you the energy that you need to improve and to and to go a little harder.
And to have that extra gear that you need to hit those faster times and hit that PR, okay. And it doesn’t mean that you have to go and start downing all the gu’s and gels and sports drinks that are laden with high fructose corn syrup and all this junk, right? There are fuels that are specifically made for the fat adapted athlete, and there’s brands like Muir energy, and that’s M-U-I-R, there’s S-fuels, there’s you can and these all make products that have slow burning carbohydrate fuels designed for the low carb athlete, so check out those brands, but really, we’re talking like 12 to 20 grams of slow burning carbs per hour might be enough to give you that little bit of an extra edge that you need.
You know, 20 grams of carbs is like a medium size banana, this is not a lot of fuel we’re talking about here, okay, so don’t freak out about this too much. But consider trying some carbohydrates around your workouts and see what works for you. Again, we’re all different. This is an experiment of one, try it and see how it feels and how it works for you.
If your goal is just to lose weight, if you’re just interested in losing weight, you’re not interested in improving your running or running longer, then stick to the low carb approach. You know, again, it doesn’t mean zero carbs, but just stick to the low carb, you know, nutrition regimen. Keeping in mind that, you know, some people will require slightly more carbs than others. And everybody’s a little different, you know.
In talking about like pre menopausal women versus postmenopausal women, pre menopausal women will probably need a little bit more carbs, especially around certain days of their cycle. I’m actually going to put together a podcast on this topic and just kind of talk about how women are different from men and how they require a little bit of a different approach when it comes to nutrition and around fitness.
Because you guys men and women are different, did you know that we are very different and we all have some slightly different needs. And I’ve been really doing some research on this lately. And it’s a fascinating topic to me. And I’m learning a lot about how women respond differently to dietary changes in intensity levels, changes in their workouts and things like that.
So we can all do this, we can all kind of maintain that kind of a lower carb approach. But we don’t have to do it with zero carbs. Okay, so when it comes to carbs, especially for the endurance athlete, all or nothing is definitely not always best. Adding in some carbs as fuel around your workouts is recommended for most people for most low carb athletes.
Especially if you want to improve your performance, okay, you can still maintain efficient fat burning, you can still lose weight, you can still prioritize fat as that main fuel source you still get to those, those logs that you’re burning, okay, but you’re just adding in a little bit of kindling to help get things going. Okay. And you’ll burn through the carbs during your workout.
So you’re not going to be like storing a lot of extra energy as fat or anything like that. Okay? So for the first sort of all or nothing, zero carbs versus some carbs, definitely, you know, give it a shot, try fueling some workouts and see how it goes.
The other all or nothing mentality is around fasting and whether or not we should be doing all of our workouts in that fasted state. And I’ve just seen a lot of people talking about this lately. And I wanted to really clear this one up too, because I think there’s some misconceptions here as well.
So, fasting, the way I’m talking about here is basically when you train in the fasted state, meaning you haven’t had any kind of fuel, any food at all, really no calories, for, you know, typically like 4 to 12 hours prior to working out. So let’s say you typically what most people do is they eat dinner, the night before they wake up in the morning, it’s been, you know, 12 hours, since they last ate, they might have a cup of coffee, and then they go and do a workout that would be considered training in the fasted state, they do a workout, they don’t use any kind of fuel.
And this is pretty, pretty effective. You know, this is a good way of ramping up, the fat burning is a good way of getting your body fat adapted. So fasting has lots of benefits and training in this state has many, many benefits, right? And please understand that fasting this way is like super normal and supernatural, it’s just kind of our natural state as humans.
One of the things I’ve heard recently, which I think is really fascinating is that the human body is designed to process digest, metabolize about two meals a day, you know, one to two meals a day is about all that we’re really supposed to be metabolizing because our pancreas can’t work more than that. And our liver has issues if we are processing more than that.
So the systems of the human body are naturally designed for eating a couple of times a day, and that’s about it. So fasting is really a natural state, again, burning fat and fasting very natural states for humans to be in, okay. But we’ve gotten away from that. We have to, you know, adhere to this three meals a day, plus eight snacks and dessert, you know, it’s like we’re eating 13 times a day or whatever. It’s ridiculous, right? We don’t need to eat that often. Right?
But so fasting, working out in the fasted state just means that you’re working out without added calories without fuel for that workout. Okay, so it helps you to get fat adapted, it helps you to stay fat adapted helps you to burn more body fat, no fuel coming in, means your body is prioritizing that stored body fat as fuel.
And the low carb approach and fasting like this and doing workouts in that fasted state all help to maintain the blood sugar like I mentioned earlier, they help to keep the insulin levels down, help to prioritize fat as fuel will help you to tap into that stored body fat as fuel. These are all amazing benefits of working out in that fasted state.
You know, the fasted workouts also help improve your fat burning efficiency. And even at higher intensities. So for most normal carb adapted athletes, you know, they’ll burn fat up to about 60-65% of their VO2 max and then they kind of start prioritizing just carbohydrates as fuel, they need carbohydrates fuel.
But as fat adapted athletes, we can actually push our fat burning up into the 75, 80 90% range. And there are some elite athletes who even go above 90% and fat burning, so 90% of their VO2 max. So this is like, massively cool, right? This is massively cool because we can not only burn fat at the lower intensities, but we are also really good at burning fat at the higher intensities, okay, so this is going to help you improve your higher intensity running is going to indefinitely improve your endurance more fat burning means you’re just going to be able to go longer without bonking, which is super amazing.
And then also training in the fastest state helps to improve your hormonal responses. So more adrenaline gets produced when you’re working out in the fasted state, which means you can go a little bit harder. It’s almost like a performance enhancing tool, you know, and then more growth hormone gets produced to help you recover faster from those workouts.
So this combination of you can go harder and recover faster is pretty awesome. And then people are like, well, yeah, so I want to do that all the time. But here’s the thing. Is it necessary or is it a good idea to always do all of your workouts in that fasted state? Yeah, there’s some great benefits to doing it. But it isn’t necessary to do it all the time.
So, I recommend people definitely train in that fasted state to build the fat adaptation and to really get efficient at burning fat. Okay, and this could take a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Again, we’re all an experiment of one. Everybody’s preferences are a little bit different. Some people love training in that fasted state, some people just don’t, they just don’t like doing it doesn’t feel good. I’ve heard people that kind of get sick when they train in the fasted state, they need some fuel, okay, great, then you’re the kind of person that would benefit from some fuel, okay.
But if you find that you, your workouts, maybe you’re taking a hit like you’ve hit a plateau in your fitness and you’re not improving, maybe you’re not getting faster, maybe you’re not recovering as quickly. Maybe your heart rate isn’t where you want it to be, it’s staying super high, you might want to consider adding in some fuel for your workouts, you know.
But I do love the idea of doing kind of the bulk of your training, especially at the beginning, in this fasted state, when you’re trying to get fat adapted, it just helps you to get through that initial phase, that first phase of getting your body trained to burn fat more efficiently. It really helps with that whole process. Okay?
So it’s a good way to begin, but it doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time. So how do you know like, when it’s time to add some fuel to your workouts, keep track of your workouts, log your workouts in a log or journal. Maybe you use an app. But you know, look at things like heart rate, pace, how you felt during that workout recovery time, you know, how long does it take you to recover? And then don’t be afraid to just try some fuel and see how it affects you.
Everybody’s a little bit different. So you got to try something and see if it works. If it does, great. If not, then try something else. And what kinds of fuel are we talking about here? Well, I just mentioned using carbs as fuel, so that’s always an option. But it doesn’t even have to be carbs. Because when you’re fat adapted, you can take advantage of using exogenous fat as fuel so fat that you eat, you know, fat and protein actually can work pretty beautifully as a fuel source.
Okay, so remember, we burn sugar first, and we can burn like fat that we get in our diet and then we kind of burn that stored body fat. So if we you know, don’t have carbs coming in, we’ll be able to take advantage of the some of the fat that we’re getting in our diet so we can actually use some fat as fuel before a workout.
And this might be as simple as putting MCT oil and heavy cream and some collagen in your coffee pre workout. That’s it. Like that could be how you fuel a workout. And remember all the brands that I mentioned above Muir energy, S-fuels you can they all have products for like pre workout, for during a workout, for post workout, they have bars that have fat and protein, you could do an hour before workout, they have drink mixes with fat and amino acids and electrolytes that you can do during a workout they have kind of a gel product that you can use during longer training runs.
And you could do those, you know, maybe they have 12 to 20 grams of carbs, you can do one every hour or so you know, and all these products. Again, they’re designed with the low carb athlete in mind, they’re designed to keep you in the fat burning mode to still prioritize fat burning, but give your body that little bit of extra energy that you need for those longer runs are those more intense workouts. So fat is fuel is a good approach and it’s something that you definitely want to try. And you might find that a little bit is all you need.
Okay, so again, like when should you start adding fuel and stop doing all your workouts fasted, again, just kind of play around with when you if your training is starting to tank a little bit or if you’re plateauing. But if you’re training for something like a marathon, and you’re up to 12 to 15 miles and you’re doing those fasted and you’re feeling pretty good, you might want to try you know, going forward from that point on, you might want to try fueling and see how it goes for you and try a couple of different products.
Try a couple of different fueling approaches, because here’s the thing, you don’t want to wait till race day right to try to fuel for your race. If you’re deciding you’re going to use fuel on race day. Don’t wait till race day to experiment with it; you have to play around with it ahead of time. You have to practice fueling strategies during your training, right? Nothing new on race day ever. Okay?
So that could be where you decide that feeling might be a good strategy for you. workouts that are over 90 minutes is a benchmark a lot of people use when they start to choose like maybe the fat protein combo for for the most part. And then as your intensity increases, your carb intake should increase as well. So the fuel sources, the carbohydrate, fuel sources can increase as your intensity levels increase, or even if you’re going super long, maybe you’re training for an ultra 50k 100k 100 miles, something like that, you’re definitely going to want to have, you definitely asked us fuel for something like that. And that that approach is going to be very different from what it looks like for, you know, fueling for a half marathon or something like that, right.
So, when it comes to fasted training, just remember, all or nothing, not always best. And really, what we’re going for with all of this is metabolic flexibility, we want to be able to burn both fat and sugar very effectively, right, we want to train our bodies to burn both fuel sources really well, so that we have the ability to use both types of fuel and improve our running, improve our fitness, improve our strength, improve our intensity, and become the badass runners that we know we can be okay.
So to do this does not mean that we have to do everything, all or nothing, it doesn’t mean we have to do all our training fast, it doesn’t mean we have to do zero carbs, it means we can use proper types of fuel and, and train fueled and, and use carbs in a very strategic way to help us and not hurt us. It doesn’t have to kick us out of fat burning mode, it doesn’t have to, you know, ruin what we’re doing here, right?
So, and as always, if you want some help with any of this or all of this, apply for coaching you and I will work closely together, we’ll put together a personalized plan for you. I’ll help you stay on track so you can achieve those goals so you can achieve your weight loss goals, your fitness goals, we can do it all cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and I’ll see you over in the Running Lean coaching project. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
I know you’ve heard the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. But so many runners keep doing the same workouts over and over …
Continue Reading about 140. You Have to Do More to Become More →
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 140, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, you have to do more, to become more. I know, you’ve heard that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over again, and expect different results, right. But so many runners I talk to, they keep doing the same workouts over and over and over and somehow they expect that they’re just gonna get faster.
Or people that lift the same amount of weights all the time and expect to get stronger or build more muscle, or you just keep eating the same food over and over again expecting to magically lose weight. I don’t know how this is supposed to happen.
But whatever, from an external perspective, these problems, they’re pretty obvious, right? You have to do things differently in order to get different results. But from an internal perspective, like from the inside, looking out where this lesson is often missed, it’s just, it’s a blind spot that a lot of us have, we all have had this at some point a lot of us have right now.
So today, I’m gonna get into what it looks like to stop doing the same things over and over again, and start doing things differently because you have to do more in order to become more. And one of the things that I love about what I do about being a weight loss coach is that I get to help runners, people who are already pretty focused on their own health and fitness, I get to help them take things to the next level.
So a lot of the runners I work with have been running consistently for a long time, or maybe a short period of time, but for some time, they really are into running, they get it, they love running. They’re also doing other kinds of workouts pretty consistently. Sometimes it’s cross training, cycling, yoga, strength training, whatever it is.
But when it comes to nutrition, there’s this blind spot there, okay, they’re at a loss, they get confused by all the conflicting information that’s out there. And they’ve tried all kinds of diets that don’t work. They even get told by some dietitians or coaches to stop running altogether. Which is really just not an option for people like us, am I right? So what’s the answer?
How do you lose weight while you keep running? How do you keep running without all the gross gels and stuff, you know the stuff that makes you gain weight? Well, that’s exactly what I do. As your coach, I put together a personalized plan for you that you feel good about to get your nutrition in line with your weight loss goals and your running goals.
Because you know what? You can do both, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. And I see this every single day: people who are learning how to fuel their bodies to promote good health, to lose weight, and to promote their athletic performance to improve their running. And this topic I’m talking about here today is all about doing more, so that you can become more. And if you’re finally ready to do more to take your health and fitness to the next level to lose weight for good to improve your running performance to really become the most badass version of yourself then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my unique weight loss coaching program designed specifically for runners to help you crush those weight loss goals and crush those running goals too. Okay? To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Alright, let’s get into this topic here today, you have to do more to become more so that old saying that I mentioned at the top of the episode here where the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. We’ve all heard this before. We all know it but still so many people are on willing to change anything at all. They just keep doing the same things over and over and over and expect somehow that things are going to be different and something is going to change.
For example, a lot of people come to me because they want to lose weight and they want to improve their running and these are amazing goals and they truly want these things for themselves. They have been overweight for some time, you know, the more they run, the more they tend to put on pounds. I know, it’s counterintuitive, but I see it all the time.
And when I talk to these people, I can really feel it, I really feel that they want these things for themselves, they are important to them, they really want to change. But there’s something that comes up, it’s a resistance, it’s a resistance to change.
Anytime we think about changing, anytime we think about embarking on some sort of process of change. When we want to become more we want to get out of our comfort zone, there’s this resistance that comes up, even thinking about changing how you eat, is going to create a resistance from within you.
And Steven Pressfield, in the War of Art calls resistance the enemy within. So it’s not something that is out there. It’s not resistance from outside of you, it’s resistance that’s within you. And you will experience this resistance every time you get outside your comfort zone, or even think about getting outside your comfort zone. When you think about how, you know what, I really want to improve my marathon time, I really want to PR my next marathon, I really want to qualify for Boston. But that’s going to require me to shave 15 or 20, or 30 minutes off of my already, you know, challenging marathon time.
When you even think about that your brain starts coming up with all sorts of stories, and excuses and reasons and justifications. And you start telling yourself that you know what, there’s just going to be too hard, I can’t do it. Right there. That’s the resistance.
And you have to understand something: the resistance is normal, it’s perfectly normal to have this, we all have this kind of resistance that shows up for us. Anytime we want to embark on a journey of change, and the bigger the change, the bigger the resistance. And so the real work that we have to do is really battling that resistance. And what it looks like to bow the resistance is in a nutshell is to suit up, show up and do the deal. Whatever it is you need to do.
If you want to become more, you got to do more. So you got to show up and do what you need to do. Even though you’re experiencing the resistance, even though you’re experiencing all these excuses and reasons. And these obstacles that are seemingly in your path. If you want to run faster, you can’t keep doing the same workouts right, you need to practice running faster, you got to do the speed work, you got to do intervals, you’ve got to do tempo runs, you got to do fartleks, I just love saying fartleks.
If you want to lose weight, you can’t keep eating the same foods that you’ve been eating that helped you to gain all the weight, you’re going to have to change up your nutrition game, your nutrition game is going to have to get on point. If you want to build muscle, if you want to get stronger, you can’t keep lifting the same amount of weight, you’ve got to increase the amount of weight that you’re lifting because your body adapts to the weight.
So if you want to build muscle, if you want to get stronger, you’ve got to keep increasing the weights, or reps or both. So you keep creating that adaptive response and your muscles will grow. And this goes for anything that you want to change in your life. And again, like I said, the bigger the change, the more resistance is going to come up. But this is how it works.
You want to change something you do a little bit more, you’ve got to get outside of your comfort zone a little bit, even just a little. You stick with that until that kind of becomes your new normal. Your Comfort Zone grows, you grow, you become more and then you repeat, rinse and repeat this cycle over and over again until you reach your goal. And then you keep going because we always have some goal out there it doesn’t we don’t stop growing. We don’t stop learning. We don’t stop evolving. We don’t stop becoming more.
But that cycle I just described none of that happens without the doing bit you got to do more to become more but this is where most people get stuck or most people stop or most people quit because doing more is hard work. Doing more is uncomfortable. Doing more is getting into unfamiliar territory. And sometimes you know what? It just feels terrible.
Getting outside your comfort zone does not feel good. That’s why we call it outside your comfort zone. It is not something that is comfortable, it feels terrible. So fear is an example of what I’m talking about. Right now I’m working on getting stronger legs, my legs have always been kind of a weak point, I just have these skinny little bird legs, whatever.
And so I’ve been focusing on doing more leg workouts and being more intentional about doing leg workouts. You know how many people love to do leg workouts? Zero. Zero people, nobody likes to do leg workouts, right? In particular, one of my worst exercises is lunges.
And the way my trainer has me doing lunges is it’s a type of lunge called a Bulgarian split. But it’s a type of lunge called a Bulgarian split squat. And we use kettlebells. And your back leg is elevated on a bench and your forward leg is the leg that you’re squatting on. So you really are using just that forward leg and that back leg, you know, you really don’t have any sort of leverage from that back leg. It’s just there to kind of balance you.
And I hate doing these. They’re terrible. They’re super hard. And I was talking to my trainer about it the other day, and I was telling him how much I hate doing these things. And he’s like, Well, that looks like where you need to focus your attention here. And I was like, oh, I hate that. I hate that. I have to focus my attention on the things that are hard and uncomfortable. And the things I don’t like to do. But I did it.
And four days later, I did this on Monday, today’s Thursday, four days later, my legs are still sore. But here’s the thing, I want more, I want to become more in this case, I want stronger legs. So I know that I’m going to have to do more than what I’ve been doing. And for me, doing more means doing the things that I don’t want to do. Doing the things that are uncomfortable, doing the things that I’m weakest at.
Because honestly, if it’s easy, it’s too comfortable. It doesn’t change you at all. Right? It just helps you stay where you are. So for me, I’m focusing on doing these lunges and other leg workouts to build stronger legs so that I can become the runner that I want to be and improve my running and some other things.
And so just you know, in order to make this change that I want for myself, I’m doing the hard work, and I’m just embracing it and I don’t like it, but I’m doing it anyway. And then here’s an example from a nutrition standpoint. For years, I was eating the same diet, basically the typical runner’s diet, which is you know, carbs, right, all carbs, literally all carbs.
And over the years, I was steadily gaining weight. And I was running a ton of miles. Every week, I was training for marathons, I was training for ultra marathons, and I just kept steadily gaining weight. And I wanted so badly for things to change. I wanted to lose the weight, I wanted to feel better. I wondered if running was ever going to be easier. I wanted to have more energy. I was feeling rundown a lot, I was really inflamed and bloated. And I use the word puffy, because I just felt very puffy. And I wanted to become more.
But I knew that in order to become more, I had to do more. And I knew all about ditching the carbs and getting fat adapted, and I knew it was going to work. But I wasn’t willing to put in the work. I wasn’t willing to get uncomfortable. I wasn’t willing to change what I was doing, because it’s an uncomfortable process. So I avoided it, I just put it off and put it off and put it off. Because I told myself, this is going to be too hard.
I gotta wait until I’m really ready for this maybe when I’m not training for something. And and I just kept telling myself all these stories, and I had all these reasons and all these excuses. But what it really was was that resistance, that resistance kept coming up. And I was giving into it. I was just letting it control me.
Until finally I was just fed up with that I had gained like 40 pounds, I was overweight, I was miserable. Running was just becoming so hard. I felt terrible all the time. And I eventually just made the decision to do it: to ditch the carbs, embrace the suck for a short period of time, you know, I got outside of my comfort zone.
And it took work. It took months of me really kind of learning what to do, what to eat, what not to eat, how to learn how to run without all the carbs. I started weight training in a different way. You know, getting getting my strength training on in a very different way. And all of these things combined helped me to get through this period and become the healthier, fitter, leaner, stronger, faster version of me that I always wanted to become, that I knew I could become.
And then I just, I kept thinking it was going to be too hard. I kept thinking about all the stories and excuses and reasons why I didn’t want to do this, because it was an uncomfortable thing to change. But I wanted it so badly for so long. And I finally was ready to do it. And looking back on it, I’m like, why did I wait so long to do that?
If I had just done this a few years prior to that, I wouldn’t have had to suffer for such a long period of time, I wouldn’t have to struggle with my weight and with running, and with the way I felt every day in my energy levels. And I wish I had done it sooner, but everything happens for a reason. So I’m like, okay, it’s perfect timing, whatever, it’s all good.
But I say this all the time, I say, nothing changes, if nothing changes, right? And it’s not just a pithy saying it is the absolute truth. It has to be something that we embrace change has to be something that we embrace. Because if where you are right now, is not where you ultimately want to be, then you’re going to have to do more, you only get different results by taking different actions, right, you don’t get results by thinking differently. Although that’s part of it.
You’ve got to think differently. But you also have to take actions, actions produce results, thoughts don’t produce results, right? You can think about losing weight, you can think about changing your diet, you can think about running faster. But unless you actually do things and get out of your comfort zone and push yourself and get uncomfortable, nothing’s going to change for you.
You don’t lose weight by thinking about changing your diet, you don’t get stronger by thinking about going to the gym, right? Actions produce results. And the same actions, if you just keep doing the same things over and over again, will just continue to produce the same results. So just keep doing what you’ve already been doing, you’ll just keep getting more and more of what you’ve already got. Right? In order to be more, you have to do more.
So here’s some action steps for you this week. Here’s what I want you to watch. Here’s what I want you to work on this week, I want you to think about who it is you want to become. Get very, very clear on this, create a vision for your future self. What does the future you look like? What does the future you feel like? What has the future you accomplished? And spend some time every day thinking about this, this is a very powerful tool called this visualization.
This is what elite athletes do, they create a vision of who they want to be, sometimes they envision the race they’re about to run. And they visualize it every single day. It’s a very, very powerful to tool to help you achieve these big goals that you want for yourself. And it doesn’t matter what it is, if you want to get stronger, if you want to lose weight, if you want to get fitter. If you want to get healthier, if you want to improve your running, or you want to qualify for Boston, whatever it is, imagine yourself crossing that finish line and looking up at the clock and seeing that PR time on the clock. And do this every single day. That’s a very, very powerful first step. So you have to know who it is you want to become and you have to spend some time thinking about that. Okay.
Next, I want you to think about what you need to do in order to get there. And you don’t have to have every step, like mapped out because it’s kind of impossible to do that anyway, like, just focus on what is the next step? What is the next action you can take? What can you do today or this week? What’s one thing that you can change today or this week, to get you a little bit closer to that goal? If you want to become that future self, you’ve got to do things differently. So what is one thing you can do differently today?
And then step number three is to do that thing. It’s not going to feel good. That resistance is going to come up and you got to do it anyway. Remember, the results come from taking action, no action, no results. No doing equals no becoming. So what is it that you can do and then do that thing, okay? And then just rinse and repeat this process. Keep thinking about who it is you want to be,every day, every week, come up with an action step or two that you can take and then do that thing even though you’re going to experience that resistance.
Okay, that’s how we become more. If you want to become more, you have to do more. And I want to encourage you to do more this week, okay? And if you’re looking to become more, if you’re ready to do the work to get there, I’m here to help get you there. Okay? Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
