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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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156. There Is No Finish Line

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There’s a powerful principle that you absolutely must embrace if you want to continue growing, evolving, and becoming more. That principle is this: There is no finish line. This means that …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 156, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, there is no finish line. There’s a powerful principle that you absolutely must embrace if you want to continue growing, evolving and becoming more.

And that principle is this: there is no finish line. This means that whatever you’re doing to improve yourself, you must continue doing for the rest of your life. Now, if this idea scares the crap out of you, rest assured you’re not alone. Most people do not live their lives this way. Why? Because it feels too big, it is too daunting.

Most people think that there’s an end to eating healthy or running consistently. And then they can get back to their comfy cozy life. But the truth is, there is no end. So today, I’m going to explain why there is no finish line, and how this is actually a good thing and the key to you becoming your most badass self.

And if you’re one of these people who thinks that constantly improving yourself is too overwhelming or too daunting, and it feels like it would just be too hard. And you just can’t wrap your mind around that I totally understand, I get that. That’s kind of why I do what I do as a coach.

My job as a coach is to help you set big goals for yourself goals that you don’t think that you can accomplish right now, maybe it’s losing 40 or 50 pounds and keeping it off for the rest of your life. Maybe it’s running that ultra marathon that you’ve been thinking about forever or running that half marathon that you’ve been thinking about forever, whatever it is that you want for yourself, that thing that’s looming out in the distance that feels impossible for you. Let’s work together and let’s make that happen for you.

Yes, you can lose the weight. Yes, you can keep it off. Yes, you can run further or faster than you ever thought you could before. You just need the right plan. And I’m here to help you with that. So if you’re interested in becoming that most badass version of yourself, and you want to make it last, and you want to understand the concepts and the principles of how to make it last and how to make these changes are just part of who you are, what you do, then I’m here for you. Okay, this is what I do. This is my jam. This is what I do as a coach.

This is why coaching works so well because it’s you and I working together, setting big goals, putting together a plan, and then helping you stay on track to reach those goals and helping you develop the mindset, the habits to make this last for life. This isn’t about the short term. This isn’t about quick fixes. This is about long term health and fitness. And the only way we do that is by really changing your lifestyle. Okay, so this is what I do.

If you’re interested in working with me, I’m here for you, this is a great time to get started. Let’s start 2023 on the right track and set some big goals for you and start working towards those goals. Cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a call. I’ll explain all about the program, and we’ll get you started.

So I think there’s a big misconception out there. When it comes to making changes, like we talked about a lot here on the podcast, you know, we talk about changing your habits, changing your eating habits, changing your diet, we talk about changing the way you approach exercise, we talk about changing your approach to running.

And I think there’s this big misconception where people think that these changes are temporary. Even the term diet itself is a very temporary thing, right? I mean, just the concept of going on a diet means you’re probably gonna go off that diet at some point, right? That’s why I try to stay away from that word, because I think it has some negative connotations. It has some limiting connotations or some temporary connotations. So I don’t really use the word diet too often anyway.

But the thing is, we think I think for the most part, we think that doing these things is something we do for the short term and somehow we’re going to improve our health, we’re gonna improve our fitness, and then we can go back to doing things that we used to do and go back to, you know, our life as we knew it before.

And I think we got to really just, I say it right at the beginning here of this podcast, which is like, that is not how it works. That’s not how it works. When you make changes and start improving your health, let’s say you start running consistently, and you start improving, running, and you and you start lifting weights, and you change your diet and you start eating properly, and you start feeling better, and you start losing the weight.

And then you get to this place where you’re like, yeah, this is pretty good. I’m feeling good. I’ve got to my goal weight, or, you know, I ran that marathon that was so big for me is such a huge accomplishment for me. And then you think what, you’re done? Are you done? Are you just gonna like, give up and throw in the towel and go back to your comfy cozy life? Is that the way that this works?

The answer is no. It’s not. When you make these kinds of changes for yourself, that is bettering yourself. When you set big goals for yourself, and then you accomplish them. Oh, my gosh, that is amazing. These are great accomplishments, celebrate those things. But then ask yourself, what’s next? So you do what you do. And then you do it again, you do what you do to become more. And then you reach that next version of yourself, that next level of yourself.

And then guess what? It’s time to level up again, there is no finish line, there is no stopping. And another concept we have to get out of the way here at the top of this episode is this, like life is hard. And it’s supposed to be hard, life is not supposed to be easy. And I think that this is a big misconception that somehow when we change our diet, or we, you know, start running more often that somehow, you know, you’ll never have any cravings for junk food again, or like running is just going to be so easy. It’s going to just feel effortless.

I’ve been running for a long time, I’ve run a lot, a lot of miles. And running is never easy. It’s never like effortless. You know, there’s some effort involved with running, always. And when it comes to food, I still struggle sometimes with some cravings or with you know, I guess peer pressure is the right word for it, you know, social pressure from others. Peer pressure is so funny, it reminds me of like middle school, right? You know, hey, try cigarettes, good. What’s the same thing?

People are like, hey, just eat some french fries, patties? Fine. Everybody else is doing it, just do it. And I’m like, dude, what is this? It feels like junior high. But I digress. So there’s this concept that like, at some point, you know, eating and choosing the right foods all the time is going to be simple and easy. And there’s times when it doesn’t feel easy. And there’s times when it is hard.

There’s times when I just want to like dive face first into a gallon of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, because that was my jam. And that was something that really made me feel good, you know, eating that much sugar all at once. Boy that lights you up, I’ll tell you what, you want to forget your problems for a few minutes. That’s a good way to do it. Right?

Of course, it comes with all those negative consequences. And of course, I don’t do that. But I still have those feelings. You know, I still have the struggle at times. You know, of course, it’s easier. And of course, running is easier than it was 5 or 10 years ago. But it’s still challenging. I actually just got done with a 10 mile run here this morning. And it wasn’t I would not say that there was really much during that run that felt really easy.

Now I did notice my heart rate was low the whole time. And I was running pretty slow. And I purposely was just making this an easy run. We’re supposed to get some terrible weather here in Cincinnati in the next few days over Christmas. So I was just like, It’s a Thursday morning. I’m gonna go get my 10 miles done now. And I’m not, I don’t normally run 10 miles on a Thursday morning, but I did it. It was cold. It was raining and windy, but you know, there was no part of that where I was like, oh, this is great. Like, this is so easy and effortless.

No, you know, I’m building my endurance again. I had to take some time off because of an injury. And coming back to running has been a bit of a challenge and it’s hard and I thought to myself, this is hard, but it’s okay. It’s hard, but it’s okay. And I approach food the same way like sometimes it’s hard but it’s okay. That can be hard. Life is supposed to be hard. It doesn’t really get easy.

I think we’re missing the point if we think we’re chasing some easy life. I think the opposite should be true. You should be chasing a hard life. You should be chasing hard things constantly in your life, this concept of there is no finish line. That means there’s no end to doing hard things and accomplishing hard things so that you can level up so that you can become more easy, it is easy, everybody can do easy.

It’s the strong, it’s the unique, it’s the dedication, the discipline to achieve hard. And that’s what you want to do. If you want to level up, you want to get outside your comfort zone and become a different person, you got to do the hard things, right? Hard is where you want to live, you want to you don’t want to live in easy, right? You can do hard things. So do hard things.

And life should be constantly a challenge for you, you should be challenging yourself to do harder and harder things. So combined with this concept of there is no finish line, when we are constantly pushing ourselves and constantly setting the bar higher for ourselves, and we’re constantly leveling up.

This is great, because it means you’re constantly growing and evolving and becoming more and becoming stronger and accomplishing more. And this isn’t just about running or losing weight. This can be about every area of your life, relationships, work. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re building a business, this is hard work. Trust me, I know, I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s not easy.

In your spiritual life, you know, sometimes it can be very hard to have faith. You know, in your family dynamics, your family relationships, dealing with kids. It can be challenging, and it should be challenging, and you should be setting the bar higher for yourself constantly and constantly leveling up. We always want to be leveling up. This is a way of life, right? becoming healthy, becoming the best version of yourself, becoming stronger, becoming your best.

Your most badass self is not a destination. It’s how you live your life. It has to become who you are at your core, it has to become part of who you are at your core. When it becomes who you are at your core, it no longer is an option to stay small, it’s no longer an option to stay in the comfort zone. It’s no longer an option to not go after bigger and bigger things for yourself.

When you constantly level up and constantly push yourself beyond your comfort zone, where all the new stuff is because if you have it already, it’s in your comfort zone. But if there’s something you want that you don’t already have, it’s outside your comfort zone, right? By definition, it’s uncomfortable out there, though, right?

But by constantly pushing yourself, you know, this idea of who you are at your core will continue to drive you. There is no longer a debate in your mind of whether you should stay on your healthy eating plan. There’s no longer a question in your mind, whether you should put on your running shoes and go outside and run even though it’s cold and windy and raining outside.

You do it and then you do it again. You level up, you accomplish something, you set another goal for yourself and then you do it again. There is no end. There is no finish line. This is who you are. Recently, I was running with a friend of mine. And she had another friend, you know that I didn’t know. And she said oh, you know, Patrick, this is so and so. Patrick is an ultra marathoner. He’s one of those guys that runs, you know, these ultra marathons.

So she introduced me as this ultra marathoner. And I thought to myself, like, is that really who I am? At my core? Is that who I am today? Because I haven’t run an ultra marathon in a few years. And so I kind of thought to myself, like, is that still who I am? I think the last time I ran an ultra was two years ago, in December. Yep. But is that who I am? If I don’t do this consistently, does that mean I’m no longer an ultra marathoner?

And I had to think about that for a minute. And it really made me look inside and see like, am I leveling up consistently? And if I’m not, why not? Why am I not pushing myself and creating bigger and better goals for myself so that I can continue to become more and continue to grow and continue to see what I’m capable of?

I’ve done some pretty amazing things in my opinion, you run 100 miles, that’s pretty amazing. Finished an Ironman. I ran 50 miles, I’ve done a bunch of 50k ultra marathons. This stuff is great. But is that like, am I done? And so the last couple of years, I’ve had some setbacks. I’ve had, you know, some injuries, some surgeries, and you know, had to take a lot of time off from running and stuff.

And I thought, you know, now I’m feeling pretty healthy, I’m feeling pretty strong, I’m building mileage. Again, my cardiovascular system is really improving. And my endurance is improving. And I’m just feeling pretty strong where I am right now. I’ve stayed consistent with strength training, which is awesome, but I’m feeling very strong from a running perspective today.

And, and I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna continue leveling up as an ultra marathoner and continue pushing myself to see what I’m capable of. Does that mean I have 100 miler in my future or a 50 or 12 hour, 24 hour? I don’t know. But I’ve got some ideas. I actually have an idea of something I’m going to be doing this spring, and you’ll learn more about it later.

But I do have this big goal for myself, that I decided, you know, if I’m going to continue leveling up, if I’m going to practice what I’m preaching here, then I need to set some big goals for myself. So I did and I have this big goal that I’m going to be working towards. And again, like I said, when I’m ready to share more about that I will with you guys, right, but I’m just not ready yet.

But the thing is that I want to continue becoming more, I want to continue evolving. I want to continue leveling up. What does that mean for me? And so you have to decide for yourself, what does that mean for you? Who are you at your core, who do you want to be and then act accordingly. So for me, if I want to be the ultra marathoner guy, then I need to be running ultra marathons regularly. And that is who I am at my core.

And that makes me feel like kind of a badass about myself. And it’s not an egotistical thing. This is just like me being confident and feeling good about myself. I’ve accomplished a lot in the running world. And I feel really confident in my ability to go out there and run 50 miles or 100 miles or whatever it is. And I want to continue doing those kinds of things. I want to continue to see what I am capable of.

So with all of this, there’s that underlying idea that there is no finish line. And in this idea that there’s no finish line means that it’s actually a good thing, because you are constantly leveling up, you’re never going to be stagnant, you’re never going to stay dormant. So you decide who you want to become. You set big goals for yourself, then reach those goals, like work hard to get those goals, like accomplish those things that you want to accomplish for yourself, absolutely.

But decide who you want to become. become that person, then you get to decide who you want to become next. And this reminds me of just the whole concept of like leveling up, like in a video game, you know, you get to this place where you have reached the next level, things get harder, you know, you got that new boss, you got to face and defeat, you know, and this is true for us as well.

Things do get harder as we push ourselves. And we push ourselves further outside of our comfort zone. But what’s cool is that when we push ourselves further outside our comfort zone, what we thought was uncomfortable, what we thought was impossible becomes possible for us becomes more comfortable for us. And we kind of surprise ourselves and what we’re capable of. But if you think that you’re going to be done with this at some point, like an actual video game, where I guess there’s an end, I don’t know, video games even have ends anymore. I don’t really know how they work anymore.

Back in the day when I was doing the PlayStation1, I don’t even know when that was, back in the 90s I guess. But the idea that there’s not a finish line can feel a little daunting for some people, it can feel like why even bother if I just have to do this for the rest of my life. But no, that’s the wrong way to think about it. The right way to think about it is yeah, I’m doing it because there is no finish line.

I’m doing this because this is who I want to be in if I want to become this better version of myself. If I want to become the most badass version of myself. That means there’s no stopping and it’s okay. Embrace that idea that there is no finish line, embrace the idea that this work continues. Embrace the idea that you’re constantly leveling up. And I promise you this, when you do that, when you embrace the idea that this work does not end and that life is going to be hard, and it’s you’re going to continue to challenge yourself and you’re going to continue to push yourself.

When you embrace this and just accept it all, it actually becomes easier because you’re just convicted and dedicated. And the discipline is there, the motivation is there, you don’t have to be convinced that you need to do this, because this is just what you do now. You don’t need to ask yourself, well, do I really feel like running or not? Because that question has been answered. Yes, you feel like running? Yes, you’re gonna go do your run. Even if you don’t feel like it? Yes, you’re going to commit to that healthy eating plan that you said, you’re going to stick to? Yes, you’re going to commit to that training schedule that you know is going to get you to the finish line of that race.

But the thing is, this work continues, you’re never done. That’s okay. Embrace the idea that you are always leveling up, embrace the idea that you’re always going to set big goals for yourself, always push yourself to that next level, always pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, always reaching for more. And when you do that, you become more. And then you guess what you do it again, you set a new goal, you set a higher bar, and then you achieve that. Think about where you could be in your life, if you just embrace this idea that the work continues.

Where could you be in your career, in your relationships, financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically? Where could you be, if you just continued to push yourself and continue to level up, this is what I want for you. So think about this, as we begin a new year, think about this idea that what you want for yourself is achievable. With the right attitude, with the right discipline with the right consistency. And sometimes you need help, and I get that sometimes you can do it on your own. But if you want help, I’m here for you. But what you want is achievable. And then you got to like pick the next goal. So just keep that in mind.

I know I’ve talked to a lot of people who have these goals for a spring race, they want to do the spring marathon ultra marathon. And, and I’m encouraging them to, you know, kind of yes, let’s, let’s work towards that goal. But then what’s what’s after that, start thinking about that, thinking about what’s next, what’s around the corner? So that you’re always driven so that you’re always moving towards that next thing. Okay, constantly leveling up.

There is no finish line, this work continues. We’re constantly in the work of becoming more and becoming the best version of ourselves. And then once we get there, we set the bar higher and we do it again. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, happy holidays and parties.

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.

155. 3 Things All Successful People Do

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What separates successful people from those who fail? What do successful people do that unsuccessful people don’t? While there are a LOT of things that differentiate people who achieve greatness …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 155, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, three things all successful people do. So what separates successful people from those who fail? What do successful people do that unsuccessful people don’t do?

While there are a lot of things that differentiate people who achieve greatness and those who don’t. Today, I’m going to focus on a few that I feel are most important. Whether you want to lose weight or run an ultra marathon, you will either succeed or fail based on a few simple but very powerful principles.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share three things that all successful people do that most people just don’t do. And I hope that you choose to apply these principles that you hear about today, in all areas of your life. So you can accomplish everything amazing that you want for yourself.

Think about this, what do you want for yourself? What do you want for yourself? For 2023? What goals do you have for yourself? What goals are going to push you outside your comfort zone? What goals are going to cause you to level up in 2023? Have you thought about that? It’s a great question, right?

If you’re having trouble coming up with big powerful goals for yourself, or maybe you have some goals, but you have absolutely no idea how you can possibly achieve those goals, then I have something that I think might help you. Let’s work together on this. With me as your coach, I will help you set big, huge, scary, impossible goals for you for the new year. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Then we’ll put together a plan to get you to those goals. And then lastly, I’ll help you stay on track every week. So you actually make progress every week and move towards that goal, so you actually accomplish them.

So if you’re ready to stop thinking about big goals, and instead start working on them, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners where I help you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started.

Okay, today, three things all successful people do. So it’s this time of the year where we start reflecting on the past year and start setting goals and start deciding what it is we want to accomplish in the new year. So we’re coming up on the end of 2022. And the start of 2023 is right around the corner. And like I mentioned a minute ago, like what is it that you want for yourself? What is it that you would like to accomplish in this coming year?

So for me, this time of the year is a good reminder, not just of what I’ve accomplished through this past year. But it’s a good reminder that I always want more for myself, that I always want to continue to grow, to learn and to become more. This is not something that is a one and done for me. And it shouldn’t be for you either.

We should always be striving to learn and grow and become more. And when I stopped to think about this a little bit, I was thinking about what it takes to accomplish big goals. And it really got me thinking and that’s why I’m talking about this today because it got me thinking about myself. And I’ve got some big goals for myself for 2023.

And the way I’m going to accomplish those goals, in big part, is going to be due to the principles I’m going to share with you today because I’m applying these principles in everything that I do in my life. So some people are able to achieve big, huge, amazing things. They’re able to accomplish big things in their life. And then there’s some people that don’t seem to ever amount to much, right?

So what separates successful people from the unsuccessful? You know, what are successful people doing that the other people are not doing or maybe they’re not willing to do? Okay, I’ve identified three key principles that I’m sharing with you today that are vital. If you want to achieve greatness in your life, however you want to define greatness, what does that mean for you?

What does greatness mean for you? You run your first ultra marathon this year, or you climb that higher mountain, or you lose 40 pounds once and for all? You change your relationship with junk food and sugar, and cake and cookies and ice cream and pizza and french fries? What is it that you want for yourself? What is that big goal that you just saw that seems to be impossible for you to accomplish? What is going to cause you to level up?

Define that for yourself. Think about that. As we’re, as I’m talking through this episode today. What is it to achieve greatness for you? What does that mean for you? Could it be something in your career, maybe you get a promotion and you become, you know, a leader in your industry? Maybe it has to do with your relationships? Maybe it has to do with you know, being a parent? Having kids, what areas of your life do you want to achieve greatness? What would achieving greatness look like for you?

Because I’m going to tell you right now that it doesn’t really matter. You get to decide what you want for yourself. But there are things that will help you to get there. There’s some attitudes or some principles that will help you to get there. And if you don’t adhere to these principles, it’s going to be really challenging for you. And that’s where most people are.

Most people want things for themselves, but they don’t actually apply these principles I’m going to talk about and so they never really accomplish those things. And they’re always out there. They’re always out there on the horizon as in like, one day I would love to run an ultra marathon or one day, I would like to finally lose this way once and for all and keep it off. Like what Why are you just thinking about that? Why not just do it? If that is what you want for yourself, I want to encourage you to start working towards that. Stop thinking about it, start taking action, start taking action today, towards that goal.

So the three things I’m going to talk about will help you to achieve greatness in your life, whatever that looks like for you. These are three things that all successful people do, and that other people just don’t do or won’t do. Most people might know about these things. And when I start talking about these, you’ll be like, oh, yeah, well, that makes sense.

That seems so simple, but they’re not simple. They’re not simple. If they were simple. I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. You would just do it. These are things that most people maybe know about, but they’re just not willing to do. But if you’re willing to do the work, if you’re willing to apply these three principles I’m gonna talk about today, you will achieve anything you want for yourself.

Now, there are more than three things that successful people do. I’m not going to get into, there’s probably hundreds of things, right? If you really think about it. These three are huge. These three are, are the big ones, okay? And they’re often overlooked, or they’re minimized. You know, people are like, oh, yeah, I get it. I get that one, Patrick. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. I get that. But no, you don’t get it.

You don’t get it because you’re not doing it. If you got it, you do it. But most people are not willing or not. Or are they just not wanting to do these things? Because honestly, because they’re hard sometimes because they’re hard. Okay. Here’s the thing, though, all of us are capable of greatness, you are capable of greatness. We’re all human beings. None of us is a superhero.

None of us are superhuman, we are all you know, pretty much the same, we are able to accomplish huge things that, you know, that a lot of people can’t do because they’re just not willing to do the work. So we’re all capable of greatness. So understand that you are capable of greatness. Whether you achieve that or not, it is going to be whether or not you apply these principles, okay.

So just keep that in mind that, you know, none of us are superhuman, you know, you could run 100 miles if you want to, you could run that ultra marathon, you could lose 40 pounds and keep it off if you really want to.

Okay, the first principle is this. Successful people don’t settle for what’s comfortable. You know, what’s comfortable, everything you already have. If you want to become more, if you want to become anything more than who You are today, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. You have to go beyond your comfort zone.

But most people never do this. Why? Because it’s uncomfortable by nature, right? That your comfort zone is very comfortable. Outside Your Comfort Zone, not comfortable. It’s unfamiliar. It’s the unknown. And when you start to think about doing something that gets you out of your comfort zone, you start to question that decision, you start to think, what if I fail? You know, what if it doesn’t work? You know, what if I, what if I look stupid doing this? You know, what if I let people down? What if I let myself down?

Yeah, guess what failure is possible, you might fail, you might let yourself down. People might judge you, why? This is not a reason not to do something, though. The reason you do something that’s hard is because it’s hard. It’s not because it’s easy. If success was guaranteed, it’s really too easy. It’s in your comfort zone. If success is inevitable, it’s not pushing you. It’s not causing you to level up, it’s not causing you to grow. It’s too easy.

You know, I’ve I’ve talked to people all the time about goals and stuff, and, and I’ll hear from somebody like, Oh, I really love to run a little bit of a fast or half marathon. Okay. All right. I’m like, why? Why do you want to just run a half marathon? Why not push yourself? Why not run a full marathon? Why not run an ultra marathon? Why not qualify for Boston? Why not do something big?

Why are you just settling for something that you already can do? Why are you not pushing yourself beyond your current limits? You got to go bigger, you gotta dig deeper, if you want to become more. Just doing the same known familiar thing isn’t going to cause you to grow, it’s not going to cause you to level up.

So striving for greatness means going beyond the known beyond the familiar, and it means getting really uncomfortable. If it’s easily achievable. Is it really worth it? Does it cause you to level up? Does it cause you to change? The answer’s no. It really doesn’t. You got to push yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of today. And this process of going after big, impossible goals is that this whole process forces you to become more in the process of going after that goal.

The process itself changes whether you actually achieve the goal or not. So let’s say you decide, you know, you want to train for an ultra marathon. And 50k is a great distance. If you want to get into ultra marathons for the first time. But you could do a 50 miler, you could do a 12 hour run, these are fun 24 hours, see how far you can run in 24 hours. These are timed events, you can do 100k or 100 miles.

But today, you’re not the kind of person that can run 50 or 100 miles, you might only be comfortable running 10 to 15 miles today, right? Today, you are not an ultra marathoner. So the process looks like this: you pick a race, you sign up, you pay for that thing, and you get some skin in the game, and you start training.

The process of training for an event like this will change you in ways that you just cannot imagine, okay? The training alone is very tough. But here’s the thing, the process of doing the training, you’re gonna get really good at being uncomfortable. Just doing the training for an event like this, you’re going to venture into unknown territory, like running 20 miles or running 30 miles at a clip doing back to back 20 mile runs on the weekends, you know, you run 20 on Saturday and 30 on Sunday or something like, right?

The training alone will force you to level up. So when you show up on the day of the race, and you toe the line at the start of that ultra marathon, you’ve already become that badass runner that you worked so hard to become. You’ve made it and it really doesn’t even matter if you finish the race or not at this point.

Now, of course, I’m going to encourage you to actually run the thing and finish it you know, finish the damn race like become that ultra marathoner, but listen, you toe the line at that thing. You’ve done the hard work now you just have to like put the icing on the cake so to speak, right? The process of just going after something like that will change you profoundly.

Training for a half a marathon though, is that going to really change you? Is that something you just keep doing? Because you know, you could do it and it’s comfortable. And yeah, you might shave a minute or two off your time. But don’t settle for that. Don’t settle for what’s comfortable for you. Because you already got all that.

Now, if you’ve never run a half marathon before, and that seems impossible for you today, then absolutely do that. Okay? The point with this is that successful people do not settle for what’s comfortable. I don’t want you to settle for what’s comfortable, either. Do not settle for what you already have, you already have all that stuff, go after something else, something bigger, something that will cause you to level up, something that will cause you to get outside your comfort zone.

Everything you want, but you don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone. So push yourself. See what you’re capable of. Go beyond what’s easy, what’s known, what’s comfortable. what’s familiar, get into that unknown territory, get into the unfamiliar territory, that’s when big things happen for you. Okay. So successful people do not settle for what’s comfortable, they go after the uncomfortable, they push themselves, they level up.

Okay, number two successful people take responsibility for all their successes, and all of their failures. One thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful people is this concept I’ve talked about before here on the podcast, and I call this radical responsibility. What do I mean by radical responsibility?

Radical responsibility means that you take ownership of everything that is happening in your life, the good, the bad, the ugly, the wins, the losses, the successes, the failures, everything. Successful people take radical responsibility for where they are in their life, no matter what. They also take responsibility for where they are not. So if I make progress towards my goal, I did that. If I fail, or if I feel stuck, I did that too. I’m responsible for that, too.

But here’s the thing you know, most people have, most people have stories. Most people have excuses. Most people have reasons, and most people blame others. It’s so easy to blame others when things don’t go as planned. Because when you fail, when you fall off your food plan, when you give up on yourself when you don’t hit your goal. Blaming others is so much easier, so much easier.

And you know what, it takes all the responsibility off of you, because it’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. You know, unless things go well, then it’s like, oh, it’s all me, I did that. Most people are super happy to take all the credit when things go right, and then blame everyone else, and everything that’s going on in their life when things go wrong.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you know somebody like this? Is this, you know, have you ever done this before? I have done this before I’ve done this in my past, I don’t do this anymore. Now everything’s my fault. Everything is on me. The Good, the Bad, the successes, the failures, all of it. So what does this look like?

Let’s say you want to lose 40 pounds, and you have a food plan. And you’ve thought about this, you got a well thought out food plan, maybe you worked with a coach and you’ve got figured out a good plan for you. And so you’ve got this plan, and you’re sticking to the plan and things are going okay for a few weeks, and you’re sticking to the plan, you’re laying off the junk food, you’re off the sugar, you’re not eating that processed junk food anymore. You’re getting fat adapted as a runner, running is starting to feel better, you’re losing some weight, things are going well.

And then, for whatever reason, you fall back into old habits, you binge out on a bunch of junk food. Candy, cookies, maybe this goes on for a couple of days, running starts to kind of suck again. Maybe you start gaining weight.

And then you’re like, oh my gosh, why did I do this? And the answer is usually something like this, you’ll start to say well, you know, it’s the holidays, or well the kids are off school now and they really love it when we make these cookies and gosh, things are so crazy at work these days, especially this end of the year stuff so much. So much stress at work. My boss is so demanding or my husband just doesn’t support me.

Oh my gosh, whatever the excuses are, there’s always excuses. They’re always stories. There’s always reasons and all this is just blaming, you’re blaming everyone What else and everything else in your life except for yourself. Everything else is the reason why you can’t stick to your food plan or why you fall into old habits has nothing to do with you.

It is just, you know, you know, everybody’s out to get you essentially, oh, I’d be able to stay on track if it wasn’t for my boss, my husband, my kids, my job, the holidays, the weather, whatever, fill in the blank. Successful people do not do this. They don’t blame anyone else for what’s going on with them. When you take radical responsibility for everything in your life, The Good, the Bad, and the otherwise. There’s no more excuses. There’s no more stories, there’s no more reasons. There’s no more blaming, it’s just you, it’s all your fault.

Whether you succeed, or whether you fail, it’s always your fault. I want to encourage you to start taking radical responsibility for every result that you get, or you don’t get in your life. Starting today. When you do this, you will start making progress towards your goals.

Because listen, everything’s on you. And this is the good news and the bad news. It’s good news. Because if it’s all on you, there’s actually something you can do about it. Because when you blame others, you give away your control. You give away your power, and you’re diverting the responsibility to somebody else.

But when you take the responsibility, you can actually do something about it. And that’s the good news, right? The bad news is, it’s all on you. And now you have to do something about it. So get on that, start doing something about it. Successful people take radical responsibility for everything in their life. So get on that right now. Start taking responsibility.

Alright, the third thing that successful people do, successful people never, ever, ever quit. This is probably the most powerful principle of these three. And the one that separates the successful from the unsuccessful, really, the principle is just do not quit, ever. You might falter. You might fail. You may go backward. You may have setbacks, you may have some disappointments. But no matter what, you keep going, you just keep going.

You never ever, ever quit. It’s like running an ultra marathon. Sometimes you twist an ankle, and you’re hobbling along for a while or you get lost. And you have to backtrack several miles, or you trip and fall. I’ve done all these things by the way, trip and fall and you feel like you can barely walk another step. But you don’t quit.

You keep going no matter what. You don’t stop when things get hard. You don’t stop when you’re tired. You don’t stop when everything hurts. You stop when you are done. Period.

This mentality keeps me going through all kinds of setbacks in my life, personally, professionally, physically. Some years ago, I hurt my shoulder. And I think I did this when I fell during an ultra marathon on a trail. I wiped out, I fell, I put my arms out to brace myself from falling and I jammed my shoulder. And it hurt for years to be honest with you, it hurt for years after that.

But it was never, you know, bad enough to keep me from doing the things I love to do. I kept running, I kept you know, doing some weight lifting and things like that. I pushed through the pain for years until it just kept getting worse and worse and had to finally do something about it.

And so about a year ago, I had an MRI. And it turns out that I had torn three muscles in my rotator cuff. And I had to have surgery, trying to avoid surgery, but I just had to do it. There’s no way these things were going to repair themselves. Okay. So a year ago, I had rotator cuff surgery and the recovery time was pretty significant in several months before I could actually get back into running.

And then when I started running again, it took me a really long time for my running to progress to the point where I felt like, you know, my old strong running self again. And I got to this place last summer back in August where I was feeling really good. And my pace had come back and I was finally at this place where running was really I was feeling really strong in my running again.

And then I was finishing up a 10 mile run and feeling really good about where I was with things. And I happened to be running back towards my house and I was at about mile nine, and I had one mile to go. And I happen to be running down through downtown Cincinnati. And there was a 5k going on. And it was running down the street. I was running up.

And so I was looking at all the people that were running this 5k. And I’m like, because I know a lot of people in the running community. I’m like, Oh, I wonder if I know anybody running this thing.

Well, no sooner did I take my eyes off the sidewalk. Then I just found myself on the ground. I tripped on this big old crack in the sidewalk that I didn’t see. Because I was looking over here at these people running this 5k, totally distracted myself. And couldn’t even get up right away. Like I was, I didn’t even know what happened. Like it happens so fast. You know, at first, I was worried that I had jammed up my shoulder again.

And my hands were really scraped up from hitting the ground. But what was really more concerned when I tried to get up was my knee. My knee was like really painful. So I didn’t think I could run home. I ended up kind of walking a little bit, I did end up kind of jogging at home that last mile. But that night, and the following day, my knee blew up, it was huge. And I had to stop running for a while. So this took me out of running for a period of time.

I tried a couple of weeks later to go for a quick little one miler. And my knee just hurts so bad. Every time I ran, it got worse, it got more inflamed, more swollen. So I just had to take some time off running. So I took like three months off of running, which was really tough, you know, I just got to this place where I was back and had to take time off again.

So now I’m back to running again, I’m building my cardio base, again, is a big setback for me though, right? Because I was feeling so good about where I was. But listen, I’m not giving up. I’m not done here, right. I have big goals for myself for next year. And I refuse to quit just because it’s hard. Or just because it hurts or just because I fell down and busted up my knee. I am not done. I am not giving up. I am not quitting, I will quit when I’m done, which I’m hoping is around the time when I’m about 100 years old.

Honestly, I want to live to about 101. I think that would be really cool to do. So that’s my goal. And I’m going to try to keep running up until that time. So I’ll be watching the sidewalk a little more closely. But here’s the thing, we experienced setbacks, we don’t quit, we experienced failures, we don’t quit, we fall down and bust up our legs. We don’t quit, we keep going.

I know that there are big, amazing things that you want to accomplish in 2023. And I want to encourage you that you do not quit until you accomplish those things. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, you will probably fail. Every success though every success is built upon a big old pile of failures.

How many times have you tried to lose weight? Maybe only to see minimal progress? Or maybe, you know, to see like a little bit of progress on a plateau and then you start gaining weight again. Have you ever done this? Yeah, we all have, right? And then what do you do? You just give up because quote unquote, like that diet doesn’t work? Have you done this before?

Here’s the thing, losing weight is never a linear process. I’ve never seen anybody just lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. And just perfectly like in a straight downward like, like on a graph. It never happens that way. It’s always an up and down kind of a process. Okay. So if you tried some diet and it doesn’t work perfectly for you out of the gate, try something else.

The reason you keep failing at losing weight is that you keep quitting, period. People who succeed at losing weight don’t quit. They never, ever, ever give up. They keep going until they reach their goal. That doesn’t mean they keep doing the same things over and over again expecting different results, they change something, they try something else. And this whole process takes time. It may take months, it may take years. Are you okay with that? You have to be okay with that.

Because the truth is it takes whatever it takes everybody’s a little bit different. Sometimes it takes a while. So just let it be what it is. But where would you rather be a year or two from now? Very, very close to your goal. Maybe you’re just so close to your goal weight you got another five pounds ago or something? Or would you rather be just where you are right now still feeling miserable because you quit after a couple months? Think about that. The only way you truly fail is if you quit. Successful people never ever, ever quit. All right, 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.

154. The Truth About Food Restrictions

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A lot of people feel the need to share their thoughts with me about food restrictions. They say things like, “I don’t ever want to restrict any foods”, or “All foods are OK in moderation”, or …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 154 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the truth about food restrictions. A lot of people feel the need to share with me their thoughts about food restrictions, they’ll tell me things like I don’t ever want to restrict any foods or all foods should be okay in moderation or something like that.

And I know where they’re coming from with this. They just don’t want to have to give up any of their favorite foods. But here’s the thing, if you want to change your health and fitness for the better, if you want to lose weight, maybe even change your relationship with some of these foods, something has to change, you can’t lose weight by eating the same foods that got you overweight in the first place. Right?

Nothing changes if nothing changes. So in this episode, I’m going to share with you the truth about food restrictions. And why it might be necessary to restrict some foods if you want to lose weight, and live your best life. And listen, these concepts that I talked about here on the podcast, the ideas that I share with you here, the things that I teach you here on this podcast are all great on their own.

But if you really want to improve your life, if you want to lose weight, if you want to improve your health, and you want to make changes to the way you you approach food and, and nutrition and fueling, for running and all of that stuff, then you’re going to have to put these principles into practice, you’re going to have to make some changes, you’re gonna have to do things differently.

And that process can be hard, it can be challenging to do that. Because each of us is an experiment of one, you have to kind of figure out the best sort of formula, the best plan that works for you, and for your lifestyle, and for your health and fitness goals.

If I was to tell you that you could just do these five things, and it would improve your life and everybody would do the same things and they would all get the same results, I’d be totally mistaken, I’d be remiss to do that. I don’t want to do that, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to tell you that, you know, there’s one one formula that’s going to work for everybody, because we’re all so different.

So this is why I do what I do as a coach is that I help you put together a detailed plan that will help you reach your goals. But then we analyze that plan and see how things are working for you as an individual. Are you feeling better? Are you losing weight? Are you sleeping better? Are you improving your running performance? Do your clothes fit better? Do you like the way you look in the mirror?

We’re going to look at all kinds of metrics, and then decide if we want to continue with this path or we need to change the plan a little bit. And that’s the beautiful part of coaching is that this feedback system, it’s you and I working closely together, trying some things, checking to see what’s working and what isn’t, and then we course correct as we go. That’s the way the process works.

I can’t tell you what’s going to be the answer for you as an individual because we are all so different. Okay. But if you want that help, if you want that guidance, if you want that support, the encouragement, the motivation, accountability to stay on track, and reach your health and fitness goals as we enter 2023 then reach out to me just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application for coaching and you and I’ll get on a call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’ll see you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself in 2023.

All right, so today I’m feeling pretty compelled to talk about food restrictions. Because I’ve been seeing posts on social media about this. I’ve been getting messages from people. People that are interested in working with me will tell me hey, I really want to work with you. I want you to be my coach, but I just have to tell you, I’m not going to restrict any foods.

I just want to keep eating the same foods that I’m eating and I don’t want to have any kind of restrictions because every time I feel restricted, I binge out on foods and things like that. And I want to address all of this because I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we think that we can make changes to our diet to our health to our fitness to our weight, and not experience some sort of restriction in some way. Okay?

I hear this from not just from people who want to work with me, but I hear this on social media too. And I see a nutritionist talk about this on social media. And where this comes from, is mostly from dieticians. And these are registered dietitians from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the problem with, and this is not just me saying this to you; you can go online and find lots of information about about the the academy, but this particular association is funded by a number of food multinationals by pharmaceutical companies.

And food industry lobbying groups, such as the National Confectioners Association, the National Confectioners Association, just so you know, it’s an American trade organization that promotes chocolate candy gum and mints and the companies that make these things. Okay, so the AMD is funded by companies like the National Confectioners Association. The AMD is also funded by companies like PepsiCo, and Mars and Coca Cola and Kellogg’s and General Mills.

And this industry funding gives food companies like Coca Cola and General Mills and stuff, the ability to offer official educational seminars to teach dietitians how to advise their clients in a way that advances the interests of those particular food companies. For example, in a Coca Cola sponsored seminar for dieticians, the speaker promoted free sugars consumption, like for kids as a healthy choice, like kids should just be able to eat as much sugar as they want. This is healthy for kids.

So if you’re listening to advice from registered dieticians, and I’m not saying they’re all the same, or that they all offer the same advice, but in general, a lot of these dietitians will say, you know, oh, all foods are fine. In moderation, we don’t restrict any foods, sugar is fine. Flour is fine, grains are fine. Just understand that this whole organization where they got their certification is funded by the sugar industry, by the pharmaceutical industry, by the junk food industry.

Okay, so anytime I see somebody talking about food restrictions, this idea of, of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics comes to mind, and their funding and who they’re sponsored by, okay. And a lot of their material, a lot of their training material is derived from these food companies to help promote their own interests.

So to me, this is a huge conflict of interest. And I don’t think this is where we should be getting our dietary advice. That’s just my opinion. Okay. So I want you to understand where this idea of never restricting foods comes from. Okay. So what does it mean to restrict foods? I want to just kind of touch on this briefly.

So what this means is that we eliminate some foods from our diet. And some people have a real problem with this. And I’m not just talking about dieticians, but some people think that we should never restrict any kinds of foods from our diet. But what if you find that you know, losing weight is very difficult unless you cut out sugary treats. Wouldn’t it be in your best interest to maybe cut out sugary treats, at least for a while.

Is restricting foods something that you should never do something you should always do? Something that you can do? Every now and then? Like what’s the right answer? Unfortunately, there isn’t really a right answer. But you’re going to hear my stance on this and my stance is going to be this – I think that at times it is necessary to restrict some foods. If you find it very difficult to give up junk food, if you find that you, you know, are addicted to junk food to sugar to you know, soda, to cookies, ice cream, whatever it is, wouldn’t it be in your best interest to you know, get off of that substance?

You know, restriction doesn’t mean it has to be a permanent thing. Restriction means that we restrict ourselves from indulging in that food for a period of time, and for some people, that period of time might be a long time. So I’ve worked with some people who have a real bad relationship with sugar.

And anytime they start eating some sugar, they find that they can’t stop eating sugar. The same goes for people who have issues with drinking or with drugs. You know, some people can drink in moderation, they can drink every now and then. You know, I know someone that can drink once a month. And she has like one drink a month. And I’m like, how do you do that?

And I know other people who have a sip of alcohol, and then and then they’re like off to the races. And they can’t stop drinking until they’re passed out on the floor. That was kind of my experience with alcohol, where as soon as I started drinking, and I drove, I couldn’t stop until I was, you know, pretty much passed out, you know? So, for me, isn’t it better for me to just abstain from drinking alcohol and not have to continually fight that battle? Yeah, I haven’t had alcohol in like 15 years, coming up on 16 years now. And it works for me.

So restricting alcohol, for me, feels great, my life is so much better without it. And it did take some time for me to get through that discomfort of, of change and the discomfort of wanting alcohol and not having it. But once I got through that, it was so much better for me. And today, I don’t even think about it like I don’t need to drink.

You know, I go out to dinner a lot. And I sit at the bar at dinner a lot just because sometimes it’s hard to find a table at a restaurant. And so my girlfriend and I will go out to dinner and sit at the bar, and neither of us really drink. So we just sit at the bar and eat food. While everybody around us is drinking. There’s alcohol everywhere there.

I’m watching them make all these drinks, and some of them look pretty damn good too. But I have no desire to drink, that desire is long gone for me. The same goes with sugar for me. So I was really addicted to sugar. And for many years, many more, I’ll just be honest here, decades, for me decades of eating tons of sugar and tons of carbs, and justifying it with all of the running that I was doing.

And that kind of worked for a while until it didn’t. And I started gaining weight and gained within a few years something like 40 pounds, and really had to take a look at my sugar intake and really had to make a decision like is this something that I want to continue to do? Or do I need to restrict this from my diet?

And I made that decision some years ago where I was just going to remove sugar from my diet. And the more I read about the dangers of sugar, and the problems, the health problems that are caused by sugar, and the obesity epidemic in this country that’s been caused by sugar and flour and grains and refined refined carbohydrates and junk food and processed foods. I just don’t want that in my life.

And so I decided that I was going to just cut that out of my life. Now this does not mean that I don’t ever eat any sugar. I do occasionally very occasionally. I recently had a birthday. And I had a big old piece of birthday cake on my birthday. Because you know what? Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Right? I had a piece of birthday cake. And it was great. I loved it.

Does that mean that the next day I needed to eat another half a birthday cake or whatever? No, no, it meant that I had that cake. And then I was done. So my relationship with sugar today is much different than it used to be. In the past, it was something I had to have every single day. That’s an unhealthy relationship with sugar. So for me, restricting this, and eliminating this from my diet 99.7% of the time works for me, and I feel better.

And I know that I’m treating my body right and that I’m eating foods that are actually healthy for me and aren’t harmful. For me. I think sugar is harmful. I think refined grains are harmful for us, especially done in excess. Now if you’re somebody that can really moderate your sugar intake, and you’re like, I’m not going to restrict any foods. This doesn’t apply to me because I want to eat some sugar every now and then. It’s not a big deal, then that’s great. You do you, but if you’re the person who is sitting there listening to this right now and you’re like, Yeah, I’m 40 pounds overweight. I do eat sugar. I have a bad relationship with carbs and sugar. But I really don’t want to give that stuff up.

Then maybe it’s this is a time for you to like, start thinking about that. Maybe you’re thinking he needs to change. Restriction doesn’t have to be permanent, it can be temporary. And I’ve worked with some people who have eliminated sugar from the from their diet, have got fat adapted as a runner, have lost a bunch of weight, and then have incorporated some carbs and some sugar back into their diet very moderately, and they’ve changed their relationship with this food substance, this food like substance, so I’m going to argue that sugar really isn’t necessary for our survival.

So it’s more like a, it’s really more like a drug than it is a food but I get it that you know, it’s sugar is in everything, it’s really, it can be hard to avoid. But if you’re the kind of person who can give it up for a while, change your relationship with it. And then slowly, you know, allow a little bit back in here and there, that’s fine. And if that works for you, and you can maintain your health and maintain your weight and maintain your running performance through all of that, then that is awesome. Like you do you absolutely.

But I think it’s stupid to think that we can keep eating a crappy diet, we can keep eating all this junk food and somehow magically, your health and your weight are going to improve. If nothing changes, nothing changes. And sometimes restricting some foods, you know, for a period of time is exactly what you need. So this idea that, you know, foods, we should never restrict any foods or foods in moderation. You know, I think this is not necessarily a helpful philosophy to adopt. Okay?

Some people cannot moderate. Some people cannot moderate things like sugar. It’s kind of like telling the alcoholic Hey, just just drink every now and then we’re telling the person who’s addicted to cocaine, just you know, do cocaine every now and then like, dude, can’t you just moderate your cocaine use isn’t? Doesn’t that sound stupid when I’m saying this out loud? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? It is ridiculous.

But this is what we’re telling people with sugar, which by the way, they’ve done studies that have shown that sugar lights up your brain more than cocaine does. That sugar actually has more of a profound impact on your brain. They’ve done these studies with rats, where rats would be given the choice of sugar or cocaine and the rats would choose the sugar over the cocaine. Poor little rats, right? They’re always being tormented.

But anyway, interesting studies, no doubt. And so if you don’t think sugar is a powerful drug, you know, studies like that kind of prove that it really is a very powerful drug, okay? But it sounds stupid to like, say to the alcoholic, or the drug addict, hey, just moderate your intake, you know, just you know, everybody else can just monitor it, why can’t you just moderate it and know if that particular substance is harmful for you? And that particular substance is something you cannot manage and you cannot control? Maybe it’s best to just cut it out of your life. All right, maybe permanently. I have no problem with that.

If you tell me like, hey, Patrick, I’m just going to cut out sugar and I’m going to do that permanently. I don’t need it anymore. And I’ve had clients who’ve told me that they’re like, I love the way I feel now that I stopped eating sugar. I don’t see any reason to ever go back to eat that junk. And I’m like, yeah, cool. I’m with you. That’s pretty much how I live my life. The most sugar I eat in a month would be some chocolate that I eat every now and then, some dark chocolate that I’ve tried, dark chocolate that’s like stevia flavored or whatever it has a erythritol or something, and I just don’t like it. It just doesn’t really do much for me. So I go to this dark chocolate that I get. And it’s pretty low in sugar. But it does have a little bit of sugar in there. But I’ll just use a little bit of that. And it’s so delicious. And it tastes so good.

And then of course, you know, my birthday, I do a piece of cake, piece of cheesecake or birthday cake or whatever. And then thinking back through this past year, as we’re coming to the end of the year here, how many times have I eaten sugar, a few bars of chocolate and some birthday cake. And that’s about it. That’s about it. It’s very, very minimal.

I’ve changed my whole relationship with sugar. And now I can do it very, very sporadically. And my life is not suffering because of that. So when it comes to never restricting foods, I don’t agree with that. I think that for some of us, it is perfectly fine to restrict foods. And for some people, maybe it’s fine to restrict foods for a period of time and then they can kind of incorporate them back.

But if you’re going to adopt this approach, you have to change your mindset around the food that you’re eating around that sugar or the soda or the desserts or whatever it is. The whole concept of restricting foods, it’s less about what foods you’re eating and not eating. And it’s more about your mindset around all of this.

So if you have this mindset of, you know, I’m going to occasionally house some sugar and it’s going to be okay. I’m going to make some cookies with my kids. And I’m going to eat a couple, great, do that. You have to have the right mindset around it, though.

But if your mindset is like, every time I eat sugar, I go into this, you know, binging behavior, if it’s if eating a little bit of sugar sets you up for for a sugar binge increases your cravings, you can’t stop thinking about it, you can’t stop eating. And once you start, then I’m going to say like, this is not something that you want to mess around with here. Like just stop eating that stuff.

This whole addictive behavior thing needs to stop. Right? This is just like you, you would deal with an alcoholic or a drug addict, like just cut them off. You got to get yourself off of the drug. All foods in moderation does not work. For some people it’s like saying all drugs in moderation. Doesn’t that sounds stupid? Yeah.

So what we want to do here is make a decision. You got to make a decision for yourself, what is it you want for yourself? If you want to lose weight, if you want to change your relationship with food, you’re going to have to probably experience some food restrictions. It’s almost impossible to do it any other way though.

And one of the big reasons why people buy into this idea of all foods in moderation or never restrict any foods. It’s because it justifies their crappy behavior. Right? If you buy into this idea that you should never restrict any foods, then this just justifies that addictive behavior. And you never have to change anything. You don’t have to give up anything. You never have to get uncomfortable. You never have to do anything differently. You can just kind of keep doing what you’re doing. And use well you know, this dietician said all foods should be fine in moderation.

But remember, the same people that are telling you this don’t restrict foods and all foods in moderation are that those people are being, you know, funded and trained and educated by the junk food companies, by the pharmaceutical companies, by the sugar industry. Just don’t listen to them. Okay? Do yourself a favor. Don’t listen to them. If you want to change, if you want to improve your health, improve your fitness. If you want to lose weight, you’re gonna have to make some changes here.

You’re gonna have to get uncomfortable. You’re gonna have to embrace the suck a little bit here, okay? Doesn’t mean forever. But what would it look like for you? If you were to lose this idea that you can eat all foods in moderation? What if? What if you just adopted this idea that Yeah, at least for a while. I’m gonna cut this junk out. I’m gonna stop eating junk food. I’m just gonna stop doing what? How do you think that would change your life? Think about that.

If you no longer ate sugar, if you no longer drink soda, if you no longer ate processed foods, how much better would you feel? How would your weight change? How would you feel about yourself? How would your energy levels be? I think that we all want more for ourselves. And that’s why you’re listening to this podcast right now, is because you want something more for yourself.

And if cutting out some of this junk food is the way that you get there. I say go for it. Absolutely go for it. It’s not a bad thing. Do it and cut some of this stuff out permanently. works better for you and your life, then I’m fine with that. It works for me. Maybe it’ll work for you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all I really do. 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.

153. 5 Tips to Avoid Gaining Weight This Holiday Season

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It’s officially the Holiday Season and that means it’s time to gain a bunch of weight over the next 30 days and start the new year feeling like crap, right? I know it seems kinda crazy when I say …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 153 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. So it’s officially the holiday season. And that means it’s time to gain a bunch of weight over the next 30 days and start the new year feeling like crap, right?

I know it seems crazy when I say that out loud. The truth is, though, that’s the way most people do it. Most people gain a bunch of weight during the holidays. And then at some point, they swear a solemn oath that they’re going to change everything and get back on track in January.

And I know what this feels like. I’ve done this many, many times. I also know how terrible it feels when January comes around. And you have to lose a bunch of weight just to get back to where you were before Thanksgiving. So in this episode, I’m gonna offer a better approach for this whole time of the year.

Okay, I have five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. And listen, if you’re the kind of person who’s ready to make some changes, right now, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to wait until January to actually start improving their health to start losing the weight to start changing their relationship with food to start becoming the healthiest version of yourself, then I want to encourage you to apply for coaching.

There’s no obligation, you can just fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a quick zoom call, we’ll have a conversation, we’ll talk about coaching, I’ll explain exactly what coaching looks like, I’ll explain my approach which is a little different for most coaches, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. And if it’s a good fit, great if it’s not no harm done, maybe you learned a little bit more about yourself, you maybe learned some tips that can help you get started in the right direction.

But here’s the thing, if you’re ready to change now, don’t wait, you don’t have to wait till January one in order to to begin a program like this or to begin changing the how you feel about yourself, or changing your health or improving your health or improving your running or losing weight, you can start now just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Again, fill out that application and you and I can get started, I want to encourage you to just take some action.

Now whatever that looks like, if it’s coaching, great if it’s not, do something today, to start improving yourself to start improving your health to start improving your fitness to become that best version of yourself. Cool. So just you know, go to runningleancoaching.com/apply I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project as always, is you.

Okay, so today, I got these tips for you. I got some tips to help you avoid gaining weight this holiday season. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And so many people think that this time of the year they will automatically gain weight. In fact, so many people think this because the average adult American says that they expect to gain around seven pounds during the holidays. That’s a lot of weight to gain in a month, right.

And one in four of those people say that they’re still carrying extra weight from the previous year. And so you know, let’s just say it’s a few pounds, I mean, you’re this is just this time of the year, you’re just going to be continually gaining weight. And if you multiply this by 10 or 20 years, this is a big problem. This can be a huge problem, right?

So, let’s stop this trend right now. Let’s take control of our health and our fitness and our weight for once. Don’t be average. Don’t be the average American. You know, I’ve talked to so many people about changing their diet and eating differently and maybe, you know, giving up things like sugar and grains. And people are like well, but I don’t want to be different. I just want to be able to do what everybody else is doing.

And I’m like to listen, listen, what everybody else is doing isn’t working, there’s like 78% of people in this country have some sort of metabolic dysfunction? Do you really want to be one of the normal people? Do you really want to be one of the average Americans? And this applies to other countries as well. But I say no, I say let’s be, let’s be the minority, let’s be different.

Embrace that, like, don’t be normal, don’t be average. Okay. So instead of expecting to gain a bunch of weight during the holidays, we need to have a different approach, you got to do things differently than the way most people are doing things. And yeah, that means that you might not be indulging in all the Christmas cookies, and all the booze at the parties and all this other stuff that other people are doing.

But guess what, you’re gonna feel so much better when January 1 comes around, and you haven’t gained that seven pounds. And that’s kind of average, I think some people gain more, you know, 10-12 pounds. So for me, here’s kind of the way I used to do it. So this time of the year was always the, well it’s still is pretty much the offseason for running.

And so we’ll do a full marathon. And then we sort of take a break from running. But for me, I never really changed my diet, like I just kept eating the same amounts of food and the same types of food. And of course, I was eating a ton of sugar and a ton of carbs. And so this time of the year, I would always gain weight.

And I would always gain 5-10 pounds somewhere in that range. And then I would always tell myself that yeah, come January 1, everything’s going to change, I’m going to get serious, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to, you know, start focusing on eating better, and all this other stuff.

And guess what, January 1 would come around, and I would sort of start some of that stuff, I would kinda maybe watch my calories, or start adding food into a food tracking app. And you know, you know, going lower fat and trying to exercise more, and all the things that we’ve tried that really don’t work long term. And I might do it for a short amount of time. But then it became problematic, it became frustrating, became too tedious, and I would just stop doing it. And I would always, you know, I might lose a few of those pounds, but I would always gain a few extra pounds every year, during this time of the year.

And you know, you do that for 10 years. And, you know, I found myself 40, more than 40 pounds overweight. And I was eating what I thought was a really clean diet. You know, I was plant based and I was just eating a ton of carbs. I was a carb-atarian, let’s just say it that way. Eating nothing but sugar and carbs, and running a lot. I was running and training for marathons and ultra marathons.

And it wasn’t that I wasn’t exercising, I was going to the gym two or three times a week, doing yoga a couple of times a week, like I had a regular exercise regimen, I was running like crazy every year. And still I would gain weight during the holiday season. And I couldn’t, couldn’t lose it. And that just kept you know, adding on and packing on more weight and more weight.

So there’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to get through the holidays. And, and I’m going to give you a few tips here for you to apply and actually take action on because these tips are great. If if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, these sound great, Patrick, that’s one thing.

It’s a whole other thing if you take action and actually do what I’m going to suggest that you do here today. Because if you do what I suggest you do here today, you’re gonna get through the holidays in a much different way than somebody who doesn’t take action. Any kind of program like this, anytime we’re talking about improving yourself, it requires something on your part.

You’re not just going to lose weight by listening to somebody talk about what to do, right? You’ve got to take action, you got to do this stuff. Okay? So if you’re the kind of person who loves getting into action and loves, you know, doing, you know, these kinds of tips, then do it. I want to encourage you to just start today.

So here’s the tips I’m gonna give you tip number one, and this is probably the one that most people won’t do. And this is why I’m sort of prefacing this by saying like you have to take action here because most people don’t want to do this. And that is to create a vision for who you want to be on January 1, create a vision for who you want to be on January 1.

How do you want to show up for yourself? How do you want to feel about yourself? How do you want to look? How do you want to feel mentally, emotionally, physically? How do you want to have approached this holiday season? Like, I really want you to get detailed about this future version of yourself. So we’re only talking about 30 days in the future. As we record this, it’s December 1. And so we’ve got, you know, what, 31 days, 32 days, something like that until January 1. So create a vision today.

And I want to encourage you not to just think about this, but to actually write it down. So grab a piece of paper, grab a journal, whatever it is that you want to use, do it on your computer, it doesn’t really matter. But write down in detail as much as you want. How do you want to show up for yourself on January 1, who do you want to be?

Most people don’t do this. Most people are just like, yeah, yeah, whatever, I want to feel good, but whatever. But they don’t really spend any time really thinking about this. But here’s something that’s very interesting. There’s this very powerful thing that happens, when you start thinking about who you want to be in the future, your subconscious mind will actually start moving you in the direction of that vision, your subconscious mind will actually get on board with this plan.

Everything that we want for ourselves, we first have to create in our mind, there’s not one thing on this planet that’s been created that hasn’t first been a thought and a vision, you know, think about things like a rocket ship, or an airplane or the iPhone, all these things were first an idea and a thought.

And then they were written down, and they were then you know, expanded upon, you know, so all these things that we want for ourselves have to start with a thought they have to start with a detailed vision. And when we create this vision for ourselves, it’s important that you get into that emotional state of how you want to feel on January 1.

Do you want to feel like you are regretting your decisions over the last 30 days? Do you want to feel like you have fallen behind or fallen off the wagon, or let yourself down? Or do you want to feel like you’ve built some confidence in yourself, you’ve built some trust in yourself, you said you were going to do some things, and you actually did them. Because that is available to you.

But you first have to start with a vision, you have to start with a detailed accounting of how you want to show up on January one. So don’t skip this step. Do it, I’m gonna encourage you to just do it, write it down, it’ll take you 10 or 15 minutes, spend about that much time writing free, write just as much as you want, or as little as you want. But do this step. Okay.

So that’s step number one, create a vision for who you want to be, and how you want to show up for yourself, and how you want to feel that’s the important part. Because once we get into that emotional state of how we want to feel, we can access that throughout the month, you know, you might have a day where you wake up and you’re like, I really don’t feel like running today, or I really don’t feel like you know, sticking to my plan my food plan today or whatever, you’re gonna be like, oh, but you know what that feeling that I want on January 1? I’m only gonna get that feeling.

If I stick to this plan, if I go out and run, if I go lift weights or whatever. So make sure that you get into that emotional state of how you want to feel on January 1, okay? That’s a very, very powerful state to be in. Okay, that’s how all visions come to life is just creating that vision getting into that emotional state. Okay, so that’s step number one.

The next tip I have for you, after you create a vision, you have to have a plan. You have to have a plan. Most people think that they will just sort of wing it. And I’m just going to tell you right now winging it does not work. If you think well, I’ll just kind of like I’ll get through the holidays, it’ll be fine. I’m not too concerned about it.

But if you’ve got some weight to lose, and you really want to make some changes and you want to get through this unscathed, you want to, you know, show up on January 1 really feeling good about yourself. You have to have a plan. Okay? So that means that you need to write down what you’re going to do to get to that vision that you have for yourself on January 1.

So you have a vision, great, how are you going to achieve that vision? You have to have a plan. I’m going to not eat sugar this month, that’s a plan. I’m going to, you know, work out every day, that’s a plan, I’m going to do yoga three times a week, I’m going to strength train twice a week, I’m going to run three times a week, I’m going to, you know, eat, you know, a good amount of protein at each meal, these are all plans, and you write these things down.

And there’s things that are going to happen this month. So we got holiday parties, we got a couple of holidays, really, we’re only talking about a couple days here, we got like Christmas, and New Year’s right, and then maybe New Year’s Eve, right? So maybe, or maybe even Christmas Eve for some people.

So three or four days really is all we’re talking about, you know, from here on out. So, plan those days, then if you have holiday parties, you’re gonna be going to or family’s gonna be in town or whatever, plan for that stuff, make a detailed plan of how you’re going to achieve your vision for yourself.

And this is what I do with all my clients. We work together on a plan and we get very detailed about what they’re going to eat and what they’re not going to eat, when they’re going to work out, when they’re not, when they’re going to recover. And we put together a detailed plan. And then obviously, you have to work the plan, you have to actually stick to the plan.

But you’re more likely to stick to the plan when you’ve created that vision for yourself. And then you’ve written it down. And then you’ve also written down a plan. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got it written down. You can look at it every day and say, okay, what am I doing today, and then just follow the plan. It seems almost too simple. Create a plan, and then stick to the plan no matter what. But that’s how simple it is. Create a plan and then stick to the plan no matter what.

And it’s that no matter what part that’s kind of important, right? For example, I am working on running every day during the holidays. So if you’re part of the Running Lean Facebook group, and if you’re not, you can join us just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. We are doing the running through the holidays challenge right now, which is to run every day, outside from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. And that’s 39 days of running.

And it’s just, you know, just gotta run at least a mile each day. So some days, I’m running one mile, some days, I’m running 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever. But the other day, I did not run during the day, I had a busy day. And I wasn’t able to get outside and you know, it gets dark early, it gets dark at like 5:30. And this is like 7pm and it was raining. And it was cold. And it was windy. And I did not feel like running. Not at all did I feel like running.

I had already eaten dinner and stuff. And I’m like, oh my god, I forgot I have to run still. And so you know what I did? I put on my running shoes, and I put on a rain jacket and I just headed out the door. And I got my mile in outside in the rain and the wind and the cold. And I have to tell you that it didn’t feel awesome. When I was out there I was you know, I had to put a headlamp on and you know, watch out for debris in the streets and roads and stuff like that.

But I did it, and I felt good about myself because I stuck to my plan. So I had a plan to run every day. That’s a plan. And then I stuck to the plan no matter what even though I didn’t feel like it. It could have been so easy for me to just say screw it. I am not doing this. I don’t feel like it. And it’s cold and it’s raining and I could have used all the excuses.

But I didn’t do that. I had a plan and I stuck to the plan no matter what. Okay? It’s that no matter what part that’s important, okay, so create a vision and have a plan and then stick to the plan no matter what. Cool.

Alright, my third tip is this. You’ve got to manage stress, you cannot go through this holiday season super stressed out about everything you just can’t. Stress will cause you to hold on to body fat. Stress will cause you to gain weight. The stress response is a glucose response. Being stressed out will spike your blood sugar, will spike your insulin levels and will put you into fat storage mode. And if you’re chronically stressed out and a lot of people are during the holidays, they stay kind of in this chronic state of stress from Thanksgiving through January 1.

I’m going to tell you right now it is going to be very difficult for you to lose weight, in fact, you will probably gain some weight just based on being stressed out during the holidays. So you have to have a stress management regimen, you have to have some sort of routine that you’re doing regularly like every single day to keep stress levels to a minimum.

Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a very hard time losing weight or have a hard time maintaining your weight during the holidays. So there are two types of stress. There’s the stress that we put on our bodies when we work out and maybe we lift weights or we go for a run. And maybe we do some sprint intervals or something like that.

This is called acute stress. And this is the good kind of stress. This is a positive type of stress, we stress our body, we stress a muscle, we stress our cardiovascular system. And then we have a positive adaptation because of that stress. So our muscles get stronger, our cardiovascular system improves, our speed improves, we raise our lactate threshold. So when we put acute stress on our bodies, this is acute and short term, very short term stress, this is a positive thing, this is a good thing we want to stress ourselves out in that way.

The kind of stress that we don’t want to be engaging in is like we’re constantly thinking about, you know, work or relationships or family issues. And we’re just constantly, you know, in a state of chronic stress, chronic stress is the kind of stress that is going to cause us to have that glucose response and cause us to keep our insulin levels high. You know, cortisol is a stress hormone.

When cortisol is high, our body is in that fight or flight mode, we’re in that sympathetic mode. Remember, the sympathetic mode is stress sympathetic for stress s for stress, the parasympathetic mode is, is peace, P for peace. So parasympathetic is when we are calm and relaxed and at peace and the sympathetic nervous system is when we are stressed out.

So we want to tap more into that parasympathetic nervous system and reduce the amount of stress we’re in. So that means that we can’t wait until we’re super stressed out to start working on it and that we have to work on it continuously. That means you have to have some sort of stress relief plan in place every single day.

Some of the things you can do to help reduce stress, meditation, journaling, going for a walk, going for a run, doing some yoga, just taking a nap. Maybe. Naps are very underrated, by the way. Getting enough sleep is super important. Getting good quality sleep, you know, we need seven, eight hours of sleep most of us as adults.

Just doing anything, playing a game, laughing, going to see a movie, doing something with friends, doing something with family, just being silly with your kids, anything like that is going to help to reduce stress, you need to figure out what works for you, everybody’s different. So figure out what works for you and what you can do every single day to make stress management a priority.

Because if you do that, I guarantee you, you’re gonna have a much easier time getting through the holidays and your body won’t be holding on to as much body weight, you won’t be holding on to as much fat you’ll be able to burn fat, we always want to be burning fat, not storing fat. So you’ll get into fat burning mode instead of fat storing mode. And you’ll get through the holidays without all that extra weight.

Okay, so that’s tip number three is to manage stress, and you have to do it every single day. You can’t wait until you’re stressed out to start working on it, you have to manage stress every single day.

And this brings me to my fourth tip, which is to exercise daily. So not only does daily exercise help with stress management, it also helps you to burn fat, you know, so obviously exercise can be helpful to fat burning, especially if you’re doing the lower intensity exercise, you know, you stay in that zone one, zone two, you know, you’re in that aerobic zone. That’s what’s considered sort of the fat burning zone, right?

So if you’re doing some sort of exercise every day, go out and run a few miles. Really easy. Go for some, you know, do a power walk, do some yoga, walk the dogs, play with the kids. It doesn’t have to be something intense but do something every day. And I promise you, you are going to not only feel better, but you’re going to help you to maintain your weight and probably help you to lose a little bit if that’s, you know, one of your goals here.

So, one of the reasons why we want to exercise every day is that when we exercise we get our dose of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So we get that rush of feel good hormones, and neurotransmitters. And when we have these feel good chemicals kind of running through our body, it puts us in a better mood, it helps us stay in that parasympathetic nervous system state. And we feel good.

It’s not only a good way to manage stress, but it’s a way of keeping our body feeling happy, like it improves our mood as well. You know, also more burning fat, you know, like I said, but it’s just this way of continually feeling good and feeling good about ourselves and feeling good about who we are and what we’re doing. And it’s such a better way to go through the holidays feeling good, as opposed to being, you know, super stressed out and freaking out about all the junk you’re eating and all this other stuff.

So when you’re in a good mood, you tend to make better decisions, when you’re exercising every day, you tend to build some momentum and want to keep exercising, it helps you to, you know, stay on track with your food plan, when you’re exercising daily. This is one of the big reasons why we have this running through the holidays challenge going on right now is because I want to encourage you to get outside every day, and do some exercise and the outside part is important.

During the winter, we tend you know, the days get shorter, and we tend to spend a lot more time indoors, the days are shorter, it’s darker in the morning is darker in the evening, there’s not as much sunlight during the day, we need to get outside and get some sun in our eyeballs, like we need to, you know, have that sun in our face on our bodies, if we can, it’s so important for us to you know, be outside in the elements in the sun.

And it helps to put us in that, you know, good mood, it helps with our serotonin levels. You know, we build serotonin during the day. And that’s what helps to create melatonin to help us sleep better at night. It helps with our circadian rhythms and helps us to sleep, you know, improve our sleep quality during the night when we can get outside into the sun every day.

So I know a lot of days around here, you know, I’m in Cincinnati, and a lot of days around here in the wintertime, it’s just gray, and dark. And there’s no sun. But those days that there is sun, take advantage of that and get outside. We’ve had a lot of gray days here. And then this morning, I went for a run and had to bring my sunglasses with me because it was so beautiful out, very, very cold, very cold.

But the sun was shining and it felt so amazing to be outside and to see the sun and to be in the sun. So exercise daily, put together you know, make exercise daily part of your plan. You know, make it part of your plan, part of your daily plan. And you’re going to get through the holidays feeling so much better about yourself, okay.

And then my last tip is going to be this when it comes to nutrition. We’re all a little bit different. And it’s hard for me to make some recommendations as here’s what you should eat or whatever. So I’m going to give you this tip. And I think this is one of the most powerful tips around nutrition that I can give you and it’s one that is underrated and something that most people just don’t do or maybe they’re not aware of, or they think it would be too hard.

But it’s this, skip some meals, skip some meals, you don’t have to eat three meals a day, every single day all the time. You don’t have to eat three meals a day, plus three snacks a day, plus dessert every single day, you really don’t have to eat that much skip breakfast, skip breakfast and lunch one day.

Skip snacking, skip dessert, like just pick something that you think would work for you. And you don’t have to do this every single day. But just consider skipping some meals. You know, there’s a lot of benefits that you’ll gain from exercising in the fasted state, which means that, you know, if you exercise in the morning, don’t you don’t have to fuel up before you get outside and run.

Just skip it, just skip fueling, you know and try some what we call intermittent fasting. And when people hear that word fasting, they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s, you know, I’m gonna die. I can’t do that. It’s like, dude, no, listen, it’s just like, skip breakfast is our target about here. It’s not that big of a deal.

You know, we’ve been doing this as human beings for millions of years. We didn’t eat all the time. We didn’t have snacks. We didn’t eat dessert, like there were no three meals a day, kind of a deal. Like a lot of times, and a lot of cultures, they eat like once a day, maybe twice a day. And so I think we’ve, you know, in the Western world, we’re under this impression that we have to eat a lot, just all the time. And it’s just not true.

Like we just don’t need to eat that often. Okay, so, one thing I did recently is Thanksgiving Day. And so that was Thursday and then a couple days later on Saturday we did another Thanksgiving with my girlfriend and our kids, well, we all got together. And so we did like two different Thanksgivings, super fun.

But each of those days, I only ate that one meal each day. So I ate one big meal on Thanksgiving, and then one big meal on that Saturday, and I just skipped breakfast, I typically eat twice a day, you know, I’ll have a pretty good sized breakfast around noon, and then I eat dinner around 6pm, 7pm, something like that.

And, and that’s usually good for me. But some days, I just skip that first meal. And, and I feel so much better when I, you know, can skip a meal and, and then I can maybe eat a little bit more at that second meal and still be in a bit of a deficit and still not be overeating and still not be eating, you know, a ton of calories that day.

So for me, it feels really good to skip a meal every now and then. And this is one of the simplest things that you can do to help manage your weight and help you to not gain weight during the holidays. It’s just like, pick a few days a week here and there and skip some of these meals. And you might be surprised how good you feel. You might be surprised how much easier it is to exercise in that fasted state and take advantage of the adrenaline that you get from exercising in the fasted state.

So you actually, you know, people think, oh, I won’t have the energy. But now your body will produce the glucose that you need, your body will produce the adrenaline that you need to be able to actually work out a little bit harder. And then there’s another positive benefit from exercising in the fasted state, which is an increase in growth hormone.

So after exercise, your body will produce more growth hormone, which will help you to recover faster. So not only can you exercise harder in a fasted state, but you can also recover faster. So these are good benefits. And you don’t have to do this all the time. But try it every now and then and see how it goes for you.

Okay, so quick recap, you know of my five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. Number one, create a vision. Who do you want to be on January 1? How do you want to feel and write it down?

Okay, number two, have a plan. Write down your plan. And then write down your plan every week and consult your plan. And make sure you’re staying on track with your plan no matter what.

Number three, you have to manage stress and it has to be something you do every single day.

Number four exercise daily. Get outside if you can do whatever it takes to move your body and to release the endorphins and get the dopamine and the serotonin and all those good feeling chemicals that you get. So power walk yoga, walk the dog, play with the kids, go for a run, lift some weights, swim, bike, whatever you need to do, but do something every day. Do it outside if you can get in the sun.

And then lastly, skip some meals here and there. You don’t have to eat all the time. This is like intermittent fasting simplified, right? It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to do some sort of long three day fast or anything like that. Just like skip a meal here and there. And you might be surprised how much easier it is to get through the holidays without gaining weight.

Cool. All right, you guys, I hope you take some action on these tips here and actually do these things because I guarantee you it’s going to make a difference on how you show up for yourself on January 1. 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.

152. Struggling, Suffering, and Giving In

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When it comes to eating healthy and losing weight, people think you have 3 choices: Struggle, suffer, or give in. You might want to stick to a healthy eating plan through the holidays but feel like …

Continue Reading about 152. Struggling, Suffering, and Giving In →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean. Hey there, and welcome to episode 152 of Running Lean.

My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today I’m talking about struggling, suffering and giving in when it comes to eating healthy and losing weight. A lot of people, runners especially, think that you have basically three choices, you can either struggle, suffer, or just give him.

So you might want to stick to a healthy eating plan, you know, through the holidays. But you feel like you’re either going to have to struggle to stay on that plan, or suffer your way through it. Or just say screw it and give in to all those cravings for carbage.

But what if there was another option? What if you didn’t have to suffer or struggle? What if you never gave in to those food cravings? Today I’m talking about how we’re not really stuck with this, these three options of struggling suffering and giving in how you can make healthy eating actually enjoyable, and maybe even fun, and stick to your plan. Cool.

Instead of struggling or suffering your way through the holidays this year, why don’t you do something different with coaching you and I will create a plan just for you. One that feels good to you when you actually have some say in how we structure it and one that you feel good about. And then I hope you stick to that plan.

If you want to show up on January 1, next year actually feeling good about yourself for a change. Instead of regretting all of your decisions over the last 40 days, then you might be ready for the Running Lean coaching project.

This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners where the project as always is you to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And get started, you’ll fill out a quick application, you and I will jump on a zoom, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. If it is then we can get you started right away. Cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And I’ll see you in the Running Lean coaching project.

Okay, this topic came to me recently because I’ve been hearing a lot of people struggling and a lot of people kind of suffering, a lot of people giving in to these temptations. Now we are officially into the holiday season here, especially in the US where if you’re listening to this, the day this episode comes out, it’ll be the day after Thanksgiving.

And so Thanksgiving is kind of the official or maybe unofficial kickoff of the holidays here in the US. So if you are in the US or in a part of the world that celebrates, you know, Christmas and all that stuff, then we are getting into this season where it’s challenging for a lot of people, this is a time of the year that can be very stressful for a lot of people.

There’s a lot of tempting foods out there. There’s holiday parties, there’s weird working schedules, there’s a lot of time off, and we sort of get out of our routine. And it can be very stressful and very detrimental.

If you are somebody that’s trying to lose weight or get healthy or change your exercise regimen or change your body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself. This is the time of the year where most people fall off the wagon, right.

Another thing to consider is that for most runners, this is considered the offseason because we are getting into the winter. We’ve had our fall races, we’ve had our fall marathons and half marathons. And now we sort of have a little bit of time off before marathons. Training actually begins again in January, at least here in the US.

So this is the time of the year where a lot of people just sort of go off the rails, eat a bunch of junk, gain a bunch of weight, and come January one they feel terrible about themselves. Yeah, have you ever done this before? This used to be my go to every single year, I would run a couple marathons every year, you know, run that fall marathon, and then I’d be like, heck yeah, I’m taking some time off.

So I would stop training. You run a little bit here and there, but pretty much stopped the level of intensity of training that I had been doing for most of the year. And then it basically eat whatever I wanted to. And then by January 1 I would always gain, like 10-15 pounds. Yeah, that’s a lot of weight gain, in really a short amount of time, really, we’re only talking about two months, maybe.

Okay, so, for me, this was always something where I would start the new year at a deficit, let’s start the new year like having to make up a bunch of ground, just to get back to normal just to get back to where I was, you know, before I started, you know, binging out and going crazy on all the garbage that I was eating at the time.

And this, this was problematic, because I would do this, you know, every year, and I would never really get back to where I was. So I just kept gaining weight, and every year, I would just gain a bunch of weight. And this time of the year was a time where I would gain the most amount of weight, because it was the offseason because it was the holidays, because it was stressful.

And all the reasons I can tell you all the reasons, all the stories, all the excuses for why I did what I did. But at the end of the day, it just boils down to me having some really bad habits and eating the wrong kinds of foods and, and really not understanding how all this was affecting me. So we don’t want to do this, this is not really a good way to go, right?

You want to start the new year, instead of feeling bad and coming from a deficit and having to make up this ground. You want to start the new year feeling good about yourself, not feeling bad about yourself. Because when you start the new year, and you feel bad about yourself, here’s what you’ve done over the last 40 days or so, you’ve broken down the trust in yourself.

So when I say you know, how do you build up trust in yourself? What I’m talking about is, you say you’re gonna do something and then you do it. So you say you’re gonna stick to your food plan, and you do what you say you’re gonna stick to your running schedule, and you do it. When you don’t do that, you break down that trust in yourself.

When you say you’re going to do something, and then you fail, and you give up and you don’t do that thing. You subconsciously break down your ability to trust yourself to stay on track, you lose confidence, you lose momentum, you have all this ground to make up, you’re not making progress anymore, you’re actually going backwards. And all of this feels terrible.

And yet, so many people do this anyway. And then they struggle come the New Year to just get back to their normal state. They’re like, You know what they’re used to. I don’t think this is a good idea, we do not want to take this approach over the next 40 days or so. So there’s roughly 39 or 40 days between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.

And I think this is a great opportunity for us to get focused on what we can do to stay consistent, and to honor the commitments we make to ourselves and to build trust in ourselves. Because the opposite is also true. When you say you’re going to do something and you do it, you build trust in yourself, you build confidence in yourself that you can actually stick to your plan. And this is where you start to make progress towards your goals, you maybe start to lose weight, maybe you start to improve your running, you get faster, maybe you’re lifting weights, and you get stronger, and then you build momentum.

And all this momentum helps you have more confidence in it. And it motivates you to keep going and then you can start the new year feeling amazing. And making all this progress and having had your own back these last 40 days. That’s what I really want for you. And for me and for all of us. Because I know that that is what you want for yourself.

I know that you want to get through the holidays and you want to feel like you’ve done a good job and you’ve honored your commitments to yourself. You’ve built momentum, you’ve built confidence, you’ve built trust in yourself and you’ve made progress. That’s where I think you want to be, right?

So why not do that? Why not make that your priority? But the problem is most people, they don’t do that. Most people just have this idea of like yeah, I’m gonna I’m going to start the new year feeling great and then they just give in, you know, they struggle they suffer they give in through the whole 40 days of the holidays.

And really what are the holidays we have? Thanksgiving Day. You can count New Year’s Eve and or I’m sorry, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So really we’re talking five days, five days. Some of those are like half days, like New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve.

So, like four days we’re talking about here, it’s so when we talk about the holidays, it’s like four days, right? Don’t make it seem like every day is a party between now and the end of the year, because it isn’t, and it shouldn’t be. Okay. But here’s the thing.

Most people, they struggle, they suffer, or they just give in, they have all these excuses, all these stories, all these reasons. As if all this stuff is automatic, it’s set in stone, it’s absolute, it is the truth, it’s not the truth. It’s just what you’re choosing to believe. It’s what you’re choosing to believe to be true.

Think about that for a minute, the things you think are true, like, losing weight is hard, I have to suffer my way through this. It’s going to be a struggle, I always give in all those things are just things that you are choosing to believe. I want you to think about that and really let that sink in. You’re just choosing to believe those things.

So when we talk about struggling, what I hear from people, I hear them struggling, and I hear them say this is really hard. It’s hard for me to do this, I just can’t do it. I can’t seem to get motivated, I can’t stick with it. And they struggle and they struggle and they struggle and it’s in it and it creates a really negative state of being. Okay.

And then there’s people that they may not actually feel like they’re struggling, they might stick with the plan, but they suffer their way through it. All right, well, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to stick with this plan and eat this good food, but I won’t like it. I’m not going to be happy, it’s going to suck. Is that how we want to go through life? No, no, no, no.

But they’re like, hanging on like, like white knuckling it right? They’re hating every minute of it. They’re in a crappy mood all the time, they’re resentful, they’re angry, they’re pissed off, because they can eat all this good food that everybody else is eating, they can’t do what everybody else is doing. And so they feel terrible. And they suffer and they suffer. Alright, so you can do that you can suffer, you can struggle, all you want.

But what that usually leads to is giving in and it leads to quitting. As it is too hard, I can’t do it, I’m just not going to do it anymore. I quit. I’m just going to give in. I’m having cravings for pizza. So I’m going to eat pizza. I’m having cravings for pie and cookies, and alcohol. And I’m just going to give in because it’s easier, and it feels good. And it’s not hard. And you know, I don’t have to suffer anymore.

And so a lot of people will just say screw it or, you know, why bother, you know, it’s too hard. And they just walk away from what they want for themselves, right? They walk away from the process of actually improving their life, improving their health, improving their well being and improving their fitness. Because the struggling, the suffering is just too much, it’s too hard. And so that usually leads to quitting.

So this might be your default behavior, you may have conditioned yourself over the years over the decades, to struggle to say it’s too hard to say you can’t do it to say you could never stick with it, to suffer your way through it, hate every minute of it. Be resentful, be angry all the time. And then quit. This may be what you’ve done over and over and over again. You’ve conditioned yourself to behave in certain ways, in certain situations.

But now, you want something more for yourself, you want to improve your body composition, you want to lose weight, you want to get stronger, you want to improve your running, or maybe you just want to start running, you want to be a consistent runner. So these are things that you want for yourself that you may not have right now. But in order to get there, you cannot continue struggling, you cannot continue with the suffering and obviously, quitting is not going to get you there.

So if you’ve conditioned yourself to act in certain ways, and behave in certain ways and feel certain things and think certain things, you’re gonna have to do some work here, you’re gonna have to decondition yourself, you’re gonna have to decondition yourself and change your default behavior because your default behavior kind of sucks and it’s not working for you.

Struggling, suffering, giving in. If this is your default behavior, that’s pretty sucky behavior. Sorry, but it is you who has to change that. You got to change that right now. And so you just got to change what you do. Right Easy, easy peasy. Just change your default behavior. That’s sarcasm in case you can’t tell. It’s not easy to do. It’s a simple concept. But it is not easy to do.

And it’s just because of your conditioning, it’s because you’ve been doing the same thing for a lot of time, decades, that it becomes very difficult to change that because you just think that this is who you are at your core. And there’s nothing you can do about it. That is what we call a limiting belief, because it limits you, it keeps you stuck, it keeps you small, it keeps you from making any kind of progress that keeps you from growing.

And a lot of times people choose those limiting types of behavior, life limiting types of beliefs, because it’s easier than actually doing the work of change, change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to do the work to change. But I’m telling you right now, if you can decondition yourself. And if you can change that default behavior, you are going to be a total badass, you can do anything that you want for yourself.

So really, what you have to do is you have to undo your conditioning. And it really starts with your mindset. Your mindset is your foundation, it’s the foundation that everything you want for yourself is built upon. Everything good that you want for yourself that you don’t already have, is built upon a solid foundation of the right mindset. With the right mindset, you can accomplish anything that you want.

The opposite is also true with the wrong mindset, it’s going to be very difficult to make any kind of progress to stick with anything to accomplish anything at all, it’s going to be very difficult with the wrong mindset. So we have to fix the mindset, struggling, suffering, this is just your mindset, this is something you are choosing, it may not seem like it, it may feel like it’s you know, just happening to you.

It may feel automatic, but I’m telling you, this is a state of being that you’re in that you are choosing. And you might be thinking, why would I choose this? Why would I choose a crappy mindset? Why do I choose a crappy state of being? Why would we do this? It sounds kind of ridiculous, right? But I see this every single day: people choosing the struggle, people choosing to suffer. Why?

Why would you do this? It feels terrible. It creates all sorts of negativity, it creates all sorts of stress in your life, it is very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable place to be. So why would you choose this? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because there’s another type of discomfort, the type of discomfort that comes with sticking to your plan no matter what. When you feel like eating a bunch of junk food and you don’t, that is very uncomfortable.

But that’s a different kind of discomfort. It’s the kind of discomfort that you’re not used to. It’s the kind of discomfort that is unfamiliar to you. The kind of discomfort you’re familiar with is the struggling in the suffering and the giving it that’s what you’re used to. That’s familiar to you. That’s your comfort zone. That sort of discomfort is in your comfort zone.

I know it sounds kind of weird, but it’s true. You’re used to that. It’s like putting on that warm cozy sweater in the winter, like, ooh, this feels good. Even though it makes you feel terrible. You’re choosing the struggling, you’re choosing the suffering because that level of that type of discomfort is something you’re familiar with.

Okay, so the other type of discomfort is the type where you have to stick to your food plan or stick to your exercise plan or go run outside even though it’s cold out. Those things feel uncomfortable, but in a different way in a way that you’re just not used to.

So here’s something I’m going to offer you: which one of these levels of discomfort do you want to focus on because you get to choose? Choose your discomfort. Choose how you want to struggle or suffer. What if you chose the discomfort of sticking to your plan no matter what. Ooh, now we’re getting somewhere right?

What if you put aside the discomfort of struggling and put aside the discomfort of suffering and just embrace the discomfort of sticking to the plan. What if you created a plan and then stuck to the plan no matter what even though it was uncomfortable? Right. This is a totally different mindset. This is a complete mindset shift that most people are not willing to even think about.

They’re not willing to even consider it because it doesn’t feel good. Now, first thing, and the most important thing is you have to have a plan. Most people don’t have a plan, they just wing it. Right? Most people wing it all the time. Well, you know, just figure it out later, I’ll figure it out. I’ll just, what am I going to eat for Thanksgiving? What am I going to eat for Christmas? What am I going to do about running? I’ll just figure it out later.

No, you have to have a plan. Have a plan. Plan your runs, plan your workouts, plan your meals. What does your running plan look like this week? What do your meals look like this week? What are you eating for dinner tomorrow? How are you handling that holiday party that’s coming up in a couple of weeks? When are you doing your strength training this week? What is your plan, plan everything and then stick to the plan no matter what.

And by the way, that’s it, that no matter what part that’s most important. The people I work with my clients, we make a plan. Every one of my clients has a plan, we put together a plan. That’s different. It’s different for everybody. Everybody’s plan is a little bit different. But we put together a personalized plan, and then we stick to the plan. And if they don’t stick to the plan, they have to tell me why I hold them accountable. And we talk through it, we decide how maybe next time we can do things differently.

How do we handle this situation better the next time it comes around, and then the next time that type of thing happens they do they handle it better, and it gets a little bit easier. And the more they stick to their plan, the more progress they make, the more confidence they build, the more they build that trust in themselves. And the more they build good habits. And they know that they can get through just about anything.

This is a big part of why coaching works so well, is because we’re creating a personalized plan and then helping you stick to the plan no matter what. And with this approach, there’s not much struggle, there’s not much suffering, and there’s really no giving in that maybe, maybe occasionally, and especially at the beginning, there’s a little bit of a, there’s a bit of a process of like committing to the change and then getting used to the change.

And again, it’s an uncomfortable process. Nobody does this perfectly. And it does happen occasionally where there might be some giving in. But we learn from the experience and we act differently next time. And over time, all of this just gets easier and easier. And the struggling, the suffering and the giving in become a thing of the past, it just doesn’t happen anymore. This is all about building new habits.

You have to build new habits, you have to do things that feel good to you that they may feel bad at the beginning, they may feel uncomfortable at the beginning. But eventually they will feel good to you. They should start to feel easy and effortless and feel sustainable for you. And there’s probably something you’ve never really experienced before because you either struggled, suffered or just gave in so you quit before the actual magic happened. Right?

So we’re getting into this season we’re getting in this holiday season, it’s can be a very tough time of the year for a lot of people, I get that. You know people deal with family issues. Maybe they’ve lost somebody, there’s some loneliness, there’s some stress, there’s anxiety, there’s financial issues and on and on.

Don’t add to the stress of the season because it’s, it’s already kind of stressful. Don’t add to that stress by going completely off the rails from a food and exercise standpoint. Make a plan and then stick to your plan no matter what. Stop it with all the struggling, stop it with the suffering. That mindset is not going to get you anywhere. And definitely stop giving in, don’t give in. Don’t quit. We keep going. Relentless forward progress, we keep moving forward.

And listen, if you want some help with this, I am absolutely here for you just go to my website runningleancoaching.com/apply and I’ll help you start the new year feeling good about yourself feeling confident and having made a bunch of progress towards your health and fitness goals. Instead of regretting everything you’ve done for the last 40 days and having to make up a bunch of ground. We don’t want to do that. Okay, so reach out to me, I’m here for you. 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.

150. Do You Have an Addictive Personality?

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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? →

Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 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.

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