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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Negative Self Talk

167. Reframing Failure

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Failure, or rather the fear of failure, is perhaps the biggest reason why you do not achieve the important things you want for yourself. People are so afraid of failure that oftentimes, they never …

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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 167 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, reframing failure. Sounds really dramatic, doesn’t it? And today we are reframing failure. But here’s the thing: failure, or the fear of failure, is one of the biggest reasons why you do not achieve the important things that you want for yourself.

People are so afraid of failure that oftentimes they just never even try anything. They decide ahead of time that failure is inevitable, so they quit before they even get started. The truth is, though, failure is always going to be part of the process. So instead of fearing failure and giving up, you need to reframe what failure actually means for you.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m gonna explain exactly how reframing failure can help you reach your goals, your weight loss goals and your running goals. But first, as a licensed sports nutritionist, I get asked a lot of questions about using nutrition to improve running performance.

And one of the most common questions I get is this, ‘what does fat adapted even mean?’ What does it mean to be fat adapted? And people think that being fat adapted means that you eat nothing but fat all day long. This is not about eating fat all day long. This is not about eating sticks of butter wrapped in bacon.

Okay, being fat adapted means you’ve adapted your body to burn fat to burn stored body fat as a steady source of fuel. And your own stored body fat is what we’re talking about being burned here, which is how you lose weight. So burning fat, we all know that if you want to lose weight, you got to burn fat, right?

So becoming a fat adapted runner is an amazing way of losing weight and improving your endurance. When you burn fat more efficiently, you lose weight, you have all day energy, your endurance improves, you can think more clearly your food cravings go away, you sleep better, you generally feel better. And this is just a partial list just for starters, okay?

Being a fat adapted runner means you are on your way to becoming the healthiest version of yourself. If you want to learn more about this, you can check out my unique weight loss coaching programs for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And you could apply to join the Running Lean coaching project where the project as always, is you.

Alright, let’s talk about reframing failure. So last week, on the podcast, I talked about overcoming your fear of success. And I got a lot of good feedback on that episode. So I thought this week, I would talk about the other side of that, the other side which is overcoming your fear of failure. And the key to overcoming your fear of failure is really reframing failure. What does failure really mean to you? What should it mean? How can we look at failure differently?

So first of all, let’s kind of talk about how failure kind of shows up in our lives. So a lot of times, we think of failure, you think of it as being like the end, I have failed, and therefore, this is the end, right? Have you ever tried something? And then it didn’t quite work out for you? And so then you said, Well, I failed and then you quit, right? That’s the way most of us look at failure.

It’s a negative thing. It’s bad. We shouldn’t ever do it. It should be avoided at all costs. And it is the end. But that’s not really a failure. So first of all, let’s look at how failure shows up. So fair, fear of failure can show up like this. Number one, it can be just never starting. So so many people are overcome by a fear of failing at something that they never try anything. They never start.

You know, I’ve talked to a lot of people who tell me that, you know, they want to lose weight, but they are so afraid that they’re going to fail again, that they won’t even try something something new, even though you know they say they’ve tried every thing, quote unquote, everything, they’ve never really had a coach helping them through the process, which can make a big difference and not for everybody, but for a lot of people can make a big difference.

But they’re so overcome by a fear of failure that they will not even try that they won’t try anything. Right. So never starting is one way that fear of failure really manifests and shows up in our lives. Another way that we fail, and I like to call this pre failing, this is where like, you might even get started with some things.

So you might make some progress toward your weight loss goal, let’s say, but then you have some sort of minor setback, and then you just start believing that you are destined to fail, and you start coming up with all the reasons why this time is going to be just like all the others. And I’ll probably end up quitting sometime in the future. I never stick to anything like this long term, this never really works out for me. And you end up pre-failing.

So you, you have maybe made a little bit of progress. But you’ve decided that failure is inevitable. And so you give up, right? So that’s pre failing. And then the most common way that failure shows up for people is they just quit like they give up. And this is the only true way that you fail. The only true definition of failure is quitting. Because if you don’t give up, if you don’t quit, you won’t fail.

People who never give up, people who just keep going, in spite of failing, will eventually succeed. Think about that for a second. If you don’t give up, you will eventually succeed. If you never quit, you can never truly fail. But so many people are so quick to quit stuff, like any minor setback, and they’re done. That’s it, check, please, I’m done with this.

Do not do that. Do not do that, don’t ever quit. I’m just telling you like, if you take nothing else away from this particular episode, do not quit. Because if you do not quit on yourself, you cannot fail. Another way that fear of failure shows up in our lives is giving up on what’s important to you. So you may have decided that for you. Losing weight is super important.

You know, you want to live longer, you want running to be easier. You want to be healthier, you want to be there for your kids, you want to be a good example to your kids. But then you start to maybe experience a little bit of a setback. Or maybe it’s harder than you think it is.

Because listen, losing weight is not easy, right? It can be a challenge. It can be tough to get through those first few months, especially. And it’s uncomfortable, the process is uncomfortable. And a lot of people can’t deal with that. And so they start to make these excuses for why they need to change, their why they need to change their minds around why they really want to do this.

So they’ll be like, well, actually, I don’t really need to lose 20 pounds, I’m fine being like 20 pounds overweight, nobody else really seems to mind. So it’s okay with me. I mean, I’ll probably live long enough anyway, it’s fine. I know. I said I wanted to be a good example to my kids. But there’s other role models for them like, nobody’s perfect anyway, like, you know, this is, maybe this issue isn’t meant to be like you just give up on these things that are that you’ve set are so important to you.

And here’s the funny thing, none of the stuff I’m talking about here is actually really failing. This is all just stuff we do based on our fear of failure. This is just stuff we do. Because we think that we might fail sometime in the future. Or we try something that doesn’t really work. And so we fail. Right?

So when we actually think about this, the first thing we need to do is really reframe this whole conversation. We need to develop a keen sense of awareness around when your fear of failure starts to show up, right? It’s usually a lot of head chatter. And in your mind, it can sound like justification. You try to justify your behavior. It’s excuses. Oh, you know, I can’t do this because of XYZ. It’s stories. It’s blaming other people. It’s blaming your circumstances.

And all this head chatter can lead to never starting or quitting or giving up on those big reasons why these goals were important to you in the first place. And this is all just negative self-talk, right, it’s typically a deep seated belief that you will fail. A deep seated belief that you cannot lose weight, or you cannot run faster, or whatever you want for yourself. And we call these limiting beliefs. A limiting belief is a belief that you have, and you believe to be true, that isn’t actually serving you.

In fact, it’s a belief that limits your potential. We all have limiting beliefs, but we need to see them for what they really are. And they’re really just fears, they’re fears of, I’m afraid, I won’t be able to do this, I’m afraid I won’t be able to lose weight, I’m afraid I’ll fail again. And so firmly believing I can’t do it means that you don’t have to actually start and then you don’t have to suffer that inevitable failure that thinks gonna happen in the future. So get rid of these limiting beliefs, stop the head chatter.

And we got to start reframing all of this, because start reframing what all of this means, okay. And by the way, the three biggest reasons why people don’t achieve their goals, fear of failure, fear of success, which I talked about last week on the podcast. So if you haven’t listened to that one yet, definitely check that one out. And then the third one is the fear of being criticized or judged, which I’m going to talk about next week.

These are the three biggest things that come up when people set out to do something big. And it’s all just a bunch of BS. And it’s all just stuff that we need to reframe, and we need to rethink, okay. So when you see this fear, fear of failure, when you see this head chatter start to happen, when these negative thoughts come into your mind, when the negative self talk starts to happen. When you notice your fear of failure is keeping you from starting something, or making you feel like quitting. Or when your fear of failure is making you give up on your hopes and dreams. And you start justifying staying where you are staying small, you got to be really aware of all that stuff.

Be ultra aware when these things are happening to you. Don’t let this stuff get in your way. Don’t let this stuff stop you from making progress. Don’t let this stuff stop you from getting started. Don’t let this stuff keep you from continuing like don’t let it make you quit. Because once you stop letting your fear of failure get in the way then you can start taking aligned action. Start doing things you can change your behavior, you can do things that’ll start moving you forward.

Aligned action is anything that you do that helps move you towards a goal. If your goal is to lose weight, aligned action might be cutting out sugar, and grains and seed oils. Goal is to run faster, aligned action might be doing speed work twice a week. And aligned action could be things you don’t do, too like, maybe if your goal is to lose weight aligned action might be like say no to the Girl Scouts, when they come to your door selling their delicious cookies. They’re evil, those little girls with their green uniforms. You know what I mean? So hard to say no. They’re so cute.

But if that’s not what you want for yourself, then you have to like take that action of like, oh, no, thank you. I’m good. Right? Hard to do. But that’s what aligned action looks like, right. And once you start taking aligned action, this is where you start making progress toward a goal. You can’t make progress without taking action, right? You can’t get results without doing something.

But inevitably, something will happen. And you will experience what we call failure. Okay, cool. Failure comes in many forms. When you start taking aligned action, you start doing something to move towards a goal, you set a plan and you start working the plan, failure can come in a lot of different ways. You might go off your food plan, you might eat the Girl Scout cookies, fine, no big deal. You might gain some weight, you know, you’re on this journey to lose weight.

First of all, nobody that I know of ever loses weight exactly like one pound a week or two pounds a week or something like that just doesn’t really happen. It always goes up and down. You have to just expect that as part of the process. So you might gain some weight, okay, big deal. Or maybe you’ve been training for a marathon PR, and then that race comes up and maybe you just miss it by a minute. Right? All of these things can look like failure.

Maybe you want to hit the gym three times a week you’re trying to get stronger and you want to lift weights and you want to be consistent with that and you just haven’t been consistent. You keep missing days you’re sleeping in or you don’t feel like it. All these things can look like and feel like failure, you gain weight, you miss your PR, you didn’t, you know, do what you said you were going to do hitting the gym.

But you know what? None of this is actually failure. You just think it is you’re looking at it as failure. This is where we have to reframe all these situations. Reframing failure means not thinking that some setback or some disappointment is the end and an excuse to quit. You didn’t fail. You did not fail. The only thing the only way you can possibly fail is if you quit. If you give up, yes, then you have failed.

But trying and failing and then trying again is not true failing. So instead of seeing these things as the end, you have to see them as stepping stones on your way to succeeding. Failure is a part of the process. Every success is built upon a pile of failures, you cannot succeed at anything without experiencing some failures along the way, it just doesn’t happen.

Michael Jordan is famously quoted as saying this, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and I missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Babe Ruth was known as the homerun king. And I did not know this. But he was also known as the strikeout king. In 1923, Babe Ruth broke the record for the most homeruns in a season. It was amazing, right? That same year, he also broke the record for having the highest batting average of anybody ever, in Major League Baseball, crazy.

The third record he broke that year, and most people don’t know this, I didn’t know this, was in 1923. He also had more strikeouts than any other player in Major League Baseball, you fail your way to success, there’s no other way to do it. If you’re afraid to fail, you will always fail.

The alternative is to reframe failure, you’ve got to look at failure as the only way to succeed at anything and everything. Failure has to be an option. There’s this quote, failure isn’t an option. I think this is a stupid quote. Because you know what, if failure isn’t an option, then success isn’t an option, either. You have to embrace the idea of failing, if you want to succeed at anything.

I talk to people all the time who, you know, maybe struggle with their weight. And they fail a lot. Things don’t go as planned. They give into an urge or craving. You know, they can’t say no to the Girl Scouts. The scale doesn’t go the way they want it to. And sometimes they feel like a failure. And we talk through this and we work through it all. But at the heart of the matter.

There’s this idea that failure is bad, and failure should be avoided. But this is not true. Failure is neither good nor bad. Actually, if I was to pick one or the other, I would say failure is actually a good thing. Failure is part of the process. Failure is what it takes to reach your goal. The only way you can reach a goal is if you fail your way to that goal. The only way to figure out what works is by trying things, figuring out what doesn’t work.

Thomas Edison tried like 10,000 different ways to get the light bulb working. And somebody once asked him like if all that failure, all that failing was just like a big waste of time? And he said I have not failed 10,000 times. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work. I love that. Because this is exactly what I’m talking about here. This is exactly what reframing failure looks like.

Failure is not the end. Failure’s not bad, failure’s not a problem. Failure’s part of the process. So the most important thing here is that you have to learn from your failures. Thomas Edison learned what doesn’t work. Michael Jordan learned what doesn’t work, Babe Ruth, learned what doesn’t work.

When you try different foods and your weight goes up, you just learned something. Hey, this doesn’t work for me. I can’t eat a large pizza by myself and then expect to keep losing weight. Okay, I can’t eat a whole box of Tagalongs by myself and then expect to lose weight, right?

So you have to ask yourself when you fail, or when you have a setback or something happens, a disappointment, you let yourself down, whatever. What’s the lesson here? What do I need to learn from this? What am I going to do differently next time?

So the biggest reframe of failures, this failure is just feedback. It’s an opportunity for you to learn and grow. You don’t learn from your successes, you learn from your mistakes. I hate that it works that way, but that’s the way it works. Success is a terrible teacher, failure is the only way you learn.

Right now I’m learning something, I’m training for an Ultra. This is a self supported 12 hour event that I’m doing completely on my own, never done a timed event like this before. And just thinking about running for 12 hours brings up all kinds of fear of failure. What if I can’t finish? And there’s a good chance that maybe I won’t, that’s a long time to run, right?

What if I get injured, I’m coming off of a knee injury from last year, there’s a real possibility that that could flare up again, especially during all this training. That’s a real possibility. It’d be easy for me to just justify not doing this, I could just easily say like, you know what, this, maybe maybe I shouldn’t do it. I don’t want to hurt myself. It’s a lot of work, a lot of training, I could really give up on this goal.

So I’ve been doing a lot of training. I’m really ramping up my mileage now. And I’m getting somewhere around 45-50 miles a week right now. And that’s going to increase to 60-65 miles a week. But right now my running has been pretty good. But I’ve had some pretty crappy runs. I did a 12 miler last week and felt completely terrible. Wasn’t a long run, but it just felt terrible.

Like what’s going on here? I did a 17 miler the week before and it felt amazing. So it’d be really easy to look at this bad run as like a failure and like a reason to quit training. I could look at it as evidence that I’m not cut out for this, like, proof that I can’t do this. But I’m not doing that. I choose not to do that. Instead, I’m looking at this bad run as an opportunity to learn something.

What do I need to do differently from a fueling perspective? What did I eat the night before? What did I eat that morning, did I eat anything? How did I fuel during the run? What did my hydration look like? Do I need to drink more water, less water and more electrolytes? How was my heart rate? Can I keep it lower? Well, how was my pacing? Maybe I started too fast. What was the terrain like? Was it flat, was it hilly, could I even cut my effort on the hills like all of this is great feedback, right? It’s good info.

And I wouldn’t consider any of this unless I had a crappy run, and essentially had to look at this failure. And now I can learn something from it. Another way that I failed is like when I first started out at getting fat adapted, I was trying an approach that really wasn’t working, I didn’t really understand what I was doing at the time, I was new to all this.

And it was taking a long time for running to feel good again, like eight weeks, and I still wasn’t where I wanted to be like running was still really hard. And this is not normal. It should only take like one to three weeks, right? And you’re good to go. But I didn’t really know what I was doing. I do now, but at the time, I was eating a lot of carbs during that process.

And now I know that that approach doesn’t work. But at the time, I really didn’t have any idea. I wasn’t tracking how much I was eating, I was just kind of guessing. And this is like, I had to just fail my way to success. I had to fail my way and figure out what actually did work for me, right.

So another chance for me to learn something but I didn’t quit. I just kept going. I tried something, it didn’t work. I tried something else, it worked. But you’ve got to keep going. So here’s your work. Stop being afraid to fail. Don’t let your fear of failure prevent you from getting started. Don’t let your fear of failure drive you to giving up on yourself and start looking at failure as essential to achieving any goal.

Yeah, remember, it’s just part of the process. So don’t try to avoid failure. instead embrace it, because it’s the only way you’re actually going to succeed at anything. And then lastly, remember, failure is just feedback. Learn from your mistakes. What are the lessons you need to learn from this? And then change something course correct. And move on. Try something else.

Rinse and repeat this whole process until you succeed. Because the only way you really fail is if you quit so never ever, ever, ever, ever quit. The people who succeed are the people who never give up. Period. 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 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 that 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 Running Lean podcast.com forward slash lean for life 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 …

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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 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.

120. How to Fail Properly

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Failure. It’s such a negative word, isn’t it? What do you think of when you hear the word “failure”? If you’re like most people, you probably think of something you tried but were not …

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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 120 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today how to fail properly. Failure. It’s such a negative word, isn’t it? What do you think of when you hear the word failure?

If you’re anything like most people, you probably think of something you tried, but then were not successful. It didn’t work, you failed. And then it brings up all these feelings like disappointment, regret, and defeat. failure means you’ve been defeated, you lost it’s over the end, right?

But what if there was a totally different way to think about failure? What would it look like if you learned how to fail properly. And that’s what I’m talking about here on the podcast today. So get ready to learn a whole new way to look at failure, what failing means and how to fail properly.

And before I get into this topic, today, I wanted to share a quick story about someone I’m working with. This person came to me as a runner, wanting to lose weight around 20 pounds or so. And he had tried everything on his own and just couldn’t do it. And in the five weeks that we’ve been working together, he’s lost over 14 pounds. And that’s a lot of weight. And it’s not really uncommon.

Okay, it’s well, within the range of average weight loss of like one to three pounds per week seems to be pretty average for most people that I work with. The reason I bring this up is because of something he said to me on our call the other day. And I’m paraphrasing here, I didn’t you know, write down everything exactly, as he said.

But he basically said, ‘You know, I’m super happy with this weight loss, I haven’t been this weight and over 30 years, I feel so good. I’m getting stronger running is getting easier every day. But the thing that surprised me the most is all the stuff I’m learning about myself. I’ve really changed my mindset about food and exercise and running and everything. And I’m feeling so much better about myself, I don’t have all those intense cravings to eat junk food anymore, I’m feeling much more confident, I’m standing taller and carrying myself better.’

And I just want to say that I’m so proud of this person for doing the work. Because this is not easy stuff to do. Not everyone is willing to commit, not everyone is willing to put in the effort and actually show up and do this work every day. Not everybody sticks to their plan. But when you do, that’s when the good stuff happens. It does work if you show up and do the work.

So if you’d like to experience the same kind of results, then I want to invite you to apply for coaching with me. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. When you get on that page, you can fill out a short application and then schedule a free zoom call with me and we’ll talk about your goals.

And we’ll talk about how coaching works and how coaching can help you reach those goals. I would love for you to experience these same kinds of changes for yourself. If you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes for mindset shifts, and you’re ready to get some sustainable results. Then I think you’re ready for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.

Alright, let’s talk about how to fail properly. So why am I bringing this up today? Well, I work with a lot of people and sometimes I see people that experience a failure of some sort and then give up. I’ve seen some examples of this lately, where someone has embarked on their weight loss journey and maybe experienced some sort of a failure or a setback.

You know, maybe they hit a stall like so their weight. They were losing weight pretty steadily but then their weight loss sort of stalled out. They hit what’s called a plateau which is super common. In fact, I’ve almost never seen it not happen or maybe they’ve gained a couple of pounds back.

And so they start slipping back into old behaviors. And the reason people do this is because they get frustrated. And when you get frustrated, what do you do, you want to go eat some food to feel better, right? But what happens internally is these, some people like they tell themselves, I have failed, I am a failure, this program, this diet, this food plan, whatever it is, isn’t working. So they quit. They give up, they see failure as the end.

And this is not some fringe thing. I see this all the time, mostly not from my clients, to be honest with you. Because if you’re one of my clients, if you’re one of the members of my program, you’re not allowed to quit. And I’ll talk more about this later. But I see it’s super common in the weight loss industry in general, in the health and fitness industry in general.

My training coach, and I, my weightlifting coach, and I were talking about this the other day, he sees a lot of times with people who are, you know, wanting to get fit. And so they start lifting weights, and they start getting healthier. And then, you know, maybe they just kind of stall out or they have a bad workout, or they’ve experienced some sort of a setback, maybe they get sick, and then they just quit, they just stopped coming back to the gym, they just give up.

So I’m going to go so far as to say that here in the Western world, this is kind of an epidemic. All right, I think that we’re taught at an early age, that the worst possible thing that we can do is to fail at something, you know, you better do well, in third grade, or you’ll fail, and we’re gonna hold you back. And this means that you don’t measure up, you’re not good enough, you are a failure.

And a little sidebar here, I think we need to do a better job of teaching kids that failure is not the end, it’s just part of the process of learning. I don’t think this whole grading system and failing kids and things like that is really working very well, I think it just puts a lot of pressure on kids, kids are filled with fear and anxiety about failure, and I think there’s a better way to do it. But that’s for another topic.

But we as adults need to understand the same thing. We need to understand that failure is just part of how we learn and how we grow, how we evolve, and how we become more. But we get it in our heads that failure is the end. So even as old wise adults, we need to learn how to fail properly because we never have. So that’s what we’re talking about here today.

So let’s get into this a little bit like what is failure? Exactly. If you look up the dictionary definition of failure, it says: an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful, lack of success, that’s all it means is lack of success. And I always add the phrase “for now” at the end of that. So failure to me is a lack of success right now.

Doesn’t mean lack of success forever, it just means that whatever you’re doing didn’t work big up. Notice it doesn’t say a lack of success forever. And it’s the end of your journey. It’s not the end. One story I love about failure is the story of Stephen King.

So Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. And I remember in high school and after high school reading, just like every one of his books, you know, I was kind of hooked on Stephen King at the time. And I love that kind of writing. Now you may not enjoy his particular style of writing or his subject matter, you know, kind of gruesome and horror-type stuff, but I enjoy it.

I think it’s really fun to just get lost in these crazy, supernatural stories. But anyway, the first manuscript that he wrote was Carrie, and he submitted this to publishers trying to get this book published, right. And he took it to like 30 different publishers and was rejected every time he was rejected over 30 times for this manuscript of Carrie.

One of the rejection letters that he received said, we are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias, they do not sell. And he eventually took that manuscript and threw it in the garbage. He was like, this is the end screw it. I’m not going to keep trying. I’ve tried 30 times and failed 30 times.

But his wife convinced him to try again and she like, dug it out of the garbage, I guess. And he was, you know, he resigned himself to just keep trying. And he did. And of course, he eventually sold it. And he’s become one of the most popular and successful writers of our time. To date, he’s the only author to have over 30 books become number one bestsellers. That’s crazy.

But what if he gave up? What if, after one of those failures, or 9 or 21 of those failures, he just said, you know, screw it, I’m not doing this anymore, and just quit writing, he would never experience the kind of success he did. So I love that story of failure, it does not mean it’s the end, it just means it’s the end for now.

And I like to use this analogy of failure as like, imagine yourself being an airplane pilot, and you’re flying a commercial airliner from LA to New York. So you plot your course and you take off and everything’s looking good. And you’re flying through the air, everything’s like smooth sailing, but then you like, realize there’s this big storm ahead, you know, a huge storm.

And you’d have to make a decision of what you’re gonna do. Do you just quit? Do you like land the plane and say, sorry, there’s a storm in our way. There’s a big obstacle in our path we just can’t go on? Or do you go around it? You know, it’s going to take longer, you know, it’s not the way it was supposed to go. Things are not going according to plan, but you’re going to make it work, right?

Obviously, you’re going to make it work. You’re just gonna go around the storm, you keep going, right. But what if there was like a mechanical issue with the plane, you had to land it? Okay, now, you’re really off track, you had to actually take the time, you have to land somewhere, you got to sit there and wait for them to check it out. You know? So do you just quit? Do you just give up in that moment?

No, you just keep going. Obviously, as long as there’s nothing terribly wrong, you know, as long as the mechanics check it out, and the plane looks good. Then you get back on it, right, you just get back on track. These failures along the way, though, we look at our own failures as the end like it’s an excuse to give up.

And if you were that pilot, you would never give up, you would just continue, you got a plane full of people, you got to get them safely to their destination, right? Think about your health and fitness journey, your weight loss journey, you want to get to that destination. And so you have to experience a little bit of turbulence, a little bit of rough weather, just expect that on the path. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean it’s the end, it just means that it’s a setback. It’s a detour. All right.

So one thing I love about runners is that they’re already really good at doing this, like you guys, you guys are amazing at experiencing failures in your training. When you’re training for a marathon, you know, you got this 16,18, 20 weeks of training. And I see people all the time experience failures and setbacks and disappointments, you know, you might get injured, and you have to take some time off of running to nurse an injury.

Or maybe you have to travel for work or vacation. And it’s the same week, you’re supposed to be doing like a 20 miler. And so what do you do in those situations? Or maybe you get sick, this has been happening a lot, right? Over the last couple of years, you get sick, and you have to take time off? You know, do you quit?

No, you don’t you keep going and you like you get back at it. As soon as you can you get just pick up where you left off with your training plan, right? You keep training because you have this goal, and it’s important to you to finish that marathon, that’s a priority. And whether you’re traveling or if you’re sick or injured, none of these things are going to derail you from accomplishing that goal, right?

You probably paid for the race. So you have some skin in the game, which helps to drive you forward as well. Right? You’re focused, you’re determined, and you’re not going to allow these failures to stop you. You’re laser-focused on hitting this goal of finishing this marathon, you’re gonna finish that no matter what. Right, that’s amazing, you know, character trait, to have that sort of tenacity to just keep going no matter what.

And it’s really the same with your weight loss journey. But here’s the thing, I see runners all the time who can do this with their running plan, they might get injured, and they just, they do all their physical therapy and they, you know, get back on track, and then they finish that marathon like they are focused on completing that task and that goal.

But when it comes to losing weight, I see people experience some minor setbacks like hey, their weight stayed the same for a couple of weeks in a row and then give up. Like, what if you were as laser-focused on your weight loss as you know, health and fitness goals as you were on finishing that marathon?

What if you never let some little failures along the way stop you from continuing on? What if you took that same all-in attitude about your marathon training, and applied it to losing weight and becoming the most badass version of yourself? What would that look like for you? Would you look at failure differently? What would you do the next time you experienced that weight loss stall or plateau?

Or maybe you gave into a temptation to eat some junk food? Would this mean you can’t do it? And you give up and you just declare this doesn’t work and go back to doing whatever you’ve been doing? Which already, you know, that doesn’t work? I know, it sounds kind of crazy. The way I’m explaining it here, you’re probably thinking to yourself, like, oh, no, of course, I wouldn’t do that.

But this is exactly the thing I see people do all the time. You know, I’ve even talked to people who said they had their diet all dialed in years ago. Like they never felt better. I was at my goal weight. Running was awesome. Everything was amazing. I was eating all this amazing food. But then something happened, something seemed like it wasn’t working. And they gave up.

They experienced some sort of a setback, some sort of a failure, and they quit. And they went back to doing whatever they were used to doing before, which got them kind of overweight in the first place, and blah, blah, blah. I really wished this was an uncommon story. I really wish this was like the exception, but it’s not a people tell me this all the time.

So instead of avoiding failure at all costs, instead of giving up when you experience failure, you have to expect failure. What would that look like for you? Like ehat would it look like if you just expected to fail? I know it sounds like a kind of a crazy concept, right? What if you just expected there to be some turbulence along the way?

What if you just expected to have to, you know, lay in the plane to fix a stabilizer flap. I clearly don’t know much about airplanes. But whatever thing you would need to fix on a plane. Like what if you expected a weight-loss stall or a plateau? And what if you just expected your weight loss journey to take a little bit longer?

Failure is not to be avoided, failure is inevitable, you will fail. So why not embrace it, deal with it, learn from it, and then keep going. You cannot spend all your time trying to avoid failure. If you do, you will never try anything hard, you will never push yourself to accomplish anything more. You won’t ever get out of your comfort zone.

Because when you avoid failure, it keeps you in that comfort zone. But it also keeps you stuck and keeps you small and keeps you from growing and becoming more expected and embracing failure has the opposite effect. It gets you out of your comfort zone and drives you forward toward your goals. It’s how you evolve and grow and become more it’s how you accomplish hard things like losing 20, 30, 50 pounds.

You have to look at failures as stepping stones along your path. If when you fail, it is not the end, every one of these failures you experience is just one more step on the path to your eventual success. So each time you fail, it becomes one more step closer to your goal. And each failure is a chance to learn something. This is the important part of failing you have to learn the lesson from the failure.

You have to learn what works and what doesn’t. And the only way you learn this is by failing because success doesn’t teach you anything. So each failure actually becomes necessary in order to reach your goal. Each failure is one step closer to that goal. So you try something you fail. You learn something, you course correct, then you try again. Boom. Now you’re one step closer to your goal.

Every success is built upon a pile of failures. And no one does anything challenging perfectly. There’s no such thing as success without setbacks and failures along the way. So just expect them to be there. Embrace the failures. If you look at failures, in the end you’re gonna be quitting a lot. You’re gonna be quitting everything you ever start.

Are you the kind of person that quits things a lot? it’s probably because you look at failures, the end, failure is never the end, it’s just another step closer to becoming who you really want to be. So when you embrace failure, this means that you’re going to try things that might not work. And this is a scary thing for a lot of people.

Well, what if it doesn’t work? Who cares? A lot of people just use this as an excuse to quit or not even start something, because what they’re gonna do, you know, what they’re setting out to do is hard, it’s uncomfortable. And I get that doing this work. Like if you’re losing weight, if you want to lose weight and become a leaner, stronger runner, this is not an easy thing to do.

This takes some time, it takes some time to build new habits, it takes some time to learn what works for you. If it was easy, none of us would be overweight, none of us would need help with staying on track. You know, nobody would ever slip into old habits, again, like this would be simple, but it’s not. It’s, it’s it takes some work, I get that right.

In order to change your habits, you have to do things that feel uncomfortable, right? At least at first, once you do things for a while, it gets more comfortable, it gets easier, and all that. But at first, especially it doesn’t feel good. And so a lot of people just use failure as an excuse to quit. So they’re just chasing, they’re chasing after comfort and security, at the cost of their goals, they really want for themselves.

They don’t want to feel uncomfortable. They don’t want to do anything hard. They want more for themselves. But they don’t want to put the time and effort into reaching some people like they don’t want to put the actual effort into doing it. They don’t want to experience the discomfort that is required to reach that goal.

So it’s way easier to just say, you know, this failed, and go back to being comfortable and safe and small and doing all the stuff you used to do. And that’s fine if that’s what you want for yourself. But you’re listening to this podcast right now, I don’t think that’s what you want for yourself.

The people that listen to this podcast, I know you want more for yourself. Like I was saying earlier, this whole idea of like staying small and comfortable, and not wanting to get uncomfortable. I think this is an epidemic. This is like the disease of modern society, at least in the Western world.

Chasing after comfort. Avoiding discomfort at all costs, and avoiding failure at all costs has caused us to become weak and soft and small. And staying safe, and uncomfortable just keeps us from evolving, right? If you want to become badass, you got to embrace discomfort, you got to embrace failure as often as you can, and you got to do stuff that might not work.

Change your diet, sign up for an ultra marathon, start lifting some heavy-ass weights, guess what, you’re gonna try these things. And you might fail, you probably will fail, Big whoop. Learn from it. Try something else and try it again. Do not give up on yourself just to be comfortable. Because I know you’re capable of so much more.

You may not believe that about yourself. But I know that about you, you’re capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for. Most of us are only living up to about 40% of our actual potential increase that goes beyond 40%.

And the last thing I want to say about all this is probably one of the most important things that I want you to take away from this episode. And that is that any time you fail, and if you’re following my lead here, and you’re kind of doing what I’m suggesting here, you will fail maybe a lot.

Anytime you fail, it does not mean anything about you, it does not mean that you are a failure. When you try something and fail, it’s really easy to fall into that trap of thinking that you are a failure. feeling like a failure is really caused by a lot of negative thinking. And if you feel like you’re a failure, that’s an internal state caused by your thoughts about what this failure means about you.

So feeling like a failure is just an emotional state that you’re in. And emotional states are just caused by your thoughts. Okay. So just know that you are never a failure. The reason you feel this way is just you’re projecting that onto yourself. You are an amazing human being. You’re capable of greatness. You are perfect just the way you are right now. Yeah, you can still work to change yourself but that does not mean that you are a failure just because you tried something and it didn’t work does not mean that you are a failure.

You analyze your results. You try something else. And you see if that works, but you are never a failure. Do things that are hard, try things that may not work, fail, fail often fail fast. But none of this means anything about you as a person, it does not mean that you are a failure. You’re amazing.

So, your call to action this week, what I want you to do, is I want you to allow failure. Allow it to become part of your health and fitness journey. Allow it to become part of your weight loss journey. Try things that may not work. Get out of your comfort zone. Stop expecting your life to be failure-free and there’s no such thing as a failure-free life. So embrace failure.

Try something hard fail, learn from it course correct, then keep going. Rinse and repeat until you hit your goal. Cool. And remember, if you’re ready to make realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and get sustainable results. Then you’re ready for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

115. Overcoming Weight Loss Fears and Insecurities

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When you set out to reach big goals like losing weight and getting fit, you will eventually come face-to-face with all your fears and insecurities. Even just thinking about changing your diet can …

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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 115 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today overcoming weight loss fears and insecurities.

So when it comes to reaching big goals, like losing weight and getting fit, you will eventually come face to face with a bunch of fears and insecurities it’s going to happen. Even just thinking about changing your diet can get you feeling pretty anxious, right?

You might even just say like no thanks to the whole idea. So you don’t have to deal with all the negative stuff that’s bound to come up when you engage in this process.

But I want to offer another approach, I want you to think about what it would feel like to actually deal with all those fears and insecurities instead of trying to avoid them. In this episode, I’m spending some time talking about overcoming these weight loss fears and insecurities.

This is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately. And it’s a very powerful thing. It’s a very powerful skill that you can learn if you’re willing to do the work and face your fears head-on.

But first, I wanted to give you a heads up about something cool that’s coming up here. Next week, I am teaching a live workshop, it’s all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner, it’s called five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner.

This will be the most informative and one of the most comprehensive live workshops that I’ve ever taught. I don’t do this kind of thing very often. But I was feeling pretty excited about this topic, and I wanted to share it with you guys.

And I thought, you know, instead of doing a podcast about this, I wanted to teach it live, there’s this real energy when we all get together when we can ask questions, and there’s that interaction. And so it’s gonna be fun, we’re gonna have a good time doing this.

Okay, you’re going to learn how to get leaner, how to become stronger, and how to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet, that is the goal. That’s what I want you to walk away from, with this workshop.

To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop. And it’s next Thursday, the 17th at 8 pm Eastern time. Now I’m going to be doing this a couple more times. I’ll give you more updates on that later.

I can’t really schedule those just yet just because of the whatever scheduling software that I’m using and things like that. So as soon as this one is over, I’ll let you know about that other one that’s coming up, the next one that’s coming up.

So if you can’t make it on the 17th, no worries, I’m gonna give you a couple more opportunities. Cool. If I didn’t mention it, this is free and fun. We’re gonna have fun together. Okay. So to sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I hope to see you there.

Alright, let’s get into this topic of overcoming weight loss fears and insecurities. This is something that has been on my mind lately, it’s something that I really wanted to take a deep dive into.

Because it’s one of those topics that comes up for every single person, every single person that I work with has this issue come up where they have to deal with the fears and insecurities around their own weight loss journey, whether they can do it or not, you know, whether they have failed in the past or not and all this stuff comes up.

But it’s one of those things that we don’t want to talk about. It’s one of those things we just want to pretend isn’t there. And so what a lot of people do is, you know, they set out to do something like lose weight, you know, they set out to like, make a big lifestyle change like this.

And then all this stuff starts coming up and they just want to avoid it. So it kind of looks like this. Like, let’s say you make a decision that you want to lose some weight. And you embark on some sort of weight loss plan. Like you join a group program, you hire a coach, you know, whatever.

As soon as you decide to make a big change like this, then commit to making that change. That’s when things are gonna start to get all scary for you. Just thinking about changing your diet like making some permanent lifestyle changes, just thinking about it can put you into freakout mode, right?

I want you to know something. There’s nothing wrong with you if this has happened to you or if it’s happening to you right now, this is super normal. It’s just your brain, your brain doing what it does best. It’s trying to keep you safe. It’s trying to keep you comfortable. It’s trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

So I want you to do this experiment right now, I just want you to think about this. Think about changing your diet, think about what it would take to lose those 30 pounds or 20 pounds or 50 pounds or whatever it is.

Are you starting to freak out a little bit right now is your heart starting to race orare your palms sweating? If they are, again, this is totally normal. What’s happening here, just thinking about this is starting to put you outside of your comfort zone.

And this idea of getting outside your comfort zone in order to grow in order to become more. Your brain does not like this idea. Your brain wants to keep you safe. That’s what your brain’s job is.

Your brain is sensing something unfamiliar here. It’s sensing something uncomfortable here. It’s sensing something dangerous. It’s not really dangerous. But it feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable. And so your brain is like, get me out of here, and you go into that freakout mode.

This is why most people just don’t ever start. They never even take on the challenge of you know trying to lose weight or get stronger, get fitter, get leaner run faster, whatever it is. Because just thinking about it seems overwhelming, it seems too hard.

You start to have all these fears and insecurities come bubbling up to the surface, you go into freakout mode, and you’re like, haha, I don’t want anything to do with that. So you just stay where you are.

But when you start to make these uncomfortable changes, when you actually start to do this stuff, your brain senses the danger. And then these fears and insecurities are going to start to come up to the surface, okay? And your thoughts and your feelings are going to come up stuff like, this is going to be so hard.

‘I don’t know if I can do this. I’m going to be hungry all the time. What if this doesn’t work for me? I mean, this never worked for me in the past? Well, what’s gonna be different this time? What if I can’t make it last, right? What if I can’t sustain this? What if it’s not something I can do forever? What if I gain the weight back? I’ve never been able to do this before, it’s always been hard for me. I know I’m going to fail. People are going to judge me, I’m going to lose friends over this.’

And on and on and on. Like, we can just go into this mode of like, thinking about all the insecurities and all the fears and all the anxiety that we have around this topic of wanting to get healthy and do something good for ourselves. And all these thoughts begin to dominate your brain.

And honestly, this is why most people just won’t even start there. It’s just too much for them. There’s too much fear and insecurity there. And the funny thing is they haven’t even done anything yet they haven’t even started.

You’re just like thinking about this and all this stuff comes up. Okay, they haven’t even actually begun the work, they haven’t started changing their habits, they haven’t done anything differently other than just like had these thoughts. So you can see how detrimental this can be for you. Right.

So I’m going to talk about this in two ways. What I’m talking about right now, this is like part one of this because before you even begin the process before you even embark on your weight loss journey before you actually start making any changes, all this stuff’s gonna come up for you.

Right, just thinking about it, all this stuff’s gonna come up for you. So this is kind of like the first part of this, okay? The negative thoughts will come up to the surface, and they can just completely stop you in your tracks, they can keep you from doing anything at all keep you from taking any action keep you from making any progress keep you from ever embarking on this journey.

It’s kind of like, hey, I talk to people all the time who are like, I’d love to run a marathon someday, but I’m too afraid it’s gonna be too hard. The training’s going to be hard, I’ve never been able to run that far before. I just don’t know.

And so they just say, you know, maybe that’s just not for me, and they just don’t do it. Deep down inside, they want that for themselves. But all this stuff is coming up. Before they even get into it.

They haven’t even looked at a training plan. They haven’t started doing the work to start training for a marathon. And they’re already like, convinced they can’t do it. This is what I call pre-failing, right? You’re pre-failing, you’re failing ahead of time. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Okay.

But this stuff just like thinking about it is going to bring up all this stuff. And you know whether or not you can lose weight, how hard it’s going to be all that. All those thoughts are going to come up. And you’ve got to be careful not to get mired down by all that stuff. It’s just a bunch of negative self-talk, right?

You have to override your brain’s natural functions, you have to override your brain’s default behavior here, right, you’re going to experience some of those thoughts, you’re going to experience some of that fear and some of those insecurities.

But that does not mean you don’t start. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You can. You have to feel the fear and do it anyway. You have to understand that in order to make big changes, like to your health and fitness, you’re going to get uncomfortable, it’s going to be uncomfortable, you’re going to have to embrace the suck, okay.

And this is what it means to override your brain’s default functioning, right, you’re still going to have the fears, you’re still gonna have these insecurities. But you move forward anyway. And this takes courage, and it takes determination and discipline.

But this is the work that you have to do if you want more for yourself. And remember, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is having the fear, doing the thing anyway, and showing up. Think about a warrior going into battle.

The warrior going into battle is not lacking fear, they have the fear. But they put on their armor, they grab their shield and their sword, and they head into the melee. They embrace the discomfort, they embrace the fear, they do it anyway. It’s not a lack of fear. It’s action in the face of fear. That’s what courage is.

Okay, so part one is all the stuff that’s going to come up when you just start thinking about this right. And before you even get started.

Part two of this process is all the stuff that actually comes up when you stop using food as an emotional management tool. Because when you’re using food, to avoid feeling negative emotions, as soon as you stop doing that, all those negative emotions are going to be right there. Yay.

So all the fear and the stress and the anxiety and the anger and the frustration and all that stuff that you’ve been avoiding. By eating food, now you got to deal with all that stuff. So this is kind of part two of this when you start changing your diet, and you start and you stop using food as a way of coping with life and with stress and with feelings and sadness, and loneliness, or whatever it is you’re experiencing.

When you stop doing that, all that stuff’s gonna come up for you. Okay? All of those same, like negative self-talk, things are going to come up for you except now, you’re not using food as a way of stuffing that down. You’re not using food as a way of dealing with those difficult emotions. So now you’ve got to start feeling your feelings.

And if you’ve never done this before, I’m going to tell you right now, you are not going to like it. Isn’t that awesome? Most people do not like feeling their emotions, not the difficult ones anyway, people don’t mind feeling happy and joyful, excited and loved and stuff like that.

But the negative emotions, the ones that we label as negative like anger, sadness, grief, loneliness, hurt, stress, boredom, are all emotions that we experience, people do not like to feel those things. So what do they eat instead? You know, and some people drink.

Some people just scroll through Instagram mindlessly for hours on end. Some people drink alcohol, some people shop, we do all these things, to try to dull the feelings that we’re experiencing. So we don’t have to feel those things, right we have we are trying to do all these difficult emotions. So you eat.

Instead, you use food to feel better. And listen, it kind of works temporarily, like you get a hit of dopamine. Those pleasure centers in your brain, they get all lit up. And it feels good for a minute, and the strategy of like, eating instead of feeling your feelings, kind of works for a minute.

That doesn’t make you feel better, but only for a minute. It’s very, very brief, very temporary. Once that sugar buzz wears off, or you know, whatever you’ve been eating, all those emotions you’re trying to avoid, they just come back. Plus you get the added benefit of like feeling terrible because you went off your plan and you ate a bunch of junk food and you feel bad about that and you still have those other emotions.

And so what do you do then? You just eat more to try to make yourself feel better and it’s a vicious cycle. It’s never-ending, you’re constantly eating your feelings, trying to avoid your feelings, eating more, feeling bad about yourself, beating yourself up feeling even worse. So then you eat more, and on and on and on, rinse and repeat forever.

So what you’re doing here is you’re just postponing the whole process of actually dealing with your emotions, what you have to do is deal with the emotions, eventually, right, you have to do something about this, right? You’ve got to feel those feelings.

So you’ve set out on your weight loss journey, and you’re no longer using food as an emotional management tool. Awesome. That is good. But now, all your fears and insecurities come up. And you have to finally deal with all of that. This is when the real work begins.

Because if you can get good at handling all of the negative emotions that come up, when you stop eating your feelings, I’m telling you, you can handle just about anything, you become a total emotional badass.

By the way, we’re having some really cool conversations about this in the coaching group right now, this month, we’re talking all about overcoming emotional eating for good, and we’re taking a kind of deep dive into this topic.

And I was talking to one of my clients yesterday about this, and she was like, she didn’t realize what she was doing was emotional eating. So we have this vision in our heads of what emotional eating is.

And it’s like, you know, somebody’s like, in bed with the covers around them with a half-gallon of ice cream and a spoon crying, you know, like, that’s not really the what emotional eating looks like for most people.

And so this person was like, “I’m not an emotional eater, you know, but I’ll tell you, I had a really stressful day at work. And you know, I eat when I get stressed out like that, you know, I just go for potato chips, and you know, all these nuts and stuff, and I just can’t stop, I just, you know, it feels better.”

And I said, “Well, that’s emotional eating stress is just a feeling right?”

When you’re stress eating, it’s emotional eating, or you’re eating because you’re bored. That’s emotional, eating out of boredom, feeling bored is just a feeling. It’s an emotion. And so anytime you use food to try to dull whatever emotion you’re feeling, that’s emotional eating, okay?

So the process of overcoming your fears and insecurities around weight loss is actually dealing with your emotions. That’s what it is. That’s the process. That’s how you do it.

You actually have to embrace feeling your emotions, you have to feel your feelings, it means you have to learn how to sit with your feelings, without doing anything to change them. Without doing anything to make them go away. Just feel your feelings.

Does this sound terrible to you? It does for a lot of people. And I used to be this way too. I was like, I don’t want to feel my feelings. So ever since I was a kid, I’m very sensitive. I was a very sensitive kid, I’m still a very sensitive person.

And I used to feel things very deeply, I still do. You know, I had a very acute sense of these emotions, right? I’m just a sensitive person. So when I stopped using food, and alcohol, to numb myself to my feelings, I had to deal with that stuff, right?

I couldn’t handle feeling those negative emotions. So I would eat and drink over them, you know, I drank a lot. So I didn’t have to feel those things. I ate a lot. But then I stopped doing that at some point. And I couldn’t handle the intensity of my emotions.

And so I would freeze, I would withdraw, I would act very passive-aggressive, you could ask both of my ex-wives about this, they can attest to this. But eventually, I had to learn how to deal with all of these emotions that I was experiencing, without using food or alcohol or scrolling through Instagram or whatever.

And I did, I’ve gotten really good at sitting with my emotions and just letting them be there. And letting them sort of process through and not trying to make them go away. Not trying to change them. Not trying to squash them down. Just walking around, feeling my feelings.

And I have to tell you, my emotions are very manageable now. I don’t feel them as intensely as I used to because I’m just allowing them to be there. I’m not trying to make them go away. I’m not trying to change anything. And I don’t have to eat over them.

You know, I can still feel things intensely sometimes, but it’s not a problem for me. I don’t see like having a feeling is like an emergency that I have to fix. And I want you to know this is available for you, you just have to start practicing actually feeling your feelings, right.

Embrace the discomfort of having an emotion without doing anything to change it without eating over it. And just letting it be there. And I have to say this goes for you guys too. Like dudes are generally like, “Really, feel your feelings? Come on, bro. No thanks, don’t I just need to like man up and grow a pair?”

No, this is actually a very powerful skill that we are, none of us are taught men and women alike. We are not taught how to do this. And if you’re a dude, and you’re listening to this right now, I promise you that when you get good at just dealing with your feelings and actually experiencing them and processing them, this is a pretty badass skill.

It’s a badass skill that you have to get good at if you want to accomplish really anything in your life. Because when you do this, men and women, when you do this when you get good at handling your emotions and dealing with them. There’s like nothing you can’t do.

When you’re no longer afraid to feel your feelings, to experience your insecurities. Oh my god is what it means to be free. You have total freedom from emotional eating, you’re in control again.

And I promise you, you can lose a lot of weight this way. And you can keep it off for good. And I say this all the time – losing weight, getting healthy, getting stronger, running faster, all of it. It’s an inside job, right? You have to commit to doing this work.

Because this is how you accomplish big goals like losing weight. This is how you accomplish big goals like getting healthier, getting stronger, and making it last for life. This is how you become that badass that I know you want to be cool. And remember that if you’re ready to overcome your fears and insecurities around losing weight and make it last for life.

If you’re ready to learn the simple steps to becoming a leaner stronger runner then you have to come check out this free live workshop next week, March 17. To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop.

I would love to see you there. I promise you’re gonna learn a lot. And we’re gonna have some fun together. Cool. All right, love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

103. Handling the Holidays Like a Badass

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The holidays can be a very difficult time of the year for a lot of people. Shopping for gifts, planning social events, spending more time with family, and the added end-of-year demands at work can …

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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 103 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today we’re talking about handling the holidays like a badass. Listen, the holidays can be a very difficult time for a lot of people.

You’re shopping for gifts, planning social events, spending more time with family, and the end of your demands at work can all lead to feeling more stressed and more overwhelmed. Not to mention the shorter days and the colder temperatures, the lack of sunlight all this can make getting outside exercise more challenging.

It can be very easy to just say “F-it” and blow off all your diet and exercise plans stay indoors watching Netflix with a big old glass of wine and hibernate until the new year. Right. But if that’s not how you want to roll into 2022, then I’ve got an alternative solution for you.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share a few simple tips for handling the holidays like a badass, so you can slide into the New Year feeling good about yourself. Which by the way, is not the way most people do it.

But first, if you liked this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. Right now we’re in the middle of our running through the holidays challenge, we just passed the halfway mark, we’ve got another, I don’t know 17 or 18 days to go. And this is a challenge to get outside and run every day during the holidays.

It’s a fantastic way to you know keep your stress levels low. And to get some exercise every day. And we’re having a ton of fun in the group. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join in on all the fun. And here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast.

This is from Rake TM. And the title of this is “Life-changing and Introspective”:

“I recently discovered this podcast and the content presented. And the method shared is absolutely awesome. Patrick is really great not only at sharing, running-related performance improvements, but life-related lessons as a life coach. It’s all very inspiring, and I can’t stop binge-listening to all the episodes. Thank you, Patrick.”

Well, thank you very much for leaving a review. And if you feel the need to share your thoughts and leave a five-star review, I would love it just go to iTunes and scroll down or your apple podcast app and scroll down to where it says to leave a review, tap the stars and leave a few words, I really greatly appreciate that.

And then a couple of things I wanted to let you guys know about number one is the Running Lean coaching group is we got a big thing coming up in January. So our focus for January is going to be on weight loss, I want to help you start the new year by creating some massive momentum to develop the habits that you need to lose weight and learn how to do it for good.

And we got a big challenge coming up in January the goal for our group is going to be to lose eight pounds, you know, by the end of the month, right? So, lose eight pounds in January is sort of our goal for the month of January.

And listen, that’s only two pounds a week and this is very doable for you. You know, it’s very average, okay? And don’t worry, because I’m gonna show you exactly how to do it, you’re going to get all the support from me and everyone else in the group. We’re all going to be kind of doing this together as a group.

So I want to help you crush that goal. And listen, January is just an awesome time to get started with this kind of thing. Right? Marathon training is just getting underway. So it’s a perfect time for you to become fat-adapted so you can crush those spring racing goals.

So I’m going to show you exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine so you can run without bonking, lose weight without losing your mind, and develop the habit you need to make this last.

If you’re interested just join the group you can join at any time just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join – we’d love to see you for our big lose eight pounds in January challenge cool.

And then also if you’re interested in one on one coaching, that’s what I do. It’s my jam. If you’re looking for a little help with all this stuff, you know how to make a plan how to stick to your plan, what you should be eating, what you shouldn’t be eating – I offer all expert guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, all the experience you need to make this work for you, no matter what your goals, we can, we can get you there. Okay? Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and see if coaching is a good fit for you.

All right on to this topic today, which is all about handling the holidays, like a badass. This time of the year, it can be very hard for people, right, we’ve got more stress this time of the year than any other time of the year collectively, right?

The days are cold, it’s dark, work is a little busier, you got to get all this stuff done at the end of the year. You’ve got more social events, you’re spending more time with family, you got to plan more meals, you’re buying gifts, you’re wrapping gifts, you’re sending out Christmas cards, maybe you’re traveling.

And all of this stuff can really feel overwhelming and cause a lot of people to really struggle. You know, this is supposed to be a fun time of the year, right and everybody looks forward to it. But at the same time, it can be very challenging for a lot of people, okay.

So when you find yourself feeling this stress, it can be very hard to stick to your diet and exercise plans, it can be very hard to want to get up and go to the gym when it’s cold and dark outside, it can be very hard to want to stick to your food plan when everybody around you is eating a bunch of junk and cookies and candy and all this other stuff, right?

So if you just want to stay inside and hibernate, like during this time of the year, that is perfectly fine. You’re allowed to do that, right? But if that’s not how you want to spend the holidays, then you get to decide what you want for yourself, okay, if you want something different, this episode is for you. Okay?

If you want to be able to stay on track, stick to your diet, keep up with your runs, keep up in the gym, whatever it looks like for you. You are allowed to do that. By the way, you don’t have to just fall into this habit that most people fall into, which is just kind of giving up a lot of this stuff during this time of the year.

How many people do you know to say, well, you know, the diet starts on January 1. Well, why? Why would you wait? Right? Why do you want to wait until then, to start improving your life? Why do you want to wait until then until you start doing something that’s good for you? Why do you want to wait until then, to start improving your health and your fitness?

I say start today, if that’s what you want for yourself, it doesn’t matter that we’ve got the holidays coming up, it really doesn’t. There’s always something going on, right? I want you to think about how you want to show up on January 2, you know, who do you want to be when you start the New Year? How do you want to show up for yourself?

Do you want to feel shame and guilt remorse and regret? Because you’re going to be starting from like a health and fitness deficit? Like you got to make up a lot of ground because you gained some weight you got a little softer?

Or do you want to feel proud of yourself and confident and happy with your choices? Do you want to start the new year with momentum? Do you want to start the new year ahead of the curve, like feeling like you had your back during this period of time, right? It’s a choice, it is a choice, you get to decide.

So here’s what I’m going to do, I got three tips for you today. And I’m gonna break these down a little bit. But the first one is step number one. Or tip number one is that you get to decide who you want to be on January 2. And you should get very detailed with this, right?

And I tell people all the time to like do these writing exercises, like write it out. Write out who you want to be. And I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast are just like, yeah, whatever. I’m not gonna write that out.

But you know what, it makes a difference. It really does. The people that take the time to do this work and actually sit down and do the writing, when it comes to things like this, they get better results I’m just going to tell you, they do.

So if you want to get better results, I want to encourage you to do a little bit of writing around this. Who do you want to be on January 2, you know, I want you to envision this version of you and write down what it will look like and feel like to be that person on January 2, right.

Now you get to decide if you want to keep losing weight, maybe you’ve already started a weight loss regimen and you’re kind of losing and you’re like that and you want to continue to lose weight. Maybe you want to just maintain your weight through the holidays. Or maybe you’re okay if you gain a little bit of weight during the holidays.

But you’ve probably never thought about it like before, right, but really, it’s a choice, it’s a choice that you get to decide how you want to show up for yourself in January if you want to gain a little bit of weight, that’s fine.

But I just want you to make that decision now. Because this decision that you make today is going to drive your behaviors over the next few weeks. So let’s say you decide you want to gain weight, that means like, you’re probably going to eat more food, drink more alcohol, indulge in a bunch of, you know, sugar, and, you know, processed foods and go a little bit crazy. Maybe you’re gonna, like, stop running for a few weeks, or, you know, not go to the gym. That’s fine. If you want to do all this, it’s totally awesome.

Just know that you will probably gain weight in this process. And if you’re okay with that, if you’re okay, showing up in January, you know, five, eight pounds heavier, whatever, awesome, more power to you. Okay, you get to decide if that’s what you want for yourself, maybe you want to maintain.

Maybe you’re the kind of person who is like, you know, what I’m gonna stick to my healthy eating plan. For the most part, I might make some more exceptions than normal, you know, I might have a little more wine here and there, I might be drinking some more beers, I might enjoy a dessert or two, but for the most part, I’m gonna, you know, kind of stick to the plan.

And maybe you back off the running and the strength training a little bit, but not entirely. So this is a way of maybe maintaining your weight. Okay, totally fine. Again, all these options are available to you.

You’ve probably never thought about it like this before, though, right? Most people just assume that they’re gonna, like, just continue to lose weight or whatever, during the holidays, but they don’t change anything. Okay.

And then let’s say you decide you want to lose during the holidays, you want to continue to lose weight, this is going to require that you keep planning your meals and keep sticking to your plan, right, it’s just going to require that you stick with your running schedule, you keep up with some sort of resistance training. And this plan is awesome. And I’m super proud of you if you decide to do this.

But just know that it requires a commitment, it requires a little bit more discipline and a little more motivation. It doesn’t require as much motivation if you’re okay, gaining some weight over the holidays, right. So you get to decide, do you want to gain weight, maintain your weight or lose weight, make that decision.

So here’s what not to do. So most people go into the holidays, thinking that they’re going to keep losing weight or stay the same, but then they eat a ton more food. They’re eating all the sugar, they’re drinking alcohol, they’re slacking off on their exercise regimen. This is the way most people do it. They don’t have a plan, they just think they’re gonna stay on track.

And they think they’re just gonna, like maintain their weight, but they’re not. Their behaviors are not in alignment with the goal of wanting to maintain their weight. And then they show up on January 2, and they’ve gained weight, they’re like 10 pounds heavier.

And they’re like, I don’t understand what happened. It’s like you didn’t make a plan. You didn’t decide how you wanted to show up. So step one is deciding how you want to show up on January 2, who do you want to be, write it down, decide today, who you want to be, and decide if you’re one of those people that wants to gain weight, maintain or lose weight, make that decision now, and then act accordingly.

So if you’re the kind of person who wants to lose weight, you’re gonna have to stick to your plan. You’re gonna have to be diligent and not eat the cookies when everybody else is eating the cookies.

Maybe people are drinking around you and you’re not. You’ve got to make that decision. If that’s what you want for yourself. Okay? Just be honest with yourself, who is it you want to become? And then act accordingly. Okay, so that’s tip number one or step number one to this process.

Okay, step number two is to make a plan and stick to the plan. So now you have a very clear picture of how you want to show up on January 2. So now you just need to make a plan and stick to it right? It seems so simple, but most people do not do this. Most people just wing it. Right? Don’t wing it. Make a plan.

So making a plan means that you’re planning out all of the events that are coming up, you plan out your meals, you plan out your workouts, you got holiday parties, family events, weird schedules, whatever.

Your kids are gonna be out of school, maybe you work from home and your kids are gonna be home with you. You’re gonna have a house full of people. All this stuff can be an excuse for just blowing off your diet and exercise routines.

And I hear this from people all the time, oh, well, you know, the kids are out of school. So that means I have to eat a lot more cookies. No, it doesn’t, it really doesn’t mean that at all. Right, don’t use that stuff as an excuse for not sticking to your plan. This will require a little bit more, you know, work a little more thought work a little bit of more discipline on your part.

Yes, it will make a plan and stick to the plan, you get to decide what’s on your plan. Just make a plan. Decide what’s coming up, like you know what’s coming up, you know that there’s going to be this holiday event, you know, there’s going to be this work thing, you know, there’s going to be kids around, whatever you got to make cookies for this thing, cupcakes, whatever, plan for all of it.

Decide what you’re going to eat and when, decide when you’re going to get your runs in, decide when you’re going to go to the gym to get your resistance training in, and get it all planned out in advance. Right, so simple, and then just stick to that plan.

Over in the coaching group, I have an entire course called Getting It All Done, where I show you exactly how to plan everything in your life so that you can make it all work, because I get it. We’re all busy. We all have busy lives, we’ve got work, we’ve got kids, we’ve got school, we’ve got all kinds of things going on, right?

And I make these suggestions like, hey, you should probably get outside and exercise every day, you should probably be doing some resistance training. You know, you should probably do some stretching and some yoga and things.

People are just like, dude, I can’t. I don’t have time for all this stuff. And I don’t want you to use that as an excuse. I don’t want you to use the I don’t have time as an excuse, okay? Because time is just a mental construct. It doesn’t truly exist.

You make the time for whatever is important to you, you absolutely do. So make the time for what’s important to you decide what’s important to you make the time and get it done. But I have this cool course right, it breaks it all down and shows you exactly how to do all that. I

found this quote when I was preparing for this podcast, and it might be from Ben Franklin. It’s kind of you know, the internet, who knows what some of this stuff. But anyway, it’s this quote has been attributed to Ben Franklin – “If you fail to plan you’re planning to fail.”

Boom, I love this, quote, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. I want to encourage you to not skip this step. Don’t skip the planning, make a plan. Most people just don’t do it. They just wing it. And if you don’t have a plan, you’re going to inevitably fail. Okay.

And just so you know, starting in January over in the coaching group, we’re going to be focused on starting the New Year, the right way. And I’m going to show you exactly how to plan your meals, what you should be eating, what you shouldn’t be eating, and most importantly, how to stick to that plan. Right, anyone can make a plan. It’s the sticking to the plan that’s the hard part.

Here’s my best advice for achieving greatness in any area of your life. Are you ready? Here it is. Make a plan. And then stick to that plan, even when you don’t feel like it. That’s it, make a plan and then stick to the plan. Even when you don’t feel like it.

You can accomplish just about anything with that kind of attitude. If you want to lose weight, make a plan to maybe you quit eating sugar and you quit eating processed food, and then stick to that plan, even when it’s hard. stick to that plan.

Even when you’re surrounded by cookies and candy and pastries. Because you’re gonna want that stuff. It will be hard in that moment, you will not feel like sticking to your plan in that situation.

You know, maybe you’re making Christmas cookies with your kids and the whole house smells like sugar cookies, right? How do you stick to your plan, that’s going to be hard, but you can do it. I know you can.

But that’s what it means to stick to your plan even when you don’t feel like it. If you want to get stronger, make a plan to lift weights a few times each week. And then do that. Work that plan. Even when it’s cold and dark outside.

You don’t feel like getting up and going to the gym because you’d just rather sleep in, get your butt out of bed and get to the gym. Even though you don’t feel like it, do it anyway. That’s how you get stronger.

Right? So make a plan and then stick to the plan. That’s my second best advice for getting through the holidays like a badass.

And then step number three. Listen. You might fail. No big whoop. Do not beat yourself up if you fail. Do not beat yourself up if you fail. What happens if you fail? What happens if you don’t stick to the plan? What happens if you eat the sugar cookies or you just skip the gym or you skip that run because you decided to stay inside watching Netflix?

Like what happens in that situation? And by the way, here’s a little sidebar for you. Netflix, is not bad. Netflix is not the worst thing in the world. People talk about watching TV as being the worst thing you can possibly do. So much so that like, it can feel very guilty and shameful.

When you just sit down to watch a show I say enjoy your TV, but just like anything else, the dosage matters. So just do it in moderation. Right?

And by the way, I just started watching Succession on HBO – holy cow, that is an awesome, awesome show. So enjoy your Netflix, enjoy your streaming TV, whatever, enjoy your movies. It’s a great way to spend some time and you know, snuggled up on the couch with a loved one or something like that. End of rant.

Okay, that was a little sidebar. So what happens if you, if you fail, you eat the cookies, you just don’t get to the gym, whatever. What happens if you don’t stick to your plan 100%? Do not beat yourself up. Just get back on track as soon as you can.

If you screw up one meal, it’s not going to ruin everything for you just get back on track at your next meal. If you miss a workout, don’t freak out about it, you’re not going to lose all your fitness. Just make a point to get back on track at your next workout.

A good rule of thumb is to not have two bad meals in a row and never skip two workouts in a row. What we’re after is consistency, not perfection. It’s more important that you put weeks and months together of consistency. Rather than sticking to some plan perfectly every single day. It’s just not practical to think that way. Right?

The same thing goes for our running through the holidays challenge. If you miss a day, it’s no big deal. Just pick it back up again the next day. It’s not about doing it perfectly. It’s about doing it consistently.

And this all might make common sense. And, you know, it can be very easy to slip into the habit of beating yourself up over this stuff though. It can be really easy to just feel guilty or shameful or talk smack about yourself. Right? These things do not do you any good whatsoever. Right?

What happens is, a lot of times people will have a cheat meal, or they’ll miss a workout. They feel terrible, ashamed, and guilty. And this can very easily spiral you down into an attitude of like, just screw it all. Why should I even bother with any of this, I always mess up. Don’t do that.

Right, indulging in these negative thoughts and negative feelings. And we call these indulgent emotions. When we do this, we indulge in this negativity and worthlessness and shame and guilt – don’t do that. It’s very detrimental to your success. Okay?

Because what happens when you feel bad? What happens when you beat yourself up like this? Typically, you just want to feel better. Typically, you just run to find something to make yourself feel good again. And a lot of times that means using food or alcohol.

So it just makes the situation worse. It completely compounds feeling bad, right? So I plan on failing, it’s part of the process, not a big deal. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Okay. Strive for consistency, rather than perfection and get back on track at the very next opportunity.

Okay, so quick recap. My three tips for handling the holidays like a badass, first of all, decide who you want to be on January 2. Do you want to gain weight, maintain your weight or lose weight and then act accordingly? Who do you want to be on January 2?

Who is that badass version of yourself? What does he or she look like and write about it? Write what it would feel like to stay consistent through the holidays right about what it would feel like to show up on January 2. Feeling good about yourself feeling confident, feeling like you had your back this whole time and decide who you want to be.

Step number two. Make a plan stick to the plan even when you don’t feel like it. Remember, if you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

And then step number three is don’t beat yourself up. If you do fail, no big whoop. Get back on track at your next meal or your next workout. Don’t ever skip two workouts in a row. Don’t ever eat two bad meals in a row. Okay, we’re striving for consistency, not perfection.

And I know you got this. I know you guys have absolutely got this. And listen if you’re ready to make some big changes in 2022 Just join the Running Lean coaching group starting in January we’re going to be focused on weight loss eight pounds down challenge and becoming a fat-adapted runner so you can crush those spring racing goals.

Join us over in the coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and we’ll see you in January. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

102. Choosing Your Struggle

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Have you ever found yourself struggling with something and thought, “Why am I choosing this?” Probably not. If you're like most people then you’ve most likely never considered the fact that you are …

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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 102 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about choosing your struggle. Have you ever found yourself struggling with something and thought, why am I choosing this? Why am I choosing to struggle with this? Probably not.

If you’re like most people, then you’ve probably never considered the fact that you are actually choosing your struggles, all of them. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with right now – your weight, your workouts, how you feel about yourself, feeling stuck – these are all choices that you are making.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain what all this means, what it means to be choosing your struggle, and I’m going to offer up some insights for you to start making better choices in your life.

But first, if you liked this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group that goes hand in hand with this podcast. Right now we’re in the middle of our running through the holidays challenge. The challenge is to run every day between Thanksgiving day.

And New Year’s Day is a tough time of the year for a lot of people. And running and getting outside and getting some exercise in every single day is a great way to get through the holidays, to help eliminate stress, to feel good about yourself to get the endorphins going the adrenaline going, and to make it through the holidays without losing your mind.

So if you’re interested in joining us, it’s never too late, come and join in the fun, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. And then if you’re interested in doing more if you’re interested in getting more out of this and going deeper, you know listening to the podcast is great.

But if you want more if you really want to apply all of the stuff that I teach here on the podcast, if you want help applying that to your own life, to make the changes that you want to become the person, the badass person that you want to become, then you got two ways that you can work with me and get more number one is the Running Lean coaching group.

And all month long for this month in December, we’re talking about building mental toughness. Last month, our topic was ending self-sabotage. So each month, I try to pick a topic that’s relevant that will help you to move in the direction of your goals. Right?

So mental toughness, is what’s required to get you through the tough times. And this time of the year, there’s a lot of tough times for a lot of people, okay, things will always get tough. So we need mental toughness to get through all of this, okay. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, run a marathon, or just develop the habits that you need to be able to stick with your food and exercise plans – it all requires mental toughness.

Okay, so join the Running Lean coaching group. And you’ll learn all about how to build mental toughness, you need to get through just about anything in life. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and you can join us anytime.

Also, I am a coach. And where I excel is in one on one coaching. And if you’re looking for a little personalized help with all this stuff, if you want some help applying all these principles, and getting some experts, one on one guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, maybe some tough love every now and then, then you need to apply for coaching with me.

Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you and I will have a conversation and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool, awesome.

So let’s get into this topic of choosing your struggle. And I think this is something that most people don’t realize that they’re making choices around what it is that they’re struggling with. And for you, I want you at the end of this podcast, I want you to be really thinking about the things that you are struggling with and how you can make better choices around your struggles.

Okay, so that’s just the mindset I want you to be in throughout this podcast. So if there’s something you’re struggling with in your life right now, think about it. Bring it to the forefront of your mind and think about that as I go through this. So that you can be thinking about how maybe you can make some changes to your perceptions of what you’re struggling with, cool.

So if you’re like most people, then you probably think that the goal for your life is to have a struggle-free life, that you think that at some point in the future, you will no longer have any struggles, everything’s just going to be rainbows and unicorns, and sunshine. And this is just not the case.

And I definitely used to think this myself, right, I thought that once I got to my ideal weight, once I got to my ideal body composition, once I started to really get clear on what I wanted for myself, once I worked through a lot of my mindset issues, then everything would just be easy for me from here on out.

And I would be struggle free. And I would never have any more challenges or struggles in my life. But that’s not reality. In reality, life is a struggle. You know, I don’t care how many, you know, self-improvement books or personal growth, podcasts you listen to, you are never going to get to a place in your life, where it’s completely struggle-free. It just isn’t going to ever be that way.

Okay, I want you to really understand this first, okay? Every human being on this planet is struggling with something. Life is a struggle, that’s just a fact, we need to stop pretending that it isn’t, we need to stop pretending that at some point, life is just going to be all blissful and joy and challenge free. It just won’t ever get that way. Okay?

Now, this does not mean that you have to struggle with everything all the time. You know, I’ve talked about this before Life is 50/50. Right, you’re going to be happy about half the time and the other half, not so much.

But what I’m saying here is that you will have struggles in your life, every now and then from here on out. So instead of trying to avoid all the struggles, instead of trying to eliminate all the struggles, I want you to start choosing the things you struggle with.

Now, you might be thinking, what, why would I choose to struggle with anything? Right? And I don’t, I’m not choosing this, this is just the way that it is. And this is a concept, I really want you to understand that you’re absolutely choosing whatever it is that you’re struggling with.

So here’s the fact, you can’t accomplish big things without a struggle. When you set out to do something big, there is a struggle involved. There is discomfort involved. growth requires discomfort, you know, you can’t have growth and accomplish big goals without some level of discomfort.

You know, if you want to lose 40 or 50 pounds, then you have to accept the fact that there will be some discomfort and struggle involved with that process. Maybe you’re gonna, you know, eliminate certain foods from your diet that you’re used to eating.

You know, one of the things a lot of people struggle with is quitting sugar, when you stop eating sugar. This is a struggle for a lot of people, or maybe you want to quit drinking. And so, you know, not drinking alcohol, especially this time of the year can be a real struggle. Right?

If you want to qualify for Boston, then you are absolutely going to struggle with that process, the training that is involved to get you to the Boston starting line is intense. You know, for some of us, it’s more intense than others because we got a lot more time to shave off.

I think my Boston qualifying time now that I hit 55 went from, like 330 to 335. And I’m just like, whatever. That’s just not happening now, maybe later, maybe when I’m 70. But qualifying for Boston requires a struggle. It requires a lot of hard work to get you there. Okay.

You know, when I was training for my 100 miler, that was a lot of struggle, the training involved with that distance with you know, getting your body ready to run that distance is intense. You know, I was doing back-to-back long runs on the weekends where I would run maybe 30 miles on Saturday and 20 miles on Sunday. Yeah, that sounds like fun, right?

And then I was running six days a week so I only had one day off and I was building up my mileage. And I think my weekly mileage ended up getting close to like 85 or 90 miles for a week, which is a lot.

You know, I know a lot of people do more than that. But for me, that was a lot. You know, I’m used to my 30, 35, 40 miles a week for marathon training. So that was a big struggle, the training alone, for an event like that is just a total struggle fest, you know, building up the mileage, building up your endurance, that’s a hard thing to do.

And then the race itself, running 100 miles, struggled all through that, you know, so crossing the finish line of that 100 miler, though, all that struggle was worth it. You know, all that struggle of training for something and pushing yourself and becoming more in the process is completely worth it. Right.

The problem is, most people want to accomplish these big things, but they don’t want to struggle. Like they set out to lose weight, but they’re not willing to experience any discomfort, they don’t want any struggles, they don’t want any discomfort, they don’t want any failures, they just want everything to be easy.

And as soon as it gets a little bit hard, or they start struggling, they quit. I don’t want to encourage you to not do that. Accept the fact that there will be struggles with whatever it is you’re trying to do, especially if you’re trying to do something hard, especially if you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before. Just doing something you’ve never done before, is a challenge in itself, because you’ve never done it before.

And you might think well, I don’t know how to do it. Of course, you don’t know how to do it because you’ve never done it before. Of course, you’re going to struggle. But at the first sign of discomfort, if you’re ready to just throw in the towel, and go back to doing whatever you’re doing before, like, that’s not going to work for you.

Alright, the bottom line here is I’m talking about in some way, shape, or form, you will always have struggle in your life, you have to accept this fact. Right? Struggle is inevitable. The good news is, you get to choose your struggle.

So you can choose to struggle with staying where you are being stuck where you are staying small, maybe not feeling good about yourself not having self-esteem, maybe feeling like crap. Or you can choose the struggle that comes with change.

You can choose the struggle of not feeling good right now of not being your healthiest self, of not loving yourself, of not loving your body. You can struggle with having low self-esteem, you can struggle with feeling crappy about yourself.

Or you can choose the struggle that’s involved with changing your diet, or working out at the gym on a regular basis. Or struggling with, you know, heading outside for those long runs, especially when it’s dark and cold outside. Or the struggle of working on your mindset and improving your mindset.

Either way, there’s going to be a struggle involved, right? Which one do you want to choose the struggle of just being where you are and feeling like crap all the time, or the struggle of doing what it takes to change? You might be struggling with something like emotional eating, which is something we all do.

You know, some people call it stress eating, or I’m just bored, some eating, whatever it is, this is all variations of emotional eating, you’re using food as a way of feeling better. And this could be a real struggle for you. You know, you’re using food as a way to not have to feel your feelings that I have to deal with your emotions.

So you can continue to choose to struggle with this you can continue you know, using food as a way of feeling better. And dealing with you know, and not dealing with your emotions and struggling with how you feel all the time.

Or you can choose the struggle of actually dealing with your feelings, dealing with your emotions, feeling your feelings, even when you know you’re even when you don’t want to because you stopped using food as a coping mechanism.

You know, maybe you start dealing with your emotions for the first time in your life. This can feel like a huge struggle fest for a lot of people. Alright, so you can choose the struggle of emotional eating or choose the struggle of dealing with your feelings, like which one of these would you choose? Which are you choosing?

You might be struggling with your relationship you can continue the struggle and hope that things get better and just feel like well, this is just the way it is. Or you can choose the struggle of having real conversations, tough conversations, honest conversations, and communicating openly and plainly with your significant other.

This is not the easier thing to do, I promise you this is, this is hard to do. The struggle involved with communicating with somebody else, and learning how to communicate openly and clearly, and honestly, with another person, you get to choose which struggle you want to endure though.

The struggle of, you know, passive-aggressive behavior, of not saying what you really want to say, of having all these resentments build-up, or the struggle of dealing with what it takes to improve that relationship, the struggle of having those uncomfortable conversations, running might be a struggle for you right now.

You know, maybe you’re, you’re not hitting your PR, you know, and you keep trying, and it’s just a big huge struggle fest for you, right. You know, you can continue to struggle with this and keep falling short of your goals.

Or, you can begin the process of improving your running little by little, doing what it takes to get faster and struggling with that. You can struggle with where you are or struggle with what it takes to change.

Right, there’s always going to be some sort of struggle in the process of improving yourself, of becoming the person that you really, really want to become, it’s a struggle. But you get to choose that if you want, or you can choose to struggle with just, you know, being where you are.

And thinking that this is never gonna work for me. And I could never stick to my diet. And I can’t get out and exercise because of X, Y, and Z. You can struggle with how you feel every single day because you’re stuck where you are.

Or you can choose the struggle that comes with changing who you are. Listen, you get to change who you are, you get to decide for yourself, who it is that you want to become. And you can become the most awesome, healthiest, most badass person that you want to be, you get to choose that for yourself.

The caveat, there is a struggle involved with getting there. I want you to choose that struggle for yourself. You know, struggle with the pain involved with going to the gym and lifting weights. struggle with the mindset it takes to get yourself out of bed at 4:30 in the morning, to get your running in because that’s what’s important to you.

I want you to struggle with you know, dealing with your emotions when you really just feel like eating something or drinking something and you’re not going to do that. Because who you are is not that person that uses food to feel better.

Right now, I’m struggling. I am choosing the struggle that comes with fixing my shoulder. I just had rotator cuff surgery. And I have to tell you it’s terrible. I was going into this feeling very positive. And you know, I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. And I have to tell you, this is pretty dang painful.

And during the day, it’s gotten better like during the day like right now I’m sitting in my chair, I’m at my computer and it feels pretty fine. Like there’s a little bit of achy pain going on there. But it’s not horrible like I can deal with it you know and I’m taking some Tylenol and stuff like that, it’s fine.

But at night trying to sleep is horrible. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. I can sleep for a couple of hours at a time but I keep waking up with intense pain for whatever reason you know, I’ve got myself propped up in bed and everybody says that you got to be like kind of sleeping sitting up to allow your shoulder to just kind of sit in its natural position.

But for whatever reason, it just starts to be incredibly painful and it wakes me up several times throughout the night. And this is uncomfortable. This is a struggle. This is what I am struggling with right now.

But I have to tell myself, and I keep reminding myself that I am choosing this struggle, I’m choosing to struggle with this right now, rather than the struggle of constantly being in pain for the rest of my life with no end in sight. I tore three different, you know, I have three different tears on my rotator cuff. And I have to get those things fixed because they there was not going to get better on their own.

I gave it a year, I gave it like 14 months actually, of this pain, like hoping it will get better. And it’s only gotten worse. So I can continue, I could have continued to just struggle with this. But I made a decision that I was going to choose a different kind of struggle, I’m going to choose to struggle with the pain that I’m dealing with right now with the discomfort with all of it.

Because I know, eventually, this will get better. I know eventually that I am going to be back to normal, and I’ll get stronger than ever. You know, I decided that this was the struggle I was going to deal with because it’s, you know, it’s short term.

Rather than going through the rest of my life feeling like I can’t do the things I want to do. The kind of pain I was in with the shoulder prior to surgery was like I could not do yoga the way I wanted to. I could not lift weights the way I wanted to. Running started to become very problematic.

So I made a decision, I made a choice that I was going to get this thing fixed. And it’s a struggle. I’m going to tell you, I’m going to be honest with you right now. It’s a struggle. But I’ve chosen this, this is what I’ve I’ve chosen for myself, okay.

So whatever it is that you are struggling with right now. I want you to understand something. Number one struggling is inevitable, you will always be struggling with something. And that’s okay. Right life’s 50/50.

It’s okay if you’re struggling with something, but you get to choose what you’re struggling with. And I want you to stop choosing the struggle of staying stuck and feeling small and staying comfortable and staying complacent and wishing you were more.

I don’t want you to struggle with that anymore. I want you to choose the struggle of becoming more. I want you to choose the struggle that it takes to become that badass version of yourself that you know is lurking inside you.

That’s what I want for you. That’s what I’ve chosen for myself and that’s what I want for you. Good deal. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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