Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
When you think of discipline, what comes to mind? For some, it conjures up images of obeying rules and doling out punishment for anyone who disobeys. But when I think of discipline I think of …
Continue Reading about 252. Practicing the Art of Discipline →
Lots of factors go into whether or not you will successfully achieve a goal. How bad you want it, where you are in your life, your physical limitations just to name a few. But one of the most …
Continue Reading about 247. The Mindset Shift Required in Order to Succeed →
Oftentimes when we take on a big challenge like changing how we eat or training for a marathon, we don’t get the results we want fast enough. The weight isn't coming off as quickly as you want or …
Continue Reading about 236. Replay: Learning to Love the Process →
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 236 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, Learning To Love The Process.
So oftentimes, we take on a big challenge, like changing how we eat or training for a marathon, and we don’t get the results that we want fast enough. The weight isn’t coming off as quickly as you want, or the training isn’t getting any easier.
Running is still really hard, and when you’re focused solely on the end result, and you’re not there yet, you can begin to hate the process that it takes to actually get you there, and this is not a very useful way to approach anything worthwhile.
So today I’m talking about learning to love the process, and how this simple mindset shift will absolutely change how you approach everything that you do, especially going after those big goals.
But first, if you want to get leaner or stronger, if you want to run faster or longer, you need to change what you do. Doing the same things will not get you new results. Nothing changes if nothing changes, right? Think we all get this part. The real secret is doing new things consistently.
If you decide you want to get stronger so you go to the gym once a month, that’s just not going to get you there. You need to adopt new behaviors, and you need to start doing them consistently. That’s where coaching really helps. Trying to stay on track yourself can be kind of challenging.
I know this because I’ve tried it a million times. I’d start doing something, I’d do it for a little while, then I’d go right back to doing these same old stuff, or not doing what I was trying to do, and really never make any progress towards my goals. Once I got a coach, everything changed for me.
Now I had somebody that was guiding me every step of the way, holding me accountable, calling me out when I started slipping back into old behaviors, and, most importantly, never, ever letting me quit. If you’re ready to start doing some new things and want to make sure that you never, ever quit, let’s get you there.
Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet, cool.
All right, so today I have a replay for you called Learning To Love The Process. And this is an episode that I did pretty early on. This was episode number 39 which was almost 200 episodes ago, which is just crazy, but I wanted to share this with you today, because I think it’s one of the most important principles that you need to adopt if you want to improve your health, your fitness, lose weight and keep it off, run a faster marathon, really accomplishing any big goal, you have to learn how to love the process. So without any further ado, here’s the replay of learning to love the process. I hope you enjoy.
Okay, let’s talk about learning to love the process. So here’s what I see happening with people and I see this with my clients a lot. You have a goal. You want to lose weight or maybe your goal is to run your first marathon. So you create a plan, you change your diet, you change your whole way of eating, you start eating all the right foods, you start feeling healthy.
And things are going pretty well. Or maybe you start training for your marathon. So you put together a 17 week training program, and you start running, and you get out there and you’re running for five days a week, whatever it is, you’re doing great. But then something happens.
You look at the scale, and you’re like, you know, I’m really not losing much weight, I’ve lost a couple of pounds. And you know, this is hard, this is hard work. It’s just not, it’s not going fast enough, it’s not happening fast enough, I’m not losing weight fast enough, or, you know, I’m running five times a week, and my endurance really isn’t improving like running still sucks, it’s still hard, I’m not getting any better, it’s not getting easier.
So what we do is we get super hyper focused on the end result, we get focused on the goal, to lose the 40 pounds, run the 26.2 miles, but you’re not there yet, you’re you’re where you are today, you still have 38 pounds to lose, or you’re only up to running, you know, six miles.
And so there’s this tension, there’s this turmoil, if you will, that you sort of create inside yourself, I want to be there, but I’m only here you’re not seeing immediate, you’re not seeing immediate results, you’re seeing some small changes, but they’re small, it’s taking too long. You know, it’s not going fast enough.
You know, I don’t look like that one woman on Instagram yet, or I can’t run 18 miles yet. So you get frustrated, you get frustrated, because you’re not where you ultimately want to be. And first of all, this doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like you’re climbing a mountain and you’re in you’re kind of like the at the base of the mountain, you know, you’ve you’ve started, you know, you’re working your way up, but you’re still you got a long way to go.
It’s like saying, oh, this isn’t, this isn’t working, this isn’t going fast enough. And you’re like looking up at the mountain, you’re like, I want to be at the top, but I’m not there yet. It’s like, you gotta like do the work to get you from here to there. Okay, you can’t just like hate being where you are, and expect it to be like, easier to get to the top. That, that doesn’t make any sense.
So you get frustrated, you hate where you are, you’re putting this hard work in, it’s not working fast enough. And by the way, fast enough according to who? Like who’s saying you should be losing weight at a certain rate? Who says it’s going to take you you know, six weeks to lose 40 pounds when it took you eight years to put it on?
That doesn’t make sense, or, you know, to run 26 miles, it takes some time to build up to that. So anyway, I don’t know why we put these arbitrary timelines on things. I used to do that though, and I get it. And I used to put timelines on my goals. And when I didn’t hit the goal in the timeline, I was pissed off, I got frustrated.
And a lot of times I would just give up. So that’s another whole story, though. That’s another topic, I’ll save that whole goal setting and timelines and stuff for another day. But just know this, when you are frustrated with where you are, it’s gonna be very difficult to get to that result.
So what happens when most people are in this situation and what most people do when they’re not getting the results fast enough? When they’re frustrated, when they’re hating the process, they quit, right? They’re like, screw, it’s too hard, it’s taking too long, it’s not worth it. I’m just gonna go back to eating the way I was eating, which by the way, is definitely not going to get you to your goals.
Or I’m just going to sleep in on Saturdays and spend all day on the couch watching Netflix, which definitely won’t get you to that goal. So they give up on these big goals. They give up on these dreams because it’s not happening fast enough, and they begin to hate the process.
When you hate the process, you are going to have a very, very hard time sticking to that process. It’s all going to be terrible. It’s just going to suck all the time. Is that how you want to approach accomplishing this goal? Is that how you want to go through life? Because we’re always going to have goals that we’re working towards, right?
Here’s an example from my own life just so you can kind of put this in perspective. So I’ve been trying to increase my lean muscle mass. I’ve been trying to build more muscle And it’s hard work, I will tell you it is difficult. And it’s taking a while. And I haven’t been seeing much progress. And I was beginning to get frustrated with all of this.
So I’m putting in a lot of hard work. I’m strength training three times a week, religiously. You know, I go to the gym and go at it hard. And I’m starting to think why even bother, it’s not working. And I was hating what I was doing, I started to just hate the whole thing. It just was terrible.
And just a little backstory, I’ve always had a hard time like bulking up. And this may be my genetics, I was always a skinny kid until I got fat. And then I was the fat guy with no muscles. Then I got skinny again, and I trained for Ironman. You know, I was going to the gym all the time, but I could never really bulk up, I could never really put on muscle.
And so I was just thinking, maybe this isn’t for me, you know, I’m 53. Now maybe it’s just not possible for me to build muscle. And I was really kind of hating the process. So I had to make a decision. I came to a point where I was like, okay, I can’t just say, ‘This is too hard. It’s taking too long, it’s not happening fast enough. You know, I’m just gonna say screw it, why even bother.’
Or I could adopt this new mindset, I could learn to love the process. And for me, the process is going to the gym three times a week and working out. The process is putting in the training, lifting the heavy things, pushing myself harder each week, learning everything I could about this topic of weight training and how to do it more efficiently, how to get the most bang for the buck.
So I started studying the subject of resistance training like crazy. And I started pushing myself super hard each week at the gym. And I started to really get into this and sort of love the process.
So much so that I’m actually becoming a certified personal trainer, because I’m like, I want to learn everything I can about this and be able to teach it to others, especially as we get older, it’s very important to continue to keep your muscle strength up build muscle is so good for your, for your joints, for your bones, for your overall health. To have more lean mass, it’s great for fat burning, it helps you for running.
Most runners don’t do enough strength training. And so I want to help runners learn how to do this stuff the right way. Anyway, I’ve learned that I need to love this process. And it’s still going to take a while for me to get to the goals. You know, it’s still going to take a while for me to build the muscle or look the way that I want to look.
I’m getting there, I’m starting to see some progress. It’s slow. I think it’s easier when you’re younger to build to like bulk up like the Instagram dudes I see. You know, they’re like ripped, and I’m like, okay, whatever. It may take me a while to get there. But my goal is to get there eventually.
And it’s taking a while but I’m enjoying the process. Now, I’m loving the process. I’m not frustrated that it’s taking a while because I know the results will come. If I love the process, or hate the process, but I keep doing it, the results will eventually come. You can either hate every minute of it, or you can love every minute of it. The choice is yours to make.
And I see this with my clients, a lot of my weight loss clients. Because you know what? Losing weight is hard. Most diets fail and most people fail at losing weight because they’re just focused on one thing. They’re focused on the number on the scale. And when I work with people, we talk a lot about becoming the healthiest human being possible. We work on breaking old habits and creating a new, healthy lifestyle, new habits. The goal is permanent lifestyle change, not some temporary quick fix. The goal isn’t really the number on the scale, although that eventually will happen.
But it takes time. And you have to learn to love what you’re doing. This is why it’s so helpful to have a coach so anyone can just tell you what to do. You can actually go on YouTube and learn what to eat, you know.
But with a coach, you get to learn how to love the entire process. You get to learn how to change your mindset, you learn how to adopt a whole new attitude, a whole new identity around what it means to be a healthy human being.
And my clients, they learn to love themselves, they learn to love their new way of eating, their new way of approaching nutrition, and exercise and fitness. And they, they love this new life, they learn to develop the mindset required to make lasting changes. They learn to love the process, yes, they still have goals, they still want to, you know, lose 30 pounds or whatever it is.
But they’re not so focused on the goal that they hate everything about what they’re doing every day, because they’re not there yet. The results will come in time, you just got to stick with it. And it’s a lot easier to stay on track when you love what you’re doing.
Honestly, this is the key to succeeding at anything in life is to love what you’re doing, love the process, not only love yourself, but love the process of getting there. Because the reality is, when it comes to like losing weight, it does take time. You know, I often remind my clients that it took them years, decades to gain the weight, it’s not going to be gone in a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
But if you can love the process, when you learn to love this healthy new life that you’re living, when your focus is not only on a number on the scale, or some short term gains, and instead your focus is on optimizing your long term health and overall fitness, it’s still going to take the same amount of time. But it will be way more enjoyable getting there.
Another example of this is with my running lately, so I’ve been training for a rather big running event in October that I’m not really talking about too much. I’m being very vague, I know. And normally, when I have a big event like this, I dread the training, I dread it. It’s grueling. It’s very hard work. I hate the long runs.
But I’ve noticed something over the last couple of months, I’ve noticed that I have really been loving the training. It’s been fun, we’ve been going out with a few friends. I’m only running like three times a week. I’m not taking myself too seriously. I’m increasing distances. And I’m not like dreading those long runs. I’m actually looking forward to them. And without really even trying, I’ve just learned to really enjoy the process of training.
And yeah, it’s still hard. Sometimes running is hard sometimes, right? Running 18 or 20 miles will probably always be somewhat challenging. But if you hate every minute of it, if you are dreading every step, you know, you head out the door and you’re like, Oh my God, this next three hours of running is gonna suck. That’s no fun. It’s no fun at all.
So instead I’ve been loving the training, I’ve been loving the process of just going out there and doing the and putting in the work. And it’s way more fun doing it this way. I promise you it’s way more fun. When you hate the process, every moment feels like failure. But when you love the process, every moment feels like success.
The end result is the same, you’ll eventually reach your goal. But you’ll be a completely different person doing it. Alright, that’s all I got for you here. Here’s what’s coming up in our Running Lean community. September intermittent fasting challenge.
We’ve got one more training coming up and we’ll be talking about some advanced fasting methods that you might consider trying, why would we want to do these things? What’s the point? How will it benefit me as a runner? How does this help with weight loss and running? All that stuff?
I’ll talk about all that stuff next week in our September intermittent fasting challenge training. I do these on Sunday afternoons, by the way. So join us this coming Sunday for that not next week. It’s this Sunday, just so you know. And it’ll be fun to have you in the group. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
When most people set goals for themselves, they think small. They set goals that feel doable, safe, and comfortable, goals that won’t cause them too much suffering if they don't achieve …
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 232 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Achieving Impossible Goals. When most people set goals for themselves, they think small. They set goals that feel doable, that feel safe, that feel comfortable, and goals that won’t cause them too much suffering if they maybe don’t achieve them, but is this really what you want for yourself? I don’t think so. Not me. Definitely not.
I want to set goals that feel kind of scary, uncomfortable, and downright impossible. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t be setting small, easily achievable goals, but instead working on achieving those big, impossible goals.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, if you’ve been thinking about losing weight, improving your diet, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help you get there, you might want to consider coaching.
The fact is, coaching works where other methods fail because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine. It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do that on your own.
One thing I tell all my clients is that you need to not need me at some point. You got to get to this place where you can do this on your own. My job is to help you get to that point. What good is it to make these lifestyle changes if they’re not sustainable for you? They have to be sustainable for you, right?
This stuff has to become easy and effortless for you, so that you can do it on your own, so that you can stick with it. My job is to make sure you stick with it. So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss goals, on your running goals, on some big, impossible goal that you have for yourself. Let’s work together to get you there. Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com click on work with me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet Cool.
All right, let’s talk about achieving impossible goals. So right now we’re about halfway through the year. It is the beginning of June 2024, right now. So if you’re listening to this in the future, that is very cool, because it’s like time traveling. You’re like time traveling. But anyway, so if you are listening to this in real-time, then we’re about halfway through the year.
You may have set some goals for yourself, maybe some running goals. Maybe you ran a spring marathon or spring half marathon, or some spring races or ultra-marathons or whatever. And now it’s time to kind of reassess your goals. And you’ve taken some time off, or kind of in the off-season right now, and so you’re thinking about goals for the fall.
So you might be setting some intentions and some goals for some fall races, or maybe you have other health and fitness goals. Maybe you have a weight loss goal, and now would be a great time to get started on that. And so right now is a good time to be thinking about setting some big goals for yourself.
But here’s the thing, most people, when they set out to set a goal, when they decide on goals that they want for themselves, they they pick a goal that’s either too vague or too small. So they pick goals that are vague, like I want to lose weight, or I want to eat healthier, or I want to get stronger, I want to get stronger, I want to run faster, I want to run more.
These goals are very vague because there’s nothing specific to commit to, right? It’s much harder to commit to goals like I’m going to lose 20 pounds, I’m going to stop eating processed food, I’m going to I want to be able to lift 315 pounds in a deadlift. I want to be able to be able to do that three times. Or run a 23-minute 5k or run four times a week.
When we get specific with our goals, they become it’s a little bit harder, right? Because you now you’re kind of, you have to hold yourself accountable. You’re you’re on the hook for something. But a lot of people won’t do that. They’ll just pick vague goals, like, I need to eat healthier. What does that even mean? They don’t even know what it means.
Like, they’re just like, saying it because they they know that if they don’t achieve it, they don’t really have to fess up to anything. They don’t have to own up to anything. There’s no own ability. There’s no accountability there. So. Vague. We don’t want to set vague goals, and we don’t want to set goals that are too small.
A lot of people set goals that are very small. I want to lose five pounds, or instead of running a 5k I want to run maybe 6k okay, that’s fine if you’re just getting into running. But listen, set some goals that are bigger, because when you set these small goals, you know they’re easily achievable. They don’t require you to get out of your comfort zone at all. They are well within your comfort zone a lot of times.
You’ve probably already done these things. You’ve probably already lost five pounds. A bunch of times to say, like, oh, I want to lose five pounds. That’s something you know you can do. You already know you can do that? You’ve done it before, or you’ve got clothes, or it just seems easy for you.
The problem here is that setting these tiny little goals means that you’re probably going to achieve them, which is fine, but what did you gain in the process? What did you learn? How much did you grow? Who have you become in that process? Small goals. They feel safe, they feel comfortable, they feel doable. These are what people call realistic goals.
Oh, you need to be realistic. I say screw that. We need to set goals that are unrealistic. You need to set some goals that are way outside your comfort zone. And I call these impossible goals because they are impossible for who you are right now, who you are here today. You cannot achieve these big goals you know you, you should always have some, some goals that feel impossible for who you are today, that are not comfortable, safe or realistic.
Who wants to achieve realistic goals honestly? You need to be going after things in your life that feel impossible, because when you do, when you do achieve those goals. They can be life-changing.
Achieving impossible goals means you have you’ve done a lot of work to get yourself to the point where you could become the kind of person to achieve that goal. It means you’ve accomplished something you never thought you could, and then you did that. That’s an amazing feeling, right there. So instead of small, vague goals, we want to set big impossible goals, goals that feel unrealistic, that feel uncomfortable, that don’t feel like they’re in your comfort zone, that don’t feel safe, that don’t feel doable, they should feel impossible.
And really this is the biggest benefit of setting and going after these big, impossible goals is who you become in the process. You know, think about a small goal like losing five pounds. You can do this with pretty little effort. It’s not going to take much time. You’ll probably gain it back pretty quickly too, because you didn’t set a goal like, oh, I need to, I’m going to lose 30 pounds, and then I’m going to keep it off, right?
But, okay, let’s just say you want to lose the five pounds. That’s great. Okay, fine. Who did you become in the process? What’s changed for you? What did you learn? What’d you learn about yourself? What’d you learn about sustainability? How have you grown? My guess is not much of any of that stuff. You probably didn’t learn much. Probably didn’t grow much. You’re basically the same person.
Okay, well, let’s use the example of losing 30 pounds and keeping it off. Now that might feel more like an impossible goal for you right now. So let’s say it takes you a year to lose the weight. It takes you a year to lose 30 pounds, and then you’ve maintained that weight loss for another year. So so far, we’ve talked about where you’ve invested two years of time into this goal already. Okay, that’s a lot of time.
What did you learn about what did you learn along the way? Maybe you had to learn how to plan meals around family vacations and social events and holidays and work trips. You had to learn how you could have some cheat meals here and there without going completely off the rails. That takes some time to figure that out.
You learned how to change your mindset around food, so you no longer have those cravings for sugar all the time. And then when you do occasionally have the cravings, you know how to deal with them. You don’t let them derail you like you can just move on, right? You’ve learned which foods work for you and which ones don’t.
You learned how to maintain your weight loss over time, which is actually the hardest part of all this. So you’ve grown. You’ve learned all these things, and you’ve grown in the last two years.
You no longer have the mental and emotional hangups around food. You feel like you’re back in control of your eating for once in your life, you’re no longer operating on autopilot. You’re no longer eating mindlessly. Basically, you’ve become a different person, the person you were two years ago when you started on this journey could not have done any of this stuff.
This was impossible for who you were two years ago, but that’s not who you are here today. You’ve become a completely different person. So. This is one of the most important outcomes of achieving an impossible goal. It’s who you become in the process, who you are here today. You can’t achieve that goal, that goal is way outside your comfort zone.
Maybe your impossible goal is running your fastest marathon this fall, and it’s impossible because the person you are here today cannot run. Let’s say it’s a sub-four. You want to run sub-four marathon, and you’ve never been able to do that, so that’s not who you are today. You cannot run a sub-four, four-hour marathon today.
So this is an impossible goal for you, but in order to achieve that goal, you have to get to work. You have to stick to a pretty rigid training schedule for months. You have to do all the speed work. You have to keep improving your tempo runs like improving the times, improving the distance, and improving the amount of time that you’re running fast.
You have to be able to sustain that, and it’s going to require that you stick to a strict eating plan to support your running goals, because you don’t want to gain a bunch of weight during this training season, right? If you’re trying to PR, you’re trying to run your fastest marathon ever.
So this is this all feels impossible for who you are today, but listen, you do the work. You show up for yourself, day after day, week after week, month after month. Come the fall, when you’re towing the line at the start of that marathon, you’re the kind of person who could run a sub-four marathon, because you’ve done the work, you’ve completely become a different person, but between today and who you are six months from now.
So this is one of those things where we think that a goal feels impossible to us, and it does feel impossible to us, but we think it’s impossible for us to achieve that goal. And in reality, there is a possibility that we can do we can pretty much do anything we want, right? But you got to set your mind to it. You have to commit to the process. You have to commit to becoming the kind of person that can do that.
And then listen, when you show up at the start line of that race, you’ve become a different person. You’ve learned, you’ve grown. You’ve become so much more than you ever thought you could become. It really doesn’t even matter if you hit the goal or not. So let’s say you run a 4:01. Is that a failure? Did you fail? I say no, because look who you are. Now, you’ve become this completely different person. You’ve learned, you’ve grown, you’ve become more it’s not about achieving the goal necessarily. It’s about who you become in the process.
Now, of course you want to achieve the goal, and of course you’re going to do the work to basically make sure that that outcome is inevitable, but the real underlying purpose of all of this is to learn about yourself, to grow and to become more and if you do that, I say that you have absolutely succeeded.
And then also keep in mind that every success requires a lot of failures to get there, right? Every success was built upon a big old pile of failures. I think Henry Ford said that, so don’t be afraid to try fail, try fail, try fail, until you succeed. The number one rule with all this stuff is you never, ever, ever give up.
You keep going until you achieve that goal, impossible or not, because if you never quit, you will eventually achieve that goal. If you’re committed to achieving that goal, you will get there eventually. So that impossible goal can become possible for you.
Now, I’ve done a few impossible things in my life. Some years ago, I completed a full Ironman. You know, I’ve run 50 miles, 100 miles. Last year I did a 12-hour solo run, unsupported, no headphones, no talking to anybody. Very much a solo in my own head event.
But for things like running 100 miles, you know, when I signed up for that, I could not run 100 miles. I was not the kind of person that could run 100 miles. I couldn’t imagine doing that. This was impossible. This felt impossible for me. And here I was paying the money on their website and signing up, and, you know, saying that I was gonna, like, sign up for this thing. And I’m like, “Who do you think you are, Patrick, signing up for 100 miler? This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. I don’t see how you’re gonna do this.” because I didn’t know at the time.
I was like, I know that somehow between now and, you know, a year from now, or however long it was, I think it was maybe 10 months, 11 months, something like that, that I signed up in advance. I knew that I was going to become the kind of person that could run 100 miles by the time I started that race.
And for me, showing up at the start line, knowing I did all the work, was the big accomplishment, and then doing it, obviously it was amazing, you know? But every time I set out to do something big like this, it feels impossible for me at the beginning of the process.
Yeah, and I know that in order to get there, I got to do the work and I have to level up. I got to learn and grow and become more and I know that by the time I show up at the event, I’m a different person, and I’ve already succeeded. In my mind, I’m it’s already a success.
And then when you do achieve something like that, when you do the hard work, and you set out to do something that is impossible, and you actually achieve it. You finish the race, you lose the weight, you’re able to keep it whatever that goal is for you, it becomes so much sweeter because it was so hard.
Listen, I am not a crier. I am not somebody who cries. Have a very hard time, like crying even. So, okay, I will say this about movies, I will cry. I do cry at movies, but every time I’ve completed something impossible, like, you know, finishing my Ironman, running my 100 miler, 50 miler, even half Iron Man like I’ve cried at the end of these things, because it’s such an emotional event.
It was, it was a life changing event. And so when you set out to do something that feels impossible and you actually do it, there’s no other feeling in life quite like that. So I want to encourage you to think about this. Think about something big, something that feels impossible for you today, something that you want to achieve, and pick one thing that really stands out, that gets you out of your comfort zone.
I want you go to go after that one thing. Don’t pick 10 different impossible goals, because it’s just too overwhelming. You need constraint. You have to practice constraint of focus. Focus on one goal at a time. Go all in on that one goal. When you finish that one goal, then you can move on to something else, right? And it kind of depends on the goal.
But for me, I like to have one impossible goal on my plate every year, or maybe one every other year. It depends on how big the goal is, how much time it takes. Blah, blah, blah, okay, but have something in mind. Pick something, and then I want you to go after that. I want you to go all in on yourself, see what you’re capable of. Don’t think small. Think big. Don’t think realistic. Think unrealistic. Don’t think doable, think impossible, and then get busy doing the work to become the kind of person who can achieve the impossible. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
This past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati - Flying Pig Weekend! I did a lot of racing this weekend and let’s just say that things did not all go as …
Continue Reading about 228. Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend →
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 228 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend. So this past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati, the Flying Pig Marathon weekend.
And I did a lot of racing this weekend. And we’ll just say that things did not all go as planned. But despite dealing with some very challenging situations, the whole weekend was actually a huge success both for the city for moving thousands and thousands of runners and for me personally.
So today here on the podcast, I’m going to share my experiences in dealing with these challenges. And then the lessons that I learned along the way, all during the Flying Pig weekend.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, losing weight, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help get you there, consider coaching. The fact is coaching works where other methods fail, because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine.
It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do it on your own. One thing I tell all my coaching clients is that I want you to not meet with me at some point, you have to be able to do this stuff on your own.
My job is to make sure you get there. What good is making these lifestyle changes if they aren’t sustainable for you? This stuff has to be easy, and effortless for you. And it will be if you stick with it. And my job is to make sure you stick with it.
So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss and your running goals, let’s work together to get you there. Just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. And I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
Okay, so this past weekend was Flying Pig marathon weekend here in Cincinnati. The most exciting and most fun weekend of the year if you’re a runner. I don’t know about what other people think of this weekend, they might think it’s annoying, because there’s so many people here, but I personally think it’s like better than Christmas. So, so fun.
And listen, if you’re ever interested in coming to Cincinnati to do this race, you should. The Flying Pig was recently voted the number one marathon in the United States. According to USA Today’s 10 Best Reader’s Choice Awards. Very, very huge award to be awarded the number one marathon in the US according to readers, not according to some judges or something like that. These are actual people. So come and do the Flying Pig it’s super, super fun.
You don’t have to do the full marathon. There’s a whole weekend of events. I’m gonna talk about all the stuff that I did this weekend. But Cincinnati is just a great, great city for this kind of thing.
Cincinnati has had a very long history of a very active running community. We used to have this running store here, Bob Roncker’s Running Spot. And he started it back in the 80s and how to run in a group associated with that running store. And the running group became very big.
It was over 1500 people in the running group at one point. And we had to meet at different locations. And we had different pace groups. So we kind of broke it up into four different groups. And I’ve been a part of that group since like 2004, I think. And it’s just been an amazing community here in Cincinnati and Bob Roncker really helped to build that running community here in Cincinnati.
They sold the store, Bob sold the store, and the running group sort of splintered off into several other groups. And now Cincinnati has maybe five pretty big running groups that are in different parts of the community here in different parts of town. And they’re all pretty big.
You know, some of them might have four or 500 people some might have more, some might have a few hundred, but a great, great place for running and the Flying Pig marathon has been going on for a long time and just a super fun event.
They do a really, really good job and it’s a lot of fun. And everything started out Friday with the expo and the expo here is a great Expo super fun. They do it at the convention center. tons of vendors, great deals on gear and shoes.
It was really fun to see all my running friends, you know, people that are all excited about running over the weekend, everybody’s picking up their packets and their T-shirts and complaining about the T-shirts, because that’s what we do. Because we’re runners. Nobody’s ever happy. I kid, I kid. But seriously, it’s good to get these T-shirts, right? But it was so exciting.
It kicks off the whole weekend. And I spent a few hours at the expo just soaking it all up and talking with friends and just had such a fun time. And by the way, I did meet a few of the podcast listeners over the weekend.
And if you are somebody that came up to me and said hi, I just want to say thank you for being a listener. And thanks for coming up and saying hi to me, because it makes me feel good that there’s actual people out there that are listening to this stuff.
I’m sitting here in my office, talking into a microphone looking at some notes. And I’m just like, Is anybody out there listening? And it’s really cool when I see an actual person go, Hey, Patrick, I listen to your podcast and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s so great.
One person in particular, I’ll just call them Bailey, who I met in the corrals for the 10k. And we spent a little bit of time just hanging out waiting for the start of the race. And you know, he’s from Memphis, he came up here to do the Flying Pig. They’ve been up here before, him and his wife.
And they love Cincinnati and really had a great time. So Bailey, you’re one of those people who came up and said hi to me. And so I really appreciate that. And it was great to meet you. But the expo was super fun.
After the expo, I went down to run the one mile. So the one mile they do just kind of a fun run. I mean, some people do take it seriously. Because I was doing a whole series of events. So my weekend event was the three-way challenge, which is the one mile on Friday night. And then I did the 10k and the 5k on Saturday. And then Sunday was a half marathon.
So I was doing all the events. I was trying to save myself for Sunday, because I wanted to have a really good half marathon on Sunday. And I took it easy on Friday night. So I did the one mile and didn’t race it, I kind of ran comfortably hard because it’s hard not to it’s like I’m just running a mile. And everybody around you is running kind of fast.
So I held like a steady 8:30 pace or something like that for a mile. Felt good and finished, you know, fine, whatever hung out afterwards with some friends and so many people downtown. And they have a big celebration after each race and a big area with booths and food and drinks and all kinds of stuff.
And also the Reds were playing Friday night and Saturday, I think the Cincinnati FC Game, our soccer team, was playing. So there was a ton going on this weekend, it was just so much fun. So after the one mile I hung out with some friends ended up going home and then you know, took a shower and what not.
And I tried to kind of wind down but I was sort of wound up you know because you just run and then it’s you know, nine o’clock at night or whatever. And you’re just wired, you know, still so I stayed up for a little bit.
And the goal, my goal, my intention for Friday night was to get a really good night’s sleep. So I always make this point of getting a really good night’s sleep two days before the race because the night before the race, typically, you don’t get a very good night’s sleep. Right?
So I’ve done this a few times. And I know that so I’m like, okay, Friday, and I’m just gonna go to bed early, get a good night’s sleep. I did not get to bed really early. It was about 10:30. And I finally you know, went to bed and I’m like, It’s fine. I mean, I gotta get up at like, 4:30 tomorrow, but it’s fine. I like to get eight hours of sleep. I did not get eight hours of sleep. I’m gonna tell you that.
So I go to sleep. And I am awakened from a deep, deep sleep by the fire alarms going off in my building here. And basically the fire alarm saying there’s been a fire detected in your area, you need to evacuate the building immediately. And I was like, Oh my god.
So I jump out of bed throw on my shoes. I’m delirious and I’m going down the stairs and when everybody’s falling down the stairs in the building, there’s probably 200 or so units in this building. So a lot of people were all falling out onto the street. I’m completely delirious because I just fallen asleep and I gotta get up in a few hours here you know?
And this is like at 11:30, I’ve only been asleep for like an hour. I was out hard and so we had to stand outside and wait for the fire department to come to clear the building to make sure there wasn’t an actual fire or something, you know, horrible going on. There was no fire. I don’t know why the fire alarms went off. False alarm I guess.
So I finally went back upstairs now I’m wide awake. It’s midnight, and I ended up you know, not getting to sleep till about 12:30 or so knowing that I had to get up in like four hours. So Friday night’s sleep plan, thwarted, completely thwarted, like I’m just telling you that I felt so terrible Saturday morning when I got up.
So I get up, and I’m going to run the 10k and the 5k, I wanted to get a good parking spot, and there’s a parking garage right near the start and finish. And you gotta get there early to make sure you get a good spot, whatever. So I get down there early, got a great spot.
And I’m waiting around to start this 10k. And I am just delirious, I can’t think straight. I was supposed to meet some friends down there, can’t find them. And I’m just like, whatever, I am just going to do my best here today.
And that 10k was rough, kind of a warm weekend, you know, so Sunday was pretty warm. But it was kind of warm in the morning. And so I just decided, you know, this is just to get it done situation, I gotta run a 5k later, I gotta run a half tomorrow. So let’s just enjoy this 10k and not run too hard, which I didn’t, and struggled a little bit about halfway till about halfway through. And then I was fine. And I just was like, that’s fine.
I didn’t run fast. It was like an hour, a little over an hour, 1:04 something like that. So I just finished the 10k got done with that, you know, went to my car, changed my clothes. And I had to change clothes because I was smart, you know, I thought about that. I got dry clothes on because I was soaking wet, dry socks, it was amazing.
So I get ready standing in the crowds for the 5k getting ready to run that thing that the 10k started at 7am. The 5k was supposed to start at 9:00. So 8:30 or so I’m like in the corral, standing around waiting for the 5k to start. Within a few minutes before the start time people just start walking away. And we’re looking around like what’s going on?
Well, apparently, there’s a big storm coming. And so they told everybody to go take shelter, and that they’re going to delay the start of the race by an hour. And we were like, okay, they didn’t announce that. They just had a couple of people walking around. Well, I don’t know how many people are standing in line for that 5k,10,000 or something like that, it’s a huge, huge amount of people.
So they just went around and like kind of told everybody there’s a big PA system. I don’t know why they didn’t use that to tell everybody. Maybe they had to turn it off because there was lightning around. I don’t know, it was very confusing.
So anyway, we went to the parking garage, I went to my car, hung out with some friends. And I’m thinking I’m looking at the radar. And I’m thinking there’s no way this thing is going to start in an hour because the storm is going to be on top of us in an hour, which it was.
And at 10am The Flying Pig sent a text everybody’s saying that the race is going to be delayed until noon. Okay, so from 9am start time till noon is three hours later. I was like, oh my god, what is happening here?
So I went to my car, I watched some TV, I have a Tesla. So it’s got the Hulu in there, you know, Netflix and stuff like that. So I watched a little Hulu, that was nice. But I gotta tell you, I was so tired. So exhausted. So I just kind of leaned my seat back and I took like a 20 minute nap. That was amazing, by the way.
But still, it’s like, you know, now it’s only 11. Like, we still got another hour wait. And I was just like starting to get all stiff, you know, because you run a 10k. And then you sit around for three hours, you’re gonna get all stiff, right? Oh boy.
And the skies did open up. And it was crazy though the amount of rain that was on top of us and the lightning, which you would hear it and see it at the same time. So you know, it’s really, really close. It’s like right on top of you. Very good for the Flying Pig to delay the start of that race because it would have been very, very dangerous out there.
I’m just, I’m really glad they did that. I didn’t like sitting around, but it makes makes a lot of sense. All right. So that storm was moving very slowly. And so their timing of starting it at noon was a good idea. So we ended up starting the 5k at noon. And I was stiff by that point, you know, and that 5k was rough at the beginning.
The first mile was really challenging because there are so many people and I love people that run 5K’s but there’s a lot of people that walk and a lot of people that have strollers and stuff and they don’t line up quite properly.
So a lot of people were lined up with strollers and walking up at the front, which made it very difficult. My first mile was very, very slow. It’s like a 10:30 and I was like oh my god, this is ridiculous. My second two are like 9:45 and 9:00’s what I was shooting for, you know, just hard to get there with that many people, but I wasn’t too worried about I was like you know what? Who cares? Like I’m so exhausted right now and stiff.
So I just tried to have fun with it and it was fun. It really was. It’s a fun little course you go through this huge transit tunnel like under the city. And so it was fine. But after the 5k, or towards the end of the 5k, I started developing this blister on the side of my big toe. And it was really hurting bad like it was killing me by the end of the race. So I finished that.
Finally, I’m done with that. I get home, take a shower, and had to deal with this blister. So I get these calluses on the side of my big toe. If you’re somebody that’s grossed out by this kind of stuff. Don’t listen to this part. But I’m just going to tell you that if you’re a runner, you probably already get this.
So no big deal, I get these calluses on the side of my big toes. And when they get kind of big, I file them down so they don’t do what they did, which is they’ll rub against your shoe. And then it’ll kind of develop a blister underneath the callus. So you get this big callus and then a blister underneath, it is not a good situation. It’s very, very painful.
I’ve dealt with these during Ultras before, never during like a 10k or a 5k or something like that. And I don’t know why it happened. Pretty weird. But anyway, I was just like, well, I got to deal with this. So get home. I tried to file that thing down, which I did and helped it out a little bit.
But it was super painful, like walking was painful. And I was like, I don’t even know how I’m gonna run tomorrow. I wasn’t, you know, I was tired. I knew I was going to be exhausted and all that. But now I’m concerned about this blister. Oh my gosh, whatever.
The rest of the day on Saturday was kind of busy, I had stuff to do. And I had lost three hours of my day because of this rain delay, you know. And I finally didn’t get to bed till like 11 o’clock on Saturday night, right, I gotta get up at four o’clock to run this thing on Sunday.
And I knew I wasn’t gonna get a good night’s sleep on Saturday night, which I didn’t get a really good night’s sleep. So, I wake up at 4am on Sunday, make some coffee. And then you get my butt down there again, I got that same parking spot, which I felt really good about because I got there nice and early.
And so my original goal for the half was somewhere between like a 2:00 a 2:10. That’s kind of what I was shooting for. Maybe though, I did have a back pocket goal. That’s a goal that I don’t tell anyone about. And so my back pocket goal was a sub-two. And I’ve done a lot of sub-two halves. It’s just been a minute.
And I was thinking I might be able to do this. But it all depends on how the weekend went. And it’s pretty safe to say that the weekend did not go according to plan. Things kind of went awry, which is fine. So that 2:10, I was like I don’t know if this is going to be even doable.
So the lack of sleep, the blister or the running I did I made a decision Saturday night. Before going to bed. I was like you know what, tomorrow, I am just going to run the half with my girlfriend Jill.
Jill was an official pacer for the Flying Pig this year. And she’s done this before. She’s like a pro at it. So she was pacing the 2:20 half group. And I was like that’s cool I can do 2:20. When you’re a pacer though you have to hold a sign on the stick that says the pace that you’re going to be running and there are some balloons on there. It’s a little bit heavy, you know. So it’s nice to have a couple of people.
So her and her good friend were there to pace the 2:20 group. And so I was like, you know what, I’m just going to run with you guys today. I’m tired. You know this, my foot is an issue right now I just need to get this thing done. And we’ll just have fun.
2:20 seemed very doable. And Jill and I, we can both run faster than that. So as an official pacer, you have to or you’re supposed to pace a group that’s around 20 minutes slower than your actual pace. So this is perfect for both of us because we can both run about a 2 hour half at this point.
And let me tell you something about Jill. Jill is the Assistant Director of the Air Force marathon so she worked the Flying Pig Expo all day Friday. Then she drove to Indianapolis, which is two hours away.
She drove there Friday night because she was running that Indi mini half marathon in Indianapolis Saturday morning. And that’s the one where you get to run on the Indy 500 track. Super cool event.
So she runs a 2:02 half marathon on Saturday. Finishes that, drives back to Cincinnati another two hours in the car. And then she got up on Sunday morning to pace the pig half group and she had a huge smile on her face the whole time. So she’s kind of a badass.
So 6:30am is the start time for the Flying Pig and at 6:30am it was like 65 degrees and 93% humidity. It was brutal and it was supposed to get up to 88, and I’m telling you at at 93% humidity is is very challenging conditions to be running a marathon or half marathon.
So we start running, 6:30 gun goes off, great. We’re out there, we’re having fun. We’re running. And Jill’s pacing partner was dealing with some cramps or something early on, and we lost her around mile three, like she just kind of started to fall back and she couldn’t keep up. So Jill was really glad that I decided to run with her. So she didn’t have to do this alone, because it’s a lot of pressure to do that by herself.
You know, I helped her carry the little stick and stuff like that a little bit. And you know what, we had so much fun. We were laughing, we were talking to everyone around us, we’re lifting people up.
We are, you know, screaming at people in a good way where there’s lots of first timers out there. And some people were freaking out a little bit because it was hot, and it was humid. And people were, you know, getting a little bit concerned, which you know, you should be.
There was a couple of water stations that ran out of water early on. So people were standing in line waiting for a cup of water, because they were they were filling them as fast as they could, but they just couldn’t keep up with the demands.
There’s so many people that needed water early. But I have to say that, despite all that we were out there encouraging people. And you know, Jill and I have both done this race many times. So we were both just having so much fun. And really, this is the most fun I’ve ever had during a race.
I cannot tell you the last time I had this much fun running a race, especially the Flying Pig. It’s a tough race. It’s not easy. The first eight miles are kind of hilly and but once you get up there, that’s a lot of downhill finish, which is nice. And Jill’s pacing was spot on. She is a pro by the way. We finished it at 19:54, within six seconds. Are you kidding me? It was amazing.
And she was very appreciative that I hung with her for the duration since her partner wasn’t able to keep up. So everything worked out beautifully there. And once we finished, we crossed the finish line. And we’re in the post race celebration area, the sun came out. It was kind of cloudy in the morning, which was good, it helped keep the heat down, but the sun came out. And it got really hot really fast, like around 80 degrees.
So for the people that were running the full marathon, they were only about halfway done. You know, and most of our friends who did the full really struggled with the last half of that race. We waited around for a lot of people at the end.
And people were kind of miserable, but everybody was in good spirits. They were like, you know what? We ran. We did our best the conditions out there. So it was really hard. But we did our best and that’s all you can do in these situations. Right?
Okay, so that was the half marathon day and then post race we met up with some friends we talked about our races we went out and got some pizza and ice cream. Yes, I made a very intentional decision a couple of weeks before the event to eat some pizza and ice cream after this weekend’s running because I was like I do this like twice a year why not celebrate this event and we’ll go to my favorite pizza place here in Cincinnati, Dewey’s love it, so good.
And then we’re gonna get some Jenni’s ice cream. Jenni’s is a local ice cream vendor around here. Amazing, crazy flavors. So race day, I got some pizza. Normally, I eat a lot of pizza, I couldn’t really eat much. And just was like, I had a few pieces and I was done.
And then the same thing with the ice cream. Normally I get a pint of ice cream. I eat the pint of ice cream, the whole thing. And I was like, I had like half of it and I was fine. I didn’t really need any more. You know, my, my food binging has really just, I don’t really do that anymore.
Because I eat some pizza or eat some ice cream and it’s okay, you know, it feels pretty good. And it’s tasty. But I’m like, you know, I’m done. I don’t need a whole lot of that. So that was good. I felt good about that. I felt in integrity with myself by not going completely nuts on pizza and ice cream. Because that used to be my jam.
Okay, so a few lessons learned. Number one, you’ve got to plan ahead, but you’ve got to go with the flow. You plan ahead and then you got to go with the flow. I trained hard to season I was ready for a pretty decent race on Sunday. But I really had to listen to my body and go with the flow.
I could have really pushed it on Saturday and really pushed it on Sunday, but I think I’ve made the right decisions you know, considering blister and by the way, the blister did not hurt me during the half marathon at all. Like it didn’t bother me at all. 100% fine.
It did hurt for a couple days afterwards. But now it’s almost completely healed, which is good. But it didn’t bother me. I was like wow, that’s amazing. But I listened to my body, I was super exhausted, I had the blister, whatever. But I did my best.
The important thing is that I feel good about my decisions, I feel good about the way I raced these different races, considering what was going on the exhaustion, and the lack of sleep, and the delirium and all these other things, right. So I feel good about my decisions, I’m in integrity with myself with my decisions, especially on Sunday.
The next lesson I learned is that, you know, you shouldn’t put timelines on your goals. And this may sound a little counterintuitive, because if people say, Oh, you need a goal, it has to be you have to have a time to complete this goal.
But when you put a timeline on your goal, especially like running goal, and you don’t hit it on that date, it can be incredibly frustrating, disappointing, you know, instead, set a goal, do the work you need to do each day to move toward that goal. And then eventually, you will get there.
I talk to my weight loss coaching clients about this all the time. Like don’t put a timeline on your weight loss goal. Instead, focus on doing the work each day to get there, and you will eventually get there. Is it going to take three months or six months or a year, who cares? It doesn’t matter.
What’s important is like you’re changing in the process, you’re becoming a different person in the process. And eventually you will get there if you stay focused. So I’ve got a goal of doing this sub-two half again, like I said, I’ve done it before, but it’s been a minute, but I’m gonna try again this fall, and I’m not disappointed about my weekend.
I’m happy that I did what I did this weekend. I’m not disappointed. I didn’t hit that goal on this particular day. You know, this was not the weekend to go for that goal. Clearly, right? The Universe sent me lots of signs, telling me this is not the weekend for that.
And the biggest lesson I learned is that, you know, running is fun. And running can be so much fun. We had so much fun running this hometown marathon, half-marathon, 5k, 10k, one mile, whatever. And especially on Sunday, it just felt light and easy. You know, we didn’t take ourselves too seriously.
The next race that you do, I want to encourage you to focus on having fun. Do what you need to do to make it fun. Leave the headphones at home, talk to people, listen to people, get encouraged by the crowd, encourage other people, crack some jokes. Have fun out there, talk to people from out of town.
Ask people where they’re from. Just enjoy it. You know, the training is the hard part. We train from January till May. And we run in all kinds of terrible weather. It’s months of hard work. The race is the celebration, the race is the victory lap. So enjoy it. Have fun with it. But I really have this new love of running. And that half marathon on Sunday really got me there. It was amazing. Super, super fun. That’s my favorite lesson this weekend, is that running can be amazingly fun.
Okay, so that’s my recap of the weekend. Those are lessons I learned. Come to Cincinnati do the Flying Pig next year. It’s going to be amazing. It always is. It’s a super fun weekend. And if you do come out here, look for me and say hi. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve ever trained for a marathon then you know that sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve that goal. You have to put in a lot of hours on the weekends running in the cold. You have …
Continue Reading about 221. What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight? →
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 221 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight?
So if you’ve ever trained for a marathon, then you know that sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve that goal. You have to put in lots of hours on the weekends running in the cold and the dark, you have to give up time with your friends and your family. You endure sore legs for days, you’re tired all the time, you are more than willing to sacrifice these things in order to finish that marathon.
Okay, so how about when it comes to losing weight? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to hit your weight loss goals? So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into the kinds of sacrifices we all have to make in order to lose weight and keep it off.
But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running, and getting stronger here on this podcast. If you’re new, welcome I’m glad you’re here. But you might be a little confused or overwhelmed by all this information.
I get it if that’s you, no worries, I’ve got you covered. I created a free hour-long training that you can check out at any time. It’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
I teach you the basics of nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset all geared towards you the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner, ready to get stronger and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Alright, so what are you willing to sacrifice to lose weight, there’s a lot of confusion around the weight loss world. And I’ve seen a lot of people who think or assume that you really don’t have to give up anything or make any sacrifices in order to lose weight.
Like you can just kind of keep doing what you’re doing, maybe run more, you know, maybe skip the ice cream every now and then or something like that, but you really don’t have to give anything up.
I’ve even heard, you know, dieticians and certain people touting these diets where you just can eat anything that you want. Just eat it in moderation. You don’t really have to sacrifice anything, just eat a little bit less of everything and all your problems will be solved. Does this really work?
I have to tell you that I know that didn’t work for me. I’ve tried that. I know a lot of people that have tried that it hasn’t worked for them. There’s a lot more going on than just like, you know everything in moderation.
Everything in moderation is a great idea. I wish it worked. If it worked, it would be amazing. But I don’t think it works for most people, especially when we’re talking about some types of foods like sugar, which are very difficult to moderate.
Have you ever tried to moderate your sugar intake? Have you tried to just eat a little bit of sugar? It’s hard to do. One of the reasons is is it brings you so much pleasure it lights up the pleasure centers in your brain every time you eat sugar. And it lights up those pleasure centers even more than certain drugs like cocaine do, you know, it’s crazy, how much it lights up the pleasure centers in your brain.
So just eating some sugar in moderation causes you this abnormal craving for more sugar, right? So if you’re somebody that’s trying to moderate what you’re eating, and you’re trying to moderate your sugar intake, and every time you eat it, you have this huge craving for more sugar, this is going to be very difficult for you, you’re gonna go crazy.
And what ends up happening is you eat a lot more sugar, because you’re trying to moderate. Okay, so that’s just one of the reasons why moderation doesn’t work. And I think that there’s a lot more going on in the human physiology when it comes to blood sugar when it comes to insulin when it comes to how our bodies store fat or release fat from fat cells.
You know, we’ve got to make sure that our insulin levels are low, that our blood sugar is pretty chill most of the time. And if you’re spiking your blood sugar and insulin is constantly high, it’s going to be very difficult for you to lose weight, even if you are eating in moderation, okay?
So the reality here is that we do have to make some sacrifices, and even eating whatever you want in moderation, you are still making some sacrifices there, because you’re not eating as much as you’re used to eating, if that’s the route you want to take, you know, people that do Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, calorie counting, you know, all that stuff.
I personally don’t think those methods are very effective long term, they’re effective short term, but not long term. You know, just for reasons like, you know, your, you know, restricting calories will kind of make your metabolism slowed down a little bit.
So, those types of diets, you know, why they tout just saying, like, oh, you know, we’re gonna, you know, eat everything, we’re just gonna moderate and really watch the number of calories you’re eating, you still have to make sacrifices there, you still have to watch the number of calories you’re eating. All right.
So just know that it doesn’t matter, the method of trying to lose weight, there is going to be some sacrifices that have to be made in order for you to reach that goal. Okay. And I want to say this, you know, I’ve said this a couple times before on the podcast here, but when we talk about losing weight, of course, we’re talking about losing fat, not just weight, we’re not talking about losing muscle or bone mass or anything like that. We want to improve our body composition, we just all understand that weight loss means fat loss, right?
Can we just all agree to that? Cool, okay. So when it comes to your body weight, and the amount of fat that you’re carrying around, or muscle, even in this case, there are three different approaches.
You can choose to maintain your weight, which means you’re just gonna keep doing what you’re doing and maintain your weight easily. You can gain weight, you know, you might be somebody that wants to actively get bigger, you know, maybe from a muscular standpoint, or you can try to lose weight.
So if your goal is to maintain your weight, and your weight is kind of where you want it to be, and you’re okay with where your weight is, then probably what you’re doing is fine, and you just can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.
You know, you might be eating a certain way, you might be exercising a certain amount each week. And if you can easily maintain your body composition, meaning you’re not gaining fat, you’re not losing muscle, you really don’t need to change anything.
So this is what we call maintenance mode. And eventually, we all want to get into maintenance mode. And the end goal of any weight loss journey should be this place where you can just easily and kind of effortlessly maintain your weight, like that should be the goal.
And that’s the goal with everybody that I work with is like the end goal should be that when you and I are done working together, you know exactly what to do to easily and pretty effortlessly maintain your weight, right? So if you just want to maintain, that’s pretty easy to do. Just keep doing what you’re doing, you don’t really have to change anything. All right.
Now, the second approach is, let’s say you’re somebody that wants to gain weight. And you might be thinking, I’m sort of crazy for talking about this, who would want to gain weight? But lots of people do. Bodybuilders want to gain weight, I’m trying to gain weight, I’ve been trying to gain weight for some time now. And when I talk about gaining weight, what we’re talking about typically is gaining muscle.
So I’ve been actively trying to gain muscle. And it is hard to do because one thing you have to understand is that you have to be very diligent about eating more food, you got to increase your calorie intake, you got to eat more protein, then you have to do a significant amount of weight training.
And that could be training for hypertrophy training for strength, but you have to be actively working towards building bigger muscles, you can’t just expect to eat a lot more calories, and then expect to gain a bunch of muscle, it doesn’t really work that way. Again, that would be awesome if it did, but it doesn’t.
So we want to combine a good healthy diet and I’m not talking about eating a bunch of junk. But a good healthy diet, you just have to increase the calorie intake and then the right amount of weight training and we have to do this stuff consistently for a pretty long period of time, especially as you get older.
You know if I was doing this in my 20s or 30s, I’d probably be gaining weight from muscle weight pretty quickly and pretty easily. But now I’m in my late 50s you know, and putting on muscle and getting bigger in that way is a little bit harder, but I’ve been pretty successful with it you know and I’ll share more about about on a future podcast, I’m not quite where I want to be yet. So when I do get there, I’m going to share my journey with you guys there.
Okay, so that would be the approach of gaining weight. All right. So if you want to maintain, just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, if you want to, if you want to gain weight, or even if you want to lose weight, then we have to change something, right?
So that brings us to the third approach, which is the one that most people, I would assume one, which is to lose weight, you want to lose that fat weight, okay? So if you want to lose, then we have to change something, if you want to maintain your weight, just keep doing whatever you’re doing, right?
But if you want to lose, what you’re doing is not getting you there, right? So we have to change something. If you have 20, 30, 40 pounds to lose, then whatever you’re doing right now is not going to get you there.
Maybe what you’re doing right now would be a good maintenance plan for you. So think about that. Like what if you’re not gaining weight, you’re just maintaining your weight pretty easily. But you want to lose, think about this. This what you’re doing now could be a good maintenance plan for you long term after you hit your goal weight, of course, right?
So common sense says that if you want to lose the weight, then we have to change something. And when I say change something, that means we have to sacrifice something or some things in order to start getting the weight to move, in order to get you to that goal weight.
Okay, so whenever people are told that they need to make a sacrifice, they figure Oh, my God, it’s like torture, you know, but it doesn’t have to be torture. I looked up the definition of sacrifice. And I like these words that are associated with it.
So the definition is to suffer loss of something to give up something to renounce something, or to destroy something, I like that one, we got to destroy the pizza cravings, you know, especially for an ideal a belief or an end. Right.
So the end, in this case, is your ideal weight. It’s your weight loss goal. And the sacrifices are the things that you need to give up that you need to renounce the things that you need to destroy, in order to achieve that.
And okay, another way of saying this is every goal requires a sacrifice. And the sacrifice could be something you love, like pizza, or ice cream. And, you know, it could be money or time or effort.
You know, if you’re training for that marathon, you know, you have to make sacrifices, months of training in the cold weather, long, long runs on sore, tired legs, you sacrifice time with your family, you sacrifice your social life, because you can’t go out on Friday night, you got to get up early to run 18 miles tomorrow. And then you can’t go out tomorrow night because you’re so tired from running the 18 miles.
You know, most people I talk to are like, oh my gosh, I am so willing to make those sacrifices in order to you know, hit my marathon goal. And so many people are so quick to make that decision. They’re like, cool, I’m definitely going to sacrifice to hit that marathon goal. In fact, I’m going to do this twice a year or three times a year, I run like two or three marathons every year.
So you’re making the sacrifices pretty much year-round. Because if you’re running two or three marathons a year, you’re kind of always in training. So you’re always giving up things. You’re always sacrificing some things for your training. So you know, that training for a marathon requires a lot of sacrifices and you do it gladly. You do it with a smile on your face. Okay.
So what about those sacrifices that you might have to make in order to reach a weight loss goal? You know, you may want to stop eating sugar and you may want to stop drinking alcohol and you may want to cut out the junk food that you’ve been scarfing down happily while you’re doing all that marathon training.
Maybe you cut out snacking or you just go down to eating a couple times a day. Maybe you stop eating all the pizza and the french fries and the ice cream. So all these things are real sacrifices that you might have to make if you want to hit that goal. But the bigger question here is this. Are you willing?
Are you willing to make those sacrifices are you willing to give up the foods that you love that tastes so amazing that light up the pleasure center in your brain like crazy, but they keep making you fatter?
Are you willing to give up those foods, because the cold hard truth is this losing weight requires sacrifices, becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself requires sacrifice. If it didn’t require sacrifice, you already would have achieved it. The fact that it requires a sacrifice means you have not achieved it yet.
So you have to give up something in order to get there, what you want is outside your comfort zone mean, meaning that, you know, if it was in your comfort zone, you’d already have it because it’d be something that you’re comfortable with, you know, but it’s not, it’s outside your comfort zone.
And so just by definition, one of the things you’re going to have to sacrifice is comfort in order to reach that weight loss goal. So sometimes I talk to my clients and they’ll say something like, you know, I’m a little frustrated because my weight has stalled a little bit. And by the way, this is totally normal happens all the time, weight loss can stall for 2, 3, 4 weeks sometimes.
And then it just picks up again, sometimes we don’t change anything. But it’s really not a stall if it’s you know, been four days or six days or something like that, it’s really not. If it’s three, four weeks, yeah, then we got to, you know, look at you know, something, and maybe make a change. And this is totally normal. Everybody goes through this at some point, okay?
So they’ll tell me, my weight is not changing at all, but it’s not going down, it’s staying the same. And when we really dig into what’s going on, almost always, it’s like, well, you know, I’ve had the occasional cookies here and there, I’ve had the occasional piece of cake, I only had one slice of pizza the other night, and I did have a glass of wine too, you know?
Okay, so first of all, all that stuff is fine to do if you want to maintain your weight, because you’re maintaining your way pretty easily here, you know, you can have the occasional cookie, you can have the piece of pizza here and there, you’re gonna have the occasional glass of wine.
And if you do it the right way, and you can do it in moderation. Again, it’s hard to do sometimes with some of this stuff. But if you can do it in moderation, then you’re good from a maintenance standpoint. So if your goal is to maintain your weight, you’re fine. Okay.
But since your goal is not to maintain, it’s to lose your weight, then you’re going to have to be a little bit more disciplined, right, you have to make these sacrifices, at least until you reach your goal weight, then you can go back to the occasional cookie, the slice of pizza, or the glass of wine here and there.
And maybe we practice doing that here and there, as you’re getting closer to that goal weight, so that you understand the mental and emotional aspects of drinking alcohol and eating sugar, because those things can really mess you up. And they’ll they’ll cause more cravings. And it’ll be really hard to stop once you start for some people anyway.
And so we got to be careful with that. So maybe we practice that and we can walk through it slowly. You know, I’m not just going to cut you loose and go Good luck, you know, we’re going to practice doing some of that stuff together. Okay.
So what I’m saying here is like we do have to make sacrifices, but we don’t necessarily have to make these sacrifices for life. Okay. I always talk about how we want to commit to a lifestyle, and commit to a lifestyle of eating healthy, that does not mean we commit to a lifestyle of never having another piece of pizza again, in our lives. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
So losing weight requires these lifestyle changes, you have to change the core of how you approach food, like your mental and emotional approach to food has to be different, right? You can’t keep doing the things you were doing before that doesn’t work, you already know that we and if you want to lose, you got to tighten things up a little bit.
You have to make some sacrifices. And then you have to learn how to do maintenance the right way. And maintenance doesn’t mean you just go back to doing things the way you did before. It’s about sticking to your healthy eating plan most of the time, like let’s say 90% of the time, it means learning that you can eat the occasional slice of pizza, and not the entire large pizza.
That was always my problem. I would be like I’m gonna get some pizza and I would eat like a whole medium or large pizza to myself. Depending on how like thick the crust was, you can only eat so much crust, you know, it means learning how to have a glass of wine once a week, not a bottle of wine every night. Like there’s a big difference there. Okay.
And this learning is how to do things differently. This learning how to moderate amazingly delicious foods that make us feel so good that that’s where the real work comes into play. Right? So if you’re somebody that’s like, you know, the thing that’s going to really be sustainable for me is if I can occasionally have that glass of wine, if I can occasionally have a piece of cake or cookie, but I can occasionally have pizza. I have learned how to do this.
And I have learned that I can eat pizza like couple times a year, I pretty much don’t eat sugar, I’ll have the occasional piece of dark chocolate. So it might be at 5% dark. So it’s there’s not much sugar in there. But I, when I eat that stuff, when I’m eating chocolate, when I’m eating some pizza, I want more of that stuff.
You know, I’ll start thinking about it ahead of time, because I usually plan it out. I’ll be like, oh, yeah, next month on the 14th I’m gonna have a pizza, you know, or eat some pizza. And then I’ll be thinking about, I can’t wait to have that pizza that I haven’t. I’m like, yeah, it was fine.
But then afterwards, I’m like, that was really good. I want more of that, you know, and I’ll and I’ll have to be really cognizant of my mental and emotional state around those types of foods that light up my pleasure centers, okay, and you’re gonna have to do the same thing for you. Okay.
So learning how to moderate some of these foods is really where the work kicks in. Okay, but you can do it. And the cool thing is, is that when you make these sacrifices, so you gotta be willing to make some sacrifices.
And when you make these sacrifices, and sometimes it’s for months on end, you might have to sacrifice some of these things for three months, six months, something like that, when you give them up, when you destroy them, they no longer have the power over you that they once had.
And after some time, you realize that not eating these things is really, you’re really not sacrificing anything at all. You know, it’s just not a big deal anymore. Okay.
So here’s your work for this week. Think about this. What do you need to sacrifice in order to reach your weight loss goals? Right? And then what are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to sacrifice all those things? And it has to be like a yes or no, you have to be committed.
You have to be absolutely committed to cutting these things out of your life, at least for a while. Okay? Every goal requires sacrifice. Losing weight requires sacrifice. What are you willing to cut out of your life to reach your weight loss goal? Okay, think about that. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
