Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you want to lose weight and you’re finding it difficult - maybe you’ve hit a plateau and can’t seem to get the weight moving again - this episode is for you. Losing weight is never a linear …
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There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by health and fitness “experts.” One in particular that has stood out to me lately goes something like, “Take a few days each …
Continue Reading about 223. The Problem with Eating Whatever You Want →
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 223, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today the problem with eating whatever you want. There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by quote unquote, like health and fitness experts.
One in particular that has kind of stood out to me lately goes something like this, take a few days each week and go crazy, eat whatever you want. You can’t be too restrictive with your diet. So I’ve done a lot of thinking about this idea. In fact, I’ve even tried it for a while I’m gonna talk about that later.
I’ve learned a lot about how this principle works, why it works, why it doesn’t work, mostly why it doesn’t work. And I’m going to share my thoughts with you about that today. So in this episode, I’m going to explain the problem with eating whatever you want, and offer maybe a better way to do things.
But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you. You want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster. And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you.
I also want you to know that I am here to help you get there. Yes, I know I’m here talking to you on the podcast, I’m sharing all this information with you. And if you’re listening, awesome, you’re going to learn a lot. I listen to all sorts of podcasts and audiobooks. And I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.
But when it comes to the practical application of all that knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track. I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life, who have helped me to become who I am today.
I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business, my mindset has never been better. These amazing coaches helped me with all of that, in fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach myself.
Okay, so for you, the one listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge, but when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me, okay, but find somebody to show you the way to help you to apply all of this knowledge that you’re gaining to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get better results and faster than you ever could on your own.
Okay, and if you are interested in working with me, awesome, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
All right, let’s talk about the problem with eating whatever you want. So there’s a trend out there. I’m starting to notice in the health and fitness industry, this has been going on for a while that basically says this every now and then you should be able to eat whatever you want, and it should be fine.
And I’m not diametrically opposed to this idea. Okay, I want to start out by saying that. So some people, they say, you know, just follow the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you’re eating healthy, then 20% of the time, you can do anything you want, and it’s totally fine. And I’m not even completely opposed to this concept. But I think if we’re doing a 20 around food, it might be a little too much of eating whatever you want.
Okay, so I did a little bit of math. And if you eat three times a day, for seven days, that’s 21 meals a week. Okay. So 20% 21 is 4.2 meals a week, where you get to eat anything you want. To me, that seems like a lot. Okay.
Then there’s something like Tim Ferris’ slow carb diet. So he has this thing called the slow carb diet. It’s from his book, The Four Hour Body, great book, by the way, a lot of good information in there.
And he has this kind of diet plan in there that says you know, just keep the carbs low. You know, don’t eat anything white, essentially. And there’s some interpretation as to what is considered white. It’s kind of like no sugar, no flour, no dairy, essentially. And you want to do that like six days a week, okay.
And then one day a week for the whole day, you should eat whatever you want. Literally eat anything, you can eat five pizzas, a dozen donuts at a time, ice cream at every meal. And the people that follow this kind of diet, I guess you could call it a diet usually have this one cheat day, whatever you want to call it.
They do this on Saturdays, and they’ve nicknamed it Fatterday. Because you gained like five pounds every Saturday. So the principle is, you know, one day a week, you get to do whatever you want. And people go crazy on this day. And I actually tried this a year or so ago I did this as an experiment to see, you know, what would happen to me, if I took on this all you can eat anything goes one day a week sort of mentality.
Okay, so I ate you know, I would eat doughnuts and pastries in the morning with coffee like and I don’t ever eat in the morning, I was eating french toast and pancakes for lunch, pizza for dinner. And then the most decadent ice cream I could find. Sometimes they get ice cream that’s like low carb ice cream that doesn’t have sugar in it.
But in this case, I was looking for what has the most fat and the most sugar like I was just going crazy. And I didn’t do this for too long. I don’t know, maybe a few weeks to a month, something like that. Because I have to tell you, that Saturday was amazing, like because I just was binging like crazy.
But I felt like total garbage for like five days afterwards. And on that one day, I would gain a bunch of weight. And it took like five days before that weight would come off again. And I would come back to normal. You know, just think about that.
Like every week, you’re doing something that is so bad for you really and makes you feel so terrible that it takes you like four or five days to just get back to normal again. Okay. So that was one problem with that.
Another problem with it was that I found myself counting the hours until Saturday, I was starting to like fantasize about food and all the junk food that I was going to eat and how many glazed doughnuts I could eat at once. And you know what kind of pizza I was going to be eating and buying ice cream. So I would have it ready.
And you know, because I’ve been avoiding all this junk for years. But I found my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about all this food. Right? This is not really healthy thinking. Okay. So needless to say, this diet did not really work for me, even though I loved it. Man, who doesn’t love binging out on a bunch of junk food like that? Right?
It wasn’t helping me to maintain my weight. I felt like crap all the time, my food cravings were through the roof. So there are several problems with with plans like this, whether it’s like four days, four meals a week, you know, whatever you want, you know, or one day a week, just do whatever. Like I think that that we have to come up with a better plan than this. Okay?
Some of the problems with this eating whatever you want mentality is that it doesn’t teach you how to take control of your eating, you know, for a long time. For me anyway, and I’m guessing for you, because this happens with a lot of people that I talk to.
They have issues about control, and they’re eating like they feel like they’re eating is out of control. And if you’re engaging in a behavior that promotes out of control, eating on a regular basis, this is not going to teach you how to take control of your eating over the long term. You’re going to constantly feel like this out of control behavior is not only okay, but it’s almost encouraged, you know.
So you’re not learning how to be a mindful eater, you know, and I talked about this recently on the podcast about the mindless eating and how we have to be more mindful about eating. And so this kind of behavior I think, is detrimental to that. I think it leads to more mindless Eating, and it doesn’t teach you anything. So, you know, people say, well, this is this is the only way that you can eat a healthy diet sustainably, you have to be able to let off the steam every now and then.
But I think that we’re just reinforcing some really terrible eating habits, you know, its its binge type of eating is what’s going on here a lot of times, and to me, it feels like, we’re just kind of giving people permission to keep the disordered eating patterns happening. Okay?
If you’re somebody that has ever suffered with any sort of eating disorder, you know, you, you know what this feels like. And you know that this is very difficult and very triggering for you. Maybe even just talking about it can feel it triggering for you.
But to keep reinforcing that binge type of eating is, I think it’s going to kind of mess you up in the long term, okay, because it’s not teaching you how to be that mindful eater, how to be that person that is in control of what they’re doing.
Not to mention that, you know, eating whatever you want is, it’s not healthy for you not physically healthy, not mentally healthy, not emotionally healthy. It’s not physically healthy, because anything that you eat, that is so full of sugar and junk food, and you know, fried food, and, you know, all of the bread and refined grains and flour, that stuff just makes you inflamed, it makes you hold on to a lot of your weight.
It makes you feel lethargic, it makes you have brain fog, like you can’t think clearly. You know, it raises your blood sugar and insulin levels, it can really lead to some serious health effects, you know, really can lead to diabetes and things like that, if not, if done regularly, obviously. But it’s kind of like you’re you’re dabbling with poison here.
You know, it’s kind of like drinking alcohol, where alcohol is poison. You know, ethanol, the main ingredient that makes alcohol give you a buzz is poisonous, toxic, if you drink enough alcohol, you will die. It will kill you. But if you do it in small doses, it’s not too bad. But it’s still poison.
All right, we’re still eating poison. When you’re eating all this junk food here, you’re just doing it in smaller doses, but it’s not physically healthy. It’s not good for you, okay? And I think from a mental and emotional standpoint, it’s really bad for you, because it’s not teaching you good eating habits.
It’s promoting disordered eating patterns. It’s not allowing you to learn how to take control of your emotions, you’re basically eating your feelings, your eating, because you’re, you’re voracious, and you have this huge desire to eat, you’re eating because you’re stressed out, or whatever it is, whatever the reasons are, it’s hard for us as humans to learn how to take control of how they think and feel, when we’re eating a huge amount of junk food all the time.
This is akin to telling an alcoholic to just go on a bender once a week, or twice a week, you know, just to let off some steam, you know, because that’s going to be more sustainable for you. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.
As somebody who used to drink, I don’t anymore, I don’t think that’s a very good idea at all. Because for an alcoholic, you know, one drink leads to more drinks. You know, for somebody that has some issues around food, eating a bunch of junk food like that can just lead to more of that type of behavior.
And you’re not changing the behavior, we’ve got to take control of the behavior. Okay, I’m not opposed to eating this stuff every now and then. Not at all. But I think that, you know, somehow we’re treating your body like a garbage can. And we’re telling ourselves this story that it’s good for us. It’s really not.
Right, you’re not learning, any type of self-control here. You’re not learning how to deal with your emotions, like an adult. You know, you’re acting like a toddler, what does a toddler do? A toddler kicks and screams and cries oh, I want it my way I want I want things my way. And they and they will cry and scream until they get what they want. And we’re kind of doing the same things.
We have these feelings and we’re like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just eat a bunch of junk food and you feel better. A little better, just for a few minutes doesn’t last. You’re actually not dealing with any of the issues and you’re not learning how to have emotions. You’re emotionally acting like a toddler, okay? We want to be emotional adults, not emotional toddlers, okay?
So this idea that we should be able to eat whatever we want to let off steam or whatever, they’re selling you this idea because they’re telling you, it’s the only sustainable way to eat because eating healthy all the time is not sustainable. You know, you have to get into those cravings or you’re gonna go crazy. This is what they tell you.
Okay, but what if you will learn how to dial down the volume of those cravings? What if those cravings weren’t as strong anymore? What if you thought about eating some ice cream for a minute, and you’re like, man, ice cream wouldn’t be good right now. It’s not really on my plan. I’m cool. I don’t really need it, I’m fine.
You’re gonna have those thoughts every now and then. But they don’t have to take over your life. They don’t have to become so strong that you have to go and give in to those cravings. Just because you have a craving for something doesn’t mean you have to go and have that thing. Right? If this is a new concept for you, I’m glad you’re here. Okay.
What if you learned how to manage your mind and you learn how to manage your emotions, so that you no longer needed to binge eat over them? Right? Wouldn’t that be more sustainable and healthier than, you know, blowing off some steam a couple times a week, just because you can’t deal with the emotional stuff. I think it’s more important to deal with how you think and feel than it is to like, binge out all the time.
So what if you learn how to handle all these emotions in your life, the good, the bad, the ugly, what if you didn’t need to turn to food to just feel better all the time? You know, this would be amazing. It’s a big game changer for you. When we’re giving in to all these cravings all the time, and we’re allowing ourselves to binge eat like that. Food has a power over you. Because you’re engaging in this binging behavior, you’re allowing food to be to be in control of you food is in the driver’s seat.
Food has the power over you, you have given up your power and your control to food. This is ridiculous. Don’t do this. You’re giving up control of your mental and emotional state to food. Right? Alcoholics do ,drug addicts do this. People who are addicted to food do this.
So there’s a better way to do things, there’s a better approach. And the approach is this learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings. That’s it. That’s the work. It’s that simple. It’s that simple. Stop using a substance food, alcohol drugs to manage how you feel. You got to get really good at just dealing with life just as it is the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly. All of it, you just have to be able to handle it all. Like an emotional adult. Okay.
I used to use alcohol this way. For 25 years I drank so that I wouldn’t have to feel, period. That’s why I drank because I didn’t want to deal with all these feelings stress, anger, fear, resentment, guilt, shame, frustration. I didn’t want to deal with any of that stuff. And I drank and I felt better. It worked.
Kind of came with all these negative consequences. My health was terrible. My relationships with everyone were terrible. I ended up getting a divorce. People didn’t want to be around me anymore. I generally felt miserable all the time. And when I quit drinking, this was back in 2007. I had to learn how to live my life without numbing, without the crutch, without escaping my thoughts and feelings. And it worked.
It worked for a period of time until I turned to food to fill that void because I got off the alcohol but then I was like oh food that gives me that buzz that I used to get that gives me that numbing sensation I used to this helps me to not have to deal with my thoughts and feelings anymore. Yay.
But then the foods started to not work for me and I started to gain a bunch of weight, you know, and I started to feel terrible. And I had to learn how to deal with all the thoughts and feelings all over again. All right.
This time I had to do it without any sort of external coping mechanism, right? So I made the decision when I stopped eating junk food – sugar, pizza, ice cream – and made the decision that I was going to start embracing my life, just the way it was everything and the way that I felt, and in my thoughts, my thoughts and feelings, were not going to, like control me that I was going to take control over that stuff that I wasn’t going to turn to food or drugs or alcohol to feel better.
I haven’t had a drink in 17 years, and my life is vastly richer and more rewarding because of it. I stopped using food to feel better. I haven’t done that in five years, I have never felt better. I’m in the best shape of my life, physically, but also in the best shape of my life, mentally, emotionally, I can handle everything that life throws at me.
And I’ve gone through a lot of hard stuff in the last few years, and I don’t have to eat a bunch of doughnuts. Just because you know, life is stressful. You know, I’ve done the work. It’s not easy, it’s hard. It takes time. There are setbacks, there is discomfort. It takes time.
But this is the work that we commit to. And the people that I work with, the clients that I work with, they get this, they’re here for it, they show up, and they’re ready to embrace the sock, you know, they don’t do it perfectly. No one does, by the way, not even me. But they stick with it.
They make progress, they get better at it, they learn how to be emotional adults, they learn how to stop using food to feel better, they learn how to stop the binging behavior. And when you learn this work, when you learn how to take control of your thoughts and feelings.
Everything in your life becomes easier. This stuff doesn’t apply just to food. It applies to every area of your life, your relationships are better, your work is better. Your friendships are better your relationship with your kids is better. You’re happier person. Because you’ve learned how to handle the stress the board and the frustration, anger all without having to eat over it.
Okay, you’re going to learn how to have a little discomfort, like that’s part of the process. But you’re going to learn how to just deal with the discomfort and you don’t have to feel better right away. This is the path to becoming the healthy, healthiest and most badass version of yourself honestly.
So you might be thinking, you know, okay, I’m listening to you, Patrick. I’m hearing all this stuff. But in the back of my mind, you’re like, Okay, does this mean I can never eat a doughnut again? Can I have pizza sometimes? Please, you know? And yeah, absolutely. You don’t have to like give up these foods for the rest of your life. That is not what I’m talking about here. I eat those things on occasion.
Food is meant to be enjoyed, right? We celebrate with food. If it’s your birthday, eat some cake. You don’t have to eat a birthday salad. Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Okay. But you have to do the work I’m talking about here today.
First, you have to change your thoughts and feelings, you have to change your relationship with food before you can start enjoying these things every now and then. Okay, you have to learn how to dial down the volume of the desire. Learn how to handle your thoughts and feelings.
Learn how to handle life on life’s terms, you’ve got to get past the need for the binging type of behavior. When you do all that you can experience true freedom around food because you’re no longer powerless, you’ve taken your power back, you’ve taken back control, you’re now in charge again, then you can start eating the stuff on occasion.
And I don’t recommend the 20% rule, or the one day a week you get to do whatever you want. I don’t think that’s really healthy for a lot of reasons that I’ve already talked about. But I do talk to my clients about getting to this place where maybe there’s one meal a week that you can go a little bit off the plan. And that might be a 90% or 95% rule, something like that sort of 80/20 It’s like 90/10 or 95/5, you know, something like that.
And, but you can’t do that from day one. Like we have to get control of food first, before you can start dabbling with some of this junk food. The junk food is not the it’s not the main problem. The problem is really our relationship with this stuff. So we got to fix that first. When you fix that first then you can enjoy a piece of pizza every now and then.
I do eat pizza a couple times a year, I do eat ice cream a couple times a year. Desserts here and there, a piece of chocolate here and there. I don’t eat a lot of sugar to be honest with you. The thing that I crave more than anything else would be like baked goods, bread, pizza, that kind of stuff. Okay?
So you can do this on occasion, but you gotta get in control of your thoughts and feelings. You got to change that relationship with food first. Okay? That’s very important. Very important. We don’t want to be eating out of control. We don’t want to be eating powerlessly.
We want to be eating mindfully. We want to be mindful of about our plan and then sticking to that plan we want to be intentional and mindful around food and that takes a little bit of time.
And as always, I’m always here to help you with all this you know, if you’re interested in working with me just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will get started on your journey. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and thought…did I really just eat all that? I know I have…and too many times to count! If …
Continue Reading about 222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating →
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 222 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to stop the mindless eating. So have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and you thought did I really just eat all that? I know I have, probably too many times to count.
So if you have ever found yourself in that situation, then you’ve probably done some mindless eating. Mindless Eating is something that we’ve all done at one point or another. And it’s something that you can absolutely change. You don’t have to continue to eat mindlessly, there are some practical things you can do to change this behavior.
So today here on the podcast, what Mindless Eating is and how to stop the Mindless Eating once and for all. But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running, and strength training here on the podcast. And if you’re new, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.
But this all might feel a little overwhelming for you. If you want a great place to start, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and strength training and endurance and mindset all geared towards you, the runner. If you’re a runner, you want to lose some weight, you want to get stronger, you want to become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. It’s pretty self-explanatory. And then get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.
Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve been excited to talk about this for some reason. I don’t know why, but I think it’s one of the things that people have been telling me that they want to change. I talk a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people every day about coaching.
And I always ask them like, you know, what do you want some coaching on? And you know, how can I help you? What goals do you have? And inevitably, most of the people I talked to that they list like the mindless eating, the automatic eating as one of the things that they want to change.
So if you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, then you really have to change your whole relationship with food. All right, if I just sit here and I say here, here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to eat these things, and not eat these things. And you’re going to be fine. I got this, I got this, Patrick, I’m good. Just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.
Okay, but in reality, you don’t got this, I’m just going to tell you, what you got is a lot of conditioned behaviors, you what you’ve got is a lot of habits that you’ve been practicing for years, decades, probably around food, a lot of learned behaviors around food, you’ve been doing the same things for years and years and years for decades.
Like I said, when it comes to how you eat, how you approach food. And if you want to lose weight, and you want to do it in a way that is sustainable for you, then you’re going to have to make some major changes to all of this, you got to change these habits.
You can’t keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing right, nothing changes, if nothing changes. You know, if what you’re if you’re what you’re doing isn’t working, then you have to change it. If you’re doing automatic eating, then you have to change it.
You can’t be a mindless eater, and expect to be able to lose weight because we have to start taking control of what we’re doing. We have to start taking control of our behavior. So the mindless eating, it’s really, it’s an automatic type of behavior that we engage in. It’s not something you just picked up out of the blue you’ve trained yourself to eat and not think about it, right.
So Mindless Eating is is an automatic learned behavior, right? So you go into the kitchen, you grab something, you start eating it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing this, right? Mindless Eating is it’s kind of an unconscious behavior. I like to say it’s similar to tying your shoes tying your shoes is an unconscious behavior.
So when you go, you’re getting ready for work in the morning, you put your shoes on, you tie them and you go, you don’t even think about it. It is unconscious. You don’t even remember doing it today, probably.
So you just do it and you don’t even have any thought or there’s no effort there. There’s no thought there. You don’t have to sit there and think, Okay, what am I doing now? I’m putting my shoes on. And now I have to take these lace things. And I had one goes under the other like, no, no, no, no, you just do it. It takes you two seconds.
Well, we’ve done the same thing with food. You know, we go into the kitchen, and we scarf down a whole sleeve of Oreos, you don’t even notice that you’ve done that until it’s done. And then you’re like, wait a minute, who ate all these oars? Did I eat all these? What the heck is going on here? Honestly, I have done this and Oreos was one of them.
Let’s see kettle chips, those kettle potato chips that are just like super salty. Oh my gosh, those are the best I can eat a giant bag that I get the family style bags, and then I just eat it until they’re gone. Oh, but that’s just me. But these are unconscious learned behaviors just like tying your shoes. Okay. And you’ve trained yourself to do this over years and years and years.
Okay, so it’s a habit is just a habit. Okay, we can if you if you’ve developed a habit, if you learn a habit, you can break the habit, okay? You’ve just trained yourself that when you go into the kitchen, you grab something and you eat it, and then you walk out of the kitchen, don’t even remember, it’s just like tying your shoes, you don’t think about it, you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take any effort, you just do it, okay.
Also, a lot of times we use food to feel better, we want to use food as a way of changing the way we feel. So we grab this thing that’s external to us, we ingest it, it becomes internal, and it helps us to feel better on the inside. This is called emotional eating. And emotional eating to some degree is also just a habit.
Emotional eating can also be automatic mindless eating. And again, it’s just a habit that you’ve developed. You know, emotional eating is when you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out or you’re anxious, and you just want to eat something to kind of feel better, you want to kind of numb the feelings that you’re experiencing, you want to numb the emotions that you’re experiencing, and food will do that it has that effect.
You know, especially if you go for something like sugar, sugar lights up the pleasure centers of your brain like nothing else. And if you want to feel pleasure, just eat some sugar, and you’ll feel pleasure for a short period of time. And you might stop thinking about the stress or the boredom or the anxiety that you’re experiencing for a short period of time, but then it’ll come back.
And then what do you do? Well, you gotta go back to the kitchen and eat something else. And again, this emotional eating can also be a very mindless eating, it can be an automatic behavior that you’re not even aware that you’re doing. Okay? So again, mindless eating, it’s just a learned behavior, you’ve trained yourself to eat, and you’ve trained yourself to not think about it.
This is important, listen to this. Because really, who wants to think about it? So you just, you just blank, this little snack out of your brain. So you’re just like, ooh, some cookies, you eat them, and then you go, bloop, and it’s gone from your brain. Like, it never really happened.
Because if you have to acknowledge it, and if you’re doing it in an intentional, conscious way, you know, you shouldn’t be eating the cookies, you just had lunch, you don’t need to be eating all these cookies. And so you sort of blank it out of your mind. You don’t want to think about it because you love it feels good.
And you know, it’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing. Right? So you have trained yourself to not think about it. Right? So you just do it, you do it automatically. And I think it’s interesting when people tell me this, they’re like, yeah, I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I say well, yeah, you do know, but you’ve chosen to blink it out of your mind. This is a little trick you’re playing on yourself, okay?
So, why is it important to change this behavior? So, mindlessly eating means that you are just eating you know, whenever you feel like it, not when you are actually in need of some nutrition. So this can lead to over eating so eating all the time, it’s really just not good for us. It’s really not the normal state for human beings. The human body is designed to eat a couple of times a day, you know, but not just mindlessly eating snacks all the time, right? It’s just not good for you, it puts a lot of stress on on the system.
You know, also, let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what you are eating. When you are mindlessly eating. I’m guessing it’s probably not broccoli. Have you ever like walked in the kitchen, and you’re like, man, I’m a little bored and a little, I just want a little snack of some time and you open up the fridge and there’s some like leftover broccoli sitting in there and you start eating that? No, nobody does that.
You want something crunchy, and salty and sweet, like chips, pretzels, nuts, chocolate, or like chocolate that has pretzels and nuts mixed into it. You know, like, whatever you can get your hands on that’s going to, you know, light up the pleasure centers. And that’s usually the crunchy, salty, sweet stuff, okay?
So, mindlessly eating is really a way of overeating, you end up over eating, and you end up over eating junk food, like you’re just eating junk, right? And so this is a bad combination. Like if you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to improve your health, you know, change your diet, change your habits, mindlessly eating, you’re overeating, you’re eating junk food, this is a bad combination. Stop doing that. Okay?
Now I get it, you’re like, but it’s so automatic. I don’t even know that I’m doing it. How am I going to stop doing this? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. So the opposite of mindless eating is what it’s mindful eating.
So the goal, the first step here, the first goal that you want to accomplish here is to start being more mindful about everything that you eat, you have to start being mindful about every bite that you put into your mouth. The easiest way to do this, is to write it down. This is a really great place to start. And I think that everybody should do this.
Not just for the mindless eating, but for all kinds of habits around food. But everything has to be written down. And the easiest way to do it is to just grab a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. So every time you eat something, just write it down.
Now I like to talk to people about this. And they’ll say, well, I could use this app I use My Fitness Pal, you know, Carb Manager or whatever. Fine. Use whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. But just make it simple.
Okay, apps can sometimes be complicated. They’re kind of clunky to use, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, and you just want to it has to be something you can do easily. It has to be simple and easy. Pen and paper is simple and easy. But if you’re on the go, maybe use a note on your phone, you know, just open up a note and just start taking inventory of everything you’re eating throughout the day.
And every time you eat or drink something, anything goes into your mouth. You want to write it down in that note on your phone or on a piece of paper. Okay, that is step number one. So what we’re doing here is we’re creating awareness about what is really going on with you and food, what’s really going on?
There’s no lies here. There’s no tricking yourself. There’s no deception. There’s no you know, tricking yourself into thinking you’re doing something you’re not or not doing something that you are, you’re actually just writing down everything that goes into your mouth, every bite, lick taste, okay?
So record everything that you do. Let’s do this for like a week. All right. And every time you eat something, every time you drink something, write it down. This is going to create a lot of self awareness. This is going to be the first step in being mindful around food instead of mindless.
Okay, so what starts happening here? Well, you start noticing that you’re eating stuff all the time you’re eating stuff, when you’re not hungry, you’re eating stuff, when you’re bored, you’re eating stuff when you’re feeling a little anxious, you’re eating stuff that you know isn’t on your plan. You know, you you start to see when and where you get triggered to eat stuff, you know, oh, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to eat something.
Oh, you know, every time I go in the break room, I have to eat something. You know, you don’t have to keep doing that. But you need to know what you’re doing first. So this is like creating such amazing self awareness. Okay.
And you have to develop this self awareness, you have to know what you’re doing before you can change it right, you got to know what you’re doing before you can change it, you have to know what you’re doing day in and day out before you can stop doing i,t before you can start creating better habits, before you can stop the automatic behavior.
So self awareness is the main goal here. So you got to write everything down, start creating that self awareness. So that’s step number one.
Step number two is this once you start noticing what you’re doing, when you’re eating, how often you’re eating the types of foods you’re eating, you can begin to start practicing the pause.
The pause is you pause before you put any food in your mouth. So you might get to the kitchen, you open up the pantry and you start looking around for some, you know, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever. But you pause right there with the cupboard open. And you notice oh man, I’m really looking for these Girl Scout cookies right now, aren’t I? Because you’ve created that self awareness. Okay, this is really cool.
This is very important and very easy to do. Okay, so you just take a moment and you pause. I’m about to engage in some kind of like mindless eating, I’m going back to these old habits. And so now you started to create a little bit of awareness, we’re starting to move into more of a mindful state, okay.
Next thing I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions. You can do this in your brain, it only takes a few seconds to do this. But ask yourself these questions. Do I really need to eat something right now? Am I really hungry? Or am I just bored or stressed out or anxious? Am I just trying to use food to feel better? What can I do instead of eating if I need to feel better?
Maybe I can go for a walk. Maybe I can walk the dog? Maybe I can, you know, pet the dog? What can you do that it doesn’t involve eating to feel better? Do I really need to feel better at all, maybe I can just be okay, feeling a little stressed out or a little bit bored or whatever.
Like, just go through these few questions in your mind really quickly. Okay. So what you’re doing is you’re going from mindless eating, to being mindful about eating. And listen, when you take that pause, you ask yourself those questions. And if you still want to eat something, then fine, eat the Girl Scout cookies or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.
But what you’re doing here is you’re not eating mindlessly. Now you’re eating mindfully, you’re you’re checking in with yourself before you make the decision to eat or not eat. And I’d much rather you are mindful about eating the Girl Scout cookies, then making that decision to eat the Girl Scout cookies, right? So you’ve made a conscious decision than eating the Girl Scout cookies unconsciously.
We don’t want to be mindless about what we’re doing. We want to be mindful, we don’t want to be unconscious. We want to be conscious. You know what we don’t want our body and our brain operating on autopilot here. We want to be in control.
And if you’re in control, and you’re saying you know what? Eating those Girl Scout Cookies feels like a really good decision for me right now. And you do that fine. Now over time, it would probably be great if you cut out the Girl Scout Cookies altogether. But listen, baby steps I get it. And this first baby step is moving from mindlessness to mindfulness around food.
This is very important. It’s a game changer if you want to lose weight. This is a game changer. It’s really hard to lose weight when you’re eating mindlessly and automatically all the time. You make this one change, and I promise you, your weight loss journey is going to get easier. Okay?
So you want to go from being a mindless eater to a mindful eater. This is where the good stuff starts to happen for you. This is where you can begin to break those conditioned behaviors and habits. This is how you start to change your whole relationship with food.
You’ve got to get away from the unconscious behavior and move towards consciousness get away from mindlessness and start moving towards mindfulness. Okay, this is a critical first step to losing weight and keeping it off. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Recently I spent a week on vacation and decided to change my diet a bit. I made the decision to eat more freely, to enjoy some of the amazing local food, to eat dessert, bread, pastries, and …
Continue Reading about 215. Lessons Learned from Vacation Eating →
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 215 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Lessons Learned From Vacation Eating.
So recently, I spent a week on vacation, and I decided ahead of time that I was going to change my diet a bit. I made a conscious decision to eat more freely, to enjoy some of the amazing local food, to eat dessert, eat the bread, eat the pastries, and generally be a little less strict about my diet.
It was definitely an interesting experience. And I learned some very valuable lessons along the way. And I want to pass these along to you here today. So in this episode, it’s all the lessons learned from quote-unquote, vacation eating for a week, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running and improving your strength. And if you’re new to the podcast, all this might feel a little bit overwhelming and confusing. And if it does, that’s okay, I’ve got you covered.
I’ve created a free hour-long training that you can go through, you can check it out anytime. It’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You’re going to learn all the basics of the nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset side of things, all geared towards you, the runner.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training exactly what you need to get started, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, so recently, I took a trip I went to Hawaii, my girlfriend and I decided we wanted to take a tropical vacation for her birthday, her birthday is in July, actually. But she was like I don’t want to go to Hawaii in July I want to go when it’s really cold and miserable here in the Midwest. So we decided that the end of January/beginning of February was a great time to do that.
So we plan this trip. And man, we’ve been really looking forward to it. It has been very cold here in Cincinnati over the last several weeks. So you know this, this trip came at a perfect time. But I made this decision going into this that I was going to be a little bit freer with my diet and I wanted to kind of do a little bit of an experiment, see how it would feel and how it worked out if I just ate kind of whatever.
Now I’m not the kind of person who eats a ton of I don’t eat much sugar, I almost never eat sugar. I don’t eat bread, and almost never eat bread. I love pastries. I love baked goods, you know, muffins and donuts and, and bars, you know, and all this all the good stuff that’s made with like with sugar and flour and more sugar and put on top like that’s my jam typically. And I know, but I don’t eat that stuff, you know, like in general, but I decided that going on this trip, I was going to be a little bit freer with this stuff. And that I was going to indulge a little bit.
I was going to eat the pizza and the fries and the burgers and the desserts and things like that. And so I made this conscious decision ahead of time. And I knew that going into it. I wasn’t going to feel amazing and I knew that I was probably going to gain a few pounds in the process and I was okay with that.
Alright, so I was very intentional about this, okay, so I just want you to know that, that when you go on vacation or you know a trip a business trip or when you’re traveling or anything like that, I want you to be very intentional about what your goal is for that trip.
And if your goal is to maintain your weight and maintain healthy eating patterns throughout, then make that your goal, set that intention, and then do that. If your goal is to indulge a little bit, enjoy the desserts have some you know donuts, eat the burgers with the bong I mean, oh my gosh, eat the french fries, whatever, then do that.
Be intentional about it, plan it ahead of time and do that. Know that you’re gonna gain a couple of pounds, that’s okay. It’s okay to do that. So that was my plan going into it. I was going to be a little bit looser with the diet. I was going to eat some sugar, you know we’re going to a place that has some amazing food. And so I was like you know, we’re just going to enjoy ourselves or I’m going to enjoy myself.
My girlfriend is a pretty good eater and she’s pretty small as she doesn’t gain weight, she’s always been pretty tiny. So like, she’s fine, like, whatever she does is going to be fine, you know, but for me, you know, I look at sugar and I gain weight, you know, essentially. So I have to be a little bit more mindful of these things.
So she was going to just do whatever anyway, and I was going to indulge a little bit here. Okay, so what did I do? So the first night we get there, we get to Hawaii. And she’s not feeling well. So she had a rough night. She had a drink at the bar at the pool, like we went to the pool as we got to our resort, beautiful Hilton resort in Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii.
And we get there and she has a drink from the from the pool bar. And we get back to our room after hanging out at the pool for a while and she did not feel well. Could have been the traveling could have been the rum drink that she had. I don’t drink alcohol, but she does.
She had this weird drink and did not feel well. We had plans to go out to sushi that night. And she just was like, I can’t leave this room. All that sounds good to me is like cheese pizza right now. And I’m like, cool. I’m down with some pizza. And there was a cool pizza place on our resort, just a two-minute walk from our place.
I’m like, okay, I’ll go get us a pizza and I’ll come back and you know, we’ll just eat some pizza in the room. Wow, and that pizza? Good. So, so good. So I ate some pizza the first night I was there and I was like, this is going well so far. This is going really well. And I really enjoyed it.
And then throughout the week I had things like for lunches I would just do like a burger with fries and just get the bun. I never do that. I always get a bunless burger. I don’t eat fries typically. So I was like, I’m just gonna eat the burger and the fries. Who cares? It’s gonna be great.
We’re eating desserts, pretty much with every meal because they have all these amazing things they make with coconut and macadamia and pineapple. I had this amazing Kona coffee gelato. Oh my gosh. We had lava cake. Because you know, we’re in the land of volcanoes and they probably invented lava cake in in Hawaii, you know, so I’m like, Okay, we’re gonna need some lava cake.
We had pastries and muffins. And we went to this little town called Javi. And we had there’s a little coffee place there and we had some good Kona coffee. And like a breakfast burrito type of thing that we had as like our lunch that was really delicious.
But then they had this lilikoi bar so it looked like a lemon bar if you’ve ever seen like a lemon bar with like the crust on the bottom, the flaky crust on the bottom and then it has like a lemony middle and then they put a little bit of like sugar on top or whatever. But it was made with lilikoi which is Hawaiian passionfruit.
Okay, so I have to tell you, this is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in my life. It did not taste like lemon. It did not taste like anything I’ve ever tasted before; it was decadent and delicious. It wasn’t overly sweet either. I expected it to be super sugary, and sweet, but it was oh my gosh, it was so good. I regret not going back there and getting a bunch more of that stuff. Bring it home, whatever. Anyway, delicious.
Okay, I really enjoyed that. Another thing that’s interesting, we’re in this area around these volcanoes, one of them being Mauna Loa and there’s all these macadamia nut orchards all over the place. So we got some local macadamia nuts they make they sell macadamia nuts that are covered in chocolate like this is a thing there you know? So of course we’re eating chocolate covered macadamia nuts, like nobody’s business. Okay.
This is not the way I eat normally at all but I was really enjoying myself. We went to a coffee plantation, a Kona coffee plantation. We went down to Kona and had the most amazing experience touring the coffee plantation. Got to pick some coffee berries off the bushes, you know, got to chop down a banana tree and take all the bananas off the banana tree.
We drank some amazing coffee and had lovely steak dinners. We stayed at this beautiful hotel where they had this nice restaurant that was like on the water and overlooking the sunset so it was oh my gosh, it was so beautiful. And with that beautiful steak dinner, they had this purple bread and it was this bread that was made with something called a Molokai sweet potato which is a like a sweet potato but it’s purple. And so the bread was like this deep purple color. And they served it with butter that was dipped with or whipped with local honey.
Okay, that was amazing that purple sweet potato bread with a local whipped local honey, honey butter was amazing. I don’t eat a lot of bread, but I ate my weight in bread that night. Okay, so good.
And just a side side note here, I don’t drink alcohol. But if I did, this would have been a very different conversation because I would have probably drank a lot, because that’s what I used to do when I went on vacation.
Okay, so I’m just giving you a little bit of a breakdown of kind of what I did while I was on this vacation, we had a wonderful time we did a lot of walking, a lot of driving too. We drove all around the island drove up and down the coast many many times. Did a lot of walking, some hiking, we checked out the volcanoes and some little towns and went to Hilo like it was really, really cool. Such a cool vacation.
I was expecting this to be more like a lay on the beach under a palm tree on a white sandy beach. There’s not a lot of white sandy beaches on the Big Island of Hawaii, interestingly enough, because it’s a newer island, you know, when it comes to the age of these islands, and so it’s very rocky. And so the coasts are very, very rocky tons of lava rock.
And if you just look some volcanoes just come all the way from the, from the sky, I mean, you’re just looking up at this massive volcano, and it just sloped slowly all the way down to the ocean. And you can just see the trails of lava, and then the deposits of lava that are that make up most of the coast of this island.
So there’s not a lot of just laying around on the white sandy beaches, we did find a cool black sand beach, which was amazing. And that’s like the volcanic rock that’s been broken down into sand. So super cool place just a wild, you know, violent, you can see the violent history of this place everywhere you look.
But it wasn’t one of these places where you just lay on the beach all day because there’s not a whole lot of beach to lay on, you know. So instead, we did a lot of walking a lot of exploring a lot of hiking, so exercising was okay. You know, I’ll tell you more about that in just a second.
But from an eating standpoint, I did go a little bit off the plan. And I did everything I just said I did and probably more. But you get the idea, right? I was eating differently than I normally would. Okay. So here are some of the lessons that I learned. And this was, this was a big eye opener for me, all of this stuff.
So number one, I realized that the more sugar and bread that I ate, the more that I craved sugar and bread, like sugar and refined carbs make you crave that stuff like crazy. So the more I ate it ate of that stuff, the more I wanted that stuff. I just wanted to eat more pizza. After that first night of having pizza, I was like when can we get that pizza again, and we did get it again another night.
And when I had that dessert the first night, I was like when I’m just gonna eat dessert at every meal pretty much you know. And so the more I eat of that stuff, the more I crave that stuff. And what’s interesting is that when I’m in my normal day-to-day life, I don’t crave any of that kind of stuff. I crave the foods that I eat, so you tend to crave the foods that you eat consistently.
So if you’re eating you know chicken and broccoli a lot, you’re going to crave that more often. I know it sounds weird. Like you’re like who craves chicken and broccoli. It’s not the same type of craving. You don’t have that intense desire and craving for chicken and broccoli but you tend to be more satisfied from those foods if you eat those foods.
When you’re eating more sugar and carbohydrates and breads, you crave more and more of that stuff and the other food just doesn’t seem very appealing because this other stuff is amazing. Why would you want to eat chicken and broccoli when you can eat? You know, lilikoi bars and pizza, you know? Okay, so the more at that stuff, the more I crave that stuff. That was a big eye-opener right there.
Another lesson I learned once I started eating this stuff, especially sugar, I found that I could not stop. I could not stop. I would start eating some chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, and I could eat a whole bag of that stuff in one sitting. I could just sit there and my girlfriend was like, hey, you’re gonna save a few of those for me and I was like, okay, there’s like one left. She’s like, seriously, and I have a problem.
Like I start eating that stuff and I can’t stop you know, she bought this little bag of sour pineapple candy so it’s like sour patch kids, I don’t know what they call these things SOUR Gummies you know, sour things that are gummy whatever. She just likes to have one or two here or there. I eat like the whole bag and like 10 minutes and she’s like, what happened to all these pineapple candies? I was like, I don’t know.
So anyway, once I start eating sugar, especially sugar and the bread too I can’t stop, you know, I just start eating that stuff and I can’t stop eating. Okay, lesson learned.
Third lesson learned is that it’s so easy for me to go back to eating junk food all the time. Like, I’m so sensitive to the effect of eating these hyper-palatable foods, it really affects me, especially the baked goods, you know, all the muffins and the bars and the and the breads and things like that. I love that stuff, you know.
So I have to be very careful with those things, I found a great way of eating for me on a daily basis. throughout the whole year, it works really well for me as a lifestyle, I feel much better doing that. And it’s just too easy for me to slip back into those old eating patterns. So it’s better for me not to do that too often. Okay. That’s number three.
Number four, I do not feel good when I eat this way. I was bloated, I was lethargic, I had brain fog. Like I couldn’t think clearly. I had zero energy for exercise. Despite all the energy that I was consuming, like I was eating a ton of calories, a ton of sugar, you’d think I would have tons of energy for exercise, I was so tired all the time.
And we were doing a lot of walking and stuff. And I was staying pretty active. But I was just so not myself, I just did not feel good. And was not myself, especially the bloating, I could just tell I was gaining weight. And I thought I gained a lot more. But I had gained about six pounds in the week.
Okay, that was another big lesson learned that I gained a lot of weight, you know, six pounds is a lot and some of that’s water weight when you eat a bunch of sugar and whatnot. But some of that is fat, some of that is the body storing fat because you got too much carbohydrate, too much sugar coming in, probably too many calories coming in, in general, your body can’t metabolize it, some of that gets stored as fat, okay, so gained about six pounds, almost a pound a day, okay of like water weight and fat weight. That’s not good, I did not enjoy that part of it at all. That’s lesson number five that I learned.
Number six, I was hungry all the time. When you eat more often, you’re going to be hungry more often. This is why people say like, oh, you need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism going. I disagree.
When you eat six times a day, you’re gonna be hungry six times a day, every single day. And you’re just always going to be hungry. And you’re always going to be eating and it’s really hard to control your appetite and control your eating when you’re eating constantly.
So for me, when you’re eating more often you’re going to be more hungry more often. Also the sugar, the carbs, the bread, the refined carbohydrates, they hijack your hunger sensors, they make you feel more hungry, even though you’re really not.
You may have just eaten something but they make you crave more carbohydrates, they make you more hungry, you know, they turn off your hunger signals, or they ramp up your hunger signals, and they turn off your fullness signals. So you know leptin is the fullness hormone. And it kind of suppresses leptin when you’re eating a lot of sugar and carbohydrates so you don’t feel full when you eat it.
So we that is one of those things where you’re going to be more hungry. And you’re going to not feel full when you actually maybe are full. You know the ghrelin is the hunger hormone. And it kind of suppresses ghrelin when you eat a lot of sugar and carbs. And so you feel more hungry constantly, even after a huge meal.
Like I was like, oh, I still need some dessert, I need more carbs, I need some, you know, I found myself going back to my hotel room. And normally I just go to bed, or you know, maybe watch some TV or something like that go to bed. But I was still hungry. I wanted some more of those chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. I never eat late, I never eat while I’m sitting in bed or anything like that. But I just found myself eating constantly and being constantly hungry all the time. So that was number six.
Number seven, I did not sleep well. I slept terribly every night. Now big time change then that messed us both up like so that’s Hawaii is five hours ahead of us here and we’re in the Eastern time zone here in Cincinnati. So five hours ahead of us.
So we were going to bed we’re trying to stay awake until like 9 or 10 o’clock. We didn’t really make it to 10 o’clock, I don’t think any night, but even staying up till nine. That’s like two o’clock in the morning here. You know and so we were like so tired by eight o’clock, nine o’clock at night.
And then we were wide awake at like three or four in the morning. Because that’s like, you know, eight or 9am here. So didn’t sleep well from the time change but the food played a huge role. So when you’re eating a lot more sugar and carbs, you have higher blood glucose, higher insulin levels, higher cortisol levels, means more stress on the system.
Your sleep really suffers from that. And then you put your body into even more stress, it’s sort of a vicious cycle to get into, you know, so the poor choices from eating really affected my sleep as well. And then that was number seven.
Number eight. And this is the last kind of lesson learned is that running was really, really hard. I did do one run, I made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to run much because we did tons of walking, and I thought, I’m just gonna run maybe once or twice while I’m there no big deal. I’m only running about three times a week right now anyway, so it wasn’t that different.
But I ran one time, it was so hard. I ran this really flat route, just from our hotel out to this big road and back. So it was an out and back. It was hot, you know, it’s probably 75 degrees in the morning, and I just was like struggling the whole time. And looking back over the Garmin data, my heart rate wasn’t that high. And it wasn’t and I wasn’t like going as slow as I thought I was. But it just felt I felt terrible. You know?
So my running really suffered from all of this that I’m talking about here. Okay, so those little lessons I learned where I’m at today with all of this. So I’ve been home about a week. And as soon as I got back home, I was like back on track. I was like, okay, I’m done with all that. I’ve worked out every day weight lifted every day, I’ve run a couple of times this week already running already feels like so much better.
Just after about five days of good eating and a couple of easy runs, running feels so much better. I’m eating like I was pre-vacation. With a few exceptions, we did bring home some of those chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, which are finished now. So we had one or two here or there. But I was really very mindful about having like, one after my dinner or something like that or two. So not a big deal there.
I am thinking more clearly I can the brain fog is gone already. And I can just think more clearly, I’ve lost four of the pounds that I gained. So I know that that’s just water weight. And there’s a little bit of fat there, which will come off here in a few days a week or something like that. So I’m not too concerned about that.
But I have tons more energy throughout the day, I’m sleeping way better. Oh my gosh, I’m waking up feeling rested. The first few days were a little wonky. Because again, now we’re coming back to this time zone and got to do that whole change. That was a little wonky for a few days.
But now I’m feeling really good had a great night’s sleep last few days here. So all of that is to say that all that is working really well. I’m not hungry all the time anymore. Like I’m back to eating a couple times a day, the sugar cravings are gone, the bread cravings are gone. Pretty much. I mean, maybe diminished greatly.
But I’ve just learned so many interesting things about myself through this whole process. You know, some of the biggest takeaways for me is like, I enjoyed this experiment I did I mean it was it was fun eating that way. It really was. I felt like I was kind of cheating a little bit. You know, some people call it oh, I had it, you had a cheat week or a cheat meal or whatever.
I don’t like that word, you know, because I was very intentional about what I was doing. I really wasn’t cheating anything. I was like I had made a decision ahead of time that I was going to eat this way. And I did it. And I felt good about that. So I enjoyed the experiment.
I mean, obviously eating those foods makes you feel really good and lights up the pleasure centers in your brain and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. But also I hated it too. Feels good in the moment when you’re eating that way. But, you know, it’s just in the moment. And that’s it,
Like afterward, there’s like all these negative consequences, the bloating, the brain fog, the lethargy, the weight gain, the sleeplessness, I don’t want that. I really don’t want that I’d much rather just enjoy my eating pretty much the way that I do all the time. I rather enjoy my eating just a little bit less and feel way better all the time. Right.
And honestly, the way that I eat all year long, I love it. I love the way I eat. I eat high protein, low carb, I pretty much don’t eat any sugar. It’s very satisfying. It’s very satiating, keeps me fit keeps me healthy. keeps me happy. I sleep well, I can think clearly I have tons of energy. Why wouldn’t I want that all the time? Even when I was on vacation?
You know, it doesn’t matter where you are. Wouldn’t you want to feel good all the time? Yeah, I think so. So, that experiment was interesting. Okay, but I’m much happier eating the way that I normally do. Now, I think that we’ve been tricked into thinking that vacation means that it’s okay to eat all the junk food because you’re on vacation. Just enjoy yourself. Right?
That’s what it means, go have fun. But is it really fun? Because all that stuff I just mentioned the brain fog the lethargy, The weight gain, the bloating, all that stuff. Is that really fun? Or do we just think it’s more fun, because of the way the food we’re eating is lighting up those pleasure centers in our brains like Christmas trees, you know?
So, go on vacation, eat the pizza, have a dessert here or there. But for me, I gotta keep things real. I gotta like, be very cautious about how I approach something like this. I can’t give myself permission to go down that hole of just eating whatever for a whole week like that, because I just feel like crap, you know?
So anyway, interesting experiment. I’m glad I did it. Lots of great lessons learned. And it made me realize that I really do love the way I eat and exercise every day. Okay, and I’m gonna keep doing that. I’m going to keep doing that.
Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Hope you got something out of this episode. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
Being overweight is not something that’s not talked about very much (or at all) in the running community. There seems to be some stigma around being a runner and being overweight. Like you’re not …
Continue Reading about 214. Replay: Why Running Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss →
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 214 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, why running doesn’t work for weight loss. Being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much or at all in the running community.
There seems to be some stigma around being a runner, and being overweight, like you’re not doing it right. You’re not running enough. You’re doing it all wrong. If you’re training for a marathon and you’re overweight, you’re you’re doing it wrong.
And I know exactly how this feels. This is definitely my story, which I’ll share with you here in a minute. But in this episode, I’m going to share why running is not an effective tool for weight loss, and why you need to treat the underlying physical, mental and emotional aspects of overeating if you really want to lose weight for good.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about losing weight, about proper nutrition for running about improving your running about building strength. And if you’re new to this podcast, well welcome first of all, but I can tell that for some of you this might feel a little overwhelming and you not might not know where to start with all this stuff.
And if that sounds like you, no worries, I’ve totally got you covered, I created a free hour-long video training that you can check out at any time it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset, all geared toward you, the runner. If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, then this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training. I know right? It’s so simple. And get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, so this is actually a replay episode, if you’re listening to this, I’m probably sitting on the beach in Hawaii right now. And I decided that this is a topic that I really wanted to share with you guys. And I thought I would go ahead and replay this is one of my very, very early episodes.
So if I sound a little bit different, that’s why. It was from several years ago. But the message still rings true. And I’m talking about overeating, especially in this episode. And it’s one aspect of losing weight and improving your health and fitness that a lot of people really don’t address or don’t talk about. So I really wanted to get into this and share this with you guys today. Okay, so let’s get into this replay of why running doesn’t work for weight loss.
Today I want to talk about a subject that is really important to me and something that I’m really passionate about, and that is why running doesn’t work for weight loss. So being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much, or at all in the running community, there seems to be some sort of stigma around being a runner, and being overweight. It’s like, hey, you’re not doing it right. You must not be running enough. If you can’t lose weight, or if you’re overweight. Oh, I see you’re training for a marathon. Still can’t seem to lose weight. What’s wrong with you?
These are some of the things that I’ve heard around the running community. And some things that people have shared with me and I felt as well. Okay, so I know, I know how this feels. I really do. I know this is something that not a lot of people are talking about. And so I wanted to sort of just like shine a light on this subject and talk about this today, because it’s really something that I’m really passionate about. And I haven’t shared this really before. And I think now’s the right time. So here we go.
So back in the day, back in, like 2003, I was seriously, I was overweight, I was I was probably 50 or 60 pounds overweight. And I was very unhealthy. I was very sick, I had cancer, I was drinking too much. And I was in a very, very bad place. I was basically just really sick and really unhealthy. And I needed to change some stuff in my life.
So I did, I quit drinking, which was a big part of the problem for me. I started eating better. And I started running. And obviously I got treated for the cancer and I’ve been cancer-free for many, many years now. So that’s all good. But the running was like a big catalyst for me to like, do something that would help me to lose weight.
You know, like that was the thing was like, oh, if I just run I’m gonna lose weight. And for me, it was like a change of lifestyle completely. You know, I gave up the crazy eating that I was doing. And I started running and stopped drinking. So all those things combined. I lost a lot of weight and I lost probably 60 pounds and kept it off for a long time and continued to run and train and do all these awesome things.
I’ve run like 14 marathons, I’ve done an Ironman, I’ve done countless other triathlons and ultra marathons, including a 50 miler and a 100 miler. And I’ve done all these things, and was able to kind of maintain this, this weight that I was at for a long time. And I felt pretty good about myself.
Well, in the last few years, I’ve sort of backed off my running a little bit. After I did my 100 miler at the end of 2017. I wanted to scale back my running, and I just didn’t want to put anything on the calendar and I just wanted to be like, I just want to go out there and run and have fun and enjoy it and not to have all these goals out there.
So I stopped kind of signing up for races and having goals like that, and I started gaining weight. And I couldn’t figure out why because I was still training and I was still running and I was still like I would do a marathon a year or whatever. But I was running all the time.
Well, I ended up, you know, gaining like 15 or 20 pounds back, you know, look, looking back over time, it was like, it happened slowly, but it happened. And I found myself in this place of like, okay, I need to lose this weight, what am I going to do? And so I tried all these different things to help me to lose the weight.
And I tried like calorie restriction where I was just like counting calories. And that is very challenging to do, by the way, I had to have this app. And I had to log every bite of anything that I ate, and I had to know all the ingredients in it, and all the breakdown of all the nutrition breakdown of it according to the label.
And it was challenging to try to keep track of that. When the idea there was like, oh, yeah, if you eat, you know, 1500 calories, but you burn off 2000 calories a day, you’ll lose weight. I gotta tell you, I did not lose weight. And I was constantly stressed out about entering all this data into this app. Okay.
Maybe that’s how you lose the weight, you’ve spent so much time and energy, and you’re so stressed about trying to figure out how to enter all that data into this thing. You just lose weight. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. But you know, I’ve done a plant-based thing for many years. Vegetarian, I tried sort of a vegan-paleo thing, a vegan-keto thing, I’ve tried to eat nothing but fat, nothing, but no carbs. Like, I’ve tried all these things. And I couldn’t get anything to work, I can’t get anything to work.
I’ve always felt like I just haven’t had control of what I eat. I know what the problem is now. And I’m gonna get to that in just a minute. But getting here, you know, I just felt like I did not have control over what I was eating. I didn’t have control over myself. You know, I felt tired all the time. I found myself doing a lot of emotional eating. I’ve been doing that lately, too.
By the way, with the lock down here, The Stay At Home order. And some other things going on in my life, I’ve been doing a lot of emotional eating. And I’m not sorry about it, but I even eat when I’m not hungry. And you know what, I’ve just felt stuck.
I felt like, I am never going to lose this weight. And I’ve keep running. You know, I ran back in August, I did 31 days of running. And I thought for sure that would help me to lose weight. No, I gained weight. Starting in November, I did a running challenge running through the holidays. And I ran for something like 80 days straight. And I thought that would help me to lose weight.
And it didn’t, I didn’t lose weight at all, I actually gained weight. And so I’ve realized that the problem really isn’t about running. It’s not about like, oh, I’m not running enough. The problem is that I’m overeating. The problem is that I overeat, I eat too much. I have an addiction to food. I’ve programmed my body to become so addicted to food, not just my body, but my brain as well, to become so addicted to food, especially sugar.
That not even you know, training for a marathon is going to help me to lose weight. Okay? So, believe me, I’m frustrated by this or have been frustrated by this. And I feel like the advice out there is just like here, Here, eat this. Just eat this over here or eat this or just do this diet over here. And it just this just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for most people.
You know, just changing your behavior, changing what you eat, does not address the underlying issues. You know, I feel like everyone’s out there just saying, eat this as if it’s that simple. It’s not that simple. In order to lose weight in order to be at your ideal weight to be at your natural weight. You need to identify and fix the causes of your over eating. Not just treat the symptoms. We’re so focused on treating the symptoms or not getting to the root of the problem. Okay.
So all these different like diets I’ve tried or whatever, I’ve tried these things and then said, that doesn’t work because I gained weight, or I kept overeating. And the problem isn’t in what I’m eating, necessarily, although that is part of it. The problem is, I wasn’t addressing the mental and emotional part of overeating, okay?
There’s three parts to overeating that have to be addressed. There’s the physical causes of overeating, there’s the mental causes, and then there’s the emotional causes. I’m going to talk about all three of these. But I want you to know something, if you’re out there and you’re a runner, and you’re having a, you know, a struggle with you’re struggling to lose weight or struggling to feel good about your body.
I know what you’re going through, I feel I feel your pain, I really do. And, and I want to help you, and I, and I coach people through this. I’m coaching myself through this and I want to coach you through this. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today, we’re going to talk about the three causes of overeating. And, and the things that aren’t really addressed. And if you’re a runner, I want you to pay attention. And I want you to really take in what I’m going to say here and be open to trying something that’s a little different, okay?
Because whatever, whatever you’ve been trying is not working. Okay? So let’s try something different. Okay? Okay, so the three causes of overeating. The first is the physical causes. So this is, most overeating is caused by a hormonal imbalance, okay? Overeating, especially sugar, causes too much insulin to be produced in your body. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, okay, the more insulin you produce, the more fat will be stored on your body, the more you way, okay?
If you continually produce insulin, you are going to continue to gain weight. Okay, this is just straight up science, okay? The problem is that when you’re trying to lose weight, the most important thing for you to consume is what it’s your own body fat you want to consume, if you will, you want to burn for energy, your own body fat, in order to lose weight, you cannot do that when your body is full of glucose sugar, your insulin is too high. And you’re in fat storage mode, and you got to, you got to shift that, okay.
So the first thing you need to do is you need to get your insulin levels down. And you can do this by eating less often. And by reducing the amount of sugar you consume. We all know that sugar is bad for us. Okay? It’s actually the worst thing you can put in your body. And I’m saying this, as, as the words are coming out of my mouth here. I’m thinking of the Ben and Jerry’s that I have in the freezer, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I love Ben and Jerry’s. I absolutely love it.
But I’m giving it up, because I know how bad it is for me, and I’m just tired of feeling the way that I felt lately, okay. So I’m giving it up. And here’s the other thing, when you eat too much sugar, you get this huge over desire for food, you get this like physical craving for food.
Because what happens is, sugar is super concentrated, it causes a super concentrated dopamine response in your brain. It causes an excess of dopamine to be produced, which feels really good, right? So much so that the neurotransmitters that are producing the dopamine, they actually down regulate over time.
So it takes more and more sugar for you to get the same amount of pleasure. So you got to eat more sugar to feel good. And your brain and your body or just being there like it’s like a Drug Act, okay? A drug addict needs more and more of the drug to produce the same result. And so what happens there then your insulin goes up again, you get more cravings, you can’t handle the cravings, you eat more, and there’s this crazy cycle that happens, right.
And you know what? This isn’t your fault. We’ve all been programmed this way. For decades, the food industry has made it their mission to make food as delicious as possible, you know, as desirable as possible, they put sugar in everything, for the love. And the food that we eat, it’s so concentrated and processed that it gives us this incredible hit of dopamine when we eat certain foods. And then we have to eat more and more just to get that same feeling.
Okay, so it’s like being addicted to drugs or alcohol, you need more to produce the same effect. So in order to fix the physical cause of overeating, you have to get that insulin level down, you have to eat less, eat less often and eat less processed foods like sugar and flour. Okay? When you do this, you actually can start to get your hormones back in balance and start burning fat instead of burning to sugar. Okay. So that’s how we fix the physical part of overeating.
Okay, next is the mental part of overeating, the mental causes. So mental cravings, this is a real thing. Again, the food industry has concentrated this sugar in our foods so much that we are constantly craving more and more food, more and more of this delicious sugar, right? Our brains are actually responding the way they’re supposed to, though. They’re not,your brain is working normally. Okay, this isn’t your fault.
You eat the sugar, you eat the flour, you release the dopamine. And then your brain wants more of that. It’s just like your primitive brain, the amygdala, part of your brain responding to this like, it’s like a life or death situation, you know, are primitive brains, they’ve learned over time that when food is good, we’re going to produce a hormone that makes us feel good. So that will remember that, hey, this is good, okay.
So when you know when we would be eating blueberries back in the caveman days, you know, back in the day, we’d be eating some blueberries and be like, ooh, these are really good. And you get this little tiny dopamine response, right? That’s good. Oh, I want to remember this, I want to eat more of those because they made me feel good. And so you’ll go back and eat more of the blueberries.
Okay, but over time, it’s kind of developed into this thing of like, life and death kind of situation with our brains. Because now we have like blueberry syrup, blueberry pie, blueberry toaster strudels. We juice everything. So it’s super concentrated, and we get this super intense hit of dopamine. And then when we don’t get it, our brains are like, we need this now or we’re going to die.
Your brain actually literally thinks it’s like a life and death situation happening here. Okay. So that’s kind of like what’s happening with your brain. And then you get these thoughts. So the thoughts will start to come into play here, you get these thoughts of, I’m restless, I’m bored. I feel deprived.
You know, when you stop overeating, even for a little bit. You start to feel like, you know, oh, I just deserve this. I’m deprived. What’s one box of Oreos? You know that you can justify that all you want. And all that mental chatter. All it’s doing is just continuing to build into that idea and support that idea that your brain is thinking like you need this or you’re going to die. And so you give in to it, you give into the mental craving, okay.
And we’ve just been programmed our whole lives, we’ve essentially programmed our minds to over eat and buy now. It’s our subconscious mind that’s running the show. Our subconscious minds have been programmed to make us think we have to overeat or will die. Okay, we get these intense cravings for something sweet.
And I know I talk about Ben and Jerry’s all the time, but it’s just a good example. It’s so good. But it’s like Ben and Jerry’s. You know? I think about that. And I’m like, I’ve just got to have it. And these thoughts go through my mind. Like if I don’t have it, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might die. And I’ll go to the store and I’ll get some.
I’ll go drive miles to the store to get Ben and Jerry’s just so I can like satisfy that mental craving. And there’s a physical craving there too. But here’s the thing. The good news is that you can reprogram your mind to not overeat, you can reprogram your mind to just just eat normally. This is actually one of the most powerful things I do with my coaching clients is I help them change their brains literally by creating new habits, new neural pathways.
And if you really want to stop overeating, you have to break those old habits and create new habits that serve to reprogram your mind, especially the subconscious. But even if you can get the physical piece to work, and you can get through some of this mental stuff, there’s still that emotional side of overeating that has to be addressed.
One of the biggest underlying factors in weight gain is emotional eating. And you know what? Runners just don’t want to talk about this. Runners think I’ve got this. I’m a runner, I know what to do. I know all this stuff about nutrition, I’ve read the books, like I’m good, thanks. They just don’t want to talk about it. Okay.
Runners do love talking about food, though, but not overeating. You know, we talk about donuts and ice cream and pizza and chips and cake and all that. What are we going to eat after the run? And I would do that too. And I would just eat all that food. But then I noticed something happening to me, I started to feel bad about myself.
You know, I started gaining weight. And I started feeling guilty about overeating. And I started to feel like shame around it. I felt shame about how I looked and how I felt I’ve been fit for a long time and had been really in great shape. And then I got to this point where I didn’t even want to like, take my shirt off at the pool or whatever. Because I was like, oh, I you know, feel fat again, okay.
And I felt judged by other people, like people were talking about me. They probably weren’t, it’s probably all in my head. But I just felt that way. And I felt like a failure. Like, I used to be really fit. I used to be in good shape. And now I’m not anymore. And like, I’m never going to be that person again. And honestly, I just felt depressed about it and sad.
And you know how I know how I dealt with all these emotions I was feeling? Yes, I ate over them. Because eating gives me that little dopamine hit and it feels good. Does that make any sense whatsoever? As I’m saying this, you’re probably like, dude, that makes no sense whatsoever. Or maybe you’re like, yep, I get it.
Here’s the problem, though. When that little feel good, dopamine wears off, you’re still left with feeling all those emotions. But now it’s worse because you feel bad about overeating. So you eat more to feel better. And then like, oh my gosh, it’s this crazy vicious cycle that just goes on and on. But you know what? Emotional eating is a very common thing. It’s a very, very common theme. A lot of people do it, they eat, so they don’t have to feel their feelings. Especially right now during this like stay at home order people are dealing with this crisis by going to the refrigerator. I’ve seen a lot of people joking about it on social media, but I think there’s an underlying like, oh, yeah, that’s me. You know?
I mean, I’ve been doing it. I know that it’s been me, okay. I mean, it does work for a little bit like you do feel a little bit better while you’re eating the Ben and Jerry’s. But when you stop, what happens? Like what results are you getting? Who are you? Who are you becoming in the process of stuffing down your feelings and feeling good momentarily, like you’re using this? It’s like a false pleasure.
You know, to just try to feel good in the moment we were so afraid to feel our feelings that we will become overweight, instead of feeling our feelings. You know, if you want to stop overeating, if you want to lose weight, you have to be able to manage your emotions, you have to be able to feel your emotions. Well, how do you do that?
Well, one of the things you do is you need to stop using food to feel better. Okay, that’s one thing. And you need to learn how to just sit with your feelings, how to sit with your emotions, how to allow them to be there, without reacting to them, or without eating to now feel them. And you know what, here’s some truth I’m gonna drop on you right now.
This is not a comfortable place to be. Sometimes it’s not comfortable, to feel sad, or to feel frustrated or to feel angry, or to feel shame or guilt or whatever it is, it might suck pretty bad sometimes. And honestly, in those times, it’s really good to have somebody there and help you. And that’s where I come in.
And I, one of the most powerful things I do as a coach is I help my clients work through their emotions, I help them to learn to allow those emotions to be with them, to allow them to be present in their body, to embrace that temporary uncomfortable feelings so they can get to the other side of that because on the other side of that is all the stuff that you want, okay, on the other side of those uncomfortable feelings are the results that you want in your life, okay?
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
When it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there that it can feel incredibly overwhelming. While I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet …
Continue Reading about 212. 3 Things You Should Stop Doing if You Want 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 212 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight.
So when it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there, it can feel incredibly overwhelming. And while I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet here in one podcast episode, I do want to go over a few things that you might want to stop doing right now because sometimes the best way to start is to stop.
So in this episode, I’ve got three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good. But first I know I talk a lot about you know proper nutrition, losing weight, improving your running and building strength here on the podcast.
And if you’re new, and all this feels a little overwhelming, that’s okay, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training that will get you started on the right track. It’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’ll learn the basics of proper nutrition, how to build strength, how to build endurance, how to build the right mindset, all geared towards you the runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training to get started on your weight loss journey today.
Alright, before I get into the topic today, I just wanted to drop a little disclaimer here that I have been really sick, I got sick a few days ago, you know, woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach bug and was up all night. And I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say that it was a pretty awful night.
And I haven’t gotten sick like that in like 15 years, I can’t remember the last time I was sick like that. And must have picked up some kind of stomach bug at the gym or at the grocery store or something. I don’t know where I got it, but the gym is my primary suspect. So I’m still recovering.
And I actually had to take a day off of work. And I haven’t done that in like 10 or 15 years. So I know it was not good. It was a really, really horrible sickness for me to actually have to take a day off work. And so it’s taken me a couple of days to kind of come back.
So if my voice sounds a little scratchy today, or I don’t sound like myself, it’s because I’m still kind of recovering. But I’m giving myself a little bit of time I actually drove to the gym yesterday sat in the parking lot and was like no, I don’t think this is a good idea for me to go in there today. I still don’t feel 100% civilian, I’m a little lightheaded. Still a little bit nauseous. And I was just like, no, I’m gonna give it another day or two.
So just a little side note here, if you find yourself up, you know, sick this winter, which a lot of people are sick right now I’ve talked to a lot of people who are getting over something or in the middle of something, give yourself time to rest and recover, drink plenty of fluids, take your vitamins, make sure you’re eating right, or just not eating. Fasting is a great way to help, you know, alleviate the symptoms of viruses and it will speed up the recovery process too.
So just know that there are things that you can do out there that will help you to get through this a lot faster. But also don’t try to do too much too soon. I know that as runners, you want to get back out there and run right away or you want to hit the gym and get back into your weightlifting.
And I’m feeling that way right now. Right now I’m like, man, I really wish I was at the gym lifting weights right now or I was out there running today. It was a run day for me and I was gonna run this morning and I just I’m not up to it, you know, and I’m listening to my body.
And I’m just like, okay, this isn’t about embracing the suck. This is about doing what I need to do to take care of myself and to make sure that I don’t go back too fast too soon, you know. So I’ll make tomorrow run day or I’ll hit the gym tomorrow, as long as I’m feeling up to it and then I’ll ease my way back into working out again. I’m not going to go run 10 miles on Saturday or anything like that.
So for me, it’s about giving my body that time it needs the rest, proper hydration, proper nutrition, and just waiting until I really feel like I’m ready to go again. Okay, so that’s just a little sidebar today. That’s where I’m at right now I’m just gonna get through this. So I appreciate your understanding if I don’t sound like myself.
Okay, now all that’s out of the way, let’s get into this topic today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight. And one of the reasons I’m bringing this up today is because I hear about so much information out there that is so confusing to all of us. It’s even confusing to me.
I’m constantly following people on social media, and reading articles on the internet, that completely contradict one another. And I’ve made a decision a long time ago that I wasn’t going to, you know, hang my hat on any one principle out there that I was going to figure out what works best for me.
And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But my goal here on the podcast is always to help you make good decisions, and help to simplify things, and clear up some of this information so that you can make good decisions for yourself so that you can start getting results right away.
Okay, so just understand that there are things that people recommend that you do constantly do this, do that. And what I’m going to ask you to do today is to stop doing a few things. And if you just stop doing these three things here, today, I guarantee you, you’re going to start seeing some results.
You know, I can’t guarantee that, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to start seeing some good results if you just stop doing these three big things here. Okay, so I’m not going to waste a bunch of time. You know, previewing this, I’m just gonna get right into it.
Number one, the one thing I want you to stop doing right now is to stop counting calories. Okay, just stop doing that. I talk about this a lot. Listen, if counting calories worked, it would have worked by now, our ancient ancestors did not do this, they did not track their food, they did not have my fitness pal, and they did not have Weight Watchers points.
They did not need to count how many macros they were eating, okay, they ate real food they ate when they were hungry, and they did not eat when they weren’t. And they did just fine. You know, we evolved as a species over two and a half million years to where we are today. And only in the last 40-50 years have we put this huge focus on counting calories.
And all that has done is made us bigger, we’re bigger than we have ever been in the history of the species. So to me, this is not a very sustainable solution. And it’s also not sustainable. From a weight loss standpoint, if you are somebody who reduces calories, in order to lose weight, just keep in mind that there’s going to come a point in time when your metabolism will slow down to match the amount of energy that’s coming in.
And this starts to become a problem because now you have to reduce your calories even more to get the weight loss to keep happening. Okay, so reducing calories and counting calories to lose weight. You know, it does work in the short term, but it does not work in the long term.
It also causes muscle loss. And if you’re somebody who is an active athlete, if you’re a runner, or you’re trying to get stronger or build muscle, which you should be, then causing muscle loss is not something that you want.
Restricting food and restricting calories is a great way to start to experience muscle loss. And you know, this is going to affect your runs, it’s going to you won’t be fueling, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel for running, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel to get stronger in the gym.
If you’re working out and lifting weights regularly, which you should be, you won’t be able to build muscle. So instead of you know counting calories and restricting calories, I want you to do something else instead. And what I want you to do instead is to eat to satiety, stop when you’re full.
You don’t need to count your calories. You don’t need to count your macros, and I talked about this. I’ve talked about this several times on the podcast but I talked a lot about tracking your food in the last episode, so definitely check that one out.
But if you focus on eating real food, so this is like food that still looks like, you know that food that you find around the perimeter of the grocery aisle, you know, so we got fruits, vegetables, we got meat and dairy and cheese. You know, we have nuts and seeds. You know, we have eggs, and fish, you know, all that stuff.
If you just focus on eating that stuff, again, this is the food that our ancestors have been eating forever. You’re going to feel more satiated when you eat, you won’t be eating the food that messes up your hunger signals. This is very important here. Okay.
So foods like sugar and refined grains, which most processed food is full of sugar and refined grains, that kind of food will really mess up your hunger signals, you will feel more hungry after you eat that food, you will have more cravings for those type of foods.
So for more sugar and more refined grains, you won’t be able to really get in touch with what hunger feels like for you. Because your hunger signals, pardon me, will be so messed up from the sugar and the refined grains, those things tend to reduce the amount of leptin that your body produces leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full.
And it increases the amount of ghrelin that you produce. And the ghrelin is the hunger hormone that makes you feel hungry. And so with those two things being you know, out of whack, you’re going to feel hungry all the time, and you’re going to be craving more of those foods.
And when you’re craving more of those foods, you just can’t get enough to eat, you tend to overeat, you tend to eat the wrong kinds of foods, and you tend to be kind of miserable all the time. And so trying to fuel properly and eat less or whatever, it’s really, it’s really hard to do not okay. So you have to start to get in touch with what real hunger feels like for you.
One of the biggest lessons I teach my clients and people that I work one one-on-one with, is to start to understand the difference between these cravings and hunger. The false hunger is what I call it. And real hunger. real hunger is when you could sit down and eat a meal. Like you can sit down and eat, you know, a whole bunch of chicken and broccoli and some carrots or whatever.
And that’s real hunger, if you could eat, you know, an actual meal. That means that, hey, I’m actually really hungry right now. And I should probably eat something. But if you’re like, oh, I’m feeling hungry, and you go browsing through the cabinets, and you’re like, oh, I’ll just eat six nuts, you know, and I’ll eat a few potato chips. Like, that’s not real hunger.
You know what that is? That is you being bored. That is you looking for something to make you feel good right now. You know, that’s you being stressed out. That’s what I call emotional eating.
Emotional Eating is when you’re just trying to dampen some kind of emotion that you’re feeling. Usually, it’s some kind of strong emotion. And that could be boredom. It could be stress, it could be anxiety. And you just want to feel better, and you want to dampen that emotion.
So you’re using food as a coping mechanism there. Okay? Well, we don’t really need to do that. If you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’re not going to mess up your hunger signals, you’re going to feel full when you eat, and you’re going to stay full for much longer.
You’re not going to be having those cravings for the chips and the nuts and the crackers and the junk food, you know. So you have to learn what hunger feels like for you. This takes time. It takes time and it takes practice.
And so you have to kind of devote the time and the effort into this process. But it is totally worth it. You know, once you start to eat and understand what your body feels like when it’s full and it’s had enough food. This is a game-changer. Right? So we don’t need to be people who overeat.
We have never been that way in the past because we’re eating food that kept us full and we didn’t have this food that was hijacking or hunger signals. Okay. So again, this is about you know, eating like our ancestors ate, we don’t need to count calories. So stop doing that. Eat real food food that, you know, fills you up and feels good when you eat it. Okay. So stop counting calories.
Number two, is to stop eating all the time. There is so much gym bro advice out there that says you should be eating six times a day. You have to eat 6, 7, 8 times a day to keep your metabolism going. So eat like you don’t want your meals and just keep eating constantly throughout the day.
And I’m gonna go back to what our ancient ancestors did. They did not eat six times a day. First of all, they did not have snacks or anything, that was invented like in the 1950’s. And it wasn’t a thing before that.
Snacks were a food category that was created by the food companies. It was a marketing thing like, hey, let’s, let’s try to sell more food to people. Let’s create a snack category. Oh, okay, that sounds great Bill, you know, let’s do that.
And so Bill and his buddies got together and they decided, I don’t know if his name was Bill could have been Steve or something like that. But they just got together and they were like, Hey, let’s create this whole new category of food that we can sell people on, it’ll be great.
And it worked. It works like crazy. People love snack foods, right? But this is not our DNA. This is not how we were programmed to eat. In fact, if you look at a lot of the systems in our body, I was reading an article recently about the pancreas and about how our pancreas is designed to only operate a couple of times a day, you know, it secretes, you know, whatever it does hormones to help us process food and whatever. And it’s only it’s the system is only designed to work a couple of times a day, it’s not designed to work six times a day.
So we’re sort of overloading our systems when we eat that often. You know, our liver plays a role in this too, and other, you know, organs and stuff. So what our ancestors did was they feasted, and they fasted. That was their MO, they would eat when the food was available, and then they didn’t eat and they didn’t eat for long periods of time.
And there’s lots of evidence that shows that there’s lots of tribes today that do the same thing where they eat, they, they hunt, they gather the eat when food is plentiful, and then there’s times when they don’t eat, but they’re not sitting there snacking all day long. All right.
And they did a study pretty recently that showed that participants in this study, who ate six small meals a day, versus people who ate three larger meals. And there was no metabolic advantage over those who ate six meals a day over the three meals a day.
So the people who ate six small meals, their metabolism didn’t speed up, because they were eating more often, that was exactly the same as the people who are eating three times a day. What was different from the two groups was that the people in the six meal a day group reported higher levels of hunger, and an increased desire to eat.
So they were more hungry, they had an increased desire to eat, so they were eating more and eating more often, and they had higher levels of hunger. And so this is not something that we want, I think we want the opposite of that. Okay.
You also have to understand there’s an insulin response, every time you eat food, you will produce some blood sugar, unless you’re eating pure fat, which really doesn’t raise your blood sugar at all. But anything else really is going to increase your blood sugar a little bit.
And insulin will be produced in order to bring that blood sugar back down to normal levels, which is the way your body is supposed to operate. And this is completely fine to eat this way or for your system to function this way when you’re eating three times a day, or six times a day or whatever.
But one thing that we have to understand is that when insulin is present in the system, that puts your body into that fat-storing mode. So your fat is locked up in your fat cells. While insulin is present. We want to get the insulin down in order to burn the fat. And if you’re eating six times a day, then your body never has a chance to recover that insulin level.
You’re always going to have insulin present, which means that you are never burning fat throughout the day. And so if you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight, and eating six times a day is not working for you. This is why right here. You are constantly in fat-storing mode, you’re never in fat-burning mode, right?
So we’ve got to make sure that we eat a diet that keeps our blood sugar at pretty normal levels, we want our blood sugar to rise a little bit, and then come back down again. We want insulin to rise a little bit and come back down again, a couple of times a day that is normal. That’s the way we should be functioning.
We are naturally good fat burners as human beings, but we’ve gotten away from that. And we want to get back to that state that natural state that we are so good at our body burns fat as fuel. This is in our DNA.
You know, we store body fat to be used as fuel later, but the way we eat the types of foods we eat the the amount of times a day we eat can really make that fat or that storage mode just constant and we’re just constantly adding you know, we’re Just constantly adding to those fat stores and never able to burn the fat. Okay?
So I’m a big fan of intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting just means you’re not eating constantly. It’s not some weird fringe thing. Again, this is kind of the way we’ve evolved as human beings. The intermittent fasting is just not eating constantly, it’s prolonging the amount of time between your meals, think of it as meal spacing.
The way that I do it, and I suggest a lot of people do this, and they have good results from doing this is just skip breakfast. This is one of the easiest ways that you can start intermittent fasting. So you know the time from dinner the day before. And let’s say lunch, the next day might be 16 hours or so.
Most of the time, we fast for about 12 hours. So all I’m saying is like, hey, just extend that like four more hours. It’s easy to do, right? So what I’m suggesting you do, instead of eating all the time is to not eat all the time, just stop doing that.
Right, don’t eat all the time, space out your meals, and allow your body more time for fat burning to kick in. And for fat burning, to ramp up. Skipping breakfast is the easiest way to do it. It is not the most important meal of the day.
That again, is a marketing message that was created by like Kellogg’s, they wanted to sell more cereal. So they’re like, you gotta have breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Just stop doing that.
Okay, and exercising in that fasted state is a great way to improve fat burning as well. And people report more energy when they exercise in the fasted state. They report increases in their endurance when they’re running, and they report increases in the amount of weight they can lift when they’re lifting weights.
So there’s some positive adaptations that happen when you train your body to exercise in that fasted state. So number two, stop eating all the time, and practice some intermittent fasting, I think you’ll see some some good results from that.
And then the third thing I would say to stop doing is just stop following the conventional advice out there. The conventional advice is like the food pyramid, the MyPlate, or whatever they’re calling it these days. A lot of this stuff is you know, they’re telling you to eat 60 to 70% of your calories from carbohydrates.
This is a problem because people are generally following this advice. The food guidelines, so food guidelines were created in like 1980. And if you look at since 1980, if you look at the rates of obesity here in the United States, they go up dramatically starting in 1980.
So I’m, you know, maybe doing some correlation, not causation. But it’s pretty clear that things have not been working for us as a country since 1980. And we may want to just rethink this whole food guidelines thing, okay. So if you’re somebody that’s like, well, I’m just going to follow the food guidelines. I’m going to suggest maybe not doing that.
Okay, so stop following the conventional advice out there. The thing with the food guidelines is that they show up everywhere they show up in hospitals, the hospitals have to follow the food guidelines. It dictates what we feed our children in schools.
There’s more obesity among children now than there ever has been in the history of human beings. Even these food guidelines show up in the military. I get people in the military constantly reaching out to me, Hey, I need some help losing weight because what they’re feeding me here is not working.
The food guidelines dictate what they serve in nursing homes. Most dietitians, and health coaches follow the food guidelines, and that’s the advice they’re giving you. Even a lot of running coaches that I know and talk to and running certification programs for coaches out there, preach these food guidelines and I just have to say that you know it this might work for some people, but for the vast majority of us, it does not work.
A recent study shows that 88 to 93% of the US population is considered metabolically unhealthy. So that is not a good stat right there. So that means like 7-12% of us are considered metabolically healthy. That is a very small number. That is actually frightening. That is a very frightening number and it’s going up because it was 88% and now they’re showing new numbers that show it could be up to like 93% that is frightening. We need to fix that.
Okay, so whatever we’re doing, following this conventional advice is not working. So we got to do something else instead. So what should you do? This is where this gets a little bit meta, because I can’t really tell you what to do, because you got to figure out what works best for you.
We’re all different. We’re all a little bit different when it comes to how our metabolisms work, how our lifestyle is structured, the foods that we enjoy our culture, you know, our weight loss goals, or our running goals, or weightlifting goals, do we want to build muscles? Do we want to maintain? Do we want to lose fat? Do we want to improve our running endurance? Do we want to get faster, there are so many different factors to consider there.
But I just want you to ditch that conventional advice out there. And it’s okay if what you do doesn’t look like what anybody else is doing. Because that’s that’s the way I am to things what I’m eating doesn’t fall into any category of any specific diet.
You know, it might be close to something like a paleo diet or primal eating, I don’t know what you want to call it, I just tried to eat something that is mostly whole foods related, you know, like I eat real food, like 90 plus percent of the time, I pretty much don’t eat packaged food.
I don’t eat processed foods, these things are mostly junk, they’re there to sell you more food. If I do eat foods that come in a package, it’s like some cheese or some you know, heavy cream, or like some frozen broccoli. It’s like hey, prepping all this food and cleaning up the kitchen.
So I buy like frozen broccoli, frozen cauliflower, stuff like that. But I want to encourage you to take control of your own health. And you don’t have to follow the norm out there. Because the norm is not working, the norm is 88-93% of the population who is metabolically unhealthy, that is the norm. So don’t be the norm.
So stop doing the norm, and start doing what feels good for you. And you start you have to start to get in touch with your own body and how your body feels when you eat certain foods. Does eating this food make me feel good? Does this make me feel bad? Does this make me feel extra hungry? Am I getting cranky?
A couple of hours after eating this food, I’m getting anxious to have more cravings for junk food. If I eat this particular thing, you need to be an experiment of one and figure out what feels good for you and what helps to keep you satiated, because the diet doesn’t mess up your hunger signals.
That keeps you feeling full throughout the day and provides proper nutrition is going to be the one that helps you to become the healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss will happen as a side effect of all the good things that you’re doing for yourself here. Okay?
The real goal here is always to become that healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss happens as a result of that, you know, we’re not just trying to lose weight. And that’s one thing I always make sure I tell people that I’m working with, I’m like, listen, our goal here is to get you as healthy as possible to get you operating at peak performance, you know.
And when we do that, when we start aiming in that direction, and moving towards that path, the weight loss, it will happen as a nice side effect of all of them. Okay, so number one, stop counting calories. It doesn’t really work. It certainly doesn’t work long term, stop eating all the time.
Eating six times a day does not speed up your metabolism. In fact, it makes you overeat and tends to make you feel more hungry and keeps that fat locked up in fat cells and then stop following the conventional advice because it’s not working. Don’t be normal. Be abnormal, okay?
And as always, if you want help with any of this or all of this, I’m here for you. Just go to runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, hit me up and you and I can have a conversation about coaching. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
