Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
There’s a lot of confusing information out there about how runners should approach strength training. Some people say you should use very light weights and do a ton of reps so you don’t bulk up too …
Continue Reading about 199. Strength, Power, and Hypertrophy for Runners →
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 199 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, Strength, Power, and Hypertrophy For Runners.
So there’s a lot of confusing information out there about how runners should approach strength training and exactly what do we mean when we say strength training? Some people think you should use very light weights and do a ton of reps you know, so you don’t bulk up too much.
Other people suggest lifting heavy weights and doing fewer reps. But for a lot of runners, that seems kind of scary. And they’re like, oh no, is this good? Is it going to help me with my endurance? So what is the right answer for you? That’s what this episode is all about.
In this episode, I’m gonna explain the difference between training for strength, power, and hypertrophy and what all those things mean. Hopefully, by the end of this episode, you’ll have a much clearer understanding of these different resistance training methodologies and how to do them correctly.
But first, if you want a little help getting started with all of the stuff I talked about here on the podcast, I created something that I think is going to be perfect for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
I will teach you how to lose weight the right way and how to keep it off for good without running a million miles a week, I created this training based off of years of doing this podcast and all the topics that I talked about, I kind of distilled it all into about a one hour training that you can go through.
It’s totally free, just have to enter your email address so you can get the follow ups and things like that. But this is going to teach you how to crush your weight loss goals and your running goals.
So, if you’re ready to become leaner and stronger, if you’re ready to run faster and longer and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, you owe it to yourself to check out this free training. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You can find it on my website, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. And it’s free by the way. Okay, let’s talk about strength, power, and hypertrophy for runners. So first of all, I want to stress the importance of this topic today, which is resistance training.
So a lot of people just lump it all into strength training, they say strength training, and that’s what everybody thinks of. But there are actually different ways of improving your skeletal muscle, so you can strengthen your muscles or you can get bigger muscles, or you can get more powerful muscles. And I’m gonna explain the difference between those today.
But resistance training helps to improve your health in many, many ways. I always say that the number one driver of your health of your body composition is going to be nutrition. Food plays such a huge role in your body composition, your ability to burn fat, the second biggest driver of body composition and fat burning.
And overall health is going to be resistance training. So you got to be doing some sort of regular resistance training. I talked to so many runners every single day who tell me, oh, I’m great with my running. I do that all the time, but I just never hit the gym. I never do resistance training. I hate it. I don’t like going to the gym.
And I’m just like why? It is the best thing that you can do for yourself from a fitness standpoint, better than running, running is catabolic. Running breaks down muscle, it really does. And if you’re not, if you’re like running long distances, and you’re doing no strength training, that’s not a good combination.
Okay, so we got to be doing some regular resistance training. But there are different ways you want to do it depending on what your goals are. But some of the benefits that you get from resistance training and doing these things regularly, and becoming stronger and putting on a little bit of extra muscle is things like improved body composition, so you have more muscle mass and less fat mass so your body composition gets improved, and you look better, you look better naked, which is amazing.
Regular resistance training will help you burn more fat. It helps to improve your endurance because you’re able to run longer distances on fat as fuel number one, but also you’re able to improve your endurance because your muscles won’t fatigue as quickly as someone who doesn’t have as strong of muscles.
So when your muscles are stronger, you can actually run longer distances before you fatigue. Regular resistance training helps improve your speed as a runner because you can run faster and push yourself harder. Because you have more muscle mass, it helps to improve your power-to-weight ratio, which just means that, you know, the weight on your body isn’t necessarily fat, it’s more muscle.
And so that weight is actually propelling you faster down the road. Okay, so your power-to-weight ratio goes up because you can burn some more fat and then you have more muscle and so you’re going to be a more powerful, faster runner.
Regular resistance training helps to prevent injuries. This is one of the big keys that a lot of runners don’t understand why they keep getting injured. And the thing you have to understand is that when you’re stronger, your whole body is stronger, not just your legs, but you know head to toe, you are less likely to get injured.
Getting stronger, helps to protect muscles, but it helps to protect your joints as well because we have all these connective tissues, ligaments, and tendons that are holding our joints together in this thing, these things are really involved with running, most running injuries, our connective tissue injuries, you know, there’s tendinitis in different areas, that tends to be where people get the most injuries from running.
And so regular strength training can help prevent injuries in those areas as well. Regular strength training helps improve your lactate threshold, meaning you can clear lactate faster, it helps improve your metabolism and helps you burn more calories.
Also, muscle tissue that has been well trained, is more efficient at utilizing calories. So you know you’re more energy efficient at changing protein into muscle and things like that. So so many ways that your metabolism gets improved from doing regular resistance training. It helps prevent sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is muscle loss as you get older.
And I was just reading a study recently that showed that people as young as 30 are starting to experience sarcopenia. And if you’re getting muscle loss as early as 30 years old, and that just continues as you get older, you’re not going to be in good shape. When you get older, you’re not going to be able to pick up your grandkids or you know, you won’t be ambulatory, you won’t be able to walk.
You know a lot of people that as they get older, they lose muscle and they get injured because they can’t carry themselves properly, they fall down, they break a hip and then they’re like bedridden. And this really drastically speeds up the aging process. And people die a lot earlier when they don’t have as much muscle mass.
So you got to be doing regular resistance training, starting today, for the rest of your life. Okay. It also helps improve bone density, a lot of women talk about osteoporosis, and something that is a concern for a lot of people in general. Well, regular resistance training will help offset that.
Regular resistance training helps boost energy and helps improve your sleep. It just helps you to live longer. They’ve done studies that have shown that people who exercise regularly and they did studies comparing people who did cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, the people who did regular resistance training and no cardio actually live longer.
So I’m not saying don’t do cardio, but I’m just saying that regardless of whether they do cardio or not the people who did regular resistance training lived longer. So we’re just talking about quality of life here.
So there are so many benefits and there’s probably even more, I’m just listing the ones that I think are especially important for us as we get older and you as a runner, but there are so many benefits to regular resistance training. If you’re not doing this right now, just you have to start.
Okay, and I’m gonna give you some help here and give you a little bit of guidance to get you started. But just understand that it is key that you are doing something regularly which means twice a week at least, you can do more than that which is totally fine.
I think a lot of people get really great results when they do it three or four times a week. But you can get good results by just working out and doing some sort of resistance training twice a week.
I have a great program that I teach to my clients which is 20 minutes twice a week. It’s a full-body workout that you only have to do twice a week. And it is very effective and a great place for most people to start and once they get you know a few months into that they can start to change that up and maybe add more to that. But that’s a great place to start.
So if you’re thinking I don’t have time to do it, you have time you have 20 minutes twice a week. Or if you’re like oh I don’t have a gym membership. You don’t need a gym membership. You can do this a lot of this stuff at home you can at least get started at home.
You can get some resistance bands for a little money maybe 50 bucks, 75 bucks, something like that. You can get a set of resistance bands with different resistance weights on them, technically like the different weights, they’ll say like 20 pounds of resistance, 40 pounds resistance, 60 pounds resistance.
Those are great because you can use them anywhere, and you can take them on vacation with you. I mean, yeah, I take my resistance bands on vacation with me and I work out in the hotel room, you know, because it’s that important to me, you know.
So it doesn’t take a gym membership, it doesn’t take a lot of time, you don’t have to become a gym rat and spend all your time six or eight hours at the gym every week, just start right and start doing this consistently. And as you do this, you’re going to feel so much better. You’re just going to. Your quality of life is going to improve, you’re going to sleep better, you’re going to have more energy.
Running will improve, you’re not going to be as injured, you’re going to be burning more fat, your body composition is going to improve, people are going to go oh, man, you’re looking like your skeletal tone there.
You know, that looks great. All that stuff is possible for you, but you have to start. Okay. So one principle I want to go into before we talk about the different the differences between strength power and hypertrophy is the progressive overload principle, which means that in order to strengthen a muscle, or to grow a muscle, you have to overload that muscle.
And we don’t want to do that massively by lifting 1000 pounds, the first time you go and lift weights, it’s progressive overload because you have to progressively overload that muscle, or you’re not going to get the benefits.
So what I mean like that, like, imagine you’re doing bicep curls, we all know what that looks like. And you grab a 10-pound weight, and you’re able to do 10 bicep curls until you just can’t do another one, and you hit failure.
So you, you get about halfway up and you just cannot finish that rep. That’s called failure when you cannot finish a rep with good form. That is, that is where you’re gonna stop with that exercise, because you’ve hit your threshold, right? So you cannot go anymore.
So you’ve hit that threshold, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to, you know, give it a day or two to rest that muscle, and then you’re going to try it again. And this time, you might be able to do 11 reps, okay, so you’re gonna progressively overload that muscle.
And again, you’re gonna go and do 11 reps until you hit that failure again. And then you have, you have seen some improvement, you’ve made some progress, you overloaded the muscle, the muscle had an adaptive response, a positive adapt adaptation to that overload and said, I need to get stronger, I need to grow.
And there are different ways muscles grow, muscles can get stronger, or muscles can get bigger. And there’s a little bit of overlap between the different ways we’re going to talk about building muscle here.
But you know, when you’re doing strict strength training, you will see some muscle growth when you’re using when you’re training for muscle growth, you will see some strength improvements as well.
But just understand that we want to overload the muscle in order for it to have that positive adaptation, whether it’s to get bigger or to get stronger. Okay, so that is very important. We just have to remember that principle here.
Okay, so, first of all, let’s talk about strength and strength training. Why do we want to train for strength? Well, we want to get stronger as human beings, we want to be able to carry ourselves around, we want to be able to run longer distances, we want to be able to lift heavier things, you know, we want to be able to enjoy the quality of life.
As we get older, all these things are going to be improved when you do regular strength training, and you’re not going to get bigger, you’re not necessarily going to get much bigger muscles, they will grow a little bit, but it’s going to be pretty minimal. Okay, so people that think, oh my gosh, I don’t want to train strength training, because I’m afraid I’m gonna get all big like a bodybuilder.
Don’t worry about that. It is really, really hard to get big, like a bodybuilder. I know from experience, I’ve been trying this and I’m a little bit older. And it does get a little bit harder as you get older too. But I’m a little bit older. And I’ve been I’ve been doing very targeted hypertrophy and strength training to get bigger muscles, eating extra calories. And it is very hard to do. I am doing it. I am getting bigger, but it is it’s taking a long time. And it’s very hard to do. I don’t think you need to worry about that.
But I think it is important and we can all benefit from getting stronger. So I think strength training is something we definitely want to be focusing on at least at some point in your training cycle.
Let’s say you’re training for a marathon. You know, you want to be doing some sort of strength training throughout the entirety of that training cycle. You don’t want to be you don’t want to just do the strength training in the offseason I’ve heard people say that to like, oh, I’m only going to do it in the offseason. Why? Because you only want to be strong in the offseason? You only want to be injury-free in the offseason? You only want more energy in the offseason?
No, don’t do that. The only time you really need to not do any strength training is right before a race, I usually tell people to take the week of a race off. And the week before you can do some light strength training, but don’t get too, you know, don’t lift too much.
You don’t want to be sore, you don’t want to be sore go leading into your a race, you know. So you can train all the way through your training cycle, you can wait to train through your entire training cycle just that last week when you’re tapering, and you’re about ready to do your race. Cut it out, just don’t do any of it. That way, you’re just 100% for your race, okay?
But we want to get stronger. And if you’re somebody who wants to get stronger and be able to lift heavier things, and to be able to improve your running performance to become a faster runner and improve your endurance, then building training for strength is going to be how you want to do this.
Okay, so this is about improving the strength of your muscle fibers, not necessarily increasing size, the size will increase a little bit, but we’re more interested in improving the strength of those muscle fibers. And the way we do it, I’m going to tell you exactly how you train for strength.
The first thing to understand is that you want to shoot for around 85% of your one-rep max. Okay, now you’re probably thinking what the hell is he talking about? What is a one-rep max? A one-rep max is the maximum amount of weight you can lift for one repetition.
Okay, but you don’t have to go and lift something super heavy and hurt yourself to determine what your one-rep max is. Instead, there’s a calculator you can use online and I don’t have the website address in front of me here, I meant to write it down, but I didn’t write it down.
But just do a search for a one-rep max calculator. And what it’ll do is, it’ll take something you’ve done, like let’s say you’ve done a benchpress, and you’re able to do 12 reps on a benchpress at 100 pounds, then it’ll tell you what your one rep max would be for that exercise.
Okay, so let’s say you can do 100 pounds 12 times on a benchpress, you put this number into this calculator, and it says, okay, your one rep max for the benchpress is 140 pounds, I actually did this and I put the data in here. So 140 pounds would be your one-rep max.
So we want to take 85% of that, which is like 119 pounds, so we’ll just round it up to 120. So for strength, you want to be doing benchpress, around 120 pounds. Okay, easy peasy, right 85% of your one-rep max. That’s number one.
The next part of this, and this is going to be really easy to remember is for strength training, we want to use the three to five principle. That means we want to train each muscle group three to five times a week, we want to do three to five exercises each time, and we want to do three to five repetitions of each exercise. And then we want to do three to five sets of each exercise.
So three to five sets, three to five reps of each exercise, three to five exercises three to five times a week, and then a three to five-minute rest in between sets. That’s a long time to rest in between sets, but you want to start each new set, feeling like 100%.
Okay, so the three to five principle is exercise three to five times a week, choose three to five exercises to do three to five sets three to five repetitions of each exercise, and then three to five minutes rest between, okay, that’s easy to remember three to five, that’s all you got to remember.
If you do that, you will get stronger, you’re going to build strength right now that 85% of your one-rep max, which is going to go up as you progress with this. Okay, so we want to aim for three to five. And this is actually another three to five number three to 5% increase in resistance each week.
So when we’re talking about progressively overloading, we got to increase that weight that we’re lifting each week. So we want to have just a slight increase each week, don’t try to go you know, 20% increase each week or something like that, you’re gonna hurt yourself. Just go slow, and shoot for that three to 5% increase in resistance each week. Okay.
And I do need to just say this. Like, you have to make sure that you’re doing your exercises safely. I’m just taking this information I’m sharing here as generalized information. You and I are not working together. But just take this information and make sure that you’re cleared to do weight training, and that you’re doing these exercises safely. Okay, that’s very important.
That’s my little disclaimer right there. Okay, so that is strength. We want to shoot for 85% of our one-rep max and then use that three to five principle. Now the same principles are going to apply when we talk about power pretty much, there’s going to be a few exceptions here. But understand that power is going to be very similar to strength with one exception being that we’re adding in speed.
So we’re going to add speed, times of force force is the amount of weight you’re lifting. So speed is how quickly you’re lifting that weight. And that equals power. So what we’re using as the primary driver to build power is intensity.
So the intensity of these exercises is going to be different when you’re doing resistance training for power versus strength. Okay, we’re going to be using for submaximal weight here. So we don’t want to use it as heavy weight, we want it to be about 30 to 70% of our one-rep max.
So you could use like 50%, maybe, as the number, you can start there and just kind of see if you need to go up or down from there. But we want to lift fast, we want to lift powerfully. So intensity is the primary driver. And these workouts that you do, if you’re lifting for power, they should not not be fatiguing, they should be non-fatiguing.
That means that you should still have gas in the tank at the end of your workout. Okay, and again, we want to progressively overload based off of power, but we want to aim for that three to 5% increase in each in resistance each week, not the volume. So we’re not increasing the volume, when we’re talking about increasing resistance, we’re talking about the weight on the bar, okay, or the weight of the resistance, or the amount of resistance, I should say.
So we don’t want to increase the volume, we want to keep the volume low when we’re training for strength and power. When we’re training for hypertrophy, which I’ll talk about in a minute, the volume is going to be higher, the weight is going to be less.
So training for strength and power is going to be similar. With a few of these exceptions, you’re going to use a little bit less resistance with the power just because you’re going to be lifting it very fast. So and that’s the big difference. They’re slow and controlled with strength training faster with the power. Okay.
Okay, next, let’s talk about hypertrophy. What is hypertrophy? So, strength training means we’re trying to improve the strength of the individual muscle fibers. hypertrophy is all about increasing the size of those muscle fibers. So hypertrophy is building bigger muscles.
So when you look at like bodybuilders, they’re mostly focused on hypertrophy. And something interesting, I think, a lot of runners that think about weight training, they want to do lighter weights and lots of reps. And they think that this is the way to make sure they don’t get too big.
But actually, the opposite is true. If you’re a runner, and you want to improve your running performance, you want to be just focused on that speed or that power and strength, like you want to focus on higher weights and lower reps actually, okay.
The opposite of hypertrophy is atrophy. You’ve probably heard that word before. So atrophy is a gradual decline in effectiveness or vigor due to underuse or neglect, you do not want that. When your muscles atrophy, they are no longer strong, they’re no longer big, they get smaller. And we do not want that, we want to make sure that our muscle mass is we’re maintaining muscle mass as we get older, and maintaining muscle strength as we get older.
Okay, so hypertrophy is all about building bigger muscles. Okay? Again, there’s a little bit of overlap with these. But if you want to focus on hypertrophy, you’re going to do things a little bit differently. The three to five principle that’s great for building strength, and it’s great for power. But hypertrophy is a little bit different.
Strength is all about heavy loads. So you want to do fewer reps, but heavier, heavier weight, hypertrophy is all about volume. So hypertrophy is all about lots of sets, lots of reps with lighter weights, okay?
So when we talk about doing hypertrophy training, you probably want to start around 65% of your one rep max. So you can play around with that number, but that’s a good place to start. And what we’re looking for is something between like six and 30 reps per set, okay? Anywhere between like 12 and 20 is usually a good place to be like, that’s kind of the sweet spot, but it can be as high as 30 or as low as six.
I shoot for 15. Like, that’s just kind of a number that I think is a great number to get to for hypertrophy. And so that’s kind of where I go. If you can’t do 15, then you need to decrease the load.
You know, if you can’t get to that 15, or if you’re getting to like 25, and it’s still, you could keep going, maybe increase the weight a little bit. So you, you hit around 15 and maybe 17. I’ve been focused on hypertrophy lately at the gym, and I noticed that I’m getting between like 15 and 18 on most exercises. And then as I can continually do like, 18, 18, 18, I made up the weight until I can only do like 15.
And then I’m, I’ll get to the place where that would be that new weight if I can, you know, do 16 17, 18 pretty consistently, then I’ll up the weight again. Okay. So hypertrophy is, you know, we want to be around 65% of our one rep max, and then somewhere around 15 reps, and then three to 10 sets.
So we’re doing a lot of volume here. So with a lot of volume, you can’t do as heavy weights, but you can do more reps, lighter weights. And I like to shoot for the middle of that. So maybe six sets, okay.
So an example might be you’re doing squats. So you pick a number that’s like 65% of your one rep max. And do six sets of 15 reps of squats, and then your rest period in between these sets is shorter. So the rest between you know, power and strength is going to be three to five minutes.
You only want to rest for like 30 to 60 seconds between sets when you’re training for hypertrophy because you want to keep that load going, you want to keep the volume up, you want to keep the intensity up. Okay. So only about a minute, you know, rest between sets when you’re doing training for hypertrophy. Okay.
So why would you want to train for hypertrophy? If you want to get bigger muscles, you know, if you’re somebody that is like, you know, I want to I want to get stronger. But I don’t want to get all big and bulky, then focus on lifting heavier weights, and don’t do as many reps and sets.
If you’re somebody that it’s like me and where I was like, I want to get bigger, I want bigger arms, I want a bigger chest, I want you know, bigger legs, then I’m going to focus on doing more volume.
Okay, now, I like to do this in cycles. So I go through six-week cycles where I do each one of these I go from strength to hypertrophy to power to strength hypertrophy to power every six weeks. And this is great, even through training cycles.
I feel like I’m always improving from a muscle standpoint, like getting bigger or getting stronger muscles. Okay, one more thing I want to tell you. And this goes for all the different methodologies that I’ve been talking about here.
Strength, power, and hypertrophy is the power of intention. So it doesn’t matter how you’re doing your training. One of the keys is intention. So you want to put your mind and your intention into each muscle that you’re working, right? So you want to think about the muscle.
So if you’re doing bicep curls, you want to be looking at that bicep muscle and thinking about that bicep muscle, this is something that Arnold talks about. He talks about looking at it and focusing on getting stronger, I’m not going to do my Arnold impression here, because that would be terrible.
But focus on that muscle getting stronger, getting bigger, getting more powerful, or whatever, contract that muscle tightly each time you do each single rep you want to contract your muscles as hard as possible during each exercise to get the maximum results from each rep that you do.
Like if you’re just sitting there going to do that you’re not really if you’re doing it super fast. I saw somebody at the gym doing this the other day, they were talking on the phone and doing leg extensions, and they were just there was almost no weight on there.
And it looked like there was no effort being used whatsoever. They’re not getting any results. Whatever they’re doing is not they’re not getting stronger muscles or bigger muscles. They’re just like goofing around is what they’re doing. Okay, they’re wasting time. They can say I went to the gym and I did all these leg lifts. But it’s not working. I’m not getting stronger. I wonder why?
Well, you’re not putting any intention into it. Okay. So think about this. If you’re doing a plank, and you’re holding that plank position, but you’re intentionally thinking about your core and you’re contracting your core, the entire time you’re doing that plank, that plank number one is going to be a lot harder, but it’s also going to be way more effective.
If you’re doing bicep curls you don’t need as much weight on the bar to get the same result. If you contract hard during those lifts, you don’t need to do as many reps. Let’s say you’re training for strength and you’re not doing as many reps. You can get massive results by going slow and controlled and then really contracting that muscle especially in that top, you know that top contracted position holding it.
Okay, so you want to get the most out of each rep that you do you want to be very intentional about this stuff. I know I rattled off a bunch of numbers, but it doesn’t mean anything. If you’re doing these things really passively like that. We have to put intention into how we’re doing our strength training because it is that important, okay?
If you want to live a long, healthy life and be strong all the way up until old age and live to be 100 years old or whatever, then you know strength training is going to be the way you get there. Okay? You want to lose weight, you want to improve your body composition, you want to be a better fat burner, you want to improve your endurance as a runner: strength training, hypertrophy training, power training, that’s how you’re gonna get there. Okay?
And as always, if you’re looking for help with any of this stuff, we can talk about coaching. That’s what I do. Just head over to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me and we can set up a time to have a little conversation about coaching, and see if there’s a good fit for you. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love to you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’ve ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, then this episode is for you. There are many different ways to lose weight - cutting calories, cutting carbs, cutting out snacking, more …
Continue Reading about 164. How to Achieve Weight Loss Success →
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 164 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today: how to achieve weight loss success. If you’ve ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, this episode is for you. There are many different ways to lose weight, cutting calories, cutting carbs, cutting out snacking, or fasting, eating less meat, eating only meat, eating only cabbage and celery and on and on and on right.
Some of these weight loss methods are more successful and more sustainable than others. But they all work to some degree for some people. But despite all these different weight loss methods and their relative effectiveness, there is one master principle that you must follow if you want to achieve long term weight loss success. This one principle will also enable you to achieve success in every other aspect of your life, not just in terms of your weight loss or your health or your fitness.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share this one master principle with you that will show you exactly how to achieve weight loss success and more. But first, one of my favorite clients Kelly had this to say about her experience she said, “Before finding Patrick, I was not in a good place. I was struggling mentally, drinking alcohol and eating garbage. I felt like other women were faster and stronger than I was. And this program has helped me to break through those limiting thoughts and really take control over my life. I started eating real food, I started lifting weights, and I’ve become more determined. I’m a stronger runner. I’m 20 pounds lighter, I ran a 50k and I even did an Ultra Ragnar. Trusting the process and gaining the confidence to keep moving forward helped turn this into a lifestyle change. I now have goals that I feel I can meet and feeling weak is in the past. I feel physically and mentally stronger than ever. You are one of a million and you changed my life.”
Thank you, Kelly. But here’s the thing, Kelly’s story is not uncommon. Every day I watch your owners like Kelly, take back control of their diet, lose weight, get stronger, and do things they never thought they could do. So think about this, what limiting thoughts are holding you back? And are you finally ready to ditch those limiting thoughts and take control of your life? If so, maybe coaching is an option for you. To learn more and apply, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
Okay, so let’s talk about how to achieve weight loss success. So like I mentioned, during the intro here, there’s many different pathways to weight loss success, you can cut out calories, you can, you know, ditch the carbs, you can cut out snacking and you can do more fasting. You know a lot of people do really well with intermittent fasting or even some extended fasting.
Some people do really well doing more of like a carnivore diet, they eat just meat, some people do better if they’re eating zero meat, some people do better if they’re doing the cabbage juice diet, I don’t even know what that is. But there’s just so many different methods of achieving weight loss. Now, some of these are more effective than others. I think some of these, especially when we get into things like really drastically reducing calories, you run the risk of slowing down your metabolism. This is not something that would really be sustainable.
I think if you limit a lot of nutrients, like if you’re just doing the cabbage diet, I don’t even know, is that a thing? But whatever if you’re just doing something where you’re just eating like cabbage for months on end, can’t be good for you. Like you’re probably not getting enough protein, probably not enough micro and macro nutrients in that. So anyway, some of these are more effective than others. Some of these are better than others. Some are more sustainable than others.
But here’s the thing, every diet that’s out there will work to some degree for some people. There isn’t just one thing that works for everybody. And I’ve said this so many times. Every person I work with I make sure we really understand that there isn’t one method, there isn’t one diet, no fad diet or whatever, that’s going to work perfectly for everybody.
Now, for me personally, I tend to gravitate toward a more low low carb sort of higher protein approach. So this isn’t no carbs. This is not like a totally carnivore type of approach. But I tend to eat lower on the carb scale. I definitely eat a higher protein than the average American for sure than the average runner definitely. And I don’t eat constantly, I’m not eating six or eight times a day.
And this approach seems to work well for a lot of endurance athletes who want to get fat adapted, who want to improve their fat burning capabilities, who want to run longer, who want to lose weight. But you know, even with this low carb approach, there’s a lot of room for differentiation, no two people are going to do this the exact same way, we’re all going to have our own sort of set point, as far as carbs go, like how many carbs do we need to feel good to make sure that our running is is still improving, to make sure that our weight loss is happening?
We don’t want to go too high on the carb scale. But we don’t want to go too low either. Like, are you making improvements at the gym? Are you seeing improvements in your running numbers, like all these things are worth considering. And it’s going to look a little bit different for each person. Okay, so just understand that there’s lots of pathways to success and weight loss, lots of different methods, lots of different quote unquote, like diets, you know, and to some degree, they all work, you know.
But if you want to achieve long term weight loss success, there is this one master principle that you must embrace if you want any of these things to work. In fact, this principle is just one word. But it’s a very, very powerful word. This word is so powerful and so important that I’ve made this one word, my mantra for the year for this year 2023. I printed out this word, I have it taped to my monitor. I’m looking at it right now. And I see this all the time, I’m constantly being reminded of this one master principle.
This word is so powerful, that it not only allows you to achieve weight loss success, but if there’s anything that you want to achieve in your life, in any area of your life, this one word principle is how you get there. And if you only embraced one mindset concept, this is what we’re talking about today. This is a mindset concept.
If you were to just ditch everything and just adopt this one mindset concept. This is the one that you should embody in everything that you do. Because if you do, your success is basically guaranteed, you basically cannot fail if you embody this one principle. Okay, I’m trying to be very dramatic and build this up. I don’t know why. But it’s fine, I guess. So I’ve probably teased this out enough for you.
So here’s the one word principle that you need to embody: discipline. That’s it. Discipline. That’s the word that I’ve chosen as my mantra for the year. That’s the word that’s taped to my monitor right now. And this is the way that you achieve success and anything that you want for yourself.
So what is discipline? The definition of discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. Another way of saying this, and I liked this definition a little better, it’s sticking to the plan, even when you don’t feel like it.
Alright, so your plan might call for chicken and salad for dinner tonight. But your husband just brought home a large pizza. And it smells amazing. And he opened up that box. And he said that pepperoni is all glistening with the grease on top of it and you can smell the cheese and you know how doughy that crust is going to be and how, oh my god, it’s like, you know, you just your whole brain is lit up now.
Your desire has increased like crazy. Being disciplined means in that moment, you eat your chicken and your salad because that’s what you said you were going to do. No one feels like eating chicken and salad when there’s pizza right there. But being disciplined means you do it anyway. Discipline means you go out and run for an hour because that’s what’s on your schedule. It said you run for an hour today. Even though it’s cold outside, even though it’s raining outside because your training plan says you run for an hour. That’s what you do no matter what.
Now I have an interesting story about this today. I have to tell him myself a little bit here. I run outside in whatever conditions and I have this whole training season I have for years actually And it’s very, very rare that I will ever skip a run. I really don’t skip runs but instead I’ll go run on a treadmill, which I have access to in my building there are a bunch of treadmills.
I could do this anytime I wanted to. But I don’t, I run outside. Today, I had this one, you know, hour block of time that I could run. And that was it. I didn’t, I don’t have time to go later. During that one hour block of time that I had to run, and I had to run an hour. During that one hour block of time, we were under a severe thunderstorm warning, there was lightning, the rain was coming down so hard with lightning and thunder, it was insane outside.
And I made the decision in that moment to go run on the treadmill. And that was a tough thing for me to do. Because I was like, oh man, I know that I need to be disciplined about this. And I know that I’ve committed to running outside no matter what. And I don’t mind getting wet. And it wasn’t warm outside. It wasn’t too cold, like 50 degrees, it was actually pretty decent temperature for like a rainy thunderstormy day.
But I was feeling really undisciplined about like not running outside. I was like, oh, I gotta go run on the treadmill. But then I started thinking about running on the treadmill. And I hate running on the treadmill. I hate it. I do not like it. The time on the treadmill just seems to go by so slowly. It’s not interesting for me, it’s boring.
My pace never really matches up to what I know my pace is like I can run at a certain heart rate. And I kind of know my paces. And on the treadmill, it’s like, you know, normally that’d be like a 10 minute mile or something like that, for me it’s a super easy pace. And on the treadmill, it’s like a 12 minute mile. I’m like, that’s not right. It’s not right. It’s boring. I don’t like the way it calculates my pace. It takes too long.
There’s all kinds of reasons why I don’t like the treadmill. So for me, being disciplined today meant putting aside my, whatever ego and getting my run in and doing it on the treadmill, just sucking it up and just, you know, not being a big baby about it. And just getting it done. And I did, that’s when I did I ran on the treadmill.
The only reason I didn’t run outside is because of the safety factor with all the lightning and stuff because I don’t mind getting wet, whatever, my skin is still waterproof. So I’m not concerned about that. I didn’t want to get struck by lightning. And it was pretty crazy out there this morning.
Okay, so being disciplined means you get it done. Even when you don’t feel like it. I didn’t feel like running on a treadmill, I did it anyway. Being disciplined means you do the things that you don’t want to do. So that you can become the person that you want to become. Discipline means choosing the hard things. When the easy thing is right there, the pizza, the couch, the warm bed, Netflix, the cookies, whatever that is for you.
Discipline means you are consistent with the way you eat, the way you train. How often you lift weights, when you go to bed, you’re consistent with reading and journaling and meditation and yoga and stretching, whatever that looks like for you. Whatever that thing is that helps you make progress towards your goals towards becoming that better future version of you. Doing that thing consistently takes discipline.
Alright, so what does this look like? How do you do it? How do you practice discipline, because discipline is a practice. It’s not something you just turn on. And then you’re like, good to go. It’s not something you say, well, I’m going to be disciplined. And then it’s just you never have to worry about it. It’s something you have to practice, just like learning to play an instrument takes practice or doing yoga, it takes practice.
I did yoga last night for the first time in a few weeks. It was hard, and I’m like, oh, I need to be more disciplined about yoga. I need to practice yoga more often. Because when I don’t do it for a while, it’s hard. Yoga is hard. Especially for runners. We are the tightest people in the world. So in order to be successful at anything, you have to have these three things, you have to have a plan, you have to take action and you have to get some kind of result.
Okay, this makes sense, right? So being disciplined means that you make a plan. Whatever that looks like for you, if you are wanting to lose weight, then you need to have a food plan. What is it you’re going to eat? What are you going to not eat? You know, if you’re used to eating pizza and cookies all the time. Maybe that’s something you got to take away.
So for you, making a plan might mean what foods you’re going to avoid and what foods you’re going to include. Right? Okay, so you make a plan. And then you take action on that plan, you work the plan. And this is where the majority of discipline happens, you’ve got to be disciplined about what you do, you will not feel like it, you will not feel like sticking to that plan, but you do it anyway. That’s discipline.
Because the only way you make progress is by taking action. The only way you achieve results is by taking action. And the way you take action consistently is discipline. All right, so you’ve made a plan, you’re taking action, you’re doing a consistently good job. Now you’re gonna get a result or not get a result. So what did all that action achieve for you? What are your results?
Is this what you want for yourself? Or are these results moving you closer to your goals or further away, so you got to analyze the results. And then if you need to course correct, make a change. Okay, then you repeat this process, you maybe tweak the plan, and then you start taking new action based on that new plan. And then you look at those results. And then you just keep doing this.
And modifying your plan, or course correcting, has to be part of the process. And this is part of the plan right here, this part of this process of being disciplined and getting results and achieving goals. The modifying your plan part is where a lot of people get stuck, because they try something, it may not work, you know, perfectly. And so they quit.
We don’t quit though, we look at the results. And if something isn’t working, we change something. Because a plan does not work 100% of the time for every person. That’s it. And we expect this, the people that I work with my coaching clients, we look at the results that we’re getting. And if something isn’t working, we freaking change it.
We change the plan. People are so afraid to do this, though. Why are you afraid to change the plan? Who cares? If what you’re doing isn’t working? Let’s try something different. Let’s make a small change here. Oh, you’re eating, you know, 80 grams of carbs a day? Well, let’s change that, you know, maybe you’re not improving your running speed that you want to, maybe we go to 100 grams and see how that works for you.
Maybe you need more protein in your diet. If what you’re doing is not giving you the results that you want, why do you keep doing? It doesn’t make any sense. But most people get stuck there. And that’s when they quit. And that’s one of the beautiful things about having a coach, whether it’s me or somebody else, having somebody there to help you look at the results and see specifically for you what kinds of things you can change to start getting some different results is really, really, really helpful. Okay, just keep that in mind.
Okay, so you have this plan, you’ve modified the plan, and now you’re taking, you’re practicing discipline, again, because you’re taking new action. And again, this is where most people give up, they don’t want to try different things. They’re not willing to go through this whole process of trial and error. But that’s the only way you figure out what works and what doesn’t, it’s the only way to accomplish anything – is you go to try something, see if it works or not, and then try something else and you just keep going.
This is one of the reasons why these fad diets don’t work because the same plan doesn’t work the same way for two different people. It just doesn’t they don’t work the same. People need to understand that. The same diet, whether it’s the Mediterranean diet, the South Beach diet, or whatever it is, doing it the exact same way for everybody will not work for everybody just doesn’t work that way. There’s no one diet that’s going to get everybody the same results never ever, ever going to happen.
Okay, so we make a plan. We take action, we work the plan. We do it, we stick to the plan, even when we don’t feel like it. That’s discipline. We look at our results. Do we need to change anything? Let’s be disciplined about analyzing results. Let’s be disciplined about making a new plan if we need to. And then take new action and rinse and repeat this process. Okay?
You cannot be afraid of this process. It’s how you accomplish everything you want in your life. In fact, it’s the only way to accomplish the things that you want in your life. And the only way. In the end, the key to accomplishing all these things is that backbone of discipline, right? Being willing to stick with the process of change, even when things don’t seem to be working the way you want them to requires discipline.
You have to be disciplined enough to make a change and keep going. being disciplined means you don’t quit If you don’t ever, ever, ever give up, you keep going, no matter what this can relate to losing weight, being disciplined about food, about when you eat, when you don’t eat, how often you eat, how many times a day you’re eating, how much food you’re eating, and each of those meals, how many carbs you’re eating a day, how many grams of protein, whatever that looks like for you.
Be disciplined about how you do that. Maybe you want to get faster as a runner, you got to be disciplined about running faster, you got to do the speed work, you got to do the hard work of pushing yourself hard past the point of, of comfort way past the point of comfort. Sometimes if you want to get faster. If you want to get stronger, you want to build muscle, you got to lift heavier weights, you can’t just keep lifting the same amount of weight and expecting to get stronger, it’s just not going to happen. You’re not going to have an adaptive response. You’ve got to lift heavier weights.
Same thing with your work with starting a business being an entrepreneur as your career. You want to be disciplined about or you want to achieve big things in your business life, you got to be disciplined about how you approach the work. And same thing with relationships, and raising children. Be disciplined about improving how you interact with your children, how you inspire them, how you motivate them, how you keep them on track.
Be disciplined about how you approach your relationship with your partner, be disciplined about communicating about expressing your feelings about expressing your wants and needs. So all these things, all these different areas of your life can be improved by practicing discipline. Now discipline gets a bad rap sometimes. Because people see discipline as being negative like they see it as a punishment.
And that’s like a definition of discipline. The practice of training people to obey rules is a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience, like disciplining your child, right? This is clearly not the kind of discipline we’re talking about here. Okay. People think discipline means, you know, giving up all their freedom, you know, their free time, their sleep, not having any fun being miserable all the time, never being able to eat any good food.
Discipline is not negative. In fact, the opposite is true. Being disciplined means you gain massive amounts of freedom. When you’re disciplined with your time, and you use your time wisely, and strategically, then you have time for play and fun and Netflix. When you’re disciplined about what you eat, like 90-95% of the time, it means you can have the pizza or the cookie every now and then. And it’s no big deal. Because you know you’ve been disciplined the other 95% of the time.
Being disciplined means you have freedom to wear whatever you want at the beach this summer, because you’ve consistently done the hard work to improve your body composition. So you can take your shirt off or wear the two piece bikini or whatever it is for you. Right. Discipline is not a bad thing. It’s the means to achieving everything good that you want in your life.
Now, there are some negative consequences that go along with not being disciplined. Like if you lack discipline, you lack progress. You don’t make progress. If you lack discipline, you’re going to lack motivation. Because being disciplined actually creates motivation. You create progress, you get motivated, you lack progress, you lack motivation. If you lack discipline, you’re gonna lack consistency.
Discipline is how you stay consistent. Being disciplined is how you create massive consistency. If you lack discipline, you’re gonna lack mental toughness. You know, mental toughness is developed through this whole process of being disciplined. And if you lack discipline in one area of your life, chances are you’re going to lack discipline in most if not all areas of your life. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything, right?
And if you lack discipline, you will lack results, period. Now, the opposite is also true. There’s a beautiful positive ripple effect that happens when you practice discipline. When you practice discipline, you make progress. This increases your motivation, you become very consistent. You build mental toughness, you develop discipline in all areas of your life, you get the results that you’re looking for, or at least you get results and then you can kinda like tweak some things and then start to get better results you know, but the only way you make progress the only way you can achieve anything is by practicing discipline. Okay.
So just to recap, how do you do this? How do you practice being disciplined? Make a plan. So what are the steps required to get you from where you are to where you want to be. So if this is like losing weight, that’s your food plan. If this is improving your running performance, this is your running training schedule. So you make a plan, then you stick to the plan, no matter what.
You stick to the plan, even when you don’t feel like it. And then you look at your results. Am I moving closer to my goal or further away? Am I gaining weight? Am I losing weight? Are my runs improving? Am I getting faster, and then make changes if you need to tweak the plan, stick to that plan, analyze those results, rinse and repeat. Okay? I’ve chosen this word discipline as my one word mantra for the year. And I’m giving you permission to adopt it as your one word mantra for the year if you want as well.
Remember that whatever you want for yourself, whoever you want to become. Discipline is how you get there. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
If you are overweight, chances are it’s a problem of metabolism. Your metabolism is not working properly. By nature, animals (including humans) do not become overweight unless there is some kind …
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 141 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today how to fix your metabolism. If you are overweight, carrying around more body fat than you’d like, then chances are it’s a problem of metabolism, your metabolism is not working properly.
By nature, animals, like animals in the wild, including humans do not become overweight, unless there’s some kind of dysfunction happening in the body most likely a dysfunction of metabolism. One of the most common dysfunctions in humans is that we have either purposely or accidentally slowed down our metabolism. Okay, this is where the body is not burning enough calories to maintain homeostasis, which just means, you know, stable and optimal health.
And I usually don’t talk about burning calories here on the podcast. But today, I’m gonna make an exception because I believe this is an important topic. And I really want to share this information with you. So today, it’s all about how to fix your metabolism here on the Running Lean podcast.
And I read a lot of books on the topics of metabolism and in the art and the science of exercise and running and mindset and building strength and nutrition. Like I’m always reading books and listening to books and listening to podcasts on these topics. And one thing that I’ve found to be 100% true from everything I’ve read and listened to, is that while books might provide you with some knowledge, the personal application of that knowledge is a whole other ball of wax.
Okay, this is why I do what I do as a coach, because what’s written in a book is going to be generalized information. It’s not a specific plan that’s created just for you. Okay, listen, you have your own goals, maybe you want to run a half marathon, or maybe you want to lose 30 pounds.
And the way that you get there will look different for you than it will for somebody else, maybe somebody else is pretty lean, they just want to drop 5 or 10 pounds, maybe they want to qualify for Boston, these are different people with different goals and different body types. The same plan is not going to work for these two people, right?
So and then we talk about how we structure workouts, how much muscle we’re trying to build, the different food preferences that we have, our different lifestyles, work schedules, travel schedules, cultural differences, there are so many differences, like we’re all individuals. And so this is why I do what I do as a coach, because there’s not one book that’s going to work for everybody. There’s not one plan is gonna work for everybody.
And this is why I offer coaching because what works for them probably won’t work for you. So in my program, you and I sit down together, we put together a plan that will work for you based on your goals and your life and your preferences.
So if you’re ready to make some changes that are designed for you, specifically for you for your goals and your lifestyle, maybe you want to lose weight or get stronger or run faster, then come and join me in the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my unique coaching program for runners to help you crush both your weight loss and your running goals because you can do both. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And get started I’d love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project is always you.
All right, fixing your metabolism. How do you fix your metabolism? Why am I even talking about this today? Well, like I said at the beginning here, if you’re overweight, it’s most likely a problem of metabolism. There’s some kind of dysfunction happening there. And in order to get your body to where it needs to be to get your body into homeostasis to lose weight, we need to fix the metabolism. And I think we all kind of know this on some level that there’s some metabolism dysfunction and happening. But I want to talk about this kind of frankly today and I want you to understand what your metabolism is and what it’s not. Maybe dispel a few myths about metabolism because there’s a few myths floating around out there that you may think are true but maybe they are not.
I want to share some key lifestyle choices that really affect your metabolism, you know, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. And then there are certain things to consider, especially if you’re a runner, and a fat adapted runner. Okay, so we’re gonna get into all of that, let’s first talk about what metabolism is. So metabolism is a term that describes really, it describes all the chemical reactions in your body that keep your body alive and functioning, right, the main way, we’re going to be using metabolism today.
And the main way that I think we all understand metabolism is how we convert nutrients from the foods we eat into fuel that we can use for our bodies. Okay, so we convert our food into energy. And, and our body needs energy to breathe and to digest food and to circulate our blood and to breathe our lungs and to repair damaged tissues and cells and all those things, right.
So our body needs energy, and we get it from the food that we eat. And when our metabolism is working properly, our body is in a state of homeostasis when it’s not working properly, we’re out of that state. Okay, so what we’re really talking about is, you know, the process our body uses of converting our food into energy. And really, we’re talking about, you know, broadly we talk about calories, you know, it’s like, okay, we’re burning more calories. Okay.
So, metabolism is why some people seemingly can eat a lot of food without gaining weight, while others seem to eat a lot less and still maintain their weight or get fatter because their metabolisms are working differently. Some of this has to do with genetics, some of it has to do with lifestyle, we’re going to talk about all that in a second here.
But I want you to understand that really, your metabolism, the speed of your metabolism is how you burn calories, how you burn calories at rest, how you burn calories during exercise. And this is commonly called like your metabolic rate, sometimes they call it the resting metabolic rate or, or basal metabolic rate, those two terms are very similar. And we can kind of use them interchangeably. Okay?
If you’re a scientist, don’t give me a hard time about that. Because I don’t, there’s a subtle difference there. But I don’t want to confuse you with that. But let’s just say resting metabolic rate is what your body is burning, while you’re just sitting around not doing a whole lot just sitting around, right, which we do a lot of the time, right, you want to increase your resting metabolic rate, if you want to increase your body’s ability to burn calories. Okay?
So one thing that is very, very important, and I want to color this whole conversation with this is, what are you metabolizing? What types of calories are you burning? Because this makes a huge difference. We talk about how we want to burn more calories, and everybody’s talking about calories and how calories are so important. We got to burn the calories burn the calories, but what calories are you burning? Are you burning carbohydrates? Are you burning fat?
Because if you’re trying to lose weight and become fat adapted and improve your endurance as a runner, you want to be burning more fat, you just do, you can’t lose weight without burning fat, you got to burn the fat that’s on your body. Unless you have liposuction, right, you can certainly do that and lose some weight that way for sure.
But if you want to change your body composition, and lose fat and gain muscle, then we have to be training our body to burn more fat, we got to get more efficient at burning fat. And eating a diet that’s super high in sugar. And super high in carbs means that you’re just going to be burning mostly sugar and carbs. Right.
And for some people, this is fine. Maybe they haven’t gained weight. Their diet is mostly carbohydrates and sugars and, and they burn that stuff just fine. And they don’t gain weight. That’s great. But for most of us, probably 80 to 90% of us, that doesn’t work, especially as we get older, right? So if your goal is to lose weight, all the sugar and all the carbs, it’s going to make it very difficult for you right?
Losing weight means we got to be burning, we want to be burning mostly fat, right. So when you ditch the carbs, when you ditch the sugar, even as a runner, you get fat adapted and you train your body to be really good at burning fat. This means you’re going to be burning more fat at rest and during exercise.
So when we increase our metabolism, that means we’re actually going to be increasing the amount of fat that our body is burning, because our body is focused on fat as our main source of fuel instead of carbohydrates as our main source of fuel. I want to make this very, very clear at the beginning here so that when I talk about what I’m going to be talking about today, the factors that affect your metabolism, how we can increase your metabolism, the diet matters, it really, really matters, okay?
We want to be metabolizing more fat instead of carbohydrates, okay. And especially if you’re an endurance athlete, and especially if you’re an endurance athlete who also wants to, you know, change the body composition and lose some fat, we got to increase the fat metabolism, it’s also called fat oxidation, the more fat we’re oxidizing, or more fat, we’re metabolizing, then the more energy we have, and, you know, that’s how we lose weight, too. So it’s a win-win, it really is okay.
And that typical runner’s diet that I’ve talked about before of all sugar, no carbs, is probably not going to get you there. Because your body always wants to prioritize the carbohydrate metabolism, because it’s just an easy source of fuel for your body to use. And as long as you’re filling your body with that stuff, you’re never going to be really getting into fat burning mode. Okay?
So step one is to ditch the sugar, ditch the carbs, let’s get into fat burning mode. That’s really the first step here. Okay, that way, when we increase our metabolism, when we’re burning more calories, we will naturally be burning more fat, we’ll be using fat as fuel. And this is our goal here. Okay.
So let’s get into what affects your metabolism and how we can fix the metabolism, how we can increase the metabolism. And some of this is pretty interesting. And some stuff that I, in my research for this, I think, is kind of new data. And there’s some new studies out there. So I think you’re gonna find this pretty interesting.
So the first thing that affects your metabolism, of course, is going to be the foods that you eat, how much food are you eating, how often are you eating, you know, the amount of food you eat, can really affect your metabolism positively or negatively. If you’re over eating constantly, if you’re constantly eating more food at each sitting than your body really needs, you will slow down your metabolism, you know, your body just cannot handle that much.
And so what we want to do is not overeat, we want to eat just enough, okay, when we want to eat enough to be satisfied, you don’t have to count calories to know if you’re overeating or not, right. If you’re eating to the point where you get uncomfortable, you’re eating too much. Okay. But then we talked about the types of foods and already mentioned, you know, that we want to be, we want to get off the sugar and the grains in the refined carbohydrates.
And when we do that, we’re going to be obviously metabolizing more fat. But for example, if we increase our protein intake, you will actually increase your metabolism, at least temporarily, at least for a few hours. But if you’re eating plenty of protein at each meal, you’re going to do yourself a big service, because you’re going to have an increase in your metabolism overall.
And the reason for this is something called the thermal effect of food or TEF. So when you eat the food, your body has to burn some calories to digest that food, okay? And protein between the three major macronutrients, you know fat, carbohydrates, and protein, protein causes the largest rise in the thermal effect of food, meaning that your body will use more calories to process and digest protein than carbs or fat.
So dietary protein requires 20 to 30% of its usable energy to be used for metabolism of the protein. So that is huge, because 20 to 30% of the calories that you’re eating from protein is actually being used to digest the protein and to metabolize the protein compared to 5-10% for carbs and 0-3% for fats. So your body does not use much energy to digest and metabolize fats, it uses a little bit for carbs, but a lot of energy for protein.
So right there, eating protein will help you to increase your metabolism, right. It also helps you to feel more full, and helps to prevent you from overeating, because it’s really hard to overeat a lot of protein, sit down and try to eat, you know, a pound of chicken breast. I’m going to tell you right now it’s gonna be really hard to do. So, a lot of food and you know, but you could eat, you know, a couple pounds of pasta probably pretty easily without really feeling that full from that. Okay.
So people that have a drop in metabolism, when they lose a lot of weight, we’ll get into this in a second here. When people have a drop in their metabolism from losing weight, a lot of this is due to losing muscle mass and eating enough protein can help prevent this, right? One of the things that we want to do when we are setting out to lose weight is we want to lose fat weight, we don’t want to lose muscle weight.
So we got to make sure we’re maintaining some sort of strength training and getting enough protein. And that’ll actually help to keep your metabolism going. You know, because more muscle means you’re burning more calories in general. Again, I’m gonna talk about that in just a second. But listen, like we got to make sure we’re getting enough protein at every single meal, it’s definitely going to affect how your metabolism functions.
Okay, body size. Another thing that affects your metabolism. In general, larger people typically have faster metabolisms, right, it just requires more energy to maintain a larger body. So people that are larger, will generally have faster metabolisms. This is not to say that you should become larger.
That’s not what I’m saying here at all. But people with larger frames, even obese people tend to carry around the who are carrying around way more body fat and muscle, then than typical people, their their metabolisms are actually going to be a little bit faster, which sounds kind of counterintuitive, but there’s other things happening there. There’s some other dysfunctions happening there. But just understand that if you’re a bit of a larger person, your metabolism might be a little bit faster, okay?
Sleep is a big one. Sleep will really increase your risk of fat storage, okay, Sleep is linked to major increases in weight gain and the risk of obesity, and partly because of the negative effects of sleep deprivation on your metabolism. So lack of sleep actually increases blood sugar levels and increases insulin resistance. It increases your risk of developing type two diabetes, it affects your hunger hormone ghrelin, and your fullness hormone leptin.
And this explains why some people who are sleep deprived they’re often pretty hungry, and they have a hard time losing weight, you know, you’re in this, you’re putting your body in this chronic state of stress when you don’t get enough sleep. Right. So if you’re having a hard time losing weight, if you’re having a hard time metabolizing fat, one of the things you have to look at is getting good sleep consistently.
And good quality sleep on a regular basis, this is going to get your body out of that stress mode, and get your body working the way it’s supposed to. Another thing that affects your metabolism in a good way is caffeine. And I know some people don’t don’t do caffeine at all. And that’s great. But studies have shown that caffeine in coffee and green tea can have a little bit of a temporary boost on your metabolism and promote more fat burning.
So if your goal is to lose weight and burn more fat, then coffee can definitely help you there. I know that’s good news. For some of us, it’s good news for me, I love coffee, and I drink a little bit of coffee every day. And I really love it. And you know, I’m one of those people I don’t, I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t eat sugar. And really the only the only thing that I ingest that gives me a different feeling is caffeine, it does give me a little bit of a boost of energy in the morning when I’m drinking coffee and especially helps me with workouts. It’s a good performance enhancing drug, so to speak, right. So I’m cool with that.
And, you know, I think I live a very clean life. And if caffeine is the one thing that I use to kind of give me a little bit of a boost in the morning, then I’m happy to just keep doing that. Okay, maybe one day, I’ll decide that it’s just not for me anymore. But for now, I love my coffee and I’m gonna keep doing it. And it does help with weight loss, it does help with weight maintenance. And it does help with metabolizing fat. So there’s a lot of good things about caffeine if you like it if that’s something that you want to do.
And then another thing that can affect how your metabolism functions is the types of workouts you’re doing. So I used to be like, oh, just cardio, cardio, cardio all the time. And this is all anybody talks about: burn calories, burn calories. But one of the types of workouts you may want to consider if you’re not doing it already, is HIIT training. So this is high intensity interval training.
So this is where we’re doing very quick, very intense bursts of activity could be sprints, you know, sprint repeats, 400 repeats, it could be more of a group class where you’re doing, you know, high intensity intervals in a different way. But basically what happens here is that when you do these types of exercises, you increase your metabolic rate. And even after you’re finished with the workout, right?
So they found that the effect of increasing your metabolism is greater for HIIT workouts than for most other types of exercise. And that hit has also been shown to help you burn fat. And this is one of the reasons why I talk about intervals so much. Like we don’t want to be doing all this, what I call like chronic cardio where you’re just like, always doing the same kind of long ish runs at a, at a medium pace, like all the time, we want to be really doing some short bursts of intense activity, and some longer slower running as well to improve endurance, but the HIIT types of workouts are going to help you to increase your metabolism for sure.
And then kind of along with that is weight training. So increasing your muscle mass will help you to burn more calories and burn more fat. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, your body requires more energy and will burn more energy carrying around muscle, then fat. So the more muscle that you have on your frame, the more calories you are burning each day even at rest, right. So lifting weights can help you build muscle and maintain muscle.
And like I said, a lot of people that that do what I call like dieting, or you know they try to lose weight by restricting calories or something like that, a lot of times they’re just losing muscle along with fat, we don’t want to lose muscle, you know, we’re athletes, we want to maintain our muscle mass, or we want to build some muscle.
And when you build muscle, you will increase your metabolism and it’ll stay increased even at rest. So this is a really important thing. I talk about the importance of strength training all the time. This is one of the reasons why it’s important. And then they did this review of 58 different studies. So this is what they call a meta study where they study studies. And so they looked at 58 different studies.
And they said that resistance training was significantly more effective at reducing body fat percentage, total body fat mass and belly fat compared to a control group. So resistance training is going to be one of the best things you can do for yourself. If you’re not doing this currently, get into it. Okay.
Another factor that will affect your metabolism is how much water you drink. And they did a study, an older study back in 2013, but it was a study that showed that drinking 17 ounces of water. So roughly about a pint of water increases your resting metabolism by 30% for about an hour. That’s pretty interesting. So if you’re drinking more water throughout the day, you know, you are just going to naturally have a faster metabolism. Plus, we need water, water is good for you, we have to have it or we will die.
And then there’s something I want to talk about. I’ve kind of touched on this a little bit. But people that do like the crazy calorie restriction type of diets, they kind of put their body into what is called starvation mode. It’s also called metabolic adaptation or adaptive thermogenesis. But you know, I think we’ve all heard the term starvation mode. What does this mean?
So, starvation mode is when your body adapts to a calorie deficit. So when your body isn’t getting enough food, it will compensate by reducing its metabolic rate and the number of calories that you’re actually burning. So when you restrict calories too much for too long, then your metabolism will slow down significantly. This is one of the main reasons why I do not focus on just you know, restricting calories to lose weight. If you restrict calories as a weight loss method, it’s going to be problematic, you know, you can restrict a little bit, but you got to be careful not to restrict too much or for too long.
Because it can have a rebound effect, you will lose weight, but it’s also not sustainable. It’s one of those things where you might lose weight in the short term, but long term, your metabolism is going to slow down and then you’re going to start gaining that weight back again. And then you’re going to try to reduce calories even more and it’s going to have just a negative effect. And so this is just not a good way to go and think about us as human beings.
We don’t need to count calories. We’ve never counted calories until the last 50 years or so, like, do we need to be doing this? No, we don’t, there’s a better way. Just eat real food, eat food, our answer shows we have been eating for thousands of years. And I promise you, you won’t need to count another calorie again, okay. But when you look at shows like The Biggest Loser, you know, they have these obese people, and they lose a ton of weight by really restricting calories for a long time, and they’re doing tons of cardio or whatever. And they lose the weight, but then they gain it all back.
And then some, I think something like 96% of people on that show have gained the weight back or more, which is not a good, that’s not a good number. Okay. So starvation mode is a real thing. And we got to be careful not to do that. So that’s why I don’t preach restricting calories really, I don’t right.
And then there’s some other things that affect your mere metabolism. And things like hormone disorders, okay. So hypothyroidism will slow down your metabolic rate, causing a higher risk of weight gain. And then there’s genetics that can play a role here. But listen, genetics alone does not mean that you’re going to gain weight, or that you can’t increase your metabolism. So you might be predisposed to a slower metabolism or to obesity.
But if you maintain healthy eating habits, and healthy exercise habits, and you know, have a good, you know, quality of life, good lifestyle, good sleeping habits, things like that, you won’t become obese, you know, it’s kind of like saying, you have a genetic predisposition for alcoholism.
But if you don’t drink alcohol, you’re not going to become an alcoholic. So what I’m saying here, lifestyle matters. It really, really matters, okay. And one of the big myths I wanted to talk about here is age and how getting older affects metabolism, because I think that most people I’ve talked to have told me they’re just like, well, as, as you get older, you know, your metabolism just slows down. And as you age, you’re just gonna start gaining more weight. And it’s really hard to lose weight, because you’re getting older.
And they did a study back about a year ago, so this is a pretty new study in August of 2021. And this was in the Journal Science. And that suggests something very different. So thinking that your metabolism will decline, as you reach middle age and beyond. They’ve done this very intensive study. And I think this is pretty interesting. So they looked at over 6000 people, like 6400 people, ranging in age from eight days old, I know, pretty young to 95 years old. And they looked at their height, their weight, their body fat percentage, their average metabolic rates for when men, women and people in different age groups, like they looked at all these different people in all these different age ranges, okay.
And they put together a pretty clear picture of how our metabolism changes during our lifetime. Okay. And here’s what they came up with. I think this is really interesting. from infancy to one year old, your metabolic rate surges, right? It’s about 50%, higher than at any other time during your life. Okay, so from zero to one, it’s the highest right, then from one to 20 years old, your metabolism decreases by almost 3% a year.
So this is the biggest drop in your metabolism actually between one and 20 years old. From age 20 to 60, your metabolism doesn’t really change. That’s interesting, right? Most people think that between, you know, you know, 20 to 60 years when your metabolism really slows down. And it doesn’t really change at all. This is good news, right?
And then after age 60, the average metabolism decreases by 0.7% annually, which is not much that is not much. So just know that if you’ve been using, oh, I’m getting older as an excuse up to this point. We can’t use that as an excuse anymore. Okay. I just want you to think about that. Okay.
So these studies are showing us that your metabolism doesn’t have to slow down as you get older, and that it’s much more likely that changes in our behavior. Changes in our lifestyle are responsible for our metabolism, you know, increasing or slowing down. And this includes pre menopausal women and postmenopausal women. These same principles apply.
Just because you’re going through menopause does not mean that you will automatically gain weight. This is really good news. So whether you are male or female, whether you’re going through menopause or not, as you get older, stay active, get good sleep, maintain muscle mass, do some, you know, hit workouts, practice healthy eating habits, make sure you’re getting plenty of protein, and drink lots of water.
And you should be able to keep your metabolism burning nice and hot, nice and strong for the rest of your life. Okay, so this is all good news. I hope you guys got something out of this episode today. It was really fun. Putting this together. I think increasing our metabolism is really an interesting and really achievable goal for us. Okay.
And if you ever want help with this, if you want me to help you put together a personalized plan, reach out, I’d love to help you with that. We’ll put together a plan that’s based on you and your goals and your lifestyle and what we think will work for you. And then as we go through the process of change as we go through the process of changing your lifestyle and changing some of the eating habits and exercise habits. We’ll see what’s working and what’s not.
And we just continue to make progress, we continue to course correct as we go. That’s the power of coaching. It’s designed specifically for you and if you want a little help, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply Apply for coaching and you and I will have a conversation we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool. Right on you guys love you all keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
There are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. Some of these concepts have been around for a very long time and just seem like they hold water but a lot of …
Continue Reading about 131. Busting the Biggest Nutrition Myths →
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 131 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths. So there are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. And some of these concepts have been around for a very long time, decades. And they just seem like they’re legit.
They seem like they hold water, but a lot of them just don’t, or at least they don’t anymore. So there’s a lot of new studies that are being published and a lot of new data that’s being looked at and analyzed. And we have to be able to decipher now, because it’s a different time, a different era, we have to be able to decipher now what’s true, and what’s not.
And it’s not always easy, I get that. And that’s why I put together this episode to hopefully shine the light on and bust some of the biggest nutrition myths. Okay, so today I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths, I’m providing you with some actionable advice to help you take control of your health, and get you on the right track.
And listen, getting healthy, losing weight or maintaining your weight. running marathons this stuff, it’s not easy, becoming the healthiest version of yourself. It takes time. It takes consistency, it takes discipline, it takes know-how. And I provide all of that in the Running Lean coaching project. This is my intensive coaching program that gives you all the knowledge, all the support, all of the accountability that you need to improve your health and make changes that last permanently.
We’re not interested in quick fixes. In my program, we’re not trying to teach you the fastest way to lose weight. This isn’t about weight loss schemes, or fad diets, we’re all about sustainability. What you can do, starting now to change your health for the better and how to maintain it for the rest of your life.
Remember that becoming healthy, it’s not a destination you’re trying to get to there is no finish line, I wish there was I wish I could tell you that at some point, you could just stop doing all this, you can stop eating healthy, you can eat all the junk food that you want, you can stop exercising, but that’s not the way it is. It’s not a temporary state of being, this becomes who we are and becomes what we do from here on out.
So you have to embrace this concept. And if you’re feeling compelled to change your health for the better, if you’re feeling compelled to lose weight, finally lose it for good for the last time. And if you’re longing to become that best and most badass version of yourself, I want to encourage you to actually do something about it today, take some small action steps today.
And if you want help, I’m here for you. I’m always here for you really, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You can fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a call, we can talk about your goals and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not for everybody, that’s totally fine. Again, this is for the people who want to commit to this way of life.
Who will make these changes last for good, then this is a good program for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply, I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, onto busting the biggest nutrition myths. So I had some fun putting this episode together. And the reason I’m talking about this is because there are a lot of myths floating around out there around nutrition and around, you know what it means to eat healthy. And a lot of this stuff has been kind of propagated over decades. It’s been propagated in the media. It’s been propagated by, you know, Jim Rose, and all kinds of stuff.
And I just want to like, for once and for all like just talk about some of the stuff that comes up often. I hear these concepts come up often with clients, they ask me these questions all the time. And so I put together a list of some of the most common questions that people ask and the common questions that people have been sort of misunderstood over the last few decades.
And I wanted to kind of tell you like what’s legit and what’s not, like what’s real, you know, what, what are things that we can honestly say are concerns and what are things we should just ignore? Okay, so I wanted to make sure that we are getting on the same page with some fundamental concepts here. And that we don’t, we’re not being manipulated by old outdated information anymore. Okay.
So that’s why I’m talking about this today. And I’m just going to go through a list of some of the biggest myths that I’ve, you know, been kind of researching, and the biggest questions that I get from clients and potential clients. And I wanted to share this with you guys, I think it’s gonna be really helpful.
So the first one, and I’ve talked about this so many times before, but I’m going to talk about it again, the first one is that calories are all that matters, right? If you want to lose weight, you’ve just got to cut your calories, right, calories in versus calories out, run more and eat less. And this is called the energy balance theory, the energy balance theory says that the energy that you take in calories coming in should be less than the energy that you’re putting out through exercise, right?
And this theory, they call it a theory, because it’s not the truth. This theory works fine. If we were a closed system, like a steam engine, but we’re not steam engines, the human body is much more complicated. And there are some issues with this theory. And, you know, like I said, I’ve talked about this so many times in the past, but I’ll just give you a couple of quick bullet points here on why this theory just doesn’t hold water. Okay.
So if you cut your calories, yes, you can lose weight, right? When it comes to losing weight, if you cut calories dramatically, you can lose a lot of weight pretty quickly, too. The problem with this, though, is it’s not sustainable. If you cut your calories too low for too long, this will effectively slow down your metabolism.
When your metabolism slows down, the amount of energy that you’re taking in becomes the amount of energy that your body is willing to put out there. So your resting metabolic rate, that’s the way you burn calories at rest just hanging around being you, this is the most calories that you burn through the day, by the way.
So because it takes calories to keep your heart beating, and your lungs working, and your blood flowing, and all these other things that all the other processes are happening with your body digestion and your brain and all this stuff. So actually you consume more calories throughout the day by just sitting around doing nothing than you do through exercise, right?
So but your resting metabolic rate will effectively slow down to match the calories that you have coming in. So let’s say you have a resting metabolic rate of like 1800 calories, so you just burn 1800 calories a day at rest, then you start eating, you decide you want to lose weight, so you start eating like 800 calories a day. And you do this for some time, you’ll probably lose some weight at the beginning.
But what will happen is your resting metabolic rate will slow down to kind of match that 800 calories that it’s getting in energy because your body’s like, listen, we’re only getting 800 calories of energy a day, we’re going to slow down to kind of match what’s coming in. So we don’t die of starvation and we don’t emaciate ourselves and die.
So it’s going to slow down your metabolism to match what’s coming in. And so let’s say you’re messing with your resting metabolic rate and it changes and it drops to 1000 or, or 800 calories a day. Okay, now that 800 calories a day that you’re eating doesn’t work for weight loss anymore, you’re going to start to gain a little bit of weight and gain a little bit of weight. And you’re going to be like, wait a minute, why is this not working anymore? And this is why.
And this is why programs like The Biggest Loser, they dramatically cut calories and these people lose a ton of weight real fast. But they don’t keep it off. It’s not sustainable. This is not a sustainable weight loss strategy. It just isn’t. And so we have to do something different. We have to change the calories and the type of calories that we’re eating matters.
It’s not about the numbers, you know, a calorie. A calorie is just a unit of measure. It’s how we measure energy. It’s the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water or one milliliter of water. One degree Celsius like it’s just, you know, how, how long does it take or how much energy does it take to increase the temperature of the water by one degree? That’s what a calorie is. Okay, so it’s just a unit of measure.
And, but that’s not taking into consideration the types of foods that you’re eating, okay? And the types of food you’re eating absolutely matter, right? So when we’re talking about quality of food, quality of nutrition, it really does matter. So you could take 300 calories of doughnuts, let’s say you can have a couple of donuts, they’re equal, like 300 calories. And the that food though, that energy that’s coming in will raise your blood sugar like crazy, you’re going to be hungry all day, your body’s going to be stuck in this fat storing mode, a lot of that energy that you take in is not being is not able to be used by your body right away. So you’re going to store some of that as fat. And these are essentially nutritionally empty calories, there’s not a lot of nutritional value in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, okay?
You could take 300 calories of steak on the other hand, and this does not raise your blood sugar much at all, maybe a little bit comes back down pretty quickly. It’s very filling, you’re not gonna be hungry all day after that, you’re not going to be putting your body into that fat storing mode, because insulin is not being generated as much. So you’re not storing extra energy as fat.
This is a new, nutritionally dense food that you’re eating. So your body is actually absorbing the nutrients from this food, it’s not generating the hunger signals that carbohydrates generate. And you’re going to be very satiated from eating that food and it’s actually nutritionally legit for your body. Okay, so calories are not the same. And anybody tells you the calories are all the same, just walk away from that conversation right there.
Okay, calories are not the same. I’ve heard people say, oh, yeah, I can help you lose weight. And you can just do nothing between keys all day long. And I’ll get you to lose the weight, but it is not sustainable. And, uh, don’t do that. By the way, Twinkies are one of those things that, you know, if you send it out on a counter, it’ll still look exactly the same in like, 100 years. So don’t don’t eat that stuff. Right? It’s bad. It’s bad for you, right?
So low calorie diets, they’re often void of quality nutrition, your health will suffer as a result of eating a low calorie diet, and it is not sustainable. Okay, so slowing down your metabolism like crazy is not a sustainable way of losing weight and keeping it off and being healthy, right?
And just understand that humans are complicated. We’re not engines, we’re not steam engines. There’s things to consider, like hormonal imbalances, metabolic adaptations, like a metabolic slowdown. There’s genetics, there’s health conditions that some of us have, like hypothyroidism, you know, there’s medications that we take.
All these things make, you know, losing weight a little bit more complicated for some people, right? So we just have to understand that we are complicated beings, and then it’s more, it’s more about eating high quality food than it is about the number of calories coming in and going out. Okay, so the biggest nutrition myth that I see out there is that calories are all that matters. And I just want to say BS, right, there’s more going on that we have to consider. Okay.
The next one, and this is one of the biggest concerns I hear from people, is that eating fat will make you fat. And I have to tell you something here, this is not the case. Eating fat does not make you fat, high fat foods are not unhealthy foods. For millions of years, we humans have been eating fat and animal fats.
And we have survived and thrived and our brains have gotten big, huge, like we’re the most advanced creatures in the known universe. And we got this way not because we’re eating a low fat diet. No, because we are eating tons of animal products and eating tons of fat. It’s the fact that we are eating that actually made our brains start to grow and become the kind of humanoid brains that we have today.
And fat is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients meaning that we do not produce these nutrients internally. We have to get these in our diet or we will die. If you don’t eat fat, you will die. If you don’t eat protein, you will die. You know what’s not an essential nutrient is carbohydrates. Humans are not required to eat carbohydrates in order to live. It’s not an essential nutrient. Right?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever eat carbohydrates. I’m just saying it’s not essential your body will produce the glycogen that your body will produce the glucose which you know becomes glycogen that you store in your muscles. Your liver will produce that for you internally. Your brain needs a certain amount of glucose to function every day. Your body makes that, right?
Your liver makes the glucose that your brain needs every single day, it makes the glycogen it gets stored in your muscles to keep you functioning properly to keep your heart beating to keep your legs moving, keep your arms moving all that stuff. Carbohydrates are not essential, fat and protein are essential, okay?
And eating a higher fat diet has been the norm for us humans for millions of years, okay. All of a sudden, in the late 1970s, somebody put out this document and said hell fats are bad for you, that’s a problem, you need to stop eating fat. This does not make any sense. Think about it. It doesn’t make any sense.
They base this off of some really crappy studies that were done in the 60s 50s and studies that do not hold water whatsoever. And they’ve done tons and tons of studies since then, that have absolutely disproven this, okay? This is an antiquated and incorrect theory, that fat will make you fat. And that, you know, eating fat is unhealthy. And it’s slowly being put to rest.
And many people still fear it though, they still fear high fat diets. They still fear high fat foods, and they follow these low fat diets, in hopes that like if they just cut their fat intake, that they’re going to become healthier, and they’re going to lose weight, and it does not work.
The American Heart Association used to be all about low fat diets, low fat diets, low fat diets. And some years back, they very quietly put out a statement that said dietary fat is no longer a nutrient of concern. They kind of hid this little, little snippet in their documentation. They didn’t make a big splash about it, because they’ve been preaching that everybody has to eat a low fat diet in order to be heart healthy, right heart healthy diet, low fat.
And even the American Heart Association has been like, yeah, you know what we were wrong. But they don’t want to say they’re wrong and make a big “to do” about it. So they just kind of snuck it in there a little bit. Okay. So it’s being outdated. It’s being antiquated, and people are starting to wake up to the fact that this is not an issue, right? That dietary fat is actually essential for human health.
And actually, they’ve done these studies where low fat diets have actually been linked to greater risk of health issues, including metabolic syndrome. And they lead to an increase in insulin resistance, an increase in try group triglyceride levels. And these are all known risk factors for heart disease. So the low fat diet is not good for you. Okay.
And when it comes to losing weight, they found that diets higher in fat have been proven just as effective or even more effective in encouraging weight loss. Okay, so don’t be afraid of fat, eating fat does not make you fat. And I just want to mention one study that I just think is so compelling.
This is the pure study, P U R E peer study. And they compared a high carbohydrate, low fat diet to a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. So they sampled 140,000 people in 18 different countries. And they follow these people for 10 years. So half the people were following a high carb low fat diet. And the other half were following a low carb high or higher fat diet.
And the conclusion was this: that high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality. Whereas the total fat and the individual types of fat are related to lower total mortality. So total fat was not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality. And saturated fat. This is really interesting, saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke, meaning that people that ate more saturated fat had fewer incidences of stroke.
And the conclusion is that the global dietary guidelines that we’re all following should be reconsidered in light of these findings. So this is just one study, but a pretty compelling study that says that a higher fat diet is actually better for you if you want to live longer, eat the fat. Okay.
Another myth I want to kind of break down and this might bump some people out there, but sugar substitutes are healthy. I’m going to have to say that this is not necessarily the case that eating a bunch of sugar substitutes is not necessarily a recipe for good health. Okay, so one thing to understand about this is that there’s not a lot of conclusive evidence out there because a lot of the sugar substitutes we’re using today, things like stevia or erythritol, xylitol, allulose.
These kinds of things haven’t been around that long, so they don’t have a ton of research to back these things up. But here’s, here’s the gist of that. Eating sugar substitutes can ramp up your craving for sweet foods, even though it’s not really sweetening your food, it’s a substitute in your body that doesn’t metabolize a lot of these sugar substitutes.
But what happens is that it tastes sweet. And so it kind of tricks your brain into thinking you’re eating something sweet, which for some people can lead to higher sugar cravings and unhealthy eating patterns. Okay, so just understand that, you know, the sugar substitutes are being used, you know, people are having all these like low carb products out there and keto products that say, like, you know, only whatever, its grams of carbs, one gram and net carbs or something like that.
And the problem is that we’re eating these things, some people are eating these things to excess. And, and, and some people are, you know, when you’re eating these types of foods, they’re not necessarily health food. It’s not like eating some broccoli and a steak. Like you’re eating, you know, something that’s supposed to be like a cookie, or brownies or ice cream or something like that, right? So these sugar alcohols, the sugar substitutes are not necessarily healthy.
So I hate to burst your bubble on that one. You know, they can be used sparingly, and that’s fine. It’s kind of like an every now and then type of thing. Just, you know, the fact is that these are not healthy foods, okay. And some of these sugar alcohols like erythritol and xylitol, they can cause digestive issues for people because your body does not metabolize them, or at least it only metabolizes a tiny bit of it. So they can cause some digestive issues, especially if consumed in large amounts. So just be careful of that. Okay.
So they’re not necessarily healthy. They’re not, you know, not necessarily, you know, bad, but we just have to be careful not to overdo it with this stuff very, very sparingly with that kind of stuff. Okay? Okay.
Another big myth out there is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We’ve heard this before. We’ve all been taught this right. In school, when I was growing up, it was always like breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And what I didn’t realize is that that concept was coined by the Kellogg’s company, right? This is just a marketing message. Right?
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is not based on science or anything like that. Kellogg’s came up with this because they wanted to sell more breakfast cereal, and breakfast wasn’t even a thing back in the day. Like Kellogg’s came up with the breakfast concept like in 1899.
This is not something that we’ve been doing for thousands of years as human beings, the human body is not designed to eat, you know, first thing when you wake up in the morning. And here’s the thing, like, skipping breakfast is not a big deal. And if you’re the kind of person who thinks that skipping breakfast is going to be impossible, I want you to try it. See what happens.
When you skip breakfast, you promote more fat loss. You know, if you exercise in the morning, you’re going to actually have an increase in adrenaline, an increase in some of the adaptive hormones when you skip breakfast, and an exercise in that fasted state. And human beings are just designed to eat a couple times a day. And to think that we have to eat breakfast and like it’s the most important meal of the day. It’s just wrong, it’s just wrong.
And especially if you eat a high carbohydrate breakfast, and they’ve done some studies that show that they did a study where they just compared people who ate eggs for breakfast and who ate bagels for breakfast, right. And the people who ate eggs for breakfast had a 16% greater reduction in body fat during the study period, compared to the people who ate the bagel for breakfast.
So right there is a good sign that the carbohydrates alone first thing in the morning especially, are going to you know, thwart your weight loss, progress or promote weight gain, you know, so just understand that you know, the types of foods we eat matters, right? But also that skipping breakfast may be just the best thing that you can do for yourself.
And it’s such an easy thing to do. Just skip your first meal and eat it later. Start eating around lunchtime and see how you feel. So many people feel so much better doing this. They don’t think it’s possible but they actually get there.
And then another myth that I wanted to bust here is that all carbs are bad. You know, I talk about a low carb diet and you know, maybe like carbs are the problem. And honestly, listen, all carbohydrates are not bad, right? They’re not essential. We don’t have to eat carbs in order to be healthy human beings. But some carbs are really problematic, right? And we want to really avoid those things, right?
Sugar. You know, carbohydrates are just sugar. It’s just another word for sugar. And they come in varying degrees of concentration. So you know that white sugar crystals that you stir into your coffee in the morning, that’s a very concentrated form of carbohydrate. So are things like maple syrup, or flour, like any kind of grain that’s been refined in ground up into a fine powder is a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, okay.
But then there are other types of carbohydrates, which we call complex carbohydrates that are not terrible for you, okay, they’re not bad. Things like white potatoes, sweet potatoes, other types of underground vegetables, tubers, some fruits, some dairy, these things have all been part of the human diet for millions of years, right?
Even honey has been part of the human diet forever. And so all these things can be considered to be what I would call good carbs, like there’s good carbs and bad carbs, sugar, flour, refined grains, bad carbs. Good carbs would be things like, you know, potatoes and some fruit, okay. So we just have to understand that there are different types of carbohydrates, and that some of these can be okay to be consumed in moderation.
You know, we don’t want to make our entire diet white potatoes, right, not nutritionally dense. And the carbohydrate load would just be too much for your system, right? But some of these things can be okay, you know, right now I’m eating mostly meat, and then some fruit, a little bit of dairy, like I’m just sticking to a very ancient sort of ancestral way of eating. And it works great.
For me, it’s very doable, very doable, it’s very sustainable for me. And I even consume a little bit of honey every now and then. And all these things have been part of the human diet forever. And we just have to understand that there’s a difference between the kinds of carbohydrates we’ve been evolving to eat like over millions of years, and the kinds of carbohydrates that are being marketed to us today. Very different, very, very different.
Okay, so let’s look at carbohydrates. From an ancestral standpoint, I think that’s a good way of looking at it, okay. And you can even use carbs, to enhance your running performance, if you want to kick into that extra gear for running if you want, you know, if you’re trying to smash a 10k time or something like that, and you want to be running at your peak performance and close to your VO2 max, then you’re definitely going to want to supplement with some carbohydrates to do that, right?
The fat burning is great when you’re a little bit lower when you’re 65-70% of your VO2 max. But once you get over that, you’re going to want to add some carbs into the mix, right? But the types of carbs matter, right?
Another myth is that high up foods high in cholesterol are unhealthy. Here’s the thing. I’m clueless why cholesterol rich foods have gotten a bad rap. Because people don’t understand how dietary cholesterol affects your health, right? So some people are very sensitive to dietary cholesterol, right, but this is the exception.
Overall, nutrient dense foods that are higher in cholesterol can be included in a healthy diet, including foods like eggs and full fat yogurt. So these have higher cholesterol in them, right? They actually might boost your health because they enhance feelings of fullness. So you’re going to feel more full.
And you’re actually getting a ton of nutrition when you eat these kinds of foods. Whereas when you’re eating foods that have zero cholesterol, you’re not getting the nutrients that you are that are actually required like kale has a lot of it doesn’t have any cholesterol in it right? But is kale something that you need to be eating? Because it’s going to give you all kinds of nutrition, it’s a lot of fiber, you’re just going to pass most of that through your system, you’re not going to absorb a whole lot from eating kale.
Sorry to bust your bubble about kale but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be right? So high cholesterol foods like eggs, full fat yogurt, these things are very nutritious, right? And like I said, some people because of genetic factors might be more sensitive to cholesterol and you’ve got to be careful with that. But for most of us, they can be included as part of a healthy diet.
Your brain needs cholesterol to function properly. Every cell in your body has cholesterol in it. We have to get cholesterol in your diet, or else we’re going to, our health is going to suffer, we’re going to start to break down, right? So we have to have cholesterol in your diet. So just understand that cholesterol does not mean you know, it’s not bad, it’s not the sign of an apocalypse, you’re not going to die from eating cholesterol, in fact, you have to eat it as part of a healthy diet.
Here’s one that might surprise you: supplements are not necessary. So this is a kind of a myth, like I’ve talked about eating real food and how you should be able to get all your nutrition from eating real food. And I kind of stand by that yes, to a certain degree. But I also think there are certain supplements that are okay.
And that actually kind of recommended for most people and especially runners like, I think creatine is a supplement that most people can benefit from most athletes can benefit from, it helps to build muscle, it helps you with recovery, it’ll help to improve running performance, because you’re going to be become a stronger human being, and you’re going to have stronger muscles and stronger connective tissues.
Collagen would be another one that I would recommend, just especially as you get older, you know, to help with connective tissue health and stronger bones. And then iron would be another one. So this is interesting, that long distance runners require more iron, because there’s some loss of blood through the gut that happens with running, because we’re, you know, diverting blood away from our gut in order to provide oxygen to working muscles, this is why a lot of people get stomach issues, GI issues, because they don’t have the blood in their gut.
So we’re diverting blood away from the gut, to arms and legs to keep us out there swimming, running, biking, whatever. And so we’re actually kind of losing blood through that process. And so we want to replace the iron. So eating a diet high in iron, iron can be really helpful. But for a lot of people, I think supplementing with iron, especially for long distance runners is going to be really helpful for you. Okay.
And then one supplement in particular, that I think is interesting. Calcium, a lot of people think they need to supplement with calcium in order to have strong bones. So people are told to just keep popping the calcium supplements, you’ve got to keep your bones healthy, especially as you get older. But there’s been new research out there that shows that supplementing with calcium may actually do more harm than good.
So calcium supplements have shown to be related to an increased risk of heart disease. And so if you’re concerned about your calcium intake, it’s best to focus on dietary sources of calcium, like again, full fat yogurt, sardines, some beans and seeds, things like that. But just another, a better, even better than just like trying to get calcium from your diet is to practice regular strength training, and get enough protein and avoid low calorie diets, low calorie diets, not good for your bone health.
Not getting enough quality protein is not good for your bone health. Not doing any kind of resistance exercise, or any kind of weight bearing exercise is not good for your bone health. So running, strength training, getting enough protein are all going to help you to maintain a strong skeletal system. And if you want to supplement use collagen, because that’s going to help you create stronger connective tissues and stronger bones better than a calcium supplement. Okay.
And then another another myth I wanted to bust is about low fat diet foods being healthy. We probably, I’m assuming that we all know this by now. But I’m just gonna like maybe maybe that’s a wrong assumption. Maybe some people don’t know this. But if you’re buying any kinds of foods that say, like low calorie or low fat, like you just got to stay away from that stuff.
A lot of the foods that are being peddled to us out there that say light or low calorie, low fat or fat free. These contain much more added sugar. And if you gotta read the labels and like just pay attention to what it is you’re getting right? But pretty much I would say stay away from anything that says light, low calorie diet, low fat, fat free. Avoid anything that says any of that, right? Go for though just regular full fat foods, because these are almost always going to be a healthier option and contain less sugar. So just keep that in mind. Okay.
Another myth that I hear all the time, and especially from, you know, bodybuilder type of people is that you’ve got to eat like six times a day in order to keep your metabolism going. And I just have to tell you that this is completely not true. That every time you eat food, you’re going to increase your blood sugar, right.
And if every time you eat if you’re eating six times a day, and you’re keeping your blood sugar high, especially if you’re eating a lot of carbs, this can really lead to more fat storage. And I can’t tell you how many people have come to me as clients and said, Patrick, I was working with a trainer. And they wanted me to eat six times a day, and I just kept gaining weight, and I just kept gaining weight.
And they were telling me that I wasn’t doing it right, or that I needed to exercise more. And I just have to tell you that this whole concept of eating six times a day is just total BS, the human body is not designed to eat six times a day, we’re just not. The human body is designed to eat like once or twice a day. And that’s it.
We did not evolve as grazers, you know, we’re not antelopes, or bison, like, you know, we evolved as persistent hunters, we, we evolved as gatherers, you know, we would gather foods and then bring them back to our tribe, and we would, we would eat that food together. But we we evolved to be people who, a species who eats infrequently. So this idea of eating all the time, just puts a strain on our systems and puts a strain on your pancreas, it puts a strain on the digestive system.
And you do not need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism going. You know, you keep your metabolism going by just eating enough each day, getting enough calories in, eating a couple times a day, you don’t need to be snacking in between meals or anything like that. And this is how you promote fat loss. This is how you keep your metabolism actually going.
And you just have to understand that we are not designed to eat that many times a day, the human body does not like that. And we will keep storing a lot of that energy as fat and you won’t be able to tap into your fat stores. You know, we talked about, you know, fat burning being the goal, here we want to be, we want to get our bodies back to being efficient fat burners.
And when we eat all the time, we flip that switch and we just store fat, store fat, we store fat, stop doing that. It’s not healthy, it’s not a good way to go. Especially if you’re an endurance athlete, stop eating a million times a day, just eat a couple times a day. And take advantage of all the amazing adaptations that happen. When you practice this kind of meal spacing, this intermittent fasting, whatever you want to call it, this idea that we eat a couple times a day. And that’s plenty for us. And this is the way we’ve always done it as human beings. Yeah.
And then the last little myth I want to bust here is about tracking calories, tracking macros, and that this is something we have to do if you want to lose weight, you got to track your calories, you got to count your calories, you got to count your macros, and you have to stay on top of it for the rest of your life, you know, and I’m just gonna say just know, just know, you don’t have to do this. Somehow, for two and a half million years, as human beings, we managed to thrive without my fitness pal. Like we didn’t need to put our food into a food tracker in order to stay healthy and fit and lean and strong.
And in my programs, I help people to learn how to eat more intuitively, how to give their body what their body actually needs, when you need it, and how to tune into that. Now, just as full disclosure here, I do encourage people to track their food for a little bit of time just to understand what that looks like. And to understand what these numbers kind of can add up to.
Because when we tell people like hey, maybe we’ll switch to eating fewer carbs, or what does that mean? And so we just wanted to, you know, we want to quantify that with some numbers. So we’ll track for a little bit of time, maybe a couple of weeks or something like that, but then we put that away, we don’t need to do that anymore. Your body knows what it needs.
And if you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’ll know when you’re hungry. And when you’re not. You’ll know when you’ve eaten too much or if you need more. And if you’ve learned how to eat properly and you’ve learned about proper human nutrition, and you’ve learned about what works for your body and what doesn’t work for your body, then this should be very intuitive for you and that you shouldn’t need to be tracking calories and tracking macros.
I talked to somebody a while back who was so obsessed about tracking calories and making sure that she was always getting the right number of calories and making sure macros were always right that she would take a scale, a food scale, with her on vacation and take a foods go with her when she went out to dinner with, you know, business with colleagues.
And she would pull out her scale and set it on the table and weigh everything that she was eating, because she needed to know exactly how many grams everything was so that she could enter it all into her food tracker. This is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not the way that we were designed as human beings to live our lives, you know.
And, you know, I think it’s interesting to track for a little while, and I have done it in the past. And every now and then I’ll just put my food into an app just to kind of see where I wonder where I am with this stuff. It’s kind of interesting, right? But it’s not necessary. I am very intuitive now and this is what I teach my clients to do, too, we want to be able to eat intuitively. And again, in my programs, we talk about sustainability, this is all about what’s going to work for the long term, because we’re not committed, we’re not committed to short term, we’re not this isn’t about like a quick fixes this is about long term, sustainable, a way of life. That’s what we’re interested in. So we want to get there. And that’s what we focus on.
So that’s, that’s the gist of, of, of what I do in my programs is that we work on sustainability, and we work on creating good habits that lasts for life. Okay. So those are the biggest myths that I wanted to go over today. And I’m sure you know, I’ll probably come up with some more, I’ll do another episode about maybe some of the other ones that didn’t quite make the list this time.
But I wanted to make sure that we’re all on the same page with some of this stuff, because some of it’s just, it’s just outdated. And that’s cool. Get it. So I hope this was helpful. Let me know what you think. You can always reach out to me on social media. And you can find me @runningleancoaching on Instagram and Facebook and all that.
And I would love to chat with you about coaching if that’s something that you’re ever interested in. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’d love to have that conversation with you. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
It’s pretty common knowledge that if you have a faster metabolism - meaning you burn more calories while at rest - you will lose more weight. What most people don’t know is that there are many …
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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 86 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got seven surprising ways to increase your metabolism. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that if you have a faster metabolism, meaning you burn more calories, while at rest, you will lose more weight.
What most people don’t know is that there are many different ways to increase your metabolism other than just running an extra 100 miles every week. Exercise is great, but it pales in comparison to other methods of increasing your metabolism. So today, I’m going to share seven surprising ways.
Some things that may, I hope, surprise you seven surprising ways to increase your metabolism so that you can burn more calories, burn more fat and become a lean running machine. That’s what we’re all about here at the Running Lean podcast.
But first, if you like the podcast, please come check out our Facebook group, the Running Lean podcast community. This group goes hand in hand with the podcast we support each other. For our goals, we encourage each other it’s a really positive encouraging environment. So I want you to come check us out, come join us over there, and join in, in all the fun, we have a lot of fun over there. So just go to Facebook and search for the Running Lean community.
And then here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one is from Jdog07 and Jdog says, “Love growing with this group of runners. I absolutely love this podcast. I appreciate your passion to help runners become fat adapted and become stronger runners. Your podcast makes running so much more fun to learn and to grow. Thank you so much for creating this podcast, it’s helped so much.”
Love that. Love this. And you’re welcome. I love doing the podcast. And I love sharing all this information with you guys. And it would mean a lot to me if you could just take a moment to go over to Apple podcasts, scroll down where it says leave a review and tap the stars and leave a few words of appreciation that would mean a lot to me.
And then lastly, the Running Lean coaching group is open. And I want to encourage you guys to just go check it out. And we’re doing this thing all month long as a group, we’re going through the whole thought-feeling action patterns, these things that are creating habits that have created habits for us.
A habit is just a combination of a thought feeling and an action. And there are these patterns that we’ve created over time. And we can actually change our thoughts we can change how we feel we can change what we’re doing so that we can get better results in all areas of our life. But we’re talking about trying to lose weight and having a hard time about it. You’ve got to look to your thoughts, feelings, and actions, you’ve got to look to your habits.
And then we’re just taking a really deep dive into this topic all month long over in the Running Lean coaching group right now. And we’re learning how to not only create a bunch of awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, a ton of awareness of our unconscious habits, but we’re learning how to change them. We’re learning how to get better results in our lives.
So just come join us over in the Running Lean coaching group. To learn more and to sign up you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. I really hope you’ll join us over there. And each month we’re going to be taking on different topics. So more to come on next month’s topic soon. All right, runningleanpodcast.com/join. I hope to see you over in the Running Lean coaching group.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today because I’ve been having a lot of fun putting this together and doing a little bit of research for you guys. But there are seven what I found surprising, very surprising ways that you can actually increase your metabolism. So what is metabolism? First of all, metabolism refers to all the chemical processes in your body. This is like all the things that your body does just a minute to maintain its function, the faster your metabolism, you know, the more calories your body burns, right.
Metabolism is why some people seem to be able to eat a lot of food without gaining weight, while others seem to eat a lot less and accumulate more weight and more fat more quickly. So the speed of your metabolism is commonly known as your metabolic rate. And it’s basically the number of calories that you burn in a day. So, exercise and metabolism, we all know that exercise burns calories, right?
Running burns calories, and you can burn a lot of calories by running, you can go out there and run 10 miles and burn 1000 calories, or whatever it is. But listen, exercise is a much smaller part of your overall metabolism. So the minimum metabolic rate required to keep you alive and functioning while at rest is called your resting metabolic rate. They also call it your basal metabolic rate, they’re pretty much the same thing.
Okay, there are some slight differences, but we’re just going to call them the same thing for our purposes today. But on average, your resting metabolic rate accounts for between 50 and 75% of total calorie expenditure per day. This is huge. So the average resting metabolic rate for women is somewhere around 1400 calories. And for men, it’s around 1600 calories.
So just by like being you just by hanging around and not doing anything, if you were to just lay down all day, just lay in bed all day, lay on the couch watching Netflix all day, you’re still gonna burn around 1500 calories a day, just by doing nothing, right. So that’s kind of cool.
And if you can do a few things to increase your resting metabolism. So if you can do some things that will improve that 1500 calories or whatever it is for you, we’re all a little bit different. By the way, you’ll become a better calorie burner, you’ll become a better fat burner, you’ll become leaner, and you’ll become more fit, you’ll become healthier. Okay?
So this is why we’re talking about this today is because the more if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re trying to become you know, a better, more efficient fat burner than increasing your metabolism will absolutely help to get you there. So, here are my seven surprising ways to increase your metabolism other than just like running a million miles.
Alright, so number one, my number one surprising way of increasing metabolism is to eat more food. You’re probably like what? So is it the number one thing people do when they’re trying to lose weight is they eat less. And this has been the gold standard for weight loss for many, many decades. And, you know, we all understand this, if you eat less food, you will lose weight. And this all has to do with calorie expenditure, right?
What is a calorie? A calorie is defined as the amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. That’s it, it’s a unit of heat energy, okay. You can also think of it as the unit of measurement for the amount of energy your body gets from the foods that you consume.
So as you’re eating food, you can think of that as energy. And we can assign numbers to the amount of calories you’re burning and the amount of energy. Okay, so your body needs calories to function, right? We all know this stuff. But your body uses these calories in three there’s like three main processes that your your your body will use calories.
The first is your basal metabolic rate or resting metabolic rate. So this is the number of calories that you need to just cover your basic functions, right? Your brain has to function your kidneys have to function your heart has to, you know pump blood through your body, your lungs have to work your nervous system has to work all these things just working requires calories or requires energy. Without energy without calories coming in this stuff will stop functioning at some point. So that’s number one. Basal Metabolic Rate.
Number two is digestion. So your body will actually use a certain number of calories just to actually digest and metabolize the foods you eat to process, the foods that you eat. So this is known as the thermic effect of food or TF.
And then the third way that calories function in your body is through physical activities. So this refers to the number of calories needed to fuel your everyday tasks and workouts. So just sitting at your desk, driving your car, going for a walk, all these things require more calories than just your you know, basal metabolic rate. And the more physical activity you do, the higher your caloric need, typically, okay.
Generally speaking, eating more calories, taking in more calories than your body needs, will cause you to gain weight. And eating fewer calories than your body requires will cause you to lose weight. Generally speaking, this is called the energy balance theory.
And it’s supported by lots of scientific research. We all know that this does work however restricting calories too much, or for too long, will slow down your metabolism. So regularly, eating fewer calories than your body needs can cause your metabolism to become slower.
Several studies show that low-calorie diets can actually decrease the number of calories the body burns burn by as much as 23%. And this effect is known as metabolic adaptation or starvation mode. You’ve probably heard this term before. So starvation mode is basically your body’s way of warding off potential starvation and death.
So research shows that consistently, eating let’s say fewer than 1000 calories per day, leads to a significant drop in metabolic rate that sticks around long after you stop dieting. What’s more, is this lower metabolism can persist for long periods of time and can be very difficult to get back to normal.
Okay, so, you know, researchers believes that this lower metabolism may explain why more than 80% of people regain the weight. Once they go off their calorie-restricted diets. This is how they lose weight on shows like The Biggest Loser, right? They go on these massive calorie-deprived diets. And they lose a ton of weight, these people lose like hundreds of pounds or whatever.
But 93% of the people on that show regain all the weight back. It’s why they don’t ever have a reunion show on The Biggest Loser because there would only be a couple of people that show up. So cutting calories. You know, eating less, will help to lose weight in the short term, but it is definitely not sustainable. You’ve got to maintain a certain number of calories coming in, in order to keep your metabolism up.
So how much should you be eating? Well, a good rule of thumb for how much to eat if you’re trying to lose weight, is just to start with your body weight and 10 times that and in the number of calories you eat per day. So let’s say if you weigh 150 pounds, start with a daily caloric intake of around 1500 calories per day. And then you can adjust up or down depending on how fast or slow you’re losing weight.
The bottom line here is that if you’re going to lose weight by calorie restriction, which you can, it’s possible, but don’t restrict your calorie intake too much and definitely don’t do it for too long. So this is a real problem for a lot of people who go on these calorie-restricted diets and you know they lose weight, but it’s very hard to maintain that because your metabolism just slows down and slows down and slows down to match what you’re taking in. So the answer is to eat more food. Hooray!
But the type of food that you eat actually matters. And this brings me to point number two. So number two is to eat fewer carbohydrates. So all calories are not the same and our bodies certainly don’t process all calories alike. So a recent $12 million year-long study at Harvard showed that people on a low carb diet could actually eat more calories than those on a high carb diet without gaining weight.
Dr. David Ludwig was the principal investigator in the study. He’s an endocrinologist at Harvard says our study adds to the literature that suggests metabolic benefits for reducing processed carbohydrates in our diets. We found that diet had a major impact on metabolism, people consuming the lower carbohydrate diet and our study burned 250 calories per day more than those on the high carb diet.
That increase in the metabolism could spontaneously cause a 20-pound weight loss over three years without eating any less. If the low-carb diet reduced hunger and food intake as well, the weight loss would be greater. So what’s happening here? Well, there’s a relationship between carb intake, insulin, and weight gain.
So insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that helps keep blood sugar levels steady. And Dr. Ludwig says that insulin plays a role in weight gain when a person eats too many carbs. So after eating processed carbs from sources of specially refined carbs, like white bread cookies, cake, your insulin levels spike.
Next, insulin traps more calories in your fat cells causing weight gain. So you literally gain fat, your fat cells just get bigger and bigger. But the rest of the body still needs calories, so you remain hungry. And this cascade of events can make you more likely to overeat and slow your metabolism.
And Dr. Ludwig says that study participants who had been producing the most insulin, so the high insulin screeners saw the biggest effect on the low carb diet. The theory is that on their normal diets, the participants’ bodies worked in overdrive to produce insulin leading to an extra two extra stored calories and a slower metabolism.
So on the low carb diet, these high insulin creators were burning 400 more calories per day with those compared with those on the high carb diet. So the bottom line, eat fewer carbs, and you’ll increase your metabolism, eat more carbs, especially refined carbs, and you decrease your metabolism. That’s fascinating to me.
Number three is to lift heavy things. So an increase in muscle mass means you will burn more calories at rest. So it requires more energy for your body to carry around muscle than it does to carry around fat. So the more muscle mass that you put on, the more your metabolism increases.
So just having more muscle on your body will increase your metabolism and you don’t have to, you know, obviously, you have to do something to get more muscle. But once it’s there, you just become more efficient at burning calories. So your metabolism becomes increased just from having more muscle and it stays that way as long as you maintain that muscle mass.
So weight training will help you to maintain your metabolism, especially as you’re losing weight. So one thing that a lot of people get wrong is they try to lose weight. You know, maybe they’re doing the calorie deprivation sort of thing to lose weight calorie restriction, but they’re not doing any kind of weight training. And so they end up a lot of people end up losing muscle mass.
As they lose weight, a lot of the weight that they’re losing is actually muscle, which is not good because this just is going to make weight loss even harder for you because you’re losing muscle. And the more muscle you have helps to increase your metabolism. So you’re losing muscle, which just that alone will decrease your metabolism.
And if you’re doing the low carb thing, then that’s going to decrease your metabolism too. So, in one study 48 overweight women were placed on a diet of 800 calories per day, along with either no exercise or aerobic exercise or resistance training, weightlifting. After the diet, the women who did the resistance training, maintained their muscle mass, maintained their metabolism, and maintained their strength.
The others lost weight but also lost muscle mass and experienced a decrease in metabolism. So very simple way to increase your metabolism and get more muscle, lift heavy things. Do some sort of resistance training. And it doesn’t have to be some crazy convoluted thing where you’re spending 12 hours a week at the gym, you can do a full-body workout twice a week, and that would be sufficient to increase your muscle mass and maintain it, especially really, it only takes about one weight training session per week to maintain muscle mass.
But if you want to build more muscle, you need to do at least two weight training sessions a week, full body twice a week, 30 minutes each time all it really takes. And you can definitely increase your muscle mass and therefore increase your metabolism.
Alright, number four. The fourth surprising way to increase your metabolism is to eat more protein. So when you eat food, you burn calories. Every time you eat anything, your body has to use some energy, some calories in order to digest absorb, and process the nutrients in the food. So your body burns energy just by eating food, which is pretty cool, right? This is called the thermic effect of food or TF.
And different foods have different TF. So when you eat fat, this will increase your metabolic rate by up to 3%. Eating carbs can increase your metabolic rate by up to 10%. Like eating protein increases your metabolic rate up to 30%. So eating more protein means you are burning more calories, just by eating more protein means you are actually increasing your metabolism.
So the more protein you eat, the more your metabolism is increased. And eating more protein helps to build and maintain muscle mass which further increases your metabolism. So eating more protein is definitely something I recommend people do. It’s we’re focused on the wrong thing.
I think a lot of times when it comes to diet so many people are focused on just eating less in general. And instead what if you’re eating more? What if you’re eating more protein? How would that affect your weight loss? I think it would help would definitely help.
So now before I get into the last three items on my list, I want to take a pause here and talk about a common scenario. I talk to people every day who’ve been trying to lose weight for years, and nothing seems to be working. It’s really frustrating. I hear from so many people that are you know, they’ve been doing everything and it’s not working for them. And so when I asked, you know, most people, when I ask them, What are they doing? What, what it turns out, they’re doing this they’re cutting calories.
So they’re eating a lot less food for long periods of time. They’re eating a diet high in carbohydrates. So you know, they’re they’re following the advice of like, eat lots of healthy grains, you know, eat all the vegetables, eat all the fruits, you know, so they end up eating a lot of carbohydrates. They’re not doing any kind of resistance training.
So they’re not lifting anything heavy, they’re not building muscle, or they’re doing it wrong. They’re not lifting heavy enough weights. And so it ends up being more of like a cardio workout. And so they’re not building and maintaining muscle mass, they’re losing muscle. And then the fourth thing is that they’re not eating enough protein.
And I especially see this in women, women seem to have a really hard time eating enough protein. Okay. So what most people do when they’re trying to lose weight is they cut calories, eat a lot of carbs, don’t do any resistance training, and don’t get enough protein. Does this sound familiar? Is this you? Have you been doing this? Have you tried this? Does it work?
So many people take this approach to weight loss and they wonder why things aren’t working. But listen, every single one of these things slows down your metabolism. So if you were to do nothing else, if you were to just take one thing away from this discussion today, here’s what I want it to be for you do these four things: eat more food, lower your carbohydrate intake, especially refined carbohydrates, lift weights, do it properly, make sure it’s heavy enough and eat more protein.
You do these four things. I promise you, you’re gonna start to see better results, you’re gonna feel better. You’re gonna have more energy, your metabolism is gonna be higher and I think you’re gonna find that losing weight becomes easier. Okay, that was a little rant I went on there.
Back to my list, number five. Number five on my list of seven surprising ways to increase your metabolism is to drink more water. Yes, just drinking water can actually speed up your metabolism. A study found that water plays a role in increasing your resting metabolic rate through a process called water-induced thermogenesis.
So drinking about a pint of water can temporarily boost your metabolic rate by up to 30%. And this increase in metabolic rate seems to last for like 30 to 45 minutes. So drinking water, which is completely calorie-free, by the way, causes you to burn calories. What, how cool is that? So they did this study on overweight adults, and they show that when they drank half a liter of water, around 30 minutes before a meal, these people lost 44% more weight than those who did not drink water. So just this one thing accounted for 44% more weight loss, just drinking half a liter of water about half an hour before a meal. I mean, to me, this is a significant, significant finding.
If you’re not convinced that you should be drinking more water, I hope you’re being convinced now. And cold water seems to be even better because your body has to use more energy to heat up the water before it can process it. So just you know drinking cold water, especially about half an hour before a meal will help you to lose weight to help you to increase your metabolism.
So how much water should you be drinking? Well, a good rule of thumb is just to take your body weight and divide it in half. And this is the minimum number of ounces of water you should be drinking each day. So for me, I weigh 175 pounds, if I divide that by two, that’s 87 and a half ounces of water per day, or around five and a half pints of water, that would be a minimum. And for those who follow the metric system, five and a half pints would equate to about 2.5 to three liters of water. It’s like 2.7 liters of water.
So if you’re getting, you know, a couple to three liters of water a day, I think this is totally sufficient. I think this is awesome. At a minimum, right. So just you know more is fine. But a lot of this is going to be detrimental for a lot of different reasons. But you know, drinking more water will help to increase your metabolism.
There’s another beverage that helps to increase your metabolism. Can you guess what it is? It’s my favorite, my favorite beverage. So number six, the sixth surprising way to increase your metabolism is to drink more coffee. That’s right, coffee has been shown to increase your metabolism. This is such good news. makes me so happy. Love my coffee.
So a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that caffeine can increase your resting metabolic rate by as much as 11% with larger doses having a greater effect. Okay, so most of this increase in metabolism is actually caused by an increase in fat burning. So not only does coffee increase your metabolism, but it’s directly related to burning more fat specifically.
Now, here’s something I thought was kind of interesting. This effect on metabolism from caffeine seems to be less pronounced in people who are obese. So one study showed that caffeine increased fat burning by as much as 20% in leaner people while the increase was only about 10% in obese individuals, so okay, the leaner you are, the greater the increase in the metabolic rate from caffeine.
But either way, there’s still an increase in metabolism just from drinking coffee, which I think is really cool. And it doesn’t have to be just coffee it can be you can get the same effect from other natural sources of caffeine like green tea, black tea matcha, which is just powdered green tea, right? So, coffee is good for you.
Coffee increases metabolism. Coffee increases fat burning coffee makes life good in general. So if you’re a coffee drinker, you’re my people. You’re with me on this. If you hate coffee, or you’ve never had it before, then you’re missing out. I’m just telling you just start drinking coffee. Give it a shot. It’s a bit of an acquired taste. But I love it. Love it. Love it, love it.
Okay, and number seven on my list of surprising ways to increase your metabolism is to get a good night’s sleep. Sleep will increase your metabolism. What? I know these things, some of these things sound like counterintuitive, but it’s so true because we Just keep thinking of like, Oh, you wanna increase your metabolism, go run more, go exercise more jump up and down. You know, if somebody told me Oh, you want to increase your metabolism, go sleep. It’s like what, that doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true.
Sleep is how we rest. It’s how we recover. It’s how we rejuvenate. And most of us are not getting enough sleep. The consequences of sleep deprivation are being increasingly recognized by science like we are a sleep-deprived society. Currently, we sleep on average, about 6.8 hours, this is the average person’s 6.8 hours of sleep a night, as opposed to nine hours of sleep a century ago. Let’s bring those days back. Right.
So around 30% of adults report sleeping less than six hours per night. This lack of adequate sleep is making it very difficult for us to maintain metabolic and hormonal equilibrium. Without adequate sleep. Our bodies just don’t function properly, our bodies are kept in a highly stressful state. That when you’re stressed out, the stress hormone cortisol is increased blood sugar is higher insulin is higher. And lack of sleep is directly linked to a major increase in the risk of obesity.
And this is partly because of the negative effects of sleep deprivation on your metabolism. So Michael Breus. He’s a PhD, author of Beauty Sleep, and the Clinical Director of the sleep division for Arrowhead Health in Glendale, Arizona. He says if you are sleep deprived, meaning that you’re not getting enough minutes of sleep or good quality sleep, your metabolism will not function properly.
On average, we need about seven and a half hours of quality sleep per night, he says. And if you’re getting this already, you know another half hour is not going to help you lose 10 pounds. But if you’re a five-hour sleeper, and you start to sleep for seven hours a night you will start dropping weight. This is fascinating.
So exactly how the lack of sleep affects our metabolism has a lot to do with our nightly hormones. So there are two hormones that are key in this process and they are ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone that tells you it’s time to eat. And when you’re sleep-deprived, you have more ghrelin, so you end up being more hungry, and you end up eating more food.
Leptin is the hormone that tells you to stop eating is the satiety hormone. So when you’re sleep-deprived, you have less leptin, and you end up eating more food. So you’re eating more, plus your metabolism is slower when you’re sleep-deprived. So getting a good night’s sleep will directly increase your metabolism. I think this is awesome.
So, everybody, I’m giving you permission to sleep more. I’ve been really focused on sleep lately. And I gotta tell you, I feel so much better when I get seven half, eight hours of sleep. If I get eight hours of sleep, I feel good. I don’t, I can’t really sleep more than that. I don’t know about nine hours of sleep. I really know it’d be hard for me to do that right now. Because I just wake up and I’m like, Okay, I’m ready to go. Because I feel good. I feel rested when I wake up in the morning.
And I think my metabolism is really efficient like I’m burning plenty of calories, even at rest. So I mean, everything seems to be functioning properly for me. So I’m in a good place with my sleep. And I would encourage you to do what it takes to make sure you’re getting a good night’s sleep. Make sure you’re sleeping in a cool dark room. Make sure you’re not doing screens right before you go to bed. You know that blue light can disrupt sleep.
If you sleep with someone, make sure they don’t, you know, bother you or like keep waking you up all night long. Hate those people that do that. So getting a good night’s sleep is so important just it’ll absolutely help to increase your metabolism.
So quick summary. There are many ways you can increase your metabolism and promote healthy weight loss and improve fat burning all while supporting your goals as a runner, so number one, eat more food. Number two, eat fewer carbs, especially refined carbs. Number three, lift heavy things. Number four, eat more protein. Number five, drink more water especially cold water. Number six, drink more coffee, or green tea or macho black tea. And then number seven, get a good night’s sleep.
Well, I hope you found something interesting and something helpful from this podcast today. I had a lot of fun putting this together. And be sure to join us over in the Running Lean coaching group for this month of August. We’re taking a deep dive into our habits into those thought-feeling action patterns that are creating the habits.
They’ve created habits that are not serving us, we’re trying to learn how to create new habits that do serve us, we want to change our health and our fitness in our, in our mindset. And we’re doing all of that over in the Running Lean coaching group. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.
And if you did get something out of this today, if you could consider sharing this with a friend, I would so appreciate that. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
If you’re like most runners, you probably don't fully understand the importance of protein in your diet, and you might not be getting enough. Protein is one of those topics that can divide people …
Continue Reading about 74. The Ultimate Guide to Protein for Runners →
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 74 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’ve got a fun topic for us. It is the ultimate guide to protein for runners. Yeah, it’s fun. I said that protein is fun.
Here, here’s the deal. If you’re like most runners, you probably don’t have a good understanding of the importance of protein in your diet, and you probably aren’t getting enough, that’s gonna be my guess most people I talk to are not getting enough protein.
Protein is one of those topics that can actually divide a lot of people, especially in the health and fitness community. So everybody’s got an opinion, right? So I wanted to take a sort of a comprehensive look at protein from a couple of different angles, including some new research on the topic.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be answering questions that I get asked most often about protein, like, how much protein should I be getting? How does protein help promote weight loss? How does protein help with my running? What are the best sources of protein? How long after a workout should I take protein? What about protein supplements? Do you recommend these? Guess what if it has to do with protein?
And if it has to do with any of these questions I just went over, I got you covered. That’s why this episode is titled The Ultimate Guide to protein for runners. But before we get into that, be sure to come and check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook.
I created this group so that you would have a voice. So I do this podcast each week. And it’s just me talking into this microphone. The Facebook group gives us a chance to connect and have a conversation. It’s a place where you can ask questions and get answers and have fun. Have I mentioned that this is a fun group of like-minded runners? Well, it is, just go to Facebook, search for Running Lean community and come join in on the fun.
Here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one is from Clark. Clark says, “On my regular rotation. I’ve only been listening for a short while but Running Lean is already on my regular rotation of podcasts I listened to while running. It’s filled to the brim with great information. It’s a must-listen podcast.”
Well, thanks, Clark. And if you enjoy this podcast, I would encourage you to leave a review you can do that on iTunes and other places, Apple podcasts, whatever they’re calling that thing now. Just go on there, tap the stars leave a few words, you know, it would just mean a lot to me and it helps other people to find the show.
And then lastly, if you ever want a little bit of help figuring out the right nutrition plan for you the right protein requirements for you if you want help losing weight or if you want to help achieving some big running goal, I gotcha. As a one-on-one coach, I work with runners every day who are striving to better themselves and are focused and determined to become the healthiest and most badass versions of themselves.
Now I understand not everyone needs coaching, totally fine. But for those of you who want expert guidance, support, encouragement, and accountability. Accountability is so huge this is like the key to everything, right? If you want that accountability that you absolutely need in order to become who you want to be then coaching might just be exactly what you need.
To learn more and apply for coaching just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and we’ll jump on a zoom we’ll have a short conversation with me and you will see if this is a good fit for you. That’s all there is no obligation there’s no fee or anything like that. It’s just you and me having a quick conversation.
So if you’re thinking about it, just do it just booked a call with me cannot hurt to have a conversation just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and hopefully I’ll be talking to you soon. Alright, let’s get into this.
Let’s talk about protein. Okay, are we cool? Everybody ready for this? All right. So what is protein? Protein is a long chain of amino acids. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within the human body including you know, there’s like metabolic reactions that happen with protein, there’s DNA replication.
Protein responds to different stimuli. It provides a structure to cells and organisms within the body. It helps molecules, you know, it helps transport molecules from one location to another in the body. Protein makes up everything in your body basically, right? Everything in your body is made of proteins. Proteins are the building blocks of organs, muscle, skin, hormones, and tissues, your body has to have protein.
To maintain the human body, we have to eat protein, okay, we don’t make protein internally. So protein is considered one of the essential nutrients that we have to have, that our body does not make. Fat and protein are two of the essential nutrients that we need.
Funnily enough, carbohydrate is not an essential protein or a nonessential nutrient. We don’t have to eat carbohydrates, we do need glucose. In order to survive, our brains need a certain amount of glucose, our muscles need a certain amount of glucose, but our liver provides all the glucose that we need.
So technically, we don’t really need to eat carbohydrates are not considered an essential nutrient. I’m not saying don’t eat them, I’m just saying we don’t need them. Okay. But protein is the other part of this is like we have to eat it. We don’t produce that from within our bodies. So we will die if we don’t eat protein or fat, okay?
So we don’t want to die. So we need a protein. Alright. Alright, and a podcast, we’re done. Just eat some protein. Okay, so why is protein important for runners? Well, protein plays a role in improving your running. So if the protein is key to building muscle, and repairing muscle tissue, then if you’re not getting enough protein, you won’t be recovering as well.
After those hard workouts, you won’t be able to repair the muscle damage that you do during those super long runs, or those super tough workouts, okay, you’ll just be continually breaking down muscle and not preparing it not rebuilding it properly. So for runners, protein is key. I mean, it’s key for everyone, but runners probably need more protein than the average person.
And here’s something cool when you train in the fasted state. So I’ve talked about this a lot like when you don’t eat before you go for a long run, this can actually help you to utilize protein more effectively. So training in the fasted state helps to optimize hormones, including growth hormone, and testosterone, which we all need.
But producing these hormones actually promotes protein synthesis, and therefore will help to repair muscles and help to grow muscle. So training fasted actually has this amazing benefit, where it’ll help you to utilize protein better, okay, so as a runner, we absolutely need to get enough protein.
I’ll talk about how much protein we eat and stuff like that in a minute. But just know that we break down muscle more than the average person, the sedentary person. So what about weight loss? Like what’s protein’s role in weight loss? So protein plays many roles in weight loss, not just in building lean muscle, that’s part of it.
Protein helps you to lose weight by actually turning off hunger signals. So researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center discovered that adding more protein to the trial, the clinical trial, patients’ diets, when they added more protein, especially if they did this at the first meal of the day, literally decreased the signals in the brain that stimulate appetite and stimulate appetite, and lead to overeating.
So people were not eating as much, and they weren’t as hungry, because they were just all they did was increase the amount of protein they were eating. So that’s cool. That helps you to lose weight because you’re not going to be hungry all the time.
Another cool role that protein plays in weight loss is that you actually burn more calories just by digesting protein than you do by digesting carbs or fat. So this is called the thermic effect of food. And when you eat carbohydrates or fat, and protein, when you eat any food at all some of that food Some of the energy from that food goes to digesting that food, okay?
So when you’re eating fat, 0-3% of the calories from fat, go to digesting fat. So in other words you don’t need, you don’t use a lot of calories to digest fat because it can be easily absorbed by your body. Carbohydrates, 5-10% of the calories from the carbohydrates that you eat, go into breaking that down and digesting the carbohydrates.
So let’s even on the higher end of that, you know, let’s say 10%. So if you’re eating 100 calories of carbs, then you’re actually only going to absorb 90 calories of that, okay, so that’s cool. But protein, the thermic effect of protein, when you eat it, 20-30% of the total calories from the protein you eat goes into digesting it. This is amazing.
So at the higher end of that, you know, if you’re eating 100 calories of protein, only 70 calories actually get absorbed by your body. So you actually, you know, burn more calories when you’re just eating more protein, which is cool.
Another study they did at the Copenhagen University Hospital and was published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that over the course of a five-year study, no macronutrient reduces the amount of belly fat for study participants more than protein. And that these results were mostly from animal-based sources of protein.
So just looking at a macronutrient, when they increased protein, then these people just lost more belly fat. So this is cool. These are big findings, they’re very important findings, okay, so protein actually, will definitely help you if you’re trying to lose weight. Now, if you’re not getting enough protein, this can lead to all kinds of problems. Okay.
So let’s think about this. Runners who are striving to lose weight, sometimes, they can be working out a lot, and then like really reducing the number of calories they’re eating. So they’re trying to do some sort of calorie-restricted diet. And they can be very protein deficient because they’re just not getting enough calories.
In general, they’re running all the time. And because they’re not eating enough food, basically, they’re not getting enough protein. And this, this can be a problem. Okay, so a couple of reasons.
Number one, when you reduce your calories, too much over a too long period of time, you put your body into this, starvation mode, which will lower your metabolism. And we don’t ever want to do that, right, we don’t want to lower our metabolism, we always want to increase our metabolism, right.
But not only that, you risk cannibalizing muscle, which means your body will start breaking down muscle to be used as energy because you’re not getting enough energy. Right. So that’s, that’s a problem with the calorie-reduced diets. Like we don’t want to go that route for sure.
But insufficient protein intake can also lead to loss of muscle. So you’re going to lose that lean muscle that you want to need for running. But if you’re not getting enough protein, you know you really risk losing muscle. And with that loss of muscle, your increase of injury goes up.
Especially things like stress fractures, stress fractures can be prevented by training properly and not overdoing it. You know, run, build up your base your long miles build that slowly is one way to make sure you prevent stress fractures and shin splints and stuff like that. But the other thing is making sure you get enough protein because you need to support muscle growth and strong muscles will help build you know help to support your skeleton and connective tissues and all that and will help to prevent injuries.
You also risk without enough protein, you risk other micronutrient deficiencies, so you’re not going to be getting enough of the vitamins and minerals that your body actually needs. So what’s the solution? What do we do? Hey, why don’t you just get enough protein?
So this leads me to like how much protein should we be eating or getting in our diet? You know? So if you look at the US Dietary Guidelines or the RDI, the recommended daily intake, suggests .4 grams of protein for every pound of body weight. This is way too low. And this is not just me saying this to you if you do a little research on these doctors, and sports nutritionists.
Anybody in the health and fitness field will tell you that this is not a recommended amount. This is like the minimum that you would want. Okay? So .4 grams of protein for every pound of body weight. So for me, I weigh 170 pounds right now, that would only be 68 grams of protein a day.
For me, this is not going to work for me at all I’m telling you right now. And they’re not taking into account my active lifestyle, or my, my running goals, or the fact that I do a lot of weight training, or that I’m trying to maybe build some muscle and become more muscular. And so this also assumes that a 170-pound sedentary person, like maybe a sedentary woman should be eating the exact same protein amount as me, that just doesn’t make any sense.
Okay, so just know that these, you know, RDI’s, the recommended daily intakes are very low and kind of the minimum. Okay. So the US military did a study on protein, and they published it in the Journal of Nutrition. And they found that higher-protein diets are actually associated with lower BMI, lower levels of visceral fat, and an improved cholesterol profile compared to protein consumed at the RDI levels.
So, you know, even the US military is like, Hey, you guys need to be eating more protein than what the, you know, the US Dietary Guidelines are recommending or whatever, are is not enough. Okay. So there are a lot of different protein recommendations out there.
And what I found, because I wanted to give you guys something that was easy for you to just kind of figure out and a good place for you to start. But like, so the sports nutrition organization that I’m licensed through the National Association of Sports Nutrition, recommends 1-1.5 grams of protein for every pound of lean body mass. So for this, you have to know your body fat percentages.
And it’s very, it’s pretty accurate, I would say this is a good place to go. Other trusted sources say to shoot for .8-1.1 grams of protein for every pound of your ideal body weight. So if you are if you currently weigh 200 pounds, but you want to weigh 150, then aim for.8-1.1 grams of protein for every 150 pounds, okay?
Now, here’s, I’m just throwing these numbers out there, but I got a much simpler formula for you. Okay, a much simpler way of figuring this out. And all of these things come to roughly the same number. But this is just an easier formula, I want you to think of protein as a percentage of your calories.
So around 30% of your calories from protein is what is recommended. For most people, this is the optimal number to optimize fat burning. So if you’re an extreme endurance athlete, or you’re a weightlifter bodybuilder, you might want more, you might want to go to like 35%, but like 30%, I think is a really great place for most people, especially runners. To begin, like, start there, you can, you know, adjust that up or down.
But let’s go with 30%. Okay, so, to figure 30% of your calories, this is an easy formula for you to do, all you have to do is multiply the total number of calories you eat each day by .075. Okay, so here’s how this works. If you’re somebody who eats about 1500 calories a day, times .075, that equals 112 grams of protein.
All right, now we’re getting somewhere as this seems much more normal, like where you should probably be. If you have a 2000 calorie diet, times .075 equals 150 grams of protein. Now, for me, I eat a lot. I work out a lot. I’m trying to build some muscle here. I’ve actually put on five pounds of muscle over the last 10-12 weeks, so I’m feeling good about that.
But for me, I eat around 2800 calories. So times .075 equals 210 grams of protein a day. Oh my gosh, that’s way different than the 68 grams of protein that the recommended daily intake suggests for somebody like me, right?
And some people say, well, what can’t you eat? You know, isn’t it a problem, like isn’t too much protein a problem? Is this something we need to be concerned about? And the short answer is no. You really don’t need to be concerned about it. You would have to be eating way, way more protein than I just mentioned, for a very long period of time.
And listen, I just did it as an experiment where I was eating basically nothing but protein, I was eating a very high protein, all carnivorous diet basically for about 40 days. And I was probably in the 200 to 220 grams of protein a day, and I didn’t have any issues at all. Honestly, I couldn’t eat more than that.
It’s just too much food, like, it’s really hard, it’s hard to overdo it with a protein, okay. But yes, there is also a concern, that too, eating too much protein will force your body to turn some of that excess protein, the protein that you’re not utilizing, it’ll turn some of that excess protein into glucose.
So there is this process that there’s your body does, it’s called gluconeogenesis. And this is a metabolic process that creates glucose from noncarbohydrate sources, namely fat and protein. This happens in your liver. So glucose gets created from fats and proteins. Now, here’s something interesting. Glucose can get created from fats. So the triglycerides that are floating around in your bloodstream can actually be used to create glucose that your muscles need that your brain needs.
And the way it works is a triglyceride is literally three fatty acids. That’s the tri part of it. And three fatty acids on a glycerol backbone. That’s what a triglyceride is. The glycerol part of it, it sounds like glucose, glycogen, that kind of thing, right? It’s very similar. So your liver can actually take a triglyceride and turn it into glucose that your body can use as fuel, which is totally cool.
Your liver will only use protein to make glucose as a last resort. So it’s going to use fat from your system first. And that can be turned into energy. This is one of the pathways that becoming fat-adapted really takes advantage of right because you’re you can create energy from fat.
So and then here’s something I think is fascinating. Glucose created from a triglyceride cannot turn back into a triglyceride. In other words, when your liver takes the triglyceride and turns it into glucose, it can’t then be stored as fat again, it has to be either burned as fuel or excreted in you know, urine or stool or whatever. So this is kind of a cool thing.
So your body will actually produce all the glucose that you need. And that extra glucose since has been created from a triglyceride can’t go back to becoming a triglyceride, so it won’t be stored as fat. Again, I think this is totally cool.
So because of this process, you know, your liver can use protein and turn some of that protein into glucose, which will raise your blood sugar, but this is the last resort, this is not going to happen until after it’s kind of used up the triglycerides that it needs. Okay, so it’s not something you really need to worry about too much, you would have to be eating way, way, way excess protein for you know, long periods of time.
Okay, so let’s talk about some high-protein foods. So foods that I would definitely recommend to get enough protein in your diet, okay. So there are basically there’s like two types of proteins out there. There are complete proteins and incomplete proteins. And you can kind of bulk these into like two different camps.
One is like, most animal proteins are considered complete proteins. And then most plant-based proteins are considered incomplete proteins. Okay. So I’m just going to say you know that animal protein are favored as a more high-quality source of protein, okay. So most plant proteins are what are considered incomplete. They don’t contain all the essential amino acids required for protein synthesis.
Okay, complete proteins have all the essential amino acids that our bodies need. So animal-based proteins like meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, and cheese, are all considered complete proteins. There are a couple of sources of plant proteins that are considered complete proteins, although they’re not as high quality or as easily absorbable.
Quinoa and soy would be the two key no’s – very, very high in carbohydrate though that’s something to be careful of. But soy is actually a really good quality, complete plant-based protein. So if you can tolerate soy, some people are allergic to soy, but if you can tolerate it, this would be the go-to for somebody on a plant-based or vegetarian diet.
Well, vegetarians can do like whey protein, which is awesome. But here’s the thing. As human beings, we work on the all or nothing principle when it comes to protein synthesis. So, really only complete proteins can be utilized, right? Partial proteins or incomplete proteins can’t really be utilized properly.
So if you’re somebody on a plant-based diet, you’re probably gonna have to combine different protein sources, and maybe supplements to be sure you’re getting all of the amino acids that your body actually needs to function properly. So and I’ve said this before, you know, plant proteins are designed for building and growing plants.
Animal proteins are designed for building and growing animals, we are animals and we prefer, we just prefer as human beings, animal-based proteins, okay? Nothing wrong with being a vegetarian or vegan if you want to go that route, but just make sure you’re getting the right types of proteins, right. And you may have to combine a few different things to get there.
So here are some high protein foods that I recommend eggs, obviously, an amazing source of protein, especially the whites, but eggs are just like so perfect. That’s like a 65% fat, they’re 30% protein, and then just a tiny little like a 5% carbs or something. And eggs, eggs are just the perfect little package. Right?
Now one egg is like six grams of protein. So you know, you eat four eggs, you know, you’re up to 24-25 grams of protein. This is awesome. This is gonna get you, you know, a great deal of ways towards your protein goals for the day. So eggs, an awesome source of protein.
One of the best sources of protein is chicken breast, eight ounces of chicken breast is like 70 grams of protein. So for most of us, if you can eat a couple of chicken breasts a day, boom, you’re good, like you’re pretty well covered, right?
Beefsteak, you know, eight ounces of steak is like 68 grams of protein.
Canned tuna is an amazing source of protein, four ounces of canned tuna is like 27 grams of protein.
Salmon, I love salmon and highly recommended it, you know, there are so many good health benefits from eating salmon, four ounces of salmon, 25 grams of protein.
Here’s a good plant base, there are two good plant-based sources of protein I’m gonna talk about one of them is tofu, and the other is tempeh base. So tofu, obviously made from soy, and four ounces of tofu can have anywhere from 8 to 15 grams of protein. And this depends on how firm it is. So the more firm the tofu is, the less water content and the denser it is, and the higher the protein content. So I always opt for the super firm is the most firm, whatever they call it, the firmest type of tofu that you can get.
And then tempeh is another soy-based protein. It’s made from soybeans. It’s fermented though, and so it’s a fermented soybean block. And so it’s very dense like there’s not a lot of water content in there. But the fermentation actually helps to break down the phytic acid in the soybeans, making the starches and the temporary in the temporary actually easier for you to digest.
So this is one of the best plant-based sources of protein, and four ounces of tempeh is 23 grams of protein. I know it’s amazing, right? Cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and a cup of each of these have around 23 grams of protein. Lentils, a cup of lentils, when it comes to you know beans, legumes, I don’t know what that is. It’s a bean or legume, whatever.
Lentils are very high in protein, 18 grams of protein for a cup. But one thing with this one thing here is that 28 grams of carbs in a cup of lentils. So you’re kind of like, you know, that’s very high in carbohydrates. So I’m mostly talking about lower carbohydrate forms of protein here, but that one’s just pretty high in carbs.
Almonds, a quarter cup of almonds, seven grams protein, awesome. Here’s one, broccoli or Brussels sprouts, two cups of broccoli or Brussels sprouts gonna give you seven grams of protein. So there are all these amazing sources of protein out there.
Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list. These are just a few things that came to mind that are kind of high in protein. Definitely, you know, you can just Google this and you’ll find all kinds of other options but at starting adding some of these things into your diet and you know, one thing you can do if you’re somebody that’s leaning more towards a low carbohydrate approach, just like, lower the carbs and replace those carbs with protein.
Here’s the other thing to keep to consider. Protein is very filling, it’s very satisfying to eat, it’s filling, it fills you up, it keeps you full for longer, and you’re not going to be as hungry. You know, it also shuts down those hunger signals. So eat more protein, there are so many good benefits from this.
Okay, well, what about protein after we work out? So most people believe that you need to consume some protein right after a workout like you’ve got about 30 minutes, and you better get some protein in. Yeah, you know, get that shake, go on, or whatever. And so this is kind of a standard that’s been around for decades, you know.
But there’s some recent research that suggests that a larger window after your workout is fine. So according to the International Society of Sports Nutrition, consuming protein anytime, up to two hours after your workout is ideal for building muscle mass. So, you know, anytime up to about two hours is going to be ideal after that. It’s not terrible. But it’s just the ideal window is going to be up to two hours after a workout, right?
This works out perfectly for me, because I’m usually not that hungry right after a workout like I’m not eating, you know, right after I’m done with a heavy lifting session or a long run. I’m just not hungry right away. And I usually wait an hour or two, before I eat anything anyway. So it’s totally fine. So just know that you don’t have to slam down some protein, right? When you’re done running or lifting weights or whatever, you can wait up to two hours totally fine.
Okay, what about protein supplements, should we be supplementing with protein. So, you know, I talk a lot about eating real food. And I think this is probably the best way to go. For most people, getting your protein from whole foods is probably best. But I do believe there is a place for protein supplements.
So for example, some women find it difficult to get 100 or 120 grams of protein per day from eating food, because they would have to eat a lot of protein, a lot of chicken or a lot of eggs, or a lot of steaks and they just can’t do that just can’t eat that much protein, okay? Totally fine.
In this case, a protein supplement can be perfect, you know, take a protein supplement one or two scoops of protein usually there it’s like 20 to 25 grams of protein in a supplement. And you know, you could do that a couple of times a day. And that’s going to give you like half your protein requirement for the day, you know, and then you can eat real food to make up the rest, and then you’re good and you’re not stuffing yourself with food.
So a couple of the types of protein supplements that I recommend. The first one is whey protein, whey protein is dairy-based, but it contains all of the essential amino acids and it is quickly absorbed by your body. So this is like the gold standard when it comes to protein supplements is whey protein, this is like the best thing that you can take as a supplement, okay.
Second to that would be soy protein. So if you don’t do dairy, and you want like a plant-based then soy is going to give you it actually does contain all of the essential amino acids. And it’s been looked at been linked to some pretty impressive health benefits. So soy protein is actually pretty good when it comes to a plant-based protein supplement.
There are a couple of other plant-based protein supplements that do not contain all the essential amino acids, they’re pretty good but they just don’t contain all of the essential amino acids so that would be pea protein. It just doesn’t have all the amino acids that you need. And hemp protein.
Hemp protein is made from hemp seeds that have a lot of fiber, omega threes Omega six fats like these, these two like pea protein and protein, they’re fine, but they’re just not complete. They’re not going to give you everything that you need. Okay. Alright, so that is everything I have to say about protein at this time.
I hope you guys got something out of this. I hope you learned something I learned a lot just by putting this together and going back to a lot of the sources that I use and just kind of piecing it all together for this episode. I had a lot of fun doing this.
So if you got something out of this today, I would love it if you would share this with a friend that would mean a lot to me. Alright, until next time, love you all keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
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