Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
This is the final episode in the Running Lean Manifesto series. The Running Lean Manifesto is a set of guiding principles that, when you practice them each day, you can create the life you’ve …
Continue Reading about 49. Be an Example of What’s Possible →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner Ultra runner, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners, I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger. So you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 49 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. How are you today? I am doing amazing. I went for a run this morning. And it’s cold here in Cincinnati this time of the year. And I just feel alive.
It made me feel very grateful for my health and the fact that I get to go out and run whenever I feel like it. And it was cold. And I just felt very much alive. It was an awesome experience this morning. So today I want to talk about how to be an example of what’s possible and what that means for you and for the world.
This is the final episode in the series I’ve been doing on the Running Lean manifesto. So the Running Lean manifesto is a set of guiding principles that when you practice them each day, you get to create the life that you’ve always wanted for yourself, you can accomplish anything you want, you can be who you want to be.
And when you do that, when you become that person you ultimately want to be, you inspire others, you inspire others to want that for themselves. So in this episode, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts about what it means to live your life in such a way that you become an example of what’s possible for others.
And if you like this podcast, then please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a fun group of runners that all share the same kinds of goals like we’re all there to help each other, whether it’s to lose weight, or run faster or run farther or to get stronger.
Whatever your goals are, we’re there to help encourage you support you and help you get it done. Okay, the stuff I teach over there in the Facebook group is is similar to what I teach here in the podcast, they kind of go hand in hand with each other. And we do some fun things like right now we have this cool running through the holidays challenge going on over there in the Facebook community.
And we’re encouraging each other to run a mile every day between Thanksgiving Day, and New Year’s Day. It’s a great way to relieve stress during this kind of a stressful time of the year for a lot of people. And it’s a lot of fun. So we’re having fun over there. Come check us out on Facebook, just search for the Running Lean community.
Okay, I want to get into this because this is like I’ve been really wanting to share this stuff with you guys. I really love this topic I’m gonna be talking about today. And that is to be an example of what’s possible.
So like I said, we’ve been working our way through the Running Lean manifesto. So I created this manifesto, or this set of guiding principles to kind of frame everything that I teach here on the podcast, everything I teach with my clients. Because when you practice these principles in your life, you can create an amazing life for yourself. It’s really that simple.
Okay, so we’ve been going through the list of all of the principles of the manifesto, and I’m going to kind of recap them here. But just think of it this way, think of this as a guideline for living an amazing life. Okay, so you want to have an amazing life. Here’s how you do it. Okay, so here’s the manifesto. And here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve covered so far.
The first principle is to eat real food. This means that we are eating whole food, food that is as close to nature as possible. So unrefined, unprocessed food, foods our ancestors would have eaten, not some stuff full of you know, garbage and sugar that is brand new, you know, snack food industry type of stuff.
This is like tried and true food we’ve been eating for millennia. We want to optimize our health from the inside out. So it starts with eating real food.
Number two is to live vibrantly. That’s living every moment of every moment of your life, with meaning with purpose, doing everything with positive energy with enthusiasm for living, as if every moment of your life matters, because guess what they all do, they all do.
Number three is to thrive in your body. And this is, like where, where you’re always wanting to improve our physical body, we don’t want to be jamming our body full of garbage so that we become diseased and sick. You know, we want to improve our physical body, always working to become healthier, to become stronger and to be more fit.
Number four is to embrace discomfort, I talk a lot about this, we don’t want to run away from hard things, we want to move toward them, we want to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Because when we do that, that is when we grow. That’s the only way to grow. You know, everything that you want, that you don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. So I encourage you to seek out discomfort and face it, head on.
Number five is to run because you love it, stop running just to lose weight, you know, I got to burn these calories, I better run more. First of all, it’s not very effective. Second of all, you end up doing it because you feel like you have to. And then running becomes a chore. And it’s something you have to do and you get resentful.
And you grow to like just hate running. This happens to so many people. I want to encourage you instead to fall in love with running, and fall in love with all of the amazing benefits that running does provide for you. The adrenaline, the dopamine that you get, you know, people that run regularly are just happier than other people than normal people.
I always say that runners are a little abnormal, and it’s fine. I love it. I like being abnormal, because the norm is to be overweight, and miserable. And unhappy. Like I don’t want that. I want to be abnormal. How about you?
Number six, love yourself unconditionally. This is like stop beating yourself up. If you make a mistake, or if you fail or when things don’t go your way. Practice positive self talk, have your own back. Love yourself unconditionally means without condition, meaning loving yourself, no matter what, no matter what you’ve done in your past, or what you haven’t done. You know, no matter which way the number on the scale is moving. We love ourselves through all of it always.
Number seven is to think, feel and act with purpose. This is oh my gosh, this is a life changing principle right here. This is like taking responsibility for your own thoughts. Taking responsibility for your own feelings and taking responsibility for your actions. And that’s it.
Because you can’t control anything other than your own thoughts, feelings and actions can’t control others. We try to, doesn’t work. And we blame other people for how things are going in our life. We blame other people for how we feel, doesn’t work that way. Take back your power, start creating the life that you want, on purpose. And it all starts with your thoughts and your feelings and the things that you do.
And then the eighth principle, and more we’re gonna talk about today, is be an example of what’s possible. Because here’s the thing, when you live your life, by all of those other principles that I just went through, you will become an example of what’s possible. Being an example of what’s possible means that you’re living your life in such a way that you inspire others to want that for themselves.
So people will look at you and say, hey, if she can do it, so can I. Be an example of what’s possible means being an example to others, obviously, but it also means being an example to yourself, like blowing your own mind at what you are capable of accomplishing. It’s about building confidence in yourself and building trust in yourself.
Strengthening your relationship with yourself. It’s about having this inner knowing and this confidence that you can do anything that you want that truly anything is possible. Being an example of what’s possible is about finding the edges of your comfort zone and then going beyond them. Right it’s about always becoming more whatever that looks like for you.
So maybe for you, it’s, you know, you have a lot of weight to lose. Or maybe you want to run an ultra marathon. Or maybe you want to climb a mountain, or write a book, or start a business, whatever your big, audacious goal is that you have for yourself. This is what we’re talking about, it’s about being an example of what’s possible by accomplishing what you feel might be impossible.
I want to give you a couple examples of what this looks like. The first one is my son, Colin. So Colin, to me, is an inspiration. And he is a perfect example of what’s possible. So Colin has always been a bigger kid. And, you know, earlier this year, he finally came to me and asked for help losing weight. He always struggled with his weight, it was really hard for him during high school and things like that.
And after high school, even, he’s just 21. So he’s still young. And to be, you know, overweight, at that age is tough, okay. And I always wanted to help him, but I never pushed it with him. You know, I knew that. When he was ready, he would come to me. And he did. So I started coaching him and the first thing he did, is that he made this commitment to himself that he was going to go all in, he had this commitment level, like I’ve never seen anybody else. It was awesome.
He had his vision for who he wanted to be. And he would always tell me, like future Colin wants to look like this. And future Colin is going to have these clothes. So he had this vision of himself, and he was all in on who he was going to be no matter what. Like, this kid was like, determined to make this thing work.
And he had a lot of weight to lose, he had 100 pounds he wanted to lose. But he went into it into this whole thing. And, you know, obviously, you know, I was helping him. I was coaching him through all of this, you know, I taught him all these principles that I just went over with you.
And he started adopting them. And he started practicing them. And he did, he lost over 100 pounds this year. And he did it in a way that, frankly, just is so inspirational to me. He adopted this mindset of I’m going to lose 100 pounds, no matter what, no matter how long it takes, I’m going to make this work, it is going to happen. This is like, damn, this is a solid commitment level. Okay.
And because his commitment was so solid, when I asked him about this recently, he was like, yeah, losing the weight was just it was effortless. It’s because he just was like all in. And when you have that sort of a mental attitude, and you’re so committed to becoming this other person, you know, what you do becomes easy.
Today, he’s down like 110 pounds total, he feels so good about himself. And he did it. That’s not a magical formula. He just did it by practicing these principles. That’s it. So Colin, to me, is an amazing example of what’s possible. He decided. He made a decision that he was going to be this future. Colin, he is that person today. He did it by practicing these principles. That’s it. Okay.
Now, today, he inspires a lot of people, people are always coming up to him and asking him because it’s dramatic when you lose 100 pounds. Like that’s dramatic, right? And people see him. It’s kind of funny, he works or used to work in the customer service department of this organization.
And somebody came in from the warehouse and was like, who’s the new guy in customer service? And they’re like, that’s Colin. He’s been working here for like three years. And it’s like, oh, my god that’s Colin?! How? Like, they couldn’t believe it. They thought it was a new breed that looked like a different person.
But he is an amazing example of what’s possible and he inspires people. People look at him and they’re just like, wow, they’re blown away. But he’s an example of what is possible. If he can do it, other people can do it.
I had a similar experience this year. I didn’t lose 100, I lost 40 pounds, which has been, you know, amazing for me, okay? It wasn’t easy. Losing 40 pounds requires a daily commitment. And I knew that I had to have that same all in attitude every day if I was gonna make this work for me.
And, you know, I’ve talked about my weight loss a lot in here on the podcast here, and today I’m at my ideal weight, okay, I’ve lost the 40 pounds, I’m in my ideal weight and staying there is easy, it doesn’t require any effort at all.
I didn’t do this by going on some whack diet. I didn’t do it by staying in my comfort zone. I didn’t do it by beating myself up every time the scale like went up, because it does go up sometimes. You know, I didn’t do it by hating on myself all the time, I did it by just following the principles that I’ve laid out here, at least to the best of my ability.
And there’s other parts of my life where I’ve practiced these exact same principles to accomplish big things. You know, I use these to train for and have a successful marathon. Recently, I’ve been following these same principles to train for and run my 50k, which is coming up next weekend.
So I’m eating real food, I’ve been embracing the discomfort I’ve been loving myself unconditionally. I’ve practiced running because I love it. And every day I work on thinking feeling and acting with purpose like, so I just take all these principles and apply them to everything that I do.
My plan for next weekend is to run this ultra marathon which is 50k, 31 miles, fasted. So nothing to eat before, no fuel during, no calories, just using my own body fat, which gives me all the fuel that I need for an event like this.
So this is not something you just wake up and do it. You don’t just like go, hey, I think I’m gonna run 50k tomorrow, without eating any calories or anything like that. No, that’s not going to work. I promise you. It takes time to train and it takes time to turn yourself into an efficient fat burner.
But that’s exactly what I’ve set out to do this year. I have this goal to run a 50k fasted, I’m going to do it next weekend. And if somebody asked me like, well, how do you do that? How do you prepare for something like that? Like, what do you eat? What do you not eat? It’s not about what I’m eating or what I’m not eating. I mean, it’s a little bit about that. It’s, but there’s all these other things that I have to do. Like, there’s eight principles I’m following here.
Right, but I’m doing this because it’s hard. I’m doing this because it’s a big challenge. And I’m doing it so that I can be an example for you. So that I can be an example of what’s possible for you. Because if I can do this, there’s things that you’re probably thinking, oh, well, I can do this half marathon or a marathon or whatever it is.
And listen, I’m not special. I don’t do this perfectly. I have setbacks, I face challenges every day, I experience failure, I struggle just like everyone else. But you know what I do? I just keep going, I just keep doing the deal, no matter what. I am 54 years old now.
And earlier this year, I made a decision that I was going to get myself into the best shape of my life at 54 years old. And guess what? I am today. I can look myself in the mirror and say, damn, I’m in really good shape. I feel amazing about myself.
And you know, I’m like buying new clothes, they look great on me. I don’t have to wear baggy clothes. And I have all this confidence about how I look. And this is something I’ve always struggled with. I’ve always been sort of like, uncomfortable about how I looked. But I wanted to be an example to myself of what I could do that anything is possible.
That if I wanted to get in the best shape of my life at 54 years old that I could do that, then I could be whoever I want it to be, it doesn’t matter how old I am. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done in the past or what I’ve been able to do or not been able to do. Doesn’t matter how I’ve thought about myself in the past, that this is what I wanted for myself.
Now, I want it to be an example for you. And for myself. Like I said, I’m nothing special. I’m just like you. If I can do it, you can too and that’s the way I try to live my life every day. This is my mission, my mission in life is to be an example of what’s possible. And I try to do big things. To do big, challenging things, so that I can fulfill that mission so that I can be an example of what’s possible to you.
I want you to say, man, if Patrick can do it, so can I, because he’s just a normal person like me. And you know, I’m very public about this stuff, I talk about this, I have this podcast, right, I’m in my Facebook group. And I teach this and I have clients, and this is my profession. This is my, this is my calling, right?
Being an example of what’s possible is my mission and my calling, I just feel called to do this. And I share all this very publicly. But you don’t have to be public. You don’t have to be like a leader, to be an example to others.
People see you, they see how you live your life. They see your integrity, they see your dedication, they see the commitment that you make, to getting these results that you’ve that you want to accomplishing big things, they see your commitment to yourself, they see you becoming more being an example of what’s possible doesn’t mean you have to be some leader or public figure.
When you live your life by these principles, when you become more, people notice. I promise you that you will notice. I love my life today. More than any other time in my life. Honestly, I love where I am right now in this moment. And I used to dream about the past a lot. The good old days, oh, if I could just go back to the 80s when I was in high school, and everything was so cool.
I didn’t have as many responsibilities and my life was so much easier. And we had all this fun, whatever. And of course, the music and the hair and everything, right. And I used to just really pine for the old days, and I just don’t do that anymore. I don’t have to dream about the past. Because my present is so freakin good.
Listen, I do work that I love. This work that I do is sharing these ideas with you. This fulfills me, helping people get results, changing people’s lives every single day, this, I love this work, it fills me up. It brings me so much joy. You know, I get to make my own schedule, I get to run every day, if I feel like it. I have all these amazing, deep and meaningful relationships with people who I truly love and who I truly care about.
You know, I’m creating the exact life that I’ve always wanted for myself, and I’m creating it on purpose. It’s not just happening to me, I’m creating this life, I’m making it happen. And every day, I kind of blow my own mind with how amazing my life is, like some days, it’s just, I feel so good.
It almost feels like my heart is gonna burst out of my chest. I feel so good about just my life. And this is not bragging, this is not about ego. This isn’t about me boasting about how awesome I am. No, it’s about me being in integrity with myself.
You know, I have this vision for who I want to be. And then every day I just try to act in alignment with that vision. That’s all. I do it by practicing these eight principles. That’s it. I practice these principles in all my affairs. In everything that I do, I’m thinking about these things.
Now, these eight principles, they’re not just something you learn. You might be listening to the podcast, you’re like, cool, I learned those eight things, awesome. And then you just go on with your day. It’s not like that. There’s not something like you hear once or you read once or you learn.
You have to live them. You have to live them every single day. And, and you practice them. Right when I say practice, it’s like any other kind of practice, like practicing yoga. Practicing yoga is a challenge.
I’ve done a lot of yoga, and I’m not very good at it. I mean, I’ve gotten better, but I don’t do it perfectly. And I don’t practice these principles perfectly either. Like far from it. I have my own, you know, anxiety, fears, challenges, and I work through these things every day. The difference is that I keep showing up.
I don’t let those challenges, fears, anxieties stop me from becoming who I want to be. I want to leave you with this thought, imagine, if we were all examples of what’s possible. Imagine if you follow these principles, and you created an amazing life for yourself. And you inspired one other person to do the same.
And then imagine if that person inspired someone else. Imagine if you’re an example for someone, they became an example for someone else, and on and on and on what an amazing world this would be right?
This is my hope that you become the person you’ve always wanted to be. And then you inspire someone else to do the same. Imagine the transformation you could have in your family and your community and in the world. You totally got this, my friends, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
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The only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, how they feel, or what they …
Continue Reading about 48. Think, Feel, and Act With Purpose →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 48 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. How are you doing today? I am doing fantastic. Today I want to talk about how to think, feel and act with purpose. So we’re still talking about our Running Lean manifesto, the principles that we choose to live our life by here in the Running Lean community.
And here’s something interesting, the only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, you cannot control how they feel, and you cannot control what they do. No matter how hard you try.
The problem is that most people don’t understand how all this works. Most people just feel terrible all the time. And they blame it on other people. They blame it on the outside circumstances, they blame it on everything and everyone except for it themselves.
But here’s the thing, if you want anything different in your life, anything different than what you already have, you have to look at what is actually creating those results in your life. If you’re getting good results or bad results in your life, whatever it is you’re getting, it’s always been created by your own thoughts, feelings and actions.
For example, losing weight and keeping it off. It requires that you learn how to think, feel, and act with purpose. So don’t worry, I’m gonna explain how all of this works today here on the podcast, so that you can start applying this to your own life so you can start getting the results that you really want.
But first, come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing community of runners called the Running Lean community. It is a supportive group, energetic group and encouraging group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast, we got this big challenge that we just started on Thanksgiving Day.
And it’s called running through the holidays, it’s not too late for you to get in on the action. Just come and join us. What we’re doing is we’re running at least a mile a day, every day from Thanksgiving Day, through New Year’s Day. Running is an amazing stress reliever. And who doesn’t want a stress reliever this time of the year? We could all use a little reduction in stress.
So come check us out the Running Lean community on Facebook, join us for the running through the holidays challenge is going to be fun, we are all doing it together. We’re challenging ourselves to show up every day and run at least a mile from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. It’ll be fun, come check it out.
Okay, like I said, we are working our way through the Running Lean manifesto. And today I want to talk about, think, feel and act with purpose. So remember the Running Lean manifesto, this is a set of guiding principles that we can live our life by. And if you adopt these principles into your life, if you use these principles as your north star, then you can have an amazing life.
That’s it. It’s that simple. Just do what I say. You can have an amazing life. It really is that simple. It’s not easy. It’s simple. But so today we’re talking about how to think, feel and act with purpose because most of us don’t understand that we can do this and that this is an option for us.
I think this is absolutely life changing. This one principle alone has changed my life more than anything else I have done in my life like this has changed so much for me. And I’m gonna get into why and how this works and everything in just a minute.
But I just want you to know that of all the principles I’ve been talking about here. If you just adopt this one principle, I guarantee you that you will start getting different, more positive results in your life, like your life will continue to get infinitely better if you adopt this one principle and if you practice it and if you get good at it, okay. And the principle is to think, feel and act with purpose. If you get good at doing that, you’re unstoppable, you become super powerful.
So here’s how this works. Here, I’m gonna break this down a little bit for you here. Most people live their life, as if life is just happening to them. Like they have no control, like they are living at the effect of other people and other circumstances. They have no control over their thoughts. It feels their thoughts feel automatic, they have no control over their emotions, their feelings feel automatic.
And a lot of times they feel like they don’t even have control over what they do. So a lot of people will say, I don’t even know I just started eating all the Oreos, it’s like, no, you know, you chose to do that, like you actually have control over that. But they feel like they have no self control.
So for most people, their thoughts, feelings and actions feel out of control, like they are not in control of those things. Most people feel like they can’t get what they want. And so they blame everything but themselves. They blame other people, or circumstances, they have reasons, they have stories, they have excuses for why things just don’t go their way, or why they can’t stick to their diet plan or why they can’t stick to their running schedule.
Most people just think if they could control all these things outside of themselves, if people would just do what I think they should do, if work wasn’t so stressful all the time. You know, if everything around me would just like fall into place, then I could feel good about myself, then I could get the results that I want.
And most people live their whole lives this way, trying to manipulate control, change everything but themselves. And it’s frustrating, because it doesn’t work. The only thing this does is it causes you to feel terrible, all the time. If you try to spend your whole life trying to controlling the uncontrollable, the things that you absolutely cannot control.
If you spend your whole life trying to manipulate and control those things, you are just going to spend your whole life feeling miserable. Right, the only things you can control are your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That’s it, you cannot control anything else, period. End of story.
When you accept this, when you accept this universal truth it is incredibly freeing because it changes everything. It changes how you see things, it changes how you think about things, it changes how you feel about things, changes what you do, and it absolutely will change the results that you get in your life.
It changes how you experience other people, and how you experience everything that happens in the world around you. When you learn how to take control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions, anything becomes possible for you, there’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing that you aren’t willing to experience.
So I’ve talked about this before, but I want to break this down a little bit for you. So that we have a good understanding of the foundation of how this all works. So we have these things that happen in our life. We call these things circumstances, circumstances, things that happen in our life are always, always neutral.
Nothing can happen in your life, and have any kind of meaning to you until you assign meaning to it. Nothing happens in the world that affects you unless you first have a thought about it. Circumstances: the things that are happening outside of you, you know, stuff your boss says at work, stuff your spouse says to you, what the kids are doing.
None of that stuff means anything until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. Your circumstances are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until you tell yourself a story about what this thing that’s happening, what that means to you, okay? This is very important to understand.
Your circumstances are always 100% of the time neutral until you have a thought about it. Okay, now, once you have a thought about something, then that thing has meaning for you. You know, if your spouse speaks to you, and says some words to you that cause you to feel, you know, upset or whatever. And then you’re assigning meaning to what those words mean to you, okay?
But you know, the circumstances that this person is just saying words, okay? But once you have a thought, then this thing has meaning to you. Your thoughts are just sentences that you’re saying in your mind about something.
That’s it, we have like 60,000 thoughts a day. So basically, you’re saying like 60,000 sentences to yourself, in your mind over and over again. So your thoughts about your circumstances, you’re gonna have all kinds of thoughts about what’s going on in your life. We do we think about the past, we think about the future, we think about what’s happening right now.
We are cars, our minds are constantly racing, we constantly have all these thoughts. And they are always your thoughts. Your thoughts are based on your own experiences, your own beliefs, your past experiences, your values, your model of the world, we all see the world differently based on our beliefs, past experiences, our own values, all that stuff.
We all create our own version of reality, if you will. So your thoughts about a circumstance might be different than somebody else’s. Which is the truth? Is it yours or theirs? I love this example of two people standing at the ocean, you know, the waves are crashing, and they’re both standing on the beach, and they’re looking over the ocean.
And one person looks at the ocean, and it fills them with fear. Because this person had a near drowning accident, when they were a child, they almost drowned in the ocean. And so the ocean is a dangerous place to them, the ocean brings a feeling of dread and fear.
The person standing next to this person surfs every day and loves the ocean, it’s there. It’s the most magical place for them, it’s where they feel the most alive. So there’s these two examples of two different people experiencing the exact same thing: the ocean is neutral.
But for one, it has a completely different meaning. The ocean is a dangerous, terrible place and should be avoided at all costs. And for the other person experiencing the exact same ocean. It is beautiful, magical, and fills them with delight, and should be utilized every single day and shouldn’t be experienced every single day.
So this is how we each have our own model of the world, we each have our own version of reality. So your thoughts about a circumstance will be different than others. So which is true, yours or theirs? Well, both, both are true for them. And neither one is true. There isn’t one universal truth.
So if you believe it, then it’s true for you. So if you really believe something, if you really believe the ocean is dangerous, then that is going to be your truth. That is what’s true for you. If this other person believes with their whole heart that the ocean is amazing and enjoys it, then that’s what they’re going to believe. And that’s what’s true for them. Okay.
So this is just our thoughts. We have circumstances that happen in our life, and they don’t mean anything really until we assign meaning to them. Okay? Now, once we have thoughts about our circumstances, we will typically get an emotion based on those thoughts.
So your thoughts cause your feelings, your thoughts cause you to experience an emotion, always, you cannot experience an emotion without a thought first, every emotion you feel is first created by a thought in your mind. So you think a thought and then you feel something, you think a thought in your mind, and then you feel it in your body.
That’s where we experience our emotions, we feel them in our body. So you don’t feel something without a thought about it. You might experience something you have a quick thought about and then you have this emotion, it happens very quickly. You think it’s like automatic, you think it’s the circumstance outside of you that’s causing this emotional response. But it’s really a thought in your head.
It’s always a thought in your head that’s causing your emotional response. It’s never what that person is saying or doing or anything else like that. It’s always a thought about it. This is really critical to understand because you want to catch yourself when you have an emotion.
When you start to feel like a negative emotion. Like let’s say you’re feeling stress. quickly ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What is the thought that I’m having that’s causing me to feel this way? And just start to create some awareness around that. I’ll talk more about that in just a minute about what we can do to start to change some of these thoughts and feelings that we have, okay?
So circumstances in our life are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until we assign meaning to them. And we do that by a thought we have a thought about something. And those thoughts cause us to feel an emotion. Now our feelings, our emotions drive our actions, we always take actions based on our emotional state.
You know, if we feel motivated, we’ll probably do this thing. If we feel frustrated, we’re probably gonna do something different. We’re gonna do this thing over here. You know, if you find yourself staying in the kitchen, binge eating Oreos, and you can’t figure out how it happened.
Know that it’s because you had some thoughts and feelings. And those thoughts and feelings are causing you to take the action of binging on Oreos, okay? It wasn’t what happened at work. It wasn’t what your spouse said to you that caused you to eat Oreos, it’s because you had thoughts and feelings about what your spouse said, or you had thoughts and things about what happened at work.
Okay, the action that you take standing there eating Oreos, might feel totally out of your control. Like it’s just happening, unconsciously. But the truth is, it’s always under your control, you just haven’t learned how to take back the control, you just haven’t learned to recognize what’s actually happening.
And this is so crucial to all this thought work is to have awareness of what’s happening, okay? Because it’s not your circumstances causing you to feel this way. It’s not, it’s not the stress at work. It’s not what’s happening at work that’s causing you to binge eat. It’s your thoughts and feelings about work.
So when you take action, you get results, every time you get some kind of result in your life, it’s because of some actions that you’re taking, okay. And if you’re taking actions based on positive emotions, you know, you’re taking actions that are probably in alignment with your goals, like sticking to your food plan, you’re sticking to your running schedule. So no matter what happens, like you’re probably going to crush those goals, because you’re, you’re sticking to those things no matter what.
But if you constantly take action from a place of negative emotion, you know, if you’re always feeling frustrated and stressed out, you’re probably going to take different actions or no action, you know, you might just go sit on the couch watching Netflix instead of run, you might just say screw it and eat all the Oreos, instead of sticking to your food plan.
Those actions you’re taking, the things you’re doing, the behaviors you’re engaging in, you’re doing because of how you feel you’re doing it based on your emotional state, which is caused by your thoughts, right?
So a lot of times, we blame our results on our circumstances. I can’t lose weight, because I have this stressful job. You know, I can’t stick to my plan, because my spouse doesn’t support me. Those things are not true. You know, your spouse might say some things or do some things, but you have control over your thoughts about those things you have control over how you feel about those things.
And then what you do, the actions that you take or don’t take, okay? Circumstances are always neutral. Until we have a thought about it, our thoughts cause our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions. And it’s from taking actions that we get results or don’t get results. Okay, so that’s how this all works.
So any kind of result that you want in your life is basically created with a thought first, you have to have a thought about it. First, whether it’s a positive result or a negative result, it’s coming from your thoughts. So here’s an example of how this all works.
I want to I know, I’m kind of like talking about these concepts. And this may be foreign to you, you may have never heard of any of this stuff before. And I want to give you an example of what this looks like. So here’s a statement that I hear all the time, like literally every day I hear this from someone.
Work is stressful. And so I can’t stick to my food plan. Work is stressful. Well, in reality work does not cause you to feel stress. Okay, it’s your thoughts about work to cause you to feel stress. Stress is an emotion, right? That’s a feeling. It’s always caused by a thought.
So what is the circumstance? What happened at work, to cause you to feel stress or you know, to cause you to choose to feel stress? Oh, well, my boss only gave me two weeks to finish this big project. Okay, so that’s the circumstance, right? The boss gave me two weeks to finish a big project.
And, okay, well, what are your thoughts about that? Well, my thoughts are that she doesn’t support me, she doesn’t care about me, she should do things differently. These are all just thoughts. Right? About the circumstance “project is due in two weeks”.
We can all agree that that is true, but doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just those thoughts that cause you to feel stress, she doesn’t care about me, she doesn’t support me, she should do things differently. Right? That’s what’s causing you to feel stressed because you have thoughts about it.
And so what do you do when you feel stressed? You get home, and you eat a bunch of Oreos, because you just don’t feel like doing this work. Because you’re all stressed out, right? Now, here’s another way of looking at this, you might have somebody else on your team that says, oh, we only have to work two weeks to get this work done. Great. I work best on a short timeline, let’s do this.
So they might feel excited. Those thoughts like “I work best on a short timeline”, that would make them feel excited and motivated, to get the work to get cracking on this project. So that would fire them up, they would start taking action right away, they start checking off things off their task list, you know, they get motivated, and they just jump right in and start doing these things.
Same exact circumstance, you have two weeks to get this project done. Two different people with different thoughts, different feelings, different actions, different results. Okay. And I hear this so, so often, you know, work is really stressful. So I can’t stick to my food plan, you know, I have all this stress at work.
So when I get home, I just don’t feel like eating anything healthy. So instead, I just open up the pantry and start eating all the Oreos. So in your mind, stress at work is causing this thing you’re eating Oreos, like that’s what’s causing it. But in reality, you are causing the stress you’re feeling based on your own thoughts about work.
And because you’re feeling stressed out, you’re choosing an action, not in alignment with your goals, you’re choosing this action of binge eating Oreos. Based on that negative emotion, that negative emotion that you created with your thoughts.
You always take action based on how you feel. And if you always feel stressed out, you’re probably gonna do a lot of binge eating, you probably never lose weight. Those are the results you’re gonna get. If you’re always stressed out, it’s probably going to be very hard for you to lose weight, right, because you can be doing a lot of emotional eating.
But when you learn to take control of your thoughts and feelings and actions, when you can feel excited, and you can feel motivated, you’ll start to do things differently. You’ll want to stick to your plan, you’ll come home and eat a salad and a piece of salmon instead of the Oreos. And you’ll start to get the results that you want.
You know, you’ll keep losing weight. This whole concept, though, of thinking, feeling and acting with purpose, it’s not the norm. I get it like this is not something we’re taught. Can you imagine, though, if we taught this to our children, like how amazing would that be?
If I had learned this, I only learned this in the last couple of years. But if I had learned this 20, 30, 40 years ago, how much different my life would be. Because since I’ve learned this, my life has changed dramatically for the better.
But we go through our whole lives thinking that we can’t control our thoughts and feelings like all this stuff is just happening to us, right? You blame the results that you get on your external circumstances, whatever good results, bad results.
And we’re always living at the effect of our surroundings. We blame others, we have all kinds of excuses why things don’t work for us. We have these stories. And when you do this, you’re just giving away all your power. You become powerless. I want you to take back your power.
And you do this by taking control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions. Stop trying to manipulate and control other people and circumstances outside of your control. That does not work. I have tried this. Believe me it does not work.
I was always blaming other people for how I felt. I was always trying to control what other people were doing or saying or thinking so that like I could feel better about myself. You know, if my wife would say, if my wife would only say these things in this way, then I’d feel better. I’d like her more, I’d feel more confident or more secure in this relationship, you know, she’d only do things this way, then I’d feel more loving to her.
But since she’s not, then you know, I’m gonna hold back, my love. I was always trying to control her, manipulate her and change what she was doing. And you know what that got me? I felt miserable all the time, didn’t change, and she never changed, she’s not going to change, you can’t change other people.
I wish we could, that would be amazing, but we can’t. But when I finally accepted this, this universal truth, that I could not change anything else, that I could control my own thoughts, feelings and action, though, when I accepted this, I was free, I started to see everything in my life differently.
It was like seeing the matrix. Like for the first time in my life, I could, I could think, thoughts that would cause me to feel positive emotions. And I would take these positive actions based on that, and I would start getting these positive results, it was crazy.
You know, like, sticking to my eating plan got way easier. You know, I couldn’t lose weight. Until I got the mindset piece right. I finally started to lose weight when I understood that my emotional eating wasn’t caused by what other people were doing. Or my stress outside of me, that I was creating all of this with my own thoughts and feelings.
But I’ve started to feel more at peace, I still do, I still feel so much more at peace now, because I understand what’s happening in my mind. And I practice this every day, I’m not perfect at it. It’s a daily practice, I’m always aware that my thoughts create my feelings. And my feelings drive my actions.
I’m always, always always aware of that. Because here’s the thing, your thoughts create the reality that you’re living in everything that you have right now in your life, or everything that you don’t have, as a result of a thought it was first a thought, like, if you think I want to run a marathon, yeah, I can do that.
I want to do that. I’m going to run a marathon, that’s going to make you feel motivated, you’re going to train consistently, and then like, bam, you’re gonna cross the finish line. Result achieved, and you did it because you kept thinking, I can do it, I want to do that. I’m going to do that.
You know, your current weight. Whatever you weigh right now, is the direct result of your thinking. Well, if you keep thinking thoughts, like ‘I can’t lose weight, it never works for me, I’m always going to be this weight, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. It’s easier for other people, I always gain the weight back.’
If you keep thinking these thoughts over and over and over again, this is going to cause you to create an emotional state for yourself. You’re just going to feel terrible, frustrated, sad, dejected, you’re going to feel like a failure. You’re going to feel like you’re not good enough. And when you feel that way, what do you do?
You got it, you come home, and you eat a whole bag of Oreos, because that’s what feels good. And that’s, you know, why bother? And then when you do that, when you eat the Oreos, instead of eating what you know you should be eating, What results do you get, you get the exact results, you kept focusing on those thoughts.
You kept thinking over and over again, that’s what you get, it is hard. It doesn’t work for you. You can’t lose the weight, you always gain the weight back. You can’t do it, it doesn’t work. So what I want you to do, is I want you to just start being aware of your thoughts.
Anytime you experience an emotion anytime you experience a negative emotion, so you start to feel stressed out or bored or frustrated, lonely, sad, ashamed, you know, angry. Whatever emotion you’re experiencing, that should be an alarm that goes off and and you want to look at your thoughts.
What is the thought that’s causing me to feel this emotion? Okay, that’s step one. Be aware of your thoughts, what thoughts are you habitually thinking? And then notice that those thoughts are causing these emotions in you, okay? When you feel that way, when you feel that emotion, what do you want to do? What do you do or what do you not do? What actions are you taking or not taking?
Because instead of reacting to the world around you, I want you to respond thoughtfully with intention with purpose. Awareness is the key though. You have to begin to think, with purpose, with intention that will help you to feel with purpose and intention. And then you will act with purpose and intention.
And when you’re acting with purpose and intention, that’s when you start to get the results that you want in your life, you can become super powerful. You can get anything you want, honestly. So whether you know it or not, you are always creating the results that you’re getting in your life. Right now.
You’re always creating results with your thoughts, feelings and actions. They may not be the results that you want, but you’re creating them. Negative thoughts, feelings and actions will produce negative results. Positive thoughts, feelings and actions will produce positive results.
So decide what you want. And then create it on purpose. Begin to choose your thoughts with intention, begin to create your feelings, and begin to take action with purpose, think, feel and act with purpose. It’s a daily practice, but you can do it.
You got this, my friends. All right, join us in the Facebook group for the running through the holidays challenge we’re going to be running every single day, at least a mile. From Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. We’re gonna run our way through the holidays and we’re going to feel good, we’re going to slide into 2021 Feeling damn good about ourselves. As always, lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
I think we’d all agree that running is hard. But for a lot of us, running can also be a very stressful, anxiety-inducing activity. I fell in love with running early on but then something …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 44 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. I think we would all agree that running is hard. But for a lot of us running can also be very stressful, and very anxiety inducing.
I fell in love with running early on. But then something happened that made me almost want to break up with running for good. So in this episode, I’m talking about running simply for the love of running without any other hidden agendas. I believe we should all run because we love it. Because if you don’t love it, what’s the point?
But first, if you like this podcast and you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic fun group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast and I have a big announcement this weekend I am doing something I’ve never done before.
I am hosting a epic training event that you do not want to miss. It is this Sunday, October the I’m sorry, November the first and it’s called getting lean, how to transform your body into a lean fat burning machine so you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it all last a lifetime.
I’m basically sharing my six part coaching framework for becoming a lean running machine. This is the exact framework that I use with my coaching clients. I’m pulling back the curtain. I’m sharing it all with you. Again, that is this Sunday, November the first, I can’t believe it’s November already. Sunday, November the first 4pm Eastern time.
Just go to Facebook, type in Running Lean community, you’ll find us you’ll see the the event that I created for this training that I’m going to be doing. It’s all free to join, just come check us out. It’d be really, really cool.
All right, let’s talk about why I’m talking about this subject today. So today, I’m talking about one of the principles of the Running Lean manifesto. So a few months back, I created the Running Lean manifesto, which is a set of guiding principles.
A manifesto is basically a set of values to live your life by these principles that I laid out are my guiding principles. They are my North Star. And I want them to become your north star as well. I want them to become your guiding principles as well.
A manifesto is a good way to see where you are. It helps to give your life meaning and purpose. I believe that we should all have a manifesto to live by. The Running Lean manifesto is this: number one, eat real food. Number two, live vibrantly. Number three, thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And number eight is be an example of what’s possible.
So I’ve been sharing these the last few episodes. And I’ve got a few more here. I’m trying to take a little bit of a deep dive into each one of these principles. And my goal sharing this with you is that I hope you adopt these as your guiding principles as well.
So the Running Lean community is a vibrant, growing community of passionate runners and we share common goals. And this mentor manifesto was really like our collective Northstar. It’s principles that can drive us forward together. It’s a blueprint that we can all use to become the best versions of ourselves together.
So today, I’m sharing the fifth principle from the Running Lean manifesto run because you love it. So I’m going to start by talking about why I first got into running. So some years ago back in 2003. I was very overweight. I was sick. I was drinking too much. I actually was dying mostly with cancer. And this scared the crap out of me.
I made this decision though, and I obviously, you know, got better. You know, I had surgeries and got through cancer and all that stuff. But I made this commitment to myself that I was going to try to be as healthy as possible. And so I changed my diet, I stopped drinking and, you know, really the, the thing that really propelled me into being the healthiest person that I could be was running.
And the first thing I did with running is that I set a goal for myself and I wanted to run a local race here in Cincinnati, the Thanksgiving Day race, it’s one of the oldest Thanksgiving Day races in the country. It’s been going on for like 110 years or something like that. And it’s a 10k, no big deal, right.
But 6.2 miles running that far without stopping seemed impossible to me. But I was determined to make that happen. And so I started training, and I remember training in the fall. But this time of the year, you know, it’s the fall here in Cincinnati right now. And we have these beautiful leaves the change colors on the trees, there’s leaves on the ground, there’s this crisp, clear air, it’s cooler out, and it’s just, it’s a cool time to be outside running.
And so this was like my first time out there being alone running. And it just felt so good. I really did fall in love with running at this time. It was hard. Yeah. And I had to dig deep, but I had to push myself and I had to run farther than I’ve ever run before.
But I had this goal in mind, I was gonna run 6.2 miles without stopping. So I was training for this little fun little 10k. And I did it, I finished it. And in that process I became more. And it really was a jumping off place for me because training for this 10k taught me that I could do hard things. And I wanted to see what else I was capable of.
So a couple of years later, I decided I was going to run a marathon. And I started training for the Flying Pig marathon, which is our local marathon. It’s a great race. Super fun, by the way, hard, hilly, but fun. So I was training for the 2006 Flying Pig. And I trained on my own. I downloaded some sort of training plan from the internet.
And I gotta tell you, that was very challenging to do all the training for a marathon on my own, I really had no idea what I was doing. But I was reading everything I could. And my longest run for that marathon, the longest run I was able to do was only 16 miles because during the process, I was overtraining.
And I ended up getting injured and I had like stress fractures in my tibias. And the doctor was like, you can’t run and I’m like, well, I’m still going to run. I took a couple of weeks off. But I never got to the 18 and 20 mile runs because I had this injury and I had to take some time off.
Anyway, I really wanted to do this thing like I had trained for it. And there was like nothing was going to stop me from finishing this race. Okay. I loved the training though. I loved being out there. And I was by myself. I loved being out there by myself running.
Again, I was like falling in love, deeply in love with running. And then the day came for the marathon. I was super nervous. And I just remember, during the race, like during the run, I was, you know, going through all these neighborhoods around Cincinnati, and I just remember like, everybody like being so happy and cheerful and cheering us on.
And it just felt so amazing. And then crossing that finish line was like one of the most amazing, transformational moments of my life. I cannot describe the feelings of elation, and joy and accomplishment when I crossed the finish line of my first marathon.
In that moment, I knew immediately that I wanted to do this all the time, like I was going to run this marathon every year. And that’s what I set out to do. And I did and I became a marathon runner. You know, this became part of who I was. And, you know, I just kept falling deeper in love with running. It became you know, part of my identity.
I eventually did something very smart, which is I joined a running group, a local running group which changed everything for me because now I had people to hold me accountable. You know, I had this group that was going to show up a couple of times a week and meet and run.
We would do hill work, speed work, interval training, we would do these long runs on the weekends. And I needed to show up. So I had this accountability. I made friends in the group. In fact, some of the people that I was in this group with had become my lifelong best friends.
You know, I was inspired by watching other people do hard things. I wanted me to do more. It encouraged me to see other people doing these big epic, ultra runs and other things and are running faster and I wanted to become faster. I wanted to run with the faster people.
You know, I had these goals of like PR in every single race, I wanted to always, you know, improve my time, every single race. So I started pushing myself faster and pushing myself to go farther. I started doing triathlons. Then I did an Ironman, I started doing ultra marathons and then did like a 50 miler and 100 miler, and this went on for years.
At some point, running started to become less of a love and more stressful. I was always competing with myself and with other people. I was always comparing myself to other people, or maybe to who I used to be. I was always trying to push myself to go faster, further.
And I started to kind of get burned out by the whole thing, I started to have some nagging injuries. And I was putting my body under a lot of stress, all the time. And I fell into this kind of pattern of chronic cardio, which I’ve talked about before, which is where we run hard enough to be over our aerobic threshold.
So we get into that place where we start to stress out our body, but not super hard, like where we’re sprinting. And so it’s this kind of no man’s land of like, you know, it’s too hard to do for a long period of time, but it’s not hard enough to do for. To make it easy. In other words, like it’s just you’re in this like stressful state of running, and called chronic cardio where you just are putting a lot of stress on your body.
And I was putting myself under a lot of stress, I felt like I had to run like running was something I had to do. And all this time, I was using running as a way to help me lose weight, or maintain my weight at least. And I was eating a plant based diet, I was running a lot. And I was always afraid to ever ease up on the running because I’d gain the weight.
And I saw this happen every single year. After every fall marathon I did, I would scale back on the mileage for a few months, you know, like we do kind of the offseason, so to speak, right. But I would always like gain 5 or 10 pounds.
And this isn’t just me, a lot of people have the same experience. And then once the next spring marathon training season started in the summertime in January or whatever, I would start to lose some of the weight but not all of it.
And so this was a cycle for me, you know, year after year, I would eventually find myself gaining weight not being able to lose all of it until I was like 40 pounds overweight. And running was no longer working to help me lose the weight or maintain my weight. I couldn’t run enough to lose the weight that I was gaining. I was trying though I was desperately trying.
But here’s the thing, you can’t outrun a bad diet, say this all the time. And just know that you are not alone. I hear every single day I hear from people who share this same kind of story. They run all the time, and they can’t lose weight or they started running and they started gaining weight.
And if you’re listening to this right now and you’re kind of nodding your head, then just know that you are not alone. You are one of the millions of people who have tried and tried unsuccessfully to use running as a way to just lose weight or maintain your weight and it kind of works for a little while until it doesn’t.
And here’s why. I’m gonna explain kind of what’s going on here. There are many, many reasons why running is not a very effective way to lose weight. I’m just going to share a couple with you here. Number one, when you run, your appetite increases, you know your body’s always trying to maintain homeostasis, maintain kind of neutral.
And when you run and you burn off a lot of calories and stuff like that, your body’s like, hey, we need to replace those calories. So it increases your appetite. And a lot of times you end up eating more to compensate for the calories that you have, you know, lost during running. And a lot of people overcompensate right, they over eat in that situation.
Also know that running does burn some calories, but not as many as you think. And when you do use running as a way to burn calories, the progress is slow. And it’s kind of minimal. And there’s something very interesting going on here. And there was this study that they did, from 1982 to 1997.
So a long study is a very well controlled metabolic ward study. Actually, there were four different studies done during this time. And they all sort of had the same conclusions. The studies showed significant reductions in resting metabolic rate, after subjects exercised for several weeks at a time.
So when people who want to lose weight who maybe are a little bit overweight, when these people do more than an hour of endurance exercise daily, their resting metabolism actually declines on an average between 5 and 15%. This is crazy, right?
Again, your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis. So when you burn a lot more calories every day, consistently, your body is going to slow your metabolism the way you know the rate at which you burn calories, it’s going to slow your metabolism, so you don’t waste away to nothing and die.
So to think that you’re just going to keep running, and everything else is going to work exactly the same. Like every time you know, you eat 500 calories and you go run five miles, you’re burning 500 calories. Exactly. It just doesn’t work that way. And especially with the resting metabolic rate going down when you exercise more.
So that’s kind of another issue, why it’s very difficult to use running alone as a way to lose weight. Another reason is that runners are notorious carb addicts, right? Runners are known for eating a lot of carbohydrates, right.
And we know that when we eat a lot of carbohydrates, our bodies are in a fat storage mode, our you know, our insulin gets high, and we just can’t let go of the fat, we can’t burn the fat when we’re eating a lot of carbohydrates, we burn the sugar very effectively. And that’s great, you know, but you’re not getting to burn the fat, we’re not putting our body into fat burning mode, we’re staying in fat storage mode, when we keep eating the massive amounts of carbohydrates.
Another thing to consider here is that running is only treating a symptom, you know, you’re trying to burn off excess body fat that’s stored on your body by you know, exercising more. And we’re not really treating the underlying causes of weight gain.
So what is causing the weight gain in the first place? A lot of it has to do with hormonal issues, carbohydrate addiction, there’s mental issues, there’s emotional things going on, there’s issues with overeating. And when you look at all of this, when you look at all these things I just mentioned, you can see why running alone is just not a very effective way to lose weight.
It just isn’t now I have people that will argue with me about this all the time, they will challenge me and tell me I’m wrong. And tell me how by just running, they are able to lose all this weight. And they say it’s all about calories in versus calories out. And if that works for you, and you’ve had some good luck with just like that, whatever. That’s totally awesome. Seriously, nice work.
If you can just cut calories, or, you know, keep eating all these carbs and run more and it helps you to maintain your weight to lose weight, then more power to you keep it up. But for the majority of us, running alone does not work to lose weight period. I have tried this for years.
And I can tell you with 100% conviction that this does not work. And I talk to people literally every single day who say yeah, Patrick, I totally get where you’re coming from. I didn’t know what the problem was either until I figured it out.
Okay, so that was a little tangent I went on just to explain why running is not a great way to lose weight. All right, but all of this stuff that I’m talking about here, I didn’t know all this by the way and in trying to run to lose weight was really stressing me out, you know, I kept running more and more and more, and I kept gaining weight.
You know, my clothes were not fitting me anymore. I was getting close to that 200 pound mark again, which was, you know, something I never want to see again. And I was like, right there. I hated how I looked in the mirror. I was beginning to hate running, because running had failed me.
You know, I thought running was stupid. And it was hard. And it was hard work. It doesn’t work. It was creating all this stress and anxiety for me. And I was thinking I should just break up with running, I should just quit. What is the point seriously?
Maybe my best running days are behind me anyway, so why bother. So this was sort of a dark place I was in, you know, I was ready to break up with running. But then early in 2020, I decided that I was going to do something about my weight. And I knew that running wasn’t helping. And I was running every day for a while there to try to maintain my weight. And it was not working at all.
I needed to change my diet. You know, I needed to figure out how to fix this weight problem. I began learning everything I could about running and weight loss and how it all works together, and began following all these leaders in the field of exercise physiology and sports nutrition. I started reading books, listening to podcasts, I attended seminars, I got all this training, I got training on sports, nutrition and training on weight loss.
And I learned that, you know, weight loss is like 90% diet and 10% exercise, you know, exercise helps a little bit. But really, it’s like almost all diet. So I ditched the carbs. I ditched the plant based diet, and went back to just eating real food. And the weight began melting off of me.
And I started to look good again. And I started to feel good about myself again. And I started to have more energy again. And something else interesting started happening. Running was becoming easier again. And I started to actually enjoy running again, you know, I stopped trying to use running just as like a weight loss tool.
And it became something different for me, I started to run regularly again, running became a very important part of my life again. So one of the reasons why I’m sharing all this with you right now is because I dedicated my life at this point to helping others. I figured this out, and I want to share it with others. And that’s basically how I got here.
You know, running was important to me, it started to become something that I needed to do for my own mental health for my own sanity, you know, running helped me to get through my divorce. It helped me to get through the early days of COVID, you know, through job furloughs and all kinds of other stuff.
And I really began to love my alone time running, it was just me and my thoughts running through the city, running along the Ohio River, running through the parks and old historic neighborhoods here in Cincinnati. And it became this like, helpful meditative time for me. It was like my time, my quality time.
Sometimes I’d listen to podcasts, sometimes I’d listen to trainings and coaching calls and things like that. I was always learning or I was getting inspired, or I was getting motivated. And sometimes it was just me with no headphones, I was just out in nature, focusing on the rhythm of my breath and the sounds of my own feet, touching the ground.
I began to really fall in love with running again. And it felt a lot like it did back in 2004 when I was training for that first 10k. Same kind of feelings were coming up from me again, I was excited about running. I was pushing myself again. I couldn’t wait to get out there to get my heart pumping, to get the blood flowing, to get my lungs working, to start the surge of all the adrenaline and the endorphins and the dopamine.
For me running is like far better than any mood altering drug. And I know I’ve taken a lot of them so I can tell you that it’s better than anything else. And I love when people say this, they say running is my therapy. I love this idea, right? Just like therapy.
Running helps you to feel good about yourself. It helps you to build self confidence and self esteem You know, running helps us to improve our sense of self, our self awareness, running helps us to then connect with others better. And just like therapy, running can help mitigate depression and anxiety.
You know, running makes us feel better about ourselves, we feel happier. Running can help improve our focus and concentration. So we can actually be more productive at work or at school. You know, running is just this amazing stress reliever for a lot of us.
So what I when I say run because you love it, here’s what I mean by that. Don’t run, just to try to lose weight, right? That’s going to cause you all kinds of unnecessary stress, and it doesn’t work very well. Don’t run because you feel like you have to, because then that’s just that makes running feel like a chore.
You know, don’t run to prove something to other people. You have nothing to prove to anybody else. All you have to do is prove something to yourself, what can you do? What are you capable of for yourself, run because it feels good to run. Run because you want to become more through the process of running. Run because you love running.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever push yourself or have goals. I want you to have goals, I want you to go for that PR run, run as fast as you can, you know, try to run your fastest race. Run further than you ever thought you could. If you’ve done a half marathon before and you’re like you know, I really want to do a marathon, do it.
Set your sights high, aim for more, see what you’re capable of. I want you to blow your own mind with what you can accomplish. Just do it in a way that serves you. Do it in a way that feels good to you. Love the process, love running throughout all of it.
Because if you find running is beginning to stress you out and it’s causing you all sorts of unnecessary anxiety. I’d encourage you to just take a good look inside. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Answer that question. That’s a good question. Why do you run? And if you do find yourself, getting a little stressed out about running, there are some things you can do. You can leave your watch at home and just head out and run untethered. No phone, no watch, just go run, run free. Run through the woods, instead of running on the sidewalks, go find a trail.
Oh my gosh, that is like my happy place to be running on trails alone in the woods. I love it. Maybe don’t take any earbuds with you, just focus on your breathing and the sound of your feet hitting the ground. Or if you’re the kind of person that usually doesn’t use music or whatever, maybe bring some earbuds, listen to music, listen to a podcast, learn something, listen to something that makes you laugh, or maybe get lost in a story.
I do this all the time. I listen to podcasts and I listen to stories. And sometimes they just get lost in this story. And it just feels so magical. I kind of forget that I’m even running. Not really, but kind of, but maybe use that time out there alone while you’re running. It’s just you and your thoughts and you could use it as a time to be thankful to give thanks for everything that you have in your life.
You know, be thankful for the sounds of the birds and the trees and the and the fact that you have a sidewalk to run on or maybe a dirt path beneath your feet. Be thankful for your health and for the people in your life. Maybe use this time to meditate or pray. Whatever you choose to do, however you choose to, love running. I want you to choose to love running.
That’s my encouragement for you this week is to fall in love with running. You can still crush your goals you can still go for that PR you can love running, and PR your next marathon. You can love running and crush that goal. You can love running and push yourself faster and further than you’ve ever run before.
You know running can still be uncomfortable. It can be hard but you can still love it. I want to encourage you to fall in love with running again. Run because you love it. Because running is where you truly find yourself. It’s in the running that you become more. I will be diving into the other principles of The Running Lean manifesto in the upcoming episodes and you can go back to the episode I did called eat real food.
And that’s where we start talking about these principles. I think these principles are so powerful and so important. And, and I hope you’re getting something out of this. I really truly do. And then be sure to join me this Sunday, November the first at 4pm. Eastern time for a little event I’m doing in the Running Lean community on Facebook. I’m sharing it all with you guys.
I got something big, big to share with you. Cool. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. We will see you there on Sunday, the first at 4pm. That is all I have for you today, my friends, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
Most people are afraid of being uncomfortable. I think this is a real shame since getting uncomfortable is the only way to achieve anything worthwhile in this life. But it happens all the …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 43 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I want to talk about how to embrace discomfort. Most people are just afraid of being uncomfortable. Let’s face it. I think this is a real shame, though, because getting uncomfortable is really the only way that you’re going to achieve anything worthwhile in your life.
But I see it happening all the time, people will willingly trade away their big goals and their dreams just so they can avoid any kind of discomfort just so they can stay comfortable. Here’s the thing though, the only thing that stands between you and your goals is the discomfort of getting them. So in this episode of the podcast, I will explore what it means to embrace discomfort, and why it’s such an important factor in achieving everything you want in your life.
But first, let’s talk about the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic, encouraging informative group of like minded runners that goes hand in hand with this podcast. And I have a big announcement for you. If you are not currently part of the Running Lean community on Facebook, I would encourage you to jump in there as soon as you can, because I am doing something next Sunday November the first that I’ve never done before.
And you have to be in the group in order to check it out. I’m doing an epic training event. You will not want to miss this. The event is called Getting Lean, How To Transform Your Body Into A Lean, Fat Burning Machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it all last for a lifetime.
So I’m sharing my proprietary kind of six part framework for becoming a lean running machine. This is the exact framework that I use with my coaching clients. I’m pulling back the curtain. I’m sharing it all with you.
That will be Sunday, November the first at 4pm, Eastern time in the Running Lean community on Facebook, it’s free to join, you have nothing to lose. You do not want to miss this event though. It’s going to be awesome. So just go on Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And join us on Sunday, November 1 For this epic event. Okay, let’s talk about our Running Lean manifesto.
So today, the principle I’m sharing with you is to embrace discomfort. So what is the Running Lean manifesto? Well, a few months back, I created a list of things that were important to me: my guiding principles. So a manifesto is a list of guiding principles, it’s a set of values to live by, these guiding principles have become my North Star.
As long as I’m following these principles, I know I’m living the kind of life that I want to live in that I’m heading towards my goals. And I want to share this with you because I want you to adopt this as your guiding list of guiding principles as well.
So your manifesto is a blueprint that you can live your life by. It’ll help to keep you on track, help you keep moving in the direction of your goals, your dreams, everything that you want to achieve. So it’s just, it’s always easy to see where you are by checking out where you are in accordance with these principles.
Am I where I’m supposed to be? Am I following these principles? Yes or no? It’s pretty easy to know. Okay, if so, following this list of principles, having this manifesto actually gives my life meaning and purpose and drives me forward.
So here’s what the Running Lean manifesto is. Number one is eat real food. Number two is live vibrantly. Number three is to thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And number eight to be an example of what’s possible.
So I’ve been sharing a few of these. And over the next few episodes, I’ll share the rest of them taking a little bit of a deep dive into each one of these principles. And again, my hope is that these become your guiding principles, too, that these help you to create the meaningful life that you want for yourself.
So today, we’re talking about the fourth principle from the Running Lean Manifesto: embrace discomfort. And I did an episode a few episodes back called Embracing The Suck, episode number 35 of the podcast, which is just a different riff on this same topic, but it’s definitely worth checking out.
I got a lot of good feedback from that episode. But it will help to round out this whole idea of embracing discomfort. Okay, so let’s get into this. Here’s the problem as I see it. We all expect life to be comfortable all the time. We want to stay comfortable.
And this kind of makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, we as humans have evolved to avoid pain and seek pleasure. And this served us really well, as we were evolving as humans, as we were hunter gatherers.
When we were faced with an actual danger, like a saber toothed Tiger, we were programmed, we’ve programmed our brains to run away, that served us really well. It kept us alive. Understanding that there’s danger. And you know, wanting to avoid that danger, wanting to avoid pain, and seeking pleasure is good. It’s a good thing.
But today, there’s no saber toothed Tiger. But we still see danger all around us. Right, we see danger in work stress, we see danger and fear in the way people talk to us. We see danger in fear in people’s comments that they make online. Our primitive brain still wants to avoid pain, and is always trying to seek pleasure.
So we’re always still trying to kind of feel good all the time. Even though there isn’t any real danger out there. Or a focus of our energy is always on just being happy all the time, if that is our only goal in life, just be happy all the time, feel good all the time. The problem here is that this is not the way life works. This is not reality.
Reality is different. Reality is this life is kind of 50/50 when you accept only the good stuff in life, and you reject all the quote unquote, bad stuff in life, you are basically miserable 50% of the time. So 50/50 means that half the time, life’s gonna be pretty good, you’re going to feel good things, you’re going to kind of go your way, and the other half the time, not so much.
Things aren’t going to go your way, you’re not going to feel good. You’re going to experience good emotions, about half the time. And then you’re going to experience some negative emotions about half the time. That’s just the way life is. 50/50 means that we embrace all of it though, because this is what it means to be a human being.
The human experience is not just feeling good all the time. The human experience is experiencing all of it, the good and the bad, not just the good stuff. Okay. When we only accept the good and want to reject all the bad, we are in so much turmoil. We put ourselves through so much turmoil, because we’re not accepting half of the way life is. Okay.
Here’s an example from my own life. Honestly, every day when I wake up, I feel some level of discomfort. And no, not just because I’m 53 years old. I wake up and I feel some amount of fear and anxiety every day, because I have to show up. I have to show up to coach people, to create this podcast, to run my business, to run.
You know to go out there and run miles and miles. I have to show up to work out to stay fit. I show up every day in a way that I want to practice all of these principles and everything that I do. And I have to say that it’s not always comfortable, it is uncomfortable. So I wake up and I feel uncomfortable.
And I’m putting myself out there, you know, especially as a person who does a podcast with a following, and a big Facebook group, you know, I’m putting myself out there every single day. And here’s the thing about me, I’m an introvert, this is not comfortable for me. It’s not.
But you know what? I do it anyway. If I rejected discomfort, I would just stay in bed all day and watch Netflix. That’s comfort for me. That’s easy. That’s what’s safe. That’s what feels good. But that’s just my primitive brain, trying to avoid the pain and seek pleasure. That is not what I do.
Why don’t I just do that? Why don’t I just stay in bed? Why don’t I just watch Netflix all day? Why do I put myself out there like this, even though it’s uncomfortable? Here’s why. Because I decided that my job is to make a difference. My job is to be an example of what’s possible.
My job is to become more, to create change. Do you think I could do that? Do you think I could do my job if I’m in bed watching Netflix all day? I wish I could. But that’s not how this stuff works. That’s not how life works. It’s because I want more for myself. It’s because I want to become more that I’m willing to embrace this discomfort of putting myself out there.
Because that discomfort, that’s what it takes to become more, that’s what it takes to get there. Discomfort is the price you have to pay. If you want to achieve more. The cost of achieving your goals is discomfort. You cannot be, do, or have more without experiencing some amount of discomfort. You just can’t.
You know if being, doing, or having more was comfortable, you’d already have it. If it was easy, you’d already have it. Everything you want, but don’t already have lies outside of your comfort zone. And it’s precisely because it’s so hard and uncomfortable. That makes it so worth it. I know I hate how that works, too. But that’s the way it works.
Losing weight is hard. It’s an uncomfortable process to go through. No one would disagree with that. But when you embrace the discomfort instead of rejecting it when you put in the work, and you get to that goal. What an amazing accomplishment. What an amazing feeling that is.
I put myself through a lot of discomfort this year, getting to my goal weight. So I’ve told this story before but you know, I had put on like 40 pounds over the last couple of years. Even though I was eating what I thought was a great diet. I was eating a plant-based diet. But I was addicted to sugar.
So earlier this year, I was like I have to figure this out. And so I did all the research, I read all the books, I listened to all the experts, I attended seminars, workshops, I got training on not just the physical aspects of weight loss, but the mental aspect and the emotional side of things, too.
I went all in on creating change for myself. And honestly, this was a very uncomfortable period for me. I stopped eating sugar, and carbohydrates. Basically, I stopped eating processed foods. And I even went back to eating meat again, which was a whole nother uncomfortable place to be. This was a big decision for me, by the way.
And I did a whole podcast about that. Because it was a big uncomfortable thing for me to go through. So you can check that out when I can’t remember what number that is, but it’s called why I decided to start eating meat again. But I did all of these things.
And all of these things, you know, not eating sugar, not eating processed foods. Going back to eating meat again. All these things went against everything I was believing in up to that point. It was a very uncomfortable transition period for me. But I knew that the only way through it was to embrace the discomfort and go all in on it.
And here’s the thing, we runners, we are pros at embracing discomfort seriously. We do it all the time training for a marathon. Come on, that is a very uncomfortable thing to go through. Running every day, maybe you’re doing a run streak and you run every single day. That’s uncomfortable. Getting up early in the morning and running in the cold, or the rain or the snow, or the ice or the heat of the summer. I mean, just getting up early every Saturday morning to run. That is uncomfortable.
We put ourselves as runners, we put ourselves through all kinds of misery on purpose, we get super uncomfortable. We willingly suffer through months and months of training, just so we can say we ran a half marathon or a full marathon or an ultra or whatever your goal is.
I remember training for 100 miler a few years back, and I put in the training, it was like a year long training now, but you could probably do it shorter. But that’s how long I chose to do it. So I trained like for a year. And at the peak of my training, I was doing 30 mile runs on Saturdays, and then 20 mile runs on Sundays.
That’s uncomfortable, to be honest with you. Runners are pros at embracing discomfort. Right? We do it all the time. We’re good at it. We actually brag about it. But here’s the crazy thing. As soon as I suggest that, maybe you stop eating sugar, so you can actually become a super healthy human being and maybe lose those extra 40 pounds you’ve been carrying around. You’re like, oh, this is too hard, Patrick, this feels uncomfortable.
And I just laugh because I’m like, this is ridiculous. You’ll happily endure 17 weeks of marathon training and all the discomfort that comes with it: the painful, long runs in the dark, the black toenails, the sore legs, the long hours out in the elements, the blisters, that chafing, GI issues, all the struggling, all the suffering. You’re all in on all of that. All that discomfort, 100%. No problem.
But when I say like, hey, maybe quit eating sugar. And you do and you experience a few moments, a day where you’re having a craving like, I could probably go for something sweet right about now. And those cravings actually go away after the first week or so by the way. But when you experience a little craving for something sweet, you’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t do this. It’s too hard. It’s too uncomfortable.
Why is there such a disconnect there? Why do we have such a cognitive dissonance when it comes to this? This is fascinating to me. I believe that it’s all about deciding what’s important to you. You know, my best guess is that you’ve made marathon training, your number one priority, which is fine. That’s an important decision. And it’s a big goal. And it takes a big commitment.
So you made a decision at one point that you’re gonna go all in, you’re gonna run a marathon. And here’s your training schedule, and you are all in on that decision, no matter what, no matter how much discomfort you are going to experience, you are crossing the finish line on this date.
You know, when you run your marathon, you decided at some point that embracing the discomfort of training and of running that race was the price that you had to pay to reach that goal to get across that finish line. What if you decided that you were going to go all in on losing that weight? What would that look like for you?
What if you committed to that goal, the same way that you commit to training for a marathon? What if you decided to go all in and actually just embrace that discomfort of losing weight? How would you show up differently? How would you show up for yourself? What would you start doing differently? Maybe what would you stop doing? Because here’s the thing, you get to decide.
My suggestion for you is that you choose discomfort, whatever that looks like for you. But my suggestion is that you choose discomfort and go for the big stuff. Because you already have all the easy stuff, all the simple stuff. I want you to go after more. I want you to go after all that stuff that lies outside of your comfort zone. Be more, do more, have more, become more, just know that there’s a price that you have to pay to get it and that price is discomfort. That’s it. It’s just discomfort.
Next weekend, I am running a marathon. And the reason that I’m telling you this and that it’s a big deal for me is because about two years ago, I decided that marathons were too hard. I had run 14 marathons, and I was like, marathons suck, right? They’re too long, it takes too long for the training. These runs are way too painful.
You know, plus, you know, you’re out there all day. I decided that I was going to stick to half marathons, you know, you get it all done, like two hours, you never have more than like a 10 or 12 mile training run. You know, after your marathon after your half marathon, you can still walk the next day, like, I could justify all these reasons why I was going to just stop doing marathons and go back to just doing halfs.
And a few months ago, I was out running with some friends. And they’re all talking about creating this marathon in the Fall here and running a full marathon. And I was like, Yeah, you guys enjoy yourselves. You’re crazy. I’m not in. No, thank you. I’m just into halves now.
But then I really started to think about what it is that I really wanted for myself. Did I want to stay comfortable and small? Or did I want to see what I was made of? Did I want to push myself? Do I want to become more?
I decided that yes, I wanted to be more, I wanted more for myself. I didn’t want to settle for the comfortable. I didn’t want to settle for the easier, softer way. I wanted to prove to myself that I can still do hard things. And that meant that I had to embrace the discomfort and go all in. So I started training for a full marathon.
This will be my first full marathon in over two years. And I’m really excited about doing this by the way. It’s going to be fun, I feel good about where I am and in all of this. But I made a decision that I was going to be an example of what’s possible when you embrace discomfort.
So I’ve done all of my runs in the fasted state. That means no food for like 12 hours or so before the run. I’ve taken zero calories, have taken in zero calories during the runs. So I’ve done several 16’s, several 18’s, 20 miles with zero calories and no problems at all, tons of energy. Because I’m fully fat-adapted. And I feel like I’m virtually bonk proof at this point.
And I’m gonna run 26.2 miles in a week. Fasted, zero calories to show you what’s possible. And I have to tell you, I’ve been feeling amazing. I’m kicking ass on my runs, even at 53 years old. That’s right. But here’s the thing.
If I chose during my life if I chose to stay comfortable. If I choose not to embrace discomfort, I would never know what I was capable of. If I had chosen to stay comfortable in my past, I wouldn’t have quit drinking. I wouldn’t have done an Ironman. I wouldn’t have run 100 miles, I wouldn’t have lost 40 pounds. I wouldn’t be running a marathon next week.
If I constantly chose comfort, I wouldn’t be here talking to you on this podcast right now. I’d be at home on the couch watching Netflix wishing that I was more wanting to be more, but instead just staying comfortable and safe instead.
So here’s my call to action for you for this week. I want you to embrace discomfort. What does that look like for you? I want you to think about that and then go all in on the discomfort. be uncomfortable. It’s okay. Please go for the hard stuff too. Don’t go for the easy stuff.
That’s simple stuff that’s like right there within your reach. That easy stuff that’s not where the growth is. Go big. Embrace all the discomfort. And I’ll leave you with this thought: discomfort is temporary, but becoming more is forever.
All right, I’ll be diving into more of these principles from the Running Lean manifesto in the upcoming episodes. So this is really fun sharing this with you guys by the way. And don’t forget next Sunday, November the first I’ve got this epic event that I really want to share with you.
It’s called Getting Lean: How To Trasnform Your Body Into a Lean Fat Burning Machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it last a lifetime. I’ll be sharing my coaching framework for becoming a lean running machine.
That’s over in the Running Lean community on Facebook Sunday, November the first 4pm Eastern, just search for Running Lean on facebook and join us. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
I used to treat my body like a garbage dump. I ate a terrible diet, I smoked cigarettes, I drank way too much alcohol, and I never exercised at all. Then one day something happened that changed …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 42 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about how to thrive in your body. I used to treat my body kind of like a garbage dump. I ate a terrible diet, I smoked cigarettes, I drank way too much alcohol. And I never exercised at all.
And then one day, something happened to me that changed my whole outlook on life. And I made a decision to change everything, I decided to become the healthiest person that I could be. And through the years, I’ve tried, I haven’t done it perfectly. I’ve certainly made plenty of mistakes along the way.
But I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to settle for a miserable, unhealthy body, you can choose to thrive in that human body of yours. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain what it means to thrive in your body, and why it’s become one of my most important guiding principles.
But first, if you like this podcast, please come check us out on Facebook. Just search for the Running Lean community. It’s a positive, fun, energetic supportive group of like minded runners, it goes hand in hand with the podcast. We share our goals, we do weekly live coaching in the group.
And here’s a message from one of our amazing members, Nancy and she said, “I woke up this morning and got on the scale for the first time since I joined Patrick McGilvray on this journey a few months ago. And I’ve dropped 25 pounds. I’m not big about getting on the scales, but I could see some small changes, clothes fit a bit better. Necklaces laying nicer around my neck rings are falling off. And now I know why this is a big deal for me. I haven’t been this weight in over 10 years. And I’ve been running for five years. Thank you, Patrick for all you do. You’ve inspired me and taught me so much. And I can wholeheartedly say that I am a fat adapted runner. And I owe it all to you. I’m looking forward to continuing this journey with you. And all the great runners in this group hashtag you are a life changer.”
Nancy, that is such an amazing accomplishment. I am so proud of you. I’m proud of you because you’ve taken this information, and you’re applying it to your life. So it’s one thing to learn all these things, it’s quite another to apply these principles to your life. Super, super proud of you, Nancy, for doing the hard work.
So join us on Facebook, we have a lot of fun over there. Just search for Running Lean community. Also becoming a fat adapted runner, applying these principles to your life can be challenging. You know, developing the mindset that you need to make all of these healthy changes last permanently, can be hard work, it can be difficult to do on your own.
That’s why I offer one-on-one coaching. As a coach, I help you navigate all the information that’s out there around sports, nutrition, and diet and exercise and weight loss and all those other things and we put together a personalized plan that works for you. I hold you accountable for doing the work. I keep you on track, always moving in the direction of your goals.
I encourage you to do things you don’t want to do so that you can ultimately be who you want to be. You’ll develop the mindset required to make these changes stick for life. So if you’re ready to stop screwing around with all of this stuff, you’re ready to get serious and just change things. If you’re ready to begin to thrive in your body.
Then apply for one-on-one coaching with me. Just do it just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, I promise you it will change your life.
Okay, let’s talk about this guiding principle today which is to thrive in your body. So a few months back, I put together the Running Lean manifesto. This is a list of guiding principles that I stand for, a list of things that help guide me. It’s like my North Star. And I’m sharing it with you because I want it to be our North Star. If we apply all of these principles to our lives, we can live the amazing, healthy, happy, vibrant life.
So a manifesto is just a list of guiding principles or a set of values to live by. A manifesto helps you to stay on track. It helps you to know where you are. Again, it’s like your Northstar, always guiding you towards your goals. Okay? These principles always guide me forward. I believe everybody should have a manifesto to live by.
And here’s the Running Lean manifesto. Number one is eat real food. Number two is to live vibrantly. Number three, which we’re talking about today thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort, number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And then number eight, to be an example of what’s possible.
So I’m going to be discussing each of these over the next few episodes of the podcast, taking a deep dive into each one. These principles guide everything that I do, every topic that I teach, can be tied back to one of these principles. I’m sharing this with you because I want this to be our, our collective guiding principles so that we can all move forward together, it’s a blueprint that we can all use to become the best version of ourselves.
Okay, so the third principle, and the one I’m talking about today is to thrive in your body. So what does it mean to thrive? The definition of thrive is to grow or develop well or vigorously to prosper, or flourish. So to thrive in your body means to grow or develop well or vigorously in your body, to prosper or flourish in your body.
And I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is our goal here, right? I don’t believe our goal should be to just get by, or survive. I believe our goal should be to thrive physically, our goal should be to thrive as human beings here on this planet. So I don’t think anybody’s going to argue with me on this one. I think most people would say that they are trying to do just that. That they are trying to thrive to try to be as healthy as possible.
I think most people strive to do and be more. But the reality might be very different. A lot of people might say they want to be healthy, but their actions really don’t support that. And I think a lot of people are stuck in this cycle of like, self-sabotage where they do things that undermine these goals of theirs.
But I want you to think about this for a minute. Think about how far we’ve come as human beings here on planet Earth. Okay, think about all of the things that could have gone wrong and did go wrong during our evolutionary period. Think about the long, slow process of natural selection.
And how we came out of that, as these thinking intelligent, creative humans. You know, think about the 100,000 years of the last ice age that we survived that we lived through as humans, we evolved through that.
Think about all the natural disasters we’ve survived. Think about how much we’ve endured as humans. And then what we’re just going to stuff our faces with sugar and drink ourselves into oblivion. Today, is this how we’re going to choose to live our lives filled with like, pain and stress and suffering and illness and disease?
Is that really how you want to choose to treat your body because it is a choice you get to choose. Choosing to thrive in your body is a choice you make every single day. You wake up in the morning and you get to decide how you’re going to treat your body today.
And of course, you’re gonna say, oh, I want to be healthy. We all say that. I believe we all want that to I think we all want to be healthy. Nobody wants to be sick or obese. Right? Nobody wants type two diabetes. But do you make the decision daily to do what it takes to thrive in your body? Do you commit to it every single day?
Because I’m going to tell you right now that that is exactly what it takes. It takes a daily commitment and then a recommitment. You get up and you said you’re gonna run but you don’t feel like it so you stay in bed. Or you said you’re not eating sugar but then someone at work left doughnuts in the break room and it’s just a doughnut, right?
And hey, they’re free. So you eat one or two, especially if they have those long johns with a maple icing on them. Those are my favorites. You know, you say you’re not going to do that, but you do. You know what to do, you know, you should choose running over sleeping in, that’s what you wanted to do.
You know, you should walk away without eating the maple covered doughnuts, but you don’t. And it’s in those moments that you’re choosing, you’re making a decision that your health is just not that important to you. It may not seem like a big deal in the moment. But keep putting that together, keep repeating the same cycle over and over again. And where do you get? Where does that get you?
So you’re deciding that 30 minutes of extra sleep is more important than your health or then running that half marathon that you said you wanted to train for. You’re deciding that this pile of fried flour and sugar is more important to you than losing the 10 pounds that you said was so important for you to lose.
You may not want to hear this. But I think you need to hear what I’m saying here. Whether you thrive in your body or not, it’s always a choice. It’s always a decision that you’re making. It’s always a choice you get to make. Now, of course there are some minor exceptions. And I’m not talking about debilitating genetic diseases, cancer and things that like you can’t choose.
Okay, so please, there will be some exceptions to this. But you know exactly what I’m hitting on here. Okay, I’m talking about deciding to create a physically healthy, thriving body. Okay. So a good example of this was like me some years back. My choices were literally like killing me. I was very overweight, I weighed about 230 pounds, so 70 pounds more than I weigh now.
And I was drinking a lot of alcohol. I was basically getting drunk every night. I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. And I had a lot of health problems. I was sick all the time. I was treating my body like a garbage dump. Every day, I was poisoning myself with food and with alcohol.
And you know, at the time, it just felt good. If I knew what I was doing, I knew that I was being unhealthy. But I would sort of make jokes about it. You know, even my friends and family would joke with me and say, oh, look, it’s fatty Patty from Cincinnati as a joke.
And I would sort of go along with it like, oh, yeah, that’s hilarious. But inside, I was like, I was literally dying. I was very self conscious about that. And it was really, it was eating and drinking was how I dealt with life.
And I ended up with a cancer diagnosis. That scared the crap out of me, honestly, it was so scary for me. I had two little kids at the time, and it just scared me straight. Basically, it scared me back to like I had to make a decision to do something. I did not want to die.
And I decided and this was back in like 2003 that I was no longer going to trash my body. I was no longer going to treat my body like a garbage dump. And then I was going to start taking care of myself and that I was going to thrive in my body because the alternative was to deteriorate, to continue to decay, to dwindle away to nothing.
And to live that way, was just no longer acceptable for me. So I made a decision: I chose to thrive in my body. I started eating better. I started running. I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking. And life just like perfect and easy and carefree after that. No, it was hard. I made a lot of mistakes. I had setbacks, I had failures. I was disappointed with myself. I suffered injuries. You know, I gained a bunch of that weight back over time. I tried stuff that worked. I tried stuff that didn’t work. I had some success, I had failures.
And then recently at the beginning of 2020, I re-committed to thriving. I decided once again that I was no longer going to treat my body like a garbage dump. I decided to stop tearing myself down because I became very addicted to carbohydrates and sugar.
And I’d started gaining weight again and I got close to 200 pounds again. I decided that I was going to do whatever it takes to become that healthiest version of myself yet. I made a decision to thrive in my body. And now I’m just telling you, I never want to go back to that person that I was that diseased, inflamed, unhealthy person, I created that body for myself.
And looking back on it, I’m like, what was I thinking? Especially like, smoking cigarettes, oh, my God, it’s terrible. So today, I focus on my future, that future version of myself that’s healthy, happy and thriving. And I want that for you, too. I want that so badly for you. I want you to choose to thrive in that one amazing human body that you have.
So forget the past, forget whatever you’ve done in the past, you are not your past. Your past does not determine your future. I want you to decide today that you want to thrive. And I want you to do something about it starting today. You know, I talk a lot about making decisions. I believe everything we want in our lives is created by a series of decisions.
Tony Robbins says I love this quote, he says, “It’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” That is such a powerful quote, I quote this all the time, who you are today, this person that you are, this body that you have today, was created by a long series of decisions that you’ve made over the years, right? Ultimately, who you want to become is determined the exact same way.
Here’s the thing, a lot of people think life is just happening to them. Like it’s out of their hands out of their control. There’s nothing they can do about it, play the cards you’re dealt, it’s all predetermined. I think this is so disempowering, it means that you’re just a puppet. And like there’s some grand, you know, puppeteer, controlling your destiny.
I do not like this concept at all. I think it’s stupid. And I think it will get you absolutely nowhere. I want you to take back your power. I want you to start making decisions that serve you. And this goes for every aspect of your life. You know, not just your physical body, but in everything that you do.
I want you to choose to thrive. I want you to decide that you are going to thrive in this body. And I want you to recommit to that every single day. So what does it look like to thrive in your body? Well, let’s talk about this. It means your body is free from inflammation and illness and disease. It means you physically feel good in your body, it means you are strong and you are fit. It means you’re doing something daily to improve your overall health.
So you might walk, you might run, you might eat real food, you might build strength and endurance, you might work on a positive mindset, you might be taking control of your thoughts and feelings, all of these things is what it looks like to thrive in your body.
And when you focus on thriving, physically, everything in your everything else in your life tends to kind of fall into place naturally. So when you feel good in your body, you know you feel good in your mind. When you have a positive self image of your physical self, you have this positive mental state of mind.
You show up in a more positive way for your partner, for your kids, for your work, for your career, you begin to see better results in everything that you do in your life. I believe 100% that you are capable of so much more than you even realize. I believe you can create the exact body that you want for yourself.
How do you do it? Well, that’s exactly what you’ve been learning here in this podcast in the Facebook group. This is what I do with my coaching clients. Look at who it is you want to be and then decide to start working toward that version of yourself. You know, it’s different for everyone but you can start by eating real food.
You know, stop eating the sugar and refined carbs. I know there’s a lot of different ways you can change your diet to be more healthy. But I just encourage people to eat whole food, eat food that’s close to nature, unprocessed, right? Eat foods our ancestors would have eaten. And for a recap on this, listen to the episode on, Eat Real Food.
And that was our first principle, from the manifesto. You might choose to take a break from alcohol, that might be some way that you choose to thrive. You know, you don’t have to declare yourself an alcoholic or start going to 12 step meetings or, or whatever. But if you feel like you’re drinking too much, you can take a break.
And I work with my clients and I suggest as we begin their new nutrition plan that they may take a break from alcohol for 30 days or so and see how it goes. And if you want help with this, please reach out to me directly, I would love to help you with that.
Another way you might choose to thrive and your body is to start building strength. Decide that you want to build a stronger body, everyone can benefit from strength training, honestly, it doesn’t have to take a lot of time and effort to join a gym and like have a personal trainer on stuff, you can do it a couple times a week workout, lift some heavy things, do bodyweight exercises, use bands, whatever it takes.
But building lean muscle is one of the best things you can do for your overall health and fitness. You might choose to run more as a way of, you know committing to thriving in your body, you might want to run a half marathon or a full marathon or an ultra marathon, you might want to just start running three or four times a week, whatever that looks like for you make a decision, decide that this is important to you, and you’re going to do it.
I committed to running a marathon this month. So I’m running a marathon at the end of this month. And so I’ve been running more. And I’ve just committed to that process. And I have this vision of me crossing the quote unquote, finish line, virtual marathon, right? Whatever that finish line will look like. And I have this vision of myself crossing that virtual finish line. And I’m committed to making that happen. And I feel really good about that decision.
So what would it look like for you to thrive in your body? Think about how you can optimize your health and your fitness. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Do what feels good for you, do what feels right for you. But I want to encourage you, and I want to challenge you to do something to choose to thrive. You may want to just choose some kind of goal for yourself.
A good goal is something that you can measure. So you’ll know when you get there. Like I want to lose 20 pounds or I want to you know, maybe get off of this medication that I’ve been taking for whatever illness that you might have, you know, maybe you want to have more energy.
Maybe you want to be able to run three miles without stopping, you want to think more clearly, lift more weight, you want to be able to do like 10 pull dps. That’s a goal of mine, I want to be able to do 10 pull ups.
You might want to feel more at peace, have more calmness in your life, less stress. You may want to feel happier, like run an ultra marathon, whatever the goal is, make sure it’s tangible, so that you’ll know when you get there. So choose a goal. And then do something today to move toward that goal.
Challenge yourself, see what you’re capable of. Because you know what, you are an amazing, powerful, unique, capable human being you can do anything that you want. But first you have to decide that you want to thrive in that body. Decide that you are not going to settle, that you’re not going to just survive. You’re not going to just make do or subsist or just deal with it. You know or muddle through your life, miserably. Instead, decide that you are going to thrive in your body.
Focus on who you want to become that amazing, healthy future version of you. Focus on thriving and that amazing human body that you have. See what you’re physically capable of. Choose to thrive. Choose it every day. It’s a choice you have to make every day that when you do, you might just blow your own damn mind with who you become.
Okay, I’m going to be diving into all of the other principles from the Running Lean manifesto here in upcoming episodes, I’m really excited to share all this stuff with you. And we will be continuing this conversation over in the Running Lean community on Facebook, join us over there and you can start applying all of these guiding principles to your own life. That is all I have for you today. Lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
If you ask most people how they feel about their life, they’ll probably tell you their life is pretty dull, pretty ordinary, maybe even dreary. Today, I'm here to tell you that this is NOT how you …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 41 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. If you ask most people how they feel about their life, they’ll probably tell you that their life is pretty dull, pretty ordinary, maybe even a little boring or dreary. Today, I’m here to tell you that this is not how you are supposed to live your life.
We have one very short life here on this planet. Do you really want to settle for a life that can only be described as dull and ordinary and dreary? Because here’s the thing, you get to choose. You can choose to live a dull and dreary life. Or you can choose to live a big, bold, beautiful, vibrant life. In this episode, I’m talking about choosing to live vibrantly, and why it’s such a powerful principle to live by.
But first, if you like this podcast, please come and check us out on Facebook. The Running Lean community is a positive, energetic and fun group of like minded runners. And it kind of goes hand in hand with this podcast. I do weekly live coaching in that group on a whole bunch of different topics, you know, focus around the same kinds of things we talk about here on the podcast, but it’s a chance for you to ask questions and get support of a very large, thriving growing group of runners just like you.
So just head over to Facebook, search for Running Lean community and join us over there. And then listen becoming a fat-adapted runner, breaking old habits, creating new ones, developing the mindset to make all of this stuff permanent in your life can be challenging to do on your own. That’s why I offer one-on-one coaching.
I’ll help you figure out the right nutrition plan that will get you to your goals because everybody’s different. You’ll have me holding you accountable and keeping you on track and always moving in the direction of your goals will help you to do things that you don’t want to do so that you can be the person that you ultimately want to be most importantly you’ll develop the mindset that you need to make these changes for life.
Here’s a comment from one of my coaching clients Hannah and she says, “I did another virtual half marathon today fasted again. My co-runners are really surprised that I don’t need any gel or goo and I am fine. I see no difference in my pace and energy. In fact, I had two strong finishes recently. I didn’t feel like I was tired or exhausted. Patrick, I’m still carrying lessons that I learned from you. Really gives me this jumpstart I needed to change my eating habits. My weight has been stable for six plus weeks. So glad I found this page and eventually you.”
Yes Hannah, changing your eating habits will definitely give you more energy and stronger finishes. If you’re ready to stop screwing around with your weight if you’re ready to change your eating habits if you’re ready to start living vibrantly, then apply for a one-on-one coaching with me just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, one word. Do it now, I promise you it will change your life.
Okay, so several months ago, I sat down and wrote out the Running Lean Manifesto. This is just a list of the things that I wanted to live my life by a set of principles, the things that I stood for the things that are important to me. And now I’m sharing this with you guys because I think this is a great framework for living an amazing life healthy in mind and body.
And I’m calling this the Running Lean Manifesto. What is the manifesto? Well, it’s just a set of guiding principles or values and it’s like your North Star, something that you can always do that is always keeping you on track.
Why do we need a manifesto? Well a manifesto provides a blueprint to live by. Okay, it helps us to stay on track and always moving towards our goals. It’s easy to see where we are so you can say, “Am I living up to these principles yes or no?” Following these principles helps to give our lives purpose. And I believe we should all have some sort of manifesto to live by.
So here’s what the Running Lean manifesto is. Number one, eat real food. Number two, live vibrantly. Number three, thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And then number eight, be an example of what’s possible.
So over the next several podcast episodes, I’m going to be talking about each one of these separately. And remember, these are the guiding principles for what I do. And they are the guiding principles of the Running Lean community. So these can be your guiding principles too, it’s totally fine. They are our guiding principles. Okay, so these are the principles that drive us forward together.
It’s the blueprint we can all use to become the best version of ourselves. Okay, so today I’m talking about the second principle, which is to live vibrantly. And what does that mean? And what kind of an impact can living vibrantly have on your life?
Well, first, let’s look at the definition of vibrant, what does that mean? Vibrant or living vibrantly means the word vibrant means full of energy and enthusiasm. Pulsating with life. Vivid, bright, striking, strong. That all sounds pretty amazing, right? The opposite of vibrant is spiritless, listless, dull.
So when I talk about living vibrantly, it means living a vivid life full of energy and enthusiasm. Not a dull, spiritless, listless life. Okay. We all squared away with that part? So are you doing it? You say, yes, I want to live a vibrant life. But are you actually doing it?
On the surface, you’d probably agree that you don’t want a dull spiritless life. But how are you living your life? Really ask yourself that question. Go inside, what’s the answer? I think way too often, we stay stuck in our own little cocoon, our little safe, comfort zone, safe from all the scary, hard things that are out there in the world.
For example, when I started coaching entrepreneurs, so I started my coaching career as a life and success coach for entrepreneurs. And that work was fine. It was safe. But I was feeling like it was kind of dull and listless. You know, looking back on it, like it wasn’t really challenging me.
And I wasn’t really passionate about this work that I was doing. You know, I was an entrepreneur and I had some success as an entrepreneur. I was helping some people but it was like, it’s okay.
At some point, though, I decided I want to work with people I connect to at a deep level. I want to work with people who are passionate about running the way that I’m passionate about running. The kind of weirdos you know, that are like, yeah, and you know, you know who you are, the ones that are like, want to go run 20 miles on a Saturday morning.
I want to connect with those people. Because I get that, I get that mindset. I wanted to work with runners on helping them to develop that mindset, and then their nutrition and help them solve the weight problem. And this felt really scary to me. I had to put myself out there.
This topic of like helping runners lose weight, especially when I talk about hey, you know, let’s get off the carbs. And there’s another way of doing this. It’s kind of controversial, right? Not everyone agrees with me. And that’s okay. I don’t need everybody to agree with me. It’s okay that you’re wrong about me.
But here’s the thing, I could stay safe and work with my little entrepreneurs over here and make some good money and have a nice little biz. Or I could go and do something that I was really passionate about, but I was like going into uncharted 10 Atari it was. It was scary though, there were a lot of unknowns. And it felt bigger than me. But that’s what I wanted. I wanted something that was bigger than me.
I love, love, love this quote from John Shedd. And if you’re if you’ve ever been to Chicago, you know, there’s the Shedd Aquarium up in Chicago. And so he had this quote, he said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for.”
Oh my gosh, that’s so good. A ship and harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for. So for me, I was not built to stay small and safe, and sit here on this shore. Doing my little entrepreneur thing over here, I was built for something bigger, something that lights me up, I was built for life so big and bright and vivid, that I blow my own mind every day.
Because the alternative to that is a comfortable life, but a very small life. It’s not what I wanted for myself. I’m not going to dull and dampen my experiences just for the sake of comfort and safety. I had to make that decision. I did that. For most of my life. I stayed small, you know, I stayed comfortable for a lot of my life.
And it got me sick and fat. I had diseases, I was you know, very unhealthy in a lot of ways. And my life was very, very small. When I gave up drinking, my life became bigger. When I gave up, you know, eating junk food. My life became bigger. My life is so big now, because I choose to live vibrantly every day.
Now, this does not mean that every day is always rainbows, rainbows and unicorn farts, okay, because it is not. Stuff gets hard sometimes. So how do you live a vibrant life, when everything is like crashing down all around you? And I get that sentiment I really do. It can feel like your life is falling apart sometimes.
But honestly, that’s just a thought in your head. That’s a thought that you are choosing to think my life is falling apart. It’s just a thought you’re choosing to think here’s the thing. Life is not supposed to be great all the time. We’re not supposed to be happy all the time. We’re just not.
If you expect yourself to be happy all the time. Or if your goal is to try to be happy all of the time, you will be gravely disappointed about half the time. Life is 50/50. 50% of the time it’s pretty good, 50% of the time, it’s not. And it’s okay. The goal is not to be happy all the time.
The goal is to have this life that’s 50/50 and be okay with all of it. You know, at the beginning of this year, I was going through a divorce, I was living alone. I had started two jobs and then lost them due to the pandemic I was delivering for Uber Eats just so I could pay my rent and make ends meet.
And I could have decided at that point that life was unfair. Everything’s crashing down around me. I’m just going into survival mode here. Go back to the shore. Stay safe. Have this safe, comfortable, dull, listless life. Or I could choose to live vibrantly. I wanted more.
I wanted to create a life so big and bold and beautiful and vibrant, that I would wake up every day and I would blow my own mind. So I worked on my business during the day, I recorded podcasts, and I was coaching people. And then at night, I was out delivering food.
You know, this was really hard for a while. It felt like I was starting over. You know, like I was in my early 20s you know, just starting out on my own again. It was really a very, it was a hard time for me. I kind of felt like a loser at times.
But I had to decide that I wanted something more. I had to decide that I wanted a life that was big and bold and vibrant. And how am I going to create that for myself? How can I live that way? Despite the fact that things around me do not seem awesome?
And the answer is, life is 50/50, we have to experience all of it. And we just have to accept all of it. And that’s the key right there is that you have to be willing to experience the good and the bad. You have to be willing to experience all the good stuff that comes your way. And all the challenging stuff that comes your way. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything.
You know, it doesn’t mean you have to like suffer. But you do have to learn how to experience the whole breadth of experiences and emotions that we all feel as humans, it’s all part of the human experience.
So I wasn’t trying to dull my experiences, I was willing to experience everything that life had to offer all the good, the bad, the terrible, the discomfort; the not knowing if any of this stuff was going to work. And I faced it all head on. I took on all those things with courage and determination as best I could.
I was determined to create a life that was pulsating with energy. That whole 50/50 thing life is, you know, half good half not so good. You have to accept this as truth. You have to, you have to accept everything. You can’t reject the bad stuff. You can’t reject the hard stuff. You can’t resist the uncomfortable stuff. Because that’s when you have that small, safe, dull life.
So be willing to feel that, be willing to experience the entire range of human emotions. You know, without sadness, we wouldn’t know what it feels like to be happy. Without anger and frustration, we wouldn’t know what peace feels like. Without hurt, we wouldn’t know relief. Without chaos, we wouldn’t experience calm.
If running a marathon was easy and pain free, do you think it would feel the same crossing that finish line? Do you think it would feel as amazing to cross that finish line if running a marathon was easy? No. It’s because of the struggle. It’s because of the fear and the pain and the suffering through the training that when you cross that finish line, it feels overwhelmingly joyful.
If you’ve ever run a marathon, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Or maybe it’s a 10k or a 5k or whatever that is for you. This is one of the reasons I love running so much. It’s not because it’s easy. It’s because it is hard. Because I’m willing to go out there and challenge myself and push myself and experience all of it. I’m willing to leave that safe harbor, so I can create a life that is buzzing with energy and enthusiasm.
This is what it means to live vibrantly. What would it look like for you to live vibrantly? Be honest with yourself. Are you living vibrantly right now? Or are you playing it safe? Do you have big goals and dreams for yourself? If yes, are you moving toward them? Are you taking action every day? Do you have a plan?
You know, one of the most powerful things about coaching is that working with me we create a plan for your big goals and your dreams. And then we work the plan. We take action and we move toward them every day. The power of coaching is having someone there to guide you, to hold you accountable to keep you focused to keep you on track to keep you motivated.
Now if you don’t have big goals and dreams, why the heck don’t you? Why wouldn’t you want a big, beautiful, bold, vibrant life for yourself? Seriously, ask yourself why you don’t want that. What kind of life do you want for yourself? The kind of life where you push yourself out of your comfort zone? Do more, be more, become the most amazing version of yourself yet? Or do you want the kind of life where you stay at home and stay safe and sit on the couch and binge watch Netflix all day? Because you get to decide.
Do you want the kind of life where you’re still carrying around that extra 40 pounds from now until the day you die? Do you want to constantly be struggling with your weight and your self image? Do you want to keep hating how your clothes fit or hating how you look in the mirror, or hating how you feel about yourself, or do you want something else?
Do you want something bigger? Do you want something more vibrant? Because it’s just a choice. And when you make that decision, like when you really decide when you go all in on living vibrantly, there is nothing that will stop you from getting there.
So my call to action for you is to make a decision to choose to live vibrantly, starting right now, what can you do right now, that would light you up. Now it doesn’t have to be like, oh, go jump out of an airplane or climb a mountain or, you know, this is not what I’m talking about.
You know, for me, it’s doing this right here. It’s recording this podcast. It’s teaching these principles to you. It’s encouraging you to live an amazing life. It’s motivating you to get out there and do something bigger than what you have now become more than who you are right now.
Doing this lights me up about what I do. And here’s a little secret for you guys. This is not easy. It’s still not easy for me to come on here and talk about these things. It’s uncomfortable. But I make the decision to show up every day with courage and determination. And because of that my life is pretty amazing. It’s pretty vibrant. Because I choose it.
I choose to live vibrantly every single day. I want my life to be pulsating with energy and enthusiasm. That just sounds so good to me. I want my life to be vivid, bright and meaningful. So what does it look like for you to live vibrantly? Maybe you have a big dream to get incredibly healthy, get back to your natural weight.
Maybe you want to run a 10k or a half marathon or a full marathon or maybe an ultra marathon. Maybe you want to run 10 miles a day for 100 straight days, like Andy in the Facebook group. This guy is a beast. He’s running 10 miles a day for 100 straight days. What if you just wanted to walk for 30 minutes a day for 100 days?
Maybe you want to start a business or get a new job or find your soulmate. Or maybe you want to quit eating sugar or maybe you need to cut back on your drinking. Doesn’t matter what it is, it matters that you choose to begin that you choose to live vibrantly.
Decide that you are not a ship that was built for safe harbors, and go out there and face the unknown. Face those turbulent waters with courage and determination and see what amazing, vibrant life you can create for yourself. All right, I’ll be diving into the other principles that I mentioned at the beginning from the Running Lean manifesto in upcoming episodes.
I’m so excited to be sharing this stuff with you guys. It’s super fun. And we continue this conversation over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So just come by and check us out. Challenge yourself to live vibrantly, to get healthier, to lose weight, to become a better runner, to become the best damn version of yourself yet. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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