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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Running Mindset

46. Love Yourself Unconditionally

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If you’re anything like me and you’ve struggled with your weight, then you probably know what it feels like to kind of hate yourself. You hate how you look, you hate how you feel, you hate how …

Continue Reading about 46. Love Yourself Unconditionally →

Podcast Transcript

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 46. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, we’re going over another one of the guiding principles from the Running Lean manifesto. And this one is: love yourself unconditionally.

So if you’re anything like me, and you’ve struggled with your weight ever, then you probably know what it feels like to kind of hate yourself. You know, you might hate how you look, you hate how you feel. You hate how you’ve let yourself go. You hate who you have become.

Wow, this is a very negative and very sad place to be. I know how it feels I’ve been there. But here’s the thing, you can’t accomplish anything positive from such a negative state of mind. When you feel like super crappy about yourself, you know, it’s almost impossible for you to do anything good to lose weight to feel better about yourself, you just can’t do it.

So in this episode, I’m going to be talking about how to break out of this negative mindset and how to stop hating yourself. Because the answer is to have unconditional love for yourself, to love yourself unconditionally. So I’m gonna explain how to do it.

But first, if you like this podcast, you need to come check out our Facebook group. It’s the Running Lean community on Facebook. And just to get you excited about this, I got a new challenge coming up in November. So starting Thanksgiving Day, we’re going to do a new challenge called running through the holidays. And I haven’t even talked to anybody about this yet.

So I’m not going to tell you what it is. But it’s going to be a fun way for us to all get through the holidays together to maintain our sanity and our health and to feel good about ourselves during the holidays. So I’m not gonna. I’m just teasing this right now, I’m not going to tell you all about it. So come to the Facebook group. And I’ll explain it all in there.

And we will be running this challenge through the Facebook group from starting on Thanksgiving Day here in 2020. Okay, cool. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And you will find us there.

All right, so we’ve been talking about the principles from the Running Lean manifesto. So this is a set of guiding principles that I put together, that I want it to be our North Star, I wanted us to rally around some principles, some concepts, some values, some ideas that can kind of keep us grounded, that can kind of keep us moving towards our goals. These are like our North Star.

And I love that analogy of it’s always guiding the way. So the Running Lean manifesto is eight guiding principles and they are this: Number one is to eat real food. Number two is to live vibrantly. Number three is to thrive in your body. Number four is to embrace discomfort. Number five is to run because you love it. Number six is to love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And then eight be an example of what’s possible.

So we’ve already covered a bunch of these. Today we’re talking about how to love yourself unconditionally and why this is important and how to do it. But listen, these principles are some some things that you can kind of rally around and really understand these and really embrace these because when you do, this is like the key to living a healthy, vibrant, fulfilled life.

And it’s not rocket science. This isn’t super complicated, but it does take a little hard work and a little dedication. So just commit yourself to living by these principles. Like I’ve committed myself to living by these principles and just see What kinds of things you can accomplish in your life? I think you might just blow your own mind.

Okay, so today we’ve got principle number six from the Running Lean manifesto, and that is to love yourself unconditionally. Now, before I get into this topic, I just want to say this, this might seem like kind of a woowoo topic for some of you, you might be like, love yourself, unconditionally, Patrick, come on, but I want you to be open minded about this, I want you to just listen, and, and be open to these concepts, because they are important.

And all too often, we don’t like to talk about our feelings, we don’t like to talk about our emotions, we don’t want to talk about how we may not like ourselves, or how we may hate ourselves, or how we maybe should work on loving ourselves more like this is stuff that kind of feels uncomfortable to talk about sometimes. But you know what, I don’t care. I’m talking about it. And I want you guys just to be open to it. Cool. Are we on the same page?

Alright, let’s get into this. So here’s what we do. We beat ourselves up a lot. As human beings, we’re just naturally really good at this. You know, we engage in a lot of negative self talk. So we have something like 60,000 thoughts a day that run through our heads? We have these conversations that are constantly running in our minds, like there is constantly a dialogue, running chatter going on in our heads, right?

Can you relate to this? Does this sound like you? Because I hope so. Because I know, it’s not just me. But I have this going on all the time. I have these thoughts, these conversations, I have conversations with other people, complete conversations in my mind. Or I have a conversation with myself in my mind. That’s kind of bizarre.

I’m like, who’s talking? And who’s listening? And who’s watching all this happen? Like, is this all me? It’s all me. Anyway, so we have these conversations going on, we have all this chatter going on in our brain. And it’s typically kind of crappy, it’s kind of negative, right?

We have a lot of negative self talk, even if you don’t, even if you’re not conscious of it. And you don’t like consciously notice that happening in the moment. It might be running in the background, right? It’s kind of like there’s a, there’s a radio station playing in the background. And it’s like, you’re not good enough, you can’t do that. Who do you think you are? Look at you, you look at how much weight you’ve gained, you’re fat, you’re ugly, you know, we have all this stuff going on in our brains. And it’s like, it just never shuts off. Okay.

And a lot of this negative self talk that we have a lot of this chatter going on this negative Chatter is because we, we regret a lot of things from our past, you know, we have, we’ve done things in the past that we regret, or that we’re ashamed of, or that we’re embarrassed by. And we feel like we failed a bunch of times in the past.

And we keep replaying these scenarios over and over and over again, in our heads. So one of the things that we do, one of the lines of negative thoughts that we keep having negative self talk has to do with the past, okay?

Another stream of negative self talk is about the future, constantly thinking about how we’re going to fail in the future, or how we’re not where we want to be, and how, you know, I’m never going to get to my goal weight. And I’m never going to be able to stop overeating, and I’m never going to be able to give up sugar. And I’m never going to be able to, you know, run a marathon, because I just, I just can never do it.

I can never commit to whatever it is, we fail ahead of time. You know, we constantly tell ourselves how we can’t do X, Y or Z. So when we’re focused on all the negative negativity from our past, we’re looking at our future as being you know, some negative thing.

We cannot live in the present. We cannot have contentment, peace. We can’t love ourselves in the present, right? All we do is we just kind of hate where we are and who we are. And what happens is, we can really set ourselves up for a lot of not only disappointment, but we set ourselves up to fail in so many ways. And we don’t even realize it.

But our negative thinking, this like idea of hating ourselves, over time can really put us into a negative state that creates these terrible results in our life. For example, earlier this year, I found myself 40 pounds overweight, I found myself getting divorced, you know, my wife said she wanted to leave me, leave the marriage, or end the marriage, let’s just put it that way.

And I found myself delivering food at night, just to make ends meet. And I had gotten to this place where I had been beating myself up for so long, and kind of hating on myself for so long, that it manifested into all these circumstances I found myself in my life.

You know, the negative self talk I was doing got me 40 pounds overweight, the negative self talk I kept doing about not being able to lose weight, and it was too hard, and I can’t do it, that just kept me at that, at that weight, or kept me gaining weight. You know, and I would argue that my negative view of myself over the years, contributed to this marriage that just, you know, that came to an end.

You know, I’m not blaming her, I’m not blaming myself, 100% we all have our roles and these kinds of things. But I have to say that, you know, having such a negative view of myself contributed to that, you know, I think I felt like I was a bad person, you know, there was something wrong with me.

And, you know, that kind of contributed to that, playing out the way that it did. And then I found myself delivering food at night and thinking, man, my whole life is a failure, I am a failure. I kind of hated who I had become. And this is a terrible place to operate from. Nothing good is gonna come out of this, okay. But this pattern of hating on myself had been going on for a long time, for years.

You know, hating on myself got me where I was. It got me overweight, it got me to this divorce, it got me to delivering food at night. And it was this big eye opening moment for me. That hating on myself for all my past failures. And all the things I hadn’t accomplished and all the things I didn’t do, all the mistakes that I made, and hating where I was headed or my future, because it looked like it was so bleak and grim for me, you know, look, I’m overweight, I’m getting divorce, I don’t have, you know, a regular job.

I just had no love for myself in the present, I have been so focused on past failures, and so focused on this grim future that I couldn’t love myself in the present. So this is a very powerful form of self sabotage. When you hate yourself, how do you think you’re going to act? How are you going to show up? What are you going to do or not?

You know, how do you show up for yourself? When you don’t have any love for yourself? Do you keep moving toward your big dreams and your goals? Probably not. Do you stick to your food plan? You know, I said I’m gonna eat this. And this is exactly what I’m going to do. I feel so good about the…no, you’re not gonna feel terrible. Do you stick to your training schedule? So you’re training for that marathon?

No. Because it’s just this powerful self sabotage of hating on yourself. It keeps you stuck or sends you backwards. You get lazy, you say screw it, you start gaining weight, you stop running, whatever it is. And all this kind of self hatred comes from this constant stream of negative self talk negative thoughts that you just keep replaying over and over and over in your mind.

You know, thoughts are just sentences we say to ourselves in our minds, but we believe them, and we give them so much power, especially the negative ones. Negative thoughts lead to feeling negatively about ourselves. And negative feelings lead us to take negative actions or to take no action at all, inaction.

So we don’t stick to our food plan. We don’t get back to our workout schedule, we say, eff it a lot more. So you just eat whatever, whenever you feel like it. And all this stuff just leads to crappy results, you gain weight, you don’t hit your goals. You can’t accomplish good things from this state. You can’t hate yourself thin, I say this all the time.

So if you keep thinking, I’m a failure, I always fail, I can’t do it, this isn’t gonna work for me, then you’re gonna get all of those results. Keep thinking that over and over and over again, keep telling yourself that you’re gonna fail and guess what you will fail. Keep telling yourself, you can’t do it.

And guess what, you won’t do it, keep telling yourself, this won’t work for me. And guess what, it will not work for you. You cannot hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself through all of this. You have to have your own back. I talk about this concept a lot with my clients having your own back. And I want to explain what this means to you so that you understand this too, because this is a cool concept.

So what does it mean to have your own back? So imagine you’re out running with a friend. And you could be in a race, maybe you’re helping a friend get through their first half marathon, right? And you’ve done this a million times. And so you feel pretty confident you’re just out there to support them.

You’re helping them get through the tough part of this run. How would you show up for that friend? What would you say to them? I think you’d say things like, hey, I’m here for you, you got this, you can do it, you are a badass, come on, keep going, you’re doing great, you look great.

You can do hard things, you are crushing it out here, you are almost there. Come on, let’s go. Right, you’d be there to support them to encourage them to keep them motivated. You point out all the positive things you can about them, you’d push them, you’d make sure that they finished strong. So this is what it looks like to have someone’s back.

And when you do this, for someone else, it feels really good. Right? It feels good to be the one that’s doing the encouraging, the one that’s doling out all that love, all that positive Mojo, it feels good to be that person, right? Because you’re helping them do something big, you’re helping them get through something that’s uncomfortable. And it feels good to do this.

It’s very invigorating. I love doing this. I love helping people. That’s why I love coaching so much. You know, it’s such a big part of coaching is to give people encouragement and motivation and all that positive Mojo doling out the love, right. So you can dig deep within yourself when you need to help someone else, right?

You can dig deep within yourself and find that love and that encouragement to help push someone further even when it’s very challenging for them even when things are going very tough for them. Right.

So it’s very easy for us to do for others. But it’s very hard for us to do for ourselves. Why is that? You know, it’s it’s interesting, isn’t it? That it’s hard for us to do that for ourselves, even though we can do it so easily for others. But here’s the thing, you can do it, it works just as well, when you do it for yourself. Right? It feels just as good.

The answer here is that it’s not harder to love ourselves. It’s not harder to have our own back. But we just have all this negative self talk that’s always getting in the way. You know, if you can do this for someone else, which you can, I know you can. I know you’ve done this before, then you can do it for yourself. It just takes a little practice.

So some of the things you can practice is instead of practicing negative self talk, practice positive self talk. You know, instead of practicing feeling discouraged all the time, practice encouraging yourself. Instead of practicing thinking about all the ways that you’re going to fail or all the ways that you suck, practice thinking about all the ways you are going to succeed and all the ways that you are awesome.

And you can do this by just writing it down on a piece of paper. This is the easiest little exercise you can do. Write down all the things you love about yourself. Write down words of encouragement for yourself. Write down ways you can motivate yourself, just like you’d be motivating that person you’re running with to help them get across the finish line.

Do that for yourself. And I promise you, I promise you that when you start practicing this, when you write it down, when you read it every morning, and you start practicing, that, you know, showing this unconditional love for yourself, you’re going to start to feel so much more empowered, so much more confident, so much better about yourself.

You’ll stop living out in the past, living out those past failures, you’ll become excited about your future, you’ll begin to feel alive, and happy and confident right here in the present moment. And here’s the most important piece of this. Loving yourself unconditionally means without condition, so the unconditional part is important. Okay?

That means that you love yourself exactly as you are right now. It means that you love yourself at your current weight, no matter what that is. It means that you love your body, every inch of it right now. It means you love how you look in the mirror. It means having a positive self image, a holistic positive self image, you love your whole body, your mind, your feelings, your soul.

Unconditional love does not mean I love myself, but I hate my thighs, or I love myself, but I wish my belly was smaller, or I love myself, but I hate that number on the scale. Unconditional means without any conditions, period.

So I want to make sure we’re on the same page with this. This concept right here, you can love yourself exactly as you are right now and still want to change. You can have unconditional love for yourself and still want to lose weight.

You know, you can love yourself just as you are right now, and still want smaller thighs or to get rid of a belly, that’s totally fine. Right? It doesn’t mean you don’t want to improve yourself, right? You can love yourself and respect yourself right now and be constantly working to improve yourself.

Wanting to improve yourself doesn’t mean you have to hate yourself the way you are now, or that there’s anything wrong with you now, it just means that you’re always growing, you’re always improving, you’re always becoming more. So today, I practiced loving myself unconditionally, and I’m not perfect at it, I’ll be honest with you.

I don’t do a perfect job of this, but I practice it. You know, and, and there’s things about myself that I want to change, like, I’m still working on getting stronger and building some muscle. So I’m going to the gym and I’m lifting weights, you know, I can look at myself in the mirror and go, hey, hey, you, you look pretty good.

But at the same time, I’m like, I’d like to see my arms get a little bigger, get my chest a little bigger, you know, I want to look like just like I got some muscle on me, you know. And I’ve never been able to do that in my life. And so I’m like really working on that.

And I’ve seen some improvements over the last couple of months. Okay. So um, that’s something where I love myself now. And I can want to change, I can want to get better, I can want to improve, you know, my physical strength or my running endurance, okay? I love myself as I am. I don’t hate what I see when I look in the mirror anymore.

Okay, I don’t hate who I have become, I love who I have become. And I’m always becoming more. This is such a beautiful concept. I think that we can love ourselves now and want to become more. I love, love, love this. When you can begin to love yourself unconditionally. Even just practicing this a little bit you can begin to operate from a place of confidence and contentment and peace and power.

You have this abundance of confidence where you can see that you can actually achieve anything that you set your mind to. You’re not afraid to do things, you’re not afraid to feel like a failure or feel like a loser because you know that no matter what happens if you try something and you fail, that you have your own back.

To me, this is like having a superpower. This is why I’ve included it in the Running Lean manifesto. This is why it’s one of the important guiding principles of our life. It’s why it’s such an important piece of all the mindset work that you have to do. Because without unconditional love for yourself, if you want to become anything more than what you are, and who you are, right now, it’s gonna be really hard to do almost impossible. Okay?

So I want you to just start practicing this, start practicing, loving yourself unconditionally. And you do that by practicing positive self talk, write it down. Practice, having your own back, just like you’d have a friend’s back.

And here’s a little exercise you can do practice looking in the mirror, and loving and accepting every bit of who you are right now, every bit of your body, every bit of how you look, and every bit of who you are in this moment. That’s a tough one to do. But it’s powerful. And when you do these things, I promise you, you are going to begin to feel like there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

There’s nothing you can’t do. Cool. Next week, I’m going to be covering the next principle from the manifesto, which is to think, feel and act with purpose. That’s going to be a good one. You don’t want to miss that. You got this, my friends, lots of unconditional love to each and every one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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45. The 5 Habits Runners Must Have to Lose Weight

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The way you make big changes is by consistently doing new things - showing up day after day with drive, determination, and perseverance. In other words...creating new habits. Breaking old habits …

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Podcast Transcript

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 45 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I am talking about the five habits that runners must have in order to lose weight. The way you make big changes in your life is by consistently doing new things.

That means showing up day after day with drive, determination, and perseverance doing these new things. Another way of saying this, is you have to create new habits, you’ve got to break old habits and create new ones. And this just might be the single most important thing you can do for yourself. It’s really the only way that you can make meaningful, lasting changes in your life.

It’s how you become anything more than who you are right now. Let’s say you want to become a marathon runner, you’ll have to break the old habit of sitting on the couch every morning watching Netflix, you’ll have to get into a new habit of running in the morning instead of watching Netflix, even when you don’t feel like it.

Creating habits like this, it’s not easy to do, it’s hard to do. That’s why most people don’t do it. So why most people never change is why most people don’t run marathons. It’s why most people will always be overweight and feel unhappy about it. Because most people aren’t willing to do the hard work of creating new habits.

So today I’m sharing with you the five habits that all runners must have if you want to lose weight, and keep it off for good. But first, if you liked this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a fun group of energetic, positive, and like minded runners who all have the same kind of goals.

We’re all trying to become fat-adapted, we’re all trying to lose weight, and run better, just make running more fun, more enjoyable to push ourselves to become more, come check us out Running Lean community on Facebook. Now we just want to get right into this today.

The five habits that runners must have in order to lose weight and number one is you got to get into the habit of eating real food. And I say this all the time, you can’t outrun a bad diet, right? Running is great. It helps to build strength, it helps to build endurance, it feels good to run, keep running, it’s just not a very good way to lose weight.

Weight loss is almost entirely an issue of diet. If you want to lose weight, you have to change your diet, you’ve got to get in the habit of eating real food. You know, for most of us, the problem really is the carbohydrates and sugar are like the most concentrated form of carbohydrate.

So we’ve got to like stop eating so much sugar because what happens is you eat a lot of sugar and carbs that raises your blood sugar, which you know, makes your insulin levels go up.

When your insulin is high, your appetite is increased, your hunger is increased, you never feel full and your body is put into this fat storage mode. And fat storage mode is not what we want. If you want to lose weight. If you want to lose weight you got to get your body into fat burning mode, right. So in order to do that, you have to get off the sugar and the carbs. Put your body into a state of a to become a more efficient fat-burner.

When you start eating real food, the kind of food that we humans have evolved to eat over the last couple of million years, you begin to lower your blood sugar. You begin to lower the insulin, you begin to regulate all those hormones that are causing you to hold on to fat and you begin to metabolize fat more efficiently.

So eat real food, eat food as close to nature as possible foods that our ancestors would have eaten. So the first habit you have to adopt in order to lose weight and keep it off is you got to get into this habit of eating real food and once you get into this habit and you’re eating real food consistently it’s just becomes a part of who you are, it becomes easy and effortless to maintain, it’s just becomes part of your lifestyle. So that’s number one.

Number two, is you have to practice meal spacing. The other habit that you have to get into is not eating all the time, because that will also contribute to putting your body into that fat storage mode. Because every time you eat any kind of food whatsoever, your blood sugar goes up, and insulin goes up, and then boom, you’re back into that fat storage mode, right.

But if you’re eating constantly, your body is constantly in that fat storage mode. So if you can limit the amount of times you’re eating throughout the day, you know, we do stuff called intermittent fasting, or you can call it meal spacing, whatever you want to call it.

When you just have some periods throughout the day, where you’re not eating food, then you give your body a break from all that insulin, you give your body a break from being in that fat storage mode, and you put your body into fat burning mode for more of the day.

So if you’re eating six, seven times a day, like let’s say you eat three meals a day, you eat snacks in between all those meals you’re eating dessert, then you’re basically going to be constantly holding on to body fat, you’re always your body’s just always going to be in that fat storage mode.

That’s just what happens, it’s almost impossible to lose weight this way, if you’re eating all the time. And one of the awesome benefits of spacing out your meals and having some time without bringing in any external fuel is that you become fat-adapted much faster. So that whole fat-adaptation process can be kind of challenging, you know, running is a struggle for a few weeks while your body’s switching over from burning sugar to burning fat.

And when you can extend the amount of time that your body doesn’t have that external fuel coming in. In other words, not eating anything, you kind of force your body to use stored body fat for fuel, which is good, we want this, this is when you begin to start metabolizing that body fat more efficiently and faster.

So this really helps to speed up the fat adaptation process. And it helps to shorten the amount of time that running sucks, while you’re going through this process, okay, so it’s really, you get sort of a couple of good benefits when you practice some meal spacing.

So that’s the second habit that we have to adopt that you have to just create in your life is to practice meal spacing, it gives your body a break from the blood sugar spikes, because your body a break from insulin, gets your body out of fat storage mode and into fat burning mode and keeps you there and get you through that tough period a lot faster. So that’s number two.

Number three, the third habit runners have to adopt if you want to lose weight, is you have to reduce stress in your life. This is one of the hidden issues around weight loss. For a lot of people, a lot of people have a really hard time losing weight, who are really stressed out.

Stress plays a huge role in keeping your body in that fat storage mode. This is like the third part of the insulin trifecta, you know the bad trifecta. It’s not a good trifecta. Because what stress does is it releases cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

And along with that is glucose is released from your liver and stress and constantly having that cortisol in your body and constantly having high levels of cortisol and glucose will spike your blood sugar and raise insulin levels as well.

So even though you may not be eating anything, even if you may be eating a good, pretty solid, clean diet, you can still be in that fat storage mode just from putting your body under constant stress. So here’s kind of what’s happening. Here’s the background.

We’ve evolved as humans to deal with stress pretty effectively. You know, back in the day, a saber toothed Tiger would come along and our body would see that and go into fight or flight mode. And we’d release the stress hormone cortisol, adrenaline gets produced, glucose gets produced, increases our blood sugar, insulin goes up, all that stuff happens, right?

These hormones are all working the way they’re supposed to, by the way, because they’re getting your body ready for fight or flight to fight the saber toothed tiger or run away So you would have all this extra energy in your body to fight this animal off or run away.

And I would run away for sure. I mean, that’s how I would probably deal with this situation, right, but either way you would use up that energy by fighting or running away, and then the danger would be gone. And then everything would regulate and everything would go back to normal. Okay, that’s good.

That’s the way our bodies are designed to work. But here’s the thing today, there is no saber toothed Tiger. But we have all this other quote unquote, quote, unquote, stress in our life, we have a boss who yells at us, we have traffic that we’re sitting in, and we got the kids screaming at us, we got COVID, you know, we’ve got the husband who’s not helping around the house, we got credit card debt, you know, we all have all this constant anxiety in society today.

And we have this constant, high levels of cortisol and glucose and adrenaline and insulin, and we’re on this, we’re all in this chronic state of, of stress. And so we’re in a chronic state of fat storage mode. You know, stress is literally making us fat.

And they actually have this synthetic form of the stress hormone cortisol, it’s called prednisone. And when people take this, they gain weight, all the time. So I always ask my clients, I’m like, how’s your stress level? You know, what are you doing about it? Because you have to have some sort of a daily plan, a daily practice for reducing stress, it’s not a one and done kind of a thing.

It has to be an intentional daily practice that has to become a habit. So Habit number three is to reduce stress in your life. If you don’t do this, your body’s just going to stay in that fat storage mode, you need to have a daily stress reduction practice, where you’ll have a very hard time losing weight. So that’s habit number three.

Habit number four, is to build strength and endurance. So why is strength training so important for runners? Well, strength training is actually essential. If you want to be a successful runner, even a long distance runner. And a lot of runners don’t do this. They don’t pay attention to strength training, they just don’t do it.

They’re like I run, I’m good, you know. But what happens is when you put your muscles under stress, the kind of not not the kind of stress, I was just talking about the kind of stress that stimulates muscle growth, you build more muscle, you build more lean mass, and you become a stronger runner.

Building strength also helps you to maintain good running form, and more consistent power output, especially as you begin to fatigue during longer runs, you know, endurance athletes that are over 40 will especially benefit from strength training, because as you get older, your strength declines faster than your endurance.

So your endurance might be there, but your strength won’t. So you need to keep up with the strength training as you go or you need to develop this habit. High intensity strength training also produces an anti-aging effect by helping you to preserve lean muscle mass and it helps you to optimize these adaptive hormones.

Being a lean runner means you’re a strong runner, so building strength in your muscles also helps you to build endurance. Because as a stronger runner, you can run further without getting fatigued, you can become more of a bonk proof runner when you build more strength. So practice some sort of strength training on a regular basis.

This has to become a habit. It helps you to build stronger muscles, stronger connective tissues, that absolutely helps you to burn fat more effectively. When you have more lean muscle mass, you’re a more effective fat burner, and you’ll lose weight more effectively. It’ll help you to increase your overall metabolism, meaning it just speeds up the whole fat adaptation process right.

Also cool to note is that when you build more strength, you increase your power to weight ratio. So that means you are a more powerful runner, you’re leaner, you’re stronger, you’re more powerful, you can run faster, and you can run longer. So habit number four is that you have to adopt is to build strength and endurance.

Strength training helps you to become fat-adapted, helps to increase your metabolism, helps you to lose weight, and helps you to get ripped and look awesome. And it makes you a more powerful, long distance runner.

And then habit number five that you have to adopt if you want to lose weight and keep it off for good. And this is probably the most important one and most overlooked habit. But you have to manage your mind. It’s so important. I probably should have mentioned this first. But I’m mentioning it last because I saved the best for last. That’s why I did it. Yeah.

But basically it underpins everything else that I just talked about. Without the right mindset, you really can’t create these other habits very effectively. You know, mastering your mindset is incredibly important and incredibly powerful. And mindset is one of my key areas of expertise as a certified Master Life Coach and a Master Practitioner of NLP, which is Neuro Linguistic Programming.

I’ve studied the human mind in depth for many years. And I’ve learned that when you’re armed with the right mindset, you can basically do anything you want. Seriously, you can do anything you want. And every single day I coach people on managing their mind and creating a more powerful mindset so they can get the results that they want.

You know, they know what to do, their mind is just in the way. Here’s the thing, your thoughts, create everything you have in your life, the good stuff, the bad stuff, all of it. Knowing this is key, it is critical to creating the life that you want for yourself.

Here’s an example. If you constantly have the thought, ‘I can’t lose weight, I always fail. This never works for me.’ If you keep thinking this over and over and over and over and over again, this becomes a thought habit. It becomes a deep seated belief.

And that belief, that thought habit, is going to cause you to constantly feel discouraged, it’s going to cause you to constantly feel frustrated. And feeling discouraged and frustrated, will cause you to go off plan, it’ll cause you to just say like, ‘screw it, why should I even bother, I always fail anyway. It never works for me.’

And this is just a thought habit. You know, it’s a thought that has created your current results. It’s a thought habit that’s created your current weight. Your thoughts always create your weight. Think about that.

If you change your thoughts, you can change your weight. When you learn how to manage your mind, when you create new thought habits, new thought patterns. You can deal with setbacks, you can deal with failures, you can deal with disappointments, you can deal with all kinds of frustrating things, without quitting on yourself.

When you manage your mind and you create these new, more empowering beliefs, and you practice those, instead, you start to build trust in yourself, you start to become incredibly confident in yourself. You find that you have the mental strength and the motivation you need to keep you going even when things get tough, because I promise you things will get tough, they always do.

So managing your mind is probably the most important habit that you need to adopt. If you want to have success in running, and losing weight, and really everything in your life. Now, these five habits are all required.

If you want to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life, kind-of sort-of doing one or two of these, it’s just not going to work. It’s not good enough, it’s not going to give you the results that you want. And I know that trying to figure out all this stuff for yourself can be very challenging.

I mean, if it was easy, if you knew how to do all this perfectly, you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now. Here’s the thing. I’ve already done the hard part, I figured all this out. I’ve already made all the mistakes so you don’t have to.

And I coach people on how to get these results and how to do these five habits and how to create these new five habits in their life every single day. And here’s something I’m excited about and I’m gonna share this with you right now. I’ve created a new program that lays out exactly how to do all of this step by step.

It’s called Running Lean: The Weight Loss Training Course for Runners. In this new program, you will learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean, fat burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without the calorie counting, and develop all the habits required to make this last a lifetime.

I’ve taken everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve been trained on, everything I’ve been coaching my clients on, and I’ve packaged it all up into this online training course that you can go through that your own pace. Now, all this stuff, it can feel very confusing, very overwhelming.

So what I did was, I put it all together into this like, framework, it’s very easy to understand. It’s a framework that you can just learn and begin to implement for yourself. It’s an online self paced training course. It has like over 40 video lessons to guide you step by step, it’ll show you exactly how to create all these habits that you have to have, in order to become an efficient fat burner.

You become fat-adapted, and then of course, you begin to lose weight, which is amazing. It’s a nice little side benefit. This is a comprehensive training course, you will learn how to break the sugar addiction and get off of the refined carbs.

So you can start burning fat, which means you’ll lose weight fast, you can become a fat-adapted runner, so you can run farther than you ever thought possible. You can stop feeling hungry all the time. So you can take back control of what you eat. And when you eat.

You’ll learn how to develop your own nutrition plan that works for you. That includes foods that you love to eat, you’ll learn how to fine tune that nutrition plan so you can hit your exact goal weight, you’ll learn how to properly fuel for those long runs and for races so that you can achieve peak performance at every single workout.

Most importantly, you will develop the mindset required to make all of this sustainable. And I want to make something very clear. This is not a diet. This is not something that you’ve done in the past. This is a transformational training program.

And it’s designed specifically for runners and it will permanently change your approach to nutrition and to running into weight loss and all that stuff I want for you, I want you to stop feeling frustrated, I want you to stop feeling defeated because you keep hitting the wall in your weight loss goals or in your running whatever.

Instead, I want you to start feeling so energized and so confident that you could run all day. And just think about how much easier running will be when you aren’t carrying around all that extra weight.

I can tell you from experience after losing 40 pounds this year, that running is much better. You know, if I strapped a 40 pound weight to myself right now it’d be like, damn, that is crazy. I can’t believe I was running with that much extra weight.

But becoming a fat-adapted runner means you are an efficient fat burner. And this is the goal. This is what we’re trying to get to here. To become a fat burning machine. It means that you have this almost unlimited source of fuel on board at all times your own body fat. Running is so much easier when you’re fueled by fat.

I just ran a marathon this weekend I did it fasted, meaning I did not have any calories before the run I hadn’t eaten for like 12 hours before running a marathon. And then during the marathon I took in zero calories. I was efficiently burning my own body fat for fuel.

And I had one of the best marathon experiences I’ve ever had. I actually got faster later on the run. My fastest splits were the last six miles. This is not normal for me at all. But because I’ve become an efficient fat burner, I’ve increased my running performance by a lot. So in this program, I break it all down for you. I’ll show you exactly how to do it, how to become a fat adapted runner. And so you can start experiencing those kinds of results for yourself.

Oh, and there’s a cool little side effect. When you become an efficient fat burner you lose weight, right? You can’t lose weight when you’re burning sugar for fuel, you only lose weight by burning fat. So in this program, I break it all down and show you exactly how to do it.

I have to say that I’m pretty sure this is the most comprehensive online fat adaptation training course for runners that’s ever been created. In fact, it might be the only one. I know that no one is teaching this material this way. No one out there is combining fat adaptation with building the habits of stress reduction, strength training, explosive workouts and mindset that you have to have in order to make all this work.

I know nobody else is doing it this way. And I’m going to encourage you to jump on this opportunity right now to enroll in this class, because enrollment is open now into this training course. But it closes in a couple of days, I’ve only got it open until Sunday, November the 8th at 11:59pm.

After that, I gotta close the doors for this session. And then I don’t know when I’m going to be running this course again. Okay, so you just have to make a decision. Do you want to keep reliving your same old past? Stuck in all those old habits that got you where you are here today, doing the same things over and over again, that you have been doing and getting the same results like some sort of terrible Groundhog Day?

Or do you want something more for yourself for your future? Who is it that you want to become? Because that future version of you would encourage you to do something to take some action now, the only way you can become more, the only way you can become that future version of yourself is if you do something different today, if you start creating new habits today, because nothing changes, if nothing changes.

Now, a lot of people have been asking me about this. And I typically don’t talk about pricing and stuff like that, because I don’t want to, I don’t want to be salesy, okay, but I’m going to just tell you this right now, this course is worth well over the $1000. This is like thousands of dollars of material here that you will learn it is amazing.

In fact, similar courses like this sell for about one thousand bucks. I was teaching this course earlier this year, I was teaching it live to a small group of people, and it was around seven hundred bucks. And people were glad to pay. That was an amazing bargain at that.

But I want to remove money as a barrier for you. So I decided that I was going to make the investment into this program, a no brainer for you. So enrollment into the weight loss training course right now, just until Sunday is only $297 bucks, this is a one time payment, and then you’re in for life.

That’s it, I want it to be a no no brainer. And I think it is. Oh, and I have something else to announce. When you enroll in the weight loss training course, you can also join the Running Lean monthly coaching group. So your monthly membership gets you bi-weekly live coaching sessions with me.

So you get personalized guidance and feedback, which means you’ll always be able to stay on track. This is a group coaching program. So we do it over Zoom. And we all get to share our stories and stuff together. So you get the supporting encouragement from this small community of like minded runners, so you can learn from their experience, you get accountability.

So you start really showing up and you keep moving towards your goals, right. And then if you happen to miss any of the live coaching calls that we do over Zoom, I record them all and put them on a membership website. So you’ll have 24/7 access to all the recorded calls. This is really like the most cost effective way if you want to get some coaching and work with me.

And here’s something cool just for you guys. I’m giving you a first, your first month free, you can actually try out the monthly coaching group for free for your first month. Just check it out and see what you think. If you don’t love it, you will I know you’ll love it, but if you don’t meet this – no big deal, you can just opt out.

But after that it’s only $39 bucks a month. That’s it. That’s another total no brainer if you ask me. So again, I feel like I need to say this. I’m not here talking to you about all this stuff, and offering you this program because I want to sell you something that is not what I’m trying to do here. I’m offering you this program because I know it will change your life.

You’ve been asking me Patrick, how do I do all this? How do I become a fat-adapted runner? I want to know how to do it. How do I lose the weight when everything I have ever tried has always failed? You know, how do I figure out how many carbs I should eat so that I can run and lose weight? You know, how do I fuel for these long runs?

You ask me all these amazing questions. And so I’ve put all those answers together into this program. I want you to become more. That’s why I’m talking about this today. I honestly don’t care if you purchase this or not. That’s fine. If you want to make that investment into yourself, I think that’s an amazing choice for you to make.

If you don’t, I think that’s fine. I know that this program is life changing and it will get you the results that you want. If you want to go and enroll right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/course and you can get right in.

I want to quickly address a couple of common reasons why people choose not to do something like this. Because I’ve gotten some. I’ve been on some phone calls with people. And we’ve talked about coaching and stuff. And here’s, here’s a couple of the things that they tell me that I want to share with you, because you might be thinking the same things.

The first is, I’m not ready for this, maybe later. How many times have you wanted something? You know, you want to lose the weight, but you’ve said, You know what, I’m just not ready, maybe later. Maybe later is like the number one killer of people’s hopes and dreams.

How long have you wanted to lose weight? Probably a long time. How long have you wanted to change how you feel about yourself? Probably a long time. I don’t want later to turn into never for you. So that’s why I’m curious or encouraging you to take action today.

That’s why the enrollment for this program is only open for a few days, because I want you to just make the decision now. Just do it, I want this for you, I want you to want it for yourself. Because you deserve this, you’re worth it. Your long term health and happiness is worth it. And so I’m encouraging you to just make that decision. Now, don’t say later, do it now.

Another thing people say is I’m just gonna figure this out myself. I’ll just go figure it out, I’ll you know, go on Google, or something. And I’ll just try to figure it all out. And that’s fine, you can do that you can save a few dollars and spend all your time struggling to try to figure it out yourself.

Or you can just spend that little bit of money now. Save yourself all that time, all the effort, save yourself from all that struggling to figure it all out yourself. skip all that skip all the struggle, strip out, skip all the overwhelming confusion and learn it from somebody who’s already made all the mistakes and figured it out.

Because I’ll have you know if you can simply pay a couple hundred bucks and have all this figured out for you is not a no brainer, I think it is for me. I gladly pay for courses, where someone else has spent years learning what works and what doesn’t, figuring it all out, putting together a system or a framework that shows you exactly how to do it all, then I can come along and just pay a few hundred bucks and boom, I get the whole system.

I don’t have to deal with all the struggling, I get instant access to all those years of knowledge. It’s like boom, knowledge download instantly. I love that and I gladly pay for that all the time.

And another thing people say that I just want to address is they’re like, you know, this sounds good. Patrick, I totally agree with you. This sounds amazing, but I just can’t afford it. And I just want you to know that if you’re listening to this now, and you’re thinking about this, and you’re thinking I really need a program like this, because I haven’t been able to do this on my own.

But you think oh, I don’t think I can afford this right now. Here’s the thing, here’s, I’m going to tell you something that is probably the most important thing you need to hear about losing weight about becoming the best version of yourself.

If you feel like you want to enroll in this program, and you think you can’t afford it, then you’re in this place called desirability versus feasibility meaning that you desire to lose weight, to become a fat-adapted runner, to be healthier, and to become that amazing, happier, more confident future version of yourself. But you don’t think it’s financially feasible for you. So what you do next, will ultimately determine what happens in your life. Because thinking it’s not feasible, is actually a form of self-sabotage, that you probably didn’t even realize you’re doing until I just pointed it out to you.

Here’s the truth, you have to ask yourself this vital question to determine whether or not you really want to become that fat-adapted runner or whether you want to really lose weight. And the question is this: am I going to be 100% responsible for my own health and happiness, or am I not?

You know, that’s where you are today. Because you’ve done the things you’ve always done. And if you really want something to change in your life, if you really want to lose the weight and become a lean runner, then you have to do something different. You have to choose to make that happen for yourself.

So the question isn’t, can I afford it? The question is, how can I be 100% responsible and make this happen for me? If you choose to do nothing here, that’s fine. Just means you aren’t willing to get out of your comfort zone. It means you’re probably driven by fear. And you’re probably not going to get there, you’re probably not going to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, which is fine.

You’re just going to probably continue to struggle with your weight, just like you’ve always done. So let’s go back to that important question you have to ask yourself right now, are you going to be 100% responsible for your own health and happiness? If yes, then just enroll in this program. It’s a no brainer.

Again, do you want more of your past or more of your future? My hope for you is that you choose to go all in on yourself, that you make the decision to become the person you’ve wanted to be for so long now that you take action now and start working on becoming more because your future self will thank you because you made this commitment today.

To enroll, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/course. Now, if you’re still unsure about whether or not this program is right for you join me in the Running Lean community on Facebook this Sunday at 4pm. I’ll be hosting a live q&a session where you can ask any question you want, I’ll answer everything for you. They’re cool. I really hope you’ll join me it will absolutely change your life. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, gonna 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.

44. Run Because You Love It

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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 …

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Podcast Transcript

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.

43. Embrace Discomfort

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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 …

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Podcast Transcript

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.

42. Thrive in Your Body

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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 …

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Podcast Transcript

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.

41. Live Vibrantly

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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 …

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Podcast Transcript

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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