Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Let’s face it, it’s been a challenging year for all of us. Just consider the impact the COVID-19 global pandemic has had on each of us - this year has been a huge challenge! We’ve all been forced …
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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 30 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host and the weight loss coach for runners. And if you’re just tuning in for the first time, you’re not losing your mind, I just recently changed the name of the podcast. So this is the podcast formerly known as The Running Mind podcast. And now we’re just Running Lean, boom.
So welcome to Running Lean, where you’re gonna learn all about how to get leaner and get stronger. So you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. You are capable of amazing things. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about. Today, we’re talking about facing challenges in order to unleash that amazingness that is lurking inside you.
Let’s face it, it’s been a challenging year for all of us. Just considering the impact that the COVID-19 global pandemic has had on every single one of us. It’s been a challenging year, it’s been a huge challenge for all of us. We’ve all been forced outside our comfort zones, and into a place that feels very uncomfortable, very challenging.
But what I want to talk about today is how it’s these, these very challenges that we face, that show us who we really are. It’s the challenges that force us to grow. It’s the challenges that change us sometimes in profound ways that we never would have experienced if it weren’t for going through all the discomfort of these challenges. The challenges that we face are essential for our growth as human beings. So I’m gonna get into all of that in just a minute.
But if you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It’s a group that kind of goes hand in hand with this podcast. And it’s a fun, thriving, engaging community of like minded runners who all want the same thing. They want to get leaner and stronger, run faster, and be able to run longer.
And speaking of challenges this month, we’ve been doing the no sugar challenge, and it’s been super fun. It’s hard. It’s a challenge. It’s why it’s called a town challenge. It’s not easy to quit eating sugar, trust me. But lots of people have been in the group ditching sugar and carbs and experiencing, you know, discomfort, but also amazing changes.
And here’s a recent comment from Sondra, she’s in the group and she’s talking about how she feels and she says, “I’m doing great. I’m finally over the headaches and the fatigue. I now have the energy to run consistently and longer. Oh, and I’ve lost inches and I’ve lost eight pounds. It’s day 16 for me, super excited about the results thus far.”
That is amazing, Sondra, that is amazing work. Giving up sugar is not easy. It’s a challenge. It’s hard. But it’s not quite as hard when you’ve got the support of all these people around you to kind of share the experience with you and help keep you motivated. So join the group just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us, I’d love to have you in there.
Also very important. Our next masterclass the next Running Lean weight loss masterclass for runners starts Monday, August 3, that is just 10 days from today. If you’re listening to this on Friday, it’s a six week intensive training program, you’re going to learn how to become a fat adapted runner. That means getting off the sugar and running on fat.
Running on your own body fat, which is an amazing source of fuel. Yes, you will lose pounds, you will lose inches but also you’ll become leaner and stronger you’ll be able to run. Running will be easier. I promise you. It’s hard at first but then it gets easier. I do have a couple of spots left. And I’m only accepting a small number of students per class. I keep it intimate. And it’s a select group of people so you’ll need to apply so if you want to get your application in do it now before the program sells out because it will sell out. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass to apply.
Okay, so let’s get into this topic today, which it’s the challenges that change us. So like I had mentioned, it’s been a challenging year for all of us, you know, we’ve got this global pandemic. I mean, who would have known that something like this would happen. It has radically changed our lives, it has affected the economy, it’s affected us as human beings like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.
There’s been layoffs and work furloughs, people have had to adjust to working from home, people have had to adjust to being at home with their spouses and with their kids. Not always easy. People have had to learn how to use Zoom, talk about stress. You know, parents are expected to homeschool their kids along with, you know, doing their job from home.
You know, our running groups have all been canceled, all of our races have been canceled. All of these big goals and dreams that we had for this year have been canceled, or at least, you know, put on some extended hold. And, you know, these are all big challenges. You know, if you can put all this stuff together, you know, it can seem like pretty overwhelming, right? Pretty big challenges.
So I’m going to share some stuff with you here. And I hope you don’t mind. But I’m going to ask your permission to get real with you. And I’m going to be vulnerable and talk about some things that I really haven’t talked about before. Here’s that cool, cool, cool. Okay, good.
So here we go. So here’s been some of the personal challenges that I’ve faced, in addition to, you know, the global pandemic, and all the fun that’s kind of gone along with that. So at the beginning of this year, I got divorced, you know, my wife said she was ready to move on.
And, and so I had to go through that, which is a challenge. And that meant, you know, finding my own place to live. So I moved into my own place, I had to get used to living alone again, which is kind of weird. After being married for like nine and a half years, you know, I had to figure out how to pay my bills, because honestly, at the time, she was the main income earner for our relationship in our marriage. And so I had to hustle, right, I had to, like, get some jobs and stuff.
So I did, I like, I had my coaching business and I was you know, doing some coaching which was good, kind of building my business at the time. But I went out there and I got some jobs so that I could have some more income coming in. So I got a job working at a running store, local running store, selling running shoes, basically, which was, you know, was fine.
I got a job working as the head coach of one of the local running groups here in Cincinnati, and that was fine. And you know, paid a little bit of money, just good. In addition to those three things, so my coaching, the running store, the running group, head coach, I was doing some rideshare you know, driving just picking up some, some extra cash, driving people around for Lyft, and all that was fine. Like I was fine, I was making ends meet, I was hustling. I was very busy. I was working literally like all the time. And then COVID hit and things really changed in a big way for me, personally.
The two jobs that I had the two paying jobs that I had I got furloughed from both of those so we had to stop the running group and obviously the running store had to shut down. So those two things went away immediately. And then I had to like stop doing that ride share thing because I did not want people in my car.
You know, I did not I just don’t trust you know, people I wanted to stay safe and I didn’t want to get sick. So I stopped doing that. And that all brought a lot of fear to me and a lot of financial fear like how am I going to pay my rent? How am I going to buy groceries? That kind of stuff.
And so I started delivering food for Uber Eats so I just did some of that food delivery and I gotta tell you, during the stay at home order that was a pretty lucrative gig. You know what I mean? I could work on my coaching business in the day and then deliver food dinner time basically and I and I did that for quite a while and really made a lot of good money doing that.
You’d be surprised people were ordering a lot of food during the lockdown. Okay so working on my coaching business during the day, recording podcasts, sharing content, you know, creating programs and things like that. And then at night out there hustling, delivering food and I gotta tell you all of this stuff dealing with all of this and and the divorce and all of that all at once was very challenging for me, there was a lot, a lot of stress going on in my life.
And, and I didn’t choose any of it. You know, it wasn’t like I went out there and was like, I think I’m going to get divorced and start my life kind of all over again, at 53 years old. You know, I didn’t want that. Choose that. I mean, I’ve chosen plenty of challenges like I’ve chosen to do hard things, plenty of times, I’ve run dozens of marathons and ultra marathons, you know, I did an Ironman, I ran 100 miles, I did a 100 mile trail race, all these things are very hard, but I chose them.
They all made me feel very uncomfortable. They got me out of my comfort zone. I knew they would, though. But I made a decision, a conscious decision ahead of time to do these things. Okay, I didn’t choose to get divorced, I didn’t choose to get furloughed from those jobs. I didn’t choose to kind of start my life all over again, on my own. I certainly didn’t choose a global pandemic, to just add to the fun of all this stuff going on.
All of this stuff forced me to get out of my comfort zone. It forced me to get uncomfortable. And inevitably, it like forced me to grow and to change. And this is the powerful lesson that I’m going to share with you here today is that whether or not you choose the challenge, if you face it head on, you change for the better.
You’ve got to embrace the discomfort that these challenges bring. The key is to step up and face the challenge head on, embrace the discomfort. Discomfort is the cost of growth, it’s the price you pay, if you want to change. Because when you avoid discomfort, you avoid all the change and all the growth, you stay right where you are.
Yeah, it feels comfortable, feels good. It’s what you know. But you’ll also never have the experience of becoming anything more than you are right here now in this moment. And one big way that we avoid discomfort is we try not to feel our feelings, you know, we don’t want to feel bad, we don’t want to feel any negative emotions, because that feels bad.
So a lot of times what we do is we buffer away our emotions. And buffering means we put something external between us in our emotions. So we use something like food or alcohol, to make us feel better on the inside. So we might, we might feel scared or lonely or angry. And so we eat something or drink something and it does feel better temporarily.
But we’re basically, we’re resisting those feelings, we’re resisting those emotions that are coming up during that challenging time. You know, we reject anything that’s so called like a negative emotion, because they don’t feel good. And we want to feel good.
Like right now. I can’t tell you how often I used food to feel better at the beginning of this year. You know, the first couple of months after our separation. I was eating a lot of pizza and a lot of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And it did feel good. It was kind of like the best part of my day.
I would you know, like I was saying I was working all day and then working all night. And then I would be like I’m getting a large pizza and a couple of pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And this is going to be like the best part of my day. I look forward to it.
I mean, honestly, that’s probably not awesome, if that’s the best part of your day. But that’s a topic for another day. But anyway, it works for a minute like it does, does feel good. Eat all that sugar and stuff. It works for a minute, but then it doesn’t work right like you come down after sugar.
And then you’re still left with all those emotions, you still feel all those feelings. But only now you feel worse because you’re getting fat on top of feeling hurt or lonely or scared. So avoiding the discomfort does not work. It only makes things worse, you have to embrace the discomfort of your challenges. So I had to learn how to allow these emotions in.
I had to learn how to allow them in and process them just to let them be there. The negative emotions the quote unquote negative emotions, the positive emotions, all of them. I had to stop using food as an escape from my emotions. And this is not something most people are willing to do.
Most people will not do this because it’s hard, it does not feel good, it is uncomfortable. But if you want to step up, if you want to face your challenges head on, you have to allow these emotions in. You know, like, a good example is right before the start of Ironman. So if you’re not familiar with what Ironman is, it is a brutal, it’s like one of the toughest sporting events you can do as a human being.
So it starts with a 2.4 mile swim, and then 112 mile bike ride, followed by a full 26.2 marathon. And so I trained for a long time for this thing, but then, right, you know, the morning of the event, we’re standing there ready to jump in the water. And I was like, feeling so scared, so scared, full of fear. And I just allowed that fear to be there with me, and I, and I, the gun went off, and I jumped in the water.
And I just did it anyway, as a good example, I tuned in to that feeling I had at the time of just allowing that emotion to be there with me, while I was doing this really hard thing. And I was kind of feeling that same way, about the separation and the divorce.
At the beginning of this year, I was feeling so hurt and angry about the divorce, you know, I didn’t want to feel that way. But I allowed the feelings to be there. I allowed those emotions to be there. And I carried on anyway, I just kept doing the next right thing. Anyway, it’s kind of like you’re driving in a car, and you look over in the passenger seat and you’re like, hello, fear, hello, hurt, hello, anger.
Yeah, you guys can come along with me, but I’m driving, you’re not in charge here. So don’t allow those feelings to overwhelm you or overtake you, or dictate how you’re going to show up. You know, keep moving forward, allow the feelings to be there with you. That’s what it means to embrace the discomfort.
You know, think about this sugar challenge or no sugar challenge we’re doing in July, it’s uncomfortable, it’s uncomfortable to not eat sugar, if you’re used to eating it, it doesn’t feel good. You can there’s some like withdrawal symptoms that you get, your head aches, maybe a little lethargy.
And it just doesn’t feel good. And you don’t have that thing anymore, that buffer to use to feel better. So there’s this period of like discomfort and most people are just not willing to feel that discomfort. But I’m telling you, discomfort is the price you have to pay to become more when you embrace discomfort and you face your challenges, you grow.
Because growth doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. Oh, you get in your comfort zone is more of what you already know and have you know, you don’t get to be more. When you embrace discomfort, you learn what you’re capable of. And let me tell you, you’re capable of way more than you realize. When you embrace discomfort, you build trust in yourself, you build confidence in yourself. And you begin to change in profound ways that you’d never even imagine.
If you weren’t faced with this particular challenge, you become more of that amazing human being that you already are, but you just become more. You know, you get to become an example of what’s possible. And honestly, when you embrace discomfort and you like, face your challenges and move through them. It just, it feels amazing. The sense of accomplishment and pride that you have in that, oh my gosh.
Now, here’s the best and worst part about all this, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the change. So, if you want to make some big changes in your life, you’ve got to like face some big challenges head on. You know, and a lot of times, what we do is we say, well, I’m gonna do this little challenge, I’ll stop eating a little bit of sugar. I’ll cut it down a little bit, you know, and then you might get a little bit of a change, you know, but if you really want to elicit big changes in your life, you’ve got to like face these big challenges whether you choose them or not.
You know, I faced some very big challenges this year so far. And because of those big challenges, I’ve changed in big ways. You know, right now sitting here talking to you today. I feel so good about myself. I’m very comfortable living here on my own, I’m very comfortable financially, I’m very comfortable with myself.
I actually love being alone, in love living by myself. I actually have a good relationship with my ex wife. Like we still talk. And just a little sidebar, like who wouldn’t want to be married to me? I just want to know that, right? I mean, because I’m awesome. But anyway, that’s another, another topic.
But I’ve gotten myself off the sugar, I’ve gotten myself off the carbs I’ve lost 40 pounds this year. And it’s not because of stress. Actually, I was gaining weight, because of the stress eating that I was doing. I was one of the reasons why I was like, dude, I gotta do something about this now.
So I got off the sugar and the carbs, I started eating high fat, low carb diet, lost 40 pounds, running is so much more enjoyable again, I’m actually like, at the best weight, and I’m in the best shape of my life that I’ve been at since I can remember, I don’t remember ever being in this good shape. And I’m 53 I’m not like you know, super young.
Other big ways I’ve changed, I’m doing work that I love every single day. Talking to you right here on this podcast is a great example of the kind of work I’m doing. Not because, not in spite of the challenges I’ve had, but because of them. Because I’ve been forced to like step up my game.
You know, I’m building this amazing community of runners. And it fills me with gratitude and with love. I mean, this is an amazing positive group of people that I get to surround myself with, I feel so grateful for that. I have this great coaching business that I just love. Coaching people, by the way, like, when I’m coaching someone, I’m in my zone, and I just feel amazing. You know, right now, this podcast, it’s like one of the top ranked podcasts on iTunes. What? That’s crazy.
I’ve rekindled all these amazing friendships with people, from people from high school and people that I just haven’t been, you know, friends with for a while or haven’t really communicated.
But I have all these people reaching out to me and saying, Hey, Patrick, how are you doing? I just, I feel overwhelmed with love and support from my friends and from family. And today, I show up in everything I do as like the best and most authentic version of myself yet. And I know there’s even more to come.
But today, I can honestly tell you sitting here today, I love myself unconditionally. This is not something I would have said four or five months ago. I love myself unconditionally. And this is one of the most amazing changes I’ve ever experienced in my life. And here’s the crazy part about all this, I would not be here today in this place with all this. All these amazing changes that I’ve experienced. I would not be here today, if I was still married, I just know that I would not be who I am today.
If I was still in that comfortable life that I had. I was forced out of that comfortable life and into all this discomfort. It was very uncomfortable. If I haven’t stressed that enough, it was very uncomfortable, the divorce, the loss of jobs, the pandemic, all of this. But it was the catalyst for my change in my growth. And I know it sounds crazy. But I’m grateful for all of it.
I’m not where I am today despite these challenges. I’m here and who I am today because of those challenges. And I look at challenges differently today. I see challenges as opportunities, opportunities to grow, to change, to become more to get stronger to thrive. I don’t want to just survive. I’m not here to be a survivor, I want to thrive. I want to be amazing.
I just want to be like, fine. You ever ask people like how are you doing? And they’re like, fine. Like of all the emotions you could choose to feel? You just want to feel fine? No, I want to be amazing.
Now are our challenges hard? Are they hard to do? Is it hard to like face your challenges? Yes. Is giving up sugar hard? Yes it is. You know you feel terrible at first,running sucks for a little while. But then is it worth it when you get through all that and you get to the other side of that again? Hell yes. It is so worth it.
Is running a marathon hard? You know it is, but are you profoundly changed when you cross that finish line, especially with your first marathon, oh my gosh, you know you are. So here’s my challenge to you. What are you avoiding doing because it’s hard? What are you not doing because it’s uncomfortable? I want to challenge you today to do that. Do the hard stuff, face those challenges, whether you’re choosing them or not, get out of your comfort zone. Do it off.
And if you can’t do it every day, if you can, you know whether the challenge is something you’re choosing or not choosing, embrace the discomfort because there will be discomfort. Learn how to feel your feelings, learn how to allow them in and keep moving forward. You know, don’t use those buffers against your emotions, don’t eat to feel better, don’t drink to feel better, don’t do drugs to feel better.
Because that stuff that does not work, you have to learn how to feel your feelings. But when you do, when you get out of your comfort zone, when you show up as your most authentic self, when you face your challenges head on, you get to show yourself what you’re made of. You get to become more you will blow your own mind with this work, I promise you.
And you can see what amazing big changes you can make in your life. Who you can be? Who do you want to be? Not despite the challenges but because of them. Ah, that was good. I’m glad I shared that stuff with you guys here today. And honestly join the Facebook group because we talk about challenges a lot in there.
And every Sunday I do kind of like a little free training in there. Sunday afternoons. So last Sunday, we talked about what it means to become a fat-adapted runner and all the benefits of that. And it’s good, we have lots of fun discussions in the group. So please join us over on Facebook, Facebook land, just go to find the Running Lean community on Facebook.
And then remember the next Running Lean weight loss masterclass for runners starts in just 10 days, you will learn exactly how to become a fat adapted runner. It’s an intensive six week training program taught by me live, you get to ask questions, get all your questions answered, you will lose weight, you will run faster, you will become stronger. You will become a bonk proof runner and build around those long distances without ever worrying about like crashing and burning.
You’ll learn how to end the emotional eating and learn how to allow and process those emotions will help you work through embracing the discomfort of all of this. Yes, it’s a challenging program, but it will change you. You will be transformed as a runner and as a human being in just six weeks. And I do have a couple spots left.
So please get your application in now. innerfiretribe.com/masterclass. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
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 Lean 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 a lean running machine.
I'm here with a special edition of the podcast to give you a quick update on what's coming - The Running Mind Podcast is getting a new name! I want the podcast name to more accurately represent the …
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This is the third episode of my three-part series called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I’ve spent years and years trying every type of diet …
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My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 21 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and Master Life Coach and the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got for you part three of my three part podcast series called How to Become a Lean Running Machine.
And the reason I put this together is because I’ve tried everything to lose weight, especially running more and more and more, and nothing I ever did really worked. So I set out to find the answers. I found the answers and I’m sharing them all with you here.
In this three part series. I just want to help you to stop struggling with your weight, I want to help you to start becoming the lean runner that you want to be. Quick reminder, next week, my next weight loss masterclass, starts Monday, June 1. And I want you to do this little visualization exercise with me here. So just take a moment.
If you’re driving, don’t do this. Don’t close your eyes. But if you’re not driving, just take a moment. Close your eyes, I want you to visualize yourself at your goal weight, or whatever that ideal weight is for you. Visualize yourself, Okay, close your eyes and do this right now. And then think about it like what do you look like?
How do you feel about your body now? How much easier is running now? How much more self esteem and how much more confidence do you have now? How much better is your relationship with yourself? What else have you learned along the way? What else have you been able to accomplish?
This is a powerful exercise really, you can open your eyes now. But I want you to just hold this vivid picture of yourself in your mind for a few moments each day when you do this. Your subconscious mind, your brain will actually get you there faster, it will move you there faster.
And if you’re ready right now, to start becoming that future version of yourself. This weight loss masterclass that I have is the rocket fuel you need to get there. Listen, losing weight is hard. If this was easy, we’d all be ripped and super lean. And it would be simple and everybody would have, there wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t have a job as a weight loss coach.
But it’s not easy. Losing weight is hard. There’s a lot more going on, than just like calories in calories out or just run more, right? And that’s what you’ve been learning here. It’s really especially hard to do on your own. Imagine, just imagine how much easier losing weight would be if you had somebody there to teach you exactly what to do and to guide you through it all every single step of the way.
Well, that’s exactly what I do in this masterclass. We just finished up a six week class where my students have had some amazing progress towards becoming their future selves. Okay, I want to share a couple of those little stats with you here. Elizabeth dropped 4 pounds. She wasn’t trying to lose weight but she ended up dropping like four pounds. She wanted to kick her sugar habit, which she did. She’s off of sugar for good and she feels amazing.
Amy lost 9 pounds. She’s down two sizes. She’s dropped four inches off her waist in her hips. Jenny lost 15 pounds and feels completely in control of her over eating for the first time in her life. Eric lost 15 pounds and he doesn’t have to feel like he has to exercise like crazy anymore just to keep the weight off.
Colin’s lost 40 pounds, and he has no doubt he’s going to hit his goal of losing 100 pounds. Oh my gosh. What’s really cool, though, all that is amazing, obviously, let’s celebrate that. But what’s also really cool is that they’ve all learned how to manage their thoughts and feelings around eating and we’re gonna be talking about that today.
They’ve all developed a whole new relationship with food and they’re all still losing weight. So our next masterclass starts Monday, June 1. If you’re in, you’re in, I only take 10 or 12 people through this class at a time, I want each person to get my personal attention. I want each person to get the coaching that they need to succeed to hit their goal.
And it means that you get a better experience because it’s a small group. And everybody loves the group classes. By the way, everybody’s been telling me how awesome it is that they’re on this journey together, and that they can share their struggles and their frustrations, and their ideas and their tips with each other and learn from each other and they support each other.
It’s an amazing little community. So if you want to get in, let’s just do it, just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and sign up to it now. Okay, so, here’s a quick recap of what we learned in the last two episodes.
I feel like I need to say like, you know, previously on The Running Mind podcast, give a little recap here. So I just did. So number one, the first part of this was talking about how running more and eating less, doesn’t really work for losing weight. Okay, running more or exercising more, moving more, doesn’t work for weight loss because our bodies naturally overcompensate by increasing our appetite by lowering our metabolism, you end up eating more so you kind of overcompensate for the calories that you burn from running.
And then the progress is very slow and very minimal at best. Also, running doesn’t address the physical, mental and emotional causes of weight gain, which is hormonal imbalances, mental cravings, emotional eating, okay. Calories in, calories out doesn’t work either, it never has, it’s a myth, our body works against this process again, you reduce calories, your metabolism goes down in response to that your body stays at that reduced metabolism, and the weight inevitably comes back, you just can’t outrun this natural process.
The second secret is that your hormones are most likely all out of whack. So increased levels of insulin put your body into fat storage mode, which also causes the hunger hormone ghrelin and the safety hormone leptin to stop functioning properly. So you’re always hungry, you never feel full. Decreasing insulin puts your body into fat burning mode, which means you know, all your hormones start working the way they’re supposed to, you’re not hungry all the time you feel full when you eat.
You know, everything’s working as it should, your body’s back into homeostasis. And the way you reduce insulin is by changing what you eat and when you eat. So you eliminate the foods that cause the high insulin, which is sugar and refined carbs, and then you just eat less often. Since insulin goes up every time you eat, eating less often.
Doing something like intermittent fasting or just not eating as often throughout the day, like eliminating snacks is probably the best thing you can do and will keep your insulin levels down and get your hormones back in healthy amounts.
And then today, we’ve got the third secret to permanent weight loss, which is you need to learn how to manage your mind and take control of your emotions. When you take away the foods that are causing you to gain weight, your over desire for food, this unnatural desire that you have for food does not go away immediately.
In fact, that desire can go up initially and it can get stronger because you’re in the state of like withdrawal, and craving. So it’s critical at this point to manage your mind and learn how to process your emotions while you’re going through this process. And this is where most diets fail.
And this is also where most dieticians or nutrition coaches fall short. They do a good job of telling you what to eat. But then they’re like, okay, here’s what you eat, or here’s what you don’t eat. Good luck with that. They don’t teach you how to deal with all the mental chatter that’s going on. And all the emotional stuff that you’re feeling that comes up, you know, you get these cravings, these urges.
We have withdrawals, we have to do a lot of emotional eating. This right here is probably the most powerful work that I do with my clients. This is what separates me from the rest of the diet coaches out there. Stop the eating, stop, you know change what you’re eating. That’s the easy part that’s just changing what you do.
And we all know that changing behavior is the least effective way of accomplishing anything. What you’re left with, after you remove the food, that’s the hard part. So, first you need to learn how to manage your mind and then learn how to deal with your emotions.
So let’s talk about how to manage your mind. You need to learn how to deal with the mental aspects of this over desire. So when you stop eating certain foods, like sugar and refined carbs, you’re going to have these urges, you’re going to have cravings, you’re going to feel restless, you’re going to feel deprived, because you’re gonna feel like you’re missing out on something like you’re missing out on on the joys of life or something, okay?
And all this is perfectly normal. Your mind has been programmed to believe that you will die if you don’t eat certain foods, like right now. And it’s for a lot of different reasons. But it has to do with the way our food is made, has to do with the way that our food has been marketed to us.
And it has to do with the way you’ve conditioned yourself to crave certain foods like your whole life. But especially like the people who make our food and market it to us, they’ve learned the secret to selling more food to us, which is to make us crave it like a drug. And it works really well.
They’ve created this thing called the bliss point in food. Scientists now lab are making our food unnaturally over desirable. And so they’ve created this thing that’s called the bliss point. And what it does is like they’ve determined for whatever food it is, what is going to give your body the most dopamine hit.
So the best feel good, physical feel good feeling from the food when you eat it, because every time you eat, you get a little bit of dopamine response, well, you increase the amount of sugar, sometimes you increase the amount of salt or the right combination of sugar, fat and salt or whatever.
And then you have this unnatural dopamine response in your body. Well, this is amazing, right? Because this is what causes them to be able to sell a lot more food. But it’s not good for us because it creates an unnatural over desire for food. And so we have this unnatural over desire right now in society, like we’ve never had before in human history. Okay.
So the good news is, though, that you can change this, okay? This is something that your brain has been trained to do. It’s mostly like subconscious mental habits, okay, and you can change it, you can actually learn how to reprogram your mind. So you got to learn how to train your brain to stop giving in to the urges, and you gotta learn how to train your brain to stop the unnatural craving for food.
Your brain is working against you here. And you need to learn how to stop doing that. Okay, so you need to develop new habits around how you eat, so that you can decrease these unnatural, like primitive desires and cravings for food that is basically making us fat. So you need to learn how to decondition your mind and reprogram your brain, so you no longer have the unnatural cravings and desires.
You need to change how you think about food. And you do this by changing what food means to you. So think about this. Next time you’re about to eat something. Just ask yourself this question. Why am I choosing to eat this? Whatever it is right now. Is it because I’m actually hungry, because I want to provide fuel for my body? Or is it because I’m bored? Or it’s lunchtime, or I eat at this time every day, whether I’m hungry or not? So let’s go get some food.
How you think about food is so key the meaning you assigned to food is so key if you want to change your relationship with it. If you find yourself thinking about food all the time, you might want to take a look at that. You might want to get to the point where food is more of you think of food as more of a way of just fueling your body and not something you’re like obsessing with, obsessing over all day long in your mind.
You know, and if you find yourself using food to feel better than we need to look at the emotional aspect of eating. Okay, we’re going to talk about that in just a second. So if you’re if thinking about food all the time, or if if the reasons you’re eating food are not just because, like oh I need to fuel my body I’m actually hungry, then that’s something you need to get control over. Okay.
The next thing is learning how to take control of your emotions. This is so critical. There’s a lot of emotional eating going on in the world right now, during this COVID19 quarantine, a lot of people are feeling a lot of emotions. And so they’re doing a lot of emotional eating. And I get it, eating feels good, it makes us feel good.
You know, we get that little hit of dopamine every time we eat. This is the same chemical that gets released when you drink alcohol or when you take drugs. Highly concentrated foods and foods that are super high in sugar, especially give us a huge hit of dopamine, and they feel really freakin good. Going back to the bliss point, again, they’ve created this unnatural desire in us, okay.
So what happens is when you start to feel some kind of negative emotion, the first thing you want to do is be like, I gotta make this go away. I want to feel better right now. So what do you do? You go to the fridge, you open it up, you pull out, whatever it is, and you eat and you’re like, Ah, I feel better. What’s going on here is that we’ve trained ourselves to use food as a way of dealing with our emotions, instead of just dealing with our emotions.
So maybe you’ve had a bad day at work, or a fight with your husband. Or maybe your kids are screaming in the background, no problem, just go eat something and feel better. And we call this buffering because what you’re doing is you’re putting a buffer between you and your feelings, you’re using something external, to feel better internally.
The problem with buffering is that it’s temporary, and doesn’t work. And it has a lot of negative consequences. So I used to use alcohol as a way of buffering from my life. And it worked great. I felt better every time I drank. Here’s the thing, though, my problems were still there. My emotions were still there waiting for me.
And when I sobered up, they were still there. Except now I’m home. I was hungover, I was feeling like ass and destroying everything good around me. And then I would want to feel better. So what I would do was what? Drink again, right? Because that’s what makes you feel good.
What a terrible unhealthy cycle to be at, you know, that was just doing the one thing that was like, you know, making my life miserable, making me miserable. And it was the only thing I could do to feel better. But it was also the thing that made me feel terrible. Crazy. The same thing happens with food though.
So you might be stressed out, you might be having a bad day or you’re feeling lonely or nervous about an upcoming event or something and, and you eat over it. You know when Kristine and I separated back in December, I was feeling all the feelings. I was feeling lonely. I was feeling scared. I was feeling sad. I was feeling hurt. And I really started using food as a buffer.
I started using food to feel better. You know Dewey’s pizza, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream became the best part of my day. I looked forward to that all day long. If I can just get to the end of the day where I can like eat a ton of food. Especially that ice cream with all the sugar in it. I knew I would feel better. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t work.
I mean, it works temporarily. It feels good. But then I started gaining weight. And I started feeling terrible about myself. And I still had all the negative emotions. But now I was eating, adding over eating on top of the negative emotions, and it made me just feel worse. Good times.
So what do you do in that situation? I just wanted to feel better. So well, I would like just go to Chipotle, get a giant burrito and chips and walk and I would feel better, right? No. It’s just part of that vicious cycle. I had to break the cycle. I had to learn how to feel my feelings. I had to learn how to stop using food as the escape pod to get away from my life.
I learned how to process my emotions all the way through. I needed to completely change how I felt about myself and how I felt about food. When you learn how to manage your emotions without having to eat over them. Not only will you have a much easier time losing weight, but you will be able to apply this same skill to every area of your life.
When you think about the worst thing that can happen in most situations, you will feel some kind of feeling. And a lot of times the feeling we’re trying to avoid is fear or, or some negative emotion, right? Fears. The biggest one that comes to mind though. But what if you are no longer afraid to feel your emotions, but if you are like, just bring it on, I’ll experience any emotion? And that’s where I’m at today.
And this is what I teach my clients is like, learn how to experience any emotion. And oh my gosh, there’s like nothing you can do. I mean, it sounds kind of scary and crazy to think about that to just like, feel your feelings. But what if you could do that? Like, what if you no longer had to eat to feel better? When you don’t have these like primitive urges, and these cravings, and you can deal with your emotions without eating, like you’re free, there’s incredible freedom in this.
And when you learn how to manage your mind, and learn how to process your emotions through, just allow them to be there, just sit with them. You know, besides being able to lose weight much easier, you get these amazing life skills that you can apply to every area of your life, everything becomes easier.
So, if you want to get back to your natural weight, if you want to stay there permanently, you need to learn how to manage your mind, you need to learn how to control your emotions. And these are skills you can learn. I can teach you all of this.
So let’s recap what we learned here today. Most diets fall short, because they only tell you what to eat or not to eat. They don’t teach you how to deal with your thoughts and your feelings. We have an unnatural mental over desire for food. It was created by scientists mostly, but it’s how we’ve programmed ourselves to think about food.
And you need to learn how to reprogram your mind and create better mental habits around eating. This is how you change your thinking about food. And then eating just like alcohol or drugs, it makes us feel good. You know, we get that little release of dopamine feels good. But you can get stuck in the cycle of using food as a buffer as a way of feeling good temporarily and trying to avoid feeling your emotions.
And it comes with a price: weight gain, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, diabetes, the list goes on and on and on. So you have to learn how to allow your emotions to learn how to feel your feelings. Stop using food as your escape pod. If you want to lose weight and you want to keep it off, you have to change the way you think and feel about food. You have to change your whole relationship with food.
And when you learn these skills, you get to apply them in every area of your life. You become this mental and emotional badass. And when you learn how to do this, there’s nothing you won’t be able to do. I promise you, this is amazing. Okay, that’s all I got for you today.
Quick reminder, the next weight loss masterclass starts June 1 That’s only a few short days away. I don’t have room for 10 people, so you have to sign up now. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating, and you can get signed up. You will learn all of these skills in this masterclass, you will lose weight for sure.
But you’ll also learn how to manage your mind and allow your emotions. This work is life changing, I promise you it is transformational. innefiretrib.com/stopovereating, and enroll now. That’s all I got here. I really hope you enjoyed this series. I’ve got lots more good stuff coming your way very soon. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are 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 Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
This is the first episode of an eye-opening new podcast series I'm doing called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. This subject is near and dear to my heart. I’ve spent years and years trying …
Continue Reading about 19. How to Become a Lean Running Machine Part 1 →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 19 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host and a Master Life Coach and weight loss coach for runners. And today, I want to talk about how to become a lean running machine. And this is the first episode in a podcast series that I’m doing a three part series that I’m doing called How to Become a Lean Running Machine.
This subject is near and dear to my heart because I’ve spent years and years trying to lose weight, I was very overweight for a while there. I lost some weight with running and exercise and diet, and then put a bunch of that weight back on. And then I’ve spent the last few years trying everything imaginable.
And nothing was working at all, until I finally figured out the secrets to losing weight and to becoming a lean runner to getting back to my natural weight and being able to stay there. And now I’m on this mission I want to help as many runners as possible to stop struggling and stop trying to run more to lose weight. I want to help you stop struggling and hit your goal weight too.
So over these next few episodes, these next three episodes, I’m sharing everything I know about becoming a lean running machine. That’s all right here on The Running Mind podcast. As a reminder, my next weight loss masterclass starts June 1, I’m really, really excited about this. I’m really proud of this work that I’m doing and the people that have taken the class already have seen amazing results. Anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds lost in the first five or six weeks, up to 35 pounds loss in the first six weeks. It’s amazing.
You will learn how to control your cravings, manage your emotions, and stop the overeating for good because really the cause of being overweight is overeating. This is a one of a kind masterclass, it’s not a diet program. It’s not an exercise program. It’s a transformational coaching program and my job.
And what I do really well is to help you permanently change your relationship with food. Most diet plans, they just focus on the food, here’s what you do, do this. They don’t do anything to address all the mental and emotional factors, all the mental and emotional causes of overeating, overeating and weight gain.
So as a master life coach, this is my area of expertise and I got you covered here for sure. I will help you go from feeling exhausted out of control and hating how you look in the mirror to feeling full of energy in control. And loving how you look feeling confident about your new body and your new mind. You’re going to completely change how you think and feel about food and about yourself.
It’s a six week masterclass, and we teach this live so we do a zoom call with the group. And I only take like 10 to 15 people at a time. I want to keep it small so that everybody has a chance to get personal one-on-one coaching time with me.
Okay, but in the six week masterclass, you will learn how to control the hormones that cause you to gain weight, you’re going to learn how to stop the cravings of those foods that do not serve you. You’re going to learn how to only desire food that fuels your body, you’re gonna develop this whole new healthy relationship with food, you’ll stop struggling with the uncontrollable urges, we’ll recalibrate your hunger.
So you will feel satisfied for longer, you’re going to be able to use food as a way to thrive not as an escape from your life. And I will teach you how to manage your mind and your emotions, like a badass. And this work that we do. It’s not just about losing weight. It applies to every aspect of your life. The tools that you will learn here you can apply to your work, to your relationships, to your family, to your career, if you’re an entrepreneur, whatever it is.
So here’s what it looks like when you enroll in the master class. Week one we uncover the hidden causes of weight gain so you’re gonna learn all the reasons why you’re gaining weight and what you can do about it. You’re going to learn what foods you absolutely have to stop eating and the most important things you should be eating if you want to lose weight.
Week two we will go into how to recalibrate your hormones. Okay, next week we’re gonna be talking about hormones. But there’s these differences between like, what is physical hunger? What are withdrawals? What are cravings? What’s emotional hunger? You’re gonna learn how to deal with all that stuff, you’re gonna learn how to recalibrate your hormones for optimal weight loss. You’re gonna learn what a food protocol is and how to stick to it.
Week three, we talk about the mental cravings, the urges, desires, how to control your thoughts, how to manage your mind, this is such a key component to this program. And so different from what other people offer out there, honestly, you’re going to manage your mind to eliminate this over desire, this unnatural desire for food, you’re gonna learn how to believe in yourself, you’re going to learn how to believe in your ability to get back to your natural weight, and we will get you there, you’re going to learn how to process those urges and those cravings.
Okay, week four, we talk about making decisions ahead of time, the power of that I talked about that in the podcast, in a recent podcast episode, the power of making decisions ahead of time,
how to overcome obstacles that stand between you and your goal weight, using the power of visualization, and then we get into in week five, the emotional eating piece, you know, we’re we build up to this, okay.
And then in week five, we talk about how to stop using food as a way to escape your life, as a way to escape your emotions. What false pleasures are and how to create emotional well being instead of relying on these false pleasures to feel good. There’s food, it’s much like a drug, you know, we eat food, it makes us feel good, but we’re escaping our life.
When we do that we’re avoiding something, usually when we do that, okay, so I’m going to teach you how to create emotional comfort, without all these negative side effects that you get from like, from overeating, okay.
And then in week six, we’re going to talk about how to feel on purpose, like how to choose your emotions, it’s fascinating that you can choose your emotion, you can choose how you want to feel, did you know that? So we’ll talk about how to do that.
The power of making commitments, how to stop reliving your past, and start creating an amazing future for yourself. And then how to keep getting ongoing support, motivation, how to, you know, do your maintenance, your ongoing maintenance once you get to your goal weight.
So I talk about all of this stuff. It’s a comprehensive program that addresses the physical, mental and emotional aspects of gaining weight, and how to master those things. So that you can lose weight and get back to your natural weight and stay there, okay. You also get access to all the training material. So I record everything and put it on a private website. We have a private Facebook group where you guys can interact, we can ask questions, I post questions and answers in there. And you get one-on-one coaching with me.
So this is one of the biggest things that I offer. One of the most powerful things that I offer through this program is that you get one-on-one time with me throughout the course of the six weeks. And this is key because if there’s something you want to talk about, that’s, you know, maybe a little personal or you want help with a specific issue, you and I will have a chance to do that together. So you get me as your personal weight loss coach throughout this program.
Now, if you’re looking for some kind of a quick fix, this is probably not the right program for you. A lot of people want the magic pill that’s going to make them lose weight, or just tell me the one thing that I should eat. I gotta tell you, that stuff does not work. Okay. This is the most comprehensive and most effective weight loss program that you will ever experience.
I guarantee that the program itself is pretty simple. Okay, it’s a simple concept, but I will tell you this, it is not easy. Over the course of the six week masterclass, you will be challenged mentally, physically and emotionally. But I am there to help you navigate every single piece of that you will not be doing this on your own. I’m not going to just tell you what to eat, and send you on your way and say good luck with that. That’s the way most diet plans work.
Okay, that’s not what I’m going to do here. Also, if you’re the kind of person who likes to sort of half assed stuff, this is probably not for you either. This is a program of commitment, empowerment and action. I want people who are committed to reaching their weight loss goal. If that feels like you, then this is the perfect program for you.
Okay, I can’t do the work for you. Just like your personal trainer can’t do the push ups for you. I can’t do your weight loss work for you. I can’t be there standing next to you every time you know somebody shoves chocolate cake in your face, okay? But I can be there virtually for you to help you. Okay. But you have to show up and you have to have a commitment to do this work. And if that sounds like you, have you committed? If you’re ready to do this now, then this is the right program for you. Again, I only take about 10 to 15 people through this class at a time so that everybody gets the personal attention and coaching that they need to be successful.
So if you want in on this, please go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating, that’s one word, and enroll now you can learn more about the program their enrollment is on a first come first served basis. So once the class is filled, I’m going to close the doors and you’ll have to wait until the next program starts in probably another eight weeks. But if you want to save your spot for this life changing masterclass, then please go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and enroll now. I want to see you in this class. You deserve this. You are worth it. Okay, so sign up today, innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating.
Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Here’s some things that I hear from my weight loss clients a lot, especially my runners. See if any of this resonates with you. So I hear things like, I’m running more, and I’m eating less, and I’m still gaining weight, or I’m running every day, and I keep gaining weight. Or I’m training for a marathon, and I’m not losing any weight, I’m actually gaining weight.
What is happening here, why can’t I lose weight by running? If you have found yourself thinking these things, or trying to run more to try to lose weight, or if you’ve tried to just limit the amount of calories you’ve been eating to try to lose weight, and it hasn’t worked for you, this is not your fault.
The truth of the matter is that this is a broken model of weight loss, it does not work. Okay, we’re going to talk all about that today. I’ve been there, I know exactly how this feels. So just a little quick backstory about me. I was about 60 pounds overweight, I was very sick, unhealthy. I was eating too much, drinking too much, I had a lot of health issues. I got really sick.
So I started eating better and running. And I did lose a lot of weight, okay. And I started getting into ultra marathons and Ironman and stuff like that. And I lost a lot of weight. But I wasn’t able to keep it off. It was temporary. It took me a long time to lose that weight. And then it didn’t take me very long to gain it all back or to gain a lot of it back.
So I started running more and trying to eat less and really controlling my calories by using apps and all kinds of stuff to like count my calories and stuff like that. I tried all these different diets. And none of that stuff was really working. I kept gaining the weight.
And so I had this mission of like trying to figure this out. I’m a runner, I’m healthy. I’m pretty fit, you know, I work out all the time, how come I’m gaining weight? And I had to realize that it wasn’t about the running. And it wasn’t about the calories. It was about this abnormal desire that I had for food and over desire, an unnatural craving and over desire for food. And that unnatural over desire was causing me to overeat.
My body and my brain. We’re addicted to food we’re addicted to eating, and no amount of running is ever going to fix that problem. Okay, so in order to lose weight, I had to figure out what was causing this over desire for food. And I had to figure out how to fix that so that I could stop the overeating so that I could get back to my natural weight. Okay, so I tried all kinds of stuff that I tried diets willpower, starving myself running more, none of this stuff was working.
So I had to get to the to the actual cause. And I discovered something interesting. My overeating was just a symptom of deeper problems. And if I wanted to lose weight, I had to identify and solve those deeper problems. I had to solve the cause of the over desire, cause of the kind of food addiction, not just treat the symptom which was overeating.
So here’s what I learned. The reason we are overweight is not because we don’t run enough. The reason we are overweight is because we overeat, period. And the reason we overeat is because we have a physical, mental and emotional over desire for food. And when we solve these underlying issues, mental, physical and emotional issues, the overeating stops the way It comes off, we get to our natural weight, and we can stay there permanently.
Now, there are three things you need to understand if you want to stop the struggling, if you want to stop the overeating and if you want to lose the weight and keep it off permanently. And these three things go against a lot of what you may already know about weight loss are about diet and exercise. And these are three things that a lot of people are not talking about.
I’m going to talk about them here. These are the secrets to getting your body back to its natural weight. Okay. So the first thing I’m going to talk about, and the subject of today’s podcast is all about how running more and eating less does not work for weight loss. Okay, so this is secret number one. So we’re going to focus on this today.
So we’ve been told for decades that the formula for weight loss is this, right: eat less, exercise more. That’s all anybody has ever said. And so this has like been the normal advice we’ve all been given. But unfortunately, it’s not good advice. And it’s basically wrong. It just doesn’t work.
Okay, running more and eating less, does not work. If you want to lose weight, and keep it off permanently. So, just a little backstory back in the 1970s, early 70s. There was this guy named Jim Fixx, and he and he wrote this book called The Complete Book of Running. And so this guy is considered sort of the catalyst for the American Fitness revolution, okay, he really popularized the sport of running.
Since then, running has become like such a popular and such an accessible sport to people. I just did some research on this, there are more than 30,000 running events in the US every year. So that includes 5k’s marathons, half marathons, ultra marathons, all that stuff. Yet, as a nation, we are fatter than ever. We are exercising more than we ever have in a recorded human history. Yet since the 1970s, the obesity rates, especially here in the US have tripled. This is crazy.
Okay, what is happening here? Here’s why running or exercise doesn’t really work for weight loss. So there’s three parts to this: running doesn’t work for weight loss. And the first part is this, that we tend to overcompensate by eating more food. So when we exercise, we burn calories, right, we burn a bunch of calories. Well, when that happens, our body requires more calories.
So do you ever notice how hungry you are after a long run? I know that I used to eat like crazy after a long run. That’s because after your long run, your brain is sending signals to your body to increase your appetite. So this causes you to actually eat more food. So your body’s always like trying to regulate itself, right? It’s trying to get back to a neutral state.
That neutral state is called homeostasis. And what happens is when you burn a lot of calories, your body’s like we got to get all those calories back. Okay, so it sends signals using hormones to your brain, to increase your appetite to cause you to eat more food. And a lot of times we overcompensate.
So instead of just, you know, eating the exact same amount of calories that we burn or fewer, we eat more, which leads to weight gain instead of weight loss. That’s why a lot of people who train for marathons gain weight, because their appetite is increased and they overcompensate. And there’s kind of a mental thing there too, where people think, hey, I ran today, so I can eat whatever I want.
And they’re just shoving doughnuts and stuff in their mouth all the time. Right? And it’s fun, I get it. Like it’s like, hey, I’m a runner, I can eat whatever I want. And I see all these memes and all these posts in Facebook groups, from runners who are like, I run so I can eat anything I want. And it’s funny, but it doesn’t really work.
Okay, you can’t just consume donuts and expect to lose weight. I don’t care how much running you’re doing. That is not going to work for you. In fact, it is going to have some very detrimental effects for you. It’s just not about it’s not about that you just can’t eat anything you want just because you’re running. Okay.
So when you exercise, you’re burning a lot of fuel and your body’s like I need to get back to homeostasis as quickly as possible. So it does this by making you hungry so you eat more food. Running actually makes you hungrier, you overcompensate, you gain weight. And this cycle just continues.
And then when you’re not exercising those hunger signals because you’re eating certain types of food, and we’ll get into that later, but because you’re eating certain types of food, and because you’re constantly burning a lot of calories, you’re constantly in this like increased appetite mode. It’s a vicious cycle, okay? You just can’t outrun this process, you can’t outrun your appetite here. Okay. So that’s number one. The number one reason why running doesn’t really work for weight loss is because you tend to overcompensate and your body’s this is just a natural process that your body is doing here. Okay.
Number two, when you try to use exercise running as a way to lose weight, progress is slow and minimal at best. It takes a long time to lose weight just by exercising just by running a bunch of miles. And when you do, the effects are usually pretty minimal. So there’s a couple of studies that were done. One of them studied this large group of men and women for over a year. And they had them do an hour of strenuous exercise six days a week for more than a year. Okay.
After the study, after more than a year, the women had lost an average of only three pounds, and the men had lost an average of around four pounds. This is after a year of exercising six days a week. They’ve done a lot of studies like this that prove that exercise is not a great way to lose weight. Okay.
Another study that I think is really fascinating is that they took this group of sedentary people, people who normally do not exercise, and they had them trained for a marathon. Okay, so what is that, 17 weeks, 20 weeks? And then at the end of the training season, they checked in and the men had lost an average of around five pounds, which is not bad. The women had lost zero pounds. This is crazy.
This is a ton of running that you’re doing when you’re training for a marathon, right. But it just doesn’t work. All of these people were overcompensating by eating more food, okay. But one of the most compelling studies was the Women’s Health Study. So this is where they followed around 40,000 women for 10 years. 10 years!
And they were divided up into three different groups, high exercise, medium exercise, and low levels of exercise. And the high intensity group exercised for like an hour every day, okay. And after 10 years, they checked out the groups, and this high exercise group has lost no additional weight. In fact, there was no noticeable change in body composition. This is insane, right?
But you just got to look at the facts. You know, science has proven time and time again, that exercise is not a great way to lose weight, yet we are so Ultra focused on this one thing: just run more, and the weight will magically come off, but it doesn’t work. Okay. So that is reason number two why running does not really work for losing weight. Which it progresses slow and minimal.
And then reason number three, why running is not a great way to lose weight is because running doesn’t address the underlying causes of weight gain, the mental, physical and emotional causes. Okay, running is just treating a symptom. So you gain weight, and then you want to try to burn it off by running right?
All you’re doing is just putting a tiny bandaid on this huge wound, okay, it’s just not enough, it’s not going to work, okay, you just cannot run enough to get out of that cycle. And you’re not addressing the underlying issues. And that’s what the third thing here is, it doesn’t address the cause of overeating, the cause of your over desire for food.
Like I said before, overeating. That’s just a symptom. You’ve got to treat the cause of the overeating, which is an over desire, okay. And I feel like I need to say this here. So I don’t want you to stop running. Running is awesome. It’s very, very good for you. It helps to build strong bones and muscles. It improves your overall fitness, especially your cardiovascular fitness. It helps you sleep better. It helps reduce stress, it’s really good for your heart. It’s an amazing thing to do. So keep running for sure.
Just don’t rely on running as a way of losing weight. Okay, so I just want to make sure that I threw that in there, okay. But there are mental issues and emotional issues that are hidden kind of beneath the surface that cause us to overeat that cause us to crave food and have an unnatural craving for food and running just doesn’t address those things. Okay?
So the three things that why running is not a great way to lose weight is you overcompensate, progress is slow and minimal, and then it doesn’t address the underlying causes: the physical, mental, emotional causes of overeating.
Okay, so that’s why running is not a really great way to lose weight, and then why eating less doesn’t work for weight loss. This is fascinating stuff right here. So we all think that if we just burn more calories than we take in, we can lose weight, right? We’ve been taught this forever. And it’s not that simple. It really does not work the way you think it does.
Okay, so here’s what we think. We think that if we normally burn something like 2000 calories a day, if we restrict our daily calorie intake to 1500 calories a day, we’re going to lose weight, right? I know you’ve tried this, I’ve tried this for years, I actually had this app where I was logging every bit of food that I ate, every time I went to a restaurant, everything I bought in the store, everything I made at home, like I was logging every single item.
And you know, getting my macros right, and counting all the calories, and then making sure that I’m running to burn off more of these calories. And it was completely ineffective. And so frustrating. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted entering food data into this app. It was crazy, okay.
But here’s what happens, you restrict your caloric intake to you know, 1500 calories, okay. And what happens is your body then lowers its metabolism to conserve calories. Okay, your body, again, is trying to get back to homeostasis, it wants to get back to normal, okay. So if you’re used to eating 2000 calories per day, and you limit your intake to 1500, your body has this process where it will down regulate its metabolism, to only burn those 1500 calories and no more, your body has a very good system at regulating this.
What’s happening here is your body is trying to keep you from starving to death. If you were to continue to lower your caloric intake, you know, there’s this idea that if you continue to lower your caloric intake, you can just keep losing weight, and you can lose some weight, but your body will continue to downregulate.
Okay, so let’s say you lowered your caloric intake and you’re losing like two pounds a week, you know, if you went on this thing for, like, two years, would you lose 200 pounds? No, you would not. Your body will downregulate what it burns. And it’ll keep you at a certain level. Okay.
Because your body’s like, I do not want you to starve to death. Okay, your body is really good at this process, okay. They actually did this experiment back in the 40s, like 1944 or 45, right after World War Two or during, during the end of it. So it was called the Minnesota starvation experiment.
And it sounds terrible I’ll tell you, but they took a bunch of healthy young men, who averaged eating around 3000 calories a day. And they lowered their caloric intake to around 1500. And then they lowered it even more to like less than 1000. And there were all kinds of issues that they had.
They ended up being like super cold all the time. Their fingernails got really brittle, their hair was falling out. Like there were all these side effects, you know, because their body was trying to conserve calories it was trying to and so it was putting all its it lowered the metabolism so much that it wasn’t effective at keeping the body in, in a good state in a natural healthy state.
And so these people were slowly losing their minds. They were starting to, you know, hallucinate and think about food all the time, and anyways, horrible. But anyway, the expected weight loss for each of these guys was around 78 pounds. That’s what they expected would happen. They discovered though, that on average, they only lost about 37 pounds each.
And what they figured out is that their bodies were reducing their energy expenditure in direct response to the reduced caloric intake. So the body was lowering its metabolism to make up for the fact that they were getting fewer calories. So for those people who were doing like 1500 calories a day, at that time, their energy expenditure dropped to only around 1400 calories per day.
So the body actually creates this little buffer, this margin of safety. Again, it’s like trying to stay healthy, so you don’t starve to death. Okay? Once the experiment was over, though, and they went back to their normal caloric intake, the 3000 calories, or whatever it was, they started gaining weight until it was actually they were even heavier than they were before the experiment.
And I know that we have all experienced this kind of thing, you kind of starve yourself, you eat less for a while, and you kind of lose a few pounds, but then you start eating normally again, and, and you gain all this weight back. In fact, you’re heavier, right? It’s crazy. I’ve done this before. It’s a crazy cycle. It’s no fun at all. But the fewer calories you eat, the lower your metabolism goes, and the fewer calories you burn.
There was another study done most recently in like 2008. And they had these participants, you know, they lowered their caloric intake, and they initially lost like 10% of their body weight. And their total energy expenditure decreased as expected. But it didn’t last very long, their metabolism actually remained reduced. So their ability to burn calories remained reduced for the entire year of the study. So even after a year at this new lower body weight, their total energy expenditure was still reduced by an average of almost 500 calories per day.
When you lower your caloric intake, your metabolism decreases almost immediately. And then that decrease persists basically indefinitely. Otherwise, you’d keep losing weight until you die. And the application of this is like it’s, it’s obvious like, let’s say, prior to dieting, a woman eats and burns 2000 calories per day. And then following doctor’s orders, she adopts a calorie restricted portion controlled low fat diet and reduces her intake by 500 calories a day, quickly.
Her total expenditure also drops by 500 calories a day. So her metabolism lowers. She feels lousy, tired, cold, hungry, irritable, depressed, but she sticks with it thinking that things must eventually improve, she might lose some weight. But as the caloric expenditure decreases to match the lower calorie intake, the weight plateaus.
And a year later, things have not improved, the weight slowly comes back. Even though she’s eating the same number of calories, right? So she finally figures this is not working. She abandons this failed diet and resumes eating 2000 calories a day, but her metabolism has slowed. She’s only burning off like 1500 calories a day now. And all the weight comes rushing back.
And people will say, well, you just are lacking willpower, right? You need to just, you know, eat less, control yourself. Right? Does this sound familiar to anybody? This is my experience for sure. Okay. Everything I’m describing here has been well documented, okay. Remember, your body is always trying to balance things out, your body always wants to get back to homeostasis.
And when you limit the amount of fuel that you give your body, your body also limits how much fuel that will burn. So you don’t become calorie deficient and starve yourself to death. calories in, calories out is broken. It does not work. Your body naturally works against this process. Okay.
So let’s recap. Running more does not work for weight loss. Your body naturally overcompensates by increasing your appetite and you end up actually eating more than you would normally. Progress is slow and minimal at best. And running doesn’t address the physical, mental and emotional causes of weight gain. It doesn’t address the hormonal imbalances that cause us to overeat the mental cravings, the emotional eating.And then eating less doesn’t work either, calories in calories out is a myth.
It doesn’t work. Your body naturally works against this. You reduce calories and your body lowers its metabolism and response, your body stays at that reduced metabolism basically forever. And you cannot lose weight this way. If you want to lose weight, you have to address the causes of weight gain. And just eating less and running more does not address the cause.
It’s just treating a symptom and doesn’t do very well. That’s why this approach to weight loss is so frustrating. It was so frustrating to me for so long and so frustrating to my clients for so long, because it doesn’t work. Okay, so next week on the podcast, I’m going to be talking about the role your hormones play in overeating and gaining weight. And this is a fascinating, fascinating topic. You will learn a lot I guarantee it.
But one of the biggest reasons why we gain weight is that our hormones are just completely out of whack. Okay, and I’m going to talk about how to get your hormones back in balance by simply changing what you eat. This is fascinating. It’s eye opening information, it will completely change what you know about food and how it affects your body.
Okay, quick reminder, my next weight class weight loss masterclass starts June 1, and I only take about 10 people through the class. So if you want in, you have to enroll now, go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and get signed up. Drop the Quarantine 15, get your body ready for the summer, become a lean running machine. Go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating to enroll now. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles, are 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 Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
Today, I have a cool little brain hack to teach you. It’s all about the power of making decisions ahead of time. It’s a simple technique, but it’s not always easy to do. It requires a little bit of …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host and the life coach for runners. And today, I’m going to be talking about a cool little brain hack that you can do. I’m going to teach you this today. It’s all about making decisions ahead of time. It’s a simple technique. It’s not always easy to do. It’s not easy to do at first, but it gets easier. We’ll talk all about that in just a minute.
But when you commit to doing this, you kind of trick your brain, okay? You can, it’s a cool way to build confidence, confidence in yourself, build trust in yourself, create momentum towards your goals, keep you motivated, get more done. All of that in just a minute.
First, let me ask you a question. Have you tried using running as a way to lose weight? And has this ever worked for you? My guess is probably not. Because I’ve tried this. I’ve tried this for years, and it has never worked. And I know why now. But running was not working.
I was running many, many miles to try to lose weight and I wasn’t getting any results. I tried all these different diet plans. I tried using sheer willpower. I tried restricting calories, none of this stuff worked. So I did tons of research. And I finally found the answer. It turns out that I had an unnatural over desire for food, and no amount of running was ever going to fix that.
I also learned that this wasn’t entirely my fault. My over desire, this unnatural over desire was caused by things like the way our food is made the way it’s marketed to us. And mostly by the way that I had trained myself to think and feel about food. So I was an over eater, okay, I was over eating. But the overeating was just a symptom.
The real problem was an underlying physical, mental and emotional relationship with food. And when I figured out those three things, when I figured out how to fix those three things, I was able to lose the weight easily. And I’ve been able to keep it off. So I’ve dropped 23 pounds in the last couple of months here. I’m actually back to the weight I was at when I was training for Ironman back in 2013.
And back then I was working out like over 20 hours a week. And today I’m barely working out at all, seriously, I’m running a couple of times a week, I go for a walk every now and then. But I’m not doing that kind of training. And I’m back to that weight. And then one of my weight loss clients just checked in with me this morning.
And he said he’s lost 29 pounds since he started working with me just six weeks ago. He says he feels great. He has tons of energy. He no longer suffers from those crazy food cravings and doesn’t have those uncontrollable urges anymore. And he says that for the first time in his life, he feels completely in control of his weight. He even said that he doesn’t have any pants that fit him and so he’s got to go buy all new clothes, which is not a bad problem to have.
But if you want to learn how to do this, if you want to learn how to change your physical, mental and emotional relationship with food, I’ve created a brand new training program. It’s free, and it’s called How to Become a Lean Running Machine and you can get it right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean to get the free training.
You’re going to learn why running more and eating less does not work to lose weight, and you’ll learn what to do instead, you’ll discover why we store fat on our bodies and how to train ourselves to burn more of it. You’re going to learn how to reprogram your mind so you stop craving food that does not serve you and you’re going to understand how to break those emotional eating habits.
Now I explain the science behind all this. I provide solutions to help you recalibrate your body to manage your mind to control your emotions. Just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean. And you’ll discover the secrets to becoming a lean running machine. And spoiler alert, it’s not about counting calories, and you don’t have to run 20 miles a day. Okay, just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you too can become a lean running machine. Cool.
So today we’re talking about making decisions ahead of time. This is a cool, cool brain hack. I’m really excited about talking about this today. So before we get into the content here, the actual solution, what we’re going to do, I need to explain a couple of things to you, I need to talk to you about how your brain works.
Now, we have kind of two brains, we have a primitive brain, and we have a modern brain, we have this primitive area of our brain called our amygdala. And this is often called the fear center of our brain. Now, the amygdala is like, responsible for our fight or flight response. Okay, this is like an old part of our brain that was used, you know, created eons ago, okay, so, a lot of times people call this our reptilian brain, or I like to call it our lizard brain, okay?
But this part of our brain is responsible for the fight or flight for those primal urges that we have for just survival. It’s always wanting to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Okay, so this is all of our like primitive urges, this part of our brain, the amygdala is responsible for all that, okay. We also have an evolved brain, and this is called our prefrontal cortex.
And the prefrontal cortex is, is more modern, it’s one of the newest parts of our brain. This is the part of our brain that controls cognitive behavior. It controls planning, it’s responsible for decision making. Okay? So just so you understand the difference between the two, we have our, our lizard brain, that’s the fight or flight, the fear center, the primitive urges, and then we have the prefrontal cortex. This is our modern evolved brain responsible for cognitive behavior, and decision making, okay.
So when it comes to making decisions, clearly, we don’t want to be using our amygdala. We don’t want to be using our lizard brain to make our decisions for us, okay, but too many of us do that. We do this all the time, we’ve trained ourselves to just give in to those primal urges, at all costs, okay? This is not good for us, okay.
So when it comes to reaching a goal, succeeding in anything that you want, like, if you want to succeed in running, let’s say you want to run a marathon, or let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds, either of those things, is just a series of decisions that you make along the way. Okay, Tony Robbins actually has this quote, and I love this quote, he says, “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.”
So do you want to leave your destiny up to your primitive brain? Probably not. We want our destiny to be shaped by our prefrontal cortex by our thinking, cognitive decision making brain, okay. So what happens though, is we don’t do that, we have learned over our whole lives really to just give in to these primal urges to just be the lizard brain, okay?
But what happens when we do this is we make a decision, and then when the time comes to actually act on that decision, we give in to the feelings we’re having in that moment, okay. We don’t do what we say we’re going to do. So we may, we may plan on running tomorrow. But then tomorrow comes and we wake up in the morning, and we had it on our schedule to run five miles at 6am.
And then at six o’clock, your alarm, you know, or 5:30, your alarm goes off, and you’re like, I don’t feel like it. And so you just hit snooze, and snooze, and snooze, and you get up at like 7:30 or whatever. You just don’t feel like running. So you’re giving in to that primitive urge of like, oh, this is uncomfortable. I don’t really feel like doing this right now. So you don’t do it.
Or maybe you plan on eating healthy food tomorrow, okay, and then tomorrow comes and then you know, you’re at the company in the break room, and somebody has some cupcakes sitting there and you’re like, ah, screw it, I’m just going to eat five cupcakes, whatever, who cares? You know, like you’re just giving in to those primitive urges.
You know, you have this desire, this craving and you just give into it. That’s letting the primitive brain that’s letting your lizard brain run the show. Okay, you’re when you do this though, and we do this with everything in our lives. That’s crazy. When you do this, you’re putting your lizard brain in charge of your goals and your dreams. That’s crazy.
But I see this all the time. Runners, they don’t run. People who say they want to lose weight, and they just eat whatever the hell they feel like. And what do you get when you do that, when you continue to give in to these urges? You get nothing, you don’t get the results you actually want. You don’t get anything done, you don’t create the momentum you need. You don’t feel motivated, you feel stuck.
So you end up just giving up on your goals and your dreams, and leaving your lizard brain in charge of your life. And this, when you do this, it’s like a dream killer. Okay? Well, that sounds terrible, but it’s true. Okay, so instead, you want to put your prefrontal cortex in charge of your decision making, you want your modern evolved brain running the show, okay? You want that planning, thinking, and cognitive brain to be making decisions and following through on those for you.
This part of your brain is far superior at setting goals and accomplishing things, okay? You’ve got to train yourself, though, to use this part of your brain, it’s really easy to just use your primitive, primal fight or flight, you know, fear center, like just just get into that that’s easy to do. It’s not easy to use your prefrontal cortex to plan ahead, to write out your training plan to plan what you’re going to eat, and then actually do those things.
Follow through with those things. But you want to use your prefrontal cortex, you want to use it to make decisions and keep those promises that you make to yourself. Okay. So how do you do this? Well, step one is to plan ahead. So get the steps that you need, figure out what your training plan is, figure out what you’re going to eat, okay, and then put that stuff on your calendar.
Alright, so plan ahead, plan your runs for the whole week, plan on what you’re going to eat for the week. And I tell my clients always plan at least 24 hours in advance, this is key. You know, if you make plans for an hour from now, you’re already into that lizard brain thinking because you’re already like responding to how you feel in the moment, okay, and you, you cannot do that, you have to plan ahead of time, okay? It’s so easy to just give into the urges in the moment. Okay. So number one is to plan ahead, always, always, always plan ahead.
And then number two, there’s only two steps to this, by the way. Number two is to follow through, do what you say you’re going to do. If you put a training run on your calendar for tomorrow morning at six o’clock, do your training run tomorrow morning at six o’clock, when the time comes tomorrow to eat a healthy meal, eat what you said you’re going to eat, don’t deviate from that, okay?
Don’t deviate from your pre-planned schedule, or your pre-planned eating plan or whatever it is. So when you do this, you start to train yourself, you start to train your brain to use more of the evolved brain and you start to quiet the lizard brain. You stop giving in to the primal urges, like I don’t feel like it. And you start building momentum towards your goals.
So you plan ahead, and you follow through, you plan ahead and you follow through it, you plan ahead and you follow through this is how you get stuff done. This is how you build momentum and trust in yourself. This is how you build motivation. Your motivation is a feeling. That feeling is created by thoughts. You know, so what do you want to think? What do you want to do so that you feel motivated? Motivation doesn’t come from outside of you. It’s a state of mind.
So here’s an example from my weight loss clients. Okay, this is what I tell them to do. And this is how we apply this when it comes to losing weight. So I make them well, I encourage them and make anybody do anything. But I encourage them to plan all of their food for at least 24 hours in advance. Okay plan, I recommend writing out a two week eating food plan which we call a protocol. So write out a two week protocol. This is what I’m going to eat every day. Okay?
But at least 24 hours in advance you plan what you’re going to eat and then you only eat what you said you’re going to eat okay, you don’t deviate from that ever. So you choose foods that are going to fuel your body in advance and then you only eat what you said you’re going to eat. You do not deviate ever, okay?
You don’t give in to those primitive urges, or the cravings, and I teach my clients, I’ve got some awesome tools and strategies that they can use for how to deal with the cravings and urges when they come up because they do come up. But I teach them to honor their protocol no matter what.
And this is hard to do at first, because it’s uncomfortable. Our primitive brain is saying, like, I don’t want to be uncomfortable here. You know, I’m all about avoiding pain, and seeking pleasure. And this feels kind of painful to me, it’s not pleasurable. But I gotta tell you something, that uncomfortable feeling, it goes away, and it goes away pretty quickly, when you stick to this, you know, might be a few days, it might be a couple of weeks, but it goes away.
And then what happens is, my clients, they begin to lose weight, they begin to feel good about themselves, they start to build trust in themselves, they know that they can then go to a party, and they don’t eat the cupcakes that are there, not because they’re like white knuckling it and starving themselves and forcing themselves not to and using sheer where willpower is because they’ve built up some mental toughness, they’ve built the confidence that they need, and they just no longer have those cravings and those urges, okay, they begin creating these new mental habits.
They’ve hacked their brain, they’re creating new neural pathways, they’ve been creating new behavior patterns. So they’re no longer a slave to the lizard brain, their prefrontal cortex is now running the show. And it’s a lot easier for them to just stick to their plan. And they keep making steady progress, they get to their goal weight, and they end up having to buy all new clothes, which is a good problem to have, right.
But they’ve built so much trust and confidence in themselves that, you know, when it comes to just maintaining that weight, it’s a piece of cake. Pardon the expression, it’s easy for them. It’s a cupcake. And it takes practice, I gotta tell you, it’s not easy.
At first, it will be uncomfortable, but that’s okay, because you can handle a little discomfort. You know, your lizard brain is always trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure, it does not want you to be uncomfortable at all, you know, your lizard brain is gonna say just eat the Ben and Jerry’s, you know, or you don’t really need to run today, it’s fine, you’ll be fine.
But you cannot listen to that lizard brain, okay? Except the fact that there will be a little discomfort when you are, you know, going for some big goal that you want, except that you will be uncomfortable. That is part of the process. But do what you said you’re going to do no matter what. And do this over and over again. Plan ahead and follow through, plan ahead and follow through. Keep the promises you make to yourself. And it gets easier. And the more you do it, the easier it gets. And the more you do it, the easier it gets.
And you build mental toughness, you build confidence in yourself, you build trust in yourself. You said you were going to run and you did. You said you are only going to eat what you put on your food plan and you did, you stuck to it. You didn’t give into the urges eating give into the primal cravings. This builds a huge amount of trust in yourself. It builds a huge amount of trust in your ability to accomplish things that are important to us.
One of the problems is we get stuck in this moment of, you know, giving into an urge to eat the ice cream, even though we know we shouldn’t. And we know we’re not going to lose weight if we eat the ice cream, but we do it anyway. And what we’re doing here is we’re making the ice cream more important than our long term health and our weight loss goal.
We’re trading a tiny bit of immediate gratification for getting to our goal weight for feeling good about ourselves. You know, we trade away our long term health and happiness for some tiny bit of short term pleasure. So when you plan ahead and follow through you build trust and confidence in yourself and there’s really there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you won’t try.
You know you train your brain so you don’t make decisions on the fly that you make all of your important decisions ahead of time when you stick to them. This is a cool little brain hack. I’m telling you it works. You create new neural pathways and you create new brain patterns, right these are like new mental habits. And then you create these new patterns of behavior that become easier and easier over time.
So you’ll know you’ll have this confidence and confidence in yourself that no matter what you will stick to your training plan. And when you know that, when you know that no matter what you’re going to stick to your trading plan, how do you think you’re going to do in that marathon? Probably pretty damn awesome.
When you know, no matter what you’re only eating what’s on your food plan, how much easier do you think it’s going to be for you to lose weight, probably a lot easier. This is a simple little brain hack. But it’s so incredibly powerful. Most people have no idea how to do this. Most people just listen to their primitive brain, they just let the lizard brain run the show.
They let the lizard brain make all of their decisions, they just give in to all the primal urges no matter what. And most people never make any progress toward their goals because of this. And they always feel like they’re stuck. And they are stuck in this loop of like, avoid pain, seek pleasure, avoid pain, seek pleasure, and they’re not willing to get even a little bit uncomfortable. And so they don’t get anywhere. And their life sucks and they can’t figure out why.
Instead, learn how to use your evolved thinking brain practice using your prefrontal cortex. Put your modern thinking brain in charge of all of your important decisions, plan ahead, follow through, plan ahead, follow through, just keep doing that. And I promise you, you’re going to be a mental badass, there’s nothing you won’t be able to accomplish seriously. Alright, that’s all I got for you today.
Next week, I got something cool that I’m doing for you. Starting next week, I’ve got the first in a three part series that I’m doing all about why runners gain weight, and what you can do to lose the weight and how to become a lean running machine. I’m gonna be talking about that over the next couple of weeks. I’m excited about sharing that stuff with you guys. I’m really passionate about this.
I’ve had amazing results in my weight loss journey over the years, and most recently, some some sharing this with other people. They’re starting to get amazing results. And I want to share this with you guys. So that’s all I got. Listen, I got lots and lots of love for each and every one of you, my friends, always. 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 Lean 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 a lean running machine.
Today I'm talking about the right way vs. the wrong way to set goals. The problem is most people pick some random goal, it's usually too small, and they kinda sorta come up with a plan for making it …
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My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and the life coach for runners. And I teach you how to stop struggling and start getting the results that you want in your life. And that’s what I teach here on the podcast is how to manage your mind.
So you can take control of your life. So you can do things like lose weight, and stop drinking, and become the most badass version of yourself. Because you know what? You can do, be, and have anything you want in this world, you are capable of so much more, you are capable of magnificence. And once you really, really believe this, there’s nothing you can’t do.
This is kind of what I’m talking about today, how to set big, powerful goals for yourself, for your life, and how to make them happen. How to achieve whatever it is that you want. And so here’s the problem with the way most people set goals. So most people, they just pick some random goal out of the air, maybe it’s something they think they shouldn’t do, like, a lot of other people are qualifying for Boston, maybe I should do that.
And so they think, okay, I’ll do that. Or maybe they’re, you know, overweight, and they’re like, hey, I should probably lose 40 pounds, there’s a goal, I’ll just do that. You know, or maybe I’m kind of unhappy with my job, maybe I’ll just like, become an entrepreneur, I’ll start my own business. So they pick something, right?
And then they pick a date, and they’re like, okay, I’m gonna accomplish this by, you know, in six months, or whatever, some random date in the future. And then they might have some vague idea in their head of what they’re supposed to do to reach that goal. So they might kind of like, do a training program, if they’re trying to qualify, or the, you know, like I should pick some diet to try to lose some weight, or, you know, maybe they’ll watch some YouTube videos on how to be an entrepreneur or something like that.
And so they kind of sorta take some action, and then, you know, kind of work toward that goal. Doesn’t that sound terrible? The way I’m explaining this, saying this out loud actually sounds kind of depressing to me right now, honestly. But here’s the thing, this is the way most people do it.
And they think that they’re doing it the right way. They don’t really know any better, it’s fine. Not calling anybody out here. But then they don’t hit the goal. And then they feel like they are a failure. And goal setting doesn’t work. I’m a failure, they get down on themselves. And they just quit and just go about their life. And they never get anything done. They never accomplish anything great. They never reach any kind of goals.
And I’m saying all this because this, this was me. Like I know exactly what this feels like I’ve done all of this so many times. I’ve picked some goals, I’ve kind of set some, you know, put some action steps in place to try to get those goals and I’ve done it so many times, and then I’ve failed. And then I just continually beat myself up over it. And I figure I’m just a failure and I can’t accomplish anything.
I’ve learned the hard way that is a terrible way of setting and accomplishing anything. This way of goal setting is broken and has to be changed. So today, I’m going to walk you through a better way of setting goals. But more importantly, I’m going to teach you how to achieve those goals.
And it doesn’t matter what they are, the process is the same for whatever goal we’re talking about here. And a quick little side note on the word goal versus outcome. I like the word outcome better than goal. And here’s why. From NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming words, we believe that words are very important. Okay.
So when we say the word goal, our brain, our subconscious mind especially comes up with this pick that’s sure of something that’s way out in the future, something that we have not achieved yet. Something that’s, you know, out there somewhere, it seems far away. Whereas when we say the word outcome, this is almost like past tense, okay, it has been done, it has been accomplished.
And the subconscious mind paints a picture of you having achieved that outcome. So I can see it, I can hear it, I can feel it. And this is kind of a better way of thinking about it. So, I prefer the word outcome. And maybe you can start adopting that when we start talking about goals.
Okay, so this is what we’re talking about today, how to set and achieve all of your outcomes. So strap in, is going to be fun. So the first thing I want to encourage you to do, the first step in achieving outcomes, is to pick an uncomfortable goal. Most people think, too small, they pick a goal, that seems like something they could do.
And the problem with this is that we never grow, when we stay comfortable. When we stay inside our comfort zone, we don’t grow. And if you want to get somewhere else, somewhere different from where you are right now, you have to think big. You know, think about what you really want.
And when you think about that thing that you really want, it should make you feel somewhat uncomfortable. If it feels too easy and too comfortable. It’s not a big enough goal, okay? In order to grow beyond who you are, right now, in this moment, you have to do things you’ve never done before. But this scares people because they’re like, well, I don’t know how to do it.
And of course you don’t, because you’ve never done it before. The way you learn how to do it, is to do it. So you gotta get outside of that comfort, comfortable bubble that you’re in, okay? And think about this, what do you really want? Who do you want to be? What do you want to accomplish, let’s say in six months, or a year. So we’re really good at coming up with little tiny goals that we can achieve. Because it’s almost like we know we can do it. But what about those things you don’t know, those things that you’re afraid you may not be able to accomplish? Those are the things we want to be focused on. Okay.
So set a big, uncomfortable goal. Get outside your comfort zone, and then start, you know, your subconscious mind will start moving you towards that thing. And this is where all the beautiful things happen in our life. This is where we grow, where we learn, nothing happens in our comfort zone, nothing really good happens that way and we just stay where we are. Okay, so number one is pick an uncomfortable goal, something that makes you feel uncomfortable when you think about it.
Number two, is you have to have a compelling why. You need to know why this goal, this outcome that you want is so important to you take some time to really figure this out. So maybe you want to lose those 40 pounds, so you don’t end up dead at 45 from a heart attack. You know, you want to be there to play with your kids and to play with your grandkids.
You know, maybe you want to quit drinking so you can stop feeling hungover every morning and stop all the obsessing about when you’re going to get that next drink. You want to experience the freedom that comes from breaking habits like overeating and over drinking. These are very compelling reasons why you would want to change why you want to accomplish that goal.
So have a compelling reason why and your why has to move you. You have to feel it in your bones. It has to be something bigger than you. When you think about why you want to accomplish this. It has to create, there has to be, an emotional response inside you. Okay, if it does, and if you don’t feel it, it’s not big enough. The goal is not big enough, your reason is not strong enough.
So you need a compelling reason why this is important to you. This is the thing, this reason, this is the thing that’s going to keep you going when it gets tough because it will get tough. If you’re setting a big uncomfortable goal. Every step along the way is good. An uncomfortable goal is going to challenge you, it’s going to be difficult, there’s going to be difficult, there’s going to be failures all along the way, having that compelling reason why will help keep you going, okay?
Number three, you have to believe in yourself. First, you have to believe it, before you see it. You have to have the confidence and trust in yourself to know that you will get there no matter what. And the way you do this is by becoming who you need to be in order to get that outcome that you’re looking for.
We get this backwards a lot, we don’t get the goal, then become the kind of person that could get a goal like that. We become the kind of person first and then we get the goal. For example, when I was training for Iron Man, I had to become an Iron Man, I had to become an Iron Man finisher. If I wanted to be an Ironman finisher, does that make sense?
In my mind, in my heart, I had to become an Iron Man, in order to be the kind of person that I needed to be to do the kind of things I needed to do to get those results. So I had to adopt the identity of being an Iron Man, and start thinking and acting like an Iron Man, what would Iron Man do?
You know, my values had to be in alignment with my goals. So training became super important to me, I was sticking to my training schedule, no matter what that became something that was really important to me. My beliefs had to be in alignment with my goal, I had to believe without a doubt that I was going to accomplish this.
And that I had everything it takes to be an Ironman finisher, I had to tap into new potentials, I had to learn new things, I had to be the kind of person that read the kind of books that an Iron Man would read, I listened to the kind of podcasts an Iron Man would listen to. I did the research about the sport, like I researched everything about the sport, I’m a passionate researcher.
I did all of these things so that I could learn as much as I could and tap into that potential. My daily schedule of the things that I did, my behaviors, my actions, I changed all this stuff, because I became who I needed to be. So I could accomplish this huge goal. So in order to achieve that outcome, finishing an Ironman, first I had to become an Ironman. And this is where we get things backwards.
Typically, we think we need to do things in order to get results so that we can become who we want to be. Instead, we need to become who we need to be. So that we can do what we need to do to get the results that we want in our lives. And when you do it this way, all of your values, the things that are important to you become clear, your beliefs become clearer, the actions you take become clearer. And you’re almost guaranteed to get the results that you’re looking for.
Alright, the next thing you need to do is write down all the steps you need to take to achieve your outcome. This sounds pretty simple. At first, but a lot of people will say to me, well, Patrick, I don’t know all the steps. If I knew all the steps, I would do it but you know what you do know?
And here’s how you do it, you just get a blank page out, grab a pen, and do what we call a thought download. You just write down everything you can think of that you would need to do to get from where you are today to where you need to be to where you achieve this goal, which is get it all out on the page. And just keep asking yourself, what else would I need to do? What else would I need to do?
So we’re looking for all those tiny little action steps that you need to take so that you can achieve this outcome. Get it all out on the page once you get it all out on the page. And you should have a lot of stuff on there.
The next thing you do is just take all those steps and put each one on your calendar. That becomes an appointment on your calendar. And then, and this is the most important thing, is do every one of those things on your calendar. This is the key to achieving any outcome that you want. You put an appointment on your calendar, and it becomes a commitment that you make to yourself. You know, the path from where you are to where you want to be is paved with steps. Achieving a big goal is just a series of small steps that gets you from where you are to where you want to be.
There’s just small actions we’re talking about here. But once you do each one, once you achieve them all, then you have reached your goal. I like the analogy of like, you know, hiking up a mountain, you’re walking up a mountain, and you just keep taking one step after another one step after another. They’re tiny steps when you look at each one. But combined, they get you up to the top of the mountain. And the view from up there is pretty amazing. Okay, so get everything down on the page and get it all on your calendar, and then do them all.
Alright, the next thing is identifying obstacles. So when you write all this stuff down, and you start putting all this stuff on your calendar, all this resistance is going to come up, you’re gonna start to feel a lot of fear, and a lot of anxiety. And you’re gonna start coming up with all these excuses. And all these reasons why this stuff is never going to work or that you can’t do it, you’re going to come up with this huge list of all the possible things that will, you know, could possibly go wrong, okay, this is completely normal, it’s part of the process, we want to embrace this part of the process.
Normally, we start thinking about all these obstacles and stuff, and we kind of freak out and we just want to pretend like they don’t exist and just kind of move on. But this is not the right way to do it, we want to embrace the obstacles, okay. So the way we do this is we do another thought download, so we grab another piece of paper, and then we start writing down all the obstacles that we can think of, we just get them all out on the page.
This is a kind of a painful process, honestly, you start writing down all these things that could possibly go wrong, or get in your way, you know, maybe, you know, so and so, you know, thinks I’m stupid for trying to do this, or, you know, my family isn’t going to be on board with this, or I’m afraid of what people will think of me, or I’ve tried stuff like this before, and it’s never worked. Or I think this is going to be too hard, or whatever it is, come up with all those obstacles, get them all down on the page.
And then for each one of these obstacles, come up with a strategy for overcoming that obstacle. All right, and this is like magic right here. So if you’re looking at, you know, your obstacles, and one of them is, I’m afraid of what people will think of me. You know, maybe your strategy for overcoming that is working on your mindset, you know, creating thoughts around those thoughts.
Like, it doesn’t matter what other people think, I believe in myself. That’s what’s most important to me, like, that’s a much better thought, then, you know, other people will will think I’m stupid, or think I can’t do this. So for every obstacle that comes up, write down a strategy for overcoming that obstacle. And then every obstacle just ends up being a rung on the ladder to success to your goal. It’s really powerful exercise to do.
Okay, then after you’ve got your obstacle ladder, so to speak. The next thing is to follow through. And this is the difference between people who achieve goals and people who don’t is whether or not they actually do what they say they’re going to do. You need to learn to count on yourself to do what you said you’re gonna do. You need to practice making promises to yourself and keeping them you know, every action step goes on your calendar, right? And then you’re gonna have this huge list of stuff, this huge calendar full of stuff that you need to do. And you’ve said yourself, here’s the goal that I want, here are all the steps I need to take. They’re on my calendar now. I just got to do them, right? And you just do them.
But what happens is you’re going to come to that day and that time and you’re going to say you know what, I really don’t feel like doing this one thing you know, maybe I’ll just go watch Netflix for a while. I’m I’m kind of tired. I don’t really feel like training today. I don’t really feel like doing the work to build my business today. I don’t really feel like sticking To my protocol, my eating protocol, I think I’ll just, you know, go ahead and eat this whole pizza. I’ve been there, I know what it feels like.
But the way we build self confidence is is that we make promises to ourselves, we make commitments to ourselves, and then we follow through on those commitments, even when you don’t feel like it. So you make a promise to yourself, and you follow through, you make a promise to yourself, and you follow through, you make a promise, and you follow through and you keep doing this.
When you do this, you build this amazing amount of trust in yourself. You build unshakable confidence in yourself, to where you feel like you can achieve anything that you want. So this is what we call honoring the calendar no matter what. So everything you’re you’re going to do becomes an action item on your calendar. And you do them even if you don’t feel like it. Okay.
The last piece of this is failure. I want you to embrace failure. What did you just say? That’s right, I said, I want you to embrace failure. So what happens if you fail? Most people, what do they do when they fail? They just give up right? Honestly, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a failure. I just think there’s stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t work. In NLP, we say there is no failure. There’s only feedback.
This thing I tried, did it work? Yes or no? What’s the feedback? Did it work? Yes, it did. Okay, cool. I’ll do more of that. Did it work? No, it did not. Why didn’t it work? What can I learn? What do I need to change? How can I do things differently next time so that I get a different result?
And we just keep practicing. Now we try something, it works or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, we try something else. And here’s the secret. Just keep doing this. There really is no such thing as failure. There’s only quitting. So people really don’t fail, they just quit, they give up. But the more times you do something and fail, the more confidence you build, because you keep overcoming this failures. So I encourage you to fail. I encourage you to plan on failing, plan on failing a bunch of times before you get things right.
No one’s ever really achieved anything of significance by succeeding every single step of the way. You get to success by creating a huge pile of failures. Failing is how you do it. It’s how you get there. I always say success is a terrible teacher, you don’t learn anything by getting everything right all the time. You learn by failing, and trying something else, and learning from those mistakes. So fail often.
So, quick recap. To achieve any goal, any outcome that you want. First thing is pick an uncomfortable goal, get outside your comfort zone has to be bigger than you. Number two have a compelling why. Why do you want to accomplish this, what’s going to keep you going when it gets tough? Number three, believe it first, believe it and then you’ll see it. Number four, get all the steps and get them all on your calendar. Number five, identify all the obstacles you can think of and then create strategies for overcoming each one of those. And this just becomes a ladder to your success. Number six, follow through. Honor your calendar no matter what, do what you say you’re going to do. And then number seven, embrace failure, fail often. And that’s it. That’s how you achieve anything you want in your life.
I know this might sound a little daunting to you just listening to this right now. And I will tell you, it can be challenging to do this on your own. And that’s what having a good coach does for you is to help you with every single one of these steps. And this is the work that I do with all of my clients. We look at every step I just laid out. And we make sure that we are always on track.
And I help my clients identify those things that they cannot see themselves. It’s really hard to to see yourself it’s hard to you know, see those your blind spots, you know, so that’s what a good coach will do to help you to see those things that you cannot see for yourself. So whether you want to lose weight, whether you want to quit drinking, you get the accountability, the follow through, you get the strategies, all of this by working with a coach.
You don’t want to create a pile of failures. And I help my clients work through all of that so they can achieve the result that they want in their life. Well, I’d love to hear what you thought about this particular topic, you can always reach out to me with questions or comments Hello at inner fire tribe.com And that’s all I got for you today. I hope to see you soon. Much love to each and every one of you.
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