Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
When it comes to running tough races, you eventually get to a point where it’s all mind over matter. Your legs hurt, you’re exhausted, and you just want to quit. This is when your emotional …
Continue Reading about 198. Increasing Your Emotional Tolerance →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 198 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today I’m talking about increasing your emotional tolerance.
So when it comes to running tough races, you eventually get to this point where it’s kind of mind over matter, right? Your legs hurt, you’re exhausted, you’re ready to give up. This is when your emotional toughness game really has to be on point, you know, or at least you think that you can physically keep going.
But there’s this emotional state that is trying to convince you that you need to stop right now. Like it’s just time to quit, right. And this emotional toughness or emotional tolerance is also required when you want to do other tough things in your life, like not eating the pizza when everybody around you is eating the pizza.
So today’s podcast is all about increasing your emotional tolerance. So you’re better armed to tough it out when things get tough, which they always seem to do. And if you want a little bit of help getting started with everything that I teach here on the podcast, when it comes to losing weight as a runner, being able to keep the weight off for good, not trying to outrun a bad diet, improving your strength, improving your endurance, improving your speed as a runner. And being able to make all of these changes last for good.
I’ve put together a free training that you can check out. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. I’ll teach you the right way to lose weight and keep it off for good. If you’re ready to become leaner and stronger, run faster and longer and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, then you need to check out this free training right now.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com, that’s my website, and click on Free Training. And by the way, it’s free if I didn’t say that it’s free, the training is free. I’ve put together this free training about an hour long. It goes over everything that I teach you on the podcast, definitely check it out runningleancoaching.com and then click on Free Training. Cool.
Okay, so let’s get into this idea of increasing your emotional tolerance. So the first thing to understand is that running is an emotional sport, right? We have all experienced a wide variety of emotions, when we’ve set out to train for a hard event, whether it’s a 5k, or half marathon, marathon, ultra marathon, whatever it is, there’s a there’s going to be a point during some tough race, there are some tough events that you’ve been training for, where it gets emotional.
And during running, there’s this physical toughness about it running, you know, I mean, you got to develop the endurance and develop the speed and develop the strength to be able to, you know, tough it out for 13 miles or 26 miles or whatever.
But then there’s also that emotional toughness, and you’ve probably already developed some emotional toughness, you’ve developed some emotional badass notes, you know, when it comes to running, because I hear from people all the time who tell me, they can sign up for a race and they go and they run their fastest race.
And there’s a point in that race where it becomes really hard. And they want to give up and they want to quit, but there’s this emotional resilience that they have that’s keeping them going. And I’m using the word emotional resilience or emotional toughness as opposed to mental toughness, because I think it is more emotional.
You know, the Mental Toughness part is like thinking, oh, I can do this. I think I can do this. I’m gonna keep going. But the emotional piece is like, you know, that feeling of like not wanting to be a failure. And like, I really just want to give up, I want to quit right now and curl up into a ball and cry right now.
I definitely have experienced that when it comes to running. So I think that as runners, we have developed some emotional toughness around running around certain events. When it comes to something like food, though, what happens there? Why is this so much different for us?
There’s this idea that when it comes to food and changing your diet, let’s say you want to lose weight, and so you’re going to stop eating pizza every night and you’re going to stop eating junk food, you’re going to up eating ice cream for dessert every night, you’re gonna stop eating the french fries every day, whatever it is, there’s this idea that you have to be able to handle some discomfort.
Because when you make a change like that, I promise you, it’s going to be uncomfortable. There’s going to be moments, sometimes a lot of moments where things are going to get uncomfortable for you. And I talk to people all the time, and I say, listen, you got to be able to handle this discomfort, you know, we’re going to stop eating sugar, for example.
And it’s going to be, it’s going to be hard and you’re going to feel uncomfortable, you’re going to want the sugar, your body’s going to crave the sugar, your mind is going to crave the sugar, you’re going to get emotional about all this stuff.
But you got to just lean into that discomfort and not eat the sugar, and be able to accept that emotional discomfort. And people tell me all the time, yep, I got it. No problem, Patrick. And then in reality when that time comes, and they have to say no to the sugar, but they’re craving it and they give in, or they you know, curl up into a ball and cry. Because it’s really hard in the moment.
In theory, it sounds easy enough. But in reality, this is a tough thing to deal with, especially if you’re not used to doing it. If you’re somebody that’s used to eating sugar every day, and you’re going to quit eating sugar for a period of time, that’s going to be hard to do.
If you’re somebody that’s used to drinking alcohol every day, or most days, and then you’re going to give up alcohol for a period of time, that’s going to be hard to do. If you’re somebody that wants to give up eating pizza all the time, not eating the pizza is going to be hard to do.
And it’s an emotional attachment that we have to these foods. It’s an emotional attachment that we have to feeling good. So it’s much harder to not eat the pizza than it is to tough it out for a marathon. Isn’t that interesting. I think that’s kind of crazy in a way.
Like if I just told you like you gotta run a PR when your next marathon. And if you’re in good enough shape, and you’ve done the training, you’re gonna get to a place during that race where it’s gonna be tough, and you’re gonna have to like put on that emotional badass rehab of yours, and you’ll be able to get through it.
But then when I say like, Hey, don’t eat pizza. Tomorrow night, when everybody else is eating pizza around you. That’s hard. It’s like harder for a lot of people, right? It’s interesting to me. So what is this? Is this a lack of willpower? You just don’t have enough willpower? Is it a lack of discipline? Are you just not disciplined enough? Was it a lack of desire? Do you not want it bad enough?
I don’t think it’s any of those things. I think it’s just an emotional tolerance issue more than anything else. So I’m going to ask you this question. What are you willing to feel? Seriously ask yourself that question, what are you willing to feel? What emotions are you willing to accept and just to feel?
You know, emotions we feel in our body, emotions, negative emotions, positive emotions, we feel them in our body, they feel like vibrations in our body, thoughts we experience in our minds and our heads. It’s very mental. It’s very heavy. But emotions we feel in our bodies like this vibration in our body. Some are good, some are not so good. Some feel good, some feel bad.
Anytime you use the word ‘feel’ to describe something that’s an emotional experience, we feel our emotions. Okay, for running, we feel physical pain, we feel physical suffering around food. It’s like emotional pain and emotional suffering. But what if you were willing to feel everything, especially the tough emotions.
Some of these emotions that we experience are deemed as negative emotions. And we don’t want to feel them. We’re taught at an early age that we don’t want to feel bad, we only want to feel good. And so our entire lives, we are chasing good feelings and running away from bad feelings.
So we do things like eat to feel better. We drink alcohol to feel better. We shop, gamble, do drugs, whatever, just because we want to feel better, even though we know those things are not good for us. But we chase after the good feeling. Because we don’t want to experience the bad feeling.
We run away from anything that feels bad, and we run towards anything that feels good. But if you want to change your diet, and you want to stick to a healthy eating plan, you’re going to have to experience some bad feelings.
But if you’re so conditioned to feel good all the time, then it’s going to feel like something is wrong. When you experience that bad feeling. So you’re sitting there at the table. Everybody’s eating pizza, and you’re like, oh my God, I feel bad right now. I don’t fit, this doesn’t feel right.
This feels like there’s something wrong, and I just got to feel better right now. And so you just grabbed the pizza and you start eating and you go, yeah, there we go. Now I feel good.
Don’t tell me you haven’t done that. Because we all have, we have all been there, you’re trying to stick to your diet, but then something happens everybody else is indulging in ice cream, pizza, whatever. And you just go for it, you just dig in, and you feel so much better. Right?
Because it feels good. Feels good to eat that stuff. Here’s the thing, though. Human beings, we are designed to feel all sorts of emotions, all sorts of stuff, right? Some feel good, and some feel bad. And I’m gonna say it’s about 50/50. And that’s the way life is designed. Life is supposed to be 50/50. It doesn’t feel good all the time.
But anytime we feel any kind of negative emotion and we go running away from it, we’re typically running into or chasing after something that is probably not good for us. So we have to accept this fact that life is 50/50 and that we’re gonna feel some negative emotions sometimes. And that’s okay, we’re gonna start, we got to start accepting, feeling bad sometimes.
That’s a crazy concept right there. Just accept that you’re going to feel bad sometimes. What? I know it’s bananas, right? A few years back. And I’ve talked about this before on the podcast here. But a few years back, I was going through a divorce. And this was tough for me. I’ve been with my second wife, that was my second wife, by the way, for like, nine years or whatever.
And we are going through this divorce. And we had been separated. And I was feeling terrible. Like, all the time. You know, I would wake up feeling terrible all day long, I’d feel kind of terrible. There were moments where I was okay. But I mean, I just felt bad a lot. It was tough to go to sleep at night, I was having all these crazy thoughts. And my mind was just racing and all these negative emotions.
Emotionally, I was a wreck. I felt terrible for a long time, for months. But here’s what I did. I, well, I tried to make it go away. And I was using food at the time to try to make it all go away. And I was working with a coach. And I just wanted to feel better. I was working with this coach. And she asked me a question.
At one point, she just said like, why do you think you shouldn’t feel bad? Why do you think you should feel any differently than you do? And I didn’t have an answer for that. I mean, I just, it doesn’t feel good to feel bad, right?
She’s like, yeah, but that right there, like just understanding that what you’re going through is tough, and it’s going to feel bad. And just having the acceptance around. That is what you need to wrap your head around, not trying to feel better, not trying to make the bad feelings go away.
But to accept the feelings, that was a game changer. For me, this changed my perspective on life and emotions and, and so much stuff. And we were just taught that we have to have like a positive attitude and think good thoughts and smile, and everything’s gonna be okay.
And like, no, everything was shit, you know, it was like, not good. And I just had to accept that and just be willing to feel bad. When I accepted this as my reality. And I sort of leaned into the negative emotions of, you know, going through this divorce. I did get through it much quicker. And I stopped having to use food to make myself feel better.
When you stop chasing feeling good all the time everything can change for you, because you’re no longer running away from the negative emotions. Because when you do that, listen, you’re running away from 50% of your life. You’re no longer afraid to feel bad. You can handle anything that comes your way, you become an emotional badass.
So this issue around food, and not wanting to feel uncomfortable at the table when everybody else is eating the pizza up. Think about this. What if you were just willing to feel bad for a little while? What if you’re willing to feel, you know, the desire for the pizza but not eat it? That’s uncomfortable. That’s an uncomfortable feeling, right?
But what if you were just willing to lean into that? What if you were having this craving and this urge to just like eat the pizza and just dig into it, but you didn’t give into that. That’s gonna feel terrible.
But you would get through that meal, and you would feel so much better about yourself. And then you would build a little bit of trust in yourself and a little bit of confidence that you can do this. And then the next time this happens, you’d get through that meal the same way and you’d build a little bit more trust and a little bit more confidence in yourself.
And listen, this doesn’t feel good. I’m not trying to Candy Coat anything here for you. This is a process that actually feels bad. Feeling negative emotions does not feel good. But it is important, I would say it is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.
If you want to change, if there’s anything that you’re going after that is tough, that’s going to take a while, like losing weight, changing your diet, not eating junk food, or even, you know, running that marathon. Those things all require some emotional tolerance, you have to be able to tolerate experiencing all these different emotions.
Now, there’s also the positive side of this, there are good emotions that you feel when you accomplish these goals. Or when you do something, when you feel good about yourself, I hear this all the time from my clients. They say, Oh my gosh, Patrick, I can’t believe I, they had, you know, brought all these doughnuts and bagels or whatever, into the break room. And I just didn’t eat them. And I felt good about myself.
And we call that a win. We call that a victory, you know, you won the day because you didn’t give in to the negative emotions. And that feels great, it feels great to do that. When you tough it out for that marathon and you cross the finish line. And you see that number on the clock and you just PR’d your marathon, that feels amazing. That’s, that’s joyous. That is an amazing elation that you feel.
So you can experience the positive emotions as well. But a lot of times it requires that we are willing to experience the negative ones. And then I remember a couple of marathons that I’ve PR’d or you know, 10K’s or half marathons, whatever. And those were very tough. And there were times when it was very challenging and extremely emotional and very hard and felt like quitting and all that.
And then at the end, crossing the finish line and accomplishing that goal, there was this release of positive emotion, it was just amazing. I actually cried, tears coming out my face, like it was so joyous, like blissful to feel that because I went through, you know, I went through the gauntlet, I did the hard things, I put in the work, I experienced all the negative emotions so I could experience the joy of victory.
You know, the same thing happens when we want to change our diet and stick to healthy eating, we have to go through the gauntlet, sometimes, you know, this isn’t forever. And this isn’t like something that’s gonna like last for months and months and months.
A lot of times we can break these addictions to sugar or junk food in around 30 days or so. But 30 days of like feeling some negative emotions can be kind of tough. You know, that’s why I do what I do as a coach. And I don’t just hand people a document and say, here’s what you do that just do the things on this list. And you’ll be fine. Because we need to talk through what they’re experiencing, we need to talk through how to get through some of those tough times and how to lean into those negative emotions.
So this is your work for this week. It is to allow yourself to experience negative emotions, allow yourself to experience you know what we would call bad feelings, don’t run away from them, lean into them, be willing to experience it all.
Remember, life is 50/50. Half the time you’re going to feel good half the time you’re going to feel bad. Don’t run away from that 50% that feels “bad”. Something else that happens over time when you do this, the bad feelings don’t feel that bad, they become more neutral.
When you’re willing to experience negative emotions and you do this on the regular and you get good at it. They become less emotionally charged, they don’t become so powerful, they become more neutral. This is what I call becoming an emotional badass.
So you build up this emotional tolerance, feeling bad becomes more and more acceptable and more neutral and easier for you to handle, then you can do anything you want. Because you’re willing to experience the negative emotions. You’re willing to experience the whole swath of emotions that we all experience as human beings and you’re not running away from half of your life.
Okay, I know you can do this. But if you want some help, I’m always here for you. Okay, we can talk about coaching, just head over to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. Fill out an application, we can get on a Zoom call. We can talk about coaching, what it looks like. I’ll answer all of your questions. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Coo.l
Okay, you guys got this I know you do and that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you are having a hard time sticking with a health and fitness routine, then you might want to have a look at your locus of control. Locus of control refers to where you believe your control lies …
Continue Reading about 189. Shifting Your Locus of Control →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind, so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 189 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Shifting Your Locus of Control. So if you’re having a hard time sticking with a health and fitness routine, sticking with a healthy food plan, then you might want to have a look at your locus of control. And I’ll explain all this in the podcast here.
But your locus of control refers to where you believe your control lies either outside of you or within you. So people who have a strong external locus of control tend to have a pretty hard time sticking to a plan and accomplishing really anything.
On the other hand, people who have a strong internal locus of control have an easier time sticking to a plan and are generally more successful in all areas of their lives. So today, I’m going to explain what locus of control is, and how you can begin shifting your locus of control so you can get better results and really just live a healthier, happier life.
But first, I know I talk a lot about the amazing transformations you can experience when you join my program and get coaching from me how you can commit to becoming your healthiest self, but instead of me yammering more about it, I’m going to share some of my clients personal stories with you.
So Elisa said, “Since working with Patrick, I don’t beat myself up anymore. I believe in myself. I’m finally in control of my eating habits. I’m steadily losing weight.” Flora said, “I’ve learned how to become a fat adapted runner. And the feeling of running with a clear head and so much energy is just amazing.” Eric said, “I’ve learned how to create good habits to replace the bad ones. I’m down 18 pounds so far, and I feel really good about myself for the first time in a long time.”
Mick said, “Accountability and education were key to my success with Patrick. I’ve had so many positive changes. I know I’m not going to slip back into old habits.” Leticia said, “I no longer have sugar cravings, I’ve taken control of my eating habits once and for all.”
Michelle said, “I’ve lost 25 pounds, I’ve gained immeasurable confidence. I am totally in control now. And I’m fully capable of doing everything I set out to do.” And Amy said, “I’m thinking so much more clearly, I have more energy, I’m sleeping better, running is easier. So far, I’m down 30 pounds and several dress sizes.”
Listen, you can add your name to this list, you can be one of these people with an amazing transformational story to share. All you gotta do is get some coaching. Join the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Book an interview with me and you and I’ll have a conversation, we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you.
And if you want a little bit of help, just getting started with all this stuff, I’ve created a great training program that you can check out. It’s about an hour long video training, you can watch it at your own pace. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You can get that by going to my website Running Lean coaching.com and click on the Free Training link to get started. Cool.
Okay, so let’s talk about shifting your locus of control. So I talked to a lot of people who struggle to accomplish what they want for themselves, they struggle to reach their goals. So this could be a weight loss goal. This could be a strength goal, it could be a running related goal. Maybe they want to run their first marathon, qualify for Boston, or maybe they just want to run their first 5k.
But when it comes down to when you kind of boil it all down when it comes down to why it is they can’t seem to accomplish whatever goal they’re trying to accomplish. They start telling me all about the external factors affecting their life.
You know, I was doing great at sticking with this running plan. I was going to run my first marathon but then things got crazy at work. Or you know we traveled or went on vacation or the kids out of school so you know how that is or jeez, it just got hot out or it got cold out. Whatever.
So they look at their life as having all these external forces, external being things that are outside of themselves, that are affecting their ability to reach their goals or not to stick to their plan or not. That thing that seems so important to them, not that long ago has been pushed to the side because of all these external factors. Okay.
And the problem with this is that when you allow outside forces to affect your weight loss goals, your health and fitness goals, your running goals, then you’re going to have a very hard time accomplishing anything for yourself, you will always find reasons why you can’t do it.
You’ll have reasons and stories and excuses, you’ll always have somebody or something else to blame for why you can’t lose weight, why you can’t stick to this healthy eating plan, why you can’t train for that marathon or whatever.
The problem is that you’re going to really just stay stuck where you are. You won’t be able to accomplish these big goals that you want for yourself or small goals that you want for yourself, you won’t be able to accomplish much, you will always feel like you’re going to struggle, because it’s out of your hands.
It’s all these outside forces, all these external situations, these external circumstances that are to blame. You don’t have control over your own life. So this is known as having an external locus of control. So locus is just a Latin word, and it means place or location. So locus of control really relates to where your sense of control is located. Is it internally? Or is it externally? Is it within you? Or is it outside of you?
And locus of control is a term that’s used in psychology, and refers to a belief that the control of your life is either within you or outside of you. Okay, some people have a very strong internal locus of control. And some people have a very strong external locus of control.
And they’ve looked at all these people, and they’ve seen that people who have a mostly external locus of control tend to be not as successful, they tend to be not as happy, they tend to be maybe not as healthy.
And the people with a strong internal locus of control tend to be happier and healthier and tend to accomplish more in their lives. Okay. So somebody believes somebody with an external locus of control believes that outside forces control their destiny, I am not in control, I’m profoundly affected by external forces in my life.
People with a strong external locus of control, tend to be more passive, because things just happen to them. They tend to blame others for their situation, they tend not to accomplish goals. They believe that there’s really nothing they can do about their situation, because hey, it just is what it is. Right? Whatever happens, happens, why bother even trying?
They feel like they are unlucky, but like nothing good ever happens to them, because they’re just, it’s just not meant to be. Must be nice for those other people. But never, nothing ever works out for me. And what’s interesting is these people tend to be at greater risk for illness, they’re typically unhappy and unhealthy. They have a hard time sticking to a plan.
If you have a mostly external locus of control, it’s going to be harder for you to stick to a fitness routine, to train for a marathon to stick to a healthy eating plan. If you want to lose weight, you got to stick to a healthy eating plan. You have to be consistent with that plan. But if you’re constantly, you know, blaming everything around you for why you can’t stick to that plan, you’re gonna have a really hard time sticking with that plan. Okay.
So that is what external locus of control looks like. Can you relate to any of this? Does any of this sound like you? Because we’ve all had bits and pieces of this and I’ll tell you a little bit about my story in a minute here. But we’ve all had maybe times in our life when we had more of an external locus of control more of an internal.
So people with an internal locus of control tend to be more active, they’re actively engaging in changing their life. They’re actively engaged in improving their situation. Because they believe that they make things happen. You know, I did this, I made this happen, you know, my determination and my hard work, created my future, I’m not relying on outside circumstances, outside circumstances be damned, I’m going to make this happen.
They tend to accomplish goals regularly, consistently. They feel like they are in control of the events of their lives, they are in control of their own destiny. They don’t look to lock or fate, you know, to determine what they can accomplish or what they can accomplish, they take responsibility for their situation, whether that’s a good situation or a bad situation, they take responsibility, they tend to be healthier, they tend to have a reduced risk of illness.
And honestly, they just tend to stick with a plan. And it’s easier for them. All right. So wherever you feel like your locus of control is now just understand that it is not fixed. It is not something that is predetermined. And it is not something that you don’t have control over, you can actually change it.
It’s about what you believe to be true, not about what you think is true or not, what you believe to be true, will be true for you. If you believe you have no control over your life, and that it’s all about external circumstances, then that will be true for you. If you believe that you’re in control, that will be true for you.
Your locus of control is not something you are born with, it’s not something that is, you know, genetically imprinted in you or anything like that, it’s not a fact. It’s where you put it, it’s where you decide it’s going to be. So your goal then, is to shift your locus of control inward.
If you find yourself blaming external circumstances for where you are, why you can’t lose weight, why you can’t stick to that marathon training plan, why you can’t go to the gym and lift heavy weights. If you find yourself blaming external circumstances, for all that, then it’s time to make a shift, you need to shift your locus of control inward.
So shifting your locus of control can be as easy as making the decision that you’re going to do it, it can be as easy as taking 100% responsibility for everything in your life, for every result you’re getting or not getting in your life, it can be as easy as making that decision. So right now, decide “I’m going to stop blaming others, I’m going to stop blaming outside circumstances. I’m going to stop using stories and excuses and reasons why I can’t and start making it happen. I control my destiny. And it starts with me, and it starts right now.”
Right, that can be a very powerful way of taking control making that decision that you are in control. Because honestly, you are another way of beginning to shift your locus of control is to start reframing situations. So instead of just believing that here’s the way it is, not everything is just the way it is. And that’s the way it is because that right there is just a belief.
You need to start questioning what you believe to be true in every situation. So you can do this by reframing. And that is just like looking at a situation from a different angle. It’s like putting a different frame on the situation. Okay, instead of, “Man, it’s just so hard to stick to my food plan because my wife keeps bringing home junk food for dinner, you know, and burgers and french fries and pizza. Like she just keeps bringing this fun stuff home for dinner for the kids. And I can’t stick to my food plan because there’s pizza on the table.”
So that’s having an external locus of control when you believe that. So shifting inward, you can reframe that situation. And you can ask yourself, like, how can I stick to my plan, even though there’s pizza sitting here on the table right now and it smells amazing, but what am I going to do right now? Right here, in this moment, to stick to my plan. I made this promise to myself that I’m not eating pizza this month or whatever, this week. What am I going to do about that in this moment right now?
How can I control my eating in this moment, right now? Because there is an answer, but you have to look inward. And you have to start asking yourself, What can I do about this? Because the external circumstances are always going to be whatever they are, you have no control over that. You don’t have control over that.
You do have control of what you do about it, though. So reframe these situations. Don’t look outward, look inward. It’s never ever about what’s going on out there. It’s always about what’s going on inside. What can I do about this? How can I make this work? What action? What action am I going to take right now in this moment, that is in alignment with my long term goals?
So I first heard about locus of control in one of my coaching programs, this was many years ago, and I can’t even remember the class I was attending. But it was a live class. I was out in LA, I was there for about a month taking all these different coaching classes and live coaching classes before COVID and all that.
And we were in this class, and the instructor was talking, it had something to do with like the business side of coaching. And at the time, I was struggling to figure out a business plan. I had tried a few things in the past that didn’t really work. I loved coaching, but the business side of things, it just wasn’t clicking for me, you know.
And, and I felt like, I tried some things, and I kept failing. And so after the class, I went up to the instructor, and I was like, okay, I get what you’re saying here. But you have to understand, I don’t think this is going to work for me, because I’ve tried this and it failed. And I’ve tried this, and it failed. And none of this stuff ever works for me.
And I said something like, you know, I don’t think this is my fault. It’s like the economy, it’s the competition out there. You know, I don’t understand the technology, whatever, like I started, you know, kind of rattling off some of these excuses, right? And I’ll never forget this, he just looked at me and said, “Well, it’s definitely not going to work with that attitude.”
And I thought to myself, how dare you. This is not in my control. It just doesn’t work for me. It’s the economy. It’s the technology, it’s the competition or whatever. And I’ve tried these different things. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I just, I’m a failure, you know, and I was really feeling sorry for myself.
And I really had this external locus of control. I didn’t realize it at the time. But I had this aha moment where I had to accept this reality that I had a very external locus of control. And what he was saying to me, wasn’t about, you know, whether I could do it or not it was about or whether the outside circumstances had anything to do with it or not. But it was about my attitude about it. It was about my state of mind about it. It was about what I decided I was going to believe.
And if I wanted to be a successful coach and have a thriving coaching practice, then it was going to be up to me to make it happen. And yes, I’ve tried things that failed. And I tried other things that failed. And I kept trying until I figured out what really worked for me, and what felt good for me, and what was in alignment with my values and my beliefs. But it was always up to me.
It had nothing to do with anything else outside of me, it was me and my attitude. I had to stop blaming circumstances, and take ownership of my situation. And as soon as I did this, as soon as I decided that I was going to make it happen, everything shifted for me.
Now, it wasn’t like turning on a light switch. It took time to get there. But it only took a moment. It was a brief moment where I made that decision that I was never going to blame anyone else ever again. I wasn’t going to look outside of myself for reasons and excuses and be a blamer and a complainer. Like if it is to be it is up to me. If it’s going to happen, I’m gonna make it happen. That’s the only way It’s gonna work. But I made that decision and I took a moment to make that decision. Okay?
So here’s what I want you to do this week, I want you to make that decision. You can do this by taking an inventory of where you are right now. So maybe get out a piece of paper or journal, something like that, and do a little bit of writing on this, like, write down all the things that are happening in your life, what’s going well, what’s not going so well.
What are you getting? Where are you getting good results in your life? Where are you not getting good results in your life? What activities are you engaging in that you’re proud of? That are in alignment with your goals, what activities are you engaging in that are not necessarily in alignment with your goals, maybe you’re not so proud of?
Where are you in regards to your goals? Are you on track? Are you not on track? Are you feeling stuck? Like just kind of take an honest inventory and look at each of these situations with yourself in your life? And honestly, ask yourself, you know, is this something that is in my control or not? Are you in control of each of these areas of your life or not?
Because if you keep thinking, I’m not in control, this has to do with, you know, my boss at work, or my wife is not, you know, being supportive. If you keep looking outside of yourself, for answers to these situations, or reasons why you’re not making progress in these situations, you’re gonna have a really hard time changing any of that.
If you’re feeling stuck in any area of your life, you’re gonna have a hard time getting unstuck, if you continually blame others. Take control. Reframe each of those situations, what can I do about this? What can I alone do about this? How can I take control of this particular situation right now? What is my part in this? Because there’s always an answer. You are always in control. Even though it doesn’t feel like it, you are, you just have to make that decision that you are going to be in control.
Being out of control is an illusion. You know, unless somebody has you chained to a water heater in their basement, you are in control of your life. And if you’re chained to a water heater, in somebody’s basement right now, then please reach out. We’ll help you, we’ll help you get out of that situation.
But listen, you have control, you just have to make that decision that you are going to take control of your own life, that you’re going to shift that locus of Control inward. And start being 100% responsible for everything in your life. You do that and I promise you things will begin to shift for you.
Okay, it takes some time to get there. It takes some time to accomplish those things you want for yourself, but it starts with that decision. Make the decision, you’re going to shift your locus of control inward, make that decision that you’re going to start being 100% responsible for every result in your life, good or bad.
Okay, this is a game changer right here. That’s all I got for you guys today. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
I work with a lot of runners who are awesome at sticking with their running plans. They get up early on Saturday mornings religiously, regardless of the weather outside. They do the required …
Continue Reading about 185. Why It’s So Hard to Stick to Your Food Plan →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 185 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, why it’s so hard to stick to your food plan.
So I work with a lot of runners who are awesome at sticking with their running plans. They get up early on Saturday mornings religiously, regardless of the weather outside, they do all the required speed work every single week, no matter what.
They never miss a workout even when they’re sick. And they should probably take a day or two off. So they’re really good at sticking with this plan, but when it comes to sticking with their diet so that they can lose weight, it all seems to fall apart.
Why is this? Why is it so easy for runners to stick to a very difficult marathon training plan, and it’s so hard to stick to a healthy eating plan? I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why it’s so hard to stick to your food plan. And I’m gonna offer up some sound advice for changing this.
Okay, but first, when I first set out to change my diet so that I could lose weight, I did not do things perfectly. In fact, for the first few months, I kept slipping up, I kept reverting back to old eating habits. And I kept getting into cravings that I had for junk food.
And I used to think that every time I got off track, it meant that I was a failure. I thought it meant that I would never get this figured out, I would never lose the weight. I would stay on track for a while and I would slip up and then I would start again.
And I did this over and over and over again. And every time I failed, instead of quitting, I just got back on track as soon as I could. So I never did this perfectly, but I always kept going. I never quit, I never gave up on myself.
So instead of focusing on perfection, I focused on consistency. You won’t do this perfectly either. Actually, spoiler alert, nobody does. Nobody does this perfectly. So don’t aim for perfection. Aim for consistency. The key to losing weight and keeping it off for good is not perfection, but consistency over time.
Practice staying on your plan, practice avoiding those urges to eat junk food, practice being consistent over time, and I promise you, you will get there eventually. And if you want a little help with this, you want a little help practicing consistency, I’m here for you.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners.
Okay, why it’s so hard to stick to your food plan? So really, the big key to accomplishing anything that you want for yourself is to make a plan and then stick to the plan, right? This is so simple. It’s such a simple concept.
And if you’re part of my coaching program, you know I say this all the time. And we actually sort of joke around about it because I say it so much. But really, it’s ‘make a plan and stick to the plan no matter what’. That’s it. That’s the key.
And you guys are so good at doing this when it comes to running. You’re so good at doing this when it comes to training for some big event. You know, I work with runners all the time. And they are great with sticking to their running plan, their cross training, their weightlifting schedule, their stretching, all these things are easy. Like they’re like, oh, yeah, I got it. That’s not a problem at all.
But why is it so hard when it comes to food when it comes to sticking to a food plan so that they can lose weight and get healthier, and improve their life in all kinds of ways? It’s so hard. It’s so hard that most people don’t do it. Most people rarely will take the time and the effort to stick with a food plant to where they actually succeed at losing weight and getting healthier and failing, but some people do. And that’s great, but so many people don’t.
However, they are sticking with a running plan. They’re training for a marathon or ultra marathons and they’re great at that, they never miss a workout. So it’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve always found this to be very interesting.
And I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. And I’ve and I’ve got some ideas here that I’m going to get into in just a minute, but I just want you to be thinking about yourself. During this episode, think about where you fall.
In this scheme of mindset here, are you one of those people who was really good at sticking with a training program, but not a food program? And if that’s you, this is definitely going to be something you’re going to want to listen to maybe a couple of times, okay.
So we find it very difficult to stick with a food plan, but find it pretty easy to stick with a running schedule. Even though that running schedule, for all intents and purposes is hard, it is challenging, most people would say, oh my gosh, that is such a hard thing, I could never run a marathon, I could never do the work, I could never run an ultra marathon.
So let’s break this down a little bit. So when you are planning to, let’s say, I’m just going to use the running a marathon as our example here at a training schedule, because that’s pretty difficult, something that requires time and, and it is difficult.
So when you have a training plan written out, so you have a training schedule, you’ve planned this in advance, you know, you’ve signed up for something ahead of time, you’ve got all your training planned out, and you are most likely to stick to that training schedule, like your life depended on it, right?
Why is food so different? Why can’t we just apply that same concept to food? Logically, they are very similar things we’re talking about here. They’re very similar undertakings. Training for a marathon is hard. It requires, you know, a lot of hard work, it requires time, so does losing weight, it requires hard work, it requires time, they both require consistency over time.
They both require you to plan things out in advance and stick to the plan. Even if things aren’t, you know, perfect. Even if the weather is terrible, or, you know, you aren’t at home to make dinner for yourself or whatever, we still stay on track, right?
So logically, they require the same things like making a plan in advance, we have structure around that plan, there are steps involved. So for running, it’s your training schedule, this is a structured rigid thing, and it has very specific steps laid out, you’re going to run five days a week, you’re going to do speed work on these days, here’s when you’re doing your long run every week, you’re going to increase your mileage by so much every week, these are your days off, it’s all laid out for you.
And your food plan can be just as structured, in fact, I encourage you to, to create the structure around your food plan the same way you create the structure around your marathon training plan, eat these things, don’t eat these things. Only eat two, three times a day, cut out snacking, you don’t need to be snacking all the time, make protein your priority, eat mostly whole foods.
Stay away from stuff and packages and processed foods and you know, concentrated forms of carbohydrates. Again, this can be all laid out. It can be very structured and rigid. And it can be something that is all laid out. Right? They’re both the same.
And it’s interesting because looking at these two things on paper, they look identical, right? So what’s the big difference? Why is it so hard to stick with food? And I think that a lot of this boils down to your mindset. And here’s what I mean by this.
The mindset required to train for a marathon and successfully finish that marathon is exactly the same mindset that’s required to stick to a healthy eating plan so that you can lose weight. And I bet you’ve never really thought about it like that before because most people don’t.
They think they’re totally different. There are some differences. I’ll get into that in a second, but listen, here’s what’s required. From a mindset standpoint, to be successful at both running a marathon, you know, training for a marathon and running that and finishing it successfully, and losing weight, they both require a plan.
But more importantly, they both require sticking to the plan. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here is focused on sticking to the plan. So the first mindset standpoint that they’re that they both need is this, this has to be something that is important to you. It matters. There’s a reason why you are doing this.
Why are you running a marathon or why do you want to lose the weight? It’s not just to be healthy. It’s probably to prove something to yourself that you can do hard things. It might be so that you can level up and grow and become more, evolve a little bit as a human being.
Maybe it’s to be an example to your kids. Or maybe it’s because you don’t want to die at age 60. Like, you know, you have a family history of that in your family. And yes, of course, to be the healthiest and most badass version of yourself.
So training for a marathon sticking to your food plan, they both require that same mindset, they are both important to you, it matters or, or it has to you, you have to adopt that same mindset across both. Okay.
The next thing I think you need to make sure you are doing, the other mindset you are adopting is that you have to have a clear end result in mind, what is your goal for this marathon? What is your goal for eating healthy? You need a very clear vision for the outcome that you want for yourself.
I want to finish this marathon, I want to finish it feeling good. I mean, relatively speaking, marathons are hard, and you usually feel pretty terrible at the end of it, but feeling good relative to maybe feeling really bad. Maybe not puking at the end too, I don’t know, maybe it’s to PR, or to, you know, qualify for Boston, that is a very clear outcome that you want for the marathon.
Okay, so what’s the clear goal that you can apply to your healthy eating, what’s the clear end result is it to lose weight is it to lose 40 pounds, is it to just feel better about yourself, to feel good about the body that you are carrying around, to have more energy, to wear those clothes you used to wear, to look better naked?
What’s the end result that you want for yourself? Be very clear about that. Because in order to stick to the plan, you need that clear end result in mind, you have to hold that vision of who you want to become at the end of this process.
Both of these things require a little bit of healthy fear of failure too, so you might not complete that marathon, that’s why you stick to the training plan. Training becomes very important. I remember training for things like my 100 miler that was very challenging.
Just you know, thinking about running 100 miles became one of those things where it pushed me through my training so much because I was failing, I had fear of failure, I did not want to fail, I really wanted to succeed at that.
There’s so many things that can go wrong, or training for an Ironman, lots of things can go wrong there because you’re talking about swimming, and I got kicked in the face, like within the first 10 minutes of being in the water almost knocked me out, gave me a black eye, somebody kicked my goggles and smashed my goggles into my eye socket. And just like really kind of gave me a black eye.
And I was like, oh my god, I could die in the water. I haven’t just started this thing, but you know, being out there on the bike, there’s all kinds of things that can go wrong there. And then, of course, running that marathon at the end of it.
So lots of points of failure can happen in these things that we do for ourselves, right? We can also fail at losing weight. And what does that mean? If we fail at losing weight, we tend to beat ourselves up, it means we’ll never be able to accomplish that, or we’ve tried in the past. And we’re afraid we’re gonna fail again, because we keep doing the same, we keep repeating the same things over and over again.
So there’s a little bit of a healthy fear of failure there. I think it kind of moves you away from what you don’t want, I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to be a failure. I don’t want to not succeed at this. So that’s actually not a bad thing.
Okay, that mindset can apply to both your marathon training and to sticking with your food plan as well. Another principle we need to apply here is that listen, both of these things are hard. They are both challenging, they will be tough to complete. They both require some hard work, some discomfort, some discipline, they both require a little bit of pain and suffering.
There’s pain and suffering involved in training for a marathon. Would you agree? Yeah, I think we would all agree with that. There’s some pain and suffering involved with giving up sugar. Or sitting there when everybody else is eating pizza and you have ordered a salad and you’re just gonna eat the salad that requires discipline, it requires grit, and requires enduring a little bit of suffering.
And then lastly, they both take time, like you can’t train for a marathon in two weeks, right? You just, you know, unless you are you’re already trained up but for most people anyway, training for a marathon takes time. It takes months right? And you can’t lose weight by just sticking with your diet for a couple of weeks. Right? These things both take time, months, sometimes years. years of work to succeed.
I know people who start running, and they’ve never run before, and they’re maybe a little bit older, 30s 40s 50s, whatever they’re like, I’m going to start running. And their goal is to run a marathon, but they know it’s going to take them like 18 months, two years or something like that, before, they’re ready to do that, they’re gonna start with a 5k, and then a 10k, and then half marathon, whatever, they’re gonna work their way up, and they, they plan it out.
And they know that if they stay committed and stay focused, and don’t get injured, that they can run that marathon in 18 months or two years. What if you committed to your food plan like that? What if you just said, you know what, it doesn’t matter how long it’s gonna take, I’m committed to this process, I’m gonna stick to this plan, you’d be a total badass, you’d be like, at your ideal weight, eventually, I don’t know how long it’s gonna take 12 months, 18 months, whatever, it doesn’t matter.
The point is that these things both take time. And so just make sure you understand that and apply that same mindset there. Okay. So I hope you can see that the mindset to be successful at both of these is the same, the mindset to stick to your marathon training program is the same as the mindset of sticking to your weight loss plan to your healthy eating plan.
So then, why is it so hard to stick to the food plan, when you have the same mentality around your training schedule, because you might be saying, oh, well, I do all those things. So we can talk about the addictive qualities of some foods. This is something we do have to consider here, sugar in particular.
So there’s certain foods, we call them hyper palatable foods, they are amazingly delicious. And it makes it hard to lose weight when all these foods are around. You know, it makes it hard to give up those kinds of foods because they light up our brain, they make us feel good.
And even with the right plan, and the right amount of structure around your diet and the right mindset, sugar, hyper palatable foods is a tough one. Every person that I work with has a little bit of struggle when they give up sugar, especially if they haven’t done this before.
So we do this because we want to get out of that addictive state that we’ve been in for a while. So we remove the quote unquote drug (the sugar) for a period of time, and then those cravings go way down. The cravings for junk food go away.
When you give up junk food, the cravings for sugar go away. when you give up sugar, stop eating donuts, and you won’t be craving donuts anymore. Stop drinking beer all the time, and you won’t be craving beer anymore.
And so these things don’t become a big deal after some time, but you’ve got to like have a period of abstinence in order to get to that place. But that’s where freedom comes from. That’s where true food freedom happens. Okay. So there are some addictive qualities of some foods that make it a little bit tougher, I get that part. Okay.
Also, there are a lot of marketing messages around food, like, oh, you can’t have a good time unless you’re eating doughnuts and pizza and drinking beer for breakfast, right? We get peer pressure from the big food corporations from friends and family to eat a bunch of junk food. There’s food pushers in our lives who are like, oh, come on, it’s just a little bit.
Just screw the diet for one day, just live a little bit. Enjoy. Can’t you enjoy your life? Come on. It’s my birthday. So please eat all this junk food with me, you know. And then there’s FOMO of course, which goes along with that.
We have fear of missing out like we feel like we’re missing out on something good if we don’t do what everybody else is doing. Okay, so there’s all that that we have to deal with. It makes sticking to the food plan a little bit more difficult, I get that. Also, food is most people’s go-to emotional management tool.
If you have a hard time coping emotionally without food, then it’s going to be harder to stick to a healthy eating plan. So part of what I do with my coaching clients is that we get to this place where we don’t use food as an emotional management tool anymore. And part of eating a healthy eating, diet or eating plan has to involve not using food to numb out to your emotions anymore. It’s a big part of what we do in my coaching practice.
I help runners to stop using food as a way of dealing with their emotions. And listen, if you’re doing this, if this is something that is an issue for you just understand that we all do it. Everybody uses food as an emotional management tool to some degree, okay, but we want to get out of that habit. You’ve just trained yourself over the years to use food to cope with your emotions. That’s it.
We’ve just got to train you and you can do this right. It’s not impossible to do it. But again, this can be a little bit challenging for people, okay, so there’s a few things here that do make, you know, sticking with a healthy food plan a little bit more difficult. And I get that.
But I think the biggest reason why it’s easy to stick to something like a marathon training plan, but not a healthy food plan is this, you haven’t made the decision. If you want to accomplish anything, first thing you have to do is make a decision that you are going to do it, you have to decide, like really decide.
And if you look at the root of the word decide it means to cut off like, you cut off all other options, except for this one, I am going to do X, I am going to stick to my training plan, I’m going to run a successful marathon. Right, you’ve made that decision. And that’s what you’re going to do.
What about food? Have you made that same decision about food? Probably not, I’m guessing. I know that when I personally make a decision to do something, it’s as good as done. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it, period.
16 years ago, I quit drinking. I wasn’t ready to stop for a long time, I knew that drinking was a problem for me. I knew that I had to stop at some point. But I hadn’t made the decision until I did when I did make that decision to stop, I quit and haven’t had any alcohol since then.
So for me, it’s like when I decide I’m going to do something, I do it. Training for an Iron Man. Once I decided I was all in, I knew I was going to do it. It was hard, hard work during all that training. And the race itself is very hard. But I had made that decision early on. And I did it.
Same thing running a 100 mile trail race. Recently, I sat down and did a 12 hour run and talked about that a few weeks ago on the podcast. I decided to do that back in like November or December of 2022. And I did it in May of ‘23. So I decided six months prior that this is something I’m going to do and I knew I was going to do it. Right.
So you have to make a decision, you made a decision to run a marathon, right? You signed up for it, you paid for it. And you committed to doing that race in your mind that is done. You are all in. So you can do this, right?
So sticking to your training plan, that’s a no brainer, right? Because you’ve already made that decision, you’ve decided I am going to do this, I’m going to run this marathon, I’m going to be successful, I’m going to qualify for Boston, I’m going to PR whatever that is.
So now you just have to make that same decision around food, just decide, I’m going to lose 40 pounds, no matter what I am all in, I’m going to put a plan together and I’m going to work the plan and I’m going to stick to it. And I’m not going to stop until I am successful.
I have decided. I’ve cut off all the other options. No other options. Now I’m just gonna do this. I’m gonna stick to the plan. So make that decision. Yeah, I’ve had this conversation with people, and they’ve told me, but Patrick, I’m stuck. I just can’t decide, I can’t do it. I can’t start. And this is all just BS. This is excuses and stories.
And it’s just you deciding that you don’t want to do it. There is a quote that has stuck with me since I first heard it back in 1980 from the band Rush. And it says this, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
So if you choose to do nothing, you’re making a choice to do nothing. If you decide that you want this for yourself, great. Take action, move forward, but don’t use these excuses about oh, I’m stuck. I can’t do it. I just can’t start.
Think about it like this. I heard another coach use this analogy. And I love it. She was saying like, oh people tell me they’re stuck. And they’re like, oh, I just can’t get up out of this chair. I’m stuck. I can’t get started. I want to go over there. I want to walk across the room, but I can’t because I’m just stuck in this chair. And it sounds ridiculous, right? It’s ridiculous.
But this is what we do all the time. It’s about making that decision and then taking that first step. It’s about just getting up out of the chair, making the decision and then going over there. If that’s what you want for yourself. It’s really that simple. We overcomplicate all of this stuff, okay?
So I hope you understand now why it’s harder to stick to your food plan. Yes, there are a few things that make sticking to a healthy diet a little more challenging than sticking to your training plan. But at the end of the day, I think it boils down to making that decision, decide what you want for yourself, make a plan, and then stick to the plan no matter what.
And that is also the important part is that very last little no matter what, because things will go awry. Your plan will meet challenges, obstacles will be in your way, all the time. This is called life. And it just happens. And that’s okay, we still stick to the plan, or we do our best, you know, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, and then go with the flow and do the best you can. Right.
But if we decide that we’re going to stick to the plan, no matter what this is, this is all you got to do, is make that decision. Okay, that’s it. That’s how easy this is. It’s not that easy, but it is simple. It’s a very simple concept. Make the decision, make the plan and then stick to the plan no matter what. Okay.
And if you want a little bit of help getting started I’ve got a great training program you can watch for free. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re anything like most runners, especially if you live in the US, this is most likely the off-season for you. You’ve completed your Spring races and you’re not quite into the next training …
Continue Reading about 182. A Better Approach to the Off-Season →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 182 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today a better approach to the offseason. If you’re anything like most runners, especially if you live here in the US, this is most likely the offseason for you.
So you’ve completed your spring races, and you’re not quite into the next training cycle yet. Most runners that I know of anyway, approach this offseason as a time to live it up, eat and drink whatever, slack off on your training and just have fun.
This is always my approach to the offseason, I figured I would you know get back on track as soon as training started up yet. The problem is that I ended up gaining weight feeling like crap. And then when training started again, I had to like make up all this ground, right?
So in this episode, I’m gonna offer a better approach to the offseason, one that will have you feeling your best when you start training for that next big race. Cool. All right, but first, when runners come to me, for help losing weight, they often experience some pretty amazing transformations.
They stop burning sugar, they start burning stored body fat, they start losing weight like they’ve never been able to do before. Their endurance improves, they become long distance running machines, they get faster, they’re able to run at higher intensities for much longer.
But one of the most unexpected transformations they experienced is that running becomes fun again. Since they’re not carrying around so much weight, running becomes easier. Gone are the days when running is a constant struggle, running actually becomes fun again. Can you even remember the last time you thought running was fun? I bet it’s been a while.
And if so, that’s okay, you can get back to that feeling anytime that you want, you just have to start doing things differently. If you’re ready to make running fun, again, join The Coaching Project.
This is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program for runners, you’ll get all the knowledge, support, guidance, and accountability you need to crush your weight loss and your running goals. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/join.
Okay, let’s talk about this, a better approach to the offseason. So the way most runners approach the offseason looks like this, eat whatever you want, all the junk food all the time, no training structure. So you know, there may not be running consistently, they may not be sticking to any kind of a running schedule.
There’s no resistance training structure or schedule there, they probably just don’t do that at all. So no hitting the gym regularly. They’re on vacation, they’re drinking more. They’re eating just kind of whatever, lots of junk food, lots of sugar.
And I don’t know about you, but this is the way that I used to approach the offseason. This was my life for years and years, okay. When our Fall or Spring races were done, I would just go into, basically, hey, I’m off, I’m not training.
And so I would just kind of slack off on everything, skip the resistance training, don’t go to the gym, no structured runs, and then eat whatever, especially during the summertime, you know. This is the time where we’ve got the pool and the cookouts and the beer and the wine and the desserts and vacation and margaritas everywhere, right?
It’s a time where most people just kind of do whatever. So the effects of this though there’s a problem with this, right? Because this approach is not going to be sustainable. This isn’t something you can’t do all the time.
In fact, I’m going to argue that it’s not something you should ever really do. You don’t really want to ever get into this place where you just toss everything out the window, and then hopefully, you know, start it back up again. Right? What happens when you take this “toss it out the window” approach is that you end up losing fitness.
You know, you’re not going to be as strong if you’re not maintaining some sort of a resistance training routine. You’re going to lose endurance if you’re not running consistently. Most likely you’re going to gain weight if you’re just eating a bunch of junk food and drinking a lot more than you’re used to.
Your mindset also just kind of goes out the window, because you get into this mindset of like, I can just do whatever I want. And so you lack discipline. And all of this kind of just leads to a general feeling of like getting out of shape, you know, and feeling like you’re starting, if and when you do start up your next training cycle you got, you’re coming from this big deficit, like, you’re just got to, you kind of got to start over again, maybe you gain 10 or 12 pounds, and you got to lose the weight.
And then, you know, you’re probably not going to lose all that weight in the beginning of this training cycle. And this is always my experience, I would gain 10 or 12 pounds, I might lose a few of those, but then I would, you know, have netted a gain of three or four, eight pounds or whatever, every year, I did the same thing just over and over again.
And not only is it not healthy, but it’s like a terrible way to start your training cycle. When you’re getting ready to train for your next marathon or triathlon or ultra marathon, whatever it is, if you just keep doing this big cycle of like eating a bunch of junk food and gaining a bunch of weight and then trying to lose it again, it’s just not it’s not healthy for you, it’s much healthier to just maintain your weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
So I just want to kind of address this whole situation here where I think there’s a mindset that a lot of runners get into, which is “it’s the offseason I can do whatever I want.” And I want to argue that that is not a very good approach. Okay. It becomes this crazy roller coaster of like, Oh, I’m working out, oh no, I’m not working out, oh, I’m running, no, I’m not running, or I’m eating right now I’m not eating right.
And, you know, that can really mess with your mind and mess with good habits maybe that you’ve worked to establish. You know, you go from being like super committed and dedicated and disciplined to just throwing everything out the window. Like that is not how you want to approach any of this stuff.
Because one thing I have learned working with hundreds of runners on this stuff is that if you just stay consistent, this is so much easier than doing this whole roller coaster up and down thing, you know, where it’s like an all or nothing sort of mentality, way, way easier to just stay consistent with all of this stuff. Okay.
But like I said, this is how I did it for years. You know, I gained weight every offseason, I tried to run it off and you know, marathon training kicked in again, or triathlon training or whatever it was. And that never really worked. I always, you know, consistently just gained weight every single year and felt like crap.
And so when you start your training cycle, feeling like crap, like this is just not a good way to approach your training. Okay, remember, you’re an athlete, right? If you run, if you do any kind of consistent, working out training races, whatever, consider yourself and an athlete because you are one.
So just start acting like that, you know, elite athletes, they don’t approach their offseason in this way. They don’t totally go off the rails, you know, they stick to the plan for the most part. And I’m gonna talk about that too. Like, you can vary your plan a little bit, you’re gonna go on vacation, you’re probably going to have a margarita or two here and there. And that stuff is okay.
But we’ve got to do this in a more mindful, more, intentional way, as opposed to just like, just throwing the rulebook out the window and just going crazy, because it’s the offseason. Okay. So I’m gonna give you a few pointers here to make the offseason more fruitful for you.
And it’s just a better approach to the offseason and the offseason can be a month or two, sometimes it’s three months, depends on what you’re training for whatever but just know that there’s a period of time here where you know, you’re not going to be in that heat of the your training cycle. And so you will have to do things a little bit differently.
So let’s kind of go through this. The first thing I want you to do, before you even get into the offseason. We’re probably already there into the thick of it right now, but just set an intention, like how do you want to handle this offseason? What do you want this to look like for you?
Do you want to go crazy and go off the rails? Then be my guest. Totally fine. You’re probably going to regret it, but it’s totally up to you. Okay. What I want you to think about is who do you want to be at the end of this offseason when the training starts up again? Who do you want to be?
How do you want to show up for yourself? Do you want to feel good and energized and feel like you’ve made some progress? In maybe some of your habits, or in your diet or your weight? Or do you want to just maybe gain a bunch of weight and get a little bit ,you know, weak and dopey because that’s up to you, you get to decide that.
Do you want to maintain your weight, lose weight, gain weight, just make that decision ahead of time, and then just act accordingly. Right, so you get to do this any way that you want. My suggestion is that you at least try to just maintain where you are, which is fine. If you want to continue to lose weight, that’s great.
But during the offseason, if you want to just maintain where you are, I think that’s great. But decide ahead of time, don’t fool yourself, don’t think, oh, I’m just going to lose a bunch of weight when the off-season comes and then you’re acting like, you know, you’re just eating whatever and drinking all the time.
Because that’s going totally against what you really want for yourself, right? That behavior doesn’t coincide, it doesn’t really line up with your intention, right. So if you have an intention of wanting to maintain weight, then act accordingly.
If you have an intention of wanting to lose weight and act accordingly, if you have an intention of wanting to gain weight, you get to act accordingly. Okay, but set that intention. That’s step number one.
The second thing I want to encourage you to do is to maintain some sort of structure, that means that you’ve got to have a structured workout program, structured runs, structured diet, this does not mean that you can’t have fun and indulge a little bit you should do that.
You know, you go on vacation, you should have a drink, you should have a beer, you should have that Margarita while you’re sitting on the beach. I think that is amazing. I think that is, you know, how we enjoy our life sometimes.
And it’s okay to do that. And every now and then you gotta do it in a way that fits your long term goals, though. So you have to have a plan, you have to have a plan for when you’re going to work out for when you’re going to run for what you’re going to be eating or not eating.
You can’t just wing it, you can’t just expect that somehow you’re going to, you know, come out of this thing on the other side of the offseason, you’re going to feel amazing and lose a bunch of weight if you have no intention and no structure around any of this stuff. Right. So structure means here’s the days I’m running, here are the days I’m lifting weights, here are the days I’m doing my cross training or whatever. Here’s what my diet is going to look like. Create that structure for yourself.
It does not mean you have to be, you know, 100% perfect with it. But have some structure. Go into this with a plan. Don’t just wing it. Winging it never works, it doesn’t work. So make sure that you have some sort of structure, make sure that you have a plan for yourself, whatever that looks like.
Like for me right now I’m kind of focusing on strength and working out. I’m at the gym five days a week. I’m running three days a week. I’ve got speed work that I’m doing. I’ve got this all planned out. It’s all written down. I know what I’m eating right now. My diet looks a little bit different right now than it did a month ago when I was training for my ultra marathon.
So I’ve got all this kind of figured out and I don’t just wing it, right that winging it doesn’t work doesn’t work for me. Anyway, I like having that structure. Okay.
Next tip is to stick to the food plan. That’s it, like you got to stick to your food plan. First of all, you have to have a food plan. And then you got to stick to it. Right? Yes, you can deviate here and there, but no more than usual.
You know, I’ve talked about the 90/10 rule. 90/10 rule that is like, nobody’s going to stick to their food plan 100% of the time you’re going to, you know, have a piece of chocolate or eat a doughnut or whatever you’re going to do have a beer, do that stuff. 90% of the time, though, stick to your food plan that 10% which works out to be maybe like one meal a week that can be a little bit off the plan. But you got to plan those things.
You can’t just do it in the moment. Like you have to do these things intentionally and purposefully. Okay, enjoy your vacation, but do it mindfully. This is not an excuse to just go crazy with food. So have a food plan and then stick to the food plan.
This is a great time to work on your diet, the offseason, especially if you’re interested in getting fat adapted because it takes a few weeks to transition, you know from being mostly a carb burner to being mostly a fat burner. And that process of that fat adaptation process can be a little bit uncomfortable.
So your running performance might dip a little bit. It’ll come back but you know, there’s a few weeks there where running might dip a little bit. This is a perfect time to change your diet and focus on that area of improvement. Okay?
You don’t want to be doing this in the thick of a training cycle. So let’s say you got three weeks to go before your marathon or whatever, that is not the time to change your diet, do not do that. Okay?
But think about how amazing you’ll feel when your training kicks in again, in a month or two, and you’re fat adapted and running feels easier, and you’ve lost some weight and you’re lighter, like, and maybe you’ve stuck with some strength training too, and you’ve got a little bit stronger.
So normally lighter, but you’re stronger, like running is going to feel amazing, okay? So just make sure that you have a plan and then stick to that food plan during the offseason, right, this is not the time to go crazy and go off the rails, you’re going to pay for that, you know, you’re gonna see the weight gain, you’re gonna feel terrible.
And if you’re somebody that already is fat adapted, maintain that fat adapted status. Don’t go so crazy that you get out of that fat adapted state, you know, that would require and I’ve seen some people that have done this before, but it’s going to require you to kind of start the process over a little bit, it takes a very short amount of time to get back into it once you’ve been fat adapted for a while.
But to get out of it is means that you’ve just been really indulging in a lot of sugar essentially. So we got to like, keep that out of the picture, right? Just keep the sugar low. Don’t be tempted to go crazy with the sugar during this offseason. Okay, stay fat adapted, it’s much easier to just stay fat adapted than it is to keep going like back and forth with this whole thing. Okay.
Next suggestion here is to focus on an area of weakness or an area that needs improvement. So that’s why like food is a big one for most people. It’s a time where they can clean up their diet and get fat adapted and get off to sugar and all that. So if that’s the area of weakness for you, this is the time to focus on that area.
It could be where you just haven’t been working on your strength training very consistently. And so this is the time for you to get into a resistance training routine. Right? Maybe your speed work has been put on hold.
I know that was kind of the case for me over the last six or eight weeks prior to my ultra marathon I did recently, I kind of put the speed work on hold, I really focused on the long slow running for the majority of that, like a third part of my training cycle for my ultra. And so right now I’m back into regular speed work again. Okay?
This is a great time to pick an area of weakness or an area that you’ve wanted to work on in wanting to improve and focus on that. Okay, so it could be one of those things where maybe you want to focus on more flexibility, or mobility work, then do that, now’s the time to focus on that. So it also helps you to kind of stay in the game. You know, and this is all good for your mindset as well.
All these things I’m talking about here will keep your mind focused and keep you in that mode of like I’m an athlete, I’m acting like an athlete, I’m still kind of in training even though I’m in between training cycles right now. Like you’re still at this place where this stuff still does matter to you, your health, your fitness still matters to you, right.
And then my last suggestion is to use this time to start creating better habits, you know, because changing habits takes time, it takes commitment, it takes focus, it takes some discipline. And you’re gonna have a lot more time and commitment and discipline during the offseason season than you would like during the middle of your training for a big race that you have coming up. Okay.
So if you want to develop some better habits, especially around food or resistance training, maybe it’s something like you want to sleep better, like you want to establish a better sleep pattern, better sleep routine, this is the time to start working on it.
It could be where you want to focus more on cross training. So you want to do more regular cycling or swimming or yoga or maybe some of that flexibility work that I talked about. It could be just other personal growth stuff like reading every day, some meditation like establishing a good morning routine.
This is key if you want to, you know start your day on a positive mindset every single day get into a good morning routine. What does that look like for you? I don’t know. It’s different for everybody. Maybe you want to spend more time having fun playing with your kids.
I just had such a blast last Friday, took the second half of the day off and my girlfriend and I went up to run to the little Miami River and we did a little kayaking down the river. And when I say kayaking, I mean we sat in our kayaks and just floated down the river for like two hours, it was so nice as beautiful day.
There was nobody else out there. And because it was like a Friday, you know, and it was so just lovely to be out in nature and to just like kick back and have nothing to do and just have fun for a couple of hours off, so nice.
But just doing things like that, this is a great time to get out into nature, walk more, I’m actually spending a lot of time rucking right now. So I’ve got a good rucking backpack with the 25 pound ruck weight that I haul around.
And I’m up to a couple miles at a time, some hilly miles where I’m just rocking right now. And I’m having a lot of fun doing that. It’s a totally different kind of workout than running. But then when I take that thing off, and I go for a run, I’m like, oh man, I feel so light, this feels so amazing right now.
So any kind of habits that you want to work on, now is the time to start building those habits, right? This is why I talk a lot about using this time to change your habits around food. Because this is like the time where you gotta like, do something consistently for a period of time in order to make these, you know, different eating habits stick.
You know, this isn’t about short term, like quick fixes. It’s about like long term lifestyle changes, you know, and that just takes time to get there. And if you think you’re going to do it in the middle of, you know, training for your race, a marathon or ultra, it’s not going to happen, it’s not the time to change your diet. Okay, right now is a great time to change your diet.
Okay, so approach the offseason with intention with mindfulness with some structure with a plan and a little bit of discipline too, you know, you can still have fun, right? And you’re going to come out the other side of this feeling amazing and feeling good about yourself, you know, set that intention.
Where do you want to be in three weeks or six weeks or a month or whatever it is, this is such a better way to do it, then the way that at least I used to do it, which is feeling like crap about myself.
And having gained like 10 or 12 pounds, right. And then remember, we still want to have fun. This is, you know, summer for us here in the US and we want to enjoy time at the pool. We want to enjoy that margarita on the beach, you can do that. Just do it with intention and with purpose.
You don’t want to undo all the good work that you’ve done up to this point, you know, just because it’s the offseason. So maintain some structure, maintain some good habits, focus on some areas of improvement and come out the end of this offseason feeling amazing with yourself.
You know, having had your own back, having like set good intentions and then, like kept those promises that you made to yourself, you’re gonna feel so much better than doing it the other way. I promise you, cool.
All right, are you ready to learn what it takes to get leaner and stronger and run faster and longer than you ever imagined? If so, then I have just the thing for you. Check out my all new free training called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
It is a comprehensive hour-long training that will teach you how to lose weight and keep it off for good without running an extra million miles per week. It takes everything that I’ve been teaching on this podcast for the last three years and distills it all down into a training program that will teach you what you need to know to get started on your weight loss journey the right way.
And of course, it’s all designed with you the runner in mind, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Recently, I completed a self-supported, solo 12-hour run. I’ve always wanted to do a 12-hour event, but I could never really find a race that spoke to me. So, I decided to take things into my …
Continue Reading about 180. What I Learned Running Solo for 12 Hours →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 180 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today what I learned running solo for 12 hours. So recently, I completed a self supported solo 12 hour run.
I’ve always wanted to do a 12 hour event, but I could never really find a race that I got excited about and nothing really spoke to me. So I decided to take things into my own hands and just do it myself.
So in this episode, I’m going to share what I learned running solo for 12 hours. What prompted me to want to run alone for so long, how I approached my training, how I fueled during the event and some interesting lessons I learned along the way.
And if you’ve ever considered doing an ultra marathon, this episode is for you, I think you’ll learn a lot. Also, if you have no desire to ever do an ultra marathon, I think you’ll still get a lot out of this episode, because a lot of the training, and the fueling principles especially, apply to races that have many different distances. Cool.
But first, if you’re ready to begin your weight loss journey, then I have just the thing that gets you started on the right track, I put together a brand new hour long training just for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
I will teach you how to lose weight the right way and how to keep it off for good without running a million miles a week. Okay, some of the things that you’ll learn in this comprehensive training is why running more and eating less is not an effective way to lose weight and what to do instead.
One thing most runners don’t do or do wrong when they’re trying to lose weight, the best fuel to use to improve your endurance and lose weight, how to create the mindset shifts necessary to develop new habits that actually make all this last for life.
And then one thing that I did that was really the key for me being able to keep the weight off for good. And it’s something you should probably do too. And there’s a lot more in there. But those are some of the key points that you’ll learn.
So if you’re ready to get started, if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, run faster, longer become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, check out this free training, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. There’s never going to be a better time than right now to get started. So just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. Alright, cool.
So let’s talk about this: what prompted me to want to run solo for 12 hours? So I came across a podcast where some people were talking about the 12 hour walk. And ‘The 12 Hour Walk’, if you’re not familiar, is a book that Colin O’Brady wrote.
Colin O’Brady is a pretty badass adventure guy. Like he’s done all kinds of endurance events like walking solo across Antarctica, and actually breaking the record for doing it faster than anybody else.
So he walked across Antarctica, pulling a sled with all of his, you know, food and equipment and everything that he needed for this track. And he ended up walking something like 12 hours a day, because I guess that’s how much daylight they had.
And he covered I don’t know, 50 miles a day or something close to that, 48 miles a day. But he ended up doing this for like 53, I believe, straight days. So that is pretty insane to do something like that.
So during the pandemic, he, you know, was back home and, you know, was itching to get outside and do something. And of course, you know, all this stuff is shut down. He couldn’t travel.
And so he decided to just take a walk and he left his house and he ended up walking for like 12 hours by himself without his phone. And he was just like, this is really fascinating. And he learned some interesting lessons along the way by doing this.
It’s a very personal sort of inward journey. It was for him anyway. And he thought, wow, I think a lot of people could benefit from doing something like this. So he wrote the book, the 12 Hour Walk.
And it’s a great book, if you want to check it out. It really goes into a lot of detail about all the things that he’s accomplished, and he’s accomplished some crazy events, some crazy endurance events.
But in the book, he talks about this 12 hour walk and encourages people to just do this. Leave your house, go walk for 12 hours by yourself unplugged. And some of the rules that he puts down are this, so it’s supposed to be done solo. So you do it by yourself, no friends, no dogs, no turtles, cats, anything, any other animal, it’s just supposed to be you. So it’s a solo journey.
And the length of time needs to be 12 hours. You know, it can be longer if you want, but that’s like the minimum right? So 12 hours is the length of time we’re talking about. And you need to be by yourself and there’s no, no phones involved.
So no headphones, no texting, no talking to anybody on the phone, no listening to podcasts, no listening to audiobooks, no listening to music. No, you know, FaceTiming people while you’re out there, it’s supposed to be a solo journey. Now you can take your phone with you, which I did. And I recorded a few short videos or a few voice memos or typed in some notes. I especially took some notes about my fueling during the event, just so I could keep track of when I was, you know, fueling.
So I could, you know, know how much time had elapsed between the last time I fueled. But it’s supposed to be done in silence, like you’re supposed to be just quiet, you know, and really not talk to people. And so that’s what the 12 hour walk is.
Okay, so I heard about this. And I heard some people talking about this on a podcast. And it really started, the wheels in my brain started turning because I was like, oh, man, I’ve always wanted to do a 12 hour event. And a lot of the 12 hour events or 24 hour endurance events, if you’re familiar with these things, a lot of times they do them on a short, one mile or two mile loop.
A lot of times they’ll do it at a track. So you’re running around a track for like 12 hours. And to me, that sounds terrible. The few miles like loop through the woods would be doable, but also you get sort of, you know, just used to the same things over and over again. So that really never spoke to me.
Like I just never was really interested in doing an event where I’m going to be running for 12 straight hours or 24 hours around a track or something like that. So I thought wow, this is pretty interesting. Because I get to do this anywhere that I want, I can go and run around my neighborhood, I can go down, you know, I live close to the Ohio River, I can go down to the river and run along the river.
And I’ll tell you about what I ended up doing and where I ended up going in a minute. But it was just sort of like this free form event like you can do it any way you want. So that really appealed to me. The solo adventure part of it appealed to me because I’ve you know, I’ve done a lot of running by myself for sure, I’ve done a lot of long distance running where I’m by myself for long stretches of time, but never more than an hour or two, something like that.
And then you’re like you hit an aid station or you’re running with other people or maybe you’re listening to something on the phone or talking to somebody. And then that aspect of not having your phone on and not having that distraction and, and listening to a podcast or an audiobook or something like that.
I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks when I run. It’s like I get to learn while I’m running. You know, I get to learn about you know, some badass, you know, adventurer guy, or whatever it is. And I really enjoy that. I don’t do that all the time, but I do enjoy that.
And so that appealed to me, like unplugging basically for 12 hours. So that part appealed to me. So this is kind of my, what prompted me, you know, and why I decided I wanted to do this. And then, of course, being a runner, I was like, well, I’m not going to walk this thing, I’m going to run it.
And I ended up doing a run-walk approach. And I’ll talk about that next and I want to talk about the training but just understand that this is something that you can do anytime you want. And if there really aren’t any rules other than what I just mentioned there, like if you need to take breaks, take breaks.
If you need to use a bathroom somewhere, use a bathroom, if you need to get some food, get some food, but the idea is that you kind of carry the food that you need, take a backpack or a Camelback or something like that. And then it should be self supported. There should be no distractions, it should be an internal journey, as well as an external physical journey. Okay.
So how did I approach my training? What did I do there? So, my idea was, my focus was always going to be on 12 hours. I wasn’t concerned about distance or time or pace or anything like that. I just wanted to be out there running for 12 hours.
And so I was going to I made a decision early on, that I was just going to do this slow and easy, that I wasn’t going to try to break any records here. And that if I could get to 50 miles, I would consider that to be a huge success. So that was kind of my goal, really, my big goal was like, you know, just to finish it, and just to keep, you know, running for 12 hours.
So, the way I approached my training, I started training for this thing back in like December, January. And the event was on May 27, that’s the day that I picked, so that was Memorial Day weekend, which was about three weeks after the Flying Pig Marathon, which I did, which was the Floating Pig Marathon since we had so much rain that day, it was crazy.
But I knew I wanted a little bit of time to recover from that race until before I did this other Ultra event. So 50 miles was the goal, May 27, was the date I picked. And I started training in December, basically January, and I was just building my base at the beginning.
I divided my training into three main sections. So the and as we get closer to the race, the running becomes more specific to the race. So at the beginning of my training cycle, I was doing more speed work, doing shorter, faster runs doing hill repeats and, and sprint intervals, and tempo runs and things like that.
As I got closer to the race, I stopped doing a lot of the speed work. And I just focused on, like dialing in sort of that race pace that I was going to use during the event itself, which was very slow. It’s like 13 minute miles, which is what I ended up averaging for the event itself, which I thought was fine, you know, it’s fine for me.
And that’s the way that I kind of approached the training. So, you know, I did a lot of miles, especially in that second and third phase of my training cycle, a lot of miles at a slow pace, and kept my heart rate down. And really the whole point of this was just to be out there for 12 hours, and enjoy it. I guess as much as you can enjoy running for 12 hours or being out there running and walking for 12 hours. And really just to finish.
And so I didn’t I didn’t put a lot of pressure on myself. I did have that goal of 50 miles. And so that was one thing where I was like, I do want to hit 50 miles. And that was totally doable. I knew that if I could get to about a 14 minute pace 14 something I knew that I would get to 50 miles.
So that was kind of the goal from a pace standpoint. So a lot of my training was just done by myself without my phone. So I just leave my phone at home and start getting used to running without any sort of distraction. Okay.
That was interesting, because think about this, how much time do you spend completely unplugged. Not looking at a screen, not watching TV, not listening to music, or podcasts, or books, or the radio in your car. Not talking to other people. Not calling someone or texting someone.
Think about this. This is one of the big lessons I learned because I was like, I do not spend much time during any given day completely unplugged. And that’s what was really interesting to me, that it made me hyper aware of how much time I actually spend distracting myself from whatever’s happening in the moment.
Think about it, like I was at the gym this morning. And I usually have my headphones when I’m at the gym and I’m listening to a book or something like that. And I forgot them right. I left them at home. So I’m just like, whatever. I’m just going to sit here in between sets and just look around, I guess I don’t know, what do you do? It’s kind of weird.
I was like, what did we used to do back in the day when we didn’t have cell phones? I guess we would just sit there and look at each other. Right? So I was just sitting there and I looked around and I started to see every single person in the gym staring at their phone.
Every single person that wasn’t actively lifting was like staring at their phone. Every person. It was wild. And I was just thinking wow, that’s so interesting. We are so connected to our phones that even two minutes in between sets we can’t not be sitting there staring at our phones, you know.
So for me, one of the biggest lessons that I learned really is that I can spend time away from screens and I can spend time away from distracting myself from the moment and that I want to be more mindful, I want to have more mindfulness in my life, I want to be more present in the moment, not just for myself, but for other people as well.
And so that was a huge lesson that I learned. And it took training for this event, and then actually doing the event to sort of bring that really into my focus and into my attention. So during the event, there were so many times where I was wanting to whip out my phone and call somebody, or text somebody, oh, I just thought of something I need to tell my kids. I better just text him.
And I was like, nope, I had my phone with me, but it was just for taking a couple of quick videos and some voice memos that I was recording, and a couple of notes that I was writing just because I wanted to keep track of my fueling, right.
So I did have my phone with me, but it was in airplane mode. So it was basically all I could do it use it for was recording messages, taking pictures, that kind of stuff. And I didn’t pull it out that often I was really just focused on being in the moment.
And that was one of the biggest lessons I learned is that I distract myself a lot. And we all do. We are constantly distracting ourselves. Aside from sleeping. We either have, we’re talking to someone, we’re listening to something, we’re watching something, we’re reading something, we are constantly bombarded with information, and constantly connected and constantly distracted from the moment. So just think about that.
How can you maybe change that? What does that look like for you? Can you spend some more time just in silence, maybe mindfulness meditation, maybe just leave your phone at home, when you go for a run, leave those headphones at home, take your phone if you want to, if you need it for emergency or something like that, but just take leave the headphones at home. Interesting, right? It may be an interesting experiment to do.
Okay, so the training I did was pretty standard, nothing really fancy there. Other than, you know, I shut down the speed work during that last six weeks or so and really just focused on really hammering the long distance getting used to running with a backpack because I did carry a backpack with water and fuel and things like that.
And that was it, like the training was pretty, you know, standard and really not a whole lot to discuss there. Other than, you know, just those last six weeks or so I just really ramped up the mileage. You know, I was doing you know, my weekly mileage ended up being I think at the peak was something like 60-65 miles a week.
But the long runs on the weekends were, you know, 25 and 12 was like the longest I did. 26 and 10, something like that. So that was the training. And then so my approach for the race itself, I decided I was going to bring the minimal amount of fuel that I needed.
And I was thinking because I’m fat-adapted, I don’t really need a whole lot in the way of fuel for something like this, but I wanted to maintain some semblance of energy. So I did use some fuel. And the idea was that I was going to start to run fasted and have some coffee before I left the door or headed out the door. I had some coffee about 6am and was out the door by 6:22 is when I started on a Saturday morning.
So I started fasted, just had some saltwater before I started and some coffee and that was it. The saltwater was actually an LMNT that’s an electrolyte drink. So I did my electrolyte drink, no calories, really no sugar or anything like that. And just some coffee, headed out the door.
And then my goal was to fuel every hour, and to get about 150 calories per hour 150 to 200 calories per hour. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t want more than that, because I don’t really need more than that. So, and I practiced during my training with this and this is something important for you.
If you’re doing a half or full or any kind of long distance event, you’ve got to practice your fueling during training, like all your long training runs should be dress rehearsals for your event. Okay, so just make sure you’re training the way that you’re going to be racing, right so I did this regularly.
And I’ve tried a few different types of fuels and things like that, I ended up going mostly with the Muir energy gels and those things, they have like four ingredients. It’s like almond butter, cacao, some blackstrap molasses, that’s the carbohydrate that they use in there. And then some salt, something, maybe there’s five ingredients, some other kind of flavoring in there, but they’re very clean.
Some people don’t like the way they taste, I think they taste fine. They’re kind of good, actually, I think they have almond butter as another ingredient depending on which one you get: cashew butter, almond butter. But they’re pretty good and have good, clean ingredients.
There are a little bit of carbs, like 12 carbs per packet. And they’re 150 calories. So one of those per hour was kind of my goal. And I had a couple other things that I had just had in my closet that I just pulled out a couple other types of fuel. But they were all very similar and all about 150 calories each. So that was what I planned on doing. And I stuck to that plan pretty well.
So after about an hour of running, I did my first Muir, and then kind of kept doing that every hour or so there was a couple of times where I lost track of time, and I looked down, I’m like, oh, it’s been like an hour and a half and I haven’t fueled at all, better do something. And then the next one I did a little bit shorter, like, you know, I just had to kind of tweak it a little bit.
But at the end of the day, I think I only used eight or nine of those. So it should have been 11. And I think I brought 11 with me, and there were a couple left when I got home. So maybe I used eight or nine of them in total. So it didn’t even need as much as I brought with me, you know, and I was really trying not to weigh myself down the pack that I had fully loaded with water, two liters of water plus all the, you know, goos and the phone and stuff like that, we’d like eight and a half pounds, so it wasn’t super heavy.
But eight and a half pounds is eight and a half pounds added to, you know, your body weight as you’re running for 12 hours, right. So I wanted to keep things as light as possible. So I just brought the bare minimum and I didn’t even use all of it. And I felt fine.
The race itself was pretty uneventful other than so I headed out of my house. And it was cool in the morning. You know, it’s very cool, probably in the high 50s, right. And I was like, oh my god, this is perfect, you know, but it got hot that day, it ended up being in the high 70s.
And two things that really helped. Number one is that I chose a rail to trail, also the little Miami Recreation Trail, that was kind of the majority of the run for me was on that trail. And I hit that during the peak of the day. And it’s very shaded because there’s trees on both sides.
And most of it, there’s some sections that are totally exposed, and it was getting hot. So that helped. So the location that I picked for this thing really did help. Also, it ended up getting cloudy in the afternoon, which was amazing because when the clouds came over it dropped the temperature down and kept me from like, I was getting hot with the sun out I was really getting hot.
And so the clouds really helped a lot. And so for that second half of the day, you know, I finished at 6:20pm. The second half of the day was warmer, but it could have been a lot worse. So I was thankful for the clouds. So I took off from my house. I ran out to this trail, which is about 12 miles from my house. So I took another path called the Watson Way, it’s another rail to trail that sort of connects to this other one.
And I ended up running from my house 26.2 miles to a little town called Loveland. And, you know, that is the farthest I’ve ever run by myself. The farthest I’ve ever run in one direction, that’s for sure. And so when I was in Loveland, I was like, 5 hours and 36 minutes into this thing. So I wasn’t quite halfway but close to it. And I decided that was a good point to turn around. And my goal was to make it a double marathon.
So if I got to, like 52 miles, that was the goal. At that point, I was like, I think I can do this. You know, I’m padding my time a little bit because I might slow down towards the last half of this thing. And I did slow down a little bit towards the end just because I did have a little bit of extra time and so I did a little bit more walking during the last hour or so, a little more walking, and a little less running and it felt fine.
You know, all in all, the event was great. I did stop to refill water a couple of times, because the two liters of water that I had wasn’t going to be enough. I ended up stopping at a Starbucks on the way out towards Loveland.
So during the first half, I stopped at Starbucks and got some ice water, took that with me, that felt great. Stopped at a little bike shop that had cold waters and filled up my backpack with cold waters on the way out. I did that again on the way back, stopped at that Starbucks again, on the way back in, I ended up getting an iced coffee, which was amazing. So delicious.
And then that gave me a little bit of an extra boost there for the last few hours that I have out there. And then you know, I ended up just finishing feeling pretty good. The only problem I had during this thing was that my knees are kind of messed up, like I’ve fallen down on the trail so many times that my knees occasionally will kind of start talking to me and my right knee was kind of talking to me towards the end of this thing.
And I was like, yeah, I think I’m ready to be done. And then as soon as I finished and I stopped, and I sat down, and I took a shower and stuff like that my knee just swelled up, it was huge. And just bending, it was very painful. And walking was hard.
Like, I messed myself up pretty bad, like, not even knowing that I was in, you know, doing any kind of damage to the knee. That knee is fine now like it just took a couple of days for the inflammation to go down. I don’t know what the issue is with that knee. But it does do this every now and then.
And I’m just going to take it easy and not overdo it here during the next few weeks. But it’s been fine since then. It took a couple of days for that swelling to go down, but it’s been fine. So the event itself was great. I did it solo, I did it without talking to people.
For the most part, when I did stop, I had to like, you know, talk to the people that sold me the water or the coffee or whatever. But other than that, and one guy that ran past me, there were some running groups running on Saturday morning. And one guy in a running group said, Hey, I love your podcast.
And I kind of just looked and waved because I didn’t want to say anything because I’m like I’m trying to be quiet and not say anything. So for the guy that ran past me and said, hey, I love your podcast, on the Murray trail, I think you’re with the tri-state group, then hey, I’m gonna say, hey, thank you for listening. I appreciate that. And I appreciate that you gave me the shout out during the run, but I was being quiet at the time.
So I wasn’t talking to anybody. And I did run into my son. I’m like, you know, he was running towards me on one section of the trail. And I’m like, what are you doing out here and he’s like, I just went out for a run today. And he didn’t know where I was running. And so he didn’t know he was going to run into me. I’m like, hey, I’m not supposed to be talking to people. He’s like, cool, I’m gonna leave. And I’m like, cool. Alright.
So that was kind of fun. And by the way, I ended up running almost 53 miles total. So it was a double marathon and a little bit more. So that was cool. So a couple of lessons that I learned through this whole thing, number one, that you have to get out of your comfort zone if you want to grow.
And I’ve talked about this before, but this brought it all home to me in a big way that this was an uncomfortable event fFor me. It was uncomfortable for a lot of reasons: because of the silence because of no distractions, because I had to be in the moment. And because it’s 12 hours of running, come on.
It was hard, you know, something that was very challenging to do the training was hard. For this event, the event itself was hard. But coming out of this, I feel like a little bit of a different person. You know, I feel like I have learned some things and I’ve grown and I’ve like, every time I challenge myself and I try to do something like this, like, once a year.
Every year, I try to pick some event, something that I’ve never done before and do it. So anytime I do something like this, it causes me to level up, causes me to grow and it causes me to become more and become closer to that ultimate version of myself that I’m always working towards. It’s a work in progress. It always is.
But doing things like this. I want to encourage you to do something like this because things like this cause you to level up, they cause you to grow and they cause you to evolve as a human being, okay.
The other lesson that I learned is that being alone in silence without the distractions for 12 hours is really hard. We are so used to using our devices and distracting ourselves that to do this was a challenge but it was great. I loved it. At the end of the day. I was like, wow, I’m like I didn’t need it. You know, I don’t need to distract myself, I could just be in the moment.
And it got me thinking about when I was younger. You know, we grew up without the internet without cell phones. Well, we did have like a Sony Walkman you could wear you know, and listen to tapes, you know, that was awesome. But even so, like, we didn’t take those everywhere we went, you know, and so there was so much more in the moment.
Mindfulness, I guess you would call it, we didn’t know, it was called that at the time. Now we have to call it a certain thing, because it’s so different from what we’re used to doing. But that’s just how we were back in the day, you know. And so it just really made me realize how distracted we are all the time.
And how much I am craving, and I think we all kind of crave a little bit of like silence and internal, an internal journey, so to speak. Okay. Another lesson I learned was this, that we all have an inner dialogue, we all have an internal voice that’s kind of talking all the time.
And I realized that that voice never really stops, it’s there’s always going and even being out there, I thought, this voice has got to stop at some point here. And it sort of did at least it got quieter after about four or five hours, but it took four or five hours out there running by myself for this to even like calm down at all. Okay.
And then I noticed that there were times where I started just talking to myself out loud. So that into your internal voice that I had, maybe I was missing it, I don’t know, but I would just start talking to myself out loud. And it wasn’t like seeing anything, you know, mind bending or anything like that.
I would just be like, oh, hey, I wonder if it’s time to drink some water. Maybe I need to grab a gel. Maybe it’s time to feel? Gosh, that tree is cool. Oh, man, I’ve been on here for a long time, those clouds look interesting. Like just whatever. I was sort of, like narrating things, and I had to like, stop myself and be like, dude, what are you doing? I was craving some sort of, I don’t know if it’s a distraction, but some sort of a dialogue.
And so I started just creating a dialogue to myself, Okay. But all in all, I would suggest that if you want to challenge yourself, and if you want to level up and if you want to see what you’re capable of, and if you want to learn some lessons that you know are going to be personal to you, then I would suggest doing something like this, you don’t have to run it, you could walk it. It can be something that you do once a year, twice a year, I’m considering doing this again in the fall as a walk.
And I might invite you to join me, not in person, but virtually and we can all do this, maybe we pick a date. And we all do this together, so to speak. You know, we all do it on the same day in our separate towns in our separate cities, separate countries, whatever. And it could be something where we all learn some lessons together, we kind of come back and commiserate on what we’ve learned together. Sounds cool.
So all in all, this was a successful event. For me. It’s my first 12 hour timed event. And I enjoyed it. I really did. I enjoyed the the aspect of doing it however, I wanted to do it, you know, picking my own route, picking how I wanted to approach the fueling and, and hydration and all those things myself.
Making all those decisions myself and not having to, you know, have it be dictated by a race director and a certain location and a certain day in a certain time and certain types of fuel they have out there. Like I just did it myself. And it was awesome.
And actually, it was one of those things that like wasn’t that big of a deal. It really wasn’t. I devoted one day, one day to bettering myself to being mindful with myself being alone with myself. And I would suggest that you kind of do the same thing. Cool. All right.
So that’s all I got for you here. And listen, if you’ve ever struggled with losing weight, if you want to lose weight and keep it off and you want some help doing that, I want you to know that I have a great coaching program, and it was created with you in mind.
The Coaching Project is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program for runners. You and I will work closely together to put together a custom nutrition plan for you to get you to your goals. And we also talk about building strength and we talk about endurance and we talk about mindset, okay, and then we meet regularly to see what’s working and what’s not and then course correct as needed.
And one thing you have to understand about coaching is it’s not like some other diet or something like that. It’s not like a one size It’s all cookie cutter approach, right? You’re an individual, you have your own sets of goals and lifestyle and food preferences and the way you want to work out and things like that. And I’m going to meet you where you are.
And we’ll put together a plan that you feel good about because you have to enjoy what you’re doing. You have to enjoy the food, you got to enjoy the way you work out. Because if you don’t, you’re not gonna stick with it.
So if you want to just stop struggling, you want to start getting results, check out The Coaching Project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more, I’d love to see you in The Coaching Project. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Your mindset is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. But most people do not spend any time at all working on improving their mindset. This is crazy to me because without the …
Continue Reading about 179. Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs to Know Part 3: Mindset →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 179 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today: Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know, Part Three: Mindset.
Your mindset is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. But most people do not spend any time at all working on improving their mindset. This is crazy to me because without the right mindset, doing things like losing weight and keeping it off becomes nearly impossible.
However, armed with the right mindset, losing weight becomes easy, and effortless and your success is basically inevitable. Everything you want for yourself but don’t already have requires a shift in your mindset in order to get it. Change happens from the inside out, okay?
This inner work, this mindset work, is the most important and most powerful work you can do for yourself. So today, I’m going to lay out a whole bunch of mindset principles that you absolutely need to know if you want to lose weight and keep it off.
And again, this is part three of my three part series called Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know. Part One focused on nutrition principles. Part Two was all about the exercise principles you need to focus on in order to lose weight, get stronger and become the most badass version of yourself. Cool.
Alright, but first, if you have ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, I want you to know that there is nothing wrong with you. You are not alone, you’ve probably just been given the wrong advice, or you’re just not following any kind of plan. Alright, and it’s okay. I get it. I’ve been there, we’ve all been there.
But if you’re ready to actually do something different to actually do something to change, and follow a plan that was custom built for you and have someone there supporting you every step of the way, then I’ve got you covered. I created The Coaching Project with you in mind.
The Coaching Project is my lifetime access weight loss coaching program designed specifically for runners. You and I will work closely together to put together a custom nutrition and exercise plan to get you to your goals.
Then we meet regularly to see what’s working and what’s not and then course correct if needed. One thing you need to understand about coaching is that it’s not a one size fits all approach. There just isn’t one diet or one exercise plan that works for everyone. There just isn’t.
You are an individual, you have your own goals, needs and your own lifestyle. And I want to meet you where you are. What works for others may not work for you. So why try to force yourself into some cookie cutter program that isn’t made for you and probably won’t work for you?
So if you’re ready to stop struggling and start getting results, check out the coaching project just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. I would love to see you in The Coaching Project.
Okay, let’s get into this, the most important mindset principles runners need to know in order to lose weight and keep it off. This is like my favorite topic. As a coach I’ve worked with a lot of runners and helped them develop the mindset that allows them to to become their most badass selves to lose weight, get stronger, run faster, and become their best selves.
And the mindset work is probably the most important work that you have to do if you want to lose weight and keep it off. If you want to live a happy, healthy lifestyle easily and effortlessly, this all requires a big shift in your mindset.
Your mindset is the foundation of everything that you do. Everything that you do is built upon this foundation. With the wrong mindset though you are doomed to failure. But with the right mindset, you’d become basically unstoppable. There’s nothing you can’t do.
So I’m gonna go over a few mindset principles that runners need to know in order to lose weight and keep it off. Okay, there’s more than a few. This is very challenging for me to narrow down this list. But I don’t know, I have like 18 or 19 principles I want to share with you today. I just couldn’t I couldn’t choose just a few.
So I hope you’ll enjoy, but let’s start with the first one, and these are in no particular order, by the way. But the first one is this: your environment is everything. So when we talk about changing your environment in order to promote healthy changes in your life, like if you want to create new healthy habits, you got to change your environment.
This means changing things like what foods you keep in the kitchen and the fridge and the pantry. What’s in that snack cupboard? Do you even have a snack cupboard? You probably don’t need one. But your environment is more than just your kitchen.
Your environment is the books you read, the movies you watch, the podcasts you listen to, the audio books you listen to, the TV shows you watch. All of these things have an influence on you as a person and what you choose to do and not do and how you live your life.
We are very influenced by all these outside influences that come into us. What about the people you spend time with? You know, they say you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with?
Who do you follow on social media? What friends do you spend time with? What family members do you spend time with? You may have some toxic family members that you probably shouldn’t spend as much time with. I know sometimes that’s out of our control.
But sometimes you need to just say like I’m not gonna go over to Aunt Janet’s because she’s a little cuckoo, you know, or whatever you need to do. But these people have an influence on you, even the people you follow on social media, right?
So make sure that the people in your life are supporting you, they have your back. There are positive influences on your life, okay? They say you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.
If you spend time with five marathon runners, you’ll probably be the sixth. If you spend time with five lean, strong human beings, five faster runners, five people who are into self improvement, you’ll probably be the sixth.
Conversely, if you spend time with five couch potatoes, five junk food junkies, you’ll probably be the sixth. Okay, so your environment is everything. It really is everything, okay?
Next one, your feelings are not in charge. Okay? And you are not your feelings. So don’t allow your feelings to drive your actions. Your brain is a powerful thing, that we don’t use it, we allow ourselves to be driven by our feelings a lot of the time.
So for example, if you’re having a stressful day, you’re feeling very stressed out about what you want to do, you just want to go drink a bunch of alcohol or eat some junk food. But listen to your mind, your mind is smarter than your feelings, your mind knows what’s good for you.
Your mind should be driving the bus, your feelings can come along for the ride, but they’re a passenger, they’re sitting in a passenger seat, they’re not allowed to drive. And we think we have to do things a certain way. Because we feel a certain way. This is just not true.
You don’t have to do anything, you can just have a feeling. So instead of being driven by your feelings, use that intuitive voice that you have inside you. Your intuition knows what’s right, or what’s wrong in any particular moment.
So let’s say you had a stressful day and you just want to eat cake for dinner. This is a feeling that’s dictating a behavior. But in that moment, there’s a part of you that’s like, this is not right. I shouldn’t be eating cake for dinner. That’s not who I want to be. That’s your intuitive voice. That’s your intuition. Listen to that voice.
Okay, your feelings are not in charge. Listen to that voice of reason. Let that drive your actions. Don’t let your feelings drive the bus. Okay? If you get good at this, this is a game changer for every aspect of your life.
All right, the next principle is this: you have to know the difference between knowledge and know how. So knowledge is knowing about something. Know how is knowing how to do that thing.
So for example, if you read books on how to swim, and you listen to, you know, podcasts about how to swim, and you read all these books, are you a swimmer? No, of course not because you’ve never been in the water. You’ve never practiced.
You’ve never, like gotten from one end of the pool to the other without having to stop and be like, oh my god, this is super hard. I did this when I was learning how to swim because I decided I was going to do my first triathlon some years ago and I signed up for a half Ironman. Who does that? Right?
I’ve never done a triathlon in my life and I’m like, I’m gonna sign up for half Ironman, how hard could it be? It’s a half, it’s a half thing, you know, so it can’t be that hard. But I really didn’t know how to swim I kind of assumed, but I wasn’t good at swimming at all. I couldn’t make it across the pool without having to stop and like catch my breath or whatever.
So I got on YouTube, and I read some books and I learned the principles of swimming but It wasn’t until I got into the pool and I practiced that, that I actually knew how to do it, it took me a long time to get good at the right form, because you have to be able to breathe on both sides.
And you have to be able to look up out of the water and sight where you’re going and keep yourself going in a straight line. Because when you’re swimming in open water, there’s no black line at the bottom of the lake or whatever to keep you on track. So you have to be able to look and so you’ve got to practice all this stuff, knowing how to do it is completely different than actually doing it. Okay.
So you got to know the difference between knowledge and know how. And when I coach people, I always kind of tell them, like, coaching is like 20% knowledge, yeah, I’m going to show you what to do to show you how to do it. But it’s like 80% application, it’s 80%, practicing these principles, it’s 80% doing the thing.
That’s how you become good at something. That’s how you develop good habits. That’s how you become a good swimmer. You know, you’ve got to practice that good form over and over and over again. But reading a book on it does not give you what you need, you’ve got to do the thing, and you’ve got to spend time doing it. Okay, so this applies.
Specifically, we’re talking about weight loss here. So we’re talking about sticking to the food plan, what works for you, what doesn’t work for you? How do you work in all this running that you want to do? How do you train for this event? And stick to your food plan and lose weight, if that’s what you want for yourself?
So it’s 20% knowledge and like, 80% application, okay, but the know how is in the doing. It’s in the practicing. It’s in the repetition. Okay.
That leads me to my next principle, which is this: You crave what you repeatedly do. So the things that are easy for you, and that you enjoy doing are probably the things you do regularly. So if you’re somebody who goes to the gym regularly, like I go to the gym most days, right?
So right now I’m in this phase where I’m going to the gym like five days a week, and I love it. I love it. There was a time in my life where going to the gym one day a week would have sucked. And I would have been like, this is stupid, I can’t believe I would have to force myself to go because I didn’t love it, because I wasn’t doing it regularly.
But those things that we continually do. We get good at, they start to fill us with joy, and we crave those things. All right. So maybe you’re somebody who runs marathons regularly, you begin to crave the training and the feeling of crossing that finish line.
Let’s look at the other side of this though. If you repeatedly eat junk food, you’re going to keep craving it more and more and more. Instead, if you start eating healthy food repeatedly, guess what? That begins to be what you crave.
I will tell you right now I crave certain foods that seem crazy to me. That like few years ago, I would have been like, who is this person, you know, like a good salad with some crispy vegetables on there. And a big steak like that is something that sounds amazing to me.
Now, if you’re not somebody that likes to eat salad, and likes to eat steak, whatever do, you do you it’s fine. But this healthy, simple food right now, I crave it, you know? So as human beings, the reason why this kind of works for us is that we perceive anything familiar as good.
So anything that seems familiar to us that we do repeatedly, we see that as good, anything unfamiliar, we see as bad. Even if that thing is not actually good for us like eating junk food as an example, right? We do this repeatedly and our brain’s just like this is good, because we do it all the time.
But we know it’s not good for us. But your brain doesn’t care. It just sees that as good because it’s something you do repeatedly. Okay. So the more you do something, the more familiar it becomes, and the more your brain perceives it as good so you begin to crave it, you crave what you repeatedly do. So choose those things wisely. Okay.
Next principle, I’ve talked about this once or twice before, embrace the suck. Listen, change is uncomfortable. Change is hard. And change, it just plain sucks sometimes. And in the ultra running community, we talk about this a lot.
There’s this concept called ‘embrace the suck’ because the suck is that point that will happen at some point during your race where you’re going to feel terrible. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. Let’s say you’re doing a 50 miler. It could happen at mile 30 or 45 or minus eight, I don’t know, but at some point, it’s going to suck. And it’s better to know this in advance to accept it. To embrace it, don’t wish it didn’t suck, don’t don’t wish it was easier because it isn’t going to be.
So accept it and embrace it. That’s the only way you’re gonna get through it. What we do here, when we’re trying to change our diet, lose weight, create better habits, become healthier, get stronger, this stuff is not easy. If it was easy, I wouldn’t have a job, I wouldn’t do what I do.
This is hard work. But it’s in the hard work that we grow, it’s in the hard work that we evolve, and we become our best selves. So don’t try to avoid the suck, don’t try to make it easier, don’t wish it was easier. You know, embrace the suck, because it will always be a part of the process. Okay?
Next principle, you have to commit to the process of change. If you want to lose weight, let’s say you wanna lose 40 pounds, and all your energy is focused on 40 pounds, I gotta get to this goal weight by this date, I’m just, you know, kind of got to hit that 40 pounds, I got 40 pounds lose.
If you just focused all of your energy on this one long term goal, you’re just going to feel kind of miserable all the time. I’m just telling you right now from experience of helping people through this kind of thing and seeing people with these weight loss goals.
And I’m just telling you that it is a miserable place to be if all you’re focused on is hitting that goal. Because your weight changes, it fluctuates, it goes up and down. And it’s just sometimes the the date that we have for a goal isn’t realistic, you know, it’s like I’m gonna lose 40 pounds in the next 60 days. I don’t think that’s realistic. I mean, it might happen. But what if it doesn’t, then you’re just disappointed. So let’s just scrap all that out.
I want you to instead commit to the process of change. What does that mean? That means doing the stuff you need to do today, and just focus on that, focus on the process of change, focus on your plan, the steps that you’re taking.
What are you doing today to move yourself towards that goal? Are you skipping dessert? Are you eating more protein, doing a HIIT workout, lifting heavy weights, saying no to fried food and sugary treats? Yeah, do those things just focus on that be in the moment, focus on the process of change instead of the end result.
Because I’ll tell you what, you’re going to enjoy that process way, way more if you just focus on the process of change, okay. And when you do this, your goal becomes inevitable, it may take a little bit longer than you want, or it may not take as long as you think it just takes what it takes, we’re all different, but you’re going to enjoy the process so much more.
So just commit to that process of change and not focused all your energy on the end result. Which leads me to my next principle, which is the gap versus the gain, you’ve got to be focused on the gain, not the gap. So the gap, what is the gap? The gap is when you’re focused on where you’re not. So let’s say you want to lose those 40 pounds.
The gap is, you know that you have 40 pounds to lose, you have 40 pounds, that 40 pounds is the gap from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. And when all of our attention and energy is focused on what we don’t have, what we haven’t accomplished, how far we have to go, that is not a good place to be.
Because you’re going to get down on yourself, you’re going to feel frustrated, it’s going to feel like this is a never ending journey. And you’re just focused on the wrong thing. Instead, I want you to focus on the gain, what’s the gain?
The gain is every little success that you have along the way. When you focus on your little successes, and these could be oh, I lost a half a pound this week. Or it could be that my pants fit a little bit better. Or, oh, I can get into those shorts that I wore last, that I couldn’t wear last summer, you know, or I just feel like I have a lot of energy today. That’s a good thing.
When we focus on the positives on the gains that we’ve made along the way, we feel more motivated to keep going. We feel more confident that this is working. We’re no longer focused on what isn’t working. We’re focused on what is and it’s like just shifting into this whole new positive mindset instead of this negative one. So stop focusing on the gap, the gap doesn’t matter.
Focus on the gain, focus on those little things you do every single day that feel good and that move you inch by inch closer to that goal. You’re going to be much happier and enjoy the process much more if you do this, okay?
Okay, next principle, it’s okay to be the weirdo at the table. I love this one. Because we are so worried about trying to fit in, and please other people, and go along, just get along with everyone just do what everybody else is doing. Stop doing that. Okay?
If you’re somebody who is like working on their weight and trying to improve their health, and you’re not just not eating junk food, but you’re going out with some friends, and they’re all want to order a bunch of junk for dinner or something like that, or a bunch of alcohol or something, you do not have to go along with that.
If you choose in that moment, though, that everybody else is getting, you know, garbage food, you know, but you’re choosing to eat a salad or, or not have the drink when everybody else is drinking, you’re going to feel like you’re a little left out like you’re the outsider, like you don’t fit in.
They may even say something to you like, Hey, why aren’t you drinking? Hey, why aren’t you eating pizza like everybody else? You know, what’s wrong with you? Come on, just live a little, you get a little peer pressure going on there.
But they may just think you’re the weirdo at the table. And I want to encourage you to just be the weirdo at the table. It’s okay. Listen, you don’t want to be like everyone else. 88% of Americans suffer from some sort of metabolic dysfunction.
We’re talking overweight, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, all that stuff. These are all lifestyle diseases. And they call it metabolic dysfunction, or metabolic disease. You want to be in the 12%. The different the, the outlier, the weirdo, that is not like everybody else, okay? Just own it. Just own it.
Like be okay being the weirdo at the table. All right. Don’t be like everybody else. And we can’t please other people by our actions, you know, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, you could be the perfect person. And somebody’s not gonna like you. So it doesn’t matter, like, stop trying to please other people. It just doesn’t work. I wish it did. But it doesn’t.
Okay, next principle is this: the 90/10 rule. I love this one. I hope you do too. So we don’t have to do everything 100% perfectly. Nobody does, not even me, honestly. Instead, you’ve got to take a day off every now and then from your workouts or have a piece of cake or a piece of pizza every now and then.
Otherwise, you know, you might feel discouraged and miserable, we don’t want to be discouraged and miserable. So when I’m working with clients, I try to encourage them to follow the 90/10 rule when it comes to diet and even exercise, primarily diet.
That means that 90% or 90% of the time you are like on the money, you’re not eating sugar, you’re not eating a bunch of processed junk food, no fried food, no vegetable oil, nothing like that, right.
But then there’s that 10% of the time where you can have the cake, or a sugary treat, or some pizza or a beer or a doughnut or whatever, do what makes you happy. Right? If you can do this the right way, and this is very important, you have to be able to do this right where you can allow yourself to binge out on junk food because you have one donut gotta be able to practice restraint, right, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do cheat meals.
But if you can do this the right way, and you have a plan that you know is working for you 90% of the time, then this is something that might be sustainable for you. Right. So if we talk about 10% of your meals can be a little bit of a cheat meal kind of a thing. That means that we’re talking about one meal per week. That’s it.
So this isn’t a cheat day, this isn’t a cheat week or a cheat month. This is a cheat meal, like once a week. So I’ll tell you like and I don’t do this once a week, but probably once or twice a month I get like tacos, that’s my thing. I just love tacos full of chips and salsa and guacamole and, and I get tacos.
And so that is what I consider my cheat meal. I do that once every other week or something like that. And it makes it so enjoyable to live this way. You know because the other 90% of the tim my diet is on point. Right?
But then I get to you know, enjoy something that is hyper palatable food that’s Uber delicious. I know it’s not super good for me. But at the same time it’s so small the amount of tortilla chips that I eat versus you know how much good clean food I’m eating that it doesn’t have a big effect on me. Okay.
Which leads me to my next principle: Whatever you do, it has to be sustainable for you. That means that it has to be enjoyable for you, or else you won’t want to do it. And if you don’t want to do it, and it’s a miserable process, and you feel like you’re deprived all the time, you’re not going to stick with it.
Sustainability means that you have a plan that you follow for life, like this is not short term. This is for good, right? not temporary. This is just how you do things from here on out. Okay. So this has to do with the foods you eat, how you exercise, all that stuff.
So if you’re trying to follow some plan that says you can never have sugar again, in any form the rest of your life, and you have to run every single day. Like, to me that sounds terrible. Because there’s going to be a moment where I’m going to be like, oh, it’s like Christmas, I really want to have this Christmas cookie that my kids made for me or something.
Or, you know, I’m kind of tired. And I feel like I need to take a day off, but I can’t because I’m on this plan. Like that’s not sustainable. Right? So whatever you have to do, you have to enjoy it. And it has to be sustainable.
That’s why when I work with new people, we come up with a plan and we always have the discussion about what foods do you love. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about putting together a plan that includes a lot of those foods that you love, so that you’re more likely to stick with it.
Which leads me into my next principle, which is consistency beats perfection. Do not focus on perfection. Nobody does this perfectly. Instead, focus on consistent consistency. Over time, that’s what’s gonna get you there. That’s what’s gonna make a huge difference for you. Okay?
When you focus on perfection, you beat yourself up every time you go off the plan. And this leads to self doubt, and a lack of motivation and giving up on yourself. Instead, practice consistency, you make a plan, and then you stick to the plan even when you don’t feel like it. It’s that simple.
You don’t go ballistic on yourself if you mess up because you are going to mess up and it’s okay. Here’s a good rule of thumb to follow: never have two cheat meals in a row. Never miss two workouts in a row.
That means if you do have that one cheat meal that next meal, you are right back on plan again. That means if you missed that workout, the next scheduled workout you make that workout no matter what.
You know, maybe you didn’t feel like running because you were super tired. It’s not a big deal. But you got to hit that next workout no matter what. Same with the food plan, right next meal, you’re back on track. Consistency over time is what’s going to get you there because nobody does it perfectly. So don’t think you have to do it perfectly. And don’t think that anybody does it perfectly, because nobody does.
Alright, next principle is this, you have to take radical responsibility. So this means that you cannot be a blamer or a complainer. Most people have a very hard time sticking with some kind of a diet or exercise plan. And they will have all kinds of stories and reasons and excuses. And they will blame everything and everyone else for why they can’t stick to their plan.
I had a job change, or my hours changed at work, or my kids are home for the summer or my husband doesn’t eat the same foods as me or is too cold outside, or it’s too hot outside, or Mercury’s in retrograde or whatever. These are all just excuses. And I could go on and on. I’ve heard every excuse in the world, you know.
And I want to tell you to just stop it with the stories. Stop it with the reasons stop it with the excuses, stop blaming everybody else. Start taking radical responsibility for your own results or lack of results. If you want to lose weight, and you want to maybe run faster, and you really want this for yourself, then take the responsibility of doing the work to get those things. No excuses.
No more blaming anyone or anything that’s outside of you. If it’s to be it’s up to me. Have you heard that quote before? I don’t know who said that. But I love it. If it’s to be it’s up to me that means you got to do it. It’s your fault. If it works, it’s your fault. If it doesn’t work, it’s your fault. Just take responsibility, good or bad.
If you’re getting good results take responsibility. If you’re not, take responsibility. Don’t blame anybody else. So here’s the thing: when you start doing this, when you start taking radical responsibility for every result you’re getting or not getting in your life, it becomes a game changer.
This is like total freedom for you because you’re no longer allowing anything outside of you to control what you’re doing or not doing or stop you from becoming who you truly want to be. This is a very beautiful empowering place to be, okay? People who take radical responsibility, get results, period. Okay?
Next principle, coaching is only for people who can’t do it on their own. So this is actually a myth. This is not something that I want you to follow. But I want you to just hear me on this. I hear people talk about coaching. And they think that coaching means that it is only for people who have no willpower, no discipline, and who just can’t do stuff on their own.
And I just have to tell you, this is not true at all. I was always somebody who’s very disciplined, I trained for an Ironman Ironman on my own. I trained for a 50 mile race on my own, 100 mile race on my own, countless marathons, countless ultra marathons, all on my own. And I was fine with all that I did great with all that.
Now, there was a blind spot that I had, when it came to nutrition, I did not have a plan that was working for me, I didn’t know what to do. And I didn’t have anybody helping me. And I thought I could figure it out myself. And I just couldn’t, I tried everything. And I really couldn’t.
Nothing really clicked for me until I got some coaching. Once I got some coaching, I had a custom plan that was designed for me, I had a lot of say in how I wanted to make this work. And I began doing the mindset work I needed to do to make this a lifestyle. And that was never going to happen on my own.
I learned a lot of the mindset principles I’m sharing with you today from various coaches that I’ve worked with. And doing this inner work has been the game changer for me. And the other thing I have to tell you is that the best coaches have coaches.
I work with a lot of coaches, there’s a lot of people that are clients of mine who coach other people. Some of them coach them on health and nutrition and diet and running and exercise. Some of them are life coaches and things like that. The point is, though, the best coaches have coaches.
So coaching isn’t just for people who can’t do it on their own, coaching is for anybody that wants to improve, and that wants the help and the guidance and the support to basically make those results inevitable. Okay.
Which leads me to my next principle, which is this change happens from the inside out, right? It’s this inner work, these mindset principles I’m sharing with you today, for example, this is the inner work that you have to do, you cannot expect to change by simply like, Oh, I’m just going to run more miles or I’m going to eat, you know, these 10 foods.
Yeah, you’ll change temporarily, like some of that you might be able to lose some weight, if you change your diet a little bit. But permanent change, it’s a whole different thing, a whole different thing. You have to fix your mindset. If you want long lasting change to happen, you have to do the inner work.
That’s why so much of my coaching program is focused on this inner work, on the mindset work. Because change happens from the inside out, it doesn’t happen the other way around. It doesn’t happen from the outside in. It’s not like oh, I’m going to make all these changes and I’m going to lose this weight. And I’m going to run faster, I’m gonna get stronger. And then I’ll have this great mindset.
Nope, it happens the other way around. You improve your mindset. First, you adopt a powerful, successful mindset. And then you become powerful and successful because of that. Okay, so just remember that change happens from the inside out, not the other way around.
Alright, next principle is this: you need to become an emotional badass. So human beings, we are emotional beings. It’s normal and natural for us to experience a wide variety of emotions and we have emotions that we call negative and some that we call positive.
We love the positive emotions you know love joy, happiness, ecstasy, calmness, peacefulness. These are all what we would consider positive emotions. But we hate the negative ones, fear stress, anxiety, guilt, shame.
All these are what we would call negative emotions. And we love feeling the positive emotions but we try to repress the negative ones. We try to push them down. We numb ourselves out to those negative emotions. We don’t want to feel those things, emotions and feelings same things right. So we numb ourselves to those feelings.
And how do we do that? We use food, we use alcohol, we use shopping, sex, gambling, drugs, and on and on and on. There’s so many things, scrolling through social media as a way of numbing ourselves. The two most common ones, and the ones that I help people with a lot, are the food and alcohol.
Those are like the two kind of most common ways that we numb ourselves. So if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re eating, to make yourself feel better, you got to learn how to stop doing that you got to learn how to stop soothing yourself, or numbing yourself with food, or alcohol.
Because you’ve probably been using food as an emotional management tool for way too long and has to stop. If you want to become healthier, leaner, stronger, you got to change your whole relationship with food. So the real work actually begins when you stop using food as an emotional management tool, when you stop using food to numb yourself when you stop using food to feel better.
Now, you got to feel all these emotions, hmm, that does not feel good. That is the stuff that we actually have to deal with. So when I talk about becoming an emotional badass, that means that you have to get good at having those emotions and experiencing the feelings, that you have all of them without doing anything to make them go away without eating over them. And it sounds easy enough, right?
Okay, you stop emotional eating, you’ve got some emotions you’ve got to deal with, you just deal with those, and then you’re good to go. Sounds easy. But this is the work. This is the hard work and some of the hardest work that we do in the coaching project.
You know, I guarantee that most coaches out there and most programs out there are not going to help you in this area. Especially people that are helping runners and stuff like that, like it’s just not on their radar to help people in this way.
Most coaches don’t know how to help you stop the emotional eating and what to do instead, right. They, most coaches, are just like eat this, don’t eat that. Run this many miles, whatever. I do things a little bit differently, just so you know. So we have feelings. And we have to feel those feelings, we have to be able to feel them, we have to be able to process them, we have to be able to learn from them without eating because of that without drinking because of them.
And honestly, this is probably one of the most important life skills that you can and should learn. Because when you become an emotional badass, you’re no longer afraid to experience any emotion, positive, negative, whatever, like you’re, you’re just like grinding it all on, you become unstoppable. There’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing that you can’t accomplish.
Most people don’t want to try to lose weight because they’re afraid they’re going to fail. And then they’re going to feel bad about themselves. That’s why they don’t do it. They’re afraid they’re going to fail. And they’re going to feel bad about themselves. They’re afraid of a feeling they’re afraid of feeling that feeling.
But what if you weren’t afraid to feel the feeling? There’s just like, nothing you wouldn’t be willing to try. So you got to become an emotional badass, just know that. Okay. Next on my list of principles that every runner needs to know, is the idea of a fixed versus a growth mindset. A fixed mindset.
So this is where your brain and your mindset is basically fixed. This is who I am. This is how I’ve always done things. This is how I will continue to do things I cannot change. And end of story. And I’m being sort of funny about this, but so many people think that their mindset is fixed. That’s just, this is the way I do things.
Oh, I’ve got a sweet tooth. I’m an emotional eater. You know, I’m a stress eater, whatever. But you don’t have to be that way. You can change. But if you’re stuck in that fixed mindset, it is going to stifle your growth, it’s going to cause a lot of stress in your life. It does kind of let you off the hook though.
Because you don’t really have to do anything, or stick with anything because you’re never going to like get better or improve anyway. So you don’t really need to bother with any of that stuff. It basically keeps you stuck and small. The fixed mindset is not where you want to be. You want to adopt a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is like I’m always learning, I’m always growing. I’m always improving. I’m always becoming more. I’m always capable of growth. I’m always open to change and learning and growing. This opens you up to amazing new experiences and opportunities. It helps you to try new things even though you might fail. But you know that you can try because you might also succeed. And so why not just try?
So the growth mindset is one that you have to adopt, if you want to change. If there’s anything you want to improve in your life, you can’t do it with a fixed mindset, you have to have that growth mindset, okay? So you have to adopt that. And you will be able to accomplish great things in your life, right? But with that fixed mindset, you’re going to just kind of stay where you are, you don’t want that.
Alright, next principle is this. Taking aligned action is the key. So this means that you have to take consistent aligned action, if you want to create progress, what is consistent aligned action. So aligned action is actions that are in alignment with your long term goals.
So if you want to lose weight, one of your actions that would be in alignment with that goal is like, I’m just not going to eat ice cream for dessert every night, boom, okay, doing that action. In this case, it’s not doing something that is in alignment with who you want to be. And when you take consistent aligned action, you make progress, you’ll start to see the weight coming off of you. Cool.
Well, making progress helps you to build confidence, you’re like, Oh, I’m doing this, I can actually do this. And that confidence creates motivation to keep going and take more aligned action. And this is the cycle of motivation. This is the cycle that you want to stay in.
All right, taking consistent aligned action, making progress, building confidence, being motivated to continue to take more aligned action, that’s the cycle you want to be in. There is another cycle that most people kind of find themselves in, by the way, and this is the cycle of demotivation, where you take misaligned action, so action that is not in alignment with your long term goals.
I want to lose weight, but you know what, I’m going to eat twice as much ice cream every night for dessert. That would be called misaligned action. Misaligned action causes misaligned results or lack of progress. So you start gaining weight, you want to lose weight, but you’re gaining weight. And that lack of progress causes doubt and worry and uncertainty and a loss of confidence. And that lack of confidence causes you to be demotivated.
So you’re no longer motivated to keep going. So you just quit. Have you ever experienced that? And I know I have. But I want to tell you something. Just don’t do that. Take consistent aligned action. If you’re not taking consistent aligned action, ask yourself why?
Why am I not doing the right thing in this moment? Maybe go back to that intuitive, asking yourself intuitively, like what is right in this moment, okay, because you know, you know what’s right.
Next principle is this: never, ever, ever, ever give up. People who are successful at losing weight, know that it takes some time to get the results that they want. So they don’t quit when they have a weight loss stall or a plateau. They keep going day in and day out. They keep doing the work, they keep showing up for themselves. And they never give up no matter what. They’ve committed to the process of change, and they keep going no matter how long it takes.
What if you adopted this mindset around one key area of your life like weight loss? What could you accomplish? How much weight could you lose? If you just never quit? What if you applied this principle to every area of your life, you could transform yourself into a whole new person no joke.
So commit to becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And then never, ever, ever give up. You don’t quit when it gets hard. You don’t quit when you get tired. You only quit when you’re done. Okay.
Which leads me to my last principle, which is this there is no finish line, you’re never done. I hope this doesn’t bum you out. Really, I hope it doesn’t. But there is no finish line. This is a lifestyle. You know, weight loss, getting healthy, becoming our best selves isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to, there isn’t a finish line, you’re going to cross and then you’re going to be like, oh, cool, I can rest and relax now and eat whatever I want.
No, it doesn’t work that way. We commit to these principles. We commit to this lifestyle. And it is a lifestyle. It’s the lifestyle that we live our life from here on out. So there is no “done”. There is no finish line. We just keep going. We keep showing up for ourselves because it’s the right thing to do.
We keep improving and growing and evolving and becoming more because it’s the right thing to do. Because we want to constantly transform ourselves. We don’t want to stay where we are. We don’t want to be the same person in 10 years that we are today.
I don’t know about you, but I’m always growing and evolving and I couldn’t look back where I was two three years ago and go, gosh, I’m like a different person today. And it’s because I kept showing up for myself every single day. A day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year.
When you have this principle, there is no finish line that this is just the work we do and it continues. This is a game changer because this just becomes a part of your identity. Being healthy, exercising, eating right, it just becomes a part of your identity becomes part of who you are and what you do. It’s not a struggle. It’s not hard. You’re not missing out on anything. It’s just what you do. It’s who you are.
Okay, just remember, there is no finish line, this work continues. Okay. I hope you’ve enjoyed this three part series called Weight Loss Principles Every Runner Needs To Know. You can really listen these three episodes anytime you need a little refresher course on what to do to kind of get yourself back on track.
Next week on the podcast, I’m going to be recapping my recent 12 hour ultra marathon, how I trained for it, my nutrition plan during the event, what went well, what didn’t go so well. lessons I learned and lots more. So that should be a fun one. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast and whatever podcast app you use so you never miss a future episode, okay.
And then if you’re a runner and you’re ready to lose the weight for good, then I have something that you need to check out, I put together a brand new free training program called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
I’ll teach you how to lose weight the right way and keep it off for good without the suffering and the deprivation or running a million miles a week. And just like you know, this is about more than just losing weight. It’s about not doing the same things over and over expecting different results.
It’s about changing your whole relationship with diets and nutrition and exercise. It’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself from the inside out. And it’s about changing your mindset and creating new habits that last for life.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, if you’re ready to run faster, run longer and become the healthiest version of yourself yet. Check out this free training, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. There’s never going to be a better time than right now to get started, that’s runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
