Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
A lot of people feel the need to share their thoughts with me about food restrictions. They say things like, “I don’t ever want to restrict any foods”, or “All foods are OK in moderation”, or …
Continue Reading about 154. The Truth About Food Restrictions →
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 154 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the truth about food restrictions. A lot of people feel the need to share with me their thoughts about food restrictions, they’ll tell me things like I don’t ever want to restrict any foods or all foods should be okay in moderation or something like that.
And I know where they’re coming from with this. They just don’t want to have to give up any of their favorite foods. But here’s the thing, if you want to change your health and fitness for the better, if you want to lose weight, maybe even change your relationship with some of these foods, something has to change, you can’t lose weight by eating the same foods that got you overweight in the first place. Right?
Nothing changes if nothing changes. So in this episode, I’m going to share with you the truth about food restrictions. And why it might be necessary to restrict some foods if you want to lose weight, and live your best life. And listen, these concepts that I talked about here on the podcast, the ideas that I share with you here, the things that I teach you here on this podcast are all great on their own.
But if you really want to improve your life, if you want to lose weight, if you want to improve your health, and you want to make changes to the way you you approach food and, and nutrition and fueling, for running and all of that stuff, then you’re going to have to put these principles into practice, you’re going to have to make some changes, you’re gonna have to do things differently.
And that process can be hard, it can be challenging to do that. Because each of us is an experiment of one, you have to kind of figure out the best sort of formula, the best plan that works for you, and for your lifestyle, and for your health and fitness goals.
If I was to tell you that you could just do these five things, and it would improve your life and everybody would do the same things and they would all get the same results, I’d be totally mistaken, I’d be remiss to do that. I don’t want to do that, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to tell you that, you know, there’s one one formula that’s going to work for everybody, because we’re all so different.
So this is why I do what I do as a coach is that I help you put together a detailed plan that will help you reach your goals. But then we analyze that plan and see how things are working for you as an individual. Are you feeling better? Are you losing weight? Are you sleeping better? Are you improving your running performance? Do your clothes fit better? Do you like the way you look in the mirror?
We’re going to look at all kinds of metrics, and then decide if we want to continue with this path or we need to change the plan a little bit. And that’s the beautiful part of coaching is that this feedback system, it’s you and I working closely together, trying some things, checking to see what’s working and what isn’t, and then we course correct as we go. That’s the way the process works.
I can’t tell you what’s going to be the answer for you as an individual because we are all so different. Okay. But if you want that help, if you want that guidance, if you want that support, the encouragement, the motivation, accountability to stay on track, and reach your health and fitness goals as we enter 2023 then reach out to me just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application for coaching and you and I’ll get on a call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’ll see you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself in 2023.
All right, so today I’m feeling pretty compelled to talk about food restrictions. Because I’ve been seeing posts on social media about this. I’ve been getting messages from people. People that are interested in working with me will tell me hey, I really want to work with you. I want you to be my coach, but I just have to tell you, I’m not going to restrict any foods.
I just want to keep eating the same foods that I’m eating and I don’t want to have any kind of restrictions because every time I feel restricted, I binge out on foods and things like that. And I want to address all of this because I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we think that we can make changes to our diet to our health to our fitness to our weight, and not experience some sort of restriction in some way. Okay?
I hear this from not just from people who want to work with me, but I hear this on social media too. And I see a nutritionist talk about this on social media. And where this comes from, is mostly from dieticians. And these are registered dietitians from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the problem with, and this is not just me saying this to you; you can go online and find lots of information about about the the academy, but this particular association is funded by a number of food multinationals by pharmaceutical companies.
And food industry lobbying groups, such as the National Confectioners Association, the National Confectioners Association, just so you know, it’s an American trade organization that promotes chocolate candy gum and mints and the companies that make these things. Okay, so the AMD is funded by companies like the National Confectioners Association. The AMD is also funded by companies like PepsiCo, and Mars and Coca Cola and Kellogg’s and General Mills.
And this industry funding gives food companies like Coca Cola and General Mills and stuff, the ability to offer official educational seminars to teach dietitians how to advise their clients in a way that advances the interests of those particular food companies. For example, in a Coca Cola sponsored seminar for dieticians, the speaker promoted free sugars consumption, like for kids as a healthy choice, like kids should just be able to eat as much sugar as they want. This is healthy for kids.
So if you’re listening to advice from registered dieticians, and I’m not saying they’re all the same, or that they all offer the same advice, but in general, a lot of these dietitians will say, you know, oh, all foods are fine. In moderation, we don’t restrict any foods, sugar is fine. Flour is fine, grains are fine. Just understand that this whole organization where they got their certification is funded by the sugar industry, by the pharmaceutical industry, by the junk food industry.
Okay, so anytime I see somebody talking about food restrictions, this idea of, of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics comes to mind, and their funding and who they’re sponsored by, okay. And a lot of their material, a lot of their training material is derived from these food companies to help promote their own interests.
So to me, this is a huge conflict of interest. And I don’t think this is where we should be getting our dietary advice. That’s just my opinion. Okay. So I want you to understand where this idea of never restricting foods comes from. Okay. So what does it mean to restrict foods? I want to just kind of touch on this briefly.
So what this means is that we eliminate some foods from our diet. And some people have a real problem with this. And I’m not just talking about dieticians, but some people think that we should never restrict any kinds of foods from our diet. But what if you find that you know, losing weight is very difficult unless you cut out sugary treats. Wouldn’t it be in your best interest to maybe cut out sugary treats, at least for a while.
Is restricting foods something that you should never do something you should always do? Something that you can do? Every now and then? Like what’s the right answer? Unfortunately, there isn’t really a right answer. But you’re going to hear my stance on this and my stance is going to be this – I think that at times it is necessary to restrict some foods. If you find it very difficult to give up junk food, if you find that you, you know, are addicted to junk food to sugar to you know, soda, to cookies, ice cream, whatever it is, wouldn’t it be in your best interest to you know, get off of that substance?
You know, restriction doesn’t mean it has to be a permanent thing. Restriction means that we restrict ourselves from indulging in that food for a period of time, and for some people, that period of time might be a long time. So I’ve worked with some people who have a real bad relationship with sugar.
And anytime they start eating some sugar, they find that they can’t stop eating sugar. The same goes for people who have issues with drinking or with drugs. You know, some people can drink in moderation, they can drink every now and then. You know, I know someone that can drink once a month. And she has like one drink a month. And I’m like, how do you do that?
And I know other people who have a sip of alcohol, and then and then they’re like off to the races. And they can’t stop drinking until they’re passed out on the floor. That was kind of my experience with alcohol, where as soon as I started drinking, and I drove, I couldn’t stop until I was, you know, pretty much passed out, you know? So, for me, isn’t it better for me to just abstain from drinking alcohol and not have to continually fight that battle? Yeah, I haven’t had alcohol in like 15 years, coming up on 16 years now. And it works for me.
So restricting alcohol, for me, feels great, my life is so much better without it. And it did take some time for me to get through that discomfort of, of change and the discomfort of wanting alcohol and not having it. But once I got through that, it was so much better for me. And today, I don’t even think about it like I don’t need to drink.
You know, I go out to dinner a lot. And I sit at the bar at dinner a lot just because sometimes it’s hard to find a table at a restaurant. And so my girlfriend and I will go out to dinner and sit at the bar, and neither of us really drink. So we just sit at the bar and eat food. While everybody around us is drinking. There’s alcohol everywhere there.
I’m watching them make all these drinks, and some of them look pretty damn good too. But I have no desire to drink, that desire is long gone for me. The same goes with sugar for me. So I was really addicted to sugar. And for many years, many more, I’ll just be honest here, decades, for me decades of eating tons of sugar and tons of carbs, and justifying it with all of the running that I was doing.
And that kind of worked for a while until it didn’t. And I started gaining weight and gained within a few years something like 40 pounds, and really had to take a look at my sugar intake and really had to make a decision like is this something that I want to continue to do? Or do I need to restrict this from my diet?
And I made that decision some years ago where I was just going to remove sugar from my diet. And the more I read about the dangers of sugar, and the problems, the health problems that are caused by sugar, and the obesity epidemic in this country that’s been caused by sugar and flour and grains and refined refined carbohydrates and junk food and processed foods. I just don’t want that in my life.
And so I decided that I was going to just cut that out of my life. Now this does not mean that I don’t ever eat any sugar. I do occasionally very occasionally. I recently had a birthday. And I had a big old piece of birthday cake on my birthday. Because you know what? Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Right? I had a piece of birthday cake. And it was great. I loved it.
Does that mean that the next day I needed to eat another half a birthday cake or whatever? No, no, it meant that I had that cake. And then I was done. So my relationship with sugar today is much different than it used to be. In the past, it was something I had to have every single day. That’s an unhealthy relationship with sugar. So for me, restricting this, and eliminating this from my diet 99.7% of the time works for me, and I feel better.
And I know that I’m treating my body right and that I’m eating foods that are actually healthy for me and aren’t harmful. For me. I think sugar is harmful. I think refined grains are harmful for us, especially done in excess. Now if you’re somebody that can really moderate your sugar intake, and you’re like, I’m not going to restrict any foods. This doesn’t apply to me because I want to eat some sugar every now and then. It’s not a big deal, then that’s great. You do you, but if you’re the person who is sitting there listening to this right now and you’re like, Yeah, I’m 40 pounds overweight. I do eat sugar. I have a bad relationship with carbs and sugar. But I really don’t want to give that stuff up.
Then maybe it’s this is a time for you to like, start thinking about that. Maybe you’re thinking he needs to change. Restriction doesn’t have to be permanent, it can be temporary. And I’ve worked with some people who have eliminated sugar from the from their diet, have got fat adapted as a runner, have lost a bunch of weight, and then have incorporated some carbs and some sugar back into their diet very moderately, and they’ve changed their relationship with this food substance, this food like substance, so I’m going to argue that sugar really isn’t necessary for our survival.
So it’s more like a, it’s really more like a drug than it is a food but I get it that you know, it’s sugar is in everything, it’s really, it can be hard to avoid. But if you’re the kind of person who can give it up for a while, change your relationship with it. And then slowly, you know, allow a little bit back in here and there, that’s fine. And if that works for you, and you can maintain your health and maintain your weight and maintain your running performance through all of that, then that is awesome. Like you do you absolutely.
But I think it’s stupid to think that we can keep eating a crappy diet, we can keep eating all this junk food and somehow magically, your health and your weight are going to improve. If nothing changes, nothing changes. And sometimes restricting some foods, you know, for a period of time is exactly what you need. So this idea that, you know, foods, we should never restrict any foods or foods in moderation. You know, I think this is not necessarily a helpful philosophy to adopt. Okay?
Some people cannot moderate. Some people cannot moderate things like sugar. It’s kind of like telling the alcoholic Hey, just just drink every now and then we’re telling the person who’s addicted to cocaine, just you know, do cocaine every now and then like, dude, can’t you just moderate your cocaine use isn’t? Doesn’t that sound stupid when I’m saying this out loud? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? It is ridiculous.
But this is what we’re telling people with sugar, which by the way, they’ve done studies that have shown that sugar lights up your brain more than cocaine does. That sugar actually has more of a profound impact on your brain. They’ve done these studies with rats, where rats would be given the choice of sugar or cocaine and the rats would choose the sugar over the cocaine. Poor little rats, right? They’re always being tormented.
But anyway, interesting studies, no doubt. And so if you don’t think sugar is a powerful drug, you know, studies like that kind of prove that it really is a very powerful drug, okay? But it sounds stupid to like, say to the alcoholic, or the drug addict, hey, just moderate your intake, you know, just you know, everybody else can just monitor it, why can’t you just moderate it and know if that particular substance is harmful for you? And that particular substance is something you cannot manage and you cannot control? Maybe it’s best to just cut it out of your life. All right, maybe permanently. I have no problem with that.
If you tell me like, hey, Patrick, I’m just going to cut out sugar and I’m going to do that permanently. I don’t need it anymore. And I’ve had clients who’ve told me that they’re like, I love the way I feel now that I stopped eating sugar. I don’t see any reason to ever go back to eat that junk. And I’m like, yeah, cool. I’m with you. That’s pretty much how I live my life. The most sugar I eat in a month would be some chocolate that I eat every now and then, some dark chocolate that I’ve tried, dark chocolate that’s like stevia flavored or whatever it has a erythritol or something, and I just don’t like it. It just doesn’t really do much for me. So I go to this dark chocolate that I get. And it’s pretty low in sugar. But it does have a little bit of sugar in there. But I’ll just use a little bit of that. And it’s so delicious. And it tastes so good.
And then of course, you know, my birthday, I do a piece of cake, piece of cheesecake or birthday cake or whatever. And then thinking back through this past year, as we’re coming to the end of the year here, how many times have I eaten sugar, a few bars of chocolate and some birthday cake. And that’s about it. That’s about it. It’s very, very minimal.
I’ve changed my whole relationship with sugar. And now I can do it very, very sporadically. And my life is not suffering because of that. So when it comes to never restricting foods, I don’t agree with that. I think that for some of us, it is perfectly fine to restrict foods. And for some people, maybe it’s fine to restrict foods for a period of time and then they can kind of incorporate them back.
But if you’re going to adopt this approach, you have to change your mindset around the food that you’re eating around that sugar or the soda or the desserts or whatever it is. The whole concept of restricting foods, it’s less about what foods you’re eating and not eating. And it’s more about your mindset around all of this.
So if you have this mindset of, you know, I’m going to occasionally house some sugar and it’s going to be okay. I’m going to make some cookies with my kids. And I’m going to eat a couple, great, do that. You have to have the right mindset around it, though.
But if your mindset is like, every time I eat sugar, I go into this, you know, binging behavior, if it’s if eating a little bit of sugar sets you up for for a sugar binge increases your cravings, you can’t stop thinking about it, you can’t stop eating. And once you start, then I’m going to say like, this is not something that you want to mess around with here. Like just stop eating that stuff.
This whole addictive behavior thing needs to stop. Right? This is just like you, you would deal with an alcoholic or a drug addict, like just cut them off. You got to get yourself off of the drug. All foods in moderation does not work. For some people it’s like saying all drugs in moderation. Doesn’t that sounds stupid? Yeah.
So what we want to do here is make a decision. You got to make a decision for yourself, what is it you want for yourself? If you want to lose weight, if you want to change your relationship with food, you’re going to have to probably experience some food restrictions. It’s almost impossible to do it any other way though.
And one of the big reasons why people buy into this idea of all foods in moderation or never restrict any foods. It’s because it justifies their crappy behavior. Right? If you buy into this idea that you should never restrict any foods, then this just justifies that addictive behavior. And you never have to change anything. You don’t have to give up anything. You never have to get uncomfortable. You never have to do anything differently. You can just kind of keep doing what you’re doing. And use well you know, this dietician said all foods should be fine in moderation.
But remember, the same people that are telling you this don’t restrict foods and all foods in moderation are that those people are being, you know, funded and trained and educated by the junk food companies, by the pharmaceutical companies, by the sugar industry. Just don’t listen to them. Okay? Do yourself a favor. Don’t listen to them. If you want to change, if you want to improve your health, improve your fitness. If you want to lose weight, you’re gonna have to make some changes here.
You’re gonna have to get uncomfortable. You’re gonna have to embrace the suck a little bit here, okay? Doesn’t mean forever. But what would it look like for you? If you were to lose this idea that you can eat all foods in moderation? What if? What if you just adopted this idea that Yeah, at least for a while. I’m gonna cut this junk out. I’m gonna stop eating junk food. I’m just gonna stop doing what? How do you think that would change your life? Think about that.
If you no longer ate sugar, if you no longer drink soda, if you no longer ate processed foods, how much better would you feel? How would your weight change? How would you feel about yourself? How would your energy levels be? I think that we all want more for ourselves. And that’s why you’re listening to this podcast right now, is because you want something more for yourself.
And if cutting out some of this junk food is the way that you get there. I say go for it. Absolutely go for it. It’s not a bad thing. Do it and cut some of this stuff out permanently. works better for you and your life, then I’m fine with that. It works for me. Maybe it’ll work for you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all I really do. Keep on Running Lean. And I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
When it comes to eating healthy and losing weight, people think you have 3 choices: Struggle, suffer, or give in. You might want to stick to a healthy eating plan through the holidays but feel like …
Continue Reading about 152. Struggling, Suffering, and Giving In →
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 152 of Running Lean.
My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today I’m talking about struggling, suffering and giving in when it comes to eating healthy and losing weight. A lot of people, runners especially, think that you have basically three choices, you can either struggle, suffer, or just give him.
So you might want to stick to a healthy eating plan, you know, through the holidays. But you feel like you’re either going to have to struggle to stay on that plan, or suffer your way through it. Or just say screw it and give in to all those cravings for carbage.
But what if there was another option? What if you didn’t have to suffer or struggle? What if you never gave in to those food cravings? Today I’m talking about how we’re not really stuck with this, these three options of struggling suffering and giving in how you can make healthy eating actually enjoyable, and maybe even fun, and stick to your plan. Cool.
Instead of struggling or suffering your way through the holidays this year, why don’t you do something different with coaching you and I will create a plan just for you. One that feels good to you when you actually have some say in how we structure it and one that you feel good about. And then I hope you stick to that plan.
If you want to show up on January 1, next year actually feeling good about yourself for a change. Instead of regretting all of your decisions over the last 40 days, then you might be ready for the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners where the project as always is you to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And get started, you’ll fill out a quick application, you and I will jump on a zoom, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. If it is then we can get you started right away. Cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And I’ll see you in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, this topic came to me recently because I’ve been hearing a lot of people struggling and a lot of people kind of suffering, a lot of people giving in to these temptations. Now we are officially into the holiday season here, especially in the US where if you’re listening to this, the day this episode comes out, it’ll be the day after Thanksgiving.
And so Thanksgiving is kind of the official or maybe unofficial kickoff of the holidays here in the US. So if you are in the US or in a part of the world that celebrates, you know, Christmas and all that stuff, then we are getting into this season where it’s challenging for a lot of people, this is a time of the year that can be very stressful for a lot of people.
There’s a lot of tempting foods out there. There’s holiday parties, there’s weird working schedules, there’s a lot of time off, and we sort of get out of our routine. And it can be very stressful and very detrimental.
If you are somebody that’s trying to lose weight or get healthy or change your exercise regimen or change your body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself. This is the time of the year where most people fall off the wagon, right.
Another thing to consider is that for most runners, this is considered the offseason because we are getting into the winter. We’ve had our fall races, we’ve had our fall marathons and half marathons. And now we sort of have a little bit of time off before marathons. Training actually begins again in January, at least here in the US.
So this is the time of the year where a lot of people just sort of go off the rails, eat a bunch of junk, gain a bunch of weight, and come January one they feel terrible about themselves. Yeah, have you ever done this before? This used to be my go to every single year, I would run a couple marathons every year, you know, run that fall marathon, and then I’d be like, heck yeah, I’m taking some time off.
So I would stop training. You run a little bit here and there, but pretty much stopped the level of intensity of training that I had been doing for most of the year. And then it basically eat whatever I wanted to. And then by January 1 I would always gain, like 10-15 pounds. Yeah, that’s a lot of weight gain, in really a short amount of time, really, we’re only talking about two months, maybe.
Okay, so, for me, this was always something where I would start the new year at a deficit, let’s start the new year like having to make up a bunch of ground, just to get back to normal just to get back to where I was, you know, before I started, you know, binging out and going crazy on all the garbage that I was eating at the time.
And this, this was problematic, because I would do this, you know, every year, and I would never really get back to where I was. So I just kept gaining weight, and every year, I would just gain a bunch of weight. And this time of the year was a time where I would gain the most amount of weight, because it was the offseason because it was the holidays, because it was stressful.
And all the reasons I can tell you all the reasons, all the stories, all the excuses for why I did what I did. But at the end of the day, it just boils down to me having some really bad habits and eating the wrong kinds of foods and, and really not understanding how all this was affecting me. So we don’t want to do this, this is not really a good way to go, right?
You want to start the new year, instead of feeling bad and coming from a deficit and having to make up this ground. You want to start the new year feeling good about yourself, not feeling bad about yourself. Because when you start the new year, and you feel bad about yourself, here’s what you’ve done over the last 40 days or so, you’ve broken down the trust in yourself.
So when I say you know, how do you build up trust in yourself? What I’m talking about is, you say you’re gonna do something and then you do it. So you say you’re gonna stick to your food plan, and you do what you say you’re gonna stick to your running schedule, and you do it. When you don’t do that, you break down that trust in yourself.
When you say you’re going to do something, and then you fail, and you give up and you don’t do that thing. You subconsciously break down your ability to trust yourself to stay on track, you lose confidence, you lose momentum, you have all this ground to make up, you’re not making progress anymore, you’re actually going backwards. And all of this feels terrible.
And yet, so many people do this anyway. And then they struggle come the New Year to just get back to their normal state. They’re like, You know what they’re used to. I don’t think this is a good idea, we do not want to take this approach over the next 40 days or so. So there’s roughly 39 or 40 days between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.
And I think this is a great opportunity for us to get focused on what we can do to stay consistent, and to honor the commitments we make to ourselves and to build trust in ourselves. Because the opposite is also true. When you say you’re going to do something and you do it, you build trust in yourself, you build confidence in yourself that you can actually stick to your plan. And this is where you start to make progress towards your goals, you maybe start to lose weight, maybe you start to improve your running, you get faster, maybe you’re lifting weights, and you get stronger, and then you build momentum.
And all this momentum helps you have more confidence in it. And it motivates you to keep going and then you can start the new year feeling amazing. And making all this progress and having had your own back these last 40 days. That’s what I really want for you. And for me and for all of us. Because I know that that is what you want for yourself.
I know that you want to get through the holidays and you want to feel like you’ve done a good job and you’ve honored your commitments to yourself. You’ve built momentum, you’ve built confidence, you’ve built trust in yourself and you’ve made progress. That’s where I think you want to be, right?
So why not do that? Why not make that your priority? But the problem is most people, they don’t do that. Most people just have this idea of like yeah, I’m gonna I’m going to start the new year feeling great and then they just give in, you know, they struggle they suffer they give in through the whole 40 days of the holidays.
And really what are the holidays we have? Thanksgiving Day. You can count New Year’s Eve and or I’m sorry, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So really we’re talking five days, five days. Some of those are like half days, like New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve.
So, like four days we’re talking about here, it’s so when we talk about the holidays, it’s like four days, right? Don’t make it seem like every day is a party between now and the end of the year, because it isn’t, and it shouldn’t be. Okay. But here’s the thing.
Most people, they struggle, they suffer, or they just give in, they have all these excuses, all these stories, all these reasons. As if all this stuff is automatic, it’s set in stone, it’s absolute, it is the truth, it’s not the truth. It’s just what you’re choosing to believe. It’s what you’re choosing to believe to be true.
Think about that for a minute, the things you think are true, like, losing weight is hard, I have to suffer my way through this. It’s going to be a struggle, I always give in all those things are just things that you are choosing to believe. I want you to think about that and really let that sink in. You’re just choosing to believe those things.
So when we talk about struggling, what I hear from people, I hear them struggling, and I hear them say this is really hard. It’s hard for me to do this, I just can’t do it. I can’t seem to get motivated, I can’t stick with it. And they struggle and they struggle and they struggle and it’s in it and it creates a really negative state of being. Okay.
And then there’s people that they may not actually feel like they’re struggling, they might stick with the plan, but they suffer their way through it. All right, well, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to stick with this plan and eat this good food, but I won’t like it. I’m not going to be happy, it’s going to suck. Is that how we want to go through life? No, no, no, no.
But they’re like, hanging on like, like white knuckling it right? They’re hating every minute of it. They’re in a crappy mood all the time, they’re resentful, they’re angry, they’re pissed off, because they can eat all this good food that everybody else is eating, they can’t do what everybody else is doing. And so they feel terrible. And they suffer and they suffer. Alright, so you can do that you can suffer, you can struggle, all you want.
But what that usually leads to is giving in and it leads to quitting. As it is too hard, I can’t do it, I’m just not going to do it anymore. I quit. I’m just going to give in. I’m having cravings for pizza. So I’m going to eat pizza. I’m having cravings for pie and cookies, and alcohol. And I’m just going to give in because it’s easier, and it feels good. And it’s not hard. And you know, I don’t have to suffer anymore.
And so a lot of people will just say screw it or, you know, why bother, you know, it’s too hard. And they just walk away from what they want for themselves, right? They walk away from the process of actually improving their life, improving their health, improving their well being and improving their fitness. Because the struggling, the suffering is just too much, it’s too hard. And so that usually leads to quitting.
So this might be your default behavior, you may have conditioned yourself over the years over the decades, to struggle to say it’s too hard to say you can’t do it to say you could never stick with it, to suffer your way through it, hate every minute of it. Be resentful, be angry all the time. And then quit. This may be what you’ve done over and over and over again. You’ve conditioned yourself to behave in certain ways, in certain situations.
But now, you want something more for yourself, you want to improve your body composition, you want to lose weight, you want to get stronger, you want to improve your running, or maybe you just want to start running, you want to be a consistent runner. So these are things that you want for yourself that you may not have right now. But in order to get there, you cannot continue struggling, you cannot continue with the suffering and obviously, quitting is not going to get you there.
So if you’ve conditioned yourself to act in certain ways, and behave in certain ways and feel certain things and think certain things, you’re gonna have to do some work here, you’re gonna have to decondition yourself, you’re gonna have to decondition yourself and change your default behavior because your default behavior kind of sucks and it’s not working for you.
Struggling, suffering, giving in. If this is your default behavior, that’s pretty sucky behavior. Sorry, but it is you who has to change that. You got to change that right now. And so you just got to change what you do. Right Easy, easy peasy. Just change your default behavior. That’s sarcasm in case you can’t tell. It’s not easy to do. It’s a simple concept. But it is not easy to do.
And it’s just because of your conditioning, it’s because you’ve been doing the same thing for a lot of time, decades, that it becomes very difficult to change that because you just think that this is who you are at your core. And there’s nothing you can do about it. That is what we call a limiting belief, because it limits you, it keeps you stuck, it keeps you small, it keeps you from making any kind of progress that keeps you from growing.
And a lot of times people choose those limiting types of behavior, life limiting types of beliefs, because it’s easier than actually doing the work of change, change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to do the work to change. But I’m telling you right now, if you can decondition yourself. And if you can change that default behavior, you are going to be a total badass, you can do anything that you want for yourself.
So really, what you have to do is you have to undo your conditioning. And it really starts with your mindset. Your mindset is your foundation, it’s the foundation that everything you want for yourself is built upon. Everything good that you want for yourself that you don’t already have, is built upon a solid foundation of the right mindset. With the right mindset, you can accomplish anything that you want.
The opposite is also true with the wrong mindset, it’s going to be very difficult to make any kind of progress to stick with anything to accomplish anything at all, it’s going to be very difficult with the wrong mindset. So we have to fix the mindset, struggling, suffering, this is just your mindset, this is something you are choosing, it may not seem like it, it may feel like it’s you know, just happening to you.
It may feel automatic, but I’m telling you, this is a state of being that you’re in that you are choosing. And you might be thinking, why would I choose this? Why would I choose a crappy mindset? Why do I choose a crappy state of being? Why would we do this? It sounds kind of ridiculous, right? But I see this every single day: people choosing the struggle, people choosing to suffer. Why?
Why would you do this? It feels terrible. It creates all sorts of negativity, it creates all sorts of stress in your life, it is very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable place to be. So why would you choose this? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because there’s another type of discomfort, the type of discomfort that comes with sticking to your plan no matter what. When you feel like eating a bunch of junk food and you don’t, that is very uncomfortable.
But that’s a different kind of discomfort. It’s the kind of discomfort that you’re not used to. It’s the kind of discomfort that is unfamiliar to you. The kind of discomfort you’re familiar with is the struggling in the suffering and the giving it that’s what you’re used to. That’s familiar to you. That’s your comfort zone. That sort of discomfort is in your comfort zone.
I know it sounds kind of weird, but it’s true. You’re used to that. It’s like putting on that warm cozy sweater in the winter, like, ooh, this feels good. Even though it makes you feel terrible. You’re choosing the struggling, you’re choosing the suffering because that level of that type of discomfort is something you’re familiar with.
Okay, so the other type of discomfort is the type where you have to stick to your food plan or stick to your exercise plan or go run outside even though it’s cold out. Those things feel uncomfortable, but in a different way in a way that you’re just not used to.
So here’s something I’m going to offer you: which one of these levels of discomfort do you want to focus on because you get to choose? Choose your discomfort. Choose how you want to struggle or suffer. What if you chose the discomfort of sticking to your plan no matter what. Ooh, now we’re getting somewhere right?
What if you put aside the discomfort of struggling and put aside the discomfort of suffering and just embrace the discomfort of sticking to the plan. What if you created a plan and then stuck to the plan no matter what even though it was uncomfortable? Right. This is a totally different mindset. This is a complete mindset shift that most people are not willing to even think about.
They’re not willing to even consider it because it doesn’t feel good. Now, first thing, and the most important thing is you have to have a plan. Most people don’t have a plan, they just wing it. Right? Most people wing it all the time. Well, you know, just figure it out later, I’ll figure it out. I’ll just, what am I going to eat for Thanksgiving? What am I going to eat for Christmas? What am I going to do about running? I’ll just figure it out later.
No, you have to have a plan. Have a plan. Plan your runs, plan your workouts, plan your meals. What does your running plan look like this week? What do your meals look like this week? What are you eating for dinner tomorrow? How are you handling that holiday party that’s coming up in a couple of weeks? When are you doing your strength training this week? What is your plan, plan everything and then stick to the plan no matter what.
And by the way, that’s it, that no matter what part that’s most important. The people I work with my clients, we make a plan. Every one of my clients has a plan, we put together a plan. That’s different. It’s different for everybody. Everybody’s plan is a little bit different. But we put together a personalized plan, and then we stick to the plan. And if they don’t stick to the plan, they have to tell me why I hold them accountable. And we talk through it, we decide how maybe next time we can do things differently.
How do we handle this situation better the next time it comes around, and then the next time that type of thing happens they do they handle it better, and it gets a little bit easier. And the more they stick to their plan, the more progress they make, the more confidence they build, the more they build that trust in themselves. And the more they build good habits. And they know that they can get through just about anything.
This is a big part of why coaching works so well, is because we’re creating a personalized plan and then helping you stick to the plan no matter what. And with this approach, there’s not much struggle, there’s not much suffering, and there’s really no giving in that maybe, maybe occasionally, and especially at the beginning, there’s a little bit of a, there’s a bit of a process of like committing to the change and then getting used to the change.
And again, it’s an uncomfortable process. Nobody does this perfectly. And it does happen occasionally where there might be some giving in. But we learn from the experience and we act differently next time. And over time, all of this just gets easier and easier. And the struggling, the suffering and the giving in become a thing of the past, it just doesn’t happen anymore. This is all about building new habits.
You have to build new habits, you have to do things that feel good to you that they may feel bad at the beginning, they may feel uncomfortable at the beginning. But eventually they will feel good to you. They should start to feel easy and effortless and feel sustainable for you. And there’s probably something you’ve never really experienced before because you either struggled, suffered or just gave in so you quit before the actual magic happened. Right?
So we’re getting into this season we’re getting in this holiday season, it’s can be a very tough time of the year for a lot of people, I get that. You know people deal with family issues. Maybe they’ve lost somebody, there’s some loneliness, there’s some stress, there’s anxiety, there’s financial issues and on and on.
Don’t add to the stress of the season because it’s, it’s already kind of stressful. Don’t add to that stress by going completely off the rails from a food and exercise standpoint. Make a plan and then stick to your plan no matter what. Stop it with all the struggling, stop it with the suffering. That mindset is not going to get you anywhere. And definitely stop giving in, don’t give in. Don’t quit. We keep going. Relentless forward progress, we keep moving forward.
And listen, if you want some help with this, I am absolutely here for you just go to my website runningleancoaching.com/apply and I’ll help you start the new year feeling good about yourself feeling confident and having made a bunch of progress towards your health and fitness goals. Instead of regretting everything you’ve done for the last 40 days and having to make up a bunch of ground. We don’t want to do that. Okay, so reach out to me, I’m here for you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
There seems to be a bit of confusion out there in the endurance world when it comes to the terms “keto” and “fat-adapted.” Keto gets a bad rap because people tout it as being an all-fat diet - all …
Continue Reading about 149. Keto vs. Fat-Adapted – Which is Better? →
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 149 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today keto versus fat adapted, which is better? So there seems to be a bit of confusion out there in the endurance world when it comes to the terms keto and fat adapted.
Keto kind of gets a bad rap because people tout keto as being the all fat diet, right? Like you’re just eating sticks of butter wrapped with bacon, but this is definitely not the case at all. And then being fat adapted on the other hand, it causes confusion because there’s the word fat in there. And so people are running in the other direction because they’re afraid of fat. We’ve become kind of a fat phobic nation here. All right.
So any kind of dietary intervention that allows you to consume higher amounts of fat seems counterintuitive and scary and all that. So today on the podcast, I’m going to clear up all this confusion and help answer the question: keto versus fat adapted, which is better?
And whether you want to lose weight, run longer, or just become that healthiest version of yourself, burning fat is how you get there, and figuring out how to best get your body into fat burning mode; this is what I do every single day as the weight loss coach for runners.
So working together, you and I will put together a plan to get your body burning fat effectively. The way it’s supposed to. This is not some weird fat diet. This is like getting your body back to its natural state of being a fat burning machine.
We humans are excellent fat burners, we’ve just gotten away from that with the crappy diet most people eat. Okay, so if you’re ready to get back to being a fat burning machine, apply for coaching with me and we’ll get you there to learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Okay, the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because there seems to be this confusion over the terms there’s confusion about what it means to be keto. There’s words like the ketogenic diet, and being in ketosis and ketones and ketone bodies and all these different words around keto, and people don’t fully understand what it means.
They also hear people talk about keto is just being like this diet, we’re eating nothing but fat. And fat adapted, you know, people are confused about what does that mean? What does it mean, fat adapted? And do you have to eat high amounts of fat in that diet, too? Is it all just about eating a bunch of fat?
So I want to break this all down for you today, I want to like kind of help you to understand the difference between the two. There’s some similarities to keto and fat adapted, they share many similarities, right? I’m gonna go over what those similarities are, how there’s some overlap between the two. And then what the differences are between the two. And I’m hoping that by the end of this episode, you can make that determination for yourself, which is better for you as a person.
Okay, I’m gonna just gonna say from the outset, that they’re both very beneficial states to be in being fat adapted and being keto, they’re both really healthy for you and they have lots of positive health benefits, okay. And I want you to understand how this relates to you as a runner as well. Okay, so I want you to understand the difference between keto and fat adapted, I want you to understand the implications that it will have for you as a runner.
I want you to understand the health benefits of both of these things and then hopefully, dispel some of these myths and misconceptions about keto and fat adapted and, and really just help you to make an informed decision about your own health and fitness journey. Okay, and what you want for yourself, so be thinking about that.
What is it that you want for yourself? What are the goals that you have for yourself, and then as I’m talking through this stuff today, think oh, that might be a way that can help me get there or maybe that’s not for me. Either way, it’s fine. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Okay. So first, let’s get into this.
Let’s talk about keto. What doees keto mean? Okay. So when we talk about keto, a lot of times we’re talking about the ketogenic Diet a ketogenic diet is a diet that is low in carbohydrates. It’s higher in fat, you know, when you drop the carbohydrate ratio, you’re going to increase your fat content as well. Okay? But it does not mean we’re eating sticks of butter wrapped with bacon all day long. That’s not what we do.
It’s basically keeping your carbohydrate levels pretty low so that you can lower your blood sugar, lower your insulin levels and shift your body’s metabolism away from burning carbs towards burning fat. And ketones are using mostly fat and ketones for energy.
Okay, so the ketogenic diet offers many health benefits right? Many studies have shown that this type of diet can help you to lose weight and improve your health and a bunch of different ways. The ketogenic diet has proven benefits that help reverse diabetes that help prevent cancers, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease.
But really the main focus here in the way that I want to talk about this today is on fat metabolism, your body’s ability to burn fat for fuel, okay, so you lower your carbohydrate intake, blood sugar, lowers insulin levels, lowers and now your body can access your stored body fat for fuel, okay? So the ketogenic diet is a diet that is low carbohydrate and higher in fat, yes, but it helps your body to start burning fat really effectively and producing ketones and and this state of producing a certain amount of ketones is called ketosis. Okay?
Ketosis is a metabolic state where your body is using fat and ketones for fuel instead of sugar and carbs and glucose, okay? It’s called dietary ketosis because in this state, your body is producing a certain amount of ketones. There are three main ketones that get produced: beta hydroxy butyrate, acetylacetate, and then acetone. The first two beta hydroxy butyrate, or BHB, and acetylacetate seemed, are the the main ketone bodies that get produced, okay, acetone is actually a byproduct of acetoacetate.
And in order to know whether or not you’re in this state of ketosis, you have to test your blood, your urine, your breath for the presence of one or more of those ketone bodies, okay? So being in ketosis means that you are producing between point five and three millimoles of ketones per liter of blood. So for me, when I have like, tried to get into ketosis in the past, I never really produced these numbers, I might get between like point five and one.
So I might be where they consider trace amounts of ketones, I might produce small amounts of ketones, but I never got into this place where I was burning, you know, two, three millimoles of ketones, right? Or producing those kinds of numbers. And to be honest with you, I never worried about it. I felt great when I when I do more of a Keto type of diet, when I keep my carbs super low.
And for me, it’s not about the number on some test device. It’s about how I feel and how my workouts are. And if I’m maintaining weight, if I’m losing weight, if my cognitive function is high, all those things are important to me, not a number of ketones. It’s produced on a certain test meter or something like that.
I’ve done the urine tests, I’ve done the blood tests, haven’t done the breath test, but there’s different ways of testing ketones. So if you follow a strict ketogenic diet, meaning you’re keeping your carbs very low, and you shoot for probably between 20 to 50 grams of carbs total per day.
So this is a dramatic lowering of your carbohydrate intake, especially if you’re used to eating like a standard kind of American type of diet with very, very high in carbs. If you follow this very strict ketogenic type of diet, you will most likely get into that state of ketosis, okay, which is great. Your blood sugar’s level out, insulin levels out, your body starts being able to use the stored body fat for fuel.
Ketones get produced as a byproduct of this fat burning, and you’re in ketosis, okay. And there’s a lot of great benefits to be in this state of ketosis. Okay. So some of the benefits of being in in ketosis and in doing the following a strict ketogenic diet, fat burning is put into high gear you are burning fat really effectively, you’re no longer burning glucose for energy because you’re not giving your body glucose for energy, you’re not really eating much in the way of sugar or carbohydrates at all.
So the only fuel your body has now is your own stored body fat and some of the fat that you’re consuming that you’re eating, okay? So fat burning is put into high gear, weight loss will absolutely begin to happen for you. If you want to lose weight, you got to burn fat, this is a great way to get fat burning going.
Okay, lots and lots of studies have shown the effectiveness of a ketogenic diet for weight loss, right? This is very well known. It’s the you know, they’ve proven like they’ve compared it to the low fat diet or low calorie diets, and they get better results. So you lose weight without counting calories without tracking your food, and with less hunger and deprivation because you’re eating a higher fat, higher protein type of diet.
And what’s interesting is they did a study, one particular study I’ll mention here was in the journal, Nutrition and Metabolism found that people who followed a ketogenic diet for eight weeks lost nearly five times as much body fat as those who followed a low fat diet, okay, so a low fat diet is not as effective at losing weight, like you can burn much more fat and get your body into this natural state of fat burning by just lowering your carbohydrate intake getting into ketosis, and boom, you’re gonna start to feel great, you’re gonna start losing weight, some other other health benefits of being in ketosis, your endurance improves.
So runners who follow a pretty strict ketogenic diet will most likely also experience an improvement in their running endurance, because you’re burning fat really effectively here, this is the key thing we have to understand here. You’re burning fat really effectively, even at higher running intensity. So people think that oh, you know, keto is great. You know, you really can’t, like run fast when you’re doing this when you’re doing the super low carb, you know, ketogenic approach, which is not really true.
They’ve done some studies, they’ve shown that typical carb adapted athletes, you know, they can hit, they can burn their burning fat up to about 65%, or their VO2 max, right. But the keto adapted athletes, somebody who’s doing more of a strict ketogenic type of diet can burn fat, you know, 70, 80 up to 90 or more percent of their VO2 max.
So as the intensity increases, as a keto adapted athlete, you can increase your fat burning as well. So just keep that in mind that athletic performance does not have to suffer because your carbohydrate intake goes down because you’re doing kind of a Keto type of diet, okay? Also, sleep is improved.
Studies have shown that ketogenic diet promotes adenosine activity in the body. So adenosine promotes the sleep drive. So it is a chemical that helps you sleep more effectively, right. And so they’ve shown that adenosine gets produced. It helps to relax the nervous system, it helps to reduce pain and inflammation, all of which help you improve sleep.
Your focus and concentration improve on the ketogenic diet. So your brain loves fat and ketones as a fuel source. And most people when they switched from, you know, a regular high sugar diet, high carb diet to a low carb ketogenic type of diet, they experienced the lifting of the brain fog that happens when they make this switch.
And most people don’t even know they’re in a brain fog until they start experiencing this. And they’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how much more clearly I could think and concentrate. People experience more sustained energy throughout the day. So blood sugar and insulin levels are normalized. So you no longer have these spikes and crashes and energy levels throughout the day.
You don’t have to get an afternoon coffee just to get you through the last part of the day. Food cravings subside greatly. So when you switch to a lower carb diet and a strict ketogenic type of diet, you no longer have your hunger signals being jacked up by all the carbs and insulin. And so your food cravings go way down. You’re not as hungry during the day, this is a really good place to be by the way. If you’re feeling hungry all the time, there’s something wrong with your diet right there. There’s some dysfunction happening there.
Also, people experience less bloating and inflammation. Keto is a non inflammatory diet, you’re removing the inflammatory carbohydrates from your diet. So inflammation and bloating become a thing of the past which helps you to recover faster from the harder workouts as well. So you have this lack of inflammation And this is gonna play a role in helping you to recover faster especially from the longer harder workouts. Okay?
So these are all benefits of the ketogenic diet. These are all benefits of fat burning, when you really kick your fat burning into high gear. These are all the amazing things that can happen. Studies have actually shown that this kind of a diet, the ketogenic diet can have other benefits for a variety of different health conditions like heart disease.
They’ve shown that the ketogenic diet can help improve risk factors like body fat HDL, which is the good cholesterol blood pressure, normalized blood sugars normalized, and this can have a positive effect on your risk of heart disease. Cancer, they’ve shown that the diet has been explored as an additional treatment for cancer because it helps to slow tumor growth, which is really interesting. The keto diet may help reduce symptoms of Alzheimer’s and actually help to slow its progress. Research has shown that the ketogenic diet can cause significant reductions in seizures for children that have epilepsy.
They’ve shown that this diet can help improve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The ketogenic diet also helps to reduce insulin levels, which plays a key role in PCOS polycystic ovary syndrome. And then the last thing that I thought was pretty interesting was that some research has shown that this diet, the ketogenic diet improves the outcomes of traumatic brain injuries as well.
Okay, so lots and lots of benefits of getting off the carbs and switching to a very low carb ketogenic type of diet. Okay, so that’s keto. That’s what it means to be in ketosis. You know, we’re keeping our ketone bodies up into that point five to three millimoles per liter of blood. We’re producing ketones, we have all these positive health benefits that begin to happen.
Now, let’s talk about the difference between keto and being fat adapted, okay. So first and foremost, understand this: being fat adapted shares a lot of the same benefits. In fact, all of the same benefits as keto they both mean that you are burning fat for fuel, you are training your body to become really effective at burning fat, right? They’re both great as weight loss interventions.
They’re both great at helping to improve cognitive function, sleep endurance, energy levels, blood sugar and insulin levels, faster recovery, everything else I mentioned above. So being fat adapted and being in the state of ketosis or following a ketogenic diet, share all of those same benefits. Okay. So in one aspect, they are virtually the same thing you would think right?
Being fat adapted means you’re burning mostly fat for energy, you’re producing ketones as well. Probably not as many though, and this is where there’s some overlap between the two. And this is where the differences start to happen. Okay. The biggest difference between being fat adapted and being keto is that when you’re fat adapted, you increase your ability to switch between burning fat and burning carbs for fuel.
So someone doing strict keto, you know, keeping the carbs super low, producing that point five to three millimoles of ketones is mainly using fat for fuel and ketones. But they will not be as metabolically flexible, meaning that you can’t switch between burning fat and carbs as easily. Okay, so eating a bunch of carbs may not shut down fat burning totally, but it will definitely kick you out of ketosis.
Okay, so as soon as you start increasing your carbs, you’re going to be kicking yourself out of that ketogenic state out of ketosis, okay. The fat adapted athlete can handle a carb load. So let’s say you eat a couple of sweet potatoes that night before a long run. In the short term, you’re going to be kicked out of ketosis, right? But it’s not a problem. Because as soon as your blood sugar and your insulin levels normalize, you’re going to be back to burning fat really effectively.
So you’ll quickly go from burning sugar burning carbs to burning fat, and you can kind of switch between the two. So, the key differentiator here is that the fat adapted athlete has the ability to use both fat and carbs as fuel. Metabolic Flexibility is the key here and this is a really good place to be. So you can switch between being keto and being fat adapted and one of the processes that I work through with all my clients.
First of all, we want to get their bodies used to burning fat, we got to get really good at burning fat. And this is the state we are naturally in as human beings, we’re naturally good fat burners. And we’ve gotten away from this state because we’re just eating tons of sugar, tons of grains, tons of processed foods, and we’re just burning all that for fuel.
So you’re constantly have to keep, you know, putting this big, fast burning fuel on the fire, it’s like putting paper on a fire and you just got it, you’re you keep burning through that paper really quickly, what we want to do is we want to be putting logs on that fire that burned really slowly.
And for long periods of time, that’s fat, okay, the paper is sugar, right? So we want to get our body back into the natural state of burning fat really effectively. And this is where keto is a great tool to us for a period of time, okay, so you can, you can go really strict ketogenic diet, you can keep your carbs super low at the beginning.
And you really don’t even need to test for ketones just keep your carbs super low, and you’re gonna start burning fat, right, and this may take some time, it may take two to four weeks, it may take longer, everybody’s a little bit different here. Okay. But then we can start incorporating more carbs back in the diet. And what we do is we time the carbs around key workouts.
So we want to get your body used to burning fat and used to burning carbs as fuel during certain times when your body demands more fuel from your body. So this is being fat adapted, right? But it’s not like a free for all with the carbs and sugar. This is not an excuse to binge out on ice cream and candy and stuff like that.
We’re still eating real food, nutrient dense sources of naturally occurring carbohydrates, for example, root vegetables or fruit, right? And then we time these around your workouts, you earn your carbs, and then you burn your carbs. Okay, and if you do this properly, you should still be experiencing all the benefits of keto.
So weight loss, improved endurance, improved cognitive function all day energy, etc, etc, etc. all the benefits I mentioned above, and also being able to use carbohydrates strategically around workouts as fuel to give you that extra gear, okay. So you can be fat adapted and not be in ketosis, you can be fat adapted, and not have to follow a strict ketogenic diet, fat adapted and keto are using the same pathways for energy.
So they’re both utilizing fat and ketones for fuel. But being fat adapted will allow you to also use carbohydrates for fuel, which is especially ideal for the endurance athlete. So I hope this clears up the confusion about keto and fat adapted, they’re similar. They’re similar states to be in their long, they’re like different sides of the same spectrum of fat burning, right, and they’re both great.
They’re both great places to be right, tons of health benefits for both and you get to decide what works best for you. Some people love being in ketosis all the time, they feel great, their workouts are great. They don’t need the extra push, they don’t need the carbs, and it can help them to lose weight or maintain their weight pretty effortlessly.
So keto is a great option for a lot of people. Other people prefer the option to use carbs for workouts. And being fat adapted gives them all the benefits of keto without having to be quite as strict right. So they also get the added benefit of having that extra gear for the higher intensity workouts and adding in some carbs, is how you do that. And that will definitely give you that edge. Okay.
And as always, if you want help with any of this, I’m totally here for you. We’ll figure out what works best for you. We’ll put together a plan for you and I’ll help you stay on track with that plan. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
A lot of people make the assumption that if you’re a low-carb runner, it means you don't ever eat any carbs at all. But this simply isn’t true. There’s a time and place for carbs in your diet, …
Continue Reading about 148. Determining Your Carbohydrate 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 148 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners today, determining your carbohydrate tolerance. So a lot of people make this assumption that if you’re a low carb athlete, that means that you don’t ever eat any carbs at all. And this simply isn’t true.
I’ve talked about this before, here on the podcast, there’s definitely a time and place for carbs in your diet, but you need to understand how carbs affect you as an individual, before you start piling all those sweet potatoes onto your plate. Okay, we all have differing levels of tolerance. When it comes to carbohydrates.
Some people can handle more than others without any negative side effects at all. Others need to keep their carb intake fairly low, or they experience all kinds of issues. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. Carbohydrates are not bad. But understanding how you tolerate them can definitely prevent a lot of the common issues and a lot of the negative side effects that a lot of people experience.
So here today, I’m going to explain the importance of determining your carbohydrate tolerance, so that you can lose weight and prove your endurance and basically achieve all of your health and fitness goals. And for a lot of people figuring out how many carbs is going to be right for you as an individual is challenging. It’s kind of confusing.
And this is why this is a big part of what I do as the weight loss coach for runners. So we’re not only going to focus on how many carbs you’re eating, but we want to focus on the timing of those carbs as well. We want to make sure that you’re getting the best bang for your buck, so to speak, without any of the issues that come along with increasing carbs in your diet.
So it’s not an all or nothing kind of thing we need to figure out, we need to do a little bit of experimenting, we do a little trial and error. And we got to figure out what is the right plan, what is the right sort of recipe for you around workouts, how many carbs the timing of your carbs. But listen, having a coach there to help you make sense of all this and help you figure it out. It’s just like hitting the easy button on all this for you.
Okay, and this is my jam. This is what I do every single day. So if you’re ready to just stop struggling and hit that easy button, I’m here for you. Okay, to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application, you and I will get on a call and we’ll see if the Running Lean coaching project is a good fit for you. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.
And if I sound like I’m a little nasally today, it’s because I have had this head cold for like 10 days now. And I rarely get sick. The last time I was sick was at the beginning of 2020 before COVID I probably had COVID at the time, but I haven’t had any kind of head cold or anything since then. And this one has been lingering. And it’s kind of I’m ready for this to be done because it’s driving me crazy. Not only do I sound nasally, I feel like my head is still going to explode.
I’m trying not to take any medication. I did that for a few days at the beginning. But that stuff just messes me up. And I feel like I just want my body to fight this off and do what it needs to do naturally. But one thing about this is that for about a week there I completely lost my sense of smell and taste. And I did a COVID test because I was like man, I think I probably have COVID because I had a fever and, you know, coughing and lost my sense of smell and taste. Tested negative for COVID. So that’s not what it is. It’s just a head cold that is really messing with my whole system here.
So, this past week again, though, the reason I’m bringing this up is because this past weekend, we’re here in Cincinnati, we had this festival called the Coffee Fest. And it was, it’s one of those things where we have lots of festivals here in the summer, you know, we have, and they’re all revolved around drinking, right? They’re all about wine tasting and beer fests. And or, you know, we have Oktoberfest Cincinnati, which is really popular here. And it’s just a bunch of junk food and beer.
And finally, there’s something where I can go and actually enjoy. This is my jam. I love coffee, I love good coffee, I drink very high quality coffee, I grind my own beans. And I’m very particular about coffee. And I’m like, this is going to be perfect. So I got these tickets. And I’m like, man, I hope I can actually taste some of this coffee, and showed up at Coffee Fest, and I’m walking around the different vendors and, and trying their coffee and trying to smell it.
I like I could not smell or taste anything. I mean, nothing at all. And, you know, I felt bad because I was like, man, I would really be enjoying this. If I could smell or taste any of this. So much of taste is is through your nose, right how you smell things. So I’m at this beautiful place with music playing. It’s a beautiful place. All these amazing coffees around, I’m tasting the coffee. And they’re explaining to me the different notes of citrus and floral and cocoa.
And I’m just like, yeah, I was just going to take your word for it because I can’t taste anything at all. It’s such a bummer. But my sense of smell and taste are coming back, I can definitely smell things now. And my taste is coming back. And I love food too. I love to eat. And eating food has not been extremely enjoyable. To me, it’s just been like, I better eat some food because I need the energy to, you know, get through my workouts and such. But it was nothing that I could taste at all.
So what a weird experience to go through, I’ve never had this before, I’ve never lost my sense of taste and smell like that before. So I don’t recommend it. I’m just gonna be honest with you. It’s no fun. But I’m getting through this, but I’m hoping that, you know, by the next time I record my next podcast, I will sound so nasally but um, I’m about apologizing, you’re just gonna have to deal with it for right now. Okay.
So here’s what I want to talk about today. I have been talking to a lot of runners, and you know, a lot of people are into this higher training cycle, you know, higher training parts of their training cycle, because we’ve got all of our fall races happening these days, you know, New York Marathon is, you know, about 10 days away. So a lot of people are talking about training and you know, how there may be increasing carbs, or we’re having these conversations in our client calls and our coaching calls about how to match your carb intake along with your training. Okay.
And for everybody that I talked to, it’s a little bit different. We all have a different tolerance for carbohydrates. Okay. And I want to explain, first of all, what this means, like what does it mean that you can tolerate, quote, unquote, like tolerate carbs or not tolerate carbs? You know, I’ve talked before that a lot of people have some level of intolerance.
For carbohydrates. I think the human body in general, has some level of intolerance for carbohydrates, and some people are more susceptible to that than others more sensitive to that intolerance than others. Okay? So when I talk about tolerance, what I’m really talking about is how many carbs you can eat that you can ingest without any negative side effects.
So we have to make this assumption that to some level carbs are somewhat toxic to the human body, okay, they have an element of toxicity, and it’s very much like alcohol, when you think about it this way. Alcohol in small amounts is slightly toxic to the human body, but is it really very harmful? I mean, you can argue why this might be harmful, even in small amounts.
But from a metabolic standpoint, even in small amounts, carbohydrates do have an effect on the human body and there’s some negative effects of carbohydrates on the human body that I really want to address here today. Because when we talk about whether you can tolerate more carbs or not? We need to be looking at these negative side effects that a lot of people experience when they are eating a high carb diet, or moderate carbohydrate diet.
Okay, now, a lot of people means that the majority of people have some sort of intolerance to carbohydrates. And they experience one or more of these negative side effects that I’m going to talk about here in just a second. But at higher amounts, all of these things get exacerbated.
Okay, and so in higher amounts, people experience more of these issues, and people experience them and in greater degrees, okay, so some of the dysfunction that I’m talking about here are things like bloating, inflammation, blood sugar spikes, and then crashes, weight gain, the inability to lose weight. These are all side effects of carbohydrates, carbohydrate intake, sleep issues, chronic stress, incessant hunger, cravings for more carbohydrates, sugar cravings, brain fog, the inability to think and concentrate, gas, constipation, diarrhea, high heart rate while exercising, the inability to recover quickly from harder workouts.
Endurance issues where your endurance just tanks, you know, you’re out there running and you hit the wall. Things like irritability, grumpiness, anxiety, depression, these are all symptoms of high carbohydrate intake. And of course, there’s a bigger list of things that will happen as a result of, of years and years of high carb intake, we start to get into metabolic diseases.
But these are just very common, these are not weird one off things I’m talking about here. These are all very common side effects, very common symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance. And a lot of people experienced these side effects, especially when they’re ingesting carbs and higher amounts, okay. And as we get older, we become even more carbohydrate intolerant, meaning that as we get older, we probably most of us can’t handle carbs like we did when we were younger.
So lowering your carb intake is going to be especially helpful and beneficial for the aging athlete if you’re in your 40s 50s 60s and beyond, okay, so really, determining your individual carbohydrate tolerance is going to be key to you, not just becoming a fat adapted runner, but also to help you to become the healthiest and fittest human being that you can possibly be.
Alright, we need to figure out what works for you from a carbohydrate standpoint, if you want to be the healthiest person that you can be. Okay, so let’s look at one common scenario. A common scenario would be somebody that is interested in losing weight, and I talked to so many people who are runners who are trying to lose weight and having a hard time with it, they’re struggling with it.
Most people that listen to this podcast are probably people that fit into that category. Right? Right. So if you’re a runner and you struggled with your weight, then this is, you know, a pretty common scenario. Okay, so let’s look at what changes you might make and how to get a feel for what your carb carb tolerance might be.
Okay, so let’s say you have been eating that standard runner’s diet that I’ve talked about in the past the standard runners diet is the all carbs all the time diet hits, where your your carb loading basically every single day, you’re pre fueling with carbs, you’re fueling during running with carbs, your post fueling with carbs. And you have it in your head, you can just eat anything you want at any time because you’re a runner.
So I call this the carbterian diet. And you might be sick of doing that and that’s not working for you any more. So you stop doing that, okay? And you decide, okay, I’m gonna, I’m going to try this Patrick, I’m gonna I’m gonna adopt a low carb approach here, I’m gonna, I’m gonna adopt a low carb diet, I’m gonna stop eating all the carbs and like you say, and I’m going to try and lose weight.
You know, your goals might be to lose weight to improve your body composition, you know, to lose fat weight, gain muscle weight, improve your endurance, you, you want to reduce inflammation and all those things, right? So you have these very specific goals, and you decide to go on a quote unquote low carb diet.
And so you might decrease your carb intake to like 100 to 150 grams of carbs a day. And this may not seem very low to most people. But most runners are probably eating between 5 and 800 grams of carbs a day, you heard me correctly, 5-800 grams of carbs per day, then remember, the dosage determines the poison, right.
So eating a few grams of carbs a day, not a big deal, but 5 to 800 grams of carbs a day is gonna have a significant impact on your metabolism and on your health in general. And I did a little bit of research into this and looked at what traditional running coaches recommend, and traditional running coaches will recommend from a carbohydrate standpoint, two and a half to four and a half grams of carbs, for every pound of bodyweight, you know, to kind of depending on where you are in your training cycle, but the higher end of this is so crazy.
So for somebody like me, so I weigh about 180 pounds these days, okay? For me, if I’m at that, you know, four and a half grams of carbs, for every pound of body weight, that is 110 grams of carbs per day, that the traditional, you know, conventional wisdom will tell you is appropriate, right. And I used to eat this way, I did.
And it was amazing. Like, I loved eating all those carbs, like I was like, bring it on, you know, I was training for ultra marathons and running several marathons a year and several ultra marathons a year. And I was gaining a lot of weight. Until you know, after a few years, I realized that I was 40 pounds overweight, and I was like this is stupid, like I can’t keep doing this, I can’t go on this way.
Like there has to be a different way of doing this, right. So just keep in mind that 100 to 150 grams of carbs a day, is pretty low compared to where a lot of people start out with this thing, okay, so you reduce your carbs, you’re down to 100, let’s say you’re about 150 grams a day, and you’re like, you know, I’m feeling better, my inflammation is going down, I don’t feel so bloated all the time, I’m feeling pretty good. I like I’ve got pretty good energy all day long, like, I’m actually losing a few pounds too, you know, so you stick with that approach for a while.
And then after some time, your weight loss might kind of stall out. So you hit a sort of a plateau. And maybe your endurance, so your running isn’t really improving much, right. So at that 150 grams level, your body is probably still relying mostly on carbs as the main fuel source, right, so you’re really not tapping into your own stored body fat as your main fuel source, you’re still relying on carbs, you might feel better, you might lose some weight.
And this may be a place where you want to stay and totally fine if that’s what you want for yourself, okay? Fat adaptation, probably not going to happen at this level of carbs. Okay, in order to get fat adapted, you have to reduce your carbs. And we’ll talk about that in a second here. But if you’re okay, like just with a lower carb approach, and you’re at that level, 150 grams, something like that, you still get to eat a lot of food that maybe you have always eaten, and it’s pretty easy to do, and pretty easy to maintain this.
Great, that’s a good place for you to be, then stick with that, if that works for you. Okay, but if you really want to get fat burning kicked into gear, if you want to become fat adapted as a runner, meaning you’re burning mostly fat instead of sugar, then you you’re going to have to drop the carb intake, okay, if you really want to get weight loss moving, you’re going to have to drop your carb intake, you know, you might be better suited in that 50 to 100 grams per day range, something like that, okay.
For me, I tend to stick with a pretty low carb approach most of the time. And then what I do is I add carbs around certain workouts or when my training load increases. And this works really well for me. And one thing I need to say right here is like we don’t need to be tracking these grams of carbs every single day, for the rest of our lives. That’s not what we’re about here.
We do want to get a feel for where we are, and then we can start to use our intuition and eat the kinds of foods that we know will work for us and avoid the kinds of foods we know don’t work for us. Okay. And that’s a big part of what I do in my coaching with people as individuals as we get to this place where All of this just becomes intuitive for you. And it just becomes how you live your life.
Like I understand what I can and can’t eat, I understand how many carbs I’m eating without even having to enter anything into an app or track any of my food. I know what I’m doing. And I know how to add extra carbs around certain workouts, or when my training load increases, to give me a little bit of an edge, and to help me with that higher gear with that higher intensity training. So that’s a beautiful place to be and, you know, if you want help with that, I can help you get there.
Okay, but just understand that, for the most part, I tend to stick with a pretty low carb approach most of the time, okay. So I do something that’s probably more like a low carb, keto carnivore type of diet, okay, I’m probably in the 20 to 30 grams of carbs total for most days, right, this is really low. And a lot of people don’t like doing this. They don’t think it’s sustainable, or they think it’s too hard or too restrictive. Like, that’s fine. But I love it.
I feel amazing when I’m super low carb like this. But then around certain workouts, I’m going to add 20 to 40 grams of carbs. So on days, when I up my training, and I have a really intense workout, I might be in the 50 to 75 grams of carbs for that day. But here’s something that’s interesting is we have to earn our carbs. Okay?
So you earn your carbs around high intensity workouts or longer workouts, okay. And, like I said, there isn’t exactly some right number that I’m shooting for. Because I don’t really track this anymore. I go about how I feel, and what I need for this particular workout that I’m about to embark on here.
Okay, so I tie my carbs around my workouts. And this is key, you have to understand this, because during a high intensity interval session, for example, I’m going to burn through that sugar that’s in my system pretty quickly. So I may raise my blood sugar by eating some carbs, but I’m essentially going to burn through that sugar very, very quickly during that workout. So I’m earning my carbs for that workout.
And then my blood sugar comes back down the rest of the day, and I’m back into that total fat burning zone again, right, and I’m back down into that, you know, keto, carnivore, whatever you want to call it, right, I don’t really have a name for that, because I don’t really track ketones and things like that, right.
So just understand that you gotta earn your carbs, and we want to time them around our workouts, okay. And lower intensity workouts basically require fewer carbs, because you’re staying in that fat burning zone, right? Usually, that’s gonna be zones one, two, and three, even, you can even get into zone four, and still be burning a lot of fat if you’re an experienced fat adapted athlete.
And I know that there are some elite athletes out there, you know, top of their game in the world who are burning mostly fat still in zones for even in the zone five, like this is like up to 80 90% of their vo to max, they are still burning mostly fat, which is amazing, which is so so amazing.
But for most of us, you know, we’re going to be into that zone one, two, and three, possibly a little bit into zone four, okay. But for those higher intensity workouts or workouts that are going to be, for me, maybe longer than two, three hours, I’m going to add more carbs to help me defend against that glycogen depletion. And just to keep my glycogen levels high, so that I can continue to perform at the level that I want to perform at.
So it doesn’t take much for me during a long workout. It doesn’t take much in the way of carbs during long workout for me to get the fuel that I need. And for me to experience that little burst of energy and a little bit of rocket fuel.
So for me, I might be adding 15 to 20 grams of carbohydrate fuel per hour, which is totally sufficient for me. There are some athletes who, like you know, talked about Zach Bitter in the past, elite ultra marathoner, right? He does something more in the 40 to 50 grams of carbs per hour. And he’s running these world record paces like he’s trying to set a world record for the 100 mile or something like that, right? This is not something that I’m going to ever have to worry about.
Okay, so, my guess is you probably won’t either, which is fine, but it’s interesting that he only needs 40 or 50 grams per hour and he can still perform as one of the top ultra runners in the world. Okay? So, for me, and I’ve experimented with this for years, I know what works for me, I know what works for me and my goals.
For me, I can keep my carbs super low, increase them around workouts, add some carbs during some higher intensity or longer workouts. And, and I know what to do when I’m in these situations, and I and I just intuitively know how to keep things working for me, okay, and I know what to do when things aren’t working the way I’d like them to work.
Okay. So for example, a couple of months ago, I, I hate even admitting this, but a couple months ago, I fell running through on the sidewalk and tripped over a big crack in the sidewalk. I was not even paying attention. I went down hard, blamed up my knee, so my knee was all swollen. And for a couple of days, I could run still, and I was like, oh, I think I’m gonna be okay. But it just got worse and, and I really had to cut back on my running because any running at all hurt my knee like crazy.
And I’ve done this before, in the past, both my knees are kind of messed up from falling down. Especially trail running. You got to avoid those roots and rocks and stuff when your trail running makes it a much more adventurous type of running for sure. But so both my knees are a little bit jacked up. But you know, it’s not enough to keep me from running, you know, I get some pain every now and then. But not a big deal.
So these last 60 days, though, I have not been able to run without a significant amount of pain. Now, the pain is getting better. And I can actually start to increase my mileage. But in the last two months, I’ve run around 30 miles total. And I was getting closer to around 30 miles per week before I fell. Okay, so anyway, because of this, I’ve had to really lower my cardio, you know, I’ve had a lower my, my running, not exercising as much. And I just know intuitively that when I get to this place where I am having some periods of inactivity, or I’m not able to exercise, then I’m gonna just drop my carbs to like zero basically, right?
So during this period, these last 60 days, I’ve been very low carb, keto carnivore-ish, right. And, and I feel really good, I feel lean, I’m not gaining weight, right. And as soon as my weekly mileage went from that 25-30 miles a week down to like three to five miles a week, because that’s about all I can handle these days. I just decreased the carbs, I just dropped the carbs altogether, basically. Right. So I’ve been focusing more on weight training more elliptical rower to get that kind of endorphin rush that I love from running.
And I’m getting better, my knees feeling better, my runs feel much better. There’s much less pain, not quite where I want to be. I was scheduled to do a half marathon this fall, I had to cancel because I can’t do it. There’s no way I can run that far right now. Without my knee just like going ballistic on me here. So for me, I know that when I get into these places where my training intensity goes down, so does my carb intake, I feel really good.
And then when I increase my intensity again, those carbs will go back up again, in order to make sure that I am like I said, defending against that muscle glycogen. And then I’m giving my body the energy that I need to crush those harder workouts. All right. So this is what I want you to do. This is all an experiment, okay? There’s no right or wrong way to do this. There’s no magic number that is perfect for you or for everybody. It’s all an experiment, okay?
And it’s a fun thing to do. Like we get to play around with this. You get to decide what you want to do for yourself. As long as what you’re doing is working for you. You’re feeling good, your inflammation is down, you’re losing weight, running is improving, your endurance is improving. You’re not experiencing the inflammation and bloating and all those side effects that I mentioned. Your body composition is improving.
Sleeping is good, your energy levels are good. Brain fog is lifted. All those things are happening then you’re doing it right. And I don’t care what that number is for you. Okay, listen, we’ve been doing this low carb approach to our diet as human beings for like two and a half million years of evolution is always the way we’ve done it. We were never a high carbohydrate society. So this is just getting back to our roots. This is just getting back to the natural order of things as human beings, okay?
So first of all determine your goals, what is it you want for yourself? If you want to lose weight, you want to improve your running, you want better sleep? Do you want more energy throughout the day? Do you want all those things? So determine what goals you want for yourself, make some changes, try it for a while, track your progress and see what works for you. And then look at your results. Okay, is this working or not? What is working, what’s not working.
And look at all these different metrics you know about weight loss and your body composition, sleeping and energy and all these things, right. And if you’re noticing things aren’t working the way you want to change something, you know, maybe add more carbs or drop your carbs lower. You know, experiment with this, have fun with this. It’s all a fun experiment, right?
And basically, you’re just going to rinse and repeat this process until you feel like you have a good handle on what works for you. And that’s what this is all about. Determining your carbohydrate tolerance means that you get to decide what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Okay, and as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll figure it out together. We’ll put together a plan. I’ll help you stay on track, we’ll hit that easy button, and together we’ll crush those goals. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Most of the people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet. And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction - their blood sugar and blood pressure are too …
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 147 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, bucking conventional wisdom. Most people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet.
And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction, their blood sugar and blood pressure are way too high, carrying around too much body fat, they’re at higher risk for heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, just to name a few.
The troubling part about all this is that this is considered normal here in this country, okay, and in a lot of other parts of the world. So if you want to be different, meaning that you want to be the healthiest human being that you can possibly be, you’re going to have to do things differently. For most people, you’re going to have to buck conventional wisdom.
So in this episode, I’m going to break down what’s considered normal, what’s not, and how bucking conventional wisdom might be the best possible thing that you could do for yourself. And as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this, or all the stuff that I’m talking about here, on the podcast, consider applying for coaching with me, it’s one thing to know what to do, it’s quite another thing to actually have the expert guidance and support of a coach to hold you accountable, and help you make all these big changes that you want for yourself.
Whether it’s improving your body composition, getting stronger, running faster, or just becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, working with a coach is how you get there. So if you want to have me in your corner, every step of the way, apply to join the Running Lean coaching project to learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Okay, so what prompted this conversation today. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what people consider normal, and I talked to a lot of clients who feel like what they’re doing is not normal, and therefore, is difficult or is challenging, or is uncomfortable or is hard.
And they fall into this place where they just want to be doing all the normal stuff, okay, so they feel like maybe they are the weird one at the table, they feel like an outsider, they kind of feel separate, not a part of because they’re not going along with what everybody else is doing.
And they see this as a problem. So they see it as a problem, because conventional wisdom, wisdom will tell them and conventional wisdom tells us that we should be eating the food pyramid, right that we should never restrict any foods that you know, in order to run as a runner in order to function well as a runner, you have to like eat all the carbs and all the sugar, right?
And so when we get it into our heads that we should be doing all this stuff out there, there, there becomes this internal conflict. Because what we want to do in order to change our health for the better, in order to improve our health, our fitness, or speed, our body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself, what we do to get there goes against conventional wisdom.
And people feel like they should be able to do what everybody else is doing. But they can’t do what everybody else is doing because they can’t make these changes they want for themselves. So that’s where the internal conflict comes from. That’s where the inner turmoil comes from.
Everybody else is drinking alcohol and I’m not. Everybody else is eating the pizza and getting dessert and eating the ice cream and eating all the junk food and I’m not. And the internal conflict isn’t actually caused by what other people are doing. It’s caused by your thoughts because you think you should be able to do what everybody else is doing.
And you should be able to become healthier and lose the weight and get stronger and improve your health and all that stuff. Right? The cold hard truth is this though. You don’t become badass by doing what everybody else is doing. You only become badass by ditching conventional wisdom and cutting your own path, okay?
So here’s the trouble with what everybody else out there is doing. So most people are eating the food pyramid or the MyPlate, or whatever the government is telling us we should be eating, okay? The government has this agenda, to push grains on us to push sugars on us.
All these studies are funded by the big agricultural companies, big food companies like Kellogg’s and Coca Cola. And they’re making these decisions about what we should be eating in this country. Okay, so a lot of the food programs in this country, the things that are served in hospitals, what our kids eat in schools with military eats, all this is driven by the food pyramid or my plate or whatever they’re calling it these days, okay?
This is a diet that is very high in sugar and carbohydrates, it’s up to 65% of your calories should be coming from refined grains and sugar. And you should limit fats and meats. And you should just be eating all the grains, like that’s the healthy stuff. You know, eat the fruits and the grains and stay away from you know, fat and meat and things like that.
But you know, what’s interesting is, if you want to fatten up a cow, what do you do? You feed it grains, right? So grass fed beef, grass fed, and grass finished beef, this is beef that only eats grass. If you’ve ever seen this at the grocery store, you will see that it is very lean there. It’s very red. Like there’s very little marbling in there at all. There’s very little fat in there at all, almost none.
But when you look at grain fed beef or grain finished beef, in other words, they feed it grain towards the end of its cycle, whatever, then there’s a lot of fat in that. So isn’t it interesting that cows naturally don’t eat grains, cows eat grass, and they can stay pretty lean if they do that. But that’s not what people want. So we feed cows grains to fatten them up.
You want to know how to fatten up a human being? Feed them grains, will just do the exact same thing. It’ll create all this internal visceral fat and intramuscular fat. And if you don’t want all that, then stop eating the grains. Pretty simple, right?
How about wild caught salmon? Have you ever seen wild caught salmon at the store? It’s very lean, there’s very little fat in there. It’s delicious. It’s really got a nice beautiful orangish red color. And then there’s the farmed salmon. The farm salmon is fed a diet of plants and grains and fish meal and farmed salmon. You know, it’s really fatty because they’re feeding it weird stuff like grains again, right fish don’t eat grains. Right?
And so when you feed a fish, the grains are how you fatten them up, right? And what’s interesting about salmon is that farmed salmon, because the salmon are not eating their normal diet of krill, which actually colors their flesh, because of the pink little creatures, whatever they are, they have to add dye to the to the meat or to the to the feed that they feed the salmon otherwise they would just be gray.
And people don’t want to eat grey salmon, right? So anyway, this is all really dysfunctional, like the way that we fatten up animals in order to, you know, make them more desirable for us. But here’s the thing, here’s my point with all this is that we humans were not really designed to process the Greens either.
So when we eat the greens, we get that to, you know, you want to increase the intramuscular fat and yourself just eat a bunch of grains. Okay, so the point with all this is that when you look out in the wild, when you look at wild animals, there are no overweight wild animals, because each animal species is eating a specific diet that is appropriate for that animal.
The only two animals well, maybe I’ll make an exception here, but the only animals on this planet that are overweight, would be humans and their pets and of course the cows and pigs and fish that we fatten up intentionally okay. So, we human beings are not eating the appropriate diet, but we’re following the food guidelines. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.
We’re good at following directions like this, you know, when, when the government came out with all the dangers of smoking cigarettes, we listened. We stopped smoking in the 1970s over 40% of Americans smoked. And that number is way way down to just 16% in 2018. So they came out with all these guidelines and told us Hey, smoking is bad. You should stop smoking and we did you know down from 40% to 16%. That’s me.
And the same goes for the food guidelines, right? The standard American diet that we have today was introduced in 1980. And up to that point, the obesity rates in this country were pretty stable, you know, during the 50s 60s 70s, right?
Once we introduced these guidelines, obesity rates began to surge. So they are around 13%. In 1980, obesity rates in this country were about 13%. In 2022, that number is up to 40%! 40% of people in the US are considered obese today, that’s for adults.
And then for children, this kind of makes me sad, because we’re fattening up our kids, unfortunately. But the obesity rate for children was 5%, before 1980, and it’s up to 20% today. So by all means, feel free to do what everybody else is doing, but just know that what everybody else is doing is really bad for you, it’s detrimental to your health and well being. Okay.
So you might be thinking, well, you know, Patrick, I’m a runner. And so this stuff doesn’t really apply to me, right. And here’s what I’m gonna say about that. Because every single day, I talk to runners who have been following the conventional wisdom out there, they might be eating the standard American diet as well. And they think that running is going to be the cure all.
That if they just run more, everything would be fine, if that doesn’t really work. Or they’re eating what I call the typical runner’s diet, which is all carbs all the time like they’re carbterians, right. So they carb load for days leading up to the long runs, they’re fueling up on carbs before running, they’re sucking down the gels and the goos. And the Gatorade, which is just sugar water, during their runs.
They’re making sure they get all those recovery carbs too, after their runs. And they’re basically just eating whatever they want. They’re like, I’m just gonna eat doughnuts and beer and ice cream and pizza, whatever, because hey, I’m a runner, I run, it’s not good enough. And they literally cannot understand why they keep gaining weight, especially as they get older.
All that sugar, all those grains, all that high carbohydrate diet just eventually catches up with you, and you start packing on the pounds. And I had personal experience with this too. You know, I was training for ultra marathons. And eating that kind of diet that I just described, it was like all carbs all the time.
And during this period, there were times where I was running up to 85 miles a week. And over about a two and a half year period or so I gained like 40 pounds. So all this running in the world wasn’t impacting my weight at all. I kept slowly gaining weight. And so this is not unusual. This is not just a one off type of thing.
Like I said, I talk to people every single day, who are doing what everybody else is doing. They’re following the conventional wisdom. And it just doesn’t work. They just keep getting, you know, more overweight, they’re carrying around way too much body fat and, and running is not helping with this, right, the diet is wrong, the diet does not work.
Now, the conventional wisdom out there, it might work for some people, that’s fine. If you’re one of those people that’s like, hey Patrick, I eat whatever I want. And I’m fine. I’m not overweight, I’m super healthy. And I can eat all that stuff. Like totally fine. Like if that works for you, that is amazing. But that is not the case for most people.
So you get to decide what you want to do. And if what’s working out there, you know, the conventional thinking is working for you fine, but if it’s not, you got to try a different approach, you got to do something different. Maybe try to stop eating the processed foods and the sugar and the grades and see what happens. Maybe stop doing all the fast food stuff. Because you know, it’s easy, but it’s not really good for you. It’s not really working for you.
Start eating actual real whole foods instead. Maybe stop doing the all carb diet as a runner, and see how you can improve your health and your running at the same time by ditching some of those problematic carbs and sugars and stuff. Bucking conventional wisdom is hard.
It’s hard because we are a society that loves junk food, just about every packaged, processed food is made with junk, it’s sugar, refined grains, seed oils, it’s like these are the worst three things that you can put into your body, by the way. And when you go out to eat at restaurants, you know, you’re going to places whose menus are full of foods that contain those three ingredients, right? And it can be challenging sometimes to find real food at restaurants, which seems ridiculous, right?
Restaurants are interesting too, because they’re pushing appetizers. So that’s the food you eat before you eat your food. They’re pushing out alcohol on you, that’s their big moneymaker. They’re pushing desserts on you, that’s the food you eat after you eat your food. So their job is really to drive up the price of your bill as much as possible, they don’t care about your health, they don’t care about you being healthy and feeling good.
They want to make as much money off of you as possible. That’s it, which is fine, I get it, they’re a business they’re running, you know, they want to like, make sure that you leave, you know, happy and fat and happy when you leave the restaurant, you know, and it’s working. It’s working.
You know, and then there’s like social pressures, you know, going against what normal, quote unquote, normal people are doing is hard, because there’s social pressures from friends and family. Oh, come on, Patrick, just live a little, you know, have a drink, eat the dessert, you deserve it, you’ve been good all week, you know, come on, just live a little every now and then let your hair down, so to speak.
Or, you know, oh, well, I have kids, and my kids have to eat all this junk food. So I keep all this junk food in the house, which means that, you know, I’m just going to eat it sometimes too, because it’s there. Or, you know, oh, I’m having lunch with this client at work, and my boss is going to be there and they all drink during lunch, so I got to drink too.
Or, you know, they’re all going to want to eat, you know, this pasta and bread and stuff. So I have to just go along with it. Because not doing that is going to be I don’t want to be the weird one at the table. Right.
So going against what everybody else is doing is hard, it is uncomfortable, I totally get that. Going against the grain pun intended. It’s uncomfortable, because you are different. You’re not like everyone else, you’re not doing what everybody else is doing. You’re not accepting this fate of just getting fatter, and sicker and weaker.
As you get older, you know, you’re not using sugar and alcohol to feel better anymore. And that definitely doesn’t feel good, but it’s temporary. So you’re gonna be sitting at the dinner table eating something different than everybody else may be eating. They’re all eating pizza, and you’re having a salad instead. But every time you stick to your plan, you reinforce this idea that being a healthy human being is important to you.
And every time you give in and just go along with what everybody else is doing, you reinforce the notion that your health is not that important to you, that it’s more important to just be comfortable here in this moment. So here’s what I want you to do, I want you to really ask yourself, what do you want for yourself?
Do you want to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself? I hope you do. Because if you do, you have to do things differently. Most people eat a pretty crap diet. Most people are overweight. Most people have some sort of metabolic dysfunction happening in their body. Most runners are carrying around way too much body fat.
Most people as they get older, get weaker and fatter. And you need to ask yourself, do you want this for yourself? Or do you want something more. Because if you want something more, that’s going to take a little bit of work to get there. It’s going to take being willing to be uncomfortable in those situations where you’re doing things differently. It’s going to take you getting to this place where you feel good about yourself and you feel confident about yourself.
And you feel confident in your decisions that you’re making in those moments where everybody else is doing the normal junk food and getting whatever food is there, and you’re doing something different. You’re being different. And I think that when you get to that place, it is an amazing place to get to. Because you no longer care about what is considered normal.
The conventional wisdom doesn’t work for most of us. So we got to buck the system, we got to do things differently. We get to cut our own path. And you get to decide if that’s what you want for yourself. Because if you do want that, be willing and ready to embrace the discomfort that comes along with that.
There will be discomfort that comes along with that, I promise you, but it’s short lived. It’s temporary, it doesn’t last forever. It takes some time to get past that. But once you do get past that, that’s where the good stuff really starts to happen. Cool. And as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll put together a personalized plan just for you. I’ll help you stay on track and together we will get you there. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Many runners who set out to achieve big goals will get it into their heads that things should just be happening faster. They should be losing weight faster, their running should be improving more …
Continue Reading about 146. Slow Down and Stay in the Flow →
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 146 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today: slow down and stay in the flow. Many runners I talked to who set out to achieve big goals will get this idea into their heads that for some reason, things should just be happening faster, they should be losing weight faster, they’re running should be improving more quickly.
And those strength sessions at the gym should be paying off by now. And the reality of the situation is this, these things take time, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to become a stronger, faster runner. And when you think everything should be happening faster, all of this becomes very frustrating.
So in this episode, I’m going to talk about what happens when you believe everything should be happening faster. And then what it looks like when you just slow down and stay in the flow instead. And one of the most important things I do with my coaching clients is this: I help them stay on track. Together, we set big goals, we’ll put together a plan to help you achieve those goals, and then help you stick to the plan. It’s that simple.
But I know how difficult and how frustrating it can be to set out to make big changes, especially when it comes to your health and fitness. And then getting to this place where you think everything should be going faster. Listen, these things take time. But imagine how much easier it would be if you had somebody there to guide you through the whole process every step of the way, to be there to offer expertise, support, encouragement, motivation, and to hold you accountable.
Becoming the most badass version of yourself, this is an amazing thing to accomplish. And having a coach there to help you get there. This is a game changer. So if you’re looking for guidance, support, encouragement, motivation, accountability, I want to encourage you to apply to join my coaching program, the Running Lean coaching project.
To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You have to fill out a short application, we’re gonna have a conversation, then we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. I would love to have you in my program. This is a very unique weight loss coaching program for runners. It’s the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Alright, let’s get into this topic, slow down and stay in the flow. The reason I’m talking about this today, like I mentioned at the top of the episode here is that so many people I talked to set out to achieve big goals, they really want to become the healthiest version of themselves, they really want to improve their body composition, they want to get stronger, they want to become a faster runner, they want to PR their marathon or half marathon, they want to lose weight.
And when they set out to achieve these things, they get this concept in their mind that it’s all going to happen according to some arbitrary timeline. Okay, it could be like, oh, I’ve got this goal race coming up in three months. And so I’m going to change my diet, I’m gonna, like start running a little bit faster. And, and somehow I’m going to like, you know, PR this thing and lose 30 pounds in the process.
And while that might happen, for some people, it’s your there’s no guarantee, right? I mean, these things take time, it takes time to change habits, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to get faster as a runner. And if you’re somebody whose thinking that this is going to be all all said and done in a matter of you know, 90 days exactly, or whatever; you may be frustrated, you may be disappointed with the results in that amount of time. So many of us get it into our heads that you know everything should be happening faster.
And when we get to this place of thinking everything should be happening faster. It’s not happening fast enough. It gets very very frustrating. So some examples of where I see this happening the most first of all is in weight loss. When people want to lose weight. They change their diet, they start making maybe some sacrifices, you know, they start giving up some of the foods they used to love to eat, you know, junk food, let’s just say and they stick with it.
And the weight loss isn’t happening fast enough, they may only be losing a pound or two a week. And over months of working together, I hear this from people a lot who have consistently lost one or two pounds a week, and then will tell me, ah, it’s just, you know, everything’s fine, I guess. But it’s just not happening fast enough, right?
And becoming a faster runner is another place where people want this to happen faster, surprisingly enough, right? So you might set out to like PR, your half marathon or marathon time. And so you start changing your running routine, you start adding more speed work, and you’re really intentionally focused on becoming that faster runner.
And then you have a race coming up and you and you do everything you’re supposed to do and you’re, you’re ready to go and you’re feeling great. And then you get out there and you just don’t hit your goal on that race day. And it gets really frustrating, right, or maybe you’re trying to build some strength and build some muscle. So you’re at the gym, and you’re hitting the weights pretty hard.
And it’s just, it seems like it’s taking forever, you don’t see those muscles bulging out of your arms, like you think you should after, you know, a period of time. You know, another way that I see people getting frustrated is when they want to improve their endurance, they want to be able to run longer distances, but they just keep running out of gas.
And they’re like, what’s going on? Shouldn’t this be happening faster? I mean, just I, you know, I can run a 5k I can run a 10k How come I can’t do a half marathon or a marathon? How come I’m running out of gas at mile 10 or 12 or 19?
Or, you know, overcoming food cravings. This is an area where I’m just going to tell you right now, this is not something that happens quickly. It may take some time to get past the place where you’re really craving junk food, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve been somebody who’s been really eating a lot of junk food, then it may take a long time for you to like get over those cravings, you know, in thinking that it’s going to happen quickly. Oh, yeah. Well, I quit eating junk food two weeks ago, how come I’m still craving pizza? It’s gonna take a while. Right?
Or even this concept of just not sticking to the plan, like I just keep slipping up. How come I’m not sticking to the plan 100% of the time? By now I’ve been doing this for a while. How can I keep you know, reverting back to old behaviors? Shouldn’t this be happening faster? So all of these things are processes that take time.
And the idea that from the very get go, you should be perfect, and everything should be moving along quickly. It’s just a myth, it’s never going to happen that way. All of these processes are things that take time. And when you have this concept that you think it should be happening faster, it creates a real negative state within you.
Okay, because when you think things should be going faster, and they’re not, it can be very frustrating. It can cause you to feel frustration, it can cause you to feel stressed, you can feel disappointed and discouraged. These are all negative emotions. And when you’re feeling these negative emotions around what you’re doing to try to change yourself for the better to try to improve your health and fitness.
When all of your energy is put into this negative emotional state it puts you into a state of mentally and emotionally being really negative. So you’re in this negative emotional and mental state. And when you’re feeling this way, how do you think you’re going to act? Because your feelings really drive your behaviors, your feelings drive your actions, the mental and emotional state that you’re in will determine what you do.
So what behaviors do you think you engage in when you’re feeling constantly when you’re in this negative emotional state? Well, if you’re feeling discouraged and frustrated that weight loss is taking too long, then you’re probably not going to stick with a plan because you’re probably thinking like, why should I stick to this plan? It’s not working anyway, it’s taking too long anyway.
And you might feel disappointed because you know, running isn’t improving as fast as you want it to and that will make you feel very disappointed. Very disappointing and discouraging to you, right? You’re not getting faster quickly enough? Well, if you’re in that state, you’re probably not going to keep doing the speed work, right? Because why bother? Why should I stick to my speed work if it’s not working anyway?
So the thought, the thoughts and feelings that you put into this, the thoughts and feelings that you’re experiencing that, oh, it’s taking too long. It’s frustrating, and I’m disappointed, I’m discouraged. It’s going to take forever, I’m never gonna get there. When you’re in that place, that will absolutely become true for you. You will prove those thoughts and feelings to be true when you act from that negative state, that negative state that you’re in will create that reality for you, you will get those results, it will take too long, it will take forever, because you won’t be sticking to the plan.
You’ll never get there because you won’t stay on track. You’re constantly thinking, Oh, why bother? Why should I do this, it’s not working anyway. And this is a really crappy place to be just so you know. But I see so many people wallowing in this negative emotional state. Your thoughts and feelings, create your results, your thoughts and feelings create your reality, you get more of what you focus your attention on. Right? So constantly thinking, this isn’t working.
It won’t work for you, I promise you, if you’re constantly thinking, I’m never gonna get there. And guess what? You’re never gonna get there. And if you’re thinking to yourself, Patrick, this sounds too simple. I agree that it does sound too simple, but it is absolutely true. And a very powerful concept that I want you to try to wrap your head around here, okay?
Because when you’re operating from this very powerful, but negative place, you get to create results and your reality. And you get to achieve what you want for yourself. Or what you, in this case, what you don’t want for yourself, you get to achieve what you’re what you’re focused on achieving, which is it’s not working, it’s taking too long, it’s gonna take forever, I’m never gonna get there. That’s a very powerful yet negative place to be, it’s a powerfully negative place to be okay.
So you have to understand this, it is a simple concept, that your emotional state, your thoughts and feelings, create your results. Because it drives your actions, your thoughts and feelings drive your actions and your actions create your results. So instead of you know, constantly thinking that these things should be happening faster, we have to let go of that.
Okay, because here, here’s some simple facts. Losing weight takes time, it takes time to change your eating habits. It takes time to figure out what actually works best for you as an individual. Because we’re all different. We all have different goals, different weight loss goals, different metabolism, different lifestyles, different food preferences, and you have to figure out what works best for you, what’s going to support your weight loss goals and your running goals. And figuring all this out, it takes a little bit of time to really dial it in.
And it’s okay, let’s just be okay with that fact. Right, losing weight will take some time, it takes time to you know, get your blood sugar regulated to fix your metabolism. It takes time to you know, get your body working the way it’s supposed to to get your hormones working the way they’re supposed to. But once you get into that place, things start to change for you.
You know, your blood sugar’s regulated, your hormonal changes become more balanced, your hormone hormonal response to food becomes more, more balanced and your your body actually starts to function the way it was made to function, you start burning more fat instead of burning all the sugar. And eventually you’ll see the weight loss start to happen.
But there’s a lot of things that have to kind of happen in the interim before you actually see the number on the scale start to change, right. So just understand that it takes time to lose weight. And if you have a lot of weight to lose, it’s going to take more time. And it’s okay.
Building muscle takes time. It takes time to go to the gym, improve your your weightlifting capabilities to increase the resistance that you’re lifting. You know, we in order to gain muscle and build strength, we have to overload the muscles so that means we have to lift heavier weights and it takes time to get to the place where, you know, you can get stronger and you can actually lift heavier weights.
And it may take time before you can see any improvement at all before you can start to increase the weights or the reps or whatever. There’s a period at the beginning, if you’ve never done any kind of strength training, any kind of resistance training, there’s a time at the beginning where you just gotta get used to the, to the workouts, you got to get used to the routines, you got to be doing things in a safe way, getting your body like used to lifting weights.
But eventually, you’ll start to see some progress happen, okay, but it takes time. Improving your endurance takes time, improving your speed as a runner takes time, it takes time to build the muscle memory of doing harder, faster workouts to improve your running form. You know, you’ll make incremental improvements to your endurance. But these things do take some time.
Do you remember when you first started out as a runner, you couldn’t imagine running a 5k, running three miles without stopping. And you might be running half marathons now and wanting to get faster, or running to take it up to the next level, run a marathon and you’re like, why is it taking so long to build that endurance and think back to when you first started running and how long it took you to make those improvements.
I remember training for my first 10k, I set out to run a 10k. And you know where I could, I could only run like one mile at a time, you know, I could run one mile without stopping. And that felt pretty amazing, you know, and then I could run two and then three. And I couldn’t imagine doing a whole 10k like 6.2 miles without stopping. Like, that’s crazy. Who does this, you know?
But eventually I got there, but it took months of training to get there. Okay, so all these things take time, stop thinking it’s all going to happen quickly or according to some arbitrary timeline that you’ve created, in your own mind. Start accepting the fact that these things will take time, time takes time. And slow down, slow down.
And instead, I want you to focus on staying in the flow. Like, what if you just took your time, instead of trying to rush your way to your weight loss goal or to some running goal or to some strength goal? What if you just slow down? What would that look like for you? What if you made changes slowly over time?
Because we’re talking about changing habits around food, changing habits around how you train. How you fuel for training and races? And, it takes time to dial this in for you as an individual. Right? So understand this and accept that it’s going to take time. Okay. How long did it take you to gain the weight in the first place? Maybe you’ve gained 30, 40, 50 pounds? Would it take two years? Three years? 10 years? 20 years? Why do you think it should all come off in like 90 days?
It might take longer than that. So what? So what. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, stop trying to fast track everything. And instead, just focus on what you’re doing today. And you will get there. Staying in the flow means just being here. Right now, what are you doing today? What are you doing in this moment to better your health?
Are you making your food plan for the next 24 hours, or you’re filling in your training schedule for the week, maybe you’re lacing up your shoes, because you’re ready to head out for a run. Maybe you’re just you know, sitting down to dinner and you’re actually eating what you said you’d eat today. That’s what it means to be in the flow.
It means you’re not thinking about how long it’s going to take. Because that really doesn’t matter. It might take six months or a year or more. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s all okay. Think about this, where would you be a year from now, if you stuck to your plan every day for a year, think about that. A year from now you could be like 95% of the way to your goal or 100% there.
Or you could be totally frustrated and pissed off a year from now because you kept thinking it was taking too long. And you kept stopping and starting and stopping and starting you kept giving up. Maybe you’d recommit. Maybe you’d quit and you’d start again, then you quit again. Maybe you just quit altogether. Staying in the flow means you commit to the process. You commit to the process of change. What things do you need to change to get to your goals?
Stop eating junk food, start lifting weights regularly, maybe doing more speed work? What is the process of change, what does that look like for you and commit to that? Because that’s what you need to focus on. That’s where your attention needs to be. Staying in the flow means staying focused on the process of change and not getting frustrated because it’s taking too long to see your results right?
Hey, when you stop thinking that this is all supposed to be different, somehow faster, whatever. And when you just slow down and you stay in the flow, and you stay committed right now to this process, your whole mindset shifts, you become calmer about everything, you become more at peace with where you are, you feel more encouraged, you feel more confident, and that confidence builds you feel more motivated to stay on track.
You stay more disciplined. When you’re feeling this way, when you’re in this mental and emotional state, you become unstoppable. When you’re operating from this emotional state, what do you think becomes your new reality? What do you think becomes true for you? What do you think are the results that you’re gonna get?
When you’re coming from this place of like, I will get there eventually. And I’m just right where I’m supposed to be, and I’m just gonna stay committed, you will get there, eventually, you will stay committed, you will get the results you want for yourself, you will achieve the goals that you want for yourself.
So what I want you to do this week, I want you to ask yourself, where you might be trying to fast track things, right? Where might you be wishing that things should be faster, quicker, and then notice how thinking that way makes you feel? Because chances are, it’s going to put you in a negative feeling, a negative emotional state, you’re not gonna feel good, you’re gonna feel frustrated, discouraged. You’re gonna feel stressed out. And then ask yourself, how can I let go of these ideas? How can I let go of this arbitrary timeline that I’ve created for myself? How can I just sit here? Slow down? How can I stay in the flow right here now?
How can you focus on the process of change here in this moment, and this isn’t just about like feeling good, or getting out of that negative state. It’s about creating everything that you want for yourself. It’s how you get there. If you want to become the most badass version of yourself, just commit to the process of change, and you’ll get there. Slow down, stay in the flow, and I promise you, you will absolutely get there eventually.
And as always, if you want some help with any of this, or all of this, apply for coaching you and I can work together, we’ll put together a plan for you. I’ll help you stay committed to that process. I’ll help you stay in the flow and together we’ll get you there. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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