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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Self-Awareness

77. Happiness is Overrated

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There’s a lot of talk out there in the personal development world about happiness. There are so many books on how to be happy all the time and how to be happy about everything, and honestly, I see …

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Podcast Transcript

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 77, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I am so happy to be here talking about happiness today. And my take on happiness, which might be a little different from what most people say about happiness. I have this idea that happiness might be a little overrated. So I’m going to talk about that today.

Listen, there’s a lot of talk in the personal development space, about happiness about how to become happy all the time, and how the goal is to just like, we need to be happy all the time. There are books on this, there are podcasts on this, there are all kinds of teachings out there about how to be happy all the time. And honestly, I think this is kind of a problem because my take on happiness is a little bit different.

I think happiness is not the goal, I don’t think our goal or our purpose in life is to be happy all the time. So I believe we are put here on this earth for something bigger, and much more powerful than just like being happy.

Okay, so in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain all of that, I’ll break it down. I’ll explain what I mean when I say that happiness is overrated, and I’ll offer my take on what I believe my life’s purpose and your life’s purpose really is.

And then as a little extra something, be sure to listen to the end of this episode because I’m going to walk you through a very powerful happiness, exercise. Okay, so be sure to listen to the end of this one, because it’ll be kind of fun, fun thing for you at the end here.

But first, if you haven’t already joined us on Facebook, come check us out the Running Lean podcast community, I created this group as an extension of this podcast so that we could have more of a two-way conversation because it’s just me here talking into this microphone. I know you’re listening on the other end there. But I like to have that interaction.

And so in the Facebook group, you can ask questions, I can chime in and help answer those questions. And then each week, I do a little coaching a little teaching in the group. And I love doing that. It’s super fun to connect with you guys. live and in person, so to speak, right virtually, virtually live and in person. So come and check us out on Facebook, just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community and you’ll find us we have fun, we have a lot of fun.

Here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Maddie. And she says “Five-star plus, I’ve only been listening a few weeks and listened to most podcasts more than once very informative, very encouraging. I’m also a member of the Facebook group, everyone is there to support, encourage and help each other.”

Thank you, Maddie, for that awesome review. And yes, the Facebook group is amazing. And if you feel the urge to drop a review of the podcast, I would really appreciate it. You can just go to Apple podcasts or Spotify or audible wherever you listen to your podcasts and tap the stars. Leave a few words and you’re good to go. I’d really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

And then listen, if you’re ever looking for a little bit of help with all this stuff, losing weight, becoming a fat-adapted runner, changing your mindset, you know, working through all the issues we have around sticking to our plan. This is what I do as a one-on-one coach, this is the kind of work we do together. Listen, everybody I work with experiences some sort of a transformation.

Sometimes it’s the transformation of the mind. Sometimes it’s the transformation of the body sometimes it’s both. But I promise you that working one on one with a coach for a period of time can be very transformative. And just imagine what you can accomplish in like three months working one on one with a coach. It’s It’s amazing. Right?

So a coach just doesn’t you know, tell you what to do. A coach is there to support you. guide you offer you encouragement, support, knowledge experience, but also a coach there to help you do the things that you know you should do that you don’t want to do. There might be a little bit of tough love involved with coaching as well. That’s all part of it.

But the goal of coaching is not to just teach you a bunch of stuff, but to help you become the person that you ultimately want to become. So if you’re ever interested, you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and apply for coaching, we’ll get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a conversation about and see if it’s a good fit for you.

No obligations, it doesn’t cost anything to jump on this call with me. It’s just me and you, having a little chat about your goals and seeing if coaching is something you’re interested in. And if you’re a good fit, cool, awesome.

Okay, let’s get into this topic because I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And I’m finally like, okay, I’m ready to have this conversation with you guys. This is one of those maybe a little bit of tough love conversations. And I just want to start out by saying, like, happiness is not the goal, happiness is not the end result that we’re looking for. At least it shouldn’t be, okay?

But a lot of times I talk to people, and I’ll say like, tell me about your goals, what do you want for yourself? And inevitably, something will come up, like, oh, I just want to be happy. You know, I know that if I just lose weight, then I’ll be happy. Or if I can just run a faster marathon, then I’m going to be happy.

And I want to caution you guys against this. Because if you’re looking at happiness, as the end result of, of what you really want for yourself is like, that’s the goal I’m trying to reach, I’m trying to get to this place where I can just be happy all the time, you are going to be disappointed. It is almost impossible for you to be happy all the time. And I’ll talk about this more, I’ll break this down for you here.

But I just want you to know that happiness is one of those emotions that we want. And we desire. It’s one of our positive emotions, right, it’s a wanted emotion, it’s something we want more of in our life. And we can absolutely have more happiness in our life. But to think that, like, we’re going to be happy all the time.

And I think this is the mental image we project and this is the idea we get in our heads about, you know, if I could just lose this weight, if I could just lose the 30 pounds, get back to this weight I was when I first got married or when I was, you know, at my peak, then then I’ll be happy.

You know, and we do this in other areas of our lives, too. Like, oh, if I just had a better job, I’d be happy. Or if maybe I had a better relationship, you know, I’d be happy. And I want to caution you against thinking this way. Because accomplishing some big goal in your life or, you know, changing, you know, moving or changing a job or changing a relationship. Those things are all great. And you should always be wanting to accomplish things in your life.

But if the end goal is to be happy, you’re going to be disappointed. Happiness should not be the end goal, okay? Because happiness is just an emotion and emotions we can experience they come and they go, you know, you feel happiness, you feel joy, you feel sadness, you feel sorrow, you feel shame, or guilt, or stress or boredom. These are all emotions that we experience at different times in our lives, different times in our day, you can go through a whole day where you’re feeling a whole breadth of emotions, right?

Which I think is super cool, because as human beings, we get to experience all of these cool emotions. And as far as we know, we’re the only creatures in the universe that experience emotion in this way, especially this wide breadth of emotions.

I think somebody told me once they’re like dogs, dogs feel emotions, too. And I’m like, Yeah, probably. Cats, not so much. Dogs. Yes. But we get to experience all these different emotions, okay? And if we’re just, you know, set on, like, I just want this one emotion to be around forever. And that’s it. Like, I think this is, this is dumb to think this way, honestly. Okay.

So I don’t want you to be in this place of like, chasing happiness and making happiness the goal. Okay. Happiness is not a permanent state of being, it’s not something that you can just experience all the time. And if you see people that are like, Oh, that person is just happy all the time. I promise you they are not.

And they why would you want to be? Why would you want to be happy all the time? The purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time. Because when you’re happy. Where are you like everything is great, right? You’re comfortable. Everything is going perfectly well right? and you’re, you get to this place of contentment. Right?

And that’s okay to feel contentment, that’s okay to feel comfortable. But I think we get into this place of, oh, I just want to be happy. And then you want to be content and you get comfortable and just feel sort of, you know, like your life is sort of soft, soft and happy and comfortable all the time. Is that really what you want for yourself?

So you no longer need to work to improve yourself, you no longer need to push yourself, you no longer need to change anything in your life, because you’re just happy. I think this is the problem, right? I have this vision of being happy all the time, like this, if you guys saw the movie, Wally, the cruise ship in space, you know, with all the fat happy people, like everybody’s become so happy. And they don’t have to do anything. And they’re so comfortable that they’re so fat, they can’t even walk anymore.

So they get carted around in these little hover chairs. And there are all these robots that do everything for them. And all they do is like sit around and eat and drink all day, and they’re just fat slobs, right? It’s just like, so hilarious.

But it’s not unlike this vision of like, Oh, I just want to be happy all the time. You know, and just happy, soft, comfortable, you know, and content. And I don’t think this is what we want for ourselves. So this is kind of what I mean when I say happiness is overrated. I think if you want to evolve and you want to grow and you want to become something more than what you are right now, that there is a level of unhappiness required that there is some discontentment that is required if you want to become more.

And this takes me to what I believe the purpose of life really is for us, the purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time, the purpose of your life is to become more. Becoming more requires you to be somewhat unhappy and somewhat discontented with how things are and somewhat uncomfortable, right?

For yourself or others for your community for the world. Like there needs to be some level of discontentment with the way things are, in order for you to want to grow and become more to change to evolve. Becoming more means experiencing some amount of discomfort, some amount of pain or hardness or suffering.

We don’t grow and evolve by sitting around on our butts in our comfort zone all the time. If I could grow and become more by just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day long, I would absolutely do that. But it doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way.

Becoming more means and I want to break this down for you. Because I talk about this idea of becoming more what does that mean? Becoming more means becoming more of who you are not becoming someone else. But just becoming more of you. More of who you want to be.

There’s this version of you that’s inside you that’s lurking inside you that maybe you’ve always been afraid to, to let her out. That’s what I’m talking about. I want that for you. I want you to be more authentically you. And I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you guys before this quote from Dr. Seuss. And it’s from one of the Dr. Seuss books. I can’t remember which book it’s from. But the quote is this: “Today you are you that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.”

Anytime I talk about like becoming more you I always this quote always comes to mind like there’s no one alive who’s youer than you. Becoming more means living up to your true potential becoming the best you can be right? Most of us are living up to about 40% of our potential. This is below average, I want more for myself, I want to become more.

I want more than that for myself. I want you to want more than that for yourself. I don’t want to be below average. I want to be well above average 40% is not cool with me. Shouldn’t be cool with you either. We need to tap into more of who we are more of what we are capable of.

So to become more though it means you have to experience some level of discontentment or discomfort with where you are right now. And that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing. Like to not be happy where you are right now this is okay. That just means you want more for yourself. It’s amazing actually, right, if there’s you know, discontentment a little unhappiness that will actually serve you and actually help to drive you forward.

And being unhappy sometimes or being discontented sometimes. Don’t look at this as a negative thing. We think of this as being negative, I’m discontented, oh, I’m unhappy. It’s okay. You know, Life is 50/50. You know, we experience 50% of the time, roughly, we have positive emotions, and 50% of the time, you know, we experience quote, unquote, like negative emotions, right?

And it’s meant to be that way, life is supposed to be about half and half. Because as humans, we get to experience all the emotions, this wide breadth of emotions, the good and the bad, we need the contrast. Because without sadness, we wouldn’t have happiness. without sorrow, you wouldn’t know what joy feels like without conflict, you wouldn’t feel peaceful.

Without some sort of discontentment, you wouldn’t have any reason to grow. And to become more. We need the contrast. The contrast provides clarity for us. Otherwise, all these emotions would all just like, blend together, and just be like, blah, right?

So we have, you know, emotions that feel good and positive, and there are emotions that we feel that we experience and we feel maybe not so good. And then we might label these as negative, okay.

And listen, negative emotions are not to be avoided or pushed away or numbed out, we do this all the time, we experienced some sort of negative emotion, and we want to just push away wanting to go with his fastball, get back to being happy, I don’t want to feel this way.

Do not make the mistake of pushing these emotions away, do not make the mistake of trying to just feel happy all the time. Because when you do this, you get caught in this practice of running away from half of the emotions you’re trying to that you want to feel, you know, end up, pushing away, and numbing out to half of your life. These negative emotions are things that we should absolutely allow them to be there.

I don’t even like to use the word negative to describe emotions, because I don’t really think they’re negative, I think it’s just part of who you are. And when we say negative then we think, Oh, I, they’re, they’re bad, they’re not bad.

Now, some of these are difficult emotions, their unwanted emotions, they’re highly charged emotions, they’re strong emotions, you know, shame, guilt, hurt, sadness. These are emotionally or energetically charged motions, they really make you feel something in your body like you feel these emotions deeply. Right. And it’s okay to feel deeply. Happiness and sadness.

It’s okay to feel deep guilt and hurt and shame, and joy, and excitement and motivation. But when we push away half of our emotions, we’re not experiencing like half of our life or numbing out to half of our experience in this world. So what does this look like?

So if, for example, somebody that you care about dies, you want to feel sadness for that person, you want to feel sadness for that loss. You don’t want to push that away. You don’t want to be happy about that. Right? So that’s kind of what I’m talking about like when we want to feel happy all the time.

That means you want to feel happy when somebody you love dies, do you want to feel happy when your husband cheats on you? You know you want to feel angry. You want to feel hurt, right? Because that is how we are wired as human beings and it’s good. It’s good to feel these things. You should be angry. If your husband cheats on you like that is something you can absolutely be angry about.

Allow that to be there don’t push it away. You don’t need to feel happy about those things. Okay, that would be weird. Okay. So whenever we experience certain emotions we want to push them away as fast as possible. A lot of times what we do is we numb out to those so we go, we eat something or drink something, we go shopping, whatever we do. We’re trying to feel better, just like right right now I just want to say feel better. I just want to feel better.

I don’t want to feel sadness, I don’t want to feel shame. I don’t want to feel guilt. I don’t want to feel stress. So I’m just gonna eat something, you know, and we condition ourselves to eat and drink our way to feeling better. To try to make ourselves feel happy. If I just eat this cake, I’m gonna be happy.

You guys, it doesn’t work. I talked to people every single day who tell me, you know, I wasn’t feeling good. I was stressed out or I was unhappy, and I just wanted to be happy. So I, you know, I ate the cake, because I thought that was gonna make me feel happy. Oh, okay. How’d that work for you? Do you feel happy? Hmm. No, I mean, you know, it tasted good. Gave me a sugar rush. But I wasn’t happy.

We eat and drink ourselves into oblivion sometimes, because we think that it’s gonna make us happy. And we think it’s gonna make us feel better. But it doesn’t. It tricks your brain into making you think you’re feeling better because it’s a, it’s like a drug, sugar as a drug. I would argue alcohol is a drug.

And we use these things to trick our brains into feeling good, right? Because we release dopamine, they light up these pleasure centers in our brain. And so we feel good. Our brain thinks we feel good. Our brain thinks we’re happy. But are we really happy? No, we just think we are.

And listen, the difficult emotions like the stress, the boredom, the sadness, whatever you’re experiencing, it’s still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. Okay. So I don’t want to chase this idea of happiness as something that we need to get to as a destination as an end result. Happiness is something we can experience and we should experience.

I think we can increase the amount of happiness in our lives and I’ll talk about that more in a minute. But I don’t want to get stuck in this idea of chasing happiness as the goal. So not the goal. The goal is to become more and I don’t want to conflate being unhappy with like grumpiness. Okay, because I think we can do this.

I think there’s a misconception that like if you’re a grumpy person you’re unhappy. Just because you’re discontented with the way things are. You don’t have to be a grim kin or a snark. Okay, you can be happy, or you can be unhappy and discontented and still be positive. You can be unhappy and discontented and still be kind, generous, selfless, and friendly. And motivated.

You know, when we talk about weight loss, a lot of times people are discontented with the way they are today. I don’t like my body today. I feel fat. I feel I’m ashamed of who I am. I don’t want you to be ashamed of who you are. We have to love ourselves exactly as we are right now.

You can absolutely love yourself how you are right now. And have a positive body image and be discontented and want to become more and want to lose the weight. You can do both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Love yourself exactly as you are and want to become more you can do that. I love that. I love that idea.

So I don’t want you to think that if you’re unhappy, that means you’re, you know, you’re just a jerk to everybody. Because that’s different. That’s just you’re a jerk, okay? If everybody you meet is a jerk, you’re the jerk. Just so you know. Okay.

I saw that meme recently, I thought was pretty funny. And listen, I’m not about anti-happiness. Okay, I absolutely think we can increase the amount of happiness in our lives. And I think we should, I think we should be working on ways to increase the amount of happiness in our lives. As long as we understand that this is not the end goal.

We should increase the time the amount of time that we spend experiencing positive or, you know, wanted emotions like joy and excitement, and delight and happiness. You know, all of these things in love. Oh my gosh, love what a great emotion to experience. Don’t you want to experience more love in your life? Absolutely.

So we just don’t want to make that like the absolute goal, right? Remember, your purpose in life is to become more of who you are. So I’m not anti-happiness. I just don’t want you to seek it as the purpose of your life. The purpose of your life is not to be happy. Because if you make that the purpose of your life, you’re going to be miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be, you’re not going to be where you want to be. Right.

So happiness is one of those things that it’s just an emotion that you can experience. And it’s an emotion that you can experience anytime you want. And so if, if you’re into it, I’m going to walk you through a little exercise here, where you can actually experience a great deal of happiness right now, right here in this moment, okay?

So, if your goal with this, I’m going to just kind of walk you through this little exercise, okay, this is really powerful. And something you can do. Anytime you want to experience more happiness, or, or any other emotion that you want to experience and you want to create more love, we’re just going to use happiness because that’s kind of what we’re talking about today.

So here’s what we’re going to do if you’re listening to this, and you can, you know, sit down or, or just close your eyes, and just relax a little bit, that’s a good way to do this. But if you’re out running or driving or something like that, and you’re listening to this, that’s totally fine, too, you don’t have to close your eyes, don’t close your eyes, if you’re driving, unless you’re driving your Tesla with autopilot on, and that’s totally fine. But even then keep your hands on the steering wheel.

But now, so just like if you’re out running or something like that, you can still do this, you just do it with your eyes open. Okay. And so here’s what I want you to do, close your eyes, and I just want you to like, relax, take a couple of deep breaths.

And just try to relax a little bit, okay, because we just want to like, we want to tap into a different state right, now we want to tap into a state where we feel a little more calm, a little bit more relaxed, a little more at ease, we just want to slow down a little bit here, okay.

And what I want you to do is I want you to think about a time when you are really happy. I want you to think about a specific moment in time in your past when you were really, really happy. And then I want you to go back to that moment right now. Go back to that moment in your mind.

Float down into that moment and see what you saw through your own eyes. Hear what you heard. And I want you to really feel the feeling of happiness. From that moment. Start to tap into what that feels like. And you can start to feel it in your body. And start to feel that energy flowing in and through you.

And as you’re experiencing this moment of happiness, I want you to turn it up a little bit. Want you to crank up the happiness, just like you would adjust the dials on an OLED television to like, make it more vibrant. make it clearer, turn up the level of happiness that you’re feeling right now in this moment.

Make it even stronger until you feel like you’re just overflowing with happiness. And you feel that happiness just wanting to burst out through you. And you can feel this energy welling up and just growing inside you. It feels so good. Doesn’t it feel good? Feels good to be happy. And this happy feeling that you’re experiencing right now in this moment. You can tap into this any time you want. It’s cool. I love this.

I love feeling good and I love tapping into an emotion an emotional state like that. And that’s as simple as it is right there you guys. You can feel happy like that any time you want. You can feel love like that anytime you want. You can feel confidence just like that anytime you want. Just go back to a time when you felt super confident and walk through that same exercise.

I would encourage you to really re-listen to this like last section of this podcast. And you can plug in different emotions you can plug in, you know confidence or motivation. Love is such a good one too. Who doesn’t love to feel love? I love to feel love.

Whew, I’m feeling so good right now. I love doing that. I haven’t done that exercise for a while. And I was just doing it with you guys just now and I’m just feeling so good right now. I’m like beaming. Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. I hope this was helpful for you.

In a way, I hope you got something out of this episode. If you did consider sharing it with a friend that would mean the world to me. And as always, I love you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, 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.

70. Becoming an Emotional Adult

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There’s one big difference between people who consistently reach their goals and those who do not. It doesn’t have anything to do with how bad they want it or how early they get up in the …

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Podcast Transcript

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 70 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. 70 episodes! This is so fun. I just love coming on this podcast and sharing this stuff with you guys. Today I’m talking about becoming an emotional adult. So I’ve noticed that there’s one big difference between people who consistently reach their goals, and those who do not.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with how bad they want it, or how early they get up in the morning. It’s more about whether or not they’re living their life as an emotional adult. So yes, this episode of the Running Lean podcast is all about emotions, we’re going to talk about feelings. I’m going to be talking about the very important role that your emotions play in whether or not you are getting the results that you want in your life.

Whether your goal is to finish a marathon without bonking or know how to lose weight and keep it off for good. You have to become an emotional adult in order to get there. Becoming an emotional adult, this is one of the most powerful skills you can learn. And it’s key to becoming the most badass version of yourself. So I’m gonna get to all that in just a minute.

First, if you haven’t already joined us on Facebook, come check out the Running Lean podcast community, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a group of people just like you. We all share common goals, we share common struggles, we help each other, we encourage each other, we ask questions, we get answers, we support each other through this journey.

Having a community to lean into is so helpful. So come and check us out. We have a lot of fun in there. I do weekly trainings every Sunday afternoon, little Facebook Live, where you can bring questions and I’ll answer them for you. I created that community on Facebook as a way of extending this conversation making it a two way conversation because I’m here talking into this microphone on this podcast. But I can’t hear back from you.

What’s going on with you? I want to know what’s going on with you. So that’s why I do this over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So come check us out over there. And then here’s a message I got recently from a new podcast listener.

And this is from Deb and she says, “Wow, Patrick, listening to your podcast is life changing. I stumbled across it yesterday. And I’ve spent the last two days smashing through loads of them. Thankfully, I have more for tomorrow. You speak so well cut to the chase, no BS, very informative. I’ve recently signed up for a half marathon and know that I will complete it. Thank you for you.”

That’s so awesome. I get messages like this all the time. If you want to share the love and just give back and let me know how you feel about the podcast. If this has helped you in any way, you can leave a review. Just do that on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. I don’t know where to do it. Just figure out where it says like leave a review, write a quick five star review. Tell me what this podcast means to you. I would love to hear from you.

And listen, I know that I talk a lot about diet, nutrition, weight loss, dealing with your emotions, and all this stuff can be helpful and awesome and all that but also may feel a little overwhelming. And you probably just want to know like how do I start? Where do I go? How do I make this work for me?

Well, as a one on one coach, I got you covered. I can help you make sense of all of this. We can put together a plan that will work for you because listen, we are all different. We have different body types, different metabolisms, different goals, different needs, different likes, different dislikes. And there’s just not one way of doing things that works perfectly for everybody.

So my job as a coach is to help you figure out what works best for you. So working together will define your goals. We’ll put together a plan that’s tailored to help you reach those goals. And listen, this work that we do together and coaching is not just about diet and nutrition. It’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself.

Becoming the healthiest human being that you can possibly be physically, mentally, and emotionally. You know, I work with people who have been struggling with weight for the majority of their life and they’re finally ready to change for good. I work with runners who are tired of bonking all the time, they’re ready to stop hitting the wall and start hitting their goals.

I work with people who want to end the emotional eating, who want to take control of their thoughts and feelings, and get over feeling obsessed about food all the time. So whatever your health and fitness goals, I’m here for you, I’ll be your guide, I can show you the way I can help you become that badass version of yourself. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we’ll have a conversation. It’ll be fun.

Alright, let’s get into this. Speaking of fun, let’s get into this topic of becoming an emotional adult. So in order to get started with this, I need to talk about what the difference is between being an emotional child and being an emotional adult. So being an emotional child is easy. This is something we’ve been doing since we were toddlers. Okay?

So if you’re a toddler, and you parents out there that have toddlers right now, I feel for you, I really do. My kids are grown up. Now, we don’t have to deal with this anymore. But when you have a toddler, what do they do when things don’t go their way? Right? They scream and cry, they lay on the ground, in the middle of Target, and just have a fit. Right?

And, you know, they, they’re like, you know, oh, you know, this isn’t going my way. I’m not getting what I want. I want this but I can’t get it, you know, I can’t have it or whatever. Or you’re so mean to me. You know, and they just kind of have a fit. Okay? This is what it means to be an emotional toddler. And it’s fine. To be this way when you’re a toddler like this is kind of normal for toddlers to act this way, right?

But here’s where this plays out for us as adults. So you kind of see this all the time. You kind of act the same way. It’s a little more subtle. But you’ll say things to yourself. Like, I can’t have this. I’m not allowed to eat cake. I want this cake. But I’m not allowed. Nothing ever works for me. My life just sucks. There’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing ever goes my way. Right?

Doesn’t this sound whiny? I know I sound like I’m whining right now. But this is what we do to ourselves. We talk to ourselves this way we say these kinds of things. We blame everyone, we blame everything on what’s going on with ourselves in our own lives. Okay, so when we talk about emotional toddlers, we’re talking about people who play the victim who blame others, their blamers they’re complainers.

They always have stories and reasons and excuses for why they can’t reach their goals, why they can’t stick to their plan. I hear these stories all the time. You know, I hear them from friends and family and clients. Sometimes they tell me about, you know, oh, I had this really hard day at work. And that’s why I had to eat cake for dinner instead of the chicken that I was planning on making.

And as I’m saying this out loud, doesn’t it sound sort of ridiculous? But these are real situations. These are like real things that go through people’s brains. You know, they’re like, oh, yeah, I had a hard day at work. And so I had to eat cake. We all do this too. And I’ve done this before too. And I’m not immune to any of this. Okay, so this is just something we all do.

But I want to just make this very clear distinction between what it means to be an emotional toddler, what it means to be an emotional child. And what it means to be an emotional adult. Okay?

So emotional child, blaming, complaining, things don’t go your way. I can’t have this, I’m not allowed. Nothing ever goes my way that kind of stuff, right? So let’s contrast that with what it means to be an emotional adult. So when you’re an emotional adult, you don’t throw fits if things don’t go your way.

You don’t blame other people or other circumstances for what’s happening in your life. You don’t have excuses. You don’t have stories you’re not blaming, you don’t have reasons. Instead, you take responsibility for all of your results. Good and bad. You gained three pounds this week. Okay, why? What did I do differently? What can I do to change that?

Didn’t hit my running goal this week. Why? What happened? How can I get back on track next week? Doesn’t it sound better? There’s no blaming, no complaining, there’s just taking responsibility for everything that’s going on in your life. All of your results, the good, and the bad. Yes, all of it. It’s all, it’s all your fault. Okay.

So another way of looking at this is a concept called cause and effect. In every situation, you are either at cause or you are at the effect of others. So you are either the cause of the result, meaning you are taking responsibility, you’re taking ownership. This is all on me, hey, I ate the cake, I chose to eat the cake that’s on me. This is what it means to be at cause, okay, or you are at the effect of your circumstances.

Someone at the dinner table said I was no fun because I didn’t want to eat the cake. So they made me feel bad. So I ate the cake. It was their fault. Like that’s being at the effect of your circumstance. I had a bad day at work, so I ate cake for dinner instead of chicken. That’s being at the fact that’s just blaming others, you don’t take responsibility there, okay?

Here’s something I need you guys to understand. You are not a victim of your circumstances. Okay? Circumstances in our lives are always neutral. People can say anything they want, people can do anything they want, things can happen at work. And they always will. Some of it you like some of it you don’t like and it’s all basically it’s all neutral.

None of this stuff means anything to you until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. So big, challenging things can happen in your life, things that, you know, don’t really mean anything, until you create a story about what this thing means to you.

For example, let’s say and this is pretty subtle, and this is very common to let’s say your husband says something to you like, you know what, honey, you’re fine, just the way you are. You don’t need to lose any more weight. Okay, what do you do with that? How do you respond internally?

Like, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that? Think about this. What’s the story that you’re telling yourself about those words? Because here’s the truth. The truth is, they are just words, your husband said some words, this is a neutral circumstance. You can make it mean whatever you want.

But he just said some words. You can just ignore him if you want to. But you can make it mean that he’s right. Oh, maybe I’m just being selfish here. You know, I really want to make him happy, I should probably just go back to doing what I was doing before. Even though I was gaining weight. I was unhappy. But, you know, you know, maybe making him happy is more important than me losing weight and feeling good about myself.

And maybe he won’t love me if I lose more weight, you know, maybe all this stuff I’m doing is making him uncomfortable. And I don’t want him to be uncomfortable. So what do you do when you start thinking this way and you start feeling this way? You go back to doing what you were doing before you give up on your goal of getting lean and getting healthy. And you just stay unhappy and overweight? Because you’re making these words means something to you. So that’s one way you can go.

Another thing you can do with this information is that this person said to you these words that this person said to you, oh, you’re fine. You don’t need to lose weight. You can make it mean that here’s a person that’s just voicing his opinion. Okay, thank you for sharing your opinion. I appreciate that. But you know what? I’m doing this for me. Not for you. Your opinion. You know, thank you, but I’m good.

You know what I’m doing might make you feel uncomfortable, but that’s your problem. I’m going to carry on because I’m becoming healthier. I’m feeling better. Running is getting easier. I’m losing weight. I love living this way. And when you make it mean that and when you can like start thinking those thoughts and feelings about what this means to you, you’ll stay on track.

You know, you actually will become that healthiest, most badass version of yourself. yet. So this is just an example. And you can replace, you know, my husband said some words with other stuff, like my boss said stuff to me at work, or I got a flat tire in my car, or my kids are driving me nuts, you know, or I can’t run because of this injury or my daughter broke her arm, or any other litany of circumstances that are happening in your life, because those things are always going to happen. Always, always, always.

It’s interesting. I was talking to a client recently about this very issue. And she said, Yeah, because she had a situation at work that was causing a lot of stress and I said, Well, how do you respond to other challenges that you face? “ And she said that she had recently got a nail in her tire in her car. And she didn’t freak out about it. She just, like, drove her car to the tire place and like got it fixed, got it patched and then was on her way didn’t make it mean anything.

But we can do this, we can say, Oh, how about this nail in my car tire? I gotta tire my car. Yeah, of course, you know, I got a nail in my tire. So this means that I’m gonna have a bad day, this is so stressful. Oh, my gosh, you know, like, we can create this whole story around it right and drive ourselves crazy.

That’s being an emotional toddler about it. Being an emotional adult is handling a situation like that. And just going like that, no big deal. I’m gonna go get this fixed. And I’m on my way. So we can do that easily with stuff like getting a nail in your tire.

But what about when it comes to what our husband says to us? Or what our boss says to us, or how our kids are behaving, we make it mean something else. Okay, we get to choose how we respond to every circumstance in our life. We can respond like a toddler, lay on the ground and kick our legs and scream and cry about it.

Or we can respond like an emotional adult. Here’s an example from my life. Speaking of challenges, 14 years ago, I decided I’d had enough drinking alcohol just wasn’t working for me, okay. And so I quit, quit drinking. And during the last 14 years, I have had all kinds of challenges in my life.

I’ve gone through breakups and divorce, I’ve changed careers. I’ve lost jobs. Both my parents passed away. I’ve started businesses and then failed businesses. And through all of these 14 years, there were all kinds of reasons and excuses that I could have turned to alcohol as a solution, like, oh, yeah, my, my parents just died. Like I could choose that as an excuse to drink. And most people would probably say, Yeah, I’d probably drink over a lot of that stuff, too. But I never did, I never felt the need to take a drink.

I’ve never felt the need to revert to being an emotional toddler because of what’s happening in my life. I don’t blame the outside world, for how I feel, or for what I’m doing or not doing. I’m staying true to myself through all of it. In fact, staying true to myself is why I’ve been able to handle these big challenges in my life.

Because I’m not afraid to experience the emotions. I’m not afraid to feel my feelings. I don’t have to numb my emotions with alcohol or food anymore. And numbing out is a way of being an emotional toddler. This is the way we sort of practice emotional childhood. Okay?

So when you go through something that challenges you and you’re absolutely going to feel some emotions, right? You’re going to feel fear, you’re going to feel frustration, you’re gonna feel stress, you’re going to feel sadness or, or loneliness or failure or shame or whatever it is, you’re going to feel some emotions. So when you go through these big things in your life, most people, the way most people deal with these difficult emotions is they drink something or they eat something they turn to some sort of external thing to make them feel better inside.

Temporarily anyway, like it just feels good to eat some cake right? It feels good to drink some alcohol. The problem with this approach, though, is that it comes with negative consequences. Right. And maybe you drink too much, or you wake up with a hangover, you know, or maybe you eat too much and you end up gaining weight and you feel terrible.

This is what it means to approach the challenges in your life like an emotional toddler or you’re just like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just like drink yourself numb or eat yourself numb and it doesn’t work. Right? It doesn’t doesn’t mean those feelings go away. They just temporarily you’re putting them on hold, you know, you’re just, you know, drinking something to make you feel better, temporarily. Doesn’t do anything for the actual feelings. Your feelings.

Because you’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna be hungover, you’re gonna feel like crap. Alright. And then you’re still gonna have those feelings. You’re gonna be like, No, I got to deal with this. And then you go, just want to drink again. It’s a never ending cycle. So numbing out is emotional toddlerhood, right? We don’t want to do that.

We want to feel our feelings. And this is where things get tough for most people, okay. Most people do not like to feel difficult emotions. And this is normal. Like, I don’t like to feel these things. Fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, grief, shame, overwhelm, frustration, stress, anxiety, these are all emotions, these are all feelings that we feel. And most people will do anything to just not have to feel these feelings.

But most people are coming from this place of like, being at the effect, right being at the effect of everything that’s happening around them being a blame, or being a complainer being an emotional toddler. So here’s a radical concept for you. What if you were willing to just feel those emotions? What if you didn’t do anything? To try to make them go away? You just felt them? What? I know, it’s a crazy concept.

What would that look like for you to just feel your feelings? I promise you, it would not feel good. I promise you it would be uncomfortable. But here’s the thing. This is how you become more emotionally evolved. This is exactly the way that you become an emotional adult, it’s about experiencing your emotions, feeling your feelings, allowing them to be they’re not doing anything to change them, just allowing them to come and go like a wave.

So we experience thoughts in our head, you know, in our brain, we experience emotions in our body. And so in order to feel those emotions, you have to get in touch with your body, you have to process your emotions, you have to get in touch with how you feel in your body. Sometimes it’s like a tightness in your chest.

Or, you know, your shoulders are tensed up, you know, your shoulders start to raise up towards your ears. That’s like stress, right? And we experience these emotions, we feel them in our body. This is where a lot of people just don’t like that feeling. They don’t like that feeling.

I’ll tell you what, one one thing that’s really amazing at working through this stuff is to go for a run, because then you’re like, you’re changing the feelings in your body. Okay, we’re not, we’re not stuffing the feelings down, what you’re doing is you’re doing something that is healthy. And that allows you to get in touch with what’s going on inside your body.

This helped me so much over the last couple of years, especially last year when I was going through a divorce and I was feeling all these intense feelings, you know, sadness and loneliness, and hurt. And I would go for a run. And I would still feel those feelings, but, but it was like I was able to process them, I was able to let them come and let them go.

Alright, and then I was able to carry on with my day. So this is how you become an emotional adult is to just allow the feelings to be there and not do anything to change them. Stop the complaining, stop the blaming, take 100% responsibility for everything you’re feeling and everything that’s going on good or bad in your life.

And you have to practice. This is a skill that you can learn. Right? This is one of the most powerful life skills that you can learn in my opinion. And you have to practice it and it is not easy. And I talk to my clients about this all the time. I talk about just letting the uncomfortable feeling be there. Right, it will not feel good.

But if you can practice it and you can just be with these emotions, it will get easier. I promise you just like anything else in your life. The more you practice it, the better you get at it. So this is how you become an emotional adult, this is how you become a total emotional badass. Because here’s the cool thing about this, when you learn how to do this, and you get good at this, when you’re no longer afraid to experience some of these emotions, there’s nothing you can’t do.

So most people will, you know, quit on themselves, they’ll give up their goals and their dreams, because getting there doesn’t feel good, it’s uncomfortable, you’re out of your comfort zone. And so most people will just quit on themselves. All because of a feeling because they just don’t want to feel uncomfortable.

They don’t want to feel the fear. They don’t want to feel the disappointment if they don’t make it or if they feel like a failure. But what if you didn’t care? What if you were willing to feel all of those emotions? What if you’re willing to feel any emotion? What do you think you could accomplish?

Oh, my gosh, there’d be nothing to stop you from achieving anything you want in your life. I’ve experienced this huge, huge amount of success, and abundance and joy and accomplishment in my life. Because I’m willing to get uncomfortable. I’m not superhuman, honestly, far from it. I’m just a normal average job here, right?

I’m just more willing to experience some of these difficult emotions. And most people, I’m more willing to put myself out there and be uncomfortable and go through it, have the fear, have the anxiety, and show up anyway. And then take responsibility for everything that’s happening in my life, good, bad, or otherwise.

So here’s my call to action for you this week. I want you to just notice, like be aware of when you’re being an emotional toddler. Don’t judge yourself. You know, don’t beat yourself up about this. But just be aware that you’re doing it. Where are you blaming others? Where are you complaining?

Where are you saying things like, I can’t have that. I don’t get to do that. Because you’re making a choice. These are all choices you get to make, be an adult about this, be an adult about your emotions, take responsibility for everything, everything, everything that you’re getting in your life or not getting the good, the bad, everything. It’s all on you.

I have this t-shirt, and it’s a black T-shirt with big white lettering, and it says everything is my fault. And I wear that T-shirt to remind myself that everything in my life is my fault, whether it’s good or bad. I am the cause of everything that’s happening in my life.

Now you know what somebody said to me? Not what’s going on at work? Not what’s happening with my running injury? Nothing. It’s all on me. So where are you at? Are you the cause of everything? Or are you at the effect of everything? Are you at the effect of your circumstances? I want you to take full responsibility for all of this, this is radical. This is crazy.

Most people don’t do this. But you know, if you’re living at the effect of your circumstances, you have all these stories and excuses and reasons and you’re blaming yourself and your complex. We don’t want to do that, we want to take responsibility for all of it. Be an emotional adult.

And if you’re finding yourself trying to avoid feeling your feelings, you just want to push your feelings away. I don’t want to feel this right now. I’m going to eat something, I’m gonna drink something. What if you just allow them to be there and see how it goes like practice that practice feeling your feelings. I know this is such a crazy concept. We don’t talk about this.

I’m not afraid to talk about feelings. I’m not afraid to talk about emotions. I think this is a skill we should be teaching our kids, honestly. Because when you get good at this, there’s just nothing you can’t do. I want you to be willing this week, I want you to be willing to get uncomfortable emotionally so that you can become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet because this is how you’re going to get there.

Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. I hope you got something out of this episode. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all, 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.

68. Our Complicated Relationship With Food

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When it comes to health and fitness, there’s no topic more controversial or more complicated than which foods we should eat, and which we should avoid. Some experts tell you this diet or that diet …

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Podcast Transcript

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 68 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And today, I’ve got a really cool topic for you. This is our complicated relationship with food. So when it comes to our health and fitness, honestly, there’s no topic that’s probably more controversial or more complicated, than what foods we should eat and what foods we should avoid.

And experts will tell you like this diet is the best one for everyone or that one is the best for everyone and, or maybe that it’s not about the food at all. It’s more a problem of willpower and self-control. Just eat whatever you want, just eat less of it and exercise more, and you’ll be fine.

And I’ve come to realize that it’s just not that simple. We humans, we’ve evolved to have a very interesting and very complicated relationship with food. So why is what we eat so complicated? And what does this mean for us? And most importantly, what can we do about it? So in this episode, I share many of the reasons why our relationship with food is complicated. And my hope is that by the end of this episode, you’ll have a deeper understanding of this complicated relationship we have with food, and maybe be able to make some more informed decisions about your own dietary choices.

But first, if you haven’t already done so come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing group of runners, the Running Lean podcast community, on Facebook, and it’s a place where you can ask questions get help feel supported, hey, we all need to feel supported. Sometimes, especially when it comes to trying to accomplish something big, like training for a marathon or an ultra-marathon or maybe, you know, getting lean and strong, maybe losing some weight.

All of these things. We support each other in the Facebook community. So come and join us. You can lean into this community you’ll find encouragement, inspiration, and motivation. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. I hope you join us. It’s fun, we have fun.

I want to dive right into this topic today. Because I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now. And I really wanted to share this information with you guys and acknowledge the fact that our relationship with food is complicated. And I think it’s, we do ourselves a disservice when we try to simplify it, you know, just eat this or don’t eat that. And it’s more complicated than that.

And I want to just really acknowledge how complicated this really is. And that there’s a lot more going on than just, you know, these foods are good, these foods are bad, you know, that kind of mentality. I don’t think that serves anybody. Okay. So before I get into, like, why things are complicated, I want to just give a quick history.

And this is nonscientific. But I just want to give you a rundown, kind of the way we’ve evolved. Okay, so we had these hunter-gatherer ancestors, okay, who I’m assuming did not have a very complicated relationship with food. Alright, food was a means of survival. So they would hunt, they would gather, and they had this survival instinct. They told them that they needed to go forage for food or hunt for food, they got some food, they ate it, they shared it, it was probably from what I understand is probably a community effort.

You know, the whole community got involved with the hunting and gathering, the preparing of the food, and then the eating of the food. And so we evolved with this beautiful, healthy sort of relationship, I guess you could call it a relationship with food. And over millions of years, we grew these amazing brains.

You know, we became the most advanced living creature in the known universe. Think about this. There is no creature that is as evolved as we are that we know about in the universe. There might be, it’d be very cool if we could figure that out and meet some of these other creatures. But for now, it’s just us, okay.

And we evolved this way, because of our dietary choices, really think about it. And then we live this way for eons, you know, from literally millions of years. And then something changed in the last few 1000 years, you know, we started to see things like, people becoming obese and diseased. And, you know, there was a lot of overeating, gluttony, and things like that.

And you can see this in history, if you look at, like the Roman Empire. So this would have been, you know, just a few 1000 years ago, during the Roman Empire, being fat was a sign of being ugly, like they really admired the ideal human form. If you look at the sculptures and paintings from that era, they had this ideal that they were reaching for.

And people that were fat people that were overweight, this is a sign of ugliness, and a sign of being mentally unbalanced, like an unfit mind. And so they created things like gymnasiums, where they would work out to get stronger and improve their fitness and their health. And they held beauty contests for women, just like interesting, you know.

And then, like, early Christians, they thought that being obese was a sign of not being spiritual. And early on in you know, the early few 100 years A.D., you know, gluttony was deemed, you know, one of the deadly sins. And so we started out with really no, sort of, like, emotional, spiritual or mental, like, hang-ups around food, and our bodies.

And then as we’ve evolved, you know, all of this has become more complicated. And being overweight, or obese, you know, has been vilified. Okay. So, just know that you know, only in the last few 1000 years have we started to really have this super complicated relationship with food. And I would say, probably, within the last 100-120 years or so, have things really amped up, you know, especially in the era of the Internet, and social media. And we’ll get into that a little bit more in just a minute here.

But here’s the thing. We do need food to survive. Food gives us life. Food can also cause us harm, it can create a diseased state in our body, we know this. Science tells us this it can create a state of obesity, lead to debilitating diseases, and can even kill us. So when I talk about our complicated relationship with food, we need food to survive without it will die. But eating the wrong types of food too much food can literally kill us. This is where things start to get complicated. Okay.

So, one of the first real big complications I want to talk about here is that you know, the foods we tend to love the most the foods that we’re most drawn to, the foods that we fantasize about, seem to be the ones that are the worst for us. For example, sugar is amazing, right? When we eat sugar, we feel amazing. Feels so good. We get this rush of dopamine, our endorphins, you know get released.

Eating sugar lights up the same centers in our brain as when you do cocaine. So this is great, right? Like we’ve evolved as humans to seek out these kinds of calorie-dense, very sweet foods, you know, like honey, and berries. And we would eat these foods every now and then. But nowadays, these foods that we’re eating are being you know, developed in a laboratory, by food scientists, they’re deemed hyper-palatable.

So they really hijack the pleasure centers of our brains. So when we eat some of these hyper-palatable foods, we can’t get them out of our mind, you know. So we’re really, really drawn to these foods. So that’s sugar.

Flour is the same way. So flour is like, white flour especially, is a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, just like sugar is, but I didn’t know this until recently, but flour actually spikes your blood sugar even more than actual table sugar does. Because it’s ground so finely. So it is a very refined carbohydrate.

But because there’s so much more surface area in flour, because it’s so fine, it will create an even higher spike in your blood sugar. So when you’re eating things that are made of flour, and sugar, this is just like, off the charts, right? So the foods we love the most, the foods that we’re like, most drawn to seem to be the ones that cause the most problems, you know. So this, this makes things complicated, right.

And these foods, you know, we know that too much sugar is bad, and it causes us to hold on to fat, and we store fat when we eat a lot of sugar, and flour. And it’s making us fat, obese, and sick, and it’s slowly killing us. We’ve never been more fat as a nation. In the US, you know, obesity rates have more than tripled since the 1970s.

And the major culprit, I would argue in the science would argue is the highly refined carbohydrates, especially sugar and liquid sugar and soda and things like that. So this is complicated, right, in, in conjunction with that is, you know, is this addictive nature of food. So, you know, I really, I gotta say, in the big food industry, they use this idea of hyper palatability, and they create this food that is super, super desirable so that they can sell more food.

And, honestly, we are being manipulated in a way. I’m not like a conspiracy theorist type of guy here, but we are being manipulated by the big food industries, especially the big packaged food industries because they just want to sell us more food. They’re not concerned about how healthy or unhealthy these products are. They are only concerned about making more money.

And so they put a lot of money into making these foods as highly palatable as possible. And so, you know, this is where the complication comes in, right? Because these foods that we know are not good for us are incredibly addicting, and we just like we can’t get enough of them. Right?

They’re like the most the things we desire the most. Our desire is like off the charts for these kinds of foods. Okay. So, you know, most of us, most of us cannot handle these, these highly refined carbohydrates and most people, the majority of people are what is called carbohydrate intolerant – just means like you can’t handle a diet that’s really high in carbohydrates.

These highly palatable high carbohydrate foods, they’re just as addictive as a substance as something like alcohol. In fact, they turn on those similar pathways in the brain, they turn on this thing called the phenomenon of craving. It’s like once you start thinking about donuts, you can’t get it out of your head and you just gotta go have a doughnut.

It’s very similar to somebody who has an addiction to something like alcohol. When they start thinking about it. They can’t get out of their head. It’s this craving that they just can’t shake. You know, and the food industry they know this and they make these foods that do this to us. So that will buy more.

They even put it on their packaging, you know, once you, once you pop, you can’t stop. Like we acknowledge the fact that you cannot just have one potato chip. You know, like, you’ve got to eat this whole bag once you open it up, that was my experience. Anyway, I used to love those kettle chips. Let’s see, I think it’s called kettle brand chips, I don’t even know anymore.

But they’re these potato chips with like salt and vinegar on them and just the saltiness and, and the bitter like vinegar taste to these things. I could not stop eating these things, I would go through a whole bag, and I could not just eat just one. You’re right, food companies, I cannot stop once I pop.

And so there’s this like addictive nature to and there’s this hyper palatability to food. And on one hand, there are people you know trying to make the food as pleasurable as possible. Remember, our brains are really good at seeking pleasure and avoiding pain that’s our, our amygdala, you know, that ancient part of our brain that primitive part of our brain that is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And this does it for us.

You know, seeking out these highly palatable foods creates this incredibly intense desire and pleasure for us. Okay, but it’s also super terrible for our health. So this is complicated, right? And then you’ll hear people say things like, well, you can eat anything you want, just in moderation. All foods in moderation. This is the slogan that a lot of registered dieticians use: all foods in moderation.

And I just don’t think this is necessarily good advice because, for some of us, certain foods can trigger addictive-like responses. So wouldn’t it be better to just avoid some of these foods? Just a thought. I mean, it’s kind of like telling somebody who has a drinking problem. And maybe they’re an alcoholic to just have a few beers every now and then. You know you can drink. It’s fine. Just you know, one or two.

But the answer for some of us is that the answer, really, for some of us is that we just have to avoid these problematic foods altogether. Because if we start we can’t stop. You know, when I used to drink alcohol, I could not stop at just one. I had to keep going. Because it lit up that pleasure center in my brain. And my brain, you know, maybe it’s wired differently than most people. I don’t know.

But I couldn’t stop it. Just I couldn’t have just one beer, I would see people that would like drink a half a beer and like, leave it on the table. I’d be like, what is happening here? Does not compute. How do you do that?

And it’s the same way with food for a lot of us like we cannot stop we you know, once you if you ordered dessert at the table and everybody’s like, oh, let’s just share, just have one bite, we can each have one bite? No, man, I’m gonna get my own dessert. Okay, I’m gonna eat the whole thing myself. You can’t, I’m not sharing it with you. All right, because I’m not I can’t just have one bite it just triggers this response inside me.

So wouldn’t it be better to maybe just avoid that? Okay. I don’t know that all foods in moderation is like the best advice, you know. And I’m gonna go on a little bit of a rant here just about registered dieticians and I love them and I have friends who are RDS but the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics so this is the organization that kind of the Governing Board of Registered Dieticians. This is an organization that over the years has been funded by big companies like McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Company, Sara Lee, Abbott nutrition, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, you know people that make candy. Unilever and the sugar association.

So of course their slogan is going to be all foods in moderation, eat some McDonald’s eat some you know, drink some Coke and Pepsi, eat your cereal, eat your candy bars. Sugar is fine, just in moderation, right. So this organization, the AMD is kind of in bed with big food. And in my opinion and the opinion of a lot of people in the nutrition world, it’s coloring their stance you know, by telling people that cereal and soda and candy bars are fine.

I don’t think this is good advice necessarily. Okay. That does not mean that every registered dietitian is telling people to go eat McDonald’s and Coke and things like that. But I’m just saying that again, this is complicated, right? That there are these relationships that those big companies have with nutrition governing bodies.

And, for example, like registered dietitians, they are the only people that can prescribe meals for patients in hospitals. And for type two diabetic patients. This is no joke. They will prescribe a breakfast of coffee, orange juice, a bagel, Rice Krispies, a V8, and a package of white sugar. This is for somebody suffering from high blood sugar hyperinsulinemia, type two diabetes, this diet is going to spike their blood sugar like crazy. This is not what you want to give somebody that’s a type two diabetic.

And then their solution is well then we just inject them with more insulin and the problem is solved. This is crazy right here. Okay. And if you want to learn more about this, there’s a great book by Michelle Hearn. She’s a registered dietician. And it’s called the Dietitian’s Dilemma.

And she talks about this place where she got to in her dietitian practice where she was like, I just, I don’t feel good prescribing people with type two diabetes, these super high sugary meals, I just can’t do it. But this is what they have to give them. It’s a little complicated.

And here’s the thing, I absolutely believe that we should be able to treat ourselves every now and then. You know, so yeah, some foods are problematic. Maybe for me, you know, sugar is a problem. And maybe I want to not eat sugar most of the time. But can I treat myself every now and then? You know, if it’s Christmas, can I have some Christmas pudding? Or if it’s Thanksgiving? Do I want to eat a piece of pumpkin pie with some whipped cream on it? Yeah, sure. If it’s my birthday, am I gonna eat some birthday cake? Probably yes.

And then I just go back to my regular diet, you know, the next day. But if treating yourself is having negative consequences, or if it becomes something that you can’t stop doing, is this good for you? Is this really a treat?

So, you know, I don’t want to go through my life, never eating a good piece of fresh sourdough bread again, or, you know, pizza, I love pizza for the crust, I’ll be honest with you, I the toppings, whatever, I love pizza, because it’s the crust, I just love the stretchiness of it. And so good. So good.

And I want to be able to eat that, again, I want to be able to eat some ice cream again. But I don’t want to be obsessed with these foods. And this is where things get complicated, right? Because we want to be able to do this every now and then. But for some, we just can’t do that.

You know, so maybe it’s better to just avoid altogether, for the most part, you know, avoid it altogether. Except for maybe some special occasions. I haven’t eaten sugar in a very long time. I think the last time I ate some sugar was on. Well, was it Thanksgiving, probably. And we’re in April now. So this was a while back. And I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t amazing. And I didn’t get obsessed with it, you know.

So for me, I don’t really want to. I just don’t want to eat sugar because I can’t stop once I start. So I’m just you know, the reason I’m doing this today and talking about this stuff is because we do have a complicated relationship with food. And I don’t want to ever say that it’s easy. And that it’s super straightforward.

Because we all have a very unique relationship with food. We all have strong opinions, we all have certain desires and things that trigger us, and it’s complicated. And I just want to acknowledge that.

So another thing that we’re told is that and I kind of mentioned this earlier is that you know, if you just eat less food and exercise more, you’ll be fine. So eat whatever you want, just eat less and exercise more and got nothing to worry about. And honestly, this just doesn’t work. And we’ve talked about this before.

It has been proven that this doesn’t work for the majority of us, you know if you’re overweight. So this is their stance is like if you’re overweight, it means you overeat, you’ve just got to eat less. If you had more self-control, you wouldn’t be overweight, because you wouldn’t eat as much.

And I just think this is so crazy because it’s just not true. There are so many people that watch their calories, and they exercise a lot. And they still gain weight. It’s not necessarily about how much you’re eating. It’s like, what kinds of foods you’re eating? And how is your relationship with it?

I have this client who had a running streak going and still does. But he’s had this running streak going since 2007. So this guy is an absolute beast, he runs at least three miles a day, since 2007. This is like well over 5000 miles, I believe by now. And in this process, he’s gained over 50 pounds. So this is an average weight gain of 3.8 pounds a year.

If it really took that long, you know, it really only came on in the last half of this. So really, it was more like six pounds a year or so. And just so you know, the average adult in the US gains around two pounds a year after the age of 20. And so this is a problem like you’re gonna be pretty overweight, as you get older, right?

But this person, this client of mine, doing this running streak was exercising like crazy, like crazy, and still gained all this weight, like, the answer is not to exercise more. And this person was not a compulsive overeater or anything like that, you know, for the most part, try to eat up a pretty healthy diet but still gained 50 pounds, the answer is not, you know, eat less and run more, it just doesn’t work.

And, you know, there’s a lot of experts out there that are doling out advice. And trying to tell us what we should do. And a lot of this advice, I think, is well-intentioned, and it may work for them. But a lot of these experts are, are thin people, and they’ve always been thin. And they’ve never been overweight, and they’ve never struggled with eating, and they don’t know what it’s like to be a fat person to be overweight.

And some of these experts that are that have always been thin, trying to tell us, you know, well, you just don’t have enough self-control, I think is really doing us a disservice. I used to follow these ultra runners who were following a high carbohydrate plant-based diet, and they’re like, this is what you do, you got to eat all these carbs eat a plant-based diet. And I’m like, oh if this is the way to go, that’s what I’m going to do. Because this is what the experts are telling me.

Well, you know, these, these ultra runner experts are, have been thin their whole life. And they run like 200 miles a week. Okay, they’ve never struggled with their weight a day in their life, maybe they’re not carbohydrate intolerant, they may be part of that population that can handle a high carbohydrate diet. Plus, you know, if you’re running 200 miles a week, you know, it’s gonna be really hard for you to put on weight.

You know, also these people are like, elite athletes are like the top 1% of athletes in the world. You know, and here I am just some average dude with, you know, who’s overweight, you know, trying to follow their advice, and it’s not working for me. Right? This is complicated. It’s not as simple as just doing what they do, because I’m not them.

We’re all different. We all have different needs. We all have different metabolic profiles, we all have different desires, we all have different likes, and we all have different goals. And we have to meet you know, we need to meet ourselves where we are. And we need to do what is best for us and what works for us and having thin people trying to tell us what to do, I don’t think is doing us a much of a service. Okay.

And then we get into things like our relationship with food being so complicated, we get into things like eating disorders, you know, there’s this body dysmorphia, which is a mental illness, you know, and it’s, it’s when people think, you know, they see a flaw in themselves, you know that this flaw they see in themselves, could be very minor or it could even be just something they’re imagining, but they spend hours just, you know, trying to fix this flaw.

You know, they may try to excel at exercise, or they do cosmetic procedures. And they look at themselves in the mirror, and they say, oh, I’m so fat. Or look at that, look at my nose, you know. And this is an issue that causes you to know, other eating disorders. So this body dysmorphia, like we were comparing ourselves to maybe this perfect ideal image we see on Instagram or something.

And it can lead to, you know, depression, anxiety, and other types of eating disorders. You know, like anorexia, Anorexia is a very distorted body image, it’s a super, like, intense fear of gaining weight or being fat. And so a lot of people that have anorexia are very below normal weight, they’re very unhealthy, they starve themselves, they exercise, they over-exercise.

And a lot of these people, need medical treatment, to get themselves back to normal weight. A lot of times they need therapy to help with their self-esteem. And with these behavioral changes, they need to make.

Bulimia is a similar disorder. You know this is binging and purging, you know, and people with bulimia. You know, they’re, they feel compelled to binge eat. And then they want to avoid any kind of weight gain. So they’ll purge, and this can be life-threatening, right, because, you know, with anorexia and bulimia, these people are not getting the nutrition that they need to be healthy.

So, you know, we’ve taken this idea of like, a healthy ideal, and it can go to the extreme. And it can be very hard for people to see themselves as healthy as well, especially when we compare ourselves to others. And if you or somebody you know, is struggling with you know, dysmorphia, anorexia, or bulimia, you need to get some sort of medical help, honestly, because these are serious eating disorders and could be life-threatening. So definitely seek out help with these kinds of things.

But see, there’s this complicated relationship we have with food, you know, and it’s just been, it gets more intense, you know, it can be very intense for people. You know, we have this physical, we have a physical relationship with food, like where we have to eat food, or we die, okay. But like I was saying, you know, we have these hyper-palatable foods, and that creates a physical craving in our body.

So our body gets addicted to these feelings of bliss that we get from eating highly refined carbohydrates, for example. So the way it works is you eat some sugar, let’s say, like, you eat some donuts, right? Blood sugar spikes like crazy, but then it comes crashing down. And in order to get back to baseline, your body needs more donuts, to get back there. So you eat more donuts, and then the cycle repeats, you know, blood sugar spikes then crashes hard.

And you know, we get a lot of energy from eating donuts, we get this like a burst of, of energy, but then after a couple of hours, we have much less energy, we’re more fatigued than before we ate the donuts. Okay, so we have this physical, this complicated physical relationship with food with certain foods especially.

And then we have this emotional relationship with food. We use food to comfort ourselves, we use food to soothe ourselves so that we feel better. When we experience a difficult emotion like we’re stressed out, or we have anxiety, or we’re bored or angry, or we’re sad, or we feel hurt, a lot of times we turn to food to make us feel better.

Some foods we call comfort foods because they come for us. They make us feel good. And this is fine. It’s fine to do this, okay. But if your comfort food has negative consequences, this may not be such a good idea. Obviously, it depends on the food you’re using to comfort yourself. You could cover yourself with a whole pizza like I used to do.

A large pizza and a pint of beer and Ben and Jerry’s and oh, that’s very comforting. But lots of negative consequences. I just kept getting fatter and sicker. You could also come for yourself with other types of food and people don’t think of it this way. But you could come for yourself with a big colorful salad. Or a thick ribeye steak. Or a piece of grilled salmon or yeah, with like butter sauce on it.

Oh my gosh, amazing. And it’s very comforting to eat healthy foods as well, it can be. So we don’t have to go to the highly palatable foods to comfort ourselves, sometimes we can use I know. It’s like, oh, really, Patrick? Like, I’m just gonna go eat a big pile of broccoli? And that’s going to comfort me? And, you know, sometimes, yes, sometimes, yes. Okay.

But we can actually choose comfort foods that do serve us, and that will support our good health. So we have a physical relationship with food that’s complicated, we have an emotional relationship with food that can be complicated. And then we have this mental relationship with food.

You know, just thinking about food can produce a physical craving, just the anticipation of eating food. It’s actually more enticing than the actual experience itself. Like, I remember. Yeah, for Thanksgiving, last year, I was all obsessed about this pumpkin pie. And I’m like, this is gonna be so amazing. And I’m gonna get the, you know, the whipped cream on there. And it’s just, I can’t wait to do it.

And the anticipation, I had this idea in my brain that it was going to be so amazing. And then, when the event actually happened, and I ate it, I was like, all right. It’s like no big deal. It wasn’t as good as it was in my brain, you know, beforehand leading up to it. So we have this mental sort of obsession with food. This is complicated, right?

We have food we see in our Instagram feed, you know, food porn, they call it, you know, and just do a search for the hashtag food porn on Instagram. It’s amazing, like, pictures of burgers and pie and cake, and doughnuts and all kinds of stuff. It’s pretty amazing, your mouth will just start to water just by looking at these pictures. And then there’s the role that, you know, the media plays, and we see these billboards with giant pictures of pizzas on them.

We were out running this past weekend and I don’t like, you know, pizza, really, from this one place here in town. But there was a big giant billboard with his huge pizza on it. And like I said, I don’t even like their pizza. But I saw that billboard. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I go for a big piece of pizza right now, because I’m looking at this thing. And it’s creating this trigger in my brain. Right. And they know that it does that to us.

You know, we see these ads on TV ads, social media ads, and magazines and stuff like that. And the food that they just, you know, they’re just pumping us full of, you know, these images of how amazing this food is, okay. And then we have the social aspects of food. So a lot of times, you know, we want to stay on our plan, but then we, we go out with friends or something, and we feel like we’re being judged by other people.

You know, we want to celebrate with food. But then we feel like we’re, we’re doing something bad. You know, there’s a lot of stereotypes to like, oh, you’re a runner. Oh, all runners are skinny people, all runners can eat whatever they want. They don’t have to worry about getting fat.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not my experience. I was fat. And I felt judged by people, like, oh, you’re a runner, and you’re overweight? Like you must be doing it wrong. And then we have all this fat-shaming that goes on, you know, there’s like so much judgment around this stuff, right? When we’re being judged by others, we tend to want to, you know, crawl back to safety. And so we don’t stick to our program because we feel judged.

You know, we don’t want to be the weirdo at the dinner party, or in the restaurant with our friends. You know, everybody’s eating bread, and you’re like, oh, no bread for me. And they’re like, what’s wrong with you weirdo? Now, of course, people probably don’t say that. But that’s what we think. And we feel judged by people.

There’s this social pressure and food pushers, you know, people that are telling us just eat, just eat it. It’s fine. It’s not fine. It’s not fine. And then, you know, we have this. Speaking of restaurants, we have this problem, I think with portion sizes and how much we eat and how often we eat. And we’re told that we need to eat three meals a day plus a couple of snacks plus dessert and so we end up eating six times a day.

So we’re snacking all day long, and we go out to eat and our portion sizes are humongous, and I think that overeating has become the norm, you know. And then there’s this, like self-torture that we, that we do to ourselves, like, we torture ourselves around food, like, I shouldn’t eat this, or I can eat that. And in order to lose weight, I have to suffer, I have to suffer my way to better health.

You know, if I’m not suffering, I must not be doing it right. So I’ve never had a diet where I didn’t suffer and feel terrible. And then there’s this guilt and shame, we feel and we don’t stick to our plan. And there’s an internal shame of feeling, you know, ugly or overweight. And we have this emotional distress around how much we weigh on the scale.

And if we gain a pound, it means we’re a bad person. And we’re a failure. And we have a bad day. And so we just go back to eating the garbage food, you know. And if you want to know more about the scale drama, check out episode number 66, all about eliminating skilled drama, because I take a deep dive into that topic.

So all of these things I’ve talked about here today, I know I’ve kind of been all over the place. But I did this on purpose because I just want to I want you to know that this is complicated. It’s not a subject that, you know, we can just talk about in black and white. It’s not black and white, there’s so much gray area here. And what works for one person doesn’t work for somebody else.

So what do we do with all this? What do we do with all this information? Yeah, it’s super complicated. So what do we do? Well, I want you to know that the reason I created this is because I wanted to create a massive amount of awareness, I want you to see how complicated our relationship with food has become. And that this is not easy.

This topic is controversial, it’s complicated, it’s complex. There are a lot of nuances here, a lot of gray areas, I want you to be able to make informed decisions about your own health. And I want you to feel good about what you choose to eat and choose not to eat, you got to do what feels good for you. I also want you to be open to different ideas. So maybe not the ideas that are pushed down from the big food companies. But maybe some more grassroots kinds of ideas.

You know, we are all an experiment of one. You need to figure out what works best for you take control of your own health and your own fitness and your own diet and do what feels best for you. If you want to be a vegetarian or a vegan, or do the Mediterranean diet or Weight Watchers, whatever you want to do is completely fine. I have no judgments about any of that stuff.

But if what you’re doing isn’t working, I want you to be open-minded to try something else. You know, I talk about this a lot here I have a bias towards a lower carbohydrate approach. It seems to be the high carbohydrate diets seem to be a problem for most of us. Okay. And so, a lot, just lowering some of these problematic carbohydrates seems to help most people achieve peak physical health.

And, you know, if you can adopt a lower carbohydrate approach, and become a fat-adapted runner, oh, that’s amazing. And if you want help with this, like, reach out to me, I’ll walk you through that whole process step by step. One of the main reasons why I chose this field to specialize in sports, nutrition, health, and fitness coaching for runners is because it is so complicated.

And because I want to take all of these complicated issues here, and I want to do my best to distill them down for you so that they make sense and that you can make informed decisions and you can take control of your own health and fitness. So I do my best here on this podcast and in my coaching programs, to help you to make good decisions and do what works best for you because there’s not one diet that works for everyone.

My job is to help you and help my clients figure out what’s best for you. What’s the best for your body type what works best for your metabolism, what’s going to help support your health and fit goals? What supports your likes and dislikes? Complicated, right? We have a complicated relationship with food. I’m hoping that you got something out of this episode today.

And if you did, if you could please consider sharing it with a friend that would mean a lot to me. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Thanks for letting me rant a little bit here. As always, lots and lots of love to every single one of you 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.

66. Eliminating Scale Drama

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I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and comments lately where people are sharing their frustration around the scale. They weigh themselves and if the scale hasn’t moved in the right direction, …

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Podcast Transcript

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 66 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer health, and fitness expert, and weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got a very fun topic. Very fun, I’m being a little sarcastic. You may not think this is very fun. I think it’s fun. Eliminating scale drama.

So I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and, and comments on posts lately where people are talking about the scale. And they’re sharing their frustration around the scale. So people are weighing themselves and if the scale isn’t moving in the right direction, they get all down on themselves, they feel depressed, they feel disappointed. And and a lot of times they just give up. All right.

So they’re creating all this drama for themselves because of a number on a device that is used to measure your body weight. Right? And then the suggested solution to the problem is to just don’t weigh yourself, you know, weigh yourself less often or don’t do it at all. And to me, this doesn’t make any sense.

If you’re having an emotional experience around a number on the scale. Does avoiding the scale really solve anything? No. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to dole out a little bit of tough love. I love you guys, but sometimes I gotta get tough with you. I want to explain exactly what scale drama is, how it is impacting your life, and how to eliminate all of that scale drama for good. All right, stay with me, you’re gonna like this one or not. It’s okay though.

If you haven’t already done it, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a fun group of positive runners who are there to support each other, and encourage each other. We talk about our goals, we share our experiences, we ask questions, and it’s fun, and we have a good time. So just come find us on Facebook. The podcast and the Facebook group kind of go hand in hand.

So I do a little bit of teaching in the Facebook group as well it kind of goes along with the stuff I teach you on the podcast. So definitely check out the Facebook group because you’ll get a good well-rounded feel for exactly what it is I’m teaching here and it’s a good adjunct to the podcast.

Also, spring enrollment is now open for the Running Lean monthly coaching group. This is my monthly membership program. In a support group where you get everything you need to make lasting changes to your health and fitness. We’re talking about knowledge, support, and accountability.

I talked about these three things last week in the podcast, right. And the Running Lean monthly coaching group, I created because it has all three of those things in one place. So you get the knowledge, which is my entire library of online training materials, and self-paced videos that you can go through and learn at your own pace.

Like the weight loss training course for runners, this is like everything you need to know about becoming fat-adapted, what to eat, what not to eat, how to break through weight-loss plateaus, how to manage hunger, and cravings, and so much more. You can go through all of this at your own pace. And then start implementing what you learned and start getting some results.

But then, if you have questions or struggles or something doesn’t make sense to you, you can bring all of that to the group, okay. And that’s where the support piece comes in. So we have this group of people that are all in this together, right, we’re all doing this together.

Of course, you get my expertise and my experience as a sports nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a master life coach, but it’s not just about me, it’s about the support from a community of people like you. Some people have some good experiences they can share.

You know, we share our experience, our strength is our hope with each other, you know, we’re vulnerable, we share with what we’re struggling with, and we offer our support or encouragement, and we lift each other up, and we help each other. This is the power of the group.

When we do try to do some hard things on our own. It’s hard. It’s challenging, it’s frustrating, but when we do hard things together, it’s motivating. It’s energizing, we’re much more likely to succeed.

And then the third piece is the accountability piece. Showing up in this group means you’re going to be held accountable to stay on track and move towards your goals. You know, if you want to make changes last you have to have accountability. You’re much more likely to stick with a healthy eating plan or an exercise regimen if you have to report to the group and say, yeah, I did what I said I was going to do. That’s powerful.

Okay, so the three biggest reasons why I created this group is because it has the knowledge, support, and accountability all in one place. All right, we do live group coaching via zoom. All the group coaching calls are recorded and archived. So you can always go back and watch something you missed, or rewatch something.

And we have a lot of fun, I believe, and making big changes in our lives, like changing our diet, losing weight, you know, getting stronger, getting faster can be fun, and enjoyable. We don’t have to suffer our way to good health. Right. So the group aspect of this program makes all of this a lot more fun.

So the spring enrollment is open. Now, I don’t open this group very often, maybe once a quarter. So if you want to take advantage of this, is this something you’ve been thinking about? Now’s the time to do it. Okay, I’m going to be closing the doors at the end of the day. On Sunday, April, the fourth, so 11:59 pm, Sunday, April 4, done for a few months.

Start today, and think about how much further you will be in three or four months. Right? Do you want to just be where you are today in three or four months? Or do you want to be like three or four months into a healthy eating regimen? The choice is yours. Always. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

Learn how to dial in your nutrition, make healthy eating a way of life, become a badass fat-adapted, bonk-proof runner, and have fun doing it. I promise you it is fun. runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Okay, let’s get into this topic today, which is eliminating scale drama. Like I said earlier, sometimes I gotta be a little tough with you guys got to dole out a little bit of tough love. And today is one of those days.

So I’ve been seeing a lot of posts out there in the Facebook group and on other Facebook groups and just in on social media in general posts and comments about the scale. You know, why you should or should not weigh yourself and how often you should weigh yourself.

Even people suggest that you never weigh yourself just stop doing it. It’s too frustrating. And I have these conversations at least once a day with people, sometimes clients who get frustrated. And today I want to make my stance on this topic very clear. Right? Not everyone is going to agree with me on my approach. And that’s totally fine with me.

We all have our own opinions, we get to decide what’s best for ourselves. Okay, if you have a different idea, a different way of doing it. Awesome. You do you, but at least be open to hearing me out today. Because I think I think we could all use a little help around this issue, this issue of scale drama.

So what is scale drama? Scale, drama is all that stuff. You tell yourself what the number on the scale means about you. So let’s say you start eating healthier, you’re exercising, you’re making some healthy changes in your life, and you’re starting to feel pretty good, right? You’re feeling pretty good about yourself.

And then you step on the scale, and you haven’t lost any weight. You know, let’s say your goal is to lose 40 pounds. And you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks and you feel good. And you get on the scale and it hasn’t moved. Or maybe it went up a pound. And then this is where all the drama comes in.

You have all these stories that you start telling yourself all these thoughts come up all these feelings come up. It’s so frustrating. This is not working. Oh no, I’m gonna have a bad day. This is so disappointing. This is depressing. This whole thing is just stupid. Screw it, I give up. And have you ever had any of these thoughts or feelings about the number that you see on the scale? I know you have, we all have.

I started so many different diets and quit them because I was having all these frustrating feelings. It was depressing to me. It didn’t I didn’t think it was working. And I did that I like stopped weighing myself, man.

Maybe I weighed myself once a week. And then then I was just frustrated that one time a week. You know what I mean? It didn’t help. So this is where this is what I’m talking about when I talk about scale drama. It’s all the stories and all the stuff we make up about what all this means about us. Okay.

So when people start doling out this advice, like only weigh yourself once a week or only weigh yourself once a month. only weigh yourself right after you’ve run 20 miles because that always looks good. Or just stop weighing yourself at all. Their intentions are good with this kind of advice. But honestly, I think this is misguided.

The idea here is that if you only weigh yourself every now and then you’re only going to feel disappointed or frustrated or depressed every now and then. Right? So it’s like, if you avoid the scale, except for once a month, you can like sneak up on it. When all the stars are aligned and you’ll hopefully get the number that will make you finally feel good about yourself.

So you wait a month, and you’re doing all the right things. At least you think you are. And then you step on the scale. You’re like, you sneak up on it, you step on it really fast. And you’re like, dang it, I’m up two pounds, then all that frustration comes back, the disappointment comes back, the depression all comes rushing back.

But you’re only doing it once a month. So like this is a much better plan, right? No, this is dumb to me, right? I don’t think this makes any sense at all. You can’t sneak up on the scale, right? You’re not looking at this from the right place, you’re not looking at the problem, the scale is not the real problem.

I don’t even say your current weight isn’t even the problem has nothing to do with how much you weigh. The real problem is how you think, and how you feel about yourself. All of this drama that you have around the scale, that’s all you. You create the drama, all the sadness, all the frustration, all the disappointment you’re experiencing. Those are all emotions.

And we know that emotions are always caused by thoughts. So if we’re feeling emotions about ourselves, it’s because we have these thoughts about ourselves. This is such a pervasive issue. I get it and these emotions are very strong, right?

They even create issues around your self-worth. I hear people say things like this all the time, like, they don’t feel like they’re good enough. Based on a number on a scale, you know, they’re comparing themselves to other people, or to where they think they should be.

You know, because they gained three pounds, they’re not good enough, you end up basing your own worthiness, your self-worth, on a number on a bodyweight measuring device, this is insane. A number on a scale cannot tell you how worthy you are. Because here’s a fact, for all of you. You were 100% born worthy. What the scale can tell you as the scale can tell you how much you weigh like it’s just a tool to measure the weight of your entire body.

The scale can tell you how much your bones, your skin, your organs, your muscles, your blood, your fat, and your hair weigh, that’s it. And every part of your body is made up of water, your body is actually 60% water at least sometimes up to 70% water. So 60% of the weight we’re looking at is actually water anyway, right?

So how much your bones and your skin and your organs weigh has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human being. It has nothing to do with how beautiful and amazing you are. It has nothing to do with whether or not you are enough. Because you were born enough. How much do you weigh? It’s just a data point, right?

It’s just a fact like your shoe size or how tall you are doesn’t mean you’re a good person or a bad person. It’s just data unless you make it mean something. It’s like saying, oh, my feet are so big. And I’m so short. It’s so frustrating. I’m like a hobbit, by the way. The hobbits were the real heroes of that story.

Okay, at the end of Return of the King, after Eric Aragorn gets crowned king, everybody’s bowing to him, and he looks to the hobbits and he says, my friends, you bow to no one. Oh my god, that gives me chills every time I love, love, love that movie.

Doesn’t mean anything. But what are you making it mean? What are you making that number on the scale mean about you? We have these thoughts like it’s not working. I’m a failure. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. I’ll never lose weight. But none of this is true unless you make it true.

None of this is true unless you believe it. You always have a choice in what you believe about yourself. Right? If you believe it It’s not working, you’ll find evidence that it’s not working like a number on a scale, it went up, and so you quit. If you believe you’ll never lose weight, you won’t, promise you.

If you believe you’re a failure, you will always fail. Always. I hope you’re starting to see that this all sounds pretty insane. If you’re experiencing any of this drama, and I know we all have at some point or another if you’re having a good day or a bad day, and you’re determining your self-worth, based on some arbitrary number on a $29 bathroom scale, we’ve got to fix this. Okay, we have to fix this.

The scale is just a measuring device. There are other measuring devices out there. Like if you really want to know about body composition, you can do girth measurements, where you measure your waist and arms and thighs, you do some calculations, you can do skinfold thickness measurements, bioelectrical impedance, hydrostatic weighing, like a bod pod, you can do a DEXA scan, all of these things will give you data. They’re all just numbers. Again, they don’t mean anything about you.

But having this info can help you to make decisions about what’s working, what’s working with your nutrition and exercise program, and what isn’t. But that’s all I can do. It can’t tell you whether you’re a good person or a bad person, it can’t determine if you’re going to have a good day or a bad day. Why do we do this to ourselves?

What do we do about this, though? Like, how do we eliminate the scale drama? So the first thing I’ll tell you is just stop it, stop doing it. Stop making that number on the scale mean something about you, it doesn’t mean anything about you. Okay, it’s just a number. It’s just data. And we’ll talk about this in a minute, like what we can do with that data, but just stop making it mean something, okay?

So here’s how we do it like, this is where people will disagree with me. My suggestion to you is this, weigh yourself every single day, do it at the same time every day, record your weight in a log or a journal or an app, whatever is easy for you.

And then you’re going to this stuff is going to come up, you’re going to feel disappointed, frustrated, depressed, whatever, just sit back and like, let that stuff come up. Okay, it will come up, and that’s fine.

But here’s what I want you to understand. This is important. Every single day, your weight will fluctuate every single day. It always will from now until the end of time, your weight will go up, and it will go down every single day. You just have to accept this. I have never seen anybody lose weight, whether it was five pounds, or 50 pounds, or 100 pounds, and I’ve helped people lose all that kind of weight; I’ve never seen it just go straight down from one day to the next.

Always down, down, down down. Never ever, ever works that way. Okay, so let’s just accept this. I’ve been recording my weight every day for like a year now. And it still goes up and down. One to three pounds every single day. But I’ve maintained the same weight for months and months and months.

Like it’s just not a problem. But it does go up and it goes down and it goes up and it goes down. Sometimes I know why sometimes I have no idea why. And at first, it used to freak me out. It’s like, oh, my gosh, you went up. What does this mean? And maybe it’s not working? Maybe I need to change something. But then it goes down again. And I’m like, oh, okay, good. Yeah.

But then it just keeps happening and keeps happening and keeps happening. And you’re like, what? A year later, it still happens every single day. I still write down my weight every single morning. Do you think I make it mean anything now? Heck, no, I do not. It means nothing. Your weight will fluctuate every single day.

So what let’s just embrace it, let’s just accept this fact. Okay. And it has to do with water retention, whether you’re dehydrated or not hormonal changes, hormonal responses, and a slew of other things that I just can’t explain. But just know that it’s normal. It is perfectly normal for the scale to go up and down for your way to go up and down.

So instead of avoiding the scale, here’s my advice to you embrace it. Instead of sneaking up on the scale, face it head-on every single day, and build up some resilience to it. I promise you, if you do this every single day, you’re gonna see that it’s totally normal for that number to go up and down.

And losing weight is never linear. It’ll always go up and down. Alright, always, always, always; don’t avoid it. Let’s start accepting it. Just create some acceptance around that. And it takes repetition, you just have to keep doing it. Now, of course, you have to deal with the drama. Right? The drama will still be there in the beginning, it’ll get better, but you’re going to have to deal with it, right?

So step one is to just weigh yourself every day, except the fact that your weight will fluctuate every single day, it should trend down, if you’re trying to lose weight, you’re doing it the right way, the way that I recommend. Everybody that works with me, they trend down, it goes up and down, but they’re trending down.

We don’t gain weight. You know, in this nutrition regimen that I help people with, they don’t gain weight, we can keep ratcheting that weight down. But it does go up and down. But over time, it’s trending down. Okay. So step one, weigh yourself every day.

Step two, deal with the drama, get the drama out of your head, and get it onto a piece of paper. Right, think about what you’re making this number mean? What does it mean to you? What’s coming up for you? What do you? What stories are you telling yourself about this? What thoughts and feelings are coming up for you?

Oh, it’s depressing. It’s not working, I’m frustrated, like, Whatever, whatever is coming up, just write it all down, get it all down on the page, we’re creating massive awareness, here’s what we’re doing.

Okay, you’re gonna start to see all these negative thoughts, all these negative emotions you’re experiencing around the scale, you’re gonna see all the drama. And you’re gonna see what your brain is doing. And once you see what your brain is doing, all those stories are making up about this number and what it means about you and doesn’t mean about you, then you can start to deal with it right?

But you have to get it all out. First, you got to see what you’re thinking, right? You got to see what you’re feeling, get it out on the page, and then ask yourself, is this true? Is any of this true? Chances are no, it’s not true.

Also, ask yourself this question. This is a good one. This is a powerful question. What else could this mean about me? So maybe my weight went up? What does that mean? What else could it mean? If it doesn’t mean, it’s not working? What else could it mean? Maybe it means losing weight will take a little more time than I originally thought. Maybe it means that I’m a normal human being.

Maybe it means that I’m committed to making this work no matter what, even if it does go up every now and then. Maybe it means I need to change something. Oh, now we’re onto something here. Okay. We want to use the scale as a tool. I encourage people to weigh themselves every day, create awareness, and see that your weight will fluctuate over time. But then we also use it as a tool to make changes, right.

So if you hit some sort of stall and your weight loss, and you’re trying to break through a stall, and by the way, a true plateau in weight loss is like if you stay at the same number for like two straight weeks. Usually, if you’re at the same number for a couple of days, that’s not a plateau.

People tell me this all the time. They’re like, my weight hasn’t changed in three days, I’ve hit a plateau. I’m like, no, you haven’t. Let’s give it two weeks. And then we change something. Okay. So if you hit a stall, a true stall, you know, where it’s like two weeks and nothing changes, then we need to make a change, then we’re going to change something, right?

We can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results, right? We got to make some changes. So we use the scales feedback. But we can’t see this, this change if we weigh ourselves, you know, once a week or once a month, we won’t be able to keep track of these things, right?

So if we don’t see any changes in two weeks, we’ll change what we eat. We’re changing our macros. We’re changing how much we’re eating, how often we’re eating, what times are eating, whatever we need to change, we’ll make changes.

I’m always tweaking my clients’ nutrition regimen when we hit some sort of stall, and we know this will happen. I know it will happen. It happens with every single person, I expect it. It’s all part of the process. You know, my favorite thing with clients? They probably hate it. But it’s like, this is all a fun experiment, isn’t it? But it’s true. It’s just a fun experiment.

There’s not one solution that works for everyone. So we keep working on it. We keep tweaking things, we keep making changes until we get the results we’re after. We never ever, ever give up. We always use that data as feedback and then we course correct. This is why it’s so important to weigh yourself every day.

You got to notice these trends, and then we can make changes accordingly. If you weigh yourself once a month or whatever, it’s just not enough data. Right? It’s just not going to tell us the whole story. So we want the data so we can, like, you know, do science, you know, this is basically like how we do science where we have a hypothesis, we set up an experiment, we test it, we measure our results, and then we make changes. And we try a different experiment.

Right? There’s no drama in science. There’s no crying in baseball, there’s no drama in science, right? Here’s what I want you to do instead of all the drama. So let’s say we’ve started weighing ourselves every day, we’re starting to get used to it. You know, you start writing down all these feelings that are coming up, you start getting used to that, like you’re starting to, like, see what’s happening with your mind.

And you’re starting to, you know, have a little bit of resilience around all this stuff. We also want to focus on all the other things. Let’s forget about the scale for a minute. Right, your weight going down is just one indicator that you’re becoming healthier. It’s one data point, what about all the other stuff?

You know, we tend to focus just on weight, how much we weigh, but your weight is often the last thing to change. Like there are a number of cool things happening in your body hormones being regulated, blood sugars leveling out, insulin levels coming down. Fat is being used as an energy source. All these things are happening, these amazing changes in your body.

Losing weight is usually the last thing to change. So let’s focus on some of the nonscale victories. You know, you’re feeling better, you’re less bloated, you’re less inflamed, you have more energy, you’re sleeping better. Running is getting easier, your workouts are improving, you’re starting to run faster, and your endurance is improving.

You’re recovering faster from these harder workouts. Your clothes are fitting better, looser, starting to get a little loose, you’re not so hungry all the time. You have improved focus and concentration, maybe you just feel happier. Maybe you just feel better about yourself. These are all amazing, healthy changes.

But we just tend to focus on the scale and then we create all this drama around it. So I want you to stop it with all the scale drama. Okay, just stop it. And hope you still love me. I mean, sometimes I gotta drop a little bit of tough love on you guys. But I hope you still can love me through this stuff.

Stop it with the scale drama. Weigh yourself every day, just get used to it right accept the fact that your weight will fluctuate every day. This is normal, it means you’re a normal human being. How about that doesn’t mean anything negative about you at all. You’re beautiful, you’re worthy, you’re more than good enough. You’re amazing. Focus on the good stuff. Okay. As always, lots of love to every single one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

62. The Secret Sauce of Self-Motivation

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March is motivation month over in the Running Lean Podcast Community on Facebook! All month long, I’m offering up helpful tips and challenges to help get you motivated to hit your health and …

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Podcast Transcript

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 62 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer, health and fitness expert, and the weight loss coach for runners. weight. The weight loss coach for runners actually did a whole podcast episode about this called a weight loss coach for runners.

Yes, because here’s the thing, on average runners carry around too much body fat runners are notoriously unhealthy people. Okay, on average. Now you may be thinking, Patrick, that’s not me, I’m super lean, I’m super fit, I’m super healthy. If that is the case, awesome, good job. Unfortunately, that’s not the norm. The majority of runners are carrying around a little too much body fat, they’re a little unhealthy.

And I noticed this in myself, I noticed this and other runners and I made it my life’s mission to help runners become more metabolically healthy, to change their diet, change up their nutrition, so that they can be the healthiest human beings possible. And keep running like we want to keep running. Running is good. We love running, we want to keep doing that.

So I focus on weight loss. You know, we talk about weight loss a lot here on the podcast. And in the Facebook group, we talk about the importance of getting down to your kind of natural weight. But the goal the real goal is to become healthy as healthy as possible. The weight loss is sort of a nice side effect of that.

So what I do in my coaching practice is help runners become the healthiest they can possibly be. We work on putting together the right combination of nutrition and exercise and mindset and stress reduction and all these other things to make you as healthy as possible. And the coaching I do is part guidance, part support system, part encouragement, part motivation, which we’re talking about today.

In part accountability, to keep you on track to keep you doing those things that maybe you don’t want to do, so that you can become the person that you all timidly want to become. If you’re interested in learning more about coaching, you can apply. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching.

All you’ve got to do is click the apply button, answer a couple of questions you and I will get on a call together we’ll talk about this I’ll explain the program we’ll talk about what coaching looks like how it might help you. It may not be a good fit for you, and that’s fine. But let’s talk about and let’s find out, okay, we’ll talk about your goals, what it is you want to achieve. And we’ll see if working with me is a good way to get you there – runningleanpodcast.com/coaching.

Another thing I wanted to talk about was the Facebook community. So we have this amazing, supportive and motivational community on Facebook called the Running Lean community. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community, you will find us there. We’re doing all kinds of challenges and this month, March is motivation month over in the Running Lean community.

And I’ll talk more about that in just a minute. But let’s just suffice it to say that this month we’re focusing on ways of motivating one another encouraging one another to do hard things and sharing our experiences. Okay, so just check us out over in the Running Lean community on Facebook.

Today’s topic, I’m going to be talking about motivation. And today I’m kind of giving you a little recipe, what I call the secret sauce of self-motivation. So like I said all month long during March we’re sharing motivational tips and talking about motivation and how to create more motivation over in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook.

And you know whether it is you want to run faster you want to run farther you want to dial in a nutrition plan, you want to lose those winter pounds. You need the motivation to make it happen. But most people severely lack motivation. Most people are just motivation deficient.

And this lack of motivation is keeping you stuck. You’re never making any progress towards your goals, and you just feel sort of self-defeated. Well, we don’t want that, we want to feel self-motivated. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be sharing my secret sauce of self-motivation.

I want you to think of this as a recipe that you can put together to help you create, and stoke that inner fire. That thing that like keeps you going right, so you can accomplish the big goals that are so important to you.

Right before I get into that, I just wanted to share this five-star review, somebody shared a five-star review on the podcast. And they did this over in Apple podcasts. And you can do this too, just go to Apple podcasts and scroll down to the Running Lean podcast and scroll down to where you see the review section. And you can leave a quick review, I would love it if you could do that. It would just mean a lot to me to know that this is helping you in some way.

And this is from BH1955. And the review said, “I was not feeling like running yesterday, but I decided that I would find an episode that would motivate me. Speaking of motivation, I found Episode 43, which was embracing discomfort. It really helped me to get through my run. Thanks so much, Patrick, for your podcast.”

You’re so welcome. Yeah, that’s a good one. And that motivation is what we’re talking about here all this month, but especially in this episode of the podcast. So why is March motivation month? Well, here’s what happens at the beginning of the year, we feel really motivated, right?

In January, people join gyms like crazy gyms are full, like, it’s insane, right? Everybody’s motivated to like, get healthy and change their diet and start exercising. And I’m going to start running every day or whatever it is, we’re feeling really fired up and really motivated in January, right? But then, you know, you kind of lose your motivation a little bit by the end of February, you’re like, Yeah, whatever, you know, the gym sort of empty out again.

And as we begin March, you know, it’s pretty easy to go to the gym, and you know, there’s really not many people there anymore. People aren’t running as much, they’re not exercising as much, they’re not sticking to their plan, they just kind of go back to doing the stuff they used to do. They’ve lost their motivation. All right.

And why is this, you know, why do people get motivated and then lose it? Why do people not stay motivated, and that’s kind of what I want to talk about today. And it really has little to do with, you know, what your capabilities are. So, there are people that accomplish some great things, right?

And you can look to these people and go like, oh, that person, they must have something that I don’t because they’re doing these amazing things. You know, I looked at, I used to look at ultra runners and go, I can’t believe that guy ran 100 miles, they must have something mentally that I don’t or some genetic, you know, character that I don’t have.

And I have to tell you, it has very little to do with innate capability, it has very little to do with genetics. People that accomplish great things, it’s not because they’re luckier than we are. I think it has everything to do with self-motivation. And motivation is, is just a feeling.

You know motivation is like when you feel motivated, you feel like doing something, right. When you’re not motivated, you don’t feel like doing something. And so a lot, oftentimes, I’ll ask my clients, I’ll be like, okay, you said, you’re going to stick to your plan this week. Why didn’t you do that?

You’re going to stick to your healthy eating plan, or you’re going to get up early and run. You set up a schedule for running three days a week, you didn’t do it, or maybe you know, we’re gonna start. We’re doing a daily journaling practice or lift weights a couple of times a week, whatever it is.

And then I’ll say, you know why didn’t you do that? You said you were gonna do that we made a kind of an agreement that you were gonna do that and then you didn’t do it. Why is that? And they’ll start with excuses.

They’ll start with oh, it was cold outside or I had a hard day at work or, you know, I just had a late-night or had to wash my car. or whatever they’re blaming their lack of, you know, wanting to do something or the reason they didn’t follow through with what they said they’re going to do.

They’re blaming it on outside events, circumstances, other people, whatever. But then I keep pushing them. It’s like, no, really, why didn’t you do that? And what it comes down to, you know, once I get through about four or five of these different excuses, is, they usually say something like, well, I just didn’t feel like it. They were not motivated to do that thing. They didn’t have the motivation. And that’s interesting, isn’t it?

And so I would say, like, Well, what did you do instead? What what did you feel like doing? Well, I just felt like sleeping in, or I just felt like eating ice cream and the cookies, or just felt like watching Netflix, or I just felt like scrolling through social media, you know, instead of journaling, or whatever it was.

So they felt like doing those things, but they were, but not feeling like doing the harder things, you know, and what it comes down to. And in my opinion, what it comes down to is like, we categorize things as like, easy stuff, and hard stuff, like some things you feel like doing.

And we kind of put these in the easy bucket, you know, it’s like, well, you know, I feel like just sitting on the couch and scrolling through Instagram. That’s easy. That doesn’t take any effort. So I could just do that. I’m motivated to do that all day long, right? I’m motivated to eat a whole pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every single day. Like I can do that without even thinking about right, that’s easy.

And then we have things that we don’t feel like doing, this is the hard stuff. Okay, so, you know, running, sticking to your running schedule, when it’s cold outside, getting up early to do some journaling, or, you know, sticking to your healthy eating plan. That stuff can be hard to do. Why is that hard? And why is this other stuff easy?

And part of it comes down to habit. You know, I talked a lot about habits in the last episode. So if you haven’t listened to that already, definitely check it out. Last week’s episode was called Making Healthy Habits Stick, and some good stuff in there that I think is going to be really helpful for you.

But the difference between the hard stuff that we don’t want to do, we don’t feel motivated to do. And the easy stuff that we just we can do without even thinking about it is it kind of comes down to habit, it kind of comes down to what we’ve been doing over and over and over again for our whole lives, you know, times, decades, at least, right.

And if you have a habit of every time you come home from work, you plop down on the couch, and you know, eat a whole bag of potato chips, and scroll through Instagram, that’s going to be kind of your go-to that’s going to seem easy. That’s the habit, that’s just the thing that you do without even thinking about it. Right.

If on the other hand, you wanted to establish a new routine and a new habit of like, instead of doing that going good coming home from work, throwing on your running shoes, and heading out the door for a little 5k that’s gonna feel really hard to do. That’s not going to be easy, because it’s not a habit yet, you know, it’s going to require you some effort to get going with that, right.

And that effort that I’m talking about kind of boils down to motivation. Are you motivated to do that thing or not? Now, here is the real problem with when we when we choose the easy stuff when we choose the easier path, the easier softer way over the hard stuff.

When you keep doing that, when you keep choosing easy, you will never become more than who and what you are right now. You will never grow as a human being as a person. You’ll never get faster as a runner, you’ll never get stronger. You’ll never get leaner, you’ll never become healthier. You’ll never become an emotional badass, which I think is one of the coolest things you can become.

You’ll be nothing more than you are right now. And you know some people are fine with that. Some people are like cool, you know, I’m just good with who I am where I am right now. I want to stay right here. And that’s fine if you want to do that. But for you, the person that’s listening to this podcast, most of the people that listen to this, want to become more.

I know you do because you tell me every single day I hear it from people all the time. I want more, I want to become fitter, healthier, stronger, leaner, faster. But here’s what happens. If you don’t lift weights, if you don’t do that hard thing, you’re going to lose muscle, you’re gonna just keep getting weaker. If you stop running, if you just quit, you know, you’re never going to become faster, you’re never going to run another marathon, you’re never going to set that PR, you’re never going to know what you’re capable of.

If you just keep blaming everybody else for how you feel playing the victim, you give out your power away, you’re powerless. The way you think and feel is controlled by everybody, but you. So for me, when I think about this, I think that even worse than staying where you are, is where you end up if you always choose easy.

Where are you going to end up if you always choose easy? You’re probably going to get fatter, you’re probably going to become more unhealthy, you’re going to get slower, you’re going to get weaker, you’re going to become less emotionally evolved, you begin to degrade as a human being, your human starts to wear down.

Like when you throw an old battery in a drawer, right? This battery that’s like brimming with life just starts to drain away, and the life just starts draining out of it over time. Just like that old battery in the back of the drawer, you become lifeless. I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you want to become more.

And if you do want to become more, you got to do the hard stuff. No one ever got stronger by thinking about lifting weights and sitting on the couch watching Netflix eating a big bag of potato chips. No one ever ran their fastest marathon by sleeping in every Saturday morning and saying screw it to all those long runs. Right?

I know you know this. We all know this. We all know what we have to do. But we don’t do it. We all know we got to do the hard stuff. But we don’t do it. Why don’t we do it? And it boils down to this like, I don’t feel like it. I just don’t feel like it. I’m not I don’t have the motivation. And I know that I experienced this too sometimes still.

And I’ll tell you, this whole podcast is about what I do to get out of that cycle. Because if I’m in that cycle of like, I don’t feel like doing this thing. Now I know I should do it. I know it’s like, gonna push me outside my comfort zone and make me a better person make me healthier, make me stronger.

I don’t feel like going to the gym sometimes and lifting weights. Lately, I’ve been doing this really intense, really hard weightlifting workout. It’s short, it’s only about half an hour, but it is intense. And you know what? Sometimes I don’t feel like doing that on my this is going to hurt. It’s going to feel terrible. But I do it anyway.

So it’s this whole idea of like, I don’t feel like it, I need motivation. Well, you got to make that motivation. So we’re going to talk about that in a minute. But here’s something I need you to understand. This is like the premise of everything I’m going to talk about here. And that is that you don’t find motivation out there. You create it within every single time.

All motivation comes from within you, you make your own motivation. 100% of the time. There’s no magic motivation dust that you can sprinkle in your morning smoothie. Although, I think there’s a very cool idea, right? I think maybe somebody should invent that thing. That’d be amazing. So you make your own motivation, right?

It comes from within you create it, even though you may not even know you’re creating it, you create it. So you might get motivated because you hear somebody speak you might hear some speaker that’s like super motivating and you’re like, oh, I feel so motivated to like take action. Right?

And you may be feeling that way right now. Like you may be like, oh, yeah, I listen to your podcast, Patrick and I get super motivated. I hear people tell me this all the time. It’s so motivating this podcast, so motivating. But here’s a fun fact. You guys, I’m not motivating you. You’re doing it. You’re motivating yourself. It’s not the words I’m saying that are getting you motivated. It’s your own thoughts and feelings about these words.

So, I need you to understand this concept, everything you feel every emotion that you experience. Emotions are things like anger, sadness, frustration, stress, happiness, joy, and motivation; these are all emotions. Every emotion is caused by a thought. You cannot experience an emotion.

You cannot experience an emotion without first thought of having a thought about something. Right? So you may be angry, but you’re angry because you had a thought about what your boss said to you. It’s not the words he used. It’s what you make those words mean, that causes you to be angry.

You may be frustrated with your kids, because they’re not doing their homework. But it’s not the fact that they’re not doing their homework that’s got you frustrated, it’s your thoughts about it? What’re you making it mean? Oh, it means they don’t listen to me, it means they’re going to grow up to be, you know, serial killers are whatever you’re telling yourself about this thing that’s causing you to get frustrated.

It’s never outside circumstances that cause emotions. It’s always, always, always your thoughts about those circumstances. This is such a basic concept that I need you to understand. Because motivation is an emotion. Motivation is a feeling. Your thoughts create your motivation. You’re not being motivated by the words, I’m saying you’re being motivated by the story, you’re telling yourself about what these words mean to you. That’s what’s really getting you motivated.

So right now, you’re thinking about what all this means to you how it applies to you and your life, and how you’re going to apply this to your unique situation. It’s all those thoughts that are creating your inner motivation. Okay. I hope you’re understanding this motivation is an inside job, you create your own motivation, by your own thoughts. Okay.

So, just so we understand, we’re all starting from the same place here. Okay. So how do you create the motivation that you need to do the hard stuff like what’s the secret sauce of self-motivation? So here’s, I’m going to break it down into a few things that you can do, I got like four things I’m going to have you work on this week, you can do this.

Number one is to do the hard thing, even though you don’t feel like doing it, in fact, do the hard thing, especially if you don’t feel like doing it. This is like my number one rule when I’m working with clients is like you have to do this thing, even though you don’t want to do it like you have to do it.

Now, of course, we’re all adults, and I cannot make anybody do anything. But I strongly encourage people to do things they do not want to do. Because I know that when they do it, they just feel so much better. So here’s an example. I decided this is crazy. I don’t even know why I’m doing this, but I decided that I’m going to do the David Goggins 4 by 4 by 48 Challenge this coming weekend.

So what is that? Well, you have to run four miles, every four hours, for a total of 48 hours. So this thing starts at 8 pm, Friday, March 5, 2021. And that’s 8 pm Pacific time. So everybody in the world is going to do this at the same time. So I’m going to start my first four-mile run at 11 pm Friday night, Eastern Time.

And then the next run for me would be 3 am. All right, that’s four hours from 11. And then the next run would start at 7 am. And then 11 am, and then 3 pm, and then 7 pm, and then 11 pm, and just keeps going until Sunday evening.

So every four hours, you’ve got to complete four miles of running. And you got to start it at the top of that fourth hour each time. Okay. Sounds like, you know, I don’t know what it sounds like to you. But it sounds to me like, Oh, it’s just four miles, right? No big deal. But it’s four miles, with only like three hours-ish of rest in between. And you got to do it 12 times. So like 48 miles in 48 hours.

And I have to tell you, I don’t feel like doing this. The main concern of mine is like, I love my sleep, and it’s so important to me to get enough sleep if I don’t get enough sleep, I get a little cranky. I’ll feel good, you know, and I don’t know how I’m going to do this without enough sleep without getting a good solid, you know, seven, eight hours of sleep straight.

I’ll only be sleeping for maybe two hours at a time. This is going to be really interesting, and I just don’t feel like doing it. The first few times getting out there I think are going to be a challenge for me, I think, you know, going out at 3 am is going to be hard and then doing it again at 7 am, I think this is going to be hard during the day may not be as bad, but those early, you know, am runs I think are gonna be awful.

But um, here’s the thing, I’m doing this to prove something to myself, that I can do hard things, even when I don’t feel like it. This is probably the biggest key, if you want to create self-motivation, you’ve got to do hard things when you don’t feel like it. Because when you do some little thing that’s hard, and you didn’t feel like doing it, you know, it’s going to move you a little closer to your goal, you know, it’s going to, it’s good for you, you know, it’s like helping you, you know, it’s going to keep you heading in the right direction.

And that little bit of doing that hard thing, that little feeling that you get after you do that little bit of satisfaction you get after doing that is going to give you a little bit of motivation to do it again. And do it again, and do it again. And you can just keep going. In order to create self-motivation, you have to do the things you don’t feel like doing.

And then you have to just keep repeating those things, you have to get your reps in. Again, this is something I talked about in last week’s podcast. Repetition causes motivation because you begin to make the hard stuff easier, and the hard stuff becomes easier. Okay. So the first thing I want you to focus on is like doing the hard thing, even though you don’t feel like it.

So I’m going to be sharing my experience of the Goggins 4 by 4 by 48 challenge this weekend in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So join us over there. And I’ll be like, kind of documenting that my experience as I go, do some lives and stuff like that, and share kind of what it’s like to try to get out there at like 3 am and getting motivated to run. So I’m doing this because it’s hard. And this is like my number one tip for creating self-motivation is like, do the hard thing, especially if you don’t feel like it.

The second tip I have for you is this always focus on making slow and steady progress, or fast and steady progress, it doesn’t matter. But always focus on making incremental progress. Just making a little bit of progress will help you to get a little bit more motivation to keep you going.

Because when you make a little bit of progress, you tell yourself a story about what that means. You have a thought about it. And that thought is, hey, this is working. Right? So many people don’t see any progress. Or maybe they’re not tracking their progress. Or they’re not seeing progress fast enough. And they just quit, they give up.

They’re like, hey, this, this way of eating isn’t, I’m not losing weight fast enough. I’m just gonna quit and go back to doing what I was doing before, which doesn’t work either. But that’s a whole nother story. But little by little, you want to be making incremental progress, because when you do you get this little hidden motivation every single time you see the, you know, the pound, one pound a week drop off or something like that.

You’re like, oh my gosh, that’s awesome. Or an inch off your waist. Oh my gosh, that feels so good. Or, hey, you know what, I ran a longer mile this week, longer than my longest run. And these little things just start to stack up. And you begin to feel more and more motivated.

It’s like you keep your motivation tank topped off each time you do something like this and you keep increasing the amount of motivation that you create, you keep stacking these little, little bits of motivation, one on top of the other. So you know, like for me lately, I’ve been lifting more weights. I’m tracking my weightlifting and I’m able to do more reps or lift more weights.

So maybe you’re like, oh, I was able to do five more pounds this week. You know, or one more rep than last week. Or one more, I ran that one more mile, whatever it is. All these little signs point to progress and that it’s working and they will help to keep you motivated to keep showing up and continue doing the hard thing that you don’t want to do. I have this mantra this is like my mantra for life.

It’s relentless forward progress, no matter what. always moving forward no matter what. Always moving forward, no matter how slow. No matter how, you know, zig-zaggy, the courses or whatever, we’re always moving in the direction of our goals. This is my motto for life. This is like this got me through ultramarathons has gotten me through, you know, tough things that happened in my life, like divorce and loss of jobs.

This is how I built my business. Relentless forward progress, little by little, we make progress. And it feels good to just look back and say like, oh, I’m actually I’m making progress here. It doesn’t feel like it sometimes. But I can see these little hits of progress. And that gets me motivated. Right.

So focus on the slow and steady progress. The third tip for you to create self-motivation is that if it’s broken, you have to fix it. If you’re not seeing any progress, you have to change something, you know, what the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right.

So if it’s not working, change it, you can’t expect to get stronger by lifting the exact same amount of weight every week, every time. Like, if you’re lifting 20-pound dumbbells, and you never go up from there, your body will adapt, and then you’ll just stop getting stronger, you’ll stop, you know, getting bigger muscles, you’re just gonna like stagnate. You can’t expect to run the fastest marathon, if you just run the same pace all the time, you’ll never get faster, you got to change something, right?

You can’t eat the same junk you’ve been eating for the last 20 years. You know, the stuff that causes you to gain the 40 or 60 or 80 pounds, you can’t eat that same stuff every day expect to lose weight, it’s not going to work. And so many people they try for a few weeks, maybe two, like they change their diet and they and they and they do it for a few weeks, and they don’t see many results.

Or maybe they’re the results aren’t happening fast enough. And so they quit, right? I’ve done this, you’ve probably done this too, right? But no, you don’t quit. You just you got to mix it up, you got to try something else, you got to change up the recipe, you know what I mean? Like you got to change up the nutrition plan. Because if what you’re doing isn’t working, you just got to try something else.

And I get it, it’s hard to know what to do. It’s hard to know, what am I supposed to change. And that’s where having an experienced coach there to help you, you know, make these changes. This is critical because I’m always tweaking things for my clients, I’m always helping them develop different macro percentages.

Different types of foods are always moving them in the direction of their health and fitness goals. Everything we do is about trial and error. You know, one of my favorite sayings is like it’s all a fun experiment, everything we do when it comes to health and fitness is a fun experiment because no two people are alike.

You cannot expect to eat what somebody else is eating and get the exact same results. It doesn’t work that way. You got to figure out what works for you. And this is like one of the things I love doing with my, with my clients, it’s super fun to do this, you know, I, I love the challenge of figuring out the right formula for each person. It’s actually fun to do.

But we’re always like trying things and then we’ll ratchet their weight down a couple of pounds were like, okay, that worked. Let’s do more of that. Oh, now it’s not working. So at least Okay, let’s try something else. And it’s fun to do that for me. Okay, so if it’s broken, you have to fix it.

If it’s not working, you have to change something, okay, just don’t keep doing the same things over and over and over again, that’s not going to keep you motivated, right. So you got to keep tweaking things. And this will help to keep you motivated because you’re going to be making more progress and moving towards those goals.

And then the fourth thing I want to talk about here, and this is like I think this is so fun, this is how to create instant motivation. So one of the keys to creating your own self-motivation. Remember, this is like, motivation is a feeling and we have to kind of create thoughts around that so we can create that feeling of motivation within us.

Everything I’m talking about here today is like how to like do some things take some actions to change our thoughts so that we create more motivation inside. More of a feeling of motivation inside the feeling of motivation inside your body, in your, in your thoughts about motivation, we call this an emotional state.

It’s like a physiological state that your mind and your body are in, that creates an emotional state of motivation. And this emotional state you can get into any time you want. In fact, you can get into any emotional state you want to get into at any time. Yes, it’s true. And I’m going to prove it to you right now.

So I want you to think about something that really makes you happy. Like, think about a time in your life when you are really, really happy. In fact, think about one very specific time when you were super happy. Do you have it? Now, close your eyes. Unless you’re driving or running, obviously, do not close your eyes, right?

But if you’re just sitting around, close your eyes, you don’t have to close your eyes students, by the way, but it does help to visualize. So you got that one specific moment in time where you were super happy, right? What were you doing? Go back to that exact moment in time where you were super happy, you’re just filled with happiness.

And see what you saw with your eyes and hear what you heard in that moment. And really start to feel the feeling of happiness welling up within you. Do you feel that? Now turn it up, turn up that feeling of happiness, increase the feeling of happiness. It’s almost like turning the dial on a television and turning up the intensity, the vibrancy of that happiness within you.

Until you begin to like radiate happiness, and you feel so intensely happy that you could just burst with happiness right now. I’m feeling that right now. And for me, it was a time when I was at Disneyland with my kids. And it was just like, so fun. It’s the happiest place on earth. Right? How could you not be happy riding Space Mountain with your kids?

You know, this is like so intensely happy for me. And I just burst with happiness thinking about that. So boom, you just got into this emotional state of being happy. And it took you like, what, 45 seconds? And you probably feel pretty amazing right now. I do. I feel really good right now. Isn’t that fun? That is fun to do, right?

Well, we can do this anytime we want. You can get into any emotional state you want at any time. And we do this all the time without even thinking about it. We get into an emotional state of frustration, or stress, or anger, or sadness, or boredom. All of these are emotional states that we choose. And they all make us feel terrible.

Why would we choose these terrible emotional states? Well, number one is because they’re easy because we’ve just been practicing them over and over and over again, our whole lives. And it’s easy to get into this emotional state of feeling frustrated, stressed out, or angry because we just we’ve been doing it and practicing it over and over again, right. And number two, it’s just kind of our default state. It’s become our default state. That’s terrible. I think that’s terrible.

I’m working on changing my default state to happy and full of joy. And I gotta tell you, it’s a much better place to be. It’s a much better state to be in. You can change your emotional state at any time, you can practice creating a feeling of motivation inside you anytime you want.

So let’s do this experiment again. Think about a time when you felt really motivated. Think about a specific moment in time in your life, when you were so overcome with motivation, and you just felt so motivated. Right now, again, close your eyes unless you’re driving or running. And then go back to that exact moment. That exact moment when you were super motivated, and see what you saw. Hear what you heard, and start to feel that feeling of motivation welling up within you. Hope you’re feeling that right now. I know I am.

I’m feeling super motivated right now. And again, turn it up, turn that dial, increase the intensity of that, of that feeling of motivation within you until you’re just bursting with motivation. You feel that? Yeah, feels good, right? I want you to practice doing this. I promise you. I promise you you’ll never be lacking motivation again, if you can just conjure up this feeling in a heartbeat, why not do it?

There’s no like magic dust involved. But I will tell you, this is like magic. This is like, it feels like magic. I feel so motivated when I think about, you know, a time when I was super motivated to do something. And it goes back for me anyway, it goes back to when I was training for my 100 miler, I was so motivated to finish that race.

I would get up early and go run 30 miles by myself on a Saturday morning, and then turn around and run like 20 miles on a Sunday morning by myself. That’s motivation right there. I think about the feeling I had, like putting my backpack together and putting my gear on, and getting ready to head out the door. That motivation that I felt was like I was a driven man, I was like, determined to like, crank that thing out and like, go out, go out there and get after it, you know?

So this little concept right here of like, going back to a specific time, we can like conjure up that feeling of motivation anytime we want. Okay, cool. I hope this has been helpful for you guys. I hope you’re feeling happy right now. I hope you’re feeling super motivated right now. And again, if you like the podcast and you get something out of it, share it with a friend, that will be awesome.

And if you want to join me in the Goggins challenge the 4 by 4 by 48, beginning this Friday, March 5 at 8 pm Pacific Time, do it. Let’s do it. It’s going to be fun. I hope. I don’t know what to expect. Never quite done anything like this. So it should be interesting. Okay, I hope you all have an amazing day. Lots of love, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

53. How to Overcome Self-Sabotage

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Self-sabotage is when you say you want to lose 30 lbs but you find yourself eating chocolate cake every day. What is happening here? By eating the cake, you are completely undermining what you say …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 53 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, this is actually the very first episode of 2021. This episode will come out on January the first. So Happy New Year, everyone. And I thought it was appropriate to talk about this topic, especially as we start the new year and that is how to overcome self-sabotage.

Self sabotage is one of those things that we all do. We’ve all done it. No one, none of us are immune to it. Self sabotage is like when you say I want to lose 30 pounds, but then you find yourself eating chocolate cake every day. What is happening? When you eat the cake, you’re undermining your goals. You’re undermining what you really want for yourself.

Okay, so if this sounds familiar to you this kind of thing. Rest assured you’re not alone, we all do it. The problem though most people think that self-sabotage is just something that happens. It’s like a part of life, and they have no control over it. That is not the case, the reality is that we absolutely can do something about it. So I’m going to talk about what self-sabotage is, and how we can overcome it in this episode. Okay.

Real quick, the Running Lean monthly coaching group opens in just a couple of days, January 3, 2021. This is my monthly group coaching program, where first of all, you get access to all of my online courses, including my flagship program called the weight loss training course for runners. This is where you learn exactly how to become an efficient fat-burning machine.

Right, you want to lose weight, you got to burn fat if you want to be able to run longer and farther and, and more efficiently. Fat is a great source of fuel. So you got to transform yourself into an efficient fat burner. So I’ll teach you exactly how to do that. You also get in the monthly coaching group, you get these live group coaching calls with me and your fellow runners.

So you get the group support, the encouragement, you get the accountability, you get help, you get to ask questions, and get answers. I want to help you reach your goals in 2021. Joining the monthly coaching group is a great way to do it. We’re also going to be doing a powerful goal-setting workshop in January called achieving the impossible I want to help you achieve some impossible goals in 2021.

So join the monthly coaching group and you can do all of that amazing stuff. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and let’s make 2021 a year of transformation. Become the badass runner you’ve always wanted to be; runningleanpodcast.com/join. And then I did want to mention that we have a new challenge that we just started over in the Running Lean community on Facebook.

So come check us out over there because we’re doing the January journal challenge and that is where I am challenging you to write in a journal every day for the month of January. Now you might be thinking Patrick, whatever. What is this like a dear diary kind of a thing? No, it is not.

This is like journaling, with intention. Journaling, with purpose journaling because you want to accomplish something. Journaling is an amazing way to help you reach your goals. Whether you’re journaling, for weight loss journaling, for some big running goal. Some people will call it a training log or a food log. You can call it whatever you want. There are different ways you can journal.

But the benefits of journaling are amazing in that it’s just such an incredible way of creating a new positive mindset, but also helping you create new thought habits, new thought patterns, and helping you to answer reach your goals. So we’re going to be talking all about what journaling is and how to do it the right way.

And I also have daily journal prompts that I’ll be offering up to you all through the month of January. So it’s going to be kind of a fun challenge that we’re doing in the Facebook group. So go just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. Okay.

Bring on the self-sabotage stuff. Today I’m talking about how to overcome self-sabotage. So let’s talk about what self-sabotage actually is. So the definition of self-sabotage, if you look it up, on the Googles, it says, self-sabotage refers to behaviors or thought patterns that hold you back and prevent you from doing what you want to do.

Self-sabotage is when you consciously or unconsciously undermine your thoughts, dreams, goals and desires. So when I look at those definitions, I’m like, Whoa, that is? That is a very, very good definition. So I kind of combine that and say self-sabotage is patterns of thoughts or behaviors that hold you back keep you stuck, or prevent you from reaching your goals. So how do you know if you’re self-sabotaging?

Like how do you know that this is something you’re actually doing. One thing you can do is take a look at your current actions, your behaviors are the things you’re doing in alignment with your long-term goals. If not, then it could be a form of self-sabotage. For example, let’s say you want to lose weight, and you decide you’re going to stop eating sugar and flour. This is a pretty, pretty common thing to do, right? If you want to try to lose weight.

So you stop eating all the refined carbs, you stop eating all the sugar, and like you’re doing okay, maybe for a couple of weeks, you’re doing okay, but then you have like a stressful day at work. And there’s like an accident on your way home, it takes you forever get home, you’re stuck in traffic, you come home, you’re tired, you’re frustrated, you open up the fridge because you’re going to your plan on eating a healthy dinner, you got a salad and a piece of chicken that you’re gonna have for dinner.

So you open up the fridge, you’re standing there, lo and behold, there’s this beautiful chocolate cake just sitting right there calling out to you eat me, it’ll make you feel better. You’re all stressed out, this is going to fix all of your problems. Chocolate Cake talking to you. So instead of eating your healthy dinner of chicken and salad like you planned on doing, you just grab the cake and you eat the whole thing while you’re standing there with the door open.

And you’re like I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m self-sabotaging. So you have this long-term goal, you want to lose weight, but your behavior standing there in front of the fridge with the door open eating a whole chocolate cake is completely undermining your progress towards your goals. Right.

So this is what self-sabotage looks like. Okay. And I know this is kind of an extremely funny example. But we do it to some degree like this all the time. Okay. Here’s a more subtle example of self-sabotage. And this may be something that you can relate to, because this is my experience.

So a few years ago, I stopped doing the longer distance running, I stopped running marathons and running ultra marathons. And I loved doing that. This is like who I was. I was like the ultra marathon guy, you know, and I just love getting out there and running all the 50K’s and the 50 milers, and stuff like that.

And I just stopped doing it because I told myself all this stuff. I gave myself all these reasons why I didn’t want to keep doing these long-distance events. So I told myself I was getting too old is too hard on my body. It’s not good for me, oh, it’s hard on your knees. Whatever those days are behind me, you know, the glory days are behind like it’s just all gonna go downhill from here, whatever. I was telling myself all this stuff. That is not what I really wanted for myself though.

What I really wanted for myself was I wanted to continue to be the ultramarathon guy. I wanted to continue to run the long-distance events but subconsciously, I was telling myself all these little stories because I was afraid because training for those events and running those events is hard, and it’s uncomfortable.

And I was telling myself all these little lies, basically, because I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. You know, it was getting me outside my comfort zone when I started thinking about running a marathon again are these Ultras, and I just didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. So I told myself all these lies, and then I just stopped running the long-distance stuff.

Okay, so that’s pretty subtle, right? I mean, you, you kind of think that you’re just, you know, these are just the this is just the truth. And this is just, these are all the reasons why I can’t do this anymore. But, you know, kind of underlying all that was this lie. This lie that I was trying to just stay safe and secure and comfortable.

When in reality, I really wanted to continue doing those things that brought me so much joy. Yeah, they’re hard to do, but they brought me so much joy and, and fulfillment when I did that, okay. But I was self-sabotaging by telling myself all these lies. You know, another subtle way of self-sabotaging is to just say to yourself, you know, I’m okay, being overweight, I’m okay, at this weight, I’m just, I’m fine the way I am. Even though, deep down inside, you really want to lose
30 pounds. And I’m not talking about like, body image issues or anything like that, if you’re okay with where you are, like, honestly, like you, you don’t want to lose weight, that is perfectly fine.

But if deep down inside, you really do want to lose weight. But you’re telling yourself, you know, lies like, I’m okay, where I am, or, you know, this just never really works for me anyway. Or it’s just kind of too hard. I don’t want to be that uncomfortable. All those things, we tell ourselves our little subtle forms of self-sabotage. Okay, so just be mindful of that.

Okay, I’m just kind of going through what self-sabotage looks like, and how it can be kind of subtle. Why do we do this? Why do we self-sabotage? Why do we say we want to do something, but then do something different? And really, it has to do with wanting to stay comfortable, you know?

Our brains are always looking for safety, like our brains are really good at seeking comfort and avoiding pain. Okay, this is great. This is helped us to evolve as human beings over millions of years. You know, seek pleasure, avoid pain, this works really well. So when we self-sabotage, we’re actually getting a positive effect by doing this to ourselves.

Our brains are thinking that it’s a positive effect because we’re avoiding some sort of pain, right? Some sort of discomfort. Right? So it might be the feeling of safety, security, or just plain old comfort, right? So but that primitive part of our brain wants to avoid any sort of discomfort, discomfort, you know, feels like pain to our brain.

And so we might just go, oh, you know, running a marathon. That’s hard work that’s like, this is discomfort. I don’t want that. You got to stay safe. Come over here. The same thing with like, when you tell yourself, oh, losing weight is too hard, or I can’t do it. Or maybe I’m just okay being this way.

You’re telling yourself, I don’t want to go through the discomfort of losing the weight, I don’t want to go through any kind of discomfort. So instead of reaching this goal, that might be a little uncomfortable getting there.

I’m just going to keep telling myself that I’m okay where I am, even though that’s not really what you want. So that’s what self-sabotage looks like. And that’s kind of why we do it. Think about where in your life right now. You’re avoiding pain and discomfort.

You know, what goals do you have? Where you’re where you might have to get uncomfortable? And how are you avoiding achieving that goal or working towards that goal? How are you avoiding getting uncomfortable? Because your brain is telling you to stay safe? Think about that.

It’d be interesting to kind of hear what you guys think about where you’re seeing this in your own life. Okay. But self-sabotage the positive benefit we get from it is that it keeps us from having to feel uncomfortable, right, but disk Comfort is the price we have to pay if we want to achieve anything worthwhile. You know, I talk about this all the time, right?

Embrace the suck, embrace the discomfort. But for example, if I decide I’m never going to run another marathon, then I don’t have to go through any of that pain and discomfort of training for the marathon. If I never, if I say I’m never running an ultra again, you know ultras are too hard, that’s too hard on my body, I’m too old, those days are behind me, then I never have to go through the discomfort of training for one again, I can stay safe right here, my little comfort zone.

You know, if you say to yourself, I’m okay, being overweight, it’s too hard to lose weight, all that stuff, then you don’t have to endure any of that discomfort of losing the weight, right? You just keep eating the chocolate cake. And, and you’re good, you’re comfortable. You’ve succeeded in staying in your comfort zone, good job. You’ve succeeded in avoiding all the pain and seeking out the pleasure.

You’re satisfying that primitive part of your brain. But the things you really want for yourself, your hopes, your dreams, and your goals are all washed away. Right? So why do we self-sabotage as we think we’re getting some positive benefit, which is to stay comfortable. But is that what you really want for yourself? I say, no.

So here are some ways that we self sabotage some ways that are a little subtle, and you may not be thinking about all the time, but they’re not as obvious. So one way that we self-sabotage is by procrastinating. So this is the act of, you know, delaying, or postponing doing something. Okay, so we put something off because we don’t feel like doing it. Well, I’ll do it tomorrow.

When you put it off, when you say I’ll do it tomorrow, you don’t have to deal with it right now, you don’t have to do anything uncomfortable right now. Right? When you say, Oh, I’m going to change my diet, I’m going to change the way I eat, I’m going to focus on my nutrition, you know, starting next month.

So that’s a very safe thing for you to do, it causes no immediate discomfort, you just push it off. And then when next month comes, you’re like, I know, I said I was going to do that. But I’m really not ready for that yet. And I’ve got all these other things going on in my life. So I’m just going to, I’m going to do it next month. And we just keep doing this right, we just keep delaying the discomfort. It’s just a constant delay, delay, delay.

Delay is a killer of hopes and dreams. If you just keep putting stuff off, you’re never gonna get it done. Okay? This is a very common way that we self-sabotage procrastination.

Another way we self-sabotage is by doing something called buffering. Buffering is where we use some external thing, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, whatever, to try to make us feel good. Inside, we have difficult emotions we’re dealing with. And so we use something external, like food or alcohol, to feel better, right? We’re using something external to feel better internally.

You put a buffer between you and your emotions. And you know, it’s buffering because it always comes with some kind of negative consequences, right? So you might be stressed out. And so you eat and you gain weight. Right? you overeat, you eat all the chocolate cake, and you gain weight and you never reach your goal. This is when you know it’s buffering, okay?

Some people use shopping in the same way you get that little dopamine hit every time you buy something, you know, and it kind of feels good. People use drugs, and people use, you know, cigarettes and alcohol. Some people even use exercise as a form of buffering because they don’t want to deal with the stress in their life.

And so, instead of dealing with the emotional experiences you’re having, you just use something to feel better temporarily. Right? It doesn’t really help you with the emotion you’re experiencing with the stress with the anger with the sadness, whatever it is you’re experiencing. It just covers it up temporarily. It just kind of makes you feel good in the moment, right? Very, a very common way that people self-sabotage is using some substance or something to just try to make themselves feel better.

And it’s self-sabotage because, you know, think about it like alcoholics who drink too much. They know they shouldn’t drink but they do it anyway. They know that drinking is going to cost them their marriage, their job, they won’t see their kids they may lose everything, but they drink anyway, this is a very common way that alcoholics self-sabotage, right.

They would rather drink than have to deal with all the feelings and especially the feeling of like not having that alcohol in their system. Okay, so buffering, with food, with alcohol, with drugs, or with shopping is another way that we self-sabotage.

Another pretty subtle way we self-sabotage is by just never starting anything. And this is like procrastination. But it just kind of goes on and on, you actually never do anything at all. And I see this, a lot of times, I talk to people all the time about changing their diet, right, and changing their relationship with food and changing their health and their fitness. And they tell me, without a doubt, I’m ready, I’m ready to lose weight, I’m ready to change my diet, I’m ready to, you know, go all-in on this, but then they never do anything about it.

You know, they just keep talking about it, they just keep saying they want to do it. I talk to people all the time, let’s say this. They want a different life for themselves. They want to be healthier. They want to eat better, they want to lose weight, they want to be in better shape, but they never do anything about they never get started.

I mean, it’s a little different than procrastinating, like constant procrastination. It’s like procrastination to the next level. Just never starting you, you just have to start. But again, it’s like one of those things, it’s uncomfortable. And we know it’s going to be hard. And so just talking about it is much easier than actually doing something about it. But the very, very common way that we self-sabotage.

How many things in your life have you been talking about doing? Think about it. How many things have you said, you know, it’d be nice to do that, to take that vacation, to change this about myself, to run a marathon, to whatever your goals are? Quit your job, start your own business, make more money, you know, get married, whatever it is, what is it that you just keep talking about, but never doing?

I’ll be honest with you, I keep talking about wanting to get out of here in the winter, and go live somewhere warm for at least a couple of months. And I keep talking about it. And I never do anything about it. I self-sabotage in that way. I’m gonna have to do something about it probably this year. Since I’m now that I’m bringing it up. I’m totally calling myself out on this. Oh my god.

But like, it’s one of those things that I’ve been talking about for a couple of years. And I really haven’t done anything about it. And I just need to like pull the trigger and do something about it. Go somewhere warm. Go live on a beach for 30 days in the winter. Oh my gosh, that’d be amazing. So I’m gonna do something about it. You watch.

Alright, another kind of subtle way that we self-sabotage is we just quit? I guess this isn’t that subtle. Right? Quitting is different from what I call failing. So, you know, there’s really no such thing as failure. Like, I think, you know, true failure is just quitting, honestly. But I think failure is a part of the process of accomplishing anything that you want in your life.

If you want to lose weight, let’s say, and you are trying a bunch of different things, and they’re just not working. Those are like little failures. And that’s okay. You just got to keep trying stuff until you figure out what works for you, right. I’ve been experiencing this lately, learning how to do a handstand, right? This is a goal of mine, it’s really hard to do.

It’s very, very challenging. And I keep failing, I keep falling down. And I can’t balance properly. And I’m not strong enough yet. But I keep doing it. So the only way that I could actually fail at that is if I just quit, like quitting is the ultimate self-sabotage. If I just keep trying, and I keep having these little failures, and I but I keep going and I keep learning what works and what doesn’t.

And this is what I’m doing. I’m falling down. I’m trying to get my hands down and falling down. I’m learning that I have to be I have to work on my balance. That’s a big part of this right and my core strength. So I’m working on those things, and I’m learning as I go. But if I were to just say like, oh, I tried it once and I can’t do it. And I quit. That’s like the ultimate self-sabotage. So I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna keep going.

So you may not even be aware of why you’re quitting. It’s kind of like what I was talking about earlier when I decided I wasn’t going to run the long-distance events anymore. I was justifying it and it sounded like, you know, justifiable, it sounded like these were good reasons for not wanting to run long distances anymore.

Oh, I’m too old. It’s too hard. I don’t like doing that. But really, I was just quitting, I just quit. I just gave up. I didn’t want to do that. That’s total self-sabotage right there. So those are a few other ways that we self-sabotage, some subtle, some not so much. But here’s what happens. Here are some of the negative side effects that we experience when we self-sabotage.

So you’ve you feel like you’re choosing safety and security, you feel like you’re staying comfortable. But what you’re really doing is you’re, you’re hurting yourself. And here’s how, when you self sabotage, in whatever way that looks like for you, whether it’s procrastination, quitting, whether that’s you know, buffering, or just like never starting anything, you just stay stuck where you are.

Right, if you want something that you don’t have, like, you have to get out of your comfort zone, right, everything you want, that you don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. But getting out of your comfort zone does not feel good is scary out there. It’s uncomfortable. It’s why it’s called comfort zone. It’s the unknown. In order to grow, in order to become the best version of you.

Like, let’s say you want to lose the weight and run faster, run farther, whatever that looks like for you. Whatever vision of yourself, you have for yourself, the person that you ultimately want to be, you can’t do any of those things. If you just stay stuck and comfortable where you are, you have to get uncomfortable.

When you self sabotage, you hold yourself back from reaching all these goals from becoming who you want to become. So you’ll never become that person. You’ll never know what you’re capable of achieving. You’re gonna miss the opportunity to find out what you can do and what you’re really made of. You’re never going to realize your full potential.

This is one of the most costly side effects of self-sabotage is that you’ll never reach your full potential. I have big goals for myself in 2021 I am very aware of the ways that I self-sabotage okay. I do it in some subtle ways. Sometimes it’s it looks like procrastination. Sometimes it looks like quitting. But I’m so aware of this now I know what I’m doing it.

And I know that when I find myself seeking comfort when I when I’m seeking when I’m when I would just want to feel safe and comfortable and complacent. I know I’m probably self-sabotaging in some way. I know when I find myself feeling uncomfortable, maybe a little bit afraid. Maybe a little bit on the edge. I know I’m not self-sabotaging. And I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be because I’m getting out of my comfort zone. I do that.

Isn’t that crazy, though? Like embracing the discomfort is kind of the opposite of what we’re taught our whole lives, right? We’re always taught like just feel good. You just want to feel good all the time. Just feel comfortable, safe, and secure. But that’s not how these things work. Because it’s not how you become more. Right? Self-sabotaging does make you feel safe and secure. But it also prevents you from becoming who you want to be. It prevents you from achieving big things.

So what do we do about all this? It’s probably what you’ve been asking yourself this whole time. How do we overcome self-sabotage, Patrick? Well, I’m gonna tell you right now, the first thing you want to do to overcome self-sabotage is to focus on taking aligned action on your goals and dreams.

So figure out what it is you want to accomplish. What are your goals? If you don’t have any goals, that’s actually a form of self-sabotage too, just FYI, right. Oh, I don’t have goals. No, you’re not going to you’re not going to achieve much then. Okay. But if you do have goals, I encourage you to have goals.

Think about one of your goals. And then think about everything you did yesterday. What did you do yesterday to work toward that goal? Did you do anything? Did you do a couple of things? Why or why not? This is what it means to take aligned action, you have a goal, and there’s something important that you want to achieve.

And then every day, every day, you take little steps towards reaching that goal. So your goal could be I want to run a marathon. And so yesterday, you ran a mile, and you logged your workout in your training journal, and you wrote a few notes about how you felt about that run. This is the kind of stuff we’ll be talking about in the journal challenge in the Facebook group, FYI.

So you took a line action, right, you ran and you logged some stuff in your trading journal, and you’re keeping track of your progress. And you stuck to your plan and you ran your workout yesterday. Perfect, you’re taking aligned action towards that goal.

Let’s say your goal is to lose 30 pounds. So you look at what you did yesterday, you planned your meals ahead of time, you didn’t snack between meals, you stuck to your plan, and you logged everything in your food journal, perfect. Another form of taking aligned action towards your goal. That’s what it means to take aligned action.

So if you’re not doing something each day, to move towards this goal that you say is so important to you. That could be a form of self-sabotage. Okay, so the number one thing you can do, to overcome self-sabotage is to take aligned action every day, when you focus on taking some sort of action that moves you in the direction of your goals of your hopes of your dreams, you can avoid self-sabotage.

The second thing you can do to overcome self-sabotage is to stop focusing on the past and focus on the future instead. If all of your attention, and all of your focus is on your past, who you used to be the all the ways that you have failed, all the things that have not worked for you, you are just going to stay stuck in that past, you’re going to keep creating more and more of that past in your future.

When we focus on all of our past shortcomings, and the things that have never worked for us, we just create more and more of that, in our future. Your past is just a series of thought patterns. It’s a series of mostly subconscious mental habits. And we need to break those old habits, we need to break out of those patterns, we need to start working on new thought patterns, we need to create new mental habits for our future.

We don’t want to keep doing and thinking and feeling the same things over and over again, that we’ve been doing in the past, right? So who is it you want to be in the future? Think about this, think about the future version of yourself. So you’ve already achieved your goal.

Let’s say you, you want to lose 30 pounds, you’re already there? What does that person look like? How do you think differently? Because you’ve already achieved this goal? How do you feel about yourself? Focus on that amazing future version of you. Instead of focusing on what you’ve done or not done in the past.

I have this vision for myself. I want to be stronger. I want to be more muscular. I want to be ripped. Okay. And I think about that future version of myself all the time, I see myself standing in the mirror looking at myself, and I’m kind of jacked. You know, I’m feeling really good about how I look and how I feel about myself.

And if I were to just focus on my past and how I haven’t really been able to build much muscle in the past, I only see my future vision of myself would be just that skinny guy who I used to be who lacks muscle definition. Focusing my attention on who I want to be that jacked version of myself who I want to become keeps me motivated and moving in that direction.

Whereas if I focused all my attention on how I’ve always been the skinny guy and I’ve never really been very muscular. I just feel All terrible about myself. And I’d always be moving in that direction. And when I say the skinny guy, I don’t, because I was pretty fat at some point, but I was still never had like muscle definition, right? I just had like fat arms, I didn’t have muscular arms, you know, and I want that. That’s what I’m working on.

But where you focus, your attention is the direction you move. So if I’m focusing my intention on this amazing, healthy, muscular version of myself in the future, I’m going to be moving in that direction. If I keep focusing on this person I used to be, that just doesn’t feel good at all. But I’ll be moving in that direction. I don’t want to do that.

So my encouragement for you in a way that you can really stop the self-sabotage is to stop focusing on what’s in your past, stop focusing on what hasn’t worked on your failures, and all that other stuff, and start focusing on who you want to become. Focus on the future you, and then you’ll always be moving in that direction.

Alright, and then the third way that we can overcome self-sabotage is to manage our minds. Right, we self sabotage, because we have thoughts and feelings about why we can’t do something or about how will never amount to anything, or it’s too hard, or that’s just not who I am anymore. Whatever thoughts and feelings we have about ourselves, you have to understand something, these thoughts that you have about yourself are not the truth. They’re just thoughts. They’re thoughts in your head. They’re just like sentences, you keep saying to yourself over and over again.

And sometimes we say these things to ourselves so often, and for so long, that they just become these deep-seated beliefs that we have about ourselves, even though they’re just thoughts, they’re not the truth. I had these beliefs that running Ultras was too hard, that I’m too old. And I thought these things over and over again until I quit training for those events. And in they became true for me.

So beliefs are just recurring thoughts that we have, like habitual patterns of thoughts. And honestly, you can change them if you want, you don’t have to hold on to them. I was holding on to them. And it was keeping me feeling terrible about myself and staying stuck and staying small. So if you have a belief that, like, let’s say, you have a belief that no matter what, you’ll never be able to lose weight, I can almost guarantee that you never, ever will be able to lose weight.

If this is a strong belief that you have about yourself, you’re never gonna be able to lose weight, I guarantee you. In order to stop the self-sabotage, you have to change these thought patterns. Right? And one of the first steps is just to recognize that all these thoughts are just that they’re just thoughts, then they’re not necessarily true. Just have that awareness. Your thoughts are just how you are choosing to respond to the world around you.

So here’s my example. You know, I had all these thoughts about how you know Ultras, were too hard. I’m too old. I don’t like doing them. Maybe just like running half marathons is better. Yeah, that’s what it was. Half marathons are better. This is like a thought that I was telling people like, oh, you know, you get it done in like two hours. And you know, the training is easier, and all these other things. And so I really believe this.

All of these thoughts, though, like, these beliefs that I had created, created this, like, whole belief system around ultras being too hard, and, you know, half-marathons being easier. And, man, it just became like, part of who I was, but it wasn’t the truth. You know, when I stopped to look at this and to really think about like, what am I doing here? Like, are marathons really too hard? Am I too old? Are halves really better than full marathons are Ultras, you know, only in my past?

And when I really sat down and asked myself these questions, the answer was like, no, none of this stuff is actually true. Lots of people would say, marathons are not too hard, or they’re not too old. I know people that are like in their 70s and 80s that still run marathons or Ultras, I know a lot of people that say a half marathons are not better than full marathons.

Like, I can decide what’s true for me. So I chose, eventually, that all these thought patterns that I had these beliefs that I had, were just that in that I don’t have to, like, hang on to this stuff anymore. Because hanging on to this stuff was just keeping me feeling small and safe and comfortable. Yeah, but also, I wasn’t doing the things I really wanted to do. pretty subtle. But it felt so true for me.

I really could justify not wanting to do these harder events because of these deep-seated belief systems they created all-around how hard this stuff was. And so this is like total self-sabotage, for me. So why this is so important is because your thoughts, create your reality, everything that you have in your life right now. All of it is created by your thoughts.

Things happen in your life, you have circumstances that happen in your life, and then you have thoughts about those circumstances. Right? Always, always, always you have thoughts about stuff that’s going on around you. And it’s your thoughts that create your feelings. So if you feel motivated, it’s because you had a thought about something that created that feeling of motivation. And then those feelings drive your actions.

So when you feel motivated, you take certain actions like usually, if you’re motivated in the right direction, those actions you’re taking are aligned actions that move you towards your goal. So when you think marathons are too hard, that creates a feeling of deep motivation inside you. And when you feel demotivated, you’re probably going to take action, that’s like self-sabotaging action, or you don’t do anything at all right, you just give up, you just quit, you don’t do it. That was my experience.

So I had all these thoughts, they created these feelings of like, discouragement, uncomfortable, or D motivation. And then I just gave up, right? This is all based on my thoughts. So the trick here is that you have to learn to control how you respond to everything happening in the world around you. Your thoughts, always create your feelings, your feelings, always drive your actions. Just know this, when you know this, you can start making some changes here.

Another example of how your thoughts create your results is if you constantly think you can’t lose weight, and you’re going to feel that those thoughts are going to make you feel defeated. Those thoughts or that feeling of being defeated is going to keep you from taking aligned action, right. So you’ll just stand in front of the fridge with the door open and eat the whole chocolate cake.

This is a classic, you know, self-sabotage. And it’s all caused by your own thoughts and feelings. Think about this, your current weight is a direct result of your thoughts, your beliefs, and your belief systems. And the emotions you create by your thoughts. All of it creates your current weight, it creates everything in your life right now.

And if you think well, doesn’t matter what I’ve done in my past, I’m going to lose these 30 pounds no matter what no matter how long it takes, I’m going to do whatever it takes. And I’m going to get there. This is a whole different way of thinking. This is going to make you feel super motivated. This is going to keep you sticking to your plan.

You’re going to take aligned action, regardless of there being chocolate cake in the fridge. And I can guarantee that you will lose weight. I see this all the time in my clients that tell me oh yeah, I just got through Christmas and there were all these cookies around and pies and everything and I didn’t even want to eat it. I stuck to my plan. And I felt so good about myself. And I’ve lost a few more pounds this week. That is amazing. It’s all because they’re choosing what to believe about themselves. They’re choosing thoughts that help them to stay motivated.

Change your thoughts. You change your reality change your thoughts, you can change your weight, change your thoughts and you can run an ultra. Okay. This is what it looks like when I say you got to manage your mind right you have to change what you’re thinking mindset is the key to all of this and you won’t get it perfect right away. This is a daily practice, I still work on this.

But when you have that awareness, when you keep working on it when you keep thinking about your thoughts, pretty meta, but when you keep focused on how your thinking is creating the results that you’re getting in your life, you can absolutely do something about it and you can start creating the results that you really want in your life by just changing your thoughts. Okay, and there, there becomes nothing that you can’t accomplish. There’s nothing you can’t do with the right mindset.

So quick recap here, self-sabotage. It’s patterns of thoughts and behaviors that hold you back that keep you stuck that prevent you from becoming who you really want to be. How do you know if you’re self sabotaging? Usually, it’s because your actions, your habits, and your behaviors are not in alignment with your long-term goals.

Why do we self-sabotage? Because our brains think we’re gonna get some kind of positive benefit from it. Like we’re avoiding pain, we’re seeking pleasure trying to stay comfortable. Some of the common ways we self-sabotage are by procrastination, buffering, we never start anything or we just quit, we just give up.

And some of the negative consequences of self-sabotage are really it just keeps us stuck. It holds us back and prevents us from becoming who we want to be from reaching our goals, from accomplishing our big impossible goals and dreams. And we just stay small. We never get to become the best version of ourselves.

And how do we overcome self-sabotage? Well, take aligned action towards your goals and dreams every single day. Remember to focus on your future, that future amazing version of you instead of your past. And then learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings. You change your thoughts, you change your results. Cool.

All right, I hope you got something out of this today. Remember, the Running Lean monthly coaching group opens up January 3, everything I just talked about here, how to take aligned action towards your goals, how to focus on your future, how to manage your mind, all of that stuff. We’re going to be talking about all of that in the monthly coaching group. I’ve got this brand new course called achieving the impossible. It’s going to be amazing.

You also get access to the weight loss training course for runners to learn exactly how to become a lean fat-burning machine, you get those live group coaching calls with me. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Enrollment opens January 3, go all-in on yourself, make 2021 the year you transform yourself into a lean, fat-burning running machine. Cool.

You got this, my friends. Hey, thank you for joining me every week here in 2020. I am looking so forward to 2021. As always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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