Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Contrary to what I see plastered all over social media, I don’t think 2020 was that bad of a year, at least it wasn’t for me. I accomplished more in my life this year than in the last 5 years …
Continue Reading about 52. Looking Back and Moving Forward →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 52 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the topic is looking back and moving forward. I want to take a look back over lessons learned in 2020. And I want to talk about what it means to move forward into this new year 2021.
And contrary to what I see, plastered all over social media, I don’t think 2020 was that bad of a year. At least it wasn’t for me. I accomplished more in my life this past year. I feel like I’ve grown more in this past year than I have in like the last five years combined. Yes, I had to overcome a lot of personal struggles this year. And yes, I had to blow past my own limitations this year. But regardless of all that, I’m not choosing to look back on this year as a dumpster fire.
You know, I’m not looking at 2020 as the worst year ever. In fact, I want to say that I think 2020 has been one of the best years of my life. So in this episode, I’m going to be looking back at 2020, I’m going to share some of the valuable lessons that I learned. And I hope you’ve learned as well. And I’ll be focusing on and I’ll be talking about what I will be focusing on as I move forward into 2021. And some things that you can start thinking about focusing on as you move forward into the next year.
Before we get into all that though, please come check us out on Facebook, just search for the Running Lean community, it’s a bunch of cool people is what it is. All hanging out, talking about running, sharing stories, encouraging each other, supporting each other. It’s a very positive group of people. And you should definitely come check us out just search for Running Lean community on Facebook.
Also, I wanted to let you guys know that starting January 3, I’m opening the doors to the Running Lean monthly coaching group. Right. This is my monthly coaching program, where you get access to all of my online courses, including my flagship, my flagship program, called the weight loss training course for runners, that shows you exactly how to become an efficient fat-burning machine. You also get live coaching calls with me and fellow runners.
So if you want coaching and encouragement and support and accountability, so that you can hit your goals going into this new year, this is the group for you. Also, we’re going to be doing this cool and very powerful goal-setting workshop called achieving the impossible in 2021. That you definitely don’t want to miss so you can find out information about this just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.
I want you to make 2021 your year, make it your best year yet become that badass runner that you’ve always wanted to be. Join the monthly coaching group and I will help you get there and so will your other runners. Okay, runningleanpodcast.com/join. Okay, let’s talk about this past year. First of all, I wanted to mention this. This is episode number 52 of the podcast which means that we have now a full year’s worth of podcasts if you listen to one each week. So the first episode came out the first week of January last year.
So we are coming up on the anniversary. But basically, we’ve got a whole year of podcasts under our belt. Oh my gosh, that is so fun. This is very exciting. You know, most podcasters when they start out. I think the average is something like they get to like episode number seven, and then they just quit.
That’s not how I roll. That is not how I roll. So I feel good about the content that I’m sharing with you guys. I hope you enjoy these podcast episodes. I know I have a lot of fun making them. I love sharing these ideas. And I hope it’s helpful in some way. And if you find it helpful, you could always hit up iTunes and leave a quick review and tell everybody else how much you love it.
But yeah, a whole year of podcasts. That’s very, very cool. So let’s talk about lessons learned. Let’s talk about the lessons that I’ve learned in 2020 and this is not everything I’ve learned. But these are some of the key lessons that I learned that I want to share with you that I think you can probably relate to.
So the first lesson I learned in 2020, was that I am stronger than I thought I was and that I am a much stronger person than I give myself credit for. You know, I struggled a lot with adversity at the beginning of this year, I was going through a divorce, I got a couple of work furloughs, I got furloughed from two jobs. There was a lot of financial insecurity happening in my world. We were in, we had just started this global pandemic, and everything was shutting down. And it was this was hard.
For me, this was a very challenging time. For me, this was a very emotional time for me. And here’s the thing, though, I can look back on all that now and say, wow, I made it through all of that. And I feel like I’m in a better place now. I feel stronger now than I did at the beginning of this year, for sure. I feel like I’m a different person now than I was the beginning of 2020.
And all that emotional stuff that I had to deal with, I had to learn how to kind of experience all those emotions, how to feel my feelings. And I learned also that, you know, your emotions can’t kill you. That it’s just a feeling you feel in your body. And they do pass, sometimes it takes a while.
But things like, you know, going through a divorce, that was very tough on me, it forced me very much forced me out of my comfort zone. Right, I was kind of forced to start over. Right here I was on my own and just got to figure everything out again, and starting from scratch in a way.
But what was cool is that I decided early on this year, that I wasn’t going to let this break me. I wasn’t going to let this thing that was happening in my life. You know, damage me or, or weaken me, I was going to get through it. And I was going to be stronger on the other side of that.
It’s like when you go to the gym, and you and you, you have to lift weights and like tear down your muscles in order to build them back up again, right? It’s kind of the same thing. Sometimes you have to go through this tough stuff, mentally and emotionally. So that you can kind of build that mental and emotional strength that you need to get stronger.
Because, you know, if everything’s just going hunky-dory in your life, you don’t have to really work those mental and emotional muscles, right? So, this kind of adversity that I was going through these tough times that I was going through, forced me to become mentally and emotionally stronger. I had to endure some pain.
But I decided I wasn’t going to wallow in it, I wasn’t going to indulge in it. I was going to allow that pain to be there, process it, and move through it. And I found out something interesting about me that I can get through a lot of stuff. I’ve been through a lot of stuff in my life. I’ve quit drinking, I went, that was my second divorce. But I had cancer, I’ve been divorced twice, I quit drinking, I was you know, drinking too much and had to stop that was very challenging. All these things that I’ve gone through. And each time I go through something like that, I come out on the other side. I feel like I get a little bit stronger.
And this year, there was a lot going on, then I think I got much stronger. I think I’m much stronger than I thought I was. I don’t give myself enough credit sometimes for how strong I am. You know, and earlier this year, I would have told you that I can’t handle this. There were times where I was literally like thinking, I don’t know what I’m going to do here. I can’t handle this.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been there in that place. It’s a terrible place to be, honestly feels terrible. But I did handle it. Somehow I managed to get through one day at a time. And then here I am, you know 12 months later, and I feel amazing today. I’m in a really good place today.
And I kind of look back at these tough times and say I’m sort of glad that happened. Now, isn’t that crazy that we can say that? Like we go through things that are terrible, and we wish for anything that they could just be different. Just make all this pain go away. But that’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. That’s how you become more of who you want to be. So that was a very, very profound lesson that I had to learn this year, that I am much stronger than I give myself credit for.
Another big lesson I learned this past year, is all about what I can and what I can control. So here’s what I’ve learned that I can control: I can control my own thoughts, my own feelings and my own actions, what I think, how I feel, and what I do, that’s what I can control. You know, what I can control.
Everything else that I didn’t just mention. That includes what other people think, what emotions other people have, when other people do it, that includes what other people think about me, or how they feel about me? Or what they do or don’t do to me, you know, all this stuff? Like? It sounds so simple, right? And I think we all kind of understand this intellectually, right?
That you can’t control other people, but do you believe it? Do you really believe it? Do you live it? Or are you always just wishing people would do things your way? I know, that’s the way I was living for a long time. I was a pro, I tried to control other people, especially my partner for the last nine years.
You know, I didn’t really see it at the time. But looking back on it, I can, I can very clearly see. I was always trying to get her to think and act my way. And if she would just do that, everything would be fine. Right? If they would just do things our way then everything would just be perfect.
But trust me, I have to tell you something, it does not work. The only person that was miserable and frustrated all that time was me. Okay, so really, I had to take control of the things that I could control my own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
And this was how I was able to finally lose weight. I mean, this is how I was able to, you know, do things like run a marathon this year and run an ultra marathon this year. Because I wasn’t blaming other people.
And that leads me to my next lesson, the next lesson I learned this past year, which is that not only do I know what I can and can’t control, but I’ve learned how to take radical responsibility for everything in my life. Radical responsibility for everything in my life. I have this t shirt. And it says in giant, a black T shirt, it says in giant white letters, it’s all my fault.
And some people see that and they don’t understand what it means. But here’s what it means. It means that everything I have in my life, everything that’s happening to me every result that I get in my life, whether it’s good or bad, it’s all my fault. You know, if I’m having a good day, that’s my fault. If I’m having a bad day, it’s my fault.
And here’s the thing, people think, oh, that’s terrible. How’s everything your fault? But I have to tell you, this is bad news. Yeah, but it’s also good news. It’s bad news. Because, well, here’s the thing, you can’t blame anybody else anymore. For how you feel. Now things are going with you. It’s good news because you get all your power back.
You are in control. Right. And this kind of goes along with taking control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, taking radical responsibility for everything that you have in your life. So when I’m constantly blaming other people, and I did this for so long, you just you’re in a place of blame.
You’re in a place of shunning responsibility, everything is happening to you, and you have no control. It’s a very disempowering place to be. So for example, when I found myself 40 pounds overweight at the beginning of this past year, I was trying to figure out how to lose weight. I was trying all these different things.
And you know, one of the things that I remember thinking to myself was, and she was my partner at the time, you know, she would just stop stressing me out all the time. I could build and stick to my eating plan. You know, if, if things were just different here in this relationship, maybe I wouldn’t be so stressed out all the time. And I could just stay on track here. I wasn’t taking ownership of my actions. And I wasn’t taking ownership of the results either.
Because for the past few years, I had kept putting on weight and kind of blaming other people for that very disempowering place to be in giving all my power away to somebody else. But when I decided to take responsibility, when I decided to be the cause of all of my results, in other words, I’m looking at myself in the mirror and looking at these extra 40 pounds on me, I’m like, this is your fault. This is your fault.
This is a very empowering place to be. Because now I have the power to change that. But when you’re always blaming somebody else for where you are, you give all your power away. They’re in control, you’re giving control to somebody else, this is not a good idea. And I hear this a lot of times from clients who tell me why they can’t stay on their eating plan. And they give me all these excuses.
And they talk about, you know, work is very stressful, or, you know, my husband is very unsupportive, or, you know, I just had a bad day, or whatever it is, and there is always there all external circumstances, people, usually other people, my boss yelled at me, my husband was being a jerk, whatever it is. And they’re basically saying, Okay, I can’t do what I really want to do here my life because of what somebody else said.
And then that’s just a very victim kind of place to be and you don’t want to live your life that way. You know, when I stopped blaming other people, and I started asking myself, Hey, okay, why have you gained 40 pounds? What are you going to do? How can I take 100% responsibility for where I am? And for where I want to be? How can I take 100% responsibility and make this happen for me? How can I lose this weight? What am I going to do?
It doesn’t matter what other people think, or other people say, or other people do. None of the other stuff matters. I wanted to be the cause, not the cause of where I am, the cause of where I wanted to be. How can I make this all my fault? This is a crazy mindset shift.
Honestly, think about this, if you stop blaming, and just start taking responsibility for everything in your life. How good running is going for you whether or not you’re injured. If you’re losing weight or not, if you stay on your food plan or not. How you’re doing with work with your business, with your kids, with your relationships.
When you take 100% responsibility, it is a game-changer. It’s a crazy, crazy mindset shift. Not something a lot of people think about. People just want to blame others all the time. You don’t have to do that. Big, big lesson learned for me this year. Here’s another one.
This one looking back on it, I was like, I didn’t even realize this is a thing. But here’s the lesson I learned. I can change anytime I want. I can always change my mind about anything. So can you. So I’m 54 years old now. For the past 15 years, I’ve been vegetarian and then plant-based. And this was, you know, working for me. I thought this is the best way to go for me.
Until it kind of stopped working right, I was eating a lot of processed foods, I was eating way too much sugar. I gained all this weight. I was still running a lot but it wasn’t working. Wondering, running was not helping me lose weight. I wanted to feel good about what I was eating. I wanted to just go back to eating real food, whole foods as close to nature as possible food their ancestors would have eaten.
And I decided that I was going to make a big change. And I went back to eating meat again. And I thought like I could never do that like that’s just not who I am. What are people gonna think of me? What am I going to think of myself? You know? And I have to tell you that it was like one of the most liberating things I’ve ever done to just say screw it. I don’t care what anybody else thinks. I’m going to do what I think is best for me. There’s a radical concept. Right?
But I can always change I can change my mind about anything I want at any time, I don’t have to be so dogmatic about this stuff, and that was stressing me out, I felt very dogmatic about being a plant-based athlete, you know. And like I was gonna get ostracized from some club if I started eating meat again.
And you know, there are probably people out there that have like, unfollowed, me or whatever you want to call it, I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter. I’m doing what I think is best for me. So I went back to eating meat again. And I’ve never felt better. I lost the 40 pounds, and I feel great. I’m stronger than ever. Running has been amazing for me this year.
So it really doesn’t matter how old you are, how long you’ve been doing the same things, you can change any time you want. You can change your mind. You can always learn new stuff, you can grow, you can evolve, you can become anything in anyone that you want in your life, you don’t even have to have a good reason to do it. You just have to feel good about it. Okay.
So this was a big one for me. And, and I love this because it’s kind of freeing because it means like I can change again, what am I going to do this year? I don’t know, who knows. But the thing is that we don’t have to be stuck where we are, we can always make different choices and change.
Alright, here’s another lesson I learned. And this is a big one. That failure is not optional. It’s actually required. Now, this might sound counterintuitive, because I know a lot of people, you know, have these T-shirts and memes that say like failure is not an option. And I’m like, no, I think failure is completely an option. I think it’s actually a requirement.
And for me anytime I set out to accomplish some big goal. You know, for example, when I became a fat-adapted runner, this took me a long time. But I felt terrible for a long time, every time I went out for a run. When I stopped eating sugar, I felt terrible. And I had no gas in the tank, you know, my body was not used to running on fat. And it took me a long time before I started feeling better and before running got easier.
But every time I went out there to run, and my legs felt heavy. And I was like, this feels awful. This is not working. This sucks. Like I feel like a failure. This went on for weeks. By the way, I had a lot of what you would call failures. I think it took me like over eight weeks to become fully fat-adapted to where my body was an efficient fat burner. And running started becoming super easy and actually much, much better.
But had I like given up at some point, I’d never be where I am today. You know, I’ve done some pretty amazing things this year. Because I am fat-adapted, you know, I ran a marathon and ran a 50k with zero calories. And was able to do that because I’m such an efficient fat burner.
Now, there’s this quote, I don’t know who said it. But it’s like, every success is built upon a pile of failures. I love that quote. Because what it means is that if you want to accomplish something big if you want to succeed, you have to sort of fail your way there. Now, a lot of people don’t like to even use the word failure.
They’re like, oh, well, that morning, talk about there’s no such thing as failure. And I’m like, yeah, there is; you try something, it doesn’t work, that’s a fail. And it’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything bad. All it means is that you did something that didn’t work. And I see this with my clients all the time, who are trying to, you know, change their diet, and they’re trying stuff and it’s not working.
And they feel like a failure, and they just want to quit and I’m like, we just learned something that didn’t work. Let’s try something else now. How many times are you willing to fail? Because if you decide ahead of time, that failure is a requirement to succeed, that it’s not optional, that it will happen, you will fail, and that is how you get to that big goal that you want.
Then you learn to embrace the failure. When I set out to do something big I know that there are going to be failures along the way. And that’s cool. I plan on it. I look forward to it now. And I know it sounds stupid. Oh, I look forward to failing, but in a way it’s like let’s get these out of the way. Let’s learn what we need to learn so that I can get to this big goal. So I have learned that failure is not an option. It’s actually required, I’m not afraid of failure. I plan it, I look forward to it. And it’s just part of the process.
You know, another big lesson I learned is that it is the challenges that actually change. So when we go through these big challenges we grow. The harder the challenge, though, the more we grow. I hate that it works that way. But it does. You know, if you just go through tiny little challenges, you grow a tiny, little bit.
But when you have to face big challenges, then you grow in a big way. And I’ve learned to embrace these challenges. And I’ve learned to embrace the discomfort. Because I know that when I do that I become more I become more of who I want to be. And I can’t tell you how many people avoid this. They avoid discomfort at all costs, they want to just stay in their comfort zone. Because it’s scary out there. It’s uncomfortable.
So they only do these little easy, tiny things. But what does that do for you, you don’t really grow, you don’t have this expansion of yourself. So for example, I was going to stay small this year. And halfway through the year, becoming fat-adapted, I’m starting to feel better. I’m running with some friends.
They’re training for a marathon. But I’m like, I’m only doing a half marathon. I don’t do marathons anymore. This is these are too hard. Marathons are too hard. I’m not doing that anymore. And it felt like it was outside my comfort zone. I didn’t run a marathon last year, I ran just one half, or maybe two half marathons last year.
But I haven’t run a full marathon and a couple of years. And it just seemed like something I didn’t want to do. Too hard, too uncomfortable. I didn’t want to go there. But at some point, I just made a decision. You know what? Screw that I want to be more. I want to push myself, I want to see what I could do. I want to blow my own mind.
So you know what? I’m in. I’m going to run this marathon with you guys. So I trained for it. I ran it. It was amazing. And then like seriously, like just about a month later, I find myself running a 50k. And I’m like, okay, well, this is hard. This is something that’s big. And I didn’t think I was going to be doing it again.
I mean, here I am earlier this year thinking I’m never going to run a full marathon again. And I ran a marathon and a 50k within the span of like five weeks. It’s crazy, right? Why? Because I decided that it was these big things that the hard things are what I embraced that I that make me bigger and better.
It’s the big challenges that change us in big ways. In the beginning of this year, I completely changed my diet, you know, I stopped eating all that plant-based stuff, all the processed foods, stopped eating sugar and started eating meat again, and all this stuff. This is a big huge change. This was very challenging for me at first, I didn’t know what to eat, I hadn’t eaten meat in like 15 years.
That big change though is what got me to where I am today. It’s how I became who I am today. It’s why I do what I do today. Because I went through this massive shift in my diet and the way I looked at food, my relationship with food, the way I look at exercise, all of that stuff. The bigger the challenge, the bigger, the change. It’s the challenges that change us, and why not go big?
Alright, that was another amazing lesson I learned. And then one other lesson I learned. And this is the last one I’ll talk about. There were other lessons I learned too. But these are just the key ones, the ones that really stuck out with me. The last one was this. I can do anything I set my mind to. I can do hard things, I can accomplish some big ass goals.
I figured out that if I adopt the right mindset that I can do anything I want. And so can you. You know, for so long, I struggled with my weight. I just felt gross. I looked at myself in the mirror and I was fat. And I felt doughy and I was ashamed of myself. I’m this like ultra runner, and I can’t even button my pants anymore. I didn’t have any love for myself at all. My self-esteem was down the toilet. And every time I tried to lose weight I failed. The struggle was real.
I knew that if I really wanted to lose weight, then if I really wanted to keep it off for good, which I did. I wanted to completely change how I looked at food and everything. I knew that in order to do that I would have to develop this entirely new relationship with food. And so I kind of asked myself, like, what would that mindset look like? Who would I have to become?
If I wanted to have a whole new relationship with food because I knew the only way I was going to sustain this was that I had to change the way I looked at food, the way I thought about food the way I felt about food.
And I was able to do it. But I had to get my mind right first. I had to, I had to, like adopt this new identity of like, I’m a person who eats this way. I was no longer a person who eats four bowls of cereal in the morning, I was a person who eats bacon and eggs. And now this is just who I am. This is the way I eat. This is what I do. It’s a habit, a way of life. It’s simple, easy, effortless, really, it is.
And I feel like there’s this incredible freedom. Knowing that with the right mindset, I can create anything I want in my life, any result that I want, any goal that I want. It all starts and ends with mindset. So I can do anything I set my mind to. And you know what a crappy mindset will get you crappy results every single time. But an expansive positive creative mindset will get you amazing positive results every single time.
So you can do anything you want. Just gotta have the right mindset. So those are the big lessons I learned in 2020. I’m going to take all these lessons and slide into 2021. And armed with these lessons and make this just an amazing year. I’m very excited. And so here’s a couple of things moving forward that I want to talk about. Here are a couple of things I’m going to be focusing on going into 2021.
First of all, I want to focus on the idea of accomplishing the impossible. So I want to do things next year, that seems so big and so crazy, that they just seem impossible. So I have running goals, I have fitness goals, I have business goals, I have personal goals, and I have all these different goals. And for each one of these, I have something that seems impossible for me. Because here’s the thing, why aim for tiny little goals? Because what if you get them? Why don’t you for big, huge, impossible goals? Because what if you get them?
So here’s one of my goals. I’m not going to share all these with you right now. Some of these I’m not ready to share with people. But I am going to share this one because I’ve been posting about it on Facebook. So I have this goal. This is one of the fitness goals I’m going to learn how to do a handstand. So why do I want to do this?
Well, for me, this seems impossible. I think it is super hard. When I see people that can do handstands. I’m like that person is a total badass. It’s super hard. It requires arm strength, shoulder strength, and core strength. It requires balance, and coordination. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of practice. And I’ve never been able to do something like this.
I wasn’t into gymnastics or anything like that, you know. And this is just something that’s way outside my comfort zone and has always seemed impossible for me. But I think it’s just so badass. So I am practicing doing handstands every single day. I’m learning what it takes. I’m practicing a little bit every day. I’m working on building strength, building core strength, building balance, all these things.
And I will be honest with you, I’m failing a lot. This is one of those things where I’m like, literally falling on my face quite often. So and this is just one of my goals. But this is just an example of something that I’ve set out to do. And you know what I’m going to keep you guys posted on the handstand progress and how I’m doing because it is fun.
And I feel like I can get there. It’s going to take a while though. I’m still working on the whole, being comfortable being upside down. Like that just doesn’t feel normal to me. And I’m really off balance. So I’m building my strength but the balance will that’s going to take a while. So think about what you want for an impossible goal.
Maybe you want to run a half marathon or a full marathon. Maybe you want to do your first ultra like a 50k or maybe you want to do like something you’ve never thought possible like run 100k or 50 miles or 100 miles, maybe you want to lose a lot of weight. Instead of thinking, oh me, I could probably lose 10 pounds, why not shoot for like 30 pounds, or 40 or 50 or 100 pounds.
Maybe like, you want to quit eating sugar, totally get off of that or quit drinking alcohol. Whatever it is. It should be big, it should be something that feels impossible for you. But I want you to think about that, because I don’t want you to, like settle for some small goal, some small accomplishment, I want you to think big.
Think about something that seems way outside your comfort zone. And then I want you to go all-in on that goal. Because you know what you can do anything you set your mind to, why not set it on something big. So going into 2021 accomplishing the impossible.
That is one thing I’m really focused on. I’m also going to get even better at failing, like, since failing is how we succeed, I’m gonna get really good at failing to embrace a lot of failure, I’m going to anticipate it plan on it, and build up a huge pile of failures with everything that I do.
Because I know that every time I fail, I move on. And for example, this handstand thing I’m doing is a lot of failures, I am literally falling on my face or my butt like many times a day. It doesn’t scare me as much it scared me at first, like falling and stuff like that. But now I’m kind of getting the hang of it.
And I just think it’s hilarious that I’m this like grown man like trying to do something and just falling down and just cracking myself up. But the more I do it, the better. I’m getting at it. Like the more I do it. The stronger I get, the more I do it and fail, the more I learn how not to do it, and what doesn’t work. And I’m getting better. And I’m making progress.
So failing is something I’m just going to embrace even more, and I want to get really good at failing. And then the other thing about this coming year is that I want to continue to learn and continue to grow and continue to change and continue to become more of who I want to be.
I love, love, love learning. I’m always reading books. I’m always learning something new. I always want to expand who I am. You know, I said this earlier, like I’m a different person now than I was a year ago. And I look back over that. And I can point to all the reasons why all the challenges I’ve faced the books, I’ve read the podcasts, I’ve listened to the people I’ve coached.
All the training that I’ve done, the certifications I’ve gotten, all the stuff that I’ve done and learned has helped me to grow and change and become who I am today. I am not the same person today, as I was at the beginning of this year. And I don’t want to be the same person at the end of 2021 that I am right now.
So I want to be more. Very, very excited about this next year. I really am. I can’t wait to see what I can do. I can’t wait to see what you can do. So here’s the thing you get to make 2021 Whatever you want it to be for you. Why not make it like the most amazing year of growth yet for yourself? Because you know what?
You get to decide, take radical responsibility for all of your results make the impossible happen next year. What would that look like for you? What would it look like to go all-in on yourself on some big-ass goal? How would that feel? Does that scare you a little bit? It should scare you because that means you’re kind of getting out of your comfort zone. This stuff scares me to do it anyway.
Because when you get out of your comfort zone, you push past that fear and everything. That’s where you become more, that’s where all the good stuff is. Okay, remember January 3, the Running Lean monthly coaching group opens up we’re going to be doing the achieving the impossible workshop.
We got that weight loss training course for runners that you’ll have access to you’ll learn exactly how to become a lean fat-burning machine. You get those live group coaching calls with me go all in on yourself in 2021 Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join get on the list.
And hey, this has been an amazing year. I look back at this year and I love love. Love it. I love 2020 It was amazing. Thank you guys for listening and supporting me and just being a part of my tribe here. I love each and every one of you 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.
This is the final episode in the Running Lean Manifesto series. The Running Lean Manifesto is a set of guiding principles that, when you practice them each day, you can create the life you’ve …
Continue Reading about 49. Be an Example of What’s Possible →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner Ultra runner, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners, I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger. So you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 49 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. How are you today? I am doing amazing. I went for a run this morning. And it’s cold here in Cincinnati this time of the year. And I just feel alive.
It made me feel very grateful for my health and the fact that I get to go out and run whenever I feel like it. And it was cold. And I just felt very much alive. It was an awesome experience this morning. So today I want to talk about how to be an example of what’s possible and what that means for you and for the world.
This is the final episode in the series I’ve been doing on the Running Lean manifesto. So the Running Lean manifesto is a set of guiding principles that when you practice them each day, you get to create the life that you’ve always wanted for yourself, you can accomplish anything you want, you can be who you want to be.
And when you do that, when you become that person you ultimately want to be, you inspire others, you inspire others to want that for themselves. So in this episode, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts about what it means to live your life in such a way that you become an example of what’s possible for others.
And if you like this podcast, then please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a fun group of runners that all share the same kinds of goals like we’re all there to help each other, whether it’s to lose weight, or run faster or run farther or to get stronger.
Whatever your goals are, we’re there to help encourage you support you and help you get it done. Okay, the stuff I teach over there in the Facebook group is is similar to what I teach here in the podcast, they kind of go hand in hand with each other. And we do some fun things like right now we have this cool running through the holidays challenge going on over there in the Facebook community.
And we’re encouraging each other to run a mile every day between Thanksgiving Day, and New Year’s Day. It’s a great way to relieve stress during this kind of a stressful time of the year for a lot of people. And it’s a lot of fun. So we’re having fun over there. Come check us out on Facebook, just search for the Running Lean community.
Okay, I want to get into this because this is like I’ve been really wanting to share this stuff with you guys. I really love this topic I’m gonna be talking about today. And that is to be an example of what’s possible.
So like I said, we’ve been working our way through the Running Lean manifesto. So I created this manifesto, or this set of guiding principles to kind of frame everything that I teach here on the podcast, everything I teach with my clients. Because when you practice these principles in your life, you can create an amazing life for yourself. It’s really that simple.
Okay, so we’ve been going through the list of all of the principles of the manifesto, and I’m going to kind of recap them here. But just think of it this way, think of this as a guideline for living an amazing life. Okay, so you want to have an amazing life. Here’s how you do it. Okay, so here’s the manifesto. And here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve covered so far.
The first principle is to eat real food. This means that we are eating whole food, food that is as close to nature as possible. So unrefined, unprocessed food, foods our ancestors would have eaten, not some stuff full of you know, garbage and sugar that is brand new, you know, snack food industry type of stuff.
This is like tried and true food we’ve been eating for millennia. We want to optimize our health from the inside out. So it starts with eating real food.
Number two is to live vibrantly. That’s living every moment of every moment of your life, with meaning with purpose, doing everything with positive energy with enthusiasm for living, as if every moment of your life matters, because guess what they all do, they all do.
Number three is to thrive in your body. And this is, like where, where you’re always wanting to improve our physical body, we don’t want to be jamming our body full of garbage so that we become diseased and sick. You know, we want to improve our physical body, always working to become healthier, to become stronger and to be more fit.
Number four is to embrace discomfort, I talk a lot about this, we don’t want to run away from hard things, we want to move toward them, we want to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Because when we do that, that is when we grow. That’s the only way to grow. You know, everything that you want, that you don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. So I encourage you to seek out discomfort and face it, head on.
Number five is to run because you love it, stop running just to lose weight, you know, I got to burn these calories, I better run more. First of all, it’s not very effective. Second of all, you end up doing it because you feel like you have to. And then running becomes a chore. And it’s something you have to do and you get resentful.
And you grow to like just hate running. This happens to so many people. I want to encourage you instead to fall in love with running, and fall in love with all of the amazing benefits that running does provide for you. The adrenaline, the dopamine that you get, you know, people that run regularly are just happier than other people than normal people.
I always say that runners are a little abnormal, and it’s fine. I love it. I like being abnormal, because the norm is to be overweight, and miserable. And unhappy. Like I don’t want that. I want to be abnormal. How about you?
Number six, love yourself unconditionally. This is like stop beating yourself up. If you make a mistake, or if you fail or when things don’t go your way. Practice positive self talk, have your own back. Love yourself unconditionally means without condition, meaning loving yourself, no matter what, no matter what you’ve done in your past, or what you haven’t done. You know, no matter which way the number on the scale is moving. We love ourselves through all of it always.
Number seven is to think, feel and act with purpose. This is oh my gosh, this is a life changing principle right here. This is like taking responsibility for your own thoughts. Taking responsibility for your own feelings and taking responsibility for your actions. And that’s it.
Because you can’t control anything other than your own thoughts, feelings and actions can’t control others. We try to, doesn’t work. And we blame other people for how things are going in our life. We blame other people for how we feel, doesn’t work that way. Take back your power, start creating the life that you want, on purpose. And it all starts with your thoughts and your feelings and the things that you do.
And then the eighth principle, and more we’re gonna talk about today, is be an example of what’s possible. Because here’s the thing, when you live your life, by all of those other principles that I just went through, you will become an example of what’s possible. Being an example of what’s possible means that you’re living your life in such a way that you inspire others to want that for themselves.
So people will look at you and say, hey, if she can do it, so can I. Be an example of what’s possible means being an example to others, obviously, but it also means being an example to yourself, like blowing your own mind at what you are capable of accomplishing. It’s about building confidence in yourself and building trust in yourself.
Strengthening your relationship with yourself. It’s about having this inner knowing and this confidence that you can do anything that you want that truly anything is possible. Being an example of what’s possible is about finding the edges of your comfort zone and then going beyond them. Right it’s about always becoming more whatever that looks like for you.
So maybe for you, it’s, you know, you have a lot of weight to lose. Or maybe you want to run an ultra marathon. Or maybe you want to climb a mountain, or write a book, or start a business, whatever your big, audacious goal is that you have for yourself. This is what we’re talking about, it’s about being an example of what’s possible by accomplishing what you feel might be impossible.
I want to give you a couple examples of what this looks like. The first one is my son, Colin. So Colin, to me, is an inspiration. And he is a perfect example of what’s possible. So Colin has always been a bigger kid. And, you know, earlier this year, he finally came to me and asked for help losing weight. He always struggled with his weight, it was really hard for him during high school and things like that.
And after high school, even, he’s just 21. So he’s still young. And to be, you know, overweight, at that age is tough, okay. And I always wanted to help him, but I never pushed it with him. You know, I knew that. When he was ready, he would come to me. And he did. So I started coaching him and the first thing he did, is that he made this commitment to himself that he was going to go all in, he had this commitment level, like I’ve never seen anybody else. It was awesome.
He had his vision for who he wanted to be. And he would always tell me, like future Colin wants to look like this. And future Colin is going to have these clothes. So he had this vision of himself, and he was all in on who he was going to be no matter what. Like, this kid was like, determined to make this thing work.
And he had a lot of weight to lose, he had 100 pounds he wanted to lose. But he went into it into this whole thing. And, you know, obviously, you know, I was helping him. I was coaching him through all of this, you know, I taught him all these principles that I just went over with you.
And he started adopting them. And he started practicing them. And he did, he lost over 100 pounds this year. And he did it in a way that, frankly, just is so inspirational to me. He adopted this mindset of I’m going to lose 100 pounds, no matter what, no matter how long it takes, I’m going to make this work, it is going to happen. This is like, damn, this is a solid commitment level. Okay.
And because his commitment was so solid, when I asked him about this recently, he was like, yeah, losing the weight was just it was effortless. It’s because he just was like all in. And when you have that sort of a mental attitude, and you’re so committed to becoming this other person, you know, what you do becomes easy.
Today, he’s down like 110 pounds total, he feels so good about himself. And he did it. That’s not a magical formula. He just did it by practicing these principles. That’s it. So Colin, to me, is an amazing example of what’s possible. He decided. He made a decision that he was going to be this future. Colin, he is that person today. He did it by practicing these principles. That’s it. Okay.
Now, today, he inspires a lot of people, people are always coming up to him and asking him because it’s dramatic when you lose 100 pounds. Like that’s dramatic, right? And people see him. It’s kind of funny, he works or used to work in the customer service department of this organization.
And somebody came in from the warehouse and was like, who’s the new guy in customer service? And they’re like, that’s Colin. He’s been working here for like three years. And it’s like, oh, my god that’s Colin?! How? Like, they couldn’t believe it. They thought it was a new breed that looked like a different person.
But he is an amazing example of what’s possible and he inspires people. People look at him and they’re just like, wow, they’re blown away. But he’s an example of what is possible. If he can do it, other people can do it.
I had a similar experience this year. I didn’t lose 100, I lost 40 pounds, which has been, you know, amazing for me, okay? It wasn’t easy. Losing 40 pounds requires a daily commitment. And I knew that I had to have that same all in attitude every day if I was gonna make this work for me.
And, you know, I’ve talked about my weight loss a lot in here on the podcast here, and today I’m at my ideal weight, okay, I’ve lost the 40 pounds, I’m in my ideal weight and staying there is easy, it doesn’t require any effort at all.
I didn’t do this by going on some whack diet. I didn’t do it by staying in my comfort zone. I didn’t do it by beating myself up every time the scale like went up, because it does go up sometimes. You know, I didn’t do it by hating on myself all the time, I did it by just following the principles that I’ve laid out here, at least to the best of my ability.
And there’s other parts of my life where I’ve practiced these exact same principles to accomplish big things. You know, I use these to train for and have a successful marathon. Recently, I’ve been following these same principles to train for and run my 50k, which is coming up next weekend.
So I’m eating real food, I’ve been embracing the discomfort I’ve been loving myself unconditionally. I’ve practiced running because I love it. And every day I work on thinking feeling and acting with purpose like, so I just take all these principles and apply them to everything that I do.
My plan for next weekend is to run this ultra marathon which is 50k, 31 miles, fasted. So nothing to eat before, no fuel during, no calories, just using my own body fat, which gives me all the fuel that I need for an event like this.
So this is not something you just wake up and do it. You don’t just like go, hey, I think I’m gonna run 50k tomorrow, without eating any calories or anything like that. No, that’s not going to work. I promise you. It takes time to train and it takes time to turn yourself into an efficient fat burner.
But that’s exactly what I’ve set out to do this year. I have this goal to run a 50k fasted, I’m going to do it next weekend. And if somebody asked me like, well, how do you do that? How do you prepare for something like that? Like, what do you eat? What do you not eat? It’s not about what I’m eating or what I’m not eating. I mean, it’s a little bit about that. It’s, but there’s all these other things that I have to do. Like, there’s eight principles I’m following here.
Right, but I’m doing this because it’s hard. I’m doing this because it’s a big challenge. And I’m doing it so that I can be an example for you. So that I can be an example of what’s possible for you. Because if I can do this, there’s things that you’re probably thinking, oh, well, I can do this half marathon or a marathon or whatever it is.
And listen, I’m not special. I don’t do this perfectly. I have setbacks, I face challenges every day, I experience failure, I struggle just like everyone else. But you know what I do? I just keep going, I just keep doing the deal, no matter what. I am 54 years old now.
And earlier this year, I made a decision that I was going to get myself into the best shape of my life at 54 years old. And guess what? I am today. I can look myself in the mirror and say, damn, I’m in really good shape. I feel amazing about myself.
And you know, I’m like buying new clothes, they look great on me. I don’t have to wear baggy clothes. And I have all this confidence about how I look. And this is something I’ve always struggled with. I’ve always been sort of like, uncomfortable about how I looked. But I wanted to be an example to myself of what I could do that anything is possible.
That if I wanted to get in the best shape of my life at 54 years old that I could do that, then I could be whoever I want it to be, it doesn’t matter how old I am. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done in the past or what I’ve been able to do or not been able to do. Doesn’t matter how I’ve thought about myself in the past, that this is what I wanted for myself.
Now, I want it to be an example for you. And for myself. Like I said, I’m nothing special. I’m just like you. If I can do it, you can too and that’s the way I try to live my life every day. This is my mission, my mission in life is to be an example of what’s possible. And I try to do big things. To do big, challenging things, so that I can fulfill that mission so that I can be an example of what’s possible to you.
I want you to say, man, if Patrick can do it, so can I, because he’s just a normal person like me. And you know, I’m very public about this stuff, I talk about this, I have this podcast, right, I’m in my Facebook group. And I teach this and I have clients, and this is my profession. This is my, this is my calling, right?
Being an example of what’s possible is my mission and my calling, I just feel called to do this. And I share all this very publicly. But you don’t have to be public. You don’t have to be like a leader, to be an example to others.
People see you, they see how you live your life. They see your integrity, they see your dedication, they see the commitment that you make, to getting these results that you’ve that you want to accomplishing big things, they see your commitment to yourself, they see you becoming more being an example of what’s possible doesn’t mean you have to be some leader or public figure.
When you live your life by these principles, when you become more, people notice. I promise you that you will notice. I love my life today. More than any other time in my life. Honestly, I love where I am right now in this moment. And I used to dream about the past a lot. The good old days, oh, if I could just go back to the 80s when I was in high school, and everything was so cool.
I didn’t have as many responsibilities and my life was so much easier. And we had all this fun, whatever. And of course, the music and the hair and everything, right. And I used to just really pine for the old days, and I just don’t do that anymore. I don’t have to dream about the past. Because my present is so freakin good.
Listen, I do work that I love. This work that I do is sharing these ideas with you. This fulfills me, helping people get results, changing people’s lives every single day, this, I love this work, it fills me up. It brings me so much joy. You know, I get to make my own schedule, I get to run every day, if I feel like it. I have all these amazing, deep and meaningful relationships with people who I truly love and who I truly care about.
You know, I’m creating the exact life that I’ve always wanted for myself, and I’m creating it on purpose. It’s not just happening to me, I’m creating this life, I’m making it happen. And every day, I kind of blow my own mind with how amazing my life is, like some days, it’s just, I feel so good.
It almost feels like my heart is gonna burst out of my chest. I feel so good about just my life. And this is not bragging, this is not about ego. This isn’t about me boasting about how awesome I am. No, it’s about me being in integrity with myself.
You know, I have this vision for who I want to be. And then every day I just try to act in alignment with that vision. That’s all. I do it by practicing these eight principles. That’s it. I practice these principles in all my affairs. In everything that I do, I’m thinking about these things.
Now, these eight principles, they’re not just something you learn. You might be listening to the podcast, you’re like, cool, I learned those eight things, awesome. And then you just go on with your day. It’s not like that. There’s not something like you hear once or you read once or you learn.
You have to live them. You have to live them every single day. And, and you practice them. Right when I say practice, it’s like any other kind of practice, like practicing yoga. Practicing yoga is a challenge.
I’ve done a lot of yoga, and I’m not very good at it. I mean, I’ve gotten better, but I don’t do it perfectly. And I don’t practice these principles perfectly either. Like far from it. I have my own, you know, anxiety, fears, challenges, and I work through these things every day. The difference is that I keep showing up.
I don’t let those challenges, fears, anxieties stop me from becoming who I want to be. I want to leave you with this thought, imagine, if we were all examples of what’s possible. Imagine if you follow these principles, and you created an amazing life for yourself. And you inspired one other person to do the same.
And then imagine if that person inspired someone else. Imagine if you’re an example for someone, they became an example for someone else, and on and on and on what an amazing world this would be right?
This is my hope that you become the person you’ve always wanted to be. And then you inspire someone else to do the same. Imagine the transformation you could have in your family and your community and in the world. You totally got this, my friends, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you 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.
The only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, how they feel, or what they …
Continue Reading about 48. Think, Feel, and Act With Purpose →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 48 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. How are you doing today? I am doing fantastic. Today I want to talk about how to think, feel and act with purpose. So we’re still talking about our Running Lean manifesto, the principles that we choose to live our life by here in the Running Lean community.
And here’s something interesting, the only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, you cannot control how they feel, and you cannot control what they do. No matter how hard you try.
The problem is that most people don’t understand how all this works. Most people just feel terrible all the time. And they blame it on other people. They blame it on the outside circumstances, they blame it on everything and everyone except for it themselves.
But here’s the thing, if you want anything different in your life, anything different than what you already have, you have to look at what is actually creating those results in your life. If you’re getting good results or bad results in your life, whatever it is you’re getting, it’s always been created by your own thoughts, feelings and actions.
For example, losing weight and keeping it off. It requires that you learn how to think, feel, and act with purpose. So don’t worry, I’m gonna explain how all of this works today here on the podcast, so that you can start applying this to your own life so you can start getting the results that you really want.
But first, come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing community of runners called the Running Lean community. It is a supportive group, energetic group and encouraging group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast, we got this big challenge that we just started on Thanksgiving Day.
And it’s called running through the holidays, it’s not too late for you to get in on the action. Just come and join us. What we’re doing is we’re running at least a mile a day, every day from Thanksgiving Day, through New Year’s Day. Running is an amazing stress reliever. And who doesn’t want a stress reliever this time of the year? We could all use a little reduction in stress.
So come check us out the Running Lean community on Facebook, join us for the running through the holidays challenge is going to be fun, we are all doing it together. We’re challenging ourselves to show up every day and run at least a mile from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. It’ll be fun, come check it out.
Okay, like I said, we are working our way through the Running Lean manifesto. And today I want to talk about, think, feel and act with purpose. So remember the Running Lean manifesto, this is a set of guiding principles that we can live our life by. And if you adopt these principles into your life, if you use these principles as your north star, then you can have an amazing life.
That’s it. It’s that simple. Just do what I say. You can have an amazing life. It really is that simple. It’s not easy. It’s simple. But so today we’re talking about how to think, feel and act with purpose because most of us don’t understand that we can do this and that this is an option for us.
I think this is absolutely life changing. This one principle alone has changed my life more than anything else I have done in my life like this has changed so much for me. And I’m gonna get into why and how this works and everything in just a minute.
But I just want you to know that of all the principles I’ve been talking about here. If you just adopt this one principle, I guarantee you that you will start getting different, more positive results in your life, like your life will continue to get infinitely better if you adopt this one principle and if you practice it and if you get good at it, okay. And the principle is to think, feel and act with purpose. If you get good at doing that, you’re unstoppable, you become super powerful.
So here’s how this works. Here, I’m gonna break this down a little bit for you here. Most people live their life, as if life is just happening to them. Like they have no control, like they are living at the effect of other people and other circumstances. They have no control over their thoughts. It feels their thoughts feel automatic, they have no control over their emotions, their feelings feel automatic.
And a lot of times they feel like they don’t even have control over what they do. So a lot of people will say, I don’t even know I just started eating all the Oreos, it’s like, no, you know, you chose to do that, like you actually have control over that. But they feel like they have no self control.
So for most people, their thoughts, feelings and actions feel out of control, like they are not in control of those things. Most people feel like they can’t get what they want. And so they blame everything but themselves. They blame other people, or circumstances, they have reasons, they have stories, they have excuses for why things just don’t go their way, or why they can’t stick to their diet plan or why they can’t stick to their running schedule.
Most people just think if they could control all these things outside of themselves, if people would just do what I think they should do, if work wasn’t so stressful all the time. You know, if everything around me would just like fall into place, then I could feel good about myself, then I could get the results that I want.
And most people live their whole lives this way, trying to manipulate control, change everything but themselves. And it’s frustrating, because it doesn’t work. The only thing this does is it causes you to feel terrible, all the time. If you try to spend your whole life trying to controlling the uncontrollable, the things that you absolutely cannot control.
If you spend your whole life trying to manipulate and control those things, you are just going to spend your whole life feeling miserable. Right, the only things you can control are your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That’s it, you cannot control anything else, period. End of story.
When you accept this, when you accept this universal truth it is incredibly freeing because it changes everything. It changes how you see things, it changes how you think about things, it changes how you feel about things, changes what you do, and it absolutely will change the results that you get in your life.
It changes how you experience other people, and how you experience everything that happens in the world around you. When you learn how to take control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions, anything becomes possible for you, there’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing that you aren’t willing to experience.
So I’ve talked about this before, but I want to break this down a little bit for you. So that we have a good understanding of the foundation of how this all works. So we have these things that happen in our life. We call these things circumstances, circumstances, things that happen in our life are always, always neutral.
Nothing can happen in your life, and have any kind of meaning to you until you assign meaning to it. Nothing happens in the world that affects you unless you first have a thought about it. Circumstances: the things that are happening outside of you, you know, stuff your boss says at work, stuff your spouse says to you, what the kids are doing.
None of that stuff means anything until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. Your circumstances are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until you tell yourself a story about what this thing that’s happening, what that means to you, okay? This is very important to understand.
Your circumstances are always 100% of the time neutral until you have a thought about it. Okay, now, once you have a thought about something, then that thing has meaning for you. You know, if your spouse speaks to you, and says some words to you that cause you to feel, you know, upset or whatever. And then you’re assigning meaning to what those words mean to you, okay?
But you know, the circumstances that this person is just saying words, okay? But once you have a thought, then this thing has meaning to you. Your thoughts are just sentences that you’re saying in your mind about something.
That’s it, we have like 60,000 thoughts a day. So basically, you’re saying like 60,000 sentences to yourself, in your mind over and over again. So your thoughts about your circumstances, you’re gonna have all kinds of thoughts about what’s going on in your life. We do we think about the past, we think about the future, we think about what’s happening right now.
We are cars, our minds are constantly racing, we constantly have all these thoughts. And they are always your thoughts. Your thoughts are based on your own experiences, your own beliefs, your past experiences, your values, your model of the world, we all see the world differently based on our beliefs, past experiences, our own values, all that stuff.
We all create our own version of reality, if you will. So your thoughts about a circumstance might be different than somebody else’s. Which is the truth? Is it yours or theirs? I love this example of two people standing at the ocean, you know, the waves are crashing, and they’re both standing on the beach, and they’re looking over the ocean.
And one person looks at the ocean, and it fills them with fear. Because this person had a near drowning accident, when they were a child, they almost drowned in the ocean. And so the ocean is a dangerous place to them, the ocean brings a feeling of dread and fear.
The person standing next to this person surfs every day and loves the ocean, it’s there. It’s the most magical place for them, it’s where they feel the most alive. So there’s these two examples of two different people experiencing the exact same thing: the ocean is neutral.
But for one, it has a completely different meaning. The ocean is a dangerous, terrible place and should be avoided at all costs. And for the other person experiencing the exact same ocean. It is beautiful, magical, and fills them with delight, and should be utilized every single day and shouldn’t be experienced every single day.
So this is how we each have our own model of the world, we each have our own version of reality. So your thoughts about a circumstance will be different than others. So which is true, yours or theirs? Well, both, both are true for them. And neither one is true. There isn’t one universal truth.
So if you believe it, then it’s true for you. So if you really believe something, if you really believe the ocean is dangerous, then that is going to be your truth. That is what’s true for you. If this other person believes with their whole heart that the ocean is amazing and enjoys it, then that’s what they’re going to believe. And that’s what’s true for them. Okay.
So this is just our thoughts. We have circumstances that happen in our life, and they don’t mean anything really until we assign meaning to them. Okay? Now, once we have thoughts about our circumstances, we will typically get an emotion based on those thoughts.
So your thoughts cause your feelings, your thoughts cause you to experience an emotion, always, you cannot experience an emotion without a thought first, every emotion you feel is first created by a thought in your mind. So you think a thought and then you feel something, you think a thought in your mind, and then you feel it in your body.
That’s where we experience our emotions, we feel them in our body. So you don’t feel something without a thought about it. You might experience something you have a quick thought about and then you have this emotion, it happens very quickly. You think it’s like automatic, you think it’s the circumstance outside of you that’s causing this emotional response. But it’s really a thought in your head.
It’s always a thought in your head that’s causing your emotional response. It’s never what that person is saying or doing or anything else like that. It’s always a thought about it. This is really critical to understand because you want to catch yourself when you have an emotion.
When you start to feel like a negative emotion. Like let’s say you’re feeling stress. quickly ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What is the thought that I’m having that’s causing me to feel this way? And just start to create some awareness around that. I’ll talk more about that in just a minute about what we can do to start to change some of these thoughts and feelings that we have, okay?
So circumstances in our life are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until we assign meaning to them. And we do that by a thought we have a thought about something. And those thoughts cause us to feel an emotion. Now our feelings, our emotions drive our actions, we always take actions based on our emotional state.
You know, if we feel motivated, we’ll probably do this thing. If we feel frustrated, we’re probably gonna do something different. We’re gonna do this thing over here. You know, if you find yourself staying in the kitchen, binge eating Oreos, and you can’t figure out how it happened.
Know that it’s because you had some thoughts and feelings. And those thoughts and feelings are causing you to take the action of binging on Oreos, okay? It wasn’t what happened at work. It wasn’t what your spouse said to you that caused you to eat Oreos, it’s because you had thoughts and feelings about what your spouse said, or you had thoughts and things about what happened at work.
Okay, the action that you take standing there eating Oreos, might feel totally out of your control. Like it’s just happening, unconsciously. But the truth is, it’s always under your control, you just haven’t learned how to take back the control, you just haven’t learned to recognize what’s actually happening.
And this is so crucial to all this thought work is to have awareness of what’s happening, okay? Because it’s not your circumstances causing you to feel this way. It’s not, it’s not the stress at work. It’s not what’s happening at work that’s causing you to binge eat. It’s your thoughts and feelings about work.
So when you take action, you get results, every time you get some kind of result in your life, it’s because of some actions that you’re taking, okay. And if you’re taking actions based on positive emotions, you know, you’re taking actions that are probably in alignment with your goals, like sticking to your food plan, you’re sticking to your running schedule. So no matter what happens, like you’re probably going to crush those goals, because you’re, you’re sticking to those things no matter what.
But if you constantly take action from a place of negative emotion, you know, if you’re always feeling frustrated and stressed out, you’re probably going to take different actions or no action, you know, you might just go sit on the couch watching Netflix instead of run, you might just say screw it and eat all the Oreos, instead of sticking to your food plan.
Those actions you’re taking, the things you’re doing, the behaviors you’re engaging in, you’re doing because of how you feel you’re doing it based on your emotional state, which is caused by your thoughts, right?
So a lot of times, we blame our results on our circumstances. I can’t lose weight, because I have this stressful job. You know, I can’t stick to my plan, because my spouse doesn’t support me. Those things are not true. You know, your spouse might say some things or do some things, but you have control over your thoughts about those things you have control over how you feel about those things.
And then what you do, the actions that you take or don’t take, okay? Circumstances are always neutral. Until we have a thought about it, our thoughts cause our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions. And it’s from taking actions that we get results or don’t get results. Okay, so that’s how this all works.
So any kind of result that you want in your life is basically created with a thought first, you have to have a thought about it. First, whether it’s a positive result or a negative result, it’s coming from your thoughts. So here’s an example of how this all works.
I want to I know, I’m kind of like talking about these concepts. And this may be foreign to you, you may have never heard of any of this stuff before. And I want to give you an example of what this looks like. So here’s a statement that I hear all the time, like literally every day I hear this from someone.
Work is stressful. And so I can’t stick to my food plan. Work is stressful. Well, in reality work does not cause you to feel stress. Okay, it’s your thoughts about work to cause you to feel stress. Stress is an emotion, right? That’s a feeling. It’s always caused by a thought.
So what is the circumstance? What happened at work, to cause you to feel stress or you know, to cause you to choose to feel stress? Oh, well, my boss only gave me two weeks to finish this big project. Okay, so that’s the circumstance, right? The boss gave me two weeks to finish a big project.
And, okay, well, what are your thoughts about that? Well, my thoughts are that she doesn’t support me, she doesn’t care about me, she should do things differently. These are all just thoughts. Right? About the circumstance “project is due in two weeks”.
We can all agree that that is true, but doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just those thoughts that cause you to feel stress, she doesn’t care about me, she doesn’t support me, she should do things differently. Right? That’s what’s causing you to feel stressed because you have thoughts about it.
And so what do you do when you feel stressed? You get home, and you eat a bunch of Oreos, because you just don’t feel like doing this work. Because you’re all stressed out, right? Now, here’s another way of looking at this, you might have somebody else on your team that says, oh, we only have to work two weeks to get this work done. Great. I work best on a short timeline, let’s do this.
So they might feel excited. Those thoughts like “I work best on a short timeline”, that would make them feel excited and motivated, to get the work to get cracking on this project. So that would fire them up, they would start taking action right away, they start checking off things off their task list, you know, they get motivated, and they just jump right in and start doing these things.
Same exact circumstance, you have two weeks to get this project done. Two different people with different thoughts, different feelings, different actions, different results. Okay. And I hear this so, so often, you know, work is really stressful. So I can’t stick to my food plan, you know, I have all this stress at work.
So when I get home, I just don’t feel like eating anything healthy. So instead, I just open up the pantry and start eating all the Oreos. So in your mind, stress at work is causing this thing you’re eating Oreos, like that’s what’s causing it. But in reality, you are causing the stress you’re feeling based on your own thoughts about work.
And because you’re feeling stressed out, you’re choosing an action, not in alignment with your goals, you’re choosing this action of binge eating Oreos. Based on that negative emotion, that negative emotion that you created with your thoughts.
You always take action based on how you feel. And if you always feel stressed out, you’re probably gonna do a lot of binge eating, you probably never lose weight. Those are the results you’re gonna get. If you’re always stressed out, it’s probably going to be very hard for you to lose weight, right, because you can be doing a lot of emotional eating.
But when you learn to take control of your thoughts and feelings and actions, when you can feel excited, and you can feel motivated, you’ll start to do things differently. You’ll want to stick to your plan, you’ll come home and eat a salad and a piece of salmon instead of the Oreos. And you’ll start to get the results that you want.
You know, you’ll keep losing weight. This whole concept, though, of thinking, feeling and acting with purpose, it’s not the norm. I get it like this is not something we’re taught. Can you imagine, though, if we taught this to our children, like how amazing would that be?
If I had learned this, I only learned this in the last couple of years. But if I had learned this 20, 30, 40 years ago, how much different my life would be. Because since I’ve learned this, my life has changed dramatically for the better.
But we go through our whole lives thinking that we can’t control our thoughts and feelings like all this stuff is just happening to us, right? You blame the results that you get on your external circumstances, whatever good results, bad results.
And we’re always living at the effect of our surroundings. We blame others, we have all kinds of excuses why things don’t work for us. We have these stories. And when you do this, you’re just giving away all your power. You become powerless. I want you to take back your power.
And you do this by taking control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions. Stop trying to manipulate and control other people and circumstances outside of your control. That does not work. I have tried this. Believe me it does not work.
I was always blaming other people for how I felt. I was always trying to control what other people were doing or saying or thinking so that like I could feel better about myself. You know, if my wife would say, if my wife would only say these things in this way, then I’d feel better. I’d like her more, I’d feel more confident or more secure in this relationship, you know, she’d only do things this way, then I’d feel more loving to her.
But since she’s not, then you know, I’m gonna hold back, my love. I was always trying to control her, manipulate her and change what she was doing. And you know what that got me? I felt miserable all the time, didn’t change, and she never changed, she’s not going to change, you can’t change other people.
I wish we could, that would be amazing, but we can’t. But when I finally accepted this, this universal truth, that I could not change anything else, that I could control my own thoughts, feelings and action, though, when I accepted this, I was free, I started to see everything in my life differently.
It was like seeing the matrix. Like for the first time in my life, I could, I could think, thoughts that would cause me to feel positive emotions. And I would take these positive actions based on that, and I would start getting these positive results, it was crazy.
You know, like, sticking to my eating plan got way easier. You know, I couldn’t lose weight. Until I got the mindset piece right. I finally started to lose weight when I understood that my emotional eating wasn’t caused by what other people were doing. Or my stress outside of me, that I was creating all of this with my own thoughts and feelings.
But I’ve started to feel more at peace, I still do, I still feel so much more at peace now, because I understand what’s happening in my mind. And I practice this every day, I’m not perfect at it. It’s a daily practice, I’m always aware that my thoughts create my feelings. And my feelings drive my actions.
I’m always, always always aware of that. Because here’s the thing, your thoughts create the reality that you’re living in everything that you have right now in your life, or everything that you don’t have, as a result of a thought it was first a thought, like, if you think I want to run a marathon, yeah, I can do that.
I want to do that. I’m going to run a marathon, that’s going to make you feel motivated, you’re going to train consistently, and then like, bam, you’re gonna cross the finish line. Result achieved, and you did it because you kept thinking, I can do it, I want to do that. I’m going to do that.
You know, your current weight. Whatever you weigh right now, is the direct result of your thinking. Well, if you keep thinking thoughts, like ‘I can’t lose weight, it never works for me, I’m always going to be this weight, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. It’s easier for other people, I always gain the weight back.’
If you keep thinking these thoughts over and over and over again, this is going to cause you to create an emotional state for yourself. You’re just going to feel terrible, frustrated, sad, dejected, you’re going to feel like a failure. You’re going to feel like you’re not good enough. And when you feel that way, what do you do?
You got it, you come home, and you eat a whole bag of Oreos, because that’s what feels good. And that’s, you know, why bother? And then when you do that, when you eat the Oreos, instead of eating what you know you should be eating, What results do you get, you get the exact results, you kept focusing on those thoughts.
You kept thinking over and over again, that’s what you get, it is hard. It doesn’t work for you. You can’t lose the weight, you always gain the weight back. You can’t do it, it doesn’t work. So what I want you to do, is I want you to just start being aware of your thoughts.
Anytime you experience an emotion anytime you experience a negative emotion, so you start to feel stressed out or bored or frustrated, lonely, sad, ashamed, you know, angry. Whatever emotion you’re experiencing, that should be an alarm that goes off and and you want to look at your thoughts.
What is the thought that’s causing me to feel this emotion? Okay, that’s step one. Be aware of your thoughts, what thoughts are you habitually thinking? And then notice that those thoughts are causing these emotions in you, okay? When you feel that way, when you feel that emotion, what do you want to do? What do you do or what do you not do? What actions are you taking or not taking?
Because instead of reacting to the world around you, I want you to respond thoughtfully with intention with purpose. Awareness is the key though. You have to begin to think, with purpose, with intention that will help you to feel with purpose and intention. And then you will act with purpose and intention.
And when you’re acting with purpose and intention, that’s when you start to get the results that you want in your life, you can become super powerful. You can get anything you want, honestly. So whether you know it or not, you are always creating the results that you’re getting in your life. Right now.
You’re always creating results with your thoughts, feelings and actions. They may not be the results that you want, but you’re creating them. Negative thoughts, feelings and actions will produce negative results. Positive thoughts, feelings and actions will produce positive results.
So decide what you want. And then create it on purpose. Begin to choose your thoughts with intention, begin to create your feelings, and begin to take action with purpose, think, feel and act with purpose. It’s a daily practice, but you can do it.
You got this, my friends. All right, join us in the Facebook group for the running through the holidays challenge we’re going to be running every single day, at least a mile. From Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. We’re gonna run our way through the holidays and we’re going to feel good, we’re going to slide into 2021 Feeling damn good about ourselves. As always, lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
I think we’d all agree that running is hard. But for a lot of us, running can also be a very stressful, anxiety-inducing activity. I fell in love with running early on but then something …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 44 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. I think we would all agree that running is hard. But for a lot of us running can also be very stressful, and very anxiety inducing.
I fell in love with running early on. But then something happened that made me almost want to break up with running for good. So in this episode, I’m talking about running simply for the love of running without any other hidden agendas. I believe we should all run because we love it. Because if you don’t love it, what’s the point?
But first, if you like this podcast and you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic fun group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast and I have a big announcement this weekend I am doing something I’ve never done before.
I am hosting a epic training event that you do not want to miss. It is this Sunday, October the I’m sorry, November the first and it’s called getting lean, how to transform your body into a lean fat burning machine so you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it all last a lifetime.
I’m basically sharing my six part coaching framework for becoming a lean running machine. This is the exact framework that I use with my coaching clients. I’m pulling back the curtain. I’m sharing it all with you. Again, that is this Sunday, November the first, I can’t believe it’s November already. Sunday, November the first 4pm Eastern time.
Just go to Facebook, type in Running Lean community, you’ll find us you’ll see the the event that I created for this training that I’m going to be doing. It’s all free to join, just come check us out. It’d be really, really cool.
All right, let’s talk about why I’m talking about this subject today. So today, I’m talking about one of the principles of the Running Lean manifesto. So a few months back, I created the Running Lean manifesto, which is a set of guiding principles.
A manifesto is basically a set of values to live your life by these principles that I laid out are my guiding principles. They are my North Star. And I want them to become your north star as well. I want them to become your guiding principles as well.
A manifesto is a good way to see where you are. It helps to give your life meaning and purpose. I believe that we should all have a manifesto to live by. The Running Lean manifesto is this: number one, eat real food. Number two, live vibrantly. Number three, thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And number eight is be an example of what’s possible.
So I’ve been sharing these the last few episodes. And I’ve got a few more here. I’m trying to take a little bit of a deep dive into each one of these principles. And my goal sharing this with you is that I hope you adopt these as your guiding principles as well.
So the Running Lean community is a vibrant, growing community of passionate runners and we share common goals. And this mentor manifesto was really like our collective Northstar. It’s principles that can drive us forward together. It’s a blueprint that we can all use to become the best versions of ourselves together.
So today, I’m sharing the fifth principle from the Running Lean manifesto run because you love it. So I’m going to start by talking about why I first got into running. So some years ago back in 2003. I was very overweight. I was sick. I was drinking too much. I actually was dying mostly with cancer. And this scared the crap out of me.
I made this decision though, and I obviously, you know, got better. You know, I had surgeries and got through cancer and all that stuff. But I made this commitment to myself that I was going to try to be as healthy as possible. And so I changed my diet, I stopped drinking and, you know, really the, the thing that really propelled me into being the healthiest person that I could be was running.
And the first thing I did with running is that I set a goal for myself and I wanted to run a local race here in Cincinnati, the Thanksgiving Day race, it’s one of the oldest Thanksgiving Day races in the country. It’s been going on for like 110 years or something like that. And it’s a 10k, no big deal, right.
But 6.2 miles running that far without stopping seemed impossible to me. But I was determined to make that happen. And so I started training, and I remember training in the fall. But this time of the year, you know, it’s the fall here in Cincinnati right now. And we have these beautiful leaves the change colors on the trees, there’s leaves on the ground, there’s this crisp, clear air, it’s cooler out, and it’s just, it’s a cool time to be outside running.
And so this was like my first time out there being alone running. And it just felt so good. I really did fall in love with running at this time. It was hard. Yeah. And I had to dig deep, but I had to push myself and I had to run farther than I’ve ever run before.
But I had this goal in mind, I was gonna run 6.2 miles without stopping. So I was training for this little fun little 10k. And I did it, I finished it. And in that process I became more. And it really was a jumping off place for me because training for this 10k taught me that I could do hard things. And I wanted to see what else I was capable of.
So a couple of years later, I decided I was going to run a marathon. And I started training for the Flying Pig marathon, which is our local marathon. It’s a great race. Super fun, by the way, hard, hilly, but fun. So I was training for the 2006 Flying Pig. And I trained on my own. I downloaded some sort of training plan from the internet.
And I gotta tell you, that was very challenging to do all the training for a marathon on my own, I really had no idea what I was doing. But I was reading everything I could. And my longest run for that marathon, the longest run I was able to do was only 16 miles because during the process, I was overtraining.
And I ended up getting injured and I had like stress fractures in my tibias. And the doctor was like, you can’t run and I’m like, well, I’m still going to run. I took a couple of weeks off. But I never got to the 18 and 20 mile runs because I had this injury and I had to take some time off.
Anyway, I really wanted to do this thing like I had trained for it. And there was like nothing was going to stop me from finishing this race. Okay. I loved the training though. I loved being out there. And I was by myself. I loved being out there by myself running.
Again, I was like falling in love, deeply in love with running. And then the day came for the marathon. I was super nervous. And I just remember, during the race, like during the run, I was, you know, going through all these neighborhoods around Cincinnati, and I just remember like, everybody like being so happy and cheerful and cheering us on.
And it just felt so amazing. And then crossing that finish line was like one of the most amazing, transformational moments of my life. I cannot describe the feelings of elation, and joy and accomplishment when I crossed the finish line of my first marathon.
In that moment, I knew immediately that I wanted to do this all the time, like I was going to run this marathon every year. And that’s what I set out to do. And I did and I became a marathon runner. You know, this became part of who I was. And, you know, I just kept falling deeper in love with running. It became you know, part of my identity.
I eventually did something very smart, which is I joined a running group, a local running group which changed everything for me because now I had people to hold me accountable. You know, I had this group that was going to show up a couple of times a week and meet and run.
We would do hill work, speed work, interval training, we would do these long runs on the weekends. And I needed to show up. So I had this accountability. I made friends in the group. In fact, some of the people that I was in this group with had become my lifelong best friends.
You know, I was inspired by watching other people do hard things. I wanted me to do more. It encouraged me to see other people doing these big epic, ultra runs and other things and are running faster and I wanted to become faster. I wanted to run with the faster people.
You know, I had these goals of like PR in every single race, I wanted to always, you know, improve my time, every single race. So I started pushing myself faster and pushing myself to go farther. I started doing triathlons. Then I did an Ironman, I started doing ultra marathons and then did like a 50 miler and 100 miler, and this went on for years.
At some point, running started to become less of a love and more stressful. I was always competing with myself and with other people. I was always comparing myself to other people, or maybe to who I used to be. I was always trying to push myself to go faster, further.
And I started to kind of get burned out by the whole thing, I started to have some nagging injuries. And I was putting my body under a lot of stress, all the time. And I fell into this kind of pattern of chronic cardio, which I’ve talked about before, which is where we run hard enough to be over our aerobic threshold.
So we get into that place where we start to stress out our body, but not super hard, like where we’re sprinting. And so it’s this kind of no man’s land of like, you know, it’s too hard to do for a long period of time, but it’s not hard enough to do for. To make it easy. In other words, like it’s just you’re in this like stressful state of running, and called chronic cardio where you just are putting a lot of stress on your body.
And I was putting myself under a lot of stress, I felt like I had to run like running was something I had to do. And all this time, I was using running as a way to help me lose weight, or maintain my weight at least. And I was eating a plant based diet, I was running a lot. And I was always afraid to ever ease up on the running because I’d gain the weight.
And I saw this happen every single year. After every fall marathon I did, I would scale back on the mileage for a few months, you know, like we do kind of the offseason, so to speak, right. But I would always like gain 5 or 10 pounds.
And this isn’t just me, a lot of people have the same experience. And then once the next spring marathon training season started in the summertime in January or whatever, I would start to lose some of the weight but not all of it.
And so this was a cycle for me, you know, year after year, I would eventually find myself gaining weight not being able to lose all of it until I was like 40 pounds overweight. And running was no longer working to help me lose the weight or maintain my weight. I couldn’t run enough to lose the weight that I was gaining. I was trying though I was desperately trying.
But here’s the thing, you can’t outrun a bad diet, say this all the time. And just know that you are not alone. I hear every single day I hear from people who share this same kind of story. They run all the time, and they can’t lose weight or they started running and they started gaining weight.
And if you’re listening to this right now and you’re kind of nodding your head, then just know that you are not alone. You are one of the millions of people who have tried and tried unsuccessfully to use running as a way to just lose weight or maintain your weight and it kind of works for a little while until it doesn’t.
And here’s why. I’m gonna explain kind of what’s going on here. There are many, many reasons why running is not a very effective way to lose weight. I’m just going to share a couple with you here. Number one, when you run, your appetite increases, you know your body’s always trying to maintain homeostasis, maintain kind of neutral.
And when you run and you burn off a lot of calories and stuff like that, your body’s like, hey, we need to replace those calories. So it increases your appetite. And a lot of times you end up eating more to compensate for the calories that you have, you know, lost during running. And a lot of people overcompensate right, they over eat in that situation.
Also know that running does burn some calories, but not as many as you think. And when you do use running as a way to burn calories, the progress is slow. And it’s kind of minimal. And there’s something very interesting going on here. And there was this study that they did, from 1982 to 1997.
So a long study is a very well controlled metabolic ward study. Actually, there were four different studies done during this time. And they all sort of had the same conclusions. The studies showed significant reductions in resting metabolic rate, after subjects exercised for several weeks at a time.
So when people who want to lose weight who maybe are a little bit overweight, when these people do more than an hour of endurance exercise daily, their resting metabolism actually declines on an average between 5 and 15%. This is crazy, right?
Again, your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis. So when you burn a lot more calories every day, consistently, your body is going to slow your metabolism the way you know the rate at which you burn calories, it’s going to slow your metabolism, so you don’t waste away to nothing and die.
So to think that you’re just going to keep running, and everything else is going to work exactly the same. Like every time you know, you eat 500 calories and you go run five miles, you’re burning 500 calories. Exactly. It just doesn’t work that way. And especially with the resting metabolic rate going down when you exercise more.
So that’s kind of another issue, why it’s very difficult to use running alone as a way to lose weight. Another reason is that runners are notorious carb addicts, right? Runners are known for eating a lot of carbohydrates, right.
And we know that when we eat a lot of carbohydrates, our bodies are in a fat storage mode, our you know, our insulin gets high, and we just can’t let go of the fat, we can’t burn the fat when we’re eating a lot of carbohydrates, we burn the sugar very effectively. And that’s great, you know, but you’re not getting to burn the fat, we’re not putting our body into fat burning mode, we’re staying in fat storage mode, when we keep eating the massive amounts of carbohydrates.
Another thing to consider here is that running is only treating a symptom, you know, you’re trying to burn off excess body fat that’s stored on your body by you know, exercising more. And we’re not really treating the underlying causes of weight gain.
So what is causing the weight gain in the first place? A lot of it has to do with hormonal issues, carbohydrate addiction, there’s mental issues, there’s emotional things going on, there’s issues with overeating. And when you look at all of this, when you look at all these things I just mentioned, you can see why running alone is just not a very effective way to lose weight.
It just isn’t now I have people that will argue with me about this all the time, they will challenge me and tell me I’m wrong. And tell me how by just running, they are able to lose all this weight. And they say it’s all about calories in versus calories out. And if that works for you, and you’ve had some good luck with just like that, whatever. That’s totally awesome. Seriously, nice work.
If you can just cut calories, or, you know, keep eating all these carbs and run more and it helps you to maintain your weight to lose weight, then more power to you keep it up. But for the majority of us, running alone does not work to lose weight period. I have tried this for years.
And I can tell you with 100% conviction that this does not work. And I talk to people literally every single day who say yeah, Patrick, I totally get where you’re coming from. I didn’t know what the problem was either until I figured it out.
Okay, so that was a little tangent I went on just to explain why running is not a great way to lose weight. All right, but all of this stuff that I’m talking about here, I didn’t know all this by the way and in trying to run to lose weight was really stressing me out, you know, I kept running more and more and more, and I kept gaining weight.
You know, my clothes were not fitting me anymore. I was getting close to that 200 pound mark again, which was, you know, something I never want to see again. And I was like, right there. I hated how I looked in the mirror. I was beginning to hate running, because running had failed me.
You know, I thought running was stupid. And it was hard. And it was hard work. It doesn’t work. It was creating all this stress and anxiety for me. And I was thinking I should just break up with running, I should just quit. What is the point seriously?
Maybe my best running days are behind me anyway, so why bother. So this was sort of a dark place I was in, you know, I was ready to break up with running. But then early in 2020, I decided that I was going to do something about my weight. And I knew that running wasn’t helping. And I was running every day for a while there to try to maintain my weight. And it was not working at all.
I needed to change my diet. You know, I needed to figure out how to fix this weight problem. I began learning everything I could about running and weight loss and how it all works together, and began following all these leaders in the field of exercise physiology and sports nutrition. I started reading books, listening to podcasts, I attended seminars, I got all this training, I got training on sports, nutrition and training on weight loss.
And I learned that, you know, weight loss is like 90% diet and 10% exercise, you know, exercise helps a little bit. But really, it’s like almost all diet. So I ditched the carbs. I ditched the plant based diet, and went back to just eating real food. And the weight began melting off of me.
And I started to look good again. And I started to feel good about myself again. And I started to have more energy again. And something else interesting started happening. Running was becoming easier again. And I started to actually enjoy running again, you know, I stopped trying to use running just as like a weight loss tool.
And it became something different for me, I started to run regularly again, running became a very important part of my life again. So one of the reasons why I’m sharing all this with you right now is because I dedicated my life at this point to helping others. I figured this out, and I want to share it with others. And that’s basically how I got here.
You know, running was important to me, it started to become something that I needed to do for my own mental health for my own sanity, you know, running helped me to get through my divorce. It helped me to get through the early days of COVID, you know, through job furloughs and all kinds of other stuff.
And I really began to love my alone time running, it was just me and my thoughts running through the city, running along the Ohio River, running through the parks and old historic neighborhoods here in Cincinnati. And it became this like, helpful meditative time for me. It was like my time, my quality time.
Sometimes I’d listen to podcasts, sometimes I’d listen to trainings and coaching calls and things like that. I was always learning or I was getting inspired, or I was getting motivated. And sometimes it was just me with no headphones, I was just out in nature, focusing on the rhythm of my breath and the sounds of my own feet, touching the ground.
I began to really fall in love with running again. And it felt a lot like it did back in 2004 when I was training for that first 10k. Same kind of feelings were coming up from me again, I was excited about running. I was pushing myself again. I couldn’t wait to get out there to get my heart pumping, to get the blood flowing, to get my lungs working, to start the surge of all the adrenaline and the endorphins and the dopamine.
For me running is like far better than any mood altering drug. And I know I’ve taken a lot of them so I can tell you that it’s better than anything else. And I love when people say this, they say running is my therapy. I love this idea, right? Just like therapy.
Running helps you to feel good about yourself. It helps you to build self confidence and self esteem You know, running helps us to improve our sense of self, our self awareness, running helps us to then connect with others better. And just like therapy, running can help mitigate depression and anxiety.
You know, running makes us feel better about ourselves, we feel happier. Running can help improve our focus and concentration. So we can actually be more productive at work or at school. You know, running is just this amazing stress reliever for a lot of us.
So what I when I say run because you love it, here’s what I mean by that. Don’t run, just to try to lose weight, right? That’s going to cause you all kinds of unnecessary stress, and it doesn’t work very well. Don’t run because you feel like you have to, because then that’s just that makes running feel like a chore.
You know, don’t run to prove something to other people. You have nothing to prove to anybody else. All you have to do is prove something to yourself, what can you do? What are you capable of for yourself, run because it feels good to run. Run because you want to become more through the process of running. Run because you love running.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever push yourself or have goals. I want you to have goals, I want you to go for that PR run, run as fast as you can, you know, try to run your fastest race. Run further than you ever thought you could. If you’ve done a half marathon before and you’re like you know, I really want to do a marathon, do it.
Set your sights high, aim for more, see what you’re capable of. I want you to blow your own mind with what you can accomplish. Just do it in a way that serves you. Do it in a way that feels good to you. Love the process, love running throughout all of it.
Because if you find running is beginning to stress you out and it’s causing you all sorts of unnecessary anxiety. I’d encourage you to just take a good look inside. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Answer that question. That’s a good question. Why do you run? And if you do find yourself, getting a little stressed out about running, there are some things you can do. You can leave your watch at home and just head out and run untethered. No phone, no watch, just go run, run free. Run through the woods, instead of running on the sidewalks, go find a trail.
Oh my gosh, that is like my happy place to be running on trails alone in the woods. I love it. Maybe don’t take any earbuds with you, just focus on your breathing and the sound of your feet hitting the ground. Or if you’re the kind of person that usually doesn’t use music or whatever, maybe bring some earbuds, listen to music, listen to a podcast, learn something, listen to something that makes you laugh, or maybe get lost in a story.
I do this all the time. I listen to podcasts and I listen to stories. And sometimes they just get lost in this story. And it just feels so magical. I kind of forget that I’m even running. Not really, but kind of, but maybe use that time out there alone while you’re running. It’s just you and your thoughts and you could use it as a time to be thankful to give thanks for everything that you have in your life.
You know, be thankful for the sounds of the birds and the trees and the and the fact that you have a sidewalk to run on or maybe a dirt path beneath your feet. Be thankful for your health and for the people in your life. Maybe use this time to meditate or pray. Whatever you choose to do, however you choose to, love running. I want you to choose to love running.
That’s my encouragement for you this week is to fall in love with running. You can still crush your goals you can still go for that PR you can love running, and PR your next marathon. You can love running and crush that goal. You can love running and push yourself faster and further than you’ve ever run before.
You know running can still be uncomfortable. It can be hard but you can still love it. I want to encourage you to fall in love with running again. Run because you love it. Because running is where you truly find yourself. It’s in the running that you become more. I will be diving into the other principles of The Running Lean manifesto in the upcoming episodes and you can go back to the episode I did called eat real food.
And that’s where we start talking about these principles. I think these principles are so powerful and so important. And, and I hope you’re getting something out of this. I really truly do. And then be sure to join me this Sunday, November the first at 4pm. Eastern time for a little event I’m doing in the Running Lean community on Facebook. I’m sharing it all with you guys.
I got something big, big to share with you. Cool. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. We will see you there on Sunday, the first at 4pm. That is all I have for you today, my friends, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
Jen Wright is a co-founder of Real Human Performance here in Cincinnati. Jen specializes in stress management, performance optimization, and mind-body resilience training. She spent 18 years in health …
Continue Reading about 31. Jen Wright on How to Breathe for Long-Distance Running →
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 31 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host and the weight loss coach for runners. And I’m on a mission to help you eat real food, lose weight, look better, feel better, run lighter, run longer, and run faster than ever before. And today, I’ve got an awesome interview with Jen Wright.
And if you’re not familiar with who Jen is, you will be by the end of this episode. But here’s a little bio. Jen is co founder of real human performance here in Cincinnati. And she specializes in things like stress management, performance, optimization, mind-body resilience training, and she spent 18 years in Health and Human performances as a science and tech advisor with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the Defense Sciences Office and then later as a deputy at the Air Force Research Laboratory in the human performance wing. She’s kind of a big deal.
For the past 10 years she has been working as a post traumatic growth coach and mind-body researcher working in Trauma Recovery, addiction recovery and with other growth minded humans that value things like personal development. Jen believes in the human potential, and she believes that each of us deserves to learn how to self regulate. It’s a really cool interview, stick around for just a minute. Get to that in just a minute here.
Just a reminder that our next six week intensive weight loss masterclass for runners begins Monday, August 3, that’s just a few days from now, if you’re listening to this on Friday, when this comes out, you will learn how to become a fat-adapted runner, you will learn how to control your hunger so you don’t feel deprived.
Because you can’t feel hungry and deprived and lose weight, that doesn’t work. You will learn how to control your hormones, especially insulin to get your body into that optimal fat burning mode. You’re going to learn how to do intermittent fasting combined with low carbohydrate, high fat so that it’s like rocket fuel for your weight loss and for your energy.
You’re gonna learn the benefits of training in a fasted state and how to do it properly. You’re gonna learn how to fuel your body while you’re training while you’re doing your long runs and how to properly fuel for those events. And those longer events and races.
You’re gonna learn how to break through weight loss plateaus so that you’ll, you’ll be able to dial in your exact weight, your natural weight for good. You’re gonna learn how to break the emotional eating habit, how to incorporate strength training and explosive workouts into your training because let’s face it, most runners, we tend to just stay in that chronic cardio zone you got to break out of that.
You’re gonna learn how to lose weight, you’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy, you’ll enjoy eating again, you’ll learn how to eat real food. And you’ll run leaner, stronger, faster and longer. Most importantly, though, you’ll have the mindset you need to be able to sustain this for, for life.
Okay, this isn’t a temporary thing. It’s not a diet. We’re changing our lifestyles. We’ll teach you exactly how to do all that. And I wanted to share a quick story with you guys. Here’s a former student of this masterclass Amy, and she really recently posted in our Facebook group, some before and after pictures a little bit about her experience. And if you’re not in the Facebook group, I would encourage you to go check it out. Just search Facebook for the Running Lean community and join the group. It’s fun, it’s fun in the group. But here’s what Amy had to say.
She said, “A couple years ago, my running was struggling. I was slow and felt weighed down. My heart rate was over 200 most days while running, which is high. I was a mess. Fast forward a year to meeting Patrick who introduced me to a new way of eating and making me realize what my body really needs. Not just all pounding the pavement, but in my everyday life. I could never imagine cutting all the crap out and I never would have guessed eating high fat would help me be leaner faster and a fat burning machine or that my running would improve. Well, this past Saturday I ran a half marathon as a training run for my Marine Corps Marathon this October and since April I’ve cut out all the stuff my body doesn’t quote unquote need so no goos, no chews, and certainly no carbs that weighed me down from my run. I use a little bit of Gatorade diluted in water for hydration, but that was it. My running was effortless. I’m down over 30 pounds, and I’ve shaved off over a minute per mile. I’m feeling lean, and pretty badass these days.”
Amy, I am so proud of you. You’re so awesome. You’re badass, you totally are badass. And here’s the difference. You can do this if I can do this. If she can do it, you can do it. The only difference is Amy made a commitment. She made a commitment to make some big changes. Was it easy? No, it was challenging.
But I helped her get through all that challenge, all the tough stuff. Now, she’s on the other side of that. And she’s a lean, mean fat burning running machine. And if you want results like this, join us in our next master class starts Monday August 3, just go to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass to apply.
So here’s what Jen and I were talking about. We talk about how to breathe as a runner, which is, surprisingly, something I get a lot. It’s a question I get a lot from people, how do I breathe as I run? Breathing is hard. So we talked about that we talked about using breath as a way of releasing relieving stress.
By the way, Jen is a breathwork expert. She’s amazing. She’s so knowledgeable when it comes to breathing. So we kind of talk a lot about that today. She talks about using breath to promote mindful running. So how to get into that flow state. We talked about that a little bit. We talked about belly breathing versus chest breathing, like which is better, which is more recommended.
There seems to be some, you know, debate out there about this. We talked about how to get rid of side dishes and a bunch of other stuff. Jen is amazing. She’s an amazing human. She’s doing amazing work. She’s transforming lives. So I’m gonna stop talking. Let’s get into this interview.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, today, I am talking to Jen right. Jen is co founder and co owner of real human performance here in Cincinnati. And today, we’re going to be talking about breathing, which is something we should all be doing, right. Thankfully, we already are.
But Jen is an expert when it comes to breathwork and breathing, and always has a lot of amazing, cool stuff to share. So Jen, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about a little bit more about what you do.
Jen Wright
Yeah, thanks for the introduction for having me, Patrick, you one thing that wrath is something that we all have in common. And once we harness this literal energy potential, the breath for fuel for waste removal for self regulation, and just for overall efficiencies, we live with a completely different experience, a real, richer experience. So I’m excited to talk with you today and share what we know about breath and how it can literally shift us at the cellular level.
Patrick McGilvray
So you just mentioned something and I wasn’t going to talk about this. But now I have to ask it. So you mentioned like waste removal, though. You said something I heard recently, tell me if this is true, is that when we burn fat when we burn body fat, most of that gets eliminated from our body through our breath. Is that correct?
Jen Wright
So breath, that exhaled breath condensates one way you know our muscles when they’re working, whether it’s running or just for moving our muscles excrete CO2. And so it’s our job to then help that removal process when we’re high performers, especially when endurance athletes that just enjoy running, enjoy moving, that CO2 comes back to our lungs.
And it’s only then that the brain gets the signals that we need to breathe more to increase our oxygen intake. Lymph, the lymph itself, the lymphatic fluid is what carries away waste. It’s our waste removal system in our body. And there are two ways that lymph launches and three ways that lymph really gets removed.
And that is through our movement through local motion and through breathing. And then we can do specific techniques like lymph drainage and brushing and all of that. But breathing is one of these things that we’re already doing is foundational activities, this foundational movement that we do 20,000 times a day. It’s more than just oxygen exchange. It’s also waste removal.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s fascinating. And when I heard that, I was like wait, that can’t be right because it just seems crazy. Like we’re breathing out all this, all these toxins and all this waste and all our body fat is basically, you know, just being expelled through all these different manners which is it’s really fascinating. The body the human body is fascinating, Jen. Okay.
Jen Wright
It is so fascinating and we are designed to heal. In my previous life and working with the Defense Department one of the programs that I was involved with was looking at exhaled breath condensate and how each of us are so unique. We are as unique as we are with our fingerprints, our odor signature is equally unique.
And we look at odor signature to identify susceptibility and resistance to certain diseases. And what influences that is really the inner fire tribe tenets and the real human performance tenets is that it’s not just one note, or one node. It is our nutrition. And it is our movement. It’s our mindset, it’s the stress and how we how resilient we are to that stress. So those factors really make a difference on our odor signature. We know that if we even see it in commercial because stress, sweat smells different. One example…
Patrick McGilvray
For those of you listening, Jen is just checking her pits haha. So yeah, that’s very interesting. I have heard people say that when they start eating cleaner when they start eating a different kind of diet, they like don’t smell anymore. And it’s interesting. I mean, they still do, but it’s not strong and powerful like it used to be. And which makes sense, you know, because your body isn’t, it doesn’t have to, like release all these toxins and unnecessary things anymore. You know, you’re you’re you’re kind of back to homeostasis, right?
Jen Wright
Yeah, that’s right. And you mentioned nutrition. It’s similar when, when someone brings in the oxygen advantage and starts breathing for our fullest potential. The oxygen the oxygenation itself is it’s our foundation for cellular repair. Each cell receives these oxygen molecules and the bloodstream carries this oxygen through first to the organs because everything tends to the organs first organs demand the most.
So it goes to the organs first and through the major muscles through the fascia, rides the fluids, and eventually this oxygen arrives to every single cell for cellular repair. The blood production itself is such an interesting component of oxygenation.
Only in the last two years, have researchers discovered that the what do you want to call the blood cells, the stem cells that live we think that it’s the the white blood cells that are helping to create blood, but it’s actually these blood cells that live within our lungs, like 10 million cells, and even outside of our lungs that are, they’re doing the blood repair and the synthesis of blood itself.
So for organ fatality nutrition’s a core component. Before nutrition, our most foundational thing that we do before eating, before drinking water, is breathing. And, uh, you know, I like to say we can go technically weeks without food, only days without water, but really only minutes without oxygen.
And, oddly, this is getting into the subconscious mindset that lives in each of us. But oddly, it’s one of the last things that we tend to look at. When we’re looking at overall performance, although it’s the first and last thing we do in life. Rarely are we taught how to do it, to breathe.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And gosh, you bring up a good point, which is like breathing is just one of those things that we don’t pay attention to. And we don’t practice how to do it better. And so when I’m, when I talk to runners, a lot of runners will say like, I’m having trouble breathing, like, what can I do to improve my breathing?
Like, should I be breathing from my chest or from my belly? Because you kind of hear different opinions on things like that. So as a runner, like, especially somebody that’s maybe just getting started running, and it seems like the breathing is the thing that’s keeping them from performing better or makes it hard. So the breathing is the thing. They identify as being like the running as hard because of the breathing part. What can we do about that?
Jen Wright
Well, noticing is the first step. That is, so we don’t want to take breath for granted. Until we are without it, we take it for granted that it’s just going to be there because it is, thankfully it’s automatic. And then when it’s short, when it’s cumbersome, when something takes our breath away.
We’ve all had that experience where we see something, hear something, remember something, and it literally, gut punch takes our breath away. And we’re left without our most basic resource, which is oxygen. And it really strikes at our core survival. And that is part of the rewiring of our stress response. It’s more than just running for breathing for running performance.
It really how do we source this oxygen, so that we can tend to our needs at the most basic level. So when we start to pay attention to this very fact that we can indeed, source our own resources that we can, can select are in modulate our ability to intake air differently, we start to receive it at the cellular level, but something in our mind happens as well.
There’s a shift in our mind that it’s a shift in our nervous system really towards a new rhythm towards regulation, where we adopt a mindset of like, I can, oh, I’ve got this I can, I can source what I need when I need it. And I can. So this is like an echo chamber, not just for the running trail, for the road, but just for life.
So first things first, is noticing when our breath is short, notice what takes our breath away. So breath in that moment becomes a clue, you know, our breathing our breath awareness is a clue. It’s a clue or cue to something that has changed. Something has rocked me off that state of homeostasis, off balance, and is demanding more from me.
Okay, no problem, we encounter this throughout the day, every day. So breath is not only a clue or cue, but then it also becomes the tool. So we’re talking about two different things, the potential of breath, disrupting the usual and then a breath also being a tool to be set in the moment and recharge throughout the day.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and one thing I understand is that when you do start experiencing, like, let’s say shallow breathing, or, you know, you know, struggling with your breath, it can create a stressful environment. And your body releases cortisol. So now you’re like in that fight or flight kind of mode, and you’re putting yourself under more stress.
So I noticed this, when I’m running with other people, there are certain people that you know, you might be running next to them or behind them, and they sound like they’re going to die. You know, everybody’s running this comfortable pace. But then there’s that one person that is breathing, like, they sound like they’re going to die.
And I’m gonna imagine that they are kind of putting themselves under a lot of undue stress, and that they’re stressing themselves out at the cellular level, and stressing themselves out mentally. And running for them is going to be a lot harder than for the person that is practicing a more slow, steady and mindful approach to breathing while running.
Jen Wright
Absolutely, and thinking of this individual, or these experiences when you observe people breathing heavy. What do you notice about their gait? Are they also running heavy? Kind of clotting or maybe compensated running? Can you when you think back to running groups, if someone’s breathing really hard is their gait also?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, I think they’re, yeah, they look and sound like they are really struggling. So yeah, and I know people that run like that all the time. That’s their, like, default.
Jen Wright
And we do it that way until we learn a different way, especially for those of us that find such freedom in running and just in being, you know, just getting into that stride. So, you know, kudos to those of us that have been running heavy and fatiguing yourselves and sticking with it because you’re right there is an additional stress that is just inherent to our most basic thing that we do in life 20,000 times a day being stressed.
It’s the it’s the most, it’s the major movement that we do, we think of it as automatic, because it is yet is the most mechanical, and most chemical, mechanical, chemical process that’s happening when we intake the air for, for that breath, and each cell takes it oxygen and through a chemical process converts it to fuel, you know, it’s just, it’s a beautiful, brilliant design that we have here.
And, and we can be better at it, it’s just stepping into that place where it feels more comfortable. And literally, we are lifted, we’re propelled by the oxygen because it is our fuel. So when we think about that, in like when we’re walking through the grocery store, we get, you know, we get the oxygen advantages to that little lift, but how that translates to the gait, during running and your running stride and footstrike it’s so important because it literally lifts us.
It’s interesting to think about breath cadence and footstrike cadence and exercise physiologists belong studying the impact of stress of running, right, and the diaphragm plays a lot in that capacity to maintain structure and stability. And conversely, it also plays a lot in instability, if we’re just repeating the same patterns of exhaling on the same footstrike, for example, so we, we… My friend, I can talk about breath work for many hours. For today, how would you like to take our conversation? Would you like to talk about more of the diaphragm?
Patrick McGilvray
Well, like, I want to go back to that question I asked about the belly breathing versus the chest breathing, because there’s some different schools of thought on that. And I’ve heard people talk about both as being better. And what do you think about that?
Jen Wright
Breathing is good, breathing is good. And that’s, that’s good advice right there. And I tell people all the time, they’re like, it’s just hard to breathe and like, just make sure you’re breathing, you’re fine. As long as you’re breathing, you’re good.
The beauty is, is that our body breathes. Now we can breathe more efficiently. Some days, we’re breathing efficiently. And some days, we’re breathing less efficiently, suboptimally. And there’s a lot of information available out there about deep breathing, you know, slow, deep breathing, and I’m here to say that one, we’re still breathing, check. Two, there is some modulation here. Not all about slow, deep breathing, there are breaths that specifically activate our nervous system that give us a boost.
Because we need a boost when we need it, we need the energy when we need to boost. And there are other breaths that intentionally slow and move us towards restoration and activate our parasympathetic nervous system. So we have the ability to operate with breath. And to down regulate with breath.
I’ve got a trusty little diagram here that anyone that knows me, I’m holding the EU. And this literally is a U it’s a U shape and it depicts our autonomic nervous system will post in the comments, because our autonomic nervous system tells us how we’re going to feel. But it’s important to note that every inhale that we take is an activation of our nervous system. And every exhale that we take is settling of our nervous system.
So just by nature of working with complete breaths, and that’s I’m a proponent of Complete Breathing, is that it’s a complete cycle, it’s every inhale is sourcing the energy that we need the air to convert to the energy, and every complete exhale is ridding our body of old toxins and waste so that we can be, quote, empty, the container more ready to receive more of that oxygen.
Patrick McGilvray
And so the inhale is kind of activating that sympathetic nervous system, which is our kind of fight or flight, you know, nervous system in our necks. What’s that?
Jen Wright
The gas. Yeah, yes, they step on the gas..
Patrick McGilvray
Step on the gas, okay. And then the exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our relaxation, you know, kind of mode. I always remember it by S for stress, P for peace, you know, and so that’s easy for me to remember sympathetic versus parasympathetic. So that’s really interesting. So then the argument about the belly breathing, chest breathing is just more about well whatever, like data isn’t as important, it sounds like what you’re saying?
Jen Wright
It’s all super important. And step one, we’re still breathing. Yes. Step two, we have so much, there’s so much to unpack here. But it’s really quite simple. The Complete Breathing is how we are born to breathe. Some of us were born with warning conditions where our breathing, our respiratory system is challenged in some way.
But most of us our respiratory system is challenged by sitting, by collapsing and so we are unable to access our fullest breath potential. So diaphragmatic breathing, chest breathing and clavicular breathing are three different places three zones or respiration that we have.
The diaphragm, the chest, and the clavicle. The Complete Breathing is a three part long breath, the low the mid the top lung, when we’re in fight or flight, we don’t need to be sourcing our breath from our belly.
Because we’re not looking to relax, we’re not looking to digest food in that moment, we’re actually just looking to survive. And so our breath becomes really short and shallow. We’ve all experienced that. And it’s when that becomes our default pattern, that the downstream effects are detrimental.
Because we’re just subsisting in that time, we’re just getting enough. And really, what would life look like, feel like when we are sourcing more, and at our most optimal state? Now for evading a lion, or if we are sprinting, for the finish line, diaphragmatic breathing is not going to be our natural go to place, we’re just going to be taking enough in so the oxygen exchange is just minimal. It’s just enough to get what we need to achieve the goal, which is to evade the line cross the finish line.
Patrick McGilvray
Right. Or if you’re like doing a heavy workout at the gym a bunch of heavy lifting, you know, you’re gonna, it’s gonna be higher, you know, right?
Jen Wright
So often, yes, because that’s what leads to, and it’s here at our thoracic cavity that really is that place where it’s, it’s the max expansion here, the ribcage. Taking a breath in here, the thoracic cavity for our big muscle movers when we’re doing the heavy lifting. When we’re looking to set a pace for a longer run then we can access the respiratory movement here at the thoracic cavity to help sustain that pace.
So we’re not just relying on the small muscles, the muscles, the intercostal muscles that live between the ribs, we can access the diaphragm, our major muscle, our major break breathing muscle, but it’s um, it’s not the only muscle that moves respiration, the diaphragm just happens to be the major muscle that moves respiration and helps us to maintain posture.
So sitting in as we do in our culture, as I am right now, we tend to overlook the access of this diaphragm, which I could go off. I love talking about breath, it is my favorite topic. And I just want to add this point.
Down here at our diaphragm when we breathe into the space of our diaphragm, it’s actually where serotonin and dopamine more than half our dopamine and serotonin is synthesized and created at in our in our viscera, in our in our belly, in our gut. And when we activate our diaphragmatic breathing or complete breaths, we’re helping that that process of synthesizing the dopamine and serotonin which then gets transported back up to our brain and distributed throughout our body. And who wants to feel good, you know? We want the ability to regulate, you know, the my life’s work. So it’s just one of those things where we aid the process.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that diaphragmatic breathing is something that I’ve experimented with, with great results. So I’ll do some diaphragmatic breathing exercises like before a run where I’ll just sit with my back straight and just practice that deep belly breathing into that diaphragm. And, you know, just do you know, five minutes of that so it doesn’t take very long right.
Right, but it starts to put you into this calmer state of mind. And now I understand what’s happening more, because you just said, you know, you’re kind of releasing that dopamine, you’re getting some of that some of those that serotonin going.
I would imagine that this would be a great thing to do before run, and to practice on longer runs to. Because if you can access that sort of calming, relaxing, those chemicals, basically, you know, those calming relaxing chemicals into your body, then I would imagine running would be a little bit easier for you, especially on those longer runs when you’re out there for a couple of hours at a time.
So I love the the idea of using breathing, not just as a way of like, oh yeah, I got to live, you know, gotta get the air in or whatever, but as a way of reducing some stress and reducing the, the toughness of the run, you know, because you can actually, so I guess the two things.
So I’m hearing, because I’m gonna keep pushing this point here, Jen, you’re like a politician with your answers here. But I’m gonna say like, belly breathing is probably the better way to go. For our long distance runners, you know, which I’m just kind of, you know, I’m, making that that jump, you know, just just say that. So whatever, it’s all good.
But it does reduce the stress, and it puts you into this more calm state, where, you know, you got to, you got to save your energy, you know, it’s all about energy conversate conservation, when you’re out there for several hours, you’re running a marathon or something like that, you’ve got to conserve your energy.
And to have this high chest breathing, you know, the shoulders start to get scrunched up into the ears. You know, you’re activating that stress response. And you’re putting your body in undue amounts of stress, which is, you know, really going to use a lot of energy to be in that state right there.
Jen Wright
I think you, you phrase that beautifully, and I’ll add that it takes a lot of energy to contain all that. Just to sum it up. It takes a lot of energy to contain this manufactured support of bracing so that the hip doesn’t hurt, so that the stitches subside, you know, running with our fullest breath potential keeps us fueled up and stitch free.
And it’s all about working with the diaphragm, I would encourage the listeners to start where it is easier. You’re talking about priming your body and your oxygen supply. You’re talking about priming your system before you go on a run. Awesome. That’s something that free divers figured out, you know, eons ago.
Because you know, underwater, we don’t have the luxury of taking air when we need it, even if you know even just emergency breath. So free divers and swimmers had to figure out this oxygen conservation and exchange rates really innately and on land as we are and working with the forces of gravity as we do.
It’s really important for us to figure out just what that impact is because during inhalation, we create a container. There’s the expansion, but stability is created. And on exhalation, the diaphragm and the external intercostal muscles relax and the space around the thoracic cavity gets smaller, it gets pushed out.
Well that’s also where we are the most vulnerable that you will though the most, the least stable when on our exhale. So if we’re always foot striking on the beginning of our exhale, we’re creating even more of a clobbed fatigue to one side. Most runners scientific most runners are taught to breathe, inhale for two, exhale for two. That’s old school. And that even number of breathing makes it so that the exhale and the foot strike are always on the same side.
The numbers show that most runners exhale, the beginning of the exhale is on the foot strike on the right side, which means most runners get stitches on the right side. So it’s just interesting to think about as listeners is let’s start not worrying not when they’re middle of mile five, or on a long run. But let’s start while we’re walking. Let’s walk and practice this breathing thing. Let’s sit in a chair, lie down and practice this breathing thing. And just to really exercise the muscles and get them tuned, tuned and get the maps of how they were born, were born and designed to function.
Patrick McGilvray
When I was training for my 100 miler a couple of years ago, I remember I came to you and I was like, Jen, I need some help breathing. Just anything you can tell me that will make running just a little bit easier, I need every little tweak I can get for this thing. And you gave me some advice, that was amazing.
And it was basically, like, try to stop doing the breathing on the to like every other foot strike, and switch it to three. So that you know, your in breath is on one foot, and then the next time it’s on the next and so you’re, you’re more balanced that way. And I practiced that and it was actually really hard to do at first, you know, it took a little bit of, you know, there’s a little mental like, because I’m just so used to just doing it the same way all the time.
And it requires you to slow down your breathing, because you’re not, you’re gonna breathe. You have to breathe slower in order to do it this way. But it was amazing. It allowed me to really be in a more peaceful state running it really, it was awesome. So that’s good advice.
What is a side stitch? Exactly?
Jen Wright
Ah crap, you know, it’s where the muscle’s contracting really fast, you know, it’s just spasming.
Patrick McGilvray
What muscles is that? Exactly? Do you know?
Jen Wright
It depends, but a lot of the time, it’s the diaphragm itself.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, because I know that one way of getting rid of a side stitch very quickly, is to breathe out really fast and hard. Like you’re blowing out candles on a birthday cake. You know, just as a lot of air really fast do that, like three times and then the stitches goes away. So
Jen Wright
Because you’re filling your body was oxygen, you know, it’s and it’s and you’re exhaling out old condensate, old CO2, you’re getting it out of the system and pushing out rather quickly. Those the old old stuff.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so it is like a diaphragm thing that’s really fascinating. This whole breathing thing.
Jen Wright
You brought up when you’re training for your 100 miler, because I just thought you were so brave into being open minded into considering a different way before such a, you know, a big event for you. And knowing how important the breath is, you’re right, it does take; we get used to it just happening.
And to bring awareness to it, it does insert a level of pause kind of slows it down. What’s happening in the brain is it what’s happening in the brain is happening at the level of the brainstem. So again, this is our basic survival brain. And it’s in the medulla.
The prebotzinger complex is basically like our it’s like a pacemaker for breaths. And so when that when that CO2 gets back to our lungs, because we’ve been breathing deeply enough to push the co2 back to the lungs to be expel, the messages get the signals are picked up from the medulla that sets our rhythm. The prebotzinger complex, the prebot-c is actually our our rhythm said it so it’s our pacer. And so when we get into a rhythm of breathing, the brain helps us out. Chicken or the egg, but it’s uh, it’s one of those things where it literally, it literally just makes life easier, makes running easier.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I will, I will say that like that, slowing down the breathing and doing that diaphragmatic breathing when you’re running at all, even if it’s just a short run is it makes a difference, it makes a noticeable difference that you can go out there and do you know, a five mile run at a slower pace.
And it can be you can make it as hard or as easy as you want it to be. And I’m not talking necessarily speed because you can kind of maintain the same speed but you can make it harder or easier. Just by slowing down that breath. It’s wild. It’s wild stuff. There’s a beautiful book that talks a lot about this called, oh my gosh, what is it called? Mindful Running.
And it just talks about getting into that sort of flow state while running, and she talks a lot about the diaphragmatic breathing and, and that’s kind of where I learned the exercises to do before going out running. It’s a really great book, I think definitely people get a lot out of it.
But the part that I liked about it is how she talks about slowing down, you know, you start getting more oxygen exchange, you start, you know, becoming into this, like more peaceful kind of flow state that she calls it, which is just being mindful, you’re being mindful of your breathing, you can just kind of focus on your breathing, you’re being mindful of your body, you’re being mindful of your feet hitting the ground, you can actually take in what’s happening around you.
And it all starts with the breath. And you’re always kind of coming back to the breath, as in meditation, when you’re running in, that becomes your sort of anchor, you know, and so you can be mindful of what’s happening. And then you’re not focused on how hard this is, you’re not focused on what you’re going to do.
You know, later today, what’s on your to do list, you’re just being in the moment, and into this flow state, which is such a beautiful thing. And it all centers around the breath, just like mindful meditation centers around the using the breath as the anchor, you can do the same thing while you’re running, and get into this more relaxed, more peaceful state in I say this, because I want to enjoy running, I don’t run it one running to be hard.
And so when I learn things like this, and I practice them, it makes running more enjoyable for me. And it makes it easier for me and I and I look forward to getting out and doing those runs, when I know I’m going to be in a kind of a peaceful state. And it all starts with the breathing, with breath.
Jen Wright
Being with the breath is the most effective way of being present. And most runners that I know, love running, so we can get out of our head, you know, and really being or get into our thoughts being present with our thoughts kind of one or the other, but just getting kicked into that flow state, a place where we’re just sliding and just present and just one with nature, one with the road with a trail, it’s breathing provides us the ability to pay attention to what’s going on on the internal inside.
And at the same time as the ability to be present with the road, with the external. And it’s, we really don’t see a difference or experience a difference, we’re just kind of one with the road. And that, that fluidity is something that’s often described. And the key component of breath is just ever present.
So teaching people how to harness that on command, if you will, as kind of the default not, rather than that one run, we’re so amazing, you know…
Patrick McGilvray
Well you know, it takes practice, you know, like anything else, like you just have to practice it. And, you know, I will tell you that when I first went out and started like trying this, it was very difficult, you know, and my mind was wandering and my, my I was thinking this is so hard, I don’t get it, it’s not working, you know what all those thoughts that come into your mind.
But after a while, if you can get into this kind of flow state, it’s really something that you are always kind of working on, like you’ll never get there. 100% You know what I mean? But when you can practice it more, just like meditation, where you practice meditation, you never perfect it, you know. So if you can practice getting in this flow state, but with running, start with your breath, slow down, use that deep diaphragmatic breath, try it on the threes instead of the twos and start becoming aware of your body.
I think, as runners we were not good at really getting into our body and being aware of our body. We use running as a way, a lot of people, use rowing as a way of getting out of their body. Like say they can sort of just like give their body something to do while their brain just starts thinking about something else, you know, but when you start to become keenly aware, like radically aware, of what’s happening in your body while you’re running, it can be a kind of amazing thing to pay attention to.
I do this when I’m running out in on trails more than anything, because I’m just so like in my element and out there in nature and I just feel like it’s like there’s this primal thing going on. I’m and and I just, I am just so aware of like my feet and my legs and my arms and my, my torso and just like all these things working in unison, and I’m just always fascinated out there. So I tend to get into that flow state more on the trails. I don’t have as many distractions as when I’m running around, you know, downtown Cincinnati with cars and traffic and stuff like that.
Jen Wright
Well, I mean, that’s, that kicks back to the beginning of our conversation, it just makes so much sense I was having a conversation with a gal about this very thing that running on the road, we are still in our survival mind, we need to pay attention to the car to the bike to the person to the pothole, all those things that could inadvertently interests.
And on the trail, likely, we’re not going to run into a lion. There, there’s less distraction at our survival, for our survival brain just to narrow down where we are. And there’s more opportunity to explore. When we’re in nature, there’s more opportunity to explore our own nature.
Really pay attention to these elements, oxygen, that sustain us, it’s in the trees, we’re work, there’s a relationship, the trees, and ourselves, there’s a relationship with our breath and our footstrike and just becomes relational. It’s not so, uhm, not so, alone.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. I love all this, Jen. We got to do this again, we got to talk more about some other things in regards to breathing and the nervous system. But for now, I think we’ve covered a lot. And I think we’ve given people a lot of amazing things to think about and to go and practice. So that’s awesome.
So where can people like learn more about you? I know you were talking about a workshop that you got coming up in August. So what is that? And where can people find out more about it?
Jen Wright
We will be posting the link, and you’ll find it in the comments, in the notes. August 11 is Breath Workshop: Fueled Up and Stitch Free. We’ll be spending two hours really learning the mechanics of breathing. And working with what we’ve got. If I could add one thing to pay attention to between now and August 11, is notice what takes your breath away, not just on the trail, but in life.
Notice what takes your breath away. Notice when your nostril breathing nasal breathing versus mouth breathing. I train so many people that when I ask them to take a breath, it’s breathing into the mouth, sucking in that oxygen. And that’s a topic in and of itself. So I would love to get into another podcast but certainly won’t be in the workshop, the importance of nasal breath, and how breathing is so important.
We have two ways of doing it primarily through our nostrils and secondary through our mouth. But nostril breath is controlled breath filters the air, it communicates more concretely and directly with the brain creates a human environment in our lungs. So the blood itself can absorb the oxygen molecules and efficiently carry it through the body.
Mouth breath is there when we need it, emergency breath taking the hill all these things that we’re used to, and yet it’s more fatiguing. So we’ll be talking about in the workshop, breath awareness, nasal breath, mouth breath, we’ll be working to create our most complete breath.
We’ll be working with resistance breathing to help build capacity. Because once we build, once we become skillful at Complete Breathing, the place to go is working with modulation to expand our capacity. Literally the way that those air sacs exchange the CO2. We can work with them. We’re not beholden to that first thought.
But we think that first feeling that we have that first breath that we take we thankfully breeze throughout the day. And so we can use breath to reset to reorient ourselves when we drift off. Use breath to build rhythm to recharge throughout the day.
And then we can use it to kind of prime ourselves to set up at the end of the day so that we can restore appropriately based on our demands like meeting really meeting the demands of the day. Every day is different. And these days, my goodness. We are at a greater capacity
Patrick McGilvray
Who knows what’s gonna happen? Every day is an adventure. Cool. What was the name of that workshop again?
Jen Wright
it’s called Fueled Up And Stitch Free, August 11, two hour session over zoom, I look forward to the day that we can meet at the park. We’ve been talking about that when we could do that. But first, we’re going to meet over zoom, because we can meet in the comfort of wherever we choose to, and work on this thing we call breadth.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. And where can people find out more about that?
Jen Wright
Well, I am always at real human performance.com Reach out to me directly via questions my emails, jen@realhumanperformance.com. A little bit about my business partner Chris Amis listed on our website. But we are all about physical fitness and mental well being. So just training, training up our human to become more ourselves.
Patrick McGilvray
We want to be the best humans we can be Jen, I love it. Love it. Thank you so much for this conversation. This has been really fun. And we’re gonna get deeper into some of these things and explore some other topics. I really love these conversations. Really cool. Thank you, Jen.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you, Patrick.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, that’s so awesome. Jen is so amazing. Love her so much. So good. And just to give you guys a quick heads up, she’s got that breath training workshop for runners called fueled up and stitch free. That’s coming up on August the 11th.
She’s going to teach you all about how to oxygenate prior to a run, how to stay fueled with oxygen during a run and for recovery after your run. And she’s going to teach you practical skills that you can put into practice in your real life.
She’s going to teach you the practices that will build breath capacity, which is so important for running, especially for the long distance running you want to have you want to be able to increase your oxygen capacity. I’m gonna have a link to this event on the show notes page over at the running mind podcast.com forward slash 31 And you’ll have all the information there.
So definitely check it out. And then lastly, remember the next Running Lean weight loss masterclass for runners begins in just a couple of days. If you’re listening to this on Friday, when it comes out, there’s still a couple of spots available, learn more and apply at innerfiretribe.com/masterclass. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.
I recently sat down to have a candid conversation with one of my favorite clients - my son Colin! Colin has struggled with his weight his whole life. He's always been the "big kid", and that hasn't …
Continue Reading about 22. Colin McGilvray on What It Takes to Hit a Big Weight Loss Goal →
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 22 of the running mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, Master Life Coach and weight loss coach for runners. And hey, if you’ve been dorking around with your weight your whole life, you need to stop doing that. You need to take action, you need to do something about it, your time has finally come.
I’ve got a weight loss masterclass that starts next Monday, June 1, it’s an intimate interactive six week class, where you will discover the real causes of your weight gain, you will learn how to recalibrate your hormones so that you stop overeating.
You will learn how to eliminate the uncontrollable cravings, urges and desires that you have around food, you will learn how to master a healthy mindset of eating, you will learn how to break the emotional eating habits. And you’ll be able to create the exact future that you’ve always wanted for yourself.
Here’s the thing, if you want to get in, you just need to enroll now, because enrollment closes Sunday the 31st at midnight, I only take about 10 people through the class at a time so that each person gets my personal attention, and the personal coaching that they need to succeed.
Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and get signed up. Let’s get you to your goal weight. You know one of the most appealing aspects of this class is the personal attention that you get. I run all the classes live on Zoom, where you get to ask questions as we go. You get personal coaching time with me. And I personally teach you exactly how to get your goal weight and walk you through it every step of the way.
And doing it as a group is amazing. Everybody loves that aspect of this, I know you’re ready to do something. So let’s do it. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating. And let’s go. Okay, recently, I had this amazing conversation with one of my best clients, my new favorite client, who just also happens to be my son, Colin.
So a little backstory, Colin has kind of struggled with his weight for most of his life. He’s always been “the big kid”. And I know it’s not always easy to be looked at that way, especially when you’re in like middle school in high school. So we talked about all that we talked about, like what it was like to go through middle school in high school as the bigger kid.
And then we talked about why he finally reached out to me for help with his weight. Now as his dad, I always knew that I could help him but I never like forced my ideas onto him. I was wanting to call him to decide for himself what he wanted to do. And when he was ready for help. If you want it from me, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too. But he finally did come to me a few months ago. And we started working together.
And I started doing the coaching with him exactly the same as I do with any other client. Almost exactly like he maybe got a little bit more of my time and attention. But he’s my son, so whatever. But this is a really fun interview, I just wanted to share, I wanted him to share his experiences that he’s had through this process, because he’s had some amazing results so far.
So we talk about the challenges he’s encountered throughout the journey so far, how he’s been able to get through those challenges. We talk about what it’s like to lose a significant amount of weight. Because this will challenge anyone, it was challenging for him. But he knew he could do it.
And he knew he could get through those tough moments. And he did, and he talks about that. And then he talks about how he’s come out the other side. And he’s just got these amazing results. He looks better, he feels better. He’s more confident. And honestly, as a parent, this is all we want for our kids.
You know, we just want them to feel good about themselves. And he does. It’s so awesome to see this. I’m really proud of myself too, for being able to be a part of this journey of his. I know you will be inspired by Colin’s story. And it’s a story that’s still in the making. Like he’s made amazing progress toward his goal.
He wants to lose 100 pounds. He’s not there yet. But he’s getting there. He’s super motivated and inspired to get there and I have no doubt he’s going to do it. He has no doubt he’s going to do it. Why? Because he has the right attitude about it. And this is the difference between people who succeed at something like this than people who don’t, you know, getting to some huge goal, whatever that goal is, is all about developing the right mindset. It’s all your mindset. Mindset is everything.
And he has the absolute right mindset to do this. And this is why I’m so passionate about helping people get the same kinds of results. Because when you’re armed with that, right mindset, there’s nothing you can do. You’re like unstoppable. You can totally train your brain to do whatever you want. Lose 100 pounds, no problem, bring it on. Okay, let’s do this. I want you to hear this interview with my son, Colin. He’s like my new favorite client.
By the way, I think you’re gonna really get a lot out of this. So here’s my interview with Colin McGilvray.
Okay, so today, I’ve got something very special for you guys. I’m actually having a conversation with one of my best weight loss clients. who just happens to be my son, Colin McGilvray. Colin, how are you?
Colin McGilvray
Great. Thank you.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Thanks for coming on here. And having a conversation with me today. I just wanted to share your experience with people. I wanted people to hear your personal experience with kind of the work that we’ve been doing together, because you’ve had some pretty amazing results so far.
So we’re going to talk a little bit about your journey in the past. What’s it been like six, eight weeks now? Roughly?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, roughly.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, roughly, over the last two months, basically, of, of working on the mindset, the emotional piece, and then obviously, the physical piece of losing weight. So tell me like, just I know where you were, but like, for everybody else’s sake, like, let’s just share, like where you were when we started working together?
Colin McGilvray
Sure. So when we started working together, I was about 300 pounds. And I weighed in once we first started doing this, at 295. Really lethargic, basically no exercise. Very little energy. Really not in a good spot.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so how, how was that for you? Like, you’re the reason you wanted me to help you is because of why like, why did you reach out to me for help?
Colin McGilvray
I reached out because I wanted to change. I wanted it to be different. Other people in my life kind of hinted that I needed to change. There’s a lot of people I know in my life who were as big as I was and had serious health problems. And so I know that if I kept going on that route, I was gonna have some serious problems.
Patrick McGilvray
And how has it been for you? Because you’ve always been like a bigger kid, you know what I mean? Like you were born a bigger kid, you know what I mean? And so and that’s fine. But you know, how was it growing up for you? Like as a, you know, middle schooler and a teenager in high school? Or was that challenging for you being like the bigger kid?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, so I played sports when I was growing up. And I always knew I was the biggest kid. And I was a little slower than everybody else. I ran cross country, kind of, towards the slower side there as well. So I always knew I was bigger. It’s not something that was like hidden. I always realized it.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So how did that make you feel, though?
Colin McGilvray
It didn’t make me feel really good at all, like, on the wrestling team I was probably one of the one of the biggest kids there. And, you know, I knew it. And I was really self conscious about it.
Patrick McGilvray
So when you like came to me and was like, Dad, I think I need some help with this. Like, what was your thought about that? Like, what was your thought of what you wanted to do? Like, what did you want from this?
Colin McGilvray
I want, ultimately a better body. I don’t want to worry about having health problems. I want to look better. I want to, I want to feel better, I want to have more energy, I want to sleep better. I want to be able to go out and exercise and be able to climb a few flights of stairs and not be out of breath.
Patrick McGilvray
Was that kind of challenging for you exercising and stuff like that?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, for sure. You know, you get in a routine where maybe you go to the gym for two weeks and it kind of falls off.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And I would imagine that being overweight being, you know, roughly 100 pounds overweight right? Is probably challenging trying to get out there and exercise. And so you don’t feel like doing it because it’s so hard, which just kind of perpetuates the body image issues that you’re having. And the fact that you know, you just don’t feel good about yourself. Right?
Colin McGilvray
Definitely.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. All right, so we started working together. And how old are you now? Colin?
Colin McGilvray
I’m 21.
Patrick McGilvray
You’re so young, literally, and baby still. But Colin’s 21 and, you know, he’s gotten, you know, he’s, he got up to 300 pounds. And that’s, that was kind of a wake up call for him. Like he told me like, when I saw that number on the scale, like, what did that mean to you? When you saw that? Like, what did that feel like?
Colin McGilvray
Oh, I mean, the first time I was 300 pounds was like in high school, like, probably my junior year, and I fluctuated between like, 300-35, I’d go on a diet, get down to like the 270s. And then it would all come right back. So I mean, recently wasn’t the first time I’d seen that I’d gotten so used to seeing 300 pounds. And I would purposely not weigh myself, because I knew it was going to be well over 300 pounds.
Patrick McGilvray
Wow. And so like you were ready to finally do something about that. Right?
Colin McGilvray
Absolutely.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, that’s cool. So you and I kind of got on this plan, I started coaching you, we started talking about, you know, what you’re going to eat, what you’re not going to eat. And then we worked on some other things, like your mindset and stuff like that, and we’ll talk about that. And then, uh, but you know, walk me through what it was like, at the very beginning, like, how was the beginning of this program? Like when you and I started doing this, and I really, the biggest thing was like, I was like, you got to stop eating sugar and flour. Like, we got to get rid of the refined carbohydrates and the sugar. And so we eliminated that first, like, what was that like?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, honestly, when we first started it within the first few days, I was like, wow, what did I get myself into? This is difficult. It started out pretty, pretty rough, because I would drink a lot of Mountain Dew every day. Yeah, like 52 ounces of Mountain Dew, which is a lot. And so tons of fast food, fried chicken, fried anything, McDonald’s. And so it was almost daily. So is a big, huge lifestyle adjustment. For sure.
Patrick McGilvray
How did you feel though, when you stopped eating sugar?
Colin McGilvray
I felt really good. I noticed that probably two days.
Patrick McGilvray
Well, first, though, at first, how would you feel first?
Colin McGilvray
Okay. So, you know, this first few days without eating sugar, it was a little rough. Because you know, you really have that sugar craving, your body really wants it, you really want that mountain dew or that candy. But like I said, probably a few days afterwards. It’s just, I just didn’t have those cravings anymore.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so it only took a few days. That’s cool. Yeah, so when you eliminate sugar, like you will kind of go through a withdrawal phase. And, and it’s short, you know, if you do it the right way. And you get rid of the refined carbs and the sugar, just like 100% like eliminate it, it will kind of be terrible, you will feel terrible for a couple of days, which I think you experienced.
And you and I talked about that. But then it goes away and then it gets better. So after that, like after you got over that initial thing, we just started getting you on an eating protocol, which just means like, a way of eating that serves you like it’s a way of eating food that fuels your body.
You know, so when we talk about a protocol, it’s not a diet, it’s not like you have to eat these certain five things or whatever. You get to choose what you want to eat. But it’s a high fat, low carb diet, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just, we just get rid of the refined sugar and carbs.
And when we do that, it gives your body a chance to, you know, rebalance the hormones. We’ve got to bring those insulin levels down, which you did, you know, when the insulin levels come down, then your hormones get balanced out so you don’t feel as hungry. When you do eat, you feel more full.
And when you’re eating a lot of processed food and sugar those things are all out of whack. So you’re like always hungry all the time. You know. So tell me about your experience with the eating protocol in general. Like, how’s that been going for you? And yeah, how’s it going today for you?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, the eating protocol’s great. I think it really helps that some of my favorite foods are high in fat. Like I really enjoy eating steak, and I can eat that a lot. And it’s nice to be able to find something in your protocol that you do enjoy eating. So it’s been really good so far. Like I said, at the very beginning, kind of settling into it took a little bit of adjustment for sure.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, cool. Um, so you are eating food that you enjoy?
Colin McGilvray
100%.
Patrick McGilvray
Do you feel hungry all the time?
Colin McGilvray
I do not feel hungry all the time.
Patrick McGilvray
So that’s, that’s good. That’s one of the benefits of eating a higher fat diet. So if you’re eating good, good fats, then it will fill you up, and you shouldn’t be as hungry. So then, one of the things I wanted to talk about, which is, you know, one of my areas of expertise, and one of the things that you and I have talked extensively about, which is kind of the mindset piece, because there, there have been times that have come up where you’ve been challenged by some of the things. So give me an example of a challenge for you during this whole mental weight loss process.
Colin McGilvray
So we have a party at work, and there’s a bunch of food that’s not in the protocol. Tons of sugar, flour, fried food, just big tables of candy and Cheetos. Doritos. So, you know, I just, I had the right mindset about it, like we’ve, like we’ve talked about before.
Patrick McGilvray
Well was that mindset like? So what is it that gets you to not have to like, feel like you’re deprived or something?
Colin McGilvray
Sure. So that mindset really becomes thinking about myself at my ideal weight. And thinking about what I’m going to look like, how I’m going to feel, the exercise I’m able to do, and knowing that, you know, if I eat that bag of Cheetos, that’s not helping me get there. So why would I really want to be eating something that’s ultimately going to hurt me?
Patrick McGilvray
Right? So what is your ideal weight? What do you want to get down to?
Colin McGilvray
I want to get down to 180 pounds.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, cool. I think you can do that. For sure. So tell me more about that ideal version of yourself that like future Colin like, what does that look like for you?
Colin McGilvray
I’d like to be you know, around 180 pounds, whatever my healthy weight is going to be, I want to have, you know, I want to be in shape, you know, I want to have some muscle muscle definition, I want to be able to have a lot of endurance, do a lot of running.
Patrick McGilvray
And what will that do for you? Like, let’s say you get to 185 pounds, 180 pounds, you’ve built some muscle you can like go out and run five miles at a time or whatever it is you want to do? Like, what does that mean for you?
Colin McGilvray
For me, all the issues we talked about earlier, like heart disease, being extremely overweight, and the possibility of diabetes. I won’t have those worries anymore. And just kind of proves to myself that, you know, I could do anything I really set my mind to. And it would give me a lot of empowerment for other other aspects of my life.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s awesome. So having that vision of yourself, is that what kind of helps you get through some of these challenging situations? Like that situation described at work, like does it help to like know that you know, who you want to be in your future is more important than like this bag of Doritos?
Colin McGilvray
It does. It really, it really helps because I think about, you know what I’m gonna look like. And I don’t really have that craving anymore, because I’m just kind of over it. I don’t need that. It’s at my ideal weight. I’m not going to be eating that. And it’s not going to help me get there. So why would I really want to hurt myself?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So looking through this whole process of like, you know, losing weight, so how many pounds would be lost so far? Let’s go. Let’s talk about that.
Colin McGilvray
So right now. I’m at 257. So over 37 pounds so far.
Patrick McGilvray
Dang. That’s awesome.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, it feels really good.
Patrick McGilvray
That is awesome. Because you’d lost a few pounds before you and I started like doing this together. But really the weight just has been dropping off like crazy over the last five or six weeks for sure. Which is awesome. But what’s been like the hardest part of all of this for you?
Colin McGilvray
The hardest part is seeing a lot of other people eating the food I used to eat. So you know people coming in with fast food, or pizza, or junk food at work sitting next to me eating it. That was really hard at first. And that’s the hardest part.
Patrick McGilvray
Has that gotten better?
Colin McGilvray
It’s gotten a lot better, just with the you know, the mindset that we’ve talked about and and thinking about, you know, 180lb Colin and how that’s not going to help get me there. And I don’t need to eat that food.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, when you think about that future version of yourself, do you have like some feelings associated with that some like emotions that that kind of come up when you think about that?
Colin McGilvray
I do. Yeah, I really want to get to that point. And I think I’m willing to put in whatever amount of work it takes to get there.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, because it’s not easy sometimes. Right? I mean, there can be challenges, you know, you get fast food shoved in your face at work. There’s cupcakes and Doritos, and all this stuff. And yeah. You’re doing great, though. Really proud of you. Colin has been an ideal client, you know, like you really have like, you’ve been doing everything that I’ve told you to do. You know, and honestly, some of this has been hard, right?
Colin McGilvray
It’s been really hard. Not gonna lie. Yeah, there are times where it is very difficult.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, but you get through it.
Colin McGilvray
Definitely. And there’s also times where it feels amazing to know that like, you know, wow, I’ve lost 37 pounds, I look visibly different. I’ve had to buy new clothes. Like, I’m doing this, it feels really good.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I tell my clients this all the time, like, it’s not easy. Like, there will be challenges, you will be challenged mentally, you will be challenged physically, you will be challenged emotionally. But I help you get through all that stuff. That’s the beautiful thing about having a coach there to help you get through stuff like this.
Because honestly, if like, losing 100 pounds was easy, everybody would just do it, it wouldn’t be a problem there wouldn’t need, we wouldn’t need any help at all, it would just be like, just eat this and you’re fine, you know, but we’ve been conditioned and trained our whole lives to eat food that just creates this, this unnatural craving inside of us.
And it creates this emotional connection to food. You know, so many of us use food as an escape from our lives as an escape from reality, because it feels good, feels good to eat the fried chicken, and eat the Snickers and eat the Doritos, you know, and so why should we deal with our emotions and our thoughts and whatever, when we can just eat instead?
You know, and one of the things that you and I have talked about is like, how to stop eating, because you don’t want to feel a certain feeling. You know, so you’ve learned how to kind of process some of those emotions and stuff.
And as a 20 year old, 21 year old, I think that’s pretty, pretty awesome, that you’ve been able to do that you know that you have learned how to manage your mind. Right? And how to process emotions, so you don’t have to eat over them.
Colin McGilvray
Definitely.
Patrick McGilvray
And you’ve also learned that you can have a fulfilling life without having to just eat food or like food doesn’t equal a good life. Right?
Colin McGilvray
Exactly. And the world doesn’t revolve around what I’m going to eat next.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you were talking about going on vacation soon. And whenever you go on vacation, you have a lot of memories about like food with that. Yeah. So what are you going to do now? So you’re going on vacation soon? What are you going to do differently?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, so a lot of it is, you know, we go on vacation in the same spot, there’s all these restaurants we always go to, and really not a whole lot of what they have is, you know, on protocol. And it’s a lot of just realizing that the vacation is going to be just as fun if you don’t eat that food.
What I put into my body does not determine whether or not I have a good vacation. It’s people I’m with, the experiences I have, you know, making memories. It has nothing to do with the food. And you know, if you’re, if you’re motivated enough, if you really care enough, you’ll figure out a way to make that work and not make excuses. Like, I’m going to go off protocol, just because I’m in a situation where it’s harder to stay on protocol.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so that you may be challenged on that vacation, but there’s no reason for you to change what you’re doing right. Here’s the thing, when we use food, food as an escape or as food as a way to feel good. We lose the beautiful moments that we have with our family and with our loved ones with our friends, you know, because we’re not really fully present to be with them. We’re not fully present for the experience.
You know, I used to have the same feeling about when I was drinking, you know, I used to drink. And, and I thought there’s no way I can have fun out with people without drinking. Like if alcohol isn’t involved, why bother? You know.
And, and I’ve learned that my life is so much better without alcohol. And my life is so much better in the same way without those foods that I used to eat as an escape because I thought that to eat the certain food or drink, the certain thing meant I was having fun. But it didn’t at all, it meant that I thought I was having fun.
It felt good for a moment. But then I had the terrible hangover, and I was gaining weight. And I felt bad about myself. And I was lethargic, like, there were all these negative side effects, these negative consequences of using food and using alcohol as an escape from my life as a buffer from my real life, you know.
And so for you, one of the things we’ve talked about, and you’ve sort of embraced is like, I’m going to go on vacation, I’m going to spend time with my family, and my friends, and we’re going to hang out and talk and I’m going to be there for the experience of being with them. And you always find something to eat at these restaurants, you know, I mean, a big piece of fish, eat a steak, whatever you want to do.
Like, there’s lots of good options, you know, you can definitely find the food that works for you. Or you can just, you know, eat what feels good and feels authentic for you, you know, and maintain that integrity that you have with yourself, because you’ve built up over these last couple of months, Colin, you’ve built up a lot of integrity with yourself, you know, like you’re not cheating on your protocol, you’re not eating what you’re not supposed to.
And when you do that, and you continue to reward yourself, you reward your brain by not eating and giving in to those urges and cravings that you used to have for like Mountain Dew or fried chicken or whatever. When you continually do that you build up this trust in yourself and this confidence in yourself. And it’s I can see it in you like you’ve changed, you know, which has been awesome to see, you know. So that’s cool.
Like, obviously, Colin is, you know, my son. And so I’ve been working with him a lot like he and I have had a lot of long conversations about this stuff. And he’s made a lot of progress in a short amount of time. But honestly, anybody I work with can see the same kinds of results, it just depends on how much work they want to put into it.
You know, Colin just happens to be really committed to this, you know what I mean? He has this vision for himself that he has created that is like, it’s really powerful. And he thinks about that, you know, like when he’s challenged with the food at work, like he’s like, that person that I want to be in the future is much more important to me than this bag of Doritos right here. Like, that’s cool. That’s really cool, Colin. So what has been like the most surprising thing out of all of this work that we’ve done together, like, what surprised you the most so far?
Colin McGilvray
What surprised me the most is how the coaching that we’ve talked about and we’ve done, the coaching model, essentially, changing your your thoughts that you have about things, has helped me in so much more than just weight loss, relationships with other people, with my family, with co-workers, or just situations that pop up in my life. I mean, it’s helped me everywhere.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, like you’ve had some experiences, you work in customer support. And you’ve you know, I’ve had some, like angry customers, you know, I’m sure they call and like, you know, want to yell at you, you know, and just take out their frustration. And you’ve learned how to separate, like, the circumstance of this angry customer from what it means to you, like, it doesn’t mean anything about you, you know, and you don’t have to take that personally and you don’t have to react to that, you know, you can respond in a very mature and very in a way that’s like, very resourceful in a way that’s that’s very helpful for them and for you, you know.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, just realizing, you know, what they’re saying doesn’t mean anything about me. It’s just a fact. And what they’re saying is what they’re saying. I’m gonna choose to think the thoughts that I want to think about it.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, they’re just words. Oh, this person said some words. You know, you can choose what that means to you. You can choose that means like, you don’t know what you’re doing. Or, you know, you know, they’re mad at you or something like that. But you can also choose that it doesn’t mean anything doesn’t mean anything about you. So that’s cool. All right. Any other thoughts about this process so far?
Colin McGilvray
Yes. So I’ve tried several, like weight loss programs before. And none of them prepare you for how hard this is going to be mentally. None of them tell you that, you know, you’re going to be around people who are eating this fast food that you are not going to eat. And it’s never prepared you for that. It’s never really gone into the coaching side of it. And I think that’s what’s really different about this. And this is why I’ve been able to get this far with it.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the things that I definitely bring to the table with my clients. And I tell them this all the time, it’s like, you know what, it will be hard, it will be challenging, you know, changing your diet, like changing what you’re eating, and stop using food as an escape from your life stop using food to feel better, is going to be challenging.
But I got you through that, like, that’s my forte is like, you know, working on the mindset piece with people and helping them process the emotional piece so that they can get through this. And diets just don’t do that. They’re like, here’s what you eat, or don’t eat, and good luck, you’re on your own, you know, they don’t talk to you about, okay, what happens when it gets really hard? Like, what am I supposed to do?
Or I’m having this situation, what do I do about this? Or I have this thing coming up at work or this vacation. Like, how do I get through that? And that’s one of the beautiful things about having a coach working with you is like, you get answers to all of your questions. You get to help working through your particular situation, you get somebody there, walking you through every step of the way of this process, through the hard stuff. Has it gotten easier, like are things easier now?
Colin McGilvray
Sure, like I was gonna say earlier a ton about it being really hard. And you know, it isn’t the beginning of getting off a sugar craving and you kind of build a you obtain a skill set that you have to help you with all these different, all these different situations. So you’ve essentially given me that skill set to get through all of this, and it gets a lot easier as you go. There’s still hard moments and things come up for sure. But you get through it, and it just gets easier and easier.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and like I said, at the beginning, this has only been we’ve only been working together for like eight weeks, you know, honestly, the first five or six weeks are probably the hardest part, like just like you got to get through that initial, you got to get off the sugar and get off, get off the sugar withdrawals, because that’s definitely a mental and a physical issue that we gotta get over.
So we did that pretty quickly. But then we learn the mental piece. And that takes a few weeks to like, kind of work through that stuff. But once you get through those, like the first six weeks, then you’re pretty well situated, right? Like, you know, the last couple of weeks, we haven’t talked too much. And you’ve been doing really well. And you keep losing weight, and you’re sticking to your protocol, which is awesome.
Like you’re doing such a great job. I wish everybody was like, honestly, because people they’re like, oh, I want to change, I want to lose weight. And then I’m like, cool, here’s what we’re gonna do. And they’re like, whoa, I don’t want to do anything different. You know, like, I don’t want to like be uncomfortable at all. And like, you gotta get uncomfortable, right? Like, has that?
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, I definitely had a fear of being uncomfortable. Yeah, sure. But like you’ve said before, I must embrace the suck.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s a phrase we use in Ultra running a lot or in triathlon is like, embrace the suck, because it will suck at times. But just know that so. So it’s been uncomfortable. You got through it, and now you’re reaping the rewards of that right?
Colin McGilvray
Absolutely.
Patrick McGilvray
Do you feel better?
Colin McGilvray
I feel so much better.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And do you still have that like strong vision of future Colin? And is that still the thing that’s kind of like your north star that keeps you pointed forward?
Colin McGilvray
I do. Definitely. And, you know, I started out with that vision, and it’s only gotten stronger as we’ve done this. As I get closer, and that number between 2- or 300 and 180 becomes smaller and smaller. That vision only becomes stronger.
Patrick McGilvray
When’s the last time we were in the 250s?
Colin McGilvray
I don’t remember it was probably junior high. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s crazy.
Colin McGilvray
It is.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s awesome. Well, here’s what I want for you. I mean, I love you because you’re my son and I want obviously all the best things in the world for you. But I want you to feel good about yourself. And I think it’s tough growing up as a kid, that’s the bigger kid in the class, you know, I mean, you’re tall too, you’re like six, three, right?
Colin McGilvray
6’2.
Patrick McGilvray
So like 6’2, okay, so you’re like tall, and then the big kid. Like, I think that’s tough. And there’s a lot of stuff that goes on, you know, around that, you know, there may be teasing, there may be bullying, there may be, you know, just some like, passive aggressive stuff, talking behind your back or whatever.
So, I mean, I know that that can be challenging. And, and I know that, you know, what I want for you is that I want you to feel good about yourself and feel confident, I want you to feel like you can do anything, because you can, I have so much faith in you. And I have so much confidence in you.
And I’m seeing you building up that self confidence in yourself. And it’s amazing to watch. And the more you do this, the more you stick with what you’re doing, the more that builds, the more that self confidence builds, the more that relationship with yourself, gets stronger, and gets better and more powerful.
You know, you’re learning very quickly, too, by the way, but you’re learning how to like, be a more powerful person and to like, step into that person that you really want to be. Because we all have that within us. We all have that ability within us to be who we want to be. And you’re starting to see that. And it’s awesome.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, I definitely look at challenges a lot different already. Now.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So you probably see challenges as more of like, an opportunity for you to grow.
Colin McGilvray
Exactly. And I started to feel, you know, a lot of things I thought I could never do, are suddenly possible.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Anything is possible.
Colin McGilvray
It is.
Patrick McGilvray
Well, you’re doing great. We’re going to check in with you later in a couple of months and see how things are going. My prediction is that you should get your goal weight here in a few months, you know, if you’re kind of on this steady decline, so average weight loss in a program like this is anywhere between like one to seven pounds a week, you know, I mean, you’ve been in about in the middle about five pounds a week, I guess.
Colin McGilvray
Yeah, something like that. And it fluctuates, too, you know, some weeks you lose a little less than others. Some days you get on the scale, and you notice a couple pound difference.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And sometimes it goes up and you’re like, what the heck is going on here? But then we’ve learned and one of the things I talk about is like not to be afraid of the scale. It’s just data. You know, I mean, it’s just like a number. It’s a number. This, you know, it’s a number that means how much your bones and your skin weigh and the water inside your body, you know.
Colin McGilvray
Exactly and ultimately still have that downward trend. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And that’s what we’re always looking for. We want it to keep going down for sure. So while you’re doing great, I’m really proud of you. And we’re going to check back in like I said, and a couple of months and see how you’re progressing. But you’re one of my favorite clients. You’ve been like one of the best coaching clients I’ve had. So keep up the good work Colin, and we’ll be checking in with you soon. Okay?
Colin McGilvray
Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, I love that kid so much. He is so awesome. I’m so happy for him too, as a parent. I’m like, so proud of him and so happy for him. And I’m proud of his progress. And I’m proud of the fact that he’s continuing to make progress and continuing on this journey.
And I want to keep you guys posted. So you know, we’ll definitely share more of his journey with you as we progress along here. I think a couple more interviews with Colin would be awesome. And then just a quick reminder here. The next weight loss masterclass starts June 1, only about 10 people can get in this class.
So if you want to get in, you have to enroll now, innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and get signed up, get your body ready for the summer, become that lean running machine that you know you can be innerfiretribe.com/stopovereating and enroll. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it so much. And as always, I have lots and lots of love for each and every one of you, my friends, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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