Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
I keep hearing from other coaches this crazy idea that, as a runner, you cannot lose weight while training for a race. Most runners who set out to lose weight will probably make some mistakes along …
Continue Reading about 137. The Most Common Weight Loss Mistakes Runners Make →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 137, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the most common weight loss mistakes that runners make. So I keep hearing from other coaches out there on social media and stuff. There’s this kind of crazy idea that as a runner, you can’t lose weight.
If you’re training, if you’re running consistently, you just can’t lose weight, or you shouldn’t. And I think this idea is kind of crazy. I’ll tell you more about that in a second. But most runners who set out to lose weight, probably make some mistakes along the way. And this is why some of these coaches just say don’t even try to lose weight while you’re a runner. Because it’s hard to do.
Well, I think it’s just because people are doing it wrong. There’s mistakes being made, and we need to just fix the mistakes. Okay, so I exclusively coach runners to help them lose the extra pounds. And I’ve seen all these mistakes, I’ve seen every mistake possible. And then some.
And a big part of what I do now is to help you as a runner not to make the same mistakes, right? You can absolutely lose weight while running, while training for a marathon, while training for an ultra marathon. And you can even maintain or improve your running performance along the way. You just have to focus on a few key things here.
Okay, so today on the podcast, I’m going to be talking about the most common weight loss mistakes runners make and what you can do to avoid them. And making mistakes is part of the process. Sometimes unfortunately, it’s part of the process of learning.
But like I said, what I do now as a coach is I help you with guidance with direction, I help you to not make the common mistakes that so many people make when they set out to improve their health to lose weight to get leaner, stronger, improve their running performance, all that stuff.
This is why I do what I do. This is why I created my coaching program, the Running Lean coaching project. This is my immersive coaching program that delivers knowledge, guidance, support, accountability, encouragement, motivation, to help you stay on track, so that you can improve your health, lose the weight, and make changes to your health at last permanently.
This isn’t about quick fixes and quit, you know, losing weight as fast as possible. You can go somewhere else and figure out how to do this, how to do that. This is about becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself and doing it in a way that you can make it last.
That’s you know, we’re talking about longevity here. We’re talking about permanent lifestyle changes. So if you’re ready for that, if you’re ready to lose weight, get stronger, run faster, run longer, and do it permanently, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project.
You gotta apply for coaching with me, it’s not for everybody, you got to fill out a short application, schedule a Zoom call with me. We’ll have a conversation, it doesn’t take that long. We’ll talk about your goals. I’ll answer your questions, we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you.
To get started with the process, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Put in your application and we’ll just see if this is a good fit. You know, I would love to see you in the Running Lean coaching project. I’d love to help you become the leanest, strongest, most badass version of yourself yet. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and let’s get started.
Alright, let’s talk about some mistakes. Some of the most common mistakes that runners make when they set out to lose weight. And like I was saying at the top of the episode here. I’ve heard from a lot of coaches and a lot of “experts” in this space that talk about not being able to lose weight while you’re training. Like it’s just impossible to do. So why even bother?
And I’m going to say right now that I think that’s BS because I help runners all the time to lose weight while they’re training for a marathon, while they’re training for an Ironman, while they’re training for some other endurance sport, some race.
But a lot of people out there think that you shouldn’t try. And I think it’s coming from this place of runners eating kind of a terrible diet, really eating a ton of carbs. And if you’re eating a ton of carbs, it’s going to be very challenging for you to lose weight, that’s for sure. You know, I’m talking about that today.
Or they think that, you know, just running more is like the answer to losing weight. And it’s not right, it’s, it can be part of a healthy weight loss strategy. But it’s not the answer. It’s not alone. Running is not a great weight loss strategy. It just isn’t, you know, it’s good for you. It’s good for a lot of things. But by itself, as a way of losing weight, it just doesn’t really work too well. Okay.
So there are some sort of myths out there, there are some mistakes that people make. There’s some misinformation out there. And I just want to clear some of that up here today. And really, I want to focus on some of these big mistakes that people make, because I want you to be able to approach your weight loss journey in a way that feels good for you. And that, you know, where you keep making progress.
If you’re not making progress, it’s not working, then obviously, something isn’t working, right, you got to change something. But a lot of times, it’s just because you’re making one of these big mistakes, okay. So just know that there are people out there that believe wholeheartedly that you cannot or should not even try to lose weight, if you’re if you’re running, especially if you’re training for a race.
And I think that is untrue, I think you can absolutely lose weight. While you’re in training mode, you just have to do things a little bit differently. And you have to like, make sure you’re focusing on a few key things. So let’s talk about these. All right.
The first is this, this is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when they approach weight loss in general, but especially as a runner, somebody that’s engaged in regular running, regular exercise, endurance exercise, and that is not eating enough, not getting enough calories.
And this might surprise you that I’m even talking about this. Because in general, I think that counting calories is a mistake, I think that we shouldn’t be focused on the calorie number. This is not really, this is not really the way we have evolved as human beings, like we never had my fitness pal until very recently.
So if counting calories meticulously was the only way you could lose weight or maintain weight, we would have been overweight and obese individuals throughout our entire existence. But no, no, we’ve only become overweight and obese and sick and, and diabetic in the last 50 years pretty much before that. The numbers were much, much lower than they are now.
And so I think this idea of just like counting calories is not the answer. Okay, so I think most people when they set out to lose weight, they think they need to be in some sort of massive calorie restriction. And this can be a problem, especially when your training load increases, because if you’re restricting calories, but you’re pushing yourself harder and harder, this is going to kind of slow down your metabolism because your body is trying to conserve energy and conserve calories.
So it’s going to slow down how much energy you’re expending. And so your resting metabolic rate will actually go down. The amount of calories you burn just from sitting around watching Netflix will go down. So no amount of exercise is going to like offset that.
You know, they talk about you can’t outrun a bad diet. You can’t outrun calorie deficit either. Okay, so you have to be mindful not to let your calories go too low. And listen, if calories in and out if that was like the answer to all this to like losing weight and being healthy and everything. We wouldn’t be having this discussion right now because you’d know what to do.
All the food tracking apps that are out there, all the exercise trackers, all the calorie deficit diets, all this stuff would work. It worked beautifully. They all work perfectly, but they don’t. You know, we’ve got nutrition labels that talk about calories, we’ve got meal replacement shakes, we’ve got guidelines, we’ve got 100 calorie snacks, like all these things would work.
But none of these things actually work. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to stop tracking every single calorie and every single workout and try to do some math where you’re subtracting the amount of calories burned with the amount of calories that you’re taking in. And then make sure you’re, you know, making this equation like you’re doing all this math, like to try to make all this work for you, right?
Your body doesn’t understand math, here’s what your body understands. Feed me real food. I should eat until I feel full. And when I exercise more, I’m probably gonna need to eat more. That’s a good rule of thumb to follow right there. Eat real food, eat to satiety. And when you’re in heavier training loads, you need to be eating more. Don’t worry about the number of calories as much as, “Do I feel like I’m giving my body what it needs? Am I eating the right amount of food for what I’m doing right now?”
It’s a pretty easy question to answer most of the time. It should be pretty clear to you. Yeah, I think I’m doing it, some people are overeaters, and they will eat more than they need. And then you feel like overly stuffed. If you’re feeling overly stuffed when you eat. That’s a problem. You gotta stop doing that, okay, eat to society, not pass there.
Eat more when you’re hungry for more, because you’re working out harder. And let’s just put away the calorie trackers, right. You can lose weight, without starving yourself, you know, you can lose weight without this massive calorie deficit. Yes, if you reduce your calories dramatically, you can lose a lot of weight, but it’s not sustainable.
Like I said, your metabolism will slow down to match the calories that are coming in. And if you’re a runner, and you’re putting out a lot of extra effort, you’re going to be breaking yourself down really fast. Okay, so you gotta like, make sure you’re keeping your, your the number of calories you’re eating up, you got to keep the amount of food that you’re eating up high enough to support your metabolism, and keep your metabolism going also to support the kind of training that you’re doing, right.
And it really helps also, if you’re eating the right kinds of foods, okay, so that’s point number two. So point number one is not eating enough, you know, not eating enough or getting enough calories, not eating enough food. Point number two is this the biggest mistake I see. Number two is just like eating way too many carbs, like thinking that, oh, as a runner, like I just got a fuel with all the carbs.
And here’s something I have to tell you. You do not need carbs to run. You heard me correctly, you do not need carbs to run, your body will do just fine with other sources of fuel. For example, your own stored body fat, this is a much better source of fuel for running. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve never heard this before. Just know that what I’m describing here is, is being fat adapted, it’s adapting your body to use your own stored body fat instead of carbs as a fuel source, okay?
When we get into fat adaptation, you can run longer, you’ll have more steady energy throughout the day. You’re burning fat, which is a great way to lose weight. You virtually have an unlimited store of body fat on your body, even someone who’s very lean like me, I think I’m like 13% body fat. I have, you know, 100,000 calories of fat on me at any given time. You know, 13% body fat for me is like 20 pounds of fat on my body. You know, if you do the math, that’s like over 100,000 calories of fuel.
I could run for like two weeks straight without stopping and still, you know, have plenty of fuel on board without eating anything. I’m not, I’m not recommending you do this. But you could if you were if you had to, okay, you can survive just fine on your own stored body fat, but you got to get fat adapted, you got to train your body to use fat instead of the carbs as fuel. This takes a little bit of time. It takes a few weeks to get your body used to that.
But once you get there, it’s so amazing. It’s such a great source of fuel. But what runners do is they’re like, well, listen, you know, running would be easier if I eat more carbs, I’m just gonna eat more carbs. And what happens is they get hungrier, and they get hungry and they start overeating.
And the reason we get hungry when we’re eating carbs is that carbohydrates will spike our insulin, insulin jacks up our hunger signals, you know, messes with the hunger hormone, ghrelin and it produces more gallons so we feel hungrier, so eating a lot of carbs will just make you in general, consume more food and be hungry for more food.
And if you’re also training you’re going to be hungrier as well. So you’re going to be really ramping up these hunger signals. And chances are, you’re gonna be overeating. So a lot of runners who are trying to lose weight, they just start on this high carbohydrate diet. And they actually gain weight.
So many people come to me and they’re like, Patrick, I’m training for a marathon, I’m crushing my workouts for like this past month, and I’m gaining weight, what is going on. And that’s exactly what’s going on. You know, it’s not a big mystery to me what’s happening when I see somebody eating like that. So what I’m saying is you don’t have to eliminate carbohydrates from your diet, this isn’t about zero carbs.
You know, depending on your goals, you can still include some strategic carbs around workout, some targeted carbohydrate loading, right before a workout, you know, just to help you maintain higher performance levels. But if you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll want to keep your carbs low. Or if you’re really crushing workouts trying to build muscle or something like that, you can afford to go a little bit higher, right?
Your carb intake varies based on your goals, your metabolism, how well fat adapted you are, how you feel, overall, your overall energy levels, how you’re sleeping at night, all those kinds of things, okay, and this is one of the reasons why I do personalized coaching, because I can’t tell you here what’s going to work for you. We’re also different, right?
And I’ve seen people do amazing things without using carbs at all, including myself, like, I’ve gotten pretty much zero carb for marathon training, and then ran a marathon with zero calories, I did a 50k with zero calories. And I’ve done training cycles where I eliminate carbs, you know, pretty much eliminate, there’s a little bit of carbs in some of the things that I eat, but it’s very, very low.
And, and my training improves, my running times improved, my running performance improved. This is crazy, right? Anybody that says you need carbs, you need carbs to run, just go just tell them thank you for your opinion. You don’t thank you for your opinion, I’m gonna move on now, right. So some people, you know, they do fine without hardly any, some people like to increase carbs as their training ramps up.
So maybe they’re really low carb at the beginning of their training cycle, then they can kind of afford to ramp up their carbohydrate intake towards the end of their training cycle when their mileage is increasing, or they’re getting closer to their race or something like that. And this is one of the fun things about all this for me because you get to experiment.
The bottom line with this and with everything I’m talking about here today, and everything I talk about with my clients really is that we are all an experiment of one, n equals one, that means that the number of people in a study is one and that’s you. N equals one number of people in the study in this experiment that you’re conducting is one. So experiment with this, try to get fat adapted, go super low carb, see how you feel, see if you can improve your running performance without adding carbs. You can, absolutely you can. I see it all day, I help runners do this all the time.
So you don’t need to eat carbs to run and going too high in carbs is going to really mess up your weight loss. Okay, so one of the biggest mistakes I see is people just thinking they need to add a bunch of carbs.
Another mistake I see people see is not eating enough protein. Most people in general, are protein deficient, they’re not getting enough protein. And runners need more protein than the average person, the average sedentary person, or the person who’s not training for a marathon, you’re a runner, and you’re training for some kind of endurance event or triathlon or cycling or swimming or whatever it is, you’re going to need more protein than the average person.
So because most people aren’t getting enough protein, runners tend to be very deficient in protein. Running is a catabolic exercise. Catabolic meaning it breaks you down. Running will break down muscle tissue, right? So we got to prevent that from happening. And you can prevent it from happening. You’ve got to incorporate strength training, and you’ve got to get enough protein to support the athletic performance that you’re doing on a regular basis.
So you can do this in a way that also supports your weight loss goals, right? It’s not one or the other. It’s not like oh, you can eat a lot of protein or you got to like lose weight, or you can’t gain muscle while you’re losing weight. Or you know, you can’t be burning fat if you’re getting loss.
I’ve heard all these different like myths since stuff out there. But here’s the bottom line. Bottom line is you need enough protein to support the running that you’re doing at your activity levels. And when you’re doing strength training and eating enough protein, you will, should be able to maintain or gain muscle mass.
More muscle means your metabolism will be faster, you’re actually increasing your metabolism, the more muscles that you carry on your body. And as a fat adapted runner, that means you’re going to be burning fat even more efficiently, you’re burning more calories. In general, since you primarily burn fat, you’re gonna burn even more fat, okay, so one of the most important things you can do is regular strength training, getting enough protein.
If you’re actively working out on a regular basis, you need more protein than you’re probably used to getting, I’m going to give you a number here to kind of shoot for, for a protein target. And I’ve talked about protein in the past, and I may have given you different numbers in the past, the science on this keeps changing.
And so I’m trying to just keep up with the science and give you what I think is good information at the time. So if I’ve said something different in the past, that’s fine. But here’s what I’m going to tell you. Now. If you’re a runner, you’re actively working out on regular basis, and you want to maintain or gain some muscle mass, then you need to be consuming around .9-1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight.
I’m gonna repeat that .9-1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So let’s say you’re a woman, and you currently weigh 180 pounds, but you’re trying to lose weight, you’re trying to get to 140. So then let’s use 140 as your target, okay? .9 would be 126 grams of protein up to 140. Okay, that’s what you should be shooting for every day.
It may seem like a lot, but I’m telling you right now, it’s not. It’s not this is what’s going to help prevent muscle loss during weight loss, muscle loss during training, especially for endurance athletes, okay. Let’s say you’re, you’re a man and you’re like 200-220 pounds and you’re trying to lose weight, you’re trying to get to 180. So that would mean somewhere between 162 grams to 180 grams of protein a day. .9-1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight.
Now, these are averages, your needs will vary based on your goals again, and this is an experiment of one. But when you’re eating enough protein, not only are you going to feel more full, and you’re gonna feel more satisfied and be less hungry throughout the day, you’re also going to be supporting your running.
You’re going to be supporting your muscle mass, you’re not going to be losing muscle while you’re training, you’re not going to be losing muscle while you’re losing weight, and you’re actually going to kick up your fat burning into high gear, okay, so all these are good things. All these are good things, okay, so get enough protein, it’s very, very important.
Another problem I see and mistake that I see runners make when they’re trying to lose weight is not getting enough rest and recovery. So really, this is like just running too much right and just doing too much running, you put your body into this state of chronic stress, you put your body into this state of chronically being in that fight or flight mode.
When your body is in that fight or flight mode. Cortisol is very high. That’s the stress hormone. Cortisol being high increases the amount of glucose in your blood because your body is like, Hey, we got to get prepared to fight. You know, we got to get prepared to fight or flight here. So your body will be constantly releasing more glucose in your blood. So your blood sugar raises, is being raised constantly, which means insulin is being raised constantly, which means your body is chronically going to be storing fat instead of burning it.
Remember, insulin is the driver here. Insulin being high means that your fat is being locked up in your fat cells. You cannot burn fat, you cannot lose fat when insulin is present. This is why we keep carbohydrates low. This is why we practice things like intermittent fasting. This is why we keep our stress levels low. Okay, so we got to be burning fat. We don’t want to be storing fat, right?
We want to be using that energy instead of conserving it. Okay? It’s very hard to lose weight with this strategy. If you’re overtraining, it’s just going to be hard to lose weight, right? So you have to prioritize rest and recovery days. You have to make sure you’re planning into your training schedule, rest days, recovery days. You got to give your body the chance to recover from the hard workouts you’re doing. You got to get a good night’s sleep every night and stuff like that. Okay.
So I had somebody ask a question like, how do you know if you’re training too much? How do you know if you’re overtraining? So if you’re not getting enough rest and recovery, if you’re overtraining, you’re going to start to see some negative impacts on your running performance, right? So that’s number one, you’ll see that you’re running, you can improve, or it’s starting to decline, that’s a good sign that your health and fitness is kind of suffering, right.
And, you know, remember that running is a catabolic exercise, it breaks you down. So without proper rest and recovery, your body will not be healing properly, right, so it’s gonna break you down even faster, and your body’s not gonna be able to adapt to the training load. So as your ramp up your training, your body won’t be able to adapt to that. And your running performance will, you’ll really see your performance start to suffer, especially as you ramp up the training load, okay?
If you’re feeling tired all the time, if you’re not getting a good night’s sleep, these are all indicators that you’re overtraining, right? If your workout performance is reduced, if you notice the RPE, or rate of perceived exertion is going up, if you feel like your workouts keep getting harder and harder. Your endurance starts to tank, maybe you can’t run as long.
These, these are all signs that you’re overtraining, okay? Also, we can see some mental impacts, like maybe you’re not as clear headed, or maybe your mood starts to suffer, you’re like, really grumpy all the time. Have you ever noticed that like, when you get into these higher training modes, you start to be really grumpy around people, that can be a sign that you’re overtraining, right?
But this can lead to other things like depression, and you start to lose motivation. And you start to doubt yourself, and you just don’t feel like running anymore. All these are signs, like if you’re in this mode, right now, like, these are signs that you might be overtraining, right. So just take some rest recovery days, make sure you’re practicing this, and building this into your training program.
Because if you’re trying to lose weight as runner, you can do it. But being in this chronically stressed out state and overtraining is going to make it very, very difficult for you to lose weight, okay.
And then the last mistake I see people make, and this one’s interesting, is not practicing what I call variation, okay, so your body is an adaptive machine, right? If you keep doing the same things every day, day in and day out, your body will adapt to those things. And this can be a good thing, depending on what it is. This is how you develop good eating habits.
For example, this is how you develop good workout habits, you know, if like, getting up at 4am to run is something that you have to do because your work schedule changed. And at first, it’s really hard to do. But over time, you keep doing it and you get used to it and you get adapted to it and you feel like oh, I actually enjoy getting up at 4am Hey, good for you.
You’ve created a new habit, your body’s adapted to doing something that it didn’t want to do. This is all good, right? So there are also times when doing the same thing over and over again, can be kind of, you know, hard on our bodies, things like that, right? And so you’ve probably heard this term, probably, and I don’t like this term, but somebody was talking about this recently.
And they were like, Yeah, you need to be confusing your muscles. Like when you go to the gym, you got to be doing different workouts. So you, you know, you’re you want to confuse your muscles, muscle confusion, muscle confusion, I’m like, What does that even mean? And I started doing a little digging into this.
And muscle confusion. I don’t really like that as an analogy, I don’t think it’s really a thing. You’re not confusing your muscles at all. But we actually want to be consistent in what we’re doing in our workouts. We want to be consistent, we want to mix things up a little bit, but we want to be fairly consistent so that our bodies will adapt, we do want our bodies to adapt. Okay. So there’s this idea. Or this, it’s not an idea.
There’s this principle called progressive overload. And this is that you challenge your muscles by changing the stress that you put on them, right. So the stress that you’re putting on your muscles, if you want to build muscles, this can come in the form of the intensity of the lift, the number of sets you’re doing, the number of reps, you’re doing, the duration of the workout, the amount of time you engage in the activity.
So it could be the same exercise. You can be doing deadlifts and just be like changing how intense you’re doing, how many sets you’re doing, how many reps like if you do it for an hour or you do it for 30 minutes, whatever any of these kinds of changes will help to positively impact your performance. Okay, so we’re willing to progressively overload the system. And we can do that in a number of different ways. All right? When it comes to training, weight training and trying to build muscle, progressive overload is a great way to break a plateau.
So if you’re finding that you’re not being able to increase muscle mass, then increase the amount of weight you train with, right? Progressive overload can also help you with your running workout. So let’s say your running workouts are starting to plateau, well increase the duration of a cardiovascular type of workout, or increase the duration of a tempo workout, you know, so these are all different ways of changing things up to break through some sort of a plateau. Okay?
So variation is important, but I want to just make sure that we understand that this isn’t about confusing yourself or confusing your muscles necessarily, it’s more about that progressive overload principle than it is about confusion, I think that’s just a silly way of saying it, to be honest with you. So variation is key for running too.
So one situation a lot of runners find themselves in is that they kind of do all their runs at that same effort, they sort of do like a five, six medium hard effort. And this can kind of lead to that chronic fatigue that I talked about, you know, in the overtraining section, right. So we want to vary our workouts, you want to do some speed work very hard, very fast workouts, but very short.
So you’re putting a certain type of stress on your body, or progressively overloading the system, but in a very acute way, very stressful, but acute, short, short, bounce very hard and fast, then you also want to include some long, slow running, this helps you to build endurance, this is much less stressful, it’s much longer, much longer workouts, but it’s a less less amount of stress on your body, it’s, it’s more of a chronic stress.
So you don’t want it to be as high, you want the stress to be lower, for that long, slow running. Okay, so this is how we vary our running workouts. And then when it comes to diet, and nutrition, variation is key there too, right? So you don’t have to do the exact same thing every single day, week, month, you know, mix it up a little bit.
You know, we talk about things like intermittent fasting, which just means like, we don’t eat all the time, we don’t eat six times a day, we eat maybe two, three times a day, right? That’s all that means. So maybe you normally eat around noon, you eat at 8pm. And maybe don’t be so rigid about this, if you want to eat a few minutes early, or even an hour or two on either side of that it’s all good. It’s not going to make or break your whole weight loss plan. Okay?
Sometimes you need to eat around your training schedule, sometimes you need to eat around family schedules and things like that, it’s totally fine. Don’t be too stressed out about that. Okay? Practice a little bit of variation here, right? Some days, you may even add an extra meal or take one away. So you might do longer fasts or like shorter fasting periods. And that’s all good. These are all good variations. This is going to help you to maintain this for the long haul, right?
And when we’re practicing variations like this, it should not negatively impact your running performance, it shouldn’t negatively impact your weight loss plans. So just make sure that what you’re doing isn’t, you know, well, I’m going to practice some variation. So I’m going to eat, you know, a whole large pizza by myself because you know, it’s variation.
No, that’s not what we’re talking about here. So we want to practice some variation, but in ways in our workouts and in our nutrition and stuff that actually helped us support us and don’t throw things off off our whole program. Okay. Okay, so quick recap.
As a runner, if you’re trying to lose weight, you can do it, it is possible, you can still maintain your training, you can still lose weight, you don’t have to lose muscle. But don’t make some of these mistakes. Number one, don’t restrict calories too excessively. Be sure to eat enough fuel to keep your metabolism going and to fuel your workout. So sometimes you’ll need to eat more, sometimes a little bit less.
Don’t be tempted to start eating all the carbs, right, because that’s just going to make you super hungry, it’s going to kick you out of that fat burning mode, slow down your weight loss.
Make sure you’re getting enough protein. Running breaks down, it really does. So strength training and enough protein are going to help prevent muscle loss while still burning fat while still losing fat weight. You can still do this right?
Make rest and recovery days a priority. Keep your body out of that chronic stress mode. If your body is in that chronic stress mode, it’s going to be very, very hard to lose weight right?
And then lastly, practice variation. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be so rigid and mix it up a little bit. Variation is one of the keys to creating a well rounded, super healthy, badass version of you.
Okay? And remember, all of this stuff is subject to what works and doesn’t work for you as an individual. We are all an experiment of one, you get to try some of these things and see what works and what doesn’t. And if you want help with any of this stuff, that’s what I do. You and I can work on putting together a plan for you.
And then we can kind of see how things are working with you and continually tweak things so that you’re always making progress so that you’re always losing weight, so that you’re always moving closer to your goals. Cool. Awesome. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Lots of runners come to me for help losing weight, getting stronger, and running faster. One common question that keeps coming up is, “How do I lose weight without all the discomfort?” They want …
Continue Reading about 136. How to Avoid Weight Loss Discomfort →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 136 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: how to avoid weight loss discomfort. Lots of runners come to me because they want help losing weight, they want help getting stronger and running faster. One common question that keeps coming up is how do I lose weight without all the discomfort?
So they want to make big sweeping changes to their health and fitness, but they want to avoid feeling uncomfortable during the process. I get that. Totally. That was definitely me. Back in the day, I was always looking for shortcuts and hacks, anything that could help me lose weight that would help me get to my goal weight without feeling any kind of discomfort, or I wanted all the gains without any of the pains.
But this is not how things work in the real world. So in this episode, I’m going to take a look at what it actually takes to reach a weight loss goal. I’ll also share the secret of how to avoid weight loss discomfort. And avoiding weight loss discomfort, avoiding the discomfort of change is something that I am very familiar with, and something that a lot of people want help with.
And what they really want though, is they want help overcoming or getting through the uncomfortable bits. Because I think we all know that it takes some discomfort in order to grow and to change and to lose weight and to get healthier and to get stronger. Like all those things that we want for ourselves. You know that it does require you to get uncomfortable.
This is one of the reasons why I created my coaching program. And why I do personalized coaching is because we all need a little help getting through those uncomfortable places. This does not mean that the rest of your life has to be riddled with discomfort. And that you’re setting yourself up for a life of discomfort. That’s not what we’re talking about at all here.
But when we’re making changes when we’re growing, when we’re changing, when we’re improving our body composition, all of those things require a certain amount of discomfort. Because what you have right now where you are right now in your comfort zone isn’t what you want for yourself like this is easy, you know how to do what you’re doing now.
But in order to get to that next level, whether it’s running faster, getting stronger, losing 30, 40, 50 pounds, it requires some level of discomfort, okay? This is why I do personalized coaching. I’ve created an immersive coaching program that delivers all the knowledge, all the support, the encouragement, the inspiration, the motivation and accountability that you need to stay on track, to improve your health to make changes that last permanently.
This isn’t about quick fixes. This isn’t about losing weight as fast as possible. And I’m going to tell you right now, this is not about doing it without any discomfort. This is about learning how to lean into the discomfort so that you can become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And you can do it in a way that is sustainable. That’s what we’re all looking for here.
Anybody can lose weight quickly for a short period of time. We’ve all done that. But then you put the weight back on. Anybody can get a little bit strong or a little bit faster. But what if you want to PR? What if you want to BQ? You know what, if you want to radically improve your body composition, you’re gonna have to lean into some serious discomfort.
So if you’re ready for those kinds of big changes, if you’re ready to finally drop the weight and keep it off for good, if you’re ready to get stronger, to look better, to run faster, to run longer than you ever have before; then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. There is an application process to join this program. You can just fill out a short application, schedule a free Zoom call with me. We’ll talk about your goals and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
It may not be but if you’re interested, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out the application, you and I will get on a call, and we’ll talk about it. Cool, I would love for you to join me in the Running Lean coaching project, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’ll see you there soon.
Okay, so this whole idea of leaning into discomfort is what we’re talking about today. And I titled this episode how to avoid weight loss discomfort, because I think that’s something we all want. And I will actually tell you, at the end of this episode, how you can avoid that discomfort.
But I want to, I want to like, first of all talk about how we really need to change our way of thinking around this, okay, so when people come to me, and they tell me that they, that they want things to be easy for them, they want things to be as comfortable as possible. So this is what they think they want, they think they want weight loss to be easy, they want it to be easy and effortless. They don’t want to give up anything, they want to continue to eat their favorite foods.
They don’t want to experience any level of discomfort whatsoever. And the truth is that this is just not the way things work in the real world. If you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to make some changes to your diet. If you want to run faster, you’re going to have to practice running faster. And these things do not feel good.
These things are by their very nature, they are uncomfortable things to do, because they’re pushing you out of your comfort zone. So people think they want weight loss to be easy. They think they want running faster to be easy. What they also want is they want to lose all this weight, they want to run a Boston Qualifying time, they want to look better, they want to feel better, and they want to do it without any kind of discomfort whatsoever.
And I think this is an interesting concept. But here’s the thing, you’re just you cannot have both. You cannot stay comfortable, and become more, it just doesn’t work that way. Think about everything you’ve done in your life that you’re proud of, or anything you’ve gotten through in your life. That was hard, but maybe profoundly changed you. Maybe you’ve had a child, or three, maybe you’ve raised a child through the teenage years, that’s some hard stuff right there.
Maybe you’ve run a marathon, or a half marathon or a 5k, or an ultra marathon or an Ironman or whatever. Maybe you’ve built a healthy relationship with a significant other. This is very hard work. This is years and years of work. Maybe you’ve gotten through a divorce or a health scare or a health diagnosis like cancer, maybe you’ve had a loved one passed away, like a parent, or a friend, or sibling or child.
All of these things have a profound effect on you. All these things change us profoundly. And I’ve said before, it’s the challenges that change us. It’s the challenges that teach us lessons. It’s through these challenges that growth happens. And none of this stuff is easy. It’s all hard. All of this stuff is hard to do.
But it’s those challenges that actually cause us to learn and grow and to evolve and to become more. It’s the challenges that change us. I hate that it works that way. I really do. I wish it was easier. I wish we could learn lessons from just reading a book. And we can learn some lessons from reading a book. But the profound life changes that the or life experiences that change us the most and cause us to grow, are those things that are hard to do, the ones that are uncomfortable.
You know, think about the weight loss or the strength training analogy where you have to, you know, go to the gym and lift weights, lift heavy weights, you have to overload your muscles in order for your muscles to grow and get stronger. You cannot build muscle and get stronger by lifting super lightweights. It just doesn’t work that way.
There’s a former Mr. Olympia Champion, Ronnie Coleman. And he has this saying he has this quote that I love. I say this all the time. And he says, “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights.” And oh my god, isn’t that the truth? Everybody wants the body, but nobody wants to do the hard work. Everybody wants the gains, nobody wants the pains.
So if you want something more for yourself, if you want to lose weight, if you want to evolve, if you want to grow, if you want to get stronger, all that stuff is going to require that you endure some discomfort. And instead of trying to avoid discomfort, I want you to think about doing the opposite, I want you to actually embrace it.
Instead of trying to stay comfortable, and have everything be easy peasy. I want you to know that it will be hard, and know that you will get uncomfortable. You need to accept this, you need to embrace it, and then get on with it. Get on with doing what you need to do. And this discomfort is something that you have to choose. And you have to choose this on a regular basis. You have to choose to do the uncomfortable things.
If you want to grow, you have to decide that this is what you want for yourself. And you have to make a decision and decide that you want to embrace discomfort. And in Latin, the Latin origin of the word decide means to cut off. So you’re cutting off all other options when you make a decision.
And when you make these decisions, and you make decisions every single day, you’re going to make a decision to eat the pizza, or to eat the salad, you’re going to make a decision to have ice cream or not. You’re going to make a decision to, you know, get drunk tonight, or just drink sparkling water. And it’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
That’s a Tony Robbins quote, by the way, it’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. There’s no growth in the comfort zone. And there’s no comfort in the growth zone. You have to be able to, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable in order to grow in order to change in order to become more.
And there actually is one way to avoid discomfort. And I told you at the beginning I was going to share this with you. There’s a way that you can avoid discomfort with all this and a lot of people don’t talk about this. Okay. So if the idea of embracing discomfort is too much for you, that is totally fine.
Here’s the answer: if you want to avoid discomfort, do nothing. Don’t try to lose weight. Don’t try to run faster. Don’t try to improve your health. Don’t try to get stronger. Don’t try to get off your meds. You know, don’t grow, don’t evolve. Don’t worry about ever trying to be anything more than who you are right now. Right, problem solved.
Stay comfortable. Stay in your comfort zone. But just remember, there’s no growth in the comfort zone. And there’s no comfort in the growth zone. But if you don’t want to experience any kind of discomfort, that’s fine. That’s an option for you. Just don’t worry about changing, just stay where you are.
Is this what you want? Is this okay for you? Is that really what you want for yourself? I don’t think so. If you’re listening to this podcast right now, I’m gonna say probably not there’s probably something more that you want for yourself. And you’re willing to experience some discomfort to get there, right.
But what most people do is what I just mentioned, they do nothing. They don’t try to improve their health. They don’t try to lose weight. They don’t try to run faster. They don’t try to get stronger. Because it’s hard. Because that doesn’t feel good. Your brain is programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Pleasure equals in our minds, in your brain, pleasure equals eating ice cream. Pain equals not eating ice cream. Pleasure equals sitting on the couch and watching Netflix pain equals going for a run or doing speed work. That is painful, right?
So your brain just wants you to be safe and comfortable, and just, you know, everything to feel good. And what I’m asking you to do here is to kind of override your brain’s natural way of doing things, and to seek discomfort in order to become more in order to grow, in order to evolve. And I have to say this to like, more discomfort is not always better. We’re not getting uncomfortable for the sake of getting uncomfortable. That’s not what I mean here.
Like, don’t put a rock in your shoe before you run out. Patrick said, I need to get uncomfortable. So I’m just going to be really uncomfortable and just, you know, make this run really suck. No, that’s not what we’re talking about here. Okay. We’re not talking about pushing yourself so hard all the time, that you’re creating chronic stress in your body, and you’re not getting the rest and recovery that you need.
You don’t need to be go, go, go, go go all the time, you have to prioritize rest and recovery. Right? This is what I’m talking about rest and recovery, I mean, mental rest and recovery, emotional rest and recovery too, as well as physical. But we don’t want to put ourselves in a chronic state of stress, you know, I gotta stay uncomfortable all the time.
No, we can be comfortable sometimes. It’s okay. So just don’t don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here, I do want you to have some comfort in your lives, you know. And you can of course, you can eat that ice cream. Occasionally, of course, you can like watch Netflix, you know, here and there.
But we also have to remember that if there are things that you want for yourself, those things that you want for yourself that you don’t already have, why outside your comfort zone, the things you want for yourself, but they exist out of your comfort zone. So you gotta get out of your comfort zone in order to get them.
And there’s no end to this, just understand this, like as a human being, you should always be striving to grow and evolve and become more. I think this is something that we should all be working towards. And there’s no end to changing and evolving. So there’s really no end to this idea of embracing discomfort, it has to just become part of your identity, it has to become part of who you are, and what you do on a regular basis.
Today, I am someone who regularly seeks out and embraces discomfort. Because I know that if I’m doing that I am growing and evolving and I’m becoming more I’m becoming more of the person that I was put on this earth to become. This is what I want for you. I want you to embrace the idea of embracing discomfort and knowing that that is the goal. That is the path to get you to your goals. Okay, I want this for you. You should want this for you as well. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
As a runner, you’ve probably been told that if you want to avoid hitting the wall, you need to consume a whole lot of one main fuel source - sugar. This approach does work for some, but for others …
Continue Reading about 135. The Benefits of Becoming Metabolically Flexible →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 135 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the benefits of becoming metabolically flexible. As a runner, you’ve probably been told that if you want to avoid hitting the wall, you need to consume a whole lot of one type of fuel: sugar basically, right?
And this approach does work for some, but for others, it spells metabolic disaster leading to incessant weight gain, insulin resistance and a host of other health issues. If you fall into this latter category, you may want to consider becoming metabolically flexible. Metabolic flexibility means you’re able to use multiple fuel sources effectively, this approach will help you lose weight, run longer and run faster.
So in this episode of the podcast, you’ll learn exactly what metabolic flexibility is, you’ll learn all about the benefits of metabolic flexibility. And I’ll show you how to get started with it. And you have to understand something: metabolic flexibility is not a one size fits all type of solution.
Okay, this does not work the same for everyone. Everyone’s a little bit different. We all have our own goals, we all have our own metabolisms, we all have our own likes and dislikes. You know, we all have our certain food preferences, body types, genetics, all these things factor into how we approach nutrition from an athletic performance standpoint, and metabolic flexibility, you know, choosing different sources of fuel for different types of activities is going to be the same it’s going to, it’s going to be different for every individual.
Okay, this is one of the reasons why I created the Running Lean coaching project. This is my immersive coaching program. And in my program we work together. So I work with you as an individual to help you come up with a personalized plan that works for you. You want to become metabolically flexible, you want to become more efficient at burning fat, you want to, you know, lose weight, you want to get faster, you want to be able to run longer than you ever have before.
All these things require some level of metabolic flexibility is what we’re talking about on the podcast here today. But also, if you want to take things a step further, and you want a little help with this, then consider joining the Running Lean coaching project. And what we do together is that we will put together a plan that works for you. And that will help you to get to your individualized goals, whatever those are for yourself.
So it’s really about you becoming the best possible version of yourself, the healthiest version of yourself, the most badass version of yourself and making it last. This is about long term, sustainable results, not about quick fixes, okay.
So if you’re ready to lose weight, get stronger, run faster, run longer, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You’ll fill out a short application, you and I will jump on a quick zoom call. We’ll talk about your goals. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. I would love to have you join me in the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Put in your application and we’ll see you soon. All right on to the topic.
So what is metabolic flexibility? At its simplest, metabolic flexibility is your body’s ability to use whatever fuel is available to it at the time. It means that your body’s metabolism is flexible, the ability of your body to metabolize different substrates, meaning different types of fuel. So different types of fuel could be food that you just ate could be used as fuel. It could be fuel that is stored in your muscles like glycogen.
It could be fuel that is stored in your fat stores could be stored body fat that you use as fuel. And so for most people, and I’ll get into this in just a minute for most people, though, they are only using like one source of fuel, mostly that stored glycogen, okay? And we want to change that we want to be able to tap into multiple sources of fuel, the two main sources of fuel we’re going to be talking about.
And the two main sort of preferred fuel sources that your body prefers to use, especially for exercise, like running, are going to be carbohydrates stored in your body. So sugar is stored in your body as glycogen in your muscles, and fat that’s stored in your body’s fat cells. Okay, so these are the two preferred fuel sources that we love to use it we’re very well adapted at using.
So the science calls this glucose oxidation and fat oxidation, okay. And something you have to understand about, you know, fat burning or a sugar burning is that we are always burning both at the same time. So it’s never just one or the other. Or very, you’re always burning a little bit of one or the other, okay? But what we’re talking about here is, is maximizing the amount of fat or, or glycogen that you’re burning, okay, so it’s never an all or nothing when it comes to fat and glucose oxidation, you’re always burning both.
But for example, the longer you’re out there running, the more fat that you’re actually burning, your body will, you know, if you’re running at a lower intensity, you will start out burning more carbohydrate, but that fat oxidation will continue to go up. And so what’s nice about you know, being really well fat adapted, is that you can burn much more fat much more efficiently.
And you can run for longer and longer distances without having to, you know, refuel, because you’ve got plenty of fuel on board at all times. And if you are a fat adapted athlete, so if you’re a low carb athlete, and you’ve become fat adapted, then you can even run at higher intensities, and still be very efficient at using fat as your main source of fuel. This is one of the reasons why we get into fat adaptation.
It’s because we want to be able to burn fat very, very effectively for long distance running. But also we can get into some pretty intense running as well. So they did a study a while back, it’s called the faster study and you can look it up. And one of the things they did was that they found that for the most part, most athletes that are, you know, the carb adapted athletes, so just your standard athletes, not fat adapted athletes, that once they get over 65% of VO2 Max, that they they tend to stop burning fat and start burning, mostly carbohydrate. Okay. So this is the majority of people out there.
Once you get over 65% VO2 max, you’re burning mostly carbohydrates up to 65%. And you’re burning mostly fat. And this goes across the board for most people. With the faster study, they found that the fat adapted athletes could burn much more fat than the carb adapted athletes. So their peak fat oxidation was 2.3 times higher in the fat adapted group.
So over twice as much fat they were able to burn. And they found that they could increase their intensity and still be burning mostly fat so they could get up to 76% of their VO2 max and still be burning more fat than carbohydrate and really didn’t need the carbohydrates in order to the carbohydrates in the form of fuel in order to achieve those kinds of numbers.
So just understand that one thing I think people get into this idea of becoming fat adapted, and they think that they’re just burning fat, you know, and that’s it. That’s the end of the story. Or if you’re not fat adapted, you’re only burning sugar, you’re only burning carbohydrates.
And really, it’s not the case, you’re always burning both, okay? Just understand that. But as a fat adapted athlete, you can take advantage of your levels of fat oxidation, which are going to be much higher than the standard of carb adapted athlete. And it’ll give you a bit of an edge.
So why am I even talking about this? Well, I’ve been really on this kick this whole month about talking about ancestral living, you know, and what we’ve done as human beings for millions of years. And really, for since like 2.5 million years ago, to about 10,000 years ago, humans have been very metabolically flexible, we’ve been able to, to burn fat very, very efficiently, we’re able to take advantage of other types of foods when they were available to us, you know, think about, you know, times when certain types of foods would have been scarce, we had to have different types of fuel, and we had to be able to metabolize those different types of fuel.
So for example, when we would hunt and you know, eat meat, or we are eating things like fish and eggs, very dense, nutrient dense types of foods, we could eat, we could hunt and eat a lot of meat, you know, and share that with the group. And then we might go for days without food. So in that case, we are consuming fuel in the form of, you know, meat and animal protein. But then we would go days, without food, where we would be basically using our own stored body fat as fuel, right?
This is the way we are designed to operate as human beings. We are very efficient fat burning machines, we always have been. What has happened in the last 50-60 years is that we’ve gotten away from that? And we’ve gotten more into just relying on very quick sources of energy, like carbohydrate, like sugar, like grains, like really concentrated refined carbohydrates, refined grains, that kind of stuff.
And the problem with that approach is that we really well, there’s all kinds of problems with that approach. But from an athletic standpoint, we’re only using one source of fuel when we do that, we’re not able to take advantage of the fact that we are really efficient fat burning machines. Okay, so back in the day humans would eat sporadically, we would take advantage of the fact that we could find things like tubers and nuts and seeds and fruit and things like that. And we would be able to use those things as fuel as well.
So we became really good, really efficient at being metabolically flexible. It’s one of the reasons we’ve survived. Whereas a lot of other hominid type species did not, you know, because we were able to have that flexibility. Okay. And all I’m proposing here is that we get that back. That’s it. That’s all I’m saying.
And especially if you’re a runner, then you are absolutely leaving a lot on the table. If you’re not taking advantage of metabolic flexibility, you absolutely are leaving a lot on the table. Our bodies are well adapted to feast and famine. Our bodies are well adapted to a variety of fuel sources, especially using stored body fat as a fuel source. Most people do not do that. Most people, most people are good at storing fat, but not actually using it as a source of fuel.
But we humans, we are really good at burning fat. We’ve been doing it for millions of years, I just want us to get back to being really efficient at burning fat, okay. And as a runner, you absolutely want to be taking advantage of this virtually unlimited source of fuel that you have on your body. stored body fat is an amazing source of fuel. And I talk to runners every single day and I coach runners on how to become fat adapted every single day.
And I get a lot of skeptical runners out there. They’re like I just don’t see how this is possible. I don’t see how, you know, not taking in all these gels and stuff and sports drinks that I’ve been doing forever. I don’t see how I can possibly run without all that stuff. And then they do it. And then they’re pretty surprised at how amazing they feel, okay?
But it’s not about just doing just using that one source of fuel. This is the thing I want to kind of drill home here today is that metabolic flexibility means you can use multiple fuel sources. So yes, that does mean that you can use carbohydrates as a fuel source as well as fat. But most runners don’t take advantage of the fat side of things. They’re only interested in the carbohydrate side of things.
But why would you leave a tool on the table, so to speak, you know, why not become fat adapted and get really, really good at burning fat? And also, you can use carbohydrates strategically, in order to have that flexibility for different types of activities, different intensities of running different distances, all right.
The problem is that most people are just metabolically inflexible. So most people, especially here in the United States are eating the standard American diet. It’s interesting that the acronym for that is SAD because it’s a sad diet. It’s so sad, it’s making us sad, it’s making us unhealthy, or it’s creating a nation of sick, weak, unhealthy, overweight people.
And one of the issues with this is that it’s a very, very high carbohydrate diet. And it means that you have to rely on just one fuel source for energy. So if you’re a runner, and you’re eating the standard American diet, you are relying on one source of fuel carbohydrates for energy for running, and you’re not taking advantage of being fat adapted.
So that standard American diet with all the carbs, you might be eating six, seven times a day, you know, you are relying on one source of fuel and you need it, you need it every couple of hours, or else you’re going to crash and burn.
Not to mention you’ve got to carb load before running the night before you got to carb load before you get out there and run you got to carb up during runs. You’ve got to carb up after runs or else you’re going to crash and burn. And this might work okay for you for running like it might help to fuel your runs. And you might be okay with that.
But eating that much carbohydrate, especially eating every few hours, it does a few things. Not good things by the way. For example, It ramps up your cravings for more carbs. So you just want more and more and more of that same stuff, same sugary goodness, you know, it causes your body to keep storing a lot of that excess energy as fat in your fat cells.
And because you’re not fat adapted, you can’t really tap into that fat for energy. So you just keep storing more and more fat in those fat cells. It causes massive spikes and dips in your blood sugar, and therefore your energy levels throughout the day.
And you end up being hungry all the time you feel fatigued, you have these massive cravings for more sugary foods, more carbohydrates, you get what people call hangry because you’re hungry and angry at the same time. And really, it just causes a host of issues not just weight gain, but it can lead to things like insulin resistance, which means your body is producing so much insulin that your body has become accustomed to that much insulin and so it’s no longer bringing your blood sugar down the way it’s supposed to.
Which means your body just keeps storing more and more fat in your fat cells. And insulin resistance is something that causes type two diabetes, and it leads to gaining a lot of weight and obesity and things like that.
And not to mention that eating that standard American diet with all the carbs and you know, eating just a ton of carbs, especially for running means you’re going to be hitting the wall at some point during a long run because you’re going to crash and burn unless you keep the sugar intake coming in.
But even that can have all kinds of digestive issues, it can cause digestive stress, and a lot of people cannot handle that much sugar while they’re out there running. And so they end up just sort of like either having to find a portapotty or they end up just crashing and burning. And you’re hitting the wall.
So that’s kind of the problem with the way that most people do this thing, right? They’re not metabolically flexible. So they have to rely on one source of fuel only for running. And you end up running out of fuel, you end up with insulin resistance with weight gain, and with a host of other metabolic issues, right. So that is the way that most people do it.
And I’m just saying here, listen, there’s another approach that you can take and you can become more metabolically flexible, you can actually train your body to use fat and carbohydrate as your two main fuel sources. very effectively, you can do this very effectively. So here are some of the benefits of metabolic flexibility.
So first of all, you can tap into different fuels and use different fuels for different types of activities, more intense activities, you can increase your carbohydrate intake, you can use different types of carbohydrates, you can use, you know, very concentrated forms of carbohydrates. So you can use slow burning types of carbohydrates. And you can use carbs for long distance activities, or for higher intensity activities. But one of the benefits is that you have this flexibility, and you have the ability to use different fuels.
So as you get into that higher, you know, intensity exercise closer to 65-70-80% of your VO2 max, when your fat oxidation starts to go down, you can actually increase your carbohydrate intake. And in preparation for that, you’ve got to do it ahead of time. But you can increase your carbohydrate intake, and maintain high intensity levels, without as much carb intake as you would need if you were not fat adapted.
Okay, so that’s one amazing benefit, obviously, you’re gonna burn more fat. One of the biggest benefits here is that you burn fat very efficiently. And when you burn fat, you know you’re losing weight, it’s much easier to lose weight. If you become fat adapted, if you actually train your body to be a really efficient fat burning machine, right. And you use fat as a source of fuel for running, then you’re going to lose weight much easier, and you’re no longer going to be storing so much body fat, you’ll be burning that body fat. Okay, so losing weight becomes much much easier when you’re fat adapted.
You know, one of the other benefits is that you can improve your athletic performance not only running longer, but running faster again, because you can tap into different types of fuel, you’re not relying on just fat, or just carbohydrate as a fuel source.
One of the other things is that you become more insulin sensitive. So instead of becoming insulin resistant, your body becomes more sensitive to the effects of insulin, meaning your blood sugar’s will normalize, you won’t have those spikes, and crashes and blood sugars, you’re going to have more all day energy. So you’re going to have more steady energy throughout the day, which is amazing.
You’re going to be able to think more clearly because your brain uses fat as a source of fuel. So your cognitive function will be improved. You will sleep better at night, you will feel more rested when you wake up in the morning. And going forward with your weight management or weight maintenance. That becomes much much easier if you are metabolically flexible. It’s much harder if you’re relying on just carbohydrate as a fuel source, because it just it makes managing your weight much more of a challenge because then you have all these other things the insulin resistance and the weight, you know the storing body, storing of more body fat, and incessant weight gain and hunger levels and things like that.
So being metabolically flexible means that you have the ability to tap into multiple sources of fuel, and you have the ability to improve your athletic performance and just become this amazing fat burning machine as well as having the ability to use carbohydrates as fuel.
One thing a lot of people one mistake a lot of people make when they become fat adapted is they don’t regularly use carbohydrates as a fuel source for certain athletic endeavors. And you got to kind of train yourself to use carbs as well as you know, your stored body fat as fuel, you don’t want to just become fat adapted and wait six months, and then, you know, try carbs for a race, because your body at that point is so used to using fat as fuel. It’s not really used to having that carbohydrate glycogen stored as fuel the way that it used to when you were carb adapted.
So you have to actually train yourself to become more carb adapted as you get into some of the more intense running and things like that. So that’s just something to keep in mind. So how do you do this? How do you become more metabolically flexible?
There’s a couple things you can do to get started, number one, is getting fat adapted, this is really important. So you gotta get your body burning fat more efficiently. And most runners just don’t do this. Right. So you got to get off the sugar, you got to get off the refined grains and things like that, and start training your body. To use fat as a fuel source, one of the easiest ways you can do this is just train in the fasted state.
Don’t eat anything before you run, like let’s say you run in the morning, don’t eat anything after dinner the night before, you know, just get out there and start running in that fasted state. And that will force your body to start using stored body fat as fuel. And of course, you have to lay off the carbs too, that’s going to kind of hinder this process.
But getting fat adapted is one of the best things you can do to become more metabolically flexible, because now you’ve taken advantage of this fuel source that most runners are not using. Okay. The other thing you can do to become more metabolically flexible, is to exercise regularly. And you gotta do it the right way, you have to be doing both aerobic type exercises. So long distance running would fall into that category beautifully, right.
But also you have to include some form of high intensity exercising, so something like weightlifting or HIIT training, or sprinting, all those things are going to help increase that intensity that you’re putting on your, your systems, you know, your muscles, your aerobic system, you’re, you’re gonna help to increase your lactate threshold and things like that. All those things will help you to become more efficient at burning fat and help you to become more metabolically flexible. Okay.
So getting fat adapted, and then doing both aerobic type of exercise and higher intensity, shorter duration, but higher intensity exercises, is going to kind of kick things into gear for you there. Okay? So think about this this week, I want you to think about becoming more metabolically flexible. There’s so many reasons why you want to do this. You don’t want to be doing things the way that most people are doing things. Because the way most people are doing things does not work. It does not work for the majority of us, okay?
And if you’re one of those people, and you find yourself wanting to lose some weight, and you find yourself wanting to improve your running performance, and you find yourself not wanting to rely on all the carbs and having all the negative things that go along with that thing, consider becoming fat adapted, and taking advantage of that metabolic flexibility that we as humans have developed over millions of years. Let’s just get back to that. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you this week. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
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If there’s one sure-fire way to make sure you stay unhealthy and die early it’s eating the modern, westernized diet. We’ve gotten very far away from eating the way our ancient ancestors ate and …
Continue Reading about 132. Ancestral Eating to Improve Health & Fitness →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 132 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, ancestral eating to improve health and fitness. If there’s one surefire way to make sure you stay unhealthy, and most likely die early, is to continue eating the modern westernized diet.
We’ve gotten very far away from eating the way our ancient ancestors ate, and it’s causing us irreparable harm. Chronic lifestyle diseases like obesity, type two diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are all linked to an unhealthy diet. And these afflictions were virtually non-existent in ancient populations for two and a half million years, humans evolved beautifully on a very simple diet.
So if you want to take control of your health and become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, and I know you do, then you might want to consider following in the footsteps of your ancestors.
So in this episode, I’m going to break it all down for you to explain how ancestral eating can dramatically improve your health and fitness. And listen, I understand that getting healthy, losing weight, maintaining your weight, training for marathons, and changing your diet and trying to fit all this stuff in becoming the strongest version of yourself and the healthiest version of yourself.
All this stuff is complicated. There’s a lot of confusing information out there. And this stuff is not easy to do on your own, becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. It takes time. It takes discipline, it takes consistency, it takes knowing what to do and how to do it. And this is everything that I do in the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my coaching program that gives you all the knowledge, the support, the accountability that you need, in order to reach your goals to improve your health, to get leaner, to get stronger, to run faster, to run longer. And to do it in a way that is sustainable. We are not about quick fixes.
In the Running Lean coaching project, we are about long term health and fitness, creating new habits that last for life. And this is about longevity more than anything else. It’s about improving your health, improving your fitness, improving your athletic performance, so that you can stay strong and healthy and live longer. Don’t you want to live longer? Yeah, absolutely.
I know, we all want that for ourselves, we all want to become healthy, we all want to live longer, we all want to, you know, become the most badass version of ourselves. Not many people are willing to do the work to get there, though. So that’s why I’m here to help you. If you’re feeling compelled to change your health for the better, and to do it in a way that is sustainable, then I want to encourage you to apply to join the Running Lean coaching project, you can go to my website, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, you and I will jump on a call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
You know, it’s not for everybody. And I talk to people every single day. And a lot of people are like, you know, I’m just not sure if this is right for me. And that’s totally fine. You have to be willing to commit, you have to be willing to kind of get uncomfortable and do some hard things. Because what you’re doing right now feels good, it feels comfortable, but it’s not working for you.
So in order to change we need to do some things we need to get out of our comfort zone. Getting out of your comfort zone is by definition uncomfortable. So I’m here to help you with that process. If you want that kind of help, if you’re looking for that kind of help, if you want to improve your health and make it last, join the Running Lean coaching project that’s runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join me in the Running Lean coaching project.
Alright, let’s get into this topic today: ancestral eating to improve health and fitness. So why am I talking about this today? Well, there’s been a lot of talk out there and a lot of concern about some of these like crazy fad diets that people are doing right. There’s the South Beach diet and then there’s Weight Watchers and there’s Jenny Craig and there’s like keto and carnivore and paleo.
And all these other things that are for the most part, newer kind of diets based on you know, more modern research and, and some modern studies and things like that, but they’re pretty new. They’re pretty new there. And a lot of these are based on calorie restriction and trying to, you know, they’re focused on losing weight and things like that. And, and a lot of this stuff is, is really eating in a very modern, very new kind of way.
Okay, so the thing I want to bring to you today and the big, you know, the big sort of message that I want you to take away from this episode today is that when we engage in ancestral eating, we’re talking about doing things, the way we used to do them a long time ago.
And for millions of years, and you know, humans have evolved over the last two and a half million years, we evolved eating a certain type of diet. And we have gotten very far away from that diet. So what we’re eating today as human beings, is crazy compared to what we used to eat, for the vast majority of those two and a half million years.
And if you think about the way that we did things, we were more like wild animals of today than we are, you know, these modern thinking humans that we are in this modern society that we live in, in all the comfort and all that, you know, we’re more like wild animals, think about animals in the wild today, there’s no obesity.
In the animal kingdom out there outside of domesticated animals, there are obese dogs, I’ve seen people with dogs who are wildly overweight. And that’s because they’re, they’re eating a diet that wasn’t made for dogs, right? They’re eating a lot of grains. A lot of these dog foods have additives and they’re full of grains and things like that, that make dogs gain weight. Don’t feed your dog that stuff. Give it dog like real dog food, what do dogs eat? Meat mostly, right?
But think about animals in the wild. Today, there’s no heart disease, there’s no cancer, there’s no obesity, you know, there are some issues here and there. But for the most part, that stuff is non existent, that stuff is non existent. And why? Because those animals in the wild are eating a diet that is specific for them, they’re eating an animal specific diet, we want to go back to doing that.
So all these new diets that you see out there today, most of them are based on, you know, modern, you know, modern studies and, and modern ways of thinking about food, and nutrition. And my suggestion is we just kind of ditch all that BS, and just go back to doing things, the way we’ve always done them as human beings.
You know, think about us more like wild animals. You know, when you eat an animal specific diet, you thrive, all the animals out there in the animal kingdom that are eating, they don’t eat food that is not designed for them. They just don’t. You know, elephants are vegetarians, they eat grass, and whatever leaves and things like that.
And, you know, we don’t you don’t see elephants, you know, going off and eating a bunch of meat and you don’t see and vice versa. You don’t see cows, or I’m sorry, you don’t see lions snacking on grass and stuff. Like, they don’t eat that stuff, right? They eat an animal specific diet. Have you ever seen an obese lion? No, the lion doesn’t need to snack during the day because it eats the right kinds of food, and then it fasts. It doesn’t need to eat after it eats.
So I was looking this up. And I think this is really fascinating. Lions eat like every three or four days. And they need an average of about 11 to 15 pounds of meat every day. And lions can go without food for more than a week. And then they can eat up to 110 pounds of meat at a time. That’s crazy. I mean, that’s the way I feel. Sometimes I could do that. Right?
But that’s almost a quarter of their body weight. And they can eat that all at once. And then they don’t need to eat for another 3-5-7 days. So you know, lions don’t need to be snacking on food during the day because they’re getting all the nutrition that they need from eating those few times a week. It’s very interesting, right?
So, you know, when we snack as human beings, we’re doing it because we are eating the wrong diet and the diet that we’re eating is jacking up our hunger signals. It’s making us feel hungry all the time. When we eat food, it’s not filling us up. It’s not giving us the nutrition that we need. It’s not triggering the sensors to say, hey, you’re full, you know.
A lot of carbohydrates will do that, they will make you feel like you are constantly hungry, and you need to eat more. But then you eat more of that same type of food and you’re still hungry. It’s all messed up, just doesn’t doesn’t work, right. It’s not designed for humans that carbohydrates are really not designed for human consumption. We’ve, you know, we can eat that stuff. And it’s okay, you know, it gives us some nutrition, you know, a little bit of nutritional value, but not a lot, but it causes more harm than good.
So, when we live more like wild animals, we are going to see improved hormonal responses, we’re going to see food, we’re going to eat food that makes us feel full when we eat it, it’s going to satisfy us for longer and then there won’t be a need to snack between meals. So let’s just get off these foods that really aren’t designed for human consumption. I’m mainly talking about sugar, grains, seed oils, processed foods, that kind of stuff, right? And live more like our ancient ancestors did.
Now I’m not talking about, you know, sleeping in a cave, you don’t have to sleep on the ground in the dirt, you can still sleep in your big comfy bed with all the extra pillows, all the unnecessary pillows.
Why do we do that? By the way, here’s a little sidebar, but I have pillows on my bed that every night before I go to bed, I take them off, and I set them aside. Do you guys do that? Isn’t that weird? Why do we do that? Why do we have extra pillows? Anyway, just think about that every day when I’m taking those off my bed? Why do I have these extra pillows that I don’t use?
Anyway, but you don’t have to sleep in the dirt, you can still shop at Whole Foods. You can buy, you know your groceries at the grocery store, you don’t have to go hunt your own food or anything like that. That’s not what I’m suggesting here. What I am suggesting is that we go back to eating a proper human diet.
What happens when you feed a cow, which normally would just eat grass? What happens when you feed a cow grains? You know, they get fat, right? Have you ever seen grass fed, grass finished meat at the grocery store? If you see it, take a look at it, you’ll notice something in it, there’s very little fat in there, that muscle meat is like just red, there’s not those big streaks of fat in there.
And then look at the grain finished or grain fed grain finished meat and you’ll see that it’s very fatty. So when you feed cows grains, they get fat. This same thing happens to humans, when you feed us fat. Or I’m sorry, when you feed us grains we get fat. We store lots of that energy as fat that we’re eating from grains and sugars.
So if you want a surefire way of fattening yourself up like we do with cows then just eat a high carbohydrate diet. Right? I mean, this is just science, just the way it works. Okay. So my proposition here, my suggestion here is just to go back to doing things the way we used to, for two and a half million years of evolution. It’s not some new, weird fad thing.
Let’s just go back to eating the way we always have been eating. So how does this improve our health? Well, when we eat the proper human diet, we keep our blood sugar low. So we’re not eating foods that spike our blood sugar like crazy. We’re not eating foods that cause an insulin spike, which causes us to stay in that fat storing mode.
If you’re eating a lot of sugar and carbohydrates, you’re constantly storing energy as fat, you’re never giving your body a chance to tap into that stored body fat as a fuel source. You know, going back to our lion example, that lion is really good at, you know, consuming large amounts of food, and then going for days and you know, up to a week at a time with nothing. And they do that because they’re able to burn fat very efficiently.
We do the same thing as human beings, we’ve evolved to be really efficient fat burners, and we’ve gotten away from them. Because we’re constantly eating a diet that keeps us storing fat and doesn’t allow us to sort of lock that fat in our fat cells.
You know that insulin will, you know, when insulin is high when insulin is present, locking up that fat in our fat cells and not allowing us to tap into it as a fuel source. When we change the diet, we become more fat adapted, we’re able to tap into that stored body fat and not only lose the weight, but we have this amazing all day energy.
So one of the best ways that eating ancestrally will help you improve your health is that it improves fat burning. So you keep your blood sugar low, keep insulin low. Have all your hormones get balanced, you know, and we’re talking about hormones like leptin, and ghrelin.
Ghrelin is the hunger hormone, and it gets jacked up and it gets really elevated when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. Leptin is the is the satiety hormone. When you have leptin, leptin is present, that means, you know, leptin gets released when you are full. So if you eat a big ol ‘steak, by the time you’re done with that steak, you’ve got leptin present and you’re full, it says, hey, don’t eat any more, you’re full. Carbohydrates do not trigger that leptin response, so you stay hungry.
So ghrelin, the hunger hormone is increased, which means you’re gonna be hungry, and then leptin is suppressed, which means you’re not going to feel full. This is a bad combination, if you’re trying to lose weight, right? If you’re trying to improve your health, you’re just going to be storing and storing more fat, right? So we don’t want that, we want our hormones balanced. We don’t want our hormones all jacked up.
Okay, so eating the proper human diet will reduce inflammation, it will reduce bloating, it will reduce the water retention, it’ll improve fat burning and helps you balance your hormones and then helps improve athletic performance. When you’re an efficient fat burner, you can run for longer periods of time.
So endurance improves, you know, your adaptive hormones are working the way they’re supposed to. So when you work out when you do a hard workout, you will improve, you know more quickly, your strength will improve the intensity of your workouts can improve, your recovery improves because you’re you’ve reduced inflammation so you can work out harder, and you can recover faster, you can work out harder because more adrenaline is being produced.
Some other ways that eating the proper human diet, eating ancestrally can improve your health is you’ll sleep better, you’ll have more energy throughout the day. You’ll have more vitality, more longevity, live longer and improve body composition. So there’s all these amazing health benefits of eating ancestral eating the proper human diet. Okay.
So how do we do it? Like what do we do? So the first thing I would say is like, let’s just get off of all these modern processed foods, you know, Franken foods, foods that are like, you know, super processed, they don’t look like food anymore. Right? Shop the areas of the grocery store where you buy meat, and eggs and produce, dairy. Stay away from all the packaged foods right?
Stay away from sugar and seed oils and liquid calories. Stay away from refined grains and anything that would be considered like hyper palatable foods. And those things contain all those things I just mentioned, which will be sugar, refined grains, and seed oils, like hyper palatable foods or foods that have been manufactured in a laboratory to be extremely delicious and make you basically addicted to them. Okay.
So we want to eat what our ancient ancestors ate: meat, eggs, fish, fruit, dairy, some honey, some vegetables, like tubers, and other vegetables that are not super high in carbohydrates. So it’s a very simple way of eating, it’s not complicated. And our ancient ancestors ate the whole animal that ate nose to tail.
One of the best things you can eat, one of the best things you can eat as a human being, one of the most nutritious things and most nutrient dense things you can eat on this planet would be liver, and organ meats, but I have to tell you that I cannot eat that stuff. I don’t like it. I don’t like the way it tastes. So instead, I use a supplement. So I use a beef organ supplement that I take and you know, this is kind of my equivalent of, of eating nose to tail, okay?
And if you’re vegetarian or vegan or something like that, you know, you don’t have to eat animal products, and you can still eat very much like our ancient ancestors. Right? But here’s the thing, like what is the way we evolved as human beings. All I’m suggesting is that we go back to doing what we’ve always done. The way we’re eating today in this modern westernized world is very, very different today than it was 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago.
And for the vast, vast majority of human existence, we ate very simply we ate animals. We ate some fruit and eggs and fish and some dairy. And we just did not go to town. on sugar and refined grains, this is a new thing. And what if we just, you know, eliminated that stuff from our diet? How would you feel, I wonder? I think you’d feel pretty amazing.
And then people always ask me, but what about this, Patrick? What about that and just fill in your favorite cheat meal or treat, you know, fill in pizza ice cream, you know, whatever it is that you love gummy worms, you know?
What about this? And what about that, you get to decide what you do for yourself, right? And this all depends on your goals, you know? So I always tell people, like, let’s try to follow the 90/10 rule, right. The 90/10 rule states that 90% of the time, I’m just gonna stick to my plan. And that means that about once a week, I might have a meal one meal a week that is a little bit different, you know, it’s a little bit off that very simple ancestral eating plan.
You know, I had dinner with my girlfriend last night, and we went to an Indian restaurant, and I ate some rice. That was my way of sort of saying, like, okay, I’m gonna eat some rice tonight. Like, it’s not crazy. It’s a grain. And I have to be honest with you, I don’t feel good today. I don’t feel good today. And I’m thinking to myself, like, why do I do this? I feel much better when I stay on track. And so do most of my clients. We feel so much better when we just stay on the plan.
But every now and then, it just seems like a good idea. Or it seems like it would be no big deal. And yet, it kind of moves us away from our goals a little bit, right? And it tends to be all about comfort versus discomfort, like what are we willing to do in these situations, to stay comfortable? What are we willing to do to keep moving in the direction of our goals? Is this choice I’m about to make here at this moment, going to move me closer to my goals or further away from my goals?
What am I feeling in this moment that makes me think I want to make this choice? Is it FOMO, fear of missing out? Is it wanting to fit in and be normal and do what everybody else is doing. And I say, let’s be abnormal, let’s get uncomfortable. Because the norm is being overweight. The norm is feeling sick, most of the time, the norm is being sluggish and feeling out of shape and not having energy and dying early.
Dying early has become a thing. And like in 2020, the average life expectancy in the United States went down 1.5 years, this is the largest one year decline since World War Two. We are not getting healthier, living longer, that’s starting to go the opposite way. This is not a good thing. Think about this.
I follow a lot of doctors and I hear them. I listen to podcasts and stuff where they’re talking about, you know, longevity and health and fitness and diet and exercise and all these things. And I hear all these doctors talk about how they never see obese 90 year olds, you know, people that live to be 90 plus years old, are not obese, because they don’t live that well. And the people with all these chronic diseases are living or not living as long as our ancestors did, you know, even 100 years ago.
So we’ve got to be concerned about this. Right? Now, I understand that ancient humans didn’t live as long as we do now. They, you know, would you know, die of certain types of viruses and things like that, which, you know, we live longer now because of modern medicine, for sure.
But the fact that we have access to all this modern medicine, and yet we’re choosing to live a lifestyle that is killing us earlier, this is not a good thing. It’s not a good thing, right? The food that we’re eating a lot of times is more like a drug than it is fuel for our bodies. Especially carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are addictive.
There are people who cannot moderate carbohydrate intake. I’m not one of those people. If I start eating sugar, it’s hard for me to stop. And when you look at the definition of what a drug is, a drug is something that is a substance that is not necessary for human existence for human health and carbohydrates fit that category.
Fat is necessary for human health. We have to eat fat or we will die. Protein is necessary for human health, we have to eat that or we will die. Those two things are called essential nutrients. We have to get those in our diet. Our body does not produce those things. We have to eat them.
Carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient. We don’t have to eat carbohydrates. Your body produces the glucose it needs. It takes some of the protein you eat, it turns it into glucose, the process in your liver called gluconeogenesis. And this is just something that we have to understand. I’m not saying don’t ever eat carbohydrates, I’m just saying they’re, they’re not necessary for human health.
Okay, so the definite definition of a drug is something that is not necessary for existence. It’s something that when you eat it, or ingest it, or smoke, or drink it or whatever, it gives you an instant reward. It lights up your dopamine centers, your pleasure centers, and releases dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins and all that stuff, right.
So you get this buzz from eating or drinking or whatever. So it’s not necessary for human health, it gives you a reward, and then it causes harm in excess. So in excess, eating carbohydrates will cause negative consequences. If there’s no harm from the substance, there’s no addiction. Right? So people that drink alcohol, if you drink, moderately, if you drink, have, you have one glass of wine twice a week or something like that, and you can just put it down. There’s no addiction there. Right, because it’s not causing negative consequences.
But if it does, when you are in excess, when it does cause negative consequences in excess, that’s a drug. And that’s something that’s an addiction, that’s an addictive behavior. And then another criteria is if you try to control your intake, and you cannot, so the absence of control is, you know, means that there’s some addiction happening there, too. Right? Once you start, you can’t stop.
And for a lot of us eating sugar is our once we start eating it, we can’t stop. It’s the definition of addiction, right. And also, another criteria is that there’s a dysfunctional way of managing emotions. So this becomes an emotional management strategy. People use drugs like nicotine, alcohol, and things like food, especially carbohydrates, sugar, to manage their emotions, they just want to feel better.
So instead of dealing with the actual emotions they are experiencing, they eat this food that makes them feel good. And it’s impossible to get obese from eating food. You cannot get obese from eating real food. You can only get obese by eating carbohydrates by eating drugs. Like if you just ate an ancestral human diet. I mean, you might get overweight, you might gain some weight. But you know, a lot of that might be muscle weight. You might get a little bit overweight, but you’re not going to become obese.
You can’t get morbidly obese from eating real food. You only get that when you’re eating, you know, drugs, essentially. Okay? Food is not addictive. You don’t get addicted to eating steak and broccoli. You don’t. Carbohydrates are very addictive, though. Right? So we want to get off of the food as a drug and start eating the way our ancestors have eaten for millions of years. Just eat real food, food that still looks like food.
And listen, I get it, you probably have a million questions about stuff and everybody wants to complicate things, I’m trying to simplify things I want to simplify my life. I want my dietary choices to be so simple, I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to make some extravagant meal with all these recipes and ingredients and things like that. Every meal does not have to be an amazing entertainment event.
Every now and then I will go out and have a nice meal in a restaurant. And I enjoy that I had a nice meal last night and I enjoyed that, you know, maybe overdid it on the rice a little bit. But besides that, you know, I can do that every now and then it’s fine. But for the most part for like 90% of the time, the way I eat is extremely simple. And it makes me happy. Eating a steak, or a big piece of salmon at night for dinner makes me happy. I look forward to it. And I might have a little bit of Greek yogurt with a little berries afterwards. You know, it’s like a little treat or something.
But this is all real food. This is all food our ancestors would say oh yeah, I guess I know what that is. We’ve been eating that for millions of years. Patrick, that’s cool. This cannot be simpler. We want to make things very, very simple. Go back to the simple ways of living our lives. Go back to those simple ways of eating and see how it might improve your health. Like what would it look like if you started living more like our ancient ancestors?
If you started eating more like your ancient ancestors, you know what if we all got off the addictive substances, alcohol, nicotine and carbohydrates you know, what if we just simplified? What if you improved your health? What if you got leaner and stronger? How would that feel for you? What if we all live to be 100 years old? Because we are so healthy and strong, going into old age? And you know, these diseases of lifestyle were no longer a thing?
And what if we modeled that for our kids? And what if they modeled that for their kids?
Think about the impact we can make in this world. Not to mention how badass you’re going to feel when you PR your next marathon. Because you’re so lean and you’re so strong, and you’ve improved your health, you’ve improved your athletic performance.
Or imagine how amazing you’re going to look in that bikini next summer because you’ve improved your body composition, you’ve lost the fat weight, you’ve gained the muscle weight and you feel amazing and you look amazing. Just imagine what that might look like for you. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
There are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. Some of these concepts have been around for a very long time and just seem like they hold water but a lot of …
Continue Reading about 131. Busting the Biggest Nutrition Myths →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 131 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths. So there are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. And some of these concepts have been around for a very long time, decades. And they just seem like they’re legit.
They seem like they hold water, but a lot of them just don’t, or at least they don’t anymore. So there’s a lot of new studies that are being published and a lot of new data that’s being looked at and analyzed. And we have to be able to decipher now, because it’s a different time, a different era, we have to be able to decipher now what’s true, and what’s not.
And it’s not always easy, I get that. And that’s why I put together this episode to hopefully shine the light on and bust some of the biggest nutrition myths. Okay, so today I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths, I’m providing you with some actionable advice to help you take control of your health, and get you on the right track.
And listen, getting healthy, losing weight or maintaining your weight. running marathons this stuff, it’s not easy, becoming the healthiest version of yourself. It takes time. It takes consistency, it takes discipline, it takes know-how. And I provide all of that in the Running Lean coaching project. This is my intensive coaching program that gives you all the knowledge, all the support, all of the accountability that you need to improve your health and make changes that last permanently.
We’re not interested in quick fixes. In my program, we’re not trying to teach you the fastest way to lose weight. This isn’t about weight loss schemes, or fad diets, we’re all about sustainability. What you can do, starting now to change your health for the better and how to maintain it for the rest of your life.
Remember that becoming healthy, it’s not a destination you’re trying to get to there is no finish line, I wish there was I wish I could tell you that at some point, you could just stop doing all this, you can stop eating healthy, you can eat all the junk food that you want, you can stop exercising, but that’s not the way it is. It’s not a temporary state of being, this becomes who we are and becomes what we do from here on out.
So you have to embrace this concept. And if you’re feeling compelled to change your health for the better, if you’re feeling compelled to lose weight, finally lose it for good for the last time. And if you’re longing to become that best and most badass version of yourself, I want to encourage you to actually do something about it today, take some small action steps today.
And if you want help, I’m here for you. I’m always here for you really, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You can fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a call, we can talk about your goals and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not for everybody, that’s totally fine. Again, this is for the people who want to commit to this way of life.
Who will make these changes last for good, then this is a good program for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply, I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, onto busting the biggest nutrition myths. So I had some fun putting this episode together. And the reason I’m talking about this is because there are a lot of myths floating around out there around nutrition and around, you know what it means to eat healthy. And a lot of this stuff has been kind of propagated over decades. It’s been propagated in the media. It’s been propagated by, you know, Jim Rose, and all kinds of stuff.
And I just want to like, for once and for all like just talk about some of the stuff that comes up often. I hear these concepts come up often with clients, they ask me these questions all the time. And so I put together a list of some of the most common questions that people ask and the common questions that people have been sort of misunderstood over the last few decades.
And I wanted to kind of tell you like what’s legit and what’s not, like what’s real, you know, what, what are things that we can honestly say are concerns and what are things we should just ignore? Okay, so I wanted to make sure that we are getting on the same page with some fundamental concepts here. And that we don’t, we’re not being manipulated by old outdated information anymore. Okay.
So that’s why I’m talking about this today. And I’m just going to go through a list of some of the biggest myths that I’ve, you know, been kind of researching, and the biggest questions that I get from clients and potential clients. And I wanted to share this with you guys, I think it’s gonna be really helpful.
So the first one, and I’ve talked about this so many times before, but I’m going to talk about it again, the first one is that calories are all that matters, right? If you want to lose weight, you’ve just got to cut your calories, right, calories in versus calories out, run more and eat less. And this is called the energy balance theory, the energy balance theory says that the energy that you take in calories coming in should be less than the energy that you’re putting out through exercise, right?
And this theory, they call it a theory, because it’s not the truth. This theory works fine. If we were a closed system, like a steam engine, but we’re not steam engines, the human body is much more complicated. And there are some issues with this theory. And, you know, like I said, I’ve talked about this so many times in the past, but I’ll just give you a couple of quick bullet points here on why this theory just doesn’t hold water. Okay.
So if you cut your calories, yes, you can lose weight, right? When it comes to losing weight, if you cut calories dramatically, you can lose a lot of weight pretty quickly, too. The problem with this, though, is it’s not sustainable. If you cut your calories too low for too long, this will effectively slow down your metabolism.
When your metabolism slows down, the amount of energy that you’re taking in becomes the amount of energy that your body is willing to put out there. So your resting metabolic rate, that’s the way you burn calories at rest just hanging around being you, this is the most calories that you burn through the day, by the way.
So because it takes calories to keep your heart beating, and your lungs working, and your blood flowing, and all these other things that all the other processes are happening with your body digestion and your brain and all this stuff. So actually you consume more calories throughout the day by just sitting around doing nothing than you do through exercise, right?
So but your resting metabolic rate will effectively slow down to match the calories that you have coming in. So let’s say you have a resting metabolic rate of like 1800 calories, so you just burn 1800 calories a day at rest, then you start eating, you decide you want to lose weight, so you start eating like 800 calories a day. And you do this for some time, you’ll probably lose some weight at the beginning.
But what will happen is your resting metabolic rate will slow down to kind of match that 800 calories that it’s getting in energy because your body’s like, listen, we’re only getting 800 calories of energy a day, we’re going to slow down to kind of match what’s coming in. So we don’t die of starvation and we don’t emaciate ourselves and die.
So it’s going to slow down your metabolism to match what’s coming in. And so let’s say you’re messing with your resting metabolic rate and it changes and it drops to 1000 or, or 800 calories a day. Okay, now that 800 calories a day that you’re eating doesn’t work for weight loss anymore, you’re going to start to gain a little bit of weight and gain a little bit of weight. And you’re going to be like, wait a minute, why is this not working anymore? And this is why.
And this is why programs like The Biggest Loser, they dramatically cut calories and these people lose a ton of weight real fast. But they don’t keep it off. It’s not sustainable. This is not a sustainable weight loss strategy. It just isn’t. And so we have to do something different. We have to change the calories and the type of calories that we’re eating matters.
It’s not about the numbers, you know, a calorie. A calorie is just a unit of measure. It’s how we measure energy. It’s the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water or one milliliter of water. One degree Celsius like it’s just, you know, how, how long does it take or how much energy does it take to increase the temperature of the water by one degree? That’s what a calorie is. Okay, so it’s just a unit of measure.
And, but that’s not taking into consideration the types of foods that you’re eating, okay? And the types of food you’re eating absolutely matter, right? So when we’re talking about quality of food, quality of nutrition, it really does matter. So you could take 300 calories of doughnuts, let’s say you can have a couple of donuts, they’re equal, like 300 calories. And the that food though, that energy that’s coming in will raise your blood sugar like crazy, you’re going to be hungry all day, your body’s going to be stuck in this fat storing mode, a lot of that energy that you take in is not being is not able to be used by your body right away. So you’re going to store some of that as fat. And these are essentially nutritionally empty calories, there’s not a lot of nutritional value in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, okay?
You could take 300 calories of steak on the other hand, and this does not raise your blood sugar much at all, maybe a little bit comes back down pretty quickly. It’s very filling, you’re not gonna be hungry all day after that, you’re not going to be putting your body into that fat storing mode, because insulin is not being generated as much. So you’re not storing extra energy as fat.
This is a new, nutritionally dense food that you’re eating. So your body is actually absorbing the nutrients from this food, it’s not generating the hunger signals that carbohydrates generate. And you’re going to be very satiated from eating that food and it’s actually nutritionally legit for your body. Okay, so calories are not the same. And anybody tells you the calories are all the same, just walk away from that conversation right there.
Okay, calories are not the same. I’ve heard people say, oh, yeah, I can help you lose weight. And you can just do nothing between keys all day long. And I’ll get you to lose the weight, but it is not sustainable. And, uh, don’t do that. By the way, Twinkies are one of those things that, you know, if you send it out on a counter, it’ll still look exactly the same in like, 100 years. So don’t don’t eat that stuff. Right? It’s bad. It’s bad for you, right?
So low calorie diets, they’re often void of quality nutrition, your health will suffer as a result of eating a low calorie diet, and it is not sustainable. Okay, so slowing down your metabolism like crazy is not a sustainable way of losing weight and keeping it off and being healthy, right?
And just understand that humans are complicated. We’re not engines, we’re not steam engines. There’s things to consider, like hormonal imbalances, metabolic adaptations, like a metabolic slowdown. There’s genetics, there’s health conditions that some of us have, like hypothyroidism, you know, there’s medications that we take.
All these things make, you know, losing weight a little bit more complicated for some people, right? So we just have to understand that we are complicated beings, and then it’s more, it’s more about eating high quality food than it is about the number of calories coming in and going out. Okay, so the biggest nutrition myth that I see out there is that calories are all that matters. And I just want to say BS, right, there’s more going on that we have to consider. Okay.
The next one, and this is one of the biggest concerns I hear from people, is that eating fat will make you fat. And I have to tell you something here, this is not the case. Eating fat does not make you fat, high fat foods are not unhealthy foods. For millions of years, we humans have been eating fat and animal fats.
And we have survived and thrived and our brains have gotten big, huge, like we’re the most advanced creatures in the known universe. And we got this way not because we’re eating a low fat diet. No, because we are eating tons of animal products and eating tons of fat. It’s the fact that we are eating that actually made our brains start to grow and become the kind of humanoid brains that we have today.
And fat is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients meaning that we do not produce these nutrients internally. We have to get these in our diet or we will die. If you don’t eat fat, you will die. If you don’t eat protein, you will die. You know what’s not an essential nutrient is carbohydrates. Humans are not required to eat carbohydrates in order to live. It’s not an essential nutrient. Right?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever eat carbohydrates. I’m just saying it’s not essential your body will produce the glycogen that your body will produce the glucose which you know becomes glycogen that you store in your muscles. Your liver will produce that for you internally. Your brain needs a certain amount of glucose to function every day. Your body makes that, right?
Your liver makes the glucose that your brain needs every single day, it makes the glycogen it gets stored in your muscles to keep you functioning properly to keep your heart beating to keep your legs moving, keep your arms moving all that stuff. Carbohydrates are not essential, fat and protein are essential, okay?
And eating a higher fat diet has been the norm for us humans for millions of years, okay. All of a sudden, in the late 1970s, somebody put out this document and said hell fats are bad for you, that’s a problem, you need to stop eating fat. This does not make any sense. Think about it. It doesn’t make any sense.
They base this off of some really crappy studies that were done in the 60s 50s and studies that do not hold water whatsoever. And they’ve done tons and tons of studies since then, that have absolutely disproven this, okay? This is an antiquated and incorrect theory, that fat will make you fat. And that, you know, eating fat is unhealthy. And it’s slowly being put to rest.
And many people still fear it though, they still fear high fat diets. They still fear high fat foods, and they follow these low fat diets, in hopes that like if they just cut their fat intake, that they’re going to become healthier, and they’re going to lose weight, and it does not work.
The American Heart Association used to be all about low fat diets, low fat diets, low fat diets. And some years back, they very quietly put out a statement that said dietary fat is no longer a nutrient of concern. They kind of hid this little, little snippet in their documentation. They didn’t make a big splash about it, because they’ve been preaching that everybody has to eat a low fat diet in order to be heart healthy, right heart healthy diet, low fat.
And even the American Heart Association has been like, yeah, you know what we were wrong. But they don’t want to say they’re wrong and make a big “to do” about it. So they just kind of snuck it in there a little bit. Okay. So it’s being outdated. It’s being antiquated, and people are starting to wake up to the fact that this is not an issue, right? That dietary fat is actually essential for human health.
And actually, they’ve done these studies where low fat diets have actually been linked to greater risk of health issues, including metabolic syndrome. And they lead to an increase in insulin resistance, an increase in try group triglyceride levels. And these are all known risk factors for heart disease. So the low fat diet is not good for you. Okay.
And when it comes to losing weight, they found that diets higher in fat have been proven just as effective or even more effective in encouraging weight loss. Okay, so don’t be afraid of fat, eating fat does not make you fat. And I just want to mention one study that I just think is so compelling.
This is the pure study, P U R E peer study. And they compared a high carbohydrate, low fat diet to a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. So they sampled 140,000 people in 18 different countries. And they follow these people for 10 years. So half the people were following a high carb low fat diet. And the other half were following a low carb high or higher fat diet.
And the conclusion was this: that high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality. Whereas the total fat and the individual types of fat are related to lower total mortality. So total fat was not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality. And saturated fat. This is really interesting, saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke, meaning that people that ate more saturated fat had fewer incidences of stroke.
And the conclusion is that the global dietary guidelines that we’re all following should be reconsidered in light of these findings. So this is just one study, but a pretty compelling study that says that a higher fat diet is actually better for you if you want to live longer, eat the fat. Okay.
Another myth I want to kind of break down and this might bump some people out there, but sugar substitutes are healthy. I’m going to have to say that this is not necessarily the case that eating a bunch of sugar substitutes is not necessarily a recipe for good health. Okay, so one thing to understand about this is that there’s not a lot of conclusive evidence out there because a lot of the sugar substitutes we’re using today, things like stevia or erythritol, xylitol, allulose.
These kinds of things haven’t been around that long, so they don’t have a ton of research to back these things up. But here’s, here’s the gist of that. Eating sugar substitutes can ramp up your craving for sweet foods, even though it’s not really sweetening your food, it’s a substitute in your body that doesn’t metabolize a lot of these sugar substitutes.
But what happens is that it tastes sweet. And so it kind of tricks your brain into thinking you’re eating something sweet, which for some people can lead to higher sugar cravings and unhealthy eating patterns. Okay, so just understand that, you know, the sugar substitutes are being used, you know, people are having all these like low carb products out there and keto products that say, like, you know, only whatever, its grams of carbs, one gram and net carbs or something like that.
And the problem is that we’re eating these things, some people are eating these things to excess. And, and, and some people are, you know, when you’re eating these types of foods, they’re not necessarily health food. It’s not like eating some broccoli and a steak. Like you’re eating, you know, something that’s supposed to be like a cookie, or brownies or ice cream or something like that, right? So these sugar alcohols, the sugar substitutes are not necessarily healthy.
So I hate to burst your bubble on that one. You know, they can be used sparingly, and that’s fine. It’s kind of like an every now and then type of thing. Just, you know, the fact is that these are not healthy foods, okay. And some of these sugar alcohols like erythritol and xylitol, they can cause digestive issues for people because your body does not metabolize them, or at least it only metabolizes a tiny bit of it. So they can cause some digestive issues, especially if consumed in large amounts. So just be careful of that. Okay.
So they’re not necessarily healthy. They’re not, you know, not necessarily, you know, bad, but we just have to be careful not to overdo it with this stuff very, very sparingly with that kind of stuff. Okay? Okay.
Another big myth out there is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We’ve heard this before. We’ve all been taught this right. In school, when I was growing up, it was always like breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And what I didn’t realize is that that concept was coined by the Kellogg’s company, right? This is just a marketing message. Right?
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is not based on science or anything like that. Kellogg’s came up with this because they wanted to sell more breakfast cereal, and breakfast wasn’t even a thing back in the day. Like Kellogg’s came up with the breakfast concept like in 1899.
This is not something that we’ve been doing for thousands of years as human beings, the human body is not designed to eat, you know, first thing when you wake up in the morning. And here’s the thing, like, skipping breakfast is not a big deal. And if you’re the kind of person who thinks that skipping breakfast is going to be impossible, I want you to try it. See what happens.
When you skip breakfast, you promote more fat loss. You know, if you exercise in the morning, you’re going to actually have an increase in adrenaline, an increase in some of the adaptive hormones when you skip breakfast, and an exercise in that fasted state. And human beings are just designed to eat a couple times a day. And to think that we have to eat breakfast and like it’s the most important meal of the day. It’s just wrong, it’s just wrong.
And especially if you eat a high carbohydrate breakfast, and they’ve done some studies that show that they did a study where they just compared people who ate eggs for breakfast and who ate bagels for breakfast, right. And the people who ate eggs for breakfast had a 16% greater reduction in body fat during the study period, compared to the people who ate the bagel for breakfast.
So right there is a good sign that the carbohydrates alone first thing in the morning especially, are going to you know, thwart your weight loss, progress or promote weight gain, you know, so just understand that you know, the types of foods we eat matters, right? But also that skipping breakfast may be just the best thing that you can do for yourself.
And it’s such an easy thing to do. Just skip your first meal and eat it later. Start eating around lunchtime and see how you feel. So many people feel so much better doing this. They don’t think it’s possible but they actually get there.
And then another myth that I wanted to bust here is that all carbs are bad. You know, I talk about a low carb diet and you know, maybe like carbs are the problem. And honestly, listen, all carbohydrates are not bad, right? They’re not essential. We don’t have to eat carbs in order to be healthy human beings. But some carbs are really problematic, right? And we want to really avoid those things, right?
Sugar. You know, carbohydrates are just sugar. It’s just another word for sugar. And they come in varying degrees of concentration. So you know that white sugar crystals that you stir into your coffee in the morning, that’s a very concentrated form of carbohydrate. So are things like maple syrup, or flour, like any kind of grain that’s been refined in ground up into a fine powder is a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, okay.
But then there are other types of carbohydrates, which we call complex carbohydrates that are not terrible for you, okay, they’re not bad. Things like white potatoes, sweet potatoes, other types of underground vegetables, tubers, some fruits, some dairy, these things have all been part of the human diet for millions of years, right?
Even honey has been part of the human diet forever. And so all these things can be considered to be what I would call good carbs, like there’s good carbs and bad carbs, sugar, flour, refined grains, bad carbs. Good carbs would be things like, you know, potatoes and some fruit, okay. So we just have to understand that there are different types of carbohydrates, and that some of these can be okay to be consumed in moderation.
You know, we don’t want to make our entire diet white potatoes, right, not nutritionally dense. And the carbohydrate load would just be too much for your system, right? But some of these things can be okay, you know, right now I’m eating mostly meat, and then some fruit, a little bit of dairy, like I’m just sticking to a very ancient sort of ancestral way of eating. And it works great.
For me, it’s very doable, very doable, it’s very sustainable for me. And I even consume a little bit of honey every now and then. And all these things have been part of the human diet forever. And we just have to understand that there’s a difference between the kinds of carbohydrates we’ve been evolving to eat like over millions of years, and the kinds of carbohydrates that are being marketed to us today. Very different, very, very different.
Okay, so let’s look at carbohydrates. From an ancestral standpoint, I think that’s a good way of looking at it, okay. And you can even use carbs, to enhance your running performance, if you want to kick into that extra gear for running if you want, you know, if you’re trying to smash a 10k time or something like that, and you want to be running at your peak performance and close to your VO2 max, then you’re definitely going to want to supplement with some carbohydrates to do that, right?
The fat burning is great when you’re a little bit lower when you’re 65-70% of your VO2 max. But once you get over that, you’re going to want to add some carbs into the mix, right? But the types of carbs matter, right?
Another myth is that high up foods high in cholesterol are unhealthy. Here’s the thing. I’m clueless why cholesterol rich foods have gotten a bad rap. Because people don’t understand how dietary cholesterol affects your health, right? So some people are very sensitive to dietary cholesterol, right, but this is the exception.
Overall, nutrient dense foods that are higher in cholesterol can be included in a healthy diet, including foods like eggs and full fat yogurt. So these have higher cholesterol in them, right? They actually might boost your health because they enhance feelings of fullness. So you’re going to feel more full.
And you’re actually getting a ton of nutrition when you eat these kinds of foods. Whereas when you’re eating foods that have zero cholesterol, you’re not getting the nutrients that you are that are actually required like kale has a lot of it doesn’t have any cholesterol in it right? But is kale something that you need to be eating? Because it’s going to give you all kinds of nutrition, it’s a lot of fiber, you’re just going to pass most of that through your system, you’re not going to absorb a whole lot from eating kale.
Sorry to bust your bubble about kale but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be right? So high cholesterol foods like eggs, full fat yogurt, these things are very nutritious, right? And like I said, some people because of genetic factors might be more sensitive to cholesterol and you’ve got to be careful with that. But for most of us, they can be included as part of a healthy diet.
Your brain needs cholesterol to function properly. Every cell in your body has cholesterol in it. We have to get cholesterol in your diet, or else we’re going to, our health is going to suffer, we’re going to start to break down, right? So we have to have cholesterol in your diet. So just understand that cholesterol does not mean you know, it’s not bad, it’s not the sign of an apocalypse, you’re not going to die from eating cholesterol, in fact, you have to eat it as part of a healthy diet.
Here’s one that might surprise you: supplements are not necessary. So this is a kind of a myth, like I’ve talked about eating real food and how you should be able to get all your nutrition from eating real food. And I kind of stand by that yes, to a certain degree. But I also think there are certain supplements that are okay.
And that actually kind of recommended for most people and especially runners like, I think creatine is a supplement that most people can benefit from most athletes can benefit from, it helps to build muscle, it helps you with recovery, it’ll help to improve running performance, because you’re going to be become a stronger human being, and you’re going to have stronger muscles and stronger connective tissues.
Collagen would be another one that I would recommend, just especially as you get older, you know, to help with connective tissue health and stronger bones. And then iron would be another one. So this is interesting, that long distance runners require more iron, because there’s some loss of blood through the gut that happens with running, because we’re, you know, diverting blood away from our gut in order to provide oxygen to working muscles, this is why a lot of people get stomach issues, GI issues, because they don’t have the blood in their gut.
So we’re diverting blood away from the gut, to arms and legs to keep us out there swimming, running, biking, whatever. And so we’re actually kind of losing blood through that process. And so we want to replace the iron. So eating a diet high in iron, iron can be really helpful. But for a lot of people, I think supplementing with iron, especially for long distance runners is going to be really helpful for you. Okay.
And then one supplement in particular, that I think is interesting. Calcium, a lot of people think they need to supplement with calcium in order to have strong bones. So people are told to just keep popping the calcium supplements, you’ve got to keep your bones healthy, especially as you get older. But there’s been new research out there that shows that supplementing with calcium may actually do more harm than good.
So calcium supplements have shown to be related to an increased risk of heart disease. And so if you’re concerned about your calcium intake, it’s best to focus on dietary sources of calcium, like again, full fat yogurt, sardines, some beans and seeds, things like that. But just another, a better, even better than just like trying to get calcium from your diet is to practice regular strength training, and get enough protein and avoid low calorie diets, low calorie diets, not good for your bone health.
Not getting enough quality protein is not good for your bone health. Not doing any kind of resistance exercise, or any kind of weight bearing exercise is not good for your bone health. So running, strength training, getting enough protein are all going to help you to maintain a strong skeletal system. And if you want to supplement use collagen, because that’s going to help you create stronger connective tissues and stronger bones better than a calcium supplement. Okay.
And then another another myth I wanted to bust is about low fat diet foods being healthy. We probably, I’m assuming that we all know this by now. But I’m just gonna like maybe maybe that’s a wrong assumption. Maybe some people don’t know this. But if you’re buying any kinds of foods that say, like low calorie or low fat, like you just got to stay away from that stuff.
A lot of the foods that are being peddled to us out there that say light or low calorie, low fat or fat free. These contain much more added sugar. And if you gotta read the labels and like just pay attention to what it is you’re getting right? But pretty much I would say stay away from anything that says light, low calorie diet, low fat, fat free. Avoid anything that says any of that, right? Go for though just regular full fat foods, because these are almost always going to be a healthier option and contain less sugar. So just keep that in mind. Okay.
Another myth that I hear all the time, and especially from, you know, bodybuilder type of people is that you’ve got to eat like six times a day in order to keep your metabolism going. And I just have to tell you that this is completely not true. That every time you eat food, you’re going to increase your blood sugar, right.
And if every time you eat if you’re eating six times a day, and you’re keeping your blood sugar high, especially if you’re eating a lot of carbs, this can really lead to more fat storage. And I can’t tell you how many people have come to me as clients and said, Patrick, I was working with a trainer. And they wanted me to eat six times a day, and I just kept gaining weight, and I just kept gaining weight.
And they were telling me that I wasn’t doing it right, or that I needed to exercise more. And I just have to tell you that this whole concept of eating six times a day is just total BS, the human body is not designed to eat six times a day, we’re just not. The human body is designed to eat like once or twice a day. And that’s it.
We did not evolve as grazers, you know, we’re not antelopes, or bison, like, you know, we evolved as persistent hunters, we, we evolved as gatherers, you know, we would gather foods and then bring them back to our tribe, and we would, we would eat that food together. But we we evolved to be people who, a species who eats infrequently. So this idea of eating all the time, just puts a strain on our systems and puts a strain on your pancreas, it puts a strain on the digestive system.
And you do not need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism going. You know, you keep your metabolism going by just eating enough each day, getting enough calories in, eating a couple times a day, you don’t need to be snacking in between meals or anything like that. And this is how you promote fat loss. This is how you keep your metabolism actually going.
And you just have to understand that we are not designed to eat that many times a day, the human body does not like that. And we will keep storing a lot of that energy as fat and you won’t be able to tap into your fat stores. You know, we talked about, you know, fat burning being the goal, here we want to be, we want to get our bodies back to being efficient fat burners.
And when we eat all the time, we flip that switch and we just store fat, store fat, we store fat, stop doing that. It’s not healthy, it’s not a good way to go. Especially if you’re an endurance athlete, stop eating a million times a day, just eat a couple times a day. And take advantage of all the amazing adaptations that happen. When you practice this kind of meal spacing, this intermittent fasting, whatever you want to call it, this idea that we eat a couple times a day. And that’s plenty for us. And this is the way we’ve always done it as human beings. Yeah.
And then the last little myth I want to bust here is about tracking calories, tracking macros, and that this is something we have to do if you want to lose weight, you got to track your calories, you got to count your calories, you got to count your macros, and you have to stay on top of it for the rest of your life, you know, and I’m just gonna say just know, just know, you don’t have to do this. Somehow, for two and a half million years, as human beings, we managed to thrive without my fitness pal. Like we didn’t need to put our food into a food tracker in order to stay healthy and fit and lean and strong.
And in my programs, I help people to learn how to eat more intuitively, how to give their body what their body actually needs, when you need it, and how to tune into that. Now, just as full disclosure here, I do encourage people to track their food for a little bit of time just to understand what that looks like. And to understand what these numbers kind of can add up to.
Because when we tell people like hey, maybe we’ll switch to eating fewer carbs, or what does that mean? And so we just wanted to, you know, we want to quantify that with some numbers. So we’ll track for a little bit of time, maybe a couple of weeks or something like that, but then we put that away, we don’t need to do that anymore. Your body knows what it needs.
And if you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’ll know when you’re hungry. And when you’re not. You’ll know when you’ve eaten too much or if you need more. And if you’ve learned how to eat properly and you’ve learned about proper human nutrition, and you’ve learned about what works for your body and what doesn’t work for your body, then this should be very intuitive for you and that you shouldn’t need to be tracking calories and tracking macros.
I talked to somebody a while back who was so obsessed about tracking calories and making sure that she was always getting the right number of calories and making sure macros were always right that she would take a scale, a food scale, with her on vacation and take a foods go with her when she went out to dinner with, you know, business with colleagues.
And she would pull out her scale and set it on the table and weigh everything that she was eating, because she needed to know exactly how many grams everything was so that she could enter it all into her food tracker. This is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not the way that we were designed as human beings to live our lives, you know.
And, you know, I think it’s interesting to track for a little while, and I have done it in the past. And every now and then I’ll just put my food into an app just to kind of see where I wonder where I am with this stuff. It’s kind of interesting, right? But it’s not necessary. I am very intuitive now and this is what I teach my clients to do, too, we want to be able to eat intuitively. And again, in my programs, we talk about sustainability, this is all about what’s going to work for the long term, because we’re not committed, we’re not committed to short term, we’re not this isn’t about like a quick fixes this is about long term, sustainable, a way of life. That’s what we’re interested in. So we want to get there. And that’s what we focus on.
So that’s, that’s the gist of, of, of what I do in my programs is that we work on sustainability, and we work on creating good habits that lasts for life. Okay. So those are the biggest myths that I wanted to go over today. And I’m sure you know, I’ll probably come up with some more, I’ll do another episode about maybe some of the other ones that didn’t quite make the list this time.
But I wanted to make sure that we’re all on the same page with some of this stuff, because some of it’s just, it’s just outdated. And that’s cool. Get it. So I hope this was helpful. Let me know what you think. You can always reach out to me on social media. And you can find me @runningleancoaching on Instagram and Facebook and all that.
And I would love to chat with you about coaching if that’s something that you’re ever interested in. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’d love to have that conversation with you. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Today, I’ve got another episode in my Back to Basics series. This time it’s all about why runners get fat. I’ve talked about this topic a lot here on the podcast, but I want to go over it again …
Continue Reading about 127. Back to Basics: Why Runners Get Fat →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 127, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got another In My Back to Basics series, why runners get fat. So I’ve talked a lot about this topic here on the podcast in the past, but I kind of want to go over it again today in a little bit of a different way. Because understanding why you get fat, even if you’re a runner, is going to help you to make the changes that you need to make to reverse that runners are not immune to gaining weight and getting fat.
In fact, getting a lot of weight as a runner is a big part of my story. And it’s kind of why I do what I do today. And it’s also something that I hear from other runners every single day, every day I talk to people who tell me the same thing, I’m running all the time, and I’m gaining weight, and I don’t understand it. So it’s not just me, it’s not just you, it’s a problem.
It’s a problem for a lot of runners out there, okay? And I need you to understand this, I want you to know that it’s okay. It’s okay. If you’ve gained weight as a runner, it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, you’ve just been given a lot of bad advice. And you’ve been doing things a certain way that just clearly don’t doesn’t really work for you, right?
So today this Back to Basics episode is all going to be about why runners get fat, and then what you can do about it. Cool. So first, I just wanted to mention that in June, for the whole month of June, we’re going to be talking about mastering your mindset over in the Running Lean Coaching Project. So how to take control of your mind, because changing your mindset is the way that you get everything good that you want in your life.
Everything that you want requires the right mindset. It’s the foundation for creating change of any kind in your life. Okay, it’s also required for maintaining change in your life. If you can’t lose weight, you’ve got to fix your mindset. If you can’t maintain your weight loss, which I know is a problem for a lot of us. You’ve got to fix your mindset.
But armed with the right mindset, there’s virtually nothing that you can’t accomplish. So some of the things we’re going to talk about, this whole month is going to be how to fix your mindset, so we can stop self sabotaging. So you can build the mental toughness that you need. So you can create a more disciplined life. So you can create permanent habit change, so you can become an emotional badass, all of these things require a shift in your mindset.
So if you’re ready to become more, if you’re ready to take your health and fitness to the next level, and ready to make these changes in your mindset, then you’re ready for the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is the container that I’ve created to give you all the knowledge, the support and the accountability that you need to be able to hit your health and fitness goals. If you want to lose weight, if you want to get stronger, if you want to run faster or longer, this is the place for you to do it. We support you, you get coaching, you get all the information that you need. You’re going to learn exactly what to do, how to do it, we’ll put together a plan that is personalized for you that will help you to reach your specific goals because we’re all different.
The same thing doesn’t work for everyone. If you’re interested, if you want this for yourself, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You’ve got to fill out a short application and schedule a call with me. We’ll talk about your goals and we’ll just see if this is a good fit for you. Okay, runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean Coaching Project.
Okay, so, back to basics. Today I’m talking about why runners get fat. And the first thing I want to mention is that there is no fat shaming here at all. This is not what this is about. Getting fat is one of those things that happens to a lot of us and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. And I’m using the word fat because that’s what it is. I was fat, I lost a bunch of weight, I started running like crazy. I ended up getting fat again, because what I was doing was not working for me.
So I’m not using the word fat here. We’re so scared to use this word, it’s like, it’s like it’s a four letter word, right? I know, it’s only three letters. But it’s like it’s a four letter word. And it really isn’t. It’s just fat, it’s body fat. And even as runners, a lot of times we’re just storing more body fat than we’re burning.
And this is the same principle that applies to anybody who has gained weight, right? You’re just, you’re storing more energy than you’re burning, you’re storing more body fat than then you’re using his fuel. And we have to fix that, there’s a way to fix it. I’m gonna talk about that today.
But I want you to understand that this isn’t about, you know, calling people out or shaming anyone, I’ve been there, I’ve looked in the mirror and said, dude, you are fat, you’ve got to fix this problem. This is not okay. It was not okay with me to look the way that I looked, and to feel the way that I felt and to be out of shape, and overweight. And even when I was in shape, I was overweight.
So there’s this, there’s this concept, they call it tofi, you can be kind of thin on the outside, but fat on the inside, you can actually have a pretty good body shape. Like it kind of looks pretty good on the outside, a lot of runners like maybe they look pretty good on the inside. But inside, you could have a lot of visceral body fat, that you’re not even that doesn’t really show the way it does in other people that are not as fit.
So I just want to make sure that we understand that this isn’t about shaming anyone. This isn’t about saying that, you know, you’re a bad person or anything like that. Fat is just part of our vernacular, but it’s become something that is like taboo. And I want to break that taboo, we need to talk about this. We’ve got to eat fat, right? So we’ve got to eat that. And fat has been so vilified, that people don’t even want to talk about it. They don’t even want to say the word out loud.
So I’m trying to, you know, just step into this. And just say like, listen, we’re going to talk about getting fat, we’re going to talk about body fat, we’re going to talk about eating fat. None of it is bad. Okay, so let’s just lay the foundation. Let’s start there. Okay.
So the first thing I wanted to kind of talk about is the energy balance theory and why it’s really just, it’s too simple. It’s too simplified. So the energy balance theory is this idea that you have to burn more calories than you eat. And if you are burning more, you know, if you’re expending more calories than you’re taking in, you should be able to lose weight. And while there is some truth to this, it is not that simple. I really wish it was that simple.
If it was, I don’t think we’d have an obesity epidemic, the way that we do here in this country today. If it was that simple. I think a lot of us as runners would not gain weight. But it’s just not that simple. For a long time, I was a runner for a long time when I started gaining weight again. And over the course of several years, I put on something like 40 pounds. So I had gotten down to like 161-165.
And I could maintain that pretty easily through running or so I thought but then the weight started to creep back up again. And I ended up getting close to 200 pounds again. And I was training for ultra marathons and running two marathons a year like I was always running a ton of miles. So what is going on here? I was even tracking my food in an app.
And you know, I was counting the calories that I was taking in and I was counting the calories that I was supposedly expending during exercise. And the numbers should have added up the numbers should have created weight loss in me and they just didn’t. And it was confounding. It was very confounding. I did not know what the answer was.
And so I started digging into this and got really down a lot of rabbit holes honestly with this. And then I came across The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. And a light bulb went off in my head when I read this book, and if you haven’t read it, definitely read it. It’s amazing. But the gist of it is that there’s more going on than just calories in calories out.
You know, that works perfect if you’re a, you know, steam engine, but it does not work perfectly for the human body. Because we’re much more complicated, different foods trigger different hormonal responses within us. Those hormonal responses determine if we store some of that energy as fat or not. And so it becomes a little more complicated than just calories in calories out.
Go back and listen to the Eating Real Food episode that I did a few weeks back, that was another Back to Basics episode that I did. And I talk a lot about this and share some studies and science with that I’m not going to get into all those details today. But go back and listen to that one if you haven’t listened to it, because it’ll kind of lay the foundation for some of the stuff I’m talking about today.
But the whole idea of calories in calories out is just too simplified. I mean, it does work to a certain degree, like think about the show The Biggest Loser, they take these people who are big, you know, they’re super overweight, and they exercise them like crazy, they cut their calories down dramatically. And they get these people to lose weight, like it does work.
But here’s the problem with that approach, when you drop your calories, so low like that for an extended period of time. And when you’re exercising, they were doing like, up to like three hours of like cardio type of exercise every day. When you put that much demand on your body, that much stress on your body, and you limit your calories, that low, your body goes into what’s called starvation mode, so your body will start to slow down your metabolism to match what’s coming in.
And if you’re eating 800 calories a day, your metabolism, let’s say your metabolism is normally about 1800 calories a day which is what your resting metabolic rate is, that’ll start to slow down and slow down, slow down until it matches the energy that’s coming in. And when you add on top of that all the exercising that’s going on, that’s putting your body into this state of panic, it’s putting your body into the state of survival mode.
They call it starvation mode. But it’s more like survival mode where your body’s like I gotta shut down some of this stuff, we gotta slow this metabolism down. Because we’re not getting enough food, we’re not getting enough fuel, we’re not getting enough nutrition here to sustain us. And all this exercising is just compounding the effect of the starvation mode, it actually makes it worse.
And so when you combine those two things, and your body starts to kind of slow down, you start to see the weight, the weight coming back on again. And almost everybody on that show, The Biggest Loser, ends up gaining the weight back and then some. There’s a lot of people who gain more back, even though they’re kind of sticking with the same plan. So it’s interesting, right? Because if it was all about energy in energy out, that should not happen. But it does.
So yeah, you can lose weight by exercising like crazy and cutting your calories way back. So the energy balance theory, in theory works. That’s why they call it a theory because it’s just a theory about the energy balance factor, you know.
So it does kind of work, but it’s not sustainable. And it’s not how we were designed as human beings to survive. Because the whole idea of cutting calories and increasing exercise puts your body into this state of panic, this state of survival mode. And that is not our normal state of being.
So our normal state of being we call that homeostasis, that’s when we are at our neutral best, you know, that’s when we’re like everything’s working the way it’s supposed to. And your body is always fighting to get back to homeostasis. So you know, expending that many calories is going to slow down your metabolism to match the calories that are coming in.
And you can only do that for so long until the weight just starts coming back on again. And you have to understand that the types of foods that we eat make a big difference here. And going back to Dr. Fung’s book, The Obesity Code, you know, he lays out this whole idea: this concept that eating sugar raises blood sugar, like crazy it spikes our blood sugar and carbohydrates do the same thing, especially refined carbohydrate traits like flour.
And when we eat that kind of food on a regular basis, our blood sugar is constantly elevated super high, it’s spiked in a way that it normally shouldn’t be our blood, blood sugar goes up when we eat food. You know, if you eat a piece of chicken and some broccoli, your blood sugar is gonna go up a little bit, and then it’ll come back down to baseline.
But when we eat these highly palatable foods full of sugar and refined grains and carbohydrates, it spikes our blood sugar like crazy. That’s why it feels good to eat that stuff, we get a rush when we eat that stuff, right? It’s like massive amounts of energy. And as you know, ancient humans, we would find some honey or some berries, and we would eat that stuff. And it would be like, ooh, we get this massive rush.
And we were like, it’s training our brain to go back to that, like, oh, we need to find that again, at some point, because that’s massive calories. It’s, um, it spikes our blood sugar. And, you know, this is like a good thing to our ancient humans. But it was very rare. It wasn’t like something we were eating every single day, because there weren’t Krispy Kremes back then, right?
But now with the Krispy Kremes and, you know, craft beers everywhere, like we’re just constantly, that’s our constant diet. So every time we eat that kind of food, it raises our blood sugar like crazy. And then what happens in response to that is insulin gets produced. Insulin is a hormone that’s created to manage blood sugar to bring blood sugar back down.
So again, eating the chicken in the broccoli, blood sugar is going to go up a little bit, and then insulin is going to get produced a little bit, and then your blood sugar is going to get back down to normal, and all is good. But with this spike in eating, you know, Krispy Kremes, then the blood sugar goes super high. So insulin response goes super high, it gets produced in extra high amounts, which causes a crash in your blood sugar.
So your blood sugar actually goes down below baseline. That’s where you feel that crash and burn after eating a bunch of donuts or whatever, like, you just want to take a nap. That’s because your blood sugar has gone below baseline and you have crashed. Alright, so I talked about this a lot, the spike and crash, like we want to stop doing that we want to, we want to normalize blood sugars. Okay, we don’t want to be dealing with these spikes and crashes.
But the other interesting thing about this is when insulin is high in your body, when insulin is present in your body, your body goes into storing fat, your body goes into fat storing mode. So your body is actually storing a lot of that energy as body fat to be used as fuel later. So think about that ancient humans, we find a bunch of honey, we find a bunch of berries or something like that.
And the berries weren’t as sweet as they are today. But let’s just say they were pretty sweet. You know, they find some really sugary foods out there in the wild. And they eat that stuff. And some of that energy that they’re eating gets turned into stored body fat, so that they can use that as fuel later, which they did. We were always burning fat, we were always fat adapted.
Back in the day, we had adapted ourselves to using our stored body fat as a fuel source very efficiently. This is our natural state of being to be in as human beings. We’ve always been good at this. And when I talk about being fat adapted today, people think I’m like, talking about some weird fringe diet thing. You know what I mean? And it’s like, no, no, no, no, it’s not some weird fringe diet. This is like the way we’re supposed to do things.
Why do we store body fat? Why do we store body fat? It’s a good question, right? We store body fat because our bodies need to use fuel when we don’t have food coming in. Our bodies are designed to not eat all the time. Our bodies are designed to store some of the energy that we consume as fat to be used as fuel later, later never comes though in this modern society today. All we do is store more and more and more and more. And so we have to understand that this is not normal.
This, this goes against, you know, getting our bodies into homeostasis. This goes against the natural state that we should be in as human beings, we should naturally be really freaking amazing, fat burning machines. That is our natural state. And I want to get back to that. I want you to get back to that. Because when you do, you don’t store more and more and more fat. You burn the fat. You lose the weight. You start to have all this energy. You feel much better. Running becomes easier.
This is our natural state as humans. And I want to get back to that. I feel like I’m there. Like, I feel like, you know, I would say 98.5% there, I always think I’ve got a little work to do. And I don’t do this perfectly. I like chips and salsa. I like sushi. There’s some carbohydrates that I’m just not going to say no to.
But I think that where I am today, versus where I was 10-15 years ago, is pretty damn amazing. And I’ve never felt better, never been in as good a shape today at 55 than I have the previous 54 years. If you can gain weight, as a runner, you can lose it too. And this is something that I thought was going to be impossible for me. And I tried all the things.
I tried all the diets, I tried all the apps, I tried cutting calories, I tried being a vegan, you know, and not eating fat, I tried all the stuff. And it just just didn’t work. Nothing was working for me. It wasn’t until I got off the sugar train, you know, until I just stopped eating, you know, processed foods and, and refined grains and sugar. And once I did that, everything started to shift for me, I was able to start tapping back in two that stored body fat as a fuel source.
The key to losing weight is to burn fat. And the key to getting your body into fat burning mode is to just keep the carbs low, keep the sugar low. The easiest way to do this, by the way, is just eliminate sugar and grains from your diet. These two things are problematic if you keep eating sugar, and grains. And of course a little bit is fine. But if you keep eating these things in the quantities that are recommended that we eat these things in, you are going to keep your body in that chronic state of fat storing and I don’t care how much running you do, you will not be able to move the needle. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve seen it in hundreds of people that I’ve worked with.
And they tell me the same thing, I’m running like crazy. I think I’m eating a pretty good diet. But I can’t lose weight. It’s just the weights not budging. It’s not budging. Maybe it worked when you were in your 20s or in your 30s. But as you get into your 40s and 50s, maybe it just stops working.
Maybe it wasn’t working all along and you just kept storing a little bit of fat, a little bit fat a little bit that it just kind of added up. And then all of a sudden you’re like, hey, how did this happen? That was definitely my story. I went from like 161-165 to like 200 pounds in the matter of a few years. I don’t know exactly when the weight gain started happening. But I would say it wasn’t longer than like three or four years, you know what I mean?
And I found myself at this place of like, I’ve got to fix this. So the energy balance theory is a little too simple, there’s a lot more going on, you have to understand that the kind of foods you eat will cause your body to either be in fat storing mode, or fat burning mode, we want to be in fat burning mode. But then think about the typical runners’ diet.
The typical runners’ diet is carbohydrates on top of carbohydrates on top of carbohydrates. It’s just all sugar. And sugar is just a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, carbs are sugar, carbs, or sugar. That’s it. And remember eating that stuff is going to, depending on what it is, you know, of course, a potato isn’t going to raise your blood sugar as much as you know, a spoonful of honey would but there’s a spectrum there.
And there are some carbs that are better than others. And I did a podcast about this a while back called Good Carbs, Bad Carbs, you can go back and listen to that one. But when we change the diet and we get our hormones balanced out and we normalize our blood sugars and our and we put our body in that state of homeostasis where it’s supposed to be.
This is when the good stuff starts happening. This is when you start burning fat. This is when you start using fat as a fuel source which we’ve limited because the more sugar you’re eating, the less you’re burning fat. The more sugar that’s available, the less your body’s going to go to that stored fat as fuel. And so, to be fat adapted as a runner is such an amazing thing because you’re taking advantage of the fact that you’ve trained your body to be really efficient at burning fat. Okay.
And again, this is just going back to what we’ve always done as humans. Okay, and you, you cannot get fat adapted, eating tons of sugar and refined carbs, you just can’t, your body’s going to use that stuff as fuel, and then store some of that as fat, it’s going to use some of that as fuel and store some of it as fat, the storing is just going to keep happening, the burning is not going to happen the way that we want it to.
Yeah, you’re always burning a little bit of fat and a little bit of you know, sugar, a little bit of glucose, glycogen, whatever you want to call it, when you eat carbs, you know, your body is going to produce is going to turn a lot of that stuff into glucose, and then glycogen gets stored in your muscles.
But just a cool little fact is that your body actually produces all the glucose that you need, our bodies need glucose to survive, our brains need a certain amount of glucose to survive, I think it’s something like the equivalent of about a teaspoon full of sugar a day. And your liver actually produces that, it creates it, it creates it in a process called gluconeogenesis.
That literally means creating new sugar. So your liver is actually like, dude, I got you covered. You don’t need to eat all that sugar I got you, I got it. I got it. And I’ve gone through periods where I’ve eaten zero carbs. And I’m not suggesting you do this. I’m just saying that, you know, I’ve done it just as an experiment to see like, how could I function? How can I possibly function if I’m not eating any carbs.
And guess what? I functioned just fine. My weightlifting sessions were awesome. My runs were awesome. I did this training for two different marathons and had an incredible performance. At the first one, the second one, I just was taking it easy. I was like whatever it is, tried a different approach or whatever. But that first one was amazing. And I was eating zero carbs during that training and during that race, and my body was producing all the glycogen that my muscles needed to perform and was getting produced by my body like I was just creating it. It’s kind of cool.
And listen, carbs are not the enemy. And I’m not like anti-carbohydrate. I’m not about saying like you should eat zero carbs. This is not my agenda at all. This is not what I’m about here. Right. But the recommendations that they put out there for us that the government suggests we eat, they’re, they’re just too high. They’re too high. For most of us. Maybe for some of us, they work okay.
But for the majority of majority of us, we’re carbohydrate intolerant, we just can’t tolerate 65% of our calories coming from carbohydrates. That’s crazy. That’s crazy high. And that’s not something we’re used to doing as human beings. We don’t need that much. So you can, you can survive just fine. You can thrive just fine on a lower carbohydrate diet. And if you’ve never done this before, or you think it’s some weird fringe thing, I want to suggest that you just try it.
Trust me, try it. Go 30 days without sugar and grains and see how you feel. See what happens. It’d be fun little experiment. Carbs are not the enemy. You can eat carbs. I eat carbs. I eat fruit. I mean, here’s what my diet looks like today. My diet today looks like meat, fruit, eggs, and a little bit of dairy. That’s it. It is that simple. Meat, fruit, eggs, little bit of dairy. That’s it.
That is what we’ve eaten as human beings forever. I do eat some vegetables, too. I always forget about that. I’ve told this a couple of different people lately. And they were like, you don’t need vegetables. And I’m like, oh, no, I do. But I always forget about that. Because they’re not that important for humans, honestly, like we don’t need to eat a ton of vegetables to be super fit and healthy. We just don’t. But I do eat some vegetables too.
But carbs are not the enemy. This isn’t about zero carbs. The recommendations, I think are too high. And I would encourage you to give it a shot. Just try it. And then understand this. We’re not, this isn’t a diet. Right? I want to make this point very, very clear. This is about changing your lifestyle. This is about becoming more like the human beings that we’ve evolved over millions of years to become.
It’s like it’s saying no to the status quo, because the status quo out there is to be overweight, to be obese, to be unfit to be unhealthy to be sick, to be on medication. And that is normal. That’s what’s normal. I do not want to be normal. And I don’t want that for you either. So this is about changing your lifestyle, to become a total freaking fat burning badass. I want that for myself, I hope you want that for you too.
And I have to tell you, I have a bit of an agenda here. I have like a secret agenda. Maybe it’s not so secret. Well, I’m gonna tell you what it is right now anyway, but here’s my agenda. I want to open your eyes to a different way of doing things. I want you to consider that it’s possible that there’s a better way to do things. And that you don’t have to do what everybody else is doing. That I want to be an example of what is possible for you. And I want to inspire you to do the same thing.
I want to inspire you to be an example of what’s possible to the people in your world. And I want to create this ripple effect, this huge impact of health and fitness and positivity. Because the people that I have helped tell me all the time how this has changed their life in ways they did not even know, it could have an impact on their life.
And it’s not about, this is not about losing weight. That’s a side effect. When you get amazingly healthy and fit. And you shift your diet back to eating just real food, the way that I talk about it, you, you get super, your body just becomes super healthy. And that weight loss happens as a side effect. That’s not the main goal. It’s but it’s a cool side effect. Because it means that you’re on the right path again.
And like I said earlier, if you can gain weight as a runner, you can lose it too. It is possible. It is possible. But it starts with a shift in your mindset, you’ve got to change the way you’re thinking about this stuff. You can’t be thinking that that high carb, carb loading, all carb diet, whatever is going to work for you. Because if it doesn’t work for you, you’ve got to make some changes.
And listen, I know it’s not easy, it’s hard. It’s hard to make these changes. That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I created this coaching program. Because I want to help you, I want to give you the support that you need. And if you want that kind of support, I’m here for you. If you want to try it on your own, you can do that. Try it on your own, see if it works. If you can get it to work. I think you can, there’s a lot of people to do. If you want coaching, great, I’m here for you. If you don’t, that’s totally fine, too.
But my mission in this world is to open people’s eyes to the fact that the way they’re telling us to do things is wrong. It’s just wrong. For most of us. You know, there’s not one diet that works perfectly for everyone. There’s not one way of eating or one lifestyle that works perfectly for everyone. And I totally acknowledge that.
But if you’re listening to this today, and you’re still if you’re still listening to this today, thank you for being here, by the way. Thanks for putting up with me. But if you’re still listening to this, then chances are you’re interested in making these kinds of changes because the status quo is not working for you either. So try it. See what happens. Cool. All right, love you all keep on Running Lean. It’ll talk to you soon.
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