Additional menu

Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Stress

144. Handling Stress Like a Badass

By

One of the most prevalent health issues facing us today is stress. When you think of stress you probably only imagine it being a mental health issue, but chronic stress is a major contributing …

Continue Reading about 144. Handling Stress Like a Badass →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 144 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: handling stress like a badass. One of the most prevalent health issues facing us today is stress. And when you think of stress, you’re probably imagining it being a mental health issue, something that happens in your brain. But chronic stress is actually a major contributing factor to a lot of physical disease here, especially in the US.

The good news is that stress can be managed quite well. The bad news is that most people, even runners, do a pretty terrible job of managing stress. Okay, so in this episode, I’m going to explain what stress actually is, how stress might be affecting you, either positively or negatively. And what you can do to start handling stress like badass, okay?

Different people handle stress in different ways. And the key to handling stress, like a badass really, is having a plan. Most people have no plan, okay. So if you find it hard to come up with a plan for yourself, if you want some help staying on track, you know, with that plan, then consider coaching might be a good fit for you.

With coaching, you and I are going to work closely together to set goals to create a plan, and then help you stay on track to help you work the plan. It’s that simple, right? Simple, but not easy. And just so you know, in my coaching program, I offer both group coaching and one on one coaching, so you get the support from the group.

So you get a supportive group of other runners with similar goals. You know, we’re all here trying to lose weight, get fat adapted, improve our running performance, get stronger, become the healthiest versions of ourselves, reduce stress, all those things. So you get the support of the group and you get the support and personalized guidance from me during our one on one coaching sessions, okay, so you get both in my program and a lot of other coaching programs offer like one or the other. But you get both in my program, okay.

So if you’re someone who is looking for some support, some accountability, some guidance, then I want to encourage you to join the Running Lean coaching project. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. You have to apply for this program at this point.

Anyway. It’s a short application, there’s a short interview process where you and I will get on a zoom call. I’ll go over all the details of the coaching program with you and we’ll see if this is a good fit. And if it’s a good fit, I would love to have you join me in the program. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners called the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you. Cool. Alright, let’s talk about stress, shall we?

And especially, handling stress and handling stress like a badass. So, the reason I’m talking about this today, the thing that kind of inspired me to bring this topic to the forefront was that I recently took a little vacation to Maine and I had never been to Maine before, beautiful state by the way. And we spent some time in Portland and we spent some time in the Lake District and and spent quite a bit of time on this little lake and it was actually a pretty good sized lake. We did some kayaking and some running.

And there were beautiful apple trees all over the place and we were picking apples right off the trees and eating them. And they all tasted a little bit different because they’re different types of apples and I couldn’t tell you which one was which, but they were all amazing. And it was such a super chill relaxed week. For me, like, there was no stress at all.

Everything was just like, you know, there’s this lake and the woods and trees. And just it was beautiful, you know. And it was funny because, you know, the friend that I was with said, I was commenting on how relaxed I was and how stress free I felt. And she was like, well, this is pretty much how you are anyway, Patrick. And I was like, yeah, I guess I am. You know, that’s kind of how I live my life anyway, I don’t really get wallowed in stress, I don’t get mired down in stress these days, like I’ve really learned how to manage stress well.

But the interesting thing is, most people don’t, most people don’t have any kind of stress management strategy in their life at all. Most people rely on things like vacation, or a trip to some really, you know, forced relaxing place like this beautiful lake that I was at. They rely on those short, short amounts of time during the year to de-stress and to kind of manage their stress and to relax.

And I think this is a problem. Because let’s say you get four weeks of vacation per year, which is I think that’s being generous for most people. But let’s just say you get about four weeks of vacation per year. And you know, we’re talking about 52 weeks in the year. So that’s roughly 8% of your year, a percent of your life that you’re dedicating to purposely and intentionally relax and de-stress.

What about the other 92% of your life? What are you doing with the rest of the time? And this is what really struck me is that most people don’t have any kind of ongoing stress management strategies. And so 92% of their life is spent in a state of chronic stress. And this is a real problem.

Stress is the cause of a lot of issues, not just mental health issues, but physical issues. So a couple of stats I found pretty interesting were that according to the American Institute of Stress, about 33% of people report feeling extreme stress. 33% of people, at least here in the United States, feel extreme stress.

77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health. And 73% of people have stress that impacts their mental health. So let’s just round that up and down to about 75% of people are experiencing some sort of stress that affects them either mentally or physically. And 33% of the people in this country report feeling extreme stress. So this is a big problem. And I’m going to talk about some of the downfalls of stress and some of the ways that this affects us, but understand that we are in general, a stressed out nation of people. Okay.

We are a nation of people who do not deal with stress very well, and are a nation of people who are mired down in stress. You know, 75% of the people in this country are reporting stress that affects their physical and mental health. This is a big problem. Okay. So, before we get into, like how stress is affecting us, let’s look at what stress is okay.

So, stress according to the Googles, according to the dictionary, stress is a physical, chemical or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. Stress can be a state that you are in, especially one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existing equilibrium.

So I’m going to like put my own spin on this and just say that basically what we’re talking about here as stress as a physical, emotional or mental tension, that alters our equilibrium, that puts us off balance, that takes our body out of homeostasis; our body and our mind. Okay. So we are no longer in homeostasis, which is where everything is working properly and we are imbalanced, okay.

And we have to understand that there are different types of stress. So stress can be acute stress or stress can be chronic stress, acute stress is something that is very short term, and usually pretty intense, like, lifting heavy weights. So if you do a heavy benchpress session, or you do some sprints, you know, sprint intervals, high intensity interval training, that would be considered acute stress, it’s very short term, it’s very intense.

And it is actually a good form of stress, okay, because it leads to adaptive responses in our body, then we have chronic stress or long term stress, long term or chronic stress is something that is on going like you are going through a tough time at work, and your boss is constantly, you know, on you to get this project finished, and you’re under this deadline.

And, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks of stress over this project, a big project you have to get done. Or maybe you’ve had a death in the family, or going through a divorce or something like that, that can cause long term stress. Okay. And chronic or long term stress can be bad, like this is not the state that we are supposed to be in as human beings, let’s, let’s look at how stress has evolved. So when we were back in the, in their caveman days, or whatever.

As human beings, we would encounter some sort of form of stress like a saber toothed Tiger, and our body would release all these chemicals in the form of the stress hormone cortisol, cortisol gets pumped out in reaction to stress. And that cortisol leads our bodies to get into that fight or flight, state fight flight or freeze state.

And so our body will produce more glucose and our senses will be heightened, more adrenaline will be produced. Because we’re ready to fight or flight, we’re ready to like take action. And so our body’s preparing us to take action to do something about the saber toothed tiger in front of us. Do I run? Do I just stand here? Do I fight this thing?

And so your body’s preparing you to fight that your brain is to your brain is just like on high alert at this point. Okay? This is an acute form of stress, because in a second, that stress is going to be gone. So let’s say you choose to run away, you will see that saber toothed Tiger and you’re like, you know, Screw this, I’m out of here. And you bail and you run like the dickens away from that thing and you hide in a tree or cave or wherever you do. Saber toothed Tiger realizes that there’s gonna be no human snack today. So it leaves the area and you come out and you’re like, Oh, good. stress hormone goes down, glucose levels return to normal, your heart rate gets back down to normal, your brain chemicals return to normal and adrenaline is reduced.

And all those things that happened in response to stress the state of stress that your body was in. Now everything in a very short amount of time. Now everything goes back to normal, you’re back in homeostasis, you’re no longer out of equilibrium, you’re back in balance. Everything is working the way it’s supposed to. This is acute stress. And this is the way our bodies are designed. This is the way that we have evolved over millions of years to handle stress. This is good.

So where our bodies are supposed to work. Then we have the other type of stress, which is chronic, ongoing long term stress. And the interesting thing is that a lot of this is just stuff that we are dealing with in our day to day lives. like sitting in traffic, or, you know, we look at our phones and we open up our inbox, our email inbox, and there’s hundreds of unread messages, and it just makes us feel so stressed out.

So, the email, our email inboxes, the new saber toothed Tiger, or sitting in traffic or worrying about the divorce you’re going through or worrying about that big project you have to at work, or whatever it is that’s going on in your life that is causing this on going consistent long term stress. Chronic stress can cause the same physiological problem. So increased cortisol, increase in blood sugar, increase in adrenaline, that heightened awareness, but it doesn’t go away, it stays that way.

And when your body is in that constant state of fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system is on high alert. And this is a bad place to be this is, this is not good for you, it’s very hard to to lose weight, if you’re if you’re, you’re going through chronic stress because the constant constant elevated glucose levels, will will cause your insulin levels to be raised and you’re constantly in that fat storing mode. So chronic stress is really the cause of a lot of mental, emotional and physical disease.

The National Institutes of Health says that continued stress on your body from routine, from routine stress, you know, from chronic stress can lead to serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety disorder, and other serious illnesses. And according to the American Psychological Association, chronic stress is also linked to six of the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.

So this is a real serious issue. Chronic stress is not something to take lightly. And it’s not something that can be fixed by taking a vacation once a year. All right, this is something that we have to manage on an ongoing basis. Okay.

The other side of this, the kind of good type of stress the acute stress is, is different. And when you put stress on your body by lifting weights or doing high interval training, this actually leads to adaptation, it leads to muscle growth, it leads to improved speed and endurance as a runner. It even leads to improved ability to fight off diseases. So I think this is really fascinating that, you know, there’s two types of stress, there’s good stress, bad stress. And if you want to learn more about this, I did a podcast episode called Good stress, Bad stress. And you can go back and check that one out. It’s episode number 81. And it’s just called Good stress, bad stress. And I go into a deep dive about the different types of stress and how they affect us.

But this idea that stress is more than just a mental or emotional issue is really fascinating. Okay, so we definitely have to pay attention to stress, and we have to pay attention to the way stress is affecting us.

And are we purposely putting our bodies under acute stress like, you know, lifting weights or doing interval training to build strength or to build speed or to build endurance? Or is our body under this constant type of ongoing chronic stress where we’re just kind of always in that heightened state of awareness and that heightened fight or flight mode, like we because that’s not good for you? Okay?

So, it’s important to manage stress, and I just don’t think we do a very good job of it, okay. And when it comes down to what stress really is, it’s a physical or an emotional response. And it can be good or bad, right? We’ve talked about acute stress being good. And we’ve talked about chronic stress being bad, but even emotional stress can be good or bad.

So, you know, the stress hormones, like cortisol that get released, can help an animal to adapt to their environment to become more aware to become more resilient, with the same types of stressors that they experience in the future. So the same way that we can adapt from acute stress. from a physical standpoint, we can also adapt to acute stressors from a mental and emotional standpoint, think about going through a tough breakup, or a death in the family or something like that.

When that happens to you, you become more resilient and less fragile. For the next time that that same kind of thing happens, okay? It’s the same principle as lifting heavy weights or doing interval training that builds stronger, more resilient muscles. We’re building a stronger, more resilient, mental and emotional state, when we go through certain types of stressors in our life, and we get through them relatively quickly, okay. But just understand that this idea of chronic stress really is affecting our lives profoundly. And we have to be really diligent about managing stress. And most people don’t do it very well.

Most people handle stress by doing things like stress eating, or stress and drinking, you know, and, and, and these are coping mechanisms that they’ve developed over the years. And sometimes they’ve, they’ve been doing them since they were, you know, young children even. And it’s a way of, you know, drinking or eating over stress is a way that we’ve just trained ourselves to manage stress.

The problem is that, you know, when we deal with stress, with alcohol or with food, it really doesn’t have the effect we want it to have. Like, we think that you know, drinking alcohol is gonna make us feel relaxed, right? It does for a moment, but then it has that opposite effect, when the alcohol wears off, we get more stressed out, just because it has that counter effect, right?

Same thing with stress eating when we eat. Because we’re stressed out, we feel a little bit better temporarily. It’s like, oh, I’m feeling really stressed out, I’m just gonna eat this whole gallon of ice cream right here, half gallon of ice cream, whatever it is, I can eat a gallon of ice cream at once. Love to do that. But you know, you eat the half gallon of ice cream, and you’re like, Oh, this feels so amazing. And it just feels so good.

But then you feel terrible afterwards. And you gain weight and you can’t, you just not functioning properly and you have that big sugar crash and, and then all of a sudden you feel terrible about going off, you’re bland and like you just you know, I shouldn’t have done that. And you just become even more stressed out about the whole thing.

Okay, so stress eating and drinking are not good coping mechanisms, they are not good stress management strategies. Okay. Another way that people don’t really realize that stress affects them is that they may not sleep well at night. And that can put their body into a state of chronic stress, just not getting a good night’s sleep every night can cause chronic stress that in itself can cause stress.

Also, not sleeping well can be a byproduct of stress. So if you’re not sleeping, well, you’ve got to look at that and look at the stress in your life as a cause, or the cause of stress in your life. Okay, so getting enough sleep at night is extremely important. Right? And real real, the real problem we’re dealing with here is that there is no ongoing stress management, do you have an ongoing stress management system in place? Or do you just like deal with stress when it shows up, because if you’re the kind of person who just wants to deal with stress, when it shows up, it might be too late, you might be just like, too far gone. You know what I mean? It’s maybe too much for you, okay.

And people use time off, they use vacations, they use the weekends, to blow off steam or to let your hair down, or to unwind or relax or whatever. And the problem with this approach is that you can’t just de-stress on the weekend or on vacation. And using food or alcohol, as stress management tools does not work either.

And I know so many people that have used food or alcohol to manage stress, and it’s an ongoing stress management strategy that does not work. It has the opposite effect that they’re looking for. So we want to handle stress differently. We want to handle stress like a badass, right? The way you handle stress like a badass The first step is to be proactive, not reactive.

You can’t react to stress in your life and then decide, well, I better come up with some kind of strategy to deal with this, you have to be proactive, you have to have a regular, ongoing stress management practice of some sort. This is not something you just do when you’re on vacation, it’s not something you just do on the weekends. It’s something that you have to do every single day. So first of all, you have to be proactive, and you have to have something that you’re doing every day to help manage stress, what is that? What would that look like for you?

But it depends, but some things that people like to do to manage stress would be taking a walk, going for a run, exercising in some way, you know, cycling, rowing, lifting weights, these are all things you can do every single day to help reduce stress. If that isn’t enough, you know, you can add in other types of exercise, yoga, you can do some hit training, you can do interval other types of interval training.

There’s just so many different ways from an exercise perspective that you can use, that you can do to help manage stress on an ongoing basis that there’s just really the possibilities are endless, right? Exercise is one of the best ways of getting your body taking your body from that state of heightened awareness, that state of fight or flight, that state of stress, and using the adrenaline using the cortisol using the glucose in your system and releasing it, you know, using it for, you know, intense exercise or, you know, whatever that might look like for you even a power walk, whatever. And then, you know, burning it off, basically, you know, burning off that stress.

And then, you know, doing this on an ongoing basis, we’ll just help to alleviate that stress, okay. But there’s other things that we can do, we can use, things like meditation, and journaling. These are great ways of helping to reduce stress on an ongoing basis. So this is something that you can do every single day, and just get in the habit of doing okay.

The other thing you have to do is if you want to handle stress, like a badass is you have to stop using food and alcohol, and drugs and other external substances as stress relievers, because they do not work, they have the opposite effect, they come with a bunch of baggage, they come with all the negative side effects. You know, if you’re using alcohol, for example, as a stress management tool, you are risking a lot more than just you know, maybe not reducing stress very well.

But you can find yourself more reliant on alcohol on a regular basis and using alcohol more regularly. And we know that, you know, using alcohol regularly will kick your body out of that fat burning mode and keep your body in fat storage mode. And your running performance is affected negatively with alcohol use, you know, for several days afterwards. So alcohol, drugs, food, we got to stop using these things to reduce stress, okay?

And the other step we need to really get our arms around here is that we need to learn how to manage our minds and our emotions, we need to learn how to manage our brains and our emotional response to things. When it comes to things in our environment that stress us out, like you know, that project at work or that divorce or whatever it is, a lot of times it’s not the event itself that’s causing the stress, but it’s our thoughts about it.

And we have to learn how to manage those thoughts and feelings. This is called managing your mind or, or managing your mindset around this stuff, right. So if you’re constantly thinking that this situation at work is going to stress you out and the situation with your ex is stressing you out, then you’re going to be in this heightened stress state from a mental and emotional standpoint, and then that’s going to cause the physical reactions too.

And sometimes, if we can do some journaling, if we can do some self awareness practices that will help to build the awareness of what it is we’re actually thinking and feeling in those moments where we feel stressed out. We can learn to manage those things, we can learn to manage our mind, we can learn to manage our emotional state and our mental state. Stress does not have to be detrimental to your health and well being.

Stress can be one of those things that you manage, like a badass, right and I want to encourage you to start doing something every single day to start managing your stress, what could that look like for you? Okay, I want you to start handling stress like a badass Cool. Alright, 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.

138. Is Alcohol Really Working for You?

By

Have you ever considered how alcohol might be negatively affecting you? Do you know how alcohol affects your running performance or your ability to lose weight? Have you ever considered taking a …

Continue Reading about 138. Is Alcohol Really Working for You? →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 138 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, is alcohol really working for you? Have you ever considered how alcohol might be negatively affecting you? Do you know how alcohol affects your running performance? Or your ability to maintain or lose weight? Have you ever considered taking a break from drinking? Or does the mere idea of quitting kind of send you into panic mode?

So today, I want to pose this question. Is alcohol really working for you? Or are you just acting like it is? It’s a legit question. And it’s a question that I really honestly want you to consider while you’re listening to this episode today. Because drinking alcohol has been normalized, and even glorified for centuries. But is it really doing you any good at all? Is alcohol all it’s cracked up to be?

In this episode, I’m going to tackle the big question of whether or not alcohol is actually working for you. Or maybe it’s working against you. And just so you know, this is another one of those tough love episodes. So you might want to strap in, but I know you can totally handle it. So I just got back from a run. And I feel amazing.

And I used to never think that I could be a runner. Because back in the day, I drank a lot. I smoked cigarettes, I ate garbage food, I never exercised, I was fat, and out of shape, and poisoning myself daily. And then one day I woke up, I woke up and I was hung over again. And I did something that I had never even considered doing before. And that is: I asked for help.

I knew for many, many years that I had to quit drinking, but it seemed way too hard for me to do on my own, it seemed impossible. I tried it kinda sorta here and there. But, you know, doing it on my own just seemed like just too big of an endeavor and seemed too impossible for me.

But asking for help, all of a sudden, it was like this light bulb moment that I had where I was like, You know what, I can get some help. And I bet I can do this if I get some help. So asking for help, for help seemed for the first time doable like quitting drinking seemed doable. And of course, I was ready to change at that moment. And I was finally willing to do something about it, I was willing to ask for help.

And what that looked like was, you know, I went to therapy, I did some 12 step work, I had several mentors along the way to becoming a sober person. But getting help was really the number one key ingredient in the recipe that was my getting sober my sobriety.

And it was the same when I gave up eating junk food, you know, I got someone to help me through that. And it was the first time I ever invested in myself in this way. It was also by far the best thing I’ve ever done for myself, not just because it helped me to become the healthy, happy fit person I am today.

Because it also led me down this path of helping other runners like you to quit eating garbage and just start becoming the best version of yourself. So if you’re ready to change if you’re ready to maybe quit drinking or quit eating junk food, too.

If you’re also willing to change and willing to ask for help willing to accept help, then you should really consider coaching. And coaching with me looks a little bit different than the way other people do this. There’s several different components to how I do my coaching program. So there’s one on one coaching with me, where you get to work with me personally to help you figure out a plan for you help you to stay on track.

On that plan, we keep course correcting as needed. We do group coaching, this is a very powerful component of the coaching project, where you get the support of other people that are going through the same thing you’re going through, we share wins, we celebrate progress, we support each other, we encourage and inspire one another.

I have a huge library of training materials you’ll have access to that you can kind of go through at your own pace. And then in between group coaching calls, and one on one coaching calls, you have access to me via messaging so that, you know you have this 24/7 lifeline to me, basically.

So I’m with you all the time. You can reach out, you can ask questions, you can get help, you can get support, you can get some accountability at any time. I also have a private podcast channel that is different from the podcast channel you’re listening to right now. And this is where I record all my group coaching calls.

So there’s a backlog of a year and a half of trainings and things like that, that you have access to that you can listen to while you’re out running. So there’s all these different components of my coaching program. And I call this an immersive coaching program because you’re immersed in this world of people and information and knowledge and support and encouragement and motivation and inspiration and accountability to help you stay on track to help you achieve your goals to help you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself.

So if this is something that interests you, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. You have to apply for coaching. We’ll have a short conversation, and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool, I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. And I’ll see you soon.

Okay, so let’s talk about whether or not alcohol is really working for you. The first thing I want to kind of go over is like what is alcohol actually? You know, we think of alcohol as just being like cool craft IPAs and rose and you know, white claw and all these things. But what is alcohol? What is the active ingredient in alcohol?

So, alcohol, the active ingredient is ethanol. It’s also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol drinking alcohol. And it’s an organic chemical compound. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a wine-like odor and a pungent taste. It is a psychoactive drug. It’s a recreational drug, and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.

I want to make this very, very clear that this is a psychoactive recreational drug that we are talking about here. Okay. Ethanol is naturally produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeast or via petrochemical processes such as ethylene hydration. I don’t even know what that means.

It has medical applications as an antiseptic, and a disinfectant, because it kills organisms by denaturing their proteins. It’s used as a chemical solvent. It’s used as a fuel source. It is a central nervous system depressant. And ethanol is one of the most commonly consumed psychoactive drugs.

Now, doesn’t that sound amazing? Doesn’t that one want to make you go out and have a few cocktails with friends? Ethanol is poisonous and toxic. It’s used as a fuel. They literally use it in cars as fuel.

And they use it to kill organisms. So anything that comes in contact with it really kills and is poisonous. So just know that what we’re talking about here is a pretty serious poison. All right. Now, of course the dosage does matter.

But I want you to consider something I want you to consider whether or not you would drink a little bit of rat poison. Now, what if rat poison had become, you know, socially acceptable, or something like heroin? You know, what about just using a little bit of heroin?

You know, of course the dosage matters, but what if you just did a little bit? You know, so it sounds crazy that I would make that comparison. But isn’t that crazy? I don’t think so. Here’s the thing, when you drink alcohol, it affects you negatively. And I’m going to go through some of the reasons why you may want to abstain from drinking alcohol, because there’s a lot of negative effects of drinking alcohol, okay?

Just so you know, though, that when you drink, even one to two drinks a week, it takes three to four days to fully remove that alcohol from your system. So if you’re drinking just once or twice a week, you’re never fully removing alcohol from your body, that alcohol is always in your system. And it’s going to affect you negatively, daily. All right.

So even drinking once or twice a week, if you think oh, you know, it’s fine. But you’re actually just never going to fully metabolize and process and remove that alcohol from your system. Okay. So, here are some things to consider, some negative effects of drinking alcohol that you may want to consider.

So the first one is that it disrupts sleep patterns and disrupts your sleep, it actually increases stress, anxiety, and increases memory loss. And also you’re going to have this lack of recovery from workouts, because you’re not getting enough sleep. Sleep is so important for your overall health.

And if you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight, and, you know, train for a marathon or something like that, and you’re constantly not getting a good night’s sleep, you may want to consider removing alcohol, because you’re going to sleep much better, okay?

Alcohol also fuels anxiety. So there’s something called AB response when you consume a drug. So any drug whatsoever will produce two responses in the body and a response and a B response. So the effect of the drug produces an A response, right, there’s this a process that happens when you drink alcohol. And that could be like, oh, you feel more relaxed, okay.

So it does produce an effect, right, it may take the edge off a little bit, you may be a little bit distressed, you may reduce anxiety a little bit, okay. So that’s the A response. But then it triggers a B response, which tends to last much longer than the a process. So that B process is the exact opposite of a process.

And again, this is the same for any drug. So if the drug makes you feel relaxed, that’s the A process then the process will make you feel more anxious, more tense, more stressed out more anxiety. You’re going to experience actually, more anxiety, the more you go for the drink. And the more you drink, the more tense and anxious you’re actually going to be most of the time, the effect you’re looking for that a response is very short lived, it’s very fleeting.

The counteractive effect, that B response, is more persistent and long lasting. So in essence, alcohol fuels anxiety, it causes anxiety, it doesn’t manage anxiety, if you think you’re using alcohol to de stress, think again, you’re actually going to become more stressed out just because of the use of the drug. Okay.

Another negative effect of using alcohol is that it impedes detoxification. So your liver is responsible for detoxifying your body of harmful compounds that you eat, drink, rub on your skin breeze, whatever your liver cannot function, you know, cannot do other things while it’s processing.

The alcohol takes precedence over everything else. Detoxification is put on hold. Whenever alcohol is present, that means all these toxins that your liver should be removing from your system are being stored in your body and they get stored in your own adipose tissue, your own body fat, okay?

Drinking alcohol also causes weight gain. You know, alcohol is high in sugar, it’s high in calories. It’s has zero nutritional value. It’s not a food substance. You don’t need to drink alcohol. It’s not an essential nutrient that we have to have. It’s a poison, okay? It’s also a natural appetite stimulant. It numbs the body’s natural fullness sensors, so you don’t feel like you ever get full, so you end up eating more, and you don’t feel you don’t get that sense of fullness when you eat.

And so you typically eat more than you would normally eat. So you’re over eating, it increases sugar cravings, it increases carbohydrate cravings. And if you don’t believe me, have you ever been in line at a White Castle, two or three o’clock in the morning after drinking? Yeah, because all you want is french fries, and sliders, and apparently diarrhea.

But anyway, it’s also the only beverage without a nutritional label or an ingredient list. Like you don’t have to, they don’t have to put those things on there. All right. Another thing about drinking is that you tend to make poor choices when you’re drinking.

So you tend to, your inhibition, sort of like just goes out the window, and you’re just like, whatever, let’s just eat junk food, you know, whatever. So if you’re like, more likely, if you’re trying to stay on an eating plan, and you’re trying to eat healthy food, you’re much more likely to eat junk food, when you’re drinking, right, it messes up your cognitive thinking you’re just start making bad choices, you know, it also, when you’re drinking alcohol, it shuts down fat burning.

So your body is trying to metabolize the alcohol. And again, like the liver, it’s going to prioritize metabolizing or using alcohol as a fuel source before anything else. So if you’re trying to be a fat adapted athlete, and you’re trying to do all these great things for yourself, and you’re trying to, you know, become a more efficient fat burner, and you’re, you know, you’re attempting to use, you know, become a fat adapted runner, and, and then you’re drinking on a regular basis, you’re just kind of shutting all that down, you’re shutting off that whole process, right.

And, again, three or four days just from having one drink, and it could take three to four days for that to leave your body. So if you’re drinking once or twice a week, just know that you are completely shutting down your fat burning process, okay?

Alcohol also messes up your brain, it really does. They’ve shown that alcohol actually affects every region of the brain. So they call it the neurological sledgehammer. It affects memory, motor function, personality, inhibition, emotional volatility, every area of your brain gets affected negatively from alcohol.

And then a few things that are specific for running you know, alcohol will reduce your athletic performance studies have shown that your aerobic performance is going to be diminished. The day after consuming alcohol like that run, you may go out Friday night and have a bunch of beers and then Saturday morning you get up to run, that run is not going to be at your best, you’re going to be your performance will be diminished for sure.

A study in the journal nutrients also showed that drinking alcohol reduces muscle strength. Well, that’s not good. We don’t want to reduce muscle strength, we want our muscles to be strong and want them to do what they’re supposed to do.

And another study actually showed that alcohol will negatively impact protein synthesis. Protein synthesis is the ability of your body to turn protein into muscle. So if you’re trying to build muscle, if you’re doing some strength training to try to build muscle, then drinking alcohol will completely shut that process down. And it will negatively impact your ability to turn protein into muscle. Okay.

Alcohol is also an anti nutrient. Alcohol is void of nutrients, it does not have vitamins or minerals. So alcohol ends up robbing your body of the micronutrients that it needs just so the body can assimilate the alcohol and metabolize the alcohol it depletes your body of essential nutrients needed to maintain good health. Alcohol diminishes your body’s ability to absorb other nutrients as well.

And this is not good because if again, if you’re trying to eat healthy, but you’re drinking, your body’s not going to be able to absorb the good food that you’re eating, you’re not going to be able to absorb the nutrients that your body actually needs. Okay? Why spend all this time eating healthy and then drinking alcohol to just leech all that out of you? It doesn’t make any sense at all, okay.

And drinking alcohol also makes you more prone to premature fatigue during your next exercise session. So you know, not only is your aerobic performance diminished, but you will crash and burn faster. You won’t be able to run as long because of the alcohol Okay? Alcohol also impedes recovery especially if you drink you know soon after a workout.

And I can’t tell you how many runners I see, finish a run and then crack open some beers like to celebrate that run. Drinking alcohol increases dehydration, it interferes with glycogen replenishing. It inhibits repair of muscle tissue. It suppresses your production of testosterone and human growth hormone.

All of these things are going to really, you know, harm your recovery process. The toxic impact of just one drink will depress the endocrine system dramatically. So recovery from intense training is basically canceled until your body metabolizes all the alcohol. Again, we’re talking about three or four days, your body is always trying to get to homeostasis, wants to get to normal, it wants everything to be balanced and good.

And it cannot get there until the alcohol is gone from your system. Alcohol is also linked to seven different types of cancer. Alcohol is a carcinogen. It’s carcinogenic, it causes cancer and over 100 studies confirm the link between drinking and cancer, especially breast cancer.

Women who drink just three alcoholic beverages a week have a 15% higher risk of breast cancer. And that risk has increased by 10%. For each additional drink you have daily. It’s also responsible or linked to at least other cancers like mouth and throat, esophagus, voicebox, liver, colon rectum, basically, anywhere in the digestive system that alcohol comes into contact with is at risk for cancer.

Again, remember we talked about it being a poison, a toxin, it kills microorganisms, it denatures proteins. So drinking this stuff, putting it into your body is going to really negatively affect you in so many different ways. Now, you might be thinking, I’m just being overly dramatic or overly negative about alcohol. But I’m really not. These are just facts, you get to decide what you want to do.

If you want to continue using the drug, use the drug, I don’t care. But if you find that you want to stop, or maybe you can’t stop, even though you want to just know that I can help with that. Okay, you can reach out to me, we can talk about what that might look like for you.

I’ve been living alcohol free for over 15 years. And I never thought I could be a non drinker. I never thought I could get through a weekend or a holiday or a birthday or a Wednesday. without drinking. I never thought I could do it. But my life is so much richer now. So much fuller, so much more meaningful. I feel so much better about myself.

I have connections with other human beings, real connections with other human beings now, I don’t have to go dive into a bottle to escape my problems or my fears, my anxieties are up, I still have anxiety I do. I just don’t use alcohol anymore. I’ve come up with other coping mechanisms, other emotional management tools. You don’t have to use alcohol to get through life.

If you think you have to use it, if you think that’s the only choice for you. I’m telling you it’s not. And if somebody like me, can quit after drinking for 25 years. You can too. Because alcohol is addictive. And they’ve done some studies where they’ve shown that alcohol is just as addictive as drugs like cocaine.

Now, people might say well, oh gosh, Patrick, you can’t make that comparison. Cocaine is way more dangerous. And it’s way more addictive. No, it is not. It’s exactly as addictive as alcohol, alcohol and cocaine are just as addictive. The biggest difference is that cocaine is highly regulated. And it’s illegal. And it doesn’t kill as many people, it doesn’t cause as many problems.

Oh, that was the only difference is really alcohol causes more deaths per year, than cocaine, for sure. You know, and the problems related to alcohol are tenfold compared to cocaine. And if you’re, you know, if you want to know a little bit about what the cycle of addiction looks like it kind of looks like this.

And this is the same cycle for all addictions, whether it’s cocaine, or cigarettes, or pornography, or shopping, or sex, or sugar, or alcohol, they all work the same. Okay? So you, you take your drug, like drinking alcohol, and you get this release of dopamine and dopamine gets released in unnaturally high amounts because the drug produces an unnatural high for you.

And that high is because a lot of it is because of the dopamine that your brain emits right in these unnaturally high amounts. And then glutamate gets released. Now, glutamate will respond to it’s kind of like a memory locking tool, if you want to put it that way.

Okay, it’s another neurotransmitter, but glutamate will get released. Also in unnaturally high amounts to help you kind of remember the effect to lock it into your memory banks. If you think about this, back in the caveman days, you know, we would find some honey, and we would eat the honey. And we would get that dopamine hit and we go like, ooh, that’s really good. But then we get this glutamate response to this says, we gotta remember this, this is really good.

This is a good source of calories. And this is something that we should come back to. So we got to remember, like where we are, where do we find this? How did this make us feel? All that stuff, right? So that’s what glutamate does. So you drink alcohol, you get the dopamine hit, you get the glutamate response, which locks it into your memory. And then that memory is what you recall, when we talk about, there’s this idea called euphoric recall, where you start to recall the feeling that you get from drinking alcohol, or doing whatever your drug of choice is.

And it produces this like euphoric feeling. And like, you just want that euphoric feeling again, you know, it makes you remember that euphoric feeling. All drugs produce this effect, okay. And then you go back to that drug, and that’s the cycle, right? You drink it, you drink alcohol, dopamine gets released, glutamate gets released, then you have that euphoric recall, you want it again, you know, you need the alcohol again, to give you that response again.

And then the cycle just continues. You’ve got to get out of the cycle. It’s a cycle that you can get out of, you can, you’re not hopeless, whether it’s sugar, or alcohol, or cigarettes, or whatever, you can jump off that cycle at any time. Is it easy? No, it’s hard. It’s hard to do.

One of the things that makes it hard is that we are being sold a bill of goods about alcohol, we’re being marketed to. Alcohol is not required to relax. Alcohol is not required to enjoy life, you don’t need alcohol to unwind. You don’t need alcohol to de-stress. You don’t need a drink to have a good time with your friends. I do all these things without alcohol, just fine. And I have for the last 15 years.

I relax, just fine, I do stress, I have a good time with friends. I enjoy parties and holidays, and birthdays now without alcohol, and it’s all good. But the big alcohol companies, they’re marketing an idea to you that in order to have a happy, fun life, alcohol is a requirement. But it’s not it’s not a requirement. Drinking alcohol has almost zero positive benefits, you know, maybe feels good for a minute, but it has this huge list of negative consequences. How is this possibly the key to a healthy, happy life? Why do we think this is the answer? It’s not.

And you might think that you’re deciding for yourself that you want to drink this craft IPA because it makes you feel cool, and hip and sophisticated. And this is what people do. This is you know, and this is what I’m choosing for myself, but it’s really not your decision at all. This is actually part of a marketing tactic and it’s called engineered consent.

And this idea of engineered consent was first introduced by a guy named Edward Bernays. He was a public relations guru back in 1929. And he was working for the big tobacco companies, American Tobacco companies specifically, and they wanted to tap into a new market.

They wanted to get more women to smoke. Like women were smoking at the time, but they were doing it very covertly. They’re doing it behind closed doors, not in public. So they wanted to get more women to smoke in public, because it was kind of taboo at the time. So Bernays hired a bunch of women to smoke in the Easter Parade, 1929 Easter Parade, walking down Fifth Avenue, in New York City, during the Easter Parade, all these women smoking, openly smoking cigarettes, and it was like, it was really unheard of at the time, right.

And it drew a lot of attention. And it drew a lot of publicity, and it drew a lot of, you know, newspapers and the media really picked up on this. And the term they use to, to describe what was going on the women said, we are lighting up our torches of freedom, torches of freedom, because they were trying to exploit women’s aspirations.

During this, it was like the first wave of feminism, right, we can do what we want, we can smoke in public, light up your torches of freedom, ladies. And it became a catchphrase, and it spread like wildfire. So women thought they were being bold and brave and sticking it to the man, I’m gonna light up my torch of freedom, I can smoke whenever and wherever I want to.

But in reality, the man engineered the whole thing. It was all engineered consent. So let’s go back to that craft IPA. You think you’re drinking of your own freewill? You think you’re consenting? You think this is your idea, but it’s really not that consent has been fabricated. It’s been engineered by the alcohol companies, by social media influencers, by billboards, by TV commercials to make you think that you’re making a good decision for yourself. That’s what they want you to think. It’s a big marketing ploy. Okay.

And you may or may not believe me here, you may be thinking I’ve kind of lost it. You may be in denial, maybe a little bit of both. Here’s a quote from Mark Twain that I love. He said, “It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they’ve been fooled.” So is alcohol the new cigarettes? So imagine, right now, if I was talking about cigarettes, would you be fighting me about this at all? Would you be in your head, you know, denying that this is the thing would you be, you know, thinking like Patrick, you’re crazy. Cigarettes are fine, you know?

Would you be like, you know, really stating your case why everybody should smoke and, you know, just smoke in moderation. Of course, would you try to convince me that, that, you know, other people might have a problem with smoking, but you’re fine. Like you can stop whenever you want to? Doesn’t that sound stupid, the way I’m saying this isn’t the sound kind of crazy. I think it’s crazy. That is like right now, I think it’s crazy to think that smoking cigarettes in any amount is okay. Right? Wouldn’t you agree with me on that? Like we should, nobody should smoke, right? It’s so they’ve proven it is so bad for you, right?

But here’s the thing, I think alcohol is just the new cigarettes. And I think we’re all gonna wake up one day and say, Oh, my God, I can’t believe we used to think drinking poison was fun. And that there were these places called bars, where they actually just served alcohol to people and they would drink it. And moms would actually drink alcohol in front of their kids.

And they would even dress their babies in onesies that said, My mommy drinks because I cry and everyone would laugh because they thought it was funny. And we would say to ourselves man weren’t times messed up back then. Wasn’t that crazy? Here’s the thing, social norms. They’re always changing. Smoking cigarettes is no longer widely accepted as being safe. It’s not cool anymore.

You can’t smoke indoors and most places you can’t smoke on airplanes. The first time I got into an airplane, the first airplane ride I ever took. I sat in the back, I sat in the smoking section. I smoked a cigarette on a plane. I cannot imagine doing that today. It’s so crazy, right? Coca Cola is no longer made with cocaine. You know they took that ingredient out. They’re like we probably shouldn’t put this in this drink okay, we’ll just put way more sugar in there and hopefully get people addicted that way. So good. Mission accomplished. Coca Cola. Good job there.

There’s no more opium dens where you can go and like smoke opium and hang out. I don’t know, I don’t think there are, maybe there are somewhere but I have a feeling this is not a normal thing anymore. You know, we don’t do frontal lobotomies on people like ice pick through the head kind of a thing. You know, this is crazy, right?

But people used to do that. And they thought it was like pretty normal. So social norms are changing. We changed, you know, our concepts of what’s acceptable, what’s normal, what’s healthy, what’s good for us over time. And I think alcohol is time is coming. There’s so many people that are like, do like, drinking alcohol is not okay. In any amount. It’s really bad, very, and has a lot of negative consequences.

There’s very few up ticks to drinking, there’s very few positives that you get out of drinking, you get a fleeting sense of relaxation, but then all those other things that I talked about, right. And one excuse I hear from people a lot is that they feel pressured from friends, or family members, but a lot of times it’s friends push you to drink, or judge you if you don’t drink.

Here’s the thing if your friends are pushing alcohol on you, or if they’re pressuring you to drink or judging you, because you drink or don’t drink, it’s time to get new friends, up level your friends. It’s plain and simple. If you’re, if your friends don’t respect your decision to not drink, these are not your friends. These are not people that have your best interest in mind.

And there’s a lot of blaming and shaming that goes on in this world of addiction around sugar addiction around alcohol and drug addiction. And it goes something like this, like alcohol is fine. That’s not the problem. You’re the problem. The problem is you, not that drug, not the poison over there. You’re the problem. So would you argue that it’s the person? That’s the problem, not the heroin, or the crystal meth or the cigarettes?

I think we’re all pretty clear that if those things are really terrible, you know, oh, no, those things are fine. You just have to moderate. If you can’t moderate then you’re broken. There’s something wrong with you. And this is the same BS that a lot of doctors and dieticians spew about sugar consumption. They’re like sugar is not addictive. It’s not the sugar. There’s nothing wrong with sugar, you just have no willpower. You have to just use it in moderation.

And this is the same message that the sugar industry pushes on us the Coca Cola move more campaign, blaming us and shaming us into thinking we’re the problem. Not the drug that they’re pushing on us to sugar isn’t the problem. You’re just not exercising enough. Stop being lazy. Get
off your ass and exercise more. Drink plenty of Coca Cola, that’s fine. That’s not the problem. You just got to exercise more.

Alcohol has the same kind of thing. They call it the drink responsibly campaign. This is the slogan of the alcohol industry: drink responsibly. So they’re kind of shaming you and blaming you if you overdo it. If you can’t handle your liquor, or if you die of alcohol poisoning. It’s not the alcohol that poisoned you. It was just you, you just overdid it. It’s the equivalent saying like just shoot heroin responsibly, snort responsibly.

You’re the problem, not our drug. Our drug is fine. There’s plenty people that drink responsibly. If you can’t, that’s your fault. You’re probably an alcoholic, you’re not normal. There’s something wrong with you. So let me finish up with this. I just want to say this, I cannot in good conscience tell you that drinking alcohol, any amount of alcohol is okay. I can’t. It’s like the equivalent of telling you that smoking cigarettes is okay. Or that occasionally snorting cocaine or shooting heroin every now and then is fine or that smoking some crystal meth is cool. It’s all good.

I can’t do that. I can’t in good conscience tell you that alcohol is okay. You know, just don’t overdo it as long as you can do it in moderation, don’t smoke, snort or shoot up, you know, irresponsibly. If you want to lose weight, if you want improve your health, if you want improve your writing, if you want to get stronger, if you want to feel amazing, if you want to sleep amazing. If you want to recover properly, if you want to lead an overall healthier life, free of stress and anxiety, free of most cancers: stop ingesting the poison.

If you think I’m being a big buzzkill here, I’ll own that. I will be the buzzkill here, okay, my job is to teach you what you need to know so that you can become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And drinking alcohol undermines all of that as the opposite of that. My mission is to lead by example. And I’m doing that my mission is to lead by example.

And I want to inspire you to do the same. And I feel that my message here today is absolutely in alignment with my mission and my values. I work with countless runners who love to drink, and they can’t possibly imagine life without alcohol. And I challenge them, I say, hey, let’s take a break from drinking for like 30 days and see how you feel. And they freak out a little bit at first, because they just cannot imagine not drinking, but then they do it.

And they’re amazed to how much better they feel. And they start to lose weight, and running gets easier. And then they say, Patrick, I don’t even miss it. I don’t miss alcohol at all. So I feel good about my message here today. I feel good about the work I’m doing. And I hold firm in my beliefs about alcohol. And living an alcohol free life will always be the better way to live for me, for you, for all of us. And if you want help quitting, I’m here for you. Always, always here for you. I love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

137. The Most Common Weight Loss Mistakes Runners Make

By

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 →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 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.

119. Why Willpower Doesn’t Work

By

One of the biggest misconceptions about losing weight is that requires a ton of willpower. If you have enough willpower you’re good to go, but if you don’t - you’ll probably just fail. This …

Continue Reading about 119. Why Willpower Doesn’t Work →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 119, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, why willpower doesn’t work. So one of the biggest misconceptions about losing weight is that it requires you to have a ton of willpower.

Like if you have enough willpower, you’re good to go. But if you don’t, you’re just going to fail. And this couldn’t be further from the truth. Listen, willpower helps, but it will only get you so far. There are other forces at work that have to be addressed if you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m gonna explain why willpower doesn’t work and what you should be focusing on instead. And listen, if you’re the kind of person who wants a little help with all this with losing weight, with being able to keep it off, you know, maybe you do really well when you have some guidance and support, I want you to know that I’ve just opened up my brand new immersive coaching program called the Running Lean Coaching Project.

This program combines the best elements of group coaching and also includes personal one-on-one coaching with me to help you get the knowledge, the guidance, the encouragement, the accountability that you need to hit your weight loss goals and your running goals.

And our whole focus for the month of April is going to be on building healthy habits that stick. There’s an art and a science to habit change. And all month long, we’re going to be doing live trainings, q&a sessions, workshops and coaching to learn how to ditch the old habits, those old habits that aren’t serving you and replace them with healthy new habits that will actually get you to your weight loss goals.

I hope you’ll join us you can learn more and sign up now at runningleanpodcast.com/join, I would love to have you in the Running Lean Coaching Project where the project is you!

All right, this topic has been one that I’ve been thinking about for a while now, why willpower doesn’t work. And one of my clients actually asked me this question about the difference between willpower and mindset. And it really got me thinking about what I wanted to talk about today and how I wanted to frame this conversation.

So willpower is one of these things that is kind of misunderstood, I think. And willpower is actually defined as control exerted, to do something or restrain impulses. So willpower is actually your ability to control yourself and control the decisions you make in certain circumstances. The thing with willpower, though, it often reflects an internal conflict.

And willpower typically feels like there’s some sort of struggle, you know, just look at the definition: control exerted. So you have to exert some sort of effort and restrain impulses, like it doesn’t feel like there’s like this conflict and struggle going on when you think about willpower. So, here’s an example of what this might look like. So let’s say you’re trying to stick to your food plan, maybe you’d cut out eating sugar, because you know, it’s bad, sugar bad.

So you’re like, okay, I’m not eating sugar right now. And you’re going along fine. And everything’s good. And then you decide on a Sunday afternoon, you’re like, I’m gonna make some chocolate chip cookies with the kids, this will be fine. I haven’t been eating this stuff. It’ll be a fine morning for cookies, I’m just gonna help the kids make these cookies, though. They can eat them or whatever.

So you start making the cookies and everything’s going along beautifully, until you start cooking those cookies. And you can start to smell them. You know, you know where I’m going with this, right? Like the whole house is filled with that smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Hello. And then they come out of the oven and they’re all gooey and melty.

And this is where you have to have willpower, right? And you feel yourself struggling to not eat the cookies and then you’ve got this internal conflict going on. Because what you want right now in that moment, did you want to scarf down like six to eight of those amazing, gooey, gooey, warm chocolate chip cookies, right? So that’s what you want right now.

That’s what’s like driving your attention. That’s what all your attention is focused on, your energy is focused on, you want these cookies right now. But long term, what you want for yourself is to be, you know, to be the kind of person who’s no longer driven by this obsession with sugar, right?

Someone who has developed a better relationship with sugar delivers a different relationship with food. And you know that eating these cookies right now, will absolutely set you back. Right? It’s not in alignment with who you want to be. But there’s a struggle right? There, you’re fighting against this urge to not eat the cookies.

And that urge is so strong. And you’re just like, you know, white knuckling is like the willpower. That’s our definition and sort of the way we think about willpower, right? You’re just fighting this urge not to eat the cookies, right? So that struggle, that’s what willpower feels like, it’s a battle.

You’re battling against the cookies, like you against the cookies, who’s gonna win? Sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s the cookies, right? So let’s say you’re in the same situation, but you’ve had a bad day, maybe you know, stress it, you’ve been stressed at work, or the kids have been driving you crazy, or you haven’t been sleeping well. Maybe you’re overtraining, you’re rundown and you’re tired, you’re already like drained of energy, then what?

Well, in that situation, your willpower is going to be greatly diminished, greatly diminished. And your ability to muster up the willpower to not eat the cookies in that moment is just not going to be there. And the cookies will win. I’m going to tell you right now, the cookies win, but when have you ever been there before? I’ve been there before I know exactly what this feels like. And this is not an uncommon situation.

I hear this all the time from people, they really struggle in these situations. And they think that they just don’t have the willpower to stick with it. But here’s the thing, most people are relying on willpower alone, because that’s all they know. Right?

When you even think about changing your diet, and like losing weight, just thinking about that is going to cause a little bit of an internal struggle with you, right, because what you’ve tried in the past maybe hasn’t worked. Or you’re thinking about the discomfort that’s going to be involved with changing your diet and not eating the cookies every time you make them.

And you have this preconceived notion about willpower, which is like, either you have it or you don’t. And you probably believe that your willpower, the willpower that you’re able to muster up isn’t going to be enough to get you through the tough spots, because maybe you’ve tried it in the past and it hasn’t worked.

So this is the way most people see willpower. They see it as an exertion of energy. And as a form of struggle, it’s a struggle, it’s a battle to stick with your diet. And this image comes to mind if somebody just like white knuckling it and like sweating, the sweat’s like dripping off their forehead, they’re frantically trying to keep themselves from eating the chocolate chip cookies.

And they keep looking at the cookies. And then there’s this internal dialogue going on. Right? This is the image that comes to my mind anyway. But this exertion of energy, it implies that what you’re doing is a struggle. And it’s hard. It’s hard work. It’s a battle. And there’s this internal conflict that you’re experiencing, right.

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be a struggle, it can actually feel pretty much effortless, to change your diet and to not have that urge to eat the cookies. And that’s the freedom that comes from doing the inner work of actually changing your mindset and changing your habits. When you change your habits and you change your mindset, now even the cookies become easy and effortless.

There’s no longer a struggle. When you’ve created a new mindset and developed new, healthier habits, these internal conflicts that you used to have they’re just a thing of the past. There’s no more struggling, no more white knuckling it, no more sweating over the plate of cookies. Sticking to your plan becomes easy and effortless.

I know what you’re thinking you’re like, Patrick, this seems crazy. I don’t see how I could possibly do this. Because it’s so hard for me right now where I am. And I get that I really do. And I want to share a story with you about my experience with needing something more than willpower.

So About 15 years ago, actually, on April 9, 15 years ago, so April 9, 2007, was the day that I decided I was no longer going to drink alcohol. So this is actually just a few days from now. And this episode should come out on the eighth. So it’ll be the day after this episode comes out will be me celebrating my 15th anniversary of sobriety.

And I decided to quit drinking, because at the time, my drinking had become unmanageable. And I felt very out of control. And I was using alcohol as a coping mechanism. For decades, really, I was using alcohol to dull difficult emotions. You know, I had all these feelings, and I couldn’t deal with them. And as long as I was drinking, I really didn’t have to deal with the failure.

And that way I didn’t have to feel anything really, I was just numbing out to whatever it was that was going on with me. And to the outside world. I seemed like I was doing okay, I had a job, you know, married, kids, house, dog all these things, right. But on the inside, I was miserable. I was drinking to excess every day, I felt physically sick, pretty much all the time. My marriage was falling apart. In fact, my wife left me because of my drinking.

I was a hot mess. I had two little kids at the time. And I decided one day I woke up one day, it was a Monday morning, it was the day after Easter 2007 April 9th, I woke up, I was feeling sick again. And I decided at that moment that I never wanted to feel that way. Again, I made a decision at that moment that I never wanted to drink again.

Now, of course, I’ve made this pledge to myself a million times before. But this time, it was different. Because I had this thought as I was laying in bed, feeling miserable, wondering if I was gonna be able to go to work or not. And I had this thought at that moment, that for the first time in my life, I was going to ask for help, that I couldn’t do this alone.

But I could do it if I had some help. And I didn’t know what that was gonna look like. But I knew that I was going to find somebody to help me, so I ended up getting some counseling and things like that. And it worked out pretty well in the end. But there were so many times where I had tried to quit before and I couldn’t do it.

And so, after making that decision, I started doing the work of developing a new mindset, this is where I kind of first learned of this concept of like, really, you know, you need a new mind, you know, when it comes to making big changes like this and the same, this exact same principles apply.

When you want to lose weight, when you want to stop eating sugar, when you want to, you know, start feeling better, and start getting healthier, these are big changes. And these things can be very challenging to do on your own especially. But they’re very challenging to do if you’re just going to rely on willpower alone, to get you through all the tough stuff.

And I’m going to tell you right now, if I was to rely on willpower alone, to keep me from drinking these last 15 years, I would not have been able to do it. I’m going to tell you right now, because there were many times over the last 15 years, where I did not have willpower. There were experiences that happened with me in my life where, you know, for example, I lost both my parents, you know, about two years apart early on in my sobriety. And that was very, very challenging for me and my family.

Because my parents were fairly young, you know, in their 70s. I ended up getting married in sobriety and then 10 years later getting divorced from that person. And these were all very challenging times to get through. I like quit jobs, I started new jobs, I changed careers, I did all kinds of things. And I’m going to tell you right now, that if I was relying on willpower to get me through all this stuff, if I was relying on willpower to keep me from taking a drink, it would never have been enough.

I wouldn’t be where I am today. I had to develop a whole new mind. I had to become the kind of person who no longer drinks alcohol. I had to become the kind of person who no longer used alcohol as a way of solving my problems as a way of numbing out, right, I had to start to experience life on life’s terms.

So I decided alcohol was no longer going to be a solution for me, and I had to figure something else out. And what I had to figure out was adopting a new mindset, a mindset of someone who no longer used something external, to feel better on the inside.

Same exact thing when it comes to food. If you’re relying on willpower to get you through, to help you to lose the weight, and get you through all the tough stuff, I’m going to tell you right now, it’s not going to be enough, you’re gonna get stressed out, you’re gonna have a hard day, you’re gonna fail, you’re not going to get enough sleep, you’re going to be, you know, fatigued, mentally, emotionally, physically.

And in those instances, if you’re relying on willpower, I’m going to tell you right now, it’s just not going to work. You have to develop a new mind. Gotta change your mindset. I wouldn’t be sober today, if I was relying on willpower to keep me sober. In order to make these big, profound changes in your life, like changing your diet, losing weight, no longer eating junk food, or training for a marathon, these things require more than willpower, they require a shift in your mindset.

Willpower comes and goes. It’s like an emotion, think about willpower, like an emotion that you have sometimes, right? Like, sometimes you have it, and sometimes you don’t, it’s very strong when it’s present. But when it’s gone, it’s like it’s gone. Right? Think about emotion, maybe you’ve recently had anger, frustration, stress, even a positive emotion, like motivation.

All of these emotional states come and go. They’re not constant. Sometimes they’re around for a while, but they’re always in motion. They’re like, they wax and wane, right. And that’s what happens with our emotions, which is good, we want to, we don’t want to be feeling the same emotion all the time. This is a good thing, right?

Because it means you’re not going to feel sad forever, you’re not going to feel lonely or stressed out forever. It also means that the positive emotions come and go too, and we just have to accept that as part of the deal here, right. So, for example, if you’re relying on the feeling of motivation to always be there, it’s not going to always be there. It comes and goes, you have to create your own motivation. If you want to, you know, go and do something, if you’re not feeling motivated to run, I’m gonna tell you right now, you need to create that motivation, it’s not going to just be bestowed upon you, in some magical way.

I talked about this in great length, in an episode called the secret sauce of self motivation, it’s episode number 62. Definitely check it out. Because it really talks about how to get yourself motivated and get out the door and things like that. But willpower is like an emotion and the way that it comes and goes. So it’s not something you can rely on to be there all the time.

You can’t rely on willpower alone to be there, to get you through the tough stuff to keep you from eating those chocolate chip cookies, or whatever. Whatever your chocolate chip cookies are. Mindset, on the other hand, when you change your mind, this is something that is much deeper, it’s stronger, it’s much more powerful and much more consistent.

Think about your mindset as like a standard that you set for yourself. Right? If you have a standard, like for me, I have a standard. It’s like I don’t drink alcohol. That’s a standard that I set for myself 15 years ago, and I never fall below that standard. So for me, not drinking alcohol is easy and effortless. It does not require any willpower at all.

Today, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I have no desire to drink alcohol, even when it’s like in my face. I can sit at a bar. And I do this sometimes, you know, I go to bars and I’ll eat dinner sitting at the bar talking to the bartender or people around me and things like that. And there’ll be alcohol all over the place.

I don’t even want it. That’s freedom right there. That is like True, true freedom. This can be the same with your relationship with sugar two. So if your standard is I don’t eat sugar, then, you know, eating those chocolate chip cookies I talked about earlier. That’s not going to be thing you have to worry about. Because that’s not who you are. You just don’t do that.

I haven’t had sugar in like two years. None. And that’s a lie. I had sugar about 18 months ago. On my birthday, I had some dessert. But I’ve had one, you know, serving whatever of sugar in last two years, which is why I put it that way. But not eating sugar is just something that I don’t do. It’s just not.

It’s a standard that I have set for myself, I don’t eat sugar. And so it’s easy. It’s effortless. I have this new mindset. And your mindset is based on on a lot. I mean, it’s a big topic, right? It’s based on your beliefs, your values, it’s based on the standards that you set for yourself.

Your mindset is your thoughts, your feelings, all these things, but your mindset beats willpower every single time. Your mindset is what’s driving your behavior. Your mindset is what’s actually creating, you know, whether or not you have this willpower.

Because willpower, think of it like an emotion, okay. So, you have to understand that you, you create your mindset, this is something that, you know, may may be something that you’ve had for a long time, but it’s something you’ve created, you’ve create your own mindset, and you can change it. It’s not set in stone.

Think about this, think about something you do easily and effortlessly right now. like brushing your teeth before going to bed. I’m hoping you do this regularly. Okay, if you don’t, get on that. Okay, so brushing your teeth before you go to bed, right? My guess is that this is like something that you do is so automatic, it doesn’t take willpower to do it, right.

It’s just something you do, you don’t have to be like, okay, I really, really got to brush my teeth here, right? It’s just part of your daily routine. It’s what you do, it’s who you are, you would never think of going to bed, I hope without brushing your teeth.

But it wasn’t always like this for you. Like when you were a kid, brushing your teeth was a struggle, try getting your kids to brush your teeth today, like before going to bed, it’s a struggle, it’s a battle, right? They don’t know what’s good for them, you’re telling them it’s good for them, but they just don’t want to do it.

There’s no internal motivation, they haven’t developed the mindset yet. They haven’t developed the mindset of somebody who just brushes their teeth every night before they go to bed. They will eventually, right, but it takes a while. Just like us, it’s the same way with when we’re trying to change our diet or stick to our workout schedule or stick to our food plan.

Think of yourself as that little kid who doesn’t want to brush their teeth, you’re not going to always feel like doing it. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes, the more you do it, the more it just becomes a part of who you are, the more you do it, the more effortlessly it becomes for you.

You develop your mindset over time, it doesn’t happen overnight. And I know a lot of people get impatient, they want to go fast, they want to stop, they want to stop eating sugar and then stop craving it right away. Because it’d be way easier to give up sugar if you didn’t crave it, right. But that’s the part that takes time.

Just like anything else worthwhile in our lives, it takes time to change your mind. Okay? So you’ve got to be patient with yourself. And one big part of your mindset is how you talk to yourself. So trash talking yourself will not get you there, you have to love yourself through this process of change.

Change can be hard, it can be hard, I get that totally. But beating yourself up every day, because it’s not going fast enough just makes it harder. You can’t hate yourself thin. So I just want you to understand that willpower is fine. And it’s something that you know, you can use at times, and you’ll have it at times, but there’s going to be times where it’s just not going to be there.

And what you need instead is to have developed the mindset of somebody who stays on track of somebody who doesn’t give in to those urges of somebody who doesn’t rely on sugar, or junk food or alcohol to feel better. You have to develop the mindset of somebody who does these things, and it becomes easy and effortless for you.

Because willpower is not going to be there all the time. You can’t rely on it. But you can definitely rely on your mindset. Okay. And remember that we’re going to be spending the whole month of April over in the Running Lean coaching project on the art and science of habit change. So you’re gonna learn exactly how to create the mindset you need to ditch those old habits and make healthy eating healthy habits.

Healthy workout habits, healthy running habits, something that you do easily and effortlessly. And we’re gonna have fun doing it. Just so you know. I hope you’ll join us just go torunningleanpodcast.com/join. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

113. Getting Out of the Gap and Into the Gain

By

Have you ever found yourself wishing your life was somehow “better”, that there was some future version of yourself that was leaner, stronger, and healthier? Of course you have, we all think about …

Continue Reading about 113. Getting Out of the Gap and Into the Gain →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 113, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today getting out of the gap and into the gain. Have you ever found yourself wishing that your life was somehow better, that maybe there was some future version of yourself that was leaner, stronger, and healthier? Of course, you have. We all think about stuff like this, I teach you to think about stuff like this, there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this.

The problem is when you’re so focused on what you don’t have, that it completely consumed you. When you’re obsessed about where you’re not, that’s when things begin to break down for you. So today I’m talking about the difference between being in the gap. And being in the gain.

When you’re in the gap, you only see the negative, you never feel like you measure up, you never feel like you’re making progress towards your goals. In fact, making any progress toward your goals feels virtually impossible.

There’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to think about all of this, and it’s called being in the gain. When you’re in the gain, you’re focused on the positive, you feel more energized, you feel more motivated, and you begin to make significant progress.

I’m going to talk all about this today, I’m going to break down why getting out of the gap and getting into the gain is so important for your long-term health and fitness goals. Cool. This is exciting. I’m excited about this one.

But first, if you’re ready to do this inner work, you know, this stuff that I talked about here, like getting out of the gap and into the gain, this is the inner work, you got to shift your mindset. If you want to become that healthy, badass version of yourself, right?

You have to take action, that action involves doing a lot of this inner work, your outer results are just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the inner work, okay? The mistake most people make is that they focus on the outer stuff, tell me what to eat, Patrick, just tell me how many times I should lift weights each week, just tell me how many carbs I should eat whatever.

Instead, let’s focus on changing our mindset. Because when you do that, your chances of success go up dramatically. I’m going to talk about this today, I’m going to talk about how when we’re focused on the negative and when we’re focused on what we don’t have, it can affect us profoundly.

But when we start to focus on the positive, the progress we made, it can affect us profoundly in a different way, in a positive way. So if you’re ready to do this inner work with me, then maybe coaching is a good fit for you! Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, apply for coaching with me, we’ll get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a short conversation. But I want you to take that step, take that first step of becoming that future badass version of yourself. Cool. runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And let’s have a conversation.

And then I wanted to give you guys a heads up about something, something very cool. That’s coming soon. So in just a few weeks, I’m going to be teaching a live workshop, all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner.

This is going to be probably the most informative and most comprehensive live workshop that I’ve ever taught. And I don’t do this kind of thing very often. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever really done this exact same kind of thing before. I like to teach here on the podcast.

But sometimes, sometimes I’m just so excited about the topic that I want to teach it live. There’s a real energy when we get together for a live workshop like this, you know, I get the feedback from you. Are you enjoying this? Are you getting something out of it?

You get to ask questions you get to you get your questions answered, I get the feedback. We all have a lot more fun doing this. It’s very interactive. So I just want to put this on your radar. That’s all I’m gonna say about this right now. This is a little teaser, I know.

But I’m going to keep you updated on dates and times when this thing is coming. It’s a few weeks out yet, but I’m just I’m so excited. I can’t wait for you guys to take part in this. I can’t wait to share more about this with you.

And if I didn’t mention it’s going to be free, it’s going to be a free live training to help you understand the fundamentals of becoming a healthy, badass human being. That’s all. That’s all. Just that. So more is coming soon on this I promise I’m so excited about this is going to be super fun. So just keep your ears peeled for that. I’ll be talking about it. More on the podcast here, don’t worry, you’ll know when it’s coming.

Okay, let’s talk about this today getting out of the gap and in the gain. So I talk to clients every single day who are working towards goals, right? They want to lose weight, they want to get stronger, they want to improve their body composition, they want to run faster.

And every time we get on a call, and my clients will attest to this, I always ask, tell me what’s good. Let’s talk about something positive share a win from this past week, big or small, doesn’t matter, some victory, some win around your health and fitness, maybe you lost a pound or maybe running felt better or easier, or you’re sleeping better. Or you realize for the first time in a long time that you just weren’t hungry all day long.

Like these are all little wins that we want to talk about and celebrate. Whatever it is, maybe it’s an “aha” moment, like, you know, I just realized that I can run perfectly fine without eating a bunch of sugar. Or when I make a plan ahead of time, and it’s a lot easier to just stick with it. What an aha moment, you know.

So this is the kind of stuff I always like to talk about, I always want to start out our conversations with wins, right? I want to give equal airtime to the good stuff to the positive to the wins, and to the negative to the problems to the obstacles to the struggles.

But sometimes when I ask people, “Hey, tell me something different this past week”, they just sit there and stare off into space. And they’re like, “I don’t know, I can’t think of anything, just crickets. Nothing positive from this whole past week.”

But then I’ll go like, “Hey, okay, well, let’s talk about what’s going on, like, what’s wrong, what issues you’re having, what’s the problem?” and then the floodgates open, there are all kinds of stuff they talk about, they can go on for days telling me what’s wrong, why things aren’t working, the stress thrown at work, the kids are driving them crazy, blah, blah, blah, right?

So there’s a real issue here, right, you’re consumed by the negative, when you’re consumed by all the negative stuff that’s going on in your life when you can’t even articulate one positive thing that has happened for you this past week. You’re in this constant state of like, inner turmoil. It’s a very negative state to be in, by the way.

It has a compound effect on your life. And I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But there’s a real issue here, there’s a bigger issue here because this is a negative state to be in. Right?

This is a place where you are constantly in your whole mental, emotional, physical being is a state of negativity. All right. And I was talking about this recently with my coach, and I was saying, “Listen, I have these clients, and they have a hard time articulating what’s good, and how can I help them?”

You know, why do we have this negativity bias? You know, how can we can’t see the good things in our life. And she started telling me about the gap. And being in the gap. I’d never heard of this concept before.

And so she recommended a book to me. And the book is called The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan is a coach. He’s awesome. I love him. I read the book. It’s a very simple concept. I’m going to break it all down for you here. I just felt compelled to share with you sort of this concept from this book.

It’s a very simple concept, but very powerful. It explains why we’re so focused on the negative, why it’s so hard to see the good things in our lives. And how we can change our mindset so we can start getting better results.

So what are we talking about here? What is this gap? What’s the gap? So the gap is the space between where you are right now, and where you want to be in the future. So this is awesome. Like I said earlier, if you have a goal of wanting to get leaner, stronger, and faster, that’s awesome. I encourage you to create a very detailed, very compelling future version of yourself. Create that vision of where you want to be that’s important to do you got to know where you’re going if you want to get there, right.

But when you’re not there yet, it can be very easy to focus all of your attention on that gap between where you are today. And where you want to be. There’s a gap you’re not there. And you can focus on the fact that you’re not there.

You can focus on the gap between where you want to be and where you are right now and where you want to be in the future and this can start to feel very terrible, right? You’re focusing on the fact that you’re not there. This is what I don’t have, I am not this person yet.

When you’re in the gap, you start to feel this inner conflict is inner turmoil. So let’s say you want to lose 30 pounds, and you’ve lost 20. So far, right? But you’re so focused on those last 10 pounds that you haven’t, that you haven’t quite lost it that you’re in the gap.

Or let’s say you want to improve your running performance, you want to go from 10-minute miles for half marathon to 9-minute miles, and you’ve made some progress. you’ve increased your speed to 9:39:30 per mile. But you still got like 30 seconds per mile more to go. When you’re just focused on that you’re, you’re in the gap here again, okay.

You may not be in control of your food choices, you’re still binging you’re feeling completely out of control, sometimes, you know, you’re not acknowledging that all the other times that you didn’t binge eat ice cream, that like you used to do. So you’ve made some progress here. But you’re only focused on the gap, you’re only focused on what’s wrong.

Maybe you look in the mirror, and every time you look in the mirror, you just see your flaws. You see the flab, and the wrinkles and the sagging skin, but you don’t see that you’ve already lost inches, your clothes fit better, you’re sleeping better at night, you have a ton more energy throughout the day.

But you don’t see any of that stuff, you just see where you’re not you just see what’s wrong, you are in the gap.

So what happens to us when we’re in the gap? Like when you’re in the gap, you’ll never measure up, you’re not going to see the progress you’ve made, you’re not going to see the good stuff, you’re not going to see the incremental improvements in your health and your well being you’re only going to see what’s wrong. Being in the gap creates this state of inner conflict.

When you’re constantly focused on what’s wrong, and how you’re not where you want to be, you are going to feel pretty miserable, like all the time. And you may not even know why you’re feeling so miserable.

But you’re constantly comparing yourself to some arbitrary place that you’re not there, right. And this conflict, I want to be there. And I’m not, this is what’s going to make it very hard for you to keep going. Alright.

So being in the gap creates this state of inner conflict. It’s also very demotivating. Why the hell would you want to go out there and run faster? Or why would you want to stick to your food plan when all you do is ruminate about how crappy everything in your life is.

Being in the gap will destroy your motivation. Even if you’ve had a little bit of motivation, it’s going to just break it down.

In order to feel motivated, you have to focus on the progress you’ve made, right? motivation comes from within. And focusing on how you’ve been making slow and steady progress can help create this feeling of motivation within you.

Being in the gap, though, has the opposite effect, you feel less motivated, you feel frustrated, you feel like why bother trying, you’re just like tired and frustrated. And you just want to give up.

I talked to a lot of people who have a decent amount of weight to lose, like let’s say you’ve, you know, I’m talking to someone who’s got like 50 pounds to lose, right? And they start making some progress.

So they might lose one or two pounds a week. But they get super frustrated because they’re consumed by this idea of they’ve got like 45 more pounds to go. And it all just feels so overwhelming. I’m never going to get there. Why should I even bother? They just want to throw in the towel.

And I want to just encourage them to stop doing this stop being in the gap. You’re in the gap when you’re getting frustrated and focused on where you’re not.

And it creates these feelings of unworthiness within you, you might know you’re in the gap when you compare yourself to others. Have you ever done this before?

Everybody’s hand should be going up right now. We have all done this. We all compare ourselves to others. But is this ever a good idea? Do you ever come out on the winning end of this comparison? No, never.

Other people are losing weight faster than me. Other people are running faster than me. Other people are making progress, more progress than me. It’s easier for other people. It’s harder for me like this is all the stuff we tell ourselves. When you get caught up in these comparisons. When you’re comparing yourselves to others. You are deeply into the gap.

Alright, you start to feel less than you don’t measure up. And again, you’re like, it leads to frustration and these feelings of just unworthiness, and you feel like a failure. Because you’re like, this isn’t working for me, look at how it’s working for everybody else.

Right. And in this just your perception, the truth is, we all have our own journey, and it looks different for everyone. You have to stop comparing yourself to others because that’s being solidly into the gap. When you’re doing that you’re comparing yourself to others, you are absolutely deep into the gap, okay?

Also, when you’re in the gap, you’re going to have a very hard time making progress, because all of your thoughts and feelings are consumed by where you’re not. And this is demotivating. So you’re demotivated, you experienced this inner conflict, you feel unworthy, you feel like a failure.

Do you think you’re going to feel like you want to stick to your food plan when this is your mental and emotional state? Do you think you’re going to want to stick to your workout schedule when you’re feeling like this? No. Most people just give up, they quit. They can’t see past the gap.

So what about this idea, Patrick, of creating a clear vision of your future self, I mean, should we not be doing that? And, and like I said earlier like I teach people to do this, I think it’s important that we do this, we have to know where we’re going, we have to create this vision of ourselves.

So I want you to, this isn’t about not having a future vision for yourself, okay? You can’t make progress towards your goals if you don’t know what you want for yourself if you don’t know where you’re going. Right?

So I strongly encourage you and I work with all my clients on this to create a vision for their future self, right? Who do you want to become? How do you want to feel? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your body to look like? What do you want running to look like for you?

These are all things that it’s important to know. Got to know where you’re going, right?

So when I talk about being in the gap, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a vision for your future, what I’m saying is stop obsessing about not being there. That’s the part where we’re in the gap.

Okay, it’s important to have that future version of yourself that future vision for yourself. But we have to be, we have to approach this in a different way. We can’t be focused on “Oh, I’m not there yet.” Okay, so there’s a, there’s a difference there. Okay.

So at this point, I think we can all relate to being in the gap, right? We’ve all been there happens to all of us, it’s okay. I don’t want you to freak out about it. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure, you’re broken, or you’re a negative person, or you’ll never reach your goals.

If you find yourself in the gap, even regularly, it just means that you’re normal, okay? Just means that you’re a normal, healthy human being with a normal human brain. That’s it. Nothing wrong at all.

And I see this all the time with clients, we all do it. This is normal. As humans, we have this bias towards negativity, this is how we have evolved. We’ve evolved as humans to recognize dangers, right?

We are really good at spotting the problem. “Oh, this other human creature that’s coming towards me does not look like one, one of the human creatures that I know, danger, danger.” Or “This plant that I’m about to eat looks just like the one that Grok ate last week. And now he’s dead. Danger Danger!” Like spotting danger is hardcoded into our DNA.

Now, you know, if everything’s cool and safe, it doesn’t set off any alarms in our brain, right? Everything’s just copacetic or everything’s cool, no big deal. But as soon as something seems dangerous, we go on high alert.

And the funny thing is that there’s no real danger for us these days, right? There’s no other human that’s trying to murder us, I hope not really. We shop at Whole Foods. So we really don’t need to worry about eating poisonous plants.

You know, we see things like, “Oh, I’m not at my goal weight yet.” That’s the danger we see in our lives, right? That’s the problems that we experience in our lives or our half marathon time doesn’t measure up to other people we run with. This is what we perceive as being a threat to us or dangerous. So just know that your brain is normal. It’s doing what it’s been conditioned to do. It’s not your fault.

But there’s a different way of seeing things, there’s a better way to experience everything in your life. And this is called being in the gain. So when you’re in the gain, you’re focused on the progress you’ve made up to this point. Being in the gain, means you’re no longer obsessed about where you’re not instead, your focus is on how far you’ve already come.

Being in the gain means you have a bias towards positivity, not negativity. Your focus is on positivity is on progress, not on the gap between where you are and where you wish you were.

So what does it look like to be in the gain? Well, let’s go back to that example, if you want to lose 30 pounds, and you’ve lost 20 stuff tend to go. So being pissed off about why those last 10 pounds are taking so dang long, you celebrate the fact that you’ve lost 20 pounds already, you focus on the progress you’ve already made.

You see now that you’ve got your sugar cravings under control, maybe for the first time in your life, you feel better, you’re sleeping better, you have a ton more energy running is getting so much easier.

Or maybe you’ve improved your running pace by that 30 seconds per mile, you still have you know, another 30 seconds more to go by, instead of getting all worked up about it like “Oh, I’m not as fast as I want to be.”

You can see how your running is improved, your running form has improved, your running efficiency has improved, you keep increasing your lactate threshold, your heart rate is going down even when you’re running faster, all of the signs that you’re becoming a total running badass, right.

But when you’re in the gap, you don’t see any of this, you’re just focused on where you’re not. I have this goal, and I’m not there. Right.

Instead, we want to focus on the gain, we want to focus on the progress we made. Here’s the cool part about this: when you’re in the game, things will begin to shift for you internally, you’re going to begin to create a whole new mindset for yourself.

When you’re focused on the gap, this is very demotivating, right. But when you’re focused on the gains you’ve made, it has the opposite effect. Being in the gain means you’re focused on progress.

And when you track progress, and you see you’ve made progress, and you’re always moving a little bit closer to your goals, this is very motivating. This builds motivation, it builds confidence, it builds your self-esteem, it creates momentum, making little itty bitty bits of progress creates a little bit more momentum and a little bit more and a little bit more. And this momentum keeps you feeling even more motivated, which keeps you making even more and more progress, right.

So the more you focus on the gain, the more gains you make. And the more you focus on the gain, the more games you play, it’s a cycle. It’s a beautiful little cycle that continues to repeat, creating more momentum and more positive results.

So the secret really to making any kind of big changes in your life, especially when it comes to things like long-term health and fitness. The big secret is consistency, right? I guess it’s not a secret, really. But like, you’ve got to stick with it, you’ve got to stick with it for the long haul. Like these are changes we make for life. And you’ve got to be committed to being a healthy human being as a way of life.

But if you’re in the gap, this is going to be incredibly frustrating and super, super hard to do. I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s going to be almost impossible.

On the other hand, if you’re in the gain, this is how you do it. This is how you become the healthy badass runner that you want to be and how you make it last for life. Being in the gain feels light, it feels energizing, it feels free.

You build confidence and trust in yourself you create momentum towards your goals, you create these feelings of motivation. And then you just want to keep going.

So if you’re at someplace in your life here, where you’re experiencing the gap. I’m going to just give you a couple of tips on how to get out of that. Okay. So I want to give you an example. Like, let’s say you’re at a point in your weight loss journey where you’ve experienced a stall. So maybe you’ve hit a plateau in your weight loss and you’re you’ve lost some weight, but it hasn’t changed for like four or five weeks and you’re getting super frustrated. You just want to give up right?

Do this one thing. Make this one change and see what happens. Stop being in the gap and start being in the gain. Start focusing on incremental progress. start focusing on all the little things that are good. Start focusing on all the tiny little bits of progress you’ve made, and see how that doesn’t feel for you.

Start celebrating all that progress is going to create momentum and motivation within you and you’ll want to keep going and you know what, I have a feeling that scale just might start to move again.

Or maybe you want to run faster and you say, can’t seem to get past that 9:30 pace, right? Start really tracking your progress, celebrate all the metrics that are improving: heart rate, VO to Max, you know, speed, overall pace, you know, splits, you know, interval paces, all that stuff, start to track all of that.

And start to celebrate the progress that you’re making. And I have a feeling you’re going to see your times improve because you’re going to feel more motivated, you’re going to want to keep going.

Slow and steady progress is how we win the game, right? Slow and steady progress, track it, and celebrate it, all of it.

And I talked to people all the time about how long it takes to lose weight. And the truth is that first some people, it just takes a while, right? It just takes what it takes.

So let’s say you want to, you know, lose those last 10 pounds. And it’s super frustrating. It’s taking forever, cording to you.

And you’re like, “Oh, this is just taking so long.” I’m like, “How long is it supposed to take?” So let’s just say for S’s and G’s like to lose the last 10 pounds, let’s say took a year.

Now when I just said that, did you freak out a little bit like, “Oh my god, it shouldn’t take that long.” Whatever. Let’s just say it took a year.

Think about this a year from now, would you rather be at your goal weight? Or would you rather be upset because you gave up because you got frustrated? Because you quit on yourself.

If you are feeling like it’s just taking too long, and you say screw it and you give up this is what most people do. They just say you know what? Why bother.

But even though you’re making progress, even though you’re on track to lose a pound a month, or whatever it is, when you’re in the gap, you cannot see this progress, you can’t see that you’re making changes, and it’s incremental, slow and steady. And you’ll get there eventually, but you can’t see it.

And so you just end up, most people just end up getting frustrated and quitting. throwing in the towel. Do not do this.

Here’s your call to action for this week, I want you to identify one area of your life where you’re in the gap. I know you know what this is you’ve probably already been thinking about this, right? Where are you focused on where you’re not. Alright.

And then I want you to stop doing that. Okay, stop being in the gap and start being in the gain instead. Don’t be obsessed about where you’re not, start being obsessed about all the tiny little incremental progress that you’re making.

And when you start focusing on that, you’re going to start to feel energized about that progress. And then you’re going to start to feel more confident. And you’re going to start to feel more self-esteem, right? And you’re going to start to make slow and steady progress and you’re going to start to create this unstoppable momentum for yourself. You’re going to feel more motivated to keep going.

So that’s your work for this week. Stop being in the gap. Find one place in your life where you’re, you know, you’re in the gap, and start being in the gain. Start being obsessed about progress. Cool, I think this is super fun, and life-changing. Do this this week. Don’t put this off. Do this for sure.

And remember, if you’re ready to get out of the gap for good and stop comparing yourself to where you’re not, and start focusing on the real progress you’re making towards your goals. You might want to see if coaching is right for you. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. Let’s have that conversation. Let’s get you out of the gap and into the gain. Cool? 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.

107. Prioritizing Rest & Recovery

By

If you’re anything like most runners, you have a very hard time taking time off. Rest days can feel like torture, you feel like you’re losing fitness, and you are convinced that your running is …

Continue Reading about 107. Prioritizing Rest & Recovery →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 107 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about prioritizing rest and recovery. If you are anything like most runners, then you probably have a pretty hard time taking time off right?

Rest days can feel like torture, you feel like you’re gonna lose your fitness and you’re convinced that your running is going to suffer, right? But the reality is most runners do not prioritize rest and recovery properly. So most runners are not getting the most out there training. You cannot become that lean badass runner you want to be if you never take the time to rest and recover properly. That’s just incredibly important. I cannot stress this enough.

That’s why I’ve dedicated this whole podcast episode to this topic, rest and recovery has to be part of your training plan. Okay, so today I’m going to just share the importance of prioritizing rest and recovery. I’m going to talk about how to do it because I want you to be able to show up at the start of your race in peak fitness and you cannot do it if you’re not taking rest days properly.

Okay. But first, if you like this podcast, please come check us out on Facebook, you can join the Running Lean Community. It’s a group of like-minded runners that support encourage and motivate one another. You can ask questions you can get answers. Get the kind of like, the camaraderie that you get from your running pals, you know, and I do some weekly coaching and training in the group. And we just have a lot of fun. It’s one of the most positive communities that I’ve experienced on Facebook. And a lot of people tell me that too. That’s not just my opinion. This is what I hear from other people.

And the Facebook group is full of people that are just like you people that are tired of struggling and ready to become more I talk about this all the time, we are people that are becoming more. If you’re tired of struggling or if you’re tired of feeling sluggish all the time. If you’re tired of gaining and losing the same 10-20 pounds over and over again. If you’ve ever been there, it’s not a fun place to be. I’ve been there.

If you’re done with all the like fad diets and meal replacement shakes. If you’re ready to end all this struggle with you know not feeling how you know you should feel, then I want to encourage you to take action for yourself. Nothing changes if nothing changes, right. So I want to encourage you to get into action starting now. I want you to start this new year, by learning how to create the good habits you need to make eating healthy a permanent part of your life.

Listen, we’re not interested in short-term results here. We’re focused on the long game. I want to help you make being healthy, just a part of who you are from now on out. And the easiest way to get there is to have someone there guiding you every step of the way, helping you overcome the things that you always struggle with. Like giving into cravings on the weekends like you do find all week long, and then the weekend comes along, you just blow it right, you keep reverting back to these old patterns of behavior. Having a coach means that you have someone in your corner, someone supporting you, someone who’s got your back, someone who’s holding you accountable to do the things you need to do to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself.

I want you to make this year count. I want this year to be the year that you finally take control of your health and fitness for good. I want you to make this the year that you finally become the lean, strong, badass runner that you’ve always wanted to be. Everything I do here on the podcast and in the Facebook group I do with my group program with my one on one coaching clients is to help you to become the most amazing, most better version of yourself yet. And I put my heart and soul into doing this.

I put my heart and soul into helping you become your best self. Why? Because I want to be an example of what’s possible and I will inspire you to do the same thing and so on and so on. I’m on a mission to create a ripple effect of health and positivity in this world. But it requires action change requires action. So I want to encourage you to take action now. And make this the year that you make some permanent changes for yourself and become that badass runner that badass version of yourself that you know, you can be.

You can apply for coaching over at runningleanpodcast.com/apply. Let’s do this. Let’s make this your year. Cool.

Okay, let’s get into this topic of prioritizing rest and recovery. And let me tell you a little bit about why I’m thinking about this so much right now, you’ve probably heard me talk about this already, I’ve been kind of talking about this on the last couple of episodes, that I’ve been sort of forced to rest, right. I’ve been forced to take some time off from running from lifting weights from really doing any kind of strenuous activity at all.

So six weeks ago, I had rotator cuff surgery to repair three torn muscles in my rotator cuff. This is a pretty brutal recovery from this surgery. It is a long process is like three or four months of really not being able to do a whole lot. You know, I mean, I’m in physical therapy, I’m starting to get more active and starting to move things around a bit. But it’s still, you know, I’m still in a pretty good amount of pain. And there’s still a very limited range of motion. I’m only about halfway through this recovery process, right. And then, and this is something I really haven’t talked about before.

Back in September, of this past year, I developed a hernia and probably developed that from, you know, some really heavy weight lifting. Maybe I did something wrong. I’m not really sure exactly how I did it. It’s sort of just kind of appeared one day. And I was like, well, that’s weird what’s going on there when saw the doctor.

And yeah, so I had an inguinal hernia that needed to get repaired. And because of COVID, and because of the way the hospitals have been jammed up and stuff like that, I had to wait. I had to wait. And I had to push that surgery off until just a week ago. So I had to finish up my marathon training and run a marathon with a hernia, this is not a good situation to be in. I’m just going to tell you right now.

I ended up having this like neoprene belt that I wore under my clothes to kind of hold things so that I could actually run. But I’m telling you right now having like this shoulder pain, and then having a hernia at the same time made this whole marathon experience that much tougher and more challenging for me, but I got through it, okay. And I finally had the hernia surgery a week ago. And so within five weeks, I’ve had two pretty major surgeries.

Alright. So I started to make some progress, I started to get back to the gym, up until you know, had hernia surgery. So now I’ve got to like scale everything back. Again, I can’t lift anything more than 20 pounds, I can’t do any strenuous activity for six weeks, which is kind of fine. It’s kind of just goes along with what I’m doing with my rotator cuff recovery period here.

So long story short here, I’ve experienced a lot of downtime, right? I’ve just been like having to take time off. And it’s gonna be a while for me until I get back to where I want to be and the level of activity and doing all the things that I want to do again. But this really got me thinking about how hard it is for runners, especially to take time off.

It’s really hard to just give yourself a rest especially when you’re in training mode, especially when you’re in the thick of your marathon training, let’s say prioritize prioritizing rest and recovery days is something that runners just they don’t do well, right runners don’t like to rest they’d rather just go go go go go, go, go. And when you can’t just go go go all the time it can be very frustrating. Right?

You feel bad when you can’t run or you can’t do a workout. And so most runners just don’t do it. They don’t make rest and recovery days a priority. It’s like the last thing they want to do, right? So most runners just would rather do anything than take a rest day. Right? It’s so hard like mentally, physically. Emotionally.

It’s hard to tell yourself that this is an important part of your training plan. So most people just don’t include this kind of rest and recovery time as part of their training program. Okay. So why wouldn’t we do this though? Like, why? Why aren’t we making rest and sleep and recovery time a priority?

And I think it goes back to like this mindset of like, if you’re not doing something active, if you’re not like moving and pushing, and just grind in and out all the time, that you’re going to lose fitness, that you’re not going to perform as well, on race day, that you’re going to be taking steps backward.

And I have to say that this is absolutely not true. In fact, if anything, the opposite is true. If you want to perform well on race day, if you want to maximize your training program, whatever it is, you’re training for, whether it’s a 5k, half marathon, marathon, whatever, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not prioritizing rest and recovery days. All right, you are doing yourself a disservice. And you’re actually going to perform worse than if you are making rest and recovery part of your training program and a priority. Okay.

So here, I just want to kind of list out some of the problems that happen when you don’t prioritize rest and recovery when you don’t take the time off that you need. In order to give your body a chance to kind of heal and repair and recover from your hard workouts right? Not prioritizing rest and recovery days will have a bunch of negative impacts on your running performance, and basically your overall health and fitness.

Okay, so here are some of the things that we need to be careful of, right. First of all, running is catabolic, it breaks you down, if you’re just running all the time, you are just constantly breaking yourself down. So when you run, especially when you do like a hard workout, there are micro microscopic muscle tears that happen in your, in your muscles, in your legs, in your arms, in your glutes, and it’s very much like weight training.

You know when you lift heavy weights, you get these microscopic tears in your muscles. And then you give yourself a chance to rest and recover and your body repairs and get stronger. Right, you don’t gain muscle at the gym, you gain muscle on your rest days you gain muscle while you’re sleeping and recovering. And it’s the same thing with running Okay.

Without the rest and recovery days, your body will not heal properly, okay, you’re not going to adapt your body to the training load that you’re putting yourself under. Right, so this goes to the overload principle which I’ve just kind of talking about here, which is you overload a muscle. So you put a strain on a muscle to the point where you get to failure on a muscle and you overload that muscle.

You cannot lift the weight you’re trying to lift that creates an adaptive response in your body and your muscle grows stronger and bigger in response to that overload. The same thing happens with your other systems in your body like your cardiovascular system okay. You overload the cardiovascular system by doing something like a sprint workout, right you go out there and crush a hard you know hit training or interval workout you know, hill repeats or you know, sprints or whatever, and your cardiovascular system in response will will improve it will get stronger, right? It’ll become more efficient.

But this does not happen while you’re doing it. It only happens on the rest and recovery days. It happens when you are taking the time off when you are inactive. So, rest and recovery are required for this overload principle for this adaptive training principle to actually take place okay?

So if you’re not giving yourself the time off that you need, you’re just going to be constantly in that breaking down mode, right, you’re just breaking yourself down. And you’re never really giving yourself a chance to repair and adapt and get stronger. Okay. So that’s one of the biggest reasons why you have to prioritize rest and recovery.

The third thing to think about is this: when you are going hard all the time, you are putting your body under a lot of stress. And chronic stress will keep your cortisol levels very high, all the time. Cortisol is a stress hormone. And when cortisol is high, you actually get this like increase of blood sugar, you get this insulin response because of the cortisol. And you kind of keep your body in this fight or flight mode, you keep your body in this fat storage mode, you keep your body in this place where it makes it very hard to burn fat. It makes it very hard to become fat-adapted, which makes it very hard to get the most out of your training. Because you’re just overstressing your body, you’re chronically stressed out.

Chronic stress is not a good thing, right? I think we can all agree on this, right? And this idea of running hard or medium hard all the time is going to keep your body in that chronically stressed state. Okay, so too much stress on your body, constant stress on your body is going to have a definite negative impact on all the good things you’re trying to do for yourself here. Okay?

What we’re really talking about here is overtraining. Overtraining means you’re just not giving yourself the rest and recovery time that you need. Okay. Overtraining can lead to not just chronic stress, not just like breaking yourself down. But also you can be chronically fatigued. So you can just feel tired all the time. And if you’ve ever experienced this, believe me, I have.

I have done some training cycles where I was running like six days a week. And on those off, off days, quote, unquote, off days, I was like doing something else really active. And I was never getting a good night’s sleep, I was never giving my body a chance to recover. And I was like, I would get sick, I would be tired all the time. couldn’t keep my eyes open, like I was crashing and burning every afternoon like just, this is not a good place to be in right, this is not good for your, for your overall health and fitness much, much less for your training program.

If you’re training for an ultra marathon or you’re training for a marathon or half marathon or whatever it is, you cannot perform your best if you’re chronically fatigued if you’re just tired all the time. And sleep is another component of this, which I’m not going to get into today.

But I just want you to know that getting a good night’s sleep is a key component of rest and recovery. I want to do a whole other episode just on the importance of sleep because there are so many studies that have been done. And so much evidence out there that says that first of all, we are chronically under, we’re not getting enough sleep like we are a nation of people who are chronic under sleepers like we’re not getting enough sleep.

We need something like 7-9 hours of sleep a night and if you’re training hard, especially at the peak of your training cycle, you need more you might need 9 or 10 hours of sleep. But most people a lot of runners I talk to most will say they don’t get enough sleep and most will say they’re getting somewhere between like 5, 6, 7 hours of sleep which I don’t think is enough.

But if you’re experiencing this chronic fatigue, if you’re experiencing being chronically stressed out sleep could be a big part of this, okay? Another thing is that when you are chronically overtraining when you’re not getting enough rest and recovery, your running, performance will suffer. You will see your workouts really start to suffer, okay. Your workouts are going to start to feel harder than they are. So that rate of perceived exertion the RPE you know, when you go out there and run and you’re like this feels pretty easy. Or whoa, this workout feels really hard for the same effort.

Those workouts are gonna feel much harder if you’re not prioritizing rest and recovery properly. So just know that if your workouts if you’re out there running, you’re like, ‘I don’t know why running feels so hard right now’, it could be that you’re just not getting enough rest. It could be that you’re just in that chronic cardio chronically stressed out, chronically overtrained state. All right, like prioritize rest and recovery days here.

Another thing is that not only will your workouts feel harder, but your endurance starts to tank like you won’t be able to run as long, you won’t be able to go as far. And it’s gonna be, it’s gonna really create this negative impact on your endurance.

So if you’re somebody who’s out there trying to run, you know, you’re training for a marathon and you’re trying to get, you know, you got your 18-20 mile runs coming up, and you just feel like you just can’t do it, you’ve got no gas in the tank. It could be that you’re just not taking the time off that you need, you know, your endurance will suffer the more overtrained that you are.

And it sounds so counterintuitive, doesn’t it? It’s like, ‘Well, shouldn’t you just keep going longer and longer and harder and harder?’ And the answer is no, you have to like, push hard, and then you have to back off. You have to go longer, and then you have to go, you know, shorter. You have to run longer distances, and then you have to back it off, you have to have hard days, you have to have super easy days, and you have to have rest days. Right.

Another key aspect of this that most people don’t really realize is that chronically overtraining and not getting enough rest and recovery can have a negative impact on your mental state. Your mindset is so important. And I talk about this all the time mindset is like 80% of the equation.

If you’re trying to lose weight, if you’re trying to change habits, if you’re trying to like create a better relationship with food, if you’re trying to improve your running, if you want to run your first marathon or PR – 80% of your results are going to be because you have the right mindset. 20% is going to be based on what you’re doing what you know, what you don’t know, things like that.

But 80% of this is mindset. And if your mindset is negatively impacted, because you’re overtraining, you’re not going to be as clear headed, you’re not going to be able to focus as much, your head’s not going to be in the game.

You know, you’re gonna be moody, you know, you’re not in a good mood, you’re like a grumpy person. Are you a grumpy person? Maybe you’re overtraining. And all this can lead to this dip in motivation to you can really start to feel like, ‘Oh, I just don’t want to run, I don’t feel like it. I’m in a bad mood. I can’t think clearly.’ And then doubt starts to creep in. And just don’t feel like running and you just like, want to give it up, you just want to like just lay on the couch watching Netflix, right.

And all of this can just be a result of not giving yourself the rest that you need. Okay. And then obviously, all of this can affect your race day performance. If you’re somebody that’s out there training for a race, and you know, you’ve got a marathon coming up. And you’ve been training for, you know, six months, or even if it’s just like three or four months of a training program, you’re putting a lot of effort, you’re putting a lot of energy, you’re putting your heart and soul into training for this race, and everything needs to be perfect on race day, right?

Everything needs to be in perfect working order. And overtraining can just have you showing up on race day, and ready for like disappointment, feeling like crap, poor performance. You know, you’re gonna feel like you’ve wasted all this time training when really all you did was you just overtrained, right? You just overtrain, you didn’t give yourself the rest and recovery that you needed so that you could show up on race day properly.

I was just talking to somebody last night about tapering, right. So you know, somebody who’s one of my clients, you know, they’ve got a marathon coming up this weekend, and they’re in this taper mode, and they’re just like, Ah, it’s driving me crazy. I hate tapering. I just want to be active, I want to be moving.

But the important thing to understand, here’s that tapering is there for a reason, right? You have to show up on race day fully rested and recovered and ready to go. If you’re just like going hard, hard, hard, all the way up to race day. You are not optimizing your body in your mind for that race. You’re going to be you’re going to show up overtrained and you’re going to show up tired and you’re going to show up stressed out and you’re not going to have a good day out there. Okay.

When you start making rest and recovery days a priority. You give your body a chance to rebuild, to repair. And to recover from all those hard workouts, we want to do the hard workouts, you want to be able to go hard on your hard days and make your easy days super easy, right?

When you are properly rested, and you can recover, and you’re repairing from these hard workouts, I’m going to tell you something, those hard days, you’re actually going to be able to go harder, you’re going to be able to run faster, you’re going to be able to run harder, you’re going to be able to run longer, which means that if you do it the right way, you should improve your fitness exponentially.

Because you’re giving your body a chance to adapt to your training load. Right, you’re improving the systems, you’re improving your cardiovascular system, you’re improving your your body’s ability to oxygenate your muscles, you’re improving your ability to get stronger, like you’re building stronger muscles, you have to give your body a chance to adapt. And that’s what happens during the rest recovery phase, okay.

You’ll be able to increase the intensity and the duration of your workout. So you can go longer without feeling fatigued. But it requires rest and your workouts will actually feel easier. So not only will you be able to go harder and things like that, but you know, your rate of perceived exertion actually goes down.

So that same run that you did when you were chronically stressed out, that same workout is gonna feel so much easier because you’re properly rested. And then there’s all these positive mental benefits to like you’re you feel more clear headed, you’re more focused, you can concentrate, you have improved cognition, you’re going to feel happier, you’re not going to be all moody and grumpy and negative, you’re going to be more positive.

And this goes a long, long way to your running performance, you know, you’re going to wake up feeling motivated, ready to go get out there and get at it. And then, you know, obviously showing up on race day, you’re going to be giving your body everything that it needs, you’re going to be setting yourself up for success. You’ve given your body the exact formula that it needs for adaptation, go hard, rest and recover, go hard rest and recover.

So that on race day, you show up at that starting line and you’re just firing on all cylinders, you’ll be operating at peak performance, you’ll be stronger, faster, and ready to go. That’s what we want. That’s what we want out of our training plans. Okay.

So rest recovery means just that just means like, you gotta like, take some time off, okay? The ideal way to do this is to just take a day off, take a day or two off every week. This is ideal. And I know that for a lot of people, they’re like, ‘I just need to do something.’ It’s like, okay, fine. You can have active recovery days, but they have to be a very minimal activity, like taking a walk.

And a lot of people are like, ‘I walk my dogs every day. I’ll go walk the dogs or I’ll go for a bike ride with the kids, you know, we’re just like on the bike’s just like really easy. Or maybe I’m going to do some stretching and foam rolling, or some gentle yoga.’

Those kinds of things are fine as recovery days, you know, those kind of active recovery days, but there’s nothing wrong with just taking a day off, you’re not gonna lose fitness if you do nothing for a day or two every week, right?

The idea is that you’re feeling fresh. The idea is that you’re repairing and you’re adapting and you’re becoming stronger so that you can go harder at your next workout. So I want you to start prioritizing rest and recovery days, put them on your training schedule. Schedule, rest and recovery days into your weekly training regimen. Right.

And rest days are not just for the early stages of your training cycle. In fact, it’s even more important that the harder you’re working out, the more intense and the longer duration of your training, the more important rest days become. Right as you get closer to your race, your intensity and your duration of running are going to increase right?

So those are the times when you need to prioritize rest days even more. And the cycle looks like this. It’s like you go harder, you rest, adapt, you get stronger, you go hard, you rest and adapt, and you get stronger, and then just kind of repeats throughout your training program.

And then there are other times where you might consider taking rest days, or you might be forced to take rest days, and I’m going to encourage you to just like, lean into this a little bit. It’s kind of like what I’m doing right now, like, I had surgery. And it’s gonna be, it’s not just a day or two, for me, this is like weeks and months of time off, and I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that.

For me, I know I am losing some fitness, I’ve lost some weight, I’m losing some muscle during this process, I’ll get it all back, and it’ll come back. Fast, it’ll come back, you know faster than it went off. I’m going to take the time and make this work, I’m going to become the strongest, most badass version of myself. This year, this is my goal, right?

So I’ve got to give myself a chance to recover. This is some pretty brutal stuff I’ve gone through here, I’m going to give myself a chance to recover. If you get sick, a lot of people are sick with COVID and stuff, you know, you need to take some time off, just embrace it and really give your body a chance to recover.

Because if you’re sick, and you’re like, I’m just gonna keep pushing through this, I’m going to keep pushing through this, you’re probably going to prolong the time it takes you to recover, I’m going to want to do that right. Or maybe you have an injury that you need to take a little bit of time off from, take the time off, it’s gonna be okay. And then like, take time off after a race, obviously, you know, anytime you have like a super intense workout or race, you got to take some time off from that, okay?

If you’re the kind of person who lays it all out there on race day, then you have got to take some time off. After that, prioritize rest and recovery, put it into your training schedule. And I promise you, you’re going to feel better your runnings going to improve, you’re going to be able to go harder and longer and faster. And you’re just going to become the healthiest version of yourself.

Okay, so make sure you’re making rest and recovery days a priority. All right. Cool. Well, I hope you guys got something out of this 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.