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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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169. What Should I Eat?

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One of the most confusing topics in the health and fitness world today is…what should I eat? There is just so much noise out there on social media, in the news, and even on podcasts. And almost …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 169 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what should I eat? One of the most confusing topics in the health and fitness world today is what should I eat?

There’s just so much noise out there on social media, in the news, even on podcasts. And almost every one of the principles someone says you need to follow is contradicted by some other principle that someone else says you need to follow. And just about every person that I talked to tells me how frustrating all of this is. And honestly, it’s probably the number one reason why I do what I do.

I became a coach to help you navigate around all the BS, and figure out exactly what you should eat and shouldn’t eat, so that you can achieve your own personal weight loss and running goals. So today, I’m gonna explain why what’s out there in the media is so confusing and what you should do instead.

And by the end of this episode, you should have a much better understanding of the complexity of the question, what should I eat? And I have a few simple steps you can take right away to help you get started on your own weight loss journey. But first, losing weight, getting stronger, running faster; all of these things require a high level of commitment, not a half-assed “I’m sort of in sort of out” type of commitment, but an “I’m all in no matter what” type of commitment.

Because whether you’re fully committed or not, your own health and fitness journey will be riddled with challenges, you might progress slowly or your progress might be minimal. You might lose motivation. You might slip back into old habits or behaviors. You know, you might have a really bad run or you might gain a few pounds, whatever, these things will happen.

If however, you’ve made a real commitment, none of these things will really matter. Most people don’t do this though. Most people come face to face with one of these challenges and they just quit. They give up. In order to get through this tough stuff, you have to have a solid commitment and then you have to recommit to your goals daily.

When you make a daily recommitment to accomplishing your goals, you stay laser focused, you stay motivated, you keep making progress, you gain massive confidence in yourself. So a couple things I want you to consider. Two questions I want you to ask yourself, number one, what are your goals? And then two, how are you recommitting to these goals today?

And if you’re looking for a little help setting goals and staying committed, join us in the Running Lean Coaching Project where we’re all about supporting each other to accomplish big goals. Okay, just learn more at runningleancoaching.com/join.

Okay, arguably one of the biggest questions I get is, what should I eat even with the people that I’m working with my coaching clients, we talk about this extensively, especially at the beginning. Why? Because there’s so much freaking confusing information out there. Sugar is good. Sugar is bad. Carbs are fine. Don’t eat carbs, keto, carnivore, low carb, no carb, all carb Mediterranean, South Beach, vegan, paleo, plant based, Whole 30. And on and on and on, right?

What are you supposed to do with all of this? Which one of these diets is going to work for you? Seriously, like which one? Do you know? How do you know? How do you know if you choose the right one? And then people will say well, you know, this study came out recently that says an insert diet here. Insert diet here will kill you, whatever that is, you know?

There are some things we have to understand when it comes to these studies that we see out there. Sometimes these studies are pretty poorly done. And they make the news anyway. You got to look at a couple of things like number one, how many people are in the study? How long did they do the study?

Is it a randomized controlled trial or is it just a what they call an observational study where they just ask people some questions? You know, are they actually like monitoring these things directly? Who paid for the study? Big food, Coca Cola, some big pharmaceutical company, you’ve got to like look into that kind of stuff too.

Okay, so recently there was a couple of studies, I’m going to call out a couple of these because I want to show you what I’m talking about here. There were a couple of studies that came to my attention. One of them was a study they did on one of the sugar alcohols, so it’s a sugar substitute called erythritol. And, you know, I’ve eaten this stuff before, it’s okay. I don’t really do much of it anymore. It doesn’t really agree with me too much.

But the headline said this, “Zero calorie sweetener linked to heart attack and stroke, study finds.” So this was the CNN Headline. And I was like, wow, that sounds terrible, like a big attention grabbing headline, right? Basically, you’re gonna die if you eat erythritol, okay, or some other sugar substitute, so I looked into this a little bit.

And the actual study, and I use that term loosely, was done on eight people, eight people who were eating erythritol, and they were eating the amount that can be found in a pint of low carb ice cream, or like, no sugar ice cream, okay. Kind of a lot, but you know, whatever, but it was eight people, okay.

And then this was kind of buried in the text of the article. It said, “And while the study found an association between erythritol and elevated cardiovascular risk, it did not prove that the compound itself causes strokes and heart attacks. The study includes observational research that requires further validation.”

So if you read the actual article, it will tell you that this doesn’t prove anything. But we see this headline, and CNN puts this headline out there, and they’re just trying to get clicks, right? They’re selling advertising, they want to get clicks, they put these sensational headlines out there.

But if you’re somebody who’s trying to find a good, you know, sugar substitute and erythritol, has been shown to be fine up until whatever this study on these eight people, eight people, really? That’s a study? I just don’t understand how you can call it a study with eight people.

There was another one that several of my clients brought this to my attention, because we do kind of a lower carb approach, typically, for most people. Now, it’s not what everybody does, but we typically don’t eat a ton of carbs. Some people like to go a little lower carb and do things like keto, carnivore or whatever, which is fine, if that’s what you want to do. But I’m not trying to say like you have to do this or that. But the program that I teach is not about any particular diet. And I’ll get more into that in a second.

But there was a study that said, and here’s the headline on like Fox News or whatever, “Keto diets could increase risk of heart attack and stroke, says news study.” So the things you have to understand about this study, is it says the participants self-reported their food intake via a questionnaire at only one point in time, which could impact accuracy. With only one day of food choices reported, there could be a lot of variation as to what diet these subjects actually followed on an ongoing basis.

Again, you’ve got to read through even the news article, if you just read the actual news article, it basically says these people reported one day of food choices, right? One, one day, one day.

And somebody replied to this with a comment that I thought was really good. And I’ll just read what they said. They said this quote, unquote, study was a really poorly done observational study of 305 people. So 305 people is a very small study group, okay, but better than eight, right?

They gave them a one time 24 hour food survey. That’s right. They asked them what they ate over the last 24 hours. And that was it. That was the quote unquote, study. Okay. And then here’s the part that doesn’t make any sense at all. They labeled anyone eating less than 25% of calories from carbs, and more than 45% from fat, they labeled them the Keto group. Yeah, so 3000 calories a day. That’s up to 187 grams of carbs a day. That is like 10 times what typically people say is Keto. Okay.

So basically, the group that they’re calling Keto is a high fat, high carbohydrate diet is what they were actually doing. Okay? So labeling something like this as dangerous is irresponsible, in my opinion. Now I’m not saying like, oh, keto is amazing and everybody should do it. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But we have to look at these studies, and really like read not just the article, but even go into the study itself and look at who’s funding the study. How many people were they really talking about? Was it eight people? Can you actually publish data on a study done with eight people? I guess you can, right.

But calling this high carb, high fat diet keto, having test subjects report on one day’s worth of food, is this really a study? No, this is an abomination. This is like, this is fleecing us. It’s fleecing. It’s whoever’s writing these things, or doing these studies has some kind of an agenda to make this stuff more confusing for us. Right? So.

Okay, my point with telling you all this, is to say that making a decision about what you should eat can be challenging, and confusing, and somewhat stressful. And by the way, I’ve tried all these things. You know, before I’ve tried all these diets that I mentioned before, you know, the Whole 30, and the vegan and the whatever. I tried all this different stuff until I finally figured out what works for me. And what I’m doing today doesn’t look like any one of those particular diets, right?

The best study that you should follow is the study of one. And that’s you what works for you, you need to figure that out, you need to figure out what actually works best for you. And if what you’re doing improves your health, helps you to lose weight, makes you feel amazing, improves your running; but it doesn’t line up perfectly with some rando study out there. Don’t worry about it, right?

You know, if you’re getting good markers from your doctor, and like everything is looking good, and you’re feeling good, you’re losing weight, don’t worry about it. You do you, okay? So I just wanted to frame this conversation, like there’s a lot of confusing and a lot of misleading information out there.

And what people come to me and they say is, “just tell me what to eat”. So here’s where I’m going to give you like the bad news, okay? Because no one can do this. Not really, ethically, right? Because there’s no dietician, or nutritionist or doctor out there, that’s going to be able to tell you what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat, and know for sure 100% certainty that this is going to work for you no matter what. No one, right? Including me. And you just have to accept this fact. Okay, so I just want to start there.

You’re asking, a lot of people are asking, for someone to just tell them what they should eat, and what’s gonna work for them and work forever. And it just doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t. The human body is a complicated organism. With a lot of interconnected systems, we’re not steam engines where the amount of energy we put out is exchanged exactly for the amount of energy we put in, it’s not like that it’s not all about calories in calories out, there’s a lot more going on. Okay.

We’re all very different individually, we’re fundamentally different from each other, which is good. This is a good thing. As humans, we are all unique. And this is beautiful, we all have our own goals. For example, some of us want to lose weight, some of us want to gain muscle, get stronger, fit into our clothes again, see our abs again. Look better by the pool or look better by the beach, or run a faster marathon or run an ultra marathon or just run. Or just feel better about ourselves, have more energy, not feel so bloated all the time, whatever, we all have our unique goals.

And your goals will influence how you structure your particular nutrition plan. Okay, so that’s one factor we have to think about. Another factor is that we all have a unique metabolism. Some of us can eat more processed food, some of us can eat more sugar and we still like lose weight or we don’t gain weight. Some of us like me, if I just smell pizza, I gained a few pounds.

I’m very carbohydrate sensitive. When I eat carbs, I gain weight, so I keep my carb intake pretty low. And I had this friend some years ago, who was a small guy, he was probably like 140 pounds soaking wet. He was a short guy, thin guy. He never exercised, he never ran, he didn’t lift weights, he didn’t do anything like that.

But this little guy could eat more food than anybody I’ve ever seen. More bread, and pasta, and cake and sugar and whatever. And this guy never gained an ounce, ever. He just stayed the same. So is he a freak of nature? I don’t know, maybe I was always jealous. I’m like, dude, I would try to keep up with him eating and I would just gain weight like crazy.

So, your unique metabolism will make a huge difference in what works for you and what doesn’t work for you, some of us have to be a little more conscious of things like sugar and in, you know, refined carbohydrates and things like that, right? Okay, so we all have a unique metabolism that we have to factor in here, we all have our own genetics, like genetics does play a part in your, you know, weight loss, or, you know, your ability to, let’s say, you know, metabolize carbohydrates and things like that.

But it’s not the whole story, because many people have the gene for obesity, but they don’t become overweight, right. So your genetics might play a part here. And we have to kind of factor that in as well. And then we have things like cultural influences, right? Sometimes your family of origin and the culture you grew up in will dictate some foods that you eat and some foods that you definitely need to avoid. And we have to factor this into the equation as well, right.

And then we have our own likes and dislikes. Some people love Brussels sprouts, others hate Brussels sprouts, some people prefer mostly like an animal based diet and other people are more like on the vegetarian side of things. So your personal food preferences, your personal likes and dislikes have to play a part in this equation as well. Right? Because if you don’t like the food that you’re eating, you won’t stick to the plan.

I don’t care how great you think the plan is. If you don’t like it, you’re not going to stick with it, it’s not sustainable for you, right? So it has to be a consideration. Other things that we need to consider is like how much food should you be eating? How often should you eat? What should your particular macronutrient breakdown look like? Like how much fat, protein, carbs should you be getting? What should that breakdown look like?

Your hydration, your supplements, electrolytes, all kinds of stuff, right? So all those factors right there. Just think about those factors, there’s probably some I’m not thinking of right now. But all those factors right there, create a super unique plan that doesn’t really follow any one of those diets that I mentioned before. There is not one diet out there, that is going to hit all of those things perfectly for you. Or if it does, that’s pretty rare and pretty amazing.

And so do that, if that works for you, whatever. But pretty much no quote unquote, like fad diet or whatever out there is going to be the perfect plan for you out of the gate. It just isn’t, you know, some of this stuff may be a good place to start. Okay, start with Whole 30 or whatever feels good to you. Start with like paleo, maybe and then go from there. You know, you can add in more vegetables or more fruit, or maybe you do more carbs or fewer carbs, whatever.

The number one reason why I am a coach is to help you navigate all this stuff and put together a plan that’s actually made for you. And that works for you. Is it going to be keto or carnivore or vegan or paleo or Whole 30? Probably is going to include some aspects of some of these things, or all of them, but it’s not going to be one of those. Right?

So you’re probably thinking right now like, great, so you can’t tell me what I should eat then, right? Yeah, that’s exactly right. Because I can’t, even with my coaching clients, they have to fill out like a food questionnaire, I need to see like kind of where they’re coming from today. That way, we can start moving them in the right direction, right?

So they fill out a questionnaire of like, what does a typical day look like for you? What kinds of foods do you like? What kinds of foods do you not like? And then we get into some conversation about what their goals are and what they’re trying to accomplish with all of this. Right?

So and then we start them out on a plan and I have some frameworks that I can use some blueprints that we can use to get you started. But as we go, we keep track of things, right. This is the beauty of coaching, by the way, because it’s a feedback system. So if the plan is working, then we can like layer on the next step. And if that continues to work, okay, cool, then we kind of move on to the next step, and so on.

But if anywhere along this process, things stop working, we need to address those things, we need to find out why they’re not working. And then we need to make some corrections here. And this is where the custom plan that does work for you really begins to take shape. Right, it’s not some cookie cutter program, you know that you bought a book and read it, and then that’s what you’re going to do, and it’s going to work for you, you know.

And then all my clients, they don’t all do the same thing everybody does, that does something a little bit different, because we factor in all these different things, okay. But I don’t want to leave you hanging here today, I do want to give you some general guidelines to get you started on this, because there are a few things that pretty much work for most people, not everybody, but pretty much work for most people.

So I’m gonna give you a couple of places where you can start. And I think this will start moving you in the right direction, whether you’re trying to gain muscle, lose weight, improve your running, all of these kind of apply across the board. And this is generally where I start with, with most people I work with, again, everybody’s so different, we have to like, create a custom plan for each person. But here’s some things that you can do.

Number one, you’ve got to start with where you are. And the way you kind of figure out where you are is to do a detailed food inventory, like what are you eating. So you got to write this stuff down, like you got to keep track of what you’re doing right now. That means write everything down, you can write it down in a notebook, write down on a piece of paper, write a note on your computer, write on your phone.

There are apps that will help you track all this stuff. So you can actually see detailed data of like macros and things like that, My Fitness Pal, Carb Manager, Lose It. Those are three apps that all work to help you enter your food and keep track of what you’re doing. So step one is just what are you doing? Right? And it’s important that you track everything every BLT – bite, lick, taste, track everything.

And this first step might surprise you. Because you might start to notice some trends. Oh, I do notice that I do like snack on a bunch of junk food at the same time, every day, I really didn’t realize I was doing that. Or I’m eating like, you know, 10 times a day, is that normal? What’s up with that?

Or, boy, I sure eat a lot of these meals. So just keep track of what you’re doing. That’s step number one, you’ve got to find out where you’re starting, because you can’t change it if you don’t know where you’re starting from. Okay, so step number one, track everything. Do this for, I don’t know, a week or so that’s probably enough time to gather enough data. So you can kind of see, that’ll get you through a work week and through the weekend.

And if you want to do longer, that’s fine. But I think a week is a good amount of time to track just to see like where you are with all this stuff. Okay. A lot of times just being aware of what you’re doing is enough to elicit change. You know, this might inspire you to take some action that you didn’t even think about before you started tracking. So definitely track. Okay.

And then the next thing and the next easiest step is to eliminate a couple things, okay. And there’s a few things that I think work for most people if we can eliminate these three things. The most problematic for most people are going to be sugar, refined grains and seed oils. Seed oils are things like canola oil, and anything labeled like vegetable oil, corn oil. Refined grains are flours, you know, soy flour, if you just eliminate sugar, flour, and refined I’m sorry, sugar, flour and seed oils, you’re going to eliminate a huge, the three biggest contributors to metabolic dysfunction in the human body.

Okay, so most people can eliminate these things safely. My suggestion is try to eliminate these three things and see how you feel. My guess is that you’re going to feel better, pretty quickly. One caveat, if you give up sugar and you do this, like kind of cold turkey or like, Oh, I’m just gonna like give up sugar. You might experience a little headache or lightheadedness. This is normal. This is like withdrawal from sugar. Okay?

So make sure you’re drinking enough water, get enough electrolytes and you’ll you’ll do fine. You need to increase your salt intake a little bit when you when you stop eating sugar. Okay, so that’s kind of step number two first step just track everything for a little while. Try eliminating these three problematic foods and see how you feel.

All right now, after a week or two of doing that, like no sugar, no refined grains, no seed oils, you might layer in the next step would be like maybe stop snacking. Snacking is never a need for fuel. It’s never a need for like a whole meal. It’s always some emotionally driven event. So you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out, or you’re anxious, or you’re lonely or whatever. And these are all emotions. And snacking is just a way of dampening these negative emotions, right?

Eat, and you feel better, works like magic. And you do feel better for a minute, until the effect of that food wears off. And then you feel like crap again, right. And what are you snacking on? My guess is it’s not the Brussels sprouts, right? It’s probably chips, and cookies and crackers, and pretzels and leftover pizza, all the carbage By the way, pretty much all these snack foods out there are made with three ingredients sugar, refined grains and seed oils. So if you’re not eating that stuff, then snacking is pretty much like off the table anyway, right?

Okay, so these steps right here, these three steps, track everything. eliminate those three problematic foods, stop snacking, they’re very simple, right, but they’re also powerful. They will definitely get you started on your weight loss journey and help you get fat adapted. So not eating all the sugar and junk food will help your body turn to stored body fat as fuel and you’ll adapt to being a more efficient fat burner. If you want to lose weight, you’ve got to do what?

That’s right, you got to burn fat. And the right nutrition plan should do two things. It should help you regulate your blood sugar and help you burn fat and help you become a fat burning machine. Okay, so those are some things you could do to get you started. And if you ever want help with all this, if you want to make all of this way easier, join the coaching project, we’ll put together a custom plan that works for you and gets you to that most badass version of yourself. Just head over to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Cool.

All right, 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.

154. The Truth About Food Restrictions

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A lot of people feel the need to share their thoughts with me about food restrictions. They say things like, “I don’t ever want to restrict any foods”, or “All foods are OK in moderation”, or …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 154 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the truth about food restrictions. A lot of people feel the need to share with me their thoughts about food restrictions, they’ll tell me things like I don’t ever want to restrict any foods or all foods should be okay in moderation or something like that.

And I know where they’re coming from with this. They just don’t want to have to give up any of their favorite foods. But here’s the thing, if you want to change your health and fitness for the better, if you want to lose weight, maybe even change your relationship with some of these foods, something has to change, you can’t lose weight by eating the same foods that got you overweight in the first place. Right?

Nothing changes if nothing changes. So in this episode, I’m going to share with you the truth about food restrictions. And why it might be necessary to restrict some foods if you want to lose weight, and live your best life. And listen, these concepts that I talked about here on the podcast, the ideas that I share with you here, the things that I teach you here on this podcast are all great on their own.

But if you really want to improve your life, if you want to lose weight, if you want to improve your health, and you want to make changes to the way you you approach food and, and nutrition and fueling, for running and all of that stuff, then you’re going to have to put these principles into practice, you’re going to have to make some changes, you’re gonna have to do things differently.

And that process can be hard, it can be challenging to do that. Because each of us is an experiment of one, you have to kind of figure out the best sort of formula, the best plan that works for you, and for your lifestyle, and for your health and fitness goals.

If I was to tell you that you could just do these five things, and it would improve your life and everybody would do the same things and they would all get the same results, I’d be totally mistaken, I’d be remiss to do that. I don’t want to do that, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to tell you that, you know, there’s one one formula that’s going to work for everybody, because we’re all so different.

So this is why I do what I do as a coach is that I help you put together a detailed plan that will help you reach your goals. But then we analyze that plan and see how things are working for you as an individual. Are you feeling better? Are you losing weight? Are you sleeping better? Are you improving your running performance? Do your clothes fit better? Do you like the way you look in the mirror?

We’re going to look at all kinds of metrics, and then decide if we want to continue with this path or we need to change the plan a little bit. And that’s the beautiful part of coaching is that this feedback system, it’s you and I working closely together, trying some things, checking to see what’s working and what isn’t, and then we course correct as we go. That’s the way the process works.

I can’t tell you what’s going to be the answer for you as an individual because we are all so different. Okay. But if you want that help, if you want that guidance, if you want that support, the encouragement, the motivation, accountability to stay on track, and reach your health and fitness goals as we enter 2023 then reach out to me just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application for coaching and you and I’ll get on a call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’ll see you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself in 2023.

All right, so today I’m feeling pretty compelled to talk about food restrictions. Because I’ve been seeing posts on social media about this. I’ve been getting messages from people. People that are interested in working with me will tell me hey, I really want to work with you. I want you to be my coach, but I just have to tell you, I’m not going to restrict any foods.

I just want to keep eating the same foods that I’m eating and I don’t want to have any kind of restrictions because every time I feel restricted, I binge out on foods and things like that. And I want to address all of this because I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we think that we can make changes to our diet to our health to our fitness to our weight, and not experience some sort of restriction in some way. Okay?

I hear this from not just from people who want to work with me, but I hear this on social media too. And I see a nutritionist talk about this on social media. And where this comes from, is mostly from dieticians. And these are registered dietitians from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the problem with, and this is not just me saying this to you; you can go online and find lots of information about about the the academy, but this particular association is funded by a number of food multinationals by pharmaceutical companies.

And food industry lobbying groups, such as the National Confectioners Association, the National Confectioners Association, just so you know, it’s an American trade organization that promotes chocolate candy gum and mints and the companies that make these things. Okay, so the AMD is funded by companies like the National Confectioners Association. The AMD is also funded by companies like PepsiCo, and Mars and Coca Cola and Kellogg’s and General Mills.

And this industry funding gives food companies like Coca Cola and General Mills and stuff, the ability to offer official educational seminars to teach dietitians how to advise their clients in a way that advances the interests of those particular food companies. For example, in a Coca Cola sponsored seminar for dieticians, the speaker promoted free sugars consumption, like for kids as a healthy choice, like kids should just be able to eat as much sugar as they want. This is healthy for kids.

So if you’re listening to advice from registered dieticians, and I’m not saying they’re all the same, or that they all offer the same advice, but in general, a lot of these dietitians will say, you know, oh, all foods are fine. In moderation, we don’t restrict any foods, sugar is fine. Flour is fine, grains are fine. Just understand that this whole organization where they got their certification is funded by the sugar industry, by the pharmaceutical industry, by the junk food industry.

Okay, so anytime I see somebody talking about food restrictions, this idea of, of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics comes to mind, and their funding and who they’re sponsored by, okay. And a lot of their material, a lot of their training material is derived from these food companies to help promote their own interests.

So to me, this is a huge conflict of interest. And I don’t think this is where we should be getting our dietary advice. That’s just my opinion. Okay. So I want you to understand where this idea of never restricting foods comes from. Okay. So what does it mean to restrict foods? I want to just kind of touch on this briefly.

So what this means is that we eliminate some foods from our diet. And some people have a real problem with this. And I’m not just talking about dieticians, but some people think that we should never restrict any kinds of foods from our diet. But what if you find that you know, losing weight is very difficult unless you cut out sugary treats. Wouldn’t it be in your best interest to maybe cut out sugary treats, at least for a while.

Is restricting foods something that you should never do something you should always do? Something that you can do? Every now and then? Like what’s the right answer? Unfortunately, there isn’t really a right answer. But you’re going to hear my stance on this and my stance is going to be this – I think that at times it is necessary to restrict some foods. If you find it very difficult to give up junk food, if you find that you, you know, are addicted to junk food to sugar to you know, soda, to cookies, ice cream, whatever it is, wouldn’t it be in your best interest to you know, get off of that substance?

You know, restriction doesn’t mean it has to be a permanent thing. Restriction means that we restrict ourselves from indulging in that food for a period of time, and for some people, that period of time might be a long time. So I’ve worked with some people who have a real bad relationship with sugar.

And anytime they start eating some sugar, they find that they can’t stop eating sugar. The same goes for people who have issues with drinking or with drugs. You know, some people can drink in moderation, they can drink every now and then. You know, I know someone that can drink once a month. And she has like one drink a month. And I’m like, how do you do that?

And I know other people who have a sip of alcohol, and then and then they’re like off to the races. And they can’t stop drinking until they’re passed out on the floor. That was kind of my experience with alcohol, where as soon as I started drinking, and I drove, I couldn’t stop until I was, you know, pretty much passed out, you know? So, for me, isn’t it better for me to just abstain from drinking alcohol and not have to continually fight that battle? Yeah, I haven’t had alcohol in like 15 years, coming up on 16 years now. And it works for me.

So restricting alcohol, for me, feels great, my life is so much better without it. And it did take some time for me to get through that discomfort of, of change and the discomfort of wanting alcohol and not having it. But once I got through that, it was so much better for me. And today, I don’t even think about it like I don’t need to drink.

You know, I go out to dinner a lot. And I sit at the bar at dinner a lot just because sometimes it’s hard to find a table at a restaurant. And so my girlfriend and I will go out to dinner and sit at the bar, and neither of us really drink. So we just sit at the bar and eat food. While everybody around us is drinking. There’s alcohol everywhere there.

I’m watching them make all these drinks, and some of them look pretty damn good too. But I have no desire to drink, that desire is long gone for me. The same goes with sugar for me. So I was really addicted to sugar. And for many years, many more, I’ll just be honest here, decades, for me decades of eating tons of sugar and tons of carbs, and justifying it with all of the running that I was doing.

And that kind of worked for a while until it didn’t. And I started gaining weight and gained within a few years something like 40 pounds, and really had to take a look at my sugar intake and really had to make a decision like is this something that I want to continue to do? Or do I need to restrict this from my diet?

And I made that decision some years ago where I was just going to remove sugar from my diet. And the more I read about the dangers of sugar, and the problems, the health problems that are caused by sugar, and the obesity epidemic in this country that’s been caused by sugar and flour and grains and refined refined carbohydrates and junk food and processed foods. I just don’t want that in my life.

And so I decided that I was going to just cut that out of my life. Now this does not mean that I don’t ever eat any sugar. I do occasionally very occasionally. I recently had a birthday. And I had a big old piece of birthday cake on my birthday. Because you know what? Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Right? I had a piece of birthday cake. And it was great. I loved it.

Does that mean that the next day I needed to eat another half a birthday cake or whatever? No, no, it meant that I had that cake. And then I was done. So my relationship with sugar today is much different than it used to be. In the past, it was something I had to have every single day. That’s an unhealthy relationship with sugar. So for me, restricting this, and eliminating this from my diet 99.7% of the time works for me, and I feel better.

And I know that I’m treating my body right and that I’m eating foods that are actually healthy for me and aren’t harmful. For me. I think sugar is harmful. I think refined grains are harmful for us, especially done in excess. Now if you’re somebody that can really moderate your sugar intake, and you’re like, I’m not going to restrict any foods. This doesn’t apply to me because I want to eat some sugar every now and then. It’s not a big deal, then that’s great. You do you, but if you’re the person who is sitting there listening to this right now and you’re like, Yeah, I’m 40 pounds overweight. I do eat sugar. I have a bad relationship with carbs and sugar. But I really don’t want to give that stuff up.

Then maybe it’s this is a time for you to like, start thinking about that. Maybe you’re thinking he needs to change. Restriction doesn’t have to be permanent, it can be temporary. And I’ve worked with some people who have eliminated sugar from the from their diet, have got fat adapted as a runner, have lost a bunch of weight, and then have incorporated some carbs and some sugar back into their diet very moderately, and they’ve changed their relationship with this food substance, this food like substance, so I’m going to argue that sugar really isn’t necessary for our survival.

So it’s more like a, it’s really more like a drug than it is a food but I get it that you know, it’s sugar is in everything, it’s really, it can be hard to avoid. But if you’re the kind of person who can give it up for a while, change your relationship with it. And then slowly, you know, allow a little bit back in here and there, that’s fine. And if that works for you, and you can maintain your health and maintain your weight and maintain your running performance through all of that, then that is awesome. Like you do you absolutely.

But I think it’s stupid to think that we can keep eating a crappy diet, we can keep eating all this junk food and somehow magically, your health and your weight are going to improve. If nothing changes, nothing changes. And sometimes restricting some foods, you know, for a period of time is exactly what you need. So this idea that, you know, foods, we should never restrict any foods or foods in moderation. You know, I think this is not necessarily a helpful philosophy to adopt. Okay?

Some people cannot moderate. Some people cannot moderate things like sugar. It’s kind of like telling the alcoholic Hey, just just drink every now and then we’re telling the person who’s addicted to cocaine, just you know, do cocaine every now and then like, dude, can’t you just moderate your cocaine use isn’t? Doesn’t that sound stupid when I’m saying this out loud? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? It is ridiculous.

But this is what we’re telling people with sugar, which by the way, they’ve done studies that have shown that sugar lights up your brain more than cocaine does. That sugar actually has more of a profound impact on your brain. They’ve done these studies with rats, where rats would be given the choice of sugar or cocaine and the rats would choose the sugar over the cocaine. Poor little rats, right? They’re always being tormented.

But anyway, interesting studies, no doubt. And so if you don’t think sugar is a powerful drug, you know, studies like that kind of prove that it really is a very powerful drug, okay? But it sounds stupid to like, say to the alcoholic, or the drug addict, hey, just moderate your intake, you know, just you know, everybody else can just monitor it, why can’t you just moderate it and know if that particular substance is harmful for you? And that particular substance is something you cannot manage and you cannot control? Maybe it’s best to just cut it out of your life. All right, maybe permanently. I have no problem with that.

If you tell me like, hey, Patrick, I’m just going to cut out sugar and I’m going to do that permanently. I don’t need it anymore. And I’ve had clients who’ve told me that they’re like, I love the way I feel now that I stopped eating sugar. I don’t see any reason to ever go back to eat that junk. And I’m like, yeah, cool. I’m with you. That’s pretty much how I live my life. The most sugar I eat in a month would be some chocolate that I eat every now and then, some dark chocolate that I’ve tried, dark chocolate that’s like stevia flavored or whatever it has a erythritol or something, and I just don’t like it. It just doesn’t really do much for me. So I go to this dark chocolate that I get. And it’s pretty low in sugar. But it does have a little bit of sugar in there. But I’ll just use a little bit of that. And it’s so delicious. And it tastes so good.

And then of course, you know, my birthday, I do a piece of cake, piece of cheesecake or birthday cake or whatever. And then thinking back through this past year, as we’re coming to the end of the year here, how many times have I eaten sugar, a few bars of chocolate and some birthday cake. And that’s about it. That’s about it. It’s very, very minimal.

I’ve changed my whole relationship with sugar. And now I can do it very, very sporadically. And my life is not suffering because of that. So when it comes to never restricting foods, I don’t agree with that. I think that for some of us, it is perfectly fine to restrict foods. And for some people, maybe it’s fine to restrict foods for a period of time and then they can kind of incorporate them back.

But if you’re going to adopt this approach, you have to change your mindset around the food that you’re eating around that sugar or the soda or the desserts or whatever it is. The whole concept of restricting foods, it’s less about what foods you’re eating and not eating. And it’s more about your mindset around all of this.

So if you have this mindset of, you know, I’m going to occasionally house some sugar and it’s going to be okay. I’m going to make some cookies with my kids. And I’m going to eat a couple, great, do that. You have to have the right mindset around it, though.

But if your mindset is like, every time I eat sugar, I go into this, you know, binging behavior, if it’s if eating a little bit of sugar sets you up for for a sugar binge increases your cravings, you can’t stop thinking about it, you can’t stop eating. And once you start, then I’m going to say like, this is not something that you want to mess around with here. Like just stop eating that stuff.

This whole addictive behavior thing needs to stop. Right? This is just like you, you would deal with an alcoholic or a drug addict, like just cut them off. You got to get yourself off of the drug. All foods in moderation does not work. For some people it’s like saying all drugs in moderation. Doesn’t that sounds stupid? Yeah.

So what we want to do here is make a decision. You got to make a decision for yourself, what is it you want for yourself? If you want to lose weight, if you want to change your relationship with food, you’re going to have to probably experience some food restrictions. It’s almost impossible to do it any other way though.

And one of the big reasons why people buy into this idea of all foods in moderation or never restrict any foods. It’s because it justifies their crappy behavior. Right? If you buy into this idea that you should never restrict any foods, then this just justifies that addictive behavior. And you never have to change anything. You don’t have to give up anything. You never have to get uncomfortable. You never have to do anything differently. You can just kind of keep doing what you’re doing. And use well you know, this dietician said all foods should be fine in moderation.

But remember, the same people that are telling you this don’t restrict foods and all foods in moderation are that those people are being, you know, funded and trained and educated by the junk food companies, by the pharmaceutical companies, by the sugar industry. Just don’t listen to them. Okay? Do yourself a favor. Don’t listen to them. If you want to change, if you want to improve your health, improve your fitness. If you want to lose weight, you’re gonna have to make some changes here.

You’re gonna have to get uncomfortable. You’re gonna have to embrace the suck a little bit here, okay? Doesn’t mean forever. But what would it look like for you? If you were to lose this idea that you can eat all foods in moderation? What if? What if you just adopted this idea that Yeah, at least for a while. I’m gonna cut this junk out. I’m gonna stop eating junk food. I’m just gonna stop doing what? How do you think that would change your life? Think about that.

If you no longer ate sugar, if you no longer drink soda, if you no longer ate processed foods, how much better would you feel? How would your weight change? How would you feel about yourself? How would your energy levels be? I think that we all want more for ourselves. And that’s why you’re listening to this podcast right now, is because you want something more for yourself.

And if cutting out some of this junk food is the way that you get there. I say go for it. Absolutely go for it. It’s not a bad thing. Do it and cut some of this stuff out permanently. works better for you and your life, then I’m fine with that. It works for me. Maybe it’ll work for you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all I really do. Keep on Running Lean. And I’ll talk to you soon.

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

150. Do You Have an Addictive Personality?

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A lot of people find it very hard to change their diet. They have been practicing the same eating patterns for most of their life and even though this is causing dysfunction in their body, they …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 150 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, do you have an addictive personality? So a lot of people find it very hard to change their diet, okay, they’ve been practicing the same eating patterns for most of their life.

And even though this might be causing some dysfunction in their body, they can’t lose weight, they’re gaining weight, they can’t seem to change anything. Why do they do this? Why can’t they just change? And a lot of times they’ll say it’s because they have a quote unquote, addictive personality. What does this mean? What is an addictive personality? Is this even a real thing? Are some of us just wired to eat junk food, and there’s nothing we can do about it?

So today, I want to unpack this kind of delicate topic, and help you to understand whether or not you have an addictive personality and what you might be able to do about it. And I get it, changing habits is hard. Changing your eating habits is really hard. Trying to do this all on your own is the hardest.

That’s why I do what I do as the weight loss coach for runners, I encourage you to do hard things to do things you might not want to do, or things you find very difficult to do on your own, like changing your habits around food, so that you can become the healthy fit runner that you’ve always wanted to be.

I know that there’s a version of you that you have in your mind, this vision that you have for yourself. And what I want to do, what I do every day is to help you to become that person. I help you to get the outside you to match the inside you. I want the way you look on the outside to match the way you feel about yourself on the inside.

So if you’re ready to get started becoming that healthiest version of you, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners where the project is you. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started.

Alright, so do you have an addictive personality? The reason I’m talking about this today is because I hear a lot of people say this, they say oh, I can’t really change my eating patterns, I can’t really stop eating sugar, I can’t stop eating carbs because I have an addictive personality. And they use this as a reason for their, you know, overeating or over drinking or whatever it is.

So they engage in patterns of behavior that might be detrimental to their health and their fitness. And they can’t stop doing that behavior. And they’ve heard this term we’ve all heard this term, oh, I just have an addictive personality in there kind of using that as a catch all as an excuse for these patterns of behavior, okay.

Now, something I want to say here is a little bit of a disclaimer for this episode. I’m going to be talking about addiction, addictive personality behaviors. If you’re somebody who actually truly struggles with a diagnosed addiction, like if you’ve been clinically diagnosed with a substance abuse problem, you know, some sort of addiction, alcoholism or eating disorder, please seek professional medical help, okay, I’m not a doctor and nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice, cool? Okay.

So, what is this thing about addictive personality? What is an addictive personality? Is this a real thing? The short answer is no. Addiction and addictive behaviors are complex issues, very, very complex issues. But there is not one personality type that will always develop an addiction.

Addiction can affect anyone regardless of your personality. Okay, so some people can drink or use recreational drugs or eat sugar in moderation. They can do these things on occasion and they never develop any kind of addiction to these substances. Other people can try these things once and immediately develop an intense craving or an intense desire to try them again and again and again. And so the truth is this: that experts generally agree that, you know, addiction is much more complicated. It’s not a personality issue. Okay.

So I want to make sure we understand that, you know, just saying, like, oh, I have an addictive personality, it’s not, it’s not a real thing. Okay, now, let’s break this down a little bit here. Okay, so what, what is addiction? And the definition of addiction that I’m using here is addictive behaviors, okay? So behaviors that can be that we can kind of grow addicted to, okay, there’s many varying definitions of addiction. And it can be confusing to know what it is and what it isn’t. But the difference between, let’s say, somebody who’s just enthusiastic about something, and someone who’s addicted to something, is this and here’s a pretty simplified definition. But I like this definition here. I think it’s helpful.

If you have a healthy enthusiasm for food or alcohol, or shopping or whatever. And when you engage in these activities they add to your life, then that’s good. That’s a healthy enthusiasm. That’s not addiction. But if when you engage in these behaviors, it takes away from your life, if the behavior leads to negative consequences, it’s most likely an addictive behavior.

If the behavior lacks the negative consequences, or actually provides some positive results in your life, then it’s probably not an addiction. Okay. Another key factor in recognizing addictive behavior like compulsive eating, binge eating, binge drinking, is a feeling of being out of control.

A lot of people who actually struggle with addiction will report that a lot of times they feel this overwhelming sensation of being out of control, like their behavior is automatic, they don’t even know they’re doing it sometimes. And they feel out of control because they might start drinking or start eating something and they can’t stop. And that’s a very out of control feeling. Okay?

And there are many, many things in this world that we can become addicted to. I’m not just talking about drugs here. So food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, porn, social media, people are addicted to social media, they get a dopamine hit, when they open up their Instagram account, and they see they got 10 more followers or something, right? People get addicted to work. You ever heard of a workaholic, people can even get addicted to things that seem positive like working out or running.

There are people who use running as an escape from their life, they use it in a way that is a numbing, like we use alcohol or food to numb out. And then if it creates some negative consequences in your life, that may be an addictive behavior, maybe something you want to stop, stop doing. Okay? So if when you start engaging in a behavior, and you can’t stop it, or when you engage in certain behaviors, they have negative consequences they take away from your life, instead of adding to your life.

This may be addictive, this may be an addictive behavior that you’re engaging in. Okay. So what we’re really talking about here is not is not your personality, right? It’s your behavior. Now, there are things like genetics that may play a role in addiction. And there have been many, many studies about this, there might be some genes that play a role in addictive behaviors that might predispose you to obesity or alcoholism.

But listen, if you don’t drink alcohol, you don’t become an alcoholic, you’re not an alcoholic. Just because you have a gene doesn’t mean that that gene gets expressed or it doesn’t mean you’re engaging in that behavior. So you might have a gene that predisposes you to obesity, but if you don’t overeat, then you stay away from junk food, you know, you don’t become obese, you’re not you’re not obese, okay?

It’s just, we don’t want to look at these things and just say, well, this is oh, it’s just I’m, I’m wired this way, it’s in my DNA. I have this addictive personality and there’s just nothing I can do about it. So I want to kind of remove that idea from the equation here. Okay.

Now, I used to think that I had an addictive personality. And I came up with this idea or heard about this idea. When I was in my teens, I started drinking alcohol. I started smoking cigarettes. I started doing recreational drugs, you know, and and every time I tried something new like the first time I smoked a cigarette, or the first time I got high or the first time I drank alcohol, that feeling that I got that, the sensation that I got the lighting up of my brain, the high that I got from that substance was something that I immediately wanted more and more of.

So I’d like drink alcohol or, you know, smoke some pot or something like that. And as soon as that high wore off, I just, I needed that, again, I wanted to get it back again. And I did this repeatedly for many, many years. And my idea, my conclusion was that I had an addictive personality. So there’s just nothing I could do about it, I was just, you know, engaging in these behaviors regularly.

I was drinking, you know, smoking weed, I was smoking cigarettes, whatever, there’s nothing I could do about it. Because I had this personality. I was doomed to just be an addict, in one way or another, my whole life. And I thought this for forever. You know, until really, until I was in my 40s. When I was 40 years old, I decided that I had had enough of drinking, and I quit. And I had quit smoking some years before that, but, and stopped doing drugs. So I want to make it very clear that I haven’t done any kind of recreational drugs in decades, right?

But you know, the last thing was really the alcohol, it took me until I was like 40, to decide that I wasn’t going to engage in this behavior anymore. So over time, I was able to break each of these addictions to break the patterns of addiction, right, some took longer than others, you know, food, food was actually probably the last one for me.

And for me, like, once I stopped drinking, I started eating more and you know, gained a lot of weight doing that I used food, kind of the similar way that I used alcohol. And really, the food was the last thing for me. And that was just about three years ago that I stopped using food in an obsessive-compulsive, addictive way. And so here’s what I found out. And this is what I’ve discovered, that was really what was really going on with me, okay, so it’s not my personality. I’m not just an addict, and I’m doomed.

You know, the reason I’m engaging in this addictive behavior is not because of genes or my heredity, heredity, or you know, my parents or whatever, all those things might play a role. It was just conditioning. It was just conditioning, I learned that certain things make my brain light up like a Christmas tree. When I drink alcohol, when I eat sugar, I get the rush of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. And my brain loves this feeling and feels so amazing.

And as soon as that effect wears off, I just wanted to give in. And so the desire within me grows, the cravings become more intense, and my brain wants that rush again, I want to feel good again. And so I just gave it what I wanted all the time. And I reinforced the feeling, I reinforced the desire with a reward.

Every time I had the desire, I rewarded that desire with the dopamine, the serotonin, all the you know, the chemicals that get released when eating sugar or drinking alcohol. And, and I wrote, I did this over and over and over again. And it was a cycle, right? So, you use food or alcohol to feel good, and then that effect wears off, the desire intensifies, and you seek the reward again, and that’s the cycle of addiction.

So the more I continued to reward myself with my quote, unquote, like drug of choice, the more I needed it, the more I needed it, the more I had to have it, and then blah, blah, blah, it was just unending. So this isn’t a personality disorder I’m describing here. This is not a personality disorder. This is a learned behavior. This is something that I practiced over and over and over again for decades, especially in the case of alcohol, especially with food.

And this behavior, for me, felt comfortable, familiar, and safe to my brain. My brain was like, This feels good. It’s like putting a warm blanket on, you know, in the winter, and putting on that soft, comfortable sweater. So your brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Your brain just wants you to feel good.

And engaging in addictive behavior, even though it comes with all the negative consequences. It’s very pleasurable to your brain. Your brain just wants to feel good right now, at any cost. Drug addicts will do horrible things to get their drug of choice and from the outside, you see this unconscionable behavior? And you think, how can they do that? How can they hurt themselves? How can they hurt others? How can they break the law? How can they do that to the people that love?

But the reality is that drug, that high, that thereafter is way more important than anything or anyone else. That’s how powerful your brain is. That’s how powerful the drug’s effect is on your brain. And it’s really not the drug itself, but it’s the effect that the drug has on the brain. You’re always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

Well, this is intense pleasure that they’re going after, and they crave that over everything else. Okay. Alright, so you might be thinking, saying, like, how does this relate to me, Patrick? I’m not some opioid addict stealing my grandmother’s pain medication to get high. But there’s liquor, let me bring this all home here, okay. There’s a way that this pertains to most of us, okay.

Food has a very, very similar effect, right? It’s probably not as intense as drugs, but it is very addictive. Sugar is highly addictive. Carbs are highly addictive. It’s all just sugar, right and varying degrees of concentration, carbohydrates, sugars, a carbohydrate. There’s just all carbs, right. And we are a nation of people who love our carbs.

And we love to numb ourselves. And we use cards to numb ourselves, we use food, and alcohol and drugs and everything else to numb ourselves, right food is probably the most prevalent thing that we use, though. We numb ourselves to the perceived pain that we see out there in the world. If we experience stress, or anger, or frustration, or sadness, or guilt or shame, we don’t want to feel any of that stuff. That’s all painful. We just want to feel good.

So we’ve conditioned ourselves to numb those feelings with, you know, a variety of substances and food being one of the most prevalent, okay, so we’re talking about, we’re not talking about numbing out with food, like asparagus and chicken like that’s, nobody does that, right? It’s the highly pleasurable foods that we use, like a drug because they light up our brain like a drug. Sugar lights up more areas of the brain and stimulates more pleasure areas of the brain than cocaine does. They’ve done studies that show this.

So it’s those highly pleasurable foods that were after sugar, refined carbs in all their various forms. And I call this stuff carbage. So if you find yourself using carbage, as a means of numbing yourself, it’s time to stop doing that. You have to break the cycle of addiction at some point in time, you’re going to have to stop numbing, and start feeling. Now this is easier said than done. I get that. Because you’ve conditioned yourself to not feel.

So feeling an emotion, especially what we call negative emotions, like you know, guilt, shame, anger, frustration, sadness, stress. This is something we’ve gotten really good at avoiding, we will do almost anything to not have to feel one of these negative emotions. No one wants to feel stress or sadness. So just go eat something and you don’t have to feel any of that stuff. Okay? But does this really work?

Maybe for a minute. But then there’s this insidious thing that happens. So it actually creates a counter effect, there is an opposite effect that happens. So you feel stress, you feel sadness, you know, whatever, you eat some sugar, it lights up your brain and you feel bliss, it feel good for a few minutes, until that effect wears off your blood sugar crashes, you begin to feel depressed, you feel even more stressed.

Now the sadness comes back even even more intensely. And now, it’s coupled with the fact that you binge out on on a bunch of Halloween candy or whatever. And so your stress levels become even more amplified, or those negative emotions become more amplified. So now what do you do? Now you’re feeling even worse. So yeah, you go back to the candy bowl, you go back to that big bowl of Halloween candy, you just start diving in, you just start eating more and more and more. And the cycle continues.

So the answer here is you have to break the cycle. You have to stop eating the carbage you have to stop numbing yourself. You have to start learning how to feel instead of you know, not feeling this is not easy to do. I’m not going to Candy Coat and say like, oh, this is so simple. It’s not easy. It’s a simple concept. Yep. It’s not easy, it takes time it takes practice.

But I promise you, this is one of the most powerful life skills that you can and should master. If you’re willing to experience any emotion, good or bad, negative or positive, there’s nothing you can do. You can achieve anything that you want for yourself. break the cycle of addiction, it’s not a personality problem.

You don’t have an addictive personality, you’ve just conditioned yourself to use food or whatever, to feel better. That’s it. So here’s your work. Here’s what you need to do. You need to look at what you’re currently doing. Start by looking at your current eating patterns. Really look honestly, at what you’re eating everything. What foods are you eating? When and what times of the day? How often? How much? When do you go for the carbage? And ask yourself, am I eating to numb out right now? What am I feeling right before I binge out on my kids’ Halloween candy?

And this is just the first step. This is like step one, but we’ve got to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you have to understand, if you are using food to numb yourself. This is what I call radical self awareness. It’s a very, very important first step. It’s the first step to changing any kind of behavior, radical self awareness. Okay, this is your work. This is what I want you to focus on this week.

Okay. And like I said earlier, if you’re really struggling with addiction or substance abuse, you know, you need to seek out professional help. But if you want to break the cycle of emotional eating, you want to learn how to stop numbing yourself with food. I got you. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

147. Bucking Conventional Wisdom

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Most of the people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet. And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction - their blood sugar and blood pressure are too …

Continue Reading about 147. Bucking Conventional Wisdom →

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 147 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, bucking conventional wisdom. Most people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet.

And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction, their blood sugar and blood pressure are way too high, carrying around too much body fat, they’re at higher risk for heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, just to name a few.

The troubling part about all this is that this is considered normal here in this country, okay, and in a lot of other parts of the world. So if you want to be different, meaning that you want to be the healthiest human being that you can possibly be, you’re going to have to do things differently. For most people, you’re going to have to buck conventional wisdom.

So in this episode, I’m going to break down what’s considered normal, what’s not, and how bucking conventional wisdom might be the best possible thing that you could do for yourself. And as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this, or all the stuff that I’m talking about here, on the podcast, consider applying for coaching with me, it’s one thing to know what to do, it’s quite another thing to actually have the expert guidance and support of a coach to hold you accountable, and help you make all these big changes that you want for yourself.

Whether it’s improving your body composition, getting stronger, running faster, or just becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, working with a coach is how you get there. So if you want to have me in your corner, every step of the way, apply to join the Running Lean coaching project to learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.

Okay, so what prompted this conversation today. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what people consider normal, and I talked to a lot of clients who feel like what they’re doing is not normal, and therefore, is difficult or is challenging, or is uncomfortable or is hard.

And they fall into this place where they just want to be doing all the normal stuff, okay, so they feel like maybe they are the weird one at the table, they feel like an outsider, they kind of feel separate, not a part of because they’re not going along with what everybody else is doing.

And they see this as a problem. So they see it as a problem, because conventional wisdom, wisdom will tell them and conventional wisdom tells us that we should be eating the food pyramid, right that we should never restrict any foods that you know, in order to run as a runner in order to function well as a runner, you have to like eat all the carbs and all the sugar, right?

And so when we get it into our heads that we should be doing all this stuff out there, there, there becomes this internal conflict. Because what we want to do in order to change our health for the better, in order to improve our health, our fitness, or speed, our body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself, what we do to get there goes against conventional wisdom.

And people feel like they should be able to do what everybody else is doing. But they can’t do what everybody else is doing because they can’t make these changes they want for themselves. So that’s where the internal conflict comes from. That’s where the inner turmoil comes from.

Everybody else is drinking alcohol and I’m not. Everybody else is eating the pizza and getting dessert and eating the ice cream and eating all the junk food and I’m not. And the internal conflict isn’t actually caused by what other people are doing. It’s caused by your thoughts because you think you should be able to do what everybody else is doing.

And you should be able to become healthier and lose the weight and get stronger and improve your health and all that stuff. Right? The cold hard truth is this though. You don’t become badass by doing what everybody else is doing. You only become badass by ditching conventional wisdom and cutting your own path, okay?

So here’s the trouble with what everybody else out there is doing. So most people are eating the food pyramid or the MyPlate, or whatever the government is telling us we should be eating, okay? The government has this agenda, to push grains on us to push sugars on us.

All these studies are funded by the big agricultural companies, big food companies like Kellogg’s and Coca Cola. And they’re making these decisions about what we should be eating in this country. Okay, so a lot of the food programs in this country, the things that are served in hospitals, what our kids eat in schools with military eats, all this is driven by the food pyramid or my plate or whatever they’re calling it these days, okay?

This is a diet that is very high in sugar and carbohydrates, it’s up to 65% of your calories should be coming from refined grains and sugar. And you should limit fats and meats. And you should just be eating all the grains, like that’s the healthy stuff. You know, eat the fruits and the grains and stay away from you know, fat and meat and things like that.

But you know, what’s interesting is, if you want to fatten up a cow, what do you do? You feed it grains, right? So grass fed beef, grass fed, and grass finished beef, this is beef that only eats grass. If you’ve ever seen this at the grocery store, you will see that it is very lean there. It’s very red. Like there’s very little marbling in there at all. There’s very little fat in there at all, almost none.

But when you look at grain fed beef or grain finished beef, in other words, they feed it grain towards the end of its cycle, whatever, then there’s a lot of fat in that. So isn’t it interesting that cows naturally don’t eat grains, cows eat grass, and they can stay pretty lean if they do that. But that’s not what people want. So we feed cows grains to fatten them up.

You want to know how to fatten up a human being? Feed them grains, will just do the exact same thing. It’ll create all this internal visceral fat and intramuscular fat. And if you don’t want all that, then stop eating the grains. Pretty simple, right?

How about wild caught salmon? Have you ever seen wild caught salmon at the store? It’s very lean, there’s very little fat in there. It’s delicious. It’s really got a nice beautiful orangish red color. And then there’s the farmed salmon. The farm salmon is fed a diet of plants and grains and fish meal and farmed salmon. You know, it’s really fatty because they’re feeding it weird stuff like grains again, right fish don’t eat grains. Right?

And so when you feed a fish, the grains are how you fatten them up, right? And what’s interesting about salmon is that farmed salmon, because the salmon are not eating their normal diet of krill, which actually colors their flesh, because of the pink little creatures, whatever they are, they have to add dye to the to the meat or to the to the feed that they feed the salmon otherwise they would just be gray.

And people don’t want to eat grey salmon, right? So anyway, this is all really dysfunctional, like the way that we fatten up animals in order to, you know, make them more desirable for us. But here’s the thing, here’s my point with all this is that we humans were not really designed to process the Greens either.

So when we eat the greens, we get that to, you know, you want to increase the intramuscular fat and yourself just eat a bunch of grains. Okay, so the point with all this is that when you look out in the wild, when you look at wild animals, there are no overweight wild animals, because each animal species is eating a specific diet that is appropriate for that animal.

The only two animals well, maybe I’ll make an exception here, but the only animals on this planet that are overweight, would be humans and their pets and of course the cows and pigs and fish that we fatten up intentionally okay. So, we human beings are not eating the appropriate diet, but we’re following the food guidelines. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.

We’re good at following directions like this, you know, when, when the government came out with all the dangers of smoking cigarettes, we listened. We stopped smoking in the 1970s over 40% of Americans smoked. And that number is way way down to just 16% in 2018. So they came out with all these guidelines and told us Hey, smoking is bad. You should stop smoking and we did you know down from 40% to 16%. That’s me.

And the same goes for the food guidelines, right? The standard American diet that we have today was introduced in 1980. And up to that point, the obesity rates in this country were pretty stable, you know, during the 50s 60s 70s, right?

Once we introduced these guidelines, obesity rates began to surge. So they are around 13%. In 1980, obesity rates in this country were about 13%. In 2022, that number is up to 40%! 40% of people in the US are considered obese today, that’s for adults.

And then for children, this kind of makes me sad, because we’re fattening up our kids, unfortunately. But the obesity rate for children was 5%, before 1980, and it’s up to 20% today. So by all means, feel free to do what everybody else is doing, but just know that what everybody else is doing is really bad for you, it’s detrimental to your health and well being. Okay.

So you might be thinking, well, you know, Patrick, I’m a runner. And so this stuff doesn’t really apply to me, right. And here’s what I’m gonna say about that. Because every single day, I talk to runners who have been following the conventional wisdom out there, they might be eating the standard American diet as well. And they think that running is going to be the cure all.

That if they just run more, everything would be fine, if that doesn’t really work. Or they’re eating what I call the typical runner’s diet, which is all carbs all the time like they’re carbterians, right. So they carb load for days leading up to the long runs, they’re fueling up on carbs before running, they’re sucking down the gels and the goos. And the Gatorade, which is just sugar water, during their runs.

They’re making sure they get all those recovery carbs too, after their runs. And they’re basically just eating whatever they want. They’re like, I’m just gonna eat doughnuts and beer and ice cream and pizza, whatever, because hey, I’m a runner, I run, it’s not good enough. And they literally cannot understand why they keep gaining weight, especially as they get older.

All that sugar, all those grains, all that high carbohydrate diet just eventually catches up with you, and you start packing on the pounds. And I had personal experience with this too. You know, I was training for ultra marathons. And eating that kind of diet that I just described, it was like all carbs all the time.

And during this period, there were times where I was running up to 85 miles a week. And over about a two and a half year period or so I gained like 40 pounds. So all this running in the world wasn’t impacting my weight at all. I kept slowly gaining weight. And so this is not unusual. This is not just a one off type of thing.

Like I said, I talk to people every single day, who are doing what everybody else is doing. They’re following the conventional wisdom. And it just doesn’t work. They just keep getting, you know, more overweight, they’re carrying around way too much body fat and, and running is not helping with this, right, the diet is wrong, the diet does not work.

Now, the conventional wisdom out there, it might work for some people, that’s fine. If you’re one of those people that’s like, hey Patrick, I eat whatever I want. And I’m fine. I’m not overweight, I’m super healthy. And I can eat all that stuff. Like totally fine. Like if that works for you, that is amazing. But that is not the case for most people.

So you get to decide what you want to do. And if what’s working out there, you know, the conventional thinking is working for you fine, but if it’s not, you got to try a different approach, you got to do something different. Maybe try to stop eating the processed foods and the sugar and the grades and see what happens. Maybe stop doing all the fast food stuff. Because you know, it’s easy, but it’s not really good for you. It’s not really working for you.

Start eating actual real whole foods instead. Maybe stop doing the all carb diet as a runner, and see how you can improve your health and your running at the same time by ditching some of those problematic carbs and sugars and stuff. Bucking conventional wisdom is hard.

It’s hard because we are a society that loves junk food, just about every packaged, processed food is made with junk, it’s sugar, refined grains, seed oils, it’s like these are the worst three things that you can put into your body, by the way. And when you go out to eat at restaurants, you know, you’re going to places whose menus are full of foods that contain those three ingredients, right? And it can be challenging sometimes to find real food at restaurants, which seems ridiculous, right?

Restaurants are interesting too, because they’re pushing appetizers. So that’s the food you eat before you eat your food. They’re pushing out alcohol on you, that’s their big moneymaker. They’re pushing desserts on you, that’s the food you eat after you eat your food. So their job is really to drive up the price of your bill as much as possible, they don’t care about your health, they don’t care about you being healthy and feeling good.

They want to make as much money off of you as possible. That’s it, which is fine, I get it, they’re a business they’re running, you know, they want to like, make sure that you leave, you know, happy and fat and happy when you leave the restaurant, you know, and it’s working. It’s working.

You know, and then there’s like social pressures, you know, going against what normal, quote unquote, normal people are doing is hard, because there’s social pressures from friends and family. Oh, come on, Patrick, just live a little, you know, have a drink, eat the dessert, you deserve it, you’ve been good all week, you know, come on, just live a little every now and then let your hair down, so to speak.

Or, you know, oh, well, I have kids, and my kids have to eat all this junk food. So I keep all this junk food in the house, which means that, you know, I’m just going to eat it sometimes too, because it’s there. Or, you know, oh, I’m having lunch with this client at work, and my boss is going to be there and they all drink during lunch, so I got to drink too.

Or, you know, they’re all going to want to eat, you know, this pasta and bread and stuff. So I have to just go along with it. Because not doing that is going to be I don’t want to be the weird one at the table. Right.

So going against what everybody else is doing is hard, it is uncomfortable, I totally get that. Going against the grain pun intended. It’s uncomfortable, because you are different. You’re not like everyone else, you’re not doing what everybody else is doing. You’re not accepting this fate of just getting fatter, and sicker and weaker.

As you get older, you know, you’re not using sugar and alcohol to feel better anymore. And that definitely doesn’t feel good, but it’s temporary. So you’re gonna be sitting at the dinner table eating something different than everybody else may be eating. They’re all eating pizza, and you’re having a salad instead. But every time you stick to your plan, you reinforce this idea that being a healthy human being is important to you.

And every time you give in and just go along with what everybody else is doing, you reinforce the notion that your health is not that important to you, that it’s more important to just be comfortable here in this moment. So here’s what I want you to do, I want you to really ask yourself, what do you want for yourself?

Do you want to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself? I hope you do. Because if you do, you have to do things differently. Most people eat a pretty crap diet. Most people are overweight. Most people have some sort of metabolic dysfunction happening in their body. Most runners are carrying around way too much body fat.

Most people as they get older, get weaker and fatter. And you need to ask yourself, do you want this for yourself? Or do you want something more. Because if you want something more, that’s going to take a little bit of work to get there. It’s going to take being willing to be uncomfortable in those situations where you’re doing things differently. It’s going to take you getting to this place where you feel good about yourself and you feel confident about yourself.

And you feel confident in your decisions that you’re making in those moments where everybody else is doing the normal junk food and getting whatever food is there, and you’re doing something different. You’re being different. And I think that when you get to that place, it is an amazing place to get to. Because you no longer care about what is considered normal.

The conventional wisdom doesn’t work for most of us. So we got to buck the system, we got to do things differently. We get to cut our own path. And you get to decide if that’s what you want for yourself. Because if you do want that, be willing and ready to embrace the discomfort that comes along with that.

There will be discomfort that comes along with that, I promise you, but it’s short lived. It’s temporary, it doesn’t last forever. It takes some time to get past that. But once you do get past that, that’s where the good stuff really starts to happen. Cool. And as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll put together a personalized plan just for you. I’ll help you stay on track and together we will get you there. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

145. All or Nothing is Not Always Best

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I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately from people in the low-carb athlete community who tend to adhere to an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to diet and exercise. They hear that low carb …

Continue Reading about 145. All or Nothing is Not Always Best →

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 145, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, all or nothing is not always best. So I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately from people in the low carb athletic community, who really tend to adhere to an all or nothing mentality when it comes to their diet and how they exercise.

So they might hear that low carb is a good way to go. And so they’re like zero carbs all the time. And that’s how they do it. And that’s kind of what they’re putting out there in the stories. They’re telling you just about no carbs, no carbs, no carbs. They might hear that training in the fasted state has certain benefits, which I’ll be talking about that in a minute, and it absolutely does; but then they do all their workouts fasted, no matter what, all of them all the time.

So today, I want to address these principles, these beliefs that I think some people have, because I think it’s important to understand when the all or nothing approach should be embraced and when it should be avoided. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why all or nothing is not always best, especially when it comes to nutrition and exercise for the endurance athlete.

So when should you use fuel for workouts? When should you add carbs around those workouts? How much fuel, how many carbs? What types of carbs? These are all great questions. And they require more information, they require more context, you can’t just answer these questions for everyone the same way because we’re all different. Everyone is different.

And we each need to figure out the right formula, right for what is going to work for you as an individual. It’s like building the perfect recipe around fuel, fuel timing, the types of exercises, you’re doing your exercise intensities, your rest, recovery, all that stuff matters. And it’s all different for each person, there’s not one recipe that’s going to work perfectly for every individual. This is why I do what I do. This is why I’m a coach.

This is why I work one on one with my clients to help you figure out the right recipe to help you figure out the right recipe that’s going to get you to your fitness goals, get you to your weight loss goals and help you improve your health overall. The only way to figure all this stuff out is really by kind of trying some things, seeing what works and then of course correcting right it’s trial and error.

And having a coach there to guide you through this process every step of the way is going to make it so much easier. So if you’re looking for that guidance, the support, the encouragement that you get from a coach, the motivation and the accountability apply to join the Running Lean coaching project. To learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join me in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners the Running Lean coaching project where the project is as always you.

Alright, so let’s get into this all or nothing approach here. Okay, and why I’m talking about this today is because I’ve been hearing a lot about people that embrace the low carb approach to endurance sports. And I love this approach. Obviously, I talk about this all the time. And they also talk about fasted workouts and they and they talk about doing all of their workouts fasted all the time.

And when I hear these things, when I hear people talk about zero carbs and carbs being bad and you have to avoid all carbs all the time. And when I hear about people doing all their workouts fasted all the time, it kind of makes me cringe just a little bit. And maybe I’ve kind of promoted some of this by talking about how I’ve done a marathon.

Well, actually I’ve done like two marathons and 50k all with zero calories fasted just to say like, hey, you know, you can do this right? You don’t need carbs to run, you know, it’s kind of fun. I tried to prove a point, you know, but maybe people think that this is like, the only way to go and it really isn’t. Okay. So a low carb approach to endurance sports does not mean zero carbs.

And training in the fasted state at times doesn’t mean you have to do all of your workouts fasted, and it doesn’t mean that you never fuel for anything. Okay, so I wanted to talk about this today and really kind of shed some light, especially in these two areas, when it comes to nutrition.

And the low carb approach, I want to make sure we understand that there are times when you will want to use some strategic carbohydrates to fuel your workouts and, and then adding fuel for workouts and not necessarily doing everything in the fasted state. Now, there’s benefits to doing these things to doing a low carb approach, or kind of a zero carb approach at times. There’s also benefits to training in the fasted state at times. But it doesn’t mean we do it all the time.

And it doesn’t mean that we never use carbs or never use fuel for our workouts. So I want to make sure that we get a better idea of when it’s okay to do these things. And when it’s okay to experiment with adding in some fuels, and especially adding some carbohydrates to help improve our performance to help improve our fitness. Because they’re not, as you know, carbs are not the enemy.

Carbs are not evil, carbs are not bad. Yes, the types of carbs you use does matter. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But just remember that all or nothing is not always best, okay, and all or nothing is definitely not how we need to do, how we need to do all this stuff. Okay, so I just want to shed some light on this so that we can be successful and do it in a way that can support us.

And we can add some carbs and add some fuel and not have to do all this stuff. Totally fasted or unfasted, or zero carbs, it’s not a zero carb approach, I’ve never really talked about that being the only way to go, okay. So, all these things matter. And I kind of touched on this at the beginning here, all these things depend on you as an individual.

So being fat adapted just means it kind of means different things to different people. And being a fat adapted athlete is going to look different for somebody who maybe they’re training for their first 5k. And so they’re doing like a couch to 5k program and they’re just getting started with running. And they’re doing most of their runs at a very low intensity, a very low heart rate. And they’re losing weight in the process. And they’re feeling amazing. That might be a great place for someone to do a lot of workouts fasted and to really not dip into the carbs too much, okay.

But if you’re somebody who is, you know, training for your fastest marathon, and you’re trying to qualify for Boston, and you’ve got to shave, you know, 15 minutes off your marathon time, your intensity level is going to be high, your training is going to be high. And for higher intensity levels and longer training sessions and more intense longer training sessions especially, you will absolutely want to fuel for those things.

And you do not have to do those things fasted. So being fat adapted means different things for different people, we’re all a little bit different. We have to accept and acknowledge this. And then all these different differences in our goals in our training levels and our fitness levels in our gender like men and women need to feel a little bit differently for these things. So all these things matter.

And we have to look at this as an experiment of one and you’ll hear me say this probably 10 times today, because an experiment of one is always how we approach all of this stuff when it comes to changing your diet, losing weight, getting faster, you know, getting stronger, we all have to do this and play around with some things and figure out what works best for us. Okay, so first I want to talk about carbs.

So the first principle that I kind of hear people get into is, you know, oh, low carb, that means no carbs, zero carbs. And as athletes, we can use carbs. And we can time our carbs around our workouts and it’s not going to kick us out of fat burning mode.

It’s not going to, you know, ruin what you’re doing here and it’s not going to mean you’re starting from scratch. I’ve heard some people ask that question where Oh, you know, ate some carbs. Does that mean I’m not fat adapted anymore? It’s like no, absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that at all.

Getting fat adapted means you’re burning fat really efficiently. you’ve trained your body to burn fat efficiently as athletes and especially if you want to increase your performance and increase your fitness. It’s a good idea to use some carbs and time them around your workouts and improve your metabolic flexibility, you want to be metabolically flexible, you want to be able to use both carbs and fat as fuel efficiently. Why not?

Why would you just rely on fat as a fuel source? Fat is a great fuel source and, and you can really get really efficient at burning fat even at higher intensities, but we don’t have to use just fat as fuel, we can absolutely use carbs, okay. So if your goal, again, you’re gonna, you want to crush your fastest half marathon, different phases of that training cycle will require you to increase your carbohydrate intake, especially around those workouts, you know, and maybe even on a daily basis as your training cycle increases.

So if you’re, you know, if you’re doing the lower carb approach, and your goal is to lose weight, and you’re probably in that 30 to 50 grams of carbs a day kind of mode, or whatever, and that kind of works for you, you know,if your intensity is increasing in your workouts, and you’re really crushing some more intense harder workouts, you might be in that 80 to 100 grams of carbs, a day kind of mode, you know, and, and it’s not going to kick you out of fat burning mode, and it’s not going to impair your performance, if anything, it’s going to give you that extra gear, when your intensity increases.

So initially, we do want to keep our carbs low and get fat adapted. And then over time, we want to start to slowly kind of ramp up our carbs, as your body responds positively to the changes, you want to ramp up your carbohydrate intake, depending on the intensity levels of your training. And this does not mean that we’re going to just go crazy and eat, you know, just you know, whatever you like to eat, that’s like pure sugar and junk food, like we’re not talking about that.

We’re talking about using real whole foods, sources of carbohydrate and some slow burning carbohydrates in order to improve your running performance. So remember that, you know, when we this whole low carb approach is to help regulate blood sugar, it’s to help, you know keep your blood sugar from from spiking and crashing, to keep your insulin levels normal instead of because when your blood sugar spikes, insulin spikes, and then you’re you’re in that fat storage mode, you know, you’re burning, you’re burning the sugar, you’re burning sugar and you’re storing fat and we need to get blood sugar normal.

We need to stop the spikes and crashes in the blood sugar, stop the spikes and crashes in the insulin levels so that your body can start burning fat instead of burning all the carbohydrates that you’re eating. Okay. Think of this like a fire. I love this analogy. So sugar, it’s like kindling, right? It burns first. It’s the first fuel source your body will use. It burns very quickly. But it’s not sustainable. It depletes rapidly and then you’re left with nothing. Okay? So sugar’s like kindling, it burns quickly, it burns first, but it doesn’t burn very long. It’s just it’s boom, burns and it’s gone.

Whereas fat burning is like the logs you put on the fire right, it takes a little bit longer to get going. But once it’s burning, it’s going to last a very, very long time. And to achieve this log burning to achieve the fat burning, we need to get rid of the sugar and the refined carbs and the processed junk food and the carbage, I like to call it, and we need to get into the fat burning, we need to get into the log burning.

And once we do that, you will have steady energy and you will have plenty of energy to fuel your you know lower intensity workouts especially at the beginning, okay, but that does not mean you never use any kind of carbs to improve, okay. And again, what we’re after is metabolic flexibility, the ability to burn both types of fuel sugar and fat very effectively.

Humans are really good fat burners, we’re, we’re naturally good fat burners, it’s our natural state of being. And we’ve just gotten away from that state. This junk food is processed carbohydrates, the carbage that we’ve been eating, it now makes up over 50% of the calories that we consume here in the United States. And that number is rising every single year. We’ve become a nation of sugar eaters, and therefore sugar burners.

So we’re not burning fat naturally anymore. And we’re gaining weight and you know, experiencing all kinds of metabolic issues and diseases and you know, obesity and all these other things, right? So we all were talking about doing things like lower the carbohydrate intake, get rid of the junk food, get rid of the garbage and start eating real whole foods. Doesn’t mean zero carbs. It does mean we will ditch a lot of the problematic carbs But we want to use some types of carbohydrates and time them around our workout so that we get the benefits of the added sugar intake from the added carbohydrate intake.

Because when you’re burning fat efficiently and when you’re exercising at a higher intensity, you’re going to burn through that sugar that you’re taking in, you’re going to burn through the carbohydrates that you’re fueling with pretty quickly. And then you’re back into fat burning again. Okay, so it’s not like you just like, oh, you’re just always burning sugar or always fat, you’re always burning both, right, but at different levels, different intensities, okay.

So when you increase your exercise intensity, you might also need to increase your carb intake. And this is where most people kind of freak out a little bit, right, they’re like, oh, my gosh, no way, I don’t want to eat any carbs, I’m gonna kick myself out of fat burning mode, I’m gonna be fat adapted, you know, low carb, low carb, zero carb.

But listen, don’t freak out, there’s a way to do this in a way that it’s not gonna really affect your body’s ability to burn fat, you can still burn fat and burn sugar at the same time, okay, if most of your training is done at a low heart rate and a lower intensity, then there’s not much of a need to add carbs as fuel, you can continue to burn fat efficiently.

And if you’re just doing some, some lower intensity stuff, lower heart rate stuff, you’re gonna be fine, you can improve your fitness, you know, you can get a little bit you know, stronger as a runner, and you can get a little bit faster, and that’s going to be fine. But if you really want to make some gains, you want to improve fitness, you get stronger, get faster, workout at higher intensities, higher heart rates, then some strategic carbs around those workouts will give you the energy that you need to improve and to and to go a little harder.

And to have that extra gear that you need to hit those faster times and hit that PR, okay. And it doesn’t mean that you have to go and start downing all the gu’s and gels and sports drinks that are laden with high fructose corn syrup and all this junk, right? There are fuels that are specifically made for the fat adapted athlete, and there’s brands like Muir energy, and that’s M-U-I-R, there’s S-fuels, there’s you can and these all make products that have slow burning carbohydrate fuels designed for the low carb athlete, so check out those brands, but really, we’re talking like 12 to 20 grams of slow burning carbs per hour might be enough to give you that little bit of an extra edge that you need.

You know, 20 grams of carbs is like a medium size banana, this is not a lot of fuel we’re talking about here, okay, so don’t freak out about this too much. But consider trying some carbohydrates around your workouts and see what works for you. Again, we’re all different. This is an experiment of one, try it and see how it feels and how it works for you.

If your goal is just to lose weight, if you’re just interested in losing weight, you’re not interested in improving your running or running longer, then stick to the low carb approach. You know, again, it doesn’t mean zero carbs, but just stick to the low carb, you know, nutrition regimen. Keeping in mind that, you know, some people will require slightly more carbs than others. And everybody’s a little different, you know.

In talking about like pre menopausal women versus postmenopausal women, pre menopausal women will probably need a little bit more carbs, especially around certain days of their cycle. I’m actually going to put together a podcast on this topic and just kind of talk about how women are different from men and how they require a little bit of a different approach when it comes to nutrition and around fitness.

Because you guys men and women are different, did you know that we are very different and we all have some slightly different needs. And I’ve been really doing some research on this lately. And it’s a fascinating topic to me. And I’m learning a lot about how women respond differently to dietary changes in intensity levels, changes in their workouts and things like that.

So we can all do this, we can all kind of maintain that kind of a lower carb approach. But we don’t have to do it with zero carbs. Okay, so when it comes to carbs, especially for the endurance athlete, all or nothing is definitely not always best. Adding in some carbs as fuel around your workouts is recommended for most people for most low carb athletes.

Especially if you want to improve your performance, okay, you can still maintain efficient fat burning, you can still lose weight, you can still prioritize fat as that main fuel source you still get to those, those logs that you’re burning, okay, but you’re just adding in a little bit of kindling to help get things going. Okay. And you’ll burn through the carbs during your workout.

So you’re not going to be like storing a lot of extra energy as fat or anything like that. Okay? So for the first sort of all or nothing, zero carbs versus some carbs, definitely, you know, give it a shot, try fueling some workouts and see how it goes.

The other all or nothing mentality is around fasting and whether or not we should be doing all of our workouts in that fasted state. And I’ve just seen a lot of people talking about this lately. And I wanted to really clear this one up too, because I think there’s some misconceptions here as well.

So, fasting, the way I’m talking about here is basically when you train in the fasted state, meaning you haven’t had any kind of fuel, any food at all, really no calories, for, you know, typically like 4 to 12 hours prior to working out. So let’s say you typically what most people do is they eat dinner, the night before they wake up in the morning, it’s been, you know, 12 hours, since they last ate, they might have a cup of coffee, and then they go and do a workout that would be considered training in the fasted state, they do a workout, they don’t use any kind of fuel.

And this is pretty, pretty effective. You know, this is a good way of ramping up, the fat burning is a good way of getting your body fat adapted. So fasting has lots of benefits and training in this state has many, many benefits, right? And please understand that fasting this way is like super normal and supernatural, it’s just kind of our natural state as humans.

One of the things I’ve heard recently, which I think is really fascinating is that the human body is designed to process digest, metabolize about two meals a day, you know, one to two meals a day is about all that we’re really supposed to be metabolizing because our pancreas can’t work more than that. And our liver has issues if we are processing more than that.

So the systems of the human body are naturally designed for eating a couple of times a day, and that’s about it. So fasting is really a natural state, again, burning fat and fasting very natural states for humans to be in, okay. But we’ve gotten away from that. We have to, you know, adhere to this three meals a day, plus eight snacks and dessert, you know, it’s like we’re eating 13 times a day or whatever. It’s ridiculous, right? We don’t need to eat that often. Right?

But so fasting, working out in the fasted state just means that you’re working out without added calories without fuel for that workout. Okay, so it helps you to get fat adapted, it helps you to stay fat adapted helps you to burn more body fat, no fuel coming in, means your body is prioritizing that stored body fat as fuel.

And the low carb approach and fasting like this and doing workouts in that fasted state all help to maintain the blood sugar like I mentioned earlier, they help to keep the insulin levels down, help to prioritize fat as fuel will help you to tap into that stored body fat as fuel. These are all amazing benefits of working out in that fasted state.

You know, the fasted workouts also help improve your fat burning efficiency. And even at higher intensities. So for most normal carb adapted athletes, you know, they’ll burn fat up to about 60-65% of their VO2 max and then they kind of start prioritizing just carbohydrates as fuel, they need carbohydrates fuel.

But as fat adapted athletes, we can actually push our fat burning up into the 75, 80 90% range. And there are some elite athletes who even go above 90% and fat burning, so 90% of their VO2 max. So this is like, massively cool, right? This is massively cool because we can not only burn fat at the lower intensities, but we are also really good at burning fat at the higher intensities, okay, so this is going to help you improve your higher intensity running is going to indefinitely improve your endurance more fat burning means you’re just going to be able to go longer without bonking, which is super amazing.

And then also training in the fastest state helps to improve your hormonal responses. So more adrenaline gets produced when you’re working out in the fasted state, which means you can go a little bit harder. It’s almost like a performance enhancing tool, you know, and then more growth hormone gets produced to help you recover faster from those workouts.

So this combination of you can go harder and recover faster is pretty awesome. And then people are like, well, yeah, so I want to do that all the time. But here’s the thing. Is it necessary or is it a good idea to always do all of your workouts in that fasted state? Yeah, there’s some great benefits to doing it. But it isn’t necessary to do it all the time.

So, I recommend people definitely train in that fasted state to build the fat adaptation and to really get efficient at burning fat. Okay, and this could take a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Again, we’re all an experiment of one. Everybody’s preferences are a little bit different. Some people love training in that fasted state, some people just don’t, they just don’t like doing it doesn’t feel good. I’ve heard people that kind of get sick when they train in the fasted state, they need some fuel, okay, great, then you’re the kind of person that would benefit from some fuel, okay.

But if you find that you, your workouts, maybe you’re taking a hit like you’ve hit a plateau in your fitness and you’re not improving, maybe you’re not getting faster, maybe you’re not recovering as quickly. Maybe your heart rate isn’t where you want it to be, it’s staying super high, you might want to consider adding in some fuel for your workouts, you know.

But I do love the idea of doing kind of the bulk of your training, especially at the beginning, in this fasted state, when you’re trying to get fat adapted, it just helps you to get through that initial phase, that first phase of getting your body trained to burn fat more efficiently. It really helps with that whole process. Okay?

So it’s a good way to begin, but it doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time. So how do you know like, when it’s time to add some fuel to your workouts, keep track of your workouts, log your workouts in a log or journal. Maybe you use an app. But you know, look at things like heart rate, pace, how you felt during that workout recovery time, you know, how long does it take you to recover? And then don’t be afraid to just try some fuel and see how it affects you.

Everybody’s a little bit different. So you got to try something and see if it works. If it does, great. If not, then try something else. And what kinds of fuel are we talking about here? Well, I just mentioned using carbs as fuel, so that’s always an option. But it doesn’t even have to be carbs. Because when you’re fat adapted, you can take advantage of using exogenous fat as fuel so fat that you eat, you know, fat and protein actually can work pretty beautifully as a fuel source.

Okay, so remember, we burn sugar first, and we can burn like fat that we get in our diet and then we kind of burn that stored body fat. So if we you know, don’t have carbs coming in, we’ll be able to take advantage of the some of the fat that we’re getting in our diet so we can actually use some fat as fuel before a workout.

And this might be as simple as putting MCT oil and heavy cream and some collagen in your coffee pre workout. That’s it. Like that could be how you fuel a workout. And remember all the brands that I mentioned above Muir energy, S-fuels you can they all have products for like pre workout, for during a workout, for post workout, they have bars that have fat and protein, you could do an hour before workout, they have drink mixes with fat and amino acids and electrolytes that you can do during a workout they have kind of a gel product that you can use during longer training runs.

And you could do those, you know, maybe they have 12 to 20 grams of carbs, you can do one every hour or so you know, and all these products. Again, they’re designed with the low carb athlete in mind, they’re designed to keep you in the fat burning mode to still prioritize fat burning, but give your body that little bit of extra energy that you need for those longer runs are those more intense workouts. So fat is fuel is a good approach and it’s something that you definitely want to try. And you might find that a little bit is all you need.

Okay, so again, like when should you start adding fuel and stop doing all your workouts fasted, again, just kind of play around with when you if your training is starting to tank a little bit or if you’re plateauing. But if you’re training for something like a marathon, and you’re up to 12 to 15 miles and you’re doing those fasted and you’re feeling pretty good, you might want to try you know, going forward from that point on, you might want to try fueling and see how it goes for you and try a couple of different products.

Try a couple of different fueling approaches, because here’s the thing, you don’t want to wait till race day right to try to fuel for your race. If you’re deciding you’re going to use fuel on race day. Don’t wait till race day to experiment with it; you have to play around with it ahead of time. You have to practice fueling strategies during your training, right? Nothing new on race day ever. Okay?

So that could be where you decide that feeling might be a good strategy for you. workouts that are over 90 minutes is a benchmark a lot of people use when they start to choose like maybe the fat protein combo for for the most part. And then as your intensity increases, your carb intake should increase as well. So the fuel sources, the carbohydrate, fuel sources can increase as your intensity levels increase, or even if you’re going super long, maybe you’re training for an ultra 50k 100k 100 miles, something like that, you’re definitely going to want to have, you definitely asked us fuel for something like that. And that that approach is going to be very different from what it looks like for, you know, fueling for a half marathon or something like that, right.

So, when it comes to fasted training, just remember, all or nothing, not always best. And really, what we’re going for with all of this is metabolic flexibility, we want to be able to burn both fat and sugar very effectively, right, we want to train our bodies to burn both fuel sources really well, so that we have the ability to use both types of fuel and improve our running, improve our fitness, improve our strength, improve our intensity, and become the badass runners that we know we can be okay.

So to do this does not mean that we have to do everything, all or nothing, it doesn’t mean we have to do all our training fast, it doesn’t mean we have to do zero carbs, it means we can use proper types of fuel and, and train fueled and, and use carbs in a very strategic way to help us and not hurt us. It doesn’t have to kick us out of fat burning mode, it doesn’t have to, you know, ruin what we’re doing here, right?

So, and as always, if you want some help with any of this or all of this, apply for coaching you and I will work closely together, we’ll put together a personalized plan for you. I’ll help you stay on track so you can achieve those goals so you can achieve your weight loss goals, your fitness goals, we can do it all cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and I’ll see you over in the Running Lean coaching project. 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.

139. Eating Healthy Is So Boring!

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I’ll bet you’ve thought about eating healthy at one point or another in your life and then thought, nah…that’s going to be way too boring. If this sounds like something you’ve thought (or even said …

Continue Reading about 139. Eating Healthy Is So Boring! →

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 139 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, eating healthy is so boring. I bet that you’ve thought about eating healthy at some point in your life. And then you’ve thought, man, that’s going to be way too boring.

If this sounds like something you’ve thought or even maybe said out loud, then you are definitely not alone. People tell me all the time that they can’t stick to their food plan, or they don’t even want to start in the first place. Because it’s all going to be so boring. And I used to think this way too, but definitely not anymore. I’ve embraced the idea that food can be a little bit boring. If it means I get to live a long, healthy, happy life.

So today, I’m going to be talking about this big lie, this lie that eating healthy is boring. And how you might be able to radically improve your health by rethinking this by rethinking how exciting your meals really need to be. And as a licensed sports nutritionist, my focus is on food, it’s on nutrition, that’s like my number one focus, I want to help you make good choices I want you to I want to help you change your eating habits, I want to help you to change your body composition, to lose weight to gain muscle.

But really, what I want to help you with is to become the healthiest version of yourself to become healthy, fit and strong. So my main focus is on nutrition. This is the main driver of good health in my opinion. And I understand that you also want to crush your running goals. So this is where I’m a little bit different from other coaches.

So you might be training for a half marathon or a full marathon, or your first 5k. You know, maybe you’re just getting started with running. And lots of coaches out there will tell you that you cannot lose weight while you’re training for some race or while you’re running. You should stop running to lose weight. And I think this is ridiculous.

Okay, so for us, we, the people in my coaching program, we change our eating habits while we’re training for a marathon, lose weight feel better, running gets improved, our health is improved. And we do it all in a way that feels good for you. It’s not about severe caloric restriction, because we can’t do that when we’re training for a marathon. Right?

We’re not focused on counting calories and doing all this math about how many calories you should be eating because you ran this many miles, which means you burn this many calories and all that stuff, right? That’s just that’s too much. It’s ridiculous. That’s not how we do this, right? I do things differently.

I focus on helping you simplify nutrition, we don’t want to make it more complicated. And I want to help you change habits around food, simplify change habits, and make healthy eating just a way of life. It’s like it has to be part of who you are and what you do. Right. It has to be something you can do without a coach without me.

So the goal is to help you develop new habits, develop a new mindset. So that how you eat just becomes effortless. And it’s just what you do from here on out. So if you want help simplifying your nutrition, you know, maybe you’re ready to embrace the boring. I’ll talk about that more in a minute here.

And if you want a plan that also supports your love of running, then I want to encourage you to apply for my coaching program, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application and we’ll talk about coaching. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Sounds good. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project. That’s where the project is you.

Alright, let’s talk about how eating healthy is so boring. The reason I’m talking about this today is because I’ve had a lot of people say this to me recently. I’ve had clients, potential clients, I’ve had friends and family all tell me that they don’t want their food to be boring, and that some people haven’t even engaged in any type of, you know, change of their nutrition regimen, and they’re just thinking about it. And they’re just thinking about like, oh, I could never do that because it would be so boring.

Here’s the thing that is really just a thought. It’s a thought that you have in your head. And it’s a thought that stops you from making any kind of changes. And if you want something different for yourself, then you have to, like drop that thought that eating healthy is going to be boring, okay?

Eating healthy, can be fun, and can be sort of exciting. But if you think that it’s going to be boring, then you’re, that’s what’s going to be reality for you. If you think eating healthy, nutritious food on a regular basis is going to be boring, then that is your reality.

So I just want you to like embrace this idea that this idea of food being boring, is just a thought, okay, but it definitely is something that comes from somewhere. Right? So there’s this idea that food has to be exciting. Food has to be amazing. Every time we sit down to eat a meal, it has to be an experience to remember forever.

And really, this is all just marketing, right? This is all just marketing. It’s the big food companies that are coming together to market an idea to us. And the idea is this. The idea is that if you want to have an amazing, fulfilling, happy life, then every time you sit down to eat a meal, it has to be amazing. It has to be an entertainment experience.

Everything you eat has to be so delicious that you are compelled to post about it on social media. And there’s a term for these photos of food that make you drool and make you crave whatever food is in the picture. And they call it food porn, like porn. But for food, that’s kind of weird, if you think about it, okay. But this is what this is the term I didn’t make it up to this is the term that a lot of people use for this idea of posting all these pictures that make you drool and make you say, oh my gosh, I have to have that.

Another term for this feeling that you get is called euphoric recall. So you see a picture. And you remember how amazing the food was, and you remember an experience similar to that. So you may have eaten that exact thing, but it reminds you of something else that you’ve had. Or you can just be sitting around talking to friends and you can, you know, recall, this amazing meal that you had, or this amazing dessert that you had.

And it brings back all these thoughts and feelings of euphoria, like you start to feel amazing, your mouth will start to water and all you’re doing is just thinking about food. Right. And so this idea of euphoric recall, really, it’s a, it’s a mechanism that’s happening in our brains, where we are driven to remember very deeply and very vividly an experience.

And it’s a good evolutionary thing, because in the past, we may have, you know, encountered some berries or some honey as hunter gatherers, and we would, you know, eat that particular food. And we would want to remember that because it will be like, hey, this is a really good source of calories, or this is something that we can, you know, that is that tastes good. It’s delicious, it feels good. We want to remember that.

So your brain sort of locks that into your memory. But now we’re doing it about everything that we eat, and it’s becoming a problem. It’s becoming a problem, because people can’t even imagine switching their diet and eating a more healthy diet because they’re like, Well, what’s going to happen to all this amazing food that I remember, this is all just stuff that’s happening in your brain, by the way.

And food never used to be like this. Like this is a relatively new phenomenon. This idea of like food being so amazing, and there’s a meta or a scientific term for this. It’s called hyper palatable food. Hyper palatable means it’s uber uber palatable, like, like I mentioned, some berries, like you know, we’d find some wild blackberries, you know, as, you know, ancient hunter gatherers, and we’d be like, oh my god, this is so amazing, or fruits that we would find back in the day.

Now, those things have been engineered to become hyper palatable. And then there’s all these scientists that are actually creating hyper palatable foods in the lab, you know, and they really light up our pleasure centers in our brain, these foods light up our pleasure centers, just like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines. And they know what they’re doing. They know that it’s going to give us a rush of dopamine, they know, it’s going to give us a high.

And we’re just buying into this whole idea. I’m gonna sound a little crazy here. But that, to me, this is very much like what drug dealers do, they want to get you hooked on their product. Because once they get you hooked on your product, you can’t stop thinking about it, you want to get that feeling again. You know, and they know what they’re doing, they put it right on the label, like once you pop, you can’t stop.

They know that we’re addicted to these hyper palatable, processed foods, and we can’t get enough of them. So the scientists that are creating these things are creating something that really, really lights up our pleasure centers. A lot of times even more so than those drugs I mentioned.

They did this experiment with rats, I think poor little rats, right? They’re always like experimenting on them. But they gave them a choice between sugar and cocaine. And over time, the rats preferred the high that they got from the sugar, so they would go for the sugar or the cocaine.

So when you talk about something that’s addictive, I mean, is sugar addictive? I mean, we crave it like a drug. We get hooked on it, like it’s a drug, we can’t stop thinking about it, and how amazing it is, like a drug. But they say it’s not a drug. And that’s okay. I mean, they can say that, but we sure act like it is. We sure buy more and more and more of this stuff, because we can’t stop eating it and are hooked on the product. We’re hooked on the quote unquote, drug. Okay?

If we stop, we’re gonna have withdrawal symptoms. I see this all the time, I help people get off sugar all the time, by the way. And when we stop eating sugar, our brains start to freak out. And we have withdrawal symptoms, we have headaches, and we feel nauseous, and we’re grumpy. And it’s just like coming off of other drugs like cocaine or alcohol. Right.

And if we stop just the idea, just thinking about stopping makes us feel like we’re gonna be missing out on all that good stuff. All that amazing stuff. Everyone else is having all these amazing experiences, how come I can’t. So just the idea of like, not eating sugar, kind of freaks us out. You know, food can’t be boring. I can’t live a boring life. Everybody else is having an amazing life. They’re living their best life. Thank you, Cheesecake Factory.

So they’ve created this product that really gets us hooked on their product. And when we think about not using the product, we feel bad. So we don’t want to give it up. And we were being sold this idea that food has to be amazing. And it has to be an experience. And if you’re the kind of person that’s like, hey, I just want to eat healthy food. I just want to live a long, healthy life, healthy life, right?

But we can’t even do that. Because we have sort of convinced ourselves or we’ve been programmed to think that it’s just going to be too boring. Eating healthy food and living a long happy life can’t do it. It’s going to be too boring. It’s going to be too boring. So we have this. We have a physical addiction to food. We have a mental and emotional addiction to food, or obsessing over food just like an addict obsesses over their particular drug of choice.

And we’re certainly acting much more like this as a drug than a food. So I just want you to know that if you’re feeling like you cannot make a change like this in your life, like you can’t stop eating, you know the junk food and you can’t stop going to Cheesecake Factory or whatever it is that you’d like to do. Because this idea of like, oh my life is going to be boring. I’m never going to be happy again.

I just want you to rethink that. Because you know food did not used to be like this. This is a recent thing in the last 50 years especially really the last probably 20 years since the Internet, this has really become this has exploded, right? This idea that food has to be amazing or whatever. But really in the last few 100 years, let’s just say, that’s really no time at all in this, you know, in the life span of humans.

So we hunted and gathered, we came together to celebrate with food. And we came together with our tribe and with our families, we socialized, we connected we bonded over food. It was nourishment, it was fuel as a source of life. It was something to be set to celebrate, you know, it was important. And nobody would ever say like, oh, God, this is so boring.

You guys, woolly mammoth again, geez, this is so boring. I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous. But that’s kind of where we are today with all of this, right. But again, this is all just a big lie. And you don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to buy into this idea that food has to be super exciting and that it has to be a source of entertainment. And every meal has to be amazing.

Food was pretty boring for like 2 million years of human evolution. Why all of a sudden does it have to be some amazing experience? Now, every meal doesn’t have to be an entertainment experience, it could just be a meal. And listen, would you rather experience a little tiny bit of short term pleasure now, or a lifetime of health and happiness in the future?

Because here’s what we’re doing, we’re choosing one over the other. When we choose short term pleasure, we’re choosing to feel good momentarily, we’re choosing the effect that the drug has on us. We’re choosing the dopamine hit that we’re going to get. And we’re choosing that. We’re forgoing our health or forgoing what makes us healthy human beings and what really is going to drive our fitness, our health, improve our running, all those things that we want for ourselves.

So we’re programming ourselves to choose short term pleasure over long term health and happiness. What if you just delayed that pleasure? Like, what if you just said, you know what, I’m not going to give in to the idea that I have to have something amazing right now, in this moment? What if we just forego the immediate pleasure, for feeling amazing for the rest of your life? Like, what if you did that?

And runners are kind of bad at this in general, I’m just going to say that because the typical runner’s diet is just bad, like lots of refined carbs, lots of sugar, lots of alcohol, really kind of the worst things you can do for your health. But they think that, hey, I’m a runner, so I get to eat and drink whatever I want. You know, I’m gonna drink like crazy. Like, if there’s anybody else, it’d be like, Hey, I think you might have a little problem with drinking. But no, it’s like, I’m a runner.

So it’s okay. And if this is working for you, you get to eat and drink whatever you want, as often as you want, as much as you want. Donuts, you know, all the refined carbs, tons of sugar, alcohol, whatever. Like, that’s all good. If this is working for you, more power to you. But I’m gonna tell you right now, it’s probably not gonna work for long. It’s probably not sustainable. If it is, and you’re that rare person that can just do that for your whole life, and you can stay super healthy. That’s amazing.

I don’t see that happening, especially as you get a little bit older. You know, once you get into your 40s, things start to change, things get a little bit different. And I’ve found myself running with friends on Saturday mornings, and we talk about food. And we’re talking about what we’re going to be eating when we’re done running and people will be like, oh, yeah, I can’t wait.

I’m gonna have this huge stack of pancakes and waffles and doughnuts and croissants and drink some beer. And I’m like, really, beer on a Saturday morning? And they’re like, yeah, what are you going to be eating Patrick? I’m like, bacon, eggs, yogurt, fruit, and they’re like, boring. And I’m like, Hey, listen, I’ve been there. I’ve done all that. I’m done with that now, though. I’m 55. And then the best shape of my life. I’m fine with my food being boring. You call it whatever you want. I enjoy it.

Can we just embrace boring, though? Can we just drop the idea that food has to be amazing? Can we just accept that our food can be a little boring? I teach my clients how to simplify their meals. Meaning that every meal doesn’t have to be different. Every meal doesn’t have to involve recipes, and shopping, and tons of ingredients and lots of time and effort to prepare.

And I really think we do ourselves no good by holding on to the notion that every meal has to be an experience for the ages. One of my favorite meals that I love to eat and I eat this a lot, is a grilled ribeye steak with sea salt. Here are the two ingredients. It’s a ribeye steak and sea salt. And I put some salt on the steak and I cook it on the grill, and then I eat it. And that’s my meal.

Sometimes I’ll do like some steamed broccoli on the side with some sea salt and lots of grass fed butter melted on there. Simple, delicious, effortless, two ingredients, almost no time to prepare. It’s simple. You can call that boring if you want to. I love it. And it’s so delicious. Boring does not mean it has to taste bad or it can’t be delicious. I love the simplicity of food these days.

Because when I eat food now I can really taste the flavors. Because I’m not making everything into this big ordeal, right? You can change your palate, your tastes will change over time. When you start to simplify, and you get off the hyper palatable foods and you start eating real foods, foods will start to taste much better than they ever have before.

So you could eat something like a plain chicken breast with salt and pepper on it. You’re like, oh my god, this is like the best thing I’ve ever had. And I never realized this until I stopped eating all the junk food. And when I stopped eating all the junk food, all that stuff that’s been designed to be like super, hyper delicious or whatever. All of a sudden, the simpler things just taste so, so good.

I think you know, we should still enjoy food. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying food should not taste good. And I’ve heard people say that food is fuel and it should just be fuel and you shouldn’t even enjoy it. And I’m like, no, we should enjoy food. We’ve been programmed to enjoy food, it’s what’s kept us alive for millions of years, if we didn’t enjoy food, we wouldn’t go back to it, we wouldn’t seek out nourishment when we need it. You know.

So I think food can be both simple, and delicious. I think food can be kind of boring, and still tastes amazing. So this isn’t about not enjoying ourselves or not enjoying food. I just think we have to get away from this idea that every food experience has to be amazing. Now I went out to dinner last night, and I had a steak and it had this kind of like South American sauce on it. And it was really delicious. It was really good. I really enjoyed it.

And every now and then I will go out to dinner. And I will do something that is a little bit more of an experience around food. And, you know, I might go out with friends or my girlfriend or something like that, and we come together and we can enjoy food. And we like I mentioned, you know, our ancestors would come and celebrate around food and it’s how we bonded and connected and how we grew closer together. And I still think we should do that.

But I think we can also simplify things. And that every food experience doesn’t have to be, you know, something amazing, right? Because when we have this idea when we have this thought in our head that every food experience has to be amazing, then, just the idea of changing our our nutrition plan, changing our diet is gonna seem just undoable, it’s just gonna seem too hard. It’s gonna seem too hard.

So, the idea that food has to be an experience, we just have to squash that idea. Start by simplifying food, make it simple. What can you do to simplify a meal? Stick with real food food that still looks like food. Try to stay away from anything that has a marketing message behind it right? So don’t be eating that stuff that’s been concocted in a lab to get you hooked on the food like an addict is hooked on the drug. Gotta get away from that.

Start to make better choices and start to simplify your food. And yes, it can be boring. Eating healthy can be boring, and it can be delicious. And it can improve your health and it can improve your fitness and it can help you improve your running all those things.

And remember, if you want help with this, if you want help simplifying your nutrition, you know maybe you’re ready now to embrace the boring and you want to be able to support your running performance reach out. I’m always always here for you. Cool, love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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