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233. The Power of Planning Ahead

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When it comes to creating healthy habits that last, the real key is consistency. You have to take consistent, aligned action if you want to create behavior patterns that get you results. And the …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 233 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Power of Planning Ahead. So when it comes to creating healthy habits that actually last, the real key is going to be consistency.

You have to take consistent aligned action if you want to create new behavior patterns that get you new results, and the key to taking consistent, aligned action is planning ahead. So in this episode of the podcast, you’re going to learn the power of planning ahead and why you need to be practicing this right now.

But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, losing some weight, improving your running getting stronger, and you want some help, some guidance, some support to help get you there, consider coaching.

The fact is, coaching works where a lot of these other methods fail because it’s not about some particular method. It’s about figuring out what works for you as an individual and teaching you how to do this stuff on your own.

You have to be able to know what to eat and know intuitively how to do all this stuff on your own. At some point, you shouldn’t need a coach. You should be able to do it on your own. If you’ve worked with a coach in the past, and at the end of that coaching relationship, you had no idea what to do, then that wasn’t a good coaching relationship. That’s not the way I do things.

The way I do things is I teach you how to make good decisions. Understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and then teach you how to make this sustainable for you. It has to be sustainable for you.

So if you want to just hit the easy button on all this stuff you want help, the support, the guidance, the knowledge, all of that stuff. Consider coaching. Go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself to date. Cool.

Okay, so today I’m talking about the power of planning ahead. And I’m actually going to share something with you guys. I don’t know that I’ve ever done this before, but I’m going to share with you a group coaching call that we did this week.

So a couple times a week, we hold a group coaching call, and each month we pick a topic, and the month of June here in 2024 we are talking about building and maintaining healthy habits. And everything that goes into creating habits, everything that goes into practicing good habits, you know, kind of getting rid of old habits and replacing those with new habits.

And one of the keys to creating good habits is the topic we’re talking about here tonight, which is the power of planning ahead. And I really liked our call the other night, and so I’m going to share with you my teaching portion of that call, and then, so this is, like, the first half, I do some teaching, and then the second half we, everybody gets a chance to kind of share and talk about things.

I’m not going to play that part of it for you guys, but I definitely want to play the first part of this where I talk about planning ahead. So you’ll get a little bit of a look behind the curtain, so to speak, of how we, you know, we do our group coaching calls and what at least the teaching portion would look like. So I hope you enjoy this one. If you have any questions about anything, reach out to me. I’m always here for you. Okay, enjoy.

Okay, so let’s get into planning ahead. So this is something that we talk about a lot, and I know that we have all talked about this before, and that’s okay. We’re going to keep talking about it because it is one of the core tenants of what makes this work, what makes any kind of long-term change work.

So habits are all about consistency. You know, doing things consistently. And so planning ahead is one of the best things that you could do, one of the most powerful things that you can do to start practicing consistency. How many of you guys have a workout schedule that is planned in advance? And you stick to it every day. Yeah, most of us do, right? How many people here? I hope everybody raised their hand on this one.

Have a food plan that’s planned ahead and you stick to it every day. Okay, good, good. So, okay, that’s because we talk about it a lot, but it is one of the most powerful ways of building good habits. Okay? And most people, believe it or not, they don’t do that. They don’t practice the consistency with the food part of things.

They’re really good with the workouts, you know, the running, whatever. Oh yeah, I got my strength sessions. I go to this gym class. I go and do my speed work. I know when I’m doing my long run. I know all that ahead of time. I’ve got my whole training schedule planned out until the the half marathon I’m training for, like, you know in advance what you’re doing.

And the reason we plan all that stuff in advance is because it works, and it’s how you stay on track with those things, you know, and so when it comes to changing our habits around food, it’s especially important to plan ahead. Now this does not mean you have to plan months in advance.

I did work with one person who loved to plan like a month of food at a time, like she planned every meal for a month at a time. Don’t recommend doing that, but if you want to, that’s perfectly fine, if that’s what floats your boat. I love the 24-hour rule, which is just saying we need to plan at least 24 hours in advance, but you know, a few days, or even if you’re somebody that likes to plan a week at a time from a meal perspective, that’s fine, whatever works for you, whatever feels manageable for you.

Remember the key to all of this, the key to long-term change, is to do these things that are sustainable for you. You know you got to get into practicing things that are sustainable for you. And if planning out a week’s of worth of meals at a time, or meal prepping is too overwhelming for you, like, I don’t really do that.

I kind of know what I’m doing most days and so and then those days where I where I don’t have a set plan, I know kind of what I’m doing. Like, you know we might be going out to dinner or something like that, and I know where we’re going, and so that I do kind of know what I’m doing in those days too, but usually I know a couple of days in advance what I’m doing, and I don’t plan a whole week at a time, and I certainly don’t do much in the way of meal prepping ahead of time, because I don’t, I just, I just never done that, you know.

And so that works for me. You need to figure out what works for you, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about here. But listen, the planning ahead thing is very important, and I’m going to explain why it works, because this is one of the keys that we’re going to be working with here, which is, you know, we have this part of our brain that is called the amygdala that is like our fight or flight center. It’s our fear center.

It’s one of the most primitive parts of our brain, a lot of times jokingly, but kind of seriously. We call it the lizard brain. So that’s that unevolved part of our brain that is reactionary, and it is a part of our brain that is responsible for our primal drives. You know, we just that part of our brain just wants whatever feels good in the moment.

You know, it’s responsible for our drive and for, you know, eating junk food and, you know, whatever like, we just want to feel good. Now, that’s the part of our brain that’s driving that. And it’s, you know, it’s interesting, because as human beings, you know, we needed to find things that were pleasurable, like we needed to procreate in order to, you know, to evolve and to maintain our status as a as a species.

And so that was something that was important to us. We had to find somebody to procreate with, right? And the same thing goes for calories and certain types of carbohydrates and things like that, where we needed those things in order to survive, we needed to remember where those things were, and they had to bring us pleasure, you know, so food is one of those things that we evolved to find and enjoy, and it brings us a lot of pleasure because of that amygdala.

Okay, well, the amygdala is also responsible. You know when put it in today’s terms for impulse decisions. You know where you’re maybe your impulse buying. You know, they put that stuff at the grocery store that’s right by the checkout. So when you’re standing there looking over, you’re like, oh, that looks really good. I’m just going to buy that thing right there. You had no intention of getting that until you saw it. That’s your amygdala at work, just wanting to feel good right now.
So the amygdala is responsible for you chasing pleasure, wanting to feel good, avoiding pain, avoiding discomfort, chasing comfort, seeking the familiar, all of those things. So we don’t want to rely on our amygdala it to make our decisions around food, because if we do, we are in trouble, because we’re just going to be going for whatever looks good in the moment.

Instead, we want to use that different part of our brain, that more evolved part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. And that is that part of our brain that is responsible for, you know, organized thought, for planning ahead, for making decisions ahead of time, for, you know, being logical and rational.

So when you sit down, for example, one of the things I recommend is that you guys take pen to paper, and you can do this in the evening. You can write your food plan down the night before. That’s an easy way to do it, it’ll take you five minutes, but when you sit down and you start thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow, you’re not using your amygdala.

You are using your prefrontal cortex in that moment when you do that, you are making good decisions. You’re making decisions based on your long term goals. You’re making decisions that you know are good for you. So we’re like in a much more clear headed space when we’re using our prefrontal cortex to make our decisions.

So that’s why we want to do these things ahead of time. When we make a decision ahead of time, when we write down our plan in advance, and we take pen to paper and physically write it down, we’re kind of cementing that into our subconscious, that that idea that tomorrow I’m eating, you know, eggs for breakfast, I’m having, you know, chicken and broccoli for dinner tomorrow. Like it can be that simple.

You can just write something down like that, but when you do that, you’re thinking ahead of time. You are making good decisions. You’re making decisions that are based on your long term goals, and then you’re also much more likely to stick to that plan because you have thought about it ahead of time you have committed it to paper, so you wrote it down yourself.

You’re writing with your hand. You’re looking at the words with your eyes, so you’re thinking about it, you’re seeing it, you’re writing it out, and all of those things just cement that idea into your subconscious mind.

So really, any habit that you want to create for yourself, this is how you do it. You need to, you know, create a plan ahead of time. You need to write it down, and then you need to just execute that plan the next day. Okay, so that’s the gist of all this. This is why this is so important. This is why we we do it this way.

So when it comes to your running schedule, you’ve kind of already done that, I would assume. I would encourage you to do the same thing for your weight training sessions and for your food, because those are the areas where we need to focus on consistency.

And I talk to a lot of people who say things like, oh, I just haven’t been really consistent with my weight training, for example. Okay, well, you know, well, are you consistent with your running? Oh, yeah, I’ve got a plan. It’s all written down. And I just, you know, do that every week, and I stick to those training plans, no matter what.

Okay, well, just do the same thing for your workouts. You know, do the same thing for your strength training. It’s that simple. Do the same thing for your food. Just make it that important to you.

You know, we prioritize things. Sometimes we say, like, oh, training for my marathon is important. So that’s like, number one. And the strength training, I’ll just kind of put, you know, down here, like number six, you know. And the food can be like, I don’t know, five, whatever. Like, we’re not making a priority.

But if this is what you want for yourself, if you really want to change, and you really want to, you know, lose the weight and get healthy and make these long term changes, these lifestyle changes, then commit ahead of time to doing these things. Because when you commit to doing them, and you fulfill that commitment, you start to build a lot of trust in yourself.

This is another part of this that is really important, because every time you say you’re going to do something, and then you don’t do it. What happens? You feel like you let yourself down. You kind of break down that trust in yourself, because you made this promise to yourself and then you broke the promise to yourself. Yeah, and you can justify it, you know, we’ve got all kinds of stories and reasons why, you know it didn’t work out, or why I didn’t, but you know what?

Think about it this way, would you let down your partner or your kids or your best friend? Would you want to break a promise that you made to those people in your life. Chances are no and chances are you don’t do that, unless it’s, you know, there’s really some sort of an emergency or something like that. But when you do let somebody down like that, it doesn’t feel good.

You know, when you do say you’re going to do something and you aren’t able to do that, or you you don’t follow through with that, it doesn’t feel good. And so we do the same thing to ourselves, though all the time. We’re constantly letting ourselves down. We’re constantly making promises to ourselves and then not fulfilling those promises.

And every time you do that, you break a little bit of trust with yourself, and you start to lose confidence in yourself. This is where it gets a little bit you go into a little bit of a decline. You go into a little bit of a spiral, because you start to lose confidence, you start to feel bad about yourself because you keep letting yourself down, you’re unmotivated, and you just don’t feel like doing it anymore.

Anybody been there before? We all have it’s normal. We’ve all been there. So the alternative is like, you gotta not get into that spiral. You can’t get into that spiral. So we plan ahead, we stick to the plan. We plan ahead, we stick to the plan. When you do that, you start to build trust in yourself. You start to create more confidence. You start getting results too. You start to see, like, Oh, this is actually working, because I’m sticking with it. I’m doing these things consistently. And then you start to be more motivated to want to keep going. And then you get into that cycle.

You get into that spiral of like, that’s an upward spiral right where you building more and more confidence, more and more trust in yourself. You’re getting better and better results. You’re feeling more and more motivated. You’re more much more likely to stick with it. And all it takes is that, planning ahead, sticking to the plan. Plan ahead and stick to the plan. You guys with me on this so far? Yeah, it’s important.

Okay, so how do we do it? Just write down what you’re doing tomorrow. Make sure it’s at least 24 hours in advance, if you can. Or you know, if you do it the night before, and you know it’s you’re going to go to sleep and then you wake that’s fine. If it’s, you know, whatever, 12 hours or whatever. We just want to make sure that you are doing these things ahead of time and not in the moment. We’re not making decisions in the moment. We want to make our decisions ahead of time.

So write down what you’re doing, okay? And I just, I make a little check, check box on my on my notebook here, I just, you know, make a little I make circles like a little bubble, right? And I and I write what I’m doing next to it, and then that little circle that I made is where I check it off after I’ve done it. So I make a little circle and I say, here’s what I’m eating for lunch tomorrow. Here’s what I’m eating for dinner. Here’s what my run looks like tomorrow, here’s what my workout is tomorrow.

And then I’ve usually got a couple other things I add on there that I want to get done. Could be work related stuff, you know, I got to pay this bill, or, you know, pay these taxes, or whatever it is, like, I’ll put down, you know, a couple things like that too. So I’m thinking about, okay, what do I want to do tomorrow? And I’m writing down those things that are important to me that I want to get done.

And then the food thing is very important part of that. And then what I do is I wake up in the morning and I have a look at what I wrote down the night before, and I just kind of commit that to memory. Okay, here’s what I’m doing today. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I forgot. I needed to pay that bill. Okay, I’ll take care of that today.

And so I just take a look at what I’m doing. I’m like, okay, cool, I’ve got this plan, and this is what I’m doing today, and then I just do it. I execute. And then that night, you know, after I’ve done all those things, I open up my notebook again, and I start to write down my stuff for that I’m going to do tomorrow. And at the same time, I kind of check off the things that I did today. Okay, yes, I paid that bill. Yes, I did that strength workout I said I was going to do, yes, I did the what I said I was going to eat for lunch. This is what I said I was going to do for dinner. Yes, I did that.

Sometimes there are things that I don’t do, you know, I didn’t get to that, paid that bill, or whatever it was, and then I have to, you know, add it to the next day, and I have to say, like, okay, I have to think about this. Like, why didn’t I do that? Oh, it’s because I got sidetracked and I got, you know, had this other meeting that I had to go to, or whatever. Like, I, you know, sometimes it’s stuff that I really don’t have control over.

Sometimes I’m just like, oh, I totally forgot to do that or whatever. So we want to pay attention to what we’re doing. We want to make this little list ahead of time. We want to review that list in the morning, and then at night.

We want to, like, kind of review our day and then give yourself some kudos for doing these things right. It’s like, celebrate the win, celebrate the things that you’re doing well, kind of like we do here on these calls.

You know, we always want to talk about wins, what’s working, what’s going well. We do that because it helps us to feel like things are going well, and we want to pay attention to that stuff. So take a moment and just kind of check off the things you did. Well, give yourself a little gold star.

Somebody in this group was putting, actually bought a bunch of gold stars, and they were putting them on their notebook, which I thought was amazing, and then that’s what we do. So that is a very simple process that you can do, but you gotta do it and listen anytime somebody tells me, well, you know, the weight loss has sort of stalled for me a little bit.

The first question I asked him is, like, are you planning ahead? Oh, no, I sort of got out of the habit of doing that. Okay, do it again. Like, get back into the habit of doing that. It’s like the foundation. It’s the fundamental thing to do. When you’re doing that, things are going to start working for you, but you got to do it consistently.

Like that is like the the trigger, that trigger, that’s like a domino effect. You know, you you make that plan ahead of time, you’re much more likely to stack, stick to that plan. You’re much more likely to have consistency. You’re much more likely to keep the motivation going. You’re much more likely to continue getting results when you don’t, you know, topple that first domino when you don’t make your plan, a lot of other stuff doesn’t happen, right?

So get into the habit of doing this now. I will say this also, when I did this journey, like five years ago, I was very adamant about making a plan every single day. I think maybe we talked about this last week, I don’t know, but for like, eight months, I wrote my plan out every single day. I was logging everything. I was eating. I was, like, being very meticulous about it, because I was like, if I stop doing this, it’s going to stop working for me. You know, I was a little paranoid about that.

But after about eight months of being really strict about this, I started to ease up on myself, and I got to a place where I was comfortable enough doing this, where I didn’t need to make that plan every day. I want you all to get to that place eventually.

And I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you. It might be three months or six months or five months. It doesn’t really matter, but you got to have that consistency, and you’ve got to be so confident in yourself that you can do this that, you know, you don’t need to write that plan every day, but you can always go back to doing it.

I went back to doing my daily plan a couple of months ago because I was starting to see some, you know, negative results, you know. And I was like, wait a minute, I’m being a little too loosey goosey with the food thing here. I need to get back into just planning and sticking to the plant. And I did that, and everything is turned around, and I’m feeling amazing, and everything’s going really well.

My running has been really much better, too, because I’m planning the runs and things like that ahead of time. So we can always go back to this planning strategy, because it’s a it’s a very simple tactic that works really well. It’s very effective.

Okay, so I want everybody to commit to making that daily plan. Make your plan for at least tomorrow, and if you want to plan a couple days in advance, totally fine, to do that. Okay, one more thing I wanted to add to this before we move on is that some people like to use a food tracker, like a food tracking app, to track all your food because you want to pay attention to calories and macros, and you don’t have to do that.

But if you’re doing it right now because you just want to gather some data and understand what you’re doing that is perfectly fine. Or if you enjoy doing that, that’s perfectly fine. One pro tip I’ll give you, if you are somebody that wants to put your food into MyFitnessPal or Lose It, or CarB Manager or something like that, is to add your food to the app ahead of time.

It’s the same principle so you can write it down. I think that’s a good thing to do. But also on your phone, just write it, put those things, enter the food into your phone the day before. So instead of tracking after the fact, put it all in your phone the day before and get all your macros where you want them to be.

Because now you have control, because you get to decide what you’re going to do. So what I would do is I would just get all my food in the app, and then I would go, like, oh, I’m over with my carbs, so I’m going to adjust a little bit. And I would, you know, dork around with a little bit and play with like, oh, I’m going to take off two strawberries, or, you know, add some of this.

Whatever I would, you know, play around with the numbers until I got to the point where I was happy with the macros for the day, and then the next day, I could just look at the app and say, What am I eating today? Oh, I’m eating this for lunch. I’m eating this for dinner, and it’s good to go.

And I, you know, I, I’m not one that likes to measure stuff or, like, weigh my food, but I was like, eyeballing it, and I could go, that’s like two cups of broccoli and that’s like a eight ounces of chicken or whatever. Like, I just kind of knew what I was getting into from that standpoint. But if you want to weigh your food, that’s completely fine too. If you want to measure perfectly, fine.

But if you’re adding food to an app, do it ahead of time, get your numbers right, and then just work that plant. It’s very easy to do it that way, because a lot of times what happens is, you get to the end of the day and you’re like, oh, I better put my food in my app, and you start putting it in there, like, oh, I’m way over in this or I didn’t get enough of that, and now what are you going to do? Like, it because you can’t undo that, right?

Or you find yourself like, I’m kind of full, but I didn’t eat enough calories today. I better go eat some food. Like, don’t do that. We don’t want to get into this place where we’re overeating. Just to hit some number on your app, you never want to do that. But that’s just a little pro tip for you guys.

Okay, any questions about planning ahead? This is key. Okay, it’s one of the most important things you guys are going to do. It’s one of the most powerful things you’re going to do. Get into the habit. If I can say anything, I’m going to stress, especially for you guys, get into the habit of making that plan every single day. It takes five minutes if that write it down every single day. Get into that habit. Okay, cool, and that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating

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Have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and thought…did I really just eat all that? I know I have…and too many times to count! If …

Continue Reading about 222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating →

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 222 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to stop the mindless eating. So have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and you thought did I really just eat all that? I know I have, probably too many times to count.

So if you have ever found yourself in that situation, then you’ve probably done some mindless eating. Mindless Eating is something that we’ve all done at one point or another. And it’s something that you can absolutely change. You don’t have to continue to eat mindlessly, there are some practical things you can do to change this behavior.

So today here on the podcast, what Mindless Eating is and how to stop the Mindless Eating once and for all. But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running, and strength training here on the podcast. And if you’re new, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.

But this all might feel a little overwhelming for you. If you want a great place to start, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.

You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and strength training and endurance and mindset all geared towards you, the runner. If you’re a runner, you want to lose some weight, you want to get stronger, you want to become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. It’s pretty self-explanatory. And then get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.

Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve been excited to talk about this for some reason. I don’t know why, but I think it’s one of the things that people have been telling me that they want to change. I talk a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people every day about coaching.

And I always ask them like, you know, what do you want some coaching on? And you know, how can I help you? What goals do you have? And inevitably, most of the people I talked to that they list like the mindless eating, the automatic eating as one of the things that they want to change.

So if you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, then you really have to change your whole relationship with food. All right, if I just sit here and I say here, here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to eat these things, and not eat these things. And you’re going to be fine. I got this, I got this, Patrick, I’m good. Just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.

Okay, but in reality, you don’t got this, I’m just going to tell you, what you got is a lot of conditioned behaviors, you what you’ve got is a lot of habits that you’ve been practicing for years, decades, probably around food, a lot of learned behaviors around food, you’ve been doing the same things for years and years and years for decades.

Like I said, when it comes to how you eat, how you approach food. And if you want to lose weight, and you want to do it in a way that is sustainable for you, then you’re going to have to make some major changes to all of this, you got to change these habits.

You can’t keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing right, nothing changes, if nothing changes. You know, if what you’re if you’re what you’re doing isn’t working, then you have to change it. If you’re doing automatic eating, then you have to change it.

You can’t be a mindless eater, and expect to be able to lose weight because we have to start taking control of what we’re doing. We have to start taking control of our behavior. So the mindless eating, it’s really, it’s an automatic type of behavior that we engage in. It’s not something you just picked up out of the blue you’ve trained yourself to eat and not think about it, right.

So Mindless Eating is is an automatic learned behavior, right? So you go into the kitchen, you grab something, you start eating it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing this, right? Mindless Eating is it’s kind of an unconscious behavior. I like to say it’s similar to tying your shoes tying your shoes is an unconscious behavior.

So when you go, you’re getting ready for work in the morning, you put your shoes on, you tie them and you go, you don’t even think about it. It is unconscious. You don’t even remember doing it today, probably.

So you just do it and you don’t even have any thought or there’s no effort there. There’s no thought there. You don’t have to sit there and think, Okay, what am I doing now? I’m putting my shoes on. And now I have to take these lace things. And I had one goes under the other like, no, no, no, no, you just do it. It takes you two seconds.

Well, we’ve done the same thing with food. You know, we go into the kitchen, and we scarf down a whole sleeve of Oreos, you don’t even notice that you’ve done that until it’s done. And then you’re like, wait a minute, who ate all these oars? Did I eat all these? What the heck is going on here? Honestly, I have done this and Oreos was one of them.

Let’s see kettle chips, those kettle potato chips that are just like super salty. Oh my gosh, those are the best I can eat a giant bag that I get the family style bags, and then I just eat it until they’re gone. Oh, but that’s just me. But these are unconscious learned behaviors just like tying your shoes. Okay. And you’ve trained yourself to do this over years and years and years.

Okay, so it’s a habit is just a habit. Okay, we can if you if you’ve developed a habit, if you learn a habit, you can break the habit, okay? You’ve just trained yourself that when you go into the kitchen, you grab something and you eat it, and then you walk out of the kitchen, don’t even remember, it’s just like tying your shoes, you don’t think about it, you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take any effort, you just do it, okay.

Also, a lot of times we use food to feel better, we want to use food as a way of changing the way we feel. So we grab this thing that’s external to us, we ingest it, it becomes internal, and it helps us to feel better on the inside. This is called emotional eating. And emotional eating to some degree is also just a habit.

Emotional eating can also be automatic mindless eating. And again, it’s just a habit that you’ve developed. You know, emotional eating is when you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out or you’re anxious, and you just want to eat something to kind of feel better, you want to kind of numb the feelings that you’re experiencing, you want to numb the emotions that you’re experiencing, and food will do that it has that effect.

You know, especially if you go for something like sugar, sugar lights up the pleasure centers of your brain like nothing else. And if you want to feel pleasure, just eat some sugar, and you’ll feel pleasure for a short period of time. And you might stop thinking about the stress or the boredom or the anxiety that you’re experiencing for a short period of time, but then it’ll come back.

And then what do you do? Well, you gotta go back to the kitchen and eat something else. And again, this emotional eating can also be a very mindless eating, it can be an automatic behavior that you’re not even aware that you’re doing. Okay? So again, mindless eating, it’s just a learned behavior, you’ve trained yourself to eat, and you’ve trained yourself to not think about it.

This is important, listen to this. Because really, who wants to think about it? So you just, you just blank, this little snack out of your brain. So you’re just like, ooh, some cookies, you eat them, and then you go, bloop, and it’s gone from your brain. Like, it never really happened.

Because if you have to acknowledge it, and if you’re doing it in an intentional, conscious way, you know, you shouldn’t be eating the cookies, you just had lunch, you don’t need to be eating all these cookies. And so you sort of blank it out of your mind. You don’t want to think about it because you love it feels good.

And you know, it’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing. Right? So you have trained yourself to not think about it. Right? So you just do it, you do it automatically. And I think it’s interesting when people tell me this, they’re like, yeah, I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I say well, yeah, you do know, but you’ve chosen to blink it out of your mind. This is a little trick you’re playing on yourself, okay?

So, why is it important to change this behavior? So, mindlessly eating means that you are just eating you know, whenever you feel like it, not when you are actually in need of some nutrition. So this can lead to over eating so eating all the time, it’s really just not good for us. It’s really not the normal state for human beings. The human body is designed to eat a couple of times a day, you know, but not just mindlessly eating snacks all the time, right? It’s just not good for you, it puts a lot of stress on on the system.

You know, also, let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what you are eating. When you are mindlessly eating. I’m guessing it’s probably not broccoli. Have you ever like walked in the kitchen, and you’re like, man, I’m a little bored and a little, I just want a little snack of some time and you open up the fridge and there’s some like leftover broccoli sitting in there and you start eating that? No, nobody does that.

You want something crunchy, and salty and sweet, like chips, pretzels, nuts, chocolate, or like chocolate that has pretzels and nuts mixed into it. You know, like, whatever you can get your hands on that’s going to, you know, light up the pleasure centers. And that’s usually the crunchy, salty, sweet stuff, okay?

So, mindlessly eating is really a way of overeating, you end up over eating, and you end up over eating junk food, like you’re just eating junk, right? And so this is a bad combination. Like if you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to improve your health, you know, change your diet, change your habits, mindlessly eating, you’re overeating, you’re eating junk food, this is a bad combination. Stop doing that. Okay?

Now I get it, you’re like, but it’s so automatic. I don’t even know that I’m doing it. How am I going to stop doing this? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. So the opposite of mindless eating is what it’s mindful eating.

So the goal, the first step here, the first goal that you want to accomplish here is to start being more mindful about everything that you eat, you have to start being mindful about every bite that you put into your mouth. The easiest way to do this, is to write it down. This is a really great place to start. And I think that everybody should do this.

Not just for the mindless eating, but for all kinds of habits around food. But everything has to be written down. And the easiest way to do it is to just grab a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. So every time you eat something, just write it down.

Now I like to talk to people about this. And they’ll say, well, I could use this app I use My Fitness Pal, you know, Carb Manager or whatever. Fine. Use whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. But just make it simple.

Okay, apps can sometimes be complicated. They’re kind of clunky to use, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, and you just want to it has to be something you can do easily. It has to be simple and easy. Pen and paper is simple and easy. But if you’re on the go, maybe use a note on your phone, you know, just open up a note and just start taking inventory of everything you’re eating throughout the day.

And every time you eat or drink something, anything goes into your mouth. You want to write it down in that note on your phone or on a piece of paper. Okay, that is step number one. So what we’re doing here is we’re creating awareness about what is really going on with you and food, what’s really going on?

There’s no lies here. There’s no tricking yourself. There’s no deception. There’s no you know, tricking yourself into thinking you’re doing something you’re not or not doing something that you are, you’re actually just writing down everything that goes into your mouth, every bite, lick taste, okay?

So record everything that you do. Let’s do this for like a week. All right. And every time you eat something, every time you drink something, write it down. This is going to create a lot of self awareness. This is going to be the first step in being mindful around food instead of mindless.

Okay, so what starts happening here? Well, you start noticing that you’re eating stuff all the time you’re eating stuff, when you’re not hungry, you’re eating stuff, when you’re bored, you’re eating stuff when you’re feeling a little anxious, you’re eating stuff that you know isn’t on your plan. You know, you you start to see when and where you get triggered to eat stuff, you know, oh, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to eat something.

Oh, you know, every time I go in the break room, I have to eat something. You know, you don’t have to keep doing that. But you need to know what you’re doing first. So this is like creating such amazing self awareness. Okay.

And you have to develop this self awareness, you have to know what you’re doing before you can change it right, you got to know what you’re doing before you can change it, you have to know what you’re doing day in and day out before you can stop doing i,t before you can start creating better habits, before you can stop the automatic behavior.

So self awareness is the main goal here. So you got to write everything down, start creating that self awareness. So that’s step number one.

Step number two is this once you start noticing what you’re doing, when you’re eating, how often you’re eating the types of foods you’re eating, you can begin to start practicing the pause.

The pause is you pause before you put any food in your mouth. So you might get to the kitchen, you open up the pantry and you start looking around for some, you know, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever. But you pause right there with the cupboard open. And you notice oh man, I’m really looking for these Girl Scout cookies right now, aren’t I? Because you’ve created that self awareness. Okay, this is really cool.

This is very important and very easy to do. Okay, so you just take a moment and you pause. I’m about to engage in some kind of like mindless eating, I’m going back to these old habits. And so now you started to create a little bit of awareness, we’re starting to move into more of a mindful state, okay.

Next thing I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions. You can do this in your brain, it only takes a few seconds to do this. But ask yourself these questions. Do I really need to eat something right now? Am I really hungry? Or am I just bored or stressed out or anxious? Am I just trying to use food to feel better? What can I do instead of eating if I need to feel better?

Maybe I can go for a walk. Maybe I can walk the dog? Maybe I can, you know, pet the dog? What can you do that it doesn’t involve eating to feel better? Do I really need to feel better at all, maybe I can just be okay, feeling a little stressed out or a little bit bored or whatever.

Like, just go through these few questions in your mind really quickly. Okay. So what you’re doing is you’re going from mindless eating, to being mindful about eating. And listen, when you take that pause, you ask yourself those questions. And if you still want to eat something, then fine, eat the Girl Scout cookies or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.

But what you’re doing here is you’re not eating mindlessly. Now you’re eating mindfully, you’re you’re checking in with yourself before you make the decision to eat or not eat. And I’d much rather you are mindful about eating the Girl Scout cookies, then making that decision to eat the Girl Scout cookies, right? So you’ve made a conscious decision than eating the Girl Scout cookies unconsciously.

We don’t want to be mindless about what we’re doing. We want to be mindful, we don’t want to be unconscious. We want to be conscious. You know what we don’t want our body and our brain operating on autopilot here. We want to be in control.

And if you’re in control, and you’re saying you know what? Eating those Girl Scout Cookies feels like a really good decision for me right now. And you do that fine. Now over time, it would probably be great if you cut out the Girl Scout Cookies altogether. But listen, baby steps I get it. And this first baby step is moving from mindlessness to mindfulness around food.

This is very important. It’s a game changer if you want to lose weight. This is a game changer. It’s really hard to lose weight when you’re eating mindlessly and automatically all the time. You make this one change, and I promise you, your weight loss journey is going to get easier. Okay?

So you want to go from being a mindless eater to a mindful eater. This is where the good stuff starts to happen for you. This is where you can begin to break those conditioned behaviors and habits. This is how you start to change your whole relationship with food.

You’ve got to get away from the unconscious behavior and move towards consciousness get away from mindlessness and start moving towards mindfulness. Okay, this is a critical first step to losing weight and keeping it off. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

219. Being Boring Can Actually Be Good for You

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If you've ever changed your eating habits or started exercising on the weekends instead of partying, and your friends have told you that you're boring then this episode is for you. Every day I talk …

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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 219 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, being boring can actually be good for you. If you’ve ever changed your eating habits or started exercising on the weekends, instead of partying, and your friends have told you that you’re boring, then this episode is for you.

So every day I talked to people who want to lose weight, improve their health, improve their fitness, and improve their strength, improve their running. And one of the reasons they struggle with all this stuff is because it all seems so boring.

I don’t want to give up this exciting life that I have, you know, I’m afraid that everything’s just gonna be too boring, my life’s gonna be boring, the food’s gonna be boring. So in this episode, I’m going to share some unconventional ideas about how being boring can actually be good for you.

But first, I know I talk a lot here on the podcast about nutrition and weight loss, improving your running, and getting stronger. And if you’re new to the podcast, it probably seems a little bit overwhelming. I get it. But I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time, it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.

You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset, all geared toward you, the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and get stronger and become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need. To get it just go to runningleancoaching.com, click on free training and you can get started on your weight loss journey today.

Okay, how being boring can actually be good for you. So the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I’ve been hearing from a lot of people lately who have had that sentiment of, you know, yeah, I want to get fit and healthy and everything, and I want to change my diet, but it’s just also boring.

You know, I don’t want my life to be boring. I want to eat food. It’s exciting. And I think that the reason for this is that we’ve been conditioned to believe that everything in our lives has to be some amazing entertaining over-the-top experience.

You know, we’re inundated with images and stories on social media and on TV and on the news and in movies about how amazing this one person was, or look at this incredible thing that this person did. Or there’s this unbelievable restaurant, you wouldn’t believe it, or this hotel, vacation destination, whatever. Or when it comes to food, there’s so much craziness out there.

There’s this out-of-the-world way to make a hamburger with 11 patties and 17 kinds of cheese and then you dip the whole thing and batter and you deep fry it and blah, blah, blah. Even someone like David Goggins, who I love and admire, he can kind of have this effect on people where it leads us to believe that you’re really not doing it right.

Unless you end up in the emergency room at the end of every run, you know, oh, my foot broke in the middle of this run. But I kept doing another 30 miles and I ended up in the emergency room like, and that’s kind of like what we’re trained to believe is like the epitome of living, you know?

So, here are some reasons why I think this is a problem because it makes us believe that everything we do has to be some amazing over-the-top experience or you know, we’re doing it wrong. And it makes us feel inferior if we’re not constantly reaching some amazing height, new height or accomplishing something amazingly huge, you know.

And what it does to us is it makes us chase the ideas of excitement and pleasure and feeling good, feeling amazing constantly. So we’re constantly chasing pleasure. We’re constantly chasing the next big, most exciting thing, and it leaves us pretty much always feeling inferior. Not feeling good enough. Like my life isn’t exciting enough. I’m not David Goggins.

You know, the food I eat is it’s boring. My life is boring. The food I eat is boring, though, the way I work out is boring. And basically, we kind of fester in this place of feeling inferior, never good enough. Like there’s always something wrong with us.

And so our lives end up feeling really dissatisfied. And we experience a lot of internal conflict around all this stuff, like you’re just not living up to your full potential, you know. And I’m all about, you know, having people like David Goggins, inspire us.

And I’m all about living up to your potential and doing things that that feel good, but at what cost, and how much of our lives have to be that exciting, the world expects us to be amazing. And we’re just not all like that we’re not all wired like David Goggins. And that’s okay.

That is perfectly okay. I’m glad there’s only one of him. That problem with chasing all of this excitement, and chasing all of this pleasure leads to a lot of unhealthy habits, you end up eating way too much, or eating way too much of the wrong types of foods like every meal has to be some fun entertainment experience, you end up getting out of shape because it’s way more fun to just sit around watching Netflix and partying than it is to, you know, go to the gym or go out for a run that stuff is boring.

Don’t you want to have an exciting life where you go and your party all the time, and you get super drunk and you eat a bunch of junk food? I mean, yeah, you’re gonna feel like crap the next day, but it’s worth it, right? Because it’s so exciting and so fun and so amazing. I think you understand where I’m going with all this.

But here’s the thing, what if the secret to a long healthy, happy life was being boring? What if a boring life not as super exciting, amazing life was actually our default? And I would argue that this is always been the case for us as human beings.

My interpretation of everything I’ve read about human evolution is that boring was a good thing. When we were living a pretty boring life, it meant that our food supply was pretty steady, and that we were living in a lot of peace and harmony.

You know, there wasn’t a lot of conflict happening in our lives, there was prosperity, we could build families and communities. We had a very simple life, but it was very consistent. We experienced a lot of consistency, a lot of consistent growth and a lot of consistent progress.

So boring for millions of years of human evolution was a good thing. You know, it was a bad thing for our human evolution was excitement. That was not good. Excitement was bad, imminent danger. It meant the saber-toothed tiger was invading tribes.

You know, excitement was a threat to our well-being. Lack of a steady food supply instability, like exciting, it was not something that we wanted in our lives, it was something that we avoided, we strove to live very simple, very kind of boring lives.

Boring is what we wanted, boring allowed us to evolve, to grow, and to thrive as human beings. So this idea that our lives have to be exciting all the time. This is a pretty new concept. It’s been drilled into our brains, though, over the last 50 years, 100 years, maybe, max.

But listen, that excitement is a lie. We don’t have to have super exciting meals at every meal, or we don’t have to party all the time. And we don’t have to be living some super exciting lives all the time. We don’t have to be chasing pleasure and dopamine constantly.

Because I think being boring is our natural state as human beings. And I think that even today, we can thrive and grow and become the amazing people that we want to become and have a very boring, quote-unquote, boring life. When I look at my life today, objectively, it is pretty boring.

You know, I go to bed at the same time every night I get you know, which is kind of early, you know, maybe 9:30, 10 o’clock, you know, you know, I watch some TV before I go to bed I get up at the pretty much the same time every day. I have the very same like morning routine, I sit and I drink my coffee.

You know, I go to the gym, Monday through Friday, every day at about the same time. I run a few times a week, on the same days. I pretty much eat the same things most days. You know, I do mix it up a little bit here and there and there’s some variety and I go to dinner every now and then. But for the most part, my diet is pretty simple.

I kind of buy the same foods at the grocery store and I might mix up the way I put them together but it’s pretty much the same things. I take a walk every day and I love my walks, I listen to podcasts and audiobooks while I’m walking. And I’m learning and I’m sort of growing, and learning some things and working on personal growth and self-development and things like that while I’m out, walking. And so that’s my boring life.

Like, that is what my life looks like most of the time. But here’s something interesting, you know, and if you asked me back in, like my 20s, you know that if I just painted that picture of what this life looks like, I’d be like, boring. Like, I don’t want to be a part of that. But now I love it.

I love it because I get so much out of it. So here’s why I believe that being boring is good for me. And here’s why I think it can actually be good for you too. Because just about everything I’m doing today has become a habit.

The things that I do on the regular are things that have become a habit, for me, they’re easy, they’re effortless, it’s not something I have to spend a lot of time, you know struggling to do, or anything like that all the things that I’ve established as habits in my life are easy for me to just continue doing.

So I’m very consistent with everything, with my diet, with my strength training, with my running, with my personal development. You know, lifting weights has been one of those things that I did for years, but not really consistently.

But now that I’m doing it very consistently, and it’s pretty boring, I go and do the same, I go to the same gym every day. And I do kind of the same workout. Not really I kind of mix it up a little bit. But I do the same types of workouts most days. This has led to massive gains in my lean muscle mass, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been before in my life.

I’m 57 years old, I’m carrying around more skeletal muscle today than I ever have in my life. And that’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve been able to develop that because of this boring consistency with my strength routine.

You know, running for me is getting much easier. Because I’m doing it consistently. I’m running three days a week only. But each run has a very specific goal and an intention, my endurance is improving. My heart rate is improving, my speed is improving. And it just feels good to run consistently. And I love doing that.

The way I eat is very consistent. And it’s allowed me to maintain my weight pretty effortlessly. You know, every meal is not some huge entertainment experience. For me, I really appreciate simple food, like I’m so excited and happy to have a steak or some burgers or something like that, and some broccoli for dinner.

Like this one of my favorite meals like steak and broccoli. I even order this when I go to restaurants sometimes because I love it so much. It’s boring. And most people would be like, oh my gosh, why don’t you go and eat some amazing thing that this one crazy restaurant has or whatever. It’s probably loaded with sugar and flour and probably had me feeling like crap afterwards. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything there. I don’t think I’m missing out on any of that junk food just because everybody says how amazing it is right?

I read a lot of books, and I listen to podcasts and audiobooks. And I’m always learning. So my personal growth is always improving and evolving. And so with my with my boring life, I actually love it. I love my boring life, I have a boring workout schedule and boring food, and boring personal growth habits.

But listen, this doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy some excitement here and there. I do enjoy some excitement here are there. But it’s not what I’m chasing constantly. You know, I love going out to a nice dinner, we’ll go to different restaurants and try something that’s different, something that I’d probably never make at home because that’s one of the reasons why I want to go to a restaurant.

Because if it’s just something I can eat at home, with the exception of the steaks, because I love eating steak out too, but I want to go somewhere where I can eat something that I normally wouldn’t get at home, you don’t have somebody make it for me, and I’ll just let the chef kind of you know, do their thing.

You know, I love exploring the world and taking trips and discovering new places and creating awesome memories. But even when I travel, like I don’t have to have all this excitement all the time. It’s not a big huge party for me, you know, I don’t have to spend all day at the buffet and at the bar and go ziplining and skydiving in order to have a fun, fulfilling vacation.

You know, I don’t have to eat myself sick at every meal in order to say oh, that was a great vacation. You know, I’m so happy to just sit by the pool or go for a run on the beach. Or check out some local cool coffee shops or something like that. Like to me that’s really fun. And yeah, it’s kind of boring. Boring by some people’s standards for sure. But for me, this is perfection. Okay.

So here’s what I want to charge you with this week, which is embrace the boring, you know, start creating good habits around food good habits around workouts good habits around running good habits around your personal growth go out there and be boring this week. Okay, that’s all I got for you today here. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

218. You Have to Change How You Think

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If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you probably already know that you have to change your diet. This is obvious and we all know this, but that’s where most people stop. They change …

Continue Reading about 218. You Have to Change How You Think →

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 218 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, you have to change how you think. So if you’re somebody who wants to lose weight and keep it off, you probably already know that you have to change your diet, right?

This is obvious, we all know this. But that’s where most people stop, they change their diet, they get some results. But it rarely lasts. Because they’ve only changed the behavior, not the thinking that’s driving the behavior. They keep slipping back into old eating patterns because they haven’t changed the thoughts that create those patterns in the first place.

So if you think you can change your diet, but not your thinking, you’re always going to struggle. So today on the podcast, if you want to change behavior and make it last, then you have to change how you think.

But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running strength training, all that stuff here on the podcast. And if you’re new to the podcast, welcome. And also this all might seem a little overwhelming to you. And you might just want to know where to get started with all this stuff.

If that sounds like you, awesome, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training, it’s about an hour long, it’s a video that you can watch, you can check it out anytime it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, you’re gonna learn all the basics, nutrition, strength, endurance mindset, all geared towards you, the runner who’s interested in becoming fitter, stronger, faster, and the most badass version of yourself yet.

If this sounds like you, check out this free training, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. I know it’s pretty obvious, right? And you can get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.

Okay, let’s get into this topic today, you have to change how you think. So one of the things that prompted me to talk about this today is that I talk to people every single day. And they just want some of these people just want me to talk to tell them like what to do, like, just tell me what to do. You know, give me a plan and I’ll follow the plan.

They just want to know what’s, the when’s, the how’s, like what should I eat? When should I lift weights? How often should I run? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And I jokingly say, half-jokingly I say, yeah, knowing what to do is easy. If it were that easy, though, all I would do is write a book and hand it over to you right?

But knowing what to do is only a small part of the equation. All right? How often have you known what to do and you still haven’t done it anyway, like, you probably know that you shouldn’t be eating some things like Dunkin Donuts, right? But you do it anyway.

And you’re not doing it and you’re not like doing the things that you want to be doing consistently. So that’s where, you know, we see this behavior that we’re engaging in, we want to change the behavior, but we stop there, we just stop it like, well, I just need to stop doing that I need to do things differently. I need to take different actions, okay?

The problem with this is that you’re not changing the thing that is actually driving the behavior that’s actually creating the thoughts, the feelings that are actually driving the behavior. Okay, you can’t just change a behavior, you have to change the thinking behind the behavior, okay?

But when it comes to, you know, things like, okay, I shouldn’t be eating Dunkin Donuts every day. I get that. But they find themselves they just keep eating the Dunkin Donuts every day. And they’re like, how come I can’t do that? Because they haven’t changed the thinking that’s driving the behavior.

So if you’re somebody who struggles with sticking to a plan, like sticking to a food plan, you know, you might have experienced this in the past, and lots of people I’ve talked to have experienced this where they’re like, yeah, I did that.

For a while I was able to change the behavior, I started to eat real food, and I started to do pretty well with that. But they never did like the deeper work of changing the thinking that drives the behavior. And so they just slip back into those old patterns that keep slipping back into those old eating patterns.

You know, slipping back into, you know, binging on stuff and in, you know, eating the junk food, and they can’t understand why because they know what to do. But they’ve never done the deeper work. The deeper work is changing. The thinking changes the doing, the thinking that actually drives the behavior.

Okay, so I’ve said this a couple of times now, your thinking drives your behavior, how does all this work? So, you know, here’s, here’s what, what I want to talk about next, this is how your thinking actually drives your actions. Okay?

So when we want to change something complicated, like eating patterns, this can be kind of challenging, okay? And for most people, they just look at the action itself, I’m either eating broccoli, or I’m eating potato chips, I’m eating, you know, the chicken that I put out, or a meeting the Dunkin Donuts, you know.

And when it’s when you think about the action like that, it is, it is very surface level, when you just try to change the action, you are going to get minuscule results, I’m just telling you right now, if that’s what you’ve been working on, then you are going to get very short term results, and you’re never going to make lasting change.

What you want to do is get down to the thinking this is the deeper work, you get down to the thinking that’s driving the behavior because this is where you can actually start making real lasting change.

So most people believe that whatever they’re doing is some sort of automatic behavior. Like they’re some sort of a robot, they have no control over their actions, you know, the Dunkin Donuts just sitting there and I eat them. I just find myself eating them, I find myself eating them. Like I am an automaton, I see doughnuts and I eat them.

This is not really going on. This is really not what’s happening. You are not a robot, you are a human being you have free will, you have agency, you have the power to make decisions and you are making decisions, you are not out of control. You can choose something different in that circumstance.

But in that circumstance, you’re making a choice, you’re choosing this over that you’re choosing, typically, you’re choosing what feels good right now, you’re choosing immediate gratification, you’re choosing immediate pleasure over your long-term goals, over long-lasting gratification and pleasure, a fit body, a long and healthy life and all the good stuff that you actually want for yourself.

Most people think behavior works like this, they see the Dunkin Donuts saying eat them, period, right? Here’s how your thinking actually drives your behavior, though. So you see the Dunkin Donuts sitting there. And then you have a thought about the Dunkin Donuts.

So it’s not the donuts themselves that are driving the behavior, but it’s your thoughts. So you have a thought about the donuts, oh, man, those look so good. You know what, I’ve been good all week, I just ran 10 miles, I deserve a little treat. You know, I’ve been pretty consistent with all this, it’s not gonna hurt that much. It’s going to feel really good to eat, though.

So you have all these thoughts that go through your mind. You know, a lot of times you don’t even know you’re having those thoughts. It just goes, it happens really fast. Really, it’s very, very quick. It’s just in an instant, where you have these thoughts, but you do have these thoughts.

And those thoughts are very powerful. Because those thoughts create a feeling inside of you. Immediately, they create a in this case, they create something like desire. And the feeling could be anything really it could be a feeling like you can have a thought that creates a feeling of stress or anxiety or anger.

But in the case of you know, looking at some Dunkin Donuts and you just ran 10 miles, it could just be an intense desire, which is just a feeling it’s an emotion, a desire. You have this intense desire that wells up inside you that desire to eat a Dunkin donut.

What is actually driving the action of eating the doughnut? If the desire wasn’t there, you wouldn’t eat the doughnut. So the desire to eat the donut is not created by the donut in the box. That’s not creating the desire. The desire is created by your thoughts about the donut sitting in the box.

Oh, this is gonna taste so good. This sugar is gonna make me feel really good because it does that sugar lights up those pleasure centers in your brain. Oh, I’m gonna get a nice sugar rush for the next 20 minutes or so.

All these thoughts that you have create that desire and they really ramp up that desire. It’s like turning up the volume on that desire. And the reason we know this is true is because some people they just don’t have that. They don’t like Dunkin Donuts and they don’t have it. The desire to eat the doughnuts, the doughnuts are not causing the desire because some people can see them sitting there and just be like, not so great. I don’t really like those things, you know, they have no thoughts about, oh my God, these are gonna be so amazing.

They have no thoughts about oh, I just deserve this, you know, just ran 10 miles, they don’t have any of those thoughts. And so they have no desire to eat the doughnut, and so they don’t eat the doughnut.

So not eating the doughnut is not hard for those people because their thinking is different. They are not thinking all these thoughts about how amazing this is going to feel. And so the desire is not there to eat the doughnut, and so they don’t eat the doughnut.

So this is what is called a thought-feeling-action pattern. Your thoughts create feelings and your feelings drive your behavior. And I just call this for simplicity, a thought pattern, right? Thought patterns are things that we have learned over the years and years and years of our lives. And we have thought patterns about all kinds of stuff in our life. Some are good, some are not so good. Right? You’ve been practicing certain thought patterns for your whole life, decades.

Like, Dunkin Donuts are amazing. To be honest with you. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a Dunkin donut, just a little sidebar here. I know people love their coffee, they talk about how good the coffee is. I just can’t imagine that it would be that good.

Because I’m sort of a coffee snob. I love really good, you know, single-origin coffees that I grind the beans myself, and I just don’t think that it would be that good. But in no way I don’t know, maybe I’m missing out on something. But I don’t have the desire to eat the Dunkin Donuts. I’m just using this as an example.

So you’ve had these, you’ve been practicing these types of thought patterns for decades. Like if you’ve always loved Dunkin Donuts, and you’ve probably thought, oh my God, these are just so amazing all the time. So you’ve created a thought pattern. And you’ve done this so many times, it just creates a habit. The habit is when you see the donuts, you eat them.

And you think it’s an automatic thing. But it really isn’t. It’s a thought-feeling-action pattern that you’ve been practicing over and over and over and over again. This is the same as practicing any other behavior. Behavior that’s become a habit for you, like running.

So when you first started running, you have all these thoughts about running, like, running as hard. I don’t feel like running today. I’m not getting any faster. Running is really hard. Why is running so hard? I hate running. It’s really hard. It’s stupid. Those are my thoughts about running when I first started doing it, and it took me so long before I got better, you know, running, running takes a long, it takes a long time to get better at, right?

And these thoughts that I was having would keep me in bed, most mornings, you know, because they would, when I started thinking these feelings about running being so hard, and I’m not getting better. And I you know, I’m not getting faster, and running is stupid. It’s not working for me.

All those thoughts that I had about running, were causing feelings of demotivation inside me, a lack of enthusiasm. I’m not good enough, feelings of frustration and anger, like those feelings of demotivation, frustration, anger, and lack of enthusiasm, these feelings will drive a certain type of behavior, which is to stay in bed and don’t go run. Because running is stupid. Okay?

That is a thought-feeling-action pattern at play right there. So you don’t feel like running and you don’t run. But over time, over time, you do squeak out a few good runs here and there. And you do eventually get a little bit faster. And running becomes a little bit easier. And you kind of surprise yourself that oh I actually ran like five miles and it actually felt okay.

Like you start to see that this might actually be working, you start to enjoy it. You start to feel good after you run, you start to look forward to it. And so then you have all these new thoughts about running that start to change the way you feel about running to the point where now you never miss a run no matter what even if it’s really crappy outside.

Even if it’s cold and snowy and rainy. Even if you’re sick, you’ve got the flu, even if you’re on vacation, you’re gonna go out there and run because it feels so good for you. So you’ve created for yourself without even knowing it a whole different set of thought patterns around running.

And so the behavior, you think, you know, the behavior just changes by itself. No, you have changed that behavior over time. I hope this is an example that you can relate to. Because this is a really good example of the amazing power of your thought patterns.

Running can be a hard thing, but you can get through it. And you can get over that and you can become a person who loves to run. The very same thing can happen with any other thought patterns in your life. Running just didn’t naturally come easily to you and be handed to you all of a sudden, you know, running just got easier. No, you had to like, work through it.

And you had to learn thought patterns, it took a while you had to practice it for a long time before it became something that was easier, and it was a habit. So thought patterns can be learned thought patterns can be unlearned, too, right?

If you want to train yourself to hate running, just go back to all the crappy thinking about running, how hard it is how you don’t like it, how you’re not getting any faster, why so hard. All that stuff, just keep thinking those kinds of thoughts, and it’ll be super demotivating. And you’ll not feel like running ever again. Okay?

If you have a thought pattern, like mindlessly eating the Dunkin Donuts every time you see them, even though you know it’s not what you want, it’s not good for you, it’s not going to help you lose weight, it’s not healthy, it’s not in alignment with your long term goals, then you can unlearn that thought pattern, okay?

And it starts with changing the way you think you have to change the thoughts that are creating those feelings of desire within you. So how do you change your thinking? So changing your thinking is not as easy as it sounds, you just can’t be like, well, I’m just going to think differently.

Especially if you’ve been practicing the same thought patterns your whole life, it takes time. And it takes some effort, it takes a little bit of work. And when I say work, that’s where most people like tune out. They’re like, oh, please, I don’t want to do any work.

But listen, if you want to change, you have to do some work, right? And I promise you that if you’re willing to work on this particular area, when you’re starting to talk about changing thought patterns, this can be an absolute game changer for you. And it applies to any thought patterns in your life, whether it’s Dunkin Donuts, running, whatever it is that you want for yourself, you can change this.

And I’ve got a three step little process here that I’m going to go through with you that I think is really powerful. And it’s the three R’s. And the three R’s are to recognize, record, and reframe.

So the first R, if we’re talking about changing thought patterns here, the first R, the very first step is to recognize you got to recognize that something is going on here. You know, you have to see that you’re engaging in a behavior or a thought pattern that you want to change.

You have to recognize that what you’re doing may not be in alignment with your long-term goals. So this is self-awareness, understanding that you’re not a robot, this is not automatic behavior. You’re just practicing an old thought pattern. So you have to recognize that something is going on here.

That is the critical first step. And you have to be honest with yourself that oh, yeah, I’m doing something that you know, I am eating the Dunkin Donuts mindlessly what’s happening here, like what’s going on? So recognize that something is happening here. Okay, step number one.

Step number two, the second R is to record, record the thought pattern in as much detail as possible. So as soon as you can, once you recognize what’s happening, or that there’s something happening here, stop and record some thoughts and feelings about the behavior.

Ask yourself some questions like, what just happened there? Like why did I do that? What was the thought that I had right before I did that? What was the feeling that I had right before I did that?

This doesn’t have to be complicated, you can just grab a notebook and write it down, use a pen and a piece of paper, use your journal, write it on a note on your phone, you can even record a voice memo and just record it into your phone. I like doing that because sometimes I can’t write as fast as my brain is, you know, can think and I can talk so I just talk it’s a lot easier for me.

But the more you record, the more you can start to see that yeah, these are the types of thought patterns that I’m engaging in. These are the types of thoughts I’m thinking these are the types of feelings that are being created within me that are actually driving the behavior.

And then the next step is to and the third R is to reframe. Reframing means you change the thought to create different feelings, which drive a different behavior. This simply means you need to start to choose different thoughts in those moments, and this is a practice this is not something you’re going to do you know, you, you know, and then you’re going to do one time, you’re gonna be like, oh, I got it. No, it takes time.

Reframing is a powerful tool. It’s used in a lot of psychological practices like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. And they have a similar like three steps sort of process that is similar to this. But I think this one applies to us very profoundly. Okay.

So you have a thought, like, you know, I’ve been good all week, I deserve this donut, I just ran 10 miles, it’s not that big a deal. All those kinds of thoughts, right? Those thoughts are creating a desire inside you. And then you just use that desire to drive you to eat the doughnut.

But a reframing, reframing thought might be something like, oh, that donut looks really good. But my health is more important to me than how good that donut might taste in the moment. My weight loss goal is bigger than the tiny amount of pleasure that this stupid little donut is going to give me. Or I’m not the kind of person that eats that crap anymore.

Right, these thoughts, these reframed thoughts, start to create feelings of motivation, you start to feel more confident, you have a different desire not to eat the doughnut, but to stay consistent and reach those health and fitness goals that are so important to you.

And so in that moment, the desire to stay committed to your goals is much more powerful than the stupid donut sitting there. And so you make the choice tonight the donut. That’s a reframe.

Okay, so the whole thing, this whole process, recognize, record, reframe, only takes a couple of minutes to do, it only takes a few minutes, but you want to practice this, you want to practice this every day.

Recognize there’s a thought pattern you want to change. Record your thoughts and feelings about it. Reframe those thoughts and feelings to produce a better outcome next time.

It’s a very simple process. Simple, but not easy. This is the work that we have to do. This is the work that most people don’t want to do or not willing to do. Most people would rather stay stuck and just blame everything around them for why they’re stuck.

Like, oh, if those donuts weren’t sitting there, I’d be fine. Actually, no, because the donuts are not the problem. It’s your thoughts about the donuts. That’s the real problem. Okay. So get out there, start seeing all the thought patterns in your life, and start recognizing that these things are happening and that you are creating them.

Alright, so there’s some good thought patterns that are happening in your life and there’s some that are not so good, but recognize all of them and start to see them for what they really are, okay?

There’s going to be some that you want to continue doing. There are going to be some thought patterns that you want to change. And that’s when we put the three R’s into practice. Recognize, record, and reframe. Cool. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

213. Supplements Every Runner Should be Taking

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If you’re a runner and interested in getting the most out of your training, then you’ve probably tried a multitude of supplements. There are literally thousands upon thousands of health and …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 213 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, supplements every runner should be taking. If you’re a runner and interested in getting the most out of your training, then you’ve probably tried a bunch of supplements, there are literally thousands upon thousands of health and wellness supplements out there on the market today.

And I looked this up – around one thousand new supplements are introduced every single year. So if you’re feeling a little confused, and a little overwhelmed by all of these options, rest assured you are not alone. Today on the podcast, I’ve got a few simple suggestions for supplements every runner should be taking that will actually improve your health and fitness.

But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, running strength training. And if you’re new, it may seem a little overwhelming and a little confusing. And that’s okay, I got you covered.

You may not know where to start with all this, but I’ve created a free hour long training that you can check out at any time, it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance and the right mindset that is required for you to become your best self. And all this is geared towards you the runner.

If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, I hope you are, then this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.

Okay, supplements every runner should be taking. The reason I am talking about this today is because I just realized after looking back through 212 episodes that I haven’t really talked much about supplements. And it’s something that I talk about with my clients regularly.

But one of the reasons why I typically don’t make suggestions for supplementation, or even, you know, certain nutrition suggestions here on the podcast is because, you know, making these blanket suggestions for the general public is not the way I like to do things.

I don’t like to just tell you like, oh, everybody should be doing this, or everybody should be doing that. Because we are all different. And we all respond differently to different nutrition, to different exercises to different supplements.

But I feel pretty confident about these few supplements I’m going to talk about today and I’m pretty sure everybody can benefit from from these particular supplements, okay, these are pretty generally accepted, pretty generally beneficial to just about everyone, there’s probably going to be some exceptions out there. Which is fine. If that is you and you’re like, oh, this one doesn’t apply to me or I can’t do that one. That is completely fine. Don’t do it.

Don’t think that I’m telling you that you have to do anything, okay. Also, I think that these supplements will really help you if you are a runner, because they are geared towards, you know, building strength and hydration and helping you to become as to perform your best as a runner.

Okay, so if you’re a runner, and you’re someone who’s interested in improving your athletic performance, improving your body composition, then stay tuned, this is definitely for you. That being said, I do have to make a little disclaimer here that I’m not a doctor, we’re not engaged in any kind of a coaching relationship.

So please check with your doctor before taking any kind of supplements to make sure you don’t experience any adverse side effects and that there aren’t any interactions with any other supplements you’re taking or medications. Cool. Okay. Awesome.

So first one is and we all know about this one is electrolytes. And what are electrolytes? First of all, electrolytes are minerals that actually carry an electric charge. They’re found in your blood, your urine, your sweat, and they are vital to specific processes that keep your body functioning properly.

Some of the most common electrolytes found in your body include sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium phosphate and bicarbonate. These electrolytes are required for various bodily processing, including nerve and muscle function, maintaining pH balance, and keeping you hydrated.

Electrolytes are crucial to keeping your nervous system and your muscles functioning and your internal environment balanced. So your brain sends electrical signals through your nerve cells to communicate with the cells throughout your body. And these signals are called nervous impulses. And they’re generated by charges to the electrical changes to the electrical charge of the nerve cell membrane.

And these changes actually occurred due to the movement of the electrolytes sodium across the nerve cell membrane. So electrolytes, if you don’t have electrolytes in your system, you will die. This is something where you just have to get electrolytes in your system.

And we all get these in our in our body, you know, through our diet, you know, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium phosphate, these are all very common, and most people will get these in their diet.

I do think that as runners, especially if you are a heavy sweater or live in a warm environment, that it is very important for you to supplement with electrolytes, it can really improve your health and fitness and you’re running performance in a lot of ways. So let’s talk about some of these ways that taking supplemental electrolytes can help you.

Number one, it improves hydration. And this is the most common way we think of electrolytes, electrolyte water, electrolyte drinks, you know, energy drinks, you know, running endurance drinks.

Water is the most essential nutrient. And it’s very important that you drink enough water throughout the day, right> However, staying hydrated with water doesn’t really work on its on itself. Like you have to have electrolytes in the mix somehow throughout the day, okay, they play a key role in maintaining your hydration levels, by directing the flow of water in and out of cells.

So studies have actually shown that adding salt to fluids greatly improves improves your fluid retention, especially when you’re restoring the fluid balance after significant electrolyte loss, which happens after long runs when the weather is really hot outside when you sweat a lot. This is because both water and sodium need to be consumed in order to establish proper hydration levels.

Okay, so know that you cannot just drink tons of water by itself, that you have to have electrolytes in your water. When you are especially when you’re exercising. I like to start my day with electrolytes first thing in the morning, I hydrate what right when I get up with electrolytes.

And I feel like it’s a great way for me to start the day. And I feel like I’m not myself until I’ve had my electrolytes first thing in the morning. When you sleep you you kind of tend to get dehydrated. So it’s great to start the day with proper hydration including electrolytes.

Okay, another benefit of taking a supplement electrolytes is that they do give you energy so electrolytes support energy production, by ensuring the body is properly hydrated and fueled. So sodium in particular, plays a pivotal role in hydration, which is essential for maintaining high energy levels.

It helps regulate fluid volume levels and ensures that your muscles function correctly. So essentially, a well hydrated body is an energized body. And if you’ve ever been out on a long run on a hot day, and you’ve kind of, this has totally happened to me, I’ve kind of run out of water run out of electrolytes and just got a little dehydrated, my energy levels tanked really fast, you know so it is important that you stay hydrated and use electrolytes to maintain energy levels.

Another benefit it improves athletic performance. So sodium before a workout helps to increase blood volume. This means that more blood is available system wide. More blood volume means more oxygen is available for working muscles. So more oxygen means better performance.

So if you just want to do something to improve your athletic performance, salt before a workout is going to help get you there. You know you’re improving increasing blood volume, and you’re going to improve your athletic performance for that workout. So right there is a great reason to make sure that you’re doing electrolytes especially before workouts.

Another benefit of electrolytes it helps to promote good sleep. So quality sleep is crucial for just being an overall healthy human being. Electrolytes particularly calcium helped to promote REM sleep, which is a deep sleep phase allows your body to rest and recharge.

This is especially beneficial, beneficial for people who struggle with insomnia. Maintaining a proper electrolyte balance can significantly improve your sleep quality. So electrolytes support sleep without the need for stimulants or our caffeine or anything like that. So just understand that good quality sleep is important electrolytes play a role in that electrolytes also helped to reduce stress.

Magnesium, one of the electrolytes we talked about is an essential electrolyte has been shown to have a calming effect on the body in the mind. And this is often used to help with sleep as well. But it helps to alleviate anxiety too. And it helps to regulate the nervous system and promotes relaxation.

So maintaining a healthy electrolyte balance helps you to your body to function properly helps to reduce stress levels, and helps you to just to feel less stressed throughout the day. Good thing for all of us.

Another benefit of electrolytes is helps to strengthen bones and muscles. So now we’re talking about calcium and potassium. These are vital for strengthening muscles and bones. Calcium contributes to bone health, which is particularly important for those at high risk of osteoporosis. And potassium helps to maintain muscle health by preserving muscle mass and helps to prevent muscle cramps. All very good things for us runners right.

Electrolytes also helped to improve recovery. Studies suggests that consuming electrolytes like sodium can optimize water absorption, which yields faster recovery times, and probably is more effective at enhancing your performance and recovery than water alone.

So it’s encouraged for someone to focus on fluids and electrolyte consumption to facilitate proper recovery not just to improve performance. And it helps with tissue repair too. So electrolytes help to rebuild damage tissue by improving cell function and cell hydration. So better all around workouts and better all around recovery from workouts, which is super important.

And then we’ve all probably heard that electrolytes help to prevent muscle cramps. Yep, this is true. Studies have shown that to that there are two main types of cramping, there’s a overuse cramping, that means you’re just pushing a muscle too much too hard, too soon. And there’s cramping from electrolyte deficiency.

If you are a really salty sweater, temperatures are really high, you’re doing really long distance runs, consider using electrolytes before and during those long events to prevent cramping. And then obviously, you have to make sure you’re ramping up your training slowly and you’re not overdoing it.

A lot of runners experience cramping, you know, miles 18 to 22 into a marathon because they’re not used to running nonstop for that long. So a lot of people get cramps during their first marathon because, you know, they may have done a few 20 mile runs.

But they’ve done them where they stop and they take breaks and things like that. But you know, running nonstop for, you know, three hours or whatever is a little bit different and it causes muscle cramps. So the the overexertion tends to be the big contributor of muscle cramps, but the electrolytes will help prevent that as well.

Okay, so how much should you take? So the recommendations vary, but listen, we’re mainly talking about salt intake. That’s the one that you know people are concerned about. And the FDA says that we should only be getting 2.3 grams of, of salt per day maximum.

Interestingly, the average American gets around three and a half grams of sodium per day. Of course, the FDA would like to see that reduced. There is a growing body of research that reveals that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels, two to three times the government recommendations.

So if you eat a diet, low in unprocessed foods, less you’re getting less sodium right there. If you eat a diet low in carbohydrates, you’re gonna have less water retention. And then you probably need to add more salt in the way of you know, an electrolyte supplement into your diet.

And the sweet spot for most people seems to be four to six grams of sodium per day. That’s kind of recommended by new research and by experts, and the new research definitely backs this up as being the optimum amount. Of course, if you have high blood pressure or hypertension, you have to check with your doctor before adding more more salt into your diet.

And then just understand that you are if you are a low carb athlete, then your body will be not as inflamed and not holding on to as much water which means you’re processing more fluids processing more water and losing more electrolytes in that process.

So most low carb athletes tend to err on the side of more salt is better and they seem to feel much better doing more salt brands I recommend there’s a couple brands that I like one is called element LMNT and they come in little packets.

And the ingredients are pretty simple. It’s salt, in the form of sodium chloride, citric acid, magnesium malate, and then potassium chloride, natural flavors, stevia leaf extract. In each packet of LMNT there’s 1000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. This is a good mix.

These things are really good I’ve recommended these in the past. Another one that I really like is is by a salt brand called Redmond. Redmond Re-Lyte is the name of the product. Re-Lyte and they use ancient sea salt. These are the ingredients coconut water powder.

Coconut water is a natural has natural occurring electrolytes in it. Citric acid stevia leaf extract natural flavors 810 milligrams of sodium per serving and this stuff comes in a little tub so you can measure out your own servings but 810 milligrams of sodium, 400 milligrams of potassium, 180 milligrams of chloride, 60 milligrams of calcium, 50 milligrams of magnesium. So both of these have good electrolyte profiles.

I kind of like the Redman Re-Lyte just because it’s a little more convenient without having to have all these packets that you have to open, number one. Number two, it also includes calcium, which I think is important as an electrolyte. So, but they’re both great, they’re both great choices.

Okay, next supplement that I think every runner can benefit from is protein powder. So protein is probably the most important of all the macronutrients that we need for survive like we cannot survive if we do not get protein in our diet. Fat is the other one, we have to eat fat or will die, we have to eat protein or we will die. These are called essential macronutrients. If we don’t consume those in our diet, we will perish.

Interestingly enough, carbohydrates are not considered an essential macro nutrient. If we don’t eat carbohydrates, we’ll be fine. Like there’s really nothing that’s going to go wrong. Our liver will produce all the glucose that our that our brain needs for survival. So we really don’t even have to eat foods that are related with carbohydrates or sugars.

Okay, so protein is very important. Why should you supplement with protein? Why do you need to eat some kind of protein powder? Shouldn’t you just get enough protein in your diet? Yes, you can definitely get enough protein in your diet. But most people find it difficult to get enough protein by eating a protein.

You know, meat essentially is probably the best form of protein. But if you’re vegan, vegetarian, whatever tofu, beans, there’s legumes, there’s other sources of protein where you can up your protein intake. But I just find that most people I talked to struggle to get enough protein in during the day.

The recommendations from the government are like, hey, 65% of your calories needs to be coming from carbohydrate. So this right alone right there, if you’re following the standard American diet right there, it’s gonna make it really difficult to get enough protein.

And I think that the type of protein powder matters and that whey protein seems to be the best the safest, the most studied the most effective, the most bioavailable form of protein, it is a complete protein means it contains all nine essential amino acids. So whey protein seems to be the best.

Now, if you are vegan or vegetarian, you don’t want to do the dairy or you’re lactose intolerant or something like that. No problem. There are other good options out there. Soy is a good option. I know a lot of people are allergic to soy, but it does have all the essential amino acids, which is important.

Pea protein is the other one that has all the essential amino acids, so those are both considered complete proteins. And those are pretty good to do, but way is superior in a lot of different ways. So if you’re somebody that can handle, you know, eating the whey protein, then that’s your best bet.

Okay, so the for the focus of this conversation today, I’m going to be mostly focusing on whey protein as the protein supplement, but you can just, you know, plug and play the other ones into this same formula because they all have similar benefits. But there’s a couple of benefits that are specific to weigh as I’m going to mention here in just a minute.

Okay, so some of the benefits of whey protein or you know, taking a protein supplement. So muscle mass declines naturally as you age, unless you’re doing something to offset that, okay. For most people, this leads to muscle loss and fat gain, and raises the risk of lots of metabolic diseases right.

This adverse change in body composition can be slowed, prevented or reversed with a combination of strength training and getting enough protein in your diet. Strength training, coupled with the consumption of a high protein foods or a protein supplement has been shown to be an effective preventative strategy for muscle degradation, and weight gain as we age.

So particularly effective seem to be high quality protein sources such as weight. So whey is rich in a branched chain amino acid called leucine. And leucine is the most growth promoting or anabolic of the amino acids. And for this reason, whey protein is effective for the prevention of age related muscle loss, as well as for improved strength.

So for muscle growth, some studies show that whey protein may be slightly better than other types of proteins such as casein or soy, okay. Whey protein may also lower blood pressure, okay, so abnormally high blood pressure, or condition called hypertension, is one of the leading risk factors for heart disease. Numerous studies have linked the consumption of dairy products with reduced blood pressure, interesting.

This effect has been attributed to a family of bioactive peptides and dairy called ace inhibitors. And in whey proteins, that specifically, the ace inhibitors are called lactic acids and several animal studies have demonstrated their beneficial effects on blood pressure.

So one study in overweight individuals showed that whey protein consumption around 50 grams a day for 12 weeks lowered systolic blood pressure by 4%. And other milk proteins like casein had, casein had seen similar effects.

This is supported by another study that found significant effects when participants were given whey protein for six weeks. However, understand this though, blood pressure decreased only in those that had high or slightly elevated blood pressure to begin with. So it didn’t really have an effect on lowering blood pressure for people with normal blood pressure.

But that’s a good benefit of just doing something as simple as taking a protein supplement. Protein helps to reduce inflammation. So inflammation is part of the body’s natural response to damage and short term inflammation can be beneficial. But under certain certain circumstances, it can become chronic and this is not good.

Chronic inflammation can be harmful. It’s a risk factor for many diseases. And it may reflect underlying health conditions of or lifestyle habits that can be detrimental to your health. This large study done recently found that high doses of whey protein supplements and when they say high doses, they’re talking equal to or greater than 20 grams per day, that is not high.

That’s like less than one scoop of protein powder basically. But anyway, these particular doses of whey protein supplements significantly reduced reactive protein CRP, which is a key marker of inflammation in the body so good at reducing inflammation. If you’re a runner and you want to recover faster and not be so inflamed, whey protein is a great supplement for that protein in general will help with that.

Also understand this protein is highly satiating, it’s very filling, and it helps to reduce hunger. So when we talk about satiety, we’re talking about the feeling of fullness we we experienced after eating a meal.

It’s the opposite of appetite or hunger, and it should suppress the cravings for food and the desire to eat. So eating food that is more satiating will help you to not eat as much to feel more full throughout the day. And to help you to not be craving all kinds of crazy foods throughout the day which is all good.

If you’re trying to lose weight then not being totally ravenously hungry and craving sugar and stuff like that is a good thing. It’s a good thing. So some foods are more satiating than others, and it depends on their macronutrient composition.

Carbohydrates, being the least satiating, fat being the next and then protein being the most, by far, the most satiating of the three big macronutrients. However, not all proteins have the same effect on satiety. Whey protein appears to be more satiating than other types of protein such as casein or soy.

These properties make it particularly useful for those who want to try to you know, consume fewer calories and lose weight. Okay, so protein, super satiating, I always suggest people eat more protein. And this is a great way to help you lose weight.

That is actually the next big benefit of a protein supplement is that it increased consumption of protein has been a well known weight loss strategy. And this is one of the things that I promote with my clients as well. And the reason this works is because it suppresses appetite, it leads to typically reduced calorie intake, it helps to boost your metabolism helps you to burn more calories.

And if you’re burning the right kinds of calories, meaning fat, then it’ll help you to lose more weight, it helps to maintain muscle mass when you’re losing weight. A lot of people they set out to lose weight, and they lose a lot of muscle mass in the process. We don’t want to do that. So supplementing with protein, especially a good quality protein, like whey will help you to offset that muscle loss.

And as long as you’re doing proper strength training as well, then you’ll be actually gaining muscle and losing weight and losing the fat weight. This is how you improve your body composition and get that have that nice, lean, strong look that we all want. So whey protein has been shown to be particularly effective, and it has a superior effect on fat burning and satiety than other types of protein.

So just know that how much protein powder should you be taking, really, the recommendations vary a little bit here, but 25 to 50 grams per day seems to be fine. If you’re somebody that is not really getting enough protein from your diet, then do a double scoop of protein.

So like 50 grams, typically a scoop is like 20-25 grams of protein. So do a couple scoops of that, mix it up with some water, some milk or almond milk or whatever, you know, floats your boat there. But 25 to 50 grams a day seems to be the recommended amount, total protein recommendations, and this has changed over the years.

But I like to tell people that you should probably be getting point seven to one gram of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. So if your goal is to get to 150 pounds, you probably want to be between 105 to 150 grams of protein per day.

Again, this can be hard for some people, especially women, women seem to have a little bit of a hard time getting enough protein just from food alone. So supplementing is a great way to make sure you’re getting adequate protein to support your weight loss to support your training.

Brands I recommend – there’s lots of great brands out there. I just recommend looking for brands that have few ingredients that don’t have any weird ingredients that you don’t understand that don’t have any added sugar. I’m currently using a whey protein powder by a company called Levels.

And the ingredients are really simple. It is whey protein, vanilla extract, sunflower lecithin, which is a natural emulsifier just improves the consistency when you mix it up. Sea salt, stevia leaf extract and monk fruit extract. That’s it super simple ingredients. I understand what all those are. There’s nothing weird in there.

But look for a brand that you know is in your budget and also because protein can be expensive. Look for something that’s in your budget and that that feels good to you. Okay, just read the labels get good at reading labels.

Okay, last of my big three supplements that I think every runner should be taking is creatine. So what is creatine? Creatine is a natural supplement used to boost athletic performance. It’s not only safe but it’s one of the world’s most popular and most effective supplements for building muscle and strength.

Creatine is a chemical compound that occurs naturally in the body. It’s also found in red meat and seafood. Creatine is an amino acid that comes from other amino acids. So there are Some amino acids that we call essential amino acids, and these are ones that we have to get in our diet, okay?

And so those those essential amino acids can kind of combine and then those produce other amino acids. I think there’s like 20 total amino acids that we need for survival. But then there’s, like 11 other amino acids that are created from combination of the essential amino acids, if that makes sense, okay.

And creatine is one of those amino acids that is created from a combination of other amino acids. So the human body makes creatine in the liver and the kidneys and the pancreas. It’s stored in your muscles, mainly in a form called a phospho, creatine or creatine phosphate. And creatine is involved in making energy for your muscles.

Why should you supplement with creatine? Can’t you just get this in your diet? You can you can actually get enough creatine in your diet if you’re eating red meat and fish, but you would probably need to eat something like two and a half pounds of steak every day to get you to the recommended dosage of creatine which is five grams per day.

Five grams is like a rounded teaspoon of creatine so it’s not a lot, but two half pounds of steak maybe a little bit much for most people. Okay, so it’s much easier to just supplement. Again, these are the supplements that I think are so beneficial, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be supplementing with them, especially creatine.

So what are the benefits of creatine? One it helps to produce helps your muscle cells produce more energy. Creatine increases your muscles phosphocreatine stores, it aids in the formation of ATP, which is the key molecule your cells use for energy and all basic life functions. During exercise ATP is broken down to produce energy.

The rate of ATP resynthesis limits your ability to continually perform at max intensity. So as your ATP as you use up ATP faster than you can reproduce it Okay, so creatine supplements actually increase your fossil creatine stores allowing you to produce more ATP energy to fuel your muscles during high intensity exercise. This is the primary mechanism behind creatine perhaps performance enhancing effects.

So I mean right there, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using creatine. Creatine also supports many other functions in the muscles. It’s a popular and effective supplement for adding muscle mass. It can alter numerous cellular pathways that lead to new muscle growth for example, it boosts the formation of proteins that create new muscle fibers. It can also raise levels of insulin like growth factor, IGF1, a hormone that promotes increases in muscle mass.

What’s more creatine supplements can increase the water content of your muscles. This is known as cell volumization and can quickly increase muscle size as soon as you start taking creatine you’ll notice a little bit of of water retention and your muscles. Most people see it as a little bit of weight gain.

So they’ll say oh my gosh, I’m starting creatine and I started gaining weight. No, you’re going to just gain a little bit of muscle and water content and your muscles are totally fine. It’s actually good for you to do that. Some research indicates that creatine decreases levels of myostatin, which is a molecule responsible for stunting muscle growth. So reducing myostatin can help you build muscle faster as well. Very, very awesome stuff this creatine, it improves high intensity exercise performance.

So creatine is direct role and ATP production means it can drastically improve high intensity exercise performance. They improve numerous factors including strength ballistic power, sprinting ability, muscle endurance, resistance to fatigue, muscle mass recovery brain performance, unlike supplements only affect advanced athletes.

Creatine benefits you regardless of your fitness level, that is key right there. And one review found that improves high intensity exercise performance by up to 15%. Why are you not taking creatine every day? Creatine also speeds muscle growth, so it’s one of the most effective supplements for adding muscle mass.

Taking it for just as few as five to seven days has been shown to significantly increase lean body weight and muscle size. This initial rise is caused by increases in water content of your muscles fine over the long term though.

It also aids in muscle fiber growth by signal signaling key biological pathways and boosting your performance at the gym. And one study of a six week training regimen participants who used creatine added 4.4 pounds more muscle mass on average than the control group that’s huge, huge, huge, huge.

Similarly, a comprehensive review demonstrated a clear increase in muscle mass among those taking creatine compared with those performing the same training regimen without creatine. This review also compared the world’s most popular sports supplements and concluded that creatine is the best one available. Its advantages include being less expensive and far safer than most other sports supplements.

Again, creatine for the when creatine helps to improve brain function, it plays an important role in your brain health and brain function. Research demonstrates that your brain requires a significant amount of ATP when performing difficult tasks and supplements can increase the phosphocreatine stores in your brain and help it produce more ATP.

Creatine may also aid brain function by increasing dopamine levels and mitochondrial function. As meat as the best dietary source of creatine vegetarians often have low levels of creatine in their system and one study on creatine supplements and vegetarians found a 20 to 50% improvement in some memory and intelligence test scores. When these vegetarians who are starving were on a creatine supplement.

And then for older individuals supplementing with creatine for just a few weeks significantly improved memory and recall ability. And older adults creatine may boost brain function protect against neurological diseases and reduce age related loss of muscle and strength. So just take creatine every day, just from now on. Okay.

One last thing about it is that it helps to reduce muscle helps to reduce fatigue and tiredness. One study they did show that people that had been sleep deprived had reduced levels of fatigue and increased energy levels. And they did a test on cycler cyclists. And they found that creatine reduced the fatigue in athletes taking a cycling test and has been used to decrease fatigue when exercising in high heat as well.

So again, creatine, for the win every day. Creatine is safe and easy to use. Along with all of its benefits, it’s one of the cheapest and safest supplements available. It’s been studied more than any other supplement out there. You can find it just about anywhere. It’s been researched for more than 200 years. Yeah, I know that’s crazy.

And numerous studies supported safety for long term use clinical trial trials lasting up to five years report no adverse effects in healthy individuals. What’s more, supplementing is easy, just do three to five grams of creatine monohydrate powder per day.

So what I’m recommending is creatine monohydrate. That should be the only ingredient so if you’re buying something and it has anything else in it, just don’t get it just stick with creatine monohydrate that should be the only ingredient I use a brand called Optimum Nutrition. It’s great, lots of good reviews. It’s odorless, tasteless, pretty much and and I just add it to my protein shake, mix it up. And then I’m good to go around five grams a day for most people, if you’re if you’re a little on the lighter side, you could probably be closer to that three grams. If you’re heavier, you know, 220 pounds or 250 pounds you could probably go six or eight grams per day something like that.

Most people seem to do well around five grams per day. Cool. Okay, those are supplements that I think every runner should be taking. I hope you got something good out of this episode today. I hope you have some good takeaways and you can start supplementing with abandon because these are these are good ones and I think just about everybody can benefit from these core. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

205. The Problem is You

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Most people come up with all sorts of excuses, reasons, and stories for why they can’t accomplish something hard. You set out to lose weight so you change your diet but you eventually slip back …

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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 205 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, the problem is you. So most people come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons and stories for why they can’t accomplish something hard.

So you might set out to lose weight. So you change your diet, but eventually kind of slip back into old habits, and your new way of eating goes out the window. And when you ask most people why they do this, that’s when all the excuses and the reasons in the stories come into play.

There’s a different way to approach all of this. And in this episode, I’m going to show you the way most people think that the problem is out there. But when you accept that the problem is you, you can start accomplishing everything that you want in your life.

But first, I talk a lot about losing weight and improving your health and fitness here on the podcast. And I know all of this information can feel a little bit overwhelming. That’s why I created a very comprehensive free hour-long training for you called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.

In this training video, you’ll learn how to fuel your body properly, to lose weight, and improve your running. You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean, healthy runner, you’re going to learn how to make changes that actually are sustainable, and so much more.

If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, to run faster, run longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then you need to check out this free training now just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.

Okay, so most people when they set out to accomplish something, and they start making some progress, and they find themselves slipping back into old habits or not following through on the things they said they were going to do, they come up with excuses, and reasons and stories.

And all these things can seem very valid. You know, you can say, oh, you know, I can’t stick to my diet because my husband doesn’t support me. Or, you know, I wasn’t able to stick to my running plan because my work schedule changed. And all of these things that we look to as reasons why we can’t accomplish the things that we want to accomplish in our lives.

All of these things are typically outside of us, they are outside of our control, meaning we only have control over three things, our own thoughts, feelings, and actions and everything else is outside of our control.

So when you start to blame outside circumstances, outside forces, for why you can’t accomplish something that feels very out of your hands, it’s out of your control, there’s nothing you can do about it, right?

And I want to talk about this, but I want to go back a little bit and talk about why we do this. So humans as we’ve evolved, we’ve been hard-wired, to look for problems and find solutions. And we are really, really good at this. This has helped us in the past to avoid danger, and to survive, and to evolve and to eventually become the beings that we are today.

So this problem-solving feature that we have as human beings is really fantastic. Okay, this is built into our DNA now, right? It’s, it’s a part of who we are, from an evolutionary standpoint, we look for problems, and we find solutions and we are good at this.

And from an evolutionary standpoint, finding problems was always really good, like looking outside of ourselves for problems was very important, right? Because we were faced with real dangers that were outside of us things like saber-toothed tigers, that were lurking in the shadows, long, cold winters that we had to survive, scarcity of food, you know, finding shelter going through childbirth, these are all things that were big problems and most of them were, you know, outside of our control.

And so, we had to look for and find these problems and find solutions for those problems. And so this is how we have evolved. We’re good at looking outside of ourselves to find what the problem is. The issue, though, is that nowadays, we don’t have those kinds of problems. But our genetic programming still wants to look outside of ourselves for problems.

So we inherently will look to, oh, my boss is being a jerk. That’s why, you know, I’m not performing well at work, or I’m in a really bad mood, because traffic was really crappy this morning on my way to work, or, you know, I would do better with my diet and stuff, but my spouse doesn’t really support me or it’s too cold outside, I don’t want to run, you know.

So we are looking outside of ourselves for problems. And when we do that, when we look outside of ourselves to find a problem, we will find problems. And we will find a lot of them.

When you’re constantly looking for the problem, and you’re looking outside of yourself, you will find it. You can find all kinds of excuses and stories and reasons why you can’t do this, or why this is too hard, or why you fail.

So instead of going outside, which is our programming, and I get that, and it’s hard to do this, but you have to look inside for the problems and the solutions. Because if the solution isn’t within you, there’s really nothing you can do about it.

Because you have no control over everything out there, you don’t have control over outside circumstances, you can only control your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That means if it’s not your own thoughts, feelings and actions, you have no control over it.

Everything else is out of your control. And if you extrapolate that out a little bit, that means that those things are not a problem for you. What other people think what other people feel what other people do, it’s out of your control, and therefore not your problem.

If it’s not within you, you can’t change it. And so it shouldn’t really be a problem for you. So always go within to find the problem. And the solution.

Sometimes other people’s actions will affect you. Like if somebody punches you in the face, that is an action that has affected you in a certain way. But it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a problem for you, you can be like, wow, that was crazy and just choose to walk away.

Or, you know, oh, my boss just dumped this big project on me. This affects you, you have to work late now, you wanted to work out or something like that, but you now you have to work late. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a problem for you. You choose what you want that situation to mean, you’re always assigning meaning to your circumstances, always.

You have a flat tire and you’re ready to work, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be in a bad mood all day, you can choose to be in a bad mood about that or not, it does not have to be a problem for you. So the solution is always within whatever the problem is, then the solution is within, okay.

If the problem is you know your own thoughts, feelings and actions, then you need to look at your own thoughts, feelings and actions to see what needs to change here. Because if it’s outside of you, it’s not your problem. If it’s within you, you can do something about that.

So that becomes where you need to put your focus. Most people will never do this. They don’t want to look at themselves. They always want to blame and complain and have stories and reasons and excuses. And when they do that, if you’re somebody that does that, it’s really easy to not have to do anything.

You don’t have to change yourself. You don’t have to become more you don’t have to grow. You don’t have to do anything hard. You can just sit there and be like, I’m a victim. And all this stuff is happening to me. With that attitude, though, what are you going to accomplish? Nothing.

You’re never going to grow, you’re never going to accomplish something bigger, and you’re never going to move past where you are right now. And if you want to move past where you are right now, and if there’s this other version of you that you’re working towards, then I’m going to tell you right now you have to stop blaming, you have to take responsibility.

So often times we look inside for the problem, and that’s a good thing. But you can do that and do it sort of the wrong way. You can be asking yourself really terrible questions. Like you can say to yourself, why is losing weight so hard for me? How come I can never run faster? How can I fail at everything I do? These are known as, and I say this a lot, these are called terrible questions.

They’re terrible. Because when you ask questions like, why is losing weight so hard? You’re going to find answers. You know, oh, because I always eat junk food. And I can never do this. And I’m never good enough.

Why can’t I run faster? Because I’m slow. I’ll always be slow. I just keep getting slow. Why do I fail at everything? Because I can never accomplish anything. I’m destined to be a failure. I’m never good enough. I can’t be successful like other people. These are terrible questions.

Don’t ask yourself those kinds of questions. Stay away from questions like that. Okay? Instead, you want to reframe these questions, you want to start asking yourself better questions. So it’s good that you’re looking within for the problem, and the solution, but you have to ask better questions.

So instead of why is losing weight so hard, say how can I make losing weight easier? What do I need to do to make this process easier for me? Do I need to write a list every day and make a plan every single day? Do I need to include foods that I really enjoy and make it fun?

Like, what do I need to do to run faster? Instead of why can’t I ever run fast? Oh, I need to do more speed work? I can start focusing on tempo runs? You know, instead of why do I always fail and everything, it’s like, how can I start being a success?

What can I do today, that’s going to help me to succeed at this thing, losing weight, getting stronger, getting faster? Stop the blame game, and start taking radical responsibility. You have to stop blaming everyone and everything that’s outside of you for why you can’t accomplish what you want to accomplish.

If you want to lose weight, if you want to run faster if you want to get stronger, stop blaming, and start taking radical responsibility. Radical responsibility means you take responsibility for all of the results that you’re getting, or not getting in your life.

If it’s not working, the problem is you. If it is working, you did that. Okay. It has nothing to do with what’s out there. What’s outside of you has nothing to do with whether or not you can accomplish the things that you want for yourself. But it has everything to do with what’s inside you. So once you see that the problem is you that’s good.

Okay, now you can get to work fixing it because you can you can control that. You can take control over what is within you. The only thing you can control. Radical responsibility means you accept responsibility for everything in your life.

Every result that you’re getting, or not getting, everything good, bad, and ugly in your life. You did that. When you get to that place of taking radical responsibility, that is a humongous first step in you know, being able to accomplish all these things that you want for yourself, okay?

Once you take radical responsibility, you can be like, oh, great, now I’m the problem. And here’s my situation. And here’s what I need to do to get things back on track. Okay, if the problem is always out there, you have every excuse in the world to fail. But if the problem is you, you have everything you need within you to succeed.

And listen, you always, always get to choose. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.