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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Weight Loss

88. Embracing the Growth Mindset

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Your mindset is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. Armed with the right mindset, there’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish! Whatever it is you want for yourself - to …

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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 88, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, your host and the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about embracing the growth mindset. I talk a lot about mindset. And your mindset is absolutely one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. Armed with the right mindset, there’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish.

Whatever it is that you want for yourself, if you’re trying to lose weight, or you want to run an ultra marathon, the right mindset will absolutely get you there. Mindset is not always positive, though, the wrong mindset can keep you stuck and keep you from realizing your true potential. So if you can’t ever seem to make forward progress, or you’re feeling like a failure, your mindset probably got you there too.

So today in this episode, I’m talking about two very distinct mindsets, the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. And why embracing the growth mindset is key to accomplishing everything that you want in your life.

But first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, this group goes hand in hand with this podcast, we extend the conversation over there in the group, and it gives you a voice. Listen, I love talking into this microphone and sharing this information with you. But I also love hearing from you. I love it when you share your pictures and your stories and your questions.

And I created the Running Lean podcast community as a place for you to do that. So come join us in the fun. We have fun, by the way, just search Running Lean community on Facebook and join us over there.

Also, here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This is from Kristen and Kristen says, “Informative podcast. I’m not sure how I stumbled on Patrick’s podcast, but I’m glad I did. It’s a very informative podcast with a lot of good information in regards to running and eating healthy.”

Thank you very much, Kristen, I appreciate that. And you can share the love of the Running Lean podcast as well if you enjoy this, and it provides value for you in some way. It would mean so much to me. If you could just take a moment. Open up Apple podcasts, scroll down where it says rate and review, tap the stars, and write a few words that just wouldn’t mean the world to me. So thank you for doing that.

Also, people ask how they can work with me? Well, there are two different ways. Number one, you can work with me one on one, I do one on one coaching with runners I help show you exactly how to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself. The other way you can work with me is through the Running Lean coaching group. The Running Lean coaching group is a group where we get together and do weekly group coaching sessions.

So I do a little teaching and coaching in the group. But you get to ask questions. And you get answers. And we have conversations in the groups that have been super informative lately and super powerful.

And people have been seeing some really good results. And all month long during the month of September, actually starting next Tuesday. So that would be the first Tuesday in September. We’re doing the four weeks to fat adapted running.

So we’re going to be talking all about fat adaptation for runners, how to do it step by step which foods to eat which to avoid the kinds of carbs you should focus on the kinds of carbs you should stay away from and how to get through that tough transition period without losing your mind.

I want to help you to become that lean, mean fat burning running machine that you want to be and I’m going to show you the mindset that’s required to make it last. So if you’re interested in the Running Lean coaching group, just go to Running Lean podcast comm forward slash join and if you ever want to inquire about one on one coaching, just go to Running Lean podcast comm forward slash apply. And when you are a one on one client with me you also get access to the coaching group. So win win for everybody. Alright, let’s get into this topic because this has been really fun embracing the growth mindset.

So why am I talking about this today? Well, I’ve recently been reading Mindset, the book by Carol S. Dweck. And basically, the book lays out two very distinct mindsets. And I see these two mindsets playing out every day, in my coaching practice. So every day I coach people and help them with their nutrition strategies, with their weight, with their physical fitness, with building strength, and endurance.

And I see these two very distinct mindsets in different people every day and I realized that I have had one of these mindsets for most of my life. And it was kind of keeping me stuck. And I’ve changed my mindset, you know, over the last five years or so, something like that. And I’ve really adopted a different mindset. And things have changed dramatically for me.

So I don’t struggle as much with decision-making. I don’t get down on myself as much I don’t dwell on my mistakes. I don’t see failures as the end, I see failures as learning experiences. I’m always learning and growing. So I’m going to talk about these two mindsets today. And I had planned on talking about this topic in a later episode.

But I got a comment recently, from a follower on Instagram, Rick, and he said, “Hey, I’m crossing my fingers this is what the podcast will be about this week.” And because I had written a post about these two mindsets, and he wanted to hear more about this. So Rick, this one’s for you, my friend. And the topic I was going to talk about, we’ll just do that another time. It’s all good.

But this is just so fresh on my mind right now that I wanted to just dive into this and share my thoughts on these two mindsets with you guys here. So really, it’s all about mindset. I say this all the time, mindset is everything, whatever it is that you want. It’s your mindset that will get you there. If you’re feeling stuck, and you just feel like you can’t seem to move forward. It’s your mindset that got you there. Mindset is powerful.

And this is one of the reasons why I talk about it’s so much a lot of coaches that teach you to know physical fitness or personal trainers, or running coaches, they don’t talk about the mindset that much. But for me, it’s like fundamental. With the right mindset, you can face huge challenges, like losing 50 pounds, or running an ultra-marathon. Like these things are huge and hard to do.

But with the right mindset, you can absolutely do it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a piece of cake, it’s going to be like a cakewalk. It’s like super simple, but it does mean that you can persevere and you can absolutely achieve whatever it is that you want for yourself, okay?

But the mindset has this other side – mindset can also keep you from ever achieving those things, no matter how much you want it, how badly you want it, or how hard you try with the wrong mindset is going to be super hard for you.

And a lot of times, people just don’t even bother trying, right? And this is all based on the wrong mindset. Okay, so the two mindsets, they’re basically two mindsets that we’re going to be talking about today, the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. And we all display traits of both of these like we all use a fixed mindset in certain situations, and we adopt a growth mindset in certain situations. But for most people, one of these is always the predominant mindset, okay.

And today, as I’m talking about each one of these mindsets, and I’m describing their characteristics, I want you to think about which one you most identify with. Now, you’re going to be tempted to think, oh, you know, I’m definitely the growth mindset because it’s the one we should all be adopting more of. But I want you to be honest with yourself because it’s only in being completely honest with yourself, that you can learn and grow.

And listen, if you think that you don’t need to learn and grow like you already know all this. That’s kind of the fixed mindset talking right there. Okay, it’s very meta. So let’s get into this.

What is the fixed mindset? So in a fixed mindset, you believe that your talent, your intelligence, your potential, your abilities, they’re all fixed, that your success is based on your innate abilities. In other words, you either have it or you don’t. So if you have a fixed mindset, people with a fixed mindset are most likely not, you’re not living up to your true potential.

People with a fixed mindset believe that you sort of have to be born with it, you got, you got to just like have that natural ability, that natural potential, that natural grit. And if you don’t have it, then you just you don’t have it.

People with a fixed mindset don’t see failure as part of the learning process, they see failure as the end, that’s it, I tried something, I failed, I’m going to just try something else. Like, I’m just going to give up on that dream, I’m going to give up on that goal.

Failure doesn’t mean you know, I tried something that didn’t work, I’m gonna like go at this from a different angle, I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep going, I’m gonna learn from this. No, they just see failure as I am a failure. I am a bad person, they make it mean something about their self-worth. I’m incapable of accomplishing this.

If you have a fixed mindset, you probably aren’t seeking out new challenges. Because to try them to go after something big and to fail. It’s just too devastating. Even a temporary setback would be seen as a total disaster to someone with a fixed mindset. So I coach a lot of people on these on all this stuff.

And the two mindsets become very clear, just after a few coaching sessions with someone like I kind of get where they’re kind of coming from most of the time, okay. So for example, if I’m coaching someone on weight loss, losing weight is never a linear process.

There are lots of ups and downs, lots of stops and starts, you might lose five pounds one week, and then you next week, you gain two pounds. I’ve never seen anybody just lose weight exactly perfectly, you know, one or two pounds every single week until they get to their goal weight, there are always fluctuations up and down.

But for people with a fixed mindset, this is devastating. They have such a hard time dealing with this because they see the scale going up. And they’re like, oh, I can’t do it. See it? Nothing ever works for me. You know, here’s the proof. Look, the scale went up, I’m just destined to be overweight, I’m destined to be at this weight forever. Who might think I could ever change?

That’s a fixed mindset, attitude right there. So those with an intense, fixed mindsets, they won’t even try to lose weight. Why would they even bother? I probably don’t see a lot of these people. Because people with a real intense fixed mindset, don’t seek out coaching, they’re not looking for help accomplishing a goal, because why would they hire a coach if they just believe it would never work for them?

Okay, so most of the people that I work with are, you know, they might have a little bit more of a fixed mindset, but they’re not, like, totally engrossed in it. Okay. And I know this, this fixed mindset example might seem like it’s a little exaggerated, but I promise you it’s not this is a very common scenario as this plays out, okay.

Another trait of the fixed mindset is shuttling responsibility fixed mindset. People don’t take responsibility for their results. They blame other people for their failures. They blame other people and situations for their setbacks. Because it’s not their fault. Like they’re doing everything they can.

But then there are all these other obstacles in the way there’s nothing, there’s nothing that they can do about it because they’re, they’re fixed, right? They’re doing everything they can. So instead of taking responsibility for the results, they blame other people. They blame things that are happening around them so that they don’t have to be accountable and that they don’t have to learn and grow because they don’t believe they can.

So in a fixed mindset, it kind of appears that nothing ever seems to go your way and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s where the fixed mindset is, is pretty harsh. It’s like, here’s, here’s how I am. Here’s how I’m wired. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t grow. I can’t change. I can’t evolve, and I can’t become more. Right?

I have a long history of being in a fixed mindset. I was in a fixed mindset for most of my life. When I was a teenager, here’s an example. I was in this band. All right, and we were kind of a popular band back in the day. This is back in the 80s, right. And I played the keyboards, and I had been taking piano lessons. And so I’m like, you know, I was the guy that knew a little bit about playing keyboards, or whatever.

But here’s the thing, I had a very fixed mindset. I never thought that I had the same innate talent and abilities that the other musicians I was playing with had, I always thought other musicians as more talented as naturally gifted. They had this natural ability to, you know, make their instrument come alive. And I just never could do that. And I just sort of felt stuck.

I felt like I was not naturally talented. I didn’t see talent as something that I could learn over time. With practice and dedication, I saw it as either you had it or you didn’t. And I did not have it. So I quit, I ended up quitting the band in my early 20s. And then I just never really thought of myself as a musician ever, ever again. So that was me.

Even at an early age being in this fixed mindset, had I adopted a growth mindset. And we’ll talk about the growth mindset here in a moment. But had I adopted a growth mindset, who knows where I’d be today, probably some, you know, huge rock star, something like that.

But then later in life, I wanted to be a runner, like, in my 30s. You know, I was like, you know, what, I really want to be a runner, I see these people running on Saturday mornings, and I thought, I want to do that. But I was like, there’s no way that’s just not me. I am not a born runner. I can’t become a runner.

Also, for me, most Saturday mornings were like, I was super hungover from, you know, a night of drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. So there’s no way I could ever be one of those runners. I’m just like, I was too out of shape. I never thought I could get in that kind of shape. Like my health and fitness were fixed.

This is this was my mindset, okay. And the idea of trying to become a runner, and failing at it, it was just too much for me. So if I tried and failed, it meant that I was a failure. That meant that I could never become a runner. So why would I even bother? It’s much safer to just avoid all that altogether. And then I never have to feel like a failure. This is the fixed mindset right here. Okay.

Now, this line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense to me today, because that’s, this is not who I am anymore. I definitely have more of a growth mindset. And I’ve worked hard at it. But at the time, I thought that’s, that’s just who I was. And I wasn’t capable of change. I wasn’t capable of becoming more.

So the overarching message for me was don’t try anything too hard. And you’ll never have to feel like a failure. This is the overarching message of the fixed mindset. And I hear it show up with people that I coach as well.

So I’ll hear people say like, you know, I’m really having a hard time losing weight. And so I’m okay, if I just stayed this way, I’m okay. If I just don’t ever lose the weight. Maybe this is just a good weight for me. When deep down, they desperately want to lose the weight.

That is the fixed mindset where it can kind of get a little bit sneaky and start you start to convince yourself that this is just as good as it gets like you can’t become more you can’t accomplish this goal. Because, you know, you’re just too afraid to fail.

And listen, this isn’t about whether I think people should or shouldn’t lose weight. This is not for me to say this is for you to decide if this is what you want for yourself. What I’m talking about here is people that say, this is what they want for themselves, but then they don’t do it because they’re afraid of failing. This is what I’m talking about. That’s the fixed mindset in action. Right there.

Okay, so let’s talk about the growth mindset because this is the one that I have been working on so hard, and this is the one that I really want to share with you guys. So in the growth mindset, you don’t believe that talent, intelligence, abilities, and potential are fixed, but these things are malleable, they can always be learned and always be improved upon.

In the growth mindset, you believe that your success is not based on innate abilities and talents, but rather your success is based on your hard work, your practice your determination, your grit, your discipline. In the growth mindset, you’re always striving to reach your true potential. And in the growth mindset, you also understand that potential, it’s kind of a moving target.

And that you can always learn, you can always grow, you can always become more always in forever. This is my mantra these days is just like always growing, always becoming more people with the growth mindset, don’t see failure as the end, they see it as a necessary part of the learning and growing process.

People with the growth mindset see failure, not as something to avoid at all costs, but as a prerequisite for all success. People with a growth mindset know that every success is built upon a pile of failures. So they don’t see failure as a problem, just an opportunity to learn and grow and try something else.

So failure is just one thing that didn’t work like, oh, I tried that it didn’t really work. Let’s try something else. Let’s see if this works better. I deal with this all the time with people who are trying to we’re trying to figure out the right, you know, diet for someone, you know, the right meal plan.

And there’s no right answer that works for everybody. I’m just going to tell you that right now. And so there’s some trial and error there. Oh, let’s try eating you know, this much protein. Let’s try eating this, this many carbs this week. And let’s see if that makes a difference. Oh, you feel better? Okay, good. Let’s, let’s keep doing more of that.

Or oh, that didn’t really work for you. Running is still hard. Okay, well, let’s try something else. So for somebody with a growth mindset, failure never means I am a failure. People with the growth mindset don’t internalize failure, they don’t make it all about themselves or their self-worth, they don’t see themselves as less worthy because of a failure, a setback, or some disappointment. They just keep going. They just keep making progress.

People with a growth mindset aren’t afraid to do big things. They’re not afraid of facing challenges, because failure isn’t the end of the line. It’s part of the process. And it’s going to happen, we expect failure in the growth mindset. And we just embrace it and just keep going.

So how does this play out? Well, I can also tell in my coaching, I can tell the growth mindset people right away, too. They understand that if they’re trying to do something like lose weight, that is not a straightforward process. They’re okay with that. They’re not fazed by the ups and downs of the scale. They’re just like, oh, yeah, I get it. I, you know, weight went up again. But I’m committed to doing this. And I understand how this works. So I’m just going to keep going.

They see it as part of the process, they see it as the path to success. And they’re always learning and growing from it. You know, they might say to themselves, like, what did I do this past week that contributed to a little bit of a weight gain? You know, what can I do differently this week to get better results. This is how growth mindset people attack setbacks.

People with a growth mindset, they’re willing to go after hard things, they’re willing to do challenging things. They’re not afraid of failure, but failing. I work with a lot of people who are of the growth mindset, which is awesome. This one woman, in particular, she’s training for her very first 5k.

She’s never seen herself as a runner, but she made a decision that she wanted to become a runner. And for her running was always too hard. Right? She’s never really gone after like becoming a runner before because it’s just been like too hard.

But now, she’s on this training plan. And she’s been doing this for a month or two now. And she’s loving it. She says she finally feels like a runner for the first time in her life. And it hasn’t always been easy. She’s had some tough runs. She’s felt terrible. Sometimes she’s had some setbacks and failures. But she keeps on going with the growth mindset. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in your past or not. What matters is that you’re doing what it takes today, to grow and improve yourself, and become more.

She’s going to become this. She’s going to do her first 5k here soon. And I’m so excited for her because it takes me right back to those days when I wanted to become a runner. And I started and I could visualize doing my first 5k that’s the growth mindset in action.

This is not who I am, but this is who I want to become. And I’m going to go after it. I’m going to do it. I don’t care how hard it is. I don’t care if I fail. I don’t care if it’s It’s challenging. I don’t care if I mess up or you know, I have setbacks or it feels terrible. Sometimes I’m going to keep going, I’m going to accomplish this goal. That’s the growth mindset right there.

So every time I talk to her, I just, I feel so good, because when she talks about running these days, she just lights up. She loves it. She’s a runner, and she’s so proud of herself. And it’s palpable, that feeling I just love it, love it. Definitely someone of the growth mindset. Also, people with the growth mindset take responsibility for everything for all of their results, the good and the bad.

They don’t blame other people. They don’t blame circumstances. They don’t. They don’t like shun all the responsibility, they own it. They own their successes and their failures, and they learn from them, and they move on with a growth mindset.

These are people who take ownership of all of their results. They know what they can control, which is their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. And they know what they can control, which is basically everything else.

So I call this concept radical responsibility. This is taking responsibility for all of your results no matter what. And people with a fixed mindset, people definitely do not do this. They always have stories and reasons and excuses for why things aren’t working for them. On the other hand, the people with the growth mindset, you know what, they have results.

So, here are a couple of my experiences with the growth mindset. I just want you guys to understand something if you find yourself more in a fixed mindset, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck there forever. Doesn’t mean you’re doomed forever like you can never change like this is just who you are, you can change your mindset.

And so I used to be more of a fixed mindset. And now I’m not. Over the last few years, I’ve been really practicing this growth mindset I’ve been trying it on. And things are very different for me. So a couple of examples here.

A few years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to run marathons anymore. running marathons was too hard, right? Are you guys with me on this one? Do you have you ever felt this way? Like you’ve done some marathons and you’re like, well, that’s too hard. I’m just gonna stick with half marathons from here on out. Well, that was me. I had that attitude. And I could justify it. I had all these reasons and excuses.

I was like, oh, the training just takes too long. You know, running a marathon, what do you out there for all day, you know, with a half marathon, you can just go home when you’re done. And you know, you can still walk around the rest of the day.

And so I made this decision at some point that I’m just like, going to do half marathons from here on out. So a few years back. Well, this is the fixed mindset in action. Because marathons were hard. Marathons were challenging. There’s an element of suffering that you have to be able to endure if you want to run marathons.

And I didn’t want to deal with that I didn’t want I feared failing. That fear of failure kept me from doing big challenging things like this. So why would I even bother trying? So if I just tell myself, Oh, I just do half marathons. That’s the fixed mindset, keeping me stuck keeping me small, keeping me from doing big things. Stay safe, stay comfortable. Don’t try these big hard things. Because, hey, if you fail, it means that you know you are a failure, Patrick.

I don’t want to feel that way. But since I’ve adopted a new mindset, a growth mindset. I’ve completely shifted my thinking around all this. In fact, let’s see last year, I ran my first marathon and several years last year, and I also did my first Ultra in several years last year, so I did a marathon and a 50k towards the end of 2020. And then this year, I’ve already run a marathon.

I’ve got another marathon coming up, I’ll most likely do an ultra later on this year. And I’m not afraid of challenging myself anymore. I’m not afraid of pushing myself I don’t see failure. As a measure of my self-worth. I don’t see having a bad time during a marathon as meaning anything about me and my self-worth. I know I’m awesome. I know I’m a badass. I don’t have to prove this to myself or anybody else.

But I do want more for myself. I do like to push myself I do like to challenge myself. And I don’t want to be stuck in this fixed mindset anymore. So now I’m like back to running marathons back to running ultra marathons and it feels amazing. Another example of me embracing the growth mindset and moving away from this fixed mindset was when I decided that I was going to start eating meat again.

So I was plant-based vegetarian, and then plant-based for, like 15 years really. And I had started gaining a lot of weight during this time and decided that I needed to do something about this. And one of the things I did was I said, okay, instead of just being stuck in this fixed mindset and stuck with this fundamental principle of like, I don’t eat meat, I’m going to explore other options, I’m going to learn all about nutrition, I’m going to, you know, do a deep dive into this topic and learn about what other options are available for me, like, what is the right plan for me, what is the right diet for me?

And I did a lot of learning and a lot of growing and a lot of internal, there was some struggle with this decision, but I decided I was going to try eating meat again. And I did and things changed for me for the better. You know, this is a decision that I came to it was a personal decision that I made. And I would not have, I would not change it.

I’m still eating meat these days. And I think it was the right choice for me, I feel better, I’m healthier. And you know, I stopped eating all the sugar and the carbs and stuff like that too. But I really just embraced eating meat and got out of that fixed mindset. Because that fixed mindset was kind of keeping me stuck and keeping me not healthy and keeping me overweight.

And so I had to like embrace the growth mindset is the only way that I could be open to like, new ideas to learning new ways of doing things. Because if you’re just stuck with your ideology, and you’re stuck in this, like fixed way of doing things, if it’s not working for you, then you have to start adopting a different mindset, you have to adopt that growth mindset in order to change.

And so this is a glaring example of me being willing to try on again, try on the growth mindset and see how it felt and see how it changed for me. And so since then, I feel great. My health has never been better. I’m so glad I’m not stuck in that fixed ideology anymore.

And listen, I’m not bashing. You know, vegetarians are plant-based. If that works for you. That’s amazing. I mean, this is so awesome. This just works for me. Right? There’s nothing wrong with doing it that way. This just works for me.

So, here’s what I want you to think about here. Which of these mindsets do you identify with the most? So here are some questions for you. Is there something you want for yourself, but you’re too afraid to fail? Do you find yourself blaming others? Or circumstances for your results? Or your lack of results? Do you believe that your talents, your intelligence, your abilities are fixed? Like you either have it or you don’t? Do you tend to give up easily when you experience a setback? Or when things don’t go your way? Or don’t go as planned? Do you feel stuck? Do you feel like things are just never gonna work out for you?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re probably more of a fixed mindset. That’s okay. Nothing wrong with that. Here are some other questions for you. Let’s see if you’re if you adopt a few relate to more of a growth mindset. So are there things that you do? Even though they’re challenging and hard? And you might fail? Do you go for them anyway? Do you take responsibility for all of your results? The good and bad? Do you believe that your talents, your intelligence, your abilities, your potential can be learned and improved upon when you experience a setback or a failure? Do you learn from it and try something else? Do you keep going no matter what even when Progress seems slow? Do you believe that you can always learn and grow and become more?

So if you answered yes to these, you’re most likely to have a growth mindset. And here’s the last thing I want to say if you identify more with a fixed mindset, it’s okay. You can work to change it. Just notice where your fixed mindset is keeping you stuck or keeping you from pushing yourself.

Now we all experience you know we all display these traits in different parts of our lives. So for different situations, we might have a fixed mindset. For other situations, we might have more of a growth mindset. You know, I talk to people all the time who say like, oh, yeah, I’m super dedicated and when it comes to running, I can get out there and do it and stick to it. I make a plan and I stick to the plan even when things don’t go my way, I can keep pushing myself, I keep moving forward, I learn from my mistakes, like, great, okay.

But then when it comes to their diet, it’s like, oh, it’s so hard, I can’t do it, I can never make a plan, I can’t stick to it, if things don’t go, right, it’s just devastating. You can see that there’s a fixed mindset in one area of their life, but a growth mindset and another, and I’m like, hey, you know what you can do? Copy and paste, copy and paste that attitude, that mindset into this other area of your life over here. And I’m sort of joking about it.

But I’m sort of not. Take those same principles, take those same thoughts and feelings, take those same thoughts, feelings, and action patterns, take that same mindset and apply it over here. That’s all it takes, really, it’s just start practicing doing this.

And this is not something that’s going to change overnight. It’s not like flipping a switch, you know, it’s like, oh, I want a growth mindset. So now I’ve got it. You just don’t announce it. Like, I now have a growth mindset, and then everything changes for you know, you got to practice it. Because it’s gonna, it’s going to take some practice, it’s gonna be challenging for you to do this. I’m, I’m telling you, it’s not, as you know, simple as I’m making it sound, it is simple.

It’s a simple concept. Apply this growth mindset to everything that you do. But it’s not easy. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. So just notice, where you’re feeling like, stuck, or feeling like you don’t want to do something because it’s too hard. This is your fixed mindset. You know, anytime you feel like I could never do that, that’s just not who I am. This is fixed mindset thinking.

Notice these places in your life where your fixed mindset is holding you back and try on the growth mindset instead. And then just notice other areas and try it on there as well. And just kind of rinse and repeat. Until this growth mindset becomes more second nature for you. Cool.

Remember, September is four weeks to fat adapted running over in the Running Lean coaching group. So we’re gonna go through exactly how to become a lean, fat-burning running machine, I want you to become the healthiest version of yourself. That’s my goal for you. I want that for you.

I hope you want that for yourself, too. So we’re gonna learn all about fat adapted running. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. It’s not too late. We haven’t gotten started yet. We start next Tuesday. And I hope you got something out of this episode. Today. It was a lot of fun putting this together for you guys. And if you did get something out of it, please consider sharing it with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

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

87. Weight Loss Is Not the Goal

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As a weight loss coach for runners, I work with a lot of people whose main goal is to lose weight. As a runner, they may have put on a few dozen pounds over the years and no matter how many more …

Continue Reading about 87. Weight Loss Is Not the Goal →

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 87 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, weight loss is not the goal. As a weight loss coach, I work with a lot of people whose main goal is to lose weight. So as runners people come to me because they’ve put on a few dozen pounds over the years.

And no matter how many more miles they put in, they just can’t seem to drop those pounds. They want to get back to their natural weight. So they come to me for help reaching that goal. And this all makes perfect sense, right. But once we start working together, I let them in on a little secret. Weight loss is not actually the goal.

What I know, there’s something much bigger at play here, there’s something much more important, a much more important goal that you should be focused on. So in this episode of the podcast, I explained why weight loss is not the goal. And the one thing that you should be focused on instead.

But first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This group goes hand in hand with the podcast, it extends the conversation it gives you a voice. You can ask questions and get answers. You’ll find positivity and encouragement support from a group of like minded people just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and come and join in all the fun.

And here’s another five star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Lori Lori says, “A regular dose of encouragement, motivation to eat healthy and be active can easily wane. And this podcast brings all of my goals back into focus for the rest of the week. Each episode leaves me with something to ponder.”

Well, thank you so much for an awesome review, Laurie, and if you want to leave a review, I would so appreciate it, you can share the love. Just scroll down on your podcast listening device. Apple podcasts, tap the stars write a few words.

And right now you can even submit your review on a rate and review post little contest that we’re doing over in the Facebook group. So all you have to do is tap the stars, write a few words, take a screenshot of your review, and then comment on the rate and review post in our Facebook group.

And at the end of the month at the end of August. I’m going to pick one of those reviews and one lucky winner will get free coaching with me. How cool is that? So just go to Apple podcast, tap the stars write a few words, take a screenshot, boom, paste it in the group, you’re done. Okay. And there’s instructions on how to do all that pinned to that post in the group.

And then people ask how can they how can they work with me people come to me they’re like, Patrick, I want to work with you. What do I do? Well, there’s two things, two ways you can work with me number one, the Running Lean coaching group. So all during the month of September. So starting next week, next week is September already you guys by the way.

But next week starting into September, we’re going to be doing the four weeks to fat adapted. And this is going to be the focus for our whole month is fat adapted running, becoming a fat adapted runner, exactly how to do it step by step, which foods to eat, which to avoid the kinds of carbs you should be focusing on the kinds of carbs you should definitely stay away from how to get through that tough transition period without losing your mind.

Basically, I want to teach you step by step how to become the lean, fat burning running machine that you want to be and you’re going to learn the mindset that’s required to make it last for life. So join the group. That’s one way to work with me and just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and you can sign up now and get started.

The other way to work with me is to hire me as your coach you and I can work one on one together and I will show you exactly how to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself. We’ll put together you know custom plans just specifically just for you. You get one on one coaching with me every week.

And something that you may not know is that when you sign up for one on one coaching with me you also get membership in the Running Lean coaching group. So it’s kind of a two for one So if you want to apply for a one on one coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. That’s it, you want to join the group, just go to Running Lean podcast, comm forward slash join, and for one on one coaching with me runningleanpodcast/com/apply, okay?

Got all that out of the way, let’s talk about weight loss not being the goal, what I know, it’s so funny. I am a weight loss coach. And I’m telling you weight loss is not the goal. And you’re probably like what is happening here. But people come to me all the time, and they want to lose weight, right.

So they have this goal, they want to lose 30 pounds by November 1, you know, they want to run a marathon, they want to be healthy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. So we put together a plan, they start making changes to their diet, they might change up their running program, they might start doing some weight training, which I highly recommend, by the way.

They start working it things going well, for a while, maybe they, they they’re losing some weight, they’re feeling good about themselves, and then maybe they hit a stall, their weights kind of stalled. This pretty much always happens by the way, okay. And then they get frustrated because their number on that scale is no longer moving the way it was before, their weight loss has become slow or stalled.

And this frustration they feel causes them to act out. And they start eating their feelings and maybe they start gaining more weight, and they become even more frustrated, they start eating their feelings even more. And you understand the cycle here, right, this is not a good place to be. Something else that always happens almost always happens is the stall kind of comes to an end if you just kind of keep going.

And they start losing weight again, but sometimes it takes a few weeks or whatever, okay, but here’s what I’m trying to get to with all this losing weight, it’s not a linear process, you don’t lose, you know, half a pound every day or whatever, yeah, it just does not work that way, it goes up, your weights gonna go up, it’s gonna go down, it’s gonna go up, it’s gonna go down. Obviously, we want to trending in the right direction.

But when you become obsessed with that number on the scale, that obsession will drive you crazy. And if you want to learn more about this whole scale drama stuff, listen to episode number 66 of this podcast eliminating scale drama. And I go into a lot of detail about this. Okay, so I want you to, to do that. If you haven’t listened to that, it’s, it’s really good because it tells you about my feelings on on the scale, what it means how often you should weigh yourself and all that other stuff. Okay.

But here’s the thing, if all you’re focused on is your weight, how many pounds your body weighs? You’re kind of missing the point. And the big secret is that, listen, weight loss is really not the goal. Getting to some arbitrary number on the scale is not what you should be after fitting into those jeans you rock 10 years ago is not your only objective. Although that’s pretty awesome. If you could do that.

So what are we talking about here? What’s the real goal, Patrick? Well, here it is, the real goal is to become the healthiest version of yourself losing weight, you know, getting back to your natural weight, whatever that is for you. That’s a side effect of becoming healthy. It’s secondary.

But most people have this backward. They think that, you know, they need to lose weight to get healthy. But it’s the other way around, you become healthy, and then the weight comes off. You stopped putting a bunch of crap into your body and your body responds, inflammation disappears, your hormones get back in line, blood sugar and insulin levels become normal, you start feeling better, you’re not hungry all the time, you start sleeping better, you no longer feel stressed out about everything, you’re you have tons of energy running becomes easier, your cravings for sugar go away.

And you seem to be able to think more clearly all of these changes in your body start happening. And then as a result of all these good changes happening in your body becoming healthier, then you start burning fat like crazy, then the weight starts to drop off. Alright.

And remember, we store body fat when we have when we’re taking in all this extra energy usually in the form of sugar in our body can only use so much of that energy and the rest of it gets stored away to be used later. But later never comes where we’re always storing fat. We’re really good at storing fat, we’re just not really good at burning the fat, okay?

So, we’re really good at storing and storing and storing fat. We want to be good at burning and burning the fat, right but all these other things have to happen in order for you get your body into that fat burning mode in order for the weight to start coming off. Okay, so you get your body healthy first and then you start losing the weight making sense. So it’s less about the number on the scale. And it’s more about becoming the healthiest human being possible.

So I’ve said this before, and I want to go on to explain this a little bit more your health, it’s not a destination, it’s not some, there’s no finish line, it’s not some place you’re trying to get to. It’s a way of life. Health, your health is not a destination, it’s a way of life. You will always need to be mindful of what foods you’re putting into your body. You know, just because you hit your goal weight, doesn’t mean you’re done. You got to keep eating healthy foods forever.

People ask me all the time, okay, so I’ve been eating great. I’ve lost almost all my weight. So I’m almost at my goal weight. Now, when I get to my goal weight, what do I do differently? And the answer is basically, nothing like you pretty much keep doing the same thing. If you’re eating healthy today, why would you stop eating healthy when you get to some number on the scale?

You know, what got you here is what’s going to keep you hear eating real food, healthy, nutrient dense food that does not cause you to gain weight. That’s what you want to keep doing. Why would you want to go back to doing something that that got you unhealthy and overweight in the first place?

You know, you’re always going to need to do some sort of resistance training, some sort of strength training in order to maintain your muscle mass, especially as you get older. Interestingly, a major cause of injury and death in older people is falling down. And here’s a quote from this is crazy. It’s from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. There’s a report for you.

Oh, yeah, it’s the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. There’s some cheerful reading right there. But anyway, here’s what they say every second of every day in the United States, an older adult falls down, making falls the number one cause of injuries and deaths from injury among older Americans.

In 2014 alone, older Americans experienced 29 million falls, causing 7 million injuries and costing an estimated $31 billion in annual Medicare costs. This is crazy. And really, the the reason these people are falling down is because they just keep losing their muscle mass is called sarcopenia.

And as you get older, most people, they lose their muscle mass and they become weaker and weaker and weaker, and they can’t even stand up anymore. And when they fall, they break a hip, then they become bedridden, and then leads to escalated death to a faster death. We don’t want that.

Okay, so we want to continue to stay strong. Not only do we have to be mindful of our food intake, as we, you know, as we keep going through our life, we want to always eat healthy, we always want to be doing some sort of resistance resistance training so that we stay strong, right, we don’t stop because we get to some goal weight, or because we hit some sort of body fat percentage, or whatever we keep going right.

You’re always going to have to, you know, stay with some sort of cardiovascular exercise to you’re always going to want to walk or run or do some swimming or whatever it is that you like to do. You know, you don’t stop running just because you lost 30 pounds, you keep running because running is good for you. It’s good for for your physical, mental and emotional health.

When you run, you know, you release endorphins and serotonin, these are chemicals in your brain that actually improve your mood. So running regularly, improves your mental health. Running also improves your memory and your ability to learn. So running helps you to reduce stress, reduce depression, reduce anxiety, and I don’t know about you, but I want to continue to keep running and to have all these good things in my life.

I want to continue to feel good. I want to continue to improve my mental and emotional health. These are some of the many many reasons why I love running so much. Right? Running just feels good, right? So these are things that we want to just continue doing. We want to continue eating right, doing some sort of strength training and continue doing some sort of exercise in you just have to accept that becoming healthy and and living a healthy life that this is just your new way of life.

And until you accept this fundamental truth, you’re going to be kind of unhappy and frustrated. Because if you’re expecting to like lose 30 pounds by a certain date and you don’t hit that goal, then you know, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re committed to this as a way of life, it doesn’t matter. When you’re committed to the process of becoming healthier as a way of life, it doesn’t matter how long it takes, you’re just you’re all in and you’re good to go.

Right, you have to commit to this to becoming healthy, as a as a lifestyle, it’s a full time gig, it has to become just a part of who you are and what you do, you have to be all in forever. And this is not bad news. When you when you’re committed to this for life, it actually, it’s a good news, it gives you an opportunity to learn a lot about yourself.

So the longer you stick to something like this, like being healthy. The more you learn about yourself, like the more you grow internally, because as you know, the way you learn and the way you grow is you have to face and overcome challenges. And all kinds of challenging stuff will come up for you I promise, the longer you are committed to eating healthy, for example, the longer emotional and mental and emotional things are going to come up for you people are going to judge you, people are going to say things to you, you’re going to feel like you’re missing out on something, you’re going to feel sorry for yourself, you’re going to get frustrated, you’re going to get angry, you’re going to want to quit, you’re going to feel like a failure, all these things are going to come up for you.

When you embark on an epic journey like becoming, you know, a healthy person for the rest of your life, like this stuff is all going to come up for you. But again, this is not bad news, this is the good news. Because when these things come up, then you can deal with them. You can learn how to navigate these things, you can learn how to overcome all of these challenges. And when you do that, then you become a mental and emotional badass, it’s totally worth it. It’s totally worth it to to face all of these challenges, okay?

So it’s not so much about the goal. It’s about who you become in the process of going for the goal. And I love goals. I love big impossible goals, especially, you know, if there’s something that seems impossible for you right now, like for some of you, it may be like running a marathon, like that’s something you want to do. But it seems impossible for you, or losing 50 pounds or 100 pounds, it may seem impossible for you right now.

But here’s the thing, it’s impossible for you now, because who you are today, can’t do that. Who you are today, you’re not the person that can achieve that goal today. But here’s the cool thing. When you set out to achieve an impossible goal like that, you become a different person in the process of going after it. You change. You learn new things, you develop new habits you grow, and you become more. And honestly, this is the real goal.

The real goal is to always become more and I talk about this a lot I talk about becoming more I want to explain what I mean by that. What is more, and how will you know when you get there. This is exactly what I’m talking about here in regards to losing weight. The goal is not a number, but a way of life. Right? So becoming more, at least for me, it means I’m always learning. I’m always growing, I’m growing mentally, I’m growing emotionally, I’m always becoming stronger.

My body is becoming stronger, my muscles are becoming stronger and bigger. My mind is becoming stronger. I’m always becoming more of me and becoming more of who I am. And becoming more of who I am authentically and becoming more of myself. And this seems pretty basic, right? Just be yourself. People say be yourself. But it’s kind of harder to do then than it sounds on the surface. Like what does it mean to be yourself?

So for me becoming more of myself, it means really not giving a rip what other people think of me. Becoming more of myself means not judging myself, and not judging others. Not comparing myself to others. Not being afraid to feel any emotion. Not beating myself up when I fail to reach a goal. Becoming more for me, it’s a life long suit. It’s a lifelong pursuit of trying to answer this question. Who the hell are you? And here’s the thing, this pursuit it never ends.

Just like becoming healthy is not a destination but a way of life. It’s the same with just becoming more in general. It’s not a destination. It’s always a moving target. And that’s okay. See, for me, I’m committed to learning and growing every single day for the rest of my life, when I stopped learning and growing and becoming more, that’s when I’m just gonna die. Okay?

And I don’t want you to think of this as being overwhelming because when we start thinking about things forever, like, geez, Patrick, I had to do this forever. Does that mean like, I can never eat a piece of cake ever again? Does that mean I could never ever take a break from running again. And of course, it doesn’t mean that at all. Just don’t get caught up in the forever part of this. Just do what you can today.

There’s a saying in 12 Step programs, one day at a time, just take it one day at a time. It’s not a forever deal. I love this little concept. It’s it’s so simple, but so powerful one day at a time, just focus on today. What real food will I eat today? What strength exercise am I doing today? How far am I running today? Don’t worry about tomorrow, worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Today is about today. Okay, one day at a time. Don’t get too caught up in this forever thing.

But just know that there isn’t a goal, there isn’t a finish line, there isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to hear. Okay. The bottom line here is that your health is on going something that you have to be committed to for the long haul. And that’s good. This is good. If you’re committed to this for life, then you know that you’re going to be so much happier because this is just who you are and what you do.

But if you’re not committed to it for life, if you’re like, Well, I’m just going to get healthy, I’m going to get healthy. When I reach some number on the scale that I’m going to stop, then I’m promise you, you’re going to come to a place where you begin to become unhealthy, you begin to become overweight, you might begin to become sick. And then you’re going to have to like do it again. Does this sound familiar?

So many people do this, they call it the yo yo dieting, you know they they get healthy, then they get unhealthy. You know, they they lose weight, then they gain it back again. And this is a never ending cycle for some people. I don’t want that. I’ve done that before. I’ve gained and lost weight many times. And the last time I lost, you know, I started to gain weight again, and I lost about 40 pounds. I was like, this is the last time I’m doing this.

And so far, it’s been amazing. I don’t have to worry about anymore because I’m committed. This is who I am now. This is who I am. This is what I do. I would say just stay committed to your health and your fitness. You don’t have to worry about that happening. Okay. So I prefer to just stay committed, because this is what I do now.

And in my past, I used to be a wreck, I was overweight, I was sick, I was unhealthy. I smoked a pack of cigarettes every day, I drank 8-12 beers every single day, I couldn’t run to the end of a block if I tried. This wasn’t that long ago, this is like 20 years ago, like 2003. And I made that decision almost 20 years ago that I was never going to live my life that way again.

And of course, there’s been ups and downs during that process. And I you know, got healthy and got unhealthy again and all that. But here’s the thing, I wanted to be around for my two boys. I wanted to see them grow up and become men. Now my oldest son, Jack, he’s married and hee has a one year old. Oh my god, cutest little grandbaby in the world.

And you think I want to quit what I’m doing now? Hell no, I want to be around for a long time. I want to keep becoming more I want to see my kids become more. I want to see my grandkids grow up and become more.

And I want that for you to I want to see you become more. And I truly hope that that’s what you want for yourself as well. So let’s not focus on the number on the scale. Let’s focus on becoming the best and most badass version of ourselves. We owe that to ourselves. All right.

Well, that’s all I got for you today. Remember September is fat adaptation month over in the Running Lean coaching group four weeks to fat adapted. learn exactly how to become a lean fat burning running machine become the healthiest version of yourself yet and learn the mindset you need to make it last. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. I really hope you got something out of this episode today. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

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

85. Understanding How Habits Really Work

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If you really want to create change in your life, you have to focus on changing your habits, right? I think we all get this concept, but most people don't really understand how habits actually …

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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.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 85 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today we’re talking about understanding how habits really work. If you really want to create change in your life in any area of your life, you really have to focus on changing your habits, right, I think we all get this concept.

But most people don’t really understand how habits actually work. Most people just focus on trying to change the behavior, the actual actions that they are taking, they don’t focus on the things that are driving the behavior in the first place.

So in order to change a habit, you first have to understand how the habit is created in the first place, you have to go deeper and get into the root cause of the habit. So today on the podcast, I take you on a deep dive into understanding how habits really work. So you can create the change that you want in your life and make those changes last.

But first, if you like this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a group that goes hand in hand with the podcast, I extend the conversation from here, over there, you get to ask questions, you have a voice, you can feel supported, encouraged, inspired by other runners and people that are sharing similar goals to you. And it’s fun to if I haven’t mentioned that already. The Facebook Group is a lot of fun, we do kind of have a lot of fun over there. So definitely just check out the Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us it’d be super awesome to have you there.

Here’s another five star review of the Running Lean podcast. This is from Laurie from Alaska. And she says, “So much to learn. So many great tips, I learned something new on every run, because that’s when I listen to your podcast. I’ve learned how to think differently. Thank you for being such a positive influence on so many.”

Thank you so much Laurie from Alaska, I appreciate those kind words. And listen, if you want to share the love, you can also just go to iTunes, Apple podcasts, whatever you call that wherever you listen to your podcast, scroll down, tap the stars leave a few words, I would really appreciate it.

And just so you know, for the month of August, if you are part of the Running Lean community, you can leave a review on Apple podcasts just like I described, take a screenshot of it, drop that screenshot in a post. And at the end of the month, I’m going to randomly select somebody from these posts, people that have reviewed the podcast and and you’ll you’ll earn a free, you know, coaching session with me. So it’s just a fun way for me to say thank you for supporting the show. Okay.

And also the Running Lean coaching group is open. All month long, we’re talking about thoughts, feelings and actions, and how these patterns show up in our life. We’re gonna be talking a lot about this in this podcast today. So you’ll get a feel for kind of what we’re going to be covering in the group this month.

But you know, this this topic of the month is, is vital. It’s the foundation for creating any kind of change whether you’re trying to become a better runner, or become healthier or lose weight or whatever your goals are. You have to understand how your thoughts, feelings and actions all tie together to help you create the life that you want for yourself.

As a member in the coaching group, you also get access to the weight loss training course for runners, my course called achieving the impossible which is about creating an extraordinary life by going after unrealistic goals. You get weekly live coaching with me. I just created something new, which I think is pretty awesome.

It’s a private podcast. So it’s not this podcast, but it’s a whole different podcast with all the replays of our group coaching calls, so you don’t have to necessarily show up to the live group zoom call although that is super fun to do. You can listen to the private podcast stream on your runs and stuff like that. So super fun. Come join us over in the Running Lean coaching group. For more information just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join Okay, cool.

Let’s talk about this, understanding how habits really work. First of all, what is a habit? So a habit is a learned behavior. Habits just don’t occur spontaneously, right habits are something that we have been practicing and learning over time. Habits tend to occur unconsciously though.

So habits are something that you’ve been practicing so much that you can do it without much consciousness or without a whole lot of conscious thought. So some types of habits that would fit this would be stuff like tying your shoes, right, you don’t have to think about you just do it. Driving a car, driving the car is something you had to learn how to do. And at first, it took a lot of effort, a lot of conscious thought. But now you can do it pretty much without thinking at all. Sometimes you’re driving and you’re like, how did I even get here, you sort of like zoned out? Have you ever had that happen to you?

Or something like taking a shower, like, you know, we do these things just completely automatically, we don’t even have to think about it. It’s super unconscious behavior, right. Some other types of habits and things that kind of relate to what we’re talking about here today would be like getting up early to work out every day, that would be habit that you do, just unconsciously, you just kind of do it.

Sticking to your marathon training schedule, like you’re gonna show up and do your runs, every day, no matter what that can be something that has to develop into a habit. Or it could be something like, you know, eating sweets late at night, could be a habit that you have that maybe you don’t want that habit, you know, or snacking all day long eating junk food, like some of these habits, you know, like sticking to your training schedule might be fine. And something that you want for yourself.

Others habits like eating junk food might be a habit that you want to change, or just drop all together. Either way, the key to to all of this. And the key to changing a habit is to understand how the habit really works. And the problem is that most people attack habit change, just by focusing on the behavior, just by focusing on the physical action that you are taking.

So if your issue is you know, you’re snacking too much or snacking all day long, they’ll just say, well just stop doing that. Stop eating snacks. Or if the habit is like you, you don’t seem to get up every day on time, or you know, you’re not, you want to hit the gym early, but you just can’t get out of bed.

People will say well just get up early every day, set your alarm get up early. Or, you know, if your habit is eating junk food, those don’t drive past the fast food places, or just don’t eat junk food. And if this was this simple, this would be amazing. But it’s not changing the behavior, changing an action. And then the goal for the what most people would tell you is just like just change the action. And then just keep doing that until that becomes a new habit.

Have you heard this before? Like just change the action? And then just keep doing it? Does this work? Maybe maybe for some people, for most people? No, it does not. And honestly, if it was this easy, I wouldn’t be talking about all this today. I just tell you to stop doing whatever it is you’re you’re doing or tell you to start doing whatever it is you want to start doing and boom, we’re done. I don’t have to have this conversation with you here today.

But it’s not that simple. A habit is a learned behavior that you’ve been practicing, until it’s pretty much an unconscious thing. Right? So you have to understand what’s beneath the action, you have to understand what’s driving the behavior. You have to go deeper you have to understand why you do what you do. You have to have to understand how the thought feeling action pattern has become unconscious for you.

So habit is always a thought a feeling. And then an action is a pattern that you’ve been practicing over and over until it becomes automatic. It may feel like there’s no conscious thought happening. It may seem like everything is happening instantaneously. But I assure you, there’s always a thought and a feeling that precedes every action that you take. Even if it seems like it all happens in an instant.

There are always choices and decisions that are being made by you. Even if it seems like you’re running on autopilot. And if habits are learned patterns of behavior, then it stands to reason that they can be on learned. Right so you can unlearn an unwanted behavior, right you can replace the old unwanted behavior with a new one. But if we only focus on the action, the actual behavior itself, you’re not going to get there, or it’s going to be a lot harder for you.

So habit is really the whole thought feeling action pattern that you’ve gotten so good at doing, you’ve been practicing this over and over and over again, it’s like, you know, eating sweets late at night, you just keep doing it every day until it just becomes like something your brain expects. And there’s a thought and a feeling that precedes the action. But it all happens in a split second, and you just find yourself eating ice cream at you know, 10:30 at night. And so you have to understand that your thoughts and your feelings are the real drivers of your actions, your thoughts and feelings are the real drivers of your choices of your decision making. And whether you are consciously aware of this or not, this is what’s happening.

So habits are not reflexive, they’re not reflexes that are just happening like, like a knee jerk, you know, reaction. So I hear people tell me all the time, like, you know, I was doing fine. The next thing you know, I’m stuffing a Cinnabon into my face. And I have no idea how this just happened.

So we tend to make our habits out to be reflexive, like things that we don’t have control over, we tend to say, Oh, this is beyond my control. And I think one of the reasons why we do this is because when we say we don’t have control over it is because then we are not to blame. But listen, our habits are not reflexive, we are in control, they don’t just happen spontaneously. They don’t bypass your brain, they don’t bypass the thought feeling action process.

But it’s easiest to think of habits as reflexive, like, you know, when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer thing, the doctor hits your patellar tendon with that little, you know, rubber hammer. And what happens in that moment is a signal is sent from your knee to your spinal column.

And immediately that signal is sent to a motor nerve in your quadriceps, and that extends your leg forward. This is called the knee jerk reaction. And it’s a motor reflex, it bypasses your brain completely, it’s actually called the patellar tendon reflex. And it bypasses your thinking your consciousness your brain totally, it goes from your knee to your spinal column to your leg muscle. That’s it. That’s a reflex.

But that is not how habits work. Habits are not reflexive, they don’t bypass the brain, okay, habits are processed by your brain very quickly. Because you’ve just gotten really good at doing this. You have a thought you have a feeling and then you take action. And it seems it’s so fast that it seems automatic. But it’s just why well formed habits, well practiced habits seem unconscious, but your brain is still involved.

This is good news, your your brain is still involved. The good news is that this is still your fault, okay. It’s still something that you have control over. And that’s good news to me, like I would rather have control over what I’m doing. Because if I feel like I’m out of control, I have no say in the matter, I have no authority over myself, right. And I don’t want that.

I don’t want to feel like I’m being you know, manipulated or controlled by some outside force. So if I know that this is within my control, this is good news. This brings the power back to me. So your brain is still doing the work has just gotten really efficient because you’ve been practicing it so much like eating the snacks, you know, late at night, or taking a shower like you take a shower, you don’t even have to think about it, you just do it right.

And sidebar here. This is why so many great ideas come to us in the shower. Because the activity that we’re engaged in, is using it doesn’t use your conscious mind. It uses your subconscious mind. So the activity of taking a shower is a subconscious activity. This is a really good example of how this works. So the conscious mind is free to think, to dream to think more creatively and this is why we get good ideas in the shower. Because our conscious mind is free and open.

Okay, so anyway, that’s a little sidebar. So the key to all of this is to understand that your thoughts and feelings drive your behavior and this is what creates the habit is the thought the feeling and the behavior all combined. and it’s just something you practice. You’ve been practicing these habits for a long, long time.

And then you might be thinking, okay, I get this, Patrick, it’s the thoughts and feelings. But where are these thoughts and feelings coming from? Like, how are those created? Well, thoughts are just sentences in your mind. They’re just things you say to yourself, or little sentences, you say to yourself, they are the stories that you tell yourself about what’s happening around you.

You know, you might be taking a walk through the park, and you see a squirrel and you see a tree, and you see a fountain, and you see a lake and you see a deer. And you’re telling yourself how wonderful all of this is. These are just thoughts, you know, they’re just stories, you’re telling yourself about what’s going on, around you.

So your thoughts are just your interpretations of your circumstances, your thoughts are the meaning that you give to every situation in your life. And your thoughts are determined by how you see the world around you. So your thoughts are heavily influenced by your past experiences by your beliefs, your upbringing, your culture, your family of origin, your education, the type of career you’re in, and on and on, like, this is what we call our model of the world.

And everyone has their own unique model of the world. So your model of the world is unique to you. It’s how you interpret the world around you. And I would argue that there is no one reality that we each have our own version of reality in our minds, because everything is up to interpretation by your brain. And your brain is going to interpret things very different from my brain.

This is kind of cool, because that means that like, we all have an opinion. And we all have a different interpretation of every situation. I think this is pretty cool. And so here’s an example of how the model of the world can influence your thoughts and feelings. And I’ve probably used this example before, but I love it. It’s so good.

So imagine two guys standing on the beach, and they’re both looking out over the ocean. And each of these people has a different view of the ocean. They have different thoughts and feelings about the ocean. One guy has been a fan of the ocean ever since he was a little kid. He used to surf every day. You know, as a kid, he grew up near the beach. And for decades, he’s been an avid surfer, and he just loves the ocean. To him the ocean is a zen like experience. It’s his happy place. It brings him joy. He can’t imagine not getting into the ocean and surfing every single day. Okay. He loves the ocean, loves loves loves it. He feels a sense of peace and joy when he’s standing on the beach looking at the ocean.

Guy number two standing right next to him looking over at the same ocean. Maybe he had a near drowning experience as a child. For him the ocean is a very scary place. For him the ocean is full of danger, and fear. And for him, he wants to avoid the ocean at all costs. He can’t imagine stepping foot in the ocean, okay.

These two people are experiencing the same ocean the same, quote unquote reality but their view of it is completely different based on their model of the world. Their model of the world affects their thoughts and feelings and actions. And different habits will emerge out of those thought feelings and action patterns.

Okay, so one guy’s become an avid surfer. He has a habit of surfing every day, no matter what loves it. The other guy has a habit of never going anywhere near the ocean won’t get on a boat won’t go on a cruise hates going to the beach would never dream of setting foot in the ocean. Right? So two different people, same circumstances, but different models of the world. Different thoughts, feelings and actions, different habits, different results.

So what does all this mean? This this is not to say that we cannot change that. Once you’ve experienced something like trauma or you know, or you’re sort of you’ve got a well established habit that you can’t change it, you absolutely can change it. You can change anything you want about yourself. The point of talking about all this is so that you understand what’s driving the behavior. It’s always your thoughts and feelings. Okay?

And all month long over in the Running Lean coaching group, we are taking a deep dive into this work all month long, we’re focusing on our thoughts, feelings and actions and these patterns, how they show up in our life and how they are creating the results that we’re getting or not getting in every area of our life.

You know, we’ve got people that are trying to change their diet and lose some weight. And they have to understand how their thoughts and feelings are driving their actions of sticking to their plan or not. We’ve got people who want to, you know, qualify for Boston. And their thoughts and feelings are either driving the actions of like making them, you’re keeping them dedicated and disciplined and running faster or not.

And each week, we’re focusing on one topic. So last week, it was our thoughts this week was our feelings next week is going to be all about actions, the and then we’re going to be talking about how to start to change these things and how to start creating the thoughts and feelings that we actually want, so that we can change our results.

And each week, we’ve got a little bit homework to do. So we’re creating a bunch of self awareness around our thoughts and feelings and habits. And then later this month, we’re going to talk about changing them and creating new habits. So if you haven’t checked it out, come over and check out the Running Lean coaching group. It’s super fun, and we’re taking just such a deep dive into this particular topic. Because I really believe this is the foundation of creating any kind of change that you want for yourself, okay.

But the first and most important step is understanding how all of this works. And understanding how your brain works, you know, you got to understand that your brain is is amazing. It’s like one of the most amazing things in the known universe, if not, the most people think it’s the most powerful thing in the known universe, the human brain, nothing is compares to the human brain, what we can do with it, right.

And you have to understand that you are always in control, even though it doesn’t seem like it. Understand that you have authority over your choices, and over your decisions, these things are not just happening to you, okay, you’ve just sort of lost touch with this part of your brain, you’ve gotten into a habit. And you’ve done you started to do something unconsciously and automatic, you’ve been on autopilot. And that’s okay. You just understand how all this works. Understand that you’re just sort of going through the motions now without a whole lot of conscious thought.

So the first step is to bring all of this back into your awareness back into your consciousness. So here’s a weird thing to think about. This is kind of random. I’m gonna bring it back, though. Okay, so I’m going to go off on a little tangent here. But listen, when you were growing up, did anyone ever teach you how to eat? Now? Of course, you’re like, well, yeah, of course, my parents taught me how to eat when I was like, one or whatever, right?

But no, I mean, like, how to eat healthy food, how to eat food that will nourish your body, how to obtain optimal health. Did your parents teach you about the effects of eating sugar and how you should stay away from junk food? Did they teach you how to moderate these things? Or avoid some of these things all together? Probably not. I don’t know. For most of us, that’s probably no.

If you are brought up that way, that is awesome. Your parents are awesome. Congratulations. For most of us, though. No, no, I grew up in the 60s in the 70s. I come from a pretty good sized family, five kids. And my mom was an amazing cook. And she always was had these home cooked meals. She loved cooking. It’s how she showed love to all of us. And, and I grew up, you know, with this idea that, you know, this is how we show love is but food.

And I also grew up thinking that food was entertainment. So Saturday mornings as a kid in the 70s. Like I would watch the cartoons. And there were all these ads, right for Count Chocula and Captain Crunch and sugar Frosted Flakes. And, of course, every time we went to the grocery store, I insisted that we get like one or all of those cereals and stuff, right?

So I was eating a lot of sugary cereals. I remember drinking a lot of sugary soft drinks, and we had dessert pretty much every night. And listen, I’m not blaming my mom or my parents, right. My parents are amazing. Amazing. People love them so much. And they always did their best. And I would say they did a damn fine job raising their five kids. We are all awesome kids, by the way. But this was my model of the world. For many years. For decades, really. my model of the world was driving my thoughts and feelings about food.

And so some of my thoughts and feelings were food is fun. Food is entertainment. Food is a reward. Food is how you show love, the more sugar the more love, more love. Like more sugar equals more love. And I used food in this way to feel good about myself for four decades, really, this was my model of the world, this would become my thought feeling action pattern.

This was my habit in trying to change this habit, you know, I tried all the diets in the world. And nothing ever really worked. Because I didn’t understand what was behind all this, I didn’t understand what was driving the habit, I was just trying to change the behavior, I was just trying to change the actions that I was taking.

And it wasn’t until I started to understand what was underneath the habit, what was underneath the behavior, the thoughts and feelings, that I could actually start to change things for myself. So I learned how I was using food as more like an emotional management tool, you know, I was using food to feel better, or to not have to feel anything at all.

So I was using food as a way to numb myself a lot of the time. So and have to deal with my thoughts and feelings, which are just too much for me, I’m a very emotional person, I feel my feelings, right. And so for years and years of doing this, you know, I I just was numbing myself as much as possible.

I used alcohol for the same reason, you know. And then eventually, I had to like, take a step back and understand what was driving all of this. And after years and years and years of doing this really decades, this all became, for me, an unconscious habit. And in order to break the habit, I had to develop a deep understanding of how the habit actually worked, how it was formed.

While I was thinking and feeling all this stuff, I was thinking and feeling what was driving the behavior. And all this stuff had to be brought out of my unconsciousness and into my consciousness out of the darkness and into the light. I had to just get really curious with myself and start asking myself, why am I thinking these things about food? Why am I thinking and feeling these feelings about food?

And what’s a different way of thinking and feeling about all of this. So if you can relate to any of this, I want you to know something that there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with me, there was nothing wrong with me in that moment. This is just how our brains are wired, you know, our brains are we have this primitive part of our brain that just wants to keep us safe.

So we have a part of our brain, you know, it’s called the amygdala. It’s this like, very primitive, I call it the lizard brain, it’s always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, seeking comfort, avoiding discomfort, seeking, the familiar avoiding anything unfamiliar. And, you know, it’s okay, this is just normal. And it’s okay, that we, that we, we have a brain like this, we just need to understand that there is another way to live our life, that if we want something different for ourselves, and we just have to understand what’s driving our behavior, it’s not automatic, it really isn’t.

And we have the capacity to override that primitive brain, we have the capacity to, you know, seek discomfort and seek the unfamiliar and get put ourselves out of our comfort zone and begin to change the habit. All these habits that we’ve developed over the years, they’re just learned behaviors, driven by thoughts and feelings that we’ve practiced over and over again, your work has to understand how all of this is formed, how it works, so you can begin to change things for yourself.

And once you’re armed with all of this self awareness, it’s like taking the red pill in the matrix like nothing will ever be the same for you. Once you see this and you understand it, you can’t unsee it. Or you can take the blue pill and remain contented and stuck where you are. But you seem more like a red pill kind of person to me. Alright, that’s all I got for you this week.

Be sure to join us over in the Running Lean coaching group for August remember we’re taking a deep dive into all of this thought feeling action patterns, how they show up how you can change them so you can start getting the results you want around weight loss running, health and fitness, all of that runningleanpodcast.com/join. And I truly hope that you got something out of this episode today. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

83. The All-or-Nothing Mentality

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As we come to the end of the #DryJulyChallenge, I’d love to know how it went for you. How was your experience giving up alcohol for a month? What’s changed? Are you sleeping better? Do you have …

Continue Reading about 83. The All-or-Nothing Mentality →

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 83 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today we’re talking about the all or nothing mentality. So as we come to the end of our dry July challenge, I’d love to know how it went for you. How did it go? How was your experience giving up alcohol for a month? Were you able to do it? Was it hard? What’s changed for you? Maybe you’re sleeping better? Do you have more energy, maybe your workouts have been better?

Maybe you just feel better overall, I actually would love to hear from you. You can drop your comments in our Facebook group. But a lot of people are now asking themselves like now what now? What do I do? Do I keep going do I have to, you know, swear off alcohol forever?

Whether or not you choose to continue with this, I just want to make one thing very clear, you don’t have to make a decision that you’re never going to drink again. I think a lot of people get stuck on this idea of either you can drink or you have to never drink and there’s no middle ground. There’s no moderation. And this is what I mean when I’m talking about the all or nothing mentality.

And if you’re trying to change a habit it can make the process of changing a habit feel extremely daunting, like thinking about never drinking again, or never eating sugar again for the rest of your life. Is that really going to help you stay on track? So in this episode, I’m just going to take a deep dive into this whole idea of like all or nothing, this whole mentality that people adopt, and then I’m going to propose what might be, I think a more effective way to change a habit.

And like I mentioned, if you haven’t already done so please come and check out the Running Lean community on Facebook, and share your thoughts about the dry July challenge. I’ll be posting a little bit more in there. We’re wrapping up the month.

But I would love to know what kind of experiences you guys have had like what positive experiences you’ve had from taking a break from alcohol for the month, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and you can join us there.

And then here’s a recent five star review of the Running Lean podcast. And this person said, “I have recently finished listening to all of your podcasts and love them. So please make more soon lol. But seriously, I thank you for sharing all of your knowledge on running and nutrition because I’ve learned a lot. Thank you so much. And I look forward to many more, please know that your podcasts are making a difference. Oh, and I will be going away for a week and really enjoyed your advice on making a plan when you are not in your typical routine because I will be sure to plan ahead.”

Thank you very much for that awesome review. And if you want to leave a review of the podcast, I would so appreciate it. I love hearing that this is helping you guys and that I am making a difference. So you can just go to whatever podcast app you use Apple podcasts, or whatever, scroll down, tap the stars and write a few words. And I will be sure to read your review on the show here. So thanks again for doing that.

And then just a quick update, you know, I’ve got this coaching group that is now open, officially open, and not going to be closing. So anytime you’re ready to start making some of these changes. This is a very cost-effective way of doing it. The monthly coaching group is where you get access to my online training materials you get access to weekly group calls with other people that are going through the same thing.

Part of it is like the support group because you get the support of people just like you that are you know going through trying to accomplish some of these big goals for themselves and you get to hear what’s working for them what’s not working, how did they overcome some of these struggles so it’s really effective at helping you to see that there’s hope and that there’s you know, things that you can do that will help you to stay on track.

And of course, I do some coaching and teaching and training every week in the group. If you’re interested just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And also in August, all month, all month long, we’re gonna be taking this deep dive into the thought, feeling, and action patterns that we all have, and how they might be keeping you stuck.

And if you want to start, you know, taking control of some of these things, habits, and things like that in your life, how you can use your thought, feeling, action patterns to actually start getting better results in different places in your life. Okay, so whether you’re trying to lose weight, or you want to improve your running, you want to improve your overall health and fitness, you want to get stronger.

Maybe you want to keep up with the drinking or learn how to moderate your drinking. We’ll be talking about all that stuff and how your thought feeling and action patterns play such a huge role and all that stuff. So anyway, runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us.

Okay, let’s get into this topic. Because I’m excited about talking about this, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because I’ve heard people say that, you know, when you decide you want to, you know, change a habit, that you just have to, like, abstain from doing that thing.

Like, let’s say you want to, like, quit eating sugar. And people are like, well, sugar is bad for you. And if you have a problem with sugar, you know, if you can’t moderate sugar, you just need to, like, quit forever. And the same thing goes for drinking.

A lot of people especially like in the recovery communities say that if you are, you know, if you have a problem with drinking, that you should just never drink ever, and that you have to be either 100%. You have to abstain 100% of the time, or, you know, basically, you’re not doing it, right. Okay. It’s like you’re either all in, or you’re all out and there’s no middle ground there, okay, it’s like 100% compliance, or you’re not complying at all.

So maybe you just want to, like, instead of giving up drinking, maybe you just want to change your drinking habit, you know, or maybe you don’t want to like, give up sugar 100%, but you just want to like change your relationship with sugar, you know, you don’t have to decide that you’re never going to do it again.

I think this all or nothing mentality, it’s like either this or that. It’s on or off. It’s binary, you know, it’s either yes or no, I think it’s very black and white thinking and I think it can be problematic for a lot of people and can be very challenging for a lot of people to, to give up or to change the habit, okay to like, kind of make a better habit.

And we’re really talking about when we talk about habit change of changing our relationship with, you know, alcohol, changing our relationship with food, okay. I used to have the same sort of attitude about running. So I was either like training for something big and epic, like an Ironman or 100 miler, or, I wasn’t training at all, like, why even bother running a half marathon, you know.

And this is like, very black and white thinking. And I don’t think this is you know, healthy, I’m not saying there’s nothing, there’s nothing wrong with, you know, running or training for an Ironman or, or 100 miler, whatever you want to do. I think those things are amazing. But we just have to get out of this idea that it’s like all or nothing, okay.

And I want to make something very clear before I go on here. So when I talk about all or nothing. It’s different from when I talk about going all-in on yourself. Okay, so I talk a lot about this concept of, you know, when you have a big goal, you need to go all-in on yourself for that goal, okay?

You need to approach these big things in your life with the attitude that you’re committed to making a work, right no matter what. So let’s say you want to lose weight, and you have this big weight loss goal. Going all in on yourself means that you’re going to keep going, that you’re, you know, it may take a while you may have some slip-ups, you may have some failures along the way. You may not stick to your plan or whatever, but you keep moving forward, you don’t quit on yourself.

Okay, maybe you want to change your relationship with alcohol going all-in on that means you use the power of your thoughts and feelings about alcohol to change the habit. It means you create a drinking plan, maybe you just want to moderate, so you create a drinking plan and you stick to it. No matter what.

Going on all in on yourself means you’re committed to your health. You’re committed to success. You’re committed to, you know, maybe going after this PR and your marathon. It does not mean you’re never allowed to drink again. It does not mean you’re never allowed to eat a cupcake again, it does not mean like you can never, you know, run a half marathon or five games or something like that, you know, we just want to make sure that we understand the difference between the all or nothing mentality and like going all-in on yourself, okay?

There’s a big difference between swearing off something forever, like sugar, alcohol, and changing the habit and changing your relationship with it. Okay? So going all-in on yourself does not equate to all or nothing, it just means you aren’t half-assing, you know, you’re not half-assing your efforts towards this goal. You’re full-assing it with whatever it is you’re doing. Okay?

So there’s this idea, and I was talking about this a minute ago, like, there’s this idea, especially in the recovery communities that if you want to change a habit, you have to quit it forever. If you want to change your relationship with alcohol, that there’s, you know, maybe you’ve had a problem with alcohol in the past, it’s been hard for you to give it up or hard for you to moderate that you just have to quit forever, you know.

If you have an issue with food, and maybe you, you know, you’re overweight and you’re trying to lose some weight, and you just want to be healthier and feel better. That means that like you could never eat sugar again, or never have a pizza or fries ever again. And here’s what I want to propose. And I think this is the kind of the crux of the problem here.

When you think about like never eating pizza again, or never eating a burger with fries and a milkshake ever again in your life. How does that make you feel? Probably, you probably feel deprived, it probably feels sort of terrible. And when you feel deprived and terrible, because you feel like you’re missing something, something that you enjoy, what happens to your desire for that thing, your desire for that thing actually goes up.

And when you feel terrible, and you have this now increased desire for this thing, what do you think you’re going to do? Typically, you’re going to give in to those cravings, you’re going to eat the fries, you’re going to eat the pizza, you’re going to eat the cupcakes, you’re going to drink the alcohol because you just want to feel better.

You have all this desire, and you’re feeling terrible about yourself. And like, you could never have this thing again, and feeling depressed about that. And geez, what are you going to do, you’re just going to want it even more. Okay. So thinking that you have to quit something forever, it feels, it can feel very daunting for people. You know, it can feel overwhelming, and, frankly, pretty frustrating.

And another big problem with this all or nothing mentality is that if you slip up if you do swear off drinking forever, and you do drink, man, you just feel terrible. Like you feel guilty and full of shame and disappointment in yourself like you are a failure. Like you just can’t do it. And if your mentality is like it’s all or nothing, there’s no room for moderation, there’s no room for occasionally. There’s no way that you can have a healthy relationship with alcohol or with sugar.

You have to have like, no relationship at all. Like that’s the mentality is that you can’t have a healthy relationship. So you have to have zero relationship at all, like total abstinence. And here’s what I’m just trying to propose today is like, there’s a different way of doing this.

Instead of having no relationship with alcohol, no relationship with junk food, like junk foods, okay, every now and then, you know, but here’s the thing, instead of having an unhealthy relationship with those things, what if you had a healthy relationship with those things? So there are other ways of doing it, you can actually change your habits and change the relationship with food and with alcohol and do it in a way that is, okay.

Now, I’m a big proponent of staying away from junk food. Honestly, I really am. And I’m a big proponent of staying away from sugar for the most part, and I don’t drink. Okay, that’s a choice that I’m making. I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But here’s the thing. If you want to drink alcohol, you can. If you want to eat a burger and fries every now and then you can. If you want to eat a candy bar, you can you just have to like work on your relationship with the thing.

Now I want to share with you an example of how this plays out in my life in a little bit of a different way. Like an actual relationship with a person. Okay, so about 18 months ago, my wife and I got divorced, we both had just moved to this new building near downtown Cincinnati, and we both love the building. So we both decided we were going to stay in the same building.

So we both live in the same building on different floors. And so we see each other every now and then, okay. And it’s not that big of a deal. Rarely, so I’ll occasionally see her and her new boyfriend, you know, hanging out at the pool or something like that. And it’s not really a problem, I’m kind, you know, we’re friendly with each other, we all get along.

But here’s the thing, I get advice from people, like people I know, they’ll tell me, like, you should just move somewhere else, or you just don’t ever talk to her, if you see or go talk, you know, walk away, go the other way, don’t engage in conversation. You know, like, you need to, like cut off all ties with her like 100% no relationship at all right?

And instead of doing that, because that’s not what I want, instead of trying to eliminate this person from my life, because that’s not reality, you know, I’m going to see her around, and it’s okay. Instead of trying to eliminate the relationship and make it an all-or-nothing type of deal, I’m working on changing the relationship I’ve worked on and successfully changed the relationship so that there’s not any drama around it, that’s not energetically charged anymore.

It’s not emotionally challenging anymore, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing situation, I can still see her around, I can say hi, we can stop and chat, I can, you know, have a conversation with her and her boyfriend at the pool. And it’s no big deal, I’ve effectively changed the relationship with my ex from a, you know, romantic partnership, to a platonic friendship.

And this is kind of, I mean, it’s such a good analogy, I think, to our relationship with food or to alcohol, or even with, you know, exercise in general, we can change the relationship and make it into something that is healthy. And that we can do in a different way, we can change the relationship, we don’t have to cut off the relationship. Okay.

So the way this works around food and stuff like that, is that, you know, for the same way that I can be around my ex in this building and stuff, I can be around sugar, I can be around people drinking, and I don’t have those cravings anymore. There’s no increased desire for these things in my life, the desire is not there.

Like the desire for my ex is not there the desire for you know, sugar is really just not there. I’ve changed my relationship with food and alcohol, I don’t have to abstain from you know, ever seeing alcohol or ever being around it. I don’t have to abstain from sugar or never eating it again, I can do it occasionally. I’ve changed the relationship.

You know, I love my son and I will do like taco night, sometimes we’ll go out to this place and we’ll get chips and salsa and tacos and all this stuff, a lot of carbs, you know, and I’m pretty much don’t eat carbs, you know, but I’ll go and I’ll enjoy myself and I’ll have fun doing that. And then the next day, I just go back to doing what I normally do. It’s no big deal. Right? I’ve changed my relationship with the food. Okay.

And when you change the relationship, there’s so much freedom in that, because now you’re free to do what you want to do. Because I’m here to tell you that if you want to drink alcohol, but you’re just forcing yourself not to and you’re just trying to white knuckle your way through your life without it. This is going to be so much harder for you than if you say you know what, instead of never drinking again, I just want to drink you know, on Saturday nights.

You know, that way I can just sleep in the next day. It’s not a big deal. Yeah, I know I’m not going to feel great but it’s not like the day before a long run, and like you know you can do it in a way that feels good for you. This is a powerful skill that you can master okay.

And here’s the other thing I want to make sure you understand is that for some people, the all or nothing, you know, principle the all or nothing mentality does work and they actually feel good about not making a decision to never drink alcohol again, or never eating junk food again. And if you’re the kind of person who’s like, you know, I just don’t ever want to drink again, or I don’t ever want to eat candy bars ever in your life, and you feel good about that.

And that motivates you? And that mentality kind of strengthens your resolve that keeps you on track and fuels you and it feels good for you. As long as it’s not making you feel deprived or demotivated or increasing your desire for it, it’s totally fine. If this kind of thinking works for you, then absolutely go for it. There’s nothing wrong with this line of thinking unless it makes you crave the thing more unless it makes you feel terrible.

Okay, you don’t have to decide that you’re never going to drink again, or never eat out or never eat sugar again. So I quit drinking alcohol 14 years ago, and when I made that decision to quit, I just so happen to have quit 100% and have never had a drop of alcohol since that day in 2007. That was not my intention when I quit.

When I quit. I was like, I just can’t do this anymore, I need to just like cut back. And, um, and I, you know, was in therapy and you know, involved in like some 12 Step programs and things like that. And my experience was that for me, it was better if I just didn’t pick it up if I just didn’t drink, you know, and I never made the decision, like, I’m going to quit this for the rest of my life.

I just decided that I was going to make this decision sort of a one-day at a time kind of a deal. So it’s like today, I’m just not going to drink it, we’ll see how it goes. And then the next day, I kind of made that same decision, and so on and so forth. And so I’ve sort of just kept that same mentality of like, if I want to drink I can, it’s not like I can’t, but I just don’t want to I don’t have that desire, okay.

But early on, especially in the 12 step programs, you know, I was told and I firmly believed at the time that if I had just like one drop of alcohol, I’d be back to drinking a six-pack every night in no time I’d be like, you know, end up in jail or dead, you know, to scare the crap out of me.

You know, I hear people talk about how, you know, they had many, many years of sobriety, and then they’d had one drink, and then it was all over, they’re right back to where they were before. And there was, you know, all this turmoil in their life and everything they had worked for so hard, just all fell apart, and their lives turned to crap.

And I’m just like, oh, my gosh, I don’t want that. So I better not drink at all. And here’s the thing I’ll tell you like, today, I don’t really believe this is true for everyone. It hasn’t been shown to be true. Like I know a lot of people who were sober for many years, and maybe they had a slip-up, maybe they drank once or twice, and then they didn’t go to jail. They’re not dead. They weren’t suddenly struck homeless and living in a gutter or anything like that.

They didn’t lose all the good stuff in their life. You know, they didn’t drink and then they drank, and then they don’t drink again. And it’s no big what you know, I think we get into this idea of like, it has to be one or the other. Like, it has to be binary. You know, and when we have this all or nothing mentality.

Occasionally having a drink is it’s forbidden. It’s completely off the table. You know why? Because well, you can’t control your drinking, you’re an alcoholic, or you can never drink again, you know, whatever things you tell yourself.

I was having coffee with a friend recently. And, you know, she had quit drinking many years ago as well. And we’ve both abstained from drinking, you know, but she decided not too long ago that she wanted to have a relationship with alcohol again. So now she occasionally drinks and she’s good with that.

You know, and we were both under this idea that once you start, you can’t stop and but that hasn’t been the case for her. So she can enjoy a glass of wine every now and then with friends. She can moderate her drinking. She feels good about her decision. Okay, she’s changed how she thinks and feels about alcohol. She’s changed the relationship with alcohol instead of having zero relationship with alcohol. She has a healthy relationship with alcohol now, and it’s the exact same thing with our food.

Like we can decide that we want to occasionally have a cupcake we can decide that we occasionally want to eat pizza. And this is where there’s freedom. Okay, you can do these things in a way that feels good for you, and you can change the relationship without having to swear it off forever.

So what about me, am I going to like try this experiment of like drinking again? Well, talking to this friend of mine got me really thinking about this idea. Like, if I wanted to drink again, I could probably do it in a way that is completely fine. And that feels good for me, I could change the relationship.

But I got to just tell you, like, I don’t want that for myself, I don’t have any desire to drink alcohol, or to feel buzzed or to get drunk or any of that stuff. I just don’t. I can drink if I want to, but I’m choosing not to. And this is a little bit different than my relationship with food. Because my relationship with food is a little bit different.

I will occasionally have some sweets or some, you know, sugar or some, you know, special dessert, or, you know, something that’s just like bread, you know, lots of carbs, I can occasionally do this stuff. Okay. But as far as drinking is concerned, I just don’t have the desire for it.

You know, that desire left me a long time ago, and I just don’t want it. Okay. So, and I’m not making this decision forever about alcohol. Like I might change my mind someday. And I might say, like, you know, what I might, you know, try drinking again. But for today, I don’t have that desire, and I’m not gonna drink today.

But like, as far as like, the junk food and the sugar and stuff like that, like, I’ve thought about this. And, you know, here’s something that I used to love when I would go to California and visit family out there. I love going to In and Out Burger, right? They have these great burgers and fries. And it’s like, milkshakes or whatever.

I’ll do that someday, you know, but it’s not something I’m doing like all the time, I don’t have to have it. I’m not thinking about it all the time, I don’t have this over desire for that kind of thing. But I’ll go and eat something like that. I love sourdough bread. I’d love to get, you know, a good loaf of sourdough bread when I go to San Francisco, or, you know, eat that special dessert on my birthday, or because it’s, you know, Christmas or something like that.

I can do those things. And I feel really good about it. I’ve changed my relationship with food. And if you’re thinking about like, well, how can I do this for myself, you know, I just want you to like, take on this attitude of like, I don’t have to swear off drinking forever, I don’t have to swear off eating sugar for forever. But maybe just for today is a good place to start.

Maybe adopting that idea that they talked about in some of these 12 Step programs is like, just for today, I’m not gonna drink just for today, I’m not going to eat sugar. And don’t even worry about tomorrow, just think about what you can do today.

And when you think about it this way it doesn’t feel so big and overwhelming anymore. It doesn’t feel like you have to quit for the rest of your life or you’re a failure, you can just decide. Today, I just don’t want that. You know.

Another big problem that I think happens when we adopt this all or nothing mentality is that we feel like we’re out of control. Like, you can’t control your drinking. So you have to quit forever. You can’t control your eating, and or you know, your sugar intake. So you have to just quit forever. Maybe you’ve been told you have an addictive personality or you thought that you had something like that. Okay?

But what if you can control your drinking? What if you can control your eating? You just haven’t learned how to do it? What if there’s no such thing as an addictive personality? I did a little research into this.

And in her book, The Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, Maya, I’m gonna screw up her last name, but it’s like Szalavitz Maya says fundamentally, the idea of a general addictive personality is a myth. People with addictions or potential addicts cannot be identified by a specific collection of personality traits. So there you go. Maybe the addictive personality is not really a thing.

Here’s the thing, you always have a choice. Everything you do is a choice. The decision that you make is a choice that you are making. It’s not something that is out of control. You always have the ability to be in control or to take back control if you think you’ve lost it because you really haven’t lost control.

You just think you have you know, maybe you’ve been told that you don’t have control and you’re choosing to believe that but a lot of times it’s just a thought, feeling, action pattern that you’ve been doing for a long time. So you may not feel like you’re in control because your thoughts and feelings about eating junk food and drinking are just like automatic.

And this behavior that you’re engaging in is like something you do, mostly unconsciously. You know, it’s kind of like tying your shoes, it’s just something you do, you can do it without even thinking about it right? Eating and drinking can be the same way. It’s such an ingrained habit that you feel like you’re out of control, but you’re actually making decisions, okay, you do have control.

And if you want to see this, what you need to do is just slow down. Right? If you want to see that you do have control, pause, when you’re, you know, about to engage in this behavior. And start looking at the thoughts and feelings that precede the behavior. Like what were you thinking and feeling right before you found yourself with a glass of wine in your hand, you know, what thoughts and feelings drove the action of eating the burger and fries, the milkshake.

And I don’t want you to skip this step like this is important, I want you to get curious with yourself. Start to become aware of how those thoughts and feelings are driving your behavior. Because if you want to change the behavior, you’ve got to look at the thoughts and feelings that are driving it. When you begin to see that there’s a pattern at work here, a thought feeling reaction pattern, you can begin to take back the control, you can see that you are in control.

And this is how you begin to change the behavior. And do it in a way that actually works. Instead of just saying like, I just got to quit this forever. So it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, okay? If that all or nothing mentality works for you love it, do it, keep it going right on, get down with your bad self.

But if you want something different, if that doesn’t work for you, if that feels terrible for you, and you want to just like instead of avoiding a relationship with, with certain types of foods or alcohol, you want to change the relationship, you still want to have a relationship, but you want to be different to a healthy relationship, then that is possible for you, you can control your eating and your drinking. And you got to start by looking at your thoughts and feelings about sugar, about burgers and fries, about alcohol.

And once you start to be aware of how your thoughts and feelings are, you know driving the action, you can begin to change them so that you can take different actions, okay. And this, the same principles apply to everything in your walk of life.

Like these same principles apply to my relationship with my ex-wife, and it works beautifully. Like it works. Great. My relationship with her today is good. You know, not because of anything she’s doing. Because I’ve learned how to change the way I think and feel about this relationship. I’ve created a healthier relationship.

You know, my relationship with food today is good. Not because it’s never around, not because I avoid, you know, carbs or sugar 100% of the time. It’s not because I made a solemn oath to swear these things off forever. It’s because I’ve changed the relationship. Right? I’ve changed how I show up around these things.

And this is available for you too. I just want you to see that. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. All or nothing sometimes works for people, but sometimes it just feels too. It’s too much. It’s overwhelming. Okay.

So be sure to join us over in the Running Lean coaching group because in August, we’re taking a deep dive into this whole idea of like changing your thought, feeling, action patterns, you know, how do you how do these things show up? How do you change them so you can start getting the results that you want around things like weight loss or maybe controlling your drinking or changing your running or just improving your overall health and fitness?

If you’re interested in joining the group love to have you in there just check out runningleanpodcast.com/join and we’ll see you soon. And listen, I hope you got something out of this episode today. I had fun putting this together.

And if you did get something out of it. Please consider sharing it with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

82. Practicing the Art of Discipline

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When you think of discipline, what comes to mind? For some, it conjures up images of obeying rules and doling out punishment for anyone who disobeys. But when I think of discipline I think of …

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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 82 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today we’re going to be talking about practicing the art of discipline. So when you think of discipline, what comes to mind, because for some people, it conjures up images of like obeying rules. And if you don’t obey the rules, there’s a punishment being doled out.

But when I think of discipline, I think of training myself to do something on a consistent basis training myself to do something day in and day out. And it’s usually something that I don’t really feel like doing, but I do it anyway. So I never think of discipline as a punishment, but rather, as a means of achieving whatever worthwhile thing that I want for myself.

So if there’s something big that you want for yourself, I’m telling you right now, there’s no like magic formula to making it easy. It just takes practicing the art of discipline to get it. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. Cool.

If you guys haven’t already checked it out, please come join us in the Facebook group, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, the group goes hand in hand with the podcast, it’s a bunch of people just like you that are cool. And that are into running and maybe want to feel better and want to get leaner and get stronger and run faster and run longer than they ever could before. And that’s what we do.

This month, we’re kind of having some fun with the dry July challenge. We’ve been kind of challenging ourselves to take a break from alcohol for the month of July. And a lot of people have been posting some really positive experiences from doing this. Because a lot of times you don’t even realize that you feel much better when you’re not doing something like drinking alcohol every day or eating sugar every day.

You know, and then you’re just like, well, I feel amazing. You know, I didn’t even know that I could feel this good. Because I’m just not used to this. So there’s nothing wrong with alcohol, alcohol is fine is drinking is awesome, but whatever. But if you’re trying to lose weight, or you know you want to improve your running performance, it may be something you want to explore cutting out. So anyway, join us over in the Facebook group and check it out. Search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us in the fun.

And here’s a quick little review that somebody posted about the podcast. So this is from Cara Lee and she says, “I only recently found this podcast, and I’m absolutely loving it. Love the podcast about stress. I’m one that’s always hated hills. But after listening to it and thinking of how to get stronger the next morning off, I went to do hill work with your voice inside my head. It was super motivating. And I went back to a few more podcast episodes. So now I’m hooked. So thanks and keep them coming.”

Thank you Kelly for posting that. And share your thoughts about the podcast. I love, love, love doing this podcast and I love when you guys tell me that it’s resonating with you. And if you want to leave a review, you can always do that on like Apple podcasts. Just go to the section where it says leave a review, tap the stars write a few words. And I so appreciate it I read all those reviews and I so appreciate it when you guys do that.

And then lastly, I’ve got a big announcement for you guys. Here’s a big update. I am opening up the Running Lean monthly coaching group starting now. So you can join now this is like something I’m just I didn’t do a lot of build-up to this I just want you to know that it is open and you can join today if you want to.

So what is the monthly coaching group? Well, it’s a group of like-minded people who are all working together to accomplish some big goals right it could be weight loss, it could be just improving your overall health and it could be becoming a more badass runner. It could be like improving your mental and emotional state so that you don’t keep doing the emotional eating and learning how to make all of these habits so that it lasts for the rest of your life.

So it’s a monthly membership program you get access to my online training materials, the weight loss training course for runners. My goal-setting course is called achieving the impossible which is how to create an extraordinary life by going after unrealistic goals. That’s super fun.

You get weekly live coaching with me. So this is a big change. I was only doing this every other week. And I’ve decided that I’m going to give more value to the group. So we’re going to start doing coaching every single week on a group zoom call. And so you’ll get personalized guidance and feedback. And you can hear other people being coached on some of the same things that you’re experiencing.

And you learn, even if you’re not getting the individual coaching if I’m not talking directly to you, hearing somebody else getting coached on a similar topic is so, so helpful. You get the support and the encouragement of people that are just like you and they’re going through the same things, you get accountability.

So we’re going to help you stay on track and help you move toward your goals. It’s a lot of fun to oh my gosh, these calls and this group is such a great group of people, oh my gosh, I do record all the coaching calls so that you’ll have access to them all on a website. And they’re all organized by month.

We’re doing something also new starting in August, we’re doing a topic of the month. So we’re going to focus all of our calls and a lot of the work that we’re going to be doing in August is going to be focused around taking a deep dive into this thought, feeling, action patterns that we have, like, how are your thought feeling action patterns keeping you stuck? And how can you start harnessing the power of your thoughts and your feelings to start getting better results in all kinds of areas of your life, you know. If you find yourself, you just can’t seem to stick to your food plan, you just can’t seem to lose the weight, you just keep getting stuck.

We’re going to talk about how to change your thoughts and feelings about this so that you can start getting unstuck, and start getting better results in your life. Okay. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and you can just sign up today, you can join us we’ve got a members only Facebook group where we’ll all be posting more information about the next group call.

So it’s going to be every Tuesday from now on every Tuesday evening is when we do these group zoom calls. So I would love love, love for you to join us. And the other thing is that I’m not going to close the group, it’s just going to be open from now on.

Now, I want you to know why I’m doing this. I did it in the past because I wanted to, you know, I open the group, maybe once a quarter. And I wanted people to kind of go through the material together and sort of learn together. But I found that a lot of people wanted to join, and they were ready to join. But I was like, well, you’ve got to wait a couple of months.

And I don’t want that I want you to join when you’re ready. If you’re ready today, I would encourage you to just take some action and join. And you can start getting some amazing results in these different places in your life. Cool. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and we’ll see you over in the Running Lean monthly coaching group.

Okay, so let’s get into this topic today, which is practicing the art of discipline. So before we get into what discipline is, I want to talk a little bit about what we typically think we need in order to accomplish something big, which is motivation, a lot of people think, oh, you know, I need to feel motivated in order to like do something I need to feel motivated in order to take action.

And a lot of people look at their lack of motivation as a reason why they don’t do something. So let’s say you’re trying to stick to your food plan, and you just don’t feel like it. It’s like I’m not motivated to stick to my food plan. So that’s why I didn’t do it. And I’m going to explain a little bit, you know, why the motivation seems to like fade away.

But this is where discipline is going to trump motivation, like every single time, right? But what is motivation? So the definition of motivation is the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. So it’s like a desire and a willingness to do something, right. It’s a, it’s a desire and willingness to take action. Right?

Now, here’s what here’s what’s not the definition of motivation. Motivation is not something that is external. It’s not something that’s outside of you. Motivation is not something that gets bestowed upon you. Motivation is an emotion, it’s a feeling. It’s created within you. You create motivation by your thoughts.

Because if it’s an emotion, it’s created by your thoughts 100% of the time. And motivation is awesome and it can get you really, it can help you to take action. feeling motivated will get you into action, for sure. It’s a driving force. Feeling motivated can definitely help you to do something that maybe you don’t necessarily feel like doing.

Okay, but what happens when the motivation sort of fades away? What happens when you don’t feel like doing something? You know, what happens when you are all excited about losing weight? And so you, you know, maybe you get to change a food plan, you know, maybe you hire a coach, you know, maybe you’re like all gung ho about, you know what, what the future holds for you, and you’re super excited, and you’re like, on track, and you’re like, super motivated, and you’ve got this energy around you and, and you’re excited.

But what happens after a couple of weeks of doing this, and, and that motivation and that excitement, and that energy sort of fades away, then what do you do? Like, how do you keep going? You know, motivation is great for getting you started and getting you into action. But then how do you keep going when you don’t feel like it?

And this is where discipline comes into play. Because when your motivation is gone, you need something else to keep you going. And think about this, like people joining a gym in January, like how many people are motivated and excited to join a gym in January, right? Millions of people, you know, the gyms are so packed in January and February, but by March, I’m telling you, they’re like empty again, there’s like, you know, it’s like, all these people, their motivation went away.

And they were like, yeah, just don’t feel like doing this anymore. And so what happens when that, you know, motivation is no longer there? Well, you need something stronger to keep you going, you need something that’s going to keep you going for the long haul. And this is where we need discipline, we need to practice discipline.

So what is discipline? Well, discipline is training oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. So this is like I love this definition, by the way, training yourself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. Discipline is what creates what it takes to create new habits, right?

Discipline is doing something, even when you don’t feel like it. Discipline means you’re suiting up and showing up every single day, no matter what. So motivation might be that thing that gets you started. But discipline is the thing that’s going to keep you going.

So you might have been motivated when you signed up for that marathon. But then the training started, you’re gonna need some discipline to get you through the months of training, especially if you’re training in any kind of, you know, sub-optimal weather like so around here, this part of the country, if you’re training for a spring marathon, you’re doing all your training in the winter, and it’s dark, and it’s cold, and it’s windy, and it kinda can suck.

And then if you’re training for a fall marathon, guess what, it’s all the opposite. It’s sunny and hot and humid. And it sucks, like, so, motivation is not going to be there, I promise you, at some point, during that marathon training, you’re going to need to get into practicing discipline, or you’re just not going to make it through there through the training.

And you might be motivated when you made the decision to lose weight. So you may have, you know, gotten, you know, finally ready to drop the 40 pounds or whatever you’ve been carrying around and you’re like, you know what, I am finally going to do this for myself and I’m motivated and excited and you’ve got this energy.

And then after a few weeks, you know, you’re just like sticking with this food plan, you’re just not motivated anymore. Discipline is going to keep you on that food plan when you don’t feel like it. Okay? Accomplishing anything worthwhile is going to require practicing the art of discipline, there’s just no other way around it.

Discipline is not the fun and sexy and exciting stuff. Discipline means you’re doing the boring stuff over and over and over again, day in and day out. It’s like discipline is like getting up early, every single day so you can hit the gym and work out. Discipline means like, you know, whatever the run is on your schedule for today just doing it. Right.

It may not be fun. It may not be what you feel like doing but you do it anyway. Discipline is sticking to that food plan. Even though it’s not exciting. Even the food is kind of like it’s a little boring. It’s okay. It means sticking to it anyway. And listen, I totally get that discipline is not easy. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unfamiliar and just by the nature of it, like, you’re not gonna feel like doing it, you’re not gonna feel like sticking with it.

But this is the work of discipline, practicing the art of discipline is the work that you have to do. So I want to like challenge you to stop looking outside of yourself for motivation, before you do something, stop waiting to feel motivated before you take action. Because in the grand scheme of things, discipline beats motivation every single time. And here’s something cool. Like when you practice discipline when you get disciplined, and you do something, even though you don’t feel like doing it, oftentimes, just the act of doing, getting out there, and doing the thing will create a ton of motivation for you.

So like, when you don’t feel like running when you’re not motivated to run, and you go head out the door anyway, you will often get super motivated to keep going. So you get out there and you run a mile or so and you’re like, I do not feel like doing this. But then after a mile and a half, two miles, you’re like, you know, I’m feeling pretty good. After three miles, you’re like, you know, I’m actually pretty pumped about this.

People tell me this all the time. They’re like, you know what, Patrick, I didn’t feel like running. But then I did it. Anyway, I headed out the door. And I had like, the most amazing run, I hit a PR for my 5k time or I just had this amazing long run. And they feel super pumped about themselves. And they feel super motivated. That motivation was not there.

Before they headed out the door, they created that motivation, from discipline from being disciplined. Right, so you create the motivation by taking the action. Okay, I love this, I love this idea. Because it means that you have more control and more power.

Like you don’t have to just feel a certain way in order to like, get amazing results. Here’s an example. Like, I did not feel like lifting weights yesterday, I’ve been a little under the weather, I’ve got a little bug of something, you know, a little sore throat, I’ve been taking my temperature, I don’t have a fever or anything like that.

But I just feel like I’ve been out in the public more, I think it’s, you know, I just got some bug or something, you know, so I’m just feeling a little under the weather. So I hit the gym yesterday. And I did not feel like lifting weights, I was a little rundown, a little achy. And I was just like, I do not want to do this. And I told my trainer, Chris, I was like, dude, I just feel terrible today. So I’m just gonna, like take it easy, you know, when I was kind of giving myself an out.

And so I found myself putting a bunch of weight on the bar to do some back squats. And actually had a back squat PR yesterday, and I tied my deadlift PR yesterday. And I have to tell you that I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that. And for whatever reason, I just was like, let’s see what we can do. And I did it.

And I have to tell you like after I hit those two like PRs, I was so motivated, it was super motivating. I felt amazing. And the rest of my workout was so good. And I felt so proud of myself for sticking with it. And for showing up and doing what was hard. That’s the hard stuff, you guys, it’s not easy.

You know, maybe you’re like part of our dry July challenge in the Facebook group. And maybe you’re not drinking right now. And I know that this is not easy to do. Like if you’re in the habit of drinking on a regular basis, and then you decide you’re going to like take 30 days off or, you know, just even a few weeks or whatever. Like that could be very challenging, right.

But, you know, let’s say you, you decide you’re just going to skip that after-work happy hour on Friday, you know, and you’re not motivated to do this at all. You’re not going to feel like this is a good idea in the moment. Okay? But because you’re practicing the art of discipline, you say no.

And you see your friends leave and they all go hit the bar. And what you do is you say no, and you go home and you get in a nice run instead. Or maybe you hit the gym. Or maybe you just spend some time playing with your kids. And then I promise you, you’re going to feel something, you’re going to feel accomplished.

You’re going to feel a sense of pride in yourself. You’re going to gain confidence, you’re going to build trust with yourself, and this feeling that you have is just going to it’s going to feel so amazing and so motivating to keep you going back and keep you doing that and keep you staying on your plan.

And you’re gonna feel so good about yourself. Motivation is a feeling it’s an emotion it’s created by our thoughts. Right, discipline is taking action despite how you think and feel despite what your thoughts and feelings are in that moment. You may not think what you’re about to do is a good idea. It may seem like a dumb idea to not go to the bar with your friends, it may seem like you’re missing out on something, you may feel like, you know, left out, you know, you may feel sad, or you may feel, you know, frustrated by that.

And you’re taking action, despite those thoughts and despite those feelings, this is kind of cool. I mean, this is powerful, powerful stuff. And I want you to think about it this way, too. You are already practicing discipline in other areas of your life. And it’s funny because I hear people say, like, well, I’m in disciplined in this area over here, but I just can’t be disciplined in this area of my life.

So for example, like, I’m sure there’s probably been a time where you didn’t feel like going to work, you get up in the morning, and you’re like, I do not feel like going to work today. But you get up, you brush your teeth, you put your clothes on, you take a shower, whatever you do, get in your car, you drive to work, and you do it no matter what.

Or maybe you don’t feel like walking your dog every day at 4:30 in the morning, you know, whatever. But there you are out there in the cold walking the dog. And maybe you don’t feel like taking your kids to soccer practice again. But there you are doing it. And so you might argue, well, Patrick, the stakes are high, you know, with these things like you can’t lose your job, you can’t have poop on the carpet, you know, you can’t let your kids grow up to be mediocre soccer players. Think that’s funny. I’m glad I cracked myself up.

Because, I mean, there’s nobody else here. So it’s just me. You know, and I would argue that your health and your well-being and your fitness are pretty high stakes too. And I say that, if it isn’t for you, it should be. Because if you don’t have that, like what else do you have, you know, you’re not going to be there for your kids and your dog and your family and things like that, right?

So you’re already practicing this in other areas of your life, I just want you to see that. And understand that you can take that same mentality of like, I have to show up to my job, the stakes are high to your health and fitness. You know, you can absolutely apply those same principles here. Okay.

So instead of waiting to be, you know, struck with motivation, instead of waiting to be bestowed with motivation, practice the art of discipline. And I call it an art because it isn’t like an art form is something that you create, and you get to make it your own, you get to do it, however, you want to do it. You get to decide what discipline looks like for you. And then you get to practice it.

And just like an artist has to practice their craft to get better at it. You have to practice discipline to get better at it. And I understand this, it doesn’t come naturally. Our natural instinct is not to be disciplined, our natural instinct is to seek comfort. And discipline is oftentimes the opposite of that it’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good sometimes. And that’s okay. Because here’s the thing, the more you practice it, the easier it becomes, the more you practice it, the better you get at it, just like anything else in your life.

Also, the art of discipline is making tiny decisions. It’s making little choices consistently over time. Every huge success is really just a series of small decisions that are made consistently, every single day. And all these tiny little actions, all these tiny things that you do all these tiny choices that you make, they can add up to something huge, something big, powerful.

I heard the saying that an ant can eat an elephant, one teeny tiny bite at a time. But this requires discipline. It’s not going to happen quickly. Motivation won’t get you there. So what is your elephant? What’s the big, seemingly impossible goal that you want for yourself? What is it that you want to become? That seems so huge?

It’s just like, there’s no way you could ever do it? And how can you take one teeny tiny bite of that today? And then what can you do tomorrow? And then the next day and so on? What little tiny decisions are you making in this moment right now? Can you lace up your running shoes and head out the door? Even though you don’t feel like it? Can you say no to the pizza that your husband brought home for dinner? Because yeah, that’s not part of your plan.

Can you skip the glass of wine after dinner because you said you weren’t drinking? Like I can say with almost certainty that you will not feel like doing these things you will not feel like running, you will not feel like saying no to the pizza. I mean, it’s pizza. Come on, right? You’re not gonna feel like saying no to the glass of wine. But can you do them anyway? Because that’s what discipline looks like.

Things just don’t happen, right, you make things happen. And in order to make things happen, you have to take action, and taking action requires discipline. And like I said before when you practice this, you get good at it, it becomes easier. There’s another side to this too, like, when you practice slacking off, you get good at that too. slagging off can be an art form, too.

You know, people get really creative and really fanciful with the excuses and reasons why they didn’t do what they said they’re going to do, you know, things are crazy at work, right now, the kids are out of school, you know, so you know, that means or it’s hot this time of the year, it’s cold this time of the year, whatever.

Like, we can get really fanciful and creative with all these excuses. And, and we’re good at this already, we’re good at coming up with excuses for not to do something. What if you instead practiced the opposite, you know, and took a different approach? Instead of practicing excuse as you practiced doing, you practiced taking action, even when the motivation wasn’t there, even when you didn’t feel like it.

So you got some work to do this week, I want you to practice the art of discipline and however that looks for you. Like, maybe you just set your alarm earlier, and you get your butt out of bed. You know, maybe you stick to that running schedule, you lace up your running shoes, and you head out the door. Maybe it’s saying no to that party after work and happy hour and hitting the gym instead. Don’t wait to feel motivated before taking action. Create those feelings of motivation by taking action, even when you don’t feel like it. Okay?

This is all about doing stuff. This is about taking action. So it’s not enough to just listen to this podcast and say, hey, cool stuff, bro. I get it. No, you got to do it. You got to practice it, nothing changes if nothing changes. So I want you to pick something. Pick one thing that you want to be disciplined about this week and stick to it. Do it even though you don’t feel like it, practice it.

And then jump into our Facebook group and post your results. Let’s talk about it. I would love to hear what you’re practicing this week. Because we’re there to support you. We’re here to help you and encourage you. And you know, just you know, celebrate you when you do stick to it for this week. Okay, cool.

You totally got this, you guys. I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

80. Understanding and Eliminating Self-Sabotage

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Self-sabotage is one of those terms that you hear and you think you have a pretty good handle on what it means. But do you really? Because if you find yourself engaging in self-sabotaging behavior, …

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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 80 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, I’ve got a fun topic for you understanding and eliminating self sabotage. Self sabotage is one of those things that we hear the term and you think you have a pretty good handle on what it means. But do you really, because if you find yourself engaging in self sabotaging behavior, then you’re not sure why you keep doing this to yourself, then you may not understand it as well as you think.

Because until you have a better understanding of what self sabotage really is, and how it shows up in your life, you can’t change it, or you can’t prevent it from happening. So in this episode, I’m going to help you to understand what self sabotage really is, how it prevents you from achieving your goals, why you do it, and how you can eliminate it from your life. Cool, it’s gonna be fun.

And just really quick, if you like this podcast, please come check us out on Facebook, we have this awesome community, the Running Lean podcast community. And the the Facebook group goes hand in hand with the podcast. It’s a place where you can ask questions and get answers, and get some support. And feel the love, feel the encouragement, get some inspiration, we talked about running, we talked about mindset stuff in there, I do a little coaching and training in there every week.

And right now it’s July, and we’re doing the dry July challenge. So it’s a place where we are taking the month of July and eliminating alcohol. And the group is a place where you can you know, kind of get supported through that journey if this is something you’re interested in. And you’re just you know, now hearing about this, you can still join in and, and and start with us it’s it’s kind of fun.

It’s not like alcohol is bad, or, you know, it’s not about good or bad. It’s not about moral judgments. It’s just about, you know, I want to see what it feels like to take a break from alcohol, maybe I want to improve my health or my running performance. And I just want to see how this will work. So come join us. It’ll be fun. It’s all about fun, right? Just search for the Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us over there. Cool.

And listen, I understand how overwhelming a lot of these topics can feel. You know, we talked about changing your mindset, changing habits, changing your, the way you’re eating, changing your exercise regimen, starting to do some strength training, getting into running, improving your running performance, all of these things can feel quite honestly overwhelming. And it can feel very confusing. And there’s a lot of conflicting information out there. And I get all of that.

That’s why I am a coach. That’s why I coach people every day to kind of navigate all of that stuff, and make it make sense for you in a way that will work for you. Coaching isn’t about you know, here’s what you do is like one thing that we do, we just here’s a list of stuff to do. And it works for everybody. It’s not like that at all. It’s about figuring out what works for you as an individual, what works for you, and your goals and your lifestyle and your likes and dislikes and your you know running performance and all these things we want to support ports support you where you are today and help you get to where you want to be tomorrow. So if you’re ever interested in working with me as your coach, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

And you’ll have to apply for coaching because I don’t work with everybody. You know, I want to I want to have a conversation with you. I want to see if this is a good fit for you. I want you to see if I’m a good fit for you for you. Like you may think like well, I thought Patrick would be awesome to work with. But then I started talking to him and I don’t think so.

I haven’t had that happen yet, by the way, but you know, it’s possible. But anyway, it just can’t hurt to have a conversation about coaching and what that would look like for you. Okay, so I’m here for you. If you ever want to do that, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we can talk about it. Cool. Awesome. All right.

I want to get into this topic today. I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now. And I’m excited about this topic because I think it’s really important to understand what self sabotage really is. How you do it, why you do it, and how you can prevent it.

And really one of the biggest keys here and the biggest takeaway from this episode is going to be that when you understand how self sabotage is showing up for you, and some of these things I’m going to talk about you may not have heard of before, and it may surprise you how you might be self sabotaging yourself or why you self sabotage.

But one of the keys is that when you understand what’s happening, just right there, this can be life changing for you, this can absolutely help you to just eliminate it from happening going forward. Okay, so just a really having a deep understanding of what’s happening with you and how you self sabotage is key to fixing the problem. Okay.

So the reason I really started getting into this and got excited about talking about this is because I was reading a book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and he talks about in the book, this this issue called, he calls it the upper limit problem. And this is a problem where we all have some sort of self imposed upper limit. And when we reach that upper limit, and we try to go past that upper limit, things get very uncomfortable.

So we might have a self imposed upper limit of how much happiness we want to experience or how much success we can experience or how much you know how healthy we can be, or how much wealth we can have, you know, how much money we can have in the bank, or how much love we can experience any, it can be positive things, too. It’s not just about, you know, how much, you know, adversity can you handle it’s not about that, it’s about like, good things, right.

So we have this self imposed sort of upper limit, and when we hit that upper limit, we get very, very uncomfortable. And here’s why. Because your brain sees this upper limit, as unsafe, as unfamiliar. And as something that maybe it’s dangerous for you, you know, it’s out of your comfort zone. And so, you might be like feeling really good and feeling all this happiness, and you’re maybe you’re sticking to your eating plan, and you’re losing some weight, and you’re feeling really good.

And your brain is like, wait a minute, what is happening here, this is not normal, this doesn’t feel right, this feels uncomfortable, this place of like, everything is going well. And so what will happen is, and you don’t even know you’re doing this, but subconsciously, you pull yourself back away from that upper limit, you pull yourself back to what feels comfortable, what feels familiar, and what feels to your primitive brain safe for you. Back to your comfort zone, right?

Some examples of how this shows up for people is, you know, kind of what I was just mentioning, you start to lose weight, you’re starting to feel good, you’re sticking to your plan. And all of a sudden, you find yourself, you know, face first into a Boston Cream Pie. And you’re like, what is happening? Why am I doing this to myself? I didn’t want to eat this. But I find myself, you know, with a cupcake in my face, like, what am I doing here?

Because subconsciously, you don’t even know you’re doing this, you think, you know, it’s all just happening to you. But you’re, you’re doing this to yourself, okay, but it’s subconscious. It’s not within your awareness. It’s like outside of your awareness. Okay. Subconsciously, you’re just trying to get back to what, what you know, and what is familiar to you, and what feels safe to you and what feels comfortable for you.

And that is a certain weight, like, let’s say you, you know, you’re you’re on this track to lose 40 pounds, all right, and you haven’t lost, you know, you haven’t been down 40 pounds in 40 years or something like that. And it’s been, you know, 10 years since you’ve lost 20 pounds. And so you start to get close to that 20 pound mark, and all of a sudden, you know, this feels really unfamiliar and very uncomfortable for you.

And so subconsciously, you will do something, you’ll start over eating, you’ll start eating a bunch of crap, just to get yourself back to where you feel comfortable. Isn’t this sort of insidious? It’s very sneaky. What happens what our brains are doing to us here, okay, but we have to understand what’s going on in order to fix it.

Another example is, you’ve probably heard this one before people that win the lottery. So people that are, you know, have, you know, let’s say middle class, you know, they have you know, they they’re not used to having a lot of money, right? They’re just like, whatever, living paycheck to paycheck, they win the lottery, they get millions of dollars.

And I think the statistics are something like this. 60% of these people within two years are back to where they were financially, before they won the lottery, like they have this pull back to their comfort zone. Because having millions of dollars in the bank, investing it and making it grow, and like all this other stuff feels so uncomfortable for them. It’s so unfamiliar.

And they’re, you know, they just want to go back to what feels good and what feels comfortable for them. And everybody else, maybe even them would look at this situation and go, you’re crazy. How can you do this to yourself, this is total self sabotage.

But in reality, it’s so hard to discern what’s happening, because it feels like it’s automatic, it’s feels like it’s just happening to you. But it’s very, it’s very sneaky. And it’s subconscious that’s happening. It’s your subconscious at work, it’s your primitive brain at work, we have to just have this awareness to understand what’s going on here.

Another way this shows up is, you know, let’s say you want to quit drinking, and you find yourself doing well, for some time for some period of time, you might like, you know, we’re on day, eight now of the dry July challenge. And there’s people that are doing really well, and they haven’t had a drink in eight days.

And maybe some of these people will find themselves, you know, drinking tonight, and they don’t understand why. And it could just be that that feeling that they’re feeling and experiencing of like not being drunk or not being buzzed or not being hungover, whatever, that doesn’t feel normal to them. It doesn’t feel, you know, familiar. It’s not what they’re used to feels uncomfortable.

And your primitive brain just wants to go back to what feels comfortable. And so your primitive brain will be like you need to drink. And you might think, well, this is a dumb idea. Why am I doing this? And you might just find yourself doing it anyway.

When I first started, when I first stopped drinking, many years ago, I remember waking up feeling good. For the first time in a long time, you know, waking up, not feeling hungover. And this felt very uncomfortable for me. I had all this energy, I felt very clear headed. I wasn’t sick to my stomach. And I did not like that feeling. This was so uncomfortable for me. And so not normal it’s not funny.

Like I remember driving to work every day. And I had like a 30 minute commute or whatever to work. And I just remember everyday thinking, man I wish I just felt better. I wish I felt I wish I wasn’t so sick, driving to work, but then I would you know, then I stopped drinking. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, what am I feeling now as I’m driving to work, but this feels so uncomfortable.

I feel so like jittery and like, you know, clear headed like, this is crazy, you know, so that that felt very foreign to me and very uncomfortable for me. And here’s the thing, happiness can feel very uncomfortable. Feeling good, feels uncomfortable for us. We’re not wired, to seek out happiness and to pursue happiness.

We’re not wired to pursue joy, and to pursue love and to pursue success and to pursue good health. We’re wired to pursue comfort. This is not a bad thing, okay, you just have to understand that this is what’s going on in your brain. And this is something that we’ve evolved over millions of years, as human beings, we have this natural instinct to seek out the familiar to seek out what is comfortable for us to always be running back to the safety of what’s comfortable, even though comfort may be what’s bad for us.

It doesn’t matter, even though we know like I want to, you know, improve my relationship with my romantic partner. And so I’m going to like, you know, try to you know, I want more love, and more joy in our relationship. And then when you start to get that, it’s like, whoa, this feels really weird and feels uncomfortable.

I’m just going to pick a fight with them just to make sure we go back to where we were before, where everything was comfortable and familiar to us where we’re fighting all the time. Right? This is kind of insidious.

Now we just have to understand this is the way your brain works. It’s not a bad thing. It’s no moral judgment here. This is just how our brains are wired. And it’s okay. All change anytime we want to change anything, it’s somewhat uncomfortable. All change is uncomfortable until it becomes familiar to us. All change is uncomfortable until it becomes more familiar to us.

So we have this thing, and I see this all the time with with clients who want something for themselves, they want to lose weight, let’s say, you know, they want to quit drinking, they want to run faster. So they want something they’ve wanted this for a long time. That wanting is very familiar, it’s part of who they are. Right.

So maybe they’ve wanted to lose weight for 20 years, they’ve tried all kinds of things, and they haven’t worked. But they keep wanting it. And they keep having this wanting this wanting becomes the familiar thing for them, the wanting of the thing, the wanting of the goal becomes their comfort zone, they’re just comfortable wanting this thing, you know, you may want to quit drinking, and you want to quit drinking. And that’s just where you’ve been for a long time.

Or maybe you want to get in shape, and you’ve been wanting to get in shape for many years. You’ve wanted it for so long. It’s now it’s just a comfortable and familiar thing this wanting. But then you get the thing, you get in shape, you do quit drinking, you lose the weight. And now you start to you have to make this shift from the wanting to the having that feels really uncomfortable for people.

Okay, because you’re just so used to wanting something you’re so used to wanting, you know, to reach this goal, that having it feels weird and feels uncomfortable and feels unfamiliar and feels unsafe. I, you know, you you may have experienced this, if you’ve ever set a big goal for yourself, like running a marathon, you know, and you cross the finish line of that marathon and it feels so amazing.

But then all of a sudden, you feel sort of let down and you feel uncomfortable, and you feel weird and, and you’re like I need another goal, I need to put something else on the calendar, I need a bigger goal. This was my experience for sure. I ran my first real big race I ever ran was a 10k. And I remember thinking, oh my god, I just I’ve been training for this for so long. And now I’m out of the habit and it’s done. Now I feel uncomfortable having this thing like I have to want something else.

So then I was like I’m gonna train for a marathon. And then I needed something else. And I started, you know, training for ultra marathons. And then I was like, I want something else. And I started training for triathlons and Ironman and I want to run 50 Miles 100 Miles and in the wanting can go on and on and on. And it feels uncomfortable when we get the thing because now we’re not, we’re not in that wanting place anymore. Okay?

You’ve gotten so good at wanting that having it just seems too big or too scary or just weird or uncomfortable for us, okay. And when we get close to reaching a goal, sometimes we will self sabotage will pull ourselves back from achieving the goal so that we don’t get it so that we don’t have it so that we don’t have to make that switch from the wanting to have.

So you might be close to losing weight. And you might think to yourself, like you know, you don’t really deserve this, like who do you think you are? What are people gonna think of me? Or are I’m really not good enough, I’m not going to be able to sustain this. This is really not for me, this might be for other people, but this is not who I am.

All of these thoughts are going to come up and all of these things are going to come up and they’re going to make you want to go running back to safety, running back to what feels safe and comfortable and familiar for you, which is the wanting.

And so you’re just going to continue with the wanting and you’ll just go go through that your whole life. I work with people every day who are like I want this so bad, Patrick. All right, cool. And we start to make some progress and they find themselves month after month, week after week, whatever it is just self sabotaging.

They don’t understand why this is a big part of it. Because having the thing just feels too uncomfortable for them. Well, now that I’ve lost the weight, how am I going to make it work? How am I going to sustain it? And a lot of times it’s just just keep doing what you’re doing.

If you desire you lost the weight and this is how you’re going to keep it off right it’s not a big mystery there. But we get so used to the wanting that the having just seems too too uncomfortable to deal with for us. And I think part of it is like we have this idea that once we get somewhere once we have the thing that we can just coast we can just like cruise, put it in a cruise control and we don’t have to work anymore at it.

So the discomfort you feel around having something I think that’s increased by this false belief that when you get the thing that you know you’ve been chasing for so long that you can just coast like when you reach your goal weight then you can go back to eating whatever you want. When you hit your marathon PR then running is you can just coast like running. It would just be so much easier, and you can just, you know, he pretty much no effort anymore, right?

Or let’s say you quit drinking for 30 days, and you hit 30 days, and then all of a sudden, something’s gonna happen where you just no longer gonna crave alcohol anymore. And you know, I have to do any work around this again. And the truth is, none of this is true, like the work is ongoing, right, you don’t get to some destination, and you have your thing, you have your goal, you’ve reached your, your goal, and then your work is done. And you, you know, can just rest and just chill and cruise control, right?

It doesn’t really work that way. Sorry. It’s just not right. This is, you know, the, the work is ongoing. You know, it’s how you live your life from here on out. Like, if you change your diet, so that you’re, you’re losing weight, and you’re feeling good, and you’re fueling your runs properly, and you’re becoming the healthiest version of you. That’s not something you stopped doing. It’s just not like there’s no, there’s no destination, there’s no finish line that you’re crossing, and then you can go back to doing what you were doing before.

There’s no “there”, that’s better than here. Okay, there’s only here. And that’s okay, and what you’re doing right now, if you’re on this, on this journey of self discovery, if you’re on this journey of personal growth, if you’re on this journey of becoming the healthiest, most badass version of you, then that is your journey from here on out. And that’s cool. That’s okay, that’s good.

We want to be on this journey, we’ll want to keep learning and growing and exploring becoming more always. So when, when it comes down to it, self sabotage is really a product of a lack of self awareness, you just don’t understand what’s happening, you just don’t understand the way your brain is working. Right.

And when you don’t understand what’s going on in your brain, it just can seem like everything is happening to you. Like, you know, everything’s happening to you. You know, when you have the self awareness, when you understand how your thoughts create your feelings, and your feelings, drive your actions. This is when you can start taking back control. This is when you understand that you have the power to change whatever you want in your life.

And psychologists call this type of self awareness, they call it emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, interpret, and respond to your thoughts and feelings in an enlightened and in an in a healthy way. And so the root of self sabotage is really is a lack of emotional intelligence, the root of self sabotage is a lack of self awareness. But when you have self awareness and emotional intelligence, it kind of looks like that.

So emotional intelligence is like you have a feeling, you have this feeling inside you that maybe you have a feeling like anger, like you understand what the feeling is, you can name it, I have, I’m angry, I have an urge to drink something or to eat something, I’m having a craving, these are all feelings, I’m stressed. This is a feeling I’m bored.

And then you understand that you have a thought that caused that feeling, you know, you maybe you’re thinking you know, a drink sure would take the edge off right now or eating this cookie will probably make me feel better. Or my husband should show more support. For me, these are thoughts that cause feelings, my husband should show more support for me might cause you to feel anger.

And so you have a feeling you understand what it is you can name it, you know the thought that’s causing the feeling. And then you allow that feeling to just be there without having to do anything to change it or to make it go away. This is what emotional intelligence looks like. You can have a feeling you understand what it is where it’s coming from, that you’re having these thoughts that are causing the feeling. And then you don’t have to do anything about it.

You can just have a feeling of wanting to drink or not drink, you can have the feeling of you know, wanting to eat the cookie, but don’t eat the cookie. You could have the feeling of anger at your husband and you don’t yell at him. Even though you’re angry with him. You can just be angry. And that’s cool. This is what emotional intelligence looks like.

And honestly, it’s just one of those things that you have to practice because it feels kind of terrible at first, until you get better at it. Because it’s so uncomfortable. It’s so unfamiliar and you’re in this place and you’re outside your comfort zone because all of a sudden things are coming up and you just got to deal with it. You just got to let it be there. Just allow it to be there. Allow that anger to be there without doing anything about it without acting on it.

But you practice it and you get better at it. And then you practice it some more and you get, it gets easier for you. And it becomes just a part of who you are. Emotional Intelligence is something you can learn, and practice and get good at. And listen, you’re already doing this in other areas of your life, like, you know, your co worker sends you a nasty email and you just want to punch them in the face, but you don’t, you don’t punch them in the face, even though you feel like it, you got angry, you’re feeling the anger, you understand, it’s just a feeling and that you don’t have to act on it. Right?

Because you know, there’s like negative consequences that go along with this, you probably get fired, or, you know, get go to jail or something. And the same goes for sticking with your eating plan or not taking a drink, you can still feel like you want to drink, you can still feel a craving for a cookie and not eat the cookie. You can just be there with that urge to drink and not do anything about it. Just be there. It will feel uncomfortable. It will. It’s cool. Just feel uncomfortable. No biggie.

I was just talking to someone last night who was telling me she was really proud of herself because she was sitting at dinner with friends and she’s trying not to do sugar and flour right now. And there was a you know, basket of bread, they just kept putting these baskets of bread in front of her at this restaurant.

And she just looked at the bread and was like, nope, not doing it. And it felt uncomfortable. But she just just let it be there. Just let it let the discomfort be there. And just went on with you know, talking with their friends and eating dinner and all this other stuff with all this bread just staring at her in the face calling out her name, eat me. Just didn’t do anything about it. You know it wasn’t comfortable, but she got through it.

And the more you practice stuff like that, the better you get at it, the more the more you practice not drinking when you feel like taking a drink like you may be at a party and you don’t know anybody there and you feel super uncomfortable. You’re like I just know a drink would sure make make things easier here.

Don’t do it, just feel uncomfortable. Be the uncomfortable person at the party. You know what other people are probably uncomfortable to. But is that drink really going to help you in that situation? Probably not. Maybe you can just go talk to somebody, you know, just talk to one person, ask them, you know what they do ask them about their family, their kids, whatever. Just you don’t have to drink, you don’t have to make yourself feel comfortable all the time. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable.

So understanding this emotional intelligence piece is so key and understanding the that your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions. This is key to ending self sabotaging behavior. The key to changing anything in your life really, is to practice a different pattern, you got to practice a different thought feeling action pattern, you have to train yourself to prefer habits that are good for you.

Like you have to make the good habits familiar to you. And they won’t be easy until they become familiar won’t be comfortable until they become familiar to you. So you have to practice doing it. Like you know, not eating the bread. That’s a good habit. Right? If you don’t eat bread, and everybody else is eating bread, you got to practice not eating the bread. And then that’ll become easier for you. And it’ll become more familiar to you.

And when you do this and you practice it, you get good at it, you expand what’s comfortable for you, you your comfort zone gets larger, you expand your comfort zone. And listen, it’s not enough to know what you should be doing. You know, it’s not about good habits versus bad habits. It’s not about being a good person or a bad person. It’s never about a moral judgment. Never.

It’s just about changing what’s familiar to you. So don’t judge yourself. For you know, wanting to eat the bread, you’re not a bad person because you want to eat the bread. That’s just what’s comfortable to you. It’s just what you’ve done. It’s what’s familiar to you.

Change what’s familiar to you. And you can change anything you want in your life. And honestly, you’re right now where you are today, you’re already good at doing everything you’re doing today. Okay, here, like whatever you’re doing today. You’re good at already. This is comfortable for you. Okay, all the habits that you have right now all the thought patterns, all the things you do automatically or that seem automatic for you. This is all familiar, it’s comfortable and safe. This is your comfort zone.

So when you want to change something, it’s going to feel uncomfortable to you. Are you willing to go through that? Are you willing to feel uncomfortable to change? You have to be willing to feel uncomfortable? It’s the only way you can change anything in your life. Are you willing to do the work to feel terrible for a little while until things start to feel more familiar, more habitual, more comfortable for you?

And you’re probably saying yes, Patrick, I am. And people tell me yes all the time. In advance, they tell me yes, before they feel uncomfortable. They’re like, of course, I’m willing to feel uncomfortable. But then when they actually do start to feel the discomfort, and they start to feel kind of terrible, then they’re like, Hell, no, I didn’t sign up for this. This is not what I thought you meant when you said I was going to be uncomfortable.

And I’m like, Yeah, that’s what it is. It doesn’t feel good. It feels terrible. And it’s okay. You can get through it. It’s temporary. It doesn’t last forever, you can get good, you just got to practice it. But it’s funny, because people are, are all in with the discomfort ahead of time. You know, they’re like, Yes, I’m willing to feel uncomfortable in a few weeks, no problem at all.

But then a few weeks go by, and they’re like, Oh, I really feel terrible. Get me off of this thing, you’re like, Nope, you got to just stay where you are. That’s the only way you got to get, you just got to get through it. So, but when you when you start to feel that discomfort, that’s when you start engaging in the self sabotaging behaviors, even though you don’t even know you’re doing it, you’re going to start to do things just to get back to the comfortable just to get back to the familiar. Even if it’s something that’s bad for you.

You know that, like let’s say you’re trying not to drink alcohol right now. And you know that, you know, drinking alcohol is bad for you, let’s say okay, and you just know that you want to take a break for those months, you know, and it’s gonna start to feel uncomfortable, and you’re gonna find yourself wanting to drink or maybe you find yourself drinking, even though you don’t want to do that.

Consciously you’re like, I don’t even want this right now. Subconsciously, your primitive brain is like, you got to get something good, you got to get something to make you feel more comfortable here. Alcohol is what we usually do. So let’s go back to doing that. Alright. Even though you know, it’s like, it’s not good for you. It’s not healthy. It’s not what you want for yourself in this moment, you’re going to do it anyway.

Listen, if you find yourself stuck, or find yourself not making progress toward a goal, you need to hear this, you’re not stuck because you’re incapable of change, you’re stuck because you don’t feel like doing what it takes to change. I’m going to say this again. Because I think this is really important.

You’re not stuck because you’re incapable of change. You’re stuck because you don’t feel like doing what it takes to change. You don’t feel like doing what it takes to change because what it takes to change is getting uncomfortable is seeking out the unfamiliar, seeking out the uncomfortable. And we get hung up on labels sometimes like we use these labels of like we have good feelings which equal comfort and safety and familiar familiarity and we have bad feelings like discomfort, danger unfamiliar. And I just want to say right now that I don’t think these are accurate labels, I don’t think any feeling is good or bad.

Being a human being means we get to experience all of our emotions, the quote unquote positive emotions, the quote unquote, negative emotions, we experience joy and sadness, happiness, and sorrow, peace and confusion, you know, anger and contentment, we get to experience all these things. And it’s cool, it’s cool, we can experience all these emotions, we’re not going to die from feeling our feelings, right.

But when you live your life from a place of always trying to avoid any of these negative feelings, you’re going to find yourself stuck in a loop of always trying to avoid feeling stuff, you’re going to always be seeking pleasure. You’re always going to be avoiding discomfort, avoiding anything unfamiliar. And you’re gonna find yourself stuck and frustrated, and never becoming more never changing anything.

Because you’re always trying to avoid feeling half your feelings, basically. All right. The way you stop the self sabotage is to get really good at feeling uncomfortable about embracing the discomfort. Get out into the unfamiliar territory, on purpose, do it on purpose. Do things that are hard, do things that don’t feel good, but that will move you in the direction of your goals and dreams. Do the hard stuff even though you don’t feel like it?

This is like the key to accomplishing anything is you make a plan and then you stick to the plan even when you don’t feel like it. Even if it feels you know unfamiliar even if it feels scary. Even if you don’t understand how it’s all going to work even though it feels uncomfortable. I’m doing this right now for myself.

I started, I found myself getting to this place where I kept hitting snooze in the morning a bunch of times, like I set my alarm for six o’clock, and I would hit snooze a bunch of times, right? And listen, as an entrepreneur, I get to make my own hours. Okay, so I’m like, Yeah, I make my own hours, I can get up whenever I want to, you know, and I just found myself wasting time.

So hitting snooze, you know. And I decided in pretty recently, a few weeks ago, that I was going to be the kind of person who got up at 5:30. And started working and just got to work right away. And so I’ve been doing that I’ve set my alarm for 5:30. I don’t hit snooze, I use my, you know, phone as like an alarm. And so I hit stop. And then the feet are on the ground. Every morning, 5:30, stop, feet hit the floor.

And this, I got to tell you guys, this feels terrible. It’s really hard. It’s very unfamiliar for me, for me, because I’ve been doing this snooze thing for like, a long time, you know. And it’s uncomfortable, it’s unfamiliar, I don’t like it, it feels terrible, I’m tired, I want to sleep more. I feel like I need more sleep, you know, when I wake up in the morning.

But I gotta tell you, every day that I do this, I feel better about myself, I’m building confidence in myself, because that hitting snooze over and over again was like a form of me self sabotage and wanting to stay in the familiar. And so I’m forcing myself to break that habit. And this is how you do it.

You just got to get out into the unfamiliar, decide what it is you want for yourself and do that thing, even though you don’t feel like it. When my alarm went off this morning at 5:30. I was deep in sleep, I was in the middle of some dream. And I was just like, so deeply asleep. And I open my eyes. And I hit stop and the feet are on the ground. And I got up. And literally within like two minutes, I’m wide awake, and it’s fine.

But it’s like, you just got to do the hard thing she got to do what, what you need to do, even though you don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like getting up at 5:30. But I’m doing it. I’m getting a lot done. And I feel so much better about myself and the self sabotage has stopped.

So here’s your homework for this week. I got a homework assignment for you. I want you to decide what it is you want for yourself. And then I want you to see what you are doing or not doing. Because you just want to stay with the familiar and the comfortable.

So what do you want to be doing? Or what do you want to stop doing? Because it’s too hard or unfamiliar or uncomfortable. So this could be you know, not drinking or sticking to your food plan or sticking to a running schedule? Or running faster or doing weight training, or doing speed work or whatever it is for you. What is it that you want to be doing? Or what do you want to stop doing? But you’re not because it’s unfamiliar, because it’s uncomfortable, because it’s hard because you don’t feel like it.

I want you to do that thing this week. Do it even though you don’t feel like it. So if you tell yourself, I don’t want to be eating sugar this week, then don’t eat the sugar this week. And there’s going to be times when you are going to feel like eating the sugar. Don’t do it.

Or you’re going to say you know, hey, I want to, you know, do speed work two times this week, and then you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna put your running shoes on, you’re gonna be like, I really don’t feel like doing this right now. This I hate speed work. It’s so hard. I’m gonna feel terrible. Do it anyway, even though you don’t feel like it. This is how you stop the self sabotage. This is how you change anything that you want for yourself.

Okay, so that’s your work for this week. Cool. Let me know how that goes for you. I want to hear about it. You can post your homework assignment, you can post your results in our Facebook group. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you guys. I hope you got something out of this episode today. And if you did, I would love it if you would share this with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

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