Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
The only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, how they feel, or what they …
Continue Reading about 48. Think, Feel, and Act With Purpose →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 48 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. How are you doing today? I am doing fantastic. Today I want to talk about how to think, feel and act with purpose. So we’re still talking about our Running Lean manifesto, the principles that we choose to live our life by here in the Running Lean community.
And here’s something interesting, the only things you have control over in this world are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. No matter how hard you try, you cannot control what other people think, you cannot control how they feel, and you cannot control what they do. No matter how hard you try.
The problem is that most people don’t understand how all this works. Most people just feel terrible all the time. And they blame it on other people. They blame it on the outside circumstances, they blame it on everything and everyone except for it themselves.
But here’s the thing, if you want anything different in your life, anything different than what you already have, you have to look at what is actually creating those results in your life. If you’re getting good results or bad results in your life, whatever it is you’re getting, it’s always been created by your own thoughts, feelings and actions.
For example, losing weight and keeping it off. It requires that you learn how to think, feel, and act with purpose. So don’t worry, I’m gonna explain how all of this works today here on the podcast, so that you can start applying this to your own life so you can start getting the results that you really want.
But first, come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing community of runners called the Running Lean community. It is a supportive group, energetic group and encouraging group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast, we got this big challenge that we just started on Thanksgiving Day.
And it’s called running through the holidays, it’s not too late for you to get in on the action. Just come and join us. What we’re doing is we’re running at least a mile a day, every day from Thanksgiving Day, through New Year’s Day. Running is an amazing stress reliever. And who doesn’t want a stress reliever this time of the year? We could all use a little reduction in stress.
So come check us out the Running Lean community on Facebook, join us for the running through the holidays challenge is going to be fun, we are all doing it together. We’re challenging ourselves to show up every day and run at least a mile from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. It’ll be fun, come check it out.
Okay, like I said, we are working our way through the Running Lean manifesto. And today I want to talk about, think, feel and act with purpose. So remember the Running Lean manifesto, this is a set of guiding principles that we can live our life by. And if you adopt these principles into your life, if you use these principles as your north star, then you can have an amazing life.
That’s it. It’s that simple. Just do what I say. You can have an amazing life. It really is that simple. It’s not easy. It’s simple. But so today we’re talking about how to think, feel and act with purpose because most of us don’t understand that we can do this and that this is an option for us.
I think this is absolutely life changing. This one principle alone has changed my life more than anything else I have done in my life like this has changed so much for me. And I’m gonna get into why and how this works and everything in just a minute.
But I just want you to know that of all the principles I’ve been talking about here. If you just adopt this one principle, I guarantee you that you will start getting different, more positive results in your life, like your life will continue to get infinitely better if you adopt this one principle and if you practice it and if you get good at it, okay. And the principle is to think, feel and act with purpose. If you get good at doing that, you’re unstoppable, you become super powerful.
So here’s how this works. Here, I’m gonna break this down a little bit for you here. Most people live their life, as if life is just happening to them. Like they have no control, like they are living at the effect of other people and other circumstances. They have no control over their thoughts. It feels their thoughts feel automatic, they have no control over their emotions, their feelings feel automatic.
And a lot of times they feel like they don’t even have control over what they do. So a lot of people will say, I don’t even know I just started eating all the Oreos, it’s like, no, you know, you chose to do that, like you actually have control over that. But they feel like they have no self control.
So for most people, their thoughts, feelings and actions feel out of control, like they are not in control of those things. Most people feel like they can’t get what they want. And so they blame everything but themselves. They blame other people, or circumstances, they have reasons, they have stories, they have excuses for why things just don’t go their way, or why they can’t stick to their diet plan or why they can’t stick to their running schedule.
Most people just think if they could control all these things outside of themselves, if people would just do what I think they should do, if work wasn’t so stressful all the time. You know, if everything around me would just like fall into place, then I could feel good about myself, then I could get the results that I want.
And most people live their whole lives this way, trying to manipulate control, change everything but themselves. And it’s frustrating, because it doesn’t work. The only thing this does is it causes you to feel terrible, all the time. If you try to spend your whole life trying to controlling the uncontrollable, the things that you absolutely cannot control.
If you spend your whole life trying to manipulate and control those things, you are just going to spend your whole life feeling miserable. Right, the only things you can control are your own thoughts, feelings and actions. That’s it, you cannot control anything else, period. End of story.
When you accept this, when you accept this universal truth it is incredibly freeing because it changes everything. It changes how you see things, it changes how you think about things, it changes how you feel about things, changes what you do, and it absolutely will change the results that you get in your life.
It changes how you experience other people, and how you experience everything that happens in the world around you. When you learn how to take control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions, anything becomes possible for you, there’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing that you aren’t willing to experience.
So I’ve talked about this before, but I want to break this down a little bit for you. So that we have a good understanding of the foundation of how this all works. So we have these things that happen in our life. We call these things circumstances, circumstances, things that happen in our life are always, always neutral.
Nothing can happen in your life, and have any kind of meaning to you until you assign meaning to it. Nothing happens in the world that affects you unless you first have a thought about it. Circumstances: the things that are happening outside of you, you know, stuff your boss says at work, stuff your spouse says to you, what the kids are doing.
None of that stuff means anything until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. Your circumstances are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until you tell yourself a story about what this thing that’s happening, what that means to you, okay? This is very important to understand.
Your circumstances are always 100% of the time neutral until you have a thought about it. Okay, now, once you have a thought about something, then that thing has meaning for you. You know, if your spouse speaks to you, and says some words to you that cause you to feel, you know, upset or whatever. And then you’re assigning meaning to what those words mean to you, okay?
But you know, the circumstances that this person is just saying words, okay? But once you have a thought, then this thing has meaning to you. Your thoughts are just sentences that you’re saying in your mind about something.
That’s it, we have like 60,000 thoughts a day. So basically, you’re saying like 60,000 sentences to yourself, in your mind over and over again. So your thoughts about your circumstances, you’re gonna have all kinds of thoughts about what’s going on in your life. We do we think about the past, we think about the future, we think about what’s happening right now.
We are cars, our minds are constantly racing, we constantly have all these thoughts. And they are always your thoughts. Your thoughts are based on your own experiences, your own beliefs, your past experiences, your values, your model of the world, we all see the world differently based on our beliefs, past experiences, our own values, all that stuff.
We all create our own version of reality, if you will. So your thoughts about a circumstance might be different than somebody else’s. Which is the truth? Is it yours or theirs? I love this example of two people standing at the ocean, you know, the waves are crashing, and they’re both standing on the beach, and they’re looking over the ocean.
And one person looks at the ocean, and it fills them with fear. Because this person had a near drowning accident, when they were a child, they almost drowned in the ocean. And so the ocean is a dangerous place to them, the ocean brings a feeling of dread and fear.
The person standing next to this person surfs every day and loves the ocean, it’s there. It’s the most magical place for them, it’s where they feel the most alive. So there’s these two examples of two different people experiencing the exact same thing: the ocean is neutral.
But for one, it has a completely different meaning. The ocean is a dangerous, terrible place and should be avoided at all costs. And for the other person experiencing the exact same ocean. It is beautiful, magical, and fills them with delight, and should be utilized every single day and shouldn’t be experienced every single day.
So this is how we each have our own model of the world, we each have our own version of reality. So your thoughts about a circumstance will be different than others. So which is true, yours or theirs? Well, both, both are true for them. And neither one is true. There isn’t one universal truth.
So if you believe it, then it’s true for you. So if you really believe something, if you really believe the ocean is dangerous, then that is going to be your truth. That is what’s true for you. If this other person believes with their whole heart that the ocean is amazing and enjoys it, then that’s what they’re going to believe. And that’s what’s true for them. Okay.
So this is just our thoughts. We have circumstances that happen in our life, and they don’t mean anything really until we assign meaning to them. Okay? Now, once we have thoughts about our circumstances, we will typically get an emotion based on those thoughts.
So your thoughts cause your feelings, your thoughts cause you to experience an emotion, always, you cannot experience an emotion without a thought first, every emotion you feel is first created by a thought in your mind. So you think a thought and then you feel something, you think a thought in your mind, and then you feel it in your body.
That’s where we experience our emotions, we feel them in our body. So you don’t feel something without a thought about it. You might experience something you have a quick thought about and then you have this emotion, it happens very quickly. You think it’s like automatic, you think it’s the circumstance outside of you that’s causing this emotional response. But it’s really a thought in your head.
It’s always a thought in your head that’s causing your emotional response. It’s never what that person is saying or doing or anything else like that. It’s always a thought about it. This is really critical to understand because you want to catch yourself when you have an emotion.
When you start to feel like a negative emotion. Like let’s say you’re feeling stress. quickly ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What is the thought that I’m having that’s causing me to feel this way? And just start to create some awareness around that. I’ll talk more about that in just a minute about what we can do to start to change some of these thoughts and feelings that we have, okay?
So circumstances in our life are always neutral. They don’t mean anything until we assign meaning to them. And we do that by a thought we have a thought about something. And those thoughts cause us to feel an emotion. Now our feelings, our emotions drive our actions, we always take actions based on our emotional state.
You know, if we feel motivated, we’ll probably do this thing. If we feel frustrated, we’re probably gonna do something different. We’re gonna do this thing over here. You know, if you find yourself staying in the kitchen, binge eating Oreos, and you can’t figure out how it happened.
Know that it’s because you had some thoughts and feelings. And those thoughts and feelings are causing you to take the action of binging on Oreos, okay? It wasn’t what happened at work. It wasn’t what your spouse said to you that caused you to eat Oreos, it’s because you had thoughts and feelings about what your spouse said, or you had thoughts and things about what happened at work.
Okay, the action that you take standing there eating Oreos, might feel totally out of your control. Like it’s just happening, unconsciously. But the truth is, it’s always under your control, you just haven’t learned how to take back the control, you just haven’t learned to recognize what’s actually happening.
And this is so crucial to all this thought work is to have awareness of what’s happening, okay? Because it’s not your circumstances causing you to feel this way. It’s not, it’s not the stress at work. It’s not what’s happening at work that’s causing you to binge eat. It’s your thoughts and feelings about work.
So when you take action, you get results, every time you get some kind of result in your life, it’s because of some actions that you’re taking, okay. And if you’re taking actions based on positive emotions, you know, you’re taking actions that are probably in alignment with your goals, like sticking to your food plan, you’re sticking to your running schedule. So no matter what happens, like you’re probably going to crush those goals, because you’re, you’re sticking to those things no matter what.
But if you constantly take action from a place of negative emotion, you know, if you’re always feeling frustrated and stressed out, you’re probably going to take different actions or no action, you know, you might just go sit on the couch watching Netflix instead of run, you might just say screw it and eat all the Oreos, instead of sticking to your food plan.
Those actions you’re taking, the things you’re doing, the behaviors you’re engaging in, you’re doing because of how you feel you’re doing it based on your emotional state, which is caused by your thoughts, right?
So a lot of times, we blame our results on our circumstances. I can’t lose weight, because I have this stressful job. You know, I can’t stick to my plan, because my spouse doesn’t support me. Those things are not true. You know, your spouse might say some things or do some things, but you have control over your thoughts about those things you have control over how you feel about those things.
And then what you do, the actions that you take or don’t take, okay? Circumstances are always neutral. Until we have a thought about it, our thoughts cause our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions. And it’s from taking actions that we get results or don’t get results. Okay, so that’s how this all works.
So any kind of result that you want in your life is basically created with a thought first, you have to have a thought about it. First, whether it’s a positive result or a negative result, it’s coming from your thoughts. So here’s an example of how this all works.
I want to I know, I’m kind of like talking about these concepts. And this may be foreign to you, you may have never heard of any of this stuff before. And I want to give you an example of what this looks like. So here’s a statement that I hear all the time, like literally every day I hear this from someone.
Work is stressful. And so I can’t stick to my food plan. Work is stressful. Well, in reality work does not cause you to feel stress. Okay, it’s your thoughts about work to cause you to feel stress. Stress is an emotion, right? That’s a feeling. It’s always caused by a thought.
So what is the circumstance? What happened at work, to cause you to feel stress or you know, to cause you to choose to feel stress? Oh, well, my boss only gave me two weeks to finish this big project. Okay, so that’s the circumstance, right? The boss gave me two weeks to finish a big project.
And, okay, well, what are your thoughts about that? Well, my thoughts are that she doesn’t support me, she doesn’t care about me, she should do things differently. These are all just thoughts. Right? About the circumstance “project is due in two weeks”.
We can all agree that that is true, but doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just those thoughts that cause you to feel stress, she doesn’t care about me, she doesn’t support me, she should do things differently. Right? That’s what’s causing you to feel stressed because you have thoughts about it.
And so what do you do when you feel stressed? You get home, and you eat a bunch of Oreos, because you just don’t feel like doing this work. Because you’re all stressed out, right? Now, here’s another way of looking at this, you might have somebody else on your team that says, oh, we only have to work two weeks to get this work done. Great. I work best on a short timeline, let’s do this.
So they might feel excited. Those thoughts like “I work best on a short timeline”, that would make them feel excited and motivated, to get the work to get cracking on this project. So that would fire them up, they would start taking action right away, they start checking off things off their task list, you know, they get motivated, and they just jump right in and start doing these things.
Same exact circumstance, you have two weeks to get this project done. Two different people with different thoughts, different feelings, different actions, different results. Okay. And I hear this so, so often, you know, work is really stressful. So I can’t stick to my food plan, you know, I have all this stress at work.
So when I get home, I just don’t feel like eating anything healthy. So instead, I just open up the pantry and start eating all the Oreos. So in your mind, stress at work is causing this thing you’re eating Oreos, like that’s what’s causing it. But in reality, you are causing the stress you’re feeling based on your own thoughts about work.
And because you’re feeling stressed out, you’re choosing an action, not in alignment with your goals, you’re choosing this action of binge eating Oreos. Based on that negative emotion, that negative emotion that you created with your thoughts.
You always take action based on how you feel. And if you always feel stressed out, you’re probably gonna do a lot of binge eating, you probably never lose weight. Those are the results you’re gonna get. If you’re always stressed out, it’s probably going to be very hard for you to lose weight, right, because you can be doing a lot of emotional eating.
But when you learn to take control of your thoughts and feelings and actions, when you can feel excited, and you can feel motivated, you’ll start to do things differently. You’ll want to stick to your plan, you’ll come home and eat a salad and a piece of salmon instead of the Oreos. And you’ll start to get the results that you want.
You know, you’ll keep losing weight. This whole concept, though, of thinking, feeling and acting with purpose, it’s not the norm. I get it like this is not something we’re taught. Can you imagine, though, if we taught this to our children, like how amazing would that be?
If I had learned this, I only learned this in the last couple of years. But if I had learned this 20, 30, 40 years ago, how much different my life would be. Because since I’ve learned this, my life has changed dramatically for the better.
But we go through our whole lives thinking that we can’t control our thoughts and feelings like all this stuff is just happening to us, right? You blame the results that you get on your external circumstances, whatever good results, bad results.
And we’re always living at the effect of our surroundings. We blame others, we have all kinds of excuses why things don’t work for us. We have these stories. And when you do this, you’re just giving away all your power. You become powerless. I want you to take back your power.
And you do this by taking control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions. Stop trying to manipulate and control other people and circumstances outside of your control. That does not work. I have tried this. Believe me it does not work.
I was always blaming other people for how I felt. I was always trying to control what other people were doing or saying or thinking so that like I could feel better about myself. You know, if my wife would say, if my wife would only say these things in this way, then I’d feel better. I’d like her more, I’d feel more confident or more secure in this relationship, you know, she’d only do things this way, then I’d feel more loving to her.
But since she’s not, then you know, I’m gonna hold back, my love. I was always trying to control her, manipulate her and change what she was doing. And you know what that got me? I felt miserable all the time, didn’t change, and she never changed, she’s not going to change, you can’t change other people.
I wish we could, that would be amazing, but we can’t. But when I finally accepted this, this universal truth, that I could not change anything else, that I could control my own thoughts, feelings and action, though, when I accepted this, I was free, I started to see everything in my life differently.
It was like seeing the matrix. Like for the first time in my life, I could, I could think, thoughts that would cause me to feel positive emotions. And I would take these positive actions based on that, and I would start getting these positive results, it was crazy.
You know, like, sticking to my eating plan got way easier. You know, I couldn’t lose weight. Until I got the mindset piece right. I finally started to lose weight when I understood that my emotional eating wasn’t caused by what other people were doing. Or my stress outside of me, that I was creating all of this with my own thoughts and feelings.
But I’ve started to feel more at peace, I still do, I still feel so much more at peace now, because I understand what’s happening in my mind. And I practice this every day, I’m not perfect at it. It’s a daily practice, I’m always aware that my thoughts create my feelings. And my feelings drive my actions.
I’m always, always always aware of that. Because here’s the thing, your thoughts create the reality that you’re living in everything that you have right now in your life, or everything that you don’t have, as a result of a thought it was first a thought, like, if you think I want to run a marathon, yeah, I can do that.
I want to do that. I’m going to run a marathon, that’s going to make you feel motivated, you’re going to train consistently, and then like, bam, you’re gonna cross the finish line. Result achieved, and you did it because you kept thinking, I can do it, I want to do that. I’m going to do that.
You know, your current weight. Whatever you weigh right now, is the direct result of your thinking. Well, if you keep thinking thoughts, like ‘I can’t lose weight, it never works for me, I’m always going to be this weight, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. It’s easier for other people, I always gain the weight back.’
If you keep thinking these thoughts over and over and over again, this is going to cause you to create an emotional state for yourself. You’re just going to feel terrible, frustrated, sad, dejected, you’re going to feel like a failure. You’re going to feel like you’re not good enough. And when you feel that way, what do you do?
You got it, you come home, and you eat a whole bag of Oreos, because that’s what feels good. And that’s, you know, why bother? And then when you do that, when you eat the Oreos, instead of eating what you know you should be eating, What results do you get, you get the exact results, you kept focusing on those thoughts.
You kept thinking over and over again, that’s what you get, it is hard. It doesn’t work for you. You can’t lose the weight, you always gain the weight back. You can’t do it, it doesn’t work. So what I want you to do, is I want you to just start being aware of your thoughts.
Anytime you experience an emotion anytime you experience a negative emotion, so you start to feel stressed out or bored or frustrated, lonely, sad, ashamed, you know, angry. Whatever emotion you’re experiencing, that should be an alarm that goes off and and you want to look at your thoughts.
What is the thought that’s causing me to feel this emotion? Okay, that’s step one. Be aware of your thoughts, what thoughts are you habitually thinking? And then notice that those thoughts are causing these emotions in you, okay? When you feel that way, when you feel that emotion, what do you want to do? What do you do or what do you not do? What actions are you taking or not taking?
Because instead of reacting to the world around you, I want you to respond thoughtfully with intention with purpose. Awareness is the key though. You have to begin to think, with purpose, with intention that will help you to feel with purpose and intention. And then you will act with purpose and intention.
And when you’re acting with purpose and intention, that’s when you start to get the results that you want in your life, you can become super powerful. You can get anything you want, honestly. So whether you know it or not, you are always creating the results that you’re getting in your life. Right now.
You’re always creating results with your thoughts, feelings and actions. They may not be the results that you want, but you’re creating them. Negative thoughts, feelings and actions will produce negative results. Positive thoughts, feelings and actions will produce positive results.
So decide what you want. And then create it on purpose. Begin to choose your thoughts with intention, begin to create your feelings, and begin to take action with purpose, think, feel and act with purpose. It’s a daily practice, but you can do it.
You got this, my friends. All right, join us in the Facebook group for the running through the holidays challenge we’re going to be running every single day, at least a mile. From Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. We’re gonna run our way through the holidays and we’re going to feel good, we’re going to slide into 2021 Feeling damn good about ourselves. As always, lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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Next week is Thanksgiving and that marks the beginning of the holiday season here in the U.S. The holidays are a time to gather with loved ones, give thanks for all that we have, and of course, eat …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 47 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I want to talk about how to handle the holidays. Next week is Thanksgiving. And that marks the beginning of the official holiday season here in the US.
And the holidays are a time to gather with loved ones and give thanks for all that we have. And of course eat and drink ourselves into oblivion. Right? Okay, maybe that’s just me. So today, I want to offer some practical tips to help you handle the holidays. So you don’t roll into 2021 hating yourself and looking like Frosty the Snowman.
But first, if you are enjoying this podcast, please come check out our Facebook community. The Running Lean community on Facebook is a positive energetic, fun group of like minded runners who share goals and get through challenges together. I’ve got a big challenge that starts on Thanksgiving Day.
It’s called running through the holidays, we’re going to be running our way from Thanksgiving Day all the way through New Year’s Day, there’s going to be a lot of encouragement, a lot of support for each other. Listen, this can be a very stressful time of the year for a lot of people. And running is an amazing way to help relieve stress.
So we want to run our way through the holidays. So we can roll into 2021 Like a boss. Okay. So come check out the Facebook group, join us for the running through the holidays challenge, I’m going to be talking all about it, explaining how it works, what the quote unquote rules are, and all that stuff on Sunday. So come check us out love to have you in the group.
Okay, let’s talk about how we are going to handle the holidays. So most people, this is what happens when most people get to this time of the year. And they just don’t have any kind of plan for getting through the holidays in one piece, so to speak, okay. So this was always me, I would always roll into this time of the year and be like, it was kind of the off season.
So I might do a fall marathon. And so that would be like late October, early November, something like that. And then unrolling into this time of the year wouldn’t be running as much. And you think about how much time there is between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. It’s like 37 days. And those 37 days, it’s like hey, I’m going to go ahead and just do whatever the heck I feel like.
I’m going to eat whatever I want, drink whatever I want, whatever. And just party my face off and eat my face off for 37 straight days. So, you know there’d be holiday gatherings, a holiday family time, you know, shopping gift buying all this stuff, right? And I would just tell myself, hey, this is just, it’s the holidays. So I’m just gonna eat whatever I want. I deserve all this, I earned it. I’ve worked hard to share you know doing all this running. It’s the offseason, I’m just gonna let my hair down so to speak, and just eat whatever I feel like and we all do this.
Okay, this is a very common thing. A lot of people do this. No plan. Just feel like they can just do whatever they want. And then they roll into the new year and can’t understand why they gained five or 10 pounds.
And I did this like all the time and I couldn’t figure out why I keep doing this? Why do I always gateway this time of the year? And I just used this excuse. I used the holidays as an excuse to just stuff myself like a Thanksgiving turkey. You know, I got into this kind of mode, this end of the year where I was just like f it, I got into f it mode, okay?
It’s the holidays f it, it’s Thanksgiving Day f it, it’s the day after Thanksgiving f it, I deserve all this, f it. It’s, you know, two weeks before Christmas, like, I just keep saying f it, I was in f it mode. And you know what that’s gonna get you, when you’re, when you’re in f it mode, constantly, your whole attitude just kind of sucks.
And you’re just going to go off the rails. You know, if you’re trying to stick to some kind of food plan, you’re trying not to blow up like a Thanksgiving turkey, during the holidays, and you’re in f it mode all the time. That is a terrible combination, you won’t stick to your plan.
So that was me, I would do this every year. And then come January would be like, okay, now I’m going to start getting serious about this. But then I’m like, starting from a negative, you know, I’m starting from this place of like, well, now I gotta, I gotta lose the 10 pounds I gained here in the last couple of months.
And I also, you know, you know, maybe another 20 pounds over as I’m up 30 pounds now. So it just sets you up for disaster, it sets you up for failure, you know. And I want to tell you something, this is all normal. And it’s just your brain doing what it does. This is your, it’s your thinking, it’s the way you’re thinking and the way you’re feeling.
And you can change all of it. I’m going to offer some tips for how to get through the holidays here. But I just want you to understand this is very, very important to understand that your brain is always trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And when we get to this time of the year, we get very stressed out. And we don’t want to feel stressed out.
So we want to avoid that that kind of pain that we’re experiencing the pain of stress, the pain of having to you know, having family over or going to someone’s house, you know, and visiting with family or preparing all these meals or buying all these gifts, or whatever we have to do is time of the year.
It can be very stressful and cause a lot of stress and anxiety. And that’s perceived pain. And we want to avoid pain. That’s our kind of default, we want to avoid pain. We want to seek pleasure. And we go to things like food to do that. Okay, so this is just normal. This is the way your brain is kind of wired, okay, but you don’t have to just operate in default mode, though.
You don’t have to just, you know, succumb to these desires to eat all the crap and overeat and just binge out on sugar for 37 straight days. You don’t have to do that. Okay? I know. But you’re saying well, but it’s the holidays. So can’t we just live a little? You can. You can, you get to decide what you want to do.
But don’t go into this expecting that you’re going to like maintain your weight or lose five pounds with that kind of an attitude. Because if your expectations are, oh, I want to lose five pounds between now and the end of the year. But you eat like a maniac for 37 straight days, that’s not going to work. That’s not reality.
Okay, so just understand that your brain is there trying to protect you. And it’s trying to say, hey, we want to avoid this pain when avoiding stress eating makes us feel better. So let’s just do that. Let’s just eat all the things and just feel good now. But I want to drop a little bit of truth on you here.
Because when we talk about the holidays, and we talk about you know, we use the holidays as an excuse to overeat and to over consume and to binge out over drink all these things. What we’re actually talking about, how many holidays are there? There’s like, three holidays, right? There’s Thanksgiving Day, there’s Christmas, and there’s New Year’s Day.
Now you could actually argue that Christmas Eve might be a holiday or New Year’s Eve or something like that. So maybe four. Okay, and there might be a couple of parties in there. So maybe five, maybe six, we’re talking like five or six days out of 37 days. But what we’re saying is it’s the holidays, so I’m just going to eat and drink my way into oblivion and what?
No, we’re just talking about a handful of days here actually, and a handful of days that you can manage if you get your mind right. Okay. Your brain is always looking for an excuse to get what it wants. Your brain is always looking for an excuse to eat the sugar until you just give in. You missed out on sugar.
Sugar is like so addictive, you know, and your brain is gonna go, you know what, it’s the holidays, eat all the sugar, you’re gonna feel so good look at that plate of cookies over there, just eat all of them, you know? Good, that’s gonna feel good.
So just notice your brain is doing this, okay? And here’s the thing, I guarantee you that your brain is not thinking about eating a bunch of turkey, or green beans, your brain doesn’t go to this place of craving, you know, normal food. What I say is like normal food, okay?
You get fixated on pie. You get fixated on cookies, on sweet potato pie, on mashed potatoes, all the carbs, all the the alcohol, the sweet stuff, the sugar, that is what you’re thinking about. And I guarantee that that’s the kind of stuff that you will binge out on. If you don’t understand what’s happening. All those foods are super delicious. Yes, but they also make us feel good.
They release these chemicals in our body that makes us feel good. The more concentrated the carbohydrate is, the more good it feels, you know, and we love this. Even thinking about a pile of Christmas cookies right now. Just think about that. Really imagine them, smell them. Imagine what it would taste like, I guarantee you right now, you’re starting to get fixated on these cookies and your mouth is starting to water and you’re starting to crave these cookies like you started once you start thinking about them. It’s like I’ve got to have cookies now. I guarantee you that you’re doing that and I have to apologize for doing this to you.
But this is what our brains do, we start thinking about how amazing this is going to taste. And for me, it’s always like pecan pie with whipped cream. Oh my god, I’m starting to like salivate just thinking about pecan pie. It’s like, so decadent and so rich.
And when that sugar hits you, because that is just like pure sugar, right? Oh my god, it feels so good. And then so that’s just thinking about it, and we start to like, have these crazy cravings for it. But once you actually start eating it, you cannot stop. And that’s the other part of it.
So there’s this like mental fixation, there’s mental craving that we get. And then there’s this physical craving that we get once we start eating it, we cannot stop, we will binge out on pie and cake and pecan pie and apple pie and all this stuff.
Whereas you won’t do the same thing with like turkey, right? You’re not gonna like I just can’t wait to binge out on, I’m gonna eat the whole turkey myself. No, man, you can’t do that. You just can’t do it. Your body has these natural whatever you call it, the sensors, like there’s these sensors in your body that say stop eating, you’re full.
We don’t have those same sensors for carbohydrates, though. So once we start eating them, we cannot stop, that feels so good. And we don’t have these things that are telling our brain to stop eating them. Okay, so just understand that this is all what your brain is telling you but it’s not necessarily the truth.
Your brain might be telling you, you have to eat a whole pecan pie yourself. But that’s really not the truth. You don’t have to do that. And like I was saying, like you probably don’t get fixated on just eating something like turkey and green beans. You just don’t do that. Right?
But you can eat a lot of food a lot of like non carb type food and get pretty full but then you’ll still eat tons of pie. But if I were to tell you like when you’re full hey, eat a bunch more turkey. You’d be like no way I can’t. There’s no possible way I could eat any more turkey but I guarantee you, you can eat half a pie. At least I can.
I’m hoping you can relate to some of this because if this is just me, then I’m in trouble. No, I know we can all relate to this stuff. Here’s the other thing I have to make sure you understand and that I want to make sure I’m communicating this well. I am not saying you cannot enjoy Thanksgiving dinner. I am not saying you should not eat the pie. Like my friend Katie says, she says, eat the damn pie. And I love that. Because if that’s what you want to do, then you should do that.
If you’re eating your grandma’s famous pumpkin pie with whipped cream on it is going to bring you joy, and you want that to be a part of your Thanksgiving, then absolutely do that. But I just want you to do it in a way that’s intentional, I want you to do it in a way that you’ve, you’ve planned it, and that you feel good about your decision for eating that. And that you have your own back.
I don’t want you to say, you know what, I’m not eating any dessert, I’m not going to do it, I’m just, I’m off of sugar, I don’t want to do it, it’s gonna like really ruin everything for me, and then do it. And then just give in in the moment and do it because then you’re just going to feel like crap, and you’re gonna beat yourself up, you’re gonna feel guilty, and you and you’re just gonna, like hate yourself, you do not want to go through the holidays, hating yourself.
You don’t want to spend Thanksgiving dinner, thinking that you’re missing out on something good, and you can’t have anything that’s good. And you’re deprived and you can’t have certain things and woe is me, everybody else is enjoying themselves. And I can’t enjoy myself because that attitude sucks. And that’s just going to keep you feeling miserable. And that’s going to make you take terrible actions.
And you’re probably just going to give in, oh, you know what, screw it, I deserve this. So what I’m saying here is whatever you decide whether it’s, you know, I’m just not eating sugar, you could always bring your own like, sugar free dessert or something. That’s what I do. And I love it, love of it. And sometimes I just eat the sugar laden stuff too. And I love that.
But whatever you decide, do it with intention, go into it with a plan, and a purpose. And then stick to your plan. So we’re going to talk about that in just a minute. So I want you guys to enjoy the holidays. And I want you to do it in a way that is intentional, that feels good to you.
That’s honest, that’s authentic. And you’re not doing it in a way where you’re just beating yourself up for 37 straight days. Because that’s terrible. That’s just a terrible way to go through the holidays. Okay.
So here are some tips that I have for you for handling the holidays. So you don’t look like or feel like a stuffed turkey by the first of the year. So the first one is this, the first thing I want you to do is set your intention for the holidays.
How do you want to show up on January one? What is your vision for yourself? On January one, how do you want to feel about yourself? How do you want to look? Do you want to be the same as you are right now? Do you want to feel the same about yourself as you do right now? Maybe you want to get five pounds leaner? Or maybe you’re somebody that’s like you know, I’m okay gaining a few pounds.
Decide what you want to do now, set that intention for yourself now. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to maintain weight? Or do you want to gain weight between now and the first of the year? Because the choice is yours. But decide now what you’re going to do and be honest with yourself.
Okay, so let’s say you want to lose weight, let’s say that’s your intention, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to just continue sticking to my plan. And I’m going to try to keep losing weight. It might be, you know, a pound or two a week. So you know, I might lose, you know, five to 10 pounds.
And if that is your goal, and you’re all in on that goal, then awesome. Like, hats off to you like, awesome job. Just stick to it. Just do what you’ve been doing. Stick to your plan. So if you want to lose weight during the holidays, you can do that. It’s up to you. It just means that you’re going to have to get your mind right around some of these situations that you’re going to find yourself in.
You may not go all out on the deserts at Thanksgiving and Christmas and all this stuff. You may not be participating in the Christmas cookie bake-a-thon, if that’s something that would be challenging for you. Or you can do it and just know that you’re going to have these cravings and how to deal with them. And I talk to my clients all the time about how to deal with these kinds of cravings, and how to get through stuff like that.
Because, listen, we can’t always control our circumstances, but sometimes you can. So if you want to lose weight, you’re just gonna have to, like, stick to your plan, you’re gonna have to have the right mindset around it. And, and you can do that, but just go all in on that plan, okay?
What if you want to maintain weight during the holidays? So that might mean that you’re just gonna like, stay where you are. And that might mean you can have a few glasses of wine here and there, it might mean that you can have some exceptions to your plan, you can eat some pie here and there, you can eat the cookies here and there.
But it doesn’t mean going off the rails, it doesn’t mean like, really binging out on stuff, you know, you’re just going to continue kind of doing what you’ve been doing. But maybe you’re adding in a little bit more of the of the treats and the sugar and stuff like that. Maybe an extra helping of mashed potatoes with gravy, I love mashed potatoes, so good, isn’t it? Oh my gosh, like lots of butter in there and gravy.
And then let’s say you want to gain weight during the holidays. Now, you might think, who would want to do that? Well, if you’re the kind of person that’s like, you know what I want to really go all out and enjoy myself. I don’t mind if I gain five pounds during the holidays, if that’s what you want to do, again, go all in on that decision.
That might mean you drink more.It might mean you’re eating more and you’re participating in the cookie bake-a-thon. It means you’re like eating double desserts, you know, whatever it is you want to do. Go all in on that decision. Okay? Have your own back no matter what you decide, because there’s no right answer here.
It’s whatever you want to do for you, okay, but what happens is, most people say, I’m just going to like, I’m going to, I’m going to be really good this year, I’m not going to go off the rails, I’m going to stick to my plan, I’m going to keep losing weight, and then they they gain weight, and they can’t figure out why.
And they just didn’t go all in on their decision to lose, okay, so whatever you want to do lose, maintain gain, totally fine. Just be good with that decision. Have your own back and go all in on that. Okay, so that’s my first tip. Set your intention, decide what you want to do ahead of time, who do you want to show up as on January 1.
The second tip I have for you on how to handle the holidays is plan ahead and stick to your plan. This is like the most important thing you can do if you want to change anything in your life, but it’s so important when it comes to eating and losing weight. Or even you know, if you’re the kind of person who is doing something like maybe training for a half marathon or a marathon.
So what happens when you want to train for a marathon? You put together a training plan, you write it all down, you put it on your calendar, and then you do what when that day comes, you run those eight miles or those 16 miles or whatever it says on your calendar, right? That’s what it means to plan ahead, and then stick to your plan.
But when it comes to things like oh, I want to lose 40 pounds. And what that’s going to require is you changing what you eat, maybe when you eat. And instead of writing that down, and then working the plan and sticking to it. You’re just kind of like, oh, I’ll just kind of figure it out as I go. And it doesn’t work. And you’re like, oh, this, this diet doesn’t work or this eating plan doesn’t work?
No, it’s just that you just didn’t plan ahead and you didn’t stick to it. That’s all. It’s that simple. I know it’s simple. It’s not easy, but it’s that simple. So include in your plan, make sure you’re including in your plan, the stuff that you want to eat.
So let’s say you’re planning ahead for the holidays, right? And so you might work out a plan for a week at a time. You might write down in your journal or on a calendar, something like that. When you have holiday gatherings, parties, whatever it is. You have a written plan of what you’re going to do, when you’re going to eat, how much you’re going to eat on those occasions.
So you’re planning ahead, you’re using that prefrontal cortex of your brain that planning, cognitive part of your brain that’s responsible for thinking ahead and planning ahead. You want to use that part of your brain because you don’t want to use the primitive part of your brain into the make decisions in the moment because you typically make bad decisions in the moment.
So we plan ahead, we write down what we’re going to eat at least 24 hours in advance. So I know what I’m going to do tomorrow.
Right, this is a great, great tip, especially for things like Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, whatever it is, the day before Thanksgiving, make sure you know what you’re going to do for that day. And if your plan is to eat some pie, and eat the mashed potatoes, and you know, whatever, write it down, it’s totally fine.
Whatever you want to put on your plan is up to you. If you want to include a glass of wine, put that in there. Okay, just like with your running, plan it out ahead of time, and then stick to your plan. This is how you like, create good habits, this is how you build trust with yourself. This is how you build self confidence. If you plan ahead and you stick to your plan, you’re gonna feel so much better about yourself when you do it this way, as opposed to planning ahead and then just saying f it.
Because that’s the, you’re just gonna feel terrible about yourself, you let yourself down, you’re gonna feel guilty, you’re gonna beat yourself up, we don’t want to do that we want to feel good about ourselves, about ourselves and about our decisions. So have your own back, write, write down what you’re going to do, and then stick to that plan.
When it comes to food, remember, you know, it’s very compelling these foods, you know, especially he’s looking at that pile of Christmas cookies, or the table with the five different pies that you can eat after dinner, like it can be very compelling, and feel very urgent and feel like, you know, you get these intense cravings for that stuff in the moment.
But if you’ve planned ahead and said, I’m going to eat a small piece of pecan pie, and a small piece of pumpkin pie, and I’m going to be good with that, then do that. Stick to that and you’re gonna feel so much better about yourself. Okay. So that’s my second tip is to plan ahead, stick to your plan. And include the good stuff, include the stuff that you want to eat, the stuff that you love, if that’s what you want to do.
Tip number three is don’t show up at these holiday dinners, or meals, like starving and dehydrated. Because I’m going to tell you, if you show up feeling super hungry, hangry and super dehydrated, what you’re going to do is you’re going to as soon as you get there, you’re just going to be shoving food in your face and drinking whatever’s available to you.
Okay, so the suggestion is, for any kind of holiday event, to make sure you eat beforehand, like eat your regular breakfast or lunch, whatever you would normally do, do that. Make sure you’re getting good fats and protein, because that stuff kind of keeps you feeling full for a while.
And then when you show up at this event, you’re not going to feel like you got to eat your face off, you’re not going to feel like super dehydrated, drink plenty of water too, this is so important. Most people don’t drink enough water during holidays and stuff like that and family gatherings.
And what you end up doing is drinking a lot more alcohol and then when you’re drinking a lot of alcohol, you sort of lower your willpower and you start making bad decisions and that’s when f it mode gets activated and right.
So if you’re super thirsty, you tend to drink more alcohol. So if that’s something you want to avoid, my suggestion is to drink more water to make sure you’re just staying hydrated, okay? And whether or not you want to drink alcohol is totally fine. It’s up to you know, I don’t have any strong opinions either way.
Just know that as you drink more and you feel more drunk, you know you feel more relaxed, a little more loosey goosey. You get a little more loosey goosey with your eating plan and you tend to kind of get into that mode where you’re just like screw it, I deserve this, this is awesome. I’m enjoying myself. I’m just gonna eat whatever it’s fine.
So you’ve tended to make terrible decisions when you drink too much. So just make sure that you’re not coming to these events feeling super super hungry. Eat your normal breakfast or lunch and then when you do show up, you won’t be just, you know voraciously, digging into the piles of nuts and chips and all this other stuff, okay, so don’t show up super hungry or dehydrated.
Number four, and this one is so important. These are all important, but this one is one that we really have a hard time doing on a daily basis. But even more so during the holidays, especially Thanksgiving, and that is to don’t eat to discomfort. This was a big aha moment for me when I started losing weight.
Finally, for the last time, I learned that I am an overeater. I tend to eat a lot of food. And I always justify it because I’m a runner, hey, I run a lot, so I need to eat a lot more. But I would eat until I was uncomfortable, basically at every meal.
And at the holidays, it was way worse. I can remember Thanksgivings where I literally would stuf myself so much that I felt so miserable. I couldn’t even function after dinner. I just had to like go sit on the couch and just veg. And I felt terrible. I felt sick to my stomach. Is that how you want to go through the holidays? I say no.
There’s this comedian. And I don’t know who said this. But basically, he’s an overweight guy. And he’s like, “Yeah, I tend to overeat a lot. He’s like, the meal isn’t over when I’m full, the meal’s over when I hate myself.” And I think about this all the time, because that was true for me.
I would eat until I hated myself, I felt so bad about eating so much food. And I just don’t do that anymore. I’ve learned how to eat to a place where I’m comfortably full. And I use this tool with my clients called the hunger scale.
And it’s basically a scale of 0 to 10. How hungry are you? How full are you? And when you get to like a plus two plus three, on that fullness meter, then you just stop eating. So you’re kind of pleasantly full but not uncomfortable. Because as soon as you get uncomfortable, you’ve eaten too much.
Our bodies are not designed to eat that much food when you get uncomfortable. That’s because we have these sensors in our stomachs that sense. They’re like stretchers. Stretch sensors, they determine how much food we’re putting in our stomach. And when they get to a certain point, they say stop eating.
And I would not stop at that point, I would start to feel that uncomfortable. And I would just keep going and keep going and keep going. And that’s what made me hate myself, as it made me miserable. Okay, so I’m not talking about like, counting calories, or you know, tracking everything in an app or you don’t have to get that detailed with this kind of stuff.
You don’t have to get super diligent about counting everything that you eat or weighing your food or anything like that, because that can be very, very stressful for a lot of people. But I do suggest really getting in tune with how your body feels, how much food does your body actually need?
When do you start to feel full, and then don’t eat beyond that feeling. Because when you do, you’re eating too much. And if your goal is to maintain or lose weight during the holidays, but you keep overeating at every meal. You’re not going to recycle I’m just going to tell you right now.
And like I said, when I first started talking about this subject of not eating to discomfort, that was the game changer for me when I was able to start losing weight that I stopped eating to the point of making myself feel terrible. I stopped eating too are uncomfortable. I stopped eating to where I hated myself.
Okay, now I’m eating enough to where I feel satisfied. But I don’t feel uncomfortable. This is a game changer. I guarantee you. Okay, so do not eat till you feel miserable. That’s not healthy. It’s just not good for you.
And then my fifth tip is just to remember what the holidays are all about, and that they’re not all about the food. For me, the holidays are about giving thanks for everything good in my life, obviously especially Thanksgiving, right? But it’s a chance for me reflect on this past year, and all the things that I’m grateful for.
You know, the people in my life, the abundance that I have in my life, I’m so grateful for everything, for being able to sit here and do these podcasts and share this with you guys, for the Facebook group for my coaching clients, for my membership group, all these people that are changing their lives for the better because they’re changing their mindset.
They’re changing their diet, they’re changing their relationship with food, they’re changing their relationship with their bodies, and with running and all this stuff. And I get to do this with people, I get to help people. I’m so grateful for all this stuff. And these holidays are a time to celebrate our accomplishments over there.
It’s time to celebrate with family and with friends, it’s time to make connections, it’s time to be together and enjoy that feeling of kinship and togetherness. It’s time to share love, and laughter and have fun together and play games and make lasting memories together. 20 years from now, you’re not going to remember how many helpings of mashed potatoes you ate.
Unless you eat like 12 helpings and you’ll probably remember, but you’re always going to remember that time you spent with your family. Like I remember, honestly, like I remember so many Thanksgivings with my family sitting around the table when all of us were together.
And seeing my dad’s face and seeing him smile. And just looking around the table. And he was so grateful to have this amazing family. With these amazing kids. Especially me, I was really probably the most amazing of all. I’m just kidding.
But he just was like, would look around us in like, raise his glass and be like, I love all you, I’m so thankful for all of you. This is so amazing. You know, let’s all give thanks. And I just remember that connection in that family togetherness that we shared. And it was so amazing.
That’s what I remember, I don’t remember, you know how many pieces of pie I ate, or you know, my mom always made these amazing, this amazing Thanksgiving dinner and all the traditional stuff. And it was always great. But I remember laughing with my family.
I remember sitting around the table, and me and my brothers, we get going and my sister we just start laughing like crazy. That’s the kind of stuff that I remember. And my mom shaking her head and just going like you guys are terrible. Oh my gosh. We’d always kind of take things a little too far.
But that’s the stuff I remember. And it was so fun. Remember what the holidays are all about. Don’t focus so much on what you’re eating, or what you’re not eating, or what you get to eat or what you don’t get to eat because you get to decide all of that. Okay? So set your intentions.
Here’s, here’s our list of tips to get you through the holidays here. Set your intention, do you want to lose, maintain or gain weight it just go all in on that decision. Okay. Number two, plan ahead and stick to your plan. Just know what you’re going to do at least 24 hours in advance and stick to it. That’s the important part: sticking to it. Number three, don’t show up starving, don’t show up dehydrated. Eat a regular meal beforehand, make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. Number four, don’t eat so much that you’re miserable, you’re uncomfortable. And then number five, remember what the holidays are all about. Connection, togetherness. Make memories.
It doesn’t have to be all about the food. It can be a little bit about the food, but it doesn’t have to be the main focus. Okay. Those are my tips to help you get through the holidays. Come on over to the Running Lean community on Facebook because we’re going to do this amazing running challenge. We’re going to be running every day from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day.
And then I’m going to do some weekly coaching in the group to help you stay on track. We’re going to be talking about some goal setting for the new year. weight loss goals, setting running goals, all kinds of stuff. Cool. I cannot wait to see you guys there in the group.
And if I don’t talk to you beforehand, have an amazing Thanksgiving with your family and friends. And as always, lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
If you’re anything like me and you’ve struggled with your weight, then you probably know what it feels like to kind of hate yourself. You hate how you look, you hate how you feel, you hate how …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 46. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, we’re going over another one of the guiding principles from the Running Lean manifesto. And this one is: love yourself unconditionally.
So if you’re anything like me, and you’ve struggled with your weight ever, then you probably know what it feels like to kind of hate yourself. You know, you might hate how you look, you hate how you feel. You hate how you’ve let yourself go. You hate who you have become.
Wow, this is a very negative and very sad place to be. I know how it feels I’ve been there. But here’s the thing, you can’t accomplish anything positive from such a negative state of mind. When you feel like super crappy about yourself, you know, it’s almost impossible for you to do anything good to lose weight to feel better about yourself, you just can’t do it.
So in this episode, I’m going to be talking about how to break out of this negative mindset and how to stop hating yourself. Because the answer is to have unconditional love for yourself, to love yourself unconditionally. So I’m gonna explain how to do it.
But first, if you like this podcast, you need to come check out our Facebook group. It’s the Running Lean community on Facebook. And just to get you excited about this, I got a new challenge coming up in November. So starting Thanksgiving Day, we’re going to do a new challenge called running through the holidays. And I haven’t even talked to anybody about this yet.
So I’m not going to tell you what it is. But it’s going to be a fun way for us to all get through the holidays together to maintain our sanity and our health and to feel good about ourselves during the holidays. So I’m not gonna. I’m just teasing this right now, I’m not going to tell you all about it. So come to the Facebook group. And I’ll explain it all in there.
And we will be running this challenge through the Facebook group from starting on Thanksgiving Day here in 2020. Okay, cool. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And you will find us there.
All right, so we’ve been talking about the principles from the Running Lean manifesto. So this is a set of guiding principles that I put together, that I want it to be our North Star, I wanted us to rally around some principles, some concepts, some values, some ideas that can kind of keep us grounded, that can kind of keep us moving towards our goals. These are like our North Star.
And I love that analogy of it’s always guiding the way. So the Running Lean manifesto is eight guiding principles and they are this: Number one is to eat real food. Number two is to live vibrantly. Number three is to thrive in your body. Number four is to embrace discomfort. Number five is to run because you love it. Number six is to love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And then eight be an example of what’s possible.
So we’ve already covered a bunch of these. Today we’re talking about how to love yourself unconditionally and why this is important and how to do it. But listen, these principles are some some things that you can kind of rally around and really understand these and really embrace these because when you do, this is like the key to living a healthy, vibrant, fulfilled life.
And it’s not rocket science. This isn’t super complicated, but it does take a little hard work and a little dedication. So just commit yourself to living by these principles. Like I’ve committed myself to living by these principles and just see What kinds of things you can accomplish in your life? I think you might just blow your own mind.
Okay, so today we’ve got principle number six from the Running Lean manifesto, and that is to love yourself unconditionally. Now, before I get into this topic, I just want to say this, this might seem like kind of a woowoo topic for some of you, you might be like, love yourself, unconditionally, Patrick, come on, but I want you to be open minded about this, I want you to just listen, and, and be open to these concepts, because they are important.
And all too often, we don’t like to talk about our feelings, we don’t like to talk about our emotions, we don’t want to talk about how we may not like ourselves, or how we may hate ourselves, or how we maybe should work on loving ourselves more like this is stuff that kind of feels uncomfortable to talk about sometimes. But you know what, I don’t care. I’m talking about it. And I want you guys just to be open to it. Cool. Are we on the same page?
Alright, let’s get into this. So here’s what we do. We beat ourselves up a lot. As human beings, we’re just naturally really good at this. You know, we engage in a lot of negative self talk. So we have something like 60,000 thoughts a day that run through our heads? We have these conversations that are constantly running in our minds, like there is constantly a dialogue, running chatter going on in our heads, right?
Can you relate to this? Does this sound like you? Because I hope so. Because I know, it’s not just me. But I have this going on all the time. I have these thoughts, these conversations, I have conversations with other people, complete conversations in my mind. Or I have a conversation with myself in my mind. That’s kind of bizarre.
I’m like, who’s talking? And who’s listening? And who’s watching all this happen? Like, is this all me? It’s all me. Anyway, so we have these conversations going on, we have all this chatter going on in our brain. And it’s typically kind of crappy, it’s kind of negative, right?
We have a lot of negative self talk, even if you don’t, even if you’re not conscious of it. And you don’t like consciously notice that happening in the moment. It might be running in the background, right? It’s kind of like there’s a, there’s a radio station playing in the background. And it’s like, you’re not good enough, you can’t do that. Who do you think you are? Look at you, you look at how much weight you’ve gained, you’re fat, you’re ugly, you know, we have all this stuff going on in our brains. And it’s like, it just never shuts off. Okay.
And a lot of this negative self talk that we have a lot of this chatter going on this negative Chatter is because we, we regret a lot of things from our past, you know, we have, we’ve done things in the past that we regret, or that we’re ashamed of, or that we’re embarrassed by. And we feel like we failed a bunch of times in the past.
And we keep replaying these scenarios over and over and over again, in our heads. So one of the things that we do, one of the lines of negative thoughts that we keep having negative self talk has to do with the past, okay?
Another stream of negative self talk is about the future, constantly thinking about how we’re going to fail in the future, or how we’re not where we want to be, and how, you know, I’m never going to get to my goal weight. And I’m never going to be able to stop overeating, and I’m never going to be able to give up sugar. And I’m never going to be able to, you know, run a marathon, because I just, I just can never do it.
I can never commit to whatever it is, we fail ahead of time. You know, we constantly tell ourselves how we can’t do X, Y or Z. So when we’re focused on all the negative negativity from our past, we’re looking at our future as being you know, some negative thing.
We cannot live in the present. We cannot have contentment, peace. We can’t love ourselves in the present, right? All we do is we just kind of hate where we are and who we are. And what happens is, we can really set ourselves up for a lot of not only disappointment, but we set ourselves up to fail in so many ways. And we don’t even realize it.
But our negative thinking, this like idea of hating ourselves, over time can really put us into a negative state that creates these terrible results in our life. For example, earlier this year, I found myself 40 pounds overweight, I found myself getting divorced, you know, my wife said she wanted to leave me, leave the marriage, or end the marriage, let’s just put it that way.
And I found myself delivering food at night, just to make ends meet. And I had gotten to this place where I had been beating myself up for so long, and kind of hating on myself for so long, that it manifested into all these circumstances I found myself in my life.
You know, the negative self talk I was doing got me 40 pounds overweight, the negative self talk I kept doing about not being able to lose weight, and it was too hard, and I can’t do it, that just kept me at that, at that weight, or kept me gaining weight. You know, and I would argue that my negative view of myself over the years, contributed to this marriage that just, you know, that came to an end.
You know, I’m not blaming her, I’m not blaming myself, 100% we all have our roles and these kinds of things. But I have to say that, you know, having such a negative view of myself contributed to that, you know, I think I felt like I was a bad person, you know, there was something wrong with me.
And, you know, that kind of contributed to that, playing out the way that it did. And then I found myself delivering food at night and thinking, man, my whole life is a failure, I am a failure. I kind of hated who I had become. And this is a terrible place to operate from. Nothing good is gonna come out of this, okay. But this pattern of hating on myself had been going on for a long time, for years.
You know, hating on myself got me where I was. It got me overweight, it got me to this divorce, it got me to delivering food at night. And it was this big eye opening moment for me. That hating on myself for all my past failures. And all the things I hadn’t accomplished and all the things I didn’t do, all the mistakes that I made, and hating where I was headed or my future, because it looked like it was so bleak and grim for me, you know, look, I’m overweight, I’m getting divorce, I don’t have, you know, a regular job.
I just had no love for myself in the present, I have been so focused on past failures, and so focused on this grim future that I couldn’t love myself in the present. So this is a very powerful form of self sabotage. When you hate yourself, how do you think you’re going to act? How are you going to show up? What are you going to do or not?
You know, how do you show up for yourself? When you don’t have any love for yourself? Do you keep moving toward your big dreams and your goals? Probably not. Do you stick to your food plan? You know, I said I’m gonna eat this. And this is exactly what I’m going to do. I feel so good about the…no, you’re not gonna feel terrible. Do you stick to your training schedule? So you’re training for that marathon?
No. Because it’s just this powerful self sabotage of hating on yourself. It keeps you stuck or sends you backwards. You get lazy, you say screw it, you start gaining weight, you stop running, whatever it is. And all this kind of self hatred comes from this constant stream of negative self talk negative thoughts that you just keep replaying over and over and over in your mind.
You know, thoughts are just sentences we say to ourselves in our minds, but we believe them, and we give them so much power, especially the negative ones. Negative thoughts lead to feeling negatively about ourselves. And negative feelings lead us to take negative actions or to take no action at all, inaction.
So we don’t stick to our food plan. We don’t get back to our workout schedule, we say, eff it a lot more. So you just eat whatever, whenever you feel like it. And all this stuff just leads to crappy results, you gain weight, you don’t hit your goals. You can’t accomplish good things from this state. You can’t hate yourself thin, I say this all the time.
So if you keep thinking, I’m a failure, I always fail, I can’t do it, this isn’t gonna work for me, then you’re gonna get all of those results. Keep thinking that over and over and over again, keep telling yourself that you’re gonna fail and guess what you will fail. Keep telling yourself, you can’t do it.
And guess what, you won’t do it, keep telling yourself, this won’t work for me. And guess what, it will not work for you. You cannot hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself through all of this. You have to have your own back. I talk about this concept a lot with my clients having your own back. And I want to explain what this means to you so that you understand this too, because this is a cool concept.
So what does it mean to have your own back? So imagine you’re out running with a friend. And you could be in a race, maybe you’re helping a friend get through their first half marathon, right? And you’ve done this a million times. And so you feel pretty confident you’re just out there to support them.
You’re helping them get through the tough part of this run. How would you show up for that friend? What would you say to them? I think you’d say things like, hey, I’m here for you, you got this, you can do it, you are a badass, come on, keep going, you’re doing great, you look great.
You can do hard things, you are crushing it out here, you are almost there. Come on, let’s go. Right, you’d be there to support them to encourage them to keep them motivated. You point out all the positive things you can about them, you’d push them, you’d make sure that they finished strong. So this is what it looks like to have someone’s back.
And when you do this, for someone else, it feels really good. Right? It feels good to be the one that’s doing the encouraging, the one that’s doling out all that love, all that positive Mojo, it feels good to be that person, right? Because you’re helping them do something big, you’re helping them get through something that’s uncomfortable. And it feels good to do this.
It’s very invigorating. I love doing this. I love helping people. That’s why I love coaching so much. You know, it’s such a big part of coaching is to give people encouragement and motivation and all that positive Mojo doling out the love, right. So you can dig deep within yourself when you need to help someone else, right?
You can dig deep within yourself and find that love and that encouragement to help push someone further even when it’s very challenging for them even when things are going very tough for them. Right.
So it’s very easy for us to do for others. But it’s very hard for us to do for ourselves. Why is that? You know, it’s it’s interesting, isn’t it? That it’s hard for us to do that for ourselves, even though we can do it so easily for others. But here’s the thing, you can do it, it works just as well, when you do it for yourself. Right? It feels just as good.
The answer here is that it’s not harder to love ourselves. It’s not harder to have our own back. But we just have all this negative self talk that’s always getting in the way. You know, if you can do this for someone else, which you can, I know you can. I know you’ve done this before, then you can do it for yourself. It just takes a little practice.
So some of the things you can practice is instead of practicing negative self talk, practice positive self talk. You know, instead of practicing feeling discouraged all the time, practice encouraging yourself. Instead of practicing thinking about all the ways that you’re going to fail or all the ways that you suck, practice thinking about all the ways you are going to succeed and all the ways that you are awesome.
And you can do this by just writing it down on a piece of paper. This is the easiest little exercise you can do. Write down all the things you love about yourself. Write down words of encouragement for yourself. Write down ways you can motivate yourself, just like you’d be motivating that person you’re running with to help them get across the finish line.
Do that for yourself. And I promise you, I promise you that when you start practicing this, when you write it down, when you read it every morning, and you start practicing, that, you know, showing this unconditional love for yourself, you’re going to start to feel so much more empowered, so much more confident, so much better about yourself.
You’ll stop living out in the past, living out those past failures, you’ll become excited about your future, you’ll begin to feel alive, and happy and confident right here in the present moment. And here’s the most important piece of this. Loving yourself unconditionally means without condition, so the unconditional part is important. Okay?
That means that you love yourself exactly as you are right now. It means that you love yourself at your current weight, no matter what that is. It means that you love your body, every inch of it right now. It means you love how you look in the mirror. It means having a positive self image, a holistic positive self image, you love your whole body, your mind, your feelings, your soul.
Unconditional love does not mean I love myself, but I hate my thighs, or I love myself, but I wish my belly was smaller, or I love myself, but I hate that number on the scale. Unconditional means without any conditions, period.
So I want to make sure we’re on the same page with this. This concept right here, you can love yourself exactly as you are right now and still want to change. You can have unconditional love for yourself and still want to lose weight.
You know, you can love yourself just as you are right now, and still want smaller thighs or to get rid of a belly, that’s totally fine. Right? It doesn’t mean you don’t want to improve yourself, right? You can love yourself and respect yourself right now and be constantly working to improve yourself.
Wanting to improve yourself doesn’t mean you have to hate yourself the way you are now, or that there’s anything wrong with you now, it just means that you’re always growing, you’re always improving, you’re always becoming more. So today, I practiced loving myself unconditionally, and I’m not perfect at it, I’ll be honest with you.
I don’t do a perfect job of this, but I practice it. You know, and, and there’s things about myself that I want to change, like, I’m still working on getting stronger and building some muscle. So I’m going to the gym and I’m lifting weights, you know, I can look at myself in the mirror and go, hey, hey, you, you look pretty good.
But at the same time, I’m like, I’d like to see my arms get a little bigger, get my chest a little bigger, you know, I want to look like just like I got some muscle on me, you know. And I’ve never been able to do that in my life. And so I’m like really working on that.
And I’ve seen some improvements over the last couple of months. Okay. So um, that’s something where I love myself now. And I can want to change, I can want to get better, I can want to improve, you know, my physical strength or my running endurance, okay? I love myself as I am. I don’t hate what I see when I look in the mirror anymore.
Okay, I don’t hate who I have become, I love who I have become. And I’m always becoming more. This is such a beautiful concept. I think that we can love ourselves now and want to become more. I love, love, love this. When you can begin to love yourself unconditionally. Even just practicing this a little bit you can begin to operate from a place of confidence and contentment and peace and power.
You have this abundance of confidence where you can see that you can actually achieve anything that you set your mind to. You’re not afraid to do things, you’re not afraid to feel like a failure or feel like a loser because you know that no matter what happens if you try something and you fail, that you have your own back.
To me, this is like having a superpower. This is why I’ve included it in the Running Lean manifesto. This is why it’s one of the important guiding principles of our life. It’s why it’s such an important piece of all the mindset work that you have to do. Because without unconditional love for yourself, if you want to become anything more than what you are, and who you are, right now, it’s gonna be really hard to do almost impossible. Okay?
So I want you to just start practicing this, start practicing, loving yourself unconditionally. And you do that by practicing positive self talk, write it down. Practice, having your own back, just like you’d have a friend’s back.
And here’s a little exercise you can do practice looking in the mirror, and loving and accepting every bit of who you are right now, every bit of your body, every bit of how you look, and every bit of who you are in this moment. That’s a tough one to do. But it’s powerful. And when you do these things, I promise you, you are going to begin to feel like there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.
There’s nothing you can’t do. Cool. Next week, I’m going to be covering the next principle from the manifesto, which is to think, feel and act with purpose. That’s going to be a good one. You don’t want to miss that. You got this, my friends, lots of unconditional love to each and every one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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The way you make big changes is by consistently doing new things - showing up day after day with drive, determination, and perseverance. In other words...creating new habits. Breaking old habits …
Continue Reading about 45. The 5 Habits Runners Must Have to Lose Weight →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 45 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I am talking about the five habits that runners must have in order to lose weight. The way you make big changes in your life is by consistently doing new things.
That means showing up day after day with drive, determination, and perseverance doing these new things. Another way of saying this, is you have to create new habits, you’ve got to break old habits and create new ones. And this just might be the single most important thing you can do for yourself. It’s really the only way that you can make meaningful, lasting changes in your life.
It’s how you become anything more than who you are right now. Let’s say you want to become a marathon runner, you’ll have to break the old habit of sitting on the couch every morning watching Netflix, you’ll have to get into a new habit of running in the morning instead of watching Netflix, even when you don’t feel like it.
Creating habits like this, it’s not easy to do, it’s hard to do. That’s why most people don’t do it. So why most people never change is why most people don’t run marathons. It’s why most people will always be overweight and feel unhappy about it. Because most people aren’t willing to do the hard work of creating new habits.
So today I’m sharing with you the five habits that all runners must have if you want to lose weight, and keep it off for good. But first, if you liked this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a fun group of energetic, positive, and like minded runners who all have the same kind of goals.
We’re all trying to become fat-adapted, we’re all trying to lose weight, and run better, just make running more fun, more enjoyable to push ourselves to become more, come check us out Running Lean community on Facebook. Now we just want to get right into this today.
The five habits that runners must have in order to lose weight and number one is you got to get into the habit of eating real food. And I say this all the time, you can’t outrun a bad diet, right? Running is great. It helps to build strength, it helps to build endurance, it feels good to run, keep running, it’s just not a very good way to lose weight.
Weight loss is almost entirely an issue of diet. If you want to lose weight, you have to change your diet, you’ve got to get in the habit of eating real food. You know, for most of us, the problem really is the carbohydrates and sugar are like the most concentrated form of carbohydrate.
So we’ve got to like stop eating so much sugar because what happens is you eat a lot of sugar and carbs that raises your blood sugar, which you know, makes your insulin levels go up.
When your insulin is high, your appetite is increased, your hunger is increased, you never feel full and your body is put into this fat storage mode. And fat storage mode is not what we want. If you want to lose weight. If you want to lose weight you got to get your body into fat burning mode, right. So in order to do that, you have to get off the sugar and the carbs. Put your body into a state of a to become a more efficient fat-burner.
When you start eating real food, the kind of food that we humans have evolved to eat over the last couple of million years, you begin to lower your blood sugar. You begin to lower the insulin, you begin to regulate all those hormones that are causing you to hold on to fat and you begin to metabolize fat more efficiently.
So eat real food, eat food as close to nature as possible foods that our ancestors would have eaten. So the first habit you have to adopt in order to lose weight and keep it off is you got to get into this habit of eating real food and once you get into this habit and you’re eating real food consistently it’s just becomes a part of who you are, it becomes easy and effortless to maintain, it’s just becomes part of your lifestyle. So that’s number one.
Number two, is you have to practice meal spacing. The other habit that you have to get into is not eating all the time, because that will also contribute to putting your body into that fat storage mode. Because every time you eat any kind of food whatsoever, your blood sugar goes up, and insulin goes up, and then boom, you’re back into that fat storage mode, right.
But if you’re eating constantly, your body is constantly in that fat storage mode. So if you can limit the amount of times you’re eating throughout the day, you know, we do stuff called intermittent fasting, or you can call it meal spacing, whatever you want to call it.
When you just have some periods throughout the day, where you’re not eating food, then you give your body a break from all that insulin, you give your body a break from being in that fat storage mode, and you put your body into fat burning mode for more of the day.
So if you’re eating six, seven times a day, like let’s say you eat three meals a day, you eat snacks in between all those meals you’re eating dessert, then you’re basically going to be constantly holding on to body fat, you’re always your body’s just always going to be in that fat storage mode.
That’s just what happens, it’s almost impossible to lose weight this way, if you’re eating all the time. And one of the awesome benefits of spacing out your meals and having some time without bringing in any external fuel is that you become fat-adapted much faster. So that whole fat-adaptation process can be kind of challenging, you know, running is a struggle for a few weeks while your body’s switching over from burning sugar to burning fat.
And when you can extend the amount of time that your body doesn’t have that external fuel coming in. In other words, not eating anything, you kind of force your body to use stored body fat for fuel, which is good, we want this, this is when you begin to start metabolizing that body fat more efficiently and faster.
So this really helps to speed up the fat adaptation process. And it helps to shorten the amount of time that running sucks, while you’re going through this process, okay, so it’s really, you get sort of a couple of good benefits when you practice some meal spacing.
So that’s the second habit that we have to adopt that you have to just create in your life is to practice meal spacing, it gives your body a break from the blood sugar spikes, because your body a break from insulin, gets your body out of fat storage mode and into fat burning mode and keeps you there and get you through that tough period a lot faster. So that’s number two.
Number three, the third habit runners have to adopt if you want to lose weight, is you have to reduce stress in your life. This is one of the hidden issues around weight loss. For a lot of people, a lot of people have a really hard time losing weight, who are really stressed out.
Stress plays a huge role in keeping your body in that fat storage mode. This is like the third part of the insulin trifecta, you know the bad trifecta. It’s not a good trifecta. Because what stress does is it releases cortisol, which is the stress hormone.
And along with that is glucose is released from your liver and stress and constantly having that cortisol in your body and constantly having high levels of cortisol and glucose will spike your blood sugar and raise insulin levels as well.
So even though you may not be eating anything, even if you may be eating a good, pretty solid, clean diet, you can still be in that fat storage mode just from putting your body under constant stress. So here’s kind of what’s happening. Here’s the background.
We’ve evolved as humans to deal with stress pretty effectively. You know, back in the day, a saber toothed Tiger would come along and our body would see that and go into fight or flight mode. And we’d release the stress hormone cortisol, adrenaline gets produced, glucose gets produced, increases our blood sugar, insulin goes up, all that stuff happens, right?
These hormones are all working the way they’re supposed to, by the way, because they’re getting your body ready for fight or flight to fight the saber toothed tiger or run away So you would have all this extra energy in your body to fight this animal off or run away.
And I would run away for sure. I mean, that’s how I would probably deal with this situation, right, but either way you would use up that energy by fighting or running away, and then the danger would be gone. And then everything would regulate and everything would go back to normal. Okay, that’s good.
That’s the way our bodies are designed to work. But here’s the thing today, there is no saber toothed Tiger. But we have all this other quote unquote, quote, unquote, stress in our life, we have a boss who yells at us, we have traffic that we’re sitting in, and we got the kids screaming at us, we got COVID, you know, we’ve got the husband who’s not helping around the house, we got credit card debt, you know, we all have all this constant anxiety in society today.
And we have this constant, high levels of cortisol and glucose and adrenaline and insulin, and we’re on this, we’re all in this chronic state of, of stress. And so we’re in a chronic state of fat storage mode. You know, stress is literally making us fat.
And they actually have this synthetic form of the stress hormone cortisol, it’s called prednisone. And when people take this, they gain weight, all the time. So I always ask my clients, I’m like, how’s your stress level? You know, what are you doing about it? Because you have to have some sort of a daily plan, a daily practice for reducing stress, it’s not a one and done kind of a thing.
It has to be an intentional daily practice that has to become a habit. So Habit number three is to reduce stress in your life. If you don’t do this, your body’s just going to stay in that fat storage mode, you need to have a daily stress reduction practice, where you’ll have a very hard time losing weight. So that’s habit number three.
Habit number four, is to build strength and endurance. So why is strength training so important for runners? Well, strength training is actually essential. If you want to be a successful runner, even a long distance runner. And a lot of runners don’t do this. They don’t pay attention to strength training, they just don’t do it.
They’re like I run, I’m good, you know. But what happens is when you put your muscles under stress, the kind of not not the kind of stress, I was just talking about the kind of stress that stimulates muscle growth, you build more muscle, you build more lean mass, and you become a stronger runner.
Building strength also helps you to maintain good running form, and more consistent power output, especially as you begin to fatigue during longer runs, you know, endurance athletes that are over 40 will especially benefit from strength training, because as you get older, your strength declines faster than your endurance.
So your endurance might be there, but your strength won’t. So you need to keep up with the strength training as you go or you need to develop this habit. High intensity strength training also produces an anti-aging effect by helping you to preserve lean muscle mass and it helps you to optimize these adaptive hormones.
Being a lean runner means you’re a strong runner, so building strength in your muscles also helps you to build endurance. Because as a stronger runner, you can run further without getting fatigued, you can become more of a bonk proof runner when you build more strength. So practice some sort of strength training on a regular basis.
This has to become a habit. It helps you to build stronger muscles, stronger connective tissues, that absolutely helps you to burn fat more effectively. When you have more lean muscle mass, you’re a more effective fat burner, and you’ll lose weight more effectively. It’ll help you to increase your overall metabolism, meaning it just speeds up the whole fat adaptation process right.
Also cool to note is that when you build more strength, you increase your power to weight ratio. So that means you are a more powerful runner, you’re leaner, you’re stronger, you’re more powerful, you can run faster, and you can run longer. So habit number four is that you have to adopt is to build strength and endurance.
Strength training helps you to become fat-adapted, helps to increase your metabolism, helps you to lose weight, and helps you to get ripped and look awesome. And it makes you a more powerful, long distance runner.
And then habit number five that you have to adopt if you want to lose weight and keep it off for good. And this is probably the most important one and most overlooked habit. But you have to manage your mind. It’s so important. I probably should have mentioned this first. But I’m mentioning it last because I saved the best for last. That’s why I did it. Yeah.
But basically it underpins everything else that I just talked about. Without the right mindset, you really can’t create these other habits very effectively. You know, mastering your mindset is incredibly important and incredibly powerful. And mindset is one of my key areas of expertise as a certified Master Life Coach and a Master Practitioner of NLP, which is Neuro Linguistic Programming.
I’ve studied the human mind in depth for many years. And I’ve learned that when you’re armed with the right mindset, you can basically do anything you want. Seriously, you can do anything you want. And every single day I coach people on managing their mind and creating a more powerful mindset so they can get the results that they want.
You know, they know what to do, their mind is just in the way. Here’s the thing, your thoughts, create everything you have in your life, the good stuff, the bad stuff, all of it. Knowing this is key, it is critical to creating the life that you want for yourself.
Here’s an example. If you constantly have the thought, ‘I can’t lose weight, I always fail. This never works for me.’ If you keep thinking this over and over and over and over and over again, this becomes a thought habit. It becomes a deep seated belief.
And that belief, that thought habit, is going to cause you to constantly feel discouraged, it’s going to cause you to constantly feel frustrated. And feeling discouraged and frustrated, will cause you to go off plan, it’ll cause you to just say like, ‘screw it, why should I even bother, I always fail anyway. It never works for me.’
And this is just a thought habit. You know, it’s a thought that has created your current results. It’s a thought habit that’s created your current weight. Your thoughts always create your weight. Think about that.
If you change your thoughts, you can change your weight. When you learn how to manage your mind, when you create new thought habits, new thought patterns. You can deal with setbacks, you can deal with failures, you can deal with disappointments, you can deal with all kinds of frustrating things, without quitting on yourself.
When you manage your mind and you create these new, more empowering beliefs, and you practice those, instead, you start to build trust in yourself, you start to become incredibly confident in yourself. You find that you have the mental strength and the motivation you need to keep you going even when things get tough, because I promise you things will get tough, they always do.
So managing your mind is probably the most important habit that you need to adopt. If you want to have success in running, and losing weight, and really everything in your life. Now, these five habits are all required.
If you want to make meaningful, lasting changes in your life, kind-of sort-of doing one or two of these, it’s just not going to work. It’s not good enough, it’s not going to give you the results that you want. And I know that trying to figure out all this stuff for yourself can be very challenging.
I mean, if it was easy, if you knew how to do all this perfectly, you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now. Here’s the thing. I’ve already done the hard part, I figured all this out. I’ve already made all the mistakes so you don’t have to.
And I coach people on how to get these results and how to do these five habits and how to create these new five habits in their life every single day. And here’s something I’m excited about and I’m gonna share this with you right now. I’ve created a new program that lays out exactly how to do all of this step by step.
It’s called Running Lean: The Weight Loss Training Course for Runners. In this new program, you will learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean, fat burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without the calorie counting, and develop all the habits required to make this last a lifetime.
I’ve taken everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve been trained on, everything I’ve been coaching my clients on, and I’ve packaged it all up into this online training course that you can go through that your own pace. Now, all this stuff, it can feel very confusing, very overwhelming.
So what I did was, I put it all together into this like, framework, it’s very easy to understand. It’s a framework that you can just learn and begin to implement for yourself. It’s an online self paced training course. It has like over 40 video lessons to guide you step by step, it’ll show you exactly how to create all these habits that you have to have, in order to become an efficient fat burner.
You become fat-adapted, and then of course, you begin to lose weight, which is amazing. It’s a nice little side benefit. This is a comprehensive training course, you will learn how to break the sugar addiction and get off of the refined carbs.
So you can start burning fat, which means you’ll lose weight fast, you can become a fat-adapted runner, so you can run farther than you ever thought possible. You can stop feeling hungry all the time. So you can take back control of what you eat. And when you eat.
You’ll learn how to develop your own nutrition plan that works for you. That includes foods that you love to eat, you’ll learn how to fine tune that nutrition plan so you can hit your exact goal weight, you’ll learn how to properly fuel for those long runs and for races so that you can achieve peak performance at every single workout.
Most importantly, you will develop the mindset required to make all of this sustainable. And I want to make something very clear. This is not a diet. This is not something that you’ve done in the past. This is a transformational training program.
And it’s designed specifically for runners and it will permanently change your approach to nutrition and to running into weight loss and all that stuff I want for you, I want you to stop feeling frustrated, I want you to stop feeling defeated because you keep hitting the wall in your weight loss goals or in your running whatever.
Instead, I want you to start feeling so energized and so confident that you could run all day. And just think about how much easier running will be when you aren’t carrying around all that extra weight.
I can tell you from experience after losing 40 pounds this year, that running is much better. You know, if I strapped a 40 pound weight to myself right now it’d be like, damn, that is crazy. I can’t believe I was running with that much extra weight.
But becoming a fat-adapted runner means you are an efficient fat burner. And this is the goal. This is what we’re trying to get to here. To become a fat burning machine. It means that you have this almost unlimited source of fuel on board at all times your own body fat. Running is so much easier when you’re fueled by fat.
I just ran a marathon this weekend I did it fasted, meaning I did not have any calories before the run I hadn’t eaten for like 12 hours before running a marathon. And then during the marathon I took in zero calories. I was efficiently burning my own body fat for fuel.
And I had one of the best marathon experiences I’ve ever had. I actually got faster later on the run. My fastest splits were the last six miles. This is not normal for me at all. But because I’ve become an efficient fat burner, I’ve increased my running performance by a lot. So in this program, I break it all down for you. I’ll show you exactly how to do it, how to become a fat adapted runner. And so you can start experiencing those kinds of results for yourself.
Oh, and there’s a cool little side effect. When you become an efficient fat burner you lose weight, right? You can’t lose weight when you’re burning sugar for fuel, you only lose weight by burning fat. So in this program, I break it all down and show you exactly how to do it.
I have to say that I’m pretty sure this is the most comprehensive online fat adaptation training course for runners that’s ever been created. In fact, it might be the only one. I know that no one is teaching this material this way. No one out there is combining fat adaptation with building the habits of stress reduction, strength training, explosive workouts and mindset that you have to have in order to make all this work.
I know nobody else is doing it this way. And I’m going to encourage you to jump on this opportunity right now to enroll in this class, because enrollment is open now into this training course. But it closes in a couple of days, I’ve only got it open until Sunday, November the 8th at 11:59pm.
After that, I gotta close the doors for this session. And then I don’t know when I’m going to be running this course again. Okay, so you just have to make a decision. Do you want to keep reliving your same old past? Stuck in all those old habits that got you where you are here today, doing the same things over and over again, that you have been doing and getting the same results like some sort of terrible Groundhog Day?
Or do you want something more for yourself for your future? Who is it that you want to become? Because that future version of you would encourage you to do something to take some action now, the only way you can become more, the only way you can become that future version of yourself is if you do something different today, if you start creating new habits today, because nothing changes, if nothing changes.
Now, a lot of people have been asking me about this. And I typically don’t talk about pricing and stuff like that, because I don’t want to, I don’t want to be salesy, okay, but I’m going to just tell you this right now, this course is worth well over the $1000. This is like thousands of dollars of material here that you will learn it is amazing.
In fact, similar courses like this sell for about one thousand bucks. I was teaching this course earlier this year, I was teaching it live to a small group of people, and it was around seven hundred bucks. And people were glad to pay. That was an amazing bargain at that.
But I want to remove money as a barrier for you. So I decided that I was going to make the investment into this program, a no brainer for you. So enrollment into the weight loss training course right now, just until Sunday is only $297 bucks, this is a one time payment, and then you’re in for life.
That’s it, I want it to be a no no brainer. And I think it is. Oh, and I have something else to announce. When you enroll in the weight loss training course, you can also join the Running Lean monthly coaching group. So your monthly membership gets you bi-weekly live coaching sessions with me.
So you get personalized guidance and feedback, which means you’ll always be able to stay on track. This is a group coaching program. So we do it over Zoom. And we all get to share our stories and stuff together. So you get the supporting encouragement from this small community of like minded runners, so you can learn from their experience, you get accountability.
So you start really showing up and you keep moving towards your goals, right. And then if you happen to miss any of the live coaching calls that we do over Zoom, I record them all and put them on a membership website. So you’ll have 24/7 access to all the recorded calls. This is really like the most cost effective way if you want to get some coaching and work with me.
And here’s something cool just for you guys. I’m giving you a first, your first month free, you can actually try out the monthly coaching group for free for your first month. Just check it out and see what you think. If you don’t love it, you will I know you’ll love it, but if you don’t meet this – no big deal, you can just opt out.
But after that it’s only $39 bucks a month. That’s it. That’s another total no brainer if you ask me. So again, I feel like I need to say this. I’m not here talking to you about all this stuff, and offering you this program because I want to sell you something that is not what I’m trying to do here. I’m offering you this program because I know it will change your life.
You’ve been asking me Patrick, how do I do all this? How do I become a fat-adapted runner? I want to know how to do it. How do I lose the weight when everything I have ever tried has always failed? You know, how do I figure out how many carbs I should eat so that I can run and lose weight? You know, how do I fuel for these long runs?
You ask me all these amazing questions. And so I’ve put all those answers together into this program. I want you to become more. That’s why I’m talking about this today. I honestly don’t care if you purchase this or not. That’s fine. If you want to make that investment into yourself, I think that’s an amazing choice for you to make.
If you don’t, I think that’s fine. I know that this program is life changing and it will get you the results that you want. If you want to go and enroll right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/course and you can get right in.
I want to quickly address a couple of common reasons why people choose not to do something like this. Because I’ve gotten some. I’ve been on some phone calls with people. And we’ve talked about coaching and stuff. And here’s, here’s a couple of the things that they tell me that I want to share with you, because you might be thinking the same things.
The first is, I’m not ready for this, maybe later. How many times have you wanted something? You know, you want to lose the weight, but you’ve said, You know what, I’m just not ready, maybe later. Maybe later is like the number one killer of people’s hopes and dreams.
How long have you wanted to lose weight? Probably a long time. How long have you wanted to change how you feel about yourself? Probably a long time. I don’t want later to turn into never for you. So that’s why I’m curious or encouraging you to take action today.
That’s why the enrollment for this program is only open for a few days, because I want you to just make the decision now. Just do it, I want this for you, I want you to want it for yourself. Because you deserve this, you’re worth it. Your long term health and happiness is worth it. And so I’m encouraging you to just make that decision. Now, don’t say later, do it now.
Another thing people say is I’m just gonna figure this out myself. I’ll just go figure it out, I’ll you know, go on Google, or something. And I’ll just try to figure it all out. And that’s fine, you can do that you can save a few dollars and spend all your time struggling to try to figure it out yourself.
Or you can just spend that little bit of money now. Save yourself all that time, all the effort, save yourself from all that struggling to figure it all out yourself. skip all that skip all the struggle, strip out, skip all the overwhelming confusion and learn it from somebody who’s already made all the mistakes and figured it out.
Because I’ll have you know if you can simply pay a couple hundred bucks and have all this figured out for you is not a no brainer, I think it is for me. I gladly pay for courses, where someone else has spent years learning what works and what doesn’t, figuring it all out, putting together a system or a framework that shows you exactly how to do it all, then I can come along and just pay a few hundred bucks and boom, I get the whole system.
I don’t have to deal with all the struggling, I get instant access to all those years of knowledge. It’s like boom, knowledge download instantly. I love that and I gladly pay for that all the time.
And another thing people say that I just want to address is they’re like, you know, this sounds good. Patrick, I totally agree with you. This sounds amazing, but I just can’t afford it. And I just want you to know that if you’re listening to this now, and you’re thinking about this, and you’re thinking I really need a program like this, because I haven’t been able to do this on my own.
But you think oh, I don’t think I can afford this right now. Here’s the thing, here’s, I’m going to tell you something that is probably the most important thing you need to hear about losing weight about becoming the best version of yourself.
If you feel like you want to enroll in this program, and you think you can’t afford it, then you’re in this place called desirability versus feasibility meaning that you desire to lose weight, to become a fat-adapted runner, to be healthier, and to become that amazing, happier, more confident future version of yourself. But you don’t think it’s financially feasible for you. So what you do next, will ultimately determine what happens in your life. Because thinking it’s not feasible, is actually a form of self-sabotage, that you probably didn’t even realize you’re doing until I just pointed it out to you.
Here’s the truth, you have to ask yourself this vital question to determine whether or not you really want to become that fat-adapted runner or whether you want to really lose weight. And the question is this: am I going to be 100% responsible for my own health and happiness, or am I not?
You know, that’s where you are today. Because you’ve done the things you’ve always done. And if you really want something to change in your life, if you really want to lose the weight and become a lean runner, then you have to do something different. You have to choose to make that happen for yourself.
So the question isn’t, can I afford it? The question is, how can I be 100% responsible and make this happen for me? If you choose to do nothing here, that’s fine. Just means you aren’t willing to get out of your comfort zone. It means you’re probably driven by fear. And you’re probably not going to get there, you’re probably not going to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, which is fine.
You’re just going to probably continue to struggle with your weight, just like you’ve always done. So let’s go back to that important question you have to ask yourself right now, are you going to be 100% responsible for your own health and happiness? If yes, then just enroll in this program. It’s a no brainer.
Again, do you want more of your past or more of your future? My hope for you is that you choose to go all in on yourself, that you make the decision to become the person you’ve wanted to be for so long now that you take action now and start working on becoming more because your future self will thank you because you made this commitment today.
To enroll, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/course. Now, if you’re still unsure about whether or not this program is right for you join me in the Running Lean community on Facebook this Sunday at 4pm. I’ll be hosting a live q&a session where you can ask any question you want, I’ll answer everything for you. They’re cool. I really hope you’ll join me it will absolutely change your life. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, gonna talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
I think we’d all agree that running is hard. But for a lot of us, running can also be a very stressful, anxiety-inducing activity. I fell in love with running early on but then something …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 44 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. I think we would all agree that running is hard. But for a lot of us running can also be very stressful, and very anxiety inducing.
I fell in love with running early on. But then something happened that made me almost want to break up with running for good. So in this episode, I’m talking about running simply for the love of running without any other hidden agendas. I believe we should all run because we love it. Because if you don’t love it, what’s the point?
But first, if you like this podcast and you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic fun group of runners. It goes hand in hand with the podcast and I have a big announcement this weekend I am doing something I’ve never done before.
I am hosting a epic training event that you do not want to miss. It is this Sunday, October the I’m sorry, November the first and it’s called getting lean, how to transform your body into a lean fat burning machine so you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it all last a lifetime.
I’m basically sharing my six part coaching framework for becoming a lean running machine. This is the exact framework that I use with my coaching clients. I’m pulling back the curtain. I’m sharing it all with you. Again, that is this Sunday, November the first, I can’t believe it’s November already. Sunday, November the first 4pm Eastern time.
Just go to Facebook, type in Running Lean community, you’ll find us you’ll see the the event that I created for this training that I’m going to be doing. It’s all free to join, just come check us out. It’d be really, really cool.
All right, let’s talk about why I’m talking about this subject today. So today, I’m talking about one of the principles of the Running Lean manifesto. So a few months back, I created the Running Lean manifesto, which is a set of guiding principles.
A manifesto is basically a set of values to live your life by these principles that I laid out are my guiding principles. They are my North Star. And I want them to become your north star as well. I want them to become your guiding principles as well.
A manifesto is a good way to see where you are. It helps to give your life meaning and purpose. I believe that we should all have a manifesto to live by. The Running Lean manifesto is this: number one, eat real food. Number two, live vibrantly. Number three, thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And number eight is be an example of what’s possible.
So I’ve been sharing these the last few episodes. And I’ve got a few more here. I’m trying to take a little bit of a deep dive into each one of these principles. And my goal sharing this with you is that I hope you adopt these as your guiding principles as well.
So the Running Lean community is a vibrant, growing community of passionate runners and we share common goals. And this mentor manifesto was really like our collective Northstar. It’s principles that can drive us forward together. It’s a blueprint that we can all use to become the best versions of ourselves together.
So today, I’m sharing the fifth principle from the Running Lean manifesto run because you love it. So I’m going to start by talking about why I first got into running. So some years ago back in 2003. I was very overweight. I was sick. I was drinking too much. I actually was dying mostly with cancer. And this scared the crap out of me.
I made this decision though, and I obviously, you know, got better. You know, I had surgeries and got through cancer and all that stuff. But I made this commitment to myself that I was going to try to be as healthy as possible. And so I changed my diet, I stopped drinking and, you know, really the, the thing that really propelled me into being the healthiest person that I could be was running.
And the first thing I did with running is that I set a goal for myself and I wanted to run a local race here in Cincinnati, the Thanksgiving Day race, it’s one of the oldest Thanksgiving Day races in the country. It’s been going on for like 110 years or something like that. And it’s a 10k, no big deal, right.
But 6.2 miles running that far without stopping seemed impossible to me. But I was determined to make that happen. And so I started training, and I remember training in the fall. But this time of the year, you know, it’s the fall here in Cincinnati right now. And we have these beautiful leaves the change colors on the trees, there’s leaves on the ground, there’s this crisp, clear air, it’s cooler out, and it’s just, it’s a cool time to be outside running.
And so this was like my first time out there being alone running. And it just felt so good. I really did fall in love with running at this time. It was hard. Yeah. And I had to dig deep, but I had to push myself and I had to run farther than I’ve ever run before.
But I had this goal in mind, I was gonna run 6.2 miles without stopping. So I was training for this little fun little 10k. And I did it, I finished it. And in that process I became more. And it really was a jumping off place for me because training for this 10k taught me that I could do hard things. And I wanted to see what else I was capable of.
So a couple of years later, I decided I was going to run a marathon. And I started training for the Flying Pig marathon, which is our local marathon. It’s a great race. Super fun, by the way, hard, hilly, but fun. So I was training for the 2006 Flying Pig. And I trained on my own. I downloaded some sort of training plan from the internet.
And I gotta tell you, that was very challenging to do all the training for a marathon on my own, I really had no idea what I was doing. But I was reading everything I could. And my longest run for that marathon, the longest run I was able to do was only 16 miles because during the process, I was overtraining.
And I ended up getting injured and I had like stress fractures in my tibias. And the doctor was like, you can’t run and I’m like, well, I’m still going to run. I took a couple of weeks off. But I never got to the 18 and 20 mile runs because I had this injury and I had to take some time off.
Anyway, I really wanted to do this thing like I had trained for it. And there was like nothing was going to stop me from finishing this race. Okay. I loved the training though. I loved being out there. And I was by myself. I loved being out there by myself running.
Again, I was like falling in love, deeply in love with running. And then the day came for the marathon. I was super nervous. And I just remember, during the race, like during the run, I was, you know, going through all these neighborhoods around Cincinnati, and I just remember like, everybody like being so happy and cheerful and cheering us on.
And it just felt so amazing. And then crossing that finish line was like one of the most amazing, transformational moments of my life. I cannot describe the feelings of elation, and joy and accomplishment when I crossed the finish line of my first marathon.
In that moment, I knew immediately that I wanted to do this all the time, like I was going to run this marathon every year. And that’s what I set out to do. And I did and I became a marathon runner. You know, this became part of who I was. And, you know, I just kept falling deeper in love with running. It became you know, part of my identity.
I eventually did something very smart, which is I joined a running group, a local running group which changed everything for me because now I had people to hold me accountable. You know, I had this group that was going to show up a couple of times a week and meet and run.
We would do hill work, speed work, interval training, we would do these long runs on the weekends. And I needed to show up. So I had this accountability. I made friends in the group. In fact, some of the people that I was in this group with had become my lifelong best friends.
You know, I was inspired by watching other people do hard things. I wanted me to do more. It encouraged me to see other people doing these big epic, ultra runs and other things and are running faster and I wanted to become faster. I wanted to run with the faster people.
You know, I had these goals of like PR in every single race, I wanted to always, you know, improve my time, every single race. So I started pushing myself faster and pushing myself to go farther. I started doing triathlons. Then I did an Ironman, I started doing ultra marathons and then did like a 50 miler and 100 miler, and this went on for years.
At some point, running started to become less of a love and more stressful. I was always competing with myself and with other people. I was always comparing myself to other people, or maybe to who I used to be. I was always trying to push myself to go faster, further.
And I started to kind of get burned out by the whole thing, I started to have some nagging injuries. And I was putting my body under a lot of stress, all the time. And I fell into this kind of pattern of chronic cardio, which I’ve talked about before, which is where we run hard enough to be over our aerobic threshold.
So we get into that place where we start to stress out our body, but not super hard, like where we’re sprinting. And so it’s this kind of no man’s land of like, you know, it’s too hard to do for a long period of time, but it’s not hard enough to do for. To make it easy. In other words, like it’s just you’re in this like stressful state of running, and called chronic cardio where you just are putting a lot of stress on your body.
And I was putting myself under a lot of stress, I felt like I had to run like running was something I had to do. And all this time, I was using running as a way to help me lose weight, or maintain my weight at least. And I was eating a plant based diet, I was running a lot. And I was always afraid to ever ease up on the running because I’d gain the weight.
And I saw this happen every single year. After every fall marathon I did, I would scale back on the mileage for a few months, you know, like we do kind of the offseason, so to speak, right. But I would always like gain 5 or 10 pounds.
And this isn’t just me, a lot of people have the same experience. And then once the next spring marathon training season started in the summertime in January or whatever, I would start to lose some of the weight but not all of it.
And so this was a cycle for me, you know, year after year, I would eventually find myself gaining weight not being able to lose all of it until I was like 40 pounds overweight. And running was no longer working to help me lose the weight or maintain my weight. I couldn’t run enough to lose the weight that I was gaining. I was trying though I was desperately trying.
But here’s the thing, you can’t outrun a bad diet, say this all the time. And just know that you are not alone. I hear every single day I hear from people who share this same kind of story. They run all the time, and they can’t lose weight or they started running and they started gaining weight.
And if you’re listening to this right now and you’re kind of nodding your head, then just know that you are not alone. You are one of the millions of people who have tried and tried unsuccessfully to use running as a way to just lose weight or maintain your weight and it kind of works for a little while until it doesn’t.
And here’s why. I’m gonna explain kind of what’s going on here. There are many, many reasons why running is not a very effective way to lose weight. I’m just going to share a couple with you here. Number one, when you run, your appetite increases, you know your body’s always trying to maintain homeostasis, maintain kind of neutral.
And when you run and you burn off a lot of calories and stuff like that, your body’s like, hey, we need to replace those calories. So it increases your appetite. And a lot of times you end up eating more to compensate for the calories that you have, you know, lost during running. And a lot of people overcompensate right, they over eat in that situation.
Also know that running does burn some calories, but not as many as you think. And when you do use running as a way to burn calories, the progress is slow. And it’s kind of minimal. And there’s something very interesting going on here. And there was this study that they did, from 1982 to 1997.
So a long study is a very well controlled metabolic ward study. Actually, there were four different studies done during this time. And they all sort of had the same conclusions. The studies showed significant reductions in resting metabolic rate, after subjects exercised for several weeks at a time.
So when people who want to lose weight who maybe are a little bit overweight, when these people do more than an hour of endurance exercise daily, their resting metabolism actually declines on an average between 5 and 15%. This is crazy, right?
Again, your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis. So when you burn a lot more calories every day, consistently, your body is going to slow your metabolism the way you know the rate at which you burn calories, it’s going to slow your metabolism, so you don’t waste away to nothing and die.
So to think that you’re just going to keep running, and everything else is going to work exactly the same. Like every time you know, you eat 500 calories and you go run five miles, you’re burning 500 calories. Exactly. It just doesn’t work that way. And especially with the resting metabolic rate going down when you exercise more.
So that’s kind of another issue, why it’s very difficult to use running alone as a way to lose weight. Another reason is that runners are notorious carb addicts, right? Runners are known for eating a lot of carbohydrates, right.
And we know that when we eat a lot of carbohydrates, our bodies are in a fat storage mode, our you know, our insulin gets high, and we just can’t let go of the fat, we can’t burn the fat when we’re eating a lot of carbohydrates, we burn the sugar very effectively. And that’s great, you know, but you’re not getting to burn the fat, we’re not putting our body into fat burning mode, we’re staying in fat storage mode, when we keep eating the massive amounts of carbohydrates.
Another thing to consider here is that running is only treating a symptom, you know, you’re trying to burn off excess body fat that’s stored on your body by you know, exercising more. And we’re not really treating the underlying causes of weight gain.
So what is causing the weight gain in the first place? A lot of it has to do with hormonal issues, carbohydrate addiction, there’s mental issues, there’s emotional things going on, there’s issues with overeating. And when you look at all of this, when you look at all these things I just mentioned, you can see why running alone is just not a very effective way to lose weight.
It just isn’t now I have people that will argue with me about this all the time, they will challenge me and tell me I’m wrong. And tell me how by just running, they are able to lose all this weight. And they say it’s all about calories in versus calories out. And if that works for you, and you’ve had some good luck with just like that, whatever. That’s totally awesome. Seriously, nice work.
If you can just cut calories, or, you know, keep eating all these carbs and run more and it helps you to maintain your weight to lose weight, then more power to you keep it up. But for the majority of us, running alone does not work to lose weight period. I have tried this for years.
And I can tell you with 100% conviction that this does not work. And I talk to people literally every single day who say yeah, Patrick, I totally get where you’re coming from. I didn’t know what the problem was either until I figured it out.
Okay, so that was a little tangent I went on just to explain why running is not a great way to lose weight. All right, but all of this stuff that I’m talking about here, I didn’t know all this by the way and in trying to run to lose weight was really stressing me out, you know, I kept running more and more and more, and I kept gaining weight.
You know, my clothes were not fitting me anymore. I was getting close to that 200 pound mark again, which was, you know, something I never want to see again. And I was like, right there. I hated how I looked in the mirror. I was beginning to hate running, because running had failed me.
You know, I thought running was stupid. And it was hard. And it was hard work. It doesn’t work. It was creating all this stress and anxiety for me. And I was thinking I should just break up with running, I should just quit. What is the point seriously?
Maybe my best running days are behind me anyway, so why bother. So this was sort of a dark place I was in, you know, I was ready to break up with running. But then early in 2020, I decided that I was going to do something about my weight. And I knew that running wasn’t helping. And I was running every day for a while there to try to maintain my weight. And it was not working at all.
I needed to change my diet. You know, I needed to figure out how to fix this weight problem. I began learning everything I could about running and weight loss and how it all works together, and began following all these leaders in the field of exercise physiology and sports nutrition. I started reading books, listening to podcasts, I attended seminars, I got all this training, I got training on sports, nutrition and training on weight loss.
And I learned that, you know, weight loss is like 90% diet and 10% exercise, you know, exercise helps a little bit. But really, it’s like almost all diet. So I ditched the carbs. I ditched the plant based diet, and went back to just eating real food. And the weight began melting off of me.
And I started to look good again. And I started to feel good about myself again. And I started to have more energy again. And something else interesting started happening. Running was becoming easier again. And I started to actually enjoy running again, you know, I stopped trying to use running just as like a weight loss tool.
And it became something different for me, I started to run regularly again, running became a very important part of my life again. So one of the reasons why I’m sharing all this with you right now is because I dedicated my life at this point to helping others. I figured this out, and I want to share it with others. And that’s basically how I got here.
You know, running was important to me, it started to become something that I needed to do for my own mental health for my own sanity, you know, running helped me to get through my divorce. It helped me to get through the early days of COVID, you know, through job furloughs and all kinds of other stuff.
And I really began to love my alone time running, it was just me and my thoughts running through the city, running along the Ohio River, running through the parks and old historic neighborhoods here in Cincinnati. And it became this like, helpful meditative time for me. It was like my time, my quality time.
Sometimes I’d listen to podcasts, sometimes I’d listen to trainings and coaching calls and things like that. I was always learning or I was getting inspired, or I was getting motivated. And sometimes it was just me with no headphones, I was just out in nature, focusing on the rhythm of my breath and the sounds of my own feet, touching the ground.
I began to really fall in love with running again. And it felt a lot like it did back in 2004 when I was training for that first 10k. Same kind of feelings were coming up from me again, I was excited about running. I was pushing myself again. I couldn’t wait to get out there to get my heart pumping, to get the blood flowing, to get my lungs working, to start the surge of all the adrenaline and the endorphins and the dopamine.
For me running is like far better than any mood altering drug. And I know I’ve taken a lot of them so I can tell you that it’s better than anything else. And I love when people say this, they say running is my therapy. I love this idea, right? Just like therapy.
Running helps you to feel good about yourself. It helps you to build self confidence and self esteem You know, running helps us to improve our sense of self, our self awareness, running helps us to then connect with others better. And just like therapy, running can help mitigate depression and anxiety.
You know, running makes us feel better about ourselves, we feel happier. Running can help improve our focus and concentration. So we can actually be more productive at work or at school. You know, running is just this amazing stress reliever for a lot of us.
So what I when I say run because you love it, here’s what I mean by that. Don’t run, just to try to lose weight, right? That’s going to cause you all kinds of unnecessary stress, and it doesn’t work very well. Don’t run because you feel like you have to, because then that’s just that makes running feel like a chore.
You know, don’t run to prove something to other people. You have nothing to prove to anybody else. All you have to do is prove something to yourself, what can you do? What are you capable of for yourself, run because it feels good to run. Run because you want to become more through the process of running. Run because you love running.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever push yourself or have goals. I want you to have goals, I want you to go for that PR run, run as fast as you can, you know, try to run your fastest race. Run further than you ever thought you could. If you’ve done a half marathon before and you’re like you know, I really want to do a marathon, do it.
Set your sights high, aim for more, see what you’re capable of. I want you to blow your own mind with what you can accomplish. Just do it in a way that serves you. Do it in a way that feels good to you. Love the process, love running throughout all of it.
Because if you find running is beginning to stress you out and it’s causing you all sorts of unnecessary anxiety. I’d encourage you to just take a good look inside. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Answer that question. That’s a good question. Why do you run? And if you do find yourself, getting a little stressed out about running, there are some things you can do. You can leave your watch at home and just head out and run untethered. No phone, no watch, just go run, run free. Run through the woods, instead of running on the sidewalks, go find a trail.
Oh my gosh, that is like my happy place to be running on trails alone in the woods. I love it. Maybe don’t take any earbuds with you, just focus on your breathing and the sound of your feet hitting the ground. Or if you’re the kind of person that usually doesn’t use music or whatever, maybe bring some earbuds, listen to music, listen to a podcast, learn something, listen to something that makes you laugh, or maybe get lost in a story.
I do this all the time. I listen to podcasts and I listen to stories. And sometimes they just get lost in this story. And it just feels so magical. I kind of forget that I’m even running. Not really, but kind of, but maybe use that time out there alone while you’re running. It’s just you and your thoughts and you could use it as a time to be thankful to give thanks for everything that you have in your life.
You know, be thankful for the sounds of the birds and the trees and the and the fact that you have a sidewalk to run on or maybe a dirt path beneath your feet. Be thankful for your health and for the people in your life. Maybe use this time to meditate or pray. Whatever you choose to do, however you choose to, love running. I want you to choose to love running.
That’s my encouragement for you this week is to fall in love with running. You can still crush your goals you can still go for that PR you can love running, and PR your next marathon. You can love running and crush that goal. You can love running and push yourself faster and further than you’ve ever run before.
You know running can still be uncomfortable. It can be hard but you can still love it. I want to encourage you to fall in love with running again. Run because you love it. Because running is where you truly find yourself. It’s in the running that you become more. I will be diving into the other principles of The Running Lean manifesto in the upcoming episodes and you can go back to the episode I did called eat real food.
And that’s where we start talking about these principles. I think these principles are so powerful and so important. And, and I hope you’re getting something out of this. I really truly do. And then be sure to join me this Sunday, November the first at 4pm. Eastern time for a little event I’m doing in the Running Lean community on Facebook. I’m sharing it all with you guys.
I got something big, big to share with you. Cool. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. We will see you there on Sunday, the first at 4pm. That is all I have for you today, my friends, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
Most people are afraid of being uncomfortable. I think this is a real shame since getting uncomfortable is the only way to achieve anything worthwhile in this life. But it happens all the …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 43 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I want to talk about how to embrace discomfort. Most people are just afraid of being uncomfortable. Let’s face it. I think this is a real shame, though, because getting uncomfortable is really the only way that you’re going to achieve anything worthwhile in your life.
But I see it happening all the time, people will willingly trade away their big goals and their dreams just so they can avoid any kind of discomfort just so they can stay comfortable. Here’s the thing though, the only thing that stands between you and your goals is the discomfort of getting them. So in this episode of the podcast, I will explore what it means to embrace discomfort, and why it’s such an important factor in achieving everything you want in your life.
But first, let’s talk about the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic, encouraging informative group of like minded runners that goes hand in hand with this podcast. And I have a big announcement for you. If you are not currently part of the Running Lean community on Facebook, I would encourage you to jump in there as soon as you can, because I am doing something next Sunday November the first that I’ve never done before.
And you have to be in the group in order to check it out. I’m doing an epic training event. You will not want to miss this. The event is called Getting Lean, How To Transform Your Body Into A Lean, Fat Burning Machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it all last for a lifetime.
So I’m sharing my proprietary kind of six part framework for becoming a lean running machine. This is the exact framework that I use with my coaching clients. I’m pulling back the curtain. I’m sharing it all with you.
That will be Sunday, November the first at 4pm, Eastern time in the Running Lean community on Facebook, it’s free to join, you have nothing to lose. You do not want to miss this event though. It’s going to be awesome. So just go on Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And join us on Sunday, November 1 For this epic event. Okay, let’s talk about our Running Lean manifesto.
So today, the principle I’m sharing with you is to embrace discomfort. So what is the Running Lean manifesto? Well, a few months back, I created a list of things that were important to me: my guiding principles. So a manifesto is a list of guiding principles, it’s a set of values to live by, these guiding principles have become my North Star.
As long as I’m following these principles, I know I’m living the kind of life that I want to live in that I’m heading towards my goals. And I want to share this with you because I want you to adopt this as your guiding list of guiding principles as well.
So your manifesto is a blueprint that you can live your life by. It’ll help to keep you on track, help you keep moving in the direction of your goals, your dreams, everything that you want to achieve. So it’s just, it’s always easy to see where you are by checking out where you are in accordance with these principles.
Am I where I’m supposed to be? Am I following these principles? Yes or no? It’s pretty easy to know. Okay, if so, following this list of principles, having this manifesto actually gives my life meaning and purpose and drives me forward.
So here’s what the Running Lean manifesto is. Number one is eat real food. Number two is live vibrantly. Number three is to thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And number eight to be an example of what’s possible.
So I’ve been sharing a few of these. And over the next few episodes, I’ll share the rest of them taking a little bit of a deep dive into each one of these principles. And again, my hope is that these become your guiding principles, too, that these help you to create the meaningful life that you want for yourself.
So today, we’re talking about the fourth principle from the Running Lean Manifesto: embrace discomfort. And I did an episode a few episodes back called Embracing The Suck, episode number 35 of the podcast, which is just a different riff on this same topic, but it’s definitely worth checking out.
I got a lot of good feedback from that episode. But it will help to round out this whole idea of embracing discomfort. Okay, so let’s get into this. Here’s the problem as I see it. We all expect life to be comfortable all the time. We want to stay comfortable.
And this kind of makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, we as humans have evolved to avoid pain and seek pleasure. And this served us really well, as we were evolving as humans, as we were hunter gatherers.
When we were faced with an actual danger, like a saber toothed Tiger, we were programmed, we’ve programmed our brains to run away, that served us really well. It kept us alive. Understanding that there’s danger. And you know, wanting to avoid that danger, wanting to avoid pain, and seeking pleasure is good. It’s a good thing.
But today, there’s no saber toothed Tiger. But we still see danger all around us. Right, we see danger in work stress, we see danger and fear in the way people talk to us. We see danger in fear in people’s comments that they make online. Our primitive brain still wants to avoid pain, and is always trying to seek pleasure.
So we’re always still trying to kind of feel good all the time. Even though there isn’t any real danger out there. Or a focus of our energy is always on just being happy all the time, if that is our only goal in life, just be happy all the time, feel good all the time. The problem here is that this is not the way life works. This is not reality.
Reality is different. Reality is this life is kind of 50/50 when you accept only the good stuff in life, and you reject all the quote unquote, bad stuff in life, you are basically miserable 50% of the time. So 50/50 means that half the time, life’s gonna be pretty good, you’re going to feel good things, you’re going to kind of go your way, and the other half the time, not so much.
Things aren’t going to go your way, you’re not going to feel good. You’re going to experience good emotions, about half the time. And then you’re going to experience some negative emotions about half the time. That’s just the way life is. 50/50 means that we embrace all of it though, because this is what it means to be a human being.
The human experience is not just feeling good all the time. The human experience is experiencing all of it, the good and the bad, not just the good stuff. Okay. When we only accept the good and want to reject all the bad, we are in so much turmoil. We put ourselves through so much turmoil, because we’re not accepting half of the way life is. Okay.
Here’s an example from my own life. Honestly, every day when I wake up, I feel some level of discomfort. And no, not just because I’m 53 years old. I wake up and I feel some amount of fear and anxiety every day, because I have to show up. I have to show up to coach people, to create this podcast, to run my business, to run.
You know to go out there and run miles and miles. I have to show up to work out to stay fit. I show up every day in a way that I want to practice all of these principles and everything that I do. And I have to say that it’s not always comfortable, it is uncomfortable. So I wake up and I feel uncomfortable.
And I’m putting myself out there, you know, especially as a person who does a podcast with a following, and a big Facebook group, you know, I’m putting myself out there every single day. And here’s the thing about me, I’m an introvert, this is not comfortable for me. It’s not.
But you know what? I do it anyway. If I rejected discomfort, I would just stay in bed all day and watch Netflix. That’s comfort for me. That’s easy. That’s what’s safe. That’s what feels good. But that’s just my primitive brain, trying to avoid the pain and seek pleasure. That is not what I do.
Why don’t I just do that? Why don’t I just stay in bed? Why don’t I just watch Netflix all day? Why do I put myself out there like this, even though it’s uncomfortable? Here’s why. Because I decided that my job is to make a difference. My job is to be an example of what’s possible.
My job is to become more, to create change. Do you think I could do that? Do you think I could do my job if I’m in bed watching Netflix all day? I wish I could. But that’s not how this stuff works. That’s not how life works. It’s because I want more for myself. It’s because I want to become more that I’m willing to embrace this discomfort of putting myself out there.
Because that discomfort, that’s what it takes to become more, that’s what it takes to get there. Discomfort is the price you have to pay. If you want to achieve more. The cost of achieving your goals is discomfort. You cannot be, do, or have more without experiencing some amount of discomfort. You just can’t.
You know if being, doing, or having more was comfortable, you’d already have it. If it was easy, you’d already have it. Everything you want, but don’t already have lies outside of your comfort zone. And it’s precisely because it’s so hard and uncomfortable. That makes it so worth it. I know I hate how that works, too. But that’s the way it works.
Losing weight is hard. It’s an uncomfortable process to go through. No one would disagree with that. But when you embrace the discomfort instead of rejecting it when you put in the work, and you get to that goal. What an amazing accomplishment. What an amazing feeling that is.
I put myself through a lot of discomfort this year, getting to my goal weight. So I’ve told this story before but you know, I had put on like 40 pounds over the last couple of years. Even though I was eating what I thought was a great diet. I was eating a plant-based diet. But I was addicted to sugar.
So earlier this year, I was like I have to figure this out. And so I did all the research, I read all the books, I listened to all the experts, I attended seminars, workshops, I got training on not just the physical aspects of weight loss, but the mental aspect and the emotional side of things, too.
I went all in on creating change for myself. And honestly, this was a very uncomfortable period for me. I stopped eating sugar, and carbohydrates. Basically, I stopped eating processed foods. And I even went back to eating meat again, which was a whole nother uncomfortable place to be. This was a big decision for me, by the way.
And I did a whole podcast about that. Because it was a big uncomfortable thing for me to go through. So you can check that out when I can’t remember what number that is, but it’s called why I decided to start eating meat again. But I did all of these things.
And all of these things, you know, not eating sugar, not eating processed foods. Going back to eating meat again. All these things went against everything I was believing in up to that point. It was a very uncomfortable transition period for me. But I knew that the only way through it was to embrace the discomfort and go all in on it.
And here’s the thing, we runners, we are pros at embracing discomfort seriously. We do it all the time training for a marathon. Come on, that is a very uncomfortable thing to go through. Running every day, maybe you’re doing a run streak and you run every single day. That’s uncomfortable. Getting up early in the morning and running in the cold, or the rain or the snow, or the ice or the heat of the summer. I mean, just getting up early every Saturday morning to run. That is uncomfortable.
We put ourselves as runners, we put ourselves through all kinds of misery on purpose, we get super uncomfortable. We willingly suffer through months and months of training, just so we can say we ran a half marathon or a full marathon or an ultra or whatever your goal is.
I remember training for 100 miler a few years back, and I put in the training, it was like a year long training now, but you could probably do it shorter. But that’s how long I chose to do it. So I trained like for a year. And at the peak of my training, I was doing 30 mile runs on Saturdays, and then 20 mile runs on Sundays.
That’s uncomfortable, to be honest with you. Runners are pros at embracing discomfort. Right? We do it all the time. We’re good at it. We actually brag about it. But here’s the crazy thing. As soon as I suggest that, maybe you stop eating sugar, so you can actually become a super healthy human being and maybe lose those extra 40 pounds you’ve been carrying around. You’re like, oh, this is too hard, Patrick, this feels uncomfortable.
And I just laugh because I’m like, this is ridiculous. You’ll happily endure 17 weeks of marathon training and all the discomfort that comes with it: the painful, long runs in the dark, the black toenails, the sore legs, the long hours out in the elements, the blisters, that chafing, GI issues, all the struggling, all the suffering. You’re all in on all of that. All that discomfort, 100%. No problem.
But when I say like, hey, maybe quit eating sugar. And you do and you experience a few moments, a day where you’re having a craving like, I could probably go for something sweet right about now. And those cravings actually go away after the first week or so by the way. But when you experience a little craving for something sweet, you’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t do this. It’s too hard. It’s too uncomfortable.
Why is there such a disconnect there? Why do we have such a cognitive dissonance when it comes to this? This is fascinating to me. I believe that it’s all about deciding what’s important to you. You know, my best guess is that you’ve made marathon training, your number one priority, which is fine. That’s an important decision. And it’s a big goal. And it takes a big commitment.
So you made a decision at one point that you’re gonna go all in, you’re gonna run a marathon. And here’s your training schedule, and you are all in on that decision, no matter what, no matter how much discomfort you are going to experience, you are crossing the finish line on this date.
You know, when you run your marathon, you decided at some point that embracing the discomfort of training and of running that race was the price that you had to pay to reach that goal to get across that finish line. What if you decided that you were going to go all in on losing that weight? What would that look like for you?
What if you committed to that goal, the same way that you commit to training for a marathon? What if you decided to go all in and actually just embrace that discomfort of losing weight? How would you show up differently? How would you show up for yourself? What would you start doing differently? Maybe what would you stop doing? Because here’s the thing, you get to decide.
My suggestion for you is that you choose discomfort, whatever that looks like for you. But my suggestion is that you choose discomfort and go for the big stuff. Because you already have all the easy stuff, all the simple stuff. I want you to go after more. I want you to go after all that stuff that lies outside of your comfort zone. Be more, do more, have more, become more, just know that there’s a price that you have to pay to get it and that price is discomfort. That’s it. It’s just discomfort.
Next weekend, I am running a marathon. And the reason that I’m telling you this and that it’s a big deal for me is because about two years ago, I decided that marathons were too hard. I had run 14 marathons, and I was like, marathons suck, right? They’re too long, it takes too long for the training. These runs are way too painful.
You know, plus, you know, you’re out there all day. I decided that I was going to stick to half marathons, you know, you get it all done, like two hours, you never have more than like a 10 or 12 mile training run. You know, after your marathon after your half marathon, you can still walk the next day, like, I could justify all these reasons why I was going to just stop doing marathons and go back to just doing halfs.
And a few months ago, I was out running with some friends. And they’re all talking about creating this marathon in the Fall here and running a full marathon. And I was like, Yeah, you guys enjoy yourselves. You’re crazy. I’m not in. No, thank you. I’m just into halves now.
But then I really started to think about what it is that I really wanted for myself. Did I want to stay comfortable and small? Or did I want to see what I was made of? Did I want to push myself? Do I want to become more?
I decided that yes, I wanted to be more, I wanted more for myself. I didn’t want to settle for the comfortable. I didn’t want to settle for the easier, softer way. I wanted to prove to myself that I can still do hard things. And that meant that I had to embrace the discomfort and go all in. So I started training for a full marathon.
This will be my first full marathon in over two years. And I’m really excited about doing this by the way. It’s going to be fun, I feel good about where I am and in all of this. But I made a decision that I was going to be an example of what’s possible when you embrace discomfort.
So I’ve done all of my runs in the fasted state. That means no food for like 12 hours or so before the run. I’ve taken zero calories, have taken in zero calories during the runs. So I’ve done several 16’s, several 18’s, 20 miles with zero calories and no problems at all, tons of energy. Because I’m fully fat-adapted. And I feel like I’m virtually bonk proof at this point.
And I’m gonna run 26.2 miles in a week. Fasted, zero calories to show you what’s possible. And I have to tell you, I’ve been feeling amazing. I’m kicking ass on my runs, even at 53 years old. That’s right. But here’s the thing.
If I chose during my life if I chose to stay comfortable. If I choose not to embrace discomfort, I would never know what I was capable of. If I had chosen to stay comfortable in my past, I wouldn’t have quit drinking. I wouldn’t have done an Ironman. I wouldn’t have run 100 miles, I wouldn’t have lost 40 pounds. I wouldn’t be running a marathon next week.
If I constantly chose comfort, I wouldn’t be here talking to you on this podcast right now. I’d be at home on the couch watching Netflix wishing that I was more wanting to be more, but instead just staying comfortable and safe instead.
So here’s my call to action for you for this week. I want you to embrace discomfort. What does that look like for you? I want you to think about that and then go all in on the discomfort. be uncomfortable. It’s okay. Please go for the hard stuff too. Don’t go for the easy stuff.
That’s simple stuff that’s like right there within your reach. That easy stuff that’s not where the growth is. Go big. Embrace all the discomfort. And I’ll leave you with this thought: discomfort is temporary, but becoming more is forever.
All right, I’ll be diving into more of these principles from the Running Lean manifesto in the upcoming episodes. So this is really fun sharing this with you guys by the way. And don’t forget next Sunday, November the first I’ve got this epic event that I really want to share with you.
It’s called Getting Lean: How To Trasnform Your Body Into a Lean Fat Burning Machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it last a lifetime. I’ll be sharing my coaching framework for becoming a lean running machine.
That’s over in the Running Lean community on Facebook Sunday, November the first 4pm Eastern, just search for Running Lean on facebook and join us. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
