29. The Ultimate Guide to Fruit

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is the Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode number 29 of the Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray and I am the weight loss coach for runners. And I just noticed that the Running Mind podcast is currently ranked number 31 in the iTunes podcast directory in the sports category.

And that is really, really cool. It’s right up there with like a couple of CBS Sports and fantasy football, podcast and ESPN podcast. So I am very humbled by this, I’m very grateful. That’s really cool. It’s not something I’m trying to do. It’s just, I think this message is resonating with a lot of you guys out there. So thank you for checking it out.

And if you have a chance, if you want to leave a review in iTunes, do that. I would be really eternally grateful for that just to say hey, you know, love it, give me you know, some stars, whatever you think is good. I’d appreciate it. But that’s really cool. We’re getting up there.

Okay, so today I want to talk about fruit, we’re talking about all things. Fruit. Fruit is one of those things that we just assume is good for us. And we should be eating a lot of fruit. Eat your fruit and vegetables. That’s the message we get told all the time. But should we be eating all those fruits?

You know, we check the labels on something. And we’re like, Hey, check this out. It’s got fruit juice in it, this must be healthy. But is it really healthy? How much fruit should we be eating? And what role does fruit play in this whole long distance running thing? You know, what about all those vitamins and essential nutrients that we need in fruit? Don’t we need those? Does fruit help us or hurt us if we’re trying to lose weight?

So all these questions I’m going to be answering today in the ultimate guide to fruit. And if you haven’t already, be sure to come and check us out on Facebook, we got this really engaging community on Facebook, the Running Lean community. It’s a group that goes hand in hand with this podcast.

And right now we’re in the middle of July. And we are doing a no sugar challenge for the month of July. And people have been getting a lot of great results from that. And it’s been a lot of fun. The questions that people are asking are great. The results people are getting have been great.

People are actually saying they’re losing weight just by cutting out the sugar, which is amazing. I mean, that’s kind of the way it works. I know it’s crazy, right? But you know, people are asking questions like what kinds of fat should I be eating? You know, how do I fuel my long runs without all the sugar or how much fruit should I be eating? Hey, we’re going to be talking about that today.

And the best part is the community aspect of it. So we all support each other, encourage each other and it’s fun. And here’s a recent comment from someone in the Facebook group from Libby. She says, “Your Facebook Lives and your podcasts are a bit blessed. Your Facebook Lives and podcasts are packed full of information I never knew. And I’ve done a crapload of challenges. Thank you for giving me skill power.”

Love that. Thank you Libby. Thanks for being a part of the group. You are amazing. You’re doing all the work I’m just over here yep on my gums and barely able to even form a sentence apparently. But there are many amazing people just like Libby in the Facebook group. So come check us out. It’ll be fun. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. Okay.

Also something is very important want to talk to you guys about which is that our next masterclass begins in just a few weeks here. So starting Monday, August 3, the next Running Lean weight loss masterclass for runners begins.

It’s a six week intensive training to teach you exactly how to become a fat-adapted runner, which just means getting off the sugar and running on fat which you can run on forever. It’s an amazing, transformational program. You will become leaner, you will get stronger, you will learn how to be able to run faster, and run longer.

You’re going to learn how to change your whole relationship with food, what you eat, how you eat, and running is going to be fun again for you. And if you want more information about that just go to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass.

I only accept a small number of people for each class but I want to keep it small and intimate. So if you want in on this go to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass and apply you have to apply for this program. It’s not something I just, you know, sell. It’s something that I want to talk to you about and see if it’s a good fit for you. Okay, so before it sells out though, definitely go over to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass.

Okay, let’s get into fruit, The Ultimate Guide to Fruit, that’s we’re talking about today. So first of all, what is fruit? Fruits are seed bearing the seed bearing part of a flowering plant. So it’s the structure of a flowering plant that actually holds the seeds for that plant. So fruit is how flowering plants spread their seeds.

Fruits are typically semi sweet, they’re delicious. They encourage animals to eat them. And since they don’t really digest the seeds, the seeds are then dispersed by the animals. And then the plant has successfully reproduced out in the wild. So that’s the purpose of fruit. The purpose of fruit is to propagate the plant species, okay.

They’re delicious because we want to encourage animals like us to eat them. And so what are some of the different types of fruits so, some of the fruits that you can get would be pom fruits and these are like apples and pears. These are different like fruit categories.

Okay, another category would be citrus so we know all about that lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, clementines and so on. Then we have melons which are like watermelons, cassava melons, honeydew, cantaloupe, those are all the melons.

There are stone fruits, otherwise known as drupes, which are peaches, nectarines, cherries, qualms, apricot, mango is a stone fruit. Coconut is actually considered a stone fruit. And then we have berries, berries or blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, loganberries, strawberries, gooseberries, cranberries.

And then here are some that I did not know were berries, tomato is actually a berry, avocados are considered a berry, bananas are considered a berry, grapes, cucumbers, eggplants, papaya, and those are all berries and then pineapple, which is considered a whole group of berries that have been fused together. Which is fascinating. So berries can, you know consists of a huge swath of different types of fruits.

Okay, so those are like all kinds of different types of fruits and there’s many many more I’m just like going over some of the high level ones here. But let’s get into kind of the history of fruit so the fruit that we know today is very, very different from what it used to be.

Fruit has been modified extensively, really just in the past few 100 years and it’s been modified to make it sweeter you know. Fruit has been selectively bred to contain more sugar and to make it denser, and include more of the sugary part of the fruit itself. Okay, so fruit didn’t used to be so sweet. It didn’t used to be so dense and it didn’t used to be so big either.

So fruit used to be pretty sour, some of it kind of bitter, and a lot smaller. So some of the very interesting research I did looking into this was some of the way the fruit has evolved over time. So for instance, the peach you know, just a few hundred years ago, peaches were like the size of a cherry, very small.

And the stone inside was you know, rather large compared to the size of it, even larger than a cherry seed would be. And so there was very little flesh and they were somewhat bitter. And then you know, over years we’ve bred them into what we know today, which is juicy and a very sweet thing, right?

Bananas are another one. Bananas used to be these short, stubby little things, and full of these very large seeds with very little edible flesh on the inside and they weren’t super sweet. The bananas of ancient times were way different than what we know today. Like we selectively bred these things to be elongated. And for, you know, the seeds that have become teeny tiny, and they are incredibly sweet.

Now, watermelon is another good one. So watermelon in the old days used to have a lot of this white inedible structure on the inside. So if you cut up on a watermelon, you know, today, it’s like all red, right? And then you got some black seeds in there. But in the old days, you could open a watermelon and there was like mostly this white structure with these small little pockets of edible red flesh, and lots of large seeds. So very, very different than what we know today. O

ne of the most fascinating ones, though, is corn. So the corn kernels are actually considered fruits. And corn was first domesticated, like 7000 BC. So corn has been one of those things we’ve been dorking around with for like thousands of years, literally. Okay.

But back in those days, corn kinda looked like a green bean, it was like an elongated little thing, it was about the size of your finger, maybe your little finger like really kind of narrow and long. And it had like five to ten of these hard kernels that were dry, then they tasted like a raw potato.

So they were like very, very different, kind of the starchy fruit or vegetable back in the day. But very different than what we know today. The average year of corn today has around 800 kernels. And we’ve, you know, genetically modified this corn over the thousands of years to contain tons of water and tons of sugar.

So corn is incredibly sweet. And obviously, they use it for all kinds of things now. But those are just some examples of how fruit is not fruit today, it’s not what it used to be. And I mentioned all this because the way we evolved to eat fruit was very different than what we’re eating today.

The fruit they were eating just a couple of hundred years ago had way less sugar in it. Okay, the high sugar content in fruit is a relatively new thing. It’s like a modern invention. It’s not unlike Coca Cola.

And here’s the thing, the food industry is going to do whatever it takes to sell more food. And they’re very good at this. So they do whatever they can to make food as pleasurable as possible. To the point of, you know, creating something like that peach we’re talking about, which is so sweet and so juicy and so large, where just a few hundred years ago, it was just a tiny little thing that wasn’t that sweet, but they make this food, they modify it until it becomes so desirable that we crave it like a drug.

You know, we do and, and fruit is basically you know, it’s got a lot of sugar in it. And so when you tell somebody like hey, you may want to like cut back on how much fruit you’re eating. It’s like saying Christmas has been canceled this year. You know, people don’t want to hear that, you know, they love their morning smoothie with their strawberries and banana in there.

Or, you know, they like their glass of orange juice or whatever. And here’s the thing, I’m always advocating for eating real food over anything processed, or anything modified. I want to eat real food the way we did, you know, even as early as a few hundred years ago.

You know, you can get into the whole debate about, you know, the Paleo thing and how we evolved over thousands of years. And there’s a lot of truth to that. And I do adhere to a lot of that as well. Like I believe that we evolved as humans to eat all kinds of different foods. And I think in the last couple of hundred years, we’ve changed so much.

The food has changed so much that we are no longer eating the food that we evolved to eat or eating something that is completely new and different and not always good. Okay, so I’m always advocating for eating real food over anything that’s been highly modified or heavily processed.

And I would say that fruit falls into this, you know, heavily modified category If I just do, so yeah, I’m canceling Christmas this year. Okay, so what about all that nutrition and food, Patrick? Don’t we need to eat fruit to get the nutrition that we need? An apple a day and all that, right?

Here’s the thing, most of the calories and fruit come from sugar. 5 grams to 20 grams of net carbs, or sugar is pretty typical and most fruit per hundred grams. Okay, so fruit is basically between 5% and 20% sugar. And this is not necessarily a good thing. It’s not terrible, but you know, it’s not like eating, you know, table sugar.

But you know, let’s say you eat five servings of fruit in a day, that’s roughly like a 16 ounce can of soda. If you follow this podcast, and you’re into this low carbohydrate, high fat kind of living, you probably don’t drink soda, I would imagine, I’m guessing. And so eating that much fruit is the equivalent of, you know, drinking a can of soda.

So I would say that the nutrition you’re getting from that is not going to be all that awesome. So what about the fiber? Well, fiber is often touted as one of the reasons why we need the fruit we need the fiber, right? But there’s lots of other sources of fiber, like we can get fiber from nuts and seeds and things like flaxseed meal and psyllium husk.

And then all sorts of vegetables like dark green veggies, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, dark leafy greens, like spinach, and kale, all kinds of ways of getting fiber. And here’s the one that people always throw out. They’re like, well, while we do have to eat fruit for the vitamin C, though, right?

It’s like no, you really don’t. You know, you’re not gonna get vitamin C deficient. Like, do you know anybody that has scurvy? No, I think we’re gonna be okay there. But there are tons of sources of vitamin C out there. Like from the animal kingdom like organ meats, like liver and kidney, huge source of vitamin C, tons of vegetable sources, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, like green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, cabbage, kale, all this stuff has tons of vitamin C.

And then the other essential vitamins that we need, as humans, you can get from things like meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and these are actually, these sources actually provide more essential vitamins than most fruits and vegetables. So you’re not going to miss out on, you know, vitamin C, you’re not gonna get scurvy, and don’t have to worry about that.

And you’re gonna get, you can get all the nutrition you need, with really not eating any fruit, if that’s the way you want to go. Some of the problems with fruit is like, number one is the sugar content, you know, especially when you take fruit and you turn it into juice. So that glass of orange juice that people drink in the morning, I’ve never fully understood that. It is like pure sugar. So let’s say you take an orange, you know, so you’ve got an orange, let’s say it’s a big, you know, juicy orange, and you peel that orange, let’s say you take four of those oranges.

And you say, here you go, eat these four oranges, I think people would have a hard time knocking back four oranges. Like it’d be hard to eat that and kind of fill you up, right, and you get the fiber and all this other stuff, you get the same sugar content or whatever. But you know, you get all that fiber, you’d be pretty full.

But if you take a glass of orange juice, which is like four to six oranges and the juice of four to six oranges, the sugar of four to six oranges without the fiber. People can knock that back in 10 seconds. No problem. And your body just doesn’t really see those calories, it doesn’t recognize those calories. And you know, it spikes your blood sugar like crazy.

Insulin goes up and you start storing fat, like it’s a bad thing. Like the the fruit juice is, is really bad. And so stay away from anything that says fruit juice, especially if you’re looking on ingredients and it says contains real fruit juice. You know, like they’re trying to tell you that this is healthy, but it’s the way they hide sugar.

They’re basically saying this contains sugar. And so they use the word fruit juice to make it sound healthy when all it is is just pure sugar. And since fruit contains so much sugar, it will increase your hunger just like eating any other carbohydrates. You know fruit is a carbohydrate. It’s a type of sugar. So, sugar turns on the hunger hormone ghrelin, like it doesn’t turn that off, like, so you’re going to be, your hunger is going to increase when you eat more fruit.

Eating a lot of fruit increases cravings for more sugar like it increases your sugar cravings, because it does this thing where it like kind of releases dopamine, it turns on that part of your brain that makes you feel good that’s kind of wired for addiction. And if you haven’t listened to my last podcast on whether or not sugar is addicting, definitely listen to that, because it’s pretty eye opening.

But you can get into this vicious cycle of eating fruit and then craving more sugar, whatever that looks like for you. More carbohydrates, and then you’re in that cycle of high insulin and all that eating a lot of fruit slows fat burning, because you can’t burn fat when sugar’s in your system.

So when your sugar is high, when you have a lot of glucose in your system, your body cannot access your fat for fuel. If you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat. And you can either burn one or the other, they don’t work simultaneously. So you got to blow through all that sugar. And then you can start losing, you know losing weight by burning the fat.

So eating a lot of fruit will slow down the fat burning, which will mean it will take longer for you to lose weight, if at all, you may even gain weight if you’re eating too much fruit. And then, of course, it takes longer to become fat-adapted. And if you want to become a fat-adapted runner, which is an amazing thing, let me tell you, this is like life changing, you’ve got to get the sugar out of your system, you cannot keep eating the sugar and the carbs, you just can’t.

And then the sugar makeup of fruit is very similar to drinking a can of Coca Cola. So Coke is like 50% glucose 50% fructose, that’s the ratio of glucose to fructose in that, and fruit is very similar. It’s like exactly the same, you know, it’s a one to one ratio of glucose fructose.

And just for comparison, like high fructose corn syrup is basically just a little bit higher. It’s like 55% fructose to 45% glucose, so it’s just a little bit higher. So for the most part, when you eat any type of sugar, any type of carbohydrate, your body kind of reacts the same way, whether it’s table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, french fries, or an apple, that sugar, the carbohydrate gets turned into glucose, your blood sugar goes up, insulin goes up, your body goes into this fat storage mode where it’s, you can only use so much of this glucose for energy. So stores most of us fat for use later. And then you start gaining weight.

And this is just the way our bodies work. You know, our bodies were not designed to eat that much sugar, they’re just not. We didn’t evolve over the last 10 or 50,000 years to eat this much sugar. You know, this is a new thing. So, again, it’s like if your goal is to lose weight, if your goal is to become a fat-adapted runner, then you’ve got to stop eating all the sugar.

And that includes fruit. And I know it just you know people love their fruit, they love their blueberries, they love their bananas. And I’m just telling you like, you got to choose one or the other. You can either eat their sugar or you can lose the weight, but it’s really, really hard to do both.

Okay, so what fruits are good and what foods are bad like this is probably the part you’ve been waiting for. Okay, so, in a simple, in the most simplest way here, like the best bets for you would be berries: strawberries, blackberries, raspberries. These are going to be fruits if you have to eat fruit, you want to you know go down that path.

Go ahead, eat some fruit. Stick with strawberries, blackberries, raspberries. Those are gonna be your best bet. The highest sugar content fruits or like the worst ones, the ones you should probably just stay away from would be things like apples, bananas, grapes, mango, kiwi, pear. All those are very high in sugar, and blueberries. I didn’t know this. But blueberries have about the same amount of sugar as pineapple pineapples, very high in sugar content too.

And if you guys are interested, I have a graphic that I will put on the show notes for this episode, which you’ll find at therunningmindpodcast.com/29. And I’m also going to share this graphic. I actually did share it already in the Facebook group of which fruits have you know how many carbs per 100 or grams, or whatever.

So it kind of breaks down which fruits are better to stick with and which ones you want to stay away from. But blueberries really surprised me because I’ve always heard the blueberries are like one of these low glycemic fruits, you know, and they’re fine. And so I was eating a lot of blueberries. And, and then I realized that it’s like basically eating pineapple, which is like one of the highest in sugar. So blueberries are actually not awesome.

Okay, strawberries are a good go to and this is what I do. So every now and then, I eat a little bit of strawberries. So I did cut up some strawberries, and I put a little dollop of this full fat, plain Greek yogurt on top and maybe throw a handful of macadamia nuts on there. And this feels like an indulgent, satisfying dessert.

You know, it’s got a little bit of sweetness, but not a lot. It’s not a lot of sugar content, it might have something like 10, or 12, net carbs of net carbs of sugar or whatever. It’s a, it’s mildly sweet and the fat in there, when I throw a little bit fat on there, it helps me to not overeat. And it actually can kind of reduce the glucose response a little bit.

And anytime I eat fruit, I do it with a meal. Or like right after a meal, I don’t do it as a snack. I don’t ever snack on anything, maybe once or twice a day. And that’s it. And then all eat this kind of thing, this little strawberry yogurt, macadamia nut, little treat, I’ll do this as like part of my quote unquote carb loading the night before a long run, where I might eat like 200 grams of carbs, which is not a lot.

But this helps me to, you know, it provides a little bit of glycogen. But it’s nutrient dense glycogen and, and nutrient dense carbs, which gives me the kind of glycogen that I want for a long run the next day. So I might eat a few sweet potatoes, wild rice, quinoa or something like that, that lasts longer. It’s slowly released. It’s not a ton of glucose.

So you’ll kind of burn through it quickly, and it’ll help you to maintain the fat-adaption. So if you’re one of those kinds of people that’s like, you know, I just have to have something for my long runs, I just have to have some sort of fuel for my long runs, then fruit is really not a terrible option.

You know, I would say it’s better than drinking Gatorade or sucking on all those gels, which are just pure sugar. So some options for you, if you have to take something on the long run would be like bananas, dates, oranges, grapes, like I’ve done all those things before, and it’s fine. But just keep in mind that when you do this, when you’re taking in the sugar while you’re out there running, you won’t be accessing your fat for fuel.

So you’re always going to have to, like keep taking more sugar basically, or more fruit or whatever it is that you’re doing. So, you know, let’s say you’re running a 50 miler,you’re gonna have to grab a banana at every aid station, you know, every couple of miles so that you can keep that sugar, keep your glucose levels tapped up, or else you’re going to kind of end up bonking.

And, and then eating this stuff, like while you’re running can cause GI issues with people too. So it’s better not to eat anything when you’re running. You know, if you can do it, you know, use your own fat for fuel. This is the whole thing about becoming fat-adapted and why it’s so amazing.

But when you have all this when you have to keep eating stuff while you’re running, your blood will move to the stomach to help in digestion and it moves away from your extremities where you want it. You want it in your legs and your arms. And you don’t need to waste all that energy digesting all these sugary fruits.

Actually fat and protein are better sources of fuel when you’re running, especially once you become fat-adapted. You know I’ve done 50K’s on nothing but almond butter. And it’s amazing. So the bottom line – fruit is not what it used to be. It’s changed a lot in like the just the last couple hundred years a lot more sugar. And it’s basically fruit is basically just like eating sugar now. Okay, so it is sugar.

Is fruit a real food? I would say no, I think it’s something that’s been highly modified recently. And I don’t think it’s something we’ve evolved to eat the way it is today. For the most part, you don’t really need it. You can get your vitamins and your fiber from better sources. If you do eat some fruit, just do it sparingly a little bit here and there. It’s fine. It’s kind of a nice treat every now and then if you do want something a little bit sweeter, that’s not too bad.

You can do something like I suggested with some strawberries and some Greek yogurt. And you can use fruit as part of your kind of carb loading that you do the night before a long run, which could help a little bit, I would stick with low sugar fruits like, you know the strawberries, blackberries, raspberries.

But here’s the most important thing, experiment, do it, try something and see if it works for you or not. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t change it up, but there’s only one way to find out. You know, the stuff I talk about on here is all suggestions. And it’s all up to you to kind of try and see what works for you.

So you might be one of those kinds of people that does really well by eating, you know, a lot of fruit on your long runs, and all through the week. And this is the way you do it, and it’s fine and you’re losing weight, you feel great, you’re super lean, you’re super fast. Awesome.

But if you’re one of those kinds of people that’s trying to lose weight, or you have a lot of GI issues or you know, you’re you’re just not feeling it, you can’t go as far as you used to be able to go or you want to try to, you know, complete this ultra run and you just can’t do it like, you know, cut it out and see what happens. You know, let’s, let’s stick with the path.

Okay, so experiment. See what works for you. There’s only one way to find out and that’s to try it, see what happens and then let me know. So join us over in the Facebook group, the Running Lean community on Facebook, and then remember, our next masterclass begins in just a couple of weeks, you’re going to learn exactly how to become a fat adapted runner in just six weeks time, you’ll lose weight, you’ll run faster, you’ll become a stronger runner, you’ll become bonk proof, you’d be able to run those long distances without ever having to worry about taking all this sugar or about bonking.

So to find out more about that just go to innerfiretribe.com/masterclass. Well, that’s all I got for you today. As always, lots and 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, are 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 Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and you’ll learn the three secrets of losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become a lean running machine.