Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you have a big goal like losing weight and keeping it off, then you know it is going to take a while to reach that goal. One of the main reasons people don’t reach their weight loss goal is that …
Continue Reading about 244. Motivation Strategies to Keep You Moving Forward →
So many people I talk to about losing weight or running faster tell me they just can’t seem to make any progress because they feel stuck. This is a really tough place to be because when you feel …
Continue Reading about 237. What to Do When You Feel Stuck →
When it comes to creating healthy habits that last, the real key is consistency. You have to take consistent, aligned action if you want to create behavior patterns that get you results. And the …
One of the big keys to achieving anything significant in your life - losing weight and keeping it off, running a marathon - is confidence. Being confident that you can accomplish something big will …
Continue Reading about 229. How to Have More Confidence Now →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 229 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, How To Have More Confidence Now. So one of the biggest keys to achieving anything significant in your life, like losing weight and keeping it off, or running your first marathon is confidence.
Being confident that you can accomplish something will make that accomplishment practically inevitable. However, the opposite is also true, a severe lack of confidence will basically make it impossible for you to reach that big goal. So how do you get more confidence?
Well, you know, you are in luck, because that’s what’s on the agenda here today. In this episode, I’m going to explain what confidence is how it might just be the game changer that you’re looking for, and how to have more confidence now.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, losing some weight, improving your running, and you want some guidance and support to help you get there, I want you to consider coaching, coaching works where other methods don’t, because it’s not about a diet. It’s not about a premade exercise program.
It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do it on your own. That’s you learning how to do this on your own at one point, in our coaching relationship, I want you to say Patrick, I don’t need you anymore. That’s then my job is done.
You have to be able to do this stuff on your own. It has to be something that is sustainable for you long term because you know, there is no finish line. Being healthy, losing weight, improving your running, improving your fitness, your health. It’s not a destination you’re trying to get to it is how you live your life from here on out. And I want to teach you how to live your life that way.
Okay, we want this stuff to become easy and effortless for you long term. And I can help you get there. If you want to hit the easy button on all this stuff on your weight loss goals, your running goals, we can work together, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. And we will work together and I’ll show you how to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today how to have more confidence now. So confidence is one of those things that can be a real game changer for you. And if you’ve ever set out to do something, maybe that you’ve never done before, you’ve probably lacked confidence at the beginning of that process.
And as you have accomplished things in your life, as you have gotten out of your comfort zone, and you’ve done things you might think well, that’s how you build more confidence. And that’s part of it. You have to understand something though that confidence comes from within. It is something that is created by you. It doesn’t come from anybody else. It doesn’t come from out there nobody bestows confidence upon you, you have to create it.
So confidence, if you look up the definition, it says it’s a feeling of self assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities, a feeling of self assurance. Confidence is a feeling. And what do we know about feelings? Well, feelings are created by your thoughts. feelings don’t come from out there. Feelings are created by the thoughts that you think.
So if you want to create more of a certain feeling, then you need to think certain thoughts. You need to change your thinking perhaps here’s a little experiment that you can do. You want to start feeling a little bit more confident right now. Just think about a time where you were extremely confident to think about that time a specific point in time in your life, where you are so freaking confident about something.
Go back there right now in your mind. What was the situation you’re at? What were you thinking? What were you doing? What were you seeing what were you hearing? What are you saying, you know, what were you feeling internally, and feel that feeling of confidence.
And you can feel confident right now, when you do this, it’s kind of interesting, right? By the way, you can do the same thing with all kinds of emotions, you want to feel angry, just think about something that pisses you off, you’re gonna feel really angry right now, don’t do that. But this is what we do.
A lot of times, we feel hurt by someone. And we keep replaying that over and over in our minds. And we just continue to feel hurt and hurt and hurt, even though that thing happened years ago, decades ago. So anyway, feelings are created by your thoughts. So you have to start looking at the way you’re thinking about things.
So one thing that I like to say is that if you, if you think that you can do something, then you probably have the confidence that you can do it. If you feel like, or I’m sorry, if you think that you cannot do something, then you’re going to feel like you can’t do it.
So our thoughts will have a big role to play in how we accomplish things. And thoughts create those feelings. So we got to look at the thoughts that are creating the feelings of confidence. So for example, if you have confidence that you can stick to your diet, plan and lose weight, and you think to yourself, here’s the thoughts you thinking, I can do this, I can stick to my plan, I’ve got this, I’ve done hard things before, then you are far more likely to stick to that plan and lose the weight.
On the other hand, if you firmly believe that this is never gonna work for you, because you know what, nothing ever works for me, I’ve tried everything, nothing works. It’s never worked before I always fail, I always fail, I always give up, I always quit. How is your confidence? Zero, it’s, it’s 0.0, you are very likely to give up and quit. And those thoughts that you’re thinking are going to become true for you. Those thoughts that you’re thinking, when you feel really confident and you think this might work for me, I’m going to I think I can do this, those will become true for you as well.
Another good example is if you are somebody who has run some half marathons, right, and you’re thinking about running a full marathon, but you lack so much confidence that you can run a full marathon that you will probably never even sign up for that race, because you just don’t have the confidence that you can do it. You don’t believe in yourself, you don’t believe that you can do it. Zero confidence.
So running a full marathon is probably never going to happen for you. Even though in your mind, you might think that is something I really want for myself at some point. So we need to we need to change our thinking, okay.
Henry Ford, I love this quote one of my favorite quotes ever. He said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
So what that says to me is that it’s all in your mind. It’s all in your mind, whatever you want to accomplish, we got to look at those thoughts that are creating the feelings. And confidence is one of the keys to helping you achieve anything of importance in your life, anything big especially.
But when it comes to achieving bigger goals, running a full marathon losing weight, losing like 40 pounds, if you want to lose 40 pounds, that’s going to require some work and some time, and you have to keep your head in the game. And you have to have the confidence to get you there.
Running a full marathon is going to require some confidence for you to get there. lacking confidence is going to keep you stuck. It’s going to keep you thinking small. When you don’t have any confidence, you’re not going to venture out of your comfort zone, you’re not going to try to push yourself to do something that’s hard. Because you don’t have the confidence that you can do it.
But when you build the confidence over time, you will see that your comfort zone will begin to grow. You can keep pushing past your comfort zone, you keep taking action even when things get hard. You still take the action that you need to take you show up for yourself in a much different way.
You’re no longer stuck, you’re free. You’re not thinking small, you’re thinking big. So these are all the reasons why we want to work on our confidence. We want to build our confidence.
So some of the ways we do this. Number one, we want to focus on how far we have come. So everything that you’ve already accomplished in your life needs to be on a list somewhere everything hard you have ever done that you maybe didn’t think you could do, but you did. Or you surprised yourself, or something that you’re proud of anything that you’ve accomplished in your life, just put it on a list somewhere.
And every now and then you need to take that list out and read it. Because we want to be focusing on where we have come, we want to focus on how far we have come not on where we are not.
We spend too much time focusing on the gap, the gap between where we are today and where we want to be in the future. And there’s a gap there, I want to lose 40 pounds. So the gap is the 40 pounds, the gap is running a full marathon, I’ve never done that before. And we focus on the gap. And it’s a negative place to focus on because it’s where you are not, you’re not there yet.
And if all your focus is on where you are not, it can feel incredibly frustrating. And it will kind of strip away your confidence. Instead, you want to focus on the gains, not the gap, focus on the gains, what have you done? What have you already accomplished? Write that stuff down, you want to make sure that this is something that you are constantly focusing on.
And then as you accomplish new things celebrate those wins, we celebrate wins in our coaching group all the time, we always want to talk about wins. Because it’s important to give equal airtime to the things that are going well in our lives and the problems.
A lot of times, we just want to focus on the promise, well, here’s what’s not working. Okay, that stuff is fine. But what is working, let’s talk about that as well. It shifts the conversation, I’m telling you, and I see it in people, it shifts their whole posture, their personality shifts a little bit when they start talking about everything that’s going well. So focus on how far you have come this right here.
If you just did this one thing, this would be enough to help you to start building all the confidence that you need. Okay, but we’re going to do more number two is to take aligned action, even when you don’t feel like it. So confidence comes from taking action and getting results. Because when you take aligned action, and you get results, you start to see that ha this might actually work for me.
Oh, I was able to stick to my food plan over the last two weeks. Great. And I lost a pound. That’s interesting. So you’ve taken aligned action, you’re seeing some results. And you’re like, hmm, actually maybe this will work for me. And so you start to feel more confident, because you’re taking action.
Even sometimes when you don’t feel like it, sometimes you don’t feel like sticking your food plan, I get it. Sometimes you don’t feel like going for a run, I get it. But if you stick to the plan, you’re going to get the results when you get the results, you feel more confident that you can keep going and you want to stay in that cycle.
You want to stay in the cycle of small actions, giving you small results, tiny little actions that you’re taking every single day that are gonna give you tiny little results. And those Tyler results deliver a little bit of confidence. Okay, so confidence is something that builds slowly over time. It does not happen all at once.
People think that it’s like flipping a light switch, like all of a sudden, you’re gonna get confident, and you’re going to be able to do everything and it doesn’t work that way. You have to create it. And it takes time you build confidence slowly, over time, like a habit, you know, habits take a long time, some people will say 30 days, some people say 90 days.
You know what? I just was doing a little bit of research on this. And then the experts out there really say that habits take as much time as they take. And it’s different for each person. And it depends on the habit and all these other factors. So there’s no number, but it takes time.
Let’s just all agree to that. Like it takes time to build a good habit. Just like that it takes time to build confidence, right? It’s not a light switch, you’re not just flipping on confidence and like then then you’re good to go.
So it looks like this, it looks like you keep showing up for yourself. You keep taking the action and you start getting little results. And this builds a little bit of confidence with each little win. And we acknowledge those wins. Sometimes they’re pretty small. That’s okay.
Feeling more confident, though, will actually make it easier for you then to take more aligned action. This is how we start to build a ton of confidence. We do it slowly over time, little by little when over when day after day, week after week, month after month. And then eventually you’re gonna get to this place where you just have all the confidence that If you need to achieve anything that you want.
Think about it like this. This is exactly what we do when we’re training for a marathon. So if you’ve only run a half marathon, the farthest you’ve ever run is 13.1 miles, and you start getting into marathon training, you’re probably going to feel pretty confident until you get to mile 14. You know, when you see that number 14 on the calendar, you’re like, oh, my long run is 14 off, I’ve never run that far before, that might feel a little daunting.
But you know, it’s pretty close to 13. So it may not be that bad. And then you do it. And then the next time it’s going to be 15. And then 16, 18, 20 miles, 22 miles. Like that’s where things start to get real for you. You know, how confident are you in week one of your marathon training? My guess is not very confident.
How confident are you by week number 16? After doing all the work, though, so you show up, week after week, you do the work, you do those long runs, you show up even though it’s hard. But you show up for yourself, you keep taking the aligned action, and you start getting the results. You’re hitting all these runs, you’re doing fine.
So how confident are you in week 16? I’m gonna say probably very much confident in week number 16. Right? It’s a game-changer. And listen, you guys with the running, you got this part down, you do. But when it comes to the food, people are like, well, it’s different. It’s not different.
Listen, think about losing 40 pounds as your marathon, okay? You’re not ready. In week number one, like you’re not going to have the confidence you need in week number one of your new food plan, right? You have to show up for yourself daily, stick to the plan, every day, even on the weekends, even on vacation.
Okay, maybe you indulge a little bit on vacation, I’ll give you that. That’s cool. But then you get back on track again. And you start to see the weight dropping, you lose a pound every week or so maybe more, maybe less, whatever. But you’re seeing results, because you’re showing up for yourself and you’re doing the work day after day, week after week, just like you do with your marathon training, it’s no different.
And then by week number 16, or 18, whatever of your new nutrition regimen, you know, you’re like, this is actually totally working for me, I’ve lost 20 pounds already, I’m feeling amazing. Running is better than ever, you’ll eventually get there, you’ll get to that 40 pound weight loss goal, if you don’t quit.
If you keep showing up for yourself, if you keep celebrating the wins. That’s that just take that same approach that we take to marathon training, copy, paste that over here to your food plan, and boom, you’re good to go. That’s how you do it. That’s how you build confidence. Okay.
The last part of this is that we will experience failures in our journey. Whether you’re training for a marathon or trying to lose 40 pounds, I’m telling you right now you’re going to experience some failures along the way.
We have to rethink failure. Because past failures can strip away your confidence that can erode your confidence if you continue to think about them as failures, or if you continue to think about yourself as a failure. Right? So for example, you know, you don’t stick to your food plan. Maybe this goes on for a few days, right? Big shocker.
Listen, everybody does this at some point. Maybe you just had a stressful week of work, whatever you there’s all kinds of excuses you can use. I always tell people that we don’t use those as excuses. But I’m just telling you, this is what people tell me.
Oh, I had a really stressful week of work. And so I couldn’t stick to my food plan. Yeah, you could have stuck to your food plan, but you chose not to because you were stressed out. And that’s how you deal with stress. You use food to deal with stress. Okay, that’s what’s really going on there.
But anyway, end of sidebar. So everybody does this. At some point, you gain a few pounds. This is just normal. It’s part of the process, right? But here’s what happens. A lot of you, you beat yourselves up. You feel like a failure. You say things like, this is never going to work for me.
I always do this. It’s too hard. I can’t do this. You’re thinking these things. You’re believing that this is never going to work for you. That is just a confidence killer right there. Okay, you didn’t fail. You learned what not to do. You learned that doing it this way doesn’t work for me. Stress eating does not work for me. How do I get through that?
You look at your little failures as learning opportunities. If you don’t, you’re never going to improve. You’re never going to get there. You’re never going to lose the weight and be able to keep it off, we have to look at our failures as learning opportunities. What’s the lesson to learn from that situation you’re in?
You have to learn how to persevere. Because listen, you are not a failure. You failed at that one thing that one time. Okay, big deal. Let’s learn our lesson, we get over it and we move on. Eyes forward, we don’t look back, we look forward. Every single success that has ever happened in the history of the world has been built upon a huge pile of failures.
What that says to me is that you cannot succeed without failure, you have to fail, failure is part of the process. And failures are never the end. So many people think, oh, I failed. So that’s the end, I’m going to quit no failures, just one more step on the path of success. It’s like one more rung on the ladder, that eventually leads to the top.
You have to climb all the rungs, you can’t skip any. So there’s going to be more failures ahead, by the way, so buckle up. Okay, so just to recap here, today, confidence, it’s a feeling that’s created by your thoughts, you got to work on your thoughts. We’ve got to stop thinking things like I can’t do this is never gonna work for me, this is too hard. I always stop all that.
Change your thinking, right? Start taking aligned action. Start doing things that are going to move you towards your goals. Aligned action means action that is in alignment with your long term goals. Start taking that action every single day, focus on everything you’ve achieved so far. Make a list of everything you’ve ever accomplished in your life that was hard, and go over that list regularly.
Remember that confidence builds over time. And we have to allow time for this process to take place. It’s not like flipping a light switch. Okay, and then anytime we do experience failure, and you will, you got to reframe that you got to look at it as a learning experience and not the end.
I have failed at so many things. So many times in my life. It’s ridiculous. And I keep showing up and I still fail at stuff. And I keep showing up for myself and I keep learning from those experiences and I keep moving on. Okay, and that is how you build confidence. And that is how you can create more confidence starting right now is just do the things I outlined in this podcast today. Cool. That’s your work this week. You got this. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
There are a lot of dieticians and weight loss coaches out there who preach the benefits of tracking your food. They suggest tracking every bite you eat, entering all of your food into an app each …
Continue Reading about 211. Should You Be Tracking Your Food? →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 211 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, should you be tracking your food? There are a lot of dietitians out there and weight loss coaches who preach the benefits of tracking your food, they suggest tracking every bite to eat, and drink all your food into an app every day. And then sticking to this routine for basically, forever.
And honestly, I’m not a big fan of this particular approach for many reasons, which I will share with you here on today’s podcast. So today on the Running Lean podcast, I answer the big burning question, should you be tracking your food? If no, why not? If yes, how should you do it?
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running, getting stronger. And if you’re new, if you’re just listening to the podcast, you might be like, oh my gosh, this is very overwhelming. I don’t even know where to start with all this.
If that sounds like you, totally fine, I got you covered, I created a free hour-long training just for you to kind of get you started with all of this. And you can check it out anytime just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on the link that says Free Training.
I created this hour-long training, it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, you’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset; all geared towards you the runner and everything that I teach here on the podcast, everything that I work on with my clients.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself here in 2024, then this free training is exactly what you need. runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, let’s get into this episode here, should you be tracking your food? So, I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve been talking to lately, and they’ve told me that they have worked with dieticians in the past, or coaches in the past, who have suggested that they track their food and do this very meticulously, and they have to track every single bite that they eat.
And they have to enter everything into an app, and they have to hit certain macro numbers and calorie numbers. And if they don’t do everything exactly perfectly, then they’re not going to lose weight, they’re not going to be healthy things are not going to work for them, okay.
And I understand sort of the concepts behind that and that they want to, you know, get people to this place where they’re eating exactly what they’re supposed to, quote, unquote, supposed to be eating. The amount of food they’re supposed to eat, eating the number of calories they’re supposed to be eating, the right percentage of macros, the right macro breakdown that they’re supposed to be eating.
And, and I understand that part of it, you know, you gotta be getting 1500 calories a day. And if you don’t, you know, you got to make up for it somewhere, so you got to make sure you’re getting exactly the right amount of calories every single day. Okay. So I understand that part of it.
The problem I have with this is that this is a very new concept in the history of human beings. You know, we have been around as some form of human being for around two and a half million years. And they’ve tracked us back to two and a half million years ago. And we’ve been growing and evolving in that span of time.
That’s a large span of time, think about that. Two and a half million years. For the 2.4999 million years, we did not need the Food Track. And we didn’t have all the obesity and overweight issues and the diseases, and the metabolic dysfunction and diabetes and all that stuff that we have today.
We’ve only been tracking food for how long, you know, maybe a few decades? We’ve only been using an app since we started using apps on phones, so maybe 15 years, 12 years, something like that. So in the grand scheme of things, I look at this and I kind of shake my head a little bit because I’m like do we really need to be logging everything into an app, and counting all of our calories?
And, you know, making sure we’re getting this exact right breakdown of macros every single day. And if we don’t do it perfectly, then we’re going to basically die. You know, and I just think this is a kind of a silly concept. I’m a big fan of going back to our ancestors and trying to mimic what they did.
What did they eat? How often did they eat? What kinds of foods did they eat? How much did they eat, I want to go back to that, I think that is a much better way of approaching your health and your fitness than, you know, looking at an app on your phone, and making sure you get a bunch of numbers, right? I just don’t think it is necessary.
Number one, I really don’t think it works for most people. Because is this something that you can do sustainably? Is this something you’re going to do forever? Do you have to now track all your food forever, or else you’re gonna like all of a sudden balloon up and gain a bunch of weight?
Because if so, there’s something very wrong with what you’re doing. Because we shouldn’t have to do that. So my initial take on this is that I think tracking your food, there are some benefits to it. And I’ll get into some of that in a minute here.
But I think tracking your food and logging all your calories, and making sure you hit all these numbers and stuff. I really don’t think it’s a sustainable practice. And remember, whatever you do has to be sustainable for you.
The right diet for you is the one that you can sustain. The right method for you when it comes to your nutrition and how much you eat and the kinds of foods you eat and what you eat, all that has to be something that you can do forever.
If it’s just something you’re going to do for a short period of time, and it has some benefits to it, and you can learn some things great, that’s fine. And just know it’s going to be a short-term fix.
But I’ve been hearing from a lot of people lately, who’ve been telling me that they’ve worked with other dieticians or coaches who expect them to track all their food and hit all these numbers every single day forever. And the other thing about this is that it’s not really teaching you much in the way of like, oh, these are the foods that are healthy for me, these are the foods that keep me full, these are the foods that work for me, you know, I feel better when I’m eating less often, or I want to get in tune with my natural body. And my body’s natural senses.
Like there are satiety sensors that we have in our body that tell us hey, we’re done eating, we’re full, don’t need to put any more food in us here. We want to get in touch with that. We want to get in touch with our hunger signals to understand, hey, you know what, I’m actually hungry right now.
Not just like, you know, I’m kind of bored. I’m like rifling through the pantry to see what crunchy salty stuff I can eat that will just satisfy my boredom or something like that. So anyway, I know I went off on a little bit of a tangent there.
But listen, the way we have been trained to like focus on calories and numbers and macros and all that stuff. I think there’s some benefits to that for a short period of time just to get some ballpark numbers and to get some awareness of what you’re doing.
But the real key here is that whatever you do has to be sustainable. And I don’t think logging all your food, every single bite you eat every time you you know, lick or taste something that you need to track and I think that is not a sustainable practice, okay?
Now, there are some benefits to keeping track of what you’re eating. And you don’t have to be super detailed about it. But if you’re keeping track of the foods you’re eating, let’s say you’re just keeping a food journal. I think this is a great first step for everybody. To start keeping a food journal just write down the foods that you’re eating as you go through your day, and you eat something you write it down.
If you have a snack in the afternoon, you write that down. If you have a bite of your kid’s cookie, you write that down, you just write down everything you’re eating for the day. If you do this for a short period of time, a few days a week, you are going to start to have a lot of self-awareness about what it is you are actually eating and not eating.
Because so many people are like yeah, I eat pretty healthy. I’m like okay, what does that mean exactly? Oh, you know, I eat healthy foods. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables and stuff. I’m like, okay, you don’t ever eat chips or crackers or cookies or french fries. No, I really don’t eat that stuff. Okay, well keep a food log and then you tell me what is really going on?
And then it’s like, oh, yeah, well, I did eat, you know, some ice cream from my kids. And then oh, yeah, we went to pizza. And then oh, yeah, I did eat a couple of large fries this week or whatever, it just starts to create a lot of awareness about what you really are doing.
And you’ve got to be honest with yourself, if you’re doing this food logging, this journaling. And people who journal their food, people who write down what they’re eating every day, they tend to make better choices, they tend to eat healthier, they tend to not overeat as much, they eat less often. And they tend to lose more weight.
So if you want to get started on a weight loss journey, I think one of the best things you can do is start keeping a food journal, and just writing down what you’re doing. So just create that self-awareness, that one little step right there will start moving you in the right direction, towards making better choices.
Because you’re starting to have this awareness of what it is you’re actually doing, as opposed to just thinking about it. Because when we think about it, and we’re disassociated with it, you know, we’re not writing it down in the moment, we can just remember the good stuff that we do, we don’t remember all those times we sneak the french fries, you know, from our kid’s plate, or the you know, dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets or whatever it is we’re eating.
And I suggest you do this in the easiest way possible. And easiest way for me would be to just write it down using a piece of paper and a pen, or a pencil in a diary or a journal or, you know, some sort of a notebook or something simple like that. Don’t make it more complicated, we don’t want our method of logging or journaling to get in the way of making it easy, it has to be something that is very simple for you to do.
So I used to keep this little tiny notebook, I would carry it around with me if I went out. And it was something that was very small. And then I would just write down what I was eating each day. And I did this for a long time.
And it really worked, it really helped me to begin to create better habits and make better choices around what I was eating and stuff like that. So it doesn’t have to be anything complicated, it can be as simple as just getting a little tiny notebook. And then write down what you’re doing every day as you do it.
You’ve got to do it like sort of in the moment, that’s the best way to do it. So keeping a food journal is great. But there’s even a better way of doing this.
So when you are logging your food after the fact, you are basically saying, here’s what I did five minutes ago, here’s what I did an hour ago, here’s what I did earlier today. And that is fine. And again, you’re starting to create a lot of awareness about what you are doing throughout the day, or what you have done throughout the day.
But there is a much more powerful approach, what we want to do is we want to set ourselves up for success ahead of time. And so I’m a huge fan of pre-planning your food, and writing down what you’re going to do ahead of time.
And one of the big reasons why this works is because you are making decisions in advance, you are making a decision about what you’re eating, but you’re doing it for tomorrow. So you’re you’re deciding today, what you’re going to be eating tomorrow.
And why this works is because when you make decisions ahead of time, you’re using a completely different part of your brain than when you’re making decisions in the moment. When you make decisions in the moment, you’re using that little tiny almond-sized part of your brain called the amygdala, which is one of the most primal parts of our brain. It is responsible for our fight or flight, our fear center.
It’s what’s responsible for our primal urges, like, you know, just like food, sex. You know, whatever feels good in the moment, those kinds of primal decisions, those kinds of primal choices that we have to make in the moment.
So we don’t want to be making decisions using that part of our brain because typically we’re going to choose whatever just feels good right now, we’re going to choose the thing that is the most pleasurable.
We’re going to think, you know, we’re going to choose the pizza if that’s what when we decide that we’re going to have if we don’t decide ahead of time and we have a pizza sitting in front of us, we’re going to decide to eat the pizza because oh my gosh, it’s pizza. It’s amazing. There it is. It smells good. I want that I’m going to eat it right now. Okay.
The other way of doing this is making decisions in advance. And when you do that you’re using your pre-frontal cortex, your pre-frontal cortex that is a modern thinking part of our brain. It’s the part of our brain we use to make good decisions. It’s our planning brain.
And when we use our pre-frontal cortex to make decisions, we tend to make good decisions, we’re going to decide ahead of time, we’re going to use our prefrontal cortex to say, I’m eating, you know, a salad and chicken for dinner tomorrow night, even though I know the kids are probably going to want pizza. And my husband will probably bring home a pizza, but I’m going to eat what I’ve planned to eat today.
When you make that decision ahead of time, you are much, much more likely to stick to that decision. In the moment, you’ve decided you’ve made a little promise to yourself ahead of time. And then when tomorrow comes, and that pizza is sitting there, you’re going to remember that you’ve made this other choice. And that’s what your choice is going to use, you’re going to stick to that plan.
This is where things really can start to come together for you. Because you’re planning ahead, you’re making good decisions ahead of time, you’re making this promise to yourself that you want to keep, because you don’t want to break a promise that you make to yourself, you do this all the time; you break promises to yourself, but it never feels good, right?
You plan ahead, you make a good decision, you make this promise to yourself that this is what you’re doing tomorrow. And then when tomorrow comes the day is so much easier, you don’t have to think about anything, you just do what you said you’re gonna do. You’ve got it all planned out, you know, when you’re eating, you know how much you’re eating, you know, the foods you’re eating, and then you just stick to that plan.
This is how you build any new habit. If you want to create a new habit, you have to change your thinking patterns, you’ve got to change your daily activities, you’ve got to change your actions and changing your actions is hard. This is hard work to do. And when it comes to food, this seems to be the hardest area for people to make, change and make change last. So creating new habits around food is a lot harder than say going to the gym every day.
If you’re somebody who’s like, okay, it’s a new year, I’m going to the gym every day, you might stick to that pretty religiously for a while. I know a lot of people, who end up quitting the gym after February or whatever the gyms are crowded in January, and they’re empty again in March.
But for some of you, you’re like, I’m going to stick to this new running plan, I’m going to stick to this new workout plan and you do it and you’re really good about that. Because it’s important to you and you do it, you make that plan ahead of time you write out your training schedule for the week, and then you stick to it.
Do the same thing with food. That’s all I’m asking you to do here. Do the same thing to food with your food. Just make sure that you are planning ahead. Know what you’re doing tomorrow, or the rest of the week, you can plan a week in advance, you don’t have to.
But when you do this, when you make this plan ahead of time, you’re gonna stick with a plan, you’re gonna start to develop a good habit around that you already have done it for running, you’ve already done it around your workouts at the gym.
And this approach works in all these different areas. It works for planning your workouts, it works for planning your strength session, you know, just decide ahead of time, what muscle groups am I going to work tomorrow, what exercises am I going to do? How many sets and reps write that stuff down?
You already plan your runs, you know what days you’re working out, you know what your runs are going to be like, you know when your long run is this weekend, right? You know what the workouts are, and you know the goal for each of these workouts, just do the same thing with food.
Okay, if there’s any area of your life where you need to create healthy patterns, better habits, or make better choices consistently, then plan them ahead of time until you get the hang of it. And those habits are formed. Once those habits are formed, it becomes so much easier.
And you don’t have to do this forever. You don’t have to make this plan ahead of time and stick to it forever. When I first started out on this last, you know journey of losing weight improving my body composition and developing these good habits, I was very very religious about planning and tracking my food every single day.
I did this consistently for like eight months straight every day. I don’t think I missed a day in there. Maybe I did here and there but I pretty much never missed a day because I was afraid that if I stopped doing it, I would like just fall apart and I would fail.
I was kind of paranoid that I was going to slip up and just go back into my old habits, if I didn’t continue to make this plan and stick to it every single day, and listen to it doesn’t typically take eight months to train your brain and develop good habits. But I was a little bit paranoid, I kind of tend to do things to the extreme.
So I was like, I’m just going to do this until I know without a doubt that I can live my life without it. And then I eventually gave it up, I eventually quit tracking. And those first few days, I was like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do, but I figured it out. And it works that my point with all this is that it did work for me.
And it doesn’t take that long, you know, I usually say if you can be religious and track consistently every day for like 30 days, or 60 days, somewhere in that range, you typically can start to, you know, create those new neural pathways in your brain create good habits, and this becomes kind of effortless for you, it becomes your new normal.
And if it’s your new normal, then you don’t have to effort your way through the day, you can just you just know what you’re doing. And you can do it. Okay. So make a 24-hour plan. This is the way I’ve worked with people who have planned a day in advance.
And that works really, really well just make sure you’re doing this at least one day in advance. I did have somebody who wanted to plan a month ahead of time, and she wrote out an entire month’s schedule of every meal she was eating for a month. Now that was awesome for her, but I don’t think we need to go to that extreme.
If you want to plan a few days ahead of time or a week ahead of time, I think that’s great. A lot of people love to do meal prepping. And so they’ll prep once a week for the week. And they’ll do their shopping for the week. And if that’s you, and that works for you, I think that’s great.
But a few days is plenty of time a day in advance is really that’s all that’s required. But we have to be making these decisions ahead of time. Don’t wait until the day of or it’s like lunchtime, and you’re like, I wonder what I should eat today. No. Decide in advance.
And you don’t have to use some app. And you don’t have to, you know, track every calorie and every macro and all that I love just using a notebook or a journal or a diary. And just write down what you’re doing tomorrow, just write it down, use a pen, when you use a pen or a pencil and you write it down by hand, it kind of cements that into your brain better than like typing into an app, there’s sort of a disconnect when you do that.
But when you write it down on a piece of paper, it tends to cement that decision into your brain. So now you’ve made the decision, you’ve made it in advance, you’ve made this promise to yourself.
Now you just have to keep that promise to yourself tomorrow. Because when you do that, when you keep the promises that you make to yourself every single day, you start to build this immense amount of trust in yourself.
You start to build integrity with yourself, you start to build confidence. And you know that you can do this, you know that you can stay consistent with this. And you’ll start making progress. I promise you that if you make this plan every day, and you stick to the plan every day.
That is how you make progress. That is how you lose weight. And that is how you keep it off. Because now you’re training your brain that this is how I do things now. Okay, everyone I’m working with right now, this is January of 2024. Everybody I’m working with this month, we are making this 24-hour plan every day. And we are committing to do it for the month of January.
So we’re challenging ourselves to do this. And everybody’s being super consistent with this with this. And they’re setting themselves up for success not only for this month or the next few months but for the year.
They’re like restarting the year on this really positive vibe of like, I’m being consistent, I’m making good choices. And I’m promising these things to myself. And I’m keeping these promises to myself, and they’re making great progress too.
Several people that I’m working with have said their weight loss has been a little bit slow. Or maybe they went out you know, took a few steps back during the holidays, you know, things have stalled out a little bit.
But lately, they have been planning every single day they’ve been planning ahead and now they’re starting to see their weight go down again. And all they have changed is this one little thing of making a plan every day making an advance and then sticking to that plan.
This is how powerful this little daily habit can be. So this is the work that you need to start doing for January. Should you be tracking your food? I think there’s some benefit to pre-planning your food. I think there are benefits to journaling your food if you’re just getting started with all this. Really, the most powerful way of doing it though, is planning ahead of time. Okay.
If you want help with all this I always got you covered you can go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me and we can talk about working together.
Cool, all right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you want to accomplish a big goal, the key to getting there is consistency. You have to take aligned action and continue to take it over and over and over until you eventually reach that …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 207 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to get back on track. So if you want to accomplish a big goal, the key to getting there is consistency.
You have to take aligned action and continue to take aligned action over and over and over again until you eventually reach that goal. The problem is that most people don’t stick with anything long enough to see that end result.
They get off track somewhere along the way, and they end up staying off track. So getting off track is actually not the problem, we all do it. The real problem is not getting back on track. So today, it’s all about how to get back on track, and how to stay there so that you can actually crush those big goals.
But first, I know I talk a lot about improving your health and fitness becoming a fat-adapted runner and losing weight. And I know all this stuff can be a little overwhelming. So if you’re looking for a little guidance, a good place to start is a free training that I created called Five Steps to Becoming a Leaner, Stronger Runner.
It’s a training video where you’re going to learn how to fuel your body properly, you’re going to learn how to improve your strength, improve your mindset, so that you can make these changes last, you’re going to learn how to lose weight, what kinds of fuel to use and not to use.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, if you’re ready to run faster and longer and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then you need to check out this free training now just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Alright, let’s get into this topic how to get back on track. So I realized that a lot of people will start working towards some big goal like losing weight. And if you’re somebody that wants to, you know, lose 30 or 40 pounds, that’s a big goal.
And that’s going to take time to reach that goal. It’s not something you can do in a few weeks or even a couple of months, it usually takes longer than that. Or maybe it’s it’s something big like running your first marathon. Again, that’s going to take months of preparation, you have to build a good base. And then you got to do like 16-20 weeks of training.
These kinds of goals, these big goals, I love them because they cause you to level up. But they’re also hard and they take time. And eventually, you are going to, during the course of training for that marathon or trying to lose weight, you’re going to go off track, you’re going to slip up, you’re going to miss a workout, you’re going to eat something you shouldn’t be eating, you’re going to eat something that it was, you know the way you used to eat, you’re gonna eat a bunch of junk food.
And it’s okay to do that. It’s okay to have those little slip-ups here and there. But what most people do is they go off track, and then they end up quitting because they’re like, well, I can’t do it. See, look, I failed.
They consider themselves a failure, which is never true, by the way. But they end up quitting so easily. Right? Have you ever done this? Have you ever been doing something you were doing great, you’re moving right along, you are sticking with a plan.
Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight. So you change your diet, and you’re sticking with it. You’re doing great. And then you have this weakness moment and you’re like, I’m just going to eat up large pizza myself, right?
And then you look at yourself and go, you know what, I’m a complete failure. I can’t do this. Look, look at what happened to me. I went completely off track, I can’t do this and then they quit.
Well, when you quit, you’re absolutely giving up and you’re absolutely going to fail. You’re never going to reach that goal. You know, if you’re training for a marathon, and you just give up running like you’re not gonna run that marathon I’m going to tell you right now, it’s a little bit too hard to be able to just show up on the starting line and run a marathon without any training. (Although there are people that have done that and good for you. They probably did not feel too good for a couple of weeks afterward.)
But just know that these things require work they require time and that you will go off track during that process. Okay, and we have got to stop looking at going off track as the end because it’s not the end, the real problem, I think, is that many people are just afraid to fail. There’s a big fear of failure going on here.
This is why most people will never even start anything why most people won’t try to change their diet, they won’t even try to lose weight. They’ll convince themselves that it’s okay being the size they are. And for some people, that’s fine.
And a lot of people, you know, there’s a big movement of body positivity. And I’m all for that if you’re feeling good in your skin the way you are, and you like your size and everything, perfect, I love it.
But there’s a lot of people that are trying to convince themselves that it’s okay, because they’re afraid of trying to lose weight, they’re afraid of failing because when they’ve tried it in the past, it hasn’t worked.
And when you go off track, when you start something and you go a little bit off track, people will see that as a failure. And they’ll be like, yeah, see, I just showed myself that I can’t do it. This is not good thinking though. This is not the way you want to approach something big like this, okay?
If you want to accomplish these big goals, you have to stay consistent. Like you have to do things consistently. You have to eat the right foods, day in and day out, you have to do the training every single day, you have to show up for yourself no matter what. So this is all about taking aligned action and taking aligned action consistently.
Aligned action is an action that is in alignment with those big goals that you have for yourself. So if you’re taking aligned action around losing 40 pounds, it might be, you’re just not gonna eat sugar for a while.
If you, you know, want to run a marathon lined action would be you got to show up and do the training, you got to run four days a week, five days a week, whatever you decided you want to do, you got to do those long runs on the weekends.
Even though it’s raining out, even though it’s cold out, even though you got to, you know, dress in a hat and gloves and tights and jacket and everything and go out there and run in the cold. Like that’s aligned action is getting out there and showing up for yourself. Even though it’s hard, even though you don’t want to. That’s the only way you’re gonna reach these goals.
If you want to lose a bunch of weight, or get to run your first marathon or improve your marathon time, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take consistent aligned action. That’s it like you just have to take consistent aligned action.
So what happens though, is people will be taking aligned action pretty consistently for a while. And then they’ll go a little bit off track. Well, listen, everybody goes off track. Nobody does this stuff perfectly. I work with clients every day, who are kicking ass, they are improving, they’re running, they’re losing weight, they’re getting stronger.
And not one person has done this perfectly, not one person has been 100% compliant with everything I’ve told him to do. And that’s okay. Because that’s the norm like, it’s normal to not do it 100% perfectly. But we do need to be consistent with this stuff.
Okay, we need to get our reps in, we need to do the same things over and over and over and over again until it becomes automatic behavior. So for me for a while there, I was working out at this local gym, a little small gym with a, I had a private trainer that was helping me and I would go twice a week.
And actually, this was when I was going in it was I was just doing this group, these group workout sessions. So I was doing these group workout sessions twice a week. And honestly, it just there wasn’t enough consistency there for me to get stronger. Like, I wanted to get bigger muscles, and I wanted to get stronger. And I just wasn’t doing it consistently enough.
And then I’d missed some weeks and missed some workouts and I was just sort of half-assing the whole thing. Okay. So the thing is, though, I decided at some point that I wanted more for myself, and that for me, I needed more consistency, that the aligned action was kind of there, but it wasn’t enough.
And so I needed to reevaluate what I was doing. And so what I started doing was I joined a different gym, you know, one where I didn’t have to go to these group classes where I could just go whenever I wanted to. And I started going five times a week and I started that just earlier this year.
So we’re coming to the end of 2023. So this was at the kind of the beginning of 2023. And I decided that for me, the kind of consistency I needed was to go five days a week, Monday through Friday. And I committed to doing that and I knew that if I was committed to going five days a week, the consistency would be there for me to get bigger muscles for me to get stronger for things to begin to change for me, and they did.
And it took a while, like, at the beginning, it was hard. It was not something I was used to, I wasn’t in the routine of going to the gym every day. I didn’t always feel motivated to go, but I just kept at it. And the thing is, every now and then, I had some, you know, things to do, I had some scheduling conflicts, or whatever, and I couldn’t show up, and I couldn’t, you know, go to the gym. So I went off track.
But the thing is, because I was going five days a week, if I missed one day, it wasn’t a big deal. When I’m going twice a week, and I missed a day, that’s a lot. That’s like 50%, of my workouts I missed for the week. But now if I’m doing five days a week, and I missed one, okay, no big deal.
But getting into this routine of going five days a week, I wasn’t motivated to do it all the time. I didn’t do it perfectly all the time. But I kept at it until it became automatic behavior, until it became something that felt easy and effortless.
Today I love going to the gym every day, it’s my happy place, I would much rather just go and lift weights than run. I got, I’ve kind of switched, I used to like hate lifting weights, and would just rather run now I’d rather just lift weights and running kind of has become secondary for me.
So my point with all this is that you have to practice consistency, you will not do it perfectly. But you have to get those reps in, you got to show up for yourself every single day. And you have to take that consistent aligned action.
Okay, so the key here is consistency, not perfection. So if you go off track, not a big deal. Now, with all the consistency in the world, you are going to go off track, and you’re going to experience some kind of failure along the way.
If you’re trying to change how you eat, and you know the family has all ordered pizza, and there’s pizza sitting there, you might eat some pizza because it’s pizza. It’s amazing, right? You might skip a workout because you don’t feel good and you didn’t get enough sleep last night or you just don’t feel like going, that’s fine.
You might skip a run because it’s like raining, pouring down rain outside, that’s about the only reason why I skip runs usually is if it’s absolutely pouring rain and cold. If it’s raining and warm, fine. But if it’s cold and rainy, I don’t like that combination.
So eating the pizza, skipping a workout, skipping a run, no big deal. It’s normal. It’s to be expected, it will happen sometimes. But you cannot look at these things as being the end, they are not the end. These are just little micro failures along the path that will eventually lead to your success.
So the big key is consistency, not perfection. And you’re going to have these little failures. But you have to recognize these little failures for what they are. They’re just little blips on the radar.
And the important thing is, is that as soon as possible, you get back on track, and you do not miss two workouts in a row. You never have two cheat meals in a row. You don’t turn one meal of eating pizza into well, you know what I’ve blown it already. So I might as well just go all in on this.
And then you end up eating and drinking your way through the weekend. And then you feel terrible on Monday. And you’re like, you know what I might as well just keep going because I’ve already blown this whole week anyway. So then you blow the rest of the week. And then you’re like, well, I’ve already blown this whole week might as well just blow the whole month.
And you see where I’m going with this right? This is terrible. This is terrible thinking, okay? Never have two cheat meals in a row. As soon as you can you get back on track. So if you have, you know, a dinner and that you know, was you ate a bunch of French fries, you know, because they were just sitting there and you’re like, I just want some french fries. And you sort of give in and you and you have that moment of like getting off track.
Okay, no big deal. Next meal that might be you know, lunch the next day or something like that. You’re back on track you you stick to the plan that you made for yourself.
Same with your workouts do not miss two workouts in a row. Everybody will miss a workout here and there. And I have done this, you know, a handful of times over the last year so like there’s just times where I couldn’t make a workout. I’m like, you know what, I’m just gonna I’m just gonna blow this one off. It’s fine. Next workout though I do not miss that next workout. That is key right there.
You don’t want to start spiraling downward so you have to stop it as soon as possible. You have to put the brakes on right there right? You have to stop that process from getting out of control. Because when you have this thinking where you’re like, well, I’ve already blown it, I might as well just keep going, that is very detrimental. You know, you have these big, important goals that you are working towards.
And basically, what you’re saying is, what’s more important to me is this one meal, and just, you know, giving in to all these desires that I’m experiencing right now. And just, you know, feeling comfortable, that’s more important than these long-term goals, that is not acting in alignment with who you really want to become in the future.
So think about that are your actions in alignment with who you really want to become in the future, getting off track is fine, you can get off track here and there, get back on track as soon as possible. It’s okay to fail. It’s part of the process, it should be expected. But failure does not mean it’s the end. getting off track here or there does not mean that you should stay off track for days or weeks or months at a time.
Right, those little off-track moments should just be that there should be little moments, little vignettes, little blips on the radar. The key to not letting these moments turn into days and weeks is to reflect on that moment of failure. And what I suggest to my clients to do is to write about it.
It doesn’t have to be this big, you know, time-consuming grandiose thing, just jot down a few questions and reflect on them. Ask yourself a few key questions. So let’s say you ate a bunch of pizza. What I want you to do is like fine, okay? Eat the pizza, enjoy it, whatever. Afterward, though, maybe that night before you go to bed, you pull out your journal. And I want you to do a little bit of writing.
And I want you to ask yourself some key questions like, Why did I do that? Get curious with yourself. Why did I go off track like that? What was the thought process that led me to make that particular decision? What feeling was I experiencing that I was trying to avoid experiencing? Or change? How was that feeling? And how was I trying to change that feeling? What could I have done differently in that moment?
You know, if I could have waved a magic wand and done things differently, what would I do differently? You know, what would I do differently next time because it’s there’s going to be a next time? And this little process, even simple, doing a little bit of writing a little bit of reflection on your thought process and on your decision making. And it is it’s very simple, but it’s also very powerful.
And honestly, most people don’t do it. Most people would not spend five minutes writing about why they made a particular decision. But understanding why you make the decisions that you make, why you go off track, learning about your own thought process, learning about how you’re dealing with emotions, or trying to squash your emotions, learning about how you give into temptation, or how you blow off a workout or why you do those things. This is amazing self-awareness.
And right here, this little exercise will help you stay on track next time 100%. Because when you do that work of doing a little bit of a post mortem on the incident and saying like, oh, here’s why I think I did this. Here’s what I would do differently next time when that next time comes around which it will, you are armed with new information, you’re armed with this new self-awareness, you’re armed with strategies and tactics that you can take. That will keep you on track.
So you don’t go off track in the first place, we will all go off track eventually. But the odds of you doing it go down a lot when you take the time to create this self-awareness. Okay, you want to understand yourself at a deep level. You want to understand why you do the things you do. You want to understand how you could do things differently next time so you can make different decisions in the future because every little decision helps to shape who you are. All these decisions you make there either moving you closer to that goal, or further away.
And failure is inevitable. Listen, you are going to fail. You’re not going to do this stuff perfectly. It’s okay. But each of these little failures you have to see is a learning experience. Every time you go off track. It has to be a learning experience.
So learn from these experiences. This is how you develop your mindset. This is how you grow, this is how you evolve, this is how you become more. You actually don’t learn anything from doing everything perfectly all the time, I wish it worked that way but it doesn’t. Okay that’s all I got for you today, love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
