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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Challenges

259. Choose Your Hard

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When it comes to accomplishing big goals, you have to expect things to get hard. For example, losing weight takes time, and for some it can be a long and challenging road to get there. Yes, …

Continue Reading about 259. Choose Your Hard →

Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 259 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Choose Your Hard. So when it comes to accomplishing big goals, you have to expect things to get hard at some point.

For example, losing weight, it takes time, and for some it can be a long and challenging road to get there. Yes, losing weight is hard, but so is becoming more overweight and becoming more metabolically unhealthy that is also hard. So you can choose the heart of losing weight or choose the heart of becoming sick and unhealthy.

In this episode, what it means to choose your hard and some practical tips to help you choose wisely. But first, if you’re considering coaching, right now is a great time to take action. We are getting into the holidays. We’re about to start a new year, and for most of us, it’s a time of the year where it’s kind of the off season, and the perfect time to make changes to things like your diet. So if you’re interested in losing weight, right now would be a great time to get started on a new nutrition regimen because you don’t want to, you know, do this.

You don’t want to, you know, change your diet six weeks before your marathon or something like that. So you definitely want to kind of use this offseason as a time to make changes to maybe your strength program, or starting a strength program to your nutrition regimen.

And then getting started on in the new year with a new training program, you know, a new running training program. So all of this is available to you. All you have to do is go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and you and I can work together to help you become the most badass version of yourself yet.

And then lastly, just a quick heads up that’s starting in the new year, I will be offering a new type of coaching, personalized running plans to help you hit all of your running goals in 2025 whether you are a beginner wanting to do a couch to 5k program, or you’re a more advanced runner wanting to crush your fastest marathon, or anyone in between, I’ve got a training plan for you.

You’re going to get a custom training plan that works for you and your schedule, along with coaching from me on all your training runs. And I’m going to have more to share with you about this soon, but I just want you to start thinking about what races you want to do in the spring, and then consider getting some coaching to help you absolutely crush those races. Awesome.

Okay, let’s get into this topic today, which is: Choose Your Hard. So, like I said at the intro here, when you set out to accomplish some big goal, like losing weight, this is not something that is going to happen overnight. It takes time. It means you have to make changes to your diet, and you have to stick with those changes. And for a lot of people, for most people, that’s difficult.

It’s difficult to stick to a new eating plan. You know, we have a lot of emotional stuff tied up with food, and we have a lot of long established habits tied up with food. And so when you are challenged to make changes to your diet and to stick with those changes, for a lot of people, that is very hard. It’s very hard to do, and so a lot of people refuse to even try to lose weight. They refuse to change anything with their diet, because it’s challenging, it’s hard, it doesn’t feel good, it’s uncomfortable.

And anybody that has ever tried to lose weight and failed knows this all too well. You know, you set out, you’re feeling pretty gung ho at the beginning, and you’re starting to lose weight, you’re feeling good, you’re sticking to your plan. But then over time, you know, you’re, you’re seeing your friends eating the pretzels at, you know, as an appetizer before dinner, and they’re eating pizza, and they’re drinking alcohol, and they’re eating dessert, and you’re just sitting there, like white knuckling it, you know, trying to white knuckle your way through the thing, and it’s difficult, and it’s hard, and it doesn’t feel good, and it’s uncomfortable, and you feel like a weirdo, and you just want to feel good and eat all the junk that everybody else is eating, because that’s what most people do. They just eat whatever.

Or it feels good in the moment, but when you set out to lose weight and you stick to a healthy eating plan, sticking to that plan is very challenging. It’s hard. It’s hard to do again. This is why most people won’t do it, because it requires you to get into this different mindset and to start changing habits.

Anytime we change anything, it’s hard. Anytime we make changes in our lives, to our routines, to our habits, it is hard. It doesn’t feel good because it’s unfamiliar. We’re stepping into unchartered territory. We’re getting out of our comfort zone when we do these things. And nobody wants to do that, and so a lot of people choose to stay overweight. They choose the comfort food, the sugar, the carbs, the junk food, because it makes them feel good in the moment.

Now, long term, their health declines. Long term, if you keep eating junk. I think we all know that eating tons of junk food and sugar and things like that, if you keep gaining weight, that’s metabolically very unhealthy, and a lot of people end up having some sort of long term metabolic disease like type two diabetes. This is a good example of just having, you know, too much sugar in your life that that can cause type two diabetes, and so that is an example of having a hard life.

Now you’ve got type two diabetes, and you have to treat that with medication, or, you know, sometimes people need insulin or something like that, like you’re you’re taking medicine or giving yourself injections, and dealing with, you know, the risk of heart disease, and you know all the stuff that comes along with this metabolic dysfunction, just from wanting to what you really want is you want to stay comfortable, but what you end up doing is causing a lot of long term discomfort.

So living a life with a metabolic disease is hard, okay, so is trying to lose weight, but you get to decide which of these you want for yourself. You know, if you’re the kind of person, that is okay, you know, having some sort of long term health issues. And some people, I think, are okay with that because they choose it. I don’t know why they would, but people do choose that. And if that’s something that you want for yourself, then by all means, choose that, and it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be a hard life. So is sticking to your food plan. That’s going to be hard, but you get to choose which of these hard things you want for yourself.

You know, another good example is wanting to get stronger. You know, I talk all about the benefits of strength training. When you get stronger, you are at a reduced risk of injury. And as a runner, this is incredibly important. If you’re a runner who gets injured often. You know, you may want to consider changing up your strength routine, or starting a strength routine so you can actually get stronger muscles, stronger ligaments, tendons, connective tissues, stronger bones. Strength training can go a long way in helping you prevent injury. Strength training is how you become a faster runner.

You can improve your endurance when you get stronger, strong muscles take longer to fatigue than weak muscles. You improve your metabolic rate like you actually can burn more calories when you’re stronger if you carry around a little bit more muscle, carrying around more muscle requires more energy, so you actually will just burn more calories.

And if you’re burning the right kind of calories, fat, then you’ll burn more fat. It helps with sleep getting stronger. And doing regular strength training helps to reset circadian rhythms. It helps you to improve your sleep. It helps with energy levels throughout the day. People that strength train tend to live longer and have less risk of certain all cause mortality.

So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be strength training, but so many people won’t do it because why? Because it’s hard. Going to the gym, just showing up at the gym is hard, learning how to do certain exercises is hard, and then physically doing the work, it does not feel good. It hurts, especially at the beginning, those first couple weeks when you start a new strength program, most people get really sore when they do that.

And I’ve talked to a lot of runners who said, Oh, you know, whenever I lift weights and do strength training, I get really sore, and I don’t want that to affect my running, so I’m not going to do that. Well, that’s just dumb. I’m going to say that right now because that soreness means that you’re weak and that you’re working those muscles for the first time in a long time, or maybe the first time ever.

And, yeah, you’re going to be sore for a couple of weeks, but after that, you’re not. I work out five times a week. I hit the gym five times a week, and I lift hard, and my workouts are really difficult, and I lift really heavy, and I’m really not sore afterwards. Occasionally I’m a little bit sore, but it’s not really bad anymore, because I’m used to doing it, and as long as you just keep up with it, that soreness is not going to be a thing you need to worry about.

So if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I don’t want to strength train because it hurts and it’s hard, well, guess what? You’re going to deal with injuries, less energy. Your running is going to suffer. You’re going to not live as long as other people. Okay, we’ll just put that out there, but you’re not going to run as fast, you won’t have as much power, you’re way more at risk for injury. Your metabolic rate is reduced. So there’s all kinds of reasons why. You know, not lifting weights, not getting stronger, is going to make life harder for you, and it’s going to make running harder for you. So you can choose that. You can choose that hard of you know, being not as fast and weaker.

You know, something else is interesting is that when people start losing muscle mass around age 30, so they start to develop sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle mass, starting at age 30, and it goes until they die. You know, this is what’s normal for most people in the world. And so you don’t want to be one of those people. You want to be somebody that is constantly weight training to stay strong and maintain or gain muscle as you get older. This is one of the best things you can do for your health.

So you can choose the hard of getting weaker as you get older. You can choose the hard of it impacting your running and being injured more often. Or you can choose the hard of going to the gym and lifting those weights and being sore, yeah, for a couple of weeks anyway. And then when you’re doing those exercises, and you’re, you’re lifting weights, and you’re, you’re lifting to failure, you’re getting to that place where you can finish a rep with good form, and it hurts and it’s hard, and you’re grunting, you know, like those guys you hear at the gym that are like, ah, you know, if you know, if you want to be one of those people, that’s fine. I personally try not to make a lot of noise, but they’re making noise because it’s hard. It’s like a physical manifestation of how hard it is to lift weights.

So you get to choose, do you want to choose the heart of you know, all those things I mentioned about making running harder for you, or do you want to choose the hard of going to the gym and lifting the weights? Because you get to decide, okay, and it is the decision. It’s a decision that you’re making. You know, you get to decide what you want for yourself.

So I want you to think about this. I want you to think about what it would look like for you to become that most badass version of yourself. What would that look like for you? Do you need to change the way you’re running? Do you need to change your diet? Do you need to change how you’re doing your strength training, or start some sort of a strength program? And then think about how hard those things were going to be for you, because they will be hard, and that’s okay. We want to accept that. We don’t want to think that things are going to be easy.

And I think this is where a lot of people get messed up, because they think that they can continue to live this stress free, easy going life, you know, where nothing really changes, because change is hard. Nothing changes. Everything’s just going to be fine. They’re just going to go through their day and be able to sail through, you know, their life and eat whatever they want, and not have to work out, and somehow magically, they’re going to stay healthy and fit and lose weight and feel better and live longer. And that is just not true. It is just not true.

And what a lot of people do, they just kind of leave it up to chance. They leave it up to, oh, let’s just kind of wait and see how things happen here. And that is not a good attitude. That’s not a really good way to approach any of this stuff. So you have to decide. You have to make a decision about who you want to be. That’s sort of step one.

Do you want to be one of those kind of, quote, unquote, normal people who loses muscle mass and gets weaker and fatter as they get older and sicker? Because that’s normal. That’s what’s normal in this country anyway, most Western countries in the world, or do you want to be the kind of person who gets stronger, who gets healthier, who gets leaner, who improves in all these areas of their health and fitness? Because that is also available to you. That’s a decision that you have to make. Though you have to make that decision.

Once you’ve made that decision, though, I want you to go all in on yourself. Don’t half ass it, right? We want to full ass everything that we do. So you make that decision, you go all in on yourself, and then you do what it takes to get there and this is just sort of like the nature of the beast here is that there really isn’t a finish line.

This is stuff that we commit to for the rest of our lives. We commit to eating healthy, we commit to regular strength training, we commit to improving our running from now until forever, right? I know it’s kind of depressing to think about it that way, but also it’s kind of it’s kind of nice to think about it that way too, because it means that nothing really has to change once you get going like once you’ve developed these good habits, you just keep doing all these things that keep you feeling good, that keep you getting stronger, that keep you running better, that keep you staying lean and and that, my friends, is the hard work right there, that right there is hard to do.

That’s why most people don’t do it. Most people, they set out to lose weight or improve their running or something like that. They go to a gym. A lot of people are going to join a gym on January 1st. They’re going to be there that first week, maybe for a couple of weeks afterwards, and then the place is going to be empty again. Gyms are completely packed during January and then February, March, they’re just dead again.

I’ve seen this year after year after year, and I’ve been to a bunch of different gyms, and I keep seeing this same cycle happen. And it’s, it’s funny to me, because I’m there all the time. I’m there five days a week. I was telling somebody this the other day, I was like, you know, there’s these people that come to the gym and they are there every single day, and it’s ridiculous, like, why are they there all the time? Like, do they live there or something? And then they’re like, Patrick, you’re there every day. And I’m like, oh, yeah. So anyway, I guess I’m one of those people, and I’m okay with that.

So, you know, there’s, there’s a big influx of people that want to get healthy because it’s a new year, and so they’re like, they come up with some arbitrary timeline, like, I’m just going to wait until after the new year to start getting healthy, and then they, they join the gym and they show up. But you know what, sticking to that plan and going to the gym and getting into the routine of doing that consistently is hard, and most people will not do it. That’s why the gym is empty again.

So choose your hard. If I was you, I would choose the hard of sticking to your diet. I would choose the hard of sticking to some sort of strength program and going to the gym two or three times a week is all you really need to do. I would, I would, I would commit to the hard of improving your running. That means we run longer. That means we do speed work. Nobody likes to do speed work. Everybody wants to get faster. You know, there’s an old saying, think Ronnie Coleman said this. If you guys know who Ronnie Coleman is, you can Google him or look him up on YouTube or something. He’s hilarious, huge bodybuilder dude, powerlifter,

and his kind of catchphrase is, ‘Lightweight, baby!’, like he’s about to lift, you know, 800 pounds and a dead lift or something, and he’s just like, lightweight, because he’s telling himself it’s just lightweight. But he says, ‘Everybody wants the muscles. Nobody wants to lift, no heavy ass weights.’, you know? And that is kind of the thing. Nobody wants to do the work. Everybody wants the results.

So if you’re one of these people that is like, Oh, it’s too hard to stick to a diet or to change my diet, it’s too hard to go to the gym. Guess what? Why don’t you just choose that hard over that other heart of being weak and sick and overweight and unhealthy? Okay, that is my charge for you this week, and we’re leading into the holidays here. You know, the holidays are just a couple weeks away. Christmas, I think, is just a couple of weeks away.

So think about this, like, what is it that you want for yourself? How do you want to show up for yourself on January 1? And I want you to start now. Don’t wait till after the new year to start making these changes. Start now. Oh, but I want to enjoy the holidays. You can enjoy the holidays. You can and you can make some of these changes now. There’s no reason why you can’t enjoy the holidays and set yourself up so that come January 1, you actually feel good about yourself instead of regretting every decision you made over the last four to six weeks.

Okay, so your charge is to think about who you want to be, what is that most badass version of yourself look like? And think about how you’re going to get there. And my guess is that you’re probably going to have to make some changes to your diet. You’re probably going to have to change how you’re working out, or start working out, you know, start doing some sort of weight lifting, and then you want to improve your running, you know, you want to have some sort of a plan to get you to whatever race you got planned for the spring. You want some, some plan around that.

Of course, I can help you with all this stuff. You can go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on, Work With Me. You and I can work together to make all of this happen. Absolutely fine, but if you want to try this on your own, that’s cool, too, you know, but you have to commit to what’s hard. You got to commit to doing the hard work. So commit to doing the hard work and improving yourself, instead of committing to having that harder life, because you’re choosing what you think is the easier, softer way. It’s really the harder way. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

257. Replay: Handling the Holidays Like a Badass

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The holidays can be a very difficult time of the year for a lot of people. Shopping for gifts, planning social events, spending more time with family, and the added end-of-year demands at work can …

Continue Reading about 257. Replay: Handling the Holidays Like a Badass →

Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 257, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Handling The Holidays Like A Badass. So, the holidays can be very difficult for a lot of people. You’re shopping for gifts, you’re planning social events, spending time with family, and then added end of year demands from work, this can all make all of us feel more stressed and overwhelmed, not to mention shorter days, colder temperatures, lack of sunlight.

All this makes getting outside to exercise more challenging, and exercise is our happy place, right? So it can be very easy to just say, “f it” and blow off all your diet, all your exercise plans, stay indoors, watch Netflix with a big old glass of wine and just hibernate until the new year, right? But if that’s not how you want to roll into 2025 I’ve got an alternative solution for you.

In this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share a few simple tips for handling the holidays like a badass, so you can slide into the New Year feeling good about yourself, which is not the way most people do it.

But first, if you’ve ever considered coaching, I’m going to tell you right now is the perfect time to take action. For most of us. This is the off season. It’s time for you to kind of scale back your running and focus on things like your diet and nutrition. If you’re somebody that is interested in losing weight, this is the perfect time to make those changes to your diet, start losing the weight, so that when we roll into 2025 you can start your training, you know, feeling good about yourself and having developed some good habits and stuff like that.

It’s also a great time because you know, your running is a little bit less of your volume of running is a little bit less, so that it’s a good time to focus on other things, like getting stronger, and again, losing weight and things like that. So if you want a little bit of help with all this stuff I got you. I can help you get leaner, I can help you get stronger. I can help you run longer and run faster.

All you gotta do is go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on, Work With Me, and I’ll show you exactly how to start the new year feeling like the most badass version of yourself, yet cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, and let’s do this.

All right. I wanted to share a little bit of how to handle the holidays, and I realized I had recorded a couple of different episodes about getting through the holidays and maybe some good tips and stuff. And I was looking back through my notes on this particular episode, and I really like the content here, so I’m not going to talk too much about it, but this is a replay from a couple of years ago, I think. But this is called Handling The Holidays Like A Badass.

I know that this episode is going to come out the day after Thanksgiving. So just keep that in mind that if you’re somebody that wants a little bit of help with all of the stuff that’s happening between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, then I’m here for you, okay, but this is going to kind of focus on that part of the the year, this end of the year, these last few weeks of the year, and it’s kind of a short time.

There’s only like 35 days this year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and usually it’s a little bit longer than that, so it’s a good time to really focus on taking care of yourself and deciding on how you want to show up in the new year. And I’ll talk about all that in the podcast.

One other thing I wanted to let you know about is that if you’re interested in a challenge during the holidays, over in the Running Lean Podcast community on Facebook, we’re doing the running through the holidays challenge, which is basically just a challenge to run every day, from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. And I’m, you know, you can go on the Facebook group and join the group, and you’ll, you’ll see all about it, but basically, it’s just run at least one mile each day, between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.

Try to do it outdoors if you can, and you don’t have to. There’s no real rules around this or anything. It’s not super strict, but if you can just run at least one mile each day outside, that’s kind of preferred. What we’re trying to do is focus on getting outside, getting in the sunlight. If you have sunlight where you live, even if it’s cloudy, you’re still getting some of that sun in your eyes.

It’s really important, but it’s a way of like, getting that endorphin release and that that dopamine and the oxytocin, all those feel good hormones going through this typical dark and dreary part of the year, especially with all the holiday stuff that’s going on, a lot of stress that’s happening, it’s a good time to focus on just being outside and running and doing something that’s good for you, mentally, emotionally, physically. So check out the Facebook group, Running Lean Podcast Community.

You can just type that in to Facebook, and you’ll find our group. Join the group, and then you can participate in the challenge. You don’t really have to do anything to participate. You can post pictures and comment on other people’s posts and things like that. It’s a fun time of the year where we’re all supporting each other and getting through the holidays feeling good about ourselves.

We want to roll into 2025, feeling good about ourselves. So join us over there and join us for the running through the holidays challenge. Okay, I’m going to stop yammering on here, and I’m going to play this episode for you, and I hope you all have an amazing holiday season this year. All right?

All right on to this topic today, which is all about handling the holidays, like a badass. This time of the year, it can be very hard for people, right, we’ve got more stress this time of the year than any other time of the year collectively, right?

The days are cold, it’s dark, work is a little busier, you got to get all this stuff done at the end of the year. You’ve got more social events, you’re spending more time with family, you got to plan more meals, you’re buying gifts, you’re wrapping gifts, you’re sending out Christmas cards, maybe you’re traveling.

And all of this stuff can really feel overwhelming and cause a lot of people to really struggle. You know, this is supposed to be a fun time of the year, right and everybody looks forward to it. But at the same time, it can be very challenging for a lot of people, okay.

So when you find yourself feeling this stress, it can be very hard to stick to your diet and exercise plans, it can be very hard to want to get up and go to the gym when it’s cold and dark outside, it can be very hard to want to stick to your food plan when everybody around you is eating a bunch of junk and cookies and candy and all this other stuff, right?

So if you just want to stay inside and hibernate, like during this time of the year, that is perfectly fine. You’re allowed to do that, right? But if that’s not how you want to spend the holidays, then you get to decide what you want for yourself, okay, if you want something different, this episode is for you. Okay?

If you want to be able to stay on track, stick to your diet, keep up with your runs, keep up in the gym, whatever it looks like for you. You are allowed to do that. By the way, you don’t have to just fall into this habit that most people fall into, which is just kind of giving up a lot of this stuff during this time of the year.

How many people do you know to say, well, you know, the diet starts on January 1. Well, why? Why would you wait? Right? Why do you want to wait until then, to start improving your life? Why do you want to wait until then until you start doing something that’s good for you? Why do you want to wait until then, to start improving your health and your fitness?

I say start today, if that’s what you want for yourself, it doesn’t matter that we’ve got the holidays coming up, it really doesn’t. There’s always something going on, right? I want you to think about how you want to show up on January 2, you know, who do you want to be when you start the New Year? How do you want to show up for yourself?

Do you want to feel shame and guilt remorse and regret? Because you’re going to be starting from like a health and fitness deficit? Like you got to make up a lot of ground because you gained some weight you got a little softer?

Or do you want to feel proud of yourself and confident and happy with your choices? Do you want to start the new year with momentum? Do you want to start the new year ahead of the curve, like feeling like you had your back during this period of time, right? It’s a choice, it is a choice, you get to decide.

So here’s what I’m going to do, I got three tips for you today. And I’m gonna break these down a little bit. But the first one is step number one. Or tip number one is that you get to decide who you want to be on January 2. And you should get very detailed with this, right?

And I tell people all the time to like do these writing exercises, like write it out. Write out who you want to be. And I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast are just like, yeah, whatever. I’m not gonna write that out.

But you know what, it makes a difference. It really does. The people that take the time to do this work and actually sit down and do the writing, when it comes to things like this, they get better results I’m just going to tell you, they do.

So if you want to get better results, I want to encourage you to do a little bit of writing around this. Who do you want to be on January 2, you know, I want you to envision this version of you and write down what it will look like and feel like to be that person on January 2, right.

Now you get to decide if you want to keep losing weight, maybe you’ve already started a weight loss regimen and you’re kind of losing and you’re like that and you want to continue to lose weight. Maybe you want to just maintain your weight through the holidays. Or maybe you’re okay if you gain a little bit of weight during the holidays.

But you’ve probably never thought about it like before, right, but really, it’s a choice, it’s a choice that you get to decide how you want to show up for yourself in January if you want to gain a little bit of weight, that’s fine.

But I just want you to make that decision now. Because this decision that you make today is going to drive your behaviors over the next few weeks. So let’s say you decide you want to gain weight, that means like, you’re probably going to eat more food, drink more alcohol, indulge in a bunch of, you know, sugar, and, you know, processed foods and go a little bit crazy. Maybe you’re gonna, like, stop running for a few weeks, or, you know, not go to the gym. That’s fine. If you want to do all this, it’s totally awesome.

Just know that you will probably gain weight in this process. And if you’re okay with that, if you’re okay, showing up in January, you know, five, eight pounds heavier, whatever, awesome, more power to you. Okay, you get to decide if that’s what you want for yourself, maybe you want to maintain.

Maybe you’re the kind of person who is like, you know, what I’m gonna stick to my healthy eating plan. For the most part, I might make some more exceptions than normal, you know, I might have a little more wine here and there, I might be drinking some more beers, I might enjoy a dessert or two, but for the most part, I’m gonna, you know, kind of stick to the plan.

And maybe you back off the running and the strength training a little bit, but not entirely. So this is a way of maybe maintaining your weight. Okay, totally fine. Again, all these options are available to you.

You’ve probably never thought about it like this before, though, right? Most people just assume that they’re gonna, like, just continue to lose weight or whatever, during the holidays, but they don’t change anything. Okay.

And then let’s say you decide you want to lose during the holidays, you want to continue to lose weight, this is going to require that you keep planning your meals and keep sticking to your plan, right, it’s just going to require that you stick with your running schedule, you keep up with some sort of resistance training. And this plan is awesome. And I’m super proud of you if you decide to do this.

But just know that it requires a commitment, it requires a little bit more discipline and a little more motivation. It doesn’t require as much motivation if you’re okay, gaining some weight over the holidays, right. So you get to decide, do you want to gain weight, maintain your weight or lose weight, make that decision.

So here’s what not to do. So most people go into the holidays, thinking that they’re going to keep losing weight or stay the same, but then they eat a ton more food. They’re eating all the sugar, they’re drinking alcohol, they’re slacking off on their exercise regimen. This is the way most people do it. They don’t have a plan, they just think they’re gonna stay on track.

And they think they’re just gonna, like maintain their weight, but they’re not. Their behaviors are not in alignment with the goal of wanting to maintain their weight. And then they show up on January 2, and they’ve gained weight, they’re like 10 pounds heavier.

And they’re like, I don’t understand what happened. It’s like you didn’t make a plan. You didn’t decide how you wanted to show up. So step one is deciding how you want to show up on January 2, who do you want to be, write it down, decide today, who you want to be, and decide if you’re one of those people that wants to gain weight, maintain or lose weight, make that decision now, and then act accordingly.

So if you’re the kind of person who wants to lose weight, you’re gonna have to stick to your plan. You’re gonna have to be diligent and not eat the cookies when everybody else is eating the cookies.

Maybe people are drinking around you and you’re not. You’ve got to make that decision. If that’s what you want for yourself. Okay? Just be honest with yourself, who is it you want to become? And then act accordingly. Okay, so that’s tip number one or step number one to this process.

Okay, step number two is to make a plan and stick to the plan. So now you have a very clear picture of how you want to show up on January 2. So now you just need to make a plan and stick to it right? It seems so simple, but most people do not do this. Most people just wing it. Right? Don’t wing it. Make a plan.

So making a plan means that you’re planning out all of the events that are coming up, you plan out your meals, you plan out your workouts, you got holiday parties, family events, weird schedules, whatever.

Your kids are gonna be out of school, maybe you work from home and your kids are gonna be home with you. You’re gonna have a house full of people. All this stuff can be an excuse for just blowing off your diet and exercise routines.

And I hear this from people all the time, oh, well, you know, the kids are out of school. So that means I have to eat a lot more cookies. No, it doesn’t, it really doesn’t mean that at all. Right, don’t use that stuff as an excuse for not sticking to your plan. This will require a little bit more, you know, work a little more thought work a little bit of more discipline on your part.

Yes, it will make a plan and stick to the plan, you get to decide what’s on your plan. Just make a plan. Decide what’s coming up, like you know what’s coming up, you know that there’s going to be this holiday event, you know, there’s going to be this work thing, you know, there’s going to be kids around, whatever you got to make cookies for this thing, cupcakes, whatever, plan for all of it.

Decide what you’re going to eat and when, decide when you’re going to get your runs in, decide when you’re going to go to the gym to get your resistance training in, and get it all planned out in advance. Right, so simple, and then just stick to that plan.

Over in the coaching group, I have an entire course called Getting It All Done, where I show you exactly how to plan everything in your life so that you can make it all work, because I get it. We’re all busy. We all have busy lives, we’ve got work, we’ve got kids, we’ve got school, we’ve got all kinds of things going on, right?

And I make these suggestions like, hey, you should probably get outside and exercise every day, you should probably be doing some resistance training. You know, you should probably do some stretching and some yoga and things.

People are just like, dude, I can’t. I don’t have time for all this stuff. And I don’t want you to use that as an excuse. I don’t want you to use the I don’t have time as an excuse, okay? Because time is just a mental construct. It doesn’t truly exist.

You make the time for whatever is important to you, you absolutely do. So make the time for what’s important to you decide what’s important to you make the time and get it done. But I have this cool course right, it breaks it all down and shows you exactly how to do all that. I

found this quote when I was preparing for this podcast, and it might be from Ben Franklin. It’s kind of you know, the internet, who knows what some of this stuff. But anyway, it’s this quote has been attributed to Ben Franklin – “If you fail to plan you’re planning to fail.”

Boom, I love this, quote, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. I want to encourage you to not skip this step. Don’t skip the planning, make a plan. Most people just don’t do it. They just wing it. And if you don’t have a plan, you’re going to inevitably fail. Okay.

And just so you know, starting in January over in the coaching group, we’re going to be focused on starting the New Year, the right way. And I’m going to show you exactly how to plan your meals, what you should be eating, what you shouldn’t be eating, and most importantly, how to stick to that plan. Right, anyone can make a plan. It’s the sticking to the plan that’s the hard part.

Here’s my best advice for achieving greatness in any area of your life. Are you ready? Here it is. Make a plan. And then stick to that plan, even when you don’t feel like it. That’s it, make a plan and then stick to the plan. Even when you don’t feel like it.

You can accomplish just about anything with that kind of attitude. If you want to lose weight, make a plan to maybe you quit eating sugar and you quit eating processed food, and then stick to that plan, even when it’s hard. stick to that plan.

Even when you’re surrounded by cookies and candy and pastries. Because you’re gonna want that stuff. It will be hard in that moment, you will not feel like sticking to your plan in that situation.

You know, maybe you’re making Christmas cookies with your kids and the whole house smells like sugar cookies, right? How do you stick to your plan, that’s going to be hard, but you can do it. I know you can.

But that’s what it means to stick to your plan even when you don’t feel like it. If you want to get stronger, make a plan to lift weights a few times each week. And then do that. Work that plan. Even when it’s cold and dark outside.

You don’t feel like getting up and going to the gym because you’d just rather sleep in, get your butt out of bed and get to the gym. Even though you don’t feel like it, do it anyway. That’s how you get stronger.

Right? So make a plan and then stick to the plan. That’s my second best advice for getting through the holidays like a badass.

And then step number three. Listen. You might fail. No big whoop. Do not beat yourself up if you fail. Do not beat yourself up if you fail. What happens if you fail? What happens if you don’t stick to the plan? What happens if you eat the sugar cookies or you just skip the gym or you skip that run because you decided to stay inside watching Netflix?

Like what happens in that situation? And by the way, here’s a little sidebar for you. Netflix, is not bad. Netflix is not the worst thing in the world. People talk about watching TV as being the worst thing you can possibly do. So much so that like, it can feel very guilty and shameful.

When you just sit down to watch a show I say enjoy your TV, but just like anything else, the dosage matters. So just do it in moderation. Right?

And by the way, I just started watching Succession on HBO – holy cow, that is an awesome, awesome show. So enjoy your Netflix, enjoy your streaming TV, whatever, enjoy your movies. It’s a great way to spend some time and you know, snuggled up on the couch with a loved one or something like that. End of rant.

Okay, that was a little sidebar. So what happens if you, if you fail, you eat the cookies, you just don’t get to the gym, whatever. What happens if you don’t stick to your plan 100%? Do not beat yourself up. Just get back on track as soon as you can.

If you screw up one meal, it’s not going to ruin everything for you just get back on track at your next meal. If you miss a workout, don’t freak out about it, you’re not going to lose all your fitness. Just make a point to get back on track at your next workout.

A good rule of thumb is to not have two bad meals in a row and never skip two workouts in a row. What we’re after is consistency, not perfection. It’s more important that you put weeks and months together of consistency. Rather than sticking to some plan perfectly every single day. It’s just not practical to think that way. Right?

The same thing goes for our running through the holidays challenge. If you miss a day, it’s no big deal. Just pick it back up again the next day. It’s not about doing it perfectly. It’s about doing it consistently.

And this all might make common sense. And, you know, it can be very easy to slip into the habit of beating yourself up over this stuff though. It can be really easy to just feel guilty or shameful or talk smack about yourself. Right? These things do not do you any good whatsoever. Right?

What happens is, a lot of times people will have a cheat meal, or they’ll miss a workout. They feel terrible, ashamed, and guilty. And this can very easily spiral you down into an attitude of like, just screw it all. Why should I even bother with any of this, I always mess up. Don’t do that.

Right, indulging in these negative thoughts and negative feelings. And we call these indulgent emotions. When we do this, we indulge in this negativity and worthlessness and shame and guilt – don’t do that. It’s very detrimental to your success. Okay?

Because what happens when you feel bad? What happens when you beat yourself up like this? Typically, you just want to feel better. Typically, you just run to find something to make yourself feel good again. And a lot of times that means using food or alcohol.

So it just makes the situation worse. It completely compounds feeling bad, right? So I plan on failing, it’s part of the process, not a big deal. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Okay. Strive for consistency, rather than perfection and get back on track at the very next opportunity.

Okay, so quick recap. My three tips for handling the holidays like a badass, first of all, decide who you want to be on January 2. Do you want to gain weight, maintain your weight or lose weight and then act accordingly? Who do you want to be on January 2?

Who is that badass version of yourself? What does he or she look like and write about it? Write what it would feel like to stay consistent through the holidays right about what it would feel like to show up on January 2. Feeling good about yourself feeling confident, feeling like you had your back this whole time and decide who you want to be.

Step number two. Make a plan stick to the plan even when you don’t feel like it. Remember, if you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

And then step number three is don’t beat yourself up. If you do fail, no big whoop. Get back on track at your next meal or your next workout. Don’t ever skip two workouts in a row. Don’t ever eat two bad meals in a row. Okay, we’re striving for consistency, not perfection.

And I know you got this. I know you guys have absolutely got this. Love. You all keep on Running Lean and we’ll talk to you soon.

250. 3 Things You Need to Do to Get Yourself Unstuck

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Have you ever felt like you just can’t seem to make any progress toward a goal? Have you ever found it difficult to get started eating right or exercising regularly? Have you ever made some …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 250 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Three Things You Need To Do To Get Yourself Unstuck. So have you ever felt like you just can’t seem to make progress towards a goal? Have you ever found it difficult to get started eating the right way or exercising regularly? Or have you ever made some progress towards a goal, but then you hit a plateau and you just can’t seem to get things going again? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then congratulations, you are normal. It also means that you’ve probably felt stuck at some point in your life and found it difficult to get unstuck. So in this episode, I’ve got three things you need to do to get yourself unstuck so that you can continue making progress toward your goals.

But first, if you’re looking for some help reaching your goals, if you have certain health and fitness goals that you’re trying to accomplish by the end of the year, we’ve got a couple of months until the end of this year, plenty of time to get started and make a lot of progress towards those goals. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to improve your running? Do you want to be able to run faster, run longer? Do you want to get stronger? Do you want to build a stronger frame to help you with running? Do you want to improve your running? Well, getting stronger is one of the ways you can do that. All these things are possible for you, and if you want a little bit of help getting there, absolutely think about getting a coach. And if it’s me, great. If it’s somebody else, that’s fine too. But with a coach, you get guidance, you get direction, you get feedback, you get support, you get accountability, you get motivation, you get encouragement. All these things that you get from a coach will help you to stay on track and keep making progress towards your goals. Today we’re talking about being stuck and getting yourself unstuck. Having a coach is one of the best ways to avoid getting stuck in the first place. So if you’re interested in getting a little bit of help making sure that you never have to worry about being stuck, just go to my website, running leancoaching.com, click on work with me. You and I will have a conversation, and we can talk about exactly what it would look like for you to become the most badass version of yourself yet, go to runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. Awesome.

Okay, so today, three things you need to do to get yourself unstuck. I’ve been thinking about this today because I hear from a lot of people in my day to day life, some people I work with, not too often, though, because with a coach, you know, a lot of the people I work with, they don’t ever really get stuck, but maybe people that are interested in coaching that I talk to, they tell me that they feel stuck. They’ve tried to lose weight, and it worked for a certain amount of time, and then it stopped working, and now they’re stuck. They don’t know what to do, or they’ve wanted to lose weight for a long time, and they’ve been stuck at this weight forever, and they just can’t seem to get things moving. Or maybe they are interested in running a marathon or something like that, and they have tried to get started with that, and it just hasn’t worked. Or they have, you know, made some progress, but they can’t get past a 5k without feeling like they’re gonna die, and so they just feel stuck. We’ve all felt this way before.

I kind of mentioned that in the intro here, that if you’ve ever felt stuck before in your life, it’s very normal. This is very normal. But I want you to think about this as I’m going through some of the stuff I’m talking about here today, which is that being stuck is really just a mindset. It’s a state of mind. It’s not real. You’re never really stuck. You’re just acting like you are. I know this might be hard for some of you to hear, but I want you to really be open to this and just listen today with this concept in mind that being stuck is just a state of mind. It’s not real. You’re acting like you’re stuck, but you’re not really stuck.

Because here’s the thing, it’s easier to just say I’m stuck than to take the uncomfortable action of getting yourself unstuck, and that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about here today, is that uncomfortable action of getting yourself unstuck. But just keep in mind that there is no such thing as being stuck. It’s just a state of mind that you are in.

Okay, so number one, the first thing you need to do to get yourself unstuck if you’re feeling stuck, is to stop procrastinating. Now you might think I don’t really procrastinate, but we all procrastinate. Everybody procrastinates to some level, to some degree, some more than others, some in different areas of their life. We all know that there are things that we should be doing or want to be doing, and we’re not doing those things, or we’re putting them off. We’re saying to ourselves, or telling us this ourselves, this story, that I will do it tomorrow. That’s classic procrastination, right? So why? Why are we sort of addicted to procrastination? What is this thing about procrastination?

Well, when you need to do something that’s tough, like, you know, changing your diet or going outside to run and it’s cold out, just thinking about these things brings up resistance. You know, resistance is a word that describes all the pain and the discomfort that shows up whenever you do hard things. So this is why a lot of times people will do anything, but that one thing that feels hard, you know. So there a lot of times people will, instead of going outside and running, it’s cold outside, people don’t want to go outside and run. So what they’ll do is they will start cleaning the house. When they’re telling themselves, oh, well, I’m just, I’m just cleaning the house. But cleaning the house is just something you’ve done a million times. It’s safe, it’s comfortable, it’s familiar. And then at the end of, you know, the 30 minutes, or however long it takes you to clean the kitchen, or whatever it is, you’ve got a clean house. So you have this instant result. You can look and say, oh, I did something, I accomplished something. But when you have to go outside and run in the cold, it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable, it’s painful, it feels unsafe, it’s unfamiliar, and the results come much later.

You know, running is amazing for you, like, it’s so good for your health, but you don’t get all the health benefits. You do get some right away, but for the most part, they come later. You know, let’s say you’re trying to improve your your running time. Well, you’re not going to go out and go from a four hour marathon to a three and a half hour marathon in one run. It’s going to take you a long time to get there. So instead of going out there and doing those hard things, we do something that feels safe and comfortable and familiar, which is to, just like, clean the house, and we’re telling ourselves a story, well, at least I’m doing something productive or whatever. But at the same time, there’s something you want to be doing, but you’re not doing it, and it’s that resistance that’s coming up. So instead of, you know, running, instead of changing your diet, starting to eat healthy food, you stay in bed, you flop out on the couch, you clean the house, whatever you’re going to do where there is not going to be any resistance.

So step number one in getting yourself unstuck is to recognize that we all have this kind of addiction to procrastination. Obviously, some people, more than others, in some areas, more than others. So recognize that we have this propensity towards procrastination and to stop doing that. The key to stopping procrastination is really getting into action. You have to do something. You have to take an action that moves you towards that goal. It doesn’t have to be a huge step. It could be just one tiny little thing to get you moving in the direction of that goal, even just a tiny little bit.

So what’s the tiniest thing you can do that’s going to get you into movement? So maybe you don’t feel like running and you’re procrastinating go out, going outside and running, because it’s cold out, and it is getting cold out, by the way, and I hate running in the cold, so there’s lots of days where I will procrastinate running, you know, I’ll sit there and I’ll be, you know, doing some work, and I’ll be inside and it’s warm, and I’ll be like, well, I’m doing work, you know, I’m doing some work, I’m doing emails or whatever it is, and I’m the whole time. I’m like, I should really be out there running.

So what is one thing you can do? Well, put your running shoes on, you don’t even have to go outside. Just get into that routine. Just start, start the process. Just put the running shoes on your feet, and then see what happens. If you don’t feel like starting a whole new eating plan and eating healthy and all this other stuff. Okay, sit on the couch and give yourself 10 minutes and just like, write a grocery list of some things that would be healthier choices for you. You know, if you don’t feel like going to the gym again, sit on the couch, write down three exercises that you can do when you go to the gym. Chances are, just by doing these tiny little things that are almost so easy you can’t do them, that you are going to break out of that stuck feeling, and you’re going to, you’re going to take the next right action.

So what’s the next action you can do after you put your running shoes on? Maybe you get your Garmin watch, and you put it on, or your running shirt, or your shorts or something like that. Maybe, you know, after making that grocery list, you know, start getting your bags ready and to put in the car, you know. Maybe you know you don’t feel like going to the gym, but you’ve written down a few exercises that you can do, and then you start, you know, packing your gym bag. You know, these are just little, tiny steps, but they absolutely help you to stop the procrastinating, stop feeling stuck, and to actually get into movement. So movement is really going to be the key to getting stuck in general, but to stop procrastinating in particular. Okay, so that’s number one. Stop procrastinating.

The second thing that you need to do if you want to get yourself unstuck is to really define your purpose. A lot of times you’re feeling stuck because you don’t have a sense of purpose. So many people say that the number one reason that they are unhappy in their life, especially as they get older in life, is because they lack purpose in their life.

So what is purpose? Well, purpose is really anything you want it to be. It can be whatever you decide that it is for you, your purpose should be something though, that drives you forward. It should be one of these things that when you think about your purpose, that it helps you to get out of bed on those cold mornings and get outside and run. Your purpose doesn’t have to be something huge, like, oh, I have to save the world. You’re not Frodo. Okay? So it can be something small, but it has to be something that is meaningful to you. Has to be something that is important to you. And having this, like, strong sense of purpose helps to keep you going when the going gets tough, and the going always gets tough, right?

So think of your purpose as your North Star. So this is the thing that’s out there. It’s actually within you. But I’m just kind of pointing out there as like, that’s something that’s always guiding you forward. It’s always moving you in the direction of your goals, your hopes, your dreams. I have a purpose. My purpose is very simple. It’s a little statement that I wrote out, and I think about it all the time. I have it written down in lots of places, and it is this, here’s my purpose. It is to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire others to do the same. That’s it, to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire others to do the same. This purpose gets me out of bed in the morning. This purpose helps me to either never get stuck or never stay stuck for very long.

And your purpose needs to be something that is personal to you, it should be something that feels bigger than you, and it should evoke some sort of emotion when you read it or you say it or think about it. So it has to make you feel something, because when you feel something deep inside, when you think about your purpose, then you know you’ve got it. So take some time to define your purpose, like, why is losing this weight important to you? How is this going to affect other people in your life? Why is it important for you to be strong? Why is it important for you to run that marathon? And then, what is the ripple effect that these things are going to have on the people in your life, especially the important people in your life.

So step two in getting yourself unstuck is to clearly define your purpose. And this doesn’t mean just think about it, I want you to write it down, print it out, paste it on your computer, on your mirror in your bathroom. Look at it every day. It even helps if you write it out every day. So maybe you do some journaling. You can, you know, at the top of every journal page, write out your purpose statement. Write it every day. Look at it every day. Say it out loud, see it, say it, feel it. But that’s the most important part, is that when you see this or say you should feel something, so having the strong sense of purpose is going to keep you from getting stuck, and it’s going to help you to get unstuck when you feel like you’re stuck.

Okay. Number three, we’ve kind of been dancing around this one a little bit, but I’m going to take a deep dive into this. Number three is to embrace the suck. If you’re feeling stuck, right, you got to know it’s a mental construct that you created in your own mind, first of all, and knowing that you’re never really stuck, acts will help you to get into action. So it actually helps you to get into action just knowing that that it’s just a mental construct. But sometimes you just have to accept the fact that action is uncomfortable. Doing hard things, by definition is hard, losing weight is hard, running a marathon is hard, getting stronger is hard.

If these things were easy, everybody would do it. People don’t do these things. Like less than 1% of the US population has ever run a marathon, like you are in an elite category, if that’s you. Losing weight is very difficult. So many people just don’t do it. And all these things are hard because they’re uncomfortable, they’re painful. They’re unfamiliar to you, and your brain is hardwired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Your brain is hardwired to avoid discomfort and seek comfort. It’s hardwired to avoid unfamiliar things and seek the familiar things.

So your brain is just a comfort, familiar, pleasure, seeking creature, and most things you want to accomplish in life unfortunately require you to experience some sort of pain or discomfort or something unfamiliar. Again, all these things that you want for yourself, if you don’t already have them, then they lie outside your comfort zone. So by nature, to accomplish things you’ve never accomplished before, it means you have to get out of your comfort zone. You have to get uncomfortable. You have to embrace the discomfort, embrace the suck.

If you want to lose weight, you have to go through the pain of sugar withdrawals. You have to go through the discomfort of eating chicken and broccoli when there’s pizza right there. And you have to go through that unfamiliarity of doing things eating foods that you’re not used to eating because you’ve been eating a different way. And so to your brain, none of this feels good. It all feels unsafe, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, painful to your brain, even though, in the long run, you know that this is what’s best for you. This is what’s best for your health, for your happiness, for your survival as a human being, all of the results of eating healthy and losing weight are positive, but to your brain, it’s all a big warning sign danger. Get out now, stop everything. And we call this being stuck.

The way to get yourself unstuck then is to accept that all of this is normal. It’s actually how you get to your goals, all that pain, the discomfort, the unfamiliar stuff, it’s all just part of what it takes for you to get there. It’s like the path that you have to take. It’s the cost of success. Discomfort is the cost of success. You want to lose weight, you want to run a marathon, the price you pay is getting uncomfortable. But you know what? We don’t want to feel any of those bad things. So instead, we do nothing a lot of times, and we stay in that stuck place.

So but remember what I said earlier, being stuck isn’t real. So the next time you think you’re stuck, do this instead of saying, oh, I’m stuck, say I am unwilling to get uncomfortable in this moment, instead of saying, I’m stuck, say, what do I need to do to embrace the suck today and then go do that thing? Okay, so those are your three things that you need to do to get yourself unstuck, stop procrastinating, define your purpose and then embrace the suck.

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

249. Avoid These Mistakes and Crush Your Next Race

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It’s that time of the year when every weekend it seems there are a ton of races going on all over the world. And a lot of runners who’ve worked really hard over the last few months will inevitably …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 249 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Avoid These Mistakes and Crush Your Next Race. It’s that time of the year when every weekend it seems there’s a ton of races going on all over the world, and a lot of runners who’ve worked really hard over the last few months will inevitably make mistakes on race day. And making mistakes does not just apply to first time racers. Whether you’re a brand new runner, you’re doing your first 5k or you’re a seasoned athlete and running your 20th marathon, I think you’re gonna get something out of this episode. So today, it’s all about how to avoid these mistakes so you can crush your next race.

But first, if you’re somebody who’s interested in improving your running performance, if you want to run longer distances, if you want to increase your endurance, if you be able want to be able to run ultra marathons or marathons or half marathons, whatever it is that you want to do to improve your endurance as a runner, or if you want to get faster, maybe you want to crush your next race. You want a PR or PB, depending on where you are in the world, then I think you might benefit from having some guidance, some direction, getting some constant feedback, having tons of support accountability, having somebody there that’s motivating you, that’s encouraging you.

This is what it means to have a coach. Listen. You don’t have to figure all this stuff out for yourself. You can have somebody right there that’s helping you every step of the way, that’s guiding you, that’s keeping you on track, that’s holding you accountable, so that you can get your results much faster than trying to do it all on your own. So if you’re interested in learning more about coaching, let’s you and I just sit down and have a conversation. We do this over zoom. We just do a quick call, and we’ll talk about coaching. I can answer all your questions. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, and click on work with me, and I can show you exactly how to run longer, how to run faster, and how to become the most badass version of yourself, yet. Cool.

All right, so today avoiding certain mistakes so you can crush your next race. So the reason I’m talking about this today is because there are a lot of races happening right now. This is the beginning of fall racing season. So that starts in September and goes really through November. So September, October, November, typically the three months in the fall when most races are happening. In fact, we just had the Berlin marathon this past weekend, and man, what a great event. I had several of my clients running that event, several of them had PRs and just had great races, and just felt amazing.

But it got me thinking that there are a lot of people out there that don’t have a coach, or don’t have the guidance, or maybe haven’t done a lot of these kinds of races, and there might be some mistakes that are being made out there that a lot of people just don’t really think about until it’s too late. I was certainly in that camp, and I’ve made my share of mistakes early on in my running career, and after doing a lot, a lot of races, I have pretty much made all the mistakes that you can make, pretty much everything I’m going to talk about, I think I’ve done probably, in other words, I’ve made all these mistakes that I’m going to be talking about today, so I can speak from experience, but the reason I’m talking about this is so you don’t have to, you don’t have to make these same mistakes. You can plan a little bit better.

But there’s a lot of people and even seasoned runners, even runners who have done tons of races, run many, many, many, five Ks, half marathons, 10 Ks, marathons, whatever, that still make these kinds of mistakes. And, you know, when we do a little bit of digging after a race, maybe I’m working with somebody, we say, okay, well, let’s talk about what you did. Oh, you know. And then they say something, and I go, well, you know, you talked about maybe not doing that. And, oh yeah, you know, I kind of forgot. So it’s just one of those things where the stuff I’m going to talk about today applies to everybody, whether you’re brand new to running and you’re going to be doing your first race, which is so exciting, it’s so fun.

And listen, I love this aspect of running where we can train for an event that has to happen on a certain day at a certain time, like you have to be ready, and you have to show up, you have to put in the effort, and then you have to show up and actually do the thing. I love that because it’s a way of like, motivating you to get out there and do the work and do the training, because you have a hard date that you got to show up and actually do the work, and then the race itself is a chance for you to prove to yourself what you’re capable of.

So I think races are so much fun, and when you do accomplish your goal in a race, that feels amazing. It’s like all this hard work paid off, and you have shown yourself that you’re capable of doing something you didn’t think you could do before you ran this race. So these races are a chance for you to really prove something to yourself, not to anybody else, but to yourself, and to say to yourself, like, look what I am capable of. So I love racing. If you’re not somebody that’s into racing, I would say, get out there and try. It doesn’t mean you have to run super fast, but it is a chance for you to prove to yourself what you could do. So it is a chance for you to get out there and get a little bit uncomfortable for the length of time it takes to run the race. That might be 30 minutes. It may be three or four hours, or maybe six hours, I don’t know, but whatever it is, get out there and prove to yourself that you can do something hard.

Okay, so there are a lot of mistakes that people make, and even seasoned runners. And the first thing I’m going to talk about here, now listen, some of these things you’ve probably heard before, and you’re like, oh, yeah, and I know all that, but are you doing it all? Like, just be honest with yourself, if you’re a seasoned runner and you’ve been running a million marathons or whatever, I’m going to tell you some things, and you’re going to probably go like, oh, I know that already, but think about the last few races you did. Did you remember these things? Did you actually do these things?

Okay, the first one is this, trying something new on race day. This is a mistake that everybody makes at some point, the rule is nothing new on race day. This is one of the biggest mistakes every runner makes when they get out there and they do their first race or their 10th race, or whatever. Oh, you know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna buy these new shoes that I just got at the expo the day before the race, and I think I’ll wear them tomorrow for my marathon. Mmm bad idea. Or I think I’m gonna try this new Mexican place the night before my race. You know, nope. Don’t do that. No new food, no new gear, no new pacing strategy. No new pre race meal, no no, nothing new on race day, no new flavor of gel or whatever you’re doing. You want to just be wearing the same clothes you’ve been wearing for your training. You want to be eating the same food. You want to be fueling the same way, and you want to be wearing the same shoes and socks, and you know, using all the gear and everything that you’ve done in training, you want to do on your race.

One of my biggest mistakes ever was during my first marathon. So I was training for my first marathon, doing it all on my own. I wasn’t running with anybody else. I wasn’t in a running group or anything like that. I had a couple of friends who were runners, and I talked to them a little bit about, okay, what should I do for this race? And they gave me some pointers and stuff, but really, not too much. Really stuck with me, but I was reading a book at the time, I think it was Ultra Marathon Man by Dean Carnass.

And in this book, he’s talking about how he was on some long run and he stopped and had some chocolate covered espresso beans, and how it was amazing because it gave him this boost of energy like he’d never felt before. He just felt amazing after eating these chocolate covered espresso beans, because it’s like caffeine and sugar and it’s chocolate and it’s delicious, and it’s exactly what he needed to keep going. And I thought, oh, that’s a good idea. I know I have a marathon coming up in a few days here. I think I’m gonna go and get myself a bunch of chocolate covered espresso beans, and I’ll just eat those, you know, towards the end of my marathon, this should be fine, right?

All right, so I got all these chocolate covered espresso beans, stuck them in a little baggy, put them in my shorts. Well, ran, I don’t know, whatever, 16-18, miles. I was probably around mile 20 or something like that, and I pulled these things out of my shorts, and first of all, think about what happens to chocolate when it’s been in your warm shorts for like, three hours? Well, everything had kind of melted together, and it just became this big glob of stuff. And I was like, well, it’s okay. It’s not going to deter me.

So I just kind of reached in there and grabbed a handful of this chocolate coffee bean glop, you know, and started munching on it. And I was like, Oh, this tastes great. You know, this is going to be awesome. Well, the thing I didn’t realize is that espresso beans are, they’re just coffee beans, so they’re like, super crunchy. And as you start eating these things, there becomes 1000s of tiny, little, very sharp shards of coffee bean that get lodged in every place in your mouth and your throat. And I started choking and coughing, and I couldn’t stop coughing. I had to stop and go to the side. I thought I was going to puke. It was horrible. Did they work? No, I don’t think so, because I felt terrible. I thought I was going to die, and I’m sitting there choking on these chocolate covered espresso beans.

So I learned something that day though, I was like, do not do anything new on race day, like I tried something brand I’ve never tried these things before. I’d never eaten these things before. Had no idea they were gonna have that effect, and it was horrible. So that’s an example of what not to do. So that’s one of the biggest rules of any kind of race, that you’re gonna do nothing new on race day.

The second mistake I want to talk about here is not preparing for the race. And what I mean by that is a lot of people, they train, and they do all the training runs, and they put in the mileage, they put in the time, and they’re preparing to run a certain distance or a certain time, but they’re not preparing for the race itself. So you’re training, yes, but are you race ready when you show up at the start line? Have you done what I call dress rehearsals for your race? In other words, you should be practicing everything before the race day, your fueling strategy, you should be practicing your food strategy that happens like the day before you were on a race the morning of you know, bathroom habits like all this stuff has to be done ahead of time, and you got to practice it wearing the same clothes.

You know, nothing new on race day, but you also have to train for running a race. Races are different than just a training run. What are you going to be carrying with you during that race, during that event, carry that with you in training runs. So the last like third of your training cycle typically should be your long run should be devoted to dress rehearsals for your event.

You should be doing a lot of running that’s very similar to your event, yes, but also you should be preparing for that race, even so much as to prepare, like your pacing strategy and to practice your pacing strategy, practice fueling, practice hydration, practice electrolytes, practice if you’re going to take walk breaks, practice that whatever it is you got to train for your race. You want to be race ready when you show up at the start line. And so many runners, they just have no clue what’s going to happen during that race, because they’ve just been training. They’ve just been running, you know, at whatever pace, and then they think something magical is going to happen on race day. No, you got to plan for that. You got to prepare for it. So prepare to race. Prepare for the event that you’re going to be running.

Okay, another big mistake that a lot of people make is not giving yourself enough time in the morning of a big event, showing up late. This is really, really stressful. So a lot of people will wait till the last minute, and then they arrive late. They can’t find a place to park. There’s so many people. The crowds are so big that it takes them forever to get from wherever they parked, super far away, probably to the actual event. When you get into some of these big marathons or half marathons, even some 5 and 10k’s can be so crowded that just getting through like the corrals, to try to find your corral can be very time consuming.

So it can take a long time, and it’s very, stressful. And that much stress right before you’re about to run your race for the season, this can really lead to poor performance. Keep in mind that when you get down there, there’s, like, always, super long lines at all the portalets. My, uh, suggestion is always to TCB at home, if you can take care of business at home, do that, because if you need to, if you wait until you get down to you know, you’re at this big event and you’re going to try to use a bathroom down there. It, it can be problematic, right? It can be a very long wait for for bathrooms and things like that. So do not show up late. Give yourself tons of time, way more time than you think.

Make sure you’ve mapped out parking situation. If you’re meeting people, you’ve mapped out where you’re going to be meeting people. Everybody is on the same page with all this stuff. If you can carpool with some people, do that, like there’s so much stress that can be avoided, especially early in the morning on a race day, if it’s a big race, it can be really, really stressful. So make sure you do not show up late. Be early. Be early.

Okay. The next thing I want to talk about is not sticking to your race strategy. So let’s say you did have a plan. You have been practicing a racing plan, but on race day, you get sort of caught up in the excitement, and you’re like, feeling a little spicy here first thing in the morning, and you end up going out a little fast, and you’re like, that’s fine. I’m good. I feel great. Well, you’re supposed to feel great at the beginning of a big event, because you’ve done the work, you’ve peaked at the right time, you’ve tapered. But when you get to that event and you go out too fast, you’re going to crash and burn early. So this is going to be a big problem. So you want to avoid that.

The other thing is just going out way too slow, like, oh, I just, I’m really worried about having enough energy for the ender to finish this thing, so I’m just going to be really, really conservative. No, have a strategy ahead of time for your pacing. Practice that strategy and then just execute it on race day. Do not deviate from the plan, like you’ve practiced this that has worked for you, and if you haven’t practiced it, then that’s tough, like you’re just gonna have to do your best. But the point is, like practice a race strategy, a pacing strategy, ahead of time, and then make sure that you execute that exactly on race day, because you know it’s going to work for you.

It may feel weird to go a little bit slower at the beginning because you’re feeling so good, or maybe feel weird to run a little bit faster at the beginning because you’re thinking, oh, I don’t know if I can keep this up, but just know that whatever you’ve decided you’re going to do ahead of time and whatever you’ve been practicing, that’s what you want to stick to. Okay?

And that leads me to my next thing, which is not sticking to your fueling strategy. And this is a big one. A lot of people, they just, they practice fueling like during training runs and then during a race. And I hear this all the time. They say, oh, I just forgot. I forgot to fuel. I forgot to do it again. This is part of your race strategy. Make sure you don’t deviate from your rehearsed, well rehearsed and practice race strategy on race day. Don’t do that. They wonder why they can’t finish strong. Well, they forgot to fuel three times during their event. You know now, if you’re a fat adapted runner, and you are, you know, you’ve gotten very efficient at burning body fat for fuel. You’re not going to need a ton of fuel, and you could probably do pretty well with a pretty bare minimum amount of fuel.

But still, you have practiced a racing strategy. You’ve practiced a fueling strategy. Stick with it during your race, practice it and then execute during your race, over fueling like, so doing too much like, if you’re too worried about, oh, you know, I better do extra this might be a problem. You know, some people get disaster pants when they do too much fuel, especially if you’re doing like, the really sugary goos and stuff like that. And under fueling might lead to early bonking like you might just crash and burn too early, so practice your fueling strategy and then do that on race day. If it works for you, then do that on race day.

The next tip here, and thing to avoid is not dressing appropriately, especially for weather that can be too hot, too cold, could be rainy, could be snowy. Most people, I find dress too warm for races, so they show up wearing jackets and long pants and things like that, because it’s a little cool in the morning, so maybe, let’s say 50 degrees or something in the morning, and they’re running a marathon, and they’re going to be out there for, let’s say, four hours, right? Say the thing starts at 7am so they’re going to be out there until 11. Well, the weather at 11 is going to be much different than the weather at 7am so instead of being 50, it might be 70, and you’re going to warm up out there, even running something like a 5k or a 10k, you know, after the first mile, your body is going to be producing a lot of heat, and you’re going to warm up quite rapidly.

And so most people I find are too hot at the beginning of the race. You should be a little cold at the start of a race, because you will warm up as you go, especially if you live somewhere where you get humidity and a little bit warmer temperatures. Then it can be very problematic, and this will cause you a lot of discomfort, or you’re like, trying to take clothes off, and then what do you do with them? Like, we’ll tie it around your waist. Well, that just makes that part of you warm. You’re trying to carry your shirt with you or whatever. Like, this stuff is just, you know, be prepared for the weather. Be like a weather fiend. Like, pay attention to the weather. Look at the humidity again. You’ve been practicing this stuff in your training, you should have been practicing a dress strategy as well.

So make sure that you are taking into consideration if it’s going to be really cold and you need to wear gloves or something like that, can you take them off and stash them in your shorts or something as you’re running? If you do warm up, maybe you use arm warmers instead of a jacket, and that’s something you can just strip off and, you know, stuff in your shirt, or something like that. Again, this is one of those things that you got to practice, but pay attention to the weather and know ahead of time what you’re getting yourself into here.

I’ve done a lot of races where I usually am pretty cold at the start. I might wear an old sweatshirt or a big plastic bag, like a trash bag, to stay warm at the start of the race, and as soon as the race starts, I strip that stuff off. And I’m a little bit cold at the beginning, but then I warm up. And I’ve had some races where, you know, towards the end of the race, I remember running the Indianapolis marathon, which is in November, and the finish line is downtown Indianapolis, and you’re running west for quite some time, and the wind was in our face, and we were having an ice storm, and I was miserable. Now I had dressed for the temperatures. Didn’t know we’re going to be getting this ice storm. It was a little bit colder than I thought I was going to be. But, you know, I actually think I had a PR that day. I think that may have been my marathon PR. So even on a day where the weather is pretty awful. You know, you got to just plan on doing the best that you can for what is happening.

Sometimes you just can’t do anything about it. You know, we’ve had a few Flying Pigs here in Cincinnati, where the rain was horrific and, you know, wading through ankle deep water and stuff like that, just craziness like you can’t plan for some of that stuff. I get it, but do your best. Pay attention to the weather. If anything, dress a little cooler, because you will warm up, all right.

The next kind of mistake to avoid here would be relying on your watch too much. So understand something, that GPSs are great. The watches that we have are awesome. They are pretty accurate, but I will tell you, I have never run a race where my GPS matched the course distance Exactly. And I hear people complain about this all the time. Oh, the course was short, or the course was long, you know, my watch said it was 26.8 miles, you know, and listen, when they plan a race course like this, and this course is certified, especially if it’s a Boston qualifier course. These routes are certified. So they go around with a wheel and they measure that course exactly. Your watch is not correct. I’m just going to tell you right now the course is correct, 99.9999% of the time the course is going to be correct. GPS is inaccurate, especially when you’re in an urban downtown area, the signal bounces off of buildings and it will look like you covered more ground.

Sometimes, if you don’t run the tangents during a marathon, which is the shortest distance you that can add up that extra little bit of running that you’re doing around corners and things like that, can all add up over time and make it look like it’s a little bit longer, or that GPS is just off a little bit. You know, it’s not perfect. It’s not perfect, and sometimes the signal is interrupted because of different factors. I don’t know whether, I don’t know all the details about that, but just understand that GPS is not going to be perfect. So when you are looking at your watch and it’s telling you you’re at five miles, but you haven’t even seen the five mile marker yet. Go by what the course is showing you. Okay, go by what the course is showing you.

A better plan, especially for a marathon, is to wear a paste band. A paste band is simply a piece of paper that you cover with plastic. So I usually just use a bunch of tape and wrap it around my wrist, and it gives me the time I’m supposed to be at each mile marker. So if my goal is to run a nine minute pace for 26.2 miles, then at mile one I should be, my watch should say nine minutes. At mile two, my watch should say 18 minutes and so on. And so I can look at my pace band and say, Oh, I’m at mile 16. I should be at this time. And does that time match the, you know, the time, does the time match the where I’m supposed to be? Does it match where I actually am on the course, yes or no.

So instead of trying to rely on your GPS, on your watch, I just switch my watch to just show me the time only when I’m running a race like that, because I’m not going to, I’m not going to rely on my GPS to be accurate, because it is not accurate. So get a pace band. And you can, actually a lot of times, you can get these at the expo the day before a race. They will have them that you can just grab, and they’re pre made for different times, and you can just grab one of those, or you can print your own. You can go on the internet and just look up, print a paste band for a marathon, and they’ll, there’ll be places where you can do that, but I’ve had really good luck with this, especially if you’re trying to, like, let’s say you’re trying to break four hours in a marathon, and you’re, you’re, you know, you’re going to be really close. Like, your pace is, like, you know, 3 hours and 57 minutes. Well, guess what? Like, you don’t want to rely on your GPS for that, because if it’s off, you could miss your PR, so instead, go by the time only and pay attention to those mile markers and just make sure that your time is matching those mile markers. Okay?

Okay, the next mistake a lot of people make is really just having a negative mindset, and this might be one of the most important ones here, if not the most important one. So people get really down on themselves when things don’t go as planned. Well, guess what? Things are never going to go as planned. You’re going to work all year, or whatever. You plan for this race. You have a race strategy, you’ve got this fueling strategy, you’ve been practicing your pacing, and then something happens, like, it’s too hot or it’s too cold, or it’s too rainy, or you you know you’re running late, so you couldn’t TCB ahead of time, and that messed you up, like whatever.

You cannot let these things get to you. One thing you can definitely plan on, though, is that nothing will ever go as planned on race day. It never goes as planned. So we’re gonna plan as much as we can, and then you gotta go with the flow. Yes, things are gonna get hard. It’s a marathon or a half marathon, or whatever. Racing is hard. Running is hard. Things are gonna get hard. It’s going to be painful. Running a marathon kind of sucks. They’re supposed to suck. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Less than 1% of the US population has completed a marathon. So if you’re somebody that’s running marathons, you are in an elite group like these things we do, they are tough, but you are tougher.

Think about all the hard things you’ve gotten through in your life so far. You’re just gonna add this one more thing to your list today. So just get it done. Just finish it up. Do the hard work. It’ll be over in a few hours. You know. Just know that you’ve done all the work. Trust your training. You’re way more powerful than you know, and just get the job done. All right. Plan as best you can. Go with the flow. Do not get into this mindset where you’re down on yourself. Oh, you know, if the weather was better, I’d have a much better day. Who cares? Everybody’s dealing with this right now. Do your best. Show up for yourself. Tough it out, see what you’re capable of. Wouldn’t it be much more fun to finish that race and go, You know what? Despite all this stuff, I did pretty good. That’s a much better attitude than Oh, all this stuff happened, and that’s why I totally just quit, you know? Like, no, don’t do that. Okay.

Which leads me to the next mistake a lot of people make, which is not having fun. Races are supposed to be fun. You guys, okay, this is like your victory lap. You’ve done all the hard work. This is the reward for all the hard work that you’ve done. I see too many people, like their heads are down. They’re kind of slunged over as they’re running. They maybe have their headphones in and they’re just checked out.

When I run a race, I smile a lot. I talk to people. I don’t wear headphones. I High Five people all over the place. I try to talk to people. Make new friends. Hey, where are you from? Oh, Bulgaria. Well, that’s crazy. What are you doing here? You know, I get pumped up from listening to the crowd. There’s this energy during a race that you want to be a part of, because it makes running the race so much more fun. So remember, we’re supposed to have fun doing this stuff. Yeah, running is hard, but listen, it’s supposed to be kind of fun, so enjoy it. Don’t be, if you’re just miserable the whole time. Like, how is that for you? Like, do you really want to do that for if you’re running a marathon for like, the next four or five hours? Do you really want to be miserable for five hours? No, enjoy yourself. Have fun, to talk to people, laugh, crack jokes, all that stuff.

And then my last little bonus tip here is going to be, don’t make the mistake of not taking good race photos. Okay, I just thought of this like the last second here. I’m like, oh, I need to add this on here. A lot of people make the mistake of not paying attention to where their photographers are on different races. So a lot of races, they’ll have professional photographers out there taking pictures. Then you can purchase the pictures afterwards.

And if you’re one of these people that wants to do that, like if it’s your first race and you want to purchase the pictures, then here these tips are going to be for you. But for anybody that wants to just take good, good race pictures, or better race pictures, pay attention. Pay attention to where these photographers are on the course. You can only see them. They’ve got giant cameras with these big lenses. It’s pretty easy to spot them a lot of times, they’re sitting in a chair, like in the middle of the road or something, or off to the side, but you know, a lot of times it’s pretty obvious that you can see them ahead of time. So be looking ahead when you see them.

Posture up, no slouching, proud chest, smile. Make sure they can see your bib number clearly on your chest. Move away if there’s people in front of you, make sure there’s a clear line of sight between you and the photographer, and you might feel like crap, but in that 30 seconds, or 20 seconds as you’re passing this photographer, smile, wave, act like you’re having a good time, then you can go back to being miserable afterwards.

But listen, racing is so much fun. I love running races. It’s one of the reasons why I love running so much is because we get to celebrate with these races. You get to go out and run with 1000s of other people, and it just shows you, like, what we are all capable of, these communities coming together. It’s so much fun. So get out there and enjoy it. Don’t make these mistakes.

Hopefully you all will have an awesome racing season this fall and or if you’re listening to this, in the springtime, hopefully you know your spring races will be awesome as well.

All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

247. The Mindset Shift Required in Order to Succeed

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Lots of factors go into whether or not you will successfully achieve a goal. How bad you want it, where you are in your life, your physical limitations just to name a few. But one of the most …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there and welcome to Episode 247 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the Mindset Shift Required in Order to Succeed. So lots of factors go into whether or not you will successfully achieve some goal, like how bad you want it, where you are in your life, your physical limitations, just to name a few. But one of the most powerful indicators of success is actually a shift in your mindset. And most people do not consider their mindset when they set out to accomplish some big goal, like, let’s say you want to lose weight, they just start with, okay, what should I do? What should I eat? What should I not eat? So in this episode, I want to talk about the mindset shift required in order to succeed so you can accomplish everything that you want in your life. Cool.

But first, let’s talk a little bit about what coaching means to me. So for me, coaching is a powerful tool that you can use to help you to accomplish all those hard things that you want to do in your life. I have done all kinds of hard things, and the times when I had a coach helping me, it was exponentially faster to get to my results, and the results were much better. So just keep in mind that, yeah, you can do lots of things on your own. I’m a self starter. I’m somebody that is pretty self motivated. But when I have a coach helping me, guiding me, showing me the way they’ve already made all the mistakes so they can tell me what not to do, and somebody that’s there holding me accountable for my actions, then my results are much faster and much better. So you can do lots of things on your own, and I’m a proponent of that.

And if you’re a self starter, or somebody that’s good at, you know, getting started and staying disciplined, great. But if you’re somebody that wants some help with that, maybe you are good at those things, but it just hasn’t been quite working out for you, whatever the reason. It doesn’t really matter, if you want some help, reach out. Coaching works where a lot of other methods don’t, because it’s not about some particular diet or some particular, you know, workout regimen. It’s about helping you, you know, pick the right things that work for you. It’s about finding the right formula of eating patterns of, you know, running and strength training patterns that work to help you to create the body, the mind, the life that you want for yourself.

Okay, so if you’re interested in coaching, we can have a conversation about it. You don’t have to commit to anything. You and I could have a conversation. It’s free to have this conversation with me, just go to my website, runningleanpodcast.com, because I’ve been working with a lot of people lately and talking to a lot of people lately who really, they get like what to do, but when it comes to actually doing it and sticking with it, you know, making changes and eating differently and working out regularly, they need some help with the mindset that’s required in order to stick with it, in order to make those goals that they have for themselves to become a reality.

And one of the things a lot of people don’t really understand is that there has to be some big shifts in your mindset in order for you to be successful with whatever it is you set out to do. You know, you can’t just decide you want to, you know, run a faster marathon and then just, it’s just going to happen. You have to change at a fundamental level.

We’ll get into all of that in just a second, but just to understand that there’s a lot of people out there, and you might be one of these people that you want more for yourself. You want to change. You want to improve. Maybe you want to lose weight or build a lean, strong body. You want to run fast. Faster. Maybe you want to run farther than you ever have before. So you want all these things for yourself, and you kind of know what you need to do to get there. Oh, yeah, I know I need to eat this way, or I need to work out, or I need to, you know, do my speed work. So you kind of might know those things.

But one area that most people tend to neglect is their thinking, their mindset. So just understand that, you know, in order to succeed at anything, and this could be your health, your fitness, it could be relationships. It can be your career. It can be, you know, if you’re in school, it could be you’re raising kids, all kinds of things, that in order to be a success, that you have to have a shift in your mindset. Okay? You have to sort of create a new mindset, all right.

So I want to start by just talking about the difference between your thinking and your mindset. So I’m going to start with talking about thinking, which is really, this is the process that your mind uses to produce ideas, to make decisions. You know, when you’re thinking about your past, your memories, this is all thinking. This could also be, you know, an opinion about something, or a judgment of something or someone. So it’s your thoughts about something, it’s you logically figuring things out. I like to say that thinking is just sentences that you say in your mind. So this is just your internal dialog.

Okay, so thinking is something that we do non stop, like we’re always thinking. You can’t not think. It’s almost impossible to not think about anything. There are Tibetan monks who sit on mountains in silence for years, you know, I’m assuming, and still can’t shut their mind off, you know, maybe some people can do this, but it is very, very challenging. So our mind is always sort of working, which is a good thing, you know? So that’s thinking. So it’s it’s our thoughts, it’s the sentences we say in our mind. It’s our logical planning, figuring things out, you know, how we think about other people, our opinions, our judgments, when we make decisions, all those kinds of things, and then we have our mindset.

So mindset is a little bit different. Mindset is your established set of attitudes and, you know, beliefs about things that really sort of affects and influences your outlook, your behavior, mind, and you have multiple mindsets. Just like you have multiple thoughts, you can have multiple mindsets. It’s like your frame of mind. It’s the way that you think. You know, it’s your collection of attitudes and opinions and program beliefs and all that kinds of stuff.

Okay, so your mindset is something that’s broader. And when I’m talking about mindset, I’m really talking about something much broader. And I’m going to come back to this in just a minute, but I want to start talking about beliefs a little bit, because beliefs are powerful things, and they go into making up your mindset. So beliefs are the thoughts that you think over and over again. So these are things that you believe to be true about the world, and beliefs are powerful, because beliefs really drive your actions, you know, and actions create stuff. You know, actions create results, whether it’s good or bad, you can’t have results without taking action. So your beliefs, a lot of times, will determine what actions you take or don’t take. And not everyone believes the same things. Your beliefs are unique to you. Beliefs are powerful because they, a lot of times, they determine what we believe we can and can’t do. You know, they determine what we want to do, first of all. So our beliefs, a lot of times, will determine our goals.

So if we think we can do something, if we believe we can do something, then we go after that thing. You know, if you believe in your heart that you can run a marathon, then you’ll probably be able to do that. So if you have a belief like I could never run that far, then you’ll probably never even consider doing that. And of course, our beliefs can change over time. So I used to believe that I could never run more than like five miles or six miles at a time. I ran a 10k once, and I thought, you know, maybe I can run a marathon, because I had never done that before, but I had that feeling of a belief that maybe that is something I could do now, prior to being able to run, you know, 10k I could, I would never think I could run a marathon. That was, it seemed impossible to me, like, who would want to do that first of all.

So I had this whole established belief about not being able to run that far. But over time, that belief changed, and I decided that, you know, I bet I could do that, and then my belief became, I’m going to do that. And I did believe I was going to do that, and I did accomplish that, okay, but it really required a change in my beliefs. And your beliefs about what you can and can’t do will always determine your results. You know, if you believe you can do something, you will probably be able to do it, and if you believe you can’t, you probably won’t be able to do it. So just understand that if you firmly believe I can never lose weight, you’ll probably never be able to and you know what?

Here’s something interesting. Your beliefs are optional. Like you get to decide what you want to believe or not. You don’t have to believe everything that you think. Okay. You don’t have to believe all of the things that you believe. Like you can actually change. You can change your mind. You know, as we get older, we tend to think, you know, that we are inflexible, that our mindset is fixed, but it’s really not, that’s a decision you’re making. And you can decide that you want to believe other things. You can decide that your mindset is malleable, that your mindset is changeable. You can, you can start adopting new beliefs about things, and this is a very healthy way to live your life when you question your beliefs, and you can actually change your beliefs, okay, but beliefs are very powerful. Just understand that.

So those things that you believe over and over and over again, this starts to become something that we would call belief systems. So when we take all sorts of, like, groups of beliefs, and we lump them together, then we become then we have these things that become belief systems. So these are groups of beliefs that feed off of one another. So an example of a belief system might be, I’m always going to be overweight because I’m weak. I have no willpower, I have no discipline. I’m lazy. This is too hard. I don’t deserve this. My metabolism is messed up. I always struggle with my weight. This is a belief system. These are all different beliefs, but we have lumped them all together, and they’ve created this very clear picture of something that we will never be able to lose weight with that sort of a belief system in place.

And I’ve known people like this who have this absolute belief system, and that’s just where they are. And they are unhappy. They don’t feel like they deserve to be happy. They don’t feel like they deserve to lose weight. They definitely don’t believe they can. And so they’re going to be, you know, kind of miserable forever. Now understand that you can have a whole different belief system. You can have a belief system that says, you know, I definitely can lose weight. I have tons of discipline. I have done hard things in my life before. I’m motivated, I am dedicated. I deserve this for myself. It has nothing to do with my metabolism. I can fix my metabolism. I do not have to struggle with my weight like this is a whole different shift in a belief system. And so your belief systems are something that you can change again. If you can, you know, change your beliefs. You can change your belief systems.

And these belief systems, they develop over time. A lot of times they take years and years decades to develop. A lot of times we have belief systems that are built over our entire lives. So every event of our life, every person we’ve interacted with, everything that’s ever happened to us, everything we’ve ever accomplished or not being able to accomplish, goes into making up some of our belief systems. And this can be very hard to overcome at times. And I get that for sure. You know, if you’re the kind of person that has, you know, dealt with childhood trauma and things like that. It’s going to be very difficult for you to get over that, and that’s where you probably need to, like, get some therapy and have somebody else help you with, you know, recovering from some of that past trauma and things like that, but understand that our belief systems are well developed over time.

And so you think that they are just fixed and that it’s something that you cannot change, but whether you believe it or not, they can change. And we all have these types of belief systems. Some of them are positive, some of them are negative, and just start to be aware of what it is that you’re believing about yourself. And we have belief systems around all sorts of stuff in our life over, you know, religious type of belief systems and political belief systems, movies, TV shows that you like. We have belief systems over music that we listen to.

So I have this friend who’s really into country music, and this is a whole lifestyle for her. It’s a whole mindset for her. There’s tons of belief systems about country music. It dictates the way she thinks, the way she dresses, what she does on the weekends, who her friends are, how her friends dress, how they behave when they go out. So there’s a whole belief system around this, you know, country, her love of country music, and it’s all cool with me. She asked me one time, you know, hey, do you like country music? I’m like not really. So, you know, we don’t really hang out much, which is fine, but good for her, you know, this is something that she’s really into. It could be something like whether or not you are really into fitness.

You know, one of my belief systems involves, you know, being a runner and physically fit, being strong, being healthy. So I tend to do things that fit with this belief system, my friends that I hang out with and I do things with. They are runners. They are physically fit people. They’re strong. They like to work out. They like to eat healthy. The person I’m dating is definitely part of this belief system. She’s a runner. She’s really involved in the running community. This is, like the podcast that I listen to have to do with health and fitness, different topics, mindset, the books I read, so a big part of my belief systems involve, you know, being a fit person and healthy and a runner, because I have these well established belief systems around all of that.

Okay, so all this is bringing me to what I really want to talk about, which is we’re going to go one layer deeper. So we’ve talked about our thinking, those thoughts, those things that we say in our minds. We’ve talked about beliefs, and then we have these belief systems, which are very powerful.

The next layer down in our minds, though, would be our identity. So this is like the very core of who you are. So anytime you say the words, I am, dot, dot, dot, we’re talking about thoughts that you’re thinking or you know your identity at your core level. So like, I am a father, I am a brother, I am a runner, I am a coach. These are all part of who I am at my core. You know my friend who is really in the country, she might be like I am a country music aficionado, like that could be part of her identity. It seems to be part of her identity.

So your identity is all of your thoughts, it’s all of your feelings, it’s everything you know, it’s everything that you believe. It’s all your belief systems. It’s like really the essence of who you are. And also understand that your identity is multifaceted. It is not just one thing. You know, I’m not just a runner. I have lots of identities, but understand that one thing we have to really fundamentally understand is that identity drives our belief systems. It drives our beliefs, it drives our thinking, and drives our results. So if you really want to succeed at something, whether it’s losing weight, running faster, running longer, becoming healthier, getting stronger, getting leaner, becoming the most badass version of yourself. You have to shift your identity. This is the mindset shift that’s required for you to succeed at whatever you want in your life, right?

So we have to change our thinking and our beliefs and our belief systems, but we really have to change our identity, and all these things are changeable. You can change who you are at any time in your life. It’s never too early or too late for you to do this.

Let’s see. 25 years ago or so, I used to smoke cigarettes and I drank beer, and I did both of these things to excess, in my opinion, but I had this identity back then of somebody who was a heavy drinker and a smoker. Okay, so that was part of who I was. So this determined what I did most days, most days I was just sitting around, hanging around certain types of people. This, you know, determined my health, my state of mind, my actions, and, of course, my results. I was overweight, I was unhealthy, I was lethargic, I was angry, I was sick, I was just in a bad way, all the way around, because I had this identity of like, this partier, drinker smoker, type of person, and in order to change I had to dramatically shift my mindset. I had to change my thinking. I had to change my beliefs, my belief systems, and ultimately, I had to make a shift in my identity. And of course, I had to change what I did, but it’s much easier to change what you do when you start at these deeper levels.

So here’s an example of how I did this. So, first of all, I really wanted to change. I had gotten to this place in my life where I was really sick. I was diagnosed with cancer at the time. I was really overweight. I was very unhealthy and I was questioning my mortality. I was really thinking, like, I could die, you know. And, and I had little kids at the time, and I was like, oh, my God, this is, you’ve got to change, Patrick, right? So I first really wanted to change, so I did. And I really wanted to change. And then I started doing things like, I started eating healthier, you know, and I quit smoking, I started walking, I even started running. And I didn’t really realize it at the time, but once I started doing some of these things, they started to break down my pre established belief systems. They started to, I started to make that shift in my identity.

You know, I started running. I started making new friends. I started reading books on running and health and fitness. I started listening to podcasts, all that stuff, as soon as podcasts became a thing, and then I started running races. I did a 5k, a 10k, I did a marathon. I started doing triathlons, ultra marathons, slowly over time, I became a different person. Now this is really scary to think about, like dismantling your belief systems, ditching old identities, becoming a new person. That’s kind of scary if you’re feeling a little bit like, you know, uneasy by just thinking about this right now, that’s normal. It is normal because we’re venturing out into the unknown when we do this, we’re starting to become somebody different.

In order to become somebody different, you got to ditch your old ways of thinking, your old belief systems, your old identity, and you have to adopt some new ways of thinking, some new belief systems, new identities. That is scary, because that’s not who you’re used to being. You’re used to being this one person over here, and now you’re saying, I want to be this other person over here, who’s, in my opinion, who’s better, who’s healthier, who’s going to live longer, you know, who’s nicer to be around, you know, and all the things that you want for yourself. And so it requires that shift, which is very scary.

And so this is why a lot of people will not do this, because it doesn’t feel good, it feels kind of bad. It feels like you’re, you’re, you know, you’re stripping away who you are at your core, because you actually are because that identity that you’ve been working on, or, you know, working from that identity that you’ve been, that’s been programmed into you over the last 30, 40 years, or whatever, it’s all kind of crumbling underneath you, and you’re like, now, who am I? Well, guess what, you get to decide. You get to decide what you want for yourself.

So here’s what I want you to kind of think about for this week. I want you to start with your goals. Like, what is it that you want for yourself? What are those outcomes that you want to create in your life? You want to lose weight, you want to run faster, you want to be stronger. Where do you want to be? And then start thinking about your thoughts. Like, what are the thoughts that you have about yourself, about your ability to accomplish these goals. You know, what do you think about regularly? And then, what do you believe about yourself? What do you believe you can and can’t do? Do you believe that this goal is attainable for you? Do you believe that you can do this, or do you believe that you cannot do this? And then, when we start thinking about beliefs, think about and look at your belief systems. You know what beliefs are all linked together to paint a picture of what you can and can’t do.

So think about all the things that you believe, about how likely you are to be able to lose weight or run faster, all right? And then start looking at your identities. What follows the words when you say those words I am, I am overweight, I am a slow runner, I am weak, I am incapable of being more like what are those things you say after the words I am? And which of these do you need to just let go of and then let them go. And then, what identities do you want to adopt instead? You know, I am a fit, healthy person, I am strong, I am fast, I am someone who loves running.

What is it that you want to adopt as your new identity? Who do you want to be? So think about that stuff this week, I think this will be very powerful for you. But if there’s anything that you want in your life, it’s going to require a change at that core level of who you are, at your core, and it’s a good thing. It’s scary, it’s uncomfortable because you’re venturing out into unknown territory. It’s unfamiliar. It’s not what you’re used to. So it’s going to be scary, it’s going to be uncomfortable, it’s going to be hard, and it’s okay. You can do it, okay. I know you’ve got this.

That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

240. How to Handle Setbacks, Failures, and Disappointments

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When it comes to going after big goals like losing weight and keeping it off or running a faster marathon, it is pretty much a guarantee that you will experience setbacks, failures and …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to episode 240 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today how to handle setbacks, failures and disappointments.

Look, when it comes to going after big goals like losing weight and keeping it off or running your fastest marathon, it’s pretty much a guarantee that you will experience some form of setbacks, failures and disappointments.

There’s no such thing as success without some level of setbacks and challenges along the way. The problem is that when most people experience setbacks, failures, disappointments, they tend to see them as insurmountable obstacles, and oftentimes they lead to them just giving up altogether. Okay, so today, how to handle setbacks, failures and disappointments, so you can get back on track and actually accomplish all of those goals.

But first, if you’re interested in getting stronger, running faster, running longer, losing some weight, and getting leaner, you need to change the things that you are doing, because whatever you’re doing is probably not working for you. Nothing changes if nothing changes, right?

The secret though to all of this is doing these new things, making these changes and doing them consistently. So this is where coaching really helps, because trying to stay on track by yourself is very difficult.

It’s very challenging. I’ve done this a million times, and it’s very challenging, and I always slid back into old behaviors until I got a coach and I had somebody there, guiding me every step of the way, holding me accountable, calling me out when I started slipping back into those old behaviors, and, most importantly, never letting me quit.

So if you’re ready to start doing new things and you’re ready to, you know, make sure that you never quit. Let’s work on getting you there. Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself, yet cool.

Okay, so here’s the topic of the day, how to handle setbacks, failures and disappointments. So the reason I wanted to bring this up today is because I work with a lot of different types of clients, all going through a lot of different stuff. They all have different goals, but a few things happened recently where several people had some failures, disappointments or setbacks, and I talked them through how to deal with that stuff, but I thought we could all learn from this here today.

So one of my clients was training for a marathon, and had some personal stuff come up in her life, some stuff she had to deal with that’s going to take time and she needed to just drop out of training for this marathon altogether.

She was going to run a fall marathon, and made a decision. It was a tough decision to make, but she made this decision that she had to stop training for the marathon because it just didn’t work with the things that are going on in her life. And so she’s very disappointed with this.

It’s that’s a tough thing to do, to basically say, hey, I’ve got this goal. I’ve been working on this for a while now. You know, I’ve only got a couple of months now to go before my race, and to just say I can’t do it. I just can’t do it because these other things are more important.

Somebody else I talked to recently had been doing amazing in her training, amazing, and showed up for her race and for the first 16 miles, was on track for her marathon, PR, and then all of a sudden, experienced some weird cramping issue in her quads. You know, this is a very strange thing, and honestly, you know, we talked about all the things she was doing.

She was doing everything right, sticking with her electrolytes. She had been training properly, strength training, doing all the things. All her training runs have been great, and then this day shows up, and she ends up having this cramping issue, and ends up, you know, completely missing her PR. Okay, that’s very disappointing, right?

Somebody else I talked to recently just was diagnosed with covid, and so has to take time off. Has to, you know, cannot exercise at all, because it just does not have the energy for it’s going to take a little bit of time to come back from that, you know, she’s worried that it’s going to impact her marathon training, and it will set her back a little bit, you know, set her back a couple of weeks.

So all of these different things that have been kind of happening with people all recently. So I thought, you know, this is probably a good time for us to talk about when we have these setbacks, these failures, these disappointments, and how to handle them. And I’ll share my own story.

You know, recently I have been, I’m training for a faster half marathon to run a faster half marathon in the fall, and I’ve got, you know, a few months of training still to go, but I ended up with a weird like, uh, glute tendon, uh, issue that has set me back a little bit, and then when that started to get better, I ended up having this adductor pain that has really impacted my running, like running at all hurts a lot, and especially doing the faster training that I have been doing, like in, you know, high speed intervals, that kind of stuff, really makes that flare up.

And so I’ve had to take a little bit of time off, right? So I’m experiencing a little bit of a setback as well. And we look at these things a lot of times. A lot of people look at these setbacks, these failures, these disappointing things that happen, and they look at them as the end and a like the end of everything, like, you know, I’m never going to run again. This is the worst thing that could ever happen.

And I just want to share with you that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can learn how to handle these things and learn from them and actually come out the other side of these things better than where we are today, or even before we experience these setbacks or failures.

So the first thing I want you to understand is that failures, setbacks, disappointments, they are to be expected. So this is one of those things where people wish they didn’t happen, but honestly, life does not work that way. Have you ever had anything long term go perfectly well, like with no issues whatsoever? No, there’s always bumps along the road, always, always, always.

And so you have to expect that these things are going to happen. You know, I have this expectation that my training was going to go perfectly and there was going to be no issues whatsoever. And as soon as I had these little injuries flare up, I was reminded that we can never expect things to go perfectly, perfectly smoothly, right?

It’s kind of like the weight loss journey. You know, people think there should be this straight line from where your weight is today to where it should be, you know, six months from now, and it should just go down perfectly at a perfect angle, and there’s no bumps along that path, it’s just a straight line. And you know what? That is not reality.

The reality is is that line goes up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, and does that forever, and hopefully it’s trending in the right direction. But you have to understand that there’s no such thing as just like smooth sailing when you’re talking about these big, complicated, long term goals.

You know, training for a marathon, right there? You’re talking about four months, five months, depending on the plan you’re on or just the running part, you know, just the training part, not to mention the time that goes into building the base and everything else.

Do you really think you’re never going to have a bad workout, or never going to have a failure, or never going to have any kind of setback? It’s just got to be something that we expect. It is part of the process.

So as soon as you accept this and you understand that failure, setbacks, disappointments, are going to happen, it makes it much easier to deal with them when they do happen, and we don’t tend to see them as the end of the world like this is not the end of anything. It’s just part of the process. You know, you have to fail in order to succeed, you know.

So, it’s one of those things where once you understand this, and once you accept the fact that they are going to happen, then it makes everything a lot easier. And you know, it’s one of those concepts where once we have acceptance of the way things are, like when you have an injury or, you know, something happens, and, you know, you get a cramp and you don’t your race doesn’t go the way you want it to, then once we have acceptance of that, it it eases the tension within us, like the inner turmoil that we experience.

We experience that inner turmoil because we think things should be different than they are. Right? I’m going to say that again, we experience inner turmoil because we think things should be different than they are. What if we just accepted that this is the way things are and it’s okay?

It’s okay that I have an injury right now. It’s okay that, you know, there’s a little bit of a, you know, setback in my training. It’s okay that I may not hit this goal that I have for my half marathon in November. It’s all okay.

The important thing is that I’m going to continue to show up for myself every single day no matter what. I’m going to continue to do what I need to do to stay on track, even though we have these disappointments. Okay.

The next thing I want to explain to you is that you need to learn how to increase your failure tolerance. So failure tolerance is where you learn how to fail with some toughness. You know, you learn how to tolerate failure and stop looking at it as the end of the world. You know?

So you when we fail, often we get good at failing. I know it sounds really weird to say that. It sounds kind of counterintuitive, but it’s actually a really good thing to learn how to be a good failure, you need to learn how to fail.

Well, you know, because, listen, if failure is part of the process, and we expect ourselves to fail, and we know that we might have to fail 10 times before we succeed, then every time you fail, it’s like, hey, I failed.

There’s one step closer to my goal because I had this setback or this disappointment or I failed. So, you know, we just have to understand that failure is part of the process, accept it and then learn how to get good at failing. You know, develop a little bit of a tougher skin around this, because when we have more failure tolerance, when we’re better at failing, failure or setbacks or disappointments or challenges are no longer the end all. It’s just part of the process, right?

We develop strength, we develop mental toughness, we develop resilience. You know, you become unstoppable when you develop failure tolerance, because there’s really no such thing as failure. You know, there’s only feedback. You know, there’s either you, you fail and you, you know, keep going, you fail, you keep going. You fail, you keep going, or you just quit. That’s the only way you can really fail is if you give up, right?

So it’s either succeed or quit. Which do you want for yourself? So you may not have hit your marathon PR. Big whoop, guess what? Try it next time there’s another marathon in a few months, there’s another marathon next spring, there’s another marathon next fall.

It took me a long time to, you know, reach certain goals for myself and in running, and I ran with some friends who, one friend in particular, who really struggled for years to break four hours in a marathon, that was her goal, and she couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it.

And then all of a sudden, like she’s one of the fastest people I know now, she stuck with it. She eventually, you know, hit that goal, and then just kept surpassing it and surpassing it. So the only way you can fail is if you give up. So don’t ever give up, right?

Increase your failure tolerance. Good. Get good at failing. The next thing that I want you to understand here is that you’re gonna have to learn from your failures. You have to learn what works and what doesn’t, and then you’re gonna have to course correct when you need to, like, sometimes you’re gonna learn some things and you need to make some changes.

Great, make the changes, and then try again, make the changes, and then keep moving forward. Life is a learning process, and it’s completely different for each one of us. So just keep that in mind that nobody you know does all of this stuff exactly the same way.

We all have to learn on our own. We all have to learn our own way of getting through these failures, setbacks and disappointments. So you gotta try something, and it may not work for you, that’s okay, you know, it’s like when it comes to, you know, learning what foods to eat that help you to, you know, get fat, adapted, lose weight, you know, have all the energy you need for running that is not something that is a one size fits all.

I’m just going to tell you that it is very different for each person that I work with. And so each person, they have to learn what works for them and what doesn’t. And the only way you can learn is to try some things, and sometimes they don’t work. Big whoop. So they don’t work. Okay, try something else.

And you know, one of these things is that people think that you know, that the first thing they try should work, or else they’re gonna quit. And if you have that attitude, that’s the wrong attitude to have. We’ll just say it that way.

Okay, the right attitude is that you have to try some things, and then some of these things will work and some of them won’t work, but you always have to learn from your failures, from your setbacks, you’re going to have some things happen, like, you know, cramping during a marathon.

It’s kind of a weird situation. What causes that? Is it a lack of electrolytes? Is it, you know, the way you’re training? Is it that you ran too hard the first half? Like, there’s a lot of factors to consider here, so you have to look at all those different things and then determine, like, yeah, maybe I could have done a better job with the electrolytes, or maybe I just went out too hard for the first 13 or 14 miles. You never know.

And then, like, you got to practice this stuff in your training, you know, make sure that you’re making some minor changes and seeing how they work for you. And then you got to try again next time. And there’s no guarantee that the next time you try something that that’s going to work either.

So I know it’s a tough thing to accept, but we have to accept that this is all a learning process, and as long as you’re learning from these setbacks, failures, disappointments, that’s the key right here. You have to learn from these things, because listen, these things all cause you to grow.

Every challenge is a chance for you to level up. It’s a chance for you to learn something new. It’s a chance for you to grow, to evolve, to become more. It’s these challenges that change us. You don’t grow by, say, staying safe and small and never trying anything big or never failing.

You grow by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone by going for those big goals. It’s only through facing and enduring failures that you become the person that you want to become the most badass version of you is out there on the other side of failures and setbacks and disappointments and challenges. You just got to get there.

You got to get through all that stuff in order to get to the other side. So don’t look at these failures and stuff as the end. Look at it as a springboard to growth for you, okay, and listen through this whole process, you have to have your own back.

You cannot succeed in running your fastest marathon, losing weight and keeping it off, training for an ultra marathon, if you’re constantly beating yourself up every time you go off your food plan, or every time you have a bad training run, or every time you don’t hit a PR in a race, you cannot beat yourself up over this stuff. You have to you can’t hate yourself to your goals like you have to love yourself through this whole process, even when you do something dumb and you cheat, or you get lazy, or you don’t show up for yourself, you know, or you stay on the couch and binge watch Netflix instead of training like you’re supposed, who cares?

None of that stuff matters. We all do stuff like that sometimes, but you have to learn how to build trust in yourself and build a strong relationship with yourself and build confidence in yourself. So that’s why I always talk about making a plan, and it’s so important that we make a solid plan and then we stick to that plan.

We make a plan and we stick to the plan. That’s how you build trust in yourself. That’s how you build confidence in yourself. That’s how you make progress, and when you’re beating yourself up constantly, you’re just grinding yourself down. You’re not building trust in yourself. You’re breaking down the trust in yourself.

You’re not building a strong relationship with yourself. You’re breaking that relationship down. You’re not building confidence. You’re losing confidence. Sense. So you got to have your own back. Gotta love yourself through this whole process. Yeah, learn from your mistakes.

Okay, listen, what did I do that I could have done better, you know, and then go from there. But don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s great that you are introspective and you want to learn and stuff like that, but don’t, you know, beat yourself up and hate on yourself through this process. That doesn’t work.

And this might sound a little counterintuitive, but stop focusing on the end result. Instead focus on the process of change. Because when you commit to the process, and this is different for each person, whatever that looks like for you.

But you have to commit to what you need to do each day. So if that’s, you know, okay, I’m gonna run my fastest marathon instead of, you know, focusing on the end result. This is the time I need to see on the clock. Focus on what you need to do every single day to get you there because when you commit to the work, and you’ll fail along the way, and that’s okay, all of that stuff is expected.

It’s normal, right? It’s part of the process. We’re going to learn from all that stuff, but when we commit to doing the daily work, we will eventually get there. Yeah, it’s important to have that goal out there in the future, but commit to what you’re doing each and every day. That’s what’s going to get you there. That’s what’s going to help you to stay on track. Okay?

And then the last bit of this is that you really need to work on reframing these things, these setbacks, these failures, these disappointments. You got to stop looking at them as the end or as the worst thing that could possibly happen, you know. And one way of reframing is to stop asking yourself terrible questions and start asking yourself more positive questions. And I’ll give you an example here. So terrible questions are questions like this.

Why does this always happen to me? Why am I such a failure? Why can I ever do anything right? How come I never stick to my plan? Why is this so hard for me? Why can’t I ever catch a break? Okay, I’ll tell you why these are terrible questions.

When you ask yourself a question, your brain will go to work to find answers for those questions. Your brain immediately goes to work when you ask yourself a question inside your own brain, your brain says, Ah, let me go find an answer to that. So when you say, Why am I such a failure, your brain will go to work and find all kinds of reasons why you are such a failure. Does this help you at all? No, it does not.

Spoiler alert, it does not help you at all. You’re just beating yourself up when you ask yourself, like, why is this so hard for me? Your brain is going to go to work finding the answer. Why is this so hard? Well, here’s all the reasons why this is so hard for you Patrick, right. This is not helpful at all. Do not ask these dumb questions. All right, these are disempowering questions.

They relinquish you of your power. They caused you to play the victim, like you’re just looking for someone or something to blame. And so you go outside yourself, and you’re looking for answers like, you know, why is this so hard? How come I can never catch a break? And this is just negativity, negativity multiplied and disempowering. It doesn’t help you at all. Don’t ask dumb questions like that of yourself.

Instead, we want to look at how we can reframe our setbacks, our failures, our disappointments. And so I want you to ask yourself better questions. Here are some better questions you can start asking yourself, why am I making this mean about me? Like, what’s the story I’m telling myself about this setback or failure or disappointment? What’s good about this problem?

This is one of my favorite questions. You can ask yourself, What’s good about this problem? Because it’s something that sounds pretty counterintuitive, like it’s a problem. Of course, there’s nothing good, but there’s always ways that you can reframe a problem and start to look at it in the positive, and you can actually look at the silver lining.

Stop focusing on the cloud, and start focusing on the silver lining. What is good about this problem? There’s always something you can find. What can I learn from this? You know? What can I do to change this conversation.

What’s another way of looking at this failure, this setback, this disappointment, what am I willing to do or not do in order to make this work, in order to get through this? What can I do to turn this around? What can I do to get back on track right away? What’s my very next step towards improving this? What am I going to do differently next time? These are powerful questions.

These are empowering questions, because when you start to ask yourself stuff like, what’s good about this problem, your brain goes to work looking for answers. What can I learn about this? How can I change this? What am I going to do differently next time? What’s my next step towards improving this situation?

These are amazing questions to ask yourself. What’s another way of looking at this? Great questions, because you’re going to start to look at things much differently. You’re going to start to be able to reframe failure setbacks, you’re going to start to look at these disappointments not as the end of the world, but it’s just part of the process, and something that you can actually learn from and grow from.

You can become more, you can absolutely still crush your goals. These setbacks are usually just small little moments in time. You know, this injury that I’m dealing with right now, it’s getting better. You know, it’s been a couple of weeks where I’ve had to take time off of running. I’ve run, like, once in two weeks, and I gotta tell you, not super stoked about that, like, I’m not super happy that I’m not running right now.

I love running. It’s my happy place. It feels good. You know? And I know that my training has taken a little bit of a step back, and it’s okay. It’s a small amount of time, really, a few weeks, in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. You know, when I look at how many years I’ve been running, and all the marathons I’ve run, over 20 marathons. I don’t know how many halves and Ultras and all these other events that I’ve done.

And I look at all of this stuff, and I’ve, I’ve dealt with knee injuries and other types of injuries that had me dropping out of races. You know, or not being able to run them, or not being able to run a marathon that season because of an injury. I’ve had all that stuff happen to me, and I’m still at it, I’m still running, and I’m still healthy, and I still feel amazing, and I still love running.

So look at these things as you know, just minor, little setbacks, little blips on the radar, that when you look back on them, they’re no big, they’re not a big deal. They’re not that big of a deal, you know, and sometimes they are a little bit of a bigger deal, and that’s okay too, you know, if you got to take a few months off or whatever, like, all of this stuff is fine, like it is all fine, just think about it that way. Okay, start reframing what this stuff means to you. And I know, as always, that you absolutely got this. Right? Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.