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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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226. What’s the Best Pacing Strategy?

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We’re in the middle of the Spring racing season here in the US and a lot of runners ask me questions about pacing for their upcoming race. Should you start slow and then try to finish …

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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 226 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, what’s the best pacing strategy? So we are in the middle of the spring racing season, at least we are here in the US.

And a lot of runners ask me questions about pacing for their upcoming race, should they start slow and try to finish fast? Should you start fast and try to make up for some time when you eventually slow down at the end of a race? Should you focus on your heart rate or cadence, your current pace or your average pace? Lots and lots of questions around pacing.

And believe it or not, there is one pacing strategy that has been proven time and again to be the most effective for most runners. So today, I’m going to answer the question of what’s the best pacing strategy so that you can go out there and crush your spring race this year.

But first, if you’re listening to this podcast, that means that your health, your fitness, it’s important to you, you want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to improve your running. And I want to tell you that all of that is possible for you. And I also want you to know that I can help you get there.

You know, I’m talking to you on the podcast and you’re listening to this and you’re taking in a lot of this information. I listen to a lot of podcasts, I listen to a lot of books. I hear from a lot of experts and a lot of different topics. I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.

But when it comes to the practical application of all that knowledge, nothing has been more helpful to me than having a coach show me what to do to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track. I’ve had a bunch of awesome coaches in my life. And I’m a different person today because I’ve had these coaches.

And because I’ve had such an amazing experience with these coaches, it inspired me to want to be a coach. That’s why I do what I do. So I know how powerful coaching can be because I’ve experienced it firsthand.

So for you, if you’re listening to the podcast, you know, keep listening and learning. But if you want help applying this, consider working with a coach. Find someone that can show you the way, that can help you apply all this knowledge, somebody that can help you learn what works for you. That’s very important.

You need somebody that can hold you accountable. And it can’t be somebody that’s close to you can’t be your your spouse or your best friend, that typically doesn’t work. You need somebody to hold you accountable and help you to stay on track and stick to the plan so that you can get the results that you want faster and more effectively than you could do on your own.

Okay, and if you are interested in working with me, I’m always here for you. Just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me and we’ll get together we’ll get on a call. We’ll talk all about coaching and how it can help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet, cool? Runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And hope to see you soon.

Okay, so it is spring season spring racing season. And we are in the midst of getting ready for a lot of spring races. Some people have already run, you know, maybe Boston or something like that. So just understand that there’s lots of races happening this time of the year. Typically here in the US, it’s spring and the fall. That’s our racing season.

But you know, there’s lots of stuff that happens in the summer and in the winter as well. But for now, let’s let’s focus on kind of some of the spring races. So if you’re running a 5k, 10k, half-marathon, marathon, and you are considering some sort of a pacing strategy, or you don’t know really what your pacing strategy should be. I’m gonna hope to answer that question for you today and give you a really solid pacing strategy that works for pretty much all runners.

It’s proven to be kind of the most effective pacing strategy. But one thing I want to start out with is just saying that you have to practice pacing in your training, okay, I can’t stress this enough.

You cannot show up on race day and expect for some miracle to happen. Like you can’t do all your training at a 10 minute pace and then just decide that you’re going to run a nine minute pace for your half marathon and be able to do that effectively. You have to practice your pacing in your training. Just stick to the script, okay.

And especially in your in your training, it’s important that you don’t get sucked into, you know, training at somebody else’s pace. You don’t want to get sucked into racing at somebody else’s pace, either. I’ve done that before, I’ve gotten excited at the beginning of a race.

And you know that, oh, I’m gonna run with my friend over here. And this person’s a little faster than me, and I just, I couldn’t hold on, you know, I didn’t stick to the script, I had a plan, I knew what I was going to do, this person was running faster than me. And I was trying my best to hold on.

But it really messed me up, because I wasn’t able to have a good race, because I started way too fast and was not able to handle that, because I wasn’t training that way. But this is important in your training as well, that you are running your paces that you are sticking to your plan so that you are fully prepared to run your, you know, hopefully predicted pace during your race.

But we get caught up in this as well like, especially if you run with a group of people or you want run with friends. And they might be faster than you or slower than you and you kind of get caught up in running with doing all your runs with them. But it’s not really at a pace that that you want to be running at. So you have to sort of do your own thing.

And a good example of this is that for me, I’ve slowed down this past year. Last year, I did a lot of slow running, I was training for this 12 hour event. And the whole point of that was just to, you know, be on my feet for 12 hours running, and be able to finish that and feel good at the end.

So I did a ton of slow running. And I just kind of took a break from the speed work and really wasn’t trying to race anything all last year. So my pace slowed down quite a bit. And then when I started running with my running group in January to start training for this half marathon I’m doing here next weekend, I couldn’t run the same speed as them, I couldn’t keep up with them.

And so it was fine. I was like you guys go ahead, I’m just gonna like hang back here. I actually started, I usually don’t run with headphones on with the training group because I like to talk to people. But I started bringing my headphones and started listening to podcasts and stuff because I was kind of running it at a pace that wasn’t really in line with the one of the pace groups in our in our room group.

So I was doing a lot of training by myself. But that was okay, I wanted to do that. That was what I needed to do, I was sticking to my plan. Okay, so I want you to do the same thing. So make sure that you are sticking to your plan in your training.

And then when you show up on race day, you have to stick to your plan, don’t get caught up in the excitement of the race, don’t get caught up, you know, just trying to keep up with somebody else.

And if you’re going to run with someone, you guys have to have a conversation ahead of time about what the plan is, you know, you might say like you, okay, I’m going to help you, I’m going to pace you for this because it’s your first half marathon, and I’ve done a dozen of them.

So I’m going to pace you, this is the pace we’re going to stay at, I’m going to stay with you no matter what, like that’s a conversation that you would have if you were you know, pacing someone, but if you’re just friends and you’re running, you might have to say, Listen, I’m feeling pretty good. Today, I’m going to you know, try to, you know, maintain this kind of pace. And if I leave you in the dust, you know, just don’t take it personally, you know, you got to have that conversation.

So everybody’s on board, and there’s no hurt feelings or anything like that. I think we put our feelings above, like what we really want for ourselves, you know, I don’t want to hurt their feelings. So I’m gonna try to stay with them. Like, don’t do that. If that’s not in your plan.

Okay, so probably the most important thing to start talking about here is that just stick to the script, do your training, make sure you’re following your your pacing plan, practice it in your training, and then on race day, make sure that you are following the plan that you have been practicing.

Remember nothing new on race day, right. Another thing I wanted to kind of touch on really quickly is this idea of a central governor. So there’s this concept called the Central Governor Model. And it’s not something that has been like 100% proven but it is very, there’s very compelling evidence that this actually is is a thing.

Okay, so the Central Governor Model says that your brain will monitor the body through your brain monitors to the body to make sure that your body doesn’t get too far from homeostasis. Homeostasis is like everything in balance, okay.

In essence, what we’re saying here is that the body is I’m sorry, the brain is the body’s control room. Okay? And it is like a safety mechanism and it’s keeping your body from dying. Alright, so when you’re out there running and you’re pushing yourself, and you’re trying to you know, PR your marathon or half marathon, your brain is going to tell you at some point this is dangerous, you’re going to die, you might feel like you’re going to die.

But a lot of times it is just your brain telling you that your body can continue. And they’ve done all kinds of studies where they’ve put people on treadmills or on on bikes, and they’ve just had them go until they couldn’t go any longer. And the people that could go longer, the way they structured the studies, they would, they would have people run on a treadmill or on a bike, and they would have them go as long as they could, until they completely fatigued, they kept cranking up the intensity.

And then they got to a point where they couldn’t go on any longer. And they repeated this over and over again. So they can only go to a certain distance before they crapped out, you know. But the interesting thing is, when they told them, oh, the person before you was able to go, you know, 28 minutes, well, then they were able to push past that.

And then they said, okay, with the person before he was able to go 33 minutes, and then they were able to push past that. So it’s interesting, because it isn’t the body that’s giving out, it’s the brain that’s telling them that they need to quit.

But if the brain is like, oh, I can go another three minutes, they’ll do it. It’s very interesting, right? So just understand that this has been a concept of Central Governor Model has been around or proposed by a physiologist, guy named Avi Hill back in 1924.

And he had this theory that the heart was protected by some sort of Governor so that you wouldn’t die from really intense activity, exercise. And then Tim Noakes has talked about this a lot. And he’s a modern day professor. And basically, he’s saying that, you know, the subconscious brain, there’s something in the subconscious brain, that sets the exercise intensity, that determines like how hard you are able to push, and just understand that, you know, the brain is going to be telling you that you want to stop, but chances are, you can continue going.

So just understand that that is a real thing. That Central Governor Model is probably something that we all have to deal with, when we’re pushing hard, especially in the late stages of a race. So if you’re trying to PR and you know that you’re getting close, chances are that you can keep going.

But if you’re like, if it looks like it’s not going to happen, it’s easier to give up, right? Because your brain is telling you one thing versus another, it’s telling you this is possible for you, you can do this, you only got you know, you just gotta like push it for the next five minutes, you can do it.

But if it’s like, oh, you’re probably not going to PR, you know, you’re just the the math isn’t going to work out, you’re not going to be able to do it, you might give up, you know what I mean? So it’s very interesting. So just keep that in mind.

I’m just putting this out there because I think it’s very fascinating the way that your subconscious mind can control what’s going on with your body. Okay, so and then there are also some different tools for pacing. So there’s assessment tools to kind of keep track of your pacing.

So, you know, heart rate monitor is one of them, your GPS, watch the time. And then there’s the RPE or rate of perceived exertion scale. So they these all have, you know, sort of pros and cons. You know, with your heart rate monitor, if you’re somebody that’s used to doing heart rate training, and you know that for you, keeping your heart rate at like a 140 is where you need to be, and that’s going to give you the best results, then then do that, again, you have to train with this stuff, right?

If you’re doing the GPS that might give you real time pace, that’s awesome. Sometimes the real time pace can be a little misleading because it bounces around a lot, you know, look down on my watch, you know, you have those different fields, you’ve got like the current pace, that’s your real time pace right now. And then you’ve got your average pace.

Some people like that current pace, because it’ll say, hey, I’m running an eight minute mile. But then you look down and your your nothing has changed. And it’ll say like 8:30, it’ll say 9:00, it’ll say 7:30. You’re like, what is going on here? Well, it’s not perfect. Okay, so GPS is not going to be perfect.

And then if you use your average, that tends to be a little bit better. But again, it’s not going to be perfect GPS, especially when you’re running a race in a urban area with a lot of buildings and stuff like that the GPS can be wildly off. People tell me all the time, oh, you know, this course was long, my watch thought it was, you know, 26.8 miles?

And I’m like, no, they measure the courses, they get that part, right, they get that part. They’ve done extensive measuring of courses to make sure that they are correct. So chances are, they’re not going to be half a mile or more off. You know, they might be a few feet off or something like that, but probably not even that. So just understand that GPS can be a little bit misleading and it’s hard to rely on that as a pacing tool, just so you know.

A better strategy is using time I think that If you’re trying to, you know PR a certain race, you know that if you’re wanting to run a four hour marathon, then you know that you have to cross the finish line, under four hours, like it’s just a matter of time, it doesn’t matter what your heart rate says, doesn’t matter what the GPS says just go by the time.

And at race expos, a lot of times, you can grab a pacing band. And so it is actually a band that you wear around your wrist. And it is a chart of what time you need to be at each mile marker.

Okay, so for me it let’s say, let’s just keep the math simple. Let’s say you want to run a 10 minute mile, that means your first mile, you need to hit that mile marker in 10 minutes or less, the next 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and so on. But once you get into like 16 miles or whatever doing the math can be kind of hard if you’re like trying to hit a 9:30 or something like that, right?

It’s like, oh, my god, I can’t do that kind of math. So having that band on your wrist is so awesome, because all you have to do is look down and go. Okay, my time is this, this is where I should be, I’m a minute faster than I need to be, perfect. I’m just gonna keep doing what I’m doing. So very, very effective pacings tool to use, it’s an assessment tool, you know. So go by time over pace, I think this is going to be very helpful for most people.

And then there’s the RPE scale. So that’s your rate of perceived exertion, just understand that you have to understand how it feels for you to run at 9 minute pace or a 10 minute pace or whatever. Like you have to be practicing this and you have to have gotten in touch with your own rate of perceived exertion so that you understand what that feels like for you.

When you get good at this though, this is awesome. Because you just know, Oh, this feels like a six on the RPE scale, this feels like a seven. Oh, maybe I need to slow down I’m getting into the eights. Or you can say this is a four, I can write this pace all day. So when you get good at that this is really an awesome strategy to use for pacing.

So most people make mistakes when they are running a race and some of the most common ones, especially for the longer distance races. You know, if you’re if you run a 5k, you’re going to be running pretty hard from the gun, you’re just going to run hard from the beginning.

And you’re going to, you know, put it all out there and you can kind of maintain a pretty high intensity for the duration of that. But then when we started getting into the longer distances, 10 K’s half marathons, marathons. One of the most common mistakes people make around pacing is just starting off too fast.

Probably the most common pacing mistake is getting caught up in the excitement of the of the event. I mean, it is super exciting. You’re down with thousands of people that got the music blasting or shooting off fireworks or whatever they’re playing, you know, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run as you cross the start line. It’s amazing, right? Probably the most overplayed song at the start of a marathon by the way, but just a little side note there.

So the most common mistake is going to be starting off too fast. And so one thing you want to do is not do this, right? Don’t try to keep up with people around you. Another common pacing mistake is running someone else’s pace, we talked about that already.

Don’t run a pace that somebody else has set, you have to set your own pace, you have to have been practicing this. And then the third common mistake that people make is running at varying intensities, you really don’t want to do this.

Most runners try to maintain the same speed. So they’re trying to maintain a certain pace, even when they’re running uphill. So what they will do is they will run hard and fast uphill, and then they will slow down a little bit on the downhills. And this is actually not a very efficient way of running. You don’t want to be varying your intensities. It’s not as efficient as just a smooth and steady approach. Okay.

And that really is the best racing or pacing strategy for a race is a smooth and steady approach. You don’t want to be bouncing all over the place. You don’t want to be all erratic with your pacing. You want to get into a pace pretty quickly. You know, for some races, you want a little bit of a warmup period and honestly the start of most races is going to give you that opportunity. If you’re running a crowded race, then the start is usually going to be pretty slow so you may be 30 seconds to a minute slower for your first mile or two. Whatever, that is completely fine.

And to do that, get into your, your effort level that you want to maintain for the duration of that race, a consistent effort level is the most effective pacing strategy. Okay? Please understand that that is different from your pace or your time. Now we want to pay attention to that stuff, especially the time if you’re trying to get you know a PR.

But the most effective pacing strategy is going to be to maintain a consistent effort throughout the duration of your race, that means that there will be times when you’re running uphill, and you might have to slow down a little bit or you’re running downhill, and you might be able to speed up a little bit, try to maintain that consistent effort level, I have used this pacing strategy to hit all my PRs, my 5k 10k, half marathon, a marathon is all all of those.

I applied this strategy right here consistent effort throughout the majority of the race, with a strong finish at the end. That’s it, that’s the that’s the most effective pacing strategy right there.

Think about it like this. If you have two cars, and they’re both driving the same distance, one’s driving steadily at 65 miles an hour. And the other one is constantly braking and accelerating, braking and accelerating, they’re going 40, they’re going at, both cars are going to arrive at the finish in the exact same time. One hour, let’s say, okay, but which one was more efficient, you know, which one had more gas in the tank at the end, you know, it’s going to be the one that just maintain a steady, smooth pace the whole time.

So this is a really good analogy for what your pacing strategy should look like. Okay, this does not mean that you don’t push hard in some areas of a race, it does not mean that you don’t finish strong, that is very important. You always want to have a race where you finish it strong.

And this is, again, something you have to practice in your training, you cannot just show up on race day and think that all this stuff is going to come together for you have to be practicing this stuff. Now, you’re not going to practice a whole half marathon like this, but you might do a nine mile or you know, or 10 miles at your race pace with a strong finish just to see like, where are you from a fitness standpoint, is this doable for you? Are you able to do 9 or 10 miles at race pace? And if you are, then your half marathon is going to be definitely doable. Okay.

So that would be my suggestion for the most effective about pacing strategy. And just keep in mind that, you know, we’ve got things to consider, we’ve got the excitement of the race, you gotta like make sure you’re calming yourself down, and you’re not getting caught up in the excitement or running somebody else’s race. We’ve got pacing versus time versus heart rate, all those things you have to consider.

I suggest if you can for longer races to get that pace band, so that you know where you’re supposed to be at each mile. And then settle into your your pace early or settle into your effort level that matches the pace that you want to that you want to hit early. And then maintain that just hold that smooth and steady pace for as long as you can.

Yeah, you might be able to run faster on some down hills, you might run a little bit slower on some of the uphill, it’s perfectly fine to do that. That’s going to give you the most energy efficient race, you got to conserve energy for the end. That’s why we like that strong finish because you have to conserve energy for the end. And if you’re running out of gas throughout the middle of the race, that end of that race is going to be terrible for you. I’ve done that so many times.

So I know exactly what it feels like where you get to mile you know 20 of the marathon, you’re like I am just done like this is like so hard because you went out too fast your effort level was all over the place. And you’ve just been wasting gas the whole time essentially. Okay.

So instead of going for some crazy erratic thing or starting slow or starting fast or anything like that, just try for smooth and steady for the majority. Okay, push it a little bit here and there but really smooth and steady and then aim for that strong finish at the end. Cool. And I hope you have an amazing race this season. I’ll let you know how mine goes here in a couple of weeks. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

225. Pushing Past Your Comfort Zone

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One of the most powerful things you can do to improve your health and fitness is to regularly push past your comfort zone. This might seem obvious to you and pretty basic, but it’s an area where …

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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 225 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Pushing Past Your Comfort Zone.

So one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your health and fitness is to regularly push past your comfort zone. Now, this might seem obvious to you and pretty basic. But it’s an area where most people really struggle, the idea of getting uncomfortable is easy to understand.

Most people are like, sure, Patrick, I’m totally willing to get uncomfortable. But when they come face to face with their own discomfort, all those good intentions kind of go out the window, most people end up running back to the safety and security of their well-constructed comfort zones.

So today here on the podcast, it’s all about pushing past your comfort zone so that you can grow so that you can evolve. And so that you can become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.

Okay, but first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health and your fitness, those things are important to you. You want to feel better, you want to get leaner run faster. And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you. It really is. And I can help you get there.

You know, I listen to lots of podcasts, I listen to lots of books, and I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. But when it comes to applying all the stuff that I know, nothing has really helped me more than having a coach there for me, somebody that could guide me and mentor me and show me the way, like every step of the way I had somebody there with me.

I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life, I had a business coach, I had a strength coach, I had a nutrition coach, and those areas of my life have never been better. So the coaches that I’ve had have helped me become the person that I am today.

They inspired me so much that they kind of this is why I became a coach myself, because I saw what they were doing and I was like I want to do that too. I want to have that kind of impact on people as well. So if you’re listening to the podcast, right now, keep listening, keep learning, like that stuff is all good.

But when you’re ready to get down to business, when you’re ready to do the work, consider working with a coach and it doesn’t even have to be me. It’s okay if it’s somebody else, but find someone that can show you the way that can help you apply all of this knowledge that you’re taking in, okay, somebody that can hold you accountable, and somebody that can help you stay on track.

The only way you make progress with anything like this is to take consistent aligned action. And the best way to stay consistent with all this is to have somebody there holding you accountable and helping you stay on track. Cool.

So if you’re interested in working with me, awesome, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. You’ll fill out a quick little application you and I’ll get on a call. We can have a conversation about coaching. I’ll tell you all about it, how it works. And we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, cool. If it isn’t, no big deal. All right.

But I want to help you to become the most badass version of yourself. You get yourself a coach, okay? It’s it’s a game-changer. I promise you Okay, runningleanoaching.com and click on Work With Me.

Okay, let’s talk about your comfort zone. What is your comfort zone? Well, your comfort zone is everything that you already have. Because when it comes to what is comfortable for you, it’s always going to be the things that you’ve already done. Those things are comfortable for you.

It’s everything that you continually do. It’s all of your current habits. It’s all your current behaviors. It’s how you think it’s how you feel, it’s all your beliefs. It’s it’s everything that is that is within your like zone of comfort. You know, that’s what your comfort zone is, you built this comfort zone.

You build your comfort zone around your psyche, like your, your model of the world, helps to shape your comfort zone and your psyche that’s just a fancy word that means your spirit your soul yourself. Like it’s the totality of your mind, your conscious mind, your unconscious mind, it’s everything that influences your thoughts, your behavior, it’s your personality, all of that is what your psyche is essentially, okay?

And you have this very unique psyche. And all of that is what feels comfortable to you. Okay, so if there is something that you want for yourself that you don’t already have, you’re going to have to leave your comfort zone in order to get it.

Because remember, everything that you already have is in your comfort zone. If you don’t have it, that means it’s outside your comfort zone, everything you want, but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone.

Which means that in order to get that thing, you’re going to have to get uncomfortable. And I talk to people about this all the time, and they say, I get it, Patrick, I’m so willing to get uncomfortable. You know, I say you’re gonna have to embrace the suck, and people are like, I’m ready to embrace the suck. Patrick, I can do that, you know.

And this could be with your diet, let’s say you’re you want to change your diet, you want to stop eating sugar, let’s say you want to stop drinking alcohol, because you’re trying to improve your health, you were trying to prove your fitness trying to lose some weight. sugar and alcohol are our throttles, if you’re trying to lose weight, those things are going to keep you stuck, right, they’re going to throttle your progress.

So my suggestion, my, my gentle suggestion would be if you want to lose weight, stop eating sugar, and stop drinking alcohol. Okay? Those two things, though, tend to feel really good, they’re really comfortable. It’s really comfortable to eat sugar, it’s really it feels really good to drink alcohol, you know.

So when I say oh, you’re gonna have to get uncomfortable, you’re gonna have to stop doing those things. People are like, I got it, I can do that. I’m really ready to embrace the suck, I’m ready to get uncomfortable. Like, okay, cool.

But then when you know, the rubber meets the road, when you actually do stop drinking or stop eating sugar. And you’re freaking out a little bit because people around you are drinking or people around, you’re eating sugar, or you walk into the break room and there’s doughnuts, or you walk into the kitchen, and your wife or husband or kids or someone has just made a bunch of chocolate chip cookies.

And the whole house smells amazing, like chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven. They’re all gooey, that chocolate chips are melty, oh my gosh, who wouldn’t want to eat that up? That’s discomfort. That’s when you’re like, I don’t think I can do this. This is too hard.

So when I talk about getting out of your comfort zone, it’s being in that moment you’re standing in the kitchen, you can smell the chocolate chip cookies, you can see them you see the chocolate just melty as they break apart, and you’re not eating them. That’s what I mean by discomfort. That does not feel good.

That’s you getting out of your comfort zone, right? Because you’re not eating those things. But they’re sitting there. And that’s the feeling I’m talking about. So people will say this when they’re having a call with me. And we’re just you know, it’s a Monday morning and we’re, you know, just having this one-on-one conversation. And they’re like, all fired up.

But as soon as those cookies come out of the oven, like all bets are off, you know. So if you want to lose the weight, you got to maybe take a break from eating those cookies for a while. And that’s what I mean by getting out of your comfort zone. All right.

So let me tell you a little bit of a story. So I had this dog. And we had this dog at our house. And this dog was kind of crazy. Her name was Daisy, she was a yellow lab. Cutest dog in the world so smart, like so ridiculously smart. And we had gotten one of those electric fences, you know, what do you call like an invisible fence, you know, it’s wires buried underground, she had the collar on, and we would train her so that she would go outside and not cross the line where the where the wires were under the ground.

So you put up flags and you train the dog that once they get near the flags, they have to back off because they get that little buzz in their neck or whatever and then it shocks them if they get too close. Well, this dog was a little bit crazy. And she figured out that she could get up against that line and start to feel that buzz or that shock and then she would just bolt through the line she would bolt through the line of the wire and get shocked and she was okay with that.

Most dogs would not do that. But she was I don’t know brave, courageous, crazy. I don’t know what you want to call it but she saw that there was a whole wide world out there. And the only way that she was going to get to that wide world out there was to experience the discomfort of, you know, going through that fence. Okay.

So this is a pretty good analogy, because that fence, that invisible fence is like our comfort zone, you know, and when we get close to it, we feel the pain. So discomfort is just our brain telling us that, you know, there’s something uncomfortable out there that we want for ourselves. And that discomfort that we feel means that in order to get that thing, we have to cross a threshold, you know, we have to cross this invisible line, from comfort to discomfort.

And our brain sees that as painful. Our brain’s job is to keep us safe to avoid pain, and seek pleasure to avoid discomfort and seek comfort, to avoid the unfamiliar and seek the familiar. So when we want something like I want to lose 40 pounds, or I want to run an ultra marathon, or I want to have a different relationship with alcohol, all those things are outside our comfort zone, the cost of achieving those things is discomfort.

And so it’s like that dog getting close to the fence and just sitting there and dealing with that buzzing and that shocking that’s going on and just bolting through it anyway. Because they know that dog knew that on the other side of that she could run that whole neighborhood.

And she did and our neighbors would always be bringing her back like, hey, your dog got out again. And I’m like, I don’t get it. You know, this is an invisible fence, she’s getting shocked here. She didn’t care. She was crazy. I loved her, but she was a handful I’m going to tell you.

So you see that that’s a good analogy, because it kind of puts your comfort zone into the 3D world here, you know, so you can actually kind of visualize what that looks like for you. So you stop drinking, or you stop eating sugar, or maybe you got to really increase your mileage to you know, go go after that ultra-marathon or something, and the discomfort is going to show up, the resistance to that thing is going to show up.

And you’ve got to just embrace it and go through that. That’s how you achieve those things. Like the cost of achieving those things is discomfort, right? So embracing the suck. That just means leaning into that discomfort standing there, at the edge of that invisible fence, feeling the shocks and then going after that thing anyway.

This is the real work that we do together, you know, with my clients, this is the real work that we do. You know, it’s it’s less about, oh, here’s the foods you should eat. And here’s the kind of workouts you should do. It’s more about how do I deal with the discomfort and the challenges of not doing the things that are comfortable for me? Okay.

So you know, in, like I said, this can relate to your running, this can relate to getting stronger to changing your body composition, whatever it can relate to your relationships, it can really to your work, whatever that thing is that you want for yourself.

Whatever area of life we’re talking about here that you don’t already have, the cost of getting that thing is going to be discomfort. And listen, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a comfort zone like this is your safe place. This is something you’ve created for yourself. It’s everything that you know, it’s everything that you’ve done. It’s everything that you have accomplished already. And this is a good place to be.

But you know what? Growth doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. Change doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. The only way you can grow and evolve and become more is to get out of your comfort zone.

Here’s an example from my life lately. My running workouts lately have been pretty amazing. And the reason is because I have been consistently pushing myself out of my comfort zone. So last year, I was doing a lot of very slow running because I was preparing for a 12 hour running event. And I did a whole podcast and kind of talked about that you can look that one up.

But this year, I am focusing on a running a faster half marathon. And this is going to be in like three weeks or so it’s going to be early. The Flying Pig Half and I’m actually running the 5k and the 10k the day before the half just because I like to torture myself.

I like running nine miles the day before a half marathon, who doesn’t do that? But my point is that my running has been amazing lately because I have been regularly pushing myself to run faster. I’ve been doing tons of speed work, tempo runs. And my running is felt better than ever.

And the last few workouts I’ve done have been so good. Tuesday, I did three one-mile repeats. So this is, you know, this was yesterday, this was my, what do you call it, like my speed day, my speed work day. And I chose to do one-mile repeats, which is something I don’t do too often, because it’s hard and uncomfortable.

But I gotta tell you, I felt so amazing doing those. And I wasn’t running super fast, I think 8:38-40s something like that per mile. But, you know, felt amazing. On this past Saturday, I did a 12 mile run, and ran with some faster people to kind of pull me along.

And I ended up having a really amazing 12 miles it was kind of like I was my goal was to run six miles fast, and then kind of jog it back. But I ended up running with some other faster people on the way back. So both out and back, were fast.

So I did a 12-mile tempo run instead of a 6-mile tempo run that day. But I was feeling so good. I wanted to see what I was capable of. And I wanted to push myself a little bit. So the reason I’m talking about this is because in order to get faster, in order to improve my fitness and my running, I’ve had to really push myself and get out of my comfort zone.

The work that I’ve been doing lately has been uncomfortable. Running 12 miles at like a tempo pace is not comfortable. Doing three one-mile repeats in a row that is now uncomfortable. But you know what, my fitness is improving, my running is feeling better than ever. And I’m hoping that I have a really good half marathon. That’s the goal anyway. Okay.

So that’s the kind of work that we have to do in order to get out of our comfort zone and achieve those things that we want for ourselves, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable, that’s the price we pay to improve, right?

So people are super keen to this idea. You know, but once they get into it, everything in your being your whole psyche is telling you go back to safety. You know, whether you’re trying to run faster, quit sugar, quit alcohol, whatever it is, you’re gonna get to this place where it’s going to feel uncomfortable, and you’re going to want to run back to the safety of your comfort zone.

And I hear people talk about this all the time, when they’re like, oh, you know, I was doing really great with my food plan. And then this thing happened at work. And I got really stressed and I just you know, there were doughnuts in the break room. So I just ate the doughnuts. You know, that’s you running back to the safety of your comfort zone when you do that.

My suggestion for you is to notice when your psyche is telling you to run back to the safety of your comfort zone, when the donut sounds good to you. And it sounds like a good idea, even though you don’t eat that stuff anymore.

If that sounds like a good idea, that’s your comfort zone trying to pull you back. And you have to fight against that. You have to just say no, I’m not doing that. I’m gonna stay uncomfortable here. In this moment, I’m going to stay uncomfortable. Because everything when we get out of our comfort zone, everything out there that’s out of our comfort zone feels painful to your brain, your brain is trying to avoid pain.

So why the heck would you want to do something that to your brain seems painful? When you do that your brain is going to resist that your program is going to resist that we avoid pain, Patrick, remember, you know, and so that’s your brain telling you like go back to the safety and comfort of your comfort zone get get away from this pain, okay?

But you have to like fight against that you just have to ignore it and you have to move on. Just like my dog Daisy, who just ignored the stupid shock that she got. Every time she ran through that fence. She didn’t care because what was on the other side of that was amazing. She would run through the whole neighborhood check out all the other dogs, go wander up to people’s porches, run in the street. Like she was nuts. And she loved it.

She was living her best life and all it required was, you know, some temporary discomfort and like not eating the chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen is the same thing. It’s like just can you deal with a little temporary discomfort. It’s not gonna last that long.

It might be 10 minutes, it might be 15 minutes, give yourself 15 minutes just say okay, you know what? Those cookies look amazing, but I’m just going to wait 15 minutes and if in 15 minutes, you still want the cookies you can reevaluate at that point. Okay, chances are, that’s going to kind of go away.

So the discomfort, it’s not like, it’s days and weeks of this stuff, a lot of times, it’s just a few minutes here and there. Or if you’re running a, you know, an ultra marathon or something like that there may be several hours of discomfort that you have to endure, to get to that goal.

And it could be, you know, a lot of a lot of uncomfortable runs, you know, uncomfortable training regimen, you know, whatever, whatever it is, it’s, it’s not a forever thing, right? But it is one of those things that, I want to encourage you to regularly step out of your comfort zone, because when you do this stuff regularly, it gets easier, your comfort zone gets bigger, the more you do it.

So things don’t end just because you got out of your comfort zone, once you get out of your comfort zone, you do something you accomplish something you never have before, guess what your comfort zone just got a little bigger. Oh, that’s kind of goal, right?

But your goal as a human being is to continue to grow, to continue to evolve to continue to become more, which means you have to regularly expand your comfort zone, you have to regularly do things that are uncomfortable, so that your comfort zone can continue to expand with your growth with your personal growth. So does your comfort zone grow.

So you got to be willing to bet against your comfort zone every day, all the time, like forever. This is just something you have to do. If this sounds terrible to you, it’s because it is it’s kind of it’s uncomfortable to do this. I’m not saying it’s comfortable. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s not. But this is the work that we do.

You don’t grow, evolve and become more and just like say, Well, I did that once and now I’m done. You don’t do that once and then go sit on the couch for the rest of your life. No, that’s not how we approach life. There’s no finish line. It’s not a destination we’re trying to get to it’s a way of living, we regularly leave our comfort zone to become more. And then we continue doing that.

Honestly, I wouldn’t want to live my life any other way. So all these hard things that you want to do in your life, and they’re hard, I get it. But I want you to approach these things with courage and with consistency. Consistently show up for yourself, have the courage to keep going even when things are hard, have the courage to feel uncomfortable. Sometimes things are hard, they take a long time. They don’t work, right? It doesn’t matter.

We don’t stop, we don’t quit. We don’t give up. We keep moving forward, we keep butting up against the edge of our comfort zone and keep making that bigger, keep expanding that comfort zone. That should be your goal. So your work becomes pushing yourself to the edge of that comfort zone daily. feeling that pain, right?

Deal with the discomfort and then move through it. And I hear people say this all the time, like oh, it’s such a struggle. I’m struggling with sugar. I’m struggling with alcohol. I’m struggling with my workouts, you’re not struggling. You’re just not willing to be uncomfortable for long enough.

Chances are your only struggle is your brain is telling you don’t do this. Go back to the safety of your comfort zone. So, you know they say the struggle is real. The struggle is actually not real. It’s just a story. You keep telling yourself the struggle is in your mind. Okay, it’s not easy doing this stuff. And it is uncomfortable. That’s the nature of it. But it’s not a struggle. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean. And I will talk to you soon.

224. How I Experienced Freedom from Alcohol

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17 years ago I finally made the decision to give up drinking alcohol. This was not a decision that came quickly or easily, I had been drinking daily for many, many years. I got to a point where …

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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 224 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today how I experienced freedom from alcohol.

So 17 years ago, I finally made the decision to give up drinking alcohol. This was not a decision that came quickly or easily for me because I’ve been drinking daily for many, many years. And I got to a point where my life was just not what I wanted it to be. I wanted more for myself and alcohol was standing between me and the person that I ultimately wanted to be.

So today, how I experienced freedom from alcohol, how I got my life back and how I became more than I ever thought possible. But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you, you want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster.

And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you. And I also want you to know that I’m here to help you get there. I’m talking to you on the podcast here. And if you’re listening to the podcast, you’re going to learn a lot.

I listen to all sorts of podcasts. I listen to audiobooks, I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. But when it comes to the practical application of all this knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way, to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track.

I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life who have helped me to become who I am today, I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business. And my mindset has never been better. My amazing coaches helped me with all of that I had a coach in each of these different areas of my life.

In fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach. So that’s why I do what I do today. So for you, the person who’s listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge. But when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me.

But find someone that can show you the way they can help you to apply all of this knowledge to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get the results that you want, and maybe a little bit faster than you ever could on your own.

Okay, and if you’re interested in working with me, you can always go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me. And we’ll work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself. Yeah, cool. Awesome. Okay.

So today, what I’m talking about here is how I experienced freedom from alcohol. And I’m just gonna give you guys a little bit of a disclaimer, this is gonna be a little bit of a different episode, I typically write out quite a lot of notes for my podcast, and I have a lot of references to things that I want to talk about. Today, I’m just kind of winging it.

And the reason I want to just kind of wing it is because I just want to share my experience with you. I want to share with you my story of how I used to be someone who couldn’t live without alcohol, and how I became someone who can imagine drinking again, it’s a very huge shift. It’s a cataclysmic shift in my life, I am a vastly different person today than I was when I was in my drinking days. So that’s why I didn’t really write notes, because it’s just my story.

And I’m just going to tell you my story the way that I remember it. So if I jump around a little bit, just know that I’ll try to pull it back. And I’ll try to keep you on track as much as possible here. But this is going to be just a little bit of a different episode. I just want to share how I experienced true freedom from alcohol. And I’m hoping to inspire you to experience true freedom from alcohol as well if that’s something that you’re interested in.

And if you listen to the end of this episode, I’m going to share with you a program that I’m putting together that may help with experiencing freedom from alcohol. Okay, so be sure to listen to the end and you’ll see how you can find out more about this program that I’m putting together here. Okay.

So let’s start from the beginning. So 17 years ago, this week, so April 9 is what I call my sobriety date. That’s the date that I quit drinking, and the day that I made the decision to change my life because I was about 40 years old or so at the time.

And for the previous, oh my gosh, 25 years or so 20-25 years, I drank pretty much every day. I’m really and I’m not exaggerating that. I think I drank most days for those 20 or 25 years. And there was some point in there, you know, well into my 30s, at least, where I knew that I had some issues with drinking.

And I knew that I probably needed to stop drinking, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to stop because I was like, I don’t see how I can possibly live without this. I had used alcohol as a coping mechanism. I used alcohol as an escape mechanism, I had used alcohol to numb myself from having to deal with life.

You know, without having to, I didn’t want to deal with my emotions, I didn’t want to deal with stress, I didn’t want to deal with, you know, relationships with work, with kids, with everything that was in my life, everything was just better if I could just numb myself to all of that.

So I used alcohol to not feel. I used alcohol to escape, I used alcohol to feel better. And you know what? It does work. When you drink alcohol, it feels pretty good. It’s a pretty short-lived experience. It’s very temporary, it doesn’t last very long. But it does feel pretty good when you’re doing it, you know, you get that buzz going, your body starts to get all tingly and warm, and stuff.

The problem with it, there’s so many problems with it. But one of the problems with it is that it’s very short-lived. And that feeling goes away pretty quickly. And then you need more to get it back. And then the more you keep doing that, the more you need to feel good. And now you’re just trying to get back to baseline, like you just want to feel normal.

That’s not a good place to be. So for most of my life, I had been drinking daily from the time I was, you know, 15, 16, 17 years old, something like that, and made it a just a daily habit of drinking pretty much all the time until I, you know, made that decision to finally quit.

And in between there, all kinds of stuff happened in my life, you know, that were consequences of my drinking, you know, there were car accidents, there was my first wife left me because of my drinking. There was, you know, people that were friends of mine that didn’t want to be around me anymore because of my drinking.

You know, I had alienated people. I had embarrassed people. I was just I was not in a good place at all. And of course, on top of all of this, I was you know, smoking cigarettes and not exercising and I was eating crappy diet.

I was in a really, you know, bad place for most of those years. And it all sort of caught up to me, when I had just been like I just woke up on a Monday morning. It happened to be the Monday after Easter in 2007. And I had just woken up and I was hungover and had a big fight with this girlfriend that I was dating at the time the day before, and I really embarrassed myself.

And you know, I just felt like it was just one of one more day where I just woke up feeling like crap, and I felt out of control. That’s the thing with alcohol. When you use alcohol or drugs to kind of escape, at some point, it just kind of stops working. And it just feels terrible because you get into this place where you really want to quit, but you can’t quit because you can’t live without it.

So you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. You’re like stuck between a rock and a hard place. And this is a terrible place to be. And I was in that place for a long time for many, many years. Until that one morning when I finally woke up, I was hungover, you know, had to go to work.

And I may have called in sick to work that day. I can’t remember. But I just remember waking up and laying in bed and telling myself or actually saying out loud. Like for the first time ever I said out loud like, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this anymore. I need some help.” And that was a thought that I had never had before that I needed some help.

Up to that point. I thought you know I can do this on my own. You know if I ever wanted to quit I could just you know give it up. And I had kind of tried a few times but I couldn’t last more than a day or two. You know what I mean?

Because I was like so you know, I can say addicted you know because it is an addictive substance. I could say that I was kind of addicted to alcohol. And I was like, you know, I just, it was too hard to live without it.

But as soon as I made that statement out loud, I was like, I can get some help. It sort of shifted something for me, it felt like this weight fell off on my shoulders like that I could actually do this. But I would need somebody to help me.

And that was a very different thought for me and a very different feeling. Because it was like, the first time I ever felt like maybe I could live without alcohol. Maybe I could experience freedom from drinking, you know.

So my first thought was to go get some like counseling. And so I went and saw like a therapist and did some counseling. And that was the first time I ever talked to anybody about this, the first time I ever talked to anybody about the fact that I had a problem with drinking and that I wanted to quit and that I couldn’t do it on my own.

And so like, what do I do? Like, I just was very open and honest, and just said, like, you know, what do I do, of course, there was a lot of guilt and shame around all of this. And, but this person that I was working with made me feel like I was very normal.

In fact, he shared with me that he had a drinking problem. And that, you know, he found a lot of relief in like a 12-step program. So he kind of turned me on to AA, you know, and so I started doing that. And, and that was really helpful at the beginning as well, because then I started to hang around other people that were just like me, that had gone through similar stuff, you know, we’re all different.

You look around a room of, of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you can see that there’s a lot of different people in that room. But we all share this same thing where we all want freedom, you know, we all want to experience that freedom from drinking, we don’t want to have to drink anymore.

And so, with that particular program, this is where I’m gonna get into just a little bit of a, you know, criticisms about a program like that. That program, I would say, it kind of saved my life, it really helped me at the beginning. I kind of grew out of it at some point, though, you know, and it’s great.

And there’s no, I’m not going to, you know, talk any smack about a program like AA or any other 12-Step program, but I’m just gonna say that they’re not for everybody. And they don’t work for everybody that you know, so there’s no, like, one size fits all, when it comes to this kind of stuff, okay.

But one thing that was helpful for me was, was being around other people and seeing that this was a pretty normal thing. And that all we all wanted together was to quit drinking and to support each other through that process. Now, listen, AA was started back in 1939, by a bunch of old white Christian guys, you know, and if, you know, so some of these tenents of the program are really based in Christianity and a belief in God and things like that, you know, they tried to kind of soften some of that stuff.

But you know, I’m not a really religious person. And so a lot of that didn’t really jive with me, you know, but there’s some good parts that program. So if you’re somebody that’s like, you know, maybe I’ll try it and give it, give it a try. You know, give it a shot. You know, there’s nothing wrong with it.

And I’m not going to like I said, I’m not going to talk more smack about it. I’m just saying it’s not for everybody, okay. But it did show me that there’s a whole world out there of people that are living their life, and they don’t have to, they don’t have to drink every day. And I was like, wow, that’s a crazy concept. Because the only people I knew were people that drank every day, or pretty much every day. And that’s how I live my life for so long.

Those were the only people that I had surrounded myself with. I didn’t see how it was possible to live your life without it. And one of the things that scared me when I first quit drinking because I felt some relief at the beginning. I was like, oh good. Finally getting on. I’m getting some help. I think I can do this. I’m gonna quit.

But then I started thinking like, how can I ever have fun again, in my life, how can anything ever be fun again, because I used alcohol to make every experience more fun. At least I thought I was you know, I thought I was having more fun but it was really just my brain tricking me into thinking I was having fun when in reality, you can have tons of fun without alcohol trust me.

But that scared me at first because I was like, How can I you know, go through a Saturday without alcohol because I would you know, you know get up and you know, do some work you know, cut the grass or something like that and then start drinking, you know, however many, whatever and drink the rest of the day and hang out with my friends and we would drink and watch football or whatever.

And I just thought this. I don’t see how life can can be fun at all, without alcohol. Well, I’m glad I was wrong, because I will tell you that my life has been infinitely more fun. Because I’m not drinking because I’m a sober person, and have been for the last 17 years.

You know, since 2007, I have had all kinds of amazing experiences in my life, you know, I got remarried and, and, you know, went on amazing trips all over the place. And, you know, my kids have grown up, and, you know, one of my kids has gotten married and had a grandchild.

And, you know, I started this amazing coaching practice that I love so much, you know, I’ve done so many amazing things physically, I’ve completely changed my physical body, you know, my physical health, you know, become super fit.

I’ve accomplished a lot, you know, from running, you know, 50 miles, 100 miles, doing an Ironman, you know, running countless marathons, like all these things that I would never consider when I was drinking, like, none of this was even on my radar, you know.

But when I quit drinking, it opened up a whole world to me of things that I never thought would be possible. You know, like staying up past nine o’clock, I guess I would drink myself until I passed out every night at you know, 9, 9:30 or something like that. Now I go to bed at like 9:30 or 10. And I love it. And I feel so amazing, because I get up pretty early.

But that’s a whole different deal. You know, going to bed early is like the new, cool thing to do. You know, I’m convinced of that. I know so many people that love going to bed early, and getting up early, and they just are more healthy. They’re more productive. They get more done. And they just feel better.

So there’s, you know, used to be this, like, you know, a badge of honor. Do they always stay up till three o’clock in the morning every day? Like, no, no, thank you. I’m in bed by 10. I love it. I love it.

But really the one thing I wanted to share with you guys that that is really the kind of the key learning with all of this is the freedom from alcohol part. So you know, a lot of people can quit drinking, or moderate their drinking, but they don’t experience the freedom that I’ve experienced.

The freedom comes from this place of the alcohol is going to be there. Okay, everywhere you look, everybody, pretty much drinks, there’s alcohol everywhere you go, you know, you can’t go to a restaurant, you can’t walk down the street, even the movie theaters they have like they’re selling alcohol at the movie theaters.

So alcohol is going to be there. And if you think that you can somehow, you know, white knuckle, your way through the rest of your life, you decide you’re going to quit drinking, but you know, you just you’re craving alcohol all the time. That is not freedom. That is not what I’m talking about.

Freedom is where you just don’t want it anymore. Freedom looks like this. Like today, I can go to any number of restaurants that I love that are around where I live here. There’s this great barbecue joint I go to all the time. And I love sitting at the bar, because I can talk to the bartender, maybe watch the sports game that’s on or whatever.

So I will sit at the bar. They are pouring drinks for everybody around me. There’s alcohol flying everywhere I can see it, I can smell it. And I don’t want it. I have no desire to drink that alcohol. That’s what freedom looks like. That’s a big difference between somebody who’s like, you know, I can’t go into that place. Because you know, there’s alcohol in there.

You know, you should be able to go anywhere, whether they’re serving alcohol or not, and it shouldn’t be a problem for you. That’s what freedom looks like. You know, freedom looks like the desire for alcohol is gone. That’s what freedom looks like.

Because when you don’t have the desire for alcohol, you just don’t want it anymore. Not drinking is not a problem. And I use this analogy all the time with people because a lot of people can relate.

I don’t know if you guys ever smoke cigarettes but I used to smoke cigarettes and smoking was one of those things that I did all day every day right as soon as I wake up in the morning and have coffee have a cigarette you know and then all day long and I would smoke.

I was somebody who smoked a pack or so a day so what does that like 20 cigarettes a day that’s a that’s a lot in my opinion. So 20 cigarettes a day and then you know I quit a bunch of times I quit for like a year or more at once at one point and then like took it back up again like so stupid.

But then at some point, it finally clicked and I quit and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I quit smoking. And then it was hard, you know, white knuckling it try not to smoke and I was just counting the days, eventually it got easier.

I finally got to some point in my life where I just didn’t want it anymore. Like cigarettes just do not appeal to me anymore. And now, you know, I think about smoking, you could put cartons of cigarettes and lighters in front of me. And I have no desire, no desire, the desire, the desire is gone, the desire has been removed. Like, I don’t have that anymore. That’s what freedom looks like.

Here’s another analogy for you. Have you ever been in love with someone? Yes, we all have. Okay. So think about like one of your first loves, like your first boyfriend or your first girlfriend? Oh, I know, what was it like middle school, high school, something like that. And you couldn’t imagine living without that person? Right?

You just couldn’t imagine life without this person that was there every day that you could talk to every day, there were your world, you know? And then at some point, you guys broke up. Or maybe you didn’t, maybe you married that person and good for you.

But you know, for most of us, for me anyway. You know, I broke up with that person. And I can look back on that and go like, oh yeah, I have no desire to be with that person anymore. The desire is gone. That’s where freedom is. Okay?

So you don’t think about that person anymore. It’s not a big deal. Or you can see that person, you’ll be like, oh, yeah, like, I’m friends with my first girlfriends on Facebook. And I can, you know, they’re married, and they have these amazing lives and everything. And I can see them and look at pictures and just be like, oh, that’s awesome. Good for her, you know.

So that’s what freedom looks like, like, you know, that person is going to be there, you’re gonna see them, it’s not a big deal. You know, alcohol is gonna be around, but you don’t need it anymore. You don’t want it anymore, the desire is gone. That desire is gone. That’s what freedom looks like. That’s what I want you to experience.

And and a lot of times, it doesn’t come from, you know, reading a book or a 12-step program or something like that. It comes from doing the inner work, you know, it comes from doing the work of changing how you think and feel about alcohol. That’s what it really comes down to.

Now, this work that I’m talking about here, is very similar to the work that I do with my clients around food. Because food, especially sugar, has the same effect on us. It lights up our pleasure centers, just like alcohol.

Sugar is very hard to give up just like alcohol. Sugar has you experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you give up sugar, just like alcohol. You probably can’t imagine life without sugar, just like alcohol. Like there’s so many similarities.

Sugar is not necessarily good for you like alcohol, there’s a lot of negative side effects that come along with eating sugar, just like alcohol, right? These things are so similar. So here’s where I want to tell you guys about something that I’m putting together.

So if you’re interested, I’m creating a program called alcohol freedom. It’s my Alcohol Freedom Program. And if you want to learn more about it, it’s just not live yet. It’s not something that I’m offering just yet. But I will be very soon.

And what I want to encourage you to do is just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and then put in /alcoholfreedom, it’s all one word, alcoholfreedom. Also, I’m going to put a link in the show notes for this episode.

So if you’re listening to this on, you know, Spotify, or you know, Apple podcasts or something, you can just scroll down and click the link, but click the link and get on the list. So there’s, there’s like a waitlist right now.

So I’m opening this up to a select few people for this like pilot program, where we’re basically going to take you through how to experience this true freedom from alcohol. And you know, we’re going to do it together. And it’s going to be guided, I’m going to I’m gonna do a lot of teaching, you’re gonna have some work to do, there’s going to be some accountability, but it’s one of those things where I feel really passionately about this, I feel very called to do this.

So I wanted to share this with you now just to plant the seed, you know, and maybe you’re fine with whatever your relationship with alcohol is today, but just know that this will be there for you later, you know. So just, you can always just put your name on this list and then you don’t have to do anything here, I’m not going to hold you to this, you’re not obligated to do anything here.

But just put your name on the list. So you can get more information as I, you know, develop this program and have it ready here, it should be, you know, soon, okay, so just go to runningleancoaching.com/alcoholfreedom, get your name on the on the waitlist for the program.

Okay, so just wanted to throw that out there. But listen, the work requires you to change your thoughts and feelings, we have all these, you know, thought-feeling-action patterns that we’ve developed over decades of drinking alcohol, and we use alcohol to feel better.

You know, we use alcohol to numb ourselves, we use alcohol to deal with stress, we use alcohol, for lots and lots and lots of reasons. And a lot of these reasons are fine. You know, if you’re somebody that drinks you know, once in a while, good, that’s awesome. And you don’t have that pull, like alcohol doesn’t have that pull on you like it doesn’t, like you don’t feel the need to drink. Like, that’s an amazing place to be honestly, I never was like that, I always had to have more like, I always had to have it, it wasn’t something I could live without, until I quit.

So, if you’re somebody that drinks occasionally, and this isn’t a problem for you, then you don’t need to worry about it, you’re in good shape. But if you feel like your drinking is out of control, if you feel like you can’t control your drinking, when you start, if you feel like you can’t keep promises to yourself, like you say, Oh, I’m not gonna drink tomorrow night. But you do.

If you want to drink less, or you want to stop drinking altogether, you don’t have to stop drinking altogether, you can moderate your drinking, and lots of people live their lives drinking moderately, and it is okay, you can do that, that is an option for you.

The whole idea here is that you take back control, you want to live a healthy happy life, you got to be in control of your eating, and you got to be in control of things like drinking, if this is something that feels maybe out of control for you, or something that you want more control over or more management over, then you know, consider putting your name on the list, you know, so that we can, you know, have that discussion and we can help you.

You know, my goal with all this is that I have experienced freedom from drinking, and the last 17 years of my life have been amazing. And I’m such a different person today than I was 17 years ago. And I want that for you too. It doesn’t mean you have to quit, it doesn’t mean you have to do it the way that I did it. But I want you to know that it is possible for you.

Because if a dummy like me can do it, you can do it too. Okay, there’s nothing special about me. I was just a normal person, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t have any super like, they call this like your bottom, like you hit rock bottom, like I didn’t, I wasn’t in jail. I didn’t you know, I wasn’t living in the street. I wasn’t in the gutter. You know, I never got a DUI or anything like that, but my life was just sucky, you know, and I didn’t want to live that way any longer.

That’s all and that’s all it takes like, it doesn’t even have to be my story doesn’t even have to be your story, like you are allowed to make your own decisions about food, about your weight, about how you want to change your relationship with alcohol. It’s up to you, okay, but just know that help is out there. And you don’t have to do it alone.

Doing it on your own is hard. I’m just going to tell you like it’s very, very hard. And getting help is easy. It’s like hitting the easy button, all that stuff. You know, because you have somebody there that’s going to hold you accountable, that’s going to help you get through the rough spots, that has the experience to help you and guide you and mentor you and all that. Okay.

So, like I said, I’m here to help you with all this stuff. If you’re interested, go to runningleancoaching.com/alcoholfreedom, or click the link on the show notes for this episode. I’d love to see you in the program. I think it’s gonna be fun.

We do have fun doing this kind of stuff. Like we’re not gonna, you know, suffer our way through this, you know, you want to, you know, take back control of your drinking. We don’t have to, you know, be all mopey about it like this can be something where we actually have fun and a really positive experience and a positive environment where we can do this work together and help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet.

If that’s what you want for yourself, it is available to you and I can help you get there. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. All right, love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

223. The Problem with Eating Whatever You Want

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There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by health and fitness “experts.” One in particular that has stood out to me lately goes something like, “Take a few days each …

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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 223, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today the problem with eating whatever you want. There’s a lot of interesting food advice being given out these days by quote unquote, like health and fitness experts.

One in particular that has kind of stood out to me lately goes something like this, take a few days each week and go crazy, eat whatever you want. You can’t be too restrictive with your diet. So I’ve done a lot of thinking about this idea. In fact, I’ve even tried it for a while I’m gonna talk about that later.

I’ve learned a lot about how this principle works, why it works, why it doesn’t work, mostly why it doesn’t work. And I’m going to share my thoughts with you about that today. So in this episode, I’m going to explain the problem with eating whatever you want, and offer maybe a better way to do things.

But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you. You want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster. And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you.

I also want you to know that I am here to help you get there. Yes, I know I’m here talking to you on the podcast, I’m sharing all this information with you. And if you’re listening, awesome, you’re going to learn a lot. I listen to all sorts of podcasts and audiobooks. And I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.

But when it comes to the practical application of all that knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track. I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life, who have helped me to become who I am today.

I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business, my mindset has never been better. These amazing coaches helped me with all of that, in fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach myself.

Okay, so for you, the one listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge, but when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me, okay, but find somebody to show you the way to help you to apply all of this knowledge that you’re gaining to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get better results and faster than you ever could on your own.
Okay, and if you are interested in working with me, awesome, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.

All right, let’s talk about the problem with eating whatever you want. So there’s a trend out there. I’m starting to notice in the health and fitness industry, this has been going on for a while that basically says this every now and then you should be able to eat whatever you want, and it should be fine.

And I’m not diametrically opposed to this idea. Okay, I want to start out by saying that. So some people, they say, you know, just follow the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you’re eating healthy, then 20% of the time, you can do anything you want, and it’s totally fine. And I’m not even completely opposed to this concept. But I think if we’re doing a 20 around food, it might be a little too much of eating whatever you want.

Okay, so I did a little bit of math. And if you eat three times a day, for seven days, that’s 21 meals a week. Okay. So 20% 21 is 4.2 meals a week, where you get to eat anything you want. To me, that seems like a lot. Okay.

Then there’s something like Tim Ferris’ slow carb diet. So he has this thing called the slow carb diet. It’s from his book, The Four Hour Body, great book, by the way, a lot of good information in there.

And he has this kind of diet plan in there that says you know, just keep the carbs low. You know, don’t eat anything white, essentially. And there’s some interpretation as to what is considered white. It’s kind of like no sugar, no flour, no dairy, essentially. And you want to do that like six days a week, okay.

And then one day a week for the whole day, you should eat whatever you want. Literally eat anything, you can eat five pizzas, a dozen donuts at a time, ice cream at every meal. And the people that follow this kind of diet, I guess you could call it a diet usually have this one cheat day, whatever you want to call it.

They do this on Saturdays, and they’ve nicknamed it Fatterday. Because you gained like five pounds every Saturday. So the principle is, you know, one day a week, you get to do whatever you want. And people go crazy on this day. And I actually tried this a year or so ago I did this as an experiment to see, you know, what would happen to me, if I took on this all you can eat anything goes one day a week sort of mentality.

Okay, so I ate you know, I would eat doughnuts and pastries in the morning with coffee like and I don’t ever eat in the morning, I was eating french toast and pancakes for lunch, pizza for dinner. And then the most decadent ice cream I could find. Sometimes they get ice cream that’s like low carb ice cream that doesn’t have sugar in it.

But in this case, I was looking for what has the most fat and the most sugar like I was just going crazy. And I didn’t do this for too long. I don’t know, maybe a few weeks to a month, something like that. Because I have to tell you, that Saturday was amazing, like because I just was binging like crazy.

But I felt like total garbage for like five days afterwards. And on that one day, I would gain a bunch of weight. And it took like five days before that weight would come off again. And I would come back to normal. You know, just think about that.

Like every week, you’re doing something that is so bad for you really and makes you feel so terrible that it takes you like four or five days to just get back to normal again. Okay. So that was one problem with that.

Another problem with it was that I found myself counting the hours until Saturday, I was starting to like fantasize about food and all the junk food that I was going to eat and how many glazed doughnuts I could eat at once. And you know what kind of pizza I was going to be eating and buying ice cream. So I would have it ready.

And you know, because I’ve been avoiding all this junk for years. But I found my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about all this food. Right? This is not really healthy thinking. Okay. So needless to say, this diet did not really work for me, even though I loved it. Man, who doesn’t love binging out on a bunch of junk food like that? Right?

It wasn’t helping me to maintain my weight. I felt like crap all the time, my food cravings were through the roof. So there are several problems with with plans like this, whether it’s like four days, four meals a week, you know, whatever you want, you know, or one day a week, just do whatever. Like I think that that we have to come up with a better plan than this. Okay?

Some of the problems with this eating whatever you want mentality is that it doesn’t teach you how to take control of your eating, you know, for a long time. For me anyway, and I’m guessing for you, because this happens with a lot of people that I talk to.

They have issues about control, and they’re eating like they feel like they’re eating is out of control. And if you’re engaging in a behavior that promotes out of control, eating on a regular basis, this is not going to teach you how to take control of your eating over the long term. You’re going to constantly feel like this out of control behavior is not only okay, but it’s almost encouraged, you know.

So you’re not learning how to be a mindful eater, you know, and I talked about this recently on the podcast about the mindless eating and how we have to be more mindful about eating. And so this kind of behavior I think, is detrimental to that. I think it leads to more mindless Eating, and it doesn’t teach you anything. So, you know, people say, well, this is this is the only way that you can eat a healthy diet sustainably, you have to be able to let off the steam every now and then.

But I think that we’re just reinforcing some really terrible eating habits, you know, its its binge type of eating is what’s going on here a lot of times, and to me, it feels like, we’re just kind of giving people permission to keep the disordered eating patterns happening. Okay?

If you’re somebody that has ever suffered with any sort of eating disorder, you know, you, you know what this feels like. And you know that this is very difficult and very triggering for you. Maybe even just talking about it can feel it triggering for you.

But to keep reinforcing that binge type of eating is, I think it’s going to kind of mess you up in the long term, okay, because it’s not teaching you how to be that mindful eater, how to be that person that is in control of what they’re doing.

Not to mention that, you know, eating whatever you want is, it’s not healthy for you not physically healthy, not mentally healthy, not emotionally healthy. It’s not physically healthy, because anything that you eat, that is so full of sugar and junk food, and you know, fried food, and, you know, all of the bread and refined grains and flour, that stuff just makes you inflamed, it makes you hold on to a lot of your weight.

It makes you feel lethargic, it makes you have brain fog, like you can’t think clearly. You know, it raises your blood sugar and insulin levels, it can really lead to some serious health effects, you know, really can lead to diabetes and things like that, if not, if done regularly, obviously. But it’s kind of like you’re you’re dabbling with poison here.

You know, it’s kind of like drinking alcohol, where alcohol is poison. You know, ethanol, the main ingredient that makes alcohol give you a buzz is poisonous, toxic, if you drink enough alcohol, you will die. It will kill you. But if you do it in small doses, it’s not too bad. But it’s still poison.

All right, we’re still eating poison. When you’re eating all this junk food here, you’re just doing it in smaller doses, but it’s not physically healthy. It’s not good for you, okay? And I think from a mental and emotional standpoint, it’s really bad for you, because it’s not teaching you good eating habits.

It’s promoting disordered eating patterns. It’s not allowing you to learn how to take control of your emotions, you’re basically eating your feelings, your eating, because you’re, you’re voracious, and you have this huge desire to eat, you’re eating because you’re stressed out, or whatever it is, whatever the reasons are, it’s hard for us as humans to learn how to take control of how they think and feel, when we’re eating a huge amount of junk food all the time.

This is akin to telling an alcoholic to just go on a bender once a week, or twice a week, you know, just to let off some steam, you know, because that’s going to be more sustainable for you. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.

As somebody who used to drink, I don’t anymore, I don’t think that’s a very good idea at all. Because for an alcoholic, you know, one drink leads to more drinks. You know, for somebody that has some issues around food, eating a bunch of junk food like that can just lead to more of that type of behavior.

And you’re not changing the behavior, we’ve got to take control of the behavior. Okay, I’m not opposed to eating this stuff every now and then. Not at all. But I think that, you know, somehow we’re treating your body like a garbage can. And we’re telling ourselves this story that it’s good for us. It’s really not.

Right, you’re not learning, any type of self-control here. You’re not learning how to deal with your emotions, like an adult. You know, you’re acting like a toddler, what does a toddler do? A toddler kicks and screams and cries oh, I want it my way I want I want things my way. And they and they will cry and scream until they get what they want. And we’re kind of doing the same things.

We have these feelings and we’re like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just eat a bunch of junk food and you feel better. A little better, just for a few minutes doesn’t last. You’re actually not dealing with any of the issues and you’re not learning how to have emotions. You’re emotionally acting like a toddler, okay? We want to be emotional adults, not emotional toddlers, okay?

So this idea that we should be able to eat whatever we want to let off steam or whatever, they’re selling you this idea because they’re telling you, it’s the only sustainable way to eat because eating healthy all the time is not sustainable. You know, you have to get into those cravings or you’re gonna go crazy. This is what they tell you.

Okay, but what if you will learn how to dial down the volume of those cravings? What if those cravings weren’t as strong anymore? What if you thought about eating some ice cream for a minute, and you’re like, man, ice cream wouldn’t be good right now. It’s not really on my plan. I’m cool. I don’t really need it, I’m fine.

You’re gonna have those thoughts every now and then. But they don’t have to take over your life. They don’t have to become so strong that you have to go and give in to those cravings. Just because you have a craving for something doesn’t mean you have to go and have that thing. Right? If this is a new concept for you, I’m glad you’re here. Okay.

What if you learned how to manage your mind and you learn how to manage your emotions, so that you no longer needed to binge eat over them? Right? Wouldn’t that be more sustainable and healthier than, you know, blowing off some steam a couple times a week, just because you can’t deal with the emotional stuff. I think it’s more important to deal with how you think and feel than it is to like, binge out all the time.

So what if you learn how to handle all these emotions in your life, the good, the bad, the ugly, what if you didn’t need to turn to food to just feel better all the time? You know, this would be amazing. It’s a big game changer for you. When we’re giving in to all these cravings all the time, and we’re allowing ourselves to binge eat like that. Food has a power over you. Because you’re engaging in this binging behavior, you’re allowing food to be to be in control of you food is in the driver’s seat.

Food has the power over you, you have given up your power and your control to food. This is ridiculous. Don’t do this. You’re giving up control of your mental and emotional state to food. Right? Alcoholics do ,drug addicts do this. People who are addicted to food do this.

So there’s a better way to do things, there’s a better approach. And the approach is this learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings. That’s it. That’s the work. It’s that simple. It’s that simple. Stop using a substance food, alcohol drugs to manage how you feel. You got to get really good at just dealing with life just as it is the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly. All of it, you just have to be able to handle it all. Like an emotional adult. Okay.

I used to use alcohol this way. For 25 years I drank so that I wouldn’t have to feel, period. That’s why I drank because I didn’t want to deal with all these feelings stress, anger, fear, resentment, guilt, shame, frustration. I didn’t want to deal with any of that stuff. And I drank and I felt better. It worked.

Kind of came with all these negative consequences. My health was terrible. My relationships with everyone were terrible. I ended up getting a divorce. People didn’t want to be around me anymore. I generally felt miserable all the time. And when I quit drinking, this was back in 2007. I had to learn how to live my life without numbing, without the crutch, without escaping my thoughts and feelings. And it worked.

It worked for a period of time until I turned to food to fill that void because I got off the alcohol but then I was like oh food that gives me that buzz that I used to get that gives me that numbing sensation I used to this helps me to not have to deal with my thoughts and feelings anymore. Yay.

But then the foods started to not work for me and I started to gain a bunch of weight, you know, and I started to feel terrible. And I had to learn how to deal with all the thoughts and feelings all over again. All right.

This time I had to do it without any sort of external coping mechanism, right? So I made the decision when I stopped eating junk food – sugar, pizza, ice cream – and made the decision that I was going to start embracing my life, just the way it was everything and the way that I felt, and in my thoughts, my thoughts and feelings, were not going to, like control me that I was going to take control over that stuff that I wasn’t going to turn to food or drugs or alcohol to feel better.

I haven’t had a drink in 17 years, and my life is vastly richer and more rewarding because of it. I stopped using food to feel better. I haven’t done that in five years, I have never felt better. I’m in the best shape of my life, physically, but also in the best shape of my life, mentally, emotionally, I can handle everything that life throws at me.

And I’ve gone through a lot of hard stuff in the last few years, and I don’t have to eat a bunch of doughnuts. Just because you know, life is stressful. You know, I’ve done the work. It’s not easy, it’s hard. It takes time. There are setbacks, there is discomfort. It takes time.

But this is the work that we commit to. And the people that I work with, the clients that I work with, they get this, they’re here for it, they show up, and they’re ready to embrace the sock, you know, they don’t do it perfectly. No one does, by the way, not even me. But they stick with it.

They make progress, they get better at it, they learn how to be emotional adults, they learn how to stop using food to feel better, they learn how to stop the binging behavior. And when you learn this work, when you learn how to take control of your thoughts and feelings.

Everything in your life becomes easier. This stuff doesn’t apply just to food. It applies to every area of your life, your relationships are better, your work is better. Your friendships are better your relationship with your kids is better. You’re happier person. Because you’ve learned how to handle the stress the board and the frustration, anger all without having to eat over it.

Okay, you’re going to learn how to have a little discomfort, like that’s part of the process. But you’re going to learn how to just deal with the discomfort and you don’t have to feel better right away. This is the path to becoming the healthy, healthiest and most badass version of yourself honestly.

So you might be thinking, you know, okay, I’m listening to you, Patrick. I’m hearing all this stuff. But in the back of my mind, you’re like, Okay, does this mean I can never eat a doughnut again? Can I have pizza sometimes? Please, you know? And yeah, absolutely. You don’t have to like give up these foods for the rest of your life. That is not what I’m talking about here. I eat those things on occasion.

Food is meant to be enjoyed, right? We celebrate with food. If it’s your birthday, eat some cake. You don’t have to eat a birthday salad. Nobody wants to eat a birthday salad. Okay. But you have to do the work I’m talking about here today.

First, you have to change your thoughts and feelings, you have to change your relationship with food before you can start enjoying these things every now and then. Okay, you have to learn how to dial down the volume of the desire. Learn how to handle your thoughts and feelings.

Learn how to handle life on life’s terms, you’ve got to get past the need for the binging type of behavior. When you do all that you can experience true freedom around food because you’re no longer powerless, you’ve taken your power back, you’ve taken back control, you’re now in charge again, then you can start eating the stuff on occasion.

And I don’t recommend the 20% rule, or the one day a week you get to do whatever you want. I don’t think that’s really healthy for a lot of reasons that I’ve already talked about. But I do talk to my clients about getting to this place where maybe there’s one meal a week that you can go a little bit off the plan. And that might be a 90% or 95% rule, something like that sort of 80/20 It’s like 90/10 or 95/5, you know, something like that.

And, but you can’t do that from day one. Like we have to get control of food first, before you can start dabbling with some of this junk food. The junk food is not the it’s not the main problem. The problem is really our relationship with this stuff. So we got to fix that first. When you fix that first then you can enjoy a piece of pizza every now and then.

I do eat pizza a couple times a year, I do eat ice cream a couple times a year. Desserts here and there, a piece of chocolate here and there. I don’t eat a lot of sugar to be honest with you. The thing that I crave more than anything else would be like baked goods, bread, pizza, that kind of stuff. Okay?

So you can do this on occasion, but you gotta get in control of your thoughts and feelings. You got to change that relationship with food first. Okay? That’s very important. Very important. We don’t want to be eating out of control. We don’t want to be eating powerlessly.

We want to be eating mindfully. We want to be mindful of about our plan and then sticking to that plan we want to be intentional and mindful around food and that takes a little bit of time.

And as always, I’m always here to help you with all this you know, if you’re interested in working with me just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. And you and I will get started on your journey. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

222. How to Stop the Mindless Eating

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Have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and thought…did I really just eat all that? I know I have…and too many times to count! If …

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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 222 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today how to stop the mindless eating. So have you ever found yourself at the end of a sleeve of Oreos or at the bottom of a bag of potato chips and you thought did I really just eat all that? I know I have, probably too many times to count.

So if you have ever found yourself in that situation, then you’ve probably done some mindless eating. Mindless Eating is something that we’ve all done at one point or another. And it’s something that you can absolutely change. You don’t have to continue to eat mindlessly, there are some practical things you can do to change this behavior.

So today here on the podcast, what Mindless Eating is and how to stop the Mindless Eating once and for all. But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, running, and strength training here on the podcast. And if you’re new, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.

But this all might feel a little overwhelming for you. If you want a great place to start, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour-long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.

You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and strength training and endurance and mindset all geared towards you, the runner. If you’re a runner, you want to lose some weight, you want to get stronger, you want to become the most badass version of yourself, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training. It’s pretty self-explanatory. And then get started on your weight loss journey today. Cool. Awesome.

Okay, let’s talk about this. I’ve been excited to talk about this for some reason. I don’t know why, but I think it’s one of the things that people have been telling me that they want to change. I talk a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people every day about coaching.

And I always ask them like, you know, what do you want some coaching on? And you know, how can I help you? What goals do you have? And inevitably, most of the people I talked to that they list like the mindless eating, the automatic eating as one of the things that they want to change.

So if you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, then you really have to change your whole relationship with food. All right, if I just sit here and I say here, here’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to eat these things, and not eat these things. And you’re going to be fine. I got this, I got this, Patrick, I’m good. Just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.

Okay, but in reality, you don’t got this, I’m just going to tell you, what you got is a lot of conditioned behaviors, you what you’ve got is a lot of habits that you’ve been practicing for years, decades, probably around food, a lot of learned behaviors around food, you’ve been doing the same things for years and years and years for decades.

Like I said, when it comes to how you eat, how you approach food. And if you want to lose weight, and you want to do it in a way that is sustainable for you, then you’re going to have to make some major changes to all of this, you got to change these habits.

You can’t keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing right, nothing changes, if nothing changes. You know, if what you’re if you’re what you’re doing isn’t working, then you have to change it. If you’re doing automatic eating, then you have to change it.

You can’t be a mindless eater, and expect to be able to lose weight because we have to start taking control of what we’re doing. We have to start taking control of our behavior. So the mindless eating, it’s really, it’s an automatic type of behavior that we engage in. It’s not something you just picked up out of the blue you’ve trained yourself to eat and not think about it, right.

So Mindless Eating is is an automatic learned behavior, right? So you go into the kitchen, you grab something, you start eating it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing this, right? Mindless Eating is it’s kind of an unconscious behavior. I like to say it’s similar to tying your shoes tying your shoes is an unconscious behavior.

So when you go, you’re getting ready for work in the morning, you put your shoes on, you tie them and you go, you don’t even think about it. It is unconscious. You don’t even remember doing it today, probably.

So you just do it and you don’t even have any thought or there’s no effort there. There’s no thought there. You don’t have to sit there and think, Okay, what am I doing now? I’m putting my shoes on. And now I have to take these lace things. And I had one goes under the other like, no, no, no, no, you just do it. It takes you two seconds.

Well, we’ve done the same thing with food. You know, we go into the kitchen, and we scarf down a whole sleeve of Oreos, you don’t even notice that you’ve done that until it’s done. And then you’re like, wait a minute, who ate all these oars? Did I eat all these? What the heck is going on here? Honestly, I have done this and Oreos was one of them.

Let’s see kettle chips, those kettle potato chips that are just like super salty. Oh my gosh, those are the best I can eat a giant bag that I get the family style bags, and then I just eat it until they’re gone. Oh, but that’s just me. But these are unconscious learned behaviors just like tying your shoes. Okay. And you’ve trained yourself to do this over years and years and years.

Okay, so it’s a habit is just a habit. Okay, we can if you if you’ve developed a habit, if you learn a habit, you can break the habit, okay? You’ve just trained yourself that when you go into the kitchen, you grab something and you eat it, and then you walk out of the kitchen, don’t even remember, it’s just like tying your shoes, you don’t think about it, you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take any effort, you just do it, okay.

Also, a lot of times we use food to feel better, we want to use food as a way of changing the way we feel. So we grab this thing that’s external to us, we ingest it, it becomes internal, and it helps us to feel better on the inside. This is called emotional eating. And emotional eating to some degree is also just a habit.

Emotional eating can also be automatic mindless eating. And again, it’s just a habit that you’ve developed. You know, emotional eating is when you’re bored, or you’re tired, or you’re stressed out or you’re anxious, and you just want to eat something to kind of feel better, you want to kind of numb the feelings that you’re experiencing, you want to numb the emotions that you’re experiencing, and food will do that it has that effect.

You know, especially if you go for something like sugar, sugar lights up the pleasure centers of your brain like nothing else. And if you want to feel pleasure, just eat some sugar, and you’ll feel pleasure for a short period of time. And you might stop thinking about the stress or the boredom or the anxiety that you’re experiencing for a short period of time, but then it’ll come back.

And then what do you do? Well, you gotta go back to the kitchen and eat something else. And again, this emotional eating can also be a very mindless eating, it can be an automatic behavior that you’re not even aware that you’re doing. Okay? So again, mindless eating, it’s just a learned behavior, you’ve trained yourself to eat, and you’ve trained yourself to not think about it.

This is important, listen to this. Because really, who wants to think about it? So you just, you just blank, this little snack out of your brain. So you’re just like, ooh, some cookies, you eat them, and then you go, bloop, and it’s gone from your brain. Like, it never really happened.

Because if you have to acknowledge it, and if you’re doing it in an intentional, conscious way, you know, you shouldn’t be eating the cookies, you just had lunch, you don’t need to be eating all these cookies. And so you sort of blank it out of your mind. You don’t want to think about it because you love it feels good.

And you know, it’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing. Right? So you have trained yourself to not think about it. Right? So you just do it, you do it automatically. And I think it’s interesting when people tell me this, they’re like, yeah, I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I say well, yeah, you do know, but you’ve chosen to blink it out of your mind. This is a little trick you’re playing on yourself, okay?

So, why is it important to change this behavior? So, mindlessly eating means that you are just eating you know, whenever you feel like it, not when you are actually in need of some nutrition. So this can lead to over eating so eating all the time, it’s really just not good for us. It’s really not the normal state for human beings. The human body is designed to eat a couple of times a day, you know, but not just mindlessly eating snacks all the time, right? It’s just not good for you, it puts a lot of stress on on the system.

You know, also, let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what you are eating. When you are mindlessly eating. I’m guessing it’s probably not broccoli. Have you ever like walked in the kitchen, and you’re like, man, I’m a little bored and a little, I just want a little snack of some time and you open up the fridge and there’s some like leftover broccoli sitting in there and you start eating that? No, nobody does that.

You want something crunchy, and salty and sweet, like chips, pretzels, nuts, chocolate, or like chocolate that has pretzels and nuts mixed into it. You know, like, whatever you can get your hands on that’s going to, you know, light up the pleasure centers. And that’s usually the crunchy, salty, sweet stuff, okay?

So, mindlessly eating is really a way of overeating, you end up over eating, and you end up over eating junk food, like you’re just eating junk, right? And so this is a bad combination. Like if you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to improve your health, you know, change your diet, change your habits, mindlessly eating, you’re overeating, you’re eating junk food, this is a bad combination. Stop doing that. Okay?

Now I get it, you’re like, but it’s so automatic. I don’t even know that I’m doing it. How am I going to stop doing this? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. So the opposite of mindless eating is what it’s mindful eating.

So the goal, the first step here, the first goal that you want to accomplish here is to start being more mindful about everything that you eat, you have to start being mindful about every bite that you put into your mouth. The easiest way to do this, is to write it down. This is a really great place to start. And I think that everybody should do this.

Not just for the mindless eating, but for all kinds of habits around food. But everything has to be written down. And the easiest way to do it is to just grab a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. So every time you eat something, just write it down.

Now I like to talk to people about this. And they’ll say, well, I could use this app I use My Fitness Pal, you know, Carb Manager or whatever. Fine. Use whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. But just make it simple.

Okay, apps can sometimes be complicated. They’re kind of clunky to use, sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, and you just want to it has to be something you can do easily. It has to be simple and easy. Pen and paper is simple and easy. But if you’re on the go, maybe use a note on your phone, you know, just open up a note and just start taking inventory of everything you’re eating throughout the day.

And every time you eat or drink something, anything goes into your mouth. You want to write it down in that note on your phone or on a piece of paper. Okay, that is step number one. So what we’re doing here is we’re creating awareness about what is really going on with you and food, what’s really going on?

There’s no lies here. There’s no tricking yourself. There’s no deception. There’s no you know, tricking yourself into thinking you’re doing something you’re not or not doing something that you are, you’re actually just writing down everything that goes into your mouth, every bite, lick taste, okay?

So record everything that you do. Let’s do this for like a week. All right. And every time you eat something, every time you drink something, write it down. This is going to create a lot of self awareness. This is going to be the first step in being mindful around food instead of mindless.

Okay, so what starts happening here? Well, you start noticing that you’re eating stuff all the time you’re eating stuff, when you’re not hungry, you’re eating stuff, when you’re bored, you’re eating stuff when you’re feeling a little anxious, you’re eating stuff that you know isn’t on your plan. You know, you you start to see when and where you get triggered to eat stuff, you know, oh, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to eat something.

Oh, you know, every time I go in the break room, I have to eat something. You know, you don’t have to keep doing that. But you need to know what you’re doing first. So this is like creating such amazing self awareness. Okay.

And you have to develop this self awareness, you have to know what you’re doing before you can change it right, you got to know what you’re doing before you can change it, you have to know what you’re doing day in and day out before you can stop doing i,t before you can start creating better habits, before you can stop the automatic behavior.

So self awareness is the main goal here. So you got to write everything down, start creating that self awareness. So that’s step number one.

Step number two is this once you start noticing what you’re doing, when you’re eating, how often you’re eating the types of foods you’re eating, you can begin to start practicing the pause.

The pause is you pause before you put any food in your mouth. So you might get to the kitchen, you open up the pantry and you start looking around for some, you know, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever. But you pause right there with the cupboard open. And you notice oh man, I’m really looking for these Girl Scout cookies right now, aren’t I? Because you’ve created that self awareness. Okay, this is really cool.

This is very important and very easy to do. Okay, so you just take a moment and you pause. I’m about to engage in some kind of like mindless eating, I’m going back to these old habits. And so now you started to create a little bit of awareness, we’re starting to move into more of a mindful state, okay.

Next thing I want you to do is ask yourself a few questions. You can do this in your brain, it only takes a few seconds to do this. But ask yourself these questions. Do I really need to eat something right now? Am I really hungry? Or am I just bored or stressed out or anxious? Am I just trying to use food to feel better? What can I do instead of eating if I need to feel better?

Maybe I can go for a walk. Maybe I can walk the dog? Maybe I can, you know, pet the dog? What can you do that it doesn’t involve eating to feel better? Do I really need to feel better at all, maybe I can just be okay, feeling a little stressed out or a little bit bored or whatever.

Like, just go through these few questions in your mind really quickly. Okay. So what you’re doing is you’re going from mindless eating, to being mindful about eating. And listen, when you take that pause, you ask yourself those questions. And if you still want to eat something, then fine, eat the Girl Scout cookies or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.

But what you’re doing here is you’re not eating mindlessly. Now you’re eating mindfully, you’re you’re checking in with yourself before you make the decision to eat or not eat. And I’d much rather you are mindful about eating the Girl Scout cookies, then making that decision to eat the Girl Scout cookies, right? So you’ve made a conscious decision than eating the Girl Scout cookies unconsciously.

We don’t want to be mindless about what we’re doing. We want to be mindful, we don’t want to be unconscious. We want to be conscious. You know what we don’t want our body and our brain operating on autopilot here. We want to be in control.

And if you’re in control, and you’re saying you know what? Eating those Girl Scout Cookies feels like a really good decision for me right now. And you do that fine. Now over time, it would probably be great if you cut out the Girl Scout Cookies altogether. But listen, baby steps I get it. And this first baby step is moving from mindlessness to mindfulness around food.

This is very important. It’s a game changer if you want to lose weight. This is a game changer. It’s really hard to lose weight when you’re eating mindlessly and automatically all the time. You make this one change, and I promise you, your weight loss journey is going to get easier. Okay?

So you want to go from being a mindless eater to a mindful eater. This is where the good stuff starts to happen for you. This is where you can begin to break those conditioned behaviors and habits. This is how you start to change your whole relationship with food.

You’ve got to get away from the unconscious behavior and move towards consciousness get away from mindlessness and start moving towards mindfulness. Okay, this is a critical first step to losing weight and keeping it off. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

221. What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight?

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If you’ve ever trained for a marathon then you know that sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve that goal. You have to put in a lot of hours on the weekends running in the cold. You have …

Continue Reading about 221. What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight? →

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 221 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight?

So if you’ve ever trained for a marathon, then you know that sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve that goal. You have to put in lots of hours on the weekends running in the cold and the dark, you have to give up time with your friends and your family. You endure sore legs for days, you’re tired all the time, you are more than willing to sacrifice these things in order to finish that marathon.

Okay, so how about when it comes to losing weight? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to hit your weight loss goals? So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into the kinds of sacrifices we all have to make in order to lose weight and keep it off.

But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running, and getting stronger here on this podcast. If you’re new, welcome I’m glad you’re here. But you might be a little confused or overwhelmed by all this information.

I get it if that’s you, no worries, I’ve got you covered. I created a free hour-long training that you can check out at any time. It’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.

I teach you the basics of nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset all geared towards you the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner, ready to get stronger and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.

Alright, so what are you willing to sacrifice to lose weight, there’s a lot of confusion around the weight loss world. And I’ve seen a lot of people who think or assume that you really don’t have to give up anything or make any sacrifices in order to lose weight.

Like you can just kind of keep doing what you’re doing, maybe run more, you know, maybe skip the ice cream every now and then or something like that, but you really don’t have to give anything up.

I’ve even heard, you know, dieticians and certain people touting these diets where you just can eat anything that you want. Just eat it in moderation. You don’t really have to sacrifice anything, just eat a little bit less of everything and all your problems will be solved. Does this really work?

I have to tell you that I know that didn’t work for me. I’ve tried that. I know a lot of people that have tried that it hasn’t worked for them. There’s a lot more going on than just like, you know everything in moderation.

Everything in moderation is a great idea. I wish it worked. If it worked, it would be amazing. But I don’t think it works for most people, especially when we’re talking about some types of foods like sugar, which are very difficult to moderate.

Have you ever tried to moderate your sugar intake? Have you tried to just eat a little bit of sugar? It’s hard to do. One of the reasons is is it brings you so much pleasure it lights up the pleasure centers in your brain every time you eat sugar. And it lights up those pleasure centers even more than certain drugs like cocaine do, you know, it’s crazy, how much it lights up the pleasure centers in your brain.

So just eating some sugar in moderation causes you this abnormal craving for more sugar, right? So if you’re somebody that’s trying to moderate what you’re eating, and you’re trying to moderate your sugar intake, and every time you eat it, you have this huge craving for more sugar, this is going to be very difficult for you, you’re gonna go crazy.

And what ends up happening is you eat a lot more sugar, because you’re trying to moderate. Okay, so that’s just one of the reasons why moderation doesn’t work. And I think that there’s a lot more going on in the human physiology when it comes to blood sugar when it comes to insulin when it comes to how our bodies store fat or release fat from fat cells.

You know, we’ve got to make sure that our insulin levels are low, that our blood sugar is pretty chill most of the time. And if you’re spiking your blood sugar and insulin is constantly high, it’s going to be very difficult for you to lose weight, even if you are eating in moderation, okay?

So the reality here is that we do have to make some sacrifices, and even eating whatever you want in moderation, you are still making some sacrifices there, because you’re not eating as much as you’re used to eating, if that’s the route you want to take, you know, people that do Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, calorie counting, you know, all that stuff.

I personally don’t think those methods are very effective long term, they’re effective short term, but not long term. You know, just for reasons like, you know, your, you know, restricting calories will kind of make your metabolism slowed down a little bit.

So, those types of diets, you know, why they tout just saying, like, oh, you know, we’re gonna, you know, eat everything, we’re just gonna moderate and really watch the number of calories you’re eating, you still have to make sacrifices there, you still have to watch the number of calories you’re eating. All right.

So just know that it doesn’t matter, the method of trying to lose weight, there is going to be some sacrifices that have to be made in order for you to reach that goal. Okay. And I want to say this, you know, I’ve said this a couple times before on the podcast here, but when we talk about losing weight, of course, we’re talking about losing fat, not just weight, we’re not talking about losing muscle or bone mass or anything like that. We want to improve our body composition, we just all understand that weight loss means fat loss, right?

Can we just all agree to that? Cool, okay. So when it comes to your body weight, and the amount of fat that you’re carrying around, or muscle, even in this case, there are three different approaches.

You can choose to maintain your weight, which means you’re just gonna keep doing what you’re doing and maintain your weight easily. You can gain weight, you know, you might be somebody that wants to actively get bigger, you know, maybe from a muscular standpoint, or you can try to lose weight.

So if your goal is to maintain your weight, and your weight is kind of where you want it to be, and you’re okay with where your weight is, then probably what you’re doing is fine, and you just can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.

You know, you might be eating a certain way, you might be exercising a certain amount each week. And if you can easily maintain your body composition, meaning you’re not gaining fat, you’re not losing muscle, you really don’t need to change anything.

So this is what we call maintenance mode. And eventually, we all want to get into maintenance mode. And the end goal of any weight loss journey should be this place where you can just easily and kind of effortlessly maintain your weight, like that should be the goal.

And that’s the goal with everybody that I work with is like the end goal should be that when you and I are done working together, you know exactly what to do to easily and pretty effortlessly maintain your weight, right? So if you just want to maintain, that’s pretty easy to do. Just keep doing what you’re doing, you don’t really have to change anything. All right.

Now, the second approach is, let’s say you’re somebody that wants to gain weight. And you might be thinking, I’m sort of crazy for talking about this, who would want to gain weight? But lots of people do. Bodybuilders want to gain weight, I’m trying to gain weight, I’ve been trying to gain weight for some time now. And when I talk about gaining weight, what we’re talking about typically is gaining muscle.

So I’ve been actively trying to gain muscle. And it is hard to do because one thing you have to understand is that you have to be very diligent about eating more food, you got to increase your calorie intake, you got to eat more protein, then you have to do a significant amount of weight training.

And that could be training for hypertrophy training for strength, but you have to be actively working towards building bigger muscles, you can’t just expect to eat a lot more calories, and then expect to gain a bunch of muscle, it doesn’t really work that way. Again, that would be awesome if it did, but it doesn’t.

So we want to combine a good healthy diet and I’m not talking about eating a bunch of junk. But a good healthy diet, you just have to increase the calorie intake and then the right amount of weight training and we have to do this stuff consistently for a pretty long period of time, especially as you get older.

You know if I was doing this in my 20s or 30s, I’d probably be gaining weight from muscle weight pretty quickly and pretty easily. But now I’m in my late 50s you know, and putting on muscle and getting bigger in that way is a little bit harder, but I’ve been pretty successful with it you know and I’ll share more about about on a future podcast, I’m not quite where I want to be yet. So when I do get there, I’m going to share my journey with you guys there.

Okay, so that would be the approach of gaining weight. All right. So if you want to maintain, just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, if you want to, if you want to gain weight, or even if you want to lose weight, then we have to change something, right?

So that brings us to the third approach, which is the one that most people, I would assume one, which is to lose weight, you want to lose that fat weight, okay? So if you want to lose, then we have to change something, if you want to maintain your weight, just keep doing whatever you’re doing, right?

But if you want to lose, what you’re doing is not getting you there, right? So we have to change something. If you have 20, 30, 40 pounds to lose, then whatever you’re doing right now is not going to get you there.

Maybe what you’re doing right now would be a good maintenance plan for you. So think about that. Like what if you’re not gaining weight, you’re just maintaining your weight pretty easily. But you want to lose, think about this. This what you’re doing now could be a good maintenance plan for you long term after you hit your goal weight, of course, right?

So common sense says that if you want to lose the weight, then we have to change something. And when I say change something, that means we have to sacrifice something or some things in order to start getting the weight to move, in order to get you to that goal weight.

Okay, so whenever people are told that they need to make a sacrifice, they figure Oh, my God, it’s like torture, you know, but it doesn’t have to be torture. I looked up the definition of sacrifice. And I like these words that are associated with it.

So the definition is to suffer loss of something to give up something to renounce something, or to destroy something, I like that one, we got to destroy the pizza cravings, you know, especially for an ideal a belief or an end. Right.

So the end, in this case, is your ideal weight. It’s your weight loss goal. And the sacrifices are the things that you need to give up that you need to renounce the things that you need to destroy, in order to achieve that.

And okay, another way of saying this is every goal requires a sacrifice. And the sacrifice could be something you love, like pizza, or ice cream. And, you know, it could be money or time or effort.

You know, if you’re training for that marathon, you know, you have to make sacrifices, months of training in the cold weather, long, long runs on sore, tired legs, you sacrifice time with your family, you sacrifice your social life, because you can’t go out on Friday night, you got to get up early to run 18 miles tomorrow. And then you can’t go out tomorrow night because you’re so tired from running the 18 miles.

You know, most people I talk to are like, oh my gosh, I am so willing to make those sacrifices in order to you know, hit my marathon goal. And so many people are so quick to make that decision. They’re like, cool, I’m definitely going to sacrifice to hit that marathon goal. In fact, I’m going to do this twice a year or three times a year, I run like two or three marathons every year.

So you’re making the sacrifices pretty much year-round. Because if you’re running two or three marathons a year, you’re kind of always in training. So you’re always giving up things. You’re always sacrificing some things for your training. So you know, that training for a marathon requires a lot of sacrifices and you do it gladly. You do it with a smile on your face. Okay.

So what about those sacrifices that you might have to make in order to reach a weight loss goal? You know, you may want to stop eating sugar and you may want to stop drinking alcohol and you may want to cut out the junk food that you’ve been scarfing down happily while you’re doing all that marathon training.

Maybe you cut out snacking or you just go down to eating a couple times a day. Maybe you stop eating all the pizza and the french fries and the ice cream. So all these things are real sacrifices that you might have to make if you want to hit that goal. But the bigger question here is this. Are you willing?

Are you willing to make those sacrifices are you willing to give up the foods that you love that tastes so amazing that light up the pleasure center in your brain like crazy, but they keep making you fatter?

Are you willing to give up those foods, because the cold hard truth is this losing weight requires sacrifices, becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself requires sacrifice. If it didn’t require sacrifice, you already would have achieved it. The fact that it requires a sacrifice means you have not achieved it yet.

So you have to give up something in order to get there, what you want is outside your comfort zone mean, meaning that, you know, if it was in your comfort zone, you’d already have it because it’d be something that you’re comfortable with, you know, but it’s not, it’s outside your comfort zone.

And so just by definition, one of the things you’re going to have to sacrifice is comfort in order to reach that weight loss goal. So sometimes I talk to my clients and they’ll say something like, you know, I’m a little frustrated because my weight has stalled a little bit. And by the way, this is totally normal happens all the time, weight loss can stall for 2, 3, 4 weeks sometimes.

And then it just picks up again, sometimes we don’t change anything. But it’s really not a stall if it’s you know, been four days or six days or something like that, it’s really not. If it’s three, four weeks, yeah, then we got to, you know, look at you know, something, and maybe make a change. And this is totally normal. Everybody goes through this at some point, okay?

So they’ll tell me, my weight is not changing at all, but it’s not going down, it’s staying the same. And when we really dig into what’s going on, almost always, it’s like, well, you know, I’ve had the occasional cookies here and there, I’ve had the occasional piece of cake, I only had one slice of pizza the other night, and I did have a glass of wine too, you know?

Okay, so first of all, all that stuff is fine to do if you want to maintain your weight, because you’re maintaining your way pretty easily here, you know, you can have the occasional cookie, you can have the piece of pizza here and there, you’re gonna have the occasional glass of wine.

And if you do it the right way, and you can do it in moderation. Again, it’s hard to do sometimes with some of this stuff. But if you can do it in moderation, then you’re good from a maintenance standpoint. So if your goal is to maintain your weight, you’re fine. Okay.

But since your goal is not to maintain, it’s to lose your weight, then you’re going to have to be a little bit more disciplined, right, you have to make these sacrifices, at least until you reach your goal weight, then you can go back to the occasional cookie, the slice of pizza, or the glass of wine here and there.

And maybe we practice doing that here and there, as you’re getting closer to that goal weight, so that you understand the mental and emotional aspects of drinking alcohol and eating sugar, because those things can really mess you up. And they’ll they’ll cause more cravings. And it’ll be really hard to stop once you start for some people anyway.

And so we got to be careful with that. So maybe we practice that and we can walk through it slowly. You know, I’m not just going to cut you loose and go Good luck, you know, we’re going to practice doing some of that stuff together. Okay.

So what I’m saying here is like we do have to make sacrifices, but we don’t necessarily have to make these sacrifices for life. Okay. I always talk about how we want to commit to a lifestyle, and commit to a lifestyle of eating healthy, that does not mean we commit to a lifestyle of never having another piece of pizza again, in our lives. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

So losing weight requires these lifestyle changes, you have to change the core of how you approach food, like your mental and emotional approach to food has to be different, right? You can’t keep doing the things you were doing before that doesn’t work, you already know that we and if you want to lose, you got to tighten things up a little bit.

You have to make some sacrifices. And then you have to learn how to do maintenance the right way. And maintenance doesn’t mean you just go back to doing things the way you did before. It’s about sticking to your healthy eating plan most of the time, like let’s say 90% of the time, it means learning that you can eat the occasional slice of pizza, and not the entire large pizza.

That was always my problem. I would be like I’m gonna get some pizza and I would eat like a whole medium or large pizza to myself. Depending on how like thick the crust was, you can only eat so much crust, you know, it means learning how to have a glass of wine once a week, not a bottle of wine every night. Like there’s a big difference there. Okay.

And this learning is how to do things differently. This learning how to moderate amazingly delicious foods that make us feel so good that that’s where the real work comes into play. Right? So if you’re somebody that’s like, you know, the thing that’s going to really be sustainable for me is if I can occasionally have that glass of wine, if I can occasionally have a piece of cake or cookie, but I can occasionally have pizza. I have learned how to do this.

And I have learned that I can eat pizza like couple times a year, I pretty much don’t eat sugar, I’ll have the occasional piece of dark chocolate. So it might be at 5% dark. So it’s there’s not much sugar in there. But I, when I eat that stuff, when I’m eating chocolate, when I’m eating some pizza, I want more of that stuff.

You know, I’ll start thinking about it ahead of time, because I usually plan it out. I’ll be like, oh, yeah, next month on the 14th I’m gonna have a pizza, you know, or eat some pizza. And then I’ll be thinking about, I can’t wait to have that pizza that I haven’t. I’m like, yeah, it was fine.

But then afterwards, I’m like, that was really good. I want more of that, you know, and I’ll and I’ll have to be really cognizant of my mental and emotional state around those types of foods that light up my pleasure centers, okay, and you’re gonna have to do the same thing for you. Okay.

So learning how to moderate some of these foods is really where the work kicks in. Okay, but you can do it. And the cool thing is, is that when you make these sacrifices, so you gotta be willing to make some sacrifices.

And when you make these sacrifices, and sometimes it’s for months on end, you might have to sacrifice some of these things for three months, six months, something like that, when you give them up, when you destroy them, they no longer have the power over you that they once had.

And after some time, you realize that not eating these things is really, you’re really not sacrificing anything at all. You know, it’s just not a big deal anymore. Okay.

So here’s your work for this week. Think about this. What do you need to sacrifice in order to reach your weight loss goals? Right? And then what are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to sacrifice all those things? And it has to be like a yes or no, you have to be committed.

You have to be absolutely committed to cutting these things out of your life, at least for a while. Okay? Every goal requires sacrifice. Losing weight requires sacrifice. What are you willing to cut out of your life to reach your weight loss goal? Okay, think about that. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.