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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Emotional Eating

258. The Truth About Comfort Food

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It’s that time of year when the days are getting shorter and colder, the holidays are upon us, and all you feel like doing is staying in and eating comfort food. I get it. I feel this too. And just …

Continue Reading about 258. The Truth About Comfort Food →

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 258, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, The Truth About Comfort Food.

So it’s that time of the year when the days are getting shorter and colder and darker, the holidays are upon us, and all you really feel like doing is staying home and eating comfort food. And I get this. I feel it too.

And just so you know, I’m not opposed to eating comfort food, but I believe there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. I also believe there are several misconceptions about using food to comfort ourselves, so I want to address those today here. So in this episode, the truth about comfort food, how to do it the right way, so you don’t completely screw up your food plan.

But first, if you’ve been considering coaching, if you’ve been thinking about working with me to lose weight, to improve your strength, to improve your running, whether it’s running longer or running farther, I want you to consider taking action.

Now, a lot of people want to wait. They put things off. They wait until, you know, the stars align, basically. And a lot of people at this time of the year are waiting until the first of the year to get started. Well, after the first, after the holidays, is when I’m going to get started. Can you imagine having a coach working with you through the holidays? Can you think about this?

How much better will you show up on January 1 when you have somebody helping you navigate all those crazy food choices during the holidays, the average American gains like eight pounds during the holidays. And so if you don’t want to be one of those people maybe get some help during the holidays.

But a lot of people will put everything off. They’ll say, well, I really want to, you know, get on this new plan. I really want to work with Patrick, or whatever it is, or somebody else, doesn’t matter. And they say, oh, I’ll wait till after the holidays. Well, you sort of get demotivated after a few weeks, and then you kind of lose your focus. You get busy with work and things like that.

And there’s this saying, “Delay is the killer of people’s hopes and dreams.” Delay is the killer of people’s hopes and dreams. I will wait till next week, next month, after the holidays, whatever. So don’t be one of those people that waits until after the holidays. Just take action now.

And the reason I’m telling you this is because if you’re feeling motivated to do something and to make a change, just do it. You know it’s not going to that motivation is not going to last forever, and it’s not something that you’re going to always feel I’ve had people that I’ve talked to, and then they’ve come back, you know, they didn’t really want to work with me, and then they’ve come back, like, a year later and said, I wish I had started this a year ago.

And I’m like, hey, it’s okay. We all learn our lessons, but think about how much progress you can make between now and the first of the year, if you get started now. So just consider that. Okay, so if you’re interested in coaching, I think it would be great to get started sooner rather than later.

Don’t delay. Don’t let that delay kill your hopes and dreams. Here, just go to my website, runningleancoaching com, click on, work with me. Fill out the application. You and I’ll have a conversation. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool.

And then just a little quick teaser. I guess I’ve got a little something coming in the new year that’s going to start right at the New Year, hopefully, which is going to have to do with running coaching. So just specifically running coaching. So I’m going to talk more about that in the next few weeks, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

If you’re somebody that just wants help with a training program and some guidance and feedback on running so just strictly running coaching, that’s something that I will be talking more about and hopefully offering right at the first of the year for you guys. Okay, so I think this is something that a lot of people have been asking me about, and I’ve been taking that into consideration. So keep an eye out for that.

Um, let’s see. The other thing I wanted to mention really quickly is that over in our Facebook group, so that’s the Running Lean Podcast Community on Facebook, we are in the midst of the running through the holidays challenge, which is basically just running every day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.

So it’s a total of 35 days of running. If you haven’t started that yet, start now. It doesn’t matter. You can start at any time, but just join the Facebook group. So find Running Lean Podcast Community on Facebook, join the group, and then all the instructions on how to do it. It’s not really complicated. It’s basically run outside if you can at least one mile every day. That’s it. That’s all you got to do.

If you’re somebody that walks and you want to walk it, walk it. If you’re somebody that you know prefers to cycle, do that instead. If you’re somebody who is doing a run walk thing, do that. If you can’t do it every day, don’t worry about it. If you want to do it indoors. Fine, do it on a treadmill, but the point of this challenge is to get you outside during this tough part of the year where it’s cold.

I just went for a run this morning, four miles. Usually that’s a pretty easy distance for me, and the route that I took is pretty easy, you know, just around the park up by where I live. But today was very, very cold, 21 degrees, but with the wind chill, it felt like 12. And so I was layered up still. I mean, that wind hitting your face is brutal, so it’s not easy getting outside every day.

I’ve committed to doing this challenge, and I’ve committed to running outside every day, and so far, I’ve been good. I’m on day number eight now, so just finish that up. It was cold, but I didn’t die. You know, it was just, you know, four miles, whatever that took about 40 minutes or something like that, of being outside in the cold, and then I could come back inside and get warm again.

But I got to tell you, it is cold out there, but you know, when you do get outside and get that sun in your eyes and get that wind on your face, it’s very invigorating. You know, we do need the sun on our eyes, especially in the mornings, it helps to reset your circadian rhythms, helps to regulate sleep patterns. Really just helps you to have more consistency with sleep and recovery and things like that.

So if you can get outside, that’s going to help you get through these cold, dark days a little bit easier, alright? So definitely check out the Facebook group. Okay, let’s get on to this topic today. So the truth about comfort food.

So I was thinking about this, Jill and I were talking about this this morning, how, you know, we’re thinking about, like, what are we going to do tonight? Let’s just stay indoors. You know, it’s so cold. It’s going to be so cold tonight. You know, we went out last night to see the Wicked movie, which was amazing, by the way. And, you know, we went out to dinner before the movie, and we’re like, let’s not go anywhere tonight. Let’s just stay home.

And we were thinking about what to eat. And you know, we were both like, oh, we just, we both wanted some comfort food, right? Because that time of the year, you know? And so we’re trying to decide what we want. We never did decide anything. So your guess is as good as mine, as to what we’re gonna do tonight. We’re gonna figure it out, though, but my point is that we started talking about comfort food and how that’s all we want this time of the year, right? Why is that?

Well, it’s because we have evolved to get pleasure from food. You know, we’ve evolved to enjoy food, and it’s become a part of our culture. It’s become a part of our growing up, and certain foods really feel comfortable for us now, one of the things if you do a Google search for comfort food, one of the things you’re going to find is that it’s basically all carbs. So that tends to be what people gravitate towards when they think of comfort food.

What do you think of when you think of comfort food? Think about that, you know, and see if it lines up with this. But if I did a Google search, if you do a Google search on comfort food, you’re gonna find pastas, tons of pastas and casseroles and pizza and chili and macaroni and cheese and what else? There’s just all kinds of stuff like that that people have kind of used as a way of comforting themselves.

Maybe it’s, you know, family recipes. Growing up, your mom cooked certain things. You know, I remember my mom. My mom was a great cook, and she really showed us love with food. And one of the things that was a comfort food was her spaghetti. She made this amazing, like, meat based pasta sauce, and it was so good and, and I love her particular spaghetti that I can, I can think about it, I know exactly what it tastes like, and that’s a very comforting for me.

But, you know, just, just know that most of the time when we think of comfort food, we are thinking of something that brings us a lot of pleasure. And so what are those foods that bring us a lot of pleasure?

Typically, they’re going to be foods that are very carb heavy, because eating a lot of carbs, eating a lot of concentrated carbs, you know, refined carbs, especially like pastas, they spike our blood sugar, they release dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin, like they release those feel good hormones. And so we actually do feel good when we eat those foods. And that is all good and fine.

The problem with that is, if you are trying to, you know, stick to some kind of food plan, and you’re trying to do sort of a lower carb type of approach, gravitating towards comfort food can be a problem because it’s not in alignment with your plan. You know what I mean?

It’s just not going to be in alignment with what you want for yourself. It’s not going to be alignment with your goals. If your goal is to lose weight, eating pasta every day is probably not going to get you there. I’m going to say it’s probably going to go in the other direction. You’re probably going to start gaining weight if you do that every day.

But we have just trained ourselves to use food to feel good, right? This is not necessarily a problem. We’ve used food for decades to soothe ourselves. We use food as an emotional management tool. We use food as a way of comforting ourselves when we’re going through tough times.

So if you’re having some sort of difficult emotion, food can actually be one of those things that helps to soothe you. It helps to dull that difficult emotion so it’s not as intense. So if you’re having a very stressful day, all you want to do is go home and eat some pizza. And it does. It makes you feel better. It does make you feel better.

Okay, the problem is the food that you’re choosing to feel better, to help you to feel better is not necessarily in alignment with your goals. Okay, so using food to comfort ourselves is not really that big of a problem, but there are some, some things we have to consider, the other, another, like kind of negative side effect of doing this is that the foods we choose to comfort ourselves typically carb heavy, refined carbs, very decadent, you know, tend to be the things where we eat them, and then we crave more and more of that stuff.

So when we crave more and more carbs, we tend to eat more and more carbs, and so it sort of has a negative spiral effect that happens when we’re using those particular carb heavy comfort foods to feel better. Okay? Now, one thing that we want to try to do is to avoid using any kind of substance to feel better that has some kind of negative impact on us.

So a lot of people use food to feel better. A lot of people use alcohol to feel better. Let’s use that as an example here, because a lot of people will choose alcohol to feel good. So they’re having a stressful day at work, they come home, they crack open a few beers, have a bottle of wine, whatever you know, a bourbon, and they’re using a drug to feel better.

Well, there are a lot of negative consequences that come from doing that, because you’re not learning how to deal with your emotions. You’re not learning how to deal with stress. You’re basically just masking that by numbing yourself to those emotions. So you can tamp those emotions down.

You can dull them with food or alcohol, but you don’t really you’re not dealing with them, so you’re they’re gonna still be there. You’re just sort of forgetting about them for a little while. Does that make sense? Yeah. So instead of using some kind of external substance, we want to learn how to deal with our emotions internally. We want to learn how to deal with these things ourselves.

And so that means just being uncomfortable, being stressed, being angry, being bored, being, you know, lonely, or whatever you’re feeling, you just feel that. Okay. I mean, nobody really wants to do that. This is the work though. Nobody wants to feel bad. But what if we learned how to just feel bad? This is like a pretty badass skill that you can learn to actually learn how to feel and how to feel these kind of negative emotions, and just how to let them be there and process them, let them process and then, then they’ll kind of go away.

You can also do something that’s a little bit healthier, like go for a run, get outside in the cold and go for a run, and you’re going to feel a lot better. You’re going to get the same sort of dopamine and oxytocin and endorphins and all that stuff going but there’s no negative side effects to that, other than, you know, you got to go out in the cold and you’re going to be cold for a little while, but there’s negative side effects to eating all the carbs, you know, and gaining weight, there’s a negative side effects to drinking alcohol to feel better, because you’re gonna, you know, that can be that can lead to, you know, addiction and things like that.

So we got to just be careful with how we’re using food to feel better, how we’re using anything external to make ourselves feel better. Another big problem we have to look at is the type of foods we’re eating and the fact that a lot of the foods that we’re gravitating towards when we want to comfort ourselves, are these hyper palatable foods.

You know, they’re just creating an unnatural desire in us, an over desire. You want to see what this is all about. Just go Google comfort food and click on images so you can just see pictures of comfort food is going to make you really hungry. You’re going to have this internal desire for junk food all of a sudden, because I just did it.

I literally just did that as I was looking up information for this podcast here. This stuff looks amazing, and I’m like, I want that, I want that I want that, I want that. Okay, so the problem really isn’t like the food itself, like using food to comfort ourselves. The problem is the types of food we’re gravitating towards, like these, highly carb laden foods that elicit this huge, huge spike of blood sugar. They’re so amazing, right? They’re so good, and that’s why they’re so comforting, okay?

But listen, we just have to understand that the truth of the matter is that there are other ways of doing this. There’s like a wrong way to comfort ourselves with food, and there’s a right way to do it and that we can do it the right way. We just have to make some better choices, you know, and really, awareness is the key.

You have to understand what’s happening here. You have to look at food a little more from a higher level, a little bit more with a bigger picture in mind. Instead of just what’s going to feel good right now, think about what’s going to be best for me long term.

Okay, so the wrong way to do this, the wrong way to use food to comfort ourselves, I believe, is going after those hyper palatable foods, the ones that don’t support your long term health and fitness goals, the ones that cause you to have an over desire for food and over desire for carbs, the ones that cause you to overeat in general, and the foods that cause you to do this emotional eating, where you’re just eating to feel better you’re not really dealing with your emotions.

So instead of, you know, using food to solve this emotional crisis you’re having, whatever, learn how to process your emotions. Okay, so stay away from the emotional eating. If possible, stay away from the hyper palatable foods. If possible, the right way to do comfort food. Again, I’m not opposed to using food to comfort ourselves, but you have to make better choices around food. It’s okay that we get pleasure from eating food.

I think there are some amazing benefits to using food as pleasure. You know, when we think about things like birthdays. You know, you’re gonna want a piece of birthday cake, and that’s gonna bring you a lot of pleasure. And there’s more to it than just the food that you’re eating. It’s the connection with other people. It’s the celebration of a milestone.

You know, there’s other things going on, rather than just, I’m eating tons of sugar right now, although that’s part of it too. Okay, so it’s okay to get pleasure from eating food, but choose foods that are on your plan. I gotta tell you, one of my go to comfort foods these days is a nice rib eye steak, like I love rib eye steak is like my favorite steak.

And I will grill up a nice steak, and I have to tell you, it is, it is just, it’s like, one of my favorite things to do, and I can eat that as my dinner. Like, that’s all I’ll eat. Is that one steak, and it is so comforting for me, and I look forward to it, and it’s so delicious. Another one that I really love is chili like, and right now is the time of the year where I’m like, I just want to eat some chili, you know, but a nice bowl of chili with cheese and sour cream and, you know, some hot sauce on there. So, so good.

So there are ways that we can use food to feel better that are comforting to us, that don’t have to be completely off the plan. Another thing I love is getting Indian food carry out. And instead of eating the rice that they serve, I just have my own cauliflower rice in the freezer, and I’ll just use that with it. Oh my gosh, it’s so good. I have no regrets eating something like that. And it’s really rich and delicious and tons of flavor and again, very comforting, okay?

And these foods that I’m mentioning here, at least for me, they don’t have negative consequences, they support my long term health and fitness goals, and they still feel really good to eat them. It still feels really comforting for me to eat them.

So some ideas I have for you here is, like, think about the things that you love and maybe, like, look for some low carb like versions, like some some substitutions for some of these things. You know, you can do, like a pizza crust. If you like pizza, and that’s one thing that you love is like a low carb or a comfort food. You can do a low carb pizza crust. There’s lots of options out there. Just Google it.

Lasagna bread. You can actually make some cool, low load, zero carb bread options. So there’s all kinds of things you don’t have to just like, you know, suffer through like, you know, these cold, dark days. You don’t have to be like, Oh, I can’t eat anything good, you know, I’m on this diet or whatever. Like, don’t think of it that way. You know, I always like to say it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.

You know, this is like, no diets always seem very temporary. There’s no finish line here, though. We’re just looking at the long term health and fitness implications of eating a healthy diet every day, or 90% of the time, you know.

So that means that sometimes you can, you can do something a little bit different. You can have the, you know, actual spaghetti, or whatever you want, like whatever feels good to you, but like 90% of the time, you’re going to be sticking to the good, healthy foods, and it’s okay to to eat a little bit of something here and there.

I like doing tacos, like I did tacos last night before we went to the movie, and that was amazing. You know, we go out to dinner with friends, you know. And you can indulge a little bit. But, you know, it’s not something we have to do all the time. It’s not something that we have to do all the time to make ourselves feel better, you know.

And another little tip I have for you guys is to make sure you’re just planning ahead with all this stuff like play. Plan ahead and stay in control. Plan ahead and stay in control. Plan ahead means that you’re making decisions about tomorrow today. If you ever feel like you’re just doing things out of habit, out of you know that’s just what you always do. If you’re just like eating out of control, if you feel like you’re eating out of control, like you’re on autopilot, then start making plans the day before.

So if you do that, then you tend to make better decisions. Plan on eating comfort food. Plan on doing something that feels good for you and is on your plan. Because there’s an answer there. There’s a way that you can do both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. People think, Oh, I’m gonna change the way I eat, and it’s got to be terrible. It’s like, no, it does not. It can still be amazing.

I eat tons of amazing food, and I don’t have regrets about what I’m eating, and I’m not eating a bunch of junk. And I feel good about that, and I want you to too. Okay, so think about that. So we got, we got the holidays coming up, and we’ve got, you know, several months of winter, you know, here in the US anyway, several months of winter left, which means, you know, we’re dealing with a lot of shorter days of cold weather.

You know, a lot gets dark so early, and I know all you want to do is stay in and eat comfort food. So you can do that. Just choose the foods that are comforting, that are still on your plan. You know, whatever that looks like for you. If you want some ideas, look up some recipes for some low carb comfort foods. I bet you’ll find all kinds of stuff. We got to get creative sometimes with this stuff.

Okay, all right, that’s all I got for you today. I hope you all have an amazing day. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.

248. How Do I Know if I’m Overeating?

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If you want to lose weight and you’re finding it difficult - maybe you’ve hit a plateau and can’t seem to get the weight moving again - this episode is for you. Losing weight is never a linear …

Continue Reading about 248. How Do I Know if I’m Overeating? →

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 248 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, How Do I Know If I’m Overeating? So if you want to lose weight and you’re finding it difficult, maybe you’ve hit a plateau and you can’t seem to get the weight moving again, then this episode is especially for you. Losing weight is never a linear process. There’s always going to be ups and downs and even stalls in your weight loss journey, and all of this is perfectly normal, but if you’re really struggling to get the weight moving in the right direction again, you might want to consider whether or not you are eating too much.

So in this episode, I’m going to answer that question, how do I know if I’m overeating, and offer some practical tips to help you stop overeating, if you are and if you’re somebody who’s struggling with losing weight, you’re a runner. You’re training for a 5k or a 10k or a half marathon or a marathon or ultra marathon, or maybe you’re just someone who loves running, and you don’t have any races scheduled or anything like that, perfectly fine. You would probably benefit from some coaching. Overeating, losing weight, running, all of these things can be complicated.

When we start thinking about them, we start breaking them all down, and today, I’m going to be going over a lot about what overeating looks like and how we can overcome that, but some people just need a little bit more help. They need a little bit more hand holding through this process. They need a little bit more guidance, a little more direction, a little more accountability. And if that sounds like you, then you might be somebody who could benefit from coaching. Coaching is just having somebody who’s got your back, who’s there to help you, to guide you through this process, who’s done it all before, who’s made the mistakes, who can help you not make mistakes, and who can help you to get to your weight loss goals faster and easier than you can do on your own. I know this because I struggled for years trying to lose weight and learn how to eat properly. And once I got a coach, it really changed everything for me. It was the game changer for me. It might be the game changer for you, too. And if you want to learn more, you can go to my website, runningleancoach.com, click on work with me. You and I have a conversation. We can talk about coaching. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you, but I want to be there to help you to become that best version of yourself. So if you’re ready to become that most badass version of yourself, then maybe consider coaching. You can’t hurt to have that conversation with me. It’s completely free. It’s runningleancoaching.com and then click on work with me. Cool.

Okay, so today we’re going to be talking about, how do I know if I’m overeating, and a few episodes back, don’t have my notes in front of me, but I talked about, you know, why calorie counting doesn’t work and and we talked pretty extensively about that, and that would be a good one to kind of dovetail into this episode, because in this episode, I really want to talk about what it means to be somebody that overeats. And the reason I want to talk about this is because I have always been a chronic overeater, and I don’t know where or when this started for me. I have a feeling it’s because I grew up in a family of five kids. You know, there was two parents, so there were seven of us at the dinner table every night. And you know, my mom made, my mom was an amazing cook, by the way, she was, she just showed love by cooking and so I grew up eating amazing food, but there was only so much to go around, you know, and you had to fight for your portion.

And then after I got a little bit older, and I started living on my own and stuff, I realized that I didn’t have to fight anybody for food, and I could just eat as much as I want. And I think there was something implanted in me at a very early age that was this, like, scarcity mindset or something around food. It doesn’t really matter. I’m just saying that. I don’t really know where this comes from, and it’s a little bit different for each person. We all get different cues as we’re growing up.

We get different messages implanted in us, from parents, from authority figures, from siblings, whatever. And some of us really struggle with eating too much or chronically overeating. And that was definitely me. I was definitely somebody who had to eat a lot. And to this day, I can still eat a lot, and one of the reasons why trying to control the amount of calories I was eating didn’t work for me is because I felt like when I was counting calories and tracking on my food and app and stuff like that, I felt like I was starving all the time. I was miserable because I was hungry all the time. I wasn’t eating to that uncomfortable fullness that I got accustomed to. And if this sounds like you, if you’re accustomed to eating to a place where you feel a little uncomfortable, you’re like, oh yeah, I’m full. I really can’t eat anymore. That’s probably a sign that you might be eating too much. You just might be overeating.

Okay, so going back to this traditional thinking that in order to lose weight, you have to count your calories, and you have to be in a calorie deficit, I don’t think that is really necessary. I don’t think it’s required to count calories, measure your food, track all your food in an app. I think we can be very intuitive about how much food we’re eating, and that’s a big part of what I want to talk about today is, how do we get in touch with those natural signals that our body tells us when we’re eating the right amount, but not beyond that.

So we don’t want to be in a calorie deficit all the time. We don’t want to be in a calorie surplus all the time. And there are different things that affect us, from a hunger standpoint, especially, and a fullness standpoint. And there’s really two parts to what I’m talking about today. There’s a physical aspect of what I’m going to be calling overeating, and then there’s a physical, I’m sorry, there’s a mental or emotional aspect of overeating. So the physical aspect of overeating a lot of times, the physical overeating is caused by the types of foods that you are consuming and when you are eating the right kinds of food, your body operates much differently than when you’re eating, for example, highly processed, hyper palatable, ultra processed, high sugar laden foods, those kinds of foods mess with your system.

Hyper palatable foods mean foods that have been engineered to be extremely desirable, addictive, even I will go as far as to say that those kinds of foods mess up your hunger signals. They make you feel much more hungry than you actually are, so they increase the production of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and you end up feeling hungry all the time. And even though you’re eating more ultra processed foods, you just can’t seem to get enough, because it’s so amazing. They’re so good, they’re so addictive. And you just, the more you eat of that stuff, the more you crave that stuff, and the more you eat, the more you eat. Bad cycle to be in.

So the ultra processed foods, the hyper palatable foods, will definitely mess up your hunger signals. They’re going to make you more hungry. You’re naturally going to eat more food when you are eating ultra processed, hyper palatable foods. The other hormone that gets affected profoundly by these types of foods is leptin. Leptin is the fullness sensor, the fullness hormone. So when you eat some food, let’s say you eat a bunch of chicken. You can only eat so much chicken and your and leptin is going to go, guess what? You’re done eating, and you stop eating because you’re like, I cannot eat anymore of this chicken as an experiment. Try this sometime. Just sit down to eat some chicken breasts. See if you can eat, like, a pound of chicken breasts. I’m going to tell you right now, it’s going to be very difficult to do, because I’ve tried it and I can’t do it, it’s very hard to do, but if you put three pounds of pasta in front of me, heck yeah, I can eat that and all the bread that goes with it.

So eating ultra processed, hyper palatable foods will not only increase ghrelin production and make you more hungry, it suppresses leptin production so you don’t feel full when you’re eating these foods. So this is a bad combination, right? So these, these two things alone, are enough to make you pause, I hope anyway, and think about the types of foods that you’re eating. How they affect you. So again, we’re not just talking about calories. It isn’t about the number of calories. It’s about the types of foods that you’re eating, which affect you profoundly. So those ultra processed foods, those hyper palatable foods, are a big problem, and they really cause you to overeat.

One of the biggest physical causes of eating too much food, overeating is eating the wrong types of foods. And something I just heard today, which is very fascinating, is that ultra processed foods, these things are not good for you, and I think we all understand that, but each additional serving of ultra processed foods increases early mortality by 18%. 18% more likely to die early with each additional serving of ultra processed foods, this is crazy. The crazier part, though, is that 67% of the foods that kids are eating today are considered Ultra processed foods. 67% of the foods that our kids are eating today are considered Ultra processed foods. This is crazy.

One more quick little stat I’m going to share with you is that 82% of independently funded studies. So when they do Food Studies, these are, like independent researchers doing these studies, 82% of these independently funded studies show that ultra processed foods are harmful to us, while 93% of studies that are funded by the food industry show that ultra processed foods are not harmful for us. This is a big red flag right there. So if you’re, if you’re looking to, you know, the big food companies to help you make a decision about what kinds of foods you’re eating, probably a bad idea. Just going to throw that out there. Much better to just stick with eating real food, food that still looks like food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, stay away from all the packaged, processed, hyper palatable foods, that kind of stuff.

Okay, so going back to the physical aspect of overeating. So another thing to consider is that a lot of us, and I’m including myself in this. A lot of us have trained ourselves, over decades of eating to that uncomfortable state. You know, you eat and then you’re full, but then you eat a little bit more, and then you’re, like, really full, like that, that uncomfortable state. Years of training yourself to do this means that when you sit down and you eat a normal food, a normal amount of food, you have to keep eating until you get to that uncomfortable state, because that’s what you’re used to. That’s what feels good for you.

And there are some chemicals that get produced when we eat like that, and we get to that, you know, have you heard the term like, food coma? Yeah, it’s like, you get into that food coma, where you’re like, oh, I just can’t eat anymore, but it feels kind of good. You know, there’s like, dopamine, and there’s different chemicals, neurotransmitters that are being released in your brain that actually make you feel good when you overeat, like that. And if you’re used to that feeling when you eat, that’s what you’re going for.

It’s kind of like the person that drinks to get drunk, you know, they drink because they want the feeling of getting super buzzed, you know, whereas some people can have a half a glass of wine and they’re fine. So if you’re one of these people that has trained yourself over decades to eat until you feel uncomfortable, then that might be something you’re going to have to undo, because you just learn. It’s a learned behavior. You’ve learned it over decades. You can unlearn that. We’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second.

A comedian that I love, Jim Gaffigan said once, he said, I have a problem with overeating. He said, I don’t stop eating when I’m full. I stop eating when I hate myself, and it’s kind of funny. It’s kind of sad in a way, but it’s said in jest, obviously, but I think it’s, it’s very telling of how we treat ourselves, when we eat food, how we want to get to this place where we feel miserable, but that’s like the goal for a lot of people. And so for me, I always wanted to get to this place where I felt slightly uncomfortable, and then I’m like, uh, okay, yeah, I think I’m done now, you know, so that is something that we need to address. We need to address the overeating issue.

So how do we do this? How do we just stop if I just tell you to stop overeating. Just stop eating too much food. You’re gonna be like, dude, that it’s hard to do right? One little philosophy that I love is this Japanese philosophy called Hara Hachi Bu and I may be mispronouncing that, but what it means is stop eating when you’re 80% full is a very simple concept, and there’s a lot of very healthy Japanese people. They consider this one of the Blue Zones, I guess. I don’t know, but, you know, people in Japan are generally pretty, pretty fit. They don’t have the kind of obesity numbers that we have here in the United States and other Western you know, considered like Western cultures. So if you can start to be more mindful about what you’re eating and how much you’re eating, and stop when you feel about 80% full, this can go a long way to help you to not get into that overeating place.

Now, one thing that’s going to be challenging is that you’re used to eating until you’re uncomfortable. You’re used to eating until you get to that food coma state, or whatever it is for you, and that’s going to be difficult. And this is where we start to get into the mental and emotional side of overeating. So we’ve talked about the physical side. You know, the types of foods you’re eating. You know why you eat too much, why you tend to overeat. There’s pleasure involved with that. There’s also the mental and emotional side of this. So you’ve kind of trained yourself that you want to feel a certain way. You know you want to, you want to get to this mental and emotional state where you feel satiated, you know, where you feel like, probably overly satiated. I’ll say it that way, because just feeling satiated is a good thing. That’s like that 80% so that’s like feeling satiated when you go beyond that, that’s when we start getting into overeating. And remember, this is all of the stuff I’m talking about is just for you to start thinking about. I want you to be just thinking about this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight and you’ve hit some kind of stall, you’ve hit some sort of plateau, the weight loss is not moving for you. You’re doing all the right things, you’re eating all the right foods, you’re exercising, you’re lifting weights, you’re feeling you’re doing all the good things, but it’s just the weight is just not moving for you. Consider whether or not you are overeating, and look at the types of foods you’re eating, look at how much you’re eating, look at, you know, eating to a place where you feel naturally good, and when you feel naturally good, that’s a good time to stop like that’s when we feel satiated. We don’t want to go beyond that, and that could be about 80% or so.

So then we’ve got the mental, emotional side, and that’s where you know we are eating because we’re bored or stressed or angry or nervous, or whatever, fill in the blank, whatever that emotion is that is causing you to go eat mindlessly. So this is a lot of snacking. Snacking is just one of those things that you don’t need to be snacking. We’re snacking because we’re bored, we’re snacking because we’re lonely, we’re snacking because we’re stressed out. I can’t tell you how many people I talk to are like, I don’t really need food, like I’m just I’m not even hungry, but I need that bowl of chips or, you know, M&M’s, or pretzels or something at my desk all day while I’m working, just so I have something to munch on. That is what I would call emotional eating, because you’re eating not because of hunger, not because your body needs fuel, you’re eating because you’re bored or you’re nervous, you know, or you’ve got some anxiety or something like that, whatever that emotion is for you.

Also, we just train ourselves to do this that we have to be eating constantly. So one thing that you want to be mindful of is, what am I eating? Why am I eating this? You know, not just what am I eating, but why am I eating in this moment, you can ask yourself those questions like, what do I really need this right now? Or am I just like, bored or stressed out? Or is this just a habit?

Because those automatic eating behaviors really need to stop. If you want to lose weight, then you need to really start getting in touch with what your body actually needs. What does that nutrition look like for your body? What does my body need in this moment, and stop the mindless, automatic eating behaviors. Once you do that, I guarantee you the weight will start moving again. Most diets do not ever address this, though, but if you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to address the mental and emotional sides of eating.

And we all do this. There’s nothing wrong with you if you do this, if you know, I do some emotional eating sometimes, we all do at times. Now I have learned that. That I don’t snack anymore. I’m not just walking around. I don’t have snack food in my house anymore, you know, I just don’t have anything here that is going to be something that I need to, like, munch on. I do have some. I keep some salami and some cheese in the fridge. And occasionally, while I’m making dinner, if I’m exceptionally hungry in that moment, I’ll slice off a little bit salami, some cheese or something like that, and eat that as sort of like an appetizer while I’m, you know, cooking dinner.

But for the most part, yeah, I don’t, I don’t do snacks, and I’ve just trained myself that I can be uncomfortable and I don’t have to eat because of it. You know, I could just be uncomfortable. Sometimes I get bored, sometimes I get stressed out and I’ll just be bored and I just be stressed out. It’s okay to feel that way.

One thing that’s important though, I want to just talk about how we evolved as human beings over 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of years, and we never counted calories. And you know, we lived beautiful lives. We ate because we needed the nutrition for our body. We ate because, you know, we wanted to survive. We needed to not die. So we needed food to eat in order to not die. It was a survival thing for us as human beings. For hundreds of 1000s of years, and now we eat because we just want to feel good. We eat Ultra processed foods, hyper palatable foods, because it feels good to do so, and then we eat all the time. So why don’t we just sort of start sliding back into our caveman roots, if you will, and start eating because our body needs the nutrition and we don’t want to die.

So the bottom line here today, if you’ve hit some sort of a stall or some sort of a plateau in your weight loss journey, you’re doing all the right things, you’re eating the right foods, but you’re not losing weight like just consider that you might be overeating. You don’t need to count calories, you don’t need to weigh all your food. You don’t need to enter everything into an app. But just start being more mindful about how much you’re eating.

Try that Hara Hachi Bu method of just eating until you’re about 80% full, and see how that feels for you. You want to get to this place where you’re eating more intuitively. You’re naturally eating the right amount of food for you, not too much, not too little, just the right amount you want to eat until you feel about 80% full, satiated. Not until you’re uncomfortable, not until you hate yourself, just until you’re satiated. Okay?

And then look into that emotional eating side of things too. Because I think a lot of people who set out to lose weight, they address the types of foods they’re eating or the calories, but they’re not looking into that emotional side of things. And that’s a very, very important part of all of this. And just a lot of diets out there, a lot of programs do not address this at all. So it’s something you really have to address if you want to lose weight.

And just notice, like, when you’re about to eat something, ask yourself, Why am I choosing this right now? Like, do I really need this, or am I just stressed or bored, or whatever? And remember, as human beings, we’ve managed all of this beautifully. We did really well listening to our bodies and being in tune with our body’s natural hunger and fullness signals. What, when do we need to eat? When should we not be eating?

We did this beautifully for hundreds of 1000s of years. We can do it again. You can do it again. You got this.

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

238. Should You Restrict Certain Foods?

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When it comes to changing your diet in order to lose weight or just be healthier, most people feel like whatever they do is too restrictive. They feel like you should be able to eat anything you …

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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 238, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, should you restrict certain foods when it comes to changing your diet in order to lose weight or maybe just feel healthier? Most people feel like whatever they do is too restrictive. So they feel like you should be able to eat anything you want, as long as you don’t overdo it. And most people also feel that restricting any amount of food is really not sustainable long term.

So what’s the answer here? Should you restrict certain foods or not? That’s the big question I’m going to answer today in this episode of the running lean podcast. But first, if you want to get leaner, if you want to get stronger, if you want to run faster longer, you need to change some things. Doing the same things is not going to get you different results. Nothing changes if nothing changes, I think we all understand this, right? But the real secret here is doing these new things, making these changes and making them doing them consistently.

If you decide you want to get stronger, you can’t just go to the gym once a month. If you want to get faster, you can’t do speed training one time. You need to adopt new behaviors, and you need to do them consistently. And this is where coaching comes into play, because with coaching, it really helps you to stay on track. It helps you to have somebody there that’s kind of guiding you, yes, that’s giving you the information that you need, that’s telling you what to do, that’s guiding you forward, that’s walking you through things step by step, but also to make sure that you’re staying on track. This was my problem.

I could never make much progress because I couldn’t stay on track for very long. But once I got a coach, everything changed for me. I had somebody that was holding me accountable, calling me out when I started slipping back into old behaviors, and somebody that’s really never, ever letting me quit, that was an awesome part of having a coach. So if you’re ready to start doing some things differently, if you’re ready to start doing some different things consistently, and you want to make sure that you never, ever quit, let’s get you there. Just go to my website, runningleancoach.com, click on work with me, and I will show you how to stay on track, how to be consistent, and how to become the most badass version of yourself yet.

Cool. Yeah, let’s do this. Okay. So what are we talking about today? Should you restrict certain foods? So the reason that I want to talk about this today is because this is kind of a big hot topic in the field of nutrition management, weight management, diets, diet culture, whatever. And there are basically two camps out there with two main ideas.

So there’s one camp who says you need to stick to a certain diet. And it’s usually whatever one they adhere to, and a lot of times it has to do with a book that they wrote that they want to sell you, okay? But basically it’s like you need to stick to a certain diet, Mediterranean, keto, vegan, carnivore. It doesn’t really matter what it is. There’s just some diet. This is the way to do it. This is it. This is the healthiest way to go. And you have to stick to this. And then that’s their whole thing. Like you cannot deviate from this diet. You have to do this.

Then there’s the other camp who says you should never restrict any foods. You should be able to eat all the foods that you want. Don’t ever deny yourself the foods that you love. Just make sure you do all these foods in moderation, right? And I’m going to get into both of these approaches.

I’m going to tell you kind of what I think is good and bad about each one, and I’m also, today, I’m also going to share my approach, which is a little bit different, but this is the approach that I live my life by, and the one that I recommend to all of my coaching clients as well. But while you’re listening to this episode, I want you to be thinking about yourself and thinking about your own life, and think about how these different approaches that I’m going to be talking about, how do they sit with you? How do you feel about them? How do they make you feel and then think about which of these approaches might be something that you could do long term.

Okay, again, when we talk about making changes like this, it can’t be something you do temporarily. Be something you do every now and then. It has to be something that you can commit to for life. So what can you commit to for life? So just be thinking about those things like, what, what are these different approaches mean to you? How do they make you feel? How do they sit with you? And which feels like it’s sustainable for you? Okay? So just be thinking about that.

Okay. So, first approach I want to talk about is that you have to stick to this certain diet no matter what. And so that’s like the people who are like, all carnivore, you know, like, all you have to do is just eat meat and eggs, and that’s it. Just don’t eat anything else. Or vegan, like, you just have to never eat any animal products. You just stick with plant based stuff. And that’s the way to go, or vegetarian, or the Mediterranean diet, or the south peach diet, or the, I don’t know, the all cabbage diet, whatever it is.

What I like about these approaches is that a lot of times there is some good data, some good studies that they’ve done, some science based studies that support some of the data here. Now what’s interesting is that a lot of the science based studies will contradict each other.

So people will say, Oh, you know, all these people lost a ton of weight and got much healthier and are at lower risk of all these diseases when they went to a totally plant based diet, so no animal products whatsoever. Then there’ll be all these other studies that say, oh, all these other people, they lost weight, they feel better, they’re much healthier. All their markers have improved. They’re at lower risk of all these illnesses, and they went to the all meat diet. That’s like, which of these is right, you know, are they both right? Are they both wrong? I don’t know, but, but a lot of times we can look at data and science and say that, you know, for the most part, for most people anyway, that some of these approaches have some good data behind them.

So I like that. One thing I really like about adhering to some sort of a diet is that you have very clear guidelines to follow. You know, it makes it very simple for you, because you don’t have to make all these decisions yourself. You can just say, like, look at a list online, or something that says, here’s the foods you can eat and here’s the foods you need to avoid. You know, if you want to do paleo, just stay away from sugar and grains and dairy or whatever it is, you know, and you’d be like, Okay, that’s easy to follow, you know, if you do go online, another thing I like about adhering to a diet is that there are, there are tons of information about each of these diets available online.

So you can get into groups where you can chat with other people about this stuff. You can look up all kinds of different articles, listen to podcasts. So there’s tons of information out there about all these different diets, and there’s lots of success stories about all these diets. A lot of people do really well when they eat, you know, this diet or that one? And you know what? Some people just like being told what to do, and they like not having to make decisions. And they just want somebody to tell them, just do this, and that’ll work for you, and they feel good, and that works for them. Okay? So that’s kind of what I like about the sticking to a certain diet approach.

Okay, what I don’t like is that these diets are all pretty restrictive, or at least most of them are pretty restrictive. For example, we look at, you know, vegan, and I was vegan for 10 years, so I’m not slamming veganism, I’m just saying that it’s kind of extreme, because you’re avoiding all animal products, including things like honey. So no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no honey, you know, and that can be tough for some people because it is very restrictive, and some people don’t like this. Some people just don’t want to live their life that way. Some people like it. They like the restrictive quality, and they do really well with that. But some people do not like that restrictive quality.

Another reason why I don’t like completely restricting certain foods is that it can lead to, in some people, it can lead to disordered eating. And this is one thing you’ll see out there when you start looking up different diets and their effectiveness and stuff like that, you’ll see that this one topic keeps coming up over and over again, and it’s that any type of restricted eating can lead to eating disorders or disordered eating. And I just have to say that that is not true for everyone.

Okay, so I don’t want you to think that if you are following some kind of diet, like paleo or something like that, that you’re doing some sort of disordered eating. You’re not but some people that are more susceptible to that kind of thing, or have had eating disorders in the past, or things like that, you got to be careful with how you’re restricting food. So that’s just something that I don’t really like the restrictive nature of. Some of these approaches, especially when they’re like, you can never eat sugar again in your life.

You know, is that really? Is that really, you know, is that really going to happen? Are you really going to adhere to that? Like, I don’t know, also, each one of these diets, like I was saying, there’s studies that’ll show, like, oh, this, this will help cure cancer, and this one, you know, I don’t know, I’m making that up, but they give you all these claims, right? But not one of these diets works for everyone, right? They’re all different, like, not everybody responds the same way to eating certain foods, right? So you just have to accept this as part of the deal here. And so if there’s a certain diet that you’re, you know, following, and it’s not working for you, try a different one. Maybe that’ll work better for you.

But all these food influencers out there, or people that are selling their books or whatever it is, they’re claiming that their diet, this one way of doing things, is superior to all the other ways of doing things. And of course, the other person that’s on the other end of that is saying the exact same thing. So who’s right? Like, I don’t know, different people respond differently to different diets. We just have to accept that this is part of it. Okay?

So these, these diet approaches, you know, there are some things I like about it. You know, they’re pretty clear, pretty simple to follow a lot of times. There’s some good science behind it, a lot of information out there, but at the same time, they can be very restrictive, and a lot of people do not respond well to that. Okay.

The second approach is this approach that a lot of dietitians out there, almost every dietician, especially if they are A and D certified dietitians. So that means that they’ve been certified through the American the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. So A and D, they recommend this approach, which is, you should never restrict any foods, right? All foods in moderation. That is their mantra. All foods in moderation. And you have to understand that dietitians, they are funded by the big food industry, even brands like PepsiCo and Mars, right Pepsi and then Mars, who makes all the candy bars and stuff like that their advice is biased, in my opinion. You know, just because they have, they are, they’re funded by big food industry, and they have a certain agenda that they’re taught to pass on. And one of them is this, all foods in moderation.

And I think this approach does have its benefits, like for most people, they do consider this approach sustainable, right? Because it’s not restrictive at all, like you can eat anything you want, just be, you know, moderate your food intake. You know, be mindful about what you’re eating. People who don’t restrict foods, they’re less likely to develop like disordered eating, right?

And again, this is not to say that everyone who restricts Foods has some sort of eating disorder, right, but for some people that are more prone to it, you know, just allowing whatever foods. You know it’s fine. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing here. You can just eat whatever you like. Doesn’t matter. You’re not following any guidelines at all. You just get to eat whatever you want.

What I don’t like about this approach is that, again, it doesn’t work for everyone for a lot of reasons, like all foods in moderation. Let’s talk about that for a minute. This idea is great in theory, but for a lot of people, and I’m one of these people, certain foods I have a really hard time moderating, especially when we start talking about hyper palatable foods.

So these are foods that are designed to make you feel really good. They taste amazing. They light up your pleasure centers like crazy, and they make you crave more of those foods. They’re very addictive in nature. They’re very hard to moderate. So hyper palatable foods, and usually these are foods that are loaded with sugar, that are a lot of times Ultra processed foods. These foods hijack your hunger signals. They make you more hungry for more of those types of foods. They make you crave more of those types of foods, very, very difficult to moderate, hyper palatable foods. So to say all foods in moderation, it’s a great theory, but it doesn’t work for a lot of people, and for some people, they eat these foods, and it leads to binging behavior, which is also a disordered type of eating, right?

So the idea behind all foods in moderation is good, the execution of it is typically pretty, pretty poor, because they’re not teaching people how to moderate their food intake. They’re not teaching people how to change their thinking. Most of us have very well developed thought patterns, thought feeling, action patterns around food. And in order to moderate our food intake, you have to learn how to change these patterns. And no one is teaching you how to do this. They’re just saying moderation. Just moderate your food. Eat in moderation. Eat whatever you want, but eat it in moderation.

So I’ve got a big problem with that part of it. And if moderating food was that simple, we wouldn’t have this obesity epidemic in this country. So I think all that advice of like all foods in moderation doesn’t work for everybody, and I think it is one of those things where it’s a little bit irresponsible because we’re not helping people deal with the thoughts and feelings they have around food, or how to deal with their own own emotions and things like that.

You know, another thing that I don’t really like about this approach is that there are some foods that affect people profoundly, you know, like sugar, for example. For some people, sugar can really dramatically affect people and put them into this place where they’re pre diabetic or diabetic, you know, high blood sugar can be a real problem. And I think saying, like, oh, even though you’re diabetic, you can still eat a bunch of sugar. I don’t think that’s responsible either.

Okay, so I have a few problems with this approach. Okay, so I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about my approach. So we’ve talked about restricting foods, you know, forever, like, here’s the diet you’re going to stick to be a vegan, or whatever it is, forever, or just eat whatever you want. Here’s my approach. I think this is something that we can all sort of relate to, which is, you need to figure out what works best for you. You know, I’ve talked about this before, right? I do suggest at the beginning of the process here, especially if you’re somebody who is trying to change your relationship with food, you’re trying to lose weight, I do suggest that we practice some food restriction for a period of time, let’s say 30 days or so, to get your body off of the sugar and the and the highly processed foods.

We got to give your body some time, your body and your brain, some time to detox and to get out of this addictive tendencies, you know, around food, you got to get you starting to get used to eating real food, not just food that hijacks your hunger signals that makes you super hungry all the time. We need to get your body burning fat, so there’s a period, yeah, of a little bit of restriction at the beginning. So we kind of lower the carbohydrate intake. You know, with this may be 30 or 60 days, depending on where you are with things or what your goals are.

But what’s different here is that this restriction is temporary, like, we’re trying to reset your body back to normal, and then we can reintroduce some of these foods later, we can even, like, you know, I also suggest taking a break from alcohol too, because it’s it’s also very addictive and has a tendency to keep you from burning fat and makes it hard to lose weight if you’re trying to lose weight. So maybe we take a break from alcohol as well, but after some period of time, we can even reintroduce alcohol back into the mix, right? If that’s something that you want for yourself, right?

So where, where I’m different though, from these other approaches is that I want you to learn how to be more mindful about the foods that you eat. So it’s not about total restriction forever, and it’s not about, you know, all foods in moderation either, it’s, you know, it’s not about eating whatever you want whenever you want, either, okay, but it’s about learning how to manage your mind around food.

So for most of us, we’ve, like, taught ourselves all these lessons around food for the last 30, 40, 50 years. Like we can use food as a great emotional management tool, you know, if I’m stressed, if I’m tired, if I’m bored, we use food and it works for us, you know. Or we use food as a reward, like I did something good this week. I had a really hard day at work. I turn in that presentation, or had a really long run, and I’m going to reward myself with a bunch of junk food. Or, you know, I can’t have fun unless I’m eating X, Y and Z, like, I’m going to go out with my friends, and I have to order the burger with the glazed donuts, because that’s the thing they have at this restaurant, the glazed donuts, or the buns for the burger, whatever it is, right?

I just heard about a burger here locally that has glazed donuts as buns. So hilarious. But we have these well conceived and well established lessons that we’ve taught ourselves around food. We use it as an emotional management tools reward or, you know, we have to eat junk food in order to have fun.

But we need to take a different approach. We want to be mindful about what we’re eating. And being mindful about what we’re eating is something where it sounds, you know, it sounds easy. It’s not easy, right? Especially if you’re eating highly palatable foods that are loaded with sugar, like these foods make you crave more of those foods. It really requires a shift in your thinking.

So this is where we have to really dig into the mindset, and we have to change our thinking. And this is something that neither one of these other approaches are really talking about. You know, if you want to, if you want to moderate your food intake, especially the hyper palatable foods, you got to learn how to deal with your emotions if you want to stop the, like, emotional eating. You know, if you want to stop eating as a reward, you got to learn other ways of rewarding yourself that don’t involve eating a bunch of junk food, right?

So what I’m talking about here is a more sensible approach. We need to learn how to take back control of our eating. We never want to feel like we’re on autopilot, like we’re out of control. We want to be intentional about and mindful about the foods that we eat, foods they affect us profoundly. You know, they can fuel our athletic endeavors. Food can provide sustenance and all the nutrition that we need, but food can be harmful to us. Can’t forget that not all foods are awesome, you know? And there’s issues out there, especially when we’re talking about these highly palatable foods, hyper palatable foods, highly processed foods.

The problem with these foods is that it’s all about the marketing. They’re just trying to sell more of this food. So they market this stuff to make it seem like it’s amazing. A lot of these foods are void of actual nutrients. So they’re actually not good for you. They’re bad for you. They’re loaded with artificial ingredients, artificial flavorings, artificial sweeteners. A lot of these foods have been proven to cause long term health issues. They’re designed to make you crave more and more of the foods, so that you become addicted to them, so that you buy more because the food companies don’t care about your health. They don’t care if you’re healthy and happy and feeling good. They don’t care if you’re overweight. They just want to make more money. They want to sell you more food.

High profits drive cheap ingredients, poor quality, addiction and repeat customers, not health. We are the sickest society to ever live in the history of the world, right here, right now, in 2024 and all the stuff we’re doing is clearly not working. I recently came across this fascinating study in the journal Lancet, and it says that the number one killer of human beings on Earth right now is no longer heart disease or cancer, but the foods that we are eating mainly because the foods that we’re eating are causing all of these other killer diseases, you know.

So what we eat, it really does matter, but we have to find a balance, like you have to do what feels right for you. You don’t have to listen to anyone else. You need to kind of trust your own instincts. And what I’m trying to tell you to do here is get off the highly palatable foods, eat mostly whole foods, real food, food that still looks like food, food that our ancestors would recognize as food. And then you got to learn how to manage your mind.

You have to adopt a mindset that is intentional and mindful about the foods that you eat. And yes, you do have to do this for life. This is not a short term thing. This requires a shift in your identity, to someone who eats healthy like 90% of the time, and someone who can indulge a little bit here and there, but this is the approach that I take.

This is what I see as the most sustainable. This is the approach that I work on with all of my clients. I want to get them into this place where they eat real food most of the time. We can occasionally have that little indulgence here there, eat the pizza, eat the ice cream, fine, whatever. But then we’re back on track again. But that is what’s sustainable. What’s not sustainable is the all or nothing approach.

You know, all foods all the time and are super restrictive all the time. So what I do, like 90% of the time I’m eating whole foods. I’m eating meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, dairy, nuts, seeds, that’s it. There’s no sugar, there’s no junk food, there’s no fried food, like, 90% of the time I’m eating super clean food. 10% of the time, 10% by the way, works out to, like, maybe a meal per week, or something like that. I might eat some pizza or some ice cream or some bread, but I probably don’t do all those things at once, you know, like, I try to pick one thing that I’ll do.

You know, if I go out, going to go, you know, play some trivia or something, one night, I might have some pizza. And that’s the one time I do that for the week. And I really limit the amount of grains that I eat, the amount of sugar that I eat, I really do. And then occasionally, I will do a 30 day stint or so where I take a reset, where I might avoid all sugar, all grains for 30 days. I just won’t do any of that stuff. I won’t eat any pizza, no ice cream, nothing like that. And this is if I’m feeling like I’m gaining some fat weight, or feeling a little puffy, or just not feeling as good as I know that I can feel, then I’ll just take a reset.

So I’ve developed a way of eating, for me, that works beautifully. It’s not all or nothing. It’s not super restrictive, but it’s not eat all the foods all the time, either. And you know what? It changes sometimes, and this is important too, like sometimes I do that stint where I’ll cut out all dairy, or cut out all sugar, or all grains or whatever. And I think one of the big mistakes that most people make when they set out to change their diet, their lifestyle, they want to lose weight, whatever it is that they think that they have to do the same thing forever. You know, all I committed to, you know, being a vegan, so I got to do this forever.

You got to figure out what works for you, and then you have to allow yourself to change things up if it stops working for you, or if you want to work differently. You know that’s what sustainability really looks like. Find something that works for you, stick with it pretty much. And then if you need to change something, change something. You got to do what works for you, right? Don’t hold on to some methodology forever, no matter what. I did this when I was plant based, I was plant based for like, 10 years, and I was doing great for a while, but then I really started feeling like crap. I was gaining a lot of weight, and I kind of felt stuck because I wouldn’t change anything, because I was like, this is who I am. This is what I do. I’m this vegan guy, you know, and you know what? That’s dumb, like, I know that now that I could change at any time, but I wasn’t willing to let go of this ideology around the foods I was eating, because it had become such a part of my identity. I had to let go of that if I wanted to feel better and get healthier and lose weight and all that other stuff, right?

So what sustainability looks like is finding something that feels good for you, that you feel in integrity with. And you know what? Some people like sticking to that plant based diet, or to the, you know, all meat diet or or doing all foods in moderation, whatever. And if that works for you, beautiful, do that. That feels good for you, and that is a long term solution for you. Do that. The real answer here is that there isn’t an answer that is the same for everybody. You got to sort of figure this out.

That’s why I do coaching, and I don’t write a book and say, here’s how you’re gonna you know, here’s the foods you’re gonna eat, because it doesn’t work that way. We all have different ways of approaching this stuff, and it’s fine. It’s completely fine that we do. The important thing is, is that what you’re doing feels good for you. It’s healthy for you, it works for you, and it is sustainable for you.

Cool, okay, you guys got this, I know you do. 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.

212. 3 Things You Should Stop Doing if You Want To Lose Weight

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When it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there that it can feel incredibly overwhelming. While I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet …

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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 212 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight.

So when it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there, it can feel incredibly overwhelming. And while I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet here in one podcast episode, I do want to go over a few things that you might want to stop doing right now because sometimes the best way to start is to stop.

So in this episode, I’ve got three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good. But first I know I talk a lot about you know proper nutrition, losing weight, improving your running and building strength here on the podcast.

And if you’re new, and all this feels a little overwhelming, that’s okay, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training that will get you started on the right track. It’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.

You’ll learn the basics of proper nutrition, how to build strength, how to build endurance, how to build the right mindset, all geared towards you the runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training to get started on your weight loss journey today.

Alright, before I get into the topic today, I just wanted to drop a little disclaimer here that I have been really sick, I got sick a few days ago, you know, woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach bug and was up all night. And I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say that it was a pretty awful night.

And I haven’t gotten sick like that in like 15 years, I can’t remember the last time I was sick like that. And must have picked up some kind of stomach bug at the gym or at the grocery store or something. I don’t know where I got it, but the gym is my primary suspect. So I’m still recovering.

And I actually had to take a day off of work. And I haven’t done that in like 10 or 15 years. So I know it was not good. It was a really, really horrible sickness for me to actually have to take a day off work. And so it’s taken me a couple of days to kind of come back.

So if my voice sounds a little scratchy today, or I don’t sound like myself, it’s because I’m still kind of recovering. But I’m giving myself a little bit of time I actually drove to the gym yesterday sat in the parking lot and was like no, I don’t think this is a good idea for me to go in there today. I still don’t feel 100% civilian, I’m a little lightheaded. Still a little bit nauseous. And I was just like, no, I’m gonna give it another day or two.

So just a little side note here, if you find yourself up, you know, sick this winter, which a lot of people are sick right now I’ve talked to a lot of people who are getting over something or in the middle of something, give yourself time to rest and recover, drink plenty of fluids, take your vitamins, make sure you’re eating right, or just not eating. Fasting is a great way to help, you know, alleviate the symptoms of viruses and it will speed up the recovery process too.

So just know that there are things that you can do out there that will help you to get through this a lot faster. But also don’t try to do too much too soon. I know that as runners, you want to get back out there and run right away or you want to hit the gym and get back into your weightlifting.

And I’m feeling that way right now. Right now I’m like, man, I really wish I was at the gym lifting weights right now or I was out there running today. It was a run day for me and I was gonna run this morning and I just I’m not up to it, you know, and I’m listening to my body.

And I’m just like, okay, this isn’t about embracing the suck. This is about doing what I need to do to take care of myself and to make sure that I don’t go back too fast too soon, you know. So I’ll make tomorrow run day or I’ll hit the gym tomorrow, as long as I’m feeling up to it and then I’ll ease my way back into working out again. I’m not going to go run 10 miles on Saturday or anything like that.

So for me, it’s about giving my body that time it needs the rest, proper hydration, proper nutrition, and just waiting until I really feel like I’m ready to go again. Okay, so that’s just a little sidebar today. That’s where I’m at right now I’m just gonna get through this. So I appreciate your understanding if I don’t sound like myself.

Okay, now all that’s out of the way, let’s get into this topic today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight. And one of the reasons I’m bringing this up today is because I hear about so much information out there that is so confusing to all of us. It’s even confusing to me.

I’m constantly following people on social media, and reading articles on the internet, that completely contradict one another. And I’ve made a decision a long time ago that I wasn’t going to, you know, hang my hat on any one principle out there that I was going to figure out what works best for me.

And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But my goal here on the podcast is always to help you make good decisions, and help to simplify things, and clear up some of this information so that you can make good decisions for yourself so that you can start getting results right away.

Okay, so just understand that there are things that people recommend that you do constantly do this, do that. And what I’m going to ask you to do today is to stop doing a few things. And if you just stop doing these three things here, today, I guarantee you, you’re going to start seeing some results.

You know, I can’t guarantee that, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to start seeing some good results if you just stop doing these three big things here. Okay, so I’m not going to waste a bunch of time. You know, previewing this, I’m just gonna get right into it.

Number one, the one thing I want you to stop doing right now is to stop counting calories. Okay, just stop doing that. I talk about this a lot. Listen, if counting calories worked, it would have worked by now, our ancient ancestors did not do this, they did not track their food, they did not have my fitness pal, and they did not have Weight Watchers points.

They did not need to count how many macros they were eating, okay, they ate real food they ate when they were hungry, and they did not eat when they weren’t. And they did just fine. You know, we evolved as a species over two and a half million years to where we are today. And only in the last 40-50 years have we put this huge focus on counting calories.

And all that has done is made us bigger, we’re bigger than we have ever been in the history of the species. So to me, this is not a very sustainable solution. And it’s also not sustainable. From a weight loss standpoint, if you are somebody who reduces calories, in order to lose weight, just keep in mind that there’s going to come a point in time when your metabolism will slow down to match the amount of energy that’s coming in.

And this starts to become a problem because now you have to reduce your calories even more to get the weight loss to keep happening. Okay, so reducing calories and counting calories to lose weight. You know, it does work in the short term, but it does not work in the long term.

It also causes muscle loss. And if you’re somebody who is an active athlete, if you’re a runner, or you’re trying to get stronger or build muscle, which you should be, then causing muscle loss is not something that you want.

Restricting food and restricting calories is a great way to start to experience muscle loss. And you know, this is going to affect your runs, it’s going to you won’t be fueling, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel for running, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel to get stronger in the gym.

If you’re working out and lifting weights regularly, which you should be, you won’t be able to build muscle. So instead of you know counting calories and restricting calories, I want you to do something else instead. And what I want you to do instead is to eat to satiety, stop when you’re full.

You don’t need to count your calories. You don’t need to count your macros, and I talked about this. I’ve talked about this several times on the podcast but I talked a lot about tracking your food in the last episode, so definitely check that one out.

But if you focus on eating real food, so this is like food that still looks like, you know that food that you find around the perimeter of the grocery aisle, you know, so we got fruits, vegetables, we got meat and dairy and cheese. You know, we have nuts and seeds. You know, we have eggs, and fish, you know, all that stuff.

If you just focus on eating that stuff, again, this is the food that our ancestors have been eating forever. You’re going to feel more satiated when you eat, you won’t be eating the food that messes up your hunger signals. This is very important here. Okay.

So foods like sugar and refined grains, which most processed food is full of sugar and refined grains, that kind of food will really mess up your hunger signals, you will feel more hungry after you eat that food, you will have more cravings for those type of foods.

So for more sugar and more refined grains, you won’t be able to really get in touch with what hunger feels like for you. Because your hunger signals, pardon me, will be so messed up from the sugar and the refined grains, those things tend to reduce the amount of leptin that your body produces leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full.

And it increases the amount of ghrelin that you produce. And the ghrelin is the hunger hormone that makes you feel hungry. And so with those two things being you know, out of whack, you’re going to feel hungry all the time, and you’re going to be craving more of those foods.

And when you’re craving more of those foods, you just can’t get enough to eat, you tend to overeat, you tend to eat the wrong kinds of foods, and you tend to be kind of miserable all the time. And so trying to fuel properly and eat less or whatever, it’s really, it’s really hard to do not okay. So you have to start to get in touch with what real hunger feels like for you.

One of the biggest lessons I teach my clients and people that I work one one-on-one with, is to start to understand the difference between these cravings and hunger. The false hunger is what I call it. And real hunger. real hunger is when you could sit down and eat a meal. Like you can sit down and eat, you know, a whole bunch of chicken and broccoli and some carrots or whatever.

And that’s real hunger, if you could eat, you know, an actual meal. That means that, hey, I’m actually really hungry right now. And I should probably eat something. But if you’re like, oh, I’m feeling hungry, and you go browsing through the cabinets, and you’re like, oh, I’ll just eat six nuts, you know, and I’ll eat a few potato chips. Like, that’s not real hunger.

You know what that is? That is you being bored. That is you looking for something to make you feel good right now. You know, that’s you being stressed out. That’s what I call emotional eating.

Emotional Eating is when you’re just trying to dampen some kind of emotion that you’re feeling. Usually, it’s some kind of strong emotion. And that could be boredom. It could be stress, it could be anxiety. And you just want to feel better, and you want to dampen that emotion.

So you’re using food as a coping mechanism there. Okay? Well, we don’t really need to do that. If you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’re not going to mess up your hunger signals, you’re going to feel full when you eat, and you’re going to stay full for much longer.

You’re not going to be having those cravings for the chips and the nuts and the crackers and the junk food, you know. So you have to learn what hunger feels like for you. This takes time. It takes time and it takes practice.

And so you have to kind of devote the time and the effort into this process. But it is totally worth it. You know, once you start to eat and understand what your body feels like when it’s full and it’s had enough food. This is a game-changer. Right? So we don’t need to be people who overeat.

We have never been that way in the past because we’re eating food that kept us full and we didn’t have this food that was hijacking or hunger signals. Okay. So again, this is about you know, eating like our ancestors ate, we don’t need to count calories. So stop doing that. Eat real food food that, you know, fills you up and feels good when you eat it. Okay. So stop counting calories.

Number two, is to stop eating all the time. There is so much gym bro advice out there that says you should be eating six times a day. You have to eat 6, 7, 8 times a day to keep your metabolism going. So eat like you don’t want your meals and just keep eating constantly throughout the day.

And I’m gonna go back to what our ancient ancestors did. They did not eat six times a day. First of all, they did not have snacks or anything, that was invented like in the 1950’s. And it wasn’t a thing before that.

Snacks were a food category that was created by the food companies. It was a marketing thing like, hey, let’s, let’s try to sell more food to people. Let’s create a snack category. Oh, okay, that sounds great Bill, you know, let’s do that.

And so Bill and his buddies got together and they decided, I don’t know if his name was Bill could have been Steve or something like that. But they just got together and they were like, Hey, let’s create this whole new category of food that we can sell people on, it’ll be great.

And it worked. It works like crazy. People love snack foods, right? But this is not our DNA. This is not how we were programmed to eat. In fact, if you look at a lot of the systems in our body, I was reading an article recently about the pancreas and about how our pancreas is designed to only operate a couple of times a day, you know, it secretes, you know, whatever it does hormones to help us process food and whatever. And it’s only it’s the system is only designed to work a couple of times a day, it’s not designed to work six times a day.

So we’re sort of overloading our systems when we eat that often. You know, our liver plays a role in this too, and other, you know, organs and stuff. So what our ancestors did was they feasted, and they fasted. That was their MO, they would eat when the food was available, and then they didn’t eat and they didn’t eat for long periods of time.

And there’s lots of evidence that shows that there’s lots of tribes today that do the same thing where they eat, they, they hunt, they gather the eat when food is plentiful, and then there’s times when they don’t eat, but they’re not sitting there snacking all day long. All right.

And they did a study pretty recently that showed that participants in this study, who ate six small meals a day, versus people who ate three larger meals. And there was no metabolic advantage over those who ate six meals a day over the three meals a day.

So the people who ate six small meals, their metabolism didn’t speed up, because they were eating more often, that was exactly the same as the people who are eating three times a day. What was different from the two groups was that the people in the six meal a day group reported higher levels of hunger, and an increased desire to eat.

So they were more hungry, they had an increased desire to eat, so they were eating more and eating more often, and they had higher levels of hunger. And so this is not something that we want, I think we want the opposite of that. Okay.

You also have to understand there’s an insulin response, every time you eat food, you will produce some blood sugar, unless you’re eating pure fat, which really doesn’t raise your blood sugar at all. But anything else really is going to increase your blood sugar a little bit.

And insulin will be produced in order to bring that blood sugar back down to normal levels, which is the way your body is supposed to operate. And this is completely fine to eat this way or for your system to function this way when you’re eating three times a day, or six times a day or whatever.

But one thing that we have to understand is that when insulin is present in the system, that puts your body into that fat-storing mode. So your fat is locked up in your fat cells. While insulin is present. We want to get the insulin down in order to burn the fat. And if you’re eating six times a day, then your body never has a chance to recover that insulin level.

You’re always going to have insulin present, which means that you are never burning fat throughout the day. And so if you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight, and eating six times a day is not working for you. This is why right here. You are constantly in fat-storing mode, you’re never in fat-burning mode, right?

So we’ve got to make sure that we eat a diet that keeps our blood sugar at pretty normal levels, we want our blood sugar to rise a little bit, and then come back down again. We want insulin to rise a little bit and come back down again, a couple of times a day that is normal. That’s the way we should be functioning.

We are naturally good fat burners as human beings, but we’ve gotten away from that. And we want to get back to that state that natural state that we are so good at our body burns fat as fuel. This is in our DNA.

You know, we store body fat to be used as fuel later, but the way we eat the types of foods we eat the the amount of times a day we eat can really make that fat or that storage mode just constant and we’re just constantly adding you know, we’re Just constantly adding to those fat stores and never able to burn the fat. Okay?

So I’m a big fan of intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting just means you’re not eating constantly. It’s not some weird fringe thing. Again, this is kind of the way we’ve evolved as human beings. The intermittent fasting is just not eating constantly, it’s prolonging the amount of time between your meals, think of it as meal spacing.

The way that I do it, and I suggest a lot of people do this, and they have good results from doing this is just skip breakfast. This is one of the easiest ways that you can start intermittent fasting. So you know the time from dinner the day before. And let’s say lunch, the next day might be 16 hours or so.

Most of the time, we fast for about 12 hours. So all I’m saying is like, hey, just extend that like four more hours. It’s easy to do, right? So what I’m suggesting you do, instead of eating all the time is to not eat all the time, just stop doing that.

Right, don’t eat all the time, space out your meals, and allow your body more time for fat burning to kick in. And for fat burning, to ramp up. Skipping breakfast is the easiest way to do it. It is not the most important meal of the day.

That again, is a marketing message that was created by like Kellogg’s, they wanted to sell more cereal. So they’re like, you gotta have breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Just stop doing that.

Okay, and exercising in that fasted state is a great way to improve fat burning as well. And people report more energy when they exercise in the fasted state. They report increases in their endurance when they’re running, and they report increases in the amount of weight they can lift when they’re lifting weights.

So there’s some positive adaptations that happen when you train your body to exercise in that fasted state. So number two, stop eating all the time, and practice some intermittent fasting, I think you’ll see some some good results from that.

And then the third thing I would say to stop doing is just stop following the conventional advice out there. The conventional advice is like the food pyramid, the MyPlate, or whatever they’re calling it these days. A lot of this stuff is you know, they’re telling you to eat 60 to 70% of your calories from carbohydrates.

This is a problem because people are generally following this advice. The food guidelines, so food guidelines were created in like 1980. And if you look at since 1980, if you look at the rates of obesity here in the United States, they go up dramatically starting in 1980.

So I’m, you know, maybe doing some correlation, not causation. But it’s pretty clear that things have not been working for us as a country since 1980. And we may want to just rethink this whole food guidelines thing, okay. So if you’re somebody that’s like, well, I’m just going to follow the food guidelines. I’m going to suggest maybe not doing that.

Okay, so stop following the conventional advice out there. The thing with the food guidelines is that they show up everywhere they show up in hospitals, the hospitals have to follow the food guidelines. It dictates what we feed our children in schools.

There’s more obesity among children now than there ever has been in the history of human beings. Even these food guidelines show up in the military. I get people in the military constantly reaching out to me, Hey, I need some help losing weight because what they’re feeding me here is not working.

The food guidelines dictate what they serve in nursing homes. Most dietitians, and health coaches follow the food guidelines, and that’s the advice they’re giving you. Even a lot of running coaches that I know and talk to and running certification programs for coaches out there, preach these food guidelines and I just have to say that you know it this might work for some people, but for the vast majority of us, it does not work.

A recent study shows that 88 to 93% of the US population is considered metabolically unhealthy. So that is not a good stat right there. So that means like 7-12% of us are considered metabolically healthy. That is a very small number. That is actually frightening. That is a very frightening number and it’s going up because it was 88% and now they’re showing new numbers that show it could be up to like 93% that is frightening. We need to fix that.

Okay, so whatever we’re doing, following this conventional advice is not working. So we got to do something else instead. So what should you do? This is where this gets a little bit meta, because I can’t really tell you what to do, because you got to figure out what works best for you.

We’re all different. We’re all a little bit different when it comes to how our metabolisms work, how our lifestyle is structured, the foods that we enjoy our culture, you know, our weight loss goals, or our running goals, or weightlifting goals, do we want to build muscles? Do we want to maintain? Do we want to lose fat? Do we want to improve our running endurance? Do we want to get faster, there are so many different factors to consider there.

But I just want you to ditch that conventional advice out there. And it’s okay if what you do doesn’t look like what anybody else is doing. Because that’s that’s the way I am to things what I’m eating doesn’t fall into any category of any specific diet.

You know, it might be close to something like a paleo diet or primal eating, I don’t know what you want to call it, I just tried to eat something that is mostly whole foods related, you know, like I eat real food, like 90 plus percent of the time, I pretty much don’t eat packaged food.

I don’t eat processed foods, these things are mostly junk, they’re there to sell you more food. If I do eat foods that come in a package, it’s like some cheese or some you know, heavy cream, or like some frozen broccoli. It’s like hey, prepping all this food and cleaning up the kitchen.

So I buy like frozen broccoli, frozen cauliflower, stuff like that. But I want to encourage you to take control of your own health. And you don’t have to follow the norm out there. Because the norm is not working, the norm is 88-93% of the population who is metabolically unhealthy, that is the norm. So don’t be the norm.

So stop doing the norm, and start doing what feels good for you. And you start you have to start to get in touch with your own body and how your body feels when you eat certain foods. Does eating this food make me feel good? Does this make me feel bad? Does this make me feel extra hungry? Am I getting cranky?

A couple of hours after eating this food, I’m getting anxious to have more cravings for junk food. If I eat this particular thing, you need to be an experiment of one and figure out what feels good for you and what helps to keep you satiated, because the diet doesn’t mess up your hunger signals.

That keeps you feeling full throughout the day and provides proper nutrition is going to be the one that helps you to become the healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss will happen as a side effect of all the good things that you’re doing for yourself here. Okay?

The real goal here is always to become that healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss happens as a result of that, you know, we’re not just trying to lose weight. And that’s one thing I always make sure I tell people that I’m working with, I’m like, listen, our goal here is to get you as healthy as possible to get you operating at peak performance, you know.

And when we do that, when we start aiming in that direction, and moving towards that path, the weight loss, it will happen as a nice side effect of all of them. Okay, so number one, stop counting calories. It doesn’t really work. It certainly doesn’t work long term, stop eating all the time.

Eating six times a day does not speed up your metabolism. In fact, it makes you overeat and tends to make you feel more hungry and keeps that fat locked up in fat cells and then stop following the conventional advice because it’s not working. Don’t be normal. Be abnormal, okay?

And as always, if you want help with any of this or all of this, I’m here for you. Just go to runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, hit me up and you and I can have a conversation about coaching. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.