Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
I’ve taught a lot of nutrition and mindset concepts over the last two and a half years of doing this podcast, and some of these topics are worth a revisit. Either because I’ve discovered new …
Continue Reading about 123. Back to Basics: Eating Real Food →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 123 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Back to Basics Eating Real Food. I’ve talked a lot about nutrition and mindset over the last two and a half years of doing this podcast. And some of these topics are worth a revisit, either because I’ve discovered new information about the topic and I want to share that with you.
Or because it’s just so important, it’s worth another look. So over the next several weeks, I’m going to be sprinkling in some of these back to basics episodes to share new and improved info, and then revisit some of the key concepts for weight loss and sports nutrition for runners. And today’s topic, eating real food falls into both categories.
So I’ve learned a lot since first talking about eating real food. And it’s also one of the most important things you can do to improve your overall health and fitness. So it absolutely deserves another look. And eating real food is a simple concept. But it looks a little different for everyone.
If you’re a runner, and you’re interested in making a change in your eating habits so that you can lose weight while also supporting your running goals, then I want to invite you to join the Running Lean coaching project. This is my immersive coaching program that includes group coaching one-on-one coaching with me, you get all the knowledge, support and accountability that you need to learn what to do to learn how to do it, and to help you stay on track.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, you will fill out a short application, schedule a Zoom call with me. And we’ll talk about your goals and see if coaching is a good fit for you. I would love to help you learn how to eat real food, lose the weight without all the frustration and learn how to build good habits that last for life.
If you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and sustainable results, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started down. All right back to basics, eating real food.
So I’m just gonna jump in and talk about why I teach this concept. And the really the first reason why I talk about eating real food is that there’s something really wrong with the standard American diet. Alright. So for millions of years as humans, we did really well, you know, eating real food was just something we did naturally.
But then pretty recently, we screwed it all up, all right? The standard American diet is based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it was created back in the late 70s. It was like 1977, I believe, I think they published it in like 1980. But they basically told us that we should all be eating a very high carbohydrate diet, like upwards of 65% of your calories should be coming from carbohydrates. And low fat, like fat is bad. They just decided this right?
And immediately upon implementing these guidelines, the health of this country began to decline. So why did they make this change? Well, there was this guy named Ancel Keys. And he was a researcher and a doctor. And back in the 50s, he proposed this idea. It was called The Diet Heart Hypothesis. And it was an idea that eating fat would cause people to die of heart attacks. So he did all these studies. And he did. He published a study called The Seven Countries Study.
And the interesting thing about this study is actually there were 22 countries involved, but he just cherry picked the seven that kind of fit with his idea of what he wanted the results to be and he only published the seven countries that that kind of supported his claims. Anyway, none of the stuff that he proposed in this study have actually been proven.
In fact, a lot of it has been disproven over the years. A lot of the stuff that he proposed in this Diet Heart Hypothesis has been disproven yet. We changed our dietary guidelines back in 1977/1980 and we’ve changed everything, this has affected everything. It still does today, the guidelines that they produce and they haven’t changed much over the last 50 years or whatever.
But these guidelines have a profound effect on all areas of our lives. So all school lunch programs are being generated based on those guidelines. Right now, 19% of school aged kids are obese. This is a problem. All military rations, all mess hall food and military is dictated by the guidelines. 7% of our troops are obese.
All the special nutrition programs for women, infants and children like WIC are being determined by the guidelines. 15% of toddlers and WIC are obese toddlers, all hospital food is dictated by the guidelines. Food Programs for the elderly are being dictated by the guidelines. Life expectancy in the elderly is going down.
There’s more Alzheimer’s disease, more diabetes, more cancer. These things are rampant among the elderly. And they’re all diet and lifestyle caused diseases. Agricultural production is dictated by those guidelines. It’s simplified, it’s incentivizing farmers to produce more and more cheap carbohydrates like soybeans, wheat and corn.
Those are like the main things that we produce here in this country. And then of course, the food industry uses the guidelines too, so they produce more garbage food that’s loaded with things like vegetable oil, right? And high fructose corn syrup and all this junk. So all these things I just mentioned, they all are using those guidelines to produce, you know, the foods that we eat, and the guidelines are just wrong. They don’t work.
Since implementing the guidelines in ‘80, 88% of Americans are today considered metabolically unhealthy meaning they’re overweight, they’re obese, their insulin resistant they have diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and on and on, only 12% of us are considered healthy. This is wrong. This does not work.
“For the first time in history, we had a government telling us what to eat.” This is a quote from Ben Bikman. He’s a PhD, a Utah professor and a leading metabolic scientist and he says, “For the first time, we have a government telling us what to eat, encouraging us to eat far more refined carbohydrates, and much less healthy fats and proteins and our weight, and our health has only suffered for it.”
The results on the nation’s health and weight have been dire since the government first set dietary guidelines in 1977. The food industry has completely shifted the types of foods they produce to our overall detriment. According to the CDC, the weight of the average adult American today is nearly 30 pounds more than that of the average adult American in 1977.
This is a problem. What are we doing? There’s all sorts of issues and diseases related to eating this particular diet too, by the way. Obesity rates have more than tripled in the US because we’re following the guidelines. We have a diabetes epidemic. 14 different types of cancer have been related to diet, including breast cancer, colorectal cancer.
Alzheimer’s disease is diet related. They call it type three diabetes, PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, is diet related. All of these issues are mostly caused by you know too much insulin in the bud. And that’s called hyperinsulinemia. And how do you get too much insulin in the blood? Eat a lot of carbohydrates and eat a lot of sugar. Right?
So the diet is wrong. It’s making us sicker, it’s making us fatter, and we need to get off of that. Do anything else do anything else, then what the dietary guidelines are telling you to do? Okay. And I don’t think I’ve talked about this, but they did a study a while back, and this was called The Pure Study.
And they did this over a 10 year period. And they did it from 2003 to 2013. And they followed over 135,000 people in 18 different countries. And they basically, you know, divided these people up based on their macronutrient intake and basically there were people who are eating high carbohydrate and lower fat, and then low carbohydrate, high fat.
And the conclusion basically is this: I’ll just read the conclusion to you. High carbohydrate intake was associated with a higher risk of total mortality body death. Whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke.
Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings. So that’s the conclusion from this study. The interesting part about that, I mean, the whole thing is fascinating to me, because basically they just disprove that Diet Heart Hypothesis right there, they’re saying fat has nothing to do with it.
In fact, the people with the high fat diet had lower risk of dying from all these diseases. And the saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke, meaning that the people who ate more saturated fat had less stroke than the other people. So that was really fascinating, right? That kind of blows all that out of the water, right?
Okay, so how does this affect you, as a runner? Aren’t runners just immune to all this stuff? Can’t runners just eat whatever we want? No, we cannot. Runners are humans too, in case you haven’t noticed, and lots of runners experience a lot of these health issues, weight gain, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type two diabetes, right?
There’s this phenomenon called TOFI. And this is someone who is thin on the outside, fat on the inside. And this is especially true with runners who look pretty lean on the outside. But on the inside, they might have a lot of visceral fat. And they might have developed something like type two diabetes, and no amount of running more is going to fix this right.
This is a diet related problem, a diet related disease. And one of the famous examples of this is Professor Tim Noakes, who wrote the book, The Lore of Running, and this guy is a total badass, right? He’s a researcher, he’s run over 70 marathons, but he ended up getting Type Two Diabetes. As a runner, he looked fine on the outside, but his doctor was like, you need to switch your diet.
It opened his eyes, he switched to a low carbohydrate diet. And now he coaches world class athletes on this low carb approach and this fat-adapted approach to running. And in his book, The Law of Running, he has a chapter on nutrition in there, which he advocates for the traditional high carbohydrate approach that, you know, you’ve probably heard of that most runners have heard of, right.
But he famously like, tore that chapter out of the book, because he just could no longer support that he’s like, I was wrong. I wrote this stuff about eating all the carbs. And it’s completely wrong. It’s bad for you, it’s killing us, we’ve got to stop doing it. Okay. So this whole low carb approach to running to sports nutrition, it’s no longer some weird fringe thing.
This is becoming more and more common. So the NASM, the National Association of Sports Nutrition, this is where I got my sports nutrition license. They used to teach the traditional high carb approach to nutrition for endurance activities running and such.
Several years ago, they made a big decision in that they couldn’t do that anymore, they’re going to move away from that high carb approach, and move to a more of a low carb fat adapted approach to sports nutrition. This is a bold move for this organization. But they could not in good conscience keep telling people, especially athletes to eat this crap diet, this diet that is literally killing us.
So they said we can’t do it, no more. And the funny thing is, is that this decision was not well received by everybody. Like there’s people who, you know, we’re following that traditional all carb approach to sports nutrition, and they wanted to get trained in this and wanted to get licensed in this approach. And they were not happy about this, but they just decided that this was what they had to do.
They couldn’t, you know, in good conscience, they couldn’t keep telling people to eat this garbage food anymore. Okay. And this is probably the biggest reason why I signed up with NASN is because they promote the low carb approach to sports nutrition, they understand the importance of being fat-adapted and how it’s not just good for for us as humans and to become the healthiest people that we can be.
But also, it’s great for endurance sports. And then there’s doctors like Stephen Finney and Jeff Bullock, who wrote the book on low carb sports nutrition called The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. And then there’s all these companies out there right now that are making nutrition products for low carb running like Mirror Energy, s fuels, you have Elemental Labs, and there are more companies coming on board all the time, they’re springing up all over the place.
Why? Because there’s a need. There are a lot of athletes like me and you who want to perform at our best without eating all the garbage. All those like nutrition food like substances like Clif Bars, I used to eat a lot of Clif bars back in the day when I was like doing the high carbohydrate thing. And I would eat a couple Clif Bars every day and I was like, well, this is healthy, you know?
And look at the ingredients, Clif Bars, these things are not good for you. In fact, I was on their website and I was like what is in a Clif Bar. And so I’m going to read you some of these ingredients: organic rolled oats, so that’s all carbs, organic brown rice syrup, sugar, soy rice crisps, which are made from soy protein isolate rice flour and barley, barley malt extract, which is a form of sugar. Organic roasted soybeans, organic tapioca syrup, that’s sugar, organic cane syrup, that’s sugar. Unsweetened chocolate, chicory fiber, soy flour, high oleic, sunflower oil, natural flavor, sea salt, cinnamon, there’s not a whole lot of nutrition in here.
Okay, this is a bunch of carbs. This one bar is 43 grams of carbohydrates, including 17 grams of sugar with 16 grams of added sugars. And only 10 grams of protein. So this is just a candy bar essentially, is what it is okay. And on their website, it says there’s like a FAQ section like frequently asked questions that says are Clif Bars good for you? And here’s their answer, “Clif Bar is the ultimate energy bar trusted for nearly 30 years by athletes and sports nutrition experts to get you started and help you keep going during long outings on the bike trail or slopes.” Notice how they don’t actually answer that question.
Because their lawyers probably were like, you can’t say that they’re not good for you. Right? So they kind of skirt that answer. But anyway, I’m just trying to tell you that instead of eating this, like processed garbage food, we need to be eating real food. And I’m gonna get into that in just a second. Okay, I’m gonna tell you what that means.
But we’ve evolved as humans to like, eat real food. We’ve thrived on eating real food for millions of years. And I just want to say that we’ve changed things recently, pretty recently, right? I mean, we’ve evolved as hunter gatherers, our diet was mostly animal based for hundreds of thousands of years. You know, we’re also omnivores, we can eat a lot of different foods. It doesn’t mean we should.
But for the most part, we were eating a diet of meat, tubers, fruit, not like the fruit we have today, honey, but there wasn’t broccoli. Broccoli didn’t come around until the 1700s. There wasn’t tomatoes, tomatoes didn’t come around until 700 ad. Even bread is a relatively recent thing, like refining grains that happened about 1000 years BC, so maybe about 10,000 years ago, right?
But in the grand scheme of things, two and a half million years of human evolution 10,000 years is not that much time. And prior to that, you know, we just didn’t need that stuff. You know, and if you look at the mummies of ancient Egyptians, they, you know, we can study the actual bodies, you know, because they’re, they’ve been preserved for the last few thousand years.
They have rotten teeth and distended bellies, and they’ve determined that this is from eating refined grains, a lot of refined grains, rotten teeth, distended bellies. Prior to that though, Paleolithic man, they found all these, you know, they didn’t find the bodies, but they found the skeletons and the skulls and they all have like perfect teeth.
So no refined grains, no tooth decay, you start eating this stuff, and it starts to be bad for you, right? The bottom line is that the refined grains are a problem, right? Alright, so what I mean when I say like, let’s eat real food. Let’s go back to eating real food. Real food is food that still looks like and it’s food that our ancestors would recognize.
So a Clif Bar does not fit into this description. Okay. So eating real food means you’re sticking with unrefined unprocessed food. Food that still looks like it’s supposed to look, if it’s a piece of salmon, it’s a piece of salmon. If it’s a sweet potato, it’s a sweet potato. If it’s broccoli, it’s broccoli. Not food that’s been ground up into powders or liquids, not food that’s been extracted from whole foods, but the actual food, okay.
I think it’s a good idea to stay away from most foods that come in packages. Most packaged food is basically processed food, okay, and I’m not anti packaged food, but most of it is highly processed. You just have to be careful, read the labels, right? Most processed food, most packaged food contains like the three worst things you can eat. I call this the Vile Triumvirate. Right?
It’s sugar, refined grains, and vegetable oil. If you stay away from packaged food, you’re not going to get any of that stuff. I promise you. Stick with whole foods, meat, fish, eggs, nuts, vegetables, fruit, natural fats, like olive oil, butter, some dairy like whole milk, Greek yogurt. Stay away from highly refined, highly processed food made with a million unpronounceable and unnatural ingredients. All right.
And then when I start talking about this, people get this idea in their head, and they’re like, isn’t this just like keto or low carb, high fat or paleo? And the short answer is like, no, it’s really none of those things. It’s similar. Paleo is pretty close. But even that isn’t quite right. Because here’s the thing. This is going to look different for each individual. And last week’s episode, I talked about this in depth, that’s episode 122.
Like we’re all different, we all have different goals. We all have different lifestyles, different food preferences, genetics, our metabolism, our culture, all that has to play a part in what you choose, as the diet that works best for you. Right? There’s not a one size fits all plan that’s going to work for everybody.
There just isn’t, there’s no such thing. And to be clear on this, this isn’t about eliminating a food group. This isn’t about eliminating carbohydrates, right? Or never eating a carb again, or anything like that. This is about shifting your body back to the way it’s supposed to function. The way that your body has been functioning beautifully, as humans for thousands or millions of years, right?
I think it’s ignorant to think that introducing all this processed food in the last like 60 to 100 years or so is not going to negatively impact our health it is it has, it’s a problem. So the best thing and simplest thing you can do for yourself right now is just eat real food, food that still looks like food, food our ancestors would recognize.
So what if you do this what happens when you start eating real food? Well, your body starts to function the way it’s supposed to. You know, the way that humans have been functioning for millions of years, hormones become balanced and regulated. You’re no longer hungry all the time. You’re getting all the nutrients your body actually needs. Things like insulin drop, like you stopped storing so much energy as fat, right?
You keep eating sugar, a lot of that sugar energy can’t be used right away. So your body stores it as fat. If you’re not eating that stuff, you’re not storing all this fat, you’re actually burning fat, your fat begins to be released from your fat cells and you begin to burn fat and you begin to lose weight.
You start sleeping better, you wake up feeling more rested. You have this steady supply of energy from burning fat, so you don’t have these afternoon crashes where you need that Starbucks Triple Shot, Caramel Macchiato with extra whip, just to get you through your workday. Right. So when you start eating real food, your body starts to function the way it’s supposed to.
So what about running? How does this affect your running? Or why would runners choose to eat this way? Well, one of the biggest benefits of eating this way is that you become really efficient at burning fat. And fat is an amazing fuel source for long distance running. And when you become fat adapted, this is a pretty amazing experience. Like if you’re into running and I know you are, then I suggest you try this. I can’t explain it.
Like you have to go and you know, try this for yourself and see how you feel. Now there are some misconceptions about what it means to be fat-adapted. So I want to explain this a little bit more. Being fat-adapted means you are training your body to burn fat very efficiently. And we all have a virtually unlimited supply of energy on our bodies at all times in the form of stored body fat.
Okay, now, I want to go back to our prehistoric man for a second because in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I came across this fascinating study in this article. And I just want to talk about what it means to be fat-adapted and how we have evolved to kind of, this is like our normal state of being okay.
So we are born runners, we are really good at running long distances. We’ve adapted to become these amazing long distance runners, right? Modern humans, and their immediate ancestors, like Homo erectus, have several adaptations that make humans instead of being some ferocious, furry fleet creature, the animals, the animal world’s best, we are the world’s best distance runners. Right?
Early humans, scavengers, ended up becoming persistence hunters. So we develop these long springy tendons in our legs and our feet that function like large elastics like rubber bands, right? They store energy, and then with each running stride, release it and this actually reduces the amount of energy it takes to take another step. There’s also other adaptations to keep our bodies stable as we run.
So we counterbalance each step with an arm swing, we have these large butts and these large buttock muscles that hold our bodies upright. And we have this elastic ligament in our neck to help keep our head steady. All of this stuff is designed to help us run very efficiently, right? Even the human waste, which is thinner and more flexible than that of our primate relatives, allows us to twist our upper bodies as we run to counterbalance the slightly off center. It forces exerted as we stride with each leg.
Okay, so once humans start running, it only takes a little bit more energy for us to run faster. Other animals, on the other hand, expend a ton of energy as they speed up, particularly when they switch from a trot to a gallop, which most animals cannot maintain over long distances, right?
Those adaptations make humans and our ancestors better runners, it’s our ability to run in the heat that may have made the real difference in our ability to procure game. So humans have several adaptations that help us dump the amount of heat that we generate when we’re running. These adaptations include being hairless, virtually, some of us more than others, our ability to sweat, the fact that we breathe through our mouths when we run, it allows us to take bigger breaths, and helps us to dump heat.
And we can run in conditions that no other animal can run in. So other animals, they get to get rid of excess heat, they pant, they have to pant and they can’t pant when they’re running, so they have to stop and rest and pant to dump the heat. That means to run a prey animal into the ground, ancient humans, they just kept that animal running. So altogether, these adaptations allowed us to relentlessly pursue game in the hottest part of the day, when most animals are resting right.
So we practice persistence hunting. We would chase a game animal during the heat of the day, make it run faster than it can maintain, we would track it, flush it if it tried to rest and repeat the process, just keeping the thing going until the animal would literally overheat and collapse. And so the animal would develop hyperthermia, which is like heatstroke in humans after about 6 or 10 miles of this.
And so, by the end of all this, even humans with their crude, early weapons could have overcome stronger and more dangerous prey. And adding credence to this theory is the fact that some Aboriginal humans still practice persistent hunting today. And it remains an effective hunting technique. It requires very minimal technology, has a high success rate, and yields a lot of nutrient dense fuel in the form of meat.
Okay, so all that is just to say that running long distances is part of our DNA. And running long distances means that we needed a steady fuel source available at all times, especially when we were not eating we would be fasting we would be, you know, running an animal for days until we, you know, caught up with it and whatever. That’s where our stored body fat comes into play.
We’re naturally born fat burners. And when you get off the sugar, and you get off the refined grains and the packaged garbage food, you can turn your body back into a long distance running badass fat burning machine. And right now, most people, like the average runner probably has around 100,000 calories of stored energy in the form of stored body fat, enough to run for days and days without stopping.
On the contrary though, your body can only hold about 2000 calories of carbohydrate in the form of glucose. So if this was our preferred fuel source, we would need a lot, lot more of that to be able to track animals for days, right. So the idea of getting fat-adapted should be really stated like getting back to being fat-adapted like we were meant to be.
The other misconception about being fat-adapted is that you make this switch from burning all carbs, you know in sugar, and then burning all fat. And this is never the case, you’re always burning both your body produces glucose, all the glucose that your body needs your body actually creates at your liver creates glucose for your brain and for your muscles to function properly.
And as long as your activity level is kept low enough, like during most long distance running, you will continue to produce enough glucose glucose for your working muscles while also utilizing fat as your main source of fuel. But as your exercise intensity gets higher and higher as you start burning more glucose and less fat, and you will probably need to add some sort of fuel in the form of carbohydrate to maintain the more intense effort, okay, and you got to practice this in your training.
And then you can dial in exactly how much carbohydrate you need, at what level of intensity. So you can keep that inner fire burning hot, right? So you can keep delivering a steady supply of fat and glucose to working muscles and kick some serious butt out there. Okay, so when you get good at this when you practice both, using both fuel sources efficiently, this is known as being metabolically flexible or metabolic flexibility.
So you train your body to use both types of fuel very effectively. Again, this isn’t about eliminating carbohydrates. This is about switching your body to going back to being an efficient fat burner, okay? The only thing with this is that if you go too high in the carbs, you kind of shut down the fat burning process. So you have to be careful with how you do this. And you have to experiment with it.
Okay, and everybody’s a little bit different. And so you have to practice with this in your training. This is not something you’re going to just do on race day, for sure. Okay. So eating real food, I want to recap real quick, what I just talked about, the standard American diet is wrong, needs to be changed.
Runners are not immune to the effects of this terrible diet. So just stop doing it. Running does not mean you can eat whatever you want, okay. Humans have evolved by eating real food. We’ve become amazing creatures, the most advanced creatures in the universe as far as we know. And we did it by eating real food. So we need to get back to that.
Humans have also evolved to be badass runners and badass fat-burning machines. We need to get back to that too. And the easiest way to get back to that to get back to our badass purpose is to eat real food. Eat food that still looks like food, food our ancestors would recognize. Cool, this is fun. I love talking about this. I could talk about this all day. Hope you guys have an awesome day. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Today I have a bit of a different episode for you. I’m going to be asking you a lot of questions about your diet, your weight, your current health, your running performance, and a few other …
Continue Reading about 121. Is It Time to Change Your Diet? →
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 121 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, is it time to change your diet? So today I have a bit of a different episode for you. I’m going to be asking you some questions about your diet, your weight, your current health, your running performance, and a few other things.
The reason for this is that I want you to consider how your current diet, whatever you’re doing today, might be affecting you in a bunch of different areas of your life. Most people don’t pay attention to their diet unless they find themselves suddenly overweight, or their doctor wants to put them on some kind of medication.
And of course, I’m joking because it’s never suddenly, “I’m overweight!” It’s a slow, gradual process, right? We just don’t notice it until it’s like I can’t put my pants on anymore. The point is, this episode is all about you and your diet. So I want you to be thinking about your diet and your current state of health and fitness as I talk about diet here today.
And by the end of this episode, I want you to have a clear understanding of the effects of food, the effects of your diet on your health, and your sports performance. And I want to help you decide whether or not it’s time to finally change your diet. And listen, I know what it’s like to try to change your diet.
I know how hard it can be. I’ve done this many, many times in the past, it was never easy. For me, it was always some sort of a struggle. And the only time it really wasn’t the only time it finally worked permanently, was when I reached out and I got some help.
I got a coach to help me figure out what I should do. What was going to work for me, not based on some fad diet. But putting together a custom plan that I felt good about that I sort of created myself and man it finally worked.
I lost 40 pounds after making this change, running became easier. I’ve never felt so good. I’ve never had so much energy. And now this is what I do. I help runners like you lose the weight that you’ve been struggling with. For years, maybe I help runners to get leaner and stronger and to become running bad asses.
So if you’re a runner, and you’d like to get that weight problem solved for good, I want to invite you to apply for coaching with me. You’ll fill out a short application, schedule a Zoom call with me, we’ll jump on a call, we’ll talk about your goals. And we’ll see how coaching can help you get there.
I would love to help you lose weight, and do it without all the stupid struggling and frustration. I know what that’s like, there’s a better way. If you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and sustainable results, then you’re ready for coaching, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.
Alright, so today, I want to talk about diet and whether or not it’s time for you to make a change to your diet. So specifically, we’re going to be talking about whether or not your current diet is working for you. And listen, people get pretty emotional when talking about diet, especially when anyone suggests that maybe you should change your diet, I’m not going to make that decision for you.
I want you to just think about this for yourself and make that decision for yourself. Because your diet is either, it’s either working for you or it’s not. And sometimes we don’t understand the effects that our diet is actually having on our health, on our athletic performance on our general mood, you know, and we naturally put up a lot of resistance when anyone suggest that we change our diet, or that maybe somebody suggests that diet could be the cause of a lot of the health issues that you’re experiencing.
And I totally get this. And there’s a lot of information out there. A lot of people that are pushing an agenda on you and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to push an agenda on you. I want to help you to make a good decision and this is what I do with my coaching.
This is why the way that I do coaching is a little bit different from other coaches, I don’t just tell you what to do, we come up with a solution together, something that you feel good about. Because only you know what kinds of foods you like and don’t like. Only you know what’s going to be sustainable for you.
And when we can put together a plan that you feel good about, that you are in alignment with, this is the game changer here. Okay, and, and this was what was the game changer for me too, when I finally decided to change my diet for good and it started to work and I started to lose the weight and I became fat-adapted, and I understood how certain foods were affecting me.
And I put that together myself, I kind of put that plan together myself, obviously with a lot of guidance with a lot of help from experts and things like that. But I just want you to understand that I just want you to think about whether or not your current diet is working for you. Okay.
Now, before I dive into this, I want to also explain how I’m using the word diet today because I tend to not use this word a lot. Just because people freak out a little bit when they hear diet. I’m not saying diet in the sense of like, you need to go on a diet, or you need to really limit how much food you’re eating.
You know, I mean diet in the sense of a nutrition regimen, a food plan died in the sense of the food that you habitually eat, not like vegetarian or carnivore or vegan or keto or South Beach diet or anything like that. I just mean like, the foods that you eat, because we’re all different. You know, we all eat differently, I can’t really put what I eat, I really can’t put it into a category, like the ones I just mentioned, it’s just different. It’s just what feels good for me and what works for me, which is different from what’s going to work for you.
But people hear the word diet, and they immediately start thinking about cutting calories, deprivation, struggle, suffering, falling off the wagon, it brings up all these negative connotations, right? So today, I just want to use the word diet freely to mean the foods that you eat on a regular basis, right? It’s not good, it’s not bad. I don’t want to be polarizing here. And I’m not talking about the latest fad diet or anything like that, just the foods you typically eat. That’s the way I’m using diet here today. Cool.
And then lastly, I want to help you to understand how profoundly your diet is affecting you, and your running, and your overall health and your weight and whether or not you can lose the weight. And I want to help you decide if changing your diet is right for you or not.
So you might be doing fine. You might be listening to this and like you’re super healthy, you’re at your natural weight, you feel amazing, you have tons of energy, all this stuff, there’s probably not a real big need to change anything.
But I’m guessing that there are a lot of people listening to this right now. And there’s some areas in your life or some areas of your health and fitness that you’d like to improve. And your diet is one of the most powerful drivers of your health, good health or bad health, and it depends on the diet.
So by the end of this episode, I want you to have a clear understanding of how your diet is affecting things like your energy levels, your mood, your sleep quality, running performance, body composition, and really your overall health and happiness.
And then I want you to have what it takes to be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not it’s time for you to change your diet. Cool. Okay, so let’s look at a few of these indicators here.
So again, think about your current state of health and your current diet. When I go through some of these questions like first and foremost, how is your weight? Think about your weight. This is always the number one thing people look at when they consider changing their diet. Am I overweight? Do I need to lose weight?
So one of the ways that people determine whether or not they need to lose weight is they look at something like BMI, body mass index. And they look at this as the one indicator of whether or not they’re overweight. And you see these charts in doctors offices and things like that.
The problem with BMI, I don’t like the BMI to be honest with you because it’s only taking two data points. It’s taking your height and your weight and then making an assessment based on that. BMI is not a very accurate indicator of your state of health and fitness.
And it’s definitely not accurate if you’re pretty fit. So BMI can be very off; it can be very inaccurate, especially if you’re muscular. So for example, my son and I are the same height. We’re both 5’11. But he probably weighs 25-30 pounds more than me. And so if you look at the BMI chart, he’s borderline obese, he’s over, he’s considered overweight on the BMI chart, he’d be borderline obese.
But I have to tell you, he’s nothing but huge. He’s a bodybuilder, you know, he’s muscular. He’s put on a lot of weight in the form of muscle. But the BMI which is telling that he’s overweight, okay. So that’s a good example of where BMI can be wrong.
Right now, I’m in a place where I’m trying to gain weight. So I’m starting to dip into that overweight range of BMI. And I’m not overweight, okay, I’m gaining muscle, I’m doing some pretty intense gym workouts, I’m really focusing on building muscle this year.
So anyway, BMI, not a super good indicator of whether you are overweight or not. Okay, there is a better way to determine your body composition. When we talk about weight, I’m really talking about fat weight, okay, there’s a certain amount of fat we all need to have on our bodies. And fat is not wrong or bad.
Like, people talk about zero body fat, you would die. If you had zero body fat. The minimum body fat requirements to sustain human life for men, I think is 3%. For women is 12%. Women need more body fat to support their, you know, female reproductive systems and things like that.
So we don’t aim, we’re not aiming for a 0% body fat ever, right? Just as to sustain life, women need 12%. So maybe 20-25% body fat is where you want to be. If you’re a female, or maybe you know, 18-16% as a male. It’s different for everybody, really.
But you can use something like the US Navy body fat calculator, you can find this online. So you take some body girth measurements along with height, weight, and age, to determine your body composition. So this is a better indicator of whether or not you want to lose some of the fat weight. Okay.
And the goal when I tell people that, you know, we talked about weight loss, and I asked people like, how much weight do you want to lose? Where do you want your body composition to be? And sometimes there’s just like, I’ve never thought about that before, I just want the scale to go down.
I’m like, well, let’s say we start gaining muscle, you’re losing some of the fat weight, but you’re gaining muscle, the scale is not going to go down, it’s going to kind of stay the same. Are you okay with that?
And so then I’ve got to like, get them to take some other measurements, and we’ve got to do some other type of measuring so that we can see that we are improving our body composition, okay. And they have scales that can do something like this, you know, those smart scales that use an electrical impedance, so they send a little bit of electric current up through your body and it you know, has to do with it tries to determine your muscle weight versus fat weight.
And so it’s trying to make a determination based on how fast the electrical current goes through your body of whether or not your competition is mostly fat, or muscle or whatever. They did a study about five years ago, and consumer reports on these different scales.
And they compare them to a bod pod, so bod pod is an air displacement measuring device, which is very accurate. So you have to go somewhere and you have to sit in this thing that looks like an egg. And they shut you in there. And it’s very, very precise.
Okay, it measures volume, and it can definitely measure, you know, the difference between your fat and muscle weight. But they, they took that as the base baseline measurement, and then they compared these scales, and the scales were off by like, a lot, you know, 20 to 30% difference, this is huge, right?
There’s a huge difference between what is considered to be, you know, accurate. So, I don’t really suggest these scales are very accurate, you know, can they help you to kind of determine if you’re losing some fat weight and gaining some muscle weight, probably, but just know that they’re not very accurate, okay.
Here’s what I want you to do instead, instead of worrying about all these measurements and things like that, some are good, some not so good. Go by how you feel. Use your best judgment. You know your body better than anyone else. Ask yourself some questions.
Do you feel like you’re overweight? Would you feel better if you lost weight? Do you feel pudgy? Or doughy or fluffy or bloated? This was me. I always felt doughy like when I started to feel doughy, like the Pillsbury Doughboy, I was like, I don’t want to feel like that. And if this is how you feel every day, then you can decide for yourself if you want to lose weight or not.
But it’s not up to a number. It’s not up to the government, it’s not up to some standard that you see on a chart somewhere. Just determine this for yourself. How do you feel about yourself? How are your clothes fitting? Are they tight? You know, have you had to go up a size or two?
And a few years back, when I started gaining weight again, my clothes were getting a little snugger. And I refused to buy new clothes. I was like, eventually, I’m just going to lose this weight. But you know, for now, I’m not buying new clothes, there’s no way I was going to go up a size in pants or shirts or anything like that.
So the clothes kept getting tighter. And I kept feeling less confident. I was feeling more self conscious, I would put on the shirts like a button up shirt, and the buttons would be sort of like pulling apart at the around the belly section. This is not a good look. All right. And it was very embarrassing for me.
And so I would like just choose whatever the loosest fitting clothes I had, and not a lot. All the tight fitting clothes, I had just ended up in the back of the drawer or the back of the closet, whatever. And then I remember I had some shorts in the summertime and I had some shorts that used to fit perfectly and I loved the shorts, but I couldn’t even button them anymore.
Could not even get them buttoned. And that was part of my wake up call was like, I’ve got to do something about this because I’m not going to buy new clothes. I’m not going to go up sizes. Alright, just so you know those shorts now I wear them today. And they’re like loose on me. Like I almost could go a size down. I’m not going to do that though.
But listen, I want you to decide for yourself, do you want to feel better about yourself? Do you want to feel better in your body with losing some weight? Maybe some fat weight and gaining some muscle help you to feel better about yourself. Now I always encourage people to work on the way they feel about themselves before they decide to go on a weight loss journey.
Like you have to like, kind of love yourself through this whole process. You can’t just hate yourself and expect to love yourself when you lose the weight. No, it doesn’t work that way. But no one else can decide whether or not you need to lose weight. It’s not up to the scale or to chart or anything else like that.
And it’s not up to other people in your life, either. Because sometimes I work with people who come to me and they’re like, yeah, I really want to lose like 10 pounds. But you know, my husband tells me I look fine, and I don’t need to lose weight, or my mom tells me I shouldn’t lose any more weight.
And I just want to like encourage you to just decide what you want to do. If you want to lose five or 10 pounds, you know, maybe you want to improve your running time. You want to run a faster marathon and losing 10 or 15 pounds is gonna really help you to get there, then absolutely, that should be something that you decide for yourself.
It’s not up to other people, other people just want us to feel good about ourselves, they want us to be happy. And if they see you, you know saying like, oh, I need to lose some weight, they might think you’re unhappy. And it’s not about that. It’s about becoming our best selves. It’s about becoming badass, right?
It’s not about you know, not feeling good about ourselves. Okay, so going back to the question, how’s your weight? How do you feel about yourself? How do you feel about your weight? If you want to lose weight, if you feel like you’re overweight, diet is going to be the number one driver of this for you. We want to change your body composition, then we’re going to change your diet.
Okay. The next indicator of whether or not it might be time to change your diet is your relationship with food. Like if you struggle with food choices, if you struggle with making good choices and staying on track with a pretty healthy diet, then it might be time to give that diet an overhaul. You know if you find it very difficult to avoid junk food, sugar in particular, then it might be time to change your diet.
Listen, sugar jacks you up. It’s more like a drug than a food. There’s no real positive nutritional benefits from eating sugar. There aren’t. There’s a lot of negative consequences though. You know, sugar causes all kinds of metabolic issues like higher blood pressure, inflammation, gain, weight gain, diabetes, fatty liver disease, increased risk for heart attack and stroke.
Too much sugar in the diet is the number one cause of metabolic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, Alzheimer’s and all these things that I just mentioned. And what it really does is it puts your body into this state of hyperinsulinemia with too much insulin in your blood, or insulin resistance, that means your body just can’t regulate insulin properly, and so it just keeps pumping out more and more and more insulin.
Insulin drives fat into fat cells. Insulin drives your body into fat storage mode. So when insulin is high all the time, you’re just storing fat all the time. You can’t burn the fat. And then in researching this podcast today, I found some other negative side effects of too much sugar in the diet.
And some of these things I did not realize first is dental health. Now of course, we all know that eating too much sugar can cause cavities, right? You know, bacteria in your mouth feed on sugar. And they release these acid byproducts which cause tooth decay, right and cavities. Think we all know that one.
But sugar also cause like an increase of kidney disease risk. Having consistently high blood sugar can damage the delicate blood vessels in your kidneys. And that can lead to an increased risk of kidney disease. Too much sugar can cause gout. Gout is an inflammatory condition characterized by pain in the joints, especially in the toes, like big toes.
I had gout some time ago, years and years ago, because I was eating a real crap diet. And I will tell you it is one of the most painful things you can experience. There was almost nothing I’ve ever experienced that was as painful as gout. I couldn’t even couldn’t even walk, couldn’t put shoes on, couldn’t have the sheets touching my feet. I had to sleep with my feet like not touching the sheets. Not good.
But sugar raises the uric acid levels in the blood, which helps make gout worse, it makes it really bad. And then another thing that I did not know is that high sugar in the diet can lead to cognitive decline, impaired memory and increased risk of dementia. Right. So why are we eating sugar?
Listen in moderation. Yes, very, very limited amounts, you know, whatever. Okay, but listen, sugar is not healthy, this is not good for you. There’s only negative consequences to eating sugar, it’s more like a drug than it is a food. It causes harm at certain levels like a drug does, it’s very difficult to quit eating sugar.
And if you struggle with giving up sugar, this is an indicator that something may have to change in your diet. Okay, if you find yourself craving sugar all the time, or just thinking about giving it up kind of sends you into like a panic mode, then it might be time to get off the sugar and change your relationship with food or change your food choices and change your diet. Okay.
Another indicator that it might be time to change your diet is your eating habits in general, like are you using food as an emotional management tool, because if you are, we got to change something here. Okay. This is about changing your thoughts and feelings, but it’s also about changing what you’re eating.
Because if you’re binging on junk food, if you’re using this hyper palatable food, you know, most processed foods most junk food is considered what they call hyper palatable, it’s been engineered to be incredibly delicious, and give you like a dopamine hit and, and make you feel good and releases all these chemicals that make you feel amazing. Again, like a drug, right?
And so if you’re using food as an emotional management tool, maybe it’s time to change your diet. Right? If you’re eating because you’re stressed, you’re bored, you’re anxious, you’re frustrated, you’re overwhelmed, angry, lonely, whatever. These are reasons to consider making a change to your diet.
Okay, you have to be able to handle your emotions and your emotional experiences in this life. Like a mature, evolved adult human being not like a toddler. The toddler reaction to our emotions is when we just want them to go away right away. I don’t want to feel this way. Give me some food to make me feel better. Right?
That’s what we do. And I’m kind of like saying it funnily. But listen, funnily is a word. I don’t even know if that’s a word. I’m saying it in a funny way. But we got to deal with our emotions like mature evolved adults, we have to actually be able to just sit with our emotions and experience these emotions without having to eat over them when we’re eating just to feel better.
This is a problem. These are not good eating habits, okay? And listen, ending emotional eating, this is not an easy thing to do. And I get it. This is a complicated topic. And we actually spent a whole month last month on this topic in the coaching project.
And people got a lot out of it, to be honest with you, we really dug deep into emotional eating and how to stop doing it and how to deal with our emotions instead, it was pretty powerful stuff. But if you regularly find yourself eating, not because you’re hungry, but because like you just want to feel better, maybe it’s time to change your diet, okay?
Another indicator that it might be time to change your diet, are you hungry all the time, because you shouldn’t be. If you’re hungry all the time, there’s something wrong. Humans evolved over, you know, millennia, I would say, lots of millennia, hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, we’ve evolved to eat a couple of times a day, at most, and then sometimes we would go for days without food altogether.
So think about our human ancestors, we were amazing, persistent hunters. That’s why we’re such good runners, because we would, you know, call an animal from the herd, and then run it down. And we could just keep up with this animal, they would, they would die of exhaustion, but we can sweat really well.
We maintain our body temperature. And we’re really good at running we have big butts, which help us to balance when we’re running. And, you know, we are really good at long distance running. Right? That’s why I love endurance events, especially ultra running, where you’re running through the woods for extended periods of time, because this most typically, most directly mimics how we’ve evolved as humans, it’s like built into our DNA, this persistent hunting and this running.
But we would run down animals, this would take days sometimes. And we wouldn’t have food during that time. And during that time, if not having food was a problem, we would you know, crash and burn and die along with the animals. Right. But no, that’s not what we did, we could maintain.
Our brains actually got more focused, we became more cognitively aware of what was going on in our surroundings. And we had plenty of energy to just keep going. And if we had to eat every couple of hours, if this is the way we’ve evolved as humans, this wouldn’t have worked at all right?
This is just not normal, our digestive systems, our pancreas and things like that are designed to work sporadically to work intermittently, not all the time. So if you can’t go for a couple of hours without food, this means that your body is not working the way it’s supposed to. Okay, it means your hunger signals are messed up, your hormones are messed up.
And what causes that is the wrong kind of diet. If you’re eating the kind of diet where you know, you’re hungry all the time, this is a problem. This is not right, you need to change your diet. Speaking of energy, how are your energy levels, because if you’re crashing and burning every afternoon, then this is a problem. This means your diet needs to be changed, right?
You want to have sustainable energy, that’s pretty consistent all day long. We don’t want to be having these spikes of energy, oh my gosh, I feel amazing. And then crashes where you just feel like falling asleep at your desk at three o’clock in the afternoon, right? The wrong kind of diet will cause these spikes in your blood sugar.
And when we have these massive spikes in our blood sugar, when we come down from that, we actually kind of dropped below baseline. So we want to stay near that baseline as closely as possible. But when you spike really high, you crash really low. And that’s where people say, oh, my blood sugar is low, I need to eat some sugar, whatever, you know, I need an energy drink in the afternoon.
So this is a problem. Again, this is not normal. We should have pretty pretty steady energy all day long, right? But a diet high in sugar, high in refined carbohydrates, high in highly processed foods is typically the cause of these energy spikes and crashes. All right. And as a runner, you don’t want this. You want steady energy being delivered to your brain into your muscles like all day, especially for running especially for your athletic performance.
Speaking of which, how is your running? How is your endurance? Do you find yourself hitting the wall during long runs? Are you just getting gassed? Are you running out of energy at some point? Do you have to like wash down a bunch of gels and goos and stuff just to like, get out there and do a 10 mile run or something?
So when we talk about, you know, running out of energy, this is like hitting the wall or bonking when you’re running, right? And if this is you, if you find yourself consistently just running out of energy, then we need to look at your diet, it could be, it could be a big problem, okay?
So, running out of energy hitting the wall is a pretty common thing, especially with the marathon runners, right. And for me, I used to hit the wall between mile like 18 and 20, pretty consistently. And this is where most runners that I talked to tell me that they typically would hit the wall.
This is when you run out of glycogen in your muscles, and you have no alternative energy source. So you’re not fat-adapted, you’re not burning fat efficiently. And you’re you have no more fuel, and you just crash and burn, boom, you’re done. You just have to stop and walk. And then it’s kind of a slog fest, those last five, six miles on a marathon, right?
So you know, for me, one of the big reasons I got into sports nutrition, and especially sports nutrition with this, you know, kind of leaning towards the fat-adaptation side of things is that I wanted to figure out how to become a fat adapted runner, I wanted to figure out how to stop the bonking, how to stop hitting the wall at mile 18 or 20, I wanted to have unlimited, you know, fuel for running.
And when you become a fat-adapted runner, you virtually become bulletproof. You have this endless supply of fuel onboard in the way of your own stored body fat. And just to prove this, I’ve heard other people that have done endurance events without any calories at all. And I wanted to see, you know, can I even do this? Is this even feasible? You know, is this possible?
And then last year, once I got fat-adapted, I ran two marathons. And then the year before I did a 50k, and I did all these events on zero calories, I didn’t eat breakfast beforehand, I didn’t take in any calories during the event. And I had plenty of energy to complete these distances.
So you can absolutely do it once you’re fat adapted, you can absolutely do these long distance events without having a bunch of fuel or any fuel really, except for the fuel that you’re producing, using your own body fat. Now, is this optimal for everybody? Maybe not, I just wanted you to understand that when you become fat-adapted, you no longer need massive amounts of fuel, you can get away with not very much, right?
I actually teach my clients how to use fuel strategically during races to enhance running performance, you can use some types of fuel to keep the fat burning going, but also take advantage of you know, the carbohydrate sources or, you know, other sources of fuel to give your muscles more glycogen, so that you can like, get a little bit faster, maybe have that top gear, okay.
Speaking of speed, how is your running speed? This could be an indication that you need to switch up your diet, you know, if you find yourself just stuck at the same speed, and you just can’t make any improvements, your diet is going to help with this. Okay, your diet could be hindering your speed and your performance.
And of course, you know, when it comes to running faster, you’ve got to work on strength training, you’ve got to build stronger muscles. You want to become a more powerful runner. And you also have to do speed work, right? These are things you need to do. But diet plays a huge part in this too. Right? The wrong diet can kill your speed.
If you’re eating a bunch of junk food, processed food, a bunch of weird ingredients, you’re not giving your body, you’re not giving your muscles the nutrition that it actually needs to perform at its best. And you’re just doing yourself a disservice you’re not going to get faster, it’s going to be very difficult to get faster. Put it that way.
So look at your running speed and if you’re trying to, you know PR a marathon PR a 5k or 10k Let’s look at the diet it could be having a negative impact on your running speed. Okay. And then how are you recovering from running? Most runners who eat the Standard American Diet who eat a lot of sugar, a lot of processed foods, a lot of refined carbohydrates and refined grains experience chronic inflammation.
This means that recovering from hard workouts takes a lot longer, which will actually decrease your running performance overall. And when we get fat adapted when we change the diet, the runners that I work with telling me that they have, they are recovering faster than ever, they’ve never experienced this kind of like, they’ll go and run a 20 miler, and the next day, they feel amazing.
They no longer feel all the inflammation and the bloating. And even their doctors report the lower levels of the inflammatory marker, I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head here. But when you get your blood work done, there’s that inflammatory marker.
And they can see that that’s greatly lowered because of diet. So diet can have a huge impact on your recovery. And when you recover faster, and your body’s not in a state of chronic inflammation, you can become a stronger runner, you can improve your running performance, you can actually get faster too.
A couple more things. What about sleeping, how is your sleep? Sleep is often overlooked. But this is an important part of your training, it should be. It is crucial to get a good night’s sleep, your body has to use that time to, to rebuild to recover, and so that you can go out there and get after it the next day. And if you’re not getting the right amount of sleep, if your sleep is horrible, and you wake up not feeling good, feeling tired of feeling exhausted when you wake up in the morning, this is a problem, this is going to put your body in this state of chronic stress.
Chronic stress will increase your cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone, your body will produce more glucose in response to that stress hormone, which increases insulin levels, which keeps your body in that fat storage mode. Chronic stress leads to chronically storing body fat, and it makes it very difficult to improve your body composition.
If you’re super stressed out, we want to practice like acute stress in our body. So we want to run hard. Sometimes we want to lift weights hard, sometimes that’s acute stress, it’s short, short term, your body can adapt to that kind of stress.
There’s an adaptive response that happens when we experience that kind of stress, chronic stress being stressed all the time, which what is what happens when you don’t get a good night’s sleep every night, you can be just chronically stressed out, this is going to just keep it keep you from losing weight, it’s going to keep you from running at your best, it’s going to just make it very hard for you to recover.
So you gotta get a good night’s sleep. diet plays a huge role in this diet plays a huge role in your sleep. If you’re not, if you’re not eating the right diet, if you’re eating a bunch of junk food and eating a bunch of sugar, I’m going to tell you right now your sleep is going to be messed up.
People that I work with report that they’re sleeping has never been better, once they get off of that sugar kind of roller coaster. And then the last thing I want you to consider is your ability to focus and concentrate. One of the best things about being fat adapted for me, is the clear headedness that I experience, I can think more clearly, I concentrate more easily. And I can stay focused all day long.
The wrong diet doesn’t give your brain the kinds of fuel that it needs to function properly, your brain actually thrives on fat as a fuel source. So if your diet isn’t promoting fat burning, then you’re probably experiencing, you know, brain fog. And it’s hard to know that you’re experiencing brain fog when you’re in it. It just seems like this is the way things are.
But I’m telling you right now, when you get off of that sugar roller coaster, when you change your diet, you start eating real food, you start burning fat more efficiently. All of a sudden, it seems like the world comes into clearer focus, and you can concentrate and you can think more clearly.
And it’s like the fog has been lifted. It’s amazing. This is like one of my favorite parts about eating this way is that I just feel like my brain works the way it’s supposed to. Right. So all these things we just talked about are all indicators that your diet is either working for you or it’s not, you know, and if you’re finding yourself deciding that, yeah, you know, it’s time for me to change my diet. I want to encourage you to do something about it. Don’t just think about it. Don’t just listen to this and go okay, good stuff.
Let’s move on to the next one or whatever. I want you to do something, try something, take a break from sugar. Start eating real food, you know, food that still looks like food, right? Get fat-adapted as a runner. It takes a little bit of time to do that. It’s not for everyone. It’s a little bit of an uncomfortable process to go through. But once you get there It’s amazing.
And I’m going to tell you right now, you’ll never want to go back to doing what you’ve been doing in the past, right? Maybe eliminate processed food, that’s a good place for a lot of people to start. Anything that comes in a package, just stay away from it. Stop it with all the ingredients, right?
Most of these processed foods are not designed for your health, but they’re just they’re designed to taste amazing and to sell you more food really. They keep you hungry. They keep you craving foods so that you’ll buy more of their crappy processed packaged foods, right? The food companies are making a lot of money, but we pay the price with our health right?
And then consider getting some help. If you’re looking for some help with all of this. If you want some help and guidance, consider joining us in the Running Lean coaching project because you’ll learn exactly what to do and how to do it. You learn how to get fat-adapted the right way.
You’ll get support from the group and from me as your coach, you’ll get encouragement to keep going accountability to help you stay on track. And you’ll just get to your goals faster when you have the expert guidance helping you get there. Okay, so if you’re interested, love to have you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, and we can get you started on your journey to becoming a badass today. Cool. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
I’ve received a lot of questions about the Running Lean Coaching Group’s January 8 Pounds Down Challenge so I decided to address all of your questions in this bonus podcast episode! Starting on …
Continue Reading about Bonus Episode: January 8 Pounds Down Challenge →
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 this special bonus episode of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about the coaching group’s January eight pounds down challenge.
I’ve received a lot of questions about this challenge and about what we’re going to be doing over in the coaching group. And I wanted to make sure that I addressed all of your questions. And I was going to do this in this week’s Facebook Live. But there are some mitigating circumstances where I cannot go live on Facebook right now. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.
But I just want you to know that starting on Tuesday, January 4, we’re going to be focusing on getting fat-adapted as a group, we’re going to be doing this in the coaching group, we’re going to be getting fat-adapted and dropping some weight.
And the goal is to try to lose eight pounds by January 31. So if you think about it, it’s roughly two pounds a week, maybe a little less than two pounds a week. Very doable. Can I guarantee everybody’s gonna drop at least exactly eight pounds? No, but you know what, we’re going to set ourselves up for success, okay.
Some people might might lose a bit more, some people might lose a bit less. It’s all good. So if you’re interested in stepping up your game and joining us for this fun and transformative challenge, be sure to listen to this episode, because I’m just gonna be talking about what we’re going to be doing over there. I’ll give you all the details, and then join us in the group, it’d be fun to have you in the group. Okay.
So normally, I would be talking about this on my Facebook Live that I do every week in the Facebook group. And because of some glitchy thing that I did a couple of years ago, apparently, the Facebook algorithm found some old posts that I shared some meme or something like that, that apparently went against the community guidelines for Facebook.
And I’m basically restricted from going live for 30 days. No big deal. Whatever I posted was innocent enough, there was something sarcastic, which I’ve been known to do every now and then. And looking back on it, I can see how it was maybe just in poor taste or whatever. Okay, so, lesson learned. I’m kind of restricted from going live on Facebook right now.
So for this month, I’m going to maybe do a couple of bonus episodes of the podcast, is that cool with you guys? Cool. So it’s all good. Lesson learned. You’ve got to be careful what you post on Facebook, I’m telling you right now they take stuff very seriously, you know, even if you’re joking around. So just be careful with that kind of stuff.
You guys, you know what? I always try to keep things positive, you’re probably listening to this going, like, I can’t believe you would post something like, what did you post I know, it was just something dumb that I shared that somebody else created, you know, some meme, you know.
But apparently, it went against their guidelines, so lesson learned.
Okay, so here’s what I’m gonna talk about today – I want to talk about this challenge that we’re doing over the Facebook group. So this is all about getting fat-adapted and doing our best to lose eight pounds by January 31.
Okay, so why are we doing this? Well, first of all, this is a great time of the year to do this not because it’s January 1, and we’re all like setting resolutions and all this stuff. No. It’s a good time to do it because we are just getting started with marathon training.
Or maybe your half marathon training hasn’t started yet. So this is the offseason and this is a good time to kind of get started with any kind of nutrition changes, any kind of dietary changes.
You don’t want to wait six weeks until your marathon to start something like this. Okay? So, most spring marathons are going to be in, you know, April, May June, kind of in that timeframe. So we’ve got plenty of time to get fat adapted, okay.
I want to help you create some momentum as well to start this new year. I want to help you develop some new eating habits and some new relationships with food really, and with exercise and I want you to understand what it takes to become a fat adapted runner.
I want you to see the benefits of becoming a fat-adapted runner, and I want to create some momentum. I want you to create the momentum to help you just project yourself into the rest of the year like really give you some momentum to just keep things going and really create some good positive habits.
You know, when we talk about losing weight, we talk about getting fat-adapted, we talk about getting healthier, we talk about getting more fit, improving our health, improving our fitness, whatever it is, it’s all about changing your habits. It’s all about what you do, every single day.
And most people, what they do is they, you know, they get to a day like January 1, and they’re like, I’m gonna lose weight, you know, and then they just kind of arbitrarily kind of half-ass a plan and sort of, you know, try to eat better, whatever that means.
And they don’t really succeed at that, right. I mean, this is why the gyms are full in January, and then by March, they’re empty again, right. So most people try to do this in a way that just doesn’t work. Okay.
And so, a couple of other things that kind of don’t work is trying to do it on your own. Right? It’s hard to do this on your own. Without guidance, it can be challenging, okay. Without accountability, it can be very challenging. Without direction, or somebody to help you get through the tough stuff, it’s going to be almost impossible for you.
So what we’re going to do as a group is we are going to learn together, exactly how to get fat adapted. So you’ll be able to do this with a group, you’re going to get expert guidance and direction from me and from other people in the group.
I’ve got people in my coaching group who have been in my membership program for many months. And some people, I would consider them to be experts at this as well, they’ve got a lot of experience doing this.
So you’re going to hear from me and from other people that have had a great experience doing this, okay, but I’m going to be your coach, I’m going to be coaching you through the tough stuff, okay. You’ll have a clear and proven plan, you’re going to have a plan that has worked for countless other runners.
And we are going to kind of figure out our plans together. And you’ll have a chance to ask questions. Every week, you’re going to get encouragement, you’re going to get that accountability, where you have to sort of check-in, you’ll get to talk about what’s going well, what’s not, you’re going to stay motivated, you’re going to stay on track when you do this as a group. Okay?
That whole accountability thing. Somebody asked me this recently, like, what does accountability look like? It looks like this. It looks like every week, we’re going to say hey, this is what your job is for this week. Here’s the work you need to do. Maybe you got some homework assignments you have to do this week. Here’s what we’re going to do as a group together, yeah, let’s do it.
So we all say, yes, we’re committed, we’re going to do this thing. And then every week, you’ve got to show up and say, did you do it or not? That’s what accountability looks like. Okay, because you don’t want to show up to the group and say, I didn’t do it. I didn’t stick to my plan. You know, I just gave up. You don’t want to do that. Right?
So you’re going to stay on track, you’re going to do what you said you’re going to do, because you got to check in with us and tell us you did, or you didn’t do it. That’s what accountability looks like. Okay.
And I also need to say this, I need to say that when we do this when we go through this process in this group together as a group, we are going to have fun doing it. Okay. It doesn’t have to stop at losing weight, getting healthy and becoming fitter can be fun. Is that crazy to say, does that totally blow your mind? Because it can be fun.
Most people think you have to suffer. Most people think it has to be super terrible. And you have to live in this world of like, dust deprivation and white-knuckling it. And, you know, just being hungry all the time. And feeling like crap. Like we’re gonna try to minimize that kind of stuff. Right? We’re gonna have some fun doing this.
Okay, um, I always say like losing weight doesn’t have to be a suffer-fest. Like we can do it in a way that feels good. That’s actually kind of fun. Okay. So how does all this work? So, what you’ll want to do is you’ll want to join the Running Lean coaching group and do this before Tuesday. Okay, Tuesday, the fourth.
So Tuesday, the fourth at 8:30 pm is our first group coaching call for January. And those are the only that’s the only time each week that we do this call. Okay, right now, I only have one call time each week.
As this group grows and we get more interest, you know, I could change that time or add more times, but for now, we just have the one call time and I try to accommodate, you know, as many people’s schedules that can there’s no way I could possibly pick a time that would work for everybody, but this time seems to work for a lot of people.
But don’t worry, if you can’t make the live calls, you can still get a lot out of the program by listening to the replays. So I post all the replays, all the video replays, from our group zoom meetings on a private website that you’ll have access to, I also have a private podcast feed that you can listen to.
So you can actually just listen to the coaching calls as you’re out running or whatever, which is a great way to kind of, you know, replay and get that information if you can’t make the lives but I do encourage you to make the live calls.
The people that make the live calls get a lot more out of the program, I’m just gonna tell you right now. Okay. So as soon as you sign up for the program, you’re going to get immediate access to all of my online training materials.
So my big flagship program is called the Weight Loss Training Course for Runners. And this is a big, multi-module program, it’s got, I don’t know, 40 videos, 45 videos, something like that, of training on a variety of topics about fat-adaptation, about the mindset required to lose weight and keep it off.
Strength training, explosive workouts for runners, there’s just so much information in there, okay, you get my course called Achieving the Impossible. This is all about setting big, huge impossible goals and then making them happen, you’ll get access to my course called Getting It All Done, which is a productivity course and helps you with planning.
A lot of what we do in the program is about planning, we plan our meals ahead of time, we plan our workouts, and then we stick to our plan. So I show you exactly how to plan your whole week, using different calendar tools and a very effective way of getting everything done.
And then you’ll have access to all the previous group coaching calls to all the recorded stuff, like I said in the private podcast, so in addition to all of that you get access to my private Facebook group where we kind of do a little bit of Q&A in there, sometimes you get to ask questions and get answers. So I would encourage you to get signed up before Tuesday. And we will all get started together on Tuesday, January 4. Cool.
So each week, you’re going to have you know, some different work to do, you’ll have some different sort of assignments, you’ll have different layers of like, what it looks like to get fat adapted, and how we change our diet, and how we, you know what you’re supposed to eat, what you shouldn’t eat, things to avoid, things you should definitely add in how to schedule your workouts around all this. How to make sure you’re getting the most out of the out of your running workouts, how to get through this tough fat-adaptation phase because the first few weeks is a little bit challenging.
And so you know, got some tips and tricks for getting through that quickly. You’ll get to ask questions and check in every week in the program. Cool. So that’s what the program looks like, I just want to encourage you, if you’re the kind of person who is like interested in doing this, you’re interested in starting your year off, by getting yourself fat-adapted, like this is something you’ve been thinking about for a long time, and you’re ready to take action, just I’m just gonna encourage you to take action. Okay?
Go over to runningleanpodcast.com/join and you can read all about it. And then you can just get yourself signed up. And as soon as you get yourself signed up, you’ll have access to all the online training materials, and then you can join in the live call on Tuesday.
You know, if you’re the kind of person who keeps gaining and losing the same 10 or 20 pounds over and over again, and you want a different way to do things, you want a different way that’s going to maybe work permanently for change, this is a good program for you.
If you’ve been running a ton of miles like trying to lose weight and it’s just not working for you anymore, this is definitely the program for you. Okay, if you want running to feel easier, you want to become virtually bonk-proof so you can run without hitting the wall and have this like steady energy for running also just for like getting through your day and not having these energy spikes and crashes all day long – definitely the program for you.
Okay, take control of your nutrition game. Let’s get you fat-adapted once and for all. We’re gonna do it together and experience all the fun and all the benefits and all the health benefits, especially of getting yourself fat adapted and losing some weight in January. Cool.
I know you guys are gonna have questions you can post questions in the Facebook group about this. I’m excited to be on this journey with you. I’m excited to take a group of people through this together. I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun doing this. If I haven’t mentioned that already, I’ll say alright, we’re gonna have fun.
And then together we’re going to have an awesome January and set you up for success for everything that you have scheduled for the rest of the year. All of your spring marathon and half marathon goals, and just all of your overall health and fitness goals. Cool. All right, you got this my friends love you all keep on Running Lean. Reach out if you have any questions and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
The 2021 Flying Pig Marathon is officially in the books! I did some things differently this training season from a fueling perspective. Some things worked pretty well, some not so much, but I …
Continue Reading about 98. Marathon Recap: What Worked and What Didn’t →
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 98 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m giving you a marathon recap, I’m going to talk about what worked and what didn’t in my recent marathon.
So the 2021 Flying Pig marathon is officially in the books. And it was fun, had a great, great weekend. And I did some things differently. This training season, especially from a feeling perspective, some things worked pretty well, some not so much.
But I definitely learned some very valuable lessons this training season and during the marathon itself. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to go over how I feel differently for this training season and how I feel for the race itself, what worked, what didn’t, and what I might do differently next time.
And just so you know, I originally recorded this episode, over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So each week I do a live call where I do some teaching and coaching and answer questions. And so this was one of those calls, this is the call we did last week.
And if you’re not currently in the Facebook group, this call that you’re going to listen to now in this in this podcast episode will give you a good idea of what those live calls are all about.
So I would love it if you would join the Facebook group and join in on the conversation. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us over there.
And then here’s a recent message that someone in the Running Lean community on Facebook posted so they posted this right after finishing their marathon. And so this is from Jima and she wrote: “2021 was the year of unexpected achievements. In each race, I was able to experiment with fat-adapted running with excellent results. With this last marathon, I was able to run 20 miles fasted with no bonking and only consumed a slow-burning energy gel at the end just for replenishment. Thank you, Patrick McGilvray, for sharing your expertise and knowledge.”
Also, much thanks to you all in the Running Lean community, as you are all inspiring. Love it. I love those kinds of messages. And congratulations on an awesome marathon season, Jima.
And then people ask how they can work with me. And one way you can do that is to join the Running Lean coaching group. And I’m going to be talking more about that later on in the podcast.
This whole month of November, we’re talking about self-sabotage just in time for the holidays, you guys. So we’re going to learn how to recognize self-sabotage, how to understand what it really is, how to stop it before it gets out of hand, and how to eliminate it from your life for good.
So if you’re interested in learning more about the coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And then as always, you know, I do one on one coaching with people, this is what I do, this is my jam.
So if you’re ever interested in a little expert guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, maybe a little tough love every now and then. Then just reach out. You’ve got to apply for coaching.
So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we’ll just see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool. All right. So I’m going to go ahead and play for you. The marathon recap what worked and what didn’t from last week’s Facebook Live.
Hey, everybody, welcome to your Sunday live coaching call. This is something we do every single Sunday afternoon. For the most part, I didn’t do it last week, because I was running the flying pig marathon. It was Halloween. And I thought we’d all take the afternoon off.
But today what I want to do is kind of give you guys a little bit of a recap of specifically sort of how I did my training, how I fueled for my training this marathon training season, how I fueled specifically for this marathon, and I did some things differently than I have been doing in the past. And I want to talk a little bit about that.
Some of it was, you know, there were some positives and there were some you know, I wouldn’t say negatives, but there were some things I would recommend doing maybe and some things that I’ll probably do again, and there were some things that I maybe won’t do again.
So let’s get into this whole marathon training, thingsthat I did differently, I want to talk about what I did differently this time and share some of my insights with you guys. I get a lot of questions about what I eat and how I fuel for these things. And I’ve talked a little bit about some different fueling strategies in the past.
And I’ve talked about how I’ve done several marathons and even an ultra marathon, completely unfilled, like just not needing any kind of fuel at all. And then I did things a little bit differently this training season. And I want to talk about that.
And I want to explain to you guys why I made the decisions that I made. And what I was trying to do with all that. A lot of the stuff that I do here is just to like, share the data with you guys, you know. So just to kind of give you guys a little perspective here, everything that we do is a is an experiment of one.
So everything that we’re doing in here when it comes to how to fuel properly for a marathon, or what’s the right diet for weight loss. When people ask these questions, I always just say, like, try something and see if it works.
That’s it like just try something and see if it works. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. And I don’t even know what works best for me. I’ve tried all kinds of things, and I keep continuing to try different things.
I do different fueling strategies and training, different fueling strategies for long runs. Sometimes I’m carb-loading, sometimes I’m not. And all this stuff is to just find out how I feel and how my performance is affected by these different strategies. Okay.
And I’m always learning. And I don’t know it all, I’m just going to tell you guys right now, I don’t have all the answers. But because you know what the answer is within, you know, the answer is within each of us the right answer as to what is the right fuelling approach for you as an individual.
So but what I want to do today is give you guys a little bit of a look a little snapshot of what this looked like, for me though, this training season and some of the lessons I learned, so that maybe you can like start experimenting with some of this stuff on your own. Okay, so that’s kind of my high level to look at why I’m talking about this today.
And what I’m hoping that you get out of this today. Okay. So I have a question. I want to ask you guys and feel free to answer this in the comments. Because this is just kind of a funny question. Could be a serious question could be a funny question.
But what has been your best or worst fueling strategy for a marathon or half marathon? Like, what’s something you did that worked really well? Or what’s something you did that just went horribly wrong? Those might be more entertaining. So drop your answer in the comments, and we’ll get to those later.
I also want to let you guys know that if you have any questions about anything that I’m talking about here today, just ask away, ask in the comments, and I’ll get to all your questions. before we’re finished here today.
Okay, so if anything comes up for you, and you’re like, you know what, how did that work? Or what do you mean by that? Like, just ask, ask away, okay, that’s what we’re here for the interaction, okay?
I do this podcast or I’m talking into a microphone. I like these lives where we get to have a conversation, okay, where you get to ask the questions, and I can answer them live. That’s super fun for me. So feel free to ask questions. Okay.
So, what did I do differently this time around? So, like I said, most of the last year and a half of training for me, I’ve done now.
Two, I’ve done through three marathons and a 50k. So three marathons and an ultra marathon in the last year basically, and all three of these, or four of these, events have been you know, done as a low carb fat-adapted athlete, okay.
Within that, you know, those parameters of being fat-adapted and low carb, there are lots of different ways of doing things. Okay, so it just doesn’t mean like you never eat anything, it just doesn’t mean you’re eating nothing.
But you know, steaks, you know, for your training and stuff like that. Steaks and sticks of butter, although pretty delicious. Melt some butter on a ribeye steak, there’s really nothing better. So the fueling strategies can be different for all these different kinds of events.
But within the parameters of a low carb endurance athlete, a low carb fat-adapted runner, I’ve done some things a little bit differently. So last year, I did a marathon at this time of the year. Zero calories I did a 50k zero calories, and then I did my marathon in the spring, basically zero calories.
And those three events were fantastic. I felt amazing, especially the last marathon that I did. And I ran that one a little bit harder actually had sort of a time goal. And I felt amazing. So that last marathon was sort of the culmination of for me what it felt like to be a truly fat-adapted athlete, and not really needing any fuel.
So for me, and I’m not crushing goal times here, I’m not qualifying for Boston or anything like that. I ran a 4:15 in the spring. And that was really good for me. And I was pushing the pace. And I had to step up my game a little bit for that one. And I felt amazing.
And again, no, like carb-loading before that event, actually, my ramp-up to that event, I made a point to like, pretty much eat zero carbs. So I talked about this on a podcast called Zero Carb Marathon Training.
And I basically went carnivore for about 40 days leading up to that marathon. And felt amazing, and it was a great experience, okay. And so when, when it came time to do this next marathon, I thought I could do the same thing, and feel the same way and sort of stay in that carnivore sort of mode, and just see how that goes.
But I didn’t want to do that I was actually really interested in getting some carb adaptation, okay. So when you’re fat-adapted, and you’re really good at burning fat and your low-carb athlete, if you want to start incorporating carbohydrates back into your strategy, you have to practice with it and do it for a while.
So you have to sort of get yourself carb-adapted again. And so I made a point to add more carbs in for this training cycle. So what does that mean? Like, what am I talking about?
Was I eating a bunch of cupcakes and stuff like that? No, it’s not that kind of carbs, I wasn’t eating sugar, I’m not eating processed flour and stuff like that.
I was eating more salads, I was eating more avocados, I was eating more yogurt, and some berries, like I love like yogurt with strawberries, and blueberries, nuts.
And then the day before or two days before and the day before my long runs, I would incorporate more slow-burning carbohydrates like wild rice, and sweet potatoes, that’s kind of my go to has been my go-to.
So this was a pretty intentional strategy for me over the last 12 weeks or so, you know, maybe longer than that. Really just to kind of ramp up during this marathon training, because I wanted to make sure that my body could also use the carbohydrates as fuel.
So when you’re really good at burning fat, and then you start introducing some carbohydrates into the mix, you’re not really efficient, and bringing the carbs and having the carbohydrates in the system kind of shuts down the fat burning the efficiency of the fat burning.
So we just have to be careful with this sort of approach. Like if you’re a super fat-adapted athlete, and you’re like, oh, I just want to like run harder, run a better time or something like that.
And you start adding in a bunch of carbs, like just the day before your marathon or something like that, and you haven’t been training this way, you’re not going to have a good experience.
And this was my take when I first started introducing carbs back into my training, I noticed a little bit of a downturn in my performance. So that was one thing that I would say was a negative.
And that was something that I did not enjoy. I didn’t enjoy adding the carbs in and then having this more of a sluggish feeling. Okay. So I pressed on, though, because I’m like, okay, I need to really do this. And I know it’s hard. And I know it doesn’t feel good, but I’m just gonna continue doing it.
Kind of like we do when we get fat-adapted, you have to kind of push through, there’s like three, four weeks of really tough running. Well, I kind of experienced the same thing when I started incorporating carbs back into the mix. So I found that very interesting.
And I’ve done a bunch of reading on this a bunch of research on it, and it’s totally normal. It’s like, part of the process. Okay. So, if you if you’re desiring to add carbohydrates into your marathon training strategy and into your marathon fueling strategy, you have to train with them for I would say a few months leading up to this, okay.
So that’s something that I just wanted to make sure you guys kind of understood and that it is something you can’t just you don’t want to just like incorporate it in the last minute.
Like, you know, you’ve been training super low carb all season and then all of a sudden, drop a bunch of carbs into the mix the night before your marathon and think it’s going to help you because it could really hinder your performance, at least for that one event. So that was interesting.
And the other thing that I started doing this training season and I experimented with, I started using a line of products called S fuels. So S fuels makes endurance, fuel for endurance for low carbon dirt, athletes fuel for low carbon endurance athletes, so the fuel that they have is mostly kind of fat and protein-based.
So MCT oil, amino acids, electrolytes, and they have different types of fuels. So they have a product called Train, which is something you add to water, it’s got a very, you know, water-like consistency, tastes great, and fat and amino acids and electrolytes, great for like, you know, two, three hour runs four or five hours, whatever it is, you can just kind of take that as you go.
They have another product called Race Plus, which has some slow-burning carbohydrates in there, as well as the fat and protein. And electrolytes, that would be something that you would, you know, kind of practice with and use for your events that you want to like run harder and run a little bit faster.
Okay, that’s really not my strategy to run super fast, but I played around with the fuel just to try it out. And then they make another product called Life Bars. And the life bars are basically well, they’re delicious. And they’re like chewy bars are made with like, almond butter or nut butter, cacao nibs and they have the MCT oil and amino acids and things like that.
So it’s kind of like the equivalent of like the fat and protein like you would eat almond butter or something like that. But it’s a little easier to, you know, chew up and swallow.
The almond butter can be a bit of a problem because it’s super thick. And if you’re trying to eat that, while you’re running, it’s difficult.
Somebody posted a comment about that. I think today, they were like I had to drink a lot of water with that almond butter just to get it down. It’s like yeah, it’s a bit much.
So S fuels makes a whole line of products, they make a recovery drink with like a protein powder. And listen, these guys don’t sponsor me or anything like that. I should talk to them about that though, right? Yeah, I probably should.
But, um, so I’m not like getting I’m not trying to like get you guys to go by this, I’m just giving you an example of something that I use that works pretty well for me.
Okay, so I practice with these fuels during the training season. And I enjoyed them I think they are spot on because what you’re doing is you’re adding the fat and the protein in which is what you really want as a low carb athlete.
You want that sort of exogenous fat, the fat that you eat, and the protein helps to keep your keep you feeling good and, and keep the fat-burning going.
So when you’re efficient at burning fat, you can burn the fat that you’re eating as well as for fuel, right. So that’s why we want to keep our fuel intake to the fats and proteins and not the carbohydrates when we’re trying to stay fat adapted and stay in that fat burning zone and really maximize fat burning. Okay.
So for the race itself by I did a life bar beforehand. And I did the Train product and some electrolyte drink. And I did some of the Race Plus beforehand. So I had a little bit of carbs in me, I did some carb-loading the days before I did a bunch of sweet potatoes and wild rice and stuff like that.
And I really wanted to like prime the tanks with glycogen, you know, make sure that I topped up my glycogen levels and got into the marathon. And I have to tell you – so this is the one thing that I noticed that was different from the last three long events that I did.
Where I did them unfold basically, the one thing that I noticed is that I felt very sluggish for the first half of the marathon. Like the first 12-13 miles I was not feeling it.
And you know, I was maintaining a decent pace and listen, we were out there just to have a good time. We had done the 10K and the 5K the day before. And so this was sort of just a fun run for us. Me and some friends we hung out together. We had a great time. It was super fun.
We all helped each other get across the finish line, but I just wasn’t feeling it for about the first half. The longer I was out there, the better I felt. And so this tells me something, this tells me that I probably had more glycogen on board at the beginning.
And as I burn through that, I got more efficient with the fat burning. And I felt better. And I had more energy and more stamina. And I just, I finished feeling much stronger than I did at the beginning of the event. So that was something I thought was really interesting. And I did not like that.
So for me, my biggest takeaway from the actual marathon itself, was that next time, I’m probably going to do away with the carb-loading and the training with the higher carbs, you know because it didn’t give me the boost that I thought it would.
I thought though, beginning half of the marathon, I would have like more energy and feel better. And then the second half, I would, you know, sort of be feeling a little bit more tired or whatever. But it was exactly the opposite. It’s very fascinating.
Again, now, this is an experiment of one. So this is my experience with this, I’m not saying you would have the exact same experience if you did the same thing. Certainly, try it and see how it works for you.
So if you’re if your goal is to run a super fast marathon, maybe some sort of carbohydrate loading would be a good strategy for you to try. For me. I wasn’t trying to run a super fast marathon just like slow and steady, and it didn’t really work for me. Okay, just keep that in mind.
Okay, so definitely try something, some of these things, and see what works for you. But my biggest takeaway was that I didn’t like the feeling of eating the carbs, you know, the sweet potatoes and the rice and stuff like that prior to the event.
I did enjoy the s fuels, I think they helped. And I think that’s what sort of got me like through the event. I did take another life bar with me because I wanted the extra fuel. But I didn’t want to have to mix a drink. I didn’t want to carry a water bottle with me.
And I was trying to do this as like as Spartan as possible. So the only thing I took with me was salt tablets and the life bar. And that was like my fueling strategy during the event.
Now, here’s my other very interesting takeaway. I usually fuel with Elementi Element, the electrolyte mix from Elemental Labs. I love this stuff, I’ve been training with it for a couple of years now. Never had any problems.
I decided, for this training season, I was going to practice using like, what is it called salt stick tablets, like the little capsules with electrolytes, because I didn’t want to have to carry a water bottle with me. During the marathon again, I was just trying something different. So I practice using the salt tablets and they were okay.
Honestly, I do better with more sodium, electrolytes, sodium, potassium, magnesium, the element product has just a very high amount of sodium – 1000 milligrams of sodium per packet. And something like 400-600 milligrams of potassium and magnesium.
So the electrolyte profile is very high. And something fascinating I learned recently is that when we’re exercising, when you’re out there running a marathon, you lose something like 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour, per hour.
So you need to be replacing that and the salt tablets that I was taking either I probably wasn’t taking enough of them, or they didn’t have enough sodium so the sodium content was lower, and I didn’t take as many.
So I think I did something like two salt tabs every four or five miles maybe two every hour or something like that, every 45 minutes or two an hour and I thought that would be sufficient.
I kind of did the math but because the electrolyte profile is different in those things. I don’t know, I probably could have done better with a water bottle just carry a water bottle and take my own electrolyte drink with me.
So there are different ways we can do this stuff. I was just trying to like not have to carry a water bottle with me. You can carry a backpack, mix up your electrolyte drink in your Camelback or whatever. And then you can just like sip on it the whole during the race.
You can carry it in a water bottle and keep refilling it if you want to. That’s what I’ve done in the past and has always worked really well for me. But again, I was just trying some different things this time just to see what works so that I could share it with you like I’m doing right now. So that’s something else I would do differently.
Next time, I’d probably just carry my water bottle like I’m used to doing, it does take a little bit of extra time at the water stops to, you know, unscrew the top, open up the packet, pour it in, get the water, and you got to sort of dork around with that at the water stops.
But you know, if the electrolyte that you’re using isn’t really working for you, you need to fix that, like, it’s super important to make sure that we’re getting enough electrolytes during these events. It was a great day, it wasn’t super hot, but still, we sweat out, like, close to 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour. So you got to be replacing that up there.
Okay. So, all in all, I’m gonna say this, we had a super fun time at the event, I felt better the second half of the marathon than I did during the first half. And I have to tell you guys that, you know, we did this thing where we ran the 10k and the 5k, the day before, so I was starting this marathon on tired legs already.
And so that has to be sort of factored into all of this too. Okay, so that’s typically not recommended to do like a nine-mile shakeout run the day before your marathon. So that has to be sort of factored into all this stuff, okay.
But what I would do differently next time, I think next time, I’m going to stick with my low carb during training season and not introduce the carbs and not try to do any carb-loading or not try to become more metabolically flexible.
So metabolic flexibility is where you can use more fat and carbohydrates more efficiently, but you got to like work through that and you got to really get good at that. And maybe I didn’t do it the right way.
Or maybe I didn’t do it long enough. Whatever the case is, for me, the way that we’re I’m sitting here today, looking back on the last year of events, the ones where I did the best is where I didn’t do any carb-loading and I didn’t do any fueling during you know.
I would say you know, maybe the next time I just add the s fuels products, which I think are pretty amazing. And nothing else. So just kind of stick with those. And that way I’m just getting a little bit of extra boost you know, that might help with the longer distance stuff especially when you start getting into like a marathon distance.
So that’s kind of the recap I’m going to go through your questions you guys and find out kind of what questions you have.
So Gene says, “Fat for fuel, no glucose.” Good job. Awesome. “Ran three marathons fat-adapted, no fuel just electrolytes and water felt good.”
Yeah, me too. Gene. I’m with you on that approach. Okay.
Let’s see Bill says. “Sorry 10k is the farthest I’ve done.” Don’t be sorry 10k is awesome! “Always fasted so started training that way and will continue.”
Awesome. Yeah. Never apologize for your resistance distances right you guys like our people say oh, I only ran the half. Like team, you ran a half marathon! That’s awesome.
Let’s see Zoey says, “Fueled and hydrated better on days leading up to the second marathon compared to first.”
Yeah, lighter meals less carbs had less gels. Ricard also, yeah. Lots of whey isolate chocolate shakes.
Yeah. I do a little protein supplement here, especially after hard strength sessions for sure. Denise did a gel, wants to try peanut butter cups, wants to carb bounce protein wraps. These are all solo marathons or ultras, there is no difference to water only interesting. But I ran my first in-person marathon in December. Thanks for your vices. Absolutely, Denise.
Yeah. So that’s interesting. So you’re actually trying a bunch of different things. And I think this is super important. You’ve got to figure out what works for you. You know, and so, I think we put too much emphasis on like, we have everything has to be perfect every single time.
I purposely do things just to find out like, how does it how’s it gonna feel? You know, I may crash and burn. That was definitely a possibility. The way I was fueling for this marathon, I was like thinking to myself like this may not go well.
Especially that first half I was feeling kind of sluggish. And I was like, oh, this may not go well. But I was like, you know what, I’m gonna just try it. I gotta try different things.
Josh says, “Trying to consume less carbs for my train this time.” Yeah. Give it a shot. Denise says, “I can relate to this. I ran 400 miles in October.” Nice job. “So I just did some carb loading because I thought it might help to maintain the training load, now a week later still feel sluggish. Oh, yeah. I’ll get off the sugar again and see what happens.”
Yeah. Here’s the thing. If you want to get off the sugar like it’s a process like you got to get fat adapted you have to go through that, that sluggish period, where, you know, you get off of sugar, processed carbs, and you’ve got to keep your carb, you know, intake pretty low for anywhere from 2-6 weeks. You know it averages about three weeks, 21 days or so. And that’s where training is very sluggish. It’s very hard.
Don’t do this a couple of weeks before your event, like make sure you start this process at the beginning of your training season or in the offseason, get fat-adapted, and then start your training for your big event.
Because once you’re fat-adapted, the training is going to be so much easier, you’re going to get stronger, faster, and you’re going to be like, super efficient at burning fat and you’re just going to kick ass at your event.
Let’s see. Kim says, “Hi from Canada. I love my element. And I’m excited to start trying s fuels.” Yeah.
And then Marianne, “Any suggestions for after the race food feel like I should be allowed to eat anything? But I get tummy trouble doing that?”
Okay. So that’s such a good question, Marianne. So here’s my take on it. After a marathon, I do give myself a little bit of permission to indulge a little bit. But here’s what I mean by indulging.
Okay, you guys are gonna laugh because here’s me indulging. So after the marathon, it was Halloween. And so I went to my son’s house and in the main room and Halloween, with the family and stuff like that.
And they made his big batch of chili, you know, with ground beef and stuff like that, but it had beans in it. And I’m like, I’m eating beans, I’m just going to go ahead and eat all these beans, this thing was loaded with carbohydrates right in the form of beans, well, I’m gonna eat it.
So that was me, carb-loading or whatever you want to call it, like carbing it up after my marathon. But that’s, like, that’s not a big deal. That is not a big deal, right? Usually my go-to would be something like tacos, I love tacos. So we’d go out and have chips and salsa and tacos or something like that. That’s going kind of off the deep end for me.
But listen, you get to decide what you want to do for yourself. And so if you want to indulge a little bit, here’s my suggestion for you. Plan ahead, just make sure you’re planning ahead.
And you’re not just you know, giving into the moment, you know, because if people are eating pizza and ice cream and a bunch of junk around you, and you’re like just getting into that and stuffing your face and it makes you feel terrible.
Don’t do that. Okay, plan ahead what you want to do. So if your post-marathon go to is something like tacos or whatever do that. Honestly, for me, like an indulgent thing for me, or something that really makes me feel good is eating a big ribeye steak and eating that.
And I do this pretty often. And so that’s sort of a way of treating myself and it tastes great, but it doesn’t throw me off my game. You know, it’s a fun thing to do. It’s indulgent. And it’s part of my plan.
And I plan it and I just keep doing that. Bill says, “Yeah, it hurts not to be perfect.” Yeah, he’s talking about the 10K’s. Yeah, but you’re awesome, so there!
Kristen says, “This is my first marathon fat adapted. And I felt great. Even with the racing the day before.” Super awesome. Kristen, you did such a great job, too. And Kristin went through the whole fat adaptation process. And she, her running improved like crazy.
She became this badass runner that she knew was inside her. And she was like, I’m determined to make this happen. And she did. And then she showed up. Kristen actually lives in Cincinnati, and I saw her after the marathon. So that was super fun. So good stuff, you guys.
I hope you all learned something from this. I hope you got a little something out of this. I hope that me taking one for the team here helps you guys kind of learn maybe what to do maybe what not to do, or maybe something some things that you can try for yourselves because it is fun to try this stuff. It’s fun to experiment.
Listen, we take ourselves pretty seriously. Sometimes we take running pretty seriously sometimes. And I’m at this place in my life where I’m like, I just want to have fun with this, you know, and if that means trying a different feeling strategy, see how it goes. Just so I can like, share my experiences with you guys. So be it. It’s fun for me to do this stuff.
Okay. Next time though, I’m going to kind of go back to my more low-carb ways and more. Just kind of sticking with the non-carb fueling strategy that I’ve done in the past that’s just worked so well for me and increase the electrolyte intake.
I think those are my biggest sort of fuels you know or biggest takeaways from my dueling strategy. Cool. All right, you guys. Well, everybody, enjoy the rest of your amazing Sunday afternoon.
I don’t know about you guys, but here, it’s just gorgeous. You know, it’s something like 63 degrees, super sunny outside, the leaves are changing colors. It’s this amazing time of the year. I love it. We’re getting into the holidays.
And in the coming weeks, I’m going to be talking about how we get through the holidays. This is going to be a good topic for us coming up. Okay. How do we survive the holidays?
You know, what does it mean to get through like Thanksgiving, which is all about indulging in food, right? Like, how do we get through a holiday with that without totally losing our minds, you know, without totally like, screwing up everything good that we’ve done for ourselves up to this point, right?
So we’ll be getting into topics like that. And then how do we get through the winter because it’s gonna start getting colder and darker. And how do we get through the crazy holiday season that is looming just in front of us?
Okay, so you guys all have an amazing day. We’re going to have some fun over the next several weeks here. Okay, if you have any other questions, drop them in the comments here and I’ll get to them soon. Okay, great seeing you guys all on here. Everybody. Have a great afternoon and talk to you soon. Bye.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
On Sunday afternoons, I do live training and coaching sessions over in the Running Lean Community of Facebook. This past week I brought on a special guest - Kelly French - for a fun and informative …
Continue Reading about 89. Fat-Adapted Ultrarunning Success with Kelly French →
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.
Patrick McGilvray
Hey there, and welcome to episode 89 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking fat-adapted ultra running success with Kelly French. Actually, she’s talking about her fat-adapted ultra running success.
So on Sunday afternoons, over in the Running Lean community on Facebook, I do these live training and coaching sessions. And this past week, I brought on a special guest, Kelly French, and we had a fun and informative conversation all about her experience of becoming a fat-adapted runner.
So Kelly’s an ultra runner, who came to me for help transitioning to the low carb way of life, she wanted to lose a little bit of weight, and she wanted to improve her running performance. So she made it through that tough transition period, I helped her kind of get through the transition period from you know, being primarily a sugar burner to be becoming a super-efficient fat-burning machine.
And since adopting this approach, she’s run two ultra marathons with great success. And she’s going to tell you all about that. She’s also become quite a bit leaner in the process and says she feels the best that she’s felt in years. Kelly and I had a ton of fun working together, she’s done an amazing job of sticking with the program, as you will see. And I just have no doubt you’re gonna enjoy this conversation with Kelly, and you’re gonna get something out of this episode.
But first, if you like this podcast, definitely come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook and the two kind of go hand in hand, the community on Facebook gives you a chance to ask questions and join in the conversation. And you can participate in those Sunday lives that I do. And you can ask questions, and we can have some fun.
And sometimes I interview some of my clients and some other professionals and other people, experts in the field of health and fitness running in nutrition. And we just have a lot of fun over there. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us.
And here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. And this one’s from BW45. And BW45 says, “Great information. I started listening as a way to get motivated to train for a half. But I’ve continued to listen because of all the great information Patrick shares each week, I’ve learned so much about health and nutrition, that I’ve started making changes to my diet. And I can’t wait to see how these changes improve my running. This podcast is great for anyone looking to not just improve their running but their whole life.”
Patrick McGilvray
Yes, I love it. And a lot of the principles I talked about here, yes, they apply to more than just running more than just you know, trying to lose weight. mindset. Mindset is huge. It’s the foundation of everything we do. If you want to get success in any area of your life it requires the right mindset.
And if you enjoy this podcast, it would mean a lot to me if you would just take a moment. To leave a quick review, you can do that on Apple podcasts, just go to the podcast, scroll down where it says, rate and review, tap the stars and leave a few words, I would love that.
And then we’re still doing the four weeks to fat-adapted running over in the Running Lean coaching group. So this is my monthly membership program. And each month we have sort of a different topic that we cover in great detail. We have a lot of work around a specific topic this month, September 2021. It’s all about fat-adapted running, becoming a fat-adapted runner.
So we’re talking about how to do it, how to get started, what foods to eat, which you should definitely avoid, the kinds of carbs that are good, the kinds you should stay away from, and how to get through this tough transition period. All that stuff. And we just got started this past week. So you haven’t really missed much.
If you want to still join us you can absolutely do that. And we have replays of all the coaching and training sessions that we do in there. So you won’t miss anything. I promise you just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us it would be super fun to see you in there.
And if you ever want a little bit of help, a little more personalized help. I’m a coach. I do one on one coaching, this is what I specialize in. This is my forte. This is my specialty. If you just want help becoming a fat-adapted runner and you just want to work with me like imagine what you can accomplish working one on one with a coach for like three months at a time, you can just become the most badass version of yourself, I promise you, it’s awesome.
And with one on one coaching, you also get access to the Running Lean coaching group. So it’s kind of like a win-win. If you want to apply for one on one coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And hopefully, we’ll have a little conversation and see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not a great fit for everybody. Some people are like, no, that doesn’t sound like me.
But for a lot of people, it’s exactly what they need. And Kelly was one of those people. So like I said, in the intro, Kelly French is an ultra runner, she decided she wanted to try this like low carb thing, you know, she wanted to lose some weight. But really, she wanted to improve her running performance.
Weight loss wasn’t her like her main goal, she wanted to become a better runner. And she’s done an amazing job of making this work for her. And she’s somebody that has kind of special, special dietary considerations. And so you know, I want you guys to see that you know, you can make this work no matter what your dietary sort of preferences are. Okay.
So she’s had some pretty great success with a couple of recent ultra marathons. So since becoming fat-adapted, she’s run two ultra marathons. And this is only in the last few months. This all happens sort of in the last three months-ish. But I’m going to let her tell you all about it.
So without further ado, here’s my recent conversation with Kelly French, Kelly is an ultra runner, and just an awesome human being, by the way. And she came for me, came to me for some help in getting leaner and getting stronger as an ultra runner.
And so together, we, you know, kind of coached her through the fat-adaptation process through a low carb approach to running and helped her get through that challenging fat-adaptation phase, which I think she’s going to talk to us a little bit about hair today too.
And since then, she’s had some really great results, including two pretty successful ultra marathons that she’s done recently. And so we’re gonna just get into this, I think you guys are gonna have a lot of fun with this. I know, Kelly and I were just talking before we started here that we’re gonna have fun today. Right?
So Kelly, introduce yourself, just tell us who you are. And let’s talk a little bit about what drove you to seek out coaching? Like, what was it that was going on with you where you wanted to get some help?
Kelly French
Yes, um, well, hello, everybody. I guess it was maybe a few months before I decided to do the coaching that I just was almost in a place of just some bad habits and just some lifestyle habits that just was not working, I was going to be completely honest. Like, I’m not gonna hold anything back I was drinking on a regular basis. No matter if I was happy, celebrating, sad, whatever it was, I was using that to cope.
I was doing the same thing I’m doing now – running all the time, I’m still doing trail races, still exercising, but I was also, you know, kind of having the mentality of, I can eat whatever I want. I just ran all these miles, I didn’t have the mindset of what I was putting into my body, you know, maybe wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t getting a lot of the results.
As in, you know, my speed, I wanted to hit certain things. And I and I wasn’t, and it was probably, you know, a couple of weeks before that I was at work, you know, listening on some headphones and was like, you know, I wonder what is out there that I could listen to that maybe there’s some podcasts or self-help, or somebody who’s in the running community.
Because I was just at a little bit of a low point at that time. And it was very interesting because I started listening to a couple of your podcasts. And there were a few things that you said, you know, hey, this is what I went through. This is what my life was like. And now here I am today, doing a to z and I just have all these results and a better person mentally.
So I saw that you were looking for people you could sign up and kind of give your story on if it was a good fit to get some coaching and to get some help. And I said you know what? I listening to you. I felt like I knew you I felt for a reason you could help me so I reached out and I said this is what I’m doing, going through, this is what I’m looking to do and, and then the next day you got back to me and we had a one on one. And it was just the best thing that could have ever happened to me in my life. So yeah, that’s kind of how it started.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So what were a couple of those goals that you are hoping to accomplish? Like, what did you want to get out of coaching? Besides just like getting a little bit faster? Like, talk a little bit about that?
Kelly French
Very interesting. So in the very beginning, I think my goal was to just feel better, feel healthy. And definitely, I wanted to at that time, the goal was to lose 15 pounds to take some of the weight off to kind of have some mental clarity. I just needed, I needed direction.
And before this, I mean, I tried things like cleanses, right? I tried, at one point, Weight Watchers, I tried just things that were very much so quick fixes things that were not going to be long term. And, you know, that’s just kind of how it was in the beginning. So at that point met you, I was like, my goal is just it really was just to lose weight and feel better. I did it like when I first started, there wasn’t anything concrete yet. Yeah. And the fear of getting weight loss surgery. That was it.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s fair. And so tell me a little bit about what running was like for you like before we started working together? How was your running performance? How did you feel running? How do you feel about running? Where were you?
Kelly French
Sure. So I would have to say, I’m still, I can relate at this time. The best part about running for me, in general, is the group of women that I run with, that’s always going to be special to me, I have really close friends that run such an amazing group of athlete women. At that point, I didn’t have concrete goals with running, my goal was to always be able to finish quote, unquote, I guess I was more like, am I back of the pack, I’m okay with that. I’m just here to finish and I was slower.
And even when I ran, you know, I would just carb load before I was like, Oh, my gosh, I have a half marathon, I need to eat a bagel or peanut butter, I got to get up an hour early and just, and I almost I would run and I would feel kind of slow and being kind of like, just I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I love to do it for the fun of it.
But I was more settling with being slow, mediocre, um, just kind of being there and then not feeling good when I was running. Like I just kind of, I would swear I’d have these conversations with girlfriends every day, I would load up on goos. Oh, you’re gonna have these goos you’re gonna feel so great. You know you take the goos, take goos with you, you’re going to feel fantastic. Take salt tablets. I mean, the list goes on. You’re going to be high performance if you eat this before. And you just, I felt like trash really. Um, so I was not feeling good. Like, during the runs. I loved the people I was with. And I love the group. I still love the group of people I run with, um, but I didn’t feel strong at that time. No, I was just there. I was just there.
Patrick McGilvray
So we started working together and you want to kind of get into this fat-adaptation thing you wanted to become a fat-adapted runner. What sort of changes did you make? Like, how was that process for you? What was the hardest thing about that process for you?
Kelly French
Cool. I would say that’s a good question. Um, I would say in the beginning, I would say I’m taking away things that helped me cope better. With alcohol, I stopped drinking the alcohol. So I felt like my advice was kind of gone. I was after long runs. I was used to getting whatever I wanted like pizza was my life at that time.
And I was like, okay, so I wasn’t able to. I made the choice. I’m not gonna say I was unable to I made the choice to not have those foods that I was used to, I was used to alcohol is used to kind of eating whatever I wanted. Although I snapped pretty healthy, I was used to eating throughout the day like snacks, even if they were peanuts, or just fruit or random stuff here and there I would like, because where I worked, I usually ate at my desk.
So I would bring like a ton of snacks. So I had to kind of sit there with no snack, and just kind of in watch, you know, drink water or coffee or something. So I wasn’t used to just having minimal, minimal things. So I had to kind of wait and I wasn’t eating for 16 hours, you know, I was doing the fasting. So that was different for me as well. And then I guess I would say, after you know, three or four weeks, your body just did it adjust to it. Um, but in the beginning, it was not fun not being able to have what I was used to having.
Patrick McGilvray
Especially, so you’re talking about using alcohol and using, you know, food, basically, as you said, like a coping mechanism, or I call that like, how we deal with our emotions, you know, it’s like emotionally eating or drinking. So, right? Was that hard at first for you? Like, did you find that that was pretty challenging to like, you because you made a decision to stop drinking for a little while?
Kelly French
So that was difficult in the sense of. Um, so this is, in grade two exercise was still every day for me to at that time, so I never missed work. But I had a schedule of working out, or going for a run cross-train, whatever it may be, you know, having a glass of wine or two at night, making, you know, pasta, maybe getting a pizza, maybe making too much of, you know, whatever the food may have been. So just I had that routine of unhealthy habits.
So when that was kind of taken away, that was difficult, especially if I had a stressful day at work or you know, people piss me off. And you know, you want something. I mean, we can all relate, right? So, it was hard to deal with certain things like that, or go to an event or a party and other people that your social drinking, you know, and however you want to put it to having you know, water or a diet soda or something when everybody else is having this or that. And they’re like, oh, what are you doing? Like you’re not drinking? You know, things like that. It’s like, well, no, actually, I’m not because I’m, you know, making that choice. But it was difficult to adjust to that in the beginning.
Patrick McGilvray
So did it get easier?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, super easier. It’s for somebody who drank alcohol, whether it was one glass of alcohol, whether it’s going out after a group run, and going to a brewery, you know, and just being after a race and drinking to drinking almost every day or on the weekends with friends after 10 miles or brunch or mimosas to now the last time I had I had half a beer was when I finished the ultramarathon in July. And I couldn’t even taste it because my taste buds are so different now.
So I don’t miss it at all. Wow. And for me, that is huge. Because I was so used to that for so long, where it’s now it’s like it’s just not in my life anymore. It’s not a part of it anymore. And I never would have thought in a million years, I would say that I have gone to barbecues and brought my own stuff and everyone’s drinking, having fun. And I still have a great time. I just choose to, to not I mean, I could if I wanted, I just I don’t have the urge like I used to, which is in a good way.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s beautiful. Because with the urge being there, like when you have this desire for alcohol or for food, whatever it is, and you’re trying not to do it but the desire still there that’s really hard to do. That’s where most people find themselves kind of white-knuckling it and trying to get through it.
But when you get to the point where the urge is gone or the desire is gone, then it’s no big deal. You can just like go to the party and hang out and you’re not craving you’re not thinking you’re you know, missing out on something. You know you’re not craving that thing. So that’s super awesome.
And I want you guys to know that are watching. If you guys have questions for Kelly, go ahead and drop them in the comments. And we’ll get to all the questions at the end. So you got through this place where you were eating a lot, you are drinking you, you change these habits, you know, started to anyway. And then things started to get a little bit easier for you.
So let’s talk about that. Like, when did you know, cause I know that like getting fat-adapted is tough. There’s a transition period, right when you’re running. And there’s a period where running is pretty terrible, right? Like, how hard was it to get through that, and then what’s running like for you now?
Kelly French
So I would say, maybe week five to six is where I started to feel kind of crappy, during the fat adaptive with the longer mileage and with the heat coming. I had done there was a three-hour run and it was kind of the same mile loop every time it was in PA was a trail. And each loop there was this terrible incline uphill. And I was just super mad I couldn’t get up there as fast as I wanted to, I was literally taking two to three breaks, even trying to like, hike up there.
Granted, it was pretty wild the incline, I just felt like trash, but you just keep going anyway, um, I still made it through the three hours, I’m not gonna give up. But I knew going into it, just by the research and just by listening to and getting the knowledge that that that’s what it’s gonna be like because your body is used to all of the things you’re doing to it before and then you know, you’re taking some of that out, it’s almost like your body’s trying to cleanse itself and, and reset.
So I feel like that’s part of like the reset progress or process. So that was difficult. And there was another time where I had like a longer run, and I was just getting aggravated. And I started walking and probably swore a little bit. And I was like, you know what, just do what you gotta do, you know, and then I might have told you about it. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is I just, I feel like I’m not doing what I need to be doing. You know, it’s I’m slower.
But then it must have been maybe three weeks later. And I felt like a brand new person. So it was probably week six when I felt not great. And maybe a few weeks after that I started to feel different, better. And my body, adjusted the schedule to the food to get rid of things that were not fueling my body, I guess to say.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you, you know, adapt, embrace this whole low-carb approach to running. You got through the fat-adaptation period, it was a little bit challenging, a little terrible. Trade. Kelly’s always very honest with me about how she’s feeling. So I remember that. And then I remember you telling me about your 50k because you had this 50k planned, and you had a pretty good experience at that. 50k, tell us about that.
Kelly French
Well, I feel like a lot of the races that I do are never the weather is always down for so that was the first thing 24 hours before the run. It was nothing but down for the whole night. So we’re in the hotel room and I’m like, great, great. And you just hear it it’s just heavy. And so we got to the start I think was seven and it started at A and it was just a total down downpour. Granted this was a trail 50k and I knew it was going to be sloppy, I knew it was going to be a mess, but I was with two girls that I always run with just a fantastic group of women and we were going to embrace it anyway. It’s never gonna be perfect running conditions. You just figure it out and you do it.
So we did it. They did have a lot of it all to my do. I brought only the noon tablets that’s what I use. Um, and I did have some coffee before so I was feeling pretty good. And I would say maybe mile 10 or 11. They had some like rest areas and stuff where they had people there so they had electrolytes water, and usually if anyone who does trail they know a lot of this stuff is kind of garbage that they’re going to give you. There’s lot of candy needed, goldfish, cookies, you know. So I ended up doing a couple of pickles shots that they had their mile, I want to say 18-19 is when I started to feel a little bit cranky that I knew I was like, okay, I need something here.
So I ended up having half of a banana, some pickles, and I felt fantastic. And I just had my noon tablets. And I didn’t need anything else. So and then after, which was cool, they, you don’t have food for you. They have stuff for vegetarians, meat-eaters, whatever. So they had bean burgers, which I like and mix it with whatever you want. So and I felt fine. I wasn’t sick. I had no major GI issues during that run.
And the conditions were absolutely out of control. So the same loop twice that we did. There were a lot of people who dropped out who didn’t do it. There were even people who went as far as did the 50 miler, and it just down-poured the whole time. The second loop we did, was barely runnable you had water up to your knees. People were falling. And we just did it.
So it was and I did it with barely anything to eat. So and I felt great. I felt great. So yeah, that was awesome. I felt really good. Which a couple of years ago, if I did something like that, I would have probably felt like I had to eat two meals doing something like that. So but I felt great. And that was the first time where I got done with a run. And just felt fantastic. So, so awesome. Good. It was a really good feeling.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and to be able to do a 50k, which you know, that’s good, that’s a long time you’re out there running, it’s like between, you know, five and eight hours, depending on how long it takes you and especially in those conditions, you’re probably on the higher end of that.
Kelly French
I was gonna have flowers.
Patrick McGilvray
What was it six and a half? Something like that. Yeah. So that’s a long time to be out there running and to just be like, oh, yeah, I have like a half a banana, and some electrolytes. That’s so awesome. Another thing I didn’t mention is that you’re doing this and you’ve been doing this as a vegetarian. And a lot of people say, oh, you know, it’s really hard to do the low carb thing as a vegetarian or if you’re a vegan or something like that. So was that extra hard for you? Because I don’t, I don’t remember that being really that much of a challenge for you.
Kelly French
I have to say I would 100% disagree with somebody who would say that that’s difficult, um, even so, I would say, maybe two years ago, I did incorporate fish into my diet. So I was a vegetarian for many years. I was an overweight vegetarian is what I was. Um, but the last couple of years I did include fish. So even if I didn’t eat fish, I could tell you what I did. There are so many options.
There’s bean burgers, if you don’t want to buy them, you can make your own you could do the beyond sausage. I think they taste incredible. I eat them almost every single day to be quite honest with you. You could do mushrooms you could do all the greens you want. You could do fish. I love salmon. I do salmon at least two to three times a week. If you don’t like fish, all you have to do like I mean tofu – marinated tofu. I put tofu and buffalo sauce. You could do whatever you want to eat. You could grill it you could saute it. There are just so many options.
You know I have that a lot of the time with broccoli. You can put that with the shredded cheese you could do marinated Brussel sprouts with buffalo sauce. I put buffalo sauce on everything so there’s just there are way more options than you think. I was like that in the beginning. I was like huh, so then I had looked before I worked with you and I can tell you I’ve never eaten so many eggs in my life until I started this process.
I love a soup can scramble omelet pickled however you want. I’ve fallen in love with eggs. Eggs are awesome. Avocados do the trick. There are just so many options and you could fill your plate with all these different things and it’s awesome. There’s so much food, so many different things you can have. You just have to, you know, look it up. I did a lot of research on different foods I could have, you have a pamphlet that says foods that you know you recommend. To me, it was not even, it wasn’t even difficult now you were the first second with not eating meat.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, one of the things you mentioned was like the beyond product like the Beyond Meat products, which are, are gluten-free. They’re sort of they’re like plant-based burgers and sausages. But they don’t have a lot of carbs in them either. And they don’t use, you know, wheat or anything like that. And so they’re kind of made for people like you who are doing more of a low carb type of thing. And then what a good source of protein. So they’re loaded with good quality protein, like pea protein.
Kelly French
Yogurt, to a lot of the yogurts that I that have very low sugar have like 16 grams of protein. There are just a lot of options at the store that you want to think but I think super easy to do it without being a vegetarian, you could do it being a vegan, all you’re doing is cutting out all the carbs. It’s easier than you think.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, for sure. I just said that because I think I think that’s true. I believe that that is true. It is easier than you think. But I think it’s just people have this concept of like, if you’re going to do low carb, then you’ve got to be eating a bunch of meat. And that’s just really not the case. You just take out all the garbage trash. We mistake eating real food, right?
And so okay, so you set out at the beginning, I remember when you and I started out you were talking about losing a little bit of weight, you’re like, I just want to lose maybe 10 or 15 pounds. And then I remember on the very last day that we had our last coaching call, you’re like here’s my weight, and you’d lost how much exactly?
Kelly French
Now it’s 22 pounds. Oh, yeah, so my goal weight. This is, let me see. Eight pounds less than my RIT original goal weight with you. I had a number between this number between that number. And then I even and I didn’t even do it on, I don’t even do it on purpose. That’s the thing. Like this is just I don’t even the best part for me. This is, it’s so easy. You don’t have to track everything.
You don’t have to keep pressing numbers into a phone. I did use that carb adapted those carb app carbs. Yeah. And I tried that. I did that for a month, just so I knew what was in certain foods that I didn’t really know before. I don’t even use that at all. Now, I don’t have to track anything. It’s just my will. It’s just my life. It’s just what I eat, and I don’t pay attention to it anymore. So awesome.
Patrick McGilvray
And that’s sustainable. Because like, I don’t think it’s sustainable to be tracking your food every single day. I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Because then we start to get a little too obsessed with this stuff. You know, I encourage people to understand what their kind of macros look like and what a day looks like, of what they’re eating.
Like, how does this all break down? Like what are the calories look like where the carbs look like what is the protein look like? But at the end of the day, we want to just be like, you know, let’s put all that stuff away. And just make this like a lifestyle like you’ve done Kelly, which is so cool. So you recently did another ultra event. And you did a Ragnar Relay, but you did it in a little bit of a different way. Tell us what you guys did there.
Kelly French
Oh, yeah. So before COVID I was signed up for Ragnar to do in West Virginia. And then COVID happened so it got canceled. So then we just had it with a month ago. Yeah, mid-August. So we did West Virginia. So as I was on, there must have been 35 people total like just from our group, but people came from all over the place. But in our group alone, there were some people that had a team of eight, or a team of seven.
We were the women’s Ultra team. We had four and then there was another women’s team that came with us there was a team of four. Then there are people from all over. They had Ultras or they just had, you know, regular teams. And it was awesome, it was a really, really cool experience. And I would say, so it’s interesting.
So I would say two years ago, I would think that I was going to be not the weakest link on the team, but just maybe, you know, the person who may be the slowest one on the team, which at that time, I’m like, It’s all right, you know, no worries, you don’t really have a lot of goals, you’re just there to, quote-unquote, have fun. So throughout this time, I have just seen so much progress in just my speed, my endurance, my overall health.
So I was like, eff that I’m coming, I’m gonna like, I’m going to see what I can do during this thing. And I’m going to, I’m going to go out and it’s going to be awesome. So when you have an ultra team, you do two loops at a time. And so you’ll have two loops, and then two loops at night. And then two loops in the morning. So this was like 26 hours. And then I had a night run, which was a 10 miler.
And, you know, you have your headlamp, there are bears, there are roots everywhere, there’s bold, it’s technical, you have to climb. It was wild, you know, but it was beautiful. It was cool. The adventure was awesome. And by then, you know, you’re just dead after the night runs, you’re not really paying attention to your times, you’re not paying attention to a lot of stuff. You’re just there, you know, you’re able to see like strong people running, you know, friendships and people having fun laughing such a fun, supportive environment.
So, as we got into the morning, and we’re on, you know, our last loops, someone was like, you know, you guys are on track to get first place and the women’s Ultra, and I’m like, no, really? And I was probably delirious. I mean, I didn’t sleep in I don’t know 30 hours. Yeah. And I was like, that’s pretty sweet.
So I had a friend that she was on our team, she ended up having some GI issues. So I ran her loop at the end. And then another girl ran one of mine, and then I ran the last one. So then we’re finished. And they said, This is the first place women’s Ragnar, so we came in first. So cool, and it was like, and I was telling you that. I mean, that was a cool experience.
But I’m gonna just tell everybody this because I think it’s so important. I have a girl on my team, she has lost over 100 pounds I had to be I just met her within the last month. And I didn’t know her backstory, I haven’t known anything except for I see her at the gym, she does a lot of obstacle course stuff. She loves to do the running. And she finished and she started crying.
And she was like, I never would have thought in my life, I would do anything like this. And she’s like, I’m so happy, I can’t even tell you. And that is what was important to me. It wasn’t about the first place it was about seeing somebody else who reached a goal and who was in a place where they needed help and support. So it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that she had a before and after picture. And I was floored. I just couldn’t even believe it. It was her and she was on my team. And I just was like, you’re just so amazing. I’m so happy for you, you made this experience even that much better for me.
And then I kind of you know, I got home when it sunk in and like, Oh, we got first place, you know, then it’s like getting all like, this is awesome. I’ve never been in this situation before, you know. So I was looking at the results when it came to my legs. And I was like, I want to just compare them to like the other girls on my team and I want to compare them to maybe some of the other ladies who ran just to see where I was at.
And I’ll tell you, I was like at the same kind of pace or better than a lot of women. I would have never thought that it would be like that and that’s when I knew I am getting so much stronger because I’m at such and not even on purpose. Like it’s just I’m just getting faster and stronger and you know mentally and physically So that experience was awesome. But this is just an icing on the cake to be like, Oh, we got first place, let’s go.
Patrick McGilvray
And I don’t want you to downplay this at all, because you are doing this on purpose. You know what I mean? You are doing this on purpose like this is something you’ve been really focused on, is getting stronger and faster. And then this is one of the reasons why you set out to do this in the first place.
And when you lose 22 pounds, running is going to be easier, you know, and you’re going to be faster, you’re going to be a little more powerful as a runner. And then I remember you telling me and I want you to share this like picture in your mind of like, what it was, like you mentioned, like seeing somebody at that race at that ultra, and all the like, food or goos or whatever that they had, versus, versus what you had.
Kelly French
It’s just really funny, like where I’m at now. So I brought that I brought bananas. Um, I bought in the stores, they have like a Keto granola, like very low sugar, like a trail mix, like a cleaner trail, mostly nuts. Yeah. Correct. And then I brought, um, waters, noon tablets. That was it. But yeah, it’s just all water. Nothing really.
And I knew they were gonna have food trucks there anyway. Because I researched before. So I knew that there was going to be stuff that I could eat, and there were no grills or anything, so I’m not going to bring it.
So we’re with a bunch of different people. And so there’s like just one big tent with a canopy with just food in there. I mean, you name it. There’s like, I couldn’t even believe it there. Doritos, Oreos, sodas, Ginger Ales. Sandwich bread. Granted, there are food trucks there. And I’m just like, Oh, God, if I eat any of that like it’s over. Like, there’s no way I’m going to feel good on the runs. Because, I mean, you’re in the wilderness. There are no restrooms out there, you know?
Patrick McGilvray
So it’s like, I mean, I know what you mean.
Kelly French
One of those things. No, so I didn’t need anything. You know, I had dinner. I knew I wasn’t getting anything until after my first two loops were done. So I had a 3.5 and then a 4.5. And then I was like, Okay, then I’m going to eat dinner. I don’t want to eat really before. So they had like a bean burger, which I knew that they would have. They had eggs there. They had coffee they had and then I had my own stuff.
So I had like the night runs that stuff saved me. Because you’re feeling kind of crappy already. You haven’t been sleeping, you have to do 10 miles in the dark. You don’t know what’s going to be behind some of these boulders. So it’s like, that’s when I was, you know, had my banana. They had coffee. You know, if I wanted the trail mix, it was there. And I was fine. I had no stomach issues. And I was up for many hours. And I felt pretty good. Even on no sleep.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a good sign of that adaptation right there for sure. Yeah, I remember you describing like, you looked over and saw somebody some guy maybe that you were, you know, one of the runners out there. And he had this bag of like goos and gels and just like so much stuff. And you were thinking to yourself, like how many weeks do you plan on being out here with all that stuff that you brought with you, you know, bars and shoes and all kinds of stuff.
Kelly French
And there’s people drinking like a ton of beers there. Oh, oh, God, like I just can’t I can’t even imagine while you’re doing that. And then okay, go for your 10 Miles have a great time. It’s like no way. But yeah, it was nice to not act like that anymore. You know, you’re already nervous enough about I have to run the next day, and when you don’t and who wants to bring a load of food? I sure did it. So I feel like you’re gonna be just fine.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, yeah, for sure. You can eat in bring your own if there’s not, not a big deal. So anything else you want to share with us? Kelly, this has been really fun talking with you. But any other thoughts on any of this stuff?
Kelly French
I know I’ve told you many times, but I have to say what I’ve learned the most. And what I’m most happy about. It’s not about weight loss. I think in the beginning people have that mindset of, I just want to lose weight and, you know, be this or be that it has really overall helped me in my life.
You know, I have a new job now I’m, I have mental clarity, I’m physically stronger, faster, I’ve become a better person, you know, I’m volunteering on Tuesdays for Special Olympics, and I do track and field, there are so many things, I’m doing better myself because of this process. And it’s not, you know, just about the food. It’s just about you as a person, and how do you want to spend your life and what do you want from it, and I would say anyone who’s on the fence about working with you or getting the coaching, it is the best investment you could ever do for yourself.
100% It’s worth it, it’s your life, it’s, you know, becoming better, you know, sister, it helps me become a better spouse, friend, employee, just all of those things. Once you get your health under control, everything else just falls into place. And that’s just honesty. So that’s the bigger picture is it’s investing in yourself, you owe it to yourself, and people who are listening, you know, they’re listening for a reason. And they might be thinking, maybe this is something I’d want to do. And but I’m just not sure. But if you’re not sure, do it, just do it, you have nothing to lose everything to gain, and it’s your life, you know, life back.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, there’s this well, thank you for saying that, I really appreciate that. But there’s this real ripple effect that happens. And I talk about this a lot. It’s like you, we worry sometimes that we’re being selfish, you know, we worry that sometimes we’re like, oh, I’m, you know, taking care of myself, you know, and getting this coaching and losing the weight and getting healthy. Now, that’s just me being selfish.
It’s like, No, it’s not being selfish at all, your health is the most important thing that you have. And when you become healthy, and when you feel good about yourself, and you feel good mentally, emotionally, and physically, that has a ripple effect. It you know, you’re more fun to be around, you know, and you get more work done, and you’re a better mom, and you’re a better parent, and you’re a better spouse and all those things that you just mentioned.
So I’m glad you said that. Because, you know, it’s one thing to hear me talking about this stuff, but to hear your experience and to hear you actually say that this is what you’ve experienced and how it’s worked for you. This is really cool. So I just want to say thank you, Kelly, for like being here and sharing all this stuff with us. It’s been awesome.
Kelly French
Well, thank you for everything. Like I say you’re one in a million and you are and you help advocate and you know, you give people the knowledge and the tools and you’re supportive, and it’s it can just help you’re there to help people. And when people make the changes for the better.
Like I said, you came into my life at such an interesting time when I really needed it. And if I didn’t start listening to a podcast, like I would have never met you. It’s just like, What are the chances? You know, and then here I am. I’m just, I’m just a better version of myself right now. So it’s, it’s great.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, my gosh, Kelly is so awesome. Thank you so much, Kelly for the conversation that we had, it was so so fun. And remember September is four weeks to fat-adapted Running month over in the Running Lean coaching group, you will learn exactly how to become a lean fat-burning running machine and become the healthiest version of yourself yet, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us over there. Well, I hope you all got something out of this episode today. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to fuel your runs as a low-carb runner. It might be because we’re back in marathon season and your runs are starting to get longer. I …
Continue Reading about 84. Fueling Strategies for Low-Carb Running →
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 84 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today we’re going to be talking about fueling strategies for low carb running. Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to fuel your runs as a low carb runner. And that might be because, you know, all of a sudden we’re back in Marathon season, I know, where does the time go?
And maybe our runs are starting to get longer. I think it’s partly that. And I also think there’s some fear around this idea of like, I’m just afraid I’m going to bonk when I get up into these higher mileage runs.
And so, you know, and I get that totally because I was also very skeptical about fueling for these longer runs without using carbs without carb loading the days before a run and without using gels during a run.
Because that’s just the way I did it for like the first 15 years or so of my running. And it kind of worked, you know, and so I was thinking there’s just no other way to do this, right? Well, today, I’m here to tell you that there is another way.
And I’m going to share my thoughts and my experience around this topic, and offer up several different fueling strategies that you can try if you want to, you know, perform at your best as a low carb runner.
And I’m hoping by the end of this episode, you feel a little less fearful about those long runs and feel a little more confident about this low carb approach to running this fat adapted approach to running Cool.
Alright, so if you’d like this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a group that goes hand in hand with the podcast. It gives you a chance to ask questions and feel supported. It’s a fun, positive group of runners just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us we’re always doing fun stuff over there. So come check us out.
And here’s a recent five star review of the Running Lean podcast actually, I’m like, this is not recent. This is from awhile back. But I just found this I just saw this review and I was like, Oh, this is cool. I need to share this.
And this is from SBerger2020. And this person writes, “Running motivator with great info. I love listening to this podcast, I’m training for a triathlon and I couldn’t be happier with the topics to achieve those goals. Plus, I get lean in the process. Thank you for putting the amount of effort you do on this podcast, Patrick.”
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Okay, let’s talk about fueling strategies for low carb running. So if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I talk a lot about how awesome it is to be a fat adapted runner. Right? So fat adapted running just means you have changed your main source of fuel from sugar to fat, you know, you’re not burning carbs for energy, as much, we always are burning some glucose or glycogen for energy, we’re always burning some fat for energy.
But the ratios are much different when you’re fat adapted, much higher, burning much more fat. So some of the benefits of becoming a fat adapted runner, you have, basically the hunger issue goes away, right, you’re just no longer hungry all the time, no GI distress.
When you’re running, you become bonk proof, you can basically feel like you can run all day, and I’ve done up to eight hours of straight running without any fuel at all. So I can attest that, you know, now I haven’t gone 24 hours or anything like that.
But you know, you just feel like you can just keep going, it’s amazing. You always have plenty of fuel onboard, you know, you’re carrying around your own fuel source, you’re burning your own body fat, which is amazing. So you don’t have to carry fuel with you don’t have to carry all the gels and goos and blocks and all that other stuff or, or like pizzas or hoagies, whatever you take with you on your long runs, people take all kinds of stuff.
Some other benefits is obviously you’re burning fat. So you you tend to lose weight much more efficiently than if you’re eating a bunch of sugar and stuff like that. You have better focus and concentration you can like perform better when you’re out there running, you can think more clearly. And running is just easier. Okay.
But I think there’s a misconception that you always have to do your runs on fuel because I’ve talked a few times I’ve you know, talked on the podcast here about doing a marathon or a 50k on fuel. And I just want you to know that we don’t have to do everything on fuel. That’s not like necessarily the optimal way to go for everybody. Okay.
So when we talk about running sans fuel we’re kind of talking about running in the fasted state. So what does this mean? Why? Why do we? Well, you know, why would we run in the fasted state? Well, the fasted state just means you haven’t had any food, or, or quote unquote, fuel for, you know, 12 hours or so. Right?
In the definition of fasted could be different for different people. But that’s kind of the general rule of it. So when I say I’m running faster, that means I had dinner the night before I wake up in the morning, I might have some coffee, and then I go for a run. That’s what I mean by running in the fasted state. So it might be 8 or 10 hours. Usually, it’s about 10 to 12 hours of having no food. Alright, so that’s what we mean by running in the fasted state.
But why would we do this like Why run in that fasted state? Well, there’s a lots of reasons why we do this, it helps to boost your fat burning. So just being in that fasted state will lower your blood sugar and lowers your insulin, which will increase fat burning. So you you can burn fat more efficiently when you’re fasted as opposed to having fuel.
You produce alternative fuel sources like ketones while you’re in that fasted state and ketones you can use as fuel on we’re going to talk about that later on here today. You actually get an increase of energy when fasting people think you like you have a loss of energy but you don’t you you get a you produce more adrenaline, you have more energy, not less, you can actually train harder.
You can have more intense workouts you can run harder, so you don’t lose energy actually get an increase of energy, which is kind of cool. Running in the fasted state helps to decrease inflammation. So sugar, and specifically insulin is very pro inflammatory.
And if you want any proof of this, just like, if you’re doing like pretty low carb, just eat a bunch of sugar, and watch the scale go up the next day, like three pounds, I did this recently, I ate a bunch of carbs. And I gained three pounds over the course of a day and a half, basically.
So when we eat sugar, it raises our blood sugar insulin gets raised in, try to bring that blood sugar down. And insulin is very pro inflammatory. So you can actually decrease inflammation, which is a good thing when you’re running, you know, especially if you’re doing long distance type of running, right.
So you get a decrease in inflammation when you’re running in the fasted state, you get more growth hormone produced when you’re running in the fasted state. Which growth hormone is awesome, because it helps to increase bone density helps to increase muscle mass and helps you to recover faster from these longer harder workouts.
So fasting, basically, you know, running in the fasted state allows you to train harder, recover faster, it speeds up the fat adaptation process. So if you’re trying to become fat adapted, if you’re making that transition to from being like more of a sugar burner to being a fat burner, then one of the keys to fat adaptation is like you’ve got to force your body to start using your own body fat for fuel.
And one of the best ways to do this is just not eat anything at all and then go run. That way your body like it will use up whatever glucose is available, whatever glycogen is available. And then it’ll have to like go into your fat stores, or the stored body fat for fuel, which is cool, right?
Because this process of switching from burning, you know, glycogen mostly, or glucose to fat, it takes several weeks, you know, the fat adaptation processes is not super simple. It’s like uncomfortable. But when you’re running fasted, it actually helps to speed up the process, right? It helps helps to shorten the uncomfortable adaptation period. So anyway, there’s all these amazing benefits of running in the fasted state.
But do you have to do all your runs fasted? And the answer is no, you don’t. And there’s different ways that you can fuel for running, you could just go to sugar, you could just go like eat goos and carb load and you know, do your Fettuccine Alfredo the night before, or whatever it is. But that is not recommended. Because you’re going to like totally throw off your whole fat adaptation game when you do that.
Okay, so we want to think of alternative fuel sources, right? And so here’s something I want you to consider, like, when should you think about fueling for your run? So I think you can do a lot of your runs on fuels and I think you should, I think it’s very, you know, advantageous to do that. To do a lot of your runs in that fasted state, because you’re going to tap into a lot of natural processes that your body has, you know, that fat adaptation, the fat burning, the growth hormone, the adrenaline, all those things, take advantage of that stuff. Why not?
But there’s times when you might want to think about fueling for your runs. Okay. And so when when should you think about fueling for your run? So of course, that depends on you and your goals, as everything it depends, right. So, you know, I’ve done two marathons and a 50k, within the last nine months or so, totally unfueled.
And, like, is this the way everybody should do it all the time? I don’t know. Maybe you could try it. Maybe not. This season we just started marathon training, you know, one or two months or so ago. So for this upcoming marathon in October, I’m practicing with some different fueling strategy. So I want to try something different.
And I want to try some different fuels. And this is kind of why I’m talking about this today, because it’s very much on my mind, I’m experimenting with all these cool things right now. So back to the question like when should you start thinking about a fueling strategy for running?
Let me I’m going to go into a higher level really quickly here. I want to look at a higher level of fat adaptation and then I’ll come back to this question. I’m not doing this on purpose. I’m just trying to like I want to make sure we understand what we mean when we talk about being fat adapted, okay.
When you’re fat adapted, you’re much more efficient at using fat for fuel. Alright, we’re always burning, both glucose and fat. We’re always burning some glucose or glycogen, glycogen is just glucose that’s stored in your muscles. And it can be used by your muscles directly within the muscle that it’s stored in, okay?
And so we’re always burning some glucose and fat, but the ratios change, when you’re fat adapted, you’re definitely gonna be burning more fat more efficiently. Your body produces plenty of glucose on its own, to fuel your muscles while you’re running, even at higher intensities.
And there’s this kind of myth out there that like, well, if you want to run faster, you have to use carbohydrate as fuel. And you don’t. I mean, this is like old school thinking. And you know, it does work. If you’re carb adapted, you can definitely use carbohydrates for more intense intensities of running. But you don’t have to do that.
So there’s been some studies done. And the one that kind of comes to mind is this faster study was done a few years back. And they showed that. So they had two different groups, they had a low carb group of athletes and a high carb group of athletes. So they were this group of ultra endurance athletes that were, you know, some of them had been on a high carb diet for many years, and some of them have been on a low carb diet for many years.
And they noticed that in the low carb group, you know, the peak fat oxidase oxide, oh my gosh, the peak fat oxidation was 2.3 fold higher than it was in the high carb group. Okay. So basically, what they’re saying is, the people in the low carb group were burning 2.3 times more fat more efficiently than the high carb group. Okay.
Basically, the conclusion of the study is this compared to highly trained ultra endurance athletes consuming a high carb diet, the long term fat adaptation results in extraordinarily high rates of fat oxidation, whereas muscle glycogen utilization and repletion patterns during and after a three hour run are similar. So that was the conclusion.
And basically, what it means is this: even elite Ultra marathoners who were running hard for three hours, you know, the low carb and the high carb performances were very similar. And my takeaway is that you can absolutely run faster and run harder, and you don’t need to carb load and suck down all the gels to do it, you can do it as a fat adapted athlete. Okay.
So the main thing that I want you to take away from this right here is that, you got to understand that when you’re fat adapted, and you eat a bunch of sugar, or carbs, all of that fat burning is put on hold while you’re metabolizing, the carbohydrate load. This is very important to understand.
And I talk to weight loss clients about this all the time, who are like, oh, you know, I just want to like, you know, eat some sugar and eat some carbs is that okay if I do that every now and then? I’m like, I’m not recommended because when you’re metabolizing, the carbohydrate load, all the fat burning is being put on hold. Right.
So as a fat adapted runner, I don’t want to fuel with carbs because it shuts down this very efficient fat burning engine that I’ve worked so hard to build, maintain. So today, my body’s running like a clean burning Tesla engine. And adding carbs into the mix is like putting gas into that Tesla motor, just it doesn’t work, it’s gonna cause all kinds of issues, it’s just totally not going to work at all.
Okay, so getting back to the question at hand, when should you start thinking about fueling your runs? So now that you understand why you want to stay fat adapted and take advantage of that clean burning engine source, that clean burning fat burning engine that we’re talking about? Let’s talk about fuel.
I suggest just as a general rule that you do most of your runs fasted up to a certain point. So what point is that only you can answer that and I want to encourage you to do a little experimenting with this and test the waters in push yourself and see what you’re capable of.
Go longer and longer without fuel. What is that going to be for you? 12 miles? 14? 16? 18? I don’t know. But figure it out. I think it’d be super fun to try.
You can always take something with you in case you need it. And I’m gonna give you some suggestions on that in a second here, but, but I want you to see what you’re capable of, I want you to see what it’s what it’s like to run for 12 or 16 miles, without any fuel at all, and see, you know how that feels for you as an individual?
And if you like that feeling, why not just keep it going? Do you know what I mean? Like, why not just take advantage of that if it works pretty well for you, okay. And I find that when I’m running fasted when I’m running without fuel, and I get to like mile 12, or so I actually feel like I have more energy, like my energy levels begin to increase, because the longer I’m out there, the more efficient my body is, is burning fat. And why wouldn’t I want to keep that going?
You know, when I see other people around me, if we’re doing a 20 mile run, and I get to mile 12 or 14, other people are starting to fade, their energy is like starting to decrease. Mine is increasing. I mean, it’s not like I can sprint all of the sudden, running is still hard. Okay, but I feel like I just have plenty of juice, and I can just keep going plenty of gas in the tank, I can just keep going.
Okay, so what is that right distance for you? Only you can figure that out. But I want to encourage you to try it and figure it out and see how long you can go without fueling yourself. But fueling is definitely an option. So let’s get into this a little bit here.
One of the things I need to say before we get into like what types of fuel to try, you have to practice these fueling strategies before your race, right? Nothing new on race day. That is our mantra when it comes to long distance running. We never do anything new on race day. I learned this the hard way.
During my very first marathon back in geez, was it 1990 or 2006? I ran my first marathon and I had heard somebody talk about, you know, having like caffeine during their marathon and it helped them. It gave them a boost of energy. And sugar was good, you know? And I was thinking, hmm, I think I was at Starbucks or something.
And I saw this like package of chocolate covered espresso beans. And I thought, well, that’s perfect. I’ll just take these with me on my marathon. This could be awesome. So I stuck a bunch of these chocolate covered coffee beans in a baggie. I put them in my pocket. I had never tried this during a run before. Okay.
And so I’m out there running. I don’t know I got to mile, I was at about 14. And I’m like, Oh, I’m gonna try a little energy here. So I reached into my pocket I grabbed this baggie of these coffee beans. Okay, first of all, they had totally melted like the chocolate was just all over the place. It was a huge mess. And I couldn’t even like stick my fingers in there without like getting totally messy.
So I’m like, trying to like dig the coffee beans out of the plastic bag with like my tongue, like shoving this bag in my mouth trying to get these coffee beans. So I eat a bunch of these. Now melted chocolate drenched coffee beans. And I started chewing on these things.
And I just started coughing like crazy because all those little bits of coffee beans got like stuck in my throat. And were super irritating to my throat and I went into this coughing fit for like the next couple of miles. It was horrible. And I honestly don’t think I got any kind of benefit from doing this. But this was just a good experiment. And a good lesson for me of like, don’t do anything new on race day.
Had I tried this in a training run, it would have been super clear that this is a stupid idea. Okay. But instead I was just like, Oh, what the hell, let’s give it a shot, you know? So that was a terrible idea. Okay.
But anyway, you want to make sure that you’re practicing, you know, your fueling strategy several times before your race. And I suggest trying a few different options here from some of the stuff I’m going to talk about here, try a few different things and see what works best for you.
Okay, so with this in mind, you may want to pick a distance like any run over like 15 miles, you know, or 12 miles, whatever it is, pick a distance and then just start practicing your fueling plan on these longer runs. Alright, because the only way you’re going to know what works for you is if you try some things, okay? There’s no right or wrong way to do it.
Find something that works for you. Try it a few times on these longer runs. And then you know, just go with that, you know, then you know that it’ll work for you on race day. Okay. So for me, I’m trying a bunch of different fueling strategies right now. So I’m trying on on anything like 10 miles and over, just to see like, hey, what works, what doesn’t and so far I’ve had some pretty good results.
So some of the options I’m going to talk about here, some of the different products and fuel options, and I’m going to talk about some of the criteria for me is that I want to make sure that I maintain fat burning as much as possible, because I want to take advantage of that I don’t want anything that’s going to shut down the fat burning engine while I’m running.
Okay, so I’m very careful about which fuels I’m choosing and the ones that I’m sharing with you today are the ones that I know are, are not going to shut down that fat burning process. Okay, so some of the things I’m looking for, make sure there’s no sugar in there, make sure there’s no weird ingredients, I want to make sure that this product will at least maintain or improve that burning.
Some of these actually help you improve that burning, which is cool. You’ve got to be able to take them with you on your runs. Some are better than others from that perspective. They have to taste good. And they have to have been like field tested like things that have been around for a while they’ve been proven to work. So let’s get into this.
Here are some fueling strategies for low carb burning. The first one that I love and I use this all the time is MCT oil. MCT oil is medium chain triglycerides. And these are naturally occurring fats that are found in things like coconut oil and palm oil. MCT oil itself is typically made from coconut oil, and this is the one you want to use right.
Don’t use stray coconut oil because that also contains the long chain triglycerides, we want to stick with the medium chain triglycerides because these are more readily available as fuel. Okay. MCT’s behave differently compared to LCT’s. So instead of having to be broken down and digested by the body, the MCT’s are sent directly from the gut to the liver, where they can be used as a source of energy by the body. Or sometimes they’re quickly turned into ketones ketones is another type of fuel I’m going to talk about in a minute.
But because of this fast turnaround, the calories from MCT are less likely to be stored as fat so you’re not storing the fat from the MCT you’re actually using it as energy. So MCT’s have been around forever. People use these all the time for mental clarity, your brain loves MCT’s as a fuel source.
And some of the benefits of using MCT’s for running is that helps to improve energy output. So they’ve done some studies that show that consuming MCT’s pre workout maybe 30 to 45 minutes before a workout can help people increase their total energy output during the training. MCT has helped to increase fat burning. So they’ve done some research. And they suggest that fatty acids like MCT oil as a pre workout fuel, give you you know a little bit more bang for your buck from a fat burning perspective.
So they they did this study where they actually took cyclists and cyclists were actually able to easily tap into fat as a fuel source while maintaining a high level of performance output. And once they were fat adapted their bodies were able to burn fat as a cleaner source of fuel kind of like what I was talking about earlier, without having to tap into muscle glycogen.
So it actually helps to, you know, spare muscle glycogen meaning that you you’re going to have more muscle glycogen available for longer periods of time. Another benefit of using MCT oil is that helps to reduce lactate buildup in athletes. So during exercise, you know rising lactate levels can negatively impact your your performance right?
MCT may help to reduce lactate buildup. So they did this study where they took athletes who took about a teaspoon and a half of MCT with food before cycling and they had lower lactate levels and found it easier to exercise compared with people taking long chain triglycerides. So pretty interesting stuff.
But definitely you’re going to notice an energy performance. I use MCT oil every day I just add a little bit to my coffee in the morning and it gives me energy for hours. So how to use MCT is like one to two tablespoons around 30 minutes before a workout is recommended. But here’s the thing with MCT is you’ve got to build up to that.
Because they can be a little bit harsh on your gut, like some people have stomach issues, when they first start doing MCT oil. So start with like a teaspoon a day, and then work your way up to a tablespoon or two. And the the energy boosts that you get from MCT oils lasts for several hours.
So if you’re out there running, you know, 15 miles or so you probably don’t need to re-up your MCT intake. But if you’re going to do a marathon, or anything that’s going to be longer than that every two to three hours, you can do another tablespoon or two of MCT oil. So there’s a very clean source of fuel directly just gives you energy without, you know, a bunch of calories and stomach issues and all that other stuff. So experiment with it. Try it this is a good is a good, very well proven fuel strategy for low carb burners.
Another thing that I’ve tried in the past and have had some pretty good luck with is just something very natural, it’s nut butter. So there’s a brand called Justin’s.And Justin’s makes these little packets of nut butter, you can find these in the grocery store, they’re in the same aisle with all the peanut butter and almond butter and stuff like that.
And the packets are cool, you can take them on a run just like you would a gel packet, okay. But here’s what they do, they give you fat and protein. So the fat gives you some energy, right. So you can actually your body can actually make energy from the fat that you eat, as well as your stored body fat.
So the fat that you eat, and that becomes, you know, metabolized is called free fatty acids. And you can actually derive energy from fat as you consume it, which is awesome, especially if you’re a fat adapted athlete, you’re much more efficient at burning fat in general, you can derive fat energy from these free fatty acids very easily.
And then protein. Protein helps to prevent muscle breakdown during endurance activities, it helps to boost glycogen storage. So your body you know, glycogen is is glucose that your body is storing in muscles. Protein helps to increase the glycogen storage. And it helps to reduce muscle soreness and promote muscle repair. So during long distance activities, fat and protein are recommended.
As you know, fuel sources to help support muscles help you to feel less sore help you to promote muscle repair, glycogen storage, and then the fat gives you the energy. Okay, so in a little packet of the Justin’s almond butter, for example, there’s 19 grams of fat, 6 grams of protein, and then a few grams of carbs, like 5 grams of carbs, and that’s from almonds.
And they also make a peanut butter as well. Just make sure that when you guys are using something like this to check the ingredients because most peanut butters or almond butters – and Justin’s especially has a bunch of different flavors, they all have sugar in them. So you want to just go for the classic almond, or classic peanut butter packets and those don’t have any sugar in them at all, there’s a couple of carbs from the from the nuts, but that’s about it.
So how to use nut butter, just take one packet every, you know, take one about 30 to 45 minutes before your workout or your long run and then once every 60 minutes or so. So I used these during a 50k a few years back, I use just a few packs of this almond butter. And I really didn’t need very many of these things. A few of them was okay.
Here’s the thing with these things you got. It’s not like a gel like it’s not super thin. It’s very thick. It’s not super easy to get down. Like to get them out of these packets and actually get them down. Like it requires a little bit of effort. I had to like stop and like, yeah, like it’s almost like you’re chewing the peanut butter or the almond butter. You know, it’s like a lot thicker than you would expect it to be. So this is one of those things where you definitely want to experiment with it. But it’s a great option for sure because it gives you that fat and protein for fuel.
Alright, another fuel option would be using exogenous ketones. So what are we talking about here? So ketones are little bundles of fuel that your body makes when you burn fat, right? We’re all producing ketones all the time. Everybody is like if you’re burning fat, you’re producing some ketones, okay, and just some people burn more when you’re fat adapted, it means you’re probably producing more ketones, which is fine like you, you know, this is a good source of, of energy for your body and for your brain.
So on a standard diet, when you’re eating a lot of sugar, your cells will use, you know, glucose for energy. But if you’re eating a low carb diet, you know, you’re keeping your carbs low enough. So your body, you know, you don’t have a lot of that glucose to use for energy, you know, you’re going to burn more fat as your main energy source. And this is what it means to be fat adapted.
So when you’re fat adapted, your liver actually breaks that down into ketone bodies, and then sends those ketone bodies through your bloodstream to fuel your cells. Okay? There’s three main ketone bodies that your liver makes when it breaks down fat.
The first is beta, beta hydroxy butyrate, BHB. The second is acetyl acetate. And the third is acetone. Acetone is actually created as a byproduct of acetyl acetate. But let’s not talk about those second two, we’re just kind of focused on BHB beta hydroxy butyrate.
So when you burn fat, you generate BHB. And that leads to the creation of ATP through the Krebs cycle. And this gives you energy, right, so just what you just need to know about this is that being fat adapted means you’re probably producing some BHB. And you’re getting energy from that, okay?
ATP is an energy source, adenosine triphosphate. This is a high energy molecule that your body stores for use as energy. But your body can only use a very limited amount of ATP. This is like used for explosive things that you can do for maybe 10 or 30 seconds total. And so for longer distance activities like running, you need a different source of fuel.
So when you run out of ATP, your body can use energy from glycogen circulating glucose free fatty acids. In this case, we’re talking about BHB or ketones, okay? So when you take exogenous ketones, exogenous – this means you’re getting them from outside your body. Endogenous would mean you’re creating them yourself.
But we’re talking about taking exogenous ketones, your your body can actually use that energy immediately, which is super cool. It doesn’t have to like go through a process of, you know, digesting and all these other things, right. So when it comes to endurance exercise performance, exogenous ketones will give you long lasting energy.
And it has a couple of other benefits too, which is that helps to increase your mental clarity and focus helps you to burn more fat more efficiently, decreases hunger and decreases inflammation. So I’ve been experimenting with exogenous ketones, and I have to tell you, I love them. I love taking these things. How to do it, well take a scoop of these, like it’s just a mix, you mix into water, or I mix it into a protein drink or something like that. Take it about 30 to 45 minutes before a workout, and then they suggest maybe a half a scoop for each additional hour.
So you know if you’re doing an ultra or or you know, you want to do a competitive marathon, you want to run fast. You know, another half a scoop each hour that you’re out there running is is perfect. So you don’t have to do a ton. There’s two types of ketones, exogenous ketones, there’s ketone salts and ketone esters.
And here’s the difference. So ketone salts is BHB is attached to a mineral. So it’s like sodium, potassium and magnesium. They’re longer lasting than ketone esters. They’re less potent, but they last longer. And they you can actually you can tolerate the taste of them. Okay? Ketone esters are attached to an alcohol molecule. They’re shorter lasting, they’re more potent, but apparently, the taste is almost unbearable.
The main difference between the two is the duration. So ketone esters give you a shorter, larger like spike in ketones while the ketone salts give you a longer lasting more moderate spike. Ketone esters apparently are terrible, like really terrible, and I’m just not even bothered trying them.
The ketone salts that I’ve tried, they last longer, they taste fine. They’re more it’s like the one you’ll find if you go if you just do a little search on Amazon or something for exogenous ketones, most of what you’re gonna see is ketone salts. Just try to avoid the ketone esters, I don’t think you’d like that too much.
Another source of fuel that, and this has kind of been my go to for my low carb running these days, which is s-fuels. So s-fuels is a product that’s made for people like you and me who are long distance endurance athletes who like are trying to do the low carb thing, you know, they understand exactly where we’re coming from.
And so they’ve created products that help us to, you know, maintain fat burning, enhanced fat burning for long distance events. So, they have two different products. One is called Train and the other is called Race Plus. And the Train product is for athletes who, you know, are doing, it’s a little bit lower intensity.
So this is this is good for the everyday runner who’s out there doing training runs, or even if you’re doing a, you know, lower intensity marathon race or long distance event be perfectly fine for you. Okay.
The main ingredients here, they use collagen peptides is protein MCT. So there’s MCT oil in this product. There’s l glutamine, which is an amino acid. So this is one of the building blocks of protein. And it has electrolytes, so sodium, calcium, potassium. So, these ingredients are formulated in a way that helps you to burn fat more efficiently. It gives you some fuel like from the MCT’s, it gives you some protein from the collagen peptides.
And then you get this L glutamine which helps to reduce inflammation and, and minimize, you know, protein or muscle loss during exercise. Okay, so and then it’s got electrolytes in it too. So it’s a really good product. And I’ve been using this for my longer runs my 10 mile-ish runs so far.
You just mix it in with water, it has, it’s a very, it has a water like consistency. It’s very tasty. And I love it. And so far, it’s been really good. It’s been I think it helps me on these longer runs that just stay in that fat burning mode and just enhances that fat burning mode. A
nd then they have another product called Race Plus. And it basically has the same ingredients as the the Train product, but it has something called highly branched pre jet pre digested cyclic starches, which is a carbohydrate source. Okay, this is a very low kind of glycemic carbohydrate. It’s like 15 grams of carbohydrate per serving.
And it’s like a slow burning type of carbohydrate that allows you to still, it does give you some carbohydrate burning, but it also helps to with fat oxidation, in other words, like you can still burn fat, but you’re burning some carbohydrate as well. So it kind of helps you to do both. And I haven’t tried this product, honestly, I just don’t do much at the higher intensities. So I’m just like, I don’t know, I really don’t need it.
But apparently, the the people that use it, the elite athletes and stuff like that, that are fat adapted really love it, because it does give them a little bit of a, a boost because of the carbohydrate in there without shutting down fat burning. And that’s the important part here. We want to make sure you’re doing both efficiently. Okay.
Then there’s another product that a lot of people have been talking about recently, which is, and I have not tried this one. And this is the next one on my list of try, which it’s been around for a while. And the key ingredient is something they call super starch. So super starch is a corn starch kind of derivative. And it’s a complex carbohydrate that doesn’t spike your blood sugar. It delivers a slow and steady release of glucose into the bloodstream.
So it’s not going to crank up your blood sugar and not going to crank up insulin and it’s not going to shut down fat burning off together. It might slow it down a little bit. But it gives you this stable blood sugar and stable steady energy. And supposedly it’s a very good product for long distance running. Again, I haven’t tried this one but people love this. All right.
They have a couple of different products. They have an energy powder, which is something you can do beforehand. So just like 30-45 minutes before your workout. Do this powder. And then you can add, you know, another serving of this every 60 to 90 minutes. Okay?
They also have a product, which this is interesting is energy gels, they’re called Edge Energy Gels. And so you can do a pouch 30 minutes before an exercise, and then do one every 60 minutes or so for workouts that are like over nine minutes long.
And this is kind of cool, because it’s a pouch of like, it’s like a gel that you can take with you. That is a very slow burning carbohydrate. But it doesn’t shut down the fat burning process either. So this is one I’m definitely going to be trying and I’ll get back to you guys on that.
So those are the main fuel options for low carb running, I think these are all very viable. And none of these will shut down the fat burning, they will all help you to stay fat adapted while you’re running and take advantage of all the benefits of being a fat adapted runner. And there’s one more that I wanted to mention, this is an element. This is not really a fuel. It’s an electrolyte mix, but it’s product, lMNT. It’s by elemental labs. And if you’re out there running, especially in this heat, you have to like replenish your electrolytes. It’s just so important.
And this is a great product, no sugar, it’s just sodium, potassium, magnesium, low flavoring, little stevia tastes great. People love it. And it works really well. So whether you’re doing a fasted workout or you’re using some of these other fuels, make sure you’re getting your electrolytes in somehow. Okay, and element is a great way to do that. All right, cool.
Well, be sure to join us over in the Running Lean coaching group for August because we’re taking a deep dive like I was mentioned earlier into these thought feeling action patterns, how they show up for you how you can change them so you can start getting the results that you want around weight loss around running around your health and fitness goals. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us in the Running Lean coaching group would love to see you in there.
And I hope you got something out of this episode today. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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