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228. Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend
This past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati - Flying Pig Weekend! I did a lot of racing this weekend and let’s just say that things did not all go as …
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Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 228 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend. So this past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati, the Flying Pig Marathon weekend.
And I did a lot of racing this weekend. And we’ll just say that things did not all go as planned. But despite dealing with some very challenging situations, the whole weekend was actually a huge success both for the city for moving thousands and thousands of runners and for me personally.
So today here on the podcast, I’m going to share my experiences in dealing with these challenges. And then the lessons that I learned along the way, all during the Flying Pig weekend.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, losing weight, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help get you there, consider coaching. The fact is coaching works where other methods fail, because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine.
It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do it on your own. One thing I tell all my coaching clients is that I want you to not meet with me at some point, you have to be able to do this stuff on your own.
My job is to make sure you get there. What good is making these lifestyle changes if they aren’t sustainable for you? This stuff has to be easy, and effortless for you. And it will be if you stick with it. And my job is to make sure you stick with it.
So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss and your running goals, let’s work together to get you there. Just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. And I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
Okay, so this past weekend was Flying Pig marathon weekend here in Cincinnati. The most exciting and most fun weekend of the year if you’re a runner. I don’t know about what other people think of this weekend, they might think it’s annoying, because there’s so many people here, but I personally think it’s like better than Christmas. So, so fun.
And listen, if you’re ever interested in coming to Cincinnati to do this race, you should. The Flying Pig was recently voted the number one marathon in the United States. According to USA Today’s 10 Best Reader’s Choice Awards. Very, very huge award to be awarded the number one marathon in the US according to readers, not according to some judges or something like that. These are actual people. So come and do the Flying Pig it’s super, super fun.
You don’t have to do the full marathon. There’s a whole weekend of events. I’m gonna talk about all the stuff that I did this weekend. But Cincinnati is just a great, great city for this kind of thing.
Cincinnati has had a very long history of a very active running community. We used to have this running store here, Bob Roncker’s Running Spot. And he started it back in the 80s and how to run in a group associated with that running store. And the running group became very big.
It was over 1500 people in the running group at one point. And we had to meet at different locations. And we had different pace groups. So we kind of broke it up into four different groups. And I’ve been a part of that group since like 2004, I think. And it’s just been an amazing community here in Cincinnati and Bob Roncker really helped to build that running community here in Cincinnati.
They sold the store, Bob sold the store, and the running group sort of splintered off into several other groups. And now Cincinnati has maybe five pretty big running groups that are in different parts of the community here in different parts of town. And they’re all pretty big.
You know, some of them might have four or 500 people some might have more, some might have a few hundred, but a great, great place for running and the Flying Pig marathon has been going on for a long time and just a super fun event.
They do a really, really good job and it’s a lot of fun. And everything started out Friday with the expo and the expo here is a great Expo super fun. They do it at the convention center. tons of vendors, great deals on gear and shoes.
It was really fun to see all my running friends, you know, people that are all excited about running over the weekend, everybody’s picking up their packets and their T-shirts and complaining about the T-shirts, because that’s what we do. Because we’re runners. Nobody’s ever happy. I kid, I kid. But seriously, it’s good to get these T-shirts, right? But it was so exciting.
It kicks off the whole weekend. And I spent a few hours at the expo just soaking it all up and talking with friends and just had such a fun time. And by the way, I did meet a few of the podcast listeners over the weekend.
And if you are somebody that came up to me and said hi, I just want to say thank you for being a listener. And thanks for coming up and saying hi to me, because it makes me feel good that there’s actual people out there that are listening to this stuff.
I’m sitting here in my office, talking into a microphone looking at some notes. And I’m just like, Is anybody out there listening? And it’s really cool when I see an actual person go, Hey, Patrick, I listen to your podcast and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s so great.
One person in particular, I’ll just call them Bailey, who I met in the corrals for the 10k. And we spent a little bit of time just hanging out waiting for the start of the race. And you know, he’s from Memphis, he came up here to do the Flying Pig. They’ve been up here before, him and his wife.
And they love Cincinnati and really had a great time. So Bailey, you’re one of those people who came up and said hi to me. And so I really appreciate that. And it was great to meet you. But the expo was super fun.
After the expo, I went down to run the one mile. So the one mile they do just kind of a fun run. I mean, some people do take it seriously. Because I was doing a whole series of events. So my weekend event was the three-way challenge, which is the one mile on Friday night. And then I did the 10k and the 5k on Saturday. And then Sunday was a half marathon.
So I was doing all the events. I was trying to save myself for Sunday, because I wanted to have a really good half marathon on Sunday. And I took it easy on Friday night. So I did the one mile and didn’t race it, I kind of ran comfortably hard because it’s hard not to it’s like I’m just running a mile. And everybody around you is running kind of fast.
So I held like a steady 8:30 pace or something like that for a mile. Felt good and finished, you know, fine, whatever hung out afterwards with some friends and so many people downtown. And they have a big celebration after each race and a big area with booths and food and drinks and all kinds of stuff.
And also the Reds were playing Friday night and Saturday, I think the Cincinnati FC Game, our soccer team, was playing. So there was a ton going on this weekend, it was just so much fun. So after the one mile I hung out with some friends ended up going home and then you know, took a shower and what not.
And I tried to kind of wind down but I was sort of wound up you know because you just run and then it’s you know, nine o’clock at night or whatever. And you’re just wired, you know, still so I stayed up for a little bit.
And the goal, my goal, my intention for Friday night was to get a really good night’s sleep. So I always make this point of getting a really good night’s sleep two days before the race because the night before the race, typically, you don’t get a very good night’s sleep. Right?
So I’ve done this a few times. And I know that so I’m like, okay, Friday, and I’m just gonna go to bed early, get a good night’s sleep. I did not get to bed really early. It was about 10:30. And I finally you know, went to bed and I’m like, It’s fine. I mean, I gotta get up at like, 4:30 tomorrow, but it’s fine. I like to get eight hours of sleep. I did not get eight hours of sleep. I’m gonna tell you that.
So I go to sleep. And I am awakened from a deep, deep sleep by the fire alarms going off in my building here. And basically the fire alarm saying there’s been a fire detected in your area, you need to evacuate the building immediately. And I was like, Oh my god.
So I jump out of bed throw on my shoes. I’m delirious and I’m going down the stairs and when everybody’s falling down the stairs in the building, there’s probably 200 or so units in this building. So a lot of people were all falling out onto the street. I’m completely delirious because I just fallen asleep and I gotta get up in a few hours here you know?
And this is like at 11:30, I’ve only been asleep for like an hour. I was out hard and so we had to stand outside and wait for the fire department to come to clear the building to make sure there wasn’t an actual fire or something, you know, horrible going on. There was no fire. I don’t know why the fire alarms went off. False alarm I guess.
So I finally went back upstairs now I’m wide awake. It’s midnight, and I ended up you know, not getting to sleep till about 12:30 or so knowing that I had to get up in like four hours. So Friday night’s sleep plan, thwarted, completely thwarted, like I’m just telling you that I felt so terrible Saturday morning when I got up.
So I get up, and I’m going to run the 10k and the 5k, I wanted to get a good parking spot, and there’s a parking garage right near the start and finish. And you gotta get there early to make sure you get a good spot, whatever. So I get down there early, got a great spot.
And I’m waiting around to start this 10k. And I am just delirious, I can’t think straight. I was supposed to meet some friends down there, can’t find them. And I’m just like, whatever, I am just going to do my best here today.
And that 10k was rough, kind of a warm weekend, you know, so Sunday was pretty warm. But it was kind of warm in the morning. And so I just decided, you know, this is just to get it done situation, I gotta run a 5k later, I gotta run a half tomorrow. So let’s just enjoy this 10k and not run too hard, which I didn’t, and struggled a little bit about halfway till about halfway through. And then I was fine. And I just was like, that’s fine.
I didn’t run fast. It was like an hour, a little over an hour, 1:04 something like that. So I just finished the 10k got done with that, you know, went to my car, changed my clothes. And I had to change clothes because I was smart, you know, I thought about that. I got dry clothes on because I was soaking wet, dry socks, it was amazing.
So I get ready standing in the crowds for the 5k getting ready to run that thing that the 10k started at 7am. The 5k was supposed to start at 9:00. So 8:30 or so I’m like in the corral, standing around waiting for the 5k to start. Within a few minutes before the start time people just start walking away. And we’re looking around like what’s going on?
Well, apparently, there’s a big storm coming. And so they told everybody to go take shelter, and that they’re going to delay the start of the race by an hour. And we were like, okay, they didn’t announce that. They just had a couple of people walking around. Well, I don’t know how many people are standing in line for that 5k,10,000 or something like that, it’s a huge, huge amount of people.
So they just went around and like kind of told everybody there’s a big PA system. I don’t know why they didn’t use that to tell everybody. Maybe they had to turn it off because there was lightning around. I don’t know, it was very confusing.
So anyway, we went to the parking garage, I went to my car, hung out with some friends. And I’m thinking I’m looking at the radar. And I’m thinking there’s no way this thing is going to start in an hour because the storm is going to be on top of us in an hour, which it was.
And at 10am The Flying Pig sent a text everybody’s saying that the race is going to be delayed until noon. Okay, so from 9am start time till noon is three hours later. I was like, oh my god, what is happening here?
So I went to my car, I watched some TV, I have a Tesla. So it’s got the Hulu in there, you know, Netflix and stuff like that. So I watched a little Hulu, that was nice. But I gotta tell you, I was so tired. So exhausted. So I just kind of leaned my seat back and I took like a 20 minute nap. That was amazing, by the way.
But still, it’s like, you know, now it’s only 11. Like, we still got another hour wait. And I was just like starting to get all stiff, you know, because you run a 10k. And then you sit around for three hours, you’re gonna get all stiff, right? Oh boy.
And the skies did open up. And it was crazy though the amount of rain that was on top of us and the lightning, which you would hear it and see it at the same time. So you know, it’s really, really close. It’s like right on top of you. Very good for the Flying Pig to delay the start of that race because it would have been very, very dangerous out there.
I’m just, I’m really glad they did that. I didn’t like sitting around, but it makes makes a lot of sense. All right. So that storm was moving very slowly. And so their timing of starting it at noon was a good idea. So we ended up starting the 5k at noon. And I was stiff by that point, you know, and that 5k was rough at the beginning.
The first mile was really challenging because there are so many people and I love people that run 5K’s but there’s a lot of people that walk and a lot of people that have strollers and stuff and they don’t line up quite properly.
So a lot of people were lined up with strollers and walking up at the front, which made it very difficult. My first mile was very, very slow. It’s like a 10:30 and I was like oh my god, this is ridiculous. My second two are like 9:45 and 9:00’s what I was shooting for, you know, just hard to get there with that many people, but I wasn’t too worried about I was like you know what? Who cares? Like I’m so exhausted right now and stiff.
So I just tried to have fun with it and it was fun. It really was. It’s a fun little course you go through this huge transit tunnel like under the city. And so it was fine. But after the 5k, or towards the end of the 5k, I started developing this blister on the side of my big toe. And it was really hurting bad like it was killing me by the end of the race. So I finished that.
Finally, I’m done with that. I get home, take a shower, and had to deal with this blister. So I get these calluses on the side of my big toe. If you’re somebody that’s grossed out by this kind of stuff. Don’t listen to this part. But I’m just going to tell you that if you’re a runner, you probably already get this.
So no big deal, I get these calluses on the side of my big toes. And when they get kind of big, I file them down so they don’t do what they did, which is they’ll rub against your shoe. And then it’ll kind of develop a blister underneath the callus. So you get this big callus and then a blister underneath, it is not a good situation. It’s very, very painful.
I’ve dealt with these during Ultras before, never during like a 10k or a 5k or something like that. And I don’t know why it happened. Pretty weird. But anyway, I was just like, well, I got to deal with this. So get home. I tried to file that thing down, which I did and helped it out a little bit.
But it was super painful, like walking was painful. And I was like, I don’t even know how I’m gonna run tomorrow. I wasn’t, you know, I was tired. I knew I was going to be exhausted and all that. But now I’m concerned about this blister. Oh my gosh, whatever.
The rest of the day on Saturday was kind of busy, I had stuff to do. And I had lost three hours of my day because of this rain delay, you know. And I finally didn’t get to bed till like 11 o’clock on Saturday night, right, I gotta get up at four o’clock to run this thing on Sunday.
And I knew I wasn’t gonna get a good night’s sleep on Saturday night, which I didn’t get a really good night’s sleep. So, I wake up at 4am on Sunday, make some coffee. And then you get my butt down there again, I got that same parking spot, which I felt really good about because I got there nice and early.
And so my original goal for the half was somewhere between like a 2:00 a 2:10. That’s kind of what I was shooting for. Maybe though, I did have a back pocket goal. That’s a goal that I don’t tell anyone about. And so my back pocket goal was a sub-two. And I’ve done a lot of sub-two halves. It’s just been a minute.
And I was thinking I might be able to do this. But it all depends on how the weekend went. And it’s pretty safe to say that the weekend did not go according to plan. Things kind of went awry, which is fine. So that 2:10, I was like I don’t know if this is going to be even doable.
So the lack of sleep, the blister or the running I did I made a decision Saturday night. Before going to bed. I was like you know what, tomorrow, I am just going to run the half with my girlfriend Jill.
Jill was an official pacer for the Flying Pig this year. And she’s done this before. She’s like a pro at it. So she was pacing the 2:20 half group. And I was like that’s cool I can do 2:20. When you’re a pacer though you have to hold a sign on the stick that says the pace that you’re going to be running and there are some balloons on there. It’s a little bit heavy, you know. So it’s nice to have a couple of people.
So her and her good friend were there to pace the 2:20 group. And so I was like, you know what, I’m just going to run with you guys today. I’m tired. You know this, my foot is an issue right now I just need to get this thing done. And we’ll just have fun.
2:20 seemed very doable. And Jill and I, we can both run faster than that. So as an official pacer, you have to or you’re supposed to pace a group that’s around 20 minutes slower than your actual pace. So this is perfect for both of us because we can both run about a 2 hour half at this point.
And let me tell you something about Jill. Jill is the Assistant Director of the Air Force marathon so she worked the Flying Pig Expo all day Friday. Then she drove to Indianapolis, which is two hours away.
She drove there Friday night because she was running that Indi mini half marathon in Indianapolis Saturday morning. And that’s the one where you get to run on the Indy 500 track. Super cool event.
So she runs a 2:02 half marathon on Saturday. Finishes that, drives back to Cincinnati another two hours in the car. And then she got up on Sunday morning to pace the pig half group and she had a huge smile on her face the whole time. So she’s kind of a badass.
So 6:30am is the start time for the Flying Pig and at 6:30am it was like 65 degrees and 93% humidity. It was brutal and it was supposed to get up to 88, and I’m telling you at at 93% humidity is is very challenging conditions to be running a marathon or half marathon.
So we start running, 6:30 gun goes off, great. We’re out there, we’re having fun. We’re running. And Jill’s pacing partner was dealing with some cramps or something early on, and we lost her around mile three, like she just kind of started to fall back and she couldn’t keep up. So Jill was really glad that I decided to run with her. So she didn’t have to do this alone, because it’s a lot of pressure to do that by herself.
You know, I helped her carry the little stick and stuff like that a little bit. And you know what, we had so much fun. We were laughing, we were talking to everyone around us, we’re lifting people up.
We are, you know, screaming at people in a good way where there’s lots of first timers out there. And some people were freaking out a little bit because it was hot, and it was humid. And people were, you know, getting a little bit concerned, which you know, you should be.
There was a couple of water stations that ran out of water early on. So people were standing in line waiting for a cup of water, because they were they were filling them as fast as they could, but they just couldn’t keep up with the demands.
There’s so many people that needed water early. But I have to say that, despite all that we were out there encouraging people. And you know, Jill and I have both done this race many times. So we were both just having so much fun. And really, this is the most fun I’ve ever had during a race.
I cannot tell you the last time I had this much fun running a race, especially the Flying Pig. It’s a tough race. It’s not easy. The first eight miles are kind of hilly and but once you get up there, that’s a lot of downhill finish, which is nice. And Jill’s pacing was spot on. She is a pro by the way. We finished it at 19:54, within six seconds. Are you kidding me? It was amazing.
And she was very appreciative that I hung with her for the duration since her partner wasn’t able to keep up. So everything worked out beautifully there. And once we finished, we crossed the finish line. And we’re in the post race celebration area, the sun came out. It was kind of cloudy in the morning, which was good, it helped keep the heat down, but the sun came out. And it got really hot really fast, like around 80 degrees.
So for the people that were running the full marathon, they were only about halfway done. You know, and most of our friends who did the full really struggled with the last half of that race. We waited around for a lot of people at the end.
And people were kind of miserable, but everybody was in good spirits. They were like, you know what? We ran. We did our best the conditions out there. So it was really hard. But we did our best and that’s all you can do in these situations. Right?
Okay, so that was the half marathon day and then post race we met up with some friends we talked about our races we went out and got some pizza and ice cream. Yes, I made a very intentional decision a couple of weeks before the event to eat some pizza and ice cream after this weekend’s running because I was like I do this like twice a year why not celebrate this event and we’ll go to my favorite pizza place here in Cincinnati, Dewey’s love it, so good.
And then we’re gonna get some Jenni’s ice cream. Jenni’s is a local ice cream vendor around here. Amazing, crazy flavors. So race day, I got some pizza. Normally, I eat a lot of pizza, I couldn’t really eat much. And just was like, I had a few pieces and I was done.
And then the same thing with the ice cream. Normally I get a pint of ice cream. I eat the pint of ice cream, the whole thing. And I was like, I had like half of it and I was fine. I didn’t really need any more. You know, my, my food binging has really just, I don’t really do that anymore.
Because I eat some pizza or eat some ice cream and it’s okay, you know, it feels pretty good. And it’s tasty. But I’m like, you know, I’m done. I don’t need a whole lot of that. So that was good. I felt good about that. I felt in integrity with myself by not going completely nuts on pizza and ice cream. Because that used to be my jam.
Okay, so a few lessons learned. Number one, you’ve got to plan ahead, but you’ve got to go with the flow. You plan ahead and then you got to go with the flow. I trained hard to season I was ready for a pretty decent race on Sunday. But I really had to listen to my body and go with the flow.
I could have really pushed it on Saturday and really pushed it on Sunday, but I think I’ve made the right decisions you know, considering blister and by the way, the blister did not hurt me during the half marathon at all. Like it didn’t bother me at all. 100% fine.
It did hurt for a couple days afterwards. But now it’s almost completely healed, which is good. But it didn’t bother me. I was like wow, that’s amazing. But I listened to my body, I was super exhausted, I had the blister, whatever. But I did my best.
The important thing is that I feel good about my decisions, I feel good about the way I raced these different races, considering what was going on the exhaustion, and the lack of sleep, and the delirium and all these other things, right. So I feel good about my decisions, I’m in integrity with myself with my decisions, especially on Sunday.
The next lesson I learned is that, you know, you shouldn’t put timelines on your goals. And this may sound a little counterintuitive, because if people say, Oh, you need a goal, it has to be you have to have a time to complete this goal.
But when you put a timeline on your goal, especially like running goal, and you don’t hit it on that date, it can be incredibly frustrating, disappointing, you know, instead, set a goal, do the work you need to do each day to move toward that goal. And then eventually, you will get there.
I talk to my weight loss coaching clients about this all the time. Like don’t put a timeline on your weight loss goal. Instead, focus on doing the work each day to get there, and you will eventually get there. Is it going to take three months or six months or a year, who cares? It doesn’t matter.
What’s important is like you’re changing in the process, you’re becoming a different person in the process. And eventually you will get there if you stay focused. So I’ve got a goal of doing this sub-two half again, like I said, I’ve done it before, but it’s been a minute, but I’m gonna try again this fall, and I’m not disappointed about my weekend.
I’m happy that I did what I did this weekend. I’m not disappointed. I didn’t hit that goal on this particular day. You know, this was not the weekend to go for that goal. Clearly, right? The Universe sent me lots of signs, telling me this is not the weekend for that.
And the biggest lesson I learned is that, you know, running is fun. And running can be so much fun. We had so much fun running this hometown marathon, half-marathon, 5k, 10k, one mile, whatever. And especially on Sunday, it just felt light and easy. You know, we didn’t take ourselves too seriously.
The next race that you do, I want to encourage you to focus on having fun. Do what you need to do to make it fun. Leave the headphones at home, talk to people, listen to people, get encouraged by the crowd, encourage other people, crack some jokes. Have fun out there, talk to people from out of town.
Ask people where they’re from. Just enjoy it. You know, the training is the hard part. We train from January till May. And we run in all kinds of terrible weather. It’s months of hard work. The race is the celebration, the race is the victory lap. So enjoy it. Have fun with it. But I really have this new love of running. And that half marathon on Sunday really got me there. It was amazing. Super, super fun. That’s my favorite lesson this weekend, is that running can be amazingly fun.
Okay, so that’s my recap of the weekend. Those are lessons I learned. Come to Cincinnati do the Flying Pig next year. It’s going to be amazing. It always is. It’s a super fun weekend. And if you do come out here, look for me and say hi. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
210. Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked
It’s a new year and a time when a lot of people become ultra-focused on health, fitness, and losing weight. It’s also a time when a lot of people will try some new fad diet or a new exercise …
Continue Reading about 210. Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 210 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked. So it’s a new year. And it’s a time when a lot of people become ultra-focused on their health, fitness and losing weight.
It’s also a time when a lot of people will try some new fad diet, or some new exercise routine that promises instant weight loss with minimal effort. I’m definitely not going to do that here today because I’m a big fan of the slow and steady approach to losing weight and being able to keep it off for good.
So in this episode, Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked, I’m going to clear up some of the most prevalent misconceptions about weight loss and offer up some helpful tips on what you should do instead.
But first, I share a lot of information here on the podcast about proper nutrition, losing weight, improving your running and building strength. If you’re new to the podcast, it might seem a little overwhelming. And you might not know where to even start with all this stuff.
And if that sounds like you, no worries, I’ve got you covered, I created a free hour long training video that you can check out at any time it’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming a Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re gonna learn the basics of proper nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset all geared towards you the runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started on your weight loss journey today.
All right, let’s get into today’s topic, Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked. I was thinking about this as we start the new year here it is now January of 2024, Happy New Year to all of you. And I was thinking about what people tend to do at the beginning of the year like this, they tend to jump on to some fad diet, or or do something they read about on social media to lose weight and maybe improve their exercise or start running or something like that.
And it usually ends up being something that is very short-lived. That’s why the gyms are full in January, and they’re empty again in March. So we need to take a different approach, okay? And some of the things that are spread out there in the world, some of the conceptions that people have around weight loss are confusing, and they’re not always correct.
And I want to clear up some of these common myths, you know, some of these common principles that people tend to think are the truth that really aren’t. So just sit back and enjoy this episode today, because I’m going to debunk some of these common weight loss myths.
Now, the first one is going to be that it’s all about calories. And this is one of the most common weight loss myths out there where it’s just all about calories, you just have to eat less, and you will lose weight. That’s it that is the one principle that most diets out there adhere to whatever the diet is, they typically are trying to get you to eat fewer calories like that is the principle of most diets.
Also with weight loss drugs, weight loss surgeries, these are all getting you to not eat as much. And the issue with this is that yes, you can lose weight by reducing your calories, it is a very effective way to lose weight. Look at shows like The Biggest Loser, they restrict calories for these very obese people. They have them exercise like crazy, and they do lose a lot of weight.
The problem with this approach is that it is not sustainable. They have done many, many studies. In fact, there was a big meta-study that was done that looked at all these other studies that showed that calorie restriction diets are the most effective at short-term weight loss.
They are also and this is the important part, the least effective long-term weight loss approaches So when you restrict calories for a period of time, what happens is your body goes into starvation mode. So your body will think that you are starving, basically, you’re not getting enough calories to satisfy your energetic needs throughout the day.
And so your body will actually slow down your metabolism over time to match the calories that are coming in. So let’s say you’re somebody that normally eats 2000 calories a day, and you restrict your caloric intake to 1000 calories a day, that’s gonna be fine for the short term, but over time, your body will slow down your metabolism to match the amount of energy that’s coming in.
So now, instead of burning 2000 calories a day at rest, that’s your resting metabolic rate, your body’s like, nope, we’re only going to burn 1000 calories a day, because that’s all we have ever coming in. So what happens is now the 1000 calories a day is not a deficit anymore.
And so the weight loss stops, and actually, you start gaining weight, because you’re still eating the, you know, the 1000 calories a day, and maybe your metabolic rate drops even more. And you can’t lower your caloric intake, you can’t keep lowering your caloric intake to match your slowdown in metabolism.
So this is a very bad approach to weight loss, like just cutting calories and thinking that that is the answer. Again, it does work in the short term. And that’s why so many people promote this type of diet where you know, just don’t eat as much. The problem with is not sustainable, it is not something that you can do long term because your body will go into that starvation mode.
And as a runner especially, you do not want to reduce your caloric intake, especially long term, this can dramatically affect your running performance, because as you ramp up your mileage, you ramp up your intensity levels, and your caloric intake needs to match that.
So you actually need to a lot of times you need to increase your caloric intake as a runner, especially as you’re getting toward the late stages of a training cycle. Another thing to consider is caloric restriction, a lot of the caloric restriction diets will cause you to lose weight, but that weight is in the form of fat and muscle and connective tissue and bone density. This is not good.
As a runner, you do not want to lose muscle, you don’t want to lose bone density. A little bit of a
side note here, there are a lot of new weight loss drugs out there and people are talking about drugs like Ozempic, right? And they’re showing oh, these are so effective at people losing weight.
What they’re not telling you though, is about 40% of the weight that people are losing, you know using drugs Ozempic is muscle, bone, and connective tissue. You know, connective tissues are ligaments and tendons. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to sacrifice muscle, bone and connective tissues just so I can lose weight.
It’s not about weight loss where we want to focus on fat loss, right? It’s not about just restricting calories, there’s a lot more going on that you really have to consider here. Okay. Instead of focusing on just restricting calories, try focusing instead on eating real food eating nutritionally dense foods, foods that are satiating foods that when you eat them, you feel satisfied.
A lot of the calorically dense or I’m sorry, the the foods that are not calorically dense, or the the empty calorie type of foods that are a lot of the processed foods, a lot of the foods that are full of sugar and refined grains and things like that will actually hijack your hunger signals and make you feel super hungry even though you’re eating a ton of food.
You can feel super hungry in between meals, and they actually cause you to overeat. So we want to be eating foods that are satiating that fill us up and that don’t mess up our hunger signals.
So what I recommend is eating food, real food that still looks like food, meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, dairy, all the stuff that is just the normal stuff you see on the outside of the grocery store.
Stay away from processed foods. Stay away from sugar, stay away from refined grains. These foods make you feel super hungry. It’s hard to lose weight when you’re eating mostly processed foods and sugars.
Those things will mess up your hunger signals. They won’t make you feel full and satisfied when you do eat. And if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re hungry all the time, that’s a bad combination right there. That’s where you start to get hangry right? Angry and hungry at the same time.
So there’s a lot more going on here. And it’s not just about calories. In fact, just reducing calories is not a really good way to lose weight. And it’s really not a long term, definitely not a long term approach that’s going to work for most people. Okay. So that’s number one. It’s all about calories. I think we busted that myth right there.
The next one is that we just need to exercise more. So exercise more, that’s all you need to do. It really doesn’t matter what you eat. As long as you’re burning it off, you’re fine. It’s okay to overeat. It’s okay to eat whatever junk food you want. Just run more, just exercise more, get your cardio in every day, and you’ll be fine.
Here’s the thing, right now we are exercising more in this time in human history than we ever have as human beings. And we are more overweight, more obese, and have more metabolic dysfunction than any other time in human history.
Clearly exercising more is not the answer. I talk to people literally every single day who tell me, Patrick, I gain weight, I’m running more and I keep gaining weight. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. Every time I increase my exercise, I end up gaining weight.
And I’m like, yeah, I know, this was me, too. For years there, I was running at least two marathons a year, I was running several ultra-marathons every year. And in that process, I was gaining weight consistently.
And over a few years, I gained something like 40 pounds. And this was you know, when I was doing that pretty typical training for me at the time, which was running a few marathons and a few ultra marathons every single year.
So I was training a lot, I was running a lot and I was doing other types of cardio and cross training and strength training and things like that. So this concept of exercising more, it just doesn’t hold up. Okay.
Never in human history, have we needed to, quote-unquote, like exercise to maintain a healthy weight, to maintain a healthy metabolism, to maintain good health and fitness. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, they did not like intentionally exercise, they weren’t out there, you know, doing calisthenics every day.
They actually were focused on energy conservation, they did not exert themselves excessively, they rested whenever they didn’t have to go out there and, and walk distances, you know, and hunt prey or gather, you know, fruits and vegetables and things like that.
So they were actually focused on conserving energy, you know, they probably walked a few miles every day. At times, they may have done more than that, but they weren’t like running consistently all the time. They did some running. But it wasn’t something they were doing, like running ultra marathons for fun. Like, you know, they just didn’t do that. It was stupid to like, you know, use that much energy, you don’t see any animal ever, you know, just exercising for the heck of it. You know what I mean?
We actually see this today in modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes like the Hadza in Tanzania, they have been a well-studied group of people. They are super fit, they’re healthy, they’re lean, they’re strong. They don’t have all the metabolic diseases that we have in the Western world here.
They don’t have diabetes, they’re not obese, they don’t have heart disease. So all that stuff is really not present with these people. And they are a hunter-gatherer triad, very similar to our ancient ancestors. So, you know, humans have evolved over two and a half million years.
And for the vast majority of that time, we were hunter-gatherers, and living in tribes, and we were super fit healthy, lean, and strong people. The only time we started to experience all this metabolic dysfunction and disease is, is within the last few 100 years, really, you know, maybe 500 years, 1000 years, even like 2000 years.
You can go back to the time of the ancient Egyptians, when we started to see them using more grains and eating a lot more refined grains in the form of flowers and things like that. So they started to you know, perfect agriculture and they were eating a lot more grains and you can see that the distended bellies of the mummies because they actually have the actual whole person preserved as a mummy.
And their teeth are all messed up. You know, they have a lot of tooth decay from the sugar and the grains they were eating and they have lives distended bellies, which means they were starting to gain weight, even that was 2000 years ago.
So in the long span of human history, there’s only a short amount of time, where we actually are starting to experience all these metabolic diseases. And they’re all really based off of our diet, you know, so we see tribes like the Hadza. And we can kind of look at them and say, like, yeah, they’re pretty close to what our ancestors used to be like.
And what’s interesting about the Hadza, is that their metabolic rate, so how many calories they burn at rest is about the same as the rest of us in the Western world here. For men, it’s like 2500 calories a day. For women, it’s 1900 calories a day, that’s pretty similar to where we are here in the Western world.
So you can’t say like, oh, well, they just exercise more, they don’t, they’re doing about the same amount of exercise we’re doing, they get in some steps every day they walk in, they might be getting in 10 to 15,000 steps a day, which is, you know, what we’re supposed to be getting anyway, you know, it’s kind of recommended.
And for the vast majority of us, you know, we’re getting around 3 or 5000 steps a day, without any intentional exercise. So we’re just in our daily lives, you know, we’re getting about a third, you know, half to a third of that, in the amount of steps we take on a daily basis anyway.
And if you’re a runner, you’re definitely getting that 10,000 steps a day, you know, so these people who are really about the same as us in most aspects, they, they don’t exercise exceedingly. They are extremely healthy, fit, lean, and strong, and their metabolic rate is about the same as ours.
So it doesn’t mean, like you need to exercise more, you know, so please understand this, like the answer is not doing a ton of cardio and trying to burn off the food, you can eat a bunch of junk food, and then think that you’re gonna burn it off. It just doesn’t work that way. Okay. So let’s just put that one to rest.
The next weight loss myth that I want to debunk is that the XYZ diet is all you need. So whatever that one diet is, right? There are so many crazy diets out there, there’s literally thousands of diets. And in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I started looking at some of the weirder diets that are out there. And I cannot make this stuff up.
But there’s a diet called the cotton ball diet, which is where you soak cotton balls in different liquids, you know, like, cabbage juice, or fruit juice, and then you eat that, right? And you actually, it’s supposed to make you feel more full because you’re eating these cotton balls, and it gets you past the cotton balls or whatever. And you’re getting a little bit of nutrition from the juice or whatever the soak in there, but don’t do that. That’s crazy.
Another one is called the werewolf diet. And I was like, oh, what is that, where they eat people? Like what? What is the werewolf diet? And no, it has to do with like fasting around the lunar cycles. Okay, great. I love that one, actually.
And then there’s one that I cannot make this up, this is called the breatharian diet. And these are people that believe that you can subsist on spirituality in sunlight that you only need air to get all the nutrients that you need, that you don’t really need to eat or drink anything, including water. And obviously, if you try this, you will die.
Okay, so the people that are saying they’re practicing breatharians they’ve actually shown them sneaking liquids and food and stuff because you can’t do this, this is not sustainable. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like I’m like making this up or reading these out of some sort of like, you know, comedy show or something like that. But no, they are things that people have actually done in the past. Okay.
Every diet out there claims to be the answer for everyone. And listen, I’ve tried them all, not the cotton ball or the breatharian diet, although the werewolf diet sounds interesting, I might have to give that one a try. But I’ve tried like most of the diets that are out there, the big popular ones, right?
And to some extent, they all worked. The problem is that nothing I ever did was ever sustainable for me. For example, I started reading about vegetarianism and veganism. And for about five years or so I went and I started cutting out my meat and I started cutting out more and more meat and then fish and then eventually so I went vegetarian then eventually I went plant-based and I did that for like 10 years, so about 15 years I was like vegetarian and vegan essentially.
You know, I stayed away from meat, stayed away from dairy, that stuff is bad for you. And at the beginning, it was okay, like I did lose some weight. But I have to tell you, for me, I gained a lot of weight eating that kind of a diet. Because if you think about it, that diet is mostly almost all 100% carbs, fruits, and vegetables, and that’s 100% carbs.
So for me, that did not work. For me, over 10 years, I steadily gained weight, I gained like 40 pounds in that process of eating a plant-based diet. For me, this was not healthy, and it was not sustainable, gaining weight on any kind of diet, that shouldn’t be the case that’s not good for you, whatever you’re doing.
And I know a lot of people who do really well on a plant-based diet or vegetarian diet, and they love it. And they do it for ethical reasons. Or they do it for reasons that work for them as individuals. And I’m not saying it’s a bad choice for you, I’m just saying that it didn’t work for me.
If I kept doing that, I’d probably be like 300 pounds by now. All right. And I have clients and I work with people who are vegetarians and vegans, and they do well, we can make it work, okay, but we have to stay away from some of the refined foods, and the processed foods and things like that, okay.
The truth is, here’s what I’m trying to get to here, there isn’t one diet that works for everyone, you need to figure out the right formula that works for you. Because you are an individual, you have your own metabolism, your own genetics, your own lifestyle, your own family, your culture of origin, your own food preferences, your own likes and dislikes, you have your own health and fitness goals.
Maybe you’re training for ultra marathons, maybe you want to run your first 5k, or maybe you don’t exercise at all, all these factors, put together mean that you are an individual, and you need to approach nutrition and exercise with this important principle in mind.
That is, you have to figure out what works for you as an individual. And it’s going to look different from what everybody else is doing. And it probably isn’t going to be some preconceived diet that, you know, it’s published in the New York Times or whatever, all right.
This is why I do coaching. And I don’t just prescribe a diet for everyone that I work with. Coaching is a process of figuring out the best approach for you, of figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. And then modify it as needed until you get the results that you want. It’s simple. It’s a feedback system. Let’s see what’s working, let’s see what’s not.
And we’ll adjust accordingly. But honestly, most people are not willing to put in the time and effort to do it this way. Sorry, but there’s no quick fix here. It takes time to figure these things out. And you have to be willing to invest the time in yourself because that’s what’s required to get the results that you’re going after here. Okay.
So the right diet is not the one that’s out there, it’s the one that works for you, the one that is sustainable for you. Because if it’s not sustainable for you, you’re not going to stick with it, and it’s not going to work long term for you, you’re gonna go back to doing what feels comfortable, and that’s probably eating the junk food because, hey, that’s what feels comfortable, right?
So don’t think that there’s some diet out there, that’s going to work for you that, you know, everybody is talking about these days, because there just isn’t such a thing. Okay. All right. I think that weight loss myth is debunked.
Here’s another one, your metabolism slows down as you get older, so why even bother? And I hear people say this all the time, they’re like, hey, I’m just getting older. So I’m not even going to try to lose weight, you know, I’m not even going to worry about it, because it’s just, it’s not going to work for me because my metabolism just is getting slower and my metabolism slowed down now, and we losing weight is too hard.
And people use this as an excuse to not start or to not change their diet or not to eat healthy foods or whatever. There was a study published a couple of years ago, that suggests that this is just really not true at all. So, your metabolism the rate at which your body burns energy, has long been thought to decline during middle age and then to keep declining as you get older. So for this particular study, researchers looked at metabolism by measuring the total energy expenditure, which includes energy burned at rest, you know, and you know, in order to perform basic functions, like digesting food and energy burned during physical activity as well.
So they looked at exercise and you know, your resting metabolic rate. And they did this study on like 6400 people, ranging from eight days old to 95 years old, along with their height, weight, their body fat percentage. They looked at their average metabolic rates for men, women, and people in different age groups. And they found some very interesting results here based on four distinct periods in people’s lives.
So from infancy to one year old, the metabolic rate surged until it was about 50% higher than it will be during adulthood. So that’s pretty common you like your metabolic rate is going to increase a lot at the beginning of your life, right? And then from the ages of one to 20, the metabolism decreased by 3% per year. Okay, again, very normal.
The one big surprising thing is that from 20 to 60 years old, people’s metabolism doesn’t really change at all. And then after age 60, your metabolism does decrease slightly, but only by about .7% a year, so not as much as people think it does. And definitely not in that middle age. So people think that you know, once you turn 40 like this, it’s all over. Like no, it’s not true at all, like your metabolism really doesn’t start to decrease until you get to about age 60.
So, studies like this are showing us that our metabolism doesn’t have to slow down as we get older, and that it’s much more likely that changes in our behavior are causing us to gain weight as we get older.
Changes in our diet are what can help us to prevent the slowing down of our metabolism. So people want to use this as an excuse as to why they can’t gain weight, but they don’t want to look at their actual diet, you know, their lifestyle choices.
So your lifestyle choices are going to go a lot further in helping you to maintain a healthy weight and even lose weight as you get older. And you can’t use the metabolism as an excuse anymore. Okay, so that myth is totally busted.
Another one that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately is cleanses and detox diets, like that’s all you need to do. You just need to do a cleanse every now and then and you’ll be fine. And listen, almost none of the cleanses and detox diets that are out there today have been proven to be effective on short or long-term metabolic health.
This is another case where people are trying to justify a crappy diet with some sort of a detox or a cleanse. Yes, it is true that today we are exposed to more toxins than probably ever before. But what you need to understand is that most of these toxins you are choosing because of your poor diet, you’re eating processed foods loaded with chemicals, industrial seed oils, deep-fried foods, foods loaded with sugar, and refined grains, all these things are contributing to health problems, all these things are making it harder to lose weight.
So the idea of a cleanse, it’s a good idea. And we should absolutely cleanse our systems of these toxic ingredients. Okay, but you can’t just do it like once a year, the best way to cleanse your body of toxins is to stop eating the toxins. The best cleanse is actually a diet that just eliminates all these terrible ingredients from your life permanently.
So people think that they can eat whatever they want for months, and then just drink a bunch of detox tea or take a bunch of supplements and pull the toxins out of your system. And these things might work. For the short term, they might have some short-term benefits, they might make you feel a little better in the interim, but it’s not a long-term solution.
I was talking to some friends recently, this couple and they’re taking all these expensive supplements to pull all these toxins out of their system. And they were telling me about this whole system of things that, you know, use all these different ingredients. I can’t remember the names of all this stuff, but they, you know, grab the toxins and they pull them out and it takes like six months of this protocol in order to do this.
Meanwhile, they’re taking all these expensive supplements every single day. Okay, that’s great. And I applaud you for trying to get healthier. But what happens after the six months? What do you do? Like do the toxins just come back? Like wouldn’t it be wiser to just eat clean and healthy foods void of all the toxic ingredients in the first place and just keep doing that?
Anyway, never in human history have we needed to go on a cleanse. For two and a half million years as humans, we’ve thrived simply by eating real food. We haven’t had to drink a bunch of detox tea or like you know, eat all these crazy supplements and things like that just to read our bodies of the garbage just stop eating the garbage.
Your body is really good at cleansing itself. Your body is really good at detoxing itself. We have an incredibly complex system to remove toxins from our bodies, let your body do what it’s supposed to do naturally just stop eating the junk food. Okay. So that’s another myth busted, by the way.
So the biggest takeaways here that I want you to have a look at here is like looking at our ancestor years, ancient human civilizations were incredibly healthy, lean, strong and disease free, much like that Hadza tribe today, okay.
They did not count calories. They did not restrict the caloric intake. They didn’t need to exercise like mad every day to stay lean and healthy. They actually were trying to conserve energy. They didn’t have to go on some crazy fad diet. They weren’t eating cotton balls soaked in cabbage juice to lose weight. Their metabolism didn’t suddenly stop working when they hit a certain age. And they didn’t do some weird juice cleanses or take a bunch of detox supplements, right?
What did they do? They ate real food. They ate food that today still looks like food, food that our ancestors would recognize, that their ancestors recognize that’s just food, just eat food. Stay away from the processed foods stay away from the Frankenfoods.
Try to eliminate sugar and refined grains. Those things have only been around for a short period of time in the course of human history. Stay away from seed oil. Stay away from toxic ingredients. Stay away from fried foods. Yes, exercise, and keep on running, but don’t do it to try to lose weight.
Do it because it’s good for you. It’s good for your mental health and emotional health. It’s good for your heart. It’s great at helping you to manage stress, just don’t run a bunch to try to lose weight because that doesn’t work. Okay, so those are the common weight loss myths debunked.
I hope you got something good out of this episode today. If you did shoot me a message and tell me what you liked about it. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
189. Shifting Your Locus of Control
If you are having a hard time sticking with a health and fitness routine, then you might want to have a look at your locus of control. Locus of control refers to where you believe your control lies …
Continue Reading about 189. Shifting Your Locus of Control →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind, so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 189 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Shifting Your Locus of Control. So if you’re having a hard time sticking with a health and fitness routine, sticking with a healthy food plan, then you might want to have a look at your locus of control. And I’ll explain all this in the podcast here.
But your locus of control refers to where you believe your control lies either outside of you or within you. So people who have a strong external locus of control tend to have a pretty hard time sticking to a plan and accomplishing really anything.
On the other hand, people who have a strong internal locus of control have an easier time sticking to a plan and are generally more successful in all areas of their lives. So today, I’m going to explain what locus of control is, and how you can begin shifting your locus of control so you can get better results and really just live a healthier, happier life.
But first, I know I talk a lot about the amazing transformations you can experience when you join my program and get coaching from me how you can commit to becoming your healthiest self, but instead of me yammering more about it, I’m going to share some of my clients personal stories with you.
So Elisa said, “Since working with Patrick, I don’t beat myself up anymore. I believe in myself. I’m finally in control of my eating habits. I’m steadily losing weight.” Flora said, “I’ve learned how to become a fat adapted runner. And the feeling of running with a clear head and so much energy is just amazing.” Eric said, “I’ve learned how to create good habits to replace the bad ones. I’m down 18 pounds so far, and I feel really good about myself for the first time in a long time.”
Mick said, “Accountability and education were key to my success with Patrick. I’ve had so many positive changes. I know I’m not going to slip back into old habits.” Leticia said, “I no longer have sugar cravings, I’ve taken control of my eating habits once and for all.”
Michelle said, “I’ve lost 25 pounds, I’ve gained immeasurable confidence. I am totally in control now. And I’m fully capable of doing everything I set out to do.” And Amy said, “I’m thinking so much more clearly, I have more energy, I’m sleeping better, running is easier. So far, I’m down 30 pounds and several dress sizes.”
Listen, you can add your name to this list, you can be one of these people with an amazing transformational story to share. All you gotta do is get some coaching. Join the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Book an interview with me and you and I’ll have a conversation, we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you.
And if you want a little bit of help, just getting started with all this stuff, I’ve created a great training program that you can check out. It’s about an hour long video training, you can watch it at your own pace. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You can get that by going to my website Running Lean coaching.com and click on the Free Training link to get started. Cool.
Okay, so let’s talk about shifting your locus of control. So I talked to a lot of people who struggle to accomplish what they want for themselves, they struggle to reach their goals. So this could be a weight loss goal. This could be a strength goal, it could be a running related goal. Maybe they want to run their first marathon, qualify for Boston, or maybe they just want to run their first 5k.
But when it comes down to when you kind of boil it all down when it comes down to why it is they can’t seem to accomplish whatever goal they’re trying to accomplish. They start telling me all about the external factors affecting their life.
You know, I was doing great at sticking with this running plan. I was going to run my first marathon but then things got crazy at work. Or you know we traveled or went on vacation or the kids out of school so you know how that is or jeez, it just got hot out or it got cold out. Whatever.
So they look at their life as having all these external forces, external being things that are outside of themselves, that are affecting their ability to reach their goals or not to stick to their plan or not. That thing that seems so important to them, not that long ago has been pushed to the side because of all these external factors. Okay.
And the problem with this is that when you allow outside forces to affect your weight loss goals, your health and fitness goals, your running goals, then you’re going to have a very hard time accomplishing anything for yourself, you will always find reasons why you can’t do it.
You’ll have reasons and stories and excuses, you’ll always have somebody or something else to blame for why you can’t lose weight, why you can’t stick to this healthy eating plan, why you can’t train for that marathon or whatever.
The problem is that you’re going to really just stay stuck where you are. You won’t be able to accomplish these big goals that you want for yourself or small goals that you want for yourself, you won’t be able to accomplish much, you will always feel like you’re going to struggle, because it’s out of your hands.
It’s all these outside forces, all these external situations, these external circumstances that are to blame. You don’t have control over your own life. So this is known as having an external locus of control. So locus is just a Latin word, and it means place or location. So locus of control really relates to where your sense of control is located. Is it internally? Or is it externally? Is it within you? Or is it outside of you?
And locus of control is a term that’s used in psychology, and refers to a belief that the control of your life is either within you or outside of you. Okay, some people have a very strong internal locus of control. And some people have a very strong external locus of control.
And they’ve looked at all these people, and they’ve seen that people who have a mostly external locus of control tend to be not as successful, they tend to be not as happy, they tend to be maybe not as healthy.
And the people with a strong internal locus of control tend to be happier and healthier and tend to accomplish more in their lives. Okay. So somebody believes somebody with an external locus of control believes that outside forces control their destiny, I am not in control, I’m profoundly affected by external forces in my life.
People with a strong external locus of control, tend to be more passive, because things just happen to them. They tend to blame others for their situation, they tend not to accomplish goals. They believe that there’s really nothing they can do about their situation, because hey, it just is what it is. Right? Whatever happens, happens, why bother even trying?
They feel like they are unlucky, but like nothing good ever happens to them, because they’re just, it’s just not meant to be. Must be nice for those other people. But never, nothing ever works out for me. And what’s interesting is these people tend to be at greater risk for illness, they’re typically unhappy and unhealthy. They have a hard time sticking to a plan.
If you have a mostly external locus of control, it’s going to be harder for you to stick to a fitness routine, to train for a marathon to stick to a healthy eating plan. If you want to lose weight, you got to stick to a healthy eating plan. You have to be consistent with that plan. But if you’re constantly, you know, blaming everything around you for why you can’t stick to that plan, you’re gonna have a really hard time sticking with that plan. Okay.
So that is what external locus of control looks like. Can you relate to any of this? Does any of this sound like you? Because we’ve all had bits and pieces of this and I’ll tell you a little bit about my story in a minute here. But we’ve all had maybe times in our life when we had more of an external locus of control more of an internal.
So people with an internal locus of control tend to be more active, they’re actively engaging in changing their life. They’re actively engaged in improving their situation. Because they believe that they make things happen. You know, I did this, I made this happen, you know, my determination and my hard work, created my future, I’m not relying on outside circumstances, outside circumstances be damned, I’m going to make this happen.
They tend to accomplish goals regularly, consistently. They feel like they are in control of the events of their lives, they are in control of their own destiny. They don’t look to lock or fate, you know, to determine what they can accomplish or what they can accomplish, they take responsibility for their situation, whether that’s a good situation or a bad situation, they take responsibility, they tend to be healthier, they tend to have a reduced risk of illness.
And honestly, they just tend to stick with a plan. And it’s easier for them. All right. So wherever you feel like your locus of control is now just understand that it is not fixed. It is not something that is predetermined. And it is not something that you don’t have control over, you can actually change it.
It’s about what you believe to be true, not about what you think is true or not, what you believe to be true, will be true for you. If you believe you have no control over your life, and that it’s all about external circumstances, then that will be true for you. If you believe that you’re in control, that will be true for you.
Your locus of control is not something you are born with, it’s not something that is, you know, genetically imprinted in you or anything like that, it’s not a fact. It’s where you put it, it’s where you decide it’s going to be. So your goal then, is to shift your locus of control inward.
If you find yourself blaming external circumstances for where you are, why you can’t lose weight, why you can’t stick to that marathon training plan, why you can’t go to the gym and lift heavy weights. If you find yourself blaming external circumstances, for all that, then it’s time to make a shift, you need to shift your locus of control inward.
So shifting your locus of control can be as easy as making the decision that you’re going to do it, it can be as easy as taking 100% responsibility for everything in your life, for every result you’re getting or not getting in your life, it can be as easy as making that decision. So right now, decide “I’m going to stop blaming others, I’m going to stop blaming outside circumstances. I’m going to stop using stories and excuses and reasons why I can’t and start making it happen. I control my destiny. And it starts with me, and it starts right now.”
Right, that can be a very powerful way of taking control making that decision that you are in control. Because honestly, you are another way of beginning to shift your locus of control is to start reframing situations. So instead of just believing that here’s the way it is, not everything is just the way it is. And that’s the way it is because that right there is just a belief.
You need to start questioning what you believe to be true in every situation. So you can do this by reframing. And that is just like looking at a situation from a different angle. It’s like putting a different frame on the situation. Okay, instead of, “Man, it’s just so hard to stick to my food plan because my wife keeps bringing home junk food for dinner, you know, and burgers and french fries and pizza. Like she just keeps bringing this fun stuff home for dinner for the kids. And I can’t stick to my food plan because there’s pizza on the table.”
So that’s having an external locus of control when you believe that. So shifting inward, you can reframe that situation. And you can ask yourself, like, how can I stick to my plan, even though there’s pizza sitting here on the table right now and it smells amazing, but what am I going to do right now? Right here, in this moment, to stick to my plan. I made this promise to myself that I’m not eating pizza this month or whatever, this week. What am I going to do about that in this moment right now?
How can I control my eating in this moment, right now? Because there is an answer, but you have to look inward. And you have to start asking yourself, What can I do about this? Because the external circumstances are always going to be whatever they are, you have no control over that. You don’t have control over that.
You do have control of what you do about it, though. So reframe these situations. Don’t look outward, look inward. It’s never ever about what’s going on out there. It’s always about what’s going on inside. What can I do about this? How can I make this work? What action? What action am I going to take right now in this moment, that is in alignment with my long term goals?
So I first heard about locus of control in one of my coaching programs, this was many years ago, and I can’t even remember the class I was attending. But it was a live class. I was out in LA, I was there for about a month taking all these different coaching classes and live coaching classes before COVID and all that.
And we were in this class, and the instructor was talking, it had something to do with like the business side of coaching. And at the time, I was struggling to figure out a business plan. I had tried a few things in the past that didn’t really work. I loved coaching, but the business side of things, it just wasn’t clicking for me, you know.
And, and I felt like, I tried some things, and I kept failing. And so after the class, I went up to the instructor, and I was like, okay, I get what you’re saying here. But you have to understand, I don’t think this is going to work for me, because I’ve tried this and it failed. And I’ve tried this, and it failed. And none of this stuff ever works for me.
And I said something like, you know, I don’t think this is my fault. It’s like the economy, it’s the competition out there. You know, I don’t understand the technology, whatever, like I started, you know, kind of rattling off some of these excuses, right? And I’ll never forget this, he just looked at me and said, “Well, it’s definitely not going to work with that attitude.”
And I thought to myself, how dare you. This is not in my control. It just doesn’t work for me. It’s the economy. It’s the technology, it’s the competition or whatever. And I’ve tried these different things. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I just, I’m a failure, you know, and I was really feeling sorry for myself.
And I really had this external locus of control. I didn’t realize it at the time. But I had this aha moment where I had to accept this reality that I had a very external locus of control. And what he was saying to me, wasn’t about, you know, whether I could do it or not it was about or whether the outside circumstances had anything to do with it or not. But it was about my attitude about it. It was about my state of mind about it. It was about what I decided I was going to believe.
And if I wanted to be a successful coach and have a thriving coaching practice, then it was going to be up to me to make it happen. And yes, I’ve tried things that failed. And I tried other things that failed. And I kept trying until I figured out what really worked for me, and what felt good for me, and what was in alignment with my values and my beliefs. But it was always up to me.
It had nothing to do with anything else outside of me, it was me and my attitude. I had to stop blaming circumstances, and take ownership of my situation. And as soon as I did this, as soon as I decided that I was going to make it happen, everything shifted for me.
Now, it wasn’t like turning on a light switch. It took time to get there. But it only took a moment. It was a brief moment where I made that decision that I was never going to blame anyone else ever again. I wasn’t going to look outside of myself for reasons and excuses and be a blamer and a complainer. Like if it is to be it is up to me. If it’s going to happen, I’m gonna make it happen. That’s the only way It’s gonna work. But I made that decision and I took a moment to make that decision. Okay?
So here’s what I want you to do this week, I want you to make that decision. You can do this by taking an inventory of where you are right now. So maybe get out a piece of paper or journal, something like that, and do a little bit of writing on this, like, write down all the things that are happening in your life, what’s going well, what’s not going so well.
What are you getting? Where are you getting good results in your life? Where are you not getting good results in your life? What activities are you engaging in that you’re proud of? That are in alignment with your goals, what activities are you engaging in that are not necessarily in alignment with your goals, maybe you’re not so proud of?
Where are you in regards to your goals? Are you on track? Are you not on track? Are you feeling stuck? Like just kind of take an honest inventory and look at each of these situations with yourself in your life? And honestly, ask yourself, you know, is this something that is in my control or not? Are you in control of each of these areas of your life or not?
Because if you keep thinking, I’m not in control, this has to do with, you know, my boss at work, or my wife is not, you know, being supportive. If you keep looking outside of yourself, for answers to these situations, or reasons why you’re not making progress in these situations, you’re gonna have a really hard time changing any of that.
If you’re feeling stuck in any area of your life, you’re gonna have a hard time getting unstuck, if you continually blame others. Take control. Reframe each of those situations, what can I do about this? What can I alone do about this? How can I take control of this particular situation right now? What is my part in this? Because there’s always an answer. You are always in control. Even though it doesn’t feel like it, you are, you just have to make that decision that you are going to be in control.
Being out of control is an illusion. You know, unless somebody has you chained to a water heater in their basement, you are in control of your life. And if you’re chained to a water heater, in somebody’s basement right now, then please reach out. We’ll help you, we’ll help you get out of that situation.
But listen, you have control, you just have to make that decision that you are going to take control of your own life, that you’re going to shift that locus of Control inward. And start being 100% responsible for everything in your life. You do that and I promise you things will begin to shift for you.
Okay, it takes some time to get there. It takes some time to accomplish those things you want for yourself, but it starts with that decision. Make the decision, you’re going to shift your locus of control inward, make that decision that you’re going to start being 100% responsible for every result in your life, good or bad.
Okay, this is a game changer right here. That’s all I got for you guys today. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
184. The Incredible Power of Focus
A lot of people set out to lose weight and then quit. They change their diet, start exercising, and then at some point just throw up their hands and give up. This was definitely me and it was …
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 184 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Incredible Power of Focus. So a lot of people set out to lose weight and then at some point they quit.
They changed their diet, they started exercising, and then at some point, they just throw up their hands and they give up. This was definitely me, and it was probably you at some point, I’m guessing.
And while there are a lot of reasons why someone might just give up on themselves, one of the most likely reasons is a serious lack of focus. Being focused means more than just paying attention to what’s in front of you, it can actually be the key to accomplishing all your health and fitness goals.
So in this episode, I uncover the incredible power of focus and how it can help you become the leaner, stronger, more badass runner you’ve always wanted to be. But first, I often get asked by runners who want to lose weight, how to get started, how to get started with proper nutrition, resistance training, how to get stronger how to improve their running, maybe run longer or run faster, or maybe they just want more energy, they want to improve themselves from the inside out.
I get asked this so much that I put together a free training program designed to do just that to get you started on your health and fitness journey to get you started on your weight loss journey. And it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
If you’re looking for a great place to start, this is it. It’s an on demand video training. So you can go through it at your own pace, whenever it’s convenient for you, you’ll learn what it means to eat real food, how to improve your ability to burn fat, how to get stronger, how to increase your endurance as a runner, and so much more, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started.
Alright, let’s talk about the incredible power of focus. So if we look up the definition of focus, there’s a couple. One of them is, “The center of interest directivity.”
Another one is, “A clear visual definition.” That’s like when you take a camera and you bring something into focus into clearer visual definition.
And the third definition here is, “To pay particular attention to something.”
Okay. So when we think about focus, I want you to think about a couple different ways of looking at this, you know, this is the center of your interest, you’re putting your mindset on something, and you are paying very close attention to that something or paying particular attention to that area of interest or activity and bringing it into clearer focus, bringing it into clearer definition.
So I like all of those definitions of the word, focus, think about focus this way. And this, this describes the incredible power of focus for sure. If you were to take a 150 watt light bulb, and you are to put it on a lamp in the middle of a large room and turn it on middle of a dark room, and you turn on that 150 watt light bulb, it would scatter light all over the room and light up the room you wouldn’t be able to see in a dark room. Very cool, right?
But if you were to take that same 150 watts, and focus the light into a very small laser beam, you could actually cut through steel with that same amount of light, it’s the same amount of energy, the same amount of light being produced, but it is focused.
And you can see that the power of that focused beam of light is much more powerful than a light bulb that’s just scattered as its light all over the place. There’s nothing wrong with a light bulb, it’s doing its job, it’s lighting up the room. But think about how much more powerful that light is when it is focused.
Okay, your focus is similar. If it’s spread all over the place, if there’s no precise direction to it, if you’re scattered. I mean this is okay and most of us live our lives this way where we kind of scatter our focus and our attention everywhere. And that’s okay. But what would happen, if you took that same amount of energy and you concentrated it?
What if you were to concentrate that energy more precisely on certain areas of your life, on certain goals that you have for yourself? I think things would change dramatically for you. And I think you would agree with that, you would become unstoppable. You could accomplish amazing things.
You know, if you want to lose weight, this requires focused energy. And a lot of people that give up, that quit things, they do it because they lack the focus, they lack the ability to stay focused on the goal.
What do you need to succeed at anything, especially like, health and fitness goals? You need a very clear, focused vision for that end result that you’re looking for. Who is it that you want to become? What do you really want for yourself? What does the future version of you look like?
And we talk about this a lot in my coaching program, when you’re a client of mine, I kind of make you go through this process of like painting a very clear picture of what that future version of you looks like.
What do you look like? How are you sleeping? How? How is your life different than it is today? How are your clothes fitting you? What clothes are you wearing? Are you comfortable taking your shirt off at the pool? You know, things like that.
And when we have this clear vision of our future self, when we have this sense of purpose, and we know exactly what we want for ourselves, well, that’s good, because now we have focus, we have direction, we have a plan a path steps, we can change our actions and behaviors because we know where we’re going.
But you have to have a clear and organized version of that future self, you have to have a clear and focused vision for who you want to become if you want to become that person. Because without a clear vision for yourself, you’re just going to be like, whatever.
So when we have this clear focus, this creates a lot of consistency, it creates a lot of motivation. And we’ll talk about more of that in a minute. But you are more likely to reach those goals. Because you have a clear vision for who you want to become.
When you don’t have focus, you don’t understand where you’re going, you know, you have no clarity of purpose, no clear vision for your future self. There’s no like big picture here, or you have a big picture, but it’s very, it’s like a blurry big picture. It’s not focused, right?
And without focus, we tend to forget our purpose, why we want these things for ourselves. So your health, your fitness, your exercise, your nutrition, it’s all scattered, right? No direction, no motivation to do anything. Because it doesn’t really matter. Because you don’t have that sense of purpose.
You don’t have that clear vision for who you want to become which just drives your motivation down. And this is why people quit. Because they don’t have that focus, they don’t have that clear vision of their future self.
And when you don’t have motivation, you lack progress. You don’t get the results you want. And of course, you’re gonna quit, why would you keep going. But with focus, you create that clear vision of your future self, you have that clarity of purpose, you have very clear goals, and dreams and hopes and things that you want to accomplish for yourself.
This is amazing at helping you to maintain motivation. Because without focus, you get very, it’s very demotivating. You know, you’re just scattered all over the place. You don’t even know where you’re going. How can you even track progress? You know, and that’s where you kind of lose motivation and give up.
But with focus, you maintain motivation. You continually make progress because you’re, you’re taking consistent aligned action. And you end up getting the results that you want, you produce results consistently. And even small results, even if they are, you know, small wins, achieved consistently you will eventually reach your goal.
It’s like running an ultra marathon. It doesn’t matter how slow you go, you gotta run 100 miles, just keep moving forward. But when you stop moving, or when you go backwards, or your heart isn’t in it anymore, and you have no clear vision of where you want to be at the end.
And there’s no purpose for you to continue, why would you continue? It’s just so easy to give up. Okay, so you can start to see, I’m hoping anyway, I hope you can start to see that focus is the key here. Whatever it is you want to accomplish, you want to lose weight, it takes time.
If you want to run an ultra marathon, it takes time, it takes time for the training, it takes time to do that actual event as well. And these things mean that you are going to have to spend a lot of time staying focused, so you stay in the game.
And another way of thinking about focus is this word, constraint, think about constraint. So what is the definition of constraint? This means a limitation or a restriction. And I know when people hear this, they think of this in a negative way, oh, I don’t want to be restricted, I don’t want to be limited. But don’t think about it in a negative way.
Think about it as restricting or limiting your focus to you know, one thing at a time. So constraint of focus is very important. And they’re similar. But it’s almost like taking your focus and really fine tuning it, it’s like, you know, that laser that I’m talking about earlier, instead of being a light bulb, be the laser constraint helps you to do this.
So we don’t want to scatter our focus all over the place, we want it to be very laser like and so constrained is how we do this. So one thing to understand is that people make a big deal about their ability to multitask.
And I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but multitasking is really not something we do well. It’s just as nice as it would be to be able to do two things at once. Lots and lots of studies have shown that the human brain simply isn’t capable of paying full attention to more than one thing at a time.
In fact, our brain has evolved to be really good at single tasking, to only be able to think about or do one thing at a time. So when somebody says they’re multitasking, that’s just somebody who is scattered. They’re trying to justify it. Oh, I’m just, I’m a multitasker. It’s like, no, you’re just not focused. You lack focus and constraint. Okay.
So multitasking is not real, we want to focus on one thing at a time. And let’s, you know, see what this would look like. So if you want to achieve health and fitness goals, you know, and like I said, these things take time, you want to lose weight, it’s going to take time, you want to become a runner, and just be able to run a half marathon or marathon or a 5k, whatever this takes time.
It’s really hard to get out there and just like run and accomplish something big from a running perspective. Or lifting weights at the gym, you know, you want to build some muscle you want to, you know, get more toned, that is not something that you’re going to see right away, you can’t go to the gym three times and be toned, like it takes a while months of hard work to get to that place. Right. And so we don’t see results for a while.
So we need to stay focused. And we need to practice constraint. So here’s an example of someone who’s trying to lose weight, let’s say you’re, you want to lose weight. And you are really motivated to lose weight.
And so you are going to do everything all at once you’re going to cut calories, and give up sugar, and start intermittent fasting and cut out snacking. And you’re going to start logging all your food and tracking your food and an app and counting your macros and skipping breakfast and doing all your workouts fasted.
And I will tell you that this approach can feel way too overwhelming. It’s just too much to change all at once. And you are very likely to fail and or quit. And a quick story of one of my clients who was very motivated early on in the process. And he came to me and on our first call, he had said okay, I’ve made all these changes.
And he literally was doing everything I just said. And he was like I’m super motivated. I’m doing all these things. And I said listen, I really don’t recommend that because you’re going to kind of feel overwhelmed and you’re probably not going to be able to sustain this very long.
But he was determined that it was fine that he could do it all. And so I said okay, let’s see how it goes. And two weeks later, he was like I can’t do this. He could not maintain that type of lifestyle, you know, all those changes at once was way too much for him.
So I said, Okay, let’s just start over. Let’s start over. Okay. But I don’t know about you, I have done this before, too, because I get this, like, you know, what do they call it shiny object syndrome, where I’m like, oh, this is cool. Oh, look at this cool thing over here. Let’s try that too. Oh, that looks fun. I saw that on Instagram. Oh, let’s try that.
So when we have shiny object syndrome, and we try all these different things at once, that all sounds great, but it’s too much. It’s too much. And it’s really hard to maintain that, especially when it comes to, you know, lifestyle changes, like from a nutrition and exercise standpoint, okay.
So constraint means focusing on one thing at a time. So for this particular person, and for you, and for others, I would say, let’s just start with one thing, like, let’s give up sugar, let’s just give that a couple of weeks, see how you feel, get over the withdrawal symptoms, which are real, by the way, once you feel good about where you are, and you’ve gotten over that initial withdrawal from sugar, and you’re starting to feel better, let’s go on to step two. Let’s try something else. Right.
And this is my strategy with clients. It’s always a layered approach, we make one or two small changes, we wait a couple of weeks, we see how things are working or not working. And then we can layer on the next change. This is my, I call this like my layered approach, right?
We’re layering on different changes, making sure that your body and your mind adjust to these things, and give you enough time to adjust to these things. So that then when we move on to the next thing, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. You’re like, oh, I already got this one thing, let’s, let’s go on to step number two.
So this practice is very effective. It gives you the ability to get used to one small change at a time, this is how you change habits. Right? You cannot change habits by changing everything at once. You have to do these one step at a time.
So this is where constraint is very important, right? This practice is effective because it gives you feedback. And so you know exactly what’s working. What isn’t? Because you’ve only changed the one thing, if you change 10 things, how do you know which one of these things is making you feel terrible, you just don’t know?
Alright, so we change one thing at a time. And then this practice is also sustainable, because we are constraining our changes to one thing at a time. You get used to each stage to each change before we move on to the next stage before we move on to the next change. And so building habits this way is very powerful, very effective.
Okay, so let’s, let’s talk about how to get started with this. How do you get started with practicing constraint and focus? And I want you to start with that vision for your future self. So who are you becoming? Where do you want to be in 6 to 12 months? What goals do you have for yourself?
Do you want to lose weight, improve your strength, you want to get faster, maybe you want to qualify for Boston or run that ultra marathon. Maybe you’re just someone who’s like, I just need to fix my dysfunctional relationship with food. Whatever it is, be very clear and focused on who you want to be. And then write it down.
And then spend at least five minutes a day thinking about this future version of yourself every single day, spend some time writing about it, journaling about it, reading those journal entries, recording a voice memos, talking to somebody else about your goals and your dreams for your future for yourself who you want to become.
Everything that you want for yourself, every accomplishment that you want to achieve starts in your mind. It starts with thinking about who you want to be, and what you want that end result to be, what is the outcome you’re looking for. And the more focused and the more clear that vision of your future self is, the more likely you are to achieve that.
So spend time every single day thinking about who you want to be, you have to have this very clear vision of who you want to be if you want to get there, right? If you don’t have focus around your goals and the vision for your future self you’re just going to fail. So don’t skip this step. Consistent focus on your future self will help you stay motivated. It will help you keep your head in the game and keep you making progress towards those goals.
Keep reminding yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. People who don’t do this, they will be motivated at the beginning of the process. You know, we all get motivated when we make a change. Oh I’m gonna lose weight. I’m gonna change my diet. I’m gonna stop eating sugar and they feel motivated at the beginning.
But over time, that motivation will fade and then they will think that they are just a failure, that they can’t do this, that it will never work for them. That is not true. The actual truth is they just lost their focus. That’s it. Clarity of purpose, that’s the key.
Keep reminding yourself of this purpose, keep reminding yourself why this is important to you, and you will stay motivated. And you will be much more consistent in your actions. And you’ll keep moving toward that vision of yourself for the future. Okay, so start with that vision of who you want to become. And then you have to practice constraint.
And this is the thing that is hard for most people, because I’m going to tell you, just pick one thing to change. You know, pick an area of your life, whether it’s, you know, running, getting faster, improving your endurance, whether it’s losing weight, or getting stronger, pick one area, and then pick one, you know, behavior that you want to change one action that you want to change, don’t get sucked into the shiny object syndrome, where you want to try to change everything at once.
Just choose one area, and then one action item that you can do and give it a couple of weeks, you know, like giving up sugar. Give that a couple of weeks and see how it’s going for you. What are the results? Is this working, or not? Is this terrible? Do I still feel terrible? Or am I feeling better now?
Okay, but don’t be tempted to keep changing things every single day. Don’t do everything at once, make one small change, and then make sure that you’ve adapted to that change before layering on the next thing. And then it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating this process, because over time, you will find that changing habits is much easier if you practice constraint instead of trying to do it all at once.
And then the third part of this is to have a plan. Being focused means that you have a plan. And of course, you got to stick to the plan. But people who lack focus, people who are scattered, they don’t have a plan.
Their plan is to just wing it with everything that they do. And how does that work for you? That doesn’t work very good. I’m gonna tell you, it might work in the moment, and sometimes we do have to wing it. And that’s just because, you know, maybe something happened externally. And your plan has to change because of outside circumstances that you have no control over.
And that is completely fine. But winging it is not a plan, okay. So I always tell my clients that the key to accomplishing everything that they want is to have a plan, right and stick to the plan. That’s the important part, right? You got to have a plan, but then you got to stick to the plan, right?
Being focused and practicing constraint. This gives you the ability to stay on track. And it helps you to continue to make minor changes, tweaking the plan if necessary. But when you’re focused and you’re practicing constraint, it means you are working a plan very intentionally, not haphazardly.
Like you’re, you’re doing everything with intention. With direction you have a laser-like focus on what you’re doing. And then what the next thing is, what’s that next step that’s going to move you closer to your goals. Without focus, you don’t have any idea what the next step is, with focus.
And with constraint, you know exactly what the next step is, because you’ve planned it in advance, and then you do it because you’re not distracted by a million other things. So make a plan. And stick to the plan. This is simple, but it requires you to be focused and it requires constraint, okay.
Remember to continue focusing on your future self always. And anytime you feel like you’re stuck, or you’re lacking motivation, you don’t feel like going to the gym, you don’t feel like running, whatever it is, remember why you’re doing this, go back to that future version of yourself, spend some time in that place. And then the other thing should fall into place for you here.
And then lastly, be careful where you put your focus. So if you focus on the negative on the things that are not working for you, you’re going to feel terrible, you’re going to feel less motivated, and you’re probably going to quit. So if you focus on your failures, you’re destined to repeat them and continue to fail.
If you focus on how long it’s taking, or I can’t do this or I’m a failure or this is too hard. It will continue to be hard, it will continue. You will continue not to be able to do it and you will continue to fail, right. If you keep focusing on the negative, you’re going to feel more and more negative and keep getting more negative results.
You always get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want. Have you ever noticed that negative people always seem to attract more and more negativity into their lives? Have you ever noticed that positive people seem to attract more and more positivity into their lives?
It all has to do with where they put their focus, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you really want. And I love this quote from Bruce Lee that says, “The successful warrior is the average man or woman with laser-like focus.”
So be the successful warrior. Maintain laser-like focus on your goals and your dreams, and you’ll experience success like never before.
And then lastly, have you ever thought about doing something hard and then just decided I can’t do that? I’ve done this many times. I’ve told myself, I can’t lose weight. I can’t run a marathon. I can’t finish an Ironman. And the problem with thoughts like I can’t is that that thought becomes the truth for you.
Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” And I love this quote so much because it sums up this whole principle beautifully. It means that whatever you believe you can or can’t do will be true for you.
So thoughts like ‘I can’t’, they don’t serve any purpose other than to keep you stuck and limit your potential. By the way, I stopped saying I can’t a long time ago. Since then, I’ve been able to lose weight. Keep the weight off for good. I’ve run like 20 marathons, I finished the Ironman Triathlon.
Stop saying I can’t and start saying I can and see what amazing things you’ll be able to accomplish. Let’s you and I work together to see what you can do. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
168. Dealing With Criticism
One of the biggest fears you face when you set out to better yourself is the fear of being criticized. You want to lose weight but you are so afraid of what people will say about you that you quit …
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 168, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: dealing with criticism. One of the biggest fears you face when you set out to better yourself is a fear of being criticized. You may want to lose weight, but then you’re afraid of what people will say about you.
And so you quit or you never even start in the first place. The fear of being criticized is one of the main three reasons why most people don’t succeed with losing weight, or with really accomplishing anything big for that matter. The other two are the fear of failure and the fear of success, which I talked about in the last two episodes of the podcast.
So today, I’m taking a comprehensive look at the fear of being judged and criticized and how dealing with criticism might be one of the most important things you do on your journey to becoming your best self. But first, if you’ve ever tried to lose weight and failed, you’re probably worried that you’re going to fail. Again, this is very common for most people.
Just because you’ve tried and failed in the past, though, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again, your past does not determine your future. The real problem is that being so afraid to fail means that you don’t ever try anything new. You don’t ever try. You don’t ever start anything. And the only surefire way to actually fail is to never start in the first place. Right?
So in my coaching program, we look at failure in a whole new way. We never expect to do this stuff perfectly. Nobody does. We accept that failure is part of the process. So we fail. We learn our lessons from it, and then we move on. Every success is built upon a big ol pile of failures.
So don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Just start. Imagine what you could accomplish if you weren’t afraid to fail. To learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. All right.
So I’ve been thinking about this episode for a while now since I’ve started talking about the three big reasons why people don’t achieve their goals. So this is the third episode in that series. So the first one was the fear of success, which I talked about a couple of weeks ago. Last week, we talked about the fear of failure. And then today I’m addressing the third big reason why people don’t succeed, or don’t achieve their goals, which is a fear of being criticized.
So what is the fear of being criticized? What is this all about? Well, fear of being criticized as being afraid of what people are saying about you. So you’re afraid that people are going to think negative thoughts about you, or say negative things about you? It’s not really a fear of being criticized positively. Get out. It’s like, Oh, I’m so afraid that people are talking wonderfully about me.
No, it’s a fear of being negatively talked about negative feelings towards you negative thoughts towards you. It’s a fear of being judged, being judged unfairly. And we all judge people unfairly all the time, then you might be thinking to yourself, but, but those people shouldn’t judge me like that. They don’t know me, they don’t know my story. None of that stuff matters, people look at what they see on the outside.
Then you might say something, you might put a picture out there on social media, and you’re gonna get judged. So welcome to Reality. It’s just part of being a human being, unfortunately. But a fear of being criticized, the fear of being negatively thought about, or maybe somebody has negative feelings towards you, or says negative things to you, writes a negative comment about you.
And really, it’s a fear of being seen as well. It’s a fear of being exposed, of being vulnerable. We don’t like to put ourselves out there. We don’t like being vulnerable. And here’s why. Here’s where this fear comes from: this fear that we have about being criticized and being vulnerable and being exposed and being judged.
It all comes from, you know, this ancient ancestral fear of being kicked out of the tribe, like it’s that we, it’s that fear of being alone. And the fear of not being a part of this is really what’s at the root of all of this, okay? This is something that’s baked into our DNA. So for millions of years, it was certain death to be kicked out of the tribe, if you were shunned from the tribe, it meant that you had to go it alone.
And going in alone, in those days was pretty dangerous. You needed the safety, the safety and the protection from the people around you, to help you hunt and help you gather food and help you stave off enemies and animals and things like that. So being alone meant that you were probably going to die.
So this fear of being criticized when we get criticized, or somebody says something negatively towards us, it kind of feels like we’re being kicked out of the tribe, like we’re not a part of, we’re different. We’re being shunned. We’re being exposed for who we really are. And those people don’t like that. They don’t like who we really are. Okay. So, how this shows up for us today, you know, obviously, we’re not afraid of being kicked out of the tribe, so to speak, like literally or being eaten by saber toothed tigers, I hope that’s not an issue we have to deal with.
Most of us listening to this podcast probably don’t have to deal with that. But this could be something where you have been working to better yourself. So maybe you are working on losing weight, and you start running, and you’re feeling pretty good. And you’re feeling confident. And you know, you’re starting to feel more like oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna share my story, I’m gonna put some pictures up there on social media and kind of talk about my journey here.
And you might get some positive comments. And you might get a lot of positive comments, and no might make you feel good, you know, but then you’ll get that one person that says something negatively, or is critical of you. And you, it makes you feel terrible, because you don’t really focus, we don’t ever focus on all the 20 or 30 positive comments we get, we focus on the one negative one, that’s the only one that really stands out where we’re like, why they’re saying something bad about me.
So people can be really, people are mean, people are idiots, and people are mean sometimes that’s the bottom line, right. And when we’re dealing with stuff online, especially, you’re dealing with a bunch of people who are, who don’t feel good about themselves, and they just want to put other people down.
And so you’re gonna get some criticism, you’re gonna get, if you put yourself out there, you’re vulnerable, you’re seen, you’re gonna get judged, whether people are judging you internally, or externally by like actually writing some sort of a negative comment. But you’re being judged, no matter what, whether you see comments from people or not, they are criticizing you internally, they are judging you. And, and we just have to accept this. We have to accept this, okay.
They’re critical of you for wanting to better yourself. I know, it’s crazy. Like I said, people are stupid. They’ll make fun of you for not eating junk food, or like not drinking alcohol. Really, really, that’s not a thing. So why do people do this to us? Like, why are people critical of us? Well, mostly, it’s because they don’t feel good about themselves. You know, so they kind of hate themselves.
They hate where they are, they hate how maybe they let themselves go. And so when you try to improve yourself, and you start losing weight, and you start looking better, and you start feeling better, then saying something negative about you, will help make them feel better about themselves. They feel bad about themselves. So they’re trying to make you feel bad too. And this doesn’t really work. And the people that do this kind of stuff are generally pretty miserable. People will talk about that in just a minute.
But the reason people do this is that they’re just trying to pull you down to where they are, right? So there’s this story, principle, whatever you want to call, it’s called crabs in a bucket. And if you’ve ever seen fishermen like catching crabs, they will put them in a bucket. And if you put one crab in that bucket, it will eventually be able to pull itself up by its little claw or whatever, and then pull itself out of the bucket.
But if you put a bunch of crabs in the bucket, as soon as one starts to pull itself up, other ones will grab it and pull it down and keep it in the bucket. So the crabs will be able to climb out of the bucket. I don’t know if this is actually true in practice or not. But let’s just use this as our analogy here today, okay.
People are just like crabs in a bucket, you know, they want to pull you down so that you don’t, you know, you don’t advance that you don’t get out of the bucket, they don’t want to see you doing well, they don’t want to see you improving yourself, they don’t want to see you losing weight, and looking better and feeling better about yourself, they just want to pull you down to where they are.
So one thing we have to understand about this is that criticism and judgment, this stuff does not happen from the top down, it happens from the bottom up, you will have people who have improved themselves and who are successful. You will not have those people criticizing other people who are trying to improve themselves and who are working on being successful, they just don’t do it.
Successful people don’t put other people down, emotionally evolved, people don’t spend any time putting other people down writing negative comments on people’s posts and things like that. Think about somebody like Oprah Winfrey, sitting behind her keyboard and writing some sort of like crappy little comments about you online, that’s just never gonna happen. It’s never gonna happen. Why? Because she doesn’t hate herself. She doesn’t need to put others down so that she feels better. She’s an emotionally evolved woman, I’m assuming.
I have a lot of respect for Oprah. And she doesn’t need to do that because she’s a successful woman, successful people, people who are working to better themselves do not spend time writing negative stuff about other people. They just don’t need to do that. Okay. And then there’s a big difference here. Now, listen, this is important because there’s a big difference between when we’re talking about randos on the internet, and then the real people in your life, people that are important to you.
For the randos, for the people that are just randomly writing negative comments about you, people that maybe you are friends with on Facebook, or that follow you on Instagram, just forget about those people, they don’t mean anything to you, right. And if you’re friends with these people, and they are doling out some criticism to you about what you’re doing, you’re trying to improve yourself, and you got people that are sending negative energy your way, then unfollow those people, unfriend those people block those people get their energy out of your life, you don’t need that, get rid of them. Okay, so let’s just start there.
For the people in your life, who you actually know, this would be spouses, partners, friends, family members, coworkers, kids, even, there will be some people in your life who are critical of you, who don’t fully support you. They may not be on board with your goals and dreams. We have to accept this, we have to accept that there will be people in our life, maybe people that are close to us who don’t support us.
Now, in this case, it’s a little bit different. We can take some of these, you know, if we’re talking about your partner, or a family or a close family member, you know, you can take some of their criticism and really say like, is this, maybe I need to work on this, this could be something that I need to improve and work on. And yeah, maybe they’re right. Maybe I am, you know, being ridiculous here or whatever, right?
So there are times when you want to take some of this criticism to heart and really look inside and see like, is there truth to this, you know, a lot of times there isn’t. A lot of times, it’s just people that are even though they love you and they’re close with you, they feel uncomfortable when you start to move ahead. I see this a lot with partners, like spouses, husbands and wives who want to better themselves and they start losing weight and they start eating better, and they start feeling better, and they’re running and they’re getting healthy and they feel great.
And their partner is not doing those things and their partners kind of feeling left behind. And they will kind of lash out at the spouse that’s doing better and want to pull them down crabs in a bucket, you know. And so sometimes we have to look at some of those relationships and decide if we want to stay in that relationship.
Now I’m not telling you to go leave your partner or anything like that, but just like sometimes we may need to find new people to hang around. If the people we’re hanging around are critical of us and they’re negative towards us, and they’re judging us, you know We can’t control what other people think or feel or what they say or what they do nothing, right. But you don’t have to hang around that and you don’t have to be a part of it. Okay?
So I forget who said it, maybe Jim Rohn said, like you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. If you spend enough time with four millionaires, you’ll probably be the fifth, if you spend enough time with four criminals, you’ll probably be the fifth. Spend enough time with four people who are ultra marathoners, and you’ll probably end up running an ultra marathon at some point, right?
When I quit drinking, which was, gosh, almost 16 years ago, now, I had to get a whole new group of friends because all the friends that I had were people that I drank with, and people who drank a lot. And for me like to go and hang out with those people was very challenging. And I realized that when, when I was sober, like they weren’t that great of friends anyway. I was like, wow, we don’t have a whole lot to talk about here. We don’t have a whole lot in common.
I think I needed to start getting some new friends. And that was hard. That was a hard transition to go through, where I started, you know, have to kind of find new people to hang around with and stuff like that. But listen, here’s what I’m trying to say. If there are people in your life, who don’t support you fully, who aren’t on board with your health and fitness goals, they don’t want you to lose weight. They make fun of you for eating the way you do.
You know, you go out to dinner, and you’re like, oh, no, thanks. I’m not going to have the bread. And they’re like, what seriously? Or if you don’t drink, and they’re like making fun of you for not drinking and trying to push drinks on you or something like that? Are these people really your friends? Do you really want to spend more time with these people? Think about that.
Do you want to spend more time with those people? And if the answer is no, then don’t. Like if you can avoid it, like don’t spend time with those people. Maybe you need some new friends, new friends are great. It’s great having new friends. And then here’s a good reality check for you, just understand that people already don’t like you.
There are already lots of people out there who don’t like you who don’t like me. And you cannot make anyone like you. You certainly can’t make everyone like you. So if you think that everybody in your world, in your sphere of influence, all your friends and friends of friends and everything is going to like you, you’re mistaken, because they already don’t.
You can’t control what other people think, or say or feel or what they do. All you can control is how you think, feel and act. That’s it. So don’t worry about any of that stuff. Don’t worry about the fact that there are people who don’t like you, like those people, just there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can do about it. Okay?
Do not let your fear of being criticized or judged, stop you from becoming the person you want to be. You know what it takes to grow, evolve and become more? It takes trying hard things, and maybe failing and risking criticism all along the way. It takes being willing to be vulnerable, because vulnerability is the cost of growth.
So how willing are you to put yourself out there and possibly be criticized to be seen maybe for the first time ever to be really seen to be judged? How willing are you to be criticized because there’s no way you’re going to do great things and become more without judgment, criticism. In fact, the more you achieve, the more you are going to be criticized.
So most people are not willing to do this. Most people just want to say stay small, they want to stay unnoticed. Because their fear of being criticized or judged is too big. So they want to stay and be criticized and judged. People already see you though, they’re already judging you whether or not you know it. They’re already criticizing you, whether they say it out loud or not. So you might as well do your thing and like kick some ass along the way. Okay.
I get criticized pretty regularly. And as I get more exposure, more people listen to this podcast and follow me on social media, whatever, I get more criticism. All throughout my weight loss journey. I’ve posted pictures and I’ve shared my story. I’ve shared a lot about myself here on this podcast too. And occasionally, I’ll get some negative comments or like a negative review on iTunes podcast, Apple podcast or whatever.
And I’m gonna go off on a little rant here because the reason I get these I’ll get a one star review and I’m like, what, really on Apple podcasts or Spotify or whatever and I’ll look at the review and it’ll say They like, oh, this guy is just, you know, talking about his coaching program on the podcast. So one star.
You know, listen, I put my heart and soul into this podcast and it takes me hours and hours every single week to do this. And I do it nonstop. I have not missed a week in like three years of doing this. And I made a decision early on in the, whatever journey of this podcast, where I wasn’t going to advertise stuff on this podcast.
So a lot of podcasts you listen to will advertise stuff like every 10 minutes, like you got another ad that pops up, right. I’ve even listened to podcasts where I had to sit through 20 minutes of them advertising different products and stuff, before they actually got into the interview or whatever it is they were going to be talking about. Right? I talk about my program. I do it for like 30 seconds. Have you ever listened to a podcast without advertising? No, there aren’t any, there aren’t any.
It’s like going to the movies and complaining about giving the movie a one star review because they advertise popcorn and coke at the beginning of the movie. Stupid, it’s stupid. I’m tired of it. Alright, so this is my little rant here. I’m in integrity with what I’m doing on this podcast. And I feel really, really good about how I do things here. Okay, so I just wanted to say that okay, I’m done with that now. So I had to be okay.
And I’m okay now with these negative reviews, because for every one like negative I get, I get like 20 or 30 positive reviews, right? So I get criticized, and it’s been one of those processes where early on it kind of stung a little bit. I was like, oh, he’s paying up someone like me, oh, my gosh, what am I doing now? It doesn’t matter.
You know, I get criticized for how I look for pictures, I have people body shaming me, I get body shaming comments from idiots on the internet, I just don’t worry about it, I just blow it off, right? Here’s the important thing. I don’t let the criticism stop me from fulfilling my mission. You know, my mission is to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire you to do the same.
My prime directive is to always become more to always improve myself to grow, evolve, become more, the more I grow. The more criticism I get, the more I put myself out there, the more I am seen, and judged and criticized. But I do not let my fear of this criticism stop me from what I’m doing. I just keep going. So do not let the fear of being seen, judged or criticized stop you from becoming more.
Do not allow your fear of critical criticism to stop you from going after your goals and your dreams. You want to lose weight, you will be criticized. You want to run a marathon, people will judge you for it. You want to stop drinking alcohol, you know, people will see that and they will call you crazy or stupid until you’re no fun anymore or whatever.
Do not let any of this get in your way. Do not let any of this stop you from doing what you know, feels good. What you know it’s right for you. Remember, emotionally evolved people don’t spend time criticizing and judging others. The people who do this are typically people who are not where they want to be. They are definitely afraid to try anything that will cause them to get criticized. They are the crabs in the bucket that will just pull you down.
So stay away from the crabs, get the crabs out of your life, do the things you want to do because they’re important to you. They’re meaningful to you. They cause you to level up, keep digging, keep taking action to fulfill your purpose. And you just have to accept all the criticism and all the judgment along the way. It’s the price you pay to become your most badass self. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’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.