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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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300. 20 Principles to Help You Get Leaner, Get Stronger, Run Better, and Live Longer

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This week marks a huge milestone for the podcast — episode 300! To celebrate, I’m sharing something very special: 20 Principles to Help You Get Leaner, Get Stronger, Run Better, and Live …

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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 300 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, 20 principles to help you get leaner, get stronger, run better, and live longer. This week is a huge milestone for the podcast episode 300. So to celebrate, I’m doing something a little bit different.

I’m sharing 20 principles to help you get leaner, stronger, run better, live longer. After nearly six years and 300 episodes, I’ve covered just about everything from fat burning nutrition to strength training, endurance building, mastering your mindset. But the truth is. All of this boils down to a handful of timeless principles.

These aren’t quick fixes. They’re not hacks. They aren’t they, they are the core truths that every runner needs to live by. These are the principles that will guide you to becoming the strongest, leanest, most resilient version of yourself. And to keep you running well for life. So in honor of episode 300, I’m just laying it all out there for you.

Um, I hope you enjoy this. And listen, if you’ve been struggling with your running, with your body, with your health, I want you to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Running doesn’t need to feel like a constant battle. Food doesn’t have to feel like, uh, confusing or, or feel like, uh, you’re being deprived all the time.

Strength training doesn’t have to be overwhelming. If you don’t have, you don’t have to keep spinning your wheels hoping that things will magically get better. What you need is a proven plan. You need the right support. You need someone in your corner to help you stay on track. That’s exactly what I do every single day with my coaching clients.

We work together to build a strong nutritional foundation. We develop a strength program that actually makes you a better runner, and then we master the mindset it takes to stay consistent with all this stuff for life. If you’re ready to finally transform into Lina’s strongest, most confident version of yourself, let’s go.

Just head over to my website running lean coaching.com and click on work with me. Alright, let’s get into this. Like I said. I’ve covered a ton of ground over the last 300 episodes. I was looking over my list of topics and oh my gosh, there’s so much I have covered on topics of nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset.

But what I’m sharing with you today are the. The big takeaways, the truths that have stood the test of time, truths, that’s hard to say. The truths that have stood the test of time. Think of these as the guiding principles that kind of tie everything together. Um, if you’ve ever like listened to the podcast and you thought, well, what matters most?

What should I really focus on? Well. This is it. Okay, so in honor of hitting this big milestone, here are my 20 principles to help you get leaner, get stronger, run better, and live longer. 20 principles that I believe every runner should live by. And the first one we’re just gonna get right into this, is to eat real food.

Everything really starts here. Real whole food fuels your body the way nature intended. If it comes in a box or a bag, or it has a barcode, or it has a lot of ingredients, I would question it. It doesn’t mean you, you shouldn’t eat it necessarily, but question it. Stick to food that still looks like food.

Food that is nutrient rich. Food that is, uh, in its natural form. You know, I’ve mentioned this in the past where there are some things where I think it’s okay to, to have some lightly processed food. Like I, I buy some frozen broccoli. That is in a bag that has been cut up. You know, if you’ve ever like cut a bunch of fresh broccoli, do you know how messy that is?

The little teeny broccoli pieces get everywhere. It’s ridiculous. So to me that’s like, yes, it is processed food, but guess what? There’s one ingredient in there, it’s broccoli. Somebody else cut it for me and. Froze it so that all I gotta do is cook it. You know, I don’t have to throw anything away so I’m not wasting anything.

Um, so that’s an example of a processed food that I am on board with. Okay? But look at the food that you’re eating. Make sure it is minimally or not processed at all. That’s kind of your, your best bet. Eat food still looks like. The food that it’s supposed to be. You know, number two, fat burning is your superpower.

So teaching your body to burn fat efficiently gives you steady energy. It improves your endurance as a runner. It makes it much easier to lose weight or manage your weight. Fat burning should be the focus. It should be your superpower. And when I talk about fat burning, I don’t mean that you’re gonna, you know, you gotta be on some kind of like ketogenic diet for the rest of your life or something like that.

We’re talking about being metabolically flexible. That means that. You have developed the ability to burn fat and carbohydrates equally Well, most people, they just don’t get into that fat burning zone very well. They don’t teach their body how to burn fat effectively. And so if you’re an endurance athlete, you’re sort of losing, uh, an edge.

You, you’re not using a tool that is available to you. So get good at fat burning. It really is a superpower. Number three, strength is not optional. Running alone will not make you strong. In fact, running is catabolic. It breaks down muscle tissue, especially long distance running. So in order to preserve muscle tissue, in order to preserve your strength, you need to be actively building muscle lifting.

Weights lifting heavy weights. This will build muscle. Eating enough protein. This will help you build muscle. Having more muscle means you’re gonna be, uh, you, you are at less risk of, of injury. You are more metabolically, uh, astute. In other words, like your body is better at metabolizing calories in general, you’re better at burning fat.

Um, you just burn more calories. When you have more muscle. Um, it’ll make you a. A faster runner, you’ll have more power. It’ll improve your endurance because it takes strong muscles longer to fatigue than weak muscles. Uh, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be building muscle. So strength is not optional.

Make it something that you do as part of your weekly training. Number four, you can’t outrun a crappy diet. No amount of miles is going to undo, you know, uh, decades of poor food choices, right? Nutrition is the foundation of fat loss. It’s the foundation of your performance as a runner when you are eating a really crappy diet.

You are putting your body in a state of stress. You’re putting your body in a state of inflammation and running just makes that worse. It actually creates more stress and more inflammation on your body. And so that is like a bad combination right there. So instead of just trying to run more and outrun all this crap that you’re eating.

It’s much better to change the diet, eat real food, stick to, you know, a, a, a diet that is low in sugar, you know, that is low in processed food, uh, that is low in hyper palatable food. And then you’re gonna be burning more fat. You’re going, when you are running, you’re, you’re going to burn more fat. You’re not going to be just burning off a bunch of junk and that.

Uh, diet is gonna have such a bigger impact on your overall metabolism and your weight and, and whether or not you are, you know, burning fat or burning sugar. But just trying to outrun poor food choices is not, it’s not gonna work. I talk to people every single day who tell me they’re running more, they’re gaining weight, ’cause their diet kind of sucks.

Fix the diet. Okay. Number five, discipline beats motivation every single time. Motivation is one of those things that comes and goes. You know, you might feel motivated because you, uh, you know, read a story about someone that did something hard or you, uh, got motivated because it’s a new year and you feel motivated to, to join a gym.

Okay. What happens after a couple of months of that though, uh, that motivation fades. Um, and this happens with a lot of people I work with too, who at the beginning of the process, they feel very motivated. They’re doing great, they’re staying on track, everything’s going well, and they start to lose a little bit of that motivation.

And so we have to, you know, reel ’em back in. We do a few things and we get, you know, get people to, to get back on track again. And one of the things we do is, is focus on discipline. Instead of trying to focus on just motivation. ’cause motivation might get you started, but it’s not gonna keep you going.

Motivation might get you started. Discipline is what keeps you going. Discipline is what keeps you moving forward. Long after the motivation fades away. So be disciplined. You’re not gonna feel like you’re not gonna be motivated. You’re not gonna feel like running. You know, some morning you wake up, it’s raining, it’s cold.

But if you’re a disciplined person, you’re gonna get outta bed. You’re gonna put on your running shoes, you’re gonna go do it no matter what. So be disciplined. It’s gonna be motivation every single time. Number six, consistency over perfection. You do not have to do these things perfect to succeed. Even the the 20 principles I’m talking about today, you are not gonna do these perfectly.

I guarantee that I work with God. I’ve worked with like a, a right around 500, uh, different runners and not one of them has done this perfectly. You just have to be consistent. You, you do need consistency. You need consistency over weeks, over months, and over years. You can’t just be consistent for a few days.

Like that’s not gonna be enough, but thinking that you do it perfectly or you’re not gonna do it at all, I’ve heard that from people. Well, if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m just not gonna start. I’m just not gonna do it. And that’s just kind of dumb thinking because nobody does it perfectly. So if you think that you have to do things 100% perfectly, or you’re just not gonna do them, you’re not gonna be doing a whole lot of stuff.

I promise you. So instead, try for consistency. Be consistent. If you are doing the right things, sticking to your plan, getting your workouts in, eating right 90% of the time, that means you have this 10% like wiggle room where you can just sort of. Wing it. I promise you, you’re gonna make a ton of progress over time, okay?

But we can’t expect to be perfect. Uh, ’cause it’s just not reality. Alright? So be consistent. Number seven. Let’s see. Rest and recovery are part of your training. Hard work breaks you down. Recovery is what makes you stronger. Don’t treat rest like an afterthought. You don’t gain muscle at the gym. You gain muscle while you’re sleeping.

You don’t improve your cardiovascular system while you’re out there, you know, running sprints. You, you do that when you’re at rest. You have to include rest and recovery in your training program. It just has to be part of your training plan. If it isn’t, put it in there. I know it’s hard. It’s hard to take a rest day.

Um. But I hear from runners all the time who are like, oh, you know, gosh, I was really burnt out and tired. I just felt exhausted, but I went and did this workout anyway. And I’m like, well, don’t do that. That is not going to help. You’re just like breaking yourself down even more when you do that. But we think we’ve been taught that like that’s what you need to do if you want to be a.

Badass. You gotta go run, even if you feel like crap, you know, even if you can’t even get outta bed, you’re so tired. But you gotta get up and, you know, do that anyway. Now, I think there’s plenty of days where if you’re just not feeling it, you need to just take a rest day. Okay? Uh, now if you’re, if you’re formulating your training properly, if you’re following a good diet, if you’re getting rest and recovery, you’re getting good sleep and things like that, you shouldn’t be burning yourself out anyway.

Um, but we do go through phases like that where we do get a little exhausted, and it’s okay to just take a, take a beat. You do not have to get out there and kill yourself. Like if you end up in the, in the, um, emergency room, uh, that is not a win. That is not a win. Okay? Number eight. Progress is never linear.

The scale’s gonna go up and down. Running is gonna feel hard sometimes, uh, setbacks are going to happen. You need to just stay the course ’cause your results will follow as long as you are persistent. I have seen so many people get frustrated anytime the scale goes up. Guess what though? The scale’s gonna go up and down, up and down, up and down from now until the rest of your life.

Like it’s just always going to happen that way. I’ve never seen anybody lose weight from day one to day 90 or whatever. Just perfectly like straight down like it. It’s always up and down. It always is. I’ve never seen anybody who’s improved their running. You know, do it perfectly where it just kept getting better and better and better and better.

There’s lots of days, weeks, sometimes that kind of suck and you’re running sufferers and you don’t do that well. Plenty of races where you don’t PR Progress is never linear. It is. It is wonky, you know. Instead go back to the principle of being consistent. Um, because instead of thinking that progress is going to be in some perfectly straight line, just.

Stick to the principles, do what you need to do each day, and progress will happen as long as you don’t quit. You’ll get there eventually. Allow the up and downs to be there. It’s part of the process. Okay? Um, don’t get frustrated by the ups and downs. It’s just part of it. Uh, number nine, zone two builds your engine slow, easy.

Miles are the foundation of endurance. They teach your body to to go longer, to recover faster, to burn fat efficiently. Um. You do not need to kill yourself every single time you go out there and run. In order to build a strong aerobic engine, you need to do a lot of slow running, slow, easy miles. So don’t be afraid to get out there and do some of that.

Now, I also think, uh, doing some very fast running is also. Equally as important. Um, hit type of training, high intensity, uh, intervals, uh, stuff like 32nd sprints, you know, uh, 400 repeats, stuff like that. That’s gonna build your VO two max, it’s going to improve your lactate threshold. Um, running will just feel easier, but also that zone two running is gonna help to build your endurance and, and help to create, uh, uh, a a running body that can run longer.

And this part is important too, is like you recover faster as well because you’re not putting so much stress on the systems every time you go out there and run. So if you’re one of those people that goes out there and runs kind of hard every single time, take it, take it easy, slow it down a little bit.

We want, you know, about 80% of our running should be done in that conversational pace. Slow, easy miles. This is your foundation. Uh, if you want to create more endurance, number 10. Comfort zones kill growth. So the magic always happens when you get outside of your comfort zone. You need to get. Used to being uncomfortable because that’s where you actually make change.

That’s when you grow, that’s when you change, that’s when you transform, that’s when you evolve. You’re not gonna change and evolve and grow inside your comfort zone. ’cause that is by definition the things that you’re comfortable with in order to grow. You need to get out of your comfort zone, everything that you want, but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone.

So get out there in order to accomplish more. You can’t really grow just by sitting on the couch and watching Netflix. Like if you really want to become a better runner, you gotta get uncomfortable. You gotta do the speed work, you gotta do the, the slow easy miles, you gotta do the strength training, you gotta get good rest.

Like you gotta do those things that. May you’re not used to doing, they’re not comfortable for you. Get out of your comfort zone because that’s where all the good stuff is. That’s where the magic happens. Okay? Number 11, muscle is your metabolic currency. The more lean muscle you carry, the higher your metabolism, the stronger your your running is going to be, the longer you’re going to live and thrive.

Muscle is so important. You just have to make that a priority in your training is strength training and building muscle. It helps you to maintain your weight much easier. Um, if you did no other exercise other than some sort of resistance training. You know, and when I talk about resistance training, I’m talking about lifting heavy things, heavy weights.

Uh, if that’s the only type of exercise you did. Awesome. That, that’s probably the best thing that you can do for yourself. It helps in so many ways. Just understand that you’re, you’re improving your metabolism, you’re improving your running economy. Uh, you’re improving the length of your life. You need to carry.

We all need to carry more skeletal muscle. This is like one of the best things you can do for yourself. Make this one of your life’s goals is to build muscle. Okay? Number 12. You wanna fuel performance without sabotaging your fat loss. So food is both fuel and medicine. You know, if you use it wisely, you can support endurance, you can support recovery without derailing your, uh, fat loss gains, you know.

I talk a lot about using, uh, fuel, especially carbs for running because I think it is important that we use carbs for running. Um, but there’s ways you can do it that don’t sabotage your goals of losing fat. You know, if you’re, if your goal is to become a efficient fat burner, get yourself fat adapted, get your body really good at burning fat, and then we use fuels strategically in order to.

Help improve our running performance. That does not mean that you just go eating a bunch of pasta and donuts and, you know, drinking sugary sodas and things like that because you need it as, as fuel for running. No, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about using Whole Foods. Good sources of carbs like sweet potatoes and rice and oats to help improve our glycogen stores to help improve our running performance and not, you know, sabotage our fat loss.

You know, we wanna make sure we’re maintaining, um, uh, fat loss while we are. Also improving our, uh, performance as a runner, right? And you do that by using carbs around workouts and not just doing the all carbs all the time. Diet, like a lot of runners do. Number 13, identity drives behavior. So. Um, your identity is who you are at your core.

You know, that’s like anything you say after the words. I am like, I am a father, I am a brother. I am a runner. I am an entrepreneur. Like, these are things that I. Would consider part of who I am at my core. This is who I am, this is my identity. Um, you want to become the kind of athlete who eats like an athlete, who trains like an athlete who stays lean for life.

Um, these are things that when they become part of your identity, um, do staying on track with these things is a no-brainer. When you say things like, I’m just trying to, to lose some weight, so I’m gonna go on a diet, what you’re basically doing is like. Making it a short term, uh, set of tactics. You know, you’re basically saying like, I’m gonna change my behavior for a short period of time in order to get these results.

Okay, that’s fine. And that can work sometimes. But instead of trying to change the behavior, you know, change who you are at your core. I’m the kind of person who. Um, eats clean all the time. I train smart all the time. I stay lean all the time when that is your identity, the behavior. Comes automatically when you’re the kind of person who, uh, if you’re an athlete and you eat like an athlete, you live like an athlete, you train like an athlete, then making a decision about whether you should eat, uh, a whole sleeve of Oreos.

It’s a no brainer. Like you’re not gonna do that because that’s not who you are at your core. So identity drives behavior. I want you to remember this one, ’cause this is a big one. Stop trying to change the behavior. Start trying to, and instead, change who you are at your core. That’s going to, that’s gonna dictate the behavior.

Um, it’s gonna be a, a, an automatic, that identity shift is the big domino where everything else falls after that. Okay. Okay. That was 13 number 14, stop negotiating with yourself. Every time you argue with yourself about whether you should do this workout, or do this run, or whether you should stick to the food plan that you put together for yourself.

You are just sabotaging yourself. Make decisions ahead of time and then stick to those decisions. Stop doing this. Negotiating with yourself where you’re like, well, let’s see. I. You know, I, I ran 10 miles this week and, you know, I’ve been really good. Like you, you try to, um, justify bad behavior. Have you ever done that before?

We all have. We all do this. But just stop doing that. Stop doing this negotiating thing where you’re trying to justify, uh, terrible behaviors, and instead just stick to the plan. You make a plan for yourself. You’ve made a decision. Don’t question the decision. Don’t question that plan. Stick to it. Follow through with it.

If you wanted a cookie on your plan, put it on your plan. Which is fine. If you wanna put a glass of wine on your plan for Friday night, put it on your plan. I would much rather you did that than just drink because other people were drinking and you felt compelled to do it, or you felt like there was pressure on you to do it.

I want you to be in charge of your decisions. I want you to be in charge of, um, the, the decisions that you make around food and around training. Um. And around your own health, you know? And so when you make decisions about what you wanna do, stick to those decisions, right? Don’t question the decision once you make it.

Decide ahead of time and then follow through, decide ahead of time, and then follow through. Just keep doing that on repeat, and I promise you you’re gonna be so much happier. You build trust and confidence in yourself. When you do this. You make tons of progress. Yeah. You’re just, you’re gonna be a completely different person.

So stop negotiating and, and stop questioning your decisions. Um, do what you say you’re gonna do. Be a person of integrity. Okay? Uh, number 15, self-compassion without excuses. So. Beating yourself up does not help. Okay. But neither does letting yourself off the hook. So true. Compassion is really accountability, uh, with love.

That means that you let, let’s say you, you binged and you ate all those Oreos, okay? Do not beat yourself up about that because the, the damage is done right. You ate a bunch of Oreos, they’re not good for you. You’re probably not gonna feel good. It might affect your sleep, it might affect your running the next day.

I don’t know, you’re just, you’re probably not gonna feel good. You’re probably gonna gain a couple of pounds of weight since you, you know, all those carbs, all that sugar comes with a lot of water weight as well. Don’t beat yourself up then, because then all you’re doing is just, you know, making it even worse.

You’re taking this al you’re already gonna feel bad. Um, and then you beat yourself up because you did something you didn’t want to do. Um, but also don’t just let yourself off the hook and go, well, you know, that’s just who I am. I just do that sometimes. Now, be accountable to yourself. Be a person of integrity.

Have some compassion with yourself, but don’t make excuses for yourself when you fall off the wagon. Acknowledge that. Accept it. Learn from it and then move on. Do not dwell in it. Do not go down that rabbit hole of just, I’m a terrible person. I can’t do this. Look, I just keep blowing it. You’re gonna fail.

You’re gonna fail a lot of times, and that’s okay. This is part of the process. There’s no such thing as success without failure. You gotta fail your way to succeed. And it sounds counterintuitive, but it is true. So accept the fact that you’re gonna fail. Be okay with that. Fail, learn from it and move on.

Don’t beat yourself up, doesn’t do you any good. Uh, number 16, we’re, we’re training for the long game, not just the next race. So the goal isn’t to crush one race, it’s to be a strong, healthy runner. For decades to come. So think bigger. Okay? This isn’t about just, oh, I, I just need to get, you know, uh, do some strength training until after this race.

Or I just need to eat right until I’m done with this race. No, think bigger. This is about the long game. This is about, you know, being healthy, being fit, uh, being lean, being strong for good. You know, and it’s just not about, you know, running a race. I can’t tell you how many people come to me because they want help getting leaner and getting stronger because they have a race coming up.

And then after the race, you know, maybe we stop working together and they kind of go back to what they were doing before. Not everybody, but some people do this. I don’t think this is healthy for you. I think it’s better to just maintain what you got rather than. Stopping and starting, you know, during race season, you, you eat one way, you train one way, and then, uh, in the off season you go completely off the rails.

Don’t do that, okay? Think about the bigger picture here. Number 17, mindset is everything. Your thoughts really do create your results. If you don’t believe you can do something, you will not be able to do that thing. You gotta master your mind and your body will follow whatever you’re thinking is going to become true for you.

If you think that you can’t do it, you won’t. If you think it is too hard, it will be. If you think you’re super slow and you’ll never get. Faster. You won’t. If you think you can’t lose weight, you won’t. I promise you. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your ability to change because we can all change.

Change is one of those things that is sounds funny, but change is constant. You know, the one thing that is constant is the universe, is that everything is changing. So understand that you may have been doing the same things for the last. Few decades, but that doesn’t mean you have to continue doing those things going forward.

And so changing your mindset around that. Well, it’s not like turning off a, a light switch where you can’t just flip it off and then now, oh, I’m good. You know, now my mindset is much better. No, you gotta practice this. But start working on it today. Start work working on mastering your mindset and your body, your results, your weight, your running performance will follow in kind.

Um, your most prevalent thoughts become your reality. And if you’re constantly thinking negative thoughts, especially about yourself, how do you think? Your reality is going to be, it’s not gonna be good, I promise you. Number 18, data instead of drama. So use facts, not feelings to guide your decisions. The scale, the miles, the amount of of weight you lift, they tell a very clear story rather than, you know, an emotion that you have.

You know, ’cause we get emotional about stuff. We, we do, we all do. We feel like I’m a failure because I can’t do this and this is too hard for me. And, and you get frustrated. Um, all these things are. N normal emotions, and we do feel these things, and that is perfectly fine to feel emotions, but it’s not who you are.

I can’t tell you how many people tell me, we’ll get on a coaching call and they’ll say, oh, I’ve just had the worst week. And very dramatic. Okay. And I say, oh my gosh, I am so sorry. Tell me what happened. And, and we boil it down to, you know, there was this one, one, you know, couple hours of this one day where they were, you know, really busy with work or, you know, maybe something happened to one of their kids or something.

And then there was this one other thing where they didn’t have a very good run. I’m like, oh, okay. So it was like, just those two things. Um, totaling about, you know, an hour and a half out of, you know, however many hours there are in a whole week. Anyway, we, we get dramatic about this stuff. We overdramatize, right?

Just stop doing that. Look at, look at facts, look at data. Um, people will say, this isn’t working, and we’ll look at, you know, where are you today? Oh, I’ve lost all this weight from when we started. Um. They’ve, uh, lost inches. They’ve gained muscle. They’re faster. Their, um, VO two max has gone up. Like we look at data and they’re like, oh, well, maybe I’m doing okay.

Like, yeah, you’re doing okay. I encourage people to do body composition measurements instead of just looking at the scale every day, because sometimes there’s a lot going on under. The covers, so to speak, inside your body that you’re not aware of. You’re burning fat, you’re gaining muscle. Um, and the scale won’t really reflect that.

The scale will just say like, oh, you’re just staying the same. Oh, I’m so frustrated. I’m not losing any weight. Well, you’re losing fat and gaining muscle. Amazing. Okay? But the scale’s gonna say that, you know, you’re just staying the same. Um, but look at the data, right? Let’s not get dramatic about all this stuff.

Fo focus on. You know, are, are you improving your VO two max? Are you improving your endurance? Are you improving your cardiovascular system? You know, are you, are you losing fat? Like these things are important to look at. Okay, where are we at number 19 run, because you get to. Not because you have to.

Running is a privilege. It’s not a punishment. When you approach running with gratitude, everything begins to shift for you. I’ve talked about this before where you know we run because we love. Running and running makes us feel alive and it helps us in so many ways. It helps us to, you know, release endorphins and oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin, and those are all feel good hormones.

And when we feel good, you know, we’re in a better mood. We have less depression. We have less stress in our lives. Um, running is amazing and we get to do it, you know, we’re healthy and we get to run. Isn’t that amazing when you feel like you have to run because you’re trying to, you know, outrun your bad diet?

That feels like punishment. That feels terrible and it feels like it is just gonna be hard. Yeah. And that, that’s not a good place to be, you know? Um, some sports use running as a punishment. I get that. Like, you know, my kids used to play, you know, whatever PB football and they would make the kids run as a punishment and, um.

It is so funny, especially when you see these little like kindergartners, first graders and they’re full football pads and helmets and they’re running and it’s just hilarious. They hate it so much. Um, but a lot of sports use running as a punishment. We, we do it because we love it. I we’re weird. You know, I, I always talk about running, being.

Uh, like 90% mental, uh, ’cause you gotta be like 90% mental to run the way that we do. You know? But approach running with gratitude. Have gratitude that you can run and that you get to do this and you get to move your body. And doesn’t it feel good to do that? Yeah. And it’s like, you know, uh, instead of taking SSRIs, you know, maybe running is the answer.

You know, for a lot of people, I know a lot of people, um, exercise and they run and, and they don’t need to be on some of those, uh, uh, you know, uh, drugs for, uh, depression and things like that. So enjoy running, be grateful. And then number 20, uh, the pri, you know, with all these principles and everything, kind of the biggest thing here is that we want to keep running lean for life.

Like this isn’t a diet, this isn’t a phase. We’re not on some 12 week plan. All these things I’m talking about, this is a way of living. I want you to adopt a way of living that keeps you lean, that keeps you strong, that keeps you. Thriving. That keeps you feeling good about yourself. And if you adopt this identity, like we talked about before, of, of an athlete, of a healthy human being, of a, uh, running badass, then that’s how you’re going to live your life.

And that’s the most important thing. You know, it’s not just about living long, like I, I I wanna live a long life, but I want. The length of my life, uh, to match the quality of my life. I wanna have a quality of life for as long as I can. Uh, you know, I just don’t want to be like, laid up in some bed with a bunch of tubes connected to me.

Just that’s not quality of life. Quality of life is I can still ambulate, I can still get up and walk around and lift some weights and, you know, uh, exercise and do all the things that I want to do. I don’t wanna be, um, an invalid when I get older, you know, I don’t want to have to like be committed to some old folks’ home or something like that, you know, because I can’t take care of myself.

No, I want, I want my mind to be clear, and I want my body to be strong. That’s what I want for myself, and that’s what I want for you too. I want you to keep on running Lean for Life. Okay. Alright, so that’s my 20 principles and a wrap on episode 300. That’s sort of crazy when I think about it. ’cause I look back on the last almost six years I started this podcast.

In, uh, December of, um, 20 19, 1 thing has been very clear to me that this podcast is not about me. It’s about you. You know, I show up here every week to share ideas. That I want the, these ideas to help you to change your health, to become stronger and, and to improve your fitness, uh, maybe improve your life.

And I get feedback from people all the time that say, just listening to your podcast has changed my life. And I love getting messages like that. From people. So thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show and being a part of the Running Lean community. None of this would exist without you.

I do this every week. I show up every week. This is a lot of work to put together a podcast every week. I do it every week because of you. Um, and if there’s one thing you know, I want you to. Take away from, especially from today’s episode, is that these 20 principles aren’t just theory. They are meant to be lived.

So put them into practice. Do these things day after day, I promise you, you’ll become leaner and stronger and faster. You’ll also live a better life, a longer life, a more vibrant life. Okay? That’s what I really want for you, and thank you again for being a part of this. Um, couldn’t do without you. That’s all I got for you today.

Love you all. Keep on running lean and I’ll talk to you soon.

294. When You Feel Like Nothing’s Working

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You know what I’m talking about. You’re doing the workouts, logging the miles, tracking your food, getting your strength sessions in… and the results? Nowhere to be found. The scale isn’t …

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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 294 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about something every runner, every athlete, every human being who’s ever been, uh, chasing a big goal will have to face sooner or later that moment when you feel like nothing’s working.

And I know you know what I’m talking about. You’re doing the workouts, you’re logging the miles, you’re tracking your food, you’re getting your strength sessions in, and the results know where to be found. The scale isn’t budging, your pace isn’t improving. You’re clothes fit the same. And you’re left wondering, why am I even doing this?

What’s the point of all this? I wanna tell you something upfront. If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not broken, you’re not weak, you’re definitely not alone. This really happens to everyone, and yes, it’s frustrating, but it can actually be one of the most powerful turning points in your health and fitness journey.

If you know how to handle it. But before we get into all that, I want to invite you, if you’re a runner who’s already, who’s ready to lose weight, get stronger, make running easier, I can help you get there faster and more efficiently than you probably think is possible. So I work with runners every single day who’ve been stuck in that nothing’s working phase for months, sometimes even years, and together.

We break through it, not with gimmicks, not with punishment workouts, but with a real sustainable approach that actually works for the long haul. So if you want that kind of support, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. Alright, let’s get into this. So this topic came up recently.

With one of my coaching clients, she’s been working hard. She’s very consistent with everything she’s doing. Her, her runs are consistent, her nutrition is on point. She’s doing everything right, but the scale isn’t moving, and her workouts felt harder than ever. And she said, you know, I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing and it’s just not working.

I’m just feeling like, you know, what’s the point of all this? And I get that. I’ve even been there myself, you know, training for races and not hitting the splits that I wanted or dialing in my diet. At least I thought I. And still feeling stuck, like nothing is ever moving. Like my weight would just never budge.

And I’ve even thought in the past like, maybe this isn’t for me. Maybe I should quit. But here’s the thing, those moments are not a sign to quit. They’re a sign to look deeper, to zoom out, because the truth is progress isn’t always obvious in the moment. So I wanna talk about the emotional side of, of plateaus or stalls.

So sometimes we hit a plateau, whether it’s our weight loss, our running performance, maybe in our strength gains, and we feel like we’re not moving forward. And that feeling. That emotional impact can be exhausting. You know, we’ve been conditioned to expect constant, visible results like you. You make some changes, you get some results, you make more changes, you get better results, and it just keeps going and going and going.

When those results stall though. Our brain says, uh, this is a failure. And failure triggers self-doubt, self-criticism and fear, which makes it very difficult to stay consistent. It makes it very difficult to stay on track. So what starts as maybe a little bit of a frustration because you’ve, you’ve hit a plateau in your weight loss can quickly turn into.

You know, this is never gonna work for me. I’m just not good enough. And when we have this kind of thinking, it’s dangerous thinking because that’s when people quit. And I wanna normalize plateaus, and this is something that we all have to understand, that plateaus stalls in progress. This is part of the process.

It’s not just normal. These things are necessary. So here’s a few reasons why. Number one, your body adapts the human body is really good at becoming efficient to change. That’s the whole point of training. You do something to overload the system. Maybe it’s a muscular system or cardiovascular system, and your body adapts and has a positive.

Change that. That’s the whole point of training is to adapt and change and become more efficient. But it also means that you’re gonna eventually stop seeing the same dramatic gains that you did at the start. And, and the more progress that you make, the smaller the gains are gonna be. A lot of times we get a lot of big changes, a lot of big progress at the beginning of our weight loss journey.

And the further along we go, the kind of slower. And smaller the gains are, and this is normal. You know, this is called the law of diminishing returns. So just, uh, over time the, the gains are gonna be smaller. So just understand that your body will adapt and the gains will be smaller. Um, another reason why a plateau might happen is that you’re in a recalibration phase, so your body might be busy repairing, rebuilding, and setting you up for the next leap forward.

But you just can’t see that yet. So there’s a lot of stuff going on sort of under the covers that you are just not really aware of. So just keep that in mind that sometimes our body has to recalibrate. It takes some time to get there, and during that process, you may not see gains. Another reason why we might hit plateaus is because of external stressors in our life.

Life, stress, work, stress, poor sleep, even emotional stuff that maybe you haven’t processed yet. All of this stuff is going to impact your ability. To progress physically. So just keep that in mind. Another reason why plateaus happen is that maybe you’ve stopped really challenging yourself. Sometimes we think we’re working hard, but we’ve settled into a comfort zone without, without really realizing it.

I know a lot of people do this with their running. A lot of people do this with their strength training. They kind of run. The same intensity all the time. Um, or they go to the gym and they, they do the work. This kind of the same workouts with the same amount of weight all the time. And they’re not really challenging themselves.

They’re kind of going through the motions and it’s, you know, better than doing nothing. But at the same time, if you want gain, if you want to break through a plateau and you want gains, you gotta switch things up. You gotta get out of that comfort zone. You don’t wanna stay in your comfort zone. All the time.

Now, there’s a big mindset shift that has to happen if you want this to change. And the key here is to shift from it’s not working to, something’s happening that I just can’t see right now. Think about training for a marathon. You’re not gonna get faster every single week, like every time you go out there and run, it’s not gonna be a pr.

You’re not gonna get faster. Every time you run. Some weeks you’re gonna feel heavy and slow. Uh, but the work you put in during those off weeks, it still counts. You’re still building a base. You’re still strengthening connective tissues, you’re still improving your mental toughness. Um, it’s the same with weight loss or even strength training.

Your body might be making subtle changes in your hormonal balance, in your metabolic flexibility or your ability to recover from harder workouts and these things. They’re not gonna show up on the scale, you know? So if you’re trying to lose weight or gain muscle, you look at the scale and it’s not really changing.

There might be a lot of stuff going on underneath there that you have to just trust is happening. Okay? So we gotta make this big mindset shift from it’s not working to, Hey, something’s probably happening that I just can’t see physically right now. And if you do find yourself in that sort of negative mental loop of thinking, oh, this isn’t working.

I’ve been stuck in this plateau for a while. There’s a couple things I wanna recommend that maybe you try here. Number one is to zoom out a little bit instead of looking at. You know today’s weight or the pace I ran last weekend, look at the last three to six months. Chances are you’re gonna see progress that you sort of forgot about.

And if you, if you look at where you were three or six months ago and you compare yourself to where you are today, you’re probably gonna see, oh, I’ve made actually a lot of progress. But we, we zoom in on, on these things. And especially people who weigh themselves every single day, which I recommend doing, just get used to your weight going up and down every day.

Don’t. Freak out about it. You don’t need to stress out. We don’t need a bunch of drama around the scale. At the same time, don’t get too caught up in what the number on the scale says and, and instead of looking at, you know, your daily weight, maybe compare this week’s average to last week’s average weight.

That’s a better way of looking at it. So this is what I’m talking about, zooming out, right? So we’re zooming out to a weekly look instead of a day by day look. But I would even go out further look at it month to month. See how you’re progressing. ’cause chances are you’re gonna see some stuff that you really haven’t, you know, uh, thought about lately.

Another thing to kind of break through some plateaus would be to think about auditing your inputs. And what I mean by this is asking yourself, like, are you really hitting the effort level that you think you are in your workouts? You know, are you. Actually doing the work and pushing yourself slightly here and there.

Is your nutrition as dialed in as you say it is, or have some little extras crept back in? So you gotta be really honest with yourself. This is what I mean by auditing your inputs. Take a little inventory, take a little audit. Uh, you know, start tracking your food. Maybe track your workouts. Be very diligent about, you know, getting a good, honest picture of what it is you are doing and are, are not doing.

And then this requires some rigorous honesty with yourself. And some compassion. Like you can’t beat yourself up because maybe you’ve been, you know, sneaking in some snacks here and there, or you just haven’t been, you know, hitting your workouts very hard. You’ve just been kind of going through the motions, don’t, you know, beat yourself up about that.

Uh, you’re not lazy, you’re not a bad person, you know, you’re just settling into what feels comfortable. Okay. So just make an inventory though, and be honest with yourself. Okay. Honest and compassionate with yourself. If you do find yourself, you know, maybe doing the right things and you’re, um, still feeling stuck, maybe change something.

Change one thing. If you’ve been running the same paces, if you’ve been, um, uh, lifting the same weights, maybe go heavier if you’ve been running the same paces, maybe. Add some high intensity intervals, do some longer slow distance or long distance, slower running. Um, you know, if you’ve been lifting the same weights, go heavier.

Um, if you’ve been lifting a lot of heavy weights, you know, go lighter and do tons of reps. If you’ve been eating the same calorie amount, you know, adjust that. Lightly. Uh, maybe you, you need to increase your fat intake or increase your protein intake or drop the carbs down or something like that. Any kind of small change like this can repark adaptation.

Again, your body does adapt to the things you do consistently, so sometimes it’s good to change things up. Don’t change all these things at once though. All right. Change one variable at a time. Give it a couple of weeks. Two weeks is a good amount of time to see changes, so change one thing, give it a couple of weeks, um, see if that makes a difference for you or not.

Another thing to kind of break through some of this, especially the mindset piece, is to focus on the non-scale wins. You know, you, you may not see movement on the scale. You know, you’re trying to lose 30 pounds and you’re stuck, you know, with, you know, 10 more pounds to go or something. Instead of focusing on what the scale is or isn’t doing, focus on your energy.

Maybe you’re, you’ve got tons of energy lately. Maybe you have an improved mood. Less brain fog, you’re sleeping better. These are all huge signs that things are working for you. You’re on the right track even if the scale isn’t working. Again, that goes back to maybe there’s some things going on under the covers that you’re not really uh, aware of yet and stick around because things are probably gonna happen eventually.

Um, the, the last sort of tip on kind of breaking through some of these plateaus or stalls is doubling down on rest and recovery. Sometimes the, the nothing’s working is happening because you are over training or you’re under recovery. Prioritize sleep. Take a down week, take a day off, or two. Um, change out a workout, maybe do a yoga workout instead of a run, or go for a bike ride or, or swim or do something different.

Um, recovery is incredibly important. If you’re just going, going, going all the time and you don’t give your body a chance to rest and recover properly, you’re not gonna repair damage done to muscle tissues. Um, you’re going to get into this. A state of what I call like chronic cardio, where you’re just doing cardio all the time and you’re not, you’re, you’re actually, you’re not resting, you’re not recovering, and you’re not giving your body a chance to, uh, lower those cortisol levels.

So cortisol being high is gonna put you in a state of, you know, fight or flight. Constantly and your body’s gonna be super stressed out. We don’t want that. That is not really good for you. It’s very hard to lose weight when you’re uh uh, when you have chronic stress like that. It’s very hard to improve on your strength gains or improve your running performance when you have that sort of chronic stress that you’re dealing with.

And a lot of times it’s just you’re doing too much. So think about doubling down on recovery. Now I wanna leave you with this. Most people decide they’re gonna quit right before they have a breakthrough. So think about this analogy, like maybe you’re a miner and like you’re digging for gold and you’ve been mining away day after day after day after day, and you’re seeing nothing.

There’s just nothing, nothing, nothing. And then you stop. But what you didn’t know was like you were two swings away from striking it rich. And then somebody else comes along and takes over, uh, after you, and they strike it rich because you gave up and they did not. Progress is rarely linear. It just doesn’t happen that way.

The people who get what they want are the ones who keep going when there’s no visible evidence that it’s working, when it just seems like they’ve been stuck in the same place for a while. Those people who do not give up are the ones who eventually succeed. So if you’re in this, nothing’s working place right now.

I got you. I understand it’s normal. Take a deep breath, zoom out, look at the bigger picture. Make some small intentional adjustments. Just one thing at a time. Give it a couple of weeks, see if anything changes, and then just trust the process. Because the truth is that if you keep showing up for yourself, if you keep doing your best, if you are consistent, if you keep putting in the work, if you keep your head in the right place, I promise the results will eventually come.

They will, right? The, the only way you’re gonna get there is if you never give up giving up. Is sure you are sure to make sure that you are not gonna get the results that you want. Okay? Do not give up. The results will eventually come as long as you keep your head in the game and you keep making progress and keep, uh, being consistent with all this stuff.

Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean. I will talk to you soon.

272. Breaking Through Weight Loss Plateaus

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Hitting a plateau or a stall in your weight loss journey is inevitable. It will happen. The problem isn’t that you hit a plateau, the problem is how you deal with it. Most people hit a stall and …

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271. Top 10 Biggest Myths about Weight Loss

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There is so much information out there these days about the right and wrong way to lose weight. Do this, not that, eat this, not that, and all these different diets and exercise routines all …

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197. Why You Keep Going Back for More

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Have you ever caught yourself eating something that you know is bad for you, but you do it anyway? Have you ever changed your eating patterns for a period of time and then found yourself going back …

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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 197 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Why You Keep Going Back For More.

So have you ever caught yourself eating something that you know is not good for you, but you do it anyway? Or maybe you’ve changed your eating patterns for a period of time and then you find yourself going back to the junk food you used to eat even though you know, you probably should steer clear of it.

This was me for sure. I found myself going back for more to the junk food I used to eat even after long periods of healthy eating. Why do we do this? And what can we do to stop it from happening in the future?

In this episode, I hope to shed some light on why you keep going back for more of the foods you should probably not be eating and what to do to stop it. And this includes over eating, eating to excess. Okay.

But first, if you want a little bit of help getting started with all the stuff that I talked about here on the podcast, I put together a free training that you can check out it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.

I put together the last three years of podcast materials, everything that I’ve taught here on the podcast, I kind of distilled it all down into about a one hour training that’s totally free, you can go through it, you can find it on my website, just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training.

But the goal of this is to teach you how to lose weight and keep it off for good as a runner. A lot of coaches, a lot of dietitians, a lot of nutritionists out there, they have advice for losing weight, but it’s really not geared towards runners.

And this is where I specialize in helping you as a runner, not only, you know, improve your running and get stronger, run longer distances, run faster, but also to be able to change your body composition for the better to lose the weight to get leaner.

A lot of people say you can’t do that, or you shouldn’t do that. I disagree. I wholeheartedly disagree. And you can learn at least a good chunk of how to get started with all this stuff by going through this free training. Like I said, it’s just about an hour of your time. That’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. Check it out, go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training. And I hope you enjoy it.

Okay, let’s get into this topic here. Why you keep going back for more? So one reason that I wanted to share this with you guys is because I’ve been working with a lot of people recently who find themselves slipping back into old patterns or craving the food that they used to eat even though we’ve changed their eating patterns, or their their chronic overeaters, you know, they just keep going back for seconds and thirds and fourths or whatever.

And there’s this idea that you know what, there’s something wrong with us, if we keep going back to the foods that we used to eat when we weren’t eating healthy, or there’s something wrong with us, because we tend to eat past the point of being full. Okay.

This has definitely been my experience in my life. So I can relate to both of these concepts of going back for more, I’ve changed my eating patterns. I started eating really healthy, and then I found myself slipping back into old patterns again, because what I was doing was uncomfortable, it was hard.

And maybe I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted. And then I’ve also been a chronic overeater in my life. This is one of the reasons why it was really hard for me to lose weight. Even though I was eating, you know, I was trying all these different diets, but I was just eating way too much of a lot of the foods even when I was doing the plant based thing.

Of course I was eating nothing but carbs, because that’s basically what a plant based diet is, is basically all carbs, tough to do for some people. Some people love it, and that’s great, more power to you. But for me, it was really challenging because I’m very sensitive to carbohydrates, number one and number two, I tend to overeat. I’m an overeater.

And you know, I don’t think calories are the whole picture. I think calories do come into the equation at some point and they definitely did for me when I would go back for seconds and thirds, and eat until I was way past the point of being full.

You know, there was a Comedian Jim Gaffigan, who used to say, “I don’t stop eating when I’m full. I stop eating when I hate myself.” I was like, Oh, my God, I feel so seen. Because that was definitely me and my experience around food.

And even today, I struggle with this sometimes, you know, I can, I can go out to dinner, I’m eating a nice big steak and maybe, you know, a baked potato or something on the side. And I find myself just eating until I’m past the point of being full. And why do we do this?

So I’m going to give you guys a couple of reasons why I’ve got like five reasons why we keep going back for more. More of the junk food that we’re not supposed to be eating, or we want to try to stay away from, or we’re chronic overeaters. And why we do this, and I want you to think about this in this concept of that there is hope for you that you’re not broken.

I’m certainly not broken, you’re not broken, we all do these things, you might be able to relate to a couple of these things I’m going to share with you here more than others. But we all have done these or some some of these in our lives. And it doesn’t mean that just because you can relate to some of these issues that there isn’t hope for you, there is hope for you like you can change.

Most of the things I’m going to be talking about are learned behaviors, and if a behavior has been learned, it can be unlearned. Alright, so just I want to put a context on this as you’re listening to this episode of you know, that these are things that you have probably taught yourself or been conditioned to over the years and that you can on teach yourself that you can decondition yourself to these patterns.

Okay, so the first one is this. The first one is that the foods that we tend to overeat are the foods that we tend to go back for the junk foods and stuff like that. It just, it feels good to eat that stuff. Let’s be honest, it tastes amazing. And it feels really good. Your brain loves pleasure.

Your brain is always seeking pleasure. Your brain’s job is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Your brain’s job is to keep you safe, is to avoid discomfort. Seek out comfort, seek the familiar, seek out pleasure. That’s your brain’s job. And you know what does a really good job of that? The comfort foods that you love. Junk food feels amazing, right?

A lot of times, it’s because these foods have been engineered to produce the maximum pleasure possible. That’s why people don’t binge out on broccoli. I hear people all the time. They’re like, oh, I just needed a snack. I’m like, okay, go eat some broccoli. And they’re like, I’m not gonna use broccoli as a snack. And I’m like, yeah, but if you’re really hungry, and you need to eat something, broccoli is great, you know, or some like raw carrots.

People are like, I don’t want raw carrots, I want some chips. I want some nuts. I want a candy bar, I want something that’s sugar, or salt or crunchy or a combination of all those things. Snickers, there you go. It’s got all those things all blended together, right.

But we don’t go for broccoli as a snack because it doesn’t light up our brain the way that this junk food does. So your brain loves pleasure. And this is one of the reasons why it’s really hard to change your diet. Because if you’re used to eating a diet that is full of pleasurable foods, pizza is a great example. You know, pizza is one of those things that like, oh my gosh, it’s like gooey and cheesy, but it’s also all that bread.

The crust is so amazing and chewy and it’s warm. And it’s just like, oh my gosh, that’s a very pleasure inducing food right there. So if you’re somebody that’s eating pizza on the regular, and then and then you switch your diet you’re like okay, pizza’s off the table, you’re gonna be dreaming about pizza. Your brain is gonna be like, where is the pizza, bro? Like, how come you took the pizza away from it? You know I want that pizza. So we seek out pleasure and junk food gives us lots of pleasure.

You know, you got to remember that there’s a dopamine response when you eat these pleasurable foods. Even thinking about the pleasurable foods gives you a dopamine response and it feels good to just think about it. If I start describing the most delicious chewiest pizza crust with the red sauce that’s just hanging off and the pepperoni on top and the melted cheese that’s got just a little bit of burned on there you know I’m you know, I’m talking about right.

You start to drool like your brain is like lighting up right now just even thinking about that just listening to a description of pizza like that will light up your brain and provide a dopamine response, but also when you eat as food, you get oxytocin release, serotonin, endorphins, all the feel good chemicals get released.

And listen, eating pizza, it feels amazing. Eating ice cream feels amazing, eating candy bars feels amazing. All these hyper palatable foods increase this dopamine response to increase the field good hormonal response. And why wouldn’t you crave that stuff, right?

We don’t tend to go back to eating hoards of broccoli or chicken or something like that. Even though that stuff is great for you. That stuff is what your brain and your body actually needs for nutrition to keep you healthy and safe and alive. But that’s not what we crave.

We crave the junk food, we crave the hyper palatable foods, the foods that have been engineered to be amazingly delicious. Okay. So number one, you have to understand that your brain loves pleasure. And that’s just your brain doing what it’s supposed to do. Seek pleasure, avoid pain, you know, it feels painful to your brain.

Eating broccoli feels painful to your brain, because it’s like, oh, I know, it’s good for me. But I really want the pizza, but I mean, the broccoli and so that seems terrible. It’s like a terrible place to be like, who wants to do that?

Okay, so your brain wants to seek pleasure and wants to avoid pain. So there’s your brain doing what it’s supposed to do. So just understand that part of the thing that we’re fighting against here, if you’re trying not to eat this stuff, is that your brain is going to drive you in the direction of the junk food.

Alright, so we got that kind of going against us here. But just listen, that is one of five different reasons why you might be going back for more.

Number two, a lot of times you are using your eyes instead of your body to know when it’s time to stop. And this refers to overeating. So a lot of times we look at our plate, and we look at you know how much is on our plate and we need to finish every bite that’s on that plate no matter what even though we’re full, even though we don’t feel good.

Now, this was me. And this is one of the reasons why it’s been decades of me trying to stop this overeating habit. But it was drilled into me as a kid that I had to finish everything on my plate no matter what or I would get in trouble.

And I had to sit at the table and everybody else left the table was able to go eat their dessert and get on with their life and I had to sit there and eat everything. Eat the tuna fritters that my mom made. I just bring that up because I just thought about, I haven’t thought about tuna fritters in like 40 years, honestly.

But I just thought about those because it was one of those things I was like this gross I don’t want to eat this stuff. You know, just imagine like a crab cake but not as good and it’s tuna instead. Okay, and it’s hot.

But I would have to sit there and eat that stuff. And if I did need it, I couldn’t leave the table. And if you didn’t eat everything on your plate you had you didn’t get dessert either, which doesn’t make any sense. Okay? Like, if you don’t finish all this plate and make yourself miserable, you don’t get more food afterwards.

So these ideas were drilled into my head that it didn’t matter how you felt, it didn’t matter if your body was like you’re full. Like your eyes and what was in front of you had to be devoured no matter what.

This is really, this is weird that we do this to kids. Don’t do this to your kids. If you want to, like help your kids now, don’t do this to them. Let them eat whatever they want. Who cares? You know they’re kids, they’ll figure it out like eat what feels good to you. Oh, you don’t want to eat much. You don’t want to eat the brussel sprouts. Fine. Don’t eat them. It’s fine.

But don’t make your kids eat everything because that is not teaching them good eating habits that’s like disordered eating in a way. Okay. So I was trained that I had to eat everything on my plate no matter what.

And mentally right now it’s really hard for me to leave food uneaten. Like my girlfriend, she’ll go out to dinner, or even eating dinner here, and when she’s done eating, she’s just done. And she’ll sit there and they’ll be like one bite left.

And I’m like, you’re not going to eat that? Oh my god, you’re driving me crazy. Just eat that last bite. I don’t want anymore. I’m done. I mean, I just got to this point where I was done, and then I’m done. I don’t have to keep eating and I’m like, how do you do that? I don’t understand how you do that. That’s not me. I gotta eat whatever is on my plate.

And a lot of times I’ll put too much on my plate but I got to eat it anyway. And so that’s one of those things where I had to really work on that and I’m better about that now. I can leave food. I’ve been better about that lately, especially as we go out to dinner. And you know, you get what they give you on the plate like I don’t have control over that.

And I’m good about like leaving some behind. Sometimes I don’t, sometimes I do. So, there’s this idea that you can’t trust your body to know what’s best for you, you because you’ve been conditioned to go by other rules, you know, you can only trust the conditioning that you’ve been exposed to, you know, and so, this is a, this is a big problem, you know, this is something that we have to undo this whole clean plate club, you got to be a member of the clean plate club.

No, you don’t. And a lot of this is just families, you know, bless my parents, you know, they were trying to try their best, they did their best, they had a bunch of kids, you know, I was always the problem child too.

And, you know, I have four siblings, and they would, I was always, always the one in trouble. I know, hard to imagine. But I was the one that would get what I thought was getting picked on all the time, but I was just, I was rebellious, you know.

But I have this conditioning, this family conditioning of overeating, really. And to this day, it still lingers here and there, sometimes it creeps it’s ugly head every now and then. But just understand that, you know, you got to start listening to your body. And when you’re feeling full, or even before you feel full, like when you feel like satiated, it’s time to stop, okay. So that’s number two, using your eyes instead of your body to know when it’s time to stop.

Number three, you believe that more is better. So if a little food is good for you, then more is great for you, right? This is the same issue that alcoholics and drug addicts have. So they think that, you know, if one drink makes you feel good, or if one hit or pill or whatever makes you feel good, then two or three drinks or 10 is going to be better, or 10 hits or pills or whatever is gonna make you feel better.

And so we think that since we’re eating a little bit of french fries, or a little bit of pizza is good for us, or it feels good, then eating the entire pizza is great. You know, we don’t want to, we don’t want to find it. And we don’t want this good feeling to end, we’re getting this dopamine response, we’re getting all these, you know, chemicals released, that feel really good.

And we don’t want that. And we want it to feel even better. So we think that eating more food, going back for more and more and more, is going to feel better and better and better. And again, this is conditioning. It’s not really genetics, we are not genetically predisposed to overeat, we’re not genetically predisposed to eat until we’re uncomfortable.

This is something that you have learned. Because you think if I stop eating halfway through this pizza, then this good feeling is going to end, it’s going to go away. And honestly, the only thing that happens is you start to feel really terrible. And then you feel really awful. And you and you do sort of hate yourself, you know.

And it’s one of those things where the behavior is so ingrained in us and again, these are just things that we’ve been conditioned to over the years we’ve trained ourselves to do these things. You’ve got to be able to unlearn this, we have to be able to learn better behaviors and start practicing eating to satiety, not to uncomfortableness, okay.

So we believe that more is better. And more is not always better, more is just more, and a lot of times more is worse. But it feels like more is better. Again, this is our brain sort of tricking us, okay.

Number four is this and I know that we have all thought this before, that I’ve already blown it for today so I might as well just keep going, right? So I ate the cupcake. You know, my kids wanted, you know, we take cupcakes to school. So I like made cupcakes, and I was just gonna get into the garage, but I had one.

And then I was like, you know what I’ve already blown it for today. So I’m just gonna go ahead and eat 10 more cupcakes and the entire pizza and all the ice cream in the house, right. And because I’ve already blown it for today, or, you know, I’ve already had like one piece of pizza, I might as well eat the entire pizza.

This is why so many diets fail because people don’t have any strategies in place to be able to deal with these occasional setbacks or fails or whatever you want to call them. And I believe that we have to build some of these exceptions into our plan.

So if you have a healthy eating food plan, there should be some exceptions in there every now and then it’s like, yeah, you can have a couple pieces of pizza, you can have the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. But you got to do these things in a very intentional and purposeful way. You got to do them mindfully.

You don’t want to do them because you’re reacting to how you’re feeling in the moment. You want to plan them ahead of time. One of the strategies that I work with all my clients on is planning, like plan ahead and then stick to the plan and plan ahead and stick with the plan. Don’t make decisions in the moment because we tend to not make good decisions in the moment.

Another rule that I think everybody needs to follow is, you never have two bad meals in a row or two cheat meals in a row. You can blow it with one meal, you can eat a cupcake, fine, okay, you blew it with that meal, you failed, great. Next meal, you’re back on track, that’s it.

Another way of looking at this is divide your day into four quarters, you might lose a quarter, but never lose the day. So if you blow it in quarter number three, and you had you know, some cupcakes or you had a piece of pizza, whatever, great, don’t blow the next quarter. Right, get back on track with the next meal. And that’s it. If you just kind of adhere to that right there.

This one can take care of itself pretty easily. But you have to be disciplined about that. And you can’t get into this attitude of like, well, I’ve blown it for today. I might as well just, you know, keep going. Or here’s another one I’ve heard people say is like I’ve already blown it for today, so I’m just gonna, like, make the next week a total eating binge fest, like, oh, I’ve gone one day, so I might as well go and blow the whole week.

Like don’t do that, but a lot of people do that. A lot of people do that. Right? Oh, you know, I was going great with my nutrition plan until work got really stressful. And then I had this one meal that was no good. And then that ruined everything. And now I’m back to eating garbage every single day. Like really, one meal can do that to you. It really can, it can set you back.

And then you think, you know, well look at me, I’m a failure, I can’t do this. So I might as well just go back to doing what I used to do. Just a piece of crap. And you know, you’re not, you’re not, you just made a bad decision, or, you know, you had a slip up whatever could get back on track with the next meal.

And again, I like to build in some of these, whatever you call it, cheat meals, you know, I like to call it the release valve. Like, we have this pent up craving sometimes for stuff and you know, talk about pizza, like just because that’s my thing. I love pizza.

And every now and then I gotta eat some pizza. Because that craving can get a little bit out of control sometimes. And every now and then I’m like, I’m just gonna go eat a couple of pieces of pizza. And then I’m fine. You know, I’ve had pizza twice this year. I know it’s crazy. And I just had some recently and it was so good. And I was like, This is so good. I’m glad I don’t do this all the time anymore. But it was so good to do it every now and then.

Okay, so don’t get into this attitude of a balloon offer today might as well just keep going or bonus for today. So might as well just blow the whole week, don’t do that. Get back on track with the next meal. Okay, that was number four.

Number five is this marketing and social pressures. So here’s the reality. The food companies do not care about your health, they don’t care about your well being, they want to make money. And the way they do that is they get you to eat more food, that is their goal.

They care about their bottom line. That’s it, it’s a business, and they’re making billions of dollars. And so they make this hyper palatable food that you keep going back for more and, and they know what they’re doing.

They spend billions of dollars on research and marketing to make sure that you crave the junk food, right, and then you keep eating it that you keep going back for more and more and more, even though, you know, it’s not good for you. They know it’s not good for you. They don’t care.

Okay, so if you think the food companies are putting stuff out there that is good for you, you’re wrong. They don’t care. It’s not good for you, they know what they’re doing. And they market this stuff to you. And they make you think that you have to eat this stuff.

Are you like some kind of weirdo? And our friends do this too. Our friends sort of like treat us like we’re weird if we’re eating, you know, good, healthy food, like we’re the weird ones. What? Really?

So there’s people in our lives, usually it’s the people that are closest to us who mean well, but they treat us like we’re in middle school. You know, they’re like, Oh, it’s okay, honey, just have one piece of pizza. It’s not going to kill you. You deserve it. You’ve been good all week. Have some fun. Live a little, let your hair down. Don’t be such a Debbie Downer.

Have you had anybody in your life that’s like this? Some people call them food pushers. And a lot of times they’re, they’re well meaning. They mean well, they’re trying to be positive and just say like, hey, have a little bit of fun. You deserve it. It’s okay.

You know, but what they’re doing is they’re putting pressure on you to do something you don’t want to do. And you don’t want to eat the junk food and they’re pressuring you into doing it and so a lot of times you do. You slipped back into it, you go back for more because they want you to, because that makes them feel good.

If you’re doing what they’re doing, and then they don’t feel so bad about themselves, because they’re like, oh, as long as you’re doing it with me, you know. But for those of us who have difficulty controlling how much we eat, saying no to certain foods, this is me totally.

You know, people in our lives that are like this are going to keep us going back for more. Doesn’t matter how much discipline we have, or how much willpower we’re using, we will keep going back for more because we’re feeling pressured by the people who are closest to us.

And again, they mean well, but we have to ignore that. And we have to stand up for ourselves in those situations. And listen, willpower, like discipline is great, willpower is a finite resource, though willpower diminishes as the day goes on, like you only have so much willpower, think of it as like a fuel tank.

And by the end of the day, that fuel tank is pretty low, you don’t have much willpower in the evening, you have a lot more in the morning, right. And then by the evening, it’s gone, right? It’s because it’s like, you’re tired, you just want to like chill out or whatever, like, your willpower is gone in the evenings.

And that’s when a lot of people, you know, go out with friends. And then that’s when the social pressures happen, and they want you to drink and then once you start drinking, you’re, you’re making even poor choices around food. And a lot of people blow it at night, like they do great all day long. And then they blow it at night because of this lack of willpower because the willpower kind of diminishes as the day goes on.

So I’m not saying you gotta avoid your friends, but just understand that, you know, you got food companies who are marketing food to us and putting pressure on us to kind of eat this food, we got friends and family who are kind of pressuring us to eat this food. It’s hard.

This is a hard one right to navigate around all this stuff. But I guess you just got to be okay, being the weirdo at the table, the one person who’s not partaking in the alcohol, the one person who’s not partaking in the junk food, and you got to be okay with that. It doesn’t feel good, it feels uncomfortable. But sometimes we got to just get used to being uncomfortable in those situations, it’ll get easier after a while.

Okay, so those are the five reasons why we typically keep going back for more, and then just understand that there are some things we can do about this. Like, I know, this feels daunting, it probably feels like oh my gosh, Patrick, like this sounds terrible. Like how am I supposed to overcome all this stuff, there’s all this pressure, there’s all these things, you know, working against me here.

The first step though, is just understanding that you have this self awareness about all of this. A lot of times is self awareness and understanding what’s happening within you and to you from the outside world.

Just having that self awareness is enough to keep you from going back for more for like slipping into those old patterns. Right. Another thing is, like I mentioned earlier, is having a plan, you gotta have a plan, make a plan, what’s your food situation? What are you eating tomorrow? What times are you eating? What are you eating, for lunch, dinner, whatever, make a plan, make it ahead of time and stick to the plan. Right? That’s it. Most people don’t do that. They just wing it every day.

If you want to change your habits around food, winging it, it’s probably what you’ve done your whole life. So don’t do that. You got to have a plan, and you got to stick to the plan.

And it’s like training yourself to practice good habits like new behaviors and behaviors, winging it is not how you do it, though. Because you’re never going to be able to like lose the weight, keep it off change eating patterns, if you’re winging it every day.

So make a plan, stick to the plan, make a plan, stick to the plan, right? Once I started doing this, I started, like seeing results consistently. Because the only way you’re gonna see consistent results is if you do something consistently, you got to stick to your plan consistently. And then you’ll get consistent results. And eventually you’ll get your goals.

Most people they just wing it every day, they get some results. And then they slide backwards. And then they get some of these backwards, they say why should I even bother? This is demotivating. Right?

Consistent results will keep you in the game. They’ll keep you motivated, keep you going forward. And eventually you’ll reach your goals, if you can stick with it long enough. There’s a big mindset shift though, right?

Because you’re you got to switch from being reactionary, like reactive to the world around you to being proactive and actively making a plan and sticking to it. That’s a very different way to do this, to go through life. Most people don’t do it, that’s why they fail.

So we got to switch from allowing the world around you to dictate your actions and behaviors to using your own mind, your own principles, your own goals, your own beliefs to guide your decisions and your actions and your behaviors.

Okay, so we don’t want to be driven by what’s going on out there but what’s going on inside by our own body, our own thoughts, beliefs, our own emotions, all of that, okay? So it takes time. It’s not something that’s gonna, you know, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna make a decision and you’re gonna say, Oh, I just want to change how I feel about food. And it’s going to happen overnight.

No, it takes some time. Alright, it’s, it feels daunting, but I promise you, there is hope you can do this. You got to give it some time, you got to embrace the discomfort of change, because that’s going to be ever present.

But if you can stick with it long enough, you will get the results that you want, I promise you and again, as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this, we can talk about coaching, this is what I do. I help people navigate this stuff every single day. And we have fun doing it too by the way.

Just head over to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. Click on that link. You can fill out a short little application, get on a call. We’ll talk about coaching and how it might help you. And if it seems like a good fit for you, great. If not, that’s cool, too. Okay, cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. And I’ll talk to you soon.

190. Carbs Are Not the Enemy

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There’s a lot of confusion out there these days around carbs, especially in the endurance athlete community. Are carbs good? Are they bad? Do they have a place in our diet or should we avoid them …

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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 190 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today: carbs are not the enemy. So there’s a lot of confusion out there these days around carbs, especially in the endurance athlete community. Are carbs good? Are they bad? Should we be carb loading? Do they have a place in our diet? Should we avoid them altogether?

I think you can probably guess from the title of this episode, ‘Carbs Are Not The Enemy’, that I have a particular stance on this, I don’t think they’re the enemy. But if you’re one of many people who are confused about all the talk on whether carbs are good or bad, my goal today is to help clear all this up for you. So in this episode, I’m gonna explain why carbs are not the enemy. Also, why it might be a good idea to keep your carb intake kind of low most of the time anyway.

But first, if you’ve been thinking about coaching, maybe you’ve been thinking about getting a hold of me, maybe working with me, but you’re still not sure if this is right for you, that’s fine. It’s not a problem at all. The thing is that coaching isn’t for everyone.

Not everyone is ready to do the work that’s required to change their lifestyle. Not everyone is willing to endure a little bit of temporary discomfort in order to get to where they want to get to whether that’s improving your running, improving your health or losing weight.

Not everyone is prepared to grind it out in the gym in order to get stronger and improve their body composition. Not everyone wants more for themselves. There’s plenty of people out there who are content with where they are right now. And that’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But my guess is that since you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably not like everyone else, you’re not afraid of getting uncomfortable. You’re not afraid to do the hard work. If it means you can get stronger, faster, you know, achieve your weight loss goal, you’re not content with where you are, maybe you do want more for yourself.

If so, if this sounds like you, then you might be a perfect fit for coaching. Whenever you’re ready to level up, I’m here for you, you can 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 about it and schedule a call with me and we can talk about it, see if coaching is a good fit for you or not.

And if you want a little help, just getting started with all this stuff, I’ve put together a cool little training program just for you. You can watch it for free, it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started. Cool.

Alright, let’s talk about this carbs are not the enemy. So I hear a lot of people talking about cutting out carbs, you know, going super low carb, keto, carnivore, whatever. And I think that some people get it into their heads that this means they can never eat a carbohydrate again in their life.

And I want to make this very clear today because I do get a lot of questions about this from people. I wanted to make it very clear on my stance on carbohydrates, and what place they can have in your diet and maybe should have in your diet depending on where you are with your training and with your weight loss goals and things like that.

So I just wanted to kind of clear up maybe some of the confusion and firmly take a stand on where I feel about all this stuff here. Okay, so first of all, understand that there are a lot of reasons why I like a low carb diet, why I think keeping your carbs relatively low is really good for you.

So just understand that, you know, when we talk about a low carb diet, that number of carbs per day can differ for different people. Some people consider, you know, 20 to 50 grams of carbs, low carb, other people consider 100 to 150 grams of carbs per day, low carb and really anything under 200, 150-200 grams of carbs is really kind of considered low carb, believe it or not.

So there’s a lot of flexibility there. And what we’re talking about, when we talk about eating a low carb diet, this does not mean that you can have one blueberry a day and a half of a banana once a week or something like that. No, this is about like, you know, you get to eat a banana or two a day and berries and honey and fruit and you know, yogurt and root vegetables and beans and all kinds of foods that contain carbohydrates.

It just means doing it in a very strategic way, in a very mindful way, so that you’re not loading up on refined carbohydrates. And I’ll talk about the difference between these in just a second here. But just understand that we want to eat a diet if your goal is to lose weight and improve your health and improve your running, you want to eat a diet that helps to regulate your blood sugar.

And regulating your blood sugar just means keeping your blood sugar relatively, you know, low and not a hypoglycemic we want to keep we don’t want to go too low, we want to keep your blood sugar, relatively constant, right, instead of having big spikes, and then crashes of blood sugar, because that causes spikes and crashes and energy levels that causes excessive weight gain and things like that.

So we want to keep our blood sugar relatively consistent throughout the day. So that means that the typical high carbohydrate diet that a lot of runners adhere to, it’s probably not going to work for you. Because runners are all about the carbs, all carbs all the time. And if you’re doing that your blood sugar is constantly spiked, and constantly spiked blood sugar means insulin is also constantly spiked, insulin being high.

When insulin is present, your body is storing fat, you’re not able to burn fat when insulin is present. So the right diet is the one that’s going to help your body to maintain its natural ability to burn fat. So we want to keep our blood sugar relatively low and consistent. We want to keep insulin levels relatively low and consistent, so that we can burn fat consistently, right?

This is all pretty basic, this is just the science behind why the low carb diet is so effective. So whether your body is burning fat, or storing energy as fat is all based on the types of foods you eat. And there’s other factors involved, but mainly on the types of foods you eat, and how much carbohydrate you’re consuming.

So if eating a lot of carbohydrates will spike your blood sugar, then what can we do about that? So I had another podcast that I did, called Good Carbs, Bad Carbs. And I’ll link to that in the show notes here. But just understand that all carbs are not bad. But there is a spectrum. You know, carbohydrates are sugar.

So sugar, you know, white sugar is just a concentrated, super concentrated refined form of carbohydrate. So on one end of the spectrum, we have super, super refined white sugar, super concentrated form of carbohydrate. And 100 grams of sugar is 100 grams of carbohydrates, right?

So this is something that if you consume this particular I’m going to use the finger quotes food if you consume this food, sugar is like not really a food. It’s a very concentrated, refined carbohydrate. But this substance that you consume will spike your blood sugar like crazy, which is going to spike insulin like crazy, which is going to make it very hard for you to lose weight, since your body’s going to shut down fat burning while you’re metabolizing that sugar.

Okay, eat a lot of sugar, your body is constantly going to be storing fat and not able to burn fat. This is not good. If you want to use fat as an endurance fuel. This is not good if you want to burn fat so you can lose weight.

Okay, so on one end of the spectrum, we have super concentrated forms of carbohydrate, like pure white sugar. On the other end of the spectrum, we have foods that contain carbohydrates, but they’re just very low, like whole foods like an avocado for example. 100 grams of avocado has like nine grams of carbohydrates. Right?

And so yeah, we’re eating some carbs, but it’s a tiny portion. It’s like 9% of that fruit. Oh, avocados are a fruit by the way, 9% of that fruit is carbohydrate as opposed to 100% with pure sugar. 100 grams of broccoli has just like seven grams of carbs. Right, so 7%.

So these foods contain fiber, which helps to reduce the carbohydrate impact, these foods will not spike your blood sugar, your blood sugar when you eat foods like broccoli and avocados and other foods with low carb, low carb foods, they will raise your blood sugar a little bit but very little and very slowly and then it will fall back to normal again pretty quickly, like it should, your blood sugar should go up a little bit when you eat, that’s normal. Insulin should go up a little bit when you eat, that’s normal. And then it should come back down to baseline pretty quickly, which is normal.

But eating that high carbohydrate diet does not do that, it completely jacks up the system. It totally spikes blood sugar, totally spikes insulin, and then your body’s just busy metabolizing all that carbohydrate. Okay, so carbs, not the enemy. But we want to eat a diet that does not cause all these spikes and crashes, that helps to kind of regulate our blood sugar.

So we want to keep blood sugar low, we want to keep insulin levels low. And we want to keep our body in that fat burning mode. So fat burning is the key here. And that should be your goal. If you’re somebody who wants to improve your running performance and you want to lose weight, or improve your body composition, then fat burning is your goal.

Because if you can improve fat burning, you can improve your endurance. If you can improve fat burning, you can lose weight. If you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat, I think that is just common knowledge. If you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat, so why not keep your body in a key fat burning state, you know, pretty consistently, you’re going to lose weight if you do that.

So keeping the carbohydrates moderately low is a great way to keep your body burning fat. Improving your endurance, you know, if you want to be able to run whether it’s 5k or 50k or 100 miles, if you can improve your ability to burn fat, your endurance is going to go up, your endurance is going to improve, you’re going to be able to run longer, and you’ll be able to run faster as well, you’ll be able to increase your your high intensity running as well.

So this is a pretty simple concept, let’s just increase fat burning, let’s, you know, optimize your body to burn more fat. This is very simple. It’s a simple concept. But people tend to complicate this stuff, right? They over complicate it, they talk about you know you know being going keto or doing carnivore or you know going zero carb and you know, I gotta keep it under 50 grams of carbs every single day all the time.

No matter what this is, we don’t need to worry about a lot of that stuff, right, you can just simply keep your carbs low, stay away from foods that spike your blood sugar, and keep your body in fat burning mode. And if you do that you’re going to be successful with this. Okay.

So there’s lots of benefits to improving your health, including, you know, not just the things that I’ve mentioned above, but some of the other things like lowering your risk for diabetes, improving your blood pressure, lowering triglycerides, improving your cholesterol numbers.

Also, if your goal is to lose weight, a low carb diet can definitely help with that because you’re burning more fat, you’re optimizing your body for fat burning, which is how you lose weight. But also it helps to decrease your appetite. You will feel more full when you do eat. And the reason for this is due to two hormones, ghrelin and leptin.

Ghrelin is the hunger hormone, which when you eat a lot of carbohydrates, that hunger hormone gets over active. And so you tend to be more hungry all the time. Have you ever noticed that if you eat a lot of carbs throughout the day, you’re constantly hungry throughout the day and you feel like you have to keep eating, keep eating, keep eating.

And then if you’ve ever done a super low carb regimen where you’ve stopped eating a lot of the refined carbs and stuff like that, and you’ve gone you know very low carb, you’ll notice that you’re not hungry throughout the day. And it’s much easier to not overeat when you’re not hungry all the time. Right. It just makes it so much easier because if you’re just not hungry, you don’t really feel like eating then you don’t need to worry about overeating because you’re just naturally not going to overeat.

The other hormone, leptin, which controls how full you are when you eat. So when you eat a big load of carbohydrate, like let’s say a big bowl of cereal or oatmeal or something like that, then leptin actually gets deregulated. So it actually is not produced the way that it should be. And so you do not feel full when you eat that.

So you end up overeating that particular food, it’s much easier to overeat carbohydrates than it is to overeat, like protein. Have you ever tried to sit down and eat like two pounds of chicken breast? I’ve tried it, I can’t do it. Like I can eat like maybe like I can sit down and eat up a pound of meat at a time, most of the time.

Chicken is one of those things that I have a really hard time and because it’s just pure protein. And I get to about three quarters of a pound. And I’m just like darn, like, I cannot eat any more. That’s like 12 ounces of chicken and I’m just like totally stuffed. I can’t eat anything else.

But if I sat down to eat, let’s say what is like one of my favorite carbohydrates, sweet treats something like cheesecake. Oh my God, even though that’s like super dense and rich, I can eat a pound of cheesecake, two pounds of cheesecake, no problem at all. Especially if it’s got like caramel sauce on it. And whipped cream. Heck, yeah, I can tear that up.

That’s because those hormones are just jacked up, they don’t, they don’t work the way they’re supposed to. And so all of a sudden, I’m not feeling full, I’m excessively hungry, and I can overeat carbohydrates, whereas, you know, it’s really hard to overeat protein, okay.

So again, there’s a lot of benefits to eating a lower carb diet, you know, also understand there’s tons of benefits for running. So fat is an amazing fuel source for endurance athletes, we all know that. If you’ve listened to this podcast at all, you know, I talk about this a lot. And you have a virtually unlimited supply of fat on board.

And really, it doesn’t even matter your body composition. If you’ve got anywhere, you know, upwards of you know, 6 or 8% body fat you’ve got tons of fat on board to use for fuel for running. So you know, you can run on fat alone for many distances, half marathon, marathon, 50k, 50 mile, 100 miles.

Mike McKnight famously ran 100 miles on zero calories, just to show the world that you can use your own stored body fat as fuel very effectively. And he’s a super small dude and really lean. And so he was able to run 100 miles on fat alone, body fat alone.

And studies have even shown that you can train yourself to burn more fat and perform at even higher intensities. So the common belief is that you know, at some point, you’re going to cross over from fat burning to sugar burning, where you’re going to be burning mostly sugar, and you’re going to stop burning mostly fat and start burning mostly sugar.

And typically this is around 65% of your VO2 max. And this will be for most carb adapted athletes. So if you’re somebody that’s eating a traditional high carbohydrate diet, you’re not fat adapted, meaning your body isn’t burning fat super effectively, then around 65% of your VO2 max is where you’re going to make that crossover.

Well, fat adapted athletes don’t hit that crossover until much later, maybe 80, 90 or 100% of their VO2 max or even over 100% or their VO2 max. So they’re burning fat up to and even over 100% of their VO2 max.

Jeff Browning is an elite Ultra runner who has been tested to burn fat at like 90-95% of his VO2 max. It’s pretty incredible. So that means that you can run at even higher intensities and you’re still just utilizing fat you haven’t crossed over from fat to sugar burning. Right.

And so most of us weekend warriors and, you know, age group athletes or who are out there, you know, we can utilize, we’re probably not going to be running at close to 100% of our VO2 max for any race.

Maybe you would, you know, but just understand that for most age groupers out there, you’re going to be burning mostly fat no matter what you’re doing. So if you’re fat adapted, this is a profound performance enhancer for you. Okay, so all of this is to say that maintaining a low carb diet can have profound performance benefits and profound health benefits for you.

If you want to lose weight, keep your carbs low. If you want to burn more fat, keep your carbs low. If you want to prove your running, keep your carbs low. If you want improve your health markers, you know cholesterol and blood pressure and things like that, keep your carbs low, right?

So the logical conclusion a lot of people come to then is like, Oh, if low carb is good, I’m just gonna go zero carbs, isn’t zero carbs better? Doesn’t this make sense? Like, you know, if low carb as good as zero carbs better? And I’m gonna say like, probably not.

This all depends on the individual. I don’t think so. I don’t think the zero carbs is really right for everybody. I do know some people that have done really well on a carnivore type of diet, maybe zero carbs for a period of time.

Now I’ve done this before, I’ve gone 30, 60 or 90 days, doing like strict carnivore, where I had almost zero carbs, it’s really hard to keep your carbs zero, like you can’t eat vegetables at all, you can’t eat a tomato, you can’t eat anything other than like meat and eggs. Even eggs have a tiny bit of carbs in there, like one or two grams of carbs.

So anyway, it’s hard to do. But I’ve done this for a period of time, and I’ve kept the carbs super low. And there are some benefits to doing that for sure. But I don’t think it’s something that you want to do all the time. Carbs are not the enemy. Okay, carbs can definitely have a place in your diet.

And what low carb means is low carb does not mean the same thing for everybody. But it doesn’t mean zero carbs. Right. So there, there is a spectrum here of where you want to be in the low carb world. Okay. So, carbs are not the enemy, we don’t need to be afraid of carbs, they can definitely have a place in your diet.

And so, for example, if you want to lose weight, and you want to improve your running, in general, and again, this is going to vary for each person. But you might start out pretty low carb, so say like 50 grams a day or so. And you might maintain that for around 30 days, this helps to regulate your hormones, get your blood sugar normalized, helps to reduce cravings for sweet foods and gets your hunger signals working the way they’re supposed to.

Then after 30 days, you might bump that daily carb number up, you might go to 75 or 100 or 150 grams of carbs. And this all depends on you, depends on your metabolism, your calorie requirements, where you are in your training cycle, your particular goals, are you trying to lose a lot of weight? Are you just trying to improve your running? Are you running 5K’s?

Are you running ultra marathons like all these things are going to factor into this, okay? There’s tons of factors involved in this, why you have to kind of experiment with this and you got to test this, why offer coaching, instead of just handing over guidelines to people like I’m even a little leery of throwing these numbers out there because they are not going to work for everyone.

All of this is on a spectrum. And every single person is a little bit different. So I work with you on an individual basis, we look at all of these factors, we come up with some guidelines based on all of these factors. And then we kind of see if it is working or not. And then we continually make minor changes and minor tweaks to get things working properly for you.

Okay, so for me, I vary my carb intake pretty regularly. So some days, I’m pretty low carb, so that might be 30 to 50 grams of carbs. Other days, I might be 100 to 120 grams of carbs. And this all depends on my activity level.

So I look at, you know, what my running schedule is like, what my weightlifting schedule is like, and how much of that carbohydrate that I’m actually going to be utilizing. So if I’m going to be burning the carbs through my workouts, great, I can up the carb intake. But if I’m just going to be a little more sedentary or have an off day or something like that, if I were to keep the carbs, you know, at the higher end of the spectrum 120 grams or something like that, I’ll probably be storing more of that as fat instead of burning it through the workout.

So this is an important distinction because I don’t want to just add a bunch of stored body fat so I want to time the carbs around my workouts and time the carbs with my lifestyle and my activity levels so that I am oxidizing the carbs as well as maintaining them. Oxidation of fat, right?

We don’t want to be shutting down your fat metabolism, your fat oxidation. Eating too many carbs, or the wrong types of carbs, will do this though. So if you eat refined sugars that’s going to shut down fat burning or definitely dampened fat burning. So I tend to gravitate toward whole foods sources of carbs, slow burning types of carbs that will not spike my blood sugar that won’t shut down the fat burning.

So some of the go to’s for me would be sweet potatoes, legumes, fruit, some dairy, things like that. So carbs are not the enemy. And but I would argue that refined carbs like white sugar and white flour are really not good for you. Like, I don’t think they really have a place in the human diet. There’s no real positive health benefits to eating refined white sugars and refined white flowers, right? There’s only negative side effects, there’s only negative effects on your body.

It’s kind of like alcohol, alcohol is not really a health food, it’s not good for you. Right? It’s a poison, but even alcohol in moderation, very strict moderation is okay. You know, it’s not great. It’s not like it’s not good for you. Sugar is not good for you. White flour is not good for you. But every now and then it’s okay.

It’s okay to have a drink every now and then it’s okay to eat a piece of cake every now and then, or have a piece of bread every now and then. It’s like, I’m never going to tell you or even myself that I’m never going to have that stuff again, although I don’t drink so I’m probably never gonna have alcohol again.

But as far as like the white sugar, and the flour and the cake and the cheesecake and things like that, I’m gonna have some of that every now and then. But it’s very sporadic. It’s very sporadic, I do not eat that stuff all the time. So just understand that carbs are on a spectrum, that they’re not the enemy, but you got to maintain the right carb level for you and the right amount of carbs, it’s going to help to help you to reach your weight loss goals, your health goals, your fitness goals, your running goals.

And also, that’s not going to cause damage, right. So we got to be careful with this stuff and got it you know, eat the right types of carbs. So carbohydrates do have a place in our diet. We’ve been consuming carbs for millions of years as human beings. But we’re not, we weren’t consuming the refined and processed carbs, the genetically modified carbs that we have available to us today.

Like back in the day, we used to eat things like bulbs, tubers and berries. We weren’t eating refined white sugar and bread and pasta, like these foods will do a number on our blood sugar and basically shut down fat burning. We didn’t have those kinds of foods available to us.

So the carbohydrates we were consuming, you know, tens of thousands of years ago for millions of years, was a very low glycemic diet and very slow burning types of carbs. Even the fruit we used back then was much different than the modified fruit we have today, which is you know, pure sugar. A lot of it is just really, really high in sugar.

So stick to whole foods, sources of carbs. Think slow burning carbohydrates like root vegetables, temper through, say berries, dairy, like Greek yogurt, legumes like beans, lentils, these types of foods, they will not spike your blood sugar. They’re slow burning carbs, they will help you too. They will help enhance your running performance and they will help to keep you burning fat, which is what you want.

You want to continue to burn fat so you can lose weight. You want to continue to burn fat so you can run faster and run longer and keep that performance edge that you want. Okay, so carbs are not the enemy. You just gotta do it the right way. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean. And I’ll talk to you soon.