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260. 10 Hard Truths About Fitness No One Is Talking About
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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 260 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, 10 Hard Truths About Fitness That No One Is Talking About.
So there’s a lot of information out there these days on what it means to be healthy and to be fit. My social media feeds are full of health and fitness experts spouting all kinds of opinions and ideas and principles that everyone should be following. But in my years of training and coaching runners on weight loss and building strength and improving their running, I found a few things that really stand out.
So these 10 concepts I’m going to share with you today are not what most of the mainstream experts are talking about, but they are critically important to your health nonetheless. So yes, I decided to make a list. It’s the end of the year, and everyone’s making lists, so I’m getting in on this action too. Just like Santa, he’s making a list. So in this episode of the podcast, I’ve got 10 hard truths about fitness that no one is talking about, so you can become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet.
But first, if you’ve been interested in working with me as your coach. I can help you to get leaner, to lose weight, to get stronger, to build some muscle, to run longer, to improve your endurance and to run faster, to run your fastest race. Whatever that means for you, or it could just be that you just want to improve your time. In general, you don’t like running races and you just want to get faster. All of that is possible for you.
You can actually become the healthy and healthiest and most badass version of yourself. It just takes a little bit of work. It takes a little bit of guidance, some direction, some feedback. You need support. You need accountability. You need somebody there that’s kind of showing you the way, and I can do that for you. So if you’re interested in working with me, you just got to go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me, and you and I can work together to get you to that place, to get you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself.
Also, starting in the new year, I’m going to be offering a new type of coaching. This is going to be personalized running plans. So this is strictly going to be running coaching, and anybody can sign up. You can go to my website. I don’t have the page up yet, but just know that this the way that it’s going to work is you can go to my website. You can pick a plan; half marathon or a 5k or a full marathon or ultra marathon. You can sign up for coaching.
You’re going to fill out a questionnaire, answer a bunch of questions. I’m going to send you a customized training plan that’s written up just for you. How many days a week you’d like to run? You know, what types of workouts you like to do, what types of workouts you want to avoid. We’re going to work towards a particular event. So if you have a particular race that you want to train for, you’re going to tell me about that, and then you’re going to get this customized plan, and you’re going to get coaching from me. We’re going to be doing all this over texting.
So you’re going to be able to message me with questions. You’re going to send me runs. We’re going to stay in touch about how you’re progressing. This is a great way to become a more badass runner. So if you’re interested in running coaching. Be on the lookout. I’m going to be talking more about this in the coming weeks.
I should have everything ready to go for you by the first of the year, so that you can start your training for spring races and have a customized plan and have me as your running coach, helping you to achieve all of your running goals for 2025 cool, so just be on the lookout for that. I’ll be talking more about that very soon.
Okay, so today, I was thinking about the topic that I wanted to talk about for this episode. And we’re coming towards the end of the year, and I always start to think about lists. And I even thought about putting together an episode where I compile a bunch of tidbits from some old episodes, and I decided that I just wanted to share some concepts with you today. And the concepts are truths, hard truths about fitness that nobody’s really talking about.
These are things that are very important, and I just don’t hear many or any health and fitness fitness experts out there on the internet really talking about this stuff. You know, my social media feeds are full of health and fitness experts. You know, I follow a lot of different people, and I do that because I want to get other perspectives. And there’s some things that I just don’t hear a lot of people talking about, and I think they’re very important. And these things work for the people that I work with.
So my clients are going to follow a lot of these principles that I’m talking about here, if not all of them, and they get amazing results. So I wanted to share these with you guys here today, and I just want to say this, that I had some dentist work done this morning. I had an old cavity filling that was coming loose, or something like that, and so they needed to replace the filling. So they had to, like, numb my mouth and do some drilling, and everything’s good now, but it has taken me all day for my mouth to be not numb anymore, because when I was talking, I sounded like, it’s like cotton in my mouth or something like that. So if it’s if I sound weird today, that is why.
But I think I’m finally feeling like I have all the sensation back in my mouth and stuff like that. But oh my gosh, I haven’t had drilling in my mouth in decades, so this has been like an experience. Anyway. Okay, let’s get into this, 10 Hard Truths About Fitness That No One Is Talking About.
Number one, fasted training will turn you into a fat, burning machine. So this is we’re talking about training fasted that means fasted cardio, so fasted running and fasted weight lifting, for example, could be fasted cross training as well. But the benefits of fasting and working out in that fasted state is that you’re burning more fat. It helps you to lose weight. It helps you to increase energy output.
A lot of people think, oh, you have to have something before you work out, you need to eat a bunch of sugar or, you know, a pre workout drink with all this, well, sugar and stuff in it, and you really don’t need that. Your body is really good at producing more adrenaline when you’re in that fasted state, adrenaline is what’s going to give you that more energy.
The other cool thing about working out in a fasted state is that your body during that fasted state produces more growth hormone, so this helps you to recover faster and more effectively from those harder workouts. So not only can you train harder because of more adrenaline output, but you actually recover faster. And if you’re somebody that is a runner and you want to lose weight training in the fasted state. Running in the fasted state is going to help you to get fat adapted. It’s going to help improve fat adaptation, speed up fat adaptation, and so you’ll be able to fat burning machine a little bit faster if you do more workouts fasted. And you’re going to find that as you run the longer distances that you run, you start running 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 miles fasted, and you feel amazing doing it. There’s something to that.
You know, using fat as energy, using fat as fuel, is a very effective way of improving your endurance. It can actually help you to improve your higher end running to like the faster, harder running that takes more time to get there. But if you just want to improve your endurance, start training in that fasted state. It helps break through weight loss plateaus. You know, if you’re somebody that’s trying to lose weight, and you’re finding that you are, you hit a stall. Work out in that fasted state. It helps to improve mental and cognitive function. You know, you can think more clearly. Your brain loves fat as fuel. It helps to lower blood cholesterol levels. It helps to decrease inflammation. Glucose levels go down.
Something else people don’t understand is that they’re like, oh, you have to eat all the time so that you keep your metabolism going. And training in that fasted state actually increases metabolism. Studies have shown that fasting up to 48 hours, I’m not suggesting you fast for 48 hours, but up to that number, then you start to get diminishing returns. But up to 48 hours actually boosts metabolism by up to 14% so this is pretty amazing. So not only can you train harder, recover faster, less inflammation, more weight loss. You break through weight loss, plateaus, more cognitive function, lower cholesterol, decreased inflammation, like there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be training in the fasted state. Okay, so this is one thing that I want you guys to think about and maybe try. So that’s number one.
Number two, talking about fasting. Do a 24 hour fast every week. This is something that I’ve been doing for years. You want to improve fat burning, then this is an awesome way to get your body into fat burning. I pick a day every week. Usually it’s Mondays for me, because on the weekends, I tend to do my longer runs like on Saturdays, Sunday’s kind of an off day, but I may the weekend is usually when I might have like a what we call like a cheat meal, okay? And I’ll talk more about that in a minute.
I’ve actually got that on my list here, but Monday is a day where I feel much better if I just don’t eat anything until like dinner time. So I’ll eat dinner on Sunday night, and then I work out in the morning on Monday. I run in the morning on Monday, and then I won’t eat anything until dinner time on Monday evening, so I’ll go about 24 hours with nothing. And this helps.
What this really helps with is not only energy increased and decreased inflammation and stronger workouts and things like that. So you get all those benefits I just mentioned for working out in the fasted state, but also you get into autophagy. Autophagy starts to happen around 17 hours of fasting. So once you get into that 16-17 hours of fasting and beyond, that’s when you start to increase autophagy.
So autophagy is a natural self preservation mechanism where your body removes damaged parts of cells and recycles other parts of cells. And it’s basically cellular repair. It’s like out with the bad and in with the good. So it’s your body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. So this is one of the best things that you can do to improve autophagy. Is just do it a little bit of an extended fast I don’t really go past 24 hours. I’ve done 36, I’ve done 48, I’ve done 72 hour fasts. And they’re good for different reasons. And some people like those. But personally, I like to do the 24, I’m pretty good with that.
I want to have a certain protein requirement and certain energy requirements. So I’m trying to make sure that I’m eating enough every day. I don’t want to do a 48 hour fast or something like that. That might have some diminishing returns on some of my workouts. So for me, anyway, I prefer not to do those longer fasts, but 24 is awesome. You can get a lot of great benefits from doing that. I feel leaner on those days. I feel lighter. You know? It helps me to keep my weight in check. If I notice my weight going up a pound or two, I just do a longer, fast like that, boom. It’s like, right back to where I want it to be. And I have lots of energy on those days. I’m kind of buzzing with energy on those days. Okay? So that’s number two.
Number three, another hard truth that no one is talking about is, quit drinking alcohol. I know this is a hard one for a lot of people, because they think, Well, you know, I don’t drink that much. It’s okay. You know, I’m drinking in moderation, and that is fine. And if you want to do that, I have no problems with that, but I’m just going to tell you that a lot of new studies have come out that have shown that the amount of alcohol that is actually good for you is 0. Zero amount of alcohol is good for you. It’s not healthy, it’s not a health food. It’s a poison. Ethanol is a poison. They use it to, you know, strip, you know, oil off of driveways, stuff like that. It’s not good for you.
It disrupts sleep. It impedes detoxification. So if you’re trying to, like, get into autophagy and things like that, that’s going to stop that process. It causes weight gain. Makes it very difficult to lose weight. If you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, I’m going to tell you right now, you have to stop drinking alcohol, because that is just going to totally thwart your progress. Alcohol impedes recovery. It’s addictive. There’s a lot of people that get addicted to alcohol, and a lot of times, the more you drink, the more you need and it can be a really vicious cycle and very hard to get out of.
When you’re drinking you also make bad decisions or not ideal decisions. You know, you tend to be a little more loosey goosey with your plan, with your rules, with your food plan. So people that drink more tend to not make very good decisions around food either. Okay, and it degrades your performance.
So as a runner, alcohol is going to degrade your performance even a couple of drinks a week, if you had one or two drinks a week, you’re never fully removing the alcohol from your body. And you’re never going to really get a good night’s sleep. You’re always going to feel stressed. Your workouts will suffer. Running is going to suffer. Weight loss will suffer. Your recovery is going to suffer. So just keep all of that in mind. If you want to drink, fine, but just know that it is not good for you, and if you want to become a healthy, fit individual, alcohol really should not be part of the plan. Okay.
Can you drink occasionally? Yes, will it affect you for a few days afterwards? Yes, you know, it takes your body about 48 hours or so to metabolize that alcohol during that 48 hours, you’re not burning fat. Your body has to process that alcohol first, so you’re not going to be burning fat. So if you’re trying to lose weight, zero, alcohol is the right amount for you. Okay, sorry to be a buzz kill, but literally, this is not good for you, all right.
Number four, I adhere to the 90/10 rule. And I think this is something that a lot of people can do pretty successfully. The 90/10 rule is where 90% of the time you are eating some sort of a healthy, whole foods type of diet, you know, and 10% of the time you can just kind of do whatever for the most part. Okay, so I try to stick to this. 90% of the time I eat, you know, high protein. So I’m eating, you know, beef, chicken, steak. I’m eating salmon. I’m eating some dairy, some fruit, some vegetables, some, you know, yogurt and cottage cheese, high protein type of things like that, eggs, bacon, things like that. So real foods, food that still kind of looks like food.
And then 10% of the time, which works out to about a meal a week or so, I can do just kind of whatever, because I’m 90% of the time, I’m sticking to a really healthy diet, and then 10% of the time, if I have some pizza or some tacos, then that’s okay. It’s not going to affect me. It will hinder my progress a little bit, you know. But at this point, I’m not trying to lose weight. I’m trying to just maintain and actually get some, you know, bigger muscles and get a little bit stronger. So for me, that 90/10 rule works really well.
Some people say, Oh, 80/20 you know, 80% of the time you do the 20% Listen, 20% of the time is not good. That does not work for me. That’s too much. That’s too much junk food, honestly. So I kind of fall into the 90/10 rule. And again, this has to be something that’s sustainable for you. It will affect you. It won’t affect you for too long. You know, a couple days later, you’ll be back on track and stuff like that. But this is how I choose to live my life. It’s something that I do on occasion. It’s not every day. If you want to live your life more strictly and you want to be 100% on some kind of diet, then perfectly fine. Do that. I love the occasional pizza or some ice cream or whatever, and I want to do that every now and then. But it’s not the norm. It’s not something I do every day, because if I do it every day, I feel terrible. Okay, so practice the 90/10 rule. This is going to really help you a lot.
Number five, you need to get sunlight in the morning, so sleep is incredibly important. It’s where you recharge your body battery, you know, and all the running that we do, all the training that we do, it breaks you down, sleep is how you build back up again. And according to the CDC, about a third of the adults in the United States don’t get enough sleep every day. So that’s like one in three adults in this country do not get enough sleep.
So one of the best things you can do to regulate your sleep is to get sunlight in the morning. So this is where you get outside, and that light is hitting your eyes. So ditch the sunglasses. Don’t wear the sunglasses. Get that. Don’t stare at the sun. That’s not what I’m saying. So please don’t do that. Oh, Patrick said I should stare at the sun. No, do not stare at the sun. Don’t do that.
But when you’re running outside, or you’re walking outside, or just, you know, hanging out outside, and that light is, you know, hitting your skin and your eyes, then you are increasing a hormone called serotonin, and serotonin actually makes you feel better. People that get more serotonin tend to be in better moods.
There’s a lot of depression in places like Alaska where people get very little sunlight. You know, there’s times of the year where there’s like, zero sunlight, places like that, people tend to have poor mental health. And then places like, let’s say San Diego, where it’s very sunny a lot of time, or Florida, people tend to be a little bit happier. And so that’s not just a coincidence. It has to do with sunlight and your mental health, and serotonin is a big role to play there.
But something that’s also interesting is when you create serotonin in the morning, this is linked to an increase of melatonin production at night. That’s what helps you to get a better night’s sleep, okay? And also getting that light in the morning helps to, you know, regulate your circadian rhythms, right? So sunlight, it’s how your body makes vitamin D too which helps to improve bone health, bone density. And you know, too much sunlight, you gotta be careful with this, though, right? Practice moderation. Too much sunlight can contribute to skin cancers.
But a moderate amount of sunlight actually has preventative benefits when it comes to a lot of different cancers. So those people who live in places like I mentioned, like Alaska, tend to get more cancers because of the lack of daylight. So more colon cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer.
So just keep that in mind that you actually have a little bit of an immune response, and you can prevent some of these cancers just by getting regular sunlight. We’re made to get sunlight, especially in the morning. It helps improve bone density, it helps to improve your mood, and it helps you to prevent some of these cancers, and it helps you sleep better at night, so definitely get sunlight in the morning.
Okay, number six, you’ve got to prioritize rest days. If you want to avoid burnout and you want to avoid injury, you’ve got to make sure you’re getting enough rest. So too much training can lead to fatigue, to burn out injury into chronic stress. So training is a stressor and this can be a good thing if it’s acute. So acute stress is where you have an amount of stress that is high in the high amount of stress, but it’s short lived. So it’s, you know, like lifting weights, you go lift weights for an hour. That’s an hour of stress on your muscles, but it’s acute, and then it’s done right?
What we don’t want is chronic stress where you’re just putting yourself at a higher level of stress consistently over time. We don’t want that, because when that happens, your workouts start to suffer. Running feels harder. Your endurance tanks. You can’t run as far. Your race day is going to suffer. You’re not going to have as good a race.
So you’ve got to prioritize rest and recovery. You actually have to make those days as important as your training days. When you do this, when you actually make rest and recovery a priority, then you give your body a chance to rebuild, repair and recover from those hard workouts. You’re able to go harder on hard days, so that means you’ll improve even faster. You give your body a chance to adapt to the training load, which means you get stronger.
So you improve your cardiovascular system, you improve your skeletal muscular system. You’ll increase intensity and duration of workouts. You can go longer without feeling fatigued, and you’re going to feel better. Your workouts will actually feel easier because your rate of perceived exertion goes down. There’s positive mental benefits to getting enough rest. You’re going to feel more clear headed.
You can focus and concentrate better, and improve cognition. You’re going to feel happier, you’re going to be less moody and less negative, and then you’ll have an optimal performance on race day. So just keep this in mind, that you got to get rest, and I suggest taking at least one full day off each week. And then as you get into some higher training, you might want to take off more rest days.
You know you might need more rest as your training increases. So just keep that in mind, especially as you get closer to a race, a lot of people are like, oh, I need to train harder. No, you want to like, actually, you can train harder on some days, but also balance that out with more rest, okay.
Number seven, supplements will not make up for a crappy diet. Okay, so we gotta stop looking for some kind of a magic pill. This should be common sense, but so many people are looking to supplements to get healthier, when, in reality, your diet is like 95% of your health is related to what foods you’re eating. Honestly, so many people think that I just need to start running and I’m going to get healthier. I just need to start taking this supplement, you know, whatever it is, and I’m going to get healthier.
And really, if you got to change your diet more than anything else, right? Supplements won’t make up for a crappy diet, so stick to a whole food diet, like I talked about healthy proteins, vegetables, fruit, dairy, eat food that our ancestors would recognize. You know, I think there are some supplements that are okay, like protein. I take protein. There’s there’s two supplements I take because I know they work for me. I’ve taken a lot of supplements that do nothing, that I’ve literally saw zero results, okay, like so. So the two supplements that I take now are protein and creatine. Protein for muscle synthesis, like protein, I need a certain amount of protein each day that just helps me to get there, and then the creatine for muscle building and muscle repair helps you recover from hard workouts.
So these are all the only two supplements I really take anymore, you know, maybe a multivitamin, and that’s about it. So we want to ditch supplements just eat real food like stick to eating real food.
You don’t need all these supplements. We didn’t need supplements for like, two and a half million years as human beings, like we just started doing this, you know, within the last 30-40, years, maybe much, much more since, you know, the internet and all this other stuff. So just keep in mind that we don’t need all these supplements. Just eat real food. You know, just eat real food.
Okay, number eight, eating healthy is just as easy as eating crappy. So I hear from people all the time that it’s too hard to eat healthy. Oh, I want to get fit. Patrick, I want to lose weight, but eating healthy, it’s just too hard, you know? They’ll say it’s hard to find healthy options when they eat out. It’s hard to find healthy options that are quick and that are easy to make.
You know, it’s harder to shop for healthier options at the grocery store. And honestly, these are all just excuses. You want to know what’s easy. Whatever you do consistently is going to be easy, all right? It’s hard because you’re just not used to it. You just are not doing it, so you got to just do it and get used to it.
Get the junk out of your house, throw away all the garbage, food that you have in your house, and stock it full of healthy options. That’s step one, because, listen, you do that, and now the only choices you have in your house are healthy options. Okay, so that’s not hard to get rid of all that junk, fill your house with healthy foods. Okay?
When you go to restaurants, ask them to make something different for you. I go to places and I’m like, hey, I want this. But take the bun off this burger. I want an extra burger patty. So give me a big stack of meat over here, some cheese, you know, all the veggies and stuff like that. Skip the fries. I’ll do some broccoli instead. Boom, I love this one restaurant that’ll make this perfect burger for me with eggs on it or whatever. Find the healthy options at restaurants, and then just go there more often.
And then every time you find a new one, write it down. I have a little list on my phone. I know I’m kind of a nerd in this way, but I have a note on my phone with all these restaurants. And anytime I’m thinking, like, oh, what should I eat tonight? I’m like, ooh, that barbecue place makes that awesome, those dry rub wings that I love, that don’t have any of that sugary, you know, barbecue sauce all over them. Ooh, yeah, I’m gonna go there, right?
And then when it comes to, like, making food at home for your family and all this stuff, there are literally, and I say that, I mean that word literally, millions of websites with hundreds of millions of healthy, easy, quick recipes. All you got to do is do a little Google search.
I just did a Google search earlier today on healthy, quick, easy recipes. Oh my god. There’s so much that came up. There’s no shortage of information out there. So stop saying that eating healthy is hard. It’s not hard. You just don’t want to do it. You’d rather eat junk food. So you say it’s hard, so you can be off the hook, right? This is a blaming mentality. You’re not taking responsibility for your own food choices, so start taking responsibility. Start making better choices for yourself. Hey, this is about your health. Healthy Eating is not hard, right? You’re just using that as an excuse. So stop doing that.
Okay, all right, I’m done with that little rant. All right. Number nine, you’ve got to prioritize protein at every meal. So when it comes to runners, there are two things that they are notorious for. One of them is not strength training, and the other is not eating enough protein, right? Running is a catabolic activity. That means it breaks down muscle tissue. You need protein to build back muscle tissue, you need to be doing some strength training as well. That’s for a whole nother episode.
But you got to do strength training consistently, and you got to get enough protein every day. Not getting enough protein can cause muscle loss. Listen, sarcopenia, that’s muscle loss begins around age 30, for most adults, most adults start losing muscle mass when they hit their 30s, and you can lose up to 8% of your muscle mass every decade from 30 on. So by the time you’re 80, you’re gonna have lost if you don’t do anything to offset this, you’re gonna have lost like 40% of your muscle mass. That’s crazy.
Loss of muscle mass is one of the leading contributors to early death. Because people lose their muscle mass, they can’t ambulate properly, they can’t stand up, they fall. They break a hip. Now they’re bedridden, and then they degrade really fast at that point. So once you’re, like, laid up in bed and you’re, you know, in your 80s or 70s or whatever, like, you’re gonna degrade really fast. Okay, I don’t want to be that person.
So get enough protein, strength train, keep up your cardiovascular health. I want to be able to pick up my grandkids and, you know, run a 5k until I’m 100 years old, whatever. Okay, also listen, when you eat a lot of carbs and sugars, you’re going to be really hungry all the time. You’re never going to feel full, so you’re always going to be craving more carbs and sugar.
When you’re eating more protein, you’re basically going to be full. You’re going to be like, very full all the time, which means that your body will be able to metabolize that nutrient dense food that you’re eating. Protein is very nutrient dense, so you’re going to be getting more nutrition from the food that you’re eating: A. B, you’re not going to be as hungry all the time, and then C, you’re going to burn more fat because you don’t have all this sugar, raising insulin levels and causing your cells to hold on to all that stored body fat.
Okay, protein means you’re probably going to be eating a little bit less, but you’re going to be getting more nutrition from the food that you’re eating, so just make protein the priority at every meal. Okay, all right, that was number nine.
Number ten, this is a hard truth for all of you. There is no finish line, okay? This is a lifestyle. The stuff I’m talking about right here, it’s not a short term thing. You must commit to this as a lifestyle. There is no finish line. Your Health, being a healthy, fit individual, being the most badass version of yourself. It’s not a destination you’re trying to get to. It’s how you live your life. Every day.
Everybody wants to go on a diet. That means you’re going to probably go off the diet at some point. Right? Everyone wants to lose weight fast. Very few people want to commit to a healthy lifestyle. Why? Because it’s hard. It takes hard work. It takes commitment. The people I work with, though, this is where they are different from most people, they get it. They are in this for good, not for some quick fix.
So this is all about sustainability. And the people that I work with are in this because they want to live their life in a different way. Sustainability is really the key, or it has to be something that you can do from here on out. And that’s why, for me, I like that one meal a week where I can eat some pizza or something like that. That’s sustainable for me, what does that look like? For you? It might be a little bit different. That’s okay, what? But that works for me. It helps me to stay fit, helps me to stay healthy, and it’s something that I can sustain easily from here on out. I don’t want to have FOMO all the time thinking that I’m missing out on something amazing.
So I’m going to eat that pizza at that new pizza place down the street. But I’m not going to do it all the time. I’m going to do it every now and then. Okay, but you have to commit to this as a lifestyle, and this takes making a real commitment. That means you’re going all in on yourself. You can no longer blame anybody else or anything else for your results or your lack of results.
You have to take responsibility for all of your outcomes, whether they’re good or bad. It’s the only way you’re going to stick with it. You have to be responsible for your own results. Your success cannot hinge on anyone else or anything else. It has to come from within. So you have to decide who you want to be. You have to make a real commitment to becoming that version of yourself. And then you get to work, and then you never, ever stop.
Every day you want to say to yourself, This is who I am. This is what I do. This is how I live my life from here on out, okay, all right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
246. The Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners
I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s advised to keep your carbs low if you’re a runner who wants to lose weight and use body fat as fuel for running. I realized I haven’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 246, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, the Macronutrient That Matters Most for Runners. So I know I talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, mainly why it’s maybe advised for you to keep your carbs low. If you’re a runner who wants to get fat adapted, use body fat as fuel for running and wants to lose weight, I think keeping your carbs low is a very good plan for most people, not everybody, but for most people. But I realized I haven’t spent much time talking about the other macronutrients, fat and protein. Fat and protein are essential nutrients that often get overlooked when it comes to low carb diets and fat adapted running. So I’m hoping to remedy that here today. So this episode is all about that one macronutrient that matters most for runners, and how it benefits your overall health and fitness.
But first I want to talk a little bit about what being a coach means to me. So I’m someone who struggled with eating properly, struggled with my weight, struggled with getting stronger, struggled with my business, and I decided at some point that I was going to get some help, and so I reached out, and I got a nutrition coach that helped me greatly, and I figured out a lot of important things for me, and it was really the key to me losing weight and be able to keep it off forever. I really wanted to get stronger and leaner and build more muscle, and I just was trying to do it on my own. It really wasn’t working. So I got a coach. I had a personal trainer that was working with me to help me get stronger and showing me what to do and correcting my mistakes and keeping me accountable and keeping me on track. And then I had a business coach that really helped me to get my business started, and get my business to a place where it was something that was very sustainable for me. And all along this process, I learned so much from having coaches guide me, show me the way, show me what to do. You know, they’ve already made all the mistakes so they can just teach me what to do without me having to make all those same mistakes, which is really awesome. It’s like taking everything that they know and then just downloading it into me and going like, Okay, perfect. You know, I’m good to go here. But having that accountability, having somebody to bounce ideas off of, having somebody to talk to when things aren’t going well, having somebody to help keep me on track all of those things were vital to me becoming the person that I am today, to losing the weight, to keeping it off, to improving my strength, my overall fitness, to having a thriving business. All those things were benefits of me reaching out and taking a little bit of a leap of faith here, because I had never really done too much in the way of coaching prior to doing all this stuff, and it was a game changer for me. So this is why I became a coach, because it was so impactful for me. And this is why I’m so passionate about being a coach, because I had such an amazing experience with my coaches. And I was just talking to someone the other day who is a coach herself, and she was reaching out to me to get some help. And, you know, we both agreed that all the best coaches have coaches, you know. So it’s just one of those things that if you’re looking for some help, you want somebody to just show you exactly what to do. You’re looking for some guidance and some accountability. You want somebody that’s had all the experience that can just, you know, really take everything that they’ve learned and just dump it into you then, then coaching is probably a good fit for you. And if you want to know if working with me is a good fit for you, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, and click on the big button that says, work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how you can become the most badass version of yourself. Yeah, cool. Running, leancoaching.com. Click on work with me, and let’s do it. Let’s work together. I think it would be super fun. Cool.
Okay, so today, let’s talk about the macronutrient that matters most for runners, and I know that we talk a lot about carbs here on the podcast, because I’m a big proponent of just keeping the carbs low. What does that mean? It’s different for each person. You know, we kind of take a break from eating sugar and some of the really starchy grains and try to lower our carbohydrate intake at the beginning of this process. That’s kind of like phase one that I go through with most of my clients.
We keep the carbs pretty low at the beginning, and then at some point we start to increase the carbs. We time carbs around workouts. You go to a place where you’ve kind of maybe hit your ideal weight, and you can dial in your carbohydrate intake to determine, okay, I can eat this many carbs until I start to gain weight again. Oh, maybe I need to back it off a little bit. You know, maybe 100 grams. 150 grams is good for you. Maybe it’s 75, maybe it’s 20. I don’t know. Just everybody’s a little bit different. Everybody has the sweet spot that they feel good about.
So we know we talk a lot about carbs, and being a low carb runner is something that is pretty amazing. Getting fat adapted as a runner is pretty amazing, because now you have this unlimited fuel source of stored body fat that helps improve your endurance, helps improve your athletic performance, and it gives you a whole nother tool that most runners just don’t take advantage of. You know, burning fat as fuel, so keeping the carbs low is a really amazing tool. It helps with weight loss and helps improve your running.
And I realize that I talk a lot about carbs. And if you want to go back to many, many episodes, there’s lots of episodes where I talk about carbohydrates, you know, good carbs, bad carbs. Why carbs are not the enemy, how we feel with carbs, all that kind of stuff. Just go back through my different episodes. You can actually, if you go on to, I don’t know what Apple podcast or Spotify, you can actually scroll back and see all the different episodes. Or you can go to my podcast website, which is runningleanpodcast.com, and that will give you all the episodes that I’ve ever put out there. And you can, you know, just have a scroll through all of those as well.
So anyway, lots of information about carbs, right? But I realized I haven’t talked about the other macronutrients too much, and protein is one of those ones that does not get the air time that carbs get, even fat. Fat gets talked about a lot, you know, especially people who are trying to watch their weight and so they cut out all the fat, which is, we’ll talk a little bit about that in a second. That’s really not recommended, but protein is one of those things that we really need to focus on, especially as runners and when we’re talking about macronutrients, I just want to set the stage here.
The macronutrients that we’re talking about are fat, protein and carbohydrates. Fat and protein are both called Essential macronutrients. That means that your body does not produce fat or protein, so you have to get that in your diet. And when I talk, when I say fat, it doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t store fat. It does store fat, but your body needs fat in order to survive. If you were to go to a zero fat diet, this would be a problem. If you were to go to a zero protein diet, this would be a problem. You would die.
But carbohydrates are not essential. There is no essential requirement for the human body to consume carbohydrates. I’m not saying you shouldn’t consume carbohydrates. I’m just saying, isn’t it interesting that they are not essential, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute, too. But the macronutrients are the things that make up kind of the majority of our diet, fat, protein, carbohydrates. If you look at the back of most labels, it’ll give you the macronutrient breakdown. But there’s also something called micronutrients. And I’m not going to get into a lot of this, but just understand that micronutrients are not, they are required, and we, there are certain essential micronutrients that are required because our bodies that make them so we need to to get in our diet, things like vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D, iron, iodine, folate, zinc. There’s all kinds of essential micronutrients. And then there’s something called micro minerals, which is salt, potassium, magnesium, calcium. These are all essential as well. So we need to get those in our diet as well, because our body doesn’t produce those things. So as long as you’re eating a well balanced diet, you’re going to be getting all of the micronutrients and all the macronutrients that you need to be a healthy human being.
Okay, so now that we know there’s a difference between macronutrients and micronutrients, I wanted to talk a little bit more about carbs. So carbs are kind of considered non essential nutrients, so proteins and fats, vitamins, minerals, all those things I just mentioned are essential because your body doesn’t produce those. So your body actually produces glucose, which is carbohydrate on its own. And your body can actually use other energy sources if there’s no glucose available or very little glucose available. So fat is a good example of this, right? So just understand that you do not need to load up on the carbs all the time, because your body doesn’t really require that much in the way of carbs. Actually, there’s no essential amount of carbs that are required, you know?
And I’m not opposed to carbs, like I said, you know, I think they’re great for helping to improve your athletic performance. It’s fun to just eat some cake sometimes, or ice cream or whatever. So carbs are fine. They’re kind of addicting to a lot of people, though, I know I’m one of these people where I start eating carbs and I can’t stop, you know, so it’s one of those things where I need to really keep my carb intake in check.
Okay, so carbs are fine, but they’re just not essential in the same way that fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals are, but just understand it’s one of the macronutrients that’s talked about a lot, and the other one being fat. So fat is often touted as, like, the enemy of weight loss. Like I know, back in the 80s, they determined, you know, with some pretty shoddy science, that the reason people were getting fat is because they were eating fat. The reason people were overweight is because they were eating too much fat, so stop eating the fat. So they took all the fat out of everything. Everything became low fat, no fat, non fat. And with most of those food products, they replaced the fat with sugar. Because taking the fat out of stuff made it taste terrible. You know, you take the fat out of whatever. There are people who were like, oh, this is disgusting. And so they were like, oh, we’ll make this better, don’t worry. And so they added sugar to it, okay. Well, now everybody became even more overweight. And they’re like, See, you’re not eating all the fat, so you’re healthier. But everybody, the obesity rates have just skyrocketed in this country since we’ve done dumb stuff like that.
So you gotta eat fat like, fat is important. It is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients. If you don’t eat fat, you’ll die. There’s actually something called dietary fat deficiency. It’s kind of rare, but it can happen if you just, like, cut all the fat out of your diet. I know some people who have tried this, they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna go super, I’m just gonna eat no fat, like zero fat. But it leads to things like vitamin deficiencies, dermatitis, slow wound healing, hair loss, sickness problems with your eyes not functioning properly because of like, vitamin deficiencies. There’s like, all kinds of problems that happen when you completely cut out fat. So don’t do that. Fat is a essential macronutrient. We have to get fat in our diet. Don’t be afraid of the fat. The fat is not causing you to get fat.
There’s other factors involved here, and carbs have a bigger role to play when it comes to gaining weight. So we don’t want to just cut out all the fat. We don’t want to go to some kind of a low fat diet, because a lot of times when you do that, you know, you’re replacing a lot of that fat with sugar, and your carbohydrate intake tends to go up pretty high. So just keep the fat in check. You know, I’m not saying you need to be wrapping bacon around sticks of butter and eating that every day. That’s not what we’re talking about here. But don’t be afraid of the fat. I eat lots of fat in my diet.
I actually found that I was trying to cut back on the fat a little bit as an experiment. So I did this for, I don’t know, for four to five months, something like that, and I noticed I just was more lethargic. My running wasn’t going as well. I just didn’t feel as good. Generally, I wasn’t making gains at the gym, and so I added more fat back into the diet, and I noticed that I started feeling better. I was sleeping better. I had more energy. My running improved. My energy levels throughout the day improved. My workouts got better. I started putting on some muscle again, like, so for me, eating a little bit more fat is good. It works for me. And everybody kind of needs to figure out their own fat intake or whatever. But just understand that.
You know, we don’t want to be just cutting all the fat out of the diet, but fat gets so much, you know, whatever you want to call it, press, people talk about fat a lot. Talk about carbs a lot. The one macro that I think you should really be focusing on here is protein for a lot of reasons. And I mean. Give you a few of them here.
Like, one of them is that when you eat more protein, you typically don’t eat as much food. So I’m a person who is, I’m a chronic overeater. I just eat a lot of food when I sit down to eat food, like, if you give me a large pizza, I can put a big, huge dent in that large pizza. People are like, oh, we’re going to be taking some of this home. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t think so. Like, I can put away some food, and I’m not a big person, but I just, especially when it comes to eating carbs. Carbs mess up your hunger signals. When you’re eating a lot of sugar, a lot of carbs, they make your body, they make you feel more hungry. You know, they increase the production of ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, so you feel more hungry. So if you’re eating a lot of carbs, you’re going to be hungry all the time. They suppress the production of leptin, which is the fullness hormone, so then you’re hungry all the time, but you’re not feeling full when you do eat.
So that’s a bad combination, because now you’re just you tend to overeat, and you’re eating and you’re more hungry and eating more all the time. So when we increase the number of the, or the amount of protein that we’re eating, I think what happens for most people is they reduce the amount of fat, and they reduce the amount of carbs that they’re eating. And I would say, if you’re going to replace something on your plate, you know, I would say, just cut out some of the carbs and replace it with protein. We want protein to be the main event at every meal. We want protein to be the main event, and I’m not gonna, you know, necessarily tell you, you got to get so many grams of protein every single day.
I think there’s some new data out there that suggests that a good place for most people who are athletic, like for runners, I think a 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight is a pretty good place for most people to be. If you’re non athletic, you could probably go a little bit less than that, maybe 0.5, 0.6, some people, if you’re highly athletic, you know, maybe bodybuilder type of person, you might need closer to 1.0 gram of protein per pound of body weight, but I think runners can do really well at about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
And this is some new data that’s been coming out. And you know, I’ve been trying this and working with a lot of clients who have been doing this, and it seems to work pretty well for most people. Again, you’re an individual, you got to do what works for you. But when you’re eating more protein, you tend to not eat as much and so and when you do eat, you tend to be more full, because protein is very satiating. And when it comes to, you know, satiety per calorie, protein is going to give you, you know, one of the best bangs for your buck there, okay?
Plus, you’re giving your body what it really needs. Protein is required to build lean muscle. And when most people try to lose weight, they just cut their calories. They lose weight, but they lose muscle through this process. We don’t want that. You definitely do not want to do that. So when you increase protein, and, you know, do some consistent strength training, this is going to stop this from happening. This is going to prevent the loss of muscle. So we want to make sure that you are eating enough protein to build lean muscle, not lose that if you’re trying to lose weight, especially if you’re training for any kind of you know, half marathon or a marathon, then you do not want to be losing muscle in the process.
Getting enough protein also means that you’re going to recover better from those hard workouts, whether at the gym or on the track or whatever, long runs, anytime you get out there and you push yourself hard, that you break down muscle tissue. Running is a catabolic activity. It breaks down muscle tissue, and you need to recover from those workouts, and so getting enough protein helps support the repair of muscle tissue and the building of new muscle tissue.
So if you want to make sure that you’re recovering properly from your workouts, you want a low inflammatory diet. So that means a diet that’s not going to keep you in a state of inflammation and bloating, which is, you know, the low carb diet tends to work pretty well for that, and you want to make sure you’re getting enough protein. So we want a higher protein diet.
Also, when you eat more protein, you will perform better as a runner, because you’re going to get stronger, you’re going to build stronger muscles. You can run harder, you can run faster, you can recover faster. Stronger muscles means you are less likely to get injured. It helps improve your immune function as well. So if you’re somebody that gets sick a lot, especially as you’re running more. I used to get sick all the time, late stages of marathon training when I’d be, you know, getting out there and doing these super long runs. You know, it’s just a lot of stress on your body, and it can really break down your immune system and compromise your immune system and help, you know, getting enough protein helps you to stay strong and build muscle tissue and helps to improve your immune function, which is amazing.
And then understand that when you’re eating more protein, this can really help with improving your weight loss for a few reasons. So you’re not as hungry all the time, like you stay more satiated throughout the day. You don’t need to eat as often. So you can eat a couple times a day. You don’t need to eat six or eight times a day, and you start to get in tune with your body’s natural hunger signals, which is a really powerful thing, if you think about it.
When did we start having MyFitnessPal to count all of our calories and track all of our macros? We started that. What, 6, 7 years ago, 10 years ago, I don’t know, but it hasn’t been that long, and before that, what did we do? How did people stay in shape? How did people not just blow up and get super fat? They just listened to their body. They just did what their body was telling them to do. Are you hungry? Eat something. Are you not hungry? Don’t eat anything. Don’t eat because you’re bored. Don’t eat because you’re stressed. You eat because you’re hungry, and when you’re eating more protein and fewer carbs, your body tends to be much better in tune with your natural hunger signals, and you tend to just eat less in general, you tend to eat fewer carbs in general too, because you’re satiated, you don’t need more.
So more protein has, gosh, so many benefits. You know, it also means you don’t need to count your macros, you don’t need to count your calories. You’re just going to feel better. You’re going to notice that you’re getting results. You’re going to lose more weight. You’re going to improve your strength, you know, more protein plus strength training. This is like magic for weight loss, it just helps improve your metabolism. Helps improve fat burning. There’s so many benefits. So for runners, especially runners who want to lose weight, or if you’re a runner who maybe you don’t need to lose weight, but you want to maintain a lean, strong body, you don’t want to keep breaking yourself down. You want to recover faster. You want to make sure that you’re building lean muscle tissue, then it’s more protein for the win every time. Cool.
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Hope that was helpful, and love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.






