Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
You’ve probably heard it a million times: “Abs are made in the kitchen.” And while nutrition definitely plays a role in fat loss, the truth is… it doesn’t start there. In this episode of the …
Continue Reading about 293. Fat Loss Doesn’t Start in the Kitchen →
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 293 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today fat loss doesn’t start in the kitchen. So you’ve probably heard this a million times. ABS are made in the kitchen. And while nutrition definitely plays a role in fat loss, the truth is it doesn’t start there.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m flipping that outdated advice on its head. You’re gonna learn while focusing only on food is a losing strategy. And how factors like your mindset, sleep, stress training, all have a massive impact on your ability to lose fat and keep it off. So if you’re stuck in the cycle of eating less and running more, but still not seeing results, it might be time to take a bit of a different approach.
So this is the stuff nobody’s talking about when it comes to fat loss. This is what I’m talking about today, and I’m gonna tell you right now, this is gonna change everything for you. But first, listen, if you’ve been struggling with your weight, if running feels harder than it should, if you’re just not where you want to be physically, there’s a reason for that.
Chances are you’re doing all the right things, trying to eat better, running more miles, maybe even doing a little bit of strength training. All that is awesome. But if it’s not really clicking, you may be just working hard and you’re just not getting the results. The truth is there’s a missing piece to your plan.
What you need is a comprehensive approach, one that addresses not just your nutrition, but also your mindset, your training, your recovery, your lifestyle. You need a program that’s built specifically for runners like you. People who want to get leaner, get stronger, and become the best versions of themselves.
And that’s exactly what we do in my coaching program. You’re gonna get the structure, the support, and the accountability that you need to finally break through and start seeing serious progress physically and mentally. So if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real lasting change, have head over to my website, running lean coaching.com.
Click on work with me. Let’s get you on the path to becoming a leaner, stronger, faster runner starting today. All right, cool. So again, there’s this, uh, old adage, and I’ve been seeing this recently that abs are made in the kitchen and yeah, there is some truth to that for sure. Nutrition does play a role, but really when it comes to fat loss, sustainable, healthy, long-term fat loss, it doesn’t necessarily start.
In the kitchen. If it did, then all we’d have to do is eat a bunch of grilled chicken and broccoli and we’d all be walking around with six pack abs. But that’s just not how it works. There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes mentally, emotionally, and even physically. That has to be in alignment before the food can even make a difference.
Okay, so I’m gonna break this down. There’s like four essential foundations of fat loss. They really have nothing to do with what’s on your plate. So we’re gonna be talking about your mindset, your sleep, um, stress levels, and even how your training can have an impact on your fat loss. Um, and these things are paramount if you’re not doing these things.
What you’re eating isn’t really gonna matter. Okay? So this is where everything should begin for you. Okay? Not necessarily in the kitchen. So first, let’s just start with the obvious. That whole thing, abs are made in the kitchen. It sounds cute, it’s catchy, um, but it’s a little bit misleading. It’s this kind of advice that basically just says like, eat less and have more willpower.
Like if you could just meal prep better or stop eating carbs at night, then boom, fat just magically disappears. But if you’ve ever tried to lose weight just by changing your diet, you probably know that it’s really not that simple. ’cause you can clean up your e eating, you can start, uh, seeing the scale moving, drop a few pounds.
But then what happens? Like you stall out, you plateau, um, people get burned out, they quit, and then they gain the weight back and they say, well, whatever. That didn’t work. That whatever I was eating didn’t work. But they were only looking at one. Piece of the puzzle here. They, they addressed the food part of it, but nothing else.
And the real problem isn’t necessarily what you’re eating. A lot of it has to do with what you’re thinking. You know, you started in the kitchen and that’s fine, but your fat loss starts with your mind. It really does. So that’s number one that you have to, uh, change your mind. If you want to change your body, you have to change your mind first.
I always talk about mindset. A lot of the episodes of this podcast talk about mindset. Why, why do you think I do that? It’s because it’s, it’s so important. It’s probably the most important thing that you need to change. In order to see real lasting change in your body composition, your running performance, your strength, anything that takes a while and that is somewhat challenging to accomplish, requires a shift in your mindset.
Mindset is everything. You can’t hate yourself thin. You can’t bully yourself into losing weight. You can’t force yourself to do things you hate for the rest of your life. And expect to be successful long term. You just can’t do that. When I work with runners, we always start with mindset. Why do you wanna lose weight?
Like, why do you wanna lose fat? Why do you wanna change your body composition? What are you really trying to accomplish here? Who is it that you want to become ultimately? So fat loss, it really starts with identity. And if you see yourself as someone who’s, you know, always stuck, always struggling, always stopping and starting over, then that’s exactly what you’re just gonna keep repeating.
But if you start showing up as the future version of yourself, that strong, lean, confident runner that you want to become, everything can shift for you. So this is that identity shift that we’re, that we need to make in order for everything else to kind of fall into place. You have to change how you think about yourself.
And who you think yourself to be, because when you can start to do this, your, your thoughts begin to change, your decisions begin to change, and then your actions start to line up. With those long-term goals, with that version of yourself in the future that, that you’re ultimately working towards. So yeah, fat loss doesn’t start in the kitchen.
It starts in your mind. It starts between your ears. Okay. So that’s number one. Number two is that fat loss happens while you sleep. So the next big piece of the puzzle is gonna be all about sleep. So you could be doing everything right during the day, so you could be eating clean, following your training plan, lifting weights.
But if you only get four or five hours of really crappy sleep every night, you are working against yourself. ’cause when you don’t sleep enough. Things like your hunger hormones get completely out of whack, so ghrelin will be increased. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone. Um, and when you don’t get enough sleep, that puts your body into a state of chronic stress, and that will cause hunger hormones to go up.
So your body’s like, just feed me, feed me, feed me. So you’re gonna be hungry all the time. Also, leptin goes down, so that’s your fullness hormone. That’s the hormone that says, Hey, I’m full. Stop eating. Well, that, that gets suppressed so that you feel, uh, you don’t feel as full when you do eat, so you never really feel full enough.
You know what I mean? So being hungry. All the time and never feeling full enough. That is a bad combination right there. So you end up craving more food, especially sugar and carbs. Um, and at this point your willpower can’t keep up with that. So your willpower just tanks. You start to make bad decisions, and your body’s just gonna be holding on to fat.
It’s gonna be holding onto fat like it’s prepping for the apo apocalypse. You know what I mean? It’s like your body’s like, we need to be ready for. For this danger that we’re experiencing here. And so your, your body gets into that fight or flight mode. So, um, sleep is so important. It’s when your body repairs recovers it, when it’s when your, your body regulates, especially hormones get regulated properly.
Your metabolism resets. It’s when your muscles grow, it’s when your brain clears out all the junk. So if you wanna burn more fat and you wanna burn fat more efficiently, start by getting good sleep. We’re talking. Seven to nine hours of high quality sleep every night. This has to be a non-negotiable for you.
If you’re not getting good sleep, focus on that right now. Turn off Netflix, put your phone away early. Um, create a good sleep, high hygiene. Routine, cold, dark room. Start dimming the lights, you know, an hour or two before bed, no food, a couple hours before bed if you need to take a, a warm bath or shower before you go to bed.
That helps. Um. But get yourself into a sleep routine because when you prioritize sleep, um, the easier it’s gonna become for you to lose the fat and to burn more fat. Okay? So you have to prioritize sleep. And then the next kind of thing we need to focus on kind of the third part of the, the puzzle here is stress.
So stress and sleep are very closely related because when your body is stressed, um, you, uh, secrete more glucose. Again, you’re, you’re putting your body into that fight or flight mode and acute stress. Is okay for us. Like we, we experience acute stress when we do things like, uh, high intensity interval training.
So you go out there and you, you run, uh, 32nd, uh, wind sprints or something like that, that is putting a lot of stress on your body, but it is very short-lived. It’s acute, it’s very short, uh, short term stress, maybe 30 seconds at a time, and then you’re done. Even if you go for a long run, you know, you might be out there for three or four hours, that’s a lot of stress on your body, but then you recover from that, you repair, um, and again, you recover and repair a lot of it at night.
So sleeping is so important, but, uh, chronic stress, that’s when we’re just, we’re constantly ruminating on the past or the future. We’re worried about. You know, things at home or at work. Um, and, and our mind can never really shut off and we’re, we put ourselves into that same fight or flight mode. Your cortisol levels are elevated.
Cortisol is the stress hormone. Um, when cortisol is high, fat loss basically shuts down. And again, when you’re stressed, you’re probably not sleeping well. And when you’re not sleeping well, you put your body into a state of stress. So these two things are very closely related, so you gotta work on both of these things.
Okay. But think about this from your body’s perspective. If you’re constantly stressed, your brain thinks that something dangerous is about to happen, and the last thing you want to do, the last thing your body wants to do is burn fat. Your body wants to hold onto that stored body fat. Again, this is like survival mode for your body.
Your body says, okay, we’re stressed. We need to conserve energy, slow everything down, slow down the metabolism, hold onto this energy store, the fat ’cause we’re gonna need it. And the kicker is that you could be eating pretty well, but if your stress is outta control, your body will not cooperate. It’s gonna be very difficult to lose weight if you’re, if you’re chronically stressed.
Okay. So self-care is important. It’s not something that you can take for granted. It’s not a luxury. This is a strategy, a long-term strategy for you to be a healthy human being. And if your goal is to lose weight and burn fat, stress management, self-care has to be a priority. Okay? So whatever you need to do, meditation, breath work, going for a walk, doing some yoga, journaling.
Talking to someone instead of bottling everything up. It feels so good to talk to someone about things that are on your mind, right? Even if that person is just going. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s, it is great to have that outlet, you know, that sounding board, maybe saying no to things that drain you. Maybe having better boundaries, maybe taking some actual rest days.
Yes, I’m talking to you, the person that never takes a rest day, take an actual rest day and just do a whole lot of nothing. Let your body and your mind, uh, your, your physical, emotional, and, uh, mental states. Calm down. So actual rest days are really important, but these things matter. You know, managing stress is very important.
They help regulate your nervous system. They create the condition where fat loss can actually happen. So if you’re finding yourself, you’re doing a lot of the right things, but you’re not seeing results work on stress. Okay. And then the fourth kind of part of the puzzle here to uh, make sure that that fat loss is actually working, um, is to, uh, make sure you’re doing smart training.
So let’s talk about training for a minute, because it does play a role in fat loss. Um, maybe not in the way that you think, so you don’t need to go out and run. You know, a hundred miles every week. You don’t need to do hours and hours of cardio every single day. In fact, too much cardio can work against you.
Too much cardio can put your body into that state of chronic stress. Now we call that chronic cardio. When you’re doing chronic cardio, you actually never properly recover from your workouts, and you’re just constantly stressed all the time. So people think, oh, I’m doing cardio. I should be able to lose weight.
Hmm. It’s very difficult if you’re doing it constantly and you never give yourself the rest that you need. But when I talk about smart training for fat loss, that means doing running, that is intentional. Not just putting in a bunch of miles or, you know, uh, running every day because you’re on some kind of streak or something like that.
Be intentional about your running. Um, strength training. Strength training is it’s key for so much. It helps to improve your metabolism. Um, helps to reduce stress, you know, by kind of overloading your muscles and then your muscles have an, uh, an adaptation to that and it does help to reduce stress. Um, you get that release of the good hormones, you know, like dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins when you do strength training.
Um, but strength training, you know, is the, is the right kind of training that that helps you to build muscle, boost your metabolism, um, and gets that fat burning engine just cranked up even a few more notches. Doing the right kind of training, uh, that helps you to become more metabolically efficient, uh, from a running standpoint, meaning that you want to be doing a combination of some shorter.
Duration, higher intensity running. So that should be at least one day a week. Shorter intensity, uh, I’m sorry, shorter, higher intensity runs. You want to have some moderate distance, moderate intensity runs, so some kind of medium runs in there. So we got high intensity intervals. We got, uh, modern intensity, think of like tempo runs, that kind of thing.
And then we have our long, slow distance. So that’s where you’re gonna be out there for longer amounts of time. It’s kind of what people call, like zone two training. But when you break up your training in this way, you are, you are creating the most, um, efficient system, metabolically speaking for your body to be able to, to burn fat really effectively.
Okay. The training is very important, but also rest days are very important. You gotta allow your body to absorb all that training and you want to avoid burning out and getting into that state of chronic stress. Okay, and here’s something a lot of people miss, though. Exercise isn’t just about burning calories, that’s not really the whole point here.
There’s a little bit of that, but it’s not really the whole point. It’s about changing your physiology, so you train to improve metabolic flexibility. You, you gotta teach your body how to burn fat more efficiently. Um, if you wanna become a stronger, more durable, uh, runner. And with improved, uh, uh, metabolic flexibility with improved, uh, endurance, then you have to train properly.
And if you can get into those different types of runs, like I mentioned, and make sure you’re doing strength training. Ah, this is gonna be key for you. It’s gonna be key for you, okay? This is the long game. Remember, you don’t wanna just lose fat. You wanna be able to keep it off and perform better as a runner.
So all of these things combined, you know, especially the smart training, um. Not just adding more miles, but doing, you know, intention, being very intentional, very mindful about each of your workouts during the week. All these things combine to help you to become that more efficient fat burner. Okay, so let’s bring this all together here.
If you wanna lose fat and keep it off, don’t start in the kitchen. Start with your mindset. Start with how you think. How do you see yourself? What do you believe is possible for you? Who do you want to be? Like? What is that identity shift that you need to make in order for you to believe that you can become that person?
That’s that’s where everything needs to start from. Next, take a look at your sleep, making sure that you’re getting good quality sleep every night, and that you’re serious about rest and recovery. Okay? Take a good look at your stress levels and learn how to manage them. Start practicing proactively some sort of stress management.
What a lot of people do is they go, oh, I’m really stressed. I better work on some stress management stuff. And then they, you know, start, you know, trying to meditate, but they’re super stressed. Well, that’s not when you need to start some kind of stress management thing. You need to do it every day. Just needs to be part of, you know, what you do every day.
Um, and then lastly, train with intention. Run smart, lift heavy. Don’t skip rest days. Okay. Once you do all these other things, yeah, then what you’re eating is really gonna make a difference. Okay? So yeah, of course what you eat is going to have something to do with this, but when all these other systems are running smoothly, then food truly does.
Become fuel, then food truly does become a more powerful tool to help you burn more fat. Okay? And we wanna stop using food to cope. We wanna stop using food to, you know, battle our cravings. And we want to create an environment where fat loss feels easy, and eating the right foods feels easy, but you gotta have all these other things in place as well.
Okay? That’s how you become that leaner, stronger, faster runner that you wanna become. Okay. And again, if you’re tired of spinning your wheels, if you’ve been stuck in this cycle of eating less and running more, it’s just not working for you. Maybe it’s time for a different approach. Remember, this is what we do in my coaching program, the Running Lean Coaching project.
It’s, we just go be on food. You know, we fix all the stuff under the surface. So that fat, fat loss actually works and actually sticks. Okay? So if you’re ready to change your mind, your habits, your body for good, go to my website running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. That’s all I got for you today.
Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
There’s no shortage of advice out there about how to lose weight. Just eat less, run more, count your calories, cut carbs, do a cleanse, go vegan, try keto—the list goes on and on. But how much …
Continue Reading about 291. Replay: Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked →
291 Replay Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked
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Speaker: 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 291 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners in today. Common weight loss myths debunked. So there’s no shortage of advice out there about how to lose weight. That is for sure. Just eat less, run more. Count your calories, cut your carbs, do a cleanse, go vegan, try keto.
The list goes on and on and on and on and on. But how much of this advice. Actually works. And more importantly, how much of it works long term, especially for runners. So in this episode, I’m digging into some of the most common and most misunderstood ideas around weight loss. We’re talking about what’s true, what’s total bs.
And how to take a more realistic, sustainable approach to getting leaner and stronger. So if you’ve ever felt confused or frustrated trying to figure out the right way to lose weight, you are definitely not alone. My goal here is to help you see through the hypes so you can finally start making real progress.
And listen, if you’re tired of feeling like you’re constantly struggling, struggling to hit your pace, struggling to stay consistent, struggling to lose that extra weight if running feels harder than it should if you’re putting in the miles, but not seeing the results. If you know you could be stronger, leaner, more energized, but you just don’t know how to get there.
I’ve got you. The truth is, running alone isn’t enough. Random diets don’t work and willpower will only get you so far. What you need is a comprehensive approach, a proven system that’s designed specifically for runners like you who want to feel better, run easier, and finally start making real progress.
Inside my coaching program, we take a holistic approach to transforming you from the inside out, we dial in your nutrition. Build real strength, train smart and develop the mindset you need to stay consistent for life. So if you’re ready to become the healthiest, strongest, most badass version of yourself, then let’s go.
Just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, book your free call. Let’s do this together. You’re so much more capable than you think. Okay. So like I said at the intro, there’s a lot of mis and misconceptions around weight loss, especially when it comes to runners. A lot of runners don’t understand, uh, the proper, uh, principles around weight loss, and there’s a lot of, and honestly, there’s just a lot of bad advice out there.
This is an older episode. I actually, uh, aired this one, oh gosh, about a hundred episodes ago or so. Um, but it is one of those ones that I feel is kind of timeless information. I think that it’s something that we can all, uh, use as a good reminder right now, especially if you’re kind of coming into the off season, which a lot of us are here in the summertime.
So I’m not gonna, uh, talk much more about this. I’m just going to go ahead and play the replay of common weight loss. Myths debunked. Enjoy. All right, let’s get into today’s topic. Common weight loss myths, debunked. Um, I was thinking about this as we start the new year here. It is now January of 2024. Happy New Year to all of you.
And I was thinking about. What people tend to do at the beginning of the year like this, they tend to jump onto some fad diet or, or do something they read about on social media to lose weight and, and maybe improve their exercise or start running or something like that. And it usually ends up being something that is very short-lived.
That’s why the gyms are full in January and they’re empty again in March. So we need to take a different approach. Okay. And, and some of the things that, that are spread out there in the world, some of the. Conceptions that people have around weight loss are confusing and they’re not always correct and, and I want to clear up some of these common myths, you know, some of these common principles that people tend to think are the truth that really aren’t.
So just sit back and enjoy this episode today because I’m gonna debunk some of these common weight loss myths. Now, the first one is gonna be. Uh, that it’s all about calories, and this is one of the most common weight loss myths out there where it’s just all about calories. You just have to eat less and you will lose weight.
That’s it. That is the one principle that most diets out there adhere to whatever the diet. They typically, um, are trying to get you to eat fewer calories. Like that is the principle of most diets. Um. Also with weight loss drugs, weight loss surgeries, these are all getting you to not eat as much. And the, the issue with this is that yes, you can lose weight by reducing your calories.
It is a very, if. Effective way to lose weight. Um, look at shows like The Biggest Loser. They restrict calories for these very obese people. They have them exercise like crazy and they do lose a lot of weight. The problem with this approach is that it is not sustainable. They have done, um, many, many studies.
In fact, there was a big meta study that was done that looked at all these other studies that showed that calorie restriction diets. Are the most effective at short-term weight loss. They are also, and this is the important part, the least effective long-term weight loss approaches. So when you, um, restrict calories for a period of time, what happens is your body goes into starvation mode.
So your body will think that you are starving. Basically, you’re not getting enough calories to satisfy your, uh, energetic needs throughout the day. And so your body will actually slow down your metabolism over time to match the calories that are coming. So let’s say you’re somebody that normally eats 2000 calories a day and you restrict your caloric intake to a thousand calories a day.
That’s gonna be fine for the short term, but over time your body will slow down your metabolism to match the amount of energy that’s coming in. So now, instead of burning 2000 calories a day at rest, that’s your resting metabolic rate. Your body is like, Nope, we’re only gonna burn a thousand calories a day.
’cause that’s all we have ever coming in. So what happens is you now, the thousand calories a day is not a deficit anymore. And so the weight loss stops and actually you start gaining weight ’cause you’re still eating the, you know, the thousand calories a day and, and maybe your metabolic rate drops even more and you can’t lower your caloric intake.
You can’t keep lowering your caloric intake to match your slowdown of metabolism. So this is a very bad approach to weight loss, like just cutting calories and thinking that that is the answer. Um, again, it does work in the short term and that’s why so many people, uh, promote this type of a diet where, you know, it just don’t eat as much.
The problem with is, is not sustainable. It is not something that you can do long term because your body will go into that starvation mode and, um, as a runner especially. You do not wanna reduce your caloric intake, especially long term. This can dramatically affect your running performance. ’cause as you ramp up your mileage, you ramp up your intensity levels, your, um, caloric intake needs to match that.
So you actually need to, a lot of times you need to increase your caloric intake as a runner, especially as you’re getting, um, towards the late stages of a training cycle. Um, another thing to consider is that. Caloric restriction. A lot of the caloric restriction diets will cause you to lose weight, but that weight is in the form of fat and muscle and connective tissue and bone density.
This is not good. As a runner, you do not wanna lose muscle. You don’t wanna lose bone density. Um, a a little bit of a side note here. There’s a lot of new weight loss drugs out there, and people are talking about, um, drugs like ozempic, right? And they’re showing, oh, these are so, uh, effective at people losing weight.
What they’re not telling you though is about 40% of the weight that people are losing, you know, using drugs. Ozempic is muscle, bone and connective tissue. You know, connective tissues are ligaments and tendons. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to sacrifice muscle, bone and connective tissues just so I can lose weight.
Uh, it’s not about weight loss. We’re what we wanna focus on. Fat loss, right? It’s not about just restricting calories. There’s a lot more going on that you really have to consider here. Okay? Instead of focusing on just restricting calories. Try focusing instead on eating real food. Eating nutritionally dense foods, foods that are satiating, um, foods that when you eat them, you feel satisfied.
A lot of the caloric calorically dense, or I’m sorry, the, the foods that are not calorically dense. So the, the, the empty calorie type of foods that are a lot of the processed foods, a lot of the foods that are full of sugar and um, refined grains and things like that will actually hijack your hunger signals and make you feel super hungry.
Even though you’re eating a ton of food, you can feel super hungry, um, in between meals and they actually cause you to overeat. So we wanna be eating foods that are satiating, that fill us up and that don’t mess up our hunger signals. So what I recommend is eating food, real food that still looks like food, meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, dairy, all the stuff that is just the normal stuff you see on the outside of the grocery store.
Stay away from processed foods, stay away from sugar, stay away from refined grains. These foods make you feel super hungry. It’s hard to lose weight when you’re eating mostly processed foods and sugars. Um, those things will mess up your hunger signals. They won’t make you feel full and satisfied when you do eat.
And if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re hungry all the time, that’s a bad combination right there. That’s where you start to get hangry, right? Angry and hungry at the same time. So there’s a lot more going on here, and it’s not just about calories. In fact, just reducing calories is, is not a really good way to lose weight.
And it’s, it’s really not a long-term. Uh, definitely not a long-term, uh, approach That’s gonna work for most people. Okay. So that’s number one. It’s, it’s, it’s all about calories. I think we busted that myth right there. The next one is that we just need to exercise more. So exercise more. That’s all you need to do.
It really doesn’t matter what you eat. As long as you’re burning it off, you’re fine. It’s okay to overeat. It’s okay to eat whatever junk food you want. Just run more, just exercise more. Get your cardio in every day, and you’ll be fine. Here’s the thing. Right now we are exercising more in this time in human history than we ever have as human beings, and we are more overweight, more obese, and have more metabolic dysfunction than any other time in human history.
Clearly exercising more is not the answer. I talk to people literally every single day who, who tell me, Patrick, I gain weight. I’m running more and I keep gaining weight. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. Every time I, uh, increase my exercise, I end up gaining weight, and I’m like, yeah, I know.
This was me too. For years there I was running at least two marathons a year. I was running several ultra marathons every year. And in that process I was gaining weight consistently, and over a few years I gained something like 40 pounds. And this was, you know, when I was doing that pretty typical training for me at the time, which was running a few marathons and a few ultra marathons every single year.
So I was training a lot, I was running a lot, I was doing other types of cardio and cross training and, and, um. Strength training and things like that. So this concept of exercising more, it just doesn’t hold up. Okay. Never in human history have we needed to quote unquote like exercise to maintain a healthy weight, to ha, to maintain a healthy metabolism, to maintain a good health and fitness.
Our hunter gatherer ancestors, they did not like intentionally exercise. They weren’t out there, you know, doing calisthenics every day. They actually were focused on energy conservation. They did not exert themselves excessively, they rested whenever they didn’t have to go out there and, and walk distances, you know, and, and hunt, pray or, or gather, you know, fruits and vegetables and things like that.
So they, they were actually focused on conserving energy. You know, they probably walked a few miles every day. Um, and at times they may have done more than that, but they weren’t like running, uh, consistently all the time. They did some running, but it wasn’t something they, they were doing like running ultra marathons for fun.
Like, you know, they just didn’t do that. It was stupid. To like, you know, use that much energy. You don’t see any animal ever, you know, just exercising for the heck of it. You know what I mean? We actually see this today in, uh, modern day hunter gatherer tribes like the ZA in Tanzania. They have been a well-studied group of people.
They are super fit. They’re healthy, they’re lean, they’re strong. They don’t have. All the metabolic diseases that we have in the western world here, they don’t have diabetes. They’re not obese. Obese, they don’t have heart disease. Um, so all of that stuff is, is really not present with these people. And they are a hunter gatherer tribe, very similar to our ancient ancestors.
So, you know, humans have evolved over two and a half million years, and for the vast majority of that time, we were hunter gatherers and living in tribes, and we were super fit, healthy, lean, and strong people. Um, the only time we’ve started to experience all this metabolic dysfunction and disease is, is within the last few hundred years, really, um, you know, maybe 500 years, a thousand years, even like 2000 years.
You can go back to the time of the, uh, ancient Egyptians when we started to see. Um, them using more grains and eating a lot more refined grains in the form of flowers and things like that. So they started to, you know, perfect agriculture and they were eating a lot more grains. And you can see that the distended bellies of the.
Um, mummies ’cause they actually have the actual whole person preserved as a mummy and their teeth are all messed up. You know, they have a lot of, um, tooth decay from the sugar and the grains they were eating, and they have a lot of distended bellies, which means they were, you know, starting to gain weight even at that, uh, even 2000 years ago.
So in the long span of human history, there’s only a short amount of time where we actually are starting to experience all these, uh, metabolic, uh, diseases, and they’re all really based off of our diet. You know, so we see tribes like the, the hazah, and we can kind of look at them and say like, yeah, they’re pretty close to what our ancestors used to be like.
And what’s interesting about the Hazah is that their metabolic rate, so how many calories they burn at rest is about the same as the rest of us in the western world here. Um, for men it’s like 2,500 calories a day. For women, it’s 1900 calories a day. That’s pretty similar to where we are here in the western world.
So you can’t say like, oh, well they just exercise more. They don’t, they’re doing about the same amount of exercise we’re doing. They get in. Some steps every day they walk, you know, they might be getting in 10 to 15,000 steps a day, which is, you know, what we’re supposed to be getting anyway, you know, it’s kind of recommended.
Um, and for the vast majority of us, you know, we’re getting around three or 5,000 steps a day without any intentional exercise. So we’re just in our daily lives, you know, we’re, we’re getting about a third, you know, half to a third of that. Um. In, in the amount of steps we take on a daily basis anyway. And if you’re a runner, you’re definitely getting that 10,000 steps a day, you know?
So these people who are really about the same as us in most aspects, they, they don’t exercise exceedingly. Um, they are extremely healthy, fit, lean, strong, and their metabolic rate is about the same as ours. So the more ex, it doesn’t mean like you need to exercise more. You know, so please understand this.
Like the, the answer is not doing a ton of cardio and trying to burn off the food. You can’t eat a bunch of junk food and then think you’re gonna burn it off. It just doesn’t work that way. Okay, so let’s just, um, put that one to rest too. Um, the next weight loss myth that I want to debunk here is that. Um, X, y, Z diet is all you need, so whatever that one diet is, right, there’s so many crazy diets out there.
There’s literally thousands of diets. And in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I started looking at some of the weirder diets that are out there and, and I cannot make this stuff up, but there is a diet called the Cotton Ball Diet, which is where you soak cotton balls in different liquids.
You know, like, uh, cabbage juice or fruit juice, and then you eat that. Right. And you, you actually, it’s supposed to make you feel more full because you’re eating these cotton balls and I guess you pass the cotton balls or whatever and you’re getting a little bit of, um, nutrition from the juice or whatever that’s soaked in there.
But don’t do that. That’s crazy. Another one is one called the Werewolf Diet, and I was like, oh, what is that? Where they eat people? Like, what, what is the werewolf diet? And no, it has to do with like fasting around the lunar cycles. Okay. Uh, great. I love that one actually. And then there’s one that I cannot make this up.
This is called the Breatharian Diet, and these are people that believe that you can sub subsist on spirituality and sunlight that you only need. Um, air to get all the, um, uh, nutrients that you need that you don’t really need to eat or drink anything, including water. And, um, obviously if you try this, you will die.
Okay. So the people that are, say they’re practicing Breatharian, they’ve actually shown them sneaking liquids and food and stuff because you can’t. This is not sustainable. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like I’m like making this up or reading these out of some sort of like, you know, comedy show or something like that.
But no, they are things that people have actually done in the past. Okay. Every diet out there claims to be the answer for everyone. And listen, I’ve tried them all. Not the Cotton Ball or the Breatharian Diet, although the Werewolf Diet sounds interesting. I might have to give that one a try, but I’ve tried like most of the diets that are out there, the big popular ones, right?
And to some extent they all worked. The problem is that nothing I ever did was ever sustainable for me. For example, I. Started reading about, uh, vegetarianism and veganism, and for about five years or so, I went and I started cutting out my meat and I started cutting out more and more meat and then fish, and then eventually, so I went vegetarian.
Then eventually I went plant-based, and I did that for like 10 years. So about 15 years. I was like vegetarian and vegan essentially. You know, stay away from meat, stay away from eggs, stay away from dairy. That stuff is bad for you. And at the beginning it was okay, like I did lose some weight. But I have to tell you, for me, I gained a lot of weight eating that kind of a diet.
Um, because if you think about it, that diet is mostly, almost all a hundred percent carbs. It’s fruits and vegetables, and that’s a hundred percent. So for me, it did not work. For me over 10 years, I steadily gained weight. I gained like 40 pounds in that process of, of eating a plant-based diet for me, this was not healthy and it was not sustainable, gaining weight on any kind of diet.
That shouldn’t be the case, that that’s not good for you, whatever you’re doing. And I know a lot of people who do really well on a plant-based diet or a vegetarian diet, and they love it and they do it for ethical reasons, or they do it for reasons that that work for them as individuals. And I’m not saying it’s a bad choice for you.
I’m just saying that it didn’t work for me. If I kept doing that, I’d probably be like 300 pounds by now. All right. And I have clients and I work with people who are vegetarians and vegans, and they do well, we can make it work okay, but we have to stay away from some of the refined foods and the processed foods and things like that.
Okay? The truth is, here’s, here’s what I’m trying to get to here. There isn’t one diet that works here. Everyone you need to figure out. The right formula that works for you because you are an individual. You have your own metabolism, your own genetics, your own lifestyle, your own family, your culture of origin, your own food preferences, your own likes and dislikes.
You got your own health and fitness goals. Maybe you’re training for ultra marathons. Maybe you wanna run your first 5K, maybe you don’t exercise at all. All these factors. Put together mean that you are an individual and you need to approach nutrition and exercise with this important principle in mind.
That is, you have to figure out what works for you as an individual, and it’s going to look different from what everybody else is doing. And it probably isn’t going to be some preconceived diet that you know is published in the New York Times or whatever. All right. This is why I do coaching, and I don’t just prescribe a diet for everyone that I work with.
Coaching is a process of figuring out the best approach for you of figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you, and then modifying it as needed until you get the results that you want. It’s simple. It’s a feedback system. Let’s see what’s working. Let’s see what’s not, and we will adjust accordingly.
But honestly, most people are not willing to put in the time and effort to do it this way. Sorry, but there’s no quick fix here. It takes time to figure these things out, and you have to be willing to invest the time in yourself because that’s what’s required to get the results that you’re going after here.
Okay? So the right diet is not one that’s out there. It’s the one that works for you, the one that is sustainable for you. Because if it’s not sustainable for you, you’re not gonna stick with it, and it’s not gonna work long term for you. You’re gonna go back to doing what feels comfortable, and that’s probably eating the junk food because hey, that’s what feels comfortable, right?
So don’t think that there’s some diet out there that’s gonna work for you. That’s, you know, everybody is talking about these days. ’cause there just isn’t such a thing. Okay. All right. I think that weight loss myth is debunked. Here’s another one. Your metabolism slows down as you get older, so why even bother?
And I hear people say this all the time, they’re like, Hey, I’m just getting older, so I’m not even gonna try to lose weight. You know, I’m not even gonna worry about it because it’s just, it’s not gonna work for me because my metabolism, uh, just is getting slower. My metabolism’s slowed down now and losing weight is too hard.
And people use this as an excuse to not start or, or to not change their diet or not to eat healthy foods or whatever. There was a study published a couple of years ago, uh, that suggests that this is just really not true at all. So your metabolism, the rate at which your body burns energy has long been thought to decline during middle age, and then to keep declining as you get older.
So for this particular study, researchers um, looked at metabolism by measuring the total energy expenditure, which includes energy burned at rest, you know, and, you know, in order to perform basic functions like digesting food and energy burned during physical activity as well. So they looked at exercise and you know, your resting metabolic rate.
And they did this study on like 6,400 people, uh, ranging from eight days old to 95 years old, along with their height weight, their body fat percentage. Um, they looked at their, um, uh, average metabolic rates for men, women, people in different age groups. And they found some very interesting, um, results here based on four distinct periods in people’s lives.
So from infancy to 1-year-old, the metabolic rate surged until it was about 50% higher than it will be during their adulthood. So that’s pretty common. You know, like your metabolic rate is going to increase a lot at the beginning of your life. Right? And then from the ages of one to 20, the, um, metabolism decreased by.
3% per year. Okay. Again, very normal. The one big surprising thing is that from 20 to 60 years old, people’s metabolism doesn’t really change at all, and then after age 60, your metabolism does decrease slightly, but only by about a 0.7% a year. So not as much as people think it does. Um, and definitely not in that middle age.
So people think that, you know, once you turn 40, like that’s it, you know, it’s all over. Like, no, it’s not true at all. Like, your metabolism really doesn’t start to decrease until you get to about age 60. So studies like this are showing us that our metabolism doesn’t have to slow down as we get older, and that it’s much more likely, um, that changes in our behavior are causing us to gain weight as we get older.
Um, changes in our diet are, are what can help us to prevent, uh, the slowing down of our metabolism. Um, so people want to use this as an excuse as why they. Can’t gain weight, but they don’t wanna look at their actual diet, you know, their lifestyle choices. So your lifestyle choices are gonna go a lot further in helping you to, uh, maintain a healthy weight and, and even lose weight as you get older and you can’t use the metabolism.
That’s an excuse anymore. Okay, so that myth totally busted. Another one that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately is, um, cleanses and detox diets. Like that’s all you need to do. You just need to do a cleanse every now and then, and you’ll be fine. And listen, almost none of the cleanses and detox diets that are out there today have been proven to be effective on short or long-term metabolic health.
This is another case where people are trying to justify a crappy diet with some sort of a detox or a cleanse. Yes, it is true that today we are exposed to more toxins than probably ever before. But what you need to understand is that most of these toxins you are choosing because of your poor diet.
You’re eating processed foods, loaded with chemicals, industrial seed oils, um, deep fried foods, foods loaded with sugar and refined grains. All these things are contributing to health problems. All these things are making it harder to lose weight. So the idea of a cleanse, it’s a good idea and we should absolutely cleanse our systems of these toxic ingredients, okay?
But you can’t just do it like once a year. The best way to cleanse your body of toxins is to stop eating the toxins. The best cleanse is actually a diet that just eliminates all these terrible ingredients from your life permanently. So people think that they can eat whatever they want for months and then just drink a bunch of detox tea, or take a bunch of supplements and pull the toxins outta your system.
And these things might work for the short term. They might have some short term benefits, they might make you feel a little better, um, in the interim, but it’s not a long-term solution. I was talking to some friends recently, um, this couple, and they’re taking all these expensive supplements to, um, pull all these toxins outta their system, and they were telling me about this whole system of things that, you know, use, uh, all these different ingredients.
I can’t remember the names of all this stuff, but they, they. You know, grab the toxins and they pull ’em out and, and it takes like six months of this protocol in order to do this. Meanwhile, they’re taking all these expensive supplements every single day. Okay. That’s great. And I, I applaud you for trying to get healthier, but what happens after the six months?
What do you do? Like, do the toxins just come back? Like, wouldn’t it be wiser to just eat clean and healthy foods, void of all the toxic ingredients in the first place and just keep doing that? Anyway. Never in human history have we needed to go on a cleanse. Right. For two and a half million years as humans, we’ve thrived simply by eating real food.
We haven’t had to drink a bunch of detox tea or like, you know, eat, eat all these crazy supplements and things like that just to rid our bodies of the garbage. Just stop eating the garbage. Your body’s really good at cleansing itself. Your body’s really good at detoxing itself. We have a, an incredibly complex system to remove toxins from our bodies.
Let your body do what it’s supposed to do naturally. Just stop eating the junk food. Okay. So, uh, that’s another myth busted, by the way. So the biggest takeaways here, uh, that I want you to, to have a look at here is like looking at our ancestors, ancient human civilizations. Were incredibly healthy, lean strong, and disease free.
Much like that ZA Tribe today. Okay. They did not count calories. They did not restrict their caloric intake. They didn’t need to exercise like mad every day to stay lean and healthy. They actually were trying to conserve energy. They didn’t have to go on some crazy fad diet. They weren’t eating cotton balls, soaked in cabbage juice to lose weight.
Their metabolism didn’t suddenly stop working when they hit a certain age, and they definitely did. Didn’t do some weird juice cleanses or take a bunch of detox supplements, right. What did they do? They ate real food. They ate food that today still looks like food. That food that our ancestors would recognize, that their ancestors recognize.
That’s just food. Just eat food. Stay away from the processed foods. Stay away from the Franken foods. Try to eliminate sugar and refined grains. Those things have only been around for a short period of time. In the course of human history, stay away from seed oil. Stay away from toxic ingredients. Stay away from fried foods.
Yes, exercise. Keep on running, but don’t do it to try to lose weight. Do it because it’s good for you. It’s good for your mental health. Your emotional health. It’s good for your heart. It’s great at helping you to manage stress. Just don’t run a bunch to try to lose weight because that doesn’t work. Okay, so those are the common weight loss myths debunked.
I hope you got something good out of this episode today. If you did, shoot me a message. Tell me what you liked about it. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
Let’s be real—eating healthy can feel like a total drag sometimes, especially when all your favorite foods seem to be off-limits. But what if I told you that you don’t have to give up everything …
Continue Reading about 289. 10 Food Swaps to Help You Eat Healthier (Without Hating Your Life) →
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 289 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today 10 food swaps to help you eat healthier without hating your life. So let’s be real. Eating healthy can often feel like a total drag sometimes, especially when all your favorite foods seem to be off limits.
But what if I told you that you don’t have to give up everything you love in order to eat healthy E in order to lose fat and still feel totally satisfied? In this episode, I’m gonna share 10 food swaps to help you eat healthier without hating your life. Uh, these aren’t bland or boring substitutions either.
These are gonna be kind of lower carb, whole food or alternatives that taste amazing. They’ll actually leave you feeling full and feeling energized. If you’re a runner who’s been struggling to stay on track with your eating. This episode is gonna show you that eating healthy doesn’t have to suck. You’ll learn how to make small, sustainable changes that can lead to big results without feeling like you’re on some sad, restrictive diet.
But first, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, man, eating healthy always feels so hard. Or I keep trying to lose weight, but nothing ever sticks. I hear you. Most runners I talk to are putting in the miles, but they’re not seeing the results that they want. They’re frustrated, exhausted, and they’re not sure what to do next.
That’s exactly why I created my coaching program to help you dial in your nutrition, get stronger, improve your running, and finally feel like you’re in control of your health and fitness again. You don’t need another generic meal plan. You don’t need to train harder or run longer. What you do need is a proven, personalized approach that works with you, with your lifestyle, with your goals, and with your body.
Inside my program, I will guide you step by step so that you can lose weight. Build muscle boost, endurance, and become the healthiest, strongest version of yourself. Yet. If you’re ready to stop struggling and start thriving, just head over to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me. Let’s get started.
Cool. Cool. Okay, let’s get into this episode. Listen, I get it that when you decide you want to start eating healthier, it can kind of feel lame. I hear people tell me this all the time, this is why a lot of people just don’t ever try to lose weight or, or try to change their diet because it just, it, it feels so restrictive and it feels terrible, and it just feels like you’re gonna be eating.
You know, kale and cardboard, you know, all the time. Um, it feels like you’re going to give up everything that you’ve grown to love. You know, pizza, ice cream, beer, pancakes. You just gotta eat salads and chicken breasts and, you know, broccoli and that’s it. Like those are your only choices, you know. But that’s not what we do.
That’s not what I do with my coaching clients. That’s not what we do in my program. Healthy eating doesn’t have to suck. Losing weight doesn’t mean you have to eat like a bird, you know, like seeds and nuts and that’s it. Also, becoming a fat adapted, high performing runner doesn’t require cutting every carbohydrate out of your life.
You can make smarter food choices that support your fast loss, fat loss goals that still taste good. This still tastes pretty amazing actually. You just have to make a few swaps. Nothing crazy. This isn’t about some extreme one way or the other. Um, I just wanted to put something together to help you start to see that you can make some simple changes.
Uh, and start actually eating some foods that are healthy for you and delicious and satisfying, and will help you accomplish your weight loss and your running goals. Okay, so I tried to concentrate on Whole Foods, low-ish carb options. Some of these have some carbs in there. We’re not afraid of carbs though, right?
You just gotta do ’em in moderation and try to stay away from some of the refined carbs. But they’re satisfying, they’re delicious, and they actually work for runners who are trying to feel better and, and lose some weight, and gain some muscle and things like that. Um, but a lot of runners tell me that, you know, I really want to eat better, but I just don’t want to give up all the foods that I love and I totally get that.
Uh, and you don’t have to a hundred percent give up all the foods that you love. You can still enjoy food. You can still have variety. You can still enjoy good flavor from food. You can even have what I would call dessert, but instead of eating. The processed high carb, sugar laden stuff that just keeps you packing on fat.
You just gotta swap out some of that stuff for something better. Just healthier choices. And you’d be surprised how easy this can be once you kind of get the hang of it. Okay, so I’ve got 10 options here. Listen, there are way more than 10 healthy swaps that you could do for things that you love. I couldn’t possibly fit these all into one episode.
Like there’s thousands of them really. But I picked a few that I think address some of the foods that people tend to miss the most. At least this is the kind of stuff that I miss the most. Um, so let’s start with number one. Um, and that would be ice cream. Okay. I am an ice cream junkie, or at least I used to be.
Um, I still do enjoy some ice cream here and there, but what I do instead most of the time is I substitute something healthier for ice cream. Now you can actually find, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna talk about a couple different things here today. I’m gonna talk about some i items that you can purchase at the store that might be substitutes, and then something that you can kind of make at home that’s more of a whole foods type of thing.
Okay? So ice cream is one of those that falls into both categories where. You can go to the grocery store and you can find some decent kinda lower carb, uh, ice cream brands that don’t have a bunch of sugar in them. It, it’s still kind of processed food, so just keep that in mind. But there are some healthier alternatives to ice cream.
Just look in the ice cream section for things like Halo Top or Rebel Creamery. Um, there’s a couple other brands out there that are pretty decent. You know, they’ve got, they use whole ingredients, but some of these have thickeners and things like that in ’em. So if you’re not interested in that, one of the, the best alternatives to just eating ice cream or something store-bought, that’s a, like a lower carb option would be just do some Greek yogurt, uh, get some plain Greek yogurt, add some berries to it.
I love blueberries and strawberries. Mix that with a little Greek yogurt. Sometimes I will put a little tiny drizzle of, uh, honey or some maple syrup on top of that. Um, not much, um, just a, you know, teaspoon or two. Um, and this is something that you can do after eating dinner. It’s a wonderful, like, very satisfying dessert type of food option.
Um. It tastes like a dessert, but it’s higher in protein, it’s low in sugar, it’s way more satisfying. It’s gonna keep you full. Um, you can even add a little bit of cinnamon in there, maybe some chopped nuts on top that this is such an awesome substitute for ice cream. So this got me through for a long time ’cause I just quit eating ice cream altogether.
I used to eat a lot of ice cream. Um, so I quit eating ice cream. And so then I would just do the Greek yogurt and berries. Um, and I just did that for a long time and then occasionally I would add a little bit of honey or something to it, but you don’t even really need that if, if the, uh, berries that you got are in season and they’re nice and sweet.
So that’s one. Another one is, um, a lot of people, you know, they want to give up some of the high carb. Staple foods like rice. And a good option for, for substituting would be something like rice, cauliflower. And this is a item again that you can get at the store. It’s pre rice. Um, you can make this yourself as well, but if you just go in the frozen food section and you look for like where the vegetables are, a lot of times you can find like brown rice and, and white rice, but also cauliflower rice, riced, cauliflower.
And this is super low in carbs. It’s got the same kind of texture as rice. It does taste a little bit different. Um, but it’s got few, just a few calories you can really load up your plate with this stuff. And, um, uh, it, it’s such a great substitute. You can use it any in, in, just use it in place of rice, stir fries.
Um, I would get like, uh, Indian takeout. I love Indian food. Um, but super high in carbs, right? But I would get something. That was kind of a low carb dish. And then instead of using the rice that they give me with it, I would just heat up some, uh, cauliflower rice and have that with it. It’s super delicious and I can feel good about what I’m eating.
I’m, I’m not eating this huge load of carbohydrate. Um, so again, you can, you can get this at the store. You can make it yourself. I have riced it myself. Um, to be honest, it’s a little bit of work and it’s very messy. Like stuff’s just flying everywhere. But if you’re cool with that, make it at home. It’s pretty easy to do.
If you’ve got, uh, like a, I don’t know, like a cheese shredder or something like that, that you can use to do it, the stuff they have at the store, it’s awesome though. Okay. So, and you can use, I mean, just think about anywhere that you use rice and you can just use this instead. Um, okay. Number three is substituting something for wheat flour.
I know one of the biggest things that people freak out about when, um, they start going kind of on a lower carb, um, journey here, um, is wheat flour. So wheat flour is one of those things that is. Is a refined carbohydrate and it actually spikes your blood sugar more than eating actual sugar does. Because it’s such a fine ground powder, it does have a higher impact on your blood sugar.
So just keep that in mind, like it’s going to be problematic to eat regular wheat flour. So instead there’s, there’s low carb options that are actually. Pretty good. And again, you can buy this stuff at the store. I would kind of recommend that because, you know, creating flour is, is, is a little bit of work.
Um, but you can do it in a, uh, food processor, a blender or something like that. But a couple options might be something like almond flour, so that’s gonna be pretty tasty. A little bit different texture though. So if you’re using it in recipes and stuff like that, you can kind of substitute it for wheat flour, but it’s gonna be, it’s gonna give you a little bit of a different consistency.
Um, and the one that I’ve been using lately that I really love is oat flour. Now I get it, oats are gonna be a little bit higher in carbs, but I consider this kind of a whole food type of substitution. Um, and if you’re okay with some carbs, then this is not a bad way to go. Um. But when you’re baking or making breads, um, even doing things like um, pizza crust, you can use almond flour to make pizza crust.
Um, if you guys wanna Google something like fathead pizza crust, I think it uses a mozzarella cheese and some almond flour and an egg or something like that, and it creates this amazing pizza crust that’s super delicious. But pancakes, muffins, all kinds of things. I make this really healthy. And very delicious, uh, pancake.
I’ve been doing this recently, um, cooking ’em on the Blackstone outside, which is super fun. So we’re just making pancakes outdoors and it’s, uh, oat flour, or I’m sorry, it’s just oats, but I grind it up in the, in the food processor. Um, so it’s oats and uh, cottage cheese and eggs. Those are really the only three ingredients and then you just blend it up and, and it makes a really awesome, um, very healthy, uh, pancake batter that you can just cook up like you would.
Normal pancakes, you know, they’re not as fluffy as the flour pancakes, but I don’t care. They taste so good. Um, and again, that’s gonna be a little bit higher on the carbohydrate side if you’re doing the oat flour. But almond flour, great alternative. You can also look at the store. They do have. Low carb flower blends that you can get that are pretty good too.
So don’t think like you can never have another muffin or another pancake. Again, there are options out there. Some are gonna be a little bit higher in carbs, and then if you’re okay with that, that’s fine. Some you can get very low carb options. Um, here’s another one that a lot of runners freak out about giving up, and that is beer.
I know so many runners who just love beer. They love drink a beer, especially after they run. So they finish running. This’ll be like eight, nine o’clock in the morning, and immediately they’re all drinking beers. And I’m just kinda shaking my head like, I don’t think that’s really what you should be doing, but hey, no judgment whatsoever.
Now, full disclosure, I used to drink beer. I used to love beer. I probably would’ve been one of those people that’s drinking at nine o’clock in the morning. Um, but I haven’t had alcohol in 18 and a half years or something like that. So for me, I just don’t want to be drinking alcohol. Um, alcohol plus the carbs that you get from the beer.
Just, you’re just storing fat at that point. You know, it makes it very hard to lose weight if you’re drinking alcohol. Um, but if you love the taste of beer, why not try something like a non-alcoholic beer? You, you will be surprised even at the regular grocery store, how many non-alcoholic beer options they have that taste really good.
So I have been enjoying some of these on occasion. Um, the, the one that I kind of recommend would be like athletic, athletic brewing. They make all non-alcoholic beers. They have, um, a few that are pretty low in carbs. I. Pretty low in calories. Um, they taste like, uh, an IPA or a golden Ale or something like that.
Um, from what I remember anyway, um, people that do drink beer, they say they taste great. Um, and this is a great option to have. And honestly, I’ll have one of these and I’m completely, completely satisfied. We’re in the past when I used to drink beer. You know, I drink five or six of these things, you know, and I, I’m, I’m, that’s a lot.
It’s a big carbohydrate load, big alcohol load, big stressor on the system. Don’t need to do that. Have a non-alcoholic beer. Enjoy yourself and you can still hang out with your friends and you don’t have to give up the things that you love. Okay? A hundred percent. Um, we’re, we’re enjoying the taste without having the negative side effects that come along with it, with the alcohol.
Cool. So that’s a good one to try. Uh, let’s see. We’re up to number five. Number five is potato chips. If you’re somebody that loves chips and you just can’t imagine giving those up, let’s try something else. You can actually do, um, something like roasted chickpeas. You know, put some chickpeas on a, on a sheet pan.
Put a little seasoning on there. Roast ’em up in the oven for, I don’t know, 10 minutes or something like that. Um, you can actually buy these at the store as well. You can buy roasted chickpeas. Um. Or veggie chips. Sometimes they have something that is like sweet potato, kale, um, zucchini. You can actually make these yourself too.
Put ’em in the air fryer, put a little drizzle of, uh, you know, olive oil on them. Uh, maybe a few, uh, little seasoning, a little salt or something like that. Fry ’em up in the air fryer, do some sweet potatoes or kale or zucchini or something like that. Oh, that sounds delicious. Now, nuts is one of those things where it’s a, a lot of people like to eat nuts and that’s fine if you want that crunchy thing, you’re missing potato chips or whatever.
Problem with nuts is that they are very high in calories. Um, high in fat, not such a big, that’s not such a big problem. But what happens is when you start eating nuts, people tend to like eat a lot of them. If you’re like me, if I get a bag of roasted almonds or cashews or something like that, technically cashews or legumes, I get that.
But I can eat a ton of that stuff. Like I can eat my body weight in nuts in a day, so I have to be careful of that one. So something like chickpeas, you’re not gonna, you’re not as tempted to overeat it or like the, the kind of veggie chips that you make yourself. Give it a try. You never know. It might be something that is, uh, a really good substitute for you.
Um, another one is sandwich bread. So people are, oh my God, I can’t believe I can never eat sandwich bread again. Listen, you can, and again, there are some good options at the store that you can get that are kind of low in, in carbs. Um, some of them I am, I question just there, there’s a lot of ingredients in there.
It’s kind of a highly processed. Item, honestly. Um, some of them are pretty good. Try ’em and see what you think. It’s up to you. Like, I just tend to not get a lot of these things because they just have a lot of ingredients that I’m just not totally sure about. Some of them use wheat flour and then they just add a bunch of fiber to help, um, offset the carb impact, you know.
So if you’re eating a bunch of W wheat flour anyway and they’re just adding fiber in the form of, you know, flax seed or something like that, is that really how we wanna be doing this? Like, I don’t know. ’cause you kind of can subtract the fiber from the food if it’s a whole food. But since it is a processed food and you’re just adding two ingredients together, is that really kind of.
Good for you. Jury’s out on that one. I don’t have a, a direct yes or no answer to that, but I tend to kind of stay away from some of the low carb breads out there. I’ve tried a few of ’em and honestly, they’re, they’re okay. Um, but you can do things, um, like when I go to restaurants, sometimes I’ll get a burger and I’ll just ask for an extra patty.
And no, no bun. So I just eat it like naked, you know, eat it with like a knife and fork. It’s delicious. Or you could do lettuce wraps. A lot of places will do the lettuce wraps, or they, they wrap it in like collard greens or something like that. But if you want a a, a, a delicious kind of sandwich. Type of thing and you don’t really want to do the bread, try something like a lettuce wrap or make your own using, you know, the almond flour or the wheat or the oat flour.
You know, that might be a good idea too. You can get tons of recipes online. That’s another thing I’ll just say, go do a little bit of research, you know, drop your, your questions into Google or chat GPT or something, and. Find out what options are available for you, um, because there’s so many things out there that you’re probably not even aware of.
Okay? Um, another one is sugary cereal. I know a lot of runners love to eat cereal. I don’t know what that is. They just like, love the cereal. Like it’s an excuse to eat a bunch of junk food, honestly. Oh, I’m a runner and I got a car blow, so they’re eating Captain Crunch or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I love some Captain Crunch.
I used to eat that stuff all the time. Haven’t eaten that in God. 10 year, 15 years. I don’t know. It’s been a long time now that I’m thinking about it. Now I need to go get me some Captain Crunch. I probably won’t do that, but instead of sugary cereal, you could do something like, uh, chia seed pudding with berries and some nuts in there.
So you can just make a quick chia pudding with, you know, milk or almond milk, maybe a little s. Little Stevia. A little sweetener. Top it with some berries and nuts. You can even do like the sugar-free jello pudding mix or something like that. It doesn’t have to be complicated, you know, but that’s a good way of like, you know, starting your day with, you know, a little bit of pudding.
Um. Some berries, some nuts, some seeds, um, instead of the sugary cereal, and it’s gonna help you, it’s gonna give you fiber, it’s gonna be good for your digestion, help you to stay full longer. Again, a lot of these foods we’re trying to like, maintain satiety and a lot of the. Super, um, carby foods, they, they actually do the opposite.
They make us feel more hungry and we have more cravings during the day, so we tend to overeat. But when you’re eating higher protein, good sources of fats, you tend to not eat as much. You’re more satisfied throughout the day. Um, again, trying to lose weight. We gotta stop the overeating thing. Um, soda. If you’re a soda drinker and you just can’t imagine giving up your Dr.
Pepper or Mountain Dew or whatever it is that you drink, um, which, you know, by the way, those, those cans have something around 40 grams of sugar per per can. That’s a lot of sugar. You know, that’s gonna be, I think the equivalent is something like 28 teaspoons of sugar or something. It’s ridiculous. Do not drink sugar.
Try to stay away from liquid sugar as best you can. Um, much healthy alternatives would be something like sparkling water. Um, couple things there. I get, uh, LaCroix or Polar or whatever, you know, brand Waterloo, whatever kind of brand is on sale at, at the grocery store. I’ll pick up a bunch of those. I love the taste of, of some of those sparkling waters.
No calories. There’s no. There’s a little bit of flavoring in there, but they, they taste fine. I love those things. I also have a soda stream here, so I just make my own sparkling water with no, uh, flavoring at all. That’s a nice thing to do. I’ve had that for God, about 15 years or so, and I use that pretty much every day.
Um, the other suggestion, especially for US runners would be, uh, some electrolyte mix. Do some electrolyte powder, get some elements, some Redmond, relight, you know, some, uh, liquid iv, anything like that that’s going to, it’s gonna have a good flavor and it’s gonna give you some nutrients that you actually need, you know, uh, some minerals you got.
Sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium. You need that stuff anyway. Why not drink that a couple times throughout the day? Um, but the sparkling waters are so much better for you. And listen, if you feel like you need to have that diet Coke every now and then, I. Yeah, don’t worry about it so much. It’s not that big of a deal.
I know some people are so adamant about never eating, uh, or never drinking anything like that because it’s like, oh, it’s got, what is it got in there, aspartame or something like that. You know, the occasional diet Coke instead of drinking 40 grams of sugar. I would say that’s a much better choice. Okay. We don’t need to go crazy with this stuff.
Have the Diet Coke if you want it. Um, pasta. If you’re somebody that loves pasta, and I do, I love pasta. There’s lots of alternatives there. Some of these you can get, uh, but you can make your own too. I, I think there’s some options at the store I haven’t checked lately, but there used to be some good low carb sort of pasta options, but you can make your own with like zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash.
Um, there’s even a new one that I, uh, kind of read about recently, paulini, which is like using um, uh, palm. Uh, root, you know, um, so that’s something that you can try. Um, you know, hey, whatever works, you know, but you can just like use it in place of, uh, regular wheat noodles, you know, um, roast up some spaghetti squash, kind of pull a, pull a stringy stuff out of there.
Then you’ve got a nice kind of substitute for, uh, pasta there. Okay. Um, and then number 10 would be salad dressing. So a lot of people love salads and, and I think this is a really healthy alternative to eat. Uh, a lot more salads. I love a big salad with, you know, some nice veggies on there. I’ll throw some avocado, maybe some hard boiled egg, a little bit of cheese on my salad.
And then you, you can use a dressing that is healthier. So instead of the store-bought dressings that have. Seed oils and a lot of sugar in there. You can make your own, um, add some olive oil, some vinegar, maybe a little Dijon mustard, put a little seasoning in there. Boom, you’ve got a nice homemade olive oil based dressing.
You can, and, and the the, the ways you can do this are endless, like you can make your own. Also at the grocery store, there’s a brand that I love called Primal Kitchen. Now Primal Kitchen has a whole line of salad dressings that are mingled with avocado oil. And zero sugar. And they are all delicious. They are a little bit more expensive, but to me it’s worth it.
I love that stuff. I don’t, I always have time to make my own dressing. I was making my own dressing there for a while. Um, you know, I just make it up ahead of time. Blend a bunch of ingredients up in the Vitamix, throw it in a mason jar, throw it in the fridge, and it would last for weeks, you know. But that’s up to you.
You know, you can buy some, some decent stuff at the store. Very delicious, primal kitchen, or make some of your own, you know, it doesn’t have to be, uh uh, you don’t have to be, uh, subject to eating all the seed oils and consuming all the sugary salad dressings that you get at the store. Okay? All right, so there you go.
10 food swaps that are simple, tasty, and sustainable. You don’t need to flip your entire diet upside down overnight. Start with a few of these swaps and then you can kind of build from there. The point is you can eat real food, lose fat, fuel your running, and still love what you’re eating. It is possible.
And if you’re ready to stop struggling and start getting real results, head over to my website running lean coaching.com, click on work with me and let’s you and I get to work. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
One of the biggest myths in the running world is that you can’t lose fat and keep running strong at the same time. Well…I’m here to tell you that’s just not true. The key is learning how to fuel …
Continue Reading about 287. How to Eat for Fat Loss Without Losing Performance →
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 287 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today how to eat for fat loss without losing performance. So one of the biggest myths in the running world is that you can’t lose fat and keep running strong at the same time.
Well, I’m here to tell you that that is just not true. The key is really learning how to fuel your body so that you burn fat efficiently and support your training and recovery. So in this episode, I’m gonna break it all down for you how to eat so that you can. Continue losing fat without losing your running performance.
In the process, you’re gonna learn exactly what types of foods promote fat loss. In which promote fat storage. Uh, why you don’t need all the carbs all the time, how to time your carbs around your runs for maximum fat burning, and how to hit the right calorie intake without totally crushing your energy.
If you wanna drop fat, get leaner and keep running strong. This episode is for you, so listen up. But first, if you’re struggling to drop the weight, if your energy is low, if your runs feel like a grind and nothing you’ve tried is working, listen, I get it. Most runners are following outdated advice. Eat all the carbs, train more, eat less, and hope for the best.
But that’s not a real strategy, that’s just guesswork. What you need is a clear proven plan that actually works for you. One that’s built around real food, smart fueling, consistent training, and the mindset required to keep it all going for life. This is exactly what I do with my coaching clients. We take the guesswork out, we simplify your nutrition, we dial in your training and build the best habits that actually help you to lose fat, that help you to get stronger and make running easier without really feeling deprived or burned out.
So if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start seeing actual results, go over to my website, runningleancoaching.com. Click on work with me. Let’s get you leaner, stronger, and running better than ever. Okay, so today’s episode, why I wanted to talk about this today. Um, how to eat for fat loss without losing performance.
Um, I decided to talk about this because this is one of the most common concerns that I hear from runners that I talk to. Which is, you know, I want to, I wanna lose weight, I wanna lose fat, but I’m afraid it’s going to completely tank my running. And I’ve heard that you can’t do both. If you wanna lose weight, your running is gonna suffer.
Or if you want to keep running strong, you gotta forget about losing weight. But listen, that’s just not true. The truth is you can do both. You just have to be intentional about how you fuel your body and how you structure your training. So that’s what we’re talking about here today. I want to clear up the confusion.
I want to give you an approach that is proven. This works for, I’ve worked with like around 500 clients now, 500 runners who have lost weight and improve their running at the same time. I would say that’s a proven approach, okay? You don’t have to lose running performance in order to lose weight. Okay. But I wanna start today by addressing the biggest myth around all of this when it comes to nutrition and fat loss is that you, you, you know this one that I’m just started talking about, which is you just can’t lose weight and run strong at the same time.
Um, the truth is that there is a delicate balance there. You need to be intentional about what you’re doing, and that’s kind of what this whole episode is about. It’s gonna be showing you how to do this, okay? Um, it is 100% possible. Like I said, 500 of my clients have done this, and you can do it too. What you can’t do is under eat, overtrain and, and somehow expect to perform at your best.
That’s the fast track to injury burnout, and just plateauing your progress. Okay. But this is what most people think of when they think of losing weight. That you gotta undereat, you have to cut your calories way back, and that you need to run more. So train more and eat less. But that’s a recipe for disaster and that’s where most people, good intention to people, good in intentioned coaches, that’s where they’re operating from.
That’s the standard, you know, uh, uh, operating procedure for people who wanna lose weight, cut your calories and in increase your cardio, you know, run more, eat less, run more, and that’s not a good plan. So that will tank your running performance. Absolutely. But that’s not what we’re gonna do. That’s not the approach that I take with people.
I never encourage people to undereat. I never encourage people to overtrain. Okay? That’s not the approach that we’re gonna take. So losing weight, fat loss, and running performance or not mutually exclusive, right? You have to have a smart approach though, to, you have to take a very smart approach to your nutrition and to your training.
Okay. So there are certain foods that will, um, promote fat loss and there are cer certain foods that kind of promote fat storage. So when it comes to losing fat, um, what you eat is probably just as important, even more important as how much you eat. Okay? So the right diet is gonna be the one that supports your, uh, fat loss goals and your running goals.
And again, this is, this is one of those things that’s kind of individualized and there’s no one answer that’s gonna fit everybody okay? But. There are certain foods, generally speaking, that will help you to lose fat and there are certain foods, generally speaking, that will cause you to hold onto that fat or to increase your fat stores.
So we, we, we are either choosing foods that, uh, diminish our fat stores. That, that help promote fat burning, or we’re eating foods that add to our fat stores that promote fat storage. Like we don’t, we don’t necessarily want that one. Okay. Also, keep in mind through this whole conversation we’re having today, that burning fat is an amazing fuel source for, uh, endurance athletes.
So if you’re a runner who wants to improve your endurance, burn more fat. So that’s kind of the, the over. Arching, uh, uh, topic here today, which is we wanna be burning the fat. We don’t wanna be storing the fat. We want to be burning the fat. ’cause when you’re burning the fat, you’re losing the excess weight, the excess fat.
When you’re burning the fat, you have this unlimited, virtually unlimited supply of fuel on board, on your body all the time. So there are certain foods that kind of promote fat loss. These are typically nutrient dense foods that are high in protein and lower in refined carbohydrates. So think about things like meat and fish and eggs and Greek yogurt, vegetables, berries, nuts, seeds, certain, you know, good fats, like, uh, uh.
Olives and olive oil. Um, and, and berry, uh, I’m sorry. And dairy, uh, like, uh, uh, butter and, uh, coconut oil and avocado oil, avocados, all those things. Okay. Low, high, high end protein, lower and refined carbs. Nutrient dense foods, and then we have uh uh, and that’s by no means an exhaustive list. This is just some examples.
Then there’s foods that promote fat storage. So pro foods that promote fat storage are typically ultra processed carb heavy. And low in nutritional value. So they’re not nutritionally dense. Um, they’re not high in protein and they’re high in those refined carbs. So think about sugary snacks, breads, pasta, soda, granola bars, baked goods, even a lot of these so-called like health foods.
They’re just loaded with sugar, seed oils, refined carbs, um, that stuff. It actually promotes fat storage. That stuff raises insulin in your body. It raises your blood sugar by a lot, spikes in blood sugar, spikes in insulin. Insulin seems to be the, the driver of fat storage. And as long as your blood sugar is high, your insulin is high, you’re, you’re storing fat.
If we can focus on a diet that is, um, lower in, in, uh, the. Nutrient, you know, diminished carbs in the, um, refined carbs if we’re eating more, um, high protein, nutrient dense foods, like I mentioned. Then your body is not producing as much blood sugar, not producing as much insulin. You’re keeping your blood sugar low essentially, and your body can burn the fat.
So high blood sugar means you’re just gonna be burning off that blood sugar. Essentially. You gotta, you gotta burn that off before you can do anything else. And if you’re eating a very high carbohydrate diet constantly, you’re just gonna be fighting a losing battle here. You’re always going to be storing fat.
Whereas if you’re eating a lower. Uh, blood sugar kind of diet, then your body can actually, uh, burn the fat. Okay? So that’s just something you have. If, if you wanna lose fat, then stick with eating these, uh, whole foods, these real foods, foods that keep you full, that support your workouts, that don’t spike your blood sugar every time you eat.
Okay? So let’s talk about carbs for a minute, because this is where a lot of runners get tripped up. We’ve been told for decades that runners need to constantly be loading up on carbs. You know, pasta before a long run, gels every 30 minutes, bagels before and after every workout. Here’s the thing though, your body doesn’t need a constant influx of carbs to run well.
In fact, if you’re constantly fueling with carbs, your body never learns to burn fat efficiently. And if fat loss is your goal, you want to be burning fat efficiently, especially during those long, steady state runs. So I’m not saying you have to go like full keto, you don’t have to be super low carb, but what I am saying is that you don’t need all the carbs all the time.
Again, once you train your body to start burning fat effectively, you’ve got a ton of fuel for running. And this is where a lot of runners just don’t understand this and they’re just stuck in this old mentality of having to eat all the carbs all the time. ’cause that’s what they started teaching us back in the eighties, you know?
And it’s just kind of, it’s all the same information. Since the 1980s. Well, I think it’s time to maybe change that or maybe add some other options to the mix and getting fat adapted, adapting your body to using fat as fuel, as opposed to just carbohydrates as fuel is a great way to improve your running and to lose the fat.
And why not? Why wouldn’t you want to do that? As a runner, why wouldn’t you want to be a better fat burner? It’s just one more tool that you have available to you. I, I don’t know why you would leave that on the table. So, and when we talk about carbs, I’m not saying like, you gotta, like, again, we’re not talking about going full keto.
Like keto typically is like 20 grams of carbs or less per day. That is very hard to do. It’s very hard to sustain that. Um, and we’re not talking about eating, you know, 300 grams of carbs a day either, but somewhere in between there, you know, a lot of people do well with 50 or a hundred or 150 grams of carbs, something like that.
That’s still considered kind of low carb, you know, and everybody has to figure out what works for them. I. But we wanna find that sweet spot and we want to include carbs in our training. We want to include carbs as part of our, um, a strategy to, you know, improve our running performance. And, but there are, but not all carbs are, you know, the same, there, there are some carbs that I, I want you to kind of include and maybe try and there’s some that I want you to kind of avoid.
So some of the carbs that we can use around our training would be things like. You know, root vegetables, sweet potatoes, beets, that kind of stuff. Um, squash, you know, like acorn squash, butternut squash, berries, beans, lentils, some oats. Um, ideally something like steel cut oats, and then whole fruits, you know, whole kinds of fruits.
You don’t need to like blend up all your fruit into a smoothie, but, you know, eating whole fruits, um, because these are. Nutrient dense, slow digesting carbs that provide energy without completely spiking your blood sugar, like just eating gels and stuff like that. Um, carbs to avoid or maybe just really limit.
I, I never say like, you can never eat bread again or something like that, but just kind of limit this stuff ’cause it does have a high impact on your blood sugar. It’s interesting that. When you look at the spikes of blood sugar and everybody’s a little bit different, but generally speaking, um. Uh, white flour will spike your blood sugar more than like table sugar does because you’re, you’ve, you’ve refined this grain into a fine powder, and so there’s like more surface area for the, I don’t know, enzymes to work or something like that.
And so it actually, you know, white flour will spike your blood sugar more than just eating plain table sugar. Well, that’s crazy, right? So when people are like, oh, you know, you’re being o overly. Uh, cautious by avoiding all these carbs, all these bread, like you can eat bread. Dude, listen, it’s like eating sugar.
It, it’ll spike your blood sugar more than sugar will. So just be mindful of that. I’m not saying not to do it, just be mindful. So some of the carbs I say to kind of avoid or limit would be white bread, pasta. Anything made with flour, really. Cookies, crackers, um, things like potato chips, all the processed energy bars, sugary drinks, cereals, ultra processed foods, ultra processed snacks, like all that stuff.
Okay. These kinds of carbs are delicious. I get it right, but they’re easy to overeat. They don’t satisfy your hunger. They’re they’re devoid of nutrients, and they’re going to sabotage both your fat loss and your performance over time. You might think you’re doing yourself a favor by eating four bagels before you run.
But over time you’re just gonna be storing more fat. You’re not gonna be a good fat burner. You’re diminishing your running performance, in my opinion. So you’re not allowing your body to function properly. Um, and that stuff can have a negative impact. There’s a lot of runners who are. Um, what’s considered tophi, TOFI thin on the outside, fat On the inside, they’ve got, they look like they’re in good shape.
They’re pretty healthy and lean, but on the inside there’s a lot of fat, uh, like, um, uh, visceral fat that’s around their organs and things like that. I know that some runners, ultra runners and things like that who have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or diabetes, um, but they don’t look like they’re overweight or anything like that, but they have a lot of.
Internal fat around their organs, which is the kind we really don’t want. That’s not good for you. So we have subcutaneous fat. That’s the fat that you can see on the outside, and then we have that visceral fat on the inside. That’s the, that’s the bad stuff there. Okay? We don’t want to be adding to that store, okay?
We want to be burning that fat. Okay? Now another question that comes up a lot is, okay, well when should I be eating these carbs? How do I time carbs? To, you know, around my workout so that I can burn fat and support my running because I’m all for using carbs for running. I think you should. Um, so if you’re gonna eat carbs, uh, do it in a strategic way.
And, and here’s a couple rule of thumbs we want to. We wanna time your carbs around your workouts, not just randomly throughout the day. You don’t wanna wake up and eat 16 pancakes and then, you know, later on in the day eat, you know, 12 bagels and then go to sleep with, you know, half a gallon of ice cream.
I. As good as that sounds. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why I came up with those numbers, but whatever. So your body is primed to use carbs for fuel and for recovery, like before and after you train essentially. So that’s when your muscles are like sponges. They soak up glycogen. Um, rebuilding is, is a, is a, the process of rebuilding muscles is stronger.
Uh, recovery is faster, so you don’t wanna just be snacking on carbs all day while you’re sitting at your desk or watching Netflix. Um, those excess carbs are probably gonna get stored as fat. So if you’re using. Carbs as fuel before a workout, you’re gonna burn those carbs. Um, if you’re using ’em after a workout, that’s a good too because your, your body can like, use those to replenish glycogen stores and rebuild muscles.
You do need some carbs and protein to, to rebuild muscles. Um, so we wanna use carbs like a tool, right? It’s just not a thing you can do freely all the time. Um, I know people are like, well, I run so I can eat whatever I want. It’s like, okay. But if you’re like. Gaining weight in the process. Maybe you can’t eat whatever you want, you know, but again, everybody’s an individual.
Um, but we wanna use carbs like a tool. So we wanna fuel our workouts, we wanna recover well, and we wanna try to stay in that fat burning mode for as long as possible. That means we don’t eat carbs, you know, all throughout the day, every day. So time ’em around your workouts. Um, another question that comes up a lot.
Is calorie deficit, and I hear so many people say the only way to lose weight is being in a calorie deficit. It. So I think that without getting into this too much, I think that there is some truth to that, that I think you have to be in a slight calorie deficit in order to lose some weight and lose fat.
But most runners take this too far, and most coaches. Push this too much with people and that’s why they suggest, you know, don’t run if you’re trying to lose weight. ’cause all they’re doing is cutting calories aggressively. When you do that though, your performance suffers. So you don’t want to do that. We don’t want to, you know, drastically cut our calories.
You’re gonna be tired, your runs won’t suck. Your recovery’s gonna tank worse. Your body’s gonna be holding on to fat and breaking down muscle in this process. So we don’t want that. We do not wanna be breaking down muscle. We wanna be building up muscle. So what we want to aim for is a, a modest calorie deficit, just enough to promote fat loss, but not so much that it tanks your training.
Now a lot of people will say, well, what does that mean? How much should we, you know, lower our calorie deficit by? That is a good question and everybody’s different. And this is where I hate putting numbers out there ’cause I get people coming back to me and they send me messages, you said this and that doesn’t work for me.
I’m like, so it’s hard for me to put these numbers out there. I. Generally speaking though, I know I’ve said that a lot today, but just keep that in mind. Generally speaking, a ballpark number might be like a 10% calorie deficit, you know, so that might be where you’re focusing on eating lots of protein.
You’re getting good healthy fats, you’re doing some carbs, you’re timing, some carbs are on your runs, and if you’re in about a 10% or so calorie deficit, then you’re probably gonna be good. You’re. That’s probably gonna work for you. Maybe that doesn’t work for you though, and you need to do crank that up to like 15%.
Or maybe you can go like right around your maintenance calories and that’s works for you and that helps you to, to lose weight. Okay? Again, there’s no right answer here. Um, how, how many calories should you be eating? Again, I kind of use this as a ballpark number. I usually say take about 10 times your body weight.
So if you weigh, you know, 190 pounds, then 1900 calories is probably good for you. And we don’t really need to factor in running and all this other stuff because all, all that does is, is that, um, you’re trying to do some math. You’re trying to do math on like, well, but I, I run and I burn a thousand calories a day, so that means I get to eat a thousand calories more.
Hey. Try that and see if it works for you. Most people I talk to that does not work for them, but hey, give it a try and see. See how that works. I tried that four years with an app. I was trying to, I was logging all my food. I was counting all my calories. I was counting all my workouts. Couldn’t lose a pound doing that.
Not a pound. Um, so what I tell people is just focus on eating plenty of protein, good, healthy fats, some carbs, you know, eat, you know, things like, uh, meat and eggs and vegetables and some fruit and nuts and seeds and, and some dairy. If you can handle it and all that stuff is good. Whole Foods, focus on whole foods.
Eat until you feel kind of satisfied, but don’t go beyond that. So be mindful not to be overeating and you should, your calories should just kind of stay where they are supposed to be. They should, you should be able to eat in a way that feels good for you without overeating. You know, if you’re somebody who’s like a chronic over eater, you may want to count your calories.
You may want to use that approach, but I don’t think it’s necessary for everybody, and I, it’s not really sustainable for most people too. Really though protein is gonna be kind of your secret weapon, okay? Um, if you’re not getting enough protein, you’re making fat loss way harder than it needs to be.
’cause protein helps you to maintain lean muscle while you’re losing weight. It helps you to recover faster from workouts. It helps you to stay full and satisfied, so you’re not tempted to be snacking all day long. How much protein should you get? Again, I’m gonna give you this disclaimer, it’s different for everybody.
Point seven to one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight per day seems to be where, you know, most people do. Okay? Um, spread it out over, you know, two or three meals. You know, you don’t need to be eating 12 times a day, uh, two or three meals a day. Um, prioritize high quality sources of protein, meat, eggs, fish, Greek yogurt.
If you need to supplement, do something like whey protein. That seems to be great. Or if you, if you’re plant-based, then do like a pea protein. Those teams, that seems to be pretty good too. But protein is gonna be your best friend during, during this process. Okay. So the bottom line with all this is you’re an individual.
You gotta kind of figure out what works for you. I’m trying to give you some guidelines. Um, so try some of this stuff, see how it works. I mean, you’re, you’re an experiment of one. We, we all are. And so you have to kind of figure out what is the right formula for you? How much protein do I need to eat? How many calories should I be eating?
What supports my running and my, uh, fat loss? Because there’s an answer there, you know, and everybody’s a little bit different, but you can lose fat and run strong at the same time. You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can do both. You just have to be smart about it. You gotta fuel wisely, you gotta train smart.
I. You gotta give your body what it needs to thrive. So don’t fall for the myths. Don’t follow what every running guru out there magazine is telling you. Whatever fuel like an athlete, burn fat efficiently, eat real food, train hard. Yeah, but then rest. Well this is how you get lean or get faster and become the strongest, most badass version of yourself.
Okay, and if you want help putting this into practice, if you’re ready to lose the fat for good and keep running strong, then I’ve got you. This is exactly what I do with my coaching clients. Every single day, we’re gonna dial in your nutrition, optimize your training, and build the habits that you need to stay consistent for life.
Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com to learn more. You can apply for coaching. We’ll have a conversation, see if this is a good fit. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
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