Mindset

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 173 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today is a replay: Why Diets Don’t Work.

There are more diets out there in the world right now and more conflicting information about those diets than I even care to think about. And there’s one thing I’ve noticed that keeps coming up again and again and again, the fact that diets don’t work. Why? Why don’t diets work?

Every one of them claimed that they are the answer to your weight loss problems. And basically, every one of them fails to produce lasting results. Today, I’m going to take a deep dive into the five biggest reasons why diets don’t work, and give you a few options for what you should focus on instead. So this is actually a replay of a very early episode of the podcast, episode number 25.

And I wanted to talk about this topic this week about why diets don’t work. And in looking through my notes, I started to realize that this episode was really good, and basically said everything that I wanted to say anyway, so I’m just going to replay it for you here today. Cool?

But first, if you’ve ever tried and failed to lose weight, then you’ve probably felt like a lost cause. Like, it’s never going to work for you. Like there’s just no way you will ever succeed at losing the weight.

But I want you to know that it’s not you, you are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you, you can do it. You need three things in order to succeed though. First, you need knowledge, you need to know what to do and how to do it. You need someone to guide you, you need a personalized plan that’s been put together for you by someone who knows what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve coached hundreds of runners on nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset to help them become the healthiest versions of themselves. And I can help you too. But you need that knowledge, you need to know what to do and how to do it.

You also need support. If you want to accomplish anything big, you need support to help you stay on track. You need people in your corner. People who understand what you’re going through, people have been there themselves.

That’s why I include group coaching, as well as one on one coaching in my program. I think the group coaching aspect is so key, because I want to ensure that you have all the support that you need to stick with your plan and keep making progress and keep moving forward.

And then lastly, you need accountability. You need someone there to hold you accountable. It’s one thing to say you’re going to stick to your food plan. It’s quite another thing to have someone there holding you accountable for your actions. Accountability is the key to making consistent forward progress towards your goals.

My unique weight loss coaching program for runners the coaching project delivers all the knowledge, support and accountability you need to crush your goals. To learn more and get yourself signed up. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join. And now onto the replay of episode number 25: Why Diets Don’t Work.

So why don’t diets work? What is going on here? So I’ve got five things I want to talk about today. And the first is this. The first thing that I think is why diets don’t work. Number one diets, they only address one thing, what you should or shouldn’t eat. So I have tried many, many different diets.

I did the vegetarian thing for a while and then I eventually moved to pescetarian. And then plant-based or vegan. I did keto paleo Adkins, I did something called TR E or time restricted eating, which is kind of a form of intermittent fasting. And then I did like a raw food diet, and actually started a raw food diet when I was training for a marathon, like just a couple of weeks before a marathon.

I was like, I’m gonna try this raw food diet. And it was terrible. I had really terrible results from doing that. And then there’s a lot of diets out there that I haven’t tried. There’s things like Jenny Craig, which is super popular. Weight Watchers is another super popular one.

And then, you know, like the Mediterranean diet, the South Beach Diet zone, which I had to look up what that even was. And I’m still not exactly sure what that entails. But the common thread among virtually every one of these diets is that they just focus on one thing, what you should or shouldn’t eat. So eat this. And not that, which is fine, I get it. It is important. It is one of the components of, you know, creating a healthy eating lifestyle, but it’s only one part of it. It’s not everything. It’s not the whole picture.

And I think when these diets focus on just telling you what you should and shouldn’t eat, we’re, you know, they’re really missing the ball, they’re really missing the point. Because if it was that easy, if it was as easy as just like telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat, then there would be no problem with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, all that stuff that we got going on here in this country.

Also, most of these diets are just kind of handing out bad advice. So they fall along the same lines as the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is a diet that is high in carbohydrates, and low in fat. And we know without a doubt, now, we know that this approach does not work. I mean, we started doing this back in the late 70s, early 80s.

And the country the US as a whole has been compliant you know we’ve reduced the amount of fat we eat, we’ve increased the amount of carbs we eat. And we as a nation keep getting, you know, fatter, and all these issues of heart disease, diabetes and obesity just keep increasing. So we know for a fact that this type of diet really doesn’t work. Okay?

But this is what a lot of these diets are putting out there. The Mediterranean diet, the Zone Diet Weight Watchers, Jenny, Greg, South Beach, a lot of these are just telling you to eat more grains, eat more carbs and limit the amount of fat that you take in, okay? It doesn’t work. And here’s something that is interesting.

Runners on the whole are really very carb dependent. Runners on the whole carry around too much body fat in general. And the reason for this is simple, that runners are addicted to carbs. So runners eat way more carbs, then even the average American.

Think about it like you got to fuel up for all those long runs, you know, so the day before, let’s do some carbo loading, you know, fettuccine alfredo, like Michael Scott training for the 5k or, you know, the the pre run meal of, you know, carbs or pancakes or whatever you like to do, and the gels, all the gels, and this constant sucking down of sports drinks, and energy bars.

And then there’s the post workout fuel and carbo loading that we do as well. I mean, I’ve done this gladly, too, because it’s just an excuse to eat as much, you know, as many pancakes and syrup is that one, you know, so I get it. But runners on the whole, eat way too much sugar and way too many carbs, which creates a chronic state in our bodies of fat storage mode. You know, because our insulin goes high insulin is a fat storage hormone.

And so we’re constantly storing fat. You know, when we run, especially when we’re training for long distance events, we can burn off some of that fat, but typically no, typically, we’re not losing weight during training like that. In fact, if you’re a long distance runner, and you’ve ever like, scaled back your running, like scaled back the intensity of your workouts, or maybe the mileage you’re doing per week or per month, you will start gaining weight pretty quickly.

I hear this all the time from runners. Oh, yeah, you know, I injured my foot. And so I had to take a couple weeks off and I gained like five pounds. It’s crazy, right? Because you are not, your body’s in this state of chronic fat storage mode. You’re not in fat burning mode, the only way you can lose weight is to burn fat. That’s that we all know that. Okay, but anyway, I went off on a little bit of a tangent there about runners and being addicted to carbs. But it’s important, I think it’s important for us to understand that.

So diets, they, you know, they only tell you what to eat, and they’re not addressing the stuff that’s going on, underneath all of that, which is the mental and emotional obsession that we have with food, you know, we’ve become a culture that has become addicted to food, we crave it like a drug, specially certain types of foods and it depends on you know, on the person. But there are a bunch of different foods out there.

Pizza is one that we crave, like a drug, you know, fast food like burgers and french fries, we crave like a drug. I used to crave Ben and Jerry’s ice cream like a drug. And the food scientists know this. They are taking advantage of this mental obsession that we have with food. So every time we eat something, we get a little bit of a hit of dopamine in our brain, you know, which makes us feel good.

It’s the same kind of response you get when you drink alcohol, or do drugs like cocaine, for instance, you get a little hit of dopamine and it feels good. And you’re like, ooh, that was good. I want more of that. But when you eat certain types of food foods that are high in sugar, especially like McDonald’s, french fries, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and french fries, just by the way, you know, it’s the fat content, but it’s also the starch that turns in no sugar.

So those kinds of things really give you a big hit of dopamine. And so your brain is like, whoa, we need more of that right now. It’s crazy. They’ve kind of created this culture of food addicts, you know? Which I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

I don’t I don’t I don’t I well, I do know I don’t think that’s good. It’s crazy, though. Like they even you’re gonna start to notice this now. driving around town, you’re gonna see giant billboards with pictures of food, they call this food porn, because it like, creates that same sort of release of dopamine in our brain, when we see a picture of like a close up picture of a juicy hamburger and french fries on a billboard, we get that same response in our body.

Like, if you were like looking at a picture of, of a naked person, you know, I mean, like, there’s a physiological response to that. Notice it. Next time, you’re driving around, and you see a billboard with like, you know, close up of some kind of food, pizza, you know, steaming or that close up of a burger or whatever. Notice what’s going on in your body, chances are, you’ll notice one thing especially which is like your mouth will start to water like Pavlov’s dog here, you know?

So notice that the next time you’re driving around, you see a billboard like that, what do you start to think about? What feelings do you have in your body? Are you like, salivating? Do you all of a sudden want that burger or whatever.

But we see these images all over the place, we see them posted on Instagram, and Facebook, and we see him on billboards, and we see him, you know, in magazines, and in commercials and all this stuff. And so we’re constantly bombarded. Our brains are bombarded with thoughts about this food, it’s creating a mental obsession for us.

Not only is the food being created and designed in a way, and they call this the bliss point, which is what the scientists create, with the right amount of sugar, fat, and salt, or whatever they use to create a food that makes us crave it the most. It creates the biggest dopamine hit in our brains, which makes us feel the best. I call it the bliss point, because it creates a sense of bliss in our body when we eat it.

They know this, they’re doing all of this on purpose, okay. So, in order to break out of this, you got to start breaking the pattern, and you got to work on your thoughts about food, you have to change the way you think about food. And we do this with my clients, we work on that mental obsession, and we work on the cravings. And one thing we do is like, anytime you have a craving, we just allow it to be there and don’t react to it.

So anytime you can not give into a craving, like let’s say you have some ice cream in your freezer, and you’re like, man, that ice cream would be really good right now. But if you don’t give into that craving, you can start training your brain to allow those cravings to be there without reacting to them without doing anything about them. It’s a process though, and it takes a while.

And you have to be okay with like feeling kind of uncomfortable for a little while. And that’s what a lot of people have a hard time with. Okay, we’re also a society that does a lot of emotional eating. Right, instead of feeling our feelings, we eat food, just like I was explaining, you know, you get uncomfortable when you have this craving for something, you just want to eat it, it’s the same thing when we have a negative emotion.

So when we have a negative emotion, like hurt, or anger, or stress or overwhelm, or you know, we’re lonely, or something like that, what we want to do is we want that feeling to go away right away, we want it to go away, like right now. And one way that we do that is with substances.

So we’ll grab alcohol, you drink some alcohol, and it’ll immediately make you feel good. So instead of feeling lonely, let’s say you drink some alcohol, and you’re going to your blood brain is going to be flooded with dopamine and adrenaline and it’s going to just feel amazing. And you kind of forget about the fact that you’re lonely, okay?

Because your body is flooded with these other feelings. So alcohol does that. Food does that the same exact way shopping for a lot of people. It gives them that same kind of sense of that feeling of like flooding your brain and body with dopamine. And there’s a variety of other things that people get into drugs and you know, sex and gambling and other things like that.

And here’s the thing, all of these things that are outside of us when we reach for something that’s outside of us to make us feel better inside it not only does it not work, so it doesn’t we’re not dealing with the emotion that we’re feeling. You know, if you’re feeling hurt or lonely. Eating is going to feel good, just because you know you’re getting that little hit of dopamine, but it’s not dealing with the fact that you’re feeling hurt or lonely, that emotion is still there.

So when the buzz of your food or alcohol or whatever it is wears off, you still have the negative emotion. In fact, you feel worse because now you’ve created, you’ve done something very negative, something with negative consequences, like you gain weight, or you have a hangover or whatever. And now you feel bad about doing that.

And so it’s kind of like, you even feel worse. So these things we think are helping or making us feel better actually make us feel worse. You know, we call this buffering when we’re using something external as a buffer between our ourselves and our feelings, you know, we want to dampen the emotions, so we put a buffer between the emotion and ourselves, the emotion doesn’t go away, you just, it just sort of numbs it a little bit, okay. And you feel something else instead.

So when you eat, you might feel full, which gives your brain you know, big hit of dopamine, it feels great. And you sort of forget about those other emotions for a little bit. But it doesn’t work for the long term, because you’re not dealing with the emotions. Okay, so if any of this is resonating with you, I just want you to know that you are perfectly normal. This happens to all of us, welcome to the human race.

So number one, diets only address one thing: they address what to eat or what not to eat, they don’t address any of this other stuff. They don’t address the mental obsession that we have with food, this unnatural craving that we have for food, they don’t address the emotional eating that we do. And most diets are kind of handing out bad advice about what to eat and what not to eat. Okay. All right. So that was number one. Diets are only talking about what to eat, what not to eat.

Number two, diets are very restrictive. Have you ever been on a diet and just wanted to punch somebody in the face? I know that I had, this is my experience. Like, I remember doing this calorie counting thing a couple years ago, because I was gaining weight I was running and I was gaining weight. And so I’m like, okay, I gotta start tracking all my calories, because that’s how you lose weight, right? You gotta like, eat fewer calories than you burn.

So I was like, you know, running extra miles every week and tracking every single mile I ran, every mile I walked, every step I took, every time I like, did, you know, weightlifting, I was tracking all these calories that I was burning. And I then had to put in how many calories I was was consuming. So I had to like, put in this app that I had this tracker app, I had to put in exactly how many calories I was consuming each day, which meant that every time I ate a bite of anything, I had to input it into this app, right?

Which at first was okay, it’s like, you know, cereal, you know, find the cereal in the database. And you know, they had a pretty good database of food in there, find the cereal. How much did I use? Probably a lot more than they say, as a serving whatever. Blueberries, I could find that. And that was fine. Like if I could just put in things like that.

But sometimes I would, I would make my own recipe or you know, make a casserole or something, right. And then you got to put every one of those items into this app to create the recipe then divided out by how many portions sizes, like the whole, the whole thing was so stressful for me.

And honestly, I got so stressed out about doing this, that it just made me like, you know, it kept me up at night, like, every time I ate something I had to like, do all this inputting into this app and do all this math and everything. And besides that, besides it being super stressful. I was hungry all the time because I was restricting calories. Okay. I was like hangry. I was hangry right, hungry and angry. Hangry and, and I wasn’t losing weight either. Right. So awesome. I’m angry, hungry, and then I couldn’t lose weight. So that’s amazing, right?

But why is this what is going on here? I had to figure out what’s happening here. So most diets are based on this concept of restrict and restriction. So typically, diets restrict fat or calories or both. So low fat or low calorie diets are probably the biggest culprits here. And they create an environment in our bodies of over hunger and over desire, they kind of do the opposite of what you would think they would do.

So what happens in your body is when you restrict calories, your body starts sending signals to your brain that you’re not getting enough food. And so you produce more ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, your appetite actually increases, because you’re restricting calories. So your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis, it wants to get back to neutral.

And so it says, like, Hey, we’re not getting enough food here, you need to feed us and so your, your body’s doing what’s supposed to, it’s increasing your appetite. But since you’re restricting calories, you’re not eating as much, you’re gonna have this like really massive disconnect from your brain, your body, your body is saying, like, feed me now.

But your brain is like, oh, no, we have to stick to 1000 calories a day, no more. And you’re gonna just feel miserable and hungry all the time. This is my experience, there’s a lot of what a lot of people experience with restrictive diets. It creates a, it just feels terrible, it creates a lot of inner turmoil.

You know, when you restrict food, especially foods that are high in fat say, you also create a sense of deprivation. So, you know, you start saying to yourself, like, I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that. Or maybe you go out to dinner with friends, and everybody’s eating, you know, wings, and pizza and french fries. And you’re like, I’ll just have a side salad, because you know, I’ve kind of had most of my calories for the day. And boy, that feels terrible, right? You get FOMO fear of missing out.

It’s like, there’s all this food here around you, and I can’t eat it, it just feels terrible. Okay, so number two diets don’t work because they are restrictive. And this restricting of calories, especially calories from fat leads to uncontrollable cravings. And almost inevitably will lead to non compliance, people will no longer comply with this kind of diet, because they just can’t do it, they can’t deal with those cravings, usually at least a binging and then just quitting the diet altogether.

And then what happens is, a lot of times people will go back on that kind of a diet, and then they will lose some weight, and then they will feel terrible, and then you can’t do it. And then they gain a bunch of weight back. And then they do that again. And that’s what we call like a yo-yo diet, where people are constantly restricting what they’re eating and like trying to white knuckle it, and then you know, quitting, because it’s so hard. And then, you know, getting a bunch of weight back and then doing it again. And that cycle just continues. It’s really not good for you, by the way.

So number three is that diets are complicated. You know, I was talking about that calorie tracking app, and I had to input everything I was eating. This was extremely complicated. You know, when you got to like, count every calorie in every macro, you know, how much protein, how much fat, how many carbs of everything you’re eating, oh my god, I was crazy.

When I did the keto diet for a while there and had some good results from that. But keto in general, to get your body into ketosis means you have to eat very, very few carbs. I think it’s like less than 50 a day or something like that. And it is very hard to do that for most people, especially since I was plant based at the time.

And so it was like, you know, you had to get most of your calories in the day from fat and you know, as eating a plant based diet, it’s kind of challenging unless you’re like chugging olive oil all day, you know, which I did not do that. But you know, I was eating a lot avocados. Anyway. So when I was doing the Keto thing, I had to track all these macros and actually created this Excel spreadsheet for calculating all this stuff.

How much protein was, you know, the protein, fat, carb ratio had to get it all straightened out every day. I had to keep track of every single morsel that I ate. And honestly, eating was no longer enjoyable for me. Eating wasn’t fun for me. It was a chore; it was like a math assignment. You know, diets they really think they’re making things simple for us but they really are very complicated.

You know, Weight Watchers has their points just eat so many points. Well, you got to like keep track of all your points. You can only buy food that has certain points. Jenny Craig, you’ve got to buy all their food you have to like only buy the food that they tell you to buy other diets have you supplement with all these shake mixes? And pills and probiotics and prebiotics and cleanse kits.

And, you know, all these things, and it just seems so overly complicated. Some diets have you, you gotta weigh all your food. So, you know, what do you have to bring a scale to the restaurant? So you can like weigh your food? I don’t know. They’re just very complicated. You know, and they’re trying to tell you, it’s simple. They’re trying to sell you on an idea that, Oh, it’s just simple. Just count on your points, or whatever.

But it really isn’t, you know, it isn’t simple. The reality is that diets are very complicated. And what happens is they create a lot of stress for us. You know, my experience has been, when I’ve had to, like input everything into an app, or you don’t track everything on an Excel spreadsheet, I got really stressed out about food.

And when I get stressed out, what do I do? Probably the same thing you do, I just want to eat to feel better. You know, and that’s not the goal of these diets. But far too often, it’s the outcome. You know, the diets are trying to be simple, but they are very complicated. And they and they create a lot of stress, and then you end up just binging. Okay, so that was number three. Diets are complicated.

Number four, diets are based on this one size fits all concept. Every diet out there is like we are the best one for everyone. Like everyone should be on this diet, everyone should be on the Zone diet, or the South Beach diet, or everyone should be plant based.

Like they can’t all be right, right? If everybody’s saying they’re the one, and there’s, you know, 60 diets out there, or 100, or however many, they can’t all be right. But I totally get this, I really, really do. So for around 10 years, I was plant based 100%. And I swore that this was the only way to go. And this is best for everyone I preached about being plant-based.

And I was you know, my thoughts, my understanding was that if everyone would just switch to eating plants, they would all be super healthy. And, and I really firmly believe this for a long time. The truth is, though, that we are all different. We are all different people, we all have different dietary needs, we all have different metabolic needs.

We all have, you know, our genes are slightly different. I don’t know a ton about genes. But I will say this, I’ve started really getting into this new science of ancestral eating. And this is where, you know, you want to focus on eating what your particular ancestors have evolved to eat over the last, you know, couple 1000 years.

You know, if your ancestors were Inuit Eskimos living in the Canadian Arctic, you’re gonna be, you know, very genetically different and thrive on a very different diet than if your ancestors like mine, you know, we’re from Ireland and Scotland, you know, or if your ancestors come from the plains of Africa, or from East Asia. So in all of these different parts of the world, people have been thriving for 1000s of years on different types of diets, different types of foods, some of them super high in fat, and super high in animal fat, and very few vegetables.

And some are kind of the opposite. Lots of rice, and lots of seafood and lots of vegetables and things like that. So really the truth of the matter is there isn’t one diet that’s best for everyone. But that’s not true. There is one, there is one diet, it’s that’s best for everyone. And that’s the one that works for you.

You know, like South Beach diet might work for you. But it might be terrible for somebody else. So what I teach, and what I would suggest that you start thinking about is choosing food that works for you, you know, choosing an eating protocol and I use this word protocol with my clients because it’s not a diet, it’s a it’s kind of a way of of eating that you can sustain over time.

So we choose a protocol that works for each person individually, and we figure it out together. So if you want to lose weight, eating a vegan diet or plant based totally fine, we can figure out a way to do that. If you want to do it as a carnivore or doing paleo or primal or, you know, whatever, fine vegetarian, fine, whatever pescatarian. We will make it work, you can lose weight on all kinds of different diets, okay? There’s not one size that fits for everyone. There’s not one diet that’s best for everyone out there.

Okay, there’s so many different factors involved here, you got to figure out what works best for you. Now, I will say one thing here. And this is my, my caveat, which is, any diet that’s high in sugar and carbohydrates will not work. Any diet that’s high in sugar, and refined carbohydrates especially, will keep you in a state of elevated insulin will keep you in this chronic state of fat storage mode in your body and you’re constantly going to gain weight, you’re going to you know, massively increase your chances for obesity, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, sugar and carbs.

Bad, okay, you absolutely cannot lose weight, while eating a diet that’s high in sugar and carbs. I don’t care what anybody says or what you believe, that’s just the facts. This is just science where our bodies work, okay. So you got to get your insulin down. That’s the only thing I would say about this. So there, there it is. Well, there isn’t one particular diet that works for everyone, we do know that there’s one thing that does not work for everyone, and that’s lots of sugar and carbs.

So choose foods that work for you, if you want to eat, you know, whatever, if you want to eat, you know, a plant based diet, do it. And you know, we can work on that we can, we can make it work for you. But just don’t assume that every one of these diets is going to work for everyone, because they don’t, you know, diets don’t work because they assume that what’s good for one is good for all there really is no one size fits all, when it comes to what food you should be eating.

So choose wisely, my friends. And then number five, and this is probably the most important factor in why diets don’t work. And that is the main concept of a diet, the whole idea of a diet is that it’s temporary, it’s a temporary thing. You know, when we think of a diet we think of as something we do for a short period of time, you know, I need to go on a diet to lose weight.

So most people think they can go on a diet for a few months, get to their goal weight, you know, lose the 20 or 30 or 50 pounds, and then go back to the way they were eating before. You know, eating the same stuff that got them to gain all that weight in the first place. Which makes no sense at all right? This is going back to that whole yo-yo dieting thing. You eat all this crappy food, you gain a bunch of weight, then you’re like, I need to go on a diet.

So you pick one of these diets. It works for a little bit, until it doesn’t, you gain all the weight back. And then you do it again. And this is really bad for you and really bad for your health. And you know, it sets you up for a lifetime of struggle and weight loss failure. And it sets you up for all kinds of things for stress.

For this over desire for food, you’re constantly thinking about and stressing out about food. And, you know, it’s because of all the other things I’ve mentioned here, you know that all the complications, all the restrictions of diets, the deprivation, we feel the cravings we experience is why people just can’t wait to just go back to what they were eating before. Because, frankly, diets kind of suck.

The whole idea that a diet is something that’s temporary, and we got to get rid of that idea. Instead of a diet I teach my clients like I said, how to create a protocol, a way of eating that you can do for the rest of your life. It doesn’t do you any good just to be able to do this temporarily. Just doesn’t work.

Whatever you choose to do, whatever kinds of food you choose to eat, when we talk about what foods you want to eat, and how often you want to eat, and your mindset around food and how you process your emotions. When we talk about taking this holistic approach to nutrition and health and feeling vibrant and thriving in our bodies. It’s not a diet, it’s a way of life.

You’ve got to create a whole new way of thinking about food. You got to change the way you feel about food. You need to change the way you feel about yourself. What I do with my clients is I help them to create a whole new relationship with food And with themselves. You know, if you’re struggling with a diet, yes, stop doing that. You need to create an eating plan that works for you protocol.

And once you get that dialed in, and you get the mindset, right, and you get your emotional state, right, you’ll be able to lose the weight, you’ll, it’s kind of magical, actually, the way it works is you kind of the fat starts coming off. And when you stick to it, it’s something you can do forever, you lose the weight, the fat starts coming off.

And it’s something you just you want to keep doing because it feels so good. And then one of the things that I really want to say here, because I think it’s important is that eating should be a joyous thing. We’ve, our whole culture is like, you know, we celebrate with food a lot of times and I don’t want you to stop doing that.

And so I encourage my clients when they’re creating their protocol to include things like birthdays and holidays like account for those kinds of days. And, and enjoy. You know, the wedding cake when you go to your best friend’s wedding. You know, if it’s your birthday, no one wants to eat a birthday salad, you know, so eat the birthday cake, it’s fine, just go back to what you were doing the next day. It’s not an excuse to just like, say, screw it and go back to eating all the sugar and carbs all the time. But every now and then, you know, eat the birthday cake, you know, and plan ahead for things like this.

But for the most part, what we do is we create a plan that involves eating the kinds of food that properly fuels your body, and keeps your body thriving and working optimally. You know, the food you eat should help your body to thrive. And it should be something that you can do forever.

So you have to change the mindset of like this diet as a temporary thing. And get into the mindset of how you fuel your body today. And how you fuel your body tomorrow is how you’re going to fuel your body a month from now or a year from now or for the rest of your life. So the biggest reason why diets don’t work is that it’s a temporary concept.

Instead, eat real food, food that encourages your body to thrive and live this vibrant, healthy, long life, something that you can do forever. Cool. Cool. We are going to be continuing this conversation in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’d love for you to join the group.

We’re talking about diets and what different kinds of diets people have tried and why they haven’t worked. I would love to hear about your personal experience with some kind of diet. Maybe something I mentioned, maybe something I didn’t mention. I know there’s a lot more diets out there. I’ve tried a lot of them. And obviously not all of them.

But why? What have you tried? And why didn’t work for you? That’s kind of what we’re talking about in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join in the conversation. Well, that’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you as always and keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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