Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Today we’re talking about something that impacts every single workout, every food choice, and every goal you set—but almost nobody trains directly: self-trust. In this episode, How to Build …
Continue Reading about 322. How to Build Unshakable Self-Trust →
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 322 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today how to build unshakeable self trust. So today we’re talking about something that impacts every single workout, every food choice, every goal you set. But almost nobody trains directly and that is self.
Trust in this episode, I’m gonna break down what self-trust actually is, what it’s not, why so many runners quietly lose it, and most importantly, how to build it back up stronger than ever because here’s the truth, you. If you don’t trust yourself, you’re gonna second guess your thinking. Sabotage your nutrition over commit, under deliver, and then you’re just gonna keep starting over and over and over.
And this isn’t about hype or affirmations. It’s about integrity. It’s about alignment. It’s about becoming someone who does what they say they’re going to do. If you wanna lose weight, if you wanna get stronger, if you want to become a better runner, you have to solve this first. But first, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, yeah, this is me.
I start strong, but then I fade, and then I reset, and then I get motivated, but then I start over again. Listen, it’s okay. You’re not broke, and you’re just missing structure. You’re missing accountability, and a lot of runners are stuck in the frustrating middle ground. Running feels harder than it should.
Strength training is inconsistent. Nutrition swings between I’m all in and I’ll start over on Monday. You’re putting in the effort, but you’re not getting the return that you want. This is exactly why I created my program, the Leaner, stronger Runner Project. This isn’t another random training plan. It’s a complete system.
You get structured strength training designed for runners. You get simple, clear nutrition guidelines that support fat loss without wrecking your running performance. You get mindset coaching that closes the integrity gap and builds real self trust and you get accountability. The kind that makes you follow through and makes these things non-negotiable for you.
This is about becoming someone who does what they say they’re going to do. If you’re ready to stop restarting and start building momentum, go to running lean coaching.com/ready and join us. Let’s build this the right way. Okay, so today I’m talking about something that a lot of runners don’t really think about directly, but it’s quietly running the show behind the scenes, and that is self-trust.
And I wanna set the context for why this matters so much right now. A lot of runners I talk to aren’t struggling because they lack information. They know that they should do strength training. They know they shouldn’t be snacking late at night. They know they shouldn’t skip recovery days. They know what an easy pace feels like.
They know they shouldn’t sign up for another race when they’re already burned out. They know. They know. They know the problem isn’t knowledge. The problem is they don’t trust themselves. They don’t trust themselves to stick to a plan. They don’t trust themselves around food. They don’t trust themselves not to quit.
When things get hard or uncomfortable, they don’t trust their body. They don’t trust their own decisions, and once self-trust erodes, everything else gets harder. Because you hesitate, you start to overthink, you go looking for another plan, and then you’re like, I’m gonna start over. And you keep looking outside yourself for answers that you already have.
So today I wanna break this down very clearly for you, what is self-trust? What does it not, how does it break down? And how do we build it back up in a practical and repeatable way? So let’s start with what this actually is. What is self-trust? So self-trust is the confidence that you will act in alignment with your word.
That’s it. It’s not loud emotional. This isn’t hypey stuff. It’s not. I feel unstoppable. Self-trust is quiet certainty. It’s the internal knowing. If I say I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this. And it shows up in very small moments. You know, you said you’d get up at 6:00 AM and you get up. Then you said you’d stop eating at 8:00 PM and you stop.
You said this is gonna be an easy run and you keep it easy. You said three strength workouts this week, and you did three. Self-trust isn’t built in race day heroics. You know, it’s built in ordinary Tuesdays. And here’s something important. Self-trust is specific. So you might trust yourself at work, or you might trust yourself as a parent, but you don’t trust yourself around food, or you don’t trust yourself to stay consistent with your training.
So when someone says, you know, I just don’t trust myself. That’s usually not true for everything in their life. It’s not globally true. It’s situational, and this is good news. Okay? Because specific problems have specific solutions. Now I want to clear up one thing about what self-trust is not. Self-trust is not blind optimism.
It’s not standing in front of the mirror doing affirmations. You know, it’s not quote unquote believing in yourself in some vague way. And it’s not motivation. And it’s not perfection. Okay? And it’s not about never messing up. It’s about knowing that when you mess up, because you will, that you respond intentionally instead of spiraling out of control again.
So a runner with self-trust might miss a workout and say, okay, that happened tomorrow. I’m back on track. A runner without self-trust misses a workout and thinks, see, this is why I can never make any progress. ’cause I I screw up all the time. Same event, same thing happened. Different responses based on your identity.
Self-trust protects your identity. Without it, every mistake feels like proof that you’re a screw up. With self-trust, mistakes just feel like data, like feedback, oh yeah, I messed a workout, or I or had a cheat meal. What am I gonna learn from this? It’s just data. It’s just information that you can use. But self-trust can break down.
It doesn’t just disappear overnight, you know, it breaks down slowly. Over time, it erodes. And almost always the erosion happens in one of three ways. One is over promising, and this is a big one for runners. ’cause you decide, you know, I’m gonna run five days a week. I’m gonna strength train three days a week.
I’m gonna cut out sugar, I’m gonna wake up at 5:00 AM every single day. I’m gonna stretch every single night. And that version of you exists. For like two days. Okay. Then reality hits and you miss one of these things, and then you start that narrative in your mind. See, I can’t stick to anything. No, you just tried to change everything at once.
So over promising is self-trust. Sabotage. Okay. Number two is emotional decision making. You make commitments in a motivated state. Then you try to execute them in a unmotivated state or a tired state. And these are two different brains we’re talking about here. Okay? If you don’t plan for the tired you, you’re gonna break promises to the motivated you.
Okay. And if you repeat that enough, trust drops. You know, you make decisions of, oh, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna sign up for this ultra marathon, because you’re super motivated. You know, you just watch somebody complete an ultra marathon. You’re like, I wanna do this. But then you’re like, you know, couple months later you’re like, I, I don’t want to do this.
You know? And then the third way that we. Uh, you know, break down self-trust in herself is the all or nothing thinking. And this is a big one. This is the one that I see most runners struggle with, which is like, you miss one run or you have one like unplanned meal, or you skip one workout. And instead of adjusting and course correcting, you gotta reset the entire plan.
And every restart reinforces the identity of someone who can’t stick with it. So self-trust is consistency over time. It’s not perfection. It’s not a bunch of dramatic stops and starts. So the way most people break down self-trust is this all or nothing thinking. Alright, next I wanna talk about something that is very important.
It is the integrity gap. So self-trust lives or dies in what I call the integrity gap. The integrity gap is the space between what you say you’re gonna do and what you actually do, and the wider the gap, the lower the trust, and here’s an uncomfortable truth. Most runners don’t have a motivation problem.
They have an integrity gap problem. They set standards that they can’t possibly maintain. They make promises that they can’t possibly keep. They commit publicly, and then quietly they back out. And every time this stuff happens, your brain logs it. Your brain is always tracking your behavior. Not your intentions.
You don’t build self-trust by wanting it. You build it by evidence and you break it down every single time. You’re not acting in integrity with yourself. So I wanna get practical here for a minute and talk about how to build unshakeable self-trust. I want to give you some things that you can start doing right now, not next month, not after your next race, but today.
The first one is this, lower the bar. Okay, this sounds counterintuitive, but if your self-trust is low, you don’t need bigger goals. You need some wins, you need guaranteed wins. So instead of, you know, I’m gonna strength train three times a week, try, I will strength train one time this week, and then follow through on that.
The goal here isn’t volume. It’s proof that you can follow through. You’re building credibility with yourself, and credibility is built through consistent, aligned action, not doing everything all at once. So lower the bar for yourself, start getting some guaranteed wins. Number two, make fewer promises.
Every commitment is a contract that you’re making with yourself. So stop casually committing to things before you say yes to something, even to yourself. Take a beat, pause. Ask yourself, am I absolutely willing to do this even when I don’t feel like it? Like strength training three times a week. What if you know you don’t feel like it?
If the answer isn’t a clear yes, reduce that commitment. Self-trust increases when your words actually mean something. So make fewer promises. Remember, every one of those promises is a contract you’re making with yourself. The next, this is a big one, is decide in advance. Do not rely on in the moment discipline.
That is a terrible idea. Okay? So make decisions ahead of time. Decide in advance what days you’re gonna run. What days you’re gonna lift, um, what your food plan looks like, what time you’re gonna stop eating, what your easy pace actually is. Decision fatigue is one of those things that just breaks down self-trust and deciding in advance, creating that structure ahead of time, protects it and builds it back up.
So when you decide in advance, you’ve made the decision. Now don’t question that decision. Follow through on that decision. And every time you do that, you build up a little bit more of that self-trust. Number four is track completions, not outcomes. So most runners are tracking things like their pace, their weight, their distance, uh, prs.
Start tracking kept promises. Make a simple note each day. Did I do what I said I was going to do? Yes or no? That’s it. Self-trust grows when you see proof stacking up. An easy way of doing this is what I call the three wins exercise, and you can do this every single night. Just grab a journal notebook and write down at the end of the day.
While you’re sitting in bed, before you fall asleep, what are three wins from today? Write those things down and then next, underneath that, write down three wins that you want for tomorrow. This could be a easy pace that you wanna run, or a workout that you want to do, or your meal plan for tomorrow.
Something simple. This whole process should take you five minutes or less to do, and then tomorrow do those things. And at the end of the day, tomorrow. You are gonna write down your three wins from today, and you’re gonna look at your list and say, did I do these things or not? I said I was gonna do these things yesterday.
Did I follow through on those things? And you get to put a big gold star next to the things that you did. And then maybe a little circle or a question mark next to those things that you didn’t do. Alright? And then that’s a chance for you to kind of go inside and say. Why didn’t I accomplish that? I said I was gonna do that ahead of time.
What happened today? You know, maybe my plans got thwarted because work caught up with me, or I had to take care of the kids, or, you know, maybe I just didn’t feel like it. But this is a way that you can start tracking wins and tracking your, uh, trust in yourself, okay? You’re tracking those promises that you’re making to yourself.
This is a very simple thing to do. Um, I love this exercise. Number five, stop negotiating mid action. This is a big one here. So you wake up, your alarm goes off, and then you start negotiating with yourself. You’re like, you know, I know I said I was gonna run, uh, this morning, but maybe I’ll do it later today.
I probably need a little bit more sleep. Um, maybe today should be a rest day. No, you know, make your decisions and stick to your decisions. Don’t question those decisions. Once they’re made, decide that once something is on the schedule, once it’s written down, it’s done. Stop negotiating, negotiation, erodes trust faster than anything.
Okay, and then finally, number six, repair immediately. If you do, break a promise to yourself and you will. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It doesn’t mean you can’t do this. Don’t let it spiral you out of control. Repair it immediately. If you missed a lift, go do 10 pushups.
If you ate off the plan, remember to structure at the next meal. Uh, one key, uh, rule of thumb I always tell my coaching clients is we never miss two workouts in a row. We never have two bad meals in a row. In other words, next meal, you’re back on track. Next scheduled workout, you’re back on track. The speed of repair matters more than the mistake that you made.
’cause mistakes are gonna happen, but this is how self-trust becomes resilient instead of fragile. Um, here’s a good example with all this stuff. Let’s say you’re training for a half marathon. You say you’re gonna run four days a week, and week one you run all four days. Week two, you miss one. Week three, you miss two.
So your old pattern of thinking might be, you know, this isn’t working, I really suck at consistency. Throw that out the window. Okay? Your new pattern needs to be okay. Four days a week probably isn’t sustainable for me right now. I’m gonna commit to three, and then for the next month, you hit those three runs every single week.
And that runner just built more self-trust at three days per week than they ever did chasing running four days a week. So progress isn’t about maxing out your effort, it’s about maintaining your standards. So why does this matter for, you know, fat loss and, and becoming stronger? If you wanna lose weight, if you wanna get stronger, if you wanna become a better runner, you have to become someone who follows through.
’cause these things take time. Fat loss requires consistency over time. Building strength requires consistency over time. Building endurance requires consistency over time. Self-trust is the foundation of all of this. It’s the foundation of consistency. Without it, you’re just always starting over with it.
Though with self-trust, you build momentum, and momentum is powerful because that’s how you get results. So I have an assignment for you starting today. Just pick one thing, one small promise to yourself. Maybe it’s 10 minutes of strength training, no food after 8:00 PM a 20 minute walk, stretching after your run, whatever that thing is, make it small, but make that promise to yourself and then keep it, do what you say you’re gonna do, and then tomorrow, repeat this process.
Stack proof on top of proof, on top of proof, and that proof is going to help reshape who you are. You don’t become confident first and then act later. You act first and the confidence follows. Okay, I know you guys have got this. That’s all I’ve got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you feel like you’re constantly struggling with food… If strength training always feels hard to stick to… If you feel like you’re forever “trying to get back on track”… …but somehow, your …
Continue Reading about 318. If You’re Always Struggling, You’re Doing It Wrong →
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 318 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, if you’re always struggling. You’re doing it wrong. If you feel like you’re constantly struggling with food, if strength training always feels hard to stick to if you feel like you’re forever trying to get back on track.
But somehow your running is just fine. Listen up. This episode is for you. It’s called If you’re always struggling, you’re doing it wrong. And yeah, I know that sounds kind of harsh, but hear me out here, because this isn’t about shaming you or telling you to try harder, it’s about something way more important.
I talk to runners all the time who tell me that they are disciplined, they’re motivated, they’re committed, yet. Their food plan, their strength training always feels like a constant battle. And the interesting thing is those same runners don’t say that about running. Okay, so today we’re gonna break all this down.
What the struggle really is, why it keeps happening, and how putting simple systems into place, not more motivation is the actual solution. Okay, so let’s just get right into this. Okay? I wanna start by saying this very clearly. If you’re struggling with your food, with your strength training, it doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It doesn’t mean you’re lazy. It doesn’t mean something is broken with you, okay? But what it does mean is that something in your approach is probably a little off, okay? The reason I’m talking about this now is because I keep hearing this over and over again from runners, and I’ve heard this many, many times in the last couple of weeks.
And these are different people, different ages, different experience levels. They all have different goals, but the story is the same. Okay. I hear things like, I’m running consistently, but I just can’t get my eating under control. You know, I know I should lift weights. Um, I know how important strength training is.
I, I know, but I just don’t do it consistently. I just can’t seem to stick with it. Or I always feel like I am starting over with all this stuff, and if you can relate to that, that, that, this is why I’m talking to you right now. Okay. Because I know so many people who can relate to this. Okay. Um, the crazy part is, is that they’re not struggling with their running, alright?
They don’t wake up every day debating whether they. Feel motivated enough to run. Okay? They’re not constantly second guessing their running training plan, maybe they’re training for a half marathon or a marathon. Um, they don’t, they don’t second guess that, you know, they don’t argue with themselves for 45 minutes before they put on their running shoes.
Okay? They get up and they go outside. Doesn’t matter how cold it is, doesn’t matter what the weather’s like and they run. Okay? So if you’re running feels. Solid, but somehow all these other things feel hard. We need to start asking some better questions. Okay? Not, you know, geez, what’s wrong with me? Um, but what am I doing differently?
Here. Okay, so the core idea of this episode, and I really want you to hear this, is this, if something feels like a struggle all the time, it’s not supposed to be that way. Okay. Now I am not saying that growth is effortless. Growth requires effort. Growth requires discomfort. I’ve talked about this a lot, where you know everything that you want but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone.
In order to get something that you don’t have, it’s going to require you to get uncomfortable. Okay? So growth is one of those things that. Requires some discomfort. Okay, so growth is not effortless. And I’m also not saying that discipline doesn’t matter because it does matter. You do have to show discipline.
And the funny thing is, is I’m talking about. You know, runners who are very disciplined about running. Most people, most normal people would see us as runners who go out and run when it’s zero degrees outside or there’s snow on the ground or whatever, and they think we’re crazy. Like, how could you possibly do that?
I could never be that disciplined, you know? But I see it all the time with runners and we don’t even think about it. We’re just like, of course I’m gonna run. Well, it’s gonna be zero degrees outside, but that doesn’t really matter. I, I can wear the right gear. I, I’ve done this before, you know, so discipline is not the problem.
And I’m not saying this is, everything’s going to always feel easy either because stuff is hard sometimes, you know, sometimes it is hard to, to get out there and run when it’s that cold out and the wind chill is 15 below zero or whatever. But there’s a huge difference between, you know, sometimes things are challenging or uncomfortable, and then you’re constantly feeling exhausted and constantly struggling.
Okay. When something feels like it’s a daily battle, when you’re always. You know, negotiating with yourself, always feeling like you’re behind or feeling like you’re failing at stuff. It’s not a problem of, you know, not being disciplined enough. Okay. It’s a, it’s a problem of design, right? You don’t have a, a plan designed for that area, whether it’s food strength training.
Those seem to be the two that I hear most people talking about. And most runners have never been taught to really look at it that way. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about why running doesn’t feel like a constant struggle for most runners because you probably have set days that you run, right? You probably have a, a rough idea or, or a very.
You know, detailed idea of distance or time that you’re gonna run on those days. You know, you have a structure in place, you have a training plan that you are following, and you have a clear definition of what you know, what this week is going to look like, what this day is gonna look like, what this particular run is going to look like.
So you have those systems in place. You have that plan in place for running. And even if you’re not following a perfect plan, you know running still has. Well, you know, like rules, right? There’s a start time. There’s a route that you have in mind. There’s an end, you know, you don’t wake up and ask, you know, should I run today or not?
’cause you’ve already decided that ahead of time, that decision was made in advance. And because of that, because you made that decision ahead of time. Running doesn’t drain you mentally. You don’t have to make decisions every single day. Those decisions have been made so it doesn’t feel heavy. It doesn’t feel, uh, like a, like a struggle.
It doesn’t feel chaotic, right? It just feels normal. Alright, let’s compare that with, you know, sticking with a food plan and sticking with a strength training plan. So when we talk about food, especially if you’re someone who is trying to change their diet because you wanna lose weight, you know, a lot of times people say, I really wanna lose weight, so I’m gonna change my diet, but here’s what their food.
Plan looks like or lack of, like, they don’t have a clear plan. They are, there are too many options on the table constantly. Um, you’re making decisions in the moment all day long, every single day. And then there’s emotional baggage attached to every decision, every choice that you’re making. You know, we have a lot of emotions tied into food and what that means about us and about our, our sense of who we are and how we show up.
In the world and how we compare ourselves to others, right? So you don’t have clear plan, you have too many options. You’re making all these decisions. There’s emotional baggage attached to everything. Um, strength training, like sticking with that kind of a plan looks like this. You know, I should probably lift weights, but I just, I don’t know what to do, or, you know, I don’t have time.
In my schedule for another thing. So I just, I don’t know when I’m gonna work this in. I’ll just do it when I, when I have time or you know, I know I should be doing some strength training, so I’ll start next week. Okay. And then we label that as an a motivation issue. Okay. Like, oh, I just didn’t feel motivated.
I need to be motivated. Okay? But it’s not what I’m describing here around food, around strength training is decision fatigue. So every time you have to make a decision, what should I eat? When should I eat? How much should I eat? When should I lift weights? What exercises am I supposed to do? How long is this gonna take?
Where am I gonna do this? You gotta make all these decisions. You’re burning mental. Energy, and that’s why it feels like a constant struggle to you. Running doesn’t feel like a struggle to you because you already have a system in place and you just follow the system. Okay? Now let me say this very plainly.
You are not struggling with food or strength training. You are struggling with too many decisions and because you don’t see that you’re trying to solve the wrong problem, you’re trying to be more disciplined, you’re trying to be more motivated. You’re trying to lock it in this time, or you’re trying to push harder, and that works sometimes temporarily until.
Anything in life shows up until you’re tired or you get busy at work, or you get a little bit of stress and then everything just falls apart again. Right? Not because you failed, not because you’re undisciplined, it’s because your system. Is not in place. Okay. That’s all it is. Um, but I see this cycle over again, over and over again with runners.
You decide like, okay, I’m really gonna do this now. So you clean up your eating, you know, you commit to strength training and it feels good. Um, but nothing is automated. So every day you’re just relying on motivation and willpower and willpower. It is not reliable. Okay. The reason why is because willpower is a temporary resource.
Like you have willpower, like your willpower is strongest in the morning, if you’ve noticed that. And then as the day goes on, that willpower. Tank that you have like that, you know, reservoir of willpower that you have available to you throughout the day tends to dwindle down throughout the day. That’s why a lot of times in the evening, people have a very hard time sticking with their food plan, like they’re good during the day, but as soon as nighttime comes around because your willpower’s just gone.
By that time you’ve been making all these decisions, you’ve had all this stuff to do at work, kids have been bugging you, you know, you, it is just like too much stuff going on. And by the end of the day, you’re just done with making decisions. You’re just like, just don’t just gimme the pizza. Okay. So willpower, motivation, these things are not reliable.
They’re, they’re limited resources that we have available to us. Okay, so eventually you’re gonna miss a workout. You’re gonna eat something off plan. You’re gonna just go and eat that whole pizza by yourself, and then you’re gonna feel like a failure. You’re gonna feel like you’re running behind or, or falling behind with your plan.
And then you’re, you’re gonna start to talk to yourself and say, I blew it. I always do this. I’m gonna restart next week. Listen, this is not a lack of discipline, okay? It’s just a bad setup, right? It’s just a bad plan. Okay? Um, so. One thing I want you to really understand here. Is that hard? Is not the goal.
And I know endurance athletes love suffering, right? It’s glorified. It’s like a rite of passage. It’s a badge of honor. Uh, no pain, no gain, all that stuff. But food and strength training are not supposed to feel like daily emotional battles. Okay? Save those emotional struggles for. Uh, you know, out there trying to pr your, your marathon or whatever.
Okay? Sticking to your food plan, your strength training plan. These things should feel boring and predictable and repetitive. Not exciting. Not dramatic, not something you have to. Mentally prepare for every single day. If your nutrition plan requires daily motivation to stick to it, it’s flawed. Okay? If your strength training plan requires you to, you know, have motivation to, to feel like doing it, it’s flawed.
Okay? You need systems in place to avoid, you know, relying on motivation all the time. Let’s talk a little bit about systems. Okay? ’cause a system is something that you can follow without thinking. Um, and a real world example of this, this has nothing to do with like running or anything, but it’s brushing your teeth, right?
Think about you Don’t wake up every morning and ask yourself, Hmm, do I feel motivated to brush my teeth today? I’m just not feeling very motivated today. I, I, I don’t know, maybe I should brush later. I’ll just do it later. What if I just skip today and I’ll, and I’ll brush my teeth twice tomorrow? I know it sounds ridiculous, right?
But you don’t do this. You don’t debate it. You don’t negotiate with yourself. You don’t have to rely on willpower to brush your teeth. You just do it. Why? Because brushing your teeth has become a system. You have a system in place. Uh, it’s not a decision that you have to make. It happens at the same time every day in the same place, in the same way, with the same expectation.
And because it’s a system, it’s automated, it takes basically zero mental energy to do it. Okay? Now imagine if brushing your teeth work the way that most runners approach their diet. Okay? You’d wake up and think. I brushed last night, so maybe I don’t need to today, or let’s just see how the day goes. Okay.
Or I’ll be extra good tomorrow. Okay. That sounds ridiculous, right? But that’s exactly how people treat nutrition and strength training, and then they wonder why it constantly feels so hard, okay? The big takeaway here isn’t that brushing your teeth is easy. The big takeaway is this, things feel easy when the decision is already made.
Okay? You’re not disciplined. With brushing your teeth, you’re not motivated. You just have a system in place. That’s the point here. And if food and strength training feel heavy, emotional, or exhausting, it’s not because you lack discipline, it’s because you haven’t turned them into systems yet. Okay?
Running has systems like you run on the same days. Usually at the same times, there’s people that love to run in the morning or maybe they run after work, or maybe they switch it up, but they have like certain days they run at certain times. You just know when you’re gonna do it. You have the same expectations, right?
You don’t debate this stuff. You just execute, right? So food needs systems. You need to have some default meals in place. You know, you need to have some rules around the grocery store and what you get and what you don’t get. You need to have routines around. Eating strength training is the same way. You need fixed days.
You need simple workouts. You need a clear progression. And when you have these systems in place, the emotion disappears, the decisions disappear, um, and those emotions, that’s what’s really causing this. Struggle and it’s causing you to burn out. You know? ’cause you’re just getting too emotionally involved with all this stuff.
And we gotta remove that layer. When you remove that layer, because you have these systems in place, everything becomes easier. Um, and I hear this all the time from runners, you know, the a about the strength training, I just can’t stick to lifting. I’m like, well, what days are you doing this? What workouts are you doing?
How long do those workouts take? What you know? What exercises do you have in, in what order are you doing them? And they can’t answer any of these questions. You know, everything is like vague. I’m just gonna show up and do it whenever. I don’t know what I’m really doing. That’s the problem. Okay. You’re trying to build consistency without any structure in place, and you don’t do that with your running, so why are you doing it in other areas here?
Okay, so we gotta get out of this struggle. And if you want out of the cycle of constantly trying harder, falling off, starting over. The solution isn’t going to be more discipline, okay? It’s gonna be fewer decisions. So here’s what I want you to do instead. Decide once. Not every single day. Most runners don’t realize how much energy they waste deciding the same things over and over and over again.
What should I eat today? When should I do my strength training? Should I train now or later? That’s not flexibility. It’s friction. Okay? Running works because the decisions are already made. You don’t wake up and reinvent your training schedule every day. You just follow the plan that’s in place. So do the same thing with food.
Do the same thing with your strength training. Decide what you eat for breakfast on most days, or if you eat breakfast or not, decide which days you’re going to strength train. Decide which days you’re going to the grocery store. You don’t need to go every single day, decide, you know, when you’re gonna prep meals, if it’s, if it’s gonna be once a week, or you know, a couple times a week, whatever.
Make those decisions in advance and once those decisions are made, don’t question the decisions. Okay. You don’t need a new plan every Monday. You need a good plan that you can stick to long enough so that you can start seeing results. Okay? The point here is we’re trying to reduce options, more options feel freeing.
Like, oh, I have all these options here, but it’s actually exhausting. Okay? And if you’re choosing between five different breakfasts every single morning. You’re burning mental energy before your day even kicks into gear. Okay? So pick one or two, go-to breakfasts one, or go-to one or two, go-to lunches. Uh, maybe a small rotation of simple dinners, okay?
Not because you can’t eat other things, because you don’t need to be deciding these things every single day. Runners love routines, you know, when it comes to training. So apply that same thinking to your food. Repetition isn’t boring when it’s getting you the results that you want. Okay? And I like to use this term all the time, which is make it boring.
You know, this part messes with some people, okay? Because we’ve been taught that progress needs excitement and novelty and constant change. It really doesn’t. The most effective nutrition and strength routines are boring by design. Boring means it’s predictable, it’s low stress. It’s easy to repeat if your plan requires, you know, enthusiasm and, and.
Inspiration or perfect conditions, it’s not gonna last. Okay. Boring works because it is sustainable. Another way you can kind of make the change and start moving away from the struggle is to attach new habits to existing routines. Okay? This is one of the most powerful moves that you can make. Don’t create standalone habits that float around.
Your schedule that you’re just hoping will get done, you gotta anchor them to something you’re already doing. Okay? So maybe you lift after your easy run. So you have like two easy runs a week, and you lift right after those. Attach the habit of lifting to your running habit that’s already in place. Okay?
Or prep your food right after your grocery shopping. Maybe you have a grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon. You do that regularly. Just prep your food right after that. Okay. Or, or do your stretching while your, your coffee is brewing in the morning. Okay. Attach the habit of stretching to an already made and established habit of like brewing your coffee in the morning.
Okay? You already have strong routines in your life. I know you do. Just use these to your advantage. Okay? When habit has a, uh, an attachment, a trigger, it stops being optional. It’s just something you do no matter what. Okay. Now here’s a question I want you to ask yourself, and I really want you to sit with this.
What can I automate so I don’t have to argue with myself anymore? Because arguing with yourself is exhausting. Okay? If you’re debating food choices, if you’re constantly debating the timing of your workouts or whether you’re on track every single day. That’s a sign that something needs to be automated.
Okay? It’s not about being perfect. The goal is not perfection. The goal is removing friction. So consistency becomes the default. Okay? We wanna remove the friction so that our default is. Being consistent. All right? You don’t need to become a more disciplined person. Uh, you just need fewer things competing for your attention, right?
When decisions are made in advance, when routines are boring and predictable, when habits are anchored to things you’re already doing. The struggle disappears, right? Not because you’re stronger or more, you know, mentally powerful. It’s because you finally have a system that works. Okay, let me leave you with this.
You don’t need to struggle less because you’re tougher. You need to struggle less because you are smarter, okay? You are not broken, you are not undisciplined. You’re just trying to succeed without systems. And once you fix that, everything else changes. And if you’re listening to this and you’re realizing that you’re not actually struggling because you lack discipline, you’re struggling because you don’t have a system in place, this is where I want you to pay attention.
Okay? The leaner, stronger Runner project isn’t a quick fix. It’s not another short term challenge. It’s a simple structured system designed to support you over time, so you’re not constantly guessing, restarting, or relying on motivation. Most runners who join don’t come in saying, okay, I’m all set forever.
They come in thinking, I just want this to feel easier. And that’s exactly what happens because they stop debating their food choices. They stop wondering if what they’re doing is right with their strength workouts. Um, they stop feeling like they’re behind all the time. And everything gets simpler because the decisions are already made.
This program is set up as an ongoing coaching program month to month. You’re not locking yourself into anything. You come in, you follow the system, and you give it enough time to actually work. And here’s the key. People don’t stay because they have to. They stay because they’re training, they’re eating in their day-to-day life.
Finally, feel aligned. Right. So if you’re tired of struggling, if you want running to feel better instead of harder, if you’re ready to stop arguing with yourself every single day, go to my website running lean coaching.com/ready and join the Leaner Stronger Runner Project. This is where things get clearer, calmer, and a whole lot more sustainable.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Today on the podcast, we’re digging into something that every runner deals with but almost no one talks about openly: “The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Losing Weight.” These thoughts are …
Continue Reading about 310. The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Losing Weight →
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 310 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today the lies we tell ourselves about losing. Weight. So today I am digging into something that every runner deals with, but almost no one talks about openly anyway, the lies we tell ourselves about losing weight.
These thoughts are subtle. They’re sneaky. They feel reasonable, and that’s exactly why they keep so many runners stuck. We tell ourselves little stories like, I run so much, I should be able to eat whatever I want, or I’ll start eating better after my race, or it’s just my hormones and we don’t even question these thoughts.
They become invisible barriers that quietly sabotage our progress. So in this episode, I’m gonna shine a big, bright light on the most common lies. Runners tell themselves about losing weight, why they feel so true, and how to shift into thoughts that actually support your goals. If you’re ready for a little honesty, clarity, and a massive mindset upgrade, this episode is especially for you.
But first, if you’re listening to this and thinking, wow, I’ve been dealing with these exact same things, Patrick, then I want you to know something. You do not have to keep trying to figure this all out on your own. Most runners are out there working hard, putting in the miles, pushing through the fatigue, but still feeling frustrated because they’re results.
Don’t match their effort, and it’s not because they’re not capable, it’s because they’re missing a clear plan, the right guidance, and the right kind of mindset that actually supports creating lasting change. That’s exactly what my coaching program is designed to do. I help you fix the stuff that’s been slowing you down for years.
The inconsistent eating, the lack of structure, the confusion about fueling the mental chatter that keeps you second guessing yourself. You’re gonna get a personalized approach for your running, strength, nutrition, and mindset. So they’re all working together to create real. Sustainable transformation. If you wanna feel lighter, stronger, more confident, and finally see all that hard work you’re doing payoff.
Go to running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. Let’s go. Okay, so the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I had a coaching call recently where a client said something to the effect of, um, you know, Patrick, I’m trying so hard, but I just don’t think this is gonna work for me. Uh, I can’t lose weight because of my age.
And listen, she wasn’t whining, she wasn’t making excuses. This is something that this person honestly believed. And for her it felt very true. And that’s exactly how these little subtle lies work. ’cause they feel like facts. You know, saying something like, oh, I’ve reached this certain age, fill in the blank.
It could be 45, it could be 75. And then you could say, well I, I’ll never be able to lose any more weight because of this number. And that feels like a fact to you. And, and it feels kind of harmless ’cause it just feels like this is just the way it is, but it’s quietly undermining every single effort you’re trying to make.
So today I want to expose some of these, uh, the biggest, at least most common lies that runners tell themselves about losing weight. And I’m gonna show you kind of what you should be thinking instead. Okay. So. Lie number one. This is a fun one. It’s fun to say, and I hear runners say this all the time, but it is definitely a lie I run, so I should be able to eat whatever I want.
Have you ever told yourself that or heard anybody say that? Just about everybody I know who is a runner has said this at some point in their life. Um, runners love this one because it sounds very logical. You know, you’re out there running, you’re burning calories, you’re working hard, you’re sweating, so obviously you should be able to eat everything that you want, right?
Well, here’s the truth. Running is great for your heart. It’s great for your mind. It’s great for your endurance, but it is absolutely terrible as a standalone weight loss strategy. Running alone doesn’t undo overeating. It doesn’t undo poor food choices. It doesn’t magically bypass the laws of metabolism.
Food is fuel, yes, but it’s also data. And when the data coming in is chaotic and consistent or low quality, your body’s just gonna store that as excess fat. A more helpful, empowering thought is I fuel my running. I don’t justify. Overeating. Okay, so think about that. If you’ve ever told yourself, I should be able to eat whatever I want because I run, just remember that food is more than just fuel.
There’s also information stored in that food. Certain foods turn on hunger hormones and make you excessively hungry. Certain foods turn off, uh, leptin production, which makes you never really feel very full, so you tend to overeat. Um, so there’s more to it than just calories and calories out, or being able to eat whatever you want because you run a certain number of miles every week.
Okay? Don’t justify your overeating. Stop telling yourself this lie. Okay? I fuel my running. I don’t justify overeating. That’s a better, more empowering thought lie. Number two, it’s just my hormones. Okay? Now, hormones are real. There’s, there’s nothing, um, magical or mythological about hormones. They matter.
They affect your metabolism, your appetite, your energy, your recovery. All of it, but there’s a, a small little lie hidden inside this truth here. And that lie is that there’s nothing I can do about it. And that’s the dangerous part because as soon as you start believing that you’re powerless, that it’s this completely out of your control, you just stop trying.
You give up. You know, hormones can make weight loss more challenging. But you are never helpless. Alright? There are ways that you, uh, there are things that you can control. You can control what you eat, how much you eat, how consistently you eat certain foods, how much protein you eat, how much strength training you do, how well you are sleeping, how you are managing your stress, how you think and feel about yourself.
These are all things that you have control over. A better thought is, yeah, my hormones play a role, but my choices still matter. So that’s a much more empowered thought there. This puts you back in control. This puts you back in the driver’s seat. Hormones can be a factor. They are, um, a lot of times turned on or off by certain food choices that you make.
Like I just mentioned, you eat a bunch of sugar. You’re turning off your, uh, fullness hormone leptin, and you’re turning on and producing more ghrelin your hunger hormones. So you’re gonna be excessively hungry, the more sugar you’re eating, and then you don’t feel as full because you’re not producing as much leptin.
That’s a very good example of how hormones are affected by the foods that you eat. So they’re not just out there operating, you know, willy-nilly. They have, um. They are being controlled by, by different, uh, forces. You know, there’s forces on your hormones that are either turning some on or turning some off.
Okay. So your choices absolutely still matter. Um, and I’ve had, you know, people that I’ve worked with in the past who have really tried a lot of different things to try to lose weight. And then we’ve looked at getting a, a hormone panel done, you know, like a thyroid panel done, and they’ve realized that they need to be on some kind of hormone therapy because there’s.
Something that’s really amiss there. And that is something that can be a factor. So if you’re really thinking that this is a factor, get your hormones checked. But for the, for most of us, um, that’s really not gonna be, um, a, a factor. Okay. Section, uh, or line number three. Um, I’m gonna start after my race. So this one is pretty sneaky because runners love creating imaginary timelines.
Like, you know, after my next marathon or after that, that Turkey trot, you know, or the 10 k, uh, around the holidays or after the holidays are over, after this vacation, after the kids go back to school. It’s always after, after, after. But here’s what you’re really telling yourself right now is not the right time.
And let me just tell you the right time, never magically appears. It’s not your race. Um, if it’s not your race, it’s gonna be your schedule. If it’s not your schedule, it’s gonna be your stress level. It’s not your stress level. It’s gonna be something else. Waiting for conditions to be perfect is just a sneaky way of staying exactly where you are, because you never have to actually start anything if you just keep saying later, later, later.
So a better thought for this one is, you know, this is something that is important to me. This counts this, this matters to me. I can start making better choices right now because the truth is that when you keep delaying and delaying and delaying your procrastinating and procrastinating, you’re just pushing back.
Uh, your ability to change for the better. And the more you do that, the more you’re just gonna stay stuck right where you are. Um, delay is the killer of a lot of people’s, um, you know, progress in life. There’s a lot of things that people want, a lot of goals, a lot of hopes and dreams that people have, and they just keep pushing that delay button.
And they never start because you know what? When you, when you don’t have to start, you’re never gonna fail with anything. You don’t have to do anything hard. You don’t have to get uncomfortable. And I get it, but just remember that if you start something today, you know, think about where you’re gonna be three, six months from now, as opposed to you just keep delaying three or six months and you’re just gonna be exactly where you are right now.
So I’ll start after, you know, my race or fill in the blank is, is very, very subtle. Lie number four. I just need to run more. So this is the classic runner solution to every problem. If you’re struggling with weight, run more. If you’re stressed, run more. If you’re tired, run more. If you’re injured. Um. Well, maybe don’t run more, but I know some of y’all are going to try.
Um, but here’s the thing. More running can actually increase your hunger. More running, um, can actually lead to more eating because you’re a lot hungrier. You know, more eating can often lead to more weight gain. So not only is running more not solving this problem, sometimes it’s actually making it worse, a better thought instead of, I just need to run more.
It might be. You know, running improves my fitness, but nutrition creates weight loss. They work together, but they are not interchangeable. But I can’t tell you how many times, you know, runners, you know, just try to throw more miles at the problem. You know, this is all again, about this idea of calories in, calories out.
And if you just, you know, do more cardio, you’re gonna lose more weight. And that’s not necessarily true. I know so many people who run all the time, they’re doing cardio every single day, and they are still. 30, 40 pounds overweight and they can’t lose the weight, is the solution to run more? Probably not.
They can’t run anymore. They’re running seven days a week. You know, you just can’t add more, uh, to that, to that situation there. Now stress, I think, you know, a certain amount of running can help with stress. I think, you know, if you’re feeling less energetic, that a certain amount of running can help you feel.
More energetic, but there’s a law of diminishing returns, right? There’s a comes a point in time where. You know, you get to the point where you’re actually overdoing it and then you’re gonna be more stressed and you’re gonna be more tired and more exhausted and over training, and that’s gonna lead to more weight gain.
So running more is just really not the answer to everything, but it’s a great lie to tell yourself. It means you don’t have to change any of your eating habits. You can just keep eating whatever junk you want to, and as long as you just run more, you can justify that. Um, but I hear all the time about runners who are, you know, running all the time they’re in.
They seem to be in pretty good shape and they end up having some, you know, heart attack or something like that because of poor diet, because of other mitigating factors. Okay? So just running more is not gonna be the answer. Okay? So remember, running improves my fitness. Nutrition creates weight loss, so make the focus on nutrition, lie number five.
I’ve already tried everything. I’ve heard this one so many times from people, and you know what? You haven’t, you know, I love you all, but listen, you are absolutely, you have not absolutely tried every single thing out there, okay? What you’ve done is tried a lot of things for very short periods of time, without consistency, without coaching, without a solid plan, without a solid mindset strategy, supporting that plan.
And listen, that’s not. Failure. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re normal. That’s just being a human, okay? But this lie of I’ve tried everything, convinces you that nothing will ever work for you. And when you believe that, you don’t have to show up anymore, you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to change because nothing is ever going to work for you.
This is a terrible thought. Doesn’t it sound terrible the way I’m saying it? Just saying it out loud here. I wrote, you know, some notes here and, and you know, it looked fine on paper as I’m saying it out loud. I’m like, God, this sounds awful. A better thought would be there are strategies I haven’t mastered yet.
There are things I have not tried, but I’m capable of figuring this out. That, that is an empowered statement right there. I’ve tried everything. Nothing is ever gonna work for me, is giving your power away. You become powerless when you say that. Alright? But when you say, I am going to figure this out, there’s things I haven’t tried yet.
That is very empowering. That’s putting the power back on your plate. You are now in control because you are in control. You know, we just, again, you know, we don’t wanna have to try anything else. ’cause it’s, it’s, it can be frustrating sometimes and I get it. It is frustrating sometimes when you try something and it doesn’t work.
But guess what? The only way you can succeed is if you try. You may, it may or may not work you. You, um, analyze your results, you make necessary changes. Then you try something else and you repeat that process until you succeed. That’s the way every successful person in the world has ever accomplished anything big.
Right? You, you keep trying. Keep trying. Success is built upon a big old pile of failures, right? So you just gotta keep, keep trying and it’s frustrating, I get it. But this is the way the world works. Okay? So why do these lies matter? Here’s the, the takeaway I want you to, to really think about here for today, the thoughts that you repeat.
Determine the results that you get, the thoughts you keep repeating, determine the results that you get, not because of magic or manifestation or crystals or anything like that, but because your thinking drives your actions every single day, period. If your thoughts are disempowering, if your thoughts remove your responsibility.
If your thoughts make you feel stuck, hopeless, or defeated, then guess what? Your actions will reflect that. The actions that you take will be disempowering. They will, they will remove you, uh uh, your responsibility. They will make you feel stuck, hopeless, and defeated. But. When you choose thoughts that create agency that are empowering, that spark motivation, when you choose thoughts that build confidence, your whole experience changes.
You know, your actions will reflect that. Your actions will be empowered. They will have agency. They will, you know, spark motivation. They will create confidence in you. Weight loss doesn’t start with food. It starts, uh, with the story that you tell yourself. Weight loss doesn’t start with, you know, how many macros you should be eating or, or what kinds of foods you should be eating.
It starts with, you know, the stories that you tell yourself or the excuses that you’re making, or the story or the, um, uh, lies you keep telling yourself. Okay. If you’re listening to this right now and you’re thinking, yeah, this is exactly the kind of work I need to be doing, then I want to just invite you to join me inside my coaching program.
This is where we dig deep into your mindset, your habits, your fueling, your training, all of it, and we build a simple, sustainable, empowering plan that actually gets you to where you want to go. So if you want some expert guidance, some ongoing support, some accountability. To finally reach your weight loss and uh, your weight loss goals and feel amazing doing it, go to running lean coaching.com.
Click on work with me. Alright, my friends, that’s all I got for you today. Stop believing the lies. Okay? Start choosing thoughts that actually support the runner that you want to become. Love you all. Keep on running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
In this week’s episode of the Running Lean Podcast, I’m diving deep into a topic that affects every single one of us—Understanding and Identifying Self-Sabotage. If you’ve ever made progress toward …
Continue Reading about 306. Understanding and Identifying Self-Sabotage →
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 306 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today understanding and identifying self sabotage. So today I am gonna be diving deep into a topic that affects every single one of us understanding and identifying when we self-sabotage.
If you’ve ever made progress toward your running or weight loss goals only to find yourself slipping back into old habits and behaviors, this episode is going to hit home for you. You’re gonna learn what self-sabotage. Actually is and what it isn’t. How to recognize when you’re doing it and the surprising reasons why we all do it.
Most importantly, I’ll show you how to start breaking the cycle so you can finally build real. Lasting consistency. This is not about guilt or shame, it’s about awareness and growth. Because once you see how you’ve been getting in your own way, you’ll have the power to stop doing it and to start creating the results that you’ve actually been working for.
But first, listen, I know how frustrating it feels when you’re doing all the right things. You’re running, you’re eating healthy, you’re putting in the work, but something still feels off. You’re tired of feeling like progress takes too long, that you can’t stay consistent, or that maybe your body isn’t responding the way that it should.
Here is the truth. You don’t need another quick fix. You don’t need another cookie cutter training plan. You need a comprehensive approach that helps you to build strength, improve your endurance, and burn fat without burning out. That’s exactly what we do inside my coaching program. I’ll help you develop a nutrition strategy that actually supports your running.
Uh, I’ll help you to build a body that feels strong and resilient, and I’ll help you to master the mindset that keeps you consistent long term. How about no more self-sabotage? Listen, you don’t have to keep doing this alone. The next step is simple. Go to my website running lean coaching.com, click on work with me.
Let’s get you feeling light, feeling strong, feeling confident, again from the inside. Out. Okay, so let’s talk about self-sabotage. Yay. What it is, what it isn’t. How to know when you’re doing it, why we do it, and the sneaky ways it shows up in our lives as runners and just as human beings. This op, I’m hoping that this episode is going to hit home for a lot of you because.
That’s my intention here. That would be a good thing. You can’t change something if you don’t know that you’re doing it. Okay? You have to acknowledge it in order to change it, and so today is all about recognizing, identifying, and acknowledging what’s really going on. So the first thing I wanna do is kind of talk about what self-sabotage is and what it isn’t.
And I wanna start with a, a definition. So self-sabotage is when your thoughts, emotions, or behaviors are working against your goals. Okay? It’s when you say you want to do one thing, like, you know, I wanna lose weight, or I wanna be able to run faster. You know, I wanna feel confident in my body. But what you’re doing, your actions tell a completely different story.
It’s that internal conflict between what you say that you want and then what you’re actually doing, you know, every day. The crazy thing is most of the time. We don’t even realize when we’re doing it, and we all do this. I wanna make that very clear right now. This is not something just for, it’s not just something that weak people do or something that unaware people do.
Like everybody at some point has engaged in some sort of self-sabotage, okay? And a lot of times we don’t even realize we’re doing it. You might just think that you’re tired or you’re stressed or you’re busy, but underneath that, there’s deeper things happening. Okay? So self-sabotage is not laziness, it’s not weakness.
It’s not because you’re broken. It’s not because you’re undisciplined. It’s actually your brain. Trying to protect you. So your brain is wired for safety and for comfort. Your brain wants predictability. It wants safety at wants the familiar. So when you start to change things, when you start a new food plan or a new strength program, you know, you start pushing yourself a little bit.
You start doing hard things that that feel a little uncomfortable and unfamiliar, your brain starts to freak out a little bit. It’s like saying, whoa, wait a minute. This is unfamiliar territory. This feels uncomfortable. Let’s go back to what we know. So it throws up all kinds of thoughts and emotions and behaviors that subtly pull you back to your old ways.
Not because your brain hates you, but because your brain is always trying to protect you from pain, from discomfort, from risk, from change. Your brain does not like things that are different. It likes the familiar. So that’s what self-sabotage is. It’s your subconscious mind saying, let’s just stay safe. Um, even when safe means staying stuck where you are, you know, if you’re trying to lose weight and you start eating differently, that’s gonna feel uncomfortable.
To your brain that’s gonna feel unfamiliar to your brain. What? Vegetables? Like what? I’ve, I’m not used to eating vegetables. Like, what is this all about? And so your brain is gonna be like, no, that, that feels like danger to us. We gotta get outta here. You know, we can’t eat broccoli. Okay. So a lot of times we don’t even know that this is happening.
So let’s talk a little bit about, um, how you can start identifying when you are self-sabotaging. Okay. Because sometimes, sometimes it’s kind of obvious. Okay. Like if you’ve been eating great all week and then you, you binge eat like all the leftover Halloween candy all at once, that might be of. Pretty clear and pretty obvious way of self-sabotaging yourself.
Okay. But it’s usually not that. It’s often a lot more subtle and kind of sneaky. Okay. So here are some signs that you might be self-sabotaging. Okay? If every Monday you’re telling yourself, oh, I’m just gonna start over on Monday, and then the next Monday comes around and you have to start over again.
’cause maybe you, you do pretty well, like, you know, Monday through Thursday and then like Friday, Saturday and Sunday, everything kind of goes to crap. You know, that could be a sign that you’re self-sabotaging. You know, because the weekends are typically when you’re used to living it up a little bit and drinking more and eating whatever, and you’re starting to slide back into those old behaviors, those old weekend behaviors that feel comfortable and safe, you know?
Um, and if every Monday you’re starting over, that could be a sign that you’re self-sabotaging. Um, if you find yourself giving up or quitting, as soon as things start to go, well, this could be a sign of self-sabotage. And what this looks like for a lot of people. For example, let’s say you’re trying to lose weight and you lose like five or eight pounds, so things are starting to go well, and then you kind of give up on yourself.
You know, because what you’re doing is working, but it feels unfamiliar, it feels uncomfortable. And especially at the beginning of any sort of change, it’s going to feel weird and uncomfortable. It’s not what you’re used to. You’re gonna be doing different things, you’re engaging in new behaviors. Um, but if you find yourself, you know, as soon as things start to go well, you, you give up.
You quit on yourself. That’s self-sabotage. Okay. If you tell yourself, you know, I just need to take a short break here. You know, I need to just stop running for a few weeks. You know, I’m kind of feeling tired, or, you know, I just need to give myself a chance to eat whatever I want because I’m just feeling too deprived.
You know, I’m not, you know, I, I. I’m, I’m eating pretty clean, but I need to give myself a, a chance to eat some donuts or cookies or some ice cream or some pizza, and that little short break turns into weeks or maybe months. That could be self-sabotage right there. Okay. Even just telling yourself I need to take a break from eating healthy could be a sign of self-sabotage.
Okay. Another sort of subtle way that we, we can self-sabotage is setting unrealistic goals for ourselves, knowing deep down that you’re not gonna follow through with all that. Um, I remember. Um, some time, a long time ago, um, talking to somebody who had all these massive goals. You know, this person wanted to lose a hundred pounds and, um, uh, run an ultra marathon and, uh, you know, get super strong and had all these huge.
Goals? Well, they had never really run before, ever. Um, they had been pretty large their whole life and hadn’t ever really been able to lose the weight, you know, um, never really been to a gym before. So setting all these huge unrealistic goals made it so that they could just say, you know, that’s just too hard.
I’m never gonna be able to do that stuff. And then they didn’t have to follow through with it, you know, so that’s a sign that you might be. Self-sabotaging, just setting goals that are just unrealistic, um, and, and unreachable really. Another way that we subtly self-sabotage is constantly comparing ourselves to others and deciding that you’re never gonna measure up.
You know, and I, I’ve done this in the past where I said, you know, other people can do hard things. Other people can run marathons. That’s just tsunami. I’m never gonna be able to do that. It’s too hard. And I remember after I did run a few marathons, I remember, um, you know, that part sort of went away. But then I had some friends that were doing.
Triathlons and Iron Man, and I thought, oh, I could never do something like that, you know? And I, and I kind of made a decision that I’m, I would never be able to do that. And that lasted for a while until, you know, I, I, I had to change that thinking and I had to stop comparing myself to other people, you know?
And instead I said, okay, well, what do I want for myself? And I set out to start doing some triathlons, and then eventually did an Iron Man. And, and I proved myself wrong. You know, I was trying to stay safe and comfortable by not having to do something hard, you know, so the way I did that was compare myself to others and say, they’re better.
They can do these things. I can’t do these things. Um, and so I’d never, you know, if I had chosen that path, I never would’ve had to do those things that were hard. Okay. Or lastly, finding excuses for why you can’t do something instead of finding ways of making it work. You know, if you keep telling yourself, I can’t do this, and, and you, you can probably list all the reasons why you can’t do something.
Shift that thinking. Like, instead, find ways to make it work for you. Like list all the reasons why you can do it. List all the different ways that you could. Work to make that thing happen for you. Okay, so these are just sneaky, subtle signs that you might be self-sabotaging and you don’t even really realize it.
You know, you might be procrastinating. You might be saying things like, you know, I’m gonna start after this vacation, or I’ll get serious when work slows down. Or, you know, I just need to be motivated. I do better when I’m motivated and I’m just not motivated right now. Here’s the truth though. You don’t need more motivation.
You need more awareness when you can recognize that these patterns are self-sabotaging patterns. They’re not like. You know, bad circumstances or lack of discipline, you know, or, or you know, fate that you can finally start to change them. Once you recognize that these are just things that your brain is doing to try to keep you safe, you can start working on changing these things.
Now, a lot of people talk about, well, why? Why do we do this? Why do we self-sabotage? What’s at the root of this thing? Because if you understand why you do it, you can really stop judging yourself for it and just start making some changes here. Okay, so there’s a few core reasons, um, why people self-sabotage.
You know, I already talked about our brain sort of wanting to stay safe, and that’s a big part of this, but even underneath that, there’s a few things that. Are really the cause of a lot of our self-sabotage. And there’s like four things I’ll talk about. There’s more, but these are four big ones. Number one is a fear of failure, so this is a big one.
You might think, you know, if I really try and I fail. That’ll, that’ll just prove to myself that I’m not good enough and it’ll prove to the rest of the world that I’m not good enough. So I’d rather just not try, not even start that way. I won’t fail. So you, you subconsciously are. Pre-filing, you’re creating failure ahead of time.
You’re doing it to yourself and you’re controlling your outcome, right? You, you don’t have to fail you, you’re not gonna succeed at anything, but also you’re not failing. So for you, it’s gonna be safer to fail on these terms than to risk, you know, trying something new and hard and giving it your all and then, and falling short.
Okay, so fear of failure is a. Big one. A lot of people will not even start things because they’re afraid that they might not be able to do it. Guess what? There’s no such thing as, uh, success without failure. Like you have to fail your way to succeed in just about everything that you do. Number two, uh, and this is kind of related, but sort of the opposite is the fear of success.
So, believe it or not, for a lot of people’s success can be just as scary. So. What do you do? You know, what if you do lose the weight? You know what if you do get faster? What if you do change your life, but you can’t keep it up? Then what? So a certain level of success brings a whole new set of like pressures and expectations and responsibility, you know, and this can feel very terrifying.
So you sabotage yourself. To just stay in the familiar struggle instead of stepping out into the unknown. So, you know, fear of succeeding can be just as scary. It can be frightening to a lot of people because once you get there, how do you maintain that? What if you can’t maintain it? Um, another big one is the fear of change.
You know, humans, we crave certainty. We crave consistency. So even when your current situation isn’t perfect, at least it’s comfortable, right? You know what to expect. And when we change things, that requires letting go of that comfort. You’re literally getting out of your comfort zone when you make changes.
And this is like your brain saying, you know better the devil that you know than the devil you don’t, you know? So instead of, you know, making positive changes, we will stay stuck. We will stay where we are presently and not grow, not evolve, not become more, because that fear of change, changing anything is too great.
It just feels too hard and too scary for us. And then number four is a fear of judgment. So you might be thinking, well, what will people think of me if I fail? What will people think of me if I succeed? You know, you don’t wanna stand out, you don’t wanna rock the boat, you don’t want to face criticism. So you stay small, you stay safe.
You don’t do things that are hard, you don’t do things that might be considered, um. Uh, great because you are thinking you’re gonna be judged if you do well or, or if you fail. So either way, you’re screwed according to yourself. You know, it’s this like unnatural fear of judgment. And again, these fears are all rooted in one thing.
Your brain is trying to protect you, and your brain isn’t your enemy. It just doesn’t understand the difference between real danger and emotional discomfort. Emotional discomfort is something that we all have to deal with, and if we can get good at dealing with emotional discomfort, um, we can overcome all of these fears and we can, you know, reach our goals much faster.
Without all the self-sabotage, discomfort is where growth actually happens, right? Everything you want but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone. If you’re unwilling to get uncomfortable, you’re going to stay stuck forever. Now let’s talk about, um, the main ways that we self-sabotage and what this might actually look like in your day-to-day life.
So here are some of the main ways that I see, especially runners self-sabotage, especially when it comes to their health, their fitness, their mindset. And I already mentioned this one a little bit, but it’s procrastination. You know, procrastination is a very popular form of self-sabotage. You know, you tell yourself, I’m gonna start when, and then just fill in the blank.
Like, I’m gonna wait until this vacation is over. I’m gonna wait until. Monday, or I’m gonna wait until after the holidays, or I’m gonna wait until after the kids are grown up and moved out of the house or whatever. Well, guess what? Things are never going to be perfect. The planets are never going to align.
There’s never a perfect time to start other than right now. So procrastination is just fear disguised as. You know, logical thinking. Well, I’m gonna be very practical and very logical about this, and the best time to start is gonna be when this person is, you know, different in my life. And this thing has changed and I don’t have a busy work schedule and the kids are taking care.
Like you can like come up with all these. Excuses and reasons, but it’s, it’s all just a form of self-sabotage. So procrastination, one of the main ways that we self-sabotage in other ways, perfectionism. And you tell yourself, you know, if I can’t do things perfectly, why should I bother doing it all? So a lot of people, they don’t ever start anything or they quit the moment something isn’t, you know, completely perfect.
But perfectionism isn’t just having high standards, it’s the fear of being seen as imperfect. It’s the fear of having to do something imperfectly. You know, I can’t tell you how many people who I. Set out to lose weight. They change their diet, they’re doing pretty well. And then they have like a bad day.
They might, you know, eat some junk food. They like drive through McDonald’s or something like that, and they’re like, look, I can’t do this perfectly, so I’m just not even gonna bother. And they just quit just because they feel like if they’re not doing it a hundred percent, they’re not doing it right. And the truth of the matter is like.
And I always tell people this, like, if you’re doing well, like 90% of the time, if you’re sticking to your plan, like 90% of the time, you’re fine. Go through the McDonald’s, drive through if that’s what you want to do. Um, don’t do it every day. Um, but you do have a little bit of wiggle room there. So if you want to eat some french fries from McDonald’s, knock yourself out.
Number three, negative self-talk. So you might tell yourself stuff like, you know, I’m too old. I’ve always failed at this. I’ve tried before. It never works. I can’t, I can never stick to something. These, these thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, your brain. Believes, whatever you repeatedly tell it.
And if you keep saying, I can’t do it, I’ll never be able to stick with it. I’m too old. I always fail. Those things are going to be true for you. You will be too old to do this. You will completely fail. You will not be able to stick to it. So that negative self-talk is a big one, and it’s something that you really have to be aware of.
Okay. Number four, the all or nothing thinking, you know, this is, you know, part of that perfectionism thing, but it’s like either I, I have to do it all and and do it all perfectly or not at all. So maybe you run five days in a row and then you miss a day and you’re like, you know what? Screw it. I’m just gonna start again next week.
Or you eat one off meal, off plan meal and you decide that your whole day is ruined. So you just, you know, just. Trash the rest of the day. Essentially, this kind of thinking just kills progress. You know? Consistency matters more than perfection, right? 90% rule. Just you don’t have to do it perfectly all the time.
Um, and that’s all or nothing thinking like you have to, you know, always, like I tell people, like, take a break from eating sugar, for example. See how your body feels. You might find that you do much better when you’re not eating sugar all the time, but this doesn’t mean you can never eat sugar again in your life.
You know, if you know a month from now you wanna have a donut, or you’re at a wedding and you wanna have a piece of wedding cake, eat the cake, eat the donut, it’s fine. All right? If you’re telling yourself, well, you know, I’m not gonna be able to do this. Uh, if I can’t go all in and then you do eat the donor or something like that, you’re gonna wanna quit because that’s.
Your mentality, you gotta shift that thinking. Number five is emotional buffering. Another big way that we self-sabotage. So you might be using something like alcohol or food or scrolling on social media or just being super busy to numb yourself to your emotions instead of just dealing with them instead of processing them.
So you tell yourself, well, I deserve this when what you’re really doing is you’re just trying to avoid being uncomfortable, emotional buffering. Or numbing ourselves to our feelings. You know, it feels good in the moment. It’s like, oh, you know, oh, I have a glass of wine and I just, I can really unwind and relax.
But it keeps you from facing the real issue. You know, you got emotions that you need to deal with and you need to process, and you need to feel those things. You need to feel fear and anger, and frustration, and stress, you know, and I’m not saying we, we can’t do things too. Um, make ourselves feel better at times, but maybe going for a walk or taking a run or going to the gym for a, for a workout to get those sort of feel good chemicals going, like endorphins and dopamine and stuff instead of just numbing yourself using alcohol or scrolling through social media or food.
Okay. That emotional buffering is, is a big one, and it is a big way that we self-sabotage. Um, and then lastly, overcommitting. So you’re just trying to do too much, too many goals, too many commitments. And then you just burn yourself out and that burnout gives you an excuse to just quit. You know, this is a very subtle but also pretty common form of self-sabotage.
I see this with some people who, they just have to be doing all the things all the time. They say yes to everything, and they can’t possibly commit to it all, and they use. Their overcommitment as an excuse to not be able to stick with anything essentially. Um, and again, this is like that, a type A personality disorder, I’ll call it, because I think it is a disorder.
I think having that type A personality, there are some good aspects to that. Like, Hey, you know, you’re very productive, you can get a lot of stuff done, but if you’re using it as an excuse, then you might be just self-sabotaging. So, what’s the cost of all this? Well, the hard truth is this. The self self-sabotage doesn’t just slow down your progress.
It just, it destroys your confidence. You know, every time you break a promise to yourself, you break a little bit of that trust with your yourself. You start to believe your own excuses. You start to expect yourself to fail, and it becomes a vicious cycle. You sabotage, you feel ashamed and guilty. You promise to do better, you sabotage again, and then the cycle just continues.
Does that sound familiar? This is why so many people feel stuck in the start over cycle, not because they can’t follow a plan, but because they haven’t dealt with the mindset that keeps derailing them. Okay, so how do you stop all this? How do you break the cycle? How do you stop self-sabotaging? Well, it all starts with an awareness, and that’s what we’re really talking about here today.
You can’t change what you don’t see. So what I want you to work on. This week is step one. Just notice, catch yourself in the act. When you skip a workout or you eat something you said you wouldn’t eat, or you make an excuse, just pause. Take a moment and ask yourself, is this action helping me, me, me, move toward my goal or keeping me stuck or move away from my goal?
Don’t judge it. Just notice it. Be kind to yourself, but just. Pause, is this moving me towards my goal or away from my goal? And then just notice what is happening. Identify the emotion. So what are you feeling in that moment? What is it? Fear, stress, boredom. Doubt. Frustration. What’s the emotion you’re feeling?
Because you can’t manage what you don’t understand. And emotions drive behavior. Right. It’s not the other way around. Your emotions drive your behavior. So what are you feeling in that moment? What is driving you to take the action of X, Y, or Z? And then question the thought, like ask yourself, what am I thinking right now that’s creating this feeling?
Maybe it’s, this is too hard, or I deserve a break, or one drink won’t hurt. You know, once you see the thought, you can kind of take away its power. And then number four, just choose intentionality instead of reacting automatically. Pause and make a decision. Decide on purpose. You can ask yourself this question, what would the future version of me, the one who’s already achieved this goal, what would that version of me do right now?
And then do that thing. Okay. Now, here’s a little tough love for you. If you keep self-sabotaging, it’s because some part of you is getting a payoff from staying stuck. Maybe you get to avoid discomfort. Maybe you get to keep blaming your circumstances. Instead of taking responsibility. Maybe you get to avoid the pressure of success, but if you wanna change, you’ve got to give up that comfort.
You’ve got to be willing to get uncomfortable. You’ve got to be willing to fail, willing to feel awkward, to mess up, to be seen trying. That’s what growth looks like. Self-sabotage is not a life sentence. It’s just a habit. And habits can be broken when you bring awareness, honesty, and compassion to them.
So you’re challenged this week. Keep a journal. Just write down the moments when you notice yourself self-sabotaging. When you notice yourself getting in your own way, what’s triggering it? What am I thinking in that moment? What was I feeling? What was I doing? What was the behavior? And then what would I do differently next time?
And then look for patterns. What do you, what are you, when are you self-sabotaging? Like, what does that look like for you? When are you most often doing that? When things are going well, when you’re feeling tired or stressed, when you’re afraid of being judged by others? Look for those patterns and see if you can, you know, put a few of these, uh, uh, connect a few of these dots here.
Okay? And then replace the behavior instead of reacting from fear. Choose from awareness. Even small shifts like pausing before you grab a snack or just skipping that excuse, that’ll start to rewire your brain. And then lastly, practice self-compassion. You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just human.
Self-sabotage is just a learned behavior. It’s a learned pattern of behavior, and you can learn a new one. Okay. So quick recap here. Self-sabotage is when your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviors work against you and your goals. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you from discomfort, not an indication of failure.
You could recognize self-sabotage by noticing when your actions aren’t in alignment with your intentions. We self-sabotage because we’re afraid because of fear, because of fear, of failure, of success, of change, or judgment. The most common forms of self-sabotage include procrastination, perfectionism, negative self-talk, all or nothing thinking, um, emotional buffering or overcommitting.
And the cost of self-sabotage is huge. Loss of confidence in yourself, loss of trust in yourself, loss of progress, but with awareness, honesty, and intention, you can break the cycle. One decision at a time. So here’s what I want you to remember today. Self-sabotage doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re human.
It’s just your brain’s misguided attempt to keep you safe. Uh, you are not here to stay safe, though you are here to grow. And growth requires discomfort. Change requires courage and freedom. Real lasting freedom comes from taking responsibility for your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions. So this week, pay attention.
Notice when you’re getting in your own way, call yourself out with kindness, with love, and then remind yourself, you know, I’m just not gonna do this anymore. I’m gonna choose differently this time. I know you got this. So if this episode resonated with you, if you saw yourself in some of these patterns of self-sabotage, that’s good.
That awareness is your first step towards freedom. And if you want help with this, if you wanna learn how to stop self-sabotaging, learn how to lose weight, get stronger, run with confidence. I’m here to help. Just head over to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me to learn more about my coaching program.
That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
Sometimes it’s during a marathon when your body just says “no more,” but other times, it’s just life that stops you cold. You lose motivation, faith, or direction — and it feels like there’s no way …
Continue Reading about 305. What to Do When You Hit the Wall →
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 305 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, what to do when you hit the wall. So we all hit walls. Sometimes it’s during a marathon when your body just says, no mas. But other times it’s just life that stops you cold.
You might lose motivation or faith or direction. And it feels like there’s just no way through. But what if the wall isn’t the end? What if it’s actually the path? In this episode, I’m talking about how to face the hardest moments in your life and find the strength to move through them, whether you’re struggling in your running, your health, or just life in general.
This episode will help you reframe those challenges and see them for what they really are. Opportunities to grow stronger, wiser, and more resilient than ever. This one’s gonna be honest, emotional, and powerful. Stick around. But first, listen, if you’re tired of feeling stuck, if running feels harder than it should, if you’ve been doing all the right things, but you’re still not seeing the results that you want, you don’t have to keep trying to figure it all out yourself.
What most runners don’t realize is that the struggle isn’t just physical, it’s mental, it’s emotional. It’s about mindset, nutrition, training, recovery. All of it working together, and that’s exactly what I help my clients do every single day. When we work together, you’ll get a customized plan for running, for strength, for nutrition, but more importantly, you’ll get coaching and accountability to help you to follow through.
You’ll finally build the consistency. The confidence and the strength that you’ve been missing. So if you’re ready to break through your wall in running and in life, go to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me and we can do this together. All right, let’s get into this topic. What to do when you hit the wall.
Um, and I’m not just talking about that moment in a marathon, when your legs feel like cinder blocks, your brain starts telling you it’s time to quit, and every cell in your body is screaming for mercy. I’m talking about the kind of walls we hit in our life, those things that stop us dead in our tracks that kind of make you question everything.
Maybe you’ve hit a wall in your health and fitness journey. You’re doing everything right, but the scale won’t budge. Maybe it’s in your training, you’ve lost motivation. The joy of running is gone. Maybe it’s something much bigger, something personal, emotional, spiritual, something that shakes the ground under your feet, whatever form it takes, hitting the wall can feel like the end.
But what I wanna offer you today is a different perspective because the wall. Isn’t the end. It’s not a dead end. It’s actually the beginning of something much deeper, A chance to grow, to evolve, to become someone new. Uh, there’s an amazing author and book out there. Ryan Holiday wrote this book called The Obstacle is The Way, and he says this beautifully in this book, the Impediment to Action Advances Action.
What stands in the way? Becomes the way, and that’s the essence of what we’re talking about here today. The obstacle that you see in front of you is the way the wall is, the path. The only way through is through. So I wanna start by defining what I mean when I say the wall in running. It’s that physiological crash.
You know, you’ve burned through your glycogen, your brain starts shutting systems down. You just can’t go on. You’re weak, foggy, unmotivated. Every step feels terrible. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I was talking to somebody last night who recently. Ran the Marine Corps marathon. She did it some years ago.
Um, my fiance Jill and I were just in Washington, DC for the Marine Corps Marathon. And we were working the expo, as you know, Jill is the assistant race director for Air Force Marathon. And so we were representing Air Force Marathon at the Marine Corps Marathon Expo. And so we, we watched 40,000 runners cross the finish line.
We were handing out some challenge medals at the end. It was, it was really an amazing experience. But we, um. We’re talking to someone last night who said she, she ran the Marine Corps marathon, and we were like, oh my gosh, that’s so awesome. She goes, yeah, I didn’t finish. I got to mile 20 and I quit. And we were both like, oh my gosh, that’s terrible.
You know? Um, and, and in reality, my thought was. Come on. You only had a 10 K to go. Like, you gotta push through that, uh, feeling of, uh, wanting to quit. You know, your body is shutting down. I totally get that. And, and listen, if you have ever, you know, uh, given up at the end of a marathon because of physiological reasons, you got, uh, really bad.
Cramps or you’re injured or something like that. What she was telling us was a little bit different. She just didn’t feel like she could go on, you know, there was nothing, uh, majorly wrong with her. She just kind of, you know, was tired and just felt like she couldn’t do it. And so she kind of gave up on herself and she sort of regrets that.
And, and I started thinking about that and, and I thought, you know, that’s a, that’s a good metaphor for life because life throws things at us all the time. Um. We have these moments in our life where, you know, things seem un insurmountable. These problems that seem like there’s just no way that we can get through them.
You know, there’s these huge obstacles to our, what we feel like are obstacles to our success, and we just can’t see a way forward. You know, maybe you’ve lost someone you love, maybe a relationship ended. Maybe you failed at something big like a business or a goal or a dream. Maybe you’re just exhausted from trying so hard for so long.
And here’s the thing, we all do this. Everyone at some point in their life hits a wall. You know, runners, parents, entrepreneurs, coaches, leaders. No one is immune to this. The wall is something universal. It’s part of the human experience, and it’s not a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a sign that you’re on the edge of transformation.
Our natural instinct, though, is to avoid it, we want to go around it, go under it, find a shortcut, or pretend it’s not there. And that’s a problem because growth doesn’t happen by avoiding walls. Growth only happens when you go through them. Here’s a truth that took me a long time to really grasp the wall.
Isn’t your enemy, it’s your teacher. Every wall you hit in your life is trying to teach you something. It’s showing you what’s not working. It’s revealing what still needs to change inside of you. It’s refining you, burning away what’s weak and temporary, what’s not in alignment with who you’re becoming.
You know, one thing in my life that was a big struggle was. Uh, 18 and a half years ago, I, I was really struggling with this addiction to alcohol and I had kind of hit a rock bottom and it felt like the end of my life. Like, this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to like, deal with, you know, to, to stop drinking.
Um, because it was really destroying my life. It was, it destroyed my marriage. It was, um, threatening to destroy my relationship with people, with my kids. Um, and it was something that just felt like the end of me. But really it was the thing that I had to go through in order for me to become the person that I am today.
And today, that wall that I hit, I’m grateful for that wall. Right in the moment though, it did not feel like that. It felt like the end of the world to me. It felt like the end of my life. It was painful. It felt like a loss. It, I felt like a failure. But I can look back on this, you know, years and years later, and I can realize that.
The wall wasn’t blocking me. It was actually guiding me toward who I needed to become. I wasn’t being punished, I was being shaped. Okay, so when you hit the wall, it kind of brings everything to the surface. The fear, the doubt, the excuses, the stories you tell yourself. It’s like stripping away all your armor, your raw, you’re vulnerable, and you can’t hide behind things like willpower anymore.
And that’s why it’s so uncomfortable. That’s also why it’s so powerful ’cause when you’re standing there face to face with whatever it is that your wall is in that moment, you get to see who you really are. It reveals that about you. It reveals who you are. You see what you really believe about yourself.
You can see how much you can actually trust in your own strength. You see whether or not you’re willing to fight for what really matters to you. And most people never get to that point because they quit. They quit before they get there. They feel the discomfort, they see the wall and they run the other way.
But if you stay, if you stand your ground and you choose to go through it, that’s where you find the version of yourself that’s been waiting on the other side. You know, it’s like pushing through the marathon when you only have those last 10 Ks to go. And I can relate to this because I’ve been there before, back in 2012.
I know this was a long time ago. That’s when I hit my marathon pr. Um. Like a 3 43, uh, which is pretty decent for me back in the day. I, I felt great about this. Um. It was in Indianapolis, it was in November. It was cold. We were dealing with, uh, an ice storm. Uh, the wind and, and, and ice were blowing in my face, heading back towards downtown Indianapolis.
And I had a friend running me in those last 10 Ks, like he met me at mile 20 right around there and, and was running me in. And I actually said to him out loud, like, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can keep running like this. And he just said, you, yes you can. But I was like, forced to deal with this wall that was in front of me, you know?
And it was like a, literally like a wall of wind and ice, you know? And, and, and I was doubting myself and the pain had set in and I was exhausted. Um. And, and he just said, you, you can do this. And, and that was the thing that’s just, I just kept running that through my head. Like I just have to push through, you know?
I know what’s on the other side of this. I’m going to hit my PR if I can keep going like this, and I really, really, really wanted to quit and I didn’t. Right. Most people though, when they’re in that situation, when they feel like they just can’t go on when they. See the wall. When they hit the wall, they do one of three things.
They stop, you know, they give up. They tell themselves, it’s too hard. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. Or number two, they try to go around the wall. You know, they look for the easy way out. What’s the shortcut? What can I do to avoid this discomfort here? Or number three, when they see the wall, they pretend it’s not there.
They numb out with food, with alcohol, with scrolling, with busyness, anything to just avoid feeling that pain of dealing with the wall, of going through the wall, but all those things, stopping going, trying to go around it or pretending it’s not there, they keep you stuck. You can’t outsmart the wall, you can’t ignore it.
You can’t run from it. Eventually it’s gonna find you again, usually in a bigger way. So you have one real option, and that is to face it. And that is terrifying, but it’s also where freedom lives. So the first step in breaking through any wall is facing it and accepting that, that it’s there, accepting it.
You gotta stop seeing it as a problem and start seeing it as part of the process. The wall isn’t a detour, it’s not a roadblock. This is the path. This is where you shift from. Why is this happening to me? To what is this here? To teach me that question. What is this teaching me? This changes everything for you.
Because it takes you outta victim mode and puts you in power mode, right? You stop fighting reality and you start working with it and acceptance. It doesn’t mean resignation. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It means you’ve acknowledged that, okay, this is real. This wall here, this is a real thing. And then choosing to go through it.
An ex good example of this is when I first started working as an entrepreneur and I was coaching other entrepreneurs, um, I was working with people who own small businesses and were trying to get started and I had some experience with this and so I started, you know, coaching them and this never really felt right for me.
Um, I had to accept the fact that this wasn’t really where I needed to be and it wasn’t the right. Fit for me and, and I had to sort of give up on that idea, you know? And when I finally did that, when I finally accepted that this wasn’t really where my heart was, and I started working with runners instead, everything fell into place beautifully for me.
But that was really hard to do because quitting something that I had started, I am not a quitter. I don’t quit anything. And when I had started this business and, and I had to make a decision because it just wasn’t working, I had to make that decision to shift into a different sort of genre here, a different, uh, niche.
And so I had to, uh, make that decision to shift gears and do something else, but it felt like a failure. It felt like I was a complete failure. And, and I didn’t wanna be a failure to myself or anybody else, but I realize now that I just pivoted. All I did was, was made a little, you know, shift in my direction and everything became clear.
And, and of course, this business that I have has become a. Incredibly successful, and it was facing that wall and going through it and not trying to avoid it, not pretending it wasn’t there. You know, my wall was, this wasn’t the right fit, you know, and, and this isn’t working. And, and I had to go through that in order to get where I am today.
But listen, going through the wall. It sucks. Okay. It’s like an emotional rollercoaster. It’s not graceful. It’s not easy, it’s messy. It’s emotional, it’s raw. You’re gonna cry, you’re gonna want to quit. You’re gonna feel lost. You’re gonna question everything. Your faith, your purpose, your strength, and you might even get.
Angry at yourself, at others, at the universe, and all that is okay. It’s part of the process, but you can’t numb your way through the wall. You can’t just check out and avoid it. You have to feel your way through it. The emotions that come up, the fear, the anger, the sadness, the grief, they’re not the enemy.
They’re signals. It’s like an alarm going off saying like, Hey, this is some stuff going on that you need to move through. Okay. And when you let yourself feel all that stuff, when you a, allow yourself to, to go on that emotional rollercoaster, ride without judgment, without, you know, uh, beating yourself up about it, something shifts for you.
This is when you actually start to heal and the wall begins to crack. And one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in all of this is that. Resilience isn’t built in comfort. It’s built in the moments when you think you can’t keep going, but you do anyway. Yeah. Every time you face a wall and you refuse to quit, you’re building that muscle of resilience.
That’s how you grow stronger mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Runners understand this better than most people ’cause every hard run, every tough race, every miserable workout, it’s training your body and your brain to handle the tough stuff, to handle adversity. And that’s why I always say like running is such a perfect metaphor for life.
’cause if you can learn to push through the pain during a really tough run, you can do this anywhere, right? The key though is that you can’t just like survive it. You have to be present in it. You have to notice what’s happening. You have to be aware. You have to be there. You can’t just check out. Notice what your mind is telling you.
Uh, notice how much stronger you are than maybe you think that awareness is what transforms that pain into power. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run in the freezing cold. Or the pouring rain or push through a really hard race. And every time I’ve done something really hard like that, it’s built up just a little bit of mental toughness.
It’s like building that mental toughness muscle. And little by little, my mental toughness, my resilience has grown and gotten stronger and stronger and stronger, and it’s taken years. And it’s taken going through a lot of tough stuff, tough runs and divorces and you know, a addiction. And cancer, like I’ve I, back in 2003, I was diagnosed with cancer and I had to go through all of that really tough times, but I came out the other side of that a lot stronger.
It didn’t feel like it at the time. I can look back on it now and say, yes, that was something that I had to go through in order to become who I am today. But you can’t avoid these things. You can’t avoid. The wall because all that does is just keeps you stuck. It just delays the growth and compounds your suffering.
Every time you avoid discomfort, you reinforce the belief that you can’t do it, that you can’t handle it, that it’s too hard for you, and you’re teaching yourself, Hey, when things get hard, we quit. Like the person I was talking to yesterday about the Marine Corps marathon, she got to mile 20 and it got hard.
There’s a hill there and she couldn’t do it. She quit. And that becomes your default for life. But the truth is you can handle it. You’ve already handled so much more than you give yourself credit for. Think about all the walls you’ve already gone through. Every challenge, every loss, every heartbreak.
You’ve made it through. Every single one. I always tell people you’ve got a hundred percent, uh, uh, track record of getting through tough stuff. We all do. We all have a hundred percent track record of getting through tough stuff. You didn’t think you could do it at the time, but you did. You always did. So when the next wall shows up and it will remember, this isn’t new.
You’ve been here before. You know what to do. You gotta just keep going. So I wanna give you guys a couple of practical tips for a minute here. ’cause this isn’t just about thinking, it’s just not just about mindset. It’s what you do when you hit the wall that really matters. And here’s a few things that can help you to move through it.
Number one. Pause, right? Don’t panic. Don’t freak out. When you hit the wall, your first instinct is to, um, you know, freak out and panic and think the world is about to end. But instead just take a beat. Okay? Take some deep breaths. Remind yourself. This is temporary and you don’t have to fix it right now.
Just breathe and stay present. Number two, just name what’s really going on. What’s the real wall here? Is it fear or self-doubt or burnout? When you name it, you get power over it. Okay. When, when you just, when you’re thinking about something as being so overwhelming that you can’t deal with it, then it has power over you.
But when you give it a name, because it might be something like addiction, but what’s, what’s really behind that? It’s like fear. You know? When you give it that name, then it becomes something that you have power over. Okay. So pause, name it. Number three, ask better questions instead of like, why do things always happen to me?
Why is this so hard? Maybe ask a question to of yourself, like, what’s the real lesson here? How can I grow from this? You’re gonna start to see opportunities instead of obstacles. Alright, those questions are terrible. Why is this so hard? Well, you can come up with all kinds of ideas and reasons why it’s so hard.
But when you say, how can I grow from this? You can come up with lots of ideas there too. Focus on those questions. Those are much better questions. Number four, lean on your people. You don’t have to go through anything alone. Talk to your friends, your family, your coach, your running community. Sometimes just being seen and heard makes the wall feel less heavy and it it becomes something that you can get through and maybe you need help from others to lean into that.
Okay? Don’t, don’t neglect that. Number five, recommit to the process. The wall will test your commitment. It’s like, how bad do you want? This is what it’s saying to you, okay? Reconnect to your why. Why are you doing what you’re doing? Remember what you’re fighting for. Okay? And then number six, take the next step.
Don’t worry about the whole wall, just take the next step and then the next one, then the next one, then that’s how you get through it. One small, messy, but brave step at a time. That’s what’s gonna get you there. Okay. And I get it. Sometimes the wall just feels too big, it’s too painful, it’s too much. And there are things that happen in life when you hit wall after wall, you just don’t have the strength to go again.
And I get that. And if that’s you. Hear me when I say this. You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You are being refined in fire. Sometimes the wall doesn’t move because you’re not ready yet. You’re still becoming the person who can move it, who can push through it. Don’t rush this process. Sit with it, learn from it.
Let it change you. And when you’re ready, when you’ve built the strength, the courage, the faith, that wall that once felt impossible will start to crumble. This took me years and years and years when I wanted to quit drinking. I knew I had a problem with alcohol. It was too big, it was too painful. It was too much.
I couldn’t do it. And it took me years and years and years to sit with it and learn from it. And eventually I had enough strength and courage and faith in myself to attack that and quit, you know? But it felt impossible at the time. It felt like there’s something I could never do. I had to sit with that one for years.
Hmm. When you finally do come out the other side though, something beautiful happens. You’re not the same person who, you know, walked into that wall on the other side of it, you’re stronger. Now, you’re wiser. You’re more grounded, more compassionate. The things that used to scare you, maybe they don’t so much anymore.
The thi things that used to break you or you know, you felt like they could break you. They don’t have that power over you anymore. Because you’ve been through the fire and you didn’t just survive, you transformed yourself in the process. And once you’ve gone through that, once you know you can do it again.
And then once you do it again, you know you can do it again. That’s where freedom, uh, really begins. That’s where your strength really comes into play. That’s where growth really happens. Circling back to Ryan Holiday’s book, the Obstacle is the Way. It’s not just a catchy quote, it’s literally a roadmap for life.
So whatever’s in your way right now, whatever wall you’re facing, it’s not blocking your path. That is your path. It’s the training ground for your soul. Every wall you face prepares you for the next one, and every obstacle builds the strength that you’re gonna need later. And when you start to see life that way, life really changes for you.
You stop dreading hard things. You start welcoming these hard things as opportunities to evolve. Now, we don’t wish these things on ourselves. We don’t wish for, you know, these huge obstacles to show up in our lives. But when they do, you’re not as afraid of them. You realize that the wall isn’t, you know, punishment.
It’s how you build your purpose. Okay. Now, a lot of you, uh, are, are runners and I want to talk a little bit about running here because. What it’s like to hit the wall. Uh, physically, we understand that as runners, right? You, you get that fatigue, that moment where you can’t just, you can’t go another step, but you do anyway.
You dig deep, you find something inside of you, something primal, something fierce that refuses to quit. Well, that same spirit and strength that’s inside you when you’re running and you want to quit, but you keep going. That’s what you need to tap into when life gets hard, when everything starts to fall apart, when you’re tired and broken and scared.
That same, you know, runner’s heart that got you across the finish line, that’s what you need to tap into. You just have to remember that that’s there and it’s available to you. And you’ve done this before and you can do it again. So if you’re standing and, and staring at your wall right now. Maybe it’s a health challenge or a relationship, or your job or your training.
I want you to know this. This moment is not the end. It’s the middle. It’s, it’s the part of the story where everything starts to change for you, but you can’t run from it. You can’t numb yourself to it. You can’t pretend it’s not there. You have to face it and feel it and then move through it. ’cause on the other side of that wall, that’s where freedom is.
And power and peace, and you will make it through this. You always do a hundred percent track record so far of getting through tough stuff. And if any of this spoke to you in this episode, if you’re in the middle of your own wall right now and you want help getting through it, that’s what I do every day as a coach.
I help runners get unstuck physically, mentally, emotionally, so they can do hard things. Lose weight, get stronger, become the best versions of themselves. If you’re ready to break through your wall, just go to running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, and we can do it together. That’s all I got for you today.
Keep on running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
This week marks a huge milestone for the podcast — episode 300! To celebrate, I’m sharing something very special: 20 Principles to Help You Get Leaner, Get Stronger, Run Better, and Live …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner sports nutritionist, master life coach, and weight loss coach. For runners, I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought Possible. This is running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 300 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, 20 principles to help you get leaner, get stronger, run better, and live longer. This week is a huge milestone for the podcast episode 300. So to celebrate, I’m doing something a little bit different.
I’m sharing 20 principles to help you get leaner, stronger, run better, live longer. After nearly six years and 300 episodes, I’ve covered just about everything from fat burning nutrition to strength training, endurance building, mastering your mindset. But the truth is. All of this boils down to a handful of timeless principles.
These aren’t quick fixes. They’re not hacks. They aren’t they, they are the core truths that every runner needs to live by. These are the principles that will guide you to becoming the strongest, leanest, most resilient version of yourself. And to keep you running well for life. So in honor of episode 300, I’m just laying it all out there for you.
Um, I hope you enjoy this. And listen, if you’ve been struggling with your running, with your body, with your health, I want you to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Running doesn’t need to feel like a constant battle. Food doesn’t have to feel like, uh, confusing or, or feel like, uh, you’re being deprived all the time.
Strength training doesn’t have to be overwhelming. If you don’t have, you don’t have to keep spinning your wheels hoping that things will magically get better. What you need is a proven plan. You need the right support. You need someone in your corner to help you stay on track. That’s exactly what I do every single day with my coaching clients.
We work together to build a strong nutritional foundation. We develop a strength program that actually makes you a better runner, and then we master the mindset it takes to stay consistent with all this stuff for life. If you’re ready to finally transform into Lina’s strongest, most confident version of yourself, let’s go.
Just head over to my website running lean coaching.com and click on work with me. Alright, let’s get into this. Like I said. I’ve covered a ton of ground over the last 300 episodes. I was looking over my list of topics and oh my gosh, there’s so much I have covered on topics of nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset.
But what I’m sharing with you today are the. The big takeaways, the truths that have stood the test of time, truths, that’s hard to say. The truths that have stood the test of time. Think of these as the guiding principles that kind of tie everything together. Um, if you’ve ever like listened to the podcast and you thought, well, what matters most?
What should I really focus on? Well. This is it. Okay, so in honor of hitting this big milestone, here are my 20 principles to help you get leaner, get stronger, run better, and live longer. 20 principles that I believe every runner should live by. And the first one we’re just gonna get right into this, is to eat real food.
Everything really starts here. Real whole food fuels your body the way nature intended. If it comes in a box or a bag, or it has a barcode, or it has a lot of ingredients, I would question it. It doesn’t mean you, you shouldn’t eat it necessarily, but question it. Stick to food that still looks like food.
Food that is nutrient rich. Food that is, uh, in its natural form. You know, I’ve mentioned this in the past where there are some things where I think it’s okay to, to have some lightly processed food. Like I, I buy some frozen broccoli. That is in a bag that has been cut up. You know, if you’ve ever like cut a bunch of fresh broccoli, do you know how messy that is?
The little teeny broccoli pieces get everywhere. It’s ridiculous. So to me that’s like, yes, it is processed food, but guess what? There’s one ingredient in there, it’s broccoli. Somebody else cut it for me and. Froze it so that all I gotta do is cook it. You know, I don’t have to throw anything away so I’m not wasting anything.
Um, so that’s an example of a processed food that I am on board with. Okay? But look at the food that you’re eating. Make sure it is minimally or not processed at all. That’s kind of your, your best bet. Eat food still looks like. The food that it’s supposed to be. You know, number two, fat burning is your superpower.
So teaching your body to burn fat efficiently gives you steady energy. It improves your endurance as a runner. It makes it much easier to lose weight or manage your weight. Fat burning should be the focus. It should be your superpower. And when I talk about fat burning, I don’t mean that you’re gonna, you know, you gotta be on some kind of like ketogenic diet for the rest of your life or something like that.
We’re talking about being metabolically flexible. That means that. You have developed the ability to burn fat and carbohydrates equally Well, most people, they just don’t get into that fat burning zone very well. They don’t teach their body how to burn fat effectively. And so if you’re an endurance athlete, you’re sort of losing, uh, an edge.
You, you’re not using a tool that is available to you. So get good at fat burning. It really is a superpower. Number three, strength is not optional. Running alone will not make you strong. In fact, running is catabolic. It breaks down muscle tissue, especially long distance running. So in order to preserve muscle tissue, in order to preserve your strength, you need to be actively building muscle lifting.
Weights lifting heavy weights. This will build muscle. Eating enough protein. This will help you build muscle. Having more muscle means you’re gonna be, uh, you, you are at less risk of, of injury. You are more metabolically, uh, astute. In other words, like your body is better at metabolizing calories in general, you’re better at burning fat.
Um, you just burn more calories. When you have more muscle. Um, it’ll make you a. A faster runner, you’ll have more power. It’ll improve your endurance because it takes strong muscles longer to fatigue than weak muscles. Uh, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be building muscle. So strength is not optional.
Make it something that you do as part of your weekly training. Number four, you can’t outrun a crappy diet. No amount of miles is going to undo, you know, uh, decades of poor food choices, right? Nutrition is the foundation of fat loss. It’s the foundation of your performance as a runner when you are eating a really crappy diet.
You are putting your body in a state of stress. You’re putting your body in a state of inflammation and running just makes that worse. It actually creates more stress and more inflammation on your body. And so that is like a bad combination right there. So instead of just trying to run more and outrun all this crap that you’re eating.
It’s much better to change the diet, eat real food, stick to, you know, a, a, a diet that is low in sugar, you know, that is low in processed food, uh, that is low in hyper palatable food. And then you’re gonna be burning more fat. You’re going, when you are running, you’re, you’re going to burn more fat. You’re not going to be just burning off a bunch of junk and that.
Uh, diet is gonna have such a bigger impact on your overall metabolism and your weight and, and whether or not you are, you know, burning fat or burning sugar. But just trying to outrun poor food choices is not, it’s not gonna work. I talk to people every single day who tell me they’re running more, they’re gaining weight, ’cause their diet kind of sucks.
Fix the diet. Okay. Number five, discipline beats motivation every single time. Motivation is one of those things that comes and goes. You know, you might feel motivated because you, uh, you know, read a story about someone that did something hard or you, uh, got motivated because it’s a new year and you feel motivated to, to join a gym.
Okay. What happens after a couple of months of that though, uh, that motivation fades. Um, and this happens with a lot of people I work with too, who at the beginning of the process, they feel very motivated. They’re doing great, they’re staying on track, everything’s going well, and they start to lose a little bit of that motivation.
And so we have to, you know, reel ’em back in. We do a few things and we get, you know, get people to, to get back on track again. And one of the things we do is, is focus on discipline. Instead of trying to focus on just motivation. ’cause motivation might get you started, but it’s not gonna keep you going.
Motivation might get you started. Discipline is what keeps you going. Discipline is what keeps you moving forward. Long after the motivation fades away. So be disciplined. You’re not gonna feel like you’re not gonna be motivated. You’re not gonna feel like running. You know, some morning you wake up, it’s raining, it’s cold.
But if you’re a disciplined person, you’re gonna get outta bed. You’re gonna put on your running shoes, you’re gonna go do it no matter what. So be disciplined. It’s gonna be motivation every single time. Number six, consistency over perfection. You do not have to do these things perfect to succeed. Even the the 20 principles I’m talking about today, you are not gonna do these perfectly.
I guarantee that I work with God. I’ve worked with like a, a right around 500, uh, different runners and not one of them has done this perfectly. You just have to be consistent. You, you do need consistency. You need consistency over weeks, over months, and over years. You can’t just be consistent for a few days.
Like that’s not gonna be enough, but thinking that you do it perfectly or you’re not gonna do it at all, I’ve heard that from people. Well, if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m just not gonna start. I’m just not gonna do it. And that’s just kind of dumb thinking because nobody does it perfectly. So if you think that you have to do things 100% perfectly, or you’re just not gonna do them, you’re not gonna be doing a whole lot of stuff.
I promise you. So instead, try for consistency. Be consistent. If you are doing the right things, sticking to your plan, getting your workouts in, eating right 90% of the time, that means you have this 10% like wiggle room where you can just sort of. Wing it. I promise you, you’re gonna make a ton of progress over time, okay?
But we can’t expect to be perfect. Uh, ’cause it’s just not reality. Alright? So be consistent. Number seven. Let’s see. Rest and recovery are part of your training. Hard work breaks you down. Recovery is what makes you stronger. Don’t treat rest like an afterthought. You don’t gain muscle at the gym. You gain muscle while you’re sleeping.
You don’t improve your cardiovascular system while you’re out there, you know, running sprints. You, you do that when you’re at rest. You have to include rest and recovery in your training program. It just has to be part of your training plan. If it isn’t, put it in there. I know it’s hard. It’s hard to take a rest day.
Um. But I hear from runners all the time who are like, oh, you know, gosh, I was really burnt out and tired. I just felt exhausted, but I went and did this workout anyway. And I’m like, well, don’t do that. That is not going to help. You’re just like breaking yourself down even more when you do that. But we think we’ve been taught that like that’s what you need to do if you want to be a.
Badass. You gotta go run, even if you feel like crap, you know, even if you can’t even get outta bed, you’re so tired. But you gotta get up and, you know, do that anyway. Now, I think there’s plenty of days where if you’re just not feeling it, you need to just take a rest day. Okay? Uh, now if you’re, if you’re formulating your training properly, if you’re following a good diet, if you’re getting rest and recovery, you’re getting good sleep and things like that, you shouldn’t be burning yourself out anyway.
Um, but we do go through phases like that where we do get a little exhausted, and it’s okay to just take a, take a beat. You do not have to get out there and kill yourself. Like if you end up in the, in the, um, emergency room, uh, that is not a win. That is not a win. Okay? Number eight. Progress is never linear.
The scale’s gonna go up and down. Running is gonna feel hard sometimes, uh, setbacks are going to happen. You need to just stay the course ’cause your results will follow as long as you are persistent. I have seen so many people get frustrated anytime the scale goes up. Guess what though? The scale’s gonna go up and down, up and down, up and down from now until the rest of your life.
Like it’s just always going to happen that way. I’ve never seen anybody lose weight from day one to day 90 or whatever. Just perfectly like straight down like it. It’s always up and down. It always is. I’ve never seen anybody who’s improved their running. You know, do it perfectly where it just kept getting better and better and better and better.
There’s lots of days, weeks, sometimes that kind of suck and you’re running sufferers and you don’t do that well. Plenty of races where you don’t PR Progress is never linear. It is. It is wonky, you know. Instead go back to the principle of being consistent. Um, because instead of thinking that progress is going to be in some perfectly straight line, just.
Stick to the principles, do what you need to do each day, and progress will happen as long as you don’t quit. You’ll get there eventually. Allow the up and downs to be there. It’s part of the process. Okay? Um, don’t get frustrated by the ups and downs. It’s just part of it. Uh, number nine, zone two builds your engine slow, easy.
Miles are the foundation of endurance. They teach your body to to go longer, to recover faster, to burn fat efficiently. Um. You do not need to kill yourself every single time you go out there and run. In order to build a strong aerobic engine, you need to do a lot of slow running, slow, easy miles. So don’t be afraid to get out there and do some of that.
Now, I also think, uh, doing some very fast running is also. Equally as important. Um, hit type of training, high intensity, uh, intervals, uh, stuff like 32nd sprints, you know, uh, 400 repeats, stuff like that. That’s gonna build your VO two max, it’s going to improve your lactate threshold. Um, running will just feel easier, but also that zone two running is gonna help to build your endurance and, and help to create, uh, uh, a a running body that can run longer.
And this part is important too, is like you recover faster as well because you’re not putting so much stress on the systems every time you go out there and run. So if you’re one of those people that goes out there and runs kind of hard every single time, take it, take it easy, slow it down a little bit.
We want, you know, about 80% of our running should be done in that conversational pace. Slow, easy miles. This is your foundation. Uh, if you want to create more endurance, number 10. Comfort zones kill growth. So the magic always happens when you get outside of your comfort zone. You need to get. Used to being uncomfortable because that’s where you actually make change.
That’s when you grow, that’s when you change, that’s when you transform, that’s when you evolve. You’re not gonna change and evolve and grow inside your comfort zone. ’cause that is by definition the things that you’re comfortable with in order to grow. You need to get out of your comfort zone, everything that you want, but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone.
So get out there in order to accomplish more. You can’t really grow just by sitting on the couch and watching Netflix. Like if you really want to become a better runner, you gotta get uncomfortable. You gotta do the speed work, you gotta do the, the slow easy miles, you gotta do the strength training, you gotta get good rest.
Like you gotta do those things that. May you’re not used to doing, they’re not comfortable for you. Get out of your comfort zone because that’s where all the good stuff is. That’s where the magic happens. Okay? Number 11, muscle is your metabolic currency. The more lean muscle you carry, the higher your metabolism, the stronger your your running is going to be, the longer you’re going to live and thrive.
Muscle is so important. You just have to make that a priority in your training is strength training and building muscle. It helps you to maintain your weight much easier. Um, if you did no other exercise other than some sort of resistance training. You know, and when I talk about resistance training, I’m talking about lifting heavy things, heavy weights.
Uh, if that’s the only type of exercise you did. Awesome. That, that’s probably the best thing that you can do for yourself. It helps in so many ways. Just understand that you’re, you’re improving your metabolism, you’re improving your running economy. Uh, you’re improving the length of your life. You need to carry.
We all need to carry more skeletal muscle. This is like one of the best things you can do for yourself. Make this one of your life’s goals is to build muscle. Okay? Number 12. You wanna fuel performance without sabotaging your fat loss. So food is both fuel and medicine. You know, if you use it wisely, you can support endurance, you can support recovery without derailing your, uh, fat loss gains, you know.
I talk a lot about using, uh, fuel, especially carbs for running because I think it is important that we use carbs for running. Um, but there’s ways you can do it that don’t sabotage your goals of losing fat. You know, if you’re, if your goal is to become a efficient fat burner, get yourself fat adapted, get your body really good at burning fat, and then we use fuels strategically in order to.
Help improve our running performance. That does not mean that you just go eating a bunch of pasta and donuts and, you know, drinking sugary sodas and things like that because you need it as, as fuel for running. No, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about using Whole Foods. Good sources of carbs like sweet potatoes and rice and oats to help improve our glycogen stores to help improve our running performance and not, you know, sabotage our fat loss.
You know, we wanna make sure we’re maintaining, um, uh, fat loss while we are. Also improving our, uh, performance as a runner, right? And you do that by using carbs around workouts and not just doing the all carbs all the time. Diet, like a lot of runners do. Number 13, identity drives behavior. So. Um, your identity is who you are at your core.
You know, that’s like anything you say after the words. I am like, I am a father, I am a brother. I am a runner. I am an entrepreneur. Like, these are things that I. Would consider part of who I am at my core. This is who I am, this is my identity. Um, you want to become the kind of athlete who eats like an athlete, who trains like an athlete who stays lean for life.
Um, these are things that when they become part of your identity, um, do staying on track with these things is a no-brainer. When you say things like, I’m just trying to, to lose some weight, so I’m gonna go on a diet, what you’re basically doing is like. Making it a short term, uh, set of tactics. You know, you’re basically saying like, I’m gonna change my behavior for a short period of time in order to get these results.
Okay, that’s fine. And that can work sometimes. But instead of trying to change the behavior, you know, change who you are at your core. I’m the kind of person who. Um, eats clean all the time. I train smart all the time. I stay lean all the time when that is your identity, the behavior. Comes automatically when you’re the kind of person who, uh, if you’re an athlete and you eat like an athlete, you live like an athlete, you train like an athlete, then making a decision about whether you should eat, uh, a whole sleeve of Oreos.
It’s a no brainer. Like you’re not gonna do that because that’s not who you are at your core. So identity drives behavior. I want you to remember this one, ’cause this is a big one. Stop trying to change the behavior. Start trying to, and instead, change who you are at your core. That’s going to, that’s gonna dictate the behavior.
Um, it’s gonna be a, a, an automatic, that identity shift is the big domino where everything else falls after that. Okay. Okay. That was 13 number 14, stop negotiating with yourself. Every time you argue with yourself about whether you should do this workout, or do this run, or whether you should stick to the food plan that you put together for yourself.
You are just sabotaging yourself. Make decisions ahead of time and then stick to those decisions. Stop doing this. Negotiating with yourself where you’re like, well, let’s see. I. You know, I, I ran 10 miles this week and, you know, I’ve been really good. Like you, you try to, um, justify bad behavior. Have you ever done that before?
We all have. We all do this. But just stop doing that. Stop doing this negotiating thing where you’re trying to justify, uh, terrible behaviors, and instead just stick to the plan. You make a plan for yourself. You’ve made a decision. Don’t question the decision. Don’t question that plan. Stick to it. Follow through with it.
If you wanted a cookie on your plan, put it on your plan. Which is fine. If you wanna put a glass of wine on your plan for Friday night, put it on your plan. I would much rather you did that than just drink because other people were drinking and you felt compelled to do it, or you felt like there was pressure on you to do it.
I want you to be in charge of your decisions. I want you to be in charge of, um, the, the decisions that you make around food and around training. Um. And around your own health, you know? And so when you make decisions about what you wanna do, stick to those decisions, right? Don’t question the decision once you make it.
Decide ahead of time and then follow through, decide ahead of time, and then follow through. Just keep doing that on repeat, and I promise you you’re gonna be so much happier. You build trust and confidence in yourself. When you do this. You make tons of progress. Yeah. You’re just, you’re gonna be a completely different person.
So stop negotiating and, and stop questioning your decisions. Um, do what you say you’re gonna do. Be a person of integrity. Okay? Uh, number 15, self-compassion without excuses. So. Beating yourself up does not help. Okay. But neither does letting yourself off the hook. So true. Compassion is really accountability, uh, with love.
That means that you let, let’s say you, you binged and you ate all those Oreos, okay? Do not beat yourself up about that because the, the damage is done right. You ate a bunch of Oreos, they’re not good for you. You’re probably not gonna feel good. It might affect your sleep, it might affect your running the next day.
I don’t know, you’re just, you’re probably not gonna feel good. You’re probably gonna gain a couple of pounds of weight since you, you know, all those carbs, all that sugar comes with a lot of water weight as well. Don’t beat yourself up then, because then all you’re doing is just, you know, making it even worse.
You’re taking this al you’re already gonna feel bad. Um, and then you beat yourself up because you did something you didn’t want to do. Um, but also don’t just let yourself off the hook and go, well, you know, that’s just who I am. I just do that sometimes. Now, be accountable to yourself. Be a person of integrity.
Have some compassion with yourself, but don’t make excuses for yourself when you fall off the wagon. Acknowledge that. Accept it. Learn from it and then move on. Do not dwell in it. Do not go down that rabbit hole of just, I’m a terrible person. I can’t do this. Look, I just keep blowing it. You’re gonna fail.
You’re gonna fail a lot of times, and that’s okay. This is part of the process. There’s no such thing as success without failure. You gotta fail your way to succeed. And it sounds counterintuitive, but it is true. So accept the fact that you’re gonna fail. Be okay with that. Fail, learn from it and move on.
Don’t beat yourself up, doesn’t do you any good. Uh, number 16, we’re, we’re training for the long game, not just the next race. So the goal isn’t to crush one race, it’s to be a strong, healthy runner. For decades to come. So think bigger. Okay? This isn’t about just, oh, I, I just need to get, you know, uh, do some strength training until after this race.
Or I just need to eat right until I’m done with this race. No, think bigger. This is about the long game. This is about, you know, being healthy, being fit, uh, being lean, being strong for good. You know, and it’s just not about, you know, running a race. I can’t tell you how many people come to me because they want help getting leaner and getting stronger because they have a race coming up.
And then after the race, you know, maybe we stop working together and they kind of go back to what they were doing before. Not everybody, but some people do this. I don’t think this is healthy for you. I think it’s better to just maintain what you got rather than. Stopping and starting, you know, during race season, you, you eat one way, you train one way, and then, uh, in the off season you go completely off the rails.
Don’t do that, okay? Think about the bigger picture here. Number 17, mindset is everything. Your thoughts really do create your results. If you don’t believe you can do something, you will not be able to do that thing. You gotta master your mind and your body will follow whatever you’re thinking is going to become true for you.
If you think that you can’t do it, you won’t. If you think it is too hard, it will be. If you think you’re super slow and you’ll never get. Faster. You won’t. If you think you can’t lose weight, you won’t. I promise you. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your ability to change because we can all change.
Change is one of those things that is sounds funny, but change is constant. You know, the one thing that is constant is the universe, is that everything is changing. So understand that you may have been doing the same things for the last. Few decades, but that doesn’t mean you have to continue doing those things going forward.
And so changing your mindset around that. Well, it’s not like turning off a, a light switch where you can’t just flip it off and then now, oh, I’m good. You know, now my mindset is much better. No, you gotta practice this. But start working on it today. Start work working on mastering your mindset and your body, your results, your weight, your running performance will follow in kind.
Um, your most prevalent thoughts become your reality. And if you’re constantly thinking negative thoughts, especially about yourself, how do you think? Your reality is going to be, it’s not gonna be good, I promise you. Number 18, data instead of drama. So use facts, not feelings to guide your decisions. The scale, the miles, the amount of of weight you lift, they tell a very clear story rather than, you know, an emotion that you have.
You know, ’cause we get emotional about stuff. We, we do, we all do. We feel like I’m a failure because I can’t do this and this is too hard for me. And, and you get frustrated. Um, all these things are. N normal emotions, and we do feel these things, and that is perfectly fine to feel emotions, but it’s not who you are.
I can’t tell you how many people tell me, we’ll get on a coaching call and they’ll say, oh, I’ve just had the worst week. And very dramatic. Okay. And I say, oh my gosh, I am so sorry. Tell me what happened. And, and we boil it down to, you know, there was this one, one, you know, couple hours of this one day where they were, you know, really busy with work or, you know, maybe something happened to one of their kids or something.
And then there was this one other thing where they didn’t have a very good run. I’m like, oh, okay. So it was like, just those two things. Um, totaling about, you know, an hour and a half out of, you know, however many hours there are in a whole week. Anyway, we, we get dramatic about this stuff. We overdramatize, right?
Just stop doing that. Look at, look at facts, look at data. Um, people will say, this isn’t working, and we’ll look at, you know, where are you today? Oh, I’ve lost all this weight from when we started. Um. They’ve, uh, lost inches. They’ve gained muscle. They’re faster. Their, um, VO two max has gone up. Like we look at data and they’re like, oh, well, maybe I’m doing okay.
Like, yeah, you’re doing okay. I encourage people to do body composition measurements instead of just looking at the scale every day, because sometimes there’s a lot going on under. The covers, so to speak, inside your body that you’re not aware of. You’re burning fat, you’re gaining muscle. Um, and the scale won’t really reflect that.
The scale will just say like, oh, you’re just staying the same. Oh, I’m so frustrated. I’m not losing any weight. Well, you’re losing fat and gaining muscle. Amazing. Okay? But the scale’s gonna say that, you know, you’re just staying the same. Um, but look at the data, right? Let’s not get dramatic about all this stuff.
Fo focus on. You know, are, are you improving your VO two max? Are you improving your endurance? Are you improving your cardiovascular system? You know, are you, are you losing fat? Like these things are important to look at. Okay, where are we at number 19 run, because you get to. Not because you have to.
Running is a privilege. It’s not a punishment. When you approach running with gratitude, everything begins to shift for you. I’ve talked about this before where you know we run because we love. Running and running makes us feel alive and it helps us in so many ways. It helps us to, you know, release endorphins and oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin, and those are all feel good hormones.
And when we feel good, you know, we’re in a better mood. We have less depression. We have less stress in our lives. Um, running is amazing and we get to do it, you know, we’re healthy and we get to run. Isn’t that amazing when you feel like you have to run because you’re trying to, you know, outrun your bad diet?
That feels like punishment. That feels terrible and it feels like it is just gonna be hard. Yeah. And that, that’s not a good place to be, you know? Um, some sports use running as a punishment. I get that. Like, you know, my kids used to play, you know, whatever PB football and they would make the kids run as a punishment and, um.
It is so funny, especially when you see these little like kindergartners, first graders and they’re full football pads and helmets and they’re running and it’s just hilarious. They hate it so much. Um, but a lot of sports use running as a punishment. We, we do it because we love it. I we’re weird. You know, I, I always talk about running, being.
Uh, like 90% mental, uh, ’cause you gotta be like 90% mental to run the way that we do. You know? But approach running with gratitude. Have gratitude that you can run and that you get to do this and you get to move your body. And doesn’t it feel good to do that? Yeah. And it’s like, you know, uh, instead of taking SSRIs, you know, maybe running is the answer.
You know, for a lot of people, I know a lot of people, um, exercise and they run and, and they don’t need to be on some of those, uh, uh, you know, uh, drugs for, uh, depression and things like that. So enjoy running, be grateful. And then number 20, uh, the pri, you know, with all these principles and everything, kind of the biggest thing here is that we want to keep running lean for life.
Like this isn’t a diet, this isn’t a phase. We’re not on some 12 week plan. All these things I’m talking about, this is a way of living. I want you to adopt a way of living that keeps you lean, that keeps you strong, that keeps you. Thriving. That keeps you feeling good about yourself. And if you adopt this identity, like we talked about before, of, of an athlete, of a healthy human being, of a, uh, running badass, then that’s how you’re going to live your life.
And that’s the most important thing. You know, it’s not just about living long, like I, I I wanna live a long life, but I want. The length of my life, uh, to match the quality of my life. I wanna have a quality of life for as long as I can. Uh, you know, I just don’t want to be like, laid up in some bed with a bunch of tubes connected to me.
Just that’s not quality of life. Quality of life is I can still ambulate, I can still get up and walk around and lift some weights and, you know, uh, exercise and do all the things that I want to do. I don’t wanna be, um, an invalid when I get older, you know, I don’t want to have to like be committed to some old folks’ home or something like that, you know, because I can’t take care of myself.
No, I want, I want my mind to be clear, and I want my body to be strong. That’s what I want for myself, and that’s what I want for you too. I want you to keep on running Lean for Life. Okay. Alright, so that’s my 20 principles and a wrap on episode 300. That’s sort of crazy when I think about it. ’cause I look back on the last almost six years I started this podcast.
In, uh, December of, um, 20 19, 1 thing has been very clear to me that this podcast is not about me. It’s about you. You know, I show up here every week to share ideas. That I want the, these ideas to help you to change your health, to become stronger and, and to improve your fitness, uh, maybe improve your life.
And I get feedback from people all the time that say, just listening to your podcast has changed my life. And I love getting messages like that. From people. So thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show and being a part of the Running Lean community. None of this would exist without you.
I do this every week. I show up every week. This is a lot of work to put together a podcast every week. I do it every week because of you. Um, and if there’s one thing you know, I want you to. Take away from, especially from today’s episode, is that these 20 principles aren’t just theory. They are meant to be lived.
So put them into practice. Do these things day after day, I promise you, you’ll become leaner and stronger and faster. You’ll also live a better life, a longer life, a more vibrant life. Okay? That’s what I really want for you, and thank you again for being a part of this. Um, couldn’t do without you. That’s all I got for you today.
Love you all. Keep on running lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
