Nutrition Archives - Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

123. Back to Basics: Eating Real Food

May 6, 2022 By Patrick McGilvray

I’ve taught a lot of nutrition and mindset concepts over the last two and a half years of doing this podcast, and some of these topics are worth a revisit. Either because I’ve discovered new …

Continue Reading about 123. Back to Basics: Eating Real Food →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 123 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Back to Basics Eating Real Food. I’ve talked a lot about nutrition and mindset over the last two and a half years of doing this podcast. And some of these topics are worth a revisit, either because I’ve discovered new information about the topic and I want to share that with you.

Or because it’s just so important, it’s worth another look. So over the next several weeks, I’m going to be sprinkling in some of these back to basics episodes to share new and improved info, and then revisit some of the key concepts for weight loss and sports nutrition for runners. And today’s topic, eating real food falls into both categories.

So I’ve learned a lot since first talking about eating real food. And it’s also one of the most important things you can do to improve your overall health and fitness. So it absolutely deserves another look. And eating real food is a simple concept. But it looks a little different for everyone.

If you’re a runner, and you’re interested in making a change in your eating habits so that you can lose weight while also supporting your running goals, then I want to invite you to join the Running Lean coaching project. This is my immersive coaching program that includes group coaching one-on-one coaching with me, you get all the knowledge, support and accountability that you need to learn what to do to learn how to do it, and to help you stay on track.

Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, you will fill out a short application, schedule a Zoom call with me. And we’ll talk about your goals and see if coaching is a good fit for you. I would love to help you learn how to eat real food, lose the weight without all the frustration and learn how to build good habits that last for life.

If you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and sustainable results, then you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started down. All right back to basics, eating real food.

So I’m just gonna jump in and talk about why I teach this concept. And the really the first reason why I talk about eating real food is that there’s something really wrong with the standard American diet. Alright. So for millions of years as humans, we did really well, you know, eating real food was just something we did naturally.

But then pretty recently, we screwed it all up, all right? The standard American diet is based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it was created back in the late 70s. It was like 1977, I believe, I think they published it in like 1980. But they basically told us that we should all be eating a very high carbohydrate diet, like upwards of 65% of your calories should be coming from carbohydrates. And low fat, like fat is bad. They just decided this right?

And immediately upon implementing these guidelines, the health of this country began to decline. So why did they make this change? Well, there was this guy named Ancel Keys. And he was a researcher and a doctor. And back in the 50s, he proposed this idea. It was called The Diet Heart Hypothesis. And it was an idea that eating fat would cause people to die of heart attacks. So he did all these studies. And he did. He published a study called The Seven Countries Study.

And the interesting thing about this study is actually there were 22 countries involved, but he just cherry picked the seven that kind of fit with his idea of what he wanted the results to be and he only published the seven countries that that kind of supported his claims. Anyway, none of the stuff that he proposed in this study have actually been proven.

In fact, a lot of it has been disproven over the years. A lot of the stuff that he proposed in this Diet Heart Hypothesis has been disproven yet. We changed our dietary guidelines back in 1977/1980 and we’ve changed everything, this has affected everything. It still does today, the guidelines that they produce and they haven’t changed much over the last 50 years or whatever.

But these guidelines have a profound effect on all areas of our lives. So all school lunch programs are being generated based on those guidelines. Right now, 19% of school aged kids are obese. This is a problem. All military rations, all mess hall food and military is dictated by the guidelines. 7% of our troops are obese.

All the special nutrition programs for women, infants and children like WIC are being determined by the guidelines. 15% of toddlers and WIC are obese toddlers, all hospital food is dictated by the guidelines. Food Programs for the elderly are being dictated by the guidelines. Life expectancy in the elderly is going down.

There’s more Alzheimer’s disease, more diabetes, more cancer. These things are rampant among the elderly. And they’re all diet and lifestyle caused diseases. Agricultural production is dictated by those guidelines. It’s simplified, it’s incentivizing farmers to produce more and more cheap carbohydrates like soybeans, wheat and corn.

Those are like the main things that we produce here in this country. And then of course, the food industry uses the guidelines too, so they produce more garbage food that’s loaded with things like vegetable oil, right? And high fructose corn syrup and all this junk. So all these things I just mentioned, they all are using those guidelines to produce, you know, the foods that we eat, and the guidelines are just wrong. They don’t work.

Since implementing the guidelines in ‘80, 88% of Americans are today considered metabolically unhealthy meaning they’re overweight, they’re obese, their insulin resistant they have diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and on and on, only 12% of us are considered healthy. This is wrong. This does not work.

“For the first time in history, we had a government telling us what to eat.” This is a quote from Ben Bikman. He’s a PhD, a Utah professor and a leading metabolic scientist and he says, “For the first time, we have a government telling us what to eat, encouraging us to eat far more refined carbohydrates, and much less healthy fats and proteins and our weight, and our health has only suffered for it.”

The results on the nation’s health and weight have been dire since the government first set dietary guidelines in 1977. The food industry has completely shifted the types of foods they produce to our overall detriment. According to the CDC, the weight of the average adult American today is nearly 30 pounds more than that of the average adult American in 1977.

This is a problem. What are we doing? There’s all sorts of issues and diseases related to eating this particular diet too, by the way. Obesity rates have more than tripled in the US because we’re following the guidelines. We have a diabetes epidemic. 14 different types of cancer have been related to diet, including breast cancer, colorectal cancer.

Alzheimer’s disease is diet related. They call it type three diabetes, PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, is diet related. All of these issues are mostly caused by you know too much insulin in the bud. And that’s called hyperinsulinemia. And how do you get too much insulin in the blood? Eat a lot of carbohydrates and eat a lot of sugar. Right?

So the diet is wrong. It’s making us sicker, it’s making us fatter, and we need to get off of that. Do anything else do anything else, then what the dietary guidelines are telling you to do? Okay. And I don’t think I’ve talked about this, but they did a study a while back, and this was called The Pure Study.

And they did this over a 10 year period. And they did it from 2003 to 2013. And they followed over 135,000 people in 18 different countries. And they basically, you know, divided these people up based on their macronutrient intake and basically there were people who are eating high carbohydrate and lower fat, and then low carbohydrate, high fat.

And the conclusion basically is this: I’ll just read the conclusion to you. High carbohydrate intake was associated with a higher risk of total mortality body death. Whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke.

Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings. So that’s the conclusion from this study. The interesting part about that, I mean, the whole thing is fascinating to me, because basically they just disprove that Diet Heart Hypothesis right there, they’re saying fat has nothing to do with it.

In fact, the people with the high fat diet had lower risk of dying from all these diseases. And the saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke, meaning that the people who ate more saturated fat had less stroke than the other people. So that was really fascinating, right? That kind of blows all that out of the water, right?

Okay, so how does this affect you, as a runner? Aren’t runners just immune to all this stuff? Can’t runners just eat whatever we want? No, we cannot. Runners are humans too, in case you haven’t noticed, and lots of runners experience a lot of these health issues, weight gain, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type two diabetes, right?

There’s this phenomenon called TOFI. And this is someone who is thin on the outside, fat on the inside. And this is especially true with runners who look pretty lean on the outside. But on the inside, they might have a lot of visceral fat. And they might have developed something like type two diabetes, and no amount of running more is going to fix this right.

This is a diet related problem, a diet related disease. And one of the famous examples of this is Professor Tim Noakes, who wrote the book, The Lore of Running, and this guy is a total badass, right? He’s a researcher, he’s run over 70 marathons, but he ended up getting Type Two Diabetes. As a runner, he looked fine on the outside, but his doctor was like, you need to switch your diet.

It opened his eyes, he switched to a low carbohydrate diet. And now he coaches world class athletes on this low carb approach and this fat-adapted approach to running. And in his book, The Law of Running, he has a chapter on nutrition in there, which he advocates for the traditional high carbohydrate approach that, you know, you’ve probably heard of that most runners have heard of, right.

But he famously like, tore that chapter out of the book, because he just could no longer support that he’s like, I was wrong. I wrote this stuff about eating all the carbs. And it’s completely wrong. It’s bad for you, it’s killing us, we’ve got to stop doing it. Okay. So this whole low carb approach to running to sports nutrition, it’s no longer some weird fringe thing.

This is becoming more and more common. So the NASM, the National Association of Sports Nutrition, this is where I got my sports nutrition license. They used to teach the traditional high carb approach to nutrition for endurance activities running and such.

Several years ago, they made a big decision in that they couldn’t do that anymore, they’re going to move away from that high carb approach, and move to a more of a low carb fat adapted approach to sports nutrition. This is a bold move for this organization. But they could not in good conscience keep telling people, especially athletes to eat this crap diet, this diet that is literally killing us.

So they said we can’t do it, no more. And the funny thing is, is that this decision was not well received by everybody. Like there’s people who, you know, we’re following that traditional all carb approach to sports nutrition, and they wanted to get trained in this and wanted to get licensed in this approach. And they were not happy about this, but they just decided that this was what they had to do.

They couldn’t, you know, in good conscience, they couldn’t keep telling people to eat this garbage food anymore. Okay. And this is probably the biggest reason why I signed up with NASN is because they promote the low carb approach to sports nutrition, they understand the importance of being fat-adapted and how it’s not just good for for us as humans and to become the healthiest people that we can be.

But also, it’s great for endurance sports. And then there’s doctors like Stephen Finney and Jeff Bullock, who wrote the book on low carb sports nutrition called The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. And then there’s all these companies out there right now that are making nutrition products for low carb running like Mirror Energy, s fuels, you have Elemental Labs, and there are more companies coming on board all the time, they’re springing up all over the place.

Why? Because there’s a need. There are a lot of athletes like me and you who want to perform at our best without eating all the garbage. All those like nutrition food like substances like Clif Bars, I used to eat a lot of Clif bars back in the day when I was like doing the high carbohydrate thing. And I would eat a couple Clif Bars every day and I was like, well, this is healthy, you know?

And look at the ingredients, Clif Bars, these things are not good for you. In fact, I was on their website and I was like what is in a Clif Bar. And so I’m going to read you some of these ingredients: organic rolled oats, so that’s all carbs, organic brown rice syrup, sugar, soy rice crisps, which are made from soy protein isolate rice flour and barley, barley malt extract, which is a form of sugar. Organic roasted soybeans, organic tapioca syrup, that’s sugar, organic cane syrup, that’s sugar. Unsweetened chocolate, chicory fiber, soy flour, high oleic, sunflower oil, natural flavor, sea salt, cinnamon, there’s not a whole lot of nutrition in here.

Okay, this is a bunch of carbs. This one bar is 43 grams of carbohydrates, including 17 grams of sugar with 16 grams of added sugars. And only 10 grams of protein. So this is just a candy bar essentially, is what it is okay. And on their website, it says there’s like a FAQ section like frequently asked questions that says are Clif Bars good for you? And here’s their answer, “Clif Bar is the ultimate energy bar trusted for nearly 30 years by athletes and sports nutrition experts to get you started and help you keep going during long outings on the bike trail or slopes.” Notice how they don’t actually answer that question.

Because their lawyers probably were like, you can’t say that they’re not good for you. Right? So they kind of skirt that answer. But anyway, I’m just trying to tell you that instead of eating this, like processed garbage food, we need to be eating real food. And I’m gonna get into that in just a second. Okay, I’m gonna tell you what that means.

But we’ve evolved as humans to like, eat real food. We’ve thrived on eating real food for millions of years. And I just want to say that we’ve changed things recently, pretty recently, right? I mean, we’ve evolved as hunter gatherers, our diet was mostly animal based for hundreds of thousands of years. You know, we’re also omnivores, we can eat a lot of different foods. It doesn’t mean we should.

But for the most part, we were eating a diet of meat, tubers, fruit, not like the fruit we have today, honey, but there wasn’t broccoli. Broccoli didn’t come around until the 1700s. There wasn’t tomatoes, tomatoes didn’t come around until 700 ad. Even bread is a relatively recent thing, like refining grains that happened about 1000 years BC, so maybe about 10,000 years ago, right?

But in the grand scheme of things, two and a half million years of human evolution 10,000 years is not that much time. And prior to that, you know, we just didn’t need that stuff. You know, and if you look at the mummies of ancient Egyptians, they, you know, we can study the actual bodies, you know, because they’re, they’ve been preserved for the last few thousand years.

They have rotten teeth and distended bellies, and they’ve determined that this is from eating refined grains, a lot of refined grains, rotten teeth, distended bellies. Prior to that though, Paleolithic man, they found all these, you know, they didn’t find the bodies, but they found the skeletons and the skulls and they all have like perfect teeth.

So no refined grains, no tooth decay, you start eating this stuff, and it starts to be bad for you, right? The bottom line is that the refined grains are a problem, right? Alright, so what I mean when I say like, let’s eat real food. Let’s go back to eating real food. Real food is food that still looks like and it’s food that our ancestors would recognize.

So a Clif Bar does not fit into this description. Okay. So eating real food means you’re sticking with unrefined unprocessed food. Food that still looks like it’s supposed to look, if it’s a piece of salmon, it’s a piece of salmon. If it’s a sweet potato, it’s a sweet potato. If it’s broccoli, it’s broccoli. Not food that’s been ground up into powders or liquids, not food that’s been extracted from whole foods, but the actual food, okay.

I think it’s a good idea to stay away from most foods that come in packages. Most packaged food is basically processed food, okay, and I’m not anti packaged food, but most of it is highly processed. You just have to be careful, read the labels, right? Most processed food, most packaged food contains like the three worst things you can eat. I call this the Vile Triumvirate. Right?

It’s sugar, refined grains, and vegetable oil. If you stay away from packaged food, you’re not going to get any of that stuff. I promise you. Stick with whole foods, meat, fish, eggs, nuts, vegetables, fruit, natural fats, like olive oil, butter, some dairy like whole milk, Greek yogurt. Stay away from highly refined, highly processed food made with a million unpronounceable and unnatural ingredients. All right.

And then when I start talking about this, people get this idea in their head, and they’re like, isn’t this just like keto or low carb, high fat or paleo? And the short answer is like, no, it’s really none of those things. It’s similar. Paleo is pretty close. But even that isn’t quite right. Because here’s the thing. This is going to look different for each individual. And last week’s episode, I talked about this in depth, that’s episode 122.

Like we’re all different, we all have different goals. We all have different lifestyles, different food preferences, genetics, our metabolism, our culture, all that has to play a part in what you choose, as the diet that works best for you. Right? There’s not a one size fits all plan that’s going to work for everybody.

There just isn’t, there’s no such thing. And to be clear on this, this isn’t about eliminating a food group. This isn’t about eliminating carbohydrates, right? Or never eating a carb again, or anything like that. This is about shifting your body back to the way it’s supposed to function. The way that your body has been functioning beautifully, as humans for thousands or millions of years, right?

I think it’s ignorant to think that introducing all this processed food in the last like 60 to 100 years or so is not going to negatively impact our health it is it has, it’s a problem. So the best thing and simplest thing you can do for yourself right now is just eat real food, food that still looks like food, food our ancestors would recognize.

So what if you do this what happens when you start eating real food? Well, your body starts to function the way it’s supposed to. You know, the way that humans have been functioning for millions of years, hormones become balanced and regulated. You’re no longer hungry all the time. You’re getting all the nutrients your body actually needs. Things like insulin drop, like you stopped storing so much energy as fat, right?

You keep eating sugar, a lot of that sugar energy can’t be used right away. So your body stores it as fat. If you’re not eating that stuff, you’re not storing all this fat, you’re actually burning fat, your fat begins to be released from your fat cells and you begin to burn fat and you begin to lose weight.

You start sleeping better, you wake up feeling more rested. You have this steady supply of energy from burning fat, so you don’t have these afternoon crashes where you need that Starbucks Triple Shot, Caramel Macchiato with extra whip, just to get you through your workday. Right. So when you start eating real food, your body starts to function the way it’s supposed to.

So what about running? How does this affect your running? Or why would runners choose to eat this way? Well, one of the biggest benefits of eating this way is that you become really efficient at burning fat. And fat is an amazing fuel source for long distance running. And when you become fat adapted, this is a pretty amazing experience. Like if you’re into running and I know you are, then I suggest you try this. I can’t explain it.

Like you have to go and you know, try this for yourself and see how you feel. Now there are some misconceptions about what it means to be fat-adapted. So I want to explain this a little bit more. Being fat-adapted means you are training your body to burn fat very efficiently. And we all have a virtually unlimited supply of energy on our bodies at all times in the form of stored body fat.

Okay, now, I want to go back to our prehistoric man for a second because in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I came across this fascinating study in this article. And I just want to talk about what it means to be fat-adapted and how we have evolved to kind of, this is like our normal state of being okay.

So we are born runners, we are really good at running long distances. We’ve adapted to become these amazing long distance runners, right? Modern humans, and their immediate ancestors, like Homo erectus, have several adaptations that make humans instead of being some ferocious, furry fleet creature, the animals, the animal world’s best, we are the world’s best distance runners. Right?

Early humans, scavengers, ended up becoming persistence hunters. So we develop these long springy tendons in our legs and our feet that function like large elastics like rubber bands, right? They store energy, and then with each running stride, release it and this actually reduces the amount of energy it takes to take another step. There’s also other adaptations to keep our bodies stable as we run.

So we counterbalance each step with an arm swing, we have these large butts and these large buttock muscles that hold our bodies upright. And we have this elastic ligament in our neck to help keep our head steady. All of this stuff is designed to help us run very efficiently, right? Even the human waste, which is thinner and more flexible than that of our primate relatives, allows us to twist our upper bodies as we run to counterbalance the slightly off center. It forces exerted as we stride with each leg.

Okay, so once humans start running, it only takes a little bit more energy for us to run faster. Other animals, on the other hand, expend a ton of energy as they speed up, particularly when they switch from a trot to a gallop, which most animals cannot maintain over long distances, right?

Those adaptations make humans and our ancestors better runners, it’s our ability to run in the heat that may have made the real difference in our ability to procure game. So humans have several adaptations that help us dump the amount of heat that we generate when we’re running. These adaptations include being hairless, virtually, some of us more than others, our ability to sweat, the fact that we breathe through our mouths when we run, it allows us to take bigger breaths, and helps us to dump heat.

And we can run in conditions that no other animal can run in. So other animals, they get to get rid of excess heat, they pant, they have to pant and they can’t pant when they’re running, so they have to stop and rest and pant to dump the heat. That means to run a prey animal into the ground, ancient humans, they just kept that animal running. So altogether, these adaptations allowed us to relentlessly pursue game in the hottest part of the day, when most animals are resting right.

So we practice persistence hunting. We would chase a game animal during the heat of the day, make it run faster than it can maintain, we would track it, flush it if it tried to rest and repeat the process, just keeping the thing going until the animal would literally overheat and collapse. And so the animal would develop hyperthermia, which is like heatstroke in humans after about 6 or 10 miles of this.

And so, by the end of all this, even humans with their crude, early weapons could have overcome stronger and more dangerous prey. And adding credence to this theory is the fact that some Aboriginal humans still practice persistent hunting today. And it remains an effective hunting technique. It requires very minimal technology, has a high success rate, and yields a lot of nutrient dense fuel in the form of meat.

Okay, so all that is just to say that running long distances is part of our DNA. And running long distances means that we needed a steady fuel source available at all times, especially when we were not eating we would be fasting we would be, you know, running an animal for days until we, you know, caught up with it and whatever. That’s where our stored body fat comes into play.

We’re naturally born fat burners. And when you get off the sugar, and you get off the refined grains and the packaged garbage food, you can turn your body back into a long distance running badass fat burning machine. And right now, most people, like the average runner probably has around 100,000 calories of stored energy in the form of stored body fat, enough to run for days and days without stopping.

On the contrary though, your body can only hold about 2000 calories of carbohydrate in the form of glucose. So if this was our preferred fuel source, we would need a lot, lot more of that to be able to track animals for days, right. So the idea of getting fat-adapted should be really stated like getting back to being fat-adapted like we were meant to be.

The other misconception about being fat-adapted is that you make this switch from burning all carbs, you know in sugar, and then burning all fat. And this is never the case, you’re always burning both your body produces glucose, all the glucose that your body needs your body actually creates at your liver creates glucose for your brain and for your muscles to function properly.

And as long as your activity level is kept low enough, like during most long distance running, you will continue to produce enough glucose glucose for your working muscles while also utilizing fat as your main source of fuel. But as your exercise intensity gets higher and higher as you start burning more glucose and less fat, and you will probably need to add some sort of fuel in the form of carbohydrate to maintain the more intense effort, okay, and you got to practice this in your training.

And then you can dial in exactly how much carbohydrate you need, at what level of intensity. So you can keep that inner fire burning hot, right? So you can keep delivering a steady supply of fat and glucose to working muscles and kick some serious butt out there. Okay, so when you get good at this when you practice both, using both fuel sources efficiently, this is known as being metabolically flexible or metabolic flexibility.

So you train your body to use both types of fuel very effectively. Again, this isn’t about eliminating carbohydrates. This is about switching your body to going back to being an efficient fat burner, okay? The only thing with this is that if you go too high in the carbs, you kind of shut down the fat burning process. So you have to be careful with how you do this. And you have to experiment with it.

Okay, and everybody’s a little bit different. And so you have to practice with this in your training. This is not something you’re going to just do on race day, for sure. Okay. So eating real food, I want to recap real quick, what I just talked about, the standard American diet is wrong, needs to be changed.

Runners are not immune to the effects of this terrible diet. So just stop doing it. Running does not mean you can eat whatever you want, okay. Humans have evolved by eating real food. We’ve become amazing creatures, the most advanced creatures in the universe as far as we know. And we did it by eating real food. So we need to get back to that.

Humans have also evolved to be badass runners and badass fat-burning machines. We need to get back to that too. And the easiest way to get back to that to get back to our badass purpose is to eat real food. Eat food that still looks like food, food our ancestors would recognize. Cool, this is fun. I love talking about this. I could talk about this all day. Hope you guys have an awesome day. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

122. What Coaching Should Look Like

April 29, 2022 By Patrick McGilvray

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what coaching is and what it isn’t. Some people think coaching is just someone screaming at you like a drill sergeant in boot camp. Others think …

Continue Reading about 122. What Coaching Should Look Like →

Podcast Transcript

Hey there, and welcome to episode 122 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what coaching should look like? I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what coaching is and what it isn’t.

Some people think coaching is just like having someone screaming at you like a drill sergeant and boot camp. Other people think coaching is having a cheerleader by your side always telling you great job. Both of these can be positive aspects of coaching. But there’s a lot more to consider if you’re seriously looking for someone to help you reach your weight loss and running goals.

So in this episode of the podcast, I break down what coaching is, what it isn’t, and explain what coaching should look like. And I’m hoping that by the end of this episode, you have a very clear understanding of how the right kind of coaching can actually help you achieve all of your health and fitness goals.

And I just want to get right into this topic today because this is something that I’ve been very passionate about, and something that I talk about just about every day. So I talk with runners every single day about their goals and whether or not they want to coach with me, whether they want to work with me or not.

And I always explain a little bit about what coaching looks like, when I get on a call with someone. And I thought you know, this would be a great idea to just jump on here and do a whole podcast about this topic about what good coaching should actually look like, you know, what coaching should look like versus what maybe we think it is?

Okay, so let me ask you this, like when you think of a coach, what image comes to mind for you, when I think of a coach, I get this image of somebody standing on the side of the track, like with a clipboard and a stopwatch, right?

Or maybe that coach in the locker room at halftime screaming at the players to get them all pumped up for the second half of the game. Or the personal trainer screaming at you there’s a lot of screaming in my envision of coaches for some reason. The personal trainer at the gym screaming like, you know, do one more rep. One more, one more.

So we all have some notion of what a coach looks like. And most of us have probably had some experience working with or having some sort of a coach in our lives, whether it was a coaching, you know, when you played high school sports, you maybe had a coach. But this idea of what a coach actually is, I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that.

Okay, and so, today I want to talk about this, I want to talk about what coaching is and what it isn’t. And I want to bust some of the myths around coaching and what it means to work with a coach. I want to help you to understand what to look for if you want to work with a coach.

Okay, by the end of this episode, I want you to have a clear understanding of what this should look like. Okay, now I need to say this, I’m a coach, right? And of course, I would love it if you wanted coaching and you decided you want to work with me. That would be amazing. But that’s not what this is about. Okay, this isn’t about me.

This is about you understanding the power of coaching, and how it can help you and how, what I want for you is I want to give you the information to go out there and find a coach that works for you, whether it’s me or somebody else, it’s fine with me either way. I fiercely believe in the power of coaching. It is one of the most amazing things I have ever done for myself is getting a coach and I think everyone can benefit from having a coach.

I actually have several coaches, I have a strength coach, I have a nutrition coach and a business coach. And each of these coaches plays a huge role in helping me to become my most badass self. I would not have lost the weight and learned how to keep it off for good without my coach.

I wouldn’t have learned how to get stronger. I wouldn’t understand the importance of continually, you know, building strength as a runner, if it wasn’t for my functional strength coach, and I definitely wouldn’t make it as an entrepreneur without my business coach. You know, being an entrepreneur building a business from the ground up and doing it all by yourself. This is one of the hardest things I have ever done. It’s challenging.

And they say I love this little like analogy here, they say, “Being an entrepreneur is like jumping out of an airplane and building the parachute on the way down.” And I feel this deeply, every single day. Okay? Anyway, so I just wanted to make this very clear that this isn’t about me, this is not about me, like selling you on coaching with me or anything like that.

It’s about helping you understand what good coaching should look like, whether it’s with me or somebody else. But I want you to understand how powerful coaching can be for you, and how amazing it can be for you, and how it can absolutely transform your life, and help you achieve whatever goals you want for yourself in different areas of your life. Okay.

So one of the biggest misconceptions I want to talk about is that a coach is just there to tell you what to do. Right? I have talked to so many runners who have worked with a running coach, or maybe a nutrition coach in the past. And one of the common issues I see with most coaches with most of like what I’ll call like traditional coaching, okay?

That it’s just somebody, they’re telling you what to do. Like, here’s what you should eat, or here’s your running workout, just do what I say. All right, and this is fine. You know, there has to be a part of that with coaching, right. But when that’s all the coaches doing for you, they’re giving you some sort of standard formula, some standard meal plan or some standard workout. You know, everybody they’re coaching is kind of getting the same standard deal, right? That doesn’t really work. Okay.

This is a problem. And I see this with a lot of nutrition coaches, specifically who just prescribe meal plans for their clients. So they give them a menu of actually, like, here’s what you’re going to eat this week. And then next week, I’ll give you a new meal plan of what you should eat. Okay? And again, this is fine.

This might work sometimes, but what are you teaching the client? What are you teaching that person you’re working with? Are they learning how to make good decisions about food? Are they developing the habits they need to make their new food choices on their own and to make them last for the long haul?

Like, how sustainable is it to just tell somebody what to do? I’ve had several people come to me after working with other nutrition coaches, who gave them meal plans, who gave them a menu of what to do. And by the end of that coaching relationship, they had no clue what to do on their own.

So once the coaching relationship was over, they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t understand why they were being told to eat these certain foods. And to avoid these foods over here. They didn’t understand the philosophy behind making these menus, you know, they hadn’t developed any skills of their own.

They just didn’t know how to create their own food plan. Okay. That’s not sustainable. Right? They also hadn’t developed good eating habits, right. So they just ended up falling back into old behaviors, once that coaching relationship was over, and they ended up putting all the weight back on.

And I see this with most diet plans, right? They just tell you what to eat, and what not to eat. And then, you know, send you on your way. Good luck. Good luck with all that, right. And I see this with books. You know, I read a lot of books on diet and nutrition, sports, nutrition, athletic performance.

And a lot of these books have meal plans in them and recipes and things like that. I guess people say they want those kinds of things, right? This might be what people say they want, but it’s not what they need. Right? What people want is for somebody to just tell them what to do.

But what they need is they need to learn how to break old habits. People need to learn how to develop new habits from the ground up, and you can’t learn new habits just by somebody telling you what to do. And just a little side note here, I’m planning on writing a book, I’ve actually kind of started this is a long process to write a book, by the way, and I’m at the baby stages right now.

But my goal with this book that I’m creating is to not just offer meal plans and tell people what to do, but to teach you how to build your own meal plan to teach you how to make good choices and why you should make those choices. That right there is going to be a game changer, I promise you, but that’s down the road.

So I’m just giving you a little preview of what’s to come later. All this is just to say that instead of just telling you what to do, a good coach should empower you to make good decisions for yourself. And to help you to be there as your guide to help you build the habits that are required to make whatever changes you’re making last for good.

Like this isn’t about, you know, just a quick fix, like these short term plans might be fine. But what do you do when you stop working with the coach, if you haven’t learned how to do this for yourself, you’re just on your own. And most people just don’t know what to do when they stop working with their coach, okay. So you should be becoming empowered, your coach should be empowering you. Right?

When the coach just tells you what to do, they have all the power, they have all the power, you need to have the power, right, you should be able to make most of these decisions for yourself. Now, of course, having a coach, a good coach, is there to guide you, and to show you the way, but also to empower you to learn what works for you and what doesn’t work for you.

Now, there’s no possible way any coach could know what’s going to work for you ahead of time, I’m just going to tell you right now, when it comes to things like nutrition, there is just no way. Every human being is different. Every human being has different metabolism, different goals, different food preferences, different likes and dislikes.

There’s different lifestyle concerns to take into consideration. There’s different cultures, different genetics, different medical histories, oh my gosh, there’s no way that one meal plan from a book is going to work for every single person, right? There’s no way that just giving everybody the same standard meal plan every week is going to work for everybody.

This is not a one size fits all situation here. There’s way too many factors involved. So the power of coaching is helping you figure out what works for you, as an individual and what doesn’t work for you. And this is one of the reasons why most people, they try some kind of diet, it doesn’t work for them.

And so they just say you know what diet doesn’t work. But in reality, one diet is not going to work for everyone. I’m just telling you, it’s not anyone who tells you that one diet is going to work for everyone is wrong, I’m just gonna tell you right now they are wrong. People get super worked up about this.

People are like they get dug in with their particular diet. Think about like, plant-based people, for whatever reason, they seem to be very worked up about their diet and telling you if they want to tell everybody that you’re stupid if you eat meat and plant-based is the only way to go. And honestly, I just have to tell you, there’s a lot of ignorance in that kind of generalization, right? The reality is, there isn’t one diet that works for everyone, there just isn’t.

So when I work with someone, it’s you and me like we are engaged in a coaching relationship. Yes, of course, I have a lot of experience and a lot of expertise in the area of diet nutrition for runners, for runners who want to lose weight and be able to keep it off like, yeah, we kind of start with a framework.

But you know, we have some basics that we sort of, kind of start with, but then throughout our coaching relationship, we pretty quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. And here’s the important part, we constantly analyze the results. We look at a bunch of different metrics. And we see, are we making progress here or not? Yes or no? Where can we improve things?

And then we course correct, we change something. If something isn’t working, we want to change it. So it’s not just about telling you what to do and then hoping you do it. It’s a feedback system, right? We’re always looking at your results. It’s a results oriented type of coaching. And that’s something you should definitely be looking for.

If you’re looking for a coach, somebody that’s going to help you to analyze the results that you’re getting, and then make the necessary changes so that you keep moving closer to your goals. And I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to be totally honest with you. I don’t know what’s going to work for you.

Yes, I have some good ideas based on working with hundreds of runners. But not every single person is the same. Every single person I work with is different. I’ve never done the exact same thing for two people, really I never have.

So when it comes to diet and nutrition, especially when we add in the complexity of doing all of this in a way that will also support your running goals. It’s always an experiment of one. This is a n equals one situation and the one that’s you so look for a coach who will win work with you, one who will help you to make good decisions for yourself, one who will empower you to make those kinds of choices and decisions and to create the good habits and teach you how to make all of this last.

Well, after the coaching relationship is over, I tell people who want to work with me all the time, I’m like, This is not a, I don’t want to like be stringing you along as a coach forever, I want to teach you what you need to learn so that you can go and go live your life. You know, you’ve got to find somebody who understands that you are an individual, and who will treat you like an individual. Okay.

So another sign you’re working with a good coach is someone who will ask you a lot of questions, a lot of powerful questions. Here’s why this is important. Most likely, you already have the answers within you. You just need help accessing them. So believe it or not, you are right now a powerhouse of information. And you know more than you think you do. And you definitely know more about you than anyone else on the planet. Okay.

This is one of those things that I couldn’t grasp at first. I thought I had no clue what to do. And that’s why I hired a coach in the first place, right? Just tell me what to do. But the more I got into this process, the more I worked with my coach, the more I learned that I pretty much had everything I needed to know already inside me.

And then I just needed somebody to help figure it out. That really changed everything for me. And I love this now, like, I see this every week, especially in working with my business coach, because she’s always asking me these powerful questions, right? Questions that force me to go inside, to go inside myself to go inside my own brain to find the answers.

The answers aren’t out there. The answers are in here. And I’m pointing to my head. And this used to be really frustrating for me at first, right? Because I just wanted her to tell me what to do, just tell me what to do. But she wouldn’t do that, she would ask me a lot of questions and help me come up with the right answers. And now I love this process.

Because I know that by asking me the right questions, she’s helping me to access those parts of my brain that I just that I need to access to be able to solve problems. And then I’m just I haven’t developed that, like skill of being able to access those things until I started doing this on a regular basis. And now, it’s extremely powerful. I know it sounds counterintuitive, right? To work with a coach and have them help you figure it out for yourself. But it’s an amazing way to coach someone.

Because when you do it this way, you’re actually teaching someone how to become a powerful problem solver on their own. Again, this isn’t about, like just, you know, telling somebody what to do in that situation, you would always have to have that coach there with you, right? Instead, what have you learned how to become that powerful problem solver on your own? That’s amazing, right there.

The point of coaching is not to just rely on your coach forever, right? But to teach you how to think for yourself to develop the cognitive skills to know what to do in every situation. Right, and to be able to solve every problem that comes your way. So for me, I ask a lot of powerful questions. Okay.

So I’ll ask clients, they’ll tell me they, you know, did something and I’ll say like, well, why did you make that choice? You know, why do you think you chose cake for dinner last night instead of chicken? Or, you know, okay, so you had a situation? How could you have handled that situation better when your coworker put that cupcake on your desk? You know, or what was the thought that immediately preceded the action that you took, you know, that behavior where, you know, you decided I’m not going to work out today? What was the thought right before that?

Or maybe you fail? Did you binge out on some pizza last night or ice cream? Like, what did you learn about yourself from this experience? These are examples of real questions that I ask clients all the time. And when I ask them these questions, they go inside themselves to find the answers. And they come up with solutions on their own with my help, right? But instead of me just telling them what to do in each of these situations, well, here’s what you do next time.

They are figuring it out for themselves. And I’m going to tell you something right now. When you figure it out for yourself, you are way more likely to remember that and to make better choices next time. There is a big difference between somebody telling you what to do, and you making a decision for yourself on what you should do.

When you come up with the solution for yourself, you learn from it, it just sticks, right? It’s the difference between, well, Patrick told me I shouldn’t eat cake for dinner and, and I don’t eat cake for dinner because that choice is not in alignment with who I want to be. See the difference there. It’s very powerful, very powerful.

Another thing you should look for in a good coach is someone who will point out your blind spots. So a good coach should help you see things that you cannot see about yourself. These are often called your blind spots, because like a blind spot in your car, you know, where you can’t see the car next to you, or whatever. There are things about yourself that you can’t see, because you’re inside yourself.

There’s a saying, and it goes something like “You can’t see the label from inside the bottle.” So you can’t see the outside, from inside. So sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to show you things about yourself that you wouldn’t be able to see on your own.

For example, I see a lot of self-sabotaging behavior happen when people set out to lose weight. So they might be going along fine for a while. And maybe their weight stalls a little bit, which is totally normal. It happens all the time, right? But then they’re just like, ethic, you know, and they binge out on french fries and donuts.

And they don’t understand why they do this. And they come to me and they’re like, Patrick, I don’t understand why, why do I do this all the time? So I started asking a lot of questions. And when we get to the root of the problem, it’s usually something like, well, you know, I was getting frustrated, the weight was stalled.

And I was having a tough day at work. And I thought, well, I might as well just eat whatever I want, since this isn’t working anyway, you know, some variation of a thought like that, okay. But they don’t see what’s happening in their brain, you know, because they’re, it’s their brain.

And they’re just like, they’re just operating on sort of autopilot. It’s just doing what they’ve always done, right. But having a coach, they’re having that person that’s outside of them, to show them what their brain is doing. To show you things about yourself that you cannot see, that’s some powerful stuff right there.

There are things about yourself that you can’t see, because they’ve just been like, things you’ve been doing your whole life, automatic behaviors and habits and they just seem like normal to you. But to an outsider, they might see like, oh, well, there’s your problem right there. You don’t see it, because it’s just part of who you are. And just something you’ve been doing forever, right.

But having this outsider’s perspective, like somebody’s pointing out these blind spots that you have, it’s crucial, it’s crucial. This is why it’s hard to have somebody that’s like really close to you, as your coach, you know, they need to be a bit more removed. So people who you’re too close with, like a spouse, or a good friend or family member, they don’t have that third party perspective, right, they’re also going to have trouble telling you things that you actually need to hear, they won’t be able to dole out the tough love the way they need to maybe.

And so somebody that’s like too close to you won’t be able to do that. Somebody that’s too close to you really just can’t be a good coach for you. Right, then it’s kind of damaging to the relationship if you’ve ever worked with somebody in that capacity, that’s a spouse or something like that, not usually a good situation. Okay.

The other thing about working with a coach versus a friend or family member is the coach has the training, the background, the professionalism, the experience necessary to help you get the results that you want. Friends and family members really don’t have that. They don’t have what it takes, unless they’re trained as a coach, but even then, again, they’re too close to you, right? So anyway, just make sure that you have somebody that can point out those blind spots. Okay.

And then there’s a few other qualities to look for in a coach that I think are very important. One is accountability. So this is one of the most important aspects of coaching in general, like you are way more likely to do what you said you’re going to do when you have somebody holding you accountable. You have to have somebody holding you accountable.

People tell me all the time, you know, I was going to eat this junk food, but I knew I was going to have to talk to you later. So I decided not to do it. They just know that they’d rather stay on their plan, then have to tell me, they went off their plan. Even though I don’t yell at anybody, like I don’t judge anybody. But having somebody that’s there to hold you accountable is key crucial insight, one of the most important aspects of coaching for sure, okay?

Another good quality to look for is encouragement. So, being a cheerleader, it’s not really the main job of a coach. A coach’s job is to help you get results. But having somebody there to encourage you, and support you, and believe in you, it’s so helpful, it really is so helpful. You want somebody who can encourage you to do hard things, to do those hard things that you know you need to do, in order to get the results that you want.

You need someone in your corner who believes in you fiercely, who can help you to start believing in yourself, right? In case that’s a problem. In case you don’t believe in yourself, you need somebody that’s there that believes in you. And that can help you build that belief that you need for yourself, right.

And then of course, another quality is look for his knowledge, like it goes without saying, but you need someone with the knowledge with the experience with the expertise to be able to help you achieve your specific goals. And a lot of coaches that I know are very general, they’re like generalists, right?

They have a little bit of knowledge over a wide variety of topics. You want a coach who specializes in helping someone like you to reach your specific goals, right? So for example, when I talk about me being the weight loss coach for runners, I say it like that for a reason. It’s because I specialize in being the weight loss coach for runners.

I don’t know of anybody else who really specializes in this particular area of coaching. As far as I know, I’m the only weight loss coach for runners. Now, there might be others. But no one does it quite like I do, I know that for sure. Okay.

But that’s just an example, like, find a coach who specializes in helping somebody like you reach your specific goals, right, because you want to find the expert in your area, you know, whatever it is that you’re looking for, okay.

And again, it doesn’t have to be me, I want you to understand how powerful coaching can be, I want you to understand that, you know, you just need to have this criteria for deciding if coaching is a good fit for you or not, it’s not for everyone. Some people don’t want that accountability. They want to just do it on their own. And that’s fine. And that used to be me, my mantra was always ‘I will figure it out myself’.

And when that strategy stopped working for me, and I decided to reach out and get help and get a coach, it really changed everything. For me, it’s absolutely been one of the most powerful things I’ve ever done for myself, okay. So listen, if you’re a runner, and you’d like to get the weight problem solved for good, and you want a coach to help get you there, I want to encourage you to find someone to help you, right?

And if you want to work with me, I would absolutely love that. And I will invite you to apply for coaching, right? Fill out an application, you and I will get on a short Zoom call. We’ll talk about your goals and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Okay, I would love to be your guide.

I would love to help you lose the weight and show you how to do it without all the struggle and frustration. So if you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts, and sustainable results. Then just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And let’s get started. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

112. Taking Back Control of Your Life with Melanie Millaway

February 18, 2022 By Patrick McGilvray

Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway and we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat-adapted. But the …

Continue Reading about 112. Taking Back Control of Your Life with Melanie Millaway →

Podcast Transcript

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 112, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, taking back control of your life with Melanie Millaway.

Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway. And we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat adapted. But the real change didn’t happen on the outside. Yes, she lost weight. Yes, she improved her running performance. Yes, she got stronger. Yes, she has more energy now. And yes, she generally feels a lot better.

But the real change happened on the inside. Melanie made this massive shift in her mindset. And I just have to say that this is the real work we do here in my coaching program, you will learn how to become a leaner, stronger runner. But you do it by making the internal shift by doing the inner work just like Melanie did. And I’ll let her tell you more about that.

Here’s the thing, the way you look on the outside, for example, your current weight, it’s just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the internal work. If you’re unhappy with the way that you look and feel and you want more for yourself, then you have to do that internal work. Okay. This is the work that Melanie did. And in this episode of the podcast, she shares how she’s absolutely transformed herself her entire life from the inside out.

But first, if you love this podcast, come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, come join us join in the fun, we have a lot of fun over there. We post selfies, we do challenges, we support each other, we encourage each other, and we have a good time doing it. It’s all about running. It’s all about diet and exercise and becoming your best self. Just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook and join the fun.

And then if you’re somebody who is ready to do that inner work to make that shift in your mindset so that you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, then you have to just take action. One of the biggest mistakes people make around changing their health is procrastination. They put off taking action.

They always think later. Like when I have more time or when I feel more motivated or after the kids go to college later, is a dream killer. It’s a killer of hopes and dreams. It’s a killer of goals. If you want something more for yourself, if you want to make a change for yourself for the better, then you have to start today.

Apply for coaching with me. There’s no commitment. It’s just a conversation, you and me just going to have a conversation about what coaching would look like for you, and how it might be one of the best things you ever do for yourself.

Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and take that first step take action, stop putting it off. Take that step towards becoming that badass future version of yourself. Cool.

All right. As I said, I’m excited to share this interview with you. Melanie experienced this profound transformation and affected a bunch of different areas of her life. And I’m gonna let her tell you all about it. So I’m gonna stop talking. Here’s my interview with Melanie Millaway.

Patrick McGilvray
All right, cool. So today I’m talking with Melanie and Melanie has a cool story that I felt was worth sharing with you guys. So Melanie and I started working together a few months ago. And
Melanie just is one of these people that at the beginning, things were very challenging for her. And at the beginning, she may have had some doubts, and she may have struggled a little bit and we’re going to talk about that. But I want you to know that at the end of our coaching together and the end of our sort of time working together. Melanie just had this amazing, like,
attitude, and this amazing transformation, and I wanted to make sure that we sort of captured that and shared it with you guys, because I think it’s very inspirational. And I hope I’m not, you know, setting this up too, too big for you here, Melanie. But I thought it was very inspirational. And I wanted to make sure that we sort of had this conversation and talked about all this stuff.

So, Melanie, why don’t you just introduce yourself and kind of tell us like, where you were, before you and I started working together?

Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Well, Patrick, first off, thanks for having me. Man, all the way back to the beginning with this process, I think when we started…

Patrick McGilvray
So where did you find yourself and by the way, this is like such a common story. This is one of the reasons I do what I do is because so many runners have this mentality of “Oh, I just run to eat, I can eat whatever I want. I just need to run more. And that’ll solve the problem.” You know, and so what you’re describing here is completely normal. We can all relate, we’ve all been there. Okay. But where did you find yourself that you thought “I need help with this?” Like what was the biggest issue that you really wanted to be solved, or the biggest issue you wanted help with?

Melanie Millaway
Well, you know, what I was doing wasn’t working, I was spending more time running and kind of prioritizing that over other things. And it was really was creating a strain for me to balance everything. Like I have a lot more responsibilities in my life, like family and career now than when I trained for my last full marathon. And, you know, I wasn’t blessed with like Olympic DNA. So I’m just your average runner based on age and kind of finish time. And, you know, it takes me a couple of hours to knock out a 10-15 mile run. And yet, I felt like I was stuck. And I wasn’t really making any material progress. I wasn’t getting faster, I didn’t look any different. In general, I kind of felt like garbage. And I wasn’t in a great mood most of the time. Yet, I was investing all this time running and I was feeling frustrated.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and this is so interesting because you’re one of these people Melanie who has come to me and said like, “Listen, I don’t have like a bunch of weight to lose. I’m not super overweight or anything like that.”

You did lose some weight in this process. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But you didn’t come to me saying like, “Oh, I just can lose the weight you just you know you had a lot more going on and there was just so many things like you described it just feeling like garbage.

I think that pretty much sums it up there. But it’s like we want more for ourselves. We want to feel better. We want running to be something we enjoy. We want it to be easier.

And so those are some of the things that I remember from when we started working together where you were just like, I’ve got to figure this out, you know?

And so we started kind of working together describe like, what, what are some of the things you, you experienced when we started making some of these changes? Because I know it didn’t know, it wasn’t all like super easy or work super well, for the beginning.

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, you know, I think when we first started, got started, really what I wanted some guidance, I wanted to be held accountable. Like I knew that was something I needed for myself. Because I have a tendency to kind of put others before me, just a kind of a pleaser, by nature that way, and if you overuse that formula, a lot of times you end up kind of sacrificing your own goals and desires. And that’s not very empowering, and it leaves you feeling like you don’t have a lot of control in certain circles, you know, situations or circumstances.

And then kind of looking outward, you know, I’ve had a lot of success, other aspects of my life working with a mentor, kind of specifically, in my career with, you know, whether it’s like an individual development plan or your career growth, I’ve had mentors in the past that were supporting me with a variety of goals, and kind of seeking their advice or guidance on something, but I never really thought to make that kind of investment in my own personal life, until I cross paths with you.

But, you know, how did they get started? Or how did it go? You know, it was challenging in the beginning, you know, I made the conscious choice to begin this journey heading into what I perceive to be the most challenging time of the year, the holiday season, that quad factor of Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Years, like, they are all packed in there. And it’s kind of crazy to, you know, experience growth and discomfort to the holidays, like the ultimate gauntlet of obstacles. But I thought if I could come out of that specific time of the year successful, it would be a huge boost to my self-confidence. And I could kind of wear it like a badge of honor.

And as I worked to get kind of fat-adapted, you know, I experienced the headaches and the sugar withdrawal symptoms. And looking back on it, I was probably a little more than grouchy. But I was really committed. You know, I started my food journal, and I was logging meals consistently. And I started planning and buying different things at the store and set my protocol and knew what I wanted to eat ahead of time.

And, you know, when it comes to running, like, I’m not gonna lie, the running sucks for a while going through this process. Yeah, there were weeks when I felt sluggish, and my body was heavy. And I was basically sucking wind.

And I had run a half marathon just a few weeks prior to kind of starting to want the Running Lean program. And I had a PR in that race. And then fast forward, like, as I’m in the midst of getting fat-adapted, I had forgot I had committed to a friend that was gonna, I was going to help pace her during a local, like half marathon. And that race felt hard. But I wasn’t quite over the hump yet at that point.

And then I just remember kind of coming out on the other side, eventually, my runs, they started getting easier. You know, my times were improving. I felt like less effort. And it was just kind of gradual onset. And I remember sending you a text message, like, you know, ran five miles this morning, and it felt really good. And I was back but I was like better.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you bring it up. Um, a couple of things I want to touch on number one is like you did take this on during candy season, which is Halloween through New Years, you know, and we’ve talked about that. And you were like, I don’t know if I really want to do this right now. But I think I need to do this right now.

And that takes a lot of courage like to stand up and do that because most people they don’t you know, most people are like, “You know what, I’m gonna wait till the New Year’s I’m just gonna like, binge my way through this holiday season. I need a bunch of garbage and feel terrible, and gained a bunch of weight. And then hopefully on New Year’s, I’ll make a resolution and be able to stick with it this time, which will be different, you know?”

And nobody does that. Do you know what I mean? It’s just, it doesn’t really work, you know? And you were like, “You know what, no, that’s not what I want for myself. I want to do something different. I want to just get started now. And I want to make these changes now. And I’m going to get through the holidays and feel good about myself. I want to come out on the other side of the holidays feeling like I had my own back through that whole process.”

So how did that go for you? Like how was the how’d you come out of the holidays?
Melanie Millaway
I came out and felt like I was well ahead of the game, you know, and I had been training along the way for my event in January and I mean, I was so far ahead. So that felt that part of felt amazing.

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah. So you came out of the holidays, you came into January, with all this momentum. And you had actually lost weight over the holidays, which is something most people don’t do.

So that was really cool. And then yeah, then you had your race in January. What was that? What was the race?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, so that was I ran a half marathon in Houston, which Houston’s a really special city to me, and I just, I love that event. And this time, you know, I was fully fat-adapted, like, it seemed so simple.

I didn’t have to do anything different than any other typical day when I was down there. Like, I didn’t have to carb load the night before. And I never, I never liked that feeling of carb-loading before a race anyway, it always kind of made me feel lethargic or gross.

But, you know, now I didn’t have to do that. And I didn’t eat anything pre-race, like I completely fasted aside from a cup of coffee. And, you know, I didn’t run with any carbs on me, like I was naked. With carbs, like, you know, I still carry my own hydration. But my running back was a little lighter. And I wasn’t ravenous post race, you know, like, I ate a standard meal a few hours later. So it was kind of surreal at first, but just strangely liberating, like to go through that transformation and to, for it to just be so easy.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and how’d you do in the race?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah. So I broke a course record for myself. So improved my time for the last time that I’d run in person. So you know, it was, it was a really smooth race, I got to see my dad along the way, like at mile two. So it’s always encouraging to have, you know, family there to support you.

But it just the overall experience of felt good. And I was really energized and happy to be there. And just overall, an incredible weekend.

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome, super awesome. Just goes to show you that just because you’re running on fat instead of carbs, like you can still run fast. You know, a lot of people, there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about that, you know, you want to get faster, you can work on getting faster, and you can do it as a fat-adapted runner, for sure. That’s awesome.

So something I wanted to kind of go back to you mentioned, like drinking and sort of like, you know, taking some time off from drinking, what was that like for you? Was that something you were just kind of struggling with a little bit and you want to do like, you knew that was maybe something that was contributing to you feeling like garbage? Is that kind of why you decided you wanted to take a break from drinking?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just wasn’t very happy with who I was. And I’ll kind of go back a little bit on my relationship with alcohol, you know,

I wanted to just kind of take a pause and kind of figure out the role it was playing in my life. And, you know, alcohol was a challenge. Like, I think I’ve had established some enduring habits over the past 20 years, like, when I was younger, and you know, you’re seeking social acceptance, like, I was one of those, I had to put effort into acquiring a taste for alcohol. But then like, fast forward, you know, now I’m in a position where I find myself thinking about having a beer after I’m done working for the day, or after a stressful week, or maybe it’s the start of the weekend, and like, let’s kick it off with a drink. Or I’m at a business meeting, and I want to be the first to meet my colleagues at the bar. So like, I had some legacy habits there. But I didn’t like the way I was feeling.

And I think with coaching, I ended up making some really positive and just lasting changes with that relationship to kind of pause on it kind of reflect on, you know, what are the positives and the negatives from drinking, like, I’m not getting a whole lot of benefits here. Like I don’t feel good. I’m not really motivated. That’s an area where I think I’ve just been wanting to make a change for a while. And this is an aspect of kind of shame with the struggle.

And that’s where you kind of provided just a safe place for me and kind of understood that the challenge that comes with it, and being like how empowering to re-evaluate that relationship over the holidays like I think it’s December and it’s holiday parties and gatherings and get-togethers and I just did like a complete dry December and like it was really challenging at first but as each day kind of passed by and I had those successes, you build more confidence and like it’s so much easier at the end and then again, looking back on it like for something I had looked so forward to like the race that year, okay, well, now I’m going to have a sip of it. And it’s just kind of neck like it kind of lost its luster by the end, like, my feeling towards it is so different now.

Patrick McGilvray
If you could identify like kind of what that mindset shift was for you because what you’re describing is awesome. And a lot of people that I work with kind of experienced the same thing. So you know, just to lose weight and kind of get fat-adapted and change our, you know, body composition and things like that. I do recommend maybe taking a break from alcohol, some people freak out a little bit about that. Some people are like, okay, no big deal I can take or leave it. And, but something interesting happens along the way.

There’s always a mindset shift. There’s like a way we think about alcohol and what it does for us. Like before we give it up for a period of time. And then there’s the way we think about it afterward. Like, can you tell me kind of what that looked like for you? Like, what was the biggest shift for you and your mindset around that?

Melanie Millaway
I think it was feeling like, I needed some sense of control, like, at some point, it kind of had control over me. And I needed to have that, that shift of power kind of back into my favor, like it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be.

And I think just more awareness to my thoughts and the feelings that they’re generating and slowing down a little bit kind of pause for a moment.

And I kind of liken it to thinking before you speak but on a more like a deeper, subconscious level. But is this really what I want at the moment and I still, you know, I still have a beer every now and then. So it’s not like I’ve completely ended my relationship with alcohol, but it’s just, I have better control. And my thought process is different towards it. And yeah, it’s been a shift, it’s, it’s not as sexy as it used to be. Because I can take it or leave it at this point.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so cool. Because that’s the place where you want to get to, and when it comes to drinking alcohol, or eating sugar, for example, these are like two things that are like drugs, if not our drugs, you know, the way that they affect our body and the way they affect our brain, the way they light up our pleasure centers.

And we have a hard time, you know, not doing these things when we’re used to doing them on the regular basis, right. And so when we’re like, okay, you know what, maybe, you know, stop eating sugar, stop drinking alcohol, and then all this resistance comes up and all this, we start freaking out about that, because we’re just so used to having it whenever we want it. So we use it to feel good, we use it as a reward system for ourselves, we use it to deal with our emotions, all that stuff.

When we take it away, it becomes challenging, and we got to deal with all that stuff that comes up. So you got to deal with the emotions, you got to like, reward yourself in different ways. You got to make yourself feel good in different ways, you know. But the other thing that people don’t realize is that that desire that you have for alcohol or sugar, will actually go away once you’ve abstained from it for a while.

And that desire, you can actually, when that sort of desire goes away, you actually start to not crave it anymore. You don’t. You’re no longer like thinking about it, you’re no longer dreaming about it. It’s no longer the solution for you anymore. And so you don’t even really want it anymore. That’s a place you want to get to. That’s a beautiful place to be because if you’re craving alcohol, but you’re not drinking, that’s terrible. I just want to murder somebody, right? But when you’re like, all of a sudden you’re like, and I remember you told me this, you’re like, it’s lost its luster. I just don’t even want it anymore. I was like, yes, that’s where we want to get to because now it’s easy to say no. Right? Yeah.

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just feel so much better. So like how I feel is more powerful than the thing than the food than the sugar than the drink. Like, that doesn’t make me feel as good as like how I feel now with the clarity and how much better I sleep at night or how much better my mood is or like I’m more engaged with my family or connected with the world like, that feels better than the beer ever made me feel.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I love that. I love that and we get into this place sometimes where we start to feel good. And you know, we start to feel good without using you know, food or alcohol to make us feel good and we think this can’t last. This isn’t sustainable. And all these like stories will start to come up and excuses and things like that, because we get some comfortable.

It’s like feeling good. Actually, it doesn’t make sense. But feeling good. Like that actually makes us feel uncomfortable because we’re not used to it. And you even said this to me, and I took a note of this of some time into our working together, you were like, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop in our heads if like, this is all gonna just come crashing down. But it didn’t, did it?

Melanie Millaway
No, I felt guilty, like for feeling so good. Like when I first felt the impact and kind of just the transformation. And I honestly had no idea that I could feel this good. It was like euphoria, like, and I just wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Like, I didn’t trust it.

And, you know, I also had to kind of remind myself not to go back to the things or the habits that got me where, where I was before, and I certainly where I don’t want to go back to you. But it was, it was a strange feeling to feel so good.

Patrick McGilvray
I just think that’s so funny in a way that we, we do that to ourselves, we actually start to feel good. And then we’re like, there’s got to be something wrong here. When is this gonna change? This is not normal, this is weird, is uncomfortable. But it’s like, no, we want to feel good. We want to feel good. So tell me about something else that shifted for you. Because, you know, you’ve you’ve experienced some profound shifts in your, in your mindset and in the way you think and feel about yourself. Tell me something else that you’ve experienced through this process.

Melanie Millaway
You know, just seeking some clarity in my life, there were things I wanted to change about myself. But I was lacking direction or certainty on kind of how to make that meaningful and lasting change.

And, you know, I had celebrated a milestone birthday earlier last year. And I think that natural progression, kind of when you enter a new decade of your life is to get introspective and start kind of conducting your own personal inventory. So you know, my satisfied with where I am right now, is there something more out there? Is this what life is really all about? Like, is this it? Or is it time for change?

And I think I coupled those kind of internal thoughts with the fact that I’ve always been interested in health and fitness and nutrition and learning new things. And, you know, identify as a runner, you know, I was an athlete in high school. And after college, I ran my first marathon, and I was hooked. I love the sport. But that also started me down the path of adopting the mindset of like, now that I’m a marathon runner, like, I can eat whatever I want like I run to eat. And if I’m training, logging miles, and burning tons of calories, and naturally, I get to eat and drink, whatever I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, like, I love food.

And my childhood and upbringing certainly revolved around food. So it seemed like a natural fit. You know, all this to say that you know, the strategy that I had adopted, you know, I run to I can eat that wasn’t really working for me anymore. I wasn’t feeling great, I was not really motivated. So what did I do? I leaned in further with what I knew, I thought, well, clearly, I just need to run farther. So let’s increase the distance.

So I signed up, and I started training to run another full marathon. And that was my goal. It had been a few years since my last full marathon, I have been running half marathons kind of for maintenance. And it was at this point that I kind of discovered the Running Lean podcast on Audible, and I was listening during my training runs. And that led me to you. And kind of just the start of this new beginning and understanding that you can’t outrun a bad diet. And what I needed was to change my relationship with food and alcohol. And if I wanted to feel better, and to achieve, like greater things for myself, like those changes needed to happen. You know, I was just kind of searching for more.

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, absolutely. It’s normal to start the year that way and to not feel like you’re in the hole, so to speak of you, you know, overindulge to the holidays, and maybe ate more drank more than you normally would have any other time of the year and have to start just to start building.

Melanie Millaway
You know, just, you know, I remember early on, I had some anxiety or apprehension with an upcoming business trip, you know, meeting with vendors, typically, that’s meals out, like a reason to overindulge with food or alcohol or otherwise and used to use support me to ensure that I had a solid plan kind of going into that situation, it’s as simple as thinking like about, how do you want to come out of that week? You know, how do you want to feel about yourself that really resonated with me. And again, just I felt supported, that was a big boost to my confidence.

You know, another simple situation where a friend had brought me lunch, like, I think it was a roast beef sandwich. And I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was doing this high fat, low carb thing. And basically, I didn’t want to eat the bread in front of my friends. So I’d not eat the bread. So I ended up, you know, kind of caving and eating the entire sandwich.

And I just remember, kind of, I felt disappointed with myself afterward. I took a good thing like someone bringing me lunch, and I turned it into something else. And I remember you kind of breaking it down. And obviously, the situation was deeper than just the bread, like leaving that conversation, feeling more confident in my choices, and being empowered to kind of stick to stick with those was really important to me.

And then really just, I mean, again, mindset, just being more aware of my thoughts and the feelings that those are generating and slowing down. Kind of just taking a pause for a moment. I didn’t realize I’ve always felt frustrated for a long time. And I couldn’t really figure out why or kind of put my finger on it. And it all makes a lot more sense.

Now it’s like, the thought is the thing. But I have control over the thoughts, how it makes me feel, and ultimately kind of what my actions are. So I feel like my life is I feel less frustrated. And I feel like I have more control in despite not being able to control the circumstance, but just how I react to the situation and just being more at ease. Like I feel less frustrated.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Do you feel like you have more control over your thoughts and feelings?

Melanie Millaway
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love just being able to, I’m more intentional, I think with my thoughts. And even if the thoughts maybe don’t feel good kind of marinating enough for a minute or kind of reflecting on it and trying to connect it back to the why.

And just having a better mindset in general. And feeling like I have control. Like, and I do. And that’s incredibly empowering. Like, I can think about having a drink. And again, pause for a second and think with that thought and contemplate it. That’s what I really want. And occasionally I may want to eat the thing like maybe it’s cake. But I got the power back like I get to decide for myself I get to choose.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I love the way you phrase that too because you do have the power. And it’s incredibly empowering when we can learn how to manage or control our thoughts and feelings. We go through life thinking that what other people do or say, makes us feel a certain way. And when we start to take control over that and start to take responsibility for our own stuff, and for our own emotional state, it becomes, it becomes so empowering, because now you’re not blaming other people for how you feel. You’re not blaming other people for how you’re reacting to situations.

Do you see this work that we’ve done together? Do you see it sort of spilling over into other areas of your life?

Melanie Millaway
Absolutely, I mean, that part of it, it is positively impacted so many other areas of my life. Like I said, with just being more engaged at home, I have more energy to spend time with my kids in the evening, after, you know, working all day or kind of fulfilling my responsibilities. At work, I think I’m more inspiring to my team of leaders that I work with, my colleagues, and just kind of energizing them and it’s infectious. Like, it’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible how I can like just spill over and impact so many other areas of my life in such meaningful and positive ways. Like that feels really good.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and, and I just want to point out, Melanie, that this is all you, you know, I’m, I’m over here, like yammering on about stuff, and, you know, kind of, you know, offering some suggestions and things like that, but you’re doing the work.

And that’s something I want everybody that’s listening to this to really hear that, you know, having a coach is great. And it’s great to have somebody that can guide you, that has the experience and that expertise with this kind of stuff. But really, you got to show up, and you got to actually do the work, you got to like, do things that you don’t want to do, you know, you’ve got to, you know, practice being disciplined about your diet and about exercising and about getting your runs and getting your strength training in and working through the mindset stuff.

And so I just wanted to point out that you have done an exceptional job with all that stuff, you know, you are the one that has shown up and actually done the work. So good job.

Well, what’s been like the most, like, if you could just identify like one big, the best part of this for you are the biggest transformation you’ve experienced with all of this, what would you say that was for you?

Melanie Millaway
I would say it’s having your own back. I mean, life isn’t easy. You know life is full of struggles. But you have choices. And I think I learned you have more control than you know, like, you get to choose your own adventure. Choose your struggles, right.

So personally, I’d rather be focused on controlling aspects of my diet, or sitting with an uncomfortable thought or emotion than struggling with diabetes, or heart disease or alcoholism, all of which, you know, run in my family, I think you’ve got to give yourself some grace and kind of self-love along the way.

Like, I’m going to make mistakes, the reality is I’m going to fail at things. But just keep going and keep working towards making those small, incremental changes. Because they all add up in time and, you know, you’re moving forward and getting closer towards the things that you want, and just never quitting.

And I think lastly, kind of coming out of this process, you know, I learned that nothing is impossible like we all have or should have like what I call a big, hairy, audacious goal, and you need to go after it, like see it as part of your identity, and who you are and believe in it. I think most importantly, just believe in yourself, because anything is possible.

Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah, and I totally agree with you, I think we should have big, huge, impossible goals, we should all have those kinds of goals for ourselves. Because if we don’t, if our goals are small, that means they’re because we a lot of people, we set small goals for ourselves because we know we can attain them.

But those small goals feel kind of comfortable for us. But we want those big or bigger things that are uncomfortable, the ones that require us to change and to become more in the process of going for them. Right. So love that.

Let me ask you this. How do you feel about going forward of all this? So you and I worked together for a few months. But now do you feel like you have like what it takes to like continue this as a way of life? Is this something that you just did temporarily? Like where do you stand with all that today?

Melanie Millaway
I think it’s I’m more confident than ever. It’s completely sustainable. It is a life track, like a lifestyle choice. It’s not like a diet or something that’s a fad that’s, you know, quickly slips away. Like I feel like I’ve acquired a set of skills that are transferable across all facets of my life.

And again, I think when I started this journey I was, I thought my goal was one thing. But really what I was seeking was something else and just the skill set that I’ve acquired make it easier for me to have a positive mindset. Being able to take back control, like, it’s a huge and just the self-confidence that comes from it. It’s life-changing. And it’s been a transformational process for me.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so awesome. I love that. And that’s really the goal is to make this something that is pretty easy and effortless that you can carry forward. You know, we’re not about it’s not about the short term, it’s not about like, losing weight, or, you know, improving your running for a month or two. This is about lifestyle changes.

You know, it’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself and being able to continue that going forward. You know, I always say that health is not a destination that we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our lives. And so you’re sort of an example of that, you know, and that’s why one of the reasons why I want to talk to you is because now you’re just like, Yeah, this is how I live my life now. I love that. So awesome.

Last question, really, like, what would you say to someone who isn’t sure about this stuff? Or isn’t sure if they’re ready to change? You know, or, or they’re on the fence? Or they’re undecided? Or they’re not sure if it’s the right time? Like, what would you say to that person?

Melanie Millaway
Put yourself out there, you’ve got nothing to lose. I mean, just kind of the growth through discomfort, make an investment in yourself. It works if you go all in and you’re truly committed to the program, and you’re willing to get uncomfortable, but it can change your life and how you experience the world.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, heck yeah. I think just like starting is just so important for people. You know, just like start, just get started. I know. But what happens is we start to think about, oh, I want to change my diet. I want to get healthy, I want to lose some weight, I want to get leaner, I want to improve my running, I want to get faster.

And then we start like, we just think about it and all this stuff starts coming up for us like oh, I’ve never worked for me in the past. Or maybe this is not the right time. I need to wait till after the holidays, or you know, whatever. But yeah, I think that’s good advice. Just start, just get started today, get started, do something for yourself today.

Anything else you wanted to talk about or anything else you wanted to mention before we finish up here?

Melanie Millaway
No, I mean, just yeah, be fully committed. Trust the contents of this program it is life-changing. It really appeals, it’s very logical. Makes a lot of sense. It’s very simplistic, kind of easy to understand and follow.

It’s built on a bunch of principles that build upon themselves. So it’s, it’s just so different than I know, I totally ditched the idea of because I’m a runner, I can eat whatever I want. Now that thought process is gone.

And I guess one other final thought too, is just again, it’s just a huge sense of relief that I can do things more efficiently with this process. Like I don’t have to spend hours running. Like I can work smarter, not harder.

And being a fat-adapted runner is so much easier. Like I’m not constantly eating I don’t feel hungry all the time. You know, I have two meals a day, I don’t snack. I can distinguish hunger from cravings and I’m just amazed at how little food I need to eat. And I’m always leaving a meal feeling satisfied. And you know, fat is your friend like it gets a bad rap. I think fat needs a new PR agent, because not only does it taste delicious, but again, it leaves you feeling satisfied. So yeah, it’s good.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Focus on fat, focus on protein. Those are the macros we want to be focused on. Awesome stuff, Melanie. Well, thanks again for coming on here and sharing your story and sharing about your transformation. And we’re gonna keep an eye on you and just kind of see where things go with you. Do you have any races coming up anytime soon?

Melanie Millaway
I’ve got one in April, I’ve got a half I’m looking forward to. And then I’ll be focused on you know, building some lean muscle mass. So that’s what’s next for me.

Patrick McGilvray
Love it. Well, we’ll stay in touch and we’ll do an update here. Once you start getting strong and ripped. Okay. All right. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it and thanks for just sharing so much about your story. It’s been really cool.

Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Thank you for having me.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

98. Marathon Recap: What Worked and What Didn’t

November 12, 2021 By Patrick McGilvray

The 2021 Flying Pig Marathon is officially in the books! I did some things differently this training season from a fueling perspective. Some things worked pretty well, some not so much, but I …

Continue Reading about 98. Marathon Recap: What Worked and What Didn’t →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 98 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m giving you a marathon recap, I’m going to talk about what worked and what didn’t in my recent marathon.

So the 2021 Flying Pig marathon is officially in the books. And it was fun, had a great, great weekend. And I did some things differently. This training season, especially from a feeling perspective, some things worked pretty well, some not so much.

But I definitely learned some very valuable lessons this training season and during the marathon itself. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to go over how I feel differently for this training season and how I feel for the race itself, what worked, what didn’t, and what I might do differently next time.

And just so you know, I originally recorded this episode, over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So each week I do a live call where I do some teaching and coaching and answer questions. And so this was one of those calls, this is the call we did last week.

And if you’re not currently in the Facebook group, this call that you’re going to listen to now in this in this podcast episode will give you a good idea of what those live calls are all about.

So I would love it if you would join the Facebook group and join in on the conversation. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us over there.

And then here’s a recent message that someone in the Running Lean community on Facebook posted so they posted this right after finishing their marathon. And so this is from Jima and she wrote: “2021 was the year of unexpected achievements. In each race, I was able to experiment with fat-adapted running with excellent results. With this last marathon, I was able to run 20 miles fasted with no bonking and only consumed a slow-burning energy gel at the end just for replenishment. Thank you, Patrick McGilvray, for sharing your expertise and knowledge.”

Also, much thanks to you all in the Running Lean community, as you are all inspiring. Love it. I love those kinds of messages. And congratulations on an awesome marathon season, Jima.

And then people ask how they can work with me. And one way you can do that is to join the Running Lean coaching group. And I’m going to be talking more about that later on in the podcast.

This whole month of November, we’re talking about self-sabotage just in time for the holidays, you guys. So we’re going to learn how to recognize self-sabotage, how to understand what it really is, how to stop it before it gets out of hand, and how to eliminate it from your life for good.

So if you’re interested in learning more about the coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And then as always, you know, I do one on one coaching with people, this is what I do, this is my jam.

So if you’re ever interested in a little expert guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, maybe a little tough love every now and then. Then just reach out. You’ve got to apply for coaching.

So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we’ll just see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool. All right. So I’m going to go ahead and play for you. The marathon recap what worked and what didn’t from last week’s Facebook Live.

Hey, everybody, welcome to your Sunday live coaching call. This is something we do every single Sunday afternoon. For the most part, I didn’t do it last week, because I was running the flying pig marathon. It was Halloween. And I thought we’d all take the afternoon off.

But today what I want to do is kind of give you guys a little bit of a recap of specifically sort of how I did my training, how I fueled for my training this marathon training season, how I fueled specifically for this marathon, and I did some things differently than I have been doing in the past. And I want to talk a little bit about that.

Some of it was, you know, there were some positives and there were some you know, I wouldn’t say negatives, but there were some things I would recommend doing maybe and some things that I’ll probably do again, and there were some things that I maybe won’t do again.

So let’s get into this whole marathon training, thingsthat I did differently, I want to talk about what I did differently this time and share some of my insights with you guys. I get a lot of questions about what I eat and how I fuel for these things. And I’ve talked a little bit about some different fueling strategies in the past.

And I’ve talked about how I’ve done several marathons and even an ultra marathon, completely unfilled, like just not needing any kind of fuel at all. And then I did things a little bit differently this training season. And I want to talk about that.

And I want to explain to you guys why I made the decisions that I made. And what I was trying to do with all that. A lot of the stuff that I do here is just to like, share the data with you guys, you know. So just to kind of give you guys a little perspective here, everything that we do is a is an experiment of one.

So everything that we’re doing in here when it comes to how to fuel properly for a marathon, or what’s the right diet for weight loss. When people ask these questions, I always just say, like, try something and see if it works.

That’s it like just try something and see if it works. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. And I don’t even know what works best for me. I’ve tried all kinds of things, and I keep continuing to try different things.

I do different fueling strategies and training, different fueling strategies for long runs. Sometimes I’m carb-loading, sometimes I’m not. And all this stuff is to just find out how I feel and how my performance is affected by these different strategies. Okay.

And I’m always learning. And I don’t know it all, I’m just going to tell you guys right now, I don’t have all the answers. But because you know what the answer is within, you know, the answer is within each of us the right answer as to what is the right fuelling approach for you as an individual.

So but what I want to do today is give you guys a little bit of a look a little snapshot of what this looked like, for me though, this training season and some of the lessons I learned, so that maybe you can like start experimenting with some of this stuff on your own. Okay, so that’s kind of my high level to look at why I’m talking about this today.

And what I’m hoping that you get out of this today. Okay. So I have a question. I want to ask you guys and feel free to answer this in the comments. Because this is just kind of a funny question. Could be a serious question could be a funny question.

But what has been your best or worst fueling strategy for a marathon or half marathon? Like, what’s something you did that worked really well? Or what’s something you did that just went horribly wrong? Those might be more entertaining. So drop your answer in the comments, and we’ll get to those later.

I also want to let you guys know that if you have any questions about anything that I’m talking about here today, just ask away, ask in the comments, and I’ll get to all your questions. before we’re finished here today.

Okay, so if anything comes up for you, and you’re like, you know what, how did that work? Or what do you mean by that? Like, just ask, ask away, okay, that’s what we’re here for the interaction, okay?

I do this podcast or I’m talking into a microphone. I like these lives where we get to have a conversation, okay, where you get to ask the questions, and I can answer them live. That’s super fun for me. So feel free to ask questions. Okay.

So, what did I do differently this time around? So, like I said, most of the last year and a half of training for me, I’ve done now.

Two, I’ve done through three marathons and a 50k. So three marathons and an ultra marathon in the last year basically, and all three of these, or four of these, events have been you know, done as a low carb fat-adapted athlete, okay.

Within that, you know, those parameters of being fat-adapted and low carb, there are lots of different ways of doing things. Okay, so it just doesn’t mean like you never eat anything, it just doesn’t mean you’re eating nothing.

But you know, steaks, you know, for your training and stuff like that. Steaks and sticks of butter, although pretty delicious. Melt some butter on a ribeye steak, there’s really nothing better. So the fueling strategies can be different for all these different kinds of events.

But within the parameters of a low carb endurance athlete, a low carb fat-adapted runner, I’ve done some things a little bit differently. So last year, I did a marathon at this time of the year. Zero calories I did a 50k zero calories, and then I did my marathon in the spring, basically zero calories.

And those three events were fantastic. I felt amazing, especially the last marathon that I did. And I ran that one a little bit harder actually had sort of a time goal. And I felt amazing. So that last marathon was sort of the culmination of for me what it felt like to be a truly fat-adapted athlete, and not really needing any fuel.

So for me, and I’m not crushing goal times here, I’m not qualifying for Boston or anything like that. I ran a 4:15 in the spring. And that was really good for me. And I was pushing the pace. And I had to step up my game a little bit for that one. And I felt amazing.

And again, no, like carb-loading before that event, actually, my ramp-up to that event, I made a point to like, pretty much eat zero carbs. So I talked about this on a podcast called Zero Carb Marathon Training.

And I basically went carnivore for about 40 days leading up to that marathon. And felt amazing, and it was a great experience, okay. And so when, when it came time to do this next marathon, I thought I could do the same thing, and feel the same way and sort of stay in that carnivore sort of mode, and just see how that goes.

But I didn’t want to do that I was actually really interested in getting some carb adaptation, okay. So when you’re fat-adapted, and you’re really good at burning fat and your low-carb athlete, if you want to start incorporating carbohydrates back into your strategy, you have to practice with it and do it for a while.

So you have to sort of get yourself carb-adapted again. And so I made a point to add more carbs in for this training cycle. So what does that mean? Like, what am I talking about?

Was I eating a bunch of cupcakes and stuff like that? No, it’s not that kind of carbs, I wasn’t eating sugar, I’m not eating processed flour and stuff like that.

I was eating more salads, I was eating more avocados, I was eating more yogurt, and some berries, like I love like yogurt with strawberries, and blueberries, nuts.

And then the day before or two days before and the day before my long runs, I would incorporate more slow-burning carbohydrates like wild rice, and sweet potatoes, that’s kind of my go to has been my go-to.

So this was a pretty intentional strategy for me over the last 12 weeks or so, you know, maybe longer than that. Really just to kind of ramp up during this marathon training, because I wanted to make sure that my body could also use the carbohydrates as fuel.

So when you’re really good at burning fat, and then you start introducing some carbohydrates into the mix, you’re not really efficient, and bringing the carbs and having the carbohydrates in the system kind of shuts down the fat burning the efficiency of the fat burning.

So we just have to be careful with this sort of approach. Like if you’re a super fat-adapted athlete, and you’re like, oh, I just want to like run harder, run a better time or something like that.

And you start adding in a bunch of carbs, like just the day before your marathon or something like that, and you haven’t been training this way, you’re not going to have a good experience.

And this was my take when I first started introducing carbs back into my training, I noticed a little bit of a downturn in my performance. So that was one thing that I would say was a negative.

And that was something that I did not enjoy. I didn’t enjoy adding the carbs in and then having this more of a sluggish feeling. Okay. So I pressed on, though, because I’m like, okay, I need to really do this. And I know it’s hard. And I know it doesn’t feel good, but I’m just gonna continue doing it.

Kind of like we do when we get fat-adapted, you have to kind of push through, there’s like three, four weeks of really tough running. Well, I kind of experienced the same thing when I started incorporating carbs back into the mix. So I found that very interesting.

And I’ve done a bunch of reading on this a bunch of research on it, and it’s totally normal. It’s like, part of the process. Okay. So, if you if you’re desiring to add carbohydrates into your marathon training strategy and into your marathon fueling strategy, you have to train with them for I would say a few months leading up to this, okay.

So that’s something that I just wanted to make sure you guys kind of understood and that it is something you can’t just you don’t want to just like incorporate it in the last minute.

Like, you know, you’ve been training super low carb all season and then all of a sudden, drop a bunch of carbs into the mix the night before your marathon and think it’s going to help you because it could really hinder your performance, at least for that one event. So that was interesting.

And the other thing that I started doing this training season and I experimented with, I started using a line of products called S fuels. So S fuels makes endurance, fuel for endurance for low carbon dirt, athletes fuel for low carbon endurance athletes, so the fuel that they have is mostly kind of fat and protein-based.

So MCT oil, amino acids, electrolytes, and they have different types of fuels. So they have a product called Train, which is something you add to water, it’s got a very, you know, water-like consistency, tastes great, and fat and amino acids and electrolytes, great for like, you know, two, three hour runs four or five hours, whatever it is, you can just kind of take that as you go.

They have another product called Race Plus, which has some slow-burning carbohydrates in there, as well as the fat and protein. And electrolytes, that would be something that you would, you know, kind of practice with and use for your events that you want to like run harder and run a little bit faster.

Okay, that’s really not my strategy to run super fast, but I played around with the fuel just to try it out. And then they make another product called Life Bars. And the life bars are basically well, they’re delicious. And they’re like chewy bars are made with like, almond butter or nut butter, cacao nibs and they have the MCT oil and amino acids and things like that.

So it’s kind of like the equivalent of like the fat and protein like you would eat almond butter or something like that. But it’s a little easier to, you know, chew up and swallow.

The almond butter can be a bit of a problem because it’s super thick. And if you’re trying to eat that, while you’re running, it’s difficult.

Somebody posted a comment about that. I think today, they were like I had to drink a lot of water with that almond butter just to get it down. It’s like yeah, it’s a bit much.

So S fuels makes a whole line of products, they make a recovery drink with like a protein powder. And listen, these guys don’t sponsor me or anything like that. I should talk to them about that though, right? Yeah, I probably should.

But, um, so I’m not like getting I’m not trying to like get you guys to go by this, I’m just giving you an example of something that I use that works pretty well for me.

Okay, so I practice with these fuels during the training season. And I enjoyed them I think they are spot on because what you’re doing is you’re adding the fat and the protein in which is what you really want as a low carb athlete.

You want that sort of exogenous fat, the fat that you eat, and the protein helps to keep your keep you feeling good and, and keep the fat-burning going.

So when you’re efficient at burning fat, you can burn the fat that you’re eating as well as for fuel, right. So that’s why we want to keep our fuel intake to the fats and proteins and not the carbohydrates when we’re trying to stay fat adapted and stay in that fat burning zone and really maximize fat burning. Okay.

So for the race itself by I did a life bar beforehand. And I did the Train product and some electrolyte drink. And I did some of the Race Plus beforehand. So I had a little bit of carbs in me, I did some carb-loading the days before I did a bunch of sweet potatoes and wild rice and stuff like that.

And I really wanted to like prime the tanks with glycogen, you know, make sure that I topped up my glycogen levels and got into the marathon. And I have to tell you – so this is the one thing that I noticed that was different from the last three long events that I did.

Where I did them unfold basically, the one thing that I noticed is that I felt very sluggish for the first half of the marathon. Like the first 12-13 miles I was not feeling it.

And you know, I was maintaining a decent pace and listen, we were out there just to have a good time. We had done the 10K and the 5K the day before. And so this was sort of just a fun run for us. Me and some friends we hung out together. We had a great time. It was super fun.

We all helped each other get across the finish line, but I just wasn’t feeling it for about the first half. The longer I was out there, the better I felt. And so this tells me something, this tells me that I probably had more glycogen on board at the beginning.

And as I burn through that, I got more efficient with the fat burning. And I felt better. And I had more energy and more stamina. And I just, I finished feeling much stronger than I did at the beginning of the event. So that was something I thought was really interesting. And I did not like that.

So for me, my biggest takeaway from the actual marathon itself, was that next time, I’m probably going to do away with the carb-loading and the training with the higher carbs, you know because it didn’t give me the boost that I thought it would.

I thought though, beginning half of the marathon, I would have like more energy and feel better. And then the second half, I would, you know, sort of be feeling a little bit more tired or whatever. But it was exactly the opposite. It’s very fascinating.

Again, now, this is an experiment of one. So this is my experience with this, I’m not saying you would have the exact same experience if you did the same thing. Certainly, try it and see how it works for you.

So if you’re if your goal is to run a super fast marathon, maybe some sort of carbohydrate loading would be a good strategy for you to try. For me. I wasn’t trying to run a super fast marathon just like slow and steady, and it didn’t really work for me. Okay, just keep that in mind.

Okay, so definitely try something, some of these things, and see what works for you. But my biggest takeaway was that I didn’t like the feeling of eating the carbs, you know, the sweet potatoes and the rice and stuff like that prior to the event.

I did enjoy the s fuels, I think they helped. And I think that’s what sort of got me like through the event. I did take another life bar with me because I wanted the extra fuel. But I didn’t want to have to mix a drink. I didn’t want to carry a water bottle with me.

And I was trying to do this as like as Spartan as possible. So the only thing I took with me was salt tablets and the life bar. And that was like my fueling strategy during the event.

Now, here’s my other very interesting takeaway. I usually fuel with Elementi Element, the electrolyte mix from Elemental Labs. I love this stuff, I’ve been training with it for a couple of years now. Never had any problems.

I decided, for this training season, I was going to practice using like, what is it called salt stick tablets, like the little capsules with electrolytes, because I didn’t want to have to carry a water bottle with me. During the marathon again, I was just trying something different. So I practice using the salt tablets and they were okay.

Honestly, I do better with more sodium, electrolytes, sodium, potassium, magnesium, the element product has just a very high amount of sodium – 1000 milligrams of sodium per packet. And something like 400-600 milligrams of potassium and magnesium.

So the electrolyte profile is very high. And something fascinating I learned recently is that when we’re exercising, when you’re out there running a marathon, you lose something like 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour, per hour.

So you need to be replacing that and the salt tablets that I was taking either I probably wasn’t taking enough of them, or they didn’t have enough sodium so the sodium content was lower, and I didn’t take as many.

So I think I did something like two salt tabs every four or five miles maybe two every hour or something like that, every 45 minutes or two an hour and I thought that would be sufficient.

I kind of did the math but because the electrolyte profile is different in those things. I don’t know, I probably could have done better with a water bottle just carry a water bottle and take my own electrolyte drink with me.

So there are different ways we can do this stuff. I was just trying to like not have to carry a water bottle with me. You can carry a backpack, mix up your electrolyte drink in your Camelback or whatever. And then you can just like sip on it the whole during the race.

You can carry it in a water bottle and keep refilling it if you want to. That’s what I’ve done in the past and has always worked really well for me. But again, I was just trying some different things this time just to see what works so that I could share it with you like I’m doing right now. So that’s something else I would do differently.

Next time, I’d probably just carry my water bottle like I’m used to doing, it does take a little bit of extra time at the water stops to, you know, unscrew the top, open up the packet, pour it in, get the water, and you got to sort of dork around with that at the water stops.

But you know, if the electrolyte that you’re using isn’t really working for you, you need to fix that, like, it’s super important to make sure that we’re getting enough electrolytes during these events. It was a great day, it wasn’t super hot, but still, we sweat out, like, close to 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour. So you got to be replacing that up there.

Okay. So, all in all, I’m gonna say this, we had a super fun time at the event, I felt better the second half of the marathon than I did during the first half. And I have to tell you guys that, you know, we did this thing where we ran the 10k and the 5k, the day before, so I was starting this marathon on tired legs already.

And so that has to be sort of factored into all of this too. Okay, so that’s typically not recommended to do like a nine-mile shakeout run the day before your marathon. So that has to be sort of factored into all this stuff, okay.

But what I would do differently next time, I think next time, I’m going to stick with my low carb during training season and not introduce the carbs and not try to do any carb-loading or not try to become more metabolically flexible.

So metabolic flexibility is where you can use more fat and carbohydrates more efficiently, but you got to like work through that and you got to really get good at that. And maybe I didn’t do it the right way.

Or maybe I didn’t do it long enough. Whatever the case is, for me, the way that we’re I’m sitting here today, looking back on the last year of events, the ones where I did the best is where I didn’t do any carb-loading and I didn’t do any fueling during you know.

I would say you know, maybe the next time I just add the s fuels products, which I think are pretty amazing. And nothing else. So just kind of stick with those. And that way I’m just getting a little bit of extra boost you know, that might help with the longer distance stuff especially when you start getting into like a marathon distance.

So that’s kind of the recap I’m going to go through your questions you guys and find out kind of what questions you have.

So Gene says, “Fat for fuel, no glucose.” Good job. Awesome. “Ran three marathons fat-adapted, no fuel just electrolytes and water felt good.”

Yeah, me too. Gene. I’m with you on that approach. Okay.

Let’s see Bill says. “Sorry 10k is the farthest I’ve done.” Don’t be sorry 10k is awesome! “Always fasted so started training that way and will continue.”

Awesome. Yeah. Never apologize for your resistance distances right you guys like our people say oh, I only ran the half. Like team, you ran a half marathon! That’s awesome.

Let’s see Zoey says, “Fueled and hydrated better on days leading up to the second marathon compared to first.”

Yeah, lighter meals less carbs had less gels. Ricard also, yeah. Lots of whey isolate chocolate shakes.

Yeah. I do a little protein supplement here, especially after hard strength sessions for sure. Denise did a gel, wants to try peanut butter cups, wants to carb bounce protein wraps. These are all solo marathons or ultras, there is no difference to water only interesting. But I ran my first in-person marathon in December. Thanks for your vices. Absolutely, Denise.

Yeah. So that’s interesting. So you’re actually trying a bunch of different things. And I think this is super important. You’ve got to figure out what works for you. You know, and so, I think we put too much emphasis on like, we have everything has to be perfect every single time.

I purposely do things just to find out like, how does it how’s it gonna feel? You know, I may crash and burn. That was definitely a possibility. The way I was fueling for this marathon, I was like thinking to myself like this may not go well.

Especially that first half I was feeling kind of sluggish. And I was like, oh, this may not go well. But I was like, you know what, I’m gonna just try it. I gotta try different things.

Josh says, “Trying to consume less carbs for my train this time.” Yeah. Give it a shot. Denise says, “I can relate to this. I ran 400 miles in October.” Nice job. “So I just did some carb loading because I thought it might help to maintain the training load, now a week later still feel sluggish. Oh, yeah. I’ll get off the sugar again and see what happens.”

Yeah. Here’s the thing. If you want to get off the sugar like it’s a process like you got to get fat adapted you have to go through that, that sluggish period, where, you know, you get off of sugar, processed carbs, and you’ve got to keep your carb, you know, intake pretty low for anywhere from 2-6 weeks. You know it averages about three weeks, 21 days or so. And that’s where training is very sluggish. It’s very hard.

Don’t do this a couple of weeks before your event, like make sure you start this process at the beginning of your training season or in the offseason, get fat-adapted, and then start your training for your big event.

Because once you’re fat-adapted, the training is going to be so much easier, you’re going to get stronger, faster, and you’re going to be like, super efficient at burning fat and you’re just going to kick ass at your event.

Let’s see. Kim says, “Hi from Canada. I love my element. And I’m excited to start trying s fuels.” Yeah.

And then Marianne, “Any suggestions for after the race food feel like I should be allowed to eat anything? But I get tummy trouble doing that?”

Okay. So that’s such a good question, Marianne. So here’s my take on it. After a marathon, I do give myself a little bit of permission to indulge a little bit. But here’s what I mean by indulging.

Okay, you guys are gonna laugh because here’s me indulging. So after the marathon, it was Halloween. And so I went to my son’s house and in the main room and Halloween, with the family and stuff like that.

And they made his big batch of chili, you know, with ground beef and stuff like that, but it had beans in it. And I’m like, I’m eating beans, I’m just going to go ahead and eat all these beans, this thing was loaded with carbohydrates right in the form of beans, well, I’m gonna eat it.

So that was me, carb-loading or whatever you want to call it, like carbing it up after my marathon. But that’s, like, that’s not a big deal. That is not a big deal, right? Usually my go-to would be something like tacos, I love tacos. So we’d go out and have chips and salsa and tacos or something like that. That’s going kind of off the deep end for me.

But listen, you get to decide what you want to do for yourself. And so if you want to indulge a little bit, here’s my suggestion for you. Plan ahead, just make sure you’re planning ahead.

And you’re not just you know, giving into the moment, you know, because if people are eating pizza and ice cream and a bunch of junk around you, and you’re like just getting into that and stuffing your face and it makes you feel terrible.

Don’t do that. Okay, plan ahead what you want to do. So if your post-marathon go to is something like tacos or whatever do that. Honestly, for me, like an indulgent thing for me, or something that really makes me feel good is eating a big ribeye steak and eating that.

And I do this pretty often. And so that’s sort of a way of treating myself and it tastes great, but it doesn’t throw me off my game. You know, it’s a fun thing to do. It’s indulgent. And it’s part of my plan.

And I plan it and I just keep doing that. Bill says, “Yeah, it hurts not to be perfect.” Yeah, he’s talking about the 10K’s. Yeah, but you’re awesome, so there!

Kristen says, “This is my first marathon fat adapted. And I felt great. Even with the racing the day before.” Super awesome. Kristen, you did such a great job, too. And Kristin went through the whole fat adaptation process. And she, her running improved like crazy.

She became this badass runner that she knew was inside her. And she was like, I’m determined to make this happen. And she did. And then she showed up. Kristen actually lives in Cincinnati, and I saw her after the marathon. So that was super fun. So good stuff, you guys.

I hope you all learned something from this. I hope you got a little something out of this. I hope that me taking one for the team here helps you guys kind of learn maybe what to do maybe what not to do, or maybe something some things that you can try for yourselves because it is fun to try this stuff. It’s fun to experiment.

Listen, we take ourselves pretty seriously. Sometimes we take running pretty seriously sometimes. And I’m at this place in my life where I’m like, I just want to have fun with this, you know, and if that means trying a different feeling strategy, see how it goes. Just so I can like, share my experiences with you guys. So be it. It’s fun for me to do this stuff.

Okay. Next time though, I’m going to kind of go back to my more low-carb ways and more. Just kind of sticking with the non-carb fueling strategy that I’ve done in the past that’s just worked so well for me and increase the electrolyte intake.

I think those are my biggest sort of fuels you know or biggest takeaways from my dueling strategy. Cool. All right, you guys. Well, everybody, enjoy the rest of your amazing Sunday afternoon.

I don’t know about you guys, but here, it’s just gorgeous. You know, it’s something like 63 degrees, super sunny outside, the leaves are changing colors. It’s this amazing time of the year. I love it. We’re getting into the holidays.

And in the coming weeks, I’m going to be talking about how we get through the holidays. This is going to be a good topic for us coming up. Okay. How do we survive the holidays?

You know, what does it mean to get through like Thanksgiving, which is all about indulging in food, right? Like, how do we get through a holiday with that without totally losing our minds, you know, without totally like, screwing up everything good that we’ve done for ourselves up to this point, right?

So we’ll be getting into topics like that. And then how do we get through the winter because it’s gonna start getting colder and darker. And how do we get through the crazy holiday season that is looming just in front of us?

Okay, so you guys all have an amazing day. We’re going to have some fun over the next several weeks here. Okay, if you have any other questions, drop them in the comments here and I’ll get to them soon. Okay, great seeing you guys all on here. Everybody. Have a great afternoon and talk to you soon. Bye.

96. The Ultimate Guide to Sugar Substitutes

October 29, 2021 By Patrick McGilvray

Oftentimes, when people cut out sugar from their diet, they start to crave those sweet treats they used to indulge in. Some people just can’t handle it and give in to their cravings, while others …

Continue Reading about 96. The Ultimate Guide to Sugar Substitutes →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 96 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’ve got the ultimate guide to sugar substitutes.

So a lot of times when people cut out sugar from their diet, they begin to have cravings for those sweet treats that they used to indulge in. And some people just can’t handle this and they just get into the cravings while other people search for low carb or sugar-free versions of those sweet treats instead, so they’re looking for substitutes.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions around this topic of sugar substitutes. People ask me questions like which sugar substitutes are best? Which ones should be avoided? How will these affect my running performance? Great questions. So in this episode of the podcast, I decided to put together the ultimate guide to sugar substitutes.

I’m going to share the science behind the most commonly used sugar-free sweeteners offer guidance on which ones to use which ones to avoid and share my thoughts on whether these will help or hinder your running game. Cool.

But before we get into all that, if you are a fan of this podcast, I would suggest you get on to Facebook and search for the Running Lean podcast community. This is a cool group of people. You guys are cool in the group, you know that. And it’s a group of people that goes hand in hand with this podcast.

It’s a group of like-minded runners who are passionate about running, nutrition, fitness, and becoming healthy. We talk a lot about fat-adapted running in there. And it’s a place where you can get support, ask questions, get inspiration, get motivation. And it’s a lot of fun that we have fun in there. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and come join us over there.

And then heads up November is just around the corner. And in the Running Lean coaching group. For the month of November, we’re going to be talking about self-sabotage how to recognize self-sabotage.

Like what is self-sabotage? How does this actually happen? How to recognize when it’s happening, how to stop it before it gets a little too out of hand. And really how to eliminate it from your life for good. This is going to be a great, great topic to get you to help get you through the holidays because the holidays are upon us.

So we’ve got you know, Halloween coming up, we’ve got Thanksgiving coming up, we’ve got Christmas and New Year’s and all that stuff coming up. And these are food holidays. These are sugar holidays, these are alcohol holidays.

And a lot of times the holidays can just sort of thwart your progress, or at least you think they can. So we need to understand how to get through all of this without totally going off the rails. Cool.

So just join us in the running group and we can help you get through the holidays intact, help you slide into 2022 Like a boss. All right.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Running Lean coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And hope to see you in November for the how to stop self-sabotage.

Alright, so let’s get into this topic of sugar substitutes. So why am I talking about this? Well, a lot of people, when they change their diet and they start, they get off the sugar, they start looking for substitutes for all the stuff that they used to indulge in.

You know, they start to really miss the sweet treats, they miss the desserts, they miss the cookies, and then the ice cream. And you know, brownies or whatever it is the sweet drinks. And they just want something that tastes like sugar but isn’t sugar right?

And so, you know, people want to satisfy the craving for something sweet, but they don’t want to go off the rails. They want to sort of have the best of both worlds here. So they want to like have the sweet treat but not have it be super bad for them. Okay, so I get that right.

You want something healthier, but you don’t want to go totally backward on your weight loss journey or your health journey, or whatever it is wherever you are in your particular journey.

And there’s a lot of confusion out there about this. About what sugar substitutes are, a lot of people call them artificial sweeteners. And I’m going to talk about that in a minute. But they’re not all artificial. Okay?

That’s why I’m using the term sugar substitutes instead of artificial sweeteners. There are some artificial sweeteners. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But are these things bad for you? Do they cause cancer? Should you just never eat them at all? Are they something you can do in moderation? What are the health implications when you’re consuming sugar substitutes?

Which are good for you, which are considered not good for you? A great question is do these raise your blood sugar? Some do? And some don’t? Do they cause a spike in insulin? Some do? And some don’t? There are some health considerations from some of these. And we’ll talk about all that stuff.

And then a good question that I got recently was about running and can I use these? Are these gonna hurt my running performance? Are they going to help me to stay fat-adapted? Will it like shut down fat burning if I’m using some product that has artificial sweeteners in it or up sugar substitutes in it? Okay, so we’re gonna cover all this stuff today.

That’s why it’s the ultimate guide to sugar substitutes, okay. Now, something I want you to consider before I start talking about these different products and these different sugar substitutes here.

For some people, using sugar substitutes will cause an increase in the craving for sugar for sweets. This is mostly a mental craving because a lot of the stuff I’m going to be talking about here does not contain any sugar, but what’s going on is you’re sort of tricking your brain into thinking you’re getting something sweet.

So this could cause some people increasing cravings for sweet things for sugar. And this can lead to a problem for some people. And it can be problematic, especially at the beginning, when you first are trying to get off sugar. Okay, it’s almost like swapping out one addictive substance for another, you know?

So the types of foods that are typically made with sugar substitutes are like dessert type treats, you know. So these are not things you should be eating all day, every day anyway, right?

I want you to just consider this when you’re at the beginning of your weight loss journey, or you’re at the beginning of quitting sugar, I would kind of stay away from sugar substitutes.

Because what you want to do is you want to catch your mind right around a sugar, you want to get off the sugar, and you want to just like stop eating sweets altogether. That includes things that are made with substitutes.

The reason for this is that you want to get your mind and your body off the reliance on sugar on the sweet stuff. This is this helps you to learn how to deal with just eating real food and how to deal with the emotional type of eating that we do.

Because a lot of times emotional eating involves, you know, you’re stress eating, or you’re eating because you’re bored or you’re eating because you’re, you know, angry or you’re just, you know, whatever this kind of eating usually is like we go for the sweet things, right? Or the junk food.

A lot of times it’s the sweet things. And so what I want you to consider is working on dealing with that emotional type of eating first, work on just getting to the point where you’re comfortable eating real food first before you just start substituting all the cookies and cakes and ice cream for you know low carb or sugar-free versions of the same things.

Okay, so, my advice for most people, some people are fine, but most people I’ve noticed, do better when they get off the sugar they get fat-adapted first they learn to deal with life without sugar, learn how to process their emotions, break the emotional eating habit.

Build that confidence in yourself, build that trust in yourself first. Do all this stuff first then you can slowly try some of these sugar substitutes and these like sweet treats and desserts and things like that and kind of see how it works for you. For some people, it’s not a big deal. For other people, it can be problematic.

It can lead to overeating, it can lead to sugar cravings, and so you’ve just got to be careful. That’s all just like try it out and see how it goes. But at the beginning of your journey away from sugar, I would say stay away from it for a while. Okay, see how it goes for you for a while first.

You just want to get off that sugar habit. You want to just not have that habit there anymore before you start incorporating something that’s like a sugar substitute, okay?

You need to learn the skills to live your life without sugar before you add foods that could potentially trigger you, okay? You’re going to be far less likely to be triggered when you’ve gotten over the sugar habit first. Okay?

All right. And then I want to talk a little bit about this whole idea of running and how these things help or hurt your running. Most of the sugar substitutes I’m going to talk about do not raise your blood sugar, they do not create an insulin response.

So if you’re a fat-adapted runner, then you really don’t need to worry about these shutting down fat burning. One thing, though, I would say, to be aware of is that some of the sugar substitutes I’m going to be talking about here do cause GI issues in some people. So you have to test this stuff out.

Before you eat a bunch of this stuff, like the morning of your marathon, you do not want to like obviously, do not do anything new on marathon day, right? Don’t go out on your on a long run, and you know, consume a whole bunch of sugar substitute you’ve never tried before, because it could cause you some stomach issues.

Okay, and there’s some that are worse than others. And we get to all that in a second. Some are fine, though. For example, I use a product called element LM NT, and it’s by Elemental Labs, it’s an electrolyte powder, and you just mix it with water, and it’s delicious.

It has potassium, magnesium, and sodium, and then a little bit of flavoring, and some stevia. Now, stevia leaf extract, as a sweetener is pretty safe. It does not cause a blood sugar spike, it does not cause any GI issues, and it’s a pretty safe bet for most people, but you need to try this out.

So if you’re somebody that’s like, oh, yeah, I want to you know, try one of these electrolyte drinks or, you know, Noon tablets or something like that. Check the label, see what it’s got in there.

Try it out on some shorter runs. And if it feels good, you can use more of it, you know, and then go from there. But don’t just go all-in on one of these sweeteners that you’ve never tried before, because it could be problematic, you do not want to have GI issues when you’re on a long run. We’ll just put it that way.

Now, some sweeteners can be more, some sweeteners that aren’t sugar are actually worse than sugar. So there are a couple of sweeteners out there that are actually more problematic than even plain old sugar.

Okay, so one of the worst things out there is fructose. It’s a real problem. Fructose is a real, real problem. So regular sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose.

However, certain types of sweeteners contain more fructose and glucose and these are called high fructose corn syrup, but that’s an example okay, because it has something like 52% or 54% fructose rather than 50%. Okay, so it’s higher in fructose and fructose seems to be the thing that is the most problematic, okay.

So some of these sweeteners that contain fructose would be things like high fructose corn syrup is in most soda drink soda pop, you know, that kind of stuff. Fruit juice concentrate contains high amounts of fructose, honey, agave syrup. These have been shown to have worse long-term effects than even pure sugar.

And the sweetener that has the highest fructose content is agave syrup or agave nectar. So agave syrup and these other high fructose sweeteners are called healthy alternatives to sugar.

They’re often marketed as being low glycaemic because they don’t raise blood sugar as much as white sugar does, but they may be an even worse choice than sugar when it comes to weight gain and health issues due to fructose having adverse side effects.

So in addition to steering clear of sugar, just avoid high fructose sweeteners. Okay, this is just a little thing to make sure that we’re just avoiding these things altogether because they can have super huge issues like developing fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. Increased weight or weight gain and more health problems later on.

So we want to just steer clear of these higher fructose sweeteners as well. Alright, so here’s some sugar substitutes that we can talk about, and some that are good.

I’m going to talk about kind of some of the best ones here first and then we’ll get into some that may be you know, sketchy, some that you may want to avoid.

So the first one is stevia. So stevia is derived from the leaves of a South American plant, the stevia plant. It’s part of the sunflower family and the active sweet compounds called stevia glycosides, are extracted and refined and they meet the US and European regulatory requirements.

And the FDA has not approved the unrefined leaves, but they’ve designated that the refined extract from stevia is generally recognized as safe, generally recognized as safe. Okay.

So some of the good things about stevia are no calories, no carbs, does not raise blood sugar and does not raise insulin levels. It’s pretty safe and has a low potential for toxicity. It’s very sweet. And a little goes a long way.

Some of the not so good about stevia. It’s very, very sweet, but it does not taste like sugar. And most people don’t like the taste of stevia, it has sort of a bitter aftertaste, it’s kind of hard to cook with because you just can’t swap out like sweet stevia and sugar the same way.

So you know, it’s just kind of weird to use sometimes if you’re using like stevia drops, I’ve tried stevia drops and some things before and it’s just like does not taste right.

But you know, you can get it as a powder or granulated form or liquid. And some of these granulated products, you’ve just got to be careful, some have other nonsugar sweeteners in them.

Like Truvia is a brand that I’ve used before. So it contains erythritol, I’m gonna talk about that one in a second, and stevia sort of combined. So that’s a pretty good option there.

But there are some products like stevia in the raw which you can get in a little packet and it actually contains dextrose, which is sugar. So don’t use that one. Okay, but regular stevia is pretty, pretty safe.

And that’s like I mentioned the stuffing element. And it’s pretty good, you know, not too bad. So that’s one.

Another pretty good option is monk fruit. So it’s relatively new, but you’re starting to see this a lot now. Okay. And it’s also called I’m not going to pronounce this right but it’s called like Luo Han Guo.

Monk fruit was generally dried and used in herbal teas, soups, and broths in Asian medicine, and it was cultivated by monks in Northern Thailand and in southern China. That’s why it’s called monk fruit if you didn’t know that.

Although the fruit in its whole form contains both fructose and sucrose, monk fruit’s intense sweetness comes from these non-caloric compounds in the fruit called mogrosides.

And in 1995 Procter and Gamble right here in Cincinnati, patented a method of solvent for the extraction of the mogrosides from monk fruit. So pretty interesting, right? It’s ruled as a pretty safe alternative.

It’s not accepted for sale by the European Union yet, which is interesting. Some pros of monk fruit, some of the good things about it – it’s calorie free, does not raise blood sugar insulin levels, it has a better taste profile.

And stevia, in fact, it’s often mixed with stevia to reduce cost and kind of cut down the aftertaste of stevia. And it’s also mixed with erythritol to reduce expense because it can be expensive. And for use and cooking doesn’t cause digestive issues. It’s very sweet. A little goes a long way.

Some of the cons about monk fruit is its kind of expensive. It’s often mixed with other fillers like insulin, probiotic fibers and other undeclared ingredients. So just be careful the labels, you know, just read labels.

That’s just a general rule of thumb for all this stuff, right? It’s pretty new. So there aren’t a lot of studies on its long-term effects, but it’s like 150 to 200 times sweeter than table sugar.

So they do make granulated blends. And they’re blended with erythritol or stevia, they make drops. And you’ll see products like monk fruit, sweetened maple syrup and chocolate syrup, and things like that. So monk fruit is a good option, for the most part, okay.

The next sort of category of sugar substitutes is something called sugar alcohols. Now, sugar alcohols are also called polyols. And they taste sweet but they don’t actually contain any alcohol. There’s no ethanol in them at all.

Their effects on blood sugar and insulin levels vary depending on the type of use. There’s a couple that we’re going to talk about here. And these are generally safe to use. And there are a couple of good options here.

So the first one is erythritol. And this is made from fermented corn or corn starch. And it’s a sugar alcohol that occurs naturally in small quantities in fruits and fungi like grapes, melons, and mushrooms.

It’s only partially absorbed and digested by the intestinal tract, which I think is kind of cool and kind of interesting. So it has a negligible amount of calories and carbs. It does not raise blood sugar and does not raise insulin levels.

And the active compound and most of this kind of just passes into the urine without being metabolized by the body. It’s easy to use, you can you know, just use it in recipes and swap it out for sugar because it has like this granulated form or a powdered form.

And it also may help to prevent dental plaque and cavities, which is cool. Some of the negatives about erythritol is it doesn’t really have the same taste and feel as sugar.

Right, it has sort of like a cooling sensation on the tongue, which is kind of weird. If you’re using it in higher amounts. For some people, it can cause some bloating, gas, maybe some diarrhea, though not as much as other sugar alcohols, and there’s a couple more I’ll talk about in a second here.

But when you absorb erythritol and you excrete it via the kidneys, it can have negative health consequences, but there’s really none that really are known at this time, but they’re just really not sure about that right.

But a lot of people use erythritol, this is one of the most popular forms of sugar substitutes. Because it just works so well. It’s tolerated pretty well by most people. It’s about 70% as sweet as sugar or table sugar.

And a lot of times they blend this with stevia like you’ll see erythritol blended with stevia or monk fruit or something like that to make different sweeteners. And so this is a good option.

Actually, I really like this one and you’ll find this, the two you’ll find most often would be erythritol monk fruit in most products anyway. And I’ve used erythritol in I make this amazing pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving every year.
And I use erythritol in there and it tastes fantastic and people just can’t even tell that it doesn’t have sugar in it and they love it!

The next one is another sugar alcohol it’s called Xylitol with an x. Xylitol is another sugar alcohol just like erythritol. And it’s found in certain fruits and vegetables and tiny little amounts.

And they produce it commercially from corn cobs or birch trees. And this is one of the ones that’s used most frequently in chewing gum and mouthwash and stuff like toothpaste. Because, like erythritol, it helps to prevent dental plaque and cavities.

Okay, so like I was checking out my toothpaste this morning and I’m like, oh, this stuff contains Xylitol as an ingredient. And it gives your toothpaste that sweet taste. I guess adding sugar to toothpaste would not be a good idea. Like that’s anti what you want, right?

So Xylitol is not zero carbohydrates. So just understand this, right. So just use it in small amounts, it does contain a tiny bit of carbohydrates. And it has a taste like sugar.

So some of the good things about it – tastes like sugar, it has an equivalent sweetness to sugar. So it’s 100% as sweet as sugar. But it has like two and a half calories per gram. And so just it’s something you want to use in small amounts, okay? And again, it’s like 50% of Xylitol is really not absorbed by your body. And so some of it gets passed through your system, some of it gets kind of fermented in your colon.

And this actually causes some issues for some people. This is where you get some of the digestive issues when some people if you eat a lot of this stuff, okay. It’s generally safe to use for humans. But one thing to be very cautious of is that Xylitol is toxic and potentially lethal for pets like cats and dogs.

So if you use xylitol, keep it away from your pets, even a small bite of a product containing Xylitol can be fatal to dogs. So keep it away from the pets. Keep those pets happy and healthy. Okay?

So they use Xylitol and all kinds of products. A lot of it has to do with like mouthwash and toothpaste and gum and things like that. So I think erythritol is a better choice than xylitol, to be honest with you, if you’re going to go for the sugar alcohol, it doesn’t have these potential side effects. It’s not, you know, bad for dogs and things like that.

And then the last of the sugar alcohols I’m gonna mention is one called Maltitol. And it’s made from the hydrogenation of this corn syrup byproduct maltose. And because it behaves in cooking in production, very much like pure sugar, it’s very popular in commercial sugar-free products, like candy, desserts and low carb products, okay?

It’s also less expensive for food producers than eryhtritol and in xylitol, okay? I don’t recommend using this stuff, though, especially on your if you’re on a low carb diet, or you’re trying to stay fat adapted because it has been shown to raise blood sugar and increase in insulin response. And we do not want that. Okay?

It’s a potential concern for anyone with you know, issues like pre-diabetes or diabetes. So stay away from Maltitol. Also, this is one side effect of multiple, it’s a powerful laxative.

So this is good reason right here to just stay away from it similar to xylitol, like half of it is passed, half of it sort of remains and ferments in the colon, and apparently causes a lot of gas, bloating and diarrhea in people, especially if you do use a lot of it. So I would just stay away from this one. Okay.

Now, there are a couple of newer plant-based sweeteners that I think are really interesting. We don’t know a lot about this stuff yet, because they haven’t done long-term studies on it, but one of them is called allulose. And allulose seems to be like one of the sweeteners that’s gaining popularity.

And it’s so allulose is called a rare sugar because it occurs naturally, and only a few foods like wheat, raisins, and figs, and it has a molecular structure that’s almost identical to fructose.

And the body isn’t able to metabolize allulose. Okay, so nearly all of it gets passed into the urine without being absorbed, thereby contributing almost zero carbs, zero calories.

And studies have shown that allulose can help to actually lower your blood sugar. Not only does it not raise it, but it actually can lower it by pulling glucose out of the system, which I think is very interesting. And apparently, it tastes just like sugar doesn’t have the digestive side effects when consumed in small amounts.

It’s more expensive than you know some of the other sweeteners so it’s not super widely available, but you can find it on Amazon, you can find allulose. But apparently a bakes and freezes just like sugar. And so people love it for making like ice cream or making baked goods.

And it has about 70% of the sweetness of table sugar. So allulose is not what I’ve tried yet, but it is very interesting to me and seems to be one that we’re probably going to start seeing more of.

And then there’s another sort of plant-based sweetener, that’s just, I just found out about this one and it’s called Bochasweet, and it’s very new and it’s made from the kombucha. It’s like a squash. It’s a Japanese pumpkin-like squash.

And apparently, it has the same taste as white sugar. But it isn’t absorbed and doesn’t contribute any calories or carbs. But there’s just not a whole lot that I know about it at this time. They haven’t done a lot of studies on it, but it’s supposed to be just as sweet as table sugar. So, you know, you might see more about this one in the future.

And then next, a category of sweeteners here is going to be artificial or synthetic sweeteners. Okay, so these are the ones that are created in laboratories made from chemicals, basically. Okay.

So, and these have been approved by the FDA, you know, and they’ve said these things were all fine to use, but you know, some of these are a little controversial.
And generally speaking, I try to stay away from these with one exception, which I’ll get to in a second.

So the first thing to talk about is one called acesulfame K and also known as acesulfame potassium or ACE K, and it’s a sweetener that’s used in like flavored waters and sugar-free drinks. They use this a lot in you know, sugary drinks and stuff like that.

And it doesn’t contain any calories or carbs. It doesn’t raise your blood sugar insulin, but it’s just one of these things that they haven’t done a lot of studies on. It’s supposed to be 200 times sweeter sugar so you don’t need much of it. So it’s just one of these things.

It’s like I don’t know they’ve done some studies and they’re like, Oh, it’s you know, it’s okay. It’s not awesome. So I would just stay away from this one.

The other one is aspartame. Aspartame is usually found in diet foods and beverages, right? This is sold under the sweetener name of Equal, it used to be called NutraSweet. Now it’s called Equal, and it doesn’t have any calories or carbs hasn’t been shown to raise blood sugar.

But here’s the thing when you’re using the packets of aspartame in the form of like equal, they contain a gram of carbohydrate from dextrose. So there’s actually a little tiny bit of like sugar in there basically.

And this stuff is kind of controversial because some people have reported side effects when they eat this stuff of having headaches and dizziness. And so there’s like a sensitivity to this stuff from some people.

I particularly don’t like this and I don’t use it. And you’ll even see things out there, now they’re putting out products that say like aspartame free. So people are starting to get wind of this and start to be like maybe I want to stay away from that. So if it has aspartame, maybe just stay away from it.

The other one is another artificial or synthetic sweeteners saccharin. Saccharin has been around since 1878. It’s by far the oldest of the synthetic sweeteners. So this is like what’s in sweet and low in sugar twin and doesn’t have any calories or carbs.

But those packets again contain dextrose. So that’s the reason they do that is because apparently, saccharin has a really bitter aftertaste. So they put dextrose in there, which is a form of sugar to kind of cut that taste down.

So stay away from saccharin. They did these studies back in the 70s that showed that rodents exposed to extremely large doses of saccharin, were getting bladder cancer. And so they just kind of like banned saccharin. Right. But the human research on this stuff is like never showed that it has any of these super terrible side effects. But again, it’s one of those ones. It’s like, do you really want to just put these chemicals in your body? Probably not.

And then the last of the artificial or synthetic sweeteners is sucralose. So this is found in Splenda. And it’s, you know, they market Splenda as being something that tastes like sugar, because it’s made from sugar.

And this is true, the sucrose, the white sugar molecule is actually been modified so it no longer contains carbs or calories, and is much much sweeter. But again, those Splenda packets like sucralose on their own are not too bad.

But Splenda packets contain dextrose. Again, all these little packets, I would just stay away from those because they actually do have calories and carbs in there. So a little bit of sugar. But then the research on sucralose is kind of mixed.

Some studies show it doesn’t have any impact on blood sugar insulin levels. Others show it increases your blood sugar a little bit. Some studies show that increases appetite and some show that it doesn’t. So it’s kind of varied like you need to sort of try this on your own.

I will say this, I use a protein supplement that’s by Optimum Nutrition, and it contains sucralose and I haven’t noticed any side effects from this at all. It’s not something I’m consuming in large amounts. So for the most part, it seems to be not a big issue for me, you know.

I wish some of these things had better options, maybe using something like erythritol or allulose, or something like that, but maybe later, sucralose, generally not too bad.

One last thing that I just want you to kind of be aware of these synthetic sweeteners, and just know that some of the ones like Stevia in the Raw, Equal Sweet and Low, Splenda, they’re all labeled as like zero calories, but they’re not.

The FDA allows products with less than a gram of carbohydrates and less than four calories per serving to be labeled as zero calories. But there are like .9 grams of pure carbs in the form of glucose dextrose and sometimes maltodextrin, which is just another name for sugar.

And then they have the, you know, the synthetic sweetener in there as well. But you’re getting sugar with this stuff and you’re getting carbs, so I would just stay away from it. Okay. Don’t be conned by the labeling laws they get around these labeling laws.

Alright, so the bottom line from all this stuff. The bottom line with all the sugar substitutes. If you’re going to use sugar substitutes, use sparingly, it doesn’t matter which ones you choose. Just some cause GI issues if they do for you stay away from them.

If using them causes more cravings for sweets, stop using them. Don’t start using these things at the beginning of your journey away from sugar or on your weight loss journey. Wait until you’ve kind of kicked the sugar habit first.

Wait until you’ve gotten fat adapted. Wait until you’ve learned the skills and you’ve learned how to deal with like the emotional eating you sort of kick that habit before you start dabbling with some of these sweet treats like sugar substitutes, okay.

Definitely test these things out before you go run a marathon don’t use these for the first time before a super long run. Your best bets are going to be stevia, monk fruit erythritol, maybe xylitol. Just keep it away from your pets right?

But the three best bets would be stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, or sucralose if you’re looking for something that’s a pretty safe synthetic sweetener. But in general, stick to eating real food. Don’t overdo it with these sweets. Sweets are fine to do here and there. You know I enjoy some.

I enjoy this sugar-free ice cream. It’s made by Rebel Creamery, it uses heavy cream and eggs and some natural ingredients and erythritol. And I think it even has a little bit of monk fruit in there. Whatever it is, it’s something that I can do every now and then it’s not a big deal.

You know, it doesn’t set me up for craving for more sweet things. But I can use some of these things on an occasional basis and it’s totally fine. So enjoy some of these sweet treats, use them for special occasions.

Like my sugar-free pumpkin cheesecake, and I make my own sugar-free whipped cream that goes on top of it and it is delicious and it’s decadent and people love it. They devour it. And they say it’s the best dessert of Thanksgiving and they don’t even know it’s sugar-free.

So just use these things wisely. I hope you’ve learned a few things about the different types of sugar substitutes, and hope you got something out of this episode.

And if you’re looking for a little help with all of this if you’re looking for someone to help you navigate the waters of your weight loss journey, this is what I do. I’m a coach, I can offer you the guidance, the support, the encouragement, the accountability, and maybe a little tough love every now and then that you need to help make this work for you.

No matter what your goals are and no matter what your lifestyle. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool. All right, you guys have an awesome rest of your day. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

94. Which Diet Is Best?

October 15, 2021 By Patrick McGilvray

There’s a lot of chatter out there in the world about which diet is best. You see this play out on social media where proponents of one diet will bash another diet, and then proponents of THAT diet …

Continue Reading about 94. Which Diet Is Best? →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 94 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, which diet is best? So there’s a lot of chatter out there in the world about which diet is best. You’ll see this play out on social media, especially where proponents of one diet will bash another diet and then proponents of that diet or bash the other one and then on and on it goes.

And with all of this conflicting information out there, it can be very difficult to make an informed decision about which diet is best for you. How do you know which is right for you? What happens if you’re wrong? So in this episode of the podcast, I’ve decided to make things a little bit easier for you.

I’m going to explain, first of all, why there’s so much conflict around which diet is best and offer up some actionable tips on how to make the right choices to help you reach your particular health and fitness goals. Cool. Awesome.

But first, if you like this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group that I created that goes hand in hand with podcast. We do some coaching and training over there in the group. It’s a positive, encouraging, motivational, inspirational group of people that share goals like wanting to lose weight, wanting to become a fat adapted runner, wanting to run without bonking just running to run faster, or maybe just want to run more.

Whatever goals that you have around weight loss and running around health and fitness. We’re here to support you. So come and check us out. It’s a fun group and I do some weekly coaching and training in the group and people get a lot out of it. At least that’s what they tell me. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and you’ll find it over there. Cool.

And then here’s another five star review of the Running Lean podcast and this one is from Lance and Lance says:

“Running Lean is easy to understand. And it works. This podcast does a great job explaining complex subjects by using everyday terms. The podcast uses updated studies in science nutrition debunking a lot of methods. The vast information out there is the vast information is out there for all of us, but Patrick takes all the information and gives us the Cliff Notes and it works for me. Love that. I read nutrition food labels an entirely different way. Now I eat entirely differently and it works for me. My hunger pangs are gone over the past two months, I feel full I’m losing weight without some crazy calorie counting. And I get my nutritional needs met. Keep up the great work you are my nutritionist for exercising. Best, Lance.”

Thank you, Lance. That is awesome. I love this. I am your nutritionist, Lance. I love that that’s so fun. And if you feel like it, if you want to leave a review, that would be awesome. You can just go to iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts and leave a review. Leave some feedback. I love getting messages like that. It just lets me know that the message is resonating with you guys. And that you’re you’re getting something out of this. So cool, awesome.

And then people ask how they can work with me. And there’s really two ways. So I have the Running Lean coaching group. And this is a group that meets once a week we do a group zoom call. And we talk about what’s going on we talk about how was your your weight loss goals going? How is your running goals going? How is your health and fitness goals guide? Like how are things going for you?

And it’s a place where you get support encouragement and you get to ask questions and get questions answered. I do some coaching and teaching in the group. I bring in special guests to do some coaching and teaching in the group. I have an entire online library of training materials that you have access to.

I have a private podcast that you would have access to with all the replays of all the trainings, you never have to miss anything you can take this stuff on the run with you. And it’s just really a great way to help you reach your goals and get some support doing it. So that’s number one.

Number two is you could hire me as your coach I’m a coach, this is what I do. This is my jam. working one on one with a coach is probably the best way for you to get your to get to your goals. And I’m not saying that like oh yeah, I’m the only one that can do this for you.

Now there are lots of coaches out there. But if you ever want to really like supercharge your your goals and really get there faster and easier and more efficiently than hiring a coach is a great way to do it doesn’t have to be me, it can be somebody else. There’s lots of great coaches out there.

So if you’re interested in working with me, you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and you can apply for coaching. And if you’re interested in joining the group, the monthly coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. So those are two ways of working with me.

And you know, I’m always here for you, my my goal in life, like, my purpose, my mission in life is to help as many runners as possible to get healthy, to, to get fitter, to become stronger, to become just better overall human beings. And it takes a little bit of work to get there, you know, so I teach some stuff on the podcast, but really to take a deep dive and, and really almost guarantee that this is going to work for you, then you can do some some coaching. Cool.

Awesome. All right, let’s get into this topic of which diet is best. So I want to say this before I start, because I’m going to use the word diet today a lot. And I usually don’t use that word, because I don’t like the connotations that brings up because when we think about a diet, we think about something that is temporary, or something that is, you know, just for the purpose of losing weight.

Like saying I’m on a diet to lose weight, and then it also implies that somehow you’re going to go off the diet. So that’s not how I’m using the word diet today. What I’m using the word diet today is just to refer to your food plan, your protocol, your nutrition program, the types of foods that you eat, whatever you want to call it, okay? It’s like the way you eat.

Okay, so, you know, we can, here’s some examples of diets like vegetarian, pescatarian, ovo, lacto, vegetarian, vegan plant based carnivore, low carb, high fat, Paleo, keto, high carb, the standard American diet, the Mediterranean diet, like there’s all these different types of diets out there. Okay.

So that’s kind of what I’m referring to in the course of this episode today, okay? So when I talk about diet, and what sparked me wanting to talk about this today, I’m a little fired up about this subject, because I see so much information out there, where people are, you know, they’ll talk about their, their particular diet, the one that they believe is the best.

And they sort of like put it out there as if all the other ones are terrible. And this is the only way to do it. And I’m right, and you’re wrong. And I’m just kind of like over that, you know what I mean?

Because clearly, there’s lots of people that that do things like, vegetarian or vegan that, like don’t eat meat. And then there’s people that do things like carnivore that eat only meat, and both groups of people seem to be pretty healthy. You know, I mean, like, I think there’s a lot of evidence that would show that, like, you can be very healthy on either side of that equation. Right.

And for us to argue with each other about this, I think is it’s an exercise in futility. Because, as I’ll get into in a minute here, the science will tell us that this one is, is the better diet, and then the science will also tell us. No, this one over here is the better diet and they conflict each other and it’s like, why is this? Why is this happening?

And I got a message recently from someone who said, you know, hey, I’m kind of confused about all this because every, you know, nutritionist that I follow or dietician or coach tells me that as a runner, I need carbs, like, that’s the only way I can fuel my running, and I have to have carbs or I can’t, you know, run a marathon or whatever.

And you’re over here telling me that low carb is, is something that’s possible, and it’s a better way to go. And so which is right, is that everybody else? Or is it you? How can the science support both of these views? And I’m going to get into that in just a second. Like why the science is so conflicting on these matters.

But I just want to say that sometimes we get into what’s what’s called a bias. So we have this, this bias as to what our beliefs are. So we tend to believe something like, like, I tend to believe that a low carb diet is a good way to go. I’m not saying it’s better or best. I’m just saying that this is a good way to go. And so I read a lot of information, and I follow a lot of people, doctors and elite athletes, who talk about the low carb diet as a way of enhancing your performance of losing weight of becoming the healthiest person you can possibly be of reversing chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes and heart disease and things like that.

And so I’m following all these people in the world. And I’m very connected to a lot of people in the low carb sort of community. And so for me, I see this everywhere I see evidence of this low carb being effective, I see it everywhere.

Now, if you’re the kind of person who believes that, you know, the traditional sort of high carb approach to running is the way to go, you’re probably going to be following people that talk about that. And that’s why you might say to yourself, like, well, everybody that I see and hear and talk to, says that you have to have carbs, well, you’re just not following the right people, or you’re just only following this small group of people over here, okay.

So just know that we all have this sort of perception bias, like when it comes to our own beliefs, you know, so we believe something. And so we tend to gravitate towards people towards resources towards podcast or its books, towards literature toward studies and all that stuff that supports our viewpoints.

And I’m telling you that I do the same thing, I totally do this, I follow tons of podcasts and read tons of books on, on how the low carb approach to endurance sports is a great way to go. And, and I feel really, you know, convicted in my beliefs, I feel very strongly about my particular beliefs. Okay.

I also have to say that what I believe is not necessarily true for everyone. And this is kind of the point I’m trying to make here today is that there are a lot of people out there that say, like, there’s only one way to do it, and this is the way to do it. You know, plant based, you can’t eat meat, because it’s killing you. It’s killing the plants, killing everybody.

And then there are other people, they’re like, listen, we’ve been eating meat for 2.5 million years, I think we’re gonna be okay, you know, why all of a sudden, do we need to stop eating it? You know what I mean? So, and both people have valid points, and both people can make the claim that you know, that they get good health results from eating this way.

And so we’re going to get into why there’s conflicting information and all that stuff here. So let’s talk about this a little bit here. So science, I love science. I am a fan of science, I’m a logical thinking sort of like science person, I want to see the facts. I don’t take much on just face value, you know, I’m not much of a man of faith, I’m more of a man of science, okay.

And when we get into studies, and we get into scientific studies, especially around food, the science can be conflicting, and the science can contradict one another. So the studies can kind of contradict each other. The problem with the way they do science in the in around food. Is that is that the science is not perfect when it comes to food. Okay.

So there are different types of studies. And there’s two main types of studies that I’m talking about here and they they have good and bad points. There is a study called a randomized controlled trial, RCT. And then there are what are called observational studies. And I want to explain what these two things are. And I’m going to just take a dive into this just for a minute here. If you will allow me, will you allow it? Thank you, because I want you to understand the difference between these two types of studies.

So randomized controlled trials, or RCTs, are the most straightforward of studies, to design and to interpret, they’re often considered to be the gold standard of clinical and epidemiological studies. This is because if they are conducted properly, it is often possible to be fairly sure that the results are correct, at least for the type of people who took part in the study.

In a randomized control trial, two or more groups of people are compared. So there’s an experimental group who receives maybe a new treatment or a different type of food or something like that. And then there’s a control group who receive the current standard treatment or the current standard food, whatever it is.

Information from the control group allows the reacher researchers to see whether the new treatments are more or less effective than the current standard. It is important that in a randomized controlled trial, the two groups have people that are as similar as possible except for the treatment they receive except for the diet they’re getting.

For example, this is very important because it means that the researchers can be sure that there aren’t any outside influences that are skewing the results. And they call it randomized because the decision about which treatment each participant gets is random, it’s based on chance, rather than decided by the participant or by a doctor or something like that. Okay.

So, randomized controlled trial, the gold standard, you’re basically taking two identical groups of people, and you’re controlling all of the factors, you’re controlling everything except for one variable, like the food that they’re eating, okay?

Then there are things called observational studies. So in fields like epidemiology, social sciences, psychology, statistics, and observational study will draw inferences from a sample to a population where the independent variable is not under the control of the researcher, because of maybe ethical concerns or logistical constraints.

So these are called observational studies, because the investigator observes individuals without mean manipulation or intervention, they’re just sort of observing what’s happening. Okay? This is in contrast to randomized controlled trials where investigators do do intervene and look at the effects of the intervention on an outcome.

Although randomized control trials are useful in determining causal relationships, between treatment and outcome, there are often instances where randomized control trials are not appropriate or ethical, right? So observational studies are needed. Observational studies are good for things like you know, long term effects of food on a population.

Like you can’t control every aspect of an entire population, you can’t make them all do the same thing, live in the same, you know, neighborhood, work, the same job, have the same level of stress, have the same type of relationship status, like all these things, you know, factor into your health and things like that, right? So it’s very difficult to do randomized control trials with food studies. So I’m just going to put that out there. Okay.

Randomized control trials are considered the gold standard, because their goal is to prove causation, what is causing the problem, if we remove all the variables, if these two groups of people are exactly the same in every single way, except this one thing, like one person’s eating high fat, one person’s eating low fat, does this food cause obesity? Does this food cause diabetes? Does this food cause heart disease? This is what we’re trying to get to.

But it’s very hard to do, because it’s hard to control everything in two groups of people, right? That’s why there are so many observational studies around food. Okay, so the best we can do. Sometimes a randomized control trials are possible with food. But the most studies around food are called observational studies. Observational studies cannot prove causation. That’s the thing you have to understand they can they can cause they can show correlation but not causation.

So correlation is where like, let’s say, everyone in this group who ate brussels sprouts had a 90% higher risk of lung cancer. So you’re inferring you’re making a correlation of lung cancer to brussel sprouts, okay? You’re inferring that the brussel sprouts caused the lung cancer, but you can’t prove that the brussel sprouts, you’re not proving causation. They didn’t cause the lung cancer. They didn’t factor in that maybe all those people smoked cigarettes. Okay. So that’s what the difference between an observational study and randomized control trial.

So the bottom line with me talking about all this stuff is just saying like the science is not always 100% perfect when it comes to food. And that’s why you can find studies that show that a high carb diet is the only way you can run long distances. And you can have other studies that show the completely opposite effect that a low carb diet is just as beneficial for endurance athletes.

And I’ve talked about some of these studies in the past, you know, like the faster study is a great one that showed groups of elite athletes, one group who did the traditional high carb diet, the other group did the was on a low carb, high fat diet for a period of time. And they had them go through all these, you know, rigorous exercises and things like that, and then they measured their blood glucose levels and their performance and their output and all this stuff.

And both groups were very, very similar. The high fat group, the low carb, high fat group was burning tons more fat than the other group. But besides that, like their performance was almost exactly the same. And so what that tells me is like, either way is is going to work. Like there’s not just one way, there’s not one way is better than the other necessarily, okay.

And I’m not saying that the science is bad, or it’s wrong or shouldn’t be trusted, but I’m saying is that science can be skewed a little bit based on some of these types of trials that they do. Also, this is very important. Sciences is often biased, you know, by who’s funding the study. Or science can be incomplete, you know, making so they’re making assumptions, you know, they’re jumping to conclusions sometimes.

But unfortunately, a lot of science is biased, because it’s bought and paid for by, like the big food industries with deep pockets. They pay for these studies to support the results that they want to get, like, they want to say, like, let’s show sugar is not the problem. So let’s pay for these studies that support this outcome. And you better show us the results that sugar is not the problem here.

Here’s an example in 2015, The New York Times revealed how Coca Cola was funding high profile scientists and organizations promoting a message that in the battle against weight gain, people should pay more attention to exercise, and less to what they eat and drink.

In the aftermath of that investigation, Coca Cola released data detailing its funding of several medical institutions and associations between 2010 and 2015. From the Academy of Family Physicians to the American Academy of Pediatrics, all told, Coca Cola says it gave $132.8 million towards scientific research and partnerships that supported the message of you need to exercise more and don’t worry so much about what you eat and drink, but they paid for those results. This is not uncommon. This is just one example. Google this, you’ll find all kinds of examples of the food industry, paying for studies that support whatever their particular views are.

So you can see how it can be sort of hard and a little frustrating to sift through all the science out there and come up with anything that is like perfectly irrefutable. Alright. So I just want to like wrap up this whole science piece by saying, like, there is a lot of great science out there, there’s no doubt about it.

But do your, like research, do due diligence, you know, look for yourself, who’s funding these studies? Are they epidemiological studies, like observational studies? Are they randomized, controlled trials? How big are the studies? Because oftentimes, the larger the study, the more sort of accurate the results will be.

So it’s a good idea for you to just kind of do a little bit of like research on your own and just kind of come up with, you know, like, if you see a study was, you know, funded by, you know, Nabisco or like Hershey’s, or something like that, I would be very wary of something like that. Okay.

There’s a lot of medical studies out there that are funded by these big food companies, too. There’s tons and tons and tons of them. They saturate the market with these studies. And they do it on purpose. They do it to make things complicated and confuse us. Honestly, they do.

Okay, so there was a little bit of rant I just went on about the science. If you’re still with me, then let’s talk about which diet is best. Okay, so according to the science, they all are, right, every single one of them will work for everybody. But here’s the fact – there is not one perfect diet that works for every human being on the planet, there just isn’t okay.

In order for you to find out what works for you, you’ve got to get into some trial and error. Okay. I talked about this idea of being an experiment of one we are all an experiment of one. We call this an n equals one or n of one. N means the number of people involved in the experiment. So if it’s an n of one that means there’s one person involved in the experiment, you, you get to try whatever you want. You get to experiment on yourself, so to speak, and see what works.

Now, here’s where most people sort of get this wrong. So let’s say you want to try something like you try, like, I just want to go plant based, I keep hearing everybody talking about plant based whatever. So like, you go read a book, or you watch some YouTube video and you’re off to the races, you start, you know, stop eating meat and you start eating more tofu or whatever, right?

And you’re doing this for a while, you might lose some weight, you might feel pretty good. But then it stops working. And you know what, it really doesn’t matter which diet you pick, like, most diets will come to a point where maybe it stops working for you, or you need to change something and you just don’t know what to do.

And so, but here’s the thing, most people at this point, they just quit, they give up. They say that diet doesn’t work. ‘Oh, I tried that. It doesn’t work for me.’ I had somebody tell me this the other day, they were feeling really good. They were, you know, kind of like doing the low carb thing. This is somebody that I’m working with. And she’s like, “Oh, man, I’m feeling so good. I’ve lost some weight. I’m just feeling it got a lot of energy. And somebody at work was like, oh, yeah, I tried that for a while. And it didn’t work after awhile. It just stopped working.”

And she was a little concerned. She’s like, well, what if this stops working for me? I was like, hey, you know what, that person, you don’t know what that person was doing? First of all, they could have been doing something completely different. They could have been like totally cheating.

Most people, when they say they tried it, and it didn’t work. Most people aren’t doing it 100%. Like most people are sort of cheating. Unless you have somebody holding you accountable. It’s very easy to just sort of like, half ass the diet, you know what I mean?

And we know we don’t half ass anything, we full ass everything we do, right? So most people just sort of don’t do the right way. So this person probably was trying to be helpful, I don’t know. But it’s kind of a jerky thing to say to somebody, in my opinion, it’s like, let this person figure it out for themselves. Like so it didn’t work for you, that’s your experience that has nothing to do with you.

It has nothing to do with whether this is going to work for another human being, you know what I mean? But that’s where most people get to they get to this place where they’re like, Oh, I tried that diet, it doesn’t work. So they just quit. And then they go on to the next one.

Oh, the Mediterranean diet. Let’s try that one, you know, and they just keep doing this, and they just keep getting the same results? Because I don’t know, maybe they’re not sticking to it. Maybe it’s just not the right diet for them. Maybe they aren’t doing it right. Or you know, they’re not doing it 100%.

Or, you know, maybe they just need to tweak it a little bit. And that’s where I do a lot of work with my clients. This is where we we tweak things, like we’re always kind of making minor changes to your nutrition plan and to the diet, because I don’t know what’s gonna work for you, and neither do you. Like, we don’t know exactly what’s going to work.

It would be amazing if there was just one simple, straightforward way and one diet that works for everybody. But it’s not it’s not straightforward. It’s not simple. It’s complicated. We’re all different human beings. We all have different complex systems at play here. We all have different genetics, different metabolisms, different goals, we have different tastes, different likes and dislikes.

We have different lifestyles, we come from different cultures, we have different families we have, some of us have allergies, we have different body types, and we have to fit factor all of these things in when we’re deciding which diet is going to work for you. And you have to sort of try different things and stick with it, you know, instead of just giving up, you have to like just make some minor changes, just like you would an experiment.

You make a minor change to one thing you try for a while. And then if that doesn’t work, you try something else. You don’t give up. You keep going. And if there was just one thing that worked for everybody, this would be so much easier. I gotta tell you, I could just write a book and give it to you guys and just be like, here, I’m done. This is exactly what you do. This will work for you perfectly.

But it’s not that easy. I’ve read a lot of books on diet and nutrition. And a lot of these books come with, like menus, they’ll say like, here’s what you do, here’s what you eat. And week one, week two, month, one, month, two, whatever. But like, what if you don’t like that food? What if that doesn’t work for you? Like, you can’t possibly write a book with pre written meal plans that will work perfectly for everyone. You just can’t do it.

When I write my book, which I’m thinking about doing here, and I’ve got, you know, sort of an outline going already, so I’m working on it and let’s just say the book is in progress at this point. I’m going to instead teach that you have to figure out what works for you, instead of just giving you like, here’s what you do. Because when you learn how to do it yourself, this is a much better way to go.

This is one of the main reasons why I don’t like just tell my clients what to eat, I make suggestions, I might tell them what to avoid, like, don’t eat sugar, that’s bad for you. That’s just a no, nobody should be eating sugar. I’ll say that, okay.

But I offer guidelines offer a blueprint, a framework, but not like done for you meal guide, right, you need to learn what works for you, you need to learn how to make your own decisions around your diet. And I’ve talked to several people recently tell me they’ve worked with like a dietitian in the past and this person gave them a menu each week.

So each week, they would like send them a menu of here’s what you’re going to eat each day. And you can’t deviate from this, this what you have to do. And then after months of working with this person, they had developed zero skills, they couldn’t make their own decisions, they didn’t know what to do, they had no idea what to eat, because somebody was just like figuring it out for them and just telling them what to do.

They weren’t telling them why they should do it, or what’s the theory behind it? Or, you know, why would you avoid this? Or why should you eat that instead, they were not empowering their people, you know what I mean? They weren’t in control of their, you know, these people weren’t in control of their own health, they were like relying on somebody else, to make all their decisions for them.

Okay, so my approach is different. What I do is I help you learn what works for you, I teach you how to make your own food choices, I teach you how to make good decisions, I teach you why we’re doing this stuff. And you’re gonna make some mistakes along the way. That’s good. That’s actually part of the process. That’s how you learn. That’s how you develop good skills.

That’s how you begin to intuitively learn what to eat that works for you, as an individual human being, and what doesn’t work for you. The best diet for you is the one that works for you. And it doesn’t have to be paleo or keto or vegan or carnivore or anything like that. It could be whatever the heck you want it to be.

Now, let’s address the big ole lean elephant in the room. So I have a bias towards a low carb approach. The low carb diet, I think works for the majority of people that I have worked with, I would say like probably 98 out of 100 people have gotten really good results with a low carb approach.

And we’re not talking about you know, necessarily like keto, or paleo or anything like that. I don’t like to put labels on it. But the reason I think the low carb approach works for a lot of people is because when I switch runners to a low carb diet, if their goals are to, you know, lose weight and to improve their health and fitness and improve their running, when they make this switch, they do lose weight, they feel better, they have more energy, not less.

Their hunger levels go way down, their cravings for junk food just go away. Their endurance improves, running becomes easier, they become bonk proof, they can run for longer distances without hitting the wall. Most of the time, they get faster and they recover faster from these hard workouts. They start sleeping better and waking up feeling more rested. They have way less inflammation, the bloating goes away their clothes fit better.

People tell them how amazing they look. They love how they look in the mirror, they feel better about themselves, they have more confidence. And if you’re experiencing all of these amazing positive benefits, why would you go back to like a standard high carb approach? I say do what works for you.

And if this this approach that I just described the low carb sort of approach to to overall health and fitness. If that works for you, do it. I don’t think it works for everybody. Or I don’t think everybody well, honestly, I don’t think everybody wants to do it first of all, but I think there are other ways to do it.

I know people that eat a very high carb diet, lots of sugar and pasta and bread and stuff like that. They seem to be in very good health. Okay, great that works for them. A lot of us we’re sort of carbohydrate intolerant, we can’t tolerate carbohydrates very well and so we get bloated, we get inflamed. We gain weight, it starts to affect us in a lot of negative ways, okay?

You know, when when you eat high carbs, you also increase your blood glucose levels, which means you have high insulin levels, which means you’re in fat storage mode, which means you end up like having less energy, you become more hungry, you gain weight.

Your intense cravings for junk food tend to go up, running gets harder, your recovery time becomes longer sleeping is more erratic, you feel more bloated, inflamed, your clothes keep getting tighter for some reason. And you don’t feel good about yourself. Like, that’s what happens with a lot of people who who eat a very high carb diet.

Okay, so that’s just my observations and sort of my bias, you know, so I do have this bias. But I think when it comes to my recommendations for runners, especially runners who want to lose weight, I tend to recommend a low carb approach. Now, it can be low carb and plant based, it can be low carb, and carnivore, or it can be low carb and somewhere in between.

And we’re really talking mainly about sugar being the number one offender here. And other concentrated forms of carbohydrates like flour, you know, white flour, that kind of thing, right? Will this approach work for everyone? Probably not. There’s no guarantee that this approach will work perfectly for you or everyone, but I think it’s a very good place to start.

And, you know, remember that low carb doesn’t mean like an all meat diet, like lots, lots of runners do amazingly well, eating low carb, who do like maybe some fish or they’re, they’re vegetarian or even vegan. I’m just a little biased, because I’ve just seen way too many runners do amazingly well with this approach. And as long as it’s working, I’m gonna keep recommending it.

Okay. Now, for me, personally, I’m always experimenting with my diet, with what I eat. I tried different things to see what works best for me for my buy for my running and stuff like that, right? I started out, I lost a lot of weight, doing sort of a kind of a paleo-ish diet, like no sugar, low carb, some fruits and lots of veggies.

And that works pretty well for me. And then I switched to a very low carb, maybe carnivore type of diet for the first part of this year. Basically, all animal products, no vegetables. And I did this during the training for my marathon I did in the spring of this year. And you can I did an episode all about that. And you can listen to that it’s Episode 71, zero carb marathon training.

And I had a really good experience doing that. But then I kind of went back to eating my more paleo-ish way, you know, eating more salads and veggies and stuff like that, then I switched back to carnivore again. Now I’m back on the salads, again, I mean, some berries here and there. And, generally, you know, more carbs than I’ve been doing for most of this year. And I’m just trying this approach.

This is more of like a paleo type of an approach, if I had to put a label on it for this particular marathon, so I got a marathon coming up here in about three weeks. And so I’m just trying this approach, because what I like to do I like to experiment and then be able to share this stuff with you guys be able to share with you like, how did it go? How was your training? How was that marathon? How did you feel? How’s your week been? Like, all those kinds of things.

Okay, so I’m gonna report in on that after the marathon at the end of this month. So this is all my approach. This is what works for me, you need to figure out what works for you. And how do you do that? Well, you just try something. For starters, I would say, try cutting out sugar and flour and processed food and vegetable oil, like those things are terrible for you, right? And just start eating real food, see how that goes for you.

Maybe try increasing your protein intake. A lot of runners don’t get enough protein. I think if you aim for something around 30% of your calories coming from protein, you’re off to a much better place. Okay? But whatever you do, it has to be sustainable for you.

Most diets operate with this idea of like, restriction or deprivation or, you know, temporary, it’s temporary. Most of these diets sort of make you feel terrible. So they’re not really sustainable. So whatever you choose for yourself has to be something that you can do going forward it has to become part of who you are, and what you do.

And the real secret here to making all this last and making it permanent is just don’t quit. This is not well, ‘I tried this one thing it didn’t work for me, so I’m done’ situation. This is a I’m going to stick with it no matter what situation. And then you’re going to make incremental changes along the way.

How are you feeling? Is this making you feel good or not so good? Is this you know, giving you more energy or less energy as you’re running, improving? Or is it sucking more? You like you just have to like figure it out as you go. Only you can make those decisions for yourself, okay?

The best diet is the one that makes you feel good. The best diet is the one that helps you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. The best diet is one that supports your weight loss goals, your running goals, your overall health and fitness goals. The best diet is the one that feels easy for you and practically effortless.

Your diet can’t stress you out, it has to be something that’s just easy to do. The best diet is the one that’s sustainable for you because it’s something you have to be able to do from here on out. And there’s only one person that can decide what that is going to be for you and that is you. Cool.

And listen, if you’re looking for a little help with all of this, this is what I do. I can offer you the guidance, the support the encouragement, the accountability, may be a little tough love that you need to make this work for you. No matter what your goals no matter what your lifestyle no matter what your tastes. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and we’ll see if coaching is good fit for you. All right, you guys, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

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Podcast Transcript

Podcast Transcript

Podcast Transcript

Podcast Transcript

Podcast Transcript

Podcast Transcript