Most people come up with all sorts of excuses, reasons, and stories for why they can’t accomplish something hard. You set out to lose weight so you change your diet but you eventually slip back …
197. Why You Keep Going Back for More
Have you ever caught yourself eating something that you know is bad for you, but you do it anyway? Have you ever changed your eating patterns for a period of time and then found yourself going back …
Continue Reading about 197. Why You Keep Going Back for More →
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 197 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Why You Keep Going Back For More.
So have you ever caught yourself eating something that you know is not good for you, but you do it anyway? Or maybe you’ve changed your eating patterns for a period of time and then you find yourself going back to the junk food you used to eat even though you know, you probably should steer clear of it.
This was me for sure. I found myself going back for more to the junk food I used to eat even after long periods of healthy eating. Why do we do this? And what can we do to stop it from happening in the future?
In this episode, I hope to shed some light on why you keep going back for more of the foods you should probably not be eating and what to do to stop it. And this includes over eating, eating to excess. Okay.
But first, if you want a little bit of help getting started with all the stuff that I talked about here on the podcast, I put together a free training that you can check out it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
I put together the last three years of podcast materials, everything that I’ve taught here on the podcast, I kind of distilled it all down into about a one hour training that’s totally free, you can go through it, you can find it on my website, just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training.
But the goal of this is to teach you how to lose weight and keep it off for good as a runner. A lot of coaches, a lot of dietitians, a lot of nutritionists out there, they have advice for losing weight, but it’s really not geared towards runners.
And this is where I specialize in helping you as a runner, not only, you know, improve your running and get stronger, run longer distances, run faster, but also to be able to change your body composition for the better to lose the weight to get leaner.
A lot of people say you can’t do that, or you shouldn’t do that. I disagree. I wholeheartedly disagree. And you can learn at least a good chunk of how to get started with all this stuff by going through this free training. Like I said, it’s just about an hour of your time. That’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. Check it out, go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training. And I hope you enjoy it.
Okay, let’s get into this topic here. Why you keep going back for more? So one reason that I wanted to share this with you guys is because I’ve been working with a lot of people recently who find themselves slipping back into old patterns or craving the food that they used to eat even though we’ve changed their eating patterns, or their their chronic overeaters, you know, they just keep going back for seconds and thirds and fourths or whatever.
And there’s this idea that you know what, there’s something wrong with us, if we keep going back to the foods that we used to eat when we weren’t eating healthy, or there’s something wrong with us, because we tend to eat past the point of being full. Okay.
This has definitely been my experience in my life. So I can relate to both of these concepts of going back for more, I’ve changed my eating patterns. I started eating really healthy, and then I found myself slipping back into old patterns again, because what I was doing was uncomfortable, it was hard.
And maybe I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted. And then I’ve also been a chronic overeater in my life. This is one of the reasons why it was really hard for me to lose weight. Even though I was eating, you know, I was trying all these different diets, but I was just eating way too much of a lot of the foods even when I was doing the plant based thing.
Of course I was eating nothing but carbs, because that’s basically what a plant based diet is, is basically all carbs, tough to do for some people. Some people love it, and that’s great, more power to you. But for me, it was really challenging because I’m very sensitive to carbohydrates, number one and number two, I tend to overeat. I’m an overeater.
And you know, I don’t think calories are the whole picture. I think calories do come into the equation at some point and they definitely did for me when I would go back for seconds and thirds, and eat until I was way past the point of being full.
You know, there was a Comedian Jim Gaffigan, who used to say, “I don’t stop eating when I’m full. I stop eating when I hate myself.” I was like, Oh, my God, I feel so seen. Because that was definitely me and my experience around food.
And even today, I struggle with this sometimes, you know, I can, I can go out to dinner, I’m eating a nice big steak and maybe, you know, a baked potato or something on the side. And I find myself just eating until I’m past the point of being full. And why do we do this?
So I’m going to give you guys a couple of reasons why I’ve got like five reasons why we keep going back for more. More of the junk food that we’re not supposed to be eating, or we want to try to stay away from, or we’re chronic overeaters. And why we do this, and I want you to think about this in this concept of that there is hope for you that you’re not broken.
I’m certainly not broken, you’re not broken, we all do these things, you might be able to relate to a couple of these things I’m going to share with you here more than others. But we all have done these or some some of these in our lives. And it doesn’t mean that just because you can relate to some of these issues that there isn’t hope for you, there is hope for you like you can change.
Most of the things I’m going to be talking about are learned behaviors, and if a behavior has been learned, it can be unlearned. Alright, so just I want to put a context on this as you’re listening to this episode of you know, that these are things that you have probably taught yourself or been conditioned to over the years and that you can on teach yourself that you can decondition yourself to these patterns.
Okay, so the first one is this. The first one is that the foods that we tend to overeat are the foods that we tend to go back for the junk foods and stuff like that. It just, it feels good to eat that stuff. Let’s be honest, it tastes amazing. And it feels really good. Your brain loves pleasure.
Your brain is always seeking pleasure. Your brain’s job is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Your brain’s job is to keep you safe, is to avoid discomfort. Seek out comfort, seek the familiar, seek out pleasure. That’s your brain’s job. And you know what does a really good job of that? The comfort foods that you love. Junk food feels amazing, right?
A lot of times, it’s because these foods have been engineered to produce the maximum pleasure possible. That’s why people don’t binge out on broccoli. I hear people all the time. They’re like, oh, I just needed a snack. I’m like, okay, go eat some broccoli. And they’re like, I’m not gonna use broccoli as a snack. And I’m like, yeah, but if you’re really hungry, and you need to eat something, broccoli is great, you know, or some like raw carrots.
People are like, I don’t want raw carrots, I want some chips. I want some nuts. I want a candy bar, I want something that’s sugar, or salt or crunchy or a combination of all those things. Snickers, there you go. It’s got all those things all blended together, right.
But we don’t go for broccoli as a snack because it doesn’t light up our brain the way that this junk food does. So your brain loves pleasure. And this is one of the reasons why it’s really hard to change your diet. Because if you’re used to eating a diet that is full of pleasurable foods, pizza is a great example. You know, pizza is one of those things that like, oh my gosh, it’s like gooey and cheesy, but it’s also all that bread.
The crust is so amazing and chewy and it’s warm. And it’s just like, oh my gosh, that’s a very pleasure inducing food right there. So if you’re somebody that’s eating pizza on the regular, and then and then you switch your diet you’re like okay, pizza’s off the table, you’re gonna be dreaming about pizza. Your brain is gonna be like, where is the pizza, bro? Like, how come you took the pizza away from it? You know I want that pizza. So we seek out pleasure and junk food gives us lots of pleasure.
You know, you got to remember that there’s a dopamine response when you eat these pleasurable foods. Even thinking about the pleasurable foods gives you a dopamine response and it feels good to just think about it. If I start describing the most delicious chewiest pizza crust with the red sauce that’s just hanging off and the pepperoni on top and the melted cheese that’s got just a little bit of burned on there you know I’m you know, I’m talking about right.
You start to drool like your brain is like lighting up right now just even thinking about that just listening to a description of pizza like that will light up your brain and provide a dopamine response, but also when you eat as food, you get oxytocin release, serotonin, endorphins, all the feel good chemicals get released.
And listen, eating pizza, it feels amazing. Eating ice cream feels amazing, eating candy bars feels amazing. All these hyper palatable foods increase this dopamine response to increase the field good hormonal response. And why wouldn’t you crave that stuff, right?
We don’t tend to go back to eating hoards of broccoli or chicken or something like that. Even though that stuff is great for you. That stuff is what your brain and your body actually needs for nutrition to keep you healthy and safe and alive. But that’s not what we crave.
We crave the junk food, we crave the hyper palatable foods, the foods that have been engineered to be amazingly delicious. Okay. So number one, you have to understand that your brain loves pleasure. And that’s just your brain doing what it’s supposed to do. Seek pleasure, avoid pain, you know, it feels painful to your brain.
Eating broccoli feels painful to your brain, because it’s like, oh, I know, it’s good for me. But I really want the pizza, but I mean, the broccoli and so that seems terrible. It’s like a terrible place to be like, who wants to do that?
Okay, so your brain wants to seek pleasure and wants to avoid pain. So there’s your brain doing what it’s supposed to do. So just understand that part of the thing that we’re fighting against here, if you’re trying not to eat this stuff, is that your brain is going to drive you in the direction of the junk food.
Alright, so we got that kind of going against us here. But just listen, that is one of five different reasons why you might be going back for more.
Number two, a lot of times you are using your eyes instead of your body to know when it’s time to stop. And this refers to overeating. So a lot of times we look at our plate, and we look at you know how much is on our plate and we need to finish every bite that’s on that plate no matter what even though we’re full, even though we don’t feel good.
Now, this was me. And this is one of the reasons why it’s been decades of me trying to stop this overeating habit. But it was drilled into me as a kid that I had to finish everything on my plate no matter what or I would get in trouble.
And I had to sit at the table and everybody else left the table was able to go eat their dessert and get on with their life and I had to sit there and eat everything. Eat the tuna fritters that my mom made. I just bring that up because I just thought about, I haven’t thought about tuna fritters in like 40 years, honestly.
But I just thought about those because it was one of those things I was like this gross I don’t want to eat this stuff. You know, just imagine like a crab cake but not as good and it’s tuna instead. Okay, and it’s hot.
But I would have to sit there and eat that stuff. And if I did need it, I couldn’t leave the table. And if you didn’t eat everything on your plate you had you didn’t get dessert either, which doesn’t make any sense. Okay? Like, if you don’t finish all this plate and make yourself miserable, you don’t get more food afterwards.
So these ideas were drilled into my head that it didn’t matter how you felt, it didn’t matter if your body was like you’re full. Like your eyes and what was in front of you had to be devoured no matter what.
This is really, this is weird that we do this to kids. Don’t do this to your kids. If you want to, like help your kids now, don’t do this to them. Let them eat whatever they want. Who cares? You know they’re kids, they’ll figure it out like eat what feels good to you. Oh, you don’t want to eat much. You don’t want to eat the brussel sprouts. Fine. Don’t eat them. It’s fine.
But don’t make your kids eat everything because that is not teaching them good eating habits that’s like disordered eating in a way. Okay. So I was trained that I had to eat everything on my plate no matter what.
And mentally right now it’s really hard for me to leave food uneaten. Like my girlfriend, she’ll go out to dinner, or even eating dinner here, and when she’s done eating, she’s just done. And she’ll sit there and they’ll be like one bite left.
And I’m like, you’re not going to eat that? Oh my god, you’re driving me crazy. Just eat that last bite. I don’t want anymore. I’m done. I mean, I just got to this point where I was done, and then I’m done. I don’t have to keep eating and I’m like, how do you do that? I don’t understand how you do that. That’s not me. I gotta eat whatever is on my plate.
And a lot of times I’ll put too much on my plate but I got to eat it anyway. And so that’s one of those things where I had to really work on that and I’m better about that now. I can leave food. I’ve been better about that lately, especially as we go out to dinner. And you know, you get what they give you on the plate like I don’t have control over that.
And I’m good about like leaving some behind. Sometimes I don’t, sometimes I do. So, there’s this idea that you can’t trust your body to know what’s best for you, you because you’ve been conditioned to go by other rules, you know, you can only trust the conditioning that you’ve been exposed to, you know, and so, this is a, this is a big problem, you know, this is something that we have to undo this whole clean plate club, you got to be a member of the clean plate club.
No, you don’t. And a lot of this is just families, you know, bless my parents, you know, they were trying to try their best, they did their best, they had a bunch of kids, you know, I was always the problem child too.
And, you know, I have four siblings, and they would, I was always, always the one in trouble. I know, hard to imagine. But I was the one that would get what I thought was getting picked on all the time, but I was just, I was rebellious, you know.
But I have this conditioning, this family conditioning of overeating, really. And to this day, it still lingers here and there, sometimes it creeps it’s ugly head every now and then. But just understand that, you know, you got to start listening to your body. And when you’re feeling full, or even before you feel full, like when you feel like satiated, it’s time to stop, okay. So that’s number two, using your eyes instead of your body to know when it’s time to stop.
Number three, you believe that more is better. So if a little food is good for you, then more is great for you, right? This is the same issue that alcoholics and drug addicts have. So they think that, you know, if one drink makes you feel good, or if one hit or pill or whatever makes you feel good, then two or three drinks or 10 is going to be better, or 10 hits or pills or whatever is gonna make you feel better.
And so we think that since we’re eating a little bit of french fries, or a little bit of pizza is good for us, or it feels good, then eating the entire pizza is great. You know, we don’t want to, we don’t want to find it. And we don’t want this good feeling to end, we’re getting this dopamine response, we’re getting all these, you know, chemicals released, that feel really good.
And we don’t want that. And we want it to feel even better. So we think that eating more food, going back for more and more and more, is going to feel better and better and better. And again, this is conditioning. It’s not really genetics, we are not genetically predisposed to overeat, we’re not genetically predisposed to eat until we’re uncomfortable.
This is something that you have learned. Because you think if I stop eating halfway through this pizza, then this good feeling is going to end, it’s going to go away. And honestly, the only thing that happens is you start to feel really terrible. And then you feel really awful. And you and you do sort of hate yourself, you know.
And it’s one of those things where the behavior is so ingrained in us and again, these are just things that we’ve been conditioned to over the years we’ve trained ourselves to do these things. You’ve got to be able to unlearn this, we have to be able to learn better behaviors and start practicing eating to satiety, not to uncomfortableness, okay.
So we believe that more is better. And more is not always better, more is just more, and a lot of times more is worse. But it feels like more is better. Again, this is our brain sort of tricking us, okay.
Number four is this and I know that we have all thought this before, that I’ve already blown it for today so I might as well just keep going, right? So I ate the cupcake. You know, my kids wanted, you know, we take cupcakes to school. So I like made cupcakes, and I was just gonna get into the garage, but I had one.
And then I was like, you know what I’ve already blown it for today. So I’m just gonna go ahead and eat 10 more cupcakes and the entire pizza and all the ice cream in the house, right. And because I’ve already blown it for today, or, you know, I’ve already had like one piece of pizza, I might as well eat the entire pizza.
This is why so many diets fail because people don’t have any strategies in place to be able to deal with these occasional setbacks or fails or whatever you want to call them. And I believe that we have to build some of these exceptions into our plan.
So if you have a healthy eating food plan, there should be some exceptions in there every now and then it’s like, yeah, you can have a couple pieces of pizza, you can have the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. But you got to do these things in a very intentional and purposeful way. You got to do them mindfully.
You don’t want to do them because you’re reacting to how you’re feeling in the moment. You want to plan them ahead of time. One of the strategies that I work with all my clients on is planning, like plan ahead and then stick to the plan and plan ahead and stick with the plan. Don’t make decisions in the moment because we tend to not make good decisions in the moment.
Another rule that I think everybody needs to follow is, you never have two bad meals in a row or two cheat meals in a row. You can blow it with one meal, you can eat a cupcake, fine, okay, you blew it with that meal, you failed, great. Next meal, you’re back on track, that’s it.
Another way of looking at this is divide your day into four quarters, you might lose a quarter, but never lose the day. So if you blow it in quarter number three, and you had you know, some cupcakes or you had a piece of pizza, whatever, great, don’t blow the next quarter. Right, get back on track with the next meal. And that’s it. If you just kind of adhere to that right there.
This one can take care of itself pretty easily. But you have to be disciplined about that. And you can’t get into this attitude of like, well, I’ve blown it for today. I might as well just, you know, keep going. Or here’s another one I’ve heard people say is like I’ve already blown it for today, so I’m just gonna, like, make the next week a total eating binge fest, like, oh, I’ve gone one day, so I might as well go and blow the whole week.
Like don’t do that, but a lot of people do that. A lot of people do that. Right? Oh, you know, I was going great with my nutrition plan until work got really stressful. And then I had this one meal that was no good. And then that ruined everything. And now I’m back to eating garbage every single day. Like really, one meal can do that to you. It really can, it can set you back.
And then you think, you know, well look at me, I’m a failure, I can’t do this. So I might as well just go back to doing what I used to do. Just a piece of crap. And you know, you’re not, you’re not, you just made a bad decision, or, you know, you had a slip up whatever could get back on track with the next meal.
And again, I like to build in some of these, whatever you call it, cheat meals, you know, I like to call it the release valve. Like, we have this pent up craving sometimes for stuff and you know, talk about pizza, like just because that’s my thing. I love pizza.
And every now and then I gotta eat some pizza. Because that craving can get a little bit out of control sometimes. And every now and then I’m like, I’m just gonna go eat a couple of pieces of pizza. And then I’m fine. You know, I’ve had pizza twice this year. I know it’s crazy. And I just had some recently and it was so good. And I was like, This is so good. I’m glad I don’t do this all the time anymore. But it was so good to do it every now and then.
Okay, so don’t get into this attitude of a balloon offer today might as well just keep going or bonus for today. So might as well just blow the whole week, don’t do that. Get back on track with the next meal. Okay, that was number four.
Number five is this marketing and social pressures. So here’s the reality. The food companies do not care about your health, they don’t care about your well being, they want to make money. And the way they do that is they get you to eat more food, that is their goal.
They care about their bottom line. That’s it, it’s a business, and they’re making billions of dollars. And so they make this hyper palatable food that you keep going back for more and, and they know what they’re doing.
They spend billions of dollars on research and marketing to make sure that you crave the junk food, right, and then you keep eating it that you keep going back for more and more and more, even though, you know, it’s not good for you. They know it’s not good for you. They don’t care.
Okay, so if you think the food companies are putting stuff out there that is good for you, you’re wrong. They don’t care. It’s not good for you, they know what they’re doing. And they market this stuff to you. And they make you think that you have to eat this stuff.
Are you like some kind of weirdo? And our friends do this too. Our friends sort of like treat us like we’re weird if we’re eating, you know, good, healthy food, like we’re the weird ones. What? Really?
So there’s people in our lives, usually it’s the people that are closest to us who mean well, but they treat us like we’re in middle school. You know, they’re like, Oh, it’s okay, honey, just have one piece of pizza. It’s not going to kill you. You deserve it. You’ve been good all week. Have some fun. Live a little, let your hair down. Don’t be such a Debbie Downer.
Have you had anybody in your life that’s like this? Some people call them food pushers. And a lot of times they’re, they’re well meaning. They mean well, they’re trying to be positive and just say like, hey, have a little bit of fun. You deserve it. It’s okay.
You know, but what they’re doing is they’re putting pressure on you to do something you don’t want to do. And you don’t want to eat the junk food and they’re pressuring you into doing it and so a lot of times you do. You slipped back into it, you go back for more because they want you to, because that makes them feel good.
If you’re doing what they’re doing, and then they don’t feel so bad about themselves, because they’re like, oh, as long as you’re doing it with me, you know. But for those of us who have difficulty controlling how much we eat, saying no to certain foods, this is me totally.
You know, people in our lives that are like this are going to keep us going back for more. Doesn’t matter how much discipline we have, or how much willpower we’re using, we will keep going back for more because we’re feeling pressured by the people who are closest to us.
And again, they mean well, but we have to ignore that. And we have to stand up for ourselves in those situations. And listen, willpower, like discipline is great, willpower is a finite resource, though willpower diminishes as the day goes on, like you only have so much willpower, think of it as like a fuel tank.
And by the end of the day, that fuel tank is pretty low, you don’t have much willpower in the evening, you have a lot more in the morning, right. And then by the evening, it’s gone, right? It’s because it’s like, you’re tired, you just want to like chill out or whatever, like, your willpower is gone in the evenings.
And that’s when a lot of people, you know, go out with friends. And then that’s when the social pressures happen, and they want you to drink and then once you start drinking, you’re, you’re making even poor choices around food. And a lot of people blow it at night, like they do great all day long. And then they blow it at night because of this lack of willpower because the willpower kind of diminishes as the day goes on.
So I’m not saying you gotta avoid your friends, but just understand that, you know, you got food companies who are marketing food to us and putting pressure on us to kind of eat this food, we got friends and family who are kind of pressuring us to eat this food. It’s hard.
This is a hard one right to navigate around all this stuff. But I guess you just got to be okay, being the weirdo at the table, the one person who’s not partaking in the alcohol, the one person who’s not partaking in the junk food, and you got to be okay with that. It doesn’t feel good, it feels uncomfortable. But sometimes we got to just get used to being uncomfortable in those situations, it’ll get easier after a while.
Okay, so those are the five reasons why we typically keep going back for more, and then just understand that there are some things we can do about this. Like, I know, this feels daunting, it probably feels like oh my gosh, Patrick, like this sounds terrible. Like how am I supposed to overcome all this stuff, there’s all this pressure, there’s all these things, you know, working against me here.
The first step though, is just understanding that you have this self awareness about all of this. A lot of times is self awareness and understanding what’s happening within you and to you from the outside world.
Just having that self awareness is enough to keep you from going back for more for like slipping into those old patterns. Right. Another thing is, like I mentioned earlier, is having a plan, you gotta have a plan, make a plan, what’s your food situation? What are you eating tomorrow? What times are you eating? What are you eating, for lunch, dinner, whatever, make a plan, make it ahead of time and stick to the plan. Right? That’s it. Most people don’t do that. They just wing it every day.
If you want to change your habits around food, winging it, it’s probably what you’ve done your whole life. So don’t do that. You got to have a plan, and you got to stick to the plan.
And it’s like training yourself to practice good habits like new behaviors and behaviors, winging it is not how you do it, though. Because you’re never going to be able to like lose the weight, keep it off change eating patterns, if you’re winging it every day.
So make a plan, stick to the plan, make a plan, stick to the plan, right? Once I started doing this, I started, like seeing results consistently. Because the only way you’re gonna see consistent results is if you do something consistently, you got to stick to your plan consistently. And then you’ll get consistent results. And eventually you’ll get your goals.
Most people they just wing it every day, they get some results. And then they slide backwards. And then they get some of these backwards, they say why should I even bother? This is demotivating. Right?
Consistent results will keep you in the game. They’ll keep you motivated, keep you going forward. And eventually you’ll reach your goals, if you can stick with it long enough. There’s a big mindset shift though, right?
Because you’re you got to switch from being reactionary, like reactive to the world around you to being proactive and actively making a plan and sticking to it. That’s a very different way to do this, to go through life. Most people don’t do it, that’s why they fail.
So we got to switch from allowing the world around you to dictate your actions and behaviors to using your own mind, your own principles, your own goals, your own beliefs to guide your decisions and your actions and your behaviors.
Okay, so we don’t want to be driven by what’s going on out there but what’s going on inside by our own body, our own thoughts, beliefs, our own emotions, all of that, okay? So it takes time. It’s not something that’s gonna, you know, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna make a decision and you’re gonna say, Oh, I just want to change how I feel about food. And it’s going to happen overnight.
No, it takes some time. Alright, it’s, it feels daunting, but I promise you, there is hope you can do this. You got to give it some time, you got to embrace the discomfort of change, because that’s going to be ever present.
But if you can stick with it long enough, you will get the results that you want, I promise you and again, as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this, we can talk about coaching, this is what I do. I help people navigate this stuff every single day. And we have fun doing it too by the way.
Just head over to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. Click on that link. You can fill out a short little application, get on a call. We’ll talk about coaching and how it might help you. And if it seems like a good fit for you, great. If not, that’s cool, too. Okay, cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. And I’ll talk to you soon.
196. What Not to Do When Life Gets Chaotic
No matter how hard we try to control all the circumstances of our lives, eventually, things get a little out of control. Your boss increases your workload, the kids are riddled with extracurricular …
Continue Reading about 196. What Not to Do When Life Gets Chaotic →
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 196 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. And today, what not to do when life gets chaotic.
No matter how hard we try to control all the circumstances of our lives, eventually things get a little out of control. Your boss increases your workload, the kids are riddled with extra curricular activities, which means you’re riddled with extracurricular activities.
Aging family members require constant care. And you just start to feel overwhelmed with everything going on in your life. Stress and anxiety levels increase until you’re sitting at defcon 1 and you’re ready to explode.
How you handle yourself during these times of intense stress. It’s extremely important. Everyone’s good at stress management, when there’s no stress. But when life gets hectic and feels overwhelming, that’s when you need to double down on self care.
So today, I’m sharing some very helpful advice on what not to do when life gets chaotic and what you should do instead. But first, if you’re interested in getting started with all the stuff that I talked about here on the website, I put together a free training for you, that will put you on the right track, it’s called five simple steps to becoming a leaner stronger runner, you’ll learn how to lose weight the right way as a runner, and keep it off for good without running a million miles a week.
I have heard from a lot of people who have told me that they have been told that they should not try to lose weight while they’re training for something while they are actively running. And I just have to tell you, that is definitely not the case, there is a way you can do this and make it work to where you can still improve your running while you are losing weight.
The problem is most people try to lose weight by just cutting calories. That’s not really recommended. That’s not what I teach. That’s not what I do with my clients. So if you’re a runner and you want to improve your endurance, you want to improve your strength, you want to improve your speed as a runner and lose weight. You can do all of that. Okay?
Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and check out that training. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, check it out. Cool.
Okay, so today I’m talking about what not to do when life gets chaotic. So the reason I’m talking about this today is because I’ve had several clients come to me recently, and in our weekly calls, they’ve shared that they haven’t been really sticking with their diet, and they really haven’t been sticking with their exercise plan.
And when we start digging into it, like, Hey, what’s going on? They’re like, well, you know, things are crazy right now in my life. I’ve got all these projects to work, you know, I’m taking care of my, my elderly father, let’s say or the kids have all that stuff going on at school and then after school on the weekends and, and life is just really chaotic right now.
And the thing they do when they feel like life is chaotic, and they feel overwhelmed. The thing that a lot of people do is they feel like they need to take something off their table. Like they got to take something off of their plate here because it’s just there’s too much stuff going on.
And what a lot of people do is they take off things like exercise, or eating right because those things seem like they are things that you can put off to later that don’t seem as important. And I know you know where I’m going with this because when you do that it just makes you feel worse. It just makes the whole situation worse.
It’s in those times of super stress in our lives and when our lives get chaotic that we need consistency. We need consistency in our diet, we need consistency in our exercise, we need to be consistently practicing self care. Because when you do that when you take care of yourself, you are much better able to handle the stress that life is throwing at you.
But that’s not what we do. We say you know what I’m feeling really overwhelmed with life right now. So I’m not going to exercise. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Because that exercise is the thing that helps you to relieve stress and helps you to keep stress levels low. So why then would you want to take that off the table when you’re in this place of high stress in your life?
So that’s what I’m going to encourage you not to do that don’t take exercising off the table, or, you know, healthy eating off the table when, you know, life starts to throw you some curveballs and things start to get a little chaotic in your life. Okay.
And the reason that you do this, the reason that your brain says let’s stop exercising now is because you’re just your brain is just trying to keep you safe and comfortable seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
So whenever we see that our life is getting stressed out, that appears to be something that is painful to our brain, right? That’s pain. We’re trying to avoid that and we’re seeking pleasure. Our brain is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, seeking comfort, avoiding discomfort, seeking the familiar, avoiding the unfamiliar.
So when all these unfamiliar, uncomfortable, painful events start happening in our life, we just want to go to that thing, or those things that make us feel good. And a lot of times it’s food, right, it’s like, I’m just going to eat a pint of ice cream by myself, and this large pizza here and sit on the couch and do nothing else. And that’s going to make me feel better.
And you know what, it kind of works for a minute like you do feel a little bit better, who doesn’t feel great eating pizza and ice cream sitting on the couch, it feels amazing.
Until later, when you feel terrible, because you didn’t work out. Because you didn’t get those endorphins that you get when you run, you didn’t get the good feel good hormones that you get when you exercise.
You have this food hangover, because you ate tons of sugar and gluten and you know, carbs and all this stuff. And then you know, now you’re faced with feeling terrible, feeling terrible about yourself, physically feeling terrible, and you still have all this stressful stuff happening in your life.
So you’re not armed to actually be able to handle that stuff. You’re much more likely to handle stress in your life, if you stick to your exercise plan, if you stick to your healthy eating plan. And I know this is the time where you’re like, oh, but it’s just so hard. I have so much other stuff going on. I get it, I totally get it. But it doesn’t help you to feel better. It just doesn’t work.
And so I just want to encourage you to not do that. Okay, when life gets chaotic, that’s when you need to be even more disciplined about your own self care. What are those things that you’re doing on a daily basis, that help you to manage stress that help you to feel better?
Don’t take your own healthy habits off the table when life gets chaotic. Okay? Make a plan. And make that plan every day. Make that plan in advance. And the reason we do that is because you’re much more likely to make a good plan if you make those decisions about what you’re doing ahead of time.
So I talked about the 24 hour plan a lot. Make that plan at least 24 hours in advance, know what you’re doing tomorrow. What does your exercise look like tomorrow? Are you working out? Are you hitting the gym? Are you lifting weights? Are you running? What does your food look like tomorrow? When are you eating your first meal? When are you eating your second meal? What are you eating in between? Are you waiting in between? What are you eating at those meals?
I plan all that ahead of time, when you plan ahead of time you make great decisions. Think about that. You’re sitting here, maybe listening to this and you’re thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow, you probably can make a great list of foods and exercise that you could do.
But when tomorrow comes and things are crazy, and you’re a little stressed out about work and stuff, you’re just gonna go and grab whatever’s in front of you. Like that’s not when you make good decisions. You make good decisions when you decide ahead of time.
So make a plan, make that plan ahead of time and then stick to that plan, no matter how hectic life becomes. There’s an exception to this. And that means that when we have a plan, and we’re planning on sticking to that plan, and then something happens and we’re like, okay, I was going to work out but my boss told me I had to come to work early.
And now I’m going to be working all night and I won’t be able to work out. Okay, so you miss a workout. It’s no big deal. Do you know make a plan, get very detailed about your plan, make that plan ahead of time and then you know when life throws you some curveballs and things get a little bit hectic, a little bit chaotic.
You have to be able to go with the flow a little bit. Okay, but that should be the exception, not the rule. That should be just something that happens every now and then. Okay. And listen, I know what this is like because I’m going through this myself right now.
I live in this old building. It’s a beautiful old building right on the outskirts of downtown Cincinnati. It’s an old Piano Factory. And it was built in 1921. And back in the, they were making pianos here until like the 70s. And then like in the 80s, they turn this building into an office like an office, office complex, whatever.
And then about 10 years ago, a building management company took over the building and turned all these, this whole building into beautiful loft apartments. And it is beautiful, huge windows, 15 foot high ceilings. It’s a beautiful place to live.
But last week, somebody had a small little fire in their apartment down the hall from me, I live on the sixth floor. And somebody had a little kitchen fire. They were like frying chicken or something, right? They had a grease fire.
They didn’t know what to do when you have a grease fire. What are you supposed to do when you have a grease fire? I’ll tell you what not to do. Don’t throw water on it. But that’s what they did. They threw water on it and it made the fire worse. It set off the sprinkler system.
Okay, so there wasn’t really damage from the fire like the fire was minimal, very small, but it set off the sprinkler system in that one apartment down the hall. Well, apparently that sprinkler system has something like 1200 gallons of water that has to just it’s like a tank and so it has to run out. There’s no way to turn it off.
So the sprinklers went off, and they just flooded this floor there. And there’s water from this floor from the sixth floor all the way down to the basement. So there’s 52 units that were affected by this flood, including mine. So I’ve had them coming in here.
I’m recording in my home office right now. It is the first time I’ve been able to get in here in a while because they’ve had dehumidifiers in here, they ripped up the carpet today. They ripped up some of our hardwood floor. They’re doing a great job of cleaning up and they’re gonna be, you know, doing the rebuilding project here pretty soon, but it is a mess right now.
And my whole system is like, just disheveled right now. It’s very chaotic in my life right now. Okay. Everything’s cool. Like we’re getting through it. My girlfriend and I live together here, we both work from home. And so this is affecting us both, you know, but we’re working it out. And we’re making things work as best we can.
But I just have to tell you that things are chaotic right now. Okay. What I’m doing is I’m focusing on healthy eating every day, I’m focusing on workouts every day. There have been a couple of days where I haven’t been able to get my workout in. Today was one of them, they came in here. During the time that I had allotted to do my workout today.
They came in here and needed to be in here for several hours doing work. And I needed to kind of be here to kind of oversee things to make sure everything was cool. So I wasn’t able to get my workout in, which is fine. That’s what I’m talking about. Like, I had a plan. I’ve been working the plan pretty well, pretty much 90% of the time.
But today, it was one of those times where I just had to like stay home and I couldn’t get my workout in. Okay, but no big deal, right? I’m not too concerned about that. Because I know tomorrow, I’m back on track again, you know, and we need to have a plan.
We need to focus on our own self care during these times of crisis and chaos. But also we do need to be able to go with the flow. We’re not striving for perfection. Nobody does any of this stuff perfectly. I don’t do this perfectly. I don’t stick to my food plan 100% of the time, probably 90% of the time.
From a workout standpoint, I’m better about that probably 95% of the time, I really don’t miss many workouts. This is a pretty rare exception today. They’ve actually ripped up the carpet in my office here to where I record and so it’s like an echo chamber in here.
Because I don’t have that carpet. dampening the sounds of it sounds like I’m in a hall like a big hall or something. That’s why there’s a lot of reverb going on in here. But listen, you need to double down on yourself during these times of crisis when things get chaotic for you.
Okay, don’t take exercise off the table. Don’t take self care off the table. Don’t take healthy eating off the table. Stick with those things as best you can. You may not do it perfectly. That’s okay. Right. I’m not putting my health and my fitness on the backburner just because there’s been this crazy, you know, construction going on around here. Right?
So I don’t want you to do that either. So in those times when things get hectic and stressful, because that’s going to happen. This is what life is about: life is about how we deal with these situations when they come up. Because it’s going to happen, it’s inevitable. But I think what happens a lot of times is we wish this stuff wasn’t going on.
You know, we wish the apartment hadn’t flooded. We wish these people didn’t throw water on a grease fire, you know, we wish they didn’t have to rip up my carpet and hardwood floors and all this stuff. But it’s just the fact you know, and this is what we’re dealing with. And so we have to accept this as like, here’s our circumstances in life, and then do our best to take care of ourselves through this process. That’s it.
Because when you do that, you’re going to feel so much more confident and so better armed to be able to deal with the stress and chaos that’s going on in your life. Okay? Chaos is inevitable. Stress is inevitable. Crazy circumstances in your life are inevitable how you deal with it, that’s up to you. You can deal with it by diving into junk food, and eating your way through large pizzas and pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. I have done that. I don’t recommend it.
The other way of dealing with this is to focus on exercise, focus on taking care of yourself, focus on healthy eating. And I promise you, you’re gonna get through this, you’re gonna get through this feeling way better about yourself, then had you gone that other route, okay? So don’t take self care off the table, focus, you know, make yourself the priority when things are crazy and chaotic. Okay.
And as always, if you’re looking for help with any of this stuff, we can talk about coaching, just head over to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me. You can fill out a little application with just a couple questions. We’ll get on a Zoom call.
We’ll talk about coaching and I’ll give you all the details and see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, great. If it isn’t, no big deal. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
176. Handling Setbacks Like a Badass
At some point in your weight loss journey, you will experience a setback. This is normal and nothing to be ashamed of. But most people just do not handle setbacks very well. They get down on …
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Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 176 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, handling setbacks like a badass. At some point in your weight loss journey, you will experience a setback. This is normal, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but most people just do not handle setbacks very well.
They get down on themselves, they feel gross feelings like guilt and shame. And most of the time they just give up. Do not do this. Instead, you have to learn how to handle setbacks properly. So in this episode, I’m gonna break it all down for you and explain what to do instead. So you’ll be handling setbacks, like a badass every time they happen.
first, let me ask you something. Can you relate to any of this? Do you struggle to lose weight? Does running more no longer work for you? Are you ready to be done with all the yo-yo dieting? The yo-yo gaining and losing the same way over and over again? Do you want running to be easier again? Do you just want to know what to do and how to do it? And are you ready to get started on your weight loss journey?
If you answered yes to any of the previous statements, then I have just a thing for you. You can join me for a free live training and coaching session called How to start losing weight as a runner, this is going to be held on Wednesday, May 17. And it is going to be live over Zoom.
So you just got to get yourself signed up. Once you do that you’re in and I’ll be there live. And during this call, you’re going to learn why we gain weight, the real reasons why we gain weight and what you can do about it. Why running more is not the answer, the right fuel to use for weight loss and for running. You’re gonna learn nutrition principles to get you started.
So the whole purpose of this is to get you started on your weight loss journey the right way. Okay. And I’ll be answering your questions live. So be sure to show up, bring your questions. If you’ve been thinking about working with me as your coach, join me on this live training and coaching session that is a great opportunity for you to show up, ask questions and kind of get some live coaching from me.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself, then you owe it to yourself to attend this free live event. If I didn’t mention that it’s free, there’s nothing you just got to sign up, you know, so I know who’s coming and be able to send emails to you and things like that. So you’ve got nothing to lose except a few extra pounds and everything to gain.
To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/live and you can sign up, right up until the date of the event. I would just encourage you to sign up a little bit sooner so that you can get the reminder emails and make sure you can and you get the links to the meeting and stuff like that. Okay, runningleancoaching.com/live. I hope to see you there. It’s gonna be fun.
Okay, on to this topic today handling setbacks, like a badass. I’ve been thinking about this topic and sharing this topic for a while with you guys. And I’ve had a couple of people experience some setbacks, lately, which is very normal. I want to make that very clear here that, you know, having a setback, you know, you’re going along fine.
Maybe you’re losing some weight, you’re sticking to your plan. And then something happens. Like that’s normal. But a lot of times we don’t, we don’t think it’s normal. And we think that it’s bad for some reason, and we get down on ourselves when this happens.
So a common scenario is you’re on your weight loss journey. You’ve changed your diet, you’re exercising regularly, maybe you join a gym, you’re sticking to the program, losing weight, feeling great, feeling motivated, committed, all of a sudden, though, something happens, something happens and it throws you off your plan.
So you’re no longer sticking with it. You stop eating healthy food, you stop going to the gym, you’re not running, you just want to sit around and watch Netflix all day. Maybe even start gaining some weight. And you just feel like guilt and shame and disgust and you’re disgusted with yourself and oh my gosh, this sounds terrible. Right?
And you might be thinking I’m being a little overly dramatic here. Or is this just a little glimpse into reality? Because I can describe this scenario so well, because I’ve lived it. I’ve been there. I’ve lived this over and over again. I’ve had many setbacks in a lot of different areas of my life. And I know how much it sucks. And I know how hard it is. And I also know that the traditional ways that people talk about this stuff isn’t super helpful.
So what I’m going to share with you today is a little bit of a different take on some of this. And you have to understand, the first thing you have to understand here is that, you know, setbacks are normal, and we should expect them and nobody’s going to get through life without having any kind of setback. So as soon as we start accepting that things are gonna get a little bit easier for you.
But you just have to know that it is part of the deal. It just is. All right. And I think that one of the big problems is that there are a lot of messages that we get from outside. A lot of external messages that we get that tell us that, like, it should be easy. That’s the first message I want to kind of address here that most experts and coaches out there who are talking about diet and nutrition, they will tell you, well, here’s what you do, stop eating sugar. And I say this all the time, too, right?
I tell people this all the time, stop eating sugar, stay away from processed food, stick to eating, you know, whole food, real food, right? This, this is something we can all agree that’s, that’s probably pretty beneficial for you and works for most people. And then if you know what to do, like, that’s all you need. And I think the underlying message there is that it’s so easy. All you need to know is what to do.
But I have to tell you something, it is never that easy. If it were that easy, no one would ever experience any kind of failure or setback, I wouldn’t have a job if it was that easy. If I could just tell you what to do, I would just do that. I would just tell you, here’s what you do, here’s the 10 things you’re going to do. And everything will work perfectly for you. It does not work that way.
This whole idea that it should be easy, it’s very misleading. Because people think that, you know, if you just tell people what to do, then they’ll just do it. And if people aren’t talking about the fact that you fail, and that there are setbacks, and that they’re expected. If people aren’t talking about that, then it just must be easy for everybody else, except for me.
So this is a real tricky little place to be because you might be thinking that you’re the only one that’s having a hard time with this. And then everybody else finds this to be easy. But for you it’s hard. Right? But I have to tell you this, it is hard. This stuff is not easy. Right? It is supposed to be hard.
And I know this not just from my own experience, because I have experienced many, many challenging times trying to stick with my weight loss plan my, you know, exercise plan, my overall mental health and fitness plan. And I know from years of experience working with literally hundreds of runners, that this stuff that we do, it is not easy. It is hard, it can be challenging. It can really suck sometimes.
Success is never a linear path. It’s always kind of wonky. And that’s okay. It’s okay. I talk about embracing the suck all the time. Like just lean into that discomfort, right? This means that it will be hard. It is not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be hard. And if you have it in your mind that it’s supposed to be easy, but for you it’s not, that’s going to feel terrible.
I was talking to a client recently who told me, you know, early on the process she was like super committed, ready to go. She was all in and you know, we talked about hey, you know at times this is going to be hard. You’ve got to be willing to, you know, embrace the suck times. It’s gonna be hard, expect to be hard.
She’s like, yeah, I got this. I know it’s gonna be hard. I’m ready for it, bring it on. And then after a month or two something happened with work. She kind of went off the plan. And getting back on track was really, really hard. She found it very, very hard to get back on the plane. And I remember being on a call with her and she said she was like experiencing all this guilt and shame and just couldn’t get her mojo back and, and it was really hard.
And I said, yeah, remember back when I said, this was going to be hard and you need to embrace the suck? Well, this is what I’m talking about. This is what hard feels like she was like, oh, wow, that’s cool. Like, it just clicked for her. That like, for some reason, even though going into it, intellectually, she knew, oh, this is supposed to be hard, it’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be hard.
But then when you’re actually in it, and it gets hard, and you’re like, oh, it shouldn’t be this way. It should be easy. It’s not easy. And this is what hard feels like. So stop thinking it’s supposed to be easy. It’s not. And it’s not just you, it gets hard for everybody at some point. Expect it to be hard, because it will be.
And then when it does get hard, and it’s like, oh, this is very challenging right now, you can gently remind yourself, oh, yeah, this is what hard feels like. So that first message that I think we get from a lot of people out there, a lot on social media, other coaches, nutrition experts, dieticians, whatever. There’s this underlying sort of presupposition that it should be easy, and it’s not easy. It is hard. Okay. So first accept that.
The second thing is that we just shouldn’t have setbacks like we should, you should just do it perfectly. This is a message that I think we get from the outside world at times, but more often, internally. That you should be able to do this perfectly, and you should never fail. And that was always me. This internal dialogue always tells me that I am different. I don’t fail, I do things perfectly. And I shouldn’t have failures. I shouldn’t have setbacks.
This is a problem. Because here’s why. When you do experience a setback, and you will, you feel like you shouldn’t be experiencing that setback. And this is something that I call fighting against what is. You are fighting against the way things are. You are so keen on being perfect, that when things go awry, and they always do – you think well, it shouldn’t be this way. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.
But this causes a lot of suffering. This thing of where you’re like this, things should be different. As soon as you start thinking things should be different, you start suffering. That’s it. Most human suffering is due to this to us wanting things to be different, but they aren’t. Most human suffering is just us fighting against what is. And we do it all the freaking time.
When we refuse to accept that things are the way they are. When we refuse to accept the way things are we suffer, we experience inner turmoil that doesn’t change the way things are. We just experienced all kinds of inner suffering. So the way through this is to learn what I call radical acceptance. That means accepting the way things are. Accepting reality, just as it is. No judgments, no criticisms, no thinking and wishing things were different.
Practicing radical acceptance in every aspect of your life, if you do this, you will stop your own internal suffering. Everything will still be the way it is. But your inner turmoil disappears because you’re accepting of the way things are. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. You’ll know that things are the way they’re supposed to be because that’s the way they are.
It’s funny because we will do something, we will experience something and look back on it and go well, that shouldn’t have gone that way. And I always say well, you know, it was supposed to go that way because that’s the way it happened. That’s the way it happened. It was supposed to be that way because that’s the way it happened. As soon as you just accept all of this, everything gets easier. You’re no longer fighting against everything. So practice radical acceptance.
This does not mean you don’t work to improve things, or change or learn from your mistakes. Of course not. We always want to be learning and growing and evolving and becoming more, you can still accept everything just as it is and work to change. This is a very, very, very key distinction here.
Accepting the way things are does not mean that we are passive, that does not mean that we accept, well, I’m just going to like, gain two pounds a week for the rest of my life until I blow up and die. Like, no, it doesn’t have to be that way.
You can work to change, while accepting the way things are. This kind of a radical concept, right? Most people do not do this. And most people suffer through everything in their life. Setbacks are to be expected. As soon as you accept this fact, it’s going to make a big difference for you.
And I think the third message we get around experiencing setbacks is that see, we often get emotional about this stuff. And there’s this underlying message out there, that we shouldn’t get emotional. That we just shouldn’t be emotional people, especially guys.
This is a sneaky one, because it’s not something that’s often you know, actually said out loud. But I think there’s an underlying vibe that we just shouldn’t be emotional, shouldn’t show our feelings, shouldn’t feel our feelings, just get over it and move on. And especially in the health and fitness community, there’s a lot of, you know, macho bravado out there.
And I think there’s a place for that. And I kind of like some of that at times. But other times I’m like, you know, it’s okay, that as men, especially, that we can just, we do have feelings, we do have emotions, and it’s okay to experience that stuff. It’s okay to have those emotions and feelings.
Listen, we are human beings. Every human being has emotions, we are emotional animals. It’s what makes us awesome, what makes us human. There’s no other animals on the planet that experience the vast array of in depth emotions that we do.
There are animals that experience emotions, they’ve shown this before, but not the way that we do. It’s not to the extent that we do. So having emotions is normal. It’s a part of being human. So that’s cool. Being emotional, having emotions is not the problem. We get into trouble when we allow our emotions to dictate our behavior. That’s when we run into problems.
So, for example, you experience some kind of setback, like you have a big change at work, and you got all this new work to do. And maybe they let a couple people go, you’ve got to take over their responsibilities. It’s a lot of work that you have to do now, a lot of internal stress. So your goal now becomes just I gotta get rid of this stress as fast as possible. So how do you do that?
Well, how have you always gotten rid of stress? Eat, drink, binge watch your favorite shows on Netflix, sleep in, skip your workouts, do whatever feels good. Because that’s going to make you feel better, right? That’s going to remove the stress right now.
It doesn’t work and we know that, but we have the setbacks and then we allow the emotions of that experience to drive our behavior. When you allow this to happen, you are no longer in control. Your emotions have taken the wheel and they are driving the bus. Okay? We cannot allow our emotions to be in charge. We cannot allow our emotions to dictate our behavior. And this will also happen when we experience a setback and then we beat ourselves up about it. ‘I’m worthless. I can’t stick to my plan. I’m a failure. I suck at this. I’ll never lose weight. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m a piece of crap.’
This is like self flagellation, right? And it sends you spiraling downward into the abyss of negative emotions. And again, how do you mitigate that? Will you turn to food and drink and Netflix and whatever to suit yourself and feel better. Even though you know, this is not a long term solution, you’re chasing immediate pleasure in the midst of pain because it just feels good. You just want to feel good.
And you end up sacrificing your long term goals for a little bit of short term pleasure. So the big problem here isn’t being emotional. The big problem isn’t having emotions, that’s normal. We’re human, we should have emotions, we should experience our emotions. The problem is when we allow our emotions to drive our behavior.
So you have to allow yourself to experience those emotions without trying to make them go away. You have to allow yourself to be emotional and experience an emotion. Process that emotion, feel your feelings, allow the emotions to move through you, without doing anything, to numb yourself or to, to feel different; just feel bad.
That is a crazy concept right there. Most people do not want to feel bad. People do not want to do this because it does feel terrible. It’s supposed to feel terrible, though they are negative emotions by default. They are negative feelings. It feels negative, it feels terrible. But what if you just could experience these emotions and not do anything about it? Ah, this is how you become an emotional badass right here.
Oh, I’m willing to experience that emotion. I’m willing to experience some guilt, or shame or feeling like crap. I’m willing to experience all that stuff. If you get good at that, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. So feel the emotion, allow it to be there, do nothing. Don’t try to numb it. Don’t try to make it go away. Just feel it, it will eventually fade and go away.
Think about the times you’ve been in emotional distress. And you’ve just felt so terrible. You can look back on those moments and say like, oh, yeah, that was like, a few hours, a few minutes a day, whatever. Depends on the type of emotion we’re talking about here and the intensity of it right? Most of the time, though, it always passes, it eventually goes away. You can choose to just experience it and feel it and process it. Or you can just numb yourself to that stuff. Don’t do that though.
Become an emotional badass. Instead practice this. This is something you do have to practice. It is not easy. It’s not for the timid. Okay, so, setbacks, they are inevitable. They are part of the process of growth and change and evolving and becoming more. Handling setbacks like a badass means knowing that your journey will be hard. And you keep continuing on anyway, you just keep going anyway.
It means accepting that everything that happens is as it should be. And then you can work to change when necessary, but accepting everything as is because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And then allowing your emotions to be there without trying to numb them or push them away. And without letting them drive your behavior. This is how you handle setbacks, like a total badass.
If you want to learn more about getting started on your weight loss journey, join me for that free live training and coaching session called How To Start Losing Weight As A Runner on Wednesday, May 17. I’ll be going live to show you how to get started on your weight loss journey the right way. I’ll be answering your questions live. So be sure to show up. Bring your questions and get a little coaching, cool. Go to runningleancoaching.com/live to sign up. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will 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.
102. Choosing Your Struggle
Have you ever found yourself struggling with something and thought, “Why am I choosing this?” Probably not. If you're like most people then you’ve most likely never considered the fact that you are …
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 102 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about choosing your struggle. Have you ever found yourself struggling with something and thought, why am I choosing this? Why am I choosing to struggle with this? Probably not.
If you’re like most people, then you’ve probably never considered the fact that you are actually choosing your struggles, all of them. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with right now – your weight, your workouts, how you feel about yourself, feeling stuck – these are all choices that you are making.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain what all this means, what it means to be choosing your struggle, and I’m going to offer up some insights for you to start making better choices in your life.
But first, if you liked this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group that goes hand in hand with this podcast. Right now we’re in the middle of our running through the holidays challenge. The challenge is to run every day between Thanksgiving day.
And New Year’s Day is a tough time of the year for a lot of people. And running and getting outside and getting some exercise in every single day is a great way to get through the holidays, to help eliminate stress, to feel good about yourself to get the endorphins going the adrenaline going, and to make it through the holidays without losing your mind.
So if you’re interested in joining us, it’s never too late, come and join in the fun, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. And then if you’re interested in doing more if you’re interested in getting more out of this and going deeper, you know listening to the podcast is great.
But if you want more if you really want to apply all of the stuff that I teach here on the podcast, if you want help applying that to your own life, to make the changes that you want to become the person, the badass person that you want to become, then you got two ways that you can work with me and get more number one is the Running Lean coaching group.
And all month long for this month in December, we’re talking about building mental toughness. Last month, our topic was ending self-sabotage. So each month, I try to pick a topic that’s relevant that will help you to move in the direction of your goals. Right?
So mental toughness, is what’s required to get you through the tough times. And this time of the year, there’s a lot of tough times for a lot of people, okay, things will always get tough. So we need mental toughness to get through all of this, okay. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, run a marathon, or just develop the habits that you need to be able to stick with your food and exercise plans – it all requires mental toughness.
Okay, so join the Running Lean coaching group. And you’ll learn all about how to build mental toughness, you need to get through just about anything in life. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and you can join us anytime.
Also, I am a coach. And where I excel is in one on one coaching. And if you’re looking for a little personalized help with all this stuff, if you want some help applying all these principles, and getting some experts, one on one guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, maybe some tough love every now and then, then you need to apply for coaching with me.
Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you and I will have a conversation and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool, awesome.
So let’s get into this topic of choosing your struggle. And I think this is something that most people don’t realize that they’re making choices around what it is that they’re struggling with. And for you, I want you at the end of this podcast, I want you to be really thinking about the things that you are struggling with and how you can make better choices around your struggles.
Okay, so that’s just the mindset I want you to be in throughout this podcast. So if there’s something you’re struggling with in your life right now, think about it. Bring it to the forefront of your mind and think about that as I go through this. So that you can be thinking about how maybe you can make some changes to your perceptions of what you’re struggling with, cool.
So if you’re like most people, then you probably think that the goal for your life is to have a struggle-free life, that you think that at some point in the future, you will no longer have any struggles, everything’s just going to be rainbows and unicorns, and sunshine. And this is just not the case.
And I definitely used to think this myself, right, I thought that once I got to my ideal weight, once I got to my ideal body composition, once I started to really get clear on what I wanted for myself, once I worked through a lot of my mindset issues, then everything would just be easy for me from here on out.
And I would be struggle free. And I would never have any more challenges or struggles in my life. But that’s not reality. In reality, life is a struggle. You know, I don’t care how many, you know, self-improvement books or personal growth, podcasts you listen to, you are never going to get to a place in your life, where it’s completely struggle-free. It just isn’t going to ever be that way.
Okay, I want you to really understand this first, okay? Every human being on this planet is struggling with something. Life is a struggle, that’s just a fact, we need to stop pretending that it isn’t, we need to stop pretending that at some point, life is just going to be all blissful and joy and challenge free. It just won’t ever get that way. Okay?
Now, this does not mean that you have to struggle with everything all the time. You know, I’ve talked about this before Life is 50/50. Right, you’re going to be happy about half the time and the other half, not so much.
But what I’m saying here is that you will have struggles in your life, every now and then from here on out. So instead of trying to avoid all the struggles, instead of trying to eliminate all the struggles, I want you to start choosing the things you struggle with.
Now, you might be thinking, what, why would I choose to struggle with anything? Right? And I don’t, I’m not choosing this, this is just the way that it is. And this is a concept, I really want you to understand that you’re absolutely choosing whatever it is that you’re struggling with.
So here’s the fact, you can’t accomplish big things without a struggle. When you set out to do something big, there is a struggle involved. There is discomfort involved. growth requires discomfort, you know, you can’t have growth and accomplish big goals without some level of discomfort.
You know, if you want to lose 40 or 50 pounds, then you have to accept the fact that there will be some discomfort and struggle involved with that process. Maybe you’re gonna, you know, eliminate certain foods from your diet that you’re used to eating.
You know, one of the things a lot of people struggle with is quitting sugar, when you stop eating sugar. This is a struggle for a lot of people, or maybe you want to quit drinking. And so, you know, not drinking alcohol, especially this time of the year can be a real struggle. Right?
If you want to qualify for Boston, then you are absolutely going to struggle with that process, the training that is involved to get you to the Boston starting line is intense. You know, for some of us, it’s more intense than others because we got a lot more time to shave off.
I think my Boston qualifying time now that I hit 55 went from, like 330 to 335. And I’m just like, whatever. That’s just not happening now, maybe later, maybe when I’m 70. But qualifying for Boston requires a struggle. It requires a lot of hard work to get you there. Okay.
You know, when I was training for my 100 miler, that was a lot of struggle, the training involved with that distance with you know, getting your body ready to run that distance is intense. You know, I was doing back-to-back long runs on the weekends where I would run maybe 30 miles on Saturday and 20 miles on Sunday. Yeah, that sounds like fun, right?
And then I was running six days a week so I only had one day off and I was building up my mileage. And I think my weekly mileage ended up getting close to like 85 or 90 miles for a week, which is a lot.
You know, I know a lot of people do more than that. But for me, that was a lot. You know, I’m used to my 30, 35, 40 miles a week for marathon training. So that was a big struggle, the training alone, for an event like that is just a total struggle fest, you know, building up the mileage, building up your endurance, that’s a hard thing to do.
And then the race itself, running 100 miles, struggled all through that, you know, so crossing the finish line of that 100 miler, though, all that struggle was worth it. You know, all that struggle of training for something and pushing yourself and becoming more in the process is completely worth it. Right.
The problem is, most people want to accomplish these big things, but they don’t want to struggle. Like they set out to lose weight, but they’re not willing to experience any discomfort, they don’t want any struggles, they don’t want any discomfort, they don’t want any failures, they just want everything to be easy.
And as soon as it gets a little bit hard, or they start struggling, they quit. I don’t want to encourage you to not do that. Accept the fact that there will be struggles with whatever it is you’re trying to do, especially if you’re trying to do something hard, especially if you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before. Just doing something you’ve never done before, is a challenge in itself, because you’ve never done it before.
And you might think well, I don’t know how to do it. Of course, you don’t know how to do it because you’ve never done it before. Of course, you’re going to struggle. But at the first sign of discomfort, if you’re ready to just throw in the towel, and go back to doing whatever you’re doing before, like, that’s not going to work for you.
Alright, the bottom line here is I’m talking about in some way, shape, or form, you will always have struggle in your life, you have to accept this fact. Right? Struggle is inevitable. The good news is, you get to choose your struggle.
So you can choose to struggle with staying where you are being stuck where you are staying small, maybe not feeling good about yourself not having self-esteem, maybe feeling like crap. Or you can choose the struggle that comes with change.
You can choose the struggle of not feeling good right now of not being your healthiest self, of not loving yourself, of not loving your body. You can struggle with having low self-esteem, you can struggle with feeling crappy about yourself.
Or you can choose the struggle that’s involved with changing your diet, or working out at the gym on a regular basis. Or struggling with, you know, heading outside for those long runs, especially when it’s dark and cold outside. Or the struggle of working on your mindset and improving your mindset.
Either way, there’s going to be a struggle involved, right? Which one do you want to choose the struggle of just being where you are and feeling like crap all the time, or the struggle of doing what it takes to change? You might be struggling with something like emotional eating, which is something we all do.
You know, some people call it stress eating, or I’m just bored, some eating, whatever it is, this is all variations of emotional eating, you’re using food as a way of feeling better. And this could be a real struggle for you. You know, you’re using food as a way to not have to feel your feelings that I have to deal with your emotions.
So you can continue to choose to struggle with this you can continue you know, using food as a way of feeling better. And dealing with you know, and not dealing with your emotions and struggling with how you feel all the time.
Or you can choose the struggle of actually dealing with your feelings, dealing with your emotions, feeling your feelings, even when you know you’re even when you don’t want to because you stopped using food as a coping mechanism.
You know, maybe you start dealing with your emotions for the first time in your life. This can feel like a huge struggle fest for a lot of people. Alright, so you can choose the struggle of emotional eating or choose the struggle of dealing with your feelings, like which one of these would you choose? Which are you choosing?
You might be struggling with your relationship you can continue the struggle and hope that things get better and just feel like well, this is just the way it is. Or you can choose the struggle of having real conversations, tough conversations, honest conversations, and communicating openly and plainly with your significant other.
This is not the easier thing to do, I promise you this is, this is hard to do. The struggle involved with communicating with somebody else, and learning how to communicate openly and clearly, and honestly, with another person, you get to choose which struggle you want to endure though.
The struggle of, you know, passive-aggressive behavior, of not saying what you really want to say, of having all these resentments build-up, or the struggle of dealing with what it takes to improve that relationship, the struggle of having those uncomfortable conversations, running might be a struggle for you right now.
You know, maybe you’re, you’re not hitting your PR, you know, and you keep trying, and it’s just a big huge struggle fest for you, right. You know, you can continue to struggle with this and keep falling short of your goals.
Or, you can begin the process of improving your running little by little, doing what it takes to get faster and struggling with that. You can struggle with where you are or struggle with what it takes to change.
Right, there’s always going to be some sort of struggle in the process of improving yourself, of becoming the person that you really, really want to become, it’s a struggle. But you get to choose that if you want, or you can choose to struggle with just, you know, being where you are.
And thinking that this is never gonna work for me. And I could never stick to my diet. And I can’t get out and exercise because of X, Y, and Z. You can struggle with how you feel every single day because you’re stuck where you are.
Or you can choose the struggle that comes with changing who you are. Listen, you get to change who you are, you get to decide for yourself, who it is that you want to become. And you can become the most awesome, healthiest, most badass person that you want to be, you get to choose that for yourself.
The caveat, there is a struggle involved with getting there. I want you to choose that struggle for yourself. You know, struggle with the pain involved with going to the gym and lifting weights. struggle with the mindset it takes to get yourself out of bed at 4:30 in the morning, to get your running in because that’s what’s important to you.
I want you to struggle with you know, dealing with your emotions when you really just feel like eating something or drinking something and you’re not going to do that. Because who you are is not that person that uses food to feel better.
Right now, I’m struggling. I am choosing the struggle that comes with fixing my shoulder. I just had rotator cuff surgery. And I have to tell you it’s terrible. I was going into this feeling very positive. And you know, I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. And I have to tell you, this is pretty dang painful.
And during the day, it’s gotten better like during the day like right now I’m sitting in my chair, I’m at my computer and it feels pretty fine. Like there’s a little bit of achy pain going on there. But it’s not horrible like I can deal with it you know and I’m taking some Tylenol and stuff like that, it’s fine.
But at night trying to sleep is horrible. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. I can sleep for a couple of hours at a time but I keep waking up with intense pain for whatever reason you know, I’ve got myself propped up in bed and everybody says that you got to be like kind of sleeping sitting up to allow your shoulder to just kind of sit in its natural position.
But for whatever reason, it just starts to be incredibly painful and it wakes me up several times throughout the night. And this is uncomfortable. This is a struggle. This is what I am struggling with right now.
But I have to tell myself, and I keep reminding myself that I am choosing this struggle, I’m choosing to struggle with this right now, rather than the struggle of constantly being in pain for the rest of my life with no end in sight. I tore three different, you know, I have three different tears on my rotator cuff. And I have to get those things fixed because they there was not going to get better on their own.
I gave it a year, I gave it like 14 months actually, of this pain, like hoping it will get better. And it’s only gotten worse. So I can continue, I could have continued to just struggle with this. But I made a decision that I was going to choose a different kind of struggle, I’m going to choose to struggle with the pain that I’m dealing with right now with the discomfort with all of it.
Because I know, eventually, this will get better. I know eventually that I am going to be back to normal, and I’ll get stronger than ever. You know, I decided that this was the struggle I was going to deal with because it’s, you know, it’s short term.
Rather than going through the rest of my life feeling like I can’t do the things I want to do. The kind of pain I was in with the shoulder prior to surgery was like I could not do yoga the way I wanted to. I could not lift weights the way I wanted to. Running started to become very problematic.
So I made a decision, I made a choice that I was going to get this thing fixed. And it’s a struggle. I’m going to tell you, I’m going to be honest with you right now. It’s a struggle. But I’ve chosen this, this is what I’ve I’ve chosen for myself, okay.
So whatever it is that you are struggling with right now. I want you to understand something. Number one struggling is inevitable, you will always be struggling with something. And that’s okay. Right life’s 50/50.
It’s okay if you’re struggling with something, but you get to choose what you’re struggling with. And I want you to stop choosing the struggle of staying stuck and feeling small and staying comfortable and staying complacent and wishing you were more.
I don’t want you to struggle with that anymore. I want you to choose the struggle of becoming more. I want you to choose the struggle that it takes to become that badass version of yourself that you know is lurking inside you.
That’s what I want for you. That’s what I’ve chosen for myself and that’s what I want for you. Good deal. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. 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.
101. What to Do When Life Throws You Curveballs
Sometimes things just don't go your way. You might have to deal with a running-related injury, loss of job, divorce, another COVID lockdown, or some other unexpected setback in your life. What …
Continue Reading about 101. What to Do When Life Throws You Curveballs →
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 101, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what to do when life throws you curveballs. Sometimes things just don’t go your way, you might have to deal with a running-related injury, loss of a job divorce, another COVID lockdown, or some other unexpected setback in your life.
What you do in these situations, and how you respond to them, can have a profound impact on your life, for the good or for the bat. Now, recently, I’ve been thrown a big curveball, and I’m going to talk more about that in this episode.
But instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I’ve decided that I’m going to do everything that I can to get through this tough period, feeling good about myself and being as positive and productive as possible.
So this episode of the podcast is all about what to do when life throws you curveballs because you will always have a choice in how you respond to every single one of these events in your life, even when it feels like you don’t.
But first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. And all this month, all through the holidays between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, we’re doing the running through the holidays challenge.
This is where we are challenging ourselves to run outside at least a mile every single day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day, I think it’s a total of 38 total days of running. So 38 days in a row.
And the reason we’re doing this is because this is a tough time of the year for a lot of people. It’s a time where a lot of people feel like they don’t want to go outside because it’s cold and it’s dark. And the weather is always kind of iffy.
But doing this challenge forces us to get outside every day, which is super good for you. It helps us to get through this challenging time of the year. Feeling good about ourselves, we get a sense of accomplishment. We get all the good endorphins and adrenaline going because we’re out there exercising every day. And we are all having a lot of fun doing this.
So if you’re interested in joining the challenge, it’s not too late. Just come and join us anytime you want. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us.
And then people always ask how they can work with me. And there are two ways you can do that. There’s the Running Lean coaching group. And then there’s one on one coaching and the Running Lean coaching group.
So the month of December, we’re talking all about building mental toughness. Last month, we focused on ending self-sabotage. And so the next step is once you understand how to avoid and end self-sabotage for good, the next step is to build the Mental Toughness that’s required to get you through hard times; to get you through the tough runs to get you through challenging situations like the holidays, maybe.
So come and join us in the Running Lean coaching group for December, learn how to train your mind to tough it out when the going gets tough because it will always get tough, I promise you. And whether you want to lose weight, run a marathon, run an ultra marathon, or just develop the habits to be able to make a plan and stick with it.
All of this stuff, it all requires mental toughness. You know, there’s going to be times when you don’t feel like working out, you don’t feel like sticking to your diet, or you just want to quit because it’s hard. But when you have mental toughness, you’ll get through all of it. If you’re interested, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and you can join the group any time.
And then the one-on-one coaching. If you’re ever looking for a little extra help, and you want to basically guarantee your success, I can offer you the expert guidance, support, encouragement, experience accountability that you need to make this work for you no matter what it is, no matter what your goals no matter what your lifestyle.
The best way to reach your goals is to have a coach guiding you and holding you accountable. Really, it’s just the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself. It’s the most powerfully powerful thing I’ve done for myself. I have several coaches that I work with. And it has made all the difference in my life. So if you’re interested in one on one coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you.
Okay, so I wanted to come on here and talk about this subject today because I’ve had a pretty big curveball thrown my way. And I’ll talk more about that in a second.
But listen, we all get curveballs thrown at us, okay, life is never going to go as you plan it like things just don’t go as planned 100% of the time, right. But when they don’t go as planned, what do you do?
You know, sometimes we really have to step up our game, in order to develop the right mindset to be able to deal with whatever tough things are going on in our lives, whatever curveballs are thrown our way.
You know, so just understand that you know, I may be talking about something that’s going on with me here today. But I want you to be thinking about the kinds of curveballs that you have faced recently or maybe facing in the near future.
And the nature of curveballs is that we don’t know what they are, we don’t know that these things are going to happen. And we don’t know that we have to plan and sort of like build the mental toughness in order to get through these kinds of times, right.
So this is very much on my mind right now, because I’ve had a big curveball thrown my way, I have developed some tears in my rotator cuff. And so I’m having rotator cuff surgery in just a couple of days.
So just for those of you who are interested in knowing the mechanics here, so I have a torn supraspinous muscle in a torn subscapularis muscle. And I have biceps tendinitis. So I have a biceps tendon that should be long and skinny, like a spaghetti noodle. But instead, it’s all like frayed in the middle. And it’s all messed up. And it’s supposed to be in this groove. And it’s not in the groove, or it’s supposed to be, and I have not been able to lift weights for a while now.
And this has been something that’s been bugging me for a long, long time. So kind of the backstory here is that I did some sort of trauma to my shoulder. And I’m pretty sure this happened a few years back running on some trails falling down, catching myself, and jamming my shoulder.
And I probably did some sort of damage at that point. Because since then, for several years now my shoulder has not been right. And it’s been okay like I’ve been able to run, it’s been okay, I’ve been able to lift weights to a certain degree.
But about 14 months ago, 15 months ago, I started getting into heavier weights and started lifting more. And you know, it’s a gradual progression. But at some point during weightlifting, I noticed things starting to like really hurt and my shoulder. And so I’ve just been pushing through the pain, you know. I’ve just been sort of, like, that’s fine.
I went and saw a physical therapist, and they made an assessment. And they thought that you know, it would probably just heal up on its own because shoulder tears can heal up on their own, you know, and it didn’t heal up on its own.
And, and I’ve just been pushing through the pain, and I’ve been, you know, doing a lot of weightlifting. And it’s been okay, you know, there are things I can’t do, some overhead stuff, and there’s their stuff that’s more painful than others. But I’ve been able to pretty much do what I want to do.
I’ve run, you know, a couple of marathons this year, and it’s it’s been okay. But in the past few months, it’s gotten progressively worse. And so I started seeing another physical therapist, and we started doing all kinds of other stuff. And then we just decided at some point that whatever we were doing was not helping.
And my condition was actually getting worse. And so just to find out exactly what was going on, I had an MRI, and that MRI showed the torn rotator cuff muscles and the biceps tendon that’s all jacked up.
So, you know, the surgeon came in and he said, I got some bad news for you. You know, the only way you’re going to get better. The only way we’re going to fix this is surgery. And he’s a guy that’s like he’s not even told me he’s like, I don’t recommend surgery for most people, especially with tears like this, a lot of times we can fix you know, they’ll fix themselves they’ll get better on their own.
What you have is not going to get better on its own. What you have is going to get continually worse. And if you tear through this muscle it’s like hanging by a thread at this point and if you tear completely through it, the repairs gonna be much more difficult and it may not ever be the same. Like you may never be able to use your muscles properly again like they’re you they could atrophy so I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like terrible.
So I’m like, well, let’s do it, let’s, let’s have this surgery. So the surgery is scheduled for a couple of days from now. So my first reaction to all of this was, like, you know, this is just something that I have to deal with I, but I was a little bit pissed off about the whole thing, to be honest with you, okay?
And, and I had some choices about how I wanted to react, so I could be defeated, pissed off, I could be in denial, I could feel really resentful, and just beat myself up, you know, blame myself for not doing something sooner and on and on and on, right? I could do that.
Or I could do something else, right? I decided that I did not want to wallow in self-pity and be pissed off and defeated. That instead, I wanted to use this experience as a way of learning about myself. And being able to use this as a teaching experience so that I could share my experience with you, and put all these practical principles that I practice, and that I teach you guys, I’m going to put all this stuff into place.
I have all these awesome tools that I use in my coaching and all these principles that I teach, and all the mental and emotional tools that I have to build a deal with whatever. And so I’m bringing it all, I’m gonna bring everything I’ve got to this experience.
And because I don’t want to just like get through it, I don’t want to just muddle through it, I want to come out of this experience, I want to come out the other side of this experience, mentally, emotionally, and physically stronger than before.
And, for me, this is like such an important thing for me to do for myself, not just to, you know, prove to myself that I can get through this and feel good and get stronger. But I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself and wallowing in misery. That is not how I want to spend the next few weeks or a few months or whatever it’s gonna take to recover from this thing.
So I’ve decided I’m going to, you know, take this opportunity to, you know, do this in a way that’s more badass. Okay, so for this first situation that I’m in, so I’ve got the surgery in a couple of days, right? And I had some thoughts about this.
And there were some things that were kind of swirling around in my brain. And I was having some concerns and some stress and some anxiety about all this. And I started to think about, okay, what are the thoughts that are causing all these feelings? Right? Our thoughts always cause our feelings, right.
So I decided to write down everything that I was thinking just the good, the bad, the crazy, everything, some of this stuff, and I’m going to share this with you guys here, I’m going to share some of my thoughts with you guys here. And then share, like what I’m doing with these thoughts and how I’m changing them.
But I started writing this stuff down, and I didn’t censor it. I just like wrote down everything I was thinking and feeling. And some of this is ridiculous, but whatever. That’s just the way our brains work. You know, sometimes we think ridiculous thoughts, you know.
But for me, I wanted to get control of how I was going into this whole thing, right? Even before I have my surgery, I wanted to make sure that I have the right mindset going into it. Okay.
So I did what’s called a thought download this is where we just write down everything that’s in our brains, get it on a piece of paper so that we can see it. And then we can look at these thoughts, and maybe challenge some of them because you don’t have to believe everything you think, right? I don’t have to believe everything. I think just because I’m thinking of thought does not mean that it’s true.
So I wrote down everything. And then I challenged all these thoughts. And I want to share this with you guys because I think it’ll be very helpful for you. And you can do this exact same thing for some situation that might be going on in your life, you might have your own curveball that’s been thrown your way. You know, there’s always something right.
There’s always something going on that in our lives that are not going as planned. It may be you know, work transitions, it may be relationship stuff, it may be stuff with our kids, or with school, or whatever. And and we get to choose how we want to approach these things. We don’t have to just react to them the way that everybody else does.
Because the way that everybody else reacts to these things typically is pretty crappy, and they just feel terrible. And they get stressed out and they you know, throw up their arms and just say like, everything sucks and like, I don’t want to do that. That’s not who I am.
So I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to do some work. And so when I say do some work, I mean I’m going to sit down and really get in touch with what I’m thinking and feeling about this stuff. Okay.
So the first thing I’m going to share with you guys is just a list of a bunch of thoughts that I’ve had about this. Thoughts that are kind of causing me some emotional distress. Okay, so I’m going to give you my kind of thought download here and just share some of the stuff with you. And then I’ll talk about what we do from there.
So here are some of the thoughts that I wrote down about this upcoming surgery and in the recovery, and this whole situation. So the first one was that this isn’t gonna work, like the surgeries just not gonna work, it’s not gonna, it’s not going to heal me, I’m not going to get better.
Another thought is I’m going to lose my fitness, you know, I’ve worked really hard to get fit, and I’m going to lose fitness.
The next one is I won’t be able to handle the pain, the pain is gonna be too much. My business will suffer, I won’t be able to do simple things like, you know, tie my shoes or put on a shirt or fold laundry, you know, I’m going to get all soft and mushy physically get all doughy, I don’t want to be doughy.
Again, I used to be doughy and I don’t want to be doing that again. I’ll fall behind on my work, I’ll be in a bad mood all the time since I won’t be able to run and workout like I’m used to, it’s going to take a really long time to recover, I’m going to get fat.
Again, my whole routine in my whole schedule is going to be thrown off. I won’t ever be as fit as I was before surgery, people are gonna think I’m lazy, no one’s gonna want to help me, I’m going to be stuck inside my apartment, I won’t get to go outside, I’d love being outside every day, and I won’t be able to go outside.
I won’t be able to, you know, complete the running through the holidays challenge, which is important to me. I love doing this every year and I won’t be able to do that. I’m going to lose my mind just sitting around doing nothing all day. There are a lot of unknowns, like how long is the recovery going to take? When can I start my physical therapy? When can I start running again? When can I start lifting weights? Again? Like I don’t know, nobody can tell me any of these things right now.
So in some of these things I may not know the answer to for a long time. So these are a lot of the thoughts that I’m having about this. And I don’t know if you guys can probably relate to some of these things like some of this stuff is kind of crazy. Some of it is legit, you know?
So then I asked myself, like, how do I feel, thinking these thoughts? When I just read all those thoughts to you, I started to feel worried and anxious and full of fear and really stressed out. That’s how these thoughts make me feel they make me feel very anxious and very stressed out. Is this how I want to go through all this? Do I want to be worried and fearful and stressed out? No, I don’t.
And here’s the thing, though. We think that we are worried and anxious and full of fear and stressed out because of the situation. Because I have to have surgery and I’m going to be you know, it’s going to take me a while to recover. I’m automatically going to be worried and anxious and full of fear and stressed out. That is not true.
The truth is, it’s all those thoughts that I just rattled off to you – those are the things that are making me feel that way. It’s not the shoulder surgery, it’s making me feel that way it is all this stuff that I just said. So I’m having all these thoughts that are making me feel stressed out.
So what do we do when we feel stressed out? What would I do? Typically, when I’m feeling this way, our thoughts cause us to feel emotions. And the emotions I just went through were anxious fear, fearful, worried, stressed out. When you know, when you feel a certain way you take action, so your emotions drive your actions.
So what actions would I be taking or not taking based on how I feel? Well, I might start eating my feelings, I might start overeating and trying to eat to feel better. I might just sit around all day not doing anything just feeling sorry for myself wallowing in my own misery. Just even saying that out loud, feels terrible.
I might just be like worrying and being stressed out all day long. I just may just walk around being stressed and not do work and just like not feel productive and not want to do anything, not want to move just to sit around and stagnate. Like this is this is how I’m thinking I might show up these are some of the behaviors that I might partake in or avoid because of the way I’m feeling.
So this is just one scenario. This is like an option like I can choose to think all these thoughts I can choose to feel this way and I can choose to do these things. I can choose to feel anxious and stressed out and eat my feelings and be stressed and be and not feel like doing anything and just sit around and stagnate. That’s an option. Like I could do that if I wanted to. But that’s not what I’m going to do.
Okay, so what I’ve done is for each of these thoughts, I’ve reframed each one of these thoughts. And this is I think the part of this process that you can do this too, right? So I’m going to give you each of these thoughts that I had and give you an alternative thought that I’ve decided I want to think on purpose. And I wrote all these things down so that I would remember them and I could go through and read them.
Again and again, if I start to feel some of these things again, or if I start to think some of these thoughts again. So the first one is that the surgery is not going to work. Well, there’s no reason whatsoever for me to think that this is not going to work. Right?
Well, where’s this even coming from? Right? It’s very routine. There’s a very high success rate. The surgeon is awesome. He already told me this is gonna work. He’s super confident. So it’s gonna work. Like there’s no doubt about it. Okay, so that one, is gone, right. I’m feeling very confident. This is all gonna work. Okay.
My next thought is I’m going to lose fitness. Yes, this is true, like, I might lose some fitness, but I’m not going to become a couch potato. I’m not going to like lose all my fitness, I’ll get it back. And it’s only going to be for a few weeks, a few months, whatever it is, you know, I’m not going to be starting from scratch. I’m already very fit right now. I feel amazing right now. So the chances of me like, you know, becoming just super out of shape, it’s just not going to happen. Okay.
The next thought is I won’t be able to handle the pain, like, okay, first of all, I have all sorts of tools, I have meds. I have this Iceman, which is like a device that circulates cold, ice-cold water through a pad that you put around your shoulder. So it keeps your shoulder nice and cold to help with the pain and the inflammation and stuff like that post-surgery.
I have supplements, I even have narcotics that they’ve prescribed to me if necessary, I’m gonna try not to take those but you know that that’s an option if I need to, I have all these tools at my you know, that I can use if I need them.
And also, I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, you know, I’m able to handle quite a bit of pain without using any kind of medications and things like that. So, I’ve had many other surgeries that are way more invasive than what they’re going to be doing. This is arthroscopic surgery, so it’s not going to be as invasive as if they had to just like slice me all open or whatever.
So I’ve had these other surgeries that have been way more invasive, and I’ve been fine. So I’ll be able to handle the pain. Next thought my business will suffer, you know what my business will be fine, I’m only taking a couple of days off work, I can still work while I’m recovering. It’s not like I’m going to be an invalid here. I’m just going to have you know, my arm in a sling, and deal with pain and things like that. But I’ll be able to do most things, right.
Next thought, I won’t be able to do simple things like you know, fold laundry, tie my shoes, things like that. This is true, like these things may be tougher for me. But all kinds of people learn how to do these things, like get themselves dressed, tie their shoes, whatever with one hand. And it’s a skill that I can learn.
And it may be difficult and it may be tough to put a shirt on. Or something like that may be sort of painful to move my arm in that position or whatever. But I can make it work, it’s just something I can learn. Just have to learn how to do it, you know, do a lot of things left-handed.
So it’s my right shoulder that I’m getting repaired. So I’m right-handed. So I’m gonna have to deal with like the left-handed stuff, I’ve already been practicing a lot of stuff left hand like I can drive with my left hand perfectly.
So next thought is I’ll fall behind on my work, you know what, here’s a way of reframing that, like, I’m gonna have a lot of downtime. So I can actually get caught up on my work since I won’t be, you know, out running and working out as much as I was before.
Another thought I’m going to be in a bad mood since I can run a workout. Well, listen, my mood is not determined by how often I run or work out, my mood is determined by my thoughts. So whether I work out or not, that is just a circumstance. And I get to choose what I make it mean.
So I can make it mean that I’m going to be in a bad mood, or I can choose to make it mean that it doesn’t affect me at all. And then I can still be in a good mood. Listen, our mood is not determined by you know, when we you know how far we run or how often we work out. It does help. Those things do make us feel happier at times.
They kind of release some good hormones, we get the adrenaline going, we get the serotonin going, we get you know, these happy hormones going. But at the same time, we can still feel good about ourselves without that, right.
Alright, another thought is that it’s going to take a really long time to recover. And here’s the thing, I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. You know, they told me three to four months before I’m back to normal. So recovery time, just it is what it is. But I’m going to do everything that I can to make this go as fast as possible.
I’m going to hit all my PT appointments, I’m going to go as soon as that they’re allowed me to go, which is right away, they said, you know, they want to get me moving right away, I’m going to do all the at-home exercises.
I’ve got access to a gym, so I can go and do everything that I need to there. I’m going to be the ideal patient, you know. And I’m going to do everything that I’m told to do. And I’m going to get better as fast as possible. I want to blow their minds with how quickly I heal up and get better.
Okay, next thought I’ll get fat again. Well, now this one is one of those silly thoughts. This is just ridiculous, right? Me getting fat, again, would require me to dramatically change my diet. And that’s just not going to happen. Okay, so I’m going to continue to plan ahead and stick to my plan, I’m going to continue to weigh myself every day so that I can react, if the weight starts creeping up, I’ll probably need to cut back on how much I’m eating just because I’m not working out as much.
So when we work out and we run a lot and we’re you know, working out several times a week and things like that, you may need more calories, because you are, you’re burning off some of these calories and your body naturally will require more energy.
As we back off from some of these things and become a little more sedentary, we don’t require as much energy coming in. So we have to be mindful of that. So I’m going to be very mindful of that and just practice a little more restraint and just you know, not eat as much really.
You can use you know, you can get good at this and use your own intuition and your biological the way you feel like your, your body’s internal sort of hunger and satiety signals to determine how much you need to eat. And so I’m going to be practicing that. I won’t get that, again, I’m not worried about that.
Next thought my whole routine in my schedule is gonna be thrown off. Yeah, my typical schedule will be different, that’s okay. But here’s what I’m gonna do, I’m going to create as much structure as possible so that even though my routine and my schedule are different, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I can change things up and create sort of a new routine and new structure, and changing things up every now and then is actually a good thing, right? It changes your perspective and gets you focused on different things. So I’m not too worried about that one.
Let’s see the next thought, I won’t be I won’t ever be as fit as I was pre-surgery. So I have this goal to become the fittest, strongest, most badass version of myself yet. And this to me, this period of time is just a setback. And it’s not going to deter me from achieving that goal, it’s not going to make me give up, or quit. This time is very brief in the big picture. This is just a blip on the radar right.
Now, I’ve already decided that 2022 is going to be the year when I improved my fitness like I never had before. You know, I might be doing a little bit less running, I might be doing a lot more weight training. But this is actually getting me feeling good is getting me feeling very excited.
Next thought I’m going to be seen as lazy, okay, this is just one of those fleeting thoughts, I wrote it down because it came up in my head, nobody’s gonna think I’m lazy, I’m not lazy, I’ve never been lazy.
And if somebody thinks I’m being lazy, there is nothing I can do about the way that they think that’s just their thoughts, their opinions of me. And there’s nothing I can do about that. So that one is just sort of ridiculous.
The next thought was no one’s going to want to help me. And this thought has already been put to rest because I’ve already received an outpouring of support and offers of help from my friends and my family. People want to bring me food and get me groceries and just come and hang out with me and watch movies and stuff like that. So I’ve already got all the help and support that I need. And then some. So this is super fun. So I’m feeling good about that.
My next thought was that I’m going to be stuck inside my apartment, I won’t get to go outside. I love being outside. I really do especially this time of the year. And I’ve kind of thought about this and I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal.
I suspect I won’t get outside for a few days maybe. But as soon as I can, I’m going to make getting outside of priority like even if it’s just to go sit outside and get a little bit of sunshine on my face or whatever. If we have some sunshine in the Midwest here.
So it might be a few days but that’s about it. You know, as soon as I’m able to I’m gonna try to get outside maybe go for a short walk or something like that and try to get outside every day.
Next thought I won’t be able to complete the running through the holidays challenge and this is true, right? I probably won’t be able to do every day of the challenge, but I’m doing what I can up until the day of my surgery. I’ll even run on the morning of the surgery and the surgery is until like noon or so on Thursday so I’ll be able to run in the morning, but then who knows.
Maybe towards the end of the month, towards the end of December, I can get back into running a mile at a time. I don’t know, it depends on what they tell me I’m allowed to do. I might be, I might be a little too optimistic about that. But either way is fine.
My goal through this challenge then is to be here to help encourage you and support every one of you as you keep up with your running streak, and you are participating in this challenge. And listen, I’m looking at this, this whole thing is for surgery in this recovery as my challenge. This is my, you know, running through the holidays challenge, this is my equivalent of that. My challenge is to get myself through this period and slide into 2022 feeling amazing. Okay.
My next thought is I’m gonna lose my mind sitting around doing nothing all day. Well, first of all, I’m not going to be sitting around doing nothing all day, there are lots of things I’m going to be doing lots of things I’m focused on.
And just because I can’t run, just because I can’t lift weights doesn’t mean I’m going to lose my mind, right? And it doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around all day. So I don’t know that that was just one of those fleeting thoughts that sort of came through my head. So I wrote it down.
My last thought about all this was that there’s a lot of unknowns, right? How long is the recovery? When do I start PT? Where can I start running again? When can I start lifting again, when will I be pain-free? All these things are unknown. There are a lot of unknowns. And this is true, right?
But this is the nature of life itself. Nothing is really ever known for certain. And worrying about all of the unknowns does not make them known. It doesn’t make you feel any better. All it does is it get me super stressed out and anxious right here now. So worrying about the future just destroys this moment right here.
And listen, each thing that I just mentioned, each of these unknowns will eventually become known. And this will give me a chance to practice patience and practice acceptance and practice staying in the present moment, right here now. So these are all my reframes of all the thoughts that I had. Okay?
How do these thoughts make me feel? Well, this list of thoughts that I just went over with you, make me feel motivated, they make me feel encouraged, I feel hopeful. I’m even excited. I’m excited about who I’m going to be when I get through this surgery and the recovery process and all that, I’m excited.
And then what do I do when I feel this way I get into action, I’m going to use this downtime to work on projects. Like I’m writing a book, I’m working to work on them, just give me some time to work on my book, I’m going to move as much as I can.
I’m going to develop more time to pour into the Running Lean coaching group and devote more time to pouring into the Running Lean Facebook community. I’m going to get moving as soon as I can. And I’m going to use this time to better myself.
Instead of suffering and feeling sorry for myself. And wallowing in misery and stagnating. I’m going to focus on growing and becoming more. Even when life throws us curveballs, we can focus on growing and becoming more.
I saw this quote today and it was just so perfect. It’s this: “Fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses toward growth.”
So I want you to think about that – fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses towards growth. So for me, this is all about growth. The fear, the uncertainty, the discomfort that I’m about to face here is all about growth, it’s going to point me in the direction of growth.
So this work, I did this thought work that I did, where I listed all my thoughts and then reframe them. This is the first work that I’m doing to get into the right mindset about this whole surgery and recovery thing. So the surgeries a couple of days.
And this podcast has actually come out if you’re listening to this on Friday, then I had my surgery yesterday. So the hard part, hopefully for me will be over by the time you’re listening to this. But my goal is to continue to share my experiences with you and to share my thoughts and feelings about this journey of recovery with you because I think there’s a lot to learn here.
There’s a lot that we can all learn here. There are a lot of lessons in this stuff like when life throws us curveballs. There are things that we can learn and there are things that we can start to practice so that we can build the mental toughness that we need to get through them. Right.
And you may not be going through the same thing as me, but we all have curveballs. You know, it’s up to you to decide how you want to respond to them. Remember, you always have a choice and how to respond.
You get to choose how you want to think and feel about everything that happens in your life. And for me I’m choosing to respond with positivity with motivation and with excitement, right? It’s not easy. It’s tough.
It’s hard to look at these circumstances in our lives, some of these curveballs, and see the good that can come from that. It’s hard to do that most people don’t do this, but this is the work that we all have to do. Alright, you guys, you got this. I got this. Love you all keep on Running Lean. We’ll talk to you soon.
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