Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you’re a runner trying to lose weight, you’ve probably run into this frustrating experience: you start cutting calories, trying to “eat clean,” maybe even running more… and suddenly your runs feel …
Continue Reading about 323. How to Lose Weight Without Tanking Your Running →
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 323 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today how to lose weight without tanking your running. So if you’re a runner and you’re trying to lose weight, you’ve probably run into this frustrating experience. You start cutting calories, you try to eat clean, maybe even start running more, and suddenly running feels terrible.
Your energy drops, your pace slows down. Workouts feel harder than they should, and sometimes you end up. Gaining the weight back anyway. And this happens all the time. This is why I do what I do, because runners assume that the solution is simple. Eat less, run more. But that approach almost always backfires.
So today I am gonna walk you through how to approach fat loss in a way that actually supports your running instead of sabotaging it. I am gonna talk about why so many runners tank their performance when they try to lose weight, what’s actually going wrong, and the smarter strategy that helps you to lean out while staying strong and consistent with your training.
If you want to get leaner and run better, this episode is for you. So this is something I see constantly with runners. Someone decides that they want to lose some weight. Maybe they’ve got a race coming up and maybe their running feels harder than it used to. Maybe they just wanna feel better in their body.
Lots of reasons why you’d wanna lose weight. Um, and listen, I would never suggest anybody needs to lose weight. And if you’re somebody that’s listening to this and going, Hey, don’t tell me I need to lose weight. I am not telling you you need to lose weight. I would never tell anybody that. But for the people that do want to lose weight, a lot of times, especially runners, they go about it the wrong way.
Um, you know, they do what most people do. They start cutting their calories, right? They start skipping meals. They try to be good all week. Good is in quotations. And then for a little while, it kind of works. They might see the scale go down a little bit, but then something starts happening, right? Running starts to feel terrible.
Easy runs don’t feel easy anymore. Long runs feel like a grind. Recovery takes longer pace drops, motivation drops, and then usually one of two things happens. Either they just abandon the weight loss effort altogether because running just feels terrible or they keep pushing through it. But their training just falls apart.
Like they just can’t make it work. Okay? So neither outcome is really good. ’cause the goal here isn’t just to lose weight, as always, the goal is to become a leaner, stronger runner. And if the strategy you’re using for fat loss destroys your running in the process. Then it’s not the right strategy. Okay, so I’m gonna unpack all of this and explain what’s actually going on here.
Okay? So if you’re somebody that is interested in losing weight without thinking your running, this is for you. So listen up. So the first big mistake that people make is approaching fat loss like a crash diet. People go from eating normally to suddenly trying to eat as little as possible. I see this. All the time, people come to me and they go, Hey, I’ve been really cutting back my calories and, and things are just not working well, you know, I’m skipping breakfast.
I’m having just a plain salad for lunch and a very light dinner. All the while they’re still trying to maintain their running volume and their intensity and their training, and this is really a recipe for disaster. Okay? Running is an energy demanding activity. Your body needs fuel to support training, to support recovery, to support adaptation.
And when you dramatically cut calories while continuing to train, your body doesn’t just burn fat, it goes into survival mode. Your body starts conserving energy. Your metabolism starts to slow down. Your hormones start to shift. Recovery gets worse, training quality drops, and eventually your performance just tanks.
It just suffers. This is why so many runners say something like, you know, I tried to lose weight, but my running went downhill, and so they just give up altogether. This is one of the main reasons why runners are told don’t try to lose weight as a runner. Like you can either run or you can lose weight, but you can’t do both.
I hear this all the time from people, and I think that’s funny. I just laugh at that. I’m like, I teach people how to do this every single day. Okay? It’s not that losing weight or losing fat is incompatible with running. It’s that crash diet mentality that’s incompatible with running, okay? Fat loss for runners has to be approached differently.
Okay. The second big mistake that I see runners make when they’re trying to lose weight is running more so that they, you know, can burn more calories, right? It’s all about this equation, this math equation of exercise versus food intake. You know? Um, and I think this is such a funny thing because. W We have lived for two and a half million years, arguably as human beings, and we didn’t need to count calories for all this time, except for within the last 20 years or whatever, or whenever, you know, MyFitnessPal became a thing.
So while all of a sudden in order to be fit and healthy, do we need to like count every calorie and track every morsel of food that we put in our body? It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. So this whole idea of like counting calories and doing the math and you know, if it worked so well. Uh, nobody would be overweight.
Nobody would have a problem losing weight because people tracked their, their macros crazy. I did this for like a year and a half, two years, tracked everything I ate, um, and it just never worked. I never lost any weight. I could not get the scale to move and I was, you know, running a lot at the time. So, but this is a big mistake.
Uh, running more to burn more calories. Um, just run more and that’s gonna be your solution to everything. You just eat whatever you want and just run more. Um, so a lot of runners will just start increasing their mileage. So they’ll add extra runs, extra long runs, extra workouts, more cardio, never taking a day off, doubling up some days, and on paper it seems like this is gonna work, right?
More running equals more calories burned, right? This is what the math tells us. But in reality, things are a little bit more complicated because when you. Increase your training volume without increasing, fueling properly or the adequate recovery. Stress begins to accumulate your body starts holding onto energy.
Instead of letting go of it, your sleep gets worse. Hunger, hunger hormones, spike cravings, increase training, fatigue builds up and ironically. Fat loss becomes harder, not easier. So now you’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re slower, and you’re frustrated. And again, runners often conclude the wrong thing. They think, maybe I just need more discipline.
But discipline is not the problem. Your strategy is. So the real goal here is to protect your running while you’re losing fat. If you wanna lose weight without tanking or running, the goal isn’t to be, you know. Aggressive and aggressively chase fat loss. The goal is to protect your running while gradually reducing your body fat.
This means the fat loss process has to support your training, not sabotage it. So let’s talk about what this actually looks like. Okay. The first strategy I wanna cover here is to slow down. Slow down the fat loss timeline. Most runners want fast results, and that’s understandable. I get it. When you decide you wanna lose weight, the natural instinct is to get it done as quickly as possible.
But quick fat loss almost always comes with trade-offs. Energy drops, recovery suffers. Workouts start to feel harder than they should, and in a lot of cases, the weight loss doesn’t even stick. This is especially true for runners. Your body is already under regular physical stress from running like every run creates a demand for recovery, repair, and adaptation.
And when you add aggressive calorie restriction on top of that, you’re essentially piling stress on top of stress. And your body doesn’t interpret that as, Hey, let’s burn a bunch of fat. It interprets that as a threat to survival. Your body goes into survival mode. Metabolism slows down hormones shift.
Energy becomes more tightly conserved and suddenly you feel flat. You feel tired and sluggish on your runs. This is why runners who try to drop weight quickly often end up saying something like, my running just fell apart because. The, the approach is wrong. Okay? The smarter approach is to take a longer view instead of chasing rapid weight loss, aim for slow and steady progress.
Something like a half a pound a week on average is perfectly fine. Think about this. If you lose a half a pound a week, where are you gonna be a year from now? That’s like, what? 26 pounds? Okay, on average. That’s amazing. That is truly amazing. I know it doesn’t sound super exciting. You’re like, it’s gonna take me a year.
Like it’s not dramatic. I get it, but it works because when fat loss happens slowly, your body has time to adapt. You maintain muscle mass. Very, very important. Your metabolism stays healthier, and most importantly, your training quality stays intact. And when your training stays consistent, everything else improves.
Running performance improves, body composition improves, and the results they tend to stick. Okay, so the goal here. Isn’t to lose weight as fast as possible. The goal, remember, is to become a leaner, stronger runner, and that takes a little patience. Okay, so let’s slow down the fat lost timeline. Strategy number two, to lose weight without tanking, you’re running Train your body to burn fat.
So this is where things get a little different from the standard advice you hear out there in the running world. A lot of coaches will tell you that you need to constantly fuel your runs with carbs, eat carbs before the run, eat carbs during the run, eat carbs right after the run, and while carbs absolutely have their place, especially for hard workouts and races.
I talk about this all the time with my coaching clients. Many runners have become overly dependent on them. Their bodies are basically trained to run on sugar all the time. They are carb adapted essentially, and that’s not ideal if one of your goals is fat loss. Instead, we want something called metabolic flexibility, and this just means that your body can efficiently burn both fat and carbohydrates for fuel depending on what the situation calls for.
And the way we build that ability is by giving your body opportunities to burn the fat. And one of the best ways to do that is through easy aerobic training. Easy, easy runs, basically in a lower insulin state. In practical terms, that often means doing some of your easy runs in the fasted state, and that just means having not eaten anything for, you know, 12 hours.
Ish. Okay. Especially shorter runs. Uh, and, and this is easiest to do in the morning. In other words, you eat dinner the night before, just don’t eat breakfast. Just go and run. Do your easy runs in that fasted state. And it doesn’t mean you do every single run fasted. And I think some people misunderstand this.
You know, I see people posting about how, um, it’s like a badge of honor to do as long a run as you can. 18, 20 miles fasted. Oh, I did all these fasted. Okay. If that’s your thing, great, but it, I don’t think you’re going to want to do that all the time. Um, because that can lead to, um, feeling terrible, sabotaging your training, you know, not being able to use carbs strategically on race day.
So let’s stick with, you know, runs of 90 minutes or less. Typically I say fasted and then runs that are 90 minutes or more. You can. You’re gonna definitely want fuel for those. Okay, so these easy aerobic runs, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s actually a great opportunity to train your body to rely more on fat for fuel.
And when you do this over time. This improves your metabolic efficiency. You become a better fat burner. Energy levels become more stable and your body becomes less dependent on constantly topping up with carbs just to get through a run. And then when it’s time for your harder workout, like temple runs intervals, those super long runs, that’s when you use carbs more strategically.
You fuel the efforts that actually require it. Okay? This is where you become more fat adapted, okay? And, and again, we’re talking about metabolic flexibility, the ability to use both fat and carbs for fuel. But when you’re more fat adapted, you can do these medium runs, no problem. You don’t need fuel. Uh, your body’s burning fat, and this is how you lose weight too.
By the way, if you wanna lose weight, you gotta burn fat. Okay, so instead of constantly flooding your system with carbs all day long, we’re gonna use them strategically as a tool to help with your running. But that, that combination, the fat adapted aerobic running with strategic carbohydrate use, this is what’s incredibly powerful for runners who wanna lose weight without sacrificing their performance.
This is the part that most coaches and most runners get completely wrong. This is the key right here. Okay? This is how you become leaner. This is, you know, also how you become a more efficient endurance athlete. Most people aren’t using fat as fuel. So they’re leaving this tool on the table. Okay? That’s the real goal here though, is to become more efficient, uh, as an endurance athlete, okay?
And lose weight in the process. Okay? So that was number two. Train your body to burn fat. Number three, you gotta focus on building strength. If there’s one thing that protects your, protects your running while you’re losing weight, it’s strength training. And this is still something that a lot of runners resist.
I’m hoping if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’re not as resistant as maybe you used to be to this idea, because I’ve been talking about it so much, but it is that important. Okay. So most runners think that, uh, strength training is gonna make them bulky and sore, and it’s gonna interfere with their running.
But the opposite is usually true. Strength training is one of the best tools you have for maintaining muscle. While you’re losing body fat, you don’t wanna just be losing quote unquote weight because then you’re, you’re, you’re categorizing muscle, you’re losing muscle tissue. What matters is that people lose weight.
Um. The right way so it doesn’t negatively impact their running. Okay. Okay. Uh, when people lose weight without strength training, a significant portion of that weight comes from muscle. This is not what you want. Muscle is incredibly valuable for you as a runner. It supports power and stability. It protects your joints, it improves your running economy, uh, helps maintain a healthy metabolism.
And if you lose too much muscle while you’re dieting, your body essentially becomes less capable, less efficient. Your stride gets weaker, fatigue sets in sooner. Performance tanks. When you combine fat loss though with strength training, something different happens. Okay? Your body holds onto muscle, sometimes even gain a bit of strength along the way, which is amazing.
That means the weight you lose is almost always gonna come from body fat instead of lean tissue. Okay? When that happens. Something interesting happens. Runners notice that they don’t get lighter. Don’t just get lighter. They get more powerful. Their stride feels stronger, their posture improves. Running starts to feel easier again.
Wouldn’t that be nice? You don’t need to spend hours in the gym to do this either. Just two or three focused strength sessions per week is plenty. Compound movements like squats, deadlifts, lunges, pushing and pulling exercises and core work. That’s all you need to do. All that is gonna go a long way to help you to become leaner and stronger again.
We’re not trying to become bodybuilders or bulk up. None of that stuff is gonna help your running. The goal here is to build a durable, capable body that supports your running. Okay, so the third strategy to lose weight without tanking Your running strength training, especially functional strength training designed for runners.
Strategy. Number four, prioritize protein. So another key factor in protecting your running while losing fat is protein intake. And this is an area where a lot of runners unintentionally just fall short. If you look at the typical endurance athlete’s diet, it’s. Tends to be very carb heavy. You know, bagels, pasta, oatmeal, sports drinks, energy bars, carbs absolutely play an important role in endurance performance.
Okay? But when fat loss is the goal, protein becomes even more important. Protein does a few very valuable things for you. Okay? So first, it’s gonna help you preserve that lean muscle tissue, right? Strength training helps. Getting enough protein helps. Um, if you’re in a calorie deficit, your body is looking for energy sources and without adequate protein, some of that energy can come from breaking down muscle tissue.
We don’t want that, okay? That’s what we’re trying to avoid. Secondly, protein helps regulate your appetite. It’s the most satiating macronutrient, meaning it helps you to feel fuller and more satisfied for longer, especially between meals. And this makes it much easier to maintain, you know, a modest calorie deficit without feeling constantly hungry.
Okay, third, protein supports recovery. Running creates microscopic damage in muscle tissue, and that’s part of the training process. But protein provides the building blocks your body uses to repair and rebuild those muscle tissues. Okay? So if you’re trying to lose fat while continuing to train, protein becomes even more important.
And a good general guideline is somewhere between 0.7 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Per day. Okay. I usually tell people, start with 0.7. That’s a good place to start. And if, you know, use that as like your kind of ballpark. If it’s a little bit less, you know, you could increase it a little bit.
And if it’s a little bit more than that, that’s okay. But up to like one gram of protein per pound of body weight, that’ll work. Spread that across your meals throughout the day so your body is, um, consistently getting access to the protein, to those building blocks. Okay. This doesn’t have to be complicated.
Eat eggs and meat and fish and Greek yogurt and cottage cheese and protein shakes if you need to supplement something. Okay? There’s also a lot of plant-based sources of protein out there, like Tempe and tofu and you know, hemp protein and all kinds of stuff. Pea protein. This is simple whole food sources we’re talking about here.
This isn’t supposed to be super complicated, okay? But when protein intake is dialed in, fat loss becomes easier. Recovery improves and your running stays strong. All right, so strategy number four, prioritize protein. And then finally, strategy number five, you’ve gotta protect your recovery. This is the last piece of the puzzle here, and this is the one that is most overlooked, um, from a fat loss and a performance standpoint, because runners tend to focus heavily on training, you know, run a bunch of miles, complete a bunch of workouts, getting your weekly mileage totals to, to be where they’re supposed to be.
They do not focus on recovery or rest. Okay? But listen, adaptation doesn’t actually happen during the run itself. It happens after the run. When your body has time to repair and rebuild, and when you’re trying to lose weight, recovery becomes even more important. Because fast fat loss is already a stressor.
Running is already a stressor. Strength training is another stressor on your body. And think about this life stress work, family, sleep disruption, all these things put stress on your body and they accumulate and they add up and they compound. And if recovery isn’t prioritized, the system eventually starts to break down.
You feel constantly tired, runs feel harder than they should. Your motivation drops and then fat loss stalls because your body’s operating in a chronically stressed state. So the fundamentals here really, really matter. Okay? Sleep is huge. Most runners need around seven to nine hours of sleep per night for optimal recovery.
And if you just laughed at that because you get like four or five hours, then fix that. Okay. Hydration really matters too. Rest days really matter. Easy runs should really be easy. Okay. This is something I see runners, runners struggle with all the time. They turn. Every run into medium hard, you know, everything’s moderately hard, but those aerobic runs, those easy runs, those conversational pace runs a lot of times that’s where your adaptation actually happens.
So you have to respect recovery. You gotta get enough rest. You gotta get enough sleep. Your body can handle the stresses of training so much better When you do okay, your metabolism will stay healthier. Fat loss will happen more smoothly. Think of recovery. You know, not as a luxury, but as part of your training plan because it really is.
Okay? So strategy number five here is to protect recovery, protect and prioritize recovery. Okay, let’s put this all together. I wanna zoom out for a second here and put all this together, because when runners, you know, try to lose weight, their instinct is usually push harder. Eat less, run more, train, more grind through it.
But as I’ve talked about here today, that approach almost always backfires. So instead of getting leaner and stronger, they end up tired, frustrated, and wondering why their performance is getting worse instead of better. Okay. The smarter approach is. Pretty much the opposite of that. Slow the process down.
You train your body to burn fat more efficiently. Through easy aerobic running and metabolic flexibility. You strength train so your body holds onto muscle. And stays strong and powerful. You prioritize protein, so recovery and muscle maintenance stay strong and efficient, and you protect recovery so your body can actually adapt to all the work that you’re doing.
When you line up these pieces correctly, something interesting happens, fat loss becomes more sustainable. Energy becomes more stable and your running often improves instead of declining. So you’re no longer trying to force weight loss through brute effort. You’re creating the conditions where your body can gradually become leaner, stronger, and more efficient.
Okay? And that’s really the whole idea behind running lean, right? It’s not just losing weight, it’s about becoming the kind of runner whose body is built to run. Well, like that is the real goal here. Okay. And listen, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, yeah, this is exactly what I need, then I want to invite you to take the next step because here’s the reality for a lot of runners, you love running.
You want to feel strong and capable out there. You want your pace to improve and your runs to feel smoother and easier. But maybe something has just been feeling off lately. Runs feel harder than they should. You feel like you’re working harder, but not getting faster energy isn’t where you want it to be.
Deep down, you know, there’s a gap between where you are and where you could be, not because you’re lazy or you lack discipline, but because no one has shown you how to bring all this stuff together. Nutrition. Strength training, fat loss, endurance training in a way that actually works for runners. This is exactly why I created the Leaner Stronger Runner project.
It’s not another diet. It’s not another generic training plan. It’s a complete coaching system designed specifically for runners who want to become leaner, stronger, and more capable athletes. Inside the program, we focus on the things that actually move the needle building strength that supports your running.
Improving metabolic health so fat loss becomes easier. Dialing in nutrition so your body has the fuel it needs to perform, and developing the mindset and the consistency that keeps you moving forward. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start following a proven path, go to running lean coaching.com/ready.
Just read the information on the page, check it out, see if it’s a right fit for you. Cool. Alright, that is all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
Recovery is the secret weapon of every successful runner — it’s where the real growth happens. If you’re training hard but not giving your body what it needs to bounce back, you’ll end up feeling …
Continue Reading about 301. The Fat-Adapted Recovery Formula →
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 301 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today the fat adapted recovery. Formula. So recovery is really the secret weapon of every successful runner, at least it should be because it’s where the real growth happens. If you’re training hard, but not giving your body what it needs to bounce back, you’re gonna end up feeling flat.
Sore and burned out. That’s why today on the podcast, I’m sharing the Fat Adapted Recovery formula. It’s a simple three part approach designed specifically for runners who follow, you know, kind of a low carb or a fat adapted lifestyle. You’re gonna learn why protein is the number one nutrient for muscle repair, why electrolytes are critical for performance, even when it’s not hot outside, and how carbs can actually help you to recover when used strategically.
If you want to keep running strong and avoid the dreaded post run crash, you don’t wanna miss this one. Tune in here and discover how to make recovery your new superpower. But first, listen, if you’re out there training week after week and you’re not seeing the results that you want, if running still feels harder than it should, if you’re not recovering well, if your body doesn’t feel strong or efficient, then something’s not right.
Something’s probably missing, and it’s not just about logging more miles. Most runners think the answer is to simply run more. Eat less or try the next shiny new thing. But the truth is, without the right strategy, the right nutrition, uh, the right strength, the right mindset, and the right training, all working together, you’re going to stay stuck, spinning your wheels.
This is exactly why I created. A comprehensive coaching program because I wanna help runners just like you to become leaner, stronger, and faster. Not by guessing or following some cookie cutter plan, but with a proven system that actually works. You’re gonna learn how to fuel properly, how to build lasting strength, and you’re gonna approach your training with confidence and clarity.
If you’re ready to finally. Feel light, strong, and in control of your running, this is your chance. Just go to my website, running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me. Let’s make running feel fun and empowering again. Okay, so the fat adapted recovery formula. A lot of runners think of low carb or fat adapted nutrition as just a way to lose weight or improve endurance, which it is good at those things.
Having the ability to use fat as fuel, being metabolically flexible is, is very key. To improving your endurance and to losing weight. But one of the biggest benefits is actually how much better you can recover if you get this formula right. So today we’re gonna be talking about protein and electrolytes and carbs.
What you need, what you don’t, how to make it all work together. So that you can train harder, recover faster, and ultimately become a stronger, leaner, more resilient runner. So training is basically controlled stress. Every time you go out for a run, whether it’s a long run, a tempo session, even an easy day, you are applying stress to your systems, to your muscles, to your cardiovascular system, to your nervous system.
And that stress is, it’s not a bad thing, it’s what drives adaptation. So we stress, uh, muscle, let’s say, and you overload that muscle. You put stress on a muscle by lifting a heavy weight, and then your muscle has a positive adaptation to that stress. It grows stronger. Same thing with your cardiovascular system.
You go out there and you run and you, uh, stress the cardiovascular system. And then what happens is your body will have a positive adaptation to that stress and become stronger, more efficient. Let’s. But the thing is that adaptation doesn’t happen while you’re running. You know, just like they say, you don’t get stronger at the gym.
It happens afterwards when you’re recovering. And if you want to keep on improving, you’ve got to get recovery, right? If you don’t, you’re gonna start to feel constantly fatigued. You’re gonna plateau. You may even get injured. Uh uh. A lot of people get burned out or get injured because they’re not recovering properly.
They just go out there and train and train and train hard, and train hard, and train harder. And they’re never giving their body a chance to repair, recover, and to create those positive adaptations. You know, if you go and you run super hard one day and the next day you run super hard and the next day you run super hard, you are going to get burned out pretty quickly and probably get injured.
That’s why we don’t develop, uh, running training programs that follow that, that formula, that plan. Just like you wouldn’t go to the gym and work out the same, you know, muscle group. Like you wouldn’t just go and do bicep curls every single day, every single day, every single day, because you’re not going to improve that way.
You’re probably gonna get yourself hurt. So the same principles apply to, you know, running and to, uh, improving your running performance in general. Um, so what we’re gonna specifically talk about though, is how fat adapted runners can and should optimize recovery because I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about fat adapted running or low carb, uh, endurance athletes.
And listen, this does not mean that you never eat carbs. It does not mean that you have to stay super low carb. Every single minute of every single day. There’s times when you want to up your carb intake. Strategically, though, you know, we just don’t go and eat, you know, entire, uh, pints of ice cream every single day.
You know, oh, I’m, you know, I need my carbs today, so I’m gonna eat a bunch of junk food. No, that’s not what we’re talking about here. And we’ll get into carbs in just a minute. But just understand that nutrition is so important to your recovery, and when you are a fat adapted athlete and you know, keeping your body burning fat effectively, you actually have some positive benefits to doing that.
In regards to recovery, but there’s a right way to approach this and there’s a wrong way to do it. Um, let’s start with, you know, the most important part of your recovery, which is going to be protein. Okay? So if there’s one nutrient that you really need to make a priority post run, it’s gonna be protein.
I think we all know this. But your muscles are literally made of amino acids, and every time you train, you’re creating microscopic damage to those muscle fibers. Protein provides the raw materials your body needs to rebuild those muscles and come back stronger. So just like I was talking about before, you put a stress on.
A system or a muscle, and your body has a positive adaptation to that. Part of that PO positive adaptation is in, in the instance of muscle recovery, your, your body needs protein in order to repair those muscles, those damaged muscle fibers. Here’s the thing, most runners don’t eat nearly enough protein.
And if you’re following a fat adapted, you know, kind of a lower carb approach, you might be eating more fat, you might be keeping your carbs low, but you might be sort of neglecting the protein part of this. You might be forgetting that protein is the real driver of muscle repair. So make sure that every time you run or do a hard workout, that you aim to get somewhere between 20 and 40 grams of high quality protein, you know, within an hour or two after that workout or that run.
Think about things like eggs, chicken, beef, salmon, whey protein, Greek yogurt. If you follow more of a, a plant-based or vegetarian type of diet, you can do this too. Just make sure you’re getting complete protein sources from things like tofu, Tempe, edamame. Um, there’s good plant-based, plant-based protein powders and things like that that use pea protein.
Um, you could also mix up things like, you know, beans and, and rice and stuff like that to sort of cover some of your bases. Um, but the idea here is that we are using high quality complete proteins in order to make sure that that muscle protein synthesis is happening properly. Um, and that we are improving our muscular integrity.
So we want to improve our muscle, uh, strength. We want to improve our muscle fiber. Uh, integrity, the strength of our muscle fibers and the, uh, size of our muscle fibers. We want them to, in some cases, get a little bigger. You know, we don’t want our muscles to waste away. We want to either keep them the same or, you know, we want them to get a little bit bigger.
Running breaks down muscle tissue, so we want to make sure that we are repairing and improving that muscle tissue and building it back up, especially after long hard runs. And protein isn’t just about repairing muscles, it also supports your immune system. It helps regulate your hormones. Um, even helps to keep your appetite in check.
So if you’re eating more protein. You’re typically not as hungry because protein is very satiating. So if you want to speed up recovery, make sure that protein is the, the star of the show. This has to be the main event. This has to be the priority. The second part of this three part formula is electrolytes.
So electrolytes are not just for when it’s really hot outside. Um, when your fat adapted, your body actually excretes more sodium because insulin levels are generally lower. Inflammation in your body is lower, and that means that you’re going to be, uh, excreting more sodium in urine, uh, and sweat as well, but mostly in urine.
Um, even if you’re not sweating a ton, you’re still gonna be losing a lot of sodium through your body, just not holding on to so much water. Um, if you’ve ever. Quit eating a, a high carb diet, and you’ve made that transition. You’ve probably noticed right away you lost quite a bit of weight in the first week or so.
You know, maybe six or eight pounds or something like that. Very normal because your body is releasing a lot of that water that you’ve been holding onto, which is a good thing. We don’t need to be so bloated and inflamed all the time. So eating a lower carb diet, becoming fat adapted means that your body is actually gonna be losing a lot more sodium through natural processes.
And so we gotta replace that sodium, um, but also potassium and magnesium. These things. Sodium, potassium, magnesium are the main electrolytes and they’re critical for muscle function, hydration and preventing cramps. Your brain literally cannot operate without these things. Um, they call them electrolytes because they.
Are, are the actual, um, things, the minerals that stimulate electrical, uh, uh, transmissions in your brain. And so if you’re, if you don’t have enough electrolytes, your brain starts to kind of shut down and not work properly, but especially after a run, uh, long, long run, hard run, hard run. Make sure that you’re replenishing electrolytes.
And this could be through, you know, eating food with, you know, maybe you eat some avocados with some salt and some eggs and some leafy greens and nuts and seeds, or just, you know, do like an electrolyte supplement, something like Redmond Red light element, um, noon or. Liquid iv, any of these things are fine.
I always suggest getting electrolytes that are just electrolytes, maybe with a little flavoring or stevia or something like that. We don’t need something that has a bunch of sugar in it or a bunch of other ingredients. Um. But I don’t want you to neglect this part. If you are a fat adapted runner, you’re not gonna be holding onto as much water, and that means that you’re gonna be losing more sodium.
It’s gonna infect your running performance and your recovery. So make sure that you are replacing the electrolytes every single day, not just days when it’s super hot outside. Um, sometimes people feel a little sluggish or lightheaded, um, or they feel like they’re not recovering properly from harder workouts, especially the day after.
And they might be thinking, oh, I’m not eating enough food, or I should be eating a lot more carbs. And it actually could just be a lack of sodium. You just need more salt in your diet. Um, if you’ve ever stopped eating sugar and you get like the sugar withdrawal symptoms where you feel like you got a headache or you’re lightheaded and um, uh, a little, you know, just lacking energy.
That could just be a lack of sodium. So try drinking one of these electrolyte drinks. You’ll feel better usually within about 10 or 15 minutes. Um, but electrolytes are key for recovery. Do not neglect this part. Okay. Now I wanna address the carb question because there’s some people in the low carb running world that talk about carbs like they are poison.
Listen, they are not. Carbs are a tool and you strategically, they can actually enhance your recovery. I get it. If you are somebody that is following a low carb diet and you wanna keep your carbs low all the time. That is okay, but just understand that you could be jeopardizing your recovery and your running performance because you’re not recovering properly by keeping the carbs super low all the time.
Like I know there’s people out there that love to do keto, and if you want to do that perfectly fine, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. But if you’re doing that. All the time, and it’s trying to stay in ketosis all the time, it’s probably gonna affect your running performance and it’s probably gonna affect your recovery.
So just think about that. Okay. So if you’re training, especially at higher intensities, if you’re doing anything like long runs or doing some back-to-back workouts. Your glyco, your glycogen stores are going to be depleted. You’re, they’re going to take a hit. Okay? So if you never really replenish them, you may feel kind of flat during your training.
Um, and it’s probably because you’re under recovered. And the goal is to use some carbs intentionally, but you don’t have to go back to that high carb lifestyle. All, all the carbs all the time, sort of lifestyle. We want to use some carbs, we want to use them. Intentionally to improve our, uh, recovery. And, and after a hard effort, adding in some carbs with your protein can actually speed up glycogen, resynthesis and improve your recovery vastly.
So think about this. Put a few handfuls of, of berries or a banana in your protein shake. Maybe eat some. Roasted sweet potatoes with your dinner or some rice or oatmeal or something like that, post run, you know, make that part of your post run meal. The key is to pair carbs with protein and keep it in the context of your overall low carb lifestyle.
So, uh, you’re not gonna undo being fat adapted by eating 30 grams of carbs after a 20 mile run. In fact, you’re gonna be giving your body exactly what it needs in that moment to bounce back stronger. And this is a concept that. Um, a lot of bodybuilders know about, like they know that pairing carbs with protein helps enhance recovery and helps them to build bigger muscles because they can repair and recover much faster.
So why don’t we just take that advice? You know, we’re not trying to be built bodybuilders obviously, but we can still take that advice, um, into the running world and use that to help us. Improve our recovery rate. Why not? Why wouldn’t you want to recover a little bit faster and improve the integrity of our recovery and our muscle tissues?
You know, getting stronger, getting bigger, whatever. Why not use some carbs to do that? And again, it’s not gonna kick you out of, you know, fat adaptation. You know, you would have to eat a ton of carbs for days and weeks on end really, to get to, you know, get you out of that fat adapted state. Okay. Uh, and it’s a little bit different for each person.
I can’t tell you exactly how many you would need to eat each day or anything like that. Okay. But let’s put this all together. Okay, so this is the Fat Adapted recovery formula. This is what I really want you to take away from here today. So number one, protein first, 20 to 40 grams post run. Make sure it’s high quality, nutrient dense sources of protein, you know, within an hour or two.
Every day. Make sure you’re getting those electrolytes. Okay. We gotta replace the sodium, the potassium, and the mag, the magnesium, uh, that we lose through just natural processes, you know, in our, in our. Urine in, in our sweat, but especially on hotter days or longer sessions, we wanna make sure we’re replacing that.
I always suggest, um, doing the electrolytes pre-workout or pre-run, it helps improve blood volume and which means you’re gonna have more, uh, blood to uh, uh, send to working muscles. And so it’ll actually has a performance enhancing, uh, effect. Um, so protein first electrolytes every day. And then strategic carbs.
Carbs are not the enemy. They’re just a tool. Use them after long runs or intense runs in order to help improve and speed up your recovery. Okay, that’s it. It’s simple, but if you nail these three things consistently, you’re gonna notice a few things. You might be less sore. Your energy comes back faster.
You’re ready to hit your next workout. Feeling strong instead of feeling completely drained. Okay. Remember, being a fat adapted runner isn’t just about running long on no fuel or just about losing weight. It’s about becoming a stronger, more efficient, more resilient athlete overall. And recovery is where all that hard work you’re putting in.
Really pays off. So follow the formula, protein, electrolytes, carbs, and watch how much better you feel and how much better your running improves. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
A lot of runners I talk to are obsessed with burning calories, cutting carbs, and logging endless miles trying to get leaner. And while running does burn some calories, it’s actually not the most …
Continue Reading about 299. Muscle is Your Metabolic Secret Weapon →
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 299 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGill. Ray, the weight loss coach for runners in today. Muscle is your metabolic secret weapon. A lot of runners I talk to are obsessed with burning calories, cutting carbs, logging endless miles, trying to get leaner, and while running, you know, does burn some calories.
It’s actually not the most efficient way. To change your body composition, the real magic happens when you build lean muscle mass. So today I’m gonna break down exactly how muscle boosts your metabolism, increases your fat burning potential, improves your running economy, and helps you to stay lean for life.
By the end of this episode, you’re going to have a whole new appreciation for your muscles and hopefully. Some motivation to start strength training if you haven’t already. But first, if you’re looking for guidance and support to lose weight, the right way, to get stronger, to run faster, and to make it all sustainable, I got you covered.
Just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click, click on work with me, and together we’ll put together a personalized plan that’s going to help you to reach your goals without all the confusion and the frustration. That’s running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me. So muscle is your metabolic secret weapon.
Let’s start with why muscle matters. So most runners think of muscle as something that bodybuilders care about, not something that runners actually need. And I hear this all the time, I don’t wanna get too bulky, or I just wanna run. I don’t care about lifting weights, and I talk to a runner. Uh, just yesterday, who is, uh, very strong.
She’s a, a young woman. She is a very fast runner. Her, her, uh, marathon PR is a 2 51. That’s pretty speedy, and she is incredibly strong. She’s got some muscle mass on her. I would not call her a bodybuilder. She is not a power lifter. She does lift heavy weights. Um, and she is doing everything that I’m gonna be talking about in here.
Today, she’s doing all of these things the right way. Um, she has definitely put on some muscle, but she is a very, very efficient runner. But if you looked at her, you would say like, oh, you know, she just looks like she’s a pretty fit person. Okay. She’s not bulky. If you are worried about getting too bulky, um, just put that outta your mind.
I’m just gonna tell you right now, it is very, very difficult to get bulky. Okay. I’ve been trying to get bulky for a while now, and as a runner it’s hard because. You know, running kind of breaks down muscle tissue. It, it breaks down. Um, you, it just breaks you down, right? It’s, it’s a, it’s a, a catabolic activity.
That means it breaks down muscle tissue. It’s not an anabolic activity muscle, uh, uh, strength training is a muscle building activity. It’s a anabolic activity. So if you’re doing both, if you’re lifting weights and. Running a lot. Chances are you’re not gonna put on a ton of muscle. You can put on some muscle, but it’s more difficult when you run a lot, especially if you’re a ultra endurance athlete.
Um, have you ever seen these guys that run, uh, the Olympic marathon? Men and women? They’re very, very lean. They’re muscular, but they are incredibly lean. They’re very small people in general. So getting bulky is not something I want you to worry about. It’s very hard to get bulky. It takes. Years of going to the gym, you gotta eat a ton of calories, tons of protein.
You gotta be very intentional about bulking up. Um, yeah, don’t worry about that. Okay? And listen, muscle is not just about how you look, it’s not just about aesthetics. It’s metabolically active tissue. That means that the more muscle you have, the more energy your body requires. Yeah, just to keep you alive.
So think of your muscles like little calorie burning furnaces, right? Even when you’re just sitting on the couch or sleeping those furnaces, your muscles are cranking away. They’re burning fuel. So if your goal is to lose fat and keep it off building muscle is your secret weapon. Here’s a stat that might blow your mind a little bit.
For every pound of muscle that you add, you burn seven to 10 extra calories per day at rest. And it might not sound like a ton, but imagine adding 10 pounds of lean muscle, that’s an extra 70 to a hundred calories per day every single day without losing, uh, without doing anything extra. And that adds up over time.
Okay, so muscle is metabolically active tissue. It’s very important and it can really help to, uh, make you a better fat burner because it just burn. You burn more calories at rest when you have more muscle, and if the type of calories you’re burning is mostly fat, then you’re gonna burn more fat. Let’s get into metabolism a little bit more though, because most people just think that metabolism is something.
That you are born with, like you either have a fast metabolism or a slow metabolism. I hear this from people all the time. Oh, my metabolism is just slow. I’ve always had a slow metabolism. The truth is your metabolism is largely influenced by your body composition. So if you have more muscle relative to fat, you’re going to have a faster metabolism.
If you have more fat relative to muscle, you’re going to have a slower metabolism. Why? Because fat is basically just storage. It just sits there, and it doesn’t require much energy to maintain fat muscle. On the other hand. Is like an expensive luxury item for your body, right? It takes work to maintain it.
Your body has to devote energy resources every single day. To keep that muscle tissue alive and functioning properly. So if you want to speed up your metabolism, stop worrying so much about cutting calories and start focusing on adding muscle so muscle can definitely improve your metabolism. Even if your whole life, you’ve thought, oh, I just have a slow metabolism.
Well build some muscle. Let’s, let’s give your metabolism a little bit of a boost here. Um, another benefit is when you have more lean muscle mass, your body becomes a more efficient. Fat burning machine. So muscle improves something called insulin sensitivity. This just means that your muscles are better at absorbing and storing glucose from the food that you eat, which prevents excess glucose from being stored as fat.
And when your insulin sensitivity improves, your body’s more likely to tap into fat for fuel. Think about it like this, having more muscle is like. Upgrading your engine from a four cylinder to a V eight. I’m not a big car guy, but this one kind of makes sense to me. So you’re not just burning more fuel overall, but you’re burning a better mix of fuel.
You’re able to use fat more effectively. As an energy source, both at rest and while you’re out there running, and for intern athletes, obviously this is huge because the more efficient you are at burning fat, the more or, or the longer that you can go. Without hitting the wall, without bonking. And the less reliant you are on constant gels and goos and things like that, um, the easier running is going to feel for you.
Okay? So the, the better fat burning you are, the, the easier, uh, running’s gonna feel. Um, the more muscle you have, the better fat burning you are. So just keep that in mind that if you want to improve your endurance, uh, muscle. Is the way to go. Again, secret weapon. Um, I wanna talk a little bit about running economy now.
So there’s another myth out there, um, a about building muscle, which. A lot of people subscribe to this, that it’s going to make you slower, right? So the first one is, I go, I’m gonna bulk up too much and then if I have too much muscle, it’s gonna make me slower. And this is one of the biggest objections I hear from runners.
Um, besides getting too big, it’s getting too slow. And the truth is that strength training and building lean muscle actually improve your running economy. So a running economy is basically how efficient you are at a given pace. And stronger muscles mean stronger. More resilient joints, better biomechanics, improved stride power, and overall less fatigue over time.
And they’ve done some studies and they’ve consistently shown that runners who add strength training to their weekly routine get faster. They can maintain their pace longer because. You know, strong muscles take longer to fatigue. They reduce their injury, uh, risk, and they recover quicker than people who are not as strong.
And that doesn’t sound like something that would really hurt your running, does it? It’s not gonna make you slower, okay? You’re not gonna bulk up, you’re not gonna turn into the Hulk overnight. And, and, uh, building muscle is not gonna make you slower. What you are going to do is become a stronger. More efficient and more durable.
Runner, that runner that I was talking about, um, who is very fast. She, she has some muscle on her. You know, you can, you can see that she’s very strong. But she is not the Hulk by any stretch, and she is extremely fast. And, you know, talking to her about this, she said that the game changer for her was strength training.
And that’s why she’s, um, so keen on consistently, uh, getting stronger, uh, all the time. She’s constantly working on, on getting stronger and, and it’s very smart. It really works well for her. So let’s zoom out a little bit because I wanna talk about. Some long-term health. So one of the biggest problems that people face as they get older is something called sarcopenia.
That’s, uh, the natural loss of muscle that happens with age, right? Starting as early as your mid thirties, um, the average American, uh, loses about three to 5% of muscle mass every decade. Um, that’s average. Some people lose a lot more, some people less. Um, but you, you can reverse this, right? You can actively do something to stop that and reverse that process.
A lot of people don’t realize this though, but imagine that from your mid thirties until whatever, 80, 90, a hundred years old, you just lose three to 5% of your muscle mass every decade. Ooh, that’s not gonna be good. Losing muscle though, listen, it also means that it slows down your metabolism. Um, it’s easier to gain fat.
Staying lean becomes harder because your metabolism has slowed down. And this is why so many people, they hit middle age and they suddenly feel like their body’s working against them. And the truth is they just lost muscle. And it doesn’t have to be this way. You gotta prioritize strength training and start building lean muscle.
Starting today. You’re essentially future proofing your body. If you do this, you’re keeping your metabolism revved up, you’re making fat, loss and and maintenance much easier, and you’re setting yourself up to stay lean, strong, and active for the rest of your life. So when I say muscle is your metabolic secret weapon, I mean it, it’s the thing that’s going to keep you healthy, fit, and lean, not just for running, not just for your next race, but for the rest of your life.
Okay? This is important. I, I tell my runners that I work with. Every single day that the most important type of exercise they can do for themselves is strength training. Yes, you should be running and yeah, running is great, blah, blah, blah. But strength training, it’s more important. It is more important than running.
And running is great, and I love it. Okay, so how do you get started with all this? How do you, um, actually build lean muscle without it, you know, interfering with your running? So I’m just gonna give you a few quick tips. I’ve talked a lot about strength training in the past. You can go back and look at some of those episodes.
Um, but number one is just. Lift heavy. Don’t be afraid to lift heavy weights. You know? Um, don’t, don’t think that you’re going to, uh, do some, uh, good for yourself If you just get this, the lightest dumbbells that you can find and lift them, you know, a hundred times, yeah, that might do something for you. You need to find something that’s challenging in the five to 10 rep range, somewhere around there.
Okay? ’cause that’s where you actually build strength and build lean muscle, right? So lift heavy. Don’t be afraid to lift heavy. That’s another big misconception is that lifting heavy is gonna bulk you up. That’s kind of the opposite is true. A hypertrophy that is building larger muscles comes from lifting lighter weights and doing a lot more sets and reps, lifting heavier weights, uh, fewer times.
So, um, shorter sets and reps. Will, uh, with heavier weights will get you stronger. And that’s really what we want. We wanna get stronger. Um, focus on the big compound movements. So these are the things that, uh, work multiple body parts like squats, deadlifts, lunges, pushups, pull-ups, rows, presses. These give you the most bang for your butt ’cause you’re working.
Multiple muscle groups all at the same time. One of my favorite, um, exercises of all time is the deadlift ’cause it’s working the whole posterior chain from the, from your head to your toes basically, and everything on the backside of your body, um, and a lot on the front as well. Um, but all those exercises I just mentioned, just get good at those and, and you’ll be, uh, super strong.
You’ll be a super strong runner. Um, keep your, your strength sessions short and focused, right? You don’t need to be in the gym six hours a day, six days a week. Two to three strength sessions per week, maybe a half hour or so. 45 minutes at each session is fine. You know, like you don’t have to like, spend your whole life, um, in a gym in order to get stronger.
You can do this relatively quickly. I did a really killer workout today. I only had about 45 minutes and I was surprised at how much I could get done in 45 minutes. Um. So that was number three and number four, um, getting started on all this is to prioritize recovery. ’cause your muscles don’t grow in the gym.
You know, you don’t recover in the gym, you don’t get stronger in the gym. Uh, your muscles grow, you get stronger at rest, like when you are at home, uh, sleeping essentially. So make sure you’re getting good quality sleep. Make sure you are. Eating enough protein and spacing out your strength sessions from your harder runs.
Do not do hard strength sessions and you know your long run on the same day, or don’t do a super heavy, hard leg day, and then the next day expect to have a, a really good, long run. That’s just a recipe for disaster. Um, and then number five, just stick with it. Building muscle takes time. It’s not going to happen overnight, but if you stay consistent, you’re going to start seeing benefits in, in a few weeks, in a few months.
So it’s not gonna take you years. Okay. But, um. A, a couple of years ago, I was pretty lean, I lost a bunch of weight and, and I lost a bunch of muscle in the process and I was able to, to gain about 12 pounds of muscle, and I think it took me like eight months. Okay, so that’s not that long of time to, to build some muscle.
Um, so just stick with it though. Everybody’s a little bit different. It depends on how you’re doing it, how often you’re doing it, if you’re getting enough protein, if you’re getting good quality sleep, all those things matter. Um, the thing is that you have to commit to this as a, as a lifestyle. It has to be part of what you’re doing.
Every single week, you know, we all plan our, our, uh, runs. We all know, oh, I’m gonna be running five times this week, and then next week I’m running four times. I’m doing these workouts like you got your whole month. Your, sometimes, you know, your whole training cycle is 16 weeks. Uh, 20 weeks, 12 weeks, whatever it is, all planned out every single day.
You know what you’re doing from a running standpoint, but when it comes to strength training, people are like, yeah, I just do it every now and then when I feel like it. No, you gotta, you gotta map this stuff out. It has to be planned. It has to be part of your, uh, weekly regimen. It just has to be something that you’re committed to doing and that you are doing consistently.
So just to wrap up, um, muscle is metabolically active tissue, which means it increases your resting, uh, metabolism. The, the calories that you burn at rest. Um, more muscle equals a faster metabolism and greater fat burning potential muscle improves insulin sensitivity. It helps you tap into more fat for fuel, stronger muscles improve.
You are running economy, reduce your risk of injury and just make you a more efficient runner. And then building and maintaining muscle keeps you lean and healthy for life, especially. As you get older, and if you take away one thing from today’s episode, it’s this stop being afraid of building muscle.
It’s not going to slow you down. It’s not gonna bulk you up. In fact, it’s the very thing that’s going to help you to run faster, burn more fat, and stay lean for life. And then remember, if you want help putting all of this into practice, if you wanna lose weight the right way, if you wanna get stronger, if you finally wanna just feel good about the way you look and the way you run.
Go to running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. I would love to help you make that happen. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love to you all. Keep on running lean. I will talk to you soon.
So here’s the deal: runners are some of the fittest people on the planet, and yet so many struggle with weight. You put in the miles, the effort, the discipline… and the scale shrugs. Or, you …
Continue Reading about 296. Getting Lean Without Going Crazy →
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 296 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today getting lean without going crazy or how to lose weight as a runner without losing your mind. So here’s the deal. Runners are some of the fittest people on the planet, or can be yet.
So many of us struggle with weight, and I get it. You put in the miles, you put in the effort, you put in the discipline, and the scale does not move. Or maybe you train for a race and somehow you gain weight. That was my experience. I talk to people every day that have the same experience, and this can make you feel a little nuts.
So we’re gonna fix that today by walking through a SANE framework, how to think about food, how to plan without feeling restricted, how to make decisions that help you to get leaner. While enjoying your life, I know it sounds crazy. I’m gonna tell you exactly what to focus on. What levers are gonna move the needle without dumping all the tactical minutia on you here.
That tactical stuff is what I do with clients one-on-one. Today, you’re gonna get a big overview on this topic, and I’m excited to share this with you. Um, quick note though, before we dive in, if you want help applying all of this in a way that fits your training, that fits your lifestyle, that fits your preferences, head over to my website running lean coaching.com.
Click on work with me and we will build a plan that works for you. Okay. Cool. Um, so here’s the deal. Runners are fit. Uh, so many people struggle with their weight. Uh, they feel like they’re doing all the right things and then stuff just really does not work for them. They can’t seem to drop the weight and it makes them feel a little crazy and a lot of the.
Uh, diet advice out there. A lot of the nutrition advice out there doesn’t really work for runners. That’s why I do what I do, because there’s dieticians, there’s nutritionists, there’s weight loss coaches out there, and they just don’t understand how to fuel for running. What it takes to, uh, lose weight as a runner or how to maintain muscle mass as a runner and why these things are so important.
Um, I’ve heard weight loss coaches out there that say you should not do any sort of exercise while you’re trying to lose weight. And I just think that’s sort of crazy. ’cause are you gonna do that? No. Am I gonna do that? No. We’re gonna keep exercising, we’re gonna keep running, we’re gonna keep doing our strength training, we’re gonna keep doing all the things that we enjoy doing.
We just have to understand that those things are not the only way to lose weight. Okay, so the first thing I wanna talk about here is that, you know, exercise and running is amazing. But it’s not a weight loss plan by itself. It’s great for your heart. It’s great to build that cardiovascular fitness. It’s good for your mental health, for your emotional health, for your stress, but you can’t outrun a bad diet.
You know, I’ve said that before. I’ll keep saying it because I think it is absolutely true. You have to switch what you’re eating if you wanna lose weight. It’s just not about running more. Then there’s something that we call the hunger and reward drive. So a lot of runners, a lot of athletes out there do long runs, they do hard workouts and you know, some of this can, you know, make you feel a little bit hungry and make you feel like, oh, I earn this piece of cake.
I earned this pizza. I earned this ice cream. And without a plan in place, what happens is we tend to reward ourselves with ultra processed foods, with sugar, um, whatever we feel like eating because we’re, we’re kind of conditioned or we’ve conditioned ourselves that I can eat whatever I want because I’m a runner.
Um, so a lot of that mentality has to shift. We’re gonna talk about how to shift that in this episode here. Another, um, thing I want to address here and, and another reason why runners struggle with weight. So first is, you know, they’re just trying to run more. They have this reward, uh, drive that they’re, uh, you know, sort of conditioned to believe, and then there’s randomness disguised as just listening to your body.
So I love listening to your body. I think that is important. But there’s a difference between listening to your body and then rationalizing eating a bunch of junk food. Okay? If every day is a new experience with food, if every day is some, uh, random, you know, meal plan, random, uh, strength plan, random running plan, your results are going to be random.
You’re not going to get the results that you’re looking for. So. You know, winging it, randomness, whatever you want to call it. Is not a plan. It’s the opposite of a plan. And when you’re just winging it, when you don’t have a plan, you tend to not make good decisions. You tend to not make a lot of progress towards your goals.
You might have this goal to lose 30 pounds and what are you doing every day? Just whatever you feel like. How’s that working for you? Is it moving you towards your goals? Probably not because it’s just randomness. Okay. And then the last thing that, uh, I wanna just talk about and, and kind of. Set up this conversation and talk about why a lot of runners struggle with losing weight is they get to this all or nothing thinking, so they feel like they have to be super restrictive.
And most diets out there tell you that you can’t ever eat sugar again. It’s the worst thing in the world. You can never have a Diet Coke, you can never have a piece of pizza. You gotta stay away from all carbs or all grains or all meat or all dairy or whatever. And so when we have this all or nothing thinking, what happens is we, we tend to rebel against that.
When somebody tells you, you can’t do this, what do you want to do? You wanna go and do it more, right? So that all or nothing thinking, which a lot of diets. Preach and, and the principle, but behind a lot of diet advice is like, you can never eat this stuff again. I can’t tell you how many accounts on Instagram and Facebook, whatever that I follow, where it’s just all or nothing.
Like let’s say it’s a carnivore person and it’s just like you have to eat. You know, rib eye steaks every day, and that’s it. Like, that’s your whole life is just rib eye steaks. You know, that’s the only way you can be healthy. And I’m like, yeah, I, I’m not sure about that. You know, I don’t really think that’s the way I wanna live my life, and I want to eat that piece of pizza occasionally.
Hey, it’s somebody’s birthday, I want to eat the birthday cake and celebrate with that person. So. We tend, when we have this all or nothing thinking, we tend to rebel against that. We, we tend to just binge out on stuff. Um, and, and, and it’s really an unsustainable strategy if you really think about it. So that’s one of the main reasons, um, I wanted to talk about this today, is that I think a lot of us have this.
Idea that losing weight has to be frustrating. It has to make you crazy. You know, it has to be, uh, very, very restrictive. Um, but all those things are very unsustainable and the key with any sort of. You know, change in your nutrition plan. Your diet has to be something that is sustainable for you. Okay? Now, if you’ve answered yes to any of these things that I’ve talked about, or you can relate to any things I just talked about, just to understand that, that’s totally cool.
Nothing’s wrong with you. This is just normal. We all kind of go through this, but what you need. Is a, a better framework. Okay, so before I get into the framework, which I love this framework, um, but um, before I get into that, I wanna talk about a little bit of a mindset shift. So, uh. The mindset shifts that are gonna help you to stay sane, right?
We’re, we’re talking about not going crazy when we’re trying to lose weight. The first is a shift in your identity. You gotta remember that you’re not on a diet, you’re a lean, strong runner in training. You are an athlete. Your decisions today are what an athlete would do. You train like an athlete, you should eat like an athlete, and this is what it means to shift your identity, adopt the identity of an athlete, and then your decisions just become super obvious.
So we gotta make that shift in your identity. The second is. Choices over rules. Okay? Rules can fee feel very restrictive. Choices feel empowering. You choose your plan on purpose. When you have that mindset of choosing your own plan and making your own decisions, you are in charge. You have autonomy, uh, you feel in control, you feel calm, you feel centered.
You’re not. Crazy because somebody says you can’t ever eat oatmeal again in your life, or something like that. So instead of having all these, you know, restrictive rules, make choices. Make choices that feel good for you, ones that can make you feel kind of calm inside. Okay? And then remember that the process beats perfection.
So this isn’t about. Uh, perfection. Nobody does this perfectly. I don’t do this perfectly. I don’t know one person I’ve ever worked with that does all this stuff perfectly. So we wanna remember that it’s more important to adhere to the process, to to show up and commit to the process on a daily basis, rather than trying to, uh, ace everything every single day and trying to be perfect every single day.
When you try to be perfect, what happens a lot of times is you beat yourself up. ’cause you weren’t perfect. I failed because I had a cookie, uh, in the break room at lunch. ’cause they looked good. I’m a failure. Look, I can’t do this. Hey, listen, 90% of the day you did amazing. 98% of the day you did amazing. You had a cookie.
Who cares? Let’s aim for like b plus work here people. Okay? If you put 10 b plus days together in a row. That’s amazing. That’s gonna beat one a plus day, followed by a complete meltdown. And you, and you have a, a D minus or a F for the day, you know? So, um, one of my coaches told me this a long time ago, uh, aim for B plus work, you know, aim for B plus.
And I’m like, I can do that. I can do that. ’cause A plus feels. Very hard to attain. It feels very out of reach for a lot of us. So let’s go for that B plus. Um, remember that. Uh, remember to think about your future self as the person sort of calling the shots. Okay? Pretend your future you is the boss of you before you, um, want to go snack on a bunch of junk food from the pantry.
What’s the future me gonna tell me in this moment? Like, go out into the future, think about your future self and let that future self dictate what you’re gonna do in this moment. Is this something that’s really gonna help me to become that person or not? ’cause future, you knows. They know everything ’cause they’re from the future.
Um, but just like listen to that little voice in your head and say, you know, probably not, probably not eating this whole sleeve of Oreos is gonna help me become. That future me. Okay. Um, and then the last little shift in your mindset is, um, something very simple and, and we talk a lot or I hear a lot of people talk a lot about setting big goals and trying to accomplish 25 things every single day.
This can feel very overwhelming. You know, you’re trying to, you know, get your strength point training on point every single day and get your running plan together and stick with it every single day and get your food plan and be perfect with that. Listen, let’s chunk it down to like making one promise to yourself every single day.
Pick one thing you know you can do. Make that promise to yourself, I’m gonna do this today. Uh, it may be a little bit hard, it may make me feel uncomfortable to do it, but I’m gonna do this one thing today. Keep that promise to yourself. Stack up those wins. You’re gonna build so much trust and confidence in yourself over time, it’s gonna be amazing.
Okay, so that’s kind of the mindset shifts we need to make. Lemme talk about this framework. So. The backbone of getting lean, of, of, of losing weight and eating like an athlete. It’s not a detailed meal plan. I’m gonna tell you that right now. It’s a framework. So instead of thinking that, oh, you know, how many grams of carbs should I eat every day?
’cause I get people that ask me these questions, how many grams of protein should I eat every day? And you know, I will answer some of those questions with people and we’ll talk through that stuff. But instead, I want you to think about this framework, and I’m calling this the SANE framework. Okay? Instead of going crazy, SANE.
So just remember that. So the S is. Simple. Your plan needs to be super simple. Think about few. The fewer decisions you make, the less friction you have in in your day. Okay? So default to meals that you like. Have a short list of go-to proteins, veggies, good sources of fat, some good carbs that you like. Um.
You, you want to get into a predictable rhythm. I’m gonna talk more about that in a second. Um, but your plan needs to be really simple. The plan that I have for daily meals is stupid simple. You know, I have a, a protein shake. I might have some eggs, some avocado, maybe some bacon or something like that.
This is like meal number one. Meal number two. Um, might be some, uh, something I had last night, which was, uh, pre-made skewers with chicken wrapped with bacon. Oh my gosh, how good is bacon? Um, with a little bit of barbecue sauce on there. I just threw those on the grill. And some sweet potatoes like that.
How simple is that? Like that’s so. Stupidly simple, right? Um, now I’m not saying you need to eat those foods, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But what you do for yourself has to be something that is simple. It cannot be complicated. You don’t have to like get all your macros right and try to figure all that stuff out.
Eat what feels good for you. It has to work for you, obviously. And that’s the A in the SANE framework. So that’s gonna be a meaning that you know what you eat, your meal plan has to be aligned with your. Goals, your training, your schedule, your food preferences, your lifestyle. You don’t have to copy anyone else’s plan.
The best plan is the one that you can follow sustainably. So what? Whatever works for you has to be aligned with your goals and it has to work for you long term. So don’t let anybody tell you you’re doing it wrong. I can’t tell you how many people will say, Hey, uh, you know, I’m really struggling with my weight.
Well, here’s what you should eat. Just do this, this, and this. You know, and that’s such a dumb response to that because we’re so different. Like, I don’t even like those foods, or I’m allergic to those foods, or, you know, my culture says I shouldn’t eat those foods. Okay, well then the, you know, they don’t have an answer for you.
My answer is always what? Your plan should be. Simple. It should be in alignment with your goals, and it should be something you can actually follow. Okay? So make sure it’s in alignment with your goals. That’s the A. The nane in my SANE framework is that your food needs to be nutrient dense. Think about real food.
Mini minimally processed foods. That’s easy to say. Protein focused. Get some vegetables in there. Some good sources of fats, some good carbs that actually help you to serve a purpose, not necessarily just junk carbs, you know, some sweet potatoes, some, some rice, some oats, something that you can uh, uh, use around specific workouts.
When you adopt a a nutrition plan that is nutrient dense, you’re gonna feel more full, you’re gonna recover better, your cravings are gonna be lower. You’re not gonna probably eat as much as you used to because the food that you’re eating is very nutritionally dense and your body is getting everything it needs so you don’t have to keep stuffing your face with a bunch of empty carbs.
And that’s what a lot of people do, especially runners. I just eat whatever I want. I’m gonna eat all these Oreos. Well, then you’re hungry an hour later because that didn’t fill you up. All it did was just jack up your hunger signals. So when you’re eating nutrient dense foods, minimally processed foods, whole foods, foods that still look like foods, the foods our ancestors would recognize, this is what’s going to make you feel more full and give you the nutrient nutrients that you need and your satiety will be, uh, much more in check and you can lose a lot of weight this way.
And then lastly, the E of SANE in my SANE framework is it has to be enjoyable. If you hate it, you’re not gonna do it. If I tell you you have to eat nothing but Brussels sprouts and you hate Brussels sprouts, you won’t stick to that plan, I promise you. Now, if you love Brussels sprouts, you are gonna thrive with that plan, but obviously that’s not gonna be a plan that I would ever suggest.
Um, your plan must include foods that you enjoy. And a sane way to eat fun foods is to eat them on purpose, without the guilt, without the drama, without beating yourself up. In other words, you gotta enjoy the food that you’re eating. I enjoy the food that I eat. I really enjoyed my, my dinner last night.
Chicken breasts wrapped in bacon with barbecue sauce on it, on the grill. Come on. That was so enjoyable. I love that so much. Um, or if you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna have a piece of cake, you know, tomorrow when I go to that party, you’re doing that on purpose. You’re gonna enjoy that and you don’t feel like you have to be restrictive while everybody else is eating the cake.
Just eat the piece of cake. It’s completely fine. Okay? So we’re trying to to to live a sane life, but we want food that is simple. Not complicated. It’s in alignment with your goals, nutrient dense and enjoyable. That’s the, that’s the food plan that’s gonna work for you. Okay. So I talked about rhythm. So, um, we want to talk a little bit about a flexible structured food plan.
Okay. So a rhythm means that, um, you want to get into a daily rhythm. So you want to decide ahead of time, you know what you’re gonna do as far as I’m gonna eat twice a day, I’m gonna eat three times a day. Um, you wanna reduce the decisions that you have to make. Throughout the day. So we’re not talking about counting calories, we’re talking about getting into a rhythm of planning your food and then sticking to that plan and planning your food and sticking to that plan.
The other part of a of flexible structure is that we wanna make sure we’re focusing on protein. This is very important. Protein is satiating, helps preserve lean muscle mass. It supports recovery. Um. Uh, how you do this is gonna be different for each person. You know, some people like plant-based proteins, some people like, you know, going with, uh, animal-based proteins or whatever.
Um, so whatever feels good for you, but make that the priority. Another way we can be flexible with our nutrition plan is to do smart carbs on purpose. So this is not about no carbs or. It’s not about all the carbs either. We want carbs that work for you. Okay? Time to support your training. Choose whole food carbs.
Use them strategically around key workouts. Um, we want to use carbs, but we want to use them to help us. To improve our running. Uh, we don’t want to just be eating all the carbs all the time because, hey, I’m a runner, so I get to eat all the carbs, and this isn’t about never eating carbs again, but it’s about timing them mo for the most part, around key workouts.
Um, natural fats for satiety. That fat helps you to stay full. Protein helps you to stay full fat, helps you to stay full. Add enough to, uh, your diet, to make sure your mood and your hunger are stabilized. Um, you know that you’re gonna be on the right track when you’re not constantly thinking about food.
You know you’re eating enough, okay? If you’re constantly thinking about food. You’re probably not eating enough protein, probably not getting enough fat. Don’t be afraid of fat. We don’t need to eat a super low fat diet. Um, but fat is something that will help you to, uh, feel more full for longer. And again, it kind of helps you to not eat as much in general.
Um, things like fiber, micronutrients, hydration, these things are all important. Make sure you’re eating colorful veggies. Drink plenty of water. Get your electrolytes in, especially when you, when it’s really hot out or you’re doing some super long runs. Um, this just needs to be something that is part of our, our diet.
And then plan your joy. You can eat for joy. The key word is that you’re planning it. Decide ahead of time what you’re gonna do, when you’re gonna do it, how much, and enjoy it, and then move on. There’s no guilt, there’s no I blew it or anything like that. Okay? So that’s what it means to be flexible with this and to have some structure, but flexibility around that structure.
So when you’re looking at different food choices. Think about these quick little filters. There’s these three decision filters. There’s is this, is this real? Is this mostly real minimally processed food? Is it purposeful? Am I doing this on purpose or am I just feeling like I have to eat this in the moment?
You know, is this supporting how I wanna feel today? Uh, is this supporting how I’m going to feel tomorrow? Okay, so is it real? Is it purposeful? And then is this plan, did I, did I decide this ahead of time? Or am I just reacting to how I’m feeling in the moment? Oh, I’ve had a, you know, stressful day at work, so I just want to eat a whole pizza by myself.
No, uh, make sure that it’s real food, that you’re doing it on purpose, and that it’s something that is planned. Okay. And, um, something that, uh, I wanted to just kind of touch on really quickly, which is a big fear that people have, which is like, if I change how I eat, isn’t this gonna really affect my running?
And the short answer is not if you’re strategic about it. And this is what I do with a lot of my coaching clients, because we change your diet, but we don’t want it to affect your running negatively. So what to focus on would be make sure that you’re matching your fueling to your workout. You know, if this is an easy effort, you don’t really need to do much, uh, just eat what you’ve been eating, um, during your run.
Fueling can be something that is, uh, something you want to think about, and it’s conditional depending on how long you’re running, how hot the day is, how hard of your effort it is. So you might want some carbs. Post run fueling, though is something that I would say is just not negotiable. You need to eat something after running.
It doesn’t have to be, you know, directly afterwards. It can be within an hour or two, but get some protein in, add carbs when your, uh, session or your goals call for it. You know, some people like to just stay super low carb, which is completely fine. Sometimes adding some carbs in after a run, especially a super long run, can help replenish glycogen stores and help just promote a little faster recovery time.
Um, and then beware of the I earned buffet. Refueling is great, but it’s not a free for all. It doesn’t mean you should go and, and eat all the ice cream that, that you have in the, in the freezer. Okay. So, um, couple things just to kind of recap a little bit. Um. Uh, fat loss and performance, uh, are sort of the, if you fat loss and performance are your goals, you wanna make sure that we’re focused on food quality and structure.
Remember, real food, protein anchored meals, purposeful carbs, plan, joy, consistent rhythm around your diet. Um. Strength training runners need to get stronger, you know, um, focus on lifting heavy so you get stronger. One to two sessions a week is probably, you know, good for a lot of people. If you can get to three.
That might be ideal, but make sure you’re doing, I would say, at least two strength sessions a week. Uh, your running programming should also help you to improve your, uh, metabolism. You know, so if you’re, if you’re doing your runs properly, you’re doing a mix of easy, longer runs, some, some middle distance runs that are moderately harder than some short runs that are.
You know, pretty hard, some high intensity interval type of stuff. Um, making sure you’re getting enough recovery, uh, and sleep and keeping your stress low. All this stuff is gonna help you move the needle. It’s gonna help you to, uh, you know, lose the fat without losing your mind. Okay, so food quality, strength training, run programming.
And then the recovery. Um, couple quick wins. I want you to think about. Uh, here’s a couple of things that are gonna help you change the game for yourself pretty quickly. So these are things you can do this week. So just think about these. Plan your food 24 hours in advance. Write down what you’re going to eat and include something of joy, something that will bring you joy.
And write this down the day before. Focus on protein first at every meal. This is something you can do starting right now. Um, fuel certain workouts on purpose. Decide beforehand, again, what you’re gonna do. What’s your run? How, how are you gonna fuel, what are you gonna use for, for fueling before and during?
Make sure you have at least one or two strength sessions on the calendar. Book it ahead of time. You notice a theme here, right? Um, and then maybe create a, a simple and effective bedtime routine so that you can start to get better quality sleep. So just. You know, focus on maybe a lights out ritual. Start getting the lights out an hour or so before you’re planning on going to sleep.
Dim the lights, maybe read a book or something. Get off your screens, turn off the tv. You know, get the, the room nice and dark and cold, and that’s gonna help you to sleep better and promote, you know, less stress. So if you’re hearing all this and you’re thinking, yes, I want all of this, Patrick, but I want somebody to help dial it in for me, for my training, for my preferences, for my lifestyle, that’s what I do inside my coaching program.
We take this framework, we build your plan. You know, we want make it simple. We want to help you achieve your goals. Uh, we want it to be nutrient dense and. Something that is enjoyable for you. Okay? We also work on the mental side of all this so that your plan feels something that is easy and repeatable.
It doesn’t feel like punishment. So when you’re ready, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, and we’ll talk about what it looks like for you. You can absolutely lose weight as a runner without losing your mind. You just gotta keep it simple, aligned with your goals, nutrient dense and enjoyable.
Tune these levers, okay? And then make that one promise to yourself today, and then keep it. Okay? That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Today on the podcast I’m breaking down a hard truth a lot of runners need to hear: Why You’re Not Getting Stronger (Even Though You’re Lifting). If you’ve been showing up, moving weight, and still …
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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 295 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today why you are not getting stronger even though you are lifting. So today I am gonna be breaking down a hard truth of lot of runners. Just really need to hear right now why you’re not getting stronger, even though you’re lifting.
So if you’ve been showing up moving weight, still not seeing results, it’s not because you’re broken, it’s because your plan isn’t sending a strong enough signal. And we’ll cover what that means. What real intensity feels like, how to progress week after week, why recovery is the secret sauce to keeping you, uh, strong, and how to choose the right lifts, uh, depending on your goals.
For this episode, I want you to leave with this. Simple runner friendly template and clear steps so that you can course correct quickly, stronger running demands, stronger muscles, but strength doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. You need to dial in the signal. You gotta respect recovery and watch your numbers climb while you’re running.
Miles. Feel easier. I wanna fix the gaps, build real strength, and help you to make the next eight weeks the most productive you’ve had in the gym two date. But real quick, if you want help building real strength that actually improves your running, your body composition and your confidence, I’d love to coach you through it.
One-on-one. We’ll dial in your training plan, your nutrition and your mindset so you can stop guessing and start progressing. To learn more and apply, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. So we’re heading into that time of the year when most runners either double down on doing the same thing, the same strength routine.
Or they decide to finally get serious about building strength. So if you’ve been putting in the work lately, but you’re not seeing results, this is a great moment to reset your approach so that the next four to eight weeks actually move the needle. We want to see progress. Okay. So I’m gonna be covering a few things today.
Really, there’s four big reasons why you’re probably not getting stronger. Um, intensity is wrong. Your plan is wrong. Uh, your recovery isn’t. Where it should be. Um, and you might be just doing the wrong workouts for your particular goals. I’m also gonna give you a simple runner friendly template that you can start using now.
You can start using it this week. So the first thing I wanna talk about is intensity. And a lot of times runners are, um, they’re guilty of too little intensity when it comes to strength training. So you might be lifting, but every set is like a five or six out of a 10 effort. So you might be finishing up your sets still having, you know, five to eight reps still in the tank.
And that’s more like cardio, you know, it’s exercise. Yes. But it’s really not training your muscles to get stronger. Um, so how do you know if your intensity level is too low? Well, your last reps look just like your first ones. In other words, you know, you’re not getting to that point where they’re getting harder.
Um, your heart rate goes up, but your muscles aren’t anywhere close to failure. And you never need a spot on your big compound lifts. Okay? So this is all signs that you’re probably not, you know, going at an intensity that that is going to help you to get stronger. So the way you fix it is we want to think about RIR, which is reps in reserve, and you should have a couple, maybe one to three reps in reserve at the end of your working sets.
So for strength work, you wanna finish your set. With one to three reps in reserve, and that is the last, that’s where the last rep should feel hard, but still clean. You could maybe do one or two more. You know, somewhere in that range, and that means your, your intensity level is where it should be. You don’t want to go to the point of absolute failure.
Uh, on every set. And certainly, um, you know, as runners, I think a lot of runners are afraid to, to go at that high of an intensity, and I totally get that. I think having, you know, one, two, maybe three reps in reserve is a good spot for most people. For most runners. Yeah. Also you have to choose loads that make the target reps, you know, honest.
So if the plan calls for five reps, then those last few should be pretty hard. So, you know, numbers. Four and five should be pretty hard, but you should still have one or two left in the tank. Not, oh, I could easily do 10 or 12 reps when the plan calls for five. So I think this is something where having a a, an honest assessment of your target reps is very important.
Okay. And the other thing is prioritizing big movements like squats, hinges, push pulls, single legwork. Um. Doing things with machines and isolation, um, are fine, but those are more peripheral type of stuff. You want to prioritize the big power movements, okay? So think about a back squat or a deadlift or a bench press, um, that kind of stuff.
That’s where you’re gonna get the most gains and be able to make the most progress. Um, and then something to just kind of think about when you’re doing leg work. Um. Uh, especially the lower body, you know, any kinda lower body strength work in general, but leg work in particular, um, you want to be in that three to eight rep range for the most part.
Okay. If every leg session is 12 to 20 reps, which I see a lot of runners do, they’re just cranking out a lot of reps with very low weight. You are just kind of reinforcing what you already have. Okay? You’re not going to progress. You’re not building strength. In that case, you’re just kind of, again, you’re kind of going through a cardio workout more than anything else.
Okay? So we want to have a couple of reps and reserves. We wanna make sure, especially for the. Uh, lower body stuff that we’re not doing a ton of reps. We wanna actually progress, so you gotta lower the, lower the reps, um, increase the weight and still have a couple reps in reserve on each, uh, set. Okay, so that’s number one.
The intensity level has to be. Correct. Number two is that you don’t really have a plan for progression. So a lot of runners just go through the motions. They, they keep repeating the same workout forever, same weight, same reps, same order. And your body will adapt to this and you will get, you will see some gains at the beginning, but then your body will just stop progressing.
Um. The way you fix it is you’ve gotta work on simple progression, okay? So that’s where you want to hit, uh, certain numbers of reps or certain weights, and then you wanna slowly over time increase the resistance. You know, either increase the number of reps that you’re doing or increase the load. So, for example, you might want to, um, if you’re doing like five reps of 20 pounds on some exercise and then, you know, week over week you start to go to six reps and seven and eight, that’s progression.
Okay? Maybe once you get to eight or nine, you’re like, okay, now I need to up the weight to 25 pounds and maybe you can only do three or four. Okay. Then wait until you can progress that. 25 pounds to, you know, eight or nine, and then you can increase it again. And, but this takes time. So just understand that we don’t want to, um, try to progress super fast.
Like every time you go to the gym, you’re not gonna progress like this. It just doesn’t work that way. And, and you want to be able to progress slowly so that you’re slowly building strength over time. Now you’re gonna probably get to some point where you know, you just can’t lift. Certain amounts of weight, you know, and, and you’re about where you want to be from a strength standpoint, perfectly fine.
And then we do things like deloading and then we can load back up again and things like that. But for the most part, most runners don’t really have a plan for progression. They just kind of do the same workout, same weights, same reps all the time. Uh, don’t do that. Okay. We want to progress. And the way you, you know, if you’re progressing is it’s, you gotta write stuff down.
You gotta log your workouts, write down the weight, the sets, the reps, and how many reps in reserve you have, uh, uh, after each set as well. You know, if it, if it. If you don’t measure it, uh, you can’t improve it, so you gotta write it down. You gotta know what it is you are, uh, looking at today, and then know how to improve that next time you’re at the gym.
Okay. And then lastly, just change one variable at a time. So either change the, the weight, the number of reps, the sets, uh, something like that. Don’t scramble all the dials every week, uh, you know, changing up your tempo and how long you’re resting and the sets and the reps, and they’ll like change one thing at a time.
And progress slowly, slowly is good when it comes to getting stronger and building real strength. So, um, that’s number two is to have a real plan for progression. Okay. Uh, number three is recovery. So a lot of runners don’t recover properly well from their running workouts, I would say for the most part, but especially from the strength.
Training that they do. So you might be stacking up some hard runs and hard lifts on the same day, which is fine to do, but then the next day you need to have a very easy recovery day. But instead that’s, that’s your hard workout day. Your hard running day. You’re gonna do intervals or something like that.
You might not be getting enough sleep. You might be undereating or under uh, undereating protein. And you’re wondering why you’re not making any progress, why the bar keeps feeling heavier every week. And this is a real problem and a, a lot of runners deal with this. They’re just not recovering properly.
They’re not allowing their body to recover properly from the hard workouts that you’re doing. You don’t make gains at the gym. You make gains while you’re sleeping. So you gotta get to sleep, you gotta get, um. You know, aim for seven to nine hours of quality sleep. Um, that’s when you build strength is, is when your body is at sleep and recovering.
Make sure you’re getting enough protein, you know, target roughly 0.7 grams, you know, per pound of your goal. Body weight. Um, make sure that you’re not in a, uh. Really deep calorie deficit. You know, if you’re trying to lose fat, um, you can have a little bit of a calorie deficit, but you know, if, if really your goal is to get stronger, then eat at more of like a maintenance plan.
Okay? So slight calorie deficit is okay. A lot of people think they just have to drastically cut their calories Well. That’s not gonna allow you to have the fuel that you need to recover properly, especially if you’re not getting enough protein as well. The other thing is to make sure you’re spacing your workouts properly to allow for rest and recovery.
Um, don’t sandwich heavy squats between, you know, uh, interval sessions and a tempo runs. You know, a better way to do it is do a hard run or a heavy lower body, uh, day, like heavy leg day on different days. Hopefully. Maybe you can have a hard run day and do leg day a couple days later or a couple days before that.
Try to put a day in between there if possible. Um, uh, just try to space your, especially your leg workouts so that you’re recovering properly and not doing like a super hard leg day. And then the following day, running 20 miles as a training run, that’s a recipe for disaster right there. Okay? And if the same day is your only option, sometimes.
That is okay. You can do, uh, an easy run in, in the morning, let’s say, and then you can lift in the evening or switch that around. It doesn’t really matter, but keep one of these things, you know, truly easy just to allow your body to recover properly. And then also resting between sets. You know, a lot of runners, they just wanna get stuff done.
They go to the gym, they’re like, I’ve got 40 minutes to get this done, and they just bang this stuff out. But to build strength, you really need to have a rest period. In between sets, anywhere from one to three minutes between sets is considered. Pretty good. Um, the 32nd bootcamp rests, they kind of, uh, kill your gains.
You know, they, they just really do, it’s great for cardio, but it’s not gonna help you get stronger. And then the fourth thing that maybe, uh, the reason why you’re not getting stronger is you’re just doing the wrong workouts for your particular goals. So if you, if you wanna get strong, uh, but you’re doing just, you know, circuits or a bunch of core work or super light dumbbells.
I mean, this stuff is great for cardio and it’s great for, it’s a great form of exercise in general, but it’s not gonna really help you to get stronger. So think about it like this, to get stronger, we wanna work in that three to five rep range. You know, heavier weights, uh, lower sets, and reps longer rests.
Um. High intent. So in other words, we want our intentions to be, you know, high and we want the, the load to be pretty heavy. That’s to build maximum strength. When we talk about things like hypertrophy, which is building larger muscles, that’s where’re in, we’re in the higher rep ranges, you know, 10 to 15 reps, lighter loads, not as much rest in between sets.
For, uh, muscular endurance and conditioning. You know, that’s where we can be in those, uh, high rep ranges, short rest circuit type of workouts, uh, bootcamp type of workouts. Um, and then we’ve got like training for power, which is actually pretty useful for runners. This is gonna be lower reps, but explosive intent.
So think about doing a bench press, but instead of doing it slowly, you’re pushing through that powerfully. You know, you’re finishing each rep in a powerful way. Um, and that you can do the same thing with squats and some other exercises. The power strength workouts are a little bit of an advanced, uh, exercise.
So be very mindful that you gotta get strong first and you gotta be very comfortable doing these things and you probably want to get some help. With the power workouts because you can get hurt easily, uh, by not doing it properly. So that’s just a little caveat there. Um, and you don’t have to pick up, you know, one of these things and do it forever.
You don’t have to just focus on strength or power, like you can mix them up occasionally. And I do this, I go through sessions where I. Do, you know, four to six weeks of, you know, maximum strength. I do four to six weeks of hypertrophy and I kind of, you know, work it around that sort of a, um, schedule, you know, um, it’s good to have an intention and it’s good to mix it up as well sometimes.
So typically I kind of primarily focus on strength. Um, and so if, if. If your, um, primary outcome for your sessions is to build strength and do your heavy lifting first, and then work on the, the, and that’s like the larger muscle groups and things like that, and then work on the, um, accessories and the smaller muscle groups afterwards.
Um, again, if, if strength is your. Uh, main focus, then do your strength session first before you run. And if you like running, uh, before your strength session, the, the running session is gonna be the kind of the priority ’cause you’re gonna be fresher and stronger for that. And then the strength session, I wouldn’t go as intense because you’re gonna have, you’re not gonna be as fresh or as strong for that.
Okay? So it, whatever session you do first is the one that’s gonna be sort of prioritized as probably a better outcome. So just keep that, that in mind when you’re, um, working your, um, workouts around running and things like that. Um, we want strength and conditioning that supports your running. We don’t want it to be the same thing as your running, and this is why a lot of runners, they just do.
They just wanna do more cardio. They just love cardio. They just wanna do, so they, you know, pick up the lightest weights they can and just do a million reps. Um, and that’s great again, but it’s just more cardio that you don’t need to be doing. You’re a runner. You’re doing plenty of cardio already. You’re running trains your body for endurance.
We want the, the work we do in the gym to build stronger muscles from head to toe. Okay, so I’m gonna give you just a quick little runner friendly weekly template. Okay? I’m just gonna go through this kind of quickly and just give you an idea of what this might look like for you. And of course.
Everybody’s different. This is just a generic thing. I sort of just worked up really quickly here, but let’s say you do two strength sessions a week, and I do recommend at least two strength sessions a week. One strength session a week is enough to maintain what you got. Two is enough to start building muscle and getting stronger.
Three, personally, I think is ideal, but we’re just gonna go with two today just for the sake of ease. Um, so look, we got two, you know, strength sessions. We got day, uh, I’m gonna call it day A and day B. Day A let’s say is your lower body strength and some core work. So you might do. Um, some back squats.
Again, three to five reps with one to two reps in reserve on each set, he got some Romanian deadlifts. Again, three to five. Um, some split squats or some step ups. These are single leg exercises. Awesome for runners. Again, three to three to five reps. Three to five sets, calf raises, and maybe like a plank.
And, and that’s it. Like that’s your workout right there. And then the next day you can do like upper body strength. And then we’re talking about posterior chain. So that’s the whole. Backside of your body, um, bench press or maybe some pushups. Again, three to five sets with a couple uh, reps in reserve. Some rows, maybe some pull-ups, overhead pressing, some hip hinge accessories.
So this could be. Hip thrust, kettlebell swing, something where you’re using that hip motion and then some, uh, some core work, maybe, you know, three to five reps of some, uh, or three to five sets of some core work as well. And so that’s, that’s it. I mean, it’s pretty simple. It’s not super complicated, but we wanna have something that, you know, works lower body.
In core, we want upper body and posterior chain. That’s a good way of breaking these things up as far as where to put your runs. You know, you might have runs where you do, uh, your a workout, or I’m sorry, your B workout, so that’s your upper body. You could do that on, on Monday with an easy run. Maybe Tuesday is, is uh, speed intervals.
Wednesday is a easy run or a rest day Thursday you could do your lower body and core work and not do a hard run on Thursday, and then you’ve got your Saturday long run. So this is putting your strength workouts, you know, on the same day as an easy run or on a day where you’re not running again, and then you’ve got a couple days between your, um, lower body and your long run.
So you can see how you can really separate it out. And it doesn’t have to be super complicated. I think we get so much information from social media and from the internet out there that we make these workouts. Uh, super complicated. We make our scheduling of all these things super complicated, and it just doesn’t have to be complicated.
We just wanna separate hard running days from your heavier, especially your lower body lifting days where you can, and of course, this is an example. You gotta do what feels good for you. Maybe your schedule doesn’t work this way perfectly fine, but try to fit within these parameters and you’re gonna make lots of progress here.
Okay. Um, couple of things to just keep in mind when you’re doing, uh, strength work. Make sure you’re going through full controlled. Range of motion. So if you’ve ever seen people doing something like a bench press and they, uh, get that, they don’t bring that bar all the way down to their chest. They bring it about halfway down or a quarter of the way down, and then it goes back up.
They’re doing a, a range of motions is about six inches. You know, that’s not a bench press. Okay. Bench press should basically touch your chest and then. Straighten the arms all the way out. And that’s more of like, what about 18 inches or something like that. So full controlled range of motion. Um, make sure you’re setting yourself up properly and safely for every exercise.
Uh, get your feet in the right place. Make sure you’re, um, set up on the bench or the bar properly. Uh, make sure you’re breathing through the lifts properly. Um, don’t be afraid to use those little plates too. The little two and a half pounders, you know, progress by sm by small amounts. That’s okay. I see so many people that are like, well, you know, I, I don’t, I can’t do 10 more pounds on that lift.
Well do five pounds, do two and a half pounds if you have to. It’s okay. Just progress slowly. This is not something you’re trying to rush to. This is. A commitment of staying strong for the rest of your life, you know? So make sure that what you’re doing is progressing, yes, but progressing slowly. Slowly is good.
You’re still progressing. Okay. And then keep that log book mindset going, right? Um, so what you’re trying to do is perfect your lifts and progress slowly. And the only way you’ll know that you’re doing that is by keeping a log. So write down your, your sets, your exercises, your sets, your reps, the weight you’re using, and then how you feel.
Um, though that one, you know, it was heavier than I’ve ever list lifted, but my form felt terrible and I felt very unstable. Well. That’s too heavy for you. Then go back to a little bit of lighter weight until you can get a little bit stronger. Okay? Um, so just a quick little plan for you, like if you wanted to, you know, kind of work on this over the next 30 days.
Pick four to six. Cornerstone lifts. So these are, you know, two lower, uh, body lifts to upper body, one to two accessories. Train them twice a week. Make sure you’ve got one to three reps in reserve on your working sets. Um, make sure you’re tracking every set. Make sure you’re progressing slowly. Get enough sleep.
Hit your protein goals. Make sure you’re not in a super big calorie deficit, um, space. Those hard runs away from the heavy, especially the lower body work that you’re doing in the gym. And then 30 days from now. See how you’re going, uh, track your progress and you should be able to see it in the gym. You should be able to lift heavier.
You should be stronger in 30 days. Okay. A couple of common questions that I’ve gotten recently in talking to some clients about this. Well, what about circuits? I just like doing the machines. Can I still do that? Yes, you can. Um. Honestly, I like them to be done as an accessory or on something. Maybe you don’t have enough time, as much time to work out.
I don’t want them to be your main strength stimulus. The machines are fine, but the, the, the free weights, especially doing the big compound moves tend to work your core. They work your whole body. They work on balance. They’re just superior to the machines, but the machines are not terrible. What about plyometrics?
Okay, so plyometrics are great to do. Like these are, you know, jumping and, um, uh, movements that stimulate the same, uh, nervous system responses as running. So they’re gonna stimulate running and they’re going to help you with your running for sure. So do some plyometrics. I like this as a wor, as a warmup before.
Heavy lifting session for sure. Um, but don’t make this the majority of your workout. So biometrics is fine to do here and there, but they don’t, don’t make it your whole workout. We just wanna get your body, um, used to doing some of these exercises and it does help with your running performance.
Absolutely. And then the other one is like, how heavy is too heavy? Like what’s. What’s the way I should be aiming for? Well, again, think about those, uh, sets that you’re doing. You know, can you, do you still have a few reps in the tank? So if you have a couple of reps in reserve, then that’s the right amount of weight.
You know, one to three reps in reserve. If you have five or eight reps in reserve, that’s too light. If you have zero reps in reserve, that’s too heavy. Okay? So try to keep it to that, like one to three. Um, something I want you to think about, look at your last 30 days of training. Um, if you don’t see that you’ve planned the right intensity or that you’ve written out a progression plan, or that your recovery hasn’t been all that good, um.
That’s what’s been going on with you, then you need to fix this stuff. Okay? Fix these things. Get your progression where it’s supposed to be. Get the intensity where it’s supposed to be. Get the weight right. Make sure you’re getting, uh, recovery, and then you’re planning these workouts around your goals.
What are your goals? Is it to get stronger, to get faster, to improve your running endurance, to improve your running power, speed. Make sure that your, uh, strength workouts are supporting your running goals as well. And if you want a customized plan that fits with your calendar, with your lifestyle, with your goals, obviously I can help build that for you.
Head over to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, you and I’ll talk about your goals, and then you and I can get to work on achieving these goals. Okay? So. You’re probably not getting stronger because you’re either not lifting hard enough, you’re not progressing on purpose, you’re not recovering adequately, or you’re just doing workouts that don’t match your goal.
So clean this stuff up, okay? And then watch what happens in your lifts and in your running. This is gonna improve your running exponentially, I promise you. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
There’s no shortage of advice out there about how to lose weight. Just eat less, run more, count your calories, cut carbs, do a cleanse, go vegan, try keto—the list goes on and on. But how much …
Continue Reading about 291. Replay: Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked →
291 Replay Common Weight Loss Myths Debunked
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Speaker: My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner sports nutritionist, master life coach, and weight loss coach. For runners, I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought. Possible. This is running lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 291 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners in today. Common weight loss myths debunked. So there’s no shortage of advice out there about how to lose weight. That is for sure. Just eat less, run more. Count your calories, cut your carbs, do a cleanse, go vegan, try keto.
The list goes on and on and on and on and on. But how much of this advice. Actually works. And more importantly, how much of it works long term, especially for runners. So in this episode, I’m digging into some of the most common and most misunderstood ideas around weight loss. We’re talking about what’s true, what’s total bs.
And how to take a more realistic, sustainable approach to getting leaner and stronger. So if you’ve ever felt confused or frustrated trying to figure out the right way to lose weight, you are definitely not alone. My goal here is to help you see through the hypes so you can finally start making real progress.
And listen, if you’re tired of feeling like you’re constantly struggling, struggling to hit your pace, struggling to stay consistent, struggling to lose that extra weight if running feels harder than it should if you’re putting in the miles, but not seeing the results. If you know you could be stronger, leaner, more energized, but you just don’t know how to get there.
I’ve got you. The truth is, running alone isn’t enough. Random diets don’t work and willpower will only get you so far. What you need is a comprehensive approach, a proven system that’s designed specifically for runners like you who want to feel better, run easier, and finally start making real progress.
Inside my coaching program, we take a holistic approach to transforming you from the inside out, we dial in your nutrition. Build real strength, train smart and develop the mindset you need to stay consistent for life. So if you’re ready to become the healthiest, strongest, most badass version of yourself, then let’s go.
Just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, book your free call. Let’s do this together. You’re so much more capable than you think. Okay. So like I said at the intro, there’s a lot of mis and misconceptions around weight loss, especially when it comes to runners. A lot of runners don’t understand, uh, the proper, uh, principles around weight loss, and there’s a lot of, and honestly, there’s just a lot of bad advice out there.
This is an older episode. I actually, uh, aired this one, oh gosh, about a hundred episodes ago or so. Um, but it is one of those ones that I feel is kind of timeless information. I think that it’s something that we can all, uh, use as a good reminder right now, especially if you’re kind of coming into the off season, which a lot of us are here in the summertime.
So I’m not gonna, uh, talk much more about this. I’m just going to go ahead and play the replay of common weight loss. Myths debunked. Enjoy. All right, let’s get into today’s topic. Common weight loss myths, debunked. Um, I was thinking about this as we start the new year here. It is now January of 2024. Happy New Year to all of you.
And I was thinking about. What people tend to do at the beginning of the year like this, they tend to jump onto some fad diet or, or do something they read about on social media to lose weight and, and maybe improve their exercise or start running or something like that. And it usually ends up being something that is very short-lived.
That’s why the gyms are full in January and they’re empty again in March. So we need to take a different approach. Okay. And, and some of the things that, that are spread out there in the world, some of the. Conceptions that people have around weight loss are confusing and they’re not always correct and, and I want to clear up some of these common myths, you know, some of these common principles that people tend to think are the truth that really aren’t.
So just sit back and enjoy this episode today because I’m gonna debunk some of these common weight loss myths. Now, the first one is gonna be. Uh, that it’s all about calories, and this is one of the most common weight loss myths out there where it’s just all about calories. You just have to eat less and you will lose weight.
That’s it. That is the one principle that most diets out there adhere to whatever the diet. They typically, um, are trying to get you to eat fewer calories. Like that is the principle of most diets. Um. Also with weight loss drugs, weight loss surgeries, these are all getting you to not eat as much. And the, the issue with this is that yes, you can lose weight by reducing your calories.
It is a very, if. Effective way to lose weight. Um, look at shows like The Biggest Loser. They restrict calories for these very obese people. They have them exercise like crazy and they do lose a lot of weight. The problem with this approach is that it is not sustainable. They have done, um, many, many studies.
In fact, there was a big meta study that was done that looked at all these other studies that showed that calorie restriction diets. Are the most effective at short-term weight loss. They are also, and this is the important part, the least effective long-term weight loss approaches. So when you, um, restrict calories for a period of time, what happens is your body goes into starvation mode.
So your body will think that you are starving. Basically, you’re not getting enough calories to satisfy your, uh, energetic needs throughout the day. And so your body will actually slow down your metabolism over time to match the calories that are coming. So let’s say you’re somebody that normally eats 2000 calories a day and you restrict your caloric intake to a thousand calories a day.
That’s gonna be fine for the short term, but over time your body will slow down your metabolism to match the amount of energy that’s coming in. So now, instead of burning 2000 calories a day at rest, that’s your resting metabolic rate. Your body is like, Nope, we’re only gonna burn a thousand calories a day.
’cause that’s all we have ever coming in. So what happens is you now, the thousand calories a day is not a deficit anymore. And so the weight loss stops and actually you start gaining weight ’cause you’re still eating the, you know, the thousand calories a day and, and maybe your metabolic rate drops even more and you can’t lower your caloric intake.
You can’t keep lowering your caloric intake to match your slowdown of metabolism. So this is a very bad approach to weight loss, like just cutting calories and thinking that that is the answer. Um, again, it does work in the short term and that’s why so many people, uh, promote this type of a diet where, you know, it just don’t eat as much.
The problem with is, is not sustainable. It is not something that you can do long term because your body will go into that starvation mode and, um, as a runner especially. You do not wanna reduce your caloric intake, especially long term. This can dramatically affect your running performance. ’cause as you ramp up your mileage, you ramp up your intensity levels, your, um, caloric intake needs to match that.
So you actually need to, a lot of times you need to increase your caloric intake as a runner, especially as you’re getting, um, towards the late stages of a training cycle. Um, another thing to consider is that. Caloric restriction. A lot of the caloric restriction diets will cause you to lose weight, but that weight is in the form of fat and muscle and connective tissue and bone density.
This is not good. As a runner, you do not wanna lose muscle. You don’t wanna lose bone density. Um, a a little bit of a side note here. There’s a lot of new weight loss drugs out there, and people are talking about, um, drugs like ozempic, right? And they’re showing, oh, these are so, uh, effective at people losing weight.
What they’re not telling you though is about 40% of the weight that people are losing, you know, using drugs. Ozempic is muscle, bone and connective tissue. You know, connective tissues are ligaments and tendons. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to sacrifice muscle, bone and connective tissues just so I can lose weight.
Uh, it’s not about weight loss. We’re what we wanna focus on. Fat loss, right? It’s not about just restricting calories. There’s a lot more going on that you really have to consider here. Okay? Instead of focusing on just restricting calories. Try focusing instead on eating real food. Eating nutritionally dense foods, foods that are satiating, um, foods that when you eat them, you feel satisfied.
A lot of the caloric calorically dense, or I’m sorry, the, the foods that are not calorically dense. So the, the, the empty calorie type of foods that are a lot of the processed foods, a lot of the foods that are full of sugar and um, refined grains and things like that will actually hijack your hunger signals and make you feel super hungry.
Even though you’re eating a ton of food, you can feel super hungry, um, in between meals and they actually cause you to overeat. So we wanna be eating foods that are satiating, that fill us up and that don’t mess up our hunger signals. So what I recommend is eating food, real food that still looks like food, meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, dairy, all the stuff that is just the normal stuff you see on the outside of the grocery store.
Stay away from processed foods, stay away from sugar, stay away from refined grains. These foods make you feel super hungry. It’s hard to lose weight when you’re eating mostly processed foods and sugars. Um, those things will mess up your hunger signals. They won’t make you feel full and satisfied when you do eat.
And if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re hungry all the time, that’s a bad combination right there. That’s where you start to get hangry, right? Angry and hungry at the same time. So there’s a lot more going on here, and it’s not just about calories. In fact, just reducing calories is, is not a really good way to lose weight.
And it’s, it’s really not a long-term. Uh, definitely not a long-term, uh, approach That’s gonna work for most people. Okay. So that’s number one. It’s, it’s, it’s all about calories. I think we busted that myth right there. The next one is that we just need to exercise more. So exercise more. That’s all you need to do.
It really doesn’t matter what you eat. As long as you’re burning it off, you’re fine. It’s okay to overeat. It’s okay to eat whatever junk food you want. Just run more, just exercise more. Get your cardio in every day, and you’ll be fine. Here’s the thing. Right now we are exercising more in this time in human history than we ever have as human beings, and we are more overweight, more obese, and have more metabolic dysfunction than any other time in human history.
Clearly exercising more is not the answer. I talk to people literally every single day who, who tell me, Patrick, I gain weight. I’m running more and I keep gaining weight. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. Every time I, uh, increase my exercise, I end up gaining weight, and I’m like, yeah, I know.
This was me too. For years there I was running at least two marathons a year. I was running several ultra marathons every year. And in that process I was gaining weight consistently, and over a few years I gained something like 40 pounds. And this was, you know, when I was doing that pretty typical training for me at the time, which was running a few marathons and a few ultra marathons every single year.
So I was training a lot, I was running a lot, I was doing other types of cardio and cross training and, and, um. Strength training and things like that. So this concept of exercising more, it just doesn’t hold up. Okay. Never in human history have we needed to quote unquote like exercise to maintain a healthy weight, to ha, to maintain a healthy metabolism, to maintain a good health and fitness.
Our hunter gatherer ancestors, they did not like intentionally exercise. They weren’t out there, you know, doing calisthenics every day. They actually were focused on energy conservation. They did not exert themselves excessively, they rested whenever they didn’t have to go out there and, and walk distances, you know, and, and hunt, pray or, or gather, you know, fruits and vegetables and things like that.
So they, they were actually focused on conserving energy. You know, they probably walked a few miles every day. Um, and at times they may have done more than that, but they weren’t like running, uh, consistently all the time. They did some running, but it wasn’t something they, they were doing like running ultra marathons for fun.
Like, you know, they just didn’t do that. It was stupid. To like, you know, use that much energy. You don’t see any animal ever, you know, just exercising for the heck of it. You know what I mean? We actually see this today in, uh, modern day hunter gatherer tribes like the ZA in Tanzania. They have been a well-studied group of people.
They are super fit. They’re healthy, they’re lean, they’re strong. They don’t have. All the metabolic diseases that we have in the western world here, they don’t have diabetes. They’re not obese. Obese, they don’t have heart disease. Um, so all of that stuff is, is really not present with these people. And they are a hunter gatherer tribe, very similar to our ancient ancestors.
So, you know, humans have evolved over two and a half million years, and for the vast majority of that time, we were hunter gatherers and living in tribes, and we were super fit, healthy, lean, and strong people. Um, the only time we’ve started to experience all this metabolic dysfunction and disease is, is within the last few hundred years, really, um, you know, maybe 500 years, a thousand years, even like 2000 years.
You can go back to the time of the, uh, ancient Egyptians when we started to see. Um, them using more grains and eating a lot more refined grains in the form of flowers and things like that. So they started to, you know, perfect agriculture and they were eating a lot more grains. And you can see that the distended bellies of the.
Um, mummies ’cause they actually have the actual whole person preserved as a mummy and their teeth are all messed up. You know, they have a lot of, um, tooth decay from the sugar and the grains they were eating, and they have a lot of distended bellies, which means they were, you know, starting to gain weight even at that, uh, even 2000 years ago.
So in the long span of human history, there’s only a short amount of time where we actually are starting to experience all these, uh, metabolic, uh, diseases, and they’re all really based off of our diet. You know, so we see tribes like the, the hazah, and we can kind of look at them and say like, yeah, they’re pretty close to what our ancestors used to be like.
And what’s interesting about the Hazah is that their metabolic rate, so how many calories they burn at rest is about the same as the rest of us in the western world here. Um, for men it’s like 2,500 calories a day. For women, it’s 1900 calories a day. That’s pretty similar to where we are here in the western world.
So you can’t say like, oh, well they just exercise more. They don’t, they’re doing about the same amount of exercise we’re doing. They get in. Some steps every day they walk, you know, they might be getting in 10 to 15,000 steps a day, which is, you know, what we’re supposed to be getting anyway, you know, it’s kind of recommended.
Um, and for the vast majority of us, you know, we’re getting around three or 5,000 steps a day without any intentional exercise. So we’re just in our daily lives, you know, we’re, we’re getting about a third, you know, half to a third of that. Um. In, in the amount of steps we take on a daily basis anyway. And if you’re a runner, you’re definitely getting that 10,000 steps a day, you know?
So these people who are really about the same as us in most aspects, they, they don’t exercise exceedingly. Um, they are extremely healthy, fit, lean, strong, and their metabolic rate is about the same as ours. So the more ex, it doesn’t mean like you need to exercise more. You know, so please understand this.
Like the, the answer is not doing a ton of cardio and trying to burn off the food. You can’t eat a bunch of junk food and then think you’re gonna burn it off. It just doesn’t work that way. Okay, so let’s just, um, put that one to rest too. Um, the next weight loss myth that I want to debunk here is that. Um, X, y, Z diet is all you need, so whatever that one diet is, right, there’s so many crazy diets out there.
There’s literally thousands of diets. And in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I started looking at some of the weirder diets that are out there and, and I cannot make this stuff up, but there is a diet called the Cotton Ball Diet, which is where you soak cotton balls in different liquids.
You know, like, uh, cabbage juice or fruit juice, and then you eat that. Right. And you, you actually, it’s supposed to make you feel more full because you’re eating these cotton balls and I guess you pass the cotton balls or whatever and you’re getting a little bit of, um, nutrition from the juice or whatever that’s soaked in there.
But don’t do that. That’s crazy. Another one is one called the Werewolf Diet, and I was like, oh, what is that? Where they eat people? Like, what, what is the werewolf diet? And no, it has to do with like fasting around the lunar cycles. Okay. Uh, great. I love that one actually. And then there’s one that I cannot make this up.
This is called the Breatharian Diet, and these are people that believe that you can sub subsist on spirituality and sunlight that you only need. Um, air to get all the, um, uh, nutrients that you need that you don’t really need to eat or drink anything, including water. And, um, obviously if you try this, you will die.
Okay. So the people that are, say they’re practicing Breatharian, they’ve actually shown them sneaking liquids and food and stuff because you can’t. This is not sustainable. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like I’m like making this up or reading these out of some sort of like, you know, comedy show or something like that.
But no, they are things that people have actually done in the past. Okay. Every diet out there claims to be the answer for everyone. And listen, I’ve tried them all. Not the Cotton Ball or the Breatharian Diet, although the Werewolf Diet sounds interesting. I might have to give that one a try, but I’ve tried like most of the diets that are out there, the big popular ones, right?
And to some extent they all worked. The problem is that nothing I ever did was ever sustainable for me. For example, I. Started reading about, uh, vegetarianism and veganism, and for about five years or so, I went and I started cutting out my meat and I started cutting out more and more meat and then fish, and then eventually, so I went vegetarian.
Then eventually I went plant-based, and I did that for like 10 years. So about 15 years. I was like vegetarian and vegan essentially. You know, stay away from meat, stay away from eggs, stay away from dairy. That stuff is bad for you. And at the beginning it was okay, like I did lose some weight. But I have to tell you, for me, I gained a lot of weight eating that kind of a diet.
Um, because if you think about it, that diet is mostly, almost all a hundred percent carbs. It’s fruits and vegetables, and that’s a hundred percent. So for me, it did not work. For me over 10 years, I steadily gained weight. I gained like 40 pounds in that process of, of eating a plant-based diet for me, this was not healthy and it was not sustainable, gaining weight on any kind of diet.
That shouldn’t be the case, that that’s not good for you, whatever you’re doing. And I know a lot of people who do really well on a plant-based diet or a vegetarian diet, and they love it and they do it for ethical reasons, or they do it for reasons that that work for them as individuals. And I’m not saying it’s a bad choice for you.
I’m just saying that it didn’t work for me. If I kept doing that, I’d probably be like 300 pounds by now. All right. And I have clients and I work with people who are vegetarians and vegans, and they do well, we can make it work okay, but we have to stay away from some of the refined foods and the processed foods and things like that.
Okay? The truth is, here’s, here’s what I’m trying to get to here. There isn’t one diet that works here. Everyone you need to figure out. The right formula that works for you because you are an individual. You have your own metabolism, your own genetics, your own lifestyle, your own family, your culture of origin, your own food preferences, your own likes and dislikes.
You got your own health and fitness goals. Maybe you’re training for ultra marathons. Maybe you wanna run your first 5K, maybe you don’t exercise at all. All these factors. Put together mean that you are an individual and you need to approach nutrition and exercise with this important principle in mind.
That is, you have to figure out what works for you as an individual, and it’s going to look different from what everybody else is doing. And it probably isn’t going to be some preconceived diet that you know is published in the New York Times or whatever. All right. This is why I do coaching, and I don’t just prescribe a diet for everyone that I work with.
Coaching is a process of figuring out the best approach for you of figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you, and then modifying it as needed until you get the results that you want. It’s simple. It’s a feedback system. Let’s see what’s working. Let’s see what’s not, and we will adjust accordingly.
But honestly, most people are not willing to put in the time and effort to do it this way. Sorry, but there’s no quick fix here. It takes time to figure these things out, and you have to be willing to invest the time in yourself because that’s what’s required to get the results that you’re going after here.
Okay? So the right diet is not one that’s out there. It’s the one that works for you, the one that is sustainable for you. Because if it’s not sustainable for you, you’re not gonna stick with it, and it’s not gonna work long term for you. You’re gonna go back to doing what feels comfortable, and that’s probably eating the junk food because hey, that’s what feels comfortable, right?
So don’t think that there’s some diet out there that’s gonna work for you. That’s, you know, everybody is talking about these days. ’cause there just isn’t such a thing. Okay. All right. I think that weight loss myth is debunked. Here’s another one. Your metabolism slows down as you get older, so why even bother?
And I hear people say this all the time, they’re like, Hey, I’m just getting older, so I’m not even gonna try to lose weight. You know, I’m not even gonna worry about it because it’s just, it’s not gonna work for me because my metabolism, uh, just is getting slower. My metabolism’s slowed down now and losing weight is too hard.
And people use this as an excuse to not start or, or to not change their diet or not to eat healthy foods or whatever. There was a study published a couple of years ago, uh, that suggests that this is just really not true at all. So your metabolism, the rate at which your body burns energy has long been thought to decline during middle age, and then to keep declining as you get older.
So for this particular study, researchers um, looked at metabolism by measuring the total energy expenditure, which includes energy burned at rest, you know, and, you know, in order to perform basic functions like digesting food and energy burned during physical activity as well. So they looked at exercise and you know, your resting metabolic rate.
And they did this study on like 6,400 people, uh, ranging from eight days old to 95 years old, along with their height weight, their body fat percentage. Um, they looked at their, um, uh, average metabolic rates for men, women, people in different age groups. And they found some very interesting, um, results here based on four distinct periods in people’s lives.
So from infancy to 1-year-old, the metabolic rate surged until it was about 50% higher than it will be during their adulthood. So that’s pretty common. You know, like your metabolic rate is going to increase a lot at the beginning of your life. Right? And then from the ages of one to 20, the, um, metabolism decreased by.
3% per year. Okay. Again, very normal. The one big surprising thing is that from 20 to 60 years old, people’s metabolism doesn’t really change at all, and then after age 60, your metabolism does decrease slightly, but only by about a 0.7% a year. So not as much as people think it does. Um, and definitely not in that middle age.
So people think that, you know, once you turn 40, like that’s it, you know, it’s all over. Like, no, it’s not true at all. Like, your metabolism really doesn’t start to decrease until you get to about age 60. So studies like this are showing us that our metabolism doesn’t have to slow down as we get older, and that it’s much more likely, um, that changes in our behavior are causing us to gain weight as we get older.
Um, changes in our diet are, are what can help us to prevent, uh, the slowing down of our metabolism. Um, so people want to use this as an excuse as why they. Can’t gain weight, but they don’t wanna look at their actual diet, you know, their lifestyle choices. So your lifestyle choices are gonna go a lot further in helping you to, uh, maintain a healthy weight and, and even lose weight as you get older and you can’t use the metabolism.
That’s an excuse anymore. Okay, so that myth totally busted. Another one that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately is, um, cleanses and detox diets. Like that’s all you need to do. You just need to do a cleanse every now and then, and you’ll be fine. And listen, almost none of the cleanses and detox diets that are out there today have been proven to be effective on short or long-term metabolic health.
This is another case where people are trying to justify a crappy diet with some sort of a detox or a cleanse. Yes, it is true that today we are exposed to more toxins than probably ever before. But what you need to understand is that most of these toxins you are choosing because of your poor diet.
You’re eating processed foods, loaded with chemicals, industrial seed oils, um, deep fried foods, foods loaded with sugar and refined grains. All these things are contributing to health problems. All these things are making it harder to lose weight. So the idea of a cleanse, it’s a good idea and we should absolutely cleanse our systems of these toxic ingredients, okay?
But you can’t just do it like once a year. The best way to cleanse your body of toxins is to stop eating the toxins. The best cleanse is actually a diet that just eliminates all these terrible ingredients from your life permanently. So people think that they can eat whatever they want for months and then just drink a bunch of detox tea, or take a bunch of supplements and pull the toxins outta your system.
And these things might work for the short term. They might have some short term benefits, they might make you feel a little better, um, in the interim, but it’s not a long-term solution. I was talking to some friends recently, um, this couple, and they’re taking all these expensive supplements to, um, pull all these toxins outta their system, and they were telling me about this whole system of things that, you know, use, uh, all these different ingredients.
I can’t remember the names of all this stuff, but they, they. You know, grab the toxins and they pull ’em out and, and it takes like six months of this protocol in order to do this. Meanwhile, they’re taking all these expensive supplements every single day. Okay. That’s great. And I, I applaud you for trying to get healthier, but what happens after the six months?
What do you do? Like, do the toxins just come back? Like, wouldn’t it be wiser to just eat clean and healthy foods, void of all the toxic ingredients in the first place and just keep doing that? Anyway. Never in human history have we needed to go on a cleanse. Right. For two and a half million years as humans, we’ve thrived simply by eating real food.
We haven’t had to drink a bunch of detox tea or like, you know, eat, eat all these crazy supplements and things like that just to rid our bodies of the garbage. Just stop eating the garbage. Your body’s really good at cleansing itself. Your body’s really good at detoxing itself. We have a, an incredibly complex system to remove toxins from our bodies.
Let your body do what it’s supposed to do naturally. Just stop eating the junk food. Okay. So, uh, that’s another myth busted, by the way. So the biggest takeaways here, uh, that I want you to, to have a look at here is like looking at our ancestors, ancient human civilizations. Were incredibly healthy, lean strong, and disease free.
Much like that ZA Tribe today. Okay. They did not count calories. They did not restrict their caloric intake. They didn’t need to exercise like mad every day to stay lean and healthy. They actually were trying to conserve energy. They didn’t have to go on some crazy fad diet. They weren’t eating cotton balls, soaked in cabbage juice to lose weight.
Their metabolism didn’t suddenly stop working when they hit a certain age, and they definitely did. Didn’t do some weird juice cleanses or take a bunch of detox supplements, right. What did they do? They ate real food. They ate food that today still looks like food. That food that our ancestors would recognize, that their ancestors recognize.
That’s just food. Just eat food. Stay away from the processed foods. Stay away from the Franken foods. Try to eliminate sugar and refined grains. Those things have only been around for a short period of time. In the course of human history, stay away from seed oil. Stay away from toxic ingredients. Stay away from fried foods.
Yes, exercise. Keep on running, but don’t do it to try to lose weight. Do it because it’s good for you. It’s good for your mental health. Your emotional health. It’s good for your heart. It’s great at helping you to manage stress. Just don’t run a bunch to try to lose weight because that doesn’t work. Okay, so those are the common weight loss myths debunked.
I hope you got something good out of this episode today. If you did, shoot me a message. Tell me what you liked about it. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
