Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
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What do you think of when you hear the word “discipline”? Does it conjure up images of “getting in trouble” or controlling behavior by means of punishment? For a lot of people, the word has a …
Continue Reading about 128. Discipline Does Not Mean Punishment →
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 128, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, discipline does not mean punishment. So let me ask you this. What do you think of when you hear the word discipline? Does it conjure up images of like getting in trouble, or controlling behavior by way of punishment?
For a lot of people, the word discipline has a very negative connotation. And they don’t want any type of discipline in their life at all. But discipline is not always a bad thing. In fact, having more discipline in your life, might actually be one of the best things you can do for yourself for your overall health and happiness as a human being.
So today, I’m going to share why discipline does not mean punishment, and explain the surprising benefits of creating a more disciplined life. First, I want to talk a little bit about what’s going on over in the coaching project.
So the coaching project is my coaching program, where you get group coaching, one on one coaching, and it’s a program that is designed to give you all of the knowledge and the support, and provide accountability for you to reach your personal health and fitness goals, whatever that might look like for you. And every month during our group calls. So we do a couple of group calls every week.
And on one of those group calls every week, I do some teaching and some coaching on a topic. And for the month of June, we’re talking about mastering your mindset. What is your mindset? And why is your mindset so important to achieving the goals that you want for yourself. And today’s topic on the podcast, they were talking about discipline is one of those mindsets that are one of those components of mindset that is required.
If you want to achieve big things for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants to get leaner, get stronger, run faster, run longer. All of these things require you to have the right mindset because it’s one thing to know what to do. And it’s a whole nother thing, to motivate yourself to do it, to be disciplined to do those things that maybe you don’t want to do sometimes, in order to get the stuff that you really want for yourself in order to become the person that you want to become.
So all month long, we’re going to be talking about different aspects of mindset. This week was all about the topic I’m talking about today, which is, you know, creating more discipline in your life. We’re going to be talking about stopping self sabotage, building mental toughness, creating permanent habit change, becoming an emotional badass. All of these things require a shift in your mindset. And the mindset is the foundation for everything that you want for yourself.
Okay, so if you’re ready to become more, if you’re ready to take your health, and your fitness and your mindset to the next level, then you’re ready for the Running Lean Coaching Project. And it’s an application program you got to apply for. You’re going to have a short conversation with me, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. And if so then I want to invite you to apply to the Running Lean Coaching Project and you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, schedule a call with me we’ll talk about your goals and we’ll just see if this is a good fit for you; runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean Coaching Project.
All right now on to today’s topic, which is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while here. And I was talking to a friend recently about the difference between having a disciplined life and an undisciplined life. And something that came up was that there’s a lot of people out there that have this really negative connotation of the word discipline.
And you know, when we talk about that word, when you hear that word, think about this, like, what? What images come up for you? What comes up for you when you hear the word discipline. So there’s a couple of different definitions of, of discipline, and one that I think a lot of us think about is the practice of training people to obey rules, or a code of behavior, using punishment, to correct disobedience, right.
So a lot of people think of discipline as disciplining a child, for bad behavior. And this was a big part of my childhood. I got in trouble a lot, as a child, especially in school with my parents, I was a bit of a rebel. And I just did things the way I wanted to do things, and I didn’t do things I was supposed to do, and whatever you want to call it, I was a bit of a rebel, I was a bit of a troublemaker, and I was getting in trouble a lot. I was punished a lot. I was disciplined a lot as a child.
And so for me, for a big part of my life, the idea of having more discipline in my life was like, oh, heck, no, no, thank you, that is not what I want at all, I don’t want more of that. I finally got away from all that, you know, I grew up and became a dad, I had my own family, and you know, I was an adult and all these things, you know, that supposedly make us, you know, autonomous creatures, and have sovereignty and agency over our own lives.
And, but then even at work, I would get punished for, you know, maybe showing up late or something like that, you know, so it was still kind of following me around. And I was like, well, geez, I don’t want discipline in my life, I don’t want to be disciplined. And so for a lot of us, we have that connotation.
Or maybe you’re trying to train a puppy. And so a lot of times we use discipline to train a puppy, we punish the puppy if they pee on the rug, or whatever, you know. So I want to just acknowledge that a lot of us have this idea of what it means to live a disciplined life or to have discipline in our lives. And it’s not necessarily a positive, you know, content doesn’t bring up positive thoughts and feelings, you know, it’s a, it’s a very negative thing. So there’s another definition of discipline that I have adopted into my life and really accepted as part of who I am. That has, for me, nothing but positive connotations.
Okay, so the other definition of the word discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. This I love because I practice discipline, in all areas of my life. I train myself to do things in a controlled and habitual way. That doesn’t mean I’m a robot, you know, it doesn’t mean I live in this weird little, you know, confined bubble or whatever.
But I do things very intentionally, in a controlled and habitual way. And I learn habits, and I create good habits for myself. And for me, this definition of discipline feels good. It’s something that I can, you know, try on and say, Yeah, I want discipline in my life, because discipline gets me the good stuff that I want in my life.
Discipline is a way of training myself, to create good habits. It does require some level of structure and some level of control over yourself. And it creates and it requires creating good habits. But it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. We don’t have to look at being disciplined in our life or having discipline in our life as a negative. We don’t have to look at it as being a punishment.
I live a pretty disciplined life. So most days, I go to bed around the same time, you know, pretty early, I would say for some people, I don’t know, maybe it’s late for others. I get up at the same time every day. I have a consistent morning routine. I do some journaling and some meditation and drink some coffee.
I start my day in a very intentional way. And then I work out I run or I hit the gym and or go to yoga class or something, I have a very structured morning, you know, I have a very structured day most days. And then my work schedule is very structured. In order for me to create the kind of business that I’ve created the business model where I’m coaching people all day long, I have to have a pretty detailed amount of structure, a pretty significant amount of structure in my calendar.
And everything I do has to be on my calendar. And I’m very disciplined about sticking to that schedule, it’s important for me, it helps me to create the kind of life that I want for myself. So having some structure and some discipline, in certain areas of my life, helps me to achieve the things that I want for myself, you know, I want to build and grow my business, I want to make an impact on this world.
I want to create more good health and more positivity, I want to get people off of junk food, I want to get people off of, you know, being you know, inactive, I want to get people stronger and more fit, I want to help people, you know, with their nutrition and with strength and endurance and with their mindset. And in order for me to do that, in order for me to make a big impact in this world, I have to be pretty structured and pretty disciplined about how I show up for you and how I show up for myself and how I show up for my business.
This requires discipline, I’m disciplined about my food choices. And about my diet, I eat a lot of the same things pretty often. I mean, I do mix it up here and there. But for the most part, I’m pretty structured and disciplined about how I eat, it’s important to me. And it’s not a struggle, this isn’t a punishment, it’s not a punishment, eat real food. For me every day, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something because I’m not eating burgers and french fries all the time. And you know, chocolate cake and ice cream and all the things that I used to do.
I used to eat a lot of pizza, a lot of ice cream. And I don’t do that anymore. But it doesn’t feel like I’m being disciplined or like I’m being punished. I’m intentional about having this kind of discipline in my life, in these areas of my life. Being disciplined has helped me to create massive change in my life. And it allows me to achieve everything that I want for myself. I have big goals that I set for myself, I want to become more.
I’m always growing as a human being, I’m always evolving as a person, I want my health and fitness to always get better, not worse. And for me, it requires me to be disciplined in some areas of my life, it requires me to be disciplined about how often I do strength training and how often I run and how I, you know, schedule my meals and things like that.
You know, for me, a few years ago, when I finally permanently lost the weight that I had gained over the previous five years or whatever. It requires some discipline for me to lose that weight. It required me creating discipline in my life, around my diet and exercise regimens. And now, having some amount of discipline in that area allows me to maintain my weight effortlessly, effortlessly.
It’s easy, because I’ve created that level of discipline. I’ve improved my running performance over the years. By being more disciplined, I’ve gotten stronger. I’ve got this big goal of changing my body composition. And I’m working on being more of a bodybuilder, if you will.
I don’t like that term, because it conjures up these images of these huge, giant people. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But I’m trying to become more muscular and change the way my body looks and feels and get a lot stronger. And I’m being very disciplined about how I do that. I have to be disciplined about how I structure my workouts, how often I’m lifting, the kinds of foods that I’m eating, I have to eat more food, I have to be more intentional about some supplements that I’m taking and things like that.
And all of these areas of my life are growing and becoming better and I’m improving in all these different areas of my life because I have discipline in my life. Okay, so you can see the difference here, right? It’s not punishment. It’s not that I’m beating myself up. It’s because I have this level of discipline that I am able to achieve these things that I want for myself. Okay. It doesn’t mean I’m battling with myself, you know, I’m not punishing myself.
I’m not in a battle with myself, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t have fun, too. So here’s a big misconception about having a disciplined life. A lot of people think that if you, oh, I don’t want discipline in my life, because I still want to have fun, guess what you can do both. It’s not a one or the other. In fact, I believe that having discipline in my life allows me the freedom to also be in the flow sometimes, and to have playfulness in my life, and to have unstructured time in my life and to have fun in my life.
Having some discipline gives me the freedom to just at other times to just do what I want. If I was always super undisciplined, if I was just always going with the flow, I don’t think I would be able to achieve a whole lot from a success level like with my business with my health and fitness. And so for me, like just being totally undisciplined wouldn’t get me there. Maybe that works for you. Maybe that works for some people. But for me, I have to have some structure and some discipline in some areas part of the time.
So think about it as a balance in our lives, right? Having discipline is how I achieve my goals. That’s how I become more. It’s how I grow and evolve. Also, being undisciplined some of the time is how I grow and evolve to it’s like, you kind of need both, right? So you need some level of unstructured playtime, I think, playfulness, and spontaneity, and just silliness and laughter and fun and craziness.
All this stuff is like so important, and really required. If you want to be a well rounded, healthy, happy human being, we have to have expressive free playtime. And we don’t do it as adults, we don’t, we don’t make that a priority as adults. And I’m going to tell you here, and you might be kind of surprised to hear me talking about this. But I’m telling you right now that just goofing around, and having total joyful, playful, fun is necessary to having a joyful life.
If you want to have an incredibly fulfilling life, you’ve got to include playfulness in there, it has to be part of it. So being disciplined does not mean punishment, it does not mean you never have fun in your life. It’s just you structure some parts of your life and then other parts of your life can be completely unstructured. Doesn’t that sound better than just being punished all the time? Or having a disciplined life 24/7, 365? I don’t want that. I don’t want that.
So here’s what I want you to do this week, I just want you to consider yourself, consider your own life. Think about those things that you want for yourself. What do you want for yourself? Do you want to get stronger? Do you want to run faster? Do you want to lose some weight? Do you want to just get fitter? Change your body composition? What is it you want for yourself? And then think about that word discipline? How does it make you feel?
Could you use a little more discipline in your life? So if there’s things that you want for yourself, but you’re having a hard time getting them or you don’t have them? What’s it going to take to get you there? How much discipline? Do you think you’ll need to get there? Can you start applying some discipline into that area of your life in order to get you there? Can you be more disciplined at times? And then the flip side of that is? Where are you? Where are you making time for playfulness? Are you making time to just have fun and let loose and let your hair down? And just go crazy?
Dance like no one is watching. You know, can you make time for that to be undisciplined? Can you have that balance? Can you achieve what you want and have time to just goof around? Like, can we have this kind of balance? Or if the answer is yes, but I want you to think about this for yourself, how can you apply this? How can you make this happen for yourself, right? And it’s not about it’s not about one or the other. It’s about both. It’s about how we can do both. You know if you’re too disciplined all the time, it can feel hard and stressful and create anxiety in you.
Being too undisciplined on the other hand can have the same effect. You’re not getting things done that are important to you, you kind of stay stuck where you are. This can create a lot of stress and anxiety as well. So I think it’s important that we have both in our lives. So think about that this week, and what would that look like for you? And I want to take back the meaning of the word discipline, I want to take back the negative power that this word has over us.
And I want to remove the negative connotations that the word discipline has in our lives, right? It doesn’t mean punishment, I want to adopt this new definition, I want you to start using it in this way of like, okay, the the word discipline for me means to create healthy, productive habits that helped me become more, that’s what I want to, I want this word to mean going forward.
Okay, so consider how you can be more disciplined in some areas of your life to get the things that you want for yourself, and how you can balance that with complete undisciplined parts of your life so you can have fun and make that room for flow and playfulness. Okay.
And as always, if you want help implementing a more disciplined life, or implementing more playfulness in your life, or applying any of the principles that I talked about here on the podcast, I want to invite you to join us over on the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
In my coaching practice, I’ve helped hundreds of runners ditch old bad habits and create ones. This is really the core of the work we do together - creating new habits that get you to your weight …
Continue Reading about 118. The Biggest Mistakes of Habit Change →
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 118 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about the biggest mistakes of habit change. So in my coaching practice, I’ve helped hundreds of runners ditch old habits and create new ones. And this is really the core of the work that we do together, creating new habits that get you to your weight loss goals and get you to your running goals.
So when it comes to changing a habit, I know what works and what doesn’t. I’ve also seen a lot of people make the same mistakes over and over again. So today, I’m going to share a few of those biggest mistakes of habit change that I’ve seen.
And these are the things that people do that make it very hard to create any kind of lasting change any kind of permanent change in their habits. And my hope here today is that this is going to help you to avoid making these same mistakes yourself.
So I just want to let you guys know that we just finished up a whole month of working toward eliminating emotional eating for good over in the Running Lean coaching project. It was an intense learning experience for everyone in the group. We all learned some powerful skills for permanently ending emotional eating stress, automatic eating whatever you want to call it, it’s basically the same thing.
And in case you don’t know, I’ve just opened up my brand new immersive coaching program called the Running Lean coaching project. This program combines the best elements of my group coaching program, and also includes personal one-on-one coaching with me to help you get all the knowledge, guidance, encouragement, and accountability that you need to hit your weight loss and running goals.
And starting in April, our whole focus for the month of April is going to be on building healthy habits that stick there’s an art and science to habit change. And all month long we’ll be doing live trainings, q&a sessions, workshops, and coaching to learn how to ditch the old habits and replace them with new healthy habits that get you to your goals. I hope you’ll join us you can learn more and sign up now at runningleanpodcast.com/join. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.
Alright, so let’s talk about why habit change is so hard. And the biggest mistakes people make around habit change. Okay. So why is it so hard? Why does it seem to be so grueling for us to stop doing our bad habits? Like why do we struggle when we want to change a habit? Break an old habit develop a new habit? Why is this such a struggle? Okay.
You know, you should be doing this, but instead, you don’t do it right? You know, you really want to stop doing this. But you keep going back to that old behavior time and time again. Okay? Why do we do this to ourselves? So that’s what I’m going to be talking about here today, okay, I’m gonna be talking about the importance of not making these mistakes, the same mistakes that I see a lot of people make, okay, you have to avoid these mistakes.
If you want to create healthy habits that actually stick that become automatic, become part of who you are and what you do that becomes easy and effortless behavior for you going forward. Okay. So this is the crux of, of the work that we do in my coaching programs because when it comes to building a better you, it’s all about what you’re doing day after day after day after day after day.
It’s not about one thing that you change one time, it’s about consistency in habits and consistent behaviors over time. And if you don’t understand this, and if you don’t wrap your head around the fact that you’re going to have to create new habits, it’s going to be very challenging for you.
Okay, so here are some of the mistakes that I see people make around this. And there’s more probably, but I’ve got a few to share with you today. These are the big ones. All right. So the first one is this. The first mistake of habit change is not understanding how your brain works and not understanding that your brain is actually designed to fight against you.
So most people don’t understand what their brain is doing and they get very frustrated. When they try to create some kind of a new habit, because they’re suddenly faced with all this resistance, it’s like internal resistance. And they don’t really see that they don’t know where it’s coming from. They don’t know why it’s such a struggle for them mentally and emotionally to like, stick with their plan.
Okay, so you have to understand what’s going on in your brain. So here’s what you need to understand. Your brain has one job, and your brain’s job is to keep you safe and to keep you alive. And whenever you make any kind of big change, your brain goes into freakout mode, it goes into fight-flight or freeze mode.
So doing a new habit, like say, you want to get up early, you want to get up earlier than normal to start running before you go to work. And this is a great idea. But to your brain, this feels uncomfortable, it feels unsafe, it feels unfamiliar, and your brain will reject this behavior. Your brain will seek comfort, and safety.
And whatever is familiar to it, even though what you’re trying to do is actually good for you. And will make you healthier, and we’ll make you feel better. Because getting up early to run, you know, it’s great for you, right, it helps you start your day with some good endorphins, you’re less stressed throughout the day, you feel more invigorated, you’re generally happier when you start your day with exercise. So this is all good.
There’s no logical reason why, you know, your brain would be against this idea. But here’s what’s going on your brain, this to your brain, this whole idea is like, foreign, it’s not what you’re, it’s not what it’s used to. Your brain is used to you hitting the snooze button three or four times and then grabbing quick coffee as you sprint out the door at the last minute, that’s what your brain sees as normal.
That’s what your brain sees as safe and comfortable. And familiar. Even though it’s not good for you, it’s not good for your mental health or physical or emotional health. But this is what just seems safe and familiar and comfortable to your brain. So that’s what your brain wants you to do. Right?
It just wants you to just keep doing what you’re doing, stay comfortable, stay with the familiar. So doing something different. Getting up early, putting your running shoes on, and going outside and running just seems so foreign and like unsafe, like your brain is literally thinking we’re gonna die if we did this, you know.
So you really have to understand this, you have to understand that your brain will force your progress in these scenarios, right. And it will cause you to self-sabotage just to keep you comfortable, your brain just wants to keep you comfortable and safe. You have to understand this have to, have to, have to.
So this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make all the time, they don’t understand this, they don’t get it and they can’t figure out why they just can’t get up in the morning, you know that they put their shoes out, they set the alarm, they made an intention, but they just can’t do it.
You know, they can’t stick to their food plan, they made a food plan and they’re, you know, trying to stick to it, and they just can’t do it, they can’t make any traction towards their goals. Because they’re just letting their brain run the show their primitive brain, you know, that’s that part of our brain that just wants to keep us safe. That’s called our amygdala that’s like that old primitive reptilian part of our brain.
Okay, so you have to override your brain, you have to take back control of your own behavior. And so, you know, one of the ways you need to do this is to embrace the discomfort of habit change, you have to embrace the discomfort that will be there. I talk about this all the time, right, you got to embrace the suck, right?
You have to be willing to get uncomfortable because your brain just wants to keep you comfortable, and you have to do the opposite. You have to get uncomfortable. And if you want to create new habits, and ditch old ones and create new healthy habits, you absolutely are going to have to get uncomfortable. And this means doing the opposite of what your brain wants you to do sometimes and you just have to be willing to be uncomfortable to do it. Okay.
So that is the first mistake that I see people make they don’t understand this. They don’t understand what’s going on. They’re not willing to get uncomfortable. And they just go with whatever their brain is, is trying to do by default, which is to keep them safe and comfortable. Hit snooze. That’s what feels normal. Don’t get up and go running. It doesn’t feel good. That’s hard. Right? But you know that that’s what’s good for you. You know that that’s required.
Another big mistake I see a lot of runners make when it comes to changing habits is procrastination. And I know you’ve done this, you’ve probably said to yourself, I really want to lose weight, or I really want to run a marathon. But right now, it’s not a good time. Not right now you’ve got this big thing going on at work, maybe when that’s done, or, you know, the kids are in school, so I got a lot of stuff going on with that.
So maybe after the kids get out of school, or when we have more money I can invest in myself, you know, or when I have more time when I have some free time, then I’ll do it. And we just keep going on and on and on about all the reasons why we should put this thing off till later. When we all do this, we all procrastinate. No one is immune, I do it. I’m very guilty of doing this.
But here’s the thing, in order to change your habits, you have to be taking action, you have to be actively practicing new behaviors. That’s what habit change is all about. You have to be actively practicing new behaviors.
The problem is new behaviors are hard. And it’s uncomfortable. See mistake number one that I just mentioned about our brain wanting to keep you safe and comfortable, right.
So we do whatever we can to just not do it. And we use this excuse of procrastination as a reason to not have to do anything right now. So you just tell yourself this little light, you’re like, I’m going to do it later, I’m going to lose the weight, I’m gonna run a marathon, just not right now, later, later, later, later, later, is the killer of hopes and dreams later is a goal crusher.
You want something for yourself, but you just keep saying later, I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s not going to happen. And I say that this is a lie that you tell yourself that you’re going to do it later. Because you really, you’re just you just don’t want to do it. You don’t want to do it at all. And so you just convince yourself that you’ll do it later. But in reality, you’re never going to do that thing.
And the reason you don’t want to do it is because you are afraid you’re afraid that you know, you might fail. That’s what this boils down to. You might feel in your heart that you really want to run that marathon, but you’re scared, you may not be able to do it. You know, what if I don’t finish?
What is that gonna be mean about me, I’m gonna feel like a failure. Or you really want to lose the weight, but you’ve failed so many times before. You just can’t bear to do that again. You know, what is that going to say about you? It’s this fear of failure that’s often at the root of all procrastination. So you have to know that this fear of failing is going to be there.
And that putting off starting something, doesn’t do anything to make that fear of failure, go away, still gonna be there. It just makes you feel worse because now you have this thing that you really want to do. But you’re not doing it, you’re kind of procrastinating because you’re afraid you’re gonna fail. So you put it off till later. And that even makes you feel worse.
But what if you just took action today toward that goal? What if you said to yourself, no more delaying this, let’s go. And you actually signed up for that marathon? Or you change something about your diet starting today? How would that feel? Well, honestly, it would feel a little scary, right?
But here’s the thing with procrastination, taking action is always going to feel scary. Because you don’t know if this is gonna work or not, you don’t know, if you’re gonna be able to lose the weight, you don’t know, if you’re gonna be able to cross that finish line that marathon. And delaying it is not gonna make it any less scary. It just means you’ve wasted a bunch of time that you could have been using to train for that marathon, or get your diet figured out.
You know, you’re still going to feel the fear. When you set out to do that thing later. You might as well just take action now and not waste all this time. Because you know that later, it really means never stop putting off that thing. And take action today.
Another big mistake related to this whole idea of habit change and kind of related to procrastination is getting into what I call information overload. And here’s what this looks like. So let’s say you want to lose weight. So you Google weight loss. A
nd you get a billion articles that all tell you different things. And I actually just did this. I’m like, I wonder how many articles if I just type in weight loss and Google will come back 1.6 billion results B with a B billion. With this much information out there on this topic. Why on earth does anyone have trouble losing weight?
Right, it would seem like all the information you need is out there. But oh my gosh, the problem with this is that there’s like, so many different ways to approach this thing, right, and everything, not everything works for everyone, everybody’s different. And you kind of need to figure out what works for you.
And I have to tell you that this is kind of a struggle for a lot of people. I’ve been there I’ve tried it. And I’ve tried so many different things. And I’ve gotten into this information overload too. And I’ve gotten stuck with like, what about this idea? What about that? Well, this says this, and this says this is all kind of contradicts each other too, right?
And I’ve tried so many different things. It didn’t work for me. I was Googling this stuff for like years, years of the Googles. And it just didn’t work I couldn’t figure it out was very frustrating. Super overwhelming. But here’s the thing, you can’t just get stuck in this information overload mode, right?
You have to get out of that state you’re in. Because what happens when you get overwhelmed, right, you end up like doing nothing, you get stuck in this analysis paralysis. And you don’t do anything because it’s all too frustrating. It’s too complex. There’s too many contradictory methodologies. There’s too many options. There’s too much information. And this is again, where your brain is just like goes into freakout mode and just like shuts down and just wants to do nothing.
But you know, that’s not the answer. That is not going to get you there. You have to do something, right. So what’s the right plan for you? And honestly, I wish I could tell you that I wish I could just tell you right now, here’s what you do. And this is what’s gonna work for you because this works for everybody. And the truth is that we’re all different. And there is not one thing, there’s not one diet, there’s not one plan that works for everyone. There’s no one size fits all, when it comes to nutrition and weight loss, there just isn’t.
And this is one of the big principles that I use in my coaching practice that I treat every person is an individual. And we look at your specific goals, your metabolism, your activity levels, your lifestyle, your food preferences, your likes, your dislikes, we put all this stuff together. And we create an individualized plan that works for you. And it’s something that you can feel good about.
So you have to get out of this mode of information overload. So get out of this, like research mode on Google, like to try to figure out what’s going to work for you. Because I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s going to drive you crazy, it’s going to drive you crazy, like looking at all this information out there.
Okay, sometimes you just have to get into action, and sort of figure it out as you go. Now, obviously, having someone knowledgeable there to help you put your plan together is ideal. But even if you try to go it alone, just get out of information overload and get into action, try something, try something that feels good to you.
That feels in alignment with your goals, your values, and then see if it works for you. And if it doesn’t, you can always try something else. Okay? Get out of information overload.
Another big mistake I see people make when they’re trying to change habits is they play the blame game. They set out to change a habit, they can’t seem to make it work. And then they blame everybody else in their life and everything in the world for their inability to make it work. So here’s a scenario you might be able to relate to.
Let’s say you’ve decided you’re going to stop eating sugar, like sugar is a problem for most people, right? It makes it really hard to lose weight. If you have a regular sugar habit. There are no real positive health benefits from consuming sugar. So you make this decision. You’re like, you know, I’m just gonna stop eating sugar. Okay. And it’s going okay for a week or so. And then your husband is doing something nice for you. So he decides he’s gonna bring home doughnuts for breakfast on like a Sunday morning. Right?
And he’s like, just have a doughnut. You know, just live a little. Have a little fun. You deserve it. You’ve been doing great all week. Just treat yourself. It’s just a don’t, it’s gonna be fine. And of course, you agree with him. You’re like, yeah, I have been doing great all week. I do deserve this. I do want to have a little bit of fun. And so you cave and you eat, you know, a few donuts.
And then you’re like, well, you know what I mean? I’ve already blown it for today. So I might as well just like, you know, this whole day it’s shot. Sometimes we’ll just like eat more sugar. Alright, so you just spend the rest of the day scarfing down muffins and cookies and cupcakes and for a snack, you’re eating like candy and oh, you have ice cream for dessert and whatever.
And of course, you feel like crap because you’ve been sugar all day. But you also feel bad because you let yourself down and so you’re like in this downward spiral now, right, and of course, you’re coming off with a sugar buzz. And so what’s gonna make you feel better? That’s right, more sugar, it feels great to eat the sugar.
But then you’re back on the sugar train, and you just say, eff it to the whole, not eating sugar thing. And you justify it, you justify it by telling yourself that it’s really not your fault. If your husband didn’t force you to eat those donuts, you’d be fine. If your husband would just support you, you’d be able to make this work.
But since I don’t have a supportive husband, this is just not going to work for me, right. And this story is really not a made-up story. I hear stories like this once a week, once or twice a week from people who legitimately think that it’s not their fault that they can’t stick to their food plan.
They blame other people, they have lots of stories, lots of excuses, lots of justifications for their behavior, and they believe in these things fiercely. And they will defend these stories and excuses and justifications, right? They blame their spouses, their friends, their kids, their kids’ friends, their boss, their stressful job, their culture, society in general, they blame the seasons, the weather, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, you name it. Nothing is ever their fault.
And if everything and everyone around them would just change, then they’d be able to stick to their plan. But here’s the thing, if you want to change your habits, it’s going to require that you take ownership of your own behavior. You cannot blame anyone else for your own choices. No one ever holds you down and forces the donuts into your mouth. And if this is happening to you, you need to seek some professional help right now, right?
But I really doubt that that is the case, right? Nobody’s making you eat doughnuts. You make your own decisions every minute of every day. And changing a habit requires that you are 100% responsible for everything that you do or don’t do. You cannot blame other people, you cannot blame anything outside of yourself.
You have to stop blaming and start taking full responsibility for everything that you do. Here’s what you can control, you can control your own thoughts, your own feelings in your own actions. That’s it, nothing else is within your control. You can’t control other people, what other people think how they feel or what they do.
This also means that no one else can control your thoughts or your feelings or your actions. No one else is ever to blame for what you are choosing to do. So stop acting like you are powerless and out of control. You’re always making decisions about what you are doing. Every bite of food you put into your mouth is a decision and a choice you’re making at that moment. Always, always, always.
In order to change habits, you have to take full responsibility for your own behaviors and your own results. If things aren’t going the way you’d like them to be going. Other people don’t need to change. You need to do something, you need to do something different. You need to change something within yourself. Okay.
So those are the biggest mistakes I see around habit change. I hope you will avoid these mistakes for yourself. And remember, we’re going to be spending the whole month of April on the art and science of habit change over in the Running Lean coaching project you’ll learn exactly how to ditch the old habits and make healthy habits stick and we’re going to have some fun doing it.
I hope you’ll join us just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
If you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good, you have to shift your mindset. I think you probably know this by now since I talk about it all the time. But there’s a reason why …
Continue Reading about 116. The One Big Mindset Shift You Have to Make →
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 116 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the one big mindset shift you have to make. If you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good, you have to shift your mindset. I think you probably know this by now since I talk about it all the time here on the podcast.
But there’s a reason why I spend so much time on this subject. It’s because it’s one of the most important factors in whether or not you keep the weight off permanently, getting leaner and stronger. It’s mostly an inside job, right? So today I’m going to share with you perhaps the biggest mindset shift you have to make if you want to create healthy new habits that last for life.
But first, I want to give you guys a quick little FYI. So you may have heard a short little podcast episode that I released accidentally. A couple of days ago, this was a message I was sending to my private coaching clients. So I have another private podcast feed that’s just for my private coaching clients.
And I record trainings and I record group coaching calls, and I released those on a private podcast so that my coaching clients can listen to those things after the fact. You know, maybe they weren’t able to make a group coaching call live. And so they can listen to the replays.
Well, the way that I do my podcasts is I have this program that I use that basically has two boxes that are right next to each other and one of them is for this live public podcast that goes out to the whole world. And then right next to it, there’s another box that’s like for just my private coaching clients.
And every time I put out an episode for my private clients, I’m always like, Okay, did I do this right? Am I in the right box? Because I know one of these days, I’m going to make a mistake. And sure enough, I was just in a hurry yesterday, or whatever I did this couple of days ago. And I was like, cool. it’s all good, publish it.
And I started getting these emails from people like, Hey, I hear you’re, you’re going away with this podcast like you’re not going to be doing it anymore. Where’s it going to be? I didn’t get an email. Because in this in this message I send out I’m changing my platform for the private podcast because I don’t want to make these kinds of mistakes in the future, right?
Anyway, I totally screwed up, I put it out in the wrong place. So if you received that podcast where I was like, hey, this is going away, you got to check your email to find out where to get the new podcast. That was all just a mistake, it was intended to just go out to my coaching clients, so you can just disregard it.
Nothing’s changing here on the Running Lean podcast at all. It’s still gonna be right here while you normally listen, you don’t have to do anything differently. Nothing’s changing. And I apologize for any of the confusion. But technology, am I right?
And then I wanted to give you guys a quick heads up that I’ve got a live workshop coming up again next week. So it’s five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner. And listen, you may have already tried everything to lose weight. But what you’ve already tried probably doesn’t work. And it’s not that you’re a bad person or you lack willpower. You’ve just been given a lot of bad advice, right? So using willpower doesn’t work. Fad diets don’t work. Counting calories doesn’t work.
You’ve heard me talk about all this stuff before, right? Deprivation and starvation don’t work, running more miles doesn’t work. So what does work well? Understanding how habits actually work in the science of making habit change permanent that works.
A personalized approach to support both your weight loss and your running goals – that works. And what you need is a comprehensive plan of action that works on the mental emotional and physical changes required so you can absolutely lose weight and keep it off for good. You just need the right information.
And that’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this free workshop. You’re going to learn how to get leaner become stronger and transform yourself into the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. To sign up for this free workshop just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop.
And I’m going to give you guys a couple more opportunities, I’m doing this three times. So the first one was March 17. And that would be yesterday if you’re listening to this podcast today, the day that it comes out. The next one is going to be Thursday, March 24. And then I’ll do another one the following Thursday. So if you can’t make it, this one time, that’s fine. Look, go for the next one.
And listen, we’re gonna have fun together, okay, it’s live. It’s interactive, you get to ask questions. And we’re going to try to have some fun doing this stuff. This, this topic of like, getting healthier and getting stronger and losing weight. It doesn’t have to be like suffer-fest. We don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. We can have fun doing this. Right? Cool. All right.
So today, the one big mindset shift that you have to make. So let me ask you this question. How is your mindset different? Think about that. Do you ever spend any time thinking about how your mindset is actually determining everything that you get in your life? No. Okay, that’s cool. That’s why I’m talking about this here today.
The truth is, most people do not spend any time thinking about this. Most people just think that the way that they think is like their thoughts, the way they feel their emotional state, all this stuff is just fixed. And it cannot be changed. Like you’ve been programmed like an android, to have certain thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about yourself, and that they are just permanently fixed. And there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s it. This is who you are. This is what you think. These are the things that you believe, good luck with your semi-human existence robot.
You are not a robot, your mindset is not fixed. You can absolutely change your mindset at any time, then this is the first thing I want you to understand here today, that your mindset is not fixed, it is changeable. Now, it may feel like it’s not changeable. Because you’ve been thinking the same thoughts, your whole life, maybe over and over again. For decades, you’ve been believing the same things. For those decades, you’ve been feeling the same way.
And so in a way, I mean, you’ve sort of programmed yourself with this current mindset that you have.
And just a little like sidebar here, like what if we are actually all just androids and we’ve programmed ourselves? Hmm. This is like, eerily close to a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story. And if you’re not familiar with Philip K, Dick and who he is, and his work, check out, Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle, Total Recall, Minority Report, and so on. Awesome, awesome sci-fi writer right here. He talks a lot about androids.
And whether or not, you know, androids can think, and are they actually humans? Are we actually androids? Hmm? Of course, we’re not androids, right? We’re not robots, but we can get ourselves stuck in a fixed mindset. And I want you to know this, that you have the power to change your mindset, always. It may not feel like it, but you do. We have to understand this thing.
Okay, so first of all got to understand that your mindset, the way you think and feel about yourself is changeable. And listen, the reason I talk so much about mindset here on the podcast is that if you want to make big changes in your life like if you want to lose weight and keep it off for good, it’s all about your mindset, right? I’ve talked about this before, what you do, you know, your diet and exercise and things like that. It’s like 20% of the equation, the other 80% is your mindset.
Losing weight, initially is mostly about what you do, like you’ve got to change your diet, right? Keeping it off for good. That’s almost entirely about your mindset because you’ve already figured out what to do you know what to do. It’s all about mindset. And this word, mindset. It’s a huge, huge word. It means so much.
It’s like, all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, all of the things you believe about yourself in the world. It’s your values. It’s your whole attitude, and outlook on life. It’s really how you feel about yourself, how you feel about other people, and how you feel about society. And like it’s huge, right? It’s a huge, huge topic.
And this is why I talked so much about it here on the podcast because there’s so much to it. And I can’t possibly tell you in one podcast episode like everything you need to know about mindset. Okay, so, you know, it would be a really long podcast episode. Maybe I’ll do it someday. Be fun with you guys like that would be fun.
So today, what I want to do is I want to focus on one specific part of your mindset. And this is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful parts of your mindset. And it’s the one part of your mindset that basically drives everything else. Okay? And this one part of your mindset, we call this your identity.
So your identity is who you are, at your core. It’s everything you say, after the words, I am. Like, for me, here are some parts of my identity – I am a man, I am a runner, I am a coach. These are all parts of my identity. This is all part of who I am at my core, how I see myself.
When Darth Vader says to Luke, “I am your father.” He’s speaking from his identity, right? This is who he is at his core, Darth Vader is a father. You know, we think of him as just this evil, you know, villain with no feelings at all. But we have to acknowledge this because his identity is driving his behavior.
And later on, right, he defies the emperor, he saves his son, because, at his core, he’s a father, he can’t kill his own son. You know, and we have, like, empathy for him at the end, sorry, if that’s a spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the Star Wars series already, whatever. And I hope you don’t mind my sci-fi references today. I’m just feeling very sci-fi-ey this morning for some reason.
But listen, your identity, it’s like the root of who you are. Okay. But here’s the thing. And this is the part I mean, that you got to understand, like, you can still change it, you can still change it, even though it’s your identity, and you feel like it’s like fixed and unchangeable, you can still change it.
Think about this, if you’re a mother, and you have kids, like being a mother is part of your identity, right? And it’s probably always going to be part of your identity. And you, you probably wouldn’t want to change that you would want to always be a mother. But even this, which seems like something that is completely fixed can be changed.
So there are some women who, you know, have kids and they give them up for adoption, because they don’t want to be mothers, okay, or whatever reason, right? And that’s okay. So this is even this, like deep-seated part of your identity of like, being a mother can be changed, okay. I just want you to understand this, that your identity is very, very powerful, and changeable, you can change it. And if you want things to be different in your life, then you need to step into a new identity to get there.
You need to assume the identity of someone who is leaner, stronger, and faster, if that’s what you want for yourself. You have to let go of the parts of your identity that are holding you back and keeping you overweight and keeping you stuck there.
So here’s a little bit of a story about me and a big shift that I had to make in my identity. So for a long time there for many years, part of my identity was I am a vegan. And nothing could change that for me.
I had programmed myself with this identity. So everything I did was filtered through the lens of I am a vegan I eat a plant-based diet. Like how I fueled you know how I ate, you know, obviously, but how I feel about running, how I felt about eating animals, what I thought of other people who ate me what restaurants I ate at. The people I spent time with books, I read blogs, I read podcasts, I listened to movies I watched where I shop for food, what kinds of food about everything in my life was driven by this huge part of my identity.
You can see how, what a powerful part of my mindset this was, right? This was who I was at my core, I’m a vegan, this is who I was okay. And I held on to this identity for dear life. For like 10 years, I held on to this part of my identity. I did not waver.
Now, even though at that time, I was not super healthy. I was steadily gaining weight. You know, I couldn’t put muscle on no matter how much I was lifting weights. And this identity that I had and I didn’t realize it at the time. I can see it now but I didn’t realize at the time this identity that I was holding onto so tightly was kind of keeping me stuck. It was keeping me from getting healthier and getting stronger.
That identity was not serving me, it was actually detrimental to my health and my athletic performance, but I would not let go of it. Because at my core, I was like, this is who I am.
So you can see how powerful your identity is how it drives your thoughts, it drives your beliefs, it drives your feelings, it drives your behavior. And ultimately, it drives and determines all the results that you get in your life.
So for me, I had to make a big change. I was getting overweight, I gained like 40 pounds during this process, right. But I just held on to this identity with a death grip, I was like not letting go of it.
And at some point a few years ago, I had to let go of that identity, I had to change my identity from I’m a vegan to I’m a meat-eater. And this was not an easy thing for me to do, you can imagine the internal struggle that I had with this decision. And if you want to learn more about this, I did a whole podcast on this. It’s episode number 32. It’s called Why I Changed My Mind About Eating Meat.
And I want to say this, I have to say this because I know that I’m going to get emails from people about this. But there’s nothing wrong with being vegan. There’s nothing wrong with being plant-based.
If this is you, and you identify this way, and this is part of your identity, and it’s working for you, that’s amazing. It did not work for me, my experience was I was eating a ton of sugar, I was eating a ton of refined carbohydrates, I wasn’t getting enough protein, I wasn’t doing it right.
And today, I have a different attitude about all this, I work with a lot of people who are vegan or vegetarian, and they do amazing, they lose weight, they get stronger, they get healthier. So I know how to do this differently now. But I’ve sort of just let go of that identity of being plant-based and being a vegan, right.
But today, I can help people that have this as part of their identity and as part of their beliefs. And as part of like what they feel is right for them. And that’s totally awesome. I love it. Like whatever diet you choose is fine, as long as it’s working for you.
If you’re slowly gaining weight and becoming unhealthy, and you know, you can’t get strong and things like that we got to change some things, we can still do it, you know, plant-based or vegan, vegetarian, whatever you’d like to do, okay, but what I was doing was not working for me. So I had to make that decision to change for myself and I decided to start eating meat again. And I started to change. And it made a big difference for me, and I got off to sugar and the refined carbs and all that other junk, okay.
But I want you to understand the incredible power of this one mindset to shift your identity, it’s driving all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, it’s driving your values and your beliefs. It’s driving, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, and how you think and feel about the world around you.
Your identity is driving your actions, your behaviors, what you do each day is largely determined by who you are at your core. And all the results that you’re getting in your life are not getting determined by your identity. So everything you say after the words “I am” is going to help to determine what you get in your life. The results you’re getting in your life are mostly determined by your identity, we have to understand this.
So I want to challenge you, I want to challenge you to change those parts of your identity that are not serving you. I want to challenge you to take a look at all the different parts of your identity. And ask yourself, Is this really something that I want to hang on to or not?
Look at who you are and all the deep-seated thoughts and beliefs that you have about yourself? Which of these do you want to keep? Which do you think you want to change? So you might have this deeply held belief that you cannot lose weight? No matter what you do?
Your identity might be “I’m hopeless”, and that’s who you see yourself. And that’s who you are at your core. But is that working for you? Is that serving you? Is this helping you or hurting you? Is it helping you to make progress? Or is it keeping you stuck? “I’m hopeless.” This is probably going to just keep you stuck.
Other identities that you have that you might want to change. “I’m a failure. I never stick to a diet. I’m weak. I have no discipline. I’m not a real runner. I’m too old. I’m too slow. I’m too weak.”
What if all of this was just BS? Like what if all the things you’ve always thought about yourself are wrong? Think about this. The truth is you’re deciding what you believe about yourself. Nobody’s programming you from the outside like you’re doing it yourself.
You get to decide who you are. You get to decide what identity you take on for yourself. So your challenge is to get honest with yourself. And really take a hard look at those identities and how they’re affecting every area of your life. And then be willing to change them be willing to make different decisions.
Changing our identity, it’s not easy. It takes courage, takes determination, it takes some time. But mostly it takes you making the decision that you want to change, that you want something more for yourself, that you’re no longer going to be driven by an old identity that’s just keeping you stuck, and miserable. Okay, that’s your challenge. Look at all of this stuff, the core of who you are, and challenge all of it.
Okay, you can do this, you’ve got this, my friends. And remember, if you’re ready to step into your new identity and make healthy habits last for good, then you have to check out my free live workshop. It’s coming up Thursday, March 24.
To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I would love to see you there. You’re gonna learn a lot. We’re gonna have some fun together. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
When it comes to making lasting habit change, there are two main areas of “work” that you have to address. There’s the outer work, which is what to do and how to do it, and then there’s the inner …
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 114 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, winning the inner game. When it comes to making a lasting habit change there are two main areas of work that we have to address. First, there’s the outer work, this is what to do and how to do it. But then there’s the inner work, which is all about making profound shifts in your mindset.
Most people only focus their attention on the outer work. Just tell me what to do, Patrick, that’s what they say to me, just tell you what to do. But the outer work is only a small fraction of the game. If you want better results for yourself, and you want to create new habits that actually last, you have to shift your focus internally, you have to start working on your inner game.
So in this episode, I’m going to be taking a deep dive into what this means what it means to be winning the inner game, and why it’s actually a very critical component of becoming a leaner, stronger runner, and a healthier, more badass human being.
But first, if you’re ready to do the inner work, if you’re ready to start winning the inner game, if you’re ready to start making that shift in your mindset, so you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet, then you have to take action, you have to start doing things differently. Nothing changes if nothing changes, right.
But most people just want to keep doing what they’re doing over and over again, expecting something to magically change. And it doesn’t work that way, right? Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I think that’s the definition of insanity. So don’t go insane. Just we got to change something, okay.
And if you’re not sure what to do, or you want a little bit of help with this, this is what I do. Apply for coaching with me, there’s no commitment to apply. It’s just me and you having a conversation about what coaching looks like and what this could possibly do for you. And how it could be one of the best things you ever do for yourself. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And take that first step, make that first change, make that first change to become that badass future version of yourself. Cool.
And then I wanted to give you guys a heads up about this workshop that I have coming up. In just a few weeks, I’m going to be teaching a live workshop all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner. So this is going to be one of the most informative and most comprehensive live workshops that I’ve ever taught. I’ve never done this in this format live before.
And honestly, I’m just so excited about this. And I think it’s gonna be super fun. There’s like this cool energy when we do these things live. And we all come together and you can ask questions and get feedback. It’s super fun. So in this workshop, you’re going to learn the simple steps you need to get leaner get stronger, and make healthy habits last for life. That’s the whole point of this.
It’s not just about, hey, let’s lose some weight and get a little bit stronger. You know, and then in six months, we’ll just go back to doing what we’re doing before. No. How do we make these things last? So that’s what this workshop is all about. To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, and I’m gonna give you a couple of opportunities to attend.
The first one is coming up on March 17. Yes, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. You can go drink your green beer after the workshop. Okay, it’s going to be March 17. And then I’ll share more about the other two opportunities to join in the weeks in the coming weeks here. Okay.
If I didn’t mention it, it’s going to be free. It’s a free live training just for you to help you understand the fundamentals of becoming the healthiest and most badass human being that you can possibly be – runningleanpodcast.com/workshop. I would love to see you there. We’re gonna have a lot of fun and it’s free. It’s fun. It’s free. It’s all good. And we can celebrate St. Patrick’s day together. Cool. Awesome. All right, let’s get into this content.
I want to talk about winning the inner game. I am so passionate about this particular topic. And I’ve been talking a lot with my clients about this lately, especially in the group program that I have in the monthly coaching group. So you know, we’re talking a lot about emotional eating and how to eliminate emotional eating, how to stop doing it for good in the coaching group.
So if you’re somebody that’s been on the fence about joining the coaching group, and you’re like, oh, man, that’s me, I’m an emotional eater, for sure. And it doesn’t mean you’re like sitting in the corner, you know, crying over him with a whole, you know, gallon of ice cream in your lap.
You know, that’s not what I mean by emotional eating, emotional eating, and stuff, like stress eating, eating, because you’re bored, because you’re tired, because you’re angry, because you’re frustrated, whatever it is your eating to feel better using something external to feel better, okay?
So we’re talking a lot about the inner work that we have to do in order to make a shift, a profound shift in the way we think and feel about ourselves and about our emotions and our feelings and stuff, so that we don’t have to eat over them.
The truth is, you don’t have to be an emotional eater, we all are, to some degree, I’m just gonna tell you right now, we all are to some degree. But if you’re done with that, if you want to be done with that forever, then you got to make some changes.
And a lot of what we got to do is the inner work, it’s not necessarily about what you’re doing on the outside, it’s about what you’re doing on the inside, okay. So that’s an example of the inner work, okay, and so we’re gonna be talking a lot about that this whole month over in the coaching group. And you can always join us over there, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/join, to kind of check it out.
But here’s the thing. And why I wanted to talk about this today is because when you have a goal for yourself, like let’s say you have a goal of losing weight, and you’re just having a really hard time with that, and you’re struggling to keep it off, you might be able to keep it off for a little while, like you’ve probably all have experienced this, right, you lost some weight, then it comes back after a while. You keep finding yourself reverting to old behaviors.
If you can’t keep the weight off, then it means that you probably aren’t doing the inner work. You know, you have to have a mindset shift in order to accomplish these big goals. And most people do not want to do this, most people only focus on the outer work. So they will be like, just tell me what to eat Patrick, tell me what I shouldn’t eat. Just tell me how many carbs I should be eating every day, Patrick, that’s it? How many times a week should I be running? When should I lift weights? That’s all good.
I mean, this is all part of this is all strategy. But most people only want to know this part. Most coaches only focus on this part. Strategy is fine, it’s good. It’s important, it is part of the process. But it’s the outer stuff. Like you know, I’m not trying to minimize the importance of strategy, you got to know what to do. And you got to know how to do it. And I teach a lot of strategies in my coaching programs.
So there’s a right way to go about losing weight, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about becoming a fat-adapted runner. There’s a right and wrong way to go about getting stronger. You know, there are also ways that we do these things that are very frustrating, especially when you’re trying to figure it out yourself.
But the thing is that our work this strategy stuff I’m talking about here, it’s like 20% of the equation, right? It’s a small piece of the puzzle, right? The inner work is learning how to shift your mindset so that you make all the strategies work long term.
The inner work is learning how to break old habits and create new ones that last, the inner work is learning how to make the new healthy habits that you’re creating, how to make those habits stick. The inner work is going to help you to say no to a food craving when it’s sitting right there in your face.
The inner work is required if you want to learn how to eliminate those old cravings for junk food, the cravings that had you eating and that whole pint of ice cream, you know right before going to bed because you just can’t say no. The inner work is the other 80% of the equation.
And when you look at it that way, it becomes glaringly important, because I know that you have tried all the different things. You’ve tried the different types of diets, the Mediterranean diet and the South Beach diet and the vegan diet and the pegan diet and you know, low carb and the Keto and the plant-based or whatever it is, right. We’ve all tried all these different things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, most of the time they don’t. Because we’re just focused on the outside stuff. We’re just focused on what to do. What do we do?
I did this for years, I tried all those different diets I just mentioned, trying them all, didn’t work for me. Because I didn’t know about the inner work, I was just focused on, you know, the outside stuff. And I got to a point in all of these different diets, where maybe things just didn’t start, didn’t keep working for me, you know, and maybe I started to gain a little bit of weight back, or I didn’t feel like I had as much energy as I wanted, or whatever it is you know. Something, something in my mind was like, Oh, this isn’t working. This isn’t for me, this isn’t gonna last, I can’t keep this up. And then I quit. I wasn’t doing the inner work.
So what is the inner work? Here are some examples of what I’m talking about here. So for example, one of the things I recommend a lot of my clients do when they’re trying to shift their habits around food, and they’re in they’re using food to kind of deal with boredom or frustration or whatever it is stressed throughout the day and things like that, are we eliminate snacking throughout the day snacking is one of those things, you just don’t need to be snacking.
Snacking is always an emotional event, you don’t need food, you don’t need to eat, like, you know, a handful of nuts or you know, a few chips or whatever it is that you’re snacking on, you know, you aren’t really hungry, like your body isn’t craving nourishment. If you’re just going to be eating a few, you know, nuts or something, you know.
So how snacking is almost always just emotionally eating, right? It’s just because we’re stressed out or bored or something like that. So one of the things we do is we stop snacking, okay, and most people kind of freak out a little bit, you know, because they want to eat, they’re like, Oh, I just always eat every time I feel a little bit hungry, I eat. So managing hunger is a form of doing the inner work, right?
When you’ve done the inner work, and you’ve you you have this new profound understanding of what hunger really is, and what it’s not; how hunger isn’t always an emergency. Like, you don’t have to just solve the problem of hunger, every time it comes up for you. Like you can just practice feeling a little bit hungry. Sometimes it’s not a problem. Right? It’s not a problem.
When you’re just okay with that feeling inside. And you’ve kind of learned how you’re not going to die of hunger if you don’t eat for two hours. When you’ve done this work, and you learn to experience a little bit of hunger, maybe in a different way, it’s no longer a problem for you, it’s not a problem that has to be solved. It’s not an emergency that has to be fixed right now. It’s just a sensation in your body that you can handle, and you’ll be fine. And you can get through it.
And you don’t have to eat every time you, you know, get a little bit stressed out. That’s an example of doing the inner work. Okay, so you got to work on your thoughts about this stuff, you got to work on your beliefs about what you believe about hunger, what does that mean to you.
Another example of doing the inner work is just sticking to your food plan. Especially when you don’t feel like sticking to your food plan. So I have my clients, you know, plan what they’re going to be eating, we do this thing where we plan ahead, it’s very important that we plan things in advance because when you plan things in advance, you’re much more likely to stick to them, right? So we create a plan.
And then the rule is that once you’ve created your plan, you stick to that plan. So for example, let’s say you’re going out to dinner with some friends Friday night, and you’re not eating bread right now, as an example. And you go out to dinner and you’re at some kind of restaurant, they just keep bringing out the bread basket and there’s bread going around, everybody’s like, you know, literally like breaking bread in front of you and eating it and you can like smell it, you know?
And you’re like, ah, you’re kind of freaking out about that, right? But when you do the inner work of learning how to understand why you’re not choosing this particular food because it’s not good for you. It’s not serving you. It’s not part of your plan. And you’ve learned that you’re not going to you don’t have to freak out in that situation.
When you see the bread sitting there and you don’t have to give in to that urge or craving that you have to eat the bread. So you learn how to stick to your food plan even when you don’t feel like it. This is an example of what it means to do the inner work.
So you’re understanding what’s really empowering to your own health and fitness, that’s what’s important to you, not what other people think of you. Because sometimes people are like Hey, why aren’t you eating the bread? We’re all eating the bread, how come you’re not eating the bread and you’re like, Hey, back off, I’m just, you know, I don’t want the bread, it’s okay.
You know, we get a little worked up about those kinds of situations sometimes, okay. But when you do the inner work, those kinds of situations, they don’t bother you anymore. Because you’ve, you’ve learned how to process those situations and those feelings that come up for you, okay? That’s what it means to do the inner work.
And these things are all about your mindset. It’s making shifts in the way that you think and feel about yourself, and the way you think and feel about your diet, nutrition, and exercise, and running. All of that stuff.
And these internal shifts are what will keep you going when the going gets tough. And here’s a little thing that going will always get tough. It always does, right? We’re always going to be faced with different challenges in our lives, we’re always going to be faced with, you know, the people eating the bread in front of us, or people like shoving donuts in our face, you know? I don’t know, do people do that? Do they shove doughnuts in your face? I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me.
But here’s the thing, but the inner work is very powerful. And here’s a little bit of truth for you. If you’re not where you want to be, you know, if you’re not at the weight you want to be at, if you’re not as healthy as you want to be, you’re probably not doing the inner work, you’ve probably got some work to do.
Because the results that you get on the outside your outer results are a direct reflection of whether or not you’re doing the inner work, your thoughts, and feelings. In other words, your mindset drives all of your actions and all of your behaviors. Your current weight is just a direct result of whether or not you’re doing the inner work.
So who you are on the outside is actually created by who you are on the inside. So losing weight and being able to keep it off for good. It’s an inside job. And if it’s not working for you, if you’re struggling with this, if you’re not where you want to be, you have to shift your focus internally, and you have to start doing the inner work.
But people don’t want to do this work. They don’t want to do it. They fight me on this all the time. And I think it’s so interesting. And so I started looking into this, like why, why don’t people want to do this? Why don’t they want to do this introspective self-awareness type of work?
Why don’t people want to challenge their own beliefs about how they see things? Because of the beliefs you have about how you see things are keeping you stuck? Why wouldn’t you want to change that? You know, it just seems logical to me that you would want to loosen your grip on your belief systems and make some changes so that you can start to make progress.
And you can start to like start moving towards your goals instead of just staying stuck and frustrated all the time. But that’s just me. But this work is hard. It’s hard for people. And the thing is people will do just about anything, they’ll do all kinds of crazy stuff except this inner work, right?
So they try all sorts of crazy diets, the cabbage diet, the hot dog water diet, the juice cleanses the counting calories, the starving themselves, and they feel like you know, murdering somebody, whatever the deprivation, all that stuff. They’re gonna suffer through all sorts of painful, frustrating stuff.
But they’re unwilling to take a look at their own thoughts and feelings and how that might be contributing to their current situation, how their own belief systems might be creating their current weight. People are unwilling to spend time working through the stuff that comes up when you stop eating junk food.
So, for example, let’s say you want to like get off the sugar train, right? So you just stop, you know, you stop eating sugar, you want to stop using sugar as a coping mechanism. All right.
We do this we use sugar as a coping mechanism. As a reward system. We use sugar as an emotional management tool. And a lot of us have been doing this our whole lives, okay. So when you stop doing that, when you stop trying to manage your emotions with sugar, all this uncomfortable stuff’s going to come up.
You’re going to start to feel all these feelings and emotions and stuff that you typically squash down with food with sugar because the sugar just lights up the pleasure centers of your brain. And so you don’t have to really think about that.
The negative emotions you’re experiencing; the stress, frustration, anger, whatever it is. So this is the resistance that comes up, right? This is your brain trying to tell you, Hey, this is not good, what you’re doing here, stop doing this, like, we want sugar, give us back to sugar, or we’re gonna sit here and we got to actually feel these emotions, we can’t do that. Danger, danger, bring on the sugar, right?
Instead of dealing with all the stuff that comes up, when we stop eating sugar, we just give in to eating sugar, it’s way easier to do. And just so you know, I just did a podcast episode about this called battling the resistance, it’s episode 110. Definitely check it out. Because I take a deep dive into this whole topic of the resistance and how our brains work and stuff. It’s a good one.
So just know that you’re normal if this is happening to you. And if you’re like, if you’re resisting doing the inner work, it’s because your brain just wants to keep you safe. And when you start to feel these emotions and stuff, it feels unsafe, it feels uncomfortable, it’s not a comfortable situation to be in – not emotionally eating.
So not using sugar as a coping mechanism is hard. And here’s the thing that I think is really interesting. Runners are really good at some of the stuff like they’re really good at sticking to like you’re good, you’re sticking to your marathon training plan no matter what. So it doesn’t matter what the weather is, doesn’t matter if you’re sick or not, doesn’t matter if you’re lacking motivation. It’s like you’re going to absolutely, make sure you do all of your training runs.
Oh, it says I have to run six miles today. It’s pouring down rain, I’m doing it. I’m just gonna run in the rain. It’s no problem, right. And I love this commitment that we have as runners, it’s amazing. Like, you’re super committed, nothing’s gonna stand in your way, boom, you just command you’re gonna do your thing, right.
But when it comes to food, runners have this like, kryptonite, that’s like this weakness. You know, they’re, they’re like superheroes over here. But then they come over here to do the inner work. And they just like melt, like cotton candy in the rain, you know, just blue.
They lack the commitment to healthy eating, they have plenty of commitment and motivation when it comes to their training programs. But that lack of commitment to healthy eating, that lack of motivation to stick to your food plan, it’s just because you haven’t done the inner work. That’s all.
It’s not that you don’t have it, you can get it, it’s not something that like you’re either born with it or you’re not, you just need to do the inner work, you need to, to do the inner work so that you can have that same level of commitment, and that same motivation when it comes to things like sticking to your food plan.
So this doesn’t mean you’re weak-minded, or you’re a failure, you have no willpower, right? It just means you got some work to do. Like I said, you know, we’re talking all about this in the coaching group. This month, we’re focused on eliminating emotional eating for good. And this topic is really resonating with people right now.
You know, emotionally eating is just using something external to feel better inside. Right. And the way we accomplish this, the way we eliminate the emotional eating is we do the inner work, right? There’s some strategy involved on top of talking about that in the group and stuff too. But it’s such an inside job, it really is, you know.
So as a group, we’re kind of committing and doing this inner work together. It’s very powerful stuff, okay. So when you shift your focus internally, and you begin to take responsibility for your own results, so you start doing the inner work, and you start saying, Hey, this is on me, I am going to fix this, then good things start to happen. Right?
Remember, your outer results, like your current weight is a direct result of whether or not you’re doing the inner work. So if you want to start moving the scale, then you know you have to do the inner work. You may have all these deep-seated beliefs about how you can’t lose weight because you’ve tried all this stuff in the past. And it’s never worked for you and you always gain the weight back.
And you so that’s a belief that you have that is just keeping you stuck. So we call these limiting beliefs because they actually limit your ability to grow. And to accomplish your goals, right, they limit your ability to accomplish things like, become healthier, like losing weight. But when you can let go of the limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck where you are, what do you think is going to happen?
Yeah, you start to grow, you start to make progress, you become limitless in a way, those things that used to seem impossible for you, all of a sudden, they become possible. And it’s really not because you’re doing anything differently. It’s because of who you are being on the inside, right?
The inner work, it’s not because of some secret strategy that you just hadn’t heard about. It’s because you’ve had this profound shift in how you think and feel about stuff. It’s like a profound mindset shift has to happen.
So if you’ve failed in the past, at sticking to your diet, or losing weight, whatever, and you believe really strongly that this is just the way it’s gonna be for you, then this is a limiting belief for you, we have to like let go of that limiting belief. When you make that internal mindset shift, to start questioning all of your beliefs, you start questioning your thoughts and feelings.
Eventually, you can completely drop those old beliefs that are keeping you stuck. That’s when the cool stuff starts to happen. That’s when the magic happens. Because you’re no longer driven by your thoughts about the past, you can begin to create the future that you actually want for yourself. That requires inner work.
So that’s what it looks like to start winning the inner game. Cool. And remember that if you’re ready to start winning the inner game, if you’re ready to start doing the inner work required to make long-lasting changes to your physical, mental, and emotional health and fitness, check out this free live workshop I’m doing here, March 17. To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop. I would love to see you there. I think it’s gonna be super fun. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway and we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat-adapted. But the …
Continue Reading about 112. Taking Back Control of Your Life with Melanie Millaway →
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 112, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, taking back control of your life with Melanie Millaway.
Today I have a very special guest for you. I recently sat down with Melanie Millaway. And we had a candid conversation about her experience of changing her diet and getting fat adapted. But the real change didn’t happen on the outside. Yes, she lost weight. Yes, she improved her running performance. Yes, she got stronger. Yes, she has more energy now. And yes, she generally feels a lot better.
But the real change happened on the inside. Melanie made this massive shift in her mindset. And I just have to say that this is the real work we do here in my coaching program, you will learn how to become a leaner, stronger runner. But you do it by making the internal shift by doing the inner work just like Melanie did. And I’ll let her tell you more about that.
Here’s the thing, the way you look on the outside, for example, your current weight, it’s just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the internal work. If you’re unhappy with the way that you look and feel and you want more for yourself, then you have to do that internal work. Okay. This is the work that Melanie did. And in this episode of the podcast, she shares how she’s absolutely transformed herself her entire life from the inside out.
But first, if you love this podcast, come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, come join us join in the fun, we have a lot of fun over there. We post selfies, we do challenges, we support each other, we encourage each other, and we have a good time doing it. It’s all about running. It’s all about diet and exercise and becoming your best self. Just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook and join the fun.
And then if you’re somebody who is ready to do that inner work to make that shift in your mindset so that you can start becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, then you have to just take action. One of the biggest mistakes people make around changing their health is procrastination. They put off taking action.
They always think later. Like when I have more time or when I feel more motivated or after the kids go to college later, is a dream killer. It’s a killer of hopes and dreams. It’s a killer of goals. If you want something more for yourself, if you want to make a change for yourself for the better, then you have to start today.
Apply for coaching with me. There’s no commitment. It’s just a conversation, you and me just going to have a conversation about what coaching would look like for you, and how it might be one of the best things you ever do for yourself.
Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and take that first step take action, stop putting it off. Take that step towards becoming that badass future version of yourself. Cool.
All right. As I said, I’m excited to share this interview with you. Melanie experienced this profound transformation and affected a bunch of different areas of her life. And I’m gonna let her tell you all about it. So I’m gonna stop talking. Here’s my interview with Melanie Millaway.
Patrick McGilvray
All right, cool. So today I’m talking with Melanie and Melanie has a cool story that I felt was worth sharing with you guys. So Melanie and I started working together a few months ago. And
Melanie just is one of these people that at the beginning, things were very challenging for her. And at the beginning, she may have had some doubts, and she may have struggled a little bit and we’re going to talk about that. But I want you to know that at the end of our coaching together and the end of our sort of time working together. Melanie just had this amazing, like,
attitude, and this amazing transformation, and I wanted to make sure that we sort of captured that and shared it with you guys, because I think it’s very inspirational. And I hope I’m not, you know, setting this up too, too big for you here, Melanie. But I thought it was very inspirational. And I wanted to make sure that we sort of had this conversation and talked about all this stuff.
So, Melanie, why don’t you just introduce yourself and kind of tell us like, where you were, before you and I started working together?
Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Well, Patrick, first off, thanks for having me. Man, all the way back to the beginning with this process, I think when we started…
Patrick McGilvray
So where did you find yourself and by the way, this is like such a common story. This is one of the reasons I do what I do is because so many runners have this mentality of “Oh, I just run to eat, I can eat whatever I want. I just need to run more. And that’ll solve the problem.” You know, and so what you’re describing here is completely normal. We can all relate, we’ve all been there. Okay. But where did you find yourself that you thought “I need help with this?” Like what was the biggest issue that you really wanted to be solved, or the biggest issue you wanted help with?
Melanie Millaway
Well, you know, what I was doing wasn’t working, I was spending more time running and kind of prioritizing that over other things. And it was really was creating a strain for me to balance everything. Like I have a lot more responsibilities in my life, like family and career now than when I trained for my last full marathon. And, you know, I wasn’t blessed with like Olympic DNA. So I’m just your average runner based on age and kind of finish time. And, you know, it takes me a couple of hours to knock out a 10-15 mile run. And yet, I felt like I was stuck. And I wasn’t really making any material progress. I wasn’t getting faster, I didn’t look any different. In general, I kind of felt like garbage. And I wasn’t in a great mood most of the time. Yet, I was investing all this time running and I was feeling frustrated.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and this is so interesting because you’re one of these people Melanie who has come to me and said like, “Listen, I don’t have like a bunch of weight to lose. I’m not super overweight or anything like that.”
You did lose some weight in this process. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But you didn’t come to me saying like, “Oh, I just can lose the weight you just you know you had a lot more going on and there was just so many things like you described it just feeling like garbage.
I think that pretty much sums it up there. But it’s like we want more for ourselves. We want to feel better. We want running to be something we enjoy. We want it to be easier.
And so those are some of the things that I remember from when we started working together where you were just like, I’ve got to figure this out, you know?
And so we started kind of working together describe like, what, what are some of the things you, you experienced when we started making some of these changes? Because I know it didn’t know, it wasn’t all like super easy or work super well, for the beginning.
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, you know, I think when we first started, got started, really what I wanted some guidance, I wanted to be held accountable. Like I knew that was something I needed for myself. Because I have a tendency to kind of put others before me, just a kind of a pleaser, by nature that way, and if you overuse that formula, a lot of times you end up kind of sacrificing your own goals and desires. And that’s not very empowering, and it leaves you feeling like you don’t have a lot of control in certain circles, you know, situations or circumstances.
And then kind of looking outward, you know, I’ve had a lot of success, other aspects of my life working with a mentor, kind of specifically, in my career with, you know, whether it’s like an individual development plan or your career growth, I’ve had mentors in the past that were supporting me with a variety of goals, and kind of seeking their advice or guidance on something, but I never really thought to make that kind of investment in my own personal life, until I cross paths with you.
But, you know, how did they get started? Or how did it go? You know, it was challenging in the beginning, you know, I made the conscious choice to begin this journey heading into what I perceive to be the most challenging time of the year, the holiday season, that quad factor of Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Years, like, they are all packed in there. And it’s kind of crazy to, you know, experience growth and discomfort to the holidays, like the ultimate gauntlet of obstacles. But I thought if I could come out of that specific time of the year successful, it would be a huge boost to my self-confidence. And I could kind of wear it like a badge of honor.
And as I worked to get kind of fat-adapted, you know, I experienced the headaches and the sugar withdrawal symptoms. And looking back on it, I was probably a little more than grouchy. But I was really committed. You know, I started my food journal, and I was logging meals consistently. And I started planning and buying different things at the store and set my protocol and knew what I wanted to eat ahead of time.
And, you know, when it comes to running, like, I’m not gonna lie, the running sucks for a while going through this process. Yeah, there were weeks when I felt sluggish, and my body was heavy. And I was basically sucking wind.
And I had run a half marathon just a few weeks prior to kind of starting to want the Running Lean program. And I had a PR in that race. And then fast forward, like, as I’m in the midst of getting fat-adapted, I had forgot I had committed to a friend that was gonna, I was going to help pace her during a local, like half marathon. And that race felt hard. But I wasn’t quite over the hump yet at that point.
And then I just remember kind of coming out on the other side, eventually, my runs, they started getting easier. You know, my times were improving. I felt like less effort. And it was just kind of gradual onset. And I remember sending you a text message, like, you know, ran five miles this morning, and it felt really good. And I was back but I was like better.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you bring it up. Um, a couple of things I want to touch on number one is like you did take this on during candy season, which is Halloween through New Years, you know, and we’ve talked about that. And you were like, I don’t know if I really want to do this right now. But I think I need to do this right now.
And that takes a lot of courage like to stand up and do that because most people they don’t you know, most people are like, “You know what, I’m gonna wait till the New Year’s I’m just gonna like, binge my way through this holiday season. I need a bunch of garbage and feel terrible, and gained a bunch of weight. And then hopefully on New Year’s, I’ll make a resolution and be able to stick with it this time, which will be different, you know?”
And nobody does that. Do you know what I mean? It’s just, it doesn’t really work, you know? And you were like, “You know what, no, that’s not what I want for myself. I want to do something different. I want to just get started now. And I want to make these changes now. And I’m going to get through the holidays and feel good about myself. I want to come out on the other side of the holidays feeling like I had my own back through that whole process.”
So how did that go for you? Like how was the how’d you come out of the holidays?
Melanie Millaway
I came out and felt like I was well ahead of the game, you know, and I had been training along the way for my event in January and I mean, I was so far ahead. So that felt that part of felt amazing.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah. So you came out of the holidays, you came into January, with all this momentum. And you had actually lost weight over the holidays, which is something most people don’t do.
So that was really cool. And then yeah, then you had your race in January. What was that? What was the race?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, so that was I ran a half marathon in Houston, which Houston’s a really special city to me, and I just, I love that event. And this time, you know, I was fully fat-adapted, like, it seemed so simple.
I didn’t have to do anything different than any other typical day when I was down there. Like, I didn’t have to carb load the night before. And I never, I never liked that feeling of carb-loading before a race anyway, it always kind of made me feel lethargic or gross.
But, you know, now I didn’t have to do that. And I didn’t eat anything pre-race, like I completely fasted aside from a cup of coffee. And, you know, I didn’t run with any carbs on me, like I was naked. With carbs, like, you know, I still carry my own hydration. But my running back was a little lighter. And I wasn’t ravenous post race, you know, like, I ate a standard meal a few hours later. So it was kind of surreal at first, but just strangely liberating, like to go through that transformation and to, for it to just be so easy.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and how’d you do in the race?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah. So I broke a course record for myself. So improved my time for the last time that I’d run in person. So you know, it was, it was a really smooth race, I got to see my dad along the way, like at mile two. So it’s always encouraging to have, you know, family there to support you.
But it just the overall experience of felt good. And I was really energized and happy to be there. And just overall, an incredible weekend.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome, super awesome. Just goes to show you that just because you’re running on fat instead of carbs, like you can still run fast. You know, a lot of people, there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about that, you know, you want to get faster, you can work on getting faster, and you can do it as a fat-adapted runner, for sure. That’s awesome.
So something I wanted to kind of go back to you mentioned, like drinking and sort of like, you know, taking some time off from drinking, what was that like for you? Was that something you were just kind of struggling with a little bit and you want to do like, you knew that was maybe something that was contributing to you feeling like garbage? Is that kind of why you decided you wanted to take a break from drinking?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just wasn’t very happy with who I was. And I’ll kind of go back a little bit on my relationship with alcohol, you know,
I wanted to just kind of take a pause and kind of figure out the role it was playing in my life. And, you know, alcohol was a challenge. Like, I think I’ve had established some enduring habits over the past 20 years, like, when I was younger, and you know, you’re seeking social acceptance, like, I was one of those, I had to put effort into acquiring a taste for alcohol. But then like, fast forward, you know, now I’m in a position where I find myself thinking about having a beer after I’m done working for the day, or after a stressful week, or maybe it’s the start of the weekend, and like, let’s kick it off with a drink. Or I’m at a business meeting, and I want to be the first to meet my colleagues at the bar. So like, I had some legacy habits there. But I didn’t like the way I was feeling.
And I think with coaching, I ended up making some really positive and just lasting changes with that relationship to kind of pause on it kind of reflect on, you know, what are the positives and the negatives from drinking, like, I’m not getting a whole lot of benefits here. Like I don’t feel good. I’m not really motivated. That’s an area where I think I’ve just been wanting to make a change for a while. And this is an aspect of kind of shame with the struggle.
And that’s where you kind of provided just a safe place for me and kind of understood that the challenge that comes with it, and being like how empowering to re-evaluate that relationship over the holidays like I think it’s December and it’s holiday parties and gatherings and get-togethers and I just did like a complete dry December and like it was really challenging at first but as each day kind of passed by and I had those successes, you build more confidence and like it’s so much easier at the end and then again, looking back on it like for something I had looked so forward to like the race that year, okay, well, now I’m going to have a sip of it. And it’s just kind of neck like it kind of lost its luster by the end, like, my feeling towards it is so different now.
Patrick McGilvray
If you could identify like kind of what that mindset shift was for you because what you’re describing is awesome. And a lot of people that I work with kind of experienced the same thing. So you know, just to lose weight and kind of get fat-adapted and change our, you know, body composition and things like that. I do recommend maybe taking a break from alcohol, some people freak out a little bit about that. Some people are like, okay, no big deal I can take or leave it. And, but something interesting happens along the way.
There’s always a mindset shift. There’s like a way we think about alcohol and what it does for us. Like before we give it up for a period of time. And then there’s the way we think about it afterward. Like, can you tell me kind of what that looked like for you? Like, what was the biggest shift for you and your mindset around that?
Melanie Millaway
I think it was feeling like, I needed some sense of control, like, at some point, it kind of had control over me. And I needed to have that, that shift of power kind of back into my favor, like it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be.
And I think just more awareness to my thoughts and the feelings that they’re generating and slowing down a little bit kind of pause for a moment.
And I kind of liken it to thinking before you speak but on a more like a deeper, subconscious level. But is this really what I want at the moment and I still, you know, I still have a beer every now and then. So it’s not like I’ve completely ended my relationship with alcohol, but it’s just, I have better control. And my thought process is different towards it. And yeah, it’s been a shift, it’s, it’s not as sexy as it used to be. Because I can take it or leave it at this point.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so cool. Because that’s the place where you want to get to, and when it comes to drinking alcohol, or eating sugar, for example, these are like two things that are like drugs, if not our drugs, you know, the way that they affect our body and the way they affect our brain, the way they light up our pleasure centers.
And we have a hard time, you know, not doing these things when we’re used to doing them on the regular basis, right. And so when we’re like, okay, you know what, maybe, you know, stop eating sugar, stop drinking alcohol, and then all this resistance comes up and all this, we start freaking out about that, because we’re just so used to having it whenever we want it. So we use it to feel good, we use it as a reward system for ourselves, we use it to deal with our emotions, all that stuff.
When we take it away, it becomes challenging, and we got to deal with all that stuff that comes up. So you got to deal with the emotions, you got to like, reward yourself in different ways. You got to make yourself feel good in different ways, you know. But the other thing that people don’t realize is that that desire that you have for alcohol or sugar, will actually go away once you’ve abstained from it for a while.
And that desire, you can actually, when that sort of desire goes away, you actually start to not crave it anymore. You don’t. You’re no longer like thinking about it, you’re no longer dreaming about it. It’s no longer the solution for you anymore. And so you don’t even really want it anymore. That’s a place you want to get to. That’s a beautiful place to be because if you’re craving alcohol, but you’re not drinking, that’s terrible. I just want to murder somebody, right? But when you’re like, all of a sudden you’re like, and I remember you told me this, you’re like, it’s lost its luster. I just don’t even want it anymore. I was like, yes, that’s where we want to get to because now it’s easy to say no. Right? Yeah.
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, I just feel so much better. So like how I feel is more powerful than the thing than the food than the sugar than the drink. Like, that doesn’t make me feel as good as like how I feel now with the clarity and how much better I sleep at night or how much better my mood is or like I’m more engaged with my family or connected with the world like, that feels better than the beer ever made me feel.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I love that. I love that and we get into this place sometimes where we start to feel good. And you know, we start to feel good without using you know, food or alcohol to make us feel good and we think this can’t last. This isn’t sustainable. And all these like stories will start to come up and excuses and things like that, because we get some comfortable.
It’s like feeling good. Actually, it doesn’t make sense. But feeling good. Like that actually makes us feel uncomfortable because we’re not used to it. And you even said this to me, and I took a note of this of some time into our working together, you were like, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop in our heads if like, this is all gonna just come crashing down. But it didn’t, did it?
Melanie Millaway
No, I felt guilty, like for feeling so good. Like when I first felt the impact and kind of just the transformation. And I honestly had no idea that I could feel this good. It was like euphoria, like, and I just wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Like, I didn’t trust it.
And, you know, I also had to kind of remind myself not to go back to the things or the habits that got me where, where I was before, and I certainly where I don’t want to go back to you. But it was, it was a strange feeling to feel so good.
Patrick McGilvray
I just think that’s so funny in a way that we, we do that to ourselves, we actually start to feel good. And then we’re like, there’s got to be something wrong here. When is this gonna change? This is not normal, this is weird, is uncomfortable. But it’s like, no, we want to feel good. We want to feel good. So tell me about something else that shifted for you. Because, you know, you’ve you’ve experienced some profound shifts in your, in your mindset and in the way you think and feel about yourself. Tell me something else that you’ve experienced through this process.
Melanie Millaway
You know, just seeking some clarity in my life, there were things I wanted to change about myself. But I was lacking direction or certainty on kind of how to make that meaningful and lasting change.
And, you know, I had celebrated a milestone birthday earlier last year. And I think that natural progression, kind of when you enter a new decade of your life is to get introspective and start kind of conducting your own personal inventory. So you know, my satisfied with where I am right now, is there something more out there? Is this what life is really all about? Like, is this it? Or is it time for change?
And I think I coupled those kind of internal thoughts with the fact that I’ve always been interested in health and fitness and nutrition and learning new things. And, you know, identify as a runner, you know, I was an athlete in high school. And after college, I ran my first marathon, and I was hooked. I love the sport. But that also started me down the path of adopting the mindset of like, now that I’m a marathon runner, like, I can eat whatever I want like I run to eat. And if I’m training, logging miles, and burning tons of calories, and naturally, I get to eat and drink, whatever I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, like, I love food.
And my childhood and upbringing certainly revolved around food. So it seemed like a natural fit. You know, all this to say that you know, the strategy that I had adopted, you know, I run to I can eat that wasn’t really working for me anymore. I wasn’t feeling great, I was not really motivated. So what did I do? I leaned in further with what I knew, I thought, well, clearly, I just need to run farther. So let’s increase the distance.
So I signed up, and I started training to run another full marathon. And that was my goal. It had been a few years since my last full marathon, I have been running half marathons kind of for maintenance. And it was at this point that I kind of discovered the Running Lean podcast on Audible, and I was listening during my training runs. And that led me to you. And kind of just the start of this new beginning and understanding that you can’t outrun a bad diet. And what I needed was to change my relationship with food and alcohol. And if I wanted to feel better, and to achieve, like greater things for myself, like those changes needed to happen. You know, I was just kind of searching for more.
Patrick McGilvray
I mean, absolutely. It’s normal to start the year that way and to not feel like you’re in the hole, so to speak of you, you know, overindulge to the holidays, and maybe ate more drank more than you normally would have any other time of the year and have to start just to start building.
Melanie Millaway
You know, just, you know, I remember early on, I had some anxiety or apprehension with an upcoming business trip, you know, meeting with vendors, typically, that’s meals out, like a reason to overindulge with food or alcohol or otherwise and used to use support me to ensure that I had a solid plan kind of going into that situation, it’s as simple as thinking like about, how do you want to come out of that week? You know, how do you want to feel about yourself that really resonated with me. And again, just I felt supported, that was a big boost to my confidence.
You know, another simple situation where a friend had brought me lunch, like, I think it was a roast beef sandwich. And I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was doing this high fat, low carb thing. And basically, I didn’t want to eat the bread in front of my friends. So I’d not eat the bread. So I ended up, you know, kind of caving and eating the entire sandwich.
And I just remember, kind of, I felt disappointed with myself afterward. I took a good thing like someone bringing me lunch, and I turned it into something else. And I remember you kind of breaking it down. And obviously, the situation was deeper than just the bread, like leaving that conversation, feeling more confident in my choices, and being empowered to kind of stick to stick with those was really important to me.
And then really just, I mean, again, mindset, just being more aware of my thoughts and the feelings that those are generating and slowing down. Kind of just taking a pause for a moment. I didn’t realize I’ve always felt frustrated for a long time. And I couldn’t really figure out why or kind of put my finger on it. And it all makes a lot more sense.
Now it’s like, the thought is the thing. But I have control over the thoughts, how it makes me feel, and ultimately kind of what my actions are. So I feel like my life is I feel less frustrated. And I feel like I have more control in despite not being able to control the circumstance, but just how I react to the situation and just being more at ease. Like I feel less frustrated.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Do you feel like you have more control over your thoughts and feelings?
Melanie Millaway
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love just being able to, I’m more intentional, I think with my thoughts. And even if the thoughts maybe don’t feel good kind of marinating enough for a minute or kind of reflecting on it and trying to connect it back to the why.
And just having a better mindset in general. And feeling like I have control. Like, and I do. And that’s incredibly empowering. Like, I can think about having a drink. And again, pause for a second and think with that thought and contemplate it. That’s what I really want. And occasionally I may want to eat the thing like maybe it’s cake. But I got the power back like I get to decide for myself I get to choose.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I love the way you phrase that too because you do have the power. And it’s incredibly empowering when we can learn how to manage or control our thoughts and feelings. We go through life thinking that what other people do or say, makes us feel a certain way. And when we start to take control over that and start to take responsibility for our own stuff, and for our own emotional state, it becomes, it becomes so empowering, because now you’re not blaming other people for how you feel. You’re not blaming other people for how you’re reacting to situations.
Do you see this work that we’ve done together? Do you see it sort of spilling over into other areas of your life?
Melanie Millaway
Absolutely, I mean, that part of it, it is positively impacted so many other areas of my life. Like I said, with just being more engaged at home, I have more energy to spend time with my kids in the evening, after, you know, working all day or kind of fulfilling my responsibilities. At work, I think I’m more inspiring to my team of leaders that I work with, my colleagues, and just kind of energizing them and it’s infectious. Like, it’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible how I can like just spill over and impact so many other areas of my life in such meaningful and positive ways. Like that feels really good.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and, and I just want to point out, Melanie, that this is all you, you know, I’m, I’m over here, like yammering on about stuff, and, you know, kind of, you know, offering some suggestions and things like that, but you’re doing the work.
And that’s something I want everybody that’s listening to this to really hear that, you know, having a coach is great. And it’s great to have somebody that can guide you, that has the experience and that expertise with this kind of stuff. But really, you got to show up, and you got to actually do the work, you got to like, do things that you don’t want to do, you know, you’ve got to, you know, practice being disciplined about your diet and about exercising and about getting your runs and getting your strength training in and working through the mindset stuff.
And so I just wanted to point out that you have done an exceptional job with all that stuff, you know, you are the one that has shown up and actually done the work. So good job.
Well, what’s been like the most, like, if you could just identify like one big, the best part of this for you are the biggest transformation you’ve experienced with all of this, what would you say that was for you?
Melanie Millaway
I would say it’s having your own back. I mean, life isn’t easy. You know life is full of struggles. But you have choices. And I think I learned you have more control than you know, like, you get to choose your own adventure. Choose your struggles, right.
So personally, I’d rather be focused on controlling aspects of my diet, or sitting with an uncomfortable thought or emotion than struggling with diabetes, or heart disease or alcoholism, all of which, you know, run in my family, I think you’ve got to give yourself some grace and kind of self-love along the way.
Like, I’m going to make mistakes, the reality is I’m going to fail at things. But just keep going and keep working towards making those small, incremental changes. Because they all add up in time and, you know, you’re moving forward and getting closer towards the things that you want, and just never quitting.
And I think lastly, kind of coming out of this process, you know, I learned that nothing is impossible like we all have or should have like what I call a big, hairy, audacious goal, and you need to go after it, like see it as part of your identity, and who you are and believe in it. I think most importantly, just believe in yourself, because anything is possible.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah, and I totally agree with you, I think we should have big, huge, impossible goals, we should all have those kinds of goals for ourselves. Because if we don’t, if our goals are small, that means they’re because we a lot of people, we set small goals for ourselves because we know we can attain them.
But those small goals feel kind of comfortable for us. But we want those big or bigger things that are uncomfortable, the ones that require us to change and to become more in the process of going for them. Right. So love that.
Let me ask you this. How do you feel about going forward of all this? So you and I worked together for a few months. But now do you feel like you have like what it takes to like continue this as a way of life? Is this something that you just did temporarily? Like where do you stand with all that today?
Melanie Millaway
I think it’s I’m more confident than ever. It’s completely sustainable. It is a life track, like a lifestyle choice. It’s not like a diet or something that’s a fad that’s, you know, quickly slips away. Like I feel like I’ve acquired a set of skills that are transferable across all facets of my life.
And again, I think when I started this journey I was, I thought my goal was one thing. But really what I was seeking was something else and just the skill set that I’ve acquired make it easier for me to have a positive mindset. Being able to take back control, like, it’s a huge and just the self-confidence that comes from it. It’s life-changing. And it’s been a transformational process for me.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s so awesome. I love that. And that’s really the goal is to make this something that is pretty easy and effortless that you can carry forward. You know, we’re not about it’s not about the short term, it’s not about like, losing weight, or, you know, improving your running for a month or two. This is about lifestyle changes.
You know, it’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself and being able to continue that going forward. You know, I always say that health is not a destination that we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our lives. And so you’re sort of an example of that, you know, and that’s why one of the reasons why I want to talk to you is because now you’re just like, Yeah, this is how I live my life now. I love that. So awesome.
Last question, really, like, what would you say to someone who isn’t sure about this stuff? Or isn’t sure if they’re ready to change? You know, or, or they’re on the fence? Or they’re undecided? Or they’re not sure if it’s the right time? Like, what would you say to that person?
Melanie Millaway
Put yourself out there, you’ve got nothing to lose. I mean, just kind of the growth through discomfort, make an investment in yourself. It works if you go all in and you’re truly committed to the program, and you’re willing to get uncomfortable, but it can change your life and how you experience the world.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, heck yeah. I think just like starting is just so important for people. You know, just like start, just get started. I know. But what happens is we start to think about, oh, I want to change my diet. I want to get healthy, I want to lose some weight, I want to get leaner, I want to improve my running, I want to get faster.
And then we start like, we just think about it and all this stuff starts coming up for us like oh, I’ve never worked for me in the past. Or maybe this is not the right time. I need to wait till after the holidays, or you know, whatever. But yeah, I think that’s good advice. Just start, just get started today, get started, do something for yourself today.
Anything else you wanted to talk about or anything else you wanted to mention before we finish up here?
Melanie Millaway
No, I mean, just yeah, be fully committed. Trust the contents of this program it is life-changing. It really appeals, it’s very logical. Makes a lot of sense. It’s very simplistic, kind of easy to understand and follow.
It’s built on a bunch of principles that build upon themselves. So it’s, it’s just so different than I know, I totally ditched the idea of because I’m a runner, I can eat whatever I want. Now that thought process is gone.
And I guess one other final thought too, is just again, it’s just a huge sense of relief that I can do things more efficiently with this process. Like I don’t have to spend hours running. Like I can work smarter, not harder.
And being a fat-adapted runner is so much easier. Like I’m not constantly eating I don’t feel hungry all the time. You know, I have two meals a day, I don’t snack. I can distinguish hunger from cravings and I’m just amazed at how little food I need to eat. And I’m always leaving a meal feeling satisfied. And you know, fat is your friend like it gets a bad rap. I think fat needs a new PR agent, because not only does it taste delicious, but again, it leaves you feeling satisfied. So yeah, it’s good.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. Focus on fat, focus on protein. Those are the macros we want to be focused on. Awesome stuff, Melanie. Well, thanks again for coming on here and sharing your story and sharing about your transformation. And we’re gonna keep an eye on you and just kind of see where things go with you. Do you have any races coming up anytime soon?
Melanie Millaway
I’ve got one in April, I’ve got a half I’m looking forward to. And then I’ll be focused on you know, building some lean muscle mass. So that’s what’s next for me.
Patrick McGilvray
Love it. Well, we’ll stay in touch and we’ll do an update here. Once you start getting strong and ripped. Okay. All right. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it and thanks for just sharing so much about your story. It’s been really cool.
Melanie Millaway
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
If you’re like most people (me included), your beliefs about what you can or can’t accomplish are based on whatever you’ve been able to do up to this point in your life. You might want to lose 30 …
Continue Reading about 111. Thinking Beyond Your Current Self →
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 111, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: thinking beyond your current self. So, if you’re anything like most people, me included, then your beliefs about what you can or what you can’t accomplish are probably based on whatever you’ve been able to do up to this point in your life.
So, you might want to lose 30 pounds, but deep down inside, you don’t believe you can get there because every time you’ve tried to lose weight in the past, you failed. So, your point of reference with weight loss is that you always give in to temptation and you end up failing.
So, you’re looking to your past experiences as evidence that you will never be able to lose weight in the future; who you are today is all you’ll ever be. Whoa, that’s incredibly limiting! It’s an incredibly limiting mindset. It’s keeping you stuck where you are. So, in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to show you a powerful, powerful way to start thinking beyond your current self, so that you can break out of that cycle of your past and become that badass future self that I know you want to be!
But first, if you like this podcast, then you have to come check out the Running Lean Podcast Community on Facebook. This is a group of like-minded runners who come together to encourage each other and support each other. We share goals, we share pictures of ourselves running, and we have fun doing it. I also post some trainings and we do some teaching and coaching in the group. It’d be fun to have you; just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook and come join in the fun.
And then listen, if you’re having trouble envisioning more for yourself, if there’s some version of you that you ultimately want to become, but you’re just having trouble, like figuring out what it really is that you want for yourself. If you’re confused by all of this conflicting information out there around diet and exercise and weight loss. If you’re having a hard time doing things like giving up sugar; it’s just too hard to stop, it’s too hard to let go of. If you’re ready to be done with all that frustration and you’re ready to get some help. If you’re ready to commit to becoming the most badass version of yourself, then you have to apply for one on one coaching with me, this is what I do, I can help you break out of that cycle of feeling like you’re addicted to sugar, I can help you end the frustration, end the confusion and we’ll put together a plan for you that will help you decide who it is that you want to become and then we’re going to work towards making that happen for you.
If you’re interested in working with me as your coach you can apply for coaching at runningleanpodcast.com/apply. Let’s make this the year that you become the badass that you want to be, cool?
Alright, let’s talk about this thinking beyond your current self. So, here’s why I wanted to talk about this today. For a lot of us, and this is me included, I definitely have some experience with this and I’m going to tell you a little bit about that in a second here. For a lot of us we base our beliefs about what it is we think we can do. We base our beliefs about what it is or who it is we think we can become based on what we’ve done in our past and whatever we’ve been able to achieve up to this point. So, you might get to a certain point in your life and then you can’t see beyond where you are. You can’t see beyond your current state.
You decide on goals. So, you choose goals based on what you think you can accomplish based on where you are today instead of what you really want for yourself. You end up thinking very small and only end up getting more of what you have already created for yourself; you end up just getting more and more of what you’ve already done.
Here’s the thing in order to grow: in order to evolve, in order to become more you have to think beyond your current self, you have to believe in a version of yourself that doesn’t even exist yet. And this is what trips up most people. Most people cannot think beyond who they are today.
So let me give you a picture of what this looks like. Maybe you’re carrying around some extra weight and you have been for a while, maybe running has gotten a lot harder than it needs to be for you. And by the way, this was my experience, I’m kind of describing me a couple years back, okay? Running was a lot harder than it needed to be. For me, I felt like I was out of control with my food choices. I’ve tried a bunch of stuff. Nothing ever really worked. I was frustrated, I was confused, I felt pretty hopeless, actually.
And here’s what happens when we’re in that state: we base what we’re able to do on where we are today. So based on feeling out of control, and frustrated and confused and hopeless, what do you think you can accomplish when you’re in that state? Not a lot, I’m going to tell you. So you end up being stuck, you feel like you’re stuck.
You’re just feeling like this is just where I’m going to be. I can’t lose the weight, I can’t control my food choices, I’m always going to feel out of control, I’m always going to feel frustrated, I’m always going to be confused, I’m always going to be stuck.
Now you wish you could become leaner. You wish you could get stronger, you wish you could lose the weight, you wish you could become a different person, but you’re not actually believing that it’s possible for you.
In order to move beyond where you are today, you have to believe in a version of yourself that doesn’t even exist yet. You have to believe in a version of yourself that is greater than where you are today, you have to think beyond your current results.
So if your results are, hey, I’m 30 pounds overweight, I’m frustrated, I’m confused, nothing ever works. That’s where you are today. And if that’s your point of reference, and that’s what you’re using to base what you think you can accomplish. That’s all you’re going to be able to accomplish, you’re just going to stay stuck where you are.
So, you have to get past that! You have to start thinking beyond your current self, beyond who you are here today. Because listen, the current self, your current self, will not get you there, can’t get you there.
Who you are today is probably the result of years or decades of patterns of behavior, patterns of thoughts, patterns of feelings, patterns of actions, habits, really. You’ve been on autopilot for a long time, right? So, who you are today is just a result of all these past habits is the result of past thinking and past patterns of behavior. That’s it. That’s all it is, not that big of a deal, doesn’t mean you’re bad. Let’s just, you know, here’s what you’ve done up to this point. And this is where it got you, these are the results you have today, who you are today is just the culmination of years of past thought patterns and feeling patterns and action patterns and behaviors.
But what got you here won’t get you there. What got you here isn’t going to get you where you want to become. So you have to make a shift, you need to start thinking beyond who you’ve been up to this point beyond what you’ve done up to this point, you have got to break out of those old patterns of behavior.
So, here’s how your mind works. Humans are really good at seeing and recognizing patterns. It’s what helps us to recognize what’s safe versus what’s dangerous when we see patterns of people in nature; animals in the animal kingdom and things like that. Like we used to be like “Oh, this is good. This thing will kill me. Okay.”
All these animals, these little tiny furry creatures are good, but this big one with all the stripes and the big teeth? That’s the one that’s going to eat me. He wants to eat me. These other ones are fine, but this one wants to eat me, so we’re good at seeing patterns.
We’re good at understanding what’s safe versus what’s dangerous. Okay, we’re still really good at this stuff today. We love patterns. We love habits. We love repetition. The more we do something, the easier it becomes, right? Your mind is like a perfect recording device, by the way, so it’s always recording everything that’s ever happened to you. You actually remember everything that’s ever happened to you deep down in your subconscious. You can’t possibly pull it all out right now, you can’t bring it into your conscious mind. It’s all buried down in there, you know. So basically, you’ve memorized all the things that you’ve done, all the patterns of behavior. And that’s just what you know, you know this stuff really, really well. It’s part of who you are, your whole identity is based on all these patterns that you’ve done up to this point, or all the things that you’ve not done up to this point. The things you’ve failed at, the things you’ve succeeded at. But whatever it is, everything about who you are, is based on your past.
But in order to grow into that future healthy, lean, strong runner that you know you want to be, you have to think beyond your current self.
So I know you’ve done this before, think back to when you just started running, you could never imagine running a marathon right? Again, this was definitely me; my experience, I couldn’t imagine. When I first started running, I couldn’t imagine running three miles without stopping. I was training for a 5K and I was like, “I’m going to run 3 miles without stopping.” I couldn’t imagine doing that! But then I did. And then I decided to sign up for a 10K. And I was like, “How am I going to run 6 miles? That’s like double what I’ve ever been able to do in the past.” So, in order to run that first three miles, and in order to double that and run 6.2 miles without stopping, I had to think beyond my current results. My current results said “You know, when I was training for that 5K, my current results said you can run like a mile and a half, and then you have to stop.” But I was going to run three miles without stopping. So, I had to think beyond my current results. And then when I decided at some point that I was going to train for and run a marathon. I know this is crazy, right? I was like “I don’t think this is possible. But I’m committed to doing this. And I need to start thinking beyond where I am today. I need to start thinking beyond my current self.”
Because if I didn’t, I never would have shown up for those training runs, I never would have put the time into it. Because deep down inside, I never would have believed I could do that. But I think at some point, I really did start to believe that. I had to really think beyond where I was at this point, though. Same thing when I ran 50 miles or 100 miles. You know, I ran 50 miles and I was like “I could never run 100 miles. The 50 was hard enough. I can’t imagine doubling it.” And then I did. And I did that because I imagined a future me that could accomplish that.
Here’s another example. I love this one. Like toddlers, they are constantly thinking beyond their current selves. They may not even be able to, you know, articulate this, but they are. If you’ve ever watched a toddler learning how to walk, you’re going to see them. Like, they just keep trying, right? They keep going for it time and time and time again, they just keep trying and trying and trying and they keep failing.
I watched my grandson do this last year. On his first birthday, he, you know, would walk his first few steps. It was so amazing. But then he fell down. But then a couple of days later he did like eight or 10 steps, you know, but then he would fall down. But he kept going, he kept getting up, wiping out trying a few steps. He’d fall down, get up and keep trying again. Right. So he kept going, even though everything he had done up to that point, failed. Everything he had done up to that point was like, “You can’t do this. You can’t walk! You’ve never been able to do this in the past. There’s no evidence that you can look to from your past to make you think that you can do this thing walking. What is that? You’ve never been able to. How do you think you’re going to possibly do this?”
So this little tiny, beautiful little creature was like, screw that I’m going to make this work. And he kept trying. And now of course, he’s running around like crazy and you can’t keep up with him. But if he based whether or not he could walk on his past results, or who he was in that moment, he would never be able to walk. No kid would ever be able to walk or ride a bicycle or graduate from high school, or get a job or buy a house or have kids or anything right. It’s the exact same thing for us.
Wherever you are today, if you’re looking for some evidence, some sort of hard evidence, something to make you believe, without a doubt that you’re going to get to your goal weight, or you’re going to be able to get stronger, or run faster, or become that total badass, there is no evidence for it, because you haven’t been able to do it yet.
The evidence comes after you get there; you have to believe it in order to see it, not the other way around. You have to believe it before you see it. You have to think, feel and act beyond who you are today.
And somebody I was talking about this with somebody recently. And they said, “Isn’t this just like fake it till you make it?” And it’s kind of like that, but there’s nothing fake about it. Your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, these are not fake.
Even just imagining something in your mind using the power of your own imagination. It’s not fake. It’s not fake to your subconscious mind, right? Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined.
So, when you imagine something in your mind, to your subconscious, it’s like it’s really happening. Everything you create in this world, every result that you get is first imagined in your mind. Think about it, let’s say you want to build a house, or take a vacation, the very first thing you do is imagine what that house will look like, how big is that master suite going to be? How big is that walk in closet going to be?
Or thinking about that vacation, that beach is going to be so awesome, so warm. Those palm trees are going to be bending in the breeze and that blue green ocean water with those waves crashing on the sand. So, I just conjured up all these images with my imagination. Now I can work to make these things a reality. I’ll pick a place to go. I really want to go somewhere warm now that I’m doing this. As I look outside, it’s cold and snowy and everything, but I’m like now I want to go up, pick a place, book my flights and then go.
But first I have to make that connection in my mind, I have to go beyond where I am today. I have to imagine it. So, it’s really not like fake it till you make it’s more like think beyond your current self and then become it.
I want to encourage you to start applying this in your life today. Stop living in the past, right? The past is not who you are. It’s just what got you here today. Okay, I want you to decide who you want to be. So define your future self. And really spend some time on this. Really think about what it is you want for yourself and who it is you want to be. What does that future badass version of yourself look like, sound like, feel like?
And then start living into your future self by thinking beyond who you are today, thinking beyond your current self, beyond your current results. Regardless of what you think you can or can’t do, regardless of your past and what’s worked or not worked in the past for you. Regardless of where you are today or who you are today, start thinking beyond your current self. And then you can start growing and evolving and becoming that badass future version of yourself. Cool?
And then remember, if you ever want help with this, if you want help thinking about who it is you want to become and thinking beyond your current self, if you’re ready to commit to becoming that future version of yourself, then apply for one on one coaching with me runningleanpodcast.com/apply. I would love to have you and it would be super fun to work with you!
I hope you got something out of this today. Love you all, keep on running lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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