Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Let’s be real—eating healthy can feel like a total drag sometimes, especially when all your favorite foods seem to be off-limits. But what if I told you that you don’t have to give up everything …
Continue Reading about 289. 10 Food Swaps to Help You Eat Healthier (Without Hating Your Life) →
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 289 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today 10 food swaps to help you eat healthier without hating your life. So let’s be real. Eating healthy can often feel like a total drag sometimes, especially when all your favorite foods seem to be off limits.
But what if I told you that you don’t have to give up everything you love in order to eat healthy E in order to lose fat and still feel totally satisfied? In this episode, I’m gonna share 10 food swaps to help you eat healthier without hating your life. Uh, these aren’t bland or boring substitutions either.
These are gonna be kind of lower carb, whole food or alternatives that taste amazing. They’ll actually leave you feeling full and feeling energized. If you’re a runner who’s been struggling to stay on track with your eating. This episode is gonna show you that eating healthy doesn’t have to suck. You’ll learn how to make small, sustainable changes that can lead to big results without feeling like you’re on some sad, restrictive diet.
But first, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, man, eating healthy always feels so hard. Or I keep trying to lose weight, but nothing ever sticks. I hear you. Most runners I talk to are putting in the miles, but they’re not seeing the results that they want. They’re frustrated, exhausted, and they’re not sure what to do next.
That’s exactly why I created my coaching program to help you dial in your nutrition, get stronger, improve your running, and finally feel like you’re in control of your health and fitness again. You don’t need another generic meal plan. You don’t need to train harder or run longer. What you do need is a proven, personalized approach that works with you, with your lifestyle, with your goals, and with your body.
Inside my program, I will guide you step by step so that you can lose weight. Build muscle boost, endurance, and become the healthiest, strongest version of yourself. Yet. If you’re ready to stop struggling and start thriving, just head over to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me. Let’s get started.
Cool. Cool. Okay, let’s get into this episode. Listen, I get it that when you decide you want to start eating healthier, it can kind of feel lame. I hear people tell me this all the time, this is why a lot of people just don’t ever try to lose weight or, or try to change their diet because it just, it, it feels so restrictive and it feels terrible, and it just feels like you’re gonna be eating.
You know, kale and cardboard, you know, all the time. Um, it feels like you’re going to give up everything that you’ve grown to love. You know, pizza, ice cream, beer, pancakes. You just gotta eat salads and chicken breasts and, you know, broccoli and that’s it. Like those are your only choices, you know. But that’s not what we do.
That’s not what I do with my coaching clients. That’s not what we do in my program. Healthy eating doesn’t have to suck. Losing weight doesn’t mean you have to eat like a bird, you know, like seeds and nuts and that’s it. Also, becoming a fat adapted, high performing runner doesn’t require cutting every carbohydrate out of your life.
You can make smarter food choices that support your fast loss, fat loss goals that still taste good. This still tastes pretty amazing actually. You just have to make a few swaps. Nothing crazy. This isn’t about some extreme one way or the other. Um, I just wanted to put something together to help you start to see that you can make some simple changes.
Uh, and start actually eating some foods that are healthy for you and delicious and satisfying, and will help you accomplish your weight loss and your running goals. Okay, so I tried to concentrate on Whole Foods, low-ish carb options. Some of these have some carbs in there. We’re not afraid of carbs though, right?
You just gotta do ’em in moderation and try to stay away from some of the refined carbs. But they’re satisfying, they’re delicious, and they actually work for runners who are trying to feel better and, and lose some weight, and gain some muscle and things like that. Um, but a lot of runners tell me that, you know, I really want to eat better, but I just don’t want to give up all the foods that I love and I totally get that.
Uh, and you don’t have to a hundred percent give up all the foods that you love. You can still enjoy food. You can still have variety. You can still enjoy good flavor from food. You can even have what I would call dessert, but instead of eating. The processed high carb, sugar laden stuff that just keeps you packing on fat.
You just gotta swap out some of that stuff for something better. Just healthier choices. And you’d be surprised how easy this can be once you kind of get the hang of it. Okay, so I’ve got 10 options here. Listen, there are way more than 10 healthy swaps that you could do for things that you love. I couldn’t possibly fit these all into one episode.
Like there’s thousands of them really. But I picked a few that I think address some of the foods that people tend to miss the most. At least this is the kind of stuff that I miss the most. Um, so let’s start with number one. Um, and that would be ice cream. Okay. I am an ice cream junkie, or at least I used to be.
Um, I still do enjoy some ice cream here and there, but what I do instead most of the time is I substitute something healthier for ice cream. Now you can actually find, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna talk about a couple different things here today. I’m gonna talk about some i items that you can purchase at the store that might be substitutes, and then something that you can kind of make at home that’s more of a whole foods type of thing.
Okay? So ice cream is one of those that falls into both categories where. You can go to the grocery store and you can find some decent kinda lower carb, uh, ice cream brands that don’t have a bunch of sugar in them. It, it’s still kind of processed food, so just keep that in mind. But there are some healthier alternatives to ice cream.
Just look in the ice cream section for things like Halo Top or Rebel Creamery. Um, there’s a couple other brands out there that are pretty decent. You know, they’ve got, they use whole ingredients, but some of these have thickeners and things like that in ’em. So if you’re not interested in that, one of the, the best alternatives to just eating ice cream or something store-bought, that’s a, like a lower carb option would be just do some Greek yogurt, uh, get some plain Greek yogurt, add some berries to it.
I love blueberries and strawberries. Mix that with a little Greek yogurt. Sometimes I will put a little tiny drizzle of, uh, honey or some maple syrup on top of that. Um, not much, um, just a, you know, teaspoon or two. Um, and this is something that you can do after eating dinner. It’s a wonderful, like, very satisfying dessert type of food option.
Um. It tastes like a dessert, but it’s higher in protein, it’s low in sugar, it’s way more satisfying. It’s gonna keep you full. Um, you can even add a little bit of cinnamon in there, maybe some chopped nuts on top that this is such an awesome substitute for ice cream. So this got me through for a long time ’cause I just quit eating ice cream altogether.
I used to eat a lot of ice cream. Um, so I quit eating ice cream. And so then I would just do the Greek yogurt and berries. Um, and I just did that for a long time and then occasionally I would add a little bit of honey or something to it, but you don’t even really need that if, if the, uh, berries that you got are in season and they’re nice and sweet.
So that’s one. Another one is, um, a lot of people, you know, they want to give up some of the high carb. Staple foods like rice. And a good option for, for substituting would be something like rice, cauliflower. And this is a item again that you can get at the store. It’s pre rice. Um, you can make this yourself as well, but if you just go in the frozen food section and you look for like where the vegetables are, a lot of times you can find like brown rice and, and white rice, but also cauliflower rice, riced, cauliflower.
And this is super low in carbs. It’s got the same kind of texture as rice. It does taste a little bit different. Um, but it’s got few, just a few calories you can really load up your plate with this stuff. And, um, uh, it, it’s such a great substitute. You can use it any in, in, just use it in place of rice, stir fries.
Um, I would get like, uh, Indian takeout. I love Indian food. Um, but super high in carbs, right? But I would get something. That was kind of a low carb dish. And then instead of using the rice that they give me with it, I would just heat up some, uh, cauliflower rice and have that with it. It’s super delicious and I can feel good about what I’m eating.
I’m, I’m not eating this huge load of carbohydrate. Um, so again, you can, you can get this at the store. You can make it yourself. I have riced it myself. Um, to be honest, it’s a little bit of work and it’s very messy. Like stuff’s just flying everywhere. But if you’re cool with that, make it at home. It’s pretty easy to do.
If you’ve got, uh, like a, I don’t know, like a cheese shredder or something like that, that you can use to do it, the stuff they have at the store, it’s awesome though. Okay. So, and you can use, I mean, just think about anywhere that you use rice and you can just use this instead. Um, okay. Number three is substituting something for wheat flour.
I know one of the biggest things that people freak out about when, um, they start going kind of on a lower carb, um, journey here, um, is wheat flour. So wheat flour is one of those things that is. Is a refined carbohydrate and it actually spikes your blood sugar more than eating actual sugar does. Because it’s such a fine ground powder, it does have a higher impact on your blood sugar.
So just keep that in mind, like it’s going to be problematic to eat regular wheat flour. So instead there’s, there’s low carb options that are actually. Pretty good. And again, you can buy this stuff at the store. I would kind of recommend that because, you know, creating flour is, is, is a little bit of work.
Um, but you can do it in a, uh, food processor, a blender or something like that. But a couple options might be something like almond flour, so that’s gonna be pretty tasty. A little bit different texture though. So if you’re using it in recipes and stuff like that, you can kind of substitute it for wheat flour, but it’s gonna be, it’s gonna give you a little bit of a different consistency.
Um, and the one that I’ve been using lately that I really love is oat flour. Now I get it, oats are gonna be a little bit higher in carbs, but I consider this kind of a whole food type of substitution. Um, and if you’re okay with some carbs, then this is not a bad way to go. Um. But when you’re baking or making breads, um, even doing things like um, pizza crust, you can use almond flour to make pizza crust.
Um, if you guys wanna Google something like fathead pizza crust, I think it uses a mozzarella cheese and some almond flour and an egg or something like that, and it creates this amazing pizza crust that’s super delicious. But pancakes, muffins, all kinds of things. I make this really healthy. And very delicious, uh, pancake.
I’ve been doing this recently, um, cooking ’em on the Blackstone outside, which is super fun. So we’re just making pancakes outdoors and it’s, uh, oat flour, or I’m sorry, it’s just oats, but I grind it up in the, in the food processor. Um, so it’s oats and uh, cottage cheese and eggs. Those are really the only three ingredients and then you just blend it up and, and it makes a really awesome, um, very healthy, uh, pancake batter that you can just cook up like you would.
Normal pancakes, you know, they’re not as fluffy as the flour pancakes, but I don’t care. They taste so good. Um, and again, that’s gonna be a little bit higher on the carbohydrate side if you’re doing the oat flour. But almond flour, great alternative. You can also look at the store. They do have. Low carb flower blends that you can get that are pretty good too.
So don’t think like you can never have another muffin or another pancake. Again, there are options out there. Some are gonna be a little bit higher in carbs, and then if you’re okay with that, that’s fine. Some you can get very low carb options. Um, here’s another one that a lot of runners freak out about giving up, and that is beer.
I know so many runners who just love beer. They love drink a beer, especially after they run. So they finish running. This’ll be like eight, nine o’clock in the morning, and immediately they’re all drinking beers. And I’m just kinda shaking my head like, I don’t think that’s really what you should be doing, but hey, no judgment whatsoever.
Now, full disclosure, I used to drink beer. I used to love beer. I probably would’ve been one of those people that’s drinking at nine o’clock in the morning. Um, but I haven’t had alcohol in 18 and a half years or something like that. So for me, I just don’t want to be drinking alcohol. Um, alcohol plus the carbs that you get from the beer.
Just, you’re just storing fat at that point. You know, it makes it very hard to lose weight if you’re drinking alcohol. Um, but if you love the taste of beer, why not try something like a non-alcoholic beer? You, you will be surprised even at the regular grocery store, how many non-alcoholic beer options they have that taste really good.
So I have been enjoying some of these on occasion. Um, the, the one that I kind of recommend would be like athletic, athletic brewing. They make all non-alcoholic beers. They have, um, a few that are pretty low in carbs. I. Pretty low in calories. Um, they taste like, uh, an IPA or a golden Ale or something like that.
Um, from what I remember anyway, um, people that do drink beer, they say they taste great. Um, and this is a great option to have. And honestly, I’ll have one of these and I’m completely, completely satisfied. We’re in the past when I used to drink beer. You know, I drink five or six of these things, you know, and I, I’m, I’m, that’s a lot.
It’s a big carbohydrate load, big alcohol load, big stressor on the system. Don’t need to do that. Have a non-alcoholic beer. Enjoy yourself and you can still hang out with your friends and you don’t have to give up the things that you love. Okay? A hundred percent. Um, we’re, we’re enjoying the taste without having the negative side effects that come along with it, with the alcohol.
Cool. So that’s a good one to try. Uh, let’s see. We’re up to number five. Number five is potato chips. If you’re somebody that loves chips and you just can’t imagine giving those up, let’s try something else. You can actually do, um, something like roasted chickpeas. You know, put some chickpeas on a, on a sheet pan.
Put a little seasoning on there. Roast ’em up in the oven for, I don’t know, 10 minutes or something like that. Um, you can actually buy these at the store as well. You can buy roasted chickpeas. Um. Or veggie chips. Sometimes they have something that is like sweet potato, kale, um, zucchini. You can actually make these yourself too.
Put ’em in the air fryer, put a little drizzle of, uh, you know, olive oil on them. Uh, maybe a few, uh, little seasoning, a little salt or something like that. Fry ’em up in the air fryer, do some sweet potatoes or kale or zucchini or something like that. Oh, that sounds delicious. Now, nuts is one of those things where it’s a, a lot of people like to eat nuts and that’s fine if you want that crunchy thing, you’re missing potato chips or whatever.
Problem with nuts is that they are very high in calories. Um, high in fat, not such a big, that’s not such a big problem. But what happens is when you start eating nuts, people tend to like eat a lot of them. If you’re like me, if I get a bag of roasted almonds or cashews or something like that, technically cashews or legumes, I get that.
But I can eat a ton of that stuff. Like I can eat my body weight in nuts in a day, so I have to be careful of that one. So something like chickpeas, you’re not gonna, you’re not as tempted to overeat it or like the, the kind of veggie chips that you make yourself. Give it a try. You never know. It might be something that is, uh, a really good substitute for you.
Um, another one is sandwich bread. So people are, oh my God, I can’t believe I can never eat sandwich bread again. Listen, you can, and again, there are some good options at the store that you can get that are kind of low in, in carbs. Um, some of them I am, I question just there, there’s a lot of ingredients in there.
It’s kind of a highly processed. Item, honestly. Um, some of them are pretty good. Try ’em and see what you think. It’s up to you. Like, I just tend to not get a lot of these things because they just have a lot of ingredients that I’m just not totally sure about. Some of them use wheat flour and then they just add a bunch of fiber to help, um, offset the carb impact, you know.
So if you’re eating a bunch of W wheat flour anyway and they’re just adding fiber in the form of, you know, flax seed or something like that, is that really how we wanna be doing this? Like, I don’t know. ’cause you kind of can subtract the fiber from the food if it’s a whole food. But since it is a processed food and you’re just adding two ingredients together, is that really kind of.
Good for you. Jury’s out on that one. I don’t have a, a direct yes or no answer to that, but I tend to kind of stay away from some of the low carb breads out there. I’ve tried a few of ’em and honestly, they’re, they’re okay. Um, but you can do things, um, like when I go to restaurants, sometimes I’ll get a burger and I’ll just ask for an extra patty.
And no, no bun. So I just eat it like naked, you know, eat it with like a knife and fork. It’s delicious. Or you could do lettuce wraps. A lot of places will do the lettuce wraps, or they, they wrap it in like collard greens or something like that. But if you want a a, a, a delicious kind of sandwich. Type of thing and you don’t really want to do the bread, try something like a lettuce wrap or make your own using, you know, the almond flour or the wheat or the oat flour.
You know, that might be a good idea too. You can get tons of recipes online. That’s another thing I’ll just say, go do a little bit of research, you know, drop your, your questions into Google or chat GPT or something, and. Find out what options are available for you, um, because there’s so many things out there that you’re probably not even aware of.
Okay? Um, another one is sugary cereal. I know a lot of runners love to eat cereal. I don’t know what that is. They just like, love the cereal. Like it’s an excuse to eat a bunch of junk food, honestly. Oh, I’m a runner and I got a car blow, so they’re eating Captain Crunch or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I love some Captain Crunch.
I used to eat that stuff all the time. Haven’t eaten that in God. 10 year, 15 years. I don’t know. It’s been a long time now that I’m thinking about it. Now I need to go get me some Captain Crunch. I probably won’t do that, but instead of sugary cereal, you could do something like, uh, chia seed pudding with berries and some nuts in there.
So you can just make a quick chia pudding with, you know, milk or almond milk, maybe a little s. Little Stevia. A little sweetener. Top it with some berries and nuts. You can even do like the sugar-free jello pudding mix or something like that. It doesn’t have to be complicated, you know, but that’s a good way of like, you know, starting your day with, you know, a little bit of pudding.
Um. Some berries, some nuts, some seeds, um, instead of the sugary cereal, and it’s gonna help you, it’s gonna give you fiber, it’s gonna be good for your digestion, help you to stay full longer. Again, a lot of these foods we’re trying to like, maintain satiety and a lot of the. Super, um, carby foods, they, they actually do the opposite.
They make us feel more hungry and we have more cravings during the day, so we tend to overeat. But when you’re eating higher protein, good sources of fats, you tend to not eat as much. You’re more satisfied throughout the day. Um, again, trying to lose weight. We gotta stop the overeating thing. Um, soda. If you’re a soda drinker and you just can’t imagine giving up your Dr.
Pepper or Mountain Dew or whatever it is that you drink, um, which, you know, by the way, those, those cans have something around 40 grams of sugar per per can. That’s a lot of sugar. You know, that’s gonna be, I think the equivalent is something like 28 teaspoons of sugar or something. It’s ridiculous. Do not drink sugar.
Try to stay away from liquid sugar as best you can. Um, much healthy alternatives would be something like sparkling water. Um, couple things there. I get, uh, LaCroix or Polar or whatever, you know, brand Waterloo, whatever kind of brand is on sale at, at the grocery store. I’ll pick up a bunch of those. I love the taste of, of some of those sparkling waters.
No calories. There’s no. There’s a little bit of flavoring in there, but they, they taste fine. I love those things. I also have a soda stream here, so I just make my own sparkling water with no, uh, flavoring at all. That’s a nice thing to do. I’ve had that for God, about 15 years or so, and I use that pretty much every day.
Um, the other suggestion, especially for US runners would be, uh, some electrolyte mix. Do some electrolyte powder, get some elements, some Redmond, relight, you know, some, uh, liquid iv, anything like that that’s going to, it’s gonna have a good flavor and it’s gonna give you some nutrients that you actually need, you know, uh, some minerals you got.
Sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium. You need that stuff anyway. Why not drink that a couple times throughout the day? Um, but the sparkling waters are so much better for you. And listen, if you feel like you need to have that diet Coke every now and then, I. Yeah, don’t worry about it so much. It’s not that big of a deal.
I know some people are so adamant about never eating, uh, or never drinking anything like that because it’s like, oh, it’s got, what is it got in there, aspartame or something like that. You know, the occasional diet Coke instead of drinking 40 grams of sugar. I would say that’s a much better choice. Okay. We don’t need to go crazy with this stuff.
Have the Diet Coke if you want it. Um, pasta. If you’re somebody that loves pasta, and I do, I love pasta. There’s lots of alternatives there. Some of these you can get, uh, but you can make your own too. I, I think there’s some options at the store I haven’t checked lately, but there used to be some good low carb sort of pasta options, but you can make your own with like zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash.
Um, there’s even a new one that I, uh, kind of read about recently, paulini, which is like using um, uh, palm. Uh, root, you know, um, so that’s something that you can try. Um, you know, hey, whatever works, you know, but you can just like use it in place of, uh, regular wheat noodles, you know, um, roast up some spaghetti squash, kind of pull a, pull a stringy stuff out of there.
Then you’ve got a nice kind of substitute for, uh, pasta there. Okay. Um, and then number 10 would be salad dressing. So a lot of people love salads and, and I think this is a really healthy alternative to eat. Uh, a lot more salads. I love a big salad with, you know, some nice veggies on there. I’ll throw some avocado, maybe some hard boiled egg, a little bit of cheese on my salad.
And then you, you can use a dressing that is healthier. So instead of the store-bought dressings that have. Seed oils and a lot of sugar in there. You can make your own, um, add some olive oil, some vinegar, maybe a little Dijon mustard, put a little seasoning in there. Boom, you’ve got a nice homemade olive oil based dressing.
You can, and, and the the, the ways you can do this are endless, like you can make your own. Also at the grocery store, there’s a brand that I love called Primal Kitchen. Now Primal Kitchen has a whole line of salad dressings that are mingled with avocado oil. And zero sugar. And they are all delicious. They are a little bit more expensive, but to me it’s worth it.
I love that stuff. I don’t, I always have time to make my own dressing. I was making my own dressing there for a while. Um, you know, I just make it up ahead of time. Blend a bunch of ingredients up in the Vitamix, throw it in a mason jar, throw it in the fridge, and it would last for weeks, you know. But that’s up to you.
You know, you can buy some, some decent stuff at the store. Very delicious, primal kitchen, or make some of your own, you know, it doesn’t have to be, uh uh, you don’t have to be, uh, subject to eating all the seed oils and consuming all the sugary salad dressings that you get at the store. Okay? All right, so there you go.
10 food swaps that are simple, tasty, and sustainable. You don’t need to flip your entire diet upside down overnight. Start with a few of these swaps and then you can kind of build from there. The point is you can eat real food, lose fat, fuel your running, and still love what you’re eating. It is possible.
And if you’re ready to stop struggling and start getting real results, head over to my website running lean coaching.com, click on work with me and let’s you and I get to work. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
We’ve all done it—worn cotton socks on a long run, tried something new on race day, asked a Facebook group to diagnose our injury. Runners are awesome… but we also do some pretty dumb stuff …
Continue Reading about 288. Dumb Stuff Runners Do (And What to Do Instead) →
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 288 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today dumb stuff runners do and what to do instead. So we’ve all done it, worn cotton socks on a long run or tried something new on race day, or asked a Facebook group to diagnose our injury.
Listen, runners are awesome, but we also do some pretty dumb stuff sometimes. The good news is that every dumb mistake is just an opportunity to learn and to grow. So in this episode, I’m laying out dumb stuff runners do, and I’m gonna share what you should do instead. This is gonna be a little more lighthearted episode, but also brutally honest.
I wanna look at the common mistakes that a lot of us runners make, even me that can lead to injury. Or burnout or stalled progress. And there’s no judgment here because I’ve done most of these things myself. Um, this is all about helping you to train smarter, to stay healthy, and to become a stronger, more efficient runner.
So if you’re ready to stop doing dumb stuff and start running with purpose, this episode is for you. But first, here’s the truth. A lot of run runners are struggling. They’re training hard, but not seeing results. Running still feels harder than it should. The weight isn’t coming off, the strength isn’t improving, and no matter how many miles they log, they just can’t seem to break through.
If any of this sounds familiar, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most runners are missing. Just a few key ingredients, things like having a smart personalized training plan, having a real nutrition strategy that supports your goals, and most importantly, having a coach who actually gets you. And that’s where I come in.
My coaching program is designed specifically for runners who wanna lose weight. Get stronger and finally feel good about their running Again, this isn’t some one size fits all plan. This is real coaching with real results. So if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making some serious progress, head over to my website runningleancoaching.com.
Click on work with me. Let’s work together to get you leaner. To get you stronger and to get you running at your full potential. Okay, so today I wanted to talk about dumb stuff that runners do, and then of course I’m gonna offer some tips on maybe what you should do instead. But I was having coffee this morning with my fiancee Jill, and we were talking about some.
Something that some runner we saw posted something and we are like, that’s so dumb. Why do people do that? We should really tell people that they shouldn’t do this dumb stuff. You know, I’m not gonna mention what it was exactly. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble or anything like that. But it was just something that we’ve seen people do before.
Um, and it may be something I mentioned in here, but again, I don’t wanna call me out on anything here. And so I thought, you know what? I should just do my podcast episode today, all about this dumb stuff. So I just, she and I just kind of went through and we came up with a list of, of some fun things and dumb things that all of us do and, and I thought this would be kind of a fun episode to do, but also, I hope you learn something from this today.
Like, you know, as much as we love running, we, we can all kind of do some dumb stu dumb stuff sometimes, especially if you’re new to running, you know, stuff that can lead to, uh, derailing our training or, or lead to injury or slow our progress or just make. Running a lot harder than it needs to be. Um, and like I said before, I’ve done a lot of this stuff myself.
Early on in my running days, I made all kinds of mistakes, you know, so this isn’t about shaming anyone, it’s just about awareness. You know, it’s about shining a light on the dumb things that we all do so that we can stop doing them and start making better decisions about running. Okay? So let’s get into the first part of this, which is what I’m calling, like mindset mistakes.
Okay. So the first one is this. Okay, asking Facebook to diagnose your injury. Let me just say this as clearly as possible. Facebook is not your doctor. Neither is your running buddy, Karen. Okay. When you’re injured, the smartest thing you can do is consult a professional, a sports doc, a pt, an athletic trainer, not some stranger on the internet who tells you to ice it and take a rest day.
So if you’re in pain. Stop crowdsourcing your treatment and go see a pro. I promise it’ll save you time, frustration, and probably your entire race season. This is something I see so often where people are like, I’m in a bunch of different Facebook groups, you know, running Facebook groups and people will say, my ankle hurts.
What do you guys think it is? What should I do? Like we don’t know. I mean, even a PT wouldn’t tell you what to do or what’s wrong with you. Um, based on my ankle hurts, right? So just go see somebody, go see a professional, you know, ask them about that. Another thing, um, I see a lot is, uh, people asking Facebook for advice on which shoes they should wear.
You know, what, what shoes should I wear? Well, we, we can’t tell you that. Nobody knows what shoes you could wear. Go to go to a, a running specialty store, try on a bunch of different shoes, one on one foot, one on the other, run a little bit in in those, pick the one that feels better, and then repeat that process until you come up with the ultimate shoe for you, which is gonna be different for everybody.
Okay? So it’s, it’s an individualized thing. You can’t just tell somebody, oh, this is the best shoe for you, right? So stop going to Facebook and asking for things like, you know, how should I deal with this pain that I’m having? Okay. That’s number one. Number two, trying to run through pain. Like, pain is information, right?
It’s your body’s, uh, it’s kind of an alarm going off and it’s telling you, Hey, you know, you need to do something about this. Not just, you should tough it out because you’re, you’re ignoring a giant red flag, right? This isn’t a rocky movie. Uh, you need to rest, you recover. You’re not David Goggins. You don’t need to run on broken feet.
You don’t need to end up in the emergency room after every run, okay? Do what you need to do so you don’t turn some little tweak into a full blown injury. Okay? So don’t just run through the pain. Um, you know, take a moment again, go seek some professional help and find out what’s really going on before you really injure yourself.
Number three, setting unrealistic goals. I love people who are ambitious. I love new runners who get excited about running. I love big goals. But if you haven’t run in five years and your goal is to run a Boston qualifier in six weeks or something, hmm, we need to have a discussion about that. Okay? So yes, set big goals.
That’s awesome, but make sure they’re grounded in reality. Okay. Build slowly be patient. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve worked with who have set unrealistically high goals and not been able to achieve them. And it gets frustrating for them and they feel frustrated and they want to give up on everything because they, they couldn’t, you know, hit their marathon pr uh, in three months or whatever it was.
Okay, so set realistic goals, not unrealistic goals. Number four, comparing yourself to everyone on str, on Strava. Like just stop doing that. You have no idea what someone else’s training looks like behind the scenes, what injuries they’ve been dealing with, how much rest they’re getting, what they’re eating, how long they’ve been doing this.
The only person you should be comparing yourself is to you from yesterday. Okay, are, are you better than you were a month ago? Then? That is great, but stop comparing yourself to everybody else. It’s just, it doesn’t do you any good. Usually when we compare ourselves to others, we come out on the bottom. We always look at other people as being better, and so we just look at ourselves as being worse in some way.
So stop doing that. Number five, thinking more is better. So running more miles, doing more races, squeezing in more workouts doesn’t always make you better. In fact, it can lead to over training, burnout, injury. The key is not more running or more training, but smarter training. Okay, so have a plan. Have a plan that incorporates rest and recovery days.
I know people that do these running streaks and they want to keep their running streak alive no matter what. Even if they’re super sick or they’re injured, they’re gonna keep running because they gotta keep the streak alive. Hmm. Is that really the best decision there? I don’t know. I would say, I would say no.
I think we need to be smarter about that stuff. Okay, this next bit is kind of on training mistakes. Um, and this’ll be number six. So number six is running too fast on easy days. So this one’s big because a lot of people just go out there and they do all their runs, kind of moderately hard. Um, easy runs should feel easy.
I know it’s shocking, but if your heart rate is spiking and your breathing feels labored. You’re not doing your zone one or two training, you’re, you’re doing more ego running, okay? Be honest. Slow down so that you can speed up later. And the same goes for, uh, running, uh, too slow on your hard days, right? So number seven on the flip side of this is like some runners hold back too much during their speed work or their tempo runs.
These runs are supposed to feel tough. They’re supposed to be hard. You’re supposed to push yourself, push that threshold, um, run faster than your goal pace. During tempo runs run much faster than a 5K pace during those shorter intervals. Um, but what a lot of people do is they just go too easy on those hard days.
So you want your hard days hard, you want your easy days, easy. So we wanna be doing a combination of, uh, slower, longer running, moderate intensity, medium length runs, and then some very short, uh, runs, but high intensity. And that’s the magic formula right there, that that’s what builds the best cardiovascular system, increases your VO O2 max and makes you the most efficient runner pro possible.
Okay? But that does require you to go easy on, easy days and, and hard on, hard days. Number eight, not fueling properly. Um, coffee and vibes, not necessarily a great pre-run breakfast. You do need some fuel when you’re going certain distances. Now I do talk a lot about fasted running, and I think there’s a lot of benefits to doing that, but that doesn’t mean we do that all the time.
So you do need some fuel sometimes, sometimes you need some carbs, you need electrolytes. Um, you need, uh, post run recovery fuel. You know, so stop treating fuel, like it’s just some afterthought. Uh, start fueling properly. Plan this stuff. Practice your fueling strategy for raise day, all that stuff. Number nine, skipping strength training.
Listen, this is not optional. Skipping strength training should not be part of your plan. It’s essential, helps you run faster, prevents injuries, builds durability. It improves your endurance. Just two strength session sessions a week can change everything for you can build muscle. Running is catabolic. It breaks you down.
Uh, doing strength training builds you back up, so you’ve gotta do that strength training consistently. Number 10, never taking a rest day. Rest is when your body actually, you know, recovers it, repairs, it gets stronger. And if you’re running seven days a week, like I mentioned, people like to do, to do these running streaks and you’re not building in any, any kind of recovery time.
You’re just digging yourself into a hole. Right? Rest is not laziness. It’s strategy. It’s part of it should be part of your running plan. Okay? So take those rest days. Number 11, adding quote unquote bonus workouts. Your training plan exists for a reason. Adding in some random 10 miler on a rest day because you felt good is a lot of times it leads to burnout and injury.
You know, you get sidelined. Stick to your plan. Don’t add in all these bonus workouts, okay? Um, do not risk over training. Okay? We gotta be careful with that. I know it’s some days you feel good, that’s, that means your body’s repairing and recovering. That’s a good thing. You wanna show up the next day, you’re gonna be even better if you do rest.
Okay. Number 12, doing the same run over and over again. Just going the same pace with the same distance, the same route, and doing the same thing over and over again. I get it. You know, we leave our house, we have this one loop that we like to do in our neighborhood, and we can get back home and it’s e easy and quick and everything, but your body needs different stressors to adapt and to improve and to grow.
Variety matters. So mix it up sometimes, okay? You don’t have to do the same thing. Um, all the time. And it doesn’t have to be different all the time either, but occasionally do mix things up. Especially vary the terrain hills, rolling hills, um, flats, and a mixture of all that. Number 13, coming back too fast from injury.
Just because it doesn’t hurt anymore doesn’t mean it’s healed completely. So ease back into running slowly. Talk to your, you know, doctor or physical therapist, or orthopedic doc, whatever. Be conservative. You only get. You know, one set of knees or hips or ankles or whatever. So don’t overdo it. Just come back from an injury and come back slowly and build that intensity slowly over time.
Same thing if you haven’t been running for a long time, um, not from an injury, but just because you just got away from it, that’s fine, but just come back slowly. Don’t try to do too much too soon. Okay, this next section is all about race day mistakes, and we’re on to number 14. I got 25 of these for you guys, so you can kind of follow along here.
Um, race day mistakes number 14 on my list of 25 things that are that, that are dumb, dumb stuff that runners do. Number 14, trying something new on race day. Don’t do it. Just don’t do it. New shoes, a whole new outfit, new fueling strategy. Race day is not the time for experimentation. Nothing new on race day ever, period.
Just don’t do that. Okay. I get it. It’s fun to try new things. Do it in your training. Do it in your training. If you’re trying to, um, have a successful race and you try something that you’ve never done before, like fuel and it makes you sick to your stomach, you’re gonna have a really bad day out there. Um, so nothing new on race day I.
Number 15. Not dressing for the weather. For the weather. So if it is going to be cool at the start line and you dress warm so that you stay warm at the start line, you’re going to suffer. At some point you are going, your body’s going to warm up. You know, by the third or fourth mile you’re going to warm up.
You know, eight or 10 degrees, and the weather typically does warm up as the day goes on as well. Um, so you want to dress for the finish, not for the start. So if it’s, if you’re going to be hotter and the weather’s gonna be warmer at the finish of the race, then make sure you. Dress appropriately at the start of the race.
Some things that we do to stay warm while we’re waiting in the corral for a race to start, or even on a training run, you can, I’ve seen a lot of people do this lately, wear an old bathrobe. You know, people do that. Or they wear a, a hoodie or a sweater or something, or a sweatshirt that they can just throw away.
You know, something like that is fine. Or a lot of times you just throw ’em on the side of the road. They collect those and give ’em to homeless people and stuff like that, which is awesome. Or just take a plastic bag, cut a couple holes in it, and then you’ve got yourself a. Homemade poncho that you can wear that’ll, um, keep you dry if it’s raining, but also it traps that warmth in there.
What I do is, you know, at the end of a race when they give you those Mylar blankets that you wrap around you that keep you warm, I just keep those, I take it home, I fold it up, like spread it out, fold it up, and then I just use that for the next race, and then I throw it away and then I get a new one, and then I repeat that process.
So that’s a fun little trick right there. So make sure you dress for the finish. Uh, number 16, going out too fast. This is so common. At the start of a race, the adrenaline is going. They got the music blaring. You’re in a such a good place. You’ve been training for this, you’re excited. Um, but listen, if the first two miles, you’re just cranking out a pace that’s like two minutes faster than your goal pace, you are going to pay for that later.
I have done this many, many times. Be careful not to go out too fast. The best race strategy, really the most effective, most efficient way to pace a race is to get into your. Goal pace. Quickly. Um, a lot of times it’s hard to navigate a lot of people at the start of a race. So the first, you know, half mile or mile might be a little crowded, but do your best to settle into your pace and then maintain that effort for the d for the duration of your event.
Maintain that effort for the duration of the event. That means that. That same effort level, you should try to just focus on that, whether that’s an RPE, a rate of perceived exertion of, of like a five or a six or something like that. Maybe it’s comfortably hard for you and you’re running a half marathon.
That’s perfect. Run that effort level. You might slow down a little bit going uphill. You might speed up a little bit, going downhill, so your pace is gonna vary. Effort should feel the same. That’s the most efficient pacing strategy right there. Uh, number 17, another race day mistake. Not hitting the port-A-potty beforehand.
TCB at home. Take care of business at home. If you can do as much of that as you need to do, whether it’s. Number one. Number two, whatever you gotta do, get that stuff out of the system as far in advance as possible. If you gotta use a porta-potty, know that there’s gonna be lines. And that sometimes it’s, you know, long lines.
So just be mindful of that. What I do sometimes is if I really need to go, I’ll wait until I get to mile four or five, you know, when the crowds have thinned out and they’ve, they’ve got porta-potties along a race, and I’ll just jump in there real quick. But, you know, whatever you need to do, just try to get that stuff out of the way ahead of time.
Do it at home if possible. Uh, another dump thing, uh, that runners do is lining up in the wrong corral on race day, right? So don’t, if you’re, if you’re running like a 10 minute pace, don’t line up with the seven minute milers, okay? If your goal is to run a four hour marathon, don’t line up with the three 30 people.
You know, it’s you, you wanna be where you should be, not thinking like, oh, if I need to get in front of all these other people, you know? And if you’re somebody that runs with like a stroller. Or you got dogs. I don’t know. Some of these races don’t allow that kind of stuff. But if you’re like a walker and you got a bunch of people with you and all that, and you guys are just gonna be walking the whole thing, do not line up at the front lineup in the back.
Okay? Don’t be dumb. Okay? And this next section is all about gear and nutrition mistakes, and we’re up to number 19. Um, and this is about ignoring chafing and ignoring blisters. Listen. Blisters and chafing are terrible. You are going to be miserable if you do not prepare for this, especially for the longer distance stuff.
I’ve had some friends that have had to drop out of a hundred mile races because of really debilitating chafing. Do not. Subject yourself to that. Lube it up. Put lube places you don’t think you would need lube. Trust me, you’ll thank me later. Bandaid, those nipples, dudes. You know, whatever you need to do.
Don’t try to be a hero. Just grease everything up. You know, you can’t wait until you’ve got a blister to like, decide you need to put some, uh, you know, balm on your feet or something like that. Uh, number 20, not charging your watch. Make sure your watch is charged ahead of time, or your headphones or your phone or whatever you’re gonna have with you.
Um, and make sure you don’t forget that stuff. Um, good friend of mine forgot his watch during a marathon. Just showed up without it. Um, so that kind of stuff happens sometimes, but just be careful, uh, to, to make sure that all the stuff is charged ahead of time. Set it out ahead of time. Um, make sure that all your stuff is ready to go.
Uh, number 21 wearing cotton, anything. Socks, shirts, underwear. Cotton is the devil when you’re sweating, right? The, the mantra is cotton is rotten and should be forgotten. Okay, so just don’t wear cotton. Anything you wanna wear moisture wicking. Uh, gear that’s made for running so that it pulls that wicks that sweat away from your body and helps to cool you off and can evaporate that sweat away.
The, the cotton just holds onto the sweat and, and it will make you miserable. You wanna talk about chafing? Mm. Wear cotton. You’ll experience a lot of chafing. You wanna talk about, you know, uh, just being miserable and, and getting blisters. Wear cotton socks. Oh, it’s brutal. I’ve done that. I’ve worn some cotton socks way back in the day before I realized that what I was doing.
Just don’t do that. It’s recipe for disaster. Uh, okay. Number 22, wearing race swag during the race. Okay. I’ve always said that I will never wear a race shirt for a race I haven’t finished. So don’t wear your race shirt for the race that you’re running till after the race. You have to earn that shirt. Okay?
You don’t get to wear that during the race. I know people do it, and I know that I’m being a little bit. Goofy here, whatever. It’s kind of a vibe thing, but also we call it like bad luck. Don’t wear the race shirt during the race. That’s just one of those things we do not do. Okay. That’s I, that’s a rookie move right there.
So if you’re doing that, congratulations, you get to graduate past the rookie status here, because now you’re not gonna do that one. You gotta earn it. Um. Number 23 Undereating, right? You just can’t run well if you’re not fueling properly. We kind of talked about that, but it also has to do with like. Your general eating, like you’d wanna make sure that during the week and during your training that you’re just eating properly.
I know a lot of people who want to lose weight, you know, they want to, um, become fat adapted and so they tend to like. Go towards the, the eating on the low end of the spectrum. Do not do that. Make sure you’re eating properly, you’re fueling yourself properly. You gotta be able to recover. You need protein, you need fats, you need some carbs in order to recover from running, uh, especially if you’re a long distance runner.
And you just can’t run Well if you’re undereating, it’s just a recipe for disaster. You’re a machine, you’re a running machine, you gotta fuel the machine. Okay. Um, and that brings me to number 24, which is during doing fasted long runs without a plan. So I, I talk about being fat adapted and doing some fasted runs and things like that to help with that fat adaptation process.
But a lot of people don’t understand what they’re doing and they just do super long runs, fasted, and they kind of feel terrible at the end, and they have no energy and they just don’t really have a plan. You know, just because you, you heard me talk about this, doesn’t mean that, you know, you should do that for every run.
You know, I think there’s, uh, a place for doing fasted, running up to a certain distance, a certain amount of miles or a certain amount of time on your feet, and then you wanna fuel so that you’re giving your body what it needs in order to continue to run at that particular pace or that intensity level for the long run.
You know, maybe it’s 90 minutes, maybe it’s two hours for you. Typically, I tend to start fueling around the 90 minute mark if I’m doing a run that’s more than that. I’m gonna make sure that I fuel before and during. So usually it’s like half marathon and up is where I’m kind of making sure I’m fueling.
And then you gotta practice that fueling in your training. You don’t just do it on race day. Um, and then number 25, using running as punishment for what you ate. This mindset is kind of toxic and it’s really unsustainable. And I hate, I think this is really dumb and I hear people talk about this. All the time.
It’s like, uh, I run so I can eat whatever I want. I’m just gonna eat a bunch of garbage all the time and feel terrible. Then I’ll, I’ll try, I’ll try to run it off. So I’m using running as like punishment for this terrible eating habit. You know, don’t do that. Like, this sounds terrible, doesn’t it? When I say it that way, it’s, it’s toxic.
It’s like a toxic mindset. It and it leads to some really disordered eating. It’s kind of a disordered eating pattern if you guy eat a bunch of junk and then you’re gonna try to run it off. Yeah, that, just don’t do that. Okay. Love yourself. Love yourself through this process. Okay. All right. I hope you got something outta this episode.
Maybe a couple of chuckles. I don’t know, maybe you learned a few things. Um, maybe there’s some things you can start changing and start becoming a little bit of a better runner right now. And remember, every runner does this dumb stuff. I’ve done this stuff. The pros have done this stuff. The goal isn’t to be perfect.
Um, it’s just to learn from maybe dumb stuff that other people do or maybe from our own mistakes, but I want you to become stronger and smarter and more efficient. And that just takes practice, it takes experience. And I’m hoping that sharing the experience of dumb things runners do will actually help you.
Um, and if you want some help with all this stuff dialing in your. Your training, your nutrition, your mindset. So you’re not out here Googling how to like tape your knees at 2:00 AM You can talk to me, just head over to my website runningleancoaching.com and I’ll help you train smarter, not dumber.
Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean. I will talk to you soon.
One of the biggest myths in the running world is that you can’t lose fat and keep running strong at the same time. Well…I’m here to tell you that’s just not true. The key is learning how to fuel …
Continue Reading about 287. How to Eat for Fat Loss Without Losing Performance →
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 287 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today how to eat for fat loss without losing performance. So one of the biggest myths in the running world is that you can’t lose fat and keep running strong at the same time.
Well, I’m here to tell you that that is just not true. The key is really learning how to fuel your body so that you burn fat efficiently and support your training and recovery. So in this episode, I’m gonna break it all down for you how to eat so that you can. Continue losing fat without losing your running performance.
In the process, you’re gonna learn exactly what types of foods promote fat loss. In which promote fat storage. Uh, why you don’t need all the carbs all the time, how to time your carbs around your runs for maximum fat burning, and how to hit the right calorie intake without totally crushing your energy.
If you wanna drop fat, get leaner and keep running strong. This episode is for you, so listen up. But first, if you’re struggling to drop the weight, if your energy is low, if your runs feel like a grind and nothing you’ve tried is working, listen, I get it. Most runners are following outdated advice. Eat all the carbs, train more, eat less, and hope for the best.
But that’s not a real strategy, that’s just guesswork. What you need is a clear proven plan that actually works for you. One that’s built around real food, smart fueling, consistent training, and the mindset required to keep it all going for life. This is exactly what I do with my coaching clients. We take the guesswork out, we simplify your nutrition, we dial in your training and build the best habits that actually help you to lose fat, that help you to get stronger and make running easier without really feeling deprived or burned out.
So if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start seeing actual results, go over to my website, runningleancoaching.com. Click on work with me. Let’s get you leaner, stronger, and running better than ever. Okay, so today’s episode, why I wanted to talk about this today. Um, how to eat for fat loss without losing performance.
Um, I decided to talk about this because this is one of the most common concerns that I hear from runners that I talk to. Which is, you know, I want to, I wanna lose weight, I wanna lose fat, but I’m afraid it’s going to completely tank my running. And I’ve heard that you can’t do both. If you wanna lose weight, your running is gonna suffer.
Or if you want to keep running strong, you gotta forget about losing weight. But listen, that’s just not true. The truth is you can do both. You just have to be intentional about how you fuel your body and how you structure your training. So that’s what we’re talking about here today. I want to clear up the confusion.
I want to give you an approach that is proven. This works for, I’ve worked with like around 500 clients now, 500 runners who have lost weight and improve their running at the same time. I would say that’s a proven approach, okay? You don’t have to lose running performance in order to lose weight. Okay. But I wanna start today by addressing the biggest myth around all of this when it comes to nutrition and fat loss is that you, you, you know this one that I’m just started talking about, which is you just can’t lose weight and run strong at the same time.
Um, the truth is that there is a delicate balance there. You need to be intentional about what you’re doing, and that’s kind of what this whole episode is about. It’s gonna be showing you how to do this, okay? Um, it is 100% possible. Like I said, 500 of my clients have done this, and you can do it too. What you can’t do is under eat, overtrain and, and somehow expect to perform at your best.
That’s the fast track to injury burnout, and just plateauing your progress. Okay. But this is what most people think of when they think of losing weight. That you gotta undereat, you have to cut your calories way back, and that you need to run more. So train more and eat less. But that’s a recipe for disaster and that’s where most people, good intention to people, good in intentioned coaches, that’s where they’re operating from.
That’s the standard, you know, uh, uh, operating procedure for people who wanna lose weight, cut your calories and in increase your cardio, you know, run more, eat less, run more, and that’s not a good plan. So that will tank your running performance. Absolutely. But that’s not what we’re gonna do. That’s not the approach that I take with people.
I never encourage people to undereat. I never encourage people to overtrain. Okay? That’s not the approach that we’re gonna take. So losing weight, fat loss, and running performance or not mutually exclusive, right? You have to have a smart approach though, to, you have to take a very smart approach to your nutrition and to your training.
Okay. So there are certain foods that will, um, promote fat loss and there are cer certain foods that kind of promote fat storage. So when it comes to losing fat, um, what you eat is probably just as important, even more important as how much you eat. Okay? So the right diet is gonna be the one that supports your, uh, fat loss goals and your running goals.
And again, this is, this is one of those things that’s kind of individualized and there’s no one answer that’s gonna fit everybody okay? But. There are certain foods, generally speaking, that will help you to lose fat and there are certain foods, generally speaking, that will cause you to hold onto that fat or to increase your fat stores.
So we, we, we are either choosing foods that, uh, diminish our fat stores. That, that help promote fat burning, or we’re eating foods that add to our fat stores that promote fat storage. Like we don’t, we don’t necessarily want that one. Okay. Also, keep in mind through this whole conversation we’re having today, that burning fat is an amazing fuel source for, uh, endurance athletes.
So if you’re a runner who wants to improve your endurance, burn more fat. So that’s kind of the, the over. Arching, uh, uh, topic here today, which is we wanna be burning the fat. We don’t wanna be storing the fat. We want to be burning the fat. ’cause when you’re burning the fat, you’re losing the excess weight, the excess fat.
When you’re burning the fat, you have this unlimited, virtually unlimited supply of fuel on board, on your body all the time. So there are certain foods that kind of promote fat loss. These are typically nutrient dense foods that are high in protein and lower in refined carbohydrates. So think about things like meat and fish and eggs and Greek yogurt, vegetables, berries, nuts, seeds, certain, you know, good fats, like, uh, uh.
Olives and olive oil. Um, and, and berry, uh, I’m sorry. And dairy, uh, like, uh, uh, butter and, uh, coconut oil and avocado oil, avocados, all those things. Okay. Low, high, high end protein, lower and refined carbs. Nutrient dense foods, and then we have uh uh, and that’s by no means an exhaustive list. This is just some examples.
Then there’s foods that promote fat storage. So pro foods that promote fat storage are typically ultra processed carb heavy. And low in nutritional value. So they’re not nutritionally dense. Um, they’re not high in protein and they’re high in those refined carbs. So think about sugary snacks, breads, pasta, soda, granola bars, baked goods, even a lot of these so-called like health foods.
They’re just loaded with sugar, seed oils, refined carbs, um, that stuff. It actually promotes fat storage. That stuff raises insulin in your body. It raises your blood sugar by a lot, spikes in blood sugar, spikes in insulin. Insulin seems to be the, the driver of fat storage. And as long as your blood sugar is high, your insulin is high, you’re, you’re storing fat.
If we can focus on a diet that is, um, lower in, in, uh, the. Nutrient, you know, diminished carbs in the, um, refined carbs if we’re eating more, um, high protein, nutrient dense foods, like I mentioned. Then your body is not producing as much blood sugar, not producing as much insulin. You’re keeping your blood sugar low essentially, and your body can burn the fat.
So high blood sugar means you’re just gonna be burning off that blood sugar. Essentially. You gotta, you gotta burn that off before you can do anything else. And if you’re eating a very high carbohydrate diet constantly, you’re just gonna be fighting a losing battle here. You’re always going to be storing fat.
Whereas if you’re eating a lower. Uh, blood sugar kind of diet, then your body can actually, uh, burn the fat. Okay? So that’s just something you have. If, if you wanna lose fat, then stick with eating these, uh, whole foods, these real foods, foods that keep you full, that support your workouts, that don’t spike your blood sugar every time you eat.
Okay? So let’s talk about carbs for a minute, because this is where a lot of runners get tripped up. We’ve been told for decades that runners need to constantly be loading up on carbs. You know, pasta before a long run, gels every 30 minutes, bagels before and after every workout. Here’s the thing though, your body doesn’t need a constant influx of carbs to run well.
In fact, if you’re constantly fueling with carbs, your body never learns to burn fat efficiently. And if fat loss is your goal, you want to be burning fat efficiently, especially during those long, steady state runs. So I’m not saying you have to go like full keto, you don’t have to be super low carb, but what I am saying is that you don’t need all the carbs all the time.
Again, once you train your body to start burning fat effectively, you’ve got a ton of fuel for running. And this is where a lot of runners just don’t understand this and they’re just stuck in this old mentality of having to eat all the carbs all the time. ’cause that’s what they started teaching us back in the eighties, you know?
And it’s just kind of, it’s all the same information. Since the 1980s. Well, I think it’s time to maybe change that or maybe add some other options to the mix and getting fat adapted, adapting your body to using fat as fuel, as opposed to just carbohydrates as fuel is a great way to improve your running and to lose the fat.
And why not? Why wouldn’t you want to do that? As a runner, why wouldn’t you want to be a better fat burner? It’s just one more tool that you have available to you. I, I don’t know why you would leave that on the table. So, and when we talk about carbs, I’m not saying like, you gotta, like, again, we’re not talking about going full keto.
Like keto typically is like 20 grams of carbs or less per day. That is very hard to do. It’s very hard to sustain that. Um, and we’re not talking about eating, you know, 300 grams of carbs a day either, but somewhere in between there, you know, a lot of people do well with 50 or a hundred or 150 grams of carbs, something like that.
That’s still considered kind of low carb, you know, and everybody has to figure out what works for them. I. But we wanna find that sweet spot and we want to include carbs in our training. We want to include carbs as part of our, um, a strategy to, you know, improve our running performance. And, but there are, but not all carbs are, you know, the same, there, there are some carbs that I, I want you to kind of include and maybe try and there’s some that I want you to kind of avoid.
So some of the carbs that we can use around our training would be things like. You know, root vegetables, sweet potatoes, beets, that kind of stuff. Um, squash, you know, like acorn squash, butternut squash, berries, beans, lentils, some oats. Um, ideally something like steel cut oats, and then whole fruits, you know, whole kinds of fruits.
You don’t need to like blend up all your fruit into a smoothie, but, you know, eating whole fruits, um, because these are. Nutrient dense, slow digesting carbs that provide energy without completely spiking your blood sugar, like just eating gels and stuff like that. Um, carbs to avoid or maybe just really limit.
I, I never say like, you can never eat bread again or something like that, but just kind of limit this stuff ’cause it does have a high impact on your blood sugar. It’s interesting that. When you look at the spikes of blood sugar and everybody’s a little bit different, but generally speaking, um. Uh, white flour will spike your blood sugar more than like table sugar does because you’re, you’ve, you’ve refined this grain into a fine powder, and so there’s like more surface area for the, I don’t know, enzymes to work or something like that.
And so it actually, you know, white flour will spike your blood sugar more than just eating plain table sugar. Well, that’s crazy, right? So when people are like, oh, you know, you’re being o overly. Uh, cautious by avoiding all these carbs, all these bread, like you can eat bread. Dude, listen, it’s like eating sugar.
It, it’ll spike your blood sugar more than sugar will. So just be mindful of that. I’m not saying not to do it, just be mindful. So some of the carbs I say to kind of avoid or limit would be white bread, pasta. Anything made with flour, really. Cookies, crackers, um, things like potato chips, all the processed energy bars, sugary drinks, cereals, ultra processed foods, ultra processed snacks, like all that stuff.
Okay. These kinds of carbs are delicious. I get it right, but they’re easy to overeat. They don’t satisfy your hunger. They’re they’re devoid of nutrients, and they’re going to sabotage both your fat loss and your performance over time. You might think you’re doing yourself a favor by eating four bagels before you run.
But over time you’re just gonna be storing more fat. You’re not gonna be a good fat burner. You’re diminishing your running performance, in my opinion. So you’re not allowing your body to function properly. Um, and that stuff can have a negative impact. There’s a lot of runners who are. Um, what’s considered tophi, TOFI thin on the outside, fat On the inside, they’ve got, they look like they’re in good shape.
They’re pretty healthy and lean, but on the inside there’s a lot of fat, uh, like, um, uh, visceral fat that’s around their organs and things like that. I know that some runners, ultra runners and things like that who have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or diabetes, um, but they don’t look like they’re overweight or anything like that, but they have a lot of.
Internal fat around their organs, which is the kind we really don’t want. That’s not good for you. So we have subcutaneous fat. That’s the fat that you can see on the outside, and then we have that visceral fat on the inside. That’s the, that’s the bad stuff there. Okay? We don’t want to be adding to that store, okay?
We want to be burning that fat. Okay? Now another question that comes up a lot is, okay, well when should I be eating these carbs? How do I time carbs? To, you know, around my workout so that I can burn fat and support my running because I’m all for using carbs for running. I think you should. Um, so if you’re gonna eat carbs, uh, do it in a strategic way.
And, and here’s a couple rule of thumbs we want to. We wanna time your carbs around your workouts, not just randomly throughout the day. You don’t wanna wake up and eat 16 pancakes and then, you know, later on in the day eat, you know, 12 bagels and then go to sleep with, you know, half a gallon of ice cream.
I. As good as that sounds. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why I came up with those numbers, but whatever. So your body is primed to use carbs for fuel and for recovery, like before and after you train essentially. So that’s when your muscles are like sponges. They soak up glycogen. Um, rebuilding is, is a, is a, the process of rebuilding muscles is stronger.
Uh, recovery is faster, so you don’t wanna just be snacking on carbs all day while you’re sitting at your desk or watching Netflix. Um, those excess carbs are probably gonna get stored as fat. So if you’re using. Carbs as fuel before a workout, you’re gonna burn those carbs. Um, if you’re using ’em after a workout, that’s a good too because your, your body can like, use those to replenish glycogen stores and rebuild muscles.
You do need some carbs and protein to, to rebuild muscles. Um, so we wanna use carbs like a tool, right? It’s just not a thing you can do freely all the time. Um, I know people are like, well, I run so I can eat whatever I want. It’s like, okay. But if you’re like. Gaining weight in the process. Maybe you can’t eat whatever you want, you know, but again, everybody’s an individual.
Um, but we wanna use carbs like a tool. So we wanna fuel our workouts, we wanna recover well, and we wanna try to stay in that fat burning mode for as long as possible. That means we don’t eat carbs, you know, all throughout the day, every day. So time ’em around your workouts. Um, another question that comes up a lot.
Is calorie deficit, and I hear so many people say the only way to lose weight is being in a calorie deficit. It. So I think that without getting into this too much, I think that there is some truth to that, that I think you have to be in a slight calorie deficit in order to lose some weight and lose fat.
But most runners take this too far, and most coaches. Push this too much with people and that’s why they suggest, you know, don’t run if you’re trying to lose weight. ’cause all they’re doing is cutting calories aggressively. When you do that though, your performance suffers. So you don’t want to do that. We don’t want to, you know, drastically cut our calories.
You’re gonna be tired, your runs won’t suck. Your recovery’s gonna tank worse. Your body’s gonna be holding on to fat and breaking down muscle in this process. So we don’t want that. We do not wanna be breaking down muscle. We wanna be building up muscle. So what we want to aim for is a, a modest calorie deficit, just enough to promote fat loss, but not so much that it tanks your training.
Now a lot of people will say, well, what does that mean? How much should we, you know, lower our calorie deficit by? That is a good question and everybody’s different. And this is where I hate putting numbers out there ’cause I get people coming back to me and they send me messages, you said this and that doesn’t work for me.
I’m like, so it’s hard for me to put these numbers out there. I. Generally speaking though, I know I’ve said that a lot today, but just keep that in mind. Generally speaking, a ballpark number might be like a 10% calorie deficit, you know, so that might be where you’re focusing on eating lots of protein.
You’re getting good healthy fats, you’re doing some carbs, you’re timing, some carbs are on your runs, and if you’re in about a 10% or so calorie deficit, then you’re probably gonna be good. You’re. That’s probably gonna work for you. Maybe that doesn’t work for you though, and you need to do crank that up to like 15%.
Or maybe you can go like right around your maintenance calories and that’s works for you and that helps you to, to lose weight. Okay? Again, there’s no right answer here. Um, how, how many calories should you be eating? Again, I kind of use this as a ballpark number. I usually say take about 10 times your body weight.
So if you weigh, you know, 190 pounds, then 1900 calories is probably good for you. And we don’t really need to factor in running and all this other stuff because all, all that does is, is that, um, you’re trying to do some math. You’re trying to do math on like, well, but I, I run and I burn a thousand calories a day, so that means I get to eat a thousand calories more.
Hey. Try that and see if it works for you. Most people I talk to that does not work for them, but hey, give it a try and see. See how that works. I tried that four years with an app. I was trying to, I was logging all my food. I was counting all my calories. I was counting all my workouts. Couldn’t lose a pound doing that.
Not a pound. Um, so what I tell people is just focus on eating plenty of protein, good, healthy fats, some carbs, you know, eat, you know, things like, uh, meat and eggs and vegetables and some fruit and nuts and seeds and, and some dairy. If you can handle it and all that stuff is good. Whole Foods, focus on whole foods.
Eat until you feel kind of satisfied, but don’t go beyond that. So be mindful not to be overeating and you should, your calories should just kind of stay where they are supposed to be. They should, you should be able to eat in a way that feels good for you without overeating. You know, if you’re somebody who’s like a chronic over eater, you may want to count your calories.
You may want to use that approach, but I don’t think it’s necessary for everybody, and I, it’s not really sustainable for most people too. Really though protein is gonna be kind of your secret weapon, okay? Um, if you’re not getting enough protein, you’re making fat loss way harder than it needs to be.
’cause protein helps you to maintain lean muscle while you’re losing weight. It helps you to recover faster from workouts. It helps you to stay full and satisfied, so you’re not tempted to be snacking all day long. How much protein should you get? Again, I’m gonna give you this disclaimer, it’s different for everybody.
Point seven to one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight per day seems to be where, you know, most people do. Okay? Um, spread it out over, you know, two or three meals. You know, you don’t need to be eating 12 times a day, uh, two or three meals a day. Um, prioritize high quality sources of protein, meat, eggs, fish, Greek yogurt.
If you need to supplement, do something like whey protein. That seems to be great. Or if you, if you’re plant-based, then do like a pea protein. Those teams, that seems to be pretty good too. But protein is gonna be your best friend during, during this process. Okay. So the bottom line with all this is you’re an individual.
You gotta kind of figure out what works for you. I’m trying to give you some guidelines. Um, so try some of this stuff, see how it works. I mean, you’re, you’re an experiment of one. We, we all are. And so you have to kind of figure out what is the right formula for you? How much protein do I need to eat? How many calories should I be eating?
What supports my running and my, uh, fat loss? Because there’s an answer there, you know, and everybody’s a little bit different, but you can lose fat and run strong at the same time. You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can do both. You just have to be smart about it. You gotta fuel wisely, you gotta train smart.
I. You gotta give your body what it needs to thrive. So don’t fall for the myths. Don’t follow what every running guru out there magazine is telling you. Whatever fuel like an athlete, burn fat efficiently, eat real food, train hard. Yeah, but then rest. Well this is how you get lean or get faster and become the strongest, most badass version of yourself.
Okay, and if you want help putting this into practice, if you’re ready to lose the fat for good and keep running strong, then I’ve got you. This is exactly what I do with my coaching clients. Every single day, we’re gonna dial in your nutrition, optimize your training, and build the habits that you need to stay consistent for life.
Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com to learn more. You can apply for coaching. We’ll have a conversation, see if this is a good fit. Cool. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
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