Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Today on the podcast, we’re digging into something that every runner deals with but almost no one talks about openly: “The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Losing Weight.” These thoughts are …
Continue Reading about 310. The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Losing Weight →
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 310 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today the lies we tell ourselves about losing. Weight. So today I am digging into something that every runner deals with, but almost no one talks about openly anyway, the lies we tell ourselves about losing weight.
These thoughts are subtle. They’re sneaky. They feel reasonable, and that’s exactly why they keep so many runners stuck. We tell ourselves little stories like, I run so much, I should be able to eat whatever I want, or I’ll start eating better after my race, or it’s just my hormones and we don’t even question these thoughts.
They become invisible barriers that quietly sabotage our progress. So in this episode, I’m gonna shine a big, bright light on the most common lies. Runners tell themselves about losing weight, why they feel so true, and how to shift into thoughts that actually support your goals. If you’re ready for a little honesty, clarity, and a massive mindset upgrade, this episode is especially for you.
But first, if you’re listening to this and thinking, wow, I’ve been dealing with these exact same things, Patrick, then I want you to know something. You do not have to keep trying to figure this all out on your own. Most runners are out there working hard, putting in the miles, pushing through the fatigue, but still feeling frustrated because they’re results.
Don’t match their effort, and it’s not because they’re not capable, it’s because they’re missing a clear plan, the right guidance, and the right kind of mindset that actually supports creating lasting change. That’s exactly what my coaching program is designed to do. I help you fix the stuff that’s been slowing you down for years.
The inconsistent eating, the lack of structure, the confusion about fueling the mental chatter that keeps you second guessing yourself. You’re gonna get a personalized approach for your running, strength, nutrition, and mindset. So they’re all working together to create real. Sustainable transformation. If you wanna feel lighter, stronger, more confident, and finally see all that hard work you’re doing payoff.
Go to running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. Let’s go. Okay, so the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I had a coaching call recently where a client said something to the effect of, um, you know, Patrick, I’m trying so hard, but I just don’t think this is gonna work for me. Uh, I can’t lose weight because of my age.
And listen, she wasn’t whining, she wasn’t making excuses. This is something that this person honestly believed. And for her it felt very true. And that’s exactly how these little subtle lies work. ’cause they feel like facts. You know, saying something like, oh, I’ve reached this certain age, fill in the blank.
It could be 45, it could be 75. And then you could say, well I, I’ll never be able to lose any more weight because of this number. And that feels like a fact to you. And, and it feels kind of harmless ’cause it just feels like this is just the way it is, but it’s quietly undermining every single effort you’re trying to make.
So today I want to expose some of these, uh, the biggest, at least most common lies that runners tell themselves about losing weight. And I’m gonna show you kind of what you should be thinking instead. Okay. So. Lie number one. This is a fun one. It’s fun to say, and I hear runners say this all the time, but it is definitely a lie I run, so I should be able to eat whatever I want.
Have you ever told yourself that or heard anybody say that? Just about everybody I know who is a runner has said this at some point in their life. Um, runners love this one because it sounds very logical. You know, you’re out there running, you’re burning calories, you’re working hard, you’re sweating, so obviously you should be able to eat everything that you want, right?
Well, here’s the truth. Running is great for your heart. It’s great for your mind. It’s great for your endurance, but it is absolutely terrible as a standalone weight loss strategy. Running alone doesn’t undo overeating. It doesn’t undo poor food choices. It doesn’t magically bypass the laws of metabolism.
Food is fuel, yes, but it’s also data. And when the data coming in is chaotic and consistent or low quality, your body’s just gonna store that as excess fat. A more helpful, empowering thought is I fuel my running. I don’t justify. Overeating. Okay, so think about that. If you’ve ever told yourself, I should be able to eat whatever I want because I run, just remember that food is more than just fuel.
There’s also information stored in that food. Certain foods turn on hunger hormones and make you excessively hungry. Certain foods turn off, uh, leptin production, which makes you never really feel very full, so you tend to overeat. Um, so there’s more to it than just calories and calories out, or being able to eat whatever you want because you run a certain number of miles every week.
Okay? Don’t justify your overeating. Stop telling yourself this lie. Okay? I fuel my running. I don’t justify overeating. That’s a better, more empowering thought lie. Number two, it’s just my hormones. Okay? Now, hormones are real. There’s, there’s nothing, um, magical or mythological about hormones. They matter.
They affect your metabolism, your appetite, your energy, your recovery. All of it, but there’s a, a small little lie hidden inside this truth here. And that lie is that there’s nothing I can do about it. And that’s the dangerous part because as soon as you start believing that you’re powerless, that it’s this completely out of your control, you just stop trying.
You give up. You know, hormones can make weight loss more challenging. But you are never helpless. Alright? There are ways that you, uh, there are things that you can control. You can control what you eat, how much you eat, how consistently you eat certain foods, how much protein you eat, how much strength training you do, how well you are sleeping, how you are managing your stress, how you think and feel about yourself.
These are all things that you have control over. A better thought is, yeah, my hormones play a role, but my choices still matter. So that’s a much more empowered thought there. This puts you back in control. This puts you back in the driver’s seat. Hormones can be a factor. They are, um, a lot of times turned on or off by certain food choices that you make.
Like I just mentioned, you eat a bunch of sugar. You’re turning off your, uh, fullness hormone leptin, and you’re turning on and producing more ghrelin your hunger hormones. So you’re gonna be excessively hungry, the more sugar you’re eating, and then you don’t feel as full because you’re not producing as much leptin.
That’s a very good example of how hormones are affected by the foods that you eat. So they’re not just out there operating, you know, willy-nilly. They have, um. They are being controlled by, by different, uh, forces. You know, there’s forces on your hormones that are either turning some on or turning some off.
Okay. So your choices absolutely still matter. Um, and I’ve had, you know, people that I’ve worked with in the past who have really tried a lot of different things to try to lose weight. And then we’ve looked at getting a, a hormone panel done, you know, like a thyroid panel done, and they’ve realized that they need to be on some kind of hormone therapy because there’s.
Something that’s really amiss there. And that is something that can be a factor. So if you’re really thinking that this is a factor, get your hormones checked. But for the, for most of us, um, that’s really not gonna be, um, a, a factor. Okay. Section, uh, or line number three. Um, I’m gonna start after my race. So this one is pretty sneaky because runners love creating imaginary timelines.
Like, you know, after my next marathon or after that, that Turkey trot, you know, or the 10 k, uh, around the holidays or after the holidays are over, after this vacation, after the kids go back to school. It’s always after, after, after. But here’s what you’re really telling yourself right now is not the right time.
And let me just tell you the right time, never magically appears. It’s not your race. Um, if it’s not your race, it’s gonna be your schedule. If it’s not your schedule, it’s gonna be your stress level. It’s not your stress level. It’s gonna be something else. Waiting for conditions to be perfect is just a sneaky way of staying exactly where you are, because you never have to actually start anything if you just keep saying later, later, later.
So a better thought for this one is, you know, this is something that is important to me. This counts this, this matters to me. I can start making better choices right now because the truth is that when you keep delaying and delaying and delaying your procrastinating and procrastinating, you’re just pushing back.
Uh, your ability to change for the better. And the more you do that, the more you’re just gonna stay stuck right where you are. Um, delay is the killer of a lot of people’s, um, you know, progress in life. There’s a lot of things that people want, a lot of goals, a lot of hopes and dreams that people have, and they just keep pushing that delay button.
And they never start because you know what? When you, when you don’t have to start, you’re never gonna fail with anything. You don’t have to do anything hard. You don’t have to get uncomfortable. And I get it, but just remember that if you start something today, you know, think about where you’re gonna be three, six months from now, as opposed to you just keep delaying three or six months and you’re just gonna be exactly where you are right now.
So I’ll start after, you know, my race or fill in the blank is, is very, very subtle. Lie number four. I just need to run more. So this is the classic runner solution to every problem. If you’re struggling with weight, run more. If you’re stressed, run more. If you’re tired, run more. If you’re injured. Um. Well, maybe don’t run more, but I know some of y’all are going to try.
Um, but here’s the thing. More running can actually increase your hunger. More running, um, can actually lead to more eating because you’re a lot hungrier. You know, more eating can often lead to more weight gain. So not only is running more not solving this problem, sometimes it’s actually making it worse, a better thought instead of, I just need to run more.
It might be. You know, running improves my fitness, but nutrition creates weight loss. They work together, but they are not interchangeable. But I can’t tell you how many times, you know, runners, you know, just try to throw more miles at the problem. You know, this is all again, about this idea of calories in, calories out.
And if you just, you know, do more cardio, you’re gonna lose more weight. And that’s not necessarily true. I know so many people who run all the time, they’re doing cardio every single day, and they are still. 30, 40 pounds overweight and they can’t lose the weight, is the solution to run more? Probably not.
They can’t run anymore. They’re running seven days a week. You know, you just can’t add more, uh, to that, to that situation there. Now stress, I think, you know, a certain amount of running can help with stress. I think, you know, if you’re feeling less energetic, that a certain amount of running can help you feel.
More energetic, but there’s a law of diminishing returns, right? There’s a comes a point in time where. You know, you get to the point where you’re actually overdoing it and then you’re gonna be more stressed and you’re gonna be more tired and more exhausted and over training, and that’s gonna lead to more weight gain.
So running more is just really not the answer to everything, but it’s a great lie to tell yourself. It means you don’t have to change any of your eating habits. You can just keep eating whatever junk you want to, and as long as you just run more, you can justify that. Um, but I hear all the time about runners who are, you know, running all the time they’re in.
They seem to be in pretty good shape and they end up having some, you know, heart attack or something like that because of poor diet, because of other mitigating factors. Okay? So just running more is not gonna be the answer. Okay? So remember, running improves my fitness. Nutrition creates weight loss, so make the focus on nutrition, lie number five.
I’ve already tried everything. I’ve heard this one so many times from people, and you know what? You haven’t, you know, I love you all, but listen, you are absolutely, you have not absolutely tried every single thing out there, okay? What you’ve done is tried a lot of things for very short periods of time, without consistency, without coaching, without a solid plan, without a solid mindset strategy, supporting that plan.
And listen, that’s not. Failure. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re normal. That’s just being a human, okay? But this lie of I’ve tried everything, convinces you that nothing will ever work for you. And when you believe that, you don’t have to show up anymore, you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to change because nothing is ever going to work for you.
This is a terrible thought. Doesn’t it sound terrible the way I’m saying it? Just saying it out loud here. I wrote, you know, some notes here and, and you know, it looked fine on paper as I’m saying it out loud. I’m like, God, this sounds awful. A better thought would be there are strategies I haven’t mastered yet.
There are things I have not tried, but I’m capable of figuring this out. That, that is an empowered statement right there. I’ve tried everything. Nothing is ever gonna work for me, is giving your power away. You become powerless when you say that. Alright? But when you say, I am going to figure this out, there’s things I haven’t tried yet.
That is very empowering. That’s putting the power back on your plate. You are now in control because you are in control. You know, we just, again, you know, we don’t wanna have to try anything else. ’cause it’s, it’s, it can be frustrating sometimes and I get it. It is frustrating sometimes when you try something and it doesn’t work.
But guess what? The only way you can succeed is if you try. You may, it may or may not work you. You, um, analyze your results, you make necessary changes. Then you try something else and you repeat that process until you succeed. That’s the way every successful person in the world has ever accomplished anything big.
Right? You, you keep trying. Keep trying. Success is built upon a big old pile of failures, right? So you just gotta keep, keep trying and it’s frustrating, I get it. But this is the way the world works. Okay? So why do these lies matter? Here’s the, the takeaway I want you to, to really think about here for today, the thoughts that you repeat.
Determine the results that you get, the thoughts you keep repeating, determine the results that you get, not because of magic or manifestation or crystals or anything like that, but because your thinking drives your actions every single day, period. If your thoughts are disempowering, if your thoughts remove your responsibility.
If your thoughts make you feel stuck, hopeless, or defeated, then guess what? Your actions will reflect that. The actions that you take will be disempowering. They will, they will remove you, uh uh, your responsibility. They will make you feel stuck, hopeless, and defeated. But. When you choose thoughts that create agency that are empowering, that spark motivation, when you choose thoughts that build confidence, your whole experience changes.
You know, your actions will reflect that. Your actions will be empowered. They will have agency. They will, you know, spark motivation. They will create confidence in you. Weight loss doesn’t start with food. It starts, uh, with the story that you tell yourself. Weight loss doesn’t start with, you know, how many macros you should be eating or, or what kinds of foods you should be eating.
It starts with, you know, the stories that you tell yourself or the excuses that you’re making, or the story or the, um, uh, lies you keep telling yourself. Okay. If you’re listening to this right now and you’re thinking, yeah, this is exactly the kind of work I need to be doing, then I want to just invite you to join me inside my coaching program.
This is where we dig deep into your mindset, your habits, your fueling, your training, all of it, and we build a simple, sustainable, empowering plan that actually gets you to where you want to go. So if you want some expert guidance, some ongoing support, some accountability. To finally reach your weight loss and uh, your weight loss goals and feel amazing doing it, go to running lean coaching.com.
Click on work with me. Alright, my friends, that’s all I got for you today. Stop believing the lies. Okay? Start choosing thoughts that actually support the runner that you want to become. Love you all. Keep on running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
In this week’s episode of the Running Lean Podcast, I’m diving deep into a topic that affects every single one of us—Understanding and Identifying Self-Sabotage. If you’ve ever made progress toward …
Continue Reading about 306. Understanding and Identifying Self-Sabotage →
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 306 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today understanding and identifying self sabotage. So today I am gonna be diving deep into a topic that affects every single one of us understanding and identifying when we self-sabotage.
If you’ve ever made progress toward your running or weight loss goals only to find yourself slipping back into old habits and behaviors, this episode is going to hit home for you. You’re gonna learn what self-sabotage. Actually is and what it isn’t. How to recognize when you’re doing it and the surprising reasons why we all do it.
Most importantly, I’ll show you how to start breaking the cycle so you can finally build real. Lasting consistency. This is not about guilt or shame, it’s about awareness and growth. Because once you see how you’ve been getting in your own way, you’ll have the power to stop doing it and to start creating the results that you’ve actually been working for.
But first, listen, I know how frustrating it feels when you’re doing all the right things. You’re running, you’re eating healthy, you’re putting in the work, but something still feels off. You’re tired of feeling like progress takes too long, that you can’t stay consistent, or that maybe your body isn’t responding the way that it should.
Here is the truth. You don’t need another quick fix. You don’t need another cookie cutter training plan. You need a comprehensive approach that helps you to build strength, improve your endurance, and burn fat without burning out. That’s exactly what we do inside my coaching program. I’ll help you develop a nutrition strategy that actually supports your running.
Uh, I’ll help you to build a body that feels strong and resilient, and I’ll help you to master the mindset that keeps you consistent long term. How about no more self-sabotage? Listen, you don’t have to keep doing this alone. The next step is simple. Go to my website running lean coaching.com, click on work with me.
Let’s get you feeling light, feeling strong, feeling confident, again from the inside. Out. Okay, so let’s talk about self-sabotage. Yay. What it is, what it isn’t. How to know when you’re doing it, why we do it, and the sneaky ways it shows up in our lives as runners and just as human beings. This op, I’m hoping that this episode is going to hit home for a lot of you because.
That’s my intention here. That would be a good thing. You can’t change something if you don’t know that you’re doing it. Okay? You have to acknowledge it in order to change it, and so today is all about recognizing, identifying, and acknowledging what’s really going on. So the first thing I wanna do is kind of talk about what self-sabotage is and what it isn’t.
And I wanna start with a, a definition. So self-sabotage is when your thoughts, emotions, or behaviors are working against your goals. Okay? It’s when you say you want to do one thing, like, you know, I wanna lose weight, or I wanna be able to run faster. You know, I wanna feel confident in my body. But what you’re doing, your actions tell a completely different story.
It’s that internal conflict between what you say that you want and then what you’re actually doing, you know, every day. The crazy thing is most of the time. We don’t even realize when we’re doing it, and we all do this. I wanna make that very clear right now. This is not something just for, it’s not just something that weak people do or something that unaware people do.
Like everybody at some point has engaged in some sort of self-sabotage, okay? And a lot of times we don’t even realize we’re doing it. You might just think that you’re tired or you’re stressed or you’re busy, but underneath that, there’s deeper things happening. Okay? So self-sabotage is not laziness, it’s not weakness.
It’s not because you’re broken. It’s not because you’re undisciplined. It’s actually your brain. Trying to protect you. So your brain is wired for safety and for comfort. Your brain wants predictability. It wants safety at wants the familiar. So when you start to change things, when you start a new food plan or a new strength program, you know, you start pushing yourself a little bit.
You start doing hard things that that feel a little uncomfortable and unfamiliar, your brain starts to freak out a little bit. It’s like saying, whoa, wait a minute. This is unfamiliar territory. This feels uncomfortable. Let’s go back to what we know. So it throws up all kinds of thoughts and emotions and behaviors that subtly pull you back to your old ways.
Not because your brain hates you, but because your brain is always trying to protect you from pain, from discomfort, from risk, from change. Your brain does not like things that are different. It likes the familiar. So that’s what self-sabotage is. It’s your subconscious mind saying, let’s just stay safe. Um, even when safe means staying stuck where you are, you know, if you’re trying to lose weight and you start eating differently, that’s gonna feel uncomfortable.
To your brain that’s gonna feel unfamiliar to your brain. What? Vegetables? Like what? I’ve, I’m not used to eating vegetables. Like, what is this all about? And so your brain is gonna be like, no, that, that feels like danger to us. We gotta get outta here. You know, we can’t eat broccoli. Okay. So a lot of times we don’t even know that this is happening.
So let’s talk a little bit about, um, how you can start identifying when you are self-sabotaging. Okay. Because sometimes, sometimes it’s kind of obvious. Okay. Like if you’ve been eating great all week and then you, you binge eat like all the leftover Halloween candy all at once, that might be of. Pretty clear and pretty obvious way of self-sabotaging yourself.
Okay. But it’s usually not that. It’s often a lot more subtle and kind of sneaky. Okay. So here are some signs that you might be self-sabotaging. Okay? If every Monday you’re telling yourself, oh, I’m just gonna start over on Monday, and then the next Monday comes around and you have to start over again.
’cause maybe you, you do pretty well, like, you know, Monday through Thursday and then like Friday, Saturday and Sunday, everything kind of goes to crap. You know, that could be a sign that you’re self-sabotaging. You know, because the weekends are typically when you’re used to living it up a little bit and drinking more and eating whatever, and you’re starting to slide back into those old behaviors, those old weekend behaviors that feel comfortable and safe, you know?
Um, and if every Monday you’re starting over, that could be a sign that you’re self-sabotaging. Um, if you find yourself giving up or quitting, as soon as things start to go, well, this could be a sign of self-sabotage. And what this looks like for a lot of people. For example, let’s say you’re trying to lose weight and you lose like five or eight pounds, so things are starting to go well, and then you kind of give up on yourself.
You know, because what you’re doing is working, but it feels unfamiliar, it feels uncomfortable. And especially at the beginning of any sort of change, it’s going to feel weird and uncomfortable. It’s not what you’re used to. You’re gonna be doing different things, you’re engaging in new behaviors. Um, but if you find yourself, you know, as soon as things start to go well, you, you give up.
You quit on yourself. That’s self-sabotage. Okay. If you tell yourself, you know, I just need to take a short break here. You know, I need to just stop running for a few weeks. You know, I’m kind of feeling tired, or, you know, I just need to give myself a chance to eat whatever I want because I’m just feeling too deprived.
You know, I’m not, you know, I, I. I’m, I’m eating pretty clean, but I need to give myself a, a chance to eat some donuts or cookies or some ice cream or some pizza, and that little short break turns into weeks or maybe months. That could be self-sabotage right there. Okay. Even just telling yourself I need to take a break from eating healthy could be a sign of self-sabotage.
Okay. Another sort of subtle way that we, we can self-sabotage is setting unrealistic goals for ourselves, knowing deep down that you’re not gonna follow through with all that. Um, I remember. Um, some time, a long time ago, um, talking to somebody who had all these massive goals. You know, this person wanted to lose a hundred pounds and, um, uh, run an ultra marathon and, uh, you know, get super strong and had all these huge.
Goals? Well, they had never really run before, ever. Um, they had been pretty large their whole life and hadn’t ever really been able to lose the weight, you know, um, never really been to a gym before. So setting all these huge unrealistic goals made it so that they could just say, you know, that’s just too hard.
I’m never gonna be able to do that stuff. And then they didn’t have to follow through with it, you know, so that’s a sign that you might be. Self-sabotaging, just setting goals that are just unrealistic, um, and, and unreachable really. Another way that we subtly self-sabotage is constantly comparing ourselves to others and deciding that you’re never gonna measure up.
You know, and I, I’ve done this in the past where I said, you know, other people can do hard things. Other people can run marathons. That’s just tsunami. I’m never gonna be able to do that. It’s too hard. And I remember after I did run a few marathons, I remember, um, you know, that part sort of went away. But then I had some friends that were doing.
Triathlons and Iron Man, and I thought, oh, I could never do something like that, you know? And I, and I kind of made a decision that I’m, I would never be able to do that. And that lasted for a while until, you know, I, I, I had to change that thinking and I had to stop comparing myself to other people, you know?
And instead I said, okay, well, what do I want for myself? And I set out to start doing some triathlons, and then eventually did an Iron Man. And, and I proved myself wrong. You know, I was trying to stay safe and comfortable by not having to do something hard, you know, so the way I did that was compare myself to others and say, they’re better.
They can do these things. I can’t do these things. Um, and so I’d never, you know, if I had chosen that path, I never would’ve had to do those things that were hard. Okay. Or lastly, finding excuses for why you can’t do something instead of finding ways of making it work. You know, if you keep telling yourself, I can’t do this, and, and you, you can probably list all the reasons why you can’t do something.
Shift that thinking. Like, instead, find ways to make it work for you. Like list all the reasons why you can do it. List all the different ways that you could. Work to make that thing happen for you. Okay, so these are just sneaky, subtle signs that you might be self-sabotaging and you don’t even really realize it.
You know, you might be procrastinating. You might be saying things like, you know, I’m gonna start after this vacation, or I’ll get serious when work slows down. Or, you know, I just need to be motivated. I do better when I’m motivated and I’m just not motivated right now. Here’s the truth though. You don’t need more motivation.
You need more awareness when you can recognize that these patterns are self-sabotaging patterns. They’re not like. You know, bad circumstances or lack of discipline, you know, or, or you know, fate that you can finally start to change them. Once you recognize that these are just things that your brain is doing to try to keep you safe, you can start working on changing these things.
Now, a lot of people talk about, well, why? Why do we do this? Why do we self-sabotage? What’s at the root of this thing? Because if you understand why you do it, you can really stop judging yourself for it and just start making some changes here. Okay, so there’s a few core reasons, um, why people self-sabotage.
You know, I already talked about our brain sort of wanting to stay safe, and that’s a big part of this, but even underneath that, there’s a few things that. Are really the cause of a lot of our self-sabotage. And there’s like four things I’ll talk about. There’s more, but these are four big ones. Number one is a fear of failure, so this is a big one.
You might think, you know, if I really try and I fail. That’ll, that’ll just prove to myself that I’m not good enough and it’ll prove to the rest of the world that I’m not good enough. So I’d rather just not try, not even start that way. I won’t fail. So you, you subconsciously are. Pre-filing, you’re creating failure ahead of time.
You’re doing it to yourself and you’re controlling your outcome, right? You, you don’t have to fail you, you’re not gonna succeed at anything, but also you’re not failing. So for you, it’s gonna be safer to fail on these terms than to risk, you know, trying something new and hard and giving it your all and then, and falling short.
Okay, so fear of failure is a. Big one. A lot of people will not even start things because they’re afraid that they might not be able to do it. Guess what? There’s no such thing as, uh, success without failure. Like you have to fail your way to succeed in just about everything that you do. Number two, uh, and this is kind of related, but sort of the opposite is the fear of success.
So, believe it or not, for a lot of people’s success can be just as scary. So. What do you do? You know, what if you do lose the weight? You know what if you do get faster? What if you do change your life, but you can’t keep it up? Then what? So a certain level of success brings a whole new set of like pressures and expectations and responsibility, you know, and this can feel very terrifying.
So you sabotage yourself. To just stay in the familiar struggle instead of stepping out into the unknown. So, you know, fear of succeeding can be just as scary. It can be frightening to a lot of people because once you get there, how do you maintain that? What if you can’t maintain it? Um, another big one is the fear of change.
You know, humans, we crave certainty. We crave consistency. So even when your current situation isn’t perfect, at least it’s comfortable, right? You know what to expect. And when we change things, that requires letting go of that comfort. You’re literally getting out of your comfort zone when you make changes.
And this is like your brain saying, you know better the devil that you know than the devil you don’t, you know? So instead of, you know, making positive changes, we will stay stuck. We will stay where we are presently and not grow, not evolve, not become more, because that fear of change, changing anything is too great.
It just feels too hard and too scary for us. And then number four is a fear of judgment. So you might be thinking, well, what will people think of me if I fail? What will people think of me if I succeed? You know, you don’t wanna stand out, you don’t wanna rock the boat, you don’t want to face criticism. So you stay small, you stay safe.
You don’t do things that are hard, you don’t do things that might be considered, um. Uh, great because you are thinking you’re gonna be judged if you do well or, or if you fail. So either way, you’re screwed according to yourself. You know, it’s this like unnatural fear of judgment. And again, these fears are all rooted in one thing.
Your brain is trying to protect you, and your brain isn’t your enemy. It just doesn’t understand the difference between real danger and emotional discomfort. Emotional discomfort is something that we all have to deal with, and if we can get good at dealing with emotional discomfort, um, we can overcome all of these fears and we can, you know, reach our goals much faster.
Without all the self-sabotage, discomfort is where growth actually happens, right? Everything you want but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone. If you’re unwilling to get uncomfortable, you’re going to stay stuck forever. Now let’s talk about, um, the main ways that we self-sabotage and what this might actually look like in your day-to-day life.
So here are some of the main ways that I see, especially runners self-sabotage, especially when it comes to their health, their fitness, their mindset. And I already mentioned this one a little bit, but it’s procrastination. You know, procrastination is a very popular form of self-sabotage. You know, you tell yourself, I’m gonna start when, and then just fill in the blank.
Like, I’m gonna wait until this vacation is over. I’m gonna wait until. Monday, or I’m gonna wait until after the holidays, or I’m gonna wait until after the kids are grown up and moved out of the house or whatever. Well, guess what? Things are never going to be perfect. The planets are never going to align.
There’s never a perfect time to start other than right now. So procrastination is just fear disguised as. You know, logical thinking. Well, I’m gonna be very practical and very logical about this, and the best time to start is gonna be when this person is, you know, different in my life. And this thing has changed and I don’t have a busy work schedule and the kids are taking care.
Like you can like come up with all these. Excuses and reasons, but it’s, it’s all just a form of self-sabotage. So procrastination, one of the main ways that we self-sabotage in other ways, perfectionism. And you tell yourself, you know, if I can’t do things perfectly, why should I bother doing it all? So a lot of people, they don’t ever start anything or they quit the moment something isn’t, you know, completely perfect.
But perfectionism isn’t just having high standards, it’s the fear of being seen as imperfect. It’s the fear of having to do something imperfectly. You know, I can’t tell you how many people who I. Set out to lose weight. They change their diet, they’re doing pretty well. And then they have like a bad day.
They might, you know, eat some junk food. They like drive through McDonald’s or something like that, and they’re like, look, I can’t do this perfectly, so I’m just not even gonna bother. And they just quit just because they feel like if they’re not doing it a hundred percent, they’re not doing it right. And the truth of the matter is like.
And I always tell people this, like, if you’re doing well, like 90% of the time, if you’re sticking to your plan, like 90% of the time, you’re fine. Go through the McDonald’s, drive through if that’s what you want to do. Um, don’t do it every day. Um, but you do have a little bit of wiggle room there. So if you want to eat some french fries from McDonald’s, knock yourself out.
Number three, negative self-talk. So you might tell yourself stuff like, you know, I’m too old. I’ve always failed at this. I’ve tried before. It never works. I can’t, I can never stick to something. These, these thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, your brain. Believes, whatever you repeatedly tell it.
And if you keep saying, I can’t do it, I’ll never be able to stick with it. I’m too old. I always fail. Those things are going to be true for you. You will be too old to do this. You will completely fail. You will not be able to stick to it. So that negative self-talk is a big one, and it’s something that you really have to be aware of.
Okay. Number four, the all or nothing thinking, you know, this is, you know, part of that perfectionism thing, but it’s like either I, I have to do it all and and do it all perfectly or not at all. So maybe you run five days in a row and then you miss a day and you’re like, you know what? Screw it. I’m just gonna start again next week.
Or you eat one off meal, off plan meal and you decide that your whole day is ruined. So you just, you know, just. Trash the rest of the day. Essentially, this kind of thinking just kills progress. You know? Consistency matters more than perfection, right? 90% rule. Just you don’t have to do it perfectly all the time.
Um, and that’s all or nothing thinking like you have to, you know, always, like I tell people, like, take a break from eating sugar, for example. See how your body feels. You might find that you do much better when you’re not eating sugar all the time, but this doesn’t mean you can never eat sugar again in your life.
You know, if you know a month from now you wanna have a donut, or you’re at a wedding and you wanna have a piece of wedding cake, eat the cake, eat the donut, it’s fine. All right? If you’re telling yourself, well, you know, I’m not gonna be able to do this. Uh, if I can’t go all in and then you do eat the donor or something like that, you’re gonna wanna quit because that’s.
Your mentality, you gotta shift that thinking. Number five is emotional buffering. Another big way that we self-sabotage. So you might be using something like alcohol or food or scrolling on social media or just being super busy to numb yourself to your emotions instead of just dealing with them instead of processing them.
So you tell yourself, well, I deserve this when what you’re really doing is you’re just trying to avoid being uncomfortable, emotional buffering. Or numbing ourselves to our feelings. You know, it feels good in the moment. It’s like, oh, you know, oh, I have a glass of wine and I just, I can really unwind and relax.
But it keeps you from facing the real issue. You know, you got emotions that you need to deal with and you need to process, and you need to feel those things. You need to feel fear and anger, and frustration, and stress, you know, and I’m not saying we, we can’t do things too. Um, make ourselves feel better at times, but maybe going for a walk or taking a run or going to the gym for a, for a workout to get those sort of feel good chemicals going, like endorphins and dopamine and stuff instead of just numbing yourself using alcohol or scrolling through social media or food.
Okay. That emotional buffering is, is a big one, and it is a big way that we self-sabotage. Um, and then lastly, overcommitting. So you’re just trying to do too much, too many goals, too many commitments. And then you just burn yourself out and that burnout gives you an excuse to just quit. You know, this is a very subtle but also pretty common form of self-sabotage.
I see this with some people who, they just have to be doing all the things all the time. They say yes to everything, and they can’t possibly commit to it all, and they use. Their overcommitment as an excuse to not be able to stick with anything essentially. Um, and again, this is like that, a type A personality disorder, I’ll call it, because I think it is a disorder.
I think having that type A personality, there are some good aspects to that. Like, Hey, you know, you’re very productive, you can get a lot of stuff done, but if you’re using it as an excuse, then you might be just self-sabotaging. So, what’s the cost of all this? Well, the hard truth is this. The self self-sabotage doesn’t just slow down your progress.
It just, it destroys your confidence. You know, every time you break a promise to yourself, you break a little bit of that trust with your yourself. You start to believe your own excuses. You start to expect yourself to fail, and it becomes a vicious cycle. You sabotage, you feel ashamed and guilty. You promise to do better, you sabotage again, and then the cycle just continues.
Does that sound familiar? This is why so many people feel stuck in the start over cycle, not because they can’t follow a plan, but because they haven’t dealt with the mindset that keeps derailing them. Okay, so how do you stop all this? How do you break the cycle? How do you stop self-sabotaging? Well, it all starts with an awareness, and that’s what we’re really talking about here today.
You can’t change what you don’t see. So what I want you to work on. This week is step one. Just notice, catch yourself in the act. When you skip a workout or you eat something you said you wouldn’t eat, or you make an excuse, just pause. Take a moment and ask yourself, is this action helping me, me, me, move toward my goal or keeping me stuck or move away from my goal?
Don’t judge it. Just notice it. Be kind to yourself, but just. Pause, is this moving me towards my goal or away from my goal? And then just notice what is happening. Identify the emotion. So what are you feeling in that moment? What is it? Fear, stress, boredom. Doubt. Frustration. What’s the emotion you’re feeling?
Because you can’t manage what you don’t understand. And emotions drive behavior. Right. It’s not the other way around. Your emotions drive your behavior. So what are you feeling in that moment? What is driving you to take the action of X, Y, or Z? And then question the thought, like ask yourself, what am I thinking right now that’s creating this feeling?
Maybe it’s, this is too hard, or I deserve a break, or one drink won’t hurt. You know, once you see the thought, you can kind of take away its power. And then number four, just choose intentionality instead of reacting automatically. Pause and make a decision. Decide on purpose. You can ask yourself this question, what would the future version of me, the one who’s already achieved this goal, what would that version of me do right now?
And then do that thing. Okay. Now, here’s a little tough love for you. If you keep self-sabotaging, it’s because some part of you is getting a payoff from staying stuck. Maybe you get to avoid discomfort. Maybe you get to keep blaming your circumstances. Instead of taking responsibility. Maybe you get to avoid the pressure of success, but if you wanna change, you’ve got to give up that comfort.
You’ve got to be willing to get uncomfortable. You’ve got to be willing to fail, willing to feel awkward, to mess up, to be seen trying. That’s what growth looks like. Self-sabotage is not a life sentence. It’s just a habit. And habits can be broken when you bring awareness, honesty, and compassion to them.
So you’re challenged this week. Keep a journal. Just write down the moments when you notice yourself self-sabotaging. When you notice yourself getting in your own way, what’s triggering it? What am I thinking in that moment? What was I feeling? What was I doing? What was the behavior? And then what would I do differently next time?
And then look for patterns. What do you, what are you, when are you self-sabotaging? Like, what does that look like for you? When are you most often doing that? When things are going well, when you’re feeling tired or stressed, when you’re afraid of being judged by others? Look for those patterns and see if you can, you know, put a few of these, uh, uh, connect a few of these dots here.
Okay? And then replace the behavior instead of reacting from fear. Choose from awareness. Even small shifts like pausing before you grab a snack or just skipping that excuse, that’ll start to rewire your brain. And then lastly, practice self-compassion. You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just human.
Self-sabotage is just a learned behavior. It’s a learned pattern of behavior, and you can learn a new one. Okay. So quick recap here. Self-sabotage is when your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviors work against you and your goals. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you from discomfort, not an indication of failure.
You could recognize self-sabotage by noticing when your actions aren’t in alignment with your intentions. We self-sabotage because we’re afraid because of fear, because of fear, of failure, of success, of change, or judgment. The most common forms of self-sabotage include procrastination, perfectionism, negative self-talk, all or nothing thinking, um, emotional buffering or overcommitting.
And the cost of self-sabotage is huge. Loss of confidence in yourself, loss of trust in yourself, loss of progress, but with awareness, honesty, and intention, you can break the cycle. One decision at a time. So here’s what I want you to remember today. Self-sabotage doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re human.
It’s just your brain’s misguided attempt to keep you safe. Uh, you are not here to stay safe, though you are here to grow. And growth requires discomfort. Change requires courage and freedom. Real lasting freedom comes from taking responsibility for your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions. So this week, pay attention.
Notice when you’re getting in your own way, call yourself out with kindness, with love, and then remind yourself, you know, I’m just not gonna do this anymore. I’m gonna choose differently this time. I know you got this. So if this episode resonated with you, if you saw yourself in some of these patterns of self-sabotage, that’s good.
That awareness is your first step towards freedom. And if you want help with this, if you wanna learn how to stop self-sabotaging, learn how to lose weight, get stronger, run with confidence. I’m here to help. Just head over to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me to learn more about my coaching program.
That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
Sometimes it’s during a marathon when your body just says “no more,” but other times, it’s just life that stops you cold. You lose motivation, faith, or direction — and it feels like there’s no way …
Continue Reading about 305. What to Do When You Hit the Wall →
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 305 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, what to do when you hit the wall. So we all hit walls. Sometimes it’s during a marathon when your body just says, no mas. But other times it’s just life that stops you cold.
You might lose motivation or faith or direction. And it feels like there’s just no way through. But what if the wall isn’t the end? What if it’s actually the path? In this episode, I’m talking about how to face the hardest moments in your life and find the strength to move through them, whether you’re struggling in your running, your health, or just life in general.
This episode will help you reframe those challenges and see them for what they really are. Opportunities to grow stronger, wiser, and more resilient than ever. This one’s gonna be honest, emotional, and powerful. Stick around. But first, listen, if you’re tired of feeling stuck, if running feels harder than it should, if you’ve been doing all the right things, but you’re still not seeing the results that you want, you don’t have to keep trying to figure it all out yourself.
What most runners don’t realize is that the struggle isn’t just physical, it’s mental, it’s emotional. It’s about mindset, nutrition, training, recovery. All of it working together, and that’s exactly what I help my clients do every single day. When we work together, you’ll get a customized plan for running, for strength, for nutrition, but more importantly, you’ll get coaching and accountability to help you to follow through.
You’ll finally build the consistency. The confidence and the strength that you’ve been missing. So if you’re ready to break through your wall in running and in life, go to running lean coaching.com. Click on work with me and we can do this together. All right, let’s get into this topic. What to do when you hit the wall.
Um, and I’m not just talking about that moment in a marathon, when your legs feel like cinder blocks, your brain starts telling you it’s time to quit, and every cell in your body is screaming for mercy. I’m talking about the kind of walls we hit in our life, those things that stop us dead in our tracks that kind of make you question everything.
Maybe you’ve hit a wall in your health and fitness journey. You’re doing everything right, but the scale won’t budge. Maybe it’s in your training, you’ve lost motivation. The joy of running is gone. Maybe it’s something much bigger, something personal, emotional, spiritual, something that shakes the ground under your feet, whatever form it takes, hitting the wall can feel like the end.
But what I wanna offer you today is a different perspective because the wall. Isn’t the end. It’s not a dead end. It’s actually the beginning of something much deeper, A chance to grow, to evolve, to become someone new. Uh, there’s an amazing author and book out there. Ryan Holiday wrote this book called The Obstacle is The Way, and he says this beautifully in this book, the Impediment to Action Advances Action.
What stands in the way? Becomes the way, and that’s the essence of what we’re talking about here today. The obstacle that you see in front of you is the way the wall is, the path. The only way through is through. So I wanna start by defining what I mean when I say the wall in running. It’s that physiological crash.
You know, you’ve burned through your glycogen, your brain starts shutting systems down. You just can’t go on. You’re weak, foggy, unmotivated. Every step feels terrible. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I was talking to somebody last night who recently. Ran the Marine Corps marathon. She did it some years ago.
Um, my fiance Jill and I were just in Washington, DC for the Marine Corps Marathon. And we were working the expo, as you know, Jill is the assistant race director for Air Force Marathon. And so we were representing Air Force Marathon at the Marine Corps Marathon Expo. And so we, we watched 40,000 runners cross the finish line.
We were handing out some challenge medals at the end. It was, it was really an amazing experience. But we, um. We’re talking to someone last night who said she, she ran the Marine Corps marathon, and we were like, oh my gosh, that’s so awesome. She goes, yeah, I didn’t finish. I got to mile 20 and I quit. And we were both like, oh my gosh, that’s terrible.
You know? Um, and, and in reality, my thought was. Come on. You only had a 10 K to go. Like, you gotta push through that, uh, feeling of, uh, wanting to quit. You know, your body is shutting down. I totally get that. And, and listen, if you have ever, you know, uh, given up at the end of a marathon because of physiological reasons, you got, uh, really bad.
Cramps or you’re injured or something like that. What she was telling us was a little bit different. She just didn’t feel like she could go on, you know, there was nothing, uh, majorly wrong with her. She just kind of, you know, was tired and just felt like she couldn’t do it. And so she kind of gave up on herself and she sort of regrets that.
And, and I started thinking about that and, and I thought, you know, that’s a, that’s a good metaphor for life because life throws things at us all the time. Um. We have these moments in our life where, you know, things seem un insurmountable. These problems that seem like there’s just no way that we can get through them.
You know, there’s these huge obstacles to our, what we feel like are obstacles to our success, and we just can’t see a way forward. You know, maybe you’ve lost someone you love, maybe a relationship ended. Maybe you failed at something big like a business or a goal or a dream. Maybe you’re just exhausted from trying so hard for so long.
And here’s the thing, we all do this. Everyone at some point in their life hits a wall. You know, runners, parents, entrepreneurs, coaches, leaders. No one is immune to this. The wall is something universal. It’s part of the human experience, and it’s not a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a sign that you’re on the edge of transformation.
Our natural instinct, though, is to avoid it, we want to go around it, go under it, find a shortcut, or pretend it’s not there. And that’s a problem because growth doesn’t happen by avoiding walls. Growth only happens when you go through them. Here’s a truth that took me a long time to really grasp the wall.
Isn’t your enemy, it’s your teacher. Every wall you hit in your life is trying to teach you something. It’s showing you what’s not working. It’s revealing what still needs to change inside of you. It’s refining you, burning away what’s weak and temporary, what’s not in alignment with who you’re becoming.
You know, one thing in my life that was a big struggle was. Uh, 18 and a half years ago, I, I was really struggling with this addiction to alcohol and I had kind of hit a rock bottom and it felt like the end of my life. Like, this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to like, deal with, you know, to, to stop drinking.
Um, because it was really destroying my life. It was, it destroyed my marriage. It was, um, threatening to destroy my relationship with people, with my kids. Um, and it was something that just felt like the end of me. But really it was the thing that I had to go through in order for me to become the person that I am today.
And today, that wall that I hit, I’m grateful for that wall. Right in the moment though, it did not feel like that. It felt like the end of the world to me. It felt like the end of my life. It was painful. It felt like a loss. It, I felt like a failure. But I can look back on this, you know, years and years later, and I can realize that.
The wall wasn’t blocking me. It was actually guiding me toward who I needed to become. I wasn’t being punished, I was being shaped. Okay, so when you hit the wall, it kind of brings everything to the surface. The fear, the doubt, the excuses, the stories you tell yourself. It’s like stripping away all your armor, your raw, you’re vulnerable, and you can’t hide behind things like willpower anymore.
And that’s why it’s so uncomfortable. That’s also why it’s so powerful ’cause when you’re standing there face to face with whatever it is that your wall is in that moment, you get to see who you really are. It reveals that about you. It reveals who you are. You see what you really believe about yourself.
You can see how much you can actually trust in your own strength. You see whether or not you’re willing to fight for what really matters to you. And most people never get to that point because they quit. They quit before they get there. They feel the discomfort, they see the wall and they run the other way.
But if you stay, if you stand your ground and you choose to go through it, that’s where you find the version of yourself that’s been waiting on the other side. You know, it’s like pushing through the marathon when you only have those last 10 Ks to go. And I can relate to this because I’ve been there before, back in 2012.
I know this was a long time ago. That’s when I hit my marathon pr. Um. Like a 3 43, uh, which is pretty decent for me back in the day. I, I felt great about this. Um. It was in Indianapolis, it was in November. It was cold. We were dealing with, uh, an ice storm. Uh, the wind and, and, and ice were blowing in my face, heading back towards downtown Indianapolis.
And I had a friend running me in those last 10 Ks, like he met me at mile 20 right around there and, and was running me in. And I actually said to him out loud, like, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can keep running like this. And he just said, you, yes you can. But I was like, forced to deal with this wall that was in front of me, you know?
And it was like a, literally like a wall of wind and ice, you know? And, and, and I was doubting myself and the pain had set in and I was exhausted. Um. And, and he just said, you, you can do this. And, and that was the thing that’s just, I just kept running that through my head. Like I just have to push through, you know?
I know what’s on the other side of this. I’m going to hit my PR if I can keep going like this, and I really, really, really wanted to quit and I didn’t. Right. Most people though, when they’re in that situation, when they feel like they just can’t go on when they. See the wall. When they hit the wall, they do one of three things.
They stop, you know, they give up. They tell themselves, it’s too hard. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. Or number two, they try to go around the wall. You know, they look for the easy way out. What’s the shortcut? What can I do to avoid this discomfort here? Or number three, when they see the wall, they pretend it’s not there.
They numb out with food, with alcohol, with scrolling, with busyness, anything to just avoid feeling that pain of dealing with the wall, of going through the wall, but all those things, stopping going, trying to go around it or pretending it’s not there, they keep you stuck. You can’t outsmart the wall, you can’t ignore it.
You can’t run from it. Eventually it’s gonna find you again, usually in a bigger way. So you have one real option, and that is to face it. And that is terrifying, but it’s also where freedom lives. So the first step in breaking through any wall is facing it and accepting that, that it’s there, accepting it.
You gotta stop seeing it as a problem and start seeing it as part of the process. The wall isn’t a detour, it’s not a roadblock. This is the path. This is where you shift from. Why is this happening to me? To what is this here? To teach me that question. What is this teaching me? This changes everything for you.
Because it takes you outta victim mode and puts you in power mode, right? You stop fighting reality and you start working with it and acceptance. It doesn’t mean resignation. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It means you’ve acknowledged that, okay, this is real. This wall here, this is a real thing. And then choosing to go through it.
An ex good example of this is when I first started working as an entrepreneur and I was coaching other entrepreneurs, um, I was working with people who own small businesses and were trying to get started and I had some experience with this and so I started, you know, coaching them and this never really felt right for me.
Um, I had to accept the fact that this wasn’t really where I needed to be and it wasn’t the right. Fit for me and, and I had to sort of give up on that idea, you know? And when I finally did that, when I finally accepted that this wasn’t really where my heart was, and I started working with runners instead, everything fell into place beautifully for me.
But that was really hard to do because quitting something that I had started, I am not a quitter. I don’t quit anything. And when I had started this business and, and I had to make a decision because it just wasn’t working, I had to make that decision to shift into a different sort of genre here, a different, uh, niche.
And so I had to, uh, make that decision to shift gears and do something else, but it felt like a failure. It felt like I was a complete failure. And, and I didn’t wanna be a failure to myself or anybody else, but I realize now that I just pivoted. All I did was, was made a little, you know, shift in my direction and everything became clear.
And, and of course, this business that I have has become a. Incredibly successful, and it was facing that wall and going through it and not trying to avoid it, not pretending it wasn’t there. You know, my wall was, this wasn’t the right fit, you know, and, and this isn’t working. And, and I had to go through that in order to get where I am today.
But listen, going through the wall. It sucks. Okay. It’s like an emotional rollercoaster. It’s not graceful. It’s not easy, it’s messy. It’s emotional, it’s raw. You’re gonna cry, you’re gonna want to quit. You’re gonna feel lost. You’re gonna question everything. Your faith, your purpose, your strength, and you might even get.
Angry at yourself, at others, at the universe, and all that is okay. It’s part of the process, but you can’t numb your way through the wall. You can’t just check out and avoid it. You have to feel your way through it. The emotions that come up, the fear, the anger, the sadness, the grief, they’re not the enemy.
They’re signals. It’s like an alarm going off saying like, Hey, this is some stuff going on that you need to move through. Okay. And when you let yourself feel all that stuff, when you a, allow yourself to, to go on that emotional rollercoaster, ride without judgment, without, you know, uh, beating yourself up about it, something shifts for you.
This is when you actually start to heal and the wall begins to crack. And one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in all of this is that. Resilience isn’t built in comfort. It’s built in the moments when you think you can’t keep going, but you do anyway. Yeah. Every time you face a wall and you refuse to quit, you’re building that muscle of resilience.
That’s how you grow stronger mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Runners understand this better than most people ’cause every hard run, every tough race, every miserable workout, it’s training your body and your brain to handle the tough stuff, to handle adversity. And that’s why I always say like running is such a perfect metaphor for life.
’cause if you can learn to push through the pain during a really tough run, you can do this anywhere, right? The key though is that you can’t just like survive it. You have to be present in it. You have to notice what’s happening. You have to be aware. You have to be there. You can’t just check out. Notice what your mind is telling you.
Uh, notice how much stronger you are than maybe you think that awareness is what transforms that pain into power. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run in the freezing cold. Or the pouring rain or push through a really hard race. And every time I’ve done something really hard like that, it’s built up just a little bit of mental toughness.
It’s like building that mental toughness muscle. And little by little, my mental toughness, my resilience has grown and gotten stronger and stronger and stronger, and it’s taken years. And it’s taken going through a lot of tough stuff, tough runs and divorces and you know, a addiction. And cancer, like I’ve I, back in 2003, I was diagnosed with cancer and I had to go through all of that really tough times, but I came out the other side of that a lot stronger.
It didn’t feel like it at the time. I can look back on it now and say, yes, that was something that I had to go through in order to become who I am today. But you can’t avoid these things. You can’t avoid. The wall because all that does is just keeps you stuck. It just delays the growth and compounds your suffering.
Every time you avoid discomfort, you reinforce the belief that you can’t do it, that you can’t handle it, that it’s too hard for you, and you’re teaching yourself, Hey, when things get hard, we quit. Like the person I was talking to yesterday about the Marine Corps marathon, she got to mile 20 and it got hard.
There’s a hill there and she couldn’t do it. She quit. And that becomes your default for life. But the truth is you can handle it. You’ve already handled so much more than you give yourself credit for. Think about all the walls you’ve already gone through. Every challenge, every loss, every heartbreak.
You’ve made it through. Every single one. I always tell people you’ve got a hundred percent, uh, uh, track record of getting through tough stuff. We all do. We all have a hundred percent track record of getting through tough stuff. You didn’t think you could do it at the time, but you did. You always did. So when the next wall shows up and it will remember, this isn’t new.
You’ve been here before. You know what to do. You gotta just keep going. So I wanna give you guys a couple of practical tips for a minute here. ’cause this isn’t just about thinking, it’s just not just about mindset. It’s what you do when you hit the wall that really matters. And here’s a few things that can help you to move through it.
Number one. Pause, right? Don’t panic. Don’t freak out. When you hit the wall, your first instinct is to, um, you know, freak out and panic and think the world is about to end. But instead just take a beat. Okay? Take some deep breaths. Remind yourself. This is temporary and you don’t have to fix it right now.
Just breathe and stay present. Number two, just name what’s really going on. What’s the real wall here? Is it fear or self-doubt or burnout? When you name it, you get power over it. Okay. When, when you just, when you’re thinking about something as being so overwhelming that you can’t deal with it, then it has power over you.
But when you give it a name, because it might be something like addiction, but what’s, what’s really behind that? It’s like fear. You know? When you give it that name, then it becomes something that you have power over. Okay. So pause, name it. Number three, ask better questions instead of like, why do things always happen to me?
Why is this so hard? Maybe ask a question to of yourself, like, what’s the real lesson here? How can I grow from this? You’re gonna start to see opportunities instead of obstacles. Alright, those questions are terrible. Why is this so hard? Well, you can come up with all kinds of ideas and reasons why it’s so hard.
But when you say, how can I grow from this? You can come up with lots of ideas there too. Focus on those questions. Those are much better questions. Number four, lean on your people. You don’t have to go through anything alone. Talk to your friends, your family, your coach, your running community. Sometimes just being seen and heard makes the wall feel less heavy and it it becomes something that you can get through and maybe you need help from others to lean into that.
Okay? Don’t, don’t neglect that. Number five, recommit to the process. The wall will test your commitment. It’s like, how bad do you want? This is what it’s saying to you, okay? Reconnect to your why. Why are you doing what you’re doing? Remember what you’re fighting for. Okay? And then number six, take the next step.
Don’t worry about the whole wall, just take the next step and then the next one, then the next one, then that’s how you get through it. One small, messy, but brave step at a time. That’s what’s gonna get you there. Okay. And I get it. Sometimes the wall just feels too big, it’s too painful, it’s too much. And there are things that happen in life when you hit wall after wall, you just don’t have the strength to go again.
And I get that. And if that’s you. Hear me when I say this. You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You are being refined in fire. Sometimes the wall doesn’t move because you’re not ready yet. You’re still becoming the person who can move it, who can push through it. Don’t rush this process. Sit with it, learn from it.
Let it change you. And when you’re ready, when you’ve built the strength, the courage, the faith, that wall that once felt impossible will start to crumble. This took me years and years and years when I wanted to quit drinking. I knew I had a problem with alcohol. It was too big, it was too painful. It was too much.
I couldn’t do it. And it took me years and years and years to sit with it and learn from it. And eventually I had enough strength and courage and faith in myself to attack that and quit, you know? But it felt impossible at the time. It felt like there’s something I could never do. I had to sit with that one for years.
Hmm. When you finally do come out the other side though, something beautiful happens. You’re not the same person who, you know, walked into that wall on the other side of it, you’re stronger. Now, you’re wiser. You’re more grounded, more compassionate. The things that used to scare you, maybe they don’t so much anymore.
The thi things that used to break you or you know, you felt like they could break you. They don’t have that power over you anymore. Because you’ve been through the fire and you didn’t just survive, you transformed yourself in the process. And once you’ve gone through that, once you know you can do it again.
And then once you do it again, you know you can do it again. That’s where freedom, uh, really begins. That’s where your strength really comes into play. That’s where growth really happens. Circling back to Ryan Holiday’s book, the Obstacle is the Way. It’s not just a catchy quote, it’s literally a roadmap for life.
So whatever’s in your way right now, whatever wall you’re facing, it’s not blocking your path. That is your path. It’s the training ground for your soul. Every wall you face prepares you for the next one, and every obstacle builds the strength that you’re gonna need later. And when you start to see life that way, life really changes for you.
You stop dreading hard things. You start welcoming these hard things as opportunities to evolve. Now, we don’t wish these things on ourselves. We don’t wish for, you know, these huge obstacles to show up in our lives. But when they do, you’re not as afraid of them. You realize that the wall isn’t, you know, punishment.
It’s how you build your purpose. Okay. Now, a lot of you, uh, are, are runners and I want to talk a little bit about running here because. What it’s like to hit the wall. Uh, physically, we understand that as runners, right? You, you get that fatigue, that moment where you can’t just, you can’t go another step, but you do anyway.
You dig deep, you find something inside of you, something primal, something fierce that refuses to quit. Well, that same spirit and strength that’s inside you when you’re running and you want to quit, but you keep going. That’s what you need to tap into when life gets hard, when everything starts to fall apart, when you’re tired and broken and scared.
That same, you know, runner’s heart that got you across the finish line, that’s what you need to tap into. You just have to remember that that’s there and it’s available to you. And you’ve done this before and you can do it again. So if you’re standing and, and staring at your wall right now. Maybe it’s a health challenge or a relationship, or your job or your training.
I want you to know this. This moment is not the end. It’s the middle. It’s, it’s the part of the story where everything starts to change for you, but you can’t run from it. You can’t numb yourself to it. You can’t pretend it’s not there. You have to face it and feel it and then move through it. ’cause on the other side of that wall, that’s where freedom is.
And power and peace, and you will make it through this. You always do a hundred percent track record so far of getting through tough stuff. And if any of this spoke to you in this episode, if you’re in the middle of your own wall right now and you want help getting through it, that’s what I do every day as a coach.
I help runners get unstuck physically, mentally, emotionally, so they can do hard things. Lose weight, get stronger, become the best versions of themselves. If you’re ready to break through your wall, just go to running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, and we can do it together. That’s all I got for you today.
Keep on running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
This week marks a huge milestone for the podcast — episode 300! To celebrate, I’m sharing something very special: 20 Principles to Help You Get Leaner, Get Stronger, Run Better, and Live …
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 300 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, 20 principles to help you get leaner, get stronger, run better, and live longer. This week is a huge milestone for the podcast episode 300. So to celebrate, I’m doing something a little bit different.
I’m sharing 20 principles to help you get leaner, stronger, run better, live longer. After nearly six years and 300 episodes, I’ve covered just about everything from fat burning nutrition to strength training, endurance building, mastering your mindset. But the truth is. All of this boils down to a handful of timeless principles.
These aren’t quick fixes. They’re not hacks. They aren’t they, they are the core truths that every runner needs to live by. These are the principles that will guide you to becoming the strongest, leanest, most resilient version of yourself. And to keep you running well for life. So in honor of episode 300, I’m just laying it all out there for you.
Um, I hope you enjoy this. And listen, if you’ve been struggling with your running, with your body, with your health, I want you to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Running doesn’t need to feel like a constant battle. Food doesn’t have to feel like, uh, confusing or, or feel like, uh, you’re being deprived all the time.
Strength training doesn’t have to be overwhelming. If you don’t have, you don’t have to keep spinning your wheels hoping that things will magically get better. What you need is a proven plan. You need the right support. You need someone in your corner to help you stay on track. That’s exactly what I do every single day with my coaching clients.
We work together to build a strong nutritional foundation. We develop a strength program that actually makes you a better runner, and then we master the mindset it takes to stay consistent with all this stuff for life. If you’re ready to finally transform into Lina’s strongest, most confident version of yourself, let’s go.
Just head over to my website running lean coaching.com and click on work with me. Alright, let’s get into this. Like I said. I’ve covered a ton of ground over the last 300 episodes. I was looking over my list of topics and oh my gosh, there’s so much I have covered on topics of nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset.
But what I’m sharing with you today are the. The big takeaways, the truths that have stood the test of time, truths, that’s hard to say. The truths that have stood the test of time. Think of these as the guiding principles that kind of tie everything together. Um, if you’ve ever like listened to the podcast and you thought, well, what matters most?
What should I really focus on? Well. This is it. Okay, so in honor of hitting this big milestone, here are my 20 principles to help you get leaner, get stronger, run better, and live longer. 20 principles that I believe every runner should live by. And the first one we’re just gonna get right into this, is to eat real food.
Everything really starts here. Real whole food fuels your body the way nature intended. If it comes in a box or a bag, or it has a barcode, or it has a lot of ingredients, I would question it. It doesn’t mean you, you shouldn’t eat it necessarily, but question it. Stick to food that still looks like food.
Food that is nutrient rich. Food that is, uh, in its natural form. You know, I’ve mentioned this in the past where there are some things where I think it’s okay to, to have some lightly processed food. Like I, I buy some frozen broccoli. That is in a bag that has been cut up. You know, if you’ve ever like cut a bunch of fresh broccoli, do you know how messy that is?
The little teeny broccoli pieces get everywhere. It’s ridiculous. So to me that’s like, yes, it is processed food, but guess what? There’s one ingredient in there, it’s broccoli. Somebody else cut it for me and. Froze it so that all I gotta do is cook it. You know, I don’t have to throw anything away so I’m not wasting anything.
Um, so that’s an example of a processed food that I am on board with. Okay? But look at the food that you’re eating. Make sure it is minimally or not processed at all. That’s kind of your, your best bet. Eat food still looks like. The food that it’s supposed to be. You know, number two, fat burning is your superpower.
So teaching your body to burn fat efficiently gives you steady energy. It improves your endurance as a runner. It makes it much easier to lose weight or manage your weight. Fat burning should be the focus. It should be your superpower. And when I talk about fat burning, I don’t mean that you’re gonna, you know, you gotta be on some kind of like ketogenic diet for the rest of your life or something like that.
We’re talking about being metabolically flexible. That means that. You have developed the ability to burn fat and carbohydrates equally Well, most people, they just don’t get into that fat burning zone very well. They don’t teach their body how to burn fat effectively. And so if you’re an endurance athlete, you’re sort of losing, uh, an edge.
You, you’re not using a tool that is available to you. So get good at fat burning. It really is a superpower. Number three, strength is not optional. Running alone will not make you strong. In fact, running is catabolic. It breaks down muscle tissue, especially long distance running. So in order to preserve muscle tissue, in order to preserve your strength, you need to be actively building muscle lifting.
Weights lifting heavy weights. This will build muscle. Eating enough protein. This will help you build muscle. Having more muscle means you’re gonna be, uh, you, you are at less risk of, of injury. You are more metabolically, uh, astute. In other words, like your body is better at metabolizing calories in general, you’re better at burning fat.
Um, you just burn more calories. When you have more muscle. Um, it’ll make you a. A faster runner, you’ll have more power. It’ll improve your endurance because it takes strong muscles longer to fatigue than weak muscles. Uh, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be building muscle. So strength is not optional.
Make it something that you do as part of your weekly training. Number four, you can’t outrun a crappy diet. No amount of miles is going to undo, you know, uh, decades of poor food choices, right? Nutrition is the foundation of fat loss. It’s the foundation of your performance as a runner when you are eating a really crappy diet.
You are putting your body in a state of stress. You’re putting your body in a state of inflammation and running just makes that worse. It actually creates more stress and more inflammation on your body. And so that is like a bad combination right there. So instead of just trying to run more and outrun all this crap that you’re eating.
It’s much better to change the diet, eat real food, stick to, you know, a, a, a diet that is low in sugar, you know, that is low in processed food, uh, that is low in hyper palatable food. And then you’re gonna be burning more fat. You’re going, when you are running, you’re, you’re going to burn more fat. You’re not going to be just burning off a bunch of junk and that.
Uh, diet is gonna have such a bigger impact on your overall metabolism and your weight and, and whether or not you are, you know, burning fat or burning sugar. But just trying to outrun poor food choices is not, it’s not gonna work. I talk to people every single day who tell me they’re running more, they’re gaining weight, ’cause their diet kind of sucks.
Fix the diet. Okay. Number five, discipline beats motivation every single time. Motivation is one of those things that comes and goes. You know, you might feel motivated because you, uh, you know, read a story about someone that did something hard or you, uh, got motivated because it’s a new year and you feel motivated to, to join a gym.
Okay. What happens after a couple of months of that though, uh, that motivation fades. Um, and this happens with a lot of people I work with too, who at the beginning of the process, they feel very motivated. They’re doing great, they’re staying on track, everything’s going well, and they start to lose a little bit of that motivation.
And so we have to, you know, reel ’em back in. We do a few things and we get, you know, get people to, to get back on track again. And one of the things we do is, is focus on discipline. Instead of trying to focus on just motivation. ’cause motivation might get you started, but it’s not gonna keep you going.
Motivation might get you started. Discipline is what keeps you going. Discipline is what keeps you moving forward. Long after the motivation fades away. So be disciplined. You’re not gonna feel like you’re not gonna be motivated. You’re not gonna feel like running. You know, some morning you wake up, it’s raining, it’s cold.
But if you’re a disciplined person, you’re gonna get outta bed. You’re gonna put on your running shoes, you’re gonna go do it no matter what. So be disciplined. It’s gonna be motivation every single time. Number six, consistency over perfection. You do not have to do these things perfect to succeed. Even the the 20 principles I’m talking about today, you are not gonna do these perfectly.
I guarantee that I work with God. I’ve worked with like a, a right around 500, uh, different runners and not one of them has done this perfectly. You just have to be consistent. You, you do need consistency. You need consistency over weeks, over months, and over years. You can’t just be consistent for a few days.
Like that’s not gonna be enough, but thinking that you do it perfectly or you’re not gonna do it at all, I’ve heard that from people. Well, if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m just not gonna start. I’m just not gonna do it. And that’s just kind of dumb thinking because nobody does it perfectly. So if you think that you have to do things 100% perfectly, or you’re just not gonna do them, you’re not gonna be doing a whole lot of stuff.
I promise you. So instead, try for consistency. Be consistent. If you are doing the right things, sticking to your plan, getting your workouts in, eating right 90% of the time, that means you have this 10% like wiggle room where you can just sort of. Wing it. I promise you, you’re gonna make a ton of progress over time, okay?
But we can’t expect to be perfect. Uh, ’cause it’s just not reality. Alright? So be consistent. Number seven. Let’s see. Rest and recovery are part of your training. Hard work breaks you down. Recovery is what makes you stronger. Don’t treat rest like an afterthought. You don’t gain muscle at the gym. You gain muscle while you’re sleeping.
You don’t improve your cardiovascular system while you’re out there, you know, running sprints. You, you do that when you’re at rest. You have to include rest and recovery in your training program. It just has to be part of your training plan. If it isn’t, put it in there. I know it’s hard. It’s hard to take a rest day.
Um. But I hear from runners all the time who are like, oh, you know, gosh, I was really burnt out and tired. I just felt exhausted, but I went and did this workout anyway. And I’m like, well, don’t do that. That is not going to help. You’re just like breaking yourself down even more when you do that. But we think we’ve been taught that like that’s what you need to do if you want to be a.
Badass. You gotta go run, even if you feel like crap, you know, even if you can’t even get outta bed, you’re so tired. But you gotta get up and, you know, do that anyway. Now, I think there’s plenty of days where if you’re just not feeling it, you need to just take a rest day. Okay? Uh, now if you’re, if you’re formulating your training properly, if you’re following a good diet, if you’re getting rest and recovery, you’re getting good sleep and things like that, you shouldn’t be burning yourself out anyway.
Um, but we do go through phases like that where we do get a little exhausted, and it’s okay to just take a, take a beat. You do not have to get out there and kill yourself. Like if you end up in the, in the, um, emergency room, uh, that is not a win. That is not a win. Okay? Number eight. Progress is never linear.
The scale’s gonna go up and down. Running is gonna feel hard sometimes, uh, setbacks are going to happen. You need to just stay the course ’cause your results will follow as long as you are persistent. I have seen so many people get frustrated anytime the scale goes up. Guess what though? The scale’s gonna go up and down, up and down, up and down from now until the rest of your life.
Like it’s just always going to happen that way. I’ve never seen anybody lose weight from day one to day 90 or whatever. Just perfectly like straight down like it. It’s always up and down. It always is. I’ve never seen anybody who’s improved their running. You know, do it perfectly where it just kept getting better and better and better and better.
There’s lots of days, weeks, sometimes that kind of suck and you’re running sufferers and you don’t do that well. Plenty of races where you don’t PR Progress is never linear. It is. It is wonky, you know. Instead go back to the principle of being consistent. Um, because instead of thinking that progress is going to be in some perfectly straight line, just.
Stick to the principles, do what you need to do each day, and progress will happen as long as you don’t quit. You’ll get there eventually. Allow the up and downs to be there. It’s part of the process. Okay? Um, don’t get frustrated by the ups and downs. It’s just part of it. Uh, number nine, zone two builds your engine slow, easy.
Miles are the foundation of endurance. They teach your body to to go longer, to recover faster, to burn fat efficiently. Um. You do not need to kill yourself every single time you go out there and run. In order to build a strong aerobic engine, you need to do a lot of slow running, slow, easy miles. So don’t be afraid to get out there and do some of that.
Now, I also think, uh, doing some very fast running is also. Equally as important. Um, hit type of training, high intensity, uh, intervals, uh, stuff like 32nd sprints, you know, uh, 400 repeats, stuff like that. That’s gonna build your VO two max, it’s going to improve your lactate threshold. Um, running will just feel easier, but also that zone two running is gonna help to build your endurance and, and help to create, uh, uh, a a running body that can run longer.
And this part is important too, is like you recover faster as well because you’re not putting so much stress on the systems every time you go out there and run. So if you’re one of those people that goes out there and runs kind of hard every single time, take it, take it easy, slow it down a little bit.
We want, you know, about 80% of our running should be done in that conversational pace. Slow, easy miles. This is your foundation. Uh, if you want to create more endurance, number 10. Comfort zones kill growth. So the magic always happens when you get outside of your comfort zone. You need to get. Used to being uncomfortable because that’s where you actually make change.
That’s when you grow, that’s when you change, that’s when you transform, that’s when you evolve. You’re not gonna change and evolve and grow inside your comfort zone. ’cause that is by definition the things that you’re comfortable with in order to grow. You need to get out of your comfort zone, everything that you want, but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone.
So get out there in order to accomplish more. You can’t really grow just by sitting on the couch and watching Netflix. Like if you really want to become a better runner, you gotta get uncomfortable. You gotta do the speed work, you gotta do the, the slow easy miles, you gotta do the strength training, you gotta get good rest.
Like you gotta do those things that. May you’re not used to doing, they’re not comfortable for you. Get out of your comfort zone because that’s where all the good stuff is. That’s where the magic happens. Okay? Number 11, muscle is your metabolic currency. The more lean muscle you carry, the higher your metabolism, the stronger your your running is going to be, the longer you’re going to live and thrive.
Muscle is so important. You just have to make that a priority in your training is strength training and building muscle. It helps you to maintain your weight much easier. Um, if you did no other exercise other than some sort of resistance training. You know, and when I talk about resistance training, I’m talking about lifting heavy things, heavy weights.
Uh, if that’s the only type of exercise you did. Awesome. That, that’s probably the best thing that you can do for yourself. It helps in so many ways. Just understand that you’re, you’re improving your metabolism, you’re improving your running economy. Uh, you’re improving the length of your life. You need to carry.
We all need to carry more skeletal muscle. This is like one of the best things you can do for yourself. Make this one of your life’s goals is to build muscle. Okay? Number 12. You wanna fuel performance without sabotaging your fat loss. So food is both fuel and medicine. You know, if you use it wisely, you can support endurance, you can support recovery without derailing your, uh, fat loss gains, you know.
I talk a lot about using, uh, fuel, especially carbs for running because I think it is important that we use carbs for running. Um, but there’s ways you can do it that don’t sabotage your goals of losing fat. You know, if you’re, if your goal is to become a efficient fat burner, get yourself fat adapted, get your body really good at burning fat, and then we use fuels strategically in order to.
Help improve our running performance. That does not mean that you just go eating a bunch of pasta and donuts and, you know, drinking sugary sodas and things like that because you need it as, as fuel for running. No, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about using Whole Foods. Good sources of carbs like sweet potatoes and rice and oats to help improve our glycogen stores to help improve our running performance and not, you know, sabotage our fat loss.
You know, we wanna make sure we’re maintaining, um, uh, fat loss while we are. Also improving our, uh, performance as a runner, right? And you do that by using carbs around workouts and not just doing the all carbs all the time. Diet, like a lot of runners do. Number 13, identity drives behavior. So. Um, your identity is who you are at your core.
You know, that’s like anything you say after the words. I am like, I am a father, I am a brother. I am a runner. I am an entrepreneur. Like, these are things that I. Would consider part of who I am at my core. This is who I am, this is my identity. Um, you want to become the kind of athlete who eats like an athlete, who trains like an athlete who stays lean for life.
Um, these are things that when they become part of your identity, um, do staying on track with these things is a no-brainer. When you say things like, I’m just trying to, to lose some weight, so I’m gonna go on a diet, what you’re basically doing is like. Making it a short term, uh, set of tactics. You know, you’re basically saying like, I’m gonna change my behavior for a short period of time in order to get these results.
Okay, that’s fine. And that can work sometimes. But instead of trying to change the behavior, you know, change who you are at your core. I’m the kind of person who. Um, eats clean all the time. I train smart all the time. I stay lean all the time when that is your identity, the behavior. Comes automatically when you’re the kind of person who, uh, if you’re an athlete and you eat like an athlete, you live like an athlete, you train like an athlete, then making a decision about whether you should eat, uh, a whole sleeve of Oreos.
It’s a no brainer. Like you’re not gonna do that because that’s not who you are at your core. So identity drives behavior. I want you to remember this one, ’cause this is a big one. Stop trying to change the behavior. Start trying to, and instead, change who you are at your core. That’s going to, that’s gonna dictate the behavior.
Um, it’s gonna be a, a, an automatic, that identity shift is the big domino where everything else falls after that. Okay. Okay. That was 13 number 14, stop negotiating with yourself. Every time you argue with yourself about whether you should do this workout, or do this run, or whether you should stick to the food plan that you put together for yourself.
You are just sabotaging yourself. Make decisions ahead of time and then stick to those decisions. Stop doing this. Negotiating with yourself where you’re like, well, let’s see. I. You know, I, I ran 10 miles this week and, you know, I’ve been really good. Like you, you try to, um, justify bad behavior. Have you ever done that before?
We all have. We all do this. But just stop doing that. Stop doing this negotiating thing where you’re trying to justify, uh, terrible behaviors, and instead just stick to the plan. You make a plan for yourself. You’ve made a decision. Don’t question the decision. Don’t question that plan. Stick to it. Follow through with it.
If you wanted a cookie on your plan, put it on your plan. Which is fine. If you wanna put a glass of wine on your plan for Friday night, put it on your plan. I would much rather you did that than just drink because other people were drinking and you felt compelled to do it, or you felt like there was pressure on you to do it.
I want you to be in charge of your decisions. I want you to be in charge of, um, the, the decisions that you make around food and around training. Um. And around your own health, you know? And so when you make decisions about what you wanna do, stick to those decisions, right? Don’t question the decision once you make it.
Decide ahead of time and then follow through, decide ahead of time, and then follow through. Just keep doing that on repeat, and I promise you you’re gonna be so much happier. You build trust and confidence in yourself. When you do this. You make tons of progress. Yeah. You’re just, you’re gonna be a completely different person.
So stop negotiating and, and stop questioning your decisions. Um, do what you say you’re gonna do. Be a person of integrity. Okay? Uh, number 15, self-compassion without excuses. So. Beating yourself up does not help. Okay. But neither does letting yourself off the hook. So true. Compassion is really accountability, uh, with love.
That means that you let, let’s say you, you binged and you ate all those Oreos, okay? Do not beat yourself up about that because the, the damage is done right. You ate a bunch of Oreos, they’re not good for you. You’re probably not gonna feel good. It might affect your sleep, it might affect your running the next day.
I don’t know, you’re just, you’re probably not gonna feel good. You’re probably gonna gain a couple of pounds of weight since you, you know, all those carbs, all that sugar comes with a lot of water weight as well. Don’t beat yourself up then, because then all you’re doing is just, you know, making it even worse.
You’re taking this al you’re already gonna feel bad. Um, and then you beat yourself up because you did something you didn’t want to do. Um, but also don’t just let yourself off the hook and go, well, you know, that’s just who I am. I just do that sometimes. Now, be accountable to yourself. Be a person of integrity.
Have some compassion with yourself, but don’t make excuses for yourself when you fall off the wagon. Acknowledge that. Accept it. Learn from it and then move on. Do not dwell in it. Do not go down that rabbit hole of just, I’m a terrible person. I can’t do this. Look, I just keep blowing it. You’re gonna fail.
You’re gonna fail a lot of times, and that’s okay. This is part of the process. There’s no such thing as success without failure. You gotta fail your way to succeed. And it sounds counterintuitive, but it is true. So accept the fact that you’re gonna fail. Be okay with that. Fail, learn from it and move on.
Don’t beat yourself up, doesn’t do you any good. Uh, number 16, we’re, we’re training for the long game, not just the next race. So the goal isn’t to crush one race, it’s to be a strong, healthy runner. For decades to come. So think bigger. Okay? This isn’t about just, oh, I, I just need to get, you know, uh, do some strength training until after this race.
Or I just need to eat right until I’m done with this race. No, think bigger. This is about the long game. This is about, you know, being healthy, being fit, uh, being lean, being strong for good. You know, and it’s just not about, you know, running a race. I can’t tell you how many people come to me because they want help getting leaner and getting stronger because they have a race coming up.
And then after the race, you know, maybe we stop working together and they kind of go back to what they were doing before. Not everybody, but some people do this. I don’t think this is healthy for you. I think it’s better to just maintain what you got rather than. Stopping and starting, you know, during race season, you, you eat one way, you train one way, and then, uh, in the off season you go completely off the rails.
Don’t do that, okay? Think about the bigger picture here. Number 17, mindset is everything. Your thoughts really do create your results. If you don’t believe you can do something, you will not be able to do that thing. You gotta master your mind and your body will follow whatever you’re thinking is going to become true for you.
If you think that you can’t do it, you won’t. If you think it is too hard, it will be. If you think you’re super slow and you’ll never get. Faster. You won’t. If you think you can’t lose weight, you won’t. I promise you. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your ability to change because we can all change.
Change is one of those things that is sounds funny, but change is constant. You know, the one thing that is constant is the universe, is that everything is changing. So understand that you may have been doing the same things for the last. Few decades, but that doesn’t mean you have to continue doing those things going forward.
And so changing your mindset around that. Well, it’s not like turning off a, a light switch where you can’t just flip it off and then now, oh, I’m good. You know, now my mindset is much better. No, you gotta practice this. But start working on it today. Start work working on mastering your mindset and your body, your results, your weight, your running performance will follow in kind.
Um, your most prevalent thoughts become your reality. And if you’re constantly thinking negative thoughts, especially about yourself, how do you think? Your reality is going to be, it’s not gonna be good, I promise you. Number 18, data instead of drama. So use facts, not feelings to guide your decisions. The scale, the miles, the amount of of weight you lift, they tell a very clear story rather than, you know, an emotion that you have.
You know, ’cause we get emotional about stuff. We, we do, we all do. We feel like I’m a failure because I can’t do this and this is too hard for me. And, and you get frustrated. Um, all these things are. N normal emotions, and we do feel these things, and that is perfectly fine to feel emotions, but it’s not who you are.
I can’t tell you how many people tell me, we’ll get on a coaching call and they’ll say, oh, I’ve just had the worst week. And very dramatic. Okay. And I say, oh my gosh, I am so sorry. Tell me what happened. And, and we boil it down to, you know, there was this one, one, you know, couple hours of this one day where they were, you know, really busy with work or, you know, maybe something happened to one of their kids or something.
And then there was this one other thing where they didn’t have a very good run. I’m like, oh, okay. So it was like, just those two things. Um, totaling about, you know, an hour and a half out of, you know, however many hours there are in a whole week. Anyway, we, we get dramatic about this stuff. We overdramatize, right?
Just stop doing that. Look at, look at facts, look at data. Um, people will say, this isn’t working, and we’ll look at, you know, where are you today? Oh, I’ve lost all this weight from when we started. Um. They’ve, uh, lost inches. They’ve gained muscle. They’re faster. Their, um, VO two max has gone up. Like we look at data and they’re like, oh, well, maybe I’m doing okay.
Like, yeah, you’re doing okay. I encourage people to do body composition measurements instead of just looking at the scale every day, because sometimes there’s a lot going on under. The covers, so to speak, inside your body that you’re not aware of. You’re burning fat, you’re gaining muscle. Um, and the scale won’t really reflect that.
The scale will just say like, oh, you’re just staying the same. Oh, I’m so frustrated. I’m not losing any weight. Well, you’re losing fat and gaining muscle. Amazing. Okay? But the scale’s gonna say that, you know, you’re just staying the same. Um, but look at the data, right? Let’s not get dramatic about all this stuff.
Fo focus on. You know, are, are you improving your VO two max? Are you improving your endurance? Are you improving your cardiovascular system? You know, are you, are you losing fat? Like these things are important to look at. Okay, where are we at number 19 run, because you get to. Not because you have to.
Running is a privilege. It’s not a punishment. When you approach running with gratitude, everything begins to shift for you. I’ve talked about this before where you know we run because we love. Running and running makes us feel alive and it helps us in so many ways. It helps us to, you know, release endorphins and oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin, and those are all feel good hormones.
And when we feel good, you know, we’re in a better mood. We have less depression. We have less stress in our lives. Um, running is amazing and we get to do it, you know, we’re healthy and we get to run. Isn’t that amazing when you feel like you have to run because you’re trying to, you know, outrun your bad diet?
That feels like punishment. That feels terrible and it feels like it is just gonna be hard. Yeah. And that, that’s not a good place to be, you know? Um, some sports use running as a punishment. I get that. Like, you know, my kids used to play, you know, whatever PB football and they would make the kids run as a punishment and, um.
It is so funny, especially when you see these little like kindergartners, first graders and they’re full football pads and helmets and they’re running and it’s just hilarious. They hate it so much. Um, but a lot of sports use running as a punishment. We, we do it because we love it. I we’re weird. You know, I, I always talk about running, being.
Uh, like 90% mental, uh, ’cause you gotta be like 90% mental to run the way that we do. You know? But approach running with gratitude. Have gratitude that you can run and that you get to do this and you get to move your body. And doesn’t it feel good to do that? Yeah. And it’s like, you know, uh, instead of taking SSRIs, you know, maybe running is the answer.
You know, for a lot of people, I know a lot of people, um, exercise and they run and, and they don’t need to be on some of those, uh, uh, you know, uh, drugs for, uh, depression and things like that. So enjoy running, be grateful. And then number 20, uh, the pri, you know, with all these principles and everything, kind of the biggest thing here is that we want to keep running lean for life.
Like this isn’t a diet, this isn’t a phase. We’re not on some 12 week plan. All these things I’m talking about, this is a way of living. I want you to adopt a way of living that keeps you lean, that keeps you strong, that keeps you. Thriving. That keeps you feeling good about yourself. And if you adopt this identity, like we talked about before, of, of an athlete, of a healthy human being, of a, uh, running badass, then that’s how you’re going to live your life.
And that’s the most important thing. You know, it’s not just about living long, like I, I I wanna live a long life, but I want. The length of my life, uh, to match the quality of my life. I wanna have a quality of life for as long as I can. Uh, you know, I just don’t want to be like, laid up in some bed with a bunch of tubes connected to me.
Just that’s not quality of life. Quality of life is I can still ambulate, I can still get up and walk around and lift some weights and, you know, uh, exercise and do all the things that I want to do. I don’t wanna be, um, an invalid when I get older, you know, I don’t want to have to like be committed to some old folks’ home or something like that, you know, because I can’t take care of myself.
No, I want, I want my mind to be clear, and I want my body to be strong. That’s what I want for myself, and that’s what I want for you too. I want you to keep on running Lean for Life. Okay. Alright, so that’s my 20 principles and a wrap on episode 300. That’s sort of crazy when I think about it. ’cause I look back on the last almost six years I started this podcast.
In, uh, December of, um, 20 19, 1 thing has been very clear to me that this podcast is not about me. It’s about you. You know, I show up here every week to share ideas. That I want the, these ideas to help you to change your health, to become stronger and, and to improve your fitness, uh, maybe improve your life.
And I get feedback from people all the time that say, just listening to your podcast has changed my life. And I love getting messages like that. From people. So thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show and being a part of the Running Lean community. None of this would exist without you.
I do this every week. I show up every week. This is a lot of work to put together a podcast every week. I do it every week because of you. Um, and if there’s one thing you know, I want you to. Take away from, especially from today’s episode, is that these 20 principles aren’t just theory. They are meant to be lived.
So put them into practice. Do these things day after day, I promise you, you’ll become leaner and stronger and faster. You’ll also live a better life, a longer life, a more vibrant life. Okay? That’s what I really want for you, and thank you again for being a part of this. Um, couldn’t do without you. That’s all I got for you today.
Love you all. Keep on running lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
Struggling to lose weight even though you're putting in the miles? It might not be your training plan or your nutrition—it might be your mindset. In this episode of the Running Lean Podcast, I …
Continue Reading about 283. Want to Transform Your Body? Shift Your Mindset. →
It’s that time of the year again! The kids are out of school, the weather is amazing, and you are going on vacation. But you might be worried because in the past, going on vacation meant going …
Continue Reading about 231. Replay: Sticking to Your Plan – Even on Vacation →
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 231. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Sticking to Your Plan – Even On Vacation. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, the kids are out of school, the weather is amazing, and you are going on vacation.
But you might be worried because in the past, going on vacation meant going off the rails, you’re on vacation. So you just want to have fun, right? You deserve to live a little, if this means coming home 10 pounds heavier and hating yourself, is it really all that fun?
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to offer up some helpful tips for sticking to your plan, even on vacation so that you can come home feeling good about yourself.
But first one thing I wanted to talk to you guys about really quickly is coaching, if this is something that you might be interested in, if you’re looking for some help and some guidance, and some support, to lose weight, to get healthier, to feel better, to have more energy to improve your strength to improve your running, then coaching might be a good fit for you.
It is not for everybody, I get that some people like to do stuff on their own, they don’t want to invest time or money into a coach that’s going to hold them accountable. That’s going to make sure they do what they say they’re going to do that’s there to you know, help them to get results.
But also is there to kind of call you out on some of your BS, because sometimes we get lost in our own stories, our own excuses, our own reasons why we can’t get the results that we want. And being a coach, I can see through a lot of that stuff, and help you to see through that stuff as well. And start taking responsibility for your own results.
Some people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to take responsibility for their own results. They’d rather just blame other people or blame their life situation or their stress at work or whatever for what it is that’s keeping them stuck and not able to lose the weight or stick to a plan or whatever it is.
But as a coach, I can just tell you right now that I can help you to work through all of that stuff. Okay, so if you want to hit the easy button on getting better results and becoming the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me, you and I will jump on a zoom call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
It isn’t for everybody. I’m gonna be honest with you. There’s some people that I talk to and they’re just like, yeah, this isn’t really a good fit for me. And that’s fine. That is fine. There’s a lot of people that it is a good fit for them and a lot of people that get really good results.
And we have a lot of fun doing this too. It’s not a suffer fest. We’re not suffering our way to getting healthy and losing weight. We are actually having fun. Okay. So if you want to learn how to become the best version of yourself, go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. We’ll jump on a call, and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool.
Okay, so today’s episode is a replay. So it’s about sticking to your plan, even on vacation. And this episode originally aired back in June of 2021. And I recorded this after taking a trip to Florida. And I’m mentioning this now because in this episode I talk about like COVID and the COVID travel restrictions being lifted and being able to travel freely again.
And I wanted to make sure you had a little context of like when did this all take place. So this was in you know, June of ‘21. And people were starting to travel more freely and so it was a good time to be traveling. I also really wanted to touch on this topic of what to do when we go on vacation because so many people I work with so many of my clients, they really stress out and they worry about traveling.
They worry about going on vacation when they’re trying to stick to a certain food plan. They’re trying to lose weight. Because in the past when they go on vacation, they tend to blow it and they tend to just go crazy. They gain a bunch of weight and they come back feeling terrible, hating themselves.
We don’t want to do that there’s a different way to approach vacation. And I go over all of that. In this episode, I was actually looking through my notes for this episode today when I was thinking about recording this. And I was like, you know what, this is really good. I’m just going to replay this episode. It’s very relevant.
This is exactly what I wanted to say to you guys here today. So I’m just going to replay this. So without further ado, I’m gonna let this play out here. So here it is the replay of episode 76 Sticking to Your Plan – Even On Vacation, I hope you enjoy it. Alright, cool.
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 76 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, I’m talking about how to stick to your plan. Even on vacation. Listen, it’s vacation season, right? The kids are out of school, the COVID travel restrictions are easing up and you, my friend, are going on a trip. Amazing, right?
But what that usually means is that you go completely off the rails eat and drink your way into oblivion and come back hating yourself. Am I right? At least that’s what I used to do, you probably don’t do that. But if you’re if you’re one of those people that’s thinking there’s just no way you’re gonna be able to get through this vacation without gaining 5 or 10 pounds and coming home feeling like crap, then I’ve got some good news for you.
Because listen, it doesn’t have to be like that. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be offering up some helpful tips for sticking to your plan, whether it’s you know, a food plan or an exercise plan, even on vacation and being able to have fun and enjoy your vacation too. Because you can do it all you absolutely can.
But first, be sure to check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. If you haven’t already checked us out over there. I created this group so we could have a conversation so you could ask questions and get help and support. And we can encourage each other and support each other through our big goals.
And it is a fun group. It’s a lot of fun. We have fun doing this. If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong. I say that all the time. Just go to Facebook search for Running Lean community. And join us join in on the fun.
And here’s another quick five star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Leanne. She says, “A must-listen for runners. I found this podcast when searching for a podcast for runners with an emphasis on diet and nutrition. Patrick’s topics each week were just what I was looking for to improve my running performance. I also worked with Patrick as a personal coach.”
Yes, she did. Leanne is amazing. And she goes on to say, “I was able to take my running to new levels and learn from Patrick that I could do much more than I thought I was possible as a runner in my early 60s. Thanks, Patrick, for your commitment to the running community and for providing these weekly podcasts that are fun, inspiring, and full of tough love.”
And Leanne is the most awesome, thank you so much. Leanne was really, really awesome to work with, by the way. And yeah, I hope this is fun. It’s supposed to be fun. And if you would like to share in the fun, and you get something out of this podcast, it would mean a lot to me. If you could take a moment and go to what is it like Apple podcasts where you can leave a review, just tap the stars and jot down a few words if this is if you’re getting something out of this, I’d love that.
And then listen, if you ever want a little help, losing some weight or, or improving your running performance or getting leaner, getting stronger, you know, running faster running longer than you ever thought you possibly could I have got you covered. As a one-on-one coach, I work with runners every single day, who want to become more who want to become the healthiest, most badass versions of themselves. This is what I do.
You know, a coach doesn’t just like tell you what to do. A coach is somebody that works with you and figures out the best plan for you, and holds you accountable for sticking to that plan. This is why the coach is so powerful because it’s very hard to stick to things on your own. Right.
I mean, this is was always my experience. It’s very hard. I know what to do. It’s very hard for me to stick to it on my own. But with a coach, I have that accountability and the encouragement to do the hard stuff. And I’m willing to like push myself harder with a coach just like when you’re at the gym and you’re you have a personal trainer, they’re saying come on, you can do one more, you can absolutely do one more.
But if you’re on your own, you’re like, I’m good. So coaching isn’t for everybody. So what we’ll do is we’ll you can go on the website, you can fill out a quick application, there’s like one question on there I want you to answer but then we’ll jump on a quick zoom call you and I will have a conversation. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
That’s all, we’ll just have a convo and we’ll talk about it. And if it’s a good fit great if it’s no big deal, you haven’t lost anything yet. There’s nothing to lose by doing this. So just go torunningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we’ll see if coaching is the right fit for you. All right, cool.
Let’s get on to this topic today because I’m kind of excited to talk about this. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. So I just got back from vacation, I was on vacation, and I took a vacation. I was in Florida for eight days, I went to this place that I absolutely love. And it’s just such a cool place. And it was one of these places that my ex-wife and I used to go to, in fact, she was the first one that took me there, she used to live in that area down to Florida.
And she’s like, oh, we got to go vacation this place. And we went there many, many times. And I just fell in love with this place. And honestly, it was a, it was a big decision for me, whether I wanted to go back to this place or not.
Because when I think of the beach vacation, I think of this place, and it’s just the there’s restaurants and shopping and a beach and a pool, like everything is just right there within walking distance, it’s on this little island, like you’re just, it just feels like you’re, you’re away from it all, you know.
And I just love this place so much. And I thought do I want to go back to the place that I went to, but I used to vacation with my ex-wife? And I talked to my coach about it. And she was like, Patrick, you can absolutely do this, you want to do this. If this is something you want to do, you should do it and make new memories, and create a new way of thinking about this place.
Because I always associate this place with her, you know, and or us, you know, as a couple or whatever. So, and the other thing is, I’ve never taken a vacation by myself before. You know, listen, I’m 54 years old, I’ve done a lot of traveling, I’ve gotten to visit family and stuff like that by myself, whatever.
But I’ve never really gone on an actual like week-long vacation, alone and just to like be by myself. So this was all out of my comfort zone, you guys, and I gotta tell you, I’m so glad I did it. I’m so glad I did it. Because I learned so much about myself, I learned that I can absolutely have fun, and be content and, and feel so good being alone.
And honestly, I was never really alone. I would go out walking on the beach every day, go for runs, there’s people all over the place. Every night, I would go out to dinner, sit at the bar, talk to people talk to the bartenders, whatever, and I was just having so much fun. And it was so chill, I came back so relaxed, I just feel so amazing.
So vacations are amazing. We need to take vacations, they’re so good for us, they’re good for our, for our body, they’re good for stress relief, they’re good for our mind, they’re good for our soul, you know, like all there are all these amazing benefits of taking a vacation. So I’m really glad I did this, I’m glad I went by myself, I have created all these new memories.
And, and, and I can absolutely do this again and I’m looking forward to taking another vacation by myself. I really enjoyed this I loved it. I’m very content being a lot, I’m okay with that. And, you know, to be able to be okay with being by yourself. I think that’s a sign of, you know, self-confidence of self-awareness of, you know, evolving as a human. So, I felt really good about my decision to do this. And I’m glad I did. So vacations are awesome.
I just got back and I wanted to share some stuff with you guys because a lot of people that I talk to I’m coaching people all the time and they tell me, oh yeah, I’m getting ready to go on vacation. I’m really nervous about it. Because and then they say they go on to tell me how in the past, what they would do is they use vacation as a way to just say eff it to everything right?
And they get into that mode of just like screw everything. They eat whatever they want. They go completely bananas on everything, you know, drinking, eating desserts, the all you can eat buffets, whatever it is okay. And, and then they always come back feeling terrible and hating themselves.
They come back feeling very regretful about all the stuff they did, you know, I’ve never seen anybody go on vacation, eat and drink their way into, you know, 10 or 15 pounds heavier or whatever it is, and then really feel good about themselves afterward. You know, most people do not feel good about themselves if they just go completely off the rails on vacation.
So what is the alternative, you know? So if you’re the kind of person who is sticking to some sort of diet or exercise plan right now, so maybe you’re in a mode of like, I’m trying to lose weight right now. Or maybe you’re training for an event, and you’re concerned about what might happen.
If you take a break from your normal life, so if you if you’re training for a marathon, let’s say, and you’re, you take a vacation, this is going to kind of be a little bit more challenging for you to stick to your training plan, right? So if you if you’ve got a long run to do on the weekend, where you’re going to be, you know, in, in Maui or something like that, like, are you going to be able to stick to your training plan? Right?
Or, you know, if you associate vacation with eating everything in sight, and drinking like crazy, every single night, then, and you want to lose weight, though? Like, is this in alignment with your goals? Like, is this gonna work for you? Okay, so these are the kinds of things we want to kind of think about here.
And I have a friend who was training for a marathon, and for a spring marathon this year, and we did all these training runs together. And, you know, he was doing great and really on track, and then he went on vacation. And you know, he didn’t run much, he kind of cut his runs shorter, ate and drank differently, let’s say, you know, I don’t know how much he ate and drank. But I’m assuming it was different from what he was doing before.
But this person came back from that vacation feeling not very confident, and the running was really hard. And he felt defeated. And he’s just like, you know, what, I’m just gonna do the half instead, yes, I switched from the full marathon to the half marathon. And listen, there’s nothing wrong with this, that’s totally fine.
You know, like, if that’s what you want for yourself, that’s fine. But if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I want to run this marathon, and I want to take this vacation, and how can I do both? You know, how can I stay healthy? How can I continue to eat right? Or maybe lose weight, or whatever it is? Stick with my exercise plan? How can I do all this? While I’m on vacation? Right?
So if that’s you, then this podcast is absolutely for you. If you’re the kind of person that’s like, you know what, when I go on vacation, all rules are out the window, then, but you probably don’t need to listen to this. Because you’re gonna just do your own thing. And that’s totally fine.
But we, I think a lot of times, you get it into your mind that going on vacation means that everything has to be different, you have to stop exercising, you know, like, oh, I’m working so hard all year long. You know, I just want to go on vacation and just relax, you know? And so I’m just gonna say no, to everything that I’ve been doing up to this point, well, it doesn’t have to mean that at all.
Okay, you get to decide what vacation means for you, you get to decide what your vacation looks like for you. And if you’re saying, well, I’ve always done this in the past, this is the way I’ve always done it. That doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it the same way. You know, not if you want something different for your future. If you want something different for yourself in the future, you may have to stop doing the same things over and over and over again, that has got you where you are today, right.
So my suggestion is to think about, you know what it is you want for yourself when you go on vacation? Who is it that you want to be when you get home from this vacation, okay? Another issue is that a lot of people seem to equate overeating or eating other sugar or overdrinking with fun.
In other words, I want to have fun on this vacation. Can I just have a little fun? Which means what does that mean to eat ice cream every day? Twice a day three times a day eat dessert every night. Binge up on the all-you-can-eat buffet. This was so me. I’ve been to all these resorts where they have like an all-you-can-eat buffet and there’s always that dessert section it’s like whole tables and tables of just like desserts.
I would eat as much food as I could possibly have. So stuff from all the food you know, because it’s all you can eat everything and I go back and eat all the desserts like I would have to try them all because you know this one looks good. So does that! So I would just like I would make two trips three trips to the dessert section. Okay, so maybe that’s just me.
But then I would feel like crap the next day. So today this is not my idea of fun. Okay, but if your idea of fun means you have to like drink a lot, you know, and eat a lot or eat all the sugar eat all the crappy food, then, you know, I think we just have to get get it into our heads. What do we mean by fun? What does that mean to us?
You know what, what does it mean to have fun on vacation? And I’ll talk about this more in a minute. here, but I just want you to start thinking about this like, what? What is it that you want for yourself? For your vacation?
Okay, so one of the most important things that I suggest people do when they’re getting ready to go on a vacation is deciding ahead of time. How do you want to be when you come home, like how do you want to feel about yourself, when you come home from this vacation?
Do you want to feel good about yourself? Or do you want to feel, you know, bloated, and regretful, and ashamed and guilty? Or do you want to feel confident, and proud of yourself, because you get to decide? One thing I suggest people do is to decide ahead of time, whether they want to maintain their weight on vacation, continue to lose weight, or gain weight on vacation because you can actually choose one of those three options.
One of those three things is going to happen. Anyway, but if you go into your vacation, thinking, let’s say you’re trying to lose, you’re saying that you’re in the middle of losing, like 50 pounds or something, right? And you’re like, well, you just have this thing in your head of like, yeah, when I’m on vacation, I’ll probably still continue to lose some weight, but then you eat whatever the hell you want to while you’re on vacation, and you come back and you’re like, what happened? I, I was doing so good.
And then you know, I went on vacation, and now I’m up five pounds, you know, and then you feel like crap about yourself, you beat yourself up about it, you end up quitting on yourself. It’s all because you didn’t have an intention going into your vacation, you didn’t have a plan, I always want people to decide ahead of time what they want for themselves. So do you want to lose weight, maintain or gain because you get to choose, this is going to determine how you show up each day?
You know, if you’re if your goal is to maintain weight, during your vacation, you can kind of just do what you’re doing, you know, maybe indulge a little bit here and there. If you want to, if you’re okay with gaining weight on vacation, just know ahead of time I’m going to gain I’m gonna allow myself to gain like five pounds on vacation.
And then you know, bang it out. Have fun with that, you know, do it, do it the way that you want to do it, just know that that’s your goal. And then when you come home, if you’ve gained 10 pounds, you didn’t do it right. Okay, you went a little, a little too excessive on that, okay? Or if your goal is to lose weight, that’s gonna determine how you show up for yourself every day, it’s gonna determine what you do, you know, each day of your vacation, okay?
So do you want to here’s another thing to decide. Do you want to keep up with your training? Exactly, you know, do you want to keep with your strength training with your running? Maybe you’re doing some cross-training, cycling, or something like that swimming? Do you want to maintain your training? Do you want to back off a little bit? Or do you want to just quit altogether?
And there’s no right or wrong answer to these things. It’s just that you have to make a decision ahead of time about what you want for yourself. Don’t say you’re going to stick to your plan, I’m going to keep exercising and, and eat right. But then go completely off the rails because that’s, that’s not being in alignment with your goals. That’s not having your own back.
When you do this, you destroy your self-confidence. You kind of undermine your own progress, you lose motivation. It is very demotivating when you let yourself down like this. So my suggestion to you, I want to encourage you to make a decision ahead of time, and then stick to that decision, whatever that is for you. Okay, do you want to continue with your exercise and an eating plan? Or do you want to like, you know, be a little more lenient, because you get to decide?
No right or wrong answer, you get to decide, just decide ahead of time. Planning ahead is one of the most important things you can do to help you stick to a plan, whether it’s whether you’re on vacation or not, honestly. And when we talk about planning ahead, you may have heard this before. But when we plan something ahead of time, especially like 24 hours in advance, we’re using a part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex.
And this is our thinking more modern, like the cognitive planning part of our brain. And when we use this part of our brain to make decisions, where we’re making good decisions, and we’re, we’re thinking through with the consequences, and it’s like the planning part of our brain. And so we always want to use that type of brain, that prefrontal cortex part of our brain, the modern thinking brain, to make decisions when it comes to what we’re going to eat how much we’re gonna drink, whether we’re going to stick to exercise playing the next day and things like that.
The alternative is we use a part of our brain called the amygdala, which is our fear center, or our primitive brain fight or flight part of our brain. This is the part of our brain that is a tiny little almond size part of our brain that’s like super ancient, and it’s designed to respond to urges and things like that, you know, very primitive.
So when you’re feeling like, I really want some cake, and you haven’t really thought this out with your prefrontal cortex, you know, your amygdala is gonna be like, eat the cake. Go back to the dessert buffet, come on, and just do it, you want to do it, you know, it’s like the good, the little angel, and the devil on your shoulders. You know, this kind of analogy is a good analogy.
So we don’t want to be caught in the moment trying to use our, you know, fear center or fight or flight or urge center to make these kinds of decisions for us. Okay, whether we’re going to work out or not, whether we’re going to eat right or not, we want to plan ahead. So that’s why it works. And it does work beautifully if you plan ahead.
So the key is to plan ahead and then stick to your plan. That’s it plan ahead, stick to your plan. This works with everything in life, you guys, every single thing you want to accomplish in your life plan ahead, stick to your plan. So I’m going to give you guys some tips and some things and I’m going to share some experiences that I had with my recent trip because I was very cognizant about this planning ahead, I really wanted to make sure that I was I wanted to stick to my plan, and I wanted to do some certain things.
So I’m going to just kind of go through what I did. And hopefully, this will give you guys some tips that you can use for your vacation. I hope you’re going on vacation soon, too. So the first thing I did was to make sure I planned my food. So I was very conscious of where I was going to stay. I wanted to stay at an Airbnb that had a kitchen like it had to have a fully stocked kitchen, a fridge, and all that stuff.
I would look at some places and they had like a hot plate or one of those tiny little mini-fridges that you can hold like, you know, 12 you know, cans of soda or whatever. And I’m like that is not going to cut it for me like I need to buy some food and I need to like I want a stocked fridge, I want to be able to cook for myself, at least one meal a day I wanted to. My plan was to cook my first meal. So I eat twice a day, around noon, then around 6 or 7pm.
And I wanted that first meal to I wanted to cook that at home every day, I wanted total control over that first meal every single day. So I made sure that the place I was staying at had a kitchen. That was important to me, okay. And then the very first thing I did when I got into town was I took an Uber over to the grocery store and I stocked up I bought everything I needed for the whole week. So I bought all the food, you know, Lacroix, eggs, bacon, sausage, butter, avocado, sour cream, like all the stuff that I typically would eat. And I and I just stocked up. That’s the only time I went to the grocery store the whole time I was there. And it was awesome.
Because I just knew that I had, you know, everything I needed for that first meal was there. And then I made that first meal at home every day. So that was one thing like planning ahead was really important for me to make sure that I did that. And I went to the store and that I stocked up.
And then for me, I made a decision that I was going to eat out every night, you know, so I went to different restaurants. I sat at the bars and I talked to people, but I would check out the menus ahead of time and you know, occasionally I would ask if they could do substitutions and things like that. But for the most part, I ate you know the items off the menu as they were prepared.
And I ate haha. Oh my god, it’s so amazing. Like the seafood down there is totally amazing. So I had fresh grouper, salmon, scallops, shrimp tacos. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So I actually made a point to go, I was eating some carbs when I was down there I made a point to like, be okay with that.
You know, I had some rice here and there I had some plantains that came with my tacos, you know and I eat the corn tortillas that came in. It’s not a big deal. You know, a few carbs here and there. But I made a point to never indulge in sugar. I did not want to do that. And so I did. And I totally stay away from sugar.
So eating out for me was amazing. And you can like, just plan ahead as much as you can with this. Know where you’re going to eat out if you can, how often you’re going to be eating out, check the menus, you can even call the restaurants and ask if they can do substitutions and stuff like that. Just tell them you have an allergy to, you know, certain foods or carbohydrates or something like that, and they’ll totally work with you. Okay.
Another thing that you can do when we’re planning food is packing snacks, making sure you bring some kind of snacks, just in case you need something, you don’t ever want to get to that place where you’re hungry, and vulnerable to temptations, right. So pack your own, like healthy snacks like nonperishable stuff, nonperishable stuff, if you can, if you need it.
Okay, so I actually brought some snacks for the plane, because, you know, I got up early, and I usually don’t eat till noon or so. But I was going to be traveling from like, basically, you know, eight o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. And I knew I was going to want to eat something in there.
So I brought, I got like a bag of this zero sugar, beef jerky. And I was like, Oh, this would be good. This would be like a little kind of lunchy type of thing I could do on the plane. But even if you’re taking a road trip in a car, like, you know, you can go to fast food places. It’s not ideal, but you can make it work. You know, you can get protein-style bunless burgers, you can get salads with chicken, you can make it work, or I think we get into this mindset of I don’t know what to do. I’ve never done this before. And I think this is not a good mindset to be in, like, so what if you’ve never done it before?
Guess what, a lot of people don’t know what to do. Why don’t you ask yourself this question instead, I wonder what’s available. I wonder how I can make this work. I wonder how I can get creative and make something work for me. Because chances are, you can absolutely make it work.
I’ve seen people get fried chicken at like, Chick-fil-A or something like that. And just like kind of peel the breading off of it and eat it and it’s delicious. You know, like, there are things you can do if you need to. I was talking to somebody last night about getting pizza. And like I did this recently where we were I was with a group of people and they all ordered pizza. And you know, there was nothing I could really order.
And so I just took the toppings off the pizza and kind of rolled them up. It was like cheese and pepperoni stuff like that. And I ate that. And I ate a lot of it. And it was delicious. And it was just left with some, you know pieces of crust with sauce on it that other people were like, Oh, can I eat that crust, I’m like sure. So it was a win-win for everybody.
Get creative. You know, even if you’re like on a road trip and you stop at a gas station, you can find something to eat like, for me I do, you know pretty low carbs I would stay away from, you know, chips and pretzels and stuff like that. But there’s like beef jerky, and nuts, pork rinds, hard-boiled eggs, pickles, like there are all kinds of stuff you can, you can find even at a crappy place like a gas station. Obviously, if you can bring your own stuff, that’s a better way to go.
Another suggestion that I have for you would be to plan your workouts ahead of time, okay. So if you’re going to want to stick to like a running program, if you’ve got a running schedule, let’s say you’re running three or four days a week, you want to get your miles in, plan ahead, plan ahead, what you’re going, where you’re going to run, how far you’re going to run where and the routes that you’re going to run.
The routes are important because a lot of times you may be in an area where I don’t know you don’t know the area. And maybe I don’t know if it’d be unsafe, but hopefully, you’re not staying in a place that is unsafe. I did this a while back when I was in Mexico, and the property owner was like, we don’t suggest you go run out on the streets around here. And I was like, ha, okay, and they said, but there is like a path that you can run around the property.
And so I did that I ran around it was a huge property. So I ran like the perimeter of the property. They actually like I think 75% of it was like a walking path anyway, so I just ran around the property and did a lot of miles on that vacation. And, you know, totally doable, you know.
Another thing you can do is like I go to Google Maps and I check the Street View and I’m like, is there a sidewalk here? You know, is this doable? Like, oh, this looks like a bridge. Is there a sidewalk on this bridge? I don’t want to be stuck on some bridge where there’s like, no, no shoulder and I’m in traffic and you don’t ever want to run on the street. You know, if there’s a lot of traffic and stuff like that, if you’re staying at a hotel or someplace, you can ask the concierge about local trails, about paths, you know, running routes, they know about all this kind of stuff.
Or maybe you’re at a place with a gym. And your only option is to like, you know, run on a treadmill, is there a treadmill available for you, you know, so when I was in Florida, I’d love running down there. Number one, I mean, there’s this long stretch of beach that I ran on every single day. So that’s amazing. I made a point to do that.
But then there’s this bridge that takes you from where I was staying over to Sarasota. And I would, I would run across the bridge and then run around the marina and stuff. And it’s just like, the views are amazing. And they got this nice ocean breeze was hot down there, but got this nice ocean breeze and just beautiful. And I plan all this ahead of time, I knew I was going to you know, run and I made a plan to run every day when I was down there.
And I did, I ran at least five miles every day down there, I did a 10-mile run, I think I did a few seven-mile runs. And really just really enjoyed it. You know, I made a point that this is important to me that I wanted to keep up with my running. And so I did it.
Another thing that I suggest if you’re doing any kind of strength training and you want to keep up with it on your vacation is to make a plan ahead of time for this as well. So if you’re staying somewhere with like a gym, you can use the hotel gym, hotels are so good. Now, they’re pretty well equipped with all this kind of stuff. But if you’re not staying at a place with a gym, you can find a local gym.
And a lot of times they’ll let you come in and just you know drop in on a class or use the gym, or maybe you belong to one of these big LA Fitness or 24-hour deals where you can just go to one of these places, those are all good too.
A couple of things that are kind of different is like find an outdoor fitness park or a playground because sometimes they have, you know, equipment that you can use to do pull-ups and you know, push-ups or bench presses or something like that, you know.
Sometimes they have those little parkour type of courses that you can kind of use to do fitness and you know, things like that it makes it kind of fun, you get outside what I did for my phone, because I didn’t have access to a gym where I was going, there wasn’t a gym in the area. And I didn’t really want to have to, you know, Uber, you know, 10 or 15 bucks every single day if I wanted to lift weights, so I decided to bring my resistance bands.
So I have this set of small, lightweight resistance bands, and you could just throw them in your suitcase, they’re super easy to bring with you. And I did, you know, a couple of workouts just to maintain my strength training while I was on vacation. And I felt really good about that. It wasn’t exactly the same, you know, but I could put enough resistance on those bands to make it pretty hard. And one of the days I was there, it was Memorial Day. And a lot of people were doing that Murph workout, which, if you don’t know what it is, it’s, it’s pretty tough.
It’s a one-mile run. And then it’s 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats. You’re supposed to do it with a weighted vest on or some sort of resistance. And I did it pretty much just with bodyweight because I didn’t have like a weighted vest or a way to do that. And I gotta tell you, that was a kick-ass strength workout.
But I felt good about doing that I felt good that I did this for myself, you know, it was a hard workout. And that one was awesome because I felt really good about sticking to that plan and sticking to my strength training because when I came home from my trip, I felt just as strong as when I left. I didn’t want to lose momentum.
I’ve been building some strength lately, I’ve been putting on some muscle, some pounds, you know, I didn’t want to lose any of that. So I wanted to keep up with it. And I absolutely did. In fact, the day that I got home the day after I got home from my trip, I went back to the gym, my gym here, and had a killer strength workout and I felt so good. I’m so glad that I kept up with it while I was on vacation, okay.
And then if you’re doing other kinds of workouts, you can find a way to do that too. Like, find a local yoga studio. If you’re doing yoga, or do yoga in your room. You can do strength training, just using bodyweight exercises if you have to as well just do it in your room. You know, other things you can do is just get out there and walk as much as possible. You know I walked on the beach every single day I walked along the beach at sunset every single night.
You can do things like rent bikes, go canoeing, go swimming, go do some rowing, stand up paddleboarding, wherever kind of, you know, hiking, whatever kind of trip you’re going on, there’s stuff you can do to stick with your plan, okay? But it all requires you to do a little bit of planning ahead of time. So that’s, that’s my really big encouragement.
And that’s my biggest, I want this to be your biggest takeaway. Plan ahead, plan ahead what you want for yourself, plan ahead, about your food, plan ahead your exercise plans, and then stick to your plan. Okay, decide who you want to be when you come home, and then stick to your plan.
And listen, you can actually choose to indulge a little bit on your vacation, you can choose to, you know, drink more than you would or, you know, eat a little bit differently if you want to just do it in a way that where you have your own back, do it in a way that is intentional. And you’re doing it with purpose, not just giving into cravings, urges, and temptations.
We don’t ever want to give in to cravings, urges, and temptations because that’s not how we build resilience. That’s not how you build new habits. That’s how you just are keeping yourself stuck to where you have been for most of your life, we got to change the way we think about this stuff, we got to change our mindset around all this stuff. Okay, planning ahead is how you do that.
Okay, so maybe you drink a little bit more, that’s fine. You know, I would suggest choosing your drinks wisely, you know, stick with the drinks that don’t contain sugar, hobbies, tropical drinks. So I went out to eat every night, I sat at the bar, and I watched them making all these drinks. And it was just like, oh, sugar, I’m going to pour some of this sugar in there. I’m going to pour some of this kind of sugar in there. And then here’s some liquor, which is mostly sugar.
Like, it was crazy how much sugar in these drinks, you know. So yeah, just make good decisions about alcohol. Make good decisions about the kinds of foods you want to eat. Like I ate more carbs than normal. I planned it. I knew I was going to do this I stayed away from the sugar. You know, I had rice at this place that made it as a side to the I had a big steak one night, which was amazing.
And as a side, they had cauliflower and potato mash. So it was like half potatoes have cauliflower. And I was like this is perfect. You know, there’ll be a few more carbs than I would normally but totally fine. Like it’s not, it’s not going off the rails here you guys, you know what I mean?
There’s a big difference between eating a couple of plantains with my tacos and eating, you know, a half a gallon of ice cream every night like I used to. Speaking of which, where I stayed, there’s this amazing gelato place and this used to be my nightly thing, I go to the gelato place every single night and order this huge big thing of gelato with one of those waffle cones. It’s just like ridiculous.
And, and I thought, Well, I’m gonna just one day I was like taking a walk around the little towns and the shops and stuff. And I’m like, I’m just gonna pop in here and see if they have some kind of sugar-free gelato option. And they did. They had sugar-free chocolate gelato, I’m like, I’m so getting some of this, which I did. And I really enjoyed it. And that was a way for me to indulge in something and not go off my plan. You know what I mean?
Like, we can do this, we can have fun, and stick to our plan. We can enjoy our vacation and stick to the plan. Decide who you want to be when you come home. For me, I wanted to be basically the same person I was when I left. I wanted to continue to feel good about myself, I didn’t want to feel crap about myself.
So my plan was to, you know, maintain my weight, maintain my running, maintain my eating as much as I could as much as I had control over. Indulge a little bit here and there, enjoy every bit of it. And come home feeling amazing, which I did. I feel like I’m proud of myself, proud of myself for taking a vacation by myself, proud of myself for going to this place that you know, had all these old memories.
I’ve created all these new memories, proud of myself for sticking to my exercise and eating plan and proud of myself for coming home feeling good and having my own back through this whole thing. Right, I’ve built more confidence because I did this all right. You can absolutely go on vacation and have fun and have an amazing time and stick to your plan.
Let’s make vacation more about the experiences of creating amazing memories with your family with your friends and relaxing and enjoying the outdoors and the adventures and creating all these experiences that will last, that’ll stay with you for a lifetime. Let’s make our vacation more about that and less about how much sugar we’re gonna eat. You know?
Because is that really the key to a vacation? Is that the most important thing for you? I’m going to say no, it’s eating and drinking your way into oblivion is not the purpose of the vacation. Right? It’s the reset, recharge, you know? Come back feeling rested and refreshed and good about yourself. Okay. All right.
Well, I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, I would love it if you would share it with a friend. And I hope you take a vacation soon. And I hope you enjoy it. I hope you decide ahead of time, who you want to be when you come home. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
