One of the biggest fears you face when you set out to better yourself is the fear of being criticized. You want to lose weight but you are so afraid of what people will say about you that you quit …
166. Overcoming Your Fear of Success
Fear of success is probably something most people aren’t aware of. If you ask people why they can’t seem to reach a particular goal, they will come up with all kinds of reasons, excuses, and …
Continue Reading about 166. Overcoming Your Fear of Success →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 166, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, overcoming your fear of success. Fear of success is something that most people probably aren’t aware of. If you ask people why they can’t seem to reach a particular goal, they’ll probably come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses and stories and such. And they’ll probably almost never say, oh, fear of success. That’s why I couldn’t reach my goal.
But here’s the thing, fear of success is a real thing. And today, I want to bring this into your understanding. I want you to become keenly aware of this natural fear of success that we all have, what it looks like, so that you’ll never have to fall prey to that again in the future. So in this episode, I’ll explain what fear of success is, and how overcoming your fear of success can be the key to achieving your weight loss goals.
But first, when I start working with someone, and they tell me they have a sweet tooth, I’m using finger quotes here sweet tooth. And they cannot imagine living their life without sweets without sugar. So here’s what we do, I suggest they take a break from sugar for a while. And that suggestion usually makes them freak out a little bit. Their cravings for sugar typically go up right away, like if you stop eating sugar, or if you let’s say you stop drinking alcohol, like the first thing that’s going to happen is that your cravings are going to probably go up a little bit.
Okay, but then we work through that and we deal with that. And then something interesting happens after a few days. without sugar, those cravings start to subside a little bit. After a few weeks, the cravings get a lot weaker and more sporadic. So they’re not happening constantly.
And then after a few months without sugar, the cravings are often completely gone. Not always.
But a lot of times, it’s just not an issue anymore. So sugar was something that they couldn’t imagine living without, oh, I have a sweet tooth, I just have to eat sugar all the time. And now it’s something that they don’t care about anymore. They don’t ever want it back in their lives. They feel better without it, they sleep better. They have more energy, and running is easier. They’re losing weight.
So if this is you, if you don’t think you could ever give up sugar, I want you to challenge that thought. Just challenge the thought, what if What if you’re wrong? Because here’s what I think – I think you can do it. I think you can do it. You just need the right guidance, the support and the encouragement to get you there. And I can help you with all that.
Okay, if you want to learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. We’ll get on call, we’ll talk about it, we’ll see how coaching can help you overcome your quote unquote, sweet tooth. Cool. Awesome.
All right, let’s talk about overcoming your fear of success. And I have been thinking about this episode for a while because it is a concept that I talk to someone about, typically every week, every week, this comes up in one way or another. And it’s something that we have to work through.
So I thought since it’s so prevalent out there, that I thought I would really bring this into the spotlight today and really shine a light on what fear of success is but I think we all experienced this to some degree. And as I go through this conversation today, I think you’re gonna see that you can relate to a lot of this and you may not be aware that you’re doing it or why you’re doing it, but let’s, let’s just get into this.
Let’s start with an understanding of what fear of success is. So fear of success is when you have an ongoing fear of reaching some goal or of accomplishing something and it’s usually something big like you know, losing a lot of weight. That’s that’s a big let’s say you got to lose 30 pounds 50 pounds. That can seem pretty daunting.
So fear of success is having a fear of reaching that goal. And the fear is very real. And it’s also mostly unconscious or subconscious. Meaning that you may not be consciously aware that you have this fear, but it’s there. And it’s real nonetheless. And it’s not that you aren’t capable of reaching your goal, you definitely are, you are capable of losing the 30 pounds or 50 pounds.
But there’s an underlying fear of what comes along with reaching that big goal, the change that happens when you reach a big goal like that, and you’re not so sure that you’re going to be able to handle it. That’s where a lot of this fear stems from. Let’s talk about the underlying issue here, the real root cause of this fear of success. The fear of success is your brain trying to keep you safe and comfortable.
So we have two main different aspects of our brain, there’s more than two, but there’s two I’m going to talk about today, we have our amygdala, our primitive brain, and we have our prefrontal frontal cortex, which is our more modern, that’s more of our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain we use for planning for making good decisions for being organized.
And so this is our modern evolved part of our brain, the amygdala, is a tiny little almond size, part of our brain, one of the most primitive parts of our brain that is responsible for fight or flight for fear for those criminal primal urges that we have, you know, survival and sex drive and things like that.
So we have this thinking, planning, you know, organized brain, and then we have this primitive, fear driven brain, and they’re always kind of at odds with each other to some degree, right? That amygdala, so that lizard brain, I’ll call it right, is always just seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And this is a very powerful part of our brain, that amygdala drives a lot of our decision making and drives a lot of our behavior.
And it’s up to us using the prefrontal cortex to override that default behavior. So that primitive part of our brain will be seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, it’s seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort, it’s seeking the familiar and avoiding anything that feels unfamiliar. So reaching a big goal, you know, losing a bunch of weight, or, you know, achieving success in other areas of our life.
This seems like it would create pleasure for us, right? And our prefrontal cortex, we say, Yes, this is what I want for myself, this will bring me joy and pleasure and make me happy. But to your brain, this is just another uncomfortable place for you. This is you getting into unfamiliar territory, your natural inclination is to avoid anything that causes fear and worry and anxiety, and discomfort.
And succeeding at something like losing a bunch of weight can create all those things, it can create fear, anxiety and worry and discomfort. So a good example of this is something that I see, probably once a week, I talk to somebody about this, in my coaching practice, someone has a big weight loss goal, and they might be getting close to some big number. So it could be breaking 200 pounds.
So there, there may be, you know, they started at 225 or 230, and they want to get, you know, down to 190 or something like that, and they’re getting close to that 200 pound mark, they might be at 205 or something. And, or it could be someone who’s, you know, trying to break through some other number, like another milestone number, like 150, you know, maybe it’s someone who’s trying to get down to one 140. And, you know, 145 and they’re like 155, and they haven’t been under 150 in decades, you know, okay, so they’re getting close to this number.
And let’s just use the 200 pound number and so we have somebody that’s getting close, so maybe they got really close, they’d been at two, two and two, a one and maybe they even dipped down below 200 And got to like 199 for a day. And then they find themselves moving in the other direction they got to, then they go back to 201 and 203 and 205.
And they don’t understand it. How can this be happening? I just got right below that number that I was working so hard to get to. I was starting to understand, why couldn’t I stay there? So then we dig into the details, we look at their food logs, and then we see a few things that become pretty clear.
Oh, yeah, well, I forgot that I ate that piece of cake. And I ate that medium sized pizza by myself. And while I ate a bunch of my kids’ french fries and ate all this bread with dinner, and I did have a few beers or a couple bottles of wine or whatever it is, right? And they’re not even aware that they’re doing these things.
But they’re sabotaging their own success in the process, right? So their brain is basically just saying, like, getting under 199 feels uncomfortable. So we’re not going to go there. We’re going to keep you up here at like 203-205. Like, this feels pretty good. We haven’t been under 200 in the 100’s for like 20 years. So this is dangerous territory we’re getting into here. This is unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
So your brain will actively try to move you in the other direction. It’s not that this is what you want for yourself, not consciously anyway. But unconsciously your brain is sensing danger, and sensing discomfort and sensing fear and will move you in the other direction. This is classic self sabotage. This is how fear of success manifests itself. In a lot of people.
Okay, this is one example. So we have to be aware of this. And we have to actively work against our brain’s natural tendencies, that means being willing to get uncomfortable. That means noticing, when you are actively seeking comfort and safety and keep going anyway, keep doing your thing anyway.
Even though it feels uncomfortable, and unsafe, and unfamiliar, be willing to be uncomfortable, embrace the suck. Because that’s how you actually achieve anything that you want and everything that you want for yourself. So there are some other signs that you might be experiencing fear of success. And one of those is maybe you don’t have goals, because you lack goals or your goals are very low and very easy to reach.
So keeping the bar low, means you don’t ever have to face any real challenges. You never have to get too uncomfortable. So if you don’t strive for much, it won’t really matter if you reach that goal or not. Because you haven’t put much into it. So many people do this. I talk to people all the time, what’s your weight loss goal? And they’ll say, oh, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds, or they’ll say something small like that.
And I’ll push them a little bit and you know, really dig into it and kind of find out where they really want to be and what their ideal weight is. Let’s say you could wave a magic wand today. Where do you want to be, really? And they’ll be like well, I mean, I really want to lose like 30 pounds.
Okay, so why aren’t you shooting for 30 pounds as your goal? Well, because it seems hard. That’s not realistic. What if I fail, or I’ve tried that before, and I’ve let myself down? I’ve never been able to do it before. And in light of this discussion to say today, I just want to say like what, what if, what if I succeed, I’m going to be a whole new person. And that brings up a whole host of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about who I’m going to be.
That’s really what’s going on here. What happens if you succeed? So understand that we can self sabotage and we can keep ourselves small, because we are afraid of succeeding. So we we don’t have big goals. We keep our goals very low. Oh, what’s your big running goal this year? Oh, I want to run? You know, a 5k. Well, why not go for more? What do you really want to do? Well, I mean, I’d love to run a marathon someday, but I mean, that’s not in the stars for me. I could never do something like that.
Like no, we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna do that thing that you think is impossible. Forget realistic, I hate those smart goals that are like they’re, they’re you know, “realistic” goals, and I’m like, no, let’s go for unrealistic goals. Okay, so lack of goals are low goals, easily attainable goals. This could be a sign that you’re experiencing fear of success.
Another sign is procrastination. So you keep stalling and stalling until you just don’t ever do anything. Right, a lot of times people will stall and then the opposite opportunity will actually pass them by. And they’ll be like, well see, I mean, it just wasn’t meant to be. But then you know, you never really have to take action if you just keep putting things off. So you never have to worry about failing or succeeding.
And one of the biggest reasons why people do not achieve what they want for themselves. The biggest reason why people don’t achieve their goals and their dreams is procrastination. They say, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it. When I have more time, I’ll do it when I have more money, I’ll do it when the kids are off to college, or when we pay the house off, or after I retire. Or once this big project is over at work or whatever, on and on, and on, and on and on.
Later, I’ll do it later. Later, later, later, is the number one killer of hopes and dreams. Because later never happens. There will always be some excuse, some reason or some story about why you need to wait or why you should put it off. If you want to make a big change in your life right now, stop doing this. Stop saying later, start taking action, not this week. Not later today, right now do something right now, to move towards that goal, whatever it is that you want for yourself. There’s something you can do, right now.
Another reason why people will have this fear of success, and you’ll see it manifest in this way, is perfectionism. So people will say to themselves, hey, if I can’t do it perfectly, why should I bother doing it at all? And I think this is on one hand, hilarious, and on the other hand, insidious, because it’s funny to me, because nobody does anything perfectly right?
No, we don’t ever do anything perfectly. But we hold ourselves to this high standard that if we aren’t perfect, there’s no reason why we should even bother doing it. And it’s kind of insidious, because it keeps us from achieving anything. This is one of the reasons why people won’t start something or they try something for a minute and they quit because they don’t do it perfectly. Or maybe they fail.
But you know what the real key here is, isn’t doing something perfectly. It’s about being consistent about what you’re doing. Consistency beats perfection all the time. So instead of thinking about and striving for perfection, think about and strive to be consistent in whatever it is you’re doing. Maybe you have a goal to run regularly. And your goal is to run five days a week. And you do that pretty well for a few weeks. And then you miss a day.
Instead of saying, “Well, you know, I screwed up, I guess I can’t do this though”, you just keep going. Or if you have a new food plan, you’re trying to not eat sugar. And then, you know, over the weekend you kind of gave in and your kids were having a little birthday party for their friend and they had cupcakes and you had a cupcake. “Well, I didn’t do it perfectly. So I might as well just eat the rest of the cupcakes. Screw these little kids. I’m gonna eat all their cupcakes.”
No, don’t do that. First of all, that’s not cool. Kids want the cupcakes, right? Let the kids eat the cupcakes. But for you, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Just stop eating the cupcakes, just whatever, you ate one, fine, move on. We don’t have to. But you know, we don’t have two cheat meals in a row. We don’t miss two workouts in a row. That’s a good rule of thumb right there. Okay, so forget perfectionism. Strive for consistency. instead.
Another sign that you might be experiencing this fear of success is quitting. Why did you quit? And a lot of people will quit just before they reach some goal or some milestone, like the example of somebody that’s trying to lose weight and they’re, you know, they get to 203 or 204. And they just quit.
Because getting close to that goal, it starts to become real, it starts to feel uncomfortable. And they start worrying about all kinds of stuff. Why they won’t be able to maintain that going forward or, or what are people going to think of them and I’ll get into all that in just a minute. But people will quit, rather than experience the discomfort that comes along with succeeding. I know it’s bananas, right?
And the last sign that you might be experiencing a fear of success is any kind of self sabotaging behavior which we’ve been talking about any kind of self destructive behavior. So doing things that go against what you’re actively trying to achieve. Self sabotaging behavior is any behavior that you engage in, that is not in alignment with your goals. It’s things you do that aren’t aligned with who you want to be. It’s pretty simple. Is this thing I’m doing right now in alignment with who I ultimately want to be as a human being? Pretty easy answer, just like yes or no?
If the answer is yes, do it. If the answer is no, don’t do it. Pretty simple. Should I eat the cupcake? Oh, is that in alignment with who you want to be? No, well, I don’t need it. Pretty simple.
So why do we do all this? There are many reasons why we fear success, as counterintuitive as it seems. So I want to dive into some of the reasons why we actually do these things. Okay. So one of them is that you might be afraid of being the center of attention. So succeeding, losing a lot of weight means that people might start to notice you. So you might be afraid of people noticing you or you might be afraid of being in the spotlight, people might start complimenting you on how good you look.
And consciously you might, you might say, oh, I want that. But subconsciously, you’re like, I don’t want that. I don’t want anybody to notice me, I don’t want people to notice how much weight I’ve lost. Because this can feel very uncomfortable. This is not something that you’re used to, you’re used to hiding in this body where nobody really paid attention to you. Nobody really saw you.
And now you start to feel exposed because people are noticing you. And this can be very uncomfortable. Okay? Notice when this is happening, notice when you’re actively being afraid of being the center of attention. Okay? Another reason why we do this is that we worry about leaving people behind, if we move forward. So if we succeed at something, we worry about, leaving others behind, so has your husband, or your friends will say things to you, like, Hey, you look fine, you don’t need to lose any more weight.
And so as you lose weight, you start to feel like you’re pulling away from those people. And you start to feel like there’s this rift between you because they’re telling you, oh, don’t lose more weight, you know, you look fine. And they’re doing that, because what you’re doing makes them feel uncomfortable. It’s not about you, it’s about them. So instead of continuing on, you begin to self sabotage your own success, so you don’t lose your friends. So you don’t lose your partner.
And of course, it’ll probably never happen. But it’s hitting on that tribal nerve, that part of us that just wants to be a part of that wants to fit in and wants to be a part of the group. And there’s this quote that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, right. And instinctively, we don’t want to stand out, we don’t want to get hammered down, we just want to be like everybody else around us.
But here’s the truth bomb, you may have to leave some people behind. If the people around you don’t support you, if the people around you are trying to hold you back from being your best self, because it makes them feel uncomfortable. It makes them feel bad about themselves. You might need to find new people, or at least have a conversation with some of these people, especially your partner.
You don’t need to get divorced over this, right? But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. So I’m just saying. All right. Another reason why we fear success is that we start to feel anxious about being able to maintain that success. So we say things like, oh, it’s kind of hard work to lose weight, right? Am I going to have to work this hard the rest of my life?
And this is where we stop being afraid of reaching a goal and start being afraid of being able to maintain that goal. The truth though, is that it’s actually much easier to maintain your weight than it is to lose weight. So to lose weight, there’s some restriction there, you have to be a little bit more strict about what you’re doing if you want to lose weight, much more so than to maintain weight.
But most people what happens is they tend to fall back into old habits once they hit a weight loss goal. So they never really learned how to maintain their weight. They never learned the habits to make all this sustainable. And one of the most important things I do as a coach is help you to learn how to make eating right and maintaining a healthy weight just part of who you are part of what you do.
It has to be easy, it has to be effortless. Maintaining your weight has to be an ingrained habit. And inevitably that’s where we’re trying to get with all this but a lot of people don’t see it that way. They don’t understand how to make it sustainable, they feel like they have to be too restrictive, to lose weight and they think that they have to be that restrictive forever and you really don’t.
But, you know, thinking about maintaining your success thinking about maintaining your weight can be enough to cause people to quit and to start self sabotaging, okay. Another reason why people fear success is there’s this fear of being judged. And criticized, especially by the people that are close to you.
We sometimes feel like we get judged, criticized, shunned by friends and family. Sometimes it’s just strangers on the internet, or whatever. But this can be, this can be very uncomfortable. And so you might have a whole new look like you lost a bunch of weight, you got new clothes, you get super fit, you feel amazing, you look fabulous.
And yet, there will be people out there who do not like you. And they’ll let you know that. They don’t like that you’ve changed. They don’t like your new look, they don’t like your new clothes, they don’t like that you’re into running or whatever it is, they just don’t like you period, right? Here’s the thing, though, this is just part of being a human being here on planet Earth. Some people like you, and some people won’t.
And that’s it, get over it. Do not let your fear of being judged or criticized stop you from becoming your most badass self. Because the reality is, there are probably already people right now who don’t like you for who you are at this moment. So you might as well just ignore everybody, all the haters out there, and just you do you you become the person that you ultimately want to become.
And don’t let any of that nonsense stop you. Okay? So all the stuff we’re talking about today is about awareness. It’s about having the insight and the self awareness to notice when your fear of success might actually be the fortune of your success. So once you understand all this, you see that it is happening. And a lot of times remember this is a lot of this is subconscious, right.
But once you see that it is happening. Once you bring it into your awareness into your consciousness, you can do something about it. You have to notice when your behavior might not be in alignment with who you want to be, and then work to change it. Be mindful when you start using excuses and reasons and stories to justify some sort of unwanted behavior. Oh, man, I’ve been really good all week. So I deserve a pizza as a reward. Oh, this might be a little fear of success. Do I really want to undo all the hard work I’ve done up to this point for a few pieces of mediocre pizza? No, I don’t.
So be aware of when you try to tell yourself, it’s okay to do it. There’s just one piece of pizza or whatever. When you know that that’s really not what you want for yourself. Okay. Lastly, I just want you to be willing to be uncomfortable because this process of succeeding or achieving weight loss goals or whatever your goals are is its own comfort.
Discomfort is the price you pay to achieve all your goals and dreams. Discomfort is the cost of your success. Just gotta remember that. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
164. How to Achieve Weight Loss Success
If you’ve ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, then this episode is for you. There are many different ways to lose weight - cutting calories, cutting carbs, cutting out snacking, more …
Continue Reading about 164. How to Achieve Weight Loss Success →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 164 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today: how to achieve weight loss success. If you’ve ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, this episode is for you. There are many different ways to lose weight, cutting calories, cutting carbs, cutting out snacking, or fasting, eating less meat, eating only meat, eating only cabbage and celery and on and on and on right.
Some of these weight loss methods are more successful and more sustainable than others. But they all work to some degree for some people. But despite all these different weight loss methods and their relative effectiveness, there is one master principle that you must follow if you want to achieve long term weight loss success. This one principle will also enable you to achieve success in every other aspect of your life, not just in terms of your weight loss or your health or your fitness.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share this one master principle with you that will show you exactly how to achieve weight loss success and more. But first, one of my favorite clients Kelly had this to say about her experience she said, “Before finding Patrick, I was not in a good place. I was struggling mentally, drinking alcohol and eating garbage. I felt like other women were faster and stronger than I was. And this program has helped me to break through those limiting thoughts and really take control over my life. I started eating real food, I started lifting weights, and I’ve become more determined. I’m a stronger runner. I’m 20 pounds lighter, I ran a 50k and I even did an Ultra Ragnar. Trusting the process and gaining the confidence to keep moving forward helped turn this into a lifestyle change. I now have goals that I feel I can meet and feeling weak is in the past. I feel physically and mentally stronger than ever. You are one of a million and you changed my life.”
Thank you, Kelly. But here’s the thing, Kelly’s story is not uncommon. Every day I watch your owners like Kelly, take back control of their diet, lose weight, get stronger, and do things they never thought they could do. So think about this, what limiting thoughts are holding you back? And are you finally ready to ditch those limiting thoughts and take control of your life? If so, maybe coaching is an option for you. To learn more and apply, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
Okay, so let’s talk about how to achieve weight loss success. So like I mentioned, during the intro here, there’s many different pathways to weight loss success, you can cut out calories, you can, you know, ditch the carbs, you can cut out snacking and you can do more fasting. You know a lot of people do really well with intermittent fasting or even some extended fasting.
Some people do really well doing more of like a carnivore diet, they eat just meat, some people do better if they’re eating zero meat, some people do better if they’re doing the cabbage juice diet, I don’t even know what that is. But there’s just so many different methods of achieving weight loss. Now, some of these are more effective than others. I think some of these, especially when we get into things like really drastically reducing calories, you run the risk of slowing down your metabolism. This is not something that would really be sustainable.
I think if you limit a lot of nutrients, like if you’re just doing the cabbage diet, I don’t even know, is that a thing? But whatever if you’re just doing something where you’re just eating like cabbage for months on end, can’t be good for you. Like you’re probably not getting enough protein, probably not enough micro and macro nutrients in that. So anyway, some of these are more effective than others. Some of these are better than others. Some are more sustainable than others.
But here’s the thing, every diet that’s out there will work to some degree for some people. There isn’t just one thing that works for everybody. And I’ve said this so many times. Every person I work with I make sure we really understand that there isn’t one method, there isn’t one diet, no fad diet or whatever, that’s going to work perfectly for everybody.
Now, for me personally, I tend to gravitate toward a more low low carb sort of higher protein approach. So this isn’t no carbs. This is not like a totally carnivore type of approach. But I tend to eat lower on the carb scale. I definitely eat a higher protein than the average American for sure than the average runner definitely. And I don’t eat constantly, I’m not eating six or eight times a day.
And this approach seems to work well for a lot of endurance athletes who want to get fat adapted, who want to improve their fat burning capabilities, who want to run longer, who want to lose weight. But you know, even with this low carb approach, there’s a lot of room for differentiation, no two people are going to do this the exact same way, we’re all going to have our own sort of set point, as far as carbs go, like how many carbs do we need to feel good to make sure that our running is is still improving, to make sure that our weight loss is happening?
We don’t want to go too high on the carb scale. But we don’t want to go too low either. Like, are you making improvements at the gym? Are you seeing improvements in your running numbers, like all these things are worth considering. And it’s going to look a little bit different for each person. Okay, so just understand that there’s lots of pathways to success and weight loss, lots of different methods, lots of different quote unquote, like diets, you know, and to some degree, they all work, you know.
But if you want to achieve long term weight loss success, there is this one master principle that you must embrace if you want any of these things to work. In fact, this principle is just one word. But it’s a very, very powerful word. This word is so powerful and so important that I’ve made this one word, my mantra for the year for this year 2023. I printed out this word, I have it taped to my monitor. I’m looking at it right now. And I see this all the time, I’m constantly being reminded of this one master principle.
This word is so powerful, that it not only allows you to achieve weight loss success, but if there’s anything that you want to achieve in your life, in any area of your life, this one word principle is how you get there. And if you only embraced one mindset concept, this is what we’re talking about today. This is a mindset concept.
If you were to just ditch everything and just adopt this one mindset concept. This is the one that you should embody in everything that you do. Because if you do, your success is basically guaranteed, you basically cannot fail if you embody this one principle. Okay, I’m trying to be very dramatic and build this up. I don’t know why. But it’s fine, I guess. So I’ve probably teased this out enough for you.
So here’s the one word principle that you need to embody: discipline. That’s it. Discipline. That’s the word that I’ve chosen as my mantra for the year. That’s the word that’s taped to my monitor right now. And this is the way that you achieve success and anything that you want for yourself.
So what is discipline? The definition of discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. Another way of saying this, and I liked this definition a little better, it’s sticking to the plan, even when you don’t feel like it.
Alright, so your plan might call for chicken and salad for dinner tonight. But your husband just brought home a large pizza. And it smells amazing. And he opened up that box. And he said that pepperoni is all glistening with the grease on top of it and you can smell the cheese and you know how doughy that crust is going to be and how, oh my god, it’s like, you know, you just your whole brain is lit up now.
Your desire has increased like crazy. Being disciplined means in that moment, you eat your chicken and your salad because that’s what you said you were going to do. No one feels like eating chicken and salad when there’s pizza right there. But being disciplined means you do it anyway. Discipline means you go out and run for an hour because that’s what’s on your schedule. It said you run for an hour today. Even though it’s cold outside, even though it’s raining outside because your training plan says you run for an hour. That’s what you do no matter what.
Now I have an interesting story about this today. I have to tell him myself a little bit here. I run outside in whatever conditions and I have this whole training season I have for years actually And it’s very, very rare that I will ever skip a run. I really don’t skip runs but instead I’ll go run on a treadmill, which I have access to in my building there are a bunch of treadmills.
I could do this anytime I wanted to. But I don’t, I run outside. Today, I had this one, you know, hour block of time that I could run. And that was it. I didn’t, I don’t have time to go later. During that one hour block of time that I had to run, and I had to run an hour. During that one hour block of time, we were under a severe thunderstorm warning, there was lightning, the rain was coming down so hard with lightning and thunder, it was insane outside.
And I made the decision in that moment to go run on the treadmill. And that was a tough thing for me to do. Because I was like, oh man, I know that I need to be disciplined about this. And I know that I’ve committed to running outside no matter what. And I don’t mind getting wet. And it wasn’t warm outside. It wasn’t too cold, like 50 degrees, it was actually pretty decent temperature for like a rainy thunderstormy day.
But I was feeling really undisciplined about like not running outside. I was like, oh, I gotta go run on the treadmill. But then I started thinking about running on the treadmill. And I hate running on the treadmill. I hate it. I do not like it. The time on the treadmill just seems to go by so slowly. It’s not interesting for me, it’s boring.
My pace never really matches up to what I know my pace is like I can run at a certain heart rate. And I kind of know my paces. And on the treadmill, it’s like, you know, normally that’d be like a 10 minute mile or something like that, for me it’s a super easy pace. And on the treadmill, it’s like a 12 minute mile. I’m like, that’s not right. It’s not right. It’s boring. I don’t like the way it calculates my pace. It takes too long.
There’s all kinds of reasons why I don’t like the treadmill. So for me, being disciplined today meant putting aside my, whatever ego and getting my run in and doing it on the treadmill, just sucking it up and just, you know, not being a big baby about it. And just getting it done. And I did, that’s when I did I ran on the treadmill.
The only reason I didn’t run outside is because of the safety factor with all the lightning and stuff because I don’t mind getting wet, whatever, my skin is still waterproof. So I’m not concerned about that. I didn’t want to get struck by lightning. And it was pretty crazy out there this morning.
Okay, so being disciplined means you get it done. Even when you don’t feel like it. I didn’t feel like running on a treadmill, I did it anyway. Being disciplined means you do the things that you don’t want to do. So that you can become the person that you want to become. Discipline means choosing the hard things. When the easy thing is right there, the pizza, the couch, the warm bed, Netflix, the cookies, whatever that is for you.
Discipline means you are consistent with the way you eat, the way you train. How often you lift weights, when you go to bed, you’re consistent with reading and journaling and meditation and yoga and stretching, whatever that looks like for you. Whatever that thing is that helps you make progress towards your goals towards becoming that better future version of you. Doing that thing consistently takes discipline.
Alright, so what does this look like? How do you do it? How do you practice discipline, because discipline is a practice. It’s not something you just turn on. And then you’re like, good to go. It’s not something you say, well, I’m going to be disciplined. And then it’s just you never have to worry about it. It’s something you have to practice, just like learning to play an instrument takes practice or doing yoga, it takes practice.
I did yoga last night for the first time in a few weeks. It was hard, and I’m like, oh, I need to be more disciplined about yoga. I need to practice yoga more often. Because when I don’t do it for a while, it’s hard. Yoga is hard. Especially for runners. We are the tightest people in the world. So in order to be successful at anything, you have to have these three things, you have to have a plan, you have to take action and you have to get some kind of result.
Okay, this makes sense, right? So being disciplined means that you make a plan. Whatever that looks like for you, if you are wanting to lose weight, then you need to have a food plan. What is it you’re going to eat? What are you going to not eat? You know, if you’re used to eating pizza and cookies all the time. Maybe that’s something you got to take away.
So for you, making a plan might mean what foods you’re going to avoid and what foods you’re going to include. Right? Okay, so you make a plan. And then you take action on that plan, you work the plan. And this is where the majority of discipline happens, you’ve got to be disciplined about what you do, you will not feel like it, you will not feel like sticking to that plan, but you do it anyway. That’s discipline.
Because the only way you make progress is by taking action. The only way you achieve results is by taking action. And the way you take action consistently is discipline. All right, so you’ve made a plan, you’re taking action, you’re doing a consistently good job. Now you’re gonna get a result or not get a result. So what did all that action achieve for you? What are your results?
Is this what you want for yourself? Or are these results moving you closer to your goals or further away, so you got to analyze the results. And then if you need to course correct, make a change. Okay, then you repeat this process, you maybe tweak the plan, and then you start taking new action based on that new plan. And then you look at those results. And then you just keep doing this.
And modifying your plan, or course correcting, has to be part of the process. And this is part of the plan right here, this part of this process of being disciplined and getting results and achieving goals. The modifying your plan part is where a lot of people get stuck, because they try something, it may not work, you know, perfectly. And so they quit.
We don’t quit though, we look at the results. And if something isn’t working, we change something. Because a plan does not work 100% of the time for every person. That’s it. And we expect this, the people that I work with my coaching clients, we look at the results that we’re getting. And if something isn’t working, we freaking change it.
We change the plan. People are so afraid to do this, though. Why are you afraid to change the plan? Who cares? If what you’re doing isn’t working? Let’s try something different. Let’s make a small change here. Oh, you’re eating, you know, 80 grams of carbs a day? Well, let’s change that, you know, maybe you’re not improving your running speed that you want to, maybe we go to 100 grams and see how that works for you.
Maybe you need more protein in your diet. If what you’re doing is not giving you the results that you want, why do you keep doing? It doesn’t make any sense. But most people get stuck there. And that’s when they quit. And that’s one of the beautiful things about having a coach, whether it’s me or somebody else, having somebody there to help you look at the results and see specifically for you what kinds of things you can change to start getting some different results is really, really, really helpful. Okay, just keep that in mind.
Okay, so you have this plan, you’ve modified the plan, and now you’re taking, you’re practicing discipline, again, because you’re taking new action. And again, this is where most people give up, they don’t want to try different things. They’re not willing to go through this whole process of trial and error. But that’s the only way you figure out what works and what doesn’t, it’s the only way to accomplish anything – is you go to try something, see if it works or not, and then try something else and you just keep going.
This is one of the reasons why these fad diets don’t work because the same plan doesn’t work the same way for two different people. It just doesn’t they don’t work the same. People need to understand that. The same diet, whether it’s the Mediterranean diet, the South Beach diet, or whatever it is, doing it the exact same way for everybody will not work for everybody just doesn’t work that way. There’s no one diet that’s going to get everybody the same results never ever, ever going to happen.
Okay, so we make a plan. We take action, we work the plan. We do it, we stick to the plan, even when we don’t feel like it. That’s discipline. We look at our results. Do we need to change anything? Let’s be disciplined about analyzing results. Let’s be disciplined about making a new plan if we need to. And then take new action and rinse and repeat this process. Okay?
You cannot be afraid of this process. It’s how you accomplish everything you want in your life. In fact, it’s the only way to accomplish the things that you want in your life. And the only way. In the end, the key to accomplishing all these things is that backbone of discipline, right? Being willing to stick with the process of change, even when things don’t seem to be working the way you want them to requires discipline.
You have to be disciplined enough to make a change and keep going. being disciplined means you don’t quit If you don’t ever, ever, ever give up, you keep going, no matter what this can relate to losing weight, being disciplined about food, about when you eat, when you don’t eat, how often you eat, how many times a day you’re eating, how much food you’re eating, and each of those meals, how many carbs you’re eating a day, how many grams of protein, whatever that looks like for you.
Be disciplined about how you do that. Maybe you want to get faster as a runner, you got to be disciplined about running faster, you got to do the speed work, you got to do the hard work of pushing yourself hard past the point of, of comfort way past the point of comfort. Sometimes if you want to get faster. If you want to get stronger, you want to build muscle, you got to lift heavier weights, you can’t just keep lifting the same amount of weight and expecting to get stronger, it’s just not going to happen. You’re not going to have an adaptive response. You’ve got to lift heavier weights.
Same thing with your work with starting a business being an entrepreneur as your career. You want to be disciplined about or you want to achieve big things in your business life, you got to be disciplined about how you approach the work. And same thing with relationships, and raising children. Be disciplined about improving how you interact with your children, how you inspire them, how you motivate them, how you keep them on track.
Be disciplined about how you approach your relationship with your partner, be disciplined about communicating about expressing your feelings about expressing your wants and needs. So all these things, all these different areas of your life can be improved by practicing discipline. Now discipline gets a bad rap sometimes. Because people see discipline as being negative like they see it as a punishment.
And that’s like a definition of discipline. The practice of training people to obey rules is a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience, like disciplining your child, right? This is clearly not the kind of discipline we’re talking about here. Okay. People think discipline means, you know, giving up all their freedom, you know, their free time, their sleep, not having any fun being miserable all the time, never being able to eat any good food.
Discipline is not negative. In fact, the opposite is true. Being disciplined means you gain massive amounts of freedom. When you’re disciplined with your time, and you use your time wisely, and strategically, then you have time for play and fun and Netflix. When you’re disciplined about what you eat, like 90-95% of the time, it means you can have the pizza or the cookie every now and then. And it’s no big deal. Because you know you’ve been disciplined the other 95% of the time.
Being disciplined means you have freedom to wear whatever you want at the beach this summer, because you’ve consistently done the hard work to improve your body composition. So you can take your shirt off or wear the two piece bikini or whatever it is for you. Right. Discipline is not a bad thing. It’s the means to achieving everything good that you want in your life.
Now, there are some negative consequences that go along with not being disciplined. Like if you lack discipline, you lack progress. You don’t make progress. If you lack discipline, you’re going to lack motivation. Because being disciplined actually creates motivation. You create progress, you get motivated, you lack progress, you lack motivation. If you lack discipline, you’re gonna lack consistency.
Discipline is how you stay consistent. Being disciplined is how you create massive consistency. If you lack discipline, you’re gonna lack mental toughness. You know, mental toughness is developed through this whole process of being disciplined. And if you lack discipline in one area of your life, chances are you’re going to lack discipline in most if not all areas of your life. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything, right?
And if you lack discipline, you will lack results, period. Now, the opposite is also true. There’s a beautiful positive ripple effect that happens when you practice discipline. When you practice discipline, you make progress. This increases your motivation, you become very consistent. You build mental toughness, you develop discipline in all areas of your life, you get the results that you’re looking for, or at least you get results and then you can kinda like tweak some things and then start to get better results you know, but the only way you make progress the only way you can achieve anything is by practicing discipline. Okay.
So just to recap, how do you do this? How do you practice being disciplined? Make a plan. So what are the steps required to get you from where you are to where you want to be. So if this is like losing weight, that’s your food plan. If this is improving your running performance, this is your running training schedule. So you make a plan, then you stick to the plan, no matter what.
You stick to the plan, even when you don’t feel like it. And then you look at your results. Am I moving closer to my goal or further away? Am I gaining weight? Am I losing weight? Are my runs improving? Am I getting faster, and then make changes if you need to tweak the plan, stick to that plan, analyze those results, rinse and repeat. Okay? I’ve chosen this word discipline as my one word mantra for the year. And I’m giving you permission to adopt it as your one word mantra for the year if you want as well.
Remember that whatever you want for yourself, whoever you want to become. Discipline is how you get there. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
162. Understanding The Different Types of Hunger
Have you ever felt hungry? I know stupid question, of course, you have. We’ve all felt hungry, we all know exactly what hunger feels like. But did you know that not all hunger is “real” …
Continue Reading about 162. Understanding The Different Types of Hunger →
Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 162 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, understanding the different types of hunger. Have you ever felt hungry? I know, stupid question. Of course, you have. We’ve all felt hungry. We all know exactly what hunger feels like. But did you know that not all hunger is quote unquote, real hunger?
Sometimes what you think is real hunger is just a mental or emotional response to your current situation. Stress, boredom, even certain social situations can cause you to feel the need to eat. But are you experiencing real hunger in those situations. So today, I’m going to break it all down for you and help you understand that there are different types of hunger so that you can take back control of how often and how much you eat. Because understanding the different types of hunger is key to you being able to lose weight and keep it off for good.
But first, if you’ve ever tried to lose weight in the past, then you probably know that most diets fail. They fail because diets are looked at as a temporary change in behavior. Even the saying I’m going on a diet implies that at some point in time, you’re going to be going off that diet, right? Diets are marketed to you as a short-term solution to get the weight off.
And then there’s this promise that you can kind of go back to doing what you’re doing before. This is a bunch of BS, and it just never ever works. Okay. In my coaching program, we do things differently. Instead of focusing on a diet, we focus on breaking old habits, and creating healthy new ones, you’ll learn exactly how to make healthy choices that can become your new way of life. Stop going on a diet and start making sustainable changes to your lifestyle.
If you want to learn more about this, you will learn exactly how to do this, you want some help with this. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply Learn more on apply for coaching that’s runningleancoaching.com/apply. I hope to see you in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, so let’s talk about this. Understanding the different types of hunger. why I’m bringing this up today is because I think there’s some misconceptions out there about what it means to be hungry. I talk to people every single day, who struggle sometimes with eating, and it feels very out of control. It feels very automatic. Like they don’t have control over their eating because they they’re feeling hungry. And they’ll tell me this all the time.
They say, well, you know, I was hungry, so I had to eat something. And I always challenge that with people, I always ask them, you know what was going on right before that? Why did they make that decision? Why did they feel like they were out of out of control in that moment, like what was going on around that?
And a lot of times we can get to kind of the root of why they were feeling hungry in that moment, or whether it was actual hunger or not real hunger versus these other types of hunger that I’m talking about today. This is important because you have to get good at differentiating these different types of hunger. You got to get good at this because you most likely need to change your relationship with.
If you’re like most people in the Western world, you have been conditioned over most of your life, to eat a lot and eat often during the day. And this is due to all kinds of situations and different reasons. And it’s different for different people. But for the most part, there’s like emotional reasons why we eat there’s social situations, situations where we eat, there’s peer pressure while we’re there, stress and that’s why we eat.
So, there’s a lot of conditioned eating that’s been going on in our lives, especially here in the United States, right? So, if you’re the kind of person that has just conditioned yourself to eat every time you feel this little urge this little nudge this little bit of hunger, then changing that is going to help you completely change your relationship with food. If you’re somebody that’s had a hard time losing weight in the past, it could be because your hunger signals are messing with you.
And you need to get good at understanding these different types of hunger so that you can start changing that whole way that you think and feel about food and nutrition and diet and all that stuff. Okay? So, instead of eating just because you feel hungry, every time you feel hungry, you need to understand that there are different types of hunger and there’s like a real hunger and then there’s like, kind of false hunger, right?
And there’s these times when, you know, we feel like we need to eat something, but it’s really just an automatic kind of learned behavior, right? And so this is like being on autopilot, when you just find yourself reaching for food and eating it sort of unconsciously, you got to change this autopilot behavior if you want to lose weight, and if you want to be able to keep it off for good.
So, it doesn’t matter so much what you do in the short term, days, weeks, months, but over the long term for years is what makes the biggest difference. And to learn the difference between real hunger and what’s you know, like false hunger, then this is going to go so far in you being able to sustain a healthy lifestyle to sustain a healthy relationship with food. Hunger is rarely ever an emergency.
We, human beings, we can go three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. This is like the rule of threes. You learn this in like boy scouts or whatever, three weeks without food. So, for us here in the Western world, we eat every single day. The fact that you could literally go three weeks without food and be fine. This means that hunger for us is almost never ever an emergency. Just think about that for a minute. Okay?
I’m not saying you should go three weeks without, let’s make that very clear. In fact, I think there’s some benefit to some extended fasting, maybe for one to three days or something like that. But you know, beyond that, it’s really not necessary. I’ve done a three day fast in the past, and I never felt like I was going to die. I didn’t feel terrible.
I never felt like I was it was an emergency situation. I was thinking about food a bit towards the end. And that first meal when I broke my fast was pretty amazing. But I don’t think it’s necessary to go three days or four days or five days or three weeks without food. But what if you didn’t treat every time you got hungry as an emergency? How would that change your whole relationship with food?
Most people cannot go a few hours without food because they feel like they’re going to die. And your brain is probably telling you in those moments that if we don’t need something right now we’re going to, you know, a murder somebody or die. And a lot of this has to do with the diet that people are eating the types of foods they’re eating, change the way certain hormones get expressed.
So processed foods, highly refined carbs, tons of sugar, this is going to really mess up your hunger signals. These foods are not satiating. In fact, they do the opposite. They make you feel really hungry all day long. Those foods high in refined carbs and sugars will suppress your satiating hormone like leptin, and they increase your hunger hormone ghrelin, which makes you feel more hungry, not feel satisfied with the food that you’re eating.
And so this is what kind of ramps up those hunger signals. That’s why eating a very high carbohydrate or a very high sugar diet is really hard to lose weight that way because you are super hungry all the time. So, if you get off of those types of foods and just start eating whole foods, more, you know protein, more fat and get off the sugars, then you’re going to do yourself a big favor and that’s going to go a long way in sort of resetting your, your hunger hormones and your satiety hormones back to baseline.
Okay, so that in itself is going to help you a lot. But just because you feel hungry does not mean that it’s an emergency. You don’t have to eat something. We look at hunger as a sign thing that we have to eat right now.
But what if you could just like be a little hungry for a couple of hours, or even like, a few minutes. Sometimes we can’t even go a few minutes; when we feel hungry, we just have to do something about it right away. But listen, when you get good at this, when you start to understand that there are different types of hunger, and you can really tell the difference between ‘Do I really need something right now? Or is this just like me being bored, you know?’. Then this is a game changer for you.
Because you no longer feel this urgent need to eat all the time, you’re no longer eating out of habit and doesn’t feel out of control anymore. You’re not eating because of emotions, or social cues, you’re back in control, and you’re eating like a healthy human being should. Okay, so let’s look at the different types of hunger. So you can start to recognize, you know, what each of these looks like, I think you’ve probably experienced all of these I think we all have.
And something I need to say here, everyone’s a little bit different. And for each of these different types of hunger, you know, we’re all going to experience these a little bit different. And there’s also some crossover here.
So sometimes you might be actually hungry, and you’re in a social situation, and you’re wanting a reward. So just understand that sometimes there’s a little bit of a crossover here, and that’s okay. But just start tuning in to your own body, your own thoughts, your own feelings. So you understand this whole picture and how it relates to you. And your goals. If you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, and you want to be able to keep it off, then understanding this is going to be super key for you to be successful with that. Okay.
So the first one I want to talk about is one that I’m calling withdrawal hunger. So withdrawal hunger is something that most people experience when they start to get off of certain types of foods, usually sugar. So when you cut out sugar, let’s say you just decide you’re going to stop eating sugar, your brain is going to miss the dopamine and all the you know all the oxytocin and the serotonin, all the good feeling hormones that you get when you eat these highly refined carbohydrates like sugar, your brain is going to miss that.
And so this is going to feel pretty terrible at first because your body has become kind of, you know, accustomed to eating sugar. And if you just stop eating sugar, you’re going to experience some withdrawal symptoms, okay? One of those things is like physical hunger. Right? So this is going to happen, when you get off foods that are high in sugar and carbs, especially the ultra processed and ultra refined carbs, you’re going to feel some withdrawal hunger, okay.
This usually just lasts a few days, maybe three to five days or something like that, until your hunger hormones start to calm down, the ghrelin starts to kind of normalize. But then something else kind of happens, it becomes more psychological in nature. So you’re going to still experience some of this, this hunger, you’ve probably gotten over the physical withdrawal, maybe after the first five to seven days.
But now there’s this like mental and emotional withdrawal that’s happening. So your brain is like, oh, yeah, like our body is fine. But our brain is like, oh, man, where’s that dopamine we used to get, you know? And so this kind of feels like real hunger, but it isn’t, okay. It’s just an imbalance of hormones. Again, it’s like ghrelin and leptin going crazy.
And this is kind of to be expected when you cut out those junk foods when you cut out all the sugars. And maybe you start out on a little bit of a lower carb way of eating. You’re going to experience some of this withdrawal, hunger, okay? Kind of feels like real hunger, but it’s really not. It’s just a withdrawal from sugar, all right?
So understand that you really don’t have to do much about that. Just understand that this is going to be part of the process. When I talk about embracing the suck of changing your diet. This is one of the things that we have to deal with. Okay, you’re gonna have some withdrawal symptoms, but you can get through it.
Alright, the second type of hunger is something you use, you’re going to know this one. This is a craving or an urge for something specific and you know that this is a craving or an urge because you are craving a certain specific food and maybe pizza or french fries or ice cream or like warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven.
Like when you get yourself thinking about something like that. That’s a craving. Now, this is going to kind of start to create maybe some of that, you know, rumbling in your stomach and you’re going to be like, oh, I’m really hungry. I have to eat pizza right now. But you don’t have to eat pizza right now. It’s just something that you’re kind of mentally creating, you’re creating this, this desire in your mind for this specific food.
Here’s an example of this just this morning, totally out of the blue. I’m like in the shower. You know, and I just had this craving for pizza. And I’m just like, what the hell? This is like for a very specific type of pizza from a place here in Cincinnati called Dewey’s pizza, amazing pizza, by the way, and there’s a specific pizza there called the Don Corleone, red sauce, mozzarella, cheese, pepperoni, salami, ham, oregano, it’s oh, my God is like so amazing.
I had to look it up here just to kind of see is that the right name for it, and there’s a picture of it there. And that even increased my craving even more. But just out of the blue, I have this craving for this pizza. And this is not real hunger. This is like I’m recording this in the morning, I’m not hungry. I just got back from a run, I’m really not even feeling hungry right now. I’m not going to go and eat pizza, you know, in the morning here.
But this is just something that came to me as a thought: it was a mental craving, it’s a mental urge to go and eat some pizza. So urges and cravings, they kind of come on fast, they come on pretty quickly. It’s just like I experienced this morning standing in the shower, it’s like out of the blue, I have this thought, wouldn’t pizza be good right now?
And then they kind of leave just as fast, they don’t really stick around for very long, it’s just a thought that you have maybe creates that desire inside of you, but then it goes away. So just give it a few minutes. And usually that will go away. Okay, but if you’re having a specific craving or urge for a specific type of food, whether it’s ice cream, or you know, french fries or whatever, just know that not real hunger, and you don’t have to do anything about that. Okay, just let it go. Get back to what you were doing. Give it a few minutes, and chances are, it’s going to go away pretty quickly. Okay.
Now, another type of hunger. And this is a big one. This is one that we all can relate to. I’m sure this is called reward hunger or emotional hunger. And this is where we want to eat some food to feel better. So typically, this is in response to some emotional state that we’re in usually some kind of negative emotional state that we’re in, we might be feeling bored, or anxious, or tired, or lonely or stressed out. And you know what we want to do we want to go eat something because we know that if we eat something, we’re going to feel better.
We don’t have to feel as much of that stress or anger if we just eat something and kind of numb ourselves a little bit. And what do you go for when you’re looking for a reward? When you’re looking to solve that emotional problem, you don’t go for like some raw broccoli, I’m guessing you go for those highly refined carbohydrates. You want the pizza, you want the french fries, you want the cookies, the Oreos, the ice cream, the candy, right?
People don’t emotionally eat raw vegetables, typically, okay. So you’re looking for a reward, you want that dopamine hit, you’re looking for something to make you feel better. Your brain is doing what it does, naturally, which is seeking pleasure. And avoiding pain, the pain that you’re perceiving is this emotional state that you’re in, I’m stressed out about work, I’m bored here sitting at home working. really angry about the situation or whatever negative emotion it is.
And you just want to find something pleasurable to kind of replace that. This is not real hunger. This is one that you have got to get good at recognizing because we all do this. And it feels very automatic. It feels like you’re not in control. It feels like you just go to the fridge and you just start eating stuff and you don’t even think about it. You know, or you grab a bag of potato chips. And before you know it you’re like how did how to eat this whole bag of potato chips? I didn’t even realize I was doing this.
So reward, hunger, reward or emotional hunger is one of those things where you have to understand what’s happening in that moment. Understand why you’re doing that. And you got to get good at stopping that automatic behavior. And really, when you’re feeling that urge to eat something in that moment, you just don’t have to do anything. about it, you can just sit there and not eat anything and just feel the emotion.
Yeah, you can just be bored. You can just feel stressed, you can just be angry, doesn’t matter, you don’t have to eat to feel better. There are other ways of dealing with those emotions. There’s other ways of trying to soothe yourself or reward yourself that don’t involve, you know, eating junk food. Okay? This one is probably the one that we do most often. And a lot of times, people don’t even realize they realize that they’re doing it.
So this is what I want you to really start to notice within yourself, am I eating because I’m bored? Am I eating because I’m stressed out? Or I’m eating because I’m actually hungry?
Okay, another one, which is pretty interesting, I think is what I’m calling social hunger. So this is where you’re in a social situation. And you’re just eating because that’s what everybody else is doing. So I want to say like, maybe this would be peer pressure, but it’s not even people like telling you that you should eat something. Although that does happen sometimes in social situations where people are like, oh, you’re not eating anything here, try this, eat this. Come on, you know, they’re trying to push their food onto you. And you can just say, no, thank you in that situation.
But a lot of times we’re eating because everybody else is eating. Right? How many social events have you been to where there’s no food, right? Zero, everything we do involves food at some point, right? Pretty much. So this is a situation where people are eating around you. And because we, as human beings are essentially herd animals, you know, we like to do what everybody else is doing.
We don’t want to stand out. We don’t want to be the weird one at the party. You know, we just want to do what everyone else is doing. We see everybody else eating. And so we want to fit in. And we do this so automatically. And it’s so much like engrained and kind of in our DNA. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. But we may not even be hungry. But we’re just sitting there eating around the snack table just like everybody else, you know, just because that’s what everyone else is doing. Okay?
This isn’t real hunger. We’re just doing it to fit in. We’re doing it because everyone else is doing it. Have you ever noticed that like when you’re sitting at a table and somebody like grabs their phone, and they start looking at it, and you see everybody else at the table, grab their phones start looking at their phone, it’s like this, this like, cue, it’s a social cue when somebody picks up their phone that everybody else does.
And it’s the same thing with food in the social situations. If somebody starts eating something, then everybody else is kind of following along. And I hear this a lot when people talk about being at work. And there’ll be like, yeah, so I’m at work, and everybody’s snacking around me. So it’s really hard for me not to snap. But I want to encourage you to just like do your own thing.
Be the lone wolf in that situation. You don’t have to go along with the herd mentality here. Do your own thing, be an individual, take a stand, be different. It’s okay to be weird. It’s okay. Like, what everybody else is doing is nest is not necessarily good, right? what everybody else is doing is they’re eating unhealthy junk food, they’re overweight, they’re, they’re not going to live as long.
If you just look at the trends here in the United States, there’s a lot of unhealthy eating behaviors out there. There’s a lot of disease, a lot of obesity, there’s a lot of, you know, lifestyle diseases caused by you know, diet and lack of exercise and things like that. Don’t be normal, be different. Okay.
So and then the last type of hunger I want to talk about here is what is real hunger. So these other things I’ve talked about here are not necessarily real hunger. Now, you might be feeling actually hungry in a social situation, fine, whatever. But just understand that that’s not always the case. What is real hunger? Well, real hunger is when your body has this physiological need to replace fuel. Like you need fuel. Right?
It’s kind of like, you know, your car is running low on gas, like you got to put gas in that car. It’s not going to keep going anymore, right? But you know, having you know, three quarters of a tank doesn’t mean you got to fill up the tank, right? So it’s kind of the same way with food like when we’re when our gas gauge so to speak, dips low enough, then we actually need to replace that fuel. And real hunger comes on kind of slowly. It never feels urgent and never feels like a craving.
It doesn’t you know happen, you know in every situation It gradually increases that kind of comes on like a wave like a slow, gentle wave. And it happens a couple of times a day, typically once or twice a day. So we as humans, we’re not meant to eat all day long. Our systems are not designed to be digesting food and metabolizing food 24 hours a day, our systems are designed to metabolize food once or twice a day. And that’s plenty for most people.
I think that, you know, there’s probably some outliers that need a little bit more often, but for the most part, we can do just fine on eating once or twice a day. That means that you should be naturally really hungry a couple times a day. Not all day long. You know, and you’ll know that it’s real hunger, because you could sit down and eat a meal, you feel like eating some chicken and a salad and some broccoli, like not just a couple of cookies, or a handful of nuts. That’s not real hunger. If a handful of nuts sounds good to you, that’s just emotional. You know, that’s just a reward type of hunger. That is not the need to eat a meal, that is not the need to refuel.
So you might do a hard workout and you get hungry afterwards. That’s your body sending signals to replace spent fuel. And you got to like replace the fuel totally fine. That’s real hunger. Interestingly, a lot of people do not get hungry right after a workout. So working out, exercise, can act as an appetite suppressant in a lot of people. And this is definitely true for me, I usually do not feel hungry right after a workout, a long run, or a hard workout at the gym.
I usually need to wait a couple of hours after that exercise session in order to, you know, kind of feel like I’m ready to eat. Right. So even you know, when you work out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to eat like right away. I know that. Back in the day, people used to say like, Oh, you got to eat right after you workout right after every run, you got to eat something right away. And you just don’t have to do that.
And I’ve gotten really good at just kind of understanding my body and my hunger signals. And what I need and what works for me, and waiting a couple hours after I work out is is what works for me feels great if I do that. Okay, so I want you to get good at recognizing the difference between real hunger and these other types of hunger, these false hungers so that you can take back control of how often and how much you eat, you’ll completely change your relationship with food, and you’ll be able to lose weight and keep it off for good without all the struggling without all the suffering. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner, and you’ve been struggling to lose weight, or keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again, or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time that I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called Running Lean For Life.
You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean, fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
159. Always Becoming More with Natasha Sorensen
6 months ago, Natasha Sorensen was a little frustrated with where she was physically, mentally, and even emotionally. She was 18 months post-partum with twins and found it difficult to lose the …
Continue Reading about 159. Always Becoming More with Natasha Sorensen →
Podcast Transcript
Patrick McGilvray
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.
Patrick McGilvray
Hey there and welcome to episode 159 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Always Becoming More with Natasha Sorenson. So six months ago, Natasha Sorenson or Tash, was little frustrated with where she was physically, mentally, even emotionally.
She was 18 months postpartum with twins, and found it difficult to lose the weight she gained during pregnancy. She was also a very active person running and doing CrossFit regularly. But she couldn’t seem to make forward progress. Like she couldn’t break that cycle of emotional eating, for example, she knew she was capable of achieving more, but could never really stay consistent long enough to get there.
In this episode of the podcast, Natasha talks candidly about her mental and emotional struggles with eating right with being consistent and with going after big goals. Personally, I’m very inspired by Tasha and I know you will be too. And if you’ve ever tried and failed to lose weight on your own, you’ve probably felt like a lost cause. Like this is just never gonna work for you.
But I want you to know something, it’s not you. You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you, you can do it, you just need a few things in order to succeed. Specifically, you need knowledge, you need support, you need accountability, you need knowledge, you need to know what to do, you need to know how to do it, you need someone to guide you, you need a personalized plan. Right?
‘ve coached hundreds of runners on nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset. And I’ve helped them to become the healthiest versions of themselves. And I can help you too. You need support. If you want to accomplish anything big, you need support to help you get there to help you stay on track. You need people in your corner, people who understand what you’re going through, people who’ve been there themselves.
That’s why I include group coaching as well as one on one coaching in my program, I want to make sure that you have everything you need and all the support that you need to keep making progress to keep moving forward. And then lastly, you need accountability. You have to have someone there holding you accountable.
It’s one thing to say you’re going to stick to your food plan. Let’s say it’s quite another thing to have someone there holding you accountable for your actions. Accountability is really the key to making consistent forward progress towards your goals.
My unique weight loss coaching program for runners delivers all three all the knowledge, support and accountability that you need to crush your goals. Let’s work together and make 2023 your best year yet to learn more and apply just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
So, Tash is an inspiration to me. She was struggling for a while, mostly with the like mental and emotional side of things of eating, diets, nutrition, weight loss, she knew deep down that she was capable of becoming more, she had these goals that she wanted for herself, she just found it difficult to get there, she found it difficult to stay on track, you know, she would put together some consistency, she would lose a little bit of weight and get back again.
This cycle continued for quite some time, she found it very difficult to make any kind of progress. And one of the reasons why I find her story so inspiring is that she never ever gave up on herself. It was difficult for her at times. And she pushed through that. She knew that she had this amazing version of herself kind of lurking inside, right, and she just needed a little bit of help to let her out. Right?
And so in this interview today, she talks about her struggles with all this. She also talks about some of the amazing accomplishments. She’s had, in a very short amount of time, physical accomplishments around running and CrossFit, but also mental and emotional accomplishments, like completely changing her relationship with food and where she is today with all that.
So today, she’s committed to this process of always becoming more. And this is a concept that I think we all need to embrace. Always becoming more should be all of our goals. That should be your goal, should be my goal. It is my goal. It should be how you live your life. It should just be like who you are and what you do, and Tash embodies this concept beautifully.
I know you’re gonna love this inspirational conversation with Tasha Sorenson. Well today I am talking with Natasha Sorenson and you prefer Tash, right, you’d like to be called Tash?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
And today, we’re just going to kind of go through a little bit of your journey, because I think you were able to accomplish some pretty amazing things in the relatively short amount of time that you and I’ve been working together.
And every time I talk to you, it’s such a pleasure, and it’s so uplifting for me, because you are doing the deal, you know, like, you show up and you and you take instruction well, and you and you are very disciplined about what you do.
And then it’s obvious because you’re getting these amazing results. So I kind of want to talk a little bit about where you started and some of the things that you know you were struggling with. So give us a little bit of an idea of where you were six months ago, when you and I started working together and and what it is you were looking for some help with everybody that seeks out coaching or seeks out some help.
It’s because you’re struggling with some things, things aren’t working for you. And you need some help and some guidance. And so kind of give us a little bit of a feel of where you were at that time and what you wanted for yourself and what you were kind of struggling with.
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, okay. So six months ago, I would have been about 18 months postpartum with my twin boys. So that was a pretty epic life event for me. And I put on roughly, sort of 50-60 pounds during my twin pregnancy. And I think when we met, I was still holding on to, you know, roughly 30 of those pounds.
And that was despite going back to walking and running and CrossFit. And I think what comes in hand in hand with being a mum, and, you know, being a mom of twins is an amazing experience. But it’s also been amazingly difficult. And it triggered some pretty deep set, you know, postpartum depression and anxiety and I just really had a very hard time early on.
And my way of sort of dealing with those really big emotions is to basically just feed them and shove them down with food and really not deal with them at all. So in reality, I wasn’t dealing with those emotions at all, I was just eating over the top of them. And, in March, last year, I was, you know, I was doing a lot of walking, I was out sort of two hours a day walking with my twins in the pram and listening to a lot of podcasts, and I stumbled upon your podcast.
And I sort of binge through all of your episodes, because it really felt like you were speaking to me, it felt like basically, every episode you made was tailored to my situation. And, and, yeah, so I felt like there was this big change that needed to be made in my life.
I felt very stuck, when we met, and I didn’t know how to help myself, I had never really been in that position. Before I was I’ve always been very strong willed and, and I’ve, you know, been able to stay fit and healthy and achieve my goals with a fair amount of ease. And I just found myself in a really bad position. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and there was just a lot going on for me.
So I felt like this was the big change that I needed. I needed to address, address all of the important issues around being your best self. And that obviously included diet. And also, you know, for me running and and you addressed the importance of strength training in that learning journey.
But I think a really big one for me was addressing mental health and mental well being and really knowing why I was, you know, choosing to eat when I felt bad and why I would constantly sabotage myself constantly. And so I’d you know, I’d lose a few kilos here and there, but at the end of the day, it would never amount to anything and I’d go straight back to where I was before.
And this cycle had been going on for, you know, at least 18 months, but, you know, sort of leads back into my previous life before I was pregnant, pregnant as well. You know, I’d kind of always done this so there was a yo-yoing between good and bad situations, so I felt like receiving coaching with you is really going to help me address all of those aspects. But probably most importantly, it was going to, I was focused on resetting my mindset, and using my mindset to my advantage, rather than my disadvantage.
Patrick McGilvray
Hmm, that’s such a big thing, I want to touch on that a little bit here. So that mental and emotional piece is so important and so common. And so, you know, it’s so like, normalized, you know, because we all can relate to what you just described there, you know, yeah, but nobody wants to talk about it, you know, nobody wants to really address that issue.
And I work with a lot of runners and, and a lot of guys too, and a lot of the guys are like, oh, you know, I don’t have I don’t, I’m not an emotional person, you know, they don’t want to really talk about that, but they do some emotional eating, you know, they call it stress eating, or something else.
But it’s all the same thing, right? You’re eating because you want to feel better, or you’re stressed out, or you’re anxious, or you’re bored, or you’re lonely, or you’re tired, whatever it is, and you’re just using food as a way of, of feeling better and dealing with, or not dealing with the actual things that you’re feeling inside, you know, so if we can just like, if everybody would just like, admit that, like, we all do some type of emotional type of eating, then we can start to address it and start to look at it.
So you were keen on that early on to just say, like, hey, this is an issue and I’m struggling with this. And I think that was good to sort of admit that, you know, the other thing that is good about you and your approach to this and wanting to help is that you understood that it required a shift in your mindset. And it’s not just about, like, what do you do, because we all kind of know what to do.
Or we can, we can learn about what to do. But it’s a whole different thing to adopt a different mindset around all of this stuff. So that you change your default thinking, and you change your default feeling. And you change how you handle these different situations, whether it’s stress from work, or dealing with the kids or whatever it is, you know.
So you’re really good about that mindset is such a huge piece to all of this, whether you’re trying to lose weight or trying to, you know, win a CrossFit competition or, you know, PR your half marathon, or any emotional eating habit, you know, it’s the right mindset, with the right mindset, you are very powerful and capable of all kinds of things, which you’ve proven, you know, so I just want to address that.
And it’s so important that you looked at that and made that a priority for you of addressing that mindset piece and, and making that shift for you.
Natasha Sorenson
So yeah, I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from you is that this isn’t a game of willpower. You can go through the processes of, you know, eating right and, and getting out there and running. But at the end of the day, something’s going to challenge that. And if you don’t have the mindset to cope with that, then your willpower is eventually going to fail you. So yeah, I think mindset over, over just relying on pure willpower is really, really important.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So when you, when you start to make those, like really profound internal shifts, then the things that you’re doing externally become much easier, you know, developing good habits and things like that.
So, okay, so give us a little bit of an idea of what that process looked like for you, not just shifting your mindset, but making changes to, you know, your diet to how you looked at exercise, whether it’s running or CrossFit or whatever. So what were some of the things that were easy for you during this process, and what were maybe some things you struggled with?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, so I’d say I didn’t really struggle with the change in diet as much as I thought I would. I always felt really well nourished, and, and really satisfied. And I think the way that you taught me how to adopt this way of eating, meant that I was eating fairly intuitively. And, you know, I suppose we can revisit that concept, if you want to, but I certainly felt like, the initial fighting of the cravings. That was a tough gig.
And that lasted a few weeks, but I had kind of you’d set me up to expect that that was going to happen. And so I knew that if I could just push through that I’d be in a good place and really within a few weeks, I stopped craving, you know, all the sugar. And I was losing weight. So I was feeling great.
Probably the one doubt I had was what sort of effect the low carb eating was going to have on my training. And initially, I was like, I can’t handle it. And then I sort of started incorporating it into my training and trying to do my usual running and my usual CrossFit. And I felt pretty dreadful initially. So much slower, I felt sluggish, my legs were heavy in my runs, and everything just felt really hard.
And keeping my mind right to push through that it really was quite difficult. I think the things that worked to help me get through that, doing some faster training, and fasted running that helped, but I’d say sort of three to four weeks of feeling pretty average. Yeah, until I was sort of truly fat adapted.
And then suddenly, everything started ticking into place. And, my running improved. And I was able to lift heavier and I was managing my CrossFit sessions much easier. And, you know, I was doing better than even before I was pregnant. So I did see the gains. But getting to that place was really difficult. And I think that was a huge part of that was the coaching that I received in sort of the interim, of getting from one place to another.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that fat adapted process like getting your body used to burning fat really efficiently is, but you know, it’s a little bit of a struggle, it really is for everybody. And it’s like by design, because your body is like not getting the fuel source that it loves – sugar. And so you kind of deny that nice, easy fuel source. And it takes a little bit of time for your body to adapt, usually two to six weeks for most people.
You’re right in the middle there, three to four, something like that. But here’s the thing: a lot of people just give up when they try to do this, they give up because it is hard. I remember doing this, like I got fat adapted years ago. And I remember like getting on these forums and Facebook groups and like saying, like, how long is this supposed to last because I feel like crap.
And it just, it’s continuing, it’s not letting up like I just can’t seem to. And people in these groups were telling me just like, stick with it, it’ll get better. And eventually did it for some reason, like when maybe it was because of the amount of carbs and sugar I was eating at the time. But it took me a long time, like eight weeks to get fat adapted.
And then I, you know, went back to the normal carb, high carb diet sometime after that. Second time I got fat adapted, which was three, four years ago. Again, it took me like eight weeks. So I’m just one of these. I’m a long study, I guess.
So imagine putting up with that. Running and struggling for eight weeks. I mean, that’s a lot, you know. So three to four weeks is no big deal. But here’s the other thing. I wasn’t doing it right, because I didn’t have the kind of guidance that you have, like, I’ve got a lot of experience helping people with this.
So I understand some things that kind of speed up the process a little bit. So that helps, you know, I don’t know anybody really that I’m working with that has taken that long – eight weeks. That’s really on the extreme end. So you’re welcome and I took one for the team there. Thank you.
I think yeah, something else you mentioned, I just want to touch on really quickly, which was those cravings. So a lot of times we think, okay, running sucks, right now, this is hard, I’m having all these cravings. And really, you just want to quit, right? You just want to just like why am I doing this? You know? How long did it take for those cravings to sort of, you know, fade away to where you really didn’t really experience those anymore?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I’d say at least two weeks, but maybe even as long as three weeks I was still you know, like I could go for a block of chocolate right now but uh, you know, as the process went on, it got much easier to just say no. And I gave up drinking in that early stage as well. And I was just astonished that I found it so easy to just say no, I really explored the psychology behind drinking with you and why we do it and you know, it’s very similar I suppose to why we eat sugar and, and just a matter of making us feel better and making us feel part of some sort of social etiquette. But I found that I really just didn’t need it, as much as I thought I did, not to de-stress at least, if anything, it made me more stressed. So, yeah, very interesting to just explore that, something I’ve never really done before.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and those cravings for sugar, you know, a lot of people have a heart, a lot of people have a hard time losing weight, because they, the cravings are very intense at the beginning. And so a lot of people again, they give up, you know, but if you can get through those first couple of weeks, they get, they get much easier, much easier.
Yeah, and drinking is interesting, because it’s one of those things that is very detrimental to our health and performance, it really is. So if you’re a runner, and you’re an active person, drinking alcohol, even a few drinks per week is going to diminish your performance, it’s going to affect you kind of profoundly, and if you’re trying to get fat adapted, if you’re trying to like keep your body burning fat, that alcohol just shuts down that whole process.
So people that have a hard time losing weight, or maybe their athletic performance isn’t where they want it to be, you know, try not drinking for a period of time. But again, there’s that social, that mental, emotional, social piece that you talked about, which is like, it’s hard to do. It’s hard to like be around friends and family who are all drinking and not drink.
It’s hard to be around friends and family and everybody’s eating pizza and ice cream and chocolate bars and not partake in that. Yeah, but it’s not impossible, you know, we can do that. And, and if you want to be a healthy person, maybe it’s worth being the kind of weird one at the table for a while.
But okay, so let’s fast forward just a little bit. So you got through this kind of transition period where the cravings were there. And then they kind of went away. The running was really hard. CrossFit was hard, but then they started to get better. And then what kinds of improvements did you start to see after that? So now that you’ve like done the hard work, you’ve gotten through that really challenging phase of getting fat adapted? What kinds of improvements did you start to see?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I just want to mention that I think a pivotal part of getting through those first few weeks was not only the one-on-one coaching that I do with you, because I was able to sort of debrief those situations as and when I needed to. But the group coaching was very effective in dealing with that, like speaking to other people that have been through that initial process and sort of had some success. That was reassuring.
And, and I think very important for me, that sort of camaraderie of like other people that knew what you were going through, but it had successfully sort of got to the other side. So I think, like you said, you did the hard work, hard work. And I think that a lot of people in that, when if they’re trying to do this alone, that self doubt is usually going to get the better of them, and they’re gonna give up.
So having both you and the other sort of students, I suppose, to fall back on, that’s been a really important part of the success, I think, in terms of how things just sort of started to improve for me after that. So I’ve lost, I’m closing in on if not already there, 20 pounds. And I’m almost, you know, I’m pretty much back at what I was pre pregnancy, if not, maybe even a little better.
I’ve certainly lost body fat and increased sort of lean muscle mass. I’ve lost as much as 10% body fat. So while I may sort of be heavier on the scale, than I was pre pregnancy, I feel like my body composition overall is just astoundingly better than what it was before.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s really what we want. It’s not necessarily like about the some number on the scale. It’s about getting healthy, getting strong and feeling good.
Natasha Sorenson
And my clothes, you know, they fit the same. So I think, really, it’s a lot of the time it’s about nonmetric successes as well as it is the scale. And so even though like in that sort of weight loss process, I did hit a plateau or two along the way. It honestly didn’t bother me because I was making a lot more progress in sort of other areas of my life. So my running, was regularly doing 5k sort of Time Trial style. And my 5k time went from 31 minutes, sort of the middle of last year to 23 minutes. And I was running that with a double pram and toddlers.
Patrick McGilvray
Kids in the pram and yeah, 23 minute 5k?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah. And like, I wouldn’t have been, I don’t think I would have been capable of that pre pregnancy. So like, I just, maybe even when I was 25, I would have been capable of that. And I ran my first half marathon after you know, sort of a few years, I’d say three or four years and I ran that fasted with just electrolytes. And I beat my previous time by about five minutes.
I entered my first trial run, because you inspired me to give trail running ago, and that was at the end of last year, and I, my first trail run, I got a podium. Just like, I don’t even recognize the person that I am. I did a slightly longer one over the weekend, last weekend gone, and I placed fifth in that one. So just my running has just like, taken off in ways that I didn’t know it was possible.
And I mean, I’m certain that that’s because I’m leaner and fitter and stronger. But also I trust myself to take those leaps of faith and my confidence has come through in leaps and bounds because I’ve attended to the mindset as well as the, you know, the physical and the mental stuff.
Patrick McGilvray
I want to talk about running just for a second here because Yeah, a couple of things that I think are interesting. One is that you are fitter and stronger, and leaner. Yes, but running has improved substantially for you. You know, and it’s because you’ve done the hard work, you’ve you’ve, you know, shifted how you kind of train a little bit.
But I think, you know, from a fuelling standpoint, I wanted to touch on that, which is like, you’re doing a lot of these runs without fuel, like you’re not you don’t need to, you know, carb up and carb load and do all the stuff before you take on a half marathon or fast 5k. Like, you can just do it with very minimal or zero fuel and still perform exceptionally well, if you’re winning or taking the podium or whatever, you know, kind of accomplishments. I mean, amazing. You’re doing amazingly well.
So how does that feel like how does it feel to run? Because it’s very counterintuitive to what, you know, a lot of the running community will tell you out there. Yeah, I think it’s an amazing feeling like how does that feel for you?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like mind blowing. I, you know, six months ago, if you’d told me that I could run my fastest 5k. And like, I think in like almost 10 years, fasted, then with a double pram, like, I would have laughed at you, really. So it’s quite amazing. And, you know, like, I think a point that you’ve driven home for me as well is that low carb doesn’t mean no carbs.
And really, we can use carbohydrates to our advantage. So if there is a really important race coming up, or, you know, with my CrossFit camps, I can have half a banana or, you know, you’ve we’ve picked out some sort of better tailored gels to low carb eating, and you can use those and they really have an effect, because they’re not just like, an everyday piece of your of your diet.
And so they give you just like this propulsion of energy, that your body is just like, wow, but actually, so much of the time you can get that just from, you know, having a glass of electrolytes. I think, an enormous part of the sort of low carb life is making sure that you’re well hydrated and your electrolytes are topped up all the time.
I feel like it’s this hack that nobody really knows about. How important salt is in the body and being well hydrated. It’s almost like you know, like, yeah, like a biohack in terms of the energy I can give you for just a standard workout. I always feel better when I’m optimally hydrated. And I think that’s when you are eating low carb, it’s very easy to become dehydrated. So yeah, that answers your question.
Patrick McGilvray
No, yeah, that’s perfect. So, it’s just so interesting because people think that if you’re not using all the sugar and gels, or herbs to run, like, you’re just not gonna be able to perform at your best, and you’re just living proof that you can.
Natasha Sorenson
I come from a triathlon background, I can’t tell you. It’s like just the amount of carbohydrates I used to eat, just sort of all day every day. And the gels and the, you know, just crazy, crazy amounts in the hundreds of grams of carbohydrates a day. Whereas now I’m, you know, probably sitting around 50, although, like I said, I’m very intuitive about that I don’t count carbs, low carb, I’ve kind of found what works for me in that in a range that I can easily find without looking at what the carbs are in each item of food.
And as long as I sort of maximize my protein, I think protein’s really important. That’s another lesson I’ve learned from you; protein, you basically can’t have too much. And, and yeah, I just, I can’t even believe how I used to eat. And I’m really getting not only getting the same results as I would have when I was doing that, but better results than when I was doing that. And I’m maintaining my health. And, you know, my physical appearance is not important, but my sort of like physique far easier than I was when I was fighting 500 grams of carbs today.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, yeah, because yeah, your body’s fighting against that process right there. All that sugar intake. So running improves this substantially it sounds like. Have you tried doing one of those 5k’s without pushing the twins?
Natasha Sorenson
I’m going to, I’m actually going to, I’m thinking of trying it this weekend. Make my hubby take the pram and we’ll see. My PB when I was about 23 is 22 minutes and like, a few seconds, so you’re gonna be maybe I’ve got it in me.
Patrick McGilvray
You’re gonna beat that. I mean, I can just I can just tell you’re gonna be faster.
Natasha Sorenson
if it doesn’t happen now. It will happen over I, I honestly didn’t think it would have happened ever again. You know, six months ago. So it’s nice to have the confidence to think that I can maybe do it again.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, you can absolutely do it. Yeah, I have no doubt. So let’s talk a little bit about CrossFit. How long have you been doing CrossFit? And kind of where have you been? And what were you able to accomplish in CrossFit? Because CrossFit is a whole different ballgame. It’s a more high intensity type of exercise and it’s really focused on strength, you know? So when we talk about fat burning, a lot of people think oh, yeah, that’s great for, you know, the long slow running old they think ultra runners or whatever. But what about for high intensity exercise like CrossFit? is it applicable?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, I mean, it’s absolutely applicable. And while in the same breath that those early few workouts and now would have been, it would have been maybe a handful workouts, like, 5 to 10 workouts that I was like, oh, I feel heavy and sluggish. Now, I don’t even I don’t even think about it.
I’ll go in the morning and do fasted workouts or, you know, sometimes in the afternoon I’ve even done one meal Monday and gone and done a CrossFit workout. That was like, one of my most epic workouts. I just felt amazing the whole way through it, and I hadn’t eaten all day. I haven’t eaten in like 24 hours. And I’m not to say that, you know, that’s a necessary part of the lifestyle.
I was just sort of playing around at that stage, but I just don’t think, yeah, you certainly don’t need absorbent amounts of food to fuel those workouts. In terms of you, like I said, it’s really strength based. I mean, it’s an overall program where we try and be good at many different things. But it’s got a huge strength base component where they do a lot of Olympic lifting, and I’ve basically PB’d all of my lifts in that component of the sport.
So you know, deadlifts and squats, cleans and snatches, I’m lifting heavier than what it was, even before I was pregnant. And I was, admittedly, still quite new to CrossFit, pre pregnancy, like, I’d only been doing it maybe eight to 10 months. But I wasn’t foreign to the concept of lifting heavy weights. It was just, I was taking on CrossFit as a new way of exploring that.
And, yeah, I mean, I just, I still, I see improvements every day. And I think that’s the beauty of CrossFit is that it’s always about how much you challenge yourself. And there’s always somewhere to go and grow and be better. And even stuff that I thought, I’ll never be any good at that, particularly the gymnastics.
So now that I’m leaning down, I’m finding I’m actually able to do movements that I thought, I’ll never do that. That’s ridiculous. Like, I’m a 35 year old woman, I’m never gonna do that, like, and now, here I am, like, I can do, I can do some of them. And I’m seeing I’m like, hey, I can do that last week, or I can do that last month. And it’s just, yeah, I think, again, it’s gone. It’s given me the confidence to try to try these completely different things.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you had a CrossFit competition not too long ago. When was that?
Natasha Sorenson
In November, and it was my coach kind of pushed me to just give it a go. And they entered me into the beginners category, just simply because there’s a lot of stuff in both the intermediate and obviously, the, they call it the fire breathers category, or the RX category that I wasn’t able to do.
And if you’re not capable of doing the movements, well, you’re not going to do any good. So you entered me and beginners, and I found it incredibly challenging, but I placed fourth overall, in fact, for maybe the first half of the weekend, I was on the podium. But that’s okay. I mean, I was just astounded to even be up there at all.
And I’ve got another one coming up in about two weeks time, with a slightly different format, where the first two days you compete, the whole group competes together, and they seed you into a category based on your performance in the first two days. And then the third day you compete in the category that they seed you into. So it’ll be interesting to see where I kind of fall as the natural progression of my capabilities and my ability to lift and do the gymnastics and do the cardio.
Patrick McGilvray
And yeah, six months ago, did you see yourself like on the podium for CrossFit competition or for these runs that you’ve been doing?
Natasha Sorenson
No way, no way. And it’s done so much for me. Not only, you know, physically, but I’ve just said a different, much more lighter person. I really believe in myself. And that’s following through into a lot of other aspects of my life, including my professional and my academic life. So yeah, I think it’s been a really important process. And it’s just nice to believe in yourself. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m, I don’t ever feel like I’m going to be at the Olympics or be at the CrossFit Games, but it’s just nice to succeed in your own little world, you know?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And when you talk about being a little bit lighter, I mean, I think you mean like, mentally and emotionally, right?
Natasha Sorenson
Yes, yes.
Patrick McGilvray
Physically, too?
Natasha Sorenson
Certainly, I think everybody in my life can tell that I’m, I’m just a happier, mentally stronger person.
Patrick McGilvray
And it’s so interesting how these types of changes bleed over into all different areas of our lives. So this isn’t just about running. This isn’t just about CrossFit, or, you know, low carb or anything like that. Like these are all just, you know, tools.
Really, these are all things that we do because we love them. And we feel amazing when we do them. And it makes life better. You know, when we’re taking care of ourselves, and when we’re becoming that healthiest version of ourselves. We are better in relationships, we’re better with our kids, we’re better at work, you know, so there’s all these things that bleed into other areas of our life. There’s this ripple effect, right, that happens. And then I’m assuming that the people around you are, you know, probably feeling better too and stressed out and those relationships improve, and work improves and all those good things, right?
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of my sort of main reasons for taking this on was so that I could be a better mom to my boys, and more present an emotionally stable mum so that I could help them be, you know, emotionally stable and grow in a healthy way, and teach them how to be physically active and eat well, but also be more present and emotionally stable wife.
And I think, coming back to those reasons, every time there’s like a moment of doubt, or things haven’t gone my way for a day, or I’m just not feeling well, you know, coming back to those reasons has been really important, because they’re always more important than eating a block of chocolate or, you know, a piece of cake, or they’re always more important. Yeah. And so I guess that goes back to mindset.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, a big piece of that mindset is having that very powerful reason why you’re doing this stuff. And like you always had that Northstar sort of guiding you. And when you have that, it makes it a little bit easier to get up in the morning and hit the gym, or put on the running shoes and do a workout. Or to not eat the chocolate bar, not drink the wine, because you have these higher, there’s a kind of a higher purpose to this, you know, and I love this idea of sort of the ripple effect.
And part of my mission is to, you know, be an example of what’s possible to help other people like you become an example of what’s possible. Now you’re spreading that to your sphere of influence, you know, the people in your life, you’re showing them what’s possible. And hopefully, you know, you’ll touch other people’s lives.
And so we have this really awesome ripple effect that we’re creating here of, positivity of mindset of, you know, mental and emotional health and well being of you know, eating right and feeling good and being healthy. And being a healthy, strong, fit human being in all areas of our lives. So I love this. I love your story. And I love your progression here. And I love the things you’ve been able to accomplish. And you’re such an inspiration, you really are.
Natasha Sorenson
Thank you, I owe it to you. But thank you, I’m really happy with how things have gone for me.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So give me an idea of what’s next for you to hash. So you’ve got you know, you talk about doing this 5k, maybe getting that personal best, right, without, without the pram without pushing the kids. So what else is on the list for you for this year?
Natasha Sorenson
Um, well, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet that I want to do an ultra. So I’m going to try a 50k ultra marathon in July, end of July. And I’ll do a marathon in the sort of LEED AP as part of my training, I’m gonna go and do the Gold Coast marathon on the east coast of Australia with my sister.
That probably won’t be sort of like a targeted run where I’ll, I’ll try and get my most amazing marathon time, just because I’ll try and sort of roll it into my training, which might just be mostly easy, especially if I’m running sort of 42k in preparation for a 50.
But yeah, I’m just really looking forward to changing it up and a completely different terrain. I’m strictly a road runner up to this point. So gonna finish the Perth summer trail series, and they’ve got a winter one as well, where I can sort of dabble a little bit more in that. And I’d like to do quite well in this up and coming CrossFit competition, but potentially at the end of the year. I’ll repeat the one that I did.
And I know that I’ve already admitted this to you, but it always feels a little bit strange, but I’d really like to win it. So we’ll see. Yeah, that’d be that’d be cool. Even just on the podium would be good. I feel like fourth kind of was like, a bit crappy. But um, but yeah, just I just want to see how much I can achieve in a year and really, I feel like it’s going to be enormous. So not not unachievable. I just need to have some faith in myself.
Patrick McGilvray
When was the last time you ran a marathon?
Natasha Sorenson
2019.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so not that long ago.
Natasha Sorenson
So I mean, realistically, it was probably safe to say that I could probably beat my time. Yeah, I mean, it’s possible. It’s very possible.
Patrick McGilvray
Do these goals scare you a little bit? Do they feel a little bit? Outside Your Comfort Zone?
Natasha Sorenson
I feel very uncomfortable.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, saying like, okay, I’m making this declaration that I’m going to win this CrossFit competition. That’s it. That’s a little scary.
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, it feels a little top heavy. So we’ll see. But, like I said, I definitely don’t think it’s unachievable. I just need to stay dedicated to the cause. And if I keep seeing the improvement in my, you know, week to week progressions at CrossFit, and my running, then the sky’s the limit, really. I’m excited. And I think, you know, even if it doesn’t happen, the progress I make over the course of the next year trying to achieve it will be rewarding enough in itself.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, cool. Yeah. And like, let’s say you don’t, you know, win the thing this year, there’s always next year, you know, there’s, so we’re not, we’re not really like focused on, oh, I have to accomplish this by this date. But it’s like setting goals for ourselves, and wanting to improve. And in setting this goal of winning this CrossFit comp, if that’s the goal that you have in your mind. And that’s the goal that you’re constantly working towards. Eventually, you’ll get there as long as you don’t quit.
Natasha Sorenson
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like this is going to be a long term thing for me, I’m always going to be chasing something different, something that’s going to push me out of my comfort zone. And that’s like a really exciting part of my life.
Patrick McGilvray
Do you feel like this whole, you know, shift that you’ve made and your diet and exercise and all this? The low carb lifestyle, whatever we want to call it? Do you feel like this is something that is sustainable for you, and something that you can do going forward pretty easily? Or is it a little bit of a struggle still?
Natasha Sorenson
No, absolutely. I don’t find it hard at all. In fact, if I will never go back to what it was before. Never. It is not worth it, in my mind, not for anything. In fact, if anything, I want to just try and yeah, just I want to say, influence those around me. I’m not really about shoving stuff on people, though. But already my husband, you know, he eats like I do. And he’s seen changes, I’d like to influence my little carb eating gremlin children. But that’s a process I may tackle a little bit later. But yeah, I don’t struggle with it at all. And I really can’t ever imagine going back to what it was before because nothing feels as good as distance.
Patrick McGilvray
Love that. And one thing I’ve learned over the years, is that you cannot force your agenda on anybody else. All we can do is just lead by example, just be a good example. Eat healthily, you know, your fitness will improve, your health improves, your mood improves, you lose weight, you look better, you feel better. People see that. And then they’re like, Wow, maybe I’m maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I should make some changes here too. But anytime we try to try to get people on our agenda, it just doesn’t work. Nobody wants to do so.
Natasha Sorenson
And I don’t want to be part of that process, either. So it really is, I think it really needs to come from you. You need to be ready to take it on because otherwise it’s just gonna fail.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you have to be ready to change. Have to be ready. Yeah. Love it. So anything else you want to share any other takeaways from this whole experience for you?
Natasha Sorenson
Um, I mean, I guess for anybody else that that’s sort of in this position where they’re on the fence. They’re thinking about doing something like this to just do it. And, particularly from a place of mother. Your body is not it’s, it’s not over. Like, it felt like it really was for me, I felt like my best days had come and gone.
And my mom bod was just going to be weighing me down for the rest of time, both physically and emotionally, and, and I really, I can’t believe how much I’ve changed my body in the last six months and, and if anything, it is stronger and better than it was before I had my kids.
And that’s, you know, for a few other reasons in terms of like I carried and birthed two babies. Not much can be harder than that. But I think, I think, yeah, just it doesn’t have to be the end for you, you really can make a comeback and you can be your best self in spades. And, you know, for the guys out there. And non mums, this process is the same.
You really can be your best self, but it requires dedication. And it requires an all in effort for all aspects of your life. But it is achievable to cook the right food as it is achievable to be in social situations where you have to deny what other people are eating or drinking. And drinking is obviously a personal choice. But it’s very, very achievable. And accomplishable.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Love it. Well, thank you so much for being here and just kind of sharing your experiences and your story. Like I said before, you are an inspiration.
Natasha Sorenson
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Honored to. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
And it’s just such a pleasure to see the progress and to see the accomplishments and to see the way you’re handling all of this with such grace, you know, and just like, yeah, you’re laughing, but from where I’m sitting, that’s the way I see it. And I know, it’s been challenging for you at times, but really, you’ve just shown up and, and been very disciplined about all this and it’s gotten easier for you. And I just love the whole like sustainability for you that this is something that you’ve really eased into and feel like it’s something that is very sustainable for you going forward. I love it. So great, great stuff. Thank you so much. Tash.
Natasha Sorenson
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Patrick McGilvray
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157. Lessons Learned This Year and What’s Next
It’s the end of the year and time to look back at everything that’s happened this past year…good and bad. 2022 has been a challenging year for a lot of people and I’m no exception. I’ve had my …
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Podcast Transcript
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 157 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, lessons learned this year and what’s next. So it’s the end of the year. And time to kind of look back at everything that’s happened this past year, the good and the bad.
2022 has been a challenging year for a lot of people. I’m no exception. I’ve had my share of setbacks and difficulties this year. But I’ve managed to get through them all. I’ve also had some pretty amazing accomplishments this year. And it’s this time of the year when I like to reflect on that stuff as well.
So in this episode of the podcast, I share my biggest lessons learned this year, and what’s next for me, and it is the end of the year. And I want you to do something, I want you to start thinking about what you want for yourself in 2023. This is a good time of the year to kind of set intentions for yourself and decide who you want to become next year.
How do you want to feel about yourself? What do you want to have accomplished by this time next year? Think about that. And if you’re ready to take action now to start making these things happen for you then I’m here to help consider coaching with me. And I’ll help you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself in 2023. Cool? To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, you and I will jump on a call and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is awesome, let’s get you started in becoming that most badass version of yourself.
All right, so this time of the year, I like to kind of look back over what I’ve learned over the year, I like to look at some of the things that maybe I’ve accomplished, or some of the failures, setbacks, disappointments that I’ve experienced, I like to look at all of it. I’m not just concerned about, you know, the things that I did well, the successes, that would be easy to focus on that stuff.
Instead, I like to look at some of the things that maybe didn’t go so well. And I like to look at the lessons that I’ve learned from some of those things I’ve had a kind of a challenging year, I’ve had some surgeries and had to recover from those and had to kind of put my training on the back burner for a while when I experienced an injury.
And so I’ve had to deal with a few challenging things this year. And to be honest with you, this entire year, my training has been less than ideal. But I’m sitting here as we close out the year and I’m really grateful that everything that has happened this year has happened the way it has because it’s given me a chance to learn a lot about myself, and to see what really is important to me.
Alright, so I’m going to talk about all of that, in this episode. And I’m going to share with you some of the lessons that I’ve learned this whole year. And understand that I have talked about a lot of this stuff on the podcast.
So for everything that I’m talking about today, you can kind of scroll back through these episodes from this past year from 2022. And you kind of find most of what I’m talking about here is buried in a lot of those episodes. Okay, so go back and listen to some of the previous episodes and you can kind of get a feel for when I talked about these things and maybe take a little bit of a deeper dive into a lot of these topics. Okay.
So some of this might be, you know, kind of not new information. But I’m reiterating some things that I’ve talked about earlier this year. But these are lessons that I’ve learned this year that have been really valuable for me, and have really helped me to see things a little bit differently. Okay.
So, with that in mind, and with that kind of feeling in mind, I just want to go ahead and dive in here. So the first lesson that I learned this year that has really resonated with me is that you are tougher than you think. You are tougher than you think and I am tougher than I think. So like I said I had to come back from two big surgeries and an injury.
So, this time last year, I had my rotator cuff surgery in December of 2021. And that was a long, slow recovery. I also had a hernia surgery in January of 2022. So within about a month, I had two pretty major surgeries that I had to recover from. And it was kind of good that I had them back to back because, you know, I was already laid up, so might as well just get it all over with.
And that was a very interesting time for me, because there wasn’t a whole lot that I could do from a physical standpoint. So I really had to work on my mental game and my nutrition game. So I couldn’t do a whole lot of exercise. But I did what I could, you know, I showed up at the gym, I did sort of my physical therapy type of exercises, I worked on the things that I could do, you know, I couldn’t lift a lot of heavy weights, I couldn’t use my right arm wasn’t allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds for a while there, you know, that whole post surgery deal.
So I was really out of my element, you know, I was not doing the things that brought me joy, I wasn’t doing the things that got my adrenaline going, got me feeling good. And I had to learn that even though I was going through a tough time that I was tougher, that no matter what, you know, I could handle anything, no matter what was thrown my way.
So once I did finally get my training back up and was training for a half marathon in the fall, I had an injury where I, you know, fell when I was running, and busted up my knee. And this was in August, and then I had to take about three months off of running because my knee was just not cooperating, you know, I did something to it, and caused a little bit of traumatic damage there. But it’s better and I’m back to running and the knee is not bothering me anymore.
And so one of the things that I was worried about was like, maybe I’ll never be able to run again. But the knee did slowly start to get better. But that was pretty frustrating because I had just, you know, recovered from the surgeries. And I had come back and I was feeling good. And my training was on point. And I had this half marathon that I was training for. Granted, I’m used to running marathons and ultra marathons. And, you know, training for a half didn’t seem like much, but it was what I could do at the time.
And I felt like I was, you know, kind of making my way back and making a comeback. And then I had that knee injury, which set me back again. And here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens if you get a setback, if you experience an injury, if you experience a disappointing event, if you have a failure, it doesn’t matter that you are tougher than you think you can get through all of that stuff.
So I had to really adapt to this mindset that I am tough and that I can get through this, that I’m capable of way more than where I am today. And that, you know, no matter what things are knocking me down, I’m going to get back up again. Knocked down six times, I’m going to get up seven, you know, that I do hard things, whatever this setback is, does not matter. I will persevere. I will continue going. I will continue pushing forward.
And where I am today, I’m feeling good. Because, you know, I’ve definitely recovered from the surgeries, you know, that was, you know, maybe five, six months or something where I felt like I was back to normal again. But I’m definitely back to running again now after the knee injury. And I’m feeling really, really good.
And I’m so glad that I stuck with it. And that I persevered and that I didn’t push it and I didn’t get down about it. I wasn’t like oh my gosh, woe is me. I’m never going to run again. I mean, I could have really gone there, but I didn’t. Okay, so I kept my mind in the game, and realized I’m tougher than I think that I can get through anything. And I did.
So that’s a big lesson for me, that I’m tough and I can get through anything. And I want you to take this lesson to heart, that you are tougher than you think.
The next lesson I learned this year is that discipline equals freedom. That discipline is not a bad thing. And I think that a lot of people think that when you’re disciplined it means you have less freedom. That discipline is the absence of freedom.
You know, they think of discipline as being, you know, chained to a desk or, you know, chained to a schedule, or something like that. And in reality, being disciplined is how you achieve true freedom. You know, if you want to be free from your sugar addiction, then you have to be disciplined about not eating sugar.
If you want to be, if you want to have financial freedom, you have to be disciplined about how you save money. If you want to have time freedom, then you have to be disciplined about how you schedule your time and how you use your time. If you want to run freer and faster and you want running to be easier, be disciplined about how you train, the more running you do, the better it gets, the easier it becomes.
You know, if you want to be free of the whole diet, culture, the whole feeling of deprivation, always trying to lose those last 20 pounds. You want to be free from all that nonsense? Then be disciplined about changing habits around food, be disciplined about changing your relationship with them.
Discipline is not a bad thing. And I think people give it a bad rap. Like, oh, you know, discipline is something that is bestowed upon you from above. And it’s some negative thing. And it’s really not, it’s just how you live your life, right. And so discipline, to me, is not a bad thing. discipline to me is how I achieve freedom. Okay, so discipline equals freedom.
Another key lesson that I learned this year, and this is something I’ve been kind of playing around with this last couple of years, but really solidified it this year is that ancestral eating is the key to health and happiness. So, when I talk about ancestral eating, I want you to understand that I’m talking about how humans have evolved over the last like 3 million years, and the food that we ate, and the way that we ate is much different.
How was much different for 3 million years than it has been for the last few 100 years. And that, especially the last 50 years, when we you know, introduced the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and, you know, they started pushing this crazy diet of like, all sugar and grains on us and trying to tell us that this is, you know, healthy, and that we got to start eliminating meat and fat and things like that, from our diet, like this is crazy.
Just eat like our ancestors have eaten, you know, just eat like humans have been eating for the last, you know, a few million years, and you’re going to do just fine. We’re talking about eating meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, dairy and honey.
You know, some of the most natural and most simple things that we have done as human beings and most nourishing foods that we’ve eaten as human beings. You know, people are telling us, they’re, they’re bad for us, we should stay away from them. And the whole idea is just crazy. So I tend to eat very ancestrally. My diet is very simple.
You know, I eat meat and eggs and fruit and some vegetables, but not a ton. And about the sweetest thing, it would be some honey, every now and then. But you know, for the most part, it’s very simple and very nutrient dense. So I stick with nutrient dense foods, foods that still look like real foods, foods that our ancestors would definitely recognize, okay.
The way that we’ve been told to eat over the last 50 years is just awful, right? It’s just wrong. So stick with ancestral eating. And I think this is going to be the key to human health and happiness.
And that leads me to the next point that I learned this year, which is that sometimes we just have to buck conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is wrong. It just is wrong. Conventional wisdom tells us to eat all the sugar and grains, sugar is not a problem. It’s fine. Stay away from meat, stay away from eggs, dairy from dairy. And it’s just wrong. And I think that if, in general, if we do the opposite of what everyone else is doing that I think you’re going to be just fine because what everybody else is doing is causing obesity and diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure and cancer and strokes and all kinds of other issues.
These are all metabolic issues. These are all diseases of lifestyle. And if the conventional wisdom is causing all these diseases of lifestyle, why don’t we just do something else? Right? So I’m not afraid to say that, you know, what’s being recommended by dieticians, for the most part, by the government, by the big food industries, I think it’s just wrong.
And I think we have to take our health and our fitness into our own hands. You want to be a healthy human being, do the opposite of what most people are out there telling you to do, you’ll probably be okay. Now obviously, there’s a grain of salt here, you do have to understand what proper nutrition is.
And, gosh, there’s so much information out there around this topic. I’m going to share more about this with you though, over the coming weeks and months, just so you know, that you know, I want to make sure you understand what the difference is between crappy the crappy Western diet and what it means to eat a healthy human diet. Okay, so I’m going to make sure that it’s very clear over the next weeks and months, okay, but for the most part, duck conventional wisdom, because it’s wrong.
Another lesson that I learned this year, which I love, and this is kind of changed the way I kind of have lived my life really, that’s like to eat and live like an athlete, because you are one. Think about this. Are you currently training for something? Are you training for a marathon? Are you training for a race? Are you training for a triathlon? Are you training for a CrossFit event? If you are, that’s awesome. If you’re not, why not?
Here’s the thing, you should always be training, you should always be eating and living like an athlete. If you do that, then you’re going to be fine. I’m just going to tell you right now, if you eat and live like an athlete, then you are going to be healthy, you’re going to be fit, you’re going to be in top physical shape, right, because that’s what athletes do. And honestly, I don’t think you should ever have to really like “get ready” from scratch for a race, like you should always be ready. Just be ready. Stay in training mode.
Yeah, put goals out there and go races and things that you can train for. But for the most part, train, eat, live like an athlete, because you are an athlete. And if you live your life that way, I promise you, you’re going to be so much healthier, and so much happier and so much stronger. And so much more fit, and you’re going to look and feel amazing.
So eat and live like an athlete, I’ve been doing this. And I have to tell you that I just feel so good right now. Now, I do have a goal out there, I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. I do have a big goal that I’m working towards. But for the most part, I want to stay ready. I want to stay strong. I want to stay fit. Like if you tell me hey, you know, you want to run a marathon next weekend? I’ll be like, sure, I’m ready. I’m ready. Because I’ve been doing the work consistently. All right. So eat and live, like you’re an athlete, and you will be so much healthier and so much happier. And always ready for whatever comes your way.
Another big lesson I learned this year is that simple wins. Every time, simple wins, whatever you do, make it simple. Everything I do when I’m working with clients, I try to simplify things for them. Because there’s so much complicated information out there around food and exercise and running and how to be healthy and people you know, that want to, you know, look at heart rate, and VO2 max, and calories and macros and percentages, and there’s so much data and we can sort of get lost in all of that data, we can get lost and make all of this very, very complicated we can make being healthy, very complicated.
We can make eating very complicated. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler that you can make something, the easier it’s going to be for you to stick with it. And food especially when it comes to food, the simpler that you can make it, the easier it’s going to be to stick with it. I talk about this all the time. How you know, when I sit down to eat dinner at night, it’s usually something like ground beef. Maybe I’ll slice up an avocado with it, maybe melt some cheese on there, and I’m done. Or I’ll eat a steak or I’ll eat some chicken. That’s it. Like it’s that simple. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to spend a lot of time on it. It’s just simple. It’s easy. It’s delicious. And I love it.
But let’s simplify things when it comes to running. Just go out there and run. Don’t worry about your heart rate. Don’t worry about your pace. Don’t worry about trying to, you know, hit some percentage of your VO2 max or stay in zone three or two or whatever. Like, just go out there and run and enjoy it and go by how you feel? Does it feel good? Does it feel too hard to slow down? Does it feel too easy to speed up, run fast, run really hard? Some days, other days run really slow. Let’s just make it simple, it doesn’t have to be complicated.
I think that as runners, we love our data. And I get that part of it. And I love data too. And I love looking at it. But I also try not to be consumed by it, or driven by it, I try to simplify things as much as possible. This is another topic I’m going to be talking about over the next weeks and months, which is going to be how to make running, how to run efficiently, effectively. And simply, gosh, every time I read a new book about some concept of running and how to improve your running performance, there’s all these complicated methods of achieving goals. And I’m just like, man, can we make this simpler? So my job is gonna be to make this simpler for you guys. Okay.
The next lesson I learned this year, this is a big one, is that consistency will beat perfection every time. And that I’m a perfectionist, and I love to do things right. And I’m like, if you can’t do it, right, don’t do it. That’s kind of my mantra a lot of times. And the thing is, though, is that nobody does anything perfectly, nobody does anything perfectly.
You’re not going to eat right all the time, you’re not going to crush every single workout perfectly, you’re not going to lose weight, exactly in linear fashion, like, you know, a pound a week or whatever. Like, everything’s a process, everything has its ups and downs, everything has successes and failures, you’ll experience progress, and you’ll experience setbacks, and you know what, it’s all good. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing things consistently, over time, that’s what’s gonna get you to every single one of your goals, stop trying to do it perfectly.
Let go of that idea that there’s some sort of a plus that you’re gonna get a gold star if you do a perfectly let go of that. And do your best but be consistent. And what does it mean to be consistent, that means like, you know, don’t have two bad meals in a row. Let’s say you screw up and you eat some, whatever chocolate chip cookies for dinner. Next meal, get back on track. That’s it.
Now, don’t ever do two bad meals in a row. Don’t ever miss two workouts in a row. You miss a workout, you don’t feel like working out fine, whatever, stay in bed, just no big deal. Don’t miss that. Next one, though. Get back on track, consistently, consistent, consistently do these things and you will eventually reach your goals. But don’t focus on perfection because there’s no such thing.
Another big goal, or another big lesson I learned this year is that there is no finish line. I talked about this on the podcast last week. And it’s such a huge lesson for me and for you. That’s what we do here, when we’re focusing on our health and our fitness, when we’re focusing on improving ourselves and becoming more. This is the way we live our lives. But there is no finish line. There isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to but rather, this is how we live our life. This is a lifestyle that we lead, right? It’s not something we do temporarily. We’re not trying to get to some number on the scale, or just some number on the scoreboard, you know, on the timer.
We’re not trying to just you know, that’s it. You know, once we do that, then we can go back to doing what we’re doing before now. We want to live our lives in a way that supports our becoming more consistently. And in that we’re never done with this, that our work is never done. We’re always working. We’re always living like athletes. We’re always trying to simplify things. We’re always trying to do things consistently. We’re always trying to better ourselves. We’re always trying to, you know, stay disciplined and toughed it out, and that it’s okay. It’s okay.
We don’t have to be finished. Like when I first thought about this, I first heard somebody talk about that. You know, we’re never finished with this . We always have to stay on top of this stuff when we always have to be focused on becoming more. It kind of scared me a little bit at first, because I thought oh my god, do I really want to commit to this for the rest of my life? Is this really who I want to be?
And the answer that I found myself coming up with was a resounding Hell yes, hell yes. This is how I want to live my life. I want to do this for life. This is how I want to live my life every single day, I don’t want to be that overweight couch potato that I used to be, that sick person who drank too much and ate too much and smoked cigarettes and was just a human garbage can. I don’t want to be that person ever again.
I’m okay, that I’ve chosen to live my life in such a different way that I’m willing to continue doing this for good. This is how I want to be for good. Alright, so there is no finish line, you got to embrace that concept. I’ve embraced that concept this year. For sure. So this is what we do. This is who we are. Right? This isn’t there’s no finish line, there’s no destination or trying to get to this is how we live our lives. Cool.
Okay, so those are the big lessons that I’ve learned this year, there’s a lot more, there’s so many more, but those are the big ones. Okay. So what’s next for me. So I’ve kind of, you know, mentioned it a few times that I’m going to be sharing some of these concepts, on the weeks and months to come on the podcast here, because I’ve got a lot of good content coming your way, a lot of good content, I’m gonna continue bringing you all the good stuff, focusing on nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset, all next year.
So keep, you know, just keep listening. I’m going to continue to bring all the good stuff your way, and hopefully give you some inspiration and encouragement to take action on these things and start making some changes for yourself.
I can’t tell you how gratifying it is, when I get a message from somebody who’s just been listening to the podcast, it’s not somebody I’ve been working with, but somebody who’s just been listening to the podcast, and they’ll say, “Patrick, Hey, I just want to tell you, you’ve really changed my life. I’ve been listening to the podcast for a year or two. And, you know, I’ve just, you know, done all these things that you’ve suggested over the years and, and I’ve really changed my life, and I’ve lost all this weight, and I’m so much healthier, I feel so much better about myself. And just thank you so much for doing this.”
Like that those kinds of messages that I get from you guys, oh my god, it just warms my heart, you know what I mean? Makes me feel so good. Because it means the message is being received, and, and that you’re taking action. So take action on this stuff. Because this isn’t about conceptualizing. These aren’t just ideas, these are things I want you to do. These are things that in order for you to change that you have to actually take action on. Cool.
So I’m going to continue bringing you all the good stuff, I got lots of good topics coming your way. And then I’ve got a big goal that I’m working towards, I’ve got this big alter event that’s going to be in May. And more on that later. But I just want you to know that it’s a big goal, it’s going to cause me to level up. It’s not something I’ve ever done before. So it’s kind of a new thing for me. It’s an ultra running event. And really like after taking last year off, like 2022 was not a great year for training for me. Like I feel like I’ve taken the whole year off from significant training.
You know, after taking all this time off, I feel like I’m ready. I’m ready, I’m back. I’m back to running some more significant mileage. And I’m feeling really good about this event. And it’s a little scary. It’s one of those events that’s a little bit scary. It’s causing me to, you know, question my decision here, like, why, what I decided to do something like this, but at the same time, it’s also something that I’m very passionate about and feel good about. So I’ll be sharing more about that as we get closer to the event. But just know that it’s a big Ultra running event. And it’s going to cause me to, you know, get out of my comfort zone in a big way, in a big way.
Okay, so that’s something I’m really looking forward to. And then after that, I’ve got another big goal for the fall. So stay tuned. I’ll share more about this as we go. Last thing I wanted to say is that I just want to really thank you for listening to the podcast for your support this year. Whether you listen, just listen to podcasts, whether you read my social media posts or allow me in your inbox.
I know you get a lot of emails and I appreciate you, you know allowing me to email you whatever where it is that you get from me and how you consume this content, whether you’re listening while you’re out there running, or walking the dogs or whatever, I just want to say that I really appreciate you, I’m doing this for you, you know, I do this because I want to help you to become the best version of yourself, you know, I want to help you to become the most badass version of yourself.
And I want to help to make 2023 your best year ever, I want it to be my best year ever as well. So let’s make 2023 the best year ever, we can do this, right? It just means that we put in place some of these principles that I’ve been talking about, and we kicked some serious butt this year. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Happy New Year everybody. Love you all, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
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