Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
It’s officially the Holiday Season and that means it’s time to gain a bunch of weight over the next 30 days and start the new year feeling like crap, right? I know it seems kinda crazy when I say …
Continue Reading about 153. 5 Tips to Avoid Gaining Weight This Holiday Season →
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 153 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. So it’s officially the holiday season. And that means it’s time to gain a bunch of weight over the next 30 days and start the new year feeling like crap, right?
I know it seems crazy when I say that out loud. The truth is, though, that’s the way most people do it. Most people gain a bunch of weight during the holidays. And then at some point, they swear a solemn oath that they’re going to change everything and get back on track in January.
And I know what this feels like. I’ve done this many, many times. I also know how terrible it feels when January comes around. And you have to lose a bunch of weight just to get back to where you were before Thanksgiving. So in this episode, I’m gonna offer a better approach for this whole time of the year.
Okay, I have five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. And listen, if you’re the kind of person who’s ready to make some changes, right now, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to wait until January to actually start improving their health to start losing the weight to start changing their relationship with food to start becoming the healthiest version of yourself, then I want to encourage you to apply for coaching.
There’s no obligation, you can just fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a quick zoom call, we’ll have a conversation, we’ll talk about coaching, I’ll explain exactly what coaching looks like, I’ll explain my approach which is a little different for most coaches, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. And if it’s a good fit, great if it’s not no harm done, maybe you learned a little bit more about yourself, you maybe learned some tips that can help you get started in the right direction.
But here’s the thing, if you’re ready to change now, don’t wait, you don’t have to wait till January one in order to to begin a program like this or to begin changing the how you feel about yourself, or changing your health or improving your health or improving your running or losing weight, you can start now just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. Again, fill out that application and you and I can get started, I want to encourage you to just take some action.
Now whatever that looks like, if it’s coaching, great if it’s not, do something today, to start improving yourself to start improving your health to start improving your fitness to become that best version of yourself. Cool. So just you know, go to runningleancoaching.com/apply I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project as always, is you.
Okay, so today, I got these tips for you. I got some tips to help you avoid gaining weight this holiday season. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And so many people think that this time of the year they will automatically gain weight. In fact, so many people think this because the average adult American says that they expect to gain around seven pounds during the holidays. That’s a lot of weight to gain in a month, right.
And one in four of those people say that they’re still carrying extra weight from the previous year. And so you know, let’s just say it’s a few pounds, I mean, you’re this is just this time of the year, you’re just going to be continually gaining weight. And if you multiply this by 10 or 20 years, this is a big problem. This can be a huge problem, right?
So, let’s stop this trend right now. Let’s take control of our health and our fitness and our weight for once. Don’t be average. Don’t be the average American. You know, I’ve talked to so many people about changing their diet and eating differently and maybe, you know, giving up things like sugar and grains. And people are like well, but I don’t want to be different. I just want to be able to do what everybody else is doing.
And I’m like to listen, listen, what everybody else is doing isn’t working, there’s like 78% of people in this country have some sort of metabolic dysfunction? Do you really want to be one of the normal people? Do you really want to be one of the average Americans? And this applies to other countries as well. But I say no, I say let’s be, let’s be the minority, let’s be different.
Embrace that, like, don’t be normal, don’t be average. Okay. So instead of expecting to gain a bunch of weight during the holidays, we need to have a different approach, you got to do things differently than the way most people are doing things. And yeah, that means that you might not be indulging in all the Christmas cookies, and all the booze at the parties and all this other stuff that other people are doing.
But guess what, you’re gonna feel so much better when January 1 comes around, and you haven’t gained that seven pounds. And that’s kind of average, I think some people gain more, you know, 10-12 pounds. So for me, here’s kind of the way I used to do it. So this time of the year was always the, well it’s still is pretty much the offseason for running.
And so we’ll do a full marathon. And then we sort of take a break from running. But for me, I never really changed my diet, like I just kept eating the same amounts of food and the same types of food. And of course, I was eating a ton of sugar and a ton of carbs. And so this time of the year, I would always gain weight.
And I would always gain 5-10 pounds somewhere in that range. And then I would always tell myself that yeah, come January 1, everything’s going to change, I’m going to get serious, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to, you know, start focusing on eating better, and all this other stuff.
And guess what, January 1 would come around, and I would sort of start some of that stuff, I would kinda maybe watch my calories, or start adding food into a food tracking app. And you know, you know, going lower fat and trying to exercise more, and all the things that we’ve tried that really don’t work long term. And I might do it for a short amount of time. But then it became problematic, it became frustrating, became too tedious, and I would just stop doing it. And I would always, you know, I might lose a few of those pounds, but I would always gain a few extra pounds every year, during this time of the year.
And you know, you do that for 10 years. And, you know, I found myself 40, more than 40 pounds overweight. And I was eating what I thought was a really clean diet. You know, I was plant based and I was just eating a ton of carbs. I was a carb-atarian, let’s just say it that way. Eating nothing but sugar and carbs, and running a lot. I was running and training for marathons and ultra marathons.
And it wasn’t that I wasn’t exercising, I was going to the gym two or three times a week, doing yoga a couple of times a week, like I had a regular exercise regimen, I was running like crazy every year. And still I would gain weight during the holiday season. And I couldn’t, couldn’t lose it. And that just kept you know, adding on and packing on more weight and more weight.
So there’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to get through the holidays. And, and I’m going to give you a few tips here for you to apply and actually take action on because these tips are great. If if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, these sound great, Patrick, that’s one thing.
It’s a whole other thing if you take action and actually do what I’m going to suggest that you do here today. Because if you do what I suggest you do here today, you’re gonna get through the holidays in a much different way than somebody who doesn’t take action. Any kind of program like this, anytime we’re talking about improving yourself, it requires something on your part.
You’re not just going to lose weight by listening to somebody talk about what to do, right? You’ve got to take action, you got to do this stuff. Okay? So if you’re the kind of person who loves getting into action and loves, you know, doing, you know, these kinds of tips, then do it. I want to encourage you to just start today.
So here’s the tips I’m gonna give you tip number one, and this is probably the one that most people won’t do. And this is why I’m sort of prefacing this by saying like you have to take action here because most people don’t want to do this. And that is to create a vision for who you want to be on January 1, create a vision for who you want to be on January 1.
How do you want to show up for yourself? How do you want to feel about yourself? How do you want to look? How do you want to feel mentally, emotionally, physically? How do you want to have approached this holiday season? Like, I really want you to get detailed about this future version of yourself. So we’re only talking about 30 days in the future. As we record this, it’s December 1. And so we’ve got, you know, what, 31 days, 32 days, something like that until January 1. So create a vision today.
And I want to encourage you not to just think about this, but to actually write it down. So grab a piece of paper, grab a journal, whatever it is that you want to use, do it on your computer, it doesn’t really matter. But write down in detail as much as you want. How do you want to show up for yourself on January 1, who do you want to be?
Most people don’t do this. Most people are just like, yeah, yeah, whatever, I want to feel good, but whatever. But they don’t really spend any time really thinking about this. But here’s something that’s very interesting. There’s this very powerful thing that happens, when you start thinking about who you want to be in the future, your subconscious mind will actually start moving you in the direction of that vision, your subconscious mind will actually get on board with this plan.
Everything that we want for ourselves, we first have to create in our mind, there’s not one thing on this planet that’s been created that hasn’t first been a thought and a vision, you know, think about things like a rocket ship, or an airplane or the iPhone, all these things were first an idea and a thought.
And then they were written down, and they were then you know, expanded upon, you know, so all these things that we want for ourselves have to start with a thought they have to start with a detailed vision. And when we create this vision for ourselves, it’s important that you get into that emotional state of how you want to feel on January 1.
Do you want to feel like you are regretting your decisions over the last 30 days? Do you want to feel like you have fallen behind or fallen off the wagon, or let yourself down? Or do you want to feel like you’ve built some confidence in yourself, you’ve built some trust in yourself, you said you were going to do some things, and you actually did them. Because that is available to you.
But you first have to start with a vision, you have to start with a detailed accounting of how you want to show up on January one. So don’t skip this step. Do it, I’m gonna encourage you to just do it, write it down, it’ll take you 10 or 15 minutes, spend about that much time writing free, write just as much as you want, or as little as you want. But do this step. Okay.
So that’s step number one, create a vision for who you want to be, and how you want to show up for yourself, and how you want to feel that’s the important part. Because once we get into that emotional state of how we want to feel, we can access that throughout the month, you know, you might have a day where you wake up and you’re like, I really don’t feel like running today, or I really don’t feel like you know, sticking to my plan my food plan today or whatever, you’re gonna be like, oh, but you know what that feeling that I want on January 1? I’m only gonna get that feeling.
If I stick to this plan, if I go out and run, if I go lift weights or whatever. So make sure that you get into that emotional state of how you want to feel on January 1, okay? That’s a very, very powerful state to be in. Okay, that’s how all visions come to life is just creating that vision getting into that emotional state. Okay, so that’s step number one.
The next tip I have for you, after you create a vision, you have to have a plan. You have to have a plan. Most people think that they will just sort of wing it. And I’m just going to tell you right now winging it does not work. If you think well, I’ll just kind of like I’ll get through the holidays, it’ll be fine. I’m not too concerned about it.
But if you’ve got some weight to lose, and you really want to make some changes and you want to get through this unscathed, you want to, you know, show up on January 1 really feeling good about yourself. You have to have a plan. Okay? So that means that you need to write down what you’re going to do to get to that vision that you have for yourself on January 1.
So you have a vision, great, how are you going to achieve that vision? You have to have a plan. I’m going to not eat sugar this month, that’s a plan. I’m going to, you know, work out every day, that’s a plan, I’m going to do yoga three times a week, I’m going to strength train twice a week, I’m going to run three times a week, I’m going to, you know, eat, you know, a good amount of protein at each meal, these are all plans, and you write these things down.
And there’s things that are going to happen this month. So we got holiday parties, we got a couple of holidays, really, we’re only talking about a couple days here, we got like Christmas, and New Year’s right, and then maybe New Year’s Eve, right? So maybe, or maybe even Christmas Eve for some people.
So three or four days really is all we’re talking about, you know, from here on out. So, plan those days, then if you have holiday parties, you’re gonna be going to or family’s gonna be in town or whatever, plan for that stuff, make a detailed plan of how you’re going to achieve your vision for yourself.
And this is what I do with all my clients. We work together on a plan and we get very detailed about what they’re going to eat and what they’re not going to eat, when they’re going to work out, when they’re not, when they’re going to recover. And we put together a detailed plan. And then obviously, you have to work the plan, you have to actually stick to the plan.
But you’re more likely to stick to the plan when you’ve created that vision for yourself. And then you’ve written it down. And then you’ve also written down a plan. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got it written down. You can look at it every day and say, okay, what am I doing today, and then just follow the plan. It seems almost too simple. Create a plan, and then stick to the plan no matter what. But that’s how simple it is. Create a plan and then stick to the plan no matter what.
And it’s that no matter what part that’s kind of important, right? For example, I am working on running every day during the holidays. So if you’re part of the Running Lean Facebook group, and if you’re not, you can join us just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. We are doing the running through the holidays challenge right now, which is to run every day, outside from Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day. And that’s 39 days of running.
And it’s just, you know, just gotta run at least a mile each day. So some days, I’m running one mile, some days, I’m running 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever. But the other day, I did not run during the day, I had a busy day. And I wasn’t able to get outside and you know, it gets dark early, it gets dark at like 5:30. And this is like 7pm and it was raining. And it was cold. And it was windy. And I did not feel like running. Not at all did I feel like running.
I had already eaten dinner and stuff. And I’m like, oh my god, I forgot I have to run still. And so you know what I did? I put on my running shoes, and I put on a rain jacket and I just headed out the door. And I got my mile in outside in the rain and the wind and the cold. And I have to tell you that it didn’t feel awesome. When I was out there I was you know, I had to put a headlamp on and you know, watch out for debris in the streets and roads and stuff like that.
But I did it, and I felt good about myself because I stuck to my plan. So I had a plan to run every day. That’s a plan. And then I stuck to the plan no matter what even though I didn’t feel like it. It could have been so easy for me to just say screw it. I am not doing this. I don’t feel like it. And it’s cold and it’s raining and I could have used all the excuses.
But I didn’t do that. I had a plan and I stuck to the plan no matter what. Okay? It’s that no matter what part that’s important, okay, so create a vision and have a plan and then stick to the plan no matter what. Cool.
Alright, my third tip is this. You’ve got to manage stress, you cannot go through this holiday season super stressed out about everything you just can’t. Stress will cause you to hold on to body fat. Stress will cause you to gain weight. The stress response is a glucose response. Being stressed out will spike your blood sugar, will spike your insulin levels and will put you into fat storage mode. And if you’re chronically stressed out and a lot of people are during the holidays, they stay kind of in this chronic state of stress from Thanksgiving through January 1.
I’m going to tell you right now it is going to be very difficult for you to lose weight, in fact, you will probably gain some weight just based on being stressed out during the holidays. So you have to have a stress management regimen, you have to have some sort of routine that you’re doing regularly like every single day to keep stress levels to a minimum.
Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a very hard time losing weight or have a hard time maintaining your weight during the holidays. So there are two types of stress. There’s the stress that we put on our bodies when we work out and maybe we lift weights or we go for a run. And maybe we do some sprint intervals or something like that.
This is called acute stress. And this is the good kind of stress. This is a positive type of stress, we stress our body, we stress a muscle, we stress our cardiovascular system. And then we have a positive adaptation because of that stress. So our muscles get stronger, our cardiovascular system improves, our speed improves, we raise our lactate threshold. So when we put acute stress on our bodies, this is acute and short term, very short term stress, this is a positive thing, this is a good thing we want to stress ourselves out in that way.
The kind of stress that we don’t want to be engaging in is like we’re constantly thinking about, you know, work or relationships or family issues. And we’re just constantly, you know, in a state of chronic stress, chronic stress is the kind of stress that is going to cause us to have that glucose response and cause us to keep our insulin levels high. You know, cortisol is a stress hormone.
When cortisol is high, our body is in that fight or flight mode, we’re in that sympathetic mode. Remember, the sympathetic mode is stress sympathetic for stress s for stress, the parasympathetic mode is, is peace, P for peace. So parasympathetic is when we are calm and relaxed and at peace and the sympathetic nervous system is when we are stressed out.
So we want to tap more into that parasympathetic nervous system and reduce the amount of stress we’re in. So that means that we can’t wait until we’re super stressed out to start working on it and that we have to work on it continuously. That means you have to have some sort of stress relief plan in place every single day.
Some of the things you can do to help reduce stress, meditation, journaling, going for a walk, going for a run, doing some yoga, just taking a nap. Maybe. Naps are very underrated, by the way. Getting enough sleep is super important. Getting good quality sleep, you know, we need seven, eight hours of sleep most of us as adults.
Just doing anything, playing a game, laughing, going to see a movie, doing something with friends, doing something with family, just being silly with your kids, anything like that is going to help to reduce stress, you need to figure out what works for you, everybody’s different. So figure out what works for you and what you can do every single day to make stress management a priority.
Because if you do that, I guarantee you, you’re gonna have a much easier time getting through the holidays and your body won’t be holding on to as much body weight, you won’t be holding on to as much fat you’ll be able to burn fat, we always want to be burning fat, not storing fat. So you’ll get into fat burning mode instead of fat storing mode. And you’ll get through the holidays without all that extra weight.
Okay, so that’s tip number three is to manage stress, and you have to do it every single day. You can’t wait until you’re stressed out to start working on it, you have to manage stress every single day.
And this brings me to my fourth tip, which is to exercise daily. So not only does daily exercise help with stress management, it also helps you to burn fat, you know, so obviously exercise can be helpful to fat burning, especially if you’re doing the lower intensity exercise, you know, you stay in that zone one, zone two, you know, you’re in that aerobic zone. That’s what’s considered sort of the fat burning zone, right?
So if you’re doing some sort of exercise every day, go out and run a few miles. Really easy. Go for some, you know, do a power walk, do some yoga, walk the dogs, play with the kids. It doesn’t have to be something intense but do something every day. And I promise you, you are going to not only feel better, but you’re going to help you to maintain your weight and probably help you to lose a little bit if that’s, you know, one of your goals here.
So, one of the reasons why we want to exercise every day is that when we exercise we get our dose of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So we get that rush of feel good hormones, and neurotransmitters. And when we have these feel good chemicals kind of running through our body, it puts us in a better mood, it helps us stay in that parasympathetic nervous system state. And we feel good.
It’s not only a good way to manage stress, but it’s a way of keeping our body feeling happy, like it improves our mood as well. You know, also more burning fat, you know, like I said, but it’s just this way of continually feeling good and feeling good about ourselves and feeling good about who we are and what we’re doing. And it’s such a better way to go through the holidays feeling good, as opposed to being, you know, super stressed out and freaking out about all the junk you’re eating and all this other stuff.
So when you’re in a good mood, you tend to make better decisions, when you’re exercising every day, you tend to build some momentum and want to keep exercising, it helps you to, you know, stay on track with your food plan, when you’re exercising daily. This is one of the big reasons why we have this running through the holidays challenge going on right now is because I want to encourage you to get outside every day, and do some exercise and the outside part is important.
During the winter, we tend you know, the days get shorter, and we tend to spend a lot more time indoors, the days are shorter, it’s darker in the morning is darker in the evening, there’s not as much sunlight during the day, we need to get outside and get some sun in our eyeballs, like we need to, you know, have that sun in our face on our bodies, if we can, it’s so important for us to you know, be outside in the elements in the sun.
And it helps to put us in that, you know, good mood, it helps with our serotonin levels. You know, we build serotonin during the day. And that’s what helps to create melatonin to help us sleep better at night. It helps with our circadian rhythms and helps us to sleep, you know, improve our sleep quality during the night when we can get outside into the sun every day.
So I know a lot of days around here, you know, I’m in Cincinnati, and a lot of days around here in the wintertime, it’s just gray, and dark. And there’s no sun. But those days that there is sun, take advantage of that and get outside. We’ve had a lot of gray days here. And then this morning, I went for a run and had to bring my sunglasses with me because it was so beautiful out, very, very cold, very cold.
But the sun was shining and it felt so amazing to be outside and to see the sun and to be in the sun. So exercise daily, put together you know, make exercise daily part of your plan. You know, make it part of your plan, part of your daily plan. And you’re going to get through the holidays feeling so much better about yourself, okay.
And then my last tip is going to be this when it comes to nutrition. We’re all a little bit different. And it’s hard for me to make some recommendations as here’s what you should eat or whatever. So I’m going to give you this tip. And I think this is one of the most powerful tips around nutrition that I can give you and it’s one that is underrated and something that most people just don’t do or maybe they’re not aware of, or they think it would be too hard.
But it’s this, skip some meals, skip some meals, you don’t have to eat three meals a day, every single day all the time. You don’t have to eat three meals a day, plus three snacks a day, plus dessert every single day, you really don’t have to eat that much skip breakfast, skip breakfast and lunch one day.
Skip snacking, skip dessert, like just pick something that you think would work for you. And you don’t have to do this every single day. But just consider skipping some meals. You know, there’s a lot of benefits that you’ll gain from exercising in the fasted state, which means that, you know, if you exercise in the morning, don’t you don’t have to fuel up before you get outside and run.
Just skip it, just skip fueling, you know and try some what we call intermittent fasting. And when people hear that word fasting, they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s, you know, I’m gonna die. I can’t do that. It’s like, dude, no, listen, it’s just like, skip breakfast is our target about here. It’s not that big of a deal.
You know, we’ve been doing this as human beings for millions of years. We didn’t eat all the time. We didn’t have snacks. We didn’t eat dessert, like there were no three meals a day, kind of a deal. Like a lot of times, and a lot of cultures, they eat like once a day, maybe twice a day. And so I think we’ve, you know, in the Western world, we’re under this impression that we have to eat a lot, just all the time. And it’s just not true.
Like we just don’t need to eat that often. Okay, so, one thing I did recently is Thanksgiving Day. And so that was Thursday and then a couple days later on Saturday we did another Thanksgiving with my girlfriend and our kids, well, we all got together. And so we did like two different Thanksgivings, super fun.
But each of those days, I only ate that one meal each day. So I ate one big meal on Thanksgiving, and then one big meal on that Saturday, and I just skipped breakfast, I typically eat twice a day, you know, I’ll have a pretty good sized breakfast around noon, and then I eat dinner around 6pm, 7pm, something like that.
And, and that’s usually good for me. But some days, I just skip that first meal. And, and I feel so much better when I, you know, can skip a meal and, and then I can maybe eat a little bit more at that second meal and still be in a bit of a deficit and still not be overeating and still not be eating, you know, a ton of calories that day.
So for me, it feels really good to skip a meal every now and then. And this is one of the simplest things that you can do to help manage your weight and help you to not gain weight during the holidays. It’s just like, pick a few days a week here and there and skip some of these meals. And you might be surprised how good you feel. You might be surprised how much easier it is to exercise in that fasted state and take advantage of the adrenaline that you get from exercising in the fasted state.
So you actually, you know, people think, oh, I won’t have the energy. But now your body will produce the glucose that you need, your body will produce the adrenaline that you need to be able to actually work out a little bit harder. And then there’s another positive benefit from exercising in the fasted state, which is an increase in growth hormone.
So after exercise, your body will produce more growth hormone, which will help you to recover faster. So not only can you exercise harder in a fasted state, but you can also recover faster. So these are good benefits. And you don’t have to do this all the time. But try it every now and then and see how it goes for you.
Okay, so quick recap, you know of my five tips to avoid gaining weight this holiday season. Number one, create a vision. Who do you want to be on January 1? How do you want to feel and write it down?
Okay, number two, have a plan. Write down your plan. And then write down your plan every week and consult your plan. And make sure you’re staying on track with your plan no matter what.
Number three, you have to manage stress and it has to be something you do every single day.
Number four exercise daily. Get outside if you can do whatever it takes to move your body and to release the endorphins and get the dopamine and the serotonin and all those good feeling chemicals that you get. So power walk yoga, walk the dog, play with the kids, go for a run, lift some weights, swim, bike, whatever you need to do, but do something every day. Do it outside if you can get in the sun.
And then lastly, skip some meals here and there. You don’t have to eat all the time. This is like intermittent fasting simplified, right? It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to do some sort of long three day fast or anything like that. Just like skip a meal here and there. And you might be surprised how much easier it is to get through the holidays without gaining weight.
Cool. All right, you guys, I hope you take some action on these tips here and actually do these things because I guarantee you it’s going to make a difference on how you show up for yourself on January 1. Okay, 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.
A lot of people make the assumption that if you’re a low-carb runner, it means you don't ever eat any carbs at all. But this simply isn’t true. There’s a time and place for carbs in your diet, …
Continue Reading about 148. Determining Your Carbohydrate Tolerance →
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 148 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners today, determining your carbohydrate tolerance. So a lot of people make this assumption that if you’re a low carb athlete, that means that you don’t ever eat any carbs at all. And this simply isn’t true.
I’ve talked about this before, here on the podcast, there’s definitely a time and place for carbs in your diet, but you need to understand how carbs affect you as an individual, before you start piling all those sweet potatoes onto your plate. Okay, we all have differing levels of tolerance. When it comes to carbohydrates.
Some people can handle more than others without any negative side effects at all. Others need to keep their carb intake fairly low, or they experience all kinds of issues. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. Carbohydrates are not bad. But understanding how you tolerate them can definitely prevent a lot of the common issues and a lot of the negative side effects that a lot of people experience.
So here today, I’m going to explain the importance of determining your carbohydrate tolerance, so that you can lose weight and prove your endurance and basically achieve all of your health and fitness goals. And for a lot of people figuring out how many carbs is going to be right for you as an individual is challenging. It’s kind of confusing.
And this is why this is a big part of what I do as the weight loss coach for runners. So we’re not only going to focus on how many carbs you’re eating, but we want to focus on the timing of those carbs as well. We want to make sure that you’re getting the best bang for your buck, so to speak, without any of the issues that come along with increasing carbs in your diet.
So it’s not an all or nothing kind of thing we need to figure out, we need to do a little bit of experimenting, we do a little trial and error. And we got to figure out what is the right plan, what is the right sort of recipe for you around workouts, how many carbs the timing of your carbs. But listen, having a coach there to help you make sense of all this and help you figure it out. It’s just like hitting the easy button on all this for you.
Okay, and this is my jam. This is what I do every single day. So if you’re ready to just stop struggling and hit that easy button, I’m here for you. Okay, to learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application, you and I will get on a call and we’ll see if the Running Lean coaching project is a good fit for you. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.
And if I sound like I’m a little nasally today, it’s because I have had this head cold for like 10 days now. And I rarely get sick. The last time I was sick was at the beginning of 2020 before COVID I probably had COVID at the time, but I haven’t had any kind of head cold or anything since then. And this one has been lingering. And it’s kind of I’m ready for this to be done because it’s driving me crazy. Not only do I sound nasally, I feel like my head is still going to explode.
I’m trying not to take any medication. I did that for a few days at the beginning. But that stuff just messes me up. And I feel like I just want my body to fight this off and do what it needs to do naturally. But one thing about this is that for about a week there I completely lost my sense of smell and taste. And I did a COVID test because I was like man, I think I probably have COVID because I had a fever and, you know, coughing and lost my sense of smell and taste. Tested negative for COVID. So that’s not what it is. It’s just a head cold that is really messing with my whole system here.
So, this past week again, though, the reason I’m bringing this up is because this past weekend, we’re here in Cincinnati, we had this festival called the Coffee Fest. And it was, it’s one of those things where we have lots of festivals here in the summer, you know, we have, and they’re all revolved around drinking, right? They’re all about wine tasting and beer fests. And or, you know, we have Oktoberfest Cincinnati, which is really popular here. And it’s just a bunch of junk food and beer.
And finally, there’s something where I can go and actually enjoy. This is my jam. I love coffee, I love good coffee, I drink very high quality coffee, I grind my own beans. And I’m very particular about coffee. And I’m like, this is going to be perfect. So I got these tickets. And I’m like, man, I hope I can actually taste some of this coffee, and showed up at Coffee Fest, and I’m walking around the different vendors and, and trying their coffee and trying to smell it.
I like I could not smell or taste anything. I mean, nothing at all. And, you know, I felt bad because I was like, man, I would really be enjoying this. If I could smell or taste any of this. So much of taste is is through your nose, right how you smell things. So I’m at this beautiful place with music playing. It’s a beautiful place. All these amazing coffees around, I’m tasting the coffee. And they’re explaining to me the different notes of citrus and floral and cocoa.
And I’m just like, yeah, I was just going to take your word for it because I can’t taste anything at all. It’s such a bummer. But my sense of smell and taste are coming back, I can definitely smell things now. And my taste is coming back. And I love food too. I love to eat. And eating food has not been extremely enjoyable. To me, it’s just been like, I better eat some food because I need the energy to, you know, get through my workouts and such. But it was nothing that I could taste at all.
So what a weird experience to go through, I’ve never had this before, I’ve never lost my sense of taste and smell like that before. So I don’t recommend it. I’m just gonna be honest with you. It’s no fun. But I’m getting through this, but I’m hoping that, you know, by the next time I record my next podcast, I will sound so nasally but um, I’m about apologizing, you’re just gonna have to deal with it for right now. Okay.
So here’s what I want to talk about today. I have been talking to a lot of runners, and you know, a lot of people are into this higher training cycle, you know, higher training parts of their training cycle, because we’ve got all of our fall races happening these days, you know, New York Marathon is, you know, about 10 days away. So a lot of people are talking about training and you know, how there may be increasing carbs, or we’re having these conversations in our client calls and our coaching calls about how to match your carb intake along with your training. Okay.
And for everybody that I talked to, it’s a little bit different. We all have a different tolerance for carbohydrates. Okay. And I want to explain, first of all, what this means, like what does it mean that you can tolerate, quote, unquote, like tolerate carbs or not tolerate carbs? You know, I’ve talked before that a lot of people have some level of intolerance.
For carbohydrates. I think the human body in general, has some level of intolerance for carbohydrates, and some people are more susceptible to that than others more sensitive to that intolerance than others. Okay? So when I talk about tolerance, what I’m really talking about is how many carbs you can eat that you can ingest without any negative side effects.
So we have to make this assumption that to some level carbs are somewhat toxic to the human body, okay, they have an element of toxicity, and it’s very much like alcohol, when you think about it this way. Alcohol in small amounts is slightly toxic to the human body, but is it really very harmful? I mean, you can argue why this might be harmful, even in small amounts.
But from a metabolic standpoint, even in small amounts, carbohydrates do have an effect on the human body and there’s some negative effects of carbohydrates on the human body that I really want to address here today. Because when we talk about whether you can tolerate more carbs or not? We need to be looking at these negative side effects that a lot of people experience when they are eating a high carb diet, or moderate carbohydrate diet.
Okay, now, a lot of people means that the majority of people have some sort of intolerance to carbohydrates. And they experience one or more of these negative side effects that I’m going to talk about here in just a second. But at higher amounts, all of these things get exacerbated.
Okay, and so in higher amounts, people experience more of these issues, and people experience them and in greater degrees, okay, so some of the dysfunction that I’m talking about here are things like bloating, inflammation, blood sugar spikes, and then crashes, weight gain, the inability to lose weight. These are all side effects of carbohydrates, carbohydrate intake, sleep issues, chronic stress, incessant hunger, cravings for more carbohydrates, sugar cravings, brain fog, the inability to think and concentrate, gas, constipation, diarrhea, high heart rate while exercising, the inability to recover quickly from harder workouts.
Endurance issues where your endurance just tanks, you know, you’re out there running and you hit the wall. Things like irritability, grumpiness, anxiety, depression, these are all symptoms of high carbohydrate intake. And of course, there’s a bigger list of things that will happen as a result of, of years and years of high carb intake, we start to get into metabolic diseases.
But these are just very common, these are not weird one off things I’m talking about here. These are all very common side effects, very common symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance. And a lot of people experienced these side effects, especially when they’re ingesting carbs and higher amounts, okay. And as we get older, we become even more carbohydrate intolerant, meaning that as we get older, we probably most of us can’t handle carbs like we did when we were younger.
So lowering your carb intake is going to be especially helpful and beneficial for the aging athlete if you’re in your 40s 50s 60s and beyond, okay, so really, determining your individual carbohydrate tolerance is going to be key to you, not just becoming a fat adapted runner, but also to help you to become the healthiest and fittest human being that you can possibly be.
Alright, we need to figure out what works for you from a carbohydrate standpoint, if you want to be the healthiest person that you can be. Okay, so let’s look at one common scenario. A common scenario would be somebody that is interested in losing weight, and I talked to so many people who are runners who are trying to lose weight and having a hard time with it, they’re struggling with it.
Most people that listen to this podcast are probably people that fit into that category. Right? Right. So if you’re a runner and you struggled with your weight, then this is, you know, a pretty common scenario. Okay, so let’s look at what changes you might make and how to get a feel for what your carb carb tolerance might be.
Okay, so let’s say you have been eating that standard runner’s diet that I’ve talked about in the past the standard runners diet is the all carbs all the time diet hits, where your your carb loading basically every single day, you’re pre fueling with carbs, you’re fueling during running with carbs, your post fueling with carbs. And you have it in your head, you can just eat anything you want at any time because you’re a runner.
So I call this the carbterian diet. And you might be sick of doing that and that’s not working for you any more. So you stop doing that, okay? And you decide, okay, I’m gonna, I’m going to try this Patrick, I’m gonna I’m gonna adopt a low carb approach here, I’m gonna, I’m gonna adopt a low carb diet, I’m gonna stop eating all the carbs and like you say, and I’m going to try and lose weight.
You know, your goals might be to lose weight to improve your body composition, you know, to lose fat weight, gain muscle weight, improve your endurance, you, you want to reduce inflammation and all those things, right? So you have these very specific goals, and you decide to go on a quote unquote low carb diet.
And so you might decrease your carb intake to like 100 to 150 grams of carbs a day. And this may not seem very low to most people. But most runners are probably eating between 5 and 800 grams of carbs a day, you heard me correctly, 5-800 grams of carbs per day, then remember, the dosage determines the poison, right.
So eating a few grams of carbs a day, not a big deal, but 5 to 800 grams of carbs a day is gonna have a significant impact on your metabolism and on your health in general. And I did a little bit of research into this and looked at what traditional running coaches recommend, and traditional running coaches will recommend from a carbohydrate standpoint, two and a half to four and a half grams of carbs, for every pound of bodyweight, you know, to kind of depending on where you are in your training cycle, but the higher end of this is so crazy.
So for somebody like me, so I weigh about 180 pounds these days, okay? For me, if I’m at that, you know, four and a half grams of carbs, for every pound of body weight, that is 110 grams of carbs per day, that the traditional, you know, conventional wisdom will tell you is appropriate, right. And I used to eat this way, I did.
And it was amazing. Like, I loved eating all those carbs, like I was like, bring it on, you know, I was training for ultra marathons and running several marathons a year and several ultra marathons a year. And I was gaining a lot of weight. Until you know, after a few years, I realized that I was 40 pounds overweight, and I was like this is stupid, like I can’t keep doing this, I can’t go on this way.
Like there has to be a different way of doing this, right. So just keep in mind that 100 to 150 grams of carbs a day, is pretty low compared to where a lot of people start out with this thing, okay, so you reduce your carbs, you’re down to 100, let’s say you’re about 150 grams a day, and you’re like, you know, I’m feeling better, my inflammation is going down, I don’t feel so bloated all the time, I’m feeling pretty good. I like I’ve got pretty good energy all day long, like, I’m actually losing a few pounds too, you know, so you stick with that approach for a while.
And then after some time, your weight loss might kind of stall out. So you hit a sort of a plateau. And maybe your endurance, so your running isn’t really improving much, right. So at that 150 grams level, your body is probably still relying mostly on carbs as the main fuel source, right, so you’re really not tapping into your own stored body fat as your main fuel source, you’re still relying on carbs, you might feel better, you might lose some weight.
And this may be a place where you want to stay and totally fine if that’s what you want for yourself, okay? Fat adaptation, probably not going to happen at this level of carbs. Okay, in order to get fat adapted, you have to reduce your carbs. And we’ll talk about that in a second here. But if you’re okay, like just with a lower carb approach, and you’re at that level, 150 grams, something like that, you still get to eat a lot of food that maybe you have always eaten, and it’s pretty easy to do, and pretty easy to maintain this.
Great, that’s a good place for you to be, then stick with that, if that works for you. Okay, but if you really want to get fat burning kicked into gear, if you want to become fat adapted as a runner, meaning you’re burning mostly fat instead of sugar, then you you’re going to have to drop the carb intake, okay, if you really want to get weight loss moving, you’re going to have to drop your carb intake, you know, you might be better suited in that 50 to 100 grams per day range, something like that, okay.
For me, I tend to stick with a pretty low carb approach most of the time. And then what I do is I add carbs around certain workouts or when my training load increases. And this works really well for me. And one thing I need to say right here is like we don’t need to be tracking these grams of carbs every single day, for the rest of our lives. That’s not what we’re about here.
We do want to get a feel for where we are, and then we can start to use our intuition and eat the kinds of foods that we know will work for us and avoid the kinds of foods we know don’t work for us. Okay. And that’s a big part of what I do in my coaching with people as individuals as we get to this place where All of this just becomes intuitive for you. And it just becomes how you live your life.
Like I understand what I can and can’t eat, I understand how many carbs I’m eating without even having to enter anything into an app or track any of my food. I know what I’m doing. And I know how to add extra carbs around certain workouts, or when my training load increases, to give me a little bit of an edge, and to help me with that higher gear with that higher intensity training. So that’s a beautiful place to be and, you know, if you want help with that, I can help you get there.
Okay, but just understand that, for the most part, I tend to stick with a pretty low carb approach most of the time, okay. So I do something that’s probably more like a low carb, keto carnivore type of diet, okay, I’m probably in the 20 to 30 grams of carbs total for most days, right, this is really low. And a lot of people don’t like doing this. They don’t think it’s sustainable, or they think it’s too hard or too restrictive. Like, that’s fine. But I love it.
I feel amazing when I’m super low carb like this. But then around certain workouts, I’m going to add 20 to 40 grams of carbs. So on days, when I up my training, and I have a really intense workout, I might be in the 50 to 75 grams of carbs for that day. But here’s something that’s interesting is we have to earn our carbs. Okay?
So you earn your carbs around high intensity workouts or longer workouts, okay. And, like I said, there isn’t exactly some right number that I’m shooting for. Because I don’t really track this anymore. I go about how I feel, and what I need for this particular workout that I’m about to embark on here.
Okay, so I tie my carbs around my workouts. And this is key, you have to understand this, because during a high intensity interval session, for example, I’m going to burn through that sugar that’s in my system pretty quickly. So I may raise my blood sugar by eating some carbs, but I’m essentially going to burn through that sugar very, very quickly during that workout. So I’m earning my carbs for that workout.
And then my blood sugar comes back down the rest of the day, and I’m back into that total fat burning zone again, right, and I’m back down into that, you know, keto, carnivore, whatever you want to call it, right, I don’t really have a name for that, because I don’t really track ketones and things like that, right.
So just understand that you gotta earn your carbs, and we want to time them around our workouts, okay. And lower intensity workouts basically require fewer carbs, because you’re staying in that fat burning zone, right? Usually, that’s gonna be zones one, two, and three, even, you can even get into zone four, and still be burning a lot of fat if you’re an experienced fat adapted athlete.
And I know that there are some elite athletes out there, you know, top of their game in the world who are burning mostly fat still in zones for even in the zone five, like this is like up to 80 90% of their vo to max, they are still burning mostly fat, which is amazing, which is so so amazing.
But for most of us, you know, we’re going to be into that zone one, two, and three, possibly a little bit into zone four, okay. But for those higher intensity workouts or workouts that are going to be, for me, maybe longer than two, three hours, I’m going to add more carbs to help me defend against that glycogen depletion. And just to keep my glycogen levels high, so that I can continue to perform at the level that I want to perform at.
So it doesn’t take much for me during a long workout. It doesn’t take much in the way of carbs during long workout for me to get the fuel that I need. And for me to experience that little burst of energy and a little bit of rocket fuel.
So for me, I might be adding 15 to 20 grams of carbohydrate fuel per hour, which is totally sufficient for me. There are some athletes who, like you know, talked about Zach Bitter in the past, elite ultra marathoner, right? He does something more in the 40 to 50 grams of carbs per hour. And he’s running these world record paces like he’s trying to set a world record for the 100 mile or something like that, right? This is not something that I’m going to ever have to worry about.
Okay, so, my guess is you probably won’t either, which is fine, but it’s interesting that he only needs 40 or 50 grams per hour and he can still perform as one of the top ultra runners in the world. Okay? So, for me, and I’ve experimented with this for years, I know what works for me, I know what works for me and my goals.
For me, I can keep my carbs super low, increase them around workouts, add some carbs during some higher intensity or longer workouts. And, and I know what to do when I’m in these situations, and I and I just intuitively know how to keep things working for me, okay, and I know what to do when things aren’t working the way I’d like them to work.
Okay. So for example, a couple of months ago, I, I hate even admitting this, but a couple months ago, I fell running through on the sidewalk and tripped over a big crack in the sidewalk. I was not even paying attention. I went down hard, blamed up my knee, so my knee was all swollen. And for a couple of days, I could run still, and I was like, oh, I think I’m gonna be okay. But it just got worse and, and I really had to cut back on my running because any running at all hurt my knee like crazy.
And I’ve done this before, in the past, both my knees are kind of messed up from falling down. Especially trail running. You got to avoid those roots and rocks and stuff when your trail running makes it a much more adventurous type of running for sure. But so both my knees are a little bit jacked up. But you know, it’s not enough to keep me from running, you know, I get some pain every now and then. But not a big deal.
So these last 60 days, though, I have not been able to run without a significant amount of pain. Now, the pain is getting better. And I can actually start to increase my mileage. But in the last two months, I’ve run around 30 miles total. And I was getting closer to around 30 miles per week before I fell. Okay, so anyway, because of this, I’ve had to really lower my cardio, you know, I’ve had a lower my, my running, not exercising as much. And I just know intuitively that when I get to this place where I am having some periods of inactivity, or I’m not able to exercise, then I’m gonna just drop my carbs to like zero basically, right?
So during this period, these last 60 days, I’ve been very low carb, keto carnivore-ish, right. And, and I feel really good, I feel lean, I’m not gaining weight, right. And as soon as my weekly mileage went from that 25-30 miles a week down to like three to five miles a week, because that’s about all I can handle these days. I just decreased the carbs, I just dropped the carbs altogether, basically. Right. So I’ve been focusing more on weight training more elliptical rower to get that kind of endorphin rush that I love from running.
And I’m getting better, my knees feeling better, my runs feel much better. There’s much less pain, not quite where I want to be. I was scheduled to do a half marathon this fall, I had to cancel because I can’t do it. There’s no way I can run that far right now. Without my knee just like going ballistic on me here. So for me, I know that when I get into these places where my training intensity goes down, so does my carb intake, I feel really good.
And then when I increase my intensity again, those carbs will go back up again, in order to make sure that I am like I said, defending against that muscle glycogen. And then I’m giving my body the energy that I need to crush those harder workouts. All right. So this is what I want you to do. This is all an experiment, okay? There’s no right or wrong way to do this. There’s no magic number that is perfect for you or for everybody. It’s all an experiment, okay?
And it’s a fun thing to do. Like we get to play around with this. You get to decide what you want to do for yourself. As long as what you’re doing is working for you. You’re feeling good, your inflammation is down, you’re losing weight, running is improving, your endurance is improving. You’re not experiencing the inflammation and bloating and all those side effects that I mentioned. Your body composition is improving.
Sleeping is good, your energy levels are good. Brain fog is lifted. All those things are happening then you’re doing it right. And I don’t care what that number is for you. Okay, listen, we’ve been doing this low carb approach to our diet as human beings for like two and a half million years of evolution is always the way we’ve done it. We were never a high carbohydrate society. So this is just getting back to our roots. This is just getting back to the natural order of things as human beings, okay?
So first of all determine your goals, what is it you want for yourself? If you want to lose weight, you want to improve your running, you want better sleep? Do you want more energy throughout the day? Do you want all those things? So determine what goals you want for yourself, make some changes, try it for a while, track your progress and see what works for you. And then look at your results. Okay, is this working or not? What is working, what’s not working.
And look at all these different metrics you know about weight loss and your body composition, sleeping and energy and all these things, right. And if you’re noticing things aren’t working the way you want to change something, you know, maybe add more carbs or drop your carbs lower. You know, experiment with this, have fun with this. It’s all a fun experiment, right?
And basically, you’re just going to rinse and repeat this process until you feel like you have a good handle on what works for you. And that’s what this is all about. Determining your carbohydrate tolerance means that you get to decide what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Okay, and as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll figure it out together. We’ll put together a plan. I’ll help you stay on track, we’ll hit that easy button, and together we’ll crush those goals. Okay. 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.
One of the most prevalent health issues facing us today is stress. When you think of stress you probably only imagine it being a mental health issue, but chronic stress is a major contributing …
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 144 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: handling stress like a badass. One of the most prevalent health issues facing us today is stress. And when you think of stress, you’re probably imagining it being a mental health issue, something that happens in your brain. But chronic stress is actually a major contributing factor to a lot of physical disease here, especially in the US.
The good news is that stress can be managed quite well. The bad news is that most people, even runners, do a pretty terrible job of managing stress. Okay, so in this episode, I’m going to explain what stress actually is, how stress might be affecting you, either positively or negatively. And what you can do to start handling stress like badass, okay?
Different people handle stress in different ways. And the key to handling stress, like a badass really, is having a plan. Most people have no plan, okay. So if you find it hard to come up with a plan for yourself, if you want some help staying on track, you know, with that plan, then consider coaching might be a good fit for you.
With coaching, you and I are going to work closely together to set goals to create a plan, and then help you stay on track to help you work the plan. It’s that simple, right? Simple, but not easy. And just so you know, in my coaching program, I offer both group coaching and one on one coaching, so you get the support from the group.
So you get a supportive group of other runners with similar goals. You know, we’re all here trying to lose weight, get fat adapted, improve our running performance, get stronger, become the healthiest versions of ourselves, reduce stress, all those things. So you get the support of the group and you get the support and personalized guidance from me during our one on one coaching sessions, okay, so you get both in my program and a lot of other coaching programs offer like one or the other. But you get both in my program, okay.
So if you’re someone who is looking for some support, some accountability, some guidance, then I want to encourage you to join the Running Lean coaching project. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. You have to apply for this program at this point.
Anyway. It’s a short application, there’s a short interview process where you and I will get on a zoom call. I’ll go over all the details of the coaching program with you and we’ll see if this is a good fit. And if it’s a good fit, I would love to have you join me in the program. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners called the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you. Cool. Alright, let’s talk about stress, shall we?
And especially, handling stress and handling stress like a badass. So, the reason I’m talking about this today, the thing that kind of inspired me to bring this topic to the forefront was that I recently took a little vacation to Maine and I had never been to Maine before, beautiful state by the way. And we spent some time in Portland and we spent some time in the Lake District and and spent quite a bit of time on this little lake and it was actually a pretty good sized lake. We did some kayaking and some running.
And there were beautiful apple trees all over the place and we were picking apples right off the trees and eating them. And they all tasted a little bit different because they’re different types of apples and I couldn’t tell you which one was which, but they were all amazing. And it was such a super chill relaxed week. For me, like, there was no stress at all.
Everything was just like, you know, there’s this lake and the woods and trees. And just it was beautiful, you know. And it was funny because, you know, the friend that I was with said, I was commenting on how relaxed I was and how stress free I felt. And she was like, well, this is pretty much how you are anyway, Patrick. And I was like, yeah, I guess I am. You know, that’s kind of how I live my life anyway, I don’t really get wallowed in stress, I don’t get mired down in stress these days, like I’ve really learned how to manage stress well.
But the interesting thing is, most people don’t, most people don’t have any kind of stress management strategy in their life at all. Most people rely on things like vacation, or a trip to some really, you know, forced relaxing place like this beautiful lake that I was at. They rely on those short, short amounts of time during the year to de-stress and to kind of manage their stress and to relax.
And I think this is a problem. Because let’s say you get four weeks of vacation per year, which is I think that’s being generous for most people. But let’s just say you get about four weeks of vacation per year. And you know, we’re talking about 52 weeks in the year. So that’s roughly 8% of your year, a percent of your life that you’re dedicating to purposely and intentionally relax and de-stress.
What about the other 92% of your life? What are you doing with the rest of the time? And this is what really struck me is that most people don’t have any kind of ongoing stress management strategies. And so 92% of their life is spent in a state of chronic stress. And this is a real problem.
Stress is the cause of a lot of issues, not just mental health issues, but physical issues. So a couple of stats I found pretty interesting were that according to the American Institute of Stress, about 33% of people report feeling extreme stress. 33% of people, at least here in the United States, feel extreme stress.
77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health. And 73% of people have stress that impacts their mental health. So let’s just round that up and down to about 75% of people are experiencing some sort of stress that affects them either mentally or physically. And 33% of the people in this country report feeling extreme stress. So this is a big problem. And I’m going to talk about some of the downfalls of stress and some of the ways that this affects us, but understand that we are in general, a stressed out nation of people. Okay.
We are a nation of people who do not deal with stress very well, and are a nation of people who are mired down in stress. You know, 75% of the people in this country are reporting stress that affects their physical and mental health. This is a big problem. Okay. So, before we get into, like how stress is affecting us, let’s look at what stress is okay.
So, stress according to the Googles, according to the dictionary, stress is a physical, chemical or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. Stress can be a state that you are in, especially one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existing equilibrium.
So I’m going to like put my own spin on this and just say that basically what we’re talking about here as stress as a physical, emotional or mental tension, that alters our equilibrium, that puts us off balance, that takes our body out of homeostasis; our body and our mind. Okay. So we are no longer in homeostasis, which is where everything is working properly and we are imbalanced, okay.
And we have to understand that there are different types of stress. So stress can be acute stress or stress can be chronic stress, acute stress is something that is very short term, and usually pretty intense, like, lifting heavy weights. So if you do a heavy benchpress session, or you do some sprints, you know, sprint intervals, high intensity interval training, that would be considered acute stress, it’s very short term, it’s very intense.
And it is actually a good form of stress, okay, because it leads to adaptive responses in our body, then we have chronic stress or long term stress, long term or chronic stress is something that is on going like you are going through a tough time at work, and your boss is constantly, you know, on you to get this project finished, and you’re under this deadline.
And, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks of stress over this project, a big project you have to get done. Or maybe you’ve had a death in the family, or going through a divorce or something like that, that can cause long term stress. Okay. And chronic or long term stress can be bad, like this is not the state that we are supposed to be in as human beings, let’s, let’s look at how stress has evolved. So when we were back in the, in their caveman days, or whatever.
As human beings, we would encounter some sort of form of stress like a saber toothed Tiger, and our body would release all these chemicals in the form of the stress hormone cortisol, cortisol gets pumped out in reaction to stress. And that cortisol leads our bodies to get into that fight or flight, state fight flight or freeze state.
And so our body will produce more glucose and our senses will be heightened, more adrenaline will be produced. Because we’re ready to fight or flight, we’re ready to like take action. And so our body’s preparing us to take action to do something about the saber toothed tiger in front of us. Do I run? Do I just stand here? Do I fight this thing?
And so your body’s preparing you to fight that your brain is to your brain is just like on high alert at this point. Okay? This is an acute form of stress, because in a second, that stress is going to be gone. So let’s say you choose to run away, you will see that saber toothed Tiger and you’re like, you know, Screw this, I’m out of here. And you bail and you run like the dickens away from that thing and you hide in a tree or cave or wherever you do. Saber toothed Tiger realizes that there’s gonna be no human snack today. So it leaves the area and you come out and you’re like, Oh, good. stress hormone goes down, glucose levels return to normal, your heart rate gets back down to normal, your brain chemicals return to normal and adrenaline is reduced.
And all those things that happened in response to stress the state of stress that your body was in. Now everything in a very short amount of time. Now everything goes back to normal, you’re back in homeostasis, you’re no longer out of equilibrium, you’re back in balance. Everything is working the way it’s supposed to. This is acute stress. And this is the way our bodies are designed. This is the way that we have evolved over millions of years to handle stress. This is good.
So where our bodies are supposed to work. Then we have the other type of stress, which is chronic, ongoing long term stress. And the interesting thing is that a lot of this is just stuff that we are dealing with in our day to day lives. like sitting in traffic, or, you know, we look at our phones and we open up our inbox, our email inbox, and there’s hundreds of unread messages, and it just makes us feel so stressed out.
So, the email, our email inboxes, the new saber toothed Tiger, or sitting in traffic or worrying about the divorce you’re going through or worrying about that big project you have to at work, or whatever it is that’s going on in your life that is causing this on going consistent long term stress. Chronic stress can cause the same physiological problem. So increased cortisol, increase in blood sugar, increase in adrenaline, that heightened awareness, but it doesn’t go away, it stays that way.
And when your body is in that constant state of fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system is on high alert. And this is a bad place to be this is, this is not good for you, it’s very hard to to lose weight, if you’re if you’re, you’re going through chronic stress because the constant constant elevated glucose levels, will will cause your insulin levels to be raised and you’re constantly in that fat storing mode. So chronic stress is really the cause of a lot of mental, emotional and physical disease.
The National Institutes of Health says that continued stress on your body from routine, from routine stress, you know, from chronic stress can lead to serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety disorder, and other serious illnesses. And according to the American Psychological Association, chronic stress is also linked to six of the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.
So this is a real serious issue. Chronic stress is not something to take lightly. And it’s not something that can be fixed by taking a vacation once a year. All right, this is something that we have to manage on an ongoing basis. Okay.
The other side of this, the kind of good type of stress the acute stress is, is different. And when you put stress on your body by lifting weights or doing high interval training, this actually leads to adaptation, it leads to muscle growth, it leads to improved speed and endurance as a runner. It even leads to improved ability to fight off diseases. So I think this is really fascinating that, you know, there’s two types of stress, there’s good stress, bad stress. And if you want to learn more about this, I did a podcast episode called Good stress, Bad stress. And you can go back and check that one out. It’s episode number 81. And it’s just called Good stress, bad stress. And I go into a deep dive about the different types of stress and how they affect us.
But this idea that stress is more than just a mental or emotional issue is really fascinating. Okay, so we definitely have to pay attention to stress, and we have to pay attention to the way stress is affecting us.
And are we purposely putting our bodies under acute stress like, you know, lifting weights or doing interval training to build strength or to build speed or to build endurance? Or is our body under this constant type of ongoing chronic stress where we’re just kind of always in that heightened state of awareness and that heightened fight or flight mode, like we because that’s not good for you? Okay?
So, it’s important to manage stress, and I just don’t think we do a very good job of it, okay. And when it comes down to what stress really is, it’s a physical or an emotional response. And it can be good or bad, right? We’ve talked about acute stress being good. And we’ve talked about chronic stress being bad, but even emotional stress can be good or bad.
So, you know, the stress hormones, like cortisol that get released, can help an animal to adapt to their environment to become more aware to become more resilient, with the same types of stressors that they experience in the future. So the same way that we can adapt from acute stress. from a physical standpoint, we can also adapt to acute stressors from a mental and emotional standpoint, think about going through a tough breakup, or a death in the family or something like that.
When that happens to you, you become more resilient and less fragile. For the next time that that same kind of thing happens, okay? It’s the same principle as lifting heavy weights or doing interval training that builds stronger, more resilient muscles. We’re building a stronger, more resilient, mental and emotional state, when we go through certain types of stressors in our life, and we get through them relatively quickly, okay. But just understand that this idea of chronic stress really is affecting our lives profoundly. And we have to be really diligent about managing stress. And most people don’t do it very well.
Most people handle stress by doing things like stress eating, or stress and drinking, you know, and, and, and these are coping mechanisms that they’ve developed over the years. And sometimes they’ve, they’ve been doing them since they were, you know, young children even. And it’s a way of, you know, drinking or eating over stress is a way that we’ve just trained ourselves to manage stress.
The problem is that, you know, when we deal with stress, with alcohol or with food, it really doesn’t have the effect we want it to have. Like, we think that you know, drinking alcohol is gonna make us feel relaxed, right? It does for a moment, but then it has that opposite effect, when the alcohol wears off, we get more stressed out, just because it has that counter effect, right?
Same thing with stress eating when we eat. Because we’re stressed out, we feel a little bit better temporarily. It’s like, oh, I’m feeling really stressed out, I’m just gonna eat this whole gallon of ice cream right here, half gallon of ice cream, whatever it is, I can eat a gallon of ice cream at once. Love to do that. But you know, you eat the half gallon of ice cream, and you’re like, Oh, this feels so amazing. And it just feels so good.
But then you feel terrible afterwards. And you gain weight and you can’t, you just not functioning properly and you have that big sugar crash and, and then all of a sudden you feel terrible about going off, you’re bland and like you just you know, I shouldn’t have done that. And you just become even more stressed out about the whole thing.
Okay, so stress eating and drinking are not good coping mechanisms, they are not good stress management strategies. Okay. Another way that people don’t really realize that stress affects them is that they may not sleep well at night. And that can put their body into a state of chronic stress, just not getting a good night’s sleep every night can cause chronic stress that in itself can cause stress.
Also, not sleeping well can be a byproduct of stress. So if you’re not sleeping, well, you’ve got to look at that and look at the stress in your life as a cause, or the cause of stress in your life. Okay, so getting enough sleep at night is extremely important. Right? And real real, the real problem we’re dealing with here is that there is no ongoing stress management, do you have an ongoing stress management system in place? Or do you just like deal with stress when it shows up, because if you’re the kind of person who just wants to deal with stress, when it shows up, it might be too late, you might be just like, too far gone. You know what I mean? It’s maybe too much for you, okay.
And people use time off, they use vacations, they use the weekends, to blow off steam or to let your hair down, or to unwind or relax or whatever. And the problem with this approach is that you can’t just de-stress on the weekend or on vacation. And using food or alcohol, as stress management tools does not work either.
And I know so many people that have used food or alcohol to manage stress, and it’s an ongoing stress management strategy that does not work. It has the opposite effect that they’re looking for. So we want to handle stress differently. We want to handle stress like a badass, right? The way you handle stress like a badass The first step is to be proactive, not reactive.
You can’t react to stress in your life and then decide, well, I better come up with some kind of strategy to deal with this, you have to be proactive, you have to have a regular, ongoing stress management practice of some sort. This is not something you just do when you’re on vacation, it’s not something you just do on the weekends. It’s something that you have to do every single day. So first of all, you have to be proactive, and you have to have something that you’re doing every day to help manage stress, what is that? What would that look like for you?
But it depends, but some things that people like to do to manage stress would be taking a walk, going for a run, exercising in some way, you know, cycling, rowing, lifting weights, these are all things you can do every single day to help reduce stress. If that isn’t enough, you know, you can add in other types of exercise, yoga, you can do some hit training, you can do interval other types of interval training.
There’s just so many different ways from an exercise perspective that you can use, that you can do to help manage stress on an ongoing basis that there’s just really the possibilities are endless, right? Exercise is one of the best ways of getting your body taking your body from that state of heightened awareness, that state of fight or flight, that state of stress, and using the adrenaline using the cortisol using the glucose in your system and releasing it, you know, using it for, you know, intense exercise or, you know, whatever that might look like for you even a power walk, whatever. And then, you know, burning it off, basically, you know, burning off that stress.
And then, you know, doing this on an ongoing basis, we’ll just help to alleviate that stress, okay. But there’s other things that we can do, we can use, things like meditation, and journaling. These are great ways of helping to reduce stress on an ongoing basis. So this is something that you can do every single day, and just get in the habit of doing okay.
The other thing you have to do is if you want to handle stress, like a badass is you have to stop using food and alcohol, and drugs and other external substances as stress relievers, because they do not work, they have the opposite effect, they come with a bunch of baggage, they come with all the negative side effects. You know, if you’re using alcohol, for example, as a stress management tool, you are risking a lot more than just you know, maybe not reducing stress very well.
But you can find yourself more reliant on alcohol on a regular basis and using alcohol more regularly. And we know that, you know, using alcohol regularly will kick your body out of that fat burning mode and keep your body in fat storage mode. And your running performance is affected negatively with alcohol use, you know, for several days afterwards. So alcohol, drugs, food, we got to stop using these things to reduce stress, okay?
And the other step we need to really get our arms around here is that we need to learn how to manage our minds and our emotions, we need to learn how to manage our brains and our emotional response to things. When it comes to things in our environment that stress us out, like you know, that project at work or that divorce or whatever it is, a lot of times it’s not the event itself that’s causing the stress, but it’s our thoughts about it.
And we have to learn how to manage those thoughts and feelings. This is called managing your mind or, or managing your mindset around this stuff, right. So if you’re constantly thinking that this situation at work is going to stress you out and the situation with your ex is stressing you out, then you’re going to be in this heightened stress state from a mental and emotional standpoint, and then that’s going to cause the physical reactions too.
And sometimes, if we can do some journaling, if we can do some self awareness practices that will help to build the awareness of what it is we’re actually thinking and feeling in those moments where we feel stressed out. We can learn to manage those things, we can learn to manage our mind, we can learn to manage our emotional state and our mental state. Stress does not have to be detrimental to your health and well being.
Stress can be one of those things that you manage, like a badass, right and I want to encourage you to start doing something every single day to start managing your stress, what could that look like for you? Okay, I want you to start handling stress like a badass Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
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I’ll bet you’ve thought about eating healthy at one point or another in your life and then thought, nah…that’s going to be way too boring. If this sounds like something you’ve thought (or even said …
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 139 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, eating healthy is so boring. I bet that you’ve thought about eating healthy at some point in your life. And then you’ve thought, man, that’s going to be way too boring.
If this sounds like something you’ve thought or even maybe said out loud, then you are definitely not alone. People tell me all the time that they can’t stick to their food plan, or they don’t even want to start in the first place. Because it’s all going to be so boring. And I used to think this way too, but definitely not anymore. I’ve embraced the idea that food can be a little bit boring. If it means I get to live a long, healthy, happy life.
So today, I’m going to be talking about this big lie, this lie that eating healthy is boring. And how you might be able to radically improve your health by rethinking this by rethinking how exciting your meals really need to be. And as a licensed sports nutritionist, my focus is on food, it’s on nutrition, that’s like my number one focus, I want to help you make good choices I want you to I want to help you change your eating habits, I want to help you to change your body composition, to lose weight to gain muscle.
But really, what I want to help you with is to become the healthiest version of yourself to become healthy, fit and strong. So my main focus is on nutrition. This is the main driver of good health in my opinion. And I understand that you also want to crush your running goals. So this is where I’m a little bit different from other coaches.
So you might be training for a half marathon or a full marathon, or your first 5k. You know, maybe you’re just getting started with running. And lots of coaches out there will tell you that you cannot lose weight while you’re training for some race or while you’re running. You should stop running to lose weight. And I think this is ridiculous.
Okay, so for us, we, the people in my coaching program, we change our eating habits while we’re training for a marathon, lose weight feel better, running gets improved, our health is improved. And we do it all in a way that feels good for you. It’s not about severe caloric restriction, because we can’t do that when we’re training for a marathon. Right?
We’re not focused on counting calories and doing all this math about how many calories you should be eating because you ran this many miles, which means you burn this many calories and all that stuff, right? That’s just that’s too much. It’s ridiculous. That’s not how we do this, right? I do things differently.
I focus on helping you simplify nutrition, we don’t want to make it more complicated. And I want to help you change habits around food, simplify change habits, and make healthy eating just a way of life. It’s like it has to be part of who you are and what you do. Right. It has to be something you can do without a coach without me.
So the goal is to help you develop new habits, develop a new mindset. So that how you eat just becomes effortless. And it’s just what you do from here on out. So if you want help simplifying your nutrition, you know, maybe you’re ready to embrace the boring. I’ll talk about that more in a minute here.
And if you want a plan that also supports your love of running, then I want to encourage you to apply for my coaching program, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application and we’ll talk about coaching. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Sounds good. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project. That’s where the project is you.
Alright, let’s talk about how eating healthy is so boring. The reason I’m talking about this today is because I’ve had a lot of people say this to me recently. I’ve had clients, potential clients, I’ve had friends and family all tell me that they don’t want their food to be boring, and that some people haven’t even engaged in any type of, you know, change of their nutrition regimen, and they’re just thinking about it. And they’re just thinking about like, oh, I could never do that because it would be so boring.
Here’s the thing that is really just a thought. It’s a thought that you have in your head. And it’s a thought that stops you from making any kind of changes. And if you want something different for yourself, then you have to, like drop that thought that eating healthy is going to be boring, okay?
Eating healthy, can be fun, and can be sort of exciting. But if you think that it’s going to be boring, then you’re, that’s what’s going to be reality for you. If you think eating healthy, nutritious food on a regular basis is going to be boring, then that is your reality.
So I just want you to like embrace this idea that this idea of food being boring, is just a thought, okay, but it definitely is something that comes from somewhere. Right? So there’s this idea that food has to be exciting. Food has to be amazing. Every time we sit down to eat a meal, it has to be an experience to remember forever.
And really, this is all just marketing, right? This is all just marketing. It’s the big food companies that are coming together to market an idea to us. And the idea is this. The idea is that if you want to have an amazing, fulfilling, happy life, then every time you sit down to eat a meal, it has to be amazing. It has to be an entertainment experience.
Everything you eat has to be so delicious that you are compelled to post about it on social media. And there’s a term for these photos of food that make you drool and make you crave whatever food is in the picture. And they call it food porn, like porn. But for food, that’s kind of weird, if you think about it, okay. But this is what this is the term I didn’t make it up to this is the term that a lot of people use for this idea of posting all these pictures that make you drool and make you say, oh my gosh, I have to have that.
Another term for this feeling that you get is called euphoric recall. So you see a picture. And you remember how amazing the food was, and you remember an experience similar to that. So you may have eaten that exact thing, but it reminds you of something else that you’ve had. Or you can just be sitting around talking to friends and you can, you know, recall, this amazing meal that you had, or this amazing dessert that you had.
And it brings back all these thoughts and feelings of euphoria, like you start to feel amazing, your mouth will start to water and all you’re doing is just thinking about food. Right. And so this idea of euphoric recall, really, it’s a, it’s a mechanism that’s happening in our brains, where we are driven to remember very deeply and very vividly an experience.
And it’s a good evolutionary thing, because in the past, we may have, you know, encountered some berries or some honey as hunter gatherers, and we would, you know, eat that particular food. And we would want to remember that because it will be like, hey, this is a really good source of calories, or this is something that we can, you know, that is that tastes good. It’s delicious, it feels good. We want to remember that.
So your brain sort of locks that into your memory. But now we’re doing it about everything that we eat, and it’s becoming a problem. It’s becoming a problem, because people can’t even imagine switching their diet and eating a more healthy diet because they’re like, Well, what’s going to happen to all this amazing food that I remember, this is all just stuff that’s happening in your brain, by the way.
And food never used to be like this. Like this is a relatively new phenomenon. This idea of like food being so amazing, and there’s a meta or a scientific term for this. It’s called hyper palatable food. Hyper palatable means it’s uber uber palatable, like, like I mentioned, some berries, like you know, we’d find some wild blackberries, you know, as, you know, ancient hunter gatherers, and we’d be like, oh my god, this is so amazing, or fruits that we would find back in the day.
Now, those things have been engineered to become hyper palatable. And then there’s all these scientists that are actually creating hyper palatable foods in the lab, you know, and they really light up our pleasure centers in our brain, these foods light up our pleasure centers, just like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines. And they know what they’re doing. They know that it’s going to give us a rush of dopamine, they know, it’s going to give us a high.
And we’re just buying into this whole idea. I’m gonna sound a little crazy here. But that, to me, this is very much like what drug dealers do, they want to get you hooked on their product. Because once they get you hooked on your product, you can’t stop thinking about it, you want to get that feeling again. You know, and they know what they’re doing, they put it right on the label, like once you pop, you can’t stop.
They know that we’re addicted to these hyper palatable, processed foods, and we can’t get enough of them. So the scientists that are creating these things are creating something that really, really lights up our pleasure centers. A lot of times even more so than those drugs I mentioned.
They did this experiment with rats, I think poor little rats, right? They’re always like experimenting on them. But they gave them a choice between sugar and cocaine. And over time, the rats preferred the high that they got from the sugar, so they would go for the sugar or the cocaine.
So when you talk about something that’s addictive, I mean, is sugar addictive? I mean, we crave it like a drug. We get hooked on it, like it’s a drug, we can’t stop thinking about it, and how amazing it is, like a drug. But they say it’s not a drug. And that’s okay. I mean, they can say that, but we sure act like it is. We sure buy more and more and more of this stuff, because we can’t stop eating it and are hooked on the product. We’re hooked on the quote unquote, drug. Okay?
If we stop, we’re gonna have withdrawal symptoms. I see this all the time, I help people get off sugar all the time, by the way. And when we stop eating sugar, our brains start to freak out. And we have withdrawal symptoms, we have headaches, and we feel nauseous, and we’re grumpy. And it’s just like coming off of other drugs like cocaine or alcohol. Right.
And if we stop just the idea, just thinking about stopping makes us feel like we’re gonna be missing out on all that good stuff. All that amazing stuff. Everyone else is having all these amazing experiences, how come I can’t. So just the idea of like, not eating sugar, kind of freaks us out. You know, food can’t be boring. I can’t live a boring life. Everybody else is having an amazing life. They’re living their best life. Thank you, Cheesecake Factory.
So they’ve created this product that really gets us hooked on their product. And when we think about not using the product, we feel bad. So we don’t want to give it up. And we were being sold this idea that food has to be amazing. And it has to be an experience. And if you’re the kind of person that’s like, hey, I just want to eat healthy food. I just want to live a long, healthy life, healthy life, right?
But we can’t even do that. Because we have sort of convinced ourselves or we’ve been programmed to think that it’s just going to be too boring. Eating healthy food and living a long happy life can’t do it. It’s going to be too boring. It’s going to be too boring. So we have this. We have a physical addiction to food. We have a mental and emotional addiction to food, or obsessing over food just like an addict obsesses over their particular drug of choice.
And we’re certainly acting much more like this as a drug than a food. So I just want you to know that if you’re feeling like you cannot make a change like this in your life, like you can’t stop eating, you know the junk food and you can’t stop going to Cheesecake Factory or whatever it is that you’d like to do. Because this idea of like, oh my life is going to be boring. I’m never going to be happy again.
I just want you to rethink that. Because you know food did not used to be like this. This is a recent thing in the last 50 years especially really the last probably 20 years since the Internet, this has really become this has exploded, right? This idea that food has to be amazing or whatever. But really in the last few 100 years, let’s just say, that’s really no time at all in this, you know, in the life span of humans.
So we hunted and gathered, we came together to celebrate with food. And we came together with our tribe and with our families, we socialized, we connected we bonded over food. It was nourishment, it was fuel as a source of life. It was something to be set to celebrate, you know, it was important. And nobody would ever say like, oh, God, this is so boring.
You guys, woolly mammoth again, geez, this is so boring. I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous. But that’s kind of where we are today with all of this, right. But again, this is all just a big lie. And you don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to buy into this idea that food has to be super exciting and that it has to be a source of entertainment. And every meal has to be amazing.
Food was pretty boring for like 2 million years of human evolution. Why all of a sudden does it have to be some amazing experience? Now, every meal doesn’t have to be an entertainment experience, it could just be a meal. And listen, would you rather experience a little tiny bit of short term pleasure now, or a lifetime of health and happiness in the future?
Because here’s what we’re doing, we’re choosing one over the other. When we choose short term pleasure, we’re choosing to feel good momentarily, we’re choosing the effect that the drug has on us. We’re choosing the dopamine hit that we’re going to get. And we’re choosing that. We’re forgoing our health or forgoing what makes us healthy human beings and what really is going to drive our fitness, our health, improve our running, all those things that we want for ourselves.
So we’re programming ourselves to choose short term pleasure over long term health and happiness. What if you just delayed that pleasure? Like, what if you just said, you know what, I’m not going to give in to the idea that I have to have something amazing right now, in this moment? What if we just forego the immediate pleasure, for feeling amazing for the rest of your life? Like, what if you did that?
And runners are kind of bad at this in general, I’m just going to say that because the typical runner’s diet is just bad, like lots of refined carbs, lots of sugar, lots of alcohol, really kind of the worst things you can do for your health. But they think that, hey, I’m a runner, so I get to eat and drink whatever I want. You know, I’m gonna drink like crazy. Like, if there’s anybody else, it’d be like, Hey, I think you might have a little problem with drinking. But no, it’s like, I’m a runner.
So it’s okay. And if this is working for you, you get to eat and drink whatever you want, as often as you want, as much as you want. Donuts, you know, all the refined carbs, tons of sugar, alcohol, whatever. Like, that’s all good. If this is working for you, more power to you. But I’m gonna tell you right now, it’s probably not gonna work for long. It’s probably not sustainable. If it is, and you’re that rare person that can just do that for your whole life, and you can stay super healthy. That’s amazing.
I don’t see that happening, especially as you get a little bit older. You know, once you get into your 40s, things start to change, things get a little bit different. And I’ve found myself running with friends on Saturday mornings, and we talk about food. And we’re talking about what we’re going to be eating when we’re done running and people will be like, oh, yeah, I can’t wait.
I’m gonna have this huge stack of pancakes and waffles and doughnuts and croissants and drink some beer. And I’m like, really, beer on a Saturday morning? And they’re like, yeah, what are you going to be eating Patrick? I’m like, bacon, eggs, yogurt, fruit, and they’re like, boring. And I’m like, Hey, listen, I’ve been there. I’ve done all that. I’m done with that now, though. I’m 55. And then the best shape of my life. I’m fine with my food being boring. You call it whatever you want. I enjoy it.
Can we just embrace boring, though? Can we just drop the idea that food has to be amazing? Can we just accept that our food can be a little boring? I teach my clients how to simplify their meals. Meaning that every meal doesn’t have to be different. Every meal doesn’t have to involve recipes, and shopping, and tons of ingredients and lots of time and effort to prepare.
And I really think we do ourselves no good by holding on to the notion that every meal has to be an experience for the ages. One of my favorite meals that I love to eat and I eat this a lot, is a grilled ribeye steak with sea salt. Here are the two ingredients. It’s a ribeye steak and sea salt. And I put some salt on the steak and I cook it on the grill, and then I eat it. And that’s my meal.
Sometimes I’ll do like some steamed broccoli on the side with some sea salt and lots of grass fed butter melted on there. Simple, delicious, effortless, two ingredients, almost no time to prepare. It’s simple. You can call that boring if you want to. I love it. And it’s so delicious. Boring does not mean it has to taste bad or it can’t be delicious. I love the simplicity of food these days.
Because when I eat food now I can really taste the flavors. Because I’m not making everything into this big ordeal, right? You can change your palate, your tastes will change over time. When you start to simplify, and you get off the hyper palatable foods and you start eating real foods, foods will start to taste much better than they ever have before.
So you could eat something like a plain chicken breast with salt and pepper on it. You’re like, oh my god, this is like the best thing I’ve ever had. And I never realized this until I stopped eating all the junk food. And when I stopped eating all the junk food, all that stuff that’s been designed to be like super, hyper delicious or whatever. All of a sudden, the simpler things just taste so, so good.
I think you know, we should still enjoy food. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying food should not taste good. And I’ve heard people say that food is fuel and it should just be fuel and you shouldn’t even enjoy it. And I’m like, no, we should enjoy food. We’ve been programmed to enjoy food, it’s what’s kept us alive for millions of years, if we didn’t enjoy food, we wouldn’t go back to it, we wouldn’t seek out nourishment when we need it. You know.
So I think food can be both simple, and delicious. I think food can be kind of boring, and still tastes amazing. So this isn’t about not enjoying ourselves or not enjoying food. I just think we have to get away from this idea that every food experience has to be amazing. Now I went out to dinner last night, and I had a steak and it had this kind of like South American sauce on it. And it was really delicious. It was really good. I really enjoyed it.
And every now and then I will go out to dinner. And I will do something that is a little bit more of an experience around food. And, you know, I might go out with friends or my girlfriend or something like that, and we come together and we can enjoy food. And we like I mentioned, you know, our ancestors would come and celebrate around food and it’s how we bonded and connected and how we grew closer together. And I still think we should do that.
But I think we can also simplify things. And that every food experience doesn’t have to be, you know, something amazing, right? Because when we have this idea when we have this thought in our head that every food experience has to be amazing, then, just the idea of changing our our nutrition plan, changing our diet is gonna seem just undoable, it’s just gonna seem too hard. It’s gonna seem too hard.
So, the idea that food has to be an experience, we just have to squash that idea. Start by simplifying food, make it simple. What can you do to simplify a meal? Stick with real food food that still looks like food. Try to stay away from anything that has a marketing message behind it right? So don’t be eating that stuff that’s been concocted in a lab to get you hooked on the food like an addict is hooked on the drug. Gotta get away from that.
Start to make better choices and start to simplify your food. And yes, it can be boring. Eating healthy can be boring, and it can be delicious. And it can improve your health and it can improve your fitness and it can help you improve your running all those things.
And remember, if you want help with this, if you want help simplifying your nutrition, you know maybe you’re ready now to embrace the boring and you want to be able to support your running performance reach out. I’m always always here for you. Cool, love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Have you ever considered how alcohol might be negatively affecting you? Do you know how alcohol affects your running performance or your ability to lose weight? Have you ever considered taking a …
Continue Reading about 138. Is Alcohol Really Working for You? →
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 138 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, is alcohol really working for you? Have you ever considered how alcohol might be negatively affecting you? Do you know how alcohol affects your running performance? Or your ability to maintain or lose weight? Have you ever considered taking a break from drinking? Or does the mere idea of quitting kind of send you into panic mode?
So today, I want to pose this question. Is alcohol really working for you? Or are you just acting like it is? It’s a legit question. And it’s a question that I really honestly want you to consider while you’re listening to this episode today. Because drinking alcohol has been normalized, and even glorified for centuries. But is it really doing you any good at all? Is alcohol all it’s cracked up to be?
In this episode, I’m going to tackle the big question of whether or not alcohol is actually working for you. Or maybe it’s working against you. And just so you know, this is another one of those tough love episodes. So you might want to strap in, but I know you can totally handle it. So I just got back from a run. And I feel amazing.
And I used to never think that I could be a runner. Because back in the day, I drank a lot. I smoked cigarettes, I ate garbage food, I never exercised, I was fat, and out of shape, and poisoning myself daily. And then one day I woke up, I woke up and I was hung over again. And I did something that I had never even considered doing before. And that is: I asked for help.
I knew for many, many years that I had to quit drinking, but it seemed way too hard for me to do on my own, it seemed impossible. I tried it kinda sorta here and there. But, you know, doing it on my own just seemed like just too big of an endeavor and seemed too impossible for me.
But asking for help, all of a sudden, it was like this light bulb moment that I had where I was like, You know what, I can get some help. And I bet I can do this if I get some help. So asking for help, for help seemed for the first time doable like quitting drinking seemed doable. And of course, I was ready to change at that moment. And I was finally willing to do something about it, I was willing to ask for help.
And what that looked like was, you know, I went to therapy, I did some 12 step work, I had several mentors along the way to becoming a sober person. But getting help was really the number one key ingredient in the recipe that was my getting sober my sobriety.
And it was the same when I gave up eating junk food, you know, I got someone to help me through that. And it was the first time I ever invested in myself in this way. It was also by far the best thing I’ve ever done for myself, not just because it helped me to become the healthy, happy fit person I am today.
Because it also led me down this path of helping other runners like you to quit eating garbage and just start becoming the best version of yourself. So if you’re ready to change if you’re ready to maybe quit drinking or quit eating junk food, too.
If you’re also willing to change and willing to ask for help willing to accept help, then you should really consider coaching. And coaching with me looks a little bit different than the way other people do this. There’s several different components to how I do my coaching program. So there’s one on one coaching with me, where you get to work with me personally to help you figure out a plan for you help you to stay on track.
On that plan, we keep course correcting as needed. We do group coaching, this is a very powerful component of the coaching project, where you get the support of other people that are going through the same thing you’re going through, we share wins, we celebrate progress, we support each other, we encourage and inspire one another.
I have a huge library of training materials you’ll have access to that you can kind of go through at your own pace. And then in between group coaching calls, and one on one coaching calls, you have access to me via messaging so that, you know you have this 24/7 lifeline to me, basically.
So I’m with you all the time. You can reach out, you can ask questions, you can get help, you can get support, you can get some accountability at any time. I also have a private podcast channel that is different from the podcast channel you’re listening to right now. And this is where I record all my group coaching calls.
So there’s a backlog of a year and a half of trainings and things like that, that you have access to that you can listen to while you’re out running. So there’s all these different components of my coaching program. And I call this an immersive coaching program because you’re immersed in this world of people and information and knowledge and support and encouragement and motivation and inspiration and accountability to help you stay on track to help you achieve your goals to help you become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself.
So if this is something that interests you, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. You have to apply for coaching. We’ll have a short conversation, and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool, I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. And I’ll see you soon.
Okay, so let’s talk about whether or not alcohol is really working for you. The first thing I want to kind of go over is like what is alcohol actually? You know, we think of alcohol as just being like cool craft IPAs and rose and you know, white claw and all these things. But what is alcohol? What is the active ingredient in alcohol?
So, alcohol, the active ingredient is ethanol. It’s also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol drinking alcohol. And it’s an organic chemical compound. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a wine-like odor and a pungent taste. It is a psychoactive drug. It’s a recreational drug, and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.
I want to make this very, very clear that this is a psychoactive recreational drug that we are talking about here. Okay. Ethanol is naturally produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeast or via petrochemical processes such as ethylene hydration. I don’t even know what that means.
It has medical applications as an antiseptic, and a disinfectant, because it kills organisms by denaturing their proteins. It’s used as a chemical solvent. It’s used as a fuel source. It is a central nervous system depressant. And ethanol is one of the most commonly consumed psychoactive drugs.
Now, doesn’t that sound amazing? Doesn’t that one want to make you go out and have a few cocktails with friends? Ethanol is poisonous and toxic. It’s used as a fuel. They literally use it in cars as fuel.
And they use it to kill organisms. So anything that comes in contact with it really kills and is poisonous. So just know that what we’re talking about here is a pretty serious poison. All right. Now, of course the dosage does matter.
But I want you to consider something I want you to consider whether or not you would drink a little bit of rat poison. Now, what if rat poison had become, you know, socially acceptable, or something like heroin? You know, what about just using a little bit of heroin?
You know, of course the dosage matters, but what if you just did a little bit? You know, so it sounds crazy that I would make that comparison. But isn’t that crazy? I don’t think so. Here’s the thing, when you drink alcohol, it affects you negatively. And I’m going to go through some of the reasons why you may want to abstain from drinking alcohol, because there’s a lot of negative effects of drinking alcohol, okay?
Just so you know, though, that when you drink, even one to two drinks a week, it takes three to four days to fully remove that alcohol from your system. So if you’re drinking just once or twice a week, you’re never fully removing alcohol from your body, that alcohol is always in your system. And it’s going to affect you negatively, daily. All right.
So even drinking once or twice a week, if you think oh, you know, it’s fine. But you’re actually just never going to fully metabolize and process and remove that alcohol from your system. Okay. So, here are some things to consider, some negative effects of drinking alcohol that you may want to consider.
So the first one is that it disrupts sleep patterns and disrupts your sleep, it actually increases stress, anxiety, and increases memory loss. And also you’re going to have this lack of recovery from workouts, because you’re not getting enough sleep. Sleep is so important for your overall health.
And if you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight, and, you know, train for a marathon or something like that, and you’re constantly not getting a good night’s sleep, you may want to consider removing alcohol, because you’re going to sleep much better, okay?
Alcohol also fuels anxiety. So there’s something called AB response when you consume a drug. So any drug whatsoever will produce two responses in the body and a response and a B response. So the effect of the drug produces an A response, right, there’s this a process that happens when you drink alcohol. And that could be like, oh, you feel more relaxed, okay.
So it does produce an effect, right, it may take the edge off a little bit, you may be a little bit distressed, you may reduce anxiety a little bit, okay. So that’s the A response. But then it triggers a B response, which tends to last much longer than the a process. So that B process is the exact opposite of a process.
And again, this is the same for any drug. So if the drug makes you feel relaxed, that’s the A process then the process will make you feel more anxious, more tense, more stressed out more anxiety. You’re going to experience actually, more anxiety, the more you go for the drink. And the more you drink, the more tense and anxious you’re actually going to be most of the time, the effect you’re looking for that a response is very short lived, it’s very fleeting.
The counteractive effect, that B response, is more persistent and long lasting. So in essence, alcohol fuels anxiety, it causes anxiety, it doesn’t manage anxiety, if you think you’re using alcohol to de stress, think again, you’re actually going to become more stressed out just because of the use of the drug. Okay.
Another negative effect of using alcohol is that it impedes detoxification. So your liver is responsible for detoxifying your body of harmful compounds that you eat, drink, rub on your skin breeze, whatever your liver cannot function, you know, cannot do other things while it’s processing.
The alcohol takes precedence over everything else. Detoxification is put on hold. Whenever alcohol is present, that means all these toxins that your liver should be removing from your system are being stored in your body and they get stored in your own adipose tissue, your own body fat, okay?
Drinking alcohol also causes weight gain. You know, alcohol is high in sugar, it’s high in calories. It’s has zero nutritional value. It’s not a food substance. You don’t need to drink alcohol. It’s not an essential nutrient that we have to have. It’s a poison, okay? It’s also a natural appetite stimulant. It numbs the body’s natural fullness sensors, so you don’t feel like you ever get full, so you end up eating more, and you don’t feel you don’t get that sense of fullness when you eat.
And so you typically eat more than you would normally eat. So you’re over eating, it increases sugar cravings, it increases carbohydrate cravings. And if you don’t believe me, have you ever been in line at a White Castle, two or three o’clock in the morning after drinking? Yeah, because all you want is french fries, and sliders, and apparently diarrhea.
But anyway, it’s also the only beverage without a nutritional label or an ingredient list. Like you don’t have to, they don’t have to put those things on there. All right. Another thing about drinking is that you tend to make poor choices when you’re drinking.
So you tend to, your inhibition, sort of like just goes out the window, and you’re just like, whatever, let’s just eat junk food, you know, whatever. So if you’re like, more likely, if you’re trying to stay on an eating plan, and you’re trying to eat healthy food, you’re much more likely to eat junk food, when you’re drinking, right, it messes up your cognitive thinking you’re just start making bad choices, you know, it also, when you’re drinking alcohol, it shuts down fat burning.
So your body is trying to metabolize the alcohol. And again, like the liver, it’s going to prioritize metabolizing or using alcohol as a fuel source before anything else. So if you’re trying to be a fat adapted athlete, and you’re trying to do all these great things for yourself, and you’re trying to, you know, become a more efficient fat burner, and you’re, you know, you’re attempting to use, you know, become a fat adapted runner, and, and then you’re drinking on a regular basis, you’re just kind of shutting all that down, you’re shutting off that whole process, right.
And, again, three or four days just from having one drink, and it could take three to four days for that to leave your body. So if you’re drinking once or twice a week, just know that you are completely shutting down your fat burning process, okay?
Alcohol also messes up your brain, it really does. They’ve shown that alcohol actually affects every region of the brain. So they call it the neurological sledgehammer. It affects memory, motor function, personality, inhibition, emotional volatility, every area of your brain gets affected negatively from alcohol.
And then a few things that are specific for running you know, alcohol will reduce your athletic performance studies have shown that your aerobic performance is going to be diminished. The day after consuming alcohol like that run, you may go out Friday night and have a bunch of beers and then Saturday morning you get up to run, that run is not going to be at your best, you’re going to be your performance will be diminished for sure.
A study in the journal nutrients also showed that drinking alcohol reduces muscle strength. Well, that’s not good. We don’t want to reduce muscle strength, we want our muscles to be strong and want them to do what they’re supposed to do.
And another study actually showed that alcohol will negatively impact protein synthesis. Protein synthesis is the ability of your body to turn protein into muscle. So if you’re trying to build muscle, if you’re doing some strength training to try to build muscle, then drinking alcohol will completely shut that process down. And it will negatively impact your ability to turn protein into muscle. Okay.
Alcohol is also an anti nutrient. Alcohol is void of nutrients, it does not have vitamins or minerals. So alcohol ends up robbing your body of the micronutrients that it needs just so the body can assimilate the alcohol and metabolize the alcohol it depletes your body of essential nutrients needed to maintain good health. Alcohol diminishes your body’s ability to absorb other nutrients as well.
And this is not good because if again, if you’re trying to eat healthy, but you’re drinking, your body’s not going to be able to absorb the good food that you’re eating, you’re not going to be able to absorb the nutrients that your body actually needs. Okay? Why spend all this time eating healthy and then drinking alcohol to just leech all that out of you? It doesn’t make any sense at all, okay.
And drinking alcohol also makes you more prone to premature fatigue during your next exercise session. So you know, not only is your aerobic performance diminished, but you will crash and burn faster. You won’t be able to run as long because of the alcohol Okay? Alcohol also impedes recovery especially if you drink you know soon after a workout.
And I can’t tell you how many runners I see, finish a run and then crack open some beers like to celebrate that run. Drinking alcohol increases dehydration, it interferes with glycogen replenishing. It inhibits repair of muscle tissue. It suppresses your production of testosterone and human growth hormone.
All of these things are going to really, you know, harm your recovery process. The toxic impact of just one drink will depress the endocrine system dramatically. So recovery from intense training is basically canceled until your body metabolizes all the alcohol. Again, we’re talking about three or four days, your body is always trying to get to homeostasis, wants to get to normal, it wants everything to be balanced and good.
And it cannot get there until the alcohol is gone from your system. Alcohol is also linked to seven different types of cancer. Alcohol is a carcinogen. It’s carcinogenic, it causes cancer and over 100 studies confirm the link between drinking and cancer, especially breast cancer.
Women who drink just three alcoholic beverages a week have a 15% higher risk of breast cancer. And that risk has increased by 10%. For each additional drink you have daily. It’s also responsible or linked to at least other cancers like mouth and throat, esophagus, voicebox, liver, colon rectum, basically, anywhere in the digestive system that alcohol comes into contact with is at risk for cancer.
Again, remember we talked about it being a poison, a toxin, it kills microorganisms, it denatures proteins. So drinking this stuff, putting it into your body is going to really negatively affect you in so many different ways. Now, you might be thinking, I’m just being overly dramatic or overly negative about alcohol. But I’m really not. These are just facts, you get to decide what you want to do.
If you want to continue using the drug, use the drug, I don’t care. But if you find that you want to stop, or maybe you can’t stop, even though you want to just know that I can help with that. Okay, you can reach out to me, we can talk about what that might look like for you.
I’ve been living alcohol free for over 15 years. And I never thought I could be a non drinker. I never thought I could get through a weekend or a holiday or a birthday or a Wednesday. without drinking. I never thought I could do it. But my life is so much richer now. So much fuller, so much more meaningful. I feel so much better about myself.
I have connections with other human beings, real connections with other human beings now, I don’t have to go dive into a bottle to escape my problems or my fears, my anxieties are up, I still have anxiety I do. I just don’t use alcohol anymore. I’ve come up with other coping mechanisms, other emotional management tools. You don’t have to use alcohol to get through life.
If you think you have to use it, if you think that’s the only choice for you. I’m telling you it’s not. And if somebody like me, can quit after drinking for 25 years. You can too. Because alcohol is addictive. And they’ve done some studies where they’ve shown that alcohol is just as addictive as drugs like cocaine.
Now, people might say well, oh gosh, Patrick, you can’t make that comparison. Cocaine is way more dangerous. And it’s way more addictive. No, it is not. It’s exactly as addictive as alcohol, alcohol and cocaine are just as addictive. The biggest difference is that cocaine is highly regulated. And it’s illegal. And it doesn’t kill as many people, it doesn’t cause as many problems.
Oh, that was the only difference is really alcohol causes more deaths per year, than cocaine, for sure. You know, and the problems related to alcohol are tenfold compared to cocaine. And if you’re, you know, if you want to know a little bit about what the cycle of addiction looks like it kind of looks like this.
And this is the same cycle for all addictions, whether it’s cocaine, or cigarettes, or pornography, or shopping, or sex, or sugar, or alcohol, they all work the same. Okay? So you, you take your drug, like drinking alcohol, and you get this release of dopamine and dopamine gets released in unnaturally high amounts because the drug produces an unnatural high for you.
And that high is because a lot of it is because of the dopamine that your brain emits right in these unnaturally high amounts. And then glutamate gets released. Now, glutamate will respond to it’s kind of like a memory locking tool, if you want to put it that way.
Okay, it’s another neurotransmitter, but glutamate will get released. Also in unnaturally high amounts to help you kind of remember the effect to lock it into your memory banks. If you think about this, back in the caveman days, you know, we would find some honey, and we would eat the honey. And we would get that dopamine hit and we go like, ooh, that’s really good. But then we get this glutamate response to this says, we gotta remember this, this is really good.
This is a good source of calories. And this is something that we should come back to. So we got to remember, like where we are, where do we find this? How did this make us feel? All that stuff, right? So that’s what glutamate does. So you drink alcohol, you get the dopamine hit, you get the glutamate response, which locks it into your memory. And then that memory is what you recall, when we talk about, there’s this idea called euphoric recall, where you start to recall the feeling that you get from drinking alcohol, or doing whatever your drug of choice is.
And it produces this like euphoric feeling. And like, you just want that euphoric feeling again, you know, it makes you remember that euphoric feeling. All drugs produce this effect, okay. And then you go back to that drug, and that’s the cycle, right? You drink it, you drink alcohol, dopamine gets released, glutamate gets released, then you have that euphoric recall, you want it again, you know, you need the alcohol again, to give you that response again.
And then the cycle just continues. You’ve got to get out of the cycle. It’s a cycle that you can get out of, you can, you’re not hopeless, whether it’s sugar, or alcohol, or cigarettes, or whatever, you can jump off that cycle at any time. Is it easy? No, it’s hard. It’s hard to do.
One of the things that makes it hard is that we are being sold a bill of goods about alcohol, we’re being marketed to. Alcohol is not required to relax. Alcohol is not required to enjoy life, you don’t need alcohol to unwind. You don’t need alcohol to de-stress. You don’t need a drink to have a good time with your friends. I do all these things without alcohol, just fine. And I have for the last 15 years.
I relax, just fine, I do stress, I have a good time with friends. I enjoy parties and holidays, and birthdays now without alcohol, and it’s all good. But the big alcohol companies, they’re marketing an idea to you that in order to have a happy, fun life, alcohol is a requirement. But it’s not it’s not a requirement. Drinking alcohol has almost zero positive benefits, you know, maybe feels good for a minute, but it has this huge list of negative consequences. How is this possibly the key to a healthy, happy life? Why do we think this is the answer? It’s not.
And you might think that you’re deciding for yourself that you want to drink this craft IPA because it makes you feel cool, and hip and sophisticated. And this is what people do. This is you know, and this is what I’m choosing for myself, but it’s really not your decision at all. This is actually part of a marketing tactic and it’s called engineered consent.
And this idea of engineered consent was first introduced by a guy named Edward Bernays. He was a public relations guru back in 1929. And he was working for the big tobacco companies, American Tobacco companies specifically, and they wanted to tap into a new market.
They wanted to get more women to smoke. Like women were smoking at the time, but they were doing it very covertly. They’re doing it behind closed doors, not in public. So they wanted to get more women to smoke in public, because it was kind of taboo at the time. So Bernays hired a bunch of women to smoke in the Easter Parade, 1929 Easter Parade, walking down Fifth Avenue, in New York City, during the Easter Parade, all these women smoking, openly smoking cigarettes, and it was like, it was really unheard of at the time, right.
And it drew a lot of attention. And it drew a lot of publicity, and it drew a lot of, you know, newspapers and the media really picked up on this. And the term they use to, to describe what was going on the women said, we are lighting up our torches of freedom, torches of freedom, because they were trying to exploit women’s aspirations.
During this, it was like the first wave of feminism, right, we can do what we want, we can smoke in public, light up your torches of freedom, ladies. And it became a catchphrase, and it spread like wildfire. So women thought they were being bold and brave and sticking it to the man, I’m gonna light up my torch of freedom, I can smoke whenever and wherever I want to.
But in reality, the man engineered the whole thing. It was all engineered consent. So let’s go back to that craft IPA. You think you’re drinking of your own freewill? You think you’re consenting? You think this is your idea, but it’s really not that consent has been fabricated. It’s been engineered by the alcohol companies, by social media influencers, by billboards, by TV commercials to make you think that you’re making a good decision for yourself. That’s what they want you to think. It’s a big marketing ploy. Okay.
And you may or may not believe me here, you may be thinking I’ve kind of lost it. You may be in denial, maybe a little bit of both. Here’s a quote from Mark Twain that I love. He said, “It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they’ve been fooled.” So is alcohol the new cigarettes? So imagine, right now, if I was talking about cigarettes, would you be fighting me about this at all? Would you be in your head, you know, denying that this is the thing would you be, you know, thinking like Patrick, you’re crazy. Cigarettes are fine, you know?
Would you be like, you know, really stating your case why everybody should smoke and, you know, just smoke in moderation. Of course, would you try to convince me that, that, you know, other people might have a problem with smoking, but you’re fine. Like you can stop whenever you want to? Doesn’t that sound stupid, the way I’m saying this isn’t the sound kind of crazy. I think it’s crazy. That is like right now, I think it’s crazy to think that smoking cigarettes in any amount is okay. Right? Wouldn’t you agree with me on that? Like we should, nobody should smoke, right? It’s so they’ve proven it is so bad for you, right?
But here’s the thing, I think alcohol is just the new cigarettes. And I think we’re all gonna wake up one day and say, Oh, my God, I can’t believe we used to think drinking poison was fun. And that there were these places called bars, where they actually just served alcohol to people and they would drink it. And moms would actually drink alcohol in front of their kids.
And they would even dress their babies in onesies that said, My mommy drinks because I cry and everyone would laugh because they thought it was funny. And we would say to ourselves man weren’t times messed up back then. Wasn’t that crazy? Here’s the thing, social norms. They’re always changing. Smoking cigarettes is no longer widely accepted as being safe. It’s not cool anymore.
You can’t smoke indoors and most places you can’t smoke on airplanes. The first time I got into an airplane, the first airplane ride I ever took. I sat in the back, I sat in the smoking section. I smoked a cigarette on a plane. I cannot imagine doing that today. It’s so crazy, right? Coca Cola is no longer made with cocaine. You know they took that ingredient out. They’re like we probably shouldn’t put this in this drink okay, we’ll just put way more sugar in there and hopefully get people addicted that way. So good. Mission accomplished. Coca Cola. Good job there.
There’s no more opium dens where you can go and like smoke opium and hang out. I don’t know, I don’t think there are, maybe there are somewhere but I have a feeling this is not a normal thing anymore. You know, we don’t do frontal lobotomies on people like ice pick through the head kind of a thing. You know, this is crazy, right?
But people used to do that. And they thought it was like pretty normal. So social norms are changing. We changed, you know, our concepts of what’s acceptable, what’s normal, what’s healthy, what’s good for us over time. And I think alcohol is time is coming. There’s so many people that are like, do like, drinking alcohol is not okay. In any amount. It’s really bad, very, and has a lot of negative consequences.
There’s very few up ticks to drinking, there’s very few positives that you get out of drinking, you get a fleeting sense of relaxation, but then all those other things that I talked about, right. And one excuse I hear from people a lot is that they feel pressured from friends, or family members, but a lot of times it’s friends push you to drink, or judge you if you don’t drink.
Here’s the thing if your friends are pushing alcohol on you, or if they’re pressuring you to drink or judging you, because you drink or don’t drink, it’s time to get new friends, up level your friends. It’s plain and simple. If you’re, if your friends don’t respect your decision to not drink, these are not your friends. These are not people that have your best interest in mind.
And there’s a lot of blaming and shaming that goes on in this world of addiction around sugar addiction around alcohol and drug addiction. And it goes something like this, like alcohol is fine. That’s not the problem. You’re the problem. The problem is you, not that drug, not the poison over there. You’re the problem. So would you argue that it’s the person? That’s the problem, not the heroin, or the crystal meth or the cigarettes?
I think we’re all pretty clear that if those things are really terrible, you know, oh, no, those things are fine. You just have to moderate. If you can’t moderate then you’re broken. There’s something wrong with you. And this is the same BS that a lot of doctors and dieticians spew about sugar consumption. They’re like sugar is not addictive. It’s not the sugar. There’s nothing wrong with sugar, you just have no willpower. You have to just use it in moderation.
And this is the same message that the sugar industry pushes on us the Coca Cola move more campaign, blaming us and shaming us into thinking we’re the problem. Not the drug that they’re pushing on us to sugar isn’t the problem. You’re just not exercising enough. Stop being lazy. Get
off your ass and exercise more. Drink plenty of Coca Cola, that’s fine. That’s not the problem. You just got to exercise more.
Alcohol has the same kind of thing. They call it the drink responsibly campaign. This is the slogan of the alcohol industry: drink responsibly. So they’re kind of shaming you and blaming you if you overdo it. If you can’t handle your liquor, or if you die of alcohol poisoning. It’s not the alcohol that poisoned you. It was just you, you just overdid it. It’s the equivalent saying like just shoot heroin responsibly, snort responsibly.
You’re the problem, not our drug. Our drug is fine. There’s plenty people that drink responsibly. If you can’t, that’s your fault. You’re probably an alcoholic, you’re not normal. There’s something wrong with you. So let me finish up with this. I just want to say this, I cannot in good conscience tell you that drinking alcohol, any amount of alcohol is okay. I can’t. It’s like the equivalent of telling you that smoking cigarettes is okay. Or that occasionally snorting cocaine or shooting heroin every now and then is fine or that smoking some crystal meth is cool. It’s all good.
I can’t do that. I can’t in good conscience tell you that alcohol is okay. You know, just don’t overdo it as long as you can do it in moderation, don’t smoke, snort or shoot up, you know, irresponsibly. If you want to lose weight, if you want improve your health, if you want improve your writing, if you want to get stronger, if you want to feel amazing, if you want to sleep amazing. If you want to recover properly, if you want to lead an overall healthier life, free of stress and anxiety, free of most cancers: stop ingesting the poison.
If you think I’m being a big buzzkill here, I’ll own that. I will be the buzzkill here, okay, my job is to teach you what you need to know so that you can become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And drinking alcohol undermines all of that as the opposite of that. My mission is to lead by example. And I’m doing that my mission is to lead by example.
And I want to inspire you to do the same. And I feel that my message here today is absolutely in alignment with my mission and my values. I work with countless runners who love to drink, and they can’t possibly imagine life without alcohol. And I challenge them, I say, hey, let’s take a break from drinking for like 30 days and see how you feel. And they freak out a little bit at first, because they just cannot imagine not drinking, but then they do it.
And they’re amazed to how much better they feel. And they start to lose weight, and running gets easier. And then they say, Patrick, I don’t even miss it. I don’t miss alcohol at all. So I feel good about my message here today. I feel good about the work I’m doing. And I hold firm in my beliefs about alcohol. And living an alcohol free life will always be the better way to live for me, for you, for all of us. And if you want help quitting, I’m here for you. Always, always here for you. I love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
There are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. Some of these concepts have been around for a very long time and just seem like they hold water but a lot of …
Continue Reading about 131. Busting the Biggest Nutrition Myths →
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 131 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths. So there are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. And some of these concepts have been around for a very long time, decades. And they just seem like they’re legit.
They seem like they hold water, but a lot of them just don’t, or at least they don’t anymore. So there’s a lot of new studies that are being published and a lot of new data that’s being looked at and analyzed. And we have to be able to decipher now, because it’s a different time, a different era, we have to be able to decipher now what’s true, and what’s not.
And it’s not always easy, I get that. And that’s why I put together this episode to hopefully shine the light on and bust some of the biggest nutrition myths. Okay, so today I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths, I’m providing you with some actionable advice to help you take control of your health, and get you on the right track.
And listen, getting healthy, losing weight or maintaining your weight. running marathons this stuff, it’s not easy, becoming the healthiest version of yourself. It takes time. It takes consistency, it takes discipline, it takes know-how. And I provide all of that in the Running Lean coaching project. This is my intensive coaching program that gives you all the knowledge, all the support, all of the accountability that you need to improve your health and make changes that last permanently.
We’re not interested in quick fixes. In my program, we’re not trying to teach you the fastest way to lose weight. This isn’t about weight loss schemes, or fad diets, we’re all about sustainability. What you can do, starting now to change your health for the better and how to maintain it for the rest of your life.
Remember that becoming healthy, it’s not a destination you’re trying to get to there is no finish line, I wish there was I wish I could tell you that at some point, you could just stop doing all this, you can stop eating healthy, you can eat all the junk food that you want, you can stop exercising, but that’s not the way it is. It’s not a temporary state of being, this becomes who we are and becomes what we do from here on out.
So you have to embrace this concept. And if you’re feeling compelled to change your health for the better, if you’re feeling compelled to lose weight, finally lose it for good for the last time. And if you’re longing to become that best and most badass version of yourself, I want to encourage you to actually do something about it today, take some small action steps today.
And if you want help, I’m here for you. I’m always here for you really, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You can fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a call, we can talk about your goals and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not for everybody, that’s totally fine. Again, this is for the people who want to commit to this way of life.
Who will make these changes last for good, then this is a good program for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply, I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, onto busting the biggest nutrition myths. So I had some fun putting this episode together. And the reason I’m talking about this is because there are a lot of myths floating around out there around nutrition and around, you know what it means to eat healthy. And a lot of this stuff has been kind of propagated over decades. It’s been propagated in the media. It’s been propagated by, you know, Jim Rose, and all kinds of stuff.
And I just want to like, for once and for all like just talk about some of the stuff that comes up often. I hear these concepts come up often with clients, they ask me these questions all the time. And so I put together a list of some of the most common questions that people ask and the common questions that people have been sort of misunderstood over the last few decades.
And I wanted to kind of tell you like what’s legit and what’s not, like what’s real, you know, what, what are things that we can honestly say are concerns and what are things we should just ignore? Okay, so I wanted to make sure that we are getting on the same page with some fundamental concepts here. And that we don’t, we’re not being manipulated by old outdated information anymore. Okay.
So that’s why I’m talking about this today. And I’m just going to go through a list of some of the biggest myths that I’ve, you know, been kind of researching, and the biggest questions that I get from clients and potential clients. And I wanted to share this with you guys, I think it’s gonna be really helpful.
So the first one, and I’ve talked about this so many times before, but I’m going to talk about it again, the first one is that calories are all that matters, right? If you want to lose weight, you’ve just got to cut your calories, right, calories in versus calories out, run more and eat less. And this is called the energy balance theory, the energy balance theory says that the energy that you take in calories coming in should be less than the energy that you’re putting out through exercise, right?
And this theory, they call it a theory, because it’s not the truth. This theory works fine. If we were a closed system, like a steam engine, but we’re not steam engines, the human body is much more complicated. And there are some issues with this theory. And, you know, like I said, I’ve talked about this so many times in the past, but I’ll just give you a couple of quick bullet points here on why this theory just doesn’t hold water. Okay.
So if you cut your calories, yes, you can lose weight, right? When it comes to losing weight, if you cut calories dramatically, you can lose a lot of weight pretty quickly, too. The problem with this, though, is it’s not sustainable. If you cut your calories too low for too long, this will effectively slow down your metabolism.
When your metabolism slows down, the amount of energy that you’re taking in becomes the amount of energy that your body is willing to put out there. So your resting metabolic rate, that’s the way you burn calories at rest just hanging around being you, this is the most calories that you burn through the day, by the way.
So because it takes calories to keep your heart beating, and your lungs working, and your blood flowing, and all these other things that all the other processes are happening with your body digestion and your brain and all this stuff. So actually you consume more calories throughout the day by just sitting around doing nothing than you do through exercise, right?
So but your resting metabolic rate will effectively slow down to match the calories that you have coming in. So let’s say you have a resting metabolic rate of like 1800 calories, so you just burn 1800 calories a day at rest, then you start eating, you decide you want to lose weight, so you start eating like 800 calories a day. And you do this for some time, you’ll probably lose some weight at the beginning.
But what will happen is your resting metabolic rate will slow down to kind of match that 800 calories that it’s getting in energy because your body’s like, listen, we’re only getting 800 calories of energy a day, we’re going to slow down to kind of match what’s coming in. So we don’t die of starvation and we don’t emaciate ourselves and die.
So it’s going to slow down your metabolism to match what’s coming in. And so let’s say you’re messing with your resting metabolic rate and it changes and it drops to 1000 or, or 800 calories a day. Okay, now that 800 calories a day that you’re eating doesn’t work for weight loss anymore, you’re going to start to gain a little bit of weight and gain a little bit of weight. And you’re going to be like, wait a minute, why is this not working anymore? And this is why.
And this is why programs like The Biggest Loser, they dramatically cut calories and these people lose a ton of weight real fast. But they don’t keep it off. It’s not sustainable. This is not a sustainable weight loss strategy. It just isn’t. And so we have to do something different. We have to change the calories and the type of calories that we’re eating matters.
It’s not about the numbers, you know, a calorie. A calorie is just a unit of measure. It’s how we measure energy. It’s the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water or one milliliter of water. One degree Celsius like it’s just, you know, how, how long does it take or how much energy does it take to increase the temperature of the water by one degree? That’s what a calorie is. Okay, so it’s just a unit of measure.
And, but that’s not taking into consideration the types of foods that you’re eating, okay? And the types of food you’re eating absolutely matter, right? So when we’re talking about quality of food, quality of nutrition, it really does matter. So you could take 300 calories of doughnuts, let’s say you can have a couple of donuts, they’re equal, like 300 calories. And the that food though, that energy that’s coming in will raise your blood sugar like crazy, you’re going to be hungry all day, your body’s going to be stuck in this fat storing mode, a lot of that energy that you take in is not being is not able to be used by your body right away. So you’re going to store some of that as fat. And these are essentially nutritionally empty calories, there’s not a lot of nutritional value in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, okay?
You could take 300 calories of steak on the other hand, and this does not raise your blood sugar much at all, maybe a little bit comes back down pretty quickly. It’s very filling, you’re not gonna be hungry all day after that, you’re not going to be putting your body into that fat storing mode, because insulin is not being generated as much. So you’re not storing extra energy as fat.
This is a new, nutritionally dense food that you’re eating. So your body is actually absorbing the nutrients from this food, it’s not generating the hunger signals that carbohydrates generate. And you’re going to be very satiated from eating that food and it’s actually nutritionally legit for your body. Okay, so calories are not the same. And anybody tells you the calories are all the same, just walk away from that conversation right there.
Okay, calories are not the same. I’ve heard people say, oh, yeah, I can help you lose weight. And you can just do nothing between keys all day long. And I’ll get you to lose the weight, but it is not sustainable. And, uh, don’t do that. By the way, Twinkies are one of those things that, you know, if you send it out on a counter, it’ll still look exactly the same in like, 100 years. So don’t don’t eat that stuff. Right? It’s bad. It’s bad for you, right?
So low calorie diets, they’re often void of quality nutrition, your health will suffer as a result of eating a low calorie diet, and it is not sustainable. Okay, so slowing down your metabolism like crazy is not a sustainable way of losing weight and keeping it off and being healthy, right?
And just understand that humans are complicated. We’re not engines, we’re not steam engines. There’s things to consider, like hormonal imbalances, metabolic adaptations, like a metabolic slowdown. There’s genetics, there’s health conditions that some of us have, like hypothyroidism, you know, there’s medications that we take.
All these things make, you know, losing weight a little bit more complicated for some people, right? So we just have to understand that we are complicated beings, and then it’s more, it’s more about eating high quality food than it is about the number of calories coming in and going out. Okay, so the biggest nutrition myth that I see out there is that calories are all that matters. And I just want to say BS, right, there’s more going on that we have to consider. Okay.
The next one, and this is one of the biggest concerns I hear from people, is that eating fat will make you fat. And I have to tell you something here, this is not the case. Eating fat does not make you fat, high fat foods are not unhealthy foods. For millions of years, we humans have been eating fat and animal fats.
And we have survived and thrived and our brains have gotten big, huge, like we’re the most advanced creatures in the known universe. And we got this way not because we’re eating a low fat diet. No, because we are eating tons of animal products and eating tons of fat. It’s the fact that we are eating that actually made our brains start to grow and become the kind of humanoid brains that we have today.
And fat is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients meaning that we do not produce these nutrients internally. We have to get these in our diet or we will die. If you don’t eat fat, you will die. If you don’t eat protein, you will die. You know what’s not an essential nutrient is carbohydrates. Humans are not required to eat carbohydrates in order to live. It’s not an essential nutrient. Right?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever eat carbohydrates. I’m just saying it’s not essential your body will produce the glycogen that your body will produce the glucose which you know becomes glycogen that you store in your muscles. Your liver will produce that for you internally. Your brain needs a certain amount of glucose to function every day. Your body makes that, right?
Your liver makes the glucose that your brain needs every single day, it makes the glycogen it gets stored in your muscles to keep you functioning properly to keep your heart beating to keep your legs moving, keep your arms moving all that stuff. Carbohydrates are not essential, fat and protein are essential, okay?
And eating a higher fat diet has been the norm for us humans for millions of years, okay. All of a sudden, in the late 1970s, somebody put out this document and said hell fats are bad for you, that’s a problem, you need to stop eating fat. This does not make any sense. Think about it. It doesn’t make any sense.
They base this off of some really crappy studies that were done in the 60s 50s and studies that do not hold water whatsoever. And they’ve done tons and tons of studies since then, that have absolutely disproven this, okay? This is an antiquated and incorrect theory, that fat will make you fat. And that, you know, eating fat is unhealthy. And it’s slowly being put to rest.
And many people still fear it though, they still fear high fat diets. They still fear high fat foods, and they follow these low fat diets, in hopes that like if they just cut their fat intake, that they’re going to become healthier, and they’re going to lose weight, and it does not work.
The American Heart Association used to be all about low fat diets, low fat diets, low fat diets. And some years back, they very quietly put out a statement that said dietary fat is no longer a nutrient of concern. They kind of hid this little, little snippet in their documentation. They didn’t make a big splash about it, because they’ve been preaching that everybody has to eat a low fat diet in order to be heart healthy, right heart healthy diet, low fat.
And even the American Heart Association has been like, yeah, you know what we were wrong. But they don’t want to say they’re wrong and make a big “to do” about it. So they just kind of snuck it in there a little bit. Okay. So it’s being outdated. It’s being antiquated, and people are starting to wake up to the fact that this is not an issue, right? That dietary fat is actually essential for human health.
And actually, they’ve done these studies where low fat diets have actually been linked to greater risk of health issues, including metabolic syndrome. And they lead to an increase in insulin resistance, an increase in try group triglyceride levels. And these are all known risk factors for heart disease. So the low fat diet is not good for you. Okay.
And when it comes to losing weight, they found that diets higher in fat have been proven just as effective or even more effective in encouraging weight loss. Okay, so don’t be afraid of fat, eating fat does not make you fat. And I just want to mention one study that I just think is so compelling.
This is the pure study, P U R E peer study. And they compared a high carbohydrate, low fat diet to a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. So they sampled 140,000 people in 18 different countries. And they follow these people for 10 years. So half the people were following a high carb low fat diet. And the other half were following a low carb high or higher fat diet.
And the conclusion was this: that high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality. Whereas the total fat and the individual types of fat are related to lower total mortality. So total fat was not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality. And saturated fat. This is really interesting, saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke, meaning that people that ate more saturated fat had fewer incidences of stroke.
And the conclusion is that the global dietary guidelines that we’re all following should be reconsidered in light of these findings. So this is just one study, but a pretty compelling study that says that a higher fat diet is actually better for you if you want to live longer, eat the fat. Okay.
Another myth I want to kind of break down and this might bump some people out there, but sugar substitutes are healthy. I’m going to have to say that this is not necessarily the case that eating a bunch of sugar substitutes is not necessarily a recipe for good health. Okay, so one thing to understand about this is that there’s not a lot of conclusive evidence out there because a lot of the sugar substitutes we’re using today, things like stevia or erythritol, xylitol, allulose.
These kinds of things haven’t been around that long, so they don’t have a ton of research to back these things up. But here’s, here’s the gist of that. Eating sugar substitutes can ramp up your craving for sweet foods, even though it’s not really sweetening your food, it’s a substitute in your body that doesn’t metabolize a lot of these sugar substitutes.
But what happens is that it tastes sweet. And so it kind of tricks your brain into thinking you’re eating something sweet, which for some people can lead to higher sugar cravings and unhealthy eating patterns. Okay, so just understand that, you know, the sugar substitutes are being used, you know, people are having all these like low carb products out there and keto products that say, like, you know, only whatever, its grams of carbs, one gram and net carbs or something like that.
And the problem is that we’re eating these things, some people are eating these things to excess. And, and, and some people are, you know, when you’re eating these types of foods, they’re not necessarily health food. It’s not like eating some broccoli and a steak. Like you’re eating, you know, something that’s supposed to be like a cookie, or brownies or ice cream or something like that, right? So these sugar alcohols, the sugar substitutes are not necessarily healthy.
So I hate to burst your bubble on that one. You know, they can be used sparingly, and that’s fine. It’s kind of like an every now and then type of thing. Just, you know, the fact is that these are not healthy foods, okay. And some of these sugar alcohols like erythritol and xylitol, they can cause digestive issues for people because your body does not metabolize them, or at least it only metabolizes a tiny bit of it. So they can cause some digestive issues, especially if consumed in large amounts. So just be careful of that. Okay.
So they’re not necessarily healthy. They’re not, you know, not necessarily, you know, bad, but we just have to be careful not to overdo it with this stuff very, very sparingly with that kind of stuff. Okay? Okay.
Another big myth out there is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We’ve heard this before. We’ve all been taught this right. In school, when I was growing up, it was always like breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And what I didn’t realize is that that concept was coined by the Kellogg’s company, right? This is just a marketing message. Right?
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is not based on science or anything like that. Kellogg’s came up with this because they wanted to sell more breakfast cereal, and breakfast wasn’t even a thing back in the day. Like Kellogg’s came up with the breakfast concept like in 1899.
This is not something that we’ve been doing for thousands of years as human beings, the human body is not designed to eat, you know, first thing when you wake up in the morning. And here’s the thing, like, skipping breakfast is not a big deal. And if you’re the kind of person who thinks that skipping breakfast is going to be impossible, I want you to try it. See what happens.
When you skip breakfast, you promote more fat loss. You know, if you exercise in the morning, you’re going to actually have an increase in adrenaline, an increase in some of the adaptive hormones when you skip breakfast, and an exercise in that fasted state. And human beings are just designed to eat a couple times a day. And to think that we have to eat breakfast and like it’s the most important meal of the day. It’s just wrong, it’s just wrong.
And especially if you eat a high carbohydrate breakfast, and they’ve done some studies that show that they did a study where they just compared people who ate eggs for breakfast and who ate bagels for breakfast, right. And the people who ate eggs for breakfast had a 16% greater reduction in body fat during the study period, compared to the people who ate the bagel for breakfast.
So right there is a good sign that the carbohydrates alone first thing in the morning especially, are going to you know, thwart your weight loss, progress or promote weight gain, you know, so just understand that you know, the types of foods we eat matters, right? But also that skipping breakfast may be just the best thing that you can do for yourself.
And it’s such an easy thing to do. Just skip your first meal and eat it later. Start eating around lunchtime and see how you feel. So many people feel so much better doing this. They don’t think it’s possible but they actually get there.
And then another myth that I wanted to bust here is that all carbs are bad. You know, I talk about a low carb diet and you know, maybe like carbs are the problem. And honestly, listen, all carbohydrates are not bad, right? They’re not essential. We don’t have to eat carbs in order to be healthy human beings. But some carbs are really problematic, right? And we want to really avoid those things, right?
Sugar. You know, carbohydrates are just sugar. It’s just another word for sugar. And they come in varying degrees of concentration. So you know that white sugar crystals that you stir into your coffee in the morning, that’s a very concentrated form of carbohydrate. So are things like maple syrup, or flour, like any kind of grain that’s been refined in ground up into a fine powder is a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, okay.
But then there are other types of carbohydrates, which we call complex carbohydrates that are not terrible for you, okay, they’re not bad. Things like white potatoes, sweet potatoes, other types of underground vegetables, tubers, some fruits, some dairy, these things have all been part of the human diet for millions of years, right?
Even honey has been part of the human diet forever. And so all these things can be considered to be what I would call good carbs, like there’s good carbs and bad carbs, sugar, flour, refined grains, bad carbs. Good carbs would be things like, you know, potatoes and some fruit, okay. So we just have to understand that there are different types of carbohydrates, and that some of these can be okay to be consumed in moderation.
You know, we don’t want to make our entire diet white potatoes, right, not nutritionally dense. And the carbohydrate load would just be too much for your system, right? But some of these things can be okay, you know, right now I’m eating mostly meat, and then some fruit, a little bit of dairy, like I’m just sticking to a very ancient sort of ancestral way of eating. And it works great.
For me, it’s very doable, very doable, it’s very sustainable for me. And I even consume a little bit of honey every now and then. And all these things have been part of the human diet forever. And we just have to understand that there’s a difference between the kinds of carbohydrates we’ve been evolving to eat like over millions of years, and the kinds of carbohydrates that are being marketed to us today. Very different, very, very different.
Okay, so let’s look at carbohydrates. From an ancestral standpoint, I think that’s a good way of looking at it, okay. And you can even use carbs, to enhance your running performance, if you want to kick into that extra gear for running if you want, you know, if you’re trying to smash a 10k time or something like that, and you want to be running at your peak performance and close to your VO2 max, then you’re definitely going to want to supplement with some carbohydrates to do that, right?
The fat burning is great when you’re a little bit lower when you’re 65-70% of your VO2 max. But once you get over that, you’re going to want to add some carbs into the mix, right? But the types of carbs matter, right?
Another myth is that high up foods high in cholesterol are unhealthy. Here’s the thing. I’m clueless why cholesterol rich foods have gotten a bad rap. Because people don’t understand how dietary cholesterol affects your health, right? So some people are very sensitive to dietary cholesterol, right, but this is the exception.
Overall, nutrient dense foods that are higher in cholesterol can be included in a healthy diet, including foods like eggs and full fat yogurt. So these have higher cholesterol in them, right? They actually might boost your health because they enhance feelings of fullness. So you’re going to feel more full.
And you’re actually getting a ton of nutrition when you eat these kinds of foods. Whereas when you’re eating foods that have zero cholesterol, you’re not getting the nutrients that you are that are actually required like kale has a lot of it doesn’t have any cholesterol in it right? But is kale something that you need to be eating? Because it’s going to give you all kinds of nutrition, it’s a lot of fiber, you’re just going to pass most of that through your system, you’re not going to absorb a whole lot from eating kale.
Sorry to bust your bubble about kale but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be right? So high cholesterol foods like eggs, full fat yogurt, these things are very nutritious, right? And like I said, some people because of genetic factors might be more sensitive to cholesterol and you’ve got to be careful with that. But for most of us, they can be included as part of a healthy diet.
Your brain needs cholesterol to function properly. Every cell in your body has cholesterol in it. We have to get cholesterol in your diet, or else we’re going to, our health is going to suffer, we’re going to start to break down, right? So we have to have cholesterol in your diet. So just understand that cholesterol does not mean you know, it’s not bad, it’s not the sign of an apocalypse, you’re not going to die from eating cholesterol, in fact, you have to eat it as part of a healthy diet.
Here’s one that might surprise you: supplements are not necessary. So this is a kind of a myth, like I’ve talked about eating real food and how you should be able to get all your nutrition from eating real food. And I kind of stand by that yes, to a certain degree. But I also think there are certain supplements that are okay.
And that actually kind of recommended for most people and especially runners like, I think creatine is a supplement that most people can benefit from most athletes can benefit from, it helps to build muscle, it helps you with recovery, it’ll help to improve running performance, because you’re going to be become a stronger human being, and you’re going to have stronger muscles and stronger connective tissues.
Collagen would be another one that I would recommend, just especially as you get older, you know, to help with connective tissue health and stronger bones. And then iron would be another one. So this is interesting, that long distance runners require more iron, because there’s some loss of blood through the gut that happens with running, because we’re, you know, diverting blood away from our gut in order to provide oxygen to working muscles, this is why a lot of people get stomach issues, GI issues, because they don’t have the blood in their gut.
So we’re diverting blood away from the gut, to arms and legs to keep us out there swimming, running, biking, whatever. And so we’re actually kind of losing blood through that process. And so we want to replace the iron. So eating a diet high in iron, iron can be really helpful. But for a lot of people, I think supplementing with iron, especially for long distance runners is going to be really helpful for you. Okay.
And then one supplement in particular, that I think is interesting. Calcium, a lot of people think they need to supplement with calcium in order to have strong bones. So people are told to just keep popping the calcium supplements, you’ve got to keep your bones healthy, especially as you get older. But there’s been new research out there that shows that supplementing with calcium may actually do more harm than good.
So calcium supplements have shown to be related to an increased risk of heart disease. And so if you’re concerned about your calcium intake, it’s best to focus on dietary sources of calcium, like again, full fat yogurt, sardines, some beans and seeds, things like that. But just another, a better, even better than just like trying to get calcium from your diet is to practice regular strength training, and get enough protein and avoid low calorie diets, low calorie diets, not good for your bone health.
Not getting enough quality protein is not good for your bone health. Not doing any kind of resistance exercise, or any kind of weight bearing exercise is not good for your bone health. So running, strength training, getting enough protein are all going to help you to maintain a strong skeletal system. And if you want to supplement use collagen, because that’s going to help you create stronger connective tissues and stronger bones better than a calcium supplement. Okay.
And then another another myth I wanted to bust is about low fat diet foods being healthy. We probably, I’m assuming that we all know this by now. But I’m just gonna like maybe maybe that’s a wrong assumption. Maybe some people don’t know this. But if you’re buying any kinds of foods that say, like low calorie or low fat, like you just got to stay away from that stuff.
A lot of the foods that are being peddled to us out there that say light or low calorie, low fat or fat free. These contain much more added sugar. And if you gotta read the labels and like just pay attention to what it is you’re getting right? But pretty much I would say stay away from anything that says light, low calorie diet, low fat, fat free. Avoid anything that says any of that, right? Go for though just regular full fat foods, because these are almost always going to be a healthier option and contain less sugar. So just keep that in mind. Okay.
Another myth that I hear all the time, and especially from, you know, bodybuilder type of people is that you’ve got to eat like six times a day in order to keep your metabolism going. And I just have to tell you that this is completely not true. That every time you eat food, you’re going to increase your blood sugar, right.
And if every time you eat if you’re eating six times a day, and you’re keeping your blood sugar high, especially if you’re eating a lot of carbs, this can really lead to more fat storage. And I can’t tell you how many people have come to me as clients and said, Patrick, I was working with a trainer. And they wanted me to eat six times a day, and I just kept gaining weight, and I just kept gaining weight.
And they were telling me that I wasn’t doing it right, or that I needed to exercise more. And I just have to tell you that this whole concept of eating six times a day is just total BS, the human body is not designed to eat six times a day, we’re just not. The human body is designed to eat like once or twice a day. And that’s it.
We did not evolve as grazers, you know, we’re not antelopes, or bison, like, you know, we evolved as persistent hunters, we, we evolved as gatherers, you know, we would gather foods and then bring them back to our tribe, and we would, we would eat that food together. But we we evolved to be people who, a species who eats infrequently. So this idea of eating all the time, just puts a strain on our systems and puts a strain on your pancreas, it puts a strain on the digestive system.
And you do not need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism going. You know, you keep your metabolism going by just eating enough each day, getting enough calories in, eating a couple times a day, you don’t need to be snacking in between meals or anything like that. And this is how you promote fat loss. This is how you keep your metabolism actually going.
And you just have to understand that we are not designed to eat that many times a day, the human body does not like that. And we will keep storing a lot of that energy as fat and you won’t be able to tap into your fat stores. You know, we talked about, you know, fat burning being the goal, here we want to be, we want to get our bodies back to being efficient fat burners.
And when we eat all the time, we flip that switch and we just store fat, store fat, we store fat, stop doing that. It’s not healthy, it’s not a good way to go. Especially if you’re an endurance athlete, stop eating a million times a day, just eat a couple times a day. And take advantage of all the amazing adaptations that happen. When you practice this kind of meal spacing, this intermittent fasting, whatever you want to call it, this idea that we eat a couple times a day. And that’s plenty for us. And this is the way we’ve always done it as human beings. Yeah.
And then the last little myth I want to bust here is about tracking calories, tracking macros, and that this is something we have to do if you want to lose weight, you got to track your calories, you got to count your calories, you got to count your macros, and you have to stay on top of it for the rest of your life, you know, and I’m just gonna say just know, just know, you don’t have to do this. Somehow, for two and a half million years, as human beings, we managed to thrive without my fitness pal. Like we didn’t need to put our food into a food tracker in order to stay healthy and fit and lean and strong.
And in my programs, I help people to learn how to eat more intuitively, how to give their body what their body actually needs, when you need it, and how to tune into that. Now, just as full disclosure here, I do encourage people to track their food for a little bit of time just to understand what that looks like. And to understand what these numbers kind of can add up to.
Because when we tell people like hey, maybe we’ll switch to eating fewer carbs, or what does that mean? And so we just wanted to, you know, we want to quantify that with some numbers. So we’ll track for a little bit of time, maybe a couple of weeks or something like that, but then we put that away, we don’t need to do that anymore. Your body knows what it needs.
And if you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’ll know when you’re hungry. And when you’re not. You’ll know when you’ve eaten too much or if you need more. And if you’ve learned how to eat properly and you’ve learned about proper human nutrition, and you’ve learned about what works for your body and what doesn’t work for your body, then this should be very intuitive for you and that you shouldn’t need to be tracking calories and tracking macros.
I talked to somebody a while back who was so obsessed about tracking calories and making sure that she was always getting the right number of calories and making sure macros were always right that she would take a scale, a food scale, with her on vacation and take a foods go with her when she went out to dinner with, you know, business with colleagues.
And she would pull out her scale and set it on the table and weigh everything that she was eating, because she needed to know exactly how many grams everything was so that she could enter it all into her food tracker. This is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not the way that we were designed as human beings to live our lives, you know.
And, you know, I think it’s interesting to track for a little while, and I have done it in the past. And every now and then I’ll just put my food into an app just to kind of see where I wonder where I am with this stuff. It’s kind of interesting, right? But it’s not necessary. I am very intuitive now and this is what I teach my clients to do, too, we want to be able to eat intuitively. And again, in my programs, we talk about sustainability, this is all about what’s going to work for the long term, because we’re not committed, we’re not committed to short term, we’re not this isn’t about like a quick fixes this is about long term, sustainable, a way of life. That’s what we’re interested in. So we want to get there. And that’s what we focus on.
So that’s, that’s the gist of, of, of what I do in my programs is that we work on sustainability, and we work on creating good habits that lasts for life. Okay. So those are the biggest myths that I wanted to go over today. And I’m sure you know, I’ll probably come up with some more, I’ll do another episode about maybe some of the other ones that didn’t quite make the list this time.
But I wanted to make sure that we’re all on the same page with some of this stuff, because some of it’s just, it’s just outdated. And that’s cool. Get it. So I hope this was helpful. Let me know what you think. You can always reach out to me on social media. And you can find me @runningleancoaching on Instagram and Facebook and all that.
And I would love to chat with you about coaching if that’s something that you’re ever interested in. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’d love to have that conversation with you. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
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