Ultramarathon

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 308 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today the hidden ways runners overeat with even realizing it. So today I’m talking about something that most runners think they understand, but almost always get wrong. It’s the subtle, sneaky stuff we do around food that feels harmless, but consistently slows our progress, stalls our fat loss, and keeps us struggling more than we should.

So this episode is called The Hidden Ways Runners Overeat Without Realizing It. And once you hear these patterns, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. I’m gonna take a deep dive into mindless eating, healthy overeating, weakened creep training, hunger, emotional snacking, and most importantly. How to take back control if you’ve been running consistently, but not seeing the changes you expected.

If your eating feels mostly fine, but something still isn’t working, or if you’re tired of feeling like you take one step forward and one step back, this episode will give you the clarity that you’ve been missing. But first, if you’re listening to this and realizing, oh, wow, I’m doing a lot of this stuff, that’s actually a good thing.

Okay? Awareness is the first step, but awareness alone doesn’t create change, not the kind of deep lasting change that you want as a runner and as a healthy human being. Most runners are out there doing all the right things on paper. They’re logging miles, they’re eating what seems like the right foods.

They’re trying to stay motivated. But some, something still feels harder than it should runs. Feel heavier. Your progress feels slow. Sometimes your body doesn’t respond the way you expect it to, and it gets frustrating, you know? ’cause you’ve been putting in all this work. This is exactly why I created my coaching program.

You don’t need another meal plan, another training plan, or another. Try harder pep talk. You need a comprehensive, high touch system that helps you to get leaner. Get stronger and feel more energized and more confident without relying on willpower or guesswork. I will help you fix your nutrition, dial in your running, build the strength you’ve been missing, and develop the mindset that makes all of this feel sustainable and even fun.

So if you’re ready for that kind of transformation, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. Let’s do this together. All right, let’s dive into this. So we’re talking about the hidden ways runners overeat without even realizing it, and this is one of those topics that. Once you see it, you’re not gonna be able to unsee it.

Okay? You’re gonna start noticing all these little patterns in your life. The mindless munching, the I earn this meals, the weekend splurges, the emotional snacking after a stressful day, and then suddenly all these things are gonna start to make sense to you. A lot of runners come to me thinking that they have a running problem or a metabolism problem, or an age problem when what they actually have is an unintentional overeating problem.

They’re not binge eating. They’re not out of control eating, you know, they don’t sit down and eat a gallon of ice cream. I’m talking about subtle, quiet, sneaky overeating. That feels kind of normal because it’s so common. And for runners, especially runners trying to lose weight, um, getting leaner or getting stronger, this stuff really matters.

Okay, so today I’m gonna break down the five biggest hidden overeating traps that runners fall into why these habits feel harmless, but actually stall your fat loss and just completely wreck your consistency. And then what you can do right now to regain control without counting calories, starving yourself, or giving up running fuel.

So if you’ve ever felt like you eat pretty healthy, but you can’t lose weight, or you’re running a ton, but the scale isn’t budging, or you do awesome all week only to sabotage yourself on the weekend, this episode is for you. So why overeating is so sneaky for runners? So most runners think I run a lot. I burn a ton of calories.

I can’t be overeating. Overeating can’t really be my issue. And listen, I get it. I used to say the same things. I used to think there was absolutely no way I was eating too much. But here’s the truth. Runners tend to overeat because they run not in spite of. Running makes you feel hungrier. Running gives you the, uh, I deserve this mentality.

Right? It gives you the, the excuses to snack and pretty much eat anything in front of you and it convinces you that you’re being healthy even when you might not be. And because overeating is subtle, it goes unnoticed. Most overeating is not big binges or giant drive, drive-through orders or, you know, for extra slices of pizza.

Most overeating looks like just a little extra handful here and there. Grabbing a snack without really thinking about it. Finishing the kids’ leftovers, pouring a second bowl of whatever eating while standing in the kitchen. I used to do that a lot. Eating at the wrong times. It’s death by a thousand tiny bites.

Okay? And those tiny bites they add up, right? So let’s get into some of the hidden overeating traps that runners fall into, starting with the most common trap of all, which is mindless eating. This is the silent saboteur. So mindless eating is kind of the sneakiest form of overeating because it doesn’t really feel like you’re overeating.

It feels like. Nothing really feels like something happening in the background while you’re focused on something else. So this could be snacking while you’re cooking or you know, snacking while you’re watching TV or scrolling or while you’re at work or in the car snacking, just because something is there.

Mindless eating is eating that’s disconnected from physical hunger. It’s not driven by need. It’s driven by habit and environment, and it’s you operating on autopilot. Okay? It’s why we call it mindless, because your mind isn’t really involved here. Okay? Here’s how runners get hit. Hard with this though.

You come home from a run, you’re a little depleted. You’re sweaty, you’re tired. You walk into the kitchen, and then something goes into your mouth. You know, not because you consciously chose it, because you walked. Buy it. You know, and this does stuff, doesn’t really get logged in your brain as eating.

Doesn’t even really register. But if you’re grabbing a couple handfuls before dinner every night, that could easily be three to 500 calories that you didn’t even notice. Okay? So why mindless eating happens? Your brain wants to conserve energy and making decisions around food takes mental effort. Your brain hates mental effort.

Okay? So it just automates things like tying your shoe or driving a car. You do these things automatically. You don’t have to think about all the steps involved with driving your car. You just get in your car and you drive now. Okay? Could you imagine having to go through all the steps when you first learned how to drive?

Remember how hard that was and how tedious it was and how long it took. Um, if you had to do that every single time, your brain would just go into overload. It’d be too much information, right? So your brain automates a lot of stuff, and for a lot of us, we’ve automated eating, okay? And automated eating rarely leads to good outcomes.

Okay? So how we stop this, the solution to stopping the automatic eating is. Is simple. It’s not easy, but it is simple. Okay? And this is just creating intentional eating moments. Like sit down when you eat, put your food on a plate, stop eating while you’re standing up. Stop eating straight out of a bag or whatever.

Don’t just grab a bite here or there. If you wanna make one rule from this episode, make it this one. If it’s worth eating, it’s worth paying attention to. So mindless eating is the opposite of paying attention. Mindless eating is the opposite of mindful eating. Okay? We wanna be mindful about how we eat and the kinds of foods we eat, how often we eat, all that stuff.

Okay? Another trap that runners fall into. Is healthy overeating. This is when good food can become a problem, and this one hits a lot of people hard, especially runners because runners love eating healthy food for the most part, right? We’re proud of healthy eating. We’re obsessed with whole foods, real foods, natural foods, and that is awesome.

But there’s a big trap here and it’s kind of subtle because food is healthy, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to help you to lose weight. Healthy overeating is just eating too much. Um, good food. Convincing yourself that it really doesn’t matter because it’s good food. Okay. You know, I hear all the time. Is, I don’t know why I can’t lose weight.

I, I only eat healthy or I don’t eat junk food, so calories don’t really matter as much. Uh, it’s all healthy stuff, you know, so it must be okay, you know, I track all my macros or it’s only nuts or fruit or yogurt or, or hummus or whatever. Okay. This is all great, but you, you can really overeat anything.

Okay. And I’ve talked before on this podcast about calories and how at some point, you know, calories matter. Like I don’t think it’s the place where you want to start with, uh uh, your weight loss journey. I think what I’m talking about today is. Gonna be the solution for a lot of people when it comes to, uh, eating too much.

Okay. So just keep listening. Okay. And we’re not really talking about counting calories and all that. I, I think that’s very tedious and it’s not really necessary. Somehow, as human beings, we’ve, we’ve been able to live very healthly for, you know, two and a half million years or so without. Counting calories.

Why all of a sudden do we have to log all our food into MyFitnessPal now? Right. Um, maybe if we just be more mindful about our food, we won’t have to, you know, count our calories and, and put all our food into an app. Okay. That was a little sidebar, so thank you for indulging me. Okay. You can really overeat anything.

Um, there’s a lot of healthy foods out there that you can actually overeat. Things like nuts. Nuts are super calorie dense, nut butters, even more so super calorie dense. You can really overeat that stuff easily. Um, I love a good, like, you know, good fresh apple with some almond butter, but I gotta be careful about how much that almond butter I put on that thing, or I, I use it like as a little dipping.

Uh, type of sauce, whatever you wanna call it, but I gotta be careful because that stuff adds up pretty quickly. Stuff like granola, um, some fruit smoothies, um, healthy trail mixes, avocado, hummus, Greek yogurt, protein bars, oatmeal. All these things are pretty good, you know, in and of themselves. There’s nothing wrong with some of this stuff.

We need some good carbs, you know, we need some, some good fats. We need some, some good protein, but at the same time. They can be a problem and the problem is just in the quantity. Okay. So healthy food is still, it’s still good food, it’s still healthy. Healthy calories are still calories And healthy overeating, uh, is still overeating.

Okay. So there’s just some issues with the overeating thing that we have to be mindful of, even if it is healthy food. So it’s very easy to overeat healthy food, and a lot of people do this and they’re not even aware of it. Okay. And a lot of this sounds good. It’s like, Hey, I’m, I’m, I, I’m eating healthy food, so it’s just fine.

Or it’s better than junk food, so I don’t really have to worry about it. And this is where you’re doing something called permission-based overeating. It feels harmless, it feels justified, it feels like you’re being responsible, but it keeps runners overweight all the time. And the solution here is just.

Nothing crazy, just you don’t need to count calories or weigh your food or anything like that. But just, you know, would I still eat this if it wasn’t healthy? Ask yourself this question. Would I still eat this if it wasn’t healthy? And if the answer is no, then you might be emotionally overeating healthy food.

Okay? So just be careful with that one. The next trap that a lot of runners fall into. This is number three, is the weekend creep. This is the two day undo button, and this one gets so many people. I can’t tell you how many people tell me they do great during the weekend. On the weekend, everything just sort of falls apart.

So weekend overeating is so common that people don’t even recognize it as overeating. They think it’s normal. Um, you know, you’re doing great Monday through Friday structured. Uh, you got a good routine going. Everything is predictable. Then Friday night hits and you. You just wanna relax and give yourself a break and treat yourself.

Uh, so that’s Friday. And then Saturday becomes just all day food free for all. You know, Sunday is starting with brunch and, and alcohol and bloody Mary’s and pizza, watching football and snacks and beers and the game. And by Sunday night you’re like, I don’t even know what happened. Um, but I gotta start all over again tomorrow, you know?

Well, I’ll tell you what happened. You just didn’t undid your entire week basically. Okay? Most overeating doesn’t happen during the week. This is the time when people are structured. They have a lot of parameters. They’re working around. They have work and kids and, and a lot of structure. But on the weekends, structure disappears.

Um, here’s just some math on some calories here I’ll give you, um, this might blow your mind a little bit here. Let’s say you overeat by just 400 calories on Friday. Um, 800 on Saturday and 600 on Sunday. That doesn’t seem like a a lot, but that’s 1800 calories. This is almost a full additional day of eating for a lot of people.

And if you’re doing this every weekend, every week, month after month, after month, um, it doesn’t matter how much you’re running, you’re just gonna stay stuck. Okay. And a lot of runners fall into this weekend creep because the, the weekends feel like a reward. You know, you think I earned this? I had a big long run today.

I’ve been good all week. It’s just this one meal. But you know what? Be honest with yourself. It’s never just one meal. It’s a pattern. Okay. And to fix the weekend creep. Um, you just have to be more intentional about everything that you’re doing. And I, I teach my clients some rules to live by, which is if you’re gonna have some indulgence, especially on the weekend, plan it in advance.

It’s fine if you want to go out and have a beer and a piece of pizza or something, just make a plan with that. Be intentional about what you’re doing. Don’t eat to numb yourself or, or, um. Uh, because you’re bored or you’re tired, uh, we don’t wanna use food as a, as emotional management tool. Okay. And then just stop eating when you feel satisfied, not when you feel uncomfortable or stuffed.

Right? That means you, you’ve just eaten too much. Okay? So take back your weekends, and I promise you this is, this is huge for so many people. You’re gonna really take back your progress too. You’re gonna stop being stuck. Okay? The fourth trap that a lot of runners fall into is training hunger. And is this real or is this fake?

Um, so runners swear that they are just hungrier than normal people. And yes, sometimes this is true. Training does increase hunger, but not most of the time. Okay. Training hunger is not real. Physical hunger. Most training hunger is related to things like dehydration, under fueling the day before or over fueling during a run.

Uh, your brain rewarding you for exercise. You get all those feel good hormones going, um, habit driven, snacking, emotional relief after a hard workout, stress hormones, post run, dopamine seeking, like you’ve, you’ve just depleted your body of everything and so you just want some, something to bring you back up, and so you reach for.

Food to do that for you. Um, or the belief that you burn more calories than you actually did. Okay? So training hunger feels real because your brain is, is very convincing to you. But if you’re one of these people that gains weight while you run, and I know so many people, uh, tell me every day that this is a, a problem with them, or if you’re stuck at the same weight year after year, you’re just likely eating far more than the run actually requires.

Yes, sometimes we get a little bit more hungry, uh, because we’re, our training has increased, but it’s rarely that much. Okay. And I can remember training for ultra marathons and eating everything in sight and really probably overeating quite a bit. I remember training for, um. Uh, a couple of ultra marathons and I, I gained, within about two years, I gained like 40 pounds.

I, that’s crazy, you know, but I was like, well, I’m training. I’m, I’m hungrier than normal, but. Honestly, 40 pounds. That’s a, that’s nuts. Okay. But this training hunger idea kind of tricks runners, because a lot of runners overestimate, you know, how much energy they’re really using, how many calories they’re burning.

They underestimate how much they’re actually eating. They think that refueling, uh, in a big way is mandatory. Uh, they’re eating to recover, not because they’re hungry. Uh, they eat because other runners tell them they get to eat whatever they want. Uh, they eat because they’re afraid of losing performance.

Um, so you finish a run, you’re sweaty. You, you worked really hard. Your brain is like, feed me all the carbs right now. Guess what? You might not really need food yet. What you might need is water and electrolytes. So start with that. Okay? Do that first. Cool. Off. Let your body, you know, get back to baseline.

Okay? And then you can ask yourself like, does something like salmon and broccoli feel good right now? Or whatever, food. If you don’t like that stuff, don’t, don’t use that as an example, but what kind of food feels good to you? Not junk food, not a bunch of carbs, not donuts, you know? Um, but if, if chicken and rice sounds good to you, or salmon and broccoli, or something like that, if the answer is yes, then you’re, you’re physically hungry.

If the answer is no. Then you’re probably more like dopamine hungry. Okay? Training hunger will fade fast, okay? Dopamine hunger will grow quickly, right? So just keep that in mind. Alright. Another trap number five that runners, uh, find themselves falling into is emotional snacking. This is using food to feel better.

So this is maybe the most important section of this episode ’cause emotional eating. Is very, very prevalent. Okay? It’s not a, it’s not a character flaw, it’s not a weakness. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or anything like that. It just means that your brain is, you know, trying to solve an emotional problem with food.

And runners are extremely vulnerable to emotional snacking. Why? Because runners are using running most of the time to manage stress. But running does not fix emotional patterns. All it does is mask them. Okay? When life gets stressful and chaotic and overwhelming or even painful food becomes the backup coping mechanism.

Um, and there are some common emotional eating patterns that a lot of runners fall into here, which is stress, snacking after work, eating out of boredom, eating because of loneliness, or because you’re overwhelmed or you might feel. Like you’re falling behind in your training. You’re eating because you’re not seeing the progress that you want or because you’re tired or because you feel like you blew it today.

Emotional eating is almost always overeating, and it’s almost always hidden. Okay. People don’t say. I’m upset, therefore, I shall eat 12 ounces of almonds. You know, it’s, it’s more subtle. It’s like a bite here, a bite there. A handful of this, a nibble of this, you know, if you just keep finding yourself going to the pantry or going to the refrigerator and just snacking on stuff and always wanting something.

This is probably emotional eating okay? And emotional eating, um, almost always goes past the point of satiety. Okay, so how do we stop this emotional snacking? Just recognize that you might be doing it. Okay? That’s the first step, right? Just understand that, you know, oh, I want to eat something right now, but what am I feeling like?

Name the emotion. If it’s something like stress or boredom, just name that and then just let it be there for a couple minutes. You know, like maybe 90 seconds. Uh, emotions have short half lives, okay? You just allow it to be there. Usually within 90 seconds it’ll go away. Um, then decide if food would actually solve the problem for you.

And you know what? It really never does. So if you’re stressed or bored, find something else to do. Another way of, of relieving that stress or boredom. And then choose a non-food solution. Take a walk, do some journaling, take a shower, stretch, talk to someone. Rest. Deal with the emotion directly. Okay? You don’t need to use food to deal with your emotions, okay?

This is how you break emotional eating forever. Okay? So name the emotion, feel it for a few minutes, decide if food’s actually gonna solve the problem, probably not. And then choose a non-food solution. So how do you regain control around food? So if, if you’re recognizing yourself in any of these traps, in any of these patterns, this is actually a good thing.

It means you’re becoming aware and awareness is really the first step to change. So lemme give you a, a strategy that I help my clients, uh, to help them regain control around food. So number one is just slow down. Like, slow down your eating, slowing down creates awareness. Awareness creates control. Put your fork down between bites.

Take 20 minutes to eat. Chew more. Breathe between bites. It’s very hard to overeat when you eat slowly. Okay. Overeating almost always requires fast eating. Okay, so number one, slow down. Number two, stop eating when you’re satisfied, not when you’re full. This one is huge. Most runners have no idea what satisfied feels like.

Right? You only know hungry and stuffed. This is so much me. Um, satisfied is in the middle somewhere. It’s kind of subtle. It’s kind of quiet, but it feels kind of calm, right? So practice ending meals with the feeling of, you know, I could eat more, but I don’t need to. This single habit right here, this is gonna change everything for you.

Um, think about it like this. Like I, I talk to my strength clients about doing, um. When they’re doing their weight training to lift heavy, but still leave a couple reps in the tank. Okay, so you could do 12, but you’re gonna stop at 10. Same thing with food. You could eat more, but you’re gonna stop when you feel satisfied, not when you’re stuffed.

Okay? So just think about that. Number three, create eating windows. So this isn’t like strict fasting, this is just creating a little structure around food. So when you have eating windows, you kind of reduce the mindless snacking. So for example, you could say, I don’t eat breakfast until 10:00 AM. I eat lunch at two, and then I eat dinner at snack at six o’clock.

And there’s no snacking at those times or between those times unless you’re really dealing with some physical hunger. Okay. Most of the time, if you’re eating two or three times a day, that is plenty of food. You don’t need to eat snacks all during the day, but I get it sometimes, you know, you do experience some hunger and you do need to eat something, which is perfectly fine.

But creating these little windows around, around food just helps to bring some predictability and some structure around your day. Uh, number four, mentioned this earlier plan. Your indulgences, indulgences are fine. Exceptions to your plan are fine. Um, just do them with intention. Okay? Surprise, indulgences.

Those are the problems. You know, enjoy a dessert or a drink or a pizza or something like that, but just plan it ahead of time. When you plan your indulgences to magical things happen. Number one, you don’t eat ’em as often. You eat less, uh, of them. You don’t do it as often. And then number two, you enjoy it more because they’re intentional.

You don’t feel guilty. You’re like, I made a plan and I’m sticking to my plan. You know, my plan was to eat dessert at this nice restaurant we went to, and I did that and I feel good about it. That’s a big difference between that. And I promised myself I was gonna be good and I really blew it. Like, don’t, don’t do that to yourself, okay?

Be intentional. Um, number five, honor your physical hunger cues. Learn what real hunger feels like. This is like your stomach growling, that feeling of like hollowness in your belly, low energy. Um, uh, it’s not urgent. It’s not emotional. Um, if hunger feels emotional, desperate, or urgent or impulsive, that’s what we call dopamine hunger.

And you know, that’s, you don’t really need food. You’re just looking for a fix. You know, you’re looking for that feel good fix. Okay. So understand though that sometimes we are physically hungry and that’s okay. You know? And if you’re physically hungry and your stomach is growling and you’re like, God, I really, you know, I’m really hungry, but I’m not going to eat for another two hours.

Maybe see if you can go for a couple hours without food and just get used to feeling hungry sometimes. ’cause that’s not a big deal. Hunger is not an emergency. Uh, let’s see. Number six is to keep run fuel to what you actually need. So this is a big one. A lot of runners tend to over fuel, so they, they just are just eating all the food all the time.

You know, I, I have this one friend in our running group, little tiny woman. She was really cool, loved her. Um, but she said that before running, she would eat like this giant stack of pancakes. And we were talking about this at breakfast after our run where she was eating more bre, more pancakes and stuff, you know, and she said, oh yeah, before all my runs I have to eat this big stack of pancakes.

And I’m like, woo, that’s a lot of food for, for a couple hours of running or whatever. But you know, it’s okay to fuel before you run. I usually tell people, listen, if you’re running for under 90 minutes, you probably don’t really need to fuel much. Anything over that. We’re gonna use some simple, minimal fuel.

Um, we’re, we’re fueling for performance, not just for entertainment. Okay? And a big stack of pancakes before you run that might be more entertainment. I don’t know. Um, let’s see, number seven. Uh, the last one of, uh, these ideas of gaining control around food, again, is to build an identity of a runner who eats like an athlete.

Okay? So often runners will see themselves as, uh, someone who just, uh, runs so they can eat right. Athletes on the other hand, see themselves as I eat in a way. That supports my body and my my goals. You know, identity drives behavior. If you shift the identity, the identity of an athlete, then the behavior follows.

Okay? You train like an athlete, eat like an athlete. Okay. Very, very important one right there. Okay, a few final thoughts here. Overeating is rarely obvious. It’s rarely dramatic. It rarely looks like overeating, but those little things, they matter. The unconscious eating matters, the emotional eating matters.

The weakened creep. Matters. The I Earn this meal matters. The healthy overeating matters, and none of this makes you bad or weak or broken. It just means you’re operating without awareness. So when you slow down, when you start to pay attention, when you eat more intentionally. When you learn to feel your feelings and emotions instead of numbing yourself to them, when you train your brain to tolerate discomfort instead of reaching for food, every time you feel a little uneasy or a little discomfort, everything can change for you.

This is when you start to lose weight. You get leaner, you get stronger, you run faster, you recover better. You feel more in control around food, and maybe for the first time ever. This is what I want for you. Okay? And if you want help with any of this, if you want help implementing this, if you want the coaching, the accountability, the structure, the support, and the real strategies that are gonna help you, uh, solve this problem.

Uh, we’re not talking about dieting or gimmicks, gimmicks, or shortcuts. I, I would love to help you with this, okay? Just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.