Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Zone 2 running gets talked about like it’s the magic bullet for weight loss. It’s often labeled the “fat-burning zone,” and runners everywhere are logging easy miles expecting the pounds to just …
Continue Reading about 298. What Zone 2 Running Really Does (and Doesn’t) Do for Fat Loss →
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 298 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today what Zone two running really does and doesn’t do for fat loss. So zone two running gets talked about, like it’s the magic bullet for weight loss, and it has been for years.
Talked about this way, it’s often labeled as the fat burning zone. And runners everywhere are logging tons of easy miles, expecting the pounds to just melt away. But here’s the truth. Zone two running is amazing, but not for the reasons you’ve been told. In this week’s episode, uh, I’m gonna break down the myths, clarify the physiology, and explain what zone two actually does for your endurance, your metabolism and your ability to tap into fat as fuel.
I’ll also clear up. What it doesn’t do, especially when it comes to completely changing your body composition. So if you’ve ever wondered whether zone two is really the key to fat loss, or if those easy runs are worth your time, uh, you definitely don’t want to miss this one. And listen, if running ever feels harder than it should, if you’re frustrated because you’re putting in the, not in the miles, but you’re not seeing the results that you want, I promise you, you’re not alone.
I talk to runners every single day who feel stuck. They feel like they’re struggling to get faster. They’re struggling to get stronger. They’re struggling to get their bodies to change no matter how much they run or train. And the truth is. Running more miles definitely is not the answer. You need a smarter, more comprehensive approach.
You need to train in a way that builds strength and endurance without breaking you down. You need to fuel your body in a way that actually supports fat burning and long lasting energy. And what you really need is just a proven system that ties all this stuff together. And that’s exactly what I do in my coaching program.
I help runners transform not just their running, but their whole lives. If you are ready to finally get the results that you’ve been chasing, go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, let’s get you to that place that you’re looking for. Okay, so why are we talking about zone two today?
Well, it’s become a really hot topic in the running world. It has been talked about for a long time, but I see a lot of people talking about this recently and a lot of people come to me and ask questions about zone two, zone two, zone two. Shouldn’t I just do everything in zone two? Um, there are good reasons for this.
You know, it’s a very effective training tool, but like most things in the health and fitness world, there’s also a lot of misinformation, half truths or oversimplifications. So I wanna make sure that you have the understanding so that you can use zone two training for what it’s best at and stop expecting it to magically do something that it was really never designed to do.
So what zone two running actually is. First, let’s just define zone two, depending on the model you’re using. Zone two is generally that sort of low to moderate intensity range where you’re running, but you can still carry on a conversation. You know, you’re not gasping for air, uh, but you’re definitely moving with with some purpose.
So if you look at different heart rate zones, uh, zone two is typically around 60 to 70% of your max heart rate. And for most runners, this is gonna feel pretty easy. Um, and that’s the point. Zone two is meant to be a sustainable effort that you can hold for long period of time. It’s that. Steady state running that you can just go out there and do that feels pretty easy.
And that’s the whole point of it. You know, zone one is probably like 50 to 60% of your heart rate and that’s just barely above a walk Zone two is gonna be just slightly more than that. Um, and it’s going to require a little bit more effort. Uh, but just slightly, you should still be able to carry on a conversation.
So we call this, a lot of times we call this conversational. Pace. Now, the big myth around this is that zone two is the fat burning zone. So here’s where things get a little bit confusing. Okay? So physiologically, yes. When you’re in zone two, a greater percentage of the energy your body is using is coming from fat.
This is true, you know, compared to sprinting or running at a higher intensity, you’re gonna be burning a larger ratio of fat to carbohydrate. But here’s the catch that does not. Automatically mean you’re going to be losing fat. Okay? Just because your body is burning more fat for fuel during a workout doesn’t mean you are burning body fat.
So this is the big distinction that I want you to understand. It does not necessarily mean you’re just gonna lose weight because you’re running it zone two fat loss. Is a complex process and it depends on energy balance on your hormones. A big part is depends on your nutrition. And then there are other factors that we have to consider like stress, sleep, uh, recovery, uh, you know, how much you’re training.
Are you over training cortisol levels? So to just say, oh, zone two fat burning zone. Uh, this is really an oversimplification of the physiology, but it leads people to think that zone two is the magic bullet for weight loss and, and it’s really not. Okay. Now I really love zone two training. So it does have a purpose.
It’s, it’s important and it, it has a lot of benefits. So we’re gonna talk about some of the benefits of zone two training. You know, it’s not just gonna magically melt body fat, um, but there are a lot of, uh, positive benefits to doing a big chunk of your training. You know, maybe about 80% or so of your training.
In that zone two kind of conversational paced zone. Um, so number one, uh, zone two training helps build aerobic capacity. So zone two training strengthens your aerobic base. It, it helps to improve that aerobic engine. This means that you’re literally training your body to use oxygen more efficiently.
Aerobic means with oxygen. Your mitochondria, the little power plants in your cells become more numerous and more effective in zone two training. So this is what allows you to run longer, recover faster, and go farther without blowing up. So building aerobic capacity is one of the. Honestly, one of the most awesome benefits of zone two training and why I’m such a big fan of it.
Another benefit of Zone two training is that it does improve fat utilization. So even though it doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to lose fat, zone two does make your body better at utilizing fat for fuel. So this is huge for endurance athletes. When your body can rely more on fat for fuel, for energy, you can preserve glycogen stores and you can delay fatigue.
This makes you a. Much more effective endurance athlete. So that’s a big difference between, you know, hitting the wall at mile 18 and then cruising through to the finish line. Having that ability to burn more fat more effectively. So if you can utilize fat as fuel as an endurance athlete, this is a tool that most endurance athletes don’t really tap into.
Most endurance athletes are. What we call carb adapted. They’re not really fat adapted, but we, we can benefit from being fat adapted. Uh, it’s gonna improve our endurance. Um, even it can even improve your endurance at higher intensity running, you know, above zone two. But that takes some time. To work on that, and that’s a discussion for another podcast.
But you can improve fat utilization even at, uh, zones 3, 4, 3 and four, and maybe even up to five. I know some of the elite athletes can, uh, burn tons of fat even at those higher intensities. So builds aerobic capacity. Um, it improves fat utilization. Number three, it strengthens your heart though. Zone two running actually conditions your cardiovascular system in a way that high intensity work just can’t.
Your heart gets stronger and more efficient at pumping blood, um, uh, especially blood volume, uh, increases, which means more oxygen is delivered to working muscles. So this translates into better performance at all intensity levels. So having a stronger cardiovascular system, strengthening your heart, strengthening your heart’s ability to pump more blood to cr you know, have a, a higher blood volume, means that, uh, you’re going to fatigue much, much slower than somebody who does not have a strong cardiovascular system.
And then number four, uh, when we talk about the real benefits of zone two training is that it supports recovery and consistency. So zone two runs are relatively low stress, you know, the, and they’re designed that way. I’m, I’m a big fan of doing, you know, roughly 80% of your running in that zone too, because it, it does not wear you down as much as the higher intensity runs.
So many runners just go out there and do. All they’re running at some medium to hard, uh, intensity. You know, medium to high intensity running. So that would be like zones three, four, and up. And when you’re doing all your runs at, at that intensity, you’re gonna trash your legs. Okay? Zone two, running. It’s relatively low stress.
It doesn’t trash your legs. That means that you can run more off and you can build consistency over time. You can accumulate more training volume without burning yourself out. And really when it comes to all this stuff, consistency is the key to long-term success, to long-term fitness. If your goal is to run.
Farther. So if your goal is to run an ultra marathon or a marathon or a half marathon and you’ve never done anything like that before, this is gonna help improve your endurance. Um, we want that. And it’ll also help you to become faster because you’re not completely, you know, breaking yourself down with every single run.
A lot of these runs, even though they’re zone two, um, they’re not going to burn you out as fast. They’re not gonna break you down. And so they. They’re that you can recover faster from some of those harder runs. Um, so a couple things about what Zone two running doesn’t do. So let’s talk about some of these things that, that I think are big myths out there.
And a lot of people, uh, think that, you know, zone two is just, uh, the magic bullet for everything, especially fat loss. So number one, zone two does not guarantee fat loss. This is the big one, right? You cannot. Out zone two, run a poor diet, right? You can run easy for hours, but if your nutrition isn’t aligned with fat loss, you’re not gonna see the scale move.
Training adaptations, body composition changes. These are all related, but they’re kind of separate processes. This is why I do what I do, because so many runners are under the impression that if they just run more, they can eat whatever they want and they don’t really have to change their diet. But I can’t tell you how many runners I work with who once we make some changes to the diet and we’re talking about common sense changes to the diet, then they start to actually lose that weight.
And, and so it really has more to do with what’s going on in the kitchen than it does what’s the, what’s going on, uh, out there on the roads. Uh, another thing that zone two running doesn’t do is that it doesn’t replace all your other training. So I mentioned a lot of runners who like to just do all their runs, kind of medium hard.
Well, there’s a lot of runners out there that like to do all their training really easy, and they get so locked into this zone two training. You know, they’re even looking at their heart rate on their watch and they freak out if it goes above, you know, into zone three. Oh, I gotta stay in zone two all the time.
But when you do that, you kind of forget that. Hey, running fast is also important. You need a mix. Zone two is a great foundation. Again, maybe 80% of your running should be done at a conversational pace in that zone two, um, uh, effort level. So that should be kind of the foundation, but you also wanna mix.
Higher intensity work. You wanna mix in some, uh, high intensity, uh, intervals. You wanna mix in some moderate intensity, tempo type of runs. You wanna, you know, practice running, uh, at your race pace, whatever that is for you. When you neglect these other zones, when you neglect zones three and four and five, even.
You are just gonna be underdeveloped. You’re sort of, you know, working in one area, but you’re, you wanna work in all these different areas, so you wanna make sure that you are, you know, doing a mix of runs with different intensities. So if we’re doing 80% of our running in zone two, then 20% of our running needs to be done.
Above that level, honestly. Um, I talked to somebody just yesterday who, you know, wants to get faster, but has never done any kind of speed work at all. Has never run faster than just the easy running. Just keeps and, and is getting frustrated that she isn’t getting faster. And I said, well, have you ever practiced running faster?
Have you ever tried running faster? No. Maybe try that and you might get faster. Um, so that’s just one thing that you have to understand that, you know, zone two running just by itself is not going to, uh, make you into a fast runner. It’s not gonna completely improve your running. You really have to factor in.
Some moderate intensity and high intensity running as well. Um, and then the third thing that zone two running doesn’t do is that it doesn’t really deliver quick results. Zone two training is kind of a long game. The adaptations happen, but they happen gradually. So it’s over, you know, months and years of doing this kind of training.
Um, if you’re expecting overnight changes, you’re going to be disappointed. So again, if you’re focusing on 80% of your training volume done at a, in, in zone two at that conversational pace and you’re expecting you’re running to completely change, you know, within, uh, a few weeks or something like that, that’s probably not gonna happen.
Give it a few months and I think you can start to see some changes. Most people I work with, we work together for three months, six months, somewhere in that range. We see vast improvements in people’s running when they stick to a, a solid running program that includes a lot of zone two and then a mix of some moderate and higher intensity running as as well.
So what about zone two and how does that actually fit into, you know, the whole fat loss puzzle here? So think of it like this. Zone two running is an excellent tool for building endurance, for improving your body’s ability to burn fat for fuel, and for creating a solid aerobic foundation. So these are the things that zone two running is very good at, but the actual like losing fat part.
That’s mostly gonna happen in the kitchen. Okay? What types of foods you’re eating, how much you’re eating. This is gonna determine whether you’re actually losing body fat or not. So zone two supports fat loss. By making you more metabolically flexible, which means that you can burn both fat and carbohydrate as fuel sources, which is a good thing.
We want to be metabolically flexible. Most runners are not. It trains your body to tap into fat as an energy source, which is good. And if you really want to, you know, take this to the next level. Get fat adapted. Make sure that your body is really efficient at burning fat for fuel. This is gonna improve your endurance massively, but without the right nutrition and other lifestyle factors in place, that adaptation won’t necessarily show up as fat loss, fat loss on your body.
So you gotta make sure that you’re doing these other things as well. So it’s not just about running. Then, you know, we talk about this a lot. You can’t outrun a poor diet. You can’t out train, you know, uh, eating a bunch of junk all the time. It just doesn’t work that way. So, why this all matters? Well, this distinction is important because, you know, I see runners every day who spend.
Hours and hours just logging tons of E Easy miles, and they get very frustrated when the scale doesn’t move. You know, they’re doing the work, they’re expecting all this zone two training. To do a job it was never really designed to do. And when you understand that there are benefits to zone two, just understand that these are great benefits.
Um, you know, things like building aerobic capacity, improving fat utilization, strengthening your cardiovascular systems, supporting recovery and consistency. So these are all, uh, uh, great things, but it does not. Automatically mean you’re gonna just lose all the weight and get to your ideal body weight just by doing tons of zone two training.
Um, train smarter, you know, stop wasting mental energy, expecting zone two training to do something that it wasn’t designed to do, and instead appreciate zone two training for the powerhouse aerobic builder that it really is. So quick recap here. Zone two is awesome for endurance. It’s awesome for aerobic capacity, for cardiovascular health, for fat utilization, but it does not guarantee fat loss.
That depends way more on what you’re eating and how you’re fueling your body. Okay. Zone two should be a foundation of your training, but not the only thing you ever do. Okay. If you keep these distinctions clear in your mind, you’re gonna set yourself up for both, you know, better performance and a much healthier relationship with running and with fat loss.
So don’t expect, uh, zone two training to do something it just wasn’t really meant to do. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean and I will talk to you soon.
So many runners tell me they want to lose weight, get stronger, or train smarter—but they keep stalling because they’re “not ready yet.” They want the timing to be perfect, their schedule to clear …
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 297 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today stop waiting to feel ready. So many runners tell me that they want to get stronger, train smarter, lose weight, but they keep stalling because they’re quote unquote not ready yet.
They want the timing to be perfect. They want their schedule to clear up. They want their motivation to kick in. But here’s the truth, that day. Rarely ever comes. You don’t suddenly wake up one morning feeling 100% ready to change your diet or run your best marathon. Readiness isn’t something you wait for.
It’s something that you create through action. Every small step you take, even if it’s messy or imperfect. Builds confidence and builds momentum. So in this episode, I’m breaking down why waiting keeps you stuck, why imperfect action is really the key to progress, and how you can finally stop stalling and start moving towards your goals today.
But first, listen, I know what it feels like when running Just doesn’t feel the way you want it to. When you’re putting on all the miles, you’re putting in all the hard work and everything just feels harder than it should. You keep trying to clean up your diet, but nothing really sticks. You’re frustrated because you know that you’re capable of more, but you can’t seem to get there, at least not on your own.
This is exactly why I created my coaching program. It’s not just about logging miles or following a generic training plan. It’s about getting all the pieces working together. Nutrition, strength, mindset, endurance, so that you can finally feel strong, feel confident, and be in control. When you work with me, you get a proven system and the support you need to stay consistent to break through plateaus and actually enjoy the process.
You’re gonna learn how to fuel your body the right way. Build strength that makes running easier and develop the mental toughness to handle anything that comes your way. So if you’re ready to stop struggling and start thriving, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me.
Let’s get you moving in the right direction today. So I talk to runners every single day who want to lose weight, improve their running, who just wanna feel better in their bodies. And one of the biggest reasons why people don’t ever take action, they don’t ever get started. With any of this stuff is because they’re waiting for some magical moment when all the stars are going to align and they’re gonna feel completely ready.
But here’s the thing, that moment it just really doesn’t exist. And in this episode, I’m gonna explain why waiting to feel ready is really just keeping you stuck. And I’m gonna explain how you can start moving forward right now by taking imperfect action. So a lot of runners will tell me that they want to change.
In fact, I talk to people every single day about my coaching program and they say they want to improve, they wanna lose the weight, they want to get stronger, they want to improve their running. Um, but deep down, they don’t feel ready. And what it kind of boils down to is fear. So they’re afraid of starting something and not being able to finish it.
They’re afraid of failing. They’re afraid of trying something that feels uncomfortable, that feels hard, and not being able to, to succeed at it. They’re afraid of looking foolish. They’re afraid of what other people might think of them. So not feeling ready is really just the excuse a lot of people hide behind and listen, I’ve done this in the past as well.
I think we all have done this to some extent because it’s much harder to say to someone, I’m afraid I’m going to fail. I’m afraid that I’m going to try something. I’m going to invest in myself. I’m going to put in a lot of time and effort into this, you know, diet or this, uh, running plan, uh, or into strength training and it’s not gonna work for me, or I’m going to give up or I’m going to, um, be the failure.
That’s very difficult to say out loud. It’s very difficult to admit that we have those fears, but it’s very, very true for pretty much all of us. So instead we just say, okay, I’m not really ready, and all these things have to have. Been in order for me to be ready, in order for me to take action and get started with this thing, we tell ourselves that I’m gonna start tomorrow, or you know, next Monday or after this vacation, or after the holidays, or when things calm down at work, or when the kids are back in school, or when the kids are out of school, or things aren’t so stressful around the house, or when Mercury isn’t in retrograde or whatever.
The truth of the matter is there’s no quote unquote ready. Ready doesn’t exist. That’s not a thing. There’s only right now. Life will always be busy. There’s never going to be a magical 12 week stretch with no work stress, no kids’ activities, no injuries, no holidays, and if you’re waiting for things to calm down, you’re never going to start.
Perfect time. The perfect time to start something. It’s an illusion, it’s procrastination, dressed up as planning. So what really creates being ready? What creates readiness is you taking action. Confidence doesn’t come first. You don’t wake up one day ready to change your nutrition or ready to run a marathon.
Being ready comes from doing the thing. And probably doing it badly at first. And that’s the thing, when you first try something, you may not be very good at it. Like think about when you first try to play the guitar or something like that. You’re gonna kind of suck at it at first. You’re gonna be really terrible until you develop that muscle memory.
And you get better at it. So you’re gonna have a lot of failures. You’re going to have a lot of people wishing you would not practice so loudly all the time. ’cause you’re gonna kind of suck at it. It’s the same with running. It’s the same with trying to lose weight. You’re not gonna be great at it first.
You’re gonna have lots of little failures along the way. It’s okay. It’s part of the process. Every success is built upon a pile of failures. Okay? But. Every time you take action, every time that you create even a little bit of a result or move the needle just a little bit, you build momentum and you start to, uh, build proof and trust in yourself that you can do this.
That you can overcome these little failures along the way and that you can stick with it, and that you can continue to make process, uh, progress. You build trust in yourself, you build confidence and you get results. And they may be small. Sometimes you may take a few steps forward and then a few steps back.
That’s okay. The more you stick with it, the more, the more progress you’re going to make, the more ready you’re going to feel. So you see how this works? Like you gotta take the action and start to build a little bit of momentum in order for you to feel ready, not the other way around. So action creates readiness.
You don’t have to feel ready in order to take action. So that is the, the biggest takeaway I want you to, uh, grab onto from this episode is that you need to take action despite not feeling ready. And there’s a lot of power in that imperfect action. We shouldn’t be aiming for perfection. I think perfection is the killer of good, you know?
Um, perfection is also the, the enemy of progress. You know, we’re, we’re aiming for progress, not perfection. Did you stick with your nutrition plan 100% this week? Probably not. Did you learn something in the process? Probably. Um, how are your running, uh, run? How’s your run training going? Like, how are your runs?
Uh, did you have a rough, long run last week? Okay, well guess what? You learned a lesson from that. Maybe next time you need to hydrate more fuel differently, but you showed up, you did the work, despite not feeling. Ready despite not feeling like you, you know, a hundred percent or despite not doing it perfectly.
So one of the things that I, I think is very important for a lot of us who are kind of type A personalities, we want to do everything perfect. If we can’t do it perfect, why do it at all? I think we need to. Put that idea to bed because that idea is going to keep you stuck. I can’t tell you how many people will not take action because they don’t feel like they can do whatever they’re gonna do perfectly.
You know, if you’re not going to be able to stick to your food plan a hundred percent, then why bother? If you’re not gonna be able to stick to a strength training routine and do every workout perfectly, every single time, why bother? And I think that. Imperfect action is always going to beat. Perfect intentions.
So instead of trying to be perfect, let’s aim for good enough. I had a coach who used to tell me that, um, this is a business coach, so we were talking about, you know, creating content for business and creating programs and things like that. And she said, aim for like B minus work, you know, and I’ve taken that to heart.
I’m like, yeah. I’m a a plus person, like I want everything to be perfect, but I really had to work hard to grasp this idea that good enough is good enough, like BB plus B minus something in that range is great. You know, it’s not, it’s it’s above average. It’s not terrible. Um, but it’s not gonna be perfect because you know what?
Perfect just doesn’t exist. It really doesn’t. Imperfect action will always beat perfect intentions. Take the action. Do something today. Do you feel ready? No, probably not. That’s okay. Start anyway. You are not gonna make progress by thinking about it or waiting. It’s just a form of procrastination. It’s a form of fear showing up for you.
It’s fear, man, manifesting as you know, preparation, and it’s just keeping you stuck where you are. So I want you to think about this this week. Um, I want you to pick something. Today I want you to pick some small step that you can take, some tiny little action that you can take today and, um, do that one thing even though you don’t feel ready.
And even though you probably won’t do it perfectly, so maybe it’s, you know, doing 10 minutes of strength training. Or signing up for some race that you’ve been thinking about or swapping out, um, you know, a healthy protein snack for your typical, um, you know, cookies or something like that. Just one little thing that you can do today that you may not do perfectly, that you don’t feel really ready to do, but just take some imperfect action.
And then do it again tomorrow. Make the commitment to yourself every single day to take imperfect action. ’cause this is what’s going to move the needle for you. This is what’s going to create progress and create results for you. This is what’s going to help you to believe in yourself. You’re going to start to feel more confident.
You’re, you’re gonna start to feel like you can do this and you’re gonna start to feel ready, but you don’t get ready until you start taking action. Trust the fact that readiness is going to follow, taking action, and then your golden, okay, so your big takeaway today. If you’re waiting until you feel ready, you’ll be waiting forever.
The way you become ready is by taking action first, messy, imperfect, uncomfortable action. That’s where the growth really happens. That’s how you build that confidence. That’s how you stop stalling. That’s how you start finally becoming that most badass version of yourself. And if you’re ready. Or maybe even if you’re not ready and you wanna, you want some help taking action towards your weight loss goals, towards your running goals, I’d love to be your coach.
Just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. I know it was a little bit of a shorter episode, but I really wanted to get this information out there to today. I thought it was really important to share this. There’s so many people that are, that are feeling stuck because they’re not ready to take action.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running Lean. And I’ll talk to you soon.
So here’s the deal: runners are some of the fittest people on the planet, and yet so many struggle with weight. You put in the miles, the effort, the discipline… and the scale shrugs. Or, you …
Continue Reading about 296. Getting Lean Without Going Crazy →
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 296 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today getting lean without going crazy or how to lose weight as a runner without losing your mind. So here’s the deal. Runners are some of the fittest people on the planet, or can be yet.
So many of us struggle with weight, and I get it. You put in the miles, you put in the effort, you put in the discipline, and the scale does not move. Or maybe you train for a race and somehow you gain weight. That was my experience. I talk to people every day that have the same experience, and this can make you feel a little nuts.
So we’re gonna fix that today by walking through a SANE framework, how to think about food, how to plan without feeling restricted, how to make decisions that help you to get leaner. While enjoying your life, I know it sounds crazy. I’m gonna tell you exactly what to focus on. What levers are gonna move the needle without dumping all the tactical minutia on you here.
That tactical stuff is what I do with clients one-on-one. Today, you’re gonna get a big overview on this topic, and I’m excited to share this with you. Um, quick note though, before we dive in, if you want help applying all of this in a way that fits your training, that fits your lifestyle, that fits your preferences, head over to my website running lean coaching.com.
Click on work with me and we will build a plan that works for you. Okay. Cool. Um, so here’s the deal. Runners are fit. Uh, so many people struggle with their weight. Uh, they feel like they’re doing all the right things and then stuff just really does not work for them. They can’t seem to drop the weight and it makes them feel a little crazy and a lot of the.
Uh, diet advice out there. A lot of the nutrition advice out there doesn’t really work for runners. That’s why I do what I do, because there’s dieticians, there’s nutritionists, there’s weight loss coaches out there, and they just don’t understand how to fuel for running. What it takes to, uh, lose weight as a runner or how to maintain muscle mass as a runner and why these things are so important.
Um, I’ve heard weight loss coaches out there that say you should not do any sort of exercise while you’re trying to lose weight. And I just think that’s sort of crazy. ’cause are you gonna do that? No. Am I gonna do that? No. We’re gonna keep exercising, we’re gonna keep running, we’re gonna keep doing our strength training, we’re gonna keep doing all the things that we enjoy doing.
We just have to understand that those things are not the only way to lose weight. Okay, so the first thing I wanna talk about here is that, you know, exercise and running is amazing. But it’s not a weight loss plan by itself. It’s great for your heart. It’s great to build that cardiovascular fitness. It’s good for your mental health, for your emotional health, for your stress, but you can’t outrun a bad diet.
You know, I’ve said that before. I’ll keep saying it because I think it is absolutely true. You have to switch what you’re eating if you wanna lose weight. It’s just not about running more. Then there’s something that we call the hunger and reward drive. So a lot of runners, a lot of athletes out there do long runs, they do hard workouts and you know, some of this can, you know, make you feel a little bit hungry and make you feel like, oh, I earn this piece of cake.
I earned this pizza. I earned this ice cream. And without a plan in place, what happens is we tend to reward ourselves with ultra processed foods, with sugar, um, whatever we feel like eating because we’re, we’re kind of conditioned or we’ve conditioned ourselves that I can eat whatever I want because I’m a runner.
Um, so a lot of that mentality has to shift. We’re gonna talk about how to shift that in this episode here. Another, um, thing I want to address here and, and another reason why runners struggle with weight. So first is, you know, they’re just trying to run more. They have this reward, uh, drive that they’re, uh, you know, sort of conditioned to believe, and then there’s randomness disguised as just listening to your body.
So I love listening to your body. I think that is important. But there’s a difference between listening to your body and then rationalizing eating a bunch of junk food. Okay? If every day is a new experience with food, if every day is some, uh, random, you know, meal plan, random, uh, strength plan, random running plan, your results are going to be random.
You’re not going to get the results that you’re looking for. So. You know, winging it, randomness, whatever you want to call it. Is not a plan. It’s the opposite of a plan. And when you’re just winging it, when you don’t have a plan, you tend to not make good decisions. You tend to not make a lot of progress towards your goals.
You might have this goal to lose 30 pounds and what are you doing every day? Just whatever you feel like. How’s that working for you? Is it moving you towards your goals? Probably not because it’s just randomness. Okay. And then the last thing that, uh, I wanna just talk about and, and kind of. Set up this conversation and talk about why a lot of runners struggle with losing weight is they get to this all or nothing thinking, so they feel like they have to be super restrictive.
And most diets out there tell you that you can’t ever eat sugar again. It’s the worst thing in the world. You can never have a Diet Coke, you can never have a piece of pizza. You gotta stay away from all carbs or all grains or all meat or all dairy or whatever. And so when we have this all or nothing thinking, what happens is we, we tend to rebel against that.
When somebody tells you, you can’t do this, what do you want to do? You wanna go and do it more, right? So that all or nothing thinking, which a lot of diets. Preach and, and the principle, but behind a lot of diet advice is like, you can never eat this stuff again. I can’t tell you how many accounts on Instagram and Facebook, whatever that I follow, where it’s just all or nothing.
Like let’s say it’s a carnivore person and it’s just like you have to eat. You know, rib eye steaks every day, and that’s it. Like, that’s your whole life is just rib eye steaks. You know, that’s the only way you can be healthy. And I’m like, yeah, I, I’m not sure about that. You know, I don’t really think that’s the way I wanna live my life, and I want to eat that piece of pizza occasionally.
Hey, it’s somebody’s birthday, I want to eat the birthday cake and celebrate with that person. So. We tend, when we have this all or nothing thinking, we tend to rebel against that. We, we tend to just binge out on stuff. Um, and, and, and it’s really an unsustainable strategy if you really think about it. So that’s one of the main reasons, um, I wanted to talk about this today, is that I think a lot of us have this.
Idea that losing weight has to be frustrating. It has to make you crazy. You know, it has to be, uh, very, very restrictive. Um, but all those things are very unsustainable and the key with any sort of. You know, change in your nutrition plan. Your diet has to be something that is sustainable for you. Okay? Now, if you’ve answered yes to any of these things that I’ve talked about, or you can relate to any things I just talked about, just to understand that, that’s totally cool.
Nothing’s wrong with you. This is just normal. We all kind of go through this, but what you need. Is a, a better framework. Okay, so before I get into the framework, which I love this framework, um, but um, before I get into that, I wanna talk about a little bit of a mindset shift. So, uh. The mindset shifts that are gonna help you to stay sane, right?
We’re, we’re talking about not going crazy when we’re trying to lose weight. The first is a shift in your identity. You gotta remember that you’re not on a diet, you’re a lean, strong runner in training. You are an athlete. Your decisions today are what an athlete would do. You train like an athlete, you should eat like an athlete, and this is what it means to shift your identity, adopt the identity of an athlete, and then your decisions just become super obvious.
So we gotta make that shift in your identity. The second is. Choices over rules. Okay? Rules can fee feel very restrictive. Choices feel empowering. You choose your plan on purpose. When you have that mindset of choosing your own plan and making your own decisions, you are in charge. You have autonomy, uh, you feel in control, you feel calm, you feel centered.
You’re not. Crazy because somebody says you can’t ever eat oatmeal again in your life, or something like that. So instead of having all these, you know, restrictive rules, make choices. Make choices that feel good for you, ones that can make you feel kind of calm inside. Okay? And then remember that the process beats perfection.
So this isn’t about. Uh, perfection. Nobody does this perfectly. I don’t do this perfectly. I don’t know one person I’ve ever worked with that does all this stuff perfectly. So we wanna remember that it’s more important to adhere to the process, to to show up and commit to the process on a daily basis, rather than trying to, uh, ace everything every single day and trying to be perfect every single day.
When you try to be perfect, what happens a lot of times is you beat yourself up. ’cause you weren’t perfect. I failed because I had a cookie, uh, in the break room at lunch. ’cause they looked good. I’m a failure. Look, I can’t do this. Hey, listen, 90% of the day you did amazing. 98% of the day you did amazing. You had a cookie.
Who cares? Let’s aim for like b plus work here people. Okay? If you put 10 b plus days together in a row. That’s amazing. That’s gonna beat one a plus day, followed by a complete meltdown. And you, and you have a, a D minus or a F for the day, you know? So, um, one of my coaches told me this a long time ago, uh, aim for B plus work, you know, aim for B plus.
And I’m like, I can do that. I can do that. ’cause A plus feels. Very hard to attain. It feels very out of reach for a lot of us. So let’s go for that B plus. Um, remember that. Uh, remember to think about your future self as the person sort of calling the shots. Okay? Pretend your future you is the boss of you before you, um, want to go snack on a bunch of junk food from the pantry.
What’s the future me gonna tell me in this moment? Like, go out into the future, think about your future self and let that future self dictate what you’re gonna do in this moment. Is this something that’s really gonna help me to become that person or not? ’cause future, you knows. They know everything ’cause they’re from the future.
Um, but just like listen to that little voice in your head and say, you know, probably not, probably not eating this whole sleeve of Oreos is gonna help me become. That future me. Okay. Um, and then the last little shift in your mindset is, um, something very simple and, and we talk a lot or I hear a lot of people talk a lot about setting big goals and trying to accomplish 25 things every single day.
This can feel very overwhelming. You know, you’re trying to, you know, get your strength point training on point every single day and get your running plan together and stick with it every single day and get your food plan and be perfect with that. Listen, let’s chunk it down to like making one promise to yourself every single day.
Pick one thing you know you can do. Make that promise to yourself, I’m gonna do this today. Uh, it may be a little bit hard, it may make me feel uncomfortable to do it, but I’m gonna do this one thing today. Keep that promise to yourself. Stack up those wins. You’re gonna build so much trust and confidence in yourself over time, it’s gonna be amazing.
Okay, so that’s kind of the mindset shifts we need to make. Lemme talk about this framework. So. The backbone of getting lean, of, of, of losing weight and eating like an athlete. It’s not a detailed meal plan. I’m gonna tell you that right now. It’s a framework. So instead of thinking that, oh, you know, how many grams of carbs should I eat every day?
’cause I get people that ask me these questions, how many grams of protein should I eat every day? And you know, I will answer some of those questions with people and we’ll talk through that stuff. But instead, I want you to think about this framework, and I’m calling this the SANE framework. Okay? Instead of going crazy, SANE.
So just remember that. So the S is. Simple. Your plan needs to be super simple. Think about few. The fewer decisions you make, the less friction you have in in your day. Okay? So default to meals that you like. Have a short list of go-to proteins, veggies, good sources of fat, some good carbs that you like. Um.
You, you want to get into a predictable rhythm. I’m gonna talk more about that in a second. Um, but your plan needs to be really simple. The plan that I have for daily meals is stupid simple. You know, I have a, a protein shake. I might have some eggs, some avocado, maybe some bacon or something like that.
This is like meal number one. Meal number two. Um, might be some, uh, something I had last night, which was, uh, pre-made skewers with chicken wrapped with bacon. Oh my gosh, how good is bacon? Um, with a little bit of barbecue sauce on there. I just threw those on the grill. And some sweet potatoes like that.
How simple is that? Like that’s so. Stupidly simple, right? Um, now I’m not saying you need to eat those foods, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But what you do for yourself has to be something that is simple. It cannot be complicated. You don’t have to like get all your macros right and try to figure all that stuff out.
Eat what feels good for you. It has to work for you, obviously. And that’s the A in the SANE framework. So that’s gonna be a meaning that you know what you eat, your meal plan has to be aligned with your. Goals, your training, your schedule, your food preferences, your lifestyle. You don’t have to copy anyone else’s plan.
The best plan is the one that you can follow sustainably. So what? Whatever works for you has to be aligned with your goals and it has to work for you long term. So don’t let anybody tell you you’re doing it wrong. I can’t tell you how many people will say, Hey, uh, you know, I’m really struggling with my weight.
Well, here’s what you should eat. Just do this, this, and this. You know, and that’s such a dumb response to that because we’re so different. Like, I don’t even like those foods, or I’m allergic to those foods, or, you know, my culture says I shouldn’t eat those foods. Okay, well then the, you know, they don’t have an answer for you.
My answer is always what? Your plan should be. Simple. It should be in alignment with your goals, and it should be something you can actually follow. Okay? So make sure it’s in alignment with your goals. That’s the A. The nane in my SANE framework is that your food needs to be nutrient dense. Think about real food.
Mini minimally processed foods. That’s easy to say. Protein focused. Get some vegetables in there. Some good sources of fats, some good carbs that actually help you to serve a purpose, not necessarily just junk carbs, you know, some sweet potatoes, some, some rice, some oats, something that you can uh, uh, use around specific workouts.
When you adopt a a nutrition plan that is nutrient dense, you’re gonna feel more full, you’re gonna recover better, your cravings are gonna be lower. You’re not gonna probably eat as much as you used to because the food that you’re eating is very nutritionally dense and your body is getting everything it needs so you don’t have to keep stuffing your face with a bunch of empty carbs.
And that’s what a lot of people do, especially runners. I just eat whatever I want. I’m gonna eat all these Oreos. Well, then you’re hungry an hour later because that didn’t fill you up. All it did was just jack up your hunger signals. So when you’re eating nutrient dense foods, minimally processed foods, whole foods, foods that still look like foods, the foods our ancestors would recognize, this is what’s going to make you feel more full and give you the nutrient nutrients that you need and your satiety will be, uh, much more in check and you can lose a lot of weight this way.
And then lastly, the E of SANE in my SANE framework is it has to be enjoyable. If you hate it, you’re not gonna do it. If I tell you you have to eat nothing but Brussels sprouts and you hate Brussels sprouts, you won’t stick to that plan, I promise you. Now, if you love Brussels sprouts, you are gonna thrive with that plan, but obviously that’s not gonna be a plan that I would ever suggest.
Um, your plan must include foods that you enjoy. And a sane way to eat fun foods is to eat them on purpose, without the guilt, without the drama, without beating yourself up. In other words, you gotta enjoy the food that you’re eating. I enjoy the food that I eat. I really enjoyed my, my dinner last night.
Chicken breasts wrapped in bacon with barbecue sauce on it, on the grill. Come on. That was so enjoyable. I love that so much. Um, or if you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna have a piece of cake, you know, tomorrow when I go to that party, you’re doing that on purpose. You’re gonna enjoy that and you don’t feel like you have to be restrictive while everybody else is eating the cake.
Just eat the piece of cake. It’s completely fine. Okay? So we’re trying to to to live a sane life, but we want food that is simple. Not complicated. It’s in alignment with your goals, nutrient dense and enjoyable. That’s the, that’s the food plan that’s gonna work for you. Okay. So I talked about rhythm. So, um, we want to talk a little bit about a flexible structured food plan.
Okay. So a rhythm means that, um, you want to get into a daily rhythm. So you want to decide ahead of time, you know what you’re gonna do as far as I’m gonna eat twice a day, I’m gonna eat three times a day. Um, you wanna reduce the decisions that you have to make. Throughout the day. So we’re not talking about counting calories, we’re talking about getting into a rhythm of planning your food and then sticking to that plan and planning your food and sticking to that plan.
The other part of a of flexible structure is that we wanna make sure we’re focusing on protein. This is very important. Protein is satiating, helps preserve lean muscle mass. It supports recovery. Um. Uh, how you do this is gonna be different for each person. You know, some people like plant-based proteins, some people like, you know, going with, uh, animal-based proteins or whatever.
Um, so whatever feels good for you, but make that the priority. Another way we can be flexible with our nutrition plan is to do smart carbs on purpose. So this is not about no carbs or. It’s not about all the carbs either. We want carbs that work for you. Okay? Time to support your training. Choose whole food carbs.
Use them strategically around key workouts. Um, we want to use carbs, but we want to use them to help us. To improve our running. Uh, we don’t want to just be eating all the carbs all the time because, hey, I’m a runner, so I get to eat all the carbs, and this isn’t about never eating carbs again, but it’s about timing them mo for the most part, around key workouts.
Um, natural fats for satiety. That fat helps you to stay full. Protein helps you to stay full fat, helps you to stay full. Add enough to, uh, your diet, to make sure your mood and your hunger are stabilized. Um, you know that you’re gonna be on the right track when you’re not constantly thinking about food.
You know you’re eating enough, okay? If you’re constantly thinking about food. You’re probably not eating enough protein, probably not getting enough fat. Don’t be afraid of fat. We don’t need to eat a super low fat diet. Um, but fat is something that will help you to, uh, feel more full for longer. And again, it kind of helps you to not eat as much in general.
Um, things like fiber, micronutrients, hydration, these things are all important. Make sure you’re eating colorful veggies. Drink plenty of water. Get your electrolytes in, especially when you, when it’s really hot out or you’re doing some super long runs. Um, this just needs to be something that is part of our, our diet.
And then plan your joy. You can eat for joy. The key word is that you’re planning it. Decide ahead of time what you’re gonna do, when you’re gonna do it, how much, and enjoy it, and then move on. There’s no guilt, there’s no I blew it or anything like that. Okay? So that’s what it means to be flexible with this and to have some structure, but flexibility around that structure.
So when you’re looking at different food choices. Think about these quick little filters. There’s these three decision filters. There’s is this, is this real? Is this mostly real minimally processed food? Is it purposeful? Am I doing this on purpose or am I just feeling like I have to eat this in the moment?
You know, is this supporting how I wanna feel today? Uh, is this supporting how I’m going to feel tomorrow? Okay, so is it real? Is it purposeful? And then is this plan, did I, did I decide this ahead of time? Or am I just reacting to how I’m feeling in the moment? Oh, I’ve had a, you know, stressful day at work, so I just want to eat a whole pizza by myself.
No, uh, make sure that it’s real food, that you’re doing it on purpose, and that it’s something that is planned. Okay. And, um, something that, uh, I wanted to just kind of touch on really quickly, which is a big fear that people have, which is like, if I change how I eat, isn’t this gonna really affect my running?
And the short answer is not if you’re strategic about it. And this is what I do with a lot of my coaching clients, because we change your diet, but we don’t want it to affect your running negatively. So what to focus on would be make sure that you’re matching your fueling to your workout. You know, if this is an easy effort, you don’t really need to do much, uh, just eat what you’ve been eating, um, during your run.
Fueling can be something that is, uh, something you want to think about, and it’s conditional depending on how long you’re running, how hot the day is, how hard of your effort it is. So you might want some carbs. Post run fueling, though is something that I would say is just not negotiable. You need to eat something after running.
It doesn’t have to be, you know, directly afterwards. It can be within an hour or two, but get some protein in, add carbs when your, uh, session or your goals call for it. You know, some people like to just stay super low carb, which is completely fine. Sometimes adding some carbs in after a run, especially a super long run, can help replenish glycogen stores and help just promote a little faster recovery time.
Um, and then beware of the I earned buffet. Refueling is great, but it’s not a free for all. It doesn’t mean you should go and, and eat all the ice cream that, that you have in the, in the freezer. Okay. So, um, couple things just to kind of recap a little bit. Um. Uh, fat loss and performance, uh, are sort of the, if you fat loss and performance are your goals, you wanna make sure that we’re focused on food quality and structure.
Remember, real food, protein anchored meals, purposeful carbs, plan, joy, consistent rhythm around your diet. Um. Strength training runners need to get stronger, you know, um, focus on lifting heavy so you get stronger. One to two sessions a week is probably, you know, good for a lot of people. If you can get to three.
That might be ideal, but make sure you’re doing, I would say, at least two strength sessions a week. Uh, your running programming should also help you to improve your, uh, metabolism. You know, so if you’re, if you’re doing your runs properly, you’re doing a mix of easy, longer runs, some, some middle distance runs that are moderately harder than some short runs that are.
You know, pretty hard, some high intensity interval type of stuff. Um, making sure you’re getting enough recovery, uh, and sleep and keeping your stress low. All this stuff is gonna help you move the needle. It’s gonna help you to, uh, you know, lose the fat without losing your mind. Okay, so food quality, strength training, run programming.
And then the recovery. Um, couple quick wins. I want you to think about. Uh, here’s a couple of things that are gonna help you change the game for yourself pretty quickly. So these are things you can do this week. So just think about these. Plan your food 24 hours in advance. Write down what you’re going to eat and include something of joy, something that will bring you joy.
And write this down the day before. Focus on protein first at every meal. This is something you can do starting right now. Um, fuel certain workouts on purpose. Decide beforehand, again, what you’re gonna do. What’s your run? How, how are you gonna fuel, what are you gonna use for, for fueling before and during?
Make sure you have at least one or two strength sessions on the calendar. Book it ahead of time. You notice a theme here, right? Um, and then maybe create a, a simple and effective bedtime routine so that you can start to get better quality sleep. So just. You know, focus on maybe a lights out ritual. Start getting the lights out an hour or so before you’re planning on going to sleep.
Dim the lights, maybe read a book or something. Get off your screens, turn off the tv. You know, get the, the room nice and dark and cold, and that’s gonna help you to sleep better and promote, you know, less stress. So if you’re hearing all this and you’re thinking, yes, I want all of this, Patrick, but I want somebody to help dial it in for me, for my training, for my preferences, for my lifestyle, that’s what I do inside my coaching program.
We take this framework, we build your plan. You know, we want make it simple. We want to help you achieve your goals. Uh, we want it to be nutrient dense and. Something that is enjoyable for you. Okay? We also work on the mental side of all this so that your plan feels something that is easy and repeatable.
It doesn’t feel like punishment. So when you’re ready, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me, and we’ll talk about what it looks like for you. You can absolutely lose weight as a runner without losing your mind. You just gotta keep it simple, aligned with your goals, nutrient dense and enjoyable.
Tune these levers, okay? And then make that one promise to yourself today, and then keep it. Okay? That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Today on the podcast I’m breaking down a hard truth a lot of runners need to hear: Why You’re Not Getting Stronger (Even Though You’re Lifting). If you’ve been showing up, moving weight, and still …
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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 295 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today why you are not getting stronger even though you are lifting. So today I am gonna be breaking down a hard truth of lot of runners. Just really need to hear right now why you’re not getting stronger, even though you’re lifting.
So if you’ve been showing up moving weight, still not seeing results, it’s not because you’re broken, it’s because your plan isn’t sending a strong enough signal. And we’ll cover what that means. What real intensity feels like, how to progress week after week, why recovery is the secret sauce to keeping you, uh, strong, and how to choose the right lifts, uh, depending on your goals.
For this episode, I want you to leave with this. Simple runner friendly template and clear steps so that you can course correct quickly, stronger running demands, stronger muscles, but strength doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. You need to dial in the signal. You gotta respect recovery and watch your numbers climb while you’re running.
Miles. Feel easier. I wanna fix the gaps, build real strength, and help you to make the next eight weeks the most productive you’ve had in the gym two date. But real quick, if you want help building real strength that actually improves your running, your body composition and your confidence, I’d love to coach you through it.
One-on-one. We’ll dial in your training plan, your nutrition and your mindset so you can stop guessing and start progressing. To learn more and apply, just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. So we’re heading into that time of the year when most runners either double down on doing the same thing, the same strength routine.
Or they decide to finally get serious about building strength. So if you’ve been putting in the work lately, but you’re not seeing results, this is a great moment to reset your approach so that the next four to eight weeks actually move the needle. We want to see progress. Okay. So I’m gonna be covering a few things today.
Really, there’s four big reasons why you’re probably not getting stronger. Um, intensity is wrong. Your plan is wrong. Uh, your recovery isn’t. Where it should be. Um, and you might be just doing the wrong workouts for your particular goals. I’m also gonna give you a simple runner friendly template that you can start using now.
You can start using it this week. So the first thing I wanna talk about is intensity. And a lot of times runners are, um, they’re guilty of too little intensity when it comes to strength training. So you might be lifting, but every set is like a five or six out of a 10 effort. So you might be finishing up your sets still having, you know, five to eight reps still in the tank.
And that’s more like cardio, you know, it’s exercise. Yes. But it’s really not training your muscles to get stronger. Um, so how do you know if your intensity level is too low? Well, your last reps look just like your first ones. In other words, you know, you’re not getting to that point where they’re getting harder.
Um, your heart rate goes up, but your muscles aren’t anywhere close to failure. And you never need a spot on your big compound lifts. Okay? So this is all signs that you’re probably not, you know, going at an intensity that that is going to help you to get stronger. So the way you fix it is we want to think about RIR, which is reps in reserve, and you should have a couple, maybe one to three reps in reserve at the end of your working sets.
So for strength work, you wanna finish your set. With one to three reps in reserve, and that is the last, that’s where the last rep should feel hard, but still clean. You could maybe do one or two more. You know, somewhere in that range, and that means your, your intensity level is where it should be. You don’t want to go to the point of absolute failure.
Uh, on every set. And certainly, um, you know, as runners, I think a lot of runners are afraid to, to go at that high of an intensity, and I totally get that. I think having, you know, one, two, maybe three reps in reserve is a good spot for most people. For most runners. Yeah. Also you have to choose loads that make the target reps, you know, honest.
So if the plan calls for five reps, then those last few should be pretty hard. So, you know, numbers. Four and five should be pretty hard, but you should still have one or two left in the tank. Not, oh, I could easily do 10 or 12 reps when the plan calls for five. So I think this is something where having a a, an honest assessment of your target reps is very important.
Okay. And the other thing is prioritizing big movements like squats, hinges, push pulls, single legwork. Um. Doing things with machines and isolation, um, are fine, but those are more peripheral type of stuff. You want to prioritize the big power movements, okay? So think about a back squat or a deadlift or a bench press, um, that kind of stuff.
That’s where you’re gonna get the most gains and be able to make the most progress. Um, and then something to just kind of think about when you’re doing leg work. Um. Uh, especially the lower body, you know, any kinda lower body strength work in general, but leg work in particular, um, you want to be in that three to eight rep range for the most part.
Okay. If every leg session is 12 to 20 reps, which I see a lot of runners do, they’re just cranking out a lot of reps with very low weight. You are just kind of reinforcing what you already have. Okay? You’re not going to progress. You’re not building strength. In that case, you’re just kind of, again, you’re kind of going through a cardio workout more than anything else.
Okay? So we want to have a couple of reps and reserves. We wanna make sure, especially for the. Uh, lower body stuff that we’re not doing a ton of reps. We wanna actually progress, so you gotta lower the, lower the reps, um, increase the weight and still have a couple reps in reserve on each, uh, set. Okay, so that’s number one.
The intensity level has to be. Correct. Number two is that you don’t really have a plan for progression. So a lot of runners just go through the motions. They, they keep repeating the same workout forever, same weight, same reps, same order. And your body will adapt to this and you will get, you will see some gains at the beginning, but then your body will just stop progressing.
Um. The way you fix it is you’ve gotta work on simple progression, okay? So that’s where you want to hit, uh, certain numbers of reps or certain weights, and then you wanna slowly over time increase the resistance. You know, either increase the number of reps that you’re doing or increase the load. So, for example, you might want to, um, if you’re doing like five reps of 20 pounds on some exercise and then, you know, week over week you start to go to six reps and seven and eight, that’s progression.
Okay? Maybe once you get to eight or nine, you’re like, okay, now I need to up the weight to 25 pounds and maybe you can only do three or four. Okay. Then wait until you can progress that. 25 pounds to, you know, eight or nine, and then you can increase it again. And, but this takes time. So just understand that we don’t want to, um, try to progress super fast.
Like every time you go to the gym, you’re not gonna progress like this. It just doesn’t work that way. And, and you want to be able to progress slowly so that you’re slowly building strength over time. Now you’re gonna probably get to some point where you know, you just can’t lift. Certain amounts of weight, you know, and, and you’re about where you want to be from a strength standpoint, perfectly fine.
And then we do things like deloading and then we can load back up again and things like that. But for the most part, most runners don’t really have a plan for progression. They just kind of do the same workout, same weights, same reps all the time. Uh, don’t do that. Okay. We want to progress. And the way you, you know, if you’re progressing is it’s, you gotta write stuff down.
You gotta log your workouts, write down the weight, the sets, the reps, and how many reps in reserve you have, uh, uh, after each set as well. You know, if it, if it. If you don’t measure it, uh, you can’t improve it, so you gotta write it down. You gotta know what it is you are, uh, looking at today, and then know how to improve that next time you’re at the gym.
Okay. And then lastly, just change one variable at a time. So either change the, the weight, the number of reps, the sets, uh, something like that. Don’t scramble all the dials every week, uh, you know, changing up your tempo and how long you’re resting and the sets and the reps, and they’ll like change one thing at a time.
And progress slowly, slowly is good when it comes to getting stronger and building real strength. So, um, that’s number two is to have a real plan for progression. Okay. Uh, number three is recovery. So a lot of runners don’t recover properly well from their running workouts, I would say for the most part, but especially from the strength.
Training that they do. So you might be stacking up some hard runs and hard lifts on the same day, which is fine to do, but then the next day you need to have a very easy recovery day. But instead that’s, that’s your hard workout day. Your hard running day. You’re gonna do intervals or something like that.
You might not be getting enough sleep. You might be undereating or under uh, undereating protein. And you’re wondering why you’re not making any progress, why the bar keeps feeling heavier every week. And this is a real problem and a, a lot of runners deal with this. They’re just not recovering properly.
They’re not allowing their body to recover properly from the hard workouts that you’re doing. You don’t make gains at the gym. You make gains while you’re sleeping. So you gotta get to sleep, you gotta get, um. You know, aim for seven to nine hours of quality sleep. Um, that’s when you build strength is, is when your body is at sleep and recovering.
Make sure you’re getting enough protein, you know, target roughly 0.7 grams, you know, per pound of your goal. Body weight. Um, make sure that you’re not in a, uh. Really deep calorie deficit. You know, if you’re trying to lose fat, um, you can have a little bit of a calorie deficit, but you know, if, if really your goal is to get stronger, then eat at more of like a maintenance plan.
Okay? So slight calorie deficit is okay. A lot of people think they just have to drastically cut their calories Well. That’s not gonna allow you to have the fuel that you need to recover properly, especially if you’re not getting enough protein as well. The other thing is to make sure you’re spacing your workouts properly to allow for rest and recovery.
Um, don’t sandwich heavy squats between, you know, uh, interval sessions and a tempo runs. You know, a better way to do it is do a hard run or a heavy lower body, uh, day, like heavy leg day on different days. Hopefully. Maybe you can have a hard run day and do leg day a couple days later or a couple days before that.
Try to put a day in between there if possible. Um, uh, just try to space your, especially your leg workouts so that you’re recovering properly and not doing like a super hard leg day. And then the following day, running 20 miles as a training run, that’s a recipe for disaster right there. Okay? And if the same day is your only option, sometimes.
That is okay. You can do, uh, an easy run in, in the morning, let’s say, and then you can lift in the evening or switch that around. It doesn’t really matter, but keep one of these things, you know, truly easy just to allow your body to recover properly. And then also resting between sets. You know, a lot of runners, they just wanna get stuff done.
They go to the gym, they’re like, I’ve got 40 minutes to get this done, and they just bang this stuff out. But to build strength, you really need to have a rest period. In between sets, anywhere from one to three minutes between sets is considered. Pretty good. Um, the 32nd bootcamp rests, they kind of, uh, kill your gains.
You know, they, they just really do, it’s great for cardio, but it’s not gonna help you get stronger. And then the fourth thing that maybe, uh, the reason why you’re not getting stronger is you’re just doing the wrong workouts for your particular goals. So if you, if you wanna get strong, uh, but you’re doing just, you know, circuits or a bunch of core work or super light dumbbells.
I mean, this stuff is great for cardio and it’s great for, it’s a great form of exercise in general, but it’s not gonna really help you to get stronger. So think about it like this, to get stronger, we wanna work in that three to five rep range. You know, heavier weights, uh, lower sets, and reps longer rests.
Um. High intent. So in other words, we want our intentions to be, you know, high and we want the, the load to be pretty heavy. That’s to build maximum strength. When we talk about things like hypertrophy, which is building larger muscles, that’s where’re in, we’re in the higher rep ranges, you know, 10 to 15 reps, lighter loads, not as much rest in between sets.
For, uh, muscular endurance and conditioning. You know, that’s where we can be in those, uh, high rep ranges, short rest circuit type of workouts, uh, bootcamp type of workouts. Um, and then we’ve got like training for power, which is actually pretty useful for runners. This is gonna be lower reps, but explosive intent.
So think about doing a bench press, but instead of doing it slowly, you’re pushing through that powerfully. You know, you’re finishing each rep in a powerful way. Um, and that you can do the same thing with squats and some other exercises. The power strength workouts are a little bit of an advanced, uh, exercise.
So be very mindful that you gotta get strong first and you gotta be very comfortable doing these things and you probably want to get some help. With the power workouts because you can get hurt easily, uh, by not doing it properly. So that’s just a little caveat there. Um, and you don’t have to pick up, you know, one of these things and do it forever.
You don’t have to just focus on strength or power, like you can mix them up occasionally. And I do this, I go through sessions where I. Do, you know, four to six weeks of, you know, maximum strength. I do four to six weeks of hypertrophy and I kind of, you know, work it around that sort of a, um, schedule, you know, um, it’s good to have an intention and it’s good to mix it up as well sometimes.
So typically I kind of primarily focus on strength. Um, and so if, if. If your, um, primary outcome for your sessions is to build strength and do your heavy lifting first, and then work on the, the, and that’s like the larger muscle groups and things like that, and then work on the, um, accessories and the smaller muscle groups afterwards.
Um, again, if, if strength is your. Uh, main focus, then do your strength session first before you run. And if you like running, uh, before your strength session, the, the running session is gonna be the kind of the priority ’cause you’re gonna be fresher and stronger for that. And then the strength session, I wouldn’t go as intense because you’re gonna have, you’re not gonna be as fresh or as strong for that.
Okay? So it, whatever session you do first is the one that’s gonna be sort of prioritized as probably a better outcome. So just keep that, that in mind when you’re, um, working your, um, workouts around running and things like that. Um, we want strength and conditioning that supports your running. We don’t want it to be the same thing as your running, and this is why a lot of runners, they just do.
They just wanna do more cardio. They just love cardio. They just wanna do, so they, you know, pick up the lightest weights they can and just do a million reps. Um, and that’s great again, but it’s just more cardio that you don’t need to be doing. You’re a runner. You’re doing plenty of cardio already. You’re running trains your body for endurance.
We want the, the work we do in the gym to build stronger muscles from head to toe. Okay, so I’m gonna give you just a quick little runner friendly weekly template. Okay? I’m just gonna go through this kind of quickly and just give you an idea of what this might look like for you. And of course.
Everybody’s different. This is just a generic thing. I sort of just worked up really quickly here, but let’s say you do two strength sessions a week, and I do recommend at least two strength sessions a week. One strength session a week is enough to maintain what you got. Two is enough to start building muscle and getting stronger.
Three, personally, I think is ideal, but we’re just gonna go with two today just for the sake of ease. Um, so look, we got two, you know, strength sessions. We got day, uh, I’m gonna call it day A and day B. Day A let’s say is your lower body strength and some core work. So you might do. Um, some back squats.
Again, three to five reps with one to two reps in reserve on each set, he got some Romanian deadlifts. Again, three to five. Um, some split squats or some step ups. These are single leg exercises. Awesome for runners. Again, three to three to five reps. Three to five sets, calf raises, and maybe like a plank.
And, and that’s it. Like that’s your workout right there. And then the next day you can do like upper body strength. And then we’re talking about posterior chain. So that’s the whole. Backside of your body, um, bench press or maybe some pushups. Again, three to five sets with a couple uh, reps in reserve. Some rows, maybe some pull-ups, overhead pressing, some hip hinge accessories.
So this could be. Hip thrust, kettlebell swing, something where you’re using that hip motion and then some, uh, some core work, maybe, you know, three to five reps of some, uh, or three to five sets of some core work as well. And so that’s, that’s it. I mean, it’s pretty simple. It’s not super complicated, but we wanna have something that, you know, works lower body.
In core, we want upper body and posterior chain. That’s a good way of breaking these things up as far as where to put your runs. You know, you might have runs where you do, uh, your a workout, or I’m sorry, your B workout, so that’s your upper body. You could do that on, on Monday with an easy run. Maybe Tuesday is, is uh, speed intervals.
Wednesday is a easy run or a rest day Thursday you could do your lower body and core work and not do a hard run on Thursday, and then you’ve got your Saturday long run. So this is putting your strength workouts, you know, on the same day as an easy run or on a day where you’re not running again, and then you’ve got a couple days between your, um, lower body and your long run.
So you can see how you can really separate it out. And it doesn’t have to be super complicated. I think we get so much information from social media and from the internet out there that we make these workouts. Uh, super complicated. We make our scheduling of all these things super complicated, and it just doesn’t have to be complicated.
We just wanna separate hard running days from your heavier, especially your lower body lifting days where you can, and of course, this is an example. You gotta do what feels good for you. Maybe your schedule doesn’t work this way perfectly fine, but try to fit within these parameters and you’re gonna make lots of progress here.
Okay. Um, couple of things to just keep in mind when you’re doing, uh, strength work. Make sure you’re going through full controlled. Range of motion. So if you’ve ever seen people doing something like a bench press and they, uh, get that, they don’t bring that bar all the way down to their chest. They bring it about halfway down or a quarter of the way down, and then it goes back up.
They’re doing a, a range of motions is about six inches. You know, that’s not a bench press. Okay. Bench press should basically touch your chest and then. Straighten the arms all the way out. And that’s more of like, what about 18 inches or something like that. So full controlled range of motion. Um, make sure you’re setting yourself up properly and safely for every exercise.
Uh, get your feet in the right place. Make sure you’re, um, set up on the bench or the bar properly. Uh, make sure you’re breathing through the lifts properly. Um, don’t be afraid to use those little plates too. The little two and a half pounders, you know, progress by sm by small amounts. That’s okay. I see so many people that are like, well, you know, I, I don’t, I can’t do 10 more pounds on that lift.
Well do five pounds, do two and a half pounds if you have to. It’s okay. Just progress slowly. This is not something you’re trying to rush to. This is. A commitment of staying strong for the rest of your life, you know? So make sure that what you’re doing is progressing, yes, but progressing slowly. Slowly is good.
You’re still progressing. Okay. And then keep that log book mindset going, right? Um, so what you’re trying to do is perfect your lifts and progress slowly. And the only way you’ll know that you’re doing that is by keeping a log. So write down your, your sets, your exercises, your sets, your reps, the weight you’re using, and then how you feel.
Um, though that one, you know, it was heavier than I’ve ever list lifted, but my form felt terrible and I felt very unstable. Well. That’s too heavy for you. Then go back to a little bit of lighter weight until you can get a little bit stronger. Okay? Um, so just a quick little plan for you, like if you wanted to, you know, kind of work on this over the next 30 days.
Pick four to six. Cornerstone lifts. So these are, you know, two lower, uh, body lifts to upper body, one to two accessories. Train them twice a week. Make sure you’ve got one to three reps in reserve on your working sets. Um, make sure you’re tracking every set. Make sure you’re progressing slowly. Get enough sleep.
Hit your protein goals. Make sure you’re not in a super big calorie deficit, um, space. Those hard runs away from the heavy, especially the lower body work that you’re doing in the gym. And then 30 days from now. See how you’re going, uh, track your progress and you should be able to see it in the gym. You should be able to lift heavier.
You should be stronger in 30 days. Okay. A couple of common questions that I’ve gotten recently in talking to some clients about this. Well, what about circuits? I just like doing the machines. Can I still do that? Yes, you can. Um. Honestly, I like them to be done as an accessory or on something. Maybe you don’t have enough time, as much time to work out.
I don’t want them to be your main strength stimulus. The machines are fine, but the, the, the free weights, especially doing the big compound moves tend to work your core. They work your whole body. They work on balance. They’re just superior to the machines, but the machines are not terrible. What about plyometrics?
Okay, so plyometrics are great to do. Like these are, you know, jumping and, um, uh, movements that stimulate the same, uh, nervous system responses as running. So they’re gonna stimulate running and they’re going to help you with your running for sure. So do some plyometrics. I like this as a wor, as a warmup before.
Heavy lifting session for sure. Um, but don’t make this the majority of your workout. So biometrics is fine to do here and there, but they don’t, don’t make it your whole workout. We just wanna get your body, um, used to doing some of these exercises and it does help with your running performance.
Absolutely. And then the other one is like, how heavy is too heavy? Like what’s. What’s the way I should be aiming for? Well, again, think about those, uh, sets that you’re doing. You know, can you, do you still have a few reps in the tank? So if you have a couple of reps in reserve, then that’s the right amount of weight.
You know, one to three reps in reserve. If you have five or eight reps in reserve, that’s too light. If you have zero reps in reserve, that’s too heavy. Okay? So try to keep it to that, like one to three. Um, something I want you to think about, look at your last 30 days of training. Um, if you don’t see that you’ve planned the right intensity or that you’ve written out a progression plan, or that your recovery hasn’t been all that good, um.
That’s what’s been going on with you, then you need to fix this stuff. Okay? Fix these things. Get your progression where it’s supposed to be. Get the intensity where it’s supposed to be. Get the weight right. Make sure you’re getting, uh, recovery, and then you’re planning these workouts around your goals.
What are your goals? Is it to get stronger, to get faster, to improve your running endurance, to improve your running power, speed. Make sure that your, uh, strength workouts are supporting your running goals as well. And if you want a customized plan that fits with your calendar, with your lifestyle, with your goals, obviously I can help build that for you.
Head over to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, you and I’ll talk about your goals, and then you and I can get to work on achieving these goals. Okay? So. You’re probably not getting stronger because you’re either not lifting hard enough, you’re not progressing on purpose, you’re not recovering adequately, or you’re just doing workouts that don’t match your goal.
So clean this stuff up, okay? And then watch what happens in your lifts and in your running. This is gonna improve your running exponentially, I promise you. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
You know what I’m talking about. You’re doing the workouts, logging the miles, tracking your food, getting your strength sessions in… and the results? Nowhere to be found. The scale isn’t …
Continue Reading about 294. When You Feel Like Nothing’s Working →
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 294 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about something every runner, every athlete, every human being who’s ever been, uh, chasing a big goal will have to face sooner or later that moment when you feel like nothing’s working.
And I know you know what I’m talking about. You’re doing the workouts, you’re logging the miles, you’re tracking your food, you’re getting your strength sessions in, and the results know where to be found. The scale isn’t budging, your pace isn’t improving. You’re clothes fit the same. And you’re left wondering, why am I even doing this?
What’s the point of all this? I wanna tell you something upfront. If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not broken, you’re not weak, you’re definitely not alone. This really happens to everyone, and yes, it’s frustrating, but it can actually be one of the most powerful turning points in your health and fitness journey.
If you know how to handle it. But before we get into all that, I want to invite you, if you’re a runner who’s already, who’s ready to lose weight, get stronger, make running easier, I can help you get there faster and more efficiently than you probably think is possible. So I work with runners every single day who’ve been stuck in that nothing’s working phase for months, sometimes even years, and together.
We break through it, not with gimmicks, not with punishment workouts, but with a real sustainable approach that actually works for the long haul. So if you want that kind of support, just go to my website, running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. Alright, let’s get into this. So this topic came up recently.
With one of my coaching clients, she’s been working hard. She’s very consistent with everything she’s doing. Her, her runs are consistent, her nutrition is on point. She’s doing everything right, but the scale isn’t moving, and her workouts felt harder than ever. And she said, you know, I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing and it’s just not working.
I’m just feeling like, you know, what’s the point of all this? And I get that. I’ve even been there myself, you know, training for races and not hitting the splits that I wanted or dialing in my diet. At least I thought I. And still feeling stuck, like nothing is ever moving. Like my weight would just never budge.
And I’ve even thought in the past like, maybe this isn’t for me. Maybe I should quit. But here’s the thing, those moments are not a sign to quit. They’re a sign to look deeper, to zoom out, because the truth is progress isn’t always obvious in the moment. So I wanna talk about the emotional side of, of plateaus or stalls.
So sometimes we hit a plateau, whether it’s our weight loss, our running performance, maybe in our strength gains, and we feel like we’re not moving forward. And that feeling. That emotional impact can be exhausting. You know, we’ve been conditioned to expect constant, visible results like you. You make some changes, you get some results, you make more changes, you get better results, and it just keeps going and going and going.
When those results stall though. Our brain says, uh, this is a failure. And failure triggers self-doubt, self-criticism and fear, which makes it very difficult to stay consistent. It makes it very difficult to stay on track. So what starts as maybe a little bit of a frustration because you’ve, you’ve hit a plateau in your weight loss can quickly turn into.
You know, this is never gonna work for me. I’m just not good enough. And when we have this kind of thinking, it’s dangerous thinking because that’s when people quit. And I wanna normalize plateaus, and this is something that we all have to understand, that plateaus stalls in progress. This is part of the process.
It’s not just normal. These things are necessary. So here’s a few reasons why. Number one, your body adapts the human body is really good at becoming efficient to change. That’s the whole point of training. You do something to overload the system. Maybe it’s a muscular system or cardiovascular system, and your body adapts and has a positive.
Change that. That’s the whole point of training is to adapt and change and become more efficient. But it also means that you’re gonna eventually stop seeing the same dramatic gains that you did at the start. And, and the more progress that you make, the smaller the gains are gonna be. A lot of times we get a lot of big changes, a lot of big progress at the beginning of our weight loss journey.
And the further along we go, the kind of slower. And smaller the gains are, and this is normal. You know, this is called the law of diminishing returns. So just, uh, over time the, the gains are gonna be smaller. So just understand that your body will adapt and the gains will be smaller. Um, another reason why a plateau might happen is that you’re in a recalibration phase, so your body might be busy repairing, rebuilding, and setting you up for the next leap forward.
But you just can’t see that yet. So there’s a lot of stuff going on sort of under the covers that you are just not really aware of. So just keep that in mind that sometimes our body has to recalibrate. It takes some time to get there, and during that process, you may not see gains. Another reason why we might hit plateaus is because of external stressors in our life.
Life, stress, work, stress, poor sleep, even emotional stuff that maybe you haven’t processed yet. All of this stuff is going to impact your ability. To progress physically. So just keep that in mind. Another reason why plateaus happen is that maybe you’ve stopped really challenging yourself. Sometimes we think we’re working hard, but we’ve settled into a comfort zone without, without really realizing it.
I know a lot of people do this with their running. A lot of people do this with their strength training. They kind of run. The same intensity all the time. Um, or they go to the gym and they, they do the work. This kind of the same workouts with the same amount of weight all the time. And they’re not really challenging themselves.
They’re kind of going through the motions and it’s, you know, better than doing nothing. But at the same time, if you want gain, if you want to break through a plateau and you want gains, you gotta switch things up. You gotta get out of that comfort zone. You don’t wanna stay in your comfort zone. All the time.
Now, there’s a big mindset shift that has to happen if you want this to change. And the key here is to shift from it’s not working to, something’s happening that I just can’t see right now. Think about training for a marathon. You’re not gonna get faster every single week, like every time you go out there and run, it’s not gonna be a pr.
You’re not gonna get faster. Every time you run. Some weeks you’re gonna feel heavy and slow. Uh, but the work you put in during those off weeks, it still counts. You’re still building a base. You’re still strengthening connective tissues, you’re still improving your mental toughness. Um, it’s the same with weight loss or even strength training.
Your body might be making subtle changes in your hormonal balance, in your metabolic flexibility or your ability to recover from harder workouts and these things. They’re not gonna show up on the scale, you know? So if you’re trying to lose weight or gain muscle, you look at the scale and it’s not really changing.
There might be a lot of stuff going on underneath there that you have to just trust is happening. Okay? So we gotta make this big mindset shift from it’s not working to, Hey, something’s probably happening that I just can’t see physically right now. And if you do find yourself in that sort of negative mental loop of thinking, oh, this isn’t working.
I’ve been stuck in this plateau for a while. There’s a couple things I wanna recommend that maybe you try here. Number one is to zoom out a little bit instead of looking at. You know today’s weight or the pace I ran last weekend, look at the last three to six months. Chances are you’re gonna see progress that you sort of forgot about.
And if you, if you look at where you were three or six months ago and you compare yourself to where you are today, you’re probably gonna see, oh, I’ve made actually a lot of progress. But we, we zoom in on, on these things. And especially people who weigh themselves every single day, which I recommend doing, just get used to your weight going up and down every day.
Don’t. Freak out about it. You don’t need to stress out. We don’t need a bunch of drama around the scale. At the same time, don’t get too caught up in what the number on the scale says and, and instead of looking at, you know, your daily weight, maybe compare this week’s average to last week’s average weight.
That’s a better way of looking at it. So this is what I’m talking about, zooming out, right? So we’re zooming out to a weekly look instead of a day by day look. But I would even go out further look at it month to month. See how you’re progressing. ’cause chances are you’re gonna see some stuff that you really haven’t, you know, uh, thought about lately.
Another thing to kind of break through some plateaus would be to think about auditing your inputs. And what I mean by this is asking yourself, like, are you really hitting the effort level that you think you are in your workouts? You know, are you. Actually doing the work and pushing yourself slightly here and there.
Is your nutrition as dialed in as you say it is, or have some little extras crept back in? So you gotta be really honest with yourself. This is what I mean by auditing your inputs. Take a little inventory, take a little audit. Uh, you know, start tracking your food. Maybe track your workouts. Be very diligent about, you know, getting a good, honest picture of what it is you are doing and are, are not doing.
And then this requires some rigorous honesty with yourself. And some compassion. Like you can’t beat yourself up because maybe you’ve been, you know, sneaking in some snacks here and there, or you just haven’t been, you know, hitting your workouts very hard. You’ve just been kind of going through the motions, don’t, you know, beat yourself up about that.
Uh, you’re not lazy, you’re not a bad person, you know, you’re just settling into what feels comfortable. Okay. So just make an inventory though, and be honest with yourself. Okay. Honest and compassionate with yourself. If you do find yourself, you know, maybe doing the right things and you’re, um, still feeling stuck, maybe change something.
Change one thing. If you’ve been running the same paces, if you’ve been, um, uh, lifting the same weights, maybe go heavier if you’ve been running the same paces, maybe. Add some high intensity intervals, do some longer slow distance or long distance, slower running. Um, you know, if you’ve been lifting the same weights, go heavier.
Um, if you’ve been lifting a lot of heavy weights, you know, go lighter and do tons of reps. If you’ve been eating the same calorie amount, you know, adjust that. Lightly. Uh, maybe you, you need to increase your fat intake or increase your protein intake or drop the carbs down or something like that. Any kind of small change like this can repark adaptation.
Again, your body does adapt to the things you do consistently, so sometimes it’s good to change things up. Don’t change all these things at once though. All right. Change one variable at a time. Give it a couple of weeks. Two weeks is a good amount of time to see changes, so change one thing, give it a couple of weeks, um, see if that makes a difference for you or not.
Another thing to kind of break through some of this, especially the mindset piece, is to focus on the non-scale wins. You know, you, you may not see movement on the scale. You know, you’re trying to lose 30 pounds and you’re stuck, you know, with, you know, 10 more pounds to go or something. Instead of focusing on what the scale is or isn’t doing, focus on your energy.
Maybe you’re, you’ve got tons of energy lately. Maybe you have an improved mood. Less brain fog, you’re sleeping better. These are all huge signs that things are working for you. You’re on the right track even if the scale isn’t working. Again, that goes back to maybe there’s some things going on under the covers that you’re not really uh, aware of yet and stick around because things are probably gonna happen eventually.
Um, the, the last sort of tip on kind of breaking through some of these plateaus or stalls is doubling down on rest and recovery. Sometimes the, the nothing’s working is happening because you are over training or you’re under recovery. Prioritize sleep. Take a down week, take a day off, or two. Um, change out a workout, maybe do a yoga workout instead of a run, or go for a bike ride or, or swim or do something different.
Um, recovery is incredibly important. If you’re just going, going, going all the time and you don’t give your body a chance to rest and recover properly, you’re not gonna repair damage done to muscle tissues. Um, you’re going to get into this. A state of what I call like chronic cardio, where you’re just doing cardio all the time and you’re not, you’re, you’re actually, you’re not resting, you’re not recovering, and you’re not giving your body a chance to, uh, lower those cortisol levels.
So cortisol being high is gonna put you in a state of, you know, fight or flight. Constantly and your body’s gonna be super stressed out. We don’t want that. That is not really good for you. It’s very hard to lose weight when you’re uh uh, when you have chronic stress like that. It’s very hard to improve on your strength gains or improve your running performance when you have that sort of chronic stress that you’re dealing with.
And a lot of times it’s just you’re doing too much. So think about doubling down on recovery. Now I wanna leave you with this. Most people decide they’re gonna quit right before they have a breakthrough. So think about this analogy, like maybe you’re a miner and like you’re digging for gold and you’ve been mining away day after day after day after day, and you’re seeing nothing.
There’s just nothing, nothing, nothing. And then you stop. But what you didn’t know was like you were two swings away from striking it rich. And then somebody else comes along and takes over, uh, after you, and they strike it rich because you gave up and they did not. Progress is rarely linear. It just doesn’t happen that way.
The people who get what they want are the ones who keep going when there’s no visible evidence that it’s working, when it just seems like they’ve been stuck in the same place for a while. Those people who do not give up are the ones who eventually succeed. So if you’re in this, nothing’s working place right now.
I got you. I understand it’s normal. Take a deep breath, zoom out, look at the bigger picture. Make some small intentional adjustments. Just one thing at a time. Give it a couple of weeks, see if anything changes, and then just trust the process. Because the truth is that if you keep showing up for yourself, if you keep doing your best, if you are consistent, if you keep putting in the work, if you keep your head in the right place, I promise the results will eventually come.
They will, right? The, the only way you’re gonna get there is if you never give up giving up. Is sure you are sure to make sure that you are not gonna get the results that you want. Okay? Do not give up. The results will eventually come as long as you keep your head in the game and you keep making progress and keep, uh, being consistent with all this stuff.
Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean. I will talk to you soon.
You’ve probably heard it a million times: “Abs are made in the kitchen.” And while nutrition definitely plays a role in fat loss, the truth is… it doesn’t start there. In this episode of the …
Continue Reading about 293. Fat Loss Doesn’t Start in the Kitchen →
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 293 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today fat loss doesn’t start in the kitchen. So you’ve probably heard this a million times. ABS are made in the kitchen. And while nutrition definitely plays a role in fat loss, the truth is it doesn’t start there.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m flipping that outdated advice on its head. You’re gonna learn while focusing only on food is a losing strategy. And how factors like your mindset, sleep, stress training, all have a massive impact on your ability to lose fat and keep it off. So if you’re stuck in the cycle of eating less and running more, but still not seeing results, it might be time to take a bit of a different approach.
So this is the stuff nobody’s talking about when it comes to fat loss. This is what I’m talking about today, and I’m gonna tell you right now, this is gonna change everything for you. But first, listen, if you’ve been struggling with your weight, if running feels harder than it should, if you’re just not where you want to be physically, there’s a reason for that.
Chances are you’re doing all the right things, trying to eat better, running more miles, maybe even doing a little bit of strength training. All that is awesome. But if it’s not really clicking, you may be just working hard and you’re just not getting the results. The truth is there’s a missing piece to your plan.
What you need is a comprehensive approach, one that addresses not just your nutrition, but also your mindset, your training, your recovery, your lifestyle. You need a program that’s built specifically for runners like you. People who want to get leaner, get stronger, and become the best versions of themselves.
And that’s exactly what we do in my coaching program. You’re gonna get the structure, the support, and the accountability that you need to finally break through and start seeing serious progress physically and mentally. So if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real lasting change, have head over to my website, running lean coaching.com.
Click on work with me. Let’s get you on the path to becoming a leaner, stronger, faster runner starting today. All right, cool. So again, there’s this, uh, old adage, and I’ve been seeing this recently that abs are made in the kitchen and yeah, there is some truth to that for sure. Nutrition does play a role, but really when it comes to fat loss, sustainable, healthy, long-term fat loss, it doesn’t necessarily start.
In the kitchen. If it did, then all we’d have to do is eat a bunch of grilled chicken and broccoli and we’d all be walking around with six pack abs. But that’s just not how it works. There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes mentally, emotionally, and even physically. That has to be in alignment before the food can even make a difference.
Okay, so I’m gonna break this down. There’s like four essential foundations of fat loss. They really have nothing to do with what’s on your plate. So we’re gonna be talking about your mindset, your sleep, um, stress levels, and even how your training can have an impact on your fat loss. Um, and these things are paramount if you’re not doing these things.
What you’re eating isn’t really gonna matter. Okay? So this is where everything should begin for you. Okay? Not necessarily in the kitchen. So first, let’s just start with the obvious. That whole thing, abs are made in the kitchen. It sounds cute, it’s catchy, um, but it’s a little bit misleading. It’s this kind of advice that basically just says like, eat less and have more willpower.
Like if you could just meal prep better or stop eating carbs at night, then boom, fat just magically disappears. But if you’ve ever tried to lose weight just by changing your diet, you probably know that it’s really not that simple. ’cause you can clean up your e eating, you can start, uh, seeing the scale moving, drop a few pounds.
But then what happens? Like you stall out, you plateau, um, people get burned out, they quit, and then they gain the weight back and they say, well, whatever. That didn’t work. That whatever I was eating didn’t work. But they were only looking at one. Piece of the puzzle here. They, they addressed the food part of it, but nothing else.
And the real problem isn’t necessarily what you’re eating. A lot of it has to do with what you’re thinking. You know, you started in the kitchen and that’s fine, but your fat loss starts with your mind. It really does. So that’s number one that you have to, uh, change your mind. If you want to change your body, you have to change your mind first.
I always talk about mindset. A lot of the episodes of this podcast talk about mindset. Why, why do you think I do that? It’s because it’s, it’s so important. It’s probably the most important thing that you need to change. In order to see real lasting change in your body composition, your running performance, your strength, anything that takes a while and that is somewhat challenging to accomplish, requires a shift in your mindset.
Mindset is everything. You can’t hate yourself thin. You can’t bully yourself into losing weight. You can’t force yourself to do things you hate for the rest of your life. And expect to be successful long term. You just can’t do that. When I work with runners, we always start with mindset. Why do you wanna lose weight?
Like, why do you wanna lose fat? Why do you wanna change your body composition? What are you really trying to accomplish here? Who is it that you want to become ultimately? So fat loss, it really starts with identity. And if you see yourself as someone who’s, you know, always stuck, always struggling, always stopping and starting over, then that’s exactly what you’re just gonna keep repeating.
But if you start showing up as the future version of yourself, that strong, lean, confident runner that you want to become, everything can shift for you. So this is that identity shift that we’re, that we need to make in order for everything else to kind of fall into place. You have to change how you think about yourself.
And who you think yourself to be, because when you can start to do this, your, your thoughts begin to change, your decisions begin to change, and then your actions start to line up. With those long-term goals, with that version of yourself in the future that, that you’re ultimately working towards. So yeah, fat loss doesn’t start in the kitchen.
It starts in your mind. It starts between your ears. Okay. So that’s number one. Number two is that fat loss happens while you sleep. So the next big piece of the puzzle is gonna be all about sleep. So you could be doing everything right during the day, so you could be eating clean, following your training plan, lifting weights.
But if you only get four or five hours of really crappy sleep every night, you are working against yourself. ’cause when you don’t sleep enough. Things like your hunger hormones get completely out of whack, so ghrelin will be increased. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone. Um, and when you don’t get enough sleep, that puts your body into a state of chronic stress, and that will cause hunger hormones to go up.
So your body’s like, just feed me, feed me, feed me. So you’re gonna be hungry all the time. Also, leptin goes down, so that’s your fullness hormone. That’s the hormone that says, Hey, I’m full. Stop eating. Well, that, that gets suppressed so that you feel, uh, you don’t feel as full when you do eat, so you never really feel full enough.
You know what I mean? So being hungry. All the time and never feeling full enough. That is a bad combination right there. So you end up craving more food, especially sugar and carbs. Um, and at this point your willpower can’t keep up with that. So your willpower just tanks. You start to make bad decisions, and your body’s just gonna be holding on to fat.
It’s gonna be holding onto fat like it’s prepping for the apo apocalypse. You know what I mean? It’s like your body’s like, we need to be ready for. For this danger that we’re experiencing here. And so your, your body gets into that fight or flight mode. So, um, sleep is so important. It’s when your body repairs recovers it, when it’s when your, your body regulates, especially hormones get regulated properly.
Your metabolism resets. It’s when your muscles grow, it’s when your brain clears out all the junk. So if you wanna burn more fat and you wanna burn fat more efficiently, start by getting good sleep. We’re talking. Seven to nine hours of high quality sleep every night. This has to be a non-negotiable for you.
If you’re not getting good sleep, focus on that right now. Turn off Netflix, put your phone away early. Um, create a good sleep, high hygiene. Routine, cold, dark room. Start dimming the lights, you know, an hour or two before bed, no food, a couple hours before bed if you need to take a, a warm bath or shower before you go to bed.
That helps. Um. But get yourself into a sleep routine because when you prioritize sleep, um, the easier it’s gonna become for you to lose the fat and to burn more fat. Okay? So you have to prioritize sleep. And then the next kind of thing we need to focus on kind of the third part of the, the puzzle here is stress.
So stress and sleep are very closely related because when your body is stressed, um, you, uh, secrete more glucose. Again, you’re, you’re putting your body into that fight or flight mode and acute stress. Is okay for us. Like we, we experience acute stress when we do things like, uh, high intensity interval training.
So you go out there and you, you run, uh, 32nd, uh, wind sprints or something like that, that is putting a lot of stress on your body, but it is very short-lived. It’s acute, it’s very short, uh, short term stress, maybe 30 seconds at a time, and then you’re done. Even if you go for a long run, you know, you might be out there for three or four hours, that’s a lot of stress on your body, but then you recover from that, you repair, um, and again, you recover and repair a lot of it at night.
So sleeping is so important, but, uh, chronic stress, that’s when we’re just, we’re constantly ruminating on the past or the future. We’re worried about. You know, things at home or at work. Um, and, and our mind can never really shut off and we’re, we put ourselves into that same fight or flight mode. Your cortisol levels are elevated.
Cortisol is the stress hormone. Um, when cortisol is high, fat loss basically shuts down. And again, when you’re stressed, you’re probably not sleeping well. And when you’re not sleeping well, you put your body into a state of stress. So these two things are very closely related, so you gotta work on both of these things.
Okay. But think about this from your body’s perspective. If you’re constantly stressed, your brain thinks that something dangerous is about to happen, and the last thing you want to do, the last thing your body wants to do is burn fat. Your body wants to hold onto that stored body fat. Again, this is like survival mode for your body.
Your body says, okay, we’re stressed. We need to conserve energy, slow everything down, slow down the metabolism, hold onto this energy store, the fat ’cause we’re gonna need it. And the kicker is that you could be eating pretty well, but if your stress is outta control, your body will not cooperate. It’s gonna be very difficult to lose weight if you’re, if you’re chronically stressed.
Okay. So self-care is important. It’s not something that you can take for granted. It’s not a luxury. This is a strategy, a long-term strategy for you to be a healthy human being. And if your goal is to lose weight and burn fat, stress management, self-care has to be a priority. Okay? So whatever you need to do, meditation, breath work, going for a walk, doing some yoga, journaling.
Talking to someone instead of bottling everything up. It feels so good to talk to someone about things that are on your mind, right? Even if that person is just going. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s, it is great to have that outlet, you know, that sounding board, maybe saying no to things that drain you. Maybe having better boundaries, maybe taking some actual rest days.
Yes, I’m talking to you, the person that never takes a rest day, take an actual rest day and just do a whole lot of nothing. Let your body and your mind, uh, your, your physical, emotional, and, uh, mental states. Calm down. So actual rest days are really important, but these things matter. You know, managing stress is very important.
They help regulate your nervous system. They create the condition where fat loss can actually happen. So if you’re finding yourself, you’re doing a lot of the right things, but you’re not seeing results work on stress. Okay. And then the fourth kind of part of the puzzle here to uh, make sure that that fat loss is actually working, um, is to, uh, make sure you’re doing smart training.
So let’s talk about training for a minute, because it does play a role in fat loss. Um, maybe not in the way that you think, so you don’t need to go out and run. You know, a hundred miles every week. You don’t need to do hours and hours of cardio every single day. In fact, too much cardio can work against you.
Too much cardio can put your body into that state of chronic stress. Now we call that chronic cardio. When you’re doing chronic cardio, you actually never properly recover from your workouts, and you’re just constantly stressed all the time. So people think, oh, I’m doing cardio. I should be able to lose weight.
Hmm. It’s very difficult if you’re doing it constantly and you never give yourself the rest that you need. But when I talk about smart training for fat loss, that means doing running, that is intentional. Not just putting in a bunch of miles or, you know, uh, running every day because you’re on some kind of streak or something like that.
Be intentional about your running. Um, strength training. Strength training is it’s key for so much. It helps to improve your metabolism. Um, helps to reduce stress, you know, by kind of overloading your muscles and then your muscles have an, uh, an adaptation to that and it does help to reduce stress. Um, you get that release of the good hormones, you know, like dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins when you do strength training.
Um, but strength training, you know, is the, is the right kind of training that that helps you to build muscle, boost your metabolism, um, and gets that fat burning engine just cranked up even a few more notches. Doing the right kind of training, uh, that helps you to become more metabolically efficient, uh, from a running standpoint, meaning that you want to be doing a combination of some shorter.
Duration, higher intensity running. So that should be at least one day a week. Shorter intensity, uh, I’m sorry, shorter, higher intensity runs. You want to have some moderate distance, moderate intensity runs, so some kind of medium runs in there. So we got high intensity intervals. We got, uh, modern intensity, think of like tempo runs, that kind of thing.
And then we have our long, slow distance. So that’s where you’re gonna be out there for longer amounts of time. It’s kind of what people call, like zone two training. But when you break up your training in this way, you are, you are creating the most, um, efficient system, metabolically speaking for your body to be able to, to burn fat really effectively.
Okay. The training is very important, but also rest days are very important. You gotta allow your body to absorb all that training and you want to avoid burning out and getting into that state of chronic stress. Okay, and here’s something a lot of people miss, though. Exercise isn’t just about burning calories, that’s not really the whole point here.
There’s a little bit of that, but it’s not really the whole point. It’s about changing your physiology, so you train to improve metabolic flexibility. You, you gotta teach your body how to burn fat more efficiently. Um, if you wanna become a stronger, more durable, uh, runner. And with improved, uh, uh, metabolic flexibility with improved, uh, endurance, then you have to train properly.
And if you can get into those different types of runs, like I mentioned, and make sure you’re doing strength training. Ah, this is gonna be key for you. It’s gonna be key for you, okay? This is the long game. Remember, you don’t wanna just lose fat. You wanna be able to keep it off and perform better as a runner.
So all of these things combined, you know, especially the smart training, um. Not just adding more miles, but doing, you know, intention, being very intentional, very mindful about each of your workouts during the week. All these things combine to help you to become that more efficient fat burner. Okay, so let’s bring this all together here.
If you wanna lose fat and keep it off, don’t start in the kitchen. Start with your mindset. Start with how you think. How do you see yourself? What do you believe is possible for you? Who do you want to be? Like? What is that identity shift that you need to make in order for you to believe that you can become that person?
That’s that’s where everything needs to start from. Next, take a look at your sleep, making sure that you’re getting good quality sleep every night, and that you’re serious about rest and recovery. Okay? Take a good look at your stress levels and learn how to manage them. Start practicing proactively some sort of stress management.
What a lot of people do is they go, oh, I’m really stressed. I better work on some stress management stuff. And then they, you know, start, you know, trying to meditate, but they’re super stressed. Well, that’s not when you need to start some kind of stress management thing. You need to do it every day. Just needs to be part of, you know, what you do every day.
Um, and then lastly, train with intention. Run smart, lift heavy. Don’t skip rest days. Okay. Once you do all these other things, yeah, then what you’re eating is really gonna make a difference. Okay? So yeah, of course what you eat is going to have something to do with this, but when all these other systems are running smoothly, then food truly does.
Become fuel, then food truly does become a more powerful tool to help you burn more fat. Okay? And we wanna stop using food to cope. We wanna stop using food to, you know, battle our cravings. And we want to create an environment where fat loss feels easy, and eating the right foods feels easy, but you gotta have all these other things in place as well.
Okay? That’s how you become that leaner, stronger, faster runner that you wanna become. Okay. And again, if you’re tired of spinning your wheels, if you’ve been stuck in this cycle of eating less and running more, it’s just not working for you. Maybe it’s time for a different approach. Remember, this is what we do in my coaching program, the Running Lean Coaching project.
It’s, we just go be on food. You know, we fix all the stuff under the surface. So that fat, fat loss actually works and actually sticks. Okay? So if you’re ready to change your mind, your habits, your body for good, go to my website running lean coaching.com, click on work with me. That’s all I got for you today.
Love you all. Keep on running lean, and I will talk to you soon.
