Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
When it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there that it can feel incredibly overwhelming. While I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet …
Continue Reading about 212. 3 Things You Should Stop Doing if You Want To Lose Weight →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 212 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight.
So when it comes to eating right and losing weight, there is so much information out there, it can feel incredibly overwhelming. And while I can’t address every misconception out there on the internet here in one podcast episode, I do want to go over a few things that you might want to stop doing right now because sometimes the best way to start is to stop.
So in this episode, I’ve got three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good. But first I know I talk a lot about you know proper nutrition, losing weight, improving your running and building strength here on the podcast.
And if you’re new, and all this feels a little overwhelming, that’s okay, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training that will get you started on the right track. It’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’ll learn the basics of proper nutrition, how to build strength, how to build endurance, how to build the right mindset, all geared towards you the runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on free training to get started on your weight loss journey today.
Alright, before I get into the topic today, I just wanted to drop a little disclaimer here that I have been really sick, I got sick a few days ago, you know, woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach bug and was up all night. And I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say that it was a pretty awful night.
And I haven’t gotten sick like that in like 15 years, I can’t remember the last time I was sick like that. And must have picked up some kind of stomach bug at the gym or at the grocery store or something. I don’t know where I got it, but the gym is my primary suspect. So I’m still recovering.
And I actually had to take a day off of work. And I haven’t done that in like 10 or 15 years. So I know it was not good. It was a really, really horrible sickness for me to actually have to take a day off work. And so it’s taken me a couple of days to kind of come back.
So if my voice sounds a little scratchy today, or I don’t sound like myself, it’s because I’m still kind of recovering. But I’m giving myself a little bit of time I actually drove to the gym yesterday sat in the parking lot and was like no, I don’t think this is a good idea for me to go in there today. I still don’t feel 100% civilian, I’m a little lightheaded. Still a little bit nauseous. And I was just like, no, I’m gonna give it another day or two.
So just a little side note here, if you find yourself up, you know, sick this winter, which a lot of people are sick right now I’ve talked to a lot of people who are getting over something or in the middle of something, give yourself time to rest and recover, drink plenty of fluids, take your vitamins, make sure you’re eating right, or just not eating. Fasting is a great way to help, you know, alleviate the symptoms of viruses and it will speed up the recovery process too.
So just know that there are things that you can do out there that will help you to get through this a lot faster. But also don’t try to do too much too soon. I know that as runners, you want to get back out there and run right away or you want to hit the gym and get back into your weightlifting.
And I’m feeling that way right now. Right now I’m like, man, I really wish I was at the gym lifting weights right now or I was out there running today. It was a run day for me and I was gonna run this morning and I just I’m not up to it, you know, and I’m listening to my body.
And I’m just like, okay, this isn’t about embracing the suck. This is about doing what I need to do to take care of myself and to make sure that I don’t go back too fast too soon, you know. So I’ll make tomorrow run day or I’ll hit the gym tomorrow, as long as I’m feeling up to it and then I’ll ease my way back into working out again. I’m not going to go run 10 miles on Saturday or anything like that.
So for me, it’s about giving my body that time it needs the rest, proper hydration, proper nutrition, and just waiting until I really feel like I’m ready to go again. Okay, so that’s just a little sidebar today. That’s where I’m at right now I’m just gonna get through this. So I appreciate your understanding if I don’t sound like myself.
Okay, now all that’s out of the way, let’s get into this topic today, three things you should stop doing if you want to lose weight. And one of the reasons I’m bringing this up today is because I hear about so much information out there that is so confusing to all of us. It’s even confusing to me.
I’m constantly following people on social media, and reading articles on the internet, that completely contradict one another. And I’ve made a decision a long time ago that I wasn’t going to, you know, hang my hat on any one principle out there that I was going to figure out what works best for me.
And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But my goal here on the podcast is always to help you make good decisions, and help to simplify things, and clear up some of this information so that you can make good decisions for yourself so that you can start getting results right away.
Okay, so just understand that there are things that people recommend that you do constantly do this, do that. And what I’m going to ask you to do today is to stop doing a few things. And if you just stop doing these three things here, today, I guarantee you, you’re going to start seeing some results.
You know, I can’t guarantee that, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to start seeing some good results if you just stop doing these three big things here. Okay, so I’m not going to waste a bunch of time. You know, previewing this, I’m just gonna get right into it.
Number one, the one thing I want you to stop doing right now is to stop counting calories. Okay, just stop doing that. I talk about this a lot. Listen, if counting calories worked, it would have worked by now, our ancient ancestors did not do this, they did not track their food, they did not have my fitness pal, and they did not have Weight Watchers points.
They did not need to count how many macros they were eating, okay, they ate real food they ate when they were hungry, and they did not eat when they weren’t. And they did just fine. You know, we evolved as a species over two and a half million years to where we are today. And only in the last 40-50 years have we put this huge focus on counting calories.
And all that has done is made us bigger, we’re bigger than we have ever been in the history of the species. So to me, this is not a very sustainable solution. And it’s also not sustainable. From a weight loss standpoint, if you are somebody who reduces calories, in order to lose weight, just keep in mind that there’s going to come a point in time when your metabolism will slow down to match the amount of energy that’s coming in.
And this starts to become a problem because now you have to reduce your calories even more to get the weight loss to keep happening. Okay, so reducing calories and counting calories to lose weight. You know, it does work in the short term, but it does not work in the long term.
It also causes muscle loss. And if you’re somebody who is an active athlete, if you’re a runner, or you’re trying to get stronger or build muscle, which you should be, then causing muscle loss is not something that you want.
Restricting food and restricting calories is a great way to start to experience muscle loss. And you know, this is going to affect your runs, it’s going to you won’t be fueling, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel for running, you won’t be giving your body enough fuel to get stronger in the gym.
If you’re working out and lifting weights regularly, which you should be, you won’t be able to build muscle. So instead of you know counting calories and restricting calories, I want you to do something else instead. And what I want you to do instead is to eat to satiety, stop when you’re full.
You don’t need to count your calories. You don’t need to count your macros, and I talked about this. I’ve talked about this several times on the podcast but I talked a lot about tracking your food in the last episode, so definitely check that one out.
But if you focus on eating real food, so this is like food that still looks like, you know that food that you find around the perimeter of the grocery aisle, you know, so we got fruits, vegetables, we got meat and dairy and cheese. You know, we have nuts and seeds. You know, we have eggs, and fish, you know, all that stuff.
If you just focus on eating that stuff, again, this is the food that our ancestors have been eating forever. You’re going to feel more satiated when you eat, you won’t be eating the food that messes up your hunger signals. This is very important here. Okay.
So foods like sugar and refined grains, which most processed food is full of sugar and refined grains, that kind of food will really mess up your hunger signals, you will feel more hungry after you eat that food, you will have more cravings for those type of foods.
So for more sugar and more refined grains, you won’t be able to really get in touch with what hunger feels like for you. Because your hunger signals, pardon me, will be so messed up from the sugar and the refined grains, those things tend to reduce the amount of leptin that your body produces leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full.
And it increases the amount of ghrelin that you produce. And the ghrelin is the hunger hormone that makes you feel hungry. And so with those two things being you know, out of whack, you’re going to feel hungry all the time, and you’re going to be craving more of those foods.
And when you’re craving more of those foods, you just can’t get enough to eat, you tend to overeat, you tend to eat the wrong kinds of foods, and you tend to be kind of miserable all the time. And so trying to fuel properly and eat less or whatever, it’s really, it’s really hard to do not okay. So you have to start to get in touch with what real hunger feels like for you.
One of the biggest lessons I teach my clients and people that I work one one-on-one with, is to start to understand the difference between these cravings and hunger. The false hunger is what I call it. And real hunger. real hunger is when you could sit down and eat a meal. Like you can sit down and eat, you know, a whole bunch of chicken and broccoli and some carrots or whatever.
And that’s real hunger, if you could eat, you know, an actual meal. That means that, hey, I’m actually really hungry right now. And I should probably eat something. But if you’re like, oh, I’m feeling hungry, and you go browsing through the cabinets, and you’re like, oh, I’ll just eat six nuts, you know, and I’ll eat a few potato chips. Like, that’s not real hunger.
You know what that is? That is you being bored. That is you looking for something to make you feel good right now. You know, that’s you being stressed out. That’s what I call emotional eating.
Emotional Eating is when you’re just trying to dampen some kind of emotion that you’re feeling. Usually, it’s some kind of strong emotion. And that could be boredom. It could be stress, it could be anxiety. And you just want to feel better, and you want to dampen that emotion.
So you’re using food as a coping mechanism there. Okay? Well, we don’t really need to do that. If you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’re not going to mess up your hunger signals, you’re going to feel full when you eat, and you’re going to stay full for much longer.
You’re not going to be having those cravings for the chips and the nuts and the crackers and the junk food, you know. So you have to learn what hunger feels like for you. This takes time. It takes time and it takes practice.
And so you have to kind of devote the time and the effort into this process. But it is totally worth it. You know, once you start to eat and understand what your body feels like when it’s full and it’s had enough food. This is a game-changer. Right? So we don’t need to be people who overeat.
We have never been that way in the past because we’re eating food that kept us full and we didn’t have this food that was hijacking or hunger signals. Okay. So again, this is about you know, eating like our ancestors ate, we don’t need to count calories. So stop doing that. Eat real food food that, you know, fills you up and feels good when you eat it. Okay. So stop counting calories.
Number two, is to stop eating all the time. There is so much gym bro advice out there that says you should be eating six times a day. You have to eat 6, 7, 8 times a day to keep your metabolism going. So eat like you don’t want your meals and just keep eating constantly throughout the day.
And I’m gonna go back to what our ancient ancestors did. They did not eat six times a day. First of all, they did not have snacks or anything, that was invented like in the 1950’s. And it wasn’t a thing before that.
Snacks were a food category that was created by the food companies. It was a marketing thing like, hey, let’s, let’s try to sell more food to people. Let’s create a snack category. Oh, okay, that sounds great Bill, you know, let’s do that.
And so Bill and his buddies got together and they decided, I don’t know if his name was Bill could have been Steve or something like that. But they just got together and they were like, Hey, let’s create this whole new category of food that we can sell people on, it’ll be great.
And it worked. It works like crazy. People love snack foods, right? But this is not our DNA. This is not how we were programmed to eat. In fact, if you look at a lot of the systems in our body, I was reading an article recently about the pancreas and about how our pancreas is designed to only operate a couple of times a day, you know, it secretes, you know, whatever it does hormones to help us process food and whatever. And it’s only it’s the system is only designed to work a couple of times a day, it’s not designed to work six times a day.
So we’re sort of overloading our systems when we eat that often. You know, our liver plays a role in this too, and other, you know, organs and stuff. So what our ancestors did was they feasted, and they fasted. That was their MO, they would eat when the food was available, and then they didn’t eat and they didn’t eat for long periods of time.
And there’s lots of evidence that shows that there’s lots of tribes today that do the same thing where they eat, they, they hunt, they gather the eat when food is plentiful, and then there’s times when they don’t eat, but they’re not sitting there snacking all day long. All right.
And they did a study pretty recently that showed that participants in this study, who ate six small meals a day, versus people who ate three larger meals. And there was no metabolic advantage over those who ate six meals a day over the three meals a day.
So the people who ate six small meals, their metabolism didn’t speed up, because they were eating more often, that was exactly the same as the people who are eating three times a day. What was different from the two groups was that the people in the six meal a day group reported higher levels of hunger, and an increased desire to eat.
So they were more hungry, they had an increased desire to eat, so they were eating more and eating more often, and they had higher levels of hunger. And so this is not something that we want, I think we want the opposite of that. Okay.
You also have to understand there’s an insulin response, every time you eat food, you will produce some blood sugar, unless you’re eating pure fat, which really doesn’t raise your blood sugar at all. But anything else really is going to increase your blood sugar a little bit.
And insulin will be produced in order to bring that blood sugar back down to normal levels, which is the way your body is supposed to operate. And this is completely fine to eat this way or for your system to function this way when you’re eating three times a day, or six times a day or whatever.
But one thing that we have to understand is that when insulin is present in the system, that puts your body into that fat-storing mode. So your fat is locked up in your fat cells. While insulin is present. We want to get the insulin down in order to burn the fat. And if you’re eating six times a day, then your body never has a chance to recover that insulin level.
You’re always going to have insulin present, which means that you are never burning fat throughout the day. And so if you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight, and eating six times a day is not working for you. This is why right here. You are constantly in fat-storing mode, you’re never in fat-burning mode, right?
So we’ve got to make sure that we eat a diet that keeps our blood sugar at pretty normal levels, we want our blood sugar to rise a little bit, and then come back down again. We want insulin to rise a little bit and come back down again, a couple of times a day that is normal. That’s the way we should be functioning.
We are naturally good fat burners as human beings, but we’ve gotten away from that. And we want to get back to that state that natural state that we are so good at our body burns fat as fuel. This is in our DNA.
You know, we store body fat to be used as fuel later, but the way we eat the types of foods we eat the the amount of times a day we eat can really make that fat or that storage mode just constant and we’re just constantly adding you know, we’re Just constantly adding to those fat stores and never able to burn the fat. Okay?
So I’m a big fan of intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting just means you’re not eating constantly. It’s not some weird fringe thing. Again, this is kind of the way we’ve evolved as human beings. The intermittent fasting is just not eating constantly, it’s prolonging the amount of time between your meals, think of it as meal spacing.
The way that I do it, and I suggest a lot of people do this, and they have good results from doing this is just skip breakfast. This is one of the easiest ways that you can start intermittent fasting. So you know the time from dinner the day before. And let’s say lunch, the next day might be 16 hours or so.
Most of the time, we fast for about 12 hours. So all I’m saying is like, hey, just extend that like four more hours. It’s easy to do, right? So what I’m suggesting you do, instead of eating all the time is to not eat all the time, just stop doing that.
Right, don’t eat all the time, space out your meals, and allow your body more time for fat burning to kick in. And for fat burning, to ramp up. Skipping breakfast is the easiest way to do it. It is not the most important meal of the day.
That again, is a marketing message that was created by like Kellogg’s, they wanted to sell more cereal. So they’re like, you gotta have breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Just stop doing that.
Okay, and exercising in that fasted state is a great way to improve fat burning as well. And people report more energy when they exercise in the fasted state. They report increases in their endurance when they’re running, and they report increases in the amount of weight they can lift when they’re lifting weights.
So there’s some positive adaptations that happen when you train your body to exercise in that fasted state. So number two, stop eating all the time, and practice some intermittent fasting, I think you’ll see some some good results from that.
And then the third thing I would say to stop doing is just stop following the conventional advice out there. The conventional advice is like the food pyramid, the MyPlate, or whatever they’re calling it these days. A lot of this stuff is you know, they’re telling you to eat 60 to 70% of your calories from carbohydrates.
This is a problem because people are generally following this advice. The food guidelines, so food guidelines were created in like 1980. And if you look at since 1980, if you look at the rates of obesity here in the United States, they go up dramatically starting in 1980.
So I’m, you know, maybe doing some correlation, not causation. But it’s pretty clear that things have not been working for us as a country since 1980. And we may want to just rethink this whole food guidelines thing, okay. So if you’re somebody that’s like, well, I’m just going to follow the food guidelines. I’m going to suggest maybe not doing that.
Okay, so stop following the conventional advice out there. The thing with the food guidelines is that they show up everywhere they show up in hospitals, the hospitals have to follow the food guidelines. It dictates what we feed our children in schools.
There’s more obesity among children now than there ever has been in the history of human beings. Even these food guidelines show up in the military. I get people in the military constantly reaching out to me, Hey, I need some help losing weight because what they’re feeding me here is not working.
The food guidelines dictate what they serve in nursing homes. Most dietitians, and health coaches follow the food guidelines, and that’s the advice they’re giving you. Even a lot of running coaches that I know and talk to and running certification programs for coaches out there, preach these food guidelines and I just have to say that you know it this might work for some people, but for the vast majority of us, it does not work.
A recent study shows that 88 to 93% of the US population is considered metabolically unhealthy. So that is not a good stat right there. So that means like 7-12% of us are considered metabolically healthy. That is a very small number. That is actually frightening. That is a very frightening number and it’s going up because it was 88% and now they’re showing new numbers that show it could be up to like 93% that is frightening. We need to fix that.
Okay, so whatever we’re doing, following this conventional advice is not working. So we got to do something else instead. So what should you do? This is where this gets a little bit meta, because I can’t really tell you what to do, because you got to figure out what works best for you.
We’re all different. We’re all a little bit different when it comes to how our metabolisms work, how our lifestyle is structured, the foods that we enjoy our culture, you know, our weight loss goals, or our running goals, or weightlifting goals, do we want to build muscles? Do we want to maintain? Do we want to lose fat? Do we want to improve our running endurance? Do we want to get faster, there are so many different factors to consider there.
But I just want you to ditch that conventional advice out there. And it’s okay if what you do doesn’t look like what anybody else is doing. Because that’s that’s the way I am to things what I’m eating doesn’t fall into any category of any specific diet.
You know, it might be close to something like a paleo diet or primal eating, I don’t know what you want to call it, I just tried to eat something that is mostly whole foods related, you know, like I eat real food, like 90 plus percent of the time, I pretty much don’t eat packaged food.
I don’t eat processed foods, these things are mostly junk, they’re there to sell you more food. If I do eat foods that come in a package, it’s like some cheese or some you know, heavy cream, or like some frozen broccoli. It’s like hey, prepping all this food and cleaning up the kitchen.
So I buy like frozen broccoli, frozen cauliflower, stuff like that. But I want to encourage you to take control of your own health. And you don’t have to follow the norm out there. Because the norm is not working, the norm is 88-93% of the population who is metabolically unhealthy, that is the norm. So don’t be the norm.
So stop doing the norm, and start doing what feels good for you. And you start you have to start to get in touch with your own body and how your body feels when you eat certain foods. Does eating this food make me feel good? Does this make me feel bad? Does this make me feel extra hungry? Am I getting cranky?
A couple of hours after eating this food, I’m getting anxious to have more cravings for junk food. If I eat this particular thing, you need to be an experiment of one and figure out what feels good for you and what helps to keep you satiated, because the diet doesn’t mess up your hunger signals.
That keeps you feeling full throughout the day and provides proper nutrition is going to be the one that helps you to become the healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss will happen as a side effect of all the good things that you’re doing for yourself here. Okay?
The real goal here is always to become that healthiest version of yourself. And the weight loss happens as a result of that, you know, we’re not just trying to lose weight. And that’s one thing I always make sure I tell people that I’m working with, I’m like, listen, our goal here is to get you as healthy as possible to get you operating at peak performance, you know.
And when we do that, when we start aiming in that direction, and moving towards that path, the weight loss, it will happen as a nice side effect of all of them. Okay, so number one, stop counting calories. It doesn’t really work. It certainly doesn’t work long term, stop eating all the time.
Eating six times a day does not speed up your metabolism. In fact, it makes you overeat and tends to make you feel more hungry and keeps that fat locked up in fat cells and then stop following the conventional advice because it’s not working. Don’t be normal. Be abnormal, okay?
And as always, if you want help with any of this or all of this, I’m here for you. Just go to runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, hit me up and you and I can have a conversation about coaching. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
There have been some eye-opening discoveries recently around dietary advice doled out by influencers on social media. It turns out that the food and beverage industry has been paying registered …
Continue Reading about 195. Taking Control of Your Food Choices →
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 195 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, taking control of your food choices.
There have been some eye opening discoveries recently around dietary advice doled out by social media influencers. And it turns out that the food and beverage industry has been paying registered dietitians to promote diet soda and sugar and supplements on Tiktok and Instagram. And while this may not come as a big surprise, it speaks to a much bigger issue.
The food industry is deliberately confusing us into eating more junk foods, so they make more money at the expense of our health and well being. In this episode, I’m going to shine a light on this quite alarming topic, in my opinion, and explain why it’s important to know who’s paying who to say what, and encourage you to take control of your own food choices.
But first, if you want a little bit of help getting started with all this stuff that I talked about here on the podcast, with improving your body composition, maybe losing some of that fat weight and gaining some muscle, getting stronger, running faster, running longer.
I’ve put together a brand new training just for you. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. In this training, I’m going to teach you how to lose weight the right way and how to keep it off for good without running a million miles a week.
You’re gonna learn why running more and eating less really doesn’t work when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off. I’m going to talk about one thing runners don’t do when they’re trying to lose weight, that they should be doing the fuel to use to improve your endurance and weight loss. The mind shift sets required to make these changes last and more and more and more.
So if you want to learn how to crush your weight loss goals and your running goals, then you’re ready to get leaner, get stronger, run faster, run longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself. Check out this free training it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training. Super simple. Cool.
Okay, so taking control of your food choices. So I came across a really interesting investigative article recently that showed that the food industry is paying influencer dieticians to shape our eating habits. Registered Dietitians are being paid to post videos to promote diet soda, sugar and supplements on Instagram, and Tiktok.
So the food beverage and dietary supplement industries are paying dozens of registered dietitians that could collectively have like millions of social media followers to help sell their products and deliver industry friendly messages on Instagram and Tiktok.
According to this analysis by the Washington Post and the examination, which is a new nonprofit newsroom that specializes in global health reporting. So the analysis of thousands of posts found that companies and industry groups paid dieticians for content that encouraged viewers to eat candy, eat ice cream, and downplay the health risks of highly processed foods and pushed unproven supplements.
Messages that run counter to decades of scientific evidence about healthy eating. The review found that among 68 dietitians with 10,000 or more social media followers on Tiktok, and Instagram, about half had promoted food, beverages or supplements to their combined 11 million followers within the last year.
One particular registered dietitian from Vancouver, British Columbia, posted videos of herself eating ice cream and peanut butter cups, while telling people that denying themselves sugary foods will only make cravings worse.
These and other posts were paid for by the Canadian Sugar Institute. The trade group, which is funded by sugar producers, includes the videos on its Instagram page to in one video This woman held a glazed doughnut and chocolate chip cookie and she mocked advice to reduce sugar intake.
She said, “The best ways to cut sugar are with a knife with my hands and even with my teeth.” Another Dietitian with a large social media following from Vancouver posted a video on Instagram where she added a lollipop to a dinner plate.
And she told parents the strategy will prevent sweets obsession, and to help kids develop healthier eating relationships with food. And another Instagram video she told parents that they can make Halloween less stressful by allowing kids to eat as much candy as they want when they’re done trick or treating.
And she said this helps decrease the stash and makes it less of a big deal she wrote in the text alongside the video. Yes, they may barf but that’s a great life lesson for them. She was also paid by the Canadian Sugar Institute to promote these posts to create these posts and promote them.
Since last year, The Sugar Group has paid at least a dozen registered dietitians to post videos about sugar on Instagram. One person said if your kiddo is obsessed with sweets, they likely need more access to sweets rather than less. Wow, okay.
The food and beverage industry has for years nurtured a close relationship with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AMD). This is the trade group that oversees registered dieticians, which has accepted millions of dollars in donations from leading producers of soda, candy, and ultra processed foods including Coca Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle.
The Academy has allowed these companies to provide continuing education courses to its dieticians and has invested in food industry stocks to the academy sponsors are American beverage, and Tate and Lyle, one of the world’s largest producers of high fructose corn syrup, and other sweeteners.
So I just read a few blurbs from the article that came out about a week ago or so in the Washington Post, and I was really blown away by this. Like I know that registered dieticians AMD has been funded by these sugar companies and by the food industry, I’ve known about that.
I’ve also known that they teach their registered dieticians and give them courses on proper nutrition. And I’m using finger quotes proper nutrition meaning like, eat lots of sugar, it’s fine for you sugar isn’t bad. You know, you know, drink diet soda, that’s fine.
Kids should be eating more sugar, like all these things, in my opinion, are kind of crazy, right? The sugar, the food industry, sugar industry, food industry is blatantly influencing our food choices. They have billions of dollars to spend on marketing, and advertising. And they’re very influential.
They are supporting the community of registered dieticians out there. And now listen, not all registered dietitians buy into this. There’s a lot that don’t, but a lot of them do. The food industry also pays scientists to write research papers to promote their products as the healthier choices.
And the idea here is to keep us confused, right to make it impossible, for you really know what’s healthy and what’s not. Because if they keep us confused, then we buy more of their junk food. And I’m just going to call soda diet soda and sugar industry a bunch of junk food because I think it is because they make more money and it’s all about the bottom line.
And so they’ll spend billions of dollars, you know, in marketing and advertising and influencing to make it really confusing for us as human beings who are concerned about our health, right? They just want to sell you more of their foods so they make the food hyper palatable by loading it up with sugar and grains and vegetable oils and they don’t care about your health.
They just want to sell more food and they know this hyper palatable food. This highly processed food is amazing, tastes amazing and it’s really hard to stop eating it once you start and they know that you are going to crave this stuff so they make more and more and more of it. And you know they are just concerned about making more money regardless of whether it’s good for you or not.
Over the years, they’ve convinced us that things like meat and eggs are bad for us. And sugar and grains are good. So they don’t make money off of meat and eggs, right? I mean, there are companies that do, but it’s not highly subsidized like the sugar industry. Highly processed foods full of sugar and grains sell like crazy and they’re super cheap to make. This stuff is super cheap. So the profit margins are a lot higher than a steak or eggs or whatever.
A lot of these companies receive subsidies from the government to grow more grains to the federal government, at least here in the US has long subsidized America’s farmers, significantly affecting our food supply and what we eat as a whole.
The most highly subsidized crops corn, soy, wheat and rice are the most abundantly produced and most consumed, often in the form of these ultra processed foods. Sugar is also highly subsidized, which drives up prices even though sugar is widely over consumed.
Fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, receive very little subsidization. And Americans eat much less produce than recommended, we eat much more sugar than we should and much less fruit and vegetables than we should.
So this is all to say, listen, if you think that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has your best interests in mind, think again, if you think the US government considers your health a priority, think again.
Even the healthcare industry here in the US is highly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. Your doctor’s job isn’t to get you as healthy as possible. It’s to sell more drugs. Hey, Doc, I’m suffering from all these diseases of lifestyle, should I change my lifestyle? And the doc says, hey, no, here’s a pill that you can take every day for the rest of your life instead.
Listen, the cards are stacked against us. Okay, it’s time that you take things into your own hands, it’s time to take back control of your own food choices and your own health. How do you do this? You’ve got to make your own decisions about what you feel is good for you, and what you feel is healthy for you and what isn’t.
And if you’re paying attention to people on social media, fine, but no, who’s paying them to say what they’re saying. Now, full disclosure about me, I have zero paid relationships, I do zero advertising of any kind of food products or supplements or anything like that. I don’t receive any money from anybody.
I have this coaching business that I freaking love. And that’s it. The only thing you’re gonna hear me talk about from a promotion standpoint here. I have on occasion mentioned certain supplements like LMNT, which is a sugar free electrolyte drink mix. I mentioned it because I use it. I like it. And it works great.
But I don’t have a paid relationship with them. I don’t advertise their products. You know, like I said, if I mentioned something, it’s because I recommend it to my clients and I use it.
And by the way, there’s another electrolyte drink that I really love. It’s called Redmond Real Light. And it’s by Redmond, the salt company. And so they make this electrolyte drink that is really tasty. And it comes in a little tub. So you can scoop out the amount that you want, which is a little bit different than LMNT which comes in packets. So they’re like pre portioned packets.
Anyway, that’s about the extent of my promotion right there. So you got to pay attention to who’s paying who to say what, right. Someone mentions a study, be sure to see who funded the study. I recently came across a study on the health benefits of canola oil. And then I skipped to the end and I see that this study quote unquote study was funded by The Canola Council.
And listen, canola oil, it’s a highly refined industrial seed oil. It’s been linked to higher inflammation, negative impacts on memory and heart health. It’s just not something I believe is healthy. Even if some of the stuff they’re talking about isn’t quite true. There’s enough evidence out there to say it’s probably best to stay away from canola oil and other industrial seed oils like that.
So pay attention to who’s saying what. Pay attention, who’s paying for the study? Who’s paying for the message? Who’s paying for that health care advice that your doctors are giving you? Is it the pharmaceutical industry? Does he have a certain number of, you know, prescriptions he has to write for pills every month? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
But I’m just telling you, we have to take things in our own hands. Right, you have agency in your life, you’re in charge of your own health. If eating candy for dinner, giving your kids candy with their dinner sounds like a bunch of BS to you then go with your gut on that one. Okay?
If you think eating steak and eggs for breakfast sounds good, and that feels good. It helps you to stay lean and strong, keeps you full all day, helps you lose weight and improves your blood markers. Do that, okay?
My suggestion is always like, let’s eat more like we always have been as human beings. You know, two and a half million years of evolution, humans have been eating kind of the same things, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, dairy, nuts, seeds, legumes, and we’ve we’ve not had highly processed foods loaded with sugar, and grains and seed oils, those things are new, those things have only been around for 50 to 100 years or so. Maybe less in some cases.
And so for the food industry to say this stuff is really awesome for you, you should be eating more highly processed foods that have sugar, grains and seed oils in them. I would just say like, I don’t know about that. And I would just question that. It doesn’t mean you can never eat a piece of pizza again, or never eat a candy bar or whatever. Like it’s okay to do that.
I mean, but geez, we got to be careful. And don’t confuse like the occasional Snickers with thinking that that’s healthy for you. Right. And a lot of these messages that they’re promoting out there are saying, hey, this stuff is actually healthy for you that canola oil, the refined grains, the sugar, and I just I don’t I don’t feel good about that doesn’t feel right to me.
And listen, it doesn’t matter what like diet you follow, you know, if you want to eat more plant based, and that feels good to you, and that works for you. And that promotes good health for you do that if you want to eat more of an animal based diet, and that makes you feel good. And that promotes good health for you, do that.
That part to me is less important than staying away from the stuff that is clearly junk food that is clearly processed that is clearly not healthy for you. The right diet is one that works for you, you know the one that you feel good about, but you have to take control here.
You can see what people are talking about out there on the internet. But be mindful and be skeptical. I think having healthy skepticism is really good for you. You know, it’s a good thing to look at who’s paying for these people to say these things, right?
Take back control of your health, take back control of your food choices. Do what feels right for you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. Okay. That is your charge for this week. Take back control.
Okay, and as always, if you’re looking for help with any of this stuff, we can talk about coaching, just head over to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me, fill out an application, we’ll have a conversation and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is great. If not, that’s cool, too. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
It’s the end of the year and time to look back at everything that’s happened this past year…good and bad. 2022 has been a challenging year for a lot of people and I’m no exception. I’ve had my …
Continue Reading about 157. Lessons Learned This Year and What’s Next →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 157 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, lessons learned this year and what’s next. So it’s the end of the year. And time to kind of look back at everything that’s happened this past year, the good and the bad.
2022 has been a challenging year for a lot of people. I’m no exception. I’ve had my share of setbacks and difficulties this year. But I’ve managed to get through them all. I’ve also had some pretty amazing accomplishments this year. And it’s this time of the year when I like to reflect on that stuff as well.
So in this episode of the podcast, I share my biggest lessons learned this year, and what’s next for me, and it is the end of the year. And I want you to do something, I want you to start thinking about what you want for yourself in 2023. This is a good time of the year to kind of set intentions for yourself and decide who you want to become next year.
How do you want to feel about yourself? What do you want to have accomplished by this time next year? Think about that. And if you’re ready to take action now to start making these things happen for you then I’m here to help consider coaching with me. And I’ll help you to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself in 2023. Cool? To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, you and I will jump on a call and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. If it is awesome, let’s get you started in becoming that most badass version of yourself.
All right, so this time of the year, I like to kind of look back over what I’ve learned over the year, I like to look at some of the things that maybe I’ve accomplished, or some of the failures, setbacks, disappointments that I’ve experienced, I like to look at all of it. I’m not just concerned about, you know, the things that I did well, the successes, that would be easy to focus on that stuff.
Instead, I like to look at some of the things that maybe didn’t go so well. And I like to look at the lessons that I’ve learned from some of those things I’ve had a kind of a challenging year, I’ve had some surgeries and had to recover from those and had to kind of put my training on the back burner for a while when I experienced an injury.
And so I’ve had to deal with a few challenging things this year. And to be honest with you, this entire year, my training has been less than ideal. But I’m sitting here as we close out the year and I’m really grateful that everything that has happened this year has happened the way it has because it’s given me a chance to learn a lot about myself, and to see what really is important to me.
Alright, so I’m going to talk about all of that, in this episode. And I’m going to share with you some of the lessons that I’ve learned this whole year. And understand that I have talked about a lot of this stuff on the podcast.
So for everything that I’m talking about today, you can kind of scroll back through these episodes from this past year from 2022. And you kind of find most of what I’m talking about here is buried in a lot of those episodes. Okay, so go back and listen to some of the previous episodes and you can kind of get a feel for when I talked about these things and maybe take a little bit of a deeper dive into a lot of these topics. Okay.
So some of this might be, you know, kind of not new information. But I’m reiterating some things that I’ve talked about earlier this year. But these are lessons that I’ve learned this year that have been really valuable for me, and have really helped me to see things a little bit differently. Okay.
So, with that in mind, and with that kind of feeling in mind, I just want to go ahead and dive in here. So the first lesson that I learned this year that has really resonated with me is that you are tougher than you think. You are tougher than you think and I am tougher than I think. So like I said I had to come back from two big surgeries and an injury.
So, this time last year, I had my rotator cuff surgery in December of 2021. And that was a long, slow recovery. I also had a hernia surgery in January of 2022. So within about a month, I had two pretty major surgeries that I had to recover from. And it was kind of good that I had them back to back because, you know, I was already laid up, so might as well just get it all over with.
And that was a very interesting time for me, because there wasn’t a whole lot that I could do from a physical standpoint. So I really had to work on my mental game and my nutrition game. So I couldn’t do a whole lot of exercise. But I did what I could, you know, I showed up at the gym, I did sort of my physical therapy type of exercises, I worked on the things that I could do, you know, I couldn’t lift a lot of heavy weights, I couldn’t use my right arm wasn’t allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds for a while there, you know, that whole post surgery deal.
So I was really out of my element, you know, I was not doing the things that brought me joy, I wasn’t doing the things that got my adrenaline going, got me feeling good. And I had to learn that even though I was going through a tough time that I was tougher, that no matter what, you know, I could handle anything, no matter what was thrown my way.
So once I did finally get my training back up and was training for a half marathon in the fall, I had an injury where I, you know, fell when I was running, and busted up my knee. And this was in August, and then I had to take about three months off of running because my knee was just not cooperating, you know, I did something to it, and caused a little bit of traumatic damage there. But it’s better and I’m back to running and the knee is not bothering me anymore.
And so one of the things that I was worried about was like, maybe I’ll never be able to run again. But the knee did slowly start to get better. But that was pretty frustrating because I had just, you know, recovered from the surgeries. And I had come back and I was feeling good. And my training was on point. And I had this half marathon that I was training for. Granted, I’m used to running marathons and ultra marathons. And, you know, training for a half didn’t seem like much, but it was what I could do at the time.
And I felt like I was, you know, kind of making my way back and making a comeback. And then I had that knee injury, which set me back again. And here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens if you get a setback, if you experience an injury, if you experience a disappointing event, if you have a failure, it doesn’t matter that you are tougher than you think you can get through all of that stuff.
So I had to really adapt to this mindset that I am tough and that I can get through this, that I’m capable of way more than where I am today. And that, you know, no matter what things are knocking me down, I’m going to get back up again. Knocked down six times, I’m going to get up seven, you know, that I do hard things, whatever this setback is, does not matter. I will persevere. I will continue going. I will continue pushing forward.
And where I am today, I’m feeling good. Because, you know, I’ve definitely recovered from the surgeries, you know, that was, you know, maybe five, six months or something where I felt like I was back to normal again. But I’m definitely back to running again now after the knee injury. And I’m feeling really, really good.
And I’m so glad that I stuck with it. And that I persevered and that I didn’t push it and I didn’t get down about it. I wasn’t like oh my gosh, woe is me. I’m never going to run again. I mean, I could have really gone there, but I didn’t. Okay, so I kept my mind in the game, and realized I’m tougher than I think that I can get through anything. And I did.
So that’s a big lesson for me, that I’m tough and I can get through anything. And I want you to take this lesson to heart, that you are tougher than you think.
The next lesson I learned this year is that discipline equals freedom. That discipline is not a bad thing. And I think that a lot of people think that when you’re disciplined it means you have less freedom. That discipline is the absence of freedom.
You know, they think of discipline as being, you know, chained to a desk or, you know, chained to a schedule, or something like that. And in reality, being disciplined is how you achieve true freedom. You know, if you want to be free from your sugar addiction, then you have to be disciplined about not eating sugar.
If you want to be, if you want to have financial freedom, you have to be disciplined about how you save money. If you want to have time freedom, then you have to be disciplined about how you schedule your time and how you use your time. If you want to run freer and faster and you want running to be easier, be disciplined about how you train, the more running you do, the better it gets, the easier it becomes.
You know, if you want to be free of the whole diet, culture, the whole feeling of deprivation, always trying to lose those last 20 pounds. You want to be free from all that nonsense? Then be disciplined about changing habits around food, be disciplined about changing your relationship with them.
Discipline is not a bad thing. And I think people give it a bad rap. Like, oh, you know, discipline is something that is bestowed upon you from above. And it’s some negative thing. And it’s really not, it’s just how you live your life, right. And so discipline, to me, is not a bad thing. discipline to me is how I achieve freedom. Okay, so discipline equals freedom.
Another key lesson that I learned this year, and this is something I’ve been kind of playing around with this last couple of years, but really solidified it this year is that ancestral eating is the key to health and happiness. So, when I talk about ancestral eating, I want you to understand that I’m talking about how humans have evolved over the last like 3 million years, and the food that we ate, and the way that we ate is much different.
How was much different for 3 million years than it has been for the last few 100 years. And that, especially the last 50 years, when we you know, introduced the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and, you know, they started pushing this crazy diet of like, all sugar and grains on us and trying to tell us that this is, you know, healthy, and that we got to start eliminating meat and fat and things like that, from our diet, like this is crazy.
Just eat like our ancestors have eaten, you know, just eat like humans have been eating for the last, you know, a few million years, and you’re going to do just fine. We’re talking about eating meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, dairy and honey.
You know, some of the most natural and most simple things that we have done as human beings and most nourishing foods that we’ve eaten as human beings. You know, people are telling us, they’re, they’re bad for us, we should stay away from them. And the whole idea is just crazy. So I tend to eat very ancestrally. My diet is very simple.
You know, I eat meat and eggs and fruit and some vegetables, but not a ton. And about the sweetest thing, it would be some honey, every now and then. But you know, for the most part, it’s very simple and very nutrient dense. So I stick with nutrient dense foods, foods that still look like real foods, foods that our ancestors would definitely recognize, okay.
The way that we’ve been told to eat over the last 50 years is just awful, right? It’s just wrong. So stick with ancestral eating. And I think this is going to be the key to human health and happiness.
And that leads me to the next point that I learned this year, which is that sometimes we just have to buck conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is wrong. It just is wrong. Conventional wisdom tells us to eat all the sugar and grains, sugar is not a problem. It’s fine. Stay away from meat, stay away from eggs, dairy from dairy. And it’s just wrong. And I think that if, in general, if we do the opposite of what everyone else is doing that I think you’re going to be just fine because what everybody else is doing is causing obesity and diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure and cancer and strokes and all kinds of other issues.
These are all metabolic issues. These are all diseases of lifestyle. And if the conventional wisdom is causing all these diseases of lifestyle, why don’t we just do something else? Right? So I’m not afraid to say that, you know, what’s being recommended by dieticians, for the most part, by the government, by the big food industries, I think it’s just wrong.
And I think we have to take our health and our fitness into our own hands. You want to be a healthy human being, do the opposite of what most people are out there telling you to do, you’ll probably be okay. Now obviously, there’s a grain of salt here, you do have to understand what proper nutrition is.
And, gosh, there’s so much information out there around this topic. I’m going to share more about this with you though, over the coming weeks and months, just so you know, that you know, I want to make sure you understand what the difference is between crappy the crappy Western diet and what it means to eat a healthy human diet. Okay, so I’m going to make sure that it’s very clear over the next weeks and months, okay, but for the most part, duck conventional wisdom, because it’s wrong.
Another lesson that I learned this year, which I love, and this is kind of changed the way I kind of have lived my life really, that’s like to eat and live like an athlete, because you are one. Think about this. Are you currently training for something? Are you training for a marathon? Are you training for a race? Are you training for a triathlon? Are you training for a CrossFit event? If you are, that’s awesome. If you’re not, why not?
Here’s the thing, you should always be training, you should always be eating and living like an athlete. If you do that, then you’re going to be fine. I’m just going to tell you right now, if you eat and live like an athlete, then you are going to be healthy, you’re going to be fit, you’re going to be in top physical shape, right, because that’s what athletes do. And honestly, I don’t think you should ever have to really like “get ready” from scratch for a race, like you should always be ready. Just be ready. Stay in training mode.
Yeah, put goals out there and go races and things that you can train for. But for the most part, train, eat, live like an athlete, because you are an athlete. And if you live your life that way, I promise you, you’re going to be so much healthier, and so much happier and so much stronger. And so much more fit, and you’re going to look and feel amazing.
So eat and live like an athlete, I’ve been doing this. And I have to tell you that I just feel so good right now. Now, I do have a goal out there, I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. I do have a big goal that I’m working towards. But for the most part, I want to stay ready. I want to stay strong. I want to stay fit. Like if you tell me hey, you know, you want to run a marathon next weekend? I’ll be like, sure, I’m ready. I’m ready. Because I’ve been doing the work consistently. All right. So eat and live, like you’re an athlete, and you will be so much healthier and so much happier. And always ready for whatever comes your way.
Another big lesson I learned this year is that simple wins. Every time, simple wins, whatever you do, make it simple. Everything I do when I’m working with clients, I try to simplify things for them. Because there’s so much complicated information out there around food and exercise and running and how to be healthy and people you know, that want to, you know, look at heart rate, and VO2 max, and calories and macros and percentages, and there’s so much data and we can sort of get lost in all of that data, we can get lost and make all of this very, very complicated we can make being healthy, very complicated.
We can make eating very complicated. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler that you can make something, the easier it’s going to be for you to stick with it. And food especially when it comes to food, the simpler that you can make it, the easier it’s going to be to stick with it. I talk about this all the time. How you know, when I sit down to eat dinner at night, it’s usually something like ground beef. Maybe I’ll slice up an avocado with it, maybe melt some cheese on there, and I’m done. Or I’ll eat a steak or I’ll eat some chicken. That’s it. Like it’s that simple. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to spend a lot of time on it. It’s just simple. It’s easy. It’s delicious. And I love it.
But let’s simplify things when it comes to running. Just go out there and run. Don’t worry about your heart rate. Don’t worry about your pace. Don’t worry about trying to, you know, hit some percentage of your VO2 max or stay in zone three or two or whatever. Like, just go out there and run and enjoy it and go by how you feel? Does it feel good? Does it feel too hard to slow down? Does it feel too easy to speed up, run fast, run really hard? Some days, other days run really slow. Let’s just make it simple, it doesn’t have to be complicated.
I think that as runners, we love our data. And I get that part of it. And I love data too. And I love looking at it. But I also try not to be consumed by it, or driven by it, I try to simplify things as much as possible. This is another topic I’m going to be talking about over the next weeks and months, which is going to be how to make running, how to run efficiently, effectively. And simply, gosh, every time I read a new book about some concept of running and how to improve your running performance, there’s all these complicated methods of achieving goals. And I’m just like, man, can we make this simpler? So my job is gonna be to make this simpler for you guys. Okay.
The next lesson I learned this year, this is a big one, is that consistency will beat perfection every time. And that I’m a perfectionist, and I love to do things right. And I’m like, if you can’t do it, right, don’t do it. That’s kind of my mantra a lot of times. And the thing is, though, is that nobody does anything perfectly, nobody does anything perfectly.
You’re not going to eat right all the time, you’re not going to crush every single workout perfectly, you’re not going to lose weight, exactly in linear fashion, like, you know, a pound a week or whatever. Like, everything’s a process, everything has its ups and downs, everything has successes and failures, you’ll experience progress, and you’ll experience setbacks, and you know what, it’s all good. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing things consistently, over time, that’s what’s gonna get you to every single one of your goals, stop trying to do it perfectly.
Let go of that idea that there’s some sort of a plus that you’re gonna get a gold star if you do a perfectly let go of that. And do your best but be consistent. And what does it mean to be consistent, that means like, you know, don’t have two bad meals in a row. Let’s say you screw up and you eat some, whatever chocolate chip cookies for dinner. Next meal, get back on track. That’s it.
Now, don’t ever do two bad meals in a row. Don’t ever miss two workouts in a row. You miss a workout, you don’t feel like working out fine, whatever, stay in bed, just no big deal. Don’t miss that. Next one, though. Get back on track, consistently, consistent, consistently do these things and you will eventually reach your goals. But don’t focus on perfection because there’s no such thing.
Another big goal, or another big lesson I learned this year is that there is no finish line. I talked about this on the podcast last week. And it’s such a huge lesson for me and for you. That’s what we do here, when we’re focusing on our health and our fitness, when we’re focusing on improving ourselves and becoming more. This is the way we live our lives. But there is no finish line. There isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to but rather, this is how we live our life. This is a lifestyle that we lead, right? It’s not something we do temporarily. We’re not trying to get to some number on the scale, or just some number on the scoreboard, you know, on the timer.
We’re not trying to just you know, that’s it. You know, once we do that, then we can go back to doing what we’re doing before now. We want to live our lives in a way that supports our becoming more consistently. And in that we’re never done with this, that our work is never done. We’re always working. We’re always living like athletes. We’re always trying to simplify things. We’re always trying to do things consistently. We’re always trying to better ourselves. We’re always trying to, you know, stay disciplined and toughed it out, and that it’s okay. It’s okay.
We don’t have to be finished. Like when I first thought about this, I first heard somebody talk about that. You know, we’re never finished with this . We always have to stay on top of this stuff when we always have to be focused on becoming more. It kind of scared me a little bit at first, because I thought oh my god, do I really want to commit to this for the rest of my life? Is this really who I want to be?
And the answer that I found myself coming up with was a resounding Hell yes, hell yes. This is how I want to live my life. I want to do this for life. This is how I want to live my life every single day, I don’t want to be that overweight couch potato that I used to be, that sick person who drank too much and ate too much and smoked cigarettes and was just a human garbage can. I don’t want to be that person ever again.
I’m okay, that I’ve chosen to live my life in such a different way that I’m willing to continue doing this for good. This is how I want to be for good. Alright, so there is no finish line, you got to embrace that concept. I’ve embraced that concept this year. For sure. So this is what we do. This is who we are. Right? This isn’t there’s no finish line, there’s no destination or trying to get to this is how we live our lives. Cool.
Okay, so those are the big lessons that I’ve learned this year, there’s a lot more, there’s so many more, but those are the big ones. Okay. So what’s next for me. So I’ve kind of, you know, mentioned it a few times that I’m going to be sharing some of these concepts, on the weeks and months to come on the podcast here, because I’ve got a lot of good content coming your way, a lot of good content, I’m gonna continue bringing you all the good stuff, focusing on nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset, all next year.
So keep, you know, just keep listening. I’m going to continue to bring all the good stuff your way, and hopefully give you some inspiration and encouragement to take action on these things and start making some changes for yourself.
I can’t tell you how gratifying it is, when I get a message from somebody who’s just been listening to the podcast, it’s not somebody I’ve been working with, but somebody who’s just been listening to the podcast, and they’ll say, “Patrick, Hey, I just want to tell you, you’ve really changed my life. I’ve been listening to the podcast for a year or two. And, you know, I’ve just, you know, done all these things that you’ve suggested over the years and, and I’ve really changed my life, and I’ve lost all this weight, and I’m so much healthier, I feel so much better about myself. And just thank you so much for doing this.”
Like that those kinds of messages that I get from you guys, oh my god, it just warms my heart, you know what I mean? Makes me feel so good. Because it means the message is being received, and, and that you’re taking action. So take action on this stuff. Because this isn’t about conceptualizing. These aren’t just ideas, these are things I want you to do. These are things that in order for you to change that you have to actually take action on. Cool.
So I’m going to continue bringing you all the good stuff, I got lots of good topics coming your way. And then I’ve got a big goal that I’m working towards, I’ve got this big alter event that’s going to be in May. And more on that later. But I just want you to know that it’s a big goal, it’s going to cause me to level up. It’s not something I’ve ever done before. So it’s kind of a new thing for me. It’s an ultra running event. And really like after taking last year off, like 2022 was not a great year for training for me. Like I feel like I’ve taken the whole year off from significant training.
You know, after taking all this time off, I feel like I’m ready. I’m ready, I’m back. I’m back to running some more significant mileage. And I’m feeling really good about this event. And it’s a little scary. It’s one of those events that’s a little bit scary. It’s causing me to, you know, question my decision here, like, why, what I decided to do something like this, but at the same time, it’s also something that I’m very passionate about and feel good about. So I’ll be sharing more about that as we get closer to the event. But just know that it’s a big Ultra running event. And it’s going to cause me to, you know, get out of my comfort zone in a big way, in a big way.
Okay, so that’s something I’m really looking forward to. And then after that, I’ve got another big goal for the fall. So stay tuned. I’ll share more about this as we go. Last thing I wanted to say is that I just want to really thank you for listening to the podcast for your support this year. Whether you listen, just listen to podcasts, whether you read my social media posts or allow me in your inbox.
I know you get a lot of emails and I appreciate you, you know allowing me to email you whatever where it is that you get from me and how you consume this content, whether you’re listening while you’re out there running, or walking the dogs or whatever, I just want to say that I really appreciate you, I’m doing this for you, you know, I do this because I want to help you to become the best version of yourself, you know, I want to help you to become the most badass version of yourself.
And I want to help to make 2023 your best year ever, I want it to be my best year ever as well. So let’s make 2023 the best year ever, we can do this, right? It just means that we put in place some of these principles that I’ve been talking about, and we kicked some serious butt this year. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Happy New Year everybody. Love you all, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
I’ll bet you’ve thought about eating healthy at one point or another in your life and then thought, nah…that’s going to be way too boring. If this sounds like something you’ve thought (or even said …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 139 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, eating healthy is so boring. I bet that you’ve thought about eating healthy at some point in your life. And then you’ve thought, man, that’s going to be way too boring.
If this sounds like something you’ve thought or even maybe said out loud, then you are definitely not alone. People tell me all the time that they can’t stick to their food plan, or they don’t even want to start in the first place. Because it’s all going to be so boring. And I used to think this way too, but definitely not anymore. I’ve embraced the idea that food can be a little bit boring. If it means I get to live a long, healthy, happy life.
So today, I’m going to be talking about this big lie, this lie that eating healthy is boring. And how you might be able to radically improve your health by rethinking this by rethinking how exciting your meals really need to be. And as a licensed sports nutritionist, my focus is on food, it’s on nutrition, that’s like my number one focus, I want to help you make good choices I want you to I want to help you change your eating habits, I want to help you to change your body composition, to lose weight to gain muscle.
But really, what I want to help you with is to become the healthiest version of yourself to become healthy, fit and strong. So my main focus is on nutrition. This is the main driver of good health in my opinion. And I understand that you also want to crush your running goals. So this is where I’m a little bit different from other coaches.
So you might be training for a half marathon or a full marathon, or your first 5k. You know, maybe you’re just getting started with running. And lots of coaches out there will tell you that you cannot lose weight while you’re training for some race or while you’re running. You should stop running to lose weight. And I think this is ridiculous.
Okay, so for us, we, the people in my coaching program, we change our eating habits while we’re training for a marathon, lose weight feel better, running gets improved, our health is improved. And we do it all in a way that feels good for you. It’s not about severe caloric restriction, because we can’t do that when we’re training for a marathon. Right?
We’re not focused on counting calories and doing all this math about how many calories you should be eating because you ran this many miles, which means you burn this many calories and all that stuff, right? That’s just that’s too much. It’s ridiculous. That’s not how we do this, right? I do things differently.
I focus on helping you simplify nutrition, we don’t want to make it more complicated. And I want to help you change habits around food, simplify change habits, and make healthy eating just a way of life. It’s like it has to be part of who you are and what you do. Right. It has to be something you can do without a coach without me.
So the goal is to help you develop new habits, develop a new mindset. So that how you eat just becomes effortless. And it’s just what you do from here on out. So if you want help simplifying your nutrition, you know, maybe you’re ready to embrace the boring. I’ll talk about that more in a minute here.
And if you want a plan that also supports your love of running, then I want to encourage you to apply for my coaching program, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a short application and we’ll talk about coaching. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Sounds good. I would love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project. That’s where the project is you.
Alright, let’s talk about how eating healthy is so boring. The reason I’m talking about this today is because I’ve had a lot of people say this to me recently. I’ve had clients, potential clients, I’ve had friends and family all tell me that they don’t want their food to be boring, and that some people haven’t even engaged in any type of, you know, change of their nutrition regimen, and they’re just thinking about it. And they’re just thinking about like, oh, I could never do that because it would be so boring.
Here’s the thing that is really just a thought. It’s a thought that you have in your head. And it’s a thought that stops you from making any kind of changes. And if you want something different for yourself, then you have to, like drop that thought that eating healthy is going to be boring, okay?
Eating healthy, can be fun, and can be sort of exciting. But if you think that it’s going to be boring, then you’re, that’s what’s going to be reality for you. If you think eating healthy, nutritious food on a regular basis is going to be boring, then that is your reality.
So I just want you to like embrace this idea that this idea of food being boring, is just a thought, okay, but it definitely is something that comes from somewhere. Right? So there’s this idea that food has to be exciting. Food has to be amazing. Every time we sit down to eat a meal, it has to be an experience to remember forever.
And really, this is all just marketing, right? This is all just marketing. It’s the big food companies that are coming together to market an idea to us. And the idea is this. The idea is that if you want to have an amazing, fulfilling, happy life, then every time you sit down to eat a meal, it has to be amazing. It has to be an entertainment experience.
Everything you eat has to be so delicious that you are compelled to post about it on social media. And there’s a term for these photos of food that make you drool and make you crave whatever food is in the picture. And they call it food porn, like porn. But for food, that’s kind of weird, if you think about it, okay. But this is what this is the term I didn’t make it up to this is the term that a lot of people use for this idea of posting all these pictures that make you drool and make you say, oh my gosh, I have to have that.
Another term for this feeling that you get is called euphoric recall. So you see a picture. And you remember how amazing the food was, and you remember an experience similar to that. So you may have eaten that exact thing, but it reminds you of something else that you’ve had. Or you can just be sitting around talking to friends and you can, you know, recall, this amazing meal that you had, or this amazing dessert that you had.
And it brings back all these thoughts and feelings of euphoria, like you start to feel amazing, your mouth will start to water and all you’re doing is just thinking about food. Right. And so this idea of euphoric recall, really, it’s a, it’s a mechanism that’s happening in our brains, where we are driven to remember very deeply and very vividly an experience.
And it’s a good evolutionary thing, because in the past, we may have, you know, encountered some berries or some honey as hunter gatherers, and we would, you know, eat that particular food. And we would want to remember that because it will be like, hey, this is a really good source of calories, or this is something that we can, you know, that is that tastes good. It’s delicious, it feels good. We want to remember that.
So your brain sort of locks that into your memory. But now we’re doing it about everything that we eat, and it’s becoming a problem. It’s becoming a problem, because people can’t even imagine switching their diet and eating a more healthy diet because they’re like, Well, what’s going to happen to all this amazing food that I remember, this is all just stuff that’s happening in your brain, by the way.
And food never used to be like this. Like this is a relatively new phenomenon. This idea of like food being so amazing, and there’s a meta or a scientific term for this. It’s called hyper palatable food. Hyper palatable means it’s uber uber palatable, like, like I mentioned, some berries, like you know, we’d find some wild blackberries, you know, as, you know, ancient hunter gatherers, and we’d be like, oh my god, this is so amazing, or fruits that we would find back in the day.
Now, those things have been engineered to become hyper palatable. And then there’s all these scientists that are actually creating hyper palatable foods in the lab, you know, and they really light up our pleasure centers in our brain, these foods light up our pleasure centers, just like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines. And they know what they’re doing. They know that it’s going to give us a rush of dopamine, they know, it’s going to give us a high.
And we’re just buying into this whole idea. I’m gonna sound a little crazy here. But that, to me, this is very much like what drug dealers do, they want to get you hooked on their product. Because once they get you hooked on your product, you can’t stop thinking about it, you want to get that feeling again. You know, and they know what they’re doing, they put it right on the label, like once you pop, you can’t stop.
They know that we’re addicted to these hyper palatable, processed foods, and we can’t get enough of them. So the scientists that are creating these things are creating something that really, really lights up our pleasure centers. A lot of times even more so than those drugs I mentioned.
They did this experiment with rats, I think poor little rats, right? They’re always like experimenting on them. But they gave them a choice between sugar and cocaine. And over time, the rats preferred the high that they got from the sugar, so they would go for the sugar or the cocaine.
So when you talk about something that’s addictive, I mean, is sugar addictive? I mean, we crave it like a drug. We get hooked on it, like it’s a drug, we can’t stop thinking about it, and how amazing it is, like a drug. But they say it’s not a drug. And that’s okay. I mean, they can say that, but we sure act like it is. We sure buy more and more and more of this stuff, because we can’t stop eating it and are hooked on the product. We’re hooked on the quote unquote, drug. Okay?
If we stop, we’re gonna have withdrawal symptoms. I see this all the time, I help people get off sugar all the time, by the way. And when we stop eating sugar, our brains start to freak out. And we have withdrawal symptoms, we have headaches, and we feel nauseous, and we’re grumpy. And it’s just like coming off of other drugs like cocaine or alcohol. Right.
And if we stop just the idea, just thinking about stopping makes us feel like we’re gonna be missing out on all that good stuff. All that amazing stuff. Everyone else is having all these amazing experiences, how come I can’t. So just the idea of like, not eating sugar, kind of freaks us out. You know, food can’t be boring. I can’t live a boring life. Everybody else is having an amazing life. They’re living their best life. Thank you, Cheesecake Factory.
So they’ve created this product that really gets us hooked on their product. And when we think about not using the product, we feel bad. So we don’t want to give it up. And we were being sold this idea that food has to be amazing. And it has to be an experience. And if you’re the kind of person that’s like, hey, I just want to eat healthy food. I just want to live a long, healthy life, healthy life, right?
But we can’t even do that. Because we have sort of convinced ourselves or we’ve been programmed to think that it’s just going to be too boring. Eating healthy food and living a long happy life can’t do it. It’s going to be too boring. It’s going to be too boring. So we have this. We have a physical addiction to food. We have a mental and emotional addiction to food, or obsessing over food just like an addict obsesses over their particular drug of choice.
And we’re certainly acting much more like this as a drug than a food. So I just want you to know that if you’re feeling like you cannot make a change like this in your life, like you can’t stop eating, you know the junk food and you can’t stop going to Cheesecake Factory or whatever it is that you’d like to do. Because this idea of like, oh my life is going to be boring. I’m never going to be happy again.
I just want you to rethink that. Because you know food did not used to be like this. This is a recent thing in the last 50 years especially really the last probably 20 years since the Internet, this has really become this has exploded, right? This idea that food has to be amazing or whatever. But really in the last few 100 years, let’s just say, that’s really no time at all in this, you know, in the life span of humans.
So we hunted and gathered, we came together to celebrate with food. And we came together with our tribe and with our families, we socialized, we connected we bonded over food. It was nourishment, it was fuel as a source of life. It was something to be set to celebrate, you know, it was important. And nobody would ever say like, oh, God, this is so boring.
You guys, woolly mammoth again, geez, this is so boring. I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous. But that’s kind of where we are today with all of this, right. But again, this is all just a big lie. And you don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to buy into this idea that food has to be super exciting and that it has to be a source of entertainment. And every meal has to be amazing.
Food was pretty boring for like 2 million years of human evolution. Why all of a sudden does it have to be some amazing experience? Now, every meal doesn’t have to be an entertainment experience, it could just be a meal. And listen, would you rather experience a little tiny bit of short term pleasure now, or a lifetime of health and happiness in the future?
Because here’s what we’re doing, we’re choosing one over the other. When we choose short term pleasure, we’re choosing to feel good momentarily, we’re choosing the effect that the drug has on us. We’re choosing the dopamine hit that we’re going to get. And we’re choosing that. We’re forgoing our health or forgoing what makes us healthy human beings and what really is going to drive our fitness, our health, improve our running, all those things that we want for ourselves.
So we’re programming ourselves to choose short term pleasure over long term health and happiness. What if you just delayed that pleasure? Like, what if you just said, you know what, I’m not going to give in to the idea that I have to have something amazing right now, in this moment? What if we just forego the immediate pleasure, for feeling amazing for the rest of your life? Like, what if you did that?
And runners are kind of bad at this in general, I’m just going to say that because the typical runner’s diet is just bad, like lots of refined carbs, lots of sugar, lots of alcohol, really kind of the worst things you can do for your health. But they think that, hey, I’m a runner, so I get to eat and drink whatever I want. You know, I’m gonna drink like crazy. Like, if there’s anybody else, it’d be like, Hey, I think you might have a little problem with drinking. But no, it’s like, I’m a runner.
So it’s okay. And if this is working for you, you get to eat and drink whatever you want, as often as you want, as much as you want. Donuts, you know, all the refined carbs, tons of sugar, alcohol, whatever. Like, that’s all good. If this is working for you, more power to you. But I’m gonna tell you right now, it’s probably not gonna work for long. It’s probably not sustainable. If it is, and you’re that rare person that can just do that for your whole life, and you can stay super healthy. That’s amazing.
I don’t see that happening, especially as you get a little bit older. You know, once you get into your 40s, things start to change, things get a little bit different. And I’ve found myself running with friends on Saturday mornings, and we talk about food. And we’re talking about what we’re going to be eating when we’re done running and people will be like, oh, yeah, I can’t wait.
I’m gonna have this huge stack of pancakes and waffles and doughnuts and croissants and drink some beer. And I’m like, really, beer on a Saturday morning? And they’re like, yeah, what are you going to be eating Patrick? I’m like, bacon, eggs, yogurt, fruit, and they’re like, boring. And I’m like, Hey, listen, I’ve been there. I’ve done all that. I’m done with that now, though. I’m 55. And then the best shape of my life. I’m fine with my food being boring. You call it whatever you want. I enjoy it.
Can we just embrace boring, though? Can we just drop the idea that food has to be amazing? Can we just accept that our food can be a little boring? I teach my clients how to simplify their meals. Meaning that every meal doesn’t have to be different. Every meal doesn’t have to involve recipes, and shopping, and tons of ingredients and lots of time and effort to prepare.
And I really think we do ourselves no good by holding on to the notion that every meal has to be an experience for the ages. One of my favorite meals that I love to eat and I eat this a lot, is a grilled ribeye steak with sea salt. Here are the two ingredients. It’s a ribeye steak and sea salt. And I put some salt on the steak and I cook it on the grill, and then I eat it. And that’s my meal.
Sometimes I’ll do like some steamed broccoli on the side with some sea salt and lots of grass fed butter melted on there. Simple, delicious, effortless, two ingredients, almost no time to prepare. It’s simple. You can call that boring if you want to. I love it. And it’s so delicious. Boring does not mean it has to taste bad or it can’t be delicious. I love the simplicity of food these days.
Because when I eat food now I can really taste the flavors. Because I’m not making everything into this big ordeal, right? You can change your palate, your tastes will change over time. When you start to simplify, and you get off the hyper palatable foods and you start eating real foods, foods will start to taste much better than they ever have before.
So you could eat something like a plain chicken breast with salt and pepper on it. You’re like, oh my god, this is like the best thing I’ve ever had. And I never realized this until I stopped eating all the junk food. And when I stopped eating all the junk food, all that stuff that’s been designed to be like super, hyper delicious or whatever. All of a sudden, the simpler things just taste so, so good.
I think you know, we should still enjoy food. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying food should not taste good. And I’ve heard people say that food is fuel and it should just be fuel and you shouldn’t even enjoy it. And I’m like, no, we should enjoy food. We’ve been programmed to enjoy food, it’s what’s kept us alive for millions of years, if we didn’t enjoy food, we wouldn’t go back to it, we wouldn’t seek out nourishment when we need it. You know.
So I think food can be both simple, and delicious. I think food can be kind of boring, and still tastes amazing. So this isn’t about not enjoying ourselves or not enjoying food. I just think we have to get away from this idea that every food experience has to be amazing. Now I went out to dinner last night, and I had a steak and it had this kind of like South American sauce on it. And it was really delicious. It was really good. I really enjoyed it.
And every now and then I will go out to dinner. And I will do something that is a little bit more of an experience around food. And, you know, I might go out with friends or my girlfriend or something like that, and we come together and we can enjoy food. And we like I mentioned, you know, our ancestors would come and celebrate around food and it’s how we bonded and connected and how we grew closer together. And I still think we should do that.
But I think we can also simplify things. And that every food experience doesn’t have to be, you know, something amazing, right? Because when we have this idea when we have this thought in our head that every food experience has to be amazing, then, just the idea of changing our our nutrition plan, changing our diet is gonna seem just undoable, it’s just gonna seem too hard. It’s gonna seem too hard.
So, the idea that food has to be an experience, we just have to squash that idea. Start by simplifying food, make it simple. What can you do to simplify a meal? Stick with real food food that still looks like food. Try to stay away from anything that has a marketing message behind it right? So don’t be eating that stuff that’s been concocted in a lab to get you hooked on the food like an addict is hooked on the drug. Gotta get away from that.
Start to make better choices and start to simplify your food. And yes, it can be boring. Eating healthy can be boring, and it can be delicious. And it can improve your health and it can improve your fitness and it can help you improve your running all those things.
And remember, if you want help with this, if you want help simplifying your nutrition, you know maybe you’re ready now to embrace the boring and you want to be able to support your running performance reach out. I’m always always here for you. Cool, love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
If there’s one sure-fire way to make sure you stay unhealthy and die early it’s eating the modern, westernized diet. We’ve gotten very far away from eating the way our ancient ancestors ate and …
Continue Reading about 132. Ancestral Eating to Improve Health & Fitness →
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 132 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, ancestral eating to improve health and fitness. If there’s one surefire way to make sure you stay unhealthy, and most likely die early, is to continue eating the modern westernized diet.
We’ve gotten very far away from eating the way our ancient ancestors ate, and it’s causing us irreparable harm. Chronic lifestyle diseases like obesity, type two diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are all linked to an unhealthy diet. And these afflictions were virtually non-existent in ancient populations for two and a half million years, humans evolved beautifully on a very simple diet.
So if you want to take control of your health and become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, and I know you do, then you might want to consider following in the footsteps of your ancestors.
So in this episode, I’m going to break it all down for you to explain how ancestral eating can dramatically improve your health and fitness. And listen, I understand that getting healthy, losing weight, maintaining your weight, training for marathons, and changing your diet and trying to fit all this stuff in becoming the strongest version of yourself and the healthiest version of yourself.
All this stuff is complicated. There’s a lot of confusing information out there. And this stuff is not easy to do on your own, becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself. It takes time. It takes discipline, it takes consistency, it takes knowing what to do and how to do it. And this is everything that I do in the Running Lean coaching project.
This is my coaching program that gives you all the knowledge, the support, the accountability that you need, in order to reach your goals to improve your health, to get leaner, to get stronger, to run faster, to run longer. And to do it in a way that is sustainable. We are not about quick fixes.
In the Running Lean coaching project, we are about long term health and fitness, creating new habits that last for life. And this is about longevity more than anything else. It’s about improving your health, improving your fitness, improving your athletic performance, so that you can stay strong and healthy and live longer. Don’t you want to live longer? Yeah, absolutely.
I know, we all want that for ourselves, we all want to become healthy, we all want to live longer, we all want to, you know, become the most badass version of ourselves. Not many people are willing to do the work to get there, though. So that’s why I’m here to help you. If you’re feeling compelled to change your health for the better, and to do it in a way that is sustainable, then I want to encourage you to apply to join the Running Lean coaching project, you can go to my website, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply, fill out a short application, you and I will jump on a call and we’ll see if this is a good fit for you.
You know, it’s not for everybody. And I talk to people every single day. And a lot of people are like, you know, I’m just not sure if this is right for me. And that’s totally fine. You have to be willing to commit, you have to be willing to kind of get uncomfortable and do some hard things. Because what you’re doing right now feels good, it feels comfortable, but it’s not working for you.
So in order to change we need to do some things we need to get out of our comfort zone. Getting out of your comfort zone is by definition uncomfortable. So I’m here to help you with that process. If you want that kind of help, if you’re looking for that kind of help, if you want to improve your health and make it last, join the Running Lean coaching project that’s runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join me in the Running Lean coaching project.
Alright, let’s get into this topic today: ancestral eating to improve health and fitness. So why am I talking about this today? Well, there’s been a lot of talk out there and a lot of concern about some of these like crazy fad diets that people are doing right. There’s the South Beach diet and then there’s Weight Watchers and there’s Jenny Craig and there’s like keto and carnivore and paleo.
And all these other things that are for the most part, newer kind of diets based on you know, more modern research and, and some modern studies and things like that, but they’re pretty new. They’re pretty new there. And a lot of these are based on calorie restriction and trying to, you know, they’re focused on losing weight and things like that. And, and a lot of this stuff is, is really eating in a very modern, very new kind of way.
Okay, so the thing I want to bring to you today and the big, you know, the big sort of message that I want you to take away from this episode today is that when we engage in ancestral eating, we’re talking about doing things, the way we used to do them a long time ago.
And for millions of years, and you know, humans have evolved over the last two and a half million years, we evolved eating a certain type of diet. And we have gotten very far away from that diet. So what we’re eating today as human beings, is crazy compared to what we used to eat, for the vast majority of those two and a half million years.
And if you think about the way that we did things, we were more like wild animals of today than we are, you know, these modern thinking humans that we are in this modern society that we live in, in all the comfort and all that, you know, we’re more like wild animals, think about animals in the wild today, there’s no obesity.
In the animal kingdom out there outside of domesticated animals, there are obese dogs, I’ve seen people with dogs who are wildly overweight. And that’s because they’re, they’re eating a diet that wasn’t made for dogs, right? They’re eating a lot of grains. A lot of these dog foods have additives and they’re full of grains and things like that, that make dogs gain weight. Don’t feed your dog that stuff. Give it dog like real dog food, what do dogs eat? Meat mostly, right?
But think about animals in the wild. Today, there’s no heart disease, there’s no cancer, there’s no obesity, you know, there are some issues here and there. But for the most part, that stuff is non existent, that stuff is non existent. And why? Because those animals in the wild are eating a diet that is specific for them, they’re eating an animal specific diet, we want to go back to doing that.
So all these new diets that you see out there today, most of them are based on, you know, modern, you know, modern studies and, and modern ways of thinking about food, and nutrition. And my suggestion is we just kind of ditch all that BS, and just go back to doing things, the way we’ve always done them as human beings.
You know, think about us more like wild animals. You know, when you eat an animal specific diet, you thrive, all the animals out there in the animal kingdom that are eating, they don’t eat food that is not designed for them. They just don’t. You know, elephants are vegetarians, they eat grass, and whatever leaves and things like that.
And, you know, we don’t you don’t see elephants, you know, going off and eating a bunch of meat and you don’t see and vice versa. You don’t see cows, or I’m sorry, you don’t see lions snacking on grass and stuff. Like, they don’t eat that stuff, right? They eat an animal specific diet. Have you ever seen an obese lion? No, the lion doesn’t need to snack during the day because it eats the right kinds of food, and then it fasts. It doesn’t need to eat after it eats.
So I was looking this up. And I think this is really fascinating. Lions eat like every three or four days. And they need an average of about 11 to 15 pounds of meat every day. And lions can go without food for more than a week. And then they can eat up to 110 pounds of meat at a time. That’s crazy. I mean, that’s the way I feel. Sometimes I could do that. Right?
But that’s almost a quarter of their body weight. And they can eat that all at once. And then they don’t need to eat for another 3-5-7 days. So you know, lions don’t need to be snacking on food during the day because they’re getting all the nutrition that they need from eating those few times a week. It’s very interesting, right?
So, you know, when we snack as human beings, we’re doing it because we are eating the wrong diet and the diet that we’re eating is jacking up our hunger signals. It’s making us feel hungry all the time. When we eat food, it’s not filling us up. It’s not giving us the nutrition that we need. It’s not triggering the sensors to say, hey, you’re full, you know.
A lot of carbohydrates will do that, they will make you feel like you are constantly hungry, and you need to eat more. But then you eat more of that same type of food and you’re still hungry. It’s all messed up, just doesn’t doesn’t work, right. It’s not designed for humans that carbohydrates are really not designed for human consumption. We’ve, you know, we can eat that stuff. And it’s okay, you know, it gives us some nutrition, you know, a little bit of nutritional value, but not a lot, but it causes more harm than good.
So, when we live more like wild animals, we are going to see improved hormonal responses, we’re going to see food, we’re going to eat food that makes us feel full when we eat it, it’s going to satisfy us for longer and then there won’t be a need to snack between meals. So let’s just get off these foods that really aren’t designed for human consumption. I’m mainly talking about sugar, grains, seed oils, processed foods, that kind of stuff, right? And live more like our ancient ancestors did.
Now I’m not talking about, you know, sleeping in a cave, you don’t have to sleep on the ground in the dirt, you can still sleep in your big comfy bed with all the extra pillows, all the unnecessary pillows.
Why do we do that? By the way, here’s a little sidebar, but I have pillows on my bed that every night before I go to bed, I take them off, and I set them aside. Do you guys do that? Isn’t that weird? Why do we do that? Why do we have extra pillows? Anyway, just think about that every day when I’m taking those off my bed? Why do I have these extra pillows that I don’t use?
Anyway, but you don’t have to sleep in the dirt, you can still shop at Whole Foods. You can buy, you know your groceries at the grocery store, you don’t have to go hunt your own food or anything like that. That’s not what I’m suggesting here. What I am suggesting is that we go back to eating a proper human diet.
What happens when you feed a cow, which normally would just eat grass? What happens when you feed a cow grains? You know, they get fat, right? Have you ever seen grass fed, grass finished meat at the grocery store? If you see it, take a look at it, you’ll notice something in it, there’s very little fat in there, that muscle meat is like just red, there’s not those big streaks of fat in there.
And then look at the grain finished or grain fed grain finished meat and you’ll see that it’s very fatty. So when you feed cows grains, they get fat. This same thing happens to humans, when you feed us fat. Or I’m sorry, when you feed us grains we get fat. We store lots of that energy as fat that we’re eating from grains and sugars.
So if you want a surefire way of fattening yourself up like we do with cows then just eat a high carbohydrate diet. Right? I mean, this is just science, just the way it works. Okay. So my proposition here, my suggestion here is just to go back to doing things the way we used to, for two and a half million years of evolution. It’s not some new, weird fad thing.
Let’s just go back to eating the way we always have been eating. So how does this improve our health? Well, when we eat the proper human diet, we keep our blood sugar low. So we’re not eating foods that spike our blood sugar like crazy. We’re not eating foods that cause an insulin spike, which causes us to stay in that fat storing mode.
If you’re eating a lot of sugar and carbohydrates, you’re constantly storing energy as fat, you’re never giving your body a chance to tap into that stored body fat as a fuel source. You know, going back to our lion example, that lion is really good at, you know, consuming large amounts of food, and then going for days and you know, up to a week at a time with nothing. And they do that because they’re able to burn fat very efficiently.
We do the same thing as human beings, we’ve evolved to be really efficient fat burners, and we’ve gotten away from them. Because we’re constantly eating a diet that keeps us storing fat and doesn’t allow us to sort of lock that fat in our fat cells.
You know that insulin will, you know, when insulin is high when insulin is present, locking up that fat in our fat cells and not allowing us to tap into it as a fuel source. When we change the diet, we become more fat adapted, we’re able to tap into that stored body fat and not only lose the weight, but we have this amazing all day energy.
So one of the best ways that eating ancestrally will help you improve your health is that it improves fat burning. So you keep your blood sugar low, keep insulin low. Have all your hormones get balanced, you know, and we’re talking about hormones like leptin, and ghrelin.
Ghrelin is the hunger hormone, and it gets jacked up and it gets really elevated when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. Leptin is the is the satiety hormone. When you have leptin, leptin is present, that means, you know, leptin gets released when you are full. So if you eat a big ol ‘steak, by the time you’re done with that steak, you’ve got leptin present and you’re full, it says, hey, don’t eat any more, you’re full. Carbohydrates do not trigger that leptin response, so you stay hungry.
So ghrelin, the hunger hormone is increased, which means you’re gonna be hungry, and then leptin is suppressed, which means you’re not going to feel full. This is a bad combination, if you’re trying to lose weight, right? If you’re trying to improve your health, you’re just going to be storing and storing more fat, right? So we don’t want that, we want our hormones balanced. We don’t want our hormones all jacked up.
Okay, so eating the proper human diet will reduce inflammation, it will reduce bloating, it will reduce the water retention, it’ll improve fat burning and helps you balance your hormones and then helps improve athletic performance. When you’re an efficient fat burner, you can run for longer periods of time.
So endurance improves, you know, your adaptive hormones are working the way they’re supposed to. So when you work out when you do a hard workout, you will improve, you know more quickly, your strength will improve the intensity of your workouts can improve, your recovery improves because you’re you’ve reduced inflammation so you can work out harder, and you can recover faster, you can work out harder because more adrenaline is being produced.
Some other ways that eating the proper human diet, eating ancestrally can improve your health is you’ll sleep better, you’ll have more energy throughout the day. You’ll have more vitality, more longevity, live longer and improve body composition. So there’s all these amazing health benefits of eating ancestral eating the proper human diet. Okay.
So how do we do it? Like what do we do? So the first thing I would say is like, let’s just get off of all these modern processed foods, you know, Franken foods, foods that are like, you know, super processed, they don’t look like food anymore. Right? Shop the areas of the grocery store where you buy meat, and eggs and produce, dairy. Stay away from all the packaged foods right?
Stay away from sugar and seed oils and liquid calories. Stay away from refined grains and anything that would be considered like hyper palatable foods. And those things contain all those things I just mentioned, which will be sugar, refined grains, and seed oils, like hyper palatable foods or foods that have been manufactured in a laboratory to be extremely delicious and make you basically addicted to them. Okay.
So we want to eat what our ancient ancestors ate: meat, eggs, fish, fruit, dairy, some honey, some vegetables, like tubers, and other vegetables that are not super high in carbohydrates. So it’s a very simple way of eating, it’s not complicated. And our ancient ancestors ate the whole animal that ate nose to tail.
One of the best things you can eat, one of the best things you can eat as a human being, one of the most nutritious things and most nutrient dense things you can eat on this planet would be liver, and organ meats, but I have to tell you that I cannot eat that stuff. I don’t like it. I don’t like the way it tastes. So instead, I use a supplement. So I use a beef organ supplement that I take and you know, this is kind of my equivalent of, of eating nose to tail, okay?
And if you’re vegetarian or vegan or something like that, you know, you don’t have to eat animal products, and you can still eat very much like our ancient ancestors. Right? But here’s the thing, like what is the way we evolved as human beings. All I’m suggesting is that we go back to doing what we’ve always done. The way we’re eating today in this modern westernized world is very, very different today than it was 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago.
And for the vast, vast majority of human existence, we ate very simply we ate animals. We ate some fruit and eggs and fish and some dairy. And we just did not go to town. on sugar and refined grains, this is a new thing. And what if we just, you know, eliminated that stuff from our diet? How would you feel, I wonder? I think you’d feel pretty amazing.
And then people always ask me, but what about this, Patrick? What about that and just fill in your favorite cheat meal or treat, you know, fill in pizza ice cream, you know, whatever it is that you love gummy worms, you know?
What about this? And what about that, you get to decide what you do for yourself, right? And this all depends on your goals, you know? So I always tell people, like, let’s try to follow the 90/10 rule, right. The 90/10 rule states that 90% of the time, I’m just gonna stick to my plan. And that means that about once a week, I might have a meal one meal a week that is a little bit different, you know, it’s a little bit off that very simple ancestral eating plan.
You know, I had dinner with my girlfriend last night, and we went to an Indian restaurant, and I ate some rice. That was my way of sort of saying, like, okay, I’m gonna eat some rice tonight. Like, it’s not crazy. It’s a grain. And I have to be honest with you, I don’t feel good today. I don’t feel good today. And I’m thinking to myself, like, why do I do this? I feel much better when I stay on track. And so do most of my clients. We feel so much better when we just stay on the plan.
But every now and then, it just seems like a good idea. Or it seems like it would be no big deal. And yet, it kind of moves us away from our goals a little bit, right? And it tends to be all about comfort versus discomfort, like what are we willing to do in these situations, to stay comfortable? What are we willing to do to keep moving in the direction of our goals? Is this choice I’m about to make here at this moment, going to move me closer to my goals or further away from my goals?
What am I feeling in this moment that makes me think I want to make this choice? Is it FOMO, fear of missing out? Is it wanting to fit in and be normal and do what everybody else is doing. And I say, let’s be abnormal, let’s get uncomfortable. Because the norm is being overweight. The norm is feeling sick, most of the time, the norm is being sluggish and feeling out of shape and not having energy and dying early.
Dying early has become a thing. And like in 2020, the average life expectancy in the United States went down 1.5 years, this is the largest one year decline since World War Two. We are not getting healthier, living longer, that’s starting to go the opposite way. This is not a good thing. Think about this.
I follow a lot of doctors and I hear them. I listen to podcasts and stuff where they’re talking about, you know, longevity and health and fitness and diet and exercise and all these things. And I hear all these doctors talk about how they never see obese 90 year olds, you know, people that live to be 90 plus years old, are not obese, because they don’t live that well. And the people with all these chronic diseases are living or not living as long as our ancestors did, you know, even 100 years ago.
So we’ve got to be concerned about this. Right? Now, I understand that ancient humans didn’t live as long as we do now. They, you know, would you know, die of certain types of viruses and things like that, which, you know, we live longer now because of modern medicine, for sure.
But the fact that we have access to all this modern medicine, and yet we’re choosing to live a lifestyle that is killing us earlier, this is not a good thing. It’s not a good thing, right? The food that we’re eating a lot of times is more like a drug than it is fuel for our bodies. Especially carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are addictive.
There are people who cannot moderate carbohydrate intake. I’m not one of those people. If I start eating sugar, it’s hard for me to stop. And when you look at the definition of what a drug is, a drug is something that is a substance that is not necessary for human existence for human health and carbohydrates fit that category.
Fat is necessary for human health. We have to eat fat or we will die. Protein is necessary for human health, we have to eat that or we will die. Those two things are called essential nutrients. We have to get those in our diet. Our body does not produce those things. We have to eat them.
Carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient. We don’t have to eat carbohydrates. Your body produces the glucose it needs. It takes some of the protein you eat, it turns it into glucose, the process in your liver called gluconeogenesis. And this is just something that we have to understand. I’m not saying don’t ever eat carbohydrates, I’m just saying they’re, they’re not necessary for human health.
Okay, so the definite definition of a drug is something that is not necessary for existence. It’s something that when you eat it, or ingest it, or smoke, or drink it or whatever, it gives you an instant reward. It lights up your dopamine centers, your pleasure centers, and releases dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins and all that stuff, right.
So you get this buzz from eating or drinking or whatever. So it’s not necessary for human health, it gives you a reward, and then it causes harm in excess. So in excess, eating carbohydrates will cause negative consequences. If there’s no harm from the substance, there’s no addiction. Right? So people that drink alcohol, if you drink, moderately, if you drink, have, you have one glass of wine twice a week or something like that, and you can just put it down. There’s no addiction there. Right, because it’s not causing negative consequences.
But if it does, when you are in excess, when it does cause negative consequences in excess, that’s a drug. And that’s something that’s an addiction, that’s an addictive behavior. And then another criteria is if you try to control your intake, and you cannot, so the absence of control is, you know, means that there’s some addiction happening there, too. Right? Once you start, you can’t stop.
And for a lot of us eating sugar is our once we start eating it, we can’t stop. It’s the definition of addiction, right. And also, another criteria is that there’s a dysfunctional way of managing emotions. So this becomes an emotional management strategy. People use drugs like nicotine, alcohol, and things like food, especially carbohydrates, sugar, to manage their emotions, they just want to feel better.
So instead of dealing with the actual emotions they are experiencing, they eat this food that makes them feel good. And it’s impossible to get obese from eating food. You cannot get obese from eating real food. You can only get obese by eating carbohydrates by eating drugs. Like if you just ate an ancestral human diet. I mean, you might get overweight, you might gain some weight. But you know, a lot of that might be muscle weight. You might get a little bit overweight, but you’re not going to become obese.
You can’t get morbidly obese from eating real food. You only get that when you’re eating, you know, drugs, essentially. Okay? Food is not addictive. You don’t get addicted to eating steak and broccoli. You don’t. Carbohydrates are very addictive, though. Right? So we want to get off of the food as a drug and start eating the way our ancestors have eaten for millions of years. Just eat real food, food that still looks like food.
And listen, I get it, you probably have a million questions about stuff and everybody wants to complicate things, I’m trying to simplify things I want to simplify my life. I want my dietary choices to be so simple, I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to make some extravagant meal with all these recipes and ingredients and things like that. Every meal does not have to be an amazing entertainment event.
Every now and then I will go out and have a nice meal in a restaurant. And I enjoy that I had a nice meal last night and I enjoyed that, you know, maybe overdid it on the rice a little bit. But besides that, you know, I can do that every now and then it’s fine. But for the most part for like 90% of the time, the way I eat is extremely simple. And it makes me happy. Eating a steak, or a big piece of salmon at night for dinner makes me happy. I look forward to it. And I might have a little bit of Greek yogurt with a little berries afterwards. You know, it’s like a little treat or something.
But this is all real food. This is all food our ancestors would say oh yeah, I guess I know what that is. We’ve been eating that for millions of years. Patrick, that’s cool. This cannot be simpler. We want to make things very, very simple. Go back to the simple ways of living our lives. Go back to those simple ways of eating and see how it might improve your health. Like what would it look like if you started living more like our ancient ancestors?
If you started eating more like your ancient ancestors, you know what if we all got off the addictive substances, alcohol, nicotine and carbohydrates you know, what if we just simplified? What if you improved your health? What if you got leaner and stronger? How would that feel for you? What if we all live to be 100 years old? Because we are so healthy and strong, going into old age? And you know, these diseases of lifestyle were no longer a thing?
And what if we modeled that for our kids? And what if they modeled that for their kids?
Think about the impact we can make in this world. Not to mention how badass you’re going to feel when you PR your next marathon. Because you’re so lean and you’re so strong, and you’ve improved your health, you’ve improved your athletic performance.
Or imagine how amazing you’re going to look in that bikini next summer because you’ve improved your body composition, you’ve lost the fat weight, you’ve gained the muscle weight and you feel amazing and you look amazing. Just imagine what that might look like for you. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
There are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. Some of these concepts have been around for a very long time and just seem like they hold water but a lot of …
Continue Reading about 131. Busting the Biggest Nutrition Myths →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 131 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths. So there are a lot of myths floating around out there in regards to proper human nutrition. And some of these concepts have been around for a very long time, decades. And they just seem like they’re legit.
They seem like they hold water, but a lot of them just don’t, or at least they don’t anymore. So there’s a lot of new studies that are being published and a lot of new data that’s being looked at and analyzed. And we have to be able to decipher now, because it’s a different time, a different era, we have to be able to decipher now what’s true, and what’s not.
And it’s not always easy, I get that. And that’s why I put together this episode to hopefully shine the light on and bust some of the biggest nutrition myths. Okay, so today I’m busting the biggest nutrition myths, I’m providing you with some actionable advice to help you take control of your health, and get you on the right track.
And listen, getting healthy, losing weight or maintaining your weight. running marathons this stuff, it’s not easy, becoming the healthiest version of yourself. It takes time. It takes consistency, it takes discipline, it takes know-how. And I provide all of that in the Running Lean coaching project. This is my intensive coaching program that gives you all the knowledge, all the support, all of the accountability that you need to improve your health and make changes that last permanently.
We’re not interested in quick fixes. In my program, we’re not trying to teach you the fastest way to lose weight. This isn’t about weight loss schemes, or fad diets, we’re all about sustainability. What you can do, starting now to change your health for the better and how to maintain it for the rest of your life.
Remember that becoming healthy, it’s not a destination you’re trying to get to there is no finish line, I wish there was I wish I could tell you that at some point, you could just stop doing all this, you can stop eating healthy, you can eat all the junk food that you want, you can stop exercising, but that’s not the way it is. It’s not a temporary state of being, this becomes who we are and becomes what we do from here on out.
So you have to embrace this concept. And if you’re feeling compelled to change your health for the better, if you’re feeling compelled to lose weight, finally lose it for good for the last time. And if you’re longing to become that best and most badass version of yourself, I want to encourage you to actually do something about it today, take some small action steps today.
And if you want help, I’m here for you. I’m always here for you really, you can just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. You can fill out a quick application, you and I’ll jump on a call, we can talk about your goals and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not for everybody, that’s totally fine. Again, this is for the people who want to commit to this way of life.
Who will make these changes last for good, then this is a good program for you. Cool, runningleancoaching.com/apply, I would love to have you join us in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, onto busting the biggest nutrition myths. So I had some fun putting this episode together. And the reason I’m talking about this is because there are a lot of myths floating around out there around nutrition and around, you know what it means to eat healthy. And a lot of this stuff has been kind of propagated over decades. It’s been propagated in the media. It’s been propagated by, you know, Jim Rose, and all kinds of stuff.
And I just want to like, for once and for all like just talk about some of the stuff that comes up often. I hear these concepts come up often with clients, they ask me these questions all the time. And so I put together a list of some of the most common questions that people ask and the common questions that people have been sort of misunderstood over the last few decades.
And I wanted to kind of tell you like what’s legit and what’s not, like what’s real, you know, what, what are things that we can honestly say are concerns and what are things we should just ignore? Okay, so I wanted to make sure that we are getting on the same page with some fundamental concepts here. And that we don’t, we’re not being manipulated by old outdated information anymore. Okay.
So that’s why I’m talking about this today. And I’m just going to go through a list of some of the biggest myths that I’ve, you know, been kind of researching, and the biggest questions that I get from clients and potential clients. And I wanted to share this with you guys, I think it’s gonna be really helpful.
So the first one, and I’ve talked about this so many times before, but I’m going to talk about it again, the first one is that calories are all that matters, right? If you want to lose weight, you’ve just got to cut your calories, right, calories in versus calories out, run more and eat less. And this is called the energy balance theory, the energy balance theory says that the energy that you take in calories coming in should be less than the energy that you’re putting out through exercise, right?
And this theory, they call it a theory, because it’s not the truth. This theory works fine. If we were a closed system, like a steam engine, but we’re not steam engines, the human body is much more complicated. And there are some issues with this theory. And, you know, like I said, I’ve talked about this so many times in the past, but I’ll just give you a couple of quick bullet points here on why this theory just doesn’t hold water. Okay.
So if you cut your calories, yes, you can lose weight, right? When it comes to losing weight, if you cut calories dramatically, you can lose a lot of weight pretty quickly, too. The problem with this, though, is it’s not sustainable. If you cut your calories too low for too long, this will effectively slow down your metabolism.
When your metabolism slows down, the amount of energy that you’re taking in becomes the amount of energy that your body is willing to put out there. So your resting metabolic rate, that’s the way you burn calories at rest just hanging around being you, this is the most calories that you burn through the day, by the way.
So because it takes calories to keep your heart beating, and your lungs working, and your blood flowing, and all these other things that all the other processes are happening with your body digestion and your brain and all this stuff. So actually you consume more calories throughout the day by just sitting around doing nothing than you do through exercise, right?
So but your resting metabolic rate will effectively slow down to match the calories that you have coming in. So let’s say you have a resting metabolic rate of like 1800 calories, so you just burn 1800 calories a day at rest, then you start eating, you decide you want to lose weight, so you start eating like 800 calories a day. And you do this for some time, you’ll probably lose some weight at the beginning.
But what will happen is your resting metabolic rate will slow down to kind of match that 800 calories that it’s getting in energy because your body’s like, listen, we’re only getting 800 calories of energy a day, we’re going to slow down to kind of match what’s coming in. So we don’t die of starvation and we don’t emaciate ourselves and die.
So it’s going to slow down your metabolism to match what’s coming in. And so let’s say you’re messing with your resting metabolic rate and it changes and it drops to 1000 or, or 800 calories a day. Okay, now that 800 calories a day that you’re eating doesn’t work for weight loss anymore, you’re going to start to gain a little bit of weight and gain a little bit of weight. And you’re going to be like, wait a minute, why is this not working anymore? And this is why.
And this is why programs like The Biggest Loser, they dramatically cut calories and these people lose a ton of weight real fast. But they don’t keep it off. It’s not sustainable. This is not a sustainable weight loss strategy. It just isn’t. And so we have to do something different. We have to change the calories and the type of calories that we’re eating matters.
It’s not about the numbers, you know, a calorie. A calorie is just a unit of measure. It’s how we measure energy. It’s the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water or one milliliter of water. One degree Celsius like it’s just, you know, how, how long does it take or how much energy does it take to increase the temperature of the water by one degree? That’s what a calorie is. Okay, so it’s just a unit of measure.
And, but that’s not taking into consideration the types of foods that you’re eating, okay? And the types of food you’re eating absolutely matter, right? So when we’re talking about quality of food, quality of nutrition, it really does matter. So you could take 300 calories of doughnuts, let’s say you can have a couple of donuts, they’re equal, like 300 calories. And the that food though, that energy that’s coming in will raise your blood sugar like crazy, you’re going to be hungry all day, your body’s going to be stuck in this fat storing mode, a lot of that energy that you take in is not being is not able to be used by your body right away. So you’re going to store some of that as fat. And these are essentially nutritionally empty calories, there’s not a lot of nutritional value in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, okay?
You could take 300 calories of steak on the other hand, and this does not raise your blood sugar much at all, maybe a little bit comes back down pretty quickly. It’s very filling, you’re not gonna be hungry all day after that, you’re not going to be putting your body into that fat storing mode, because insulin is not being generated as much. So you’re not storing extra energy as fat.
This is a new, nutritionally dense food that you’re eating. So your body is actually absorbing the nutrients from this food, it’s not generating the hunger signals that carbohydrates generate. And you’re going to be very satiated from eating that food and it’s actually nutritionally legit for your body. Okay, so calories are not the same. And anybody tells you the calories are all the same, just walk away from that conversation right there.
Okay, calories are not the same. I’ve heard people say, oh, yeah, I can help you lose weight. And you can just do nothing between keys all day long. And I’ll get you to lose the weight, but it is not sustainable. And, uh, don’t do that. By the way, Twinkies are one of those things that, you know, if you send it out on a counter, it’ll still look exactly the same in like, 100 years. So don’t don’t eat that stuff. Right? It’s bad. It’s bad for you, right?
So low calorie diets, they’re often void of quality nutrition, your health will suffer as a result of eating a low calorie diet, and it is not sustainable. Okay, so slowing down your metabolism like crazy is not a sustainable way of losing weight and keeping it off and being healthy, right?
And just understand that humans are complicated. We’re not engines, we’re not steam engines. There’s things to consider, like hormonal imbalances, metabolic adaptations, like a metabolic slowdown. There’s genetics, there’s health conditions that some of us have, like hypothyroidism, you know, there’s medications that we take.
All these things make, you know, losing weight a little bit more complicated for some people, right? So we just have to understand that we are complicated beings, and then it’s more, it’s more about eating high quality food than it is about the number of calories coming in and going out. Okay, so the biggest nutrition myth that I see out there is that calories are all that matters. And I just want to say BS, right, there’s more going on that we have to consider. Okay.
The next one, and this is one of the biggest concerns I hear from people, is that eating fat will make you fat. And I have to tell you something here, this is not the case. Eating fat does not make you fat, high fat foods are not unhealthy foods. For millions of years, we humans have been eating fat and animal fats.
And we have survived and thrived and our brains have gotten big, huge, like we’re the most advanced creatures in the known universe. And we got this way not because we’re eating a low fat diet. No, because we are eating tons of animal products and eating tons of fat. It’s the fact that we are eating that actually made our brains start to grow and become the kind of humanoid brains that we have today.
And fat is an essential nutrient. Fat and protein are both essential nutrients meaning that we do not produce these nutrients internally. We have to get these in our diet or we will die. If you don’t eat fat, you will die. If you don’t eat protein, you will die. You know what’s not an essential nutrient is carbohydrates. Humans are not required to eat carbohydrates in order to live. It’s not an essential nutrient. Right?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever eat carbohydrates. I’m just saying it’s not essential your body will produce the glycogen that your body will produce the glucose which you know becomes glycogen that you store in your muscles. Your liver will produce that for you internally. Your brain needs a certain amount of glucose to function every day. Your body makes that, right?
Your liver makes the glucose that your brain needs every single day, it makes the glycogen it gets stored in your muscles to keep you functioning properly to keep your heart beating to keep your legs moving, keep your arms moving all that stuff. Carbohydrates are not essential, fat and protein are essential, okay?
And eating a higher fat diet has been the norm for us humans for millions of years, okay. All of a sudden, in the late 1970s, somebody put out this document and said hell fats are bad for you, that’s a problem, you need to stop eating fat. This does not make any sense. Think about it. It doesn’t make any sense.
They base this off of some really crappy studies that were done in the 60s 50s and studies that do not hold water whatsoever. And they’ve done tons and tons of studies since then, that have absolutely disproven this, okay? This is an antiquated and incorrect theory, that fat will make you fat. And that, you know, eating fat is unhealthy. And it’s slowly being put to rest.
And many people still fear it though, they still fear high fat diets. They still fear high fat foods, and they follow these low fat diets, in hopes that like if they just cut their fat intake, that they’re going to become healthier, and they’re going to lose weight, and it does not work.
The American Heart Association used to be all about low fat diets, low fat diets, low fat diets. And some years back, they very quietly put out a statement that said dietary fat is no longer a nutrient of concern. They kind of hid this little, little snippet in their documentation. They didn’t make a big splash about it, because they’ve been preaching that everybody has to eat a low fat diet in order to be heart healthy, right heart healthy diet, low fat.
And even the American Heart Association has been like, yeah, you know what we were wrong. But they don’t want to say they’re wrong and make a big “to do” about it. So they just kind of snuck it in there a little bit. Okay. So it’s being outdated. It’s being antiquated, and people are starting to wake up to the fact that this is not an issue, right? That dietary fat is actually essential for human health.
And actually, they’ve done these studies where low fat diets have actually been linked to greater risk of health issues, including metabolic syndrome. And they lead to an increase in insulin resistance, an increase in try group triglyceride levels. And these are all known risk factors for heart disease. So the low fat diet is not good for you. Okay.
And when it comes to losing weight, they found that diets higher in fat have been proven just as effective or even more effective in encouraging weight loss. Okay, so don’t be afraid of fat, eating fat does not make you fat. And I just want to mention one study that I just think is so compelling.
This is the pure study, P U R E peer study. And they compared a high carbohydrate, low fat diet to a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. So they sampled 140,000 people in 18 different countries. And they follow these people for 10 years. So half the people were following a high carb low fat diet. And the other half were following a low carb high or higher fat diet.
And the conclusion was this: that high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality. Whereas the total fat and the individual types of fat are related to lower total mortality. So total fat was not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality. And saturated fat. This is really interesting, saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke, meaning that people that ate more saturated fat had fewer incidences of stroke.
And the conclusion is that the global dietary guidelines that we’re all following should be reconsidered in light of these findings. So this is just one study, but a pretty compelling study that says that a higher fat diet is actually better for you if you want to live longer, eat the fat. Okay.
Another myth I want to kind of break down and this might bump some people out there, but sugar substitutes are healthy. I’m going to have to say that this is not necessarily the case that eating a bunch of sugar substitutes is not necessarily a recipe for good health. Okay, so one thing to understand about this is that there’s not a lot of conclusive evidence out there because a lot of the sugar substitutes we’re using today, things like stevia or erythritol, xylitol, allulose.
These kinds of things haven’t been around that long, so they don’t have a ton of research to back these things up. But here’s, here’s the gist of that. Eating sugar substitutes can ramp up your craving for sweet foods, even though it’s not really sweetening your food, it’s a substitute in your body that doesn’t metabolize a lot of these sugar substitutes.
But what happens is that it tastes sweet. And so it kind of tricks your brain into thinking you’re eating something sweet, which for some people can lead to higher sugar cravings and unhealthy eating patterns. Okay, so just understand that, you know, the sugar substitutes are being used, you know, people are having all these like low carb products out there and keto products that say, like, you know, only whatever, its grams of carbs, one gram and net carbs or something like that.
And the problem is that we’re eating these things, some people are eating these things to excess. And, and, and some people are, you know, when you’re eating these types of foods, they’re not necessarily health food. It’s not like eating some broccoli and a steak. Like you’re eating, you know, something that’s supposed to be like a cookie, or brownies or ice cream or something like that, right? So these sugar alcohols, the sugar substitutes are not necessarily healthy.
So I hate to burst your bubble on that one. You know, they can be used sparingly, and that’s fine. It’s kind of like an every now and then type of thing. Just, you know, the fact is that these are not healthy foods, okay. And some of these sugar alcohols like erythritol and xylitol, they can cause digestive issues for people because your body does not metabolize them, or at least it only metabolizes a tiny bit of it. So they can cause some digestive issues, especially if consumed in large amounts. So just be careful of that. Okay.
So they’re not necessarily healthy. They’re not, you know, not necessarily, you know, bad, but we just have to be careful not to overdo it with this stuff very, very sparingly with that kind of stuff. Okay? Okay.
Another big myth out there is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We’ve heard this before. We’ve all been taught this right. In school, when I was growing up, it was always like breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And what I didn’t realize is that that concept was coined by the Kellogg’s company, right? This is just a marketing message. Right?
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is not based on science or anything like that. Kellogg’s came up with this because they wanted to sell more breakfast cereal, and breakfast wasn’t even a thing back in the day. Like Kellogg’s came up with the breakfast concept like in 1899.
This is not something that we’ve been doing for thousands of years as human beings, the human body is not designed to eat, you know, first thing when you wake up in the morning. And here’s the thing, like, skipping breakfast is not a big deal. And if you’re the kind of person who thinks that skipping breakfast is going to be impossible, I want you to try it. See what happens.
When you skip breakfast, you promote more fat loss. You know, if you exercise in the morning, you’re going to actually have an increase in adrenaline, an increase in some of the adaptive hormones when you skip breakfast, and an exercise in that fasted state. And human beings are just designed to eat a couple times a day. And to think that we have to eat breakfast and like it’s the most important meal of the day. It’s just wrong, it’s just wrong.
And especially if you eat a high carbohydrate breakfast, and they’ve done some studies that show that they did a study where they just compared people who ate eggs for breakfast and who ate bagels for breakfast, right. And the people who ate eggs for breakfast had a 16% greater reduction in body fat during the study period, compared to the people who ate the bagel for breakfast.
So right there is a good sign that the carbohydrates alone first thing in the morning especially, are going to you know, thwart your weight loss, progress or promote weight gain, you know, so just understand that you know, the types of foods we eat matters, right? But also that skipping breakfast may be just the best thing that you can do for yourself.
And it’s such an easy thing to do. Just skip your first meal and eat it later. Start eating around lunchtime and see how you feel. So many people feel so much better doing this. They don’t think it’s possible but they actually get there.
And then another myth that I wanted to bust here is that all carbs are bad. You know, I talk about a low carb diet and you know, maybe like carbs are the problem. And honestly, listen, all carbohydrates are not bad, right? They’re not essential. We don’t have to eat carbs in order to be healthy human beings. But some carbs are really problematic, right? And we want to really avoid those things, right?
Sugar. You know, carbohydrates are just sugar. It’s just another word for sugar. And they come in varying degrees of concentration. So you know that white sugar crystals that you stir into your coffee in the morning, that’s a very concentrated form of carbohydrate. So are things like maple syrup, or flour, like any kind of grain that’s been refined in ground up into a fine powder is a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, okay.
But then there are other types of carbohydrates, which we call complex carbohydrates that are not terrible for you, okay, they’re not bad. Things like white potatoes, sweet potatoes, other types of underground vegetables, tubers, some fruits, some dairy, these things have all been part of the human diet for millions of years, right?
Even honey has been part of the human diet forever. And so all these things can be considered to be what I would call good carbs, like there’s good carbs and bad carbs, sugar, flour, refined grains, bad carbs. Good carbs would be things like, you know, potatoes and some fruit, okay. So we just have to understand that there are different types of carbohydrates, and that some of these can be okay to be consumed in moderation.
You know, we don’t want to make our entire diet white potatoes, right, not nutritionally dense. And the carbohydrate load would just be too much for your system, right? But some of these things can be okay, you know, right now I’m eating mostly meat, and then some fruit, a little bit of dairy, like I’m just sticking to a very ancient sort of ancestral way of eating. And it works great.
For me, it’s very doable, very doable, it’s very sustainable for me. And I even consume a little bit of honey every now and then. And all these things have been part of the human diet forever. And we just have to understand that there’s a difference between the kinds of carbohydrates we’ve been evolving to eat like over millions of years, and the kinds of carbohydrates that are being marketed to us today. Very different, very, very different.
Okay, so let’s look at carbohydrates. From an ancestral standpoint, I think that’s a good way of looking at it, okay. And you can even use carbs, to enhance your running performance, if you want to kick into that extra gear for running if you want, you know, if you’re trying to smash a 10k time or something like that, and you want to be running at your peak performance and close to your VO2 max, then you’re definitely going to want to supplement with some carbohydrates to do that, right?
The fat burning is great when you’re a little bit lower when you’re 65-70% of your VO2 max. But once you get over that, you’re going to want to add some carbs into the mix, right? But the types of carbs matter, right?
Another myth is that high up foods high in cholesterol are unhealthy. Here’s the thing. I’m clueless why cholesterol rich foods have gotten a bad rap. Because people don’t understand how dietary cholesterol affects your health, right? So some people are very sensitive to dietary cholesterol, right, but this is the exception.
Overall, nutrient dense foods that are higher in cholesterol can be included in a healthy diet, including foods like eggs and full fat yogurt. So these have higher cholesterol in them, right? They actually might boost your health because they enhance feelings of fullness. So you’re going to feel more full.
And you’re actually getting a ton of nutrition when you eat these kinds of foods. Whereas when you’re eating foods that have zero cholesterol, you’re not getting the nutrients that you are that are actually required like kale has a lot of it doesn’t have any cholesterol in it right? But is kale something that you need to be eating? Because it’s going to give you all kinds of nutrition, it’s a lot of fiber, you’re just going to pass most of that through your system, you’re not going to absorb a whole lot from eating kale.
Sorry to bust your bubble about kale but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be right? So high cholesterol foods like eggs, full fat yogurt, these things are very nutritious, right? And like I said, some people because of genetic factors might be more sensitive to cholesterol and you’ve got to be careful with that. But for most of us, they can be included as part of a healthy diet.
Your brain needs cholesterol to function properly. Every cell in your body has cholesterol in it. We have to get cholesterol in your diet, or else we’re going to, our health is going to suffer, we’re going to start to break down, right? So we have to have cholesterol in your diet. So just understand that cholesterol does not mean you know, it’s not bad, it’s not the sign of an apocalypse, you’re not going to die from eating cholesterol, in fact, you have to eat it as part of a healthy diet.
Here’s one that might surprise you: supplements are not necessary. So this is a kind of a myth, like I’ve talked about eating real food and how you should be able to get all your nutrition from eating real food. And I kind of stand by that yes, to a certain degree. But I also think there are certain supplements that are okay.
And that actually kind of recommended for most people and especially runners like, I think creatine is a supplement that most people can benefit from most athletes can benefit from, it helps to build muscle, it helps you with recovery, it’ll help to improve running performance, because you’re going to be become a stronger human being, and you’re going to have stronger muscles and stronger connective tissues.
Collagen would be another one that I would recommend, just especially as you get older, you know, to help with connective tissue health and stronger bones. And then iron would be another one. So this is interesting, that long distance runners require more iron, because there’s some loss of blood through the gut that happens with running, because we’re, you know, diverting blood away from our gut in order to provide oxygen to working muscles, this is why a lot of people get stomach issues, GI issues, because they don’t have the blood in their gut.
So we’re diverting blood away from the gut, to arms and legs to keep us out there swimming, running, biking, whatever. And so we’re actually kind of losing blood through that process. And so we want to replace the iron. So eating a diet high in iron, iron can be really helpful. But for a lot of people, I think supplementing with iron, especially for long distance runners is going to be really helpful for you. Okay.
And then one supplement in particular, that I think is interesting. Calcium, a lot of people think they need to supplement with calcium in order to have strong bones. So people are told to just keep popping the calcium supplements, you’ve got to keep your bones healthy, especially as you get older. But there’s been new research out there that shows that supplementing with calcium may actually do more harm than good.
So calcium supplements have shown to be related to an increased risk of heart disease. And so if you’re concerned about your calcium intake, it’s best to focus on dietary sources of calcium, like again, full fat yogurt, sardines, some beans and seeds, things like that. But just another, a better, even better than just like trying to get calcium from your diet is to practice regular strength training, and get enough protein and avoid low calorie diets, low calorie diets, not good for your bone health.
Not getting enough quality protein is not good for your bone health. Not doing any kind of resistance exercise, or any kind of weight bearing exercise is not good for your bone health. So running, strength training, getting enough protein are all going to help you to maintain a strong skeletal system. And if you want to supplement use collagen, because that’s going to help you create stronger connective tissues and stronger bones better than a calcium supplement. Okay.
And then another another myth I wanted to bust is about low fat diet foods being healthy. We probably, I’m assuming that we all know this by now. But I’m just gonna like maybe maybe that’s a wrong assumption. Maybe some people don’t know this. But if you’re buying any kinds of foods that say, like low calorie or low fat, like you just got to stay away from that stuff.
A lot of the foods that are being peddled to us out there that say light or low calorie, low fat or fat free. These contain much more added sugar. And if you gotta read the labels and like just pay attention to what it is you’re getting right? But pretty much I would say stay away from anything that says light, low calorie diet, low fat, fat free. Avoid anything that says any of that, right? Go for though just regular full fat foods, because these are almost always going to be a healthier option and contain less sugar. So just keep that in mind. Okay.
Another myth that I hear all the time, and especially from, you know, bodybuilder type of people is that you’ve got to eat like six times a day in order to keep your metabolism going. And I just have to tell you that this is completely not true. That every time you eat food, you’re going to increase your blood sugar, right.
And if every time you eat if you’re eating six times a day, and you’re keeping your blood sugar high, especially if you’re eating a lot of carbs, this can really lead to more fat storage. And I can’t tell you how many people have come to me as clients and said, Patrick, I was working with a trainer. And they wanted me to eat six times a day, and I just kept gaining weight, and I just kept gaining weight.
And they were telling me that I wasn’t doing it right, or that I needed to exercise more. And I just have to tell you that this whole concept of eating six times a day is just total BS, the human body is not designed to eat six times a day, we’re just not. The human body is designed to eat like once or twice a day. And that’s it.
We did not evolve as grazers, you know, we’re not antelopes, or bison, like, you know, we evolved as persistent hunters, we, we evolved as gatherers, you know, we would gather foods and then bring them back to our tribe, and we would, we would eat that food together. But we we evolved to be people who, a species who eats infrequently. So this idea of eating all the time, just puts a strain on our systems and puts a strain on your pancreas, it puts a strain on the digestive system.
And you do not need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism going. You know, you keep your metabolism going by just eating enough each day, getting enough calories in, eating a couple times a day, you don’t need to be snacking in between meals or anything like that. And this is how you promote fat loss. This is how you keep your metabolism actually going.
And you just have to understand that we are not designed to eat that many times a day, the human body does not like that. And we will keep storing a lot of that energy as fat and you won’t be able to tap into your fat stores. You know, we talked about, you know, fat burning being the goal, here we want to be, we want to get our bodies back to being efficient fat burners.
And when we eat all the time, we flip that switch and we just store fat, store fat, we store fat, stop doing that. It’s not healthy, it’s not a good way to go. Especially if you’re an endurance athlete, stop eating a million times a day, just eat a couple times a day. And take advantage of all the amazing adaptations that happen. When you practice this kind of meal spacing, this intermittent fasting, whatever you want to call it, this idea that we eat a couple times a day. And that’s plenty for us. And this is the way we’ve always done it as human beings. Yeah.
And then the last little myth I want to bust here is about tracking calories, tracking macros, and that this is something we have to do if you want to lose weight, you got to track your calories, you got to count your calories, you got to count your macros, and you have to stay on top of it for the rest of your life, you know, and I’m just gonna say just know, just know, you don’t have to do this. Somehow, for two and a half million years, as human beings, we managed to thrive without my fitness pal. Like we didn’t need to put our food into a food tracker in order to stay healthy and fit and lean and strong.
And in my programs, I help people to learn how to eat more intuitively, how to give their body what their body actually needs, when you need it, and how to tune into that. Now, just as full disclosure here, I do encourage people to track their food for a little bit of time just to understand what that looks like. And to understand what these numbers kind of can add up to.
Because when we tell people like hey, maybe we’ll switch to eating fewer carbs, or what does that mean? And so we just wanted to, you know, we want to quantify that with some numbers. So we’ll track for a little bit of time, maybe a couple of weeks or something like that, but then we put that away, we don’t need to do that anymore. Your body knows what it needs.
And if you’re eating the right kinds of food, you’ll know when you’re hungry. And when you’re not. You’ll know when you’ve eaten too much or if you need more. And if you’ve learned how to eat properly and you’ve learned about proper human nutrition, and you’ve learned about what works for your body and what doesn’t work for your body, then this should be very intuitive for you and that you shouldn’t need to be tracking calories and tracking macros.
I talked to somebody a while back who was so obsessed about tracking calories and making sure that she was always getting the right number of calories and making sure macros were always right that she would take a scale, a food scale, with her on vacation and take a foods go with her when she went out to dinner with, you know, business with colleagues.
And she would pull out her scale and set it on the table and weigh everything that she was eating, because she needed to know exactly how many grams everything was so that she could enter it all into her food tracker. This is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not the way that we were designed as human beings to live our lives, you know.
And, you know, I think it’s interesting to track for a little while, and I have done it in the past. And every now and then I’ll just put my food into an app just to kind of see where I wonder where I am with this stuff. It’s kind of interesting, right? But it’s not necessary. I am very intuitive now and this is what I teach my clients to do, too, we want to be able to eat intuitively. And again, in my programs, we talk about sustainability, this is all about what’s going to work for the long term, because we’re not committed, we’re not committed to short term, we’re not this isn’t about like a quick fixes this is about long term, sustainable, a way of life. That’s what we’re interested in. So we want to get there. And that’s what we focus on.
So that’s, that’s the gist of, of, of what I do in my programs is that we work on sustainability, and we work on creating good habits that lasts for life. Okay. So those are the biggest myths that I wanted to go over today. And I’m sure you know, I’ll probably come up with some more, I’ll do another episode about maybe some of the other ones that didn’t quite make the list this time.
But I wanted to make sure that we’re all on the same page with some of this stuff, because some of it’s just, it’s just outdated. And that’s cool. Get it. So I hope this was helpful. Let me know what you think. You can always reach out to me on social media. And you can find me @runningleancoaching on Instagram and Facebook and all that.
And I would love to chat with you about coaching if that’s something that you’re ever interested in. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And we’d love to have that conversation with you. Love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.
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